NYC built a monument to Khalil Gibran and Little Syria. Why was there global uproar?
Lebanese officials were furious, claiming the city erased Gibran’s identity. Yet there was a time when Arab immigrants in the US thought ‘we were all Syrians’This is Muslim New York: artists, thinkers and politicos on defining a new era for the cityOn the morning of 30 April, in the shadow of the financial district’s skyscrapers, a gold cloth slid off a bright yellow sculpture of painted stainless steel, 7ft (2 metres) tall, that spells an Arabic word: “al Qalam”, the pen.The monument, Al Qalam: Poets in the Park, stands in Elizabeth H Berger Plaza and honors the writers of the vanished neighb