Mosqueing the Marketplace: Business as (Un)Usual in Hamtramck

Abstract

Abstract Hamtramck, Michigan, is the first Muslim-majority city in the US, has the nation's first all Muslim city council, and likely boasts the highest number of mosques per capita as well. Yet as recently as the 1970s, Hamtramck was the center of the Polish diaspora, and was home instead to the nation's highest concentration of bars. Muslim entrepreneurs, primarily from Yemen and Bangladesh, stand poised to revitalize Hamtramck's economy by investing in the city's growing halal marketplace. This article explores two recent efforts to revitalize the city's economy, especially its downtown business district, and the ways in which conflicts over space there are quickly translated into an idiom of religious belonging or exclusion. The symbiotic relationship that exists in metro Detroit between mosques and small businesses may be a healthy one in economic terms, but it also extends the sphere of cultural and religious praxis for Muslims and non-Muslims alike and is therefore met with resistance by many of the same people who consume, market, and embody this distinction, even as they also work to disrupt and redefine what it means.