Transcripts For CSPAN3 Muslims In New York City Past And Present 20240714

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 come from manhattan. Project was first and foremost to fill gaps in knowledge. As everyone here i am sure already knows and will be mentioned throughout this evening, when muslims are spoken about in American Society and you, in politics, it is overwhelmingly negative coverage. The goal of the project was essentially to look at new york city. Previously, i had people who carried out personal, similar projects in michigan on the contributions of Muslim Americans in new york citys stem, civicsne, and democracy, philanthropy and nonprofit education, arts, economics, entertainment, and sports. We wanted to combine facts, a lot of statistics, with human faces. The richest part, i believe, of our project was the interviews and photo series that we did, and all of our portraits come from our photographer, who is actually here in the audience. That told the human stories behind a lot of these facts. Thatpu is a think tank seeks research that empowers american muslims to develop their community and contribute to democracy and pluralism in the United States. Researchay, we conduct not as an advocacy organization, but in focusing on the contributions of muslims to new york city and the United States in general. We seek to provide information that can be used by policy institutes in social and Public Policy as well as the media to have accurate eta. A little bit about who american muslims are, who are muslim new yorkers . This the Media Coverage is a huge percentage of the United States, but it is really just 1 of the population. That is huge and tiny at the same time. It is not a really big percentage of the u. S. , but the u. S. Is a large country and has a lot of people. In new york city, it is almost 9 of the population. You are looking at over 22 of living in new york city alone. It is quite a Large Population in the five boroughs. It is concentrated, of course, in certain areas. There is very little demographics on muslims, and everyone here would have learned. I understand if staff people wants to talk more about how we got these numbers. It is a rough estimate, but it is the closest we have commented, and aligned with you and other Major Research institutes and their estimates. Muslims, but8,767 today i will focus on the silences and md spaces, the history and stories of muslims in new york city. Although we know muslims arrived in new york city during the 1600s or so, as slaves, and mosques that are here to this day were registered at the turn of the 20th century, in 1907. The three places in new york i are ao direct you towards tenement on orchard street and a food cart on 53rd and 6th avenue. What do you think about . This is something i was thinking about when you think about what new york city is . It is a lot. It is a center of civics and place people associate with creativity and me,rsity, finance, and for food. In the minutes that i have, i will introduce you to three places. One is a story about food, but one is at 127th street. This is going to touch on contributions of black, muslim communities, which are very diverse. This includes the nation of islam, but not only the nation of islam in harlem. I will introduce you to a personal story. You might have seen this guy on a lot of shows. He was on 30 rock and is currently on a show called the blacklists. In this image, what you see is the site where the mosque was where he grew up, and he speaks of it about this mosque in our interview. An actor who was born, raised, and still based in harlem. Although he has been on shows order, andk, law and nurse jackie, he worked as a correctional officer, in the marines, and as a firefighter. He has spoken a lot about growing up in harlem and the influences on his life, and one of the most moving pieces i found was when he spoke about the corner where the mosque was being painted yellow. The reason it was painted yellow, he told us, is because it became a protective space in the neighborhood. When he grew up in harlem this is the 1970s there were a lot of drugs in the area. Kids and teenagers could go there from all different backgrounds and hang out on that corner and feel protected areas he said there were these moments where you would see people fighting or someone getting chased, and as soon as the kit or teenager would step on that corner, the person would stop. It was a respected boundary in the community. Motivation fors his most recent project, a documentary on his really interesting and diverse life, and he spoke about how in the marines and in firefighting and in his work as an actor, all of these same issues have come up, especially after 9 11. In his words, there has become more of a needs to speak on my experience and talk about the contribution that muslims and specifically Africanamerican Muslims made to new york city. Nd cities across the country if you want to learn more about muslim life in harlem and the history, there is someone who flies intermittently from North Carolina to give tors. She introduces you to malcolm x. s former mosque on one 27th to bookstores where he used to read and the musical history of Africanamerican Muslims, which is really deep again, sylvia spoke about this, but we dont hear much about that in the media. A lot of hiphop as well as the blues and jazz is influenced deeply by Muslim Americans. Many ofnd place, which you probably know by now, is on 53rd and sixth. It is still there, and that is guys. Ole all the halal the reason i want to talk about them, food carts are an epitome of new york city. Cannot imagine new york without a culture of immigration and fusion represented in the food culture. I have traveled a lot across the world, and this is one of the only places in the world where you can literally taste the world. Of course, fine dining as part of the culture here, but a bigger part and more Democratic Peace of the food culture our food carts. Run carts were historically by jewish and greek immigrants, but today, only 50 over 57 of new york food vendors are muslim. And the halal is just the of a guys are in evidence food cart that rose to become a national chain, but it is also connected with a sadly i do not want to say dying, but a apart industry in new york, the taxi drivers. They rose to serve the taxi drivers, because over 40 of taxi drivers in new york are muslim. They needed quick, delicious, filling food on the goat. On the go. For the past few years i have not been living here, and now coming back here, people talk about halal. Like getting a hot dog or Something Else on the street when i was a teenager, you talk about grabbing a halal. It is integrated into everyday for category every day vocabulary. My final story is about the tenements. When we think about the tenants, and i am pointing out a building where one of the women we interviewed lived and grew up. Jewish, think about italian, irish, life in the city and immigration culture, but we do not think about muslim influence on the Lower East Side. The photo you see here is of khanam, she moved there when she was a teenager with her father, who is a local community she speaksimam, and beautifully about her experience. She has become an important educator in new york city. She is known everywhere and spearhead Mental Health in the Muslim Community and beyond. I want to show you a short video, because she talks about her experience much more eloquently than i will, but it points to a left out history and story, and this continues to this day, there is a significant muslim populace in the tenements there are tenements, that i only recently learned, that have not been renovated, but this is one of the silent pieces. So i will put on the video, it is three minutes. I am a teenager entering the city for the first time. We crossed the bridge in a yellow cab. Go up to the building in the Lower East Side that is now our home, and i think, this is america . I asked dad to use the bathroom. He hands me a key and points to the hallway outside of our apartment. I find myself in a bathtub in the middle of the kitchen. I realize this new life will acquire some adjusting to. Years go by. Our living room is also me and bedroom and a space for my fathers meetings. He is a Community Leader. People come to him to translate their marriage certificates, explain their immigration that is, and mediate disputes. I am the scribe, taking notes on my typewriter, learning different languages and making tea for everyone. Fastforward. I am in a plane again. This time back to bangladesh to get married. Am. Ant you to marry an im knowing the stereotypes, i refused. [speakings foreign language] i am happy when i meet my husband, who is far from the stereotype. Im employed by a school back home, impressed by the various languages i speak and needing someone who can relate to the community. Students of my own and am a teacher. I have students from 30 different countries. They do not have enough to eat sometimes. The principal asks why i am cooking chicken curry pancakes on the hot plate in science class. I explain the relevance down to the fusion and cellular inspiration. Now the days of typing notes are long gone. Families come to me about the problems they are facing and for help with their children. Sometimes i run into elders in the community who know my father. They are greeting is always some variation of oh, you are his daughter. It makes perfect sense. [applause] elisabeth i think abeda spoke a lot about how growing up in the tenements and her fathers role as a Community Leader for the community as a whole influenced her life. They spoke i lynwood is. One of them was spanish, because there was a large Latino Community in the neighborhood her father would help them with their issues, including immigration that is issues. I think it is a very new york story about People Living close together, but also revealing asylum. Conclude, i want to leave you with thinking about new yorks history, both deep and contemporary, and whose stories we are telling. All of these narratives point to different types of silences. When we think of harlem, we think of africanAmerican History, but not necessarily muslim history. And the food culture of new york , we think about diversity, hasgration, and how halal become a point of language, but we do not know the richness of the food culture. Of course, the tenements are very specific, but they are also the epitome of the immigration story in new york and its long history. For one, did not know anything about the muslim history in the tenements. I will conclude with a quote. In every story there is a silence. Are are spoken, some unspoken. Even though we have spoke the unspoken, we have not come to the heart of the story. Thank you. [applause] zaheer thank you both, elisabeth and sylvia. I will set the timer up, because we have been really good with our time. I want to continue that tradition. So the muslims in Brooklyn Project, you have heard a little bit about it and im going to talk about how we have been approaching the histories of muslims in brooklyn. Have kind of thought about the histories of muslims in brooklyn, these five themes. One, the theme of migration. Both physical migration but also spiritual migration. Migration of people to the United States, from brooklyn to other parts of the united dates. Migration of people out of brooklyn. As you know, there is a serious concern with gentrification and displacement that has caused a lot of people to leave brooklyn. The spiritual migration that the story of people who come to islam, as well as the people who leave islam, so we are not centralizing the stories of muslims to anyone population. The second theme is the theme of institution building, which is something that usually happens almost as soon as people get routed in a neighborhood, the need to establish schools or educational centers, places of worship, bookstores to sell religious paraphernalia, food shops that sell food that is consistent both with cultural culinary styles as well as what is permissible religiously. This is also very similar to what you would see in the histories of early jewish communities in new york city and certainly brooklyn. The third theme is neighborhood, looking at how neighborhoods have been shaped and how people have been shaped by their neighborhoods. The fourth is civic engagement, and this tends to be historically when communities maturityhed a kind of in their presence. We begin to see organizing activity, bothl through the traditional forms of political engagement, like electoral activity, but also to protest. When you see civic engagement, that is a statement by a community of confidence, and of rootedness. The final theme is art and culture. Certainly brooklyn has been a Thriving Center for music and visual arts and muslims have played a significant role in that. ,e have alluded to some of that talking about the role of muslims in music. I wanted to give you a map of brooklyn, for people who are not so familiar with brooklyn and these neighborhoods, as well as a rough timeline highlighting some very key points that i am going to mention. I will come back to this map. Map indo not get the this moment, that is fine. I think what is important for us is, this project has been based on oral histories, and oral histories are incredibly rich and useful, but they are limited. You can usually go back. If you are lucky, maybe a century. The oldest narrator in our collection is 74 years old, and so our oral History Collection tells us the stories of muslims in the 20th century. As sylvia and elizabeth both mentioned, that history extends back before the 20th century. But i will say the way we have framed our project is to focus on the presence of organized muslim communities. Though we know, for example, if you go to the african burial ground, there are markers for buried, enslaved africans that are muslim markers, which is a clear evidence that there were enslaved muslims in new york city. We also know that brooklyn was one of the largest slaveholding boroughs in new york city, because it was for many, for much of its 17th and 18th and 19th century, farmland. The people who work that farmland were enslaved people, until the abolition of slavery in the 1820s. It is not unlikely that those were, some of those people were muslim. But we do not have a historical record of that, and are only we do not have, except for maybe in ireland,east, south of the islands off the coast of georgia and the carolinas, real evidence of organized muslim communities. For us, we have been focusing on that. Are going to start with the williamsburg story. One of the earliest communities to establish a Muslim Community in brooklyn was it established was established by people from eastern europe, lithuania, thend, and they established Mohammed Society in 1911, and opened a mosque at 104 power street. It is still there. It is the oldest surviving mosque in new york state. Brooklyn can claim that. It is one of the oldest surviving mosques in the country. Brooklyn can claim that. Significants activity one of the earliest reports of muslim activity in brooklyn was in the oakland daily brooklyn daily eagle, a newspaper in the 1930s, that reported on the eid celebration, one of the festivals for muslims, and this took place at the royal palace, at 1800 manhattan avenue. It was a groundfloor restaurant and a secondfloor meeting space, where taxicab drivers were gathering to deliberate whether or not to go on strike. On the third floor was a dance hall that had been rented out for the Prayer Service for muslims. Itople were described was said that the third floor for some four hours this morning was turned into a mohammedan mosque. In attendance were mostly hindu mohammedans. We will come back to that. Division between ethnicity and religion, which i will get into, but i love that quote. Persians,mmedans, arabs, russians the two leaders of the Prayer Service kov andmed hussein ramo , so they were likely a members members of the american mohammedan society. So this structure still exist for us to tell that history. Moving into the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s i have highlighted brownsville, new york, and Brooklyn Heights as when you have the emergence of the earliest Africanamerican Muslim communities. One is located at state street, here in downtown brookland. Brooklyn. Thehe time, it was called Islamic Mission to america, which was founded in the 1930s by an afro caribbean man and his wife, who opened up their brownstone for a Prayer Service for many of the merchant seamen who are docking on the waterfront, looking for a place to pray. They did this in an area that was already beginning to grow as a significant Arab Community atlantic avenue, cobble hill, court street was the site of many arab owned businesses. Mostly christians early, many coming from downtown manhattan, but subsequent waves were muslim. This was a significant institution. Then, in the 1960s and especially then come you had then, in the 1960s, you had the harlem. E of muslims in so the nation of islam, the mosque number was one. Chicago was mosque number two. Milwaukee was number three, d, number 4, 5 was the blend, ask with baltimore five was cleveland, six was baltimore. So they had satellite mosques. A was harlem, 7b was in in brooklyn. C was it was opened by malcolm x. , and in that opening, over 900 people were in attendance. An orallay a clip from history interview we did with a man who is a member of that community. Evolved into a word forn arabic prayer, place of prayer. Mached mohammed and khalifa. At the time of his interview, this man was the head of islamic studies at the independent khalifa. Mached he joined the nation of islam in the story, but tells of the establishment of the mosques and the tradition of transforming urban spaces that was true for many of these communities, including state street. Was posted by minister malcolm, it was a dance hall. My father used a party here, like hey, i knew this place. Taqwa was a cocktail lounge, called girls cocktail lounge. Called earls cocktail lounge. Which i myself knew, because i 1960s block was, in the and 1970s, it was heroin central. 1980s andlate 1990s, it was cracked central. So that block was always notorious, and that was a cocktail lounge. Masjid was the one in East New York was a youth center. Large building, nice building that they purchased. Mistaken, masjid uminum, that was a slaughterhouse. So thats somewhat indicative of in history of black masjid new york. And were talking particularly in brooklyn, where it was not common to see a house to convertmasjid, or a cocktail lounge, a dance hall, or a youth center, or a slaughterhouse into a masjid. Theer lets move on to 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Sylvia talked about the immigration act that really transformed muslim communities in the United States. The first wave of immigrants that came from abroad were primarily middleclass or professionals or students, and the subsequent waves were more working class people. I wants to play a clip well, many of these communities began settling in more southern neighborhoods in brooklyn. You have kensington, which is iignificant as a bangladesh community. Coney island, which people call little pakistan. Bay ridge and sunset park. Atlantic avenue has been gentrified, but a significant Yemeni Community has been present there. I will play a clip with one of our other narrators who was born in 1971 in pakistan, integrated in the 1970s and lived in Sheepshead Bay in brooklyn. About theip, he talks role of businesses, these Small Businesses that were established in the community. His father opened one of the first pakistani businesses in his neighborhood, and he talked about the importance of these businesses. The firstpurchased muslim Grocery Store for pakistanis right near the mosque that we were visiting. And a groceryque store, my dads Grocery Store. That is all it was in this neighborhood. , cashier, stock boy and a butcher in the Grocery Store. I still remember, i used to cut the meat, clean up the place, mop the place. As i am doing that, i see my dad helping people who did not get their paychecks yet. They were requesting, can i take some food . I have not received my paycheck yet. My dad said no problem. He started helping people continuously. He was helping people who came into the store who were new immigrants can i have a job . Might dad would take their name and number down. When he had a job to offer, he would connect them. People who had jobs in the Public Schools with their children, trying to get them registered. Or people who came into the country, my dad used to assist them. Storesnic mom and pop were the first actual social Service Agencies for these community members, the new immigrants. Those are the places, these mom and pop is mrs. , are the ones people turn to first. Zaheer so he founded an Organization Called the council the People Organization in 2001, after 9 11. I think sylvia talked about how this really mobilized many of tomuslim communities respond to the challenges of surveillance, response to the andlenges of deportation having to register. In fact, in what was known as little pakistan, that coney island area, over 50 of the 150 Stores Closed because of the significant fbi presence both in having people to register, but also intimidating people. One newspaper article estimated upwards of 20,000 people left the neighborhood, either going back to pakistan or leaving new york altogether because of the impact of the state and its presence after 9 11. This brings us to the story of civic engagement. Gloom,ot all doom and muslims have mobilized. There have been several campaigns and i have highlighted some of the significant ones. In 2005, the Brooklyn Borough president hosted the first for brooklyn, which was significant. In 2015, new york city Public Schools formally recognized the eid as part of an official school calendar. We just had this last week, where the school was closed for eid, which is a significant recognition for the presence of muslims in the school system. In 2013, a muslim plaintiff fired a class action suit against the city of new york for the nypds unconstitutional surveillance of muslim theunities, and all of , all offs in that case the plaintiffs were brooklynbased, in brooklyn. The case was settled through a Court Settlement that sought to provide more restrictive guidelines for nypd surveillance , and finally in 2017, as a sign of other kinds of activism, right out here in brooklyn, in over 5000 yemeni store owners of the bodega Corner Stores shut down their stores at noon on february 2, 2017 in what was called the ke over thei muslim ban, which targeted countries including yemen. I want to play a clip of an educator and activist and a yemeni american who was one of the organizers of the bodega strike. In this clip, she describes what is like on that date finally made my way over on that day. I finally made my way over around 3 00, and there were over 1000 people there. I was totally in shock. The whole entire plaza was filled with men. And i was like, holy as i was walking to go into the hall they all assembled themselves and prayed the Late Afternoon prayer. Here were no mats they prayed on the pavement, it was so powerful. Theas the first time in history of the Yemeni Community in america they became politically involved. , it wasga strikes something that basically charged them. They didnt close their stores that day and they didnt accept statements. They were of worth and value to this country, and they were not going to sit back and not live in the shadows. Those were just some of the snippets of stories we have been able to recover, our histories of muslims in brooklyn. I think this is the perfect clip to and with in saying that muslims will not be in the shadows. Im going to rejoin my panelists. We are going to have a brief conversation and then open it up for questions and conversations with members of the audience. Thank you. [applause] im switching hats here. We are going to be cognizant of time, i think i went a little bit over, so my apologies. I want to start with elizabeth. Even as hect listed some of those statistics like the number of food cards and cabdrivers in the population, i think that surprised a lot of people. So importantt was to engage in a project that highlighted the contribution of muslims to new york city, and what the challenges are of this contribution approach to some muslim narratives. I have spoken about this a lot. Talk about howwe no group, no person should have to set out and say, this is what im contributing to society, you should think im a full member of society. Looking at the reality today, there are a lot of nonrealities being passed around, and what can you come back at, all the stereotypes and assumptions, when there is really little data. Together, wethings couldnt find many sources. Work,nd good historical but we couldnt find any sources to guide us. I feel like this is a first intervention, but it is definitely not comprehensive. Have to keep in mind and take it with a grain of salt and be aware that having to highlight contributions already points out a significant problem in our society. At the same time, having this information that is really rich and is used we have seen it a lot in the media, but as well as politicians and people who work in social and Public Policy using this to say not just, youre wrong, that is a stereotype, but have different information built on this research that shows how you are wrong, and we have this information to fill that gap. I think that is an important step in this direction. There is so much more that needs to be done. Guess along that chain of thought, and your work is highlighted, specifically your book highlights work and histories of muslim women. Talk about why that was an important intervention in the thepeople talk about histories of muslims in new york city, brooklyn or the United States. Rutgersourse i teach at in america. Lam i went over the rich local histories of islams in the United States, how the religion existed in the u. S. Another piece of that is islam and the United States, how has his mom been imagined . Talk orvery conversation i have around my work will eventually come to , why did theof women wear that . What is really going on . Gender and the issue of oppressed poor muslim is a piece of this conversation. Talk about gender, islam is there in the center. Inst and foremost, i feel order to poke at that and deconstruct that, we actually have to talk about the complexity, the nuance, the richness of womens lives. If stereotypes are just that, they are lazy ways of characterizing groups of people, often for political ends. To talk about womens lives, i see in their complexity, their messiness, a stand against that type of box and rigid type of thinking around gender. Secondly, for me, as a mother of three daughters and as someone , youas lived as a woman see a lot of the ways in which identity gets constructed for young people. Like we know figures malcolm x, muhammad ali, we see these rappers, my question is who was teaching the children how to say their prayers . Food islamicng the ly . Time and time again these are the stories you have to go and talk to women about. These are stories that i as a scholar of american studies and women and gender studies was fascinated by. Who were the muslim women who were in the background, not on the pulpit, not in the spotlight, doing . Historicallyhereas we might be able to name famous Muslim Americans as malcolm x, muhammad ali, kareem abduljabbar, if you look at the current Political Landscape and the muslims advocating for communities, it is people ,ike house representative omar. Ashida to leave from detroit its women who are in the public eye. I think their presence has to do with both the ways muslim woman has been imagined with these negative stereotypes and also the way which muslim women have always been the creators and movers within their community. I have one more question for all of us to consider and then go and throw it to the audience. One of the things that has really challenged us in doing this project is calling the project muslims in brooklyn. The reason that is a challenge projectlling this muslims in brooklyn are constructing a community that is diverse and we are calling it muslims in brooklyn. It is pakistani, yemeni, latino,hi, qatar puerto rican, asian. We have people who are sunni, nation of islam, who who are observant, not observant, we are identifying. Queer identifying. We had to call it something. But what are we doing when we have a history of muslims in the United States, brooklyn, new york, what are the challenges of doing that . Similar we have how do you identify why are we using this identity . Part of the reason is the way muslims are portrayed negatively. Part of the way is that part of it is the way people part of it is the way people identify themselves. Say, i am a muslim american, or an american muslim, someone might not say that, they may say im a pakistani american, or im a new yorker. Ofhink about the history Jewish Americans and jewish new yorkers, and this way in which there is this religious, ethnic, racialized identity that is really dynamic and intersectional. You cant get away from it because of the weight its been politicized. But ian be negative, think it does create some cohesion. You do see communities come theyher since 9 11 because are labeled as such and thinking, what do we share, what can we contribute to this conversation . I think highlighting that, what your project has done, is a positive way. You are capturing is thousands of communities, you are not capturing a community. Your subjectsose for inclusion in your history, how did you make the decision of who to include and how to frame them . . . In the public documents, in popular culture, thats who publicly identify as a muslim. My argument is, and i think we can find it in new york city and beyond, is that history doesnt go away. Thats what i try to remind studentss and audiences. Because now we see muslims in this post9 11 framework, in which it seems like this exotic, foreign, faraway, terroristic, religion, it change the fact on the some arrive shores are the bodies tha come back to the question about why are we saying ave this wonderful student every semester i teach the autobiography of malcolm x. This student was blown away. Wow,ver heard malcolm x is a cool guy. All the time. He was a muslim student. Didnt have to muslimsexplain that were human beings and we have so much to offer before we actually started talking about the ideas that muslims have, like malcolm x, think about the work we could get done. Think of all the things we could actually have conversations yout if we could convince what were not first. There are mean muslims, too. There are good people, there are bad, just like in every community. I think its not about the homogeneity, is the fact that starting the conversation and putting it out there so that we can have those deductive conversations about how to deal in the city, schools, all these things. I think this is connective. Connected. For us its really important that this project is muslims in brooklyn and not islam in brooklyn, making the distinction between a historically involved religious tradition and the way people embody their identities as individuals. I think the benefit of oral thesey has been to ground in the human experiences of each individual and to say that these oral histories, we have 50 of them, are not representative but indicative. They are indicative of the diversity, indicative of the experiences, but they are not fully representative. There is no way to fully collapse the stories into any archetype. Lets open it up. We have a minute for any questions from the audiences. We are audience. We look forward to engage you and hear from you. If there is anything you would like to share with us or have us respond to [laughter] we have a mic. A wonderful for presentation. This is a stale question, but i think its within your this is a racist country. Its not extraordinary that people hate the muslims. Given 9 11, shouldnt there have been greater outcry from american muslims against the doctrine of terrorism that 9 11 represented . If you didnt hear the question, she asked why wasnt thee or there is question of why wasnt there greater denunciation of the terrorist attack from Muslim Americans . I guess the short answer is there was, it just wasnt covered. As we know, for minority groups, especially, to get on the news for negative stories that serve their marginalization, that serve their displacement, that serve their estrangement. It is not as easy to get on the news with positive stories or counter narratives that challenge that. I appreciate your question. Head. Nodding her she wasnt asking the question, but she was saying this is the question, and it is a question that is common. I think we have seen terrorists acts in fact over the past few years we have seen more terrorist act by white men, and they have not been framed as such because cause any other white men to feel like they have to disassociate themselves from those acts. Is burden of minority groups especially for muslims is we are not allowed individuality , we are not allowed to establish social distance from the actions of another individual, it becomes a collective guilt. Even with that, muslims have responded to try to challenge that idea that we are somehow implicated in support of the actions that kill innocent people. Adequately add quickly, every person i know who ,orks at a Muslim Organization every Single Person you find on an administrative staff say they have written so many press releases and done so many interviews condemning terrorism, sot just one terrorist act happened by muslims, but condolences, prayers. Muslims raising money when there are attacks on synagogues and other places of worship. Been a swell of muslims trying to present a counter narrative than what is heard out there. Is just not asit circulated. There are some who dont want to hear that, and thats not going to conform to what they want to. Hink and know about islam so it is not going to get hurt. For those of us and for those who do that work, i think most people have resolved themselves to that and continue to do the work they do in organizations and the Community Work they do. Just following up on what you all have said. Im am wondering, if there are any wondering if there are takenplicit actions to be that really suggest that muslims in the United States are alive in well and are organized many communities . I dont need to say that our country is huge and that it is filled with small towns as well as cities as large as brooklyn. But im wondering if there have been any, of amongst any, amongst Muslim Americans, any proactive attempts to change textbooks for high school students. If Muslim Americans are moving into small towns into the United States i would like to add is here from kansas, which in land. Its been a thrill to hear this presentation. Im eager to take it home and disseminate the fact that i attended such a panel in brooklyn. But i would like to see it happening in alabama, in north dakota. I would like to know if there is anyone at work at spreading the word . There are numerous different kinds of national and Grassroots Efforts around the country that give us helpful signs of that kind of organizing. Project, the our curriculum we are developing is a k12 curriculum that will be in line with the common core standards of new york city which schools, but also, is consistent with national standards. Our goal is to make this a webbased curriculum with resources teachers around the country can use. This will be completed in november. And then we will work on promoting and publicizing it through conferences and contacting different teachers organizations throughout the country. That is our hope with the work we have been doing. Isnow sylvias book available as something you can physically take back with you to kansas. I gotta do that i did not pay him. We are continuously trying to expand, it is dependent something positive i have seen our local researchers, especially from the south. I dont know if that is because i have recently moved to charlottesville. They have reached out and said, we want to do this on a smaller scale, we want to highlight the contributions to our community, we want to come out with statistics and stories, and that shows where we are present and what we are doing. There were some researchers in texas, and also in charlottesville, which has become the hub of political action. I have seen the Muslim Community there become extremely active. I have only been there for a year, but ive heard over the last few years a lot of groups have come together. Its interesting because its not just the Muslim Community, its the jewish community, the africanamerican community, and a lot of the Church Leaders are coming together saying, we have to spearhead this as religious matter. N a grassroots is the clergy that is standing they are getting pushed around. I do think there are initiatives. I dont know about the demographics. There is so little data. It you found more data maybe you found more data. People generally tend to live where they know other people. There is 1. 1 of the u. S. Population that is muslim. There are populations in places like texas has a huge muslim population. While they are concentrated in the city since the city centers, they are they are. There they are. Surveyve survey after where they say and had that conversation with them, it shifts their view. There was a study that said the Soccer Player in river pool has singlehandedly, because of his presence on the team, reduced islamophobia in the u. K. It really is about that type of contact. Hopefully through this type of curriculum and the type of images that are being produced things like that, thats how the tide kind of shifts around peoples prep sessions peoples perceptions. They are doing teacher trainings across the country. They are bringing to teachers more knowledge about islam in america and help them develop more local curriculum. To put this out there, we need to collaborate. You, itsto all of been fascinating. Im really interested in learning about other religions. I guess you could say im a christian, but i mostly spiritual. For instance, ive been learning about judaism over the last five years. That and of an enigma country that is so oriented toward the judeochristian sense of values. A quick question is, the bhs, the presentation you gave and the other stuff you have on your slide, will it be available to the general public at some point other than a curriculum . It will be with the curriculum, because we are still refining the research. An average member of the public who is not a teacher or student could absolutely. It will be on the public website. Are not sure how to ask this im not sure how to ask this and this is not islamophobia, per se, im looking at the more positive sense of muslims and their identity as muslims and how they integrate islam into their lives, whatever that means to every individual. Im curious if you have talked , if they were to say to someone who doesnt understand or know much about them, what is it about their igion, whether they are actually practice, there may be some who practice and people who dont. Did you ask anyone what they would want to say about that part of themselves to people who dont understand what that means . For instance, may be a christian would say, i hope and hope, faith, and love and the grace of love is to love thy neighbor. , jewish person might say justice is a driving force. In terms of those gaps you discussed earlier, is there something that could crack that positive sense of what it means to be a muslim in america . As another american, i want to know, as a nonmuslim american i would want to know. The first thing i would say in response to that is islam is in abraham bank faith abrahamic faith. It is closely related, not teachingse ethos and and values, but the stories themselves. It is not perceived. That is a matter of perception. When you start to talk to people and say the story of mary is in the koran, and jesus christ is revered as a prophet in islam, and the story of abraham and della and the ark, these are stories muslims grow up hearing as well. There is a shared understanding. Hat is not being recognized that would be the first thing. Terms of again, this comes to the story of what you are up against. I often have to think about muslims as people who need to walk into a party, and everybody has been talking about them, but they need to go in there and figure out how to make friends. Everybody is talking about do you. Oh my gosh, soandso is coming, and then you have to walk into a room and go like, im not really like that. Go, im not really like that. They have all the negative perceptions already, that the person they are meeting for the first time might be encountering. ,he first thing is to think there are these platitudes. Islam means peace and islam means submission. Islam is the second largest religion in the world. There are 1. 8 billion muslims worldwide. It is the second religion only to christianity in terms of global population. Personally, i would say 1. 8 billion muslims, that is a lot of different kind of muslims practicing islam a lot of different kinds of ways. Just kind of like christianity as practiced a lot of different kinds of ways. To say it is one thing i would say talk to muslims. It is the koran, there are five pillars, there are things muslims are prescribed to do, pray, factoring ramadan, making the too much to my side, but everyone engages those in their own ways to mecca. Everyone practices them in a broad different way. These are traditions that have evolved over centuries that provide human beings a way to access emotions and experience that transcends their immediate reality, right . Thats it. Everyone is just trying toe be human and as crazy as that sounds, the person who is fasting and trying to follow all of their religious guidelines is looking for what they call salvation. The person that is proclaiming jesus christ their lord and savior is looking for salvation. The person that is observing the rules of the Old Testament is looking for salvation. However that is defined for that person. What is common for all of them is that theyre people and the you know, Tony Morrison has this quote from an address she gave and im going to butcher the poetics of it but shes basically like there will always be something. The job of racism is to keep you busy defending and , recting and explaining and you know, in the context of racism in america. Somebody said your intelligence was linked to the shape of your head so you spent all that time trying to prove that was the case. Somebody said you didnt have a history so you spent all your time trying to prove a history. Somebody said you didnt have this theres always going to be something. Our job is to be and it is the job of everyone to take on that responsibility to be human and to find that humility in themselves and connect humanity in themselves and connect it with the humanity outside of themselves. [applause] i think we have, sit two more, three more . I think we should just take round uestions and well out to close out. Hello. Im a muslim from brooklyn. I work out of the commission of human rights and my focus is on mislum communities and one of the first thing i was tasked with was developing a training on understanding muslim experience. Within that training we had a lot of challenges in terms of just because it was meant for a nonmuslim office. One of the things was, a couple of spots we had featuring famous muslims and then another part was a lot of pushback from different folks who were seeing the pilot version and saying, you know, take every muslim practice and compare to it a jewish or christian practice and show us how similar it is. So my question is really like how do you navigate those challenges and has it come up in your work and also, when we do things like that where we showcase like famous or accomplished muslims, how i personally feel like its tokenizing us and also sets a very high bar of what i am the means to be accepted and it lso, i think, dehuston humanizes muslims who arent famous or may not be a recognized sports person. How do we not perpetuate this idea of an extremely successful person being worthy of respect whereas someone who works in a bodega not having that same respect. Ok, you . Yes. Thanks ever so much for your presentation. It was really fantastic. Im from britain so im kind of on the outside looking in and i always wondered how do muslims live in america and how do they deal with the prejudice its similar in britain but maybe not to the same extent. Our ruling party is going to elect its next leader and were likely to have a racist, sexist man as our next prime minister. You wouldnt know anything about having a leader like that. [laughter] so i was wondering about the histories and the oral history youve had and how people respond to the prejudices and if they do feel like they live in fear or if its different in brook colin and so on and how it differs across the u. S. Ok, and then my comment is maybe a little more light hearted. I grew up in the middle east so the sounds of the azan are kind of like comfort food to me and then later i lived several years in chicago and i fell in love with the blues and id never thought about that connection. So i just wanted to say thank you all for all of your work and for making this all so acceptable and taking so much of the potential stress out of theis these talking about these topics. Thank you. Thank you. Quick note google when you get home. Levi camp holler muslim guide to prayer. The scholar has juxtaposed this over the muslim call to prepare and it will blow your mind. Yes. Youll say oh, my gosh. I play it for my students and for almeds and people, their jaws drop. The vay brato, the sustaining of the notes. All of the kinds of constriction of the throat to elongate sound and breath that is part of whats taught in the recitation of classical arabic is in the camp holler. First question im going to throw to elizabeth, which is, we can call tilt politics of acceptability. [laughter] the challenge of trying to do this work, of demonstrating contributions to counter islama phobia. Its two sided. I agree, i think you just dont want to have these kind of exceptional people. Throughout the history of racism in the United States and this leader in germany said there are two ways to dee humanize someone. Thing or ep onize deem them exception a. M. Its like the two sides of the coin. Try to not just represent a superstar basketball player but also bo dego owners but a lot of local Business Leaders where they are as much as providers. Theyre just as important or to me maybe more important. I think in these limited periods where up training and you have to get information across, youre caught between wanting to team people something but i would also equate this to christiantary and judaism. That comes up all the time and it came up in my research in europe and the u. K. And jeremy as well. People germany as well. People would say theres a dome in christianity. Is that why you have a dome . Its also being able to understand islam on its own terms and i think most people are capable of company ever comp henleding what it means to pray or fast. But i think you have a task. We do these listening parties for our oral history and before we start, we do some ground rules for listening and one of the things that i like to tell people is that listening is not a nrs cystic act so you should not listen to find yourself. You should listen to be able to sit with a story that you may not be finding yourself in, that you may not find resonance with, but thats the real challenge of listening. Can you listen to something that you dont relate to . Because thats how you begin to build the bridge, the empathy gab. Its gap. Its easy to find resonance with familiarity but can you find connection with the unfamiliar . So i think push people to sit with a story or an experience that is completely unlike them. Thats the work that we have to do. The next question, or the last question was about the stories of prejudice and i think silvia, because you covered a historyal period at the height f jim crow and racism, how did those stories play out in the work gnaw looked at . The stories of the women you looked at . I think both of your questions the young lady here on the end and yours as well are both kind of asking how do we counter antimuslim racism . How do weapon, in our daily lives, our work, our personal rhythms, in every space of your lives, how do we counter it . And i think its very fitting that we are in the Brooklyn Historical society because as a scholar i would say you do it by looking at the way so much of what is happening has already happened before and others have experienced this and within the Muslim Community in the u. S. And this is one of the large connections i was trying to make in my book. That many of the issues muslim women in the u. S. Are encountering now. This prejudice, violence, demeemenization are all experiences that Africanamerican Muslim women, others in the communities, in the Muslim Community on the one hand have already experienced and have enormous insight and wisdom to offer. Also in the history of this country, you have the story of japanese interment. Chinese exclusion. Immigrant community after immigrant community that has undergone in type of marginalization and demonization within their communities and within the Muslim Community familiar so many stories and history. As opposed to holding up a historical figure or offer a platt dude about who muslims i think muslims themselves, even in reaching outward, would do well to speak to those who have been here and investigate the stories that we know and know them more deeply and with more complexity and know them so that they can become our own so we can incorporate them into our practices of how muslim communities and other communities seeking justice move forward. I think that is a perfect note to end on, with a call for us to recover more and more and more history so thank you so much for joining us. [applause] one final plug. Silvias book is here in case you want her to sign it. [captions Copyright National able satellite corp. 2019] now youre watching American History tv. 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