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Monday, November 12, 2007

Detroit, the Islamic City (and more University of Michigan trivia)

Followups to the posting on the theft of Israeli flags at the University of Michigan/Dearborn have shown that the university doesn't even pretend to hide its biases.

Here is a lecture from last week(Google cache):

Detroit, The Islamic City

Description:
Middle Eastern Cities Colloquium Series lecture by Andrew Shryock. Detroit has been home to Muslim communities for over a hundred years. The city's first purpose-built mosque was established in Highland Park in 1921. Today, there are over 50 mosques in greater Detroit, and many areas (Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Hamtramck) have large, influential Muslim populations. Using materials drawn from the "Building Islam in Detroit" project, I will show how Muslim spaces have been created and transformed in Detroit over the last century. The mosque, as a physical object and a spiritual aspiration, is key to understanding larger processes of identity formation that make it possible to know Detroit (to inhabit, historicize, experience, and envision it) as an Islamic city.

The Center for Arab-American Studies at the university refers to Jerusalem as being in Palestine.

(h/t Anti-Racist Blog)


Shy Guy over at Israellycool comments about a few other facts about U of M:

- It employs the dishonest academic Juan Cole.
- It published a study finding no relation between Islam and terror.
- It is building Islamic footbaths in public university bathrooms.

Their Center for Middle Eastern and North Africa Studies has a program of extending their pro-Arab propaganda throughout Detroit's public schools. Typically, their idea of even-handedness is to give equal time to the claims of Syria, the PLO, UNIFIL, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel and then ask kids to decide who they think has the best claim.