New source is in one of oldest communities in America
DEARBORN — Members of one of the oldest and most obscure Arab American communities in the country are connecting with the Detroit-area as they work to put halal meat from Iowa on local dinner tables.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa is home to one of the first mosques established in the U.S., built in 1934 during the Great Depression.
It’s also home to Midamar Corp., a major exporter of halal meat, run by descendents of four brothers who moved to Iowa from Lebanon in 1888.
The company recently reached out to a Dearborn-based distributor and began selling products in local stores.
“Iowa holds claim to fame for many things in Muslim America, including one of the first mosques and one of the first Islamic cemeteries in the U.S.,” said Nasim Cheetany, a Detroit-area resident whose family is originally from Cedar Rapids.
The original four immigrant brothers, Abbas, Moussa, Ali and Yusef Habhab, made homes in Iowa by working on farms and peddling fruit and whatever else they could sell, according to Abdullah Habhab, who runs domestic sales for Midamar and is the grandson of Moussa.
“Eventually, one by one, each brother made enough money and went back to Lebanon to get married,” he said.
“They then came back to Iowa and started many businesses such as grocery stores, tire shops, theaters, cafés and gas stations. The brothers became very successful after very hard work and many hardships… Our families made a name for themselves.”
The grandson of Abbas Habhab, William Aossey, would become the first American Muslim to serve in the Peace Corps.
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal from 1963-1965, Aossey worked in agricultural development, helped dig water wells and helped coach the country’s 1964 Olympic wrestling team.
He then spent years traveling throughout Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia.
Witnessing widespread malnutrition and a lack of agricultural development in many of the places he explored, Aossey decided to form an Iowa-based international development research organization called Mid-American Agricultural Research, or Midamar.
Incorporated in 1974, Midamar grew into a major export company sending halal meat approved by the Department of Agriculture and certified by the organization Islamic Services of America to over 30 countries around world, including Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and Singapore.
“The global demand for halal food completely outweighs the supply,” said Jalel Aossey, Director of Midamar and the son of William Aossey.
The company is now trying to gets its name well-known in the Detroit-area as a trustworthy provider of halal meat.
Being distributed by local company Midwest Halal Distribution, the products are on now on the shelves of grocery markets in Dearborn and Hamtramck, according to that company’s owner Azzam Haidar.
“There was a need for variety, a wider selection of halal products,” he said about hooking up with Midamar.
He said the company is widely known and respected as a company that works with the U.S.D.A. and Islamic authorities to ensure quality.
Cheetany said there is a strong historical connection between Detroit and Cedar Rapids, going back to Iowa immigrants moving to the Motor City to work in the auto industry at its peak decades ago.
“There was always that relation back then,” he said. “To have this kind of business relationship is going to further the relationship between the Dearborn and Cedar Rapids communities, and between Arab American communities all over the country.”
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