Pubdate: Fri, 05 Aug 2005
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2005 Detroit Free Press
Contact:  http://www.freep.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/125
Author: Erin Chan
Cited: New Detroit Science Center http://www.detroitsciencecenter.org

ARABIC FLAG TO REMAIN IN DRUG EXHIBIT

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will not change portions of 
an exhibit at the New Detroit Science Center about the dangers of 
drugs and their connections to terrorism -- even though it has 
offended several Arab-American and Muslim groups in metro Detroit.

The decision by a DEA panel to do nothing prompted the American-Arab 
Anti-Discrimination Committee of Michigan this week to call for 
community action.

"As long as people are concerned enough to ask us to do something 
about it, as long as people are offended by it, we are not to rest 
before this is solved," says Imad Hamad, director of ADC Michigan.

An e-mail message sent to thousands of ADC members in Michigan asked 
people to contact the Detroit Science Center and insist that it put 
pressure on the DEA to modify the exhibit. The message, sent by ADC 
Michigan deputy director Rana Abbas-Chami, says "the exhibit has 
created false, negative impressions of Islam."

Of particular concern to groups is a handmade flag purportedly 
confiscated from the Taliban displayed near rubble taken from the 
9/11 attacks at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. The white 
flag reads in Arabic: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the 
Messenger of Allah."

Representatives from ADC Michigan and the Arab Community Center for 
Economic and Social Services who have viewed the exhibit say the flag 
makes inaccurate connections between Islam, terrorism and drug 
trafficking, given the paramount importance of the phrase to Muslims.

But Garrison Courtney, spokesman for the DEA, says the flag is meant 
to represent a regime and not a religion.

"To take down the flag would be to take down a large part of 
history," Courtney says, adding that "the best way we can show who 
the Taliban is is through their flag."

The Taliban, the former ruling party of Afghanistan, was ousted by 
U.S. forces. Courtney emphasized that drug money taken by the Taliban 
was used to fund terrorist activities.

Shawn Kahle, the president and chief executive officer of the New 
Detroit Science Center, says she has spoken to DEA leaders in Detroit 
and Washington to raise the concerns of Arab-American groups and to 
make a plan that would address ways to modify the exhibit. She says 
the DEA "is committed to their decision not to modify the exhibit."

"I do not believe there is any action that I can take that I have not 
taken to try and share the feedback and emphasize the concerns that 
were shared by the Arab-American community," she says. "We have taken 
all of this very seriously."

She adds that the science center will continue to share feedback from 
Arab-American groups with the DEA. Science center officials and the 
DEA's Detroit Field Division have agreed to meet with ADC Michigan to 
discuss its concerns.

The science center first invited Arab-American groups to tour the 
exhibit after two employees told their bosses about the potential 
insensitivity of parts of the exhibit, including the flag and a panel 
titled "What is a narco-terrorist?" that also lists Hezbollah, which 
some see as a legitimate political and military organization in 
Lebanon, as a terrorist group.

Along with ADC Michigan and ACCESS, representatives from the Council 
on American-Islamic Relations and the Arab American and Chaldean 
Council also viewed the exhibit, Kahle says.

The exhibit, called "Target America: Opening Eyes to the Damage Drugs 
Cause," has been touring the country since its premiere at the DEA 
Museum & Visitors Center in Arlington, Va., in September 2002. Sean 
Fearns, director of the DEA museum, has said the exhibit traveled 
through New York and Dallas without raising serious concerns from 
Muslim and Arab-American groups. It runs in Detroit through Oct. 2.

The majority of the exhibit deals with how illegal drugs affect 
communities and how they damage the human body, which Arab-American 
groups acknowledge plays an important role in education.

But it violated that role, Hamad says, when his 10-year-old daughter, 
Nadeen, came home from a field trip to the science center last spring 
complaining that some of her classmates connected Arab Americans to 
terrorism and drugs.

Says Hamad: "If we continue to allow such respectful agencies and 
institutions to display misleading information, I wonder what would 
be the future of this greater understanding that we all reach for?"

'Target America: Opening Eyes to the Damage Drugs Cause'

Through Oct. 2 Detroit Science Center 5020 John R, Detroit 9 a.m.-5 
p.m. weekdays, 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. $7; $6 seniors and children 
ages 2-12 313-577-8400

(http://www.detroitsciencecenter.org)
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake