Simply put, there has not been a time during the last century when Detroit was unaware of its Middle Eastern communities, and these populations seem always to be active in public life. Governors attended their fund-raising banquets in the 1950s; mayors attended their mosque openings in the 1930s; their political meetings and community protests were dutifully reported by the local press in the 1920s, and the opening of the Highland Park Mosque in 1921, the handiwork of Syrian, Turkish, and Balkan Muslims, received several columns— and a photograph of three turban-wearing, flag-waving imams—in the big Detroit newspapers.

XREF: Counteracts common narratives that Arab/Muslim American civic presence is recent or post-9/11; connects to scholarship on early 20th-century Arab immigrant communities in Michigan. SEED: Possible essay on the deep roots of Muslim American civic life in Detroit, challenging assumptions about when these communities entered mainstream public life.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 690