Some Arab and African American Muslims in a Culture Clash
By Bill Beene
Special to the NNPA from the St. Louis American
Thursday, December 15, 2005

ST. LOUIS (NNPA) –“I don’t want these Black people patronizing these Arabs because they don’t care about us,” said Carol Hazam, an angry Black Muslim woman currently married to an Arab Muslim business owner.

Carol Hazam is divorcing her husband of five years, Mohamed Hazam, on the grounds of adultery after allegedly seeing a surveillance videotape of him sexually abusing a 13-year-old black girl in his Marcus Beauty Supply store.

Yemen-born Mohamed Hazam, 48, is charged with three counts of second-degree statutory sodomy and three counts of second-degree child molestation.

Carol Hazam got her hands on the videotape after police were called to the store during a fight with a male customer. She alleges that her husband refused to give the tape to police to view the fight and tried to record over it since the sex acts were on it.

Carol Hazam said she then took the tape home and viewed it. When he allegedly called demanding that she return it to the store, she took him blank tape, leaving the store surveillance tape at home to view.

She said when she saw the sex acts of Mohamed Hazam and an underage Black girl, she immediately turned it in to police, who arrested him on September 13.

She said a friend of hers and Mohamed Hazam’s had previously told her that he was having sex with girls in the back of the store, at 1509 Marcus at Martin Luther King Boulevard. He was arrested last year for child molestation, but released for lack of evidence.

Carol Hazam said Mohamed Hazam was trading hair products for sex from young Black female customers. She and neighbors protested in front of the store calling for a boycott, but were stopped by police.

“This whole community should be in an uproar,” Carol Hazam said of the crime.
“They are taking advantage of the disadvantaged and trading hair products for sex, and they’ve been doing for years. But no one is doing anything about it.”

She named another North St. Louis location in particular: M&A Liquor at Natural Bridge Blvd. and Harris Ave.

Ali Badran, a 21-year-old Palestinian family member of the family-owned M&A Liquor, categorically denied Carol Hazam’s charges.

“You can’t base the actions of one person on a whole community,” Badran said inside M&A Liquor.

“We don’t condone, agree or participate in those actions. It makes us sick to see those types of things and would like these actions out of this community, because we are part of this community just like everyone else.”

Badran also rejected Hazam’s charge that Arab Muslims don’t like Blacks and are just using them for patronage.

“We deal with racism on a daily basis the same way that African-Americans and the Latin community do, and this is something that we should all collectively battle instead of turning against each other. Because it’s a global issue.”

Hazam called those Arab Muslims hypocrites who adorn their businesses with Christmas lights and sell pork and alcohol, though their religion forbids them from celebrating the Christian holiday or consuming pork and alcohol.

Badran agreed that it’s an issue and said that the younger Arabs are moving away from alcohol.

He said, “It’s nothing that we are proud of, but look at the fact that the majority of the Middle Eastern people who own liquor stores are immigrants who came here with little education and no opportunity.”