Islam in the United States
is the third-largest religion in the United States after Christianity and Judaism. The 2020 United States Religion Census estimates that there are about 4,453,908 Muslim Americans of all ages living in the United States in 2020, making up 1.34% of the total U.S. population. In 2017, twenty states, mostly in the South and Midwest, reported Islam to be the largest non-Christian religion.
The first Muslims to arrive in America were enslaved people from West Africa. Allan D. Austin makes a bold estimate that 5 to 10% of the slaves brought to colonial America from ports between Senegal and the Bight of Benin during the Atlantic slave trade were Muslims, however Islam was suppressed on plantations and the majority were forced to convert to Christianity. Nearly all enslaved Muslims and their descendants converted to Christianity during the 18th and 19th centuries, though the Black power movement of the 20th century would later influence the revival of Islam among descendants of slaves. Prior to the late 19th century, the vast majority of documented Muslims in North America were merchants, travelers, and sailors.
From the 1880s to 1914, several thousand Muslims immigrated to the United States from the former territories of the Ottoman Empire and British India. The Muslim population of the U.S. increased dramatically in the second half of the 20th century due to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished previous immigration quotas. About 72 percent of American Muslims are "second generation". In 2005, more people from Muslim-majority countries became legal permanent United States residents—nearly 96,000—than there had been in any other year in the previous two decades. In 2009, more than 115,000 Muslims became legal residents of the United States.
American Muslims come from various backgrounds and, according to a 2009 Gallup poll, are one of the most racially diverse religious groups in the United States. According to a 2017 study done by the Institute for Social Policy, "American Muslims are the only faith community surveyed with no majority race, with 26 percent white, 18 percent Asian, 18 percent Arab, 9 percent black, 7 percent mixed race, and 5 percent Hispanic". The Pew Research Center estimates about 73% of American Muslims are Sunni and 16% are Shia; the remainder identify with neither group, and include movements such as the Nation of Islam, Ahmadiyya, or non-denominational Muslims. Conversion to Islam in large cities and in prisons have also contributed to its growth over the years.
History
Historical overview
Islam in the United States can be traced back to the 16th century when African slaves were brought to the United States of America. Most slaves who tried to maintain Islamic religious practices after their arrival were forcibly converted to Christianity. Some enslaved Muslims managed to preserve their religious practices. In the mid-17th century, Ottoman Muslims are documented to have immigrated with other European immigrants, such as Anthony Janszoon van Salee, a merchant of mixed origin from Morocco. Immigration drastically increased from 1878 to 1924 when Muslims from the Balkans, and Syria settled especially in the Midwestern United States. During that era, the Ford Motor Company employed Muslims as well as African-Americans, since they were the most inclined to work in its factories under demanding conditions. By the 1930s and 1940s, Muslims in the US built mosques for their communal religious observance. As of the early 21st century, the number of Muslims in the United States is estimated at 3.5 to 4.5 million, and Islam is predicted to eventually become the second-largest religion in the US.Early records
One of the earliest accounts of Islam's possible presence in North America dates to 1528, when a Moroccan slave, called Mustafa Azemmouri, was shipwrecked near what is now Galveston, Texas. He and three Spanish survivors subsequently traveled through much of the American southwest and the Mexican interior before reaching Mexico City.Historian Peter Manseau wrote:
Muslims' presence is affirmed in documents dated more than a century before religious liberty became the law of the land, as in a Virginia statute of 1682 which referred to "negroes, moores, molatoes, and others, born of and in heathenish, idolatrous, pagan, and Mahometan parentage and country" who "heretofore and hereafter may be purchased, procured, or otherwise obtained, as slaves."
American Revolution and thereafter
Records from the American Revolutionary War indicate that at least a few likely Muslims fought on the American side. Among the recorded names of American soldiers are "Yusuf ben Ali", "Bampett Muhamed" and possibly Peter Salem.The first country to recognize the United States as an independent nation was the Sultanate of Morocco, under its ruler Mohammed ben Abdallah, in the year 1777. He maintained several correspondences with President George Washington. On December 9, 1805, President Thomas Jefferson hosted a dinner at the White House for his guest Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, an envoy from Tunis.
Bilali "Ben Ali" Muhammad was a Fula Muslim from Timbo, Futa-Jallon, in present-day Guinea-Conakry, who arrived at Sapelo Island during 1803. While enslaved, he became the religious leader and Imam for a slave community numbering approximately eighty Muslim men residing on his plantation. During the War of 1812, Muhammad and the eighty Muslim men under his leadership protected their master's Sapelo Island property from a British attack. He is known to have fasted during the month of Ramadan, worn a fez and kaftan, and observed the Muslim feasts, in addition to consistently performing the five obligatory prayers. In 1829, Bilali authored a thirteen-page Arabic Risala on Islamic beliefs and the rules for ablution, morning prayer, and the calls to prayer. Known as the Bilali Document, it is currently housed at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Nineteenth century
Estimates ranging from a dozen to 292 Muslims served in the Union military during the American Civil War, including Private Mohammed Kahn, who was born in Persia, raised in Afghanistan, and emigrated to the United States. The highest-ranking Muslim officer in the Union Army was Captain Moses Osman. Nicholas Said, formerly enslaved to an Arab master, came to the United States in 1860 and found a teaching job in Detroit. In 1863, Said enlisted in the 55th Massachusetts Colored Regiment in the United States Army and rose to the rank of sergeant. He was later granted a transfer to a military hospital, where he gained some knowledge of medicine. His Army records state that he died in Brownsville, Tennessee, in 1882. Another Muslim soldier from the Civil War was Max Hassan, an African who worked for the military as a porter.A Greek/Syrian convert to Islam, Phillip Tedro, born in Smyrna, who renamed himself Hajj Ali, 'Ali who made the pilgrimage to Mecca,' was hired by the United States Cavalry in 1856 to tend camels in Arizona and California. He would later become a prospector in Arizona. Hajj Ali died in 1903.
During the American Civil War, the "scorched earth" policy of the North destroyed churches, farms, schools, libraries, colleges, and a great deal of other property. In early April 1865, when Federal troops commanded by Col. Thomas M. Johnston reached the campus of the University of Alabama with an order to destroy the university, Andre Deloffre, a modern language professor and custodian of the library, appealed to the commanding officer to spare one of the finest libraries in the South. The officer, being sympathetic, sent a courier to Brigadier General John T. Croxton at his headquarters in Tuscaloosa, Alabama asking permission to save the Rotunda, but the general refused to allow this. The officer reportedly said, "I will save one volume as a memento of this occasion." The volume selected was a rare copy of the Qur'an, titled The Koran: Commonly Called The Alcoran.
Alexander Russell Webb is considered by historians to be the earliest prominent Anglo-American convert to Islam in 1888. In 1893, he was the sole representative of Islam at the first Parliament of the World's Religions. The Russian-born Muslim scholar and writer Achmed Abdullah was another prominent early American Muslim.
In the 1891 Supreme Court case In re Ross, the Court referred to “the intense hostility of the people of Muslim faith to all other sects, and particularly to Christians". Scores of Muslim immigrants were turned away at U.S. ports in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Christian immigrants suspected of secretly being Muslims were also excluded.
Slaves
Many enslaved people brought to America from Africa were Muslims from the predominantly-Muslim West African region. Between 1701 and 1800, some 500,000 Africans arrived in what became the United States. According to 21st century researchers Donna Meigs-Jaques and R. Kevin Jaques, "hese enslaved Muslims stood out from their compatriots because of their resistance, determination and education."It is estimated that over 50% of the slaves imported to North America came from areas where Islam was followed by at least a minority population. Thus, no less than 200,000 came from regions influenced by Islam. Substantial numbers originated from Senegambia, a region with an established community of Muslim inhabitants extending to the 11th century.
Through a series of conflicts, primarily with the Fulani jihad states, about half of the Senegambian Mandinka were converted to Islam, while as many as a third were sold into slavery to the Americas through capture in conflict.
Michael A. Gomez speculated that Muslim slaves may have accounted for "thousands, if not tens of thousands", but does not offer a precise estimate. He also suggests many non-Muslim slaves were acquainted with some tenets of Islam, due to Muslim trading and proselytizing activities.
Historical records indicate many enslaved Muslims conversed in the Arabic language. Some even composed literature and commentaries on the Quran.
Some newly arrived Muslim slaves assembled for communal salat. Some were provided a private praying area by their owner. The two best documented Muslim slaves were Ayuba Suleiman Diallo and Omar Ibn Said. Suleiman was brought to America in 1731 and returned to Africa in 1734. Like many Muslim slaves, he often encountered impediments when attempting to perform religious rituals and was eventually allotted a private location for prayer by his master.
Omar ibn Said is among the best documented examples of a practicing-Muslim slave. He lived on a 19th Century North Carolina plantation and wrote many Arabic texts while enslaved. Born in the kingdom of Futa Tooro, he arrived in America in 1807, one month before the U.S. abolished importation of slaves. Some of his works include the Lords Prayer, the Bismillah, this is How You Pray, Quranic phases, the 23rd Psalm, and an autobiography. In 1857, he produced his last known writing on Surah 110 of the Quran. In 1819, Omar received an Arabic translation of the Christian Bible from his master, James Owen. Omar converted to Christianity in 1820, an episode widely used throughout the South to "prove" the benevolence of slavery. However, many scholars believe he continued to be a practicing Muslim, based on dedications to Muhammad written in his Bible.