Biographical Sketches of Key Figures in Islam, esp. Islam in America

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

(of key figures in Islam, esp. American Islam)

(compiled beginning in 1994 by Susan McKee)

Abraham (sometimes spelled Ibrahim)

The Biblical prophet Abraham also is considered the father of the Muslims. His children through his second-born son Isaac became the Jews, but his children through his first-born son Ishmael became the Muslims. Islam, therefore, considers itself a continuation of the same prophetic tradition that produced Judaism and Christianity.

Baha Abu-Laban

Professor of sociology (1989) at University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the American University of Beirut and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle. He writes frequently on North American Arabs.

Sharon McIrvin Abu-Laban

She is (1991) a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and specializes in social differentiation, comparative family, international development, and religion and belief systems.

Noble Drew Ali

See Timothy Drew.

Imam Jamil Abdullah Amin

The Muslim convert formerly called H. Rap Brown who now (1993) leads the Black Muslim sect, Dar-ul-Islam, in Atlanta detailed his transformation in Revolution by the Book: The Rap is Live.

Zafar Ishaq Ansari

A professor (1985) in the Department of Islamic & Arabic Studies, University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Brent Ashabranner

Born in Shawnee, Okla., he was graduated from Oklahoma State University where he also taught English. He served as director of the Peace Corps in India and now (1991) lives in Williamsburg, Va., and writes books for young readers.

Barbara C. Aswad

Dr. Aswad is (1991) a professor of anthropology at Wayne State University, Detroit, Mich., and specializes in research on Arab village life, Arab-American communities and Arab women in both the Middle East and the United States.

Allan D. Austin

Taught at Springfield College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1977 and 1978.

Nimat Hafez Barazangi

Dr. Barazangi specializes in the education of cultural minorities and Arab Muslim cultural adaptation. In 1990 she was visiting fellow in the Department of Education at Cornell University. Currently (1991) she is designing an action plan for Islamic education in North America based on findings from her Ph.D. dissertation.

Steven Barboza

A journalist, Muslim convert and African-American, Barboza lives (1993) in New York City.[i]

Robert N. Bellah (1927-)

He was born in Oklahoma and has been professor of sociology and comparative studies at the University of California at Berkeley. His best known collaboration is Habits of the Heart.

F. M. Bhatti

Associate of the Islamic Cultural Centre in London, U.K. (1980)

Edward W. Blyden (1832-1901?)

A West Indian of African descent, he was educated in the United States by an American Presbyterian minister. Blyden emigrated to Liberia in 1851 and entered government service, holding among other posts that of Liberian Minister in London. In 1866 he traveled to Egypt and Palestine, and became convinced that Islam's "doctrine of brotherhood and lack of racial prejudice made it a more suitable religion for Africans than missionary-Christianity."[ii] A prolific writer, two collections of his work appeared during his lifetime.

George Breitman

This biographer of Malcolm X lived in Detroit, Mich., in the mid-1960s. Although he says he never met Malcolm X, he "did have a keen interest in what he had been trying to do during the last year of his life."[iii] He dedicated his book to "the young black freedom fighters of our country, whom Malcolm counted on to lead their people in a successful struggle for equality."[iv]

H. Rap Brown

See Imam Jamil Abdullah Amin.

Rev. Albert Cleage

Described by Wilson Jeremiah Moses as a radical Christian black nationalist,[v] he named his Detroit church the Shrine of the Black Madonna and taught (in the late 1960s) that God, too, was black.[vi]

Timothy Drew (1886-1929)

He was born in North Carolina, moved to the Northeast and worked as a railway expressman in New Jersey. He was best known as Noble Drew Ali. He founded the Moorish National and Divine Movement, soon renamed the Moorish-American Science Temple, in Newark, N.J., in 1913 he said with the "commission" of the King of Morocco. He died "mysteriously"[vii] in Chicago. His movement still is (1990s) in existence, and some consider him the founder of the first Black Muslim movement in the U.S.[viii]

Abdo A. Elkholy

At Northern Illinois University in 1966. Studied under Muhammad El-Bahay and Morroe Berger, apparently at Princeton University, around 1959. Research supported by Dodge Foundation.

E.U. Essien-Udom

Described as a Nigerian scholar[ix], he studied at Oberlin College and University of Chicago, and was apparently at Harvard University at the time of the publication of his book on black nationalism in 1962, which focused on the Nation of Islam during the time it was led personally by Elijah Muhammad.

Wallace D. "Wali" Fard

Elijah Muhammad wrote that this man, who appeared on the religious scene in Detroit about 1930, was "Allah...from the Holy City of Mecca, Arabia."[x] Another writer said he was merely "a foreign born Muslim from India or Pakistan" who was born in 1877 and turned up in Detroit in the early 1900's.[xi] A third said he claimed a British father and Polynesian mother.[xii] A fourth noted Fard claimed to be part of the Kuraish Tribe, the Arabian tribe of the Prophet Muhammad.[xiii] Called "the Prophet" or "the Great Mahdi," Fard, who also went by Wallace Fard Muhammad, W. D. Farad, Wali Farrad, Professor Ford, Wallace Delaney Fard, Wallace Dodd Ford, Farrad Mohammed and F. Mohammed Ali, founded Temple No. 1 in Detroit "which, at its peak, had over eight thousand followers."[xiv] One of those followers was Robert (or Elijah) Poole, later to rename himself Elijah Muhammad and found Temple No. 2 in Chicago. After problems with the police in Detroit, Fard moved to Chicago in 1933. Fard mysteriously disappeared in 1934; this disappearance was rumored to be linked to Elijah Muhammad (who noted that if Fard was Allah, then the natural successor would be himself, as messenger of Allah), but the connection was never proved. Elijah Muhammad said that Fard had returned to Mecca. but "critics of the Black Muslim movement observed that Fard's disappearance and Muhammad's subsequent rise to power were not coincidental."[xv] This last statement is contained in a biography of Elijah Muhammad that is part of a series on Black Americans of Achievement containing introductory essays by Coretta Scott King. It is one of many "anti-Muslim" comments that could be considered as part of the Black Christian attempt to discredit Black Muslims.

Louis Farrakhan (1933- )

While a follower of Elijah Muhammad, he was known as Louis X and, later, as Abdul Haleem and as Louis Abdul Farrakhan. He was minister of the Boston branch of the Nation of Islam before becoming Elijah Muhammad's national representative. In 1977, two years after Elijah Muhammad's death, Farrakhan set up his own organization named at first The Final Call and then by the old appellation, the Nation of Islam, as the Black Muslims splintered. Born in the Bronx, N.Y., to a West Indian domestic-worker mother[xvi] (some say his parents were Jamaican) he was named him Louis Eugene Walcott. He made the hajj in 1985, a trip which some say caused him to mix "pure Islam" with his old racial superiority teachings. He told an interviewer that the name Farrakhan was given to him by Elijah Muhammad, and that it was "one of the modern names of God."[xvii]

E. Franklin Frazier (1894-1962)

Scholar of black religion who was chairman of the Department of Sociology at Howard University. He is the author of The Negro in the United States (1957).

Gabriel

The archangel revealed the word of God to Muhammad in the form of the Koran over a period of time around 610. According to Islam, this is the same divine messenger who appeared to Biblical figures, including Adam, Daniel, Mary and Zacharias.

Marcus Moziah Garvey (1887-1940)

Born in Jamaica, he was staunch supporter of black nationalism. He formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the African Communities League in 1914, and moved to New York's Harlem in 1916. According to Essien-Udom, Garvey "advocated racial purity, racial integrity, and racial hegemony."[xviii] Garvey's questionable business dealings landed him in jail for mail fraud in 1925. He was deported in 1927 and never regained his former status. (see also project website)

Edwin S. Gaustad (1923- )

He was born in Iowa and was professor of history at the University of California at Riverside in 1968. He is the author of the Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York, 1962).

Eugene D. Genovese (1930- )

Dr. Genovese, received his B.A. from Brooklyn College in 1953 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1959. He has taught at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Rutgers University and Sir George Williams University in Montreal; he has been visiting professor at Columbia and Yale. He became chairman of the history department at University of Rochester in 1969.

Milton M. Gordon (1918- )

A sociologist at (1977) University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad

A Presbyterian born in Lebanon, Dr. Haddad has been Professor of Islamic Studies at the Hartford Seminary Foundation, Hartford, Conn., and an editor of The Muslim World; in 1994 she is professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Malu Halasa

She is a graduate of Barnard College who lives (1990) in London where she writes for a number of periodicals.

John Hawkins

Elijah Muhammad wrote, "Allah has taught us that our foreparents were deceived and brought into America by a slave-trader whose name was John Hawkins in the year 1555."[xix] However, most researchers point to a shipment of 20 Africans sold as slaves by a Dutch trader to settlers in Jamestown, Va., in 1619 as the first.

Philip Khuri Hitti (1886-1978)

The eminent historian of the Middle East who taught at Princeton University from 1926 until retirement was a Maronite Christian born in Shimlan, Lebanon. He was graduated from the American University in Beirut in 1908 and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. A scholar of Arabic language, culture and history, Dr. Hitti is the author of The History of the Arabs and Syrians in America. The Philip Khuri Hitti Memorial Fund at the University of Minnesota works to insure the continued development of the university's Arab and Lebanese American Collection in the Immigration History Research Center, founded in 1965.[xx] Dr. Hitti was visiting professor at Minnesota in 1967 and was invited to deposit his papers there by a Minnesota colleague and fellow Arabist, Prof. Anwar G. Chejne. The fund also sponsors occasional symposia on Near Eastern American studies, the first of which resulted in Crossing the Waters: Arabic-Speaking Immigrants to the United States Before 1940, edited by Eric J. Hooglund.[xxi]

Eric J. Hooglund

A senior analyst at the National Security Archive in Washington D.C. (1987), he has taught Middle East history and politics for several years at various colleges and universities and is the author of journal articles and several books, including Land and Revolution in Iran and Taking Root: Arab-American Community Studies.[xxii]

Charles Colcock Jones

Described as "the leading theoretician and chief publicist of the plantation mission," Jones saw an urgent need "to have the Gospel preached" to "the heathen slaves,"[xxiii] penning The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States in 1842.

M. Ali Kettani

Professor at the University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (1981), this Muslim scholar is the son of Sheikh Mohammed Al-Muntasir Kettani of Saudi Arabia, who was sent by King Faisal to explore the idea of Islamic solidarity with the heads of North African states in 1965 (which resulted in the creation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference).

Hamaas Abdul Khaalis (born Ernest McGhee)

In 1972, this Nation of Islam minister denounced his group as a corruption of Sunni Islam and pronounced Elijah Muhammad a lying deceiver. In January 1973, five members of the Nation of Islam "butchered five members of his family,"[xxiv] or shot his wife in the head six times, shot his daughter (who survived) and drowned three more children and a nine-day-old granddaughter in the bathtub.[xxv] Louis Farrakhan discusses this incident in Seven Speeches,[xxvi] implying that the U.S. Government arranged the murders to discredit the Nation of Islam. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar came to Islam through Hamaas, who was then an official with the Nation of Islam.[xxvii] In 1980, he was considered the leader of the Black American Muslims who subscribe to the Hanafi School of Islamic law.[xxviii]

Charles Eric Lincoln (known as C. Eric Lincoln)

The founding president of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters, Lincoln attended University of Chicago; did graduate work at Fisk University where he also was chairman of the Department of Religious and Philosophical Studies (approx. 1974). His dissertation at Boston University (approx. 1956) was published in 1964 as The Black Muslims in America. Taught religion and philosophy at Clark College, Atlanta, Ga. in the mid-1950s and was a Human Relations Fellow at Boston University while writing his dissertation. As of 1983, he was a professor of Religion and Culture at Duke University.

Emily Kalled Lovell

She is an independent researcher and editor in Stockton, Calif., in 1983, formerly at Arizona State University. Her father emigrated from Lebanon in 1911.

Al Hajj Imam Isa Abd'Allah Muhammad Al Mahdi

Often called Imam Isa, the leader of the Ansaru Allah Community is said to be the great-grandson of Al Imam Muhammad Ahmad Al Mahdi, who let the Islamic revolt against the British in the Sudan in the 1880s.

Elias D. Mallon

In 1989, he was associate director of the Graymoor Ecumenical Institute in New York, where he coordinates interfaith relations. He is an ordained member of the Society of the Atonement and chairs the Roman Catholic-Muslim Dialogue in the Archdiocese of New York. Father Mallon earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

Manning Marable (1950- )

He is (1985) professor of political sociology and director of the Africana and Hispanic Studies Program at Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y.

Saida Masoud

A Muslim who was founder of Islamic Press International and is (1980) executive director of Islamic Television Review in New York; also said to be founder of the Afro-Arab-American Friendship Society.[xxix]

Ernest McGhee

See Hamaas Abdul Khaalis.

William G. McLoughlin (1922- )

He was born in New Jersey, and was professor of history at Brown University in 1968.

Beverlee Turner Mehdi

Related to Rev. William Henry Turner and Al-Haj Mohammed Abdullah Mehdi. In 1978 at College at Old Westbury (New York).

J. Gordon Melton

Melton is (1993) the director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., and a research specialist with the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Kathleen M. Moore

In 1990, a research scholar in the political science department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

R. Laurence Moore

Dr. Moore is (1986) professor of history and former department chairman at Cornell University.

Muhammad

In Islam, Muhammad is the final prophet, the messenger of Allah. While he is not considered divine, he is set apart as the final messenger, the "seal of the prophets". The son of an Arab merchant named Abdullah (and, thus, sometimes called Muhammad ibn Abdullah), he was born into the Quraysh tribe in Mecca on the Arabian peninsula about 570, began receiving the revelations that form the Koran about 610 and died in 632. For a recent biography written by a non-Muslim, see Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. Less used alternate transliterations of his name are Mahommed and Mahomet. A note: Muhammad is a prophet of the divine, not divine himself; therefore, referring to followers of Islam as Muhammedan is considered offensive by Muslims.

Akbar Muhammad

The youngest child of Elijah Muhammad who studied at al-Ashar in Cairo and later at the University of Edinburgh. He was expelled from the Nation of Islam in 1965 for calling his father's version of Islam "homemade," and returned with his family to Egypt.[xxx] He is assumed to be the same Akbar Muhammad who is (1981) chairman of the Department of Afro American and African Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Ayman Muhammad (1921- )

Born Emmanuel Poole, he is eldest child of Elijah Muhammad.

Clara Muhammad (d. 1972)

Clara Evans Poole was the wife of Elijah Muhammad and the namesake of the school he established for children of the Nation of Islam.

Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975)

Born Robert Poole near Sandersville, Ga., and sometimes referred to as "Mr. Muhammad," he called himself the "Messenger of Allah to the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in North America"[xxxi]. Other names among the 100 alias he once used include Elijah Poole, Elijah Karriem, Mohammed Allah, Elijah Black, Rassoul Mohammed and Elijah Muck Muck.[xxxii] From his start as an early follower of Wallace Fard, by the late '50s, he was the leader and spiritual head for 20 "Temples of Islam" in 11 states and the District of Columbia from his home base at 4847 Woodlawn near University of Chicago. He assumed leadership of the Black Muslims when Wallace Fard disappeared in 1934. When Elijah Muhammad died on 25 February, 1975, in Chicago's Mercy Hospital[xxxiii], he left no will; therefore, "his 19 legitimate and illegitimate children" were forced to fight with each other for his estate, estimated at $5.7 million.[xxxiv] Another writer asserts the estate still was not settled a decade after his death, but that there were eight legitimate and 13 illegitimate children, for a total of 21 heirs.[xxxv]

Jabir Muhammad

Born Herbert Poole, this son of Elijah Muhammad is (1993) imam at the Al-Faatir mosque on Chicago's south side. Friday services there are attended by about 500 men and 100 women, including Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. in 1942).[xxxvi]

Warith Deen Muhammad (1933- )

His current title (1993) is Muslim American Spokesman for Human Salvation, and he lives quietly in Little Rock, Ark.[xxxvii] The leader of the Temple of Islam (also called the American Muslim Mission or Community, but now referred to as simply American Muslims) he is the seventh son of Elijah Muhammad (a propitious place in the birth order; Malcolm X also was a seventh child). He also has been known as Wallace Delaney Muhammad (his birth name--bestowed at the request of Wallace D. Fard[xxxviii]), Warith al-Din, Warith ad-Din and Minister Wallace, and is often given the honorific title of imam. He made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1967 and, as a result, now considers himself a follower of traditional Sunni Islam, and places the American Muslims within that tradition.

Walter Dean Myers (1937- )

A four-time winner of the Coretta Scott King award, Myers has written many novels for teenagers and middle-grade readers. He lives in Jersey City, N.J.

Alixa Naff

Dr. Naff is a scholar documenting the Arab experience in America. She is director of the Arab-American Ethnic Studies Program for the National Association of Arab Americans (Washington, D.C.), and was formerly affiliated with National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs. Her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is in the history of the modern Middle East[xxxix].

Muhammad Armiya Nu'Man

He considers himself a Muslim in the tradition of Elijah Muhammad. He served as imam of Masjid Muhammad Jersey City in the late 1980s and at one time was a member of the Black Panther Party. Born a Christian in 1946, he converted in 1970 and joined the Lost-Found Nation of Islam as Jeremiah X (later, Jeremiah 4X).

Sulayman S. Nyang

Professor of African Studies (1980) at Howard University.

Gregory Orfalea

Mr. Orfalea, a Catholic of Syrian/Lebanese descent, works (1987) as an editor in Washington, D.C. He is the author of fiction and poetry as well as Before the Flames: A Quest for the History of Arab-Americans.

Bruce Perry

A biographer of Malcolm X, Perry is a former teacher of political science at the universities of Texas and Pennsylvania; he received his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania after graduate work at Harvard University.

Daniel Pipes

A former Special Adviser to the Counselor of the United States Department of State, Pipes is (1977) professor of strategy at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

Dr. Qureshi received her Ph.D. in anthropology and is (1991) a professor of music at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. She specializes in ethnomusicology, cultural anthropology and Islamic studies.

Albert J. Raboteau

Black Christian scholar.

E. Allen Richardson

The author of East Comes West: Asian Religions and Cultures in North America, he is taken to task by a Muslim reviewer for his simplistic outlook plus mistakes in fact and in implications in that book.[xl]

Wade Clark Roof

Dr. Roof is (1993) J.F. Rowny Professor of Religion and Society at University of California at Santa Barbara.

Jack Rummel

He is a freelance writer from Hoboken, N.J., who is the author of three volumes in the "Black Americans of Achievement" series, including Malcolm X: Militant Black Leader.

Edward W. Said

A Christian Arab (Episcopalian), he was born in Jerusalem, Palestine; attended schools in Palestine, Egypt and Connecticut; received his B.A. from Princeton, M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. In 1988, he was professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. The author of Orientalism among others.[xli]

James Shabazz

Affiliated (1965) with Muhammad's Mosque of Islam No. 2, Chicago, Illinois, and Temple No. 25 in Newark, N.J., he was shot dead in 1973. "Members of the New World of Islam splinter group were convicted of killing Shabazz," according to Steven Barboza,[xlii] but still alive in Kansas City and renamed Shaikh Abdulaziz Shabazz in 1985, according to Zafar Ansari.[xliii]

Jack G. Shaheen (1935-)

Born in Pittsburgh, Pa., he was (in 1984) professor of mass communications at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Ill. He has worked in film, radio and television and writes frequently on the Middle East and film-making. His Ph.D. is from the University of Missouri.[xliv]

Hisham Sharabi

Raised as a Sunni Muslim, he is a native of Jaffa who attended the American University of Beirut. Co-founder of the Contemporary Arab Studies Program at Georgetown University and the Arab American Cultural Foundation, he is described in 1988 as "the reigning dean of committed Palestinian intellectuals in this country"[xlv].

Raymond Sharrieff

Married to Elijah Muhammad's daughter Ethel, he was Supreme Captain of the Fruit of Islam.

George Eaton Simpson

An anthropologist at Oberlin College specializing in religion, he studied under Melville J. Herskovits at Northwestern University and did field work in northern Haiti, Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean as well as Nigeria.

Michael W. Suleiman

Dr. Suleiman, professor of political science at Kansas State University (1989), has written widely on Arab politics, Arab-Americans and American attitudes toward the Middle East. (1987) He is the author of Political Parties in Lebanon.

Earle H. Waugh

Dr. Waugh is (1991) a professor of religious studies and chair of the Canadian Studies Program at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He specializes in Islam, religion in Canada, and contemporary religious issues.

Gayraud S. Wilmore

In 1983, Wilmore was dean of the M.Div. Program and professor of Afro-American Studies at New York Theological Seminary. Previously he was Martin Luther King Memorial Professor of Black Church Studies at Colgate Rochester Divinity School/Bexley Hall/Crozer Theological Seminary. Educated at Lincoln University, Temple University, and Drew Theological Seminary, he is an ordained minister of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and has served as a pastor in Pennsylvania.[xlvi]

Bayly Winder

Dr. Winder is (1987) a professor of Near East languages, literature and history at New York University. The son-in-law of Philip K. Hitti, Dr. Winder was a Founding Fellow of the Middle East Studies Association and the author of several books.

Michael Wolfe

A "recent" white American convert to Islam, Wolfe is the author of books of poetry, fiction and travel writing. He is (1993) the publisher of Tombouctou Books and lives in Santa Cruz, Calif. His father's father was a Jew who emigrated from Byelorussia. His father married a Christian, but nonetheless joined a Reform Jewish congregation in his hometown, Cincinnati. He says his conversion to Islam came largely because of its non-racist attitudes.[xlvii]

Robert Wuthnow

A sociologist of religion whose current research is underwritten in part by Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment (he gives credit to the endowment in his preface to The Restructuring of American Religion and has recently spoken at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis on endowment-funded projects). He is a professor of sociology at Princeton University and the author of several books on American culture and religion.

Malcolm X (1925-65)

The best-known name of the man born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebr., is Malcolm X. When he was killed February 21, 1965, he carried the name El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He was the seventh child of his father, Earl Little, and "was groomed for the destiny that had been ordained for him" by his aunt Ella, who hoped he would become a lawyer.[xlviii] He served as minister of Elijah Muhammad's Temple of Islam No. 7 in New York City, editor of the newspaper Muhammad Speaks and, by early 1959, was the chief spokesman for the Nation of Islam. He was married to Betty X in 1958; their six daughters are Attallah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah, Malikah and Malaak. The break with Elijah Muhammad occurred on March 12, 1964, when Malcolm X announced his plans to form the Muslim Mosque, Incorporated. His hajj, later that same year, reinforced the break and "opened his eyes" to orthodox Islam.

J. Milton Yinger

The eminent sociologist of religion was at Oberlin College in 1970.

(see also <A HREF=”mckee_muslimbibliography.html”>bibliography</A>)