i think this article just begins to touch the surface of a few issues - how “immigrant Muslims” (Arabs, Pakistanis, Indians, etc.) view “African American Muslims” and the latter’s relationship with the Nation of Islam and ‘our’ perceptions of that relationship. i don’t think we get enough exposure on this Forum of the diversity within Islam, the same diversity that we praise and talk about proudly during pictures of Hajj - when we see pilgrims from all shades of life performing the same actions and bowing towards the One same God.
But if you read this article from a historical point of view, isn’t it interesting that when Islam was beginning to spread out from Arabia into Africa through the merchants/traders/warriors, around the early 700s, it was with Africans that early Arab traders came into contact. Later on, we had Muslim travellers like Ibn Battuta travel in Africa to places like Tanzania and Kenya; hundreds of years later, we are ‘mixing’ again - but this time thousands of miles away in North America. i wonder where this will take us in another thousand years? Will we be more ‘integrated’ with our fellow Muslims? Will our mosques not be separated as “Pakistani mosques” or “African mosques” but just be a simple mosque? Or is that me being naive again…
Islam has an African-American face, Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, 6 December 2003, Seattle Times
In the midst of an impoverished East Oakland neighborhood as concerned with the war on drugs as the war in Iraq lie answers to a question present throughout the country since Sept. 11, 2001: Can Islam and the United States co-exist?
They can, say members of a largely African-American mosque there.
Perhaps no group of Americans can speak about Islam and the U.S. with the same intimacy or authority as African-American Muslims. But their voice and story frequently are missing from recent national conversation about Islam.
In some ways, it is a question about what is Islam and what are Middle East politics, says Faheem Shuaibe, the imam, or spiritual leader, of the East Oakland mosque, Masjidul Waritheen.
“What role do black American Muslims play in terms of America and Muslim countries?” asks Shuaibe, whose 1,500-member congregation is the largest mostly African-American mosque in Northern California. “They’re not a factor. As long as the conversation is about geopolitics, that’s fine. But when you talk about Islam in America, I’m the one to talk to.”
No thorough study has been done on the number of Muslims in the United States; estimates vary from 2 million to 8 million. Other studies have estimated that African-American Muslims make up a third of the Muslim population in the U.S.
At its core, the Islam practiced at Masjidul Waritheen is no different from what is practiced in Indonesia, India or Saudi Arabia. The Quran and the collected sayings of the Prophet Muhammad form the basis for all beliefs.
But there are differences of interpretation, culture and history. Most African-American Muslims are converts; many feel they are returning to the religion of their ancestors, slaves who were Muslims. Many came to the faith through the Nation of Islam — which even African-American Muslims consider to have Islamically heretical beliefs. Women also have a higher status and more visible presence in the mosque, and music plays a role.
African Americans were the first to promote and develop Islam in America, says Howard University professor Sulayman Nyang, an immigrant and author of “Islam in the United States of America.” Decades ago, “African Americans were the ones who took Islam out of the closet,” Nyang says. “Immigrants who were Muslims, they were not coming out. That’s a fact.”
Amjad Obeidat, a Jordanian immigrant, says that a key difference between African-American and immigrant Muslims is the nature of immigration.
“Immigrants tend to hang out a little bit more with the people that are close to them,” Obeidat says. “As a corollary, the immigrant community did not get as close to the Muslims who are African American.”
“A common misperception has been that they are Muslims in training, even though they are fully Muslim and they have a lot to offer,” says Shahed Amanullah, 35, a child of Indian immigrants and a spokesman for United Muslims of America.
While race and class play a role in the divisions, the historic tie many African-American Muslims have with the Nation of Islam and its quasi-Islamic beliefs is also a reason immigrant Muslims sometimes don’t view African Americans as full followers of the faith.
Remnants of that history are still visible. Go to Masjidul Waritheen on a Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, and you might see members selling everything from bean pies, strawberries and mangoes to soap, tea and vegan chocolate chip cookies. Such farmers-market scenes aren’t part of immigrant mosques, but Masjidul Waritheen’s congregants believe economic self-reliance is one more step on the straight path toward Islam.
“For African Americans, we live in a capitalistic society where we’ve never had the capital,” says Abdul Sabry, 64, an Oakland resident who three decades ago was the first chairman of the black-studies program at San Jose State University. “It is an example of self-sufficiency that is lacking in our community.”
For Masjidul Waritheen members who were once part of the Nation of Islam, their history is a source of strength. The Nation of Islam sought to lift them and other African Americans out of poverty, racism and humiliation that for centuries defined white America’s treatment of blacks.
While self-reliance and autonomy were cornerstones of the faith, so was racism — black people were gods, white people were devils. It was an attempt to lift up the self by bringing down and demystifying their oppressors.
Before the Nation of Islam, “we were straightening our hair” to seem more white, says Tauheedah Muwwakkil, 54, a Masjidul Waritheen member. “We were bleaching our skin. We were imitating the image the media put before us.”
“Now comes this man who says, ‘Let’s look at your own kind,’ " she says, referring to Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam’s founder. " 'You’re not the scum … You’re the best of what God created. … ’ This set the psyche turning in a different way.”
But these teachings had no basis in the Quran, Islam’s holy book, which says that all races are equal.
W. Deen Mohammed became the spiritual leader of the Nation of Islam after his father, Elijah Muhammad, died in 1975. The son soon pointed the Nation toward traditional Islam, built around the Quran. The racist views were eliminated from the teachings, as was the name Nation of Islam. Whites were allowed to join.
It was a decision that disgruntled some, such as Louis Farrakhan, who resurrected the Nation of Islam and its black-supremacist philosophies a few years later. But the vast majority of the community had already changed, African-American Muslims say.
One of the most striking differences between today’s immigrant and African-American Muslims involves the role of women.
At Masjidul Waritheen, women follow the Quran’s teachings on modest dress but also serve in leadership roles. Men and women mingle freely after services, sometimes exchanging hugs. Both genders pray in the same room — rare in many immigrant mosques.
Carla Ali, principal of the congregation’s school, says African-American Muslims’ history shows what the religion can be in the U.S.
“First of all, we are Americans,” says Ali, 43. "We do have that American experience. Islam has raised a band of people up from what most people would agree are horrible conditions and challenges. And here we are. We are trying to live as peacefully as possible, forgiving the past, trying to bring people into the knowledge of what the religion is.
“Who better to explain and show the light of Islam than African Americans?”