Mohamad Marwan Jarada

In the past decade, over 200 mosques have been the target of violent attacks across the United States. In response to acts of vandalism, arson and defacement, Muslim communities have increasingly sought recourse in private security firms and F.B.I. partnerships in order to safeguard their sacred spaces against the threat of violence. My research examines how mosque communities in North Carolina and Virginia renegotiate their relationship to security and surveillance technologies, both in light of the violence directed at them by fellow citizens and the surveillance to which they have been subjected at the behest of U.S. government. Through ethnographic research, my research will focus on the interface between mosque leadership, mosque congregants, and security personnel mediated by the space of the mosque. How does the invitation of such contested securitization measures transform the mosque, a site of spiritual cultivation and hospitality toward strangers, into a site of security and the management of risk and uncertainty? In answering this question, this project engages and challenges anthropological studies on governmentality, political and religious minorities, and security and surveillance.