Creating a Culture of Change: Building Community Through Faith
On Wednesday, July 29, Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, the Arab American National Museum, and the National Network for Arab American Communities co-hosted the third conversation in its summer-long series, Creating a Culture of Change: A Series of Conversations on Race and Community Building.
Wednesday’s conversation brought together three community leaders and activists for whom faith plays an integral role in their anti-racist work: Jasiri X, hip hop artist, activist, and CEO/co-founder of 1Hood Media; Ahmad Jitan, Community Organizer at IMAN (Inner City Muslim Network); and Margari Aziza Hill, co-founder and Executive Director of MuslimARC. The discussion was moderated by Isra Daraiseh, Advocacy and Community Engagement Manager at ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services).
The three panelists, who happen to have all worked with each other over during their combined many years of work in faith and activism, spoke to the unique position of faith groups to collaborate with each other, learn from each other, and stand up to hate.
A full recording of the event can be viewed below:
“What does it mean when we say building community through faith...within the context of racial equity and race in general?” asked moderator Isra Daraiseh at the outset of the conversation, inviting panelists to speak to specific experiences that address this question. Before turning to the panelists, Ms. Daraiseh held up a recent real-world example of Muslim faith leaders seeking to answer this same question: a recent episode of the NPR podcast Code Switch takes up the experience of a prominent Arab business owner in Minneapolis leaning on his faith and the faith community to address the racism within his own family.
Jasiri X spoke first, addressing at the opening of his presentation how much of his own inspiration in this sphere has come from co-panelist Margari Aziza Hill. “She was really one of the first Muslims that I saw online who brought race into the conversation of Islam, in an intentional way. I think sometimes we have this idea that there’s no racism in Islam, there’s no white supremacy in Islam, but if you talk to Black Muslims, specifically, you realize that is not the case.” He went on to thank Hill for bringing to the fore sometimes difficult conversations: “Even though [addressing our own prejudices is] a harder conversation for some folks to have, we bring our own baggage and our own life experience into Islam, and if racism or patriarchy or misogyny is called out, then we have to really begin to look at ourselves.”
Originally from the South Side of Chicago but now based in Pittsburgh, Jasiri spoke to growing up as a young black man in the extreme segregation of Chicago, moving as a child to an almost entirely white suburb, finding Islam through hip hop and how all of these experiences influenced his approaches to faith and activism.
“How do I push back and how do I fight back against this injustice that I’m seeing everyday but not use physical violence?”
Jasiri X found himself asking. He found the answer in Islam, hip hop, and ultimately in creating his Activism through Art Organization, 1Hood Media.“We started 1Hood Media because Pittsburgh has the poorest working Black community in the country–and so here we are as young activists and wanting to combine our hip hop consciousness, our faith, and a movement to bring justice to our community. So 1Hood started as people of different faiths coming together to do that…” Across a group of members of the Nation of Islam, Sunni Muslims, Christians, and Athiests, Jasiri X spoke to the experience of finding common ground through activism in an inter-faith group. As such, Jasiri X and the 1Hood community have focused on modeling interfaith harmony and collaboration.
Ahmed Jitan, a native of Palestine, brings his years of work with youth and faith communities in a number of cities in the Arab world as well as cities throughout the U.S. to IMAN, and most recently, the Corner Store Campaign.
“I actually see the Corner Store Campaign as a form of art and creativity– so if you think of any kind of art as putting different pieces together in a way that’s beautiful or challenging or thought-provoking, I see Community Organizing as putting pieces and putting people together to create a new beautiful world and thought-provoking actions.”
Reminding the audience that George Floyd was killed in front of a corner store, Jitan urged attendees to consider a different model for corner stores, places which often manifest racial inequities in communities of color. This new model (one where corner stores are places of camaraderie, food sovereignty, and racial justice) needs to be created, Jitan says, “by people who are directly affected, people who live in the neighborhood and shopping at those stores, and also recognizing that there are roles for others, like those who have benefitted from the wealth of these corner stores to redress the harm that has been done by them.” Jitan helps to organize “ciphers” in front of corner stores, a word which comes from the Arabic “sifr” or “zero”, also meaning wholeness--healing circles in which participants seek to address conflict and solve problems.
The campaign works to end what Jitan calls “food apartheid” in neighborhoods of color in Chicago––the strategic absence of places to buy real food or build solidarity with community members. “Wittingly or unwittingly, corner-store owners, many Palestinian, have chosen to participate in a system of apartheid…[they feel] if you don’t sell this liquor, if you dont sell this tobacco, if you don’t set up shop in a way [that benefits white supremicist systems] you will be poor, you won’t be able to support your family.” In this way, marginalized communities are pitted against each other to prop up systemic racism. Through ciphers, a “model corner store”, community gardens, and more, the campaign works to dismantle this system.
Jitan referenced his experience growing up a Palestinian refugee in the U.S. and understanding very early on that he could, if he acted a certain way, enjoy certain privileges not available to Black people in his community, but simultaneously, as a Palestinian, also understanding deeply the feeling of marginalization and oppression that is daily experience for Black Americans. “It reminds me of the Qur'anic verse ‘Stand up as witnesses to justice even if against your own selves, your own parents, your own kin’”, Jitan said. “So when we come to this country what is the model of success we’ve adopted for ourselves? Is it one that’s based off of buying into white capitalism or is it based off of building solidarity with people of color?”
Margari Aziza Hill, the discussion’s last speaker, began by talking about her entry into Islam and about the fertile ground for collaboration and solidarity between Arab Muslim and Black Muslim communities. "I found Islam through Black Muslims, through the Nation of Islam.. and that’s what allows most Muslim Americans [to connect], like if you’re Muslim, you’re wearing this scarf, the safest place you’ll be is in the hood.” Because Islam has been so widely embraced by by urban communities of color, she mentioned, Black city neighborhoods can be some of the safest spaces for Muslims.
From here, Hill went on to speak about how, for Black Americans, embracing Islam was and still is closely tied with rejecting white supremacy.
“Within that understanding of what Islam was, was rejecting white supremacy, and it was through this very Black experience, and through the Black radical tradition, which challenged capitalism, which challenged the racial hierarchy, which challenged even the deification of whiteness.”
Still, as Hill began to meet Muslims of different backgrounds, she was exposed to the deep anti-Black racism within the Muslim community. After almost twenty years of experiencing this racism Hill was moved to start MuslimARC.
“First we were focused on [teaching and activist work in] Muslim spaces, but after the murder of Eric Garner, we really had to shift to more systemic work.” While she was at various times pushed to run for public office, Hill had her reservations about the brokenness and the white supremacy built into politics. Instead, she thought, “Organizing is the way we can do this with dignity, that we could build power and not be kowtowing to the racist structures.” Beginning with a six month workshop at the Arab American National Museum, and continuing through trainings, workshops, and the development of standardized curriculum, MuslimARC has continued to address xenophobia, islamophobia, and anti-Blackness through a racial justice lens. Of late, MuslimARC has focused this work particularly on fighting the criminalization of Black Muslim men. “We can be allies and we can dismantle white supremacy through collaboration and solidarity,” Hill ended.
After fielding questions from attendees, Jasiri X shared lyrics he’s currently working on, which are an attempt, he said, “to synthesize everything that’s going on right now”
“We need f***n retribution / You can call a million cops, but you can’t arrest a movement / Welcome to the revolution, to clear up any confusion / We came for redistribution and for everything we suffered / That ain’t even restitution.”
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