The Mosque and the Block: Race, Geography, and Islam in the Black neighborhood

Abstract

This paper explores the intertwined geographies of race and religion through the relationship of the African American mosque and Black neighborhood. In the geography of religion, particularly Muslim geographies, there is an emerging body of scholarship related to Islam and Muslim communities in the United States. Although the American Muslim population and number of mosques in the United States has increased over the past two decades, the number and proportion of African American mosques has decreased. While Bagsby (2021) attributed this decrease to less conversions to Islam, young people not attending mosques, and the aging population of Muslims, I locate the mosque within the context of the block and examine the role of neighborhood change on Black spaces of worship. Through spatial analysis, combining mosque location data with historical U.S. Census neighborhood characteristics, this project explores the (changing) relationship between the mosque and the block. The locational attainment of religious institutions offers a quantitative and spatial glance of lived Islam at the neighborhood level. This contributes to the urban geography of religion, Muslim geographies, and Black geographies.