From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Iraqis/Muhammad A. Shuraydi
Despite differences in dialect, Iraqi Canadians see themselves as Arabs. Almost all Iraqi immigrants wish to maintain the Arabic language in both oral and written forms. Because young children and Canadian-born ones cannot easily learn reading and writing skills, more emphasis is put on teaching oral skills. Many Canadian-born can understand spoken Arabic without being able to speak it. Gender equity, which has expanded in Iraq itself, is encouraged in Canada. Marriage for both males and females remains principally endogamous.
Iraqi Canadians have their own community newsletters, and almost all Iraqi-born read magazines, books, and newspapers written in Arabic and published outside Canada. Cultural products imported from Iraq or other parts of the Arab world are an essential component of family life, including videotapes of Arabic films, plays, and songs and cassette tapes of Arabic music. Visits by well-known popular singers from Iraq and other Arab countries are very common.
Children of both Christian and Muslim Iraqi Canadians are taught to respect and be proud of their cultural heritage. While they are sensitized to the problems of the old country, they are admonished to adjust to the new land and to address the opportunities and problems faced here. The longer the residence in Canada, the less the role of the family in fostering ethnic identity. Canadian-born children are keenly responsive to the pressure of acculturation, as facilitated particularly by public schools, the peer group, and the mass media. Ancestral ties and the old country become secondary.
In Iraq, adult literacy in 1980 was 70 percent, and the excellent, secular education system was open to both sexes. Most Iraqi immigrants to Canada are highly educated professionals, and their children will almost certainly place a great value on educational achievement.
Although in Iraq Christians account for less than 10 percent of the population, in Canada it is estimated that they comprise about 60 percent of the community. Christian denominations include Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Nestorian, and several rites of Catholicism. The remaining 40 percent are Muslims, either Shiite or Sunni. In contrast to Iraq, where just over half the country’s Muslims are Shiite, among Iraqis in Canada as in the Arab world as a whole, Sunni are by far the majority.
