Community Folk Art Center opens exhibition of photos on Brooklyn’s Dar-ul-Islam movement

Community Folk Art Center opens exhibition of photos on Brooklyn’s Dar-ul-Islam movementFebruary 10, 2009Cjala Surratt

The Community Folk Art Center (CFAC), 805 E. Genesee St., Syracuse, has opened a new exhibition in its Corridor Gallery. “Selections From the Dar-ul-Islam Historical Photographic Collection by Khalil Abdulkhabir” features photographs documenting the Dar-ul-Islam movement in Brooklyn in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The exhibition will be on view through March 7. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday from 10-5 p.m. and Saturday from 11-5 p.m. Abdulkhabir will give a gallery talk on Saturday, Feb. 21, at 2 p.m. at the CFAC.

The Dar-ul-Islam movement (1962-83) was a grassroots movement that began in Brooklyn and eventually grew to more than 40 branches in the United States, Canada and Trinidad. Its purpose was to empower indigenous American Muslims. The goal of the Dar was to establish a fully functioning community, complete with schools, places of worship and a governing body.

Syracuse photographer Abdulkhabir was born in Brooklyn. He credits photographers from the Kamoinge workshop, created by Roy DeCarava, as being particularly important in his artistic development. Recently, Abdulkhabir has begun archiving images of the Dar that he took from 1970-83, as well as those taken by other photographers during the same time period.

For the initial phase of this project, Abdulkhabir has chosen to exhibit his own works. “My work is a collection of photos that depict a facet of my life as a Muslim in the 1970s in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn,” Abdulkhabir says of the project. “It presents the viewer an inside-out view of the people, activities and experiences of the Dar-ul-Islam Movement. This allows the viewer who is not familiar with the Islamic experience to expand his knowledge of this group and Muslims, and for the Muslim, too, who hopefully will positively identify with the subject matter.”

The Community Folk Art Center is a branch of the Department of African American Studies in The College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University. CFAC is sponsored, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, the Cultural Resources Council, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at SU and the Office of the Chancellor.

Media sponsors are WAER 88.3 and Urban CNY. The Genesee Grande and Park View Hotels are the official accommodations for guests of the CFAC.For more information about the exhibition and gallery talk, contact the CFAC at 442-2230 or cfac@syr.edu.