Sufism--1970s Style

 A rare collection of faces...

Volume 3 is still coming

Upcoming Presentation

 

New Book Chapter: "Conversion to Islam in modern Western Europe and the United States"

 "Conversion to Islam in modern Western Europe and the United States"

This is a thoroughly revised version of my book chapter of the same title that was published in 2014. This new version is, I believe, the first scholarly work to examine and compare quantitative and historical data on modern conversion to Islam from virtually every Western European country and the United States. In doing so it offers a fresh, broad perspective on the phenomenon of conversion to Islam in the modern West. 

in Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West 2nd Edition, ed. Roberto Tottoli

Amazon

Upcoming Lecture - March 2022

 

Upcoming and Recent Lectures - Spring 2021

*UPDATED WITH APRIL SPEECH  DATE AND TIME

“Early Black Muslim Political Candidates in the Midwest, 1975-1989”

AAR-Midwest Region

Friday, April 23 @ 4pm CST

Registration--FREE for students and contingent faculty using promo code MIDWESTAAR on the Eventbrite registration page

“Remanufacturing Religion: On the Early Years of Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam”

AAR-Rocky Mountains – Great Plains Region
Virtual Regional Meeting
Saturday, March 20, 2021

Registration is Free

Upcoming Presentation for the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, December 3

"Exploring Local Histories of African American Islam Through the Black Press"

ABSTRACT: This paper offers a new historiographic approach to African American Muslim history from both a local and a multilocal perspective. Based on an analysis of over four dozen African American newspapers from 1975 through 1989—the years corresponding to the transition of the original Nation of Islam and the rise of Louis Farrakhan’s group—it is proposed that we can gain great insight into the local and regional development of certain African American Muslim communities by looking at their coverage in the local black press. It will be shown that, in general, the amount and type of coverage of Muslim communities roughly corresponds to those communities’ growth. The paper will present several examples of this phenomenon functioning at both local and regional levels. It will be observed, for example, that local growth is highly correlated with press coverage of the local branch of a particular community, but not necessarily with coverage of national news for that community. In some cases, regional patterns can also be observed, such as the case of black newspapers along Interstate 35 showing similar patterns of coverage, which generally corresponds to local community growth in that region.

For those attending (virtually) the upcoming American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, I will be presenting in a session on Thursday, December 3 from 4 pm - 5:30 pm EST

Afro-American Religious History Unit
Theme: Mormon, Muslim, Coptic, Webb: Blackness and Identity in New Religious Movements

Program book PDF