Islam in America

Professor Jennings    
POSC 120
Speaker: Professor adam jaffers
May 12, 2011 6pm Thursday.
Rethinking our path: Islam in America
The presence of Islam in the New World began with the Moriscoes who accompanied the Spanish invaders. Following their time, great numbers of Muslim slaves were imported to this continent to work on the plantations of the South. In spite of the effort to wipe out the slaves' Islamic identity, Islamic practices and beliefs remained strong with many of them.
In the early part of this century, waves of immigrants from various parts of the Muslim world, most notably Palestine, Lebanon and what is now Pakistan, appeared on these shores. These people were mostly illiterate, unskilled Arabs who found work in the auto factories of Detroit, or peasants from the Panjab who set up house in such places as Sacramento.
Then, beginning in the '50s, the picture changed drastically. An influx of Muslim professionals, many of them physicians, finding conditions in their homelands inhospitable, settled in this country after completing their studies. The black movements, the back-to-Africa groups, had come into flower by this time. Great numbers of Muslim students from all parts of the world also began to arrive in this country.
This was the period which saw the formation of the early Muslim communities and mosques in such places as Detroit, Ann Arbor, Gary (Indiana), Cedar Rapids (Iowa), Sacramento and the like. Visiting scholars and missionary groups from the Middle East and the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent also began to arrive. And Islam began, in a very slow manner, to gain adherents among white Americans.
It was this period which also witnessed the formation of national Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Students Association (MSA) of the United States and Canada, later to be replaced by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and their supporting institutions. Regional and national conferences of Muslims for the discussion of issues of...