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Kevan Moezzi, talked about his experiences growing up half-Persian in America and dealing with the Iranian side of his heritage. For me, one of the most interesting aspects of this week’s discussion with K-Von was about the issues relating to his religious background. Describing his family dynamic, K-Von joked “my dad was raised Muslim and my mom is Christian so it’s exactly the people who are fighting right now.”

I have a slightly different experience than K-Von with religion and the first time I experienced the problem that many of us Iranian-Americans have with religion was in the second grade. It was right before winter break and my class was getting ready for the upcoming holiday season. I remember we were making holiday cards and our teacher told us to make either Christmas or Hanukah cards depending of what our families celebrated.
I thought about it for a few moments and suddenly realized that my family didn’t do anything special at home during this time of the year. I raised my hand and said that my family didn’t celebrate Christmas or Hanukah so my teacher just told me to pick one. Now at this point in my life, I had not yet fully understood the complexity of the Iranian- American religious identity and naturally thought something was wrong with me. Was there some reason why my family didn’t celebrate anything and why did all the other kids seem to
have so much fun during the holiday season?
Of course not all Iranian-Americans have such an uneventful holiday season since there
are those who hail from Jewish and Christian backgrounds. Even Iranians who come from
Muslim, Zoroastrian, Baha’i, and non-religious traditions sometimes put up a Christmas tree just
to be part of the holiday season. As for me, to this day I can never get into the holiday spirit and
become a bit of a Scrooge at the end of the year.
I’m sure that all of us in the Iranian-American have been asked at one point by our friends
what religion we practice. Since many Americans assume that all Iranians are Muslim, we often
have to explain that either we are Jewish or Christian or we even have to explain that we
subscribe to religions they may not be familiar with such as Zoroastrianism or Baha’ism.

For those of us who are Muslim, we have to explain we are not Muslims the way Bin Ladin or Ahmadinejad are Muslims. We are Muslims the way the protestors in the streets of Iran are Muslim and btw we don’t have a bomb in our backpack so chill out. For me personally, I have to explain that I don’t follow any religion. I then usually get asked what religion my family practices and I explain that they also don’t follow a religion down to my grandpa who was a hardcore communist atheist back in Iran. By this point, I usually let them know what they want to hear and say that I’ve been told my family has Muslim ancestry. Now these religious issues can pose a lot of different problems for Iranian-Americans like worrying whether the girl you’re talking with will think that you might end up like that guy from Not Without My Daughter, but that is a topic for another post. I guess our unique religious background does give Iranian-Americans some advantages like not having to fight with our co- workers to take Christmas Eve off. In the end it all comes with the territory and is part of the fun that comes with being Iranian-American.

Links Mentioned on the Show: K-von’s Official Site, Clip of the Week, Edward Petrossi, K-von & Petrossi, Kvon’s Facebook Page, Christian Amanpour Townhall Debate on Islamophobia