The Arab-American Handbook

Tune up your knowledge of the Arab and Muslim worlds with this easy to read text. The Arab-American Handbook contains useful reference material and comment by a wide variety of participants and observers.

The book includes: a thumbnail history; the essentials of Islam; social insights & cultural norms. The perfect tool for : teachers, employers, travelers, law enforcement.

Government workers and the general public will find that they can quickly penetrate the stereotypes and misconceptions to appreciate the tenor and nuance of Arab and Muslim life. Without a better grasp of this subject, the citizens of liberal democracies are unsafe at home and at a disadvantage in the global competition for hearts and minds.
The first part of the book uses simple fact to outline its subject and to convey the basic elements of Arab culture and Islam. Here we learn the origins of such seemingly disparate American cultural elements as algebra and ice cream.

The second part of the book puts meat on this outline. It conveys the complexity of Arab and Muslim lives. Here are essays by leading Middle East scholars and journalists such as Juan Cole and Patrick Seale alongside the poetic first person impressions of Arab-Americans such as Nathalie Handal and Lisa Suhair Majaj.

Other essays convey the sometimes conflicted thoughts of American Jews. Several pieces give the street level look and feel of the Middle East through the eyes of American travelers who venture alone among the locals, abide as the guests of strangers, and are received with surprising humor and good will.

Author Nawar Shora bases his book on the highly successful training seminars he has given for the past eight years to live audiences of 20,000 (plus thousands more via intranet and DVD). Seminar audiences have included local, state, and federal law enforcement personnel, church groups, academic institutions, and private businesses.

Shora is a lawyer who serves the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee as the Director of Diversity Education and Law Enforcement Outreach. Shora has participated in creating two federal government training DVDs.