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April is Arab American Heritage Month, but do most non-Arabs in the U.S. truly understand just how much racial and religious diversity there is in this community?

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By Yasmin Moll

5 MIN READ

Apr 17, 2023

Marking April as Arab American Heritage Month鈥攁 time to learn about the history, culture, and contributions of &苍产蝉辫;肠辞尘尘耻苍颈迟测鈥攊蝉&苍产蝉辫; across the country.

In 2022, Joe Biden made history as , which he did . States such as  and  have passed legislation to make the celebration an annual event, and dozens more .

This recognition is important, given the simplistic ways Arabs are often portrayed in American culture. From TV stations to , people of Arab descent are often stereotyped as violent, oppressed, or exotic. Nevertheless, as  who studies religious and racial dynamics in Arab societies, I am concerned that as the celebration of 鈥淎rab American heritage鈥� becomes more mainstream, the diversity and complex stories of Arab Americans鈥� many different communities may be papered over. In short, Arab Americans are not a monolithic group.

Arab Christians

In 2023, Arab American Heritage Month overlaps with the second half of Ramadan, . For many in the United States, this overlap seems natural, given how often Islam is conflated with Arab identity. But just as most Muslims around the world , not all Arabs are Muslim.

While the 22 countries that make up the  all have Muslim majorities, Christian communities predate Muslim ones in the region. Indeed, Christianity began in the Middle East, with the , which is revered as Jesus鈥� birthplace, an important pilgrimage stop for Christians from all over the world. During the first significant wave of Arab immigration to the U.S. in the , families more often than not were Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian Christians.

Today, most  identify as Christian. While the Arab community in the greater Detroit area, a short drive from where I live and work, , that sets it apart from many other Arab communities in the U.S.

 are themselves diverse, identifying as Protestants and Catholics, and with a variety of Eastern Christian traditions, such as Antiochian and Coptic Orthodoxy. 

Furthermore, some sects of Christianity have become intertwined with specific ethnic identities. For example, some Coptic Christian Egyptian Americans  鈥淎rab,鈥� even if they grew up speaking Arabic at home or learn the language to connect with their family roots. This refusal is often rooted in Copts鈥� collective experiences of marginalization in Egypt, where they face , including on .

From Mizrahi Jews to Shiite Muslims

Just as Christianity is an integral yet complex part of Arab heritage, so is Judaism. Arab Jews, often called , have existed since ancient times and helped shape Arab heritage through their philosophical, poetic, and political contributions across centuries.

To be sure, Israel鈥檚 establishment and its occupation of Palestinian territories has complicated Arab Jewish identities, with  becoming more common within many Arab communities. Still, there is  among scholars and Arab American Jews themselves in learning more about , as well as the Jewish background of beloved pan-Arab celebrities, such as , an iconic midcentury Egyptian actress.

The San Francisco Bay Area for generations has been home to the Egyptian  community. Karaites reject the authority of the rabbinic oral tradition used by more mainstream branches of Judaism, such as Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox groups in the U.S. Here in the U.S., as in Egypt, members struggle for recognition as a religious minority within a religion that is itself a minority, Judaism. 

Arab American Muslims are not a monolithic group, either. Over half identify as Sunni, 16% as Shiite, and the rest with neither group, according to a . Of course, the diversity of beliefs and practices within Sunnism and Shiism, the largest two branches of Islam, are themselves present within  as well.

Finally, many Arab Americans identify with no religion at all, or with other faiths beyond the Abrahamic traditions.

Many Nations, One Box

Arab heritage not only includes a variety of religious traditions, but also encompasses a wide range of ethnic and racial identities. It is difficult to make generalizations about Arabs, whose skin tone, facial features, eye colors, and hair textures embody the rich histories of human migrations and settlements that characterize western Asia and northern Africa.

The U.S. census erases this internal diversity, however, by categorizing Arabs and other Middle Easterners as 鈥渨hite.鈥� Arab American advocacy groups have  that the form鈥檚 categories do not reflect the actual experiences of the vast majority of Arab Americans, who are not treated as white in their everyday lives. And Arab identities in the U.S. are becoming only more complex, given the diversity of national backgrounds reflected in the  from the 1960s to today.

Complicated Identities

Asking that Arabs check the box as 鈥渨hite鈥� also marginalizes Black Arabs. The term  is growing as a term of self-description for Black Arab Americans seeking to make space for their multifaceted identities and heritage. Black communities are a part of every Arab country, from  to .

These dual identities are still fraught, given the pervasiveness of anti-Black racism within some Arab communities, which often stems from the legacies of . An estimated 15% of Tunisians, for example, are descendants of  from sub-Saharan Africa. Tunisia abolished slavery in 1846, two decades before the U.S., yet it passed a  only in 2018, making it the first Arab country to do so. Still, Tunisia鈥檚 president recently provoked outrage after he gave a  targeting African migrants and Black Tunisians.

Around the world, Black Arabs have consistently  such racism, especially after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S., which sparked a  with anti-Blackness.

As the Sudanese American museum curator Isra el-Beshir , 鈥淚 am an African person, who speaks Arabic and who as a result of speaking Arabic has Arab cultural tendencies. But I do not racially identify as an Arab. It鈥檚 still murky territory for me that I am trying to navigate.鈥�

500-Year Journey

In her historical novel , which won the Arab American Book Award in 2015 and was , Laila Lalami recounts the experiences of Al-Zammouri, more commonly known as Estebanico. Based on true accounts, Lalami narrates how he was enslaved and brought to current-day Florida by 16th-century Spanish colonizers. Al-Zammouri鈥檚 name reflects his Moroccan hometown: Azemmour, a city famed for its ocean breeze. His identity鈥擝lack and Arab; Muslim, then Catholic鈥攔eflects the complexity of the Arab world while bringing to light the complex origin stories of America itself. 

Ideally, heritage month celebrations will create more opportunities to reflect on stories like Al-Zammouri鈥檚, which portray how rich and diverse Arab American identity is鈥攔eally, many different identities rolled into just two words. If heritage months are an opportunity to celebrate the diversity of America, the diversity of the Arab community itself should not be overlooked.

This article was originally published by . It has been republished here with permission.

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