format_quote Originally Posted by Muslim Woman
Ouch!!!!
I seek refuge in Allah (The One God) from the Satan (devil) the cursed, the rejected
With the name of ALLAH (swt) -The Bestower Of Unlimited Mercy, The Continously Merciful
Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh (May the peace, mercy and blessings of Allah be upon you)
&&
How to Make America an Islamic Nation
by Yahiya Emerick
I was born and raised here. This is my land. I'll raise my children here, Insha'allah and probably be buried here as well.
I knew that by accepting Islam I was declaring that America needed to do so too. America, my home, would naturally become an Islamic country one day.
There is no other way to think if you are a truly conscientious believer in Allah.
...The Yemenis formed a master plan and determined to stay together. They set up a fund and slowly bought one house after another, moving Muslim families in and drug-infested kafirs out, until they literally had thousands of Muslims businesses and stores in the heart of the community and bought a huge Catholic church and made it into a beautiful masjid. They even made a small community health care center!
When we were leaving our meeting and walking to the masjid for salat, it was the most beautiful sight: from all directions, men, women and children, of all races, were going to their masjid as a community.
I've never been to Muslim country before, but I'll tell you this much, I felt as if I were in an Islamic country. And this wasn't Egypt or India or Turkey. It was right here - in America
http://www.themodernreligion.com/convert/america.html
format_quote Originally Posted by Muslim Woman
Ouch!!!!
sorry i don't get this thread can you explain it to me
Wa Salaam
format_quote Originally Posted by snakelegs
Salaam/peace,
in another forum , a Christian became so angry , he threated to complain to FBI / related org about our revert American bro.
’Europe is pregnant with Islam and will give a birth to an Islamic nation’
Thursday, May 19, 2005
KurdishMedia.com - By Aland Mizell
Since September 11, the word Islam has become familiar words around the world. Some Muslims see this phenomenon as an open door for spreading Islam globally. Some even interpret this tragedy as fortuitous because they say Allah will bring good news out of bad news. Others argue that in the future Islam and the message of the Qur’an would have prevailed in any case. Also, some Muslims go further to provide what they perceive as clear proof that this victory will occur.
For example, students of Mola Saidi Kurdi refer to his writings to provide such evidence. Saidi Kurdi, an Islamic theologian, born in 1876 in the Kurdish city of Bedlîs in Northern Kurdistan (Southeastern Turkey), predicted a long time ago that Islam would, in what he deemed the near future, gain ascendancy. Because Islam
holds that everything happens for a reason, some Islamists interpret the World Trade Center attack as a means of spreading Islam. In this view the event advanced the early twentieth century prophecy of the Bediuzzamans [holy man].
In 1908, Saidi Kurdi foretold that Europe would become an Islamic nation. He wrote that his followers should take with pleasure the advantages of Europe - like technology and industry - that would assist them in their progress toward their goal and in the development of their civilization. However, he admonished them that they should forbid the sins and evils of Western civilization from entering the boundaries of their freedom and their culture. With the sword of the Sharia, the Quran, young people in his civilization would be protected by the pure, cold spring of life of the Sharia. He advised that they must imitate the Japanese in acquiring civilization, for by taking only the virtues of civilization from the Europeans, they would preserve their national customs, the leaven of every nation’s continuance, but leave behind the undesirable.
Believing that the most effective tool to defeat the enemy is to shoot the enemy with his own weapon, Muslims see the enemy’s weapon as democracy, rule of law, and particularly freedom of expression. Technology and higher education are also to be appropriated to use against infidels. In their home countries, most Islamists cannot exercise freedom of expression, but in the West they seize the benefits of democracy to spread Islam. Ironically, the airplane hijackers lived in the United States under the rule of law as ordinary members of the community until they executed their plan to crash the planes into the buildings and kill so many occupants. By this strategy of assessing the most advantageous tools of the Western world, Islamic organizations with a mission to revive an international Islamic state take hold of every means of achieving their goal, especially the benefits of the enemy’s society. Academic freedom, freedom of assembly, sophisticated technology, as well as values of tolerance, equal access, and freedom of speech have permitted Islam to become the most rapidly growing religion in both the United States and Europe.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Saidi Kurdi recognized that through their own technology Europeans could be conquered. His early writings predict this conquest. In the autumn of 1908, one of the leading members of the famous el-Ezher University in Cairo, and at one time Grand Mufti of Egypt, Seyh Muhammed Bahid visited Istanbul. The Istanbul ulema, inferior to Bediuzzaman in argument and debate, asked Seyh Bahid if he would meet him for an intellectual exchange. The Seyh accepted, and one day after prayers in Aya Sophia, a contest began. Bediuzzaman was seated in a tea-house with other ulema present. Seyh Bahid approached Bediuzzaman, and questioned him: "What is your opinion concerning Freedom and the Ottoman State, and European civilization?" Bediuzzaman unhesitatingly replied with insightful comment. "The Ottoman State is pregnant with Europe, and it will give birth to a European state one day. And Europe is pregnant with Islam; one day it will give birth to an Islamic state (Tarihe-i Hayat, shf. 45).
In his early writing he explained, "Europe and America are pregnant with Islam. One day, they will give birth to an Islamic state. Just as the Ottomans were pregnant with Europe and gave birth to a European state." He addressed his followers and those who would come, "O my brothers who are here in the Umayyad Mosque and those who are in the mosque of the world of Islam half a century later! to foretell of a worldwide Islamic empire.
He forecast that it is only Islam that will provide true moral and spiritual rule in the future and only Islam that will lead those under its State to happiness in this world and the next. He believed that true Christianity, stripping off superstition and corrupted belief, would be transformed into Islam; following the Qur’an, it would unite with Islam (Hutbe-i Samiye, 19-28.) Saidi Kurdi argued that Islam’s progress and supremacy in the future would prevail, because European civilization is founded on the negative virtues of "lust and passion, rivalry and oppression," rather than on virtue and guidance, as he believed Islam is. Secular Europe has cast off its Judeo-Christian values and the culture derived from them leaving a moral vacuum for Islam to rush in. Researchers studying Europe today note that church attendance has dropped and, for example in France, is at approximately five percent. As one cardinal noted, Europe has become a pagan continent. It is this secular paganism that has created the void.
Saidi Kurdi questioned his followers, "How is it that while there are such powerful and unshakable ways and means for the material and moral progress for the believers and people of Islam, and the road to future happiness has been opened up like a railway, you despair and fall into hopelessness in the face of the future and destroy the morale of the Islamic world?.... Since the inclination to seek perfection has been included in man’s essential nature, in the future truth and equity will show the way to a worldly happiness in the world of Islam, God willing, in which there will be atonement for the former errors of mankind (Hutbe-i Samiye, 28-32.) He asked them how they could be losing hope with such a potential for expansion.
In considering the expansion of his movement, Saidi Kurdi noticed that one of the sicknesses that had entered heart of the world of Islam was despair. In his interpretation of Said Nursi’s writings, Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish Islamic spiritual leader of a worldwide movement today, remarks: "He says that it was despair that had destroyed the morale of Muslims, so that the Europeans had been able to dominate them and make them their captives for the preceding four hundred years. And it was despair that had killed their high morality, and caused them to abandon the public good for personal benefit. And despair had even caused them to use the indifference and despondence of others as an excuse for their own laziness, and to abandon the courageousness of belief, and neglect their Islamic duties. He says that despair is the quality and pretext of cowards, the base, and the impotent. It cannot be the quality of the Arabs in particular, who are famous for their tenacity (Hutbe-i Samiye,
37-9).
Setting aside Saidi Kurdi’s Kurdishness, his successors capitalized on his Islamic theology and presented him as Said Nursi in his writings and in his reputation. Instead of remaining in a post-Ottoman despair, Saidi Kurdis followers were encouraged to spread Islam diligently, particularly through education. Said Nursi tells a parable of his movement: When Saidi Kurdi was on his way from Batum to Van he claimed that, "the future shall be Islam’s and Islam alone." In Tbilisi, today the capital of Georgia, Saidi Kurdi climbed the hill known as Shaykh Sanan Tepesi, which views the city of Tbilisi and valley of the river of Kura. When a Russian policeman approached him, the policeman asked him, "Why are you studying the land with such attention, Saidi Kurd?" Saidi Kurdi replied: "I am planning my medrese," and the conversation went on as follows:
Where are you from?
I’m from Bedlîs
But this is Tbilisi!
Bedlîs is one of Tbilisi.
The policeman was bewildered:
What do you mean?
Saidi Kurdi explained that three lights are beginning to be revealed one after the other in Asia and in the world of Islam. Three layers of darkness will start to recede, [ meaning that the Caucasian and Central Asian countries would become independent and take on Islam.]
This only increased the policemans bewilderment. I’m sorry for you he said. I’m astonished that you should entertain such a hope. And I am astonished at your lack of understanding! replied Bediuzzaman. Do you think it possible that this winter will continue? Every winter is followed by spring, and every night by day. But the Islamic world is all broken up and fragmented. They have gone to study. It is like this: India is an able son of Islam; it is studying in the high school of the British. Egypt is a clever son of Islam; it is taking lessons in the British school for civil servants. Caucasia and Turkestan are two valiant sons of Islam; they are training in the Russian war academy. And so on. You see, after these noble sons of Islam have received their diplomas, each will lead a continent, and, waving the banner of Islam, their just and mighty father, on the horizons of perfection, will proclaim the mystery of pre-eternal wisdom inherent in mankind in the view of pre-eternal divine determining and in the face of obstinate fate (Said Nursi. Kastamonu Lahikasi, 121-32).
Although written several decades ago, this narrative clearly sets forth the goals as well as the strategy of the Nur movement. Taking this prophecy to heart, Fethullah Gulen, the leader of the Fetullahci world wide educational system, Interfaith Dialogues, and the Rumi Organization, has raised up an army of young Islamists armed with a good education and the code of secrecy and unwavering allegiance to him, to go as missionaries to spread Islam and in so doing ensure the birth of Islam in Europe, and then in the United States. These youth are today’s noble sons who have waved the banner of Islam to bring about the obstinate fate of a global Islamic movement. Fethullah seemingly offers an alternative voice to radical Islam but behind the guise of tolerance and ecumenicalism lies Said Nursi’s injunction to bring about a European Islamic polity.
Gulen encourages his followers to leave their Islamic country to spread Islam and economically to be independent of the western countries. By infiltrating the most prestigious universities in Europe and in the United States, among other regions, they can gain not only an excellent education but through that means gain access to power, influence, and wealth. Receiving major scholarships, grants, and influential academic positions from teaching assistants to chairs of departments, they have made great inroads to influence the minds of the youth from the classroom lecture to the numerous articles in scholarly journals and leading newspapers.
Writing as supposed secular academicians, journalists, and independent players, they critique Islam and its tenets with seeming objectivity, while advancing their message in each seminar, symposium, article, or cultural event. A concerted effort to orchestrate Saidi Kurdi’s goals underlies the movements today. The success of this orchestration in Europe results from Saidi Kurdi’s oath to teach the Quran, so that it became the religious, social, and political foundation for a worldwide empire. Believing that the task of
Muslims was to spread the revelation of the Quran until the entire world accepted it, he applied this mission to Europe. Saidi Kurdi pledged to conquer through the Quran.
One time an Ottoman Pasha showed him an article about Islam in a London newspaper. It argued that as long as the Muslims had the Quran in their hands, they [the Europeans] could not colonize them [the Muslims]. It proposed, "We needed to take the Quran away from the Muslims, and then we can colonize them." Today Muslims
believe that once Muslims get away from the Quran, they will become inferior to non- Muslims; also, they believe that Islam will otherwise not be defeated but will instead prevail. From then on Saidi Kurdi believed their strength lay in the Quran and took an oath that he would prove to the world that the Quran is like a sun and would not disappear but would instead shine forever.
As of April 2005, the CIA Factbook categorizes the religious affiliations in Germany as 34% Protestants, 34% Catholic, 3.7% Muslim and 28.3% unaffiliated, but many of those labeled Protestant or Catholic are nominal while most of the Muslim hold to their faith in part because of their immigration to a host country. Approximately 3.4% of the population in Germany is Turkish. Other variables are the 0% population growth rate and the 2.18 per 1000 immigration rate. Indigenous Germans are having fewer children while immigrants are having many. Today, Germany has 2600 mosques, in England there are 900 mosques and many Islamic schools, and in France almost every city has at least one mosque (Yeni Asya newspaper 3 Nov. 2005). Clearly, Europe has a tremendously growing Muslim population.
According to the German Federal Foreign Office, there are about 3.2 million Muslims from forty-one different countries with Turks and Kurds being the most represented group. They came forty years ago trying to get the jobs that the Germans did not want like Mexicans today in the United States. Leaving much of the hard labor for immigrants, Germany allocates this work to the Turks today, but they have dominated almost all of the textile industry in Germany and have an Islamic bank, schools, and even a voice in politics. The Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen encouraged his follower to go to Europe to spread Islam and to prove that Saidi Kurdi was right.
Fethullah Glen believes that the Islamic nation would begin with the German people. He claims that if Muslims are to be successful, first they have to be independent of Europe economically, and then be superior economically and socially. He argues that they cannot be a super nation if they are still begging from Europe or from the infidels (Fasildan Fasila 3). Muslims in Turkey advocate Turkey’s accession to the European Union more than secular people in Turkey for several reasons. First, Muslims will freely increase their missionary activity in Europe. Secondly, they will not have any pressure from the Turkish military, a long-term check on Islamic activities, because the role of the military will decrease. Thirdly, the unsolved problems, such as wearing the headscarf, will be solved because the EU’s value of freedom of religion will overcome the threat to secularism that the scarves pose today. If we look at the AK Party, Erdogan is following exactly the same line that Fethullah Gulen is using, pressing Turkey to join the European Union. He uses a secular cloak to disguise his fundamental Islamic spirit characterized by his pre-prison poem.
In an article in the Cumhuriyet newspaper, Ahmet Arpad claims that since September 11 Muslim organizations have conquered Germany. He explains that they took advantage of the lacuna of Islam in the West; they know how to use this advantage by infiltrating into intellectual circles, churches, liberal organizations, and other institutions to present a different face of Islam by using Interfaith Dialogue. In the early 90s, Fethullah sent young businessman and students to Germany to open schools and to start businesses. The schools were mostly the elementary level; education was free and very successful. Arpad says that Gulen’s followers were never associated with him. He admits, "If you try to associate them with any kind of religious organization, they threaten you by suing you. This is their kind of trick to counter the charges. Fethullah has spent an enormous amount of unaccounted Euros, but still leaders in the schools deny that they are associated with him" (Cumhuriyet 13 Mar. 2005).
Also, the data presented in an article in Ozgur Politika, notes that Fethullah Gulen’s aim is to start a new Islamic university in Germany besides the high schools, elementary schools, and preschools. He has sent hundreds students overseas to get their Masters and Doctorates in Germany. According to the Ozgur Politika newspaper, Fethullah has sent 500 students to the U.S. since 2001 to get Ph.D.s and Masters degrees (Ozgur Politika 29 Jan. 2001). This estimate is very conservative. In addition, most of those students are getting funds or scholarship from the U.S government.
The noted Middle Eastern historian from Princeton University, Bernard Lewis, ignited the European world when he commented on July 28, 2004, to the conservative Hamburg-based daily Die Welt that Europe would be Islamic by the end of this century "at the very latest" (Qtd. in Caldwell 1). Agreeing with Lewis, a Syrian immigrant and prominent Muslim in Germany, Bassam Tibi, refined the opinion in Welt am Sonntag, "Either Islam gets Europeanized, or Europe gets Islamized." He believes that Europe cannot defend itself against Islam nor steer its direction, but merely can chose between two forms: "The problem is not whether the majority of Europeans is Islamic," he added, "but rather which Islam--sharia Islam or Euro-Islam--is to dominate in Europe" (Qtd. in Caldwell).
Many Muslims recognize Said Nursi for his religious leadership rather than for his Kurdishness. Said Nursi even offered a solution for the Kurdish question to the Ottoman sultan, but the sultan rejected it. Said Nursi wrote a letter to Sultan Abuldulhamid, proposing a solution by suggesting that he open a university in Wan, in Northern Kurdistan (southeastern Turkey), and suggested that the language should be in Turkish, Kurdish, and Arabic because the majority of people who live in Wan are Kurds; Arabic was the language used for religion, and Turkish was the language of government affairs, but the Sultan failed to understand Mullah Saidi. Today the Turkish government seems to be returning to his solution, but whether these initiatives are motivated by Muslims in the current administration who understand Saidi Nursi’s ideology or by the pressure of the European Unions criteria remains unanswered. Even though there is no such Kurdish language in academia in Turkey yet, in the near future the recommendations of Said Nursi will be implemented.
Said Nursi gained his reputation, not for his Kurdish identity, but for his Islamic writings and for his message of spreading Islam over the world, so that first Europe and then the United States would give birth to Islamic nations that would merge into a transnational empire in the future. His prediction from 1908 is becoming a reality with thirty million Muslims living in Europe, with Islamic websites linked to the official national homepages of, for example, Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, and with Fethullah Gulen’s Abant Journalists and Writers Foundation advocating the accession of Turkey into the EU at the European Parliament meeting in Brussels. Europe is close to delivering an Islamic nation.
Works cited
Arpad, Ahmet. Fethullahcilar Almanya’da emin adimlarla... Cumhuriyet 13 Mar. 2005
Germany. CIA Factbook. Apr. 2005.
Christopher Caldwell. Islamic Europe? The Weekly Standard. 10.4
From the 4th Oct. 2004 article, When Bernard Lewis Speaks. (4 Oct. 2004).
CIA World Factbook. Apr. 2005.
Federal Foreign Office.
Gulen Almanya’da Universite Kuruyor. Ozgur Politika. 29 Jan. 2001.
Gulen, Fethullah. Fasildan Fasila 3 .
Saidi Kurdi. Hutbe-i Samiye, 28-32.
---. Kastamonu Lahikasi, 121-32
---. Tari.he-i Hayat, shf. 45.
Yeni Asya, 3 Nov. 2005.
Aland Mizell,
University Of Texas at Dallas
School of Social Science
Salaam/peace,
format_quote Originally Posted by Yanal
will u pl. visit the link & read the whole article ?
our revert US bro is giving suggestion how it will be possible to make the only Super power an Islamic Nation.......sounds impossible ? May be not if we try hard & if it's a will of Allah . Who ever thought that after 9/11 , many Americans will embrace Islam ?
u/we can think more about this possibility & try , try , try
....I was attending a meeting of the newly-formed local ICNA group and had never been exposed to the place before. What I saw amazed me. I was elated, in fact!
Children were saying salaams to me on the street and women (in hijab) were walking around and going places leisurely and confidently.
I saw Muslims who were Arab, Black and Bengali. But what took the cake for me was when out of nowhere I heard the adhan outdoors over a loudspeaker. They fought the city council and won the right to do adhan five times a day in the community!
http://www.themodernreligion.com/convert/america.html
Europe's Hatred Against IslamFirst of all, we should not label someone from the geographical point of view. But every common Muslim believes due to many innocent deaths today that Europeans and Americans hate Muslims and Islam. What is behind this hatred? I tried to dig deep into history to find out the answer but as history has been corrupted, I dig deep into the autobiographies of many who had some background related to Europe and Islam. I found many interesting statements and views of not just common Europeans but many European heads of state.
I am presenting this book (http://qurango.com/europe.html) as a historical and a true logic behind the European hatred against Islam and Muslims. This book was origianlly written by Allama Jalal-ul-Alam and translated by Qazi Abu Salman Mohammad Kafayatullah alongwith Mohammad Tahir Naqqash. My purpose here is not to flame the hatred as the popular saying "hate begets hate, love begets love". In my own quest of finding out the true purpose behind such European hatred, I found none of them to qualify as GOOD one. All of them are usual historical and religio-political lies that got not much logical grounds. Hence all such crimes against humanity committed by European Forces on Muslim lands are based upon the normal historical truth of "might is right" irrespective of its wrong-doings. Since Islam has a built-in Defensive system called "Jihad", hence instead of succeeding in shutting down Islam, Europe's hatred has done a great benefit to raise the ranks of Muslims and the awareness inside Europe and many have started to believe that Europe's biggest religion will be Islam within next 2 or 3 decades whenever someone looks at the short history of Islam in Europe. Islam is not only the fastest growing religion in USA but in Europe too. And since the European identity is at the risk of being taken away by the universal appeal of Islamic ideology, hence the heads of European states have decided to use the Americans and Israelis to suppress Muslims wherever they are worldwide. And they call it a "war on terror" and never admit on public that it is actually a "war on Islam".
Thanks to the Islamic principles, there is no way that Muslims will hate the Europeans in the same way that they hate Muslims. However, Islam is being protected by the "Jihad" against such hatred which is a pillar of Islam. And in performing that Jihad, Islam does not permit its followers to hate the Non-Musilms in return. Instead, it asks Mujahideen to protect the families, wealth, women, children, and elderly of the European, American or Israelis fighting against Islam. The principles of war in Islam are clearly established and peaceful and no such massacres of innocent human beings are allowed as currently being committed by the Europeans and Americans worldwide, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
Viewing Images (Internet Explorer only): Please setup your browser to view the images 100%. Here is how you can do it in Internet Explorer Browser 5.5 and above; Click Tools --> Internet Options --> Advanced --> Multimedia --> Enable Automatic Image Resizing (Uncheck the box by clicking on it.)1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79Courtesy: Darulbalagh Publishers, Lahore, Pakistan. Phone: 92-300-4453358.
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Last edited by NoName55; 03-14-2007 at 01:51 PM.
format_quote Originally Posted by Muslim Woman
Inshallah.
Salaam/peace,
to all non-Muslims:
Visit a mosque
We'll do our best to arrange a visit for you.
877-WHY-ISLAM has a nationwide team of volunteers, who host non-Muslims at their local Mosques.
If you're interested, we'll find a mosque close to your residence, then we'll schedule a good time and date for you to come by.
You can visit the mosque, view one of 5 daily prayer services, attend one of their interfaith events, or just converse with the many members of a mosque. If you have any questions, you can also discuss them with the mosque members.
If you wish to visit a mosque in your area, fill out the form and one of our mosque-guide volunteers will get back to you within 24 hours.
http://whyislam.org/877/Services/MosqueVisit.asp
free brochure
Hijab - Unveiling the Mystery
http://whyislam.org/877/Services/Literature/8.asp
Video
Turning Muslim in Texas
by turntoislam.com
Islamic Organizations in North America
http://whyislam.org/877/Info/natl_orgs.asp
The rise of Islam in America is almost entirely due to immigration. The number of Muslims entering America, will never exceed the number of non-Muslims entering the US, legally or not. America will never become a Islamic country.
someone told me that if we use maths it could take a mere 5 thousand years or so based on current trends of migration
WOW.format_quote Originally Posted by Muslim Woman
But I haven't heard a thing about that new alcohol law...Strange. Very odd indeed. What, do they have cops hiding now that jump out and say, "Gotcha!" every time someone tries to buy a beer from the gas station? O.o
How recent is that article?
either by immigiration or by conversion ..(anyway good news).....
America will surely become an islamic country one day for sure.........
and its a fact that the conversion of non muslims to islam is at a high rate.......
Then stop being silly and use Islam instead of math.format_quote Originally Posted by NoName55
The way America is now makes me thinks that the Islamic Republic of America is far away...>.<format_quote Originally Posted by Muzammil
god save me from theocracy of any kind!
Salaam/peace,
---but not impossibleformat_quote Originally Posted by Count DeSheep
But I haven't heard a thing about that new alcohol law
---it's our brother's hope about future
here is the 2nd para.......Sound like fiction? It may be fiction now, but the future is ........
had I spoken to you like that I would already have recieved a PM from Admin or a modformat_quote Originally Posted by Count DeSheepThen stop being silly and use Islam instead of math.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
20th CenturyEssay:
Islam in America: From African Slaves to Malcolm XUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Thomas A. Tweed
©National Humanities CenterWhen students think of Islam—if they do at all—they might summon an image of Denzel Washington playing a stern and passionate Malcolm X in Spike Lee's 1992 film, or maybe they imagine Louis Farrakhan on the speaker's platform at the Million Man March in 1995. Some might have encountered Middle Eastern Muslims on the nightly news, mostly as "fundamentalists" and "terrorists." A few have met immigrant Muslims in their neighborhood. Muslim students might be among their classmates. But Muslims are more diverse than popular images allow, and American Muslim history is longer than most might think, extending back to the day that the first slave ship landed on Virginia's coast in 1619. It encorporates two groups—Muslims from other countries who migrated to America by force or by choice, and African Americans who created Muslim sects in the twentieth century. Thus, a consideration of the Islamic presence in America provides a new perspective on several important (and familiar) issues that will be used to organize this essay:At first, you will need to introduce Islam to your students, and a helpful way to do this is to invite their responses to the word "Muslim." What comes to mind when they hear the word? Write their responses on the board without comment, and then use the list to establish the dominant images of Muslims—for example, as militants, extremists, newcomers. Then you can begin to contest these impressions and establish that Islam is a diverse and long-standing American religion—one that has had a significant presence in the United States.
- What is the history of slavery in the United States?
- How have immigrants resisted and accommodated American culture?
- What were African Americans' experiences in the northern cities after the Great Migration?
- How has African-American Islam addressed race relations since the 1960s?
- Is America a Christian nation?
At this point you will need to introduce the basic beliefs and practices of the world's one billion Muslims, most of whom live in Asia, not in the Middle East as most Americans presume. As in Christianity and Judaism, Islam (which is second only to Christianity in worldwide adherents) includes a number of communities or branches. The two major groups are Sunni Muslims, who constitute about 85 percent of Muslims, and Shii (or Shiite) Muslims, who account for 15 percent of the world's Islamic population. All traditional groups are represented among the five million Muslims in the United States, along with some new movements that have been cultivated on American soil.
Muslims in prayer, Long Island, New York Courtesy Islamic Center of Long Island
Despite their diversity, Muslims have a good deal in common. They look to the Qu'ran— the sacred book that records the message of Allah [God] as it was revealed to his final prophet, Muhammed (A.D. ca. 570-632), and they seek to follow the example (sunna) of the prophet. All accept the Five Pillars of Islam, the basic beliefs and duties of Muslims:Slavery and Islam
- A profession of faith (shahada). All Muslims must proclaim "There is no God but Allah and Muhammed is his prophet." Note here that Muhammed is not God in Muslim theology but rather a spokesperson or mouthpiece for the divine.
- Prayer (salat). All Muslims pray five times daily while facing the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
- Alms (zakat). Faith also means outreach. To give thanks and follow the example of Muhammed, Muslims with the economic means must give alms to those who are less fortunate.
- Fasting (sawm or siyam). Muslims who are physically able are to fast from dawn to dusk during the ninth month (Ramadan) of the Islamic calendar.
- A pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. At least once in their lives, all Muslims who are able must make a pilgrimage to the Great Mosque in the holy city of Mecca, toward which they have knelt while praying five times daily during their lives. (Chapter seventeen of The Autobiography of Malcolm X offers a vivid account of this pilgrimage, which was life-transforming for him. It was on hajj, he recounts, that he first glimpsed the possibility that people of different races could get along.)
A small but significant proportion of African slaves, some estimate 10 percent, were Muslim. You might tell the story of Omar Ibn Said (also "Sayyid," ca. 1770-1864), who was born in Western Africa in the Muslim state of Futa Toro (on the south bank of the Senegal River in present-day Senegal). He was a Muslim scholar and trader who, for reasons historians have not uncovered, found himself captive and enslaved. After a six-week voyage, Omar arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in about 1807. About four years later, he was sold to James Owen of North Carolina's Cape Fear region. In 1819 a white Protestant North Carolinian wrote to Francis Scott Key, the composer of The Star Spangled Banner, to request an Arabic translation of the Bible for Omar, and apparently Key sent one. Historians dispute how much the African Muslim leaned toward Christianity in his final years, but Omar's notations on the Arabic bible, which offer praise to Allah, suggest that he retained much of his Muslim identity, as did some other first-generation slaves whose names have been lost to us. (Omar's Arabic bible, which has recently been restored, is housed in the library of Davidson College in North Carolina.)
Muslims and Immigration, 1878-1924
Most history courses cover the immigrants who changed America's population throughout the nineteenth century. You might point out these immigrants were not all European or Christian. Many were Chinese and Japanese migrants who practiced Buddhism and other Asian traditions. Thousands of Muslims came as well, and most of these first Islamic immigrants were Arabs from what was then Greater Syria. These Syrian, Jordanian, and Lebanese migrants were poorly educated laborers who came seeking greater economic stability. Many returned, disenchanted, to their homeland. Those who stayed suffered isolation, although some managed to establish Islamic communities, often in unlikely places. By 1920, Arab immigrants worshiped in a rented hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and they built a mosque of their own fifteen years later. Lebanese-Syrian communities did the same in Ross, North Dakota, and later in Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Michigan City, Indiana. Islam had come to America's heartland.
The first wave of Muslim immigration ended in 1924, when the Asian Exclusion Act and the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act allowed only a trickle of "Asians," as Arabs were designated, to enter the nation.
African-American Islam in the Urban North
A Euro-American, Mohammed Alexander Webb (1847-1916), proclaimed himself a Muslim at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, but converts have been more prominent among Americans of African descent, especially those who followed the mass migrations of southern blacks to northern cities beginning in the early decades of the twentieth century. Noble Drew Ali established a Black nationalist Islamic community, the Moorish Science Temple, in Newark, New Jersey in 1913. After his death in 1929, one of the movement's factions found itself drawn to the mysterious Wallace D. Fard, who appeared in Detroit in 1930 preaching black nationalism and Islamic faith. Fard founded the Nation of Islam there in the same year. After Fard's unexplained disappearance in 1934, Elijah Muhammed (1897-1975) took over, and he attracted disenchanted and poor African Americans from the urban north. They converted for a variety of reasons, but, for some, the poverty and racism in those cities made the Nation of Islam's message about "white devils" (and "black superiority") plausible.
Race Relations since the 1960s
Elijah Muhammed won an important convert when Malcolm Little (1925-1965) joined the faith in a prison cell. Malcolm X, the name he took to signal his lost African heritage, became a public figure during the 1960s, although he separated himself from the Nation of Islam before his death. After Elijah Muhammed's death in 1975, the movement split. One branch, under the leadership of the fifth son of Elijah Muhammed, moved closer to the beliefs and practices of Islam as it is practiced in most of the world. This group, which would later change its name to the American Muslim Mission, is the largest African-American Islamic movement. The much smaller Nation of Islam, which the American Muslim Mission and other Islamic groups condemn as racist and unorthodox, is much more familiar to most Americans. Many American Muslims would claim that the Nation of Islam, led by Louis Farrakhan, is not representative of either immigrant or convert Islam in the United States.
As you teach the Nation of Islam, you might ask students what the history of African-American Islam since the Great Migration tells us about race relations. Why were Malcolm X and others in northern cities so willing to believe that European Americans were "white devils"? In what sense, you might ask, is the Nation of Islam's sacred story about the origin of whites as the mistake of a black scientist a "truthful" representation of many African Americans' experience?
Muslims and the New Immigrants after 1965
If you are able to reach the post-1965 period in your class, you might reintroduce Muslims in a discussion of demographic changes in contemporary America. Palestinian refugees arrived after the creation of Israel in 1948. More important for the history of American Islam, the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 relaxed the quota system established in 1924, thereby allowing greater Muslim immigration. The gates opened even more widely after the 1965 revisions of the immigration law. Since then, Muslim migrants have fled oppressive regimes in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria; and South Asian Muslims, as from Pakistan, have sought economic opportunity. By the 1990s, Muslims had established more than six hundred mosques and centers across the United States.
Islamic Cultural Center of New York
Islamic Center of West Virginia
Islamic Center of Long Island Courtesy Muslimsonline.com, the Islamic Cultural Center of New York,and the Islamic Assn. of West Virginia
Is America a Christian Nation?
Toward the end of your discussion of Islam in America, you might raise this final issue concerning religion and national identity. Islam may soon be the second largest American faith after Christianity, if it is not already. Estimates vary widely, and a moderate estimate is five million American Muslims in 1997—more than Episcopalians, Quakers, and Disciples of Christ. When recounting this to students, and recalling the history of Islamic slaves and the early debates about the First Amendment, you might ask students whether America is a Christian nation as some have proclaimed. Could we, you might ask to focus the discussion, elect a Muslim president? If so, would she (while we are imagining, let's get bold!) view this land as a New Israel or take her presidential oath on a Christian Bible, as has been traditional?
Thomas A. Tweed holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University in Religious Studies and is currently the Zachary Smith Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Tweed is the author of Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (Oxford University Press, 1997) and the editor of Retelling U.S. Religious History (California University Press, 1997). He most recently co-edited, with Stephen Prothero, Asian Religions in America: A Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 1999).
Address comments or questions to Professor Tweed through TeacherServe "Comments and Questions."
Last edited by NoName55; 03-14-2007 at 08:52 PM. Reason: article added
What? Why? Now I feel bad...=(format_quote Originally Posted by NoName55had I spoken to you like that I would already have recieved a PM from Admin Muhammad.
talk about being consistent
Argh...Next time I should actually read the whole thing...format_quote Originally Posted by Muslim Woman
XD!format_quote Originally Posted by snakelegs
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