Recent Muslim Migrants
With the 1965 liberalisation of American immigration laws, Asians began to migrate in greater numbers than previously. As a result, we witness for the first time the greater migration of Muslim professionals from Turkey, Iran, India, Pakistan, Indonesia and the Arab world.
Mehdi’s recent study of Arabs in the United States shows that ‘of the more than 100,000 who have arrived since 1945, 70 per cent are Moslem in contrast to earlier decades’. This increase in the Muslim population in American society was not confined to the category of professionals; it was also evident in the growth of Muslim students coming into the United States. Whereas in the early thirties, Muslim students constituted a very negligible percentage of America’s foreign students, by the mid-sixties and seventies, the figure had climbed to 120,000 students. This was facilitated by decolonisation in the Muslim world and the greater American involvement in the education of these societies. One important result of this phenomenon was the birth of the Muslim Student Association whose success story has led to its transformation into the Islamic Society of America, a new and much broader-based organisation catering to both its old student constituents and the professional class of Muslims who in many cases were former student members of the old MSA. These new Americans and new immigrants have all been generally identified with values emphasising success in American society. Although the Iranian Revolution created some problems for the safety and effective operation of many Muslims, particularly those from the Middle East, the fact remains that since the release of the American hostages, Iranian-American Muslims are once again doing business as usual and many are still hoping to have a successful rendezvous with the American Dream.
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