Ken Chitwood, "Borícua Muslims: Everyday Cosmopolitanism Among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam" (U Texas Press, 2025)

Mar 23, 2026

Ken Chitwood, a scholar of religion and author of Borícua Muslims, explores Puerto Rican converts to Islam through multi-sited and digital ethnography. He discusses everyday cosmopolitanism, food and identity tensions, mosque dynamics and solidarities linking Puerto Rico and Palestine. Music and cultural expression also feature as ways communities make meaning.

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ADVICE

Use Transparent Naming When Ethically Justified

Name interlocutors and include verifiable details when ethical and consented to increase accountability and public verifiability.
Ken used journalistic naming for public figures and asked consent when stories were easily identifiable to community members.

ANECDOTE

Airport Call Turned Into Intimate Fieldwork

Ken conducted multi-sited and digital ethnography across New York, Florida, Puerto Rico, Houston and online, often following interlocutors who moved.
One participant called Ken from Gainesville airport and later lived with him briefly, enabling intimate, everyday observation.

INSIGHT

Everyday Vernacular Cosmopolitanism

Cosmopolitanism for Puerto Rican Muslims is built from everyday practices, not elite mobility or Western moral frames.
Ken argues they craft a ground-up vernacular cosmopolitanism because standard categories (Puerto Rican/Latinx/Islamic) fail to contain them.

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Ken Chitwood's Borícua Muslims: Everyday Cosmopolitanism among Puerto Rican Converts to Islam (University of Texas Press, 2025), uses rich ethnographic fieldwork across multiple cities and the digital space to capture the complex lived realities of Puerto Rican Muslims both on the island and in the United States. The study is attuned to the archipelago’s context that accents Puerto Rican Islam, such as through histories that link it to Andalusian Spain, and culture, especially through foodscapes. Puerto Rico also has a diverse Arab Muslim diasporic population, especially Palestinians. Due to this diversity of Muslim experiences, throughout the book there emerge conversations about the boundaries of Islam in relation to culture, ethnicity, and theology. At times, when these varied communities share ritual and communal space together, questions of authenticity unfold, such as over language or notions of piety. Despite moments of tension around tribalism and questions of legitimacy, we learn that often Islam for both these communities is understood through their experiences of colonialism, and so anti-colonial registers of Islam influence the solidarity building and social justice organizing that unites Puerto Rican and Palestinian Muslims. The book also has an accompanying Spotify playlist that you definitely should check out. This book will be of interest to anyone working on Islam in South America and/or North America, and Arab and Palestinian diasporic studies, and food studies.

Ken Chitwood is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer with the Department for the Study of Religion at Universität Bayreuth and Affiliate of the University of Southern California's Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

Shobhana Xavier is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Queen’s University. More details about her research and scholarship may be found here. She may be reached at shobhana.xavier@queensu.ca.

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