African-American Islam in the Urban North A Euro-American, Mohammed Alexander Webb , proclaimed himself a Muslim at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in , but converts have been more prominent among Americans of African descent, especially those who followed the mass migrations of southern blacks to northern cities beginning in the early decades of the twentieth century. After his death in , one of the movement's factions found itself drawn to the mysterious Wallace D.
Fard, who appeared in Detroit in preaching black nationalism and Islamic faith. Fard founded the Nation of Islam there in the same year. After Fard's unexplained disappearance in , Elijah Muhammed took over, and he attracted disenchanted and poor African Americans from the urban north.
They converted for a variety of reasons, but, for some, the poverty and racism in those cities made the Nation of Islam's message about "white devils" and "black superiority" plausible. Race Relations since the s Elijah Muhammed won an important convert when Malcolm Little joined the faith in a prison cell.
Malcolm X, the name he took to signal his lost African heritage, became a public figure during the s, although he separated himself from the Nation of Islam before his death.
After Elijah Muhammed's death in , the movement split. One branch, under the leadership of the fifth son of Elijah Muhammed, moved closer to the beliefs and practices of Islam as it is practiced in most of the world. This group, which would later change its name to the American Muslim Mission, is the largest African-American Islamic movement.
The much smaller Nation of Islam, which the American Muslim Mission and other Islamic groups condemn as racist and unorthodox, is much more familiar to most Americans. As you teach the Nation of Islam, you might ask students what the history of African-American Islam since the Great Migration tells us about race relations.
Why were Malcolm X and others in northern cities so willing to believe that European Americans were "white devils"? In what sense, you might ask, is the Nation of Islam's sacred story about the origin of whites as the mistake of a black scientist a "truthful" representation of many African Americans' experience?
Muslims and the New Immigrants after If you are able to reach the post period in your class, you might reintroduce Muslims in a discussion of demographic changes in contemporary America. Palestinian refugees arrived after the creation of Israel in More important for the history of American Islam, the McCarran-Walter Act of relaxed the quota system established in , thereby allowing greater Muslim immigration.
The gates opened even more widely after the revisions of the immigration law. Since then, Muslim migrants have fled oppressive regimes in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria; and South Asian Muslims, as from Pakistan, have sought economic opportunity. By the s, Muslims had established more than six hundred mosques and centers across the United States. Toward the end of your discussion of Islam in America, you might raise this final issue concerning religion and national identity.
Islam may soon be the second largest American faith after Christianity, if it is not already. When recounting this to students, and recalling the history of Islamic slaves and the early debates about the First Amendment, you might ask students whether America is a Christian nation as some have proclaimed.
Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics. Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work. President Michael Dimock explains why. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research.
Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Newsletters Donate My Account. Research Topics. Views on race relations and the geographical distribution of U.
Muslims In general, black people in the U. Read the other posts in this series: Black Millennials are more religious than other Millennials 5 facts about the religious lives of African Americans Blacks more likely than others in U. Share this link:. Besheer Mohamed is a senior researcher focusing on religion at Pew Research Center.
Sermons urged Muslims to find work, stay free from crime and drugs and maintain stable family lives. Ali said he assumed the mosque was bugged and infiltrated by informers, in part because its leaders remained skeptical about U. They unplug Arabs and plug in communists. Its imam, Plemon el-Amin, said he was involved with local interfaith work as well as with a local Islamic school.
One recent Friday, Mark King, a new convert, and hundreds of others at the mosque listened to a preacher urge Muslims to seek God through the Koran. Followers of other faiths should seek God through their own holy books, the preacher said. King, who wears his hair in dreadlocks, converted after visiting Africa for the first time and in Gambia read the Koran and realized its teaching chimed with his own beliefs, not least in fighting injustice.
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