Whatever food you would like. We'll just start in a minute.

So, just let you… there's lots to drink up a… above, too, there's water, there's lemonade.

So please help yourselves, and feel free to go back for more.

Ken said he's okay walking around. Try not to chew quietly, I guess.

So, okay, on behalf of the Center of. Um, Muslim experience in the United States, and the Religious Studies Unit in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies.

I want to welcome you to this forum and discussion today that we're having. We're very fortunate to have.

Dr. Ken Chitwood with us, and I will introduce him in a moment. To begin with, though, I just want to just kind of quickly… some upcoming events to announce to you that, at least from the Center of Muslim Experience side.

On November 6th, we will be having a documentary film showing.

Um, in the evening at… 6 o'clock, I think?

Um, and it's actually a documentary about an Afghan soldier who fought for the Union Army during the Civil War.

And the challenges that were faced of whether he should be in the.

I guess you can call it now the Black Regiment versus the White Regiments.

And the whole question of race and immigration and religion that came to play in his, sort of, identity, or how it was imposed upon him.

In January, some of you might be aware, most of us, I've only just learned, but Tina educated us.

That there's actually a move to create January as an American Muslim Heritage Month.

And it, of course, hasn't gone too far, but several states and cities have actually started to recognize it.

Um, Andre Carson, who's a representative from the state of Indiana, has been pushing this as a bill in the hopes that it will pass Congress, become a national, sort of, heritage Month. Um, it hasn't passed, but we're hoping to have, um, Representative Carson here, as well as a series of other events, so please… keep track, we'll have some…

Cultural events, some discussions, and other things going on, so please keep track of that.

So, Leah, do you wanna… And now… Two upcoming events for some religious studies workshop series, which is, uh.

Focus on our faculty. I could talk loudly. Uh, which…

Uh, which is, uh, mostly for faculty and graduate students in religious studies, but always open to all.

On Thursday, October 16th, from 10.30 to 12 in this room, we have a graduate student practice panel for the American Academy of Religion, Avalon J. Thiessen, Ryan Tankos, and Kristen Miller will present their work, moderated by our faculty member.

Terry Shoemaker, and then on Thursday, November 13th, uh, same place, 10.30 to 12 in this room, uh, Core 4403, will be, uh, one of our alum, um, Diana Coleman from Northern Arizona University, who works on, um.

She's a scholar of Islam and global context with an emphasis on contemporary Islam, and training in post-Holocaust ethics.

So, um… To move on, I first want to thank, of course.

The center, on behalf of everybody, Fatina Halal, um, for organizing this, putting all this together, for the food, et cetera, and also Kalani from Shippers.

For her assistance in helping and setting up everything, and so we're deeply… grateful for their assistance and work that they do behind the scenes.

Um, it's a great honor to actually, today, to have Dr. Chitwood here with us.

Um, we had them last night, actually, in my graduate seminar on religion and minoritization, where he got to share with several of our graduate students.

On his work, and in that class, a lot of the, sort of, the discussion sort of emerged, kind of thing, and then the discussion kind of thing. I learned a lot more, actually, about Ken and his work.

And so, I'm very excited to have him here today. He's here to share with us, actually, his, um… a book that is coming out in about 3 weeks, I think?

Um, at Borica Muslims, Everyday Cosmopolitans Among Puerto Rican converts to Islam.

What I found myself going through this book as it's appearing in… for the class and seminars, just the richness of the study, and despite the comments of reviewer number 3, I was told, it's actually a richly ethnographic study.

Um, with a lot of very, sort of, personal stories and encounters.

Interspersed with some really deep, serious sort of thinking about race and marginalization and the ways they would play out in sort of the world today, and particularly.

In the United States, and particularly with Puerto Ricans, which, as you know, is sort of… the longest, continuously.

Colonized space. Right? As I said, Dr. Chidwood, he comes to us from Germany.

So, where he's based? Um, and he's conducting… Rahi is actually his, um.

Habitationally? Habilitation. Habilitation candidate, and you'll have to explain. Basically, that's the move to where you can become, basically, a professor, a teacher within the university system, and within the…

German hierarchy, it's these things make a huge difference. Here, we tend to collapse everything.

But he's finished his PhD from the University of Florida, um… And on this question of, sort of, Puerto Rican Muslims.

But it's really his background, and what I found so rich in his study and in his discussion with us last night, and what I assume will be his discussion today.

Is the way he combines. Basically his background and experiences. So not only does he have this strong academic background.

Um, in religious studies and ethnography and anthropology. But also in theology.

And so I learned, if you don't mind me sharing… that he's also non-practicing.

Ordained Lutheran minister. So he comes with a sort of deep knowledge and experience and understanding of.

Religion, texts. But really sees it and is concerned with the lived. So he brings a sort of academic, anthropological knowledge, he brings that theological.

Understanding concerns and knowledge. But also, he has, in a sense, a third life, and that is as a journalist.

And so, not only is he working and teaching and writing, um, his academic works, but if I can.

But he's currently the senior correspondent for. Interfaith America, he's the European correspondent for Christianity Today. Um, he has an editorial role for Religion Link, and on and on and on, I can go. His CV is actually about 19 pages long, so quite impressive.

Um, but that these roles continue, and that they all sort of interplay and intersmerse, and that's why I find his work so, sort of, rich and fascinating.

Um, so anyway, without further ado, I will pass over to… Um, Ken Chitwood for his talks.

Thank you. Thank you, Chad. Yeah, happy to talk about all those different hats, uh, as we go into the Q&A session as well, particularly as it's relevant to.

Yeah. I'm just gonna add, for the format, I forgot to… Oh, yeah, go ahead, please.

Um, Ken's gonna give his talk. About half an hour or so.

And then we will go into… we actually have a panel discussion.

So, and I will introduce the panel afterwards, and then we'll come to the open.

Question and, um, answer period, any questions that you have. Yeah. Nah, no problem at all.

I hope you're enjoying your meal. Feel free to get seconds at any time during the talk. You won't offend me at all. I hope you enjoy the food that's out there.

I want to take you to Union City, New Jersey, so feel free to close your eyes if you'd like, take yourself there if you've been there before.

Walking down Bergen Line Avenue. Crossing 31st Street in Union City, New Jersey, I steal a glance to my left.

From that vantage point, I can just make out Midtown Manhattan's gleaming mass through the morning mist.

During the latter half of the 20th century, a range of Latinx groups moved to the Union City area.

Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Colombians in search of economic opportunity and stability.

Today, numerous towns in northern Hudson and southeast Bergen counties, areas sometimes referred to as Havana on the Hudson.

Are up to 90% Latinx. Here, just west of the Lincoln Tunnel, and with a view to Midtown, the Americas come together with remnants left from previous European, Middle Eastern.

And Asian migrations. The palpable Latinx presence is most visible along Bergen Line Avenue.

Where flags from the US, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic hang proudly in storefronts, and many privately operated hail and ride minibuses traveling to points in Jersey City and Manhattan fly by.

Signage and language are often bilingual. The North Hudson Islamic Education Center, home to a large number of Latinx Muslims, lies directly off Bergen Line Avenue.

And since 2004, they have hosted the annual National Latino Muslim Day, and they're ramping up for their 20th.

First National Latino Muslim Day later in October. Journalists, activists, and self-described proud Puerto Rican Muslima, Wendy Diaz, says the NHIEC acts as a significant node and centrifugal hub in the broader Latinx Muslim landscape, elaborating that NHIEC is the home to one of the largest Latino Muslim communities in the nation.

It's been catering to their growing needs by providing simultaneous Friday sermons, Spanish interpretations, their annual Latino Muslim Day for the past two decades, and continuous educational programs specially geared towards Spanish speakers and new Muslims of.

Hispanic heritage. Outside of Ramadan, the NHIC also hosts potlucks in which converts and lifelong Muslims alike share dishes from their family's heritage, many of them.

Puerto Rican. Lebron is one such Puerto Rican Muslim. On a muggy… whoop, don't want to skip past him too quick.

On a muggy late May afternoon, I met up with LeBron down the road at Noches do Colombia, a restaurant serving pan-Latin American fare.

As the restaurant's windows dripped with humidity, we discussed his recent comments on the Dean Show, a popular YouTube program.

Responding to disparaging comments toward Muslims tweeted by then-Ms Puerto Rico Destiny Velez, LeBron said Ms. Velez would be welcomed by the Muslim community, but she needed to show more Boricwa pride.

And needed a history lesson as well. If she's a true Puerto Rican, true to the Puerto Rican pride, proud of her culture, proud of where she came from, he said, then I would ask her to go back and read about how Puerto Rico came about being the country that it is, now after being colonized.

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 Taino, African, and Andalusian roots.

He talked about the thousands of words that Spanish shares with Arabic, and the entanglement of Puerto Rican culture with the Middle East.

Referencing the popular music culture of Puerto Rico, LeBron claimed that La Bamba even has Muslim roots.

Looking at the camera, he challenged Ms. Puerto Rico to see how our people are connected to Islam, especially.

In our Boricua culture. As we finished our breakfast and continued our conversation, LeBron told me about his personal journey to Islam in the 1990s as well.

He said he meandered his way through various gangs before finding his way to a meeting of the Universal Zulu Nation, an international hip-hop awareness group formed and formerly headed by artist and speaker Africa Bambata.

As part of their mission to inspire solidarity and what they called ghetto transformation, many members of the Nation of Islam and the Five Percenters, a break-off group from the NOI, joined the meetings in the 1980s and 1990s.

And through contacts in the Zulu Nation, LeBron talked with 5 percenters and members of an all-Latinx and particularly Puerto Rican community in Obrario called Alianza Islamica.

Lebron took the Shahad in 1998, and by 2001 was studying in Medina, Saudi Arabia.

Reflecting on his story, and that of other Puerto Rican Muslims like him, LeBron said, You could call Puerto Rican Muslims the original gangstas of Latino Islam.

Literally, we started in gangs, and then we started the Latinx Muslim community.

In his poem, American, Tato Lavier richly portrays the positives and protestations of biculturalism.

Bilingualism and the broader borderlands experience of Nuo Ricans like LeBron and other Puerto Ricans living in the continental U.S.

Part of their circumstances, Laviero wrote, involves developing the skills, the sensibility, and artistic ability to recreate new identifications and socialities out of the marginalized, miscellany that is their intersectional, multiracial, and bifurcated lives.

In general, Lavierre's poems wrestle with themes like cultural identification, race, language, and this persistent sense of estrangement and precarity that being American represents.

Interwoven throughout his works, of which American is perhaps prototypical, is the constant feeling of belonging neither here nor there in one's country of residence or homeland.

And one's adopted sociality or that of their birth. Or, as Puerto Ricans who feel like foreigners wherever they are and who seek a place for themselves, like to say they are ni.

Needed, yeah. But as the portion of the poem above emphasizes, Laviera also finds hope in the outworking of this imposed, yet inclusive inventiveness.

In choosing the title American to refer to the Puerto Rican Muslims whose stories I share, I invoke Lavierre's poem to highlight convert's sense of never quite feeling at home, and yet drawing on variegated lineages to make peace with their multiple heritages and marginalizations.

This sentiment pervaded my encounters with American Muslims, who are quadrupling minoritized, as Muslims among Puerto Ricans, Puerto Ricans among Muslims, and both Puerto Rican and Muslim in the context of American empire.

In other words, my book tells the story of how Puerto Rican converts to Islam navigate diversity and difference and transform their minoritizations into new identifications that reshape understandings of what it means to be Puerto Rican.

What it means to be Muslim, and what it means to be American all at the same time.

Although they are marginalized within each community they claim membership in, they also believe, belong, and co-create each of these constituencies to one degree or another.

In Lavierre's words, this book is thus the story of how American Muslims spit out in malice and reproduce a broader answer to the marginality that threatens to gobble them up, taking the accent from the altercation through generative frictions with others.

While I focus on Puerto Rican converts, this book is also about the ways in which humans of various identifications navigate diversity and difference in the late modern world.

American Muslims are far from alone in not feeling at home while living at, across, or between borders, both literal and figurative, individual and social.

The challenges associated with the late modern are manifold, defined as it is by a confluence of the legacies of colonial exploitation, cross-border processes, patterns, and problems that mark neoliberal capitalist globalization.

The growth of massive metroplexes as cosmopolitan hubs, and the networks of communication and travel and materials linking them.

As a result, layers upon layers of peoples and cultures and histories and philosophies and religions embodies bump up against one another, come into conflict with each other, or fuse together into new coalitions or combinations as they compete for social, cultural, political, and economic capital.

In this book, I focus on the everyday negotiation of diversity and difference from.

American Muslims' position of marginalization, exploring four lines of inquiry. First, the contested negotiation of their authenticity.

Puerto Rican Muslims often face skepticism about their authenticity from both Muslims and fellow Boricua.

This is not only true among their family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and co-religionists, but also within academic discourses that continue to frame Puerto Ricanness in certain ways, or equate being or becoming Muslim with particular geographies, ethnicities, perspectives.

Or practices. They also contend with colonial legacies. Their identities are shaped by the dual legacies of U.S. Colonization and the broader context of the American Empire.

They also deal with the contingent nature of everyday cosmopolitanism. Rather than viewing cosmopolitanism as a lofty ideal or a moral and political reality, I present it as an everyday, lived social reality.

For me, for cosmopolitanism to be a useful frame for understanding the assemblages that mark Islamic late modernity, I suggest we move away from moralistic and political idealizations, and instead focus on cosmopolitanization as a social process.

The majority of works on Muslim cosmopolitanism try to find and make a case for individuals, institutions, or socialities who exemplify certain characteristics of a perceived cosmopolitan character.

But in general, due to what Aaron Hughes calls considerable conceptual indeterminacy, the idea of Muslim cosmopolitanism becomes a convenient rehash of various good Muslim, bad Muslim dichotomies, wherein good Muslims are found to be cosmopolitan, based on predominantly Western notions and expressions thereof, and bad Muslims are, according to those same measures, found to be anti-cosmopolitan.

In this book, I follow sociologists and anthropologists who approach cosmopolitanism not as some ideal to be reached, but a social reality, however distorted, which has to be explored.

In addition to treating cosmopolitanization as a social process, I operate on the premise that cosmopolitanism is less defined by a sense of feeling at home, wherever one goes, or whomever one encounters, but more by feeling increasingly uncomfortable and out of place.

In places that feel like, are, or we assume should be home.

Therefore, I look at cosmopolitanizations more ambivalent, and I would say constitutive tensions.

As cosmopolitan expressions of being and becoming metamorphize in our late modern world, there is no one-to-one monovalence or reduction of complexity. Instead, the complexities compound.

The tensions multiply, and the intersections of identification take on increased uncertainty.

And fourth, I look at how Puerto Rican Muslims find and form intersectional solidarities.

Examining the intersectionality of precarity in American Muslim lives helps further elucidate the complex cartography of coloniality, cosmopolitanism, and subalterity in the late modern world as well.

Allowing me to tease out the concrete ways that the generative frictions produced by colonialism and neocolonialism in American Muslim lives are then, in La Vieira's words, spit out in malice.

Remixed and otherwise reused to create solidarity. These solidares empower Puerto Rican Reverts to embody the margins of American empire as a site of resistance, and as a result, to envision and give voice to a more just world they yearn for in the future.

Given Puerto Rican's geographic dispersion, I drew on the example of other ethnographies that adopted a multi-local or traveling approach, and I seem to have a good time doing it.

So I went to places where Puerto Rican Muslims were, and they never predominate in any one particular place.

The advantage of a multi-sided approach allowed for the analysis to better trace and elucidate the complexity of their cosmopolitanized lives.

Thus, their stories and experiences shared in this book are the product of 111 semi-structured relational interviews, as well as innumerable hours of participation and observation I conducted in Texas.

Puerto Rico, in New York, New Jersey, in Florida, and along with concomitant digital ethnography that I conducted for 5 years. And then subsequent follow-up interviews as I worked on this manuscript.

To give a general overview, um, of the Puerto Rican Muslim community, these are a few of the folks that I got to talk to, including one whose story I won't be able to share today, but he's a Puerto Rican Muslim ninja, and if you buy the book for any particular reason, do it for his story, because he's amazing. He lives in Staten Island as well, which is a world unto its own.

But there were an estimated 3,500 to 5,000 Muslims in Puerto Rico before Hurricane Maria. After Hurricane Maria, there's been massive out-migration from Puerto Rico in general. That includes the Muslim community as well, and so it's hard to get an estimate of how many Muslims are still on the island. It's a very small community.

There are, however, more… Muslims of Puerto Rican heritage or descent or identification in the United States. That's an estimated 11,000 to 15,000, according to a Latinx Muslim survey that was conducted in 2017. There are undoubtedly more now.

Uh, and when we think about the historical lineages that Puerto Rican Muslims pull on, and which is the subject of an entire chapter in my book.

Carabayo Resto talks about these different callienturas, or junctures of their history during the colonial, Spanish colonial period, the transatlantic trade in enslaved persons that followed soon after, 19th and 20th century immigration, predominantly by Palestinian Muslims, who make up around 90% of the population on the island of Puerto Rico, and then transnational dawah and local conversion through.

Black Muslim movements in New York, New Jersey, Asian Arab Missionary Contact Marriage, and lots of other pathways that Puerto Ricans take to convert.

To Islam. Today, with the time I have left, I'd like to share a few brief vignettes that help flesh out those four aspects of American Muslims' everyday cosmopolitanism that I described earlier.

First, as Muslims among Puerto Ricans. Puerto Rican Muslims are often treated as foreigners in a society where they feel at home.

But where Islam is viewed as anachronistic at best and antagonistic at worst.

The embodiment and performativity of Islam becomes a particularly poignant point of contestation for Puerto Rican Muslim converts, who are constantly answering and reformulating their responses to their everyday context and relationships. This is true on the island, as well as in the diaspora.

Jennifer Matarena Taylor's film, New Muslim Cool, tells the story of Puerto Rican raptor Hansa Perez and his conversion to Islam against the backdrop of the post-9-11 world, government surveillance, prison, drugs, and street life in the urban centers of Pennsylvania.

It also shows Perez's family and depicts their reactions and continued wrestling with his new religious identity.

His aunt reflected that it was a shock when Perez converted, because we're Catholic, you know? It was a little… we would get into our little confrontations, arguments. His mother talked about raising Perez in a Catholic school, his name being Jason and not Hamza, and the process of his conversion being very confusing for her.

At the same time, she's happy that he no longer drinks, smokes, or is involved with gangs.

In the end, she admitted, my family don't understand what Muslims is.

Perez's story is far from the only one that involves misunderstanding, confrontation, and struggle within the family.

Indeed, the place where the process of simultaneous ostracism and reconstituted identification takes place most frequently and with the most intensity within the intimate networks of family and friends.

Almost every Puerto Rican Muslim I talk to had a struggle within their families when they converted.

Furthermore, even after conversion, they faced a steady barrage of pressure from their friends, neighbors, and coworkers and family members for being.

Too Arab, or abandoning their Puerto Rican culture in favor of Islam.

Such was the case with Adrian. I first met Adrian when he was cleaning the steps leading up to the prayer room at the mosque in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico.

Vigorously mopping the white tiles, Adrian was a fairly recent convert who had grown up Christian.

His conversion cost him. When I met Adrian, he was living at his mother's house after going through a divorce.

When he converted, his wife told him that while she liked Muslims, was fine with Islam, didn't mind it at all, she would not convert.

At Adrian's mother's house a couple of days later, his ex-wife, Diana, arrived with their 20-month-old son.

Of our cafe con Lecce, I got to know Diana a bit more, and she told me that she speaks some Arabic because she traveled to the Middle East on business. It was partially through these business contacts that Adrian, her former husband, came to convert.

She emphasized again that while she respects Muslims and Islam, she would not convert nor remain married to Adrian after he converted.

He related that he kept his conversion a secret at first, until Diana caught him praying one day and freaked.

Out. He said, we realize our interests, feelings, and outlook were heading in different directions, so we divorced.

Whether or not their child will be raised Muslim is an ongoing and contested question.

Adrian's family struggles were not limited to his former marriage. His mother was a Pentecostal, and his father a strict atheist. When Adrian converted, his father made fun of him for his religion.

As an old-school Marxist who still thinks religion is the opium of the masses or something, my father doesn't take me too seriously, Adrian said. His mother had even stronger words. On the news of his conversion, she said, you betray Christ.

You betray our culture. Although there is rarely any overtension between Adrian and his parents, he knows that his family and his friends do not know what to do with his faith.

Faced with feelings on the fringe, Puerto Rican Muslims try to reconcile their multiple identifications by crafting what is called a Boricua Islamidad.

A unique Puerto Rican Muslim identity that resists complete assimilation to Arab cultural norms on the island, even as it reimagines and expands what it means to be Puerto Rican and Muslim.

They seek ways, like LeBron on The Dean Show, to connect their Muslim identity with conventional markers of Puerto Rican culture in order to show family and friends and colleagues and loved ones that being Muslim does not mean they are rejecting.

Turning their back on, or abandoning their Puerto Rican-ness, but discovering different aspects to it.

They appeal to the Iberian Muslim past and the vestiges of Arabic influence on over 3,000 words in the Spanish language, of which these are just a couple of examples. They draw on broader Latinx Muslim narratives about the connections between Andodusia and contemporary spaces like Centro-Islamico in Houston, Texas. They harken back to the historical vestiges of architecture and try to reflect that in mosques around the island.

Or in finding it at famous cultural institutions like the Teno Potorqueno in San Juan, where here the motto of the Nasrid dynasty, the last dynasty on the Iberian Peninsula, there is no victor, but Allah is listed here on a major.

Monument in Old San Juan. They also exchange recipes with each other online for creative halal versions of Puerto Rican culinary classics, and even new fusion versions like this mofongo burger that is also halal.

Several of my interlocutors suggested that by converting to Islam and rediscovering the many vestiges of Islamic influence on Puerto Rican culture and society, they are perhaps even more Puerto Rican than their non-Muslim relations. As one interlocutor, Kamal, told me, I'm decolonizing our identity, stripping it of its Christian colonial decay, and rediscovering what it means to be Boricua.

To be Puerto Rican before and without Christianity. Thus, through language, architecture, and food, they seek to make Islam not simply something that exists in Puerto Rico.

But something that is of Puerto Rico. This is a resistant response to built-in mechanisms of power that both exclude and tangentially include Muslims in the Puerto Rican cultural imagination.

It's also a context-specific and nuanced response to their simultaneous local and global encounters that they find themselves in in the late modern world, typified.

Within the Puerto Rican Muslim community. Alongside these negotiations of identity and practice that Puerto Rican Muslims face as Muslims in Puerto Rican society, they also find difficulties within the Muslim community as well.

After meeting Jose at the Eid celebrations in San Juan in 2015, I met up with him a few days later in Rio Piedras. We talked about the celebration, the prayers, the food, the dancing, and he said that it's all pure Palestinian tribalism.

We can eat the food, we can participate in the dances, but that wouldn't be us. That isn't our identity. It's not Islam, either. They can get together for their celebrations to remember their Palestinian. That's fine.

We have our festivals, our celebrations with Puerto Ricans, but we don't mix that with Islam. We don't try to make it one and the same.

Being Arab doesn't make you a better Muslim, he told me.

If anything, Puerto Rican Muslims are a pure picture of the unified ummah, talked about in the Qur'an.

I inquired how so, and he responded with a smirk. Or pure hybrids, man. Pure hybrid creations of our own making.

Nobody bred us, nobody planned to make Puerto Rican Muslims, we just happened.

We're not easily categorized. We're not the next… we are the next step in the UMA's evolution… evolution.

But, he admitted, it's still difficult to get a grasp of who we are.

Indeed, the question of who we are remains a prevalent one for Puerto Ricans who have converted to Islam, especially on the island where, as I mentioned, up to 90% of the Muslims are Palestinian.

Along with many others in the late modern world whose identity has been brought into question by the commonplace nature of cosmopolitan encounter.

Puerto Rican Muslims must navigate the in-between of simultaneously being part of the Muslim world and yet feeling as if they are marginalized on its metaphysical edges.

For Jose and other Puerto Rican Muslim converts like him, the tension experienced in their conversion and the collision of culture, traditions, and customs that comes with it produces new mixtures and identities.

This process is not an easy one, but through the confluence of the streams of different cultural heritages and the pressures they feel in joining a new community, a new identity emerges that is both decidedly Muslim and stubbornly Puerto Rican.

Some Puerto Rican Muslims attempt to ease this tension by, as one interlocutor put it, being more Muslim than the Muslims.

This was particularly the case with Puerto Rican imams who studied at institutions in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere in the quote-unquote Muslim world, or among those who became stricter about aspects of the Sunnah than their co-religionists at the local mosque.

Studying at such sources of Islamic knowledge, or seeking to impose a pure piety on their fellow Muslims seemed to give them a certain level of authenticity.

From which they feel they can better lead other Muslims, especially their fellow Puerto Ricans and other Latinos.

Others reject such overtures and opt out of what they call Arab-dominated mosques and communities and create alternative spaces for prayer and connection.

When I returned to Puerto Rico for fieldwork after doing some research in Florida, I found the fissures around the Eid gathering two years after I first talked to Jose there were still very felt and still very fresh.

So Maya is married to an Egyptian and is a convener of a multicultural group at her home for Friday prayers and special events. Join me at the Eid al-Fitr celebration at the Convention Center in June that year.

She had recently had a falling out with the Muslim community in Puerto Rico.

Although she used to be seen as a leader for her efforts alongside a local imam doing dawah with Puerto Ricans, she was now widely suspect for her outspoken positions on LGBTQI plus issues and participation in mass same-sex wedding ceremonies in San Juan.

She came to the Eid celebrations, but was wary of her co-religionists at the same time.

Pulling me aside, she commented, we get together every year for this ritual, this celebration, and people gather from all over Puerto Rico, but the thing is.

This isn't real community. It's community without community. I'd rather be on my own, or with my own, than interact with them, the wider era of Muslim community in Puerto Rico.

As Palestinian music began to play in the background and several men began to dance their way to the stage, Sumaya pointed out to me that there are not many Puerto Ricans here this year.

She looked around the room of 500 and counts out 20 or so.

I ask if that's just a reflection of the small number of converts, and she retorted, no, it's a reflection of how they do not feel part of this group.

Highlighting such fractures of difference between Muslims as Andrew Bush refers to them, I'm not attempting to recreate some Arab, non-Arab, or immigrant indigenous dichotomy.

Instead, the stories shared here illustrate that a cosmopolitan frame helps us see these communities' experiences as a dynamic, overlapping, and entangled relationship of generative frictions, rather than as distinct or delimited communities or phenomena.

A significant aspect of what shapes Puerto Rican Muslim identity is their relationships with non-Puerto Rican Muslims.

On the one hand, there's much they glean from these relationships, much that they wholeheartedly accept and adapt with relative ease into their own quotidian contexts.

On the other hand, because of their marginalization in local mosques, group events, and in community leadership.

Puerto Rican Muslims identify, or their identity is also shaped by the rejection of and resistance to Arab culture, identity, and their co-religionists.

It's in this dynamic tension between acceptance and rejection, adaptation and resistance, that a distinct Borrico Islamidad emerges.

It is also where distinct solidarities can materialize as well. And that's my last aspect, is to look at Puerto Rican… being Puerto Rican and Muslim in the context of American empire.

Just before I arrived for fieldwork in Puerto Rico in 2017, students began a university-wide strike at the University of Puerto Rico.

Disputing actions proposed by the US's Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act, or PROMESA, and its financial oversight and Management Board, known colloquially as La Junta.

To enforce the shutdown of the OOPI system, students barricaded the Gallito emblazoned main gates of the campus with delivery pallets, desks, and chairs from the classrooms.

If one was following along with the social media hashtags that brought attention to the event, one might have caught a glimpse of the aforementioned Abdyan.

Laying out his prayer map for evening prayer. Adrian is a staunch supporter of Puerto Rican independence, and was active and politically engaged as a street artist in San Juan. You can see one of his pieces here.

Known on campus for a striking political paintings, Adityan said he was the only Muslim he knew of at the Ubi protests.

When people would ask him about his faith in politics, he pointed to this mural on the wall on one of the campus's main parking lots depicting female freedom fighters, one Palestinian, one Chechen, along with flowers, skulls, and a gun sight trained on Carlos M. Garcia, a prominent member of La Junta.

Adrian's experience and the convergence of his faith in resistance politics helps bring into focus some of the contours of the political and ethical self-fashioning of American Muslims in light of their double marginalization as both Muslim and Puerto Rican in the context of American empire.

The story of Puerto Rico has never sat comfortably aside more celebratory narratives of U.S. History.

Nor has the story of global Islam. Instead, the plotline of Muslims and Puerto Ricans across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries unfolds in the shadow and under the influence of American empire.

Thus, the two communities share a story of perseverance, resistance, and resilience in the face of a struggle to reconcile histories of colonization and cultural racism.

With a strong sense of minoritized identification. At the same time, the two are shaped by their own respective socio-political contours, seminal events, and emphases.

In American Muslim lives, the two narratives become intertwined, revealing a complex and cosmopolitan nexus of solidarity around issues of colonization, racism, oppression, and varying intersectional phobias in the late modern age.

This is what Wilfredo Amir Ruiz, a Puerto Rican Muslim lawyer in Miami, calls an acute intersection of marginalization.

What we see in Adrian's protests and the following ethnographic narrative as a result of the continuous outworking of the unresolved contradictions and ongoing provocation of this final set of marginalizations.

In the words of the Puerto Rican Muslima poet I quoted earlier, with oppression manifest comes insight.

Puerto Rico thrust into darkness only to see the light. But Puerto Rico's have hope. We have been in worse situations, battling for independence against imperialist nations.

Well, there were multiple instances where the intersectionality of race, religion, and power came together during my work with Puerto Rican Muslims from the aftermath of Hurricane Maria to the Upi protests, or the reaction to the Pulse nightclub shooting.

In Orlando, Florida. I want to take this opportunity to share about the ways in which Puerto Ricans dual minoritization as Muslim and Puerto Rican in the context of American empire has created what Sarah Alertani calls novel solidarities between Puerto Ricans concerned with their political situation.

And the so-called Palestinian problem. I focus here on two instances when engagement with the question of Palestine led to the creation of new coalitions and partnerships of resistance.

Ramon Ocasio, one of the founders of Alianza Islamica, the first Latino-specific Muslim community formerly founded in 1987, said that tired of second-class citizenship.

Racism and poverty, as well as what the United States' continuing colonial domination of Puerto Rico, their community resisted various forms of marginalization through their activities and activism in El Barrio in New York City in the 1980s and 90s.

Ocasio said that their marginalization as an underclass in American cities was part of a broader struggle against neocolonialism and racism.

They shared their struggle with other civil rights groups in the US and with other groups in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East.

In particular, they saw the connections between occupied Palestine and occupied Vieques.

A Puerto Rican island used for U.S. Military testing and bombing practice, and their joint struggle against the military might and racist superstructures of the Western powers.

Influenced by other Islamic groups, such as Bani Sakr and the 5% Nation, but wanting to do something singular for their people.

Ocasio, John, or Yaya Figueroa, and Freddie Ibrahim Gonzalez founded Alianza Islamica to improve their community and its way of life.

Ocasio said, we began the difficult journey of being a Puerto Rican Muslim in a world that had trouble accepting that.

Both inside the mosques and outside. Fast forward almost 3 decades, and Ibrahim is serving me tiramasu across the bar at Nana, a small Italian eatery in the Condado neighborhood in San Juan.

As he does so, I notice a prominent tattoo of Leila Khalid on his left forearm.

As it takes a break from serving brunch to patrons gather on a sultry summer Sunday morning, he wipes the sweat from his forehead, and I ask him about the tattoo.

He says, quite nonchalantly, Oh, this? She's how I came to Islam. As the brunch crowd recedes, he serves me a cup of coffee and tells me how his parents raised him reading Karl Marx's like it was the Bible, he said.

They were always encouraging me to read the stories of the oppressed, to not get stuck in the colonial mindset of Puerto Rico, he said, echoing the prominent theory of insiderismo, that because of colonization, Puerto Ricans can't think beyond the island.

With his parents' input, Ibrahim thought well beyond the island's confines.

As a teenager, he showed a growing interest in popular revolutions, everything from the PLO to the Zapatistas.

Revolutionary Iran to the Puerto Rican skinheads. Eventually, his interest in the PLO led him to read more about Islam, grab the copy of the Qur'an that was on his parents' bookshelf, and then, later, take the Shahada.

While he said being a Muslim in Puerto Rico can be lonely, he feels connected to his fellow Muslims across the globe fighting for freedom.

When he converted, he sought not only as a religious choice, but a political one.

To stand with marginalized Muslims across the globe. And also as fuel for the fire of resistance to American imperialism on his own island.

Even in brief, Alianza Islamika's and Ibrahim's stories illustrate how being both Muslim and Puerto Rican in the context of American empire has helped give shape to Puerto Rican Muslims' identifications and networks and activities within a transnational comparative framework of anti-colonial.

Anti-imperial resistance. Their stories not only provide new insight into the scope and scale of global Muslim resistance, but also demands for Puerto Rican independence and autonomy, and also the connections between Puerto Ricans, feeling that they are a nation without a state, as well as Palestine being a nation.

That estate. In the end, it is another example of the ways in which the everyday lives of American Muslims are relevant to conversations far beyond their particular context, and can serve as a useful.

Specific case study in which to study the navigation of diversity and difference in the late modern world.

As you can tell, I enjoyed my fieldwork, I treasure the opportunity to share American Muslim stories, and could go on for hours. Alas, it's time for me to come to a close.

I wish I could have shared more about Palestinian Muslims in Puerto Rico, such as Salim or Ahmed, who share with me how they navigate the palpable tensions with their Puerto Rican Muslim brothers and sisters, or how they enjoy living on the island.

I wish I could have talked more about the gendered experiences of Samaya or Khadija, and what they called the Issamization of machismo.

I wish I could have talked more about the multiple valences of Puerto Rican Muslim politics, more about their foodways and sartorial practices, included more comparison between the Amarrician Muslim experience and other communities in Latin America and the Caribbean, or trace the networks that connect Puerto Rican Muslims to other communities throughout the globe.

For now, I hope the stories I shared and the points I offered not only give you an intimate introduction to America and Muslim experience, but also help shine light on dynamics of Muslim experience in the late modern world more broadly.

My sincere thanks goes to the Center of Muslim Experience in the United States, particularly Chad and Yasmeen, for their hospitality while I've been here.

The School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies for hosting this event, and I look forward to the conversation we're about to have and the responses I'll hear, as well as the Q&A to follow.

But most of all, I thank the many Puerto Rican Muslims who shared their lives and stories with me, as one said.

Ours is the story, after all. Ken, you're just the storyteller.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ken. As I said, we'll just have a.

Brief, sort of, panel discussion. We're here, we're very honored, actually, to have today with us, uh, Dr. Andrea Shaheen Espinoza.

From the School of Social Transformation in the Herberger Institute, the School of.

Music, dance, and theater. I got that right. Um, but her own work actually, quite interestingly, sort of is involved in engaged with questioning how migration, nostalgia, grief.

Impact notions of tradition and performance practices. Of the Syrian diasporic communities, both in the United States and in Latin America.

So she brings with her some very, sort of, interesting own background and perspective on some of these sort of connected issues.

Do you want to start us off? Thank you.

Well, thank you so much for such a wonderful presentation, and for sharing your wonderful work with us.

I've thoroughly enjoyed, um, learning more about it these… these last couple weeks.

Um, I guess my first question, I have a few questions for you, but my first one, you know, I'm wondering if… you came across any particular popular mediums, uh, that were mentioned.

Or that floated maybe to the top of the testimonies of your interlocutors, um, as they cited reasons for reverting to Islam.

Um, that was something that I encountered when I was studying, um.

Notions of musical tradition in both Mexico and Argentina, and the… novella or clone, the very popular novella came up, uh, numerous times about sort of sparking a curiosity in Islam, and so I was wondering if you encountered anything similar.

Yeah. Thank you for that question, and for… Referencing a clone and, um… telenovelas, which have a role in Puerto Rico as well.

Um, not that they cited those particular, um, pop culture references in their conversion pathways, but some definitely reference it, like, media representations of Islam, sparking some type of curiosity. One convert in particular talked about, in 1996.

Relevant to the bombings at the Olympics in Atlanta, and all the speculation that immediately turned towards Muslims, and he said, why would they immediately assume Muslims are about.

That, or doing this. And then that turned into a conversation with one of the Muslim neighbors that he had, and then eventually led to his Shahada.

Um, as well. Um, some people also do reference, interestingly enough, not media that has to do with Islam explicitly, um, but they look at, um.

Groups like, uh, Calle3, which is a very political reggaeton, but also hip-hop group.

Out of Puerto Rico. Um, and again, this kind of idea of resistance politics, out of which created connections with resistance organizations among Muslim minorities or groups across the globe.

Uh, and so again, that kind of political milieu that Puerto Ricans have as a colony of the United States and resistance to that experience.

Pervades popular culture in Puerto Rico, and whether or not it's Islamic, or references Islam.

Does a few times, um, but not too strongly. Um, that… definitely put them on a track towards conversion, but I didn't hear any explicit reference to, um…

Popular media as such, even though it kind of wove its way through here and there in the conversations.

Interesting. Just to follow up, I'm just kind of curious, post-conversion.

How do you find, in a sense, their relationship and connection to this musical tradition or other expressive arts and cultures?

And particularly this ways in which, as you're saying, art becomes this mode of resistance, finding themselves at the margins of American empire.

Does that change? With conversion, and what is our relationship to music?

To pop music as Muslims. And hip-hop, or other ways in which they express themselves.

Yeah, I think that there might be a more ready acceptance of turning to music or using music to express aspects of their, like, Boricua Muslim pride, um, as well. They also critique aspects of Puerto Rican popular culture.

One of the interesting things that came up. Was the Fiesta of St. James in Luis Aldea, which is east of San Juan, and this is one of the most.

Popular, uh, popularly framed festivals in Puerto Rico. Um, it's on so many different tourism posters, people are encouraged to go to it, and it's kind of showcased as an example of.

Black Puerto Rican pride. And essentially, the festival features these caballeros, or these gentlemen, these knights on horses, chasing these vegigantes, or these diablitos, these little devils. It's a recreation of.

The idea that St. James, the brother of Jesus, miraculously appeared to chase out the Moors when the Spanish Catholics were looking to re… complete the Reconquista, the reconquest of Iberian… the Iberian Peninsula.

And this is brought over to Puerto Rico as part of the colonization process, and this is repeated in various places across Latin America.

Um, but the Vehigantes, who were originally Moors, people have kind of forgotten that, and now they're… they take pride of place. They're the center of all the posters, they're part of this black Puerto Rican identity, um, and the caballeros are less important, almost, in the festival and in the popular representations of it.

But after conversion, to come back to your question, you were wondering, where was Ken going? Um, after conversion, Puerto Rican Muslims look on this, where you have.

You know, three statues of St. James that are paraded through the streets, one for men, one for women, and one for children, and each one of them has a St. James on a white horse riding over, and he's very clearly white, um, and he's riding over and trampling and stabbing turbaned brown men.

Uh, with beard. And so, where… before they were Muslim, they didn't think much of this.

After they were Muslim, they started to critique it, even as they recognized people in Luis Aldea aren't.

You know, doing this as any type of Islamophobic representation, but they see it as a way that, again, Muslim stories as part of Puerto Rican history are marginalized, pushed aside, or generally trampled over as they are with these, um.

Statues, and the one for the children is particularly striking, because if you've ever seen a Precious Moments Bible.

Where you have these, like, large angelic eyes and soft, uh, blushed cheeks. Uh, the St. James is like that, and so are the turbaned Muslim men down below, which kind of interesting juxtaposition with the violence of it, but that's just one example of how that changes after conversion.

Just curious, this question, racialization, right, comes up over and over again.

And becomes a major way in which, obviously, not only is it imposed upon, but it's also a mode of resistance, of an affirmation of.

Not just the marginalization, but in some sense, the creation of, sort of, pride and other ways in which it becomes a resistance to, then, the imposition. So race gets… in a sense, reconfigured within these processes of resistance. So I was just, I mean, when you're talking, you had mentioned in sort of passing, but Nation of Islam.

Which, to me, I mean, in many ways, is a very American movement. I mean, it's not… I mean, if you want to understand Nation of Islam, you don't look at Islam, you actually.

Look at racism in the United States. And I'm just kind of curious.

With conversion of… Puerto Ricans, do you… Is it an American issue?

In a sense, in the same way. As the ways in which the resisting empire and their place on the margins of empire, if you will.

Or do you see it, in a sense, or is it both, or multiple sort of things going on?

This question of the ways in which a real connection to Islam, or is it really, in a sense, a resistance to.

American-ness. Yeah, thank you for that question. And one of the things.

That happened in this multi-sided fieldwork, because obviously the experiences of, uh, reverts in Puerto Rico is different and distinct from that of reverts in New York and New Jersey, and they're… they're… first contact points. Uh, Nation of Islam does not have a presence on the island, for example, so that was not usually a pathway to conversion or even didn't feature much. Maybe Malcolm X is a figure or something.

Um, but not very strongly. In the US, however, particularly because of their geographic proximity in and around Harlem, that there was just a thickness there that they bumped into them very regularly in interaction.

Um, but also because Puerto Ricans who came to New York were coded as Black within the United States racial orders. Now, this isn't to say that Puerto Ricans aren't Black. There is, um… you know, Africanity is baked into Puerto Rican culture and identification and history, etc. It's often denied on the island. However, so in Puerto Ricans come to New York and New Jersey, there can be a surprise to find out they're called black, because they never thought of themselves that way. And there's a lot of debate within the Puerto Rican community about that.

So, within their experience, it's… I would say it's very American. It's a very American issue, because when they come to the United States, they become something else in terms of the racialization and the structures that exist in the United States.

Then associating with members of the race they now find themselves in is one of the ways they convert to Islam and are able to then resist that racialization. It's the same in Puerto Rico, even though it takes on different contours, insofar as, again, resistance to American empire is often a pathway to how people convert.

Or even if it's not a main motivating factor, afterwards, they find a rich resource across.

Global Islamic tradition and discourse to resist American empire, and to add to their repertoire thereof.

But I want to add one more thing on that. Puerto Rico is hard to place, um, and… That also came up in, like, publishing this book. It was like, okay, is this… like, it's published in a series on Latin America.

Um, and some people are like, oh yeah, Puerto Rico, Latin America, of course. It could have easily been in a Caribbean series, it could have easily been on a global Muslim series, it could have been in a lot of different places. It could be on America, it could be on the United States, um, it could be on colonies, and… I… I had to navigate that as an author, whatever, but Puerto Ricans have to navigate that constantly, right? Are you part of Latin America, or are you part of the United States? Are you part of the Latinx United States, or are you actually part of the Hispanophone Caribbean? Or… and Puerto Ricans would be like.

Yeah. Uh, and so, it is an American story, but that's also why I take American and Tato Lavier's poem to refer to the converts that I focus on.

Uh, because that kind of breaks up this American experience to show its connections to various other orders and geographies.

To follow up on… on that, um, I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about.

The friction between. Puerto Rican reverts, and the Palestinian community, and what was happening there.

And, you know, if you… If any of your interlocutors or of the reverts that you were, um, speaking with.

Um, if any of them identified with the older Syrian and Lebanese population.

That had been there, or were descendants of that population, and how that community might play… may or may not play into.

This whole dynamic. Yeah, um… that presence is not as keenly felt because of the predominance of Palestinians, which is quite distinct from many other Latin American contexts. Um, pretty much.

Every other place, you go, yeah, there are Palestinians present, and they may have, like, in Chile, they have also a very strong presence in local communities. But, like, I mean, if you're in Argentina or you're in Mexico, or you're in El Salvador, or wherever, the Syro-Libanese presence is thick.

It's different in Puerto Rico because it's the Palestinian presence that is very evident. And when you walk into the different mosques and the different communities, it becomes evident very quickly in terms of.

Decor, food, dress, language, all of that. Um, and also who started these mosques. Um, from what I could gather, and there weren't.

Records that I accessed for every single mosque, but anecdotally at least, every single mosque on the island that was built was built.

From within the Palestinian community there. So they also control the resources of the local religious community, and often also.

Many other resources. You know, one of my interlocutors proudly told me I was the first guy to bring IHOP to the island, uh, you know, and that was a point of pride for him, but for Puerto Ricans who see fast food colonization as part of American empire, he was also an agent of empire in doing that. But he also employed recent converts, and so they're constantly having to deal with.

How Palestinians predominate. Now. As I talk about this, this almost makes Palestinians into villains, given the emphasis I put on Puerto Rican reverts and their experiences with them, but in one of my chapters, I really try, and it's the messiest chapter in my book. All my chapters are messy in a way, but that chapter's the messiest, because it is a very messy.

Lived reality for these people, and Palestinians feel ostracized in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Ricans feel ostracized by Palestinians on the island, and so it's a difficult struggle, and they're all trying to figure it out together, but they don't reference Syro-Lebanese history as much, not that I encountered. And they don't refer to other communities beyond.

Puerto Rico all that much, either. Their experience is quite insular, and it's connected either back to.

Other nodes within the Palestinian diaspora, or with other Puerto Rican Muslims, other Latinx Muslims in the United States, less so to.

Latin America or other places in the Caribbean.

Um, we'll open up in just a minute, but I just… I want to push… one issue, is the main theme, cosmopolitanism, right? And this is something I, myself.

Just little reference. So, engaged with a few years ago. I found Cosmopolitan, sort of, Muslim cosmopolitanism, actually quite refreshing, but at that time, I was deeply engaged in discussions around the idea of global citizenship.

Which I just had serious problems with, and sort of… in the… Thus, I found in cosmopolitanism a way of critiquing.

This idea, both citizenship. And the ways in which the global was being sort of imagined, um.

At that time. This is pre-COVID, in a period where people are sort of rethinking their connections and relationships and things that have.

Of course, since shifted again. But Cosmopolitan came out as… and again.

Multiple ways in which it's understood and approached, and how we understood it, and so I really… I take… the heart, your idea of this kind of lived social processes of it, not these imposed.

Categories in which we sort of fit with. But at the same time, I found that.

Why it's not necessarily unique. To Muslims. There was something inherent.

Late Islamic, if you will, or Muslim-ness. About the ways in which a sort of cosmopolitan mindset imaginaire took root.

And in some ways, it was their own imagining of their relationship. In some ways, the uma loomed large. And again, these are very normative, abstract ideas, this global community of Muslims.

Out there somewhere. And again, the day-to-day reality is something completely different.

And so that tension. But it's a… there's an aspiration.

And so I'm just kind of curious of, in your experience, and particularly amongst the reverts and the Puerto Ricans and that place there.

That aspiration to something. Other. And so, and I figured you had one quote I found, that we are the pure hybrid.

Right? I forget who said it, but, um, and that's the true Muslim Ummah. The next phase of this Umah is this constantly sort of changing.

Now, I'm just kind of curious, what is that aspiration? And what is that hybridness that actually comes out of business that may be actually rooted in Islam or Islamic?

Sort of perspective. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that question. Um, yeah, I think…

In the lives of Puerto Rican reverts, the Uma is a very, um, important ideal.

And it's operational in their lives for a couple of reasons. One, it's very significant to them because it helps them break beyond what they may feel is an insular position as Puerto Ricans. Feeling isolated.

Marginalized on the island or within the diaspora, being part of this global community helps them feel more connected, more grounded, uh, they draw on various forms of resistance within that community, and so the UMA operates at a very personal level and a very strong level within their lives. At the same time.

Because their local lived realities sometimes. Shatter this Uma ideal. Um, they develop what one of my interlocutors called asaboriqua.

Um, Astaboricua being, uh, kind of a play on the concept of acavilla, which was developed by Ibn Khaldun to talk about, like, the tensions between the.

General community, and then local solidarities. Um, and so both the Ummah and the Asaburikua operate within their lives at the same time, and they draw strength from both, depending upon.

When their interaction, or how their interactions are proceeding, or who they're talking to, and I talk about Jose, who talked about this, we are the next step in the UMA's evolution. Uh, he would at one time talk about, oh, there is no difference in the ummah, it's not Palestinian, Puerto Rican, and then at the same time be like, well, Puerto Ricans are the best form of the uma, and Palestinians are tribal, and we're not tribal, and so he would use both in the conversation, and I was struggling to figure out.

Who he was and what he was trying to say, and then realized that perhaps, yeah, both of these are existing within his life and his experience at the same time.

And so my critique of the usual ways we think about Muslim cosmopolitanism kind of emerge from that.

Because I said, well. To think that Jose is not cosmopolitan when he's.

Emphasizing the asaboriqua. Doesn't match his lived reality or what I'm seeing, and so I want to see that also as cosmopolitan, rather than just seeing that Uma ideal and that grasping at a global community, um, as.

As cosmopolitan. I was influenced by Annet Singh here, who says, globality doesn't emerge, um, from, you know, when things are going well, but from these frictions, right? And the grip of local encounter, as she puts it during her research in Indonesia. And I was compelled by that. I will also say, to any grad students in the room, maybe there's not any left anymore, but cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitanization.

Or for scholars, don't choose these words in your writing. I misspelt them 99 times out of 100, and then I misspeak them 90 times out of 100. So, just a poor choice in theory. I would definitely choose another one next time.

Just one last question, then just follow up. Do you think it has any utility anymore? Academic, from an academic perspective?

I was gonna call it? I think, um… the critique that I join in with, rather than… it's not my original critique, others have pointed this out, but when we make Muslim cosmopolitanism solely into a moral or political ideal, again, I write in the book that I aspire to that, perhaps not as a Muslim, but this moral, political, ideal, cosmopolitanism is something that I am.

Committed to and find appealing, and yet, as a framework, I fear that.

A, those well-meaning, saying these are cosmopolitan Muslims drawing on this cosmopolitan tradition, are falling into a broader discourse that.

Especially within people who are not studying Islam as such, but talking about cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitanization.

A lot of the authors who talk about this, uh, Ulrich Beck, Kwame Appia, um, these kind of big names talking about cosmopolitanism, they will raise up Muslim.

And particular contexts where Islam predominates and say, this is anti-cosmopolitan.

Um, and so I think in saying, well, these Muslims in Indonesia or Malaysia or here are Muslim cosmopolitanism.

Our Muslim cosmopolitans plays into their, kind of. Cosmopolitan, anti-cosmopolitan dichotomy, and recreates or rehashes this kind of good Muslim, bad Muslim.

Framework that emerges out of Western understandings of cosmopolitanism. So I think if we proceed with it, we just have to be aware of and wary of falling into that, and maybe I fell into it as well. I don't know, but dealing it more as a… dealing with it more as a social process, seeing cosmopolitanism not as a way of feeling at home in the world, but actually feeling very uncomfortable in the world, and how that works out in daily life.

That felt more right to me. But, yeah. So, we'll open it up to any questions.

Of the audience?

Uh, Eugene?

So, I'd like you to, um, thank you so much for your talk. I'd like you to, um… just comment on, uh, so in your…

Totally, you have Puerto Rican converts to Islam, but… You've been speaking about reverts. Yeah. So could you, uh, uh, explain.

Why you didn't use revert, uh, and what the difference is. Yeah.

Thank you for the question, and thank you for being here as well.

Yes. So, I use the word interchangeably in the book. Um, because when I was having conversations with reverts or converts, they would also use.

Them, not interchangeably, but some would say they're converts, some would say they're reverts.

I remember one particular conversation where, um. Guy said he was a convert, and I asked him about this, because I was wondering why people use different terms at different times. And, uh, he said, man, that revert stuff, he's like, that's pure Puerto Rican bullshit.

Uh, and I was like, well, what do you mean by that? Uh, you know, the annoying kid on the playground being like, well, but why? But why? And then, um, he was like, oh, well, because they're trying to, like, recover this Andalusian history, and that's why they're saying they're reverting back to their original past, and other people found that very empowering, very strengthening, part of this Borico Islamidad, but he critiqued it. Um, and I found others who also felt like, no, I just don't call myself a revert, I'm a convert.

Fine. Uh, revert also has meaning within Islamic parlance as well, as a reversion to your original state of creation, right? And so.

But different people disagreed about it, and I knew if I used Convert, 50% of the people that I talked to would be like, ah, he's using the wrong word. If I used Revert, 50% of the people would be like, eyes using the wrong word. Uh, and so I went with convert, probably because on the cover, it speaks to… people more broadly and more widely, rather than revert. But I use it in, kind of, mixed in throughout the book, trying to match it to what, if I'm telling a particular person's story, what term they used. The other linguistic aspect of it that if, um, you're a Spanish expert, is that.

Boricua, there's an accent on the eye. This is… this is an error. This is wrong.

I do it intentionally, A, because the original title of this book was American Muslims. You might have picked up on that in my talk.

But Google doesn't recognize American, so my publishers told me that I can't have that, because it would just be American Muslims, according to Google. Thank you, Google, for ruining everything.

Um, but I wanted to maintain that accent from the altercation aspect, uh, and so we put that in the title.

Uh, there. And so there were a lot of choices, I think, and this is part of the Puerto Rican Muslim experience of these kind of combined cultures, these, uh, contestations, these generative frictions, convert-revert, accent on the eye or no accent on the eye. There are a lot of those choices that came into the process, um, so… Thank you for asking about that. Did that answer your question sufficiently? Yeah, good.

Thanks so much, uh, it's great to hear you talk, and uh, Chad, I think mostly covered my question. I was curious more about.

Intersections with anti-Blackness and all of that. But I'm curious about your fieldwork process and the process of, like, um, participation in.

Ritual and festivals and prayer events. Uh, and since we have some graduate students still left here, I could wonder if you could weigh in a little more about that, what that was like for you, what did you learn from.

Beyond the questions of identity that come out of it, but from practice. Were there any, like, noteworthy stories within any of the sites that you study? I don't know, it's a huge question. Yeah. Anything interesting about embodied practice that you… Embodied practice. That you can tell us about.

Yeah, thank you for clarifying. Choose one. Yeah, thank you for that question. I'll choose… three very brief ones to respond to that. Uh, one, uh, was the day, and I talked to a couple grad students about this last night, but I was in Staten Island with the Puerto Rican Muslim Ninja, and I spent the whole day with him. I left my house at 5, got to his place by 8, because it takes forever to get to Staten Island, um, and I was there, and it was 4PM, and he gave me a piece of pumpkin pie and coffee, and we were transcribing an interview, and I fell asleep.

The sunshine was on me, and I just fell asleep, because I was dead tired, you know? And he just, like, put a blanket on me and let me sleep for a while, and then woke me up, and then was like, let's go for a tour of the island, you need some fresh air. So, embodiment is you're also a tired researcher, um, and people can be really kind to you in that, um, very embarrassing. The other one was, uh, yeah, as a non-Muslim.

Um, in Muslim spaces, I was put into, um, some opportunistic, uh, you know, circumstances, and also into some awkward ones.

Um, as you may have seen in the pictures, I had a pretty thick beard back then, um, and I have a mustache now, and you can judge that accordingly. Um, but back when I had the beard.

I would code as Muslim when I walked into the space. Um, I would perform, uh, wudu out of respect, and entering into their spaces, but then most people would assume I was Muslim, and I would sit down, particularly for Jumma, and everyone would just assume I am a Muslim. I would often also be reading a Qur'an, trying to work on my Quranic Arabic in the time leading up to it. And what I realized was everyone then thought I was Muslim, and then when they gathered.

Prayer, then I would not go up. This became opportunistic insofar as everyone wanted to talk to me afterwards. Uh, so it worked out very well for fieldwork, because they were like, who is this guy? And so the first time I'd entered, they would come and talk to me, and I'd be very clear about it. And I tried to be extremely clear that I was not Muslim to everybody that I talked to, and I've had the opportunity to explain that, and change the way I went into mosques after that as well. Uh, because I was aware of, oh, I'm coding as.

As a member of the community. Um, but in one instance where I was in a small Musallah with someone, I'd asked to go see it, and he knew I was not Muslim, or at least I thought he did, and he took me there, and he showed me around, and he was sitting at rugs, and he's like, well, it's time. He's like, well, you lead the prayers.

Uh, and I was like… Uh, no, I don't think I'd feel comfortable doing that as a non-Muslim, and he was a very recent revert. Uh, and he's like, yeah, he's like, but you seem to know a lot. Uh, so could you just…

Lead the prayers, because I think you know them better than I do.

And I was like, no, I don't think for either one of us you want that. And he was like, no, like, I don't know him. And I was like, okay, deal. Can I show you the motions, but do you know the prayers? And he says, yeah, I think I can get them. And I was like, this is so weird. And I was like, I'll show you the motions.

Then you can pray and, you know, but I really, I was like, they didn't train me for this in grad school, you know? I was very out of my depth at that moment, and I tried to then tell everyone about this, because I was like, I may have messed up, I don't know what I did, I told my committee, I told… Local Muslims, and they're like, Ken, cool, it's okay, you know. And gone on from there. So, there were lots of different instances where I had to navigate that, and I…

Was unsure in a lot of them, yeah.

Amen. Yeah.

Yeah, fantastic, fantastic, yeah. Other questions?

Thank you so much for your talk. This is… this was really fascinating. So I… I was… I had a question that's somewhat related to… Andrea's last question about the interactions with the different Arab communities, because I was quite intrigued when you talked about.

This resistance towards Arabization, because I… I mean, I'm from Malaysia, so that… kind of reminds me of a lot of discourses, especially within the past 10 years or so. There's a lot of talk about.

Yeah, like, you know, dearabization and stuff like that, and a lot of the target is usually on.

You know, stuff that's coming out from. The… the golf, especially Saudi Arabia, you know, you have a lot of…

Local imams who go to Saudi Arabia and come back and… you know, the perception is that they promote a certain kind of Islam that's opposed to local Malay Islam, so…

I'm just wondering, with the… with the kind of Puerto Rican Muslims that you encountered, um, is this kind of resistance towards Arabization more… kind of internationally directed, or is it kind of locally directed, say, against, you know, Palestinian Muslims, for instance?

Yeah, thank you for that question, and yeah. It's certainly… whether or not.

Puerto Ricans may frame it this way, or Puerto Rican Congress may frame it this way, it falls in line with this broader discourse, whether it's locally experienced or it's explicitly connected to these wider conversations.

Um, I would say on the island, it's more about that local experience. Again, um… It's hard to understate, as we were talking about, the predominance of Palestinians there, and how much that shapes and orders Puerto Rican converts' experience of Islam and the community around… of Muslims around it. Um, and so they're not as much keyed into these global.

Conversations and debates, and not so much aware of, perhaps, the Gulf's predominance in that sense. Even as, in the local mosques, a lot of the publications come from Riyadh, etc, as do.

I'm almost everywhere, right? Um… In the United States, however, they're very much a part of this conversation, and very much talking about the predominance of the Gulf.

And, uh, even though, again, like, most of the Puerto Rican imams that are out there were trained in Saudi Arabia, right, they still are critiquing it. And that was one thing I noticed a lot, is that, like, a Puerto Rican Muslim would be critiquing the Arabization of Islam and how there's no tribes within the ummah, etc, and they'd be dressed as if they were in.

The Middle East, right? They had taken on the clothes, they had taken on the sartorial practices of places that were not explicitly Puerto Rican, like a guy wearing a lungi.

And telling me about South Asian and Arabs and how they control everything, and they want you to become like them, and I'm just not about that. And I'm like.

Uh, you know, but for them, although it may seem a contradiction, it is a way of navigating it, right? Even as they take on certain aspects, whether in terms of their practice or their perspectives, or their, you know, sartorial choices, um, they can still critique it even as they're living within it, adapting to it, trying to gain authenticity from it. And I think that's part of other broader experiences of Muslims in.

Other contexts, perhaps Malaysia as well, I'd love to hear more about that.

Yeah, I think that's a question. Are there any other questions? Kj?

So we'll just take all three questions, and then… That's okay, just… Yeah, please.

Uh, hi, Ken, thank you so much for a very informative and wonderful presentations.

My question is that, as you mentioned in your presentations, that the Muslims in Puerto Rico are often treated as foreigners. My question is twofolded.

One is, what are the Palestinian Muslim facing pressure to abandon or compromise their faith?

Uh, in terms of their conversions. And the second one is, what specific challenges or obstacles do they encounter in practicing their religious.

Activities freely due to the marginalization. Thank you.

Thank you for running the mic around.

Yes, ask in. Yeah, I'm gonna ask you to wear your theology hat for a second. Okay. The question I have is… in your conversations with the Convert Three words.

You've mentioned where they… were introduced to Islam, and then talked about how once they become Muslims.

Did you ever get a chance to actually ask. Exactly what was that… motivated them to con- convert, as in…

How did they deal with. What did have been brought up as a Christian, as a Catholic, and, you know, the whole Jesus.

Questioned the… the… you know, so all… if you ever had a chance to actually speak to them, if there was one incident that motivated them to convert, or was it more than that?

Yeah, thank you.

Well, I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit about how maybe the dynamic between, um, the Palestinian community and the conference reverts.

If it has or hasn't changed, given the events of the past two years.

Thank you for, um… Four excellent questions. Two, and then, uh, two more.

Uh, first, in terms of Palestinians and their pressure to abandon their… their faith in the context of Puerto Rico.

One of the things that Palestinians often said to me, um, is they found it easier economically, socially, and religiously to be in Puerto Rico than some of their Palestinian family members, like, in Detroit, or in New York, or other places in the United States. Um, and so… they felt they were… they were freer to be themselves, um, in Puerto Rico than in other places. And got a better economic foothold, because they do… they did say they… they experience a form of ostracization, but not.

Explicit forms of U.S. Racism that they may experience elsewhere. There's questions of.

Where they're from, who they are, etc. But especially, I mean.

Like, I tell the story of this guy, Salim, who is, like, a pillar of his community in this mountain town, Hayuya.

Everyone knows Salim is the name of the section. And while there may be very, you know.

Real and potent experiences of. Marginalization or racism that he and others experienced there. I didn't hear about them, I didn't sense them, I didn't, uh, encounter them. They may very well exist. But even when they talked about their difficulties, they never framed it in a way that they say that might lose their faith.

With that said, there are plenty of Palestinians I met, um, at, like.

You know, different social events and things in Puerto Rico that were no longer Muslim and had left their faith. That seemed to me more of just a process of.

Second, third gen secularization, perhaps, or just kind of folding in with their local community and culture, abandoning their faith.

Difficult to have, kind of, the overwhelming milieu that can maybe be offered back in Jordan or in Kuwait or something, where it becomes more of a choice, almost, for them.

Even though there were questions of family relations, etc, I didn't dig into that. I only met these people socially, they weren't part of my research, like, why they left Islam.

Um, the challenges and obstacles in their practice. I think the biggest obstacle they faced was just financial, to get the capital together to be able to build the spaces they wanted, um, and to have purpose-built facilities, etc.

You know, and organizing for halal food, etc, is. Complicated because of the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. So if you're importing goods, it has to go to a U.S. Port before it goes to a Puerto Rican port. That means more taxes, more value added to it, and so they often.

Bring in goods from Palestine, from Jordan. This is… I have this one section where it's the souk in a trunk.

This guy calls it, uh, because he's got all these stuff, uh, that he's brought with him, and he sells it at the back of his truck.

So there are some obstacles to their life, but in general, they didn't speak too strongly of that. They were very clear. We love Puerto Rico, we love being here, even though they still don't identify as Puerto Rican, or they identify very strongly as Palestinian. This is in keeping with.

You know, other aspects of a very strong Palestinian identity in other places.

Motivations to convert. Um, yes, I mean, this came up. Uh, to… points about this. Conversion testimonies, uh, for me at least, are not to be trusted, is what I always kind of operated on, because.

When I heard them, they were, uh, you know, interpreted and retold through the prism of trying to fit into this community to say the right thing about how they came to the faith, etc. So I knew that I needed to critique them and place them within their social context as much as I also just heard them as real stories of why they converted.

With that said, earlier research I actually did among Latinx Muslims in the United States kind of held true among Puerto Rican Muslims as well. I identified in earlier research 23 different pathways that led to conversion, and I categorized them according to spiritual, social, or societal reasons. So some of them.

We're explicitly theological. Uh, the Trinity never made sense to me, the concept of Tahid, the oneness of Allah, makes a lot more sense. Uh, praying through intermediaries, if you came from a Catholic background, through saints, or.

Working through the local priest, I go directly to Allah in Islam. That makes more sense to me.

Other social reasons, um, and societal reasons would be my neighbor was Muslim, I married a Muslim, uh, and then later there came these spiritual, personal, theological reasons to convert, or societal reasons. Yeah, the question.

Uh, and the cause of Palestine, uh, racism in the United States that drew them to Islam. So there were these kind of different categories that brought them to conversion.

And then, uh, Palestinian and Puerto Rican Muslim community in the wake of October 7th, 2023. Um… I can't speak to the local Muslim communities very well. I've not been back to Puerto Rico since then.

Um, however, I can say that. Beyond Muslims, Sarah Awatani, who I briefly mentioned, she's done amazing work on the historical.

Solidarities between Palestinians and Puerto Ricans beyond. Puerto Rican Muslims, non-Muslim Puerto Ricans are also.

Very keen as a nation without a state to support the Palestinian cause and make connections between them.

That has only been strengthened over the last 2 years, that sense of connection as Puerto Rico continues to struggle.

Uh, under its debt management, under, um, you know, massive out-migration and continued impoverishment, and then what they see with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, they have been very outspoken about it in their protests against.

Puerto Rican government officials that you often see Palestinian flags at the same time. We see similar dynamics in the United States as well, but I think it's also strengthened that critique, strengthened that protest, both in Puerto Rico and then in the Puerto Rican diaspora.

And we do have one question, um, from the Zoom chat. Fantastic, yeah.

Um, so I'm just going to read it out. Good afternoon, my name is Wendy Diaz. I was one of the Puerto Rican Muslims Dr. Chitwick quoted in his presentation.

Question for Dr. Chitwood. You quoted someone saying, ours is the story, you, Ken, are just the storyteller.

But for many of us, that framing still feels paternalistic. We are not just the story, we are also the storytellers.

How do you respond to the critique that your role, however well-intentioned, still centers an outsider voice in narrating our lived realities?

Yep. Thank you, Wendy, and hello, if you're still there. Wendy, as I quote her in the book, is a wonderful poet, journalists, and she's written much about the Puerto Rican and Latinx Muslim communities. Very big fan of Wendy's work, and definitely points you to her work. Winnie's also been an interlocutor of mine, often digitally, and so this feels very authentic to our experience in the past.

Um, and we've talked about this in the past as well, so I'm glad she's brought it up. Yeah, mine is an outsider perspective. I make that very evident in my work and in my book, and Puerto Rican Muslims themselves will have to engage with it.

Uh, even as I engage with them throughout this research process. I hope Wendy and others bring critique of my representation. I imagine they will, and, um… Those conversations are something that I lean into and look forward to.

Um, I tried to do the best I could as an outsider, as any outsider doing ethnography or research does, um, to honor these stories, to put them together in a way that made sense to the experience of Puerto Rican Muslims, of Puerto Rican converts.

Um, and yeah, as with any book. They will have to be the judge of how well I did that, and I look forward to the generative frictions that occur between insider and outsider perspectives on this community, and especially to Wendy. And Wendy, you have my contact information, so feel free to shoot me a note, and we can continue this conversation from here. In fact, we should do an event together. If Wendy's still there, we should do something, Wendy, you and I, and have some fun with it, so…

Yeah. Any, just, lasts?

Quick questions, comments? Good. Okay.

Just quickly, since we invited the last… Yes, yes, indeed.

It's very interesting you mentioned a couple times about the Karl Marx in your, like, interview and research.

And, uh, like, a hypothetically, right? Like, if there's a socialist.

Like a neighbor or Marxism. Neighbor with possibly a Puerto Rican, like, convert to that ideology.

Because as a resistance tuna. Colonization and, you know, like, imperialism and so forth. And how to what likelihood, like, this kind of religious conversion that happened.

Like, but boasting lie about. Anti-canalism. Yeah, thank you. Um, so I have an article that's been submitted. I hope you're one of the reviewers, um, that is about this very theme, because it didn't get into the book, but it comes from Ibrahim, who I shared briefly about the tattoo, and he talks about, as a kid, he grew up with the Communist Manifesto in one hand, and then… or as a teenager, the Communist Manifesto in one hand, and the Qur'an in another.

Um, and that really stuck with me, because Marxism plays a very strong role in broader Puerto Rican political discussions. I think you kind of heard that reflected in.

Two different stories, Adrian's family and Ibrahim's family, how their parents, uh, were… influenced by or self-proclaimed Marxists or socialists, and tried to raise their children accordingly, and their resistance politics emerged out of that.

Influence from their parents. And in the broader Puerto Rican political scene, socialism and Marxism plays a strong role, particularly among those advocating for Puerto Rican independence. And so, I don't think they're necessarily against one another, but they're kind of complementary in the lives of the people that I interacted with. Not everyone.

There are plenty who also say, you know, Islam is not… Marxism, Islam is not communism, and they draw a strong line between them. But there are others who draw on both at the same time, or also more Marxist interpretations of Islam.

That emerged perhaps out of Iran or elsewhere, they find that in their own journey, and they give voice to that as they're trying to combine them in their experience and their lives. And so, I've got an article hopefully coming out about that, but would love to talk more, too, perhaps.

Thank you again, and I just want to apologize, both Andrea and Ken, I'm horrible at introductions, obviously. I didn't take a cue from Carolina, who gives a great introduction last week to two weeks ago.

But, um, I should have read my notes more carefully. Just completely, Andrea, besides her academic work, is also the director of the Southwest Asian and North African Music Ensemble?

And so, I strongly encourage you to follow them and participate in their events.

And Ken also has his own website, so you can learn more about all his amazing work and everything else that he's been involved with that I sort of dropped with, which is… You have to give the URL. Oh, the URL is my name.com. That's gross, but that's what it is. Kenshitwood.com. Okay, so…

Join me again to thank Ken for this wonderful talk. It's a testament everybody stayed here throughout and to the end, and there's a ton of food, so please help yourselves to seconds and thirds, or wherever you're at in your… Yeah, we would, most definitely. There'll be plenty there.

Okay? Thank you, Ken. Thank you. Thank you all.