Muslim contributions to American Society. The brooklyn oracle societies muslims in Brooklyn Project and of social policy and understanding muslims for n Progress Initiative cohosted the events. Evening, welcome. Out inou all for coming this nasty weather. We are really happy to see you here. For those of you who are sitting in back, if you feel like it, we would love to have you come up front a little bit more. We always have a good and lively conversation with the audience, and it is great to see people come up front, if you feel like it. Deborah schwarz, i am the president of the Brooklyn Historical society, and it is my pleasure to welcome you all tonight. I just want to get a sense of how many of you are here for the first time. Great, wonderful. Welcome, to those of you who know us well, and welcome to those of you who are here for the first time. We hope you will make this a place you come back to often. , muslims in tonight new york city, lessons from the past, visions for the future, is part of a tremendously Important Initiative here at the Brooklyn Historical society, a project we call muslims in brooklyn. It is a very multifaceted project that has really been very important to us for the past several years. It is a project that involves oral histories, it involves educational programs, we will fall,n exhibition in the in september, that we hope you will come back to. We are working on educational and there are many, Many Community conversations that are part of this project. There will be a website that is part of the project. With byare so thrilled the work we are doing here is the fact that the history of muslims in brooklyn has really not been something that has been systematically studied, researched, and told until our very brilliant oral historian arrived on the scene made a commitment to spearhead and direct this project. He has done so with such enthusiasmfocus and and intelligence that we have been very, very privileged. Now we have moved from an organization that had basically almost no stories, no collections, no evidence of the muslim communities in brooklyn to an organization that has a very deep and real commitment and connection to those communities. And so, it is from my perspective very powerful and meaningful to be with you all here tonight, to have this important conversation. This evenings program, like many of our rogue rams here, is not one that we do in isolation, and we are very pleased to be doing this presentation tonight in partnership with the institute of social policy and understanding, muslims for American Progress new york city project. We are grateful for their collaboration and i know you are going to your more about that in a few minutes. With that, i just wanted to ahir, whoe here z will take on introductions for the evening, but i will tell you about zahir, who is our oral projectsand the director of muslims in brooklyn, and also the coproducer of our podcast, flatbush and main, which is an awardwinning podcast. It comes out on a regular monthly schedule, and it is now in its fourth year of production, which is quite wonderful and i urge you to check it out, for those of you who love podcasts it is incredibly interesting and covers a. Iadsubjects covers a myr of subjects from our oral andory collections, collections from scholars all over the city and beyond. Flatbush and has taught courses on u. S. History, malcolm x, and on prince rogers nelson. Managerd as the project of the malcolm x. Project at columbia university, where he worked as the lead researcher for the pulitzer prizewinning malcolm x. a life of reinvention. With that, it is my great honor to introduce my colleague. [applause] thank you so much, deborah, and thank you all for joining us. I am going to ask my copanelists to join me on stage. We are going to do this conference style, so no surprise revealed here surprise reveals here. As deborah explained, this program is being offered as part of the muslims in Brooklyn Project, which i am really proud and honored to direct here at Brooklyn Historical society. This program is one in a series of programs that we have had since we publicly launched the project in december at the completion of our oral history component. We have had a series of listening parties throughout brooklyn, throughout different neighborhoods in brooklyn. We have one wednesday coming up on city line, we have one coming up next week on the 20th in kensington, and a series of programs lined up at least one Program Every month for the rest of the year. That gives you a sense of the commitment of this institution to this project and the amount of material that we look forward to going through. I am happy to talk more about that as the evening progresses. There are three main ideas we wanted to foreground in doing this project. Very basic ideas, and i think many of our presentations will kind of speaks to that. One is that muslims have a long history in the United States, in new york city, and in brooklyn. That isnt to say that a long history is a prerequisite for citizenship. You can be a newly arrived person and still be entitled to Human Dignity and rights, but it is important for us to acknowledge that muslims have a long history. The second main idea is that muslims are a Diverse Group of people. It is impossible to profile muslim communities by any one single ethnicity, nationality, tradition, level of observance, but there is an intersection of identities that comprise muslim communities. Finally, that muslims are integral, have been integral to shaping brooklyn for us, but certainly new york city and the United States. Our conversation today is going to help give a little bit of context for these ideas. Sylvia givell have us a broad overview of the history of muslims in the United States, then Elizabeth Becker will give us a more focused look at muslims in new york city, and then i will ring up the tail end with muslims in brooklyn. I, let me introduce will do introductions for both of you, so i can sit down and we can just come up. First we will hear from sylvia chanmalik, an associate professor at Rutgers University in new brunswick, where she directs the social Justice Program and teaches courses on race and ethnicity in the United States. In and america, social justice movements, feminist methodologies, and multiethnic literature and culture in the u. S. She is the author of eating beingcall in muslim, published last year, ourthere are copies in bookshop. You might stay back to sign them if anyone buys them. She speaks frequently on issues of u. S. Muslim politics and culture, racial and gender politics in the u. S. , and her commentary has appeared in venues such as and, slate news, the intercept, daily beast, huffington post, and others. She holds a phd in ethnic studies from the university of california berkeley and an mfa in creative writing. Advisorsso one of our on the muslims in brooklyn people and just pull get them to work. Then we will hear from Elizabeth Becker, a phd in sociology from yale university, where she was a fellow in cultural sociology and religion in politics. She graduated with a ba in sociology from Cornell University and a masters of science in refugee migration studies from oxford university, a phd you know, all of these letters get confusing after a while. Center onsts religion, ethnicity, culture, and inequality. Her dissertation drew from over two years of Ethnographic Research in european countries, where she studied the connection to islam and national identity, culture, and struggles in great britain, germany, and spain. She is the Principal Investigator on the muslim American Progress project, which uses qualitative methods to understand muslim contributions to new york city. With that, i will hand over the podium to sylvia, who is going to take us on our historical journey. [applause] sylvia thank you. Deserved that applause, because i have been tasked with reviewing and offering you 500 years of history in 15 minutes. Yes, here we go. Did. Wish i i will also be very descriptive. Thank you so much for being here tonight. A Wonderful Program and the wonderful work that zaheer is doing here at the Brooklyn Historical society. Because weportant, live in a moment in which it seems like almost every conversation that we have in politics in culture, when you turn on the 24hour news cycle, whether we are aware of it or not, somewhere in that conversation you will find islam, muslims as either very obvious,r very not so pretext or subtext to that conversation. I always pull this one up. You are talking about the u. S. Mexico border wall like we were back in january, one of these debates around whether to build the wall, and all of a sudden the conversation is about prayer rugs in the desert. I do not know if you remember that news story, where they were finding prayer rugs in the desert. These conversations seem to happen a lot, fresh people in the house of representatives, there is all this talk all the time, and so little of substance in these conversations. Andhank you to zaheer elizabeth for the really important work they do. I want to give you an overview thatese four main periods i understand islams presence and the presence of muslims in very. S. As sitting within broadly. And they are not discrete or bounded, there are spaces in between these categories. The first. The first period i want to talk about is the colonial period from the 1500s into the 1800s. This is the first period that islam and muslims start becoming prominent in the United States. The next period is the late 20th century, following the great migration north after the reconstruction period, and the and period in which Islam Muslims become significant is the post1965 era, after the passage of a very significant immigration bill, which i will tell you about in a minute. Finally, we find ourselves in the place where we are now, which i generally call the post 9 11 period, and now we are in the trump era, in which some of the post 9 11 manifestations have evolved into new and often times surreal manifestations. So the first period in which ms. Law islam and muslims come to be support and in the u. S. Contextt in the u. S. Is in the beginning of chattel slavery. Presentms have been in the u. S. For centuries. Even before columbus arrived on these shores, there were muslims on ships that were coming for exploring,oming and and creating narratives around their presence in the americas. Not just in the u. S. , but the caribbean and south americas as well. Amongrst presence was those enslaved africans who were forcibly brought to the u. S. During chattel slavery. Historians estimate that anywhere this is a very hard number to pin down anywhere between 10 to 30 of enslaved africans that were brought to the u. S. Were from a region of west africa, which is now senegal, which is predominantly muslim. Can surmise anywhere between 10 to 30 of enslaved africans were muslim. Now, amongst this population, the lives that we have documented our those of very highly literate, oftentimes those of noble lineage, wellknown muslims who were enslaved during that time. There was a documentary made about one man called the prince of slaves. He was a noble man, his masters were surprised to find that he was fluent in arabic and literate, and he had a very noble bearing. When this was discovered, his masters work to free him. He wound up traveling to europe and living out the rest of his life there. But those stories, while they are fascinating and there are a number of them, they are few and far between. Peoples, many of them were not noble men. Many of them more workers or people who had come in whatever trade they were in, right . And while they were not able to practice their religion or will their institutions in the ways that other arrivals to our shores might have, they left an impression on this country and created a presence of islam in this country that lives on in many different ways. For example, if many of you any of you are fans of the blues, there has been a direct lineage traced between the call to prayer and the different types of music in west africa made to the call to prayer, and field songs of early enslaved people. You can hear the continuity. It is absolutely amazing. In the food and cuisine, you can see those continuities as well. While the former practice was notractice of islam of thearent in the end 19th century, the ways in which islam persisted in culture, food , in peoples memories and their legacies lived on. Reemerged once again in africanamerican context in the early 20th century in this country, following the end of the civil war and the passage of the 13th amendment in 1865 and the reconstruction period, during the great migration north from thenamericans south to places like chicago, philadelphia, and new york. Africanamericans came to these urban centers to find new work, new jobs, new opportunities, and a lot of them rejected christianity, because they thought christianity as the religion of slave owners and slave masters and ones that have been used to justify their dehumanization. In these spaces where they could reinvent themselves, they sought out new religions as well. In this place, we see the emergence of islamic organizations. If anyone here is a jazz fan, southwas a movement, a asiabased missionary movement through which jazz musicians converted to islam and practiced throughout the 1940s, 50s, 60s. Finally, most famously, the group that most people are familiar with is the nation of islam. As you can tell from the story, the vast majority let me make sure i am not running low on time here. The vast majority of muslims in this country, prior to 1960 or 70, were africanamerican. If you were to meet a muslim walking down the street or callnter anyone who themselves a muslim, they were talking about Africanamerican Muslims, black muslims who saw alternative to christianity and also as a critique of christianity and white supremacy. This is a very strong legacy of islams presence in the United States. It is this antiracist, liberation oriented theology that africans in the africanamericans took up to embody and live their full humanity within a global community, in a way that transcended domestic boundaries of race, class, and gender. We will talk about the gender peace more later. Following that, the next period passage in saw the this country and the context of struggles, thes immigration act that lifted quotas that have been placed on immigration prior to the time throughout the 20th century. Because of the lifting of the quotas on immigration, we had large numbers, mostly professional class right migrants coming from places like south asia, the middle east, what we call the middle east, and north africa. The fundamentally changed demographic of muslims in the United States. To the 1970s, the vast majority were africanamericans. Act, the 1965 immigration you started to see a large number of professional class south asians, arabamericans, north africans coming into the u. S. And changing a lot of the communities and culture that had been established i black muslims by black muslims. The final period, i will wrap appear and turn it over to elizabeth, is what i call the post9 11 era. A story i used to illustrate the post9 11 era and what happens to muslims in the post9 11 period, i am from oakland, california. Has anyone been there . Ok. In a five mile radius you have right . Fferent mosques, on september 10, 2001, there are five mosques. There is a sunni majority mosque 35th street. There is a predominantly arab mosque right around the corner. Road,les down the you have an africanamerican sunni mosque, and then you have a predominantly south asian sunni mosque. And the one by the lake, you mosque. Hiite five within 15 minutes. Prior to 9 11, if you were to if they knew what was going on at the mosque two miles down the road, they would not know. There was very little conversation between all of these different groups, right . There was no desire or need for these different muslims to be speaking to each other. What 9 11 did i say, the that went into high gear and took place during 9 11 were already present. Producedened was, it the need for muslims to need different spaces that they had been sequestered in prior than to talk and figure out what it meant collectively to be muslims in the United States. What it meant to forge connections and build coalitions between them in light of the larger political context. I think since that time, muslims in the u. S. Have been struggling to do so because of the communitys incredible diversity, because of the incredible heterogeneity of this group. So many different languages spoken, so many different ethnicities and cultures, so many generational differences represented. But the history of islam in the u. S. Is rooted in black communities, in culture, and yet it is extremely diverse. Trying to find a way between its antice as an supremacy, liberation theology and this expression of a global faith with 1. 8 billion practitioners that is where we are now, and i think all of that is beautifully represented in new york city and in brooklyn. I will turn it over. [applause] elizabeth hi. Thanks again for joining us. , thehank you to zaheer Brooklyn Historical society, and sylvia for joining me on this presentation. I will talk to you about some stories tonight, which is rare in the research i do. I have welcomed this opportunity to work in social policy and understanding. Projectessentially a ok, fantastic. It looks at muslim contributions in new york city. I will talk to you a little bit about the project overview, but i want to focus on three in dances of overlooked, forgotten, of muslimshistories in new york city. I will integrate some of the interviews we did with a few places in new york. Er is going to talk about brooklyn, i am going to talk about manhattan. My three stories will co