Turning to Islam: African-American conversion stories

Christian Century, July 12, 2003 by Rose-Marie Armstrong

Butts acknowledges the empowerment, stability and privileges Islam brings to African-Americans and their communities. "I see men who are redeemed from prison and drugs, who are off the streets and running their own businesses, who are neat and clean. They even have a new name!" he exclaims.

Hafis Mahbub, a Pakistani Muslim missionary to "new" black Muslims in Brooklyn during the 1960s, offered an even more radical account of Islam's appeal to black Americans. In Dannin's words, Mahbub taught that in Islam "the struggle to achieve personal transformation was synonymous with the struggle for total social reform."

Rose-Marie Armstrong, a freelance writer and development consultant, is also a fellow of the C. S. Lewis Institute in Annandale, Virginia.