Iranian Americans

A Cultural Divide That Is Difficult to Cross

Iranian heritage is important to Iranian Americans, but naturalization is very common—more than 80 percent of Iranian Americans are citizens, and 15 percent are permanent residents. Few return to Iran permanently. Muslim Iranian Americans have the most difficulty with assimilation; though religion is important in the United States, American culture is fundamentally secular, and Islam is a religion with traditions, beliefs, and practices that assume living in a religious culture. The public sphere in the United States is very different for traditional Muslims.

Although this has meant some changes to religious practice—Iranian American women are more active in the community and participate more in the mosque than they did in Iran—it has also created a divide. That separation is sharpest for women. In the United States, it is common for women to work outside the home, but not so in Iran. Women wearing traditional modest garb may attract negative attention and stand out in a crowd in exactly the way such garb was originally intended to prevent. Many Muslim families worry about their teenagers growing up in the culture of the United States, where access to drinking and drugs is easier, and sexual relations are less taboo. Further, though the United States is home to dozens of different Christian groups with very different beliefs, Muslims face an American public that understands and acknowledges few to none of the differences among various strains of Islamic belief.

It is nearly impossible to determine the number of Persian immigrants to the United States before the middle of the 20th century. Because those leaving were not supposed to depart for the West, their destination was recorded as Egypt. Once they arrived in the United States, immigration officials labeled them as Arabs if they arrived before 1900 and as Syrians between 1900 and 1930 or so. Most “Arab” immigrants to the United States before the World War II years were Lebanese Christians; there were certainly some Persians arriving, but their numbers cannot have been great. This changed in the 1950s, after Iran became friendlier with the West (in part because of a coup orchestrated with the help thereof). About 1,500 Iranians a year immigrated to the United States from 1950 to 1977, just before the Iranian Revolution. Additionally, thousands more students came to the United States to study; the United States was one of the most popular destinations to which well-off Iranian families sent their children for college.

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