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Muslims in America: Race, Politics, and Community Building
In a flowing and engaging style, Mbaye Lo provides us with a fascinating historical account of the growth of Islam in America. He reveals the different factors and figures that interacted to shape the evolution and growth of the American Muslim communities in the wider contexts of race, civil rights, identity and politics. Mabye takes the mosque as his paradigm to analyze and synthesize the growth of Muslim communities in Cleveland; how their mosques developed over time, the challenges they faced, in moving to mainstream Islam and developing a multi-ethnic community. An added feature of the book is a survey to answer questions about what motivated converts to Islam, who introduced them to Islam and how Muslims are distributed across different ethnic groups and mosques.
- GenresReligion
152 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2004
3 people want to read
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January 27, 2026
A HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN (PARTICULARLY AFRICAN-AMERICAN) MUSLIMS
Mbaye Lo (a native of Senegal) is professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University; he also previously taught at Kent State University.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2004 book, “this book uses several qualitative research methods to examine the growth of Islam in the United States in general and the history of the Muslim community in Cleveland, Ohio, in particular. The last chapter of the book is based on a survey to answer questions that would otherwise remain unanswerable… What motivates people to convert to Islam? Who introduced them to Islam? What is the distribution of Muslims across ethnic groups and mosques? How religious and integrated are Cleveland Muslims? Anecdotal experience is not adequate to deal with such a range of issues. Survey research offers a more reliable and objective method for answering these questions.
“This is a comprehensive historical assessment of Muslim communities in Cleveland: their history, their faith and the challenges they face as they establish mosques, develop Islamic centers, and create a multi-ethnic community… It is my firm belief that the history of Islam in Cleveland is a local phenomenon with both national and global derivation. First, it evolved from the presence of the Ahmadiyyah movement, which arrived from India in the 1920s and established the first Muslim house of worship in Cleveland. That early center was replaced by the First Cleveland Mosque under the leadership of Imam Wali Akram in 1937. Then came the uniquitous Black Muslim groups in … the Nation of Islam, which ended up adopting mainstream Islamic beliefs under the leadership of Imam Warith Deen Muhammad and the influence of Muslim Immigrant groups… From 1930 to the present, these groups have produced different segments and brands of Islam, but in the last two decades, the face of Islam and the Muslim community in Cleveland have unified toward the national trend of mainstream Islam.”
He explains, “‘Sunni’ literally means those who follow the path of Prophet Muhammad. Shi’s, Shi’tes, or Shi’t literally means schism and partisan. It denotes those who were partisans of Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and the fourth caliph after the Prophet Muhammad. There are different sects within each group; altogether, they constitute what is known as the Muslim ‘Ummah’ (Islamic nation)… Sunnis make up more than two-thirds of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims.” (Pg. 12) Later, he adds, “Sufism is Islamic mysticism that focuses on spiritual values and the anti-establishment form of Islam… Sufis follow the esoteric dimension of Islam as a protest against Shi’a political activism and Sunni intellectualism and institutionalism in Islam…” (Pg. 12-15)
He states, “Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States. Because the U.S. Census Bureau does not identify religious affiliation, there is no official account of the number of Muslims in this country. According to … the American Muslim Council, the number of Muslims in the United States was … eight million in 1999… Paul Martinson estimated the number of mosques and Islamic centers in the United States to be 1,100… Most of these mosques and Islamic centers are associated with local or national organizations that promote Islamic views on moral, social, and political issues.” (Pg. 17)
He reports, “In recent years, there has been a growing academic inquiry into the social, historical, and political motivation of African-American conversion or reversion to Islam. Although African-Americans make up only 12% of the total American population, they represent more than one-third of the estimated … U.S. Muslims… Within academic inquiries and American Muslim writings two basic explanations of this phenomenon emerge… One school of thought proposes that the spread of Islam in the African-American community ought to be interpreted from a broad historical perspective that embodies all people of West African descent in the New World. This is because that Europeans consider the golden age of slavery (1500-1800) coincided with the rise of Islam and Muslim kingdoms in West Africa.” (Pg. 29-30)
The ‘Second Explanation’ is: “This group of mostly social scientists considers the tendency toward Islam among African-Americans to be an identity issue generated by years of subjugation to slavery, racism, and striking poverty. The Nation of Islam, the first popular Muslim movement of black Americans, symbolizes the apex of this search for identity… What attracted thousands to Elijah Muhammad’s message was not the Muslim religion itself but rather the nationalistic rhetoric of racial superiority of blacks that permeated the N.O.I.” (Pg. 37)
He goes on, “The disproportionately high number of African-American converts to Islam is a reality that needs an explanation. It is not only the historical consciousness that motivates these converts. By the same token, it is not an identity crisis that is bringing African-Americans to the abode of Islam. Rather, an objective and balanced reason for this phenomenon can be found in the interaction of three factors: the historical awakening, the African-American community, and the Islamic message. The cultural philosophy of African America defines itself historically in the imaginative consciousness inherited from Africa… the common ground was always defined dialectically to white racial ideology. As such, the further an African-American intellectual’s view were from Eurocentric ideology, the more authentic and grounded they were in black cultural philosophy.” (Pg. 40-41)
He adds, “The view that Islam is a religion that grows from bottom up explains why more than 80% of the American converts/reverts to Islam are African-Americans. Needless to say there is overwhelming evidence of economic disparity and racial biases entangling the African-American community in this country. The success of Islam in the inner city reflects another dimension of alternatives to the city inhabitants who witnessed few changes in their living conditions in the post-civil-rights era. When immigrant Muslims come, African-Americans who are the primary inhabitants of the inner city, are the first to talk to them, listen to them and, in some cases, learn their ways of life. Many Muslim immigrants were not practicing Muslims in their homeland. But the circumstance of living in a non-Muslim society brought them to the mosque where they discovered that their cultural backgrounds were an important commodity for religious authority and leadership.” (Pg. 44)
He continues, “The penitentiary system alone is producing more converts than the standing mosques. Conversion/reversion while serving jail sentence has been a legacy of heroism since the days of Malcolm X, who himself was a jail convert. Eldridge Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, and Mike Tyson followed that trend… According to the American Muslim Council study in 1991, about 35,000 prisoners convert to Islam each year.” (Pg. 46)
He notes, “In the early 1970s, Lew Alcindor, a … basketball star… became a devoted Muslim and changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Like [Muhammad] Ali, he played a role in popularizing Islam in the mainstream culture. The same decade witnessed a mass trend among African-American artists and prisoners to adopt the religion of Islam as a part of following the legacy of the slain Muslim and civil rights leader Malcolm X. For example, LeRoi Jones, a leader and founder of the Black Arts School in Harlem, became Muslim and adopted the name Amiri Baraka.” (Pg. 75)
He explains, “When discussing Muslim immigrants in the United States, the first picture that comes to mind is the Arab community. However, Arabs represent only a small portion of the estimated 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. According to a 1989 study… only 18% of Muslims are in the Arab world; Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan account for 10% of the non-Arab Middle East; 30% live on the Indian subcontinent; 20% in Sub-Saharan Africa; 17% in Southeast Asia; and 10% in China and countries of the former Soviet Union. The false perception that most Muslims are Arabs and all Arabs are Muslims has some historical basis... [b]ecause the Prophet of Islam was an Arab, and the Qur’an and most Islamic sciences are in Arabic… The Muslim community in the United States is not predominantly Arab, and most Arabs in the United States are not Muslims.” (Pg. 89-90)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying Muslims (particularly African-American) in the United States.
Mbaye Lo (a native of Senegal) is professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University; he also previously taught at Kent State University.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2004 book, “this book uses several qualitative research methods to examine the growth of Islam in the United States in general and the history of the Muslim community in Cleveland, Ohio, in particular. The last chapter of the book is based on a survey to answer questions that would otherwise remain unanswerable… What motivates people to convert to Islam? Who introduced them to Islam? What is the distribution of Muslims across ethnic groups and mosques? How religious and integrated are Cleveland Muslims? Anecdotal experience is not adequate to deal with such a range of issues. Survey research offers a more reliable and objective method for answering these questions.
“This is a comprehensive historical assessment of Muslim communities in Cleveland: their history, their faith and the challenges they face as they establish mosques, develop Islamic centers, and create a multi-ethnic community… It is my firm belief that the history of Islam in Cleveland is a local phenomenon with both national and global derivation. First, it evolved from the presence of the Ahmadiyyah movement, which arrived from India in the 1920s and established the first Muslim house of worship in Cleveland. That early center was replaced by the First Cleveland Mosque under the leadership of Imam Wali Akram in 1937. Then came the uniquitous Black Muslim groups in … the Nation of Islam, which ended up adopting mainstream Islamic beliefs under the leadership of Imam Warith Deen Muhammad and the influence of Muslim Immigrant groups… From 1930 to the present, these groups have produced different segments and brands of Islam, but in the last two decades, the face of Islam and the Muslim community in Cleveland have unified toward the national trend of mainstream Islam.”
He explains, “‘Sunni’ literally means those who follow the path of Prophet Muhammad. Shi’s, Shi’tes, or Shi’t literally means schism and partisan. It denotes those who were partisans of Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and the fourth caliph after the Prophet Muhammad. There are different sects within each group; altogether, they constitute what is known as the Muslim ‘Ummah’ (Islamic nation)… Sunnis make up more than two-thirds of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims.” (Pg. 12) Later, he adds, “Sufism is Islamic mysticism that focuses on spiritual values and the anti-establishment form of Islam… Sufis follow the esoteric dimension of Islam as a protest against Shi’a political activism and Sunni intellectualism and institutionalism in Islam…” (Pg. 12-15)
He states, “Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States. Because the U.S. Census Bureau does not identify religious affiliation, there is no official account of the number of Muslims in this country. According to … the American Muslim Council, the number of Muslims in the United States was … eight million in 1999… Paul Martinson estimated the number of mosques and Islamic centers in the United States to be 1,100… Most of these mosques and Islamic centers are associated with local or national organizations that promote Islamic views on moral, social, and political issues.” (Pg. 17)
He reports, “In recent years, there has been a growing academic inquiry into the social, historical, and political motivation of African-American conversion or reversion to Islam. Although African-Americans make up only 12% of the total American population, they represent more than one-third of the estimated … U.S. Muslims… Within academic inquiries and American Muslim writings two basic explanations of this phenomenon emerge… One school of thought proposes that the spread of Islam in the African-American community ought to be interpreted from a broad historical perspective that embodies all people of West African descent in the New World. This is because that Europeans consider the golden age of slavery (1500-1800) coincided with the rise of Islam and Muslim kingdoms in West Africa.” (Pg. 29-30)
The ‘Second Explanation’ is: “This group of mostly social scientists considers the tendency toward Islam among African-Americans to be an identity issue generated by years of subjugation to slavery, racism, and striking poverty. The Nation of Islam, the first popular Muslim movement of black Americans, symbolizes the apex of this search for identity… What attracted thousands to Elijah Muhammad’s message was not the Muslim religion itself but rather the nationalistic rhetoric of racial superiority of blacks that permeated the N.O.I.” (Pg. 37)
He goes on, “The disproportionately high number of African-American converts to Islam is a reality that needs an explanation. It is not only the historical consciousness that motivates these converts. By the same token, it is not an identity crisis that is bringing African-Americans to the abode of Islam. Rather, an objective and balanced reason for this phenomenon can be found in the interaction of three factors: the historical awakening, the African-American community, and the Islamic message. The cultural philosophy of African America defines itself historically in the imaginative consciousness inherited from Africa… the common ground was always defined dialectically to white racial ideology. As such, the further an African-American intellectual’s view were from Eurocentric ideology, the more authentic and grounded they were in black cultural philosophy.” (Pg. 40-41)
He adds, “The view that Islam is a religion that grows from bottom up explains why more than 80% of the American converts/reverts to Islam are African-Americans. Needless to say there is overwhelming evidence of economic disparity and racial biases entangling the African-American community in this country. The success of Islam in the inner city reflects another dimension of alternatives to the city inhabitants who witnessed few changes in their living conditions in the post-civil-rights era. When immigrant Muslims come, African-Americans who are the primary inhabitants of the inner city, are the first to talk to them, listen to them and, in some cases, learn their ways of life. Many Muslim immigrants were not practicing Muslims in their homeland. But the circumstance of living in a non-Muslim society brought them to the mosque where they discovered that their cultural backgrounds were an important commodity for religious authority and leadership.” (Pg. 44)
He continues, “The penitentiary system alone is producing more converts than the standing mosques. Conversion/reversion while serving jail sentence has been a legacy of heroism since the days of Malcolm X, who himself was a jail convert. Eldridge Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, and Mike Tyson followed that trend… According to the American Muslim Council study in 1991, about 35,000 prisoners convert to Islam each year.” (Pg. 46)
He notes, “In the early 1970s, Lew Alcindor, a … basketball star… became a devoted Muslim and changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Like [Muhammad] Ali, he played a role in popularizing Islam in the mainstream culture. The same decade witnessed a mass trend among African-American artists and prisoners to adopt the religion of Islam as a part of following the legacy of the slain Muslim and civil rights leader Malcolm X. For example, LeRoi Jones, a leader and founder of the Black Arts School in Harlem, became Muslim and adopted the name Amiri Baraka.” (Pg. 75)
He explains, “When discussing Muslim immigrants in the United States, the first picture that comes to mind is the Arab community. However, Arabs represent only a small portion of the estimated 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. According to a 1989 study… only 18% of Muslims are in the Arab world; Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan account for 10% of the non-Arab Middle East; 30% live on the Indian subcontinent; 20% in Sub-Saharan Africa; 17% in Southeast Asia; and 10% in China and countries of the former Soviet Union. The false perception that most Muslims are Arabs and all Arabs are Muslims has some historical basis... [b]ecause the Prophet of Islam was an Arab, and the Qur’an and most Islamic sciences are in Arabic… The Muslim community in the United States is not predominantly Arab, and most Arabs in the United States are not Muslims.” (Pg. 89-90)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying Muslims (particularly African-American) in the United States.
Displaying 1 of 1 review