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| Volume XV, Fall 2008, Number 3 |
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EXCERPT
America’s Early Experience with the Muslim Faith: The Nation of Islam
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| Ghada Hashem Talhami |
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Dr. Talhami is D.K. Pearsons Professor of Politics, emerita, at Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, IL. This paper was presented at the ninth conference of the International Center for Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies, University of Victoria, March 28, 2008.
It should come as no surprise that Islam informed various transformations of African-American movements before the rise of the Nation of Islam (NOI). Although it had quickly become the exclusive representative of African-American Islam, the NOI was the product of a decades-long chain of events. Islam played an enormous inspirational and ideological role in the evolution of a distinct African-American identity. This study will trace the spiritual, ideological and psychological antecedents of the NOI as a way of charting the course of Islamic expansion within the United States. This will be followed by an examination of the official response of U.S. security agencies to this movement and the application of similar methods to the Arab-American community following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The purpose of this analysis is to clarify American perceptions of the role of Islam in the life of various American communities, native as well as immigrant, in order to uncover a developing pattern of official behavior as a predictor of future trends. Islam’s attraction as an identity emblem among various Afro-American groups was witnessed as early as 1913.
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