Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Category
Social Sciences/Humanities
Abstract/Artist Statement
During the 1920s, an immigrant missionary from colonial India named Muhammad Sadiq established headquarters in Chicago and Detroit for a branch of Islam called the Ahmadiyya movement. During the interwar period, the Ahmadiyya movement became the first institutional expression of Islam in North America. It was especially influential in attracting African American converts through anti-racist messages and its connection to Black Nationalist, Pan-Islamist, and Pan-Africanist groups and ideologies. This project argues that the Ahmadiyya movement developed a “conversion rhetoric” aimed at African Americans that emphasized Islam as a connection to ancestral practice and a means toward liberation. Later African American Muslim groups followed a similar pattern in their conversion efforts, leading to the growth of Islam among African Americans through the twentieth century, known as African American Islamic Revival. Both the Ahmadiyya movement and American Islam more broadly have received little focus from historians. This project aims to expand the historical understanding of African American Islamic Revival by exploring publications circulated by the Ahmadiyya and later Muslim organizations between 1920 and 1960. The ideas introduced by the Ahmadiyya movement can allow historians to form a cohesive framework for understanding the origins of the African American Islamic Revival movement and position the Midwest as central to the growth of African American Islam.
Mentor Name
Tobin Miller Shearer
Personal Statement
I believe my work is important because the field of American religious studies and religious history suffers from a lack of scholarship about Islam in the United States and about non-Christian African-American religion. Only recently does it seem that scholars are arguing for a more robust inclusion of “American Islam” within the study of American religion. Some authors have produced valuable surveys of African-American religion which include Islamic movements, but most seem to emphasize the Nation of Islam (NOI), despite there being a vibrant history of Black Islam prior to and outside of the NOI. Though the NOI is a historically important movement and continues to exist as an important organization, it does not represent the extent of Black Islam in the U.S. Similarly, narratives about Islam in the United States should not be limited to immigrant Muslims, as Islam and Muslims have existed in the Americas for as long as Christianity, largely within enslaved communities. Though Muslims may not have existed in large numbers in the U.S. until the twentieth century, common understandings of Islam as a recent and foreign practice reduce a diverse and complex tradition to orientalist tropes. I hope to better illuminate intersections and diversity within American religious history and African American history. I believe it is important for academic historians to ask ourselves who is benefitting from our work and how it can contribute to a more just world. The perception of Muslims in the United States has been one largely made up of stereotypes and simplifications. By expanding the scope of historical focus onto understudied Muslim communities, I hope to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of American Islam and American religious history more broadly.
Sunrise in the Heartland: The Ahmadiyya Movement and African American Islamic Revival
UC 332
During the 1920s, an immigrant missionary from colonial India named Muhammad Sadiq established headquarters in Chicago and Detroit for a branch of Islam called the Ahmadiyya movement. During the interwar period, the Ahmadiyya movement became the first institutional expression of Islam in North America. It was especially influential in attracting African American converts through anti-racist messages and its connection to Black Nationalist, Pan-Islamist, and Pan-Africanist groups and ideologies. This project argues that the Ahmadiyya movement developed a “conversion rhetoric” aimed at African Americans that emphasized Islam as a connection to ancestral practice and a means toward liberation. Later African American Muslim groups followed a similar pattern in their conversion efforts, leading to the growth of Islam among African Americans through the twentieth century, known as African American Islamic Revival. Both the Ahmadiyya movement and American Islam more broadly have received little focus from historians. This project aims to expand the historical understanding of African American Islamic Revival by exploring publications circulated by the Ahmadiyya and later Muslim organizations between 1920 and 1960. The ideas introduced by the Ahmadiyya movement can allow historians to form a cohesive framework for understanding the origins of the African American Islamic Revival movement and position the Midwest as central to the growth of African American Islam.