Islam in the African-American Experience

"A significant contribution to our understanding of the role of individuals, Muslim groups, as well as the religion of Islam in the shaping of African-American Muslim identity...I believe that the book will be the standard text used for courses on the subject." - Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Professor of Islamic History, University of Massachusetts. Malcolm X and, more recently, Louis Farrakhan are two of the more visible signs of the importance of Islam in the African-American community. Yet, as Richard Brent Turner shows in this fascinating book, the involvement of black Americans with Islam is not a recent phenomenon. Turner reaches back to the earliest days of the slave trade and traces the story of Islam's growing influence in the lives and culture of African-Americans. Part I of the book roots twentieth-century African-American Islam in the Middle East, West Africa, and antebellum America. Part II tells the story of the "Prophets of the City" - the leaders of the new urban-based African-American Muslim movements in the twentieth century. Turner positions the study of Islam in a historical context of racial, ethical, and political divisions that influenced the history of slavery in America. He offers evidence that the current racial separation among Muslims in America is not entirely the result of black nationalism or a new phenomenon in Islam, but a common pattern for black people in African Islam before the Atlantic slave trade. Turner proposes to balance the weight accorded to black nationalism in shaping Islam in black America by looking at the influence of the Ahmadiyya Movement, an Islamic missionary group from India representative of a multi-racial Islam.