New York Narratives tour centers Muslim experiences, history in the city

NEW YORK (RNS) — Participants are often surprised when Asad Dandia’s Muslim Harlem tour stops at JC Barbershop in Spanish Harlem — only until he explains it was the headquarters of the country’s first Puerto Rican Muslim organization, the AlianzaIslámica (the Islamic Alliance).

A photo of the 1990s storefront in hand, Dandia lectures a tour group on a Saturday in April about the history of Latino Muslims in New York City.

“I’ve stopped there so many times, I know clients and barbers probably wonder what I’m doing,” he said.

Dandia founded his walking-tour company, New York Narratives, in 2023 to help tourists discover the city’s Muslim history. He highlights traces of the earliest Muslim New Yorkers and locations important to the approximately 750,000 Muslims who currently call the city home. The tours have since expanded to show experiences of other religious minorities and cultural histories, such as a tour through the “Jewish Lower East Side,” and others focused on social movements and working-class New Yorkers.

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