Is Islam a Religion of the Black Man as suggested by Elijah Muhammad? Or is it a slave religion originated by white Arabs and imposed on Black People? Finally, this question is addressed with scholarship rather than with rhetoric. Internationally known scholar of Islam Dr. Wesley Muhammad brings together in this his latest work a tremendous amount of scholarship and demonstrates that: Ancient Black Arabia, which is the matrix of Islam, is a root of civilization and an integral component of the Global African Civilization paradigm. Islam the veneration of Allah as the supreme God predated the Arabian prophet Muhammad by millennia The oldest records of this ancient veneration of Allah indicates that Blacks or Africans in Arabia were the originators of this veneration And much more Remarks about Black Arabia from Africentric Scholar Wayne B. Chandler, author of Ancient Future: The Teachings and Prophetic Wisdom of the Seven Hermitic Laws of Ancient Egypt (1999) about new book: I began going through it and I must say I was really impressed with your work and historical insights. More times than not, much of what has come on the heels of the work we did with [Ivan] Van Sertima has been no more than a regurgitation of our ideas, directions, and story lines. I applaud you in creating a written work which is fresh and inspiring. I am enjoying the read! Peace & Blessings.

Did the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teach true Islam or was he simply a powerful social reformer who spun an interpretation of Islam which, while socially and culturally uplifting, was religiously blasphemous? What criteria should be used to assess his Islamicity? The Qur an and Sunnah obviously, but whose reading of the Qur an and Sunnah is to be privileged in this discussion? Islamic scholar Dr Wesley Muhammad, who holds a Doctorate in Islamic Studies from one of America s top Public Ivy League universities, brings to this discussion for the first time a wealth of information from and concerning the Classical Arabic/Islamic tradition that has up until now been omitted. This work by Dr Wesley puts the most controversial aspect of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad s teachings the claim that God is a man in the context of the Classical Arabic/Islamic Tradition. He demonstrates that the original Arabic context of the Qur an and the Sunnah, as well as the Arabic Sunni orthodoxy that first came together in the 8th-9th centuries, was markedly different from the de-Arabized orthodoxy that will develop later and which now dominates all discussion of God in Islam. When judged on the basis of this de-Arabized Islam, the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad indeed appear radically divergent and un-islamic . However, when viewed from the perspective of the Arabic Qur an and Sunnah and the Arabic Sunni Tradition that Dr. Wesley has helped rediscover, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad s teachings appear recognizably Islamic as they are consistent with what came to and through Prophet Muhammad b. Abd Allah, the Seal of the Prophets. This newly revised 2nd edition also includes an intense academic dialogue between the scholars of the respective religious communities of Minister Louis Farrakhan (Nation of Islam) and Imam W.D. Mohammed (Mosque Cares) discussing the controversial subject matter.

Renowned for its madrassas and archives of rare Arabic manuscripts, Timbuktu is famous as a great center of Muslim learning from Islam’s Golden Age. Yet Timbuktu is not unique. It was one among many scholarly centers to exist in precolonial West Africa. Beyond Timbuktu charts the rise of Muslim learning in West Africa from the beginning of Islam to the present day, examining the shifting contexts that have influenced the production and dissemination of Islamic knowledge—and shaped the sometimes conflicting interpretations of Muslim intellectuals—over the course of centuries. Highlighting the significant breadth and versatility of the Muslim intellectual tradition in sub-Saharan Africa, Ousmane Kane corrects lingering misconceptions in both the West and the Middle East that Africa’s Muslim heritage represents a minor thread in Islam’s larger tapestry. West African Muslims have never been isolated. To the contrary, their connection with Muslims worldwide is robust and longstanding. The Sahara was not an insuperable barrier but a bridge that allowed the Arabo-Berbers of the North to sustain relations with West African Muslims through trade, diplomacy, and intellectual and spiritual exchange. The West African tradition of Islamic learning has grown in tandem with the spread of Arabic literacy, making Arabic the most widely spoken language in Africa today. In the postcolonial period, dramatic transformations in West African education, together with the rise of media technologies and the ever-evolving public roles of African Muslim intellectuals, continue to spread knowledge of Islam throughout the continent.

The changes to U.S. immigration law that were instituted in 1965 have led to an influx of West African immigrants to New York, creating an enclave Harlem residents now call ''Little Africa.'' These immigrants are immediately recognizable as African in their wide-sleeved robes and tasseled hats, but most native-born members of the community are unaware of the crucial role Islam plays in immigrants' lives. Zain Abdullah takes us inside the lives of these new immigrants and shows how they deal with being a double minority in a country where both blacks and Muslims are stigmatized. Dealing with this dual identity, Abdullah discovers, is extraordinarily complex. Some longtime residents embrace these immigrants and see their arrival as an opportunity to reclaim their African heritage, while others see the immigrants as scornful invaders. In turn, African immigrants often take a particularly harsh view of their new neighbors, buying into the worst stereotypes about American-born blacks being lazy and incorrigible. And while there has long been a large Muslim presence in Harlem, and residents often see Islam as a force for social good, African-born Muslims see their Islamic identity disregarded by most of their neighbors. Abdullah weaves together the stories of these African Muslims to paint a fascinating portrait of a community's efforts to carve out space for itself in a new country.

Ancient Future celebrates the wisdom of those ancient civilizations that did not disassociate the philosophical, spiritual, and material realms of life. This book is an attempt to re-create this holistic experience in hopes that a synthesized view of life will become reality in the 21st century.

Born to a wealthy family in West Africa around 1770, Omar Ibn Said was abducted and sold into slavery in the United States, where he came to the attention of a prominent North Carolina family after filling “the walls of his room with piteous petitions to be released, all written in the Arabic language,” as one local newspaper reported. Ibn Said soon became a local celebrity, and in 1831 he was asked to write his life story, producing the only known surviving American slave narrative written in Arabic. In A Muslim American Slave, scholar and translator Ala Alryyes offers both a definitive translation and an authoritative edition of this singularly important work, lending new insights into the early history of Islam in America and exploring the multiple, shifting interpretations of Ibn Said’s narrative by the nineteenth-century missionaries, ethnographers, and intellectuals who championed it. This edition presents the English translation on pages facing facsimile pages of Ibn Said’s Arabic narrative, augmented by Alryyes’s comprehensive introduction, contextual essays and historical commentary by leading literary critics and scholars of Islam and the African diaspora, photographs, maps, and other writings by Omar Ibn Said. The result is an invaluable addition to our understanding of writings by enslaved Americans and a timely reminder that “Islam” and “America” are not mutually exclusive terms. This edition presents the English translation on pages facing facsimile pages of Ibn Said’s Arabic narrative, augmented by Alryyes’s comprehensive introduction and by photographs, maps, and other writings by Omar Ibn Said. The volume also includes contextual essays and historical commentary by literary critics and scholars of Islam and the African diaspora: Michael A. Gomez, Allan D. Austin, Robert J. Allison, Sylviane A. Diouf, Ghada Osman, and Camille F. Forbes. The result is an invaluable addition to our understanding of writings by enslaved Americans and a timely reminder that “Islam” and “America” are not mutually exclusive terms. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians

Illuminating the Darkness critically addresses the issue of racial discrimination and colour prejudice in religious history. Tackling common misconceptions, the author seeks to elevate the status of blacks and North Africans in Islam. The book is divided into two sections: Part l of the book explores the concept of race, 'blackness', slavery, interracial marriage and racism in Islam in the light of the Qur'an, Hadith and early historical sources. Part ll of the book consists of a compilation of short biographies of noble black and North African Muslim men and women in Islamic history including Prophets, Companions of the Prophet and more recent historical figures. Following in the tradition of revered scholars of Islam such as al-Jahiz, Ibn al-Jawzi and al-Suyuti who wrote about this topic, Illuminating the Darkness is structured according to a similar monographic arrangement.