When people think about Islam in America, they quickly turn to traditional Muslims who have immigrated from the Middle East. This is reasonable, but it ignores the sizable population of Muslims who have lived in America all their lives and who have a long, complex, and controversial history here: The Nation of Islam. How will the two groups interact?

Peter Skerry writes in the Wilson Quarterly:

W.D. Mohammad's openness to American society, culture, and politics makes it difficult for immigrant Muslims, and indeed for some African-American Muslims, to embrace his teachings. Yet Imam Mohammed’s efforts to ground his work in authentically Arabic and Islamic sources cause problems for those uncomfortable about straying too far from their African- American roots. Meanwhile, America’s powerful social and cultural turbines are drawing immigrant Muslims, and especially their children, into the American mainstream—sometimes not obviously, usually not completely, and almost never painlessly. Gradually, this process is transforming what it means to be a Muslim in America.

There are two to three million Muslims in America and Mohammed’s group is just 50,000 at best — however, that’s still larger than any other Muslim leader in America, which means that he is still the most influential voice in American Islam. Renamed the American Muslim Mission, his group is, moreover, more cohesive and organized than the rest of the Muslim community. Mohammad embraces America, denounces racism and separatism, and supports equal rights for woman. Will any of this impact the communities of immigrant Muslims?

Aside from differences of language, culture, and national origin, tensions have long been fueled by class disparities. Immigrant Muslims tend to be university educated and comfortably situated, while African-American Muslims are likely to be neither. Even W. D. Mohammed’s followers, who seem better off than other African-American Muslims, barely have a foothold in the middle class. ...

Imam Mohammed is well versed in Arabic and the Islamic texts, but such learning was not much in evidence at the Jummah service he led at the Chicago convention. This casual tone is even more apparent at local mosques, where worshipers drift in late, talk during the service, and fail to sit and kneel in the tight, ordered rows (“shoulder-to-shoulder, feet-to-feet” is the saying) that Muslims, as preoccupied with correct practice as with correct belief, value highly. Even the imams complain about this. As an immigrant Muslim activist sympathetic to Imam Mohammed said to me, “Their mosques feel like churches!”

Immigrant Islam and African-American Islam have a lot of similarities, but also a lot of differences. It’s difficult to know which will end up prevailing: will they become united on the basis of their common beliefs or will their differences foster suspicion, distrust, and rivalry? Either is certainly possible and there’s no particular reason why one must necessarily win out over the other. The relationship between immigrant Islam and African-American Islam my prove to be one of the more interesting stories of 21st century American religion.

 

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