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Kambiz GhaneaBassiri created this viewing guide for the documentary film Prince Among Slaves (2007), directed by Andrea Kalin, produced by Unity Productions Foundation in association with Spark Media and Duke Media.

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri offers an annotated bibliography of further resources for the American Stories theme.

As background to the locations described in G. Willow Wilson's memoir The Butterfly Mosque, readers can view and download a map of Egypt from the United Nations Cartographic Section website in pdf format.

The Butterfly Mosque Based on your reading of G. Willow Wilson’s memoir, what doyou think are some of the key difficulties in cross-cultural understanding. Based on your personal experiences with cultural differences, how do you assess…

Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation In Acts of Faith, Patel writes about the personal struggles associated withreconciling multiple identities. What are some of thediscoveries in Patel's life…

A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence from the Middle East to America In A Quiet Revolution, Leila Ahmed complicates politicized understandings of “the veil.” Based on your reading of her text, what do you think hijab means…

The Columbia Sourcebook of Muslims in the United States Scholar’s note: The suggested selections from this sourcebook address varying aspects of the history of Islam in America during the first half of the twentieth century. While there are…

Prince Among Slaves: The True Story of an African Prince Sold into Slavery in the American South Scholars estimate that there were tens of thousands of African Muslims who came to antebellum America through the transatlantic slave trade. The…

After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 , strong differences arose over the method of choosing the leader of the Muslim community. These disagreements ultimately resulted in the division of Muslims into two major groups—Sunni and Shi'i.…

Islam in Africa to 1800 Islam moved into Africa from three directions. It came from North Africa across the Sahara to Bilad al-Sudan (The Lands of the Black People), which is between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Chad. Despite six centuries of…

According to the Qur'an, a mosque is God's “sacred house,” a setting for Muslims to perform rituals, and a “meeting place for the people.” The term mosque derives from the Arab word masjid, meaning a “place for (ritual)…

Calling themselves Osmanlis, after tribal chieftain Osman I, the Ottomans were Turks from Central Asia. They created a vast empire that encompassed southeastern Europe to northern Hungary, the Middle East to Iran, and most of the North African coast.…

Narratives of the modern age often divide the world into a “modern West” and a “traditional Orient,” or between Islam and the West, with the suggestion that the two are incompatible. However, this narrative is countered by the…

The Moors were the Muslim inhabitants of Islamic Spain, or al-Andalus. The term Moor is a late-antique and medieval Western European usage to indicate dark-skinned North Africans of Arab and/or Berber origin who were responsible for the invasion of…

The religious movement known as the Wahhābīyah, sometimes anglicized as “Wahhabism,” is founded on the teachings of Muḥammad Ibn ῾Abd al‐Wahhāb (1703–1791), who wrote on a variety of Islamic subjects such as theology,…

From the 1970s onward, a number of Sunnī groups emerged, claiming to adhere to Salafī doctrines and to be engaged in purifying Muslim society in accordance with these. The designation Salafī is prestigious among Muslims, because it denotes an…

A prevalent institution of the Islamic world throughout its history,slavery (ʿubūdīyah, riqq) had a crucial influence on societies and cultures of Islam. Slavery was common in pre-Islamic and contemporary societies in the Mediterranean basin,…

This entry contains three subentries: ROLE AND STATUS OF WOMEN WOMEN'S RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES WOMEN LIVING UNDER MUSLIM LAWS Role and Status of Women The Qurʿān, Islam's holy book, changed women's status considerably from that of the…

This entry contains four subentries: SūFī THOUGHT AND PRACTICE SūFī ORDERS SūFī SHRINE CULTURE SUFISM AND POLITICS ṢūfĪ Thought and Practice Sufism can be described broadly as the intensification of Islamic faith and practice, or…

This article is about the feminism, or feminisms, which Muslim women have created around the world from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. Muslim and non-Muslim women in the East and West were among the originators of feminism.…

Religion has played a central role in the lives of the inhabitants of the Nile Valley from the time of the pharaohs. The priests of ancient Egypt presided over the cults that defined each province, and made up a central part of the ruling class. The…

The capital of Egypt, Cairo was founded in 969 C.E. by the Shīʿī Ismāʿīlī dynasty, the Fāṭimids. Its name in Arabic is al-Qāhirah, “the victorious,” in commemoration of the conquest of Egypt by the Fāṭimids. The Medieval…

Situated in the heart of premodern Cairo, al-Azhar is the greatest mosque-university in the world today. Reluctantly adjusting to modern times over the last century, the millennium-old Azhar remains a focal point of Islamic religious and cultural…

With anywhere from two to six million followers in the United States in the early twenty-first century, and with numerous Islamic mosques, centers, and schools across the continent, Islam has clearly become an American religion. The U.S. census does…

The word ḥijāb is used in the contemporary Islamic world both in reference to a head-covering and to a particular style of dress considered modest and Islamic. This style of dress can be distinguished from various rural dress traditions, and it…

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…

The percentage of Muslims in each U.S. county is shown in a 2010 map. Concentrations range from 5 percent in a few counties to 0 percent, reported in most counties. It should be noted, however, that the data used for this map was collected through…

1517 Egypt incorporated into the Turkish Ottoman Empire. 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte's forces invade Egypt. British and Turkish forces defeat the French in 1801 and restore Ottoman rule of…

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…