Islam on the U.S. Cultural Stage: The Black Muslims Part 1

This is a presentation on #nbamuslims and Islam’s introduction as a substantive US religion. Muslims have been in America since before Columbus. Examples of Muslims in America include Pre-Colombian explorers, enslaved Africans, and immigrant waves beginning in the Nineteenth Century to present. During the mid-Twentieth Century, a group known as the Lost-Found Nation of Islam emerged in African-American communities and became a major catalyst for the introduction of Islam onto the American social, cultural, and religious stages.

Because of attempts by the NOI to indoctrinate African Americans to their interpretation of Islam, the words Islam and Muslim became part of the American socio-political landscape in a groundbreaking way. The group’s doctrine, encapsulated in its leader Elijah Muhammad’s book A Message to the Black Man in America, included teachings such as the classification of Christianity as the white man’s religion, categorization of the white man as the devil, and preaching black supremacy. The NOI demonstrates how native-born Americans utilized American socio-political tools relevant to their target audience in order to disseminate their theology. The Nation of Islam amalgamated Islam to the existing socio-political structure of American Black Nationalism. This provided the group with the appeal necessary for it to gain popularity in the United States and began the substantiation of Islam as an American religion.