Only he can be a leader who never loses hope.
Bapu Ke Ashirwad
February 12, 1946

What could be a more accurate, and simpler, definition of a leader than this? Bapu – more commonly known as Mohandas Gandhi – both believed in, and embodied, this statement. His hope to bring about change in society never waned, even after he was thrown out of a train at Peitermaritzburg Station in South Africa. He did not give up hope after the outbreak of violence by Satyagrahis in Chauri Chaura, during the first Civil Disobedience movement in 1920, which he suspended despite the fact that most of his colleagues felt they were on the verge of victory. Only Bapu was confident that he could suspend the movement and revive it later, when he was more assured about the readiness of his people and their discipline.

It is all too easy for leaders to become hostages to their followers, especially if they are fearful of possible backlash that could result from admonishing or criticizing them. Movements and protests can spiral out of a leader’s control and further devolve into chaos and violence. This lack of control, and discipline, is the opposite of leadership. A leader is one who has the ability to navigate the actions of his or her followers, ensuring they do not violate their principles: he or she should not succumb to populism. Bapu exhibited this ability throughout his entire life, both as a public entity and in his Ashram (religious) life.

Bapu founded one ashram in Ahmedabad, India, in 1915. He performed many Ashram rituals himself, and made these into a daily practice, which the Ashramites saw and emulated. He eventually went on to develop a system of virtues which he called the “11 Vows” (Ekadashi Vrat):

1. Ahimsa (Non-violence)
2. Satya (Truth)
3. Asteya (Not stealing)
4. Bhramhcharya (Celibacy or Fidelity)
5. Aparigraha (Non-possession)
6. Sharira-Shrama (Physical labor)
7. Aswada (Control of the Palate)
8. Sarvatra Bhayavarjana (Fearlessness)
9. Sarva Dharma Samanatva (Respect for all religions)
10. Swadeshi (Using local produce)
11. Sparshabhavana (Abolishing practice of untouchability)

He lived by these principles without preaching them or making a show of doing so. “An ounce of practice is of more significance than a ton of preaching,” Bapu believed, and so it was easy for his followers to believe him and follow suit. Today, leaders thrive on preaching and confusing their adherents. They also frown upon and discourage the habit of asking questions or allowing their followers to express discontent or dissent.

When Bapu announced the next Non-Cooperation Movement, he declared that he would march from Sabarmati to Dandi, which was a distance of 341 miles, and that he would pick up a fist full of salt from the sea shore and declare that he had broken the draconian Salt Monopoly that so hurt India. The British Imperial Regime had imposed a barbaric 3500% tax on the production and consumption of domestic salt. This act of defiance was meant to help declare India to be independent; however, many senior leaders of the Indian National Congress (INC) were not convinced and were opposed to his proposal. Sardar Patel, a senior leader of the INC, was one of the people who disagreed and argued about the foolishness of the proposal. Bapu gave him a patient hearing and finally convinced Sardar, who then took responsibility for organizing the protest. It was Sardar who actually finalized the route of the march and spread the message of the Salt Satyagraha (form of nonviolence resistance). Sardar was the first Indian leader who was arrested and imprisoned, even before Bapu began the Salt March, which explains why Sardar Saheb was absent while Bapu marched to Dandi.

Another senior leader of the INC to voice his dissent, was Motilal Nehru. He wrote a twenty-two-page letter to Bapu, with a point by point explanation of why Bapu’s proposed move would fail and put his future leadership in danger; he also explained how the INC would lose the people’s trust and support. In his reply, Bapu wrote:

“Adarniya Motilalji, Kar Ke Dekhien – Respected Motilalji, please give it a try.”

Any other leader would have taken such a short reply as an insult and rejected Bapu’s leadership; however, Motilalji accepted Bapu’s decision. After Bapu had symbolically broken the Salt Law at Dandi and asked the people to follow, Motilalji declared that he would help break the Salt Law by leading his own satyagraha in the city of Allhabad.

By then, the Viceroy had ordered that all satyagrahas must be crushed by any means and its leaders must be immediately arrested, so that the movement would become leaderless and flounder. After announcing his intention to perform satyagraha, when Motilalji reached his home, the Police Commissioner was waiting for him with an arrest warrant. The last thing Motilalji did before going to prison was to send a telegram to Bapu stating the following:

“Adarniya Gandhiji, Karne se Pehle hi Dekhliya! – Respected Gandhiji, I have realized its power even before trying it out!”

This was the confidence of a true leader and such was his honesty and humility that his subordinates and contemporaries had the freedom to question his decisions and seek that he convince them before they obeyed. This also illustrates the fact that a great leader had the resolve and confidence to go it alone without becoming a hostage to the opposition of those who disagreed with him or defied his decision. As Gurudev wrote:

“Joki tor haak shunee koi na aashe tomi ekla Chalo Re…: When no one heeds your call, oh unfortunate one, walk alone.”

Bapu had the courage to tread a lonely path.  This is a hallmark of a great leader.

Bapu never aspired to become a leader. His ambition was always to serve the people and the cause to the best of his ability, and the honesty of his method was always of paramount importance, even more so than his desired objective. This sets him apart from the majority of other leaders.

1. To make the realm to its activity more spacious for the spirit, one should have a firm religious belief and develop spiritually through regular worship and asceticism. The more refined matter is, the more free and active the spirit. Austere practices-less food, more fasting, less sleep, refraining from all kinds of sins and regular and more frequent worship-are advised in this way. If one has innate capacity to develop one’s spiritual faculties, one can go beyond the limits of this material world, travel in the spirit in other dimensions of existence and, to some degree, get in contact with the past and future. It may be understood by means of the following analogy:

While you are in a room, you can see the things within the confines of the four walls. When you go outside, your viewing range will be broadened and include your immediate surroundings. You can see a still wider area from the top of a hill. As you ascend higher, the area you see is further enlarged. It is the same with time. The more free the spirit is from the imprisonment’ of matter and the body, the broader the realm of its activity is with respect to both time and space.

This way is usually the way of the Prophets and saints. Either through travel in spirit in time and space or through being taught by God, the Knower of the Seen and Unseen, they can penetrate into the depths of time and space just as the light of the sun, although it is a material body, can be present in numberless places at the same time, so the spirit of a Prophet or a saint, especially one belonging to the group called ‘substitutes’ (abdal), can be present in many places at the same time in the immaterial or energetic form of its body. The Qur’an points to this: the Spirit (many interpreters of the Qur’an are of the opinion that it was the Archangel Gabriel) was seen before Mary the virgin, mother of Jesus, in the form of a human being. There are many authentic narrations about some saints who were seen in different places at the same time. This is, as pointed out above, like the sun being reflected in innumerable transparent things at the same time.

The spirit of a saint which has acquired enough enlightenment or luminosity comes across symbols or signs of past or future events while it is travelling in time. The saint interprets those visions of his and gives news of certain past or future events. This is comparable to interpretation of dreams. However, the saint may sometimes err in his interpretation. However, a Prophet, since he receives revelation and is directly taught by God Almighty, the Knower of the Unseen, never errs in his interpretations and predictions. Whatever the Prophets predicted always came true. For example, the Prophet Muhammad, upon him be peace and blessings predicted numerous future events. Most of his predictions have already come true, while others are waiting for their time to come true. (For many of his predictions, see, Said Nursi, The Letters, vol. 1, pp. 111-130; F. Gulen, The Infinite Light, vol. 1, pp. 67-82).

Muhy al-Din ibn al-’Arabi is a Muslim saint who lived in the thirteenth century. Although he died about half a century before the foundation of the Ottoman State at the beginning of the fourteenth century, he predicted numerous important events of Ottoman history. His work Shajarat al-Nu’maniyah, manuscripts of which are available in libraries in Edirne and Istanbul in Turkey, is like a history of the Ottoman State written in symbols. For example, he predicted that his burial-place would be discovered when Salim entered Damascus, and it happened as he predicted. Again, he predicted that despite nine months of siege, Hafiz Ahmad Pasha would not be able to capture Baghdad and Murad, the Sultan, would conquer it in forty days. He also predicted that Sultan ‘Abd al-’Aziz would be dethroned and killed. All these predictions of his came true.

Similarly, Mushtaq Dada of Bitlis, who lived in the first half of the eighteenth century, predicted that, following a war, Ankara would be made the capital of Turkey by one named Kamal. It happened exactly as be predicted. His Diwan, the book containing his poems, where this prediction can be found, is available.

It is certain that these beloved servants of God, whether Prophets or saints, make predictions only by God’s leave and power. God Almighty enables and allows them to make predictions. He declares: My servant can draw near unto Me in no safer and better way than performing his obligatory religious duties. He becomes nearer to me through supereregatory prayers. Once he becomes near to Me, I become his eyes with which he sees, his ears with which he hears, and his hands with which he holds.

2. The second way to travel in spirit in time and space or to penetrate into further and deeper dimensions of time and space is to follow the guidance of the relevant Divine Name or Names. All existence depends on the manifestations of Divine Names. We see because, as the manifestation of His Name the All-Seeing, God Almighty has made us able to see; as the manifestation of His Name the Self- Subsistent and the One Causing to Subsist, we are able to continue to exist. If He were to cease the manifestation of His Name, the One Causing to Subsist, in connection with existence, the universe would go to ruin all instantly.

Similarly by following the guidance of God’s relevant Names, spirit beings, like angels and jinn can take on the form of another being by God’s leave; for example, they can assume the form of an animal or human being. Especially jinn can enter the body of an animal and govern its actions. Likewise, they can even take a human being under their influence. So, by discovering the Divine Name which gives one the ability to penetrate into farther dimensions of time and space and to follow the guidance of that Name in a particular affair, one can travel by God’s leave in time and space and see and hear certain things which others cannot.

3. Supranormal phenomena like telepathy and spiritualism are widespread in the world. Millions of people, who seek peace and happiness in a world where technology and materialistic world-view and tendencies dominate human lives, minds and spirits, attend special seances for the sake of so-called transcendental experiences.

Some people are more inclined to and have the innate capacity for supernormal phenomena. For example, a woman medium called Madame Gibson had predicted the partition of India in 1947 and the murder of John Kennedy. Likewise, Fenni Bey from Ordu, Turkey, who fought at the front of Madina during the First World War, relates:

‘We were under siege in Madina. I was unable to communicate with my family in Istanbul. One night in a dream I saw fire and smoke in my house. In the morning I sent for a private of mine, who was a medium. I told him to go into a trance and, travelling to my house-I told him where it was situated-describe to me what he saw. He did what I told him and began to describe: “1 have reached the house, I have knocked on the door and an old woman in a head-scarf has come out with a child in her arms.” I told the private to ask the woman if there was anything wrong in the house? He related to me: “She says your wife died yesterday.”

Spiritualism is one of the more widespread supranormal practices nowadays. Before further explanation, I should point out that my aim in mentioning such supranormal phenomena is to emphasize that existence is not normal phenomena is to emphasize that existence is not restricted to matter. Rather, as in the case with a book or a piece of writing whose main existence lies in its meaning, what is metaphysical or spiritual or immaterial is the essential part of existence; matter is accidental and a changing means for the manifestation of the immaterial. It is true that some great saints like Muhy al-Din ibn aI-’Arabi, are known to have communicated with the spirits of the dead and even of those who had not yet been born-the spirits of all human beings were created long before the first man came to the world and the spirit of each person is breathed into him while he is about a six-month old embryo in his mother’s womb-but those who practise spiritualism in the modern world today communicate, rather than with the souls of the dead, with the unbelieving jinn or satans who appear to them in the form of the dead person with whose soul they wish to communicate. Also, mediums who predict future events usually make contact with the jinn from whom they report what they report jinn are a kind of beings who live longer than humans, are active in broader dimensions (realms) of time and space and act much more speedily than human beings, and who can see some things which normal people cannot. However, they are unable to see the future and we should not believe their predictions even though, very rarely, these may prove true. Actually, it is a known fact that the intelligence services of the US and the Communist Russia competed with each other in making use of supranormal ways of communication like telepathy. As will be explained later, in a not too distant future, world powers will be using jinn in communication and especially in secret intelligence activities. However, it is dangerous to seek to contact and communicate with jinn or satans, because they can easily bring the people who contact them under their influence and govern their actions. And, as was pointed out above, those who practise spiritualism usually communicate with members of the unbelieving party of jinn, who appear to them in the form of the dead ones whose souls they are calling.

A friend of mine, who is a psychiatrist, relates:

‘I was invited to a practice of necromancy in a house in Samsun (a province in Northern Turkey). The youngest daughter of the family arranged cups and letters on a table. One of the friends present invited the soul of his late grandfather. After several calls, a man appeared. When we asked him insistently who he was, he answered: ‘Satan’. We were greatly astonished. A while later, I asked him why he had come although we had not called him. He wrote on the table with the cups: ‘So I come!’ I asked him whether he believed in God. He wrote ‘No!’. When I asked whether he believed in the Prophet, again, he wrote, ‘No!’. I began reading to him some passages from a book concerning the existence of God. When I read, ‘A factory with such and such features points to the engineer who planned and built it’, he wrote, ‘True’; but when I read, ‘So too the universe with all the planets and particularly the world with all plants and animals in it indicate God’, he wrote, ‘No!’. This continued for some time, and I began reciting to him from Jawshan, a collection of supplications to God. While I was reciting, the cups were moving on the table. Meantime he wrote: ‘Give up that nonsense!’ When I continued to recite, he could not endure listening and disappeared.

Like such supernormal experiences, observations of some doctors at the time of death also prove the existence of the spirit and spirit beings. What Bedri Ruhselman reports in Ruh ve Kainat (‘The Spirit and the Universe’) from a doctor is in complete agreement with the observations of a group of doctors from Holland, which were published in newspapers.

A doctor narrates: ‘My wife was ill. When she went into the pangs of death, two things resembling two clouds descended into the room and hovered above her head. Meanwhile a form appeared, which was connected to my wife on the nape of the neck with a cord and was fluttering. This continued for five hours. In the end, the cord broke off and the form, the spirit, rose away. This was the end of my wife’s life.’

In the following historical survey I cover some basic realities of the Muslim experience in the US. I have adopted different ways of looking at our present reality and past experiences. Some of these are case studies, some are from personal experience and others are from my readings of history.

Today, as a community, we are at a point where we can either succeed or fail to a much greater extent than in the past. We have schools, professionals, Islamic centres and knowledgeable Muslims. However, we lack a core of brothers and sisters willing to try to organize the Muslims into cohesive voting blocks and into strong neighborhoods and communities where the Muslims are visible and where they will have a voice in the destiny of the greater society as well as, to some degree, in the foreign policy of America.

There are, by various estimates, between two and thirteen million Muslims or non-practising descendants of Muslims in America. Unfortunately, some of them are not well-versed in the literature and doctrines of their religion. Most of them would like to pass Islam on to their children and grandchildren, but this is unlikely if parents do not have sound knowledge about the Islamic faith, nor practise it in their daily lives. One way of understanding our current situation is to study our past. In order to develop my theme along this line, I will divide the history of Muslims in the United States into five eras: before 1800, 1800-1890, 1890-1910, 1910-1950 and 1950-present.

Before 1800

Before 1800 there were five Muslims in America who deserve mention:

1. The navigator of Columbus who, during the famous voyage, brought a copy of a travel narrative about Portuguese Muslims who had sailed to the New World in the 12th century. The narrative by al-Idrissi was called ‘The Sea of Tears’. In it he discusses the voyage of 80 mugharrirun, explorers from Lisbon, Portugal, during the reign of the al-Murabit ‘amir Yusuf ibn Tashufin. The narrative mentions visits to fourteen islands, half of which have been identified as belonging to either the Canaries or the Azores. However, the ones not traced could have been as far away as the Caribbean. An early voyage, from 942 ce, is mentioned in the annals of al-Mas’udi (see Arameo World, May-June, 1992).

2. Istafan the Arab was a guide for the Spanish settlers in the area of Arizona in l539. Istafan was from Azamor, Morocco, and had previously been to the Americas in the ill-fated expedition to Florida of Panfilo de Narvaez in 1527. He was a guide for the Franciscan friar. Marcos de Niza and was invaluable in this capacity until he was killed in an Indian attack in present day Arizona and New Mexico in 1539.

3. Another early Muslim of this period is Nasruddin. He is notable for having killed a Mohawk princess who refused to marry him and for being the earliest permanent Arab settler in the New World (see history of Greene County, N.Y., pp.l9-22).

4. Ayub Sulaiman ibn Diallo became a minor go- between with his people and the British after his repatriation. I mention him because he continued to practice Islam during his two years of slavery in the l730s in Maryland. He was well-versed in Arabic and wrote at least a half dozen letters in that language, translated coin inscriptions for the British Museum and drew a map of West Africa in which he wrote the place names in Arabic.

5. Salim the Algerian, who was a Muslim from a royal family of Algiers, studied in Istanbul. After returning from a visit to Istanbul, he was captured by a Spanish man- of-war and was later sold into slavery to the French in New Orleans, eventually escaping and regaining his freedom. He lived among American Indian tribes and settled in Virginia. Salim was found in rags, almost naked, and was taught English. Eventually, it was ascertained that he knew Greek, and he was given a Greek New Testament. Several future members of the US Congress befriended him, and he converted to Christianity. As a new convert to Christianity, he decided to go back home to spread the Gospel. Alter a disastrous journey to his homeland (where he was shunned as an apostate), he returned to America, met Thomas Jefferson, attended the 1st Continental Congress and, at the instigation of Congressman Page, his portrait was painted by an artist called Peale. Salim lapsed into insanity, perhaps brought on by his traumatic visit to his homeland. Salim’s final months are a misery. Some accounts tell of him regaining his sanity while others say he died in an insane asylum. It is also unclear if Salim renounced his adopted religion but it is possible that he died a Christian and he remained on the Page estate until the cod of his life. (See Graham’s magazine, 1857, pp.433-7.)

It should be noted that none of these men tried to spread Islam, and that only Ayub tried to preserve his own belief. An important point is that these Muslims were not unique in being able to read and write Arabic. In fact, in many slave quarters in the Caribbean and Brazil, there were clandestine Arabic and Islamic schools. One can find references to them in the works of Nina Rodriguez and in the two volume book Twelve Months in Jamaica by Robert Madden (1835).

1800-1890

During the nineteenth century, the presence of Islamic captives in slave quarters was documented by four individuals:

1. Theodore Dwight Jr wrote two articles about a slave named Lamen Kebe who had been a school teacher in Africa. Lamen Kebe gave Dwight a list of over twenty texts used in his schools and several pages of information on teaching methods (much of it still valuable today). At the end of one of the articles, he also attached one of the earliest glossaries we have of the Serrekuleh language. Dwight also mentions Abdul Rahman and Ayub b. Sulaiman Diallo.

2. James Cooper wrote the story of Salih Bilali, published with other ethnological writings in William Brown Hodgson’s Notes on North Africa (1844). Salih was a Fulani (as are all the others mentioned) and his story is only found in a letter by Cooper. This letter has been reprinted in Africa Remembered by Philip Curtin. Here we have an oral remembrance of Africa and a vocabulary of Fula, but nothing about his training or practice in Islam.

3. William Brown Hodgson did perhaps the most important of these documentaries. The main characters Hodgson recorded were the following: Bilali Mohammed, who wrote the only extant book on Islamic Law written in America and who contributed several Islamic terms to the Gullah dialect of English. He gave his descendants Muslim names and taught them until the generation of his grandchildren. Umar ibn Sa’id was a butler for Governor Owens of Fayetteville, North Carolina, and he wrote an autobiography and thirteen pages in Arabic. What he wrote shows that he might have been a Qadariyyah Sufi, a trader, and a school teacher who feigned conversion to Christianity under difficult circumstances. Abdul Rahman Ibrahim Sori wrote two autobiographies, two copies of sura al-Fatiha, signed a charcoal sketch of himself that was done by Henry Inman (this picture was on the cover of Freedmen’s Journal and is on display in the Library of Congress) and he dictated several letters to his family while travelling in the US to raise money to return to Africa. None of his Arabic writings show the least formal education, but it is surprising that he remembered the little Arabic he knew after forty years in slavery. Said eventually returned to Africa, where he died. His story is documented in Prince Among Slaves by Terry Afford (1977). A slave named London is described in a pamphlet by Hodgson (1844) called The Gospels Written in the Negro Patois of English in Arabic Characters by a Mandingo Slave Named London. This was perhaps the only systematic try at writing English in Arabic letters up to that point. London was held in slavery by the Maxwell family of Savannah, Georgia. They later moved to Florida where he died. An unknown slave correspondent from Georgetown, South Carolina wrote five chapters of the Qur’an from memory. This was translated by Hodgson.

4. William Carruthers, author of The Kentuckian in New York, tells of a slave who wrote sura al-Fatiha at the request of a traveller. He also mentions Ayub ibn Sulaiman Diallo.

One Muslim of this era not covered by these writers is Hadji Ali (Philip Tedro) who was a Greek convert to Islam and one of six camel handlers (three Arabs, two Turks and Hadji Ali) in the short-lived US camel calvary in 1856. The Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, introduced a bill in Congress, passed in 1855, to import camels for military purposes in the Arizona desert. During this experiment, 77 camels and six handlers were brought over from the East. When the Civil War broke out, this experiment was abandoned. Hadji Ali was the only one of the cameleers to remain in America. The others returned to their homelands. Circuses and zoos acquired some of the camels while others were turned loose. The camels that were turned loose in the desert terrorized live stock and wild animals for years. Hadji Ali became a prospector in the Colorado River Area. He eventually became a legend under the corrupted name, ‘Hi Jolly’, given to him by soldiers in the US calvary. The only legacies of this experiment are a highway grave marker for Hadji Ali and some US Army Manuals (see ‘Report Upon the Purchase, Importation, and Use of Camels and Dromedaries, to be Employed for Military Purposes, According to Act of Congress March 3, 1855. Made under the Direction of the Secretary of War 1855, ’56, ’57’). A movie by Walt Disney called Hawmps, starring Slim Pickens and Denver Pyle, highlights this moment in history. Hadji Ali lived until 1903 in Quartzsite, Arizona, where he was a prospector and resident imam. His three daughters were raised as Muslims, but I have yet to verify how many generations of his family continued practicing Islam.

The Omani Embassy published a pamphlet about the exploits of the first Arab traders to the United States during the 1840s. (However, these traders did not settle here: see Eilts, 1962),

One other Muslim is Yarrow Mamount who was poorly covered by other writers. He deserves mention as he was perhaps one of the longest-lived individuals in this country; his reported age at death was over 130 years, and he was one of the first shareholders of the Washington, DC Columbia Bank, the second chartered bank in the United States.

1890-1910

During this period the only movement of great interest is that of Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb. He is commonly believed to be the first white convert to Islam in America. Before he became a Muslim, he was a newspaper editor and from 1887-92, served as US Consul to the Philippines, he accepted the post of Consul in 1887. While a Consul, he began to read books on Eastern and Oriental religions. Soon afterwards he began written correspondence with Indian Muslims, and in 1888 he publicly declared that he was a Muslim. He resigned his post in 1892, and went to India where he made a lecture tour of four cities: Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Hyderabad. These lectures were published in the books The Three Lectures and Lectures in Various Locations. The topics for these lectures included:

‘Islam, the Better Way’ and ‘Philosophical Islam’. Upon returning to the US, he set up the Oriental Publishing Company, which published at least a half dozen of his books including Islam in America (1892) and his short-lived periodical The Moslem World. He had a mosque on upper Broadway which failed prior to his death in 1913. His appointment as the Polish Emissary to the US and his writing of a still very pertinent book, The Armenian Problem and Its Solution, as well as the views of Webb on the war between the Turks and the Armenians, may have contributed to the decline of the group. Webb also failed to address the needs of the generality of the people; his was a movement for ‘philosophers’.

1910-1950

Between 1910-1950 several Orthodox, Sufi, Ahmadiyyah. Bahia, Shia and Black Nationalist groups arose. However, I shall focus on the orthodox mosques (in Ross, North Dakota; Detroit, Michigan and Cedar Rapids, Iowa) and on Sheikh Dawood, Soufi Abdul Hameed, Noble Drew Ali and Elijah Mohammed. Two mosques were built in the early years of this century. In 1915 the Albanian community built a mosque in Maine and another in Connecticut, but little documentation has survived of their administration. In Brooklyn, New York, Polish-speaking Tatars built a mosque which was still in use in 1926. The Red Crescent was founded in Detroit in 1920 and the mosque built there was in regular use from 1926-1932. This organization appears to have suffered from lack of finances, rather than lack of numbers. Only a few brothers kept the masjid afloat but the Great Depression proved to be too much of a financial burden for them. Perhaps the most successful of these early, orthodox communities was the Ross Mosque, having a congregation of about 100 followers at its height. The mosque was built in 1930 and remained standing until 1978, and in regular use until the late l960s. At this time, conversions and mixed marriages had decreased the number of Muslims, and Arabic was no longer used. Also, there were no practising Muslims to attend Friday prayers and the cemetery had fallen into neglect.

The Lebanese masjid in Cedar Rapids is a success story. Started in 1935, the mosque is still in use. This community seems to have suffered fewer of the problems common to the others; going overseas to marry was common, finance was freer and fewer people drifted from Islam. Arabic continued to be used widely, language being an important factor in uniting a community.

Sheikh Dawood and Soufi Abdul Hameed represent home-grown orthodox Islam. Sheikh Dawood founded the Islamic Mission Society on State Street in 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. Over 75,000 people accepted Islam under his tutorship before his death in 1981. His theory of Islam being genetic was to be adapted by many later leaders such as Elijah Mohammed and Imam Isa. His success was due to his willingness to stiffer personal abuse and financial difficulty for the sake of Islam. His writings and theories are contained in his self-published book Islam the True Religion of humanity (1965). His contemporary, Soufi, and his teacher, Mandaly from Egypt, had similar successes in Harlem, but their work was cut short when Mandaly died following a heart attack, and Soufi perished in an aeroplane crash. Their problem was that they failed to train proper successors, and the movement died with them (see Ottley, 1968, pp.116-19).

Noble Drew Ali and Elijah Mohammed represent the Black Nationalist side to Islam between 1910 and 1950. Both movements outlasted these men. Ali started his move- merit, the Moorish Science Temple, in May 1913 with the short-lived Canaanite Temple. He gave an identity to the recently freed Africans and showed them how they could have self-esteem, and allowed them to take part in a movement that was not under the former slave masters’ control. His main error was to fail to fully bring people into the reality of the Arabic language, the Qur’an and ibadah, but he gave them a clear concept of a Jesus they could accept and of tawhid, which Christianity had failed to give them.

Elijah Mohammed’s organization, the Nation of Islam, was begun in Paradise Valley (a black ghetto in Detroit) on July 4, 1930 by Mr W.D. Fard. Fard was a mysterious peddler from the East and a one-time challenger to Drew Ali’s leadership of Islamic Nationalism in Newark, New Jersey. Fard was reputed to have been born of a white mother and a black father (Mimi and Alfonso) on February 28, 1877 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He supposedly receiving his education at U.C.L.A. and Oxford. Fard was to have been a member of the diplomatic corps in the Hijaz, but he decided against it in order to go to the ‘wilderness of North America to find his Uncle [the Black Man] and teach him Islam and the true history of the black man. After teaching for three years, he left the US for an unknown destination. He left behind a successor, Elijah Mohammed, and some written teachings which were set down in several lesson plans of which seven are extant today. This was a way of teaching that was not uncommon to church catechisms, Masonic degrees or Moorish American Qur’an Questionnaires. By 1934, Fard became a sort of hidden Imam common to the doctrines of the Druze and Isma’ili versions of Islam. He seemed to expound rhetoric similar to military manual directives, Moorish Science, Masonry and some vague eschatology as well as doctrines (such as blood atonement), similar to that of early Utah Mormons. His movement succeeded due to dedicated individuals and strong leadership that was willing to suffer for the movement. His weaknesses were failing to teach proper rules for prayer and fasting, and his preaching the concept of Ali reincarnated through the Imams and the Mahdi (later he was considered God incarnate).

1950-Present

The next forty years saw the rise and fall of the Nation of Islam and its rebirth (primarily with Silas Mohammed, Farrakhan, John Mohammed, W.D. Mohammed and Imam Isa). The groups that were resurrected tended to try to revolutionize the teachings. Silas works with the white community and calls Elijah Mohammed ‘the Virgin Mary’ and himself the ‘Spiritual Son of Elijah Mohammed’. Farrakhan works with other minorities and has been working against the drug problem; he attacked a drug dealer after he found out his own son was a drug abuser. W.D. Mohammed works with the immigrant community in a liaison role. John Mohammed is the ‘orthodox’ Nation of Islam teacher, as he tends not to teach anything except what Elijah Mohammed distinctly taught. Imam is a Unitarian Universalist, Spiritualist, Jewish, Ansar, Black Nationalist successor to the self-proclaimed Messenger of Allah, Elijah Mohammed. All are in serious error because they fail to address the greater problem of developing the basic groundwork for a strong, growing and evolving Islamic community in America. Only W.D. Mohammed has begun the needed work of teaching sound Islam based on the Qur’an and the Sunna, but he is somewhat hindered by the legacy of his father, tending to give the teachings of the Qur’an as mostly symbolic as he was taught the Bible was. Others left the Nation of Islam, and we must remember them as true Muslims. These true Muslims include Mohammed Ali, Hamas Abdul Khaalis, and Malcolm X. Mohammed Ali went on to become one of the greatest sportsmen in this nation and a great Contributor to the spreading of Islam. Hamas Abdul Khaalis founded the Hanafi Mah-Hab Centre in New York in 1968. It was later moved to Washington, DC. At his height he had over a thousand followers and led protests for several Muslim causes. His famous follower is Kareem Abdul Jabbar. In 977, Khaalis and some of his followers seized a building in Washington, DC as part of a protest, and they held the people for some 30 hours. One hostage was killed and Khaalis is currently serving a prison sentence of 4l to 120 years. One of the greatest-ever Muslim leaders in America was, of course, Malcolm X (or according to his true Muslim name, Al-Hajj Malik at Shabazz). He started the political street organ of the Nation of Islam, the Mohammed Speaks newspaper, and influenced several generations with his eye-opening autobiography. Until the end of his life, he was dedicated to the struggle for the rights of all oppressed people of the world. He was killed at the hands of FBI-sponsored infiltrators from the Nation of Islam.

Conclusion

It is strange that the religion of peace is always forced into violence against itself. God says in the Holy Qur’an:

And thus, We have made you a middle nation that you may witness to all people and We made the Messenger a witness to you… (al-Baqarah, 2.143).

How could this history, with its successes, failures and disappointments exist, when we are instructed to be a middle nation of witnesses to mankind, and to propagate Islam?

In sum, this historical briefing on Islam in America focused on American Muslims and Muslims that were becoming Americans points to the need for da’wa, for Islamic schools, for fighting assimilation, for bilingual education, for masjids, and for taking part in the greater society.

The groundwork is da’wa, developing schools and businesses, youth and adult education programmes to teach Arabic and Qur’an to such an extent that our community here will become bilingual and stay that way. Next, we need to have Islamic holidays recognized in public schools in much the same way as Jewish holidays are. Finally, we need to make sure proper books on Islam are in every single public and private library in the US and that hooks on Islam are placed in as many non-Muslim homes as is feasible.