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Islam in the African American Experience

After the West Africans converted, they attempted to mix Islam with traditional African religions. This resulted in West African Islam being markedly unique from other forms of Islam found in the world. Additionally, racist feelings inherent among some Arabs perpetuated the rise of separatist feelings among West African Muslims. These separatist feelings would only be fueled later when Arabs began enslaving their fellow Muslims. Turner goes through this thorough description of the founding of West African Islam to communicate to the reader that the Islam of African People was different from the Islam of the Middle East and Indian subcontinent. He brings this up so that the reader may eventually link how the early differences between West African Islam and orthodox Islam would carry over to the twentieth century during the initiation of new American Islam in the black Community. The last part of the chapter is spent discussing the stories of some of the first known African Muslims in America such as Yarrow Mahmout and Bilali. The author describes the customs and clothing of these trailblazers, and also emphasizes that they all were well educated. Many of them were fluent in Arabic or had significant portions of the Quran devoted to memory. Turner mentions this to highlight how these slaves still had traditional "old Islamic" beliefs. .
             The next chapter in the book is titled "Pan-Africanism and the New American Islam: Edward Wilmot Blyden and Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb". The purpose of this chapter is to familiarize the reader with how Pan-Africanism infused itself with the ideologies that formed the basis of twentieth century American Islam. The author makes it known that he believes that Pan-Africanism bridged the gap between "old Islam" and "new Islam" in America. Turner begins his discussion by detailing the life and beliefs of Edward Blyden, the so-called "father of Pan-Africanism.


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