By the second half of the twentieth century, Islam re-emerged as an ideological tool for African Americans fighting within civil rights and Black Power movements. Ironically, the proliferation of Black Islamic organizations in twentieth-century United States—most famously the Nation of Islam—often masks the gradual, centuries-long formation of said organizations, their ideologies, and their influence on modern Afro-diasporic identity.
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In the early seventh century, an Ethiopian man named Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ was born into slavery in Mecca to a man named Umayya bin Khalaf. Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ was among the first to accept Prophet Muhammad’s teachings and he endured severe persecution for his conversion to Islam. Bilāl was purchased and manumitted by Abu Bakr, ‘another of the Prophet’s earliest followers and the man who would become the first caliph of Islam after [Prophet] Muhammad’s death’. In his 2014 book, The Call of Bilal: Islam in the African Diaspora, historian Edward E. Curtis describes Bilāl as one of Prophet Muhammad’s closest companions, most famously recognized as the first Mu’adhdhin, or the one who summons the faithful to prayer (adhan). Curtis writes that Bilāl’s significance is manifest as an emblem and proof of the Black world’s ‘legitimate role as moral leaders for Muslims worldwide.’
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