New Bloggingheads: Being Muslim in America

The following is in response to Jonathan’s post at Head Heeb. It is a selection from a piece I’m working on about South Asian diaspora communities and hybrid art. Diaspora, as an analytic term, is one that has multiple meanings,[1] and that needs some clarification before proceeding with its use. One convenient way to begin thinking about diaspora is to make a distinction between physical diasporas and the idea of diaspora as metaphor.[2] Physical diasporas[3] can be further divided into types, such as classical, victims, labor, trade, and imperial.[4] The key type of diaspora for South Asians is the labor…

The Jew Who Helps Run an Important Arab-American Organization in Brooklyn – Tablet Magazine. Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, home to an estimated 35,000 Arabs, is the largest Arab-American community outside of Michigan and California. That number is an estimate because no one in government has been able to count. “The community doesn’t like to fill out forms, and for good reason,” a staffer at the Arab-American Association of New York, in Bay Ridge, told me, referring to the recent revelation that the NYPD targeted Muslims for surveillance. Over the next two months, however, the Arabs of Bay Ridge will submit to…