Arab American Takes Miss USA Title
THE TELEGRAPH: A 24-year-old Arab American has won the Miss USA title, despite nearly stumbling in her evening gown.

Miss Michigan Rima Fakih, reacts as she is crowned Miss USA 2010 by Kristen Dalton, Miss USA 2009. Photo: The Telegraph
Rima Fakih of Dearborn, Michigan, won the pageant at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip after strutting confidently in an orange and gold bikini, wearing a strapless white gown and saying health insurance should cover birth control pills.

While it is though Miss Fakih is the first Middle Eastern woman to take the title, pagent officials said historical records were not detailed enough to show whether Miss Fakih was the first Arab American, Muslim or immigrant to win the Miss USA title. The pageant started in 1952 as a local bathing suit competition in Long Beach, California.

When asked how she felt about winning the crown, she said, "Ask me after I've had a pizza."

Miss Fakih, a Lebanese immigrant, told pageant organisers her family celebrates both Muslim and Christian faiths. She moved to the United States as a baby and was raised in New York, where she attended a Catholic school. Her family moved to Michigan in 2003.

Miss Fakih said sold her car after graduating from university in Michigan to help pay for her run in the Miss Michigan USA pageant.

She said she believed she had the title on Sunday after glancing at pageant owner Donald Trump as she awaited the results with the first runner-up, Miss Oklahoma USA Morgan Elizabeth Woolard.

"That's the same look that he gives them when he says, 'You're hired,"' on Trump's reality show "The Apprentice," she said. >>> | Monday, May 17, 2010

Miss USA 2010 FInale - Journey to the Crown


Rima Fakih

Miss USA au coeur d'un scandale
leJDD.fr: Fraîchement élue au titre de Miss USA, la jeune Libano-américaine Rima Fakih se retrouve prise dans un scandale comme seuls les médias américains en ont le secret. "Coupable" d’avoir remporté un concours de striptease il y a trois ans, la belle à qui le destin promettait la gloire voit une partie de son pays s’élever contre elle.

La nouvelle Miss USA, Rimah Fakih. Photo: leJDD.fr
On la croyait touchée par la grâce, c’est raté. Toute auréolée de son titre de Miss USA acquis dimanche devant les yeux de millions d’américains, Rima Fakih semblait vivre un conte de fée moderne made in Obama. La jeune femme de 24 ans, d’origine libanaise, est la première reine de beauté américaine à se déclarer officiellement musulmane. Une belle histoire pour Rima Fakih, arrivée à New York étant bébé et vivant dans le Michigan depuis 2003.

C’était sans compter sur la polémique qui agite depuis lundi la sphère médiatique. La belle aurait en fait un passé pas si innocent. Celle qui s’apprête à exporter l’idéal américain de beauté et de vertu à travers le monde est en réalité une ancienne stripteaseuse. L’histoire n’est pas sans rappeler celle de Valérie Bègue, Miss France 2008, critiquée pour avoir posé dans des postures dites "érotiques" quelques semaines avant son sacre national. Rima Fakih se trouve aujourd’hui sous le feu des critiques. >>> Grégory Raymond, leJDD.fr | Mardi 18 Mai 2010

Pour liens en relation avec cet article, cliquez ici

Beauty and the Beastliness: Miss USA Accused of Being an Islamic Extremist
SUNDAY HERALD: The Miss USA media panic is an annual event, most often comprising tales of drunken behaviour, indiscreet teenage photographs or a particularly stupid answer to a leading question.

This year, however, the beauty pageant finally has a controversy worthy of the name: the winner has been denounced as a terrorist sympathiser because she is an Arab-American.

Rima Fakih, 24, is the first Muslim to win the title. Her family emigrated from Lebanon to the US when she was seven. In the round of daytime television interviews that followed her victory, she took care to portray herself as “an American girl” from Dearborn, Michigan, who went to Catholic school.

“My family comes from a Muslim background, and we’re not defined by religion,” she said. “We’re a spiritual, liberal family.”

But this did not wash with the right-wing commentator Debbie Schlussel, who has found a niche audience by ­writing with a mixture of scorn and outrage about the predominantly Muslim population of the Detroit suburb she calls “Dearbornistan”.

“Don’t let her lack of a headscarf and her donning a bikini in public fool you,” she wrote. “Rimah Fakih is a Muslim ­activist and propagandist extraordinaire.”

Without producing any evidence, Schlussel accused Fakih’s family of being card-carrying members of the Lebanese extremist group Hezbollah, citing unnamed intelligence sources. “Mark my word. Hezbollah is laughing at us,” she wrote.

“One of its auxiliary members won the Miss USA title without having to do a thing to denounce them and their bloody murder of hundreds of Americans.” >>> Andrew Purcell in New York | Sunday, May 23, 2010

Miss USA’s Aunt: Hezbollah Congratulated Us; Cousin: I’m in Hezbo-Allied “Amal” Terrorist Grp
DEBBIE SCHLUSSEL: While some of Miss USA Rima Fakih’s family is lying and trying to do damage control on her Hezbollah ties, she’s yet to say three words: “I condemn Hezbollah.” And she’ll never say them because she supports the terrorist group. Sadly, not a single member of the mainstream media (including the gushing morons at FOX News) has the cojones to ask. Meanwhile, some of Fakih’s family is now claiming she is not from Srifa, the South Lebanese Hezbollah stronghold where she was born, but from the mountains near Beirut. Don’t believe it. In fact, those mountains are dominated by Lebanese Christians and Druze Arabs (not Muslims). And whether or not she lived briefly in those mountains, it doesn’t change two facts: Her family is in two terrorist groups, Hezbollah and Hezbo-allied Amal. And she won’t denounce Hezbollah, the group that murdered hundreds of Americans. >>> Debbie Schlussel | Monday, May 24, 2010

Related articles here and here

‘Miss Hezbollah’ Has US Frothing About Muslims
THE SUNDAY TIMES: The crowning of a Lebanese woman as Miss USA has sparked rows about rigging and radicalism

SHE isn’t the first American beauty queen to be caught out by racy photographs from her past but Rima Fakih, who was crowned Miss USA last week, is certainly the first to be plunged into a political controversy about radical Islam, affirmative action and her family’s supposed links to the Hezbollah political and paramilitary organisation in Lebanon.

After her success as the first Muslim immigrant to win the Miss USA title, Fakih swiftly shrugged off the mildly salacious pole-dancing pictures that were leaked by someone she had considered a friend.

Less easy to dispel was an outburst of right-wing anger over a beauty pageant result that some believed had more to do with political correctness and commercial calculation than feminine appeal.

“If I had lost, people would have said, oh, it’s because you are a Muslim,” Fakih told The Sunday Times. “It’s funny, because now they are saying instead, oh, it’s because you are a Muslim that you won.”

Fakih, 24, moved to America with her Lebanese parents in 1993. The family settled in Dearborn, Michigan, home to one of the country’s largest Arab-American communities. She said she had wept when she heard that many of the city’s immigrants had taken to Dearborn’s streets to cheer her victory at the televised Las Vegas pageant last Sunday.

It did not take long for hostilities to commence on the internet, where an off-hand comment by one of America’s most prominent critics of radical Islam sparked angry exchanges about the judges’ intentions and whether or not Fakih deserved her crown. >>> Tony Allen-Mills in Washington | Sunday, May 23, 2010

Related articles and videos here

Miss USA Rima Fakih Stopped for Drink Driving, Police Say
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Former Miss USA Rima Fakih was driving with a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit when she was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in a Detroit enclave, according to police.

The report says the 26-year-old from was pulled over early Saturday going 60 mph, weaving in heavy traffic and changing lanes with a turn signal.

The report says she was driving a black 2011 Jaguar and "immediately identified herself as Miss USA." » | Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Now Muslim Miss USA Says DON'T Build Mosque Near Ground Zero
MAIL ONLINE: The growing movement against the building of a mosque near Ground Zero has gained another prominent supporter: the first Muslim Miss USA.

Rima Fakih, 24, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants and a Muslim, criticised the location of the planned £70 million Islamic Cultural Center planned just two blocks away from Ground Zero.

'It shouldn't be so close to the World Trade Center,' Fakih, 24, told Inside Edition during a break from the Miss Universe pageant preparations in Las Vegas.

'We should be more concerned with the tragedy than religion.'

After wading into the highly-charged political issue, the Michigan-born Fakih then went on to support President Obama's statement on the constitutional rights of religious freedom.

'I totally agree with President Obama with (that) statement,' said Fakih.

Meanwhile growing number of New York construction workers are vowing not to work on the mosque planned near Ground Zero, according to the New York Daily News.

'It's a very touchy thing because they want to do this on sacred ground,' said Dave Kaiser, 38, a blaster who is working to rebuild the World Trade Center site.

The grass-roots movement is gaining momentum on the Internet, says the Daily News. One construction worker created the Hard Hat Pledge on his blog and asked others to vow not to work on the project if it stays in its current location.

'Thousands of people are signing up from all over the country,' said creator Andy Sullivan, a construction worker from Brooklyn.

'People who sell glass, steel, lumber, insurance. They are all refusing to do work if they build there. >>> Mail Foreign Correspondent | Saturday, August 21, 2010