Family members of victims on the one-year anniversary of a mass shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, Aug. 5, 2013

DEARBORN— For Millions of Arab Americans, ethnic and religious backgrounds are not at odds with American values. An inseparable myriad of cultures and traditions form their identities.

Vandalized homes, unjust terrorist classifications and politicians like Donald Trump, however, have revealed a hostile climate for Arab and Muslim Americans. Many find it more difficult to proudly carry the quilted flag woven of diverse and hybrid colors and ideals.

The label of Arab or Muslim is detrimental to their prosperity, causing some to distance themselves from the stigmatized classification. However, discrimination and hate crimes committed in the name of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment permeates both groups, as specific ethnic or religious ideologies are rarely the sole targets.

Among those who endure such experiences, Sikhs, Hindus and Arab Christians find themselves wrongful targets of Islamophobia, while African American and south Asian Muslims get ignorantly called “Arab.”

This confusion-based hate has forced groups to redefine themselves in the face of an already complicated narrative. For example, an Iraqi Christian in Metro Detroit might hesitate to call himself an Arab. Hence, the rise of the Chaldean identity.

Nour Goda, a Palestinian Muslim whose New York-based blog and podcast, The Between Arabs Project, uncovers taboo subjects within the Arab American community, said focusing on internal differences only further validates a negative view of what it means to be an Arab in the U.S.

“Whether I am liberal or conservative, Muslim or Arab is irrelevant,” Goda said. “To our common oppressor, we are one and the same.”

She defines being an Arab American as breaking away from sectarianism and social restrictions and wielding a unified and effectively transformative message about immigrants and minorities in America.

“To me, being an Arab means the same thing as being an African American and having struggled through the same injustices,” Goda said. “It has to do with being stigmatized the way that Muslims are or conservatives of any faith are stigmatized.”

She said the prevalent Islamophobic climate is pushing Arab and Muslim youth to disassociate from their cultural and religious identities.

“We’re so severely misrepresented that we’ve internalized the stigma of being Arab,” she said, quoting literary critic Edward Said.

However, Islamophobia is a problematic term, Goda added.

She said the targeted bigotry transcends a concern about Islam itself, apparent in the victimizing of Christians and Muslim Palestinians, Sunni and Shi’a Muslims and Sikhs and Bangladeshis alike.

A former teacher of language, Goda added that it is clear that Trump has been pouring kerosene on the fire of hate toward Middle Easterners and “brown people.”

She urged Arab and Muslim American communities to be active in pushing against hate unapologetically, without wasting time on internal conflicts and social stigmas.

“It behooves us as a community to unite in a fashion that’s very disciplined and not erratic and defensive and reactive,” she added.

Christina Elhaddad, an attorney at the Arab American Association of New York, said her Lebanese heritage instills in her a range of values and morals that teaches hospitality, respect for others, thirst for knowledge and education.

Her American identity is equally important because of the significance of liberty.

“I can’t be one without the other. They both equally define me,” Elhaddad said. “Imagine my disappointment and outrage when this country fails to live up to those standards that I’ve held so high and that I’ve proudly stood up for.”

Although she knows many non-Muslim Arabs who reaffirm their backgrounds in defiance of discrimination, Elhaddad, a Christian, said she knows of many others who hesitate to call themselves Arabs if they culturally fit the description.

She added the individuals shed the label not out of shame, but out of fear of ignorance and bigotry.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” Elhaddad said. “Ignorance begets fear, fear begets violence, violence begets hatred and hatred begets ignorance.”

Thaki Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi American, said members of his community, 90 percent of whom are Muslims, are often mistaken as Arabs.

As a result of political feuds between his home country, India and Pakistan, Bangladeshis dissociate themselves from greater India and identify closer with Arab Gulf countries.

“It can be extremely frustrating to kind of lose your identity to the larger cultural milieu that’s imposed on you by certain segments of American society,” Chowdhury said.

Not only do these cultural nuances escape non-brown Americans, but Chowdhury said even some of his Indian friends have mistaken him for an Indian because of similar complexions.

“We’re past an inflection point where people now feel more comfortable to be open about their religious or racial prejudices,” Chowdhury said. “Where in the past, people were more likely to hide that.”

Sikh Americans have endured a slew of attacks from Islamophobic and neo-Nazi individuals because they are perceived as hard-line Muslims because of their overt religious characteristics.

In 2012, an Army veteran massacred six and wounded four others at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Last December, a 68-year-old Sikh man was hit by a truck and beaten by its two occupants while waiting for a ride to work in Fresno, California.

Arjun Singh Sethi, director of Law and Policy at The Sikh Coalition in Washington D.C., said in the aftermath of 9/11, Sikh Americans have been acutely vulnerable to bullying, employment discrimination and hate-based violence, often being targeted in the classroom, workplace and on the streets.

Following the San Bernardino shootings, Sikh Americans have experienced a 200 percent uptick in hate crimes, according to Sethi.

As the group’s youth are bullied at twice the national average, the Coalition works with school superintendents and teachers to prevent, identify and remedy bullying.

However, The Sikh Coalition chooses to not focus on its differences with the Muslim community. Instead, it joins in solidarity against a shared struggle.

“While Sikhism is different from Islam, and Sikhs have different beliefs from Muslims, Sikhs stand alongside Muslims in combating bigotry and hate violence,” Sethi said.

The underlying problem, he explained, is that while the FBI requests local law enforcement agencies to report hate crimes that occur within their jurisdiction, it is voluntary. He said the agencies often argue that frequent reporting is burdensome, involves erroneous incidents and is even unnecessary.

As a consequence, 17 percent of local law enforcement agencies have not reported a hate crime in six years, he added.

“If you don’t understand the severity of the problem, you can’t fix it,” Sethi said. “If you understand it, you can’t look the other way.”

Sally Howell, an Arab American studies professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, said the increased bigoted sentiments are the ramifications of a complex historical relationship between Europe and the Arab World, as well as the fruits of a national political agenda.

She said the ratio of Arab, South Asian and African American Muslims are relatively equivalent in Michigan, adding that roughly half of the Arab community in the nation is Christian.

The reason Muslims are not subject to as many hate crimes in Michigan as other parts of the country is that they are not strangers and they are likely to be a person’s doctor or next door neighbor.

However, proximity does not always breed familiarity and comfort, she said.

Khalid Jabara

On Aug. 12, Khalid Jabara, 37, a Lebanese American Tulsa resident, was brutally murdered by a neighbor who had directed racial slurs at him and his family for years.

Howell said the conflict and backlash are results of back-to-back terrorist attacks that have shaken Europe and the U.S. this year, coupled with an election year where anti-Muslim rhetoric is heavily employed to gain traction among some Americans.

She said racism will be alleviated once the elections are over, especially if polls about Trump’s falling popularity are correct. She added Trump’s decline means voters are beginning to view his anti-immigrant rhetoric as racist and “too far.”

Where the issue could continue, Howell said, is in the nationwide local elections, where anti-Muslim sentiments are still successful tactics for their candidates.

Howell said to define Islamophobia as just racism is a stretch, although it is at the heart of it.

She attributed today’s heated political and social climate in part to Europe’s response to a shocking wave of immigrants, refugees and terrorist attacks. She said the fear overflows to American media and politics.

Howell added that European societies are less diverse than the United States, making the sizable Muslim and Arab American population more visible.

Although the everyday reality of being Muslim in the U.S. is different than being a Muslim in France, those concerned about Muslims can borrow the same language and rhetoric to denigrate these communities, she explained.

“Because we are such a diverse society, we generalize about each other,” Howell said. “All the time, we make assumptions about each other because we’re just trying to make sense of our own differences. And those generalizing patterns accomplish productive things for us, but they also obviously lead to stereotyping and discrimination.”