At a time when anti-Muslim rhetoric and hate crimes have seen a spike in the United States, an oral history project comprising uniquely personal stories of Muslims living in Brooklyn, New York hopes to challenge assumptions about Islam and its followers in America.
Titled “Muslims in Brooklyn”, the first-of-its-kind project shares the life experiences of 50 Muslims, narrated in their own voices, and captures details that defy any “flattened portrayals” of the community. At least, five of the narrators are of Bangladeshi origin.
“There is something about the experiences and histories of Muslims in Brooklyn that has a lot to tell us about the Muslims in America at large,” says Zaheer Ali, who is an oral historian at the Brooklyn Historical Society and the project director.
“Their fears, courage, disappointments, hopes, and most of all deep abiding love for and pride in their families, communities, neighborhoods, and city reveal life experiences that are shared universally,” he adds.
For well over a century, Muslims have lived, worked, and prayed in Brooklyn, making it a major centre of Muslim life for New York City and the nation. The city is home to nearly 22 percent of Muslims in the United States and Brooklyn has the highest concentration of mosques within New York.
There’s a big Bangladeshi community that lives side by side with Muslims of other ethnicities, cultures and nationalities.
Brooklyn also bore the brunt of the war on terror crackdowns in the post-9/11 days and faced controversial racial profiling and surveillance programs targeting Muslim communities. Thousands of Muslims were deported back to their countries of origin and many left voluntarily.
Many Muslims believe a similar bias against their community is visible all over the country during the Trump presidency.
Zaheer Ali says the Brooklyn project gives a richer understanding about how the people living here are navigating their world in a context that might seem adverse at times.
“Even though it’s happening in 2018, even though Donald Trump is not a pre-occupation of our narrators, his presidency hovers over in this context. The nasty rhetoric, the acts of hate and attacks on Muslims provide the context that helps us fill out the stories,” he says.
Conducted over the course of a year, the 50 oral histories that constitute the Muslims in Brooklyn collection capture the numerous ethnicities, nationalities, neighborhoods and occupations of Muslim Brooklynites.
It reflects varying approaches to religious observance in different traditions of Islam and also represent a spectrum of occupations including religious leaders, medical professionals, community organisers, homemakers, business owners, laborers, musicians, students, educators, artists, and activists.
The oral histories will be made available to the general public on an online listening portal on December 6.