ABOUT

This is a companion site to the Mapping Islamophobia Project main site which documents and makes legible Islamophobia incidents in the United States and the ways in which Muslim Americans counter it.

What

Anti-Muslim hostility has been on the rise in recent years in the United States. In response, Muslim Americans have engaged in variety of outreach efforts to counter the rise of Islamophobia. These efforts take the shape of open mosque houses, nation-wide conventions, interfaith dialogues, dinner parties, and “Ask a Muslim” events. They are organized by large Islamic organizations, local mosques, college students, and individual families. This site showcases how Muslim Americans, individually and collectively, are responding to this troubling trend.

Why

Islamophobia has increasingly become part of the American public life. At the same time, we see vital efforts from American Muslim communities to counter this trend. However, the persistent exposure to public hate and the demand on Muslim Americans to exonerate themselves from public suspicion severely limits their ability to freely and voluntarily participate in public life.

How

This site engages with data from the Mapping Islamophobia Project, which documents and makes legible both instances of Islamophobia and the response of Muslim Americans. To supplement the project’s data-driven main site, this site explores specific stories that exemplify the humanizing work of Muslim Americans. More specifically, the site considers six distinct events and individuals representing the six main categories of our dataset. In addition to the extensive dataset from the Mapping Islamophobia Project, the site also draws from notes and interviews conducted in field work.

Categories of Humanizing Work

We organize outreach efforts of Muslims Americans into the following six categories

Community Outreach

The category encompasses a wide-range of Muslim American outreach work. It consists of volunteering efforts, such as distributing foods to the homeless, setting up free clinics for low-income families, and organizing nation-wide blood drives on the anniversary of 9/11. It also includes individually driven projects, like “dinner with your Muslim neighbor” initiatives by Muslim families and forums about Islam organized by college students, community organizers, and large Islamic organizations.

Open Mosque House

Every year hundreds of mosques around the country organize open mosque houses, aimed at educating the public about Islam. The open houses often include a guided tour of the mosque, a brief lecture about Islam with Q&A sessions, free educational materials, and fun activities consisting of hijab tutorials, henna tattoos, and Arabic calligraphy. The organizers of the open houses often report that the misconceptions about Muslims to be the main drivers of their outreach.

Interfaith Efforts

This category covers the interfaith work in which Muslim Americans engage with other faith groups. It includes interfaith dialogue in which panelists discuss the similarities and differences between their faiths. It also includes interfaith meals, walks, and volunteering work that Muslims participate with the main objective of promoting understanding and harmony among different faith groups.

Ask a Muslim

To dispel misconceptions about Muslims, Muslim Americans create opportunities to answer questions non-Muslims have Islam. Because the goal is to correct the wide spread misinformation about Muslims, participants are encouraged to ask any questions they have ranging from the rights of women in Islamic theology to Middle Eastern politics. “Ask a Muslim” events take place on metropolitan street corners, public libraries, college campuses, and private living rooms.

Political Outreach

Muslim Americans engagement in political processes has been limited in the aftermath of 9/11. However, in recent years Muslim communities have engaged in consistent effort to reach out to local and national lawmakers and educate them about their struggles. This takes many forms, like mosques extending invitations to local politicians, who have expressed anti-Muslims sentiments in their campaign or Muslim advocacy groups organizing “Muslim Day at the Capitol” in state capitols across the country.

Political Activity

This category includes electoral activities by Muslim Americans, including running for a public office, registering voters, and organizing fundraising events for candidates. In our dataset, this category has the fewest number of entries. Number of Muslim Americans running for office has dramatically plummeted in the aftermath of 9/11 with numbers just beginning to recover. Hence, many of the individuals included in this category are repeats as they are often unsuccessful for their bid on a political office.

Team

Who are we?
Caleb Elfenbein

Caleb Elfenbein

Associate Professor of Religious Studies and History at Grinnell College

Primary investigator of Mapping Islamophobia Project, serving as a project editor and mentor.

Farah Omer

Farah Omer

Senior at Grinnell College

Serves as a contributor to Mapping Islamophobia, collecting and entering data.

Katherine Walden

Katherine Walden

Digital Liberal Arts Specialist at Grinnell College

Member of Grinnell College's Digital Liberal Arts Collaborative, Katie provides essential digital and technological support to the project.

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