MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES | AMERICAN STUDIES Chicago is home to one of the largest, most politically active Palestinian immigrant communities in the United States. For decades, secular nationalism held sway as the dominant political ideology, but since the 1990s its structures have weakened and Is- lamic institutions have gained strength. Drawing on extensive fi eldwork and interview data, Palestinian Chicago charts the origins of these changes and the multiple effects they have had on identity across religious, political, class, gender, and generational lines. The perspectives that emerge through this rich ethnography challenge prevail- ing understandings of secularity and religion, offering critical insight into current de- bates about immigration and national belonging. “Provides the fi rst in-depth examination of an important Palestinian-American commu- nity in a major US city. This book is a welcome contribution to our understanding of both the Palestinian diaspora and an important US immigrant community.” RASHID KHALIDI, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine “In this groundbreaking and beautifully written book, Loren Lybarger centers the voices of a wide array of Palestinians and brings forth the complex, dynamic, and fl uid ways members of this community navigate identity and belonging in today’s world.” MAHA NASSAR, author of Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World “Palestinian Chicago masterfully transforms existing understandings of Palestinian identity, resistance, and diaspora. This is an extraordinarily valuable text for anyone interested in history, ethnic studies, urban studies, religious studies, and Middle East studies.” NADINE NABER, author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism “A compelling work that complicates the secular in Palestine and the Arab world, in di- aspora, and in the United States.” SHERENE SEIKALY, author of Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine LOREN D. LYBARGER is Associate Professor of Classics and World Religions at Ohio University. He is the author of Identity and Religion in Palestine: The Struggle between Islamism and Secularism in the Occupied Territories. New Directions in Palestinian Studies, 1 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS www.ucpress.edu | www.luminosoa.org A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Cover photograph: Palestinian fl ag featuring a stencil of the Dome of the Rock. Photo courtesy of the author. Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org Palestinian Chicago NEW DIRECTIONS IN PALESTINIAN STUDIES Series Editorial Committee Beshara Doumani, Series Editor Samera Esmier Rema Hammami Rashid Khalidi Sherene Seikaly The New Directions in Palestinian Studies series publishes books that put Palestinians at the center of research projects and that make an innovative contribution to decolonizing and globalizing knowledge production about the Palestinian condition. 1. Loren D. Lybarger. Palestinian Chicago: Identity in Exile. Palestinian Chicago Identity in Exile Loren D. Lybarger UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press Oakland, California © 2020 by Loren Lybarger Suggested citation: Lybarger, L. D. Palestinian Chicago: Identity in Exile. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525 /luminos.90 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lybarger, Loren D., 1964- author. Title: Palestinian Chicago : identity in exile / Loren D. Lybarger. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019053432 | ISBN 9780520337619 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520974401 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Palestinian Americans—Social conditions. | Palestinian Arabs—Illinois—Chicago—History—20th century. | Palestinian Arabs—Illinois—Chicago—History—21st century. Classification: LCC E184.P33 L93 2020 | DDC 305.892/74077311—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053432 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For my daughter, Rachel, and for my parents, Lee and Connie Lybarger Contents List of Illustrations xi Foreword by the Series Editor xiii Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 Protesting “Protective Edge,” Chicago, July 26, 2014 1 The Project 5 Questions and Data 7 Main Assertions 7 Contextualizing the Religious Shift 9 Key Concepts: Identity, Secularism, and Religion 17 Organization of the Book 26 1. Palestinian Chicago: Spatial Location, Historical Formation 29 Early Migration from Palestine: 1890s–1940s 30 Migration, 1948–1967: Transformations of the Exilic Space 35 The New Immigrants and “Re-Palestinianization”: 1967–1980s 39 The Ascendancy of Secular Nationalism: 1967–1990 43 Suburban Transition and the Religious Turn: 1980–Present 45 Browning Bridgeview: Palestinian Suburbanization and the New Islamic Milieu 48 Expanding the Islamic Milieu: Islamic Education 53 viii Contents The Christian Milieu: Key Structures 55 Conclusion: Mahjar Spaces 56 2. Secularism in Exile 58 Examining Secularism: Why It Matters 60 Palestinian Secularism 61 Constituting Secularism in Chicago: The Generation of 1948–1967 62 The Generation of 1987–2001 70 A Secular Afterword 83 3. The Religious Turn: American Muslims for Palestine 85 The 6th Annual Conference for Palestine in the US (November 28–30, 2013) 89 American Muslims for Palestine’s Nakba Commemoration: Palestine through an Islamic Lens 98 Conclusion 107 4. The Religious Turn: Generational Subjectivities 108 Generational Processes of the Religious Turn 109 Alienation and Latency in the Generation of 1948–1967 110 The Generation of 1987–2001: Polarization and Sectarianization 115 The Post-September 11 Generation 120 Conclusion 132 5. Dynamic Syntheses: Reversion, Conversion, and Accommodation 133 Syncretic Secularity 134 Reversion, Conversion, and Accommodation 135 Reversion 136 Conversion 142 Accommodation 152 Conclusion 157 6. Dynamic Syntheses: Rebellion, Absolute and Spiritual 159 Syncretic Rebellions 159 Absolute Rejection 161 Spiritualization 165 Conclusion 183 Contents ix Conclusion 185 Reconsidering the Religious Shift: Concluding Points 187 Religious and Secular: What to Do? How to Live? 196 Notes 199 References 225 Index 245 List of Illustrations 1. Palestinian flags, traditional and Islamized, alongside United States flag 2 2. Palestinian flag featuring a stencil of the Dome of the Rock; United States flag in background 3 3. Demonstrator wearing the national colors and kufiya scarf over hijab 4 4. Map of British Mandate for Palestine, 1922–1948 10 5. Chicago Community Areas Map 36 6. Palestinian Dabka 43 xi Foreword by the Series Editor “The Palestinians” are a household word and the Palestinian condition is routinely invoked as emblematic of the dark side of the modern world: settler colonial violence, racialization and statelessness, disenfranchisement and incar- ceration, inequality and over-exposure to the disasters of climate change. Pal- estinian resistance, by the same token, is inspirational because of its persistent multigenerational struggles for justice, dignity, and the right to exist as a political community in the face of asymmetrical power relations. It is precisely because of this over-determined binary that tomes on the Palestinian-Israeli “conflict,” most of which are dominated by “one land/two people” nationalist constructions of the past, still rule the shelves. Fortunately, the past two decades have witnessed a flowering of scholarship that exceeds the colonial and nationalist frames through grounded studies of the internal complexities and lived experiences of Palestinian communities. They look at the world with Palestinian eyes. Their lines of vision intersect with the stories of many of the world’s marginalized and disenfranchised populations. New Direc- tions in Palestinian Studies (NDPS), the first book series of its kind in the United States, publishes books that put Palestinians at the center of research projects, to decolonize and globalize knowledge production about the Palestinian condition. The fundamental Palestinian condition is one of ongoing process of disposses- sion, displacement, and statelessness, coupled with grinding generational struggles for survival across an extraordinarily diverse range of political, social, and cultural geographies. A shared trauma—the ethnic cleansing of the overwhelming major- ity of Palestinians from their native land in 1948—is, at one and the same time, the key reference point for the Palestinian political imagination and a centrifuge xiii xiv Foreword by the Series Editor of life trajectories. The epicenter remains pre-1948 Palestine, where roughly half of the twelve million Palestinians still live; they do so under a bewilderingly complex array of differential legal, military, and economic zones and rules of mobility meant to fragment and contain their communities. A large percentage