Pacific Northwest prayer rug connects Muslim, Indigenous communities

Seattle’s Center for Global Muslim Life is releasing the first of its kind Pacific Northwest prayer rug, a project aimed at reimagining traditional Muslim prayer rugs as “living artifacts” of Indigenous lands. This project, according to the center’s website, is “meant to reflect the stories, identities, and ancestral ties of Muslim communities” in parts of Washington state, Oregon and British Columbia.

Dustin Craun, who founded the Center for Global Muslim Life in 2020 and now works as its executive director, said the idea for the Pacific Northwest prayer rugs came about several years ago.

“We were doing some work on the U.S.-Mexico border where we made a short film called ‘A Prayer Beyond Borders,’ which was about the border mosque that we had built there,” Craun said. “We were actually gathering monthly with separated families at Friendship Park at the border.”

Rooting the sacred in place

Craun said his wife and business partner, Amor Craun, had the idea to gift prayer rugs to the migrants entering the U.S., buying hundreds of prayer rugs to give to the shelters that provided assistance to the individuals .

“We didn’t know the situation they were fleeing from,” Dustin Craun said. “So what we wanted to do was to give them something that would make them feel at home.”

From there, a conversation began about creating a prayer rug that was unique to the Indigenous and sacred land within the Pacific Northwest . This idea, Dustin Craun said, was largely inspired by a prayer rug created in Edmonton, Alberta, called the Canadian prayer rug.

“That group was very intentional about doing work (that) connected Muslim communities to Indigenous communities in Canada,” Dustin Craun said.

The goal for the design of the Pacific Northwest prayer rug was to encapsulate the deep-rooted history between the Muslim population in the Americas and the Indigenous communities that first welcomed them. The centerpiece of the prayer rug is Mount Rainier, also called Tahoma.

“You can go to a prayer rug shop and find rugs from Turkey or from China, and they’ll have one of three primary (sites) on them: Mecca, Medina or Jerusalem,” Dustin Craun said. “It’s never a place where you’re from. So the idea was, ‘How do we make a prayer rug that talks about the sacredness of land and (that) of all the places we live throughout the Earth?’ ”

Dustin Craun said intercultural dialogue is one of the big goals of the prayer rug.

“We really want to create conversation between these Indigenous and Muslim communities,” he said. “Getting them to think about who we are, who our communities are and how we can be better connected in these places.”

The Center for Global Muslim Life hopes the prayer rug will be offered to places like public libraries, prisons and shelters, making daily prayer more accessible to Muslims in locations where they may not be expecting to have a place to go pray during their day.

Building bridges between communities

Amor Craun, vice president of the Center for Global Muslim Life, spoke of her desire for her community to be aware of the lands they are on and to exercise respect for it and for those who originally welcomed them .

“For me as an Indigenous woman, this is one of the most important things about this project,” Amor Craun said. “To make sure the Muslim community recognizes the people of the land, that they know the land they’re on and that they build community and connections in a respectful way so that we can get to know each other.”

Amor Craun shared her desire for her kids, who are growing up with their Indigenous heritage while practicing Islam as a family.

“It’s important that my kids know that they can be both and that all of their identities matter,” Amor Craun said. “They are able to build community and bridges with one another so that we are not strangers.”

Dustin Craun shared a similar sentiment .

“To me, this is a revolutionary project of understanding, transformation and belonging.”

This story was written in partnership with FāVS News, a nonprofit newsroom covering faith and values in the Inland Northwest.