Muslim Activists rewire the Net

Contribution to Friday, Nifca project space #1: (on the island of Suomenlinna)
13.00 – 17.00 Dot Org Boom – Activist afternoon

www.disappearedinamerica.org
www.shobak.org
www.muslimsorheretics.org

The Internet is emerging as an essential tool for Muslim activists, both working in Muslim-majority nations and in the western diaspora. By creating digital networks and mobilizing against Islamophobia, dot-org Muslims have become a “globalized ummah.”

Naeem Mohaiemen is Editor of Outsider Muslim network Shobak.Org, Assoc. Editor of AltMuslim.com and Board Member of Progressive Muslim Union- all three Internet-based dot-orgs. In this presentation he will discuss VISIBLE Collective, a digital network of Muslim and Other Artists. VISIBLE premiered DisappearedInAmerica.Org, a multimedia installation that has parallel existence in a museum and on the internet

DISAPPEARED IN AMERICA is a walk-through multimedia installation that uses a film trilogy, soundscapes, photos, objects, and the audience’s interactions to humanize the faces of “disappeared” Muslims. Since 9/11, thousands of American Muslims have been detained in a security dragnet. The majority of those detained were from the invisible underclass of cities like New York. They are the recent immigrants who drive taxis, deliver food, clean restaurant tables, and sell fruit, coffee, and newspapers. The only time we see their faces are when we glance at the hack license in the taxi partition, or the ID card around the neck of a vendor. Already invisible in our cities, after detention, they have become “ghost prisoners.”

DISAPPEARED has been profiled by NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, TIME OUT, QUEENS COURIER, and Q-NEWS (UK). NEW YORK TIMES selected VISIBLE as one of four artist groups to represent the new art scene in Queens in “The New Bridge & Tunnel Crowd: New York Art is filing a change of address.” WALL STREET JOURNAL called it “moving & eerily impressionistic.”

Naeem Mohaiemen
Naeem Mohaiemen is a writer-filmmaker-visual artist specializing in Political Islam. He is Editor of Shobak.Org, Associate Editor of AltMuslim.com and Board member of Progressive Muslim Union. Naeem directed MUSLIMS OR HERETICS?, a documentary about struggles between moderate and radical Muslims. He is Director of VISIBLE Collective, which premiered DISAPPEAREDINAMERICA.Org at the Queens Museum of Art. Naeem also co-produced RUMBLE IN MUMBAI, a documentary on globalization, which premiered on Free Speech TV.

Naeem’s essay on “Accelerated Media & Bangladesh Genocide” will be published in “Difference Engines: Thinking Race and Technology” (MIT Press, edited by Beth Coleman) and his essay on “Hip Hop’s Islamic Connection” will be published in “Sound Unbound: Music, Multimedia, and contemporary Sound Art” (MIT Press, edited by DJ Spooky). His work and writing has been featured in The Washington Post, The Village Voice, Tikkun Jewish Journal, Alternet.org, CounterPunch.org, Chimurenga.co.za (South Africa), Wordt Vervolgd (Netherlands), Deseret News (Utah), Peace News (UK), New Internationalist (UK), Prothom Alo (Bangladesh), Dawn (Pakistan), and Rediff.com (India).

Naeem has spoken about Islam & Media at panels at School of Oriental & African Studies (London), New York University, Columbia University, Asia Society, and South Asian Journalists Association. He is a regular guest on WBAI (New York) and KPFA (San Francisco) radio as well as TV networks in the US (American Desi, WNYC) and South Asia.

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