Detroit’s mosques diligently memorialize key events in Islamic history. Religious holidays are observed, the Prophet’s birthday commemorated, and the Battle of Karbala remembered and re-enacted annually. The Hajj is dutifully simulated by perambulating elementary students. But it is difficult to find reference to the Muslim American past in local mosques. The cornerstone of the city’s oldest mosque, for example, which is dated 1938, is hidden in the back of a closet underneath an out-of-the-way stairwell. Records of the nation’s first purpose-built mosque, which opened in Highland Park in 1921, have all but disappeared, as have those of the dynamic array of Muslim, Arab, Turkish, and Indian organizations that sought to institutionalize Islam in the city, lobbied for the rights of their communities, and worked to expel colonial powers from their homelands in the 1910s and 1920s. A few mosques will bring out, when asked, tokens of their early struggles in the city – restrictive real estate covenants, hate mail they received during the Iranian Revolution, or Qur`ans that miraculously survived an arson attack in the early 1970s. Mosques with their roots in the Nation of Islam are a proud exception to this pattern. They display the Qur`an of their founder, Elijah Muhammad, the photographs and names of their pioneer members, even the career memorabilia of a well-known jazz artist from their community. A handful of other mosques, Arab and Albanian, that have recently passed their 50th or their 80th anniversaries, have commemorated their founders and key moments in their past through carefully curated photo displays and videos. Taken together, these varied, sometimes hidden objects suggest that the American history of Detroit’s Muslims is complex, uneven, and symbolically potent (occasionally toxic). This paper will examine the parts of this past that are publically memorialized through video, websites, newsletters, and exhibits in the lobbies, hallways, and jazz cafes of local mosques. It will also explore some of the objects that are held back from this widespread consumption. It will ask who the audience is for each representation, how ideas about Muslim American identity are shaped by such presentations (and withholdings), and how these displays contribute to (and suppress) Muslim American historical knowledge. These representations are sites of contest within the Muslim community and outside it. They express anxiety, belonging, and anxiety about the belonging of Muslims in Detroit today.