Early American Islam grew by fusing Qur’anic spirituality with black liberation and pan-African politics

Evidence

Sadiq brought together the Qur’an and the Sunna, or tradition of the prophet Muhammad, with post-World War I agitation by people of color for freedom from colonialism and Jim Crow segregation. On the one hand, he emphasized the ecumenical appeal of Islam as a religion of social equality; on the other hand, Sadiq argued that Arabic and Islam were part of an explicitly African past that had been taken from blacks when they were enslaved. He endorsed the activities of black nationalist and pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey and sought converts from Garvey’s UNIA. In this era of the new nativism, when the Ku Klux Klan rose to political prominence based on a combination of Protestant Christianity, white supremacy, and terrorism, the Ahmadi linking of domestic struggles for racial liberation to what Sadiq and others identified as a rising call for self-determination, the deep spirituality of the Qur’an, and black historical achievements under Islam was a powerful message that convinced over 1,025 mostly African American people to convert to Islam from 1921 to 1925. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 380

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s project on the anatomy of intolerance — this shows Muslim activists responding to white supremacy by forging an opposite alliance, a counterpoint to the dominant fear narrative. — connects to: Black American Islam functioned as post-Reconstruction resistance to white supremacy — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 231; Hip-hop performers fused Islam into Black street identity as an official religion — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 199; Islam has been raced in America since the early slave era — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 148 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Why did the Ku Klux Klan’s 1920s rise specifically target Ahmadi converts — and what does the 1,025-conversion figure suggest about the scale of Muslim presence that alarmists feared?