Michael P. Saba

By Grace Halsell

Michael P. Saba, a North Dako-businessman who heads the Attiyeh Foundation in Washington, D.C., describes his life's work as building bridges" among a variety of cultures—in particular those of the western and eastern worlds.

To do this Mr. Saba, 43, established the Attiyeh Foundation in 1.980 to "fill a void that exists for sharing the good aspects of the Arab cultural traditions." While it is "an absolute necessity" to organize politically and protest discrimination against Arabs, "we wanted to assist in promoting what is positive about Arab culture—not just advertise the Arab culture of the past, but aspects we can easily appreciate in today's world," he explains. The Foundation carries out a variety of cultural/ educational projects, and most recently helped sponsor folkloric troupes from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco that performed in Washington and Los Angeles, in conjunction with the Summer Olympics.

Mike Saba's most recent exercise in bridge building involved making U.S. congressmen aware that Jerusalem is important to the world's billion Christians and 800 million Muslims, as well as its 14 million Jews.

It began last April, when Mr. Saba accompanied Archbishop Metropolitan Philip Saliba, Primate of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archidiocese of North and South America, and Dr. Frank Maria, who directs the Mid-East and Refugee Affairs Division of the same church, to Saudi Arabia. There they met with leaders of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and with Dr. Abdullah Nasseef of the Muslim World League (Rabita) to discuss the legislation pending in Congress to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Afterward, Archbishop Saliba and Dr. Naseef issued a strongly-worded statement opposing the legislation.

New Opportunity for Dialogue

"This was the first joint Christian-Muslim statement on the status of Jerusalem, which expressed the feelings of nearly two billion people. And it is significant that it was issued in Jeddah," says Mr. Saba. He points out that the meeting in Jeddah also "opened tremendous opportunities for Christian-Muslim dialogue... There have always been issues of common concern, but they have not always been expressed."

Following the trip to Saudi Arabia, the Antiochian Archdiocese Department of Mid-East Affairs sponsored a Jerusalem "Prayer Breakfast" on Capitol Hill. And Mr. Saba, who represents the Antiochian Orthodox Church on the governing board of the National Council of Churches, helped to secure the participation of clergymen from most major Christian denominations.

"These church leaders, who represented almost 100 million American Christians, all expressed opposition to the proposed legislation," Mr. Saba says. "They wanted congressmen to know that we are concerned by the issue of Jerusalem, and that it is not an issue to be decided unilaterally." He notes that while the governing board of the National Council of Churches (NCC) has ruled that the status of Jerusalem must be decided only by negotiations, "most congressional members are not aware of this, although the majority belong to the mainstream churches, represented by the NCC."

Uncovering It Dual-loyalists?"

In addition to his religious activities and his work at the Attiyeh Foundation, Mr. Saba has spent much of the past six years warning against "dual-loyalists" in the U.S. government, and is now writing a book on the subject. He has called for investigations of possible violations of U.S. laws by two Americans, Richard Perle and Stephen Bryen, both of whom have high-level positions in the Defense Department. In an affidavit he filed with the FBI, Mr. Saba charges that he himself overheard Mr. Bryen discussing U.S. military information with Israeli officials at a coffee shop in 1978. In their present posts these men exert great influence over what technology may be exported, he says. "They deal with sales in the billions of dollars and have become arbiters of what is 'secret' American technology—and who gets it."

Mike Saba was raised and educated in North Dakota, and completed his master's degree at the University of Illinois. He says his own Arab-American background (his father came from Ain Arab, Lebanon) "generated a fascination with other ethnic groups in the United States and abroad." He served three years in Malaysia as a Peace Corps volunteer and trainer and was an educational and cross-cultural trainer in Puerto Rico and Thailand. He also served as a director of educational programs for American Indians, and worked in a VISTA training program for blacks in Louisiana.

A former manager of Middle Eastern Public Affairs for Mobil Oil, Mr. Saba served as executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans from 1976 to 1977, and is currently on its board of directors. He also sits on the board of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Grace Halsell is a freelance writer and the author of numerous books, including Journey to Jerusalem.