Customer Reviews

African American Islam

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Ms. McCloud writes a very informative book on Islam in America, as practiced by African Americans from a number of different perspectives. She addresses several communities and organizations which comprise a history of a century's worth of approaches and philosphies, explaining strategies utilized both for living and spreading the Islamic lifestyle as members of both a socio-political minority in the dominant culture in general, and as a religious minority within the African American culture in particular, and for successfully co-existing in what has often been a hostile and untrusting social context.

As a person who, as a teenager, was first exposed to Islam through the Nation of the Five Percent (now known as the Nation of Gods and Earths), and who has explored various expressions of Islam through the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and Orthodox Islam (including the Sufi tariqah), I developed an appreciation for the research required to develop this thorough writing. As Administrative Minister of a nondenominational religious organization, I can attest that this book adds to an understanding of the varying histories that each person brings to the table when Muslims gather, and that this makes serving him or her much easier for the pastoral counselor or spiritual leader.

African American Islam would make an outstanding contribution as required reading for America's universities, and would have helped my graduate work in religious humanities greatly. Ms. McCloud's style is easily read, and I couldn't put the book down until it was nearly finished. A true professional, Ms. McCloud gives the reader a factual presentation that doesn't betray her own allegiances or sympathies, a scholarly quality that makes this book a must-read for the adherent, the student, and anyone just interested in knowing more about this world faith which has for well over a hundred years been growing in America, with the arrival of the Moors several centuries ago.

This is a fine and accessible introduction to the varied experiences of African American Islam - the largest ehtnic component of the second largest religious faith in the U.S. today.

Teachers/Librarians: 9th grade to adult, social studies/humanities units.

At the time this 1995 book was published, Aminah Beverly McCloud was Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at DePaul University. She has also written Transnational Muslims in American Society.

She states in the Introduction, "This text is an introduction to some of the diverse community histories, beliefs, and practices that comprise African American Islam."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"The presence of Islam amongst African Americans can be traced to the earliest days of their forcible exportation to this continent. Although Western literature has encouraged the notion that most African slaves practiced traditional African religions and were first introduced to monotheism via Christianity, the areas in West Africa that were raped for slaves were in fact predominantly Muslim, and had been for six or seven hundred years prior to the slave trade. Hence, contrary to orthodox belief, a large portion of the Africans brought to this country as slaves were Muslims, and this fact is becoming increasingly clear through the discovery, translation, and interpretation of Arabic slave narratives." (Pg. 1)
"It is noteworthy, however, that the tension between nation-building and ummah is escalating, as the needs for community resources increase and Muslim world crises ebb and flow." (Pg. 78)
"The Nation of Islam's major celebration is Saviour's Day, which is a celebration of Fard Muhammad's birthday of February 26 of each year. This community had generally celebrated Ramadan ... in December to discipline members against the glitz of Christmas. Recently, some members of this community have participated in Ramadan as the lunar month with the rest of the Muslim world, but have not joined in the celebration at the end of Ramadan or the hajj." (Pg. 113)
"We know little about the Islam that came to the shores of America in the hearts and practices of Muslim slaves, primarily because of another masking discourse, i.e. that of Christianity and the institution of slavery. What we do know is that in twentieth-century America, African-American ex-slaves rediscover and reassert Islam as a worldview. The dominant forces of Christianity and racism immediately move to marginalize any Islamic presence." (Pg. 165)

This book will guide you down the path of the many groups in the black community which claim to be muslim from the orthodox(mainly Sunni) to the heterodox (Nation of islam, Moorish science etc). In conclusion highly recomeded.

This book is a very informative look at the different groups of African American who call themselves Muslims. The focus on Imam Jamil Al Amin is especially interesting.

The largest ethnic body of Muslims in the United States is not Iranian or Egyptian but American blacks. Statistics are notoriously difficult to ascertain, but they probably number several hundred thousand. Their ranks include such artists as Ahmad Jamal (the jazz musician) and Queen Latifa (the rap singer) and such sports figures as Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson (the boxers) and Kareem Abdul Jabbar (the basketball player). This body of believers is deeply divided, with mainstream Muslim groups on the one side and an exotic growth of homegrown communities on the other.

Unfortunately, McCloud tells little about these interesting topics. Instead, she provides rudimentary information about the groups (who started the organization, when it split, and so forth) without explaining their key features or conveying their spirit. The chapter on women has a distinctly apologetic tone. To make matters worse, McCloud gets basic facts wrong about Islam (there is no Islamic practice of taking shoes off when entering a house) and betrays some very strange political ideas (in one passage, she refers to "the atrocities committed by the United States" in the outside world).

Oddly, writing on this subject as a Muslim made McCloud's task all the harder: "because I am a Muslim, many communities were even more suspicious than usual about my motivation." Routledge, publisher of shelves full of distinguished books on Islam, slipped up on this one.

Middle East Quarterly, June 1995