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ANAHEIM, California: A few miles from Disneyland is a place most tourists never see. The signs along the thoroughfare suddenly switch to Arabic script advertising hookah shops, Middle Eastern sweets and halal meat.
At a run-down strip mall in the neighborhood known as Little Arabia, flags from a half-dozen Muslim countries flap in a stiff breeze. Flying above them is a giant American flag.
After Sen. Ted Cruz called for increased surveillance of Muslims in the US, many people in this community and others like it either challenged the Republican presidential candidate or dismissed his comments as mostly meaningless rhetoric.
Majd Takriti, 43, stopped to discuss Cruz’s remarks as he picked his mother up from a butcher shop. He said he took Cruz and rival Donald Trump with a grain of salt.
“A lot of what they say is to attract attention,” Takriti said.
A block down the street, Jordanian native and 44-year US resident Wathiq Bilbeisi slurped on lentil soup during his break at a Jordanian restaurant. He seemed mystified by the concern among some non-Muslim Americans about the candidates’ comments.
“The politicians, they want to say whatever the constituents want to hear. I don’t think they mean what they say, and in the end, they’ll have to come to terms with themselves,” he said. Bilbeisi wasn’t worried about the GOP seeking major changes to US law.
“When they go to Congress to get laws to watch the Muslims, nobody’s going to do anything about it,” he said. “It’s against American values.”
At a nearby hookah shop displaying pipes in a rainbow of colors, employee Guss Zayat questioned whether Daesh members were true Muslims.
“They are killing more Muslims than anyone else in this world. They are killing children. They are killing Christians and Muslims in our home countries,” said Zayat, who came to America from Beirut about three years ago. Politicians “should know the difference between Daesh and Islam.”
Cruz’s statement on Tuesday came hours after the deadly attacks at the Brussels airport and a subway station that killed dozens of people and wounded many more.Daesh militant group claimed responsibility. He said law enforcement should be empowered to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”
Echoing earlier statements from Trump, Cruz also said America should stop the flow of refugees from countries where Daesh has a significant presence.
Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates was asked Wednesday at a news conference about calls to step up patrols of Muslim communities.
She said the Muslim community “is one of our greatest partners in our fight against terrorism and public safety generally.”
Ahmad Tarek Rashid Alam, publisher of the weekly Arabic-language Arab World newspaper and one of the immigrants who helped build Little Arabia, said anti-Muslim statements are familiar.
“This has been going on in every Muslim neighborhood for years,” he said. “But now our kids are in the police, in the army. Are they going to watch us?” He said Cruz’s remarks seemed aimed at exploiting prejudice to get votes.
“The way he talks, it could work maybe 40 years ago. But now, it’s too late. Islam is part of the country. We are already in the country. We’re part of the country whether he likes it or not.”