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Nasser Beydoun Bridging the gap between the U.S. and Middle East
As a bus carrying congressional staff and prominent Lebanese Americans from Metro Detroit careened through the streets of Beirut in October, an escort of Lebanese police shooed traffic out of the way. "Make way for Senator Beydoun!" shouted some of the passengers, all members of an American delegation to the war-torn nation sponsored by the American Arab Chamber of Commerce. Whether in Metro Detroit or halfway around the globe, Beydoun commands respect as a ground-breaker in efforts to build economic bridges between the United States and the Middle East. Beydoun considered mounting a quixotic campaign for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2006, several months before the Lebanon visit. He decided against running, and instead helped lead the local Lebanese community's response to the war with Israel last summer. About 7,000 Metro Detroiters were caught in the war zone, as they vacationed and visited family homes. "I think it was right after 9-11, I felt that the community needed to get its message out and start telling its own story," says Beydoun, who emigrated from Lebanon when he was 5 years old. "For many years, Arabs and Arab Americans, our stories have been told by others and sometimes twisted. "And I thought first of all, you have to lead by example, and second of all, you have to build bridges so that people can understand what the Arab-American community is all about." Beydoun spearheaded U.S.-Arab Economic forums in Detroit in 2003 and in Houston on May 7-9. A third is set for Washington, D.C., in 2008. Representatives of American and Middle Eastern companies and governments meet to make deals, swap tips and discuss easing trade restriction and the generalizations based on ethnicity and faith that have hampered relations between the United States and the Middle East. For his work, the State Department named Beydoun a "citizen diplomat" in December 2005. "I have always thought that a lot of progress can be made when people start doing business with each other," says Beydoun in a phone interview from Qatar. "If you sit back and let things go without making an effort to make things better, then there is no agent for change." "Nasser has accomplished a lot in a short period of time," says Ali Jawad, a local businessman and head of the Lebanese American Heritage Club. "He can talk about the gas station business and the challenges that Arab-owned businesses face. He also can talk about life in southern Lebanon, from which most of Metro Detroit's Muslim Lebanese came." Gregg Krupa
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Maggie Allesee