From Muslims in America to American Muslims

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In this essay the author gives an historical overview of Islam in America from its earliest beginnings in pre‐Columbia America until the present. Details on the origins, growth and spread of the three largest American Muslim groups – African American, Arab and South Asian – are explored as are the tensions and frictions between the three communities, which undermine the unity of these adherents and their potential influence on the United States’ domestic and foreign policies. Also explored are the ideological struggles some Muslims – perhaps a large percentage in the three groups – have regarding their position in the American mosaic. Are they “Muslims in America” or are they “American Muslims?” Some African Americans, many of whom have adopted Islam and the “new” identity it provides as an antidote to this group’s long history of ostracism and marginalization, are alienated from any wholesale embrace of their American heritage and identity. Among Arab and South Asian Muslims, some feel a loyalty to their homelands and are often opposed to U. S. policies related to them. Others see the U.S. as morally bankrupt and beyond redemption and are therefore unwilling to totally embrace an American identity. Post 9–11 events in the U.S. in which Muslims with immigrant backgrounds have been targeted have further alienated those who already had their doubts and pushed others who were on the fence into the camp of those who see no real place for Muslims in the American body politic. Lastly, the author lays out her views on how all three Muslim communities can find ways to unite internally and why it is to their advantage to fully embrace their American identity and citizenship in order to influence her future policies, both domestic and international. Keywords: MuslimsIslamMuslim Americansimmigrant MuslimsAfrican American MuslimsArab MuslimsSouth Asian MuslimsracecitizenshipSunniShi’aMarcus GarveyDuse Muhammad AliNoble Drew AliMoorsElijah Muhammadthe Nation of IslamWarith Deen MuhammadMuslim American SocietyLouis FarrakhanBlack Religion Notes 1John Esposito, ‘Muslims in America or American Muslims’ in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito (eds), Muslims on the Americanization Path? (Scholars Press, Atlanta GA Citation1998). 2Ibid. 3. 3Zafar Ishaq Ansari, ‘Islam among African Americans: An Overview’ in Zahid Bukhari and others (eds), Muslims’ Place in the American Public Square: Hope, Fears and Aspirations (AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek CA Citation2004) 222. 4Zahid Bukhari, ‘Demography, Identity, Space: Defining American Muslims’ in Philippa Strum and Danielle Tarantolo (eds), Muslims in the United States: Demography, Beliefs, Institutions (Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Washington, DC Citation2003) 7. 5Ibid. 6Ibid. 7Ibid. 8Ibid. 9Ibid. 8. 10Ansari, op. cit. 222. 11Available from 〈http://pewforum.org/surveys/muslim‐american/〉 (accessed September 28, 2008). 12Esposito, op. cit. 3. 13Ibid. 14Zahid H. Bukhari, ‘Demography, Identity, Space: Defining American Muslims,’ in Philippa Strum & Danielle Tarantolo (eds), Muslims in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Citation2003, pp. 7–20), p. 9. 15Ibid., pp. 9–10. 16Pew Report, op. cit. 1. 17Bukhari, op. cit. 10. 18See Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African‐American Experience, 2nd edn (Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2003), especially Part Two: ‘Prophets of the City’; Aminah Beverly McCloud, ‘A Challenging Intellectual Heritage: A Look at the Social and Political Space of African–American Muslims’ in Strum and Tarantolo, op. cit.; and Sherman A. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking toward the Third Resurrection (Oxford University Press, New York Citation2005). 19Esposito, ‘Forward’, op. cit., pp. 4–5 20Green was said to be the Prophet Muhammad’s favorite color and therefore green is said by some to be Islam’s color. 21Esposito, ‘Foreword’, op. cit., 4–5. 22Zahid H. Bukhari and others (eds), Muslims’ Place in the American Public Square: Hope, Fears, and Aspirations (AltaMira, Lanham, MD Citation2004). 23Ibid. ‘Introduction’, xvi–xx. 24Ibid. xvi. The editors quote Nehemia Levtzion and J.E.P. Hopkins (eds), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Wiener, Princeton, NJ Citation2000) 269; and Sulayman S. Nyang, Islam in the United States of America (ABC International, Chicago IL Citation1999) 12. Nyang does not take these accounts lightly and notes that the distinguished British scholar, Basil Davidson, was interested in these stories and wrote about this famed black African explorer in his acclaimed Lost Cities of Africa (Little Brown, Boston MA Citation1959). Davidson’s account of an African visit to the New World in pre‐Columbian times is based on chapter ten of Ibn Fadl Allah al‐Omari’s Masālik al‐abṣr fī mamālik al‐amṣār (Cairo, c. Citation1342 AH) (quoted in Nyang, op. cit. 31, n. 2). 25Ibid. The editors are drawing on Leo Wiener’s work, Africa and the Discovery of America (Innes, Philadelphia PA Citation1922). See Nyang, op. cit., p. 12, where he notes that it was Ivan Van Sertima of Rutgers University in New Jersey who made these accounts famous in his well‐regarded book, They Came before Columbus (Random House, New York Citation1976). 26Ibid., p. xvii, the editors draw on the unpublished paper by George H. June, Jr, ‘Neither Christian nor Heathen: Islam among the African Slaves in the New World’ (Black Studies Department, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley CO Citation1995) 18. 27Michael Gomez writes, “In 1492, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic and with him came Islam. Among his crews were Muslims…” in Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Citation2005) ix. 28See Allen Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (Garland, New York Citation1984).and African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (Routledge, New York 1997). 29Sylviane Diouf has documented the role of African Muslims in the Americas in her important work, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York University Press, New York Citation1998). 30Karen Isaksen Leonard, Muslims in the United States: The State of Research (Russell Sage Foundation, New York Citation2003) 9–15. 31Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Adair T. Lummis, Islamic Values in the United States: A Comparative Study (Oxford University Press, New York Citation1987). 32Ibid. 14. 33Leonard op. cit. 10. 34Ibid. 10–11. Both these decisions were reversed on appeal. Yet ironically, the second reversal came in 1923, the same year in which Asian Indians (including Muslims) who had previously been classified as “white” were declared “not white” in the popular meaning of the term. 35Haddad and Lummis, op. cit. 14. 36Ibid. 11. 37Ibid. 38Ibid. 39Leonard, op. cit. 10–11. 40Haddad and Lummis, op. cit. 14. 41Leonard., op. cit. 12. 42Ibid. 13. 43In 1940, the Muslim politician, Muhammad Ali Jinnah led the Muslim League in a call for the establishment of Muslim statehood in the region of India where Muslims were in the majority. Great Britain gave them their separate state, called Pakistan, in 1947. 44In 1971, East Pakistan declared its independence and took the name Bangladesh, which led to a civil war with West Pakistan. The war ended on Dec 16, 1971, when Pakistani forces surrendered to the combined Indian and Bangladeshi forces. Bangladesh celebrates March 26, the day they declared their independence, as Independence Day. 45Leonard., op. cit. 13. 46Ibid. 14. 47Ibid. 48Ibid. 49Yusuf Nuruddin, ‘Africa‐American Muslims and the Question of Identity: Between Traditional Islam, African Heritage, and the American Way’ in Haddad and Esposito, op. cit. 268. 50Ansari, op. cit. 227. 51Ibid. 52Ibid. 53Michael Gomez in his work Black Crescent, op. cit., has found possible linkages between remote groups of mixed race people living in the hills of Tennessee who continued practicing a synthetic form of Islam into the early twentieth century. See his chapter five, the section ‘Interlude: Into a Glass Darkly: Elisive Communities’, 185–203. 54Ansari, op. cit. 229, quoting from Steven Barboza (ed), American Jihad: American Islam after Malcolm X (Doubleday, New York Citation1993) 195. 55Ansari, op. cit. 224, quoting from Barboza, op. cit. 9. 56Ansari, op. cit. 225, quoting from Carol L. Stone, ‘Estimate of Muslims Living in America’ in Yvonne Haddad (ed), The Muslims of America (Oxford University Press, New York 1991) 28. Stone is clear that all her figures are subject to error and explains their source. She writes: “The number of immigrant Muslims living in the United States in 1980 was estimated from three sets of data: (1) 1980 census statistics, categorized by country of ancestry; (2) 1980 immigration statistics, categorized by country of origin; and estimates of the percentage of Muslim population in countries around the world” (25). In her section on ‘Sources of Error,’ Stone writes that her study assumes that the proportion of Muslims in a given country is equal to the proportion of Muslims currently residing in the United States with ancestry from that country [and that] this assumption represents the largest potential source of error (27). 57Pew Report, op. cit. 1. 58Of course this did not keep the government from rounding up and imprisoning without charge thousands of Middle Eastern and Asian Muslims after the September 11 attacks. 59Jackson, op. cit. 131. 60Ibid. 27. 61Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re‐Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II (Doubleday, New York Citation2008). On the jacket cover of the book is the following: “Under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines and charged for the costs of their arrests. With no means to pay these ostensible ‘debts,’ prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized by southern landowners and compelled into years of servitude.” 62Ansari, op. cit. 233. 63Turner, op. cit. 73. 64Ibid. 79. 65Ibid. 80. 66Ibid. 81. 67Ibid. 68Ibid. 83. 69Ibid. 70Ibid. 71Ibid. 88. 72Ibid. 90. 73Noble Drew Ali, The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America (Chicago, Citation1927) 59, quoted in Turner, op. cit. 90. 74Turner, op. cit. 92. 75Ibid. 76Ibid. 77Ibid., 92–93. 78Ibid. 79Ibid., 94. 80Ibid. 83Turner, op. cit. 96–97. 81Arthur Huff Fauset, Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia Citation1944) 51. 82Idries Shah is a popular writer and teacher of Sufism who emphasizes the psychological aspects of Sufism and has been influential in America since the 1960s. He is an Indian of Afghani lineage who has spent most of his time in the West, primarily in England. He is the author of numerous books on Sufism that can be found on the shelves of many American books stores. 84C. Eric Lincoln, ‘The Muslim Mission’ in Gayraud S. Wilmore (ed), African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (Duke University Press, Durham NC Citation1989) 345. 87Lincoln, op. cit. 346. 85There are many excellent books about the Nation of Islam including: Edward E. Curtis IV, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975 (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2006); Turner, op. cit.; Jane I. Smith, Islam in America (Columbia University Press, New York Citation1999); Aminah Beverly McCloud, African American Islam (Routledge, New York Citation1995); C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, 3rd edn (William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids MI Citation1994); and E. U. Essien‐Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for Identity in America (University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL Citation1971). 86Ernest Allen, Jr. ‘Identity and Destiny: The Formative Views of the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation of Islam’ in Haddad and Esposito, op. cit. 243, n. 2. 88Allen, op. cit. 215. 89Ibid. 241. 92Ibid. 345. 90Lincoln, op. cit. 347. 91Ibid. 93Allen, op. cit. 241. 94Ansari writes: “W.D. Muhammad had in fact renounced as far back as 1963, many of the doctrines of his father that were opposed to the teachings of Islam. Both he and his brother Akbar Muhammad (at that time a student at al‐Azhar in Egypt) formed a rebellious trio with Malcolm X” (op. cit. 252). 95Smith, op. cit. 90. 96Ansari, op. cit. 252. 97Ibid. 91. 98Lincoln, op. cit. 352. 99Wallace Fard Muhammad was said to have founded the NOI in Detroit, taught Elijah Muhammad for approximately three years and then disappeared mysteriously. Mr Muhammad would later teach that Fard was Allah in person and that he was the messenger of Allah. 100Ibid. 101Saviors Day was said to be the birthday of Fard and it was the largest event in the NOI calendar of events. At the height of the NOI’s success, there would be thousands waiting patiently in line for entry into the large meeting hall to see and hear Mr Elijah Muhammad. 102Smith, op. cit. 91–92. 103Lincoln, op. cit. 353. 104Ibid. 105Ibid. 93. 106Smith, op. cit. 93. 107Lincoln, op. cit. 354. 108Ibid. 353. 109Smith, op. cit. 93. 110Jackson, op. cit. 159. 111Smith, op. cit. 143. 112Mattias Gardell, ‘The Sun of Islam Will Rise in the West: Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam in the Latter Days’ in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad & Jane Idleman Smith (eds), Muslim Communities in North America (State University of New York Press, Albany Citation1994) 32. 113Ibid. 41. 114During the 2008 Presidential Primaries, Minister Farrakhan made positive comments about his Senator from Islam, Barack Obama, causing Obama to be pilloried by the news media and his opponents. Obama was literally forced to denounce the Minister publicly over and over again. In 1984, when Revd Jesse Jackson ran in the Democratic Presidential Primaries, he was publicly supported by the Minister and found that this support hurt him severely among white voters. 115Gardell, op. cit. 32–33. 116Ansari, op. cit. 258. 117Nuruddin, op. cit. 273. 118See Robert Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam (Oxford University Press, New York Citation2002) for an in‐depth study of some of these black Sunni orthodox groups. 119Sherman A. Jackson, ‘Black Orientalism: Its Genesis, Aims and Significance for American Islam’ in Strum and Tarantolo, op. cit. 120In his book, Islam and the Blackamerican, Jackson explains why he uses the term, Blackamerican to distinguish African Americans as a unique group who after half a millennium’s residence in America owe more of their identity to the New World than to Africa and he refuses to use the often hyphenated nomenclature (Greek–American, Italian–American, etc.) which has become so popular, as African Americans have rarely if ever enjoyed the citizen rights that such a hyphenated identity suggests (op. cit. 17–18). 121Ibid. 24. 122Ibid. 25. 123Ibid. 27. 124Ibid. 34. 125Jackson and others who write about this period do not mention the influence the US Civil Rights Movement probably had on President Johnson when he repealed that National Origins act of 1924. The US’s role as “leader of the Free World” had been sorely challenged by the horrific scenes of African Americans women and children, as well as men, being terrorized, beaten and tortured in the South by sadistic sheriffs and their minions for trying to sit while drinking their coffee or eating their hamburger or taking an empty seat on a bus across the white demarcation line separating coloreds from white. Therefore, whether acknowledged or not, all immigrants of color (whether they saw themselves as legally “colored” or not) would not have been able to enter the country or have the right to obtain citizenship had it not been for the African American led Civil Rights Movement. 126Ibid. 128. 127Ibid. 34. 128Ibid. 129Ibid. 131. 130Ibid. 133. 131Ibid. 152. 132Ibid. 133Ibid. 157. 134Ibid. 135 Message to the Black Man in America (Muhammad Mosque of Islam No. 2, Chicago Citation1965) was the title of the most famous of Mr Muhammad’s writings and it was widely read by African Americans, both Muslim and non‐Muslim. 136Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, op. cit. 159. 137Bukhari and others, op. cit. xx–xxi. 138Ibid. xxi. 139Ibid. 140Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, op. cit. 134–137. Jackson draws on what he calls a “magisterial work”, Sydney Ahlstrom’s, A Religious History of the American People (Yale University Press, New Haven CT Citation1972) for his reflections on religious communities’ relations with the secular state. 141Ibid. 135. 142Ibid. Jackson quotes extensively from Niebuhr’s classic Christ and Culture (Harper Collins, New York Citation2001) and says that Niebuhr catalogues the various positions taken on this issue by Christians, without identifying his own views on the matter (ibid. 218–219, n. 7). 143Ibid. 142–143. 144Ibid. 143–144. 145Khaled Abou El Fadl, ‘Striking a Balance: Islamic Legal Discourse on Muslim Minorities’ in Yuonne Y. Haddad and John L. Esposito (eds), Muslims on the Americanization Path (Oxford University Press: New York 2000). 146Omar Khalidi, ‘Living as a Muslim in a Pluralistic Society and State: Theory and Experience’ in Bukhari and others, op. cit. 147Ibid. xxx; Mohammed Nimer, “Muslims in the American Body Politic” in Bukhari et al., op. cit., p. 162. Nimer states that there are Muslims who oppose participation in political life as futile. 148Ibid. 162. 149Ali A. Mazuri, “Muslims between the Jewish Example and the Black Experience: American Policy Implications” in Bukhari et al., op. cit., p. 118. 150Ibid. xxviii. The editors term Mazuri’s discourse as “A Tale of Two Islam”; Mazuri talks about “the paradox of the two Islam” on p. 133. 151Mazuri in his chapter speaks about these three crises on p. 117. 152Ibid. xxviii. 153Ibid. xxii. Aminah Beverly McCloud writes this in her chapter: “Conceptual Discourse: Living as a Muslim in a Pluralistic Society” in Bukhari et al., op. cit., p. 73. 154There are two major Eid festivals for all Muslims, one following immediately at the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting, and the other after the Hajj. 155Ibid., p. xxiii. 156Ibid.