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For more than twenty years, West African Muslims from the Muridiyya order, a Sufi brotherhood based in Senegal, have organized the annual Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day parade in New York City. It is a religious procession that allows them to redefine their African identities, cope with the stigma of Blackness, and counteract accusations of Islamic terrorism. But the march is not merely an event for members, because its banners often challenge common notions of Black history, and African American paraders follow a slightly different course. This chapter explores the way Murids, followers of Muridiyya, and other West African Muslims such as the Malinke and the Fulani create religious activities, networks, stores, and institutions that transform Harlem into a sacred city. It is a sacred space, however, that includes the long-standing Nation of Islam and other African American Muslim orientations.

This chapter examines the so-called Third Resurrection and the transition from Black Religion to historical Islam as the basis of religious authority in American Islam. It suggests that while the basis of religious authority shifted, African American Muslims remained objects rather than subjects in this development. It compares this situation with Edward Wilmot Blyden's 19th century argument that if White European and American missionaries in Africa did not transfer religious authority to African Christians in a timely fashion, the latter would ultimately regurgitate Christianity.

A dominant theme that is evident in most testimonies of new Muslims entails the recognition of personal tragedies that are usually caused by sexual disorders or conflicts within their families. As Nur Ali points out, a family begins with two individuals unrelated by blood who come together to accomplish things that they could not perform as individuals, and from this basic element we can build villages, nations, and worlds. African-American Muslims are believed to have a mission concerned with advocating attempts to resolve social disorder and providing a new way of life grounded on certain Islamic values about sexuality and marriage. This chapter illustrates, through an ethnohistorical view, some common patriarchal practices practiced by Muslims and how these entail concepts that are not unfamiliar to contemporary American society.

African-American Muslims strongly believe that embracing Islamic worship and principles can help oppressed people from the lower classes triumph over instances of economic and social injustice. The Quran is believed to serve not only as a source of divine inspiration but also as a practical guide for taking on issues of deficiencies in inferior jobs, substandard housing facilities, and unequal education that usually bring about suppression and violence. As a liberation theology, Islam supposedly examines ethical conduct in the context of specific ideals that aim to surpass the status quo. Because Islam is a “simple religion”, it is believed that although one may attempt to integrate Islam into his or her life, he or she may not surpass material poverty and is at risk of human error.

This chapter examines the history of Black Orientalism and its relation to African American Muslims and American Islam. It describes and criticizes three typologies of Black Orientalism, including National Black Orientalism, Academic Black Orientalism and Religious Black Orientalism. It discusses the manifestations of Black Orientalism as seeking to cast the Arab/Muslim world as a precursor and then imitator of the West in the latter's history of anti-blackness, and as rendering the Muslim world not only as the source of anti-black racism, but also of the of the most toxic reactions to this which continued to infect the otherwise civil approach of non-Muslim Black Americans long after the propriety and usefulness of black radicalism in America had passed.

This chapter examines the historical relation between African Americans, immigrant Islam and the dominant culture in the U.S. during the 20th century. It describes African African Muslim thought during the Third Resurrection as a prescriptive ideal, and attempts to reconcile blackness, Americanness and adherence to Islam. It contends that it was not Islam but certain oversights and obsessions of Black and especially Post-Colonial Religion that impeded the African American Muslim's ability to come to terms with America.

In this chapter, the author draws attention to the Islamic sources African American Muslims consult when organizing their households. As with their coreligionists around the world, African American Muslims revere the Qur?an and the sunna (practices of the Prophet Muhammad) as their primary and most authoritative sources for the development of Muslim family life, including polygyny. Other authorities are important for those living polygyny, including female experience as textual exegesis, and should be examined. Thus this chapters explores theological questions attendant to multiple-wife marriage, drawing specific attention to what Islam says about polygyny and how African American Muslims embody what they hear, read, and witness as they seek to understand the conditions under which polygyny is a viable form of marriage.

Here the author introduces the purpose, limitations, and scope of polygyny. It reflects upon her positionality as a former Christian, now Muslim, who came to Islam through the guidance of the association of Imam Mohammed. It identifies the methodology used in the book, specifically ethnography and Muslim womanism, and revisits the social context in which African American Muslims live and worship.

The journey taken by African-American Muslims and how they persisted in situations of slavery is often ignored as a significant element of American history. Testimonies and narratives about such accounts, as the author observes, can be compared to “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” because they share certain themes regarding symbolic death and rebirth, sacrifice, heroism, redemption, and other such concepts. Also, we observe how this literature entails descriptions about slavery and how this can therefore serve as a template wherein believers may be able to associate his or her own experiences of conversion and functioning. This ethnography examines how the Muslims were considered the “home team” and, through photos, interviews, and other such documentary evidence, we look into contemporary religious practices and issues that may have greatly influenced the Muslims’ social transformation.

This chapter unpacks the interaction between African American Muslims and South Asian and Arab American Muslims, who visited the mosque to make charitable donations. It reveals how believers at the mosque responded to perceptions their Muslim brothers and sisters from other ethnic categories looked down on them, contrasting sharply with the ideal of Islam as a religion without racial hierarchy. Such ethnic cleavages stand in stark contrast to the ideal of an inclusive ummah, but they emerge because all US Muslims live at the intersection of America’s racial and religious orders. While there is much Othering that happens among African American and immigrant Muslims, what tensions ultimately reveal is the enduring legacy of white racial dominance in the United States and its cascading impacts on the everyday lives of US Muslims.

In 1930, Farad Muhammad, a mysterious peddler, told African Americans in Detroit that their true religion was Islam and that their original language was Arabic, stolen from them when they were brought as slaves into the New World. With few followers, he established the Lost–Found Nation of Islam in North America. When Farad disappeared in 1934, Elijah Poole, who later became known as Elijah Muhammad, emerged as the leader of this Islamic movement. This book analyzes the beliefs, practices, doctrines, and religious narratives of the Nation of Islam (NOI). It provides a profile of the rich religious landscape of African American Muslim members of NOI and illuminates the movement's impact on the relationship between religion and politics in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.

This chapter explores the intellectual defenses of Elijah Muhammad by African American Muslim intellectuals who defended their leader as a genuine Islamic prophet. To defend their leader's authenticity, these intellectuals offered interpretations of Muhammad's message on a frequent basis in Muhammad Speaks. They also employed a variety of genres such as public speeches, foreign endorsements in newspapers, and cartoons.

This chapter examines the history of the formative development of classical Muslim theology. It traces the development of Muslim theology from its embryonic beginnings to its status as a full-blown, metacognitive tradition and highlights the extent to which history and societal situatedness informed classical Muslim theological discourse. It aims to clarify the theological contemplations of African American Muslims where God’s self-disclosure assumes concrete meaning and practical relevance in validatable form.

Elijah Muhammad is credited with introducing the Qur'an to most African American Muslims. The earlier Moorish Science Temple's most Islamic feature was the use of the word “Koran” for the scripture “written” by its founder, Drew Ali. In that regard, the Nation of Islam was clearly much more “Islamic.” This chapter focuses on the status of the Qur'an for Elijah Muhammad and the use he made of it. A comparison between Drew Ali's Koran and Elijah Muhammad's use of the Bible and predictions of a future scripture highlight Elijah Muhammad's unique understanding of the role of the Qur'an within his formulation of Islam. His understanding of the Qur'an was not monolithic, however. As he became more familiar with the Qur'an and then experienced the negative reaction of other Muslims, his relationship to the Qur'an evolved.