African American Muslim Research Articles

The African American experience in the Islamic faith.

Disparity of health outcomes has been identified as a key concern in the health of Americans. Marginalization of the African American population may be a contributing factor. Identification of health protectors may prove key in decreasing disparities. The effect of spirituality on health is discussed. A historical overview of the African American experience in the Islam faith, from the Nation of Islam to universal Islam, is presented. A systematic assessment of the Islamic faith, with emphasis on the African American Muslim, was conducted as an assessment for a Community Health Nursing class. Leininger's Sunrise Model of Culture Care Diversity and Universality, with the ethnonursing model of data collection, served as the framework for data collection and analysis. The Islamic faith was noted to offer holistic direction for a "way of life" that promotes health and harmony of the mind, body, and soul. Implications for research were discussed.

The ‘Asabiya of African-American Muslims and an American Christian Response

The following article contends that the historical context of the African-American community within North America has produced a need for African-Americans to find a new identity. The development of Islam within this community has provided the basis for ‘asabiya, group identity, which is neither American nor African. Within the contemporary social setting of the African-American community, primarily in the urban areas of the United States, the development of Black Muslim groups during the early 1990s has been seen as a moral force within urban communities. This has enabled African-American Christians to participate in Black Muslim community projects even though uncertainties still remain regarding the Islamic basis of these projects.

Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African-American Islamic Thought. By Edward E. Curtis IV. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. xii, 174 pp. Cloth, $54.50, ISBN 0-7914-5369-3. Paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-7914-5370-7.)

Most early works on African American Islam, even C. Eric Lincoln's The Black Muslims in America (1961) and E. U. Essien-Udom's Black Nationalism (1962), generally dismiss black Muslims as either quasi-religious racial separatists or heretical Muslim cultists. Recent scholarship has sought to correct that prevalent tendency by evaluating African American Islam on its own terms. Toward this end, Edward E. Curtis IV has crafted an impressive slender volume that serves as both a history of religion and a history of ideas that squarely situates Islam within the African American experience. Although he is engaged in an exhaustive investigation of African American Islam in the twentieth century, his book also offers great insights into the evolution of such vital concerns within modern African American historiography as the Great Migration, New Negro militancy, pan-Africanism, black nationalism, and the civil rights and Black Power movements. The introductory chapter of the book succinctly outlines the author's governing assumptions about two distinctive ways of understanding African American Islam. First, instead of treating African American Islam as a religion per se, Curtis argues for a greater consideration of Islam as a religious “tradition” subject to more dynamic interpretations and complex adaptations. Making the semantic distinction between religion and tradition is crucial to the author's main argument. Second, the author examines how the diametrically opposed notions of universalism and particularism have shaped the evolution of modern African American Islamic thought over the last century. Each of five chapters analyzes one prominent black intellectual—Edward W. Blyden, Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Wallace Deen Muhammad—and how he grappled with Islam as a universal faith for all people, a faith for a specific group of people, or some combination of the two. In his treatment of those five figures, Curtis provides assessments of each thinker's intellectual and religious development that are both fresh and provocative.

African-American Muslim Women and Health Care

ABSTRACT Muslims constitute a growing proportion of the African-American population. This paper explores the health practices, health behaviors, and code of ethics as informed by the Islamic religion within the context of African-American Muslim women's lives. An overview of the history of Islam in the world, and in the U.S., the main Islamic tenets, and the socio-cultural context of African-American Muslim women provides the broad framework for this paper. This information will be helpful in meeting the health needs of African-American Islamic women, within an outreach/community health promotion setting, within a clinical/hospital setting, or within a home care setting.

Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism

Introduction PART ONE: AFRICAN AMERICAN JEWS AND ISRAELITES Black Culture and Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism, 1790-1930: An Overview African American Jews: Dispelling Myths, Bridging the Divide Symbolic Identity Formation in an African American Religious Sect: The Black Hebrew Israelites Another Exodus: The Hebrew Israelites from Chicago to Dimona PART TWO: AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSLIMS AND JUDAISM The Proximate Other: The Nation of Islam and Judaism The Nubian Islamic Hebrews, Ansaaru Allah Community PART THREE: AFRICAN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM Remembering Nehemiah, A Note on Biblical Theology Theological Affinities in the Writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr. This is the Gateway to the Lord: The Legacy of Synagogue Buildings for African-American Churches on Cincinnati's Reading Road The Jew in the Haitian Imagination Selected Bibliography Notes on Contributors

Muslims, Islamic Law, and the Sociopolitical Reality in the United States

Native born African-American Muslims and the Immigrant Muslimcommunity foxms two important groups within the American Muslimcommunity. Whereas the sociopolitical reality is objectively the samefor both groups, their subjective responses are quite different. Both arevulnerable to a “double Consciousness,” i.e., an independently subjectiveconsciousness, as well as seeing oneself through the eyes of theother, thus reducing one’s self-image to an object of other’s contempt.Between the confines of culture, politics, and law on the one hand andthe “Islam as a way of life” on the other, Muslims must express theircultural genius and consciously discover linkages within the diverseMuslim community to avoid the threat of double consciousness.

Competing Visions of Islam in the United States: A Study of Los Angeles

Tables Introduction Some Major Muslim Organizations in the United States Muslim Integration Gender Issues and Relations African-American Muslims Conclusion Selected Bibliography Index

Islam in the African-American Experience

African-American Islam, especially as practiced by the Nation oflslam, continuesto engage the attention of many scholars. The racial separatist tendency,contrasted against the color blindness of global Islam, has been the focal pointof most of these studies. The historical presence of African Americans in themidst of American racism has been explained as, among other things, the mainimpetus behind African-American nationalism and racial separatism. Islam inthe African-American Experience is yet another attempt to explain this historicalposition. Originally the author's Ph.D. dissertation, the book spans 293pages, including notes, select biographies, indices, and thirteen illustrations. Itstwo parts, "Root Sources" and "Prophets of the City," comprise six chapters; there is also an introduction and an epilogue. The book is particularly designedfor students interested in African-American Islam. The central theme of thebook is the signifktion (naming and identifying) of the African Americanwithin the context of global Islam. The author identifies three factors thatexplain the racial-separatist phenomenon of African-American Islam:American racism, the Pan-African political movements of African-Americansin the early twentieth century, and the historic patterns of racial separatism inIslam. His explanations of the first two factors, though not new to the field ofAfrican-American studies, is well presented. However, his third explanation,which tries to connect the racial-separatist tendency of African-AmericanMuslims to what he tern the “historic pattern of racial separatism” in Islam,seems both controversial and problematic.In his introduction, the author touches on the African American’s sensitivityto signification, citing the long debate in African-American circles. Islam, heargues, offered African Americans two consolations: first, a spiritual, communal,and global meaning, which discoMects them in some way from Americanpolitical and public life; second, a source of political and cultural meaning inAfrican-American popular culture. He argues that a black person in America,Muslim or otherwise, takes an Islamic name to maintain or reclaim Africancultural roots or to negate the power and meaning of his European name. Thus,Islam to the black American is not just a spiritual domain, but also a culturalheritage.Part 1, “Root Sources,” contains two chapters and traces the black Africancontact with Islam from the beginning with Bilal during the time of theProphet, to the subsequent expansion of Islam to black Africa, particularlyWest Africa, by means of conversion, conquest, and trade. He also points to animportant fact: the exemplary spiritual and intellectual qualities of NorthAmerican Muslims were major factors behind black West Africans conversionto Islam. The author discusses the role of Arab Muslims in the enslavement ofAfrican Muslims under the banner of jihad, particularly in West Africa, abehavior the author described as Arabs’ separate and radical agenda for WestAfrican black Muslims. Nonetheless, the author categorically absolves Islam,as a system of religion, from the acts of its adherents (p. 21). This notwithstanding,the author notes the role these Muslims played in the educational andprofessional development of African Muslims ...

Mediating Discrimination: Resisting Oppression among African-American Muslim Women

Using qualitative data from interviews with twenty African-American Muslim women, this analysis contrasts the understanding of experiencing discrimination gained from Feagin and Sikes' Living with Racism (1994) with that gained from Patricia Hill Collins' Black Feminist Thought (1991). I demonstrate Collins' theory of a matrix of domination and the both/and conceptual stance through examining these respondents' experiences with the intersection of race, gender, and religious discrimination. Furthermore, I argue that these women are able to mediate, or resist the oppression of, discrimination through the self-definition and determination, provided by a humanist vision of themselves and others. Finally, the respondents' membership in the Muslim community provides them with a safe social space to transform their life and their consciousness. Through these cultural and social structural means, this group of respondents are able to socially construct a reality that allows them to mediate the discrimination they experience.

Mediating Discrimination: Resisting Oppression among African-American Muslim Women

Mediating Discrimination: Resisting Oppression among African-American Muslim Women

Islam in the African-American Experience

Introduction. What Shall We Call Him: Islam and African-American Identity I. Root Sources 1. Muslims in a Strange Land: African Muslim Slaves in America 2. Pan-Africanism and the New American Islam: Edward Wilmont Blyden and Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb II. Prophets of the City 3. The Name Means Everything: Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple of America 4. The Ahmadiyya Mission to America: A Multi-Racial Model for American Islam 5. Missionizing and Signifying: W. D. Fard and the Early History of the Nation of Islam 6. Malcolm X and His Successors: Contemporary Significations of African-American Islam Epilogue. Commodification of Identity Notes Bibliography Index

The Islamic Jesus: Messiahhood and Human Divinity In African American Muslim Exegesis

Journal Article The Islamic Jesus: Messiahhood and Human Divinity In African American Muslim Exegesis Get access Kathleen Malone O'Connor Kathleen Malone O'Connor Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 66, Issue 3, FALL 1998, Pages 493–532, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/66.3.493 Published: 01 October 1998

Issues of Contextualisation: Challenges for African American Christians and Muslims

Issues of Contextualisation: Challenges for African American Christians and Muslims

Issues of Contextualisation: Challenges for African American Christians and Muslims

Issues of Contextualisation: Challenges for African American Christians and Muslims

Issues of Contextualisation: Challenges for African American Christians and Muslims

Issues of Contextualisation: Challenges for African American Christians and Muslims

African American Islam

African American Islam

African American Islam

African American Islam

Muslim Families in North America

The writers contributing their researaches to this book deal with anare8 that has not yet been adequately studied. Most of the litemhue onMuslims is historically or politically oriented and views immigrant Muslimsin North America as extensions of their homelands, in particular theMiddle East. This book discusses Muslim families as part of the pluralsticand ever-changjng social fabric of the United States and Canada. Thefamilies of African-American Muslims and Muslim converts are notstudied. We are going to present our critique chapter by chapter.Muslim Normative 'I).aditions and the North American Environment(Sharon Mclrvin Abu-Laban).The clear and workable typology of Muslim immigrant families presentedhere points out major social patterns and links to Islam. They aredivided into three cohorts based on "the dynamic interaction between socialconditions and group characteristics" @. 7): pioneer (nineteenth centuryto WWII); transitional (post-WWII to 1967); and differential (1968to ptesent). Different generations within each cohort are exarnined.African-American Muslims are excluded, as their case is unique.The fitst cohort lived in an era of total conformity to a socioculturalmilieu dominated by the English language and Christianity. This cohort'ssecond generation assumed a more conformist role due to its disadvantagedsocial status, distance from its original home and culture, and lackof financial resou~easn d ethnic institutions. Intermarriagew ith the widersociety was high. Ironically, all of this "generated the particular disdainof the newest Muslim immigrants," who arrived after 1976 @. 18).The transitional cohort consists mainly of foreign students from wellestablishedindigenous elite families who had been Europeanized beforetheir arrival. As a postcolonial generation, they saw nationalism, not religion,as a valuable means for development and social change. They intermarriedwith North Americans at a higher rate than their predecessors.The second generation of this cohort, along with the third generation ofthe pioneers, experienced the most discrimination and media stereotyping ...

The Case for Muslim Constitutional Interpretive Activity

Muslim Involvement: The Court Record 1.Prisoners' RightsCan we rely upon the courts to protect Islam and Muslims from discriminatory treatment? Have the courts considered Islam to be a 'religion' worthy of constitutional protection? The issue of First Amendment protection of Muslim beliefs and practices has arisen most often in cases brought by African-American Muslims who are incarcerated. In fact, the area of law to which Muslims have made their most substantial contribution to date is the area of prisoners' rights litigation. African-American Muslim inmates have been responsible for establishing prisoners' constitutional rights to worship. Cases brought by Muslims have established that prisoners have the right to assemble for religious services; to consult a cleric of their faith; to possess religious publications and to subscribe to religious literature; to wear unobstrusive religious symbols such as medallions; to have prepared a special diet required by their religion; and to correspond with their spiritual leaders. The court record demonstrates that Muslim inmates' religious liberty claims, challenging prison regulations that impinge on the free exercise of the Islamic faith, have been accepted only under certain circumstances. In brief, the responsiveness of the courts to Muslim inmates' claims has turned on a number of factors including: (1) the issue of equality of treatment of all religious groups in prison; (2) the courts' reticence to reverse the decisions of prison officials; (3) the degree to which the inmates' challenges would undermine the fundamental interests of the state (e.g. in prison security and administrative efficiency); and (4) the showing that Islam is parallel in significant ways to the conventional Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish faiths.Constitutional protection of Islamic practices in prison and elsewhere, however, has not been automatic. Many Muslim organizations, the Nation of Islam in particular, have been treated as cults, or suspect and dangerous groups, due in part to the perception that Muslims teach racial hatred, and have not been regarded in the same respect as 'mainline' religious groups. It has been argued before the courts that Muslim doctrine contains political aspirations and economic goals as well as racial prejudice and should be suppressed in the interest of society. The gist of this argument is that certain Muslim groups are primarily political and not religious associations and thus ...

Ethnicity and Family Therapy

McGoldrick, Giordano, Therapy with Families in Our Multi-Ethnic Society. Part I: Native American Families. Sutton, Broken Nose, Native American Families, An Overview. Tafoya, Del Vecchio, Back to the Future: An Examination of the Native American Holocaust Experience. Part II: Families of African Origin. Black, Families of African Origin: An Overview. Moore Hines, Boyd-Franklin, African American Families. Brice-Baker, Jamaican Families. Bibb, Casimir, Haitian Families. Mahmoud, African American Muslim Families. Nwadiora, Nigerian Families. Part III: Latino Families Garcia-Preto, Latino Families: An Overview. Bernal, Shapiro, Cuban Families. Falicov, Mexican Families. Garcia-Preot, Puerto Rican Families. Korin, Brazilian Families. Hernandez, Central American Families. Part IV: Asian Families. Lee, Asian Families: An Overview. Lee, Chinese Families. Matusi, Japanese Families. Kim, Korean Families, Leung, Boehnlein, Vietnamese Families. McKenzie? Pollack, Cambodian Families. Peircy et al, Indonesian Families. Santa Rita, Filipino Families. Part V: Middle Eastern Families. Abudabbeh, Middle Eastern Families: An Overview. Jalali, Iranian Families. Simons, Lebanese Families. Dagirmanjian, Armenian Families, Part VI: Asian Indian Families. Almeida, Hindu, Christian and Muslim. Part VII: Families of European Origin. Giordano, McGoldrick, European Families: An Overview. Emery, Amish Families. McGill, Pearce, Anglo Families. De Master, Dutch Families. Langelier, French Canadian Families. Steiner, Wetzel, German Families. Tsemberis, Orfanos, Greek Families. Smith, Hungarian Families. McGoldrick, Irish Families. Giordano, Italian Families. Araujo, Portuguese Families. Erickson, Sinkjaer Simon VIII, Scandinavian Families. Part VIII: Jewish Families. Rosen, Weltman, Jewish Families: An Overview. Fein, Soviet Jewish Families. Fogelman, Israeli Families. Marganoff, Folwarski, Slavic Families: An Overview. Folwarski, Marganoff, Polish Families. Kerr, Slovak Families. Althusen, Russian Families. Krestan, Czech Families.