Arab Americans in Michigan

The Origins of Arab Americans in Michigan

17 The Origins ofArabAmericans in Michigan A lthough Arab immigrants in the United States have come from all of the twenty-two Arab-speaking countries, including the Occupied Territories, the majority of Arab Americans have come from the Levantine, or Fertile Crescent area (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq), and Yemen.21 The five major groups of Arab immigrants to the United States are: Lebanese (both Christian and Muslim), Iraqis (including sizable numbers of Christian Chaldeans, Christian Assyrians, and Muslims), Palestinians (Christians and Muslims), Muslim Yemeni, and North Africans (mostly from Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria). A map of the Arab world or Southwest Asia and North Africa (swana) States shows the twenty-two countries that currently belong to the League of Arab States. Note that Turkey and Iran are non-Arab countries that speak Turkish and Farsi (Persian) languages that have Indo-European roots, while having largely Muslim populations. This map omits the Comoros Islands off the coast of East Africa in the Mozambique Channel, a country that is a member state of the Arab League. Rosina J. Hassoun 18 Villages and Pre-Immigration Lifestyles The majority of Arab Americans in Michigan originated in small towns and agricultural villages in Southwest Asia. The earliest immigrants were Syrian/Lebanese Christians from the Mount Lebanon area. Few studies are available on the Christian mountain villages. The later Lebanese immigrants were Shi’ites from villages in the south of Lebanon. Specifically, the majority of the more recent Lebanese immigrants have come from the village of Bint Jebail. There have been a small number of anthropological studies that describe life in the Southern Lebanese villages. Emyrs Peters’s studies provided a picture of the social structure and the flavor of life in these villages in the 1950s and 1960s.22 Peters’s second study refuted the immutable nature of the social structure of the villages and indicated that the social stratification was more mobile than he previously thought. Conditions were changing rapidly in those villages just prior to the time the majority of Southern Lebanese immigrated to Detroit.23 In addition to the social changes described by Peters, the onset of the Lebanese civil war brought more upheavals to the South. The selfsuf ficient villages of two decades before experienced severe economic SPAIN TURKEY KENYA ETHIOPIA ERITREA SUDAN EGYPT NIGER MAURITANIA MALI NIGERIA SOMALIA LIBYA CHAD ZAIRE ALGERIA GABON CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC TUNISIA MOROCCO UGANDA TOGO BENIN GHANA IVORY COAST LIBERIA SIERRA LEONE GUINEA BURKINA CAMEROON WESTERN SAHARA DJIBOUTI SENEGAL JORDAN ISRAEL LEBANON KUWAIT QATAR U.A.E. YEMEN SYRIA IRAQ IRAN OMAN SAUDI ARABIA BAHRAIN Map 4. The Arab world. problems. For those who migrated to the United States, a modification of the social class structure of the villages developed. With the migration , social standing in the Detroit area would be determined more by financial success, and to a lesser degree by education, than strictly by traditional kinship relations. Yet kinship does still play a role in determining status in the community. While many Chaldeans do not identify themselves as Arab Americans , their story as a minority population in the Arab world is very similar to that of other Arab Americans. Almost all of the Chaldeans who immigrated to the Detroit Metropolitan area came from the village of Tel Kaif and some sixteen nearby villages in the mountains of northern Iraq.24 There are also a small number of Kurds and a few Assyrians from Mosul and the surrounding area of northern Iraq living in the Metro Detroit area. The area of northern Iraq where these groups originated was a major wheat-producing area. Tel Kaif also produced a variety of other agricultural produce, including vegetables and fruits. Some of the Chaldeans who immigrated resided in Baghdad prior to coming to the United States. The trend of urbanization in the Arab world followed larger general world trends. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, most major Arab and third world cities doubled in size. Baghdad’s suburbs grew as migration to the United States increased. The early Chaldean immigrants came seeking greater religious freedom and began arriving long before the rule of Saddam Hussein. Although the Ba’athist party discriminated less against Christians than had previous regimes, the exodus of Chaldeans continued. The Palestinians in Southwest Michigan came from several villages on the West Bank, primarily Ramallah, El Bireh, and Beit Hanina. Joost Hiltermann describes modern life in Ramallah...