Elijah Muhammad and Islam

1. American Islam before Elijah Muhammad

9 1 American Islam before Elijah Muhammad Many Africans who made the Middle Passage were Muslims. The story of how their religion was all but extinguished in the United States is a remarkable one. Just as intriguing is its seemingly spontaneous reappearance under the charismatic but unlearned and unassuming Elijah Muhammad . Although Elijah Muhammad and his Nation of Islam were almost entirely responsible for bringing African Americans to Islam during the twentieth century, a closer examination reveals that Islam was not unheard of even in the 1930s when he himself converted. Some African Americans were aware that many of their African ancestors had been Muslims when brought as slaves to North America. They were stripped of this religion almost immediately (as they were of their names and other elements of African culture). Nevertheless, the association of Islam with Africa remained. This association was strengthened by white American islamicism. Although the white American view of Islam was quite negative, Islam’s presumed antithesis to Christianity and its alleged opposition to slavery would have been intriguing and appealing to many African Americans. These vestiges of, and imaginations about, Islam made the fertile ground that allowed the seeds of Islam to be sown, first by Ahmadiyya missionaries and then by Noble Drew Ali. These movements and the socioeconomic conditions of African Americans, especially those who lived in northern urban centers but had recently migrated from the rural South (including Elijah Muhammad himself), made them particularly receptive to the radically new formulation of Islam promulgated by Wali Fard Muhammad. Islam Comes to America The first Muslim—in fact, the first Muslim African slave—in North America was a Moroccan named Estevan (also known as Estevanico, Esteban, 10 American Islam before Elijah Muhammad Estebanico, Black Stephen, or Stephen the Moor). In 1527 he landed in what is now Florida with an ill-fated Spanish fleet, for whom he was a guide. Only four of the 506 men who were part of the fleet survived the first year. They wandered for eight years among Native Americans, but when the three Europeans were finally able to return home, Estevan stayed behind in Mexico. Later, he served as a guide for another expedition, this one north into modern New Mexico, where he was killed by natives in 1539.1 Given that even historians had long ignored him, it is not surprising that Estevan’s origin as a Muslim had no impact on later African Americans .2 Likewise, the many other early African Muslims within the Spanish and French parts of colonial North America had no discernible religious influence on later African Americans. American Slaves Any vestigial influence of Islam on the twentieth-century African Americans of Elijah Muhammad’s time came from their slave ancestors, first shipped to the New World in 1501. It is not certain how many of the half a million or so3 Africans brought to colonial North America and later the United States as part of the transatlantic slave trade were Muslims. The data is scarce because those who recorded it were not generally interested in slaves as Muslims. Moreover, Muslims and their descendents might be reluctant to divulge Muslim practices or ancestry. However, scholars estimate that over half of these slaves were from West Africa, where Islam was prevalent, and perhaps 15 percent4 of these West African slaves brought to North American were Muslims. These estimates are based not only on the names recorded in the ledgers of slave owners but also on the religious and ethnic milieu of principle regions from which the slaves originated. These figures are supported by other documents such as runaway notices, which contained names, descriptions, and, occasionally, information about geographical or ethnic origins. The vast majority of these slaves were stripped of their names, their religion , and their culture. However, Sylviane A. Diouf argues that African Muslims resisted. That Islam as brought by the African slaves has not survived does not mean that the Muslim faith did not flourish during slavery on a fairly large scale. . . . Muslims were not absorbed into the cultural-religious American Islam before Elijah Muhammad 11 Christian world. They chose to remain Muslims, and even enslaved, succeeded in following most of the precepts of their religion.5 Historian Michael A. Gomez shares this view and contends that many Muslim slaves made genuine and persistent efforts to observe their religion; and even though they perpetuated their faith primarily within their own families...