Thesis (Ph. D.)--Radboud University Nijmegen, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 304-343).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, 1981. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-280).

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A. Missions)--Grace Theological Seminary, 1993. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-65).

Thesis (M. A.)--Cornell University, 1970. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University Includes bibliographical references (leaves 384-390). Abstract: leaves [1-4]. Vita. Microfilm. s / The slow and painful progress of desegregation in America when seen in contrast with the dramatic successes the non-white peoples of Asia and Africa have experienced since World War II in their determination to be free of white supremacy, has markedly increased the frustrations and anxieties of America's Negro minority. There is a developing apprehension that it may come to pass that the American Negro will be the only people in the world still demeaned by racial subordination. The Black Muslims represent one organized reaction to continuing patterns of discrimination in the United States and to the white man's tendency to deprecate all non-white races and cultures. They also represent an extreme protest against Christianity for its failure to treat black and white Christians with equanimity. The study is designed: (1) to survey some characteristic defenses against the effects of race prejudice and discrimination in order to provide a perspective from which to evaluate the Muslim Movement; (2) to examine in detail the Black Muslims as a particular form of reaction to prejudice and discrimination in America; and (3) to assess the response-patterns of other Negro organizations and institutions towards the Muslim Movement and its modus vivendi. The data was collected over a span of four years by means of: (1) interviews with Muslim leaders and laymen, and with Negro leaders outside the Movement such as ministers, businessmen, politicians and educators; (2) participant observation involving hundreds of hours at Muslim temples, homes, lectures, etc.; (3) reports from interested persons and institutions across the country; (4) newspaper and magazine articles by and about Muslims; (5) tape recordings of Muslim speeches and addresses; (6) Muslim pamphlets, booklets, brochures, etc.; (7) Muslim dramatic productions, pageants and phonograph records. There are probably 100,000 Black Muslims in the United States, and the Movement is growing. There is a good deal of sympathy in the general Negro community for the Muslims, but only a relatively small number of Negroes are willing to abandon Christianity to become Muslims. Non-Muslims sympathetic to the Movement tend to concur in the belief that the white man is incapable of justice toward non-whites, and that he will never of his own accord live in a situation of equality with non-whites. Again, there is wide agreement that the white man has deliberately "written the Negro out of history"--refusing to recognize his contributions to Afro-Asian civilization and to the development of America. Negro intellectuals are least sympathetic to the Movement, and tend to discount it as a social force of any importance. Muslims are ambivalent toward the intellectuals. believing them to be most vulnerable to the white man's blandishments. The Movements is essentially an expression of the Negro lower class. A few college students are Muslims, and some Muslim ministers were formerly Christian pastors. Temples are located in the large industrial cities from Boston to San Diego and from San Francisco to Miami. Converts come from a wide variety of religious backgrounds--the Methodist, Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist and Congregational churches are all represented, as are various sects and cults. Many ex-Garveyites are Muslims. There is no apparent delinquency problem among Muslim children. The father is restored as head of the family. Notable success in rehabilitating ex-convicts, alcoholics and narcotic addicts is reported. Parochial schools are maintained by some temples. The Muslims anticipate the eventual destruction of the white man, and the re-establishment of the Black Man's civilization. They advocate non-violence except in self-defense, when the lex talionis is held to apply. Complete separation of the races--and a "United Front of Black Men" are fundamental precepts. The Black Muslims probably constitute a Moslem sect in spit of their doctrinal deviations. Some Muslim leaders have made the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

The thesis examines two of the arguably most contentious strands within contemporary Islam – Salafism and Islamism – in the British context from 1965 to the contemporary period. Its central argument is that by using their (multi-directional) connections, modern Muslim sects in Britain fashioned a distinct ‘Western Muslim’ consciousness, which has gradually altered their relationship with the ‘Muslim world’ at large. Rather than generating remittances to send ‘back home’, to Muslim-majority countries – Britain, and the West more broadly, came to be seen as another important Muslim space in need of resources, institutions, and unique paradigms for understanding and practicing Islam. Put differently, scholars, activists and intellectuals began carving out a self-conscious Western form of Islam, and in this process have begun to subvert their peripheral status vis-à-vis the heartlands of the Muslim world. The thesis charts the emergence of this ‘Western Muslim’ consciousness beginning from the late 1960s to the present. It demonstrates that this was neither a linear process of severing ties with Muslim-majority countries, nor one of wholly adopting Western cultural codes or modes of faith. Rather Salafis and Islamists rooted Islam in Britain, but on their own terms. It opens with a re-examination of the religious lives of the first generation pioneer migrants that arrived in the post-War period from South Asia, who were involved with either the Ahl-e-Hadith or the Jamaat-e-Islami. It examines how each faction established their mosques and organisations in the British context, making complex and sophisticated adaptions in their thoughts and practice while negotiating their changed setting. It suggests that the sharp generational divide – where the first were primarily seen in ethnic terms and the second adopted a global religious identity – has hitherto dominated accounts of Muslims in Britain, and needs to be critiqued and revised. From their inception, the struggle to recreate an ‘authentic’ Islam was pivotal in both movements. Purging Islam from adulterations and perceiving themselves as part of the global ummah were sentiments that were present, to a certain degree, in the first-generation. This is not to say that there were no generational differences, but that these differences were more fluid than has been suggested. The thesis also explores the reasons underpinning the resurgence of ‘traditional’ religious figures at the expense of ‘intellectuals’. However, in the context of individualisation, new media and the democratisation of religion, this raises important questions as to how ‘traditional’ religious authority is being transformed and adapted. It analyses the seemingly contradictory elements of the desire to wholeheartedly follow ‘authentic’ religious figures on the one hand, and still actively rationalise and determine which interpretation of Islam they ultimately follow on the other. With the advent of cyberspace, it also examines the changing contours of the ‘community’ and the relationship between offline and online networks. It argues that the internet has accelerated the development of like-minded or ideological transnational networks that span online and offline spaces. These networks increasingly take precedence over geographically close ‘communities’ decentralising, but not devaluing, the masjid.

M.A. (Semitic Languages) / The history of Muslims in Pretoria began two decades after the arrival of the first Muslims to Natal from India and over two centuries after those in the Cape. Historians and researchers have undertaken the study of the Cape Muslims and pioneers of Natal. There is no book written on the Muslims in the Transvaal region. The two main centres in the Transvaal are Pretoria and Johannesburg. The village of Pretoria was founded in 1858, two and a half decades before Johannesburg. The first Muslims came to the vicinity in the 1880's, when it was still a small village consisting of 12 shops. The pioneer Muslims witnessed the growth and development of this village into a city. It is from the Pretoria region that the Muslims moved into the interior of Transvaal. The problems of the Muslims began in this city, and later spread to other town areas. This city was the centre of trade and business links to the other towns. As a Muslim citizen of Pretoria, it was considered best to undertake the study of the Muslims in this area. It was assumed that there would be no difficulty in obtaining basic source material on the historical aspect of the Muslims of Pretoria from the first arrival to the end of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (Z.A.R.) Government. At one stage the exercise of collecting data on this subject proved futile. However, it was after referring to a few books on the history of Indians in general, that it gave me some direction of the situation in the Z.A.R.

Muslims in the Metropolis is about everyday social and cultural practices through which Muslim identity and ‘community’ are made. The study takes Birmingham, a city synonymous with Muslims and the area of Sparkbrook, which has decades long associations with racialised communities, as sites of Muslim-making. While there is considerable literature concerned with the Muslim presence in Western European public spheres, much of it treats the city as merely incidental in the lives of Muslims; as places where they have settled and, then, generated formal spaces, infrastructures and narratives relating to their presence. A key argument advanced in this thesis is that impressions of Muslims as a ‘community’ defined through the lens of settlement patterns resulting from immigration, folk-religious practices carried over from other homelands, socio-economic disadvantage and various other markers of their presence, lend them to being understood in essentialist ways. A number of scholars have noted this and how discourses about ‘parallel lives’, ‘clash of civilisations’ and ‘religious extremism’ have culminated in the Muslim question. In this study I do not so much seek to challenge such representations, but to consider what is left over – the excess - from these framings. A key consequence I argue is that Muslims, when viewed and worked with officially as a ‘community’ based on sensibilities of race relations management in the city, misses the vitality of Muslim life as it is made everyday in relation to discourses and materials linked with their presence in the city. Through the use of ethnography and specifically observations and interviews conducted with people involved in setting up and running an ‘alternative Muslim arts centre’, a local ‘community’ radio station and diffuse networks of social action across the city, I trace different contours of Muslim identity and ‘community’ in the making. Ethnographic methods, I argue, allow valuable insights into how Muslims relate to the city as a place historically marked and presently targeted through racialised narratives and categories of control. There are complex negotiations that go on, where Muslims occasionally resist as well as fold into authoritative discourses and structures around them. Attention is paid to how Muslims live in the interstices of these and how through their social practices generate alternative meanings toward being Muslim; as something not given in the existing nomenclature of multicultural identities in the city, but in process and becoming. These everyday urban rituals of Muslims, therefore, present a challenge to official and academic efforts that attempt to represent or confer recognition on Muslims.