The Pluralism Project at Harvard University

Mara Leichtman

Brown University
Making Islam in Detroit: An Exploration of the History and Expressive Cultures of Michigan's Mosques

Building Islam in Detroit: An Interdisciplinary Study of Muslim Institutions and Collective Spaces is a project at the University of Michigan that aims to research how communal places and institutions have been made Muslim, while at the same time defined and imagined to be American. The project will examine the institutions local Muslims have built in Detroit, their histories, their architecture, the ways in which they signal their Islamic status to the public (or choose not to), and the materials they use to distinguish themselves from other Muslims. Our goal is to produce a portrait of Islam in Detroit that engages the processes of "Americanization" and "minoritization," analyzing how these identities have been defined and redefined over the years. My contribution will be to focus on how immigrant mosques represent particular Islams (local, national, and global). I will interview leaders of mosques and congregation members about their religion, how Islam is practiced in America, and how that differs from their country of origin. I will attend Friday sermons, holiday celebrations, teaching and reading circles, and analyze the meanings of acts of devotion. This will fit in with my completed anthropological fieldwork in Senegal and enable me to see how the Shi'ite communities in Dakar and Michigan are contextually unique, while members of a global and transnational religious movement. The project will result in visual, written, and aural documentation, which will provide in-depth material on local Islamic institutions for the general public and destabilize mainstream representations of Islam in America. In addition, I will organize interfaith dialogues between the Jewish and Muslim communities of Detroit.

Dr. Mamadou Diouf is the faculty sponsor for this research.