Abstract
This chapter explores seven divergent perspectives on the subject of “Islam in America” to show how the perspective one adopts largely determines the conclusions one derives. It is clear that the immigrant perspective on Islam in America is largely oblivious to the belief that blacks enjoy a special relationship with the religion of Islam given their prominent role in the religion’s development and spread as illustrated by well-known sayings of the Prophet, including one that asserts that while many from among the original companions (al sahaba) of the Prophet and helpers (al ansar) of Islam will be saved, only a relative few from among later-day believers will be saved on Judgment Day. Use of the word “convert,” by immigrant Muslims to refer to blacks undermines this and other beliefs held by black Muslims, leading blacks to be reluctant to embrace an immigrant Muslim leadership seemingly bent on viewing if not treating them as inferior. Long gone are the days before 1975 when blacks used to worship in all-black mosques and, to their credit, US Muslims have avoided the bloody confrontations linked to Sunni-Shia violence overseas. But neither black nor immigrant Muslims have abandoned Islam as they understand it. This chapter explores the substance behind this divergence.
By the night as it conceals [the light]; By the day as it appears in glory; By [the mystery of] the creation of male and female; Verily, [the ends] you strive for are diverse.
—Quran (92:1–4)
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Notes
See Charles L. Blockson, The Underground Railroad: First-Person Narratives of Escapes to Freedom in the North (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1987),
Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean 1736–1831 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), and
Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Vintage Books, 1956).
Joel W. Martin, Sacred Revolt: The Muskogee’s Struggle for a New World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1991), 160–161.
Ibid., 163. Also see Susan Avery and Linda Skinner, Extraordinary American Indians (Danbury, CT: Children’s Press, 1992), 49.
Ibid. Also see John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 28,
Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 159, and
Peter P. Hinks, To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance (University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1997), 42.
See Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 3. Also see Brent Richard Weisman, Unconquered People: Florida’s Seminole and Miccosukee Indians (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999), 137–138.
See Weisman, Unconquered People, 43, 44, 68, 69, 72. Edwin C. McReynolds, The Seminoles (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), and
J. Leitch Wright Jr., British St. Augustine (St. Augustine, FL: Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board, 1975).
Charles L. Blockson, The Underground Railroad: First-Person Narratives of Escapes to Freedom (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1987), Preface, x.
See Peter Hinks, To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1997).
Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 163.
Joseph E. Holloway, “The Origins of African American Culture,” in Africanisms in American Culture, ed. Joseph E. Holloway, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 40–42.
Sylviane Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 1.
Diouf, Servants of Allah, 3. Also see Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), 56.
Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobbard, Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad (New York: Doubleday, 1999).
Hinks, To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren, 45. Also see Cassandra Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 6.
See Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
Ibid., 38, 98. Also see Allan Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (New York: Garland Publishing, 1984), 121–263.
Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Vintage Books, 1956), 104.
Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African American Experience, 1st ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 28–29. Also see
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 19–28.
Kenneth W. Porter, The Black Seminoles: History of a Freedom-Seeking People, revised and edited by Alcoine M. Amos and Thomas P. Senter (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), 23, and 78.
Robert Hall, “African Religious Retentions in Florida,” in The African American Heritage of Florida, ed. David Colburn and Jane L. Landers (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1976), 230.
See Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 229–231. Also see R. B. Edgerton, Hidden Heroism: Black Soldiers in America’s Wars (Boulder: Westview Press, 2002), 16.
See GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America, 62, 83, 84, 95, Gomez, Black Crescent, 182, Kenneth W. Porter, Black Seminoles, 140, and R. B. Edgerton, Hidden Heroism, 16, 26. Writing on Said (although referring to his full Islamic name) Diouf describes how “Mohammed Ali ben Said of Nigeria—a Union soldier in the Civil War, teacher, and lecturer—reported that while he was enslaved in Tripoli, Libya, as news reached the pasha that the group of young men captured with Said were from the best families in Bornou, [the pash] purchased the whole lot and held them for ransom.” See Sylviane A. Diouf, ed., Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003), 95.
See John Tebbel and Kieth Jennison, The American Indian Wars (London: Phoenix Press, 1960).
Amir Nashid Ali Muhammad, Muslims in America: Seven Centuries of History (1312–1998) (Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 1998), xiv. Also, for a discussion of Western conflict, bias, and prejudice toward the Islamic world in general see
Robert J. Allison, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World 1776–1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), and
Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Mr. Obama acknowledged Muslim contribution in 2009.
Donald Green and Shapiro, Pathologies of Rational Choice: A Critique of Applications in Political Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 37–38.
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978).
Farha Ternikar, “Tribalism in Muslim America,” in Islam in America: Images and Challenges, ed. Phylis Lan Lin (Indianapolis, IN: University of Indianapolis Press, 1998), 41–42.
See “Muslims in America,” January 10, 2002, Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0110/p15s1-lire.html; Jerome P. Bjelopera, “American Jihadist Terrorism: Combatting a Complex Threat,” A Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report prepared for Congress, pp. 1–141, January 23, 2013, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/R41416.pdf; and
Hisham Aidi, “Jihadis in the Hood: Race, Urban Islam and the War on Terror” Middle East Report, 224, Fall 2002, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/776834/posts.
Hisham Aidi, “Let Us Be Moors: Islam, Race, and ‘Connected Histories’,” Middle East Report, Online version, (November 2005), 3, http://loveforlife.com.au/content/08/02/13/let-us-be-moors-islam-race-and-connected-histories-hisham-aidi
Sulayman Nyang, “Islam in the United States of America: A Review of the Sources,” in Islam in North America: A Sourcebook, ed. Michael A. Koszegi and J. Gordon Melton (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), 24.
For an illustration of this attitude see Michael Scheuer (first published under the name “Anonymous”), Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, Inc., 2004).
Yvonne Y. Haddad, ed. The Muslims of America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 5.
See Kenneth O’Reilly, Black Americans: The FBI Files (New York: Carrol and Graf Publishers, 1994), and
Clayborne Carson, Malcolm X: the FBI File (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 1991). Also see GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America, 223, 230–231, 309, 338,
Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).
Fatimah Mernissi, Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (New York: Addision-Wesley Publishing Co., 1992), 111. Also see
Sherman Jackson “Preliminary Reflections on Islam and Black Religion,” in Zahid H. Bukhari et al., Muslims in the American Public Square (New York: Altamira Press, 2004).
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). Also see
M. Muktedar Khan, American Muslims (Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 2002).
Leonard Karen Isaksen, Muslims in the United States (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003), 138.
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© 2013 Samory Rashid
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Rashid, S. (2013). Divergent Perspectives. In: Black Muslims in the US. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137337511_4
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