c. 2007 Religion News Service

HARTFORD, Conn. _ More than a half century ago, Malcolm X traveled regularly through the Northeast while working for the New Haven Railroad, using his trips to plant temples for the Nation of Islam.

As he passed though Hartford during the 1950s, he saw the African-American community as fertile ground for the group’s black nationalist message. In 1955, Malcolm X founded the Nation of Islam’s 14th mosque here, with early followers meeting in members’ homes.

Since those days, the mosque and its members have made the journey to worldwide Islam, becoming a religious community that includes immigrants from around the world.

Fifty years after its founding, the faith community now called the Muhammad Islamic Center in many ways reflects the evolution of American Islam, from one dominated by hardline black nationalists to the diverse tapestry of what leaders here call “little Mecca.”

And, tested by the crucible of 9/11, the mosque has joined hands with newer immigrants to defend a multicultural American Islam that would have been hard to imagine when the mosque was formed.

Many Americans see Islam as a relatively new faith, brought by recent immigrants to U.S. shores. But many black Muslims see it as arriving with slavery and lost when slaves converted to Christianity.

“It’s not that we converted to Islam, but we reverted back to Islam, which was the faith we brought with us to this country,” said Sajda Sharief, who joined the Nation of Islam in the 1970s and has been a member of the Hartford mosque for 20 years.

Karl Evanzz, author of a 2001 biography of the Nation of Islam’s controversial leader, Elijah Muhammad, says the historical record supports this belief.

“Not many African-Americans realize this even today, but many of the slaves arrived on these shores as Muslims,” Evanzz said. “Slave ship records … contain detailed lists of slaves, many of them with surnames like Ibrahim, Mohammed and so forth. So when the slaves sang about that `old time religion,’ one could argue they were talking about Islam.”

When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, his son, W.D. Mohammed, took the reins of the organization, disavowed black nationalism and pointed the movement toward the traditional practices of worldwide Islam. The Hartford mosque followed suit.

It was a change for which many members now say they were ready.

Richard El-Amin, 63, was attracted to the black nationalist message and its emphasis on self-sufficiency when he joined the Nation of Islam in the early 1960s. He was known as Richard 3X, dropping his last name for an X to replace what Nation of Islam leaders called their slave names. Looking back, he says he never truly embraced Elijah Muhammad’s teachings that white people were devils or blacks superior beings.

“I never believed it,” said El-Amin, “and I don’t know anyone who really did.”

With the change in ideology came more practical changes: chairs replaced with prayer rugs, images removed from walls, Friday prayers instituted and all Muslims _ regardless of race or color _ invited to join in.

“Imam W.D. Mohammed said, `Do nothing that my father taught. … Listen today and I will bring you the truth and you will understand,”’ said Imam Khasif Abdul-Karim, the current leader of the Hartford mosque.

In 1978, Louis Farrakhan resumed the teachings of Elijah Muhammad to restore the Nation of Islam; the majority of black Muslims in the U.S. stayed with W.D. Mohammed.

In the transition, said Abdul-Karim, the Hartford imam, some followers “disappeared, and some became confused.”

“I was confused, and I left for a time,” said Sadiq Ali, 52, a member of the Hartford mosque. “But by then other members of my family had become Muslims, and I came back, and I began to understand.”

Abdul-Karim said many members recognize that their past practices were significantly in error. “We had no one to teach us Islam,” he said. “We had to learn it on our own.”

W.D. Mohammed’s organization is now known as The Mosque Cares, based in Homewood, Ill. The movement’s mosques _ many with a story similar to the one in Hartford _ have operated autonomously since the late 1990s.

“In accepting true Islam, those who follow W.D. Mohammed have in essence taken back `that old time religion,”’ said Evanzz, the biographer. “The Hartford mosque is clearly in the forefront of the orthodoxy, and Muslims who still worship (the Nation of Islam) would do well to follow their lead.”

Rafah Muhammad, a spokesman for W.D. Mohammed, said the transition from the movement’s black nationalism to worldwide Islam has provided “a lineage and a heritage. And it has broadened us, and that is something that is continuing.”

These days, the Hartford Islamic Center membership includes immigrant families from Pakistan, Africa and Indonesia, as well as second- and third-generation black Muslims. Abdul-Karim said the mosque was a home for many Muslim immigrants when they arrived in the early 1980s.

“Many of them had been here for sometime, but they had not felt safe to come out and be Muslims,” he said. “Communities like ours had created a safety net, a safe place to be Muslim and to be American. We were already woven into the American fabric.”

On a typical Friday at the Hartford mosque, Muslim families from a range of different countries fill the two levels, men downstairs and women upstairs.

“We’re like a little Mecca, everyone trying to get along, ” Abdul-Karim said.

At the Islamic Center of Greater Hartford, about 15 miles away in Berlin, Conn., Ali Antar said he first worshipped at the Hartford mosque when he arrived from Egypt in 1969.

“At that time, it was the only place available, ” said Antar, who now leads the other mosque. “After they made their transition, we worked much more closely with them, particularly on racial and social issues that were confronting the community at the time.”

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Antar said, “we were closer than ever before, working together with the interfaith community to state our stand on those issues.”

These days, Muslim congregations from across the state combine their celebrations at the close of Ramadan, which draws thousands of Muslims to the city’s convention center each year.

“After 9/11, immigrant Muslims were perceived to be a threat, an experience that in some ways mirrored the experiences of black Muslims went through years earlier, ” Abdul-Karim said. “They also realized that they could learn a lot from our experiences.”

KRE END TAYLOR

Editors: To obtain photos of worshippers at the Muhammad Islamic Center, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

Editors: Different spellings, `Muhammad’ and `Mohammed,’ are cq throughout