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Re: The Diaspora
Ace, certainly living in Muslim countries is a factor that decreases Armenian assimilation, but even that is not enough. In Lebanon, the Armenian Church registered that 40% of its marriages in 1997 were mixed marriages. That is an alarming number, probably about the same in the US. And that is scary for the Lebanese Armenian community.
Iran is a special case. There, Armenians live in Muslim theocracy, so the religious factor is multiplied, and so the religious difference between Armenians and Persians is also multiplied, making assimilation much slower than in more liberal Muslim countries (ie, Lebanon, UAE, Kuwait, Syria).
Rostom: The Chinatowns around the country have only been "going strong" because new immigrants keep rejuvenating the community. That is precisely what happened in the US with the 1960s/1970s when Armenians began to come from the Middle East, and again in the 1990s when Armenians came from Armenia. New immigrants always help rejuvenate an ethnic immigrant community, partly because psychologically, you feel more tied to your heritage as there is power and presence in numbers (ie, more people know of Armenians, so you feel more comfortable identifying as such), and partly because the new immigrants fill up dying churches and establish new organizations and institutions.
Ace, certainly living in Muslim countries is a factor that decreases Armenian assimilation, but even that is not enough. In Lebanon, the Armenian Church registered that 40% of its marriages in 1997 were mixed marriages. That is an alarming number, probably about the same in the US. And that is scary for the Lebanese Armenian community.
Iran is a special case. There, Armenians live in Muslim theocracy, so the religious factor is multiplied, and so the religious difference between Armenians and Persians is also multiplied, making assimilation much slower than in more liberal Muslim countries (ie, Lebanon, UAE, Kuwait, Syria).
Rostom: The Chinatowns around the country have only been "going strong" because new immigrants keep rejuvenating the community. That is precisely what happened in the US with the 1960s/1970s when Armenians began to come from the Middle East, and again in the 1990s when Armenians came from Armenia. New immigrants always help rejuvenate an ethnic immigrant community, partly because psychologically, you feel more tied to your heritage as there is power and presence in numbers (ie, more people know of Armenians, so you feel more comfortable identifying as such), and partly because the new immigrants fill up dying churches and establish new organizations and institutions.
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