Posted on 03/25/2007 5:18:59 AM PDT by Flavius
Pittsburgh among cities to see increase after terror attacks as religious leaders try to paint positive image By Ramit Plushnick-Masti ASSOCIATED PRESS
PITTSBURGH, Pa. - Allahu Akbar, the Muslim call for prayer, rings out on a recent Friday and a group of black men and women gather to celebrate the Islamic day of rest.
The wooden house in Pittsburgh's rundown Homewood neighborhood looks like any other on the block. But the sign at the door, Masjid Mumin, and the rows of shoes lined up inside on gray, plastic shelves hint of the brand of Sunni Islam its members practice.
The mosque is one of seven in Pittsburgh, home to a vibrant community of about 8,000 to 10,000 Sunni Muslims -- some 30 percent of them black.
Following what appears to be a trend in cities nationwide, religious leaders in Pittsburgh say there has been a rise in black conversions to Sunni Islam since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
No national surveys have been taken to confirm the increase, but Islamic religious leaders in Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit have also reported growth, said Lawrence Mamiya, a professor of religion and Africana studies at Vassas College in New York. Experts estimate that 30 percent of the 6 million to 7 million Muslims in the United States are black, with only South Asians making up a larger number at 33 percent.
The Sept. 11 attacks have "cut both ways, positively and negatively," Mamiya said.
The dynamic is obvious, another expert said.
Since Sept. 11, Muslims have been attempting to "disseminate positive information about the religion, so the obvious outcome of that would be more conversions," said Richard Turner, coordinator of the African-American studies program and an expert on Islam among blacks at the University of Iowa.
Sunni Islam is the world's most prominent branch of Islam. The Nation of Islam and the Moorish Science Temple, other Muslim groups that attract many blacks, believe in prophets after Muhammad, making them anathema to Sunni Islam.
Rashad Byrdsong, an elder in Pittsburgh's black Muslim community, hopes the rise in interest in Sunni Islam will help the Mumin Mosque collect money to expand its small house of worship into a larger community gathering place.
The new mosque, still in the planning stages, will look more like a community center than a traditional minaret-topped Muslim place of worship found in the Arab world.
The expanded Homewood mosque will have a daycare facility, a re-entry program for released inmates, a health clinic and a program for entrepreneurs -- features that are in great need in the downtrodden neighborhood.
"First, the spiritual aspects, the dawa, but also basic, physical, fundamental needs," Byrdsong said.
In the fourth year of its seven-year expansion plan, Pittsburgh's tight-knit Muslim community has raised much of the $1.5 million needed in the project's first phase through book sales, telephone fundraisers, auctions and banquets. It has purchased all but two lots it will need and already has the sketches for the future mosque complex.
"Building the mosque has always been a goal, idea, vision," said Yusef Ali, 63, emir of the Mumin Mosque. "But as a community grows ... it's (become) a solid goal with strategic objectives."
A growing number of Muslims in America, especially blacks, are building mosques that offer a variety of community services, partly because the federal and state governments do not answer to many of their social needs, Islamic experts say.
These complexes take the religion back to its roots before the modern-day state began providing services to the population.
"What you have here is the creation of a true American Islam," said Edward Curtis, a religious studies professor who specializes in African-American Islam at IUPUI. "Islam has been a part of this country from its beginning, and the forms of Islam that are successful here are indigenous forms."
"The African-American mosque has made itself different in this way from other mosques around the world," Mamiya said. "Religious institutions in the black community have always been their strongest institutions and have always done more than religious functions."
Pittsburgh is home not only to black Muslims, but also a broad community of immigrants who practice the religion. However, until Sept. 11, the two communities were largely isolated.
After the attacks, immigrants -- subject to FBI surveillance, police raids and other scrutiny -- began to reach out to black Muslims in Pittsburgh, whose persecution they could suddenly relate to, said Sarah Jameela Martin, 64, an active member of the city's black Muslim community.
"It really was a time for us to come together," Martin said.
But Sept. 11 also put an end to any hopes the black Muslim community had to collect money for their mosque project from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries overseas because new U.S. laws put Islamic charities under greater scrutiny.
Now, as immigrant and black Muslims in Pittsburgh try to improve the religion's image and separate it from global terrorism, blacks are paving the way, Martin said.
Maybe not, but most of them are democrats. Islam is the fastest growing "religion" in the prison population, because "crime is ...OK"
Look at the vast majority of environmentalists and non-Muslim anti-war activists: they are predominantly of European descent. Are these people representative of all Americans of European descent?
No, they are representative of European philosophy.
So, are Americans of African descent who are Democrats or have become Muslims representative of all Americans of African descent?
Who said they were? But in the case of the democrats, yes, pretty much they are. There are some exceptions in a current minor trend towards conservativism.
In the case of islam, it's significant enough to be a problem if they go active.
The media absolutely loves stories like this; it's one of their favorite media templates. But is there one MSM outlet anywhere that has covered the large amount of conversions from Islam to Christianity in Africa?
I could see where she took it that way. Just the way you wrote it, I think.
That statement also caught my eye
I'm sure Islamic people has always immigrated here in very small numbers since our founding, but being "part" of the county would imply more than .001 (if that) % of the population post 1776.
That statement probably falls under the same category as the black Egyptians knew how to fly, but the white man stole the idea
That is what is called a: a myth
(incidentally, today is supposed to be the two hundredth anniversary of the British abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire).
Celebrate by seeing the movie AMAZING GRACE. It's fabulous and about this very thing.
Fear not the enemy at the gates.
Fear the enemy within.
These conversion are part and parcel of the enemy within, and it will get worse before it gets better, unless our current immigration laws and policies are changed to our Founding Fathers' intent.
I doubt if most people really know what they are getting into when they seek out Islam.
It really is pathetic and sad that many in the black communities throughout the USA feel, think that the white man, America, its heritage is so alien to their 'experiences' that they would want to join a religion , a ethos, even a radical departure from Western Civ. The OJ trial set the two communities, black and white apart on guilt. I can still remember that %. In spite of so many great contributions and accomplishments in the USA, that so many blacks would want to depart from their nation(though they would say they are not)is actually frightening. The Black Muslim movement of yesteryear is not exactly a peaceful organization and joining mullahs and imans in some mosques in cities like Pitts., Detroit, and Phila. which have been known for their radicalism, does not portend good things for blacks in general.
"How any self respecting black could associate with the religion of the slave traders who were front and center in the slave trade, and are taking slaves today is a mystery to me."
I suppose many American blacks have bought into the idea that contemporary Islam is empowering. They have been long fed a steady diatribe that "Chuck" has been keeping them down by the likes of Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton. It's no wonder to me.
Their racist hatred of white people overwhelms their rationality.
Stupid is as stupid does....
You simply can't overcome bone deep ignorance.
Semper Fi
They provided the slaves.
people with no identity usually gravitate to those they perceive as having ALL THE POWER. Think about it.
How about the "image" of Islam, the creator of the entire African slave trade?
Reporters as so damn gullible. It was paid for with Saudi money.
Considering that Christianity is going through a major boom time for adding on new members in Africa.
This headline seems misleading, what do black converting have to do with 9/11?
Any which way you cut it, isalm is a cult. A very dangerous cult. It must be eliminated
Why am I getting this deja vu doing on...sounds so much like Helter Skelter/Islam and Manson
http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/09/charles_mansons_path_to_freedo.html
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