Mapping Islam in the Americas

The idea of Islam in the America’s is something we’ve been thinking about for years. After 20 years of War on Terror politics our identities have been forced into wearing the flags of our nations literally as hijabs on our heads. Of course we understand that our faith and our Ummah are not confined to any borders. Some of the fastest growing communities of Muslims in the world are in the America’s. Rather than being oriented to motherlands and our countries of origin what if we instead began to orient ourselves to our brothers and sisters of these continents as we plant the seeds of Islam everywhere throughout these lands.

This idea of a shared identity across Islam in the America’s isn’t foreign to Latinos, Indigenous and peoples of African descent who make up the majority of the population of the Americas. This is called Latinidad in Spanish, a shared identity of the peoples of the America’s despite all their diverse roots. Another term that has been used over the years is La Raza Cosmica (the cosmic race) to define the race of people mixed all together, of Black, Indigenous, White and of course Arab descent. So many of us have Islam coded in our DNA from ancestors most of us will never know their name but whose prayers traveled across centuries to land in our hearts. Of course Islam is El Fe Cosmica (the cosmic faith) and a primordial reality that has an understanding of all the seen universe, and all the unseen worlds.

The Global Border Mosque

Starting in 2019, we built the Border Mosque at one of the most militarized borders in the world, to unite separated families and to raise our voices as Muslims against the inhumane immigration system in the United States.

Over the last year as Friendship Park at the US/ Mexico border has been closed, we imagined what the Border Mosque would look like as a virtual space where Muslim refugees from around the world can come together for spiritual uplift, but also to get connected to key resources for wherever it is they are traveling in the world.

This is how the Global Border Mosque was born with refugee leaders from the Border Mosque who want to give back and serve, just as our families were given shelter, and food, information, and legal help every step of the way in their journey for safety, and to build new homes.

The Global Border Mosque is a necessary gathering space, to create belonging for Muslim refugees who face Islamophobia all over the world. Today Muslims make up the majority of the world’s refugee population, with 46% of global refugees coming from Muslim majority countries. This doesn’t even take into account the Latino Muslim convert populations we met on the Border, escaping war and violence just like Muslims from other parts of the world.

In 2016 Muslims, for the first time, made up the majority of refugees being resettled in the United States, at almost 50% of refugees admitted to the US. Then as the Trump administration came to power, those numbers fell by over 90% with the Muslim ban, with Muslim refugee admissions declining each year. In 2021, now that President Biden has ended the Muslim ban we need to be vigilant in making sure Muslim refugees are able to have full access to the US asylum system at the levels they had reached in 2016. Muslim refugee communities today include, but are not limited to the following diverse groups:

• Palestine

• Syria

• Yemen

• Uyghur

• Rohingya

• Iraq

• Afghanistan

• Somalia

• The Central African Republic

• Bosnia

• Kurdish

• Migrants on the West African route

• Muslim converts from throughout the America’s

Our goals for the Global Border Mosque are:

• Create monthly virtual gathering spaces where Muslims from around the world can worship together while discussing issues faced by refugees around the world.

• We will also continue to build alliances with refugee-led organizations in raising the voice of our community while also exploring the deep intersections between mass incarceration immigration detention in the US and around the world.

• Support direct legal services, and bail funds at migration detention centers

• We are continuing production on a feature-length documentary about the story of Friendship Park, and the Border Church, and the Border Mosque called, “Pray Beyond Borders.”

• We are also beginning production on the Border Mosque Podcast series featuring refugee stories from around the world.

• We are working with tech partners like Tarjimly, and RefAid to identify language access and general needs of Global Muslim refugee populations, to help connect them to key resources in each step of their journey.

• As this was founded as an interfaith effort with our partners at the Border Church, this space will not be Muslim exclusive, as we continue to build relationships with our multi-faith partners and brothers and sisters in humanity.

Our call to pray beyond borders started with a humble gathering in Friendship Park on the US/ Mexico border of San Diego and Tijuana in April of 2019. A group of Muslims and Christians gathered to pray together in parallel ceremonies on each side of one of the world's most militarized international borders. The sea met below us, just past the reach of the fence, as did our hearts connected by a love for God and a deep desire to transform the humanitarian crisis that surrounds us.

It was at that border that we prayed together for almost a year, we even brought Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib to our ceremony in December of 2019. Our groups started talking about traveling to Palestine together, and then suddenly, our final ceremony of the Border Church & Border Mosque came at the end of February 2020. As we know the world changed around us overnight, but Friendship Park has stayed closed this entire time, and because of water sanitation issues in the park, we doubt this binational space of gathering and prayer will open again any time soon.

In that space, we met friends from around the world, many who had been separated from their families and were seeking asylum in the United States. We met refugees from all over, but we also met Muslim ban refugees stuck in Tijuana.

In the year that we have been unable to meet at Friendship Park, we worked with directly impacted Muslim refugees to imagine what the future of the Border Mosque would look like. We met together online, we prayed together with our friends at the Border Church, and we began to work with partners doing important work beyond the space where the Border Mosque was launched. We worked with our partners at Beliver’s Bailout to raise money to get people free from immigration detention centers. We took calls from families who had brothers, and sisters, and cousins, and aunts, and uncles locked up in the midst of COVID at detention centers for more than six months at a time.

Building the Border Mosque - 2019-2020

Building the Border Mosque

To break down barriers we have to first start with the borders in our minds and hearts, and the borders within our communities and families. If we break down the walls between us then no iron or steel can stop our hearts from being connected. Prayer is not confined to dimensions of existence, let alone man-made borders, so answer this call and pray with us. 

From this original gathering we believe we have opened up one of the most important Christian / Muslim relationships in the world. While we have invited in other faith groups and we pray that others join us in this call, the core groups have been Muslim and Christian leaders. Together our faith communities make up more than 50% of humanity as the two largest religious groups on this earth. We know of no other place on this earth where Muslim and Christian services take place together, we invite you to join us and connect with our friends and family in the Border Church and Border Mosque.

THE SHORT FILM - A PRAYER BEYOND BORDERS

At our first Border Mosque/ Border Church service we commissioned a binational film crew with 15 members to shoot the service on both sides of the border with a team also crossing with the Muslim community into Tijuana. The direction from the filmmaker’s Ala’ Khan & Reynaldo Escoto was clear in attempting to capture the “God’s eye view” of the Border where no barrier exists. We did this through film-making focused on the spiritual nature of the service through close-up shots of the participants, and the contrasts on both sides of the border with central drone shots that allowed the camera to pass over the border. 

This turned into our film, “A Prayer Beyond Borders” which screened at international film festivals, and at the border wall in Tijuana and was distributed by MoveOn, and MPower Change. The film produces critical narrative interventions by featuring authentic Muslim and Christian voices in unison focused on justice and the immigration issues at the border, while also featuring Latina Muslims throughout the film. 

With the six-month anniversary of Border Mosque services we also conducted our first truly binational prayer with Imam Omar Suleiman leading the prayer in the US while a large group of Muslims followed in Mexico on the other side of the border wall.

From Palestine to Mexico

In December of 2019, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib visited the Border Mosque in what become one of our most emotional ceremonies as she reflected on being separated from her family in Palestine like people at the Border wall have been separated from their families. We produced a short film of her visit, “From Palestine to Mexico.”