PDF Ebook Reversion to Islam: A study of racial and spiritual empowerment among African-American Muslims by Shana Slutzky
The black Muslims who came to traditional Islam by way of the Nation of Islam’s Black Nationalist movement in the mid-20 th century constitute a large portion of today’s practicing African-American Muslims. Muslims of this group often share interestingly complex identities and histories that include disillusionment by centuries of institutionalized oppression, dissatisfaction with what they saw as a submissive ideology underlying integrationism, and frustration with the slow efficacy and false promises of government-enforced integration. Many were tired of contradictions they saw within Christianity, such as its emphasis on “turning the other cheek” despite discrimination and violence against blacks. These disenfranchised blacks sought an alternative to the integrationist approach, and the Nation of Islam provided one with its message of racial empowerment and its notion of reviving the black race. With the help of charismatic leaders like Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, and the popularity of the Black Power message backed by the organization, the Nation of Islam gained strength and numbers throughout the 1950s and 60s.
After the death of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation, his son Warith Deen Muhammad steered the organization away from its controversially racist discourse. He led most of its members to a more traditional and recognized practice of Islam as dictated by the Qur’an and the Sunnah (“the way of the Prophet”), and separated from those who would follow Louis Farrakhan under the original tenets of the Nation, anathema to the global community of Muslims. Despite a decline in the reversion of public figures to Islam since the 1980s, and a decrease of black Muslims in the public eye, Sunni Islam continues to appeal to African Americans.
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
II. HISTORY OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN ISLAM
III. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: THE SOCIAL APPEAL OF RELIGION
IV. LITERATURE REVIEW ON AFRICAN-AMERICAN ISLAM
V. HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN PRIMARY SOURCES
VI. HISTORICAL NARRATIVES FROM AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSLIMS
VII. CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE OF SUNNI ISLAM AMONG AFRICAN AMERICANS
VIII. CONCLUSION
IX. APPENDIX
X. WORKS CITED
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