African Islamic movement in the United States - Essay Example

African Islamic Movement in the United s Islam has deep origins in the African-American practice of religion, roots that can be traced back to the period of slavery and early 20th century black Sunni communities in the United States. Islam played a greatly encouraging and ideological role in the evolution of a distinct African-American identity. This study will outline the spiritual, ideological and psychological way for tracing the course of Islamic expansion within the United States and how has the matter of race in the United States influenced the practices and the community experiences of black Sunni Muslims who conventionally see Islam as a color and race-blind religion Malcolm X's Hajj in 1964 and Warith Deen Mohammed's transformation of the Nation of Islam into an orthodox community in 1975 are two of the more recent visible signs of the importance of mainstream Islam in the African-American experience (American Black Islam, 1989). African Americans comprise about 42% of the Muslim population in the United States, which conservatively is somewhere between four to six million; and Sunni African-American Muslims are the predominant community in the United States today. Mainstream Islam and Slavery Muslim slaves-involuntary settlers, who had been the urban-ruling elite in West Africa - comprised at least 15% of the slave populace in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Their spiritual and racial roots could be tracked to ancient black Islamic monarchy in Ghana, Mali, and Sohghay. Some of these West African Muslim slaves brought the first mainstream Islamic beliefs and practices to America by keeping Islamic names, writing in Arabic, fasting during the month of Ramadan, praying five times a day, wearing Muslim clothing, and writing and reciting the Qur'an (McCloud, 1995). By the end of the Civil War, the old Islam of the West African Muslim slaves was for all realistic purposes obsolete, because these Muslims were not able to develop community establishment to maintain their faith. When they died, their version of Islam, which was African-American, personal, and with conventional and unorthodox practices disappeared. Early 20th-Century Mainstream Communities In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Pro-Africanist ideas of Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), which criticized Christianity for its racial discrimination and recommended Islam as a feasible alternative faith for African Americans, offered the political agenda for Islam's influence on black Americans. Furthermore, the global outlook of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Great relocation of more than one million black southerners to northern and Midwestern cities during the World War I era offered the social and political background for the emergence of African-American mainstream communities from the 1920s to the 1940s. The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, an unorthodox disciple community from India, set the foundation for conventional Islam in Black America, by imparting African Americans with their first Qur'an, significant Islamic literature and culture, and association to the mainstream world of Islam. Black Sunni Muslims can track their ancestry in the United States in the early 20th century to two multi-ethnic communities: the Islamic Mission of America, led by Shaykh Daoud Ahmed Faisal in New York City, and the First Mosque of Pittsburgh (Marsh, 1984). Shaykh Daoud, was born in Morocco and migrated to the United States from Grenada. He was greatly influenced by the Muslim migrant societies, by Muslim sailors from Yemen, Somalia, and Madagascar, and by the Ahmadi version of the Qur'an. He established the Islamic Mission of America, also known as the State Street Mosque, in New York City in 1924. This was the first African-American conventional muslim community in the United States. The president of the Muslim Ladies Cultural Society was none other than Shaykh Daoud' s wife, "Mother" Khadijah Faisal, who possessed Pakistani Muslim and black Caribbean ancestry. The Islamic Mission of America came out with its own literature and publications, including Sahabiyat, a Muslim journal for women. This influential community expanded mainstream customs and rituals among black Muslims on the East Coast in the 1920s and 1930s and continued to be important among African-American Sunni Muslims for the remainder of the 20th century. The First Mosque of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was established in 1945 by African-American Muslims who desired to spread the knowledge of Islam; construct mosques; begin the Jumu'a prayer in their community; assist its members in case of death or illness; and bring together the Muslim communities in the United States. This mainstream community was the outcome of a spiritual transformation after its previous associations with the unorthodox viewpoints of the Moorish Science Temple and the Ahmadiyya. In the 1950s, they set up Young Muslim Women's and Young Men's Muslim Associations which offered social services to the local community. Ultimately, the First Mosque of Pittsburgh released sub-charters to African-American Sunni communities in several other cities. In the early 20th century, in addition to these two African-American communities, there is strong evidence of a lively, multi-cultural, mainstream Islamic community in New York City, which included black Americans, African, Turkish, Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Indian, Albanian, Arab, Persian, and Caribbean peoples. In spite of this multi-cultural model, a race and color-blind community experience was not suggested, as immigrant Muslims were noted for their ethnic, racial, and linguistic isolation from African-American Muslims during this period. At last, these early African-American Sunni communities were surpassed by the flourishing missionary work of the unorthodox Ahmadiyya and later by the superiority of the Nation of Islam in the 1950s. Mainstream Islam did not become a popular choice for African-American Muslims until the 1960s. Mainstream Islam in Modern Black America Since Malcolm X's conversion to Sunni Islam in 1964 and his establishment of the Muslim Mosque, Inc. in New York City, large numbers of African Americans have resorted to mainstream Islamic practices and communities. Being inspired by Malcolm X, African-American Sunni Muslims view themselves as part of the mainstream Muslim community in the world of Islam and study Arabic, fast during the month of Ramadan, and pray five times a day. The spectacular spread of Sunni Islam in black America is also linked to the migration of more than one million Muslims in the United States after the American immigration laws were reformed in 1965 (Malcolm X on Afro-American History, 1970). Elijah Muhammad's son, Warith Deen Mohammed, played an important role within mainstream Islam in the United States (Marsh, 1984). He was selected as the Supreme Minister of the Nation of Islam after his father's demise in 1975. During the early years of his leadership, he authorized comprehensive changes in order to align his community with mainstream Islam. The Nation of Islam's racial-separatist teachings was disproved. Now the community's mission was directed not only at black Americans, but at the entire American environment. The new leader renamed the Nation of Islam the "World Community of Al-Islam in the West" in 1976; the "American Muslim Mission" in 1980; and the "Muslim American Community" in the 1990s. Ministers of Islam were renamed "imams" and temples were renamed "mosques" and "masajid." The community's profitable financial holdings were liquidated and conventional rituals and customs were embraced. Though Warith Deen Mohammed's constructive relationships with immigrant Muslims, Islamic world, and the American government are positive developments in the Islamic movement in the United States, his group has diminished in members since the 1980s. Daryl Islam, founded in Brooklyn, New York, in 1962 is probably the largest, well pronged and most influential community of African-American Sunni Muslims(Marsh, 1984). The Dar's practices and community experience concentrate on the utilization of the Qur'an and habit. The members do not pursue the teachings of a particular contemporary leader. Prestige and leadership are on the basis of understanding of the Qur'an, the hadith, and the Arabic language. Darul Islam is a private decentralized entity, which did not allow immigrants in its midst until the mid-1970s. There are reports of subtle racial and ethnic tensions between African-American and immigrant Muslims today. Immigrant Muslims believe in "a color and race-blind Islam" and the American dream, while African-American Muslims continue to place Islam at the forefront of the fights for social justice, as the United States enters a new century of frightening Islamic terrorism which is termed as "clash of civilizations". Certainly, African-American and immigrant Muslims have a lot to learn from each other and jointly defend issues of social justice, and post 9/11 on the new front of terrorism, since, mainstream Islam's appeal and growth in the United States in the next century will depend on American Muslims' ability to claim a ethical and political high ground on those social justice issues that have historically divided the American Christian population. References: American Black Islam. New York Times, 21 Feb. 1989, 1. McCloud, Aminah B. African-American Islam. New York: Routledge, 1995: 10-17 Malcolm X on Afro-American History .Atlanta:Pathfinder Press, Inc., 1970: 37-38. Marsh, C.E. From Black Muslims to Muslims: The transition from separatism to Islam, 1930-1980. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1984: Read More