IJIA 11 (2) pp. 267–292 Intellect Limited 2022
International Journal of Islamic Architecture
Volume 11 Number 2
www.intellectbooks.com 267
Abstract
This article adopts a horizontally integrative approach to understanding Islamic
architecture in the traditionally excluded geography of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is
literally and figuratively left off the map of the so-called ‘Muslim world’ and there
is very little about its mezquitas (mosques) or the Andalusian legacy in its built
environment in the published record of Islamic architectures, sites, and responses.
I argue, based on my ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in 2015–17 and 2019–21,
that Puerto Rican Muslims counter their multiple marginalizations – identifying
as Muslim in the Puerto Rican community, Puerto Rican in the Muslim commu-
nity, and both Muslim and Puerto Rican in the context of the American empire
– through various architectural responses. To make this argument, I discuss the
physical landscape of Islamic architecture in Puerto Rico, including innovative and
adaptive spaces constructed in protest of the elitism found in certain mezquitas,
and locales where Andalusian architectural influence is readily visible. This leads
to my critical examination of how the diverse, dynamic, and vernacular architec-
tural responses of Puerto Rican Muslims speak to each of their minoritizations.
Kemal, a convert to Islam, wants to build a museum of Andalusian history
in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States of America
located on a Caribbean island.
1
Throughout 2020, he scoured the streets of
San Juan and his hometown of Hatillo for vestiges of Moorish influence
and examples of how the architecture of Muslim Spain shaped Borikén, the
© 2022 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijia_00080_1
KEN CHITWOOD
Free University of Berlin
‘A Place of Our Own’: Puerto Rican Muslims
and Their Architectural Responses as
Quadruple Minorities
Keywords
Puerto Rico
mezquitas
quadruple minorities
al-Andalus
American Muslims
imagined diaspora