U.S. scholars seek mention of lost 'Little Syria' in 9/11 museum

Reuters ^ | September 9, 2013 | Victoria Cavaliere

[TFine80]

Before construction began on the World Trade Center in the 1960s, a vibrant Arab-American community lived and worked in the shadow of what would become the Twin Towers, the two New York skyscrapers destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.

As Wednesday's 12th anniversary of the attacks draws near, local historians are asking the September 11 Memorial Museum to include a reference to the neighborhood, known for more than 50 years as "Little Syria," in its permanent exhibit.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I know what! Let’s build them a mosque at Ground Zero!

[Vendome]

Yer Arabs.

Skip that noise.

[The_Reader_David]

Actually, an honest telling of the history of the “little Syria” neighborhood — complete with the fact that most of the Arab immigrants to the U.S. in that period were Christians who fled the intermittent anti-Christian pogroms launched by their Sunni Muslim neighbors even after the Ottoman Empire, in a quid pro quo for British and French support in the Crimean War, had abolished their second-class citizen status as dhimmis — might be a nice addition to the 9/11-Memorial Exhibit. (I think the idea that there were any sizable percentage of Muslims among the Syrians of “little Syria” is rubbish — the only sizable Muslim immigration to the U.S. before the 1980’s were the lot that settled in Michigan, both Bosniaks and Arabs.)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks TFine80.

Before construction began on the World Trade Center in the 1960s, a vibrant Arab-American community lived and worked in the shadow of what would become the Twin Towers... As Wednesday's 12th anniversary of the attacks draws near, local historians are asking the September 11 Memorial Museum to include a reference to the neighborhood, known for more than 50 years as "Little Syria," in its permanent exhibit.

How about instead the "local historians" are found face down in the East River, and intercourse this "Little Syria" b.s.?