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The entrepreneur concluded: it was like this that I

got good clientele and a nickname. In the coming

years, the family business expanded, and she con-

tinued to work in the clothing store, raise children,

and take care of household chores. Women thus

exercised central roles in family accumulation

strategies, but they have been almost ignored by

masculinized (and stereotypical) representations of

the Arab peddler in South American plays, nov-

els, and films (see Bestene 1994, Civantos 2001,

Karam 2004).

In the upwardly mobile immigrant generation,

women were limited to store spaces and/or home

environs. Carrying out research among Alawi

Syrian immigrants in the Tucumn province of

Argentina, Assali found that men gained literacy in

the Spanish language due to the public nature of

business while women learned only how to speak,

but not read or write (1989, 3841). Yet this lin-

guistic and spatial containment of women shifted in

the second generation. In Assalis study, Argentine-

born daughters and sons in immigrant families

were each taught how to speak Arabic in family and

religious circles especially through reciting

prayers and verses but their mother tongue was

Spanish, not Arabic. Though code-switching with

Arabic continues in religious spaces, descendants

have been overwhelmingly educated in public or

private schools whose primary language of instruc-

tion is Spanish or Portuguese. Indicative of

Christian-laden nativism in early twentieth-century

South America, a Muslim female student was once

deemed heretical by her instructors (Jozami

1996, 801). However, education has been used by

women to practice medicine, law, and other pro-

fessions in the second and third generations.

Especially through educational and professional

mobility, Muslim women have demonstrated an

empowered but private awareness of their dias-

poric and religious origins.

In recreational and romantic affairs, however,

women have been closely monitored. Immigrant

parents granted considerable liberty to sons, but

exerted far more control over daughters out of fear

that they would marry outside the Muslim commu-

nity. Based on a survey with 106 Middle Easterners

in six provinces in Argentina, Adelouahed Akmir

found that exogamy has been a privilege for bach-

elors, almost never women (1997, 90). Akmir

South America

Contemporary Muslim communities in South

America have been primarily composed of early

and mid-twentieth century immigrants and their

descendents from Lebanon, Syria, and, to a lesser

extent, Palestine. There are, of course, significant

numbers of South Asian Muslims in the circum-

Caribbean nations of South America, namely

Suriname and Guyana as well as recent converts to

Islam throughout the region, but these communities

are not addressed in this entry (see Ahsani 1984,

Bruijne 1979, Manuel 2000, Williams 1991).

Rather than taking shape through their identifica-

tion with a point of origin or source of authenticity

in the Arab and Islamic worlds, the Muslim dias-

pora in South America has been produced out of

the particular histories, everyday lives, and socio-

cultural exchanges of Arab Muslims themselves,

most visibly concentrated in Argentina and Brazil.

Arab Muslims comprised a small but significant

percentage of the total number of early twentieth-

century immigrant waves, estimated at between 10

and 15 percent of Middle Easterners in Argentina

and Brazil. Carrying Ottoman Sultanate travel

papers, Arab men and women were labeled as tur-

cos and turcas (Turks) by South American masses

and elites. By the late nineteenth century, limited

numbers of mostly male immigrants attained a

striking presence in peddling. Yet the turca vende-

dora (female Turk seller) was a particularly shock-

ing sight for belle poque Argentines unaccustomed

to working women, native or foreign (Bertoni

1994, 69). Like early twentieth-century pioneers,

post-Second World War immigrants became store

owners and small-scale industrialists. Women were

crucial to such upward mobility, especially in the

daily affairs of stores and households. Take, for

example, a Sunni Muslim Lebanese woman who

immigrated to help an older brother and his ped-

dling coterie in Brazil in the mid-1940s (cited

in Osman 1998, 5168): While the men would

go . . . peddling, she recounts, I would say at

home, washing, ironing, cooking, and going to the

farmers market. After marrying one of her

brothers friends, she got the taste for business as

a seamstress, making a dress for a friend who

announced to other Brazilians that it was pur-

chased na Turca (in the female Turks [business]).

Migration: Muslim Diasporas

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reflected that some Muslim women of this [sec-

ond] generation did not consider religion an

obstacle in marriage, but what truly impeded the

matrimony with Christians was the wrong concept

that the community formed around them (women[sic]), since Islam prohibits the marriage of a

Muslim woman with a person of another religion.

He added that some asked their non-Muslim suit-

ors to pretend to be Muslim while others accepted

the religion of their husbands and saw themselves

obligated to diminish their contacts with the

Muslim community or . . . definitively cut them

(Akmir 1997, 94). Women, and not men, were thus

forced to marry within the Muslim diaspora, and if

doing otherwise, could risk being marginalized by

patriarchal standards.

Such patriarchy has been upheld by the Brazilian

state as well (see Karam 2004a, 1935). A federalimmigration official, for instance, explained that

most Muslim Lebanese men are granted residency,

and later citizenship, through their marriage to

Brazilian-born Muslim Lebanese women. But the

state official qualified that he has never personally

spoken with any of these women, rather, their

fathers or brothers have customarily come to speak

with him about the details of a given visa applica-

tion. When not obligated to wed South American-

born Muslim men, women have been married to

co-religionist migrants with the implicit support of

Brazilian state powers (2004, 1935).

Today, this gender hierarchy has shifted to a lim-ited degree. Among the majority of third genera-

tion Argentine Arabs who have wed non-Arabs,

Akmir notes that there are cases of Muslim

women married, by way of civil ceremony, with

members of other religions (1997, 97). It is, how-

ever, doubtful whether exogamous Muslim women

take up positions within community institutions,

such as mosques, clubs, charity leagues, or schools.

In Brazil, Muslim men who marry non-Muslims

are welcomed and sometimes desire to participate

in such entities. In addition, non-Muslim wives of

Muslim men who convert to Islam are welcomed

by male leaders (Karam 2004, 2024). But thisinclusion has not been afforded to Muslim women

who marry non-Muslims or who reject male

standards of Muslimness, such as wearing the

headscarf in certain circumstances. This double

standard seems unlikely to change, especially given

its long history. Since the majority of Muslim immi-

grants since the late nineteenth century have been

men, male exogamy has been endemic to South

American Muslim communities, a tendency ac-

knowledged by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars

alike.

migration: muslim diasporas 7

This politics of gender is evident in Muslim char-

ity institutions founded in the first half of the twen-

tieth century. In Brazil, the Muslim Beneficent

Society was established in 1924, and began con-

structing South Americas first mosque in 1929(Hajjar 1985, 812). Only men, however, have

been recognized as founding the mosque (Duoun

1944, 2212, Delval 1992, 21718). In Argentina,

the Pan Islamic Association was founded in 1923,

the Druze Society of Beneficence in 1927, and the

Pan Allawite Islamic Association of Beneficence in

1929 (Bestene 1992, 119). According to a Arab-

run Argentine newspaper in 1932, such entities

aimed to strengthen the union and friendship of

resident Muslims in Argentina, to present a defen-

sive front against propaganda averse to their beliefs

and [to promote] the protection and assistance of

orphans, widows and all needy in their commu-nity (Bestene 1992, 119). Such self-help organiza-

tions were useful both to new arrivals and to the

upwardly mobile strategies of more established

individuals in these communities.

Especially since the 1970s, numerous mosques,

clubs, and centers have been established by Sunni

and Shii Muslims in Argentina, Brazil, and

Venezuela, often with aid from Saudi Arabia and

other Middle Eastern states (Ahsani 1984, Islamic

Studies Center 1992, Delval 1992, 21832,

25169). In these institutions, men have regularly

controlled public and material affairs while women

have been relegated to female departments or com-mittees. This containment of women is evident

in day-to-day affairs as well. In a country club

founded by Sunni Muslim Lebanese immigrants in

So Paulo, second and third generation women

have criticized the invidious comparisons made by

club members, and more specifically, the liberty

given to male youth in clothing and sports while

they themselves have been expected to dress and act

in modest ways (Osman 1998, 149, 1756,

1956). This club, Sunni Muslim owned and oper-

ated, thus serves as a space for second and third

generation young men to negotiate their autonomy

as well as for second and third generation youngwomen to be monitored and encouraged to marry

within the community.

B i b l i o g r a p h yS. A. H. Ahsani, Muslims in Latin America, inJournal of

the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 5:2 (1984),45463.

A. Akmir, La inmigracin rabe en Argentina, in L. AgarCorbinos et al., El mundo rabe y Amrica Latina,Madrid 1997, 57121.

E. B. Assali, Alternancia de los cdigos espaol-rabeentre los bilingues de Tucumn, Argentina, inC.M.H.L.B. Caravelle 52 (1989), 3355.

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, A cultural politics of entrepreneurship in nation-making. Phoenicians, Turks, and the Arab commercialessence in Brazil, in Journal of Latin AmericanAnthropology 9:2 (Fall 2004), 31951.

C. Knowlton, Srios e libaneses em So Paulo, So Paulo

1961.R. M. de Larroca, El Islam, in Todo es Historia 430(2003), 1617.

J. Lesser, Negotiating national identity. Immigrants,minorities, and the struggle for ethnicity in Brazil,Durham, N.C. 1999.

P. Manuel, East Indian music in the West Indies. Tan-singing, chutney, and the making of Indo-Caribbeanculture, Philadelphia 2000.

N. Morandini, El harn. Menem,Zzulema, Seineldn. Losrabes y el poder poltico en la Argentina, Buenos Aires1998.

S. A. Osman, Caminhos da imigrao rabe em SoPaulo. Histria oral de vida familiar. M.A. thesis,Universidade de So Paulo 1998.

A. Tasso, La inmigracin rabe en la Argentina, in Todoes Historia 24:282 (1990), 7891.

O. Truzzi, Patrcios. Srios e libaneses em So Paulo, SoPaulo 1995.

B. Williams, Stains on my name, war in my veins. Guyanaand the politics of cultural struggle, Durham, N.C.1991.

John Tofik Karam

K e y w o r d sprofessional mobility, diasporic institutions, Argentina,Brazil, trade, immigrants, Arab Diaspora, benevolentassociations, modesty, small businesses

N. Assrauy, O Druzismo, So Vicente 1976.L. A. Bertoni, De Turquia a Buenos Aires. Una colecti-

vidad nueva a fines del siglo XIX, in EstudiosMigratorios Latinoamericanos 9:26 (1994), 6793.

J. O. Bestene, Formas de asociacionismo entre los sirio-

libaneses en Buenos Aires (1900 1950), in F. J. Devotoand E. J. Miguez (comps.), Asociacionismo, trabajo eidentidad etnica. Los italianos en Amrica Latina enuna perspectiva comparada, Buenos Aires 1992,115133.

, Realidades y estereotipos. Los turcos en el teatroargentino, in Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos9:26 (1994), 14363.

G. A. de Bruijne, The Lebanese in Suriname, in Boletn deEstudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 26 (1979),1537.

C. Civantos, Custom-building the fictions of the nation.Arab Argentine rewritings of the Gaucho, inInternational Journal of Cultural Studies 4:1 (2001),6987.

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T. Duoun, A emigrao sirio-libanesa s terras de promis-so, So Paulo 1944.

A. Gattaz, Histria oral da imigrao libanesa para oBrasil, 18802000, Ph.D. diss., Universidade de SoPaulo 2001.

C. Hajjar, Imigrao rabe. Cem anos de reflexo, SoPaulo 1985.

Islamic Studies Center, Islam in Argentina. A report, in Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs13:1 (1992), 2728.

G. Jozami, The manifestation of Islam in Argentina, inThe Americas. A Quarterly Review of Inter-AmericanCultural History 53:1 (1996), 6785.

J. T. Karam, Distinguishing arabesques. The politics andpleasures of being Arab in neoliberal Brazil, Ph.D. diss.,Syracuse University 2004.

8 migration: muslim diasporas

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