Mohamad Marwan Jarada

MOHAMAD JARADA, then a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley, California, was awarded a grant in October 2019 to aid research on “Securing the Mosque: The Transformation of Religious Space into Security Space in Muslim American Communities,” supervised by Dr. Stefania Pandolfo. Over the past two decades, mosque spaces have been the target of racial violence and have experienced the dangers of counterinsurgent warfare across the United States. In response to both racial violence and counterinsurgency, Islamic communities have increasingly sought recourse in private security firms and partnerships with law enforcement agencies in order to safeguard their sacred spaces, ensure the transmission of their tradition, and enable the practice of their ethical form of life. This research examines how Islamic communities in North Carolina and Virginia renegotiate their relationship to security and surveillance technologies, both in light of the violence directed at them by civilians and the surveillance to which they have been subjected at the behest of U.S. government. Through ethnographic research, my research focuses on the interface between Islamic leadership, Muslim congregants, and security personnel mediated by the space of the mosque and other Islamic communal spaces. How does the invitation of such contested securitization measures transform the practice of the Islamic tradition and its spiritual spaces? How does the implementation of securitization and the management of risk and uncertainty in Islamic life become conditions for its renewal and regeneration? In answering these questions, this project engages and challenges anthropological studies on Islamic life in the United States, governmentality, political and religious minorities, and security and surveillance.