Only a minority of Iranian Americans are Muslims
According to this survey done by Zogby International. The numbers:
42% Muslim
9% Christian
6% Jews
5% Zoroastrian
7% Bahai
31% “Other” (the pollsters presume this is mostly those with “No religion”)
The sample size was small, only around 400. And it seems really strange that there was a religious option for “Other” but not “No Religion,” but perhaps the pollsters simply weren’t expecting that so many people wouldn’t select the religion of their cultural tradition. I was surprised by the low proportion of Jews (several Persian American actors are Jewish), and high proportion of Zoroastrians. Of course Zoroastrians emigrated in large numbers, but their population base in Iran itself wasn’t that huge to begin with, European ethnographers were shocked to “discover” that they were still a living community in the 19th century (part of this was that they isolated themselves in remote areas to escape Muslim persecution). One hypothesis: some Iranian Americans identify as Zoroastrian to reassert their Persian cultural heritage even if they are from traditionally Muslim families (this has happened in Tajikistan somewhat, though only among intellectuals, as secularization during the Soviet period made it psychologically feasible for some to simply “leap-frog” the Muslim period back to their presumed primal identities).
Obviously Iranian Americans are very different from people in Iran. Americans sometimes assume that the anti-clerical attitude of many Iranians indicates a general anti-religious stance, but this is not evident in The World Values Survey. 16% of Iranians consider themselves “not religious” while 84% consider themselves “religious.” 0.1% were convinced atheists, out of a sample size of ~2500 (survey taken in 2005). As a comparison in Turkey 16.9% are “not religious” while in Egypt it is 7.5%. For a Middle Eastern country Iran is actually relatively on the secular side, but only for a Middle Eastern country.
Of course there is no reason that the demographics of an immigrant community would represent well that of the source region. An enormous proportion of people whose ancestors came from the Russian Empire were Jews. Arab Americans in the United States are much more likely to be Christian or other religious minorities (Casey Kasem is Druze). Until recently the rule-of-thumb has been that a majority of Arabs in the United States are Christian, not Muslim, but I suspect that is no longer true. Many people of part Arab heritage (e.g., the 1980s pop singer Tiffany) may no longer identify as Arab (and Christian Arabs seem to have had high outmarriage rates), and the recent immigrant waves have been much more Muslim in composition (this makes some sense since there simply aren’t that many Arab Christians left in the Middle East, though numerically the Copts are still substantial because of Egypt’s large base population).
A final note on Iranian Americans: did the high frequency of those with no religious affiliations emerge in the United States, or was that due to the selection biasing of the Iranian migrants? One can imagine that Iranian Communist intellectual contingent may have been irreligious, but I would assume that educated Iranians would generally have had a nominal religious affiliation to begin with. But with the option to defect in the United States, combined with a secular reaction to make themselves distinctive from the Iranian theocracy, I suspect that the generation born or raised in the United States had less use for adherence to a cultural Islam. In other words, the extent of Iranian American secularity may be as contingent as the prevalence of Latoya face & small-dog ownership among female Tehrangelinos.
(other interesting, if unsurprising, data at thePDF)
Christian Arabs seem to have had high outmarriage rates
I think that almost everywhere marrying outside your religion is taken more seriously than marrying outside your ethnicity. One group of Arab American I knew in Portland was Catholic-affiliated, and they seemed to just intermarry with Catholics, and to fit into the local community alongside the Italians as Mediterranean Catholics. They were Syrian and Lebanese, and Lebanese at least have always been cosmopolitan.
I think that American identity politics has made a lot of people take ethnicity more seriously than it should be. It’s not unusual for immigrant families to have grudges against their home country, and for that and other reasons to identify 100% as Americans the minute they step off the boat. (In many places, central Europe and the Middle east being two, national identity is involuntary, the result of wars and treaties, and entirely nominal).
Surname based poll. Lots of potential for errors.
Most Parsees in this country identify themselves as Persians first and Indians second. I strongly suspect the high Zoroastrian results are related to this. Bahai numbers make sense, Christian numbers seem way high.
While most persians in this country are affluent, getting random telephone calls asking about ID and religious practices might trigger some hesitation in answers.
Most Parsees in this country identify themselves as Persians first and Indians second. I strongly suspect the high Zoroastrian results are related to this. Bahai numbers make sense, Christian numbers seem way high.
i thought parsees tended not to have iranian surnames?
re: christians. armenian iranians like the agassi family. also, young people convert. i have known catholic persian girls; parents secular or muslim, just converted.
Granted, engineerwallah isn’t an “Iranian” name. But that is the problem when using a surname file — you don’t know the quality of the names in it.
The gold standard when measuring ethnic american population is to call 10,000 random people and ask them “are you persian” and hang up if they don’t say yes. With hangup rates and the need for a good base it might be more like 50K random calls. The only groups that can afford that are the Jews.
With surname files you can generate a 1000 calls really quickly, and you do ask them “are you persian” to weed out the negatives, but you have to choose the surnames really really really carefully.
Good point on Armenian-Iranians. And I suspect minority communities — especially affluent ones — are the most likely
As an Iranian and frequent reader of your blog I don’t understand how this post fits into this space which, I think, is meant to be about genetics.
Maybe in the future we should treat people’s description of their religion as another phenotype and try to associate to it some rare variants etc
Some anecdotal data: Out of the 5 or so Iranians that I know in the US, only one really calls herself Muslim. One likes to say Zoroastrian though he was born Muslim. One is Bahai, though also born Muslim, one is jewish and was born jewish and the others prefer no religion. So yes, I think this poll may be correct and your guess that some of these are Iranians who were identified as Muslim in Iran but who have since opted out is also correct.
to continue with anecdotes, the one with no religion is married to a Roman Catholic wife and his son, raised Catholic, has suddenly decided to “become Muslim”…so this may not be the end of the story!
Omar,
The “Persian” girl I dated whose Dad was Bah’ai and Mom, Sephardic Jewish/Columbian Catholic, was raised as Lutheran and grew up in an Ashkenazi Jewish enclave on Long Island.
She ended up marrying a Swedish-American.
I dont know how things look south of the Manson-Nixon line, but on the coasts the US is fast on its way to becoming the most polyglot nation on earth. And I have a theory that this fact alone guarantees American success in the next 50 years, the considerable drag of past racist attitudes and newer left-wing moral panic and ignorant bullshit notwithstanding.
but on the coasts the US is fast on its way to becoming the most polyglot nation on earth.
seeing as how some african nations have *hundreds* of languages spoken in non-trivial proportions within their borders, this is probably not literally true
additionally, consider a nation like brazil, which is mostly white, with a large black element, as well as a non-trivial amerindian one, and some of the largest japanese and arab communities in the world.
True, Polyglot was the wrong word. Brazil is pretty mixed too, but I think California may give them a run for their money…..
Interesting article as usual, Razib. Being a “halfie” myself, the statistics completely jive from my own observations over the last 30 years. If I could offer some subjective insight on the data, I would say it also represents two rather separate “waves” of Iranian immigration to the U.S, and the nature of the people included in them. The first wave being immediately after the revolution and during the earlier phases of Iran-Iraq War. These are your religious minorities, and overly educated non-religious types(like many of the “Shahis” are) that make up such a huge percentage of the data. For those that are religious from that wave, most are literally like lapsed non-practicing Catholics. That is why there is literally only one Iranian “Shia” Mosque in the Los Angeles area. Lapsed Catholics are lucky to go to Church once a year, as goes the Shia.
The second wave, starting in the mid 90’s, and a slow trickle by comparison, is much more religiously indoctrinated in my opinion. Not less educated per say, but certainly much more religious than the first wave. These folks grew up in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War in the Islamic Republic after all, and are not from the “higher classes” like the first wave were, hence their differing attitudes toward religion I believe.
As far as religious and ethno-religous minorities are concerned, such as the Jews and Armenians, I believe they seem much higher in number than they actually are. This is due to the fact that they tend to stick together as communities, and as such “stick out.” In LA for instance, I would say at least half of the Persians in Beverly Hills, if not much more(mostly?), are Persian Jews. As such, on the Westside of LA, you tend to meet an over representation of that group. The same could be said of Armenians in Glendale as well.
It always amuses me that on Westwood Blvd, so-called “Tehrangles”, all of the shops cater to the local Persian Jewish population living nearby in Beverley Hills, and down Pico Blvd. Most uninitiated would probably just assume they are Persian Jews. In reality, most are actually Iranian Azeri Turks who cater to the local Persian Jewish community(there are two Sephardic Temples/Centers right there). Here is the real kicker…Most of those Iranian-Azeris are Bahais! So you have Azeri Bahais marketing their stores to Persian Jews, everyone having originated in Iran.
Zoroastrians are another matter. They, like the Jews and Armenians, have a religion that is very much their “ethnicity” to a large degree. Yet, elements of their religion still exist heavily in the cultural practices of all Iranians in general. So, it is not terribly hard for one to say one is a Zoroastrian, even when one was born a Shia Muslim. You inherently already know a lot about the religion and it’s practices to begin with, as opposed to say Judaism or Christianity. It is almost as though one is “reverting” as opposed to converting, as those “Muslims” just love to say. This, combined with the fact that in my experience Zoroastrians in the U.S actively attempt to recruit Iranian Muslims to “convert back.” This even though the religion supposedly does not except converts.
plurality, not minority
nice to know editors for the OED are reading this blog!
…what success that will guarantee them in the next 50 years. Prolly the same they had in the last 50. btw: Manson-Nixon has a ring to it–telling spelling, if I may say so. What Charlie’s family did to Ms Polanski, polyglot polymorphic pervy goodness will do to us–polyglossia not being the really worrisome aspect. And heck, yes, it takes one of those rightly guided guys to tell us about how to succeed yankee-wise.
…I’m not supposed to rant hereabouts? Dang.