Is Haboob English?

Caught this in a story about those duststorms in Phoenix (which, btw, my wife missed by a few days on her recent trip there)

The massive dust storms that swept through central Arizona this month have stirred up not just clouds of sand but a debate over what to call them...Use of the term “haboob,” which is what such storms have long been called in the Middle East, has rubbed some Arizona residents the wrong way.

“I am insulted that local TV news crews are now calling this kind of storm a haboob,” Don Yonts, a resident of Gilbert, Ariz., wrote to The Arizona Republic after a particularly fierce, mile-high dust storm swept through the state on July 5. “How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term?”

...the National Weather Service, in describing this month’s particularly thick storm, used the term haboob, which was widely picked up by the news media. “Meteorologists in the Southwest have used the term for decades,” said Randy Cerveny, a climatologist at Arizona State University. “The media usually avoid it because they don’t think anyone will understand it.”

...David Wilson of Goodyear, Ariz., said those who wanted to avoid Arabic terms should steer clear of algebra, zero, pajamas and khaki, as well. “Let’s not become so ‘xenophobic’ that we forget to remember that we are citizens of the world, nor fail to recognize the contributions of all cultures to the richness of our language,” he wrote.

Although use of the term often brings smirks...

Funny, haboob means "pal", no?

And what smirks?

^