Not long after Rami Nashashibi founded the Inner-City Muslim Action Network 25 years ago, he began acting on some longstanding complaints about some of the few successful businesses in the downtrodden South Side: corner grocery stores owned by Muslim immigrants.
The shops were often held in contempt by their neighbors. Many were filthy, the neighbors complained. Customers, and women in particular, were treated poorly. Some shops illegally paid 50 cents on the dollar for food stamps. Very few sold fresh food, though many stores stocked the only groceries in neighborhoods considered food deserts — regions with no supermarkets.
The corner stores also became a target, Nashashibi says, because they sold alcohol, pork and their exploitative business practices.
“They went against spiritual values,” Nashashibi says. “I began calling them out in public speeches, pointing out how their practices hurt people in these neighborhoods. I wanted them to deal with their contradictions. I’d say, ‘You want justice for Muslims internationally, but you’re falling short of that standard for the people here.’”
Even as the organization chastised the store owners, it used a velvet approach to win over other groups. IMAN co-founded another coalition-building organization, the United Congress of Religious and Community Organizations. That group deepened IMAN’s embrace of other South Side communities, including African-American Muslims, Catholic Latinos, and Jews.
IMAN-backed or -led coalitions have since worked to pass legislation that reformed Illinois’s parole system. Another bill that granted temporary driver’s licenses to Illinois’s immigrants — a cause African-American members pushed for the benefit of their Latino neighbors — also became law after Chicago groups banded together to advocate for it.
These days, IMAN and its partners work on campaigns to increase police accountability and open up community access to vacant properties. And in Atlanta, IMAN continues to push for the passage of legislation that would allow ex-felons to vote.
To keep those campaigns moving forward, it takes positive energy, a continuing commitment, and frequent contact among groups, Nashashibi says.
“It’s hard work to sustain these kinds of alliances over the long term. You have to find new reasons to be inspired to move forward together. What the [2016] election drove home for me was Dr. King’s idea of the fierce urgency of now — the need for better housing, more jobs, and an end to the increased criminalization of people of color. These are all issues we can bring people together to fight,” he says.
But confronting South Side Muslim store owners — the equivalent of brandishing the proverbial stick rather than dangling a carrot — has proved to be a tougher job. IMAN hasn’t always been successful at pleasing Muslims who don’t have an African-American background.
Nashashibi’s high profile on the issue hardly made him popular with local and national Arab-American organizations, not to mention the store owners themselves.
And events that IMAN sponsors have often offended the sensibilities of some Muslims here. Concerts and gatherings in nearby Marquette Park that feature F-bombing hip-hop musicians and radical artists sometimes run afoul of Islam’s more conservative aspects.
“Some Muslims don’t want their kids around that, and I understand,” Nashashibi says.
Persuading all Muslims in Chicago to invest in IMAN’s work has been difficult. Some bristle at the group’s partnerships with Jewish organizations. “Muslims sometimes have other charitable and social-justice interests” that IMAN doesn’t take part in, he adds, such as international justice for Palestinians.
To bridge the gap between it and store owners, IMAN has held forums and built teams from among its coalition members to get the word out about the need to improve local groceries, as well as to give shopkeepers a voice. To win them over, it has offered them tangible support.
With help from a grant from the city of Chicago, it distributes fresh produce to the stores. The organization’s health clinic offers patients coupons for fresh food that can be redeemed at corner stores. IMAN has helped outfit stores with coolers to store fruits and vegetables.
What’s more, the organization developed standards for how a Muslim-run store should operate, resulting in a Good Housekeeping-style seal of approval; 50 shops have signed on and have signs in their front windows announcing themselves as “Muslim-Run Corner Stores.”
“We want Muslims in Chicagoland to take our corner-store campaign very seriously,” he says. “Last year, I saw more people from suburban mosques and more Muslim professionals invest in the idea.”
This year, IMAN will open up the first of what it hopes will be several new fresh markets in the area. Run by a local Muslim, the shop will operate on a co-op model and offer fresh food and some menu items on a rundown corner in Englewood, one of the South Side’s most troubled neighborhoods. IMAN hopes it will spur revitalization of a mostly vacant corner.
But Nashashibi’s aspirations for the program are much bigger. He hopes grant makers and activists around the nation take note of the transformation here.
“We’re creating a national model for what the corner store should be,” he says.
