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Islam in the African-American Experience

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I found this book to be clear and well-written, with a wealth of interesting and little-known information about the history of Muslims in the United States- not only African Americans. The first white American convert to Islam, the early communities from Eastern Europe, and the colorful Ahmadiyya movement are described in detail along with biographies of African American Muslim slaves, and black Muslim movements from the 1910s onward. He shows that just as in West Africa, Islam was spread among American blacks in a form that included local ideologies (in this case, racist nationalism). And, as in Africa, orthodox Islam was eventually adopted.
With that said, this book is written from a non-Muslim perspecitive, which is occasionally too evident. One may argue that concepts that the author claims were precedented in the late 1800s- (like the "jihad of words," Islam as a force to unify the oppressed), were actually present in the religion from the beginning. In addition, Turner's "myth of a race-blind Islam," takes a great deal of consideration...Basically, although this is a great book, it is time for American Muslims to begin writing their own history.

R. Turner does a fair job with book until he comes to Noble Drew Ali his entire frame of referrence comes from the Chicago Defender. A paper known for it's sensationalizing untrue stories of lurid sex and perverted crimes to sell more papers. Unfortunately it has been 70 years since D Ali's death and over a 100 since his birth and the Defenders articles are some of the only remaining sources of the time of D Ali on the earth plane, therefore the Defender unfortunately is one of the sources to satisfy the public's hunger for knowledge of this mysterious and great man. I would recommend the book "The Huevolution of Sacred Muur Science Past and Present" by Noble Timothy Myers-EL for a more objective commentary on the life of Drew Ali in chapter v.

Turner has produced a fairly interesting book which expands on his superior 1988 article, The Ahmadiyya Mission to Blacks in the United States in the 1920s" (_The Journal of Religious Thought_, Vol 44, No 2, Pp. 50-66). Although based entirely upon secondary sources, he presents some information that will be new to students of African-American Islam. His efforts unravel however when he becomes trapped in the enigma of W. D. Fard's identity. Fard, the mysterious founder of the Nation of Islam who knighted Elijah Muhammad as his successor, fled from Detroit in 1934 creating one of those apocryphal riddles that has distracted serious scholars of religion ever since. Rather than explore the alternative development of orthodox Islam in America - a subject badly in need of publishers' attention - Turner jumps from Fard to Farrakhan, another sensationalist personality who hardly represents the sentiments of contemporary African American Muslims. The concluding chapter deals with the interesting notion of religion as a cultural commodity, but it seems like an afterthought unrelated to the text.

Turner argues three interesting points in his faddish though well-researched study: First, Islam was a significant factor in the lives of American slaves. In particular, it had a disproportionate role in inspiring resistance to the institution of slavery: "writing in Arabic, fasting, wearing Muslim clothing, and reciting and reflecting on the Quran were the keys to an inner struggle of liberation against Christian tyranny." In reaction, whites sought the return of Muslims to Africa, "to rid America of Islam."

Second, this faith (what Turner calls the "old Islam") then died out. By the time of the Civil War, Islam among blacks was, "for all practical purposes, defunct."

Third, a "new Islam" took many years to revive and did so through the circuitous route of Pan-African nationalism, black Christian ministers distressed at the racism of their denomination, white American converts to Islam, Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, Nobel Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple of America, and the Indian-based Ahmadiyya Movement to America. W. D. Fard emerged from this eccentric background in 1930 and preached the religion that would eventually crystalize as the Nation of Islam. Turner then reliably covers the more familiar ground of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan, concluding that "African-American Islam has finally arrived on the center stage of American religion and politics."

Middle East Quarterly, December 1997

Turner's work provieds a much-needed insight into a little-understood aspect of American History. His work provides a clear chronology and argument to help the reader understand the impact that Islamic ideas and symbols have had upon the United States