History of Arab Americans by Aminah Al-Deen

Author:Aminah Al-Deen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440840692
Publisher: ABC-CLIO

CHAPTER SIX

Women

Anchors of Community

Upon arriving in America, many Arab Christian women found that they and their families were finally free from Muslim rule and its subjugations. They quickly formed women’s organizations to assist in resettlement in the United States. Initially, they too created traditions that included analyses of that subjugation for subsequent generations. Depending on the fate of the family under Ottoman rule, the analysis of their prior subjugation was told as either relief from the way it was or as unparalleled hatred of Islam and Muslims. The few Arab Muslim women who migrated came in the beginning of the 20th century. While most Arab Christian women lived in ethnic enclaves at the beginning of the 20th century, their interactions with American society were influential. When Arab Muslim women came in the middle of the 20th century they also lived in ethnic enclaves, but their interactions with American society were minimal.

This chapter will explore Arab American women as minority religious women in the context of religious women of other minorities living virtually and totally isolated lives in some instances and partially integrated lives in other instances. It will also examine their cultural lives as they have transported them to America.

Context

As with many other immigrant groups, language, religion, class, and region of origin determined a great deal about the character of the U.S. Arab community. Enclaves of women knew and still know the town and sometimes the precise village where their neighbors originated. In both Christian and Muslim groups, traditional values, behaviors, and attitudes were and are upheld as the only acceptable comportment. Among many Muslim women these acceptable comportments are not left to individual accountability, since communities use several tools for surveillance of women. Old world and now new world policing involves gossip, threats of slander, and even violent discipline. This environment envelops the lives of community members.

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