A New Revelation about Webb

New Article on Abdul Hamid Suleiman

My new article on Abdul Hamid Suleiman has just been published under the title:

"Prince D. Solomon and the Birth of African-American Islam" 

in the Journal of Theta Alpha Kappa, vol 38 no 1 (Spring 2014), pages 1-19.

*NOTE* Unfortunately, very few libraries carry this journal--in either hard-copy or electronic form. However, it is available through some library subscriptions of the EBSCO Publishing. If your library does not have it, you can obtain a copy through your library's Interlibrary Loan department. Or, if you belong to a college that has a Religious Studies department that is a member of Theta Alpha Kappa, they may have a copy.

In this article I discuss new evidence I have found on Suleiman's activities between 1905 and 1922, the years he was verifiably in the US prior to the confirmed existence of his "Caananites" Temple.

I also discuss evidence concerning his birth and immigration years, and his likely ties Georgia in the late 1800s--information obtained from Suleiman's various court and prison records

Perhaps the most important aspect of this article, however, is my discussion of Suleiman's meeting with leading Garveyites--including DUSE MOHAMED ALI--in April 1922. The evidence of this meeting has been staring all of us in the face for years. Richard Brent Turner, in his seminal work on African-American Islam, "Islam in the African-American Experience" (1997), discussed this meeting. However, at the time, he had no idea whom "Dr. Abdul Hamid" was, plus he had a few errors in his transcription of the 1922 article he was citing, which made it difficult to recognize all of that article's important clues. After I wrote my 2011 article on Abdul Hamid Suleiman,  I was re-reading Turner's book to see if I could see things I had missed before. That's when I stumbled onto this story, which got me interested in digging deeper into Suleiman's past.

Now, I actually originally wrote this newest article in late 2012, so there are some claims and conclusions in it that I no longer adhere to. These will be cleared up in my forthcoming "A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Vol. 2: The African-American Islamic Renaissance" (Brill 2015)

Below is the article that Turner discussed and which inspired this new investigation (click to enlarge):

1914

Early Pan-Arab Movement in the Americas

This is important for understanding the emergence of Non-Christian religions in the US

FOUND PT. 2: Ghulam Ahmad's Ad that Helped Spark Webb's Interest in Islam

Like Webb's first letter to Ghulam Ahmad, I will be discussing this advertisement and the context in which Webb read it in my forthcoming "History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Vol. I" due out next year.

Understanding Early Black Sunnis in Detroit

I wrote a paper last year that explains where these feelings come from