Interfaith Solidarity at the Border: Ritual, the Border Mosque/Church, and the _Barzakh_ Moral Imagination

In this presentation, I explore the role of ritual in Muslim activism and organizing in cultivating a solidarity with the Muslim and non-Muslim other in order to “stand for justice in the borderlands” (Craun quoted by Molina 2019). Based both on my participant observation in 2019 when the American Academy of Religion met in San Diego as well as journalistic accounts, I focus on the interfaith and binational efforts by the “Border Mosque” and “Border Church” in San Diego and Tijuana to preserve a space at the U.S.-Mexico border where family members separated by their immigration status can connect. Beyond this, the joint worship performed by both groups served as a ritual expression and enactment of solidarity with all victims of unjust immigration policies and a reminder that despite its militarized nature, the border can be “a place of human encounter, of friendship, of peaceful relationship, of communion, of solidarity” (Fanestil quoted by Molina 2019).

In my discussion of the above, I focus in particular on the role played by ritual in enacting a “prefigurative politics” that creates in miniature the world that movements or organizations struggle to establish in broader society. In doing so, I conceive of rituals as social practices which not only anticipate and express a particular ethos, but in their performance, they also habituate and form ritual actors into the embodied ways of being defined by that ethos. In this regard, I follow Molly Farneth who states that, “…even as rituals prefigure a world that is not-yet, they are _working_ on the people and politics of the world that is: shaping them and making claims on them” (2023, 13). Thus, in the performance of the Muslim ritual prayer (_salat_) and the Christian Eucharist by US and Mexican citizens as well as immigrants of differing legal status on both sides of the border, the “Border Mosque” and “Border Church” relied on ritual to _both_ prefigure a world free of xenophobia, militarized borders, and the forcible separation of peoples _and_ to cultivate solidarities across religious, racial, and national lines. 

Such ritual action creates a moral imagination that opens up new ways of conceiving, imagining, and acting in the world in solidarity with all members of the community, especially those on the margins. In order to unpack and illuminate this moral imagination, I draw on the concept of the _barzakh_, used in the Qur’an to indicate a boundary between fresh and salt water or the thin path between paradise and hell, but more generally thought of as the space in which the spirits of the dead dwell until Judgement Day (Q. 23:99-100, 25:53, 55:19-20). And in Sufi discourses, including those of Ibn ʿArabi (d. 638/1240), _barzakh_ denotes the in-between of the imaginary world and the space in which encounters with the Prophet Muhammad occur. In these formulations, _barzakh_ indicates that discursive space which _both_ divides _and_ connects, and in recent years, anthropologists and feminists of Islam have employed the concept to describe a relationship between the self and other that neither presupposes stark opposition nor collapses difference in the name of a liberal modernity (Ewing 1997; Pandolfino 1997; Mittermaier 2011, 235-39; Shaikh 2021). Though these authors make use of _barzakh_ in differing ways, they all rely on it to capture a subjectivity characterized by an in-betweenness that simultaneously holds difference and unity without collapsing distinctions. As a result, the concept of _barzakh_ offers promising insights into how we might understand solidarity. In my presentation, I will use this concept to explore and unpack the role played by ritual in the “Border Mosque” and "Border Church" in _both_ forming ritual actors _and_ prefiguring the world they sought to create, all for the purpose of cultivating moral spaces and selves characterized by a deep solidarity which aims to create more just and humane borderlands and immigration systems.  

Works Cited

Ewing, Katherine P. 1997. _Arguing Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis, and Islam_. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Farneth, Molly. 2023. _The Politics of Ritual_. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Mittermaier, Amira. 2011. _Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination_. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Molina, Alejandra. 2019. “‘Border Church’ and ‘Border Mosque’ Team Up for Prayer Service.” _Religion News Service_. October 23. https://religionnews.com/2019/10/23/border-church-and-border-mosque-team...

Pandolfo, Stefania. 1997. _Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from a Moroccan Space of Memory_. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Shaikh, Sa’diyaa. 2021. “Embracing the Barzakh: Knowledge, Being and Ethics.” _Journal for Islamic Studies_ 39/1:28-48.