The community of Gillette has seen tension recently with plans for a Quran burning and protests over Gillette’s first mosque. Writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Kathryn Schulz heard this and wondered how a Muslim community came to be in coal mining Wyoming.
She wrote an article this summer about Zarif Khan, a Muslim man from Pakistan who built a restaurant, a life, and a family in Sheridan at the turn of the last century. Many Muslims living in Wyoming today are his direct descendants. Schulz joined Wyoming Public Radio’s Caroline Ballard to talk about the piece Citizen Khan.