African Islamic movement in the United States Essay

African Islamic movement in the United States - Essay Example Islam has deep origins in the African-American practice of religion, roots that can be traced back to the period of slavery and early 20th century black Sunni communities in the United States. Islam played a greatly encouraging and ideological role in the evolution of a distinct African-American identity This study will outline the spiritual, ideological and psychological way for tracing the course of Islamic expansion within the United States and how has the matter of race in the United States influenced the practices and the community experiences of black Sunni Muslims who conventionally see Islam as a color and race-blind religion.Malcolm X's Hajj in 1964 and Warith Deen Mohammed's transformation of the Nation of Islam into an orthodox community in 1975 are two of the more recent visible signs of the importance of mainstream Islam in the African-American experience (American Black Islam, 1989). African Americans comprise about 42% of the Muslim population in the United States, whi ch conservatively is somewhere between four to six million; and Sunni African-American Muslims are the predominant community in the United States today.Muslim slaves-involuntary settlers, who had been the urban-ruling elite in West Africa - comprised at least 15% of the slave populace in North America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Their spiritual and racial roots could be tracked to ancient black Islamic monarchy in Ghana, Mali, and Sohghay. Some of these West African Muslim slaves brought the first mainstream Islamic beliefs and practices to America by keeping Islamic names, writing in Arabic, fasting during the month of Ramadan, praying five times a day, wearing Muslim clothing, and writing and reciting the Qur'an (McCloud, 1995). By the end of the Civil War, the old Islam of the West African Muslim slaves was for all realistic purposes obsolete, because these Muslims were not able to develop community establishment to maintain their faith. When they died, their version of Islam, which was African-American, personal, and with conventional and unorthodox practices disappeared. Early 20th-Century Mainstream Communities In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Pro-Africanist ideas of Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), which criticized Christianity for its racial discrimination and recommended Islam as a feasible alternative faith for African Americans, offered the political agenda for Islam's influence on black Americans. Furthermore, the global outlook of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Great relocation of more than one million black southerners to northern and Midwestern cities during the World War I era offered the social and political background for the emergence of African-American mainstream communities from the 1920s to the 1940s. The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, an unorthodox disciple community from India, set the foundation for conventional Islam in Black America, by imparting African Americans with their first Qur'an, significant Islamic literature and culture, and association to the mainstream world of Islam. Black Sunni Muslims can track their ancestry in the United States in the early 20th century to two multi-ethnic communities: the Islamic Mission of America, led by Shaykh Daoud Ahmed Faisal in New York City, and the First Mosque of Pittsburgh (Marsh, 1984). Shaykh Daoud, was born in Morocco and migrated to the United States from Grenada. He was greatly influenced by the Muslim migrant societies, by Muslim sailors from Yemen, Somalia, and Madagascar, and by the Ahmadi version of the Qur'an. He established the Islamic Mission of America, also known as the State Street Mosque, in New York City in 1924. This was the first African-American conventional muslim community in the United States. The president of the Muslim Ladies Cultural Society was none other than Shaykh Daoud' s wife, "Mother" Khadijah Faisal, who possessed Pakistani Muslim and black Caribbean ancestry. The Islamic

Philosophical Conceptions of Justice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Philosophical Conceptions of Justice - Essay Example However, justice, in a universal definition, entails the knowledge of doing right from wrong and making sure people live in the right way together. It is this ‘right’ way of living that brings controversies in describing social justice among nations. This paper discusses a variety of philosophical conceptions of justice with regard to famous philosophers in their definitions of social justice (Ackerman, 1980). John Locke and Thomas Jefferson John Locke lived in the mid seventeenth century as an English Enlightenment philosopher. He argued that our ancestors once lived in a state of nature that had no government or laws. However, as life advanced and civilization came up, people became stratified into various social classes that required the formulation of laws and regulations in order to cater for the less disadvantaged. This also prohibited the oppression of the less fortunate by the more fortunate. He called this idea of the social contract that enabled all citizens ac quire fundamental rights of life, property, and liberty. However, this depended on people’s consent that he said are an active part of the social contract in which they take part depending on their own accord (Chaffee, 2004). Consequently, a twenty first century philosopher, Chaffee, analyses Locke’s writings in addition to other various ancient philosophers. He says that Locke’s theory is political in that he took up Hobbe’s opinion of human equality and the social contract. Furthermore, he also puts Aristotle’s arguments forward that man is naturally a social creature who cannot survive alone. This means that humanity is fundamentally a social identity and that there is no need to put up a system to control our way of life. However, Hobbes described how this natural socialism could lead to relinquishment of certain rights by high status individuals, hence, leading to oppression and injustice. On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson, the third preside nt of the United States was a profound follower of Locke’s arguments. He believed that every human being is equal and that God gave each unique rights, including liberty, life, and the right to be happy and content. He created his government on the basis that it enabled his people to secure these rights. However, the people still held the right to overthrow the government if they felt that its constitution was not in favor of their happiness and safety. As a result, I believe in Locke’s way of thinking that nowadays life requires a body, like the government, that controls the provision and use of resources on the basis that we are all equal regardless of an individual’s social status. This is because it defines true independence (Marx, 1938). Conceptions of justice Liberalism denotes a free way of acting and thinking in public and private life. It focuses on the role of an individual to possess the power to think and act in whatever way that he or she likes. It is a philosophical view based on Aristotle and Plato’s arguments on justice as was recommended by Locke as the key to a just way of life. It rejects state religion, hereditary privilege, and absolute monarchy as notions that favor inequality among the public and private. In the 19th, liberalism advanced to a political ideology called classical liberalism. This liberalism was still based on the initial liberalism ideas although it advocated for political freedom and civil liberties while opposing how the government interfered with economic freedom. On the other hand, socialism describes an economic ideology that entails social possession of resources, including the ways of production of these resources. It also entails mutual organization of the economy that focuses on benefiting the public as a whole instead of