New website brings to life oral
histories of Muslims in Brooklyn
BY ROSE ADAMS
A new website from the
Brooklyn Historical Society
sheds light on the history
and experiences of Muslims
in Kings County through
dozens of oral histories — allowing
outsiders to view the
borough through a Muslim’s
perspective, while preserving
the recordings for future generations,
said the project’s creator.
“Oral histories provide us
greater access to often marginalized
or diminished voices,
and can be both personally
empowering and collectively
transformative,” says former
Historical Society Oral Historian
Zaheer Ali, who coordinated
the project. “Sharing
the listening experience establishes
a common frame of reference
for cross-cultural and
intergenerational communication.”
The site, which launched on
Sept. 9, is the fi nal element of
the Society’s three-year-long
“Muslims in History” oral history
project, which collected
more than 50 recordings from
Muslim Brooklynites over the
course of a year. The diverse
narrators, whose ages range
from 24 to 74, spoke about
their lives in Brooklyn in conversations
COURIER L 30 IFE, SEPT. 18-24, 2020
that lasted between
90 minutes and two hours, Ali
told Brooklyn Paper in 2018.
Historians created the website
to break down around half
of the recordings into about
seven-minute-long segments,
and organize them by theme
to make the project more accessible
to teachers, students,
and residents across Brooklyn,
said the president of the
Brooklyn Historical Society.
“These clips were selected
very deliberately to illustrate
points and aspects of this
whole project,” said Deborah
Schwartz. “We chose these
themes not just by pulling the
themes about what people said
in the oral histories, but also
thinking what would be meaningful
in the context of schools
and curriculum.”
The more than 60 clips
are sorted into two main categories:
“Growing Up and Fitting
In,” which focuses on the
narrators’ childhoods, and
“Listening to the City,” which
centers on belonging and Islamophobia.
The categories
include stories about having
male friends as a girl, starting
a small business, and experiencing
discrimination and
surveillance after 9/11.
The website’s 24 narrators
— which include business
owners, students, imams,
and activists, such as the wellknown
Palestinian activist
Linda Sarsour — highlight
the wide range of perspectives
while underscoring shared experiences,
Schwartz said.
“We tried to give people a
sense of the range of perspectives,
of stories, that include
both emotional responses and,
in some cases, very political
responses,” she said. “Each
one, in essence, looks at a different
set of ideas.”
The website also allows
visitors to sort through the
recordings by neighborhood
through a digital map, or to
view all the clips under a single
narrator, each of whom
has a short biography. Teachers
can get their own specialized
tutorial on how to use the
resource in workshops in the
fall and spring.
Meanwhile, history junkies
can check out the website’s
timeline, which uses old
newspaper articles and photographs
to illustrate the history
of Muslims in New York since
the 17th century. The borough
is fi lled with Muslim history,
such as North America’s oldest
functioning mosque that
opened in 1931 is in Williamsburg,
and Bedford-Stuyvesant
being home to Masjid Khalifah,
a mosque founded by Malcolm
X.
Schwartz said that the Society
pioneered the years-long
“Muslims in Brooklyn” oral
history project — which also
featured art exhibits, panel
discussions, and other public
exhibits — not only to lift
up Muslim voices, but also to
build a longterm relationships
with the Muslim community.
“We wanted it to be a partnership
with people in the
community,” she said. “While
we wanted to introduce their
stories into our collection,
they are still their stories.”
You can visit the “Muslims
in Brooklyn” website at www.
muslims.brooklynhistory.org.
BY ROSE ADAMS
The Brooklyn Public Library
unveiled grab-and-go
services at six more branches
on Monday, bringing the total
number of outposts where
Brooklyn books worms can
quickly pick-up reading supplies
to 23.
The new partially reopened
book repositories — which include
Midwood, Kensington,
Mill Basin, Walt Whitman,
Washington Irving, and the
Annex in Dumbo — will allow
readers to snag books while
limiting their time inside the
library, which the book honchos
unveiled in July amid the
spread of COVID-19.
Library patrons can reserve
materials online or over
the phone, and must wear face
masks and socially distance
when picking up or returning
the books, according to
a library rep, who noted that
each item is quarantined for
96 hours after it is returned.
The service has been popular
among the borough’s
bookworms, as members have
checked out nearly 44,000
physical items between the
libraries’ opening on July 13
and Aug. 30 — and holds and
check-outs increase every
week, according to the chief librarian.
“It shows how much people
truly depend on their
neighborhood library, and as
holds have continued to increase
from week to week,
staff are truly grateful to see
their neighbors return to
branches,” said Nick Higgins.
The in-person service compliments
the library’s large
online library, where members
can check out e-books
and audiobooks and attend
a wide range of free virtual
programs, such as resume
workshops, multi-lingual read
alouds, and arts programs.
Since March, the library has
hosted nearly 2,500 programs
that have drawn more than
600,000 in total, according to
spokeswoman Fritzi Bodenheimer.
The newly-opened branches
will be open Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday, 10 am to 4 pm;
Tuesday and Thursday, 1 to 7
pm The 17 previously opened
branches, with one exception,
are also open Saturdays from
1o am to 4 pm.
Here’s a list of the branches
with grab-and-go services:
Annex (open Monday,
Wednesday and Friday, 10 am
to 3 pm)
Bay Ridge Library
Bushwick Library
Canarsie Library
Central Library
Clarendon Library
Coney Island Library
Cortelyou Library
Flatbush Library
Fort Hamilton Library
Homecrest Library
Kensington Library
Kings Highway Library
Macon Library
Midwood Library
Mill Basin Library
New Lots Library
Park Slope Library
Red Hook Library
Stone Avenue Library
Walt Whitman Library
Washington Irving Library
Williamsburgh Library
Speak to me
Library opens more spots to grab-and-go
BROOKLYN
Reading up on it!
The Brooklyn Historical Society’s new “Muslims in Brooklyn” website features dozens of oral histories.
Brooklyn Historical Society
Brooklyn Public Library.
Photo by Kevin Duggan
/muslims.brooklynhistory.org