Inventing the American Mosque: Early Muslims and Their Institutions in Detroit, 1910-1980.

Abstract

This dissertation explores the unwritten history of mosque development and Muslim identity formation in Detroit from 1910-1980. Drawing on untapped archival sources, interviews with Muslims who are connected to the city’s past, and on representations of Detroit’s mosques that appeared in the local media, this work is a project of historical recovery intended to open up for reconsideration our understanding of Muslim American history prior to the 1980s. The American mosque has been imagined, invented, critiqued, and reinvented repeatedly in Detroit as Muslim American identity has responded to social incorporation and assimilation, to public and political exclusions, and to the pressures created by ever new conversions and immigration. By investing in mosques, Muslims have sought a space in which to nurture and Americanize Islam at the congregational level – the level at which culture resonates with great significance and where Muslims are most comfortable maintaining ethnic and sectarian particularity. Islam is practiced in Detroit by Arabs, African Americans, Eastern Europeans, South Asians, Africans, Latinos, and Anglo Americans, who have also developed important networks and identifications that link their populations and institutions to one another. This collaborative work began, roughly, in 1912 and continues with much enhanced capacity in the present.

This dissertation traces the history of several of Detroit’s earliest and oldest mosques, examines the public forgettings that have prevented the telling of this history thus far, and considers the consequences of this amnesia for the politics of Muslim identity formation in the United States today. Focusing on mosques and other organizations that have transcended and reinforced ethnic/racial/sectarian identities, this work explores the critical role American mosques have played in grounding Islam as an American faith tradition and engaging Muslims in the mutually evolving politics of liberation, assimilation, accommodation, and resistance that has made Detroit the important center of Muslim American life it has been since the early 20th century.