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Mosques
Among enslaved Africans were African Muslims, many of whom were noted in some settings for their resistance to slavery in the Americas. Others were recognized for their refusal to convert away from Islam. Some kept their African names, continued to write in Arabic, observed religious fasts, read and recited the Qu'ran, and worked through the American Colonization Society to return to Africa. (From Richard Brent Turner, "Pre-Twentieth Century Islam," in Down by the Riverside: Readings in African American Religion, Larry G. Murphy, ed., New York: New York University Press, 2000, pp. 68-78)
Early in the twentieth century, movements in African Communities such as the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, the Muslim Mission of America, and the Amaddiyya movement led to conversions. Since World War II, the Nation of Islam offered African Americans a religious alternative, as have orthodox Muslim centers. Writing about the future of Islam in the African American community, Gordon Melton notes:
"Islam has become an established minority voice within the African American community.[It] has been able to find common cause with the larger multiracial American Muslim Community, now numbering in the millions and growing. ("The Second Emergence of Islam," in Down by the Riverside: Readings in African American Religion, Larry G. Murphy, ed., New York: New York University Press, 2000,
pp. 202-7) |
