Mosque, Corner Store and Global City
(9/13/15)
“Allah blessed the
ghetto”
The
recent study by UnMosqued
revealed that 75% of all mosques in America are dominated by one ethnic group.
In most case, this one group is either South Asian, Arab, or African American. The
massive Muslim migrations in the 1960’s and 70’s that created multicultural
living space in American Muslim communities has not successfully removed
primordial barriers among them, in fact it strengthen it. Mosque as the
embodiment of universal solidarity of Muslims has failing to live up its ideal.
So if it is not Mosque, where is the alternative space for that? Muslim-run corner
stores has unexpectedly performed that task. In Chicago, one of the most
segregated city in the U.S., it has
facilitated an intensive interaction for better or worse between Black
residents, many of them are Muslims and Arab Muslim families who run that
businesses. A corner store is a store located at corner of the street common in
all urban/ghetto areas across the U.S. that sells all needs, including
toiletries, food, liquor and sometime a variety of narcotics. How can a food
and liquor store enables that interracial interaction?
It is
expected that the globalization will transcend primordial identity into
cosmopolitan one. The idea of transplanetary community of believers or Ummah gained momentum along with the
increasing of cross border interaction between Muslims. The idea is not new.
Pan Islamism of Jamaluddin Al Afghani or Muslim Brotherhood of Hasan Al Bana
has been part of Muslims’ discourse since the end of the nineteen century. But
the massive immigration to the West amplified this idea. They vision America as
the new ground to flourish a new common identity and unity, free from
historical baggage. There were many institutions have been built to facilitate
this. Consequently, the old barriers are successfully removed. Pakistanis and
Indian Muslims manage to abandon their differences and create unity in Mosque
or institution such as ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America). So as the Arabs
and Muslims from different countries. Nonetheless, a new ethno-language based
has come to the surface. For instance, the division among groups in American
Muslim community is prevalent, especially between the African American Muslim
and the Muslim immigrants. Due to its unorthodoxy, the African American Muslims
of the Nation of Islam, were
considered heretics by majority of Muslim immigrants. Despite there has been a
massive ‘conversion’ of members of the Nation to the traditional practice of
Islam in 1976 under the leadership of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, the tension
between those groups prevails. The gap is caused by many reason from
differences in religious practices, legal doctrines, political values, and
economic welfare. Many of successful Muslim immigrants settle in sub-urban and
be part of middle class society of the West. Meanwhile, Black Muslims occupied
space in the inner cities sharing with poor Arabs and Latinos Muslims. Mosques
give sense of belonging for those different groups but at the same time create
division among them.
Nevertheless, globalization also creates a new
space for interracial interaction. During my last week visit to Englewood, a
poor neighborhood of South Chicago, Rami Nashashibi, the Executive Director of Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN)
explained that corner store acts as intersection for various identities to meet
and interact. For Blacks, the only contact most had with person outside their
race was with store owners. While for the Arab merchants, they may end up in
these disinvested communities because they couldn't find a space in other
ethnic neighborhoods. But the Muslim-owned food and liquor stores are often a
site of conflict between the business owners and Black residents. The stores
are perceived as a source of major problems in this poor neighborhoods as
Nashashibi continued his
explanation. There has been a growing mistrust between
these groups. According to his
survey, 70 percent of surveyed store owners felt their
businesses “have positive impact on the community”, while only 18 percent of
residents felt the same.
For the last few years, Nashashibi and his
team has tried to construct racial solidarity through these corner store. The
arranged discussion forum for both store owners and residents to find solution.
The residents help the store owner to clean their store, bring them more
customers and as the compensation they have to make pledge for selling healthy
products, stop selling liquor and conduct a better business practice. They
revitalized corners stores in the neighborhood and set up network of Muslim Run
store. IMAN brings back the business model as practiced by the Nation before. Now we
can see the fruits of their effort. In 2012, more than 15 corner stores
participated in this program. There is interracial healing process going on
there. Moreover, some corner stores has become an entry point for broader
transformation of the neighborhood addressing food
desserts, promoting food justice, and developing alternative
business model.
What
can we reflect from this phenomena related to globalization? Globalization
indeed reconfigures the social space of human interaction, which is in this
case through migration. Yet, it did not created a uniform consequences with
respect to identity as mentioned by Jan
Aart Scholte. Using Mosque and corner store as comparison,
migration bolsters primordialism at the mosque but initiating cosmopolitanism
at corner store. Moreover, in term of positive and negative outcomes, globalization
has not automatically determined the end result, but communities’ responses or
choices contribute to it. The corner store may persist as a locus for racial
intersection that is merely instilling prejudice and tension, and source of
criminal activities. Yet, local initiative has enable it to become the source
of community improvement. So as the mosque should be.
If we
zoom out from our discussion of mosque and corner store into a broader
discourse on U.S. cities, globalization has indeed transformed those into
global and multicultural cities. The political turmoil back home and economic
opportunities at those cities encourage people to do migration. According to Saskia
Sassen as a result of privatization, deregulation, the opening
up of national economies to foreign firms, and growing involvement of private
actors, the key articulators of cross-borders economic activities are no longer
monopolized by state. There has been re-scaling of economic strategic
environment. It shifted to the sub-national level. The sub-national, which is
cities and regions, have become important players and locus for the current
economic activities. Nevertheless, it did not create a single layer reality of
global city. In line with previous argument, a multilayered space has been
formed especially within the periphery of today’s global city. Homogeneity
exists in form of mass consumerism, yet racial and social segregation is
strengthen inside. Moreover, she argues that cities have become a part of
larger “geography of centrality and marginality”. It was not only creating
political and economic center of urban life but also different type political, economic
and cultural expression found in ghettos. In this case, we can consider #Blacklivesmatter
movement as reaction to this marginalization process. If was not merely fueled by
incidents of police shootings, but it is intensified by centuries-old project of
institutionalized racism that continues today. Mosque, corner store, and global
city are more complex than merely religious, economic, and socio political
spheres. Those spaces are intersection local and global aspects of
globalization.
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