Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:16 Hello everyone. And welcome to this episode of the Islam on the edges channel of the Madan podcast. My name is Vicki Youngson and I'm a doctoral fellow at the Berlin graduate school, Muslim cultures and societies, and the visiting fellow at the Berlin university Alliance projects and titles global repertoires of living together. I'm delighted to have with me today, Dr. Ken Chitwood religion, scholar news writer and theologian its academic work focuses on the ethnographic study of religion in a global and digital age with a specific focus on Islam and Muslim communities in Latin America, the Caribbean and the Latin X us Dr. Chi wood recently completed a Fritz season post-doctoral fellowship at the Berlin graduate school, Muslim cultures and societies Andd is currently doing research on the intersections of ethnography and journalism with the university of Southern California center for religion and civic cultures, spiritual examplers project today, Dr. Chiu and I will speak about his latest book, the Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Speaker 2 00:01:18 So again, thank you so much for letting me read the book and ask you some questions about it. I enjoy the book a lot. It's such an accessible and enjoyable text, even for someone who doesn't have much knowledge at all about the geographical region of, uh, Latin America. It gives so much insight into the historical and contemporary context of Muslims living in that area. But apparently also, how, what has essentially been a minority since their first arrival has done so much to shape the histories and cultures of the Americas. And I think this is where your book and the emerging field it contributes to is, uh, is so important. And also on the other hand, how these Muslims are very much a part of, and in constant interaction with other Muslim communities across the globe. So before I started like throwing my real questions at you, could you perhaps describe briefly for those who haven't had a chance to read your book yet some of the most important points or takeaways.
Speaker 3 00:02:10 Thank you. And just say, thanks again for having this conversation with me and interacting with the book. One of the exciting things is to not only have people who are more familiar with the subject or the subject area, read the book and respond to it, but also those who have done research in other places, uh, in other contexts, in your case, Indonesia, et cetera, to be able to interact. Cause I think that's where the conversation gets very exciting is when we're able to compare and contrast and, and have these conversations across disciplines or across geographical specialties. With that in mind, knowing that people who are gonna read this may not know too much about Muslim communities in Latin America and the Caribbean, maybe they've come across one in their research or they heard about something or they read a popular article or saw a video and thought, oh gosh, I didn't even know there were Muslims in Latin American MC Caribbean.
Speaker 3 00:02:59 I thought those might be the people who stumble across this book and could particularly benefit from it. And so the, the most important aspect of the book I think is to make three related arguments that Islam and Muslims are not foreign to this region, but are an integral part of it and have contributed to its history and it, and its narrative and its contemporary scene, uh, over 500 years. And then number two, that Latin America and the Caribbean pan, and should be considered part of a broader global Islamic landscape or Islamic world or, uh, an Islam sphere. I mean, there's lots of different terminology that has been used to describe kind of a global understanding of this Islam that that goes beyond the quote unquote Muslim world. And we can get into that, um, more later, but I think that Latin American, the Caribbean should be considered part of that landscape and, and try to convince people of that through the book.
Speaker 3 00:03:55 And so therefore the, the third argument is once we see global Islam as part of the Americas and American history, and we see the Americas and Latin American Caribbean in particular, as part of global Islam, then we see the Americas and global Islam in different ways. We can ask different questions, we can make different arguments about identifications and what socialities look like and what those histories are about. And then also potentially contribute to contemporary political conversations about belonging, et cetera, as well, in order to make that case. I, I broke it down into two parts, one focusing on history and then the other focusing on contemporary cases. And we cover a lot of ground in between in terms of the history starting all the way back in the long 16th century connections to, you know, endo sea in Spain and Iberian influences that came with the colonizers and cohesive the Americas. Then we talk about slave Muslims in their legacies, indentured servants from India and Indonesia. We talk about migrations and asylum seekers from the middle east and north Africa, and then also some contemporary conversions in the history part. And then in the second part, I look at some contemporary cases ranging from Cuba to Brazil, from the Latin X us to Trinidad from Argentina to Mexico. So it kind of gives us this very broad, but also I hope synthetic account that makes those three points very clear.
Speaker 2 00:05:19 Yeah. Thanks. And I think the, the book does set very well to like show these transnational trans local connections and how they've been like relevant from way before actually. And also what I really like is this combination of this huge diverse historical research combined with live, which is a combination you don't see very often, I think. Can you tell me a little bit more about how this idea and, and also the format for this book came about?
Speaker 3 00:05:43 Yeah. I mean, as I described it, the book, it was a fairly straightforward and somewhat surprising process that led me to write this book. I was working as a, a PhD candidate at the university of Florida in the department of religion at the center for global Islamic studies there and partnered with our center for Latin American studies to teach a course on Islam in the Americas. And when I did so, and I elected to choose a couple of textbooks, I chose a couple of really valuable textbooks that were edited collections, Crescent over another horizon and is done in the Americas edited by Aisha K. And these were the books that we used, but what they are as edited collections, they have an introduction that gives a brief kind of overview of the subject. And then they have kind of historical and contemporary cases that they looked at.
Speaker 3 00:06:34 So very similar in, in structure to my book in the end. But, um, as is the case with most edited collections, they were highly specialized. So I think of chapters that are very valuable about context in Puerto Rico or in Cuba or, uh, in The Bahamas. And there's a little bit of preparatory material in the beginning of these chapters, but they have to dive right to the people they were talking to or the, the histories they were exploring. And the students responded. They said, these are great books. We really love the discussions. Uh, but they always needed the little bit of background. They said, what's, you know, kinda, what's the big picture. How do we contextualize what they're talking about here? What else was going on? And so what I found myself doing in the lectures was trying to provide that synthetic overview, that background context, some of the, the history and, and the broader developments that came to shape, and then also were shaped by the cases that were being looked at in these specialized chapters, in the edited volumes.
Speaker 3 00:07:33 And at the end of the course, the students who were a part of it had given me a lot of feedback, cuz this is the first time I taught the course. And one of the things they said was it would be great to have some kind of book that gave a general overview. And then the lectures in the conversations could be focused on these more specialized cases. And so then I said, well, okay, there needs to be a book. And I talked to a couple of people who were working in the area and they said they weren't working on anything. Uh, there were a couple of works that had been done in Spanish, but didn't do exactly what I thought maybe the book should do or were split into multiple volumes. And so I said, I should, I should tackle it. Why not try it on for size?
Speaker 3 00:08:13 And so I went about writing the book and I actually was able to write the book in the course of about three and a half, four months, just kind of get it out there. And first draft form, because I had come very quickly off of the class and we had all of that material that we'd used. Uh, but then I started to do more research and to kind of strengthen the argument, add in more of that ethnographic texture and make the book what it is now. And that process took about three years. Once you throw in reviews and some revisions and editing and the publishing process. So it started off as a very quick process and then it became a very long and drawn out process. And I hope it's better as a result.
Speaker 2 00:08:53 Yeah, I think that's, that's such a cool origin story. It really, it really answers this kind of demand that you, that you had from your students, which is interesting because I'm also a former student of yours because I did the course global Islam with you at the graduate school. And we talked a lot about, uh, this term global Islam and it's various definitions and it's problematics, for example, the way in which it has been implicated in center periphery models, or like clash of civilization narratives. And in general, S Islam is like this monolithic whole, and you discussed the term global Islam at lengthen this book as well, which I found like interesting to see, because we had so many discussions about it. And finally, you connected with the study of Islam through the world as methods, and you define it on page 14 as the complex and dynamic nexus of people, material, institutions, ideas, texts, and contexts encountered across and between ofties and traditions, variously identified as Islamic. So would you mind perhaps expanding a bit on this idea of the world as methods and also how you eventually came to this definition of global Islam and how it has been useful to you in your work? And do you, do you still think this is like, um, useful term or like alternatives?
Speaker 3 00:10:05 Yeah, I, I, I appreciate that. And there's a lot behind that, right? I mean, I think a lot of us are still in Islamic studies raise. If, if you would allow the analogy to raised in this kind of center periphery understanding of the Muslim world and the rest of the world, right. And that's a product of many things, it's a product of the history of our disciplines. That's the product of our institutions. That's a product of the books that are out there. And one of the things that I try to say is that we need new maps of global Islam, because one of the things that I noticed as I was teaching introduction to Islam, multiple times, I had textbooks that I really appreciated, uh, and would continue to use. And I tried different ones on for size each semester. And as I was teaching these courses, I would notice that they had maps in them.
Speaker 3 00:10:55 Most of them, and the maps would show usually the same geographic area and underneath, it would be a very simple caption the Muslim world. And they would show primarily middle east, north Africa, that's where the, the globe was kind of centered and its size and its scope would change between the different books. Maybe it would include everything, uh, up to like, you know, IBER I on Spain maybe as far east, as Indonesia, but it generally stayed the same. And I, I lived in New Zealand for a time and I came to appreciate what happens when places are left off maps. Uh, there's a couple jokes about Globes and maps in New Zealand. Uh, but one of them is that there's lots of Globes out there in the world that actually don't include New Zealand. They just assume it's part of Australia. Uh, and, and sure enough, once I lived there, then I started noticing Globes in places that I went, you know, big statues and zoos or at historical centers or on the campus of my undergraduate university and new, Zealand's not there, it's just kinda left off.
Speaker 3 00:11:55 And I was like, wow, you just erased an entire geography of whole people, whole histories, whole narratives, uh, you know, and, and, and assumed it. And so they have a map in New Zealand that actually puts New Zealand right in the center of the map. And then you see the whole world differently. So I started to think as I was teaching those courses, what if we did that with Islamic studies? What if we centered other stories? And in this case centered the stories of Islam and Muslims in and of Latin American and the Caribbean. What if we did that? Could, could we see our study Islam differently because of it, and, and I'm convinced that we will, and I think that's an ongoing project. That's not something that's accomplished by one book, but this is perhaps one of the contributions to kind of kick off that conversation is what if we, we not only talked about Latin American at Tribune as part of global Islam, but we, we centered it.
Speaker 3 00:12:47 But then I also appreciate the fact that we need to use the world as a method, as, as I say. Um, and this is to no longer treat particular places as, as central to Islam. Um, but instead to see multiple representative sites or multiple nodes, uh, or multiple as, uh, Argen Panerai calls them process geographies, places where Islam, as we know, it is undergoing a constant process of change and development. Uh, and rather than seeing that as only happening in one place, looking at that diffuse process across the world, that's hard work because this vision of the Muslim world is so deeply entrenched in our politics and in our academic studies and in popular parlance as well. We refer to at least in the English language quite often, if a place is kind of the center of a community, we, we were trying to say, it's the center of a community it's its Mecca, like bear kind is like the Mecca of Berlin dance and technical culture.
Speaker 3 00:13:52 Um, I've heard that said before. And so we say that that's where it really happens. That's where the essence of this, this thing we're talking about is, and, and so deeply entrenched that Mecca is the center and the only center of is Islam. Uh, and there's an argument to be made for that, that we have to really push hard against this idea that there's not only one center to is Islam, but a diffuse process happening in multiple geographies. And, and I think this book attempts that, uh, and is inspired by work done in other areas, for example, in Indonesia and in the Indian sub subcontinent, or I was trained under multiple scholars who had done work in Sub-Saharan Africa and who had fought for a long time to not have Sub-Saharan Africa or west Africa treated as peripheral to the middle east and north Africa. And I thought, well, why don't we push that process that's been going on? And others have been talking about even farther and put Latin America and Tribune into the conversation. And, and as I said too, to even center it in that conversation, not to say, this is the center, but to say, what do we see? That's different if, if we did so.
Speaker 2 00:14:54 Yeah, I think that's really an important project. And, um, this was also gonna be my next question, like, to what extent is so called other peripheral Muslim communities have inspired your work. Maybe another question I can ask is, does it even make sense to have a map of the Muslim world anymore since I guess Islam's everywhere nowadays? I mean, you could center Russia as well, or China or Thailand or the us, or yeah, New Zealand I'm sure. So does it even make sense to, to have some kind of map
Speaker 3 00:15:24 To your first question? Yes, I was, I was very clearly inspired by scholars who had done work in other places before me and before others. And not only inspired by saying, oh, we should, we should do something like that. But I guess learning from what they saw as, not the mistakes, but the, the kind of learning curve of thinking about those places in spaces like in, uh, Africa in particular, very broad geography, just like the Americas, right. There were two things that I learned from those I studied under. They said there was a long debate in that field about Islam in Africa versus Islam of Africa, African Islam, and the kind of center peripheral binary way of viewing. This was that is Islam in Africa was a more pure Orthodox version. And then African is Islam, was this more hybrid, mixed version. And that debate was long, ongoing is still ongoing in some works.
Speaker 3 00:16:21 I was just sitting with a scholar, uh, also based here in Berlin, who does work in west Africa. And they were reviewing a book that replayed this dichotomy kind of says that dichotomy is no good, but then replays it in the text. And so, for example, from them, I, I've learned to say, even though it's sometimes awkward is some, uh, and Muslims in and of the Caribbean or in, and of Latin America and the Caribbean. And I'm trying to think of better ways to talk about this, but it shows the impact of that conversation to say that, yeah, I think there is a sense in which we can talk about people who are in and not of the space, you know, that they, they haven't adapted to the local environment. Uh, you know, as of yet, because there are people who are new arrivals or, or things that are just happening, but we also need to think about the ways in which that space has shaped the practice of a Islam.
Speaker 3 00:17:07 Uh, and we know need to not only think about it in terms of its hybrid forms or its messy forms or it's unorthodox forms. And I, throughout the book, I try not to play that game. As I say, in the introduction, I don't label things as more Orthodox or less Orthodox or pure and IUR or Islamic or not Islamic or in, or of, I talk about inner of a little bit at the beginning, but then I never say, well, this is an example of Caribbean Islam. I don't think such a thing exists. And I don't think we should talk about things existing in that format, but again, think of all of these things as processes, as things that are happening and we can perhaps observe, uh, or we can kind of participate in as interlopers or we can kind of mark and, and pay attention to, and perhaps subject to some critical reflection.
Speaker 3 00:17:57 Um, but I never try to say, this is an example of this or an example of that, that this is, is summed in, or this is a Caribbean Islam or Latin American Islam. I, I don't try to play that. I just try to describe the processes that are at work and make these bigger arguments that Islam and Muslims are part of the story of the Americas. Americas are part of the story of global Islam, and that helps us think of these categories differently. And I raised the example of west Africa, some are in Africa, but this also happened as I saw studies in Indonesia and studies in the Indians of continent and in Indian ocean as well. And I think that area is very comparable to the work we're trying to do in, in our field now in our region now, because there, people started to see this kind of Indian ocean exchange happening between like Eastern Africa and Indian sub subcontinent and Indonesia and other places kind of in that Indian ocean world.
Speaker 3 00:18:50 And some of the geographies that are connected to that through trade and politics. And I think you're starting to see that now with studies of Islam and Muslim communities in Latin American attrition, over climate and in the contemporary scene where we're starting to think of this Atlantic world. And, and I talk about that a little bit in the book, but people starting to see how the Atlantic world and the various polities and peoples that populated it and, and connected with each other across this Atlantic world, between Europe and, and Africa and the Americas over 500 years as that being very central to what we understand as Islam and Muslims in and of Latin American, Caribbean, uh, as well. And then to your second question, whether we, we should even be producing maps. I say, we need new maps. I don't think we should have the kind of maps that I referred to earlier.
Speaker 3 00:19:38 But one of the new projects that I'm working on is creating some of the new maps. I said that we should have, and those maps should be showing us these connections. They should be showing us these contingent lineages. They should be showing the movements of people and ideas and technologies. They should be showing the interconnectedness of the multiple process, geographies of global Islam. They should not be static, but they should be dynamic. I also think they should be largely digital because we will need to continue to update them. And we can do more with digital maps than one printed on a page. And so I think we need to not only create new maps, conceptually, but also physically as we go forward in our study of global Islam to make our knowledge of those various nodes and connections between them much more in motion, because I think is Islam is always in motion. Muslims are always in motion. And so our, our ways of understanding them should also be so in some sense, that's a weakness of this book in that it is static. It's printed, it's done it's out there, but I want to help create new ways of, of dealing with these topics and dealing with some of the chapters in the book. And so I'm trying to create these maps online using GIS software, uh, et cetera, in order to do so.
Speaker 2 00:20:56 That's really cool. And I think it makes a lot of sense to, to think of like what Islam, in terms of connections and networks, rather than things that are kind of like already in place. And you actually answered another question that I didn't write down, but that I had in mind when I saw your title, I can't remember which color it was that you did an interview with yourself that we, that you watched during your course. And it was also something about this question of, of, and in of Muslim Islam of, and in. So I was really wondering like how you came to the, to the title that you have in chapter two, you discussed the claims that have been made by, by Muslims of a pre-Colombian context. You examined the evidence for them. And ultimately you connect these claims to, to kind of the right, to belong on the part of Muslims through establishing this historical precedence rather than confirming their historical accuracy.
Speaker 2 00:21:45 And from there you go into the actual historical legacies of Muslims in the Americas through the stories of macOS of aand Los of Muslim slaves, and in servants who were brought to the continent as well as voluntary immigrants. And now all of these people have made their mark, uh, under region. So what I was wondering as I was reading these, these histories is about your interlocutors responses to, to the way you write their history or the history of their Muslim predecessors. For example, was it tricky to, to deal with this, this quite explicit rejection of these claims of pre Colombian context and in general, what did they make of the diverse historical trajectories that you present in the book?
Speaker 3 00:22:24 That is an excellent question. Cause I think it's really important that, uh, scholarly works are constantly in conversation with the people we're writing about. And I think we can probably discuss that a little bit more later as well in terms of the decolonial aspects of that as, as well. But yeah, I mean, in part, some of this work has been shared beforehand with people who are Muslims in the region, or are part of particular communities that I've worked with there in the community as well, or in, in Cuba and Puerto Rico and Brazil. And I got feedback from them. And it's really interesting to put that on the side of scholarly reviews that I received in the process of writing this book as well. Cause early on in the process, I got very critical feedback about that chapter on pre contact and someone even called me a pseudo scientist, uh, which is, it's not a fun thing to get by email, like to be called a pseudo scientist, uh, is, is never fun.
Speaker 3 00:23:24 Um, but it's especially not fun to get it when, you know, you're in the early stages of working on a book and, and you just get it as a cold email from someone. And I appreciated that feedback because it showed, you know, the weaknesses of my argument and it showed me that what I was trying to do with this, as you said, not trying to verify or discount the, the historical argument that people are making, that, that Muslims came to the Americas before Europeans did before Christopher Columbus did, cuz he's kind of the, you know, the big name in the room when it comes to this discovery quote unquote of the new world by Europeans, it's a very strong narrative again, you know, given to us through, um, our, our, our education, our, our cultural knowledge, et cetera, et cetera. I was trying to say, I'm not, I'm not trying to deal with the history.
Speaker 3 00:24:11 What I wanna do is talk about the claims and, and look at how the claims are powerful and look at how the claims are fairly pervasive throughout Muslim communities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Now there's plenty of Muslims that, that don't believe this who either don't know about it, never really cared about it. There are are Muslims who have looked at the evidence and are not convinced by it, and I'm not convinced by it either. I, I never was. I don't think the evidence is reliable. And I, I try to make that a little clearer in the book because that early review said, you, you seem to be supporting this argument for pre-Columbian Muslim contact. And so I wanna make it very clear. I, I'm not convinced by the evidence, but I am very convinced of the fact that the claims are very potent among Muslims in the Americas.
Speaker 3 00:24:55 And why do I care about that? Well, because the Americas have long been a claim space, a place where people make certain claims about land, about peoples, about identity, about belonging to the place. And that has been a very bloody and, and a very violent history at times. It's also been a very celebrated and exciting part of that history at times, depending upon which perspective you come from and the Americas and belonging to the Americas is a very, again, powerful I think is, is the word I, I like to use most driver of identification in not only the American hemisphere, but also for Europeans and also for Africans and also for people in Asia. And, and so suddenly the whole world cares about the Americas because, uh, it, it takes on this sense of frontiers. It takes on this sense of new identity. It takes on this sense of adventure and rightly wrongly erasing other histories, indigenous histories, et cetera, that have existed for many centuries before any of these other peoples arrived.
Speaker 3 00:25:57 But I think in making those claims, Muslims are trying to say, we belong here we're of this place. And they're also trying to make claims about their historical pride and legacy against European technology, European knowledge, European history. And so these claims are, are much more than about fact they're about who we are, how we relate to other people, and where is our place in the world. And as an ethnographer, those, those are really important questions for you. Those, those are very important questions. The most important questions for me is these ideas of belonging and these ideas of, of who we are and how we relate to others. And so I wanted to address them. Now, I I'd be really interested to hear how someone like Hakeem quick, who wrote the book deeper roots, which tries to accomplish some of the work that I did in, in this book and is, is valuable in, in many senses, but he has this whole chapter about these evidences for pre-Colombian contact.
Speaker 3 00:26:57 And like I said, I'm not convinced by it. I, I look forward to hearing from him perhaps if he inclines to read my book, but he has not responded, uh, yet to it. And no one's responded specifically to that chapter yet other people have responded to other chapters saying, oh, this speaks to my history, or this speaks to who I am, or this speaks to what I've encountered. Or a lot of people saying, this is why I converted, because I've found out about these legacies. And I, I felt like there was a whole history. I'd never been told about my people in Puerto Rico or my people in Cuba, or my people in Brazil and knowing these histories led me to Islam. Uh, and, and so I've heard a lot of that feedback as well. Uh, so it'd be interesting to get some of the perhaps more negative feedback that I'm sure people will, will share with me at some point in time as well.
Speaker 3 00:27:44 And I hope to be able to get some of that feedback in, in the years to come. I mean, this is still a very young book. It's only a few months old and so it needs more time to percolate out there. And I had planned to do more events at local mosques in various places, and to have some immediate contact and feedback with members of various communities that I know or who are in the book, and that has not been able to happen because of the pandemic. But I, I look forward to perhaps having some digital events here in the spring. There's a couple that are in the early planning stages. And, and I hope to have some of that feedback soon to, to be able to have more of that conversation, because I think what's gonna be most important again, are those questions of identification, those questions of belonging. And I think both the positive and negative feedback I might receive from members of the community is gonna be about those, those questions and, and whether they think, oh yeah, this is, this has done a service to us, or no, this is a disservice to us. But again, for me, that's where the conversation begins and even gets more interesting than it already is.
Speaker 2 00:28:44 Yeah, exactly. I would also be very curious to, to hear how people respond particularly to that chapter. And could, of course also be that there haven't been that many negative responses to it because it is quite clear that you don't reject the importance of this idea, even though you don't necessarily agree with the accuracy of it. So you already touched a little bit upon this colonial postcolonial angle to, to your work. And I feel like this is kind of a red thread. That's weave through the book with your analysis of the processes of colonization and the ways in which they still play out in the exclusion and discrimination of Muslims across the, the Americas and the imagination of them as others. Do you wanna expand a little bit more on this? Like whether you see your work as the colonial or how you, how you relate to that field?
Speaker 3 00:29:28 Yeah, I appreciate that question. And, uh, this is something that's come up. It came up in the book launch conversation, and this is something that other people have talked to me. Other scholars have talked to me about. So I think it's an important conversation to have. And even in the chapter, we were just discussing, I raised up the fact that a lot of the claims that are made about pre Colombian Muslim contact with the Americas do very similar things to the indigenous peoples of the Americas in terms of erasing their history, erasing their accomplishments and civilization or architecture, or in language saying, you see, well, the indigenous peoples that the Europeans encountered, they had this technology, or they spoke these words, or they had this kind of community formation and saying that all came from Muslims from elsewhere. And so I, even as I was, you know, addressing those claims and those claims of Muslims saying we were here first are in themselves, anti-colonial claims they are then re inscribing a different kind of colonialism and re inscribing a different kind of power, maybe more accurately, rather than colonialism a different kind of power in that space and in erasing indigenous lives and backgrounds.
Speaker 3 00:30:33 And that is something important to point out in, in this conversation for me as a scholar trained in both global Islamic studies and American religion in a hemispheric sense, because a lot of my training in the American religion side of things was looking at the indigenous peoples of the Americas, trained by an anthropologist who lived for 30 years in the Amazon, you know, doing kind of like what we call old school, anthropological work, you know, learning how flutes were used in an indigenous community, not in learning about the flutes, but like learning how to make the flutes and play the flutes and be part of the, the ceremonies. And so scholars, like, I think Robin Wright, I should probably say his name, uh, Robin Wright kind of shaping my understanding of the world and of religion in the Americas was a lot of this post-colonial decolonial thought and wanting to make sure that work impacted what I said and how we view this topic, this, this field.
Speaker 3 00:31:25 But as I, as I get into that, a little more in depth, a caveat or a caution on this whole post-colonial decolonial discussion is that I still inhabit and embody and, and benefit from colonial privilege. And I'm a white Christian us scholar at a European university. I mean, it's just like, ding, ding, ding, ding, I mean, colonizer, colonizer, colonizer, colonizer. And, and, and so, yes, I'm impacted by, I hope this work does some decolonial work, but I'm unlimited in the amount I can do. Uh, because even as this is, I hope a V colonial work, it is still also a colonizing work and that's problematic. Uh that's, that's messy. Mr. Dr. Nora Lai of the, that said Mo here in Berlin pointed out in the book launch as well. She said something along the lines of you've done some decolonial work. She was very proud of that.
Speaker 3 00:32:13 She was very excited about that. But then also saying that I'm still kind of trapped in Western ways of, of knowing and, and Western interests and Western classifications and systems of representation, models of comparison. What am I looking at and how am I putting them in a conversation? What are the criteria I'm using for my evaluation? And this is what Linda <inaudible> Smith in her book, decolonizing methodologies calls the cultural or archives of colonization, and I'm still operating within those very much so. And so I kind of throw in that caution and caveat to say, yes, I, I attempt to do deep colonial work. I, I think I have succeeded in some regards in that, but what's needed from here, I think are more critical reflexive EIC projects or, or research being done on this subject. Uh, that is by people who are from within the community who are doing critical scholarship, but also are doing this decolonizing work and, and challenging some of my framings and, and some of my comparisons, some of my evaluations, et cetera.
Speaker 3 00:33:16 And some people are already doing this. I'm in conversation with a scholar, Cynthia EZ Gonzales in Mexico. She is doing, I think, some really challenging work around gender and sexuality and Sufi communities in Mexico and also in California among Muslims in the Los Angeles area. And we've been in, in dialogue. We, we exchange emails quite regularly actually. And I asked her a lot of these questions because she keeps me very humble in this regard and opens my eyes to things in this regard and helps push me further in decolonizing, the work that we're doing. And in fact, with the Latin American Caribbean Islamic studies association that I, I work with in our newsletter, we have our next edition coming out in, in January of 2022 this month when we're recording this, this interview. And she's got a piece in there about what we, what we imagine or what we think about when we think about Muslim women from the perspective of Latin American, the Caribbean and her research in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 00:34:09 So I think that's excellent work and we need more of that work. But yeah, I think I was inspired by people like Spock and her critique of post-colonial reason, which is quite old work now. I mean, it's almost 25 years old. I think, you know, she makes this argument how European works and not only tend to exclude the subter from their discussions, but even actively prevent non-Europeans from occupying those conversations or occupying those institutions. So she kind of talks about this sanctioned ignorance that we have for, for reproducing and, and foreclosing colonialist structures. And this, this idea really plays a strong role in how I tried to do this work in trying to push back against the sanctioned ignorance that we had about Muslims in the area and how they shaped the Americas and how the Americas also shaped what we call global Islam. She also critique center periphery models. And so I drew on her from that. And so I do try to do that work, but I think I just wanna add in a lot of those cautions to say, yeah, this work went some, some way in, in achieving that, but there's a lot more work to be done and, and I'm not gonna be the person to do it.
Speaker 2 00:35:16 Yeah. Thank you. I think that's really throws up a lot of like interesting questions and issues for, for everyone who is like doing research as, as an outsider. Basically, I find it's very interesting what you said that you can tick all the boxes of the colonization model or whatever in your, uh, in your research. And I was wondering like how that is. I mean, you really touched a little bit it, but how in like the practical field work itself, like how did this work out? Like, is it something you had to really struggle with in your interactions with interlocutors or was it not so much of an issue? How did that play out?
Speaker 3 00:35:49 It played out differently depending upon context, which I'm not trying to Dodge the question, but I mean, it, it just played out differently in, in multiple different contexts and relationships. I think there was always a good dose of healthy suspicion as there should be when someone like me comes knocking, whether that's literally knocking on the door or, or digitally knocking on the door or whatever, uh, way I use to contact people. But gosh, yeah, this is where I think our conversation gets more kind of an anthropological more ethnographic is the research I was doing. And in person that, which was more ethnic graphic, there were different kind of dynamics that would happen different inflections of power that shaped those relationships and those conversations and those introductions. I'll just start with the one that's on the top of my mind. A lot of people thought I was Muslim, so I didn't try to actively promote that perception if asked or if I realized people thought I was Muslim, I made clear that I was not, but right now we're doing this interview.
Speaker 3 00:36:44 You can see, I have a mustache, that's a questionable choice. Okay, sure. But back then I used to have this full beard, cuz that was, you know, a cool thing to do at the time. I was trying to be one of the hip kids. I don't know. I liked the beard. So like when I was doing my, my extensive field work in Puerto Rico and in New York, I had this fairly big beard. And so people saw that as a marker of being Muslim or one of my practices is when I went into, uh, you know, a Muji, uh, or a Mesquita, whatever people might call it locally, I would take up a copy of the Quran and, and be reading it beforehand as other people would as well. But for me, it was an opportunity to continue to learn about the Quran and to read it.
Speaker 3 00:37:22 And I wasn't trying to get it off the perception that I was Muslim, but they would always come that time when I was visiting, when people would kind of step forward to do prayers and I would stay back. Uh, and, and then people would be like, oh, whoa, what's up there. Um, so that was one of the ways I made clear I'm I'm not Muslim. You may have thought I was, but, but I'm not. Or in conversation, you know, if people were talking to me and they'd be calling me brother, and you know, they'd be making certain references, I would be like, you know, just so you know, I'm not, I'm not Muslim, but that perception based on certain external markers or certain practices, or the fact that when I went to a mosque people, I knew what kind of to do. Right. Um, and so people would not question me that gave me access that wasn't, um, that wasn't an intentional mood to get me in more so like doing will do.
Speaker 3 00:38:05 And, uh, you know, kind of knowing what to do at a, a mosque was an intentional side of respect. Something that I had picked up long before I started doing research as a way to respect the space, respect the place and to, to mark myself yes. As an outsider, but someone who wanted to, to treat that space and that place as, uh, an insider would, but it got me in a lot of times now, other times, you know, people knew I was not Muslim because they, I made it explicit perhaps, uh, in, in my contact with them or they knew me through someone else or I'd been referred to them. And a lot of times people would Google me. And when you Google me, I am all over the place on the internet. Uh, not to say that I'm like, you know, really popular or exciting, but I just a typical American who is, you know, not concerned about their digital footprint.
Speaker 3 00:38:49 And so I got a lot of stuff out there including, you know, talks that I've given in Christian communities, because I'm an ordained pastor as well, which complicates this whole thing even further. And people will look at that and go, okay, who is this guy? And, and why is he here? And, and is he trying to convert us and does he model himself a missionary? And so they'd ask those hard questions. And thankfully my online presence, I think, speaks to who I am and, and what I'm trying to do and, and respect and the encounter that I'm trying to encourage between Christians and Muslims. And part of my research is to do research from a very humble point of view of what I call a critically compassionate point of view, like Muslim communities. And I think people saw that reflected online and it never became a big problem.
Speaker 3 00:39:31 If people Googled me, they'd be like, oh, Google you, man. This is pretty cool. I really like what you said here. And it would start a conversation. Oftentimes there's even in a mom that I know among the Puerto Rican Muslim community, who we would exchange notes on, like, you know, I deliver a sermon and, and he, you know, does the football, and we'd talk about like what the differences were like, what we could learn from each other. So it started some really interesting conversations as well, along the way. Now the third aspect of this is the colonial power dynamic between myself as an American, as a us American. And how funny that I said that, that I'm an American as if the rest of the people in the Americas are not American, cuz this is a typical problem. And one that I often critique and I just did it.
Speaker 3 00:40:11 I said it, but there it is, right. The us models itself as kind of the leader, not only in the free world, but definitely of the American hemisphere. And part of that emerges out of the politics of the late 19th century and the early 20th century, the outworkings of what is called the Monroe doctrine in that we were trying to keep foreign powers out of the American hemisphere in order to establish us supremacy in the region and to protect the us Homeland, the land that we took from the, the peoples that were already present from foreign incursions. Now, originally those were European colonial powers, Britain and France and Spain, et cetera. But then it merged into keeping communist Russia and communist China out of Latin America and the Caribbean. And I, I would argue now that includes keeping is Islam and Muslims out of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Speaker 3 00:41:01 And so I also, as a researcher, I stepped into that kind of colonial space where the us says this area is an area that we should control, that we should have power over, that we should dictate what happens within it and who is allowed access to it in order to protect the us Homeland. And so when I'd come to Puerto Rico, Cuba, for example, or into Brazil or into these other spaces, I'm also carrying that with me. And I think that was a bigger concern for a lot of people within the communities that I interacted with was that more political colonial power dynamic that was at play. And I had to answer a lot of hard questions and some people still did not trust me thinking that I was an agent of the state. And what I think is really interesting about the state of the field is that a lot of the early research on Muslim communities in Latin American, the Caribbean or Islam in Latin American Caribbean were from we're from military officials who were concerned about the presence of Isan and presence of Muslims in Latin America and the Caribbean. And the fact that terrorists might be emerging from cells hidden throughout the Americas and that they might come over the poorest borders into the United States. And I, I argue about this in, in one of the chapters of book that, that, that dynamic is very much at play in the region. And so I also had to deal with, with that aspect as I did my research.
Speaker 2 00:42:18 Yeah, thanks. This is so interesting to listen to, I mean, as an anthropologist, I always find these kind of like dynamics and tensions, uh, in the field the most, most interesting. And I love this aspect of like interfaith exchange about like how to do sermons and, and things like that. I think you could write a whole book about just this aspect of it. I wanted to go back a little bit to the problematics of this pre-Colombian context narrative in the context of indigenous communities. I found very interesting this case study on the conversion of, uh, people in the mid 90 nineties in your chapter, on Muslims in Mexico. And you explained that the conversion two Islam of a substantial number of people from, from these communities in chias, if I pronounce it correctly, and it has been labeled as demonstrative of the selective appropriation of Islamic doctrine and as representative of the preservation and reshaping of ethnic identities in conversation with global Muslim communities, I mean, you already touched upon it, but I thought it was really interesting, like this relationship between indigenous communities and Muslim communities in the region, um, and how both are kind of minorities, but perhaps also competing in a sense, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 00:43:25 And of course like how this conversion trends, if you wanna call it that impacts this.
Speaker 3 00:43:31 That's a really rich question. And I, I must thank the multiple predominantly Mexican scholars. Who've done work there in, in Southern Mexico, in JAAS in the area around St CLA Casa with <inaudible> or wider Maya as, as they referred to, uh, people that have converted. That is an endlessly fascinating rich case from the first contact between Muslims and the, the community there, which involves this Sufi international network. The MEIT tune world movement was founded by a Scott who had converted and became a chef and wanted to get in touch with the Z Batista's that were there, who were, you know, this anti globalization movement, um, here in the region. And then how this like whole village basically converts. They had converted from Catholicism to evangelicalism and then from evangelicalism to Islam. And then now in the present day, you've got the original kind Meto community, but then you've also got what you could call a mainstream or, or a BroadStream Sunni Muslim, uh, mosque.
Speaker 3 00:44:36 There you've some kinda community it's just, I, I often use that as an example of here is the world of global Islam and multiple dynamics happening within, in a single village in Southern, in Southern Mexico. And like so rich, so wonderful. But as you point out, this also brings up some really rich opportunity to discuss the interaction between indigenous peoples and the Americas and global Islam and indigenous peoples being Muslim as well in the Americas. I think this is an area that deserves really robust for their consideration in our field, because there are other communities in the Americas that have not received the same attention that these Muslims have. So there's multiple Mexican scholars who have done work in this, looking at it from the perspective of the indigenous peoples in particular and Satia history, et cetera, Michelle <inaudible> has done. I think some of the most significant work in that area, looking at subed identity and conversion to Islam, but there are other communities in other places that I think people should endeavor to do research in.
Speaker 3 00:45:42 I'm always cautious about that, cuz it's not like we should just point to indigenous peoples and say, well, they need to be researched cuz again, that's a, the reins of this kind of colonial need to, to map and to study and to classify and to place into structures of Western knowledge in order to dominate. And so I am hesitant to say, well, we need to study, but gosh, I think there are some interesting questions that we had there. And I think there are some interesting conversations that could emerge into that and there's some good learning that could happen. And even some de-colonial work that could be done there again, the right person, the right moment, the right kind of questions need to be asked in those contexts. Again, I don't think I'm the person to do that, but people could be doing that kind of work with various indigenous communities.
Speaker 3 00:46:26 I list a few at the end of my book that I had come across in my research, but there wasn't data or information on them, uh, or there wasn't sufficient information or there was nothing at all. And I'm not saying I'm the first to kind of come across this and others may have come across it, but I, I literally cannot find anything uh, about them except that there was the report of a mosque in this community. Say for example, in, in DOA that, that I came across, I think there's some really, uh, interesting things that could be done there, but we have to be careful on the one hand as we explore those, those questions because of the ways that indigenous peoples have, have been classified and colonized over the years. And then also we, we need to still do this work in order to understand some of the contemporary dynamics of this Islam and see how indigenous communities not only Americas, but then in comparison with other indigenous communities, what the dynamics are, there is some and conversion and then also the establishment of communities and identifications and belonging, et cetera.
Speaker 2 00:47:25 Yeah. I think this sounds such interesting question. What is so striking about your book is the sheer diversity of topics that it covers from the Reconquista to the halal economy of Brazil to Islamophobia in the, in the us is really rich and, and wide range. And I want to ask you like how you, how you managed to do all the research and background work, uh, for all these time diverse communities in histories. And you already said that, uh, a lot of it was also done, uh, in the context of this course that you were teaching and that you kind of had the materials from there. So maybe my follow up question would be, how did you decide on which ones to include and were there important stories or regions that you decided not to include
Speaker 3 00:48:02 As we talked about earlier? Yeah. The preparation for this course was really big in terms of, you know, the book follows basically the outline of that semester of long course history, contemporary case studies, you know, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. So it, it was structured. The structure was already there, very clear to me, but the, the work that I'd done in kind of collecting all the different source material that I used for this emerged out of my early graduate work, when I was just looking into the conversions of Latinx people in the United States, the Islam that was my, my master's work. And as part of that, I started to come across these stories from Mexico, uh, and having grown up in, uh, the Los Angeles, California area and having frequently gone into Mexico and spent time in Mexico, uh, I was drawn to some of those stories.
Speaker 3 00:48:48 And so then when I applied for my PhD work, it was to do work south of the, the us Mexico board. That was the idea. And so I started to look at various communities and places to see what work had been done, what areas still needed to be research, what communities had not been known or, um, had not been part of this research so far. And I saw a lot of work being done in Mexico and then chop and I thought originally that's where I want to go. Uh, but then I saw there were already like four PhDs in process at the time. And I said, well, they don't need me to do this. You know, I don't need to step into that space. And it's now fun cuz some of those PhD projects are know my colleagues, right. And people who I interact with in this space.
Speaker 3 00:49:29 Um, and I've mentioned a couple of them in the interview today. So a lot of those just preliminary research and you know, I have archived fever. You might say, uh, I, you know, wanna just like kind of save that information, pretend like I know it and all that. And, and so I, I saved that all in different folders. And as I continued to do my preliminary research as to where I would do my PhD research, my in-depth ethnography, I kept a lot of options open and did preliminary field work in a few different places as well. So that all came to be a benefit in the writing of this book because I had an extensive bibliography that was already in place. I had some preliminary field work that I'd done. I had contacts that I had made. And so I went into that bibliography for the course.
Speaker 3 00:50:11 I, I followed up with some of those contacts for the course as well and included them in the class as well. They, they, you know, some people from the community shared as part of that course. I have some of that when I went to go write the book, but then in between the course and writing the book, which is about several months, I, I dug even deeper into the material, made a couple of additional trips and did some additional research and more follow up. I presented at a couple of conferences, some chapters in progress and got feedback from there as well, and then was able to write it in three and a half months that, that first draft. And then after that, I continued to find more and more and more and more that I could kind of add to this, this text, if there was a gap in the argument or there was evidence that I didn't have that I kind of needed to find.
Speaker 3 00:50:54 Yeah. I either went and did the research. If, if no one else had done it or I relied on others who had done it before this book is not necessarily like my all original research, right? As a synthetic account of this type, uh, relies on other scholars, it stands on the shoulders of those other scholars. And I, I try to make that clear in the book that I rely on them. And, uh, I trespass into their territory and hope that the way I'm trying to tie these different studies together, put these different works into conversation is my contribution to the field. But understanding that the specialized knowledge comes from the individual scholars or the members of the community that I relied upon, uh, to, to get it done. So, yeah, I mean, it, it's, it's a lot of work and, uh, it covered a lot of ground and there were plenty of things that were left off to the side.
Speaker 3 00:51:40 As you mentioned. I think the biggest one that I, I wish I could have had a chapter on was the various Sufi <inaudible> or Sufi influences or SoFi communities or individuals, cetera, this whole story of sophism and Latin American attri. Uh, and again, we need to make distinctions between sophism as, as a concept and as a phenomenon. And there's been a lot of less than stellar work on, on Sufi communities and what sophism is as a concept, et cetera, and, and how it's lived in the real world. But because of that, I think there's a lot of rich opportunity to dive deeper into that. And there's been some who have done this work, but again, that kind of synthetic what's going on. What are the dynamics across the hemisphere? I think that's one of those things I wish I could have had a chapter on, but didn't have the time for knew I needed to do actual field work and, and didn't have the bandwidth, uh, or the funding to get that done.
Speaker 3 00:52:31 And so I left it off to the side, but I think I have like two paragraphs in the concluding chapter on that, trying to just lay the groundwork for people to say, Hey, here's the works that have been done. Here are a few references have added like, go do this work. And if someone else doesn't, I mean, I'll eventually get to it. Um, but I think that's, that's another area where people can really dig deeper and, and really explore, uh, a lot more of the dynamics that are happening in Sufi spaces, suing networks, et cetera, in, in the region. And, and there's lots of others too, that are put in the concluding chapter. Other unpublished works as well. There are several books in progress that I was able to see copies of, or I had conversations with the authors about, and I didn't feel comfortable writing people, writing whole chapters on unpublished works and adding them to the synthetic account. But I, I nod to them. I tip my hat to them in the concluding chapter saying, wait until you see these works because they're gonna be really helpful and we're gonna see more and we're gonna understand more because of them. And I referenced several of those scholars at the end and I can't wait until their books come out over the next few years.
Speaker 2 00:53:34 Right. Maybe then my, my next question would be, can we expect a second book on Muslims in or off Latin America in the Caribbean from you? Or what are your future plans or that you currently working on?
Speaker 3 00:53:47 Yeah, I think I, I, I write in the book that I hope that this book will be irrelevant, uh, in 10 to 20 years. Uh, or maybe I think that may have gotten edited out. I think the publisher said, don't say you hope it's irrelevant. I think <laugh>, I think they told me that I don't know if I kept it in the end, but yeah, that's kind of how I feel, right. I want this book to be a place marker. I I'm, I'm someone who loves spending time in the mountains or on the desert and hiking. And I love place markers. And whether they're like official government place, markers, like this is how many kilometers or miles you've walked, and this is how far you've got to go to the, the goal or, uh, they're the impromptu, what we call Karens, like piles of rock that let you know you're still on the right path.
Speaker 3 00:54:28 I, I hope this book is like a place marker. If it says this, this is where the field is at right now. These are the stories that, that have been told, have been told in depth that we could create a synthetic account around that we could provide an overall narrative that this is what's happening. This is the state of the field at this moment. And it says, and here here's where you're headed a little bit. Like these are the questions that are left over. These are the conversations that we have yet to have. These are the communities that we have yet to involve in the conversation and we can look forward to those happening. And, and again, my hope is that in, you know, 10 years, 20 years people would be like, oh, kinship with nice guy, super irrelevant book. You know, uh, that, that, that's, that's my hope.
Speaker 3 00:55:11 I think the job as a scholar is to constantly be working to replace yourself, to replace your work. And, and I mean, that quite literally is that we are there only in order to encourage the scholarship that will come after us and not necessarily prove us wrong, but show us what we didn't see and only serve to advance the conversation beyond what we were capable of this book. I, I don't think there'll be another one of them. The publisher also in the 1980s, maybe even in 1980, I think published a book on the Jews of Latin America. And this book is, is not a companion volume to that, but is seen as kind of paralleling it in some ways. And they've created additional additions of that work, but that's only because that work was super popular and it made the money. So, you know, if we do another addition of it, that kind of depends on whether or not it resonates whether or not it's successful other projects I'm working on earlier.
Speaker 3 00:56:08 I said, the reason we think about the Muslim world as the Muslim world and it's bounded to middle east, north Africa, maybe as broad and as generous as Shahab SP Bengals complex. You know, the reason we do that is because institutionally structurally, we continue to pass on that message to future generations, uh, of scholars and of students that aren't scholars, but who then share that opinion and in other public spheres or in, in the popular products. And so what I wanted to do was create new infrastructures, create new institutions that could help tell a different narrative and center the Americas, Latin American, the Caribbean in particular, into our conversation of global Islam and to center global Islam into our conversation about Latin American, the Caribbean. And so I founded this network of scholars that are working on this subject back, uh, at the end of 2020, it's now been in operation for like a year and a couple months.
Speaker 3 00:57:03 And we've got over 300 different people who are involved in this network and that's a Testament to the need for that type of infrastructure, but also to the already robust nature of this, the status of the scholarship and of knowledge within the community. And so I've been doing a lot of work on that. We produce a quarterly newsletter to talk about these works, to share with one another. And as one of the scholars who as part of that shared with me when we had our first colloquium, our first kind of event back in, in autumn of 2021, she said, you're the godfather of us. And I, I liked that this, this Vivino this, this individual who is, you know, necessarily responsible for the birth of the field. I am not the biological father of this field, but I am a godfather that says, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna care for this community because I care a lot about it.
Speaker 3 00:57:50 And I'm gonna try and, and to use very godfather Christian language. Bless it. But in, in, in other ways, it's just to say, yeah, I wanna be there. I wanna help shepherd. I want to come lead. I wanna help launch other people, give a platform for emerging scholars to share their work and for those conversations to happen. And, and my hope is that I can more and Moree into the background as time goes on, pass that on to other people, uh, as well. So a lot of my work has been focused on that other things. I've got a PhD research that I need to publish. I'm working on my book based on my research with Puerto Rican Muslims over several years in Puerto Rico and in the United States. And online, I published a couple of articles about that, but now I'm working on the actual book manuscript and completely overhauling the dissertation and, and writing something new based on that. And then I've been doing some research here in Berlin as well, and doing some work in the field of ethnic graphic theology. And I, I've just published two articles in the last few months about that. That's a whole nother field of research that I've become an interloper in. See, I've got various projects going on and some of them are directly related to the book. Others are, are completely different and more founded in death and graphic work. But yeah, I'm staying busy. I'm staying outta trouble, uh, since the publication, the book.
Speaker 2 00:59:06 Right. That sounds very exciting. Thank you so much for, for this really interesting conversation. I, again, learned a lot.
Speaker 3 00:59:13 I'm humbled to have people read it, people that I, I respect and who's worked, uh, challenges me and shapes me, uh, to be, to have this conversation with you is, is really helpful. And I think the only thing I hope there's more of is putting your research context into conversation with my research context and seeing what comes out of it. And, and that's, I think kind of some of the next steps of, of this book as well, is to see more comparison at, across in between these various lats of connection that I talk about when I talk about global is, um, again, structurally, we have a book that focuses on, on very specific geographies, but I think that these conversations here are relevant to other conversations into the context. And I hope to see more of that cross geography, cross area studies exchange to be able to, to do more of transnational trans regional work in the future.
Speaker 2 01:00:02 Yeah, definitely looking forward to that.
