South Paterson is a neighborhood of Paterson, New Jersey, United States. The neighborhood holds a large Arab-American population with a growing number of immigrants from the Middle East. The diverse neighborhood with significant Turkish, Arab, [1] and Palestinian populations, the community has been known as Little Istanbul, Little Ramallah or Little Palestine. [2] The city is a sister city to Ramallah, Palestine, and has renamed a segment of its main street to 'Palestine Way.' [3]
The Arab community has existed since the late 19th century when many Lebanese and Syrian immigrants moved in. Since then, immigrants from Lebanon have slowed, although many second, third, and fourth-generation residents remain. In addition to the Arab community, a Turkish community and an Azeri community has existed in the neighborhood since the 1950s made up primarily of Turks and Karachay immigrants. Palestinian immigrants have settled in the neighborhood, adding to the mix of Arabs.
The area is known for housing many Palestinians, [4] Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, and Arab immigrants from a variety of other countries. Paterson is home to the second largest Arab-American community after Dearborn, Michigan. [5] Paterson's Arab American population was estimated as high as 20,000 in 2015. [4]
The neighborhood is bounded by NJ 19 on the west, the border with Clifton, New Jersey to the south, the Passaic River to the east, and I-80 to the north. The area is also part of Lakeview, which lies to the east of East Railroad Avenue. The area is bounded on the south by Clifton, on the west by NJ 19 and on the north by I-80.
There are many Middle Eastern restaurants, grocery stores and stores in the area. Main Street has the largest concentration of these, but there are other Turkish and Arab stores and restaurants throughout the area. The area is mostly residential with commercial zoning along Main Street.
The Paterson-based Arab American Civic Association runs an Arabic language program in the Paterson school district. [6]
The Levant is the subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west and core West Asia, or by the political term, Middle East, to the east. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is equivalent to Cyprus and a stretch of land bordering the Mediterranean Sea in western Asia: i.e. the historical region of Syria, which includes present-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories and most of Turkey southwest of the middle Euphrates. Its overwhelming characteristic is that it represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia. In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all of the Eastern Mediterranean with its islands; that is, it included all of the countries along the Eastern Mediterranean shores, extending from Greece in Southern Europe to Egypt and Cyrenaica in Northern Africa.
Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank, that serves as the de facto administrative capital of the State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, 10 km north of Jerusalem, at an average elevation of 872 meters (2,861 ft) above sea level, adjacent to al-Bireh.
Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country, village or house over the course of the 1948 Palestine war and during the 1967 Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refugees live in or near 68 Palestinian refugee camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 2019 more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees were registered with the United Nations.
Paterson is the largest city in and the county seat of Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, Paterson was the state's third-most-populous municipality, with a population of 159,732. an increase of 13,533 (+9.3%) from the 2010 census count of 146,199, which in turn reflected a decline of 3,023 (-2.0%) from the 149,222 counted in the 2000 census. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated a population of 156,452 for 2023, making it the 168th-most populous municipality in the nation.
Arab Americans are Americans who trace ancestry to any of the various waves of immigrants from the Arabic-speaking countries. In the United States census, Arabs are racially classified as White Americans because "White" is defined as "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa".
The phenomenon of large-scale migration of Christians is the main reason why Christians' share of the population has been declining in many countries. Many Muslim countries have witnessed disproportionately high emigration rates among their Christian minorities for several generations. Today, most Middle Eastern people in the United States are Christians, and the majority of Arabs living outside the Arab World are Arab Christians.
Dabke is a Levantine folk dance, particularly popular among Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian, and Syrian communities. Dabke combines circle dance and line dancing and is widely performed at weddings and other joyous occasions. The line forms from right to left and the leader of the dabke heads the line, alternating between facing the audience and the other dancers.
According to 2007 statistics released by the United States Department of State concerning Islam in Nicaragua, there are approximately 1,200 to 1,500 Muslims, mostly Sunnis who are resident aliens or naturalized citizens from Palestine, Libya, and Iran or natural-born Nicaraguan citizens born to both of the two groups. The Islamic Cultural Center in Managua serves as the primary salaat (prayer) center for Muslims in the city, with approximately 320 men attending on a regular basis. Muslims from Granada, Masaya, Leon, and Chinandega also travel to the Managua center for Friday prayers. Granada, Masaya, and Leon have smaller prayer centers in the homes of prominent local Muslims. In May 2007 the Sunni leader of the Managua prayer center was dismissed, due to the increase in Iranian influence in the Muslim community and was to be replaced by a Shi'a religious leader. By the end of the reporting period the Shi'a leader had not been identified.
Lebanese Americans are Americans of Lebanese descent. This includes both those who are native to the United States of America, as well as immigrants from Lebanon.
Palestinian Nicaraguans are Nicaraguans of Palestinian ancestry who were born in or have immigrated to Nicaragua. They are part of the ethnic Arab diaspora.
Since its founding in 1625 by Dutch traders as New Amsterdam, New York City has been a major destination for immigrants of many nationalities who have formed ethnic enclaves, neighborhoods dominated by one ethnicity. Freed African American slaves also moved to New York City in the Great Migration and the later Second Great Migration and formed ethnic enclaves. These neighborhoods are set apart from the main city by differences such as food, goods for sale, or even language. Ethnic enclaves provide inhabitants security in work and social opportunities, but limit economic opportunities, do not encourage the development of English speaking, and keep immigrants in their own culture.
Arab Chileans are Chileans from predominantly Arab ancestry. People from the Arab world arrived in Chile as early as the mid-19th century. Historically, the Arabs of Chile were called Turks, Moors, Syrians, Lebanese, or Palestinians.
Jordanian Americans are Americans of Jordanian descent. In 2014, the American Community Survey reported that there were 80,120 Jordanian Americans in the United States.
Little Syria was a diverse neighborhood that existed in the New York City borough of Manhattan from the late 1880s until the 1940s. The name for the neighborhood came from the Arabic-speaking population who emigrated from Ottoman Syria, an area which today includes the nations of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. Also called the Syrian Quarter, or Syrian Colony in local newspapers it encompassed a few blocks reaching from Washington Street in Battery Park to above Rector Street. This neighborhood became the center of New York's first community of Arabic-speaking immigrants. In spite of this name the neighborhood was never exclusively Syrian or Arab, as there were also many Irish, German, Slavic, and Scandinavian immigrant families present.
Arab immigration to the United States began before the United States achieved independence in 1776. Since the first major wave of Arab immigration in the late 19th century, the majority of Arab immigrants have settled in or near large cities. Roughly 94 percent of all Arab immigrants live in metropolitan areas, While most Arabic-speaking Americans have similarly settled in just a handful of major American cities, they form a fairly diverse population representing nearly every country and religion from the Arab world. These figures aside, recent demographics suggest a shift in immigration trends. While the earliest waves of Arab immigrants were predominantly Christian, since the late 1960s an increasing proportion of Arab immigrants are Muslim. Arab immigration has, historically, come in waves. Many came for entrepreneurial reasons, and during the latter waves some came as a result of struggles and hardships stemming from specific periods of war or discrimination in their respective mother countries.
Palestinian Americans are Americans who are of full or partial Palestinian descent.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a secular Palestinian Marxist–Leninist and revolutionary socialist organization founded in 1967 by George Habash. It has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the largest being Fatah.
The Detroit metropolitan area has one of the largest concentrations of people of Middle Eastern origin, including Arabs and Chaldo-Assyrians in the United States. As of 2007 about 300,000 people in Southeast Michigan traced their descent from the Middle East. Dearborn's sizeable Arab community consists largely of Lebanese people who immigrated for jobs in the auto industry in the 1920s, and of more recent Yemenis and Iraqis. In 2010 the four Metro Detroit counties had at least 200,000 people of Middle Eastern origin. Bobby Ghosh of TIME said that some estimates gave much larger numbers. From 1990 to 2000 the percentage of people speaking Arabic in the home increased by 106% in Wayne County, 99.5% in Macomb County, and 41% in Oakland County.
The Palestinian diaspora, part of the wider Arab diaspora, are Palestinian people living outside the region of Palestine and Israel. There are 2.1 Mio Arabs in Gaza, 2.9 in West Bank, and 1.65 in Israel. more than 6.1 Mio live outside, most of them in Jordan, Syria, Chile and Lebanon.
Islam is the third most widely professed religion in New York City, after Christianity and Judaism. A 2018 study estimated that there are over 750,000 Muslims living in New York City, the largest population of Muslims by city in the United States. Approximately 9% of New York City residents are Muslim, constituting 22.3% of American Muslims, with 1.5 million Muslims in the greater New York metropolitan area, representing the largest metropolitan Muslim population in the Americas.—and the most ethnically diverse Muslim population of any city in the world.