Summary
A North Side Chicago mosque community, primarily of South Asian Muslim immigrants with a small Palestinian group, whose youth programs and private Islamic school formed Sara (pseudonym) in the interethnic Islamic framework she later helped institute in American Muslims for Palestine (Palestinian Chicago — Identity in Exile, PDF p.144-146).
Details
- Sara’s parents, increasingly active in the MCC in the absence of the Southwest Side secular centers, enrolled their children in its “weekend and night schools for Arabic and Islamic studies and Qur’an”, from pre-K to age fourteen (PDF p.144-145 / printed p.123-124).
- The MCC and the private K-12 Islamic school where Sara’s Pakistani Qur’an teacher also taught had explicitly embraced the Palestinian cause, which Sara asserted reflected a key Islamic mandate: “It’s in the Qur’an”, “all the prophets went through [the Holy Land]” (PDF p.145 / printed p.124).
- During Israel’s war with Hezbollah in 2006, Palestinians and South Asians boarded buses at the MCC to join a mass protest in downtown Chicago (PDF p.145 / printed p.124).
- MCC youth typically attended the Islamic Society of North America annual convention, at which Sara, volunteering at a booth in 2005, met the individuals discussing a Muslim organization focused exclusively on Palestine activism from which AMP was created in 2006 (PDF p.145 / printed p.124).
Related pages
American Muslims for Palestine · Palestinian Chicago · Religious turn