Arab Americans

Arab Americans…

The Arab experience is different than any other immigrants. They are one of the few groups that had a high ratio of women to male. They had more women then males.

I came from Saudi Arabia, so it is very interesting to me to read about the Arabs immigration experience. The author started the paragraph with the huge misconception between Arabs and Muslims. He is very true many American thinks that all Arabs are Muslims and vise versa. This is not the case, in the Middle East we have different religions: Muslims, Jews, and Christians. I agree that the majority are Muslims, but that doesn’t make us all Muslims. In the United States most of the Arab immigrants were Christians of Rite churches. Most of these immigrants are Lebanese.  The Muslims who came to the US found a very hard time to practice their religion. They could not build a mosque until later on. It was hard for them to be Muslims in a non-Muslim country. Another thin the book mentioned is that Muslims who came here tried to simulate in the US society. They adopted American names and married American women.  It is fascinating to learn about how the Arab American assimilated into the US society. I came from a Middle Eastern culture, and we are very culturally oriented. It is not an easy task to adapt to a new society, and a new culture. The book mentioned that these Arab American started to loose their language generation by generation. Forgetting their language is the first step that makes them blend with the society and consider themselves American. In my opinion, I believe that the language plays an important factor of shaping our characters and behaviors. Our  mother tongue is where we belong to.