Creating Islamic Spaces and Places

Creating Islamic Spaces and Places Layla Sein (bio) The 52nd Annual (Virtual) Conference of the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS) focused on "Creating Islamic Spaces and Places." It was cosponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, University of Indiana, Indianapolis on October 19, 2023, under the direction of its Executive Director, Philip Goff, and Conference Program Chair. He welcomed the panelists and guests for their participation in the conference. The conference consisted of four panel sessions. Panel Session 1 highlighted "Place-making at the Margins," with Alisa Perkins, (Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI) serving as discussant. The first presentation which examined "Making the Arctic a Muslim Home: Strategies of Place-making in Northern Canada" was by Bouchra E. Mossmann (University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.) Her paper focused on how the building of mosques in Northern Canada was driven by "wishes for rootedness, visibility and … the desire to feel at home." She spoke about how the building of mosques was a "strategy" of place-making to help Muslims "feel at home … where Islamic ritual practices are severely complicated by extreme changes in daylight." Mossman's presentation raised questions about "religious authority and the interpretation of Islamic traditions" because of the "different ethnicities, generations, gender groups, and branches of Islam," represented in the new Muslim communities. She stated that her focus on the study of Islam in rural and Northern Canada was "part of a bigger research effort titled The Arctic [End Page 116] Muslim." She identified early Muslim immigrants as being Arabs from Bilād ash-Shām who worked primarily as traders, trappers, and peddlers in the north. Her presentation drew on "data from local news outlets and social media to census data and fieldwork." According to the discussant, Alisa Perkins, Mossmann explored the difficulty associated with community building in a "sparsely populated Canadian landscape" especially since there was "already a concern for … establishing alliances for the Muslim newcomers [with Canada's] Indigenous people … and providing charity [and support] from food and clothes banks, which already serve the Indigenous community." The second presentation which focused on "Feeling Islam in Detroit City: Prophetic Neighborliness and the Making of a 'Real' Islamic Place" was given by Lucy Ballard (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA). In her presentation, Ballard explained how "DREAM of Detroit, a Muslim-led non-profit organization, is remaking a disinvested neighborhood once dismissed by the municipal government as a place of unsalvageable ruin." Her presentation examines "what began as a limited home rehabilitation project has now expanded into a comprehensive vision for the entire neighborhood, anchored by the Muslim Center, an historic African American masjid, and powered by multiethnic Muslims from across the metropolitan region." She examines how this project which is being "modeled as a new Medina" is "driven by the hope [of putting] Islamic values in proper practice [as a way to deconstruct the] endemic patterns of racial and class segregation." In her talk, Ballard stated how DREAM of Detroit encourages young non-Black suburban Muslim volunteers to become part of the neighborhood and feel it "as a space of safety, belonging, and Muslim kinship," as opposed to an urban space which is "conceived as a metonym for Blackness, danger, and, often, derivative or less authentic forms of Muslimness." During Q&A, Perkins, the discussant, noted that Ballard's talk examined how "inner city Black American Muslims, who sometimes refer to themselves as 'Indigenous Muslims' are working together to provide a 'second home' for more elite, ethnically diverse Muslim Americans from the suburbs, pouring their resources and time into offering a safe space for community building." The discussant noted how Mossmann's discussion highlighted how the "Indigenous Canadian Muslims were concerned about welcoming newcomers from the start of their 'mosque building' by supporting them in their identification and alliances with the Indigenous community." This was followed by a talk by Nazreen S. Bacchus (Farmingdale State College-State University of New York, SUNY) on "Mobilizing for Islam: Community Organizing and Place-making in New York." In her examination of projects that address place-making in New York, Bacchus stated that New Yorkers' "experiences with Islamophobia and xenophobic stereotypes about [End...

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