From the Black Power movement and state surveillance to Silicon Valley and gentrification, Medina by the Bay examines how multiracial Muslim communities in the San Francisco Bay Area survive and flourish within and against racial capitalist, carceral, and imperial logics. Weaving expansive histories, peoples, and geographies together in an ethnographic screenplay of cinematic scenes, Maryam Kashani demonstrates how sociopolitical forces and geopolitical agendas shape Muslim ways of knowing and being. Throughout, Kashani argues that contemporary Islam emerges from the specificities of the Bay Area, from its landscapes and infrastructures to its Muslim liberal arts college, mosques, and prison courtyards. Theorizing the Medina by the Bay as a microcosm of socioeconomic, demographic, and political transformations in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, Kashani resituates Islam as liberatory and abolitionist theory, theology, and praxis for all those engaged in struggle.

Maryam Kashani is a filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A Note on Transcription, Translation, and Blessings  xi
Acknowledgments  xiii
Cast of Characters  xix
Introduction  1
1. Medina by the Bay  37
2. Roots, Routes, and Rhythms of Devotional Time  85
3. Codewords and Counterinsurgent Continuities  121
4. Out of Bounds  153
5. Epistemologies of the Oppressor and the Oppressed  182
In the Way (Toward a Conclusion/Opening)  219
Notes  227
References  263
Index  295