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SAT-7 Broadcasts " A Voice From Home" To North American Arabs
The number of Arabs living in North America today is greater than ever. If you don’t believe this, notice the well-educated individuals from the Middle East or North Africa who’ve joined your company in the past five years. Or pay attention when you register for a hotel room or grab a taxi. Do you like Middle Eastern or North African cuisine? You’ll have no trouble finding a good restaurant.
Arab heritage individuals have long since distinguished themselves in North American academics, entertainment, business, medicine, and sports, and North American culture is benefitted by such things as algebra, soaring architecture, and beautiful calligraphy, all with roots in Arab culture.
Arab North Americans
Arabs coming to North America is actually nothing new. The first wave of immigrants to the New World began in the 1880s and lasted into the 1920s.
During his world travels about one hundred years ago, the original Henry Ford met Lebanese businessmen, was impressed, and ordered his Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan to recruit them. So it happened, and so Dearborn a century later has become a center of Arab culture in the United States.
Later waves of immigration from the Middle East and North Africa are sourced in global economic forces and regional wars or social turmoil.
To be precise, though, it’s not simply the number of Arabs that’s increasing in North America but the number of Arabic speakers from a variety of ethnic and national backgrounds. This includes some Armenians, Kurds, Chaldeans, and more.
In any case, the population of Arabic speakers in the United States is expanding, some estimates suggesting more than 4 million. Other estimates claim the number of Arabic speakers in the States has been consistently undercounted and could range as high as 8 million. The number in Canada may be about 500,000.
Why did they and why are they leaving their homelands? Some seek better employment opportunities to provide for their families, some better education for their children, some flee violence or even religious persecution. In other words, most Arabic speaking people leaving their home region once did so and are still doing so for the same reasons immigrants throughout history have moved to new lands: hope for a better life.
SAT-7 NORTH AMERICA™
The point for SAT-7, though, is not so much the millions but the one by one. SAT-7, an established Middle East Christian satellite television broadcaster, now wants to bring North American Arabic speakers a “voice from home.” Beginning November 3, 2013, SAT-7 is launching SAT-7 NORTH AMERICA™ to meet the spiritual needs of the Arabic speaking community.
On this new channel, the first for SAT-7 “across the pond,” the network will make available its highly regarded, quality Christian programming for Arab children, youth, and adults. Broadcasting in Arabic speakers’ heart language, the channel will meet viewers’ needs in a manner that fits their cultural context and addresses everyday personal, family, and community issues. This will include Bible teaching, music, worship services, dramas, comedies, cartoons, films, talk shows—a wide variety of programs—sharing a Christian perspective in a winsome and loving way. Viewers will be introduced to the love, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, and hope found in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
At a recent central California event promoting the new channel, an Arab American guest said, “There is no doubt that any Christian believer loves sending the love of Jesus throughout the whole world. In our minds, that is always tied to SAT-7 because it was the first channel to carry Christ’s message in the Arabic language to the Arab World.”
SAT7 NORTH AMERICA™ will help viewers apply biblical principles and Christian values to the challenges and opportunities they are facing living in a secularizing and materialistic Western culture. And the channel will minister to Arabic speakers in North America by helping them maintain a strong link with both their heritage and the Church in the Middle East and North Africa.
SAT-7 NORTH AMERICA™ will do this is, for example, through specially prepared programs addressing the needs of the Arab Church and Arab young people in North America. The channel will air live broadcasts from the Middle East and North Africa, as well as children and youth, teaching, and women’s programs. Productions will include interviews with North American Arabs, exploring what it means to be an Arab Christian living out his or her faith or exploring the challenges and opportunities facing Arabic speakers living in free and open societies. The channel will be non-political and non-partisan.
SAT-7
SAT-7 NORTH AMERICA™ is a logical development for SAT-7. Since 1996, SAT-7 has broadcast Christian teaching in Arabic, Farsi (spoken in Iran and Afghanistan), and Turkish language across 22 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and via its satellite footprint some 50 countries in Europe as well. Based in Cyprus, SAT-7 is the oldest Christian satellite television ministry working in the Middle East and North Africa. It’s a ministry operated “by and for the people of the Middle East and North Africa” and backs up this claim with some 80% of its programs produced in the region by locals. SAT-7 has long been recognized for its efficiency—$1 provides 1 viewer 1 full year of Christian programming—and its reach, some 15+ million documented viewers.
*SAT-7 NORTH AMERICA™ will broadcast without subscription fee as a free-to-air channel on Galaxy 19 at 97º West, 11.867 GHz Vertical, Symbol Rate 22000, FEC 3/4. It also will be available online on the SAT-7 NORTH AMERICA website, www.sat7northamerica.org, on iOS and Android mobile devices, and via Roku.
Dr. Rex Rogers
The Christian Post