EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

Abstract

The arrival of Islam in the United States of America has been datedback to the coming of slaves from Africa. During this unfortunate tradein human cargo from the African mainland many Muslim men andwomen came to these shores. Some of these men and women were morevisible than others; some were more literate in Arabic than the others:and some were better remembered by their generations than the others.Despite these multiple differences between the Muslim slaves andtheir brethren from various parts of the African continent, the fact stillremains that their Islam and their self-confidence did not save them fromthe oppressive chains of slave masters. The religion of Islam survivedonly during the lifetime of individual believers who tried desperately tomaintain their Islamic way of life. Among the Muslims who came in antebellum times in America one can include Yorro Mahmud (erroneouslyanglicised as Yarrow Mamout), Ayub Ibn Sulayman Diallo (known toAnglo-Saxons as Job ben Solomon), Abdul Rahman (known as AbdulRahahman in the Western sources) and countless others whose Islamicritual practices were prevented from surfacing in public.Besides these Muslim slaves of the ante bellum America, there wereothers who came to these shores without the handicap of slavery. Theycame from Southern Europe, the Middle East and the IndianSubcontinent. These Muslims were immigrants to America at the end ofthe Nineteenth Century and the beginning of the Twentieth Century.Motivated by the desire to come to a land of opportunity and strike it rich,many of these men and women later found out that the United States ofAmerica was destined to be their permanent homeland. In the search foridentity and cultural security in their new environment, these Muslimimmigrants began to consolidate their cultural resources by, buildingmosques and organising national and local groups for the purpose ofsocial welfare and solidarity. These developments among the Muslimscontributed to the emergence of various cultural and religious bodiesamong the American Muslims. In the drive for self-preservation and ...