Islam

Islam. Islam is a global religious tradition with about one billion adherents. Observing the “five pillars of Islam,” Muslims pray five times a day, give alms, fast during the month of Ramadan, make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and testify to the oneness of God (Allah) and the messenger status of Muhammad, Islam's seventh‐century founder. The religion is divided into two major groups, the Sunni and the smaller Shiite branch.

Islam first came to North America with the slave trade. Records from 1717 indicate that some African slaves spoke Arabic, refused to eat pork, and called God Allah. As many as 20 percent of the slaves in the North American colonies were Muslims, though most traces of their religious heritage vanished when they converted to Christianity. In the late nineteenth century, Muslims from the Middle East came to the United States, settling in eastern and midwestern cities. The South Asian agricultural workers who immigrated to California at the turn of the twentieth century also included Muslims. The most rapid growth of the American Muslim population came after 1965, however, when legislation eased immigration barriers.

By 2000, America had roughly one thousand mosques and many national Islamic organizations, including the Muslim Students Association (established in 1963) and the Islamic Society of North America (1981). Figures on America's total Muslim population at the end of the twentieth century varied widely, in part because the number was growing so rapidly. It seemed likely, however, that the United States was home to 3 to 6 million Muslims, or approximately 1–2 percent of the total population.

Many Americans associate Islam with the “Black Muslims” of the Nation of Islam, a controversial African‐American group founded in Detroit in the early 1930s by Wallace Fard and later led by Elijah Muhammad. Most U.S. Muslims, however, are of either Middle Eastern or Asian origin. While some African‐American Muslims continued in the late twentieth century to affiliate with the Nation of Islam, many more, including Elijah Muhammad's son, Wallace D. Muhammad, were orthodox members of American mosques.

American Muslims suffer from stereotypes that associate their religion with terrorism, but because of its roots in Judaism and Christianity, Islam is gradually coming to be seen as an important American faith. In 1991, a Muslim delivered the opening prayer at a session of the U.S. House of Representatives. Later in the 1990s, some American intellectuals spoke of one “Judeo‐Christian‐Islamic” faith common to the vast majority of U.S. citizens.

Throughout the 1990s American Muslims suffered from stereotypes that associated their religion with terrorism, but because of its roots in Judaism and Christianity, Islam was gradually coming to be seen as an important American faith. In 1991, a Muslim delivered the opening prayer at a session of the U.S. House of Representatives and by the late 1990s, some American intellectuals spoke of one “Judeo-Christian-Islamic” faith common to the vast majority of U.S. citizens.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, carried out by nineteen Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia, created problems for Muslims in the United States, and between the United States and the Muslim world. President George W. Bush, insisting that the American response was directed against would-be terrorists, not against Islam, made a point of meeting at the White House with American Muslim leaders. Nevertheless, some American Muslims experienced hostility and discrimination, and foreign students of the Muslim faith faced difficulties with immigration officials. Further complicating matters, some well‐known Protestant fundamentalist leaders, including Franklin Graham, son of the revivalist Billy Graham, and televangelist Jerry Falwell, made derogatory statements about Islam that deeply angered Muslims in the United States and throughout the world.
See also African Americans; Immigration Law; Malcolm X; Post–Cold War Era, Protestantism; Roman Catholicism; Slavery: The Slave Trade.

Bibliography

C. Eric Lincoln , The Black Muslims in America, 3d ed., 1994.
Jane I. Smith , Islam in America, 1999.

Stephen Prothero

; Updated by

Paul S. Boyer