…the rest of the working paper on Islam in America by Susan McKee

(remember: do not quote without permission, as this is a work in progress, and is updated frequently)

[ee also: Glossary, Biographical Sketches, Bibliography, and Abstract/Preface]

Introduction

Two stories can be told of Islam in America: that of traditional Islam as practiced in Arabia and that of indigenous Islam, whose practitioners are popularly known as Black Muslims. These two threads begin to intertwine in the 1970s as some Black Muslims turn to the beliefs and practices of traditional Islam.

But, because there are two stories, a dichotomy exists in the study of Islam in the United States. On the one hand, Black Muslims are arguably the most researched religious minority in America. It is said that, for example, Malcolm X "got more press than any other Islamic leader in U.S. history."[i] On the other, Muslims (no matter what their skin color) who follow the traditional Islamic paths known as Sunni and Shi'ia are seldom mentioned in histories of religion in the U.S. Religious groups sharing the appellation "Muslim" have been overlooked in a predominantly Protestant Christian culture that treats them as exotic at best and "statistically insignificant"[ii] at worst.

Muslims, whether native-born or immigrant, often appear to be invisible to sociologists and historians of religion. Will Herberg's influential 1960 essay on American religious sociology covered only Protestant, Catholic, Jew.[iii] Samuel Eliot Morison's The Oxford History of the American People,[iv] even though it was published in 1965 and included the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was silent on Islam, not even mentioning Malcolm X in passing. In The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II, William H. Chafe put Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X and the Black Muslim movement together -- and dispatched all in the same footnote.[v]

No reference to Islam is found in the Encyclopedia of American History edited in 1970 by Richard B. Morris[vi]. Even the third edition (1965) of George Eaton Simpson and J. Milton Yinger's Racial and Cultural Minorities made no mention of Muslims (except Black Muslims). They included Jews, Mexicans and Chinese, for instance, but not Arabs.[vii] Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, in The Future of Religion, asked research subjects in the early 1980s whether they were "Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Other or None,"[viii] at a time when numbers of Muslims were approaching the numbers of Jews.

In The Restructuring of American Religion,[ix] the sociologist Robert Wuthnow mentioned neither Islam nor Muslims, although they numbered at least 4 million in the United States at the time of the book's publication in 1988. (By contrast, much smaller religious denominations, including Jehovah's Witnesses, Buddhists and Christian Scientists, were covered by Wuthnow.) The University of Chicago-based data-gathering organization producing the General Social Survey does not yet offer "Muslim" as an option for designating religious preference.

Sulayman S. Nyang, a professor of African studies at Howard University, put it succinctly: "the field of Islamic studies in the United States is virgin territory."[x]

ORIGINS OF TRADITIONAL ISLAM

If there is one thread throughout writing on traditional Islam in the U.S., it is the continuous lament over America's lack of understanding. Both scholars and the media are excoriated in ritual fashion, especially by writers who are themselves Muslim. "Islam is the most misunderstood religion in the West," lamented a Muslim scholar in London.[xi] "There has been and continues to be significant distortion of the meaning of Islam in publications that should know better," wrote the editors to The Muslim Community in North America in 1983. "Admittedly some of this is pure laziness, and reflects an attitude on the part of publishers and writers alike to accept antiquated ideas rather than draw from contemporary research. But some of it arises from deep-seated prejudices that have been perpetrated in the West and reinforced with political and social mythologies."[xii] This volume is a collection of articles presented at a conference, and it was self-consciously and purposefully offered as "an attempt to set the record straight and tell the truth about Islam".

That the American public misunderstands both Islamic culture and the Muslim practitioner is a voiced assumption in most of the existing writings on Islam whether here or abroad. The political scientist Fred R. Von Der Mehden wrote, "There can be little doubt that the public's perceptions of Islam have tended to be characterized by ignorance, confusion, and misinformation."[xiii] Kathleen M. Moore lamented the "paucity of information and studies about the reception of Islam and Muslims in North America."[xiv] A Black Muslim, Imam Nu'Man, commented that his "book is an attempt to inform every American, Caucasian and African-American, about the religion of Al-Islam and the people who are called Muslims." Why? Because, he wrote, "many people are afraid of Muslims." He "hope[s] to clear up the confusion and some of the misconceptions."[xv]

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, a religious historian and professor specializing in Islam, noted that she convened a 1989 conference on the Muslims of America "to expand the scope of scholarly investigation" because of a lack of understanding about American Muslims.[xvi] Edward W. Said, an English professor born in Palestine, also has complained at length about the misperceptions of Islam in America[xvii], but arguably the most strident is Jack G. Shaheen, whose TV Arab[xviii] is one long complaint about television's depiction of his compatriots.

Because there is so little research on Muslims in this country, source books combine articles drawn from both Canadian and U.S. sources. For example, The Muslim Community in North America focuses on Muslims in the U.S. in only three of its 15 submissions; two of those three were on Black Muslims with only one on traditional Islam.

The Muslims of America (edited from presentations at Haddad's 1989 conference) does look specifically at the U.S. "The American experience has presented Muslims with a special challenge," Haddad asserted in the introduction. "They have unprecedented freedom to experiment with forms and structures for the separation of religion and state away from the watchful eyes of wary governments and the criticism of traditionalists."[xix] Chapters deal with the thought of leading American Muslim intellectuals, interest group formation among American Muslims and the theoretical basis for an Islamic parochial school system. Unfortunately, no historical context for contemporary developments was provided; a further drawback is the absence of an index.

The First Muslims in America

Because of the scarcity of verifiable evidence, researchers do not agree precisely when traditional Islam came to the United States; myths and legends abound. One set stems from the writings of the renowned Arab geographer Al-Sharif Al-Idrisi (1100-66), who recorded the explorations of Muslims in the New World long before the European voyages and asserted that the explorers encountered Arabic-speaking natives living in the Western Hemisphere.

Moriscos, or Spanish Muslim Moors outwardly professing to be Catholics, were said to have sailed with Christopher Columbus.[xx] One was said to be a Muslim navigator by the name of Rodrigo de Lope (sometimes called Louis de Torre[xxi]).

The Black Muslim Imam Nu'Man asserted, "Actually, the history of Al-Islam in America began before Columbus got here, technically. Some of the Indians that migrated from Asia, up through Russia, across the Bering Strait and down into America, were Muslims," he wrote in 1985. "When we study the history of the original natives of America, called 'Indians' by the Europeans, we see that many of them were Muslims, practicing the religion of Al-Islam, such as some of the Indians in Florida."[xxii]

There also is a report of an Egyptian prince named Nasir-al-Din who was said to have joined the Mohawk tribe in the colonial period and "reached a position of pre-eminence."[xxiii] Or maybe he was an Egyptian called Nosereddine, who settled in the Catskills in the 1500s and "was burned at the stake for murdering an Indian princess."[xxiv]

A Muslim guide (or maybe he was a general), named Estevanico or perhaps Estephan[xxv] or maybe Istfan[xxvi], arrived in Arizona in 1539 with a Franciscan priest named Marcos de Niza.[xxvii] There were said to be Muslims among immigrants taking advantage of the Homestead Act in 1862 and some Yemeni are said to have arrived in the U.S. in 1869 "after the opening of the Suez Canal."[xxviii]

SOURCES AND DEVELOPMENT OF IMMIGRANT MUSLIM COMMUNITIES

Although the English entered the slave trade to the Americas in 1562, these early shipments of human cargo under Sir John Hawkins disembarked on Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica and Puerto Rico rather than on the North American mainland.[xxix] The first black slaves to arrive in what is now the United States were 20 Negroes sold from a Dutch man-of-war to the settlers of the Virginia Colony in 1619.[xxx] By 1790 there were 697,624 slave and 59,557 free blacks in the U.S.; by 1860, the population had jumped to 3,953,760 slave and 488,070 free.[xxxi]

There were Muslims among African slaves brought to the U.S., but no evidence exists that these slaves had influence beyond their own experiences or were able to propagate Islam in the New World. One such slave was named Job ben Solomon (or, Ayub Ibn Sulaiman Diallo[xxxii]), a Muslim literate in Arabic who wrote a letter of appeal to his father and attempted to send it back to Gambia by way of London. A colonial philanthropist, James Oglethorpe, obtained the letter, had it translated, and was so impressed that he bought Job, took him to London, eventually freed him and sent him back home to Africa with gifts for his family.[xxxiii]

That evidence in this area of research is in its early stages of verification and documentation is exemplified by the story of another Muslim slave. In Prince Among Slaves[xxxiv] he is called Prince, although his given name is noted as Ibrahima. He worked four decades as a slave in Natchez, Miss., before being freed and returning to Africa. Details of his life match up incident-by-incident and date-by-date with the tale of Abdul Rahahman, as outlined in African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook[xxxv], which also includes the stories of Job ben Solomon and other Muslim slaves from Africa. Another well-documented Muslim slave is Omar ibn Said.[xxxvi]

Charles Colcock Jones, in an 1842 book-length treatise calling for the evangelization of slaves, noted the existence of Muslims just once:

The Mohammedan Africans remaining of the old stock of importations, although accustomed to hear the Gospel preached, have been known to accommodate Christianity to Mohammedanism. "God," say they, "is Allah, and Jesus Christ is Mohammed -- the religion is the same, but different countries have different names.[xxxvii]

There were many reasons that African slaves did not perpetuate the culture of their homelands, besides the accommodation noted by Jones. Most were young males, a demographic group least likely to be associated with cultural transmission. Slave owners actively suppressed native language and behavior to create a distinct slave culture. And, there is a great difference in the history of African slavery in the American colonies and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. It is estimated that of the 10 million individuals sold into slavery in Africa, only 400,000 were shipped to what became the United States.

Living and working conditions for slaves in the American colonies were considerably less harsh than in the Caribbean or South America, where constant importation of slaves was necessary to replace those who died. Brazil, for example, imported six times as many slaves as the American colonies. Because conditions were better here, soon after slavery was begun in what became the U.S., the population of native-born slaves outnumbered those who had made the trip across the Atlantic. Second generation Africans -- first generation African-Americans, living under a regime hostile to continuation of African culture (speaking native languages, for example, was forbidden on all American plantations), would be even less likely to retain a religion practiced by their forebears.[xxxviii]

One of the more interesting Muslim immigrants in the antebellum period was not a slave. His name was Hajd Ali, and he was brought from Syria in the 1850s by the U.S. Government to oversee the introduction of camel breeding in Arizona[xxxix]. In one version of the tale, it was Jefferson Davis (later President of the Confederacy) who oversaw the Army's project to develop a desert-based cavalry. Hadji Ali, said to be Lebanese this time, came in 1856 to oversee a shipment of 33 camels.[xl] In all versions, though, the experiment failed -- but the stories of "Hi Jolly" and his exploits have been embellished in more than a century of retelling in fable and song.[xli]

During the first century of the United States of America, the individual states held control over immigration, enacting (for example) bills requiring inspection of arriving aliens, charging a head tax for new arrivals and excluding certain categories of immigrants (such as prostitutes). A series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings during the mid-1800s led to the first national legislation. The Immigration Law of 1882, the first country-wide statute, provided for a head tax of 50 cents which was to be used to defray costs of monitoring immigration. Criminals, paupers, idiots and lunatics were forbidden entry to the U.S.

A law forbidding the importation of contract labor was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1885, and a 1888 resolution added polygamists, anarchists and persons afflicted with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease to the list of those prohibited entry to the U.S. Immigration law was further refined in 1891 and again in 1907 and 1917.[xlii]

The first wave of immigration from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire to the U.S., between about 1860 and 1918, included an estimated 5 to 10 percent Muslims among the majority Christians.[xliii] Among the overwhelming numbers of Christians were a "few thousand young Muslim men".[xliv] Most immigrants came from the (then) province of Syria, which included parts of present-day Turkey and Jordan plus all of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. They referred to themselves as "Syrians," rather than Arabs or Arabic-speaking peoples. Some had come to the U.S. for the first time in 1876 to participate as artists and craftsmen, at the request of the Ottoman emperor, in the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.[xlv] This initial immigrant wave peaked between 1900 and 1915, and was effectively curtailed by the outbreak of World War I.[xlvi]

In 1910, more than half of all Arabic-speaking immigrants (Muslim and Christian) were found in just four states: Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. An estimated 90 percent lived in urban areas and the able-bodied men worked as unskilled laborers, primarily in factories. (Most of these early immigrants were unmarried men in their mid-20s from the lower strata of society.[xlvii])

A group of homesteaders settled around Ross, North Dakota, where the first communal Muslim prayers were said in 1900.[xlviii] "Before a mosque was built there in the 1920s,[xlix] prayer and ritual were conducted in private homes and led by the best informed among the group."[l] However, isolation and assimilation took their toll: by 1948 the mosque was abandoned.

One study of immigration to Maine found 300 Arabs in 1915 living in a dozen towns.[li] Among the Maronites, Orthodox and Catholics were noted "a few Muslims," including "at least one" who lived in Waterville amongst 300 Syrian Christians. Among the early Arabic-speaking immigrants to El Paso, Texas, one Muslim family was mentioned.[lii] Statistics on the number of foreign-born employees in Massachusetts industrial concerns employing more than fifty persons in 1918 showed 4,819 from Turkey, but religious affiliation was unknown.[liii] One source said Syrian immigrants in Detroit formed their first Islamic association in 1912, and built the first U.S. mosque there in 1919.[liv] Another placed the origins of the Detroit Muslim community in 1916, and noted a steady stream of immigrants, especially since 1965.[lv]

There are scattered reports detailing immigration of specific individuals: for example, Muhammad Asa Abu-Howah (whose 1908 naturalization papers renamed him A. Joseph Howar) and Fazal Khan, a Muslim Pakistani who arrived in the U.S. around 1912.[lvi]

A relatively small number of Druze also emigrated around the turn of the century, primarily from the mountains of Lebanon. The first known immigrant was Malhim Salloum Alboulhosn, who arrived in 1881. More of his family followed, and their Alboulhosn-named descendants number some 1200 in 19 different states.[lvii]

The Druze are members of a small sectarian offshoot of Shi'ia Islam that is known for its closed community, secret initiation rites and a theology forbidden to outsiders. Practices and beliefs differ in significant ways from traditional Islam -- so much so that some Muslims (and some Druze) do not consider the movement as authentically Islamic but rather one with a distinctly Druze cultural or ethnic content.[lviii]

The Druze tended to settle in small towns across the U.S. and "adopted a very low religious profile." The first organized Druze society involved the young men living in Seattle, Wash., in 1907. By 1913, this community numbered more than 300.[lix]

There are no official Druze places of worship in the U.S. Perhaps as a result of this religious isolation and the absence of converts as well as the aftereffects of proselytizing by American Protestant missionaries in Greater Syria in the 1800s, many of the Druze in the U.S. have entered the Christian mainstream by becoming nominal Christians -- primarily Presbyterians and Methodists.[lx] Assimilation became the community norm. "Druze woman have been among the most Westernized of Arab Americans."[lxi]

That these early Middle Eastern immigrants were held in generally low regard in the U.S. is evident in popular culture of the 1800s. For example, destitute homeless boys were commonly referred to as "street arabs."[lxii]

Popular culture also shows that there have been Syrian peddlers throughout the U.S. for decades, if not longer. On the Broadway musical stage, for example, Ado Annie's boyfriend, Ali Hakim, in Oklahoma! is a Syrian (rather than "Persian") trader -- peddling was a common occupation of immigrants from the Levant, whether Christian or Muslim. These traveling salesmen were everywhere -- the television critic Jack Shaheen's Lebanese grandfather was a peddler in Clairton, Pennsylvania. It is said that Wallace D. Fard, founder of the Temple of Islam, was "[d]isguised as a silk peddler in the streets of Detroit."[lxiii] Peddling required no training and little cash outlay (in many cases, the newcomer obtained his goods on credit, often from a fellow Syrian). In time, the Syrian peddler became the Syrian shopkeeper, anchored in American small towns from Kinston, N.C., to Bristow, Okla.[lxiv]

Muslims began to immigrate in noticeable numbers around 1900. One of the oldest Muslim communities in America was founded in the early decades of this century in Willows, California, a "few hundred miles north of San Francisco"[lxv] by some of the estimated 700 Muslims among the 6,800 men who immigrated from the Punjab, India. The remainder of the total, all of whom came to work as farmers in rural California between 1899 and 1914, were Sikh.[lxvi]

America's first restrictive immigration law was passed in 1921, allowing annually 3% of each nationality's number already in the U.S. It was followed in 1924 by the Immigration Quota Act, which dropped the cap to 2% of each nationality's number in the 1890 census. For Syrians and Lebanese, this meant 100 immigrants per year each. The 1929 immigration law fixed the total number of immigrants to 150,000 annually and dropped the yearly quota of Syria and Lebanon together to 123.

Specific data are hard to come by. The most likely source during this period for Muslim immigration is the Arab Middle East. However, it is not possible to know precisely how many Arabic-speaking immigrants arrived on U.S. shores before 1940. However, by the 1930s there were sufficient numbers of immigrants along the eastern seaboard to allow for Muslim groups based on ethnic origin.[lxvii]

Part of the difficulty is due to the terminology of immigration record-keeping. According to Eric Hooglund, before 1899, immigration officials did not employ a standard term for identifying these immigrants. Between 1899 and 1920 he says they were classified as Syrians, but Alixa Naff wrote they were listed as coming from "Turkey in Asia"[lxviii]. Earlier than 1899 "they were variously listed as Syrians, Turks, Ottomans, Armenians, Greeks, or Arabs."[lxix] Hooglund estimated that there were some 125,000. Although most were Christian, perhaps 12,500 (10%) were Muslim.

In 1934 or 1935, there were enough Muslims in the small midwestern town of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for a mosque to be built (prior to that year, Muslims met in homes).[lxx]

World War II once again interrupted immigration patterns. Because of the turmoil and dislocations of Muslims and Christians during the establishment of Israel, many of the post World War II Muslim immigrants have been Palestinian, and are classified as "refugees" rather than by a particular country of origin.[lxxi]

However, the end of the war marked the beginnings of the institutionalization of American Islam.[lxxii] The Druze formed a national organization in 1946, calling it the American Druze Society.[lxxiii] Efforts at organizing American Muslims on a national level began in 1952, when the Federation of Islamic Associations was formed.[lxxiv]

Nyang was typical of scholars who noted that "a new chapter" in the history of American Islam begins at the end of World War II. Defining fact for him (and for Lovell[lxxv]) was institutionalization: the founding of a national organization by second-generation Arab Muslims and the organization of the Muslim Students Association.[lxxvi] Edward Said, the Palestinian professor, agreed to the concept without giving his reasons, merely asserting: "Culturally there was no distinct place in America for Islam before World War II."[lxxvii]

The Immigration Reform Act of 1965, which abolished race and nationality caps, resulted in a dramatic increase in immigration from Asia and the Middle East. It is estimated that at least 10,000 people per year have arrived from the Middle East alone.[lxxviii] These new immigrants bring with them their religions, including Islam. Muslims from around the world, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Iran and Malaysia, continue to arrive in the U.S. in a flow that "shows no sign of slowing and every sign of increasing".[lxxix]

Institutionalization also has continued, with the founding of new mosques to serve the increasing number of immigrant Muslims[lxxx] and the organization of regional councils since 1976, including the Islamic Council of Northern California and the Islamic Council of New England.[lxxxi]

A new cultural and ethnic awareness in the third and fourth generations of Muslim immigrants also has fueled organizational growth. For example, paid membership in the American Druze Society grew to more than 1300 in the 1980s. A Druze cultural center in Los Angeles was established in 1990.[lxxxii]

Urban areas continue to attract almost all of the new immigrants. Cities including Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and New York have sizeable Muslim communities. For Arabs arriving in the U.S., Detroit is the number-one port of entry (three-fifths of immigrants to Detroit are Arab).[lxxxiii] San Francisco, Houston, Jacksonville and Phoenix also have large Arab-American communities.

In just one city, Los Angeles, there are an estimated 200,000 from Iran, a majority of whom are said to be Shi'a Muslims. These immigrants and their children are the subject for a soon-to-be-released book edited by Ron Kelley titled Irangeles,[lxxxiv] and undoubtedly influence life in that Pacific Rim megalopolis. An estimated 10,000 families participate in the activities of the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles.[lxxxv]

An under-studied area is the impact of "temporary immigration" -- that is, the effects of Muslim foreign students on indigenous Muslim communities in university towns. Just a decade ago, there were an estimated 90,000 Muslim students in American universities.[lxxxvi] International students present assimilation difficulties in communities such as Lafayette, Ind., where large numbers of students from Muslim majority countries come and go amidst a small but stable community of permanent residents who practice Islam in a Muslim minority environment.

One organization representing these "temporary immigrants" is the Islamic Society of North America (which emerged in the 1980s out of the Muslim Students Association, founded in 1952[lxxxvii]), headquartered at the Islamic Teaching Center in Plainfield, a small community west of Indianapolis, Ind.

There are so few white American converts to Islam (an estimated 1.6% of U.S. Muslims fall into this category) that they stand out among other Muslims. One of them, Michael Wolfe, argues that more Americans will be drawn to Islam because of the appeal of joining a religious group free of "the Western obsession with race as a social category." This recent convert found it "transcendent and refreshing" that, instead of focusing on race, "Muslims classified people by their faith and their actions."[lxxxviii] An early white American convert profiled in a variety of sources was Alexander Russell Webb, the U.S. consul in the Philippines in 1888.[lxxxix] He returned to New York in 1892, opened the Oriental Publishing Company and began a periodical, The Moslem World, of which he was editor.[xc]

CURRENT STATUS OF MUSLIMS IN THE UNITED STATES

How many Americans are Muslims? One estimate put the total in 1982 at 3 million, or 1.3% of the American population.[xci] This source (based in Saudi Arabia) estimated 1 million African-Americans, 900,000 Arabs, 450,000 Indo-Pakistanis and 450,000 others (primarily Yugoslav, Albanian, Turkish and Iranian).[xcii]

Another researcher used U.S. Bureau of the Census and other data sets to conclude that, in 1980, there were approximately 3.3 million Muslims in the U.S., or 1.5% of the total population. From those figures, an estimate of 4 million Muslims in 1986 was projected. An estimated 30% were African-American Muslims, 28.4% were Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa, 26.6% were East Europeans and the remaining were predominantly Asians (11.6%). A U.S. population including 6.6 million Muslims is projected by 2000, when Muslims will probably outnumber Jews, who have a slower birth and immigration rate.[xciii]

That the numbers of American Muslims are estimates is obvious, as no religious census is conducted in the U.S. Another wide-ranging estimate of current Muslim numbers was the 5 to 8 million figure given by the American Muslim Council in 1993. Council statistics also estimated that 42% were African-American; 24.4% from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; 12.4% Arabs; 5.2% African; 3.6% Iranian; 2.4% Turkish; 2 percent from Southeast Asia; 1.6% white Americans (of whom 75 percent were women), and 6.4% from other areas.[xciv]

By comparison, it was estimated that there were 1,029,427,000 Muslims in 1982, or 25% of the world's population. Of that total, 636,720,000 lived in countries where they formed the majority, and 392,707,000 were a minority. Indonesia had the most Muslims, with 141,500,000 or 90% of its total population. The U.S. had the 15th largest minority Muslim population, outranked by such countries as China (with 107 million), Kenya (with 5,330,000) and Yugoslavia (with 4,225,000).[xcv]

Researchers note that two unique difficulties in accepting adherents of traditional Islam into the U.S. come from immigration patterns and policies, rather than from the nature or content of the religion of the newcomers to America.

First, many of the immigrants of the late 1800s and early 1900s were from the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, and the overwhelming majority of these were Christian. Once in the U.S., these newcomers did not welcome the arrival of Muslim immigrants from their homelands. These Christians had left the Middle East, at least in part, because they had felt persecuted by the Muslim majority.[xcvi]

Second, there is a continuing flow of immigration from Muslim countries today. While Catholic Christians and Eastern European Jews came to the U.S. in large numbers prior to World War II (and thus have had time and several generations to assimilate into the dominant Protestant culture), Muslims have arrived in large numbers only in recent decades. "Continuous immigration constantly renews the homeland ties, reaffirms a cultural distinctiveness, and chides 'secularized' Muslims; it helps resist integration and acculturation and thereby idealizes the 'home' culture."[xcvii] The large number of Muslim foreign students at American universities adds to this reaffirmation of overseas Islam as normative.

In addition, ethnic consciousness arises "as the number of Muslims from abroad increases and the process of self-identification and self-differentiation begins to be felt." That is, "a natural segmentation or grouping along national lines begins to take place," reported Nyang.[xcviii] Islam is not seen as one religion when (as is the case in large urban areas) there are separate mosques for Turkic, Malay, Pakistani and Arab Muslims, for example, in addition to separate mosques for Black Muslims. In New York, Detroit and Los Angeles, there are at least as many mosques as ethnic groups.

The world of Islam in the U.S. is not a monolith (as it may have seemed to immigrants before their departure from their homelands) and individual American Muslims differ in their approaches to religion.[xcix] It is estimated that 80% of the mosques in the U.S. today were founded within the last dozen years, mostly along ethnic lines. (If these communities were Christian, they would be called denominations -- much as Swedish Lutheran or Dutch Reform evolved in the Protestant tradition; however, Islam emphasizes "one religion" and does not accept denominationalism as valid within the Muslim tradition.)

World events also have an impact on acceptance of Muslim immigrants by the Christian majority. American Muslims have historically "been overshadowed by the tempestuous American relationship with Middle Eastern countries."[c] Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Centers at American universities concentrate research on overseas Islam ("Orientalism") rather than the domestic variety.

For many Muslim intellectuals, the "unprecedented freedom to experiment" enjoyed by the Muslim immigrant to the U.S. is exhilarating. The possibility of experimentation on this side of the Atlantic in a faith some see as "stuck in a time warp" on the other side of the ocean has begun to attract academics and others to the study of the American versions of traditional Islam. Typical of the new thinking was Samuel P. Huntington's Op-Ed essay for The New York Times on "The Coming Clash of Civilizations -- Or, the West Against the Rest."[ci] He saw the U.S. having to accommodate Islam (and six or seven other "major civilizations") by developing "a much more profound understanding of the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see their interests." Huntington suggested "an effort to identify elements of commonality" and it is logical to assume that some of that effort would take place on this continent.

Although Muslims are a minority in the U.S., this country's history of religious pluralism allows Muslims to practice their religion virtually unhindered; an estimated 90% of the followers of traditional Islam are Sunni with most of the remainder Shiite.

One arena for testing religious rights, no matter what the religion, has been the American judicial system. While most of the early court battles involving Islam revolved around the religious rights of prisoners (allowing Christian services, but not Muslim, for example), current cases are more wide-ranging. "In U.S. v. Board of Education of Philadelphia (May 1989), a Muslim school teacher successfully challenged a Pennsylvania state law that prohibited public school teachers from wearing apparel that indicates membership in a religious denomination."[cii]

As communities become established, education of children becomes a priority. Incorporating the Islamic philosophy of education within the framework of American pluralism presents challenges to the Muslim minority.[ciii]

Some Muslim writers stress that Muslims, where they are in the minority, must set aside their national ties and concentrate on their Islamic ones. If they do not forge a new community, one that can give their children an Islamic (rather than national-origin-based) education, they will loose their chance to build "a full-blooded Islamic life in their country of adoption."[civ] Some Islamicists fear for the future of the faith, specifically because of the tradition of religious pluralism in the U.S., and its history of nationality-based congregations, that encourages ethnic Muslim mosques rather than collective ones.

Each Muslim-majority country developed its own traditions and practices within the world religion known as Islam. While growing up in their homelands, immigrants saw only that paradigm. However, once they arrived in the U.S., settling primarily in urban areas, they were exposed to a wide variety of orthodoxy and orthopraxy put forth as the "true Islam." Recognition of these divisions along ethnic and national lines have brought new stresses to the Muslim communities in America.[cv]

ORIGINS OF BLACK ISLAM

Although much has been written about the Black Muslims, this religious group also has been described as primarily a racial, or a political or a social movement, which has sometimes imparted an agenda to frame what otherwise could be objective academic research.

When Black Islam first claimed general attention in the post World War II era, scholars of religion at first ignored it, then dismissed it as "merely" a separatist movement. In the beginning they noted its ties to black Christianity, outlined its variant theology, then questioned the sincerity of its move in the late 1970s toward ties with traditional Islam. Throughout the 1960s, Black Muslim leaders were under surveillance by the U.S. government as potential or actual political subversives, and one was martyred, presumably by his former allies.

Because the beliefs of Black Islam seemed unusual to academically-trained scholars of religion (most of whom were Christian), explaining the popularity of the movement in its early days remains problematic to the present. Reappraisals continue: seemingly annually, for example, a new biography of Malcolm X is released offering a reexamination of his life and work.

For this overview on Islam in America, there will be first a look at the historic sources of Black Islam, beginning with Marcus Garvey, Noble Drew Ali and Elijah Muhammad, adding, later, his chief protegé, Malcolm X. A look at the theological content of Black Islam follows. The Islamic content of Black Muslim belief is considered, following with the assertion that the movement was marketed not as Islam but as "un"-Christianity and can be considered, in its beginnings, as a Christian sect. It functioned as a black separatist or black nationalist movement in the political arena, attracting the attention of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. After three decades, following the deaths first of Malcolm X and a decade later of Elijah Muhammad, Black Islam splintered. Two major offshoots heading in different directions were one (led by Elijah Muhammad's son, Wallace D. Muhammad), which turned toward traditional Islam, and the other (led by Elijah Muhammad's national representative, Louis Farrakhan), which continued on the path outlined by the Nation of Islam.

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Moziah Garvey arrived in New York from Jamaica in 1916. Styling himself in the messianic tradition of the Bible, he often was referred to as the Black Moses,[cvi] ready to lead his people from enslavement in the New World back to their homeland in the Old World. Racial separation and a return to Africa were central to his message, which resonated in the hearts of blacks disillusioned by social progress in the wake of the Great War.

He extolled the virtues of blackness and preached pride in an African heritage. Garvey called for blacks to worship a black God "whose concern for the black man was prior to His concern for all other racial or national groups."[cvii] At its peak in the 1920s, members of his Universal Negro Improvement Association were said to number some 3 million.[cviii]

One source says that a missionary of the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam, Dr. Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, "converted 40 Garveyites in Detroit" in the 1920s and was succeeded in his mission by Mohammed Yusuf Khan, thereby implying that Elijah Muhammad (in Detroit and a follower of Garvey at the time) was first exposed to Islam through this variant tradition.[cix] Others have not noted Ahmadiyya presence or its connection with nascent Black Islam, but one hinted at an Islamic tie by asserting that a confidant of Garvey's "was a half-black Egyptian, Duse Mohammed Ali."[cx]

C. Eric Lincoln, who coined the term Black Muslims, called them the "inevitable heirs" of Garvey's back-to-Africa movement.[cxi] A recent Malcolm X biographer, Bruce Perry agreed, referring to the "Nation of Islam's Garvey-like call for a separate state...."[cxii]

Both Elijah Muhammad and Earl Little, Malcolm X's father, were organizers for Garvey in the 1920s.[cxiii] Daniel Burley, in his foreword to Elijah Muhammad's Message to the Blackman in America, pointed to parallels between Garvey and Elijah Muhammad; for example, both were "unlettered" teachers of truth.[cxiv] Farrakhan tied Black Islam to the movement in frequent references in speeches and writings to the "Honorable Marcus Garvey [who] was a good man who came among Black People to do a good work."[cxv]

Noble Drew Ali

While Garvey espoused black nationalism, he did not promote Black Islam. However, in 1913 Timothy Drew (who became better known as Noble Drew Ali), said he was commissioned "by the King of Morocco to teach Islam to the African-Americans (so-called Negroes) in the United States."[cxvi] He proclaimed himself "the prophet of Allah" and established his first Moorish Science Temple of America in Newark, N.J., but there soon were others elsewhere, including one in Chicago in 1914[cxvii] and temples in Pittsburgh and Detroit by 1925.[cxviii] The first Moorish National Convention was held in Chicago in 1928.[cxix]

Garvey encouraged American blacks to rediscover their African roots by returning to their homeland. Ali considered it more important for American blacks to rediscover what he termed their Asiatic or Moorish roots while remaining in the country where fate had led them. While Garvey garnered more followers, it can be argued that Ali had the more long-lasting impact.

His scripture was The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America. A closely-guarded volume[cxx], it "makes no pretense of being a replica or even an approximation of the Qu'ran, which Muslims believe was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad."[cxxi] However, it is this 64-page document which Elijah Muhammad, later to lead the Black Muslims, probably read while still in Detroit. Ali taught his followers that they were, originally, from Asia and that they had descended from the ancient Canaanites, Ethiopians and Moabites. A core teaching, one that would be echoed later in Black Islam, was that Islam was the religion of people of color,[cxxii] while Christianity belonged to whites.

Ali encouraged his followers to consider Garvey as a "John the Baptist" of the Moorish Science Temple.[cxxiii] Ali implied that the appearance of another messenger from God was imminent, perhaps inadvertently preparing his listeners to accept the arrival of Wallace Fard in 1930. One researcher made the tie between Ali, Fard and Elijah Muhammad closer still. He asserted that Fard claimed to be Ali reincarnated, and that Elijah Muhammad was one of four men trained by Ali to carry out Ali's mission after his death.[cxxiv]

Although the movement still exists,[cxxv] at the time of the death of Ali in 1929 it was at the peak of its power with more than 100,000 members nationwide.[cxxvi] Arguments over succession fueled internal dissention.[cxxvii] Many Garveyites also were members of the temple[cxxviii] and when its influence waned after Ali died, many of them formed the nucleus for Fard's Nation of Islam.[cxxix]

Significantly, Black Christians dismissed Noble Drew Ali and his Moorish Science Temple of America as insignificant. A leading scholar of black Christianity, E. Franklin Frazier, mentioned it disparagingly, deriding the temple as "the most radical secularization of Negro religion or of the Negro church in the city [urban America]."[cxxx] The white anthropologist George Eaton Simpson took note of Ali's Moorish Science Temples merely as the most successful of "various Moorish American or Islamic cults" that "popped up" in the 1920s and 1930s.[cxxxi]

Wallace D. Fard

Wallace Fard founded the Temple of Islam in Detroit, Michigan, about 1930. At least one source notes that both he and his protegé, Elijah Muhammad, were members of Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple of America,[cxxxii] where both would have been exposed to Ali's unique Koran, theology and view of history.

Fard himself is somewhat of a mystery, described by various authors as an immigrant from Mecca, a native West Indian, a diplomat trained in England and a light-skinned American Negro with Asian features. Beginning in the summer of 1930 he began working door-to-door as a peddler in the Paradise Valley area of Detroit, selling first raincoats and then silks. Referring to himself as Allah's incarnation, Fard was a charismatic stranger who "denounced the iniquitous white man and exalted black Afro-Asians".[cxxxiii]

Fard disappeared under mysterious circumstances. An assumption that Elijah Muhammad had something to do with his mentor's presumed murder runs through much of the writing on the subject. Perhaps in response to the innuendo, Elijah Muhammad's son, Wallace D. Muhammad, was quoted in many sources[cxxxiv] as asserting that Fard was alive -- but in hiding, that he knew where Fard was and that he could phone him anytime he wanted to. There is no evidence that he ever made such a call; Fard has not been seen in public since 1934.

One of Fard's early followers was a transplanted Georgian, Robert Poole, who became Elijah Muhammad, Minister of Islam. This southern black man took over the movement upon Fard's disappearance in 1934.

Elijah Muhammad

Robert (or Elijah) Poole was a laborer in Georgia before migrating north to Detroit with his wife, the former Clara Evans, and their two sons. Four more sons and two daughters were born in Michigan, where Poole worked in the auto industry until the Depression forced the family onto public relief. Poole attended one of Fard's sermons in 1931, and became a convert. Fard renamed him, eventually, Elijah Muhammad and appointed his protegé Chief Minister of Islam.[cxxxv]

In 1932, Elijah Muhammad moved to Chicago to establish the Nation of Islam's Temple #2.[cxxxvi] Police confrontations (involving mandatory school attendance for Muslim children) forced Fard to flee Detroit for Chicago, where he was arrested again. Soon after, Fard disappeared for good and Elijah Muhammad became the movement's leader.

Eventually, the Nation of Islam became a powerful force nationwide through both political and social programs. Elijah Muhammad's power began to unravel when his protegé, Malcolm X, discovered that the Nation of Islam's leader had not only committed adultery, but had fathered illegitimate children. Following Malcolm X's defection and assassination, Elijah Muhammad clung to power over a diminishing realm. Upon his death in 1975, a power struggle splintered the Nation of Islam.

IS BLACK ISLAM ISLAMIC?

Assessments of the religious content of the Nation of Islam during its early years vary. However, most agree that the new Black Muslims were not adherents of Islam as understood by followers of the Sunni or Shi'a traditions. Writers who were themselves followers of one of these traditional paths of Islam admittedly viewed the movement with a lack of critical distance: to them, these Black Muslims were not believers in the "true Islam" but followers of an indigenous, somewhat aberrant, religion. Black Muslim "teachings were fundamentally at variance with the teachings of Islam."[cxxxvii] (Therefore, to become "true Muslims", Black Muslims must convert to the "true Islam"[cxxxviii]).

According to the Nigerian scholar E. U. Essien-Udom, "most foreign Moslems dispute the contention that [Elijah] Muhammad is a legitimate teacher of Islam. They say that despite the use of a few prayers and occasional quotations from the Koran, he relies mainly on the Bible and that his doctrines are directly opposed to Moslem doctrines and purely a personal matter."[cxxxix]

Differences between Black Islam and Islam as understood by followers of the traditional form of the religion can be summarized as follows:[cxl]

1. Elijah Muhammad saw a Supreme God, which he called by the Arabic word, Allah, but he also acknowledged as God-as-person the man known commonly as Wallace D. Fard.[cxli] By contrast, traditional Islam is fiercely monotheistic.

2. Black Muslims recognized Elijah Muhammad as a messenger or prophet of God. By contrast, traditional Islam recognizes as the final prophet the Muhammad of the seventh century.

3. The Black Muslims divided the world on the basis of a physical characteristic, skin color, with only the black-skinned allowed to become Muslims. By contrast, traditional Islam promotes worldwide, universal brotherhood and acknowledges no skin color (or other "racial") barriers to adherence. As a "crossroads" region, the Middle East did not develop the same level of social differentiation by physical characteristics as other regions.[cxlii]

4. Traditional Islam has developed a system of sacred laws, called shari'a, which were neither understood or followed by the early Black Muslims. Neither did they follow the agreed-upon Islamic traditions which grew from the sayings and behavior of the Prophet Muhammad (such as food prohibitions and ritual fasting). "Elijah Muhammad ignored most Islamic precepts and made whimsical changes in the ones he kept," noted one scholar.[cxliii]

Looking at these key differences in more depth shows the gap between Black Islam and traditional Islam. The first two come from the shahadah, the profession of faith required of Muslims, which can be translated into English as "I perceive and bear witness that there is no God but God, and I perceive and bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God."

Point 1. Referring to Wallace D. Fard as God-in-Person contradicts the first statement of the shahadah. Black Muslims considered Fard to be Allah. Louis Farrakhan often invoked blessings of the deity at the beginning of his speeches this way: "In the Name of Allah, Who Came in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, the One God to Whom All Praise is Due, the Lord of the Worlds."[cxliv]

Elijah Muhammad added yet another dimension to the discussion when he talked not only of belief in a supreme being called Allah, but also of other deities in the Black Muslim pantheon -- at one point stating that Allah means Gods.[cxlv] Also, he asserted, "Every race has a God looking like itself"[cxlvi] and that the "Black God made the white god."[cxlvii] However, Fard was clearly identified as the supreme being rather than some lesser god. "All Muslims are Allahs," wrote Elijah Muhammad, "but we call the Supreme Allah the Supreme Being. And He has a Name of His Own. This Name is 'Fard Muhammad'."[cxlviii]

The Nation of Islam to this day celebrates a unique holiday, Savior's Day, on 26 February to commemorate Fard's birthday.[cxlix]

That Black Islam considers Allah to be human (rather than infinite in space and in time, as understood by traditional Muslims[cl]) was clearly restated by Farrakhan in response to a question from a television interviewer asking his concept of God. "Elijah Muhammad teaches us that God was a man. He is a man and shall always be a man for it is only man who can judge man. It is only man who can make man, and it is only man who is a fitting guide for man."[cli] Elijah Muhammad asserted, "This teaching of a mystery God enslaves the minds of the ignorant."[clii] Proof for his assertion rests in reality. "We are material beings and live in a material universe," he explained.[cliii] "Know that God is a man and not a spook!"[cliv]

Point 2. If Fard was God-in-Person, then it was logical that in Black Islam, Fard's protegé would be God's messenger or prophet. However, this contradicts the second statement of the shahadah.

Elijah Muhammad wrote, "Allah, in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad to Whom praises are due forever, has delivered to me whom He chose to deliver this Message of Truth." He spoke of "the truth that God has given to me" and exhorted, "I say, Black Man, believe in Allah and come follow me."[clv] Elijah Muhammad noted that he always wanted to be a preacher and he "was about to start preaching Christianity," but that Fard showed him the religion to preach.[clvi] Farrakhan acknowledged Elijah Muhammad as prophet, calling his mentor "a divine Messenger of God,"[clvii] and reporting, "The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, as the Messenger of Allah, desires to teach you and me the knowledge of Islam."[clviii] This emissary of the divine came in response to an ecumenical call from both Christian and Islamic scripture. Minister James Shabazz wrote, "Messenger Elijah Muhammad's message to us fulfills the Bible and Holy Qur-an."[clix] Many of his followers thought him immortal.[clx]

Traditional Muslims acknowledge Muhammad ibn Abdullah as "the first and last messenger sent to all humanity," because "through him the message was completed."[clxi] No prophets came after Muhammad.

Point 3. A "visible" reason that Black Islam is not accepted as part of the worldwide religion called Islam is its racism: its emphasis on segmenting human society (and measuring human worth) according to skin color. Muslims consider such variations merely to be proof of God's existence and see no one melanin level as inherently superior to any other. "Both dogmatically and scientifically, Islam regards differences in colour -- as it regards differences in language and all the other natural and human phenomena of this great universe -- as simply a manifestation of the Divine Power," asserted an Islamic theologian in a book titled Islam and the Race Question.[clxii]

He explained further:

Islam believes in one God. From this profession of the divine uniqueness derives the necessary and inescapable unity of all human beings, a unity in which I bear no responsibility save for my own actions, and to whom am the equal of every other man throughout history, anywhere in the world.[clxiii]

Dividing humanity by skin color disregards the traditional Muslim's emphasis on his Islamic identity as the most important in his life. "All Muslims are equal under God," another Muslim wrote. "None is better than any other, except by his effort to be a better Muslim. Tribalism or nationalism are, therefore, the worst enemies of Islam since they break up the Muslim ummah along lines that are Islamically irrelevant, let alone are highly destructive."[clxiv]

Point 4. The shari'a, the code of religious laws interpreted and administered by an Islamic court system (as contrasted with a secular court system -- countries such as Egypt have both), is of no interest to Black Muslims. Traditional Muslims have spent lifetimes arguing over jurisprudence -- and have aligned themselves in at least four schools of law based on these on-going arguments. In addition, traditional Islamic practices are either not observed or were changed by Elijah Muhammad and his followers. Food regulations are one area of clear disagreement between Black Muslim and traditional Muslim practice. For example, Elijah Muhammad, writing that he was following Fard's instructions, insisted that his followers eat just one meal a day (between 4 and 6 p.m.) and fast during December. He forbad, for example, collard greens, all beans (except small navy beans), and all potatoes. Black Muslims should not eat cake made with white sugar, corn bread or chicken.[clxv]

Ramadan is the fasting month in traditional Islam, not December. In addition, none of these foods mentioned by Elijah Muhammad are prohibited in traditional Islam.[clxvi]

There are other significant discrepancies with traditional Islam. One area concerns beliefs about what happens after death. Traditional Muslims accept the doctrine of the resurrection of the body from the grave.[clxvii] Elijah Muhammad admitted to only a mental resurrection.[clxviii] Muslims believe in a place called heaven.[clxix] Elijah Muhammad said "heaven is a condition of life and not a special place."[clxx]

More differences between Black Islam and traditional Muslim beliefs stem from the unique cosmology developed by Elijah Muhammad. He argued that 25 black scientists (24 who wrote and one who judged the truth of the others' writings) created 25,000 year scenarios which then unfold and the cycle repeats. It was these scientists who wrote the "original scriptures of the Bible and Holy Qu'ran" and "revealed [them] by word of mouth and inspiration to prophets."[clxxi] That the Koran was not dictated to Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel would be considered heresy by traditional Muslims.

As foretold by these scientists in an ancient scenario, some 66 trillion years ago blacks were exiled from the moon (from which the earth had been spun off); 6,600 years ago, Yakub, a black scientist/god grafted the white race (a race of devils) from the superior black race. These whites were given 6,000 years to rule over the earth before it became time for the black race to rule (and that time is soon).

If traditional Muslims question Elijah Muhammad's theological beliefs, he also returned the favor. He said "most old world Muslims" lacked "a true knowledge of the Supreme one, referred to as Allah"[clxxii] and reported that "99% of the old world Muslims...need to be taught today the reality of Allah."[clxxiii] That he believed he was the one to teach them was obvious: "So I say to the Arab world of Islam, prepare yourself for all that you hear coming from the mouth of Messenger Elijah Muhammad here in America. You can accept it or reject it. It Would be good if you accept it."[clxxiv]

Occasionally, Black Muslims acknowledged the differences between their tradition and that of the Muslim majority. Farrakhan referred to existing factional and doctrinal differences with Sunnis, but insisted that he respected all varieties of Islam and disagreed with them "only with words."[clxxv]

Elijah Muhammad explained, "If a man is lazy let him go to the Christian church. But if you are ambitious and hardworking, come to the Temple of Islam."[clxxvi] Doctrinal differences between the two faiths appeared not to matter to the prophet of Allah.

Christian writers were more guarded about theological content, but they still were skeptical of Black Muslim claims to be Islamic. Gordon W. Allport, writing a foreword to Lincoln's The Black Muslims in America, referred to them as "this strange Moslem sect" and concluded, "The tie to Islam is, of course, an historical monstrosity, but this fact does not trouble minds innocent of theological antiquity."[clxxvii] The historian Edwin S. Gaustad rejected the Black Muslims claim to be Muslims, asserting "its relationship to world-wide Islam is tenuous at best."[clxxviii]

The black Presbyterian theologian Gayraud S. Wilmore lumped Islam into what he called "quasi-religious groups that sponsor African culture among black Americans" and asserted that they "are continual reminders that black religion is a complex concatenation of archaic, modern, and continually shifting belief systems, mythologies, and symbols, none of which can be claimed as the exclusive property of any one religious tradition -- yet sharing a common core related to African and racial oppression."[clxxix] Included is what he termed the "dark and contrary side" of black spirituality, a "survival tradition" that fueled the "bitterness and hatred" found among Black Muslims.[clxxx]

That Lincoln considered Black Islam "full of surprises and of social and religious inconformities" is clear. "These Muslims are 'Black Men,' black as the antithesis of white. They do not subscribe to the familiar Moslem doctrine that a common submission to Allah erases and transcends all racial awareness. On the contrary, they do not conceive the white man as capable of being a Muslim. 'By nature he is incapable!'."[clxxxi] Abdul Basit Naeem, editor-publisher of Moslem World & the U.S.A., himself a part of the Black Muslim movement, conceded in 1957 that "some of the teachings of Elijah Muhammad...would not be acceptable to Moslems in the East...", but insisted that "the SPIRIT of Islam is shared by all of us."[clxxxii]

Black Muslims actively kept their followers away from traditional Muslims, presumably to avoid letting either side know it differed from the other. Daniel Burley noted that Elijah Muhammad "doesn't admit whites to his spiritual meetings in his Mosque on Sunday."[clxxxiii] Essien-Udom reported that Elijah Muhammad thought "some of the Eastern Moslems residing in this country have forsaken the teachings of Islam" and added that his guards actively barred visitors from Muslim countries from entering his Black Muslim mosques.[clxxxiv] Essien-Udom also expressed surprise "that no foreign student or visitor was invited to speak to the Muslims in Chicago, an excellent opportunity for them to learn about those countries which they believe to be their 'homeland'."[clxxxv]

It was the Nation of Islam's lack of knowledge of traditional Islam that, ironically, led to a turning point in the life of one of its most devoted followers, Elijah Muhammad's protegé, Malcolm X. The biographer Walter Dean Myers described Malcolm X's first direct encounter with traditional Islam on his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964. While Malcolm X awaited the hearing to determine if he was sufficiently Muslim to participate in the hajj (he was ultimately successful), he waited with orthodox practitioners. "At prayer times he was embarrassed because he did not know either Arabic or the Islamic rituals. He was a Muslim minister in the United States, without knowing the fundamentals of his own religion,"[clxxxvi] Myers noted.

BLACK ISLAM AS "un"-CHRISTIANITY

Black Islam is consciously "un"-Christian. That is, some blacks became Black Muslims not because they experienced a religious conversion to Islam, but because they were drawn to Black Islam's monotheistic Christian-style God who was by definition not Christian.[clxxxvii] These Black Muslims did not so much chose Islam as reject White Christianity: the religion imposed on them during slavery by their masters. "You automatically become the servant of the white race and not of God upon accepting their religion," wrote Elijah Muhammad.[clxxxviii] "You can't be a Christian unless you are white."[clxxxix] He was echoing the admonitions of Noble Drew Ali, who wrote that "Christianity is for the European (paleface): Moslemism is for the Asiatic (olive-skinned)."[cxc]

Black Islam, therefore, was attractive to some not for its religious content, but specifically because it was seen as separate and apart from the Christian racism of whites who had placed blacks in "enforced isolation from the mainstream of Christianity with unparalleled equanimity".[cxci] Elijah Muhammad wrote that blacks "love their enemies in spite of the fact that the white slave masters kept our fathers out of their religion, Christianity, for approximately three hundred years."[cxcii]

The historian Gaustad added that Black Islam "stands more as a rejection of Christianity as the white man's religion than as an embrace of the 'five pillars' of Islam."[cxciii] Islam is attractive because it is marketed by Black Muslims as a religion of people of darker hues (Asiatics, Africans), attractive precisely because it is not a religion of white Europeans.

Wilmore asserted, "It happened that the nations of the Christian West were the ones to enslave Africans on a large scale and separate them from their ancient religions. Indeed, the Christian faith was used by whites as an instrument of control...." He decried "Euro-American hegemony over the darker races."[cxciv] Black Christian writers such as Wilmore and Lincoln contended that, in the rhetoric of Black Muslims, "the Christian church was the tool of slavery."[cxcv]

Elijah Muhammad wrote, "Read and study the above chapter of John 8:42, all of you, who are Christians, believers in the Bible and Jesus, as you say. If you understand it right, you will agree with me that the whole Caucasian race is a race of devils." [cxcvi]

What black American would willingly join a religion espoused by white slave master devils?

Given a U.S. history filled with repression and racism, Lincoln asked, "How can Christian America be surprised that Elijah Muhammad has attracted tens of thousands of Negroes to the cause of Black Islam." To Lincoln in 1964, "The Black Muslims are a part of the Negro's all-out struggle for freedom."[cxcvii] A decade later he noted, "Black Islam promises instant identity and an established tradition independent of the white man's tampering or influence."[cxcviii]

Black Islam did not require the approval of whites for legitimacy. Lincoln summarized in 1964 the quest for independence among black separatists that resonates three decades later:

There is a new pride in being black, and it is this aspect of Muslim philosophy that is impressive far beyond the numbers of men and women who confess the faith that is Elijah Muhammad's interpretation of Islam. And this, not the number of his followers, with their exaggerated formality yet a certain sureness, do not defer to the white man. They are polite to everybody, but they do not defer. And yet they came, for the most part, from the class which survives on deference. The Muslims appear to thrive. Their houses are neat and clean. Their children are not delinquent. They are seldom before the white man's courts except when in contest with the white man himself. Their own explanation is 'knowledge' --knowledge about themselves and knowledge of the truth about the white man'. The Negro masses are impressed, and they accept Muhammad's 'truth' without necessarily accepting his hatred. There is no compelling drive for integration among the masses; but there is a compulsion to be free -- to be free in spite of being black.[cxcix]

Some black Christians were dissatisfied with a religion steeped in the slave master mentality. Black Muslims capitalized on a major market opportunity to grow a novel faith.[cc]

BLACK ISLAM AS CHRISTIAN SECT

Within the context of a majority Protestant Christian America, it is perhaps easier to understand the emergence of Black Islam as a dissident movement within black Christianity, a calculated recasting of Christianity with new terminology and a black core. And, if one considers that Black Islam began as a Christian sect, rather than from within traditional Islam, a new examination of its larger role as a religion in American culture is possible.

It is the non-Islamic content, including the "mutilated version of western eschatology"[cci], that framed the discussion for some non-Muslim writers. They saw Black Muslims as Christian dissidents rather than converts to Islam: blacks who did not find comfort in traditional black Christianity and therefore sought solace in a novel version of spirituality with its roots nonetheless in that same Christianity.

That Black Islam began as a Christian sect can be argued on several points. First, the theology of redemption through suffering which is repeated by Elijah Muhammad as a Black Muslim belief has its roots in Judaism and Christianity. Second, the leaders of the Black Muslim movement were themselves steeped in Black Christianity. Third, their followers were drawn from the same black Christian community. Fourth, their sermons and rituals were continuations of the familiar framed in a new black consciousness.

That Black Islam began as a Christian sect can be argued in strictly sociological terms as well. In addition to existing in tension with the surrounding society, it meets the standard definition for a sect according to sociologist Rodney Stark's framework. It also fits within Stark's model for successful religious ventures. The first test within in this model includes cultural continuity. Black Islam successfully built its message upon beliefs and attitudes held by Black Christians.

First, the theme of redemption through suffering is a recurrent one in Judaism and in Christianity, so it is familiar to those raised in black churches. Even though they did not share a common faith, they shared a common prophetic myth: that suffering (such as that endured first by the Israelites and later by the slaves) ennobled a people, endowing them with moral superiority. Elijah Muhammad's chosen constituency -- the black underclass -- had indeed suffered and the messenger of Allah offered them concrete, here-and-now redemption in the form of a separate economy if not a separate nation. There was no need to wait for the rewards of heaven or the coming of a messiah to usher in the millennium.

A messiah/prophet to cure social ills is particularly attractive to oppressed black masses, according to Lincoln. Wilson Jeremiah Moses added that possession of a messianic myth was evidence of an ethnic group's cultural health, and that when one dies out, another takes its place.[ccii]

Second, the leaders of the Black Muslim movement had family histories of intimate involvement with institutional black Christianity. Fathers of both Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X were Baptist preachers, for example.

Third, followers of Black Islam were specifically drawn from the ranks of black Christians. According to Essien-Udom's field observation account, "small groups [of Black Muslims] visit Negro churches on Sundays. After the service they mingle freely with the members and suggest to them that they attend Temple meetings later that afternoon."[cciii] Islam offered an alternative to the turn-the-other-cheek Christianity of "Uncle Toms" in the black nationalism days of the 1960s. Lincoln, who is said to have coined the term "Black Muslim" with his doctoral dissertation, pointed out the lure of Islam for his own black students at Clark College in Atlanta, Ga., in the 1961 preface to The Black Muslims in America. "Despite their Christian backgrounds, and despite the fact that they were even then attending a church-related college, these young men had despaired of Christianity as a way of life capable of affording them the respect and dignity they sought and deserved."[cciv]

Fourth, what was delivered to these followers of Black Islam was close enough to what they already knew to be readily accepted. Sermons delivered by Black Muslim preachers abounded in Biblical references. Essien-Udom noted the tendency to draw heavily on Old Testament metaphors, especially that of identifying the black experience of slavery in the United States with the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. In his early preachings, Wallace Fard "used the Bible as his textbook, since it was the only religious book with which the majority of his hearers were familiar."[ccv] Elijah Muhammad taught from the Bible, saying "the destiny of the Black Nation and of the Caucasian race is 'hidden' in the scriptures."[ccvi]

The Koran, which Elijah Muhammad called "a wonderful book," was revered by Black Muslims, but it was deemed useful because it "verifies the truth of the Bible;"[ccvii] the Bible, in turn verified Islam.[ccviii]

The ministers of Black Islam, including both Elijah Muhammad and the current head of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan (himself a protegé of Malcolm X[ccix]), relied upon Biblical stories in their speeches and writings. Not only were they secure in the knowledge that audiences will understand about whom they spoke when they mentioned "pharaoh" and "Moses", but they used Biblical passages to "prove" Black Islamic beliefs.[ccx] Farrakhan commented on his listeners' Biblical background, reliance on Scriptures and familiarity with Biblical teachings frequently.[ccxi] He explained his belief that the end-time was at hand by comparing contemporary events at length with Matthew 24 -- Elijah Muhammad, of course, being the Elijah of Biblical prophecy.[ccxii] At one point, he reported that Elijah Muhammad told him to "speak to you today on the basis of Scriptures."[ccxiii]

In that precursor of Black Islam, the Moorish Science Temple, the familiar hymns of black Christianity were recast to be chanted (rather than sung) with words conforming to Ali's teachings. "Give me that old time religion..." became "Moslem's that old time religion...".[ccxiv] Even the practice of informal prayer meetings at home, used by Black Muslims, was familiar to members of small black Christian congregations.[ccxv]

That Jesus is an integral part of Black Islam is irrefutable. References to Jesus as a prophet, and even to Jesus as a Muslim, abound in both Moorish Science Temple and Nation of Islam writings. One writer, who had read Ali's Koran, described it as "well-written parables and statements attributed to Jesus."[ccxvi]

To take his followers beyond Christianity into Black Islam, Elijah Muhammad claimed that Christianity was not the religion of Jesus, that "the religion of Jesus was Islam as it was the religion of Moses and all the prophets of God."[ccxvii] and that "Jesus was a Muslim, not a Christian."[ccxviii] Elijah Muhammad saw himself in an unbroken line of religious leaders that included the prophets first of Judaism and then Christianity. But Christianity was "the chain the binds the Black Man in mental slavery"[ccxix] much as slavery itself, in the hands of white Christians, had bound blacks in literal chains. His message took his flock beyond Christianity to the truth -- Islam -- as Jesus himself had intended.

The anthropologist Simpson said that Black Muslims have not sought "to restore the traditional culture of Africa.... [Rather, t]hey have devised a history and a belief system which combine a political ideology with certain elements of Christian and Muslim teachings."[ccxx]

Did blacks defect in meaningful numbers from the traditional Black Churches to Black Islam? The sociologist Yinger did not think so; he stated that opinion polls put approval of Black Muslims among American blacks at only 5 per cent.[ccxxi] Wilmore asserted that "[t]here is no evidence that there was widespread defection from the churches into the Nation of Islam," although he admitted that "nominal Christians" defected to Black Muslim ranks in the 1960s, "considering themselves Muslims without formally uniting with a mosque."[ccxxii] He said the assassination of Malcolm X "prevented the movement from making serious inroads into the ranks of organized Christianity." Instead, he reported that "thoroughly secularized black racism, empty of any self-conscious ideological or redemptive significance" drew young black men and women "into the Islamic sects and cults that nourished their personal resentment and nonconformity."[ccxxiii]

However, Lincoln did see disaffected black Christians being drawn to the group, despite its blatant misrepresentation of Muslim beliefs. Writing in 1964 he said, "At a time when any separatist philosophy is repugnant to the Negro's concept of social and religious propriety, Elijah Muhammad has managed to wean untold thousands of Negroes (including a sizeable number of former Christian pastors) away from the churches and weld them into a white-despising black supremacy cult called the Black Muslim Movement."[ccxxiv] A decade later, Lincoln wrote, "Such a religion for all its imperfections must inevitably attract many Black Christians grown weary and impatient with the peculiar conditions of Christianity in America. And it has, for there are no Black Muslims except those who left the Christian tradition in search of a more satisfying alternative."[ccxxv]

Sociology offers guidelines for determining whether a religious group is a sect. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, in The Future of Religion, list these:

1. Separatism from the general society and withdrawal from or defiance of the world and its institutions and values.

2. Exclusiveness both in attitude and in social structure.

3. Emphasis upon a conversion experience prior to membership.

4. Voluntary joining.

5. A spirit of regeneration.

6. An attitude of ethical austerity, often of an ascetic nature.[ccxxvi]

In addition, Stark and Bainbridge note that "[t]o be a sect, a religious movement must have been founded by persons who left another religious body for the purpose of founding the sect."[ccxxvii] There is little question that Black Islam meets most if not all of these guidelines for determining a sect. Its call for separation and withdrawal from the general society was unmistakable. That membership was built first and foremost on race gave it an exclusiveness few sects have claimed. The conversion experience included accepting the new icons, prophets and vocabulary of Black Islam. Members joined voluntarily.

Because recruits went from what was seen as a repressive white Christian milieu into one which reinforced their superiority as "people of dark hues," a spirit of regeneration was inevitable. The ascetic nature of Black Islam, including its stands against alcohol consumption and use of illegal drugs, continues to attract admiration. And, the leaders and followers in Black Islam left black Christianity for this new religious movement.

In a later work, Rodney Stark discussed models for successful religious movements. Here are some of the attributes which Black Islam possesses:[ccxxviii]

1. Retention of cultural continuity with the conventional faiths of the societies in which they appear or originate.

2. Achievement of effective resource mobilization with strong governance and a high level of individual commitment.

3. Attraction of a normal age and sex structure.

4. Existence of a favorable ecology, which includes a relatively unregulated religious economy, conventional faiths weakened by social disruption and the possibility of achieving success within a generation.

5. Adequate socialization of the young so as to limit pressures toward secularization and limit defection.[ccxxix]

By using the Bible and other essentials of Christianity, Black Islam made cultural continuity obvious. Through encouragement of tithing and the establishment of communal business enterprises, resources were marshalled to underscore the movement. The Nation of Islam was ruled by an iron hand and those in the core membership have been considered fanatics.

Although no membership statistics are available for any time period in Black Islam, photographs show a reasonable age and sex distribution for the membership. The U.S. meets all definitions for a relatively unregulated religious economy. Black Christianity was rocked first by the economic disasters of the Depression, then by the furor over segregated military units in World War II and finally by the civil rights uprisings of the '60s. Black Islam did achieve success within the lifetime of one man -- Elijah Muhammad.

Through establishment of the University of Islam (actually more of an elementary and secondary parochial school system) plus various youth groups (including Fruit of Islam), the Black Muslims sought to keep their young within the fold.

BLACK MUSLIMS AS BLACK SEPARATISTS

Essien-Udom made the Nation of Islam the centerpiece of his book on black nationalism, calling it in 1962 "the most important black nationalist movement in the United States."[ccxxx] The Nigerian scholar, who researched the Nation of Islam through field studies for his oft-quoted 1962 book, discounted religion as a motivation for joining the group. He reported, "The need for identity and the desire for self-improvement are the two principal motives which lead individuals to join and to remain in the Nation of Islam."[ccxxxi] None of the Muslims he interviewed during field research considered acceptance or profession of the faith as the key factor in joining. The details of Islamic theology, as taught by Elijah Muhammad, were faced (if at all) after the decision to affiliate.

In The Black Muslims in America, published one year earlier, Lincoln had asserted that "the aegis of orthodox Islam means little in America's black ghettos. So long as the Movement keeps its color identity with the rising black peoples of Africa, it could discard all its Islamic attributes--its name, its prayers to Allah, its citations from the Quran, everything 'Muslim' without substantial risk in its appeal to the black masses."[ccxxxii]

Black Muslims clearly are not Muslims in the traditional, world-religion-forged-in-Arabia mold, but followers of a new and distinct sect overtly couched in religious terms but at base dependent on separation according to race. As V. DuWayne Battle wrote in The Black Scholar, "Islam was identified as the natural religion of the black man."[ccxxxiii] Myers summarized the movement bluntly: "the beliefs binding the members had to do more with race than religion."[ccxxxiv]

If not in religion, perhaps the key to understanding the allure of the Nation of Islam (both for converts and the media) in the decades surrounding the civil rights turmoil of the 1960s was its call for black separatism: a demand for the creation of "some sort of territorial separation of Negroes and whites"[ccxxxv] or even a separate nation for blacks.[ccxxxvi] Casting the white man as the devil is seen as central to the rationale for this self-imposed apartheid. These two beliefs isolated Black Muslims from the mainstream black Christianity's call for integration and acceptance.

Lincoln emphasized the "preoccupation of the Black Muslim with his personal and racial image," a person in search of what he called "mood ebony," or a recapture of the positive image of blackness.[ccxxxvii] For Essien-Udom, too, the black nationalism of these Muslims was a search for a "Negro identity," an identity that was independent of "the power center of the ruling white society." Searching for this identity in African (or "Asiatic" or Arabian) roots "placed the black race in an exalted position in some very remote past."[ccxxxviii]

The numerous biographies of key figures of Black Islam (especially Malcolm X) continue the theme of Black Muslims as a "black power" movement. "Malcolm X is a symbol of the recklessness that extreme weariness [with the pace of social change] can produce."[ccxxxix] The religious content of the Nation of Islam was ignored while its separatist doctrines were explained and justified as an natural response to the slave experience.[ccxl] It was the Black Muslims who "have been forthright about feeling superior to anybody white."[ccxli]

"A significant aspect of the Muslim's appeal has always been their openly expressed hostility toward the white man, for in listening to the Muslim ministers castigate their oppressors, the millions of Negroes most accommodated to the status quo may share vicariously in a glorious moment of aggression,"[ccxlii] Lincoln wrote. Elijah Muhammad prophesied the coming destruction of the Caucasian race and its civilization. "Allah revealed to him that the United States would be destroyed in 1970," reported Essien-Udom in 1962. "After this apocalypse, the Black Nation -- the entire world population of the 'black, brown, yellow, and red' races -- would emerge as the sole ruler of the world under Allah's benign and righteous guidance."[ccxliii] As Lincoln put it:"In the Muslim community the lamp of resentment with its flame of black hatred is carefully tended against the Day of Armageddon -- the final confrontation between the forces of good and those of evil, when the non-white races of the world with inundate and annihilate the despised whites. Theirs is the hate that hate produced, or so the Black Muslims believe. For if the white man does not hate the black man, then why has he degraded him for so long?"[ccxliv]

Only Burley discounted the separatist label. He categorized Elijah Muhammad's movement as a quest for "race solidarity and unity."[ccxlv] The "leader of 250,000 Black Muslims" avoids interracial gatherings "because he believes the Negro weakens himself morally as well as spiritually by breaking his neck to get into the company of white persons."[ccxlvi]

THE BLACK MUSLIM MOVEMENT

In the first decade after Wallace Fard's disappearance, the Nation of Islam faltered under Elijah Muhammad's leadership. Its membership slipped from a peak of some 8000 to about 100. But fate intervened. Citing religious convictions, Elijah Muhammad resisted the draft during World War II and was briefly jailed. He realized there that he and his fellow inmates were virtually ignored by the black churches: an underclass population ripe for recruitment.

Once released, Elijah Muhammad began a new recruitment. Focusing on the downtrodden -- prisoners, prostitutes, young delinquents -- the Nation of Islam experienced unprecedented growth. By 1960, membership nationwide was estimated at 65,000 to 100,000,[ccxlvii] although Elijah Muhammad's son, Warith Deen Muhammad, insists the membership never went beyond 10,000, because the membership was transient, "coming in and going out regularly."[ccxlviii] Once placed on the membership rolls, a name never was deleted even if the person never reappeared at the temple.

This success brought economic rewards as well. Member contributions allowed the Nation of Islam to own real estate and operate businesses: the first step toward a separate economic realm for blacks, this one within the United States. Self-help reduced reliance on whites and boosted income for blacks.

While Elijah Muhammad was the leader of the Black Muslim Movement, Malcolm X certainly was its media star. Tall, authoritative, good-looking and articulate, he would have commanded attention even without his fiery rhetoric. Converted to Black Islam while in prison for grand larceny, after parole in 1952 he served the Nation of Islam as an organizer in Detroit, Boston and Philadelphia before being called upon to lead the powerful Temple Number Seven in Harlem. He also created Muhammad Speaks, the Nation of Islam's newspaper, and served as Elijah Muhammad's "chief spokesman and traveling representative."[ccxlix]

Lincoln wrote that Malcolm X "has had a long and arduous training in the philosophy of Black Islam, which, while presenting itself as a religion of peace, is publicly committed to the lex talionis ('an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth')."[ccl]

Biographer Bruce Perry emphasized Malcolm X's "chameleon-like" qualities, his ability to tailor his rhetoric to his purpose and his audience. He reported, "Privately, Malcolm admitted that he did not believe everything he said publicly."[ccli] Perry attributed the instability in beliefs to an insecurity stemming from his mixed-race heritage and tumultuous childhood. He did not want his new source of security, the Nation of Islam, to founder -- it "had become the most important thing in his life."[cclii] So, Malcolm initially kept quiet about his theological changes of heart and also declined to disclose the corruption and immorality he discovered among Elijah Muhammad and his lieutenants.

In My Face Is Black, published in 1964, three years after the first edition of The Black Muslims in America, Lincoln noted the difference between the "racist doctrines" of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, who introduced "large numbers of his admirers to a more orthodox rendition of traditional Islam."[ccliii] It is certain from all accounts that discontent between Elijah Muhammad's followers and Malcolm X grew as the latter's reputation grew -- even before the trip to Mecca. Scholars note that Malcolm seemed to overshadow his former mentor, whose health steadily deteriorated. Elijah Muhammad "praised Malcolm to his face, but condemned him behind his back."[ccliv]

Lincoln believed the differences between mentor and protegé were ideological divergence. But whereas in the early pages of his landmark 1964 book he emphasized Malcolm X's turn toward orthodox Islam, in the last chapters he characterized Elijah Muhammad as the less radical of the two, and wrote that "a shift toward conservatism in the mood of the Muslim movement left no place for Malcolm X...a revolutionary by nature...."[cclv] Myers also called Elijah Muhammad a conservative man, in contrast with his disciple, "a man to whom the idea of revolution was not only possible, but necessary."[cclvi]

Lincoln clearly considered Malcolm X alarming, calling him "potentially the most powerful and perhaps the most dangerous Negro in America. A man of extraordinary gifts with a diabolical appeal to the sense of injury and the sense of pride of the disinherited, Malcolm X is himself the Man on the Black Horse who stalks in the wings as the tortured masses come awake to the possibilities of freedom, or foredoom themselves to increased frustration through some chauvinistic enterprise."[cclvii]

It is because of his impassioned adherence to and advocacy of the Nation of Islam that his turn away from the separatism of Elijah Muhammad and toward the inclusiveness of Sunni Islam is so important in the evolution of the Black Muslim Movement.

Malcolm's disillusionment turned on two key events. In July 1963, two former secretaries of Elijah Muhammad filed paternity suits against the head of the Nation of Islam.[cclviii] He admitted the charges, but was not disciplined for these obvious acts of adultery. The leader of the Nation of Islam had carefully cultivated an image as "a sober noble father of a well-beloved family,"[cclix] when in fact he had committed immoral acts for which others would have been expelled.

Second, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X publicly pronounced the tragedy as the inevitable result of white men's hate. Elijah Muhammad responded to the outrage resulting from his disciple's remarks by ordering him silent for 90 days.

It soon became obvious that Malcolm X was no longer welcome within the Nation of Islam, and in March 1964 he announced the creation of Muslim Mosque, Inc., and embarked upon a pilgrimage to Mecca. That trip, called hajj in Arabic, was a turning point in his life.

Traditional Muslim writers openly rejoice when they recount that it was this visit to Mecca and Malcolm's contact with traditional Muslims that showed him the error of his ways.[cclx] He encountered "tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the non-white," Malcolm X was quoted as saying in his "as told to Alex Haley" autobiography.[cclxi]

The biographer Myers emphasized that the American visitor was awed by his warm welcomes from Muslims throughout the Middle East. "The men who showed Malcolm this hospitality were Muslims, and they were white. They talked to Malcolm about his conversion and about his racial attitudes. There is a saying in the Islamic faith that one cannot be a true Muslim unless he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself, and Malcolm was asked if he really felt that all white men were devils."[cclxii] Apparently chastened and enlightened, Malcolm X returned to the United States as El Hajj Malik el Shabazz, a "true" Muslim interested anew in the "true" faith.

Black Muslims were outraged by his defection. The year before Malcolm X was killed, Lincoln speculated whether the activist would be assassinated by Elijah Muhammad's followers.[cclxiii] By late 1964, Malcolm X had made many enemies within the Nation of Islam. "The word on the streets of Harlem was somber. Malcolm, it was said, was marked for death."[cclxiv]

The key piece of writing on Malcolm X is his autobiography, "as told to" Alex Haley, but it is considered incomplete by many. George Breitman, in the introduction to his own book on Malcolm X, wrote, "Because Haley did not sympathize with his views, Malcolm stipulated that nothing be in the book that he had not said and that nothing be left out that he wanted in it." Breitman thought Haley "honored Malcolm's stipulation to the best of his ability" but that the work was flawed because its subject was killed before he was able to review the manuscript.[cclxv]

Breitman is one of many writers to emphasize the change in Malcolm X following his pilgrimage to Mecca. Even the sociologist Yinger noted the shift following the "trip to Mecca and contacts with orthodox white Muslims."[cclxvi] Breitman penned an entire book on this shift, with the premise that "[n]obody, apparently, had fully understood the trend of Malcolm's thought while he was alive, except himself. No one but he had been present on all the occasions when he gave these speeches [during the last year of his life], and most of them had not been transcribed and printed before his death."[cclxvii]

Part of his impetus was what he saw as Haley's shortcomings. "Even after the split he did not fully grasp the changes in Malcolm's outlook which took place with great speed in the final months, and the book does not adequately reflect these changes."[cclxviii]

On 21 February 1965, Malcolm was assassinated by three gunmen at the start of a speech in the Aragon Ballroom in Harlem.[cclxix] While Elijah Muhammad sought to distance himself from his former protegé and consolidate once again the Nation of Islam, most researchers[cclxx] subscribe to the popular theory that Elijah Muhammad had ordered Malcolm X's death. The biographer Myers wondered whether it also was part of a government plot (much of Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary is concerned with F.B.I. infiltration of Black Islam and surveillance of its key figures), but also pointed a finger at the Nation of Islam.[cclxxi]

One biographer said the assassins were members of Harlem Temple Seven[cclxxii] and that "a high ranking Black Muslim had instructed them to assassinate Malcolm X."[cclxxiii] In widely publicized comments in March 1994, Malcolm X's widow, Betty Shabazz, openly accused Louis Farrakhan, then one of Elijah Muhammad's top aides, of complicity in her husband's assassination.

Not much is written about the decade between Malcolm X's death and the 1975 death of Elijah Muhammad, but this second death publicized rifts within the Black Muslim movement.

In the 1990s, a reappraisal of the role of Malcolm X both in the Civil Rights Movement and in Black Islam is underway, sparked at least in part by discussions about Spike Lee's 1992 movie and its 1993 release to the home video market. In November 1992, U.S. News & World Report noted the transformation of Malcolm X from "the angriest Negro in America" to "inner-city icon".[cclxxiv] In November 1993, Shahab Riazi, a Purdue University student from Pakistan, wrote in a column on the editorial page of the Purdue Exponent that Malcolm X buried his racist persona in Mecca and returned to the U.S. as a convert to "Islam, true Islam. This color-blind religion was the only religion which could change the ideals of a fanatic," Riazi wrote[cclxxv]. As traditional Muslims in the U.S. discover Black Muslims, scholarly explorations and reappraisals should increase.

SPLINTERING OF BLACK ISLAM

Elijah Muhammad continued to lead the Nation of Islam until his death in 1975. In 1972 he had negotiated a controversial $3 million interest-free loan from Colonel Muamar Qadafi of Libya to expand Black Muslim enterprises in Chicago, his headquarters.[cclxxvi] Shortly thereafter, he received a $100,000 "gesture of support" from the Persian Gulf States.[cclxxvii] Yet, he was unable either to anoint a successor or to determine the future of the organization he shaped.

One writer estimates 17 distinct offshoots from Black Islam, including Dar-ul-Islam Tabligh, Tijani Sufis, Nubian Islamic Hebrews in Brooklyn and followers of traditional Islam.[cclxxviii]

Wallace D. Muhammad

Following the death of his father, Wallace D. Muhammad led his faction of the Nation of Islam in the direction espoused by Malcolm X before the latter's expulsion from the sect and subsequent assassination. The Black Muslim academic Nyang lauded the decision of Elijah Muhammad's son, Warith Deen Muhammad, to take the section of the Nation of Islam he ultimately controlled "into the fold of orthodox Islam."[cclxxix]

W. D. Muhammad publicly shunned his father's separatist teachings and brought his group closer to the Islamic mainstream, renaming it the World Community of al-Islam in the West. Adopting the name Warith Deen Muhammad, he changed the name of his organization, again, to American Muslim Mission.

His approach to orthodox Islam was rewarded with political and economic benefits. In 1975, he met privately with Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat in Chicago during the statesman's visit to the U.S.[cclxxx] In 1976 he received a gift of $16 million from Sheikh Sultan Ben Mohammad al-Qasmini, head of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, to purchase a mosque and build a school.[cclxxxi] He made his own pilgrimage to Mecca. He dropped the racial criteria for membership in his faction, and his movement became acceptable to other Muslims worldwide. By 1977 he claimed a membership of 70,000,[cclxxxii] but in September 1978 he announced his resignation from leadership of the mission and decentralized its administration.[cclxxxiii]

Louis Farrakhan

Louis Farrakhan, a Nation of Islam minister, continued Elijah Muhammad's doctrine of racial separation. His movement, for which he claimed some 20,000 followers, remained outside traditional Islam.

Believing he, not Wallace D. Muhammad, should have been named Elijah Muhammad's successor, Farrakhan took his splinter group from the Nation of Islam forward with separatist doctrines intact in December 1977.[cclxxxiv] In February 1981 he announced restoration of the "old" Nation of Islam. During the 1980s, Farrakhan was said to be successful in drawing adherents to the Nation of Islam because of the economic dislocations caused by the Reagan presidency. In a 1985 article in New Statesman, the sociologist Manning Marable asserted all segments of black society suffered economic hardship due to "the administration's contempt for non-whites" and were thus drawn to Farrakhan. He continued, however, that the Muslim religious leader (then aligned with the Christian leader Jesse Jackson) was leading his adherents "into the blind alley of black capitalism"[cclxxxv] -- not exactly a path with Islamic religious content but certainly with economic consequences.

Farrakhan purchased Elijah Muhammad's Chicago mosque for $2.3 million and renamed it Mosque Maryam.

Ansaru Allah Community

One heir to the disintegration of the Nation of Islam is a man called Al Hajj Imam Isa Abd'Allah Muhammad Al Mahdi (usually called, simply, Imam Isa). In 1970 in Brooklyn he was the founder of what is either a sectarian offshoot of Black Islam or a new segregationist religion called the Ansaru Allah Community (formerly the Nubian Islamic Hebrew Mission). Its members wear distinctive white robes and turbans.

Since its founding, grounded in the Black Power movements on the East Coast in the 1960s, it has changed dramatically, incorporated Muslim traditions, customs and beliefs into a segregationist worldview.[cclxxxvi]

Imam Isa stakes a place in the messianic tradition by claiming to be the great-grandson of the Mahdi who fought the British in the Sudan during the 1880s in the name of Islam. When he assembles 144,00 followers, presumably in 2000, the millennium begins. Theology of the movement derives as much from Biblical tradition as from Mahdi legend (Imam Isa is seen as fulfilling the prophecy in Revelation 14:1).[cclxxxvii]

The community recognizes the pioneering work of both Noble Drew Ali and Elijah Muhammad (hence its ideological ties to Black Islam) but it also looks to Sudanese Islamic traditions -- Isa Muhammad was born in Omdurman, Sudan, in 1945.[cclxxxviii] His first exposure to Islam was at a Black Muslim mosque in New York City but he also visited a Moorish Science Temple in Queens. Where Ali called black Americans Moors, Isa called them Sudanese.

Because many of his views are controversial (including his current assertion that he awaits the return of Jesus and that his followers are Muslims for Christ), the community remains on the fringes of black religious life, whether Muslim or Christian.[cclxxxix]

CONCLUSION

An estimated one million American blacks follow some form of Islam, with many having left the Black Muslim movement since the mid=1960s and become adherents to the worldwide religion of Islam. Traditional Muslims welcome these migrants from indigenous Islam, and look forward to combining their stories with those of immigrant Muslims and their children.

It is Americans of African descent who continue to form the larger segment of converts to Islam. Michael Wolfe, the American convert of European descent, says the American names he heard repeatedly during his pilgrimage to Mecca were those of three black Americans: the boxing champ Muhammad Ali, who "had embraced Islam at a time when it was not popular to do so;" Malcolm X, whose autobiography "most literate pilgrims I met had read," and Alex Haley, who not only co-authored Malcolm X's autobiography but also mentioned Muslim slaves in Roots.[ccxc]

The rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan, who leads the separatist movement under the banner of the Nation of Islam, continues to alienate much of the rest of American society. The anti-white, anti-Jewish diatribes command media attention even as they repel listeners from outside his group of followers. As a result, those remaining with the Nation of Islam will continue to be marginalized despite their skills at grabbing headlines.

IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

As Black Muslims evolve (continuing the split into orthodox and separatist traditions), as Middle Eastern terrorism spills into the U.S. Islamic immigrant community, as American isolationism brings retaliation against citizens of non-European backgrounds--an understanding of the history of these non-Christians becomes critical.

Surprisingly, there is little call from within the relatively small group of American religion specialists for a more general history of this distinctive religious tradition the way religious studies specialists have examined, for example, the Mormons or the Protestant Fundamentalists.

C. Eric Lincoln asserted in 1983 that "the religion of Islam is not in any substantial way a part of the critically valued American experience." If scholars intend to account for the changes in the American social mix of the last few decades, this cannot continue. The student of American religion cannot justify overlooking the "second largest" religious group in the United States.

Some researchers see writing about U.S. Islam as an internal task for the Muslim community, a task which specifically focuses on redefining Islam in light of its American experience. Both of the books derived from conferences on North American Islam deal primarily with the search for a particularly American Islamic identity. One university student called this process "[b]uilding an Islamic identity in a predominantly non-Islamic society. And just showing people that we are regular people."[ccxci]

The question immigrant American Muslims consider most crucial: how is it possible to create an American Islam? As the editors for the Canadian conference asked, "How can a religious system that is much more a way of life than a theological structure adapt to North America?"[ccxcii] A religious studies professor noted, "[I]t would be an error to consider immigrant islam as merely the transferral of a creed to a North American environment."[ccxciii]

A second dilemma for the newly American Muslim is the retention of faith among the next generation. It is estimated that as many as 80% of the children of Muslim immigrant families eventually leave Islam.[ccxciv] As it was for the Puritans in New England three hundred years ago, preserving the faith of the fathers in the sons remains an American problem.

These dilemmas arise partially because Muslim immigrants do not come to North America in search of religious freedom; arguably they would be freer to practice Islam in their native countries which often are Islamic states (such as Pakistan or Iran). Pluralism poses new research questions that are many and varied. How have American Muslims coped with traditional dictates of an all-encompassing religion in a pluralistic society? What strategies were employed in the 1890s compared with the 1990s, for example?

Because Muslims are distinctive in their prayer schedule, day of worship, dress and dietary habits, they are easily distinguishable from the American Protestant mainstream. How have Muslims arrange for five prayers daily and mosque attendance at mid-day Friday?

How have American Muslims kept their dietary laws over time? This is not a new topic, but where is the history of food preferences among Muslim immigrants? How is it possible for contemporary practitioners to avoid ingesting pork products when everything from bacon bits on salads to the lard in apple pie crust to the pork-bone-based coating on Tylenol gelcaps are made from pigs or pork by-products?

Scientific advances present particular challenges. Medical researchers work to perfect the technique of genetically altering pigs so their internal organs may be used as human transplants. Dr. John "Atkinson said he does not think someone needing an organ to live will resist accepting one from a pig."[ccxcv] It can be assumed he did not consult with Muslims.

What about the role of women? If contemporary Muslim women work outside the home how do they explain the necessity of wearing a traditional Muslim head covering in a work place with no other Muslims? How do Muslim teens cover themselves modestly and still meet high school physical education class requirements that include coed swimming? How does a Muslim family buy a house or a car if paying interest is immoral?

The discussion of these topics has just begun. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, writing with Adair T. Lummis, devoted an entire book to the complex interaction between Islamic values and the pluralistic society of the U.S. in the lives of Muslim immigrants.[ccxcvi] However, these issues were not examined in that work on a historical or contextual basis.

What kind of leadership is necessary for the success of Islam in America? No traditional Islamic spokesperson has gained the attention of the American public, which continues to regard Muslim leaders as variations on the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran or Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman of Egypt (currently incarcerated in New York State). That Islam has a tradition of decision-making by community consensus can become problematic in a society that relies on decision-building by community leaders. How have Muslim groups dealt over time with the societal pressure to name spokesmen?

Many contemporary writers see acceptance rather than assimilation or accommodation as the pivotal problem for Muslims in the U.S. They note, for example, the continuation of pervasive Muslim stereotypes. "Everybody expects an Arab [with] a dagger and multiple wives behind them," lamented a convert from Minnesota.[ccxcvii] An engineer from Pakistan said, "The media has presented us like some undesirable creatures.... [I]n the background there is an air of mistrust and misconceptions."[ccxcviii] Indiana would-be politician Michael Pence's campaign commercials a couple years back featuring an "oil sheik" with dark glasses and Rolex remain potent images (even though he lost his bid for a term in the U.S. Congress). But, what were Muslim images before Rudolph Valentino and Lawrence of Arabia? Where is the examination of American literature for Muslim themes?

Much work remains to be done.

---

[i].Steven Barboza, American Jihad: Islam After Malcolm X (New York: Doubleday, 1993): 74.

[ii].Edwin S. Gaustad, "America's Institutions of Faith: A Statistical Postscript," in Religion in America, ed. William G. McLoughlin and Robert N. Bellah (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 121.

[iii].Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1960).

[iv].Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965).

[v].William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 318.

[vi].Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

[vii].George Eaton Simpson and J. Milton Yinger, Racial and Cultural Minorities: Third Edition (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).

[viii].Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, eds., The Future of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 382.

[ix].Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988).

[x].Sulayman S. Nyang, "Islam in the United States: Review of Sources," Journal, Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 2 and 3 (Winter 1980-Summer 1981): 198.

[xi].F. M. Bhatti, "Muslims in the West: A Research Project," Journal, Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 2 and 3 (Winter 1980-Summer 1981): 202.

[xii].Introduction to Earle H. Waugh, Baha Abu-Laban and Regula B. Qureshi, eds., The Muslim Community in North America (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1983): 5.

[xiii].Fred R. Von Der Mehden, "American Perceptions of Islam" in Voices of Resurgent Islam ed. John L. Esposito (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983): 18.

[xiv].Kathleen M. Moore, "New Claimants to Religious Tolerance and Protection: A Case Study of American and Canadian Muslims," American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 6 (1989): 139.

[xv].Imam Muhammad Armiya Nu'Man, What Every American Should Know About Islam & The Muslims (rev. ed) (Jersey City, N.J.: New Mind Productions, [1985] 1989): 1.

[xvi].Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, "Introduction: The Muslims of America," in The Muslims of America, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991): 3.

[xvii].See Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981).

[xviii].Jack G. Shaheen, The TV Arab (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1984).

[xix].Haddad, "Introduction: The Muslims of America", 5.

[xx].M. Ali Kettani, Muslim Minorities in the World Today (London: Mansell Publishing Limited, 1986): 191.

[xxi].Joseph R. Haiek, ed., The American Arabic Speaking Community 1975 Almanac (Los Angeles: The News Circle, 1975): 9; also, Kettani, 192.

[xxii].Nu'Man, 53.

[xxiii].Kettani, 193.

[xxiv].J. Gordon Melton, The Encyclopedia of American Religions (Third Edition) (Detroit: Gale Research, 1989): 156.

[xxv].Haiek (1975), 9.

[xxvi].Melton, The Encyclopedia, 156.

[xxvii].Emily Kalled Lovell, "Islam in the United States: Past and Present," in The Muslim Community in North America, eds. Earle H. Waugh, Baha Abu-Laban and Regula B. Qureshi (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1983): 94-96.

[xxviii].Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, "Arab Muslims and Islamic Institutions in America: Adaptation and Reform," in Arabs in the New World: Studies on Arab-American Communities eds. Sameer Y. Abraham and Nabeel Abraham (Detroit: Wayne State University Center for Urban Studies, 1983): 65.

[xxix].One description of the early slave trade is found in Charles C. Jones, The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969 [Savannah: Thomas Purse, 1842]):2-3.

[xxx].Even though Elijah Muhammad asserted that the first black African slaves were brought to the North American mainland colonies by John Hawkins in 1515, no other source backs him up. Almost all (including Kettani, 193) use 1619 as the first year of slavery.

[xxxi].Statistics from Bureau of the Census, Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1915, page 53, as quoted by E. Franklin Frazier, "The Negro in the United States" in Andrew W. Lind, ed., Race Relations in World Perspective (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1955): 342.

[xxxii].Nyang, "Islam in the United States: A Review of Sources," 191.

[xxxiii].Job's story, first told in 1734 by Thomas Bluett in Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, is recounted in Douglas Grant, The Fortunate Slave: An Illustration of African Slavery in the Early Eighteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). This is the same person referred to by Sulayman S. Nyang as Ayub Ibn Sulaiman Diallo, whose tale, Nyang reports, also is told by Frances Moore, Dr. Folarin Shyllon and Philip D. Curtin (see Nyang, "Islam in the United States," 191).

[xxxiv].Terry Alford, Prince Among Slaves: The True Story of an African Prince Sold Into Slavery in the American South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

[xxxv].Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1984): 121-264.

[xxxvi].See "Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina, 1831," The American Historical Review 30 (July 1925): 787-795.

[xxxvii].Jones, 125.

[xxxviii].For a more complete discussion of the religious beliefs of black slaves in the southern U.S., see Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

[xxxix].Kettani, 195, says its 1855 and spells his name Hadj Ali; Melton, Encyclopedia, 156, says its 1850 and spells his name Haj Ali.

[xl].Haiek (1975), 9.

[xli].One song is reprinted in Melton, Encyclopedia, 156.

[xlii].For a complete discussion of early immigration legislation, see Prescot F. Hall, "History of Immigration" in Philip Davis, ed., Immigration and Americanization: Selected Readings (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1920): 61-68.

[xliii].This is approximately the reverse of the ratio of religions in the region of Greater Syria, where some 90% are Muslim.

[xliv].Alixa Naff, "Arabs in America: A Historical Overview," in Arabs in the New World: Studies on Arab-American Communities eds. Sameer Y. Abraham and Nabeel Abraham (Detroit: Wayne State University Center for Urban Studies, 1983): 14.

[xlv].Mentioned, among other places, by Naff, "Arabs in America", 11; and by Haddad, "Arab Muslims," 65.

[xlvi].For a complete discussion of the reasons for emigration from the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire, see Samir Khalaf, "The Background and Causes of Lebanese/Syrian Immigration" in Crossing the Waters ed. Eric Hooglund, 17-35. Key causes cited are economic and demographic pressures, military conscription, religious persecution, American missionaries (who provided peasant boys with a glimpse of the wider world through education), recruitment by steamship agents and money lenders and, finally, the myths and legends of limitless wealth in the new world.

[xlvii].Khalaf, 22.

[xlviii].Lovell, "Islam in the United States," 94-96.

[xlix]."One hundred Syrians comprised the isolated community of farmers and peddlers in Ross in 1900, but it took thirty years to build a crude building that resembled a large, sunken duck blind." Gregory Orfalea, Before the Flames (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988): 95.

[l].Naff, "Arabs in America," 19.

[li].See Eric J. Hooglund, "From the Near East to Down East" in Crossing the Waters ed. Eric Hooglund, 85-103.

[lii].For a detailed discussion, see Sarah E. John, "Arabic-Speaking Immigration to El Paso" in Crossing the Waters ed. Eric Hooglund, 105-117.

[liii].Turkey is the only country listed which had a significant Muslim population (Syria, for example, is not listed). It can therefore be assumed that on this table "Turkey" included all immigrants to Massachusetts from the Ottoman Empire. "The Immigrant and the State: The work of the Massachusetts Bureau of Immigration" in Davis, 490.

[liv].Kettani, 195.

[lv].Naff, "Arabs in America," 25.

[lvi].Nyang, "Islam in the United States," 196-7.

[lvii].Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith, "The Druze in North America," The Muslim World 81 (April 1991): 120.

[lviii].While Yvonne Haddad and Jane Smith consider the Druze religion rooted in Isma'ili Shi'ism (see "The Druze in North America," 111), others consider it non-Islamic in its present form. For a more complete discussion of the origins and beliefs of the Druze, see Cyril Glassé, The Concise Encyclopaedia of Islam (HarperSanFrancisco, 1991): 103-4.

[lix].Haddad and Smith, "The Druze in North America," 121.

[lx].For a complete discussion of this Islamic sect, see Robert Brenton Betts, The Druze (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). This information is found on page 64.

[lxi].Haddad and Smith, "The Druze in North America," 118.

[lxii].Jacob A. Riis, for example, titled his photograph ca. 1890 of raggedly dressed boys sleeping on Mulberry Street in New York City "Street Arabs, Barelegged." This photo was reprinted in Marilyn Irvin Holt, "West to Indiana on the Orphan Trains," Traces 5 (Fall 1993), 33. Holt writes, "What to do with the street arabs, the indigent, and children of the poor was a growing worry for government officials, charities, and reformers." Holt, 32.

[lxiii].Nu'Man, 29; also, "He is said to have peddled silks and raincoats from door to door in 'Paradise Valley,' the Negro neighborhood of Detroit." E. U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962): 44.

[lxiv].For a discussion of some Syrian-Lebanese immigrant peddlers, see Brent Ashabranner, An Ancient Heritage: The Arab-American Minority (New York: Harper Collins, 1991): 17-34.

[lxv].Leona B. Bagai, The East Indians and the Pakistanis in America (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company, 1967): 42.

[lxvi].See Karen Isaksen Leonard, Making Ethnic Choices: California's Punjabi Mexican Americans (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), which was reviewed in The Journal of American History Vol. 80, No. 4 (March 1994): 1502-3.

[lxvii].Sulayman S. Nyang, "Convergence and Divergence in an Emergent Community: A STudy of Clallenges Facing U.S. Muslims," in The Muslims of America ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991): 240.

[lxviii].Naff, "Arabs in America," 11.

[lxix].Introduction to Crossing the Waters, Eric Hooglund, ed., 3.

[lxx].It's 1934, according to Lovell, "Islam in the United States," 94-96. It's 1935, according to Orfalea, 95, who wrote, "The Cedar Rapids community was the first to build a mosque with minaret and dome from scratch in 1935. Rebuilt with a minaret from which one can see the Quaker Oats Company's giant grain silos, it is probably the oldest surviving mosque in America."

[lxxi].Naff, "Arabs in America," 11.

[lxxii].See Gutbi Mahdi Ahmed, "Muslim Organizations in the United States," in The Muslims of America ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991): 11-14. Along with institutionalization comes the quest for political power: see Steven A. Johnson, "Political Activity of Muslims in America," in The Muslims of America ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991): 111-124.

[lxxiii].Haddad and Smith, "The Druze in North America," 122.

[lxxiv].Kettani, 195.

[lxxv].See Lovell, "Islam in the United States," 95.

[lxxvi].Nyang, "Convergence and Divergence," 240-1.

[lxxvii].Said, 13.

[lxxviii].Ashabranner, 41.

[lxxix].J. Gordon Melton, "Another Look at New Religions" in Religion in the Nineties: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science ed. Wade Clark Roof, May 1993: 98-99.

[lxxx].Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad said there are at least 600 mosques in the U.S. in her introduction to Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, ed., The Muslims of America (New York, Oxford University Press, 1991): 3. Ihsan Bagby of the Islamic Resource Institute counted more than 1,100 mosques in Richard Bernstein, "A Growing Islamic Presence: Balancing Sacred and Secular," The New York Times. 2 May 1993: 14 Y.

[lxxxi].Kettani, 196.

[lxxxii].Haddad and Smith, "The Druze in North America," 128.

[lxxxiii].Ashabranner, 46.

[lxxxiv].B.J. Violett, "Bookshelf: Books by Faculty, Staff, and Alumni", UCLA Magazine (Fall 1993), 43.

[lxxxv].Ashabranner, 134.

[lxxxvi].Kettani, 196.

[lxxxvii].According to Melton, Encyclopedia, 826; or it was founded in 1963, according to Kettani, 196.

[lxxxviii].Michael Wolfe, The Hadj: An American's Pilgrimage to Mecca (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993): 7.

[lxxxix].Kettani, 195, who spells his name Alexander Russel Webb; also look for research on him by Akbar Muhammad who, in 1981, had a book in progress which included Mohamed A.R. Webb: see Journal, Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs Vol. III, No. 2 (Winter 1981): 285; also see Mohammad Alexander Russell Webb, "The Spirit of Islam" in Michael A. Köszegi and J. Gordon Melton, eds. Islam in North America: A Sourcebook (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992): 34-41.

[xc].Melton, Encyclopedia, 156.

[xci].Kettani, 193.

[xcii].Kettani, 196.

[xciii].Carol L. Stone, "Estimate of Muslims Living in America," in Muslims of America ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991): 25-36.

[xciv].As quoted in Barboza, 9n.

[xcv].Kettani, 241.

[xcvi].Von Der Mehden, 19.

[xcvii].Introduction to The Muslim Community in North America, 6.

[xcviii].Nyang, "Convergence and Divergence," 238.

[xcix].Riffat Hassan, "What Does It Mean to Be a Muslim Today?" Cross Currents Fall 1990: 303.

[c].Haddad, introduction to The Muslims of America, 4.

[ci].Samuel P. Huntington, "The Coming Clash of Civilizations -- Or, the West Against the Rest," The New York Times, 6 June 1993, E-19.

[cii].Kathleen M. Moore, "The Case for Muslim Constitutional Interpretive Activity in the United States," The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 7 (1990): 68. For more information on Muslims in the judicial system, see other references by her in the bibliography.

[ciii].One researcher wrestling with this topic is Nimat Hafez Barazangi, "The Education of North American Muslim Parents and Children: Conceptual Change as a Contribution to Islamization of Education," The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 7 (1990): 385-402.

[civ].See the discussion of the roles and responsibilities of Muslim minorities in Kettani, 243-248.

[cv].Wade Clark Roof, "Toward the Year 2000: Reconstructions of Religious Space" in Religion in the Nineties: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science ed. Wade Clark Roof, May 1993: 158.

[cvi].See Edmund David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey (Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin, 1955).

[cvii].R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986): 191.

[cviii].That is the most commonly accepted figure, although there may have been as many as 4 million, according to Mary Frances Berry and John W. Blassingame, Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982): 410; or 5 million, according to David Burley in his foreword to Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Newport News, Va.: United Brothers Communications Systems, 1965): xiii.

[cix].Barboza, 14n.

[cx].Melton, Encyclopedia, 156.

[cxi].C. Eric Lincoln, My Face Is Black (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964): 85.

[cxii].Bruce Perry, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America (Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill, 1991): 187.

[cxiii]. For more on Elijah Muhammad as a Garveyite, see Malu Halasa, Elijah Muhammad (New York: Chelsea House, 1990): 41. For a discussion of Earl Little and his wife, Louise (who was born in the British West Indies on Grenada), see Walter Dean Myers, Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary (New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1993): 7-22.

[cxiv].Burley in Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, xiii-xvii.

[cxv].Louis Farrakhan, Seven Speeches by Minister Louis Farrakhan, national representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (Newport News, Va.: Ramza Associates & United Brothers Communications Systems, 1974): 99.

[cxvi].Nu'Man, 28.

[cxvii].Berry and Blassingame, 109. According to Arthur Huff Fausett, Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North (New York: Octagon Books, 1974): 42, it was located at 3603 Indiana Avenue on the south side of Chicago.

[cxviii].Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith, Mission to America: Five Islamic Sectarian Communities in North America (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993): 87.

[cxix].Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, 88.

[cxx].Research into the Moorish Science Temple of America is hampered because "Much of its lore and practice is accessible only to members and initiates." See Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, 93.

[cxxi].Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, 81.

[cxxii]."[T]he author has not seen any Moors [members of the temple] who were not Negroes," Fauset, 44.

[cxxiii].Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, 85.

[cxxiv].Clifton E. Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Transition from Separatism to Islam, 1930-1980 (Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1984): 48-9.

[cxxv].Two addresses in Baltimore, Md., are listed in Melton, Encyclopedia, 840; Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, say it is headquartered in the early 1990s in Chicago.

[cxxvi].Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, 92.

[cxxvii].All sources say Ali died under mysterious circumstances. Fauset, 44, reported that "Some say...his death was the result of a severe beating at the hands of dissident members."

[cxxviii].Among those noting the overlap in membership are Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, 85.

[cxxix].Essien-Udom, 35.

[cxxx].E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1974), 70. Significantly, no mention at all in this book, originally published in 1963, is made of the growing Black Muslim movement--as if for Frazier, a black Christian academic, it indeed had no consequence.

[cxxxi].George Eaton Simpson, Black Religions in the New World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978): 270-1.

[cxxxii].Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, 92.

[cxxxiii].Simpson, 271.

[cxxxiv].Including Newsweek, 15 March 1976, 33; see also Zafar Ishaq Ansari, "W. D. Muhammad: The Making of a 'Black Muslim' Leader (1933-1961" Journal. Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 2 (Summer 1980): 245-262.

[cxxxv].Among the many places the outline of Elijah Muhammad's early life may be found is Marsh, 53-4.

[cxxxvi].Located at 5335 South Greenwood Avenue, according to Marsh, 54.

[cxxxvii].Zafar Ishaq Ansari, "The Religious Doctrines of the Black Muslims of America: 1930-," Journal, Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 2 and 3 (Winter 1980-Summer 1981): 199.

[cxxxviii].Lovell, "Islam in the United States," 93.

[cxxxix].Essien-Udom, 317.

[cxl].Frame for this discussion was provided by Daniel Pipes, In The Path of God: Islam and Political Power (New York: Basic Books, 1977): 274.

[cxli].For example, see the acknowledgement page of Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived (Newport News, Va.: United Brothers Communications Systems, n.d.), where he writes on page III, "In the name of Almighty Allah, Our Most Merciful Savior, Our Deliverer, Who came in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, Master of the Day of Judgment." Later, in a chapter on "Allah, God, The Supreme Being," he writes on page 62, "I am with Allah to convince the world that He is God in the person of Master Fard Muhammad and that idols are things, not persons." These are typical of Elijah Muhmammad's references to Wallace D. Fard, whom he sometimes called Fard Muhammad.

[cxlii].For a more complete discussion of the concept, see Albert Hourani, "Race and Related Ideas in the Near East" in Andrew W. Lind, ed., Race Relations in World Perspective (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1955): 116-144.

[cxliii].Pipes, 274-5.

[cxliv].For example, Farrakhan, 13 and 97.

[cxlv].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 57.

[cxlvi].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 36.

[cxlvii].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 43.

[cxlviii].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 56.

[cxlix].A birthday of 26 February 1877 in Mecca is claimed for Fard by Marsh, 51.

[cl].See basic tenets of Islam in Kettani, 248-250.

[cli].Farrakhan, 141.

[clii].Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, 3.

[cliii].Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, 6.

[cliv].Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, 10.

[clv].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 6-7.

[clvi].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 35.

[clvii].Farrakhan, 45.

[clviii].Farrakhan, 13.

[clix].Minister James Shabazz in his foreword to Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, xxv.

[clx].Ansari, "W.D. Muhammad," 246.

[clxi].Kettani, 249.

[clxii].Abdul Aziz Kamel, Islam and the Race Question (Safat, Kuwait: Islamic Book Publishers, 1982): 5.

[clxiii].Kamel, 8.

[clxiv].Kettani, 245.

[clxv].For a complete discussion of Black Muslim food preferences and prohibitions, see Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live (Book No. 1) (Newport News, Va.: National Newport News and Commentator, 1967) and How to Eat to Live (Book No. 2) (Newport News, Va.: National Newport News and Commentator, 1972). For example, he explains that he chose December, rather than Ramadan, for the fasting month "to relieve ourselves of having once worshipped that month as the month in which Jesus was born" in How to Eat to Live (Book No. 1): 45.

[clxvi].For a discussion of prohibited foods, see Glassé, 133.

[clxvii].For a complete discussion, see Glassé, 334.

[clxviii].Elijah Muhammad, Our Saviour Has Arrived, 223.

[clxix].For a complete discussion of heaven, see Glassé, 151-2.

[clxx].Elijah Muhammad, Our Saviour Has Arrived, 2.

[clxxi].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 12.

[clxxii].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 61.

[clxxiii].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 67.

[clxxiv].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 135.

[clxxv].Farrakhan, 51.

[clxxvi].Elijah Muhammad quoted in Essien-Udom, 180.

[clxxvii].Gordon W. Allport's foreword to C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon Press, [1961] 1973), xv.

[clxxviii].Gaustad, 121.

[clxxix].Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism 2d. ed. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1983), 3.

[clxxx].Wilmore, 224.

[clxxxi].Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, xi-xii.

[clxxxii].Abdul Basit Naeem's introduction to Elijah Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom: Solution to the so-called NEGROES' Problem (Newport News, Va.: The National Newport News and Commentator, 1957): 4.

[clxxxiii].Burley's introduction to Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, xvii.

[clxxxiv].See "eligibility" in Essien-Udom, 184-6.

[clxxxv].Essien-Udom, 295.

[clxxxvi].Myers, 151.

[clxxxvii].For a more complete discussion, see Simpson, 315.

[clxxxviii].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 21-2.

[clxxxix].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 50.

[cxc].As quoted in Fauset, 47.

[cxci].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 17.

[cxcii].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 24.

[cxciii].Gaustad, 121.

[cxciv].Wilmore, 169.

[cxcv].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 18.

[cxcvi].Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, 23.

[cxcvii].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 88.

[cxcviii].C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Church Since Frazier (New York: Schocken Books, 1974): 167.

[cxcix].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 89.

[cc].For an exhaustive discussion of this approach to religion, see Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992).

[cci].Essien-Udom, 337.

[ccii].For a complete discussion of this argument, see Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982).

[cciii].Essien-Udom, 187.

[cciv].Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, xi.

[ccv].Erdmann Doane Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit," The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XLIII, No. 6 (May 1938): 895.

[ccvi].Essien-Udom, 124.

[ccvii].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 198.

[ccviii]."The Holy Qur-an teaches us that Allah is sufficient as a judge for His Apostles, and the Bible verifies this." See Minister James Shabazz's preface to Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, xxiv-xxvii.

[ccix].According to Manning Marable, "In the business of prophet making," New Statesman 110 (13 December 1985), 23.

[ccx].For example, readers are directed to Revelation 2:17 and Romans 7:6 to verify the teachings of Islam by Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 130. Those are just two of hundreds of references to specific Biblical passages in one book alone.

[ccxi].Examples abound in his preaching, such as references to the Prodigal Son on page 36, putting moneylenders out of the temple on page 48, comparing Elijah Muhammad to Moses on page 63 -- all in Farrakhan.

[ccxii].Farrakhan, 67-70.

[ccxiii].Farrakhan, 98.

[ccxiv].As quoted in Fauset, 49.

[ccxv].For one description of these informational meetings arranged by Wallace Fard, see Beynon, 895.

[ccxvi].Abbie Whyte, "Christian Elements in Negro American Religious Beliefs," Phylon Vol. XXV, No. 4 (1964): 383. This author also claims that Ali's Koran is substantially the same as an obscure Christian text, the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, which I have not yet been able to locate.

[ccxvii].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 2.

[ccxviii].Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, 22.

[ccxix].Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived, 2.

[ccxx].Simpson, 273.

[ccxxi].J. Milton Yinger, The Scientific Study of Religion (New York: Macmillan Company, 1970): 336.

[ccxxii].Wilmore, 174.

[ccxxiii].Wilmore, 170.

[ccxxiv].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 27.

[ccxxv].Lincoln, The Black Church Since Frazier, 168.

[ccxxvi].Stark and Bainbridge, 21.

[ccxxvii].Stark and Bainbridge, 25.

[ccxxviii].Rodney Stark, "How New Religions Succeed: A Theoretical Model," in David G. Bromley and Phillip E. Hammond, eds., The Future of New Religious Movements (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1987): 11-29.

[ccxxix].As adapted from Stark, 13. Attributes listed which apply less to the Black Muslim experience are maintaining a medium level of tension with the surrounding environment (Black Islam exists in high tension); being deviant, but not too deviant (Black Islam is definitely too deviant); maintaining a dense internal network without becoming isolated (Black Islam isolated itself and was weakened from within), and resisting secularization (the black power movement was a secular one, so secularization could not be avoided).

[ccxxx].Essien-Udom, 5.

[ccxxxi].Essien-Udom, 83.

[ccxxxii].Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, 232.

[ccxxxiii].V. DuWayne Battle, "The Influence of Al-Islam in America on the Black Community," The Black Scholar (January-February 1988): 34.

[ccxxxiv].Myers, 72.

[ccxxxv].Essien-Udom, 259.

[ccxxxvi]."Members of the Nation of Islam believed that their organization was a black nation within the United States and that Muslims were citizens of Mecca who saluted the Islamic flag," wrote Marsh, 57.

[ccxxxvii].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 85.

[ccxxxviii].Essien-Udom, 58-59.

[ccxxxix].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 30.

[ccxl].For a sympathetic "on-the-spot" discussion of this topic in the history of the Black Muslim movement, see Louis E. Lomax, When the Word is Given (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press [1963] 1979).

[ccxli].Lincoln, My Face is Black, 59.

[ccxlii].Lincoln, My Face is Black, 101.

[ccxliii].Essien-Udom, 6.

[ccxliv].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 87.

[ccxlv].Burley's foreword to Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, xvii.

[ccxlvi].Burley's foreword to Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, xxii.

[ccxlvii].Membership estimates come from Manning Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985): 60.

[ccxlviii].Warith Deen Muhammad as quoted in Barboza, 103.

[ccxlix].Marsh, 67.

[ccl].Lincoln, My Face is Black, 106.

[ccli].Perry, 204.

[cclii].Perry, 232.

[ccliii].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 28.

[ccliv].Perry, 229.

[cclv].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 109.

[cclvi].Myers, 147.

[cclvii].Lincoln, My Face Is Black, 112.

[cclviii].They were a Miss Rosary and a Miss Williams, according to Marsh, 77.

[cclix].Burley, xxii.

[cclx].For example, Lovell, "Islam in the United States," 95.

[cclxi].Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992): 390-1.

[cclxii].Myers, 151-2.

[cclxiii].Lincoln, My Face is Black, 114-115.

[cclxiv].Myers, 163-5.

[cclxv].George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X (New York: Pathfinder, 1967): 3.

[cclxvi].Yinger, 338.

[cclxvii].Breitman, 2.

[cclxviii].Breitman, 3.

[cclxix].Three followers of Elijah Muhammad were convicted and imprisoned for the murder of Malcolm X: Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. The first two are out on parole, with the third scheduled for review in December 1994. Barboza, 150n.

[cclxx].Including Marsh, 84-87.

[cclxxi].Myers, 180.

[cclxxii].Located at 102 West 116th Street and firebombed in retaliation for the assassination on 23 February 1965, according to Marsh, 89.

[cclxxiii].Halasa, 96.

[cclxxiv].[Lewis Lord and others], "The legacy of Malcolm X: He terrified whites and turned Negroes into African Americans," U.S. News & World Report (23 November 1992), 76.

[cclxxv].Shahab Riazi, "The Malcolm X Conversion," The Purdue Exponent 9 November 1993, 6.

[cclxxvi].Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion, 178; also Farrakhan, 51.

[cclxxvii].Farrakhan, 51.

[cclxxviii].Barboza, 15.

[cclxxix].Nyang, "Convergence and Divergence," 241.

[cclxxx].Marsh, 96.

[cclxxxi].Marable, Race, Reform and Rebellion, 178.

[cclxxxii].Berry and Blassingame, 112; Marsh, 119.

[cclxxxiii].Marsh, 100.

[cclxxxiv].Marsh, 97.

[cclxxxv].Marable, "In the business," 24-5.

[cclxxxvi].For a complete discussion, see Chapter 5 in Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, 105-136.

[cclxxxvii].For a more complete discussion of the Ansaru Allah Community, see Moses, 191-3.

[cclxxxviii].Or, perhaps, he was born Dwight York in the U.S. See Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, 107-8.

[cclxxxix].For example, in 1989 he publicly accused Sunni Muslims of the murder of Malcolm X in 1965. See Haddad and Smith, Mission to America, 135.

[ccxc].Wolfe, 310.

[ccxci].Samer Hathout, quoted in Elias D. Mallon, Neighbors (New York: Friendship Press, 1989): 91.

[ccxcii].Introduction to The Muslim Community in North America, eds. Earle H. Waugh and others, 2.

[ccxciii].Earle Waugh, "Muslim Leadership and the Shaping of the Umma" in The Muslim Community in North America, Waugh and others, eds., 13.

[ccxciv].Ashabranner, 133.

[ccxcv].Carlos Byars [Houston Chronicle], "Pig organs cultivated for transplants," The Indianapolis Star, 8 November 1993, D-2.

[ccxcvi].Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Adair T. Lummis, Islamic Values in the United States: A Comparative Study (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

[ccxcvii].Patricia Awad quoted in Mallon, 33.

[ccxcviii].Syed Manzoor Naqi Rizvi quoted in Mallon, 57-8.