A Holy Calling: Dealing with Diversity Every Day

On a recent trip to Sweden, some friends asked me about my work as a theologian, pastor, religion newswriter and scholar.

They were, understandably, a bit confused about how it all fit together. To be honest, sometimes so am I!

They were also a bit concerned.

How do I avoid a conflict of interest as a journalist? How do I deal with my outsider status as an ethnographer working with Muslim minority communities? How do I reconcile my interreligious encounters with my calling as a theologian?

Great questions.

Last month, Cristina Ochoa interviewed me for the ATLA (American Theological Library Association) blog. To say the least, I was pretty excited. The ATLA — a membership association of librarians and information professionals, and a producer of research tools, committed to advancing the study of religion and theology — often featured in my early theological research at Concordia University Irvine and I continue to use its tools today.

The result is an exploration of how my various vocations work together. It’s also a look into how I see my efforts as a religion scholar, newswriter, and theologian as part of a larger calling toward advancing religious literacy.

Weimar: The Capital of Contemporary Yiddishland?

In a clear homage to the Beatles’ 1967 “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album cover and its wonderful whirl of colorful visuals, the poster for this year’s Yiddish Summer Weimar (YSW) festival features a menagerie of cut-out visages: from Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, to wandering cattle and a bedecked bass drum reading, “Makonovetsky’s Wandering Stars Club Band.”

Together, the collage symbolizes the transcultural and time-spanning story of Yiddish culture and music — its progenitors and critics, its historical influences and contemporary performative interpreters.

At the center of it all stands Alan Bern.  

Bern playing the accordion. PHOTO: Yulia Kabakova, courtesy of Alan Bern

The Bloomington, Indiana-born composer, musician, educator and cultural activist made his way to Berlin, Germany in 1987. There, he helped found Brave Old World, a band described by The Washington Post as the first “supergroup” of klezmer music’s contemporary revival movement.

Klezmer music is an instrumental tradition of Ashkenazi Jews of Europe. Simply meaning “musician,” the word “klezmer” reflects, and conveys, its broader Yiddish roots.

A spoken language of a considerable portion of Ashkenazi Jews for centuries, Yiddish emerged in 9th-century Europe as a mix of German vernacular, written Hebrew, and Aramaic, Slavic, and Romantic linguistic influences and vocabulary. Meaning “Jewish” in the language itself, Yiddish is also the vehicle for a rich culture heritage of everyday Jewish life and celebration: proverbs, humor, idioms and music.

Over the last 30-odd years, klezmer – and Yiddish language and culture in general – has been enjoying quite the comeback.

Knoblauch Klezmer Band · Moustache

In the midst of this rejuvenation, Bern and Brave Old World were invited to conduct a workshop on Yiddish music in the central German city of Weimar as part of the European Summer Academy in 1999. The workshop was a wild success and Bern became the founding artistic director of what is now known as YSW — a five-week summer institute and festival for the study, creation and performance of Yiddish culture and music in the heart of Germany.

Today, it is one of the most widely recognized programs for the renewal of Yiddish culture in the world, receiving awards from the European Union and the German Music Council, among others. In 2016 Bern was awarded the Weimar Prize in recognition of his significant cultural contributions to the city.

For Bern, YSW is about more than showcasing Yiddish music; it’s about exploring Yiddish culture as a complex, and continually evolving, convergence of European and non-European customs. It’s also about empowering people for creativity and connection on a continent evermore marked by diversity and difference.

Streaming Ramadan TV to the World

Fatima al-Masri, a sales consultant in her 20s, grew up watching TV drama serials during Ramadan as a family tradition in Amman, Jordan. “We will be talking about it for hours, for days even,” she says. “You have no idea how much time we spend watching these shows, analyzing them. It opens up a lot of conversation.”

For nearly 2 billion people worldwide, the holy month of Ramadan is not just 29 or 30 days of fasting from dawn to sunset, prayer and charity. It is also a month of social gatherings and cultural events—including television dramas produced for the season.

As travel and public health restrictions have hampered in-person socializing during Ramadan both in 2020 and this year, social media and television have been playing greater roles than ever.

Now along with searching YouTube for advice on how best to fast or what to make for the day’s fast-breaking iftar,observing Ramadan also involves deciding among apps such as Ramadan Diet, Daily Dua or dozens more. It means picking out Ramadan-themed gifs to share on Whatsapp threads. And it means selecting which TV series to binge with the family—and the options are overwhelming. Traditional Ramadan programming powerhouses like Egypt and Turkey as well as ones in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Algeria and the UAE are all serving up ever-more sumptuous buffets of social dramas, cooking shows, music specials, comedies and religious programming.

Often described by Arab media experts as a sweeps season for the Middle East, Ramadan boosts TV viewership by up to 45 percent on traditional platforms, and YouTube has recently seen three-fold to four-fold Ramadan spikes. This is why Arabic-language networks so often premiere their top shows in Ramadan—from perennially popular prank shows like Ramez to cooking shows with popular Moroccan chef Assia Othman to Al Namous, a Kuwaiti drama featuring stories across social classes set in the 1940s and 1970s, and dozens more. 

“If you want to understand the region, you have to see it through its pop culture.”

— Joseph Fahim, film critic

While satellite channels have delivered programs like these to millions of Arabic speakers for decades, streaming platforms like Netflix and YouTube are now bringing even more to new audiences, particularly in Europe, North America and Asia, with subtitling in major world languages. 

Along with widened distribution and added viewership, streaming platforms and competitive programming are pushing producers to offer increasingly contemporary storylines and series shorter than a month’s worth of 30 episodes. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ramadan TV has offered a window on places viewers couldn’t travel to and also offered cultural insights.

“If you want to understand the region, you have to see it through its pop culture,” says Egyptian film critic Joseph Fahim. “A good way to start learning is through a show.”

Public Lecture: What hath ethnography to do with religion journalism?

Diversity and difference continue to pose a pronounced challenge to the public understanding of religion.

For decades, both religion scholars and journalists have striven to address religious pluralism and advance religious literacy through a range of critical research and explanatory reporting. One shared aspect between them has been the use of immersive techniques in order to offer more nuanced, contextual, and longform narratives of the miscellany of religious traditions.

On the one hand, ethnographers of religion have produced textured analyses of religious individuals, socialities, rituals, and material cultures, further refining and complicating our understanding of what “religion” is and how it is lived in particular places. On the other hand, some religion newswriters are afforded the opportunity to take deep dives into religious actors’ lives and contexts and tell their stories in popular fashion via features, podcasts, and video stories.

Despite their differences, qualitative religious studies scholarship and religion journalism have more in common than usually acknowledged.

As part of the series "Erfurt Monday Lectures: New Topics in Religious Studies” at the University of Erfurt, I will share some insights and reflections as both an ethnographer and a journalist and how my research and reporting on religion has led me to explore questions related to the ethics, norms, and aesthetics of both fields and how they might work together to shine light on how religion and spirituality function in the lives of religious actors and socialities in a diverse array of locales and from multiple points of view.

The event will be Monday, 21 June 2021 at 5:00 pm Central European Time (11:00 am EDT/8:00 PDT). You can learn more about the event HERE, register ahead of time via e-mail, or simply attend the event at the link below (requires WebEx software).

If you have any questions, be sure to reach out to me as well: k.chitwood@fu-berlin.de.

Finding spiritual solace in Berlin, the not-so-secular city

Both before and during the pandemic — and perhaps for years to come — religion remains a potent force in Germany’s not-so-secular city, Berlin.

When Harvard theologian Harvey Cox served as an ecumenical worker in Berlin in the 1960s, he watched the city and its people wrestle with their identity , surmising that they were taking steps toward a more secular future in the aftermath of conflict and chaos. 

It was in Berlin that the seeds of an idea — later called the “secularization thesis” — began to germinate in his mind. In his 1965 book, “The Secular City,” Cox proposed that as societies develop, the need for religion diminishes, and as a result, religion itself declines. 

And yet, as cosmopolitan as ever, Berliners — its people, not its pastries — still turn to a diverse array of religious sources to meet multiple needs: from social contact to providing a semblance of order in a tumultuous world. 

The magnificent tale of Moroccan acrobats in 19th-century England

Mohamed “Mo” Salah, the 28-year-old Egyptian professional footballer, is idolized by fans across the globe for being a goal-scoring machine for Liverpool Football Club in the English Premier League and Egypt’s national squad. But beyond his adept dribbling and scintillating scoring, the “Egyptian King” has left his mark on Liverpool in other ways. 

Researchers from Stanford University in the U.S. claimed that as a visibly Muslim, and very successful, footballer, Salah has helped humanize Islam not only in Liverpool, but in Britain writ large. They called this the “Mo Salah Effect.”

Even so, they suggested, the effect isn’t limited to Salah. They wrote that other “celebrities with role-model like qualities have long been thought to shape social attitudes.” 

Preston, UK, journalist Ismaeel Nakhuda poses beside the gravestone that gives the acrobat’s full name, Achmed Ben Ibrahim. (Photo courtesy Ismaeel Nakhuda/AramcoWorld Magazine)

For instance, about an hour’s drive outside of Liverpool lies the small city of Preston. There, around the turn of the 20th-century, a traveling Moroccan acrobat named Ali — known as Achmed ben Ibrahim — was part of a prominent community of Muslims that left their mark on Victorian British society. 

In fact, before there was a “Mo Salah Effect,” one might say there was an “Achmed ben Ibrahim Effect,” or, at the least, a “Moroccan acrobat effect.” 

The connections between the two Muslim athletes — Salah and Achmed — is a story that involves a traveling troupe of Moroccan acrobats, a Liverpudlian lawyer, and a mysterious grave located on the margins of a middle-class Lancashire cemetery.

It is also the story of the evolution of Muslim life in England and the cosmopolitan transformation of a port city like Liverpool, and how the early arrival of immigrants helped pave the way for the likes of Mo Salah to act as cultural humanitarians today.

"No Victor but Allah": The Islamic Built Legacy of Puerto Rico

ولا غالبَ إلا الله

Wa la Ghalib Illa Allah

No hay vencedor excepto Allah. 

There is no victor except Allah. 

Walking past the pastel-colored façades of Viejo San Juan (Old San Juan), you might miss the arabesque arches and azulejo tile work that adorns buildings like the French restaurant at 311 Calle de Fortaleza or the elite cultural institution el Ateneo Puertorriqueño.

Both of these stunning buildings bear the remnants of a little-known, but resilient, slice of Puerto Rico’s history — that of how Islamic architecture came to shape the built environment of the island and other parts of the Americas during the Spanish colonial period and beyond.

The words above — “there is no victor except Allah” — are featured hundreds of times on the walls of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. They can also be found on the façade of 311 Calle de Fortaleza or in the Ateneo Puertorriqueño’s lobby.

More than architectural curiosity, these vestiges of Islamic influence in Puerto Rican art, culture, and society become a strong identity referent for Puerto Rican Muslims who feel marginalized from more popular and sanctioned understandings of what counts as “Puerto Rican.”

This story forms a key part of a new podcast episode from “Kerning Cultures,” put together by Alice Fordham.

I got to consult on this project and am super excited that it is out in the world. I encourage you to listen to the podcast and learn more about how Puerto Rican Muslims make meaning through the island’s Andalusian and neo-Moorish architecture.

THANKS:

Thanks to Alice Fordham for reaching out about this piece and involving me in the process. It was an honor to contribute. Also, a huge shout out to Kemal Delgado and María (Maru) Eugenia Pabón. Kemal is one of the Puerto Rican Muslims I’ve learned much from over the last few years and Maru was a fellow participant in an in-depth Arabic language program in Amman, Jordan with my wife, Paula. Not only am I glad to see friends and colleagues produce such a beautiful, resonant story, but I am pleased to see the Puerto Rican Muslim experience find a broader audience. It’s a narrative I am humbled to share, in this way and more.

The age of "spirit tech" is here. It’s time we come to terms with it.

The electrodes are already attached to your scalp, so you settle into a seat that reminds you of the one they use at the dentist’s office. On the other end of a series of cords is a machine where a technician sits with a clipboard and a range of blinking and bleeping devices.

No, you’re not about to start a medical diagnostic exam.

You’re about to meditate.

Sound surreal? If so, welcome to the brave new world of “spirit tech,” where a range of researchers and practitioners are using brain based tech to “trigger, enhance, accelerate, modify, or measure spiritual experience.”

In their new book — Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering — Wesley J. Wildman and Kate J. Stockly take a stimulating journey into the technology that could shape our spiritual futures.

Investigating the intensifying interaction between technology and religion, they talk to innovators and early adopters who are "hacking the spiritual brain” using ultrasounds to help practitioners meditate or experimenting with “high-tech telepathy” to build a “social network of brains.”

Not only did I get the chance to read the book, I also sat down with a one-on-one interview with Stockly about how spiritual entrepreneurs and tech-savvy religious practitioners are using technology to modify spiritual experiences.

While critics may question “spirit tech’s” efficacy, elitism, and ethics, Wildman and Stockly are careful to note that religious people have always used tools — from mantras to mandalas, prayer beads to palm reading — to enhance spiritual experience. The difference now, they write, is the sheer number of “customizable and exploratory practices at the threshold between cutting-edge tech and the soul,” from synthetic psychedelic trips in lieu of Holy Communion to LED orbs that create connection between congregants.

Wildman and Stockly do not pretend to have it all figured out — spirit tech’s ability to balance innovation and enlightenment, they say, “is still being written” — but their thought-provoking introduction to the brave new world of transcendent tech gives both pious pioneers and defenders of traditional religion something to consider as they imagine the future of spirituality in the 21st-century and beyond.

Spotlight on: Dr. Karoline Cook - Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America

Emigrants from the Atlantic world came to the Americas for various reasons, with many motives, and precipitated by myriad circumstances. Some were forced, some came to escape an old society or to build a new one, others came to acquire riches or set-up shop. Yet, as J.H. Elliott wrote in his tome Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830, “they all faced the same challenge of moving from the known to the unknown, and of coming to terms with an alien environment that would demand of them numerous adjustments and a range of new responses.” 

Furthermore, as Elliott continues, “to a greater or lesser degree, those responses would be shaped by a home culture whose formative influence could never be entirely escaped, even by those who who were most consciously rejecting it for a new life beyond the seas.” While the local context with its diverse ecological, material, political, socio-cultural, and religious environments shaped the contours of American colonization and conquest, the colonial world was simultaneously defined and influenced by its transatlantic nature. Significantly, the historical and legal dimensions of imperial statecraft conditioned the experience of various constituencies in even the most far-flung reaches of the American empires. 

It is within this transatlantic imperial nexus that Dr. Karoline P. Cook situates the narrative of Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America.

The following is an interview with Dr. Cook, lecturer in the history of the Atlantic world at Royal Holloway University of London about her previous and current work that provides multiple insights into the state of study on Islam and Muslim communities in Latin America and the Caribbean over the longue durée.

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Why did you set out to write Forbidden Passages? Where did the process begin?

I became interested in Moriscos in the Americas when I was still an undergraduate student at Bryn Mawr College, researching my senior thesis on enslaved Moriscas who were tried by the Spanish Inquisition for practicing Islam. The summer before my senior year, I received a grant from Bryn Mawr to conduct research for my thesis at the Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN) in Madrid, but first spent a couple of weeks in Seville with my family. In Seville I stopped by the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) to apply for an ID card that was required at the time for all researchers who wanted to consult Spain’s national archives. The archivists told me that I wouldn’t find information about Moriscos at the AGI because during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they had been prohibited from emigrating to the Americas. Because I was already familiar with the rich historiography on conversos who faced the same travel restrictions as the Moriscos, and who nonetheless settled in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, I began to wonder whether the same might have been true of the Moriscos. This knowledge and the questions it raised prompted my interest in whether Moriscos emigrated to Spanish America and if so, what implications their presence could have for our understanding of colonial society. Upon graduating from Bryn Mawr, I was granted a Fulbright Fellowship to spend the following year in the Spanish archives to determine whether I could answer these questions. I found more sources than I had anticipated amongst the Inquisition records at the AHN and the Royal Audiencia records at the AGI, and I began applying to PhD programs to continue researching the topic.

In your opinion, how much tactical thought was behind the accusation of being a Morisco?

Accusations that someone was a Morisco or had Muslim ancestry were very tactical, often aimed at discrediting an opponent. They drew upon understandings of limpieza de sangre (blood purity) that could be invoked to prevent a rival from holding prestigious offices, practicing certain professions, or emigrating to the lands claimed by Spain in the Western Hemisphere. The reality was much more complex, and the accused could go to court to assert their status and negotiate their position in colonial society. This allowed for degrees of fluidity in the ways that individuals presented themselves. But it was also about access and the persistent vulnerability to accusation that would result in lengthy and expensive litigation.  

Are there any implications for today’s political landscape that we can draw from the colonialist’s fear of Moriscos undermining their agenda and the subsequent failure to exclude the latter from the ‘New World’?

The discourses invoked by colonial officials against Muslims and anyone they perceived to be a Muslim finds a great deal of resonance with Islamophobia and anxieties about emigration today. Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ is one of the most recent examples, but this goes back much farther. My Fulbright year in Madrid coincided with September 11 and the US invasion of Afghanistan – when I returned home each evening after reading denunciations of Moriscos in the archives, I continued to read the newspapers full of reports of hate crimes against people perceived to be Muslims and generally heightened anxiety about Muslims who were viewed with suspicion and associated with terrorism in the media. These images have a much longer history, and it was one of the points I wanted to write about in my book.

If there are any implications that can be drawn it is the insidious persistence of hate speech – the ways that negative images of Muslims and emigrants have been invoked for a variety of political agendas. It is important to recognize the types and patterns of anti-Islamic discourse and be attentive to such images in order to challenge them both verbally and legally before they can gain traction. The ways that the label ‘Morisco’ functioned in the context of local disputes can also tell us something about early constructions of race and racism, and the different forms that racism can assume in contexts that both pre-dated and extend beyond the 19th and 20th century examples.

If the numbers in the sources are reliable, what is your estimate of how many Moriscos came to the Americas?

This is a very difficult question and something I am still working on in the background, even if it wasn’t the focus or main interest of my first book. To date I have found approximately 200 references to Moriscos in the context of denunciations before the ecclesiastical and secular courts for practicing Islam in secret or having Muslim ancestry. I am continuing to gather references for a future book that will attempt to grapple with the question of the ways that individuals who did self-identify as Muslims in Spanish America during the early colonial period might have formed communities or ties with each other. This would include not only Iberian converts from Islam but also Muslims from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. 

That said, a focus on numbers alone can be problematic since it is often very difficult to determine who was or was not a Morisco, and such an approach risks replicating the concerns of inquisitors and colonial officials.

In the second half of the book you describe the Moriscos as providers of magical health services across all classes and castes. What implications do you see in this for understanding the colonial society as a whole?

There was a great deal of exchange at the local everyday level, where Moriscos were sought for remedies – their expertise was valued within their communities. We see this in a variety of contexts where multiple ritual specialists might be consulted if someone was ill or needed the intervention of a healer or a practitioner of love magic and divination. Morisco healers operated in the same local communities as indigenous and African healers, and alongside other broader Mediterranean traditions of healing. Inquisition denunciations could also operate as malpractice suits, but there were important differences between how someone denouncing a failed cure framed the event and the inquisitors’ propagandistic use of it in the context of pamphlets and autos de fe. Heightened political tensions or interpersonal rivalries created an environment where denunciations could occur. 

Read “From Disciples to Missionaries: The Trans-Continental Trajectory of the Khoja Shia Ithna-Asheri Community from South Asia to Latin America”

You use the term ‘Morisco’ for both, new Christian converts, and old Christians accused of descending from Moors. What was your reasoning behind this double connotation?

‘Morisco’ was a label that operated as a legal category with implications for someone’s rights and status. There is also little evidence that Moriscos in Spain referred to themselves by this label. I wanted to convey the tactical use of the term in disputes and lawsuits as well as highlight the multiple people who fell under this designation depending on the context. 

What has been the ‘afterlife’ of the book? In other words, what conversations has it inspired and what has it contributed to the study of Islam and Muslim communities in the Americas?

Since Forbidden Passages was published there has been more interest in the topic. It has inspired conversations about the presence of Muslim communities across the Americas. There are a number of young scholars now working on this topic from different perspectives, and it is gratifying to hear from them about their interests and their work.

If you would have the chance to rewrite the book today, what area would you include that is not covered in the first version?

I would write a lot more about Moriscas and gender generally. When I was researching Forbidden Passages I didn’t feel that I had adequate source material to do this well, but as time passes and I collect more sources I am increasingly incorporating gender analysis into my work.

What research project(s) are you currently working on?

I am working on two book-length projects, beyond the long-term project that I mentioned above that really won’t be ready to write for at least another ten years! My next book project examines constructions of nobility in the early modern Spanish Empire. I will focus on how a range of families who claimed descent from the Nasrid emirs of Granada, the Inca rulers of Peru, and the Mexica rulers of Tenochtitlan claimed noble status at a time when creole families in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru were also engaged in litigation regarding the perpetuity of their encomiendas, and they invoked and at times invented accounts of Christian-Muslim relations on the Peninsula in order to stake their claims. Broadly speaking I am interested in how such claims to noble status and representations of Muslims in the petitions and court cases can shed light on how ideas about race were taking shape in this period.

My other project is a microhistory that focuses on Cristóbal de la Cruz, a man who was born in Algiers and enslaved as a young boy after being captured on a fishing boat, taken to Seville and baptized. De la Cruz denounced himself before inquisitors in Barcelona, Seville, and Mexico City multiple times over a thirty-year period. I am comparing his testimonies between the 1650s and 1680s to analyse how he narrated his life story to inquisitors at the beginning of each trial, engaged them in theological debates, and recounted events and exchanges he had with Muslims and Christians in Spain, the Caribbean and in Mexico, all while expressing doubts about whether belief in Christianity or Islam would lead to his salvation. I have already written about De la Cruz in an article that appeared in The Americas in 2008.

To cite this article: “Spotlight on: Dr. Karoline Cook - Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America,” Latin America and Caribbean Islamic Studies Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 2. (January 2021).

AmeRícan Muslims: The Everyday Lives of Puerto Rican Muslims

On a muggy late-May afternoon, I met up with “Lebron” at Noches de Colombia, a restaurant serving pan-Latin American fare just off Bergenline Ave. in Union City, New Jersey. As the restaurant’s windows dripped with humidity, we discussed his recent comments on “The Deen Show” — a popular YouTube program hosted by Eddie Redzovic.

Responding to disparaging comments toward Muslims tweeted by then Miss Puerto Rico, Destiny Velez, Lebron said Ms. Velez would be welcomed by the Muslim community, but she needed to show more “Boricua pride” and needed a “history lesson.” 

“If she is a true Puerto Rican, true to the Puerto Rican pride, and proud of her culture, proud of where she came from, then I would ask her to go back and read about how Puerto Rican came about being the country that it is now after being colonized. We see that our people weren’t really a people of Christian faith and Christian belief,” he said. 

Screen shot from The Deen Show.

Pushing back on those who frame Puerto Rico as a “Christian nation,” Lebron went to talk about Muslim contributions to mathematics, science, education, technology, and navigation. He harkened back to Andalusian Spain and Caribbean history, claiming his family had Taíno, African, and Andalusian roots. 

Looking at the camera, he challenged Miss Puerto Rico to “see how our people are connected to Islam, especially in our Boricua culture.” 

You are cordially invited to an online lecture and discussion of, “AmeRícan Muslims: The Everyday Lives of Puerto Rican Muslims” on 5 November 2020, made possible by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin. 

The online event is on 5 November, starting with a streaming of the lecture at 4:00 pm (Berlin, GMT +2). The live discussion will take place at 4:45 pm followed by an open Q&A with participants. The discussants will be Prof. Dr. Kai Kresse (Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient) and Dr. Harold Morales (Morgan State University). 

If you’d prefer to watch the lecture ahead of time, watch it above (or at this link) and join us for the live discussion on Thursday, 5 November.

My goal with the lecture is to showcase the lives of Puerto Rican Muslims like Lebron, addressing questions of identity, ethnicity, and religion in the context of diversity and difference. 

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Puerto Rico, the U.S., and online, I provide a nuanced view of how Islam takes shape in Puerto Rican Muslims’ everyday lives as “quadruple minorities”:  being Puerto Rican in the Muslim community, Muslim in the Puerto Rican community, and both Puerto Rican and Muslim in the U.S. context. 

I focus on how Puerto Rican Muslims “permanently live with the unfamiliar” (Appiah 2006) in four interrelated ways: 1) alongside other Puerto Ricans and their conception and construction of “authentic” Puerto Rican culture, 2) in relationship, and networked, with other Muslims around the globe, 3) as Puerto Ricans in colonial relationship with the U.S., and 4) as Muslims in the context of American empire. 

Essentially, for Puerto Rican Muslims, there are few established communities that they can go to without having to suppress part of their identity, adapt their representation, or resist some form of marginalization. 

Although I do not want to frame their situation in binaries and oppositions, Puerto Rican’s lives contain multiple boundaries they live across, at, and in between. 

I argue that their experience and perspective offers insights in three ways:

1. it enriches our understanding of Islam and Muslim communities in the Americas;

2. adds more texture to our understanding of Latinx Muslims in the U.S. and American Muslim communities in general;

3. and it further invites scholars to consider what can be learned by a critical focus on the supposed “margins” of the study of global Islam. 

In particular, I make the case that Puerto Rican Muslims’ cosmopolitan lives help us better grasp how Muslims in the late-modern world develop and implement strategies to negotiate diversity and difference both among Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims. 

Book Review: Far From Mecca

Brenda Flanagan’s 2009 novel Allah in the Islands tells the story of the lives, dreams, and social tensions of the residents of Rosehill, a community on the fictional “Santabella Island.” The novel centers around the protagonist Beatrice Salandy and her decision whether or not to leave Santabella, a lush and tropical Caribbean island only thinly veiled as real-life Trinidad. Weaving its way through the novel is Beatrice’s relationship with an “Afro-Santabellan” Muslim community that is critical of island politics and outspoken on behalf of the poor.

Through first-hand narratives from Abdul—one of the members of the community and right-hand man to its leader, Haji—readers learn that the “Afro-Santabellan” Muslim community is planning a coup against the Santabellan government. This, in turn, is a thinly veiled reference to the real-life 1990 Jamaat al-Muslimeen coup. A key theme that runs throughout the book, and in contemporary Trinidad, is how the non-Muslim residents of Santabella view “Afro-Santabellan” Muslims. Situated between the island’s Black and Indian communities, Flanagan writes how island residents react with a mixture of awe and opprobrium to their Muslim neighbors.

While it may seem strange to start a review of one book with a discussion of another, I would not have been aware of Flanagan’s work if it were not for Aliyah Khan. Khan’s adept analysis of Flanagan’s Allah in the Islands serves as one of the primary means by which she argues that the 1990 coup is the seminal event for the Caribbean’s perception of Islam and Muslims. Combining this analysis with an interview with “Haji”—the real-life “celebrity terrorist” Imam Yasin Abu Bakr—and an exploration of popular calypso music about the coup, Khan shows how events in Trinidad in the 1990s “changed national perceptions of Muslims” (192) throughout the Anglophone Caribbean, long before 9/11.

This is just one small example of Khan’s masterful interdisciplinary treatment of the subject of Islam and Muslims in the Anglophone Caribbean.

In this regard and many others, Far From Mecca is a commendable monograph that will spark additional research in the burgeoning field of Latin American and Caribbean Islamic studies, building on previous literature on Islam and Muslims in the Anglophone Caribbean in particular. It is also a worthwhile text by which scholars in different fields—religion in the Americas, Caribbean studies, global Islamic studies, postcolonial studies, etc.—might branch beyond their main disciplines and come to learn something fresh, from a slightly different perspective. Such was the case for me as I came across Allah in the Islands in Khan’s work. It is rare for works to be able to speak to so many different fields and to do so cogently and convincingly, but Khan’s book is an exception that is enlightening for readers in multiple disciplines, critical of an array of entrenched scholarly discourses, and useful for various classroom discussions.

Overall, Khan argues that appreciating the continuous Afro- and Indo-Muslim presence and cultural influence in the Caribbean tells a different story about both global Islam and the Caribbean. Following Aisha Khan’s emphasis on Islam of the Americas, rather than Islam in the Americas, Aliyah Khan claims that Muslims are “not different from other Caribbean people in their negotiation of culture and place” and situates Islam and Muslims firmly within the history and society of the Anglophone Caribbean as a whole. At the same time, Khan also seeks to de-center the study of Islam in the Americas outside the USA, looking at the hemisphere’s “formerly colonial whole” and pinpointing events and figures beyond 9/11 and the USA’s respectively well-studied Muslim communities. Khan brings an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, weaving together literary analysis of fiction, autobiography, poetry, non-fiction, and music in Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica with interviews, media analysis, and personal connections to key events in the Anglophone Caribbean.

Khan’s work is a timely, incisive, and critical addition to the growing corpus of literature that seeks to bring the lens of Caribbean studies to bear on the study of global Islam and expanding the perspectives and paradigms scholars use to frame Islamic studies and its “literatures.”

Introducing the Latin America & Caribbean Islamic Studies Newsletter

The study of Islam & Muslim communities in Latin America and the Caribbean is a field on the rise and features an ever-expanding network of scholars.

This newsletter is one way for us to be connected.

The idea behind the Latin America & Caribbean Islamic Studies Newsletter is simple: to bring together persons interested in the study of Islam and Muslim communities in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the networks that exist across, between, and beyond the Americas. The goal is to increase knowledge and encourage further scholarship on the topic.

The quarterly newsletter will not only communicate information on research opportunities and contribute relevant resources, but also serve as a platform to connect and collaborate.

The Latin America and Caribbean Islamic Studies Newsletter is secular, academically independent, and non-confessional. Its main aims include gaining recognition for the field, creating a network of scholars with the hope of one day creating a formal membership organization, generating further interest in the topic, and producing data, analysis, and insights on the subject from various fields of research and the public sphere.

The General Editor for the newsletter is Dr. Ken Chitwood and the Editor is Ms. Giulia Brabetz, both of the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures & Societies at Freie Universität Berlin. Contributions will include work from a range of scholars working in various fields. While the newsletter will be predominately in English, specific articles and resources will be provided in Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Arabic, and other languages. 

The first newsletter will be sent mid-October, 2020. 

If you are interested in learning more about the newsletter or have specific questions or concerns, please contact k.chitwood@fu-berlin.de. 

Otherwise, we invite you to subscribe and share this invitation with other potentially interested people in your network. 

A short history of hajj cancellations

Saudi Arabia has urged Muslims to delay their plans for the hajj, amid speculation that the obligatory pilgrimage may be canceled this year due to the coronavirus.

Earlier this year, Saudi authorities halted travel to holy sites as part of the umrah, the “lesser pilgrimage” that takes place throughout the year.

Canceling the hajj, however, would mean a massive economic hitfor the country and many businesses globally, such as the hajj travel industry. Millions of Muslims visit the Saudi kingdom each year, and the pilgrimage has not been canceled since the founding of the Saudi Kingdom in 1932. 

But as a scholar of global Islam, I have encountered many instances in the more than 1,400-year history of the pilgrimage when its planning had to be altered due to armed conflicts, disease or just plain politics.

What is a caliphate? How the Islamic State tries to boost its legitimacy by hijacking a historic institution

Just days after the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Oct. 27, the Islamic State named Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi as the new “caliph.”

In 2014, IS conquered vast swaths of Iraq and Syria and declared itself to be the “caliphate.” 

Defined and applied in different ways over the centuries, the fundamental idea behind the caliphate is the just ordering of society according to the will of God. 

The Islamic State’s caliphate was never widely recognized among the global Muslim community and no longer has significant territory. But the Islamic State still uses the history of the caliphate to push their claims.

As a scholar of global Islam, every time I teach my “Introduction to Islam” class, questions about the caliphate come up, in part because of IS’s claims. 

Caliph conundrums

The leader of a caliphate is called the caliph, meaning deputy or representative. All caliphs are believed to be the successor to Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad was not a caliph; according to the Quran he was the last and greatest of the prophets. 

That means no one can replace Muhammad as the messenger of God. The caliph, for example, is not always seen as holding special spiritual authority. But he is meant to preside over the caliphate in the absence of Muhammad.

The debate over who was the rightful representative of the prophet began immediately after his death. While the majority supported Abu Bakr – one of the prophet’s closest companions – a minority opted for his young son-in-law and cousin, Ali. 

Abu Bakr’s supporters would come to be known as Sunni Muslims, who believe that Muhammad did not leave instructions regarding his successor. Those who felt Ali was appointed by the prophet to be the political and spiritual leader of the fledgling Muslim community became known as Shiite Muslims. 

Abu Bakr was the first caliph and Ali the fourth. 

The second and third caliphs were Umar and Uthman. Under Umar, the caliphate expanded to include many regions of the world such as the lands of the former Byzantine and Sassanian empires in Asia Minor, Persia and Central Asia. Uthman is credited with compiling the Quran. 

That al-Baghdadi adopted the name of the first caliph was no coincidence. Together, Sunni Muslims call the first four caliphs the Rashidun, or the “Rightly Guided Caliphs,” because they were close companions or relations of Muhammad. They are also believed to be extraordinarily pious. This period lasted about 30 years. 

The complex history of the caliphate

After rebels assassinated Uthman in A.D. 656, Ali was elected caliph. However, a civil war soon broke out between Ali and Muʿawiya ibn Abi Sufyan. The civil war ended in Sufyan’s victory and the formation of the Umayyad caliphate in A.D. 661. 

The Umayyad dynasty lasted 89 years.

The Abbasid dynasty descended from Muhammad’s uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib, and succeeded the Umayyads.

These two caliphates oversaw the continuing expansion of the empire. Under them architecture, the arts and sciences flourished.

For example, the “Dome of the Rock,” a shrine in the Old City of Jerusalem, was built under an Umayyad caliph as a monument to the rising supremacy of their empire.

The Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem (PHOTO: Ken Chitwood).

The Grand Library of Baghdad, also known as the “House of Wisdom,” was supported by Abbasid patronage. The “House of Wisdom” is credited with being a center of translation, scientific study and academic exchange. This period of flourishing, from the eighth to the 14th century, is often referred to as the “Islamic Golden Age.”

Both before and after the fall of the Abbasids in A.D. 1258, a succession of various empires made overlapping and competing claims to the caliphate. These included the Mamluks of Cairo and the Umayyads in Cordóba, Spain. 

In 1517, the Turkish Ottomans amassed enough land and power throughout Asia Minor, North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Eastern Europe to claim the title “caliphate.” Ottoman sultans, however, were not universally recognized as caliphs. Many Muslims believe that the caliphate effectively ended after the Mongol conquest of Abbasid Baghdad in A.D. 1258.

Nonetheless, the Ottomans effectively held on to that title until 1924, when the Turkish nationalist and secularist Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate. 

Resurrecting the caliphate?

The idea of the caliphate, which the Islamic State has forcefully promoted, recalls a time and a place when Islamic states flourished politically, economically and socially. It also summons up a spiritual vision of a supposedly more devout and dedicated Muslim community than exists today. 

Other modern-day Islamists have called for a resurrection of the caliphate, or at least its ideals, as a way to recapture the vibrancy of the past. However, only violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida or the Islamic State have tried to make it a tangible reality.

Killing al-Baghdadi has not quashed the Islamic State’s version of the caliphate. The idea lives on and continues to motivate its members in enclaves across the globe. It is worth mentioning that the name of their new caliph is an honorific title for a member of Prophet Muhammad’s family – “al-Qurashi.” This prophetic lineage is one more way IS is trying to resurrect the history of the caliphate for its destructive purposes.

What does it mean to be a cosmopolitan? (And no, I'm not talking about the drink or the magazine)

In November 2017 I came across the work of Naeem Mohaiemen at a New York Museum of Modern Art’s PS1 gallery while doing research with the city’s Puerto Rican Muslim population. 

In "Volume Eleven (A Flaw in the Algorithm of Cosmopolitanism),” Mohaiemen explores his uncle Syed Mujtaba Ali’s “flawed cosmopolitanism.” On the one hand, his uncle was a Bengali author who fought against colonial interference in the affairs of India and Pakistan. On the other hand, Ali wrote words of adoration for Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. 

The artist wrestles with the (im)possibility of both being true, but comes to the uncomfortable “conclusion” that in Volume 11, a collection of his renowned uncle’s essays, there is a “flaw in the algorithm of cosmopolitanism” — evidence of the swirling contradictions and inconsistencies of what it means to live as a minority in the late-modern world. 

Cosmopolitanism is often presumed, or proposed, as a moral ideal or political ideology. I think cosmopolitanism is something else.

Through my ethnographic research alongside Puerto Rican Muslims — in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Puerto Rico, and online — I became convinced that cosmopolitanism is more a condition. One which we all share in a modern world that is evermore speeding up and spreading out. Like Mohaiemen’s uncle, we face some choices regarding what to do in this cosmopolitan world, but we cannot opt out.

There is no way to be non-cosmopolitan in the 21st century.

When Islam Is Not a Religion: A Response to Asma Uddin

After wrapping up a Q&A session at a public conference where I presented on the topic of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations to a largely evangelical Christian audience, an older man who was sitting in the back approached me at the podium.

Rather nonchalantly, he asked, “You do know that the Constitution wasn’t written for Muslims, right?”

As we talked, he elaborated on his opinion that the concept of religious freedom does not apply to Islam and Muslims because, he said matter-of-factly, “Islam is not a religion.” At the time, it seemed to me a fringe theory cooked up in the dark corners of the internet or in 6am greasy-spoon breakfast meet-ups.

In short, I could not really believe — given my own biases — that people could actually think that the First Amendment and its promise of religious freedom did not extend to Islam and Muslims in the U.S.

However, far from fringe political theory or radical cultural posturing, this view has found its way into legal briefs, court cases, and political contexts in recent years. In fact, these legal and political perspectives are the fodder for Asma Uddin’s new book When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America’s Fight for Religious Freedom.

In this work, Uddin points out that many Americans insist that the religious liberty they so quickly claim for Christianity or Judaism (or other religions beyond the nation’s so-called “Judeo-Christian” heritage) does not extend to Islam and Muslims in the U.S.

What does the Hajj mean to millions of Muslims?

Nearly 2 million Muslims will gather in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia on Aug. 9 for an annual pilgrimage known as the hajj. 

The five-day journey is a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for all Muslims who are physically and financially able to undertake it. It is considered the fifth pillar of Islamic practice, along with professing faith, saying five prayers daily, giving to charity and fasting during Ramadan. 

In calling Muslims to perform the hajj, the Quran says: “Proclaim to men the pilgrimage: they will come to thee on foot and on every lean camel, coming from every remote path.” 

The millions of Muslims from around the world who meet each year in Saudi Arabia dress simply to mask any differences in wealth and status. Women wear plain, white dresses and headscarves. Men drape themselves in seamless, unhemmed clothing.

As a scholar of global Islam, I’ve interviewed many Muslims who have gone on the hajj. They have described to me having profound experiences on the pilgrimage, both political and spiritual.

"Brewery church" story goes down smooth, but questions still bubble up

If you know me at all, you know that my interests in beer and religion are both relatively high.

That’s why when I came across Castle Church Brewing Community in Orlando, Florida I jumped at the opportunity to report on the “brewery church” for the Religion News Service (RNS).

Beyond the surface phenomena (and all the beer+religion puns like, “frothy faith”) there was a deeper resonant story at Castle Church that I wanted to tell — a story of church changing as we know it, of 30-somethings looking for home, and issues surrounding notions of class, gender, and race.

The story I wrote for RNS touches on these themes and invites you to reflect a little more on the significance of a brewery that is a church, a church that is also a brewery. As you read the story, enjoy the gimmick. Sure. But beyond the “beer church” novelty, take a moment to reflect on questions such as:

• What can a “brewery church” tell us about American religion? American Christianity?

• Why — at this moment in time — is such an idea popular let alone feasible?

• Who might be attracted by such a model? Why?

• Who is potentially marginalized by such a model? Women? People in the neighborhood north of Orlando International Airport that can’t afford craft beer? Good ole’ Florida boys looking for a Budweiser? Is this just a place for cis white males who want to play Settlers of Catan, drink beer, and debate Augustine?

These questions and conversations are still fermenting in my own mind (sorry, couldn’t help another beer pun!) and I don’t have any ready answers after my reporting. Furthermore, each of the people I interviewed for this story — Rev. Jared Witt, Dr. Annie Blazer, Jeremy Carnes, and others — had also thought about these issues and had some weighty and worthwhile comments to make on each.

With that in mind, I invite you to share your thoughts, send your questions, or post a comment on this blog or at ReligionNews.com by clicking the link below.

Religious Studies in Social Media: Promising Venues for Public Scholarship

Universities are not meant to be islands unto themselves. 

Instead, as Jaroslav Pelikan argued in his seminal work The Idea of the University: A Reexamination, every university has a duty to the societies in which it is situated — local, regional, and international. 

In an age of space and time compression thanks to advances in communications and digital technology those contexts are ever more immediate and expansive. 

The internet brings untold opportunity for universities to fulfill their duties to society. To share their research. To spread their knowledge. To engage in conversations. To develop its arts, humanities, and sciences for the fitness of the world.

That is why I believe that social media — and digital technology in general — provide prime platforms for scholars to share their ideas and innovations with the public. 

With that said, I am well aware that these media and technologies come with their own issues, dangers, and roadblocks — especially for women, people of color, and adherents of minority religions.  

To explore how scholars can best utilize social media as a means of sharing scholarship and engaging the major issues of our society I invite you to join me and a couple of other amazing scholars for an upcoming webinar. Even if you’re not a scholar you should join the conversation and share your perspective! 

The Religious Freedom Center of the Freedom Forum Institute’s October webinar, “Religious Studies in Social Media: Promising Venues for Public Scholarship” will be held October 18, 2018 from 12:00pm-1:00pm EST.

We will discuss how scholars of religion can engage different publics through social media to raise the visibility of their work. I will co-present with Kelly Baker, editor of Women in Higher Education and Simran Jeet Singh, post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Religion and Media (NYU). The webinar will include a presentation and extended Q&A.

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required here: RSVP.

The Public Scholars Project is a joint initiative of the American Academy of Religion and the Religious Freedom Center of the Freedom Forum Institute. Through seminars and other resources, the Public Scholars Project equips scholars of religion to effectively communicate in the public sphere and foster religious literacy.

Be sure to take a look at their other webinars and events here. 

The #MosqueMeToo Movement

2018 marked a sweeping year of change and awareness for women across the spectrum, including Muslim women.

Building on the momentum established by the #MeToo movement, the founder of the #MosqueMeToo movement, Mona Eltahawy, has sought to bring similar societal awareness to Muslim women within the Muslim community and empower Muslim women to have a more proactive role in their communities. Despite difficulties, the importance of such a cause is undeniable.

What #MosqueMeToo Is All About

Women have often remained voiceless on issues regarding sexual harassment and assault. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) survey conducted in 2015, 75% of the world’s roughly two billion women 18 years or older have experienced sexual harassment. Furthermore, analysis of the data concludes over 80% of the adult female population in Muslim-majority countries, such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, have been negatively impacted. Granted, these statistics can vary depending on one’s definition as to what constitutes sexual harassment, but these facts still paint a daunting picture of a serious problem in society regarding the basic human right to feel safe. 

However, hash-tag movements and the social synergy that is created by them can strengthen voices so that they are heard. A revolutionary movement, called #MeToo, started in 2007 and was revived in October 2017 on social media outlets, such as Twitter and Facebook, to expose sexual assault incidents and provide a sense of unity for survivors. Inspired by the momentum created by #MeToo on social media, Egyptian-American writer, activist and journalist, Mona Eltahawy, began the #MosqueMeToo movement to give an active voice to women who experienced sexual violence in the Muslim community and have long been silenced in male-dominated cultures. 

A focus of the movement is exposing sexual violence at sacred places, such as during the Hajj. Although Saudi Arabia’s Council recently passed an anti-harassment law that punishes offenders and protects victims’ dignity as insured by Islamic law abuse continues to occur in the Gulf country because of underlying gender inequalities says Eltahawy. Consequently, giving Muslim women a greater voice in their community will allow them as caretakers of children, to empower their daughters and instill parity of women in their sons, to incrementally move the needle with each generation, so that men no longer see women as inferior.

The Hajj is a particular place of tension for Muslim women who report instances of sexual abuse by men during the annual spiritual pilgrimage.

As discussed, sexual violence in the sacred places of the Muslim community, especially during the Hajj, is not an anomaly. The spark that ignited the #MosqueMeToo movement began in February 2018 by Eltahawy when she tweeted her experience during the Hajj after being inspired by a harrowing Facebook post by a Pakistani woman, Sabica Khan, who shared her own incident. Eltahawy wanted to distinguish the #MosqueMeToo movement from #MeToo to ensure it “breaks the race, class, gender and faith lines that make it so hard for marginalized people to be heard.” 

With increased globalization, transportation technology, and the Internet, the world’s interconnectedness is unparalleled—social media platforms are giving women a voice that we may not have arguably heard before. Eltahawy noted that her Twitter thread was liked or retweeted “thousands of times” and shared in a variety of languages, such as Arabic, Spanish, and German. The synergy that has been created from the #MeToo and #ChurchToo (which exposes sexual abuse and harassment in Christian religious sites) movements are highlighting that the experiences felt by women in the Muslim community are not anomalous, but are shared across the religious and culture spectra.

Eltahawy has expressed numerous goals. Above all, she hopes for positive outcomes for the basic treatment of women. Her objectives include: men having conversations with each other and their families about sexualized violence, holy sites giving sermons and launching campaigns reminding Muslims that "Islam demands the respect of women,” insisting authorities and police need to be trained on how to discern and handle assaults, and calling for more female personnel at the holy sites. She fearlessly requested that the Grand Mosque Imam to address the safety of female Muslims during the Hajj. Inspiring her supporters to continue the movement, Eltahawy has exhorted them: “don’t let it die on social media unless it dies in the society.”

The significance of the #MosqueMeToo movement is multifaceted. Supporters seek to use the movement to empower those most vulnerable: Muslim women, who have been taken advantage of primarily by men and religious figures. By establishing a network seeking to challenge the societal norms Muslim women are joining the movement to challenge the accountability of the crimes because they refuse to simply be victimized, especially in sacred places.

The Quran and Other Concerns with #MosqueMeToo

However, the movement has faced its hurdles. Eltahawy’s insinuation that the Quran is irrelevant in addressing how women should pray is a highly inflammatory statement to many Muslims. There seems to be a division in the movement between the emphasis on a literal adherence to the Quran, versus a less rigid interpretational frame. Amina Wadud, an international Quranic scholar and mentor to Eltahawy, emphasizes the importance of reinterpreting the Quran so that the Muslim community can cultivate more liberating, inclusive, equitable laws.

There are also Muslims who feel that this movement will only amplify Islamophobia and substantiate their false arguments that portray Muslim men as evil. Some Muslim women fear that exposing the Muslim community’s “skeleton in the closet” will enable society to further blame Muslims (“#MosqueMeToo”). When women do speak up, both in society and on social media, they are told that they have an overactive imagination, it is their fault, they want to destroy Islam, they are too ugly to be assaulted, etcetera (“#MosqueMeToo”). However, due to the supporters’ determination to include men as a solution to the problem in the movement these inquiries may avoid that slippery slope. Activists are using the #MosqueMeToo movement to promote that sexualized violence is not just a “woman’s issue.” They are expressing this by advocating for candid discussion among men within the community to help break the connotation that it occurs without retribution.

Where to from here for #MosqueMeToo? 

The #MosqueMeToo movement has enabled Muslim women to be heard regarding the sexualized violence that they have endured in both the religious and secular aspects of their lives. Significantly, the movement is endeavoring to end the gagging and shaming of Muslims within the community who have experienced this abuse by encouraging individuals to continue to share their stories, the religious leaders to denounce such acts, and highlight the importance of men taking greater responsibility on this issue. 

For this aspirational movement to have a lasting impact on the Muslim community, it needs to leverage social media and broaden its message to a wider audience to public policy makers and the judicial system—lest the movement operate in a vacuum and run out of oxygen causing it to be short lived and ineffective.

*This is a guest post from MaryAnne O'Neill and was originally written as an essay in an "Introductoin to Islam" course at the University of Florida in Summer 2018.