Emerging Community a Target
The terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon have triggered vandalism against stores and other small businesses across the country that are owned by Arab Americans and Muslims.
Widely denounced as misguided, the hostile reaction comes as Arab Americans and others from Islamic and Middle Eastern countries play an increasingly visible role in the U.S. business community, fueled by immigration from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and other countries.
“You see more and more businesses constantly opening,” said Ra’id Faraj, a spokesman for the Anaheim office of the Council on American Islamic Relations. “And to us that’s a sign that the economic condition of the community is healthy.”
In the wake of the attacks, believed to be the work of Islamic extremists, vandals have struck a number of businesses and individuals who appear to be of Arab or Middle Eastern background (though some have been neither).
The attacks have alarmed many within and outside of the Arab community who point out that Arab Americans, Muslims and others of Middle Eastern descent have deep roots in the United States--including the business community.
“Here are these people who are contributing economically to this country, just like the Germans did, just like the Irish did, just like any other ethnic group,” said Samia El-Badry, a Texas-based demographer and the author of a 1999 report on Arab American entrepreneurs. “We need to be aware of that.”
According to the report, which was based on 1990 U.S. Census data, nearly 74,000 entrepreneurs identified themselves as being of Arab descent, and El-Badry thinks that’s an undercount.
The list of business executives of Arab descent includes Kinko’s Inc. founder Paul Orfalea, Ford Motor Co. President and Chief Executive Jacques Nasser and former Mattel Inc. President Ned Mansour.
Others include Roger Farah, president and chief operating officer of Polo Ralph Lauren and J.M. Haggar III of Haggar Clothing Co., whose grandfather founded the company.
El-Badry’s report found that 33.4% of Arab American entrepreneurs reported that they were in sales, the highest single category and nearly double the 17.9% seen for non-Arab entrepreneurs.
The second-highest category for Arab American entrepreneurs was “executive manager,” which at 19% was slightly higher than the 15% seen for non-Arab entrepreneurs in the U.S.
Fully 90% of Arab American entrepreneurs were U.S. citizens, either by birth (50%) or by naturalization (40%).
And the $39,000 annual median income for Arab American entrepreneurs was 29% greater than the median for the nation’s non-Arab entrepreneurs, according to the report.
“It’s a booming business community,” said Nasser Beydoun, executive director of the Detroit-based American Arab Chamber of Commerce, a 1,000-member Michigan organization. “And we’re still a very young community.”
Arkan Somo, president of the California Independent Grocers and Convenience Stores Assn., said his group includes more than 800 retail outlets in the San Diego area, 85% of them owned by Christians of Iraqi heritage.
Beydoun said that in the metropolitan Detroit area, there were 5,000 to 7,000 Arab American-owned businesses, about 40% of them in retailing. The number of businesses has nearly doubled compared with five years ago, he said.
More than a third of the nation’s Arab Americans live in California, Michigan and New York, according to the Arab American Institute.
Mazen J. Kherdeen, president and chief executive officer of Denver-based ArdBank Corp., a mortgage banker, estimates there are about 1,000 Arab American-owned businesses in his region, covering a variety of fields.
“There’s lots of retail,” he said. “People own cell phone companies, restaurants, hotels, gas stations. There’s a large community south of Colorado Springs; they came in the 1800s to build the Santa Fe Railroad.”
Generations later, many Arab Americans remain in the area as entrepreneurs, he said.
The Arab American Institute estimates that 42% of Arab Americans are Catholic and 23% Muslim. More than half--56%--trace their roots to Lebanon.
And many, experts said, brought an entrepreneurial spirit from their homelands, riding the waves of the booming U.S. economy.
Likewise, when the slowdown came, the pain was felt across ethnicities.
Sayed Abbas, who owns Pakistan Market in San Jose, said the deadly terrorist attacks could hardly have come at a worse time.
Because of the slow economy, Abbas, who is Muslim, said his business already was down more than 40% compared with last year. On top of that, he closed his business early twice in the days following the attack, after getting threatening phone calls. With many of his regular customers afraid to venture out, he also thought demand for meats and spices was going to be nonexistent anyway.
“If it keeps up this way, we may have to shut down and walk away,” said Abbas, who also owns a market in Hayward. “We were already hurting because of the layoffs in Silicon Valley.”
Other Middle Eastern shop owners--including Arabs and Christians--said they’ve felt the pinch as well.
“People are scared to go to the markets selling stuff from the Middle East,” said Michel Abssi, publisher of the Hollywood-based Beirut Times, one of the oldest and largest newspapers serving the Arab American community in the United States.
“They think people are watching them and may ask them questions and they may get arrested. They’re scared to go out at night. So it’s affecting business.”
Abssi, a native of Lebanon who’s been in the U.S. for 20 years, said even before the terrorist attacks, he had seen a drop in ads as the economy softened. The events of Sept. 11 only made it worse, he said, as restaurants canceled events and pulled ads.
Abssi, like others, was hopeful that within a few weeks, the mood would return to something more closely resembling the routine.
“I think people will go back to normal,” he said. “We certainly can’t stay like this.”
