ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how religious practices, and even buildings, are used by minorities to claim the city and to participate fully in the urban sphere. It shows that religion provides a useful framework for the construction of new urban geopolitical geographies in the city. Thus, various distinct groups weave new patterns into the urban landscape through religiously based identity politics. The chapter focuses on a specific case of the reconstruction of a small mosque, known as the Lababidi mosque, located in the ethnically mixed city of Acre in northern Israel, the struggle to renovate and reopen it after years of disuse, and the debate and conflict that ensued. It examines Lababidi mosque as urban conflict in which the struggle over a religious site and its greater accessibility to a minority's heritage generated a tumultuous and heated debate that divided the city along ethnic and religious fault lines.
