美国国家公共电台 NPR Religious Walking Tour Maps Out The History Of Muslims In New York City（在线收听）

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Visitors often get to know New York's Harlem through its many walking tours - from gospel music to architecture to food. But one guide offers a tour that spans centuries in the neighborhood. Farah Dosani has more.

FARAH DOSANI, BYLINE: Two dozen people are gathering at the corner of a busy intersection in Harlem near a state office building.

KATIE MERRIMAN: Thanks for waking up and choosing this tour instead of brunch. I'm here to talk to you about the history of Islam in New York City.

DOSANI: Katie Merriman started these Muslim history walking tours in 2014. She's from New York and is now finishing her doctorate in religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And over the years, whenever she'd come across the history of Muslims in New York, she'd write it down.

MERRIMAN: And so I took all those little scribbles in the margins. I put them together. And lo and behold, a map appeared before my eyes in Harlem.

DOSANI: The history goes back almost 400 years, when North African slaves were brought here by Dutch settlers. The tour is not chronological, but more geographic. And it goes to some surprising neighborhood landmarks.

MERRIMAN: So I brought you here to the Apollo Theater. So don't let anyone tell you I gave you a bad Harlem tour. But no, we're here to talk at the Apollo because there's a large connection between music, especially jazz, and Islam.

DOSANI: She talks about American jazz musicians who performed here and converted to Islam in the '50s after touring abroad. Merriman also plays a clip from John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" and explains how some interpret it as a Sufi Muslim prayer.

MERRIMAN: And John Coltrane never claimed this as saying Allah Supreme, but many people are pretty sure that he wanted you to not be sure.

DOSANI: Many sites on the tour are more obscure, and are either unmarked or no longer here. On a street far from the crowds, Merriman stops in front of an empty lot.

MERRIMAN: And so right in front of us here, you see all of - kind of construction fence. And that's there because they tore down a big building that used to include a mosque.

DOSANI: Aqsa Mosque served as a community center for the wave of West African immigrants in the '80s and '90s. She also tells a story of Alianza Islamica, the Latino Muslim community that was among the first to wash the bodies of those who died from AIDS.

MERRIMAN: All right. Let's keep moving.

DOSANI: Many people who come on these tours have no particular connection to Islam; they're just curious, like Patty Rout. She's lived in Manhattan for the past 40 years.

PATTY ROUT: I'm a big walking tour person because I find it's a good way to learn. And I like things about New York. And it's something I don't know really much about.

DOSANI: But the tour takes on a more personal meaning for others, like Amir Ahmed, a 26-year-old graduate student living in Harlem.

AMIR AHMED: This is a good way for me to sort of also learn about my identity as a Muslim and a black Muslim in the United States, but also, like, just as a neighborhood member in this community.

MERRIMAN: We're just going to go back 116th Street and over to the mosque, and that's where we'll finish up.

DOSANI: The final stop on the tour takes the group to what is likely the most prominent Muslim site in Harlem, the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque. It's there that Merriman shares a story of her Irish Catholic father who grew up nearby.

MERRIMAN: And the day that Malcolm X was assassinated, he was a teenager up there riding around on his bike.

DOSANI: Her father told her stories of seeing crowds standing outside the hospital in Harlem. And while not Muslim herself, Merriman says stories like this emphasize a shared history.

MERRIMAN: My dad has no connection to these communities, but there he was on that historical day riding his bike as a teenager in Washington Heights.

DOSANI: The story reminds her, and she hopes the people taking this tour, that the history of Islam in New York is part of the history of America - what made this country what it is today. For NPR News, I'm Farah Dosani in New York.

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