Ihsan Alkhatib

Wissam Allouche arrested by the JTTF Flag of the Lebanese Shia Amal Movement The Lessons of the Wissam Allouche case: An American Lebanese Shiite Muslim caught in the government and media dog- and- pony show Wissam Allouche, a Lebanese Shia immigrant from Lebanon was sentenced to five years in prison for lying on his citizenship application and for lying to get a security clearance from the Department of Defense. The US government had asked for a ten- year sentence. Allouche’s criminal case began in 2013 and he was tried and convicted in 2015 in the Western District of Texas district court.  After conviction, the US Attorney for the Western district of Texas issued a press release that read in part: “Jurors found that defendant lied about his previous association with the Amal militia This afternoon in San Antonio, a federal jury convicted 45–year-old Lebanese–born Wissam “Sam” Allouche of knowingly lying to federal authorities on his U.S. citizenship petit

Attorney Fatina Abdrabboh Wayne county prosecutor Kim Worthy In the Detroit News, American-Arab anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) Michigan office regional director wrote a column entitled "Yes hate crimes happen here." The column's genesis is in the Kroger case that ADC took but the Wayne County prosecutor Kim Worthy declined to prosecute as a hate crime. [This is the same Kim Worthy that charged an Arab immigrant gas station clerk with first degree murder for shooting a customer in the back, once, with the customer dying later from complications] The picture that attorney Abdrabboh describes as to the prosecution of hate crimes is accurate. Many times meeting the burden of proof is a great challenge and going the civil route with its lower evidentiary standard is the only avenue of relief. Arab Americans need organizations such as the Arab American anti- Discrimination Committee (ADC) to defend their civil rights and civil liberties and the Kroger case

My dissertation was on the political behavior of Arab Americans. Using the data from the Detroit Arab American study, I examined three forms of political participation- voting, campaign donations and writing to political officials. I looked at the differences between national groups, faith groups and generations. I found that there is no significant difference in political participation between Christians and Muslims and that education and income are, as expected, strongly linked to political participation. One finding that showed assimilation of Arab Americans was the consistent increase in participation between the generations-from the first generation through the third generation. We know that Arab Americans are assimilating and are part of the political process. However, my study relied on survey data. Surveys are snapshots of reality. The data was gathered after 9/11. Did political participation increase after 9/11? The survey numbers could not address that.