The Sacred Geographies of Twentieth Century Muslim Americans

This paper examines conceptions of sacred geography invoked by two Muslim groups in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, and the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA). Geographic touchstones for both groups included Chicago, the American South, India, Asia, and Africa. This seemingly eclectic mix of locations, ranging from cities to regions to continents, were consecrated and stitched together through repeated invocations in community newspapers and periodicals. The idea of a Muslim world provided the Ahmadiyya and MSTA with a vision in which their small burgeoning groups in the United States could be understood as integral components of much larger global forces. Categorization is a means of establishing mastery of knowledge, and in mapping out these geographic assemblages, the Ahmadiyya and MSTA groups presented different visions of racialized understandings of Muslim identity that would eliminate racial inequality.