Bad Bodies

Abstract

Death takes up space, but not all bodies have clear access to it. Muslim Americans routinely face prejudicial, and often arbitrary, community and institutional opposition to proposals for Islamic cemeteries. These proposals intend to address the overwhelming deficit of local denominational plots, the desolate conditions of their existing death spaces, and typological collisions with the nation’s dominant white-Christian-capitalist burial paradigms. Using both literature and cartographic information, this article contextualizes obscured present-day conflicts within the settlement history of Muslims in America to reveal the entrenched operations—and consequences—of space being exploited to negate the diaspora’s sense of belonging and dispossession of place.