US Arab voters drop support for Bush

By: Mohamed Ali

DEARBORN, Mich.: Arab Americans who enthusiastically shouted thanks to US President Bush on the ouster of Saddam last year were dropping their support for him in the oncoming election.

Husham Al-Husainy, a cleric who in 1979 fled Iraq and moved to Dearborn that is home to many of the estimated 235,000 Arab Americans in Michigan, said: “The butcher (Saddam) is gone, but the bloodshed is still there.”

“President Bush did a good job to remove the cancer… but he did not do a good job of strengthening Iraq. Iraq is still like an infected patient in an emergency room,” he said.

According to the polling firm Zogby International, more of the estimated 1.1 million Arab Americans in the four battleground states of Michigan, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania back Kerry over Bush.

Dearborn restaurant owner Sam Ajami, a Muslim who migrated from Lebanon 35 years ago, has voted for the Republican candidate in the last three presidential elections. But now, sitting at a table at his Al-Ajami restaurant, Ajami said he is switching to John Kerry and the Democrats.

Frustration in the community has also grown over the US role in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and over the Patriot Act.

“The president has talked about an independent Palestinian state, but nothing has been done,” said Mohammad Ali Elahi, who left Iran 14 years ago and is the cleric at the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, one of about 25 mosques in the metropolitan Detroit area.

Meanwhile, ahead of Wednesday night's third and final presidential debate in Tempe, FBI agents have been questioning hundreds of Muslims across the state and visiting mosques in what they say is a new initiative to thwart terrorist attacks.

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