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AP November 20, 2015, 12:55 PM In America's Little Syria, a divide on accepting refugees ALLENTOWN, Pa. -- A few days ago, a pastor asked Syrian-born restaurant owner Marie Jarrah to donate food to a welcoming event for recently arrived Syrian refugees. Jarrah, who said she regularly helps people in need, declined. Like many of Allentown's establishment Syrians, she doesn't think it's a good idea to bring refugees to the city. She clung to that view even before last week's terrorist attacks in Paris. "Problems are going to happen," said Jarrah, co-owner of Damascus Restaurant in a heavily Syrian enclave....

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A few days ago, a pastor asked Syrian-born restaurant owner Marie Jarrah to donate food to a welcoming event for recently arrived Syrian refugees. Jarrah, who said she regularly helps people in need, declined.

Tourists visiting the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City can read its brochures in 10 different languages – but Arabic is not one of them. Nor will it be any time soon. “Nine languages are spoken by over 97 percent of our visitors: English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Mandarin, Italian, Japanese and Russian,” a representative from the memorial told the New York Post. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, claiming Arabic is the world’s fourth-most-spoken language, is sending letters to memorial coordinators demanding answers on why the language is not included. But it appears that the Arabic community is looking for...

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.

Little Syria is facing a big problem. Activists are rallying to save the last vestiges of America’s first Arab-American neighborhood before it’s too late — but the city doesn’t think the buildings are worth it. “Most people don’t realize that the center of Arab life was in the shadow of the World Trade Center,” said Todd Fine, an organizer with Save Washington Street, a campaign to preserve the surviving two buildings of New York’s once bustling Syrian quarter. “The fact that it’s near Ground Zero makes it trickier to talk about,” he said. “Yet this should have been protected wherever...

In 1891, Yusuf Sadallah arrived in Lower Manhattan from the town of Baskinta, in the part of the Ottoman Empire that is now Lebanon. Going by the name of Joseph Sadallah, he set up a trading shop on Washington Street, where other immigrants from the Levant — Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians — had created a vibrant Arab quarter known as Little Syria. Most residents were Christian, their loyalties divided only between St. George’s Syrian Catholic Church at 103 Washington Street and St. Joseph’s Maronite Church at 57 Washington Street, later at 157 Cedar Street.