ARABIC FLAG TO REMAIN IN DRUG EXHIBIT

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration will not change portions of
an exhibit at the New Detroit Science Center about the dangers of
drugs and their connections to terrorism -- even though it has
offended several Arab-American and Muslim groups in metro Detroit.

The decision by a DEA panel to do nothing prompted the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee of Michigan this week to call for
community action.

"As long as people are concerned enough to ask us to do something
about it, as long as people are offended by it, we are not to rest
before this is solved," says Imad Hamad, director of ADC Michigan.

An e-mail message sent to thousands of ADC members in Michigan asked
people to contact the Detroit Science Center and insist that it put
pressure on the DEA to modify the exhibit. The message, sent by ADC
Michigan deputy director Rana Abbas-Chami, says "the exhibit has
created false, negative impressions of Islam."

Of particular concern to groups is a handmade flag purportedly
confiscated from the Taliban displayed near rubble taken from the
9/11 attacks at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. The white
flag reads in Arabic: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the
Messenger of Allah."

Representatives from ADC Michigan and the Arab Community Center for
Economic and Social Services who have viewed the exhibit say the flag
makes inaccurate connections between Islam, terrorism and drug
trafficking, given the paramount importance of the phrase to Muslims.

But Garrison Courtney, spokesman for the DEA, says the flag is meant
to represent a regime and not a religion.

"To take down the flag would be to take down a large part of
history," Courtney says, adding that "the best way we can show who
the Taliban is is through their flag."

The Taliban, the former ruling party of Afghanistan, was ousted by
U.S. forces. Courtney emphasized that drug money taken by the Taliban
was used to fund terrorist activities.

Shawn Kahle, the president and chief executive officer of the New
Detroit Science Center, says she has spoken to DEA leaders in Detroit
and Washington to raise the concerns of Arab-American groups and to
make a plan that would address ways to modify the exhibit. She says
the DEA "is committed to their decision not to modify the exhibit."

"I do not believe there is any action that I can take that I have not
taken to try and share the feedback and emphasize the concerns that
were shared by the Arab-American community," she says. "We have taken
all of this very seriously."

She adds that the science center will continue to share feedback from
Arab-American groups with the DEA. Science center officials and the
DEA's Detroit Field Division have agreed to meet with ADC Michigan to
discuss its concerns.

The science center first invited Arab-American groups to tour the
exhibit after two employees told their bosses about the potential
insensitivity of parts of the exhibit, including the flag and a panel
titled "What is a narco-terrorist?" that also lists Hezbollah, which
some see as a legitimate political and military organization in
Lebanon, as a terrorist group.

Along with ADC Michigan and ACCESS, representatives from the Council
on American-Islamic Relations and the Arab American and Chaldean
Council also viewed the exhibit, Kahle says.

The exhibit, called "Target America: Opening Eyes to the Damage Drugs
Cause," has been touring the country since its premiere at the DEA
Museum & Visitors Center in Arlington, Va., in September 2002. Sean
Fearns, director of the DEA museum, has said the exhibit traveled
through New York and Dallas without raising serious concerns from
Muslim and Arab-American groups. It runs in Detroit through Oct. 2.

The majority of the exhibit deals with how illegal drugs affect
communities and how they damage the human body, which Arab-American
groups acknowledge plays an important role in education.

But it violated that role, Hamad says, when his 10-year-old daughter,
Nadeen, came home from a field trip to the science center last spring
complaining that some of her classmates connected Arab Americans to
terrorism and drugs.

Says Hamad: "If we continue to allow such respectful agencies and
institutions to display misleading information, I wonder what would
be the future of this greater understanding that we all reach for?"

'Target America: Opening Eyes to the Damage Drugs Cause'

Through Oct. 2 Detroit Science Center 5020 John R, Detroit 9 a.m.-5
p.m. weekdays, 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat. $7; $6 seniors and children
ages 2-12 313-577-8400

(http://www.detroitsciencecenter.org)