Arab Diaspora Research Articles

Indianapolis's Syrian Ark : Crossing and Dwelling in the Arab American Midwest, 1936–1954

ABSTRACT: This article is the first to document the historical significance of the Indianapolis-based Syrian Ark , the official newspaper of the Midwest Federation of Syrian American Clubs from 1936 to 1954. Extant copies of the periodical provide a detailed record of Arab, Syrian, and Lebanese midwestern life in the middle twentieth century. Using elements of Thomas A. Tweed's spatial theory of "crossing and dwelling," author Edward E. Curtis IV analyzes how the newspaper's editor, correspondents, and other contributors moved across and inhabited local, regional, national, and diasporic spaces in their reporting. He argues that the Syrian Ark 's collective mapping of Arab American dwelling or "homemaking" in the shared public culture of the U.S. Midwest and U.S. nation-state was co-constituted through inhabiting the terrestrial space of diasporic Arab nationalist identity and the cosmological aspirations of religious ecumenism. The article illustrates this thesis by showing how the coverage of multiple midwestern locales in the Syrian Ark constructed a sense of Arab belonging to an ideal midwestern "hometown" of economic prosperity and strong civic engagement; how the newspaper's deep U.S. patriotism was joined to grassroots Arab diasporic nationalism, including activism on behalf of Palestinian liberty; and how the periodical created a cosmological home of religious ecumenism that sought to bring Muslims and Christians together across the Arab diaspora.

Fairouz and the Arab Diaspora. Music and Identity in the UK and Qatar, written by Issa, Dima

Fairouz and the Arab Diaspora. Music and Identity in the UK and Qatar, written by Issa, Dima

Dispute in the Diaspora: Metaphor and Contradiction in Twenty-First-Century Arab American Family Dramas

Betty Shamieh’s Roar (2005) and Yussef El Guindi’s Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith (2009) exemplify early twenty-first-century Arab American family dramas that grapple with the intersecting dilemmas of Arab diasporic experience in the United States. Reading the family as a metaphor for the Arab diaspora, I argue that these plays serve as sites of contradiction and negotiation, exploring intra-communal conflicts that stem from differing relationships to homeland, host nation, and community. In this article, I contextualize Shamieh’s and El Guindi’s plays within the long history of Arab Americans navigating US racial frameworks, immigrant sentiment, and systemic bias. I further propose that these family dramas can be read as allegories of a diasporic public, Arab American or otherwise, that imagine ways of responding to the challenges of acculturation and survival in the diaspora.

The Funambulists: Women Poets of the Arab Diaspora

The Funambulists: Women Poets of the Arab Diaspora

Strategies of Resistance to the Patriarchal Coercion in Najat El Hachimi’s the Last Patriarch (2008)

The focus of this paper, which is in the mainstream of cross-cultural representation, is on the resistance strategies used by Anglophone Arab women immigrant writers. Writings from the Arab diaspora in particular lay the way for challenging the binary opposition between various cultures, genders, races, nationalities, and so forth as well as the culture of exclusion and oppression. This paper argues that Arab women Diaspora writing commit itself seriously to the marginal and the oppressed where authors express their abilities to engage consciously in a political contest and willed protest against Orientalism and Patriarchy. Through a textual analysis of Najat El Hachimi’s Novel entitled The Last Patriarch (2008), this study attempts to trace the ways in which Arab female diasporic writers aim to go beyond the politics of exclusion, surpasses gender and sexual stereotypes and resists patriarchal regime in its many multiple forms and institutions. Therefore, Theories of feminism, postcolonialism and identity are used to analyze double oppression and identity formation in a context of precariousness.

Hadhramaut Arabs in the Malay World: Features of Naturalization and Social Status

In island Southeast Asia, since the first centuries of the Muslim era, the Hadhramaut Arab diaspora has been steadily present. Arabs controlled maritime trade south of the Arabian Peninsula since pre-Islamic times. They have long traded with India, and sometimes sailed even further to their cherished goal - the Spice Islands (Moluccas). With the advent of Islam, the presence of Arabs in the ports of the Archipelago increased and was generally perceived positively: they acted as bearers and preachers of the new religion. Over time, their business contacts with the local merchant community grew stronger. The most powerful influx of Arabs to Nusantara dates back to the beginning of the 18th century. Subsequently, with the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), this process gained even greater scope. Over the years, the aliens, step by step, won a place for themselves in the field of commerce, in agriculture and shipbuilding, Islamic preaching and diplomacy, education and politics. Some of them laid the foundation for new Malay dynasties (the sultanates of Siak and Kalimantan, 18th century) or simply entered the circle close to local rulers. Since the beginning of the twentieth century Arab merchants participate in the organization of the first political parties in Indonesia. The paper briefly examines the biographies of some members of the Hadhramaut aristocracy, Sayyids and Sharifs, who took a prominent place in the cultural, economic and political life of Malaysia and Indonesia in the pre-colonial and post-colonial era.

Arab- and Muslim-American organisations in metropolitan Detroit: resistance to the travel ban, 2017–19

The ‘travel ban’ or ‘Muslim ban’, issued by the Trump administration in 2017, was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018 in its third iteration. It was rescinded by President Biden. This article focuses on the mobilisation of Arab and Muslim Americans as minorities facing intentional discrimination. Responses from diasporas in metropolitan Detroit, which emphasise Muslim- and Arab-American community mobilisation, are examined in detail. The ban led to ten responses, including protests, media activism, communications with Congress and legal action. The research agenda incorporates original research on the activity of 12 organisations in metropolitan Detroit. Analysis focuses on interactions between and among Arab Muslims, other Muslims, Arabic-speaking Christians, Japanese Americans, Latinos and women’s organisations. Examining this active minority response to discrimination tells the story anew – looking at groups’ politicisation, alliances among related but distinct Arab-American and Muslim communities, and coalitions across ethnicities. The research contributes to the academic literatures on Muslim and Arab diasporas.

Negotiating Home in Exile

Abstract The Arab uprisings of 2011, and their slogans of freedom, dignity and justice, gave the Arab diaspora hope. Their aftermath led to disappointment, but many Arab diasporans still dream of returning home. The tension between their real, imagined and in-transit homes keeps these immigrants in home and exile simultaneously. The paper analyses the negotiation between distant and present, real and imagined homes, in finding and settling into a new home in the Arab diaspora in Berlin. It discusses the theory that the modern public sphere is primarily attached to territorially defined modern nation-states. Migration and transnationalism have challenged the bounded nature of nation-states and have allowed forces from and outside national territories to interact with forces beyond territorial limits, via satellite TV channels, social media and migration. This transnational push in the national public sphere has empowered the Arab diaspora to renegotiate their belonging to their host and home countries.

Notes on Contributing Authors

Michael A. Figueroa is Associate Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He specializes in musics of the SWANA region and its diasporas, with an interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arab diaspora in North America, and issues related to music, poetry, and multimedia. He is the author of City of Song: Music and the Making of Modern Jerusalem (Oxford University Press, 2022), and co-editor of Performing Commemoration: Musical Reenactment and the Politics of Trauma (University of Michigan Press, 2020).Morgan James Luker is Associate Professor of Music at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He is author of The Tango Machine: Musical Culture in the Age of Expediency (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and the founding director of Tango for Musicians at Reed College (www.reed.edu/tango).Althea SullyCole is an ethnomusicologist and multi-instrumentalist from New York City. She has studied her primary instrument, the kora, a 21-stringed harp from the Mandé region of West Africa, for ten years, three of which were spent in Dakar, Senegal. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Ethnomusicology at Columbia University and the Sylvan C. and Pam Coleman Memorial Fund Fellow in the Musical Instruments Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Deonte L. Harris, assistant professor in the International Comparative Studies program at Duke University, holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include global Black studies, diaspora studies, critical race studies, and the anthropological study of value. These broader interests animate his current book-in-progress, which investigates the local, diasporic, and global dimensions of Caribbean carnival culture in postwar UK, and the value of carnival among Black Britons of Caribbean heritage. Harris is a past chair of the SEM Student Union (2014–2016); former member of the SEM Council and Diversity Action Committee (2017–2020); and current co-chair of the Gertrude Rivers Robinson Network of Black Ethnomusicologists (2020–2022).Katie Young is a postdoctoral research fellow based at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. At present, she is researching experiences of music at night for Black-Irish and Afrodiaporic musicians in Cork and Galway, Ireland, as part of the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) NITE research project. She recently received her PhD in Music from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Religious Identity Representation of Arab Diaspora in the Linguistic Landscape of Shop Signs in Sydney, Australia

One of the fascinating issues concerning the Arab diaspora is the way they represent their identity in the new environment in which they live, interacting with the indigenous and other communities. This identity representation can be expressed through language and religion. This study aimed at describing the language use and religious identity representation of Arab diaspora depicted from shop signs in Sydney. The data consisted of pictures that were collected from commercial shops along the Haldon Street of Sydney, Australia. The findings demonstrated that language choices are varied in the linguistic landscape of shop signs. English is the predominant language used, while Arabic is used in the domain related to religion. This study also found the use of Islamic expressions in commercial signage is not only informative but also a symbolic function. The use of Islamic expressions is intended to assert their Islamic identity representation through the linguistic landscape of shop signs.

An Aesthetics of Disruption: Unsettling the Diasporic Subject

In her writings and video works, Hito Steyerl presents a disruptive tension between the pervading sense of being under constant surveillance and the desire not to be seen or to be invisible. In observing the omnipresence of the camera, Ariella Azoulay also considers photography’s capacity for inscription and surveillance. This withdrawal from representation disrupts our expectations of the photographic process, in which a contract is made between the sitter and the photographer, that their likeness will be captured on the photographic emulsion or digital pixels, a likeness that can be observed, critiqued, printed or shared. Disrupting the political and social ontologies of photography undoes and unsettles what photography is and what it should do; hence Azoulay and others ask, What is a photograph? This essay takes these concepts as a point from which to consider an aesthetics of disruption and the conditions that cause a subject or an image to withdraw, to hide, or to disappear, in the work of three artists from the Arab diaspora: Cherine Fahd, Joana Hadjithomas, and Khalil Joreige.

Female genital mutilation and cutting in the Arab League and diaspora: A systematic review of preventive interventions.

Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting (FGM/C) is an act of gender-based violence (GBV) and a global public health issue with well-documented adverse outcomes. With the rise in global migration, there is an increasing prevalence of FGM/C among Arab diaspora living in the West and Global South. What remains unclear is how to reduce the practice. This study was designed to identify interventions exerting an effect on reducing the practice of FGM/C. A systematic review of peer-reviewed articles was conducted on interventions targeting individuals and/or the broader community to prevent FGM/C within the Arab League and its diaspora, up to December 2021. Databases searched included PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, PsycINFO, EMBASE, CINAHL, BIOSIS, ASSIA and Scopus. Quality assessment used the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) 2018. Twelve of 896 studies met the inclusion criteria. Eight interventions relied entirely on education with short-term gains but unchanged practices. Three interventions used social marketing and mixed media. Only one study took a multi-sectoral approach. At a macro level, opportunities to reduce or to end the practice of FGM/C exist through legislation, policy, a public health approach grounded in gender equality and human rights. Using multi-sectoral actions that consider the social context and challenge social norms at macro, meso and micro levels appears more effective than individual-level interventions. Promoting advocacy and developing supportive environments to reduce GBV, enhance gender equality and empower communities is crucial for interventions to succeed and achieve the Sustainable Development Goal target of FGM/C abandonment by 2030.

Philosophical dialogue in Arabic diaspora literature with special reference to ‎Kahlil Gibran’s poems

Philosophy regulates the functioning of human life. Good philosophies are the cross-cutting faces of human life. This theoretical thinking in Arabic literature dates back to the Jahiliyya period. Arab literary figures that, have appeared throughout history, have made significant contributions to the regulation of human life by conveying philosophical ideas in their literary works. These philosophical dialogues have the potential to elicit a positive response in solving the various social, economic and political issues of human life. In this manner, the Lebanese Arab diaspora poet Khalil Gibran is one of the foremost contributors to the Arabic literary world. The research tries to introduce Arabic diaspora literatue and poet Khalil Zibran and to express the theoretical and social ideas expressed in his poems. For this purpose, descriptive and analytical methods were used and studied. The poet Khalil Gibran writes in these poems all his philosophical thoughts and social views, and speaks in it with the senses of nature and its details, arguing that nature is the cause of complete happiness and that the world is free from hypocrisy. This is what he describes as the characteristic of souls who strive to achieve their distant goal behind perfect human life away from the false world of materialism.

BOOK REVIEW: Fluid Jurisdictions in the Indian Ocean - Arab Diaspora under Colonial Rule, by Nurfadzilah Yahaya

SOJOURN is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of social and cultural issues in Southeast Asia. It publishes empirical and theoretical research articles with a view to promoting and disseminating scholarship in and on the region. Areas of special concern include ethnicity, religion, tourism, urbanization, migration, popular culture, social and cultural change, and development. Fields most often represented in the journal are anthropology, sociology, and history.

Fluid Jurisdictions: Colonial law and Arabs in Southeast Asia by Nurfadzilah Yahaya (review)

Reviewed by: Fluid Jurisdictions: Colonial law and Arabs in Southeast Asia by Nurfadzilah Yahaya Sai Siew-Min Fluid Jurisdictions: Colonial law and Arabs in Southeast Asia. By Nurfadzilah Yahaya. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2020. 251 pp, ISBN 978-150-1750-87-8 (cloth) Nurfadzilah Yahaya's Fluid Jurisdictions: colonial law and Arabs in Southeast Asia is an expansive book that speaks to multiple fields of history. This is surely a book about the Hadhrami Arab diasporic elite in island Southeast Asia but Nurfadzilah challenges what we know about diasporas and their relationships with colonialism and imperialism in this region from multiple angles. To begin with, the book is not a straightforward historical ethnography of 'the Arab diaspora' at a specific site, a genre readers may be more familiar with. Both in the Introduction and Conclusion, Nurfadzilah takes issue with our easy association of 'diaspora' and 'diasporic consciousness' with 'mobility', 'hybridity' and 'cosmopolitanism'. Addressing the scholarship of Sumit Mandal and Eng-Seng Ho who emphasize the 'hybridity' of [End Page 217] the Arab diaspora, she writes that there were many Arabs who identified solely as 'Arab' by patrilineal descent and that the category was remarkably durable across the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. Her objective, however, is not to revert to a purist definition of 'Arab-ness' as the counter-point to 'hybridised Arab-ness' or attempt to fix the category to discern who belonged. Instead, the book resists reducing what being 'diasporic' meant historically to our cliched imagination. Relying on lively prose and the power of historical narrative to weave a complex and multi-dimensional story that is simultaneously conceptually sophisticated, Nurfadzilah has written a book that requires concentrated and repeated reading to appreciate her intricate insights and careful treatment of both the copious archival materials she examines as well as the formidable range of scholarly literature with which she is engaged. What makes this book unlike most historical-ethnographical studies on ethnic diasporas in Southeast Asia is its fine-grained examination of colonial law in what used to be the Straits Settlements and the Netherlands East Indies. Trained as a legal historian, Nurfadzilah draws heavily from an impressive and updated scholarship in the fields of imperial, colonial and international law, and legal pluralism in particular. While legal pluralism and what is known as 'Islamic law' in Southeast Asia is well-studied, studies on ethnic diasporas in Southeast Asia have seldom intersected with these fields. The scholarship on ethnic diasporas in the region tend to be stripped down to focus overwhelmingly on the identity of diasporic communities understood in the political, socio-economic and culturalist senses. Very rarely does law, and for that matter, colonial law, feature centrally in these studies. Colonial law and colonialist legal classifications tend to appear in the literature only to be dismissed by scholars for suppressing the fluidity and hybridity of diasporic identities or used to demonstrate how diasporic communities 'played' multiple legal identities that were arguably insincere and false. This book, however, challenges these perspectives by featuring colonial law at its core and as Nurfadzilah argues, flips conventional wisdom around. The book demonstrates how, why and with what paradoxical and unexpected consequences diasporic Arab elites appealed to and allied themselves with colonial legal regimes, in the process driving the expansion of colonial jurisdiction over the most intimate areas of their lives as well as the lives of Muslim populations in the region. Nurfadzilah's demonstration that colonial law was instrumental to how mobile individuals in the region—including women whose presence is well-documented in the book—conducted their lives and businesses is one of the most significant contributions of the book to the study of diasporas in the region. The book opens with an evocative description of the so-called 'Oertatan' in the Malay world in 1599 which turns out to be a mangled name for the Malay word 'orang datang', meaning 'newly-arrived'. The Introduction is effective for mapping the geo-legal domains the book will traverse as well as the key concepts of writing and paperwork, diasporas, legal pluralism and Islamic law which centres the book. It is absolutely necessary to begin with the Introduction without which readers may...

Review on the Child in Modern Iraqi Poetry

The image of the child in its various shades is one of the common images in Arabic poems from the pre-Islamic era to the modern era, but it did not receive the attention of scholars, and it was not studied in depth showing its connotations and symbols. Hence came my study entitled "The Child in Contemporary Iraqi Poetry", which is an attempt to clarify the symbols of the word (the child) and what it indicates according to the context in which they are mentioned, as well as the statement of the aesthetic aspects of how to employ these symbols through the selection of poetic texts of modern poets in which the image of the child was mentioned Where this image was linked to the intellectual and political framework of the trends of Iraqi poets to create with it multiple connotations that were in harmony with the successive conflicts and revolutions that the poet employed to express intellectual, political and artistic positions. Modern Iraqi poetry by this expression means what many poets wrote in a non-traditional or traditional (classical) poetry curriculum in the literature of their languages. It appeared in Arabic literature at the end of the first half of the twentieth century, especially at the hands of Al-Rihani, Al-Sayyab, the angels and the Arab diaspora in a number of European countries that they went to settle in, especially Italy, France, Britain and then the American states. One of the most prominent differences raised by this trend was what was raised about (authenticity and contemporary) in his book and its production, over decades of years, which lasted about a century.

“Like a Wolf Who Fell upon Sheep”: Arab Diaspora and Religion in America, 1880–1930

Historians of migration have extensively studied the economic, social, and political impact of migration and the secular changes amongst diasporic communities, but changes in religious faith, practice and institutions remain opaque. Yet, they form part of the most intimate aspect of the lives transformed in movement and were, in fact, the most active fault line in diasporic communities and at home. However, in relation to religion in the Middle East, historians have hardly paid any attention to movement of people and ideas across and beyond the geographical boundaries of the region. This makes our understanding at best incomplete and, in some instances, incorrect in identifying the sources, dynamics and reasons for change in religious institutions and faith. This article attempts to fill these lacunae by looking at an example of how migration inflected religious institutions and how faith and religion shaped the migratory experience.

Reception of Bicultural Identity in Arabic Diaspora Literature: The Works of Elia Abu Madi in Qisshat Al-Adabi Al-Mahjary

Literature by the Arab diaspora in the United States has promoted dialectical interpretations of authors' cultural identities, balancing their ancestral cultural identities with those of their new country. In regards to the bicultural identity found in the Arabic-language poetry of Elia Abu Madi, it can be seen that the poet produced several discourses portraying a bicultural reality. The historical essence of Arabic diaspora literature is found not only in its social expressions and representations, but also in the interactions of Arabic and American culture that have produced a bicultural identity. It consists of five key concepts: sign analysis, which functions to reveal the meaning of signs or symbols in the material object; interpreter analysis, which functions to discover the correlations between authors' intents and readers' horizons of expectation; effect analysis, which functions to reveal the influence of literary works on their readers; reference analysis, which functions to reveal authors' repertoires; and context or conditions analysis, which functions to reveal the bicultural identity of authors. This research concludes that, in the author's bicultural identity, the United States is positioned as a prosperous country of dynamic multiculturalism, where people are passionate in their work and art. Meanwhile, Lebanon is positioned as a country where people live mechanically, facing hardship and minimal productivity owing to their lack of security. Conversely, although the United States is prosperous and safe, owing to its orientation towards religious pluralism, its people are more positivistic and material in their lives. They thus tend to ignore spiritual aspects.

Трудовые мигранты с арабского Востока в Швеции: изменение парадигмы

Middle East Arab diasporas, primarily the Iraqi and Syrian ones, are playing an increasing role in the economy and demography of Sweden. This study aims to describe the formation of economically active diasporas in Sweden over the past three decades. There has been a paradigm shift in the immigration and business activity of people from the Middle East Arab countries in Sweden. Diaspora leadership changes depending on the situation in the countries of origin and migration phenomena driven by political and military shocks. This change affects the migration process and the role of communities in the economic life of the country. The study draws on the work of top research centres and data from leading Swedish and international statistical agencies. The rise and subsequent decline in Syrian immigration, which included labour migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, did not restore the unconditional leadership of the Iraqis among the Arab communities of Sweden. The significant business activity of Syrian immigrants, their professional skills, level of education, and broad business ties make the diaspora a likely leader in the Arab community. These four factors also contribute to easier migrant integration into Swedish society.

Bilingualism and “Significant Geographies” in Moroccan Colonial Journals: Al-Motamid and Ketama, Modern Arabic Poetry and Literary History

This essay surveys two largely disregarded bilingual (Arabic–Spanish) literary journals from late-colonial northern Morocco: Al-Motamid (1947–1956) and Ketama (1953–1959). I trace the process which led to the consolidation of the centrality of contemporary Arabic poetry in both journals, the practices and the actors which enabled it. As such, the essay is concerned not only with the project of (re)writing Moroccan Arabic literary history, but also the larger literary history connecting the Maghreb and the Mashreq, as well as Europe and Spanish and Arab diasporas in the Mahjar (North and South America). The essay also complicates understandings of local colonised culture and literature as necessarily subaltern and of literary translation moving from the literary “centre” to the “periphery,” allowing us instead to grasp the ways in which the Moroccan and Arab authors influenced the Spaniards. I argue the collaboration of the former, first in Al-Motamid and later in Ketama, was decisive for the increasingly bilingual and Arabic orientation that the journals adopted. In fact, one of the main goals of both journals became making modern Arabic literature available in Spanish. The Moroccan and other Arab writers also enabled the reorientation of some Spanish orientalists towards contemporary Arabic literary production. The journals made visible and enabled the circulation of contemporary Arabic poetry between the Mashreq, the Maghreb and the Mahjar literary worlds; of contemporary poetry between Arabic, Spanish, and other European languages. Although their location was the seemingly provincial Moroccan Spanish Protectorate, these journals became small but significant world literary nodes.