Ahlan Wa Sahlan

If you were looking for laughing bookstore owners or hipster librarians, you’ve come to the wrong place (but I would check out the Japanese and Hebrew bookstores for that). This is the place to learn about the cold hard facts about what this country is doing to an immigrant population and about a bookstore that is struggling and is threatened by the mere idea of the media.

New York City is known to be one of the most diverse cities in the world—and one of the first places an immigrant plans on settling within when coming to the United States. Among the various ethnicities here, there is a prevalent Arabic-speaking population—which is most closely associated with the Muslim population. Islam is a religion that is heavily dependent on scholarly texts; however, there aren’t enough bookstores in the city that match the needs and wants of its Arabic-speaking population. The bookstore we focused on was of Arab-Muslim origin, so most of the literature was Islamic. The majority of Arabic bookstores that are in N.Y.C. shy away from the eyes of the media and rely on the comfort of their ethnic enclaves to keep their businesses going. Why are these bookstores holding back from sharing their literature and resources with the rest of the city, and why aren’t they reaching out to teach the world about Islam? Many twenty-first century political issues coupled with current events contribute to the reason as to why these bookstores are hiding.