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Since the days of Muhammad, followers of Islam have supported many educational, religious, and social welfare causes. Governments and individuals regularly contribute to charitable activities. In the Islamic world, giving serves both social and…

Muslim life in America is summarized in a U.S. State Department booklet. The booklet was published by the State Department and the Bureau of International Information Programs (a State Department agency) in 2009. It includes profiles of American…

A young U.S. Muslim is leading a global interfaith movement. In a memoir on the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation Eboo Patel relates how he embraced an ecumenical…

Information on the more than 2,000 U.S. mosques is provided in The American Mosque 2011. Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky, has surveyed American mosques and their communities with the support of the…

Western discussions of Muslim women’s public attire seldom take into account what women themselves think about this issue. In the past decade, the Gallup Organization has been polling intensively in Turkey and other Muslim countries. A Gallup…

Is veiling is oppressive? It’s not quite that simple. Offering insightful and often surprising analysis, Harvard professor Leila Ahmed has described a mostly unheralded trend among Muslim women: choosing to wear head coverings and concealing…

English text: The foregoing copy of the Lord’s Prayer was written by Prince Abduhl Rahhuman in Arabic, at my request and in my presence on the 29th day of December 1828 in Philadelphia, at which time and place he related to me in detail the…

Note: A WPA field worker, Everal J. McKinnon, interviewed Mike Abdullah in his home in Ross, North Dakota. I was born in Rufage, Rushia, Syria. I don't remember the date, nor the month[,] but I believe that it was in 1886. (People in the Old Country…

Note: A WPA field worker, Everal J. McKinnon, interviewed Mary Juma in her home in Ross, North Dakota. Because she could not speak English, her son, Charles Juma, interpreted. I was born in Byria, Rushia, Syria. I don't know my exact age, but…

Portrait of African-American freed slave Yarrow Mamout painted in 1819 by Charles Wilson Peale, in the Philadelphia Museum

In 1788, the slave ship Africa set sail from West Africa, headed for the West Indies filled with a profitable but highly perishable cargo--hundreds of men, women, and children bound in chains. Six months later one of its human cargo, a…

Omar ibn Said, (b. 1770?), a freed slave living in North Carolina, is the author of this page written in Arabic script. A note in English on the back states, “The Lord's Prayer written in Arabic by Uncle Moreau (Omar) a native African, now…

The handwriting on the front under the portrait reads, "Uncle Moro" (Omeroh), the African (or Arab) Prince whom Genl. Owen bought, and who lived in Wilmington N.C. for many years, and died in Bladen Co. in 1864, aged about 90…

In this memoir, Eboo Patel relates his journey to faith-based activism with American youth. Patel, a native of the Chicago area who was born of Indian immigrants and raised in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, recounts the challenges he faced straddling multiple…

Edward E. Curtis IV places a treasure trove of information about Islam in the United States at the reader’s fingertips. The primary sources that make up this collection are arranged chronologically: from the early nineteenth century to World…