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Essay On Islam In America

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dear brothers and sisters in Islam. My name is Osman Azharuddin and today I will be speaking about a topic that is not shed light upon enough: the history of Muslims in America. Don’t you want to know how your fellow brothers and sisters got here? What made it possible for you to get here? After my speech, insha’Allah, I anticipate that you will leave with more knowledge and gratitude for the Muslims before us, our unsung heroes.
The time of the first Muslims’ arrival to present-day U.S is debatable. However, many historians claim that the earliest Muslims came from the Senegambian region of Africa in the 1300s, which is present day Gambia and Senegal. It is believed they were Moors, expelled from Spain, who made their way to the Caribbean …show more content…

However, the first real wave of Muslims in the United States was the African slaves of whom 10 to 15 percent were said to be Muslims. Maintaining their religion was difficult and many were forcibly converted to Christianity. There were still some practicing Muslim slaves though; one of the best documented examples is Omar Ibn Said a scholar from Senegal who wrote many Arabic texts while enslaved. Between 1878 and 1924, Muslim immigrants from the Middle East, particularly from Syria and Lebanon, arrived in large numbers. These immigrants settled primarily in Dearborn, Michigan; Quincy, Massachusetts; and Ross, North Dakota. Ross, North Dakota is the site of the first documented mosque and Muslim Cemetery, but it was abandoned and later torn down in the mid-1970s. A new mosque was built in its place in 2005. At the same time, the Great Migration of blacks to the North helped encourage the African-American Islam revival and the growth of the African-American Muslim Nationalist Movement that still exists to this day. An example of an Islamic movement group consisting of primarily African Americans would be the Nation of Islam. After 30 years of excluding most immigrants, the United States flung open its doors again in 1952. This led to waves of immigration such as with South Asian immigration in the 1960s, bringing many more Muslims

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