[1] First published in May 1999, the magazine's founding editor in chief was Hasan Jaber,[2] currently the director of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS).

The section Mezza covered health and fashion while Grapevine carried a variety of short national and international news items.

Feature articles ranged from Pokémon and profiles of Arab American movie stars, like Salma Hayek and Tony Shalhoub, to politicians, Iraqi sanctions and Palestine.

As a result, ARABICA was the target of harassment and threats by security and intelligence staff from the Egyptian embassy who arrived at the magazine's Dearborn offices.

[citation needed] The day after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center in New York, as a consequence of the immediate backlash against Arabs and Arab-Americans, ARABICA lost almost all of its advertising revenue.