Muslim sound, public space, and citizenship agendas in an American City

Abstract

Based on fieldwork in a small Michigan city, this study examines a contestation over the right for Muslims to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer, or adhan, into the streets. At stake in such contestations over public space is a struggle over conflicting citizenship agendas, or ideological formations seeking to advance particular models for good citizenship and the acceptable integration of minorities. Some Hamtramck citizens who identified themselves as interfaith actors advocated a citizenship agenda to support the call to prayer based on a material and spatial conception of shared civic culture that challenged assumptions about political differences between religious communities. To forward these aims, interfaith actors organized public ritual events that offered opportunities for visceral and experiential investments into the sights, sounds, and ceremonies of Hamtramck's religiously diverse public arena. This strategy encouraged people to a cross boundaries into previously exclusive religious spaces and presented opportunities to expand the cultural boundaries of municipal belonging.

Keywords::

• Islam
• America
• citizenship
• anthropology of the senses
• urban space

Acknowledgments

As always, I am grateful to Nathan Tabor for his significant intellectual and creative contributions to this article. Thanks to Kamran Asdar Ali, Pauline Turner Strong, and Anouk de Koning for their critical engagement, kindness, and encouragement as the work progressed. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Citizenship Studies anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions greatly enhanced this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. All references to names and personal street addresses have been changed to protect identities of speakers.

^2. I use ‘impasse’ in Berlant's sense of the term to capture the intensified feelings of Hamtramck residents who, during the debates, were seeking to work out ‘what seems to be possible and blocked in personal/collective life’ while participating in an uncertain and ‘unfolding’ political present (2010, 3).

^3. ‘Interfaith’ as it is generally understood describes movements that encourage interaction between two or more faith communities in which all participants recognize one another as belonging to different, but legitimate, alternative belief systems with the goal of promoting dialogue, mutual understanding, and mutual aid (Smith 2004).

^4. ‘Public ritual events’ are described by Sanjek as those which mark special occasions or purposes, occur in central or symbolically transformed locations, and break the flow of ordinary events with formal behavior including invocations, speeches, music, processions, dance, and the sharing of food (1998, 8).

^5. This strategy reflects Bhandar's concept of ‘cosmopolitan cultural citizenship,’ in which ‘cosmopolitanism’ refers to a strategy of inclusion based on a ‘politics of hybridity [that] challenges the rigid borders between cultural communities’ (2010, 340). Bhandar argues for a dynamic, material-spatial and practice-based understanding of ‘the cultural’ that emphasizes the importance of ‘shifting cultural forms that arise through disaporic experiences’ (2010, 332).

^6. The potentials and constraints of the 2004 movement to support the adhan have also been discussed in Weiner's (2014) study of religious sounds, public space, and American pluralism.

^7. In an earlier publication, I discuss how the alliances formed within the call to prayer movement were tested in a public debate on a human rights ordinance giving equal protection for LGBTQ minorities (Perkins 2010).

^8. Schafer explains: ‘The term “soundmark” is derived from landmark and refers to a community sound which is unique or possesses qualities that make it specially regarded or noticed by people in that community’ (1994, 10).

^9. Yet, this is not always the case. Weiner's study sets his analysis of the call to prayer debate in Hamtramck within a wider discussion of the ways in which church bells have also been subject to heated municipal debate in various times and places throughout American history (2014).

^10. Ordinance 503 may also be critiqued as unconstitutional for giving preferential treatment to the sounds of organized religious groups over those of any other individuals or groups to amend Ordinance 434.

Additional information

Funding

This research was carried out with support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation [GR7643].