Journal of Islamic Studies and Culture December 2019, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 48-66 ISSN: 2333-5904 (Print), 2333-5912 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: 10.15640/jisc.v7n2a6 URL: https://doi.org/10.15640/jisc.v7n2a6 Islām Takes Root in America alongside Racism Rafi Rahman Doctoral Candidate School of Theology and Religious Studies The Catholic University of America Abstract According to current-day demographic projections, Islām is poised within the next half-century to become the world‘s fastest growing faith tradition and, with this religious particularity in mind, ―American-born Black Muslims stand out from other U.S. [immigrant] Muslims in several ways … fully two-thirds are converts to Islām, compared with just one-in-seven among all other U.S. Muslims … [approximately] three-quarters of U.S. Muslims are immigrants or the children of immigrants‖; a religious expansion that draws much needed race, religion, culture and ethnicity attention upon the discrete ―color line‖ saturating Muslim identity and membership. The post-1965 immigration of Muslims from the Middle East and South Asia dramatically transmuted the previous American social imagination concerning Islām—in its infancy it was known as a religio-cultural phenomenon exclusively associated with America‘s indigenous Black community—to a new highly contested and racialized domain that dramatically underscores the fraught relationship between Black and non-Black immigrant Muslims. Keywords: Islām, Black Muslims, Black Islām, Black identity, American culture, racism, race relations and religious studies I begin with the premise that there is a [new] American Islām being created - a version of the faith that aligns with the contemporary United States both organizationally and culturally. This faith formation is connected to the immigration of Muslims to the United States since the 1965 changes in immigration laws, even though Muslims have been in the United States, especially among African Americans, much longer than that … This has led to an ideal typical distinction in the scholarly world that studies Muslims in the United States that differentiates between ‗indigenous‘ and ‗immigrant‘ Islām, largely along racial lines. —Rhys H. Williams 1 According to current-day demographic projections, Islām is poised within the next half-century to become the world‘s fastest growing faith tradition and, with this faith particularity in mind, ―American-born Black Muslims stand out from other U.S. [immigrant] Muslims in several ways … fully two-thirds are converts to Islām , compared with just one-in-seven among all other U.S. Muslims … [approximately] three-quarters of U.S. Muslims are immigrants or the children of immigrants‖; a religious expansion that draws much needed race, religion, culture and ethnicity attention upon the discrete ―color line‖ saturating Muslim identity and membership within America. 2 1 Williams, Rhys H. "2010 Association for the Sociology of Religion Presidential Address, Creating an American Islam: Thoughts on Religion, Identity, and Place." Sociology of Religion 72, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 127-53. 2 Mohamed, Besheer. "New Estimates Show U.S. Muslim Population Continues to Grow." Fact Tank: News in the numbers. Washington: Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social sciences, 2018.; see also Lipka, Michael, and Conrad Hackett. "Why Muslims Are the World‘s Fastest -Growing Religious Group." Fact Tank: News in the numbers. Washington: Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social sciences, 2017.; see also Mohamed, Besheer, Gregory A. Smith, Alan Cooperman, Jessica Hamar Martínez, Elizabeth PodrebaracSciupac, Becka A. Alper, Claire Gecewicz , et al. U.S. Muslims