Islam in America

Islam in America

Shari'ah:

The origin of this word Shari'ah is from Shara'a and a few other names of it are Shar', Shir'ah and Tashri'. The Shari'ah represents the canonical laws of the Islam religion. The legislative power of the government rests with the legislative assembly and the legislators are to formulate rules and conventions within the range and scope of the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet or s.a.w. These rules form the Shari'ah. (Sharia'h: (www.usc.edu)

Sharia" is conventional Islamic law, which is also referred to as Allah's Law. Typically Islam draws no difference between religious and secular life. Thus Sharia includes not only holy rites, but also many features of everyday life. The phrase itself means way to water or a break in a riverbank allowing access to water. Islamic scholars for the most part renowned between fiqh, which refers to understanding and denotes to the suggestions made by scholars from the sources of law, and sharia, which is the moral ideals that is behind the fiqh. Scholars hope that fiqh and sharia are in a certain case the same, but they cannot be definite. (Sharia: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Umma:

We could have an understanding of the religion of Islam by viewing it in several varieties of ways, and from several perspectives. The complex nature of the religion and the cultures it involves combined together with the wide view we try to make use of in World History provides us several perspectives from which to view and analyze. Of all of those several angles, the one which is more relevant to the present time is the notion that the evolution of Islam had involved the concept of an idea which Muhammad called as the Umma. In a very interesting manner, this is considered to be an analog of one of the most important socio-political notions of the West in the 18th and 19th centuries which was the nation. (The Umma: Islam from its origins to 1300)

However roughly 'Umma' denotes to the people of Muslims, that is the entirety of all Muslims. The phrase comes from a term that just refers to people. But the word is used in many manners in the Holy Koran, but it always specifies a group of people that are a part of a godly plan and salvation. There is even an instance of the word being used for a person, Abraham. It seems that in the previous days of Islam, umma was used for the people of Mecca, but with the expansion of Islam, the umma of Muhammad altered to become supporters, and thus barred Meccans that had not changed. The umma term has been important to the Muslim value of unity, without being a central theological concept. (Umma: Encyclopedia of the Orient)

Noble Drew Ali:

Noble Drew Ali was born Timothy Drew in North Carolina in the year 1886 and was embraced the Cherokee tribe. He started his life as a circus magician, and then moved to Egypt where he studied under a priest who acknowledged him as a prophet. He founded his first temple in Newark, New Jersey in 1913. His best-known Chicago temple was called the Moorish Science Temple of America. Ali lectured that blacks are Moabites or Moors, for whom the Promised Land is Morocco. As his supporters were overflowing with arrogance, they conflicted with police; Ali died after being hit by Chicago police. The Moorish Science Temple was disjointed after Ali's death; one such group had the leadership from Elijah Muhammad, which became the Nation of Islam. (Prophet Noble Drew Ali)

Ali came to Chicago in 1925 and his movement took on its greatest force here. He saw Marcus Garvey as a motivation for his own work. Ali, like Garvey preached the significance of forming unity among all the people of the African Diaspora. Marcus Garvey was particularly acclaimed as a John the Baptist who set the way for the emergence of Noble Drew Ali at Moorish Science Temple meetings. (What was the relationship between Noble Drew Ali and Marcus Garvey?)

Warith al-Din Muhammad:

Many foreign countries have exercised substantial power on the lives of American Muslims by ascertaining to increase the religious knowledge. Saudi Arabia has enhanced the image of Islam in the West. It has supported the actions of the Muslim World League -- MWL in America. Saudi Arabia has also promoted good relations with the Afro-American Muslim community. In all possibility, under foreign pressure, Warith al-Din Muhammad started a sequence of reforms to bring his movement near to conventional Islam. He discarded many of his father's deviating teachings regarding the superiority of the blacks over the whites. The movement that used to support racist ideology now publicizes Islamic brotherhood due to the force applied by foreign forces. (The Politics of External Influences on American Muslims)

Warith al-Din also renamed the temples as mosques and declared the savior's day as celebrating the birthday of the founder of the movement who was Wallace D. Mohammed. He has also given regular appearances on television with religious bureaucrats from Saudi Arabia. Warith al-Din has also widened his organization to outer power, which had until then looked at the Nation with much doubt. Warith al-Din was named as the exclusive advisor and trustee for the counsel and allocation of funds to all Muslim organizations occupied in the spread of the faith in the U.S. By the Gulf States of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar in 1978. (The Politics of External Influences on American Muslims)

Kunta Kinte:

Kunta Kinte is the main figure in Alex Haley's 1976 book Roots. According to research, by Haxley, Kinte was 17 when he was arrested and taken to America as a slave on board the ship named Lord Ligonier in 1767. Roots sketch the lives of Kinte and his children down to Haley himself who was Kinte's great great-grandson. (Kunta Kinte: (www.who2.com)