Black Muslims in the US : History, Politics, and the Struggle of a Community

Black Muslims in the U.S. seeks to address deficiencies in current scholarship about black Muslims in American society, from examining the origins of Islam among African-Americans to acknowledging the influential role that black Muslims play in contemporary U.S. society.

From the labeling of jihad as a ''holy war'' to the generalization of all black Muslims as ''converts'' to the religion of Islam, myths and deficiencies in today''s rhetoric and scholarship foster stereotyped images of black Muslims. Black Muslims in the US provides historical and contemporary analyses of political Islam among mainstream black Sunni Muslims in the US who-despite being the least-examined group by scholars- represent the largest, oldest, and fastest growing Muslim group in the US. Rashid seeks to correct deficiencies in scholarship by identifying alternative ways to recognize black and other indigenous Muslims in early America, offering more authoritative descriptions of the black American Muslim experience, and citing new evidence of a strong black Islamic presence in contemporary American society. Using both new and re-examined research from historical records, field study data, ethnographic reports, and oral accounts, Rashid examines the status of black Muslims in the US from their arrival to the influential role that they continue to play in contemporary US society.