Malcolm X and, more recently, Louis Farrakhan are two of the more visible signs of Islam's influence in the lives and culture of African Americans. Yet, as Richard Brent Turner shows, the involvement of black Americans with Islam reaches back to the earliest days of the African presence in North America. Part I of the book explores these roots in the Middle East, West Africa, and antebellum America. Part II tells the story of the "Prophets of the City"--the leaders of the new urban-based African-American Muslim movements in the twentieth century. Turner places the study of Islam in a historical context of racial, ethical, and political relations that influenced the reception of successive and varied presentations of Islam, including the West African Islam of slaves, the Ahmadiyya Movement from India, the orthodox Sunni practice of later immigrants, and the Nation of Islam. This new edition of Islam in the African-American Experience features a new Introduction, which discusses developments in African-American Islam since the earlier edition, including Islam in the new millennium in a post-9/11 context.
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