Black America to Save Islam?

Now there's a thought. Surely the long struggle for equality and recognition of Black Americans has endowed them with an especial understanding of victims and victimhood at the hands of racists. Many of whom were Muslims originally in their places of birth when they were handed over to slavers and taken to the west to live out their lives. Many of whom were handed over to slavers by fellow Muslims, all in the name of doing business.

Blacks have always been low on the hierarchical scale of importance as human beings. Their long struggle against their centuries of slavery, against the horror of their existence enslaved to white masters was an epic one. The following struggles against societal discrimination that saw them treated as racial inferiors while yet 'free' from slavery saw them as passionate Christians long weaned away from Islam.

In defiance against a society of god-fearing Christians who saw great utility in living lives of leisure off the sweating backs of black slaves, there was initiated a slow return to Islam. That growth has accelerated of late, it would seem, as the black community has begun its conversion back to its religious roots.

Converts, it would appear, relate to the disciplines of prayer, the emphasis within Islam on submission to God, and the religion's affinity with the oppressed. And weren't they oppressed, good god, were they not oppressed? Islam is now said to be the fastest growing religion in the United States.

Black American Muslims attend their own mosques, not those of Muslims from other countries. Islam - clerics preach - re-connects them with their roots in Africa. They share a special relationship with god, with other, diverse peoples around the world. And in some such mosques there is no distinction between Sunni and Shiite.

Oh, even better - sermons urge Muslims to seek employment, eschew connections to drugs and crime, and to value stable family living.