Islam in the United States

Muslim Americans:
Keith Ellison , André Carson , Saqib Ali, Malcolm X , Siraj Wahhaj , Jermaine Jackson , Hamza Yusuf , Dave Chappelle , Kareem Abdul-Jabbar , Rasheed Wallace , Louis Farrakhan , Muhammad Ali , Mike Tyson , Ice Cube , T -Pain , Lupe Fiasco

The history of Islam in the United States begins even before the declaration of independence . From the colonial era , when an estimated 200,000 Muslim Africans were sold as slaves across the Atlantic , through the early 20th century, when tens of thousands of Islamic emigrants from Europe, the Middle East, and other parts of Asia settled in the United States, Islam has been up to into the present an integral part of American history. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , the gap between successfully integrated Muslim Americans and those on the margins of society has widened significantly.

Demographics

The Islam is after Christianity and Judaism , the third largest religion in the United States . According to a survey by the polling institute Pew Research Center from 2017, there are currently just under 3.5 million Muslims living in the USA, which make up 1.1% of the total population. The exact number of Muslims in the United States is unknown because the US Census Bureau does not collect information on religious affiliation in the interests of religious freedom in the United States . Corresponding estimates vary between one and seven million Muslims in the United States. In 2009, over 115,000 Muslim immigrants were granted permanent residency in the United States. Almost a quarter of Muslims in the US have converted to Islam .

chronology

16th to 19th century

As the first Muslim whose presence in North America is documented, the Moroccan slave Estevanico arrived shipwrecked at what is now Galveston in Texas in 1528 .

In 1765, the future US President Thomas Jefferson bought a translation of the Koran by the Englishman George Sale .

In 1788, the Muslim nobleman Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori (1762-1829) from what is now Guinea , a member of the Fulbe , was sold as a slave to Natchez (Mississippi) and released after 40 years on the orders of President John Quincy Adams .

In 1856 the Turkish convert Hajji Ali or Hi Jolly was employed by the US cavalry as a camel driver in Arizona and California . He later changed his name to Philip Tedro and died in 1903.

In 1888, the writer and consul Alexander Russell Webb (1846–1916) became the first prominent figure in the United States to convert to Islam. Webb was the first Muslim representative at the First World Parliament of Religions in 1893 .

Between 1869 and 1898, 20,690 Asian Turks ("Asian Turks", i.e. immigrants from the Turkish and Arab countries) legally immigrated to the USA.

20th century

After the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese migrants from immigrating to the United States, the 1917 Immigration Act extended that ban to include immigrants from Arabia, South, Central, and Southeast Asia.

During the First World War , almost 14,000 soldiers of Syrian origin, including numerous Muslims, were deployed on European soil in the American Expeditionary Forces from 1917 onwards . In World War II, at least 1,500 Muslim Americans served from 1941 by the Arab, African and South Asian origin in the US Army .

In 1981 Robert Dickson Crane , who later held a senior position at the IIIT , was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as the first Muslim US ambassador to the United Arab Emirates .

21st century

On September 11, 2001 , 19 Saudi Arabian and Egyptian members of the Islamist terror network al-Qaida murdered almost 3,000 people in four coordinated aircraft hijackings followed by suicide bombings .

Keith Ellison became the first Muslim US Congressman in 2006. He took his oath of office not on the Bible, but on an English translation of the Koran, which led to a heated controversy in the USA. In 2008 , André Carson was elected as the second Muslim MP in the US House of Representatives .

2009 gave President Barack Obama in Cairo University a speech to the Islamic world , under the English title "A New Beginning" ( "A New Beginning").

Development in the 21st Century

Newsweek poll of non-Muslim US citizens in July 2007
statement	I Agree	Disagreeing
Muslims in the United States are as loyal to the United States as they are to Islam	40%	32%
Muslims do not silently ignore violence	63%
The Koran does not silently ignore violence	40%	28%
In Islamic culture, suicide is not glorified		41%
Concerned about Islamic extremists		54%
I support telecommunications surveillance by the FBI		52%
Muslims in the US are more peaceful than those from outside the US	52%	7%
Muslims in the USA are disadvantaged by police measures	38%	52%
Against mass arrests of Muslims	60%	25%
I think most Muslims are immigrants		52%
Would allow my kids to date a Muslim		64%
Muslim students should be allowed to wear a headscarf	69%	23%
Would vote for a qualified Muslim political officer	45%	45%

Successful Muslims

According to a 2007 report by Newsweek news magazine , Muslim Americans represent "the wealthiest, most integrated, and politically engaged Muslim community in the western world." South Asia, which came to the USA since 1965 after President Johnson had signed the Hart-Celler Act , with which the previous quota system for immigration was replaced and partly replaced by more liberal provisions. By 1990 immigrants of South Asian descent were well ahead of other groups in terms of income and education, with an above-average proportion working in managerial positions and professions. Although fewer Muslim immigrants came to the US from South Asia than those with a Hindu or Sikh background, anthropologist Karen Leonard pointed out in a 2004 presentation at Stanford University that, in a generally prevailing view, they were “a particularly privileged group ”With a reputation as“ model immigrants ”.

Islam in the state penal system

Of course, this generally rosy picture cannot be generalized. At the lower end of the social spectrum, of the roughly 2.3 million prisoners in the United States, around 350,000, or 15% , are believed to be Muslim, a percentage many times that of their total population. US celebrities who converted to Islam in prison include Malcolm X , gangster Jeff Fort , wrestler Montel Vontavious Porter, and boxers Bernard Hopkins and Mike Tyson . In American prisons, 80% of all religious conversions to Islam occur.

Survey results

In a Newsweek poll of non-Muslim Americans, 46% of respondents believed the US allowed too many immigrants from Islamic countries to enter the US. 52% of respondents agreed to the FBI monitoring mosques . 36% of respondents said they knew a member of Islam who lived in the USA personally. 52% of respondents knew that the majority of Muslims in the US were immigrants, while 19% believed most of them were US-born converts.

Subgroups

According to an estimate from the beginning of the 21st century, 786,000 Shiites were living in the USA at that time . They come from different geographical and sociocultural backgrounds and run an umbrella organization called North American Shia Ithna-Asheri Muslim Communities (NASIMCO). The Islamic Center of America in Dearborn , Michigan is under Shiite management. The presence of the Ahmadiyya movement in the United States goes back to the early 1920s, when Mufti Muhammad Sadiq initiated the construction of the al-Sadiq Mosque in Chicago.

In the first half of the 20th century, African Americans founded some syncretistic movements with Islamic elements that are not recognized by traditional Islam. These include the Moorish Science Temple of America, built by Noble Drew Ali in 1913 . In 1930, Wallace followed Fard Muhammad with the establishment of the Nation of Islam , which represents the racist ideology of Black Supremacy and, according to the Anti Defamation League, also anti-Semitic positions. World boxing champion Muhammad Ali and civil rights activist Malcolm X initially belonged to the Nation of Islam , but later resigned. Malcolm X joined the traditional Sunni direction of Islam after his pilgrimage to Mecca , Muhammad Ali became a follower of Sufism in 2005 under the guidance of Sheikh Hisham Kabbani , chairman and co-founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of America . Some exponents of the Koranism , such as Ahmed Subhy Mansour and the Kurdish Edip Yüksel from Turkey, had to leave their countries of origin and have lived in the USA ever since. Other sub-groups include Salafists , supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood , the Gülen movement and the Tablighi Jamaat . About 15% of the Muslims living in the US do not belong to any Islamic organization.

Mosques

The Islamic Center of Washington , opened in 1957.

The number of mosques in the US has grown rapidly since the late 20th century. Between 1990 and 2000 their number increased by 42 percent.

One of the oldest mosques in the country is the al-Sadiq Mosque in Chicago . It was founded in 1922 by Mufti Muhammad Sadiq , the first Muslim missionary in the USA and a follower of the Ahmadiyya , and financed with funds from India. The Islamic Center of Washington was planned from 1944 and was inaugurated in 1957 by President Dwight Eisenhower . Under the leadership of the Egyptian ambassador to the USA, funding was provided with contributions from the Islamic world. The Islamic Cultural Center of New York , which also contains a mosque, was only able to open in 1991 after decades of planning and delays due to the Second Gulf War . It was also financed mainly with foreign funds.

The largest mosque in North America to date is the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn , Michigan , which opened in 2005 . The building is considered the "heart of Shia " in the USA. The Mosque Maryam in Chicago, a former Greek Orthodox church, remains the main mosque for the Nation of Islam and is now the residence of Louis Farrakhan . Islamic places of worship are also increasingly being built in rural areas. Around 2015 there were two mosques in the state of Idaho : in Boise and in Moscow .

Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, under Shiite management.

Umbrella associations and other institutions

The geographical, nation-state, religious, linguistic, political and socio-cultural diversity of the US Muslims, which the scholar Akbar Ahmed describes in his book Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam , which on a one-year research trip through the 75th, also documented in a film Places in the USA is also reflected in the different Muslim institutions.

Umbrella organizations

The largest Muslim umbrella organization is the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), or Islamic Society of North America , to which, according to its own information, 27% of mosques in the USA are affiliated. It consists predominantly of immigrants, emerged from a meeting of various Muslim student organizations in 1963 and was officially founded in 1982. Ingrid Mattson is one of its former chairmen . ISNA sees its main task as being a common mouthpiece for the call to Islam ( daʿwa ). Its sub-organizations include AMSS (American Muslim Social Scientists) and AMSE (American Muslim Scientists and Engineers).

The second largest Muslim organization is the American Society of Muslims , to which 19% of mosques belong. It was founded in the 1970s as a descendant of the Nation of Islam by Warith Deen Mohammed , the son of long-time leader Elijah Muhammad .

The third largest Muslim umbrella organization is called Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). It also consists mainly of immigrants and their descendants. According to Hossein Nasr , it is under the influence of Maududi and has a similar structure to the Jamaat-e-Islami founded by Maududi . ICNA, ISNA, the Fiqh Council of North America , the umbrella organization Federation of Islamic Associations of the United States and Canada and the Muslim Students Association (MSA), both in the US and in Canada operates.

Akbar Ahmed , who portrays the different forms of Islam in different countries on his travels , points out that from the 1970s onwards, Muslim organizations were mainly controlled by Arabs who shuttled between a modernist and literalist Islam . Among them were the ISNA , MSA , IIIT , AMC , MPAC , ICNA and CAIR .

Other institutions

The IIIT , based in Herndon , Virginia , sees itself as a think tank for the Muslim Brotherhood . It is attributed to Islamism and was founded in 1981 by Ismail al-Faruqi , Anwar Ibrahim and Abdul Hamid Abu Sulayman . European representations are located in Brussels and London . At the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS), which belongs to the Islamic-led Cordoba University in Ashburn (Virginia) , Muslim military chaplains are trained on behalf of the US Department of Defense. The Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in Washington, DC is dedicated to Muslim-Christian dialogue

literature

• Akbar Ahmed : Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam . Brookings Press, 2010. ( American Book Award winner ) Video: Interview with Akbar Ahmed
• Patrick D. Bowen: A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States . 2 volumes. Brill, 2015 and 2017 respectively.
• Gerhard Bowering , Patricia Crone , Wadad Kadi, Devin J. Stewart, Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Mahan Mirza (Eds.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought . Princeton University Press, 2013. online review (English)
• James L. Conyers Jr. (Ed.): Africana Faith: A Religious History of the African American Crusade in Islam . Hamilton Books, 2017, ISBN 978-0-7618-6872-9 . Online partial view
• Jonathan Curiel: Islam in America . IB Tauris, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-84885-598-4 .
• Edward E. Curtis IV (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History . Facts on File, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-8160-7575-1 . Online partial view
• Edward E. Curtis IV (Ed.): The Practice of Islam in America . New York University Press 2017, ISBN 978-1-4798-0488-7 .
• Edward E. Curtis IV (Ed.): The Bloomsbury Reader on Islam in the West. Bloomsbury Academics, 2015, ISBN 978-1-4742-4536-4 .
• Edward E. Curtis IV: Muslims in America. A short history. Oxford University Press, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-536756-0 .
• Kambiz GhaneaBassiri: A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-61487-0 .
• Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad : The Muslims of America. Oxford University Press, New York 1991, ISBN 0-19-508559-0 .
• Juliane Hammer, Omid Safi: The Cambridge Companion to American Islam . Cambridge University Press, New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-107-00241-8 .
• Thomas S. Kidd: American Christians and Islam - Evangelical Culture and Muslims from the Colonial Period to the Age of Terrorism. Princeton University Press , 2008, ISBN 978-0-691-13349-2 .
• Michael A. Kőszegi, John Gordon Melton : Islam in North America: A Sourcebook . Routledge, 2017. Partial online view
• Manning Marable , Hisham D. Aidi: Black Routes to Islam . Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4039-8400-5 .

Web links

Commons : Islam in the United States  - Collection of Pictures, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Religious composition by Country, 2010 . Pew Research Center, Washington DC 2015.
2. ↑ New estimates show US Muslim population continues to grow Pew Research Center, January 3, 2018.
3. ↑ Kambiz Ghaneabassiri: North America. In: The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. P. 398.
4. ^ The Future of the Global Muslim Population Pew Research Center, Jan. 27, 2011.
5. ↑ Muslim Converts Face Discrimination Andrea Elliott in: The New York Times , April 30, 2005.
6. ^ Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History , pp. XXIV.
7. ↑ NEWSWEEK Poll: Americans Are Mixed on US Muslims. Prnewswire.com, archived from the original on January 14, 2012 ; accessed on October 23, 2019 . 
8. ↑ American Dreamers: Islam in America Lisa Miller in: Newsweek. July 29, 2007.
9. ↑ American Muslims: South Asian Contributions to the Mix Stanford, December 12-14. September 2004.
10. ↑ Malise Ruthven , in: Jonathan Curiel: Islam in America . S. VIII.
11. ^ A prayer from Mike Tyson before the madness The Guardian: Archives, March 25, 1995.
12. ↑ How to Produce Fewer Terrorists in Prison Leonid Bershidsky in: Bloomberg , March 27, 2017.
13. ^ Daniel Brumberg, Dina Shehata: Conflict, Identity, and Reform in the Muslim World: Challenges for US Engagement. US Institute of Peace Press, 2009, p. 366. Partial online view
14. ^ Southern Poverty Law Center : Nation of Islam
15. ^ Anti Defamation League: Nation of Islam Leader Reprises "Vintage" Anti-Semitism; ADL Says Farrakhan's Racism 'As Ugly As It Ever Was' ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2013 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
16. ↑ Muhammad Ali: Five things you never knew about the boxing legend Conor Lane, CNN. April 28, 2016.
17. ^ Muslim Mosques Growing at a Rapid Pace in the US Faith Communities Today, December 6, 2001.
18. ↑ Jonathan Curiel: Islam in America . S. XVI.
19. ^ Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam
20. ↑ Karim H. Karim, Mahmoud Eid: Engaging the Other: Public Policy and Western-Muslim Intersections . Springer, 2014, ISBN 978-1-137-40368-1 . Online partial view
21. ↑ Akbar Ahmed, Journey into America. P. 269 ("They appeared to exist in a cultural cocoon and were intoxicated with a sense of triumph because they believed they had brought Islam to America. In doing so, they were ignoring both the contribution and presence of African American Muslims." / dt. they seemed to exist in a cultural cocoon and were intoxicated by a sense of triumph, because they believed to have brought Islam to America. Here they ignored both the contribution and the presence of African-American Muslims. )
22. ↑ Johannes Grundmann: Islamism, Education and Society in Jordan using the Example of Private Higher Education . Dissertation . 2010. ( brs.ub.ruhr-uni-bochum.de )