A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Volume 1

Muslim Minorities

Editorial Board

JØrgen S. Nielsen (University of Copenhagen)

Aminah McCloud (DePaul University, Chicago)
Jörn Thielmann (Erlangen University)

VOLUME 18

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mumi



A History of Conversion to Islam

in the United States, Volume 1
White American Muslims before 1975

By

Patrick D. Bowen

LEIDEN | BOSTON
 

Cover illustration: Mosque on New York City’s Upper East Side. ©iStock.com/flexidan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bowen, Patrick D.
A history of conversion to islam in the United States, volume 1 / Patrick D. Bowen.
pages cm. -- (Muslim minorities ; v. 18)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-29994-8 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-30069-9 (e-book) 1. Muslim
converts--United States. 2. Islam--United States--History. 3. Muslims--United States. I. Title.

BP170.5.B68 2015
297.5’740973--dc23

2015026091

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To my friends and family

∵


Contents

Acknowledgements ix
List of Abbreviations x

Introduction 1

PART 1
The Years 1800–1910

1 From Renegades to Transcendentalists 27

2 The Occult Revival 51

3 The Makings of a Muslim Missionary 88

4 Islamophilic Masonry 115

5 The Rise and Fall of a Brotherhood 139

6 The Post-Movement Years 160

PART 2
The Years 1910–1974

7 The Non-Orthodox Transition 203

8 New Bonds 231

9 Uniting Muslim Communities 260

10 The Postwar Shift 290

11 Reorientation 322

Conclusion 361

Bibliography 365
Index 396


Acknowledgements

This project could not have come to fruition without the assistance of numer-
ous individuals who generously donated their time, knowledge, money, energy,
and love. While a complete list of people who have aided me in some way dur-
ing these past eight years would be far too large for me to include here (or to
fully remember), I would like to identify a few individuals who have been par-
ticularly helpful in this project, providing both invaluable guidance and, in
some cases, access to extremely important documents.
Perhaps the single most important set of documents that I was able to look
at for this project was the correspondence of Thomas M. Johnson, and I am
greatly indebted to the Johnson family for allowing me the privilege of examin-
ing these fascinating letters. The Special Collections and Archives Department
at Missouri State University was in charge of cataloging and preserving the
Johnson correspondence, and David E. Richards, Anne M. Baker, and the rest
of the staff at msu were gracious hosts when I visited them in March 2013.
Sally Howell and the Bentley Historical Library were my sources for another
incredible set of rare documents concerning Islam in America and similarly
welcolmed me to Ann Arbor in May 2014. Thanks are due to Brent Singleton,
Muhammed Al-Ahari, Marc Demarest, and Dr. Omar Dahbour, all of whom
shared copies of several items related to Islam in America. I also cannot forget
Sharif Anael Bey of ali’s men and K. Paul Johnson, whose willingness to guide
me as I left my intellectual comfort zones has proved invaluable. From the
University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology, where I did my graduate
studies, I would especially like to mention Ginni Ishimatsu, Liyakat Takim
(now at McMaster), Tink Tinker, Carl Raschke, Michelle Kyner and du’s
Interlibrary Loan Department, du’s Acquisitions Department, Eliana
Schonberg, Antony Alumkal, Nader Hashemi, Andrea Stanton, and Catherine
Alber. Lastly, this project could not have become what it is without the dozens
of American Muslims who over the years shared with me the stories of their
religious journeys and communities. Of course, any errors or flaws in this book
are entirely my own.
Funding for research and materials used in this volume was provided by the
University of Denver Humanities Institute Student Travel and Research Grant,
the Charles Redd Center Independent Research and Creative Works Grant, and
the Bentley Historical Library Research Grant.
Finally, I would like to thank all my friends and family, especially my par-
ents, John and Lorraine; my grandmothers, Emily and Mary; my brother, David;
the Quintanas—Antonio, Becca, and Lily; Luis Esparza and family; W.W. and
friends; the c-krs; and my wife, Michelle.
 

List of Abbreviations

aauaa Addeynu Allahe Universal Arabic Association

aia American Islamic Association
aip American Islamic Propaganda
aoi Academy of Islam
bhl Bentley Historical Library
cps Civilian Public Service
fbi Federal Bureau of Investigation
fia Federation of Islamic Associations of the United States and Canada
fp Fonds Papus
g.i.e.e. Groupe Indépendent d’Etudes Esotériques
hctius A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States
iaa Islamic Association of America
iam Islamic Association of Muslims
ima Islamic Mission of America
imb International Muslim Brotherhood
imjc Imam Mohamad Jawad Chirri
ims International Moslem Society
isna Islamic Society of North America
itc Islamic Teaching Center
mbusa Moslem Brotherhood of the u.s.a.
mnic Moorish National Islamic Center
moa Moslems of America
msa Muslim Students’ Association of United States and Canada
mst Moorish Science Temple
mwl Muslim World League
noi Nation of Islam
ompf Official Military Personnel File
oom Oriental Order of the Magi
sria Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia
tmj Thomas M. Johnson
ts Theosophical Society
umcgny United Moslem Council of Greater New York
uisa Uniting Islamic Societies of America
wia Western Islamic Association
wmc World Muslim Congress
ymma Young Men’s Moslem Association
Introduction

The present book, which is the first academic work to thoroughly examine the
history of white American conversion to Islam before 1975, is a study of both
the history of the conversions themselves and of the social and religious trans-
formations that led to and shaped the phenomenon of white Americans
becoming Muslims. While there have been a handful of books and articles on
the most well-known early white American convert, Alexander Russell Webb;
a book chapter and a non-scholarly biography on a prominent later female
convert, Maryam Jameelah; and one study of white conversion narratives that
were written before 1990, research on other pre-1975 converts and on the spe-
cific historical changes that led to their emergence and molded their charac-
teristics has been practically nil. The primary reason for this scholarly silence
is that there was little information on the subject available to researchers prior
to the twenty-first century. Few early white converts besides Webb had ever
been notable enough to earn mention in early scholarly studies of American
Islam, and for the most part their impact on the American Muslim community
was forgotten after that community went through its significant post-immigration
reform transformation starting in the mid-1960s. But today, with growing num-
bers of old periodicals, books, and government records being made available
through interlibrary loan and digitization, and unpublished and rare docu-
ments concerning early American Muslims being collected and made public,
researchers have been able to uncover much of what was previously hidden,
and, as a result, we now have access to a fairly detailed picture of the early his-
tory of this important development in the us religious landscape.
The picture that emerges is one that both challenges and refines earlier
views. It has become apparent, for instance, that the role that Alexander Webb
played in the history of Islam in America has been somewhat distorted in the
literature. Given the previous lack of information on early white American
converts, it is understandable that the vast majority of scholarly discussions of
this group of Muslims have focused on Webb. Nevertheless, this tendency
downplays the important activities of other converts before and after Webb,
and it frequently ignores the variety of ideological, social, and organizational
forces at work in the development of the white American conversion commu-
nity. Webb and the Muslim convert movement he started, for instance, were
intimately connected to a specific nineteenth-century subculture that had a
minimal role in the conversions of white Americans in the twentieth century—
a fact that can be easily overlooked when no other white converts are dis-
cussed. One of the factors contributing to the emphasis on Webb is that there

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_002

2 Introduction

was very little known about Webb’s religious transformation in the 1880s. No
one has yet uncovered any extant private papers of Webb from the period, and
his known writings from the 1880s and earlier reveal little about his thoughts
on either Islam or the Theosophical Society—an esoteric religious movement
with which he was connected. For the most part, scholars have relied on Webb’s
accounts from later in his life, most of which are dated from 1892 through 1896
and only vaguely discuss his conversion and his involvement with alternative
religious movements. This has made it very easy to see similarities between
Webb and later converts without perceiving the numerous differences. At the
same time, there has been minimal research on the Theosophical Society in
the us in the early 1880s—which was very different from the Theosophical
Society of earlier and later periods—and so far no scholar has convincingly
demonstrated what being a us member of the Theosophical Society in the
early 1880s actually meant. This has led to the proffering of unclear and even
somewhat distorted ideas about Theosophy’s own role in the history of conver-
sion to Islam in the us.
The view of Webb and the Theosophical Society that this book takes has
been significantly shaped by the contents of a little-known cache of letters and
documents in the possession of the Johnson Library and Museum. These mate-
rials are from the 1880s and concern the Theosophical Society and related
groups, including the specific St. Louis Theosophical ‘lodge’ of which Webb
was one of the few members. Although Webb’s name is only mentioned once
in these letters, they have nevertheless helped shed a great deal of light on
Webb’s Theosophy-influenced interest in Islam. As it turns out, Webb’s conver-
sion took place at the precise time that Islam was most influential in American
Theosophy—and the St. Louis Theosophists specifically were, in all likelihood,
the Theosophists impacted by Islam the most. Furthermore, by being a mem-
ber of the St. Louis Theosophical lodge, Webb was connected to some of the
most organizationally influential and ideology-shaping American Theosophists
at the time—several of whom, like Webb, were involved in the publishing
industry. Indeed, Webb’s later ability to create an Islamic organization that was
very similar to and relied upon the Theosophical Society should not be regarded
as a mere ‘borrowing’ from Theosophy generally: it was a direct outcome of his
involvement with the St. Louis group. Webb’s particular connection with
Theosophy and the history of the development of Theosophy in the us are
therefore both of great significance for understanding the first white American
Muslim convert movement.
As for converts in the twentieth century, we now have a much clearer under-
standing of the importance of their contact with Muslim immigrants. The
available evidence suggests that by the 1930s, there were hundreds more white
Introduction 3

American Muslim converts than there had been in Webb’s day, and the vast
majority had little to no interest in esotericism—these were people whose
conversions were the direct results of the growing number of relationships
between white Americans and immigrant Muslims. Furthermore, we also now
know that almost as soon as immigrant Muslims began to establish religious
organizations and create a somewhat stable community, a number of white
American converts became leaders in this new us Muslim community—a fact
that had previously been almost completely ignored in the literature on Islam
in America. These converts helped build the national network of us Muslims
that began developing in the interwar period and culminated with creation of
the first successful national Muslim umbrella organization, the Federation of
Islamic Associations of the United States and Canada (fia). Then, after the fia
was established in 1952, white converts continued to play important roles in
the American Muslim community, serving as early leaders in both the fia and
another important national Sunni organization of the postwar period, the
Muslim Students’ Association. For these twentieth-century converts, I have
relied especially on three types of sources: pre-1975 Islamic periodicals that
were popular among immigrants and white converts, several fbi files made
during the Second World War when the Bureau was investigating groups and
individuals thought to be involved with ‘subversive’ activities, and interviews
with Muslims—both converts and immigrants—who were active in the us
Islamic community before 1975.
Perhaps the single most important issue that comes to light in this volume
is the fact that these converts were individuals who, by and large, were inter-
ested in cultivating peace, justice, and brotherhood. In the early twenty-first
century, there has been a growing fear that people who convert to Islam will
become violent, anti-Western radicals. Islam itself is generally blamed for this;
today many Westerners assume—as they have for centuries—that Islam is a
religion that is inherently violent and intolerant of non-Muslims. It may there-
fore come as a surprise to some readers that there are no known confirmed
instances of religiously-motivated violence perpetrated by white American
Muslim converts before 1975. Many, if not most, of the converts studied for this
book were in fact both pro-American and deeply concerned with fostering
peace on multiple levels: in their own minds and souls, in their homes, in their
local communities, in their country, and throughout the world. While the
majority of the early white converts primarily used Islam as a tool for cultivat-
ing internal and domestic harmony, there were a handful of white Muslim
leaders who desired to go beyond this and attempt to facilitate the develop-
ment of national and international movements and philosophies that would
spread brotherhood to all people. Indeed, by embracing and promoting the
4 Introduction

religion that was often seen as the West’s greatest enemy, these converts helped
teach Americans that violence and hate were not essential to Islam, and that
great progress could be made if Americans and all people lived up to the ideals
of tolerance and love.
With this background in mind, the significance of white American conver-
sions to Islam can only be appreciated by acknowledging the deep roots of
anti-Islamic sentiment in the culture out of which they emerged, and the deep
historical forces that would eventually begin to weaken the strong hold of
Islamophobia on Western Christian culture. At the same time, because the
­history of these conversions is quite complex, involving numerous cultural
changes, individual idiosyncrasies, and multiple waves of immigration, it
will also be important to have a framework on which to direct this study.
The remainder of this introduction, then, provides an introduction to early
American Islamophobia and a concept known as ‘deterritorialization,’ which
is at once both an important historical phenomenon and the main theoretical
lens through which the history of white American Muslims will be told.

Early Anti-Islamic Sentiment in North America

During the colonial and early independence periods, there was relatively little
contact with Muslims who were not enslaved, and most white North Americans
understood Islam through a traditional Christian anti-Islamic lens. Generally
speaking, early white Americans looked at Islam’s teachings as sinful, its
prophet as an ‘impostor,’ and its followers as violent and oppressive brutes.
These views had been inherited from their European forebears and were
­cultivated and reshaped for the American context.
Anti-Islamic sentiment among Christians has shown a great deal of conti-
nuity since its emergence in the Byzantine Empire during the early years of
Islam’s expansion. Since that time, Christian polemicists have, fairly consis-
tently, attacked the character of the Prophet Muhammad, the legitimacy of the
Qurʾan, the doctrines of the Islamic faith, the religion’s purported methods of
converting people, and the morality of common Muslims.1 The more direct
antecedents of early American thought concerning Islam were, however, the
polemics that developed in Western Europe starting in the twelfth century
after Alfonso vi’s 1085 conquest of Toledo, the northernmost Islamic s­ tronghold

1 Norman Daniel’s book Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh: University
Press, 1962) remains the authoritative study of pre-modern Western European Christian
views of Islam.
Introduction 5

in Western Europe. With Toledo subdued, non-Spanish Christians now had

access to the city’s impressive libraries, and knowledge of Islam and its texts
began to spread. Arabic, the Qurʾan, and hadith (traditions of Muhammad and
early figures in Islamic history) were soon being studied in several places
throughout Europe and polemics against the religion of Muslims were refined,
now often being backed up with references to particular sections of Islamic
works.2
At the same time, battles and growing economic and cultural competition
with Muslims began to increase antipathy towards the Muslim people. The
Ottoman sack of Constantinople in 1453 had created in Europe a greater fear of
Muslim encroachment from the East. In the South, even after the Muslim
relinquishment of Granada in 1492, traders who used the Mediterranean were
under the constant threat of conflict with North African powers.3 Meanwhile,
those same powers were seen as corroding Europe from the inside: Due to their
wealth and allowance of relative social freedom, North African kingdoms were
attracting tens of thousands of European Christian ‘renegades’ who moved to
North Africa and often converted to Islam.4 Even though this phenomenon
was not entirely consistent with the old Christian narrative that Islam has
mostly been spread ‘by the sword,’5 it was still taken as further evidence of
Islam’s corruptive nature. Given this context, then, by the time Europeans
began colonizing the land that would become the United States, anti-Islamic
sentiment among Europeans was relatively strong.
Although largely separated from events overseas, anti-Islamic sentiment per-
sisted—and in some cases intensified—in colonial North America.6 Many of
the early colonizers were from a Puritan background, which meant they were
involved in religious communities that both saw themselves as especially criti-
cal of oppressive religious powers and believed that their journey to America
was divinely sanctioned. Early colonists therefore sometimes compared the

2 See, e.g., Thomas E. Burman, “Tafsir and Translation: Traditional Arabic Quran Exegesis and
the Latin Qurans of Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo,” Speculum 73 (1998): 703–32;
Alastair Hamilton, “The Study of Islam in Early Modern Europe,” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte
3 (2001): 169–82.
3 E.g., see Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain: 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998).
4 Bartolome Bennassar and Lucile Bennassar, Les Chrestiens d’Allah: L’histoire extraordinaire
des renegats xvi–xvii siecles (Paris: Perrin, 1989).
5 The idea that most converts only embraced Islam out of the fear that they would be killed if
they did not convert.
6 On early American views of Islam, see Fuad Sha’ban, Islam and Arabs in Early American
Thought: The Roots of Orientalism in America (Durham: Acora Press, 1991), 1–19.
6 Introduction

Church of England and Roman Catholicism to Islam, which was considered by

Christians to be the penultimate example of an oppressive religion. The Puritan
‘pilgrimage’ to North America, meanwhile, was perceived as an escape not just
from oppressive Christians, but also from Muslims, who, according to leading
colonial religious figures like Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, would be
wiped out in a coming apocalypse.7 Throughout the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries the widespread influence of Puritan religion and its notion of
American exceptionalism helped to further establish the anti-Islamic current
on North American soil.8
The traditional European image of Islam for early colonists, however, was
not solely shaped by religious polemic; a number of American colonists had
encountered Muslims under violent circumstances abroad, which reinforced
the commonly-held image of Muslims as blood-thirsty. One of these was famed
Jamestown leader John Smith who had, as a young man, fought against Muslims
in Hungary and was for a brief time enslaved by Ottoman Turks.9 Also, by the
early 1700s, a few Americans who had personally spent time as captives of
‘Barbary’ (North African) Muslims had begun writing about their experiences
and the harsh treatment they endured.10 Occasionally, the American captives
observed that even the European ‘renegade’ converts to Islam were similarly
subjected to violence.11 All of this was contributing to the increasingly popular
American ‘captivity narrative’ literary genre, in which non-Christian, dark-
skinned ‘savages’—usually Native Americans—imprisoned and assaulted
innocent white Americans. By linking the image of the Native American with
the Muslim, white North Americans were not only legitimizing the dehuman-
ization of and aggression towards both groups, they were also defining true

7 Timothy Marr, The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 98–114.
8 On the Puritan influence on North American religious culture, also see Sydney
E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2004), 2–3; Winthrop S. Hudson and John Corrigan, Religion in America:
An Historical Account of the Development of American Religious Life, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle
River, nj: Prentice Hall, 1999), 39–44.
9 Marr, Cultural Roots, 2–3.
10 Paul Baepler, “The Barbary Captivity Narrative in Early America,” Early American Literature
30, no. 2 (1995): 95–120; Paul Baepler, ed., White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of
American Barbary Captivity Narratives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
11 See, e.g., John Foss, A Journal, of the Captivity and Sufferings of John Foss: Several Years a
Prisoner at Algiers: Together with some Account of the Treatment of Christian Slaves when
Sick:—and Observations of the Manners and Customs of the Algerines (Newburyport, ma:
Angier March, Middle-Street, 1798), 40–41.
Introduction 7

freedom—a core value in the us American12 identity—as something that

could only be produced and protected by white Christian Americans. With
there being few voices critical of this anti-Islamic perspective, it is little won-
der that, even if a white North American had wanted to convert to Islam during
the colonial and early independence periods, he or she would generally have
chosen not to do so out of fear of the significant social consequences that
would accompany rejecting these pervasive views.
Almost as soon as the nineteenth century commenced, however, the us
would see its first white converts to Islam. Although it would take ninety more
years for a full-fledged white Muslim convert movement to emerge, and an
additional forty years for a truly national network of white converts to begin to
develop, by the time the first reports of us Muslim converts appeared in 1803,
the country had already entered a major cultural and religious metamorphosis
that would eventually lead to the Islamic conversions of thousands of white
Americans. American religious culture was now coming under the influence of
the complex historical forces of deterritorialization.

Deterritorialization

The fundamental causes of the us’ dramatic cultural and religious transforma-
tions that ultimately produced thousands of white American Muslims are
quite complex. They involve advances in communication, travel, and arma-
ment technology, political struggles, the emergence of a variety of new philo-
sophical and religious movements, psychological and identity reconfigurations,
and numerous other global cultural developments. Together, these various
dynamics comprise the historical phenomenon that Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari have identified as the ‘deterritorialization’ of the modern world.13 By
using the notion of deterritorialization, Deleuze and Guattari conceptualize
the modern era as being fundamentally characterized by its relative lack of
traditional boundaries or ‘territories’—be they physical, political, cultural,

12 In using the term ‘us American,’ as I do occasionally throughout this book, I am following
Malini Johar Schueller (in u.s. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature,
1­ 790–1890 [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998]), who resists the tendency to
use the terms ‘America’ and ‘American’ as equivalent to ‘United States’ and ‘citizen of the
United States,’ as these terms carry with them the connotation that the United States by
itself represents all of the Americas, a notion that is completely inaccurate and, in some
sense, imperialistic.
13 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans.
Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (New York: Viking Press, 1977).
8 Introduction

intellectual, spiritual, or psychological. Deterritorialization does not imply, of

course, that boundaries no longer exist; indeed, Deleuze and Guattari propose
that the modern world is constantly undergoing both deterritorialization and
reterritorialization. Nevertheless, reterritorialization is itself shaped by the
same globalizing historical processes—such as the emergence of both modern
commercial markets and print technology—that are responsible for deterrito-
rialization. Deterritorialization and reterritorialization are therefore, to a great
extent, the defining forces of the modern world—and it is the interaction of
these two forces that led to the development of the white us American Muslim
convert community. Building off of the ideas proposed by Deleuze and Guattari
and certain related authors,14 the present section provides an introduction to
the concept and historical foundations of de- and reterritorialization in order
to establish a broad theoretical framework that will be helpful for understand-
ing the deep historical causes of (a) Islamophobia loosening its grip on
American religious culture and (b) the resulting conversions of tens of thou-
sands of Americans to Islam.15
When each of the ancient civilizations fell, they left behind both traces of
knowledge that they had gained and remnants of the trade, travel, and raiding
networks that they had created. As new civilizations rose, they frequently
adopted and built on the older knowledge and networks, increasing the chances
for intercultural contact and exchange. Slowly over time, as the networks were

14 This section builds primarily off the following works: Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus
and A Thousand Plateaus (trans. Brian Massumi [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1987]); Michel Foucault’s History of Madness, ed. J. Khalifa and trans. J. Murphy and
J. Khalifa (Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2006); The History of Sexuality: Vol. i, trans.
R. Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, [1976] 1978); Discipline and Punish (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1970); Order of Things, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977);
Birth of the Clinic, trans. A. Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973); “Power/Knowledge,” in
Political Philosophy: The Essential Texts, ed. S.M. Cahn (New York: Oxford University Press,
2005), 511–24; “Truth and Power,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. P. Rabinow (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1998), 51–75; The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. Smith (London: Routledge,
2001); Ibn Khaldun’s The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal,
2nd ed. (New York: Bollinger Foundation, 1967); and Marshall G.S. Hodgson’s The Venture of
Islam, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). That Ibn Khaldun and Hodgson
are ‘related’ authors is an assertion I am making that will be treated directly in a future vol-
ume of hctius. I can say here, though, that these authors are used to foster an alternative
reading of Foucault, one that resists Said’s reading, which conflates Foucault and Gramsci.
15 It is important to point out here that the concept of deterritorialization will be used as the
main historical/theoretical framework for the entire, multi-volume hctius, not just this
volume. Its value as a framework should become clearer with each subsequent volume,
which will contain further discussions of deterritorialization.
Introduction 9

strengthened, sciences from one region made it to others, leading to improve-

ments in technical knowledge, which in turn helped the new societies and
their networks develop further. By the eighth century ad, with the emergence
of the Islamic empires, a vast network of peoples had been established—both
humans and knowledge could now, potentially, transverse the known ‘civilized’
world, from China to the northwestern coast of Africa. The world was becom-
ing globalized.
This interconnectivity of people and knowledge had an immense impact on
ideas, religions, and identities. In some cases, this impact was fostered by travel-
ers who simply spread religious and philosophical teachings and sects to new
regions; travelers could either transmit these ideas and organizations to local
teachers, or they could become teachers themselves after settling in the new
lands. Sometimes texts alone traveled, and were read and incorporated into the
worldviews of discrete communities.16 Religious concepts and practices were
also spread through violence. The development of global networks meant an
increased ability for invaders who followed one religion to conquer people who
followed another, and, although the ways in which this affected religions and
identities could vary significantly, it almost always had a profound impact. The
most infamous style of religious transmission in these situations was forced
conversions of whole societies. In these cases, however, the vanquished popula-
tions often found ways to retain their traditional religions, either by practicing
them secretly or by blending them with the imposed religion. In many instances,
the conquerors did not force conversion, but allowed for conversion as a means
for the local people—especially those who had formerly been the community’s
elites—to achieve positions of power in the new societal structures that had
been instituted.17 In such scenarios, the new elites help popularize or legitimize
the doctrines and identities of the conquerors for the masses. Lower classes, on
the other hand, particularly if their situations were not improving under the
new rulers, might develop new ideas, religions, and identities—which often
incorporated elements of the rulers’ own cultures—that were more focused on
opposing or rejecting those in power.18 In some cases, though, the invaders
themselves decided to adopt the religions and identities of the locals.

16 For a valuable summary of some of the influences of Mesopotamian knowledge on Greek,

Egyptian, Persian, and Indian cultures, see Stephanie Dalley, ed., The Legacy of Mesopotamia
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
17 This seems to have been the case in the first centuries of Islamic Persia; see Richard W. Bulliet,
Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1979).
18 See James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1990).
10 Introduction

As these examples suggest, changes in ideas, religions, and identities always

occur within, and are usually significantly shaped by, a context of power.
Which ideas and identities are imposed, how freely they circulate, how they
are transmitted, how they are understood—all of these factors are intimately
tied to the forms of power active in a particular historical context. Power, how-
ever, is not limited to military strength and social and economic structures.
Sometimes knowledge itself, especially in the form of technology, has the
power to shape societies beyond political or economic borders. For instance,
the spread of a certain armament technology can give multiple societies the
tools necessary to successfully defend themselves and conquer others, but
often in the process of maximizing the utilization of that technology, a soci-
ety’s political, economic, and cultural structures change. In other words, the
mere need or desire to use a certain technology can have the power to reshape
the very institutions that regulate day-to-day life. When such reshaping hap-
pens—because it often involves micro-level changes that are not entirely the
outcomes of direct use of military or political power—the masses are often
unconscious of the transformations taking place; the individual man or woman
has no idea that his or her entire ways of thinking and interacting with the
world are being transformed not simply by a cultural or political forces, but
also by the profound trans-societal impact of the circulation of knowledge and
technology.
In the early modern period, the development and spread of armament,
long-distance seafaring, and print technologies had this type of profound soci-
etal impact, and therefore began fundamentally reshaping religions, identities,
and cultures. Gunpowder, a Chinese technology, began traveling westward via
cultural transfusion and with the Mongol invasions of the medieval period.19
By the fifteenth century, its use was becoming widespread throughout Islamic
and Christian lands, and, as nations competed to create stronger and deadlier
armies, many additional technological developments were being made to
improve the use of gunpowder in warfare. Because it was very expensive to
both develop modern armament technologies and to produce the large quanti-
ties of modern firearms needed to equip big armies, the advantage frequently
went to those with greater wealth. The timing of this was fortuitous for Western
Europe, as this region was making significant developments in long-distance
seafaring technology, which gave that region a significant advantage in the
acquisition of wealth.

19 Stephen G. Haw, “The Mongol Empire—the First ‘Gunpowder Empire’?,” Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society 23, no. 3 (2013): 441–69; Kenneth Warren Chase, Firearms: A Global
History to 1700 (Cambridge, uk: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Introduction 11

The ability to transport goods and humans long distances by boat allowed
for late medieval and early modern Western European merchants and king-
doms to directly enter commercial markets for which they had previously
relied on middlemen. One major result of this was the explosion of the wool
market; so much wool was being sold out of Western Europe that the whole
system of land management started to be changed in order to increase the
number of sheep they could produce. In England, this took the form of the
enclosure movement, in which land that was previously left open for commu-
nal use by peasants was now closed off and designated as grazing areas for
sheep.20 The best land for sheep raising, meanwhile, became increasingly valu-
able and landowners realized they could make more money by renting or sell-
ing this land—with interest, of course. There was so much wealth to be had by
participating in this process—wealth that would be invaluable for developing
and producing modern armaments, which were in growing demand as the
threat of others acquiring more and more advanced arms spread—that English
law, which had previously forbidden profiting from interest, began allowing
this, as well as other new laws that favored wealth acquisition.21 In doing so,
the English government had to find a way to bypass the Christian foundations
for its laws, and it increasingly looked toward non-Christian (usually Greek)
models of law. At the same time, the desire to increase wealth led to the per-
mitting of both de facto and de jure religious freedom to those Christian sec-
tarian communities that were particularly adept at producing wealth.
The wool trade was not the only major source of wealth for Western Europe
in the early modern period. Armed with modern weapons, modern boats, and
immunity to numerous European diseases, Western Europe reached the
Americas and Africa and took what it wanted, while, by and large, rejecting the
humanity of the non-Christians of those regions. In pillaging foreign lands,
Western Europe was not historically unique or even rare; but, with the particu-
lar technological developments it had acquired, its relative strength, and its
inability to quickly produce laws and religious movements that might have
significantly limited its impact, Western Europe’s ability to exploit its power
was unprecedented.
The levels of wealth being generated through these activities were also
unprecedented—so unprecedented, in fact, that the whole global economy
began to change. New companies were constantly springing up with the inten-
tion of trying to take for themselves a share of this new influx of wealth, so

20 R.H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Longmans, Green
and Co., 1912).
21 R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952).
12 Introduction

much so that the traditional, rural, peasant-based social and economic sys-
tems were destroyed. Large-scale farming was big business now, and poor ten-
ants were increasingly forced off the land so that enclosures and modern mills
could be developed. Western European peasants were now moving in droves to
the growing urban centers, where they were largely employed by captilistic
companies and in trades created specifically for modern capitalistic produc-
tion. More and more, merchant ships were being sent to foreign lands for new
trading opportunities, while at home industries expanded in order to buy and
sell goods for the increasingly wealthy Europeans.
The impact all of this had on ideas, religions, and identities was tremen-
dous. Modern urbanization, first of all, significantly destabilized traditional
cultures and psychologies. Finding a stable life and livelihood in a city was very
different from doing so in a rural community. Laborers would have to learn the
kinds of skills necessary for commercial employment and be ready to pick up
new skills when they needed to find a different job—one’s labor skill knowl-
edge, therefore, had to be more flexible and intellectually-based. Extended
family networks, meanwhile, were often broken up, and could no longer pro-
vide the social, economic, and emotional safety net that they once had, dra-
matically reshaping the family relationship and identity. At the same time,
immigrants to the cities could now join new churches and trade guilds in an
attempt to gain social and financial protection, and this meant exposure to
new ideas and social networks. The city also brought people into greater con-
tact with the modern printing press, another technology that had made its way
to the West from its Chinese birthplace. Books and tracts—which were pri-
marily for spreading religious ideas—were now increasingly popular, literacy
rates began to rise, and professions requiring literacy were more and more in
demand to help with the new business- and law-based way of life. To survive
and thrive in such an environment, urban residents had to develop a highly
technical way thinking about their work, their social networks, the religious
ideas they encountered, and their own identities. By the end of the sixteenth
century, Shakespeare’s images of modern, urban people, characterized as inde-
pendent-thinking individuals, were resonating with English audiences.
Travel was another key factor in the early modern transformation of ideas,
religions, and identities. In Western Europe—as well as in North Africa, the
eastern Mediterranean, and other locations—urbanization meant that modern
laborers would be forced to go from city to city and company to company look-
ing for employment. For people whose families had lived in the same town or
county for generations, even this relatively local travel had a significant impact
on their view of other people and of their own identities, as it exposed them to
new ways of life—and the notion that there could be multiple legitimate ways
Introduction 13

of life—even within one’s own broader culture. For those who were aboard the
increasing number of ships voyaging to foreign lands, the exposure to other
cultures was obviously even more profound. The diversity of the world’s people
and their religions and cultures was being observed on unprecedented levels.
Old notions about foreigners were not eradicated, but, at the same time, to see
in the flesh people who looked and lived very differently caused many to recon-
sider their own cultures and identities. The growing number of published trav-
elogues containing descriptions of exotic peoples and religions helped bring
these impressions to those who could not go overseas themselves.
With the influx of so much new information, the old symbols that had once
represented the things people knew in their lives were no longer sufficient for
explaining their new world. Symbols, in fact, were increasingly detached from
the things they once represented. Wealth, to take a prominent example, is a
very modern notion because it represents an idea that is disconnected from its
material source.22 Prior to the early modern period, people rarely thought in
terms of ‘wealth’; they tended to think of how much of a certain material
resource—such as grains, animals, or gold—that they had. But with the enor-
mous influx of goods and currency in the early modern period, there was soon
not even enough gold to back up all of the finances that existed on paper; tra-
ditional notions of money based on material resources would therefore not be
adequate for expressing the amount of one’s possessions in a clear way. More
and more, people turned to the concept of ‘wealth,’ an abstraction of one’s
relative number of resources, and conducted business using this concept.
The development of the concept of wealth represented a broader transfor-
mation in the relation between symbols and the material world.23 In Western
Europe’s medieval period, symbols were largely seen as a direct link between
the material world and God. With relatively little circulation of ideas, the
meaning of a symbol—what it represented in the material world—was rela-
tively stable, and, since it was understood that God created all things in the
material world, including symbols, it was believed that a symbol simply repre-
sented a material thing that God had created. However, with the influx of new
information through travel, books, and the constant development of technical
knowledge, and with the increasing desire and ability of people—now armed
with literacy and a need to constantly improve their technical knowledge—to
manipulate symbols, the meaning of symbols was increasingly detached from
its material origins. The notion of a ‘dog’ for a medieval European, for instance,
would be far more limited than it would be for an early modern European who

22 This discussion largely draws on Foucault’s Order of Things, 166–198.

23 Ibid., 4–39.
14 Introduction

had learned about the huge variety of dog breeds found throughout Africa,
Asia, and the Americas. The very symbol or notion of ‘dog,’ had in fact been
disconnected from its original meaning; not only did it no longer represent the
same material objects, it was recognized that there could possibly be more
undiscovered species that would potentially be classed as ‘dog.’ Therefore the
category should not be closed and the material basis of the symbol of ‘dog’ was
no longer obvious. It was becoming, then, increasingly clear to people that the
notion or symbol of ‘dog’—and symbols generally—were not God-given but
made and manipulated by humans in order to express a concept. The symbol,
which is one of the most important building blocks of thoughts, ideas, reli-
gions, and cultures, had become radically destabilized. Like people, goods, and
money, in the early modern period, symbols themselves began to lose their ties
to a single location.
Deleuze and Guattari have introduced the term ‘deterritorialization’ to help
conceptualize this destabilized state of modern people, objects/goods, money,
and symbols. More so than the word ‘globalization,’ deterritorialization particu-
larly emphasizes the fact that boundaries of all types are now much less restric-
tive. Of course, as has been mentioned, Delueze and Guattari recognized the very
modern conditions that created deterritorialization, and that these conditions
contain within them forces that will inevitably restrict movement, such as eco-
nomic inequality and cultural domination. To account for this, they introduced
the corollary to deterritorialization: reterritorialization, which is the creation of
‘territories’ under modern circumstances. These territories can be material, such
as when borders are imposed and protected by modern nation states or when a
community must deal with its having limited resources; they can be ideological,
such as when ideas about cultural or religious boundaries prevent individuals
from exploring certain concepts; and they can be habitual—that is, certain intel-
lectual and physical behaviors can become standard in a community.
Territories can also be economic, in both a monetary and non-monetary
sense. The relative freedom of movement of all things produces, essentially, a
large number of ‘free markets’ in which economic factors play important roles
in promoting and restricting the movement of any type of good, whether it is
material, behavioral, or ideological.24 This concept of market as territory is par-
ticularly important for understanding religious de- and reterritorialization

24 In this, my theoretical approach has been significantly influenced by the sociological

work of Rodney Stark, particularly in John Lofland and Rodney Stark, “Becoming a World-
Saver,” American Sociological Review 30 (1965): 864–73 and Rodney Stark and Roger Finke,
Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000). Although I by no means agree with all of Stark’s proposals, a number of his
Introduction 15

because it reminds us that, even when it comes to religion, humans generally

behave in what they believe are ‘rational’ ways. So, for instance, both consum-
ers and producers of religious ‘goods’—ideas, practices, sects, etc.—desire to
maximize profit and minimize loss, and will therefore calculate the risk of
their decisions. A person who is considering religious conversion will analyze
whether their ‘purchasing’ of this new religious ‘good’ will give them a greater
gain than it will cost them—usually, the ‘costs’ in this scenario are associated
with losing one’s social position. For this reason, a person thinking about con-
verting to a non-dominant religion—particularly when there are pre-existing
prejudices against that religion—will decide not to because the cost will be too
great. There will always be a few isolated outliers, people who convert no mat-
ter what the cost. But whole conversion movements—which are essentially
the creation of new religious markets—tend to grow from within a preexisting
market because the ability of a market to thrive means that it has achieved
some degree of social legitimization, so new forms of religion that emerge
within such a market will to some extent share that legitimization, which thus
reduces the risk of social cost for the consumer.
Religious markets themselves can develop in a number of ways. Perhaps the
simplest way is through the intervention of a powerful institution, such as a
government or military group that imposes onto a population a religious mar-
ket, or at least religious market boundaries. The emergence of new religious
markets can also be the result, as mentioned earlier, of oppressed populations
inventing new forms of religion to resist their oppressors. Religious producers,
however, do not need to be oppressed to produce new religions in a free market
system. Since, generally, the most successful producers are those who have the
greatest desire, knowledge, and resources to supply goods that are in demand,
the advantage in religious production usually goes, just as it does in any free
market, to those who already possess these in abundance—i.e., the relatively
‘wealthy.’ So, when demand for certain religious goods increases, those with
wealth will tend to be the people who profit most from this emerging market. In
fact, on occasion, savy, wealthy producers who have perceived subtle changes in
the demands of consumers will intentionally create a whole religious market by
investing in a market infrastructure. In the modern period, elements of religious
infrastructures can be religious or philosophical publications, supply houses
that produce paraphernalia for rituals and clothing worn by religious consum-
ers, and wages for religious leaders. The changes in religious demands, mean-
while, are frequently wrapped up in cultural and psychological currents that are

hypotheses have led to fruitful analyses of the data collected for this study, and those
familiar with his work will recognize the influence.
16 Introduction

shaped by the impact of de- and reterritorialization. So, for instance, in the
modern period there has been a greater demand for religious and philosophical
ideas that provide the consumer with justification for capitalistic behavior and
the oppression of certain classes; religious producers have responded to this by
creating publishing houses and supporting religious leaders that promote such
ideas. We also see increased demand for religions and philosophies that address
issues related to emotional, social, and intellectual crises experienced by mod-
ern people who face alienation as a result of urbanization, immigration, and
social change. Hyper-technicalized minds may, for instance, sometimes find
little comfort in religions or philosophies that reject science and may seek out
religions that embrace it; or, in some cases, contact with new immigrants and
social movements destabilizes a consumer’s traditional models of the world and
forces him or her to seek out new ways of being that better address their current
condition. Countless religious producers have responded to this situation; some
have even profited from it. The reterritorialization of religion is therefore often
the product of the complex interplay between social change, personal experi-
ences and desires, and the manifold impacts of modern forms of power.
At its core, the present volume argues that as the world has become more
globalized, the spread of knowledge and technology has created two opposing
but corollary forces: a tendency for vitually all human-related things to attempt
to expand and circulate without restriction (deterritorialization) and a ten-
dency for modern forms of boundaries to be imposed (reterritorialization). De-
and reterritorialization are, therefore, the fundamental modern historical forces
that would destabilize the stronghold of traditional European anti-Islamic sen-
timent in the United States and eventually lead to the emergence of new reli-
gious markets through which white us Americans were willing to convert to
Islam.25 This book is both an exploration and explanation of that process.

Outline of the Book

Using the concept of de- and reterritorialization as its broad historical and
theoretical foundations, the present book examines how traditional cultural,

25 In this book, the concepts of de- and reterritorialization primarily refer to phenomena
that produced cultural and religious changes that were directly related to conversion to
Islam. Although the history of the United States is intimately tied to numerous events in
which physical and political boundaries were de- and reterritorialized—some of which
had enormous cultural impacts—only those that played key roles in the history of white
American conversion to Islam are discussed in this volume. Other volumes of hctius
will address different aspects of American de- and reterritorialization.
Introduction 17

social, religious, and psychological territories in the us were shattered and

then reconfigured in ways that produced white American converts to Islam.
Despite this general unity in perspective, however, as will become clear in the
proceeding chapters, the history of white us Muslims contains a number of
significant disjunctions. To help the reader better perceive and understand the
relationships between these disjunctions, this book is divided into two parts,
each of which deals with a key, and somewhat unified era in this history and
applies the particular scholarly techniques that are most appropriate for exam-
ining that era. For example, to understand the trends that connect the nine-
teenth-century era, which saw few significant convert-related events and lacks
a large amount of primary source data concerning the converts themselves, it
will be necessary to spend a great deal of time examining non-Islamic esoteric
communities and the writings they produced, which gave rise to the Islamic
conversion movement that appeared in the 1890s. The second era, on the other
hand, witnessed a great deal more Islamic activity and has a much larger pool
of Muslim primary sources from which to draw, so more time will be spent
examining the history of that era’s organizations, activities, and leading fig-
ures. Because of these differences in subjects, sources, and techniques, the pac-
ing and overall styles of the two parts of this book are themselves very different.
It is my hope that the reader will find this approach, if nothing else, at least
understandable.
Part 1 explores the first era of conversions: that which took place between
ca. 1800 and ca. 1910. Here, I argue that while there were many motives for con-
version during this period, and while American culture, as it became more and
more deterritorialized, was showing increasing sympathy for Islam and
Muslims, conversion to Islam only became a notable phenomenon when it was
promoted and endorsed by people closely tied with a major reterritorializing
current that has been called the ‘occult revival.’ The American occult revival,
which began in the mid-1870s, was an eruption of the creation of organizations
focused on studying and practicing esoteric and non-Christian religious teach-
ings. The supporters and leaders of the first American Muslim convert move-
ment—including Alexander Webb himself—were closely tied with the us
occult revival, and most likely would not have had any success had they not
been connected to it. The occult revival not only gave them a solid pool of
recruits, but also provided legitimization, models, and inspiration for creating
a non-Christian religious movement that was primarily populated by white
Americans from Christian backgrounds.
This book begins, in Chapter 1, with the earliest known white American con-
verts to Islam: the small number of American sailors who embraced Islam
while residing in Muslim-majority regions in the early nineteenth century.
Some of these converts were captives of North African Muslims during the
18 Introduction

First Barbary War and were labeled, like their European predecessors, ‘rene-
gades’ for embracing the religion of the enemy, while other ‘renegades’ were
apparently either deserters or American spies working undercover in Egypt.
Very little is known about most of these early converts—or supposed con-
verts—save for one man, George Bethune English. English, interestingly, is also
the only one of the early renegades who can be verifiably shown to have been
influenced by the deterritorializing liberal religion currents that were gaining
popularity in the us in the early nineteenth century. This chapter concludes,
then, with a discussion of importance of the emergence of American liberal
religiosity, which by the 1830s was epitomized by Transcendentalism and
which produced a space in American religious culture for the serious apprecia-
tion of certain religious aspects of Islam. I argue that deterritorialization led to
more and more Americans not only traveling to Muslim regions where some
converted to Islam, but also to Americans breaking down traditional religious
boundaries by publicly criticizing Christianity and identifying with—though
not as—Muslims without the fear of being labeled renegades. It should be
mentioned here that starting in this chapter I liberally use the words ‘orient’
and ‘oriental.’ These terms, which are often understood today as embedded
with many negative stereotypes about non-Christian peoples, are generally
considered outdated in contemporary scholarly parlance. However, they were
used regularly by nineteenth-century converts and Muslim sympathizers to
characterize something similar to what we today sometimes refer to as the
‘East’; that is, the peoples, cultures, and religions of Asia and North Africa.
Although I will sometimes highlight the fact that this is now contested lan-
guage by enclosing these terms in inverted commas, I retain the use of ‘orient’
and ‘oriental’ in order to highlight the distinctiveness of the terms as used in
that era as well as the frequency with which they were utilized by converts and
sympathizers. The reader will notice that in part 2, with the exception of
Chapter 7, which represents a transition from the previous era, these terms are
almost never employed.
Before the first liberally-motivated movement for full-fledged converts to
Islam could emerge, as Chapter 2 shows, American religious culture would
have to undergo yet another deterritorializing/reterritorializing transmuta-
tion. This was the emergence of the American occult revival. The American
occult revival was a movement that, while it had roots in earlier liberal reli-
gious currents like Idealism and Transcendentalism, developed more directly
out of spiritualism and early occult organizations in the us and England.
Starting around the late 1840s, there was a visible growth in the popular inter-
est in examining what were thought to be supernatural occurrences and pow-
ers, particularly in the forms of spirit ‘manifestations’ and ‘mediums.’ At least
Introduction 19

hundreds of thousands of Americans would soon be visiting séances and ‘mes-

meric’ healers, and a few small groups of spiritualists and mesmerists also
began attempting to cultivate additional supernatural—or ‘occult’—powers
through the use of magic mirrors or crystals, hashish, and the other tools of the
magician. Interestingly, Muslims and other non-Christian communities were
increasingly identified with in these supernatural-focused communities,
although exclusive commitment to a non-Christian religion was still frowned
upon. However, this would all change in the 1870s. After British Freemason eso-
tericists, backed by a shrewd, wealthy businessman, had established—or reter-
ritorialized—a stable market for Anglophone occult and non-Christian
religious groups, this market was able to immigrate to America, where it was
given life in the form of the Theosophical Society (ts), established in 1875. It
would only be in the 1880s, however, after the group had found new ambitious
promoters, that the ts would finally be able to achieve true success in the
United States. When it did, though, a religious market in which conversion to
Islam had the potential to thrive in organizational form had been reterritorial-
ized in the us.
Alexander Russell Webb—the first prominent American convert to Islam—
was one of the early participants in the American occult revival. Chapter 3
explores how Webb, the son of a Democratic newspaper publisher, made his
religious journey from that of a deterritorialized young mind with little inter-
est in religion to become not just a prominent Muslim convert, but the founder
of the first relatively successful American movement for conversion to Islam.
In this chapter, I look at the major events in Webb’s pre-Islam life, highlighting
his tendency for innovation and entrepreneurship. I also show how his back-
ground and personality traits were fortuitously fitting for his connecting with
one of the most important exponents of the American occult revival: the St.
Louis ts. As one of the early members of the St. Louis ts, Webb was exposed to
the influence of some of the great early leaders of the early American occult
revival, particularly Thomas M. Johnson, a prominent Platonist, a high-ranking
Theosophist, and the American president for one of the first competitors of
Theosophy, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. Johnson, who was a member
of the St. Louis lodge with Webb, did much to encourage the interest in Islam
and Sufism in the ts community. In fact, in March 1887, while Webb was still an
active Theosophist, Johnson was responsible for creating the first American
Sufi organization, the ‘Sufic Circle.’ Although a direct connection between
Webb and the Sufic Circle cannot be firmly established, there is little doubt
that Webb’s Theosophical ties played a major role in his taking an interest in
Islam around the same time Johnson created his group. Within months, Webb
decided to attempt to go to the East to learn Islam directly from knowledgeable
20 Introduction

born-Muslims. It was in this de- and reterritorializing context, then, that Webb
was molded to become the first true American Muslim convert leader.
Neither Thomas M. Johnson nor Alexander Webb, however, were the first
people connected to the early occult revival to decide to organize a group for
whites interested in embracing an Islamic identity. Chapter 4 discusses the
important religious and cultural current of Islamophilic Freemasonry in
England and the us, which, starting in the 1870s, began creating para-Masonic
organizations that emphasized Islam. I argue that one of the major motives
underlying these groups was a desire to foster world peace, and these Masons—
or at least one of the most influential ones—recognized that only through
embracing an Islamic identity could they help Western Christians overcome
one of their greatest obstacles to achieving that peace: their own prejudice
against Islam. Although the most well-known of the Islamophilic Masonic
groups—the Shriners—would devolve into a mere parody of orientalist ste-
reotypes, early on, all of these groups appear to have taken their Islamic identi-
ties seriously. It is necessary to understand these groups for two reasons: (a)
Their motivation for organizing may shed some light on the psychology of
white American conversion to Islam generally. (b) Some of the prominent
members of these groups became Webb’s earliest supporters when he started
his own movement.
Chapter 5 turns, finally, to the Islamic movement Webb led starting in 1893.
Here, in addition to detailing most of the known events that occurred over the
three years that the movement was alive, I show how the creation and growth
of this movement was dependent on the occult revival for its American sup-
port, publicity, and organization. Webb’s movement contained many elements
that he had observed in the Theosophical Society and many of the movement’s
original supporters had direct ties with the occult revival, some being
Islamophilic Masons, others being Theosophists, New Thought followers, or
individuals connected to the Rosicrucians. Despite the advantages that these
ties with the occult revival brought to Webb’s efforts, however, they were not
enough to prevent debilitating schisms and the movement’s eventual death. In
the end, Webb’s major failure was his being unable to maintain control of the
leading converts who had joined the community.
In Chapter 6, I look at the years following the Islamic movement’s collapse
to bring to light both its various vestiges and the factors that contributed to its
failure. A few Islamic organizations did continue to have a small presence in
the years following the collapse of Webb’s movement, and at least one group,
composed of people Webb possibly knew from his Theosophical days, had a
movement called the Order of Sufis, which was probably a revival of Johnson’s
Sufic Circle. In this chapter, I call attention to the previously unknown fact that
Introduction 21

one of the leading members of this organization was, like Webb, involved in
the French-based occult movement of Martinism—a movement that had ties
to Muslims in America and throughout the world—and that it is likely that he
connected his Sufi organization to the Martinist Order. This would make the
Order of Sufis an early predecessor to the much more popular Martinist-
influenced Sufi movement associated with René Guénon. In this chapter, I also
discuss various failed attempts by early twentieth-century immigrant Muslim
promoters of Islam, arguing that their failures in converting Americans reflect
the fact that they were unable to successfully appeal to the white American
population that would be most receptive to conversion: that involved in the
occult revival. It seems that to intentionally create religious change in the era
before large non-Christian immigration to the us, new ideas had to latch onto
preexisting successful reterritorialized markets. I therefore conclude this chap-
ter by examining other turn-of-the-century American movements for Asian-
majority religions in order to identify the traits that made some of those
movements more successful than those of the Muslims. As it turns out, there
were two elements that the more successful movements had that the
Muslims’—including Webb’s—lacked: an Eastern-born leader with advanced
religious training and the ability to incorporate numerous occult revival move-
ments as legitimate components of the religion.
With Chapter 7, I commence part 2 of the book, which looks at conversions
between 1910 and 1975. In the twentieth century, the dynamics of white
American conversion to Islam changed significantly. As I argue throughout
part 2, twentieth-century conversion was characterized by the impact of the
deterritorializing current of Muslim immigration to the us and the reterritori-
alizing social bonds the immigrants developed with white Americans. Although
some whites who embraced Islamic identities continued to be individuals tied
to the esoteric subculture, the vast majority of converts were now average
Americans who were not particularly interested in alternative religious views,
but became friends and spouses of Muslims simply because they interacted
with them in their daily lives. For many, if not most of these converts, embrac-
ing Islam was merely a means to improve their relationship or family life—for
them, religion itself was not the primary motive of their conversion. For others,
though, exposure to Islam through relationships with immigrants gave the
future converts unexpected but attractive new options for how to live in the
world and cultivate an inner spiritual life. In the nineteenth century, when
white Americans sought a new religion to help with personal or spiritual frus-
trations or with their desire for greater meaning, since the vast majority only
knew other Christians, they almost always joined Christian communities. But
in the twentieth century, when there was a growing likelihood that an average
22 Introduction

American had befriended or married a Muslim immigrant, this led to some

people considering Islam as a legitimate religious choice. The fact that immi-
gration played a significant role in these conversions also meant that the con-
verts’ backgrounds and views on Islam would be largely determined by the
backgrounds and views that predominated in the immigrant community at
any given period. This situation helps explain the differences between, for
example, the backgrounds and views of converts in the 1930s, when most
immigrants were working class and had little concern for Pan-Islamic move-
ments, and those of converts in the 1970s, when a large percentage of immi-
grants were college-educated and many were supportive of Pan-Islamic ideas.
In Chapter 7, I begin by first laying out the general argument that for white
American Muslim conversions between 1910 and 1975, Muslim immigration—
and not connection to an occult religious market—was the dominant force
shaping the dynamics of conversion. This change in conversion dynamics was
not a sudden one, however. During the 1910s and 1920s, as this chapter argues,
the most prominent Islam and Sufi convert movements, while they were led by
immigrant Muslims, had strong ties to occult currents. Indeed, these move-
ments seem to have been successful precisely because they were non-orthodox
Islamic movements that were developed with an awareness and adaptation of
Theosophy and other Western occult groups. It is a fascinating fact, for instance,
that Rabia Martin, the first white convert of the Sufi leader Inayat Khan, was
reportedly, like Webb, a Martinist and taught aspects of Martinism to her white
Sufi followers. She may have even belonged to the (possibly) Martinism-
connected Order of Sufis. Nevertheless, after the 1920s, the relative impact of
occult connections on white American converts to Islam and Sufism decreased
dramatically, and the white members of these non-orthodox groups would be
relatively quiet through the rest of the interwar period. I should comment here
about my use of the terms ‘orthodox’ and ‘non-orthodox,’ which I employ on
many occasions in this and in subsequent chapters. ‘Orthodox’ is generally
understood as meaning mainstream tradition, but it sometimes implies ‘cor-
rect’ tradition, as if other traditions are somehow ‘incorrect.’ As I am not a
theologian, I do not wish to make such types of normative claims. My use of
‘orthodox,’ then, is simply as a less cumbersome equivalent to ‘mainstream tra-
dition’; whereas ‘non-orthodox’ is used for ‘non-mainstream tradition.’
It was in the late 1920s and 1930s that the immigration—the deterritorializa-
tion—of Muslims began to cause a major shift—a major reterritorialization—
in white American conversion to Islam. As Chapter 8 shows, the evidence
suggests that the principal way through which this happened was marriage. As
more and more Muslim immigrants began to settle in the country, the chances
increased that some of them—the vast majority of whom were males—would
Introduction 23

start taking American spouses, and that some of these spouses would convert.
Here, I examine the available data and conclude that there were probably at
least several hundred marriage-converts, making them the largest group of
white Muslim converts in the country. I explain, too, that these converts gener-
ally showed little evidence of being strongly motivated by religious or spiritual
urges; creating a family life with little friction was probably their greatest moti-
vator in their embracing of Islam. Nevertheless, there were other individuals
who demonstrated a great desire to convert for personal spiritual reasons and
to spread Islam. These were, it seems, mostly friends of Muslim immigrants,
the most notable of which was Louis Glick, the Chicago-born son of an immi-
grant Jewish couple. During the interwar period, Glick became the single most
active white Muslim convert in the country, establishing a number of Islamic
organizations and starting various other Islam-related enterprises, all of which
greatly contributed to strengthening the national networks of Muslims. During
the war years, as Chapter 9 reveals, Glick continued to play an important role
in the uniting of American Muslims, even working closely with the African
American Sunnis who were, at the time, establishing their own national
Islamic network. Glick, however, was not the only prominent white American
Muslim during this period; in fact, it was during the war that two white Muslim
women made history with their activities in the name of spreading peace and
unity under the banner of Islam. Then, just after the war, white converts began
receiving attention for their efforts to bring Muslims closer together—although
in some cases these converts were ignored or dismissed by immigrants. In
these, as well as in the following chapters, close attention is paid to the devel-
opment of the immigrant Muslim community, a community for which the
details of its pre-1975 history have frequently escaped the gaze of previous
historians.
By the late 1940s, the history of Islam in America had entered a new phase
as changes in postwar immigration began to produce very new kinds of Islamic
leadership and institution-building. For the first time, a relatively large num-
ber of highly trained Muslim religious leaders began coming to the country,
and they were accompanied by a quickly-growing college student and profes-
sional wave of Muslim immigration. Being much better educated, wealthier,
and having better connections than the first generation immigrants, these
individuals started reshaping the face of Islam in America and were soon
befriending and marrying converts of their class. Now, a relatively large num-
ber of college-educated white converts began to appear, and some were soon
even being put in leadership roles in the new Islamic institutions that were
springing up across the country. The result of this change, as Chapter 10 shows,
was a transformation of the position of white converts in American Islam.
24 Introduction

They now had greater influence in the us Muslim community and they were
increasingly influenced by the educated Muslim teachers and international
reform movements with which many of the new immigrants were linked.
In the final chapter of this book, I demonstrate that after the passing of the
1965 immigration reforms, the tendencies of the early postwar period now
became the dominant trends. Fewer and fewer white converts were associated
with the old generations of immigrants, most of whom were working class and
primarily concerned with securing their livelihoods in America; white con-
verts increasingly came from the educated middle class and were meeting
internationally-minded Muslim students, who now had a significant influence
on American converts, exposing to them their many global organizational and
intellectual movements, including moderate Pan-Islam. However, converts’
lives as Muslims were also being shaped by their own needs and desires. Due to
having to negotiate a society undergoing rapid change, white converts tended
to be interested in cultivating a new ‘way of life.’ For many, this meant the
sacralization of both their interior and exterior lives through taking on new
mental habits, clothing, and behaviors. In addition to these converts, most of
whom were tied with Sunni and Shiʿi immigrants, there was also a growing
population joining the numerous new Sufi communities. By the end of 1974,
white American conversion to Islam was a great deal larger, and far more com-
plex—or deterritorialized—than it had been just eighty years earlier. Indeed,
the us religious landscape, having undergone numerous deterritorializing and
reterritorializing reconfigurations, now looked completely different from how
it had appeared when the country first learned about its white Muslim con-
verts in 1803.
 part 1
The Years 1800–1910

∵
 chapter 1

From Renegades to Transcendentalists

De- and Reterritorialization and American Religiosity

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the American religious landscape
underwent a major transformation. When the 1800s began, public criticism of
the Christian religion was very rare and conversion to non-Christian religions
was virtually unheard of, but by the end of the century, the criticizing and
questioning of Christianity was relatively widespread, and non-Christian
religions had been embraced by several thousand white Americans. The
fundamental cause of this religious metamorphosis was the spread of two
complimentary movements: the deterritorializing current of liberal religion
and the reterritorializing occult revival. Liberal religion—particularly in the
forms of Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, spiritualism, and the Free Thought
movement—was a significant force in the promotion of non-biblically-based
religiosity throughout the nineteenth century. It asserted that an individual
could identify religious Truth and morality without the use of the Bible,
whether through the application of rational thought or from one’s ‘intuition’; it
therefore encouraged the study and appreciation of non-Christian religions,
which were often assumed to contain clues about morality, Truth, and even
intuition itself. Liberal religion, however, did not promote exclusive commit-
ment to a non-Christian religion; thus, for example, while it fostered interest in
Islam among nineteenth-century white Americans, it did not, as far as we
know, generate a true conversion movement. What was needed for the emer-
gence of a genuine Muslim convert movement on us soil was the creation of a
religious market in which this kind of exclusive commitment was seen as a
legitimate religious option. In the mid-1870s, such a market appeared in the
form of what has been called the occult revival. A product of the confluence of
the deterritorializing, liberal religion-influenced movements with the reterri-
torializing, boundary-enforcing institution of esoteric Freemasonry, the occult
revival made exclusive commitment to non-Christian religions a publicly
acceptable practice and directly led to the emergence of the first conversion to
Islam movement for white Americans.
The history of nineteenth-century white American conversion to Islam can
be broken down into four periods that roughly correspond with key major his-
torical dynamics connected to the appearance of white American convert
movements for non-Christian religions. The first period, lasting from the

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_003

28 chapter 1

beginning of the century to the 1850s, coincides with the development of

Transcendentalism out of Unitarianism. During this period, conversions to
Islam were extremely rare and, as far as the evidence shows, almost all took
place in Muslim-majority regions and had almost no connection to liberal reli-
giosity. In fact, most of the few conversions we do know about for this period
were done for very pragmatic reasons: either to improve that particular
American’s treatment while living under Muslim rule or to enable him or her
to marry a Muslim. However, the most famous white American who was
believed to have converted during this era was unique because he had actually
been influenced by elements of liberal religion while a student at Harvard in
the early nineteenth century. Although the authenticity of his conversion is
still uncertain, the fact that George Bethune English consciously and verifiably
studied Islam and took up practices he knew to be those of Muslims reveals the
fundamental importance of liberal religion in beginning to shape white
American religious identities in the nineteenth century.
During the second period, which lasted from around the 1850s through the
1890s, the us saw a wave of religious movements that would culminate with
the appearance of the occult revival. These movements, which were influenced
by liberal religion as well as a growing desire amongst common people to apply
rational science to religiosity, included spiritualism, mesmerism, an early
‘Rosicrucian’ occult group, and esoteric Freemasonry. In several instances,
these movements promoted identification with Islam and Muslims, but at the
time they did not produce actual converts in America, nor were they by them-
selves responsible for the transformation of American religiosity that would
legitimize organizations for converts to non-Christian religions. However,
in 1875, the key transformative moment finally arrived when these move­
ments were brought together in the form of a new occult group known as
the Theosophical Society (ts), which, despite promoting adherence to non-
Christian religious practices, quickly gained a respectable following and sig-
nificant attention from the wider public. With the ts, then, the American
occult revival had finally commenced. Although at first the ts could not main-
tain its popularity in the us for more than a few years, in the early 1880s the
group was revived when it connected with a new batch of liberal religion
enthusiasts living across the country who were willing to rebuild the move-
ment. In doing so, these new leaders broadened the reach of organizations
promoting adherence to non-Christian teachings and created a national net-
work on which new non-Christian movements were able to form.
The first prominent convert to Islam, Alexander Russell Webb, was closely
tied to the 1880s rebirth of the ts in America, and it was during the expansion
of the occult revival that decade that he embraced Islam. At the time of his
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 29

conversion, however, Webb was living overseas and remained fairly isolated
until 1893. That year, he returned to the us, and by gaining the allegiance of
several people tied to liberal religion and the occult revival, he was able to lead
not just the first conversion to Islam movement for white Americans, but the
first movement for white Americans to formally join any Asian-majority reli-
gion. The time during which Webb’s movement was organized and active, 1893
to early 1896, is therefore the third important period. The fact that the achieve-
ments of this conversion movement are directly attributable to its ties with
liberal religion and the occult revival demonstrates the importance of those
earlier movements for generating a religious market in which non-Christian
religions could be exclusively and publicly adhered to by white Americans.
Nevertheless, the cohesiveness of the Muslim convert movement was very
short-lived and by 1896, the relatively successful organized efforts to promote
Islam had all but disintegrated. The fourth period, then, was the time during
which the members of the previous period’s movement continued to attempt
to spread Islam but achieved little success, and the results they did achieve had
minimal impact. It was also during this period, which lasted from 1896 to circa
1910, that other Muslim proselytizers came to the us but similarly failed to
bring Americans to Islam. The key to this failure, it seems, is that none of these
post-movement attempts to spread Islam did what was done so well during the
movement’s peak: strongly connect their proselytization efforts with the occult
revival. Indeed, this was a period in which white Americans started joining
several different Asian-majority religious movements, and the evidence sug-
gests that the success of non-Christian religious organizations during this
period was proportional to the degree to which they aligned themselves with
the occult revival.
Part 1 examines these four periods over the course of six chapters. My
argument is that nineteenth-century white American conversion to Islam—
especially as embodied in Alexander Webb’s movement, which was the first
successful conversion to Islam movement for white Americans—was primar-
ily a product of the deterritorializing and reterritorializing forces of liberal
religion and the occult revival. The present chapter looks at the first period of
this history, which was the period in which the us saw its earliest known white
converts to Islam. These converts were primarily sailors who—due to the
deterritorializing forces of long-distance seafaring, global trade, and interna-
tional warfare—were residing in Muslim-majority territory between 1803 and
1823. Some of these sailors converted as captives of Muslims, others willingly
embraced Islam as free men, and at least one well-known ‘convert’ from the
period may not have actually been a convert at all, but rather a liberal-minded
critic of Christianity who simply valued aspects of the religion and culture of
30 chapter 1

Muslims. This chapter presents the known details about their conversions and
brings to light the ways in which these early converts represent the transition
between the traditional ‘renegades’—the European converts who joined up
with Mediterranean Muslims—and the new type of American religious liber-
als, epitomized by the Transcendentalists, who would begin to pronounce
their sincere interest in and respect for aspects of Islam. I make the case that
the deterritorializing forces of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberal reli-
gion transformed American religious culture in such a profound way during
this period that individuals who publicly criticized Christianity and showed
respect for Islam went from being considered traitors and ostracized from
American religious life to being regarded as the leaders of a popular mid-
century religious and cultural current.

‘Turning Turk’: Barbary Captives

The first reports of white Americans embracing Islam were of individuals who
had been taken captive by North African Muslims and, the evidence suggests,
converted primarily to ensure their survival during their captivity.1 Such con-
versions fit nicely into narratives about Islam being a corrupting influence that
was spread ‘by the sword’; therefore, these conversions were easily discounted
by early Americans and in all likelihood their only influence on subsequent or
potential American conversions was as a deterrent. Nevertheless, the circum-
stances and details of these early conversions are historically valuable because
they illustrate some of the extreme conditions necessary for early Americans
to embrace Islam prior to the transformation of American religious culture
that would enable a whole movement of converts to develop in the 1890s.
In 1801, the young United States became embroiled in its first foreign war.2 The
Mediterranean had long been an important trade route for American merchants
and, during the colonial period, when Americans were still British citizens, they

1 The present chapter argues that the first confirmed American converts to Islam were the five
convert sailors on the Philadelphia, which was captured on the Barbary Coast in 1803. None
of these individuals, however, was the first white man on an American ship to become a
Muslim. In 1796 a Scottish national named Peter Lisle, who had joined the American navy in
order to avoid a British court martial, embraced Islam when his American ship, the Betsey,
was captured on the North African coast.
2 On the Barbary Wars, see Glenn Tucker, Dawn Like Thunder: The Barbary Wars and the Birth
of the u.s. Navy (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963) and Robert J. Allison, The Crescent
Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World 1776–1815 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995).
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 31

were protected there by the British and French navies.3 Upon independence,
however, the Americans had to defend themselves. This meant that—because
the us did not have a particularly strong navy in its early years—American mer-
chant ships were constantly being seized and their crews were being held hos-
tage by various North African pirates attempting to extract ransoms and tributes.
To deal with this problem, the us began building up its navy. In 1801, the American
government refused to pay an excessive tribute demanded by the Tripolitan
Pasha, who responded by declaring war against the us. The us then sent war-
ships to the region to create blockades and perform raids, setting into motion the
First Barbary War.
On October 31, 1803, the Philadelphia, one of the us warships stationed on
the Barbary Coast, hit uncharted rocks near the Tripolitan shore. Separated
from the rest of the American navy and lacking the means to ably defend itself,
the ship was captured by Tripoli’s Pasha, who subjected its crew to forced labor,
beatings, food deprivation, and generally very unpleasant conditions. It was
made clear to the captives that they would receive better treatment if they
embraced Islam, but the general sentiment among the crew was that conver-
sion would be a cowardly, treacherous act.4
John Wilson was the first to ignore the crew’s opinions and join up with the
Muslims. Even before he converted, just days after the crew was taken prisoner,
Wilson was already behaving, as the Philadelphia’s Captain Bainbridge put it,
“in a most infamous manner.”5 He had told the Tripolitans that Muslim captives
on another American ship were being abused, a lie that appears to have caused
the Philadelphia’s Muslim guards to flog the Americans even harder and more
often.6 Then, barely a week after being captured, attempting to further ingrati-
ate himself with the Pasha, Wilson claimed that Captain Bainbridge had thrown
gold and American money overboard—another outright falsehood that resulted
in further persecution of the Americans and, simultaneously, the elevation of
Wilson’s status by his captors: he was made overseer of the captured crew.7
Although Wilson, a Swede by birth, was a naturalized us citizen, his brazen-
ness in betraying his crewmates was apparently grounded in his expectation that

3 The latter because of a treaty with Britain.

4 See United States Office of Naval Records and Library, Naval Documents Related to the United
States Wars with the Barbary Powers, 6 vols. (Washington: us Govt. Print. Off., 1939–44), esp.
volume 3.
5 Naval Documents, 3:223.
6 William Ray, Poems, on Various Subjects, Religious, Moral, Sentimental and Humorous (Auburn,
ny: Doubleday, 1821), 234.
7 Naval Documents, 3:530; Ray, Poems, 234.
32 chapter 1

the Swedish government would protect and rescue him.8 This infuriated
Bainbridge, who had the fleet’s commodore write to the Swedish consul detail-
ing Wilson’s actions, clarifying his us citizenship status, and threatening to
report the consul to the country’s king if he made any attempt to protect the man
whom the Americans now considered a deserter.9 Bainbridge also confronted
Wilson directly, promising him that he would be hanged for treason if the crew-
men were ever freed.10 Wilson’s response was to hedge all bets with his captors
and to turn ‘Renegado’ or ‘Turk,’ as conversion to Islam was sometimes termed.11
Bainbridge would soon be calling Wilson “the greatest Villain [he] ever knew.”12
The remaining converts do not seem to have been nearly as unscrupulous as
Wilson. At least two of them, in fact, were probably simply trying to negotiate the
complex realities of competing ethnic, religious, and national commitments in
wartime. Thomas Prince, an ordinary seaman from Rhode Island but of German
parentage, was still in his teens or younger when the Philadelphia crew was cap-
tured, and apparently was the second to convert, probably after having befriended
the German-speaking Wilson.13 Another German-American, Lewis Hacksener,14
also converted soon after Wilson,15 but instead of being remembered for treach-
ery, the single known account of Lewis’ actions indicates that in at least one
instance he used his conversion and the advantages it gave him to help his for-
mer crew. On August 10, 1804, when the crew wrote a petition to the Pasha
requesting a reduction in the physical abuse given by the guards, Hacksener, who
due to his conversion had been given a position as a messenger between the ship
and the Pasha, truthfully explained to the latter the crew’s petition.16 This
resulted in the Pasha formally forbidding the guards from striking the Americans.

8 Ibid., 3:224.
9 Ibid., 3:224, 280–81.
10 Ray, Poems, 234–35.
11 Ray, Poems, 235; Naval Documents, 3:185, 409.
12 Naval Documents, 3:409.
13 Ray, Poems, 235; Naval Documents, 3:269, 5: 328, 6:203. Wilson’s ability to speak German
can be deduced from three things: (a) his confirmed Swedish background, which—
because of Sweden’s proximity to Germany and the Swedish language’s being a Germanic
language that shares many words with German—increases the possibility that he had the
ability to communicate in German; (b) the fact that at least two of the other converts were
German; and (c) the fact that he was misidentified as a German by at least one of his
crewmates (see Ray, Poems, 233).
14 In the naval documents, his surname is also spelled Heximer, Hickson, and Hickshaw,
while his first name is sometimes spelled Louis.
15 Naval Documents, 3:269.
16 Ibid., 4:63.
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 33

The fact that three of the first converts were of similar minority ethnic back-
grounds on the American ship is not particularly surprising. As we will see,
throughout the history of religious conversion of Americans to non-Christian
religions, it is often the case that ethnic minorities convert in groups. Frequently,
this is because ethnic minorities, particularly those who are immigrants or the
children of immigrants, tend to rely heavily on social ties based on shared eth-
nicity and language. When one of these ties is stretched through one of the
members of the group changing identities or loyalties, particularly when this is
a relatively influential member, other members of the group may follow in
order to preserve the valuable ethnically-based social tie.17 In the case of the
Philadelphia, John Wilson seems to have been this influential member for the
ship’s German speakers.
Nevertheless, Thomas Smith and Peter West—the two other Philadelphia
crewmen who “turned Mahometants”18—were not, by any accounts, from
German backgrounds. Almost nothing is known about seaman Thomas Smith,
other than his approximate conversion date of January 15, 1804.19 Peter West, a
carpenter and another early convert,20 is only noted for having helped build at
least one boat for the Pasha that later attacked an American cruiser.21 It is likely
that these men’s primary motive for converting was to reduce their harsh treat-
ment and improve their chances of survival. Despair was in fact quickly spread-
ing through the crew, and by mid-January 1804, Captain Bainbridge was
expecting “many more” of the ship’s crew members to follow in Wilson’s foot-
steps.22 A wave of defections did not occur, however;23 instead, the Americans’

17 For a discussion of this phenomenon, see Stark and Finke, Acts, 125.
18 Naval Documents, 3:329.
19 Ibid., 3:185, 6:203. Although in some instances this specific date was given for Smith’s con-
version, we can only consider it approximate, for on January 14—one day before Smith’s
supposed conversion—Bainbridge observed that five crew members—which was the
total number of crew members that were reported to have converted, so this number
included Smith—had already converted; see Naval Documents, 3:329.
20 Ibid., 3:185.
21 Ibid., 5:488.
22 Ibid., 3:329.
23 In February 1804, Bainbridge noted that there were seven total converts, suggesting two
additional conversions (see Naval Documents, 3:409). However, given that (a) in all other
documents written by the Philadelphia’s crew these two additional converts were never
mentioned (although in late December 1803 another American ship heard the probably
exaggerated rumor that eight Philadelphia sailors had converted—see Naval Documents,
3:301); (b) in the official reports only five converts were named and all remaining crew
members’ fates were accounted for; and (c) the Muslim captors would have punished
apostasy from Islam with death and we know that they did not kill more than four of the
34 chapter 1

resolve and their resentment towards their captors and the converts intensi-
fied, and they reportedly became eager to lynch the “traitors” if they were ever
released.24
After numerous negotiations, and over a year-and-a-half of captivity, a
peace treaty and agreement were finally reached. On June 4, 1805, the American
crew of the Philadelphia was freed. In converting to Islam, however, the five
renegades had effectively renounced their American citizenship, so, on June 3,
they were summoned to see the Pasha who gave them the option of staying in
Tripoli or leaving the country. Only John Wilson wanted to stay; he would later
be captured by the Portuguese while sailing with Tripolitan pirates.25 The other
four were escorted away by a guard. They were never mentioned again in any
of the American naval correspondence from the period and were presumed to
have been either killed or enslaved.26 Once the remaining crew members
returned to American soil, word spread about the betrayal of five men on the
Philadelphia, and for the rest of the First Barbary War, there were no other
American captives positively known to have converted to Islam.
Other American sailors possibly ‘turned Turk’ in the early nineteenth cen-
tury, but not to gain relief from the harsh treatment of Muslims. One man, a
native of Baltimore named Walker, had been forced to join the British navy in
1810, and his having to endure his British officers’ “system of cruelty” led him to,
when his ship ported in Algiers, abandon the ship, “his country, his family, and
religion.”27 It has been suggested too that some of the unaccounted-for
American sailors from the period—including perhaps a few African
Americans—made similar decisions.28

American converts, there are essentially only two possible conclusions to draw: 1) that
these two particular crew members had converted was never made clear in any of the
preserved naval documents and that they were among the five supposedly non-convert
crew members who died (possibly at the hands of Muslim guards or angry American
crewmates), or 2) the more likely scenario, that Bainbridge made a simple mistake when
he identified seven converts in this instance.
24 Gary E. Wilson, “American Prisoners in the Barbary Nations, 1784–1816” (PhD diss., North
Texas University, 1979), 281n43.
25 Wilson, “American Prisoners,” 274.
26 Ibid., 274.
27 M.M. Noah, Correspondence and Documents Relative to the Attempt to Negotiate for the
Release of the American Captives at Algiers Including Remarks on our Relations with that
Regency (Washington, dc, 1816), 66–67, quoted in Allison, Crescent, 120.
28 Allison, Crescent, 120–26.
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 35

‘Taking the Turban’: George Bethune English

Out of all of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century phrases that

described British and American conversions to Islam, none captured the ambi-
guity of the supposed converts’ motives for joining up with Muslims as much
as ‘took the turban.’ The meaning of ‘renegade’ and ‘turned Mahometant’ were
clear. The ‘Turk’ in the phrase ‘turned Turk,’ meanwhile, could be equivalent for
‘Muslim,’ but it also could signify that the convert took on the appearance and
social habits of the North African Ottoman Muslim people without necessarily
becoming Muslim, or—more significantly, in times of war—that the way the
person was really converting was in terms of national loyalty: ‘Turk’ being a
designation of national identity rather than ethnic or religious identity.29 In all
these meanings—which could be employed simultaneously—the convert’s
social commitments, whether they be religious, secular, or political, were
understood as having changed. However, the wording of ‘took the turban,’
although surely understood by many as basically equivalent to the other terms
for converting to Islam, was the phrase that was least connected to a person’s
social commitments and internal motives. More than the other terms, it could
be interpreted as a superficial change only, and perhaps better reflected the
mentality of the convert sailors.
It is noteworthy, then, that the last and most well-known American to be
called a ‘renegade’ in the context of conversion to Islam was also accused of
‘taking the turban,’ and even used the phrase himself to describe another con-
vert sailor. Indeed, despite all the evidence and reports indicating the contrary,
George Bethune English made sure that posterity would always have to
acknowledge that we cannot say with certainty whether or not he actually
converted.
The accusations began appearing in January 1819 when American newspa-
pers reported a rumor that an unnamed “American officer of marines had
embraced the Mahometan faith at Constantinople.”30 This was undoubtedly
English. Through a favor of then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams,
English—a graduate of Harvard’s law and divinity schools—had joined the
American military as a second lieutenant in the Marines in February 1815.
English’s early military career was brief. In 1816, he was posted in the

29 The phrase ‘to turn Turk’ was also sometimes used as a derogatory euphemism for prosti-
tution; see Warner G. Rice, “‘To Turn Turk,’” Modern Language Notes (March 1931):
153–54.
30 National Advocate (New York), January 26, 1819, 2.
36 chapter 1

Mediterranean; in April 1817, he was promoted to first lieutenant; and soon

after his promotion, English resigned from the navy and moved to
Constantinople.31 The circumstances surrounding English’s resignation and
rumored conversion, however, leave many questions. First of all, it is not cer-
tain as to what exactly English’s resignation meant; in as late as 1819, his name
was still listed in the navy register, although it was crossed out and next to it
was simply written “out” and “in Turkey.”32 There is also the question of whether
English was involved with state-sponsored covert activities at the time, activi-
ties that necessitated that he wear Muslim clothing. There is circumstantial
evidence suggesting that Adams had wanted English to work as a spy as early
as 1816, and in the 1820s, English was verifiably wearing a robe and turban while
working undercover for Adams in Constantinople.33 It is very likely, then, that
English’s 1819 taking of the turban was done for the same purpose. Nevertheless,
this would certainly not be the last time there would be talk about English’s
supposed turn to Islam.
By around early 1820, English had made his way to Cairo where he contin-
ued to wear Muslim clothing and went by the name Mohamed Effendi.34
Interestingly, despite English’s recent supposed resignation from the American
military and his ‘turning Turk,’ the British consul, General Henry Salt, obtained
for English a position in the Khedive Mohammed Ali’s Egyptian Expeditionary
Force to take control of the Sudan by way of the Nile. English’s account of the
expedition, first published in 1822 as A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola
and Sennaar: Under the Command of His Excellence Ismael Pasha, Undertaken
by Order of His Highness Mehemmed Ali Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt,35 contains one
of the first, most well-known, and most detailed descriptions of the Sudanese
Nile area made by a Westerner during the period.
Just before the expedition departed in the summer of 1820, a white New
Yorker living in Cairo asked English if he (the New Yorker)—and apparently his
friend—could go along with English on the journey.36 Very little is known
about the two men, other than the fact that they had both supposedly con-
verted to Islam prior to the expedition. English later recalled that the New

31 Cassandra Vivian, Americans in Egypt, 1770–1915: Explorers, Consuls, Travelers, Soldiers,

Missionaries, Writers and Scientists (Jefferson, nc: McFarland, 2012), 76.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 76, 96–97.
34 Ibid., 76.
35 This edition was published in London by John Murray. In 1823, a new edition was pub-
lished in Boston by Wells and Lilly. Citations here will be from the 1823 edition.
36 English, A Narrative, 158.
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 37

Yorker, known only as Khalil Aga, “took the turban” a few weeks before the
forces left for the Sudan. In another account, conveyed by British clergyman
George Waddington, both Khalil and his companion, a Swiss-born naturalized
American known as Achmed Aga, ‘took the turban’ at that time, apparently
following English’s lead.37 Waddington claimed to know an “eye-witness” of
their supposed conversions who said that about a week or two prior to the
event, the two men were seen walking around Cairo in their American navy
uniforms; then they disappeared for eight or ten days, only to reappear in
Muslim garb.38 Nothing more is known about their backgrounds, and only a
few facts are known about their fates. Achmed would die during the expedi-
tion; Khalil would survive, leaving an important unpublished account of the
journey,39 and after the expedition he returned to Egypt where even in as late
as 1831 he was reportedly “distinguished for his courage and good conduct.”40
With such little information, it is impossible to accurately assess the sincer-
ity and depth of Khalil and Achmed’s conversions. For English, on the other
hand, much more evidence exists, although it is still difficult to come to a
definitive conclusion. English, first of all, adopted some Muslim customs, such
as using the Islamic calendar for dating his account of the expedition, ‘Turkish’
stoic mannerisms, and quoting from the Qurʾan.41 English also later recalled
that while in Muslim countries he even participated with Muslims in prayers,
although, admittedly, he did the same with Jews and their prayers as well.42
Another suggestive anecdote comes from English’s Narrative. In it, he records
that one day during the Nile expedition he stayed for a night at the home of
local Muslims who offered their married daughters for him to sleep with.
English responded by telling his hosts that “a Mussulman [Muslim] ought to

37 English, A Narrative, 158; George Waddington and Barnard Hanbury, Journal of a Visit to
Some Parts of Ethiopia (London: John Murray, 1822), 114–15.
38 Waddington and Hanbury, Journal, 115. This account seemingly eliminates the possibility
that the Swiss identity of Achmed was a misidentification of the Swedish John Wilson,
who would have long been wearing local clothing, not an American sailor’s uniform, and
by this time, seventeen years after his conversion, probably would not be accompanying
another American sailor.
39 See Cassandra Vivian, “Khalil Aga: A Lost American on the Nile,” in Saddling the Dogs:
Journeys through Egypt and the Near East, eds. Diane Fortenberry and Deborah Manley
(Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2009), 81–94.
40 James Ellsworth De Kay, Sketches of Turkey in 1831 and 1832. By an American (New York: J. &
J. Harper, 1833), 488.
41 De Kay, Sketches, 488; Samuel Knapp, American Biography, or Original Biographical
Sketches of Distinguished Americans (New York: C.C. Childs, 1850 [1833]), 96–97.
42 Knapp, American Biography, 96.
38 chapter 1

regard lying with his neighbour’s wife as a crime.”43 This was, most likely,
merely a condescending remark on English’s part, and not evidence of him
being a “Mussulman” himself. Indeed, English admitted that he gave into
temptation and took up the hosts’ offer.44
For the American press, the most persuasive pieces of evidence of English’s
conversion were the testimonies of three European Christians. One of these
was Waddington, who had traveled with the expedition for a time and quickly
came to suspect English of having converted. When English learned that
Waddington, another Westerner, was in the entourage, he eagerly went to go
see him, but Waddington treated English coolly precisely because he already
believed English to be a “renegade.”45 Waddington, in fact, generally had little
respect for English, and this showed through in his unfavorable depictions of
the man in his journal made during the expedition, which was published in
1822.46 The fact that Waddington put into print his claim that English had con-
verted angered English, who later confronted Waddington, demanding that in
the next edition of the book he retract the assertion.47 English’s efforts to quash
the rumor, however, would be in vain, as no new edition of Waddington’s book
was published and other Europeans who met English in Egypt also identified
him as a convert. When English and Khalil returned from the expedition, they
stayed with their patron, the British consul Henry Salt, who happened to be
hosting at the time various other Western travelers. One of these travelers
noted in a letter to a friend that English had “turned Mahomedan and written
an exposition of the Koran.”48 Another traveler staying with Salt, one Joseph
Wolf, a German Jewish convert to Christianity, wrote in his journal that English
confided in him “the history of his turning to Mahomedanism by principles.”49
According to Wolf, after reading Voltaire in college, English supposedly
“became a complete infidel,” and extracts from Wolf’s journal indicate that he
learned that one of English’s major criticisms of Christianity was that the New

43 English, A Narrative, 93.

44 Ibid., 93n.
45 Waddington and Hanbury, Journal, 117.
46 As Vivian points out, however, Khalil presents English in a more honorable light. See
Vivian, Americans, 80–81, 85.
47 Vivian, Americans, 85.
48 “George B. English,” Spectator (New York), July 26, 1822, 3. This exposition of the Qur˒an,
like several of English’s unpublished writings, has not yet been found. It may be included
in his “Miscellaneous religious instruction,” which is appended to a manuscript copy of
A Narrative located at Yeshiva University.
49 Ibid.
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 39

and Old Testaments could not be completely reconciled with each other.50 All
of these claims were included in an 1822 syndicated news article about English’s
conversion, which helped cement his reputation as a ‘renegade.’51 For the rest
of his life, English would repeatedly deny having converted to Islam,52 but at
least one of these claims—Wolf’s assertion about English’s criticism of
Christianity—was at least partially based in fact.
George Bethune English was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1787 to
Thomas English, a Boston merchant and Irish immigrant, and Penelope
Bethune, an American of Scottish descent.53 A naturally inquisitive young
man and member of Harvard College’s Phi Beta Kappa academic honor soci-
ety, English was said to have devoted twelve to fifteen hours a day to study and
was known for both his love of learning and his “lofty and refined sentiments
of honor.”54 English’s intellectual interests were wide; as an undergraduate, he
investigated metaphysics, church history, biblical criticism, oriental literature,
military tactics, and poetry, even becoming the official poet for his school’s
famous Hasty Pudding social club.55 After graduating in 1807, English appar-
ently unsuccessfully attempted to join the navy;56 he then turned to law, enroll-
ing in Harvard Law School and practicing as an attorney for a brief period.57
However, English quickly came to dislike working in this field and decided to
attend Harvard Divinity School instead. Here, English excelled. He had a gift
for learning languages and he began reading medieval and early modern
Hebrew texts as well as new works being published on Asian religions. In 1812,
English won Harvard’s most prestigious academic honor, the Bowdoin prize,
for his dissertation entitled “The Origin of the Masoretic Points, and Their
Subserviency to a Thorough Knowledge of the Hebrew Language.”58 During
this time, English, now leaning towards the increasingly popular Unitarian

50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Knapp, American Biography, 96.
53 On English’s parents, see Harvard University, Harvard College Class of 1867. Secretary’s
Report No. 14 (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis Co., 1918), 62–63.
54 “George B. English,” Spectator, 3; Harvard College, A Catalogue of the Fraternity of ΦBK,
Alpha of Massachusetts (Cambridge: Charles W. Sever, 1873), 19; Knapp, American
Biography, 92.
55 “George B. English,” 3; Harvard College, A Catalogue of the Members of the Hasty Pudding
Club in Harvard University (Cambridge: e.w. Metcalf & Co., 1829), 6.
56 Harvard, A Catalogue of the Fraternity of ΦBK, 19; “George B. English,” Spectator, 3.
57 “George B. English,” Spectator, 3; Knapp, American Biography, 92.
58 Harvard University, A List of the Winners of Academic Distinctions in Harvard College dur-
ing the Past Year together with Lists of the Scholars of the First Group since 1902 and of the
40 chapter 1

religious perspective, attempted to become a preacher, but despite being

widely respected for his vast knowledge of the Bible and religion generally, the
controversial and recondite subjects of his sermons made him an unpopular
public speaker.59
In any case, reading Jewish and Asian religion literature had fostered in
English a critical view of traditional Christianity. In 1813, he self-published the
book The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing the New Testament
with the Old in which he laid out the conclusions about Christianity he had
reached through his years of study and reflection.60 English prefaces his book
by proclaiming his belief that free thought and public criticism through ratio-
nal argumentation are “natural right[s]” and “dut[ies].”61 He then explains how
he arrived at his current critical position towards Christianity: When he first
read the New Testament as a young man, English was convinced that the Bible
had a divine origin. Not even the criticisms of Deists, he felt, were persuasive
enough to abandon belief in the book’s having been directed by God. But then
English investigated Jewish criticisms of Christianity and, through the influ-
ence of these, he became convinced of the idea that there were several incon-
sistencies between the New Testament and the Old Testament.62 These
inconsistencies would thus call into question the Bible’s divine origins. The
main purpose of English’s book, then, was, in keeping with his belief in the
responsibility of all people to bring rational criticisms to the public sphere, to
expose these arguments against Christianity. Much of the book was aimed at
showing that Jesus does not possess what the Old Testament says would be the
characteristics of the messiah. English also argues that some of the practices
and ideas in the Old Testament were not consistent with those in the New
Testament or with those used by early Christians—and, in fact, that some of
the New Testament concepts appear to have been based on “Oriental”
religions.
In terms of understanding English’s possible conversion to Islam six years
later, there are two sections in Grounds that stand out as particularly impor-
tant. First is Chapter xiii, whose stated goal is to prove that the Apostle Paul

Winners of the Bowdoin Prizes (Cambridge: [Harvard University], 1905), 21. Masoretic
points are the vowel points and accent marks in the Hebrew Bible.
59 “George B. English,” Spectator, 3; Knapp, American Biography, 92.
60 This was originally self-published in Boston. It was republished in 1814 by Cummings and
Hilliard and then several times after that. The edition i will cite from is the 1852 reprint of
the original, which contains no information about the 1852 publisher.
61 English, Grounds, vi.
62 Ibid., viii.
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 41

“was well versed in Cabalistic learning, and not unacquainted with the princi-
ples of the Philosophy styled ‘the Oriental.’”63 English argues that the “mystery”
of the marriage of Christ to the church, referred to in Ephesians, is a Kabalistic
idea; and that it also reflects a theory in “Oriental” religions in which God is
identified as a phallus.64 Another doctrine Paul supposedly derived from
“Oriental Philosophy” is a version of Idealism in which “all evil resulted from
matter”; in other words, that true good is only immaterial, part of the ‘eternal
mind.’65 Finally, English argues that the New Testament’s notion of evil is not
based in the Old Testament view, but rather on the Persian notion of a struggle
between light and dark on earth.66 Chapter xiii, then, is significant as evidence
concerning English’s possible conversion because it proves that English was
familiar with and interested in not just non-Christian religions generally, but,
perhaps more importantly, the new research on and theories about ‘oriental’
religions that had recently begun circulating in the English-speaking world,
and how these religions criticize Christianity.67
Nevertheless, both Chapter xiii and another section in English’s book sug-
gest that he was no Muslim at the time of writing Grounds. At the end of
Chapter xiii, English refers to Muhammad as “the imposter.”68 Then, in
Chapter xiv, he expresses more disbelief in Islam. The goal of this chapter is to
attack the popular claim that miracles supposedly performed by early
Christians are proof of the divine truth of Christianity. In a footnote, English
argues that, generally, reports of miracles are not good proof for the truth of a
religion, as many religions claim witnesses for miracles, and Islam in particular
has a relatively large catalog of witnesses and a highly-developed system for
grading their reliability69—yet, he points out, most people do not accept wit-
nesses’ accounts for other religions as proof for the truth of those religions’
miracles.70 English is saying, then, that people will always doubt the reliability
of witnesses for other religions because those witnesses’ biases and intelli-
gence will always be in question. English himself, therefore, would likely not
have fully accepted the Islamic hadith (the collection of reports of early Muslim

63 Ibid., 61.
64 Ibid., 61–62. For an excellent introduction to the phallic and other ‘oriental’ religion theo-
ries circulating in the early nineteenth century, see Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical
Enlightenment (Albany: State University of New York Press 1994).
65 English, Grounds, 63.
66 Ibid., 64–67.
67 Again, see Godwin, Theosophical Enlightenment.
68 English, Grounds, 67.
69 English is referring to the Islamic hadith system.
70 English, Grounds, 70.
42 chapter 1

witnesses of Muhammad and the original Muslim community) as proof of

early actions of Muhammad.
Since he was on the subject of Islam at this point, English decided to add
another argument related to the religion. While Christians, English observes,
are fond of arguing that Christianity’s current popularity is proof of it being
the only true religion, Muslims, he says, can argue that a key aspect of their
religion, the rejection of Christ’s divinity, helped make their religion become
popular more quickly than Christianity had been able to.71 In fact, English
points out, the belief that Islam was primarily spread ‘by the sword’ is incor-
rect; more people embraced Islam voluntarily than embraced early and medi-
eval Christianity.72 English’s point is simply that it is not a legitimate argument
to say that Christianity’s current popularity proves that it is a superior religion.
In all this argumentation, meanwhile, English displays that he is not just famil-
iar with the Qurʾan and with several Western scholarly works on Islam, but that
he has also integrated what he learned from these texts into his very modern,
complex understanding of religion. While the evidence in Grounds points to
English not being a convert, it also reveals that English possessed key traits that
some of the later prominent American Muslim converts would have: an
advanced understanding of various religions of the world and a willingness to
use this knowledge to criticize Christianity and find value in other religions.
In the early 1800s, however, these were radical, irreverent views—even in
Boston—and English’s choice to make them public had significant conse-
quences. He was harshly attacked from the local pulpits, ostracized from the
community, and even excommunicated in 1814. His joining the Marines in 1815
was done largely out of a need to secure a livelihood outside of the us, where
his views would most likely have followed him no matter where he went. It is
somewhat unclear how long this reputation stayed with English. Only a little is
known about his life after he returned to the us in 1827, as he only lived a few
more months, dying under mysterious circumstances in August 1828. English,
however, stuck by his views throughout his life, even composing a response to
his critics just before he left on the Sudanese expedition in 1820.73
Whether English actually converted or not is hard to say given the existing,
often seemingly contradictory evidence. Even if the hearsay from Wolf seems
to have a ring of truth, Wolf may have simply assumed, without definitive evi-
dence, that English, the turban-wearing critic of Christianity, had become a
genuine convert. English was undeniably a strong critic of Christianity, but

71 Ibid., 71.
72 Ibid., 71.
73 This was his Five Pebbles from the Brook (Philadelphia, 1824).
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 43

throughout the 1820s he continuously insisted that he remained a believer in

Christ and that he had not embraced Islam. More than any of the ‘renegades’
of the early nineteenth century, then, English represented the ambiguity of
what it meant to ‘turn Turk’ or ‘take the Turban.’
At the same time, by being significantly shaped by Unitarianism, biblical
criticism, notions concerning the “natural right” to free though and its public
expression, and ‘oriental’ religious ideas, English stood at the transition
between the old, wartime survival-type Euro-American sailor converts to Islam
and the emergence of the new cultural current sweeping the West that would
later produce several ideologically- or spiritually-driven converts. It would take
well over half a century, and a surprisingly complex transformation of Western
and us religious culture, for this current to produce a us Muslim convert
movement. But its beginnings had already appeared by English’s day, and had
even left their mark on English’s own ideas and identity. Indeed, it is very fit-
ting that in concluding his brief biography of the man, Samuel Knapp described
the free-thinking, irreverent, Harvard-educated English as a “Transcendent
Genius.”74

Ideas, Unity, Transcendence

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the us witnessed the appear-
ance of several new religious movements,75 but for the history of white
American conversion to Islam, one of the most important deterritorializing
religious currents was that of Idealism-based liberal religiosity. In the early-to-
mid nineteenth century, this current would significantly contribute to an
increase in American interest in Islam and even, on occasion, led to certain
individuals identifying with—but not as—Muslims, seeing themselves as
believers in the same spiritual truths. While, as far as the evidence shows, this
religious change did not verifiably directly lead to conversions to Islam—even
in the case of English—it still helped sow the cultural soil for what was to
come later in the century.
As pointed out by Foucault and discussed in the introduction to this
volume,76 early modern Western Europe experienced a new cultural phenom-
enon in which the meanings of symbols were destabilized. One can discern

74 Knapp, American Biography, 98.

75 See Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge,
ma: Harvard University Press, 1990).
76 Foucault, Order of Things, 31–34.
44 chapter 1

this in the increased popularity of occult magic at the time, with its practice of
manipulating words and images motivated by a revived interest in understand-
ing the relationship between humans and God.77 In the seventeenth century,
as technical, scientific knowledge increased and interest in magic declined,
Western Europe began to witness a greater interest in more purely philosophi-
cal questions concerning the nature of humans and their ability to use sym-
bols. Reflective of both the new spirit and new sources of deterritorialization
of the period, men like Descartes and John Locke read from amongst the grow-
ing numbers of new and translated books, hoping to solve some of the same
questions the Renaissance humanists asked about magic, but now were even
more concerned with understanding the human power of thought. Locke,
interestingly, seems to have found some of his answers in a medieval philo-
sophical treatise composed by a Sufi-influenced Muslim, Ibn Tufayl, whose
Hayy Ibn Yaqzan provided a sophisticated philosophical explanation for
human logic and free will.78 Indeed, as the eighteenth century began, philo-
sophical questions were increasingly concerned with the nature of the indi-
vidual, or the ‘sources of the self,’ as Charles Taylor has termed it.79
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, German philosophi-
cal thought in particular became increasingly Idealist, asserting that the only
true reality is the world of ideas. This development was partly a reaction to a
growing body of scientific and philosophical work that took a strong material-
istic perspective, and partly a response to the German Kant’s groundbreaking
Critique of Pure Reason (1781).80 Kant had demonstrated, through a long, com-
plex, logical argument, that rational analysis alone could not explain how

77 There is a great deal of literature on early modern occult magic in the West. Some valu-
able overviews include Brian Vickers, ed., Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the
Renaissance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Gyorgy E. Szonyi, John Dee’s
Occultism: Magical Exaltation through Powerful Signs (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2004); Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (New York:
Routledge, 2002); Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (New York: Routledge,
2002).
78 See G.A. Russell, “The Impact of The Philosophus Autodidactus: Pocockes, John Locke, and
the Society of Friends,” in The “Arabick” Interest in Seventeenth-Century England, ed.
G.A. Russell (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 1994), 224–65. For more on Hayy’s likely impact on Western
culture, see Samar Attar, The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl’s Influence
on Modern Western Thought (Plymouth, uk: Lexington Books, 2007).
79 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, ma:
Harvard University Press, 1989).
80 See Terry Pinkard, German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism (Cambridge, uk:
Cambridge University Press, 2002).
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 45

humans inherently know that objects are separate and not part of a unified
whole. The ‘a priori’ mental categories humans have, Kant argued, must come
from a power greater than material forces; a power that, Kant reasoned, must
be God. Furthermore, since our perceptions and understanding of the material
world are only possible because God has provided us with these a priori cate-
gories, we cannot be sure that material things actually exist beyond the realm
of the ideas God has implanted in us. In other words, the only thing in the
world we can be sure of is that humans are a conduit for God’s Ideas. By reject-
ing the knowability of the reality of the material world and affirming that all
known things share a single nature—that they are expressions of God’s
Ideas—Kant had unleashed a comparatively deterritorialized conception of
the world, ushering in a new era of destruction of old intellectual territories.
Given the thoroughly Christian culture of Western Europe at the time of
Kant’s writing, as well as the lack of a significant amount of information and
quality scholarly research concerning non-Western cultures and religions, it is
not surprising that Kant ostensibly assumed that God’s Ideas were those con-
veyed in the Bible. However, in just a few years, Western intellectual culture
was inundated with a wealth of new data about non-Christian religions, and
this would have a tremendous impact on philosophers coming from an Idealist
perspective.
The main source of this data was India, where Sir William Jones, a British
lawyer who had taken a job as a judge in the Supreme Court of Calcutta, became
the single most important person responsible for generating an appreciation of
Asian religions in the West.81 Jones had studied and become fascinated with
oriental languages while still in England, and within months after arriving in
India in 1783, he established the Asiatic Society for research on topics relating
to Asian culture. Jones, and the community of amateur scholars he cultivated
and promoted, translated and analyzed numerous religious texts from Hindu,
Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and Islamic traditions. These works were published in
various books and in the Asiatic Society’s journal, Asiatick Researches, which
was well-received in Europe. The reasons for the Western fascination with
these texts were multiple: Jones had, first of all, made a convincing argument
that there was a relationship between Persian, Arabic, Latin, Greek, and
Sanskrit—a notion that appealed to people interested in discovering humans’
original language, which they presumed came directly from God. He also
revealed to the West the complexity and magnificence of these non-Christian
religions and their cultures, which enabled Westerners who had previously

81 For an introduction to Jones and his efforts, see P.J. Marshall, The British Discovery of
Hinduism in the 18th Century (Cambridge, uk: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
46 chapter 1

looked down on the East as degenerate to begin to appreciate them. Finally,

many of the religious texts he translated were mystically-oriented and some,
especially Buddhist works, presented notions similar to those of the Idealists,
so these particular works appealed to philosophers already inclined towards
Idealism.82 In the early nineteenth century, German Idealists became the
Westerners most interested in trying to incorporate Asian religions into their
broader philosophical understandings, as they hoped these religions might give
more information on God’s true Ideas. Western-based ­deterritorialization—on
both a material and intellectual level—was therefore now, more than ever
before, attempting to transcend cultural and religious boundaries.
In the United States, meanwhile, Idealism was about to become an influen-
tial intellectual current through the increasingly liberal Unitarian movement.
Unitarianism originally emerged in the 1740s among New England Congre­
gationalists in response to the emotionalism of America’s religious Great
Awakening.83 They saw the Awakening’s endorsement of a belief in God
speaking through one’s emotions as going against the Puritan tradition of
sober religiosity based on a rational reading of the Bible. The conservative
Congregationalists argued, moreover, that enthusiasm-based religion would
lead believers to possibly mistake their own ideas for the word of God, and to
feel more morally certain about the truth of their ideas, and therefore become
intolerant and uncharitable. In response, the opponents of the Awakening
argued that a ‘true religion’ must be based on both a rational approach to the
Bible and universal moral principles. This notion of a religiosity that combined
rationality with an innate sense of morality would eventually support a num-
ber of diverse liberal approaches to religion, such as a growing tendency to
affirm the Universalist doctrine that all souls would be saved; an interest in
biblical criticism, with the goal of expunging Christianity’s “dogmatic encrus-
tations,” especially the concept of the Trinity;84 an embracing of social reform
ideas and activities that supported moral principles; and a desire to cultivate
science and art as expressions of rational and moralistic thought.
By promoting these ideas and practices, Unitarianism had moved from
being what was at first accepted as a defender of the ‘Old Guard’ of American
Puritanism to being a rather liberal religiosity. It was inevitable, then, that, by

82 See Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘the Mystic East’
(New York: Routledge, 1999) for an extended discussion of this phenomenon and the
power dynamics involved.
83 On the history of Unitarianism, see David Robinson, The Unitarians and the Universalists
(Westport, ct: Greenwood Press, 1985).
84 Robinson, Unitarians, 22.
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 47

the end of the eighteenth century, Congregationalist churches began splitting

over the movement. Then, in 1805, the liberal Congregationalists won a signifi-
cant coup with the election of the liberal Henry Ware for the Hollis Professorship
of Divinity at Harvard College, one of the most influential positions in one of
New England’s most influential centers for ministry training. Harvard—which
George Bethune English was attending at the time—was now firmly in the
hands of the liberals, who soon parleyed this achievement into better estab-
lishing the Unitarian movement. Rational, moralistic, liberal religiosity was
now becoming a major institutionalized force in New England.
In this environment of modern religious liberalism, there were many people
like English who began taking an interest in and showing liberal sympathy
towards the so-called oriental religions, including Islam. The general American
public, for instance, was being entertained by the Arabian Nights’ tales of orien-
tal magic and indulgent wealth; the 1794 Philadelphia edition of Nights sold over
forty thousand copies in its first decade.85 Among the better educated classes,
there were Islam sympathizers like Thomas Jefferson, a Deist, who had privately
studied Islamic history, the Qurʾan, and even some Arabic,86 and would also, in
the early years of the country, join with a handful of other Enlightenment-
influenced politicians to express their belief that us religious liberty must be
applied even to Muslims.87 Those of a more literary bent, meanwhile, might
have read in various American journals an occasional translation coming out of
India of a poem by one of the famous Persian Muslim poets, usually Hafiz.88
Some writers, such as Royall Tyler in his Algerine Captive (1797), did not display
deep knowledge of Islam but presented Muslim characters in favorable light to
point out their own criticisms of what they considered problems in American
Christianity. Of the Unitarians, perhaps the most well-known sympathizer of
Islam was the respected abolitionist Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson.89

85 Susan Nance, How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790–1935 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 19; Malini Johar Schueller, u.s. Orientalisms:
Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790–1890 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1998), 26.
86 Kevin J. Haynes, “How Thomas Jefferson Read the Qur˒an,” Early American Literature 39,
no. 2 (2004): 247–61.
87 Haynes, “How Thomas,” 258–59; Denise A. Spellberg, “Could a Muslim Be President? An
Eighteenth-Century Constitutional Debate,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39, no. 4 (2006):
485–506.
88 John D. Yohannan, Persian Poetry in England and America: A 200-Year History (Delmar, ny:
Caravan Books, 1977), 107–108.
89 Leigh Eric Schmidt, Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality (San Francisco:
Harper San Francisco, 2005), 106, 134.
48 chapter 1

Generally, the Unitarians most attracted to oriental religious ideas were, like
Higginson, those on the more extreme liberal end, and happened to be the very
same people most interested in thinkers like Kant and other German Idealists.
These radical Unitarians were in fact becoming an increasingly influential group
of preachers and writers that would lay an important foundation for the first
Muslim conversion movement in the us.
The radically liberal Unitarianism, known as Transcendentalism, originated
as a subset of New England Unitarians who were rebelling against a religiosity
that they saw as too empirically- and historically-oriented, too church-based,
and not reformist enough. The founders were generally men who had grown
up during the first generation of institutionalized Unitarianism and by the
1830s were beginning to openly criticize the views of their forefathers.
Because Transcendentalism was a radically individualist movement, specific
ideas could vary from thinker to thinker, but, since many of the most influen-
tial Transcendentalists were themselves influenced by Platonism and
Neoplatonism,90 they generally shared the core beliefs of ‘One Mind’ (or, in
other words, the notion that all material reality and people are connected to
God’s Mind or Idea); individuals having direct access to God and His Mind
through ‘intuition’; and the importance of an individual’s moral improve-
ment through increasing contact with God’s Mind. There was also a strong
tendency to reject religious creeds and to look for evidence of this non-­
doctrinal type of religiosity as having been promoted by various religions
throughout history. And since they also had been highly influenced by the
German Idealists, many Transcendentalists were similarly fascinated with the
orientalist work coming out of India and frequently incorporated it into their
writings.91 However, like German Idealists, they rejected ‘creedalism’ in favor of
a single ‘transcendent’ view of ‘true’ religion. Therefore, while Transcendentalists
often identified with Asian-majority religions—particularly Buddhism and
Hinduism—they did not, for the most part, convert and identify exclusively as
members of a single Asian religious tradition, let alone start a conversion
movement for one.
Nevertheless, the Transcendentalists, with their tremendous impact on
American culture, were the group largely responsible for popularizing a
serious appreciation of Asian-majority religions in the United States.
Islamic ­mysticism—Sufism—for instance, received significant exposure in the

90 See Arthur Versluis, American Gurus: From American Transcendentalism to New Age
Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 17–78.
91 See Arthur Versluis, American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993).
From Renegades To Transcendentalists 49

1850s, first through the writings of leading Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo

Emerson, who had been strongly influenced by the German embrace of Islamic
poetry, and then in William Rounesville Alger’s popular Poetry of the East (1856),
which contained French and German translations of Persian, Arabic, and
Sanskrit religious poems.92 By the end of the 1850s, Persian Sufi Muslim poetry
had become fairly popular in America—having even inspired imitators and
plagiarizers—which made the country primed for the 1859 release of Edward
FitzGerald’s Romantic rendition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. FitzGerald’s
work won wide praise among American and English literary critics, and it rocketed
Omar Khayyam to the position of the preeminent Sufi poet in the West. Towards
the end of the century, an Omar Khayyam club would even appear in both England
and the us, reflecting the poet’s achieved cult status in Anglophone culture.93
However, despite all the praise for Islamic poetry, despite the many Unitarian
and Transcendentalist statements showing respect for Islam and Muhammad,
and despite the growing attitude of acceptance and interest for oriental reli-
gions, as we have seen, in the early nineteenth century, us converts to Islam were
extremely rare. There is, furthermore, currently no evidence that more than a
fraction of the few people who are known to have actually converted between
1830 and 1885 had been motivated by Transcendentalism or any other
philosophically-based liberal religious feeling.94 In fact, the handful of extant
reports about converts from the period indicate that these were primarily
American men and women living in Islamic countries who had chosen to con-
vert in order to marry a Muslim.95 It seems that neither increasingly widespread
sympathy towards, nor intellectual interest in, Islam could be sufficient in

92 Yohannan, Persian Poetry, 115–44.

93 See Chapter 6 for further discussion of these clubs.
94 There are in fact only two known cases of whites who possibly converted on American
soil during this period. The first is that of John and Martha Simon, both West European
immigrants who, by 1871, had moved from the us to Canada where government docu-
ments listed them as “Mahometans.” The second case is that of A.K. Brown, who claimed,
in 1893, that he converted to Islam upon reading the Qurʾan in the early 1850s, although he
did not give any more details about the conversion, including clarification about where
exactly his conversion took place. See Daood Hassan Hamdani, “Canada’s Muslims: An
Unnoticed Part of Our History,” Hamdard Islamicus 20, no. 3 (1997): 98; “Converted Years
Ago,” Moslem World (July 1893).
95 See, e.g., “Conversion to Mohammedanism,” Cincinnati Daily Press, February 18, 1861, 1;
“American Mohammedan Lives Happily with his Four Wives,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 13,
1902, 2. There is also a rumor that prior to Alexander Russell Webb another American consul
to a Muslim country converted to Islam; see Howard MacQueary, “American
Mohammedanism,” Unitarian 8, no. 3 (1893): 106.
50 chapter 1

themselves to motivate white Americans living on us soil in the nineteenth cen-

tury to go against American religious convention to the extreme degree of con-
verting to Islam, let alone start a conversion movement. By the 1850s, American
critics of Christianity and respecters of Islam were no longer ‘renegades,’ but they
were not converts either. Transcendentalist and Unitarian sympathizers of
Islam—like English—had opened the door, but more changes in American cul-
ture would be necessary to produce a relatively large group of people willing to
publicly embrace Islam.
 chapter 2

The Occult Revival

Idealism, Unitarianism, and Transcendentalism were movements that had set

into motion the broad transformation of us religious culture that would, in the
1890s, produce almost two thousand white people who openly embraced and
organized around Islam and other Asian-majority religions. However, by them-
selves these deterritorializing, liberal religion movements could not generate
white Americans who identified their religiosity exclusively with Muslims. Of the
handful of reports of American converts from between 1830 and 1885, none can
be verifiably tied to liberal religious movements, or even liberal religious ideals.
On the contrary, many seem to have been largely motivated by the rather practi-
cal desire to marry a Muslim while living on Muslim land.1 The more immediate
roots of the wave of conversions at the end of the century were therefore not
these deterritorializing liberal currents but rather a new reterritorializing reli-
gious development, known as the ‘occult revival,’ which legitimized the creation
of religious boundaries for organizations based around non-Christian religions.
Especially prior to the twentieth century, the word ‘occult’ has typically
been used to describe secret teachings, usually involving some sort of magic
and reference to human divinity, that have been passed on since ancient times
and are associated with famous sages, such a Plato and Hermes Trismegistus.
In the eighteenth century, occult knowledge—or at least that which was pur-
ported to be occult knowledge—was primarily imported to North America
through European books, as organized groups for studying and practicing
occultism were extremely rare in the Enlightenment-era Anglophone world.2
After independence, American publishers began producing their own editions
of occult and pseudo-occult works. Titles like The Complete Fortune Teller
(1797)—whose publisher dubiously promoted it as being “carefully [trans-
lated] from the Arabic Manuscripts” of one Ibraham Ali Mahomed Hafez—
became fairly well-known and went through several reprints and editions.3
Francis Barrett’s 1801 compendium of Renaissance occult learning, The Magus,
was another one of the more popular works from the period, despite its

1 See the final note for Chapter 1.

2 For a study of eighteenth-century Anglophone occultism, see Marsha Keith Manatt
Schuchard, “Freemasonry, Secret Societies, and the Continuity of the Occult Traditions in
English Literature” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1975).
3 I have only been able to look at the 1816 edition, entitled The New and Complete Fortune Teller.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_004

52 chapter 2

relatively high cost as a two-volume set. In fact, for the first several decades
after its entrance into the country, occultism—or ‘esotericism,’ as it is some-
times called—was almost exclusively an isolated hobby of members of the
literate middle class with disposable income.
As the nineteenth century progressed, however, there were several eruptions
of increased interest in the occult—what some scholars have labeled as ‘occult
revivals’—in both Europe and North America.4 This chapter argues that the us’
own occult revival developed over the course of five stages. It began in the 1840s
with the rise of spiritualism out of mesmerism, liberal religious movements
that, although they were similar to the century’s earlier liberal currents, more
thoroughly established a place in American religious culture for individuals to
publicly embrace non-Christian identities. It was through spiritualism, in fact,
that Americans seem to have first begun sincerely—if temporarily—taking on
Islamic and Islamic-like religious identities, although actual conversion to Islam
was still not an accepted practice. However, it was because of the religious lee-
way that spiritualism offered that, in stage two, the first known American orga-
nized occult group was able to develop. In the late 1850s, the spiritualist
medium Paschal Beverly Randolph began initiating people into what he called
a ‘Rosicrucian’ occult order, which, significantly, by the early 1870s he was asso-
ciating with Islam. But despite his innovativeness and his importance as an
early American occult leader, Randolph was not able to create a genuine occult
movement—let alone an occult market—during his lifetime. As it turns out,
what was both the key resource and the third stage of the American occult
revival was not to be found either in the us or among spiritualists. It was within
England’s Freemasonic community, during the late 1860s and early 1870s, where
the infrastructure for a market based around organizations devoted to particu-
lar occult and non-Christian religions was first cultivated.
For the fourth stage of the occult revival we return to America where, in
1875, a new occult community with ties to both Randolph and spiritualism was
developing. Because this community—which would soon be known as the
Theosophical Society—also possessed several connections with the British
esoteric Freemasonic movement, it was able to exploit these links and eventu-
ally firmly establish a strong occult market on us soil. The fifth and final stage
of the occult revival, which took place between 1884 and 1889, was when the
American market fully came into its own. During this period, individuals linked
to the Theosophical Society started breaking away from the main movement

4 For instance, Godwin, in his Theosophical Enlightenment, identifies several occult revivals,
such as one in England the 1830s (170), one in France in the 1850s (196), and one in 1870s
England (219, 302).
The Occult Revival 53

and using the legitimacy that their occult market connections gave them
to begin combining Theosophy with other non-mainstream teachings—­
particularly Randolph’s ideas, and concepts from Asian-majority religions. In
generating this new, wide array of occult, liberal, and non-­Christian ideas and
organizations, the American occult revival had finally fundamentally reshaped
the us religious landscape.
The various roots and branches of the American occult revival, which are
both numerous and microscopic, must be brought to light here so that a proper
historical foundation is laid before we proceed to taking on the Muslim con-
version movement itself. As will become clear in the subsequent chapters,
many of the little-known themes, organizations, individuals, and patterns of
growth that were involved with the occult revival, even when they were not
strongly tied to the promotion of Islam or Muslims, would play important roles
in preparing the way for the Muslim movement, and sometimes would make
important and recurring appearances within the Islamic movement’s own his-
tory.5 Admittedly, at some points, the details presented in this chapter will
seem to have almost no connection with conversion to Islam and the narrative
will take the reader down what will appear to be an unnecessarily long and
winding path. Those who choose to do so may in fact pass over this chapter
without a significant loss in comprehension of the developments more directly
tied to the conversion movement. However, the patient reader who is devoted
to understanding the intricate details of what gave rise to conversion to Islam
in the United States will gain much from this long chapter, as it was directly out
of the Anglophone occult revival—and all its many complex sources and
­manifestations—that the first us Muslim convert movement emerged.

Spirits and Muslims

The notion that spirits of the dead can inhabit the world has of course existed
in many, if not most, human cultures for millennia, as has the corollary belief
in humans’ ability to observe or communicate with these spirits either directly
or through a human ‘medium.’ Even colonial and early independent America,
despite its Puritan anti-witchcraft culture, had small pockets of these beliefs.6
Nineteenth-century American spiritualism, however, was neither relegated to

5 The connections between the occult revival and African American Muslims will be explored
in hctius vol. 2.
6 For some examples, see Mitch Horowitz, Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism
Shaped Our Nation (New York: Bantam Books, 2009), 42–65.
54 chapter 2

small pockets nor kept secret. After taking the country by storm following the
infamous ‘Hydesville rappings’ of 1848, modern American spiritualism was an
out-in-the-open, vigorously publicized, enormously popular movement that
had the power to transcend denominational, class, and ethnic boundaries. It
has been estimated that in the nineteenth century upwards of two million us
Americans, from ex-slaves to us presidents and people of practically all variet-
ies of religious and non-religious commitments, attended at least one séance
in their lives.7
Spiritualism undoubtedly owed much of its popularity to its séances being
fairly enterning events. During its heyday, visitors to the darkened séance room
were regularly thrilled by the sudden appearance of floating objects, musical
instruments that were seemingly making sounds without human aid, and even
spirits themselves, which were eerily draped in flowing sheets or robes. Yet there
was more to spiritualism than these superficially exciting phenomena. The
movement appealed, for instance, to Americans who, as modern technicalized
people, were interested in examining the same issues that Idealists and
Transcendentalists had explored—the nature of the human spirit, what hap-
pens to the soul after death, the relationship between the material world and
God, et cetera. Spiritualism, in fact, was part of a larger cultural response to the
country’s growing encounter with science and scientific thinking. Nineteenth-
century Americans were constantly being amazed by the developments of tech-
nologies like the railroad and the telegraph, which were fostering whole literary
themes and genres.8 The spiritualist movement was a religious reaction to these
things; those who participated in the movement regularly used words like
‘observation,’ ‘investigation,’ ‘evidence,’ ‘experimentation,’ and even ‘science’
itself to describe how they approached their time in the séance room.9 By insist-
ing that discovery of religious truth was not dependent on revelation, dogma, or
faith, but rather on the ability of humans to observe and analyze the material
world, spiritualism attempted to put everyone, of all religious backgrounds, on
an equal plane. This wave of spiritualism was, then, a thoroughly modern phe-
nomenon; it was a way for the newly deterritorialized, technicalized minds of
common Americans to enter a free market of religions in which they could use

7 See David K. Nartonis, “The Rise of 19th-Century American Spiritualism, 1854–1873,” Journal
for the Scientific Study of Religion 49, no. 2 (2010): 361–73.
8 On the impact of science on nineteenth-century American culture, see Sam Halliday, Science
and Technology in the Age of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and James: Thinking and Writing
Electricity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
9 See Patrick D. Bowen, “Islam and ‘Scientific Religion’ in the United States before 1935,” Islam
and Christian-Muslim Relations 22, no. 3 (2011): 311–328.
The Occult Revival 55

their spare time and disposable income to ‘scientifically’ study for themselves
the nature of humanity and God.
Of course, such high intellectual goals were probably not what was driving
most people who attended séances. It seems that another part of the draw was
the chance to hear something that one would not hear in another context, for,
while the presence of spirits in the material world may be debatable, it certainly
appears that what many people were ‘observing’ when a medium spoke was
that particular medium’s secret or subconscious thoughts. Spiritualism was, if
nothing else, a tool for opening up—for deterritorializing—the human mind
for the social world. The most radical liberal views of the nineteenth century—
from abolitionism and women’s equality, to the concept of ‘free love’—were
perhaps more often expressed by the (usually female) spiritualist mediums than
they were by non-spiritualists.10 Through the context of the séance, Americans
were permitted to speak their most controversial thoughts without being sub-
jected to punishment or ostracism. This not only added to spiritualism’s enter-
tainment value, it made spiritualism a psychological and political release valve
that was used for the development of new cultural and political movements and
identities. Indeed, many political and religious liberals—including some
Transcendentalists—happily embraced the world of the spirits.11
Given spiritualism’s ability to create a space in which people were allowed to
publicly endorse alternative and controversial ideas, it is understandable that it
was spiritualism that laid much of the groundwork for the the reterritorializa-
tion of white American religiosity in the late nineteenth century. In fact, it was
through spiritualism that sincere religious Islamic and Islamic-like identities
seem to have first begun appearing among white Americans living on us soil.
The emphasis on ‘religious’ is important here, for this does not include the ‘play-
ing Eastern’—as Susan Nance has termed it—that was increasingly common in
nineteenth century America, and included practices like the fashionable trend
of donning a Turkish fez and robe while posing for portraits, dressing up as a
Muslim for dramas or for tours of the Holy Land, or Herman Melville’s wearing
of Turkish slippers in the solitude of his home.12 The white Americans who took
on Islamic and Islamic-like identities—if only partially or briefly—from a
religious perspective during this period were different, and they represent an

10 For an invaluable introduction to this topic, see Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism
and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).
11 See Ibid. and Schmidt, Restless Souls.
12 See Carrie Rebora, “Transforming Colonists into Goddesses and Sultans: John Singleton
Copley, His Clients, and their Studio Collaboration,” American Art Journal 27, no. 1/2
(1995/1996): 5–37; Marr, Cultural Roots, 219, 262–93; Nance, How, passim., esp. 1–18.
56 chapter 2

important link between Transcendentalism, the occult revival, and the first
white American Muslim convert movement.
One of spiritualism’s earliest and most influential mediums, Andrew Jackson
Davis, helped pave the way for this even before the modern spiritualist move-
ment started in earnest, when he began his career as a mesmeric patient.13
A predecessor to spiritualism, mesmerism was a religio-medical movement
that developed in late eighteenth-century France and was imported to the us
in the 1830s. Mesmerism posited that through the manipulation of what were
theorized to be magnetic forces surrounding a person, a ‘mesmerist’ could put
a ‘patient’ in a trance during which that patient could access useful knowledge
from the magnetic realm of the universe; generally, the patient discovered the
cause of a person’s illness, which was then used to prescribe a remedy.14
Philosophically, it was close to but not quite the same as theories associated
with Idealism and Transcendentalism because, although mesmerism accepted
the unseen interconnectedness of all things in the world, it maintained a firm
belief in the reality of the material world. It was also not quite spiritualist
because it did not see the spirits of dead people as the primary conveyors of
information to the passive recipient of information from the unseen realm. By
1846, however, mesmerism would open the door for spiritualism, helping to
establish it as a legitimate religious market, when nineteen-year-old Andrew
Jackson Davis began his mesmeric career. Davis was a unique mesmeric paient
as it appeared that while under a mesmeric trance he was communicating with
Emmanuel Swedenborg, a prominent eighteenth-century Swedish spiritualist.
Because Davis also appeared to have mesmerically dictated in Hebrew, Sanskrit,
and, notably, Arabic, a call was made to George Bush, an ancestor of the future
us presidents, who was an expert not only on mesmerism and Sweden­
borgianism, but also on oriental languages and Islam.15 After observing Davis,
Bush confirmed the authenticity of both the communication with Swedenborg
and Davis’s dictations in oriental languages, announcing Davis as “the most
astonishing prodigy the world has ever seen next to Swedenborg’s oracles.”16

13 R.L. Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 10–12.
14 See Robert C. Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1982).
15 George Bush was in fact the author of the first American book-length biography of
Muhammad: The Life of Mohammed: Founder of the Religion of Islam, and of the Empire of
the Saracens (New York, 1830).
16 Quoted in Moore, White Crows, 10. Also see George Bush, Mesmer and Swedenborg: Or, The
Relation of the Developments of Mesmerism to the Doctrines and Disclosures of Swedenborg
(New York: John Allen, 1847), appendix A, 159–205.
The Occult Revival 57

In a single stroke, Davis had become one of the country’s most prominent spiri-
tualists and one of the country’s most prominent promoters of Islamic topics.
Over the next several years, Davis frequently displayed great familiarity and
sympathy with Islam and Western scholarship on the religion.17 During spiritu-
alism’s heyday, in his numerous books and speeches Davis praised Muhammad
as being a true spirit communicator who “declared many spiritual truths,” and,
like earlier liberal religionists, he chastised those whose religious prejudice
prevented them from appreciating the truths contained in Islam. Davis’s inter-
est in Islam and the Islamic-oriental world seems to have even taken him
beyond mere sympathy. One day, while in meditation, Davis claimed, he heard
a voice that identified itself as “Arabula; […] the light of the world; he that
followeth me shall have light and life; he that loveth me keepeth my
commandments.”18 Davis clarified for his readers that ‘Arabula’ was not Allah,
but a distinct, more inclusive figure,19 who communicated that

God includes all, the heathen, they in the wisest way observe the Hebrew,
the Mahometan, the innermost activities of the human Atheist, and the
Christian; nay, soul.20

Despite his denials, this Arabula revelation represented an unprecedented

type of American appropriation of Middle Eastern oriental symbols—which
were strongly connected to Islam in Davis’s work and American discourse
generally—to express a new liberal religious identity.
In keeping with their ‘scientific’ perspective of the universality of spiritual-
ism, spiritualist publications during this period duly mentioned other spirit
communications that supported the legitimacy of at least some aspects of
Islam, as well as, occasionally, reports concerning Muslim spiritualists in the
Middle East and North Africa.21 For the most part, then, these discussions of
Islam were not about white Americans taking on an Islamic or Islamic-like
identity, but rather were examples that reflected the liberal religious attitude of
the movement. Still, there were a handful of Islamic-identity moments. For
instance, one well-known spiritualist author and abolitionist, Epes Sargent,
included in a spiritualist novel a story about a white daughter of a slaveholder
who adopted the spiritualist-like religious ideas of the family’s Arabic-speaking

17 For an extended discussion and citations, see Bowen, “Scientific Religion,” 315–16.
18 Andrew Jackson Davis, Arabula; or, The Divine Guest (Boston: W. White & Company, 1868), 35.
19 Ibid., 206.
20 Ibid., 327.
21 Bowen, “Scientific Religion,” 317.
58 chapter 2

Muslim slave.22 Some mediums, meanwhile, sometimes claimed to be channels

for the Prophet Muhammad. Often, Muhammad’s spirit only came to impart
the well-known views of Islam’s more progressive aspects—such as its endorse-
ment of equal treatment of women and abstinence from alcohol; in at least one
case, though, Muhammad’s spirit announced his rejection of Islam his plan to
bring the world’s Muslims to a pure, non-doctrinal form of spiritualism.23
Because of its ‘scientific,’ non-creedal stance, the broader movement of
spiritualism was not going to be interested in promoting exclusive conversion
to any form of Islam. The only exclusive religious commitment that was accept-
able for American white spiritualists was, naturally, Christianity. This resis-
tance to conversion to Islam among American spiritualists—the most
deterritorialized, transcendent religious community in the us in the mid-­
nineteenth century—was in fact made very explicit in 1874, when, in September,
a white Muslim convert named Henry L. Norman, “once a Methodist preacher
in London,”24 arrived New York City. Norman explained to a reporter that he
had been sent to America by

a wealthy Mohammedan of Constantinople, who made his fortune in trad-

ing with England and America, and so became somewhat familiar with
Christian courtesies. He was struck with the energy of the Christians in
spreading their religion, and being intensely devoted to his own faith, he
became convinced that counter measures ought to be taken. He formed
my acquaintance in London. Much of our leisure for months was spent in
discussing Mohammedanism, and the result was that I became a convert to
his views. […] I assure you that I am now a firm and conscientious follower
of the glorious eastern religion. That religion is not understood in Christian
countries. If it was, it would make converts rapidly. As a beginning of the
work of spreading its teachings, I have undertaken this mission.25

After a week in New York trying to spread understanding of Islam, apparently

having made little headway among the locals, Norman left for Chicago, believ-
ing that Americans further west might be more “progressive.” A spiritualist

22 Epes Sargent, Peculiar; a Tale of the Great Transition (New York: Carleton, 1864), 191–99.
23 N.B. Wolfe, Startling Facts in Modern Spiritualism, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Religio-Philosophical
Publishing House, 1875), 278–79.
24 “A Mohammedan Missionary,” Sunday Times (Chicago), September 20, 1874, 5. The earliest
scholarly mention of Norman was in Thomas Walker Arnold, The Preaching of Islam
(Lahore: Shirkat-I-Qualam, [1893] 1956), 458.
25 “A Mohammedan Missionary,” Boston Investigator, September 30, 1874, 4.
The Occult Revival 59

minister, one Rev. A.J. Fishback, essentially agreed, speculating that in Chicago
Norman would “very likely join forces with the Spiritualists, who may justly
claim that Mohammed, if not the pioneer of their faith, as a ‘medium’ of rare
distinction,” echoing Davis’s claims from years before.26 However, even
Chicago’s spiritualist community showed little interest in Norman’s message.
The editors of the city’s influential and extremely liberal spiritualist newspa-
per, the Religio-Philosophical Journal, insisted that spiritualism was “far in
advance of Mohammedanism,” and seriously doubted that Norman would
convert anyone.27 Considering that there is no trace of Norman’s activities in
Chicago or anywhere else after he left the East Coast, it seems likely that he
found little success and soon abandoned his mission.
The radically deterritorialized approach to religion of spiritualism, while
immensely important for liberalizing us religious sentiment and allowing
Americans to briefly take on non-Christian identities, because it was so strongly
committed to the notion that religious truth can be observed in all religions
and throughout the world, was necessarily going to preclude conversion to a
single non-Christian religion. If conversion to Islam was going to become a
true movement in the United States, it needed not just a sympathetic religious
environment, but also a religious foundation that accepted new religious
boundaries—a religious reterritorialization—to justify exclusive commitment
to one non-Christian religion.

Paschal Beverly Randolph’s Rosicrucian ‘Ansaireh’

The key for creating new non-Christian religious boundaries would be orga-
nized occultism, a phenomenon that was, not coincidentally, initially brought
to the us by a popular spiritualist. In the early 1850s, after spending much of his
teenage and young adult life joining various radical religious movements,
Paschal Beverly Randolph, the orphaned son of a white father and African
American mother, began making a name for himself as a spiritualist medium.28
By mid-decade, Randolph—who was one of the mediums who supposedly
channeled Muhammad29—had become one of the most popular spiritualists

26 A.J. Fishback, “Asiatic Missionaries,” Boston Investigator, October 14, 1874, 25.
27 “A Mohammedan Missionary,” Religio-Philosophical Journal, October 3, 1874, 4.
28 The best biography of this figure remains John Patrick Deveney, Paschal Beverly Randolph:
A Nineteenth Century Black American Spiritualist (Albany: suny Press, 1996). The follow-
ing is largely a regurgitation of Deveney’s analyses.
29 Deveney, Paschal, 22.
60 chapter 2

in the country. However, after taking trips to Europe and, he claimed, North
Africa and the Middle East,30 where he purportedly learned various occult
teachings, Randolph’s ideas changed significantly. He, first of all, became con-
vinced that American spiritualism was based on a fundamentally flawed
understanding of the human soul. Randolph argued that the soul is not limited
to the personality, which the spirits of spiritualism seem to represent, but is
rather an infinite element, or ‘monad,’ of the universe, and this monad con-
tains within it an infinite number of universes as well. Each soul also has a
single ‘soul mate,’ and finding one’s soul mate while living in one’s physical
body on Earth will produce great happiness and allow for the performance of
practical occult powers through sexual intercourse. Indeed, Randolph now
taught that the notion held by both mesmerists and spiritualists that the only
way to contact the infinite universe or spirits was through the passive recep-
tion of an entranced subject or medium was incorrect—humans could in fact
consciously and intentionally do this, and they would obtain occult powers in
the process. Randolph encouraged the use of breathing techniques, hashish,
magic mirrors, and sexual discipline to help in this practice, but he empha-
sized that the key for all of this was to focus on one’s will and to, as he put it,
“Try!” The idea that a person could obtain advanced powers from the universe
simply through the cultivation of their individual will and the manipulation of
their bodies and objects surely resonated with many urbanized, individual-
ized, and technicalized minds. In fact, all of Randolph’s concepts had already
gained popularity in the various earlier nineteenth-century Western subcul-
tures with which he had come into contact. Randolph’s ideas seem to have
been largely a mixture of Andrew Jackson Davis’s spiritualist philosophy, cer-
tain Free Love teachings with which Randolph had been affiliated, and
nineteenth-century French and English occultism. Nevertheless, Randolph
was the first to combine these notions in this particular way, and he gave his
teachings a unique identity by labeling them ‘Rosicrucian.’ In doing this,
Randolph introduced an important Islam-connected current into America’s
religious culture, thus further preparing the culture for non-Christian religious
groups generally and the Islamic movement specifically.
Rosicrucianism is a European occult movement that dates back to the early
seventeenth century, towards the end of the Renaissance-era European fasci-
nation with magic.31 It was in fact the first European movement that claimed

30 Although Deveney’s biography of Randolph seems to imply that Randolph did in fact
make at least one voyage to North Africa and the Middle East, in my opinion, the evidence
leaves much room for doubt.
31 See Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (New York: Routledge, 2002);
Christopher McIntosh, The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason (New York: e.j. Brill, 1992);
The Occult Revival 61

to be an occult secret society. Prior to the seventeenth century, European

occultists were essentially loners, reading, writing, and practicing their magic
without claiming membership in any occult organization. But, beginning in
the 1610s, a number of small books were printed that discussed a ‘brotherhood
of the Rosy Cross,’ supposedly founded by one Christian Rosenkreutz, who
had, it was claimed, traveled to the Near East and North Africa in the four-
teenth century to obtain esoteric knowledge. It is likely that both Rosenkreutz
and his brotherhood were fabrications. The creators of Rosenkreutz perhaps
drew on the tradition of Artephius, a mysterious figure known as a medieval
esoteric sage who, it was said in as early as the thirteenth century, gained his
knowledge through travel to the orient—though in reality he may have been a
Muslim mystic or occult writer.32 And while it is likely that no Rosicrucian
brotherhood had actually existed prior to the printing of these books, their
publication caused great excitement in Europe. Suddenly, as a result, a number
of individual writers began claiming to be members of the brotherhood. The
movement was quickly quelled, however, and for the next 200 years it did not
have organizational form in the English-speaking world. Nonetheless, the story
of the Rosicrucians and their oriental roots persisted and, by Randolph’s day,
for Anglophones the Rosicrucians had obtained an almost mythical status,
even becoming the subject of a whole subgenre of British novels.33
Perhaps the most important reason that the West maintained an interest in
Rosicrucians and the oriental roots of occult knowledge is the fact that, begin-
ning in the twelfth century, the West’s own explorations into esoteric thought
were frequently influenced by Muslim writers and Islamic elements. After
Alfonso vi’s 1085 conquest of Toledo, Christian intellectuals slowly began trav-
eling to the city, which was well-known as a center of scientific learning.34
There, in the second half of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, a major
effort was made to translate Arabic works into Latin, ultimately leading to the
production of the vast majority of Arabic translations that would be known to
Western Europe for the next four centuries—an event that, as discussed in the

Susanna Akerman, Rose Cross over the Baltic: The Spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern
Europe (Boston: Brill, 1998).
32 Nicholas H. Clulee, “At the Crossroads of Magic and Science: John Dee’s Archemastrie,” in
Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. Brian Vickers (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1984), 61, 69n30.
33 See Marie Roberts, Gothic Immortals: The Fiction of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (New
York: Routledge, 1990).
34 See Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, “Translations and Translators,” in Renaissance and Renewal in the
Twelfth Century, eds. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University
Press, 1982), 421–462; Charles Burnett, “The Coherence of the Arabic-Latin Translation Program
in Toledo in the Twelfth Century,” Science in Context 14, no. 1/2 (2001): 249–288.
62 chapter 2

introduction, played an important role in the the modern wave of European

Islamophobia. While most of the translations made in Spain were of texts deal-
ing with science, mathematics, and Greek philosophy, some of the translations
were concerned with occult forms of magic: astrology, alchemy, and divina-
tion.35 Copies of these translations, along with translations of other Arabic
occult texts from Italy, began spreading throughout Western and Central
Europe and played a key role in the flourishing of occult thought during the
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Renaissance.36
Already by the thirteenth century, in fact, major Western thinkers, such as
Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, had become very familiar with the Arabic
occult tradition. This interest was continued by the principal Renaissance
theorists of magic—including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Cornelius
Agrippa, Paracelsus, John Dee, and Elias Ashmole—who all had knowledge of
a number of magic-related texts translated from Arabic.37 Through these writ-
ers and the translated books that they read, the Arabic esoteric writings had a
major influence on several key elements of the Western occult tradition. For
instance, the Latin version of the Ghayat al-Hakim, known as the Picatrix, was
one of the most popular magic books during the Renaissance and served as
the primary model of a text that could bring all the various magic sciences
together into a somewhat coherent scheme.38 Westerners also relied heavily
on Arabic sources dealing with talismans and amulets.39 But the most well-
known influence of Arabic occult texts was in the fields of astronomy/astrol-
ogy and alchemy; many of the most popular sources used in these fields were
translations from Arabic,40 and Arabic writers like Abu Maʿshar and Jabir

35 Astrology was sometimes understood, by both early Arabic and medieval Latin writers, as
part of astronomy, and, therefore, a legitimate science.
36 David Pingree, “The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe,” in La Diffusione
delle Scienze Islamiche nel Medio Evo Europeo, ed. B. Scarcia Amoretti (Rome: Accademia
Nazionale dei Lincei, 1987), 57–102; Robert Halleux, “The Reception of Arabic Alchemy in
the West,” in Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, ed. Rashdi Raheed, vol. 3 (New
York: Routledge, 1996), 963–84.
37 References to the knowledge of translations of Arabic occult texts are dispersed through-
out most of the major studies of these authors’ writings.
38 David Pingree, “Some of the Sources of the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm,” Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 43 (1980): 1–15.
39 See Pingree, “Diffusion.”
40 Halleux; Lee Stavenhagen, trans., A Testament of Alchemy; Being the Revelations of
Morienus (Hanover, nh: Brandeis University Press, 1974); Eugenio Garin, Astrology in the
Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life, trans. Carolyn Jackson and June Allen (Boston: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1983), passim.
The Occult Revival 63

(Geber) remained icons in their fields through most of the seventeenth

century.41
In the eighteenth century, however, there was a tremendous decline in
interest in occult knowledge, especially Arabic occult knowledge, which over
the years had lost its position of prominence. The rise of modern science and
new efforts to suppress potentially subversive groups both pushed occult stud-
ies and organizations like the Rosicrucians underground. This was particularly
true in England, where Rosicrucianism and occult-based Freemasonry seem to
have become nearly non-existent in the eighteenth century; France and
Germany, meanwhile, retained a few such orders, although they were still fairly
small and secretive. In the nineteenth century, it appears that an eighteenth-
century German para-Masonic group called the Gold und Rosenkreutz (Golden
and Rosy Cross) may have been brought to Britain where, under the name
Societas Rosicruciana, a few small ‘colleges’ began springing up in the 1850s.42
Still, these groups had little impact at the time, and most Britons had no more
than vague knowledge of the meaning of the term ‘Rosicrucian,’ even after 1847
when it received greater prominence with the publication of Edward Bulwer
Lytton’s popular occult novel Zanoni.43
Randolph’s ideas show almost no connection to any of the known Rosicrucian
groups or texts, or their Arabic sources.44 Randolph even admitted to using the
Rosicrucian label simply because he found it “suggestive and loved its
mysticisms”45—and then discovered that it appealed to others and helped legit-
imize setting up his occult organization in a way so that members passed through
Masonic-like grades, for which Randolph could charge fees. The oriental basis of

41 Garin, Astrology in the Renaissance, 16–21; William Newman, “Arabo-Latin Forgeries: The
Case of the Summa Perfectionis (with the Text of Jabir ibn Hayyan’s Liber Regni),” in The
“Arabick” Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, ed.
G.A. Russell (Leiden: e.j. Brill, 1994), 278, 286–288.
42 T.M. Greensill, A History of Rosicrucian Thought and of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia,
2nd rev. ed. (n.p.: Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia 2003), 65–73. On the Gold und
Rosenkreutz, see McIntosh, Rose Cross.
43 On Zanoni, see Roberts, Gothic Immortals, 156–207.
44 Although Deveney, in Paschal, says that he believes Randolph probably did travel to the
Near East or North Africa, he admits that, besides a few rare Arabic terms, there is almost
nothing in Randolph’s supposedly Eastern-based teachings that cannot be traced to Euro-
American ideas or Randolph’s own elaborations, and certainly no evidence of an adapta-
tion of a genuine coherent Islamic teaching.
45 Paschal Beverly Randolph, Eulis! The History of Love: Its Wonderous Magic, Chemistry,
Rules, Laws, Modes, Moods and Rationale; Being the Third Revelation of Soul and Sex (Ohio:
Randolph Publishing Company, 1874), 15.
64 chapter 2

the Rosicrucianism myth, furthermore, enabled the mixed-blood Randolph to

claim he had some connection with the orient, or at least with North Africa and
the Levant, where Americans assumed mixed people were far more common,
thereby legitimizing for whites his non-white, yet non-enslaved racial identity.
Despite Randolph’s superficial motivations for appropriating Rosicrucian
occultism and its Arabic-Islamic roots, both would play an important role in
his teachings in the early 1870s, when Randolph released two small works
exploiting the oriental connections of Rosicrucianism. First was 1871’s The
Asiatic Mystery. The Fire Faith!—The Religion of Flame!—The Force of Love!—
The Energos of Will!—The Magic of Polar Mentality! First Rosicrucian Manifesto
to the World Outside the Order!46 This booklet implied that while Randolph’s
teachings were “Asiatic,” they were not Islamic because Islam, according to
Randolph, is the type of religion that “allows the utmost limit to lust and license
to the elect, and roundly berates all others.” Because Randolph at the time was
promoting a form of Rosicrucian/oriental-tinged Free Love-based sexual doc-
trines, he may have realized that Rosicrucianism’s vague connection with
Islam and the liscentiousness associated with it in anti-Islamic rhetoric had
the potential to hurt his ability to popularize his teachings. He seems to have
therefore felt that it was necessary to employ anti-Islamic themes himself to
assuage his readers that his ‘Asiatic’ teachings were distinct from the corrupt-
ing teachings of the Muslims.
However, Randolph’s views on Islam would soon change—or he would at
least strategically reappropriate the assumed connection between Islam and
Rosicrucianism. In around 1873, Randolph released “The Ansairetic Mystery,
A New Revelation Concerning Sex! A Private Letter, Printed, But Not Published;
It Being Sacred and Confidential,” a work that, as the title suggests, was a
printed treatise not intended for wide circulation but primarily for members of
his Rosicrucian group.47 This work is, as Randolph’s biographer John Patrick
Deveney has pointed out, “the fullest expression of the magical powers, many
of them trivial, that Randolph believed could be acquired through sexual and
mirror magic.”48 It explains that when two people who have found their soul
mates have mutual orgasm during sexual intercourse, they can obtain occult

46 There are no known extant copies of the original. Two slightly different versions of the
text were reprinted, first by Randolph himself, attached to an 1872 book of his, and then
by R.S. Clymer in the 1930s. I would like to thank John Patrick Deveney for providing me
with a copy.
47 It has been reprinted in Deveney, Paschal, 311–26.
48 Deveney, Paschal, 361. Randolph had apparently picked up the use of mirror magic from
European occultists.
The Occult Revival 65

powers. “Ansairetic Mystery” notably also contains a few references to Islam

and Muslims. At one point, Randolph mentions “ALLAH—God himself,” when
discussing the creator of all things. The clearest reference, however, is in the
title of the work: “Ansairetic” refers to the Ansaireh, a Shiʿi group in the Levant
that is today sometimes called the Alawites or Nusaris. In the nineteenth cen-
tury, a few European writers who discussed esoteric topics, such as Geoffrey
Higgins, began promoting the idea that this group (as well as the Isma‘ili
Assassins, who where often thought to have either influenced or been identical
with the Ansaireh) was the possessor of key secret sexual magic rites.49
Although Randolph makes no mention of the Ansaireh in the body of the text,
prior to the work’s appearance Randolph had promised he would “reveal the
secret of the Ansairetic Priesthood of Syria,”50 and throughout the text he does
state a few times that his magic is from “Oriental” people. Nonetheless, there is
no strong evidence that suggests that Randolph was genuinely influenced by
the group, whose teachings on sex probably played a minor role in its overall
identity anyway.51 As has already been pointed out, Randolph, more than likely,
came up with his ideas after working with and reading the writings of other
Western writers who discussed esoteric topics, spiritualism, and Free Love,
particularly Davis, John Murray Spear, and French mesmerists like Alphonse
Cahagnet and Baron Du Potet. The members of Randolph’s occult groups, how-
ever, would not have known this. Being vaguely aware of the connection
between Islam and Rosicrucianism, they would have most likely believed that
their organization was in fact essentially an induction into the Ansaireh’s most
important teachings. To a degree, then, they saw themselves as Ansaireh.
Randolph’s various orders, however, were never either particularly popular
or long-lasting. Although precise numbers are lacking, he probably had no more
than one hundred initiated followers over the years, and the majority of these
had stopped following him before he released “Ansairetic Mystery.” His organi-
zations, furthermore, were so little known that they did not inspire imitators
during his lifetime and, when Randolph committed suicide in July 1875, his
remaining Ansairetic group—for which there was no clear and able successor
to Randolph—was not able to continue. Randolph, then, was not responsible

49 For a discussion, see Deveney, Paschal, 213–14.

50 Paschal Beverly Randolph, The New Mola (Quakertown, pa: Philosophical Publishing
Company, [1873] 2004), 33.
51 Contemporary scholarship still knows almost nothing about what the group taught about
sexual magic, and it is appearing likely that the nineteenth-century rumors were baseless;
see Meir M. Bar-Asher and Aryeh Kofsky, The Nusayri-Alawi Religion: An Enquiry into its
Theology and Liturgy (Boston: Brill, 2002), 154–59.
66 chapter 2

for creating either an occult revival or a us Muslim convert movement.

Nevertheless, it was with Randolph that organized occultism had sprouted its
first seed in the country, and this would not be forgotten. When the American
occult revival and Islamic movement finally emerged, both Randolph and his
Rosicrucian Ansaireh would have a lingering presence.
Before the American occult revival could grow, however, a much more sig-
nificant reterritorializing force had to prepare the way. This force, interestingly,
was, like Randolph’s order, Rosicrucian, and it similarly had spiritualist and
occult roots. However, unlike Randolph’s group, it was not American, and, even
more importantly, it had significant financial interests and the power of the
press behind it. In fact, it was with these tools that British esoteric Freemasonry
was able to develop a genuine occult market infrastructure.

The British Roots: Esoteric Freemasonry

Despite all the elaborate myths and conspiracy theories surrounding the his-
tory of the Craft, the beginnings of modern ‘speculative’ Freemasonry (i.e.,
Freemasonry for people who are not actual stonemasons) appear to date to
only the seventeenth century.52 At the time, a small number of Scottish and
English gentlemen interested in ancient Greek, Egyptian, and oriental/
Rosicrucian occult knowledge began joining stonemasons’ guilds, which used
references to ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Egyptian ideas and figures in the
myths about their trade’s origins. By the early seventeenth century, when the
deterritorializing force of modern capitalism was dramatically reconfiguring
long-established professional markets, stonemasons’ guilds were losing their
traditional monopoly on architecture and building, and they agreed to allow in
these wealthy non-masons who were willing to pay the requisite dues. However,
in the late seventeenth century, as has been mentioned, due to both political
repression and the rise of Cartesian science, the study of esoteric traditions
was pushed underground, and speculative Freemasonry all but disappeared
for a time.
In the second and third decades of the eighteenth century, after modern
economic structures had further weakened stonemasons’ guilds, speculative

52 See David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century, 1590–1710 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1984); Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment:
Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991); Robert Freke Gould, Gould’s History of Freemasonry throughout the World, vol. 1
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935).
The Occult Revival 67

Freemasonry reemerged, now stronger than ever before. However, while in

France and Germany the esoteric tradition seems to have remained fairly
prominent in the speculative Masonic lodges, in England, Freemasonry was
reestablished on more Deistic and aristocratic bases.53 By the end of the cen-
tury, rationalistic, politically-focused Freemasonry became the dominant form
across Europe and the us, where many of the country’s founding fathers
proudly donned Masonic regalia for paintings and public ceremonies.54
It was around the late eighteenth century that Freemasonic lodges—now
almost exclusively speculative—began to undergo popularization. The ways
this occurred varied significantly between regions. In France, for instance, the
revolutionary middle class adopted the Masonic secret lodge system for sur-
reptitious organizing, while in America aristocrats and common men united in
lodges as a means of fostering a unified, egalitarian, anti-British identity.55 In
the mid-nineteenth century, after a few decades of dormancy caused by anti-
Masonic fears of a repeat of the political turmoil in France, us Freemasonry
underwent new growth, being intimately tied to the expansion of the country’s
middle class.56 In England, meanwhile, Masonry did not become affiliated
with a significant nationalist revolutionary movement. As a result, its popular-
ization did not begin to take strong root until the second quarter of the nine-
teenth century when, like in mid-century America, aristocratic dominance
began to give way to new sources of capital and power, which allowed for a
middle-class appropriation of old aristocratic institutions.
The growth of Freemasonry in England was therefore largely a byproduct of
the increasing literacy rates and disposable income of Britain’s emerging busi-
ness and professional classes.57 As these rural folk abandoned their traditional
ways and adapted to urban life, they desired new forms of social cohesion, and

53 See Jacob, Living the Enlightenment; Christopher McIntosh, The Rose Cross and the Age of
Reason: Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe and its Relationship to the
Enlightenment (New York: Brill 1992).
54 See Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of
the American Social Order, 1730–1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1996).
55 See Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood.
56 Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989); Mark C. Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian
America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
57 Because nineteenth-century British Freemasonry is less well-researched than American
Masonry from the same period, this section relies on generalizations that I have gleaned
from the above-cited sources, various Masonic writings from the period, and two works
by Aubrey N. Newman: “Masonic Journals in Mid-Victorian Britain,” Hibiscus Masonic
68 chapter 2

many disovered that Masonry offered not only urban solidarity and entertain-
ment, but also access to the aristocratic power brokers. As more and more non-
aristocrats joined, ambitious middle-class Masons were able to challenge their
group’s established power structures, often employing, as their most effective
medium, the press; these new Masons supported the publication of Masonic
periodicals that insisted on giving transparency to the Craft’s aristocratic lead-
ers’ actions.58 At the same time, more and more Masons began looking closely
at the various lodges and orders’ provenances, questioning their legitimacy, as
there was growing evidence that some Masonic orders and histories had been
improperly suppressed by the leaders of the more powerful orders.59
The British Masonic environment that ultimately created the occult revival
was not British Masonry generally but rather a small subculture within that
community that put high stock into research on Masonic history and philoso-
phy. While a number of British Masons had been doing such research indepen-
dently for most of the first half of the nineteenth century, in June 1867 a handful
of young and ambitious London Freemasons came together to formally orga-
nize activities along these lines for the first time, calling their group the Societas
Rosicruciana in Anglia (sria).60 The Societas Rosicruciana, as we have seen,
was a Masonic research organization that had existed in Scotland and possibly
Manchester since at least the 1850s,61 and was most likely based on the German
Gold und Rosenkreutz. The founders of England’s sria in 1867—Robert
Wentworth Little and William James Hughan—had both been initiated in the
Scottish group the previous December, and soon after quickly moved up its
grades, enabling them to start their own lodge.
Both Little and Hughan were well-connected and high-ranking Masons who
were fascinated with uncovering forgotten Masonic knowledge. Little, in par-
ticular, desired to start new orders based around supposed ancient Masonic
rites. In 1865 he claimed to have “revived” the para-Masonic group called the
Military Order of the Knights of the Red Cross of Rome and Constantine, pur-
portedly a medieval order, which immediately became incredibly popular,
chartering sixty-two ‘Conclaves’ (branches) by 1871, of which over a dozen were

Review 1 (2008): 59–70 and “Controversy and The Freemasons’ Magazine in Mid-Victorian
England,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 122 (2009): 185–205.
58 See the above-cited pieces by Aubrey N. Newman.
59 For a discussion of this trend in nineteenth-century Anglo-American Freemasonry, see
Richard Kaczynski, Forgotten Templars: The Untold Origins of Ordo Templi Orientis (n.p.:
Richard Kaczynski, 2012).
60 Greensill, A History, 68.
61 Greensill, A History, 65–73.
The Occult Revival 69

in foreign countries.62 Then, in December 1870, after having already estab-

lished the sria, Little organized what was called the ‘Ancient and Primitive
Rite of Misraim,’ a French-based Masonic rite that claimed connections with
ancient Egypt.63 The vast majority of members of this group were already
members of Little’s Red Cross, and some were also in the sria.64 Misraim and
the Red Cross, however, were primarily appealing to Masons interested in
partaking in exotic degree systems. Although there was some overlap, for the
most part, they were different from the kind of people who joined the sria,
which emphasized above all other things the recovery of hidden—esoteric—
knowledge. Few could afford the time, money, and social embarrassment that
might accompany publicly indulging in this eccentric field, so naturally the
sria could not be as popular as Little’s other orders. Nevertheless, the sria’s
having as leaders prominent Masons who occasionally also led other para-
Masonic orders gave the group enough legitimacy to draw several dozen
Masonic esotericists from throughout England in its first few years.
One of the prominent Masons the sria attracted was George Kenning. Part
of the emerging business class, Kenning, the son of a candle maker and himself
a former gold lace maker, had recently made a name for himself in England’s
Masonic community by becoming one of the most important Masonic regalia
and jewel suppliers in the country.65 Always looking for new clients and oppor-
tunities, Kenning surely realized the possibilities that could be had by aligning
himself with the likes of Little and the other prominent Masonic esotericists.
In October 1867, Kenning was initiated in the sria,66 and he immediately set
to work cultivating his clientele. In July 1868, the sria produced the first issue
of its journal, the Rosicrucian, and Kenning was its only advertiser; he would,
in fact, remain the Rosicrucian’s only advertiser until he took control of the
journal in the late 1870s. Undoubtedly, then, Kenning was also the exclusive
regalia and jewel supplier for the sria and most likely sold Little and the

62 Ellic Howe, “Fringe Masonry in England 1870–85,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 85 (1972):
249n2.
63 Howe, “Fringe Masonry,” 246–50.
64 “Ancient and Primitive Rite of Misraim,” Freemason, January 14, 1871, 220; Howe, “Fringe
Masonry,” 257–58.
65 Library and Museum of Freemasonry, “Biographical History of George Kenning” (which
claims his father was an oyster seller), accessed October 8, 2013, http://62.244.182.221/
EOSWeb/OPAC/TitleView/CompleteDisplay.aspx?FromOPAC=true&DbCode=0&Patron
Code=0&Language=british&RwSearchCode=0&WordHits=p%7Cgbr%7C1991&BibCo
des=27313524; George Kenning baptism record (which indicates his father was a “tallow
chandler”), available from Ancestry.com.
66 “Services of Bro. George Kenning,” Freemason, November 2, 1901, 560.
70 chapter 2

group’s other esoteric organizers the regalia they desired to legitimate their
own fringe Masonic orders. The uniting of Kenning and the sria was therefore
a significant moment in the history of the organizational development of
Anglophone esotericism: there was now, for the first time in the modern
period, serious financial support and business interest in the development of
organizations that promoted alternative histories and sources of knowledge.
Like any good businessman, Kenning was not one to be satisfied with yester-
day’s accomplishments. In early 1869 he approached the leading members of
the sria with yet another business venture: starting a new general Masonic
periodical. At the time, the country’s main Freemasonic journal, the Freemasons’
Magazine, was losing popularity,67 and, with the Masonic community continu-
ing to expand, the time was ripe to enter the publication industry. Kenning
recruited Little, who was the editor of the Rosicrucian, to be the editor of what
would be called the Freemason, along with Hughan and several other sria eso-
tericists as contributors.68 Even sria members’ friends with similar esoteric
interests, like Rev. A.F.A. Woodford, who would become the magazine’s longest
lasting editor, were brought on board. Backed by a team of intelligent, respected
writers who desired to spread their new ideas, and capitalizing on the growth
of Masonry outside of London and the concomitant expansion of railroads and
steamships, Kenning quickly found sales agents across the uk, and even some
in India and the us, to vend his periodical. By August 1869, just five months
after the first issue appeared, the Freemason was boasting to advertisers that it
had a circulation of “nearly half-a-million,” and the numbers of letters and
advertisements it received confirm that the journal had quickly become the
most popular and preeminent magazine for British Freemasonry. Kenning was
in fact so successful with the Freemason that he soon expanded his publishing
efforts to include the monthly Masonic Magazine, an annual Masonic calendar,
several books on Masonic history, and an influential Masonic Cyclopaedia, all
edited by Woodford. In all of these works, Kenning made sure to advertise his
other projects—including his regalia business—which only further cemented
his position as one of the most important Masonry suppliers and promoters in
the second half of the nineteenth century.
The success of the Freemason meant that sria members suddenly had, in
addition to a reliable regalia supplier and Little’s example as an inventor of

67 Newman, “Masonic Journals,” 68–70.

68 “Death of Bro. George Kenning,” Masonic Illustrated, December 1, 1901, 49; William J.
Hughan, “A Tribute to Bro. Kenning,” Freemason, November 9, 1901, 574; “In Memoriam,”
Freemason, April 20, 1878, 202; W.W. Westcott, History of the Societas Rosicruciana in
Anglia (London: Privately Printed 1900), 8; Howe, “Fringe Masonry,” 247n3.
The Occult Revival 71

orders, the best possible forum for propagating their other new ideas. Indeed,
this seems to have further stimulated their penchant for developing new para-
Masonic orders. In addition to Little’s two para-Masonic groups and the sria
itself, the Freemason ran numerous articles on sria member John Yarker’s
popular Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis (distinct from Little’s similarly-
named order), as well as the Hindu-based Sat B’hai order, which was suppos-
edly brought to the West from India by a British soldier, but was soon being led
by Yarker and fellow sria member Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie. The sria net-
work, clearly excited by the possibilities that Kenning’s backing offered, was
in fact producing so many new and strange groups that not even all of them
were featured in the Freemason. Frances George Irwin—who started the first
sria ‘college’ (branch) outside of London in 1869 and had been a member of
Little’s Misraim group—claimed to have been contacted by spirits who told
him about an organization known variously as the ‘Order of 卍,’ the ‘Brotherhood
of the Cross of Light,’ the ‘Brothers of Light,’ and ‘Fratres Lucius.’69 Mackenzie
was a known member of this order and, like Irwin, also began putting the left-
turning swastika on some of writings in the 1870s, a trend apparently started by
the mesmerist astrologer and friend of Irwin and Mackenzie, Richard Morrison,
when in 1869 he announced the appearance in England of a ‘Most Ancient
Order of the Suastica; or; the Brotherhood of the Mystic Cross,’ a supposedly
Tibetan order.70 It is therefore the appearance of these orders, along with the
several other sria-connected para-Masonic groups that previously had not
been known in England,71 that justifies intellectual historian Joscelyn Godwin’s
labeling of the period of the late 1860s through the early 1870s as the true begin-
ning of the Anglophone occult revival.72 And it was George Kenning, presum-
ably primarily driven by financial interests, who, by investing in the esoteric
Freemasonic infrastructure, was the person largely responsible for ensuring a
stable foundation for this creation of a new cultural market interested in groups
organized around non-Christian ideas and identities.
The known published and unpublished writings of sria members from
the early stage of the occult revival suggest that the majority of these men

69 Howe, “Fringe Masonry,” 259–60.

70 Zadkiel [R.J. Morrison], Zadkiel’s Almanac for 1870 (London: Printed by B.D. Cousins and
published for the author by J.G. Berger, 1870 [1869]), 68; Godwin, Theosophical
Enlightenment, 219.
71 In addition to the six above-mentioned groups, Irwin claimed to have information about
an order called the ‘Knight of the Hermetic Cross,’ Mackenzie claimed ties with another
order, and there are a few other mentions of new esoteric orders during this period.
72 Godwin, Theosophical Enlightenment, 219.
72 chapter 2

sincerely believed in the authenticity of the esoteric groups they were promot-
ing.73 However, at least one key figure in the sria, Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie,
publicly supported the conscious invention of myths to serve as the bases of
these groups.74 Mackenzie had a long-time interest in not just esoteric topics
but also alternative religions like mesmerism and spiritualism, as well as more
mainstream research in history, anthropology, and philosophy. He was in fact
particularly influenced by the German philosophers, especially Goethe, an
Idealist who was one of the biggest supporters of incorporating oriental and
Islamic ideas into European art in the early nineteenth century, and Lessing, a
late-eighteenth-century Mason, philosopher, and playwright who was also one
of the first modern Westerners to promote tolerance of Muslims.75 This back-
ground would make Mackenzie, as we will see, a key figure behind the scenes
of both the occult revival and the American Islamic movement.
In 1869, using his pseudonym, Cryptonymus, Mackenzie wrote a series of
articles for the Freemason arguing that myths are important for inspiring in
people the idea that God is in fact an infinite, unifying power.76 If people truly
understood this, he argues, they would realize how to create true peace, justice,
and unity for all people throughout the world. He explains that in order to
accomplish this goal, people should be united around similar myths and join a
single universal organization. While he admits that this is precisely what many
Masons at the time believed was their order’s purpose, Mackenzie believes
that contemporary Masonry is now plagued by disunity. He also points out
that non-Christians might not want to join Masonry lodges because of the
Judeo-Christian emphasis in the order’s teachings, and forcing them to join
would not serve the cause of peace and unity. The solution, then, he suggests,
is to unite the knowledge of the East and West, as well as that of the material

73 See Howe, “Fringe Masonry,” passim. and Frederick Hockley, The Rosicrucian Seer: The
Magical Writings of Frederick Hockley (Willingborough, uk: Aquarian Press, 1986).
74 For more, see Chapter 4 as well as my “Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie’s ‘Papers on Masonry’ and
the Spread of Islamic-Identity Organizations in the us and England in the Late Nineteenth
Century” in Con Artists, Enthusiasts and True Believers, ed. Jay Kinney (Forest Grove, or:
Typhon Press, 2015).
75 On Mackenzie’s knowledge of Goethe and Lessing, see Chapter 4. On Lessing’s views of
Islam, see Mark Sedgwick, “Quelques sources du XVIIe siècle du pluralisme religieux
inclusif,” in Études d’histoire de l’ésotérisme : Mélanges offerts à Jean-Pierre Laurant pour
son soixante-dixième anniversaire, eds. Jean-Pierre Brach and Jérôme Rousse-Lacordaire
(Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2007), 50–51.
76 This was “Papers on Masonry,” which was a twenty-seven-part series that appeared on an
almost weekly basis between March and October that year. See my “Kenneth R.H.
Mackenzie’s ‘Papers on Masonry’” for an extended discussion.
The Occult Revival 73

and spiritual worlds, in a single new organization with new myths. He adds
that this kind of new order would be brought forth by a modern-day “prophet”;
that is, a person who understands the existing myths and psychology of
humankind and could use that knowledge to create effective myths. Towards
the end of his series, Mackenzie seems to be trying to take on the prophet role
himself when he starts claiming that he is a member of an ancient unnamed
order that happened to do the things he was supporting: uniting East and West
and material and occult knowledge.
Interestingly, although this series garnered a handful of letters to the editor
in 1869, there is no evidence that any sria member other than Mackenzie him-
self was influenced by these ideas. Indeed, the series seems to have had so little
clear impact that it has been almost completely ignored by historians of
Masonry and esotericism. Nevertheless, Mackenzie held onto these ideas and
they would soon play a role in the development of both the American occult
revival and the creation of Islam-focused organizations for white men in England
and the us (see Chapter 4).
The most well-known of Mackenzie’s efforts, however, did have a clear impact,
and it was almost certainly motivated by his 1869 ideas. This was Mackenzie’s
Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, which was published serially between 1875 and
1877.77 Unlike other Masonic ‘cyclopaedias’ of the period, Mackenzie’s contained
numerous entries on esoteric topics and just about every sria-connected para-
Masonic order. The likelihood that Mackenzie was writing with his 1869 philoso-
phy on his mind is strengthened by the fact that in this book he did not intimate
at all that these groups could possibly have been invented; he treated them and
their claimed histories as facts—which suggests that Mackenzie was no longer
playing the role of the historian-philosopher but had moved on to being a full-
fledged prophet. Most readers, however, had no idea that this was what Mackenzie
was up to, and this produced a variety of respsonses. Several Masonic reviewers,
for instance, were disgusted by his willingness to uncritically accept fantastic
myths, which they dismissed as “aberrations and mystical rubbish.”78 Others,
meanwhile, because Mackenzie was a respected Masonic authority by this point,
saw the inclusion of these occult groups and ideas in the Cyclopaedia as actual
proof of their historical existence. In fact, as was observed over one hundred
years later, the Cyclopaedia “announc[ed] the occult revival” to the world, quickly
becoming one of the most influential works among Western occultists and play-
ing a major role in the expansion of the esoteric, non-Christian organization

77 Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie, Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia of History, Rites, Symbolism, and
Biography (London, 1877; Wellingborough, uk: Aquarian Press, 1987).
78 See R.A. Gilbert and J.M. Hamill, introduction to the Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, v.
74 chapter 2

market to non-Masons and Americans.79 Mackenzie had thus become

the prophet—the supreme intellectual authority and legitimizer—of the
Anglophone occult revival.

Theosophy and the American Occult Revival

As we have seen, esotericism had already made some headway in the us by the
time Mackenzie’s Cyclopaedia first appeared in 1875. Transcendentalists, spiri-
tualists, and Freethinkers were increasingly interested in ancient, forgotten,
and Eastern knowledge; there were surely more than a few informal circles of
Americans studying the ideas of Hermes Trismegistus; and Paschal Beverly
Randolph had successfully organized small occult Rosicrucian groups on both
American coasts. Still, nothing that could rightly be called a movement had
developed and little mainstream media attention was paid to the few orga-
nized activities.
The direct antecedents to the development of the us’ market for organiza-
tions based around non-Christian religions can be traced back to 1874, when
the American spiritualist community was first introduced to the Russian
medium Helena P. Blavatsky.80 That fall, Blavatsky, who claimed to have trav-
eled throughout Europe, Asia, and Egypt, made her way to the Vermont farm of
the Eddy family where the appearance of various spiritual manifestations had
recently elicited great interest in the spiritualist community. Soon, however, all
attention at the farm was being focused on Blavatsky, when her mediumistic
powers purportedly began not only affecting the spirits already there in strange
ways, but also began bringing spirit manifestations of a type relatively uncom-
mon in the us: Eastern Europeans, Asians, and a Muslim named Hassan Agha,
whom Blavatsky claimed to have once known personally in Russia. Persuaded
by these and other demonstrations that Blavatsky was special, Henry S. Olcott,
a spiritualist journalist who had been reporting on the events at the Eddy farm,
befriended Blavatsky and the two returned to his home in New York City.

79 Godwin, Theosophical Enlightenment, 219.

80 For the history of the Theosophical Society, see Bruce F. Campbell, Ancient Wisdom
Revived: A History of the Theosophical Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1980); The Theosophical Movement 1875–1950 (Los Angeles: Cunningham Press, 1951);
Michael Gomes, The Dawning of the Theosophical Movement (Wheaton, il: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1987); John Patrick Deveney, Theosophical History Occasional Paper vi:
Astral Projection or Liberation of the Double and the Work of the Early Theosophical Society
(Fullerton, ca: Theosophical History, 1997).
The Occult Revival 75

In the spring, Olcott began asserting that he had recently been contacted via
visions and handwritten letters by a living adept with the Muslim-sounding
name of Tuitt Bey, who claimed to be a member of an unseen ‘Eastern’ occult
order known as the Brotherhood of Luxor, which desired to reform spiritual-
ism. Blavatsky, whom many would later suspect of having written these letters,
claimed to belong to this Brotherhood, and encouraged Olcott to publish infor-
mation about it in a spiritualist periodical over which they had gained influ-
ence, the Spiritual Scientist. By this time, connections were already being made
between this Brotherhood and Rosicrucianism. Olcott believed that one of the
early visual manifestations this spirit made had Rosicrucian symbols, and in a
long letter to the Spiritual Scientist in July, one writer asserted that all occult
groups—implying that the Brotherhood of Luxor was included—were
Rosicrucian.81 Blavatsky replied in an article later that month that this Eastern
Brotherhood was not itself Rosicrucian, but that it possessed the teachings
that the Rosicrucians studied.82 The controversy and Blavatsky and Olcott’s
increasing influence over the newspaper helped gain the duo more attention,
and by the late summer of 1875, around them had formed a small group of
interested esotericists, many of whom were spiritualists and members of the
Free Thought movement.83 At the time, this circle had no official name, but, as
it was focused around the spirit communication of Tuitt Bey, some people
equated it with his and Blavatsky’s organization, the Brotherhood of Luxor.
Again, this was not the first American occult group formed around the belief
that non-Christian—and possibly Muslim—occult teachers were imparting
knowledge in the us; Randolph’s group had preceded it. In fact, Blavatsky
seems to have picked up many ideas from Randolph, and the insistence of
there being a Muslim-like occult spirit may have been one of these. Nonetheless,
it was only her group—which in October 1875 formally organized under the
name Theosophical Society and would soon attempt to implement a Masonic-
like grade structure—that had direct connections with the sria community,
and this meant that the strong British market for reterritorialized groups based
around non-Christian religions now had an entrée to the American liberal reli-
gion scene.

81 Gomes, Dawning, 68; see the “Rosicrucianism” articles by ‘Hiraf’ in the early July issues of
the Spiritual Scientist.
82 Mdme. H.P. Blavatsky, “A Few Questions to Hiraf,” Spiritual Scientist, July 22, 1875, 236–37.
83 See John Patrick Deveney, “Albert Leighton Rawson, Initiate of the Brotherhood of
Lebanon, Bigamist, Plagiarist and Felon, and D.M. Bennett, Agent of the Theosophical
Masters, ‘Foul-Mouthed Libertine’ and ‘Apostle of Nastiness,’” Theosophical History (forth-
coming at the time of writing).
76 chapter 2

Although Blavatsky had already rejected the notion that the Brotherhood
was Rosicrucian, in early September 1875, Rev. Dr. J.H. Wiggin, a Unitarian min-
ister who was familiar with and would soon join Blavatsky’s circle, published
an article that explicitly labeled the ideas of the Brotherhood of Luxor group as
“Rosicrucianism.”84 The British bookseller and Freethinker Charles Sotheran,
one of the members of the Blavatsky circle at the time, happened to also be a
member of the sria, and would have found this and other claims of Rosicrucian
identity for the Brotherhood intriguing. It is likely, then, that it was Sotheran
who conveyed the claim of the Brotherhood being Rosicrucian back to his sria
brethren in England. In October, Kenneth Mackenzie duly included a descrip-
tion of Blavatsky’s Brotherhood of Luxor—complete with the assertion of its
Rosicrucian basis—in his soon-to-be popular Cyclopaedia,85 thereby intellec-
tually incorporating the group that would become the Theosophical Society
into the Anglophone occult revival.
The connection between the British and American esoteric communities
was soon further solidified when, almost immediately after the Theosophical
Society was formally established, an American member named George H. Felt
started promising the group that he would perform for the Society feats of
occult magic based on his knowledge of ancient Egyptian occultism. By this
time, Felt was already known in the British occult revival due to the fact that in
1872 the sria had printed in the Rosicrucian magazine an excerpt from Felt’s
never-to-be-published book concerning his supposed discovery of ancient
Egyptian magic.86 Word surely made its way back to England that it was in the
Theosophical Society where Felt had finally resurfaced. Mackenzie, mean-
while, was made an honorary member of the ts in 1877,87 the same year that
Blavatsky published her most well-known work, Isis Unveiled. This book—
which, by drawing from and repurposing much of the recent English-language
research on the world’s religions and myths, essentially presented a theory of
an orient-emphasized esoteric religious history—contained several citations
of Mackenzie’s Cyclopaedia, which Blavatsky used to validate her own esoteric
claims, including the claim that the Brotherhood of Luxor was indeed real

84 H.P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, vol. 1 (Wheaton, il: Theosophical Press, 1966), 121.
85 Mackenzie, Royal Masonic, 461. The October appearance of the Cyclopaedia is inferred by
the advertisement for the first part of the book, which appeared that month in the
Freemason.
86 The only complete manuscript of Felt’s book, The Egyptian Kaballah, was destroyed in a
fire in 1872.
87 See his Theosophical honorary membership, entered December 9, 1877, Theosophical
Society General Register Vol. i, 4, accessed February 10, 2014, http://www.theartarchives.org.
The Occult Revival 77

(although Blavatsky still denied its connection to Rosicrucianism). The linking

of this American occult group with the British movement legitimized the ts,
giving it a far greater potential for serving as the base of an American non-
Christian occult market.
At least partly due to the legitimization offered by Mackenzie and the sria,
during its first year, the ts expanded rapidly, gaining thirty-four American
members before the end of 1875 and another 111 during 1876—numbers and
rates probably far surpassing anything Randolph had achieved.88 At the time,
the group was focused around the achievement of ‘practical occult’ powers—
magic—and Randolph’s presence lingered, as Blavatsky, like Randolph,
emphasized the cultivation of the will—to “Try!”89 However, by late 1876, per-
haps because its leaders had failed to live up to their promises of demonstrat-
ing practical occultism, interest started to decline and the Theosophical
Society’s only formally organized branch had become inactive.90 At the end of
1878, Blavatsky and Olcott left for India, where they would set up the new head-
quarters for Theosophy and live for several years. At that point, to many it
would have looked as if no non-Christian religious organization would be able
to survive in the us.
Once in India, Blavatsky and Olcott set about rebuilding their young organi-
zation. They had left the us with a distinctly non-Christian religious goal:
learning yoga and esoteric religious knowledge from Swami Dayananda, the
head of the Hindu revivalist movement Arya Samaj, with whom they had con-
nected through one of his followers, a Hindu Freemason named Hurrychund
Chintamon.91 Blavatsky and Olcott quickly established strong ties with the
Samaj and gained a wide Indian following of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims,
reaching over one thousand members within a year, largely because the alle-
giance with the Theosophists was seen by many Indians as a way to help their
nationalist movement. Blavatsky and Olcott, with their Indian followers,
started a monthly magazine, the Theosophist, which regularly featured Indian
writers and discussions of non-Christian topics. The magazine was soon being
sold in England and the us, where it commenced to achieve popularity among

88 See Theosophical Society General Register Vol. i, accessed February 10, 2014, http://www
.theartarchives.org.
89 See Deveney, Astral Projection.
90 Theosophical Movement, 116.
91 See Har Bilas Sarda, Life of Dayanand Saraswati, World Teacher (Ajmer, India: P. Bhagwan
Swarup, Manager, Vedic Yantralaya, 1946), 522–92 and Karl Baier, “Mesmeric Yoga and the
Development of Meditation within the Theosophical Society,” Theosophical History 16,
nos. 3&4 (2012): 151–61.
78 chapter 2

those who had heard about Blavatsky, particularly those connected to the
sria, spiritualism, and the Free Thought movement. The facts that a large pro-
portion of each issue was devoted to Eastern religions, many articles were
authored by Indians, and the movement’s large Indian following was often
mentioned, all lent Blavatsky and her Eastern-connection claims a great deal
of legitimacy in the eyes of white Westerners. As a result, although the orga-
nized occult/non-Christian movement in the us was essentially dormant
between 1877 and 1881, interest in Blavatsky, her writings, and her order began
to be rekindled.
In 1881, the history of both Theosophy, and the American occult/non-­
Christian market generally, reached a major turning point. That year, Thomas
Moore Johnson, a lawyer from a small town in western Missouri, sent a copy of
the second issue of the Platonist—a Platonism-focused journal he had recently
started—to the Theosophical headquarters in India. Johnson, who had been
significantly influenced by Transcendentalism and Thomas Taylor’s transla-
tions of the Idealist Plato, was not himself a Theosophist, but one of the main
contributors to his journal, Alexander Wilder, was, having played a major role
in helping to popularize Blavatsky by editing Isis Unveiled. Johnson was of the
belief that Platonic philosophy was the one true philosophy, and that there
were various manifestations of it throughout the world in esoteric teachings,
which should be brought to light. The Theosophical Society saw similarities
between theirs and Johnson’s projects and suggested that they advertise in
each other’s magazine.92 Johnson agreed, and this new relationship eventually
led to him becoming one of the most important figures in the expansion of
Theosophy in the us.93
It was at this time that other Americans also started gaining enthusiasm for
Theosophy, and organizers—who were almost always strong believers in the
idea that American culture needed spiritual reforming—led the reemergence
of the American side of Theosophy. In 1882, Rochester was the site of the first
branch to be established outside of New York City. Its founder was Josephine
Cables, a philanthropist and spiritualist who felt “pity for the world and desire to
serve and save it and affection for those holy people [in India].”94 She gathered

92 Damodar Mavalankar to Johnson, May 31, 1881, Thomas M. Johnson Papers (hereafter, tmj
Papers), Thomas M. Johnson Library and Museum, Missouri State University Department
of Special Collections.
93 Johnson exchanged letters with a number of prominent Theosophists throughout 1882.
94 Cables as quoted by William Q. Judge in his March 8, 1882 letter to her, in Arthur L. Conger,
ed., Practical Occultism: From the Private Letters of William Q. Judge (n.p.: Theosophical
University Press, 1951).
The Occult Revival 79

around her several friends, who in turn brought their own family members to
the small circle. Albert L. Rawson, a Mason and proponent of Free Thought who
was one of the early Theosophical Society members, was sent out to Rochester
to grant Cables her official charter.95
Meanwhile, in April, in Johnson’s home state, a St. Louis man named Elliott
B. Page, a long-time student of philosophy who had recently read Isis Unveiled,
came across a copy of the Platonist. The magazine greatly impressed Page, and
he wrote to Johnson that very day, expressing his pleasure with the periodical
and explaining his own ideological position—which was, essentially, that of a
Freethinker—and intellectual activities.96 Judging by the relatively large num-
ber of letters exchanged between the two, Page apparently found in Johnson a
wise and inspiring teacher and advisor, and Johnson in Page a loyal and eager
student and follower. Soon, the two were talking Theosophy and Johnson gave
Page the Indian headquarters’ address so that he could communicate directly
with the heads. Johnson had already been telling Theosophical leaders his
desire for a branch in Missouri, but putting a lodge in his small home town
would be a waste of effort because so few people lived there. So in July, Blavatsky
and Olcott were encouraging Page—who was not yet even a member of the
group—to start a branch in St. Louis, and promising that Johnson would
help.97 Just a few months before all of this happened, Page had become inter-
ested in St. Louis’ new little Rosicrucian community,98 and he saw the fact that
he had come into contact with Rosicrucians, Johnson, and Theosophists within
the span of six months as a sign that “the Occultists of both hemispheres, nota-
bly of the East, are preparing for some grand movement which cannot fail to
leave its mark upon the whole race” and that he had been chosen to play a key
role in this important moment in history.99 Page then set about forming the
first Theosophical lodge outside of the state of New York. Although he would
later claim that he received his charter in September 1882, his letters to Johnson
indicate that the first St. Louis branch was not chartered until the spring of
1883 and did not officially open until July. Johnson was one of the group’s five

95 Michael Gomes, “Abner Doubleday and Theosophy in America: 1879–1884,” accessed

February 10, 2014, http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sunrise/40-90-1/th-tsgom.htm.
96 Page to Johnson, April 26, 1882, tmj Papers.
97 Page to Johnson, August 3, 1882, tmj Papers.
98 Page to Johnson, May 14, 1882, tmj Papers. On this Rosicrucian community, which possi-
bly had connections to both Randolph and the sria, see Bowen, introduction to Letters to
the Sage, eds. Patrick D. Bowen and K. Paul Johnson (Forest Grove, or: Typhon Press,
2015).
99 Page to Johnson, August 3, 1882, tmj Papers.
80 chapter 2

charter members and, largely through Page, the branch’s president, he would
have a significant influence over the lodge.
The presence of a branch in St. Louis was incredibly valuable for the
Theosophical Society’s spread in the country. It proved to observers that the
organization could expand outside of the East Coast and attract what were
surely seen as average Americans: Midwesterners. It also, by being connected
to Johnson’s Platonist, a magazine that had become (through the Theosophist’s
co-sign) very popular among American Theosophists, demonstrated to believ-
ers that true wisdom could be found throughout America. The establishment
of the St. Louis ‘Pioneer’ branch was therefore an invaluable legitimizing event.
Moreover, by Johnson becoming connected to the first non-New York lodge, he
strengthened his position in the early American organization, and this was
reflected in 1884 when both he and Page were made two of the seven members
of the Board of Control, the Society’s recently-formed governing body for the
us side of the movement. Their presence further strengthened the legitimacy
of the movement and new lodges, largely composed of spiritualists,
Freethinkers, and people interested in philosophy and Asian religions, slowly
began to spring up across the country. By late 1886, there were twelve us
branches and 246 members; by April 1888, there were twenty-two branches
and 460 members.100 The occult revival, and the legitimization it gave to non-
Christian-focused religious organizations, had finally—forty years after the
emergence of spiritualism—established a solid market on American soil.

The Market Diversifies

It is important to recognize that the new occult/non-Christian religious mar-

ket that was developing in the us in the 1880s was not going to be restricted to
the Theosophical Society, but was fostering a broader occult revival. There
were several reasons for this. First is the fact that the governance and control
of the American Theosophical community was fairly weak. Blavatsky and
Olcott retained the ultimate power in issuing charters, but their distance from
America had meant they had little control over day-to-day activities and ideas
in the us branches. Their most loyal American leader, William Q. Judge, who
had been with the group from the beginning, went to India for most of 1884

100 The Theosophical Movement 1875–1950, 119. The Theosophical Society’s register lists more
us members than this by late 1886, but this may be due to the fact that the register is not
clear about which of the 140 American members who had joined before 1880 had with-
drawn by 1886.
The Occult Revival 81

and therefore was also not able to fully exert his power in the us during all of
the American group’s formative years. It was only in 1884, in fact, that the group
gained a governing body, and, with Judge gone, its leaders were mostly people
who had never met Blavatsky or Olcott, and therefore were more likely to have
different ideas about the group’s purpose. At the same time, clearly-stated and
well-developed official teachings—which might have reined in deterritorial-
izing interpretations of the movement—were few. Moreover, the international
leaders could not stop their followers from making their own religious
innovations and investigations, which sometimes included corresponding
with British Masonic esotericists like Mackenzie and John Yarker—which
Johnson did.101 Johnson, as it turns out, was particularly resistant to control. He
was very well-read, wealthy enough to not rely on Theosophy for books, ambi-
tious enough to reach out to philosophers and writers throughout the world,
and prominent enough to get the respect from the people he contacted. It was
in fact Johnson who was the American most responsible for ensuring that the
occult revival market quickly expanded beyond its Theosophical boundaries
and more directly incorporated the British Masonic current.
In the 1880s, the American occult revival diversified in numerous ways, but
it was through Johnson’s efforts that one of the most important diversifying
currents was able to flourish. By the summer of 1884, Johnson had started cor-
responding with Rev. William Ayton, a British Theosophist and esoteric
Freemason.102 Ayton had become involved with a new British occult group
that was at that time gaining a public presence: the H.B. of L., or the Hermetic
Brotherhood of Luxor.103 Two of the organization’s three leaders were men
who were involved in the British Theosophical and esoteric Masonic
community—Peter Davidson and Thomas H. Burgoyne—and they were
­
unapologetically borrowing from esoteric knowledge from the period: they
used in their teachings texts and ideas of Paschal Beverly Randolph; their name
was clearly derived from two entries in Mackenzie’s Cyclopaedia, most notably
the one for Blavatsky’s Brotherhood of Luxor; and they explicitly defined

101 See, e.g., Mackenzie to Johnson, August 30, 1882 and Yarker to Johnson, March 17, 1883, tmj
Papers.
102 T.H. Pattinson to Johnson, August 18, 1884, tmj Papers; on Ayton, see Ellic Howe, ed., The
Alchemist of the Golden Dawn: The Letters of the Revd W.A. Ayton to F.L. Gardner and Others
1886–1905 (Willingborough, uk: Aquarian Press, 1985).
103 The main scholarly study of the H.B. of L. is Joscelyn Godwin, Christian Chanel, and John
P. Deveney. The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an
Order of Practical Occultism (York Beach, me: Samuel Weiser, 1995). Also cf. T. Allen
Greenfield, The Story of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light (Stockholm; Beverly Hills, ca:
Looking Glass Press, 1997).
82 chapter 2

themselves in opposition to Theosophy. What distinguished this group was its

focus on using occult texts to perform a form of practical occultism signifi-
cantly influenced by Randolph, which usually meant using breathing tech-
niques, magic mirrors, sexual intercourse, and the invocation of spirits, all of
which was presented as ‘Ansairetic.’ Theosophy was, at the time, moving away
from a focus on practical occultism, having failed to live up to its original
promises of showing members that practical occultism was possible; it was
instead becoming more interested in promoting a philosophical notion of eso-
teric religious unity, the study of religion, and cultivating brotherhood through-
out the world.104 But, lacking the necessary controls to prevent early
Theosophists from exploring other topics, many freely pursued the H.B. of L.
Not surprisingly, in America at least, where the occult revival market was
still largely limited to the Theosophical Society, initially the H.B. of L. found
Theosophists to be its most receptive audience. In November 1884 the
Theosophist reprinted an H.B. of L. advertisement in an article discussing spec-
ulations about the group, and over the next several months, H.B. of L. circulars
were read in Theosophical Society meetings.105 Soon, the British H.B. of
L. heads were receiving numerous inquiries from American Theosophists who
aspired to be H.B. of L. neophytes. Many of the group’s initiates were directed
to Johnson to acquire the required teachings, and this revealed to them
Johnson’s affiliation, which, due to the Theosophist respect for Johnson, lent
the H.B. of L. additional legitimacy. By the end of 1885, the majority of American
H.B. of L. members were Theosophists.106
During this same period, other new ts-connected groups began to spring up
in what would be an amazingly rapid and complex example of a new religious
market undergoing de- and reterritorialization. In 1885, the American ts’s gov-
erning body, the Board of Control, expelled the Unitarian-spiritualist-
Theosophists George Chainey and Anna Kimball, primarily for attempting to
use the ts name for personal profit by retaining new members’ initiation fees
and creating competing ts lodges.107 Just prior to their official expulsion, how-
ever, Chainey and Kimball had independently formalized their ideas and
activities, which ensured their continued institutional presence after their
expulsion. They had created in San Francisco a group called the Gnostic Society

104 See Deveney, Astral Projection, 65–84.

105 See, e.g., Throckmorton to Johnson, June 21, 1885, tmj Papers.
106 See the H.B. of L. pledges in the tmj Papers.
107 Page to Board of Control, April 17, 1885, tmj Papers; The American Board of Control of the
Theosophical Society Annual Meeting Held at Cincinnati, Ohio, July 4th and 5th, 1885
(Cincinnati: Board of Control, 1885), 3, in the tmj Papers.
The Occult Revival 83

and established a journal, the Gnostic, which included writings by participants

in other alternative religions, such as spiritualism, Randolph-influenced
Rosicrucianism, and mesmerism.108 With the creation of this organization and
its organ, both of which helped give Chainey and Kimball legitimacy even after
their expulsion from Theosophy, California now had a new organized link with
the occult revival market, one that was even less regulated than the part of the
market dominated by Theosophists—and this would have a serious effect on
the broader transformation of the occult revival.
Another important element in the expansion of the market was the emerg-
ing New Thought movement—a religious movement that developed in orga-
nized form in the 1880s, but has roots that can be traced back decades before.
New Thought can be defined as the adaptation of Idealism for the purpose of
healing, or ‘practical Idealism,’109 as it has been called.110 As was discussed in
Chapter 1, Idealism asserts that the material world is in fact simply an exten-
sion of God’s Thought, and, therefore, true reality is immaterial. Generally, this
assertion is accompanied by the concept that humans would benefit greatly by
coming to this understanding. Transcendentalism was essentially a form of
Idealism, and its incredible influence over New England culture in the mid-
nineteenth century seems to have contributed to Maine resident Phineas P.
Quimby applying it to his healing practices at the time. Early in his career,
Quimby had been a mesmerist, healing individuals’ physical ailments by
claiming to manipulate the magnetic forces in the ether around them while
they were in a mesmeric trance. Over the years, however, Quimby became con-
vinced that he had the power to cure patients simply by using his mind, with-
out relying on a belief in magnetic force, and he began to consider the
possibility that all people were connected by a single mind. Soon he came to
the conclusion that physical ailments were caused by nothing but the errone-
ous belief—promoted by doctors and priests—that physical illness existed
and that people were not part of God’s single, omnipresent Mind. In the early
1860s, he achieved regional fame for using this ‘Mind Cure’ approach to heal-
ing; some of his students asked him to teach them his concepts and techniques,
which they would soon popularize.

108 See Gnostic 1, no. 1 (1885).

109 Horatio W. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell
Company, 1919), 129.
110 The following discussion of New Thought is largely derived from Charles S. Braden, Spirits
in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought (Dallas: Southern Methodist
University Press, 1963).
84 chapter 2

The first of Quimby’s students to create an organization around these con-

cepts was Mary Baker Eddy, who in the 1870s began to call the teaching
‘Christian Science’ and started denying that Quimby—or anyone else—had
influenced her ideas, which were outlined in her Science and Health (1875).111
Eddy’s somewhat dogmatic notions were not reflected in Quimby’s other stu-
dents, such as Warren Felt Evans, who wrote a great deal about New Thought
and claimed, in order to prove the universality of Quimby’s concepts, that all
religions had taught similar principles, even citing non-Christian writings—
including those of the Sufi al-Ghazali—to defend this claim. Meanwhile,
Eddy’s tendency towards authoritarianism led to some of her most prominent
disciples leaving the movement and spreading less dogmatic versions of
Quimby’s ideas. One of these individuals was Miranda Rice, who by the mid-
1880s was living in San Francisco where she apparently influenced one Malinda
E. Cramer. In 1885, Cramer became one of Chainey and Kimball’s early follow-
ers and commenced practicing and teaching her own liberal version of New
Thought.112 Another of Eddy’s ex-disciples was Chicago resident Emma Curtis
Hopkins, who had probably started following Eddy upon the latter’s visit to
Chicago in 1884. By 1886, though, she and some other local Christian Scientists
had become influenced by Theosophy and broke with Eddy.113 Then, in 1887,
she established a ‘seminary’ in which the “Bibles of all times and nations”
were compared in order to prove the reality of New Thought.114 By this time,
Cramer—in San Francisco—was already incorporating, due to the influence
of Chainey and Kimball, the comparative religion idea into her teachings, but
this would have been greatly reinforced in 1887 when Hopkins came to
California where she taught Cramer in a New Thought class.115 By 1888, Cramer,
who began calling her more liberal ideas ‘Divine Science,’ had organized her
own activities and had gained a prominent position in Chainey and Kimball’s
movement.116
Around this time, the Denver H.B. of L. community, which by 1887 could
boast that it had not only the largest American H.B. of L. membership but also

111 For Eddy, in addition to Braden’s work, I have relied on Stephen Gottschalk, The Emergence
of Christian Science in American Religious Life (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1973).
112 Braden, Spirits in Rebellion, 145; “Formation of the Gnostic Society,” Gnostic 1, nos. 3 & 4
(1885): 75.
113 See Amy B. Voorhees, “Understanding the Religious Gulf between Mary Baker Eddy,
Ursula N. Gestefeld, and Their Churches,” Church History 80, no. 4 (2011): 798–831.
114 Braden, Spirits in Rebellion, 145.
115 Braden, Spirits in Rebellion, 270.
116 See Gnostic 1, no. 8 (1888): back cover; Gnostic 1, no. 11 (1888).
The Occult Revival 85

almost no Theosophist members, was largely composed of people interested in

Mind Cure and New Thought.117 This included the former Christian Scientist
Mary D. Fisk,118 one of the most well-known followers of spiritual healing in
the American West. At the time, Denver was in fact an important center for a
growing New Thought movement led by the Brooks sisters of Pueblo, Colorado
(a town one hundred miles south of Denver), who had been influenced, like
Cramer, by the teachings of Hopkins. Soon, probably through Fisk, who was in
contact with Cramer, the Brooks sisters would unite their Colorado movement
with Cramer’s to form a national Divine Science organization. Through
Theosophy-influenced New Thought, then, the American occult and non-
Christian market had discovered a strong organizational base for promoting
diverse religions and occult and non-Christian religious ideas.
Meanwhile, as occultism and non-Christian religions were influencing New
Thought, New Thought was influencing the American occult and non-­Christian
religious community. In 1884 another former follower of Eddy, Sarah Stanley
Grimké,119 had relocated to California, where she became friendly with
Cramer’s friend Miranda Rice as well as the local Theosophists.120 In 1886,
Grimké, who had previously published her own New Thought booklets, fol-
lowed along with several California Theosophists (as well as, probably, Chainey
and Kimball) and joined the H.B. of L.121 By 1887, after apparently becoming
the mistress of H.B. of L. leader Thomas Burgoyne, who had moved to California,
Grimké’s two booklets were made required reading in the occult order,122 and
she would eventually have considerable influence over the ideas in the 1889
book attributed to Burgoyne, Light of Egypt, which came to be seen as the main
text of the H.B. of L.123

117 See, e.g., Henry Liddell to Johnson, January 14, 1886, and compare with H.B. of L. ‘diplo-
mas’ in the tmj Papers.
118 Fisk’s H.B. of L. diploma is dated January 15, 1887, tmj Papers.
119 For more see K. Paul Johnson’s forthcoming book on Grimké.
120 Grimké’s relationship with Theosophists can be inferred from the fact that her H.B. of
L. ‘diploma’ in the tmj Papers was signed in Los Angeles and its date is very close to those
of the local Theosophist members of the H.B. of L.
121 Her diploma is dated April 3, 1886.
122 See “Circular No i” in the tmj Papers.
123 The H.B. of L.’s later leader—when then group was revived under the name Brotherhood
of Light, and, later, Church of Light—Elbert Benjamine, asserted that Grimké wrote half
of Light of Egypt. See C.C. Zain [Elbert Benjamine], Laws of Occultism: Inner Plane Theory
and the Fundamentals of Psychic Phenomena, Rev. 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Church of Light,
1994), 156—a claim that had been circulating privately since the 1890s.
86 chapter 2

Through Grimké’s influence, the H.B. of L. gained one of the most important
concepts necessary for the later explosion of American occult and non-­
Christian movements: what Horatio Dresser would call ‘mental picture
theory.’124 Grimké, it must be understood, was a student of not just Christian
Science, but also of Classical and medieval Idealism, liberal political philoso-
phy, and Transcendentalism, particularly as it was transmitted to her via her
teacher, the Transcendentalist Unitarian minister Cyrus Bartol. She had also
been strongly influenced by abolitionism, having been raised by and friends
with several abolitionists—including Parker Pillsbury, a Unitarian Theosophist
and spiritualist—and having married the African American lawyer Archibald
Grimké, through whom Sarah became friends with his well-known abolitionist
half-sisters of the same last name. In the 1880s, Grimké, perhaps partly inspired
by a desire to disrupt color-based racism in the us, developed a new theory
that could be applied to, at first, New Thought and, later, occultism and non-
Christian religions. Grimké’s theory—which was similar to concepts both
Bartol and Quimby had taught—was that one way to assist people in coming
to the realization of their divine nature is to replace erroneous images in their
minds with mental pictures that help them better recognize this ‘truth’ about
themselves.125 In her second book, Grimké presents a unique form of an
­astrology-based way of thinking about the world. This should be regarded not
as a medieval-type astrological system in which astronomical bodies are
thought to mechanically affect people’s behaviors, but as a system of symbols
that could help ‘heal’ people by awakening in them the idea that they are
united with an infinite God.
Amazingly, although she was coming from a practical healing perspective,
this idea of intentionally using symbols to heal people—both socially and
physically—on an esoteric basis is very close to what Mackenzie had proposed
in his 1869 essays. And, like Mackenzie’s essays, it legitimized employing a
wide range of occult and non-Christian symbols in order to help different
people who had different symbolic needs. This willingness to commit to a par-
ticular set of symbols is in fact what distinguished Grimké’s strain of New
Thought from other forms, even the liberal Divine Science. Divine Science,
Transcendentalism, and the emerging form of Theosophy, asserted that one
should study all religions because they all contained the universal Truth, thus
one could gain insight from them all. Grimké’s theory, on the other hand, while
relying on a fundamental openness to various religious teachings, emphasizes
the use of specific symbols in certain ways with the belief that they will better

124 Dresser, New Thought, 141.

125 See Dresser, History, 137–42 for a discussion.
The Occult Revival 87

help reveal to people their divine nature. And, because it claims to heal people
of their illnesses, whether physical, psychological, social, or economic, it is
vastly more attractive for the average person than occult teachings that simply
promote practical occultism for specific—and what most would consider
unbelievable—magical powers. This ‘mental picture theory,’ then—whether
derived from Grimké and/or the H.B. of L., independently realized, or subcon-
sciously followed—helped further the diversification of the occult revival in
the us.
Ultimately, what this all meant was that as the result of the connecting of
New Thought to the occult/non-Christian market via Theosophy and the H.B.
of L., by the late 1880s there was a highly viable and potentially incredibly
diverse occult/non-Christian market. It also meant that for the next decade or
so—before the American religious market changed again—the style and suc-
cess of those who wanted to spread non-Christian religions in the us would be
greatly dependent on the degree to which they appealed to the core compo-
nents of the American occult/non-Christian market: Theosophy, the H.B. of L.,
New Thought, and spiritualism. Indeed, starting in the late 1890s, there were
numerous attempts to build off of and further diversify the growing occult
revival/non-Christian religion market, but those most successful usually were
those able to connect themselves to all of these elements.
The development of the American occult revival out of nineteenth-century
liberal religion, mesmerism, spiritualism, and esoteric Freemasonry was a
complex—if not chaotic—process of de- and reterritorialization. It was the
product of numerous interactions between a large number self-interested and
altruistic promoters, leaders, and thinkers; the creation and combination of
countless theories and organizations; and the constant circulation of people
and ideas across time and space. It was indeed a great mess. But this mess had
laid the foundation for a real market for organizations based around non-
Christian religions, and it was within the early years of this market’s growth
that the ideas and resources for the first American Muslim conversion move-
ment were generated and came together.
 chapter 3

The Makings of a Muslim Missionary

Many factors contribute to the success of a producer in a deterritorialized,

comparatively free market. Circumstances of birth are of course major deter-
minants of one’s access to the material, social, and intellectual resources nec-
essary for gaining a competitive market position. Not only does one need to
exploit particular resources to enter into a market, but frequently even the
knowledge and desire to use these resources is determined by one’s earlier
exposure to them. If, for instance, George Bethune English had not been born
a white man to well-off parents in Boston, the chances that he would have
become an early nineteenth-century student of oriental religions, let alone a
published sympathizer of Islam, would have been very small. Still, English, like
most individuals, was not a simple product of his environment. Whether
because or in spite of their birth, some people are able to transcend their cir-
cumstances and innovate, breaking into economic and cultural markets in
unforeseen ways. Determining precisely how much of innovators’ actions are
indeed attributable to their unique internal qualities is one of the goals of the
historian.
The story of Alexander Russell Webb’s journey to Islam and his becoming a
Muslim missionary is an example of the complex interplay between circum-
stances and the uniqueness of individuals. Webb was, by all accounts, a cre-
ative, ambitious innovator who was rarely satisfied with his circumstances and
had the skills to achieve things that no one else in his family had achieved
before him. Nevertheless, he benefitted greatly from his birth. Webb was from
an educated, skilled, and well-off white family in an America where these traits
were virtual necessities to make a name for oneself. He was not required to risk
his life in the Civil War, which commenced when he was fifteen years old, and
he was permitted to pursue the trades and hobbies of his choice. In terms of
his coming to Islam, however, probably the single most important circum-
stance was Webb’s involvement with the St. Louis spiritualist newspaper men
in the early 1880s. Had Webb lived in any other city, or chosen a different career
and pastime, it is unlikely he would have become America’s first leader of a
prominent Islamic propaganda movement. Webb was an intelligent man who
was not afraid to pursue what he believed in, and he might have even con-
verted to Islam in another environment. But had he not come into contact with
the St. Louis Theosophical Society and the occult revival when he did, he most
likely would have never left his mark on the history of Islam in America.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_005

The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 89

Before Islam

Alexander Russell Webb was born in Hudson, New York on November 9, 1846.1
In 1847, his father, Alexander Nelson Webb, purchased the temperance news-
paper for which he had worked as a printer, the Columbia Washingtonian,
continuing its publication and, at the same time, establishing a secular news-
focused newspaper, the Hudson Daily Star. Webb later remembered his father
as being “outspoken and fearless,” and his newspapers became the mouth-
pieces for expressing his Jeffersonian Democratic views. Alexander Nelson
remained in the newspaper industry until his retirement in 1873, at which
point Alexander Russell’s brother, Herbert, inherited the business.
Alexander Russell, meanwhile, chose to not follow in his father’s footsteps.
Webb, it seems, had a rather creative and independent spirit. As a child and
young man, for instance, having no interest in religion, he tried to avoid attend-
ing his Presbyterian church and Sunday school as often as he could, and instead
began attending an Episcopalian Sunday school simply to meet girls.
Intellectually, he was similarly independent-minded. Webb reportedly com-
posed essays and shorts stories as a teenager and he attended Claverack College
and Hudson River Institute, a school that was known for encouraging intel-
lectual freedom and liberal values. After leaving school and attempting to find
a career, instead of apprenticing with his father, he chose to learn the jewelry
trade under a jeweler whose shop was in the same building as the office of
Alexander Nelson’s newspaper.
In 1869, Webb moved to Chicago where he worked as a jeweler, married, and
then partnered with his new father-in-law to start a jewelry business. When the
business was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871, he went home
to Hudson for a few years, where his father secured a job for him as a jeweler. In
1873 Webb returned to Chicago to be with his wife and newborn son, but by the
end of the year, his wife’s father, who had moved to Unionville, Missouri, had
purchased interest in a local newspaper and invited his son-in-law to be its assis-
tant editor. Webb, an able writer who surely had learned much about the news-
paper editing business during his youth, accepted the offer and moved his
family to the northern Missouri town. For the next two-and-a-half years, he
faithfully and capably edited the paper. This was not an easy job, however. The

1 The following section draws largely from the two best biographical works on Webb: Umar
F. Abd-Allah, A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2006) and Brent D. Singleton, introduction to Yankee Muslim: The
Asian Travels of Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb ([Maryland]: Borgo Press/Wildside
Press, 2007), 9–54.
90 chapter 3

owners required him, as the editor, to regularly write in support of the Republican
politics they endorsed; because Webb had Democratic leanings, he sometimes
evaded full support of their ideas, and this led to growing tensions. During this
period, there was also increasing discord in the Webb household, and in mid-
1876, either Alexander Russell or his wife filed a petition for divorce. Around that
same time, the wife’s father sold his share of the newspaper, which meant that
the soon-to-be ex-son-in-law now had no choice but to step down from his edi-
torial post.
Faced with the loss of his job and family, Webb moved to St. Joseph, where
he briefly worked as a reporter for a local newspaper, the Gazette. The Gazette’s
city editor at the time was Eugene Field, a respected writer from the period,
who just a short while after Webb’s arrival, moved his editorial staff to St. Louis
and, apparently, obtained a job for the ex-editor of the Unionville paper. Webb
was ready to follow this new opportunity and return to the big city; he packed
his things and left for St. Louis in the fall. There, he remarried and worked off
and on as a jeweler and reporter for various local newspapers. In addition,
from the late 1870s to the early 1880s, Webb, who was known to be a natural
showman, also sometimes worked as a theatrical manager and promoter. His
productions, however, were generally panned by critics, and he seems to have
given up on drama by 1882. Webb’s true forte, the prominent St. Louis newspa-
per editor William Kelsoe would later recall, was in being a ‘newspaper man,’ as
he distinguished himself as a skilled reporter, printer, and editor.2
But being a good newspaper man did not make Webb content; he desired a
different kind of outlet for his creative, intellectual, and independent spirit. In
previous generations, this would have been difficult to find for any person, and
many surely lived very frustrated lives. But Webb was born white, well-off, and
educated into an America that was undergoing massive deterritorialization. As
a child and young man, he had the luxury of experimenting with creative writ-
ing and free thinking. When he chose to pursue his employment, he had the
freedom to, while still living under his father’s roof, have a two-year unpaid
apprenticeship for a trade that was not practiced by his father. After settling
down and marrying, Webb had the connections to start a new business. After
that business was destroyed, instead of being financially ruined for the rest of
his life, Webb’s connections gave him the opportunity to start his career over.
Although for this to happen, Webb had to give in and pursue the career of his

2 William A. Kelsoe, “Kelsoe Authority on Days of Old,” St. Louis Republic, July 12, 1908, 1–2;
William A. Kelsoe, St. Louis Reference Record: A Newspaper Man’s Motion-Picture of the City
When We Got Our First Bridge, and Many Later Happenings of Local Note (St. Louis: Von
Hoffman, 1927), 182.
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 91

father, this still was a fortuitous change, as it was in Unionville where Webb
initially cultivated his new creative outlet when he joined the local drama
club.3 In St. Louis, where he once again had the opportunity to rebuild his life,
Webb pursued drama further, now tying it to his business ambitions. After it
became clear that his promotional and managerial career might be financially
ruinous, in 1882 Webb turned away from that aspect of drama and tried his hand
at editing a drama criticism journal, which his new wife apparently purchased
for him.4 This effort, however, seems to have quickly failed as well. Webb, who
was by now very used to finding means for expressing his artistic spirit, would
need something else to fill this void of his.

The Turn

In around 1883, when he could no longer deny that he was not going to have a
successful career in drama, Webb chose a new outlet for his personality and
ambitions: spiritualism.5 As a young man, Webb’s general impression of
Christianity was that it was restraining and dull, and that it had nothing in it
“calculated to win [Webb] to it.”6 By the 1870s, Webb had for the most part
given up religion altogether. But American spiritualism, unlike ‘orthodox
Christianity’ (as Webb called it), was intellectual, liberal, exotic, and poten-
tially—if one was lucky enough to observe a believable spirit manifestation—
dramatic and exciting. It was therefore a religion that could ‘win’—or at least
entice—a man of Webb’s personality and background. Webb had attended a
few séances in Unionville back in 1875, but he did not commit to spiritualism
at the time. Perhaps he feared the criticisms he might receive from his in-laws
and bosses; perhaps he was simply not ready to devote himself to it, having

3 Singleton, introduction, 18–19.

4 Singleton, introduction, 21–22.
5 For a reporter—and, according to Kelsoe, Webb was a good reporter—Webb was curiously
very inconsistent and vague when discussing his 1880s spiritual search and conversion. See
Mohammad Alexander Russel [sic] Webb Esq., Lectures on Islam: Delivered at Different Places
in India (Lahore: Islamia Press, 1893), 2; Mohammad Alexander Russell Webb, Islam in
America: A Brief Statement of Mohammedanism and an Outline of the American Islamic
Propaganda (New York: Oriental Publishing Co., 1893), 12; L. Grebsonal, “The Mohammedan
Propagandist,” Frank Leslie’s Weekly, March 30, 1893, 204–05; “Hopes to Islamize America,”
Chicago Daily Tribune, December 21, 1892, 2; H.R.W., “Republic Reviews Alex Webb’s Life:
Former Editor of Unionville Republican,” Unionville Republican, January 31, 1917, 12; Singleton,
Yankee Muslim, 277.
6 Webb, Lectures on Islam, 2.
92 chapter 3

developed a bug for the more acceptable interest in drama. But by 1883, Webb,
now middle-aged and having failed to successfully exploit other outlets for his
creative ambitions, turned to the religious movement that had ignited his vari-
ous sensibilities. Given what is known about Webb, he in all probability
thought that, since St. Louis lacked its own spiritualist newspaper,7 he could
eventually be the person to start one and, if it were successful, he would get the
respect and admiration bestowed on the editors of the major spiritualist
papers in Boston and Chicago. Little did he know, however, that pursuing spiri-
tualism in St. Louis in the early-to-mid 1880s would give him unique access to
a movement that was in fact even more creative and open—deterritorialized—
than spiritualism. It was a movement that, when it appeared, seemed to have
limitless room for growth, in which a man like Webb would not have to settle
for being a mere newspaper editor—he could be a religious leader and put all
his passions, skills, and experiences to work.
Webb began by visiting the popular St. Louis medium George V. Cordingley.8
Soon after this, because the local spiritualist community was not particularly
large, he would have surely come into contact with the town’s recently-formed
spiritualist group known as the Spiritual Association, incorporated in
November 1882, which in turn would have put him in touch with even more
like-minded people, such as one of the Association’s leaders, William Ferdinand
Burrows.9 Through these alternative religion connections, Webb would have
also met various mesmerists, homeopaths, and Mind Curers, including Calvin
L. Herring and R.A. Campbell, regulars in the St. Louis spiritualist scene.10
Later, in fact, Campbell, Webb, and fellow newspaper editor William Kelsoe
become involved with the Society for Psychical Research, an organization
dedicated to investigating spiritualist manifestations.11 Interestingly, Webb
and Kelsoe were not the only St. Louis newspaper and literary-connected men

7 St. Louis’ first known spiritualist newspaper, the Light in the West, would not be started
until 1886. This paper was somewhat Christian-focused and made no mention of
Theosophy, although it did regularly feature one of the local ts lodge’s members whom
Webb and Kelsoe both knew: the mesmerist R.A. Campbell. There is no indication that
Webb had any connection to this newspaper.
8 H.R.W., “Republic Reviews.”
9 John Thomas Scharf, History of Saint Louis City and County from the Earliest Periods to the
Present Day Including Biographical Sketches of Representative Men (Philadlephia:
L.H. Everts, 1883), 1770.
10 Herring’s profession listed on the 1880 census is inventor; his “magnetic healing” business
card is contained in the tmj Papers. Campbell is mentioned in the tmj Papers, and his
advertisements appeared in the St. Louis spiritualist newspaper, the Light in the West.
11 “Hopes to Islamize.”
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 93

taking an interest in alternative religions at the time. There was Albert J. Stiles,
a detective and favorite of the St. Louis newspapers.12 George Harvey, a retired
colonel, was a friend of local literati and an associate of Kelsoe.13 George
Hamilton Field, a physician of the ‘eclectic’ approach—meaning he used, in
addition to more accepted medical practices, homeopathy, mesmerism, and
spiritualism—was an editor of a local eclectic medical journal. Edward
Hungerford Gorse had multiple publishing connections: he worked for a mer-
cantile agency that published business reports, he lived with his brother who
was himself a newspaper man, and he was friends with Kelsoe.14 And Elliott
B. Page, who briefly tried his hand in reporting, but gave it up to pursue a
steadier job as a clerk, enjoyed, as we have seen, making connections with local
followers of alternative religions.
By April 1884, every single one of these men—including Webb—would be a
Theosophist.
Because the St. Louis Theosophical community was the first us Theosophical
community to produce a lodge outside of the state of New York, and, once
organized, was only one of three active lodges in the country, to examine its
early growth is to gain a microscopic-level understanding of one important
case of the occult revival spreading and transforming in the us. It is to acquire,
furthermore, the context in which Alexander Webb came to take an interest in
Islam and develop not only his understanding of the religion, but also the
foundations for his future movement. Indeed, Webb’s involvement with the
early St. Louis Theosophical lodge was, it seems, crucial for his conversion and
later efforts.
The first St. Louis resident to become a member of the Theosophical Society
was, notably, a spiritualist medium, although it is not clear when exactly
Pauline Libert was actually connected to St. Louis. The French spiritualist lived
with Blavatsky and Olcott in New York City for eighteen months around 1876,
during which time she joined the Society.15 Despite her New York residence,
Libert’s entry in the Theosophical register gives a St. Louis address, so it is pos-
sible that this was her previous home. St. Louis, at the time, was basically the

12 Kelsoe, St. Louis Reference Record, 90 and 130.

13 Kelsoe, St. Louis Reference Record, 317.
14 Page to Johnson, December 2, 1883, tmj Papers; “Theosophical Movement,” Theosophy 9,
no. 4 (1921): 100.
15 William Emmette Coleman, “Spiritualism and the Wisdom Religion,” Carrier Dove
8 (November 1891): 298. The Theosophical Society register currently available online lists
her as having joined in 1877, but a different register from Adyar indicates she was entered
in 1876; see Theosophical Society General Register Vol. i, accessed February 10, 2014, http://
www.theartarchives.org.
94 chapter 3

last major stop for spiritualists who were traveling west but did not want to go
all the way to California, and it had thus produced a respectable, though not
large, spiritualist community. Whatever the case was, Libert appears to have
defected from Theosophy by 1878, when she was claiming she had learned,
while living with Blavatsky, the latter’s tricks for convincing people of her spiri-
tualist powers,16 and she is never mentioned by later St. Louis Theosophists.
There would not be another St. Louis member of the Theosophical Society
until April 1881, when William Throckmorton, a railroad company clerk, joined,
unattached to any lodge.17 Apparently Throckmorton had come to Theosophy
entirely on his own—probably through reading the founders’ publications—as
there was not another officially registered St. Louis Theosophist until Michael
Angelo Lane, a newspaper reporter, enrolled in February 1883.18 The two men
soon learned about each other, however, and, sharing a common interest,
became good friends for the next several years. As discussed in Chapter 2, by
this time, Elliott B. Page, a one-time reporter who was not yet technically a
Theosophist, had already set about organizing a lodge with the support of
Thomas M. Johnson. In March 1883, two more St. Louisans enrolled in the inter-
national organization and were the first locals to join up with Page: Frank Kraft
and Edward Hungerford Gorse.19 Like Throckmorton, Kraft was a clerk; Gorse,
meanwhile, as has been mentioned, published business reports and had ties to
the newspapers through his brother and Kelsoe.20 It is notable that all of these
men were in their twenties or thirties and worked in a field in which they wrote
for a living; they were, like Webb, relatively young and ambitious middle-class
intellectual-types21 interested in joining up with new ideas and new move-
ments. Indeed, it seems that the ability of the St. Louis lodge to recruit from
what appears to have been a preexisting network of young, writing-oriented
white collar workers significantly contributed to its growth. While some of the
other early 1880s American ts communities—such as the ones in New York and
Cincinnati—may have had more prominent figures as leading members, their

16 Coleman, “Spiritualism,” 298.

17 Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, accessed February 10, 2014, http://www
.theartarchives.org.
18 Ibid.
19 Theosophical Society General Register Vol. I, accessed February 10, 2014, http://www
.theartarchives.org.
20 Kelsoe, St. Louis Reference Record, 194; “Theosophical Movement,” Theosophy 9, no. 4
(1921): 100.
21 The lodge president, Page, judged applicants’ qualifications by looking at, besides their
moral uprightness, their intelligence, education, “studious[ness],” and employment in a
white collar profession; see Page to ts Board of Control, October 27, 1884, tmj Papers.
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 95

inability to tap into a preexisting pool of recruits retarded their ability to

expand.22 St. Louis, however, was doing this fairly well and, soon, Johnson and
a fellow lawyer from his small western Missouri town became members of both
the international movement and Page’s group, as did Throckmorton and Lane.
The group received its charter in the late spring of 1883, but Throckmorton and
Lane decided they did not want Page as the leader, and it was only after the two
resigned from the lodge did it finally officially open in July, just around the time
Webb had started pursuing spiritualism.23
The lodge’s internal conflicts put its growth on hold for the first several
months. Only after Throckmorton and Lane rejoined in late November did
things start to turn around.24 They enrolled one new member in December,
and then in the spring of 1884 the St. Louis lodge received its first significant
wave of converts, several of whom apparently knew Throckmorton.25 It began
in March, when seven men were entered as having joined both the Theosophical
Society and the St. Louis lodge:26 Albert J. Stiles (the popular detective who
happened to be an old friend of Throckmorton),27 William Ferdinand Burrows
(the Spiritual Association leader), Calvin L. Herring (an inventor and ‘mag-
netic’ healer), Frank E. Dickie (another inventor); George Hamilton Field (the
eclectic physician and editor); George Harvey (Kelsoe’s friend); and Alexander
Russell Webb. In April, they were joined by R.A. Campbell (the Mind Curer
who knew Webb and Kelsoe through spiritualism);28 Julius Henry Weber
(occupation unknown); and, finally, the popular newspaper man who was
friends with several early St. Louis Theosophists—including Thomas
M. Johnson, who himself had been the editor of a St. Louis newspaper in the
late 1870s—William Kelsoe.29 The demographic similarities and social ties of
these individuals offer further proof that the St. Louis lodge was successful pre-
cisely because it was recruiting from a preexisting network of people linked to

22 On New York’s difficulties, see Doubleday to Johnson, June 17, 1882; on Cincinnati’s slow
growth, see Randall to Johnson, January 13, 1885 and November 17, 1885, tmj Papers.
23 Page to Johnson, April 6, 1883; May 30, 1883; June 4, 1883; tmj Papers.
24 Page to Johnson, December 2, 1883, tmj Papers.
25 Throckmorton to Johnson, April 23, 1884, tmj Papers.
26 See Theosophical Society General Register Vol. i, accessed February 10, 2014, http://www
.theartarchives.org.
27 Throckmorton to Johnson, April 23, 1884, tmj Papers.
28 Campbell is mentioned in the tmj Papers, and his advertisements appeared in the
St. Louis spiritualist paper Light in the West.
29 On Kelsoe’s friendship with Johnson, see Kelsoe’s letters in the tmj Papers. On Johnson
being a former St. Louis newspaper editor, see Walter B. Stevens, Missouri: The Center
State 1821–1915, vol. 3 (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1915), 211.
96 chapter 3

the occult revival-related movements—in this case, it was a network of local

spiritualism- and Mind Cure-connected, literary-oriented young white collar
workers—a fact that, as we will see, would not be lost on Webb. At the time,
these young Theosophists were among the less than one hundred total active
Theosophists in the country. They—and Webb in particular—must have been
excited about getting in on the ground floor of this rapidly expanding new reli-
gious movement.
Webb appears to have fully embraced what the Society had to offer. At the
time, as discussed in Chapter 2, this was still primarily the prospect of achiev-
ing practical occultism. Since the group’s early days in New York, Madame
Blavatsky had encouraged abstaining from alcohol and taking a vegetarian diet
as purifying practices to prepare oneself to achieve various magical powers,
such as astral travel (whereby a living person can make his or her soul leave the
body and travel to other places in the universe), successfully using a magic
mirror, and ‘psychically’ communicating with unseen Masters.30 The group’s
heads had asserted that these practices—which were being performed in the
St. Louis Theosophical lodge as late as November 1886, when Webb was still a
regularly-attending member31—were the Western counterparts to yoga, and
like yoga were elements of the ancient ‘Wisdom-Religion,’ which they, rather
arrogantly, called ‘Buddhism.’32 Webb soon took up these practices himself,
abstaining from alcohol and meat, proclaiming himself a ‘Buddhist,’ and devot-
ing many hours a day to religious study.33 Several years later, Webb would even
explicitly discuss both his own astral travel experience and the ability of others
to achieve psychical communication.34
Although it appears that Webb did not join the occult order known as the
H.B. of L., he had been interested in the Rosicrucians since his twenties,35 so he
would have undoubtedly been fascinated by the group’s circular that was read

30 See Deveney, Astral Projection, 22, 51–52, 80, and accompanying notes.
31 W.A. Kelsoe to Johnson, November 12, 1886, tmj Papers. On Webb being an active mem-
ber of the St. Louis ts in late 1886, see Henry Liddell to Johnson, November 4, 1886, tmj
Papers.
32 See Sarda, Life, 522–92, esp. 581–82; Baier, “Mesmeric Yoga,” 151–61.
33 H.R.W., “Republic Reviews”; Webb, Lectures on Islam, 2; “Hopes to Islamize.”
34 Webb asserted he had unintentionally astrally traveled years before he took up Theosophy
and that Muhammad, the Muslim prophet himself, had achieved a high level of “psychi-
cal development”; see Alexander Russell Webb, “Two Remarkable Phenomena,” New
Californian 1 (January 1892): 248–51; M’d Alexander Russell Webb, “Criticism on
‘Mohamed’s Place in the Church,’” Miscellaneous Notes and Queries 14, no. 6 (1896):
128¼–128½.
35 Webb had been “excited” by Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni; see Webb, Lectures on Islam, 31–32.
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 97

at a St. Louis Theosophical meeting in 1885, and likely would have heard good
things about the group from the ts lodge’s president and H.B. of L. supporter,
Page.36 Webb was also almost certainly influenced by the H.B. of L. leader
and the St. Louis Theosophical lodges’ most prominent member, Thomas
M. Johnson. Johnson and Webb shared a mutual friend in Kelsoe, and in 1892,
when Webb was describing his journey to Islam for an Indian Muslim audi-
ence, he explained that his spiritual exploration at the time was greatly assisted
by having “access to a library of 13,000 volumes, covering quite fully the sub-
jects in which [he] was most deeply interested.”37 Johnson’s personal library
only had, reportedly, around 10,000 volumes, but it was the region’s largest
known collection of the kind of works in which Webb would have been inter-
ested.38 Since, as a fellow Missourian, friend of Kelsoe, and member of
Johnson’s Theosophical lodge, Webb would have had some of the best access to
Johnson and his books, it seems likely that it was Johnson’s library to which
Webb was referring.39
Webb had thus found a new home for his creative, intelligent, independent,
and ambitious soul, and he had done so during the short period (1880–1886/7)
when Theosophy and the American occult revival were still relatively open and
deterritorialized. His mind, then, was undoubtedly churning out countless
ideas and plans for how he would pursue his ambitions within the movement.40
And it was within this context that he began to take an interest in Islam.

Islamophilic Theosophy

The common narrative in biographies of Webb is that his interest in Islam was
initially sparked in late 1886 when he came across an advertisement for a

36 Throckmorton to Johnson, June 21, 1885, tmj Papers.

37 Webb, Lectures on Islam, 19.
38 Stevens (in Center State, 3: 211) says Johnson had “about ten thousand” books, while Paul
R. Anderson puts the number at 8,000 in Platonism in the Midwest (New York: Temple
University Publications, 1963), 161.
39 The only thing keeping me from more confidently asserting that Webb was referring to
Johnson’s library is the fact that in one version of his conversion story, Webb says the
books were “at [his] disposal” “from four to seven hours a day” (Webb, Lectures on Islam,
2), which might seem to suggest that this was a physical library in which he spent his time.
However, Webb could have simply meant, as the other versions of the story imply, that he
studied for four to seven hours a day the books he had at the time.
40 He would later say about the period: “My mind was in a peculiarly receptive yet exacting
and analytical condition”; see Webb, Lectures on Islam, 2.
98 chapter 3

recent book written by the Muslim Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.41 However, while
this was undoubtedly a major event in Webb’s religious life, being a Theosophist
and avid reader of Theosophy-connected writings, particularly in the Johnson-
influenced St. Louis lodge, an encounter with Islam would have been practi-
cally unavoidable, even if Islam was not particularly emphasized in the larger
movement.
It is undeniable that in the nineteenth century, the main currents in the
Theosophical Society did not show a significant interest in Islam. Although
some of its early influencers and members, such as Paschal Beverly Randolph,
Emma Hardinge Britten, and Henry Olcott, had discussed Arab and Muslim
magicians in some of their pre-Theosophical work, the Theosophical Society
proper was much more focused on other religions.42 This is true despite the
fact that (a) some of the Islamophilic figures who will be discussed in
Chapter 5—including Yarker, Rawson, and Sotheran—were early Theosophists
and (b) one of the reasons Blavatsky had been able to make a name for herself
in America in the 1870s was that she had claimed connections with Muslims.
Even by 1885, after the group’s founders had spent several years working with
Muslims in India,43 and their journal, the Theosophist, had run several pieces
by and about Muslims and Islam, Olcott could only claim “slight knowledge” of
the religion and felt he was not qualified to speak on it.44 Still, Islam was a pres-
ent factor, and would have been read about and discussed by any Theosophist
with an eager intellect.
Something that we might call ‘Islamophilic Theosophy,’ however, primarily
owes its birth to two men: Thomas M. Johnson and C.H.A. Bjerregaard.45 This

41 However, in one interview Webb says his interest was stimulated in around 1872 after he
read Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni; see Webb, Lectures on Islam, 31–32. Abd-Allah points out,
though, that this may have merely been when Webb’s interest in the general concept of
alternative spirituality was sparked; see Abd-Allah, A Muslim, 54.
42 In fact, it seems that, when the group started in 1875, the movement was more interested
in ancient Egypt. After 1878, the focus turned to Indian religions.
43 In addition, in August 1876, thirteen Arab Muslims were stranded in New York, and a
member of the Theosophical Society planned on taking them to North Africa and
bringing back an Arab or African magician, but the plans fell through. See Coleman,
“Spiritualism,” 298; Deveney, Astral, 60.
44 Henry S. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, Third Series (1883–87) (London: Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1904), 285. I would like to thank Kathy Gann for pointing out to me this
reference.
45 The following is based on my article “Magicians, Muslims, and Metaphysicians: The
American Esoteric Avant-Garde in Missouri, 1880–1889,” Theosophical History 17, no. 2
(2014): 48–70.
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 99

minor current within the American occult revival was largely initiated by
Johnson, whose tendency to promote what he thought were various examples
of Platonism soon led to his embracing of certain exponents of Islamic thought.
His interest in Islam-connected metaphysical philosophy—which was encour-
aged by Johnson’s friend, the Theosophist and eclectic physician, Alexander
Wilder—appeared in the very first volume of the Platonist, published from
February 1881 to January 1882. In that volume, Johnson ran a collection of selec-
tions from the twelfth-century Arab philosopher Ibn Badja’s The Proper
Government of Life for the Individual, translated by Wilder.46 Johnson also
started publishing in the first volume a new English version of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan,
the famous Sufi-inspired Islamic philosophical text that he believed reflected
Platonic thought.47 However, in volume one, Johnson ran just two parts of the
work, and only one in volume two48—suggesting that, although he knew cer-
tain Islamic ideas were valuable, he was still uncertain as to how they would be
received by his readers. Still, 1884’s volume two contained Richard Monckton
Milnes’ 1844 poem concerning the Sufi saint Rabia, reflecting a continuing
interest in the topic.49
In volume three, which appeared in 1887—a year during which Johnson,
despite having started separating himself from Theosophy, still had a big influ-
ence on St. Louis Theosophists—Islam was given a much more prominent role
in the journal. That year, Johnson ran five parts of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, and in June
commenced publishing parts of a translation, made by the Indian Muslim nov-
elist and scholar Ruswa, of the Desatir, which at the time was thought to be an
ancient Neoplatonic work by Persian prophets, but would later be discovered
to be inauthentic.50 Ruswa sent the journal, in addition, a brief, but useful
description of Sufism, which, Johnson commented, had recently become a

46 This ran in the January 1882 issue.

47 This version, which was a revision of Simon Ockley’s translation by one W.H. Steele, who
most likely was a Christian missionary in Indonesia, has never been published in another
form. Unfortunately, the Johnson papers that have been transcribed as of the summer of
2014 do not provide any information about how Johnson obtained this work.
48 Its appearances in the first two volumes of The Platonist were as follows: 1, nos. 5–7 (1881):
75–80; 1, nos. 11–12 (1882): 162–64; 2, no. 1 (1884): 3–4.
49 “Rabia,” Platonist 2, no. 3 (1884): 33; Richard Monckton Milnes, Palm Leaves (London:
Edward Moxon, 1844), 97–100. This was probably provided to Johnson by Wilder, who had
the poem published in another journal that year; see Alexander Wilder, “Rabia, the Sufi
Saint,” Religio-Philosophical Journal, September 20, 1884, 1.
50 I would like to thank Francesca Chubb-Confer for pointing out that the man I knew as
‘Hadi’ was in fact the same person as Ruswa.
100 chapter 3

subject of interest among readers of the Platonist.51 These pieces were topped
off in that volume with more Sufi poems as well as parts of a series of articles
on Sufism by C.H.A. Bjerregaard.
A Danish immigrant who had been a librarian at New York’s Astor Library
since 1879, Carl Hendrik Andreas Bjerregaard was a longtime student of mysti-
cism and oriental thought, having studied European scholarship on the topic
prior to his immigrating, and Transcendentalism and New Thought afterward.52
He had become affiliated with the New York Theosophical branch by early
188653 and began giving the group several lectures on various esoteric topics.
Bjerregaard also wrote for Judge’s new journal, The Path, a series of articles on
Sufism, which ran from May through October of 1886.54 The last of these articles
explained that his work on Sufism was to be continued in a forthcoming issue,
but, instead, his next pieces in the journal, which ran in early 1887, were on
‘elementary spirits.’ As it turns out, Bjerregaard, who joined the H.B. of L. in
November 1886,55 had started exchanging letters with Johnson,56 and the 1887
issues of The Platonist were where his work on Sufism picked up again.
Johnson’s extant letters do not tell us what was behind his increased interest
in Islam and Sufism in 1887. One possibility is the influence of the H.B. of L. It

51 [Mirza Mohamed Hadi Ruswa], “An Interesting Letter,” Platonist 3, no. 7 (1887): 391–92.
52 On Bjerregaard’s life, see C.H.A. Bjerregaard, “C.H.A. Bjerregaard’s Auto-Biography—
Dictated at Deer Isle, Maine. June-1912” (unpublished manuscript, June 1912), typescript
with manuscript notes.
53 This can be surmised from his being mentioned in Judge’s Path magazine. Bjerregaard,
however, did not officially join the Theosophical Society until October 1886. His role and
activities in the movement are still not fully known. In 1887, Henry Wagner, in a letter to
Johnson, said that Bjerregaard “heads a Theosophical Society organized under the Laws of
New York as its teacher lecturer Etc”—although I have found no sources to verify this (see
Wagner to Johnson, November 12, 1887, tmj Papers). Later in life, Bjerregaard explained
the following about his relationship with Theosophy: “I am not a theosophist and never
was and never shall be, if by that word is understood a follower of Blavatsky or any of the
various faiths which she originated. I will admit that she was a clever, intellectual woman
and I will give her full credit for her smart attempt to restore Oriental doctrines of various
kinds […] I stand in no personal relationship to her for or against or to any of her followers
[…] Theosophy has been the cause of the introduction of a great deal that is sound teach-
ing […] At the same time, […] much harm has come by it, not inherent in the doctrines,
but from the immature student’s relationship to it.” See Bjerregaard, “Auto-Biography,” 52.
54 See the 1886 and 1887 issues of The Path for his articles and mentions of his lectures.
55 Bjerregaard pledge, November 11, 1886, tmj Papers.
56 Unfortunately, none of Bjerregaard’s exchanges with Johnson are contained in the
Johnson papers; their relationship, however, is confirmed in Wagner’s previously cited
letter to Johnson.
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 101

needs to be pointed out, first, that in 1887, while many of the early Theosophists
who had joined up with the H.B. of L. had now, due to pressure from the
Theosophical Society leaders, abandoned the Hermetic Brotherhood, Johnson
had stayed behind. He was still the head of the American side of the movement,
serving as its president, and, as the letters to him indicate, he was still taking its
teachings seriously, probably being convinced that this was a possible path to
the divine insight he believed Platonism offered. Johnson’s favoring the H.B. of
L. over Theosophy in 1887 is reflected in the fact that the Platonist, more so in
that year than in any other, published a number of articles with occult themes,
several of which were written by H.B. of L. members. There were also more
articles that year that dealt with Asian-majority religions, and, again,
H.B. of L. members like C.H.A. Bjerregaard seem to have played a role in this.
It may not be a coincidence, then, that in 1887, Islam-connected notions
were getting more attention within both the Platonist and the H.B. of L. com-
munity itself. As will be recalled, the H.B. of L.’s early teachings were largely
based on Randolph’s sexual magic, which, as discussed in Chapter 2, Randolph
dubiously claimed to have come from the Islamic sectarian group known as
the Ansaireh. In early 1887, when the H.B. of L. reformed its secret teachings, it
produced a manuscript entitled “The Mysteries of Eros,” which was largely a
reworking of Randolph’s sexual magic as explained in his “Mysteries of Eulis”
and “The Ansairetic Mystery” teaching documents.57 In the “Mysteries of Eros,”
furthermore, the instructions for the H.B. of L.’s second of three degrees was
called the “Ansairetic Arcanum.” Also in September of that year, when Johnson
was performing the order’s highest ritual in an attempt to obtain his ultimate
initiation from the group’s unseen adepts, Johnson’s guru, Thomas Burgoyne,
advised him that the spirit Johnson would be communicating with would be
that of an Arab.58 Then in December, the group’s true head, Max Theon, moved
to Algeria, where he would eventually study under a local spiritual teacher and
start a new occult movement.59 According to historian Christian Chanel, this
move was precipitated by anti-Semitism in France, where Theon, who was
from a Jewish background, had been living. However, Theon had already been
living in France for some time, and he had already moved to southern France
in early 1887—which suggests that the move to Algeria was not a reaction to
certain anti-Semitic events, but part of a pre-planned journey south. The full

57 Godwin et al., Hermetic Brotherhood, 81, 213–79, esp. 234–60; Bowen, introduction to
Letters to the Sage vol. 1.
58 Burgoyne to Johnson, September 4, 1887, tmj Papers.
59 Christian Chanel, “De la ‘Fraternite Hermetique de Louxor’ au ‘Mouvement Cosmique’:
l’œuvre de Max Theon” (PhD diss., Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 1992), 337.
102 chapter 3

truth behind Theon’s motives, however, will most likely remain unknown, as
will that of the H.B. of L.’s influence on Johnson’s Islamophilia in 1887.
Another possible explanation for Johnson’s 1887 Islamophilic Theosophy
was that he was influenced by the same material that had supposedly sparked
Webb’s interest in Islam. In the fall of 1886, Johnson, like Webb, would have
read in the September issue of the Theosophist Henry Olcott’s introduction of
one Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.60 Ahmad, a Muslim scholar and mystic from the
north Indian city of Qadian, had sent Olcott two circulars concerning his new
book, Burahini-i-Ahmadia, which Olcott reprinted in his journal.61 In these cir-
culars, Ahmad claims he was inspired and commanded by God to help human-
kind achieve salvation by showing them that Islam is the only true religion
because it is the only religion through which a person can come to truly know
God. The Qurʾan, furthermore, is the only written true word of God. Islam,
then, is the only “Truth.” In order to spread this message, Ahmad says he was
inspired and directed by God to “compile” the Burahini-i-Ahmadia, which
would eventually be, he promises, a 4,800-page book, although only 592 pages
were being published at this time. This book contains, Ahmad asserts, two
approaches for showing that Islam is the only true religion. The first is to give a
set of logical argumentations for which he offers a reward of 10,000 rupees for
anyone who can refute them. The second approach is to present discussions of
various divine signs. These are the miracles performed by Muhammad, as
recorded in hadith; certain “marks” in the Qurʾan; and “marks” in the lives
of believing Muslims. To prove the reality of the “marks” in believers’ lives,
Ahmad says he will demonstrate miraculous powers—including evoking
spirits—in Qadian for those who study under him for a year and promise,
through a written contract, that they will convert after witnessing these
feats. He invites any and all to come, guaranteeing them free food and

60 H.S. Olcott, “Two Messengers of God,” Theosophist 7 (September 1886): 747–52. Singleton
notes in his English translation of an Urdu translation of Webb’s first letter to Ahmad, that
the name of the “newspaper” that Webb had first read Ahmad’s circular in was “unclear,
however it mentions a Mr. Scott” (see Yankee Muslim, 275). While the presence of the word
“newspaper” and a “Mr. Scott” do not seem to reflect the Theosophist, these more than
likely came from problems in the original translation into Urdu. However, even if there
was indeed a distinct newspaper connected to a “Mr. Scott” that ran Ahmad’s advertise-
ment, if Webb was reading even half as much Theosophical literature as he claimed he
was at the time, he would have definitely been reading the Theosophist and would have
come across the Ahmad information in that journal as well.
61 For an introduction to Ahmad and his Ahmadiyya movement’s doctrines, see Yohanan
Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Ahmadi Religious Thought and its Medieval
Background (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 103

­lodging as well as at least 2,400 rupees to those who do not observe any mirac-
ulous powers after one year.
Olcott explained to the Theosophist’s readers that he personally knew sev-
eral trustworthy people who had said they had observed Muslim ‘fakirs’ and
‘pirs’—terms generally reserved for Sufi masters—perform feats of magic simi-
lar to those claimed by Hindu yogis. As the scholar Carl Ernst has demon-
strated, some Indian Sufi groups were in fact highly influenced by yoga, and
sometimes even had Hindu followers.62 Olcott, however, indicated he was not
going to go to Qadian, primarily because he fundamentally rejected Ahmad’s
claim that only one religion and one religious text contained the true path to
God. He therefore would not be willing to adhere to Ahmad’s condition that
visitors who see miracles must convert to Islam.63
As for Johnson, again, we cannot say with certainty whether he was influ-
enced by this discussion of magic-connected Islam. Nevertheless, given his pre-
existing interest in Islam, Sufism, and yoga,64 Johnson probably at least found
the Muslim’s offer interesting. Indeed, the timing of the appearance of infor-
mation about Ghulam Ahmad in the ts relative to Johnson’s increased interest
in Islam and Sufism is quite suggestive. Learning about Ahmad’s activities may
have, therefore, been what motivated Johnson to create in March 1887 his own
Islam-connected practical occult organization, the ‘Sufic Circle.’65 On the sev-
enteenth of that month, Johnson, acting in his capacity as president of the H.B.
of L.’s American Central Council, sent out an “ordinance” to six leading
American members of the occult order, asking them to vote on the establish-
ment of this organization. As the ordinance explained, the objects of the circle
were “the systematic study of Sufism, the practical application and realization
of its teachings, and the dissemination of its precepts and doctrines.”66 No one,
furthermore, was required to convert to Islam—the ideas and practices of
Sufism were to be treated in the same ‘scientific,’ experimental way that spiritu-
alism and other practical occult teachings were treated in this community.
Indeed, the Sufic Circle’s organization was not based on any one traditional
Sufi order, but was instead the product of Johnson’s largely book-based knowl-

62 Ernst has published several essays on the subject, but a good introductory piece is
“Situating Sufism and Yoga,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15, no. 1 (2005): 15–43.
63 Olcott, “Two Messengers,” 749, 752.
64 Yoga was promoted by Theosophists in the early 1880s and the H.B. of L. in 1885; see the
tmj Papers.
65 Letter, Johnson to W.W. Allen, March 17, 1887, Jonathan Stickney McDonald Papers, owned
by Esther Lloyd-Jones; microfilmed by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution, reel 1358.
66 Ibid.
104 chapter 3

edge of Sufism, Western esotericism, and American voluntary associations. The

Circle’s “principle officers” were to be master, guide, and secretary, and these
officers would be included in the group’s seven-member Executive Council,
which would possess the power to pass rules and bylaws. The master—whose
job entailed appointing the six other officers,67 among other things, presum-
ably—was an ex officio position that was to go to whomever was the current
president of the H.B. of L.’s American Central Council. At the time of the
appearance of Johnson’s ordinance, Johnson himself was the Central Council
president, as he had been since 1885 and probably expected to continue to be
for several more years.
Ostensibly, Johnson, who sometimes in his ordinance referred to the circle
as “section” and “chapter,” was intending to make the group merely a branch
of the American H.B. of L. However, one of the six appointed officers,
J.S. McDonald, suspected that Johnson may have ultimately desired for the
Sufic Circle to become an independent “school of [Black] Magic, so as to have
an inside wheel with himself at the head.”68 At some point soon after receiving
the letter, then, McDonald rejected supporting the Sufic Circle as well as all
other H.B. of L. activities, and attempted to encourage others to do the same.
McDonald seems to have largely failed in this effort, but it appears that, if the
group did not die off immediately, it did not have a particularly long lifespan.
We have no other information about Johnson’s Sufic Circle in the 1880s—
although, as we will see in Chapter 6, in the late 1890s and early 1900s Johnson
was connected to a similar group that was functioning under the name of
Order of Sufis. At that time, Johnson, Bjerregaard, and one of the other 1887
Sufic Circle officers, S.C. Gould, were its only confirmed members.
Given the early dissension in the Sufic Circle, combined with the fact that
there is almost no additional information about its activities, it is difficult to
even speculate about the possible impact of Johnson’s Sufic Circle on the
occult revival community, or even on other H.B. of L. or ts members.
Nevertheless, the creation of this Sufic Circle was important for multiple rea-
sons. From a larger historical perspective, it is notable as being perhaps the
earliest confirmed Sufi organization to be established in the modern West as
well as the first known Western attempt to create a Sufi organization that did
not require conversion to Islam. In the twentieth century, such ‘New Age’ or
‘pseudo-Sufi’ groups, as they have been pejoratively branded, would be quite

67 Ibid. The officers were as follows: Thomas Johnson, W.W. Allen, J.S. McDonald,
W.S. Mellen, S.C. Gould, Henry Wagner, and W.J.C. Kenyon. For more information on these
individuals, see Bowen and Johnson, Letters to the Sage.
68 Ibid.
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 105

popular among white Americans. Fascinatingly, as Chapter 7 demonstrates,

the single most influential of these movements—that of Inayat Khan—
possessed, early on in its development, direct links with Johnson’s Islamophilic
community. There is a possibility, then, that the Sufic Circle/Order of Sufis was
the primary inspiration behind Khan’s decision to not require his followers to
become Muslims. Because there are still numerous followers of Khan in the
twenty-first-century United States, this connection would represent the oldest
genealogical tree of organized Sufi movements on American soil. Furthermore,
by connecting Khan’s movement to Johnson’s Sufic Circle and thus the
American occult revival, we can better understand the growth and popularity
of non-Islamic Sufism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The fact that Johnson created the Sufic Circle is also important because it
confirms the existence of a somewhat cohesive current of Theosophic
Islamophilia in the 1880s, a current that produced a concentrated interest in
Islam among at least a small group of Theosophists and H.B. of L. members.
What is particularly noteworthy about this current, in addition, is that during
the 1880s there was almost no trace of a Masonic influence on it. Neither
Johnson nor Bjerregaard were Masons, and though they had contact with
Masons who were connected with both Islamophilic Masonry and Theosophy,
that contact appears to have been minimal and to have had little effect on their
ideas about Islam. Although it may be tempting to think that, because
Islamophilic Masons and Islamophilic Theosophists shared an interest in eso-
teric elements of Islam, that the two currents influenced each other a great deal,
there is no evidence that they had any significant contact prior to 1893, several
years after the birth of Islamophilic Theosophy. Islamophilic Theosophy seems
to have largely been a force of its own—a fact that is important to clarify if we
are trying to accurately identify possible sources of Webb’s Islamic movement.
Still, despite all of the strong circumstantial evidence, Webb cannot be
definitively tied to Johnson, Bjerregaard, or the Sufic Circle. No known docu-
ments connected to either man discuss a personal relationship with Webb,
and in none of Webb’s known writings are their names or influence ever men-
tioned. While this is not at all proof that Webb did not know them—­especially
since (a) Johnson’s correspondence with Bjerregaard and others have not yet
been found, (b) Webb was notably vague about his time studying religion
in St. Louis, and (c) Webb would later have a verifiable Islam-based connec-
tion with Sufic Circle member S.C. Gould—it certainly leaves room for
questions.
Webb can be linked, nevertheless, to Ahmad and his promotional efforts in
the Theosophist. By December 1886, Webb had sent a reply to Ahmad concern-
ing his circulars, saying:
106 chapter 3

I found myself interested in this movement. I have studied quite a bit

about Buddhism, Brahmanism and also about Confucianism and
Zoroastrianism, but not as much about Prophet Muhammad. […] I am
basically in search of the Truth and feel sincere toward you.69

Ahmad replied in mid-December, essentially repeating the ideas from his cir-
culars.70 Webb responded this time by explaining that he could not afford to
take care of his family if he went to India, but offered to spread “the truth” in
America, such as by getting the circulars printed in “leading American
newspapers”71—a feat he partly accomplished via the New York Tribune, which
Webb had publish one of Ahmad’s circulars in late March.72 He admitted,
though, that he still did not know much about Islam, but believed Ahmad to be
a follower of Muhammad’s “esoteric teachings”—in other words, the ‘Wisdom
Religion,’ which Webb believed underlay all religions. Webb also told Ahmad
that he was

seeking for the truth [and was] ready and eager to embrace it wherever I
can find it. If you can lead me into its blessed light you will find me not
only a willing pupil but an anxious one.73

Ahmad, in his last preserved letter to Webb, replied that he desired to spread
Islam in the West and that he would in five months send Webb an outline of
the Qurʾan.74
Webb had thus discovered a new outlet for his ambitions. The way Webb
had come to understand Islam through Ahmad and Theosophist/Johnson-
connected texts (and possibly Johnson’s Sufic Circle) allowed for the accep-
tance of the exciting and dramatic world of spiritualism and practical occultism
as legitimate parts of Islam, and it also incorporated the highly intellectual
study of comparative religion and philosophy. All of these were features that
appealed to Webb. Islam, furthermore, had no major representatives in the
us—or at least no known white Americans. And its exclusive claim—in its
exoteric form—to be the sole possessor of the Truth meant that if Webb could

69 Singleton, Yankee Muslim, 275.

70 Ahmad’s response can largely be inferred from Webb’s second letter; see Singleton, Yankee
Muslim, 276–78.
71 Singleton, Yankee Muslim, 276–77.
72 See “Religious Jottings,” New York Tribune, March 27, 1887, 11.
73 Singleton, Yankee Muslim, 277.
74 Singleton, Yankee Muslim, 278.
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 107

become sincerely convinced of the truth of Islam and obtain advanced teach-
ings from an Eastern teacher, like Theosophy’s founders had done, he could
become the religion’s major representative in the country.
Webb, however, did not immediately convert to Islam. On March 19, he
wrote a letter to the prominent Rochester Theosophist Josephine Cables in
which he expressed his belief, which he said he had come to realize “nearly two
years ago,” that while

all the great religious teachers taught the same truth […] in keeping with
the fitness of things […] a native of Asia should be a Buddhist or a
Mohammedan [… and] an American should be a Christian.75

In fact, he continued,

if American Theosophists would teach more Christianity and less of

Buddhism, much more good would be accomplished. […] Our St. Louis
branch has gone to pieces and its wreck I attribute to too much
Orientalism and desire for phenomena and too little Christianity and
brotherly love.76

Written just weeks after his last correspondence with Ahmad, but before Webb
could have learned about the Sufic Circle,77 the letter reveals Webb’s conflict-
ing feelings on conversion, feelings that were understandable given that there
still had never been a single prominent Muslim convert in the us. Converting
to Islam would be a much riskier venture than jewelling or managing plays.
It seems, though, that Webb could not resist the call. One person who appar-
ently knew Webb would later recall that it was around the springtime of 1887
that Webb had started corresponding with “noted” Muslims, both abroad and
in the us, and he speculated that it was these communications that inspired
Webb to try to find a way to go to the East .78 Webb himself would later at least

75 Alex. R. Webb, “A Letter from a Friend,” Occult Word 3, nos. 3&4 (1887): 13.
76 On the schism in St. Louis Theosophy, see Bowen, introduction to Letters to the Sage.
77 The Sufic Circle ordinance was originally sent out by Johnson on March 17, and it was to
be forwarded by each of the appointed officers of the group to the officer who was listed
next on the officer list that was presented in the ordinance. It would have been highly
unlikely, then, for anyone but the seven officers to know about the circle prior to April.
78 H.R.W., “Republic Reviews.” Whom this ‘H.R.W.’ was cannot be verified, but it was possibly
a nephew of Webb, or some other relation, as this person shared Webb’s brother and
Unionville resident Herbert’s first and last initials. It also is unclear if the mention of
“noted” Muslims was simply a reference to Ahmad.
108 chapter 3

admit that he desired to go East to study, if not Islam specifically, “Oriental

religions and spiritual philosophies.”79 He, therefore, asked his friends to help
him obtain an American consul position that was opening up in Manila. The
Philippines was not a Muslim-majority country, but it was much closer to
Ahmad’s home in India than the us, and Webb could at least be among Asians
there. The job offer finally came and Webb accepted it in September 1887—
and he immediately put in a request to be transferred to India if an opening
ever arose.80 On November 1, 1887, Webb and his family left St. Louis and began
their journey to the orient.

Conversion and Obtaining a Mission

It is a strange fact that in all of Webb’s recollections of his spiritual exploration

and conversion this skilled reporter was frequently vague and offered contra-
dictory details, particularly when it came to the dates of these important turn-
ing points in his life. He sometimes, for example, claimed that his interest in
Islam was first sparked when he read Bulwer-Lytton’s Rosicrucian-themed
Zanoni in around 1872.81 In another instance Webb said that it was only after a
year of being in Manila, when he came into the possession of various “books
and documents” by Muslim authors, that he first felt a “most intense interest in
the Islamic system.”82 Some reports, however, date his conversion to earlier in
1888,83 one puts it in September 1892,84 and Webb once attributed Ahmad’s
influence as the primary cause of his conversion.85 Nevertheless, we do know
he had not converted by March 19, 1887, when he sent his letter to Cables
emphasizing his Christian identity. Another letter of Webb’s—this one written
to his friend Eugene Field in June 1892—tells us that his conversion occurred

79 Grebsonal, “The Mohammedan Propagandist.”

80 Singleton, introduction, 25.
81 Webb, Lectures on Islam, 31–32. Abd-Allah points out, though, that this may have merely
been when Webb’s interest in alternative spirituality was sparked; see Abd-Allah, A
Muslim, 54.
82 Grebsonal, “The Mohammedan Propagandist.”
83 Abd-Allah, A Muslim, 66.
84 Webb said on September 30, 1892 he was “received in the Moslem fraternity in Rangoon,
Burma […] and renamed Mohammed Webb”; see John W. Leonard, ed., Who’s Who in New
York City and State: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporaries (New York: L.R. Hamersly
Co., 1909), 4: 1352.
85 Singleton, introduction, 24.
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 109

sometime between late 1888 and June 1889.86 Ignoring the improvable possi-
bility that Webb was hiding his true motives and the events surrounding his
conversion, his failure to give a specific date was probably in large part due to
his not performing an official conversion ceremony, which can help strengthen
one’s memory about the date. It also could reflect the fact that as he read more,
he probably only increasingly felt like he was a Muslim, and later could not
pinpoint exactly when these feelings started to occur, or what date would be
most appropriate for marking his conversion. From the perspective of the his-
torian, the specific date matters little—it is mere trivia. One wishes, though,
that Webb had left a better record of his spiritual transformation.
Webb still discussed his conversion, of course, leaving for history at least his
more public—or ‘exoteric’—reasons for exclusively choosing Islam. Ghulam
Ahmad is, interestingly, almost never brought up in these discussions. When
Webb went to India in 1892, he learned that most Muslims looked down on and
rejected Ahmad’s claims as heretical, so he steered clear of publicly mention-
ing him for several years; he did not visit Qadian; and he never officially joined
Ahmad’s ‘Ahmadi’ movement.87 Instead, Webb said, after reading a great deal
about Islam and comparing it with what he knew about the world’s many other
religions and philosophies, he felt that he had come to understand that Islam
was the best religion and so, rationally, he chose to adhere to it. If Webb had
any other motives or feelings that influenced his conversion, he did not reveal
them.
Webb offered a public explanation for his conclusions about the supremacy
of Islam when compared with other religions. First of all, according to Webb,
only Islam fully answered the “mysteries of life and death.”88 Webb attempted
to clarify this cryptic expression by explaining that to him only Islam could
satisfactorily explain the difference between “a live man and a dead one.”89
Webb claimed that the solution Islam offered for his spiritualism-influenced
concern was that the soul is immortal

and that the conditions of the life beyond the grave were regulated by the
thoughts, deeds and acts of the earth life; that man was, in a sense, his

86 In a June 21, 1892 letter to Eugene Field, Webb states: “I have been a Moslem for over three
years”; see Eugene Field Correspondence, Box 1 Folder 3, University of Chicago Library.
For other estimates of the date of his conversion, see Abd-Allah, A Muslim, 66.
87 Singleton, introduction, 24.
88 Webb, Islam in America, 13.
89 Webb, Lectures on Islam, 2.
110 chapter 3

own savior and redeemer, and that the intercession of anyone between
him and his God could be of no benefit to him.90

Webb of course knew that these ideas were already common in Idealism-
influenced movements, such as Theosophy, Randolph’s teachings, the H.B. of L.,
New Thought, and perhaps even Johnson’s Sufic Circle. Webb’s Islam, in fact,
was similar to these movements in other ways as well. For him, Islam was ratio-
nal and ‘scientific’; it contained the timeless wisdom of the ages; and it offered
an effective system of “soul-development” for reaching the true peak of spiritual
understanding.91 Indeed, Webb explicitly and publicly asserted that, at its core,
Islam was “almost identical” with Theosophy.92 He even came up with a
Theosophy- and New Thought-linked term to describe this Theosophy-like
aspect of Islam: “esoteric Mohammedanism.”93 In 1883, the Theosophist Alfred
P. Sinnett published the extremely popular Esoteric Buddhism, a work that, in a
similar fashion to what Blavatsky had already done and what Webb would do
later, claimed that the true, inner core of Buddhism—its ‘esoteric’ teachings—
was actually essentially the same as Theosophy’s, and only its ‘exoteric’ teach-
ings differed. Then, in 1886, New Thought writer and reader of works on oriental
religions, Warren Felt Evans, did a similar thing with Christianity, saying in his
Esoteric Christianity and Mental Therapeutics that Christianity’s real teachings
were identical with New Thought. Webb, if not building directly off of Sinnett
and Evans, was clearly coming from a similar perspective.
For Webb, what distinguished Islam from, and made it superior to, all of these
other movements was its ‘practical,’ or ‘exoteric,’ aspects.94 Apparently his study
of the religion had shown Webb that his March 1887 critique that each of the
world’s races had its own proper religion was superseded by the fact that, accord-
ing to Webb, only Islam had a religious “soul-development” system that was
“applicable to all classes of humanity.”95 Or, stated slightly differently, Islam’s

chief beauty […] is its perfect adaptability to the spiritual needs of all
classes of humanity, from the humblest laborer to the most advanced
thinker and man of letters.96

90 Webb, Islam in America, 14.

91 Webb, Islam in America, 24.
92 “Muhammed Webb’s Mission,” New York Times, February 25, 1893.
93 Ibid.
94 Ibid.
95 Webb, Islam in America, 24.
96 Webb, Islam in America, 28.
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 111

Webb argued that the “universal brotherhood” for which Theosophy strove
could not reach the “common folk” through Theosophy’s teachings, particu-
larly after the group had moved away from offering practical instructions and
towards an emphasis on reading of what were often very dense philosophical
and religious texts.97
It is likely that Webb’s view of Islam’s unique ability to reach all members of
society had been influenced by a brief discussion of the religion that appeared
in an article in the April 1888 issue of the Theosophical journal Lucifer. This
article presents an extended quote from an 1887 paper by Canon Isaac Taylor, a
British divine who was attempting to explain Islam’s much greater success in
converting Africans than that had by Christianity. In the Lucifer excerpt, Taylor,
whose views had been influenced by the writings of Bosworth Smith, Edward
Blyden, and Joseph Thomson, argues that

The faith of Islam is spreading over Africa with giant strides. …Christianity
is receding before Islam, while attempts to proselytise Mohammedans are
notoriously unsuccessful. We not only fail to gain ground, but even fail to
hold our own. …An African tribe once converted to Islam never returns to
Paganism, and never embraces Christianity. …When Mohammedanism is
embraced by a negro tribe devil-worship, cannibalism, human sacrifice,
witchcraft, and infanticide disappear. Filth is replaced by cleanliness, and
they acquire personal dignity and self-respect. Hospitality becomes a reli-
gious duty, drunkenness rare, gambling is forbidden. A feeling of human-
ity, benevolence, and brotherhood is inculcated. …The strictly-regulated
polygamy of Moslem lands is infinitely less degrading to women and less
injurious to men than the promiscuous polyandry which is the curse of
Christian cities, and which is absolutely unknown in Islam. The polyan-
drous English are not entitled to cast stones at polygamous Moslems. …
Islam, above all, is the most powerful total abstinence society in the world;
whereas the extension of European trade means the extension of drunk-
enness and vice and the degradation of the people. Islam introduces a
knowledge of reading and writing, decent clothes, personal cleanliness,
and self-respect. …How little have we to show for the vast sums of money
and precious lives lavished upon Africa! Christian converts are reckoned
by thousands; Moslem converts by millions…98

97 Alexander Russell Webb, “Islam and Theosophy,” Lucifer 10, no. 59 (July 1892): 425.
98 Canon Isaac Taylor, “Christianity and Mohammedanism” quoted in “Christian Lectures
on Buddhism, and Plain Facts about the Same, by Buddhists,” Lucifer 2, no. 8 (April 1888):
142n. The ellipses are those used in the excerpt as it appeared in Lucifer.
112 chapter 3

Webb undoubtedly found Islam’s ability to both convert and (what he would
have understood as) ‘civilize’ Africans’ society and religiosity—making
these, in the process, fertile grounds for spiritualism- and Theosophy-like
­esotericism—as proof of the religion’s universal usefulness and applicability.
In 1892, Webb wrote his own article for Lucifer in which he asserted, quoting
Syed Ameer Ali’s The Spirit of Islam (1891), that “common” people need more
than “mere philosophy; they require practical rules and positive directions for
their daily life,”99 and that only Islam and the Qurʾan adequately offer this. In
1893, Webb further explained—using concepts reminiscent of Taylor—that
Islam’s prescriptions for belief in one God, prayer, cleanliness, fasting, alms-
giving, and pilgrimage all were ingeniously-inspired practices that would
enable anyone, from any social position, to achieve a true knowledge of God.
Islam, furthermore, emphasized the concept of fraternity, which Webb innova-
tively claimed was one of the five pillars of Islam.100 So, because, at a ‘practical’
level, its instructions reached all classes of people, and because fraternity was
one of its core principles, Islam was the religion that could best achieve the
‘universal brotherhood’ that Theosophists promoted; a true Theosophist, then,
Webb insisted, would have to be a follower of Islam.101
Reaching these intellectual conclusions was the only motive Webb publicly
admitted to having caused his conversion. However, Webb seems to have
intentionally framed his ideas in the most appealing way possible, and they
appear to have not entirely reflected his true feelings and experiences. For
instance, later he would insist that he was not personally interested in helping
the ‘common folk’ learn about Islam; and in fact he had a rather low opinion of
the uneducated and non-whites.102 Furthermore, in his speeches, writings, and
interviews, he never offered a picture of himself in which he was constantly
breaking from the practices and ideas of the people around him in order to
blaze his own creative, entrepreneurial trail. His conversion narratives almost
always presented him as a highly rational person who had been dissatisfied
with Christianity since a young age, but had a spiritual thirst that was only
quenched when he, almost independently, discovered Islam after years of

99 Webb, “Islam and Theosophy,” 425.

100 Webb, Islam in America, 33.
101 Webb, “Islam and Theosophy,” 421.
102 Singleton, introduction, 47. Also, Webb emphasized the idea that Islam should be
approached intellectually; he therefore looked down on the illiterate, lower-classes,
which he believed should raise themselves through philosophical study. See Muhammad
Webb, “Muhammadan Society and its Pressing Needs,” Moslem Chronicle and the
Muhammadan Observer, March 29, 1902, 170.
The Makings Of A Muslim Missionary 113

study. Based on what we know about Webb’s pre-Islamic life, this narrative,
while not a lie per se, distorts because it does not reflect either the tremendous
importance of the occult revival currents with which he was connected or the
ambitiousness and strong desire to break free from convention that seem to
have been fundamental to Webb’s character.
Indeed, it appears that it was Webb’s ambition—and not his reflective,
intellectual side—that motivated him to jump at the first opportunity he was
given to lead an Islamic mission when he had only been a Muslim for three
years and had met in person only a handful of other Muslims. In 1889, while in
Manila, Webb encountered a Muslim businessman from Bombay who put the
convert in touch with an Indian named Budruddin Abdallah Kur. The two
commenced a correspondence, mostly concerning the Qurʾan, and Kur pub-
lished several of Webb’s letters in Bombay newspapers. These published letters
were read by a wealthy Meccan merchant living in India, Hajee Abdulla Arab,
who had already been excited to learn the news that England had a Muslim
conversion movement in Liverpool (see Chapter 4). Arab sent a letter off to
Webb proposing an Islamic mission to the us and in March 1892 he and another
Muslim visited Webb to seal the deal. The three came up with a written con-
tract that included discussions of monies to be paid to both Webb and the
missionary effort itself. To help subsidize the movement, Webb appealed to the
Ottoman Sultan103 and he agreed to do a major fundraising tour with Arab and
his associate to India, Egypt, Turkey, and Liverpool. Webb resigned from his
consular post the following September and set out on his three-month tour.
Since the planned Egypt and Turkey visits were soon abandoned and there was
only a short stop in Liverpool, Webb’s journey ended up being mostly spent in
India, where Webb visited numerous Muslim communities and leaders and
briefly met with the Theosophical heads.104
Now armed with a symbolic ‘trip to the East’; connections with non-white
Muslims who would legitimize his oriental religious knowledge in the eyes of
Americans; ties with many American liberal and occult revival-linked move-
ments that might support an Islamic organization; experience as a publisher
and promoter; and having witnessed firsthand how Theosophy and possibly
Sufism were able to spread in America in the 1880s, Webb must have felt confi-
dent that he could lead a successful Islamic movement in the us. In late

103 Emrah Şahin, “Sultan’s America: Lessons from Ottoman Encounters with the United
States,” Journal of American Studies of Turkey 39 (2014): 61–62.
104 Webb’s personal journal from the tour was edited by Singleton for the book Yankee
Muslim.
114 chapter 3

December, he commenced his return journey, arriving in New York City on

February 16, 1893. Webb was ready to begin his mission.
There was, however, one important additional factor that would be invalu-
able for whatever success Webb would achieve with this mission. This was
another occult revival-connected current, but one that developed somewhat
independently of Theosophy and, the evidence suggests, did not have an influ-
ence on Webb in the 1880s. This current was Islamophilic Masonry, and in
order to understand how and why it played a major role in Webb’s movement,
it will be necessary to pause for a chapter to examine its historical and psycho-
logical roots, its leading figures, and its organizational development.
 chapter 4

Islamophilic Masonry

In the American occult revival there were two main reterritorializing currents
of Islamophilia. One was that of the Theosophists, many of whom, like Thomas
M. Johnson, had been influenced by the teachings of the H.B. of L. and Paschal
Beverly Randolph. Alexander Webb came into direct with this Islamophilic
Theosophy at least two years prior to his conversion, and, as we have seen,
there is a good possibility that his conversion was deeply influenced by it. The
other form of occult revival Islamophilia was that of British and American
Masons. Starting in the 1870s, a number of Islamophilic Masonic groups were
formed in the us and England. Although there were several ties between these
Masonic groups and Theosophists, the evidence shows that the two Islamophilic
currents were for the most part distinct and had little influence on each other
through the 1880s. In fact, it seems that they only strongly came together in
1893, when Alexander Webb formed his Islamic organization and gained sig-
nificant support from several influential Islamophilic Masons. In making this
union, American conversion to Islam became connected to many elements of
the Anglophone occult revival that had not previously influenced Webb, and
therefore added several new layers to the early white American Muslims’
identities and social networks. Understanding the history of Anglophone
Islamophilic Masonry—and the reasons it would be drawn to Webb’s
movement—is therefore important for gaining a solid grasp of America’s first
Muslim convert community.

Antecedents

By the start of the nineteenth century—besides the occasional pronounce-

ments that Freemasonry was open to members of all religions, including
Muslims—Freemasonry had shown almost no interest in Islam.1 And, for the
most part, this general disinterest would remain true until the 1860s, even

1 There were some exceptions, of course. For instance, as Susan Nance has pointed out, in 1788,
a Pennsylvania Masonic group translated Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson’s Oriental Antiquities
and General View of the Othoman [Ottoman] Customs, Laws, and Ceremonies. On the cover of
their edition, they indicated that the book discussed “Oriental Freemasons,” although there
were no explicit references to any Freemasons within the book. Presumably, the Philadelphia

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_006

116 chapter 4

despite a very minor Masonic interest in Sufism2 as well as the appearance of

theories that posited an Islamic influence on the development of Freemasonry.
The renowned German orientalist and fan of Goethe, Joseph von Hammer-
Purgstall, for instance, asserted that Freemasonry had obtained its doctrines
and practices from the Isma‘ili Assassins, an idea that gained a little traction
among readers of esoteric and religious history works, particularly after it was
picked up by Godfrey Higgins.3 Among some Freemasons in Spain, meanwhile,
it apparently became common knowledge that the larger Muslim community
had, during Europe’s Dark Ages, maintained the ancient secrets of Freemasonry
and transported them to North Africa and Spain.4 These interests and theories,
however, neither gained wide currency nor directly led to the development of
Islam-focused Masonic organizations. In fact, Islamophilic Masonic groups
would not emerge until three key developments in the 1860s finally brought
Islam and Muslims to the attention of mainstream Freemasons in both Europe
and the United States, thereby legitimizing popular Masonic interest in Islam.
The first of these was the visit to French Masonic lodges by Abd el-Kader in
1865.5 In the 1830s and early 1840s, the Muslim scholar and Sufi led a successful
resistance movement against the French in Algeria. Although Abd el-Kader
was ultimately defeated and exiled by 1847, for the rest of his life he was highly

lodge believed that Sufis, who were discussed by d’Ohsson, were the “Oriental Freemasons.”
This, then, is the earliest known example of Westerners identifying Sufis as Masons.
2 In addition to d’Ohsson’s work discussed in the previous note, in 1812, an article describing
the “Philosophy of the Soufies” ran in two American Masonic journals, The Freemason’s
Magazine and General Miscellany and the American Masonic Register, and Ladies and
Gentlemen’s Magazine. This article, however, was apparently inspired not by a belief in a his-
torical link between Sufism and Masonry, but by the 1811 publication of Chardin and Langles’
popular travel book Voyages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse et Autres Lieux de L’Orient.
3 Joseph von Hammer, Die Geschichte der Assassinen aus Morgenländischen Quellen (Stuttgart
and Tübingen, 1818); Godfrey Higgins, The Celtic Druids (London: Rowland Hunter, 1829),
264–65; Higgins, Anacalypsis, An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of Saitic Isis; or, An Inquiry into
the Origins of Languages, Nations, and Religions, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Rees, Orme,
Brown, Green, and Longman, 1833–1836), 1:688–723. For the genealogy of this and related
theories, see Deveney’s Paschal, 213–14.
4 See the 1858 speech of F.G. Irwin, an English fringe Freemason who had, while stationed in
Gibraltar, been a member of a lodge there; in Charles Wallis-Newport, “From County Armagh
to the Green Hills of Somerset: The Career of Major Francis George Irwin; (1828–1893),” Ars
Quatuor Coronatorum 114 (2001): 167.
5 The best English-language source on Abd el-Kader’s Masonic ties remains Rob Morris’
Freemasonry in the Holy Land, which will be discussed below. French-language scholarship
on Abd el-Kader, however, provides much more information; cf., e.g., Smaïl Aouli, Ramdane
Redjala, and Philippe Zoummeroff, Abd el-Kader ([Paris]: Fayard, 1994), 492–512 and 561–83.
Islamophilic Masonry 117

respected, especially by North Africans and Europeans who saw him as a lib-
erator. In 1860, members of the French Masonic lodge Henry iv, who had great
respect for both Abd el-Kader’s resistance activities and his Sufi-based tolerant
views of religion, began corresponding with him, and invited him to join their
lodge. In 1864, Abd el-Kader became a Freemason for the first time when he
joined the Lodge of the Pyramids in Egypt and was subsequently initiated by
the Henry iv lodge. Then, in 1865, at the invitation of Napoleon iii, Abd
el-Kader visited Paris, where a ceremony was held for him by the Henry iv
lodge. Whatever the degree of interest that Abd el-Kader personally had in
these Masonic activities, this was a notable event, and news of its occurrence
made it to the Masonic press in Europe and America.6
The second development had its roots in 1855 when rumors started circulat-
ing in English and American Masonic journals that claimed that Sufism, par-
ticularly in Turkey, was actually an Islamic form of Masonry.7 Although this
story had been present since the late 1700s,8 it only achieved wide circulation
in the 1850s, when it was popularized by Richard Francis Burton. The British
explorer and occultist, who famously disguised himself so that he could take
the hajj in 1853, detailed both his adventure and his claims about Sufis as
Masons in his 1855 A Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and
Meccah. Though this rumor was largely put to rest in the winter of 1856–57 in a
widely-reprinted letter written by a newspaper correspondent in the Levant, it
had still, because of Burton’s fame, piqued the interest of some.9 The seeds
were therefore sown for John Porter Brown. In 1868, Brown, an American
Mason who had lived in Istanbul since the 1830s, published a highly learned
book about Sufism in which he revealed that some Turkish Sufis—particularly
the Bektashis—did in fact believe that their religious practices were Masonic.10
Thereafter, Masonic interest in Sufism and Islam began growing even more.

6 See, for instance, the “Masonic Chit-Chat” articles in Freemasons’ Monthly Magazine in
October and November 1865.
7 See, for example, “Freemasonry in Turkey,” Freemasons’ Monthly Magazine 14, no. 8 (June
1855): 252. As noted above, this claim had been made since as early as the late eighteenth
century—what we see in the 1850s is a revival of the old rumor.
8 See note 1 above.
9 This letter, which frequently appeared under the headline “Freemasonry in Turkey,” origi-
nally ran in the New York Tribune and appeared in the Masonic journals Ashlar 2, no. 4
(1856): 156–59; American Freemason 5, no. 3 (1856): 24, and Freemasons’ Monthly Magazine
16, no. 3 (1857): 89–91.
10 John Porter Brown, The Dervishes; or, Oriental Spiritualism (London, 1868). For a more
recent study of the connections between Freemasonry and Sufism, particularly in Turkey,
118 chapter 4

These two series of events, however, would not have had the impact that
they did—at least in the us—without a third development: the Holy Land pro-
motional activities of Rob Morris. Rob Morris was an American school teacher
and principal who desired to have a career as an intellectual, and he discovered
that the Masonic community was a vast, and relatively reliable, network of
consumers of certain intellectual ideas.11 Although he became best known for
his Masonic poetry, in the 1860s and 1870s he also capitalized on the growing
interest in biblical archeology by promoting the investigation into Masonry’s
supposed origins in the Levant. To this end, in the 1860s he established a para-
Masonic group known as the Oriental Order of the Palm and Shell, which
developed new Masonic rituals to incorporate findings from the Levant that
gave insight into what were thought to be the ancient Masonic rituals there.12
He also began raising contributions, which would eventually total nine thou-
sand dollars, for his own exploration of the region—and in the spring of 1868
he set off on a seven-month tour of the Holy Land.13 There he discovered not
only what he considered evidence of early Masonry, but also that many
Muslims had started becoming Masons. This discovery led Morris to the con-
clusion that Islam was a religion very much in line with the democratic, ratio-
nalistic, universal religion that Masonry idealized. He learned about the recent
involvement with French Masonry of prominent Muslims, such as Abd
el-Kader and Mohammed Raschid—both of whom he apparently met—and
he even came into contact with John Porter Brown, learning more about his
background and the Masonic activities in Turkey. Upon Morris’ return to the
us, he immediately began a lecture tour, visiting over six hundred Masonic
lodges in two-and-a-half years as he raised funds to publish a book about his
journey.14 At these lectures, which were often covered in the Masonic press, he
made sure to praise Abd el-Kader and give his listeners extensive details about
“Oriental Masonry.”15 In 1872, Morris’ Freemasonry in the Holy Land was finally

see Thierry Zarcone, Mystiques, Philosophes et Francs-Macons en Islam (Paris: Institut

Francais d’Etudes Anatoliennes d’Istanbul, 1993).
11 On Morris, see Nance, How, 82–91.
12 A.G. Mackey, Robert Ingham Clegg, and H.L. Haywood, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, vol. 2
(Chicago: The Masonic History Co., 1946), 749.
13 See Rob Morris, Freemasonry in the Holy Land. Or, Embracing Notes Made During a Series
of Masonic Researches, in 1868, in Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Europe, and the
Results of Much Correspondence with Freemasons in those Countries (New York, 1872).
14 Morris, Freemasonry, 4.
15 See, e.g., “A Word from the Holy Land,” Flag of Our Union 23, no. 50 (December 12, 1868):
797; “Masonic Literature,” Freemason, April 17, 1869, 4.
Islamophilic Masonry 119

published and, subsequently, was for many years regarded as the seminal book
on the subject.
Generally speaking, Masonry, like Idealism, Unitarianism, and spiritual-
ism, had been significantly influenced by the huge influx of knowledge of the
oriental world, which appealed to Masons’ belief that their teachings had
Eastern origins. As the number of literate Masons increased in the nineteenth
century, more and more Masons showed an interest in oriental connections
with the Craft.16 It is understandable, then, that the Masonic interest in
Muslims could eventually lead to the creation of actual Islam-themed
Masonic organizations—and that is precisely what happened. The begin-
nings of two organizations, the American Ancient Arabic Nobles of the Mystic
Shrine (the Shriners) and the British Order of Ishmael, had appeared by 1872,
and their official origin stories and doctrines would include obvious connec-
tions with the Masonic interest in Islam from the previous decade.

The American Groups: The Shriners and the Sheiks of the Desert

The Islamophilic group to claim the oldest Western beginnings was the Ancient
Arabic Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, popularly known as the Shriners. The origi-
nal members are known: Walter M. Fleming, William J. Florence, Charles T.
McClenachan, William S. Paterson, George Millar, and William Fowler—all
respected professionals or businessmen and Masons—but how the group
actually began is still somewhat uncertain. An 1877 pamphlet for the Shriners
stated that their group was established in Mecca, “and” (it is not clear if there
was a time lapse) it “became an acknowledged power” in 1698, and after that it
thrived in Arabia and Cairo.17 The Nobles of the Mystic Shrine—which, the
group claimed, was known as the “Bektashy” in Arabia and for which one of its
many offshoots was the “Ab Del Kader El Bagdadi”—had its ritual

brought to America by one of the transient foreign members and repre-

sentatives with instructions to place it only in the hands of prominent
high-grade Masons for establishment and exemplification […] owing to
the fact of Masons being regarded as a choice of the best men in the land,
and having already passed the ordeal of obligation […]18

16 See Carnes, Secret Ritual.

17 Fred Van Deventer, Parade to Glory: The Story of the Shriners and their Hospitals for
Crippled Children (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1959), 35.
18 Van Deventer, Parade to Glory, 37.
120 chapter 4

But in another version of the story that had been orally transmitted since at
least 1877 and was only made official in the 1880s, the American beginnings
were a little different. William J. Florence, a Mason and actor who had been
touring Europe, claimed that while in Marseilles, France in 1870 he was invited
to view one of the group’s ceremonies, which was being attended by various
European diplomats and led by one Sheikh Yusef Churi Bey, who had suppos-
edly been initiated in Bukhara.19 Florence then purportedly traveled to
Algeria (the home of Abd el-Kader) where he visited the local version of the
Shrine. Despite these claims of international origins, however, contemporary
histories tend to say that the group’s founders—but particularly Fleming,
who wrote the Shriners’ ritual—invented the idea of the group in 1870 as a
way of joining the increasingly popular trend of creating new Masonic
orders.20
The Shriners, nevertheless, did not achieve any real success until the 1880s,
after they recruited Albert L. Rawson, a man who was respected in the Masonic
community for his knowledge of the Holy Land and who would revise the Shriner
ritual and provide more supposed evidence that the group had legitimate con-
nections with Islamic orders and with Abd el-Kader.21 Rawson’s knowledge of
and interest in Islam went decades back. In 1847, as a nineteen year-old, he dem-
onstrated familiarity with the Qurʾan and traditional Christian polemics against
Islam in his book intended for other youths, Evidences of the Truth and Divine
Origin of the Christian Revelation, which contained a chapter comparing Islam to
Christianity.22 Islam, however, was not Rawson’s main interest for the next three
decades. During this period, he studied and published about a variety of non-
Islamic topics—law, medicine, biblical studies, ancient religions, geology, and

19 Van Deventer, Parade to Glory, 42.

20 In December 2014, the author talked to current leading members of the New York and
national Shriner organizations in an attempt to locate the group’s early unpublished docu-
ments. The author was informed that no documents from before the 1930s have survived.
21 On Rawson, see K. Paul Johnson, “Albert Rawson,” Theosophical History 2, no. 7 (1988):
229–51; K. Paul Johnson, The Masters Revealed: Madam Blavatsky And The Myth Of The
Great White Lodge (Albany: suny Press, 1994), 25–30; John Patrick Deveney, “Nobles of the
Secret Mosque: Albert L. Rawson, Abd al-Kader, George H. Felt and the Mystic Shrine,”
Theosophical History 8, no. 9 (2002): 250–61; John Patrick Deveney, “The Travels of
H.P. Blavatsky and the Chronology of Albert Leighton Rawson: An Unsatisfying
Investigation into H.P.B.’s Whereabouts in the Early 1850s,” Theosophical History 10, no. 4
(2004): 8–30; Nance, How, 92–97; Deveney, “Albert Leighton Rawson.”
22 Albert L. Rawson, Evidences of the Truth and Divine Origin of the Christian Revelation
(Auburn, ny, 1847), 43–53.
Islamophilic Masonry 121

languages—and he achieved some recognition as an artist and engraver.23 In

fact, Rawson’s earliest verifiable connection with the publishing of an authori-
tative work dealing with Muslims only appears in the early 1870s when Rob
Morris sought out Rawson for help with his Freemasonry in the Holy Land.
According to Morris, Rawson at that time was mostly known for his Bible-
related work:

‘The Oriental Artist’ [Rawson] […] has given his pencil exclusively, for
a number of years, to Biblical illustration […] I am indebted, not only
for the maps and engravings in my volume, but for many practical and
useful suggestions in the preparation of the work itself. Himself a thor-
ough explorer in Eastern fields, he is giving his mature and experienced
judgment to such works as Beecher’s, Deems’s, Crosby’s, and other
first-class writers on Biblical themes; his own excellent “Hand-book of
Bible Knowledge”24 meanwhile comparing favorably with the best of
them.25

It was Rawson’s involvement with Morris’ book that made him a significant
figure in Islamophilic Masonry. By the mid-1870s, he was publicly claiming to
have traveled to the Near East in the 1850s, where he was purportedly initiated
by the Druze and Bektashis and supposedly encountered Blavatsky prior to her
founding the Theosophical Society, a group in which Rawson was an early
member; in Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky even claimed to have met Rawson while

23 Rawson’s claims for expertise on this wide variety of subjects have been doubted by several
contemporary scholars, largely because most of the books he claimed to have written have
not been located. However, I have obtained copies of the following books and articles by
Rawson that, while not fully verifying, certainly support the possibility that he did indeed
have some knowledge of these subjects (note that this list does not include all of all of
Rawson’s known writings): Evidences of the Truth; “The Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior,”
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 34 (December 1, 1866): 681–97; The Bible Hand-Book; for
Sunday-Schools and Bible-Readers (New York, 1870); “Archeology in America. The Mound
Builders,” The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health 58, no. 3 (1874): 155–60; “Moabite
Inscriptions,” The Nation 19 (December 17, 1874): 397–98; “Palestine,” Journal of the American
Geographical Society of New York 7 (January 1, 1875): 101–14; Evolution of Israel’s God, Truth
Seeker Tracts no. 104 (New York: [Truth Seeker Tracts?], 1877); “The Ancient Inscription on
a Wall at Chatata, Tennessee,” New York Academy of Sciences 11 (November 9, 1891): 26–27,
which also appeared in The American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal 14, no. 1(1892): 221–
24; “The Valley of Roses,” Godey’s Magazine 128, no. 764 (1894): 188–94.
24 This was Rawson’s The Bible Hand-Book, cited above.
25 Morris, Freemasonry, 9.
122 chapter 4

abroad, which she presented as proof of her own travels.26 Later, Rawson also
told people that Richard Francis Burton—the man whose account of his sur-
reptitious visit to Mecca had initiated a wave of interest in the connection
between Freemasonry and Sufism—was a personal acquaintance.27 Despite
the fact that all of these claims are highly questionable, Rawson had success-
fully exploited this reputation as an expert on Islam and in 1877 started work-
ing with the Shriners, supposedly translating the Arabic-language documents
they possessed describing the workings of their order. He was made an official
member in 1878 and thereafter he elaborated the group’s rituals and claimed to
receive letters from Abd el-Kader about the world-wide Shrine order. This
apparently led to a significant increase in the order’s popularity among Masons,
although it does not seem to have led to the Shriners becoming part of the
American occult revival—even despite Rawson’s affiliation with Theosophy
and the fact that one of the Shriner’s founders, McClenachan, would soon
become a leading figure in the Societas Rosicruciana.28
Judging by the dates given later by John Yarker in a 1907 article,29 Rawson’s
own Masonic-like organization was probably established in the late 1870s. This
group, which was originally known as the ‘Sheiks of the Desert’ and later the
‘Guardians of the Kaaba & Guardians of the Mystic Shrine,’30 most likely devel-
oped after Rawson had become involved with Theosophy and the Shriners.
Almost nothing is known about it; most of the information we have comes
from Yarker’s short article and a slightly different manuscript version of the

26 It is highly unlikely that Rawson had in fact traveled to the Near East in the 1850s. For a
fuller discussion of the Rawson-Blavatsky connection, see Deveney, “The Travels of
H.P. Blavatsky.”
27 See A.L. Rawson, “Personal Recollections of Sir Richard Francis Burton, k.c.m.g., f.r.s.,
f.r.g.s.,” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly 34, no. 5 (1892): 565–76.
28 Harold Van Buren Voorhis, A History of Organized Masonic Rosicrucianism (n.p.: Societas
Rosicruciana, 1983), 47–49.
29 John Yarker, “The Order of Ishmael or B’nai Ismael,” The Rosicrucian Brotherhood 1, no. 4
(October 1907): 1[5]8-60.
30 See the manuscript “Ancient Oriental Order of Ishmael: history laws etc. from W. Wynn
Westcott & J. Yarkers’ mss, [and], Rite of Swedenbourg” (unpublished manuscript, 1907),
1–3; this is in the possession of the library of the United Grand Lodge of England. This
version clarifies a confusing issue in Yarker’s 1907 article: the two different names of the
group. Yarker’s article states that the group was known as “Sheiks of the Dessert [sic],
Guardians of the Kaaba, Guardians of the Mystic Shrine,” and then says that these were
two—not three—different names used by the group at different points. In this manu-
script version, however, the two versions of the group’s name are made clear; the original
name was “Sheikhs [sic] of the Dessert [sic]” and the later name was “Guardians of the
Kaaba & Guardians of the Mystic Shrine.”
Islamophilic Masonry 123

same narrative.31 The few traits that we do know about the group seem to be
incredibly similar to those of both the Shriners and a British Islamophilic
group, which we will discuss shortly, called the Order of Ishmael. The Shriners,
because they used Islamic themes and Muslim-sounding titles; and the Order
of Ishmael, because, like Rawson’s group, it emphasized the Kaaba, which it
referred to as the ‘cubic stone’32 and which was at the time probably seen by the
Order’s members as a key link to Ishmael. In fact, as we will see, it seems likely
that Rawson had developed his group by drawing directly from works that were
connected to the British Islamophilic community, and the Order of Ishmael’s
leader in particular. As for the Sheiks’ members, all we know is that its leaders
were, for the most part, men like Rawson and John Yarker (who was himself
made an honorary member in 1887) in that they showed an interest in ancient
history, fringe and oriental Masonry, Theosophy, and esotericism.33 The known
leaders for the group were Rawson; Felix de Fontaine,34 a prominent journalist;
Charles Sotheran, a prominent Mason, member of Yarker’s Ancient and
Primitive Rite, Theosophist, and sria member; John A. Weisse, a professor of
English language history who wrote an influential work on the ancient Egyptian
use of the obelisk and its influence in Masonry; and Max Scheuer, a leader in
both the fringe Cerneau Rite and Yarker’s Ancient and Primitive Rite. The
Sheiks of the Desert were relatively quiet for most of the occult revival, but they
would, interestingly, briefly make their presence known to the public a few
years after the fall of the Muslim convert movement (see Chapter 6).

The Order of Ishmael and the Psychology of Islamophilia

Yarker’s 1907 discussion of the Sheiks of the Desert was given within the context
of a larger discussion of three modern Western orders that Yarker claimed to be
descended from the “Guardians or Keepers of the Kaaba,” a group that sria mem-
ber Kenneth R.H. Mackenzie had called, according to Yarker, “the oldest secret
society in the world.”35 The Sheiks of the Desert and the Shriners were the two
American descendants, while the British descendant was the Order of Ishmael.

31 For a citation of the manuscript, see the previous note.

32 The discussion of the ‘cubic stone’ was left out of Yarker’s article, but appears in the man-
uscript version.
33 The following list of names comes from the Yarker article and the Order of Ishmael
manuscript.
34 His name was misspelled in the Yarker article.
35 Yarker, “The Order of Ishmael,” 1[5]8-60.
124 chapter 4

The first known reference to a group called ‘Order of Ishmael’ appeared around
1877 when the group’s founder, Mackenzie, had it included in his new Royal
Masonic Cyclopaedia.36 In the entry for this group, it was indicated that the Order
of Ishmael did not focus on Islam specifically—Mackenzie implied that most of
its members were Christians, though the group also had Jewish and Muslim
members. Why the group focused on the figure of Ishmael is not fully explained;
Mackenzie only says that Ishmael is important because “he strove to perpetuate
[the] happy union of the two principal branches of Abraham’s stock.”37 What
Mackenzie was implying here, however, was not simply a reverence for the bibli-
cal tradition of Ishmael making peace with Isaac. As the evidence below demon-
strates, the greater meaning of this biblical peace-making was the notion that the
supposed descendants of Ishmael and Isaac—in other words, Jews, Christians,
and Muslims (Islam regards Muhammad, and therefore Muslims, as a descen-
dant of Ishmael)—should establish peaceful relations among themselves.
Nevertheless, when Yarker wrote about the group thirty years later, he indicated
that the Order had many more direct ties to Islam. According to him, the Order of
Ishmael came about in 1872 when Mackenzie, while traveling in Paris, received
information about the Order from an Arab, and that he had simply expanded on
that information to create the ritual for the British version of the Order.38 It was an
origin story curiously similar to the Shriners’, and like the Shriners’ story, probably
reflected Masonic interest in Abd el-Kader’s visit to France.
However, there is no evidence that this Arab-in-Paris story was actually used
by Mackenzie himself. And even if he did tell people this story, the Order had
other, more important roots that link it with Mackenzie’s claims of connection
with the other strange and supposedly rare and highly advanced orders, includ-
ing the Brotherhood of Luxor and the Hermetic Brothers of Egypt.39 Most
modern scholars have assumed that Mackenzie’s predilection for these fanci-
ful orders was basically no more than the product of either a chronic liar or a
somewhat unstable mind that could not distinguish reality from fantasy—
reflective of Mackenzie’s life-long interest in esoterica, his history of alcohol-
ism, and the fact that he was sometimes known to exaggerate or falsely claim
to have important titles.40 However, a careful examination of the evidence

36 Mackenzie, Royal Masonic, 344.

37 Mackenzie, Royal Masonic, 344.
38 This story is recorded in the Order of Ishmael manuscript noted above as well as in John
Yarker, “Arab Masonry,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 19 (1906): 243.
39 Mackenzie, Royal Masonic, 461 and 309, respectively.
40 See, e.g., A.E. Waite, The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (New York: University Books, 1961
[1924]), 566 and Gilbert and Hamill, introduction to Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, vi.
Islamophilic Masonry 125

connected to the Order of Ishmael reveals that this Order played an important
role in Mackenzie’s level-headed project for fostering world peace, which he
had commenced in 1869 with his “Papers on Masonry” series (see Chapter 2).
The first clue is that when Mackenzie wrote about the Order of Ishmael in
his Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, he actually listed it as “Ishmael, Order of, or of
Esau, and Reconciliation.” Yarker’s article did not refer to either Esau or
Reconciliation, which suggests that by 1907 the group had lost its original con-
nections to these two terms and had taken on a more Islamic focus. As it turns
out, though, these two terms were very important in the original manifestation
of this organization, as indicated by a cryptic passage in an article Mackenzie
wrote in May 1872 for the influential British Masonic journal The Freemason:41

Freemasonry comes in, with its silent voice, and bids all [that] strife of
classes and of races, cease. And although it is certain that the Order exists,
and has existed, in the emphatic words of Bro. Lessing, “at all times,” yet
I may be permitted to say, that in his day, and following out his own argu-
ment, it was not, and cannot be universal. There appears to be, not only
an order of expiation, but an order of reconciliation. These
two united, as was the meeting of the wily Jacob with the honest Esau,
would perfect society. Reconciliation between individuals is the true sta-
bility of the State.
In the contributions I have before been kindly permitted to make in
these pages, I have spoken of such an Order of Reconciliation. It exists but
only in Holy Russia, where our Masonic Order does not run as it might.
The reason is plain, the pages of Herodotus illustrate it. Wherever the
Scythians are, they are moveable; they were cast out and can not return.
They seize therefore a vast continent to move in. It has been presumed
that their aim is Constantinople. Khef and rest.42 This is not so, it is the
everlasting collision occurring between the Occident and the Orient.

God’s is the Orient,

God’s is the Occident;
True that your countenance
In common Ordinance
Might turn it here or there,
For God is everywhere.

41 Bro. Cryptonymus [Mackenzie], “Bro. Lessing and His Masonic Conversations. By Way of
Commentary—Part the First,” Freemason, May 18, 1872, 306–07.
42 ‘Khef’ is probably a transliteration of the Arabic word for ‘stop.’
126 chapter 4

But that no precept fail,

And that no doubter rail,
And that mild peace prevail,
With humble pious bow
Turn to the Kaaba now.

And what is the Kaaba, but the Conscience[?] [W]hat is Freemasonry,

but an adequate outward expression of the Divine powers given us,
untrammeled by other adventitious aids?

May I again add a few lines? Surely,

What is that, being just to God?
Not that you turn you east,
Not that you turn you west,
It is the Faith in Him, the only One;
And in his messengers who leave
His throne for every world, and in his prophets,
Through whose mild voice he speaks, and in his Holy Book;
The doom—and in the great and final day
Of general judgment, ending all.

This general judgment, what is it, save the verdict of the conscience?
[…]

I have sincere hopes that my brethren either born Unitarians—in the

sense of Parsees or Mohammedans—will give me the credit of sincerity.
If Freemasonry does not include a belief in the unity of the [Grand
Architect of the Universe] where can it be?43

Even most of the Masonic readers of this article in 1872—who would have
understood that “Bro. Lessing” was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the eighteenth-
century German playwright, Mason, and Muslim sympathizer whose Ernst und
Falk was recently translated by Mackenzie and published in the same journal—
would have found this passage rather confusing. Mackenzie, first of all, despite
his implying it, had not previously explicitly mentioned in print either an
“Order of Expiation” or an “Order of Reconciliation.” Second, although he insists
that the “reason is plain” for why the latter order exists in Russia, for most read-
ers his explanation obfuscates more than it enlightens. A third reason this pas-
sage is confusing is that the “God’s is the Orient” poem, which Mackenzie treats

43 Mackenzie, “Bro. Lessing,” 306.

Islamophilic Masonry 127

as if his Masonic readers should recognize it, was actually something that no
one had seen before. It was in fact his interpretation—not a translation—of
Goethe’s first “Talisman” in his West-östlicher Divan, Buch des Sängers.44
Goethe’s version did not even mention the Kaaba. And this leads us to the next
question: Why is the Kaaba important for Mackenzie? If his goal was simply to
promote reconciliation between Muslims, Jews, and Christians, why did he
have to incorporate this reference to the Kaaba and equate it with conscience?
Before we can answer these questions, it would be helpful to point out here
what the existence of this 1872 discussion of the Order of Reconciliation tells
us about the 1877 version. Most important is the fact that the group was clearly
not originally called the Order of Ishmael. Related to this is that the group
originally looked to the relationship between Jacob and Esau—not Ishmael
and Isaac—as the preeminent example of reconciliation, even if the interest in
promoting peace with Muslims was, admittedly, still there. Finally, Mackenzie’s
saying that the group only existed in Russia is in stark contrast to what he
claimed in 1877, that

The Chiefs of the Order reside habitually in the East, and two of the three
chiefs must always be east of Jerusalem. Branches of this Order, under
Arch-Chancellors, exist in Russia, Turkey, Greece, Austria, Italy, Germany,
Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, Portugal, Africa, and the
United Kingdom.45

It is obvious, then, that the group was originally focused much more on reconcili-
ation between enemies (and the implications of this for Masonry) and not on its
supposed Islamic origins, which Yarker claimed. Indeed, despite having numer-
ous articles and letters appear in the Freemason in 1872 and 1873, Mackenzie
never once mentions either a visit to Paris or an Arab whom he had met.
To get to the bottom of this mystery, then, it will necessary to look closely at
Mackenzie’s other significant work from the period: his “Papers on Masonry.”
“Papers”—Mackenzie’s manifesto for inventing new occult orders—explicitly
mentions Islam and Muslims on more than one occasion. In all of these instances,
mention of Islam is contextualized within a discussion of the importance of the
peaceful coexistence of all religions, which Mackenzie believes is necessary in
order for the world to have true peace, harmony, and brotherhood—ideals for
which, he believes, God desires humans should strive. Mackenzie explicitly sup-
ports the meeting of all religions—even non-Abrahamic religions—“as sons of

44 I would like to thank Dr. Katharina Mommsen and Jesse Goplen for their help identifying
what exactly this poem was.
45 Mackenzie, Royal Masonic, 345.
128 chapter 4

one common Creative Cause,”46 and he praises Masonic lodges in India where
men of different religions were being united under Masonry’s “mystic tie,” a step
towards the “long-desired reign of peace and harmony.”47
The inclusion of Muslims is especially important for Mackenzie. He knows
that Islam has long been seen as a religion that is incredibly intolerant of other
faiths, but Mackenzie believes this is an unjust stereotype.48 As proof, he offers
two examples that are particularly significant for our tracing of his Order of
Reconciliation/Ishmael. In an October 1869 article, he claims that he has a
young Muslim friend, currently living in India, who once told Mackenzie that
he believes that all people are “seeking the same God, but each according to
the faith of their fathers”49—a view that Mackenzie finds entirely consistent
with his own. Could this be the Arab in Paris Mackenzie supposedly met and
who gave him the information on the Order of Ishmael? We may never know.50
The second example Mackenzie presents, however, is clearly tied to his later
discussions of his Order of Reconciliation. In a piece that ran in August,
Mackenzie shows admiration for Peter the Great of Russia, whom, because he
was able to unify his diverse Russian subjects, Mackenzie regards as having
acted in a Masonic way, despite Peter not having been initiated as a Mason.51

From a great brute mass of humanity, [Peter] formed a nation […]

[W]hoever has seen Tatar [i.e., Russian Muslim] races of our present
times can doubt that [Peter], by force of will […] humanized that which
was Scythian before his day?52

Here, Mackenzie’s praise of Peter’s “Masonic way” is primarily based on his

political inclusion of Muslims, whom Mackenzie equates with the “Scythians.”
This term directly connects us to Mackenzie’s 1872 discussion of the Order of
Reconciliation, in which he claimed that it

exists but only in Holy Russia, where our Masonic Order does not run as
it might. The reason is plain […] [Russia is where] the Scythians are […]

46 Freemason, October 2, 163.

47 Freemason, May 29, 2.
48 Freemason, October 2, 163.
49 Ibid.
50 However, Mackenzie says this Muslim in “now living in India” (emphasis added), which
possibly implies that he had previously been residing in England. One wonders whether
this was Rev. Henry L. Norman.
51 Freemason, August 7, 62.
52 Ibid.
Islamophilic Masonry 129

it is the everlasting collision occurring between the Occident and the

Orient.

In other words, the one place the Order is said to exist is the place where
Muslims and Christians live in harmony—and this harmony may in fact be
directly attributable to the fact that (a) Peter the Great was motivated by a true
Masonic feeling and (b) modern Masonry, which is mired in disunity and
degeneration, is not strong in Russia. Nevertheless, in 1869, Mackenzie did not
explicitly assert that an Order of Reconciliation existed in Russia. In fact,
Mackenzie’s first published use of that term is only in his 1872 article, which
suggests that he came up with the idea for it, and thus the Order of Ishmael,
after developing his philosophy of creating new fraternal organizations that
combined both the East and West and material and occult knowledge.
Despite the evolving nature of Mackenzie’s ideas, however, in 1869, 1872, and
1877 Mackenzie consistently emphasizes a particular concept that is extremely
important for understanding one reason Islam was attractive to certain Masons
and Muslim converts. While it is very likely that Mackenzie’s views on Islam
had been influenced by the German philosophers who sympathized with
Islam, Goethe and Lessing, and he had probably also been affected by the sym-
pathetic writings of the British esotericist Higgins, it was Mackenzie himself
who identified and explicitly expressed a deep cultural-psychological truth.
Mackenzie understood that the traditional Christian view of Islam was that
Islam was, as the scholar Norman Daniel has observed, “the most powerful
instrument for the destruction of the Church”;53 Islam, then, was essentially
seen as the Christian West’s greatest enemy. Therefore, as Daniel points out, “a
society would have to be remarkably tolerant” if it were to accept and respect
such a religion.54 Indeed, to welcome the presence of one’s supposed greatest
enemy is perhaps the highest form of tolerance imaginable. Since Mackenzie
believed cultivating this high level of tolerance, with the understanding that
this would bring peace on Earth, was precisely the true goal of fraternal organi-
zations, he realized the greatest psychological and cultural obstacle for Western
Christians to achieve world peace was their own prejudice against Islam.
‘Reconciliation’ with Islam must be achieved for true world peace to come. It
was absolutely vital, then, that, in an era of new occult orders for Westerners,
Islam was explicitly included. As Mackenzie saw it, if an occult revival lacked
Christians embracing brotherhood with Muslims, the whole point of the occult
revival was being missed.

53 Daniel, Islam and the West, 245.

54 Ibid., 246.
130 chapter 4

Mackenzie, here, had tapped into a realization that a handful of other

Westerners have come to before and since. In the late seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries, for instance, British liberals Henry Stubbe and John Toland
held Islam as not just a religion to be respected, but as a model towards which
Christianity and Europe should strive.55 Later, Alexander Webb himself would
recognize Islam’s unique position in the Western cultural psyche as the great
enemy, as would one of the major early African American Muslim leaders,
Noble Drew Ali.56 All of these people acknowledged the significant Western
prejudice towards Islam and then chose to embrace or idealize Islam as a tech-
nique for bringing peace and brotherhood to the world. It seems, therefore,
that this strategy—whether consciously realized or not—was what lay behind
much of the Islamophilia of the occult revival and perhaps many Muslim con-
verts as well. The embracing of an Islamic identity by a Western Christian can
be seen as a metaphor for healing one’s deepest wounds, and can therefore be
incredibly psychologically and culturally powerful. Indeed, it seems that for
Mackenzie himself the very notion of embracing Islam and Muslims was pro-
foundly tied to his creating a philosophy and incredibly influential book (his
Cyclopaedia) that would shape the occult revival from the beginning. One
might even say that, to the extent that Mackenzie and his Cyclopaedia played
key roles spreading the British Freemasonic non-Christian market to the
Theosophical Society and from there to countless other movements, the occult
revival could not have become the international phenomenon that it did with-
out the belief in the necessity of finding a way for Christians and Muslims to
live in peace. Or, to go further, any occult revival-connected movement that
emphasizes, in some way, the concept of Christians embracing Islam or
Muslims and vice versa is closer to the philosophical and cultural-­psychological
foundations of the occult revival than any occult revival-connected movement
that does not do this.
The Islamophilic Freemasons seem to have been especially impacted by this
concept. While the Shriners would eventually move away from such elevated
ideals and focus more on emphasizing the baser orientalist stereotypes of
Muslims as indulgent and irresponsible, it seems likely that they were origi-
nally created with this ideal in mind. Evidence of this original intention is
the fact that, as we will see in Chapter 5, Shriners—including Rawson,
McClenachan, and almost all of the other founders—made up the majority of

55 See P.M. Holt, A Seventeenth-Century Defender of Islam: Henry Stubbe (1632–76) and His
Book (London: Dr. William’s Trust, 1972); J.R. Jacob, Henry Stubbe, Radical Protestant and
the Early Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
56 For Drew Ali’s views on the subject, see hctius vol. 2.
Islamophilic Masonry 131

the original members of Alexander Webb’s Islam-study organization, the

American Moslem Brotherhood.

The Kaaba as the ‘Cubic Stone’ and ‘Shrine’

One question remains, however. Why did Mackenzie stress the importance of
the Kaaba in the Order of Reconciliation/Ishmael, one of the few original
notions that Yarker would retain in 1907? A clue to this answer also lies in
“Papers on Masonry,” in its discussion of the ‘cubical stone.’
Mackenzie understood Freemasonry, as did many if not most Masons of his
day, as being connected to a tradition that stretched back to at least biblical
times. Freemasonry represents, he argues, the wisdom and “purification of the
human heart” that God had given to biblical figures who had passed down
their knowledge in the form of rituals, symbols, and science.57 The First Temple
was built by King Solomon with this process in mind; the ancient king decreed
that architecture and its science (Freemasonry) should be the medium through
which this knowledge and purification were represented and transmitted.
Within the Temple, though, God had also instructed certain builders to con-
struct a “cubical stone” (or “cubic stone”), which was to be kept secret, and the
process of its construction and maintenance over the years produced “a prin-
ciple of Peace and Justice throughout the world.”58 Peace, justice, enlighten-
ment, unity, and freedom for all people throughout the world are therefore, for
Mackenzie, ideals that are embedded in the human heart—i.e., the human
conscience—but, due to arrogance and indulgence, most humans, including
the vast majority of Masons, have departed from this original mission of
Masonry and destroyed the “temple”— the God-given institutions—in which
these ideals are protected and worshipped. Myths and symbols are necessary
tools, he continues, to “reconstruct the temple of the human mind, to revivify
the dead bones in the valley of Ezekiel,”59 so that people may have the strength
and wisdom to live up to great ideals. “Hence the excellence of the square”—
which represents both an important tool for constructing (and reconstructing)
buildings and, when equated with a cube, represents the basic and first build-
ing block of ancient temples “as a symbolic instrument.”
In October 1872, Mackenzie wrote a new short piece on the stone, entitled
“Legend of the Cubic Stone,” which gave more details to his version of the story,

57 Freemason, April 3, 6.
58 Ibid.
59 Freemason, May 22, 3.
132 chapter 4

and which would later be included in his Royal Masonic Cyclopeadia.60

According to Mackenzie, who was following previous Masonic writers,61 the
cubic stone was a cubic structure, which contained esoteric notions as well as
God’s handwriting, that ancient Israelite Masons had built, at the instruction of
God, just prior to constructing the First Temple, in which the stone was kept.
The stone was, however, destroyed by these early Masons, as they did not
understand its “mysteries,” and attempts have been made to rebuild it.
Mackenzie adds, at the end of the article, that the stone represents the human
brain, a notion that is consistent with his 1869 discussion of the square being an
essential component for the reconstruction of “the temple of the human mind.”
If Mackenzie wanted to create a new group that incorporated Islam, the
cubic stone seems like it would have been an obvious symbol to utilize, as one
could easily see the similarities between it and the Kaaba in Mecca. Not only is
the Kaaba cubic in structure, but Islamic tradition holds that it was constructed
by Abraham and Ishmael; it thus could fit into the pre-existing Masonic
mythology that had already been developed for the stone. Given that the Order
of Ishmael, as the group’s manuscript reveals, did indeed place value on the
cubic stone/square62 and Mackenzie showed in his Cyclopaedia an interest in
the Kaaba,63 it seems that Mackenzie realized at some point that the cubic
stone would be an important symbol to highlight in his Order. This would
explain why the group’s name was changed to the Order of Ishmael, which
better reflects this fundamental connection between the ancient Israelite
cubic stone and the Kaaba.
It is likely that Mackenzie was inspired to make this connection by articles
that appeared in the Freemason in the early 1870s. In 1870, an article that was
probably written by John Porter Brown—who, as we have seen, had already
gained popularity among Masons—appeared under the title “Freemasonry in
the East.”64 Here, the author emphasizes the importance of the Kaaba for
Muslims, noting about the Kaaba that

60 “Legend of the Cubic Stone,” The Rosicrucian (October 1872): 12. Mackenzie’s authorship
of this piece was previously unrecognized, but we can be sure of it because of the fact that
it was reprinted, under the heading of “Stone, Cubical,” in his Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia.
61 See, e.g., “Cubical Stone,” Freemason, August 13, 1870, 391. The story of the cubical stone
was used in the Royal Arch and Rose Croix high-degree orders at the time.
62 See the Order of Ishmael manuscript.
63 Mackenzie, Royal Masonic, 397–99.
64 Freemason, June 4, 1870, 271–72. No name is given, but it is signed from Constantinople
and uses information that Brown had already written about for his book. My theory of
Brown’s authorship of this article is strengthened by the fact that a few months later a
‘J.P.B.’ wrote a piece on “Oriental Traditions,” which appears to be coming from a similar
Islamophilic Masonry 133

tradition says [it] originally descended from heaven, to serve as a point of

adoration for Adam after he had lost that of Eden. […] Abraham is sup-
posed to have rebuilt it by Divine command, and though it has suffered
from various vicissitudes much of the materials used by him, it is fully
believed, still exist in its original form, that of a perfect square. Indeed,
the Arabic word, Keebah, signifies a square, or a cube, and is regarded as
occupying a spot immediately under the great arc or arch of the celestial
world […]65

Then, in an article that appeared in August 1873 by W. Viner Bedolfe,66 a Mason

whom Mackenzie probably knew as they were two of only a handful of con-
tributors to George Kenning’s new Masonic Magazine, the connections with
Mackenzie’s idea about the meeting of religions were linked directly with the
symbols of the Kaaba and the square. Bedolfe argues that Masonry’s Roman
and Jewish roots were combined when Muslims—who inherited the original
Hebrew elements of Masonic knowledge through their descent from various
biblical figures, especially Ishmael—came into contact with and enlisted
Roman influence in the former Byzantium and southern Spain. Islam, further-
more, Bedolfe implies, is a religion that is very much in line with Freemasonic
philosophy because it strongly endorses a belief in a single, unitary God of
Abraham and because of its historical tolerance of people of other Abrahamic
faiths. Bedolfe then broaches the subject of the Kaaba:

[…] the ancient, as well as the modern religion of these Arabs is inextri-
cably mingled with the building of a celebrated Temple called the Kaeeba,
or ‘square,’ (hence the word ‘Cabalaistic’,) towards which they turned
their faces in prayer, as do the Jews towards the Holy Temple at Jerusalem.
To this temple, or its successor, they pay the same devotion as do the Jews
to their temple, and tell of it similar fables [i.e., that Adam’s son Seth built
the true first temple and that Abraham and his son Ishmael built theirs].
[…] Each [temple] had its square.
Can we then wonder that in traversing, in common with all the arts and
sciences, such a country, Freemasonry should partake of its [Islam’s?] ideas

interest in Islamic connections to Masonry; see J.P.B., “Oriental Traditions—I,” Freemason,

27 August 1870, 409. Unfortunately, although the full title of this piece implied that more
essays would be forthcoming, no other parts appeared.
65 Ibid.
66 W. Viner Bedolfe, “The Footsteps of Masonry,” Freemason, August 23, 1873, 548. This was
the last installment of a several-part series that ran over three years.
134 chapter 4

and by substituting for the Kaeeba as an emblem the far-famed Temple of

King Solomon, “which Jews might love, and Infidels adore,” wisely, politi-
cally, and for ever attempt to unite all sects and creeds, all tongues and
languages under their banner, in the Worship of the God of Abraham.
If then, this explanation of the origin of the Hebraistic tradition be
accepted, we can see that King Solomon and his Temple are only symbolic,
and intended as a sign to embrace all the religions influencing the then
known world, viz.:—the Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan; a most
worthy idea, and worthy of the philosophy whence Freemasonry sprung.67

If we are looking for a possible source for Mackenzie’s decision to emphasize

‘Ishmael’ over ‘Reconciliation,’ since there is no evidence that Mackenzie had
actually met an Arab in Paris, this article by Bedolfe is currently the best candi-
date. Not only does it express ideas that were central to Mackenzie’s vision, it
strengthens the connection between Islam and Masonry by presenting a ver-
sion of the Muslim transmission thesis. His connecting the Kaaba to the Kabala
would have just sweetened the deal for Mackenzie, who had his own interest in
the Kabala.68 It is true that this article appeared a year after Mackenzie ran his
Order of Reconciliation piece, which seems to suggest that it was Bedolfe who
was influenced by Mackenzie, not the other way around. However, Bedolfe’s
piece was only the last installment of a series of articles he wrote, “The
Footsteps of Masonry,” that began appearing in 1871, at which point he proba-
bly had already completed it and had more than likely begun privately discuss-
ing it with other esoterically-leaning Masons.
It is significant that Mackenzie’s “Legend of the Cubic Stone” originally
appeared in the sria’s journal, The Rosicrucian.69 As has been pointed out,
many of leading members of this organization were, like Mackenzie, both fre-
quent contributors to the Freemason as well as interested in esoteric and orien-
tal topics. For instance, William Carpenter, a writer of various articles on
Masonic and ancient Hebrew history, in 1870 wrote a piece on the Kabala,
which was a topic of particular interest to the Societas members.70 The

67 Ibid.
68 Kenneth Mackenzie, “Philosophical and Cabbalistic Magic,” The Rosicrucian (1873): 27–
34, reprinted in Francis King, Modern Ritual Magic: The Rise of Western Occultism
(Bridport, uk: Prism Press, 1989), 28–38.
69 The best introduction to this group and the men it involved is Ellic Howe, “Fringe Masonry
in England 1870–85,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 85 (1972): 242–95.
70 William Carpenter, “The Cabbala,” Freemason, August 13, 1870, 385. That year he also had
an article, which appeared in both the Freemason and Rosicrucian, on the French occult-
ist Eliphas Levi—it was the first time Levi was publicly discussed in print in the British
Islamophilic Masonry 135

Societas’ founder, Robert Wentworth Little, in addition to contributing numer-

ous poems and lectures to the Freemason, in 1869–70 also wrote his own series
entitled “Ancient and Modern Mysteries” in which he discussed various
Masonic-like organizations in other cultures and historical periods. Several of
his articles, in fact, simply reprinted the portion of Thomas Keightley’s Secret
Societies of the Middle Ages (1837) that discussed the Isma‘ili Assassins, a group
Little did not believe to have a direct connection with Freemasonry but, he felt,
still was a good group with which to compare Masonry.71 John Yarker, a fre-
quent letter and article writer for the Freemason, prior to joining the Societas,72
demonstrated his own interest in Islam when in 1869 he explained that he
believed, based on his study of the “runic marks” on various old buildings, that
Muslims had introduced Masonry to France.73 Another important early mem-
ber of the Societas, F.G. Irwin, did not publish much in the Freemason but was
a practitioner of crystal-gazing and spiritualism and had been telling English
Masons about the theory of Muslim Masonic transmission to Europe via Spain,
which he learned during his time stationed in Gibraltar.74 It should also be
noted that over the 1870s, the Rosicrucian ran three Islam-themed articles;
while not a significant number, the presence of anything related to Islam in
this small journal reflects the interest that its incredibly minute readership
took in the religion. The Societas community, then, was the community that
would have been the one most receptive to Mackenzie’s ideas. It should there-
fore come as little surprise that the Order of Ishmael’s leading officers over the
years—Mackenzie, Irwin, Yarker, W.W. Westcott, and R.S. Brown—were all
Societas members, a fact that suggests that Islamophilia was significant in
shaping the mentality of these important early figures in the occult revival.75
To conclude this section it would be useful to point out that Mackenzie’s ideas
may have influenced the American Islamophilic groups. As noted above, Rawson’s
American group, the Sheiks of the Desert, referred to the Kaaba as the ‘cubic
stone.’ It also, like the Order of Ishmael, gave special emphasis to the Egyptian
ankh symbol.76 We do not know precisely how this transmission of ideas

fringe Mason community; see William Carpenter, “Occult Science,” Freemason, January
29, 1870, 57 and The Rosicrucian (1870): 83.
71 See Robert Wentworth Little, “Ancient and Modern Mysteries,” Freemason, February 26,
1870, 98.
72 In fact, in July 1869, he clearly had almost no knowledge of the organization; cf. John
Yarker, “The Rosicrucians,” Freemason, July 31, 1869, 55.
73 John Yarker, “Chair Degree, Operative Lodges, and Templary,” Freemason, April 24, 1869, 9.
74 Wallis-Newport, “From County Armagh,” 167.
75 These officers are listed in the Order of Ishmael manuscript.
76 See the Order of Ishmael manuscript.
136 chapter 4

happened, though we do know that, in addition to the fact that the Freemason was
fairly popular in the us, there were several connections between Mackenzie’s
writing, the sria, and the Theosophical Society to which Rawson belonged. Any
link between Mackenzie and the Shriners, however, would be significantly less
strong. While the term ‘Shrine’ may have implied the Kaaba, the Shriners them-
selves almost never referred to the ‘Shrine’ as either the Kaaba or the cubic stone,
and the writings connected to the Order of Ishmael and the cubic stone generally
did not use the word ‘Shrine.’ Still, (a) the timing of the appearance of the Shriners;
(b) the fact that McClenachan, a Shriner founder, was also a founding member of
New York’s Societas group in 1880; and (c) the facts that not only did Rawson shape
the group’s claimed history, he also clearly emphasized a connection between the
Kaaba and a ‘shrine’ in the second name of his own Islamophilic organization
(Guardians of the Kaaba & Guardians of the Mystic Shrine), all suggest that it is
possible that the Shriners were at least indirectly influenced by Mackenzie via
Rawson, McClenachan, or both. In the end, however, the fact that Rawson,
McClenachan, and several other leading Shriners and Sheiks of the Desert mem-
bers would join up with Webb’s group at least suggests that the various British
Masonic-esoteric liberal notions about Islam—including the idea that to embrace
an Islamic identity is an important tool for achieving world peace—had con-
nected with the first Muslim convert group in America.

William Henry Abdullah Quilliam

Before turning to the story of the American converts to Islam, one last Masonic
Islamophile needs to be briefly mentioned. While we have no evidence that he
was a member of either the Societas or any Islamophilic Masonic group, the
Liverpool native William Henry Quilliam knew Mackenzie and was an impor-
tant member of John Yarker’s para-Masonic Sat B’hai and Ancient and Primitive
Rite groups.77 He was also in communication with Muslim Masons from around
the world, and was perhaps the first white Western Mason to identify exclusively
as a Muslim. Quilliam began joining Masonic organizations in the late 1870s,78
and by the early 1880s was heading the Liverpool-based Ancient Order of

77 On his Sat B’hai connection, see “Further Masonic Honour for the Sheikh,” Crescent,
October 16, 1901, 250 and “Masonic and General Tidings,” Freemason, November 16, 1901,
14. Quilliam joined the Ancient and Primitive Rite in 1880; see “Antient and Primitive
Rite,” Freemasons Chronicle, September 25, 1880, 9.
78 Quilliam’s Masonic ties are relatively well documented in his journal, Crescent, and addi-
tional information was provided to me by Martin Cherry.
Islamophilic Masonry 137

Zuzimites, a fringe group that was featured in The Kneph, Yarker’s Ancient and
Primitive Rite journal edited by Mackenzie.79 The circumstances of Quilliam’s
late 1880s conversion to Islam are rather vague, but it was probably influenced
by the various Muslim-Masonic theories as well as Quilliam’s 1880s travels in
North Africa,80 a region that would have been both familiar with and interested
in Abd el-Kader’s Masonic ties and the Masonic theories popular in southern
Spain that posited that Muslims had transmitted Masonry to Europe. Quilliam
later implied belief in the Muslim transmission theory; in 1901 one of his Islamic
publications ran a piece, written by either him or Yarker, discussing the various
ways Muslims supposedly brought Masonry to Europeans; the author also
implied a connection between Islam and the Ancient and Primitive Rite.81
Upon returning to Liverpool from North Africa, in the late 1880s he estab-
lished the Liverpool Moslem Institute (lmi), the most successful Islamic pros-
elytizing group in England in the nineteenth century. Many of the lmi’s
converts had been Masons, and while Quilliam was not known to have started
or joined an overtly Islam-themed Masonic group, beginning around 1901, in
the Islamic periodicals that he published, he began frequently discussing vari-
ous Masonic topics, including the Masonic-like honors he received from
Ottoman officials. Many of his Muslim convert followers also joined his para-
Masonic Zuzimites order. Likely due to his involvements in a few minor con-
troversies, in 1908 Quilliam fled England and, as is now well known, reappeared
in London, where he began, in 1914, using the name Henri de Leon. However,
various documents from 1913 show that that year he was living in London and,
while still using the name William Quilliam, was a leading figure in the Ancient
and Primitive Rite. Through this position, he worked with the famous occultist
Aleister Crowley to help determine, after Yarker died that year, who would take
over as the group’s head.82

79 See The Kneph 1, no. 6 (1881): 47 and 48. The Zuzimites were likely an invention of Quilliam,
perhaps with the help of Yarker. There is no evidence of their existence prior to 1881, and
1881 is the year the group “issued” its ritual; see “Ancient Order of Zuzimites,” Collectanea
3 (1947): 123.
80 Ron Geaves, Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam
(Leicestershire, England: Kube Publishing, 2010), 60; “Islam in Britain,” Moslem Chronicle
and Muhammadan Observer, January 23, 1904, 55; Jamie Gilham, Loyal Enemies: British
Converts to Islam, 1850–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 52–57.
81 “Freemasonry and Islam,” Islamic World 6, no. 68 (1901): 208–211. The author here com-
bines the thesis that Islam in general brought Masonry to the West with theories of early
Sufi Masons, Hammer-Purgstall’s theory about the Isma‘ilis being the principal carriers of
the Craft, along with other stories.
82 See Aleister Crowley, “In Memoriam—John Yarker,” Equinox 1, no. 10 (1913): xxiv–xxvi and
the 1913 letters from Crowley to Quilliam and Quilliam’s son in the Gerald Yorke Collection
138 chapter 4

Quilliam would become an important figure in the history of the first

American Muslim convert community. He apparently met and corresponded
with Webb on a few occasions, but, more importantly, he supported Webb’s
detractors—including Rawson—when they rebelled against Webb, even set-
ting up an American branch of the lmi. Quilliam thus served as an additional
important link between Islamophilic Masonry and American conversion to
Islam. In fact, as we will see, the emergence of the first white American convert
movement was not the product of isolated, unconnected individuals who had
an interest in Islam and somehow serendipitously found each other. On the
contrary, its creation came about by the linking of several sub-subcultures that
were all connected to the larger Anglophone occult revival religious market.
Indeed, without the occult revival and groups like those of the Islamophilic
Masons, early American converts to Islam might never have even formed com-
munities in the nineteenth century, and Webb’s efforts would have likely failed
before they had started.

(ns 12). Unfortunately, these documents tell us basically nothing about Quilliam beyond
the fact that he was a leading Ancient and Primitive Rite member and sided with Crowley
about Yarker’s successor.
 chapter 5

The Rise and Fall of a Brotherhood

During the years Alexander Webb was living overseas, the recent connecting of
the occult revival with New Thought (see Chapter 2) had grown from a trickle
of innovative religious ideas and organizations in the mid-1880s into a verita-
ble deterritorializing tide of new religious movements. By 1893, Malinda
Cramer and Nona Brooks’ Divine Science had started spreading throughout
the country. The H.B. of L. had been reborn as a New Thought-based occult
group with the publication of the Grimké co-authored Light of Egypt (1889).
Some astrologers, such as H.B. of L. member James D. Keifer, had begun incor-
porating a New Thought influence into their teachings. Randolph’s Rosicrucian
movement had been revived on a more New Thought basis by a former
Randolph follower, Freeman B. Dowd, an old correspondent of Thomas
M. Johnson who had joined the H.B. of L. and aligned with Cramer, Chainey,
and Kimball in California. Another former follower of Randolph, Thomas
Docking, had become a Theosophy lodge leader in the Bay Area. California was
also home to a prominent but isolated convert to Buddhism, Philangi Dasa
(Carl Herman Vetterling), who in 1887, after a time as a Swedenborgian and an
independent Theosophist, started a Buddhist magazine, the Buddhist Ray, and
came into contact with the state’s New Thought-influenced Theosophists.1
Meanwhile, various spiritualists and eclectic physicians, such as W.J. Colville
and Hiram E. Butler, had aligned with occultists and New Thought thinkers to
produce new groups stretching from Boston to San Francisco. Chicago, mean-
while, was an especially important center for this new wave of New Thought-
influenced occultism. Besides hosting the influential Theosophist-leaning New
Thought teachers Emma Curtis Hopkins and Ursula Gestefeld, the city was
home to a Christian Scientist-Theosophist-H.B. of L. follower, William Phelon,
who had broken off from the latter group to form his own New Thought-based
organization, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Atlantis, Luxor, and Elephante.
One could also find in Chicago Olney L. Richmond and his Oriental Order of
the Magi, perhaps the fastest-growing occult movement in the country (see
Chapter 6).

1 See, for instance, Louise A. Off to Thomas M. Johnson, October 22, 1887, tmj Papers. Vetterling
became a member of the Theosophical Society (but without joining a specific lodge) on
September 2, 1884, just a few months after Webb; see Theosophical Society General Register
Vol. I, accessed February 10, 2014, http://www.theartarchives.org.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_007

140 chapter 5

Without having planned for it, then, Webb had returned to the us at an
ideal moment in history, and—as a member of the early Johnson-influenced
Theosophical Society—in an ideal position for taking advantage of this
expanding occult revival. Had he, like Henry L. Norman, tried to start his mis-
sion at an earlier period in American religious history, Webb probably would
have been completely shunned and mocked. Had he joined Theosophy later in
its existence and in a lodge other than St. Louis’, even with his creative, ambi-
tious spirit, Webb probably would not have felt the freedom and confidence to
explore and commit exclusively to Islam. Due to historical forces beyond his
control or knowledge, Webb and his Islamic mission were poised for success.
For the first nine months of the mission, in fact, Webb’s achievements were
unprecedented, and it appeared as if he were about to lead the first truly suc-
cessful us movement for conversion to a non-Christian, widely-practiced reli-
gious tradition. But, just as it was beginning to take off, the movement’s growth
was cut short by significant leadership and financial problems. By early 1896,
the first Islamic conversion movement in the us was dead, and a new one
would not appear for several more years.2

The Mission Begins

When Hajee Abdulla Arab visited Webb in Manila in the spring of 1892, the two
men, in the presence of a Muslim witness, created a contract for Webb’s future
mission, which would be called the ‘American Islamic Propaganda.’3 Initially,
Arab “agree[d] to advance $13,500 for the American Propaganda, for the estab-
lishment and maintenance of its publication department and lecture course
for one year and, if necessary, $10,000 for each of two subsequent years for the
maintenance of the same.”4 The length of the subsequent payment was then
expanded to four years, and Arab also agreed to pay Webb a salary of $2,000 per
month, starting in September of 1892. That was, basically, it. Webb was, it
appears, confident that he had the knowledge, skills, and connections to make
this skeleton of a plan successful.
Initially, however, Webb had a somewhat rough going. When he arrived in
New York City in mid-February 1893, he had not yet received his money from

2 Again, for this chapter I am indebted a great deal to the previous research of Singleton and
Abd-Allah, as well as to the help of Muhammed al-Ahari.
3 MD. Alexander Russell Webb, “To My Oriental Brothers,” Moslem World and the Voice of Islam
(January 1895).
4 Ibid.
The Rise And Fall Of A Brotherhood 141

Arab, and would not get any until April.5 Nevertheless, the press got wind of
the consul-turned-Muslim missionary story and, before the end of the month,
began spreading the rumor that he had anywhere from $150,000 to “millions”
of dollars from rich foreign Muslims backing him.6 Webb may have been claim-
ing that he was planning on establishing a mosque in the us, which would
have added fuel to the press’s fire.7 All of this caused a great deal of interest in
the movement, but also required Webb to have to disabuse many disappointed
inquirers, and the lack of money was no doubt frustrating the ambitious Webb.
Still, Webb was heartily welcomed into New York’s progressive scene. Two
receptions were held for him in late February, the second of which reportedly
had several well-known journalists and literary figures—including Mark
Twain—in attendance.8 Then, in early March, he gave an invited lecture for the
New York Theosophical Society.9 Although Webb had been a Theosophist for
nearly nine years by that point, he had not been particularly prominent in the
movement until 1892. That year, he published two articles in Theosophical
journals,10 and in December he visited the Theosophical headquarters in India,
where Olcott observed that Webb’s understanding of Islam “was that of the
Sufis,” a comment that was consistent with Webb’s emphasis on esotericism
and possibly reflected an influence from Johnson’s Sufic Circle.11 All of this, in
any case, earned Webb a great deal of respect from Theosophists and other
liberals. On March 11, the New York-based Free Thought journal, The Truth
Seeker, discussed Webb’s ideas and, although the editor did not agree with
Webb’s Theosophy-tinged notion of “esoteric Mohammedanism,” or with his
goal of converting Americans to Islam, he wished Webb “huge luck […] in lac-
erating, dilapidating, deracinating, and otherwise making away with the doc-
trins [sic] and usages of Christianity.”12

5 Ibid.
6 “Muhammed Webb’s Mission”; Singleton, introduction, 32.
7 Singleton (in introduction, 32) rejects this as a reporter’s invention, but I have seen no
evidence that shows Webb explicitly denied this.
8 “Muhammed Webb’s Mission.” However, at least some of the people reported to have
come did not; see “Not a Follower of Islam,” Moslem World (May 1893).
9 The date of this lecture is somewhat unsure; although it probably took place on March 9;
see “To Talk on Islamism and Theosophy,” New York Tribune, March 7, 1893, 12; Singleton,
introduction, 37.
10 “Two Remarkable Phenomena” and “Islam and Theosophy.”
11 Singleton, Yankee Muslim, 197–99; Henry S. Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, Fourth Series (1887–
92) (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1975), 522–23.
12 “Mohammedanism vs. Christianity,” Truth Seeker, March 11, 1893, 147–48.
142 chapter 5

In April, the pace of activities started picking up even more. Webb finished
his book Islam in America—in which he discussed his conversion, outlined his
views on Islam, and announced his plans for the mission—and had it pub-
lished by his recently-created New York-based Oriental Publishing Company.13
That same month, some money from Arab and the Ottoman Sultan came in,14
so Webb could now set about establishing the lecture course and publication
department for which they had planned. He started by setting up the Moslem
World Publishing Company at 458 West 20th Street, from where he would run
an Islamic newspaper, the Moslem World. Meanwhile, he continued to be noted
by New York’s progressive scene when the Truth Seeker discussed his April 7
lecture at the city’s Liberal Club.15 Then, later in the month, the same journal
showed sympathy for Webb having said that Islam supported temperance and
the equal treatment of women:

If religion we must hav [sic], let it be of Mohammedan, Buddhistic, and

every kind possible. […] Evil is the predominance of one sole religion—
especially of that most tyrannical of all, Christianity.16

Webb now had a strong contingent of anti-Christian supporters—times had

indeed changed since the days of George Bethune English’s ostracism from
Boston.
May was marked by even more progress for Webb’s mission. He, first of all,
commenced working on a project that had been developed with various
Indians he had met in the fall of the previous year. This was to establish colo-
nies for Muslim immigrants—businessmen and laborers, not missionaries—
in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.17 Webb, who told landowners in the region
that it would be economically beneficial for all parties involved, soon secured
an option on a 25,000-acre tract of land in Georgia. However, this project fell
through when the Indian backers failed to produce the money for the
purchase.18

13 Webb, Islam in America, 10.

14 On Ottoman support in 1893, see Şahin, “Sultan’s America,” 62.
15 “Liberal Societies,” Truth Seeker, April 15, 1893, 232; “Men of All Views,” St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, April 9, 1893, 8.
16 “Mohammedan Nibblings at Christianity,” Truth Seeker, April 22, 1893, 244.
17 For a fuller discussion of this scheme, see Brent D. Singleton, “Minarets in Dixie: Proposals
to Introduce Islam in the American South,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 26, no. 3
(2006): 433–44.
18 Singleton, “Minarets in Dixie,” 436–37.
The Rise And Fall Of A Brotherhood 143

Webb’s biggest accomplishment in May was the publication of the first issue
of his Islamic newspaper.19 The Moslem World was a sixteen-page monthly that
contained news items concerning Muslims from around the Islamic world;
pieces by Muslim and Western scholars discussing Islam and its history; us
news stories concerning what Webb’s liberal readership would consider
Christians’ harsh and unfair treatment of people; occasional discussions of the
Propaganda effort by both Webb and the secular press; and advertisements for
his and his associates’ various businesses, lectures, and writings—even the
Buddhist Ray appeared in a few issues.20 Each issue, furthermore, was printed
on high-quality paper and had on its cover page, in addition to a very elaborate
masthead, a large picture of a different mosque in India.21
Finally, May was the month that Webb announced the creation of yet
another branch of the American Islamic Propaganda: the American Moslem
Brotherhood. By this time, Webb had already defined the American Islamic
Propaganda as a “purely educational” movement designed to

teach the intelligent masses who and what Mohammed was and what he
really taught, and to overturn the fabric of falsehood and error that preju-
diced and ignorant writers have been constructing and supporting for
centuries against Islam.22

Muslim missionaries would come when needed, and converts would be hoped
for, but the present goal of the aip was to till the American religious soil in
order to improve relations with Muslims and Islam on a broad plane. The
American Moslem Brotherhood, then, was the main outreach aspect of this
effort. Those interested in learning about Muslims and Islam were encouraged
to independently form study circles,23 for which Webb would provide litera-
ture. They could then officially register and become chartered with the move-
ment’s backers in India, and through this correspond with “learned Mussulmans

19 A useful introduction to Webb’s Islamic newspapers is Brent D. Singleton, “The Moslem

World: A History of America’s Earliest Islamic Newspaper and Its Successors,” Journal of
Muslim Minority Affairs 27, no. 2 (2007): 297–307.
20 See “Do Not Convert Him” in the September issue and the small quote from the Ray in the
October issue.
21 For many, Webb’s paper was the most impressive aspect of his Islamic efforts; see, e.g.,
“Mohammed Webb,” Hartford Courant, October 26, 1900, 14.
22 Webb, Islam in America, 67.
23 Webb would later explicitly suggest that the circles be limited to five people each (see “For
the Faith of Islam,” New York Times, October 8, 1893) and this seems to have been generally
followed early on, as indicated by the lists of members given (see below).
144 chapter 5

in India, Turkey or Egypt.”24 Potential circle members were reminded that they
were not required to subscribe to any religious doctrine

nor accept any creed or tenet that is not in harmony with his or her rea-
son and common sense; [and] that each will be absolutely free to accept
or reject anything or everything that may appear from the studies and
discussions of the societies.25

In their setup, in their fundamental philosophy, and even in their names

(which invoked the Theosophist ‘universal brotherhood’ concept), the aip
and American Moslem Brotherhood seem to have been modeled primarily
on the Theosophical Society, and perhaps the Sufic Circle to a lesser extent.
This should come as little surprise. Webb had witnessed firsthand the rapid
­expansion—from almost nothing—of Theosophy in the us in the 1880s. He
saw how having loose restrictions on the local groups, avoidance of require-
ments for adhering to religious creeds, and encouraging the creation of groups
based on personal social networks were tools that could draw in religiously-
curious intellectual liberals. He had observed the important role played by the
Theosophist and Johnson’s Platonist in terms of helping like-minded people
across the us connect with each other and build up a community. He had seen
how presenting the movement’s authority as being based in the East—in
India—could be a benefit because it could reduce the ability of the rank-and-
file to attack international, supposedly official, leaders. Theosophy had given
Webb the blueprint; all that was left to do, then, was to start recruiting.

Expanding with Islamophilic Freethinkers

The two most important Americans who would align themselves with Webb in
the first months of his movement, Albert L. Rawson and John A. Lant, were
both strongly connected to New York’s Free Thought community that used the
Truth Seeker as its main organ.26 In fact, Rawson and Lant shared a deep bond

24 “The Moslem Brotherhood,” Moslem World (May 1893).

25 Ibid.
26 Over the last twenty-five years, Albert Leighton Rawson has received attention from
researchers who have primarily looked into his early involvement with the Theosophical
Society, the Shriners, and the Sheiks of the Desert (see Johnson, “Albert Rawson”; Johnson,
Masters Revealed, 25–30; Deveney, “Nobles of the Secret Mosque”; Deveney, “Travels of
H.P. Blavatsky”; Nance, How the Arabian Nights, 92–97). While these ties are certainly very
The Rise And Fall Of A Brotherhood 145

in the Free Thought movement, having struggled and suffered over many years
in American Free Thought’s conflict with its great nemesis, Anthony Comstock.
Beyond the realm of Free Thought, though, the connections continued. Both
men had been professional writers for several years prior to Webb’s becoming
a professional newspaper man himself; both had ties to American occult move-
ments that dated back from years before Webb had ever joined up with
Theosophy; and both even had connections with Islamic identities that, again,
predated Webb’s conversion. Webb, therefore, had gained two very valuable
assets to his movement and, although it was their strengths that later made
them powerful opponents, during the aip’s first nine months they would sig-
nificantly help in its growth.
Free Thought was a movement that, even more so than Unitarianism and
spiritualism, strongly endorsed unlimited access to ideas and the use of ratio-
nal thought, particularly for matters of religion and morality. By the mid-1870s,
as we have seen, Rawson was very much involved with non-mainstream reli-
gious ideas, so it would have been natural for him to be drawn to the growing
Free Thought community in his region. He joined up with the movement
by 1875, and between that year and the early 1890s, Rawson spent a large
amount of his time actively involved with the group, which revolved around
D.M. Bennett and the Truth Seeker, a journal Bennett had founded in 1873.27 In
January 1876, Rawson even became the president of the community’s newly-
formed National Defense Association, which the Freethinkers had organized
to investigate and defend victims of questionable persecutions that came out
of the creation of the Comstock Laws, the cumulative body of federal and state
laws that prohibited sending ‘obscene’ materials through the mail.28 It was in
fact this affiliation in particular that brought Rawson and Lant together.
The Comstock Laws were the brainchild of Anthony Comstock, whose
relentless censoring activities dated to early 1873, when, with the backing of
the Young Men’s Christian Association and New York’s courts and law enforce-
ment community, he created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
This organization, in addition to monitoring and persecuting local violations

important for understanding his relationship with Webb, it was most likely through Free
Thought that Rawson, Lant, and Webb initially found common ground. Rawson’s rela-
tionship with the Free Thought movement has recently been discussed in Deveney,
“Albert Leighton Rawson, Initiate.”
27 For an overview of Bennett’s life, and several discussions of his relationship with Rawson,
see Roderick Bradford, D.M. Bennett: The Truth Seeker (Amherst, ny: Prometheus Books,
2006).
28 Bradford, D.M. Bennett, 114.
146 chapter 5

of vice laws, pushed for new and harsher laws concerning moral conduct. In
March of that year, Comstock and his Society successfully lobbied for the pass-
ing of the Comstock Act, which was the first federal Constock Law. Comstock
then parlayed this recently-acquired influence to obtain the position of us
postal inspector and, with this new power, led a censorship movement that is
today best known for its objections to literary works. Works that discussed
birth control and Free Love, and those that were perceived as anti-Christian—
all topics popular among Free Thought writers—were also targeted.
An early victim of Comstock’s attacks was a newspaper editor from Toledo,
Ohio, John A. Lant. After serving in the Civil War, Lant had found his way into
both spiritualism and the publishing industry in Ohio,29 and it was especially
through the latter that Lant was able to make his liberal views public. By 1873,
Lant had started the Liberal Printing House, which published his new newspa-
per, the Toledo Sun, and printed, sometime around late 1873 or early 1874,
Paschal Beverly Randolph’s Islam-themed sexual magic document, “The
Ansairetic Mystery.”30 The extent of Lant’s affiliation with Randolph and his
Ansaireh teachings is, unfornately, not fully known, but, in any case, Randolph’s
document was not what led to Comstock’s attack on Lant in 1875. The Comstock
Laws were created for items being sent in the mail, so it was Lant’s Toledo
Sun—which published a piece by the influential Freethinker agnostic Robert
G. Ingersoll, verses from a “Jewish-Christian Bible,” and “criticisms of clerical
sensualisms”31—that was the source of Comstock’s antagonism. When the
thirty-two-year-old Lant was arrested and sentenced to prison for two years
hard labor for his ‘crimes,’ the Truth Seeker and the leading spiritualist newspa-
pers came to his support, and the Free Thought community viewed him as a
martyr for many years afterwards.32 After his release from prison in 1877, Lant
returned to the newspaper editing industry but moved to New York, where he

29 In 1873, at the Tenth Annual Convention of the American Association of Spiritualists,

Lant attended as a delegate for Ohio, and it may have been here where Lant first met
Randolph, who spoke at the Convention; see Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Convention
of the American Association of Spiritualists (Chicago: [American Association of
Spiritualists], 1873), 32, 33, 66–73, 220–27.
30 Deveney, Paschal, 361.
31 Bradford, D.M. Bennett, 110; “Sectarian Intolerance,” Truth Seeker, August 15, 1875, 9;
“Liberal League,” Truth Seeker, October 26, 1878, 677; “Demonetizing Liberty,” Truth Seeker,
February 9, 1876, 90.
32 Bradford, D.M. Bennett, 110; “Sectarian Intolerance”; “The Case of John A. Lant,” Banner
of Light, February 12, 1876, 4; A.S. Davis, “A Martyr out of Prison,” Truth Seeker, March 17,
1877, 86.
The Rise And Fall Of A Brotherhood 147

joined Rawson and Bennett in the National Defense Association.33 In 1892,

Comstock reappeared in Lant’s life when he attempted but failed to have Lant
convicted again on obscenity charges.34
Rawson, meanwhile, was very close to D.M. Bennett, who was one of the
leading proponents of Free Thought in post-Civil War United States.35 The cre-
ation of the National Defense Association was in fact largely a response to
Comstock’s attacks on Bennett himself, and Rawson’s serving as its president
reflected the strong loyalty he had to the man. By taking on this public posi-
tion, however, Rawson made himself a major target for Comstock, who publi-
cized accounts of Rawson’s old legal troubles.36 Rawson recovered from the
attack and remained a leading figure of several of the Bennett-connected Free
Thought groups, such as the National Liberal League and Manhattan’s Liberal
Club. Bennett, in turn, seems to have been influenced by Rawson’s penchant
for the occult. Starting in the late 1870s, the Truth Seeker would sometimes dis-
cuss spiritualism, Randolph, and the Theosophical Society, and in January
1882, while visiting India, Bennett joined the Society and met its heads.37 After
Bennett’s death in December 1882, New York’s Free Thought community and
the Truth Seeker lived on, and Rawson maintained a presence in both, fre-
quently serving in leadership roles and giving lectures for its followers on the
world’s religious traditions. Rawson appears to have abandoned Theosophy
after 1886,38 so, from then on, Masonry and Free Thought were his main orga-
nizational commitments.
With this background in mind, it is easy to see how Rawson, Lant, and Webb
would have come together. The process seems to have started in the late spring
of 1893, around the time that Webb announced the formation of his American
Moslem Brotherhood. On May 7—as later reported in the Truth Seeker—the
liberal American Labor Reform League held its second annual conference in
New York City; Rawson and Lant were in attendance and both were elected to
be officers of the organization.39 By this time, Rawson and Lant, if they had not
met Webb personally at some progressive-community gathering, had surely

33 “Honor to Mr. Bennett,” Truth Seeker, March 13, 1880, 168; Elmina Drake Slenker, “Lewis
Masquerier,” Truth Seeker, February 4, 1888, 71.
34 Truth Seeker, April 16, 1892, 244.
35 See Bradford, D.M. Bennett, passim and Deveney, “‘Foul-Mouthed Libertine.’”
36 T.B. Wakeman, “Liberty and Purity: How to Secure Both Safely, Effectively, and Impartially,”
Truth Seeker, April 30, 1881, 274; Deveney, “‘Foul-Mouthed Libertine.’”
37 Bradford, D.M. Bennett, 297–322.
38 Johnson, “Albert Rawson,” 238.
39 “Rational Labor Reform,” Truth Seeker, May 27, 1893, 327.
148 chapter 5

read about his activities and ideas, and were probably discussing them with
each other.
Then, in June, the newest issue of the Moslem World gave an update on the
progress of the Moslem Brotherhood:

To A.L. Rawson, Esq., of Woodcliff, n.j., belongs the credit of having orga-
nized the first Circle of the Moslem Brotherhood in America, to which
has been given the name of Mecca Circle No. 1, of New York City. The
charter members are: A.L. Rawson, Walter M. Fleming, m.d., Charles T.
McClenachan, J.B. Eakins, and W.S. Paterson. […]
Mr. Rawson has also organized two more Circles composed of the fol-
lowing gentlemen: A.W. Peters, Chas. H. Heyzer, Geo. W. Mill[a]r, James
McGee, Wm. D. May, Saram R. Ellison, m.d., Robert P. Lyon, James V.
Kirby, Edgar M. Ayers, and Edward S. Ismet, all residents of New York
City.40

There are several points worth noting here, beyond the fact that Rawson was
the person responsible for organizing the first three circles for Webb’s
Brotherhood. First of all, every single one of these men was a Shriner and
belonged to the ‘Mecca’ Temple—the first Shriner temple—in New York.41
Moreover, the men who were in Mecca Circle No. 1 were all—with the excep-
tion of Rawson—founding members of the Shriners,42 and most of the men in
the other two circles were at that time officers in the Mecca Temple.43 The fact
that not just Rawson and a few friends, but the founders and leaders of the New
York and national Shriner organizations were the first members of Webb’s very
serious movement casts much doubt on the persistent academic characteriza-
tion of the Shriners as people who simply made a joke of Arabic and Islamic
culture. The fact that Charles T. McClenachan, a founding member of the
Shriners who was also in the first Moslem Brotherhood study circle, was also a
founding member of New York’s Societas Rosicruciana and Rawson’s Sheiks of
the Desert should lend even further support the idea that the Shriners—or at
least some of its leading figures at the time—were serious about Islam.

40 “The Moslem Brotherhood,” Moslem World (June 1893).

41 See Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Mecca Temple, Ancient
Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Its History and Pleasures, together with the
Origin and History of the Order (New York: Press of A. H. Kellogg, 1894), passim.
42 Rawson did not become affiliated with the Shriners until 1877, but after that point Shriner
histories started referring to him a founder.
43 “Mecca Temple Officers,” New York Times, January 14, 1893.
The Rise And Fall Of A Brotherhood 149

However, the founder of the fourth study circle—which was announced in

the June issue of the Moslem World—was not a Shriner. Elliott Coues was,
though, like Rawson, a former Theosophist.44 Coues was a Washington, dc
ornithologist who had gained a passion for alternative theories about religion
and, after joining the Theosophical Society in July 1884, quickly established a
lodge, which had many politicians and government employees as members.45
He soon navigated his way into replacing Page as the president of the Board of
Control, but, because Judge did not like his actions as president, the former
convinced Olcott to disband the Board and create a new governing body for
the us, the American Section, in which Judge, not Coues, was the head.46 Then,
after a public falling out with other Theosophy leaders, in 1889 Coues was com-
pletely expelled from the organization for “untheosophical conduct.” Coues,
however, remained active in his investigations into the occult and oriental reli-
gious thought, and was able to recruit a few other Washington residents who
had similar interests to study Islam with him.47
As for Lant, by July he had come on as an employee for the Moslem World,
and his letters to Webb from that summer indicate they had a good relation-
ship.48 Lant, who would soon convert to Islam, added to Webb’s movement not
only a stalwart defender of both liberal thought and Islamic-influenced eso-
tericism, but also an experienced editor. Although the Moslem World was start-
ing to struggle—it had to double its price in July—Lant helped keep the
content strong and things were looking up for the movement, which contin-
ued to receive positive coverage in the Truth Seeker and in Judge’s New York
Theosophical publication, The Path.49
For the next few months, Webb’s movement continued to grow. That sum-
mer, an Egyptian Muslim missionary, Abdurrahim Effendi, had come to join

44 “The Moslem Brotherhood,” Moslem World (June 1893).

45 Coues’ Theosophical and religious life is outlined in Paul Russell Cutright and Michael J.
Brodhead, Elliott Coues: Naturalist and Frontier Historian (Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1981), 292–308.
46 See Arthur L. Conger, ed., Practical Occultism: From the Private Letters of William Q. Judge
(n.p.: Theosophical University Press, 1951).
47 The other charter members of Coues’ Capital Circle No. 4 were W. R. Singleton, Charlotte
Smith, E. E. Conant, m.d. and C. B. Winslow, m.p.; see “The Moslem Brotherhood,” Moslem
World (June 1893).
48 “Some Personal Matters that May Prove Interesting,” American Moslem (April, May, June
1894): 1; Lant to Webb, July 25, 1893 and August 1, 1893, in the John A. Lant Papers at the
Missouri History Museum.
49 See The Path for June and July 1893, and the Truth Seeker’s June 24 and July 1 issues.
150 chapter 5

the Muslim efforts50 as did Emin L. Nabakoff, a Russian convert to Islam who
had been an active member of Quilliam’s Liverpool Moslem Institute.51 By early
August, two new study circles had been started, including ‘Khadijah No. 6’ in
Brooklyn, which had as a member John H. Russell, a future leader of Rawson’s
Sheiks of the Desert.52 By late September, there were eight study circles: four in
New York City; one in Baltimore (which was presumably the group led by
Coues from Washington); one in Woodcliffe, New Jersey (where Rawson lived);
and one in Pueblo, Colorado—and one was expected to be open soon in
Chicago.53
Out of all of these study circles, the one in Pueblo, Colorado stands out the
most. Pueblo, unlike New York, Baltimore, and Chicago, did not have strong—
if any—Free Thought, Shriner, or Theosophical groups, and it could in no way
be considered a major metropolitan center. In fact, at the time, Pueblo, a trad-
ing town one hundred miles south of Denver, had a population of only about
thirty thousand, less than a third of Denver’s. One would think that in a town
of that size, having one of the country’s first Islam study circles would have
been discussed in the local newspaper, the Chieftain—but that was not the
case. And, unfortunately, the available documents connected to Webb give no
other helpful information about this circle. The most likely explanation for its
existence, then, is that it was created by a Pueblo group that similarly received
very little local press coverage but had an interest in studying esoteric and non-
Christian religions: Nona L. Brooks’ Theosophy-influenced Divine Science.
Webb had, it seems, finally connected himself with the New Thought commu-
nity, an important achievement if he was going to ride the main wave of the
deterritorializing New Thought-esoteric American occult revival.
In the fall, Webb punctuated a successful summer with two significant
events. First was speaking at the World’s Parliament of Religions, a branch of

50 “Islam’s Propagandist,” Press (ny), July 4, 1893, 5.

51 Singleton, “Brothers at Odds,” 474.
52 “To Be Called Khadijah,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 6, 1893, 20. The other members were
Dr. Louis Barkan, David M. Drury, James Rodgers, H.C. Van Vechten, W.A. Marinus, William
Carmichael, Robert Ross, and Waters B. Klopp. This was the sixth circle; the name and
location of the fifth is uncertain—it was either in the New York City area, Woodcliffe, nj
(Rawson’s home), or Pueblo, Colorado; see “Missions of Islam,” Chicago Daily Tribune,
September 20, 1893, 1.
53 “Missions of Islam”; “More Light is Needed,” Moslem World (September 1893). Abd-Allah
points out (in A Muslim, 324 n124) that a Turkish-language document from the Ottoman
Archives indicates that this Pueblo was in California; however, given that the state is
explicitly listed as Colorado in multiple English accounts, we can surmise that this was
probably a mistake on the part of the Turkish transcriber.
The Rise And Fall Of A Brotherhood 151

the World’s Fair being held in Chicago.54 That year’s World’s Fair was a particu-
larly important one for Islam in America for reasons besides Webb’s appear-
ance there. The directors had called for the building of mock cities representing
various world cultures, and dozens—probably hundreds—of Muslims came
from overseas to construct and fill these ‘towns,’ give performances, observe,
and sell goods to the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visited the Fair.55
The Fair’s orientalism left a lasting impact on us culture, and many of the
Muslims who had come for it returned to their homelands conveying their
excitement for the America they had seen. Some even stayed behind, often
performing in imitation ‘Streets of Cairo’ scenes attached to the new small
local fairs that started springing up throughout the country.56
The Parliament branch of the Fair, meanwhile, added the elements of intel-
lectuality and liberal religion. It had been designed by and for Protestant
liberals interested in learning about the various religions of the world. Perhaps
the most notable representative of a non-Christian religion was Swami
Vivekenanda, whose appearance at the Parliament eventually led to the forma-
tion of his Vedanta movement in 1895 (see Chapter 6). However, not all reli-
gions discussed at the Parliament were represented by members of their faiths.
Several Christian scholars and missionaries, for instance, spoke on various
Asian-majority religions, such as the Baha’i faith and Islam. Webb, who gave
two speeches on September 20 and 21, was in fact the only Muslim to give an
official speech for the event. In his speeches, Webb outlined his basic views
about Islam and he briefly touched on polygamy, which sparked a small but
negative reaction in the crowd and in the press.57
The second important event to occur in the fall was the official opening of
the American Islamic Propaganda headquarters and lecture room at the
Moslem World’s 20th Street offices on October 6.58 Along with Webb, both
Nabakoff and Lant—who had recently converted—spoke at the ceremony.
Webb explained that the headquarters, which had a library that was open to
the public, was intended to essentially be a “school of morality, free to all who

54 For an extended discussion of the Parliament and Webb’s speeches, see Abd-Allah,
A Muslim, 211–44.
55 See Nance, How the Arabian Nights, 137–63.
56 See Nance, How the Arabian Nights, passim.
57 Transcriptions of Webb’s speeches are contained in John Henry Barrows, ed., The Word’s
Parliament of Religions; An Illustrated and Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of
Religions, Held in Chicago in Connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893 (Chicago:
The Parliament Publishing Company, 1893), 989–96 and 1046–52.
58 “For the Faith of Islam,” New York Times, October 8, 1893; “Headquarters Opened,” Moslem
World (October 1893).
152 chapter 5

may attend,” in which Webb would “present the merits of [the Islamic] social
system […] and […] encourage students of religious philosophy to examine
carefully the principles of [Islam].”59 Meetings were planned to be held on
Friday evenings and informal talks would be given on Sunday afternoons, and
Webb again encouraged the forming of American Moslem Brotherhood cir-
cles.60 Then, over the next week, a Syrian Christian immigrant and follower of
the Baha’i faith, Anton Haddad, gave at the lecture hall a number of speeches
sympathetic towards Muslims.61
Spirits were running high. The first Islamic movement in the us now had an
official headquarters, school, newspaper, and several study circles throughout
the country. It was getting strong support from the liberal community and con-
verts were being made. Muslims from around the world, furthermore, were
aware of and supporting Webb’s efforts, and some had even come to the us to
join up with it. In October, Webb announced a forty-lecture, nineteen-state,
five-month tour of the us, and he began visiting Midwestern cities.62

Schisms and Decline63

Just as their prospects were starting to look very good, however, money prob-
lems began piling up. Hajee Abdulla Arab and other Muslims had sent some
money over in November, but it was too little, too late. The nineteen-state lec-
ture tour was cancelled and the last issue of the Moslem World appeared in
November. Financial problems were also starting to affect the cohesiveness of
Webb’s New York following. In the summer of 1894, Lant printed a letter sup-
posedly written by Webb on November 11, 1893 that indicated that Lant had
worked for Webb since July, lending the movement $472 of his own money, and
receiving an iou from Webb for $30, neither of which had yet been paid back.64
Webb, however, claimed that Lant’s interest in Islam was purely money-driven,
and that when Webb refused Lant’s request to be paid $25 per week to run the
Moslem World, Lant began to lose interest in the movement.65 Lant, further-
more, Webb claimed, had begun contacting Indian Muslims about creating an

59 “For the Faith of Islam.”

60 “For the Faith of Islam.”
61 “Headquarters Opened.”
62 Singleton, introduction, 39–40.
63 See Singleton, “Brothers at Odds,” for a more complete discussion of these schisms.
64 “Some Personal Matters.”
65 “Islam in Union Square,” New York Sun, December 11, 1893, 1.
The Rise And Fall Of A Brotherhood 153

Indian-American trade bureau, which Webb supposedly disapproved of; he

would later tell reporters that he felt it “was not within the line of missionary
work.”66 Finally, Webb insisted that Lant had been “prying in [Webb’s] desk,” a
statement implying the Lant was an immoral thief.67 For these reasons, Webb
said, he asked Lant to leave the movement.68
It does not seem, though, that Webb had accurately depicted Lant’s sup-
posed wickedness. While the fact that Lant was attempting to form a Muslim-
American trade bureau is confirmed by numerous letters preserved in the
Missouri History Museum, one of the letters in this collection, dated October 21,
1893, was written by Webb and indicates that the trade bureau plans were being
initiated not by Lant but by Webb’s Moslem World Publishing Company.69
In fact, in this letter to potential clients, Webb wrote that he considered Lant
to be “reliable and trustworthy in every respect.”70 Lant also later responded to
the accusation of him “prying,” saying he used that desk, which contained his
own private papers, every day while working for the Moslem World.71
Lant, however, was not the only Muslim with whom Webb had a problem.
Webb claimed that upon Emin Nabakoff’s arrival in the us, he had received
letters warning him about the Russian.72 Webb said he ignored these rumors at
the time, but when he returned from a short lecture tour, there were several
complaints made against Nabakoff—Webb did not say from whom.73 Webb
then asked Nabakoff to leave the movement as well, and Nabakoff complied.
Again, the letters contained in the Missouri History Museum suggest that
Webb might not have been telling the whole truth: Quilliam himself told Lant
that he (Quilliam) had nothing but good things to say about Nabakoff, and an
Indian Muslim who had communicated with Quilliam about the issue in early
1893 confirmed that the Liverpudlian had consistently stood by this position
when communicating with others.74 Nabakoff, meanwhile, was critical of
Webb for not having instituted the formal aspects of the Islamic prayer ritual;

66 “Scoffed at the Christian Faith,” New York Herald, December 11, 1893, 11.
67 “Far India Wants to Know,” New York World, May 17, 1894, 8.
68 “Scoffed at the Christian Faith.”
69 Webb to Messrs. Strong & Trowbridge, October 21, 1893, John A. Lant Papers.
70 Ibid.
71 Singleton, “Brothers at Odds,” 475.
72 “Islam in Union Square.”
73 Ibid.
74 Quilliam to Lant, September 26, 1894; Mirza Birjis Kader to Lant, March 16, 1894, John A.
Lant Papers.
154 chapter 5

Webb responded by dismissing Nabakoff as a “fakir,” a fake Muslim spiritual

leader, who had never read the Qurʾan.75
After the expulsions of Lant and Nabakoff from the movement, the next
time Webb had heard about either of them was on Sunday, December 10, when
reporters went to his house to try to get an interview after the estranged pair
performed in Manhattan a public Islamic call to prayer, made ablutions, and
held the first meeting of their new First Society for the Study of Islam.76 About
forty people, including several Muslims who were in the country for the World’s
Fair, appeared for the call and the first meeting; and the next week, when
Nabakoff performed another call to prayer and held a second meeting,
seventy-five people were present.77 Then in January, the group launched its
own Islamic newspaper under Lant’s editorship, the American Moslem. It was
in this context—in which Lant and Nabakoff had taken without warning much
of the prestige Webb had gained as the only American Muslim leader—that
Webb started publicly unleashing his harsh, and possibly inaccurate, words
against the two men.
At first, both Rawson and Arab counseled Lant to end the feud.78 Webb,
however, was not interested.79 By early January, he had apparently reached out
to Anthony Comstock—a person Webb had previously criticized in the Moslem
World80—to write a statement against Lant, which Webb then sent a copy of to
the movement’s Indian backers.81 Lant, for his part, aligned with the Eurasian
(mixed British and Indian) Theosophist and convert to Islam Urban Hamid
Snow, who already disliked Webb after the latter offended Snow while on his
Indian tour in 1892.82 Snow, who led the independent ‘Church of Islam’ and
published multiple English-language Islamic journals and small books in India,
contributed several pieces to the American Moslem and wrote a letter critical

75 “Islam in Union Square”; “Scoffed at the Christian Faith”; “Far India Wants to Know.”
76 “Islam in Union Square”; “Scoffed at the Christian Faith”; “New York’s First Muezzin Call,”
New York Times, December 11, 1893.
77 “Islam in Union Square”; “New York’s First Muezzin Call”; “At the Union Square Mosque,”
New York Sun, December 18, 1893, 1.
78 Rawson to Lant, January 15, 1894; Arab to Lant, January 25, 1894, John A. Lant Papers.
79 “Islam in Union Square”; “Scoffed at the Christian Faith.”
80 “Unjust Discrimination,” Moslem World (September 1893).
81 Riazuddin Ahmed to Hamid Snow, March 20, 1894, John A. Lant Papers.
82 The exact offense is unknown; all that is known is that Webb says it was unintentional on
his part; see M’d Alexander Russell Webb, “Explanatory Letter from Mr. Webb,” Moslem
Chronicle and the Muhammadan Observer, January 10, 1895, 3. Snow joined the
Theosophical Society in India on December 21, 1892; see Theosophical Society General
Register Vol. I, accessed February 10, 2014, http://www.theartarchives.org.
The Rise And Fall Of A Brotherhood 155

of Webb to a New York newspaper, claiming Webb misused funds and intimat-
ing that Webb had lied about hearing bad rumors concerning Nabakoff.83 By
late January, Rawson had aligned with Lant as well,84 as did—possibly—
Webb’s old backer, Arab, and several other Muslims and non-Muslims within
and without the country.85 Lant would soon publish in his paper the purported
Webb iou and letters to and from Comstock,86 which Webb surely included
among the “false documents” he claimed others were using against him.87 The
sides were thus increasingly solidified.
Although this growing antagonism towards Webb was helping unite Webb’s
critics, the First Society for the Study of Islam was not able to survive. A major
factor was the fact that already by late December 1893, a number of anti-Islamic
Armenian Christians had started attending the group’s Sunday meetings where
they would challenge Nabakoff to explain controversial ideas held by some
Muslims—which they presented, of course, as universally adhered to.88 When
Nabakoff resisted indulging their aggressions and asked that they leave the
meeting, they yelled and challenged him even more. The uncomfortable situa-
tion discouraged attendance, and at the January 7 meeting, there were only
about twenty people present, including the Christians, Nabakoff, and Lant.89
The group started running low on funds, and by April the First Society was no
longer active.90
Webb, meanwhile, struggled to keep his own organization alive. He contin-
ued to take speaking engagements, lecturing in various states and for
Theosophists and spiritualists in New York,91 but by the spring he had accepted
that Arab was no longer going to support the movement, and he was sending

83 “Far India Wants to Know.”

84 Rawson to Lant, January 21, 1894, John A. Lant Papers.
85 See the various letters in the John A. Lant Papers.
86 American Moslem (April, May, June 1894): 1.
87 M’d Alexander Russell Webb, “To the Editor of the ‘Moslem Chronicle,’” Moslem Chronicle
and the Muhammadan Observer, May 23, 1895, 224. While we cannot be certain the
Comstock letter was a forgery, Webb did—despite having criticized Comstock in the
past—continue to use Lant’s run-ins with Comstock as evidence of Lant’s bad character;
see “Far India Wants to Know.”
88 “Islamism in New York,” New York Herald, December 25, 1893, 9; “Discord Enters Islam’s
Church,” New York Herald, January 8, 1894, 4.
89 “Discord Enters Islam’s Church.”
90 “Far India Wants to Know.”
91 Singleton, introduction, 42; Path (March 1894): 394; “The New York Psychical Society,”
Banner of Light, April 28, 1894, 8.
156 chapter 5

out fundraising form letters to various Muslims.92 With no steady income, Webb
had to give up the 20th Street office; in May he moved his family to a small home
in Ulster Park purchased by his wife, and he began living part-time in New York
City with another male convert. In June, Webb started a new scaled-down
paper, the Voice of Islam, out of a new office on East 23rd Street. The subtitle of
this paper, “Journal of the American Moslem Brotherhood,” confirmed that the
American Islamic Propaganda effort had come to an end, and all that was left
was the Brotherhood. On the 25th of May, the Brotherhood held its first annual
election for its officers, none of whom were people who had been named as
Brotherhood members in previous public mentions of the group.93 Then, in
July, the secretary of both the Brotherhood and the Voice, Nafeesa M.T. Keep,
initiated a small sensation in the local newspapers when she locked Webb and
all other employees of the Voice out of the journal’s office. Keep—whose inter-
est in Islam was sparked by hearing discussions about the religion at the World’s
Fair, which led to her becoming perhaps the first white American woman to
convert to Islam without marrying a Muslim94—claimed that Webb had taken
monies that were to go to rent and salaries and demanded not only that Webb
resign from his position, but also that she get possession of the company. Her
charges, however, apparently lacked any foundation, and Webb was able to
retain the company, which he moved to his home in Ulster Park.
But Webb continued to lose friends. Back in May, when Snow’s letter to the
press led to a reporter asking for Webb’s response, Webb reportedly called
Quilliam “a charletan [sic] of the worst possible character.”95 Webb later denied
saying this,96 but the damage was done. In late September, Quilliam, who had
been communicating with Keep, suggested to Lant that he, Nabakoff, Keep,
and whomever else they could gather up, form a single group that could be
recognized as an affiliate of the Liverpool Moslem Institute.97 The Americans
thus created the American Moslem Institute, which held in the old Voice office
on December 3, 1894 its first meeting, in which Lant was elected president

92 See Webb’s May 1, 1894 form letter contained in the John A. Lant Papers.
93 “Annual Elections,” Voice of Islam (June 1894). The officers were as follows: President—
Mohammed Alex. R. Webb; Vice-President—C. Omar McCoun; Secretary—Nafeesa M.T.
Keep; Treasurer—H. Ali Lewis; Librarian—Ahmed Hamouda (an Egyptian immigrant);
Assistant Librarian—R. Othman White; Advisory Board—E.A. Arnold, H. Fatima Peabody,
Khaled D. Hutchins; Board of Publication—Nafeesa M.T. Keep, H. Ali Lewis, R. Othman
White, C. Omar McCoun.
94 “A Moslem Crusade in Free America,” Utica Sunday Journal, February 11, 1900, 15.
95 “Far India Wants to Know.”
96 “Explanatory Letter from Mr. Webb.”
97 Quilliam to Lant, September 26, 1894, John A. Lant Papers.
The Rise And Fall Of A Brotherhood 157

and Keep secretary.98 On December 10, the group celebrated the anniversary of
the First Society’s call to prayer, and Nabakoff performed the call again.99 At
this meeting, Keep—who had brought police officers with her for protection
in case Webb or his friends tried to attack her—claimed that while on a trip to
Cincinnati, Webb listed among his expenses “Bar expenses $3,” which she
interpreted as him having indulged in liquor.100 She made a motion to have
the Institute repudiate Webb; Rawson, who was in attendance, seconded it;
and then it was voted for unanimously.101 The attendees also proposed officers
for their group—among which were, notably, three women—and signed
by-laws.102
On December 15, however, even this new organization lost its cohesion.
Lant, Theodore F. Price (a supporter of the First Society and the American
Moslem newspaper), and another friend, William McNair, resigned from their
positions in the organization.103 Lant explained that after the December 10
meeting, he had expressed to Keep his displeasure with her actions that night,
and she responded by telling him to resign. Nabakoff was then elected to
replace Lant. This led to bad feelings between Lant and Nabakoff and the latter
left the Institute to start what was an American branch of a Turkish movement,
the International Moslem Union.104 Keep then decided to move to Liverpool,
so Lant retook charge of the American Moslem Institute, and Quilliam, desper-
ately trying to keep the peace, treated both Lant and Nabakoff’s organizations
as affiliates of his Liverpool mosque. By April, the Institute was still active

98 “Moslems Unite,” New York World, December 7, 1894, 8; “Mrs. Keep at the Front Again,”
New York Herald, December 12, 1894, 12.
99 “Webb Falls from Grace,” New York World, December 11, 1894, 11.
100 Ibid.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid. The officers were as follows: Lant as president; Lant’s First Society supporter
Theodore F. Price as vice-president; Mrs. E.A. Arnold as treasurer; Lant’s wife, Anna, as
librarian; Lant’s daughter, Janet, as recording secretary; Keep as secretary. Quilliam was
named honorary president; Arab, honorary president for Arabia; Nabakoff, honorary
president for Russia; Rawson, honorary president for America; Joseph M. Wade (another
First Society supporter), honorary vice-president for America; Snow, honorary secretary;
Prof. H.H. Wilde [?] from Liverpool, honorary secretary. The patrons were listed as the
Sultan of Turkey, the Ameer of Kabul, the Nyzam of Hyderabad, the Sultan of Morocco,
the Begum of Bhopal, the Sultan of Selangor, and the Sheikh Ul-Islam of Turkey.
103 “The Moslems Lose a President,” New York World, December 16, 1894, 16.
104 Singleton, “Brothers at Odds,” 481–82; “Mohammedanism and Romanism in Manila,”
Christian Advocate, November 14, 1901, 1808. The latter article says that group was alterna-
tively known as the ‘Young Turks,’ which possibly indicates that this was an early incarna-
tion of the movement that would gain prominence in the twentieth century.
158 chapter 5

and—according to Rawson, who was by this time signing his letters “Yours in
faith/ in Allah”—the members hoped that they would soon build a mosque
with the support of an Indian Muslim from England.105 This Indian, however,
would not come for a few more years (see Chapter 6). In the meantime, Lant
had reunited with Nabakoff and his Union, but even this recombined group
began to slowly die out; its December 1895 call to prayer anniversary meeting
seems to have been its last.106
Webb, meanwhile, was also able to hang on through 1895, having found new
international Muslim support. In January that year, he started a new paper, the
Moslem World and the Voice of Islam, and held the second annual elections for
the American Moslem Brotherhood in May.107 He also attempted to reconcile
with the other groups, showing support for their movements in his newspaper
and publishing pieces by and about Rawson.108 Money, though, apparently con-
tinued to be a problem. There is no trace of the Moslem Brotherhood after May
1895 and Webb published no more issues of his newspaper after February 1896.
After only three years, the first Islamic movement in the United States was
effectively dead. It is difficult to say, given the existing evidence, how much of
this collapse was due to Webb’s mismanagement or any less-than-honest
actions committed by Webb or his followers. Without doubt, though, the fail-
ure of backers to come through with the money they promised put an enor-
mous strain on the group, which could not but have exacerbated interprersonal
tensions. For all of his connections with the occult revival and background in
business and promotional activities, Webb did not have the resources to over-
come this unforeseen difficulty. He also appears to have failed to earn the true
loyalty of many of his leading followers, which might have held the group
together through the lean times. Perhaps he overestimated his own skills, con-
nections, and appearance of authority; perhaps he let his ambitiousness and
arrogance cloud his judgments; perhaps he simply made poor choices for the
aip leadership—or, as in most cases of organizational failure, perhaps it was a
combination of factors. It is worth mentioning, though, that Webb did not hold
a leadership position in an occult revival-connected group prior to taking on

105 Rawson to Lant, April 19, 1895, John A. Lant Papers.

106 Singleton, “Brothers at Odds,” 481–83.
107 “Annual Election,” Moslem World and the Voice of Islam (June 1895). The officers elected
were President—Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb; Vice-President—R. Othman
White; Treasurer—C. Omar McCoun; Librarian—Ahmed Hamouda; and Board of
Directors—Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb, R. Othman White, H. Ali Lewis, C.O.
McCoun, Ahmed Hamouda, Khaled D. Hutchins, Fatima Peabody, and August Berg.
108 Singleton, “Brothers at Odds,” 482.
The Rise And Fall Of A Brotherhood 159

this Islamic mission. It is often the case that before a person can become a
good leader, she or he must learn through failure the many skills and numerous
difficulties that make a person a good leader in a particular community, and
rank-and-file members—like Webb had been—frequently cannot appreciate
all that goes into this. As a person well-connected with the occult revival, Webb
was surely far more successful than a complete outsider would have been, but
he was not truly prepared for the task he took on when he had only been a
Muslim for three years.
Despite all of this, however, Webb and his movement had made history.
They had successfully introduced into the white American religious market
the possibility of publicly embracing and organizing around something unde-
niably understood as Islam—not ‘Ansairetic’ Rosicrucianism, not Islamophilic
Theosophy, not non-Islamic Sufism, and not Islamophilic Masonry. Because of
Webb, from 1893 on, Islam would have a permanent place in the white
American religious landscape.
 chapter 6

The Post-Movement Years

In the fourteen years that followed the folding of Webb’s third Islamic newspa­
per, while a few Muslim and Sufi groups for white Americans appeared,
nothing that could be considered an actual conversion movement existed in
the us. This was not due to a lack of effort, however. Several of the people who
had been directly and indirectly connected to Webb’s Islamic movement—­
including Webb himself—continued to attempt to persuade white Amer­
icans to embrace Islam, or at least Islamic and Sufi teachings. Some of these
­individuals—including, again, Webb—tied themselves directly to a new Western
occult organization, Papus’ Martinist Order. But even this was not sufficient for
reviving the Islamic movement. Meanwhile, there were a number of interna­
tional Muslim missionary efforts in the country, and at least a few people con­
verted to Islam on an individual basis. Still, no one had the ability to create a
movement anywhere close to what Webb had fostered between 1893 and 1896.
Overall, these were quiet years for conversion to Islam.
Interestingly, though, these were not quiet years for conversion to other
non-Christian religions. Particularly after 1894, the turn-of-the-century us wit­
nessed a sudden, major wave of Americans embracing Asian-majority reli­
gions, such as the Baha’i faith, Buddhism, and Vedantic Hinduism. It is not at
all a coincidence that the us movements connected with these religions were
tied to some of the very same organizations, religious currents, events, and
people with which Webb had been affiliated. Indeed, several of these move­
ments were able to thrive precisely because they were better at the very things
Webb had attempted to do, such as convincingly presenting their religion as
the true version of America’s esoteric and New Thought teachings, and per­
suading prominent members of those groups to join their religion. Their rela­
tive success in these activities was so significant that by the beginning of the
twentieth century, the American religious landscape had come to look very
different than it had in the mid-1870s when Rev. Norman had failed in his
attempt to spread Islam. The country would now be peppered with numerous
non-Christian religious organizations and teachers, a situation that generated
even more competition and, as a result, the expansion of the non-Christian
religious market. These conditions would make conversion to Islam after 1910
something very different than it had been in the 1890s. The emergence and
success of these other non-Christian groups in the years following the collapse

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_008

The Post-movement Years 161

of Webb’s movement are therefore instructive not only for understanding the
relative failure of Islamic groups during this period, but also for revealing fac­
tors contributing to the changes in Islamic conversion that would appear in
the twentieth century.

Vestiges

Keep, Nabakoff, and Lant probably did not have the backgrounds—in terms of
either experience or connections—that would have been necessary for start­
ing new successful Islamic movements. Out of the three, only Lant had strong
ties to the kind of movements—spiritualist and Free Thought groups1—that
would show an interest in Islam, but the people in these movements were not
the type to convert exclusively, as they would be primarily interested in Islam
from a liberal, inclusivistic perspective. Lant, furthermore, does not appear to
have maintained ties with the old Randolph-influenced Rosicrucians, who
would have been much more receptive to the notion of exclusive conversion to
a non-Christian religion, particularly Islam. Still, it was probably Lant’s back­
ground in liberal movements and his abilities as an editor that led him to be,
out of the three dissenters, probably the most active in working for Islam in the
us after 1896. In 1897, for instance, Lant attempted to help secure the release of
detained Muslim immigrants.2 Then, in 1900, Hamid Snow’s Church of Islam
permitted Lant to start an American branch of the group and to be its first
‘pastor.’3 Nothing is known about the Church of Islam activities in the us, but,
about a year later, Lant had appeared with Nabakoff and Theodore Price, one
of Lant’s convert supporters since the First Society days, in Manila where they
were working with Snow to spread Islam.4 Interestingly, while Snow was said
to be the Indian director of the effort, the organization sponsoring their work
was not the Church of Islam, but rather Nabakoff’s old International Moslem
Union, and Nabakoff, not Lant, was head of the Manila mission.5 At some

1 Lant was speaking in front of spiritualists even as late as April 1894; see “The Anniversary,”
Banner of Light, April 14, 1894, 6.
2 Lant to unnamed recipient, March 24, 1897, John A. Lant Papers.
3 Hamid Snow, “A Voice from India,” Crescent 16, no. 415 (1900): 407.
4 “Mohammedanism and Romanism in Manila.” This convert was Theodore F. Price, now
known as Mohammed Price.
5 Ibid. In early 1896, Lant and Snow had joined with several other Indian and British Muslims
in supporting the expansion of the Union into India; see “‘The International Moslem Union.’
A Suggestion,” Crescent 7, no. 158 (1896): 469–70.
162 chapter 6

point, Lant moved back to the us, and at least through 1905 occasionally pub­
lished pieces on Islam.6 He died at his home in Florrisant, Missouri on January 17,
1913.7 Nabakoff’s post-1896 activities, meanwhile, are less well known; he partici­
pated in at least one ecumenical event, but there is no other information on
any Islamic missionary work he may have done in the us.8
Keep, for her part, did attempt to start a new us mission. After moving to
Liverpool in early 1895, Keep relocated to London where she met a pair of
wealthy Egyptians with whom she moved to Egypt, living there for a few years.9
By late 1899 she had returned to London, where she connected with the local
Muslim community. There she learned about an American Muslim who
wanted to donate fifty acres of land to form a Muslim colony in the us and
promote conversion to Islam.10 Keep announced her plans to lead this mission
in a widely circulated news article. However, it seems that nothing ever came
of it and Keep faded into obscurity.
Somewhat surprisingly, Quilliam’s Institute continued to have a small
American presence for a few years, even after the departure of Lant, Nabakoff,
and Keep. It seems, judging by the number of appearances of Americans in
Quilliam’s journal, the Crescent, by 1895 it had become the main competitor
for Webb’s Islamic newspaper. That year, Quilliam’s magazine published
numerous stories and news briefs concerning Nabakoff, Lant, and Keep, as
well as several letters from Americans—including converts, Muslim immi­
grants, and non-Muslim sympathizers—known to be associates of the three
Webb dissenters.11 One of these people was Dr. C.F. Elsner, a Chicago pharma­
cist, who in early 1895 donated money to Lant’s American Moslem Institute.12
Soon after this, Elsner joined the Institute community, and, at least through
1899, helped keep the American branch of Quilliam’s organization alive.13
In July 1898, Quilliam’s Islamic publication made the announcement that

6 Lant had a piece published in Quilliam’s second Islamic journal, the Islamic World, in
August 1905.
7 “Editor John A. Lant Dead,” Dobbs Ferry Register (New York), January 24, 1913, 1.
8 Singleton, “Brothers at Odds,” 483–84.
9 “A Moslem Crusade in Free America,” Utica Sunday Journal, February 11, 1900, 15.
10 Ibid.
11 E.g., Joseph M. Wade and Muhammad Najb.
12 See Carl Stephens, The Alumni Record of the University of Illinois, Chicago Departments,
Colleges of Medicine and Dentistry, School of Pharmacy (Chicago: University of Illinois,
1921), 336; “Editorial Notes,” Crescent 5, no. 111 (1895): 89.
13 “Answers to Correspondents,” Crescent 7, no. 159 (1896): 488; “Answers to Correspondents,”
Crescent 13, no. 336 (1899): 392.
The Post-movement Years 163

Dr. Elsner was one of two American honorary presidents for the Liverpool
Muslim14 Institute.15
The other American honorary president in 1898 was Dr. Edouard Blizt from
Nevada, Missouri. Unlike Elsner, Blizt almost certainly had come into the
international Muslim convert community via Webb. Blizt was a Belgian
Mason who had studied Theosophy and had been initiated into both the
Yarker- and Quilliam-connected Memphis-Misraim Rite16 as well as a new
occult group called the Martinist Order.17 Martinism was an eighteenth-
century French Masonic movement that followed the esoteric teachings of
Martinez de Pasqually. Although it had lost much of its following by the early
nineteenth century, in the late 1880s the movement was revived and popular­
ized as the Martinist Order by Papus (Gerard Encausse), the single most influ­
ential French esotericist of the late nineteenth century.18 Starting in the
mid-1880s, when barely twenty years old, Papus joined and helped start
numerous esoteric groups in France, including the Theosophical Society and
the H.B. of L. He hoped to connect all these organizations as part of a larger
program to promote both interfaith cooperation and the notion of the essen­
tial unity of all traditional religions.19 Some of the organizations he started,
such as Groupe Indépendent d’Etudes Esotériques and l’Union Idéaliste
Universelle, were ostensibly designed to meet these specific goals, yet they,
like many of Papus’ other groups, were also gateways for joining what were
thought to be superior organizations, one of which was the Martinist Order.
The Martinist Order itself, meanwhile, was used to prepare people for the H.B.
of L., as Papus was convinced that the highest form of spirituality was the type
of occult initiation promoted by the latter group.20 Indeed, when Blitz came
to the us in 1894 with the intention of spreading Martinism, he was instructed

14 They had changed the spelling of this word in the organization’s name from ‘Moslem.’
15 “Annual Meeting of the Liverpool Muslim Institute,” Crescent 11, no. 286 (1898): 421.
16 This was another name for Yarker’s Ancient and Primitive Rite.
17 On Blitz, see Edouard Blitz, Ritual and Monitor of the Martinist Order (Nevada, mo:
E. Blitz, 1896); Chanel, “‘Fraternite Hermetique.’” 315; Edouard Blizt letters, Fonds Papus,
MS 5489, Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon (henceforth, fp); Milko Bogaard, “The Martinist
Order,” accessed May 9, 2014, http://www.hermetics.org/Martinism.html, accessed April
14, 2014; http://kg.vkk.nl/french/organisations.f/om.f/blitz/blitzbio.html.
18 On Papus, see Marie-Sophie André and Christophe Beaufils, Papus, biographie: la Belle
Epoque de l’occultisme (Paris: Berg International Éditeurs, 1995).
19 André and Beaufils, Papus, 54–58.
20 René Guénon, “F.-Ch. Barlet et les sociétés initiatiques,” La Voile d’Isis, April 20, 1925,
reprinted in Godwin et al., Hermetic Brotherhood, 434.
164 chapter 6

to keep in touch and work with the Georgia-based H.B. of L. leader Peter
Davidson.21
In a project similar to what Mackenzie had proposed in 1869, the Martinist
Order presented itself as the only Masonic movement that taught true “tradi­
tional” symbols, as opposed to “synthetic” ones, which were, according to
Papus, permeating and dividing Masonry. Because he was working from this
belief, in establishing the Martinist Order in the us, Blitz began with Masons,
although he soon reached out to Theosophists and other esotericists as well.22
Blitz was relatively successful in this effort; between August 1894 and November
1895, Martinist groups had been established in over a dozen states and Blitz
had started communicating with influential people in the American esoteric
scene, such as the H.B. of L. and Sufic Circle member, S.C. Gould, who joined
the movement and helped promote it in the esotericist magazine he edited
and published.23
By early 1896, when the growth of us Martinism apparently reached a pla­
teau, Blizt also began working on spreading the newly-created Union Idéaliste
Universelle, the Papus group that, more than any of his other ones, sought to
establish good relations among different religions.24 This may have been what
initially led to Blitz’s connection with Muslim converts, since Islam was one of
the religions that was prominent on the radar of the ecumenical side of the
Papus community. In 1892, Papus created a short-lived journal, the La Lumière
d’Orient: Revue Bi-Mensuelle de L’Islam, whose objectives were to “approach
Islam through philosophical and social terms rather than political ones” and to
correct prevalent misconceptions about the religion of Muslims.25 To this
effect, the journal included articles on cultural institutions in Turkey, news
from the Muslim world, a serialized French translation of the Qurʾan, and brief
introductions to important elements of Islam—which included, interestingly,
two essays by Quilliam.26 Despite only producing two issues, the creation of
such a journal apparently led, in January 1893, to the Ottoman Sultan awarding
Papus the fourth class of the Ottoman Imperial Order of the Mejidieh, a medal

21 Chanel, “ ‘Fraternite Hermetique,’” 310 ff.

22 The spread of the Martinist Order under Blitz is well-documented in his dozens of letters
to Papus in fp.
23 See letter, Blizt to Papus, undated, fp.
24 André and Beaufils, Papus, 156–59; in the fp, see the “Union Idéaliste Universelle” flyer
and Blitz to Papus, 1886 (month and date are in a cipher, but they are filed before a March
1886 letter).
25 André and Beaufils, Papus, 102.
26 Copies of the two known issues of the journal are held in the Bibliothèque nationale de
France.
The Post-movement Years 165

given in honor of services to the Ottoman government.27 This was followed by

the opening of Martinist Order lodges in both Egypt and Tunisia.28
Connecting with Muslims, then, was not a new idea for Martinists by the
time Blitz came to the us, and these experiences of the Order surely embolded
him. Blitz, in fact, showed no hesitancy, in an early 1896 letter, in discussing
with Papus his desire to form alliances with “the Arab, the Persian, or the Turk”
to obtain for Martinism “the glory of having established silently a wide com­
mittee of peace and of universal alliance.”29 Of course, persuading Muslims to
become actual Martinists, and not just join the Union, would be an even bigger
coup, and Blitz was up to challenge. In early March, Blizt was proud to
announce to Papus that he had brought into the Martinist Order Alexander
Webb, the most famous Muslim in the country.30 Webb was at that time also
still a Theosophist as well as a confirmed believer in Islam’s having esoteric
origins through Muhammad’s ‘psychical’ divine communications—he even
publicly expressed the latter view that year in S.C. Gould’s magazine.31
Martinism’s strong commitment to religious cooperation and unity, along with
its promotion of occult initiation, would have been particularly appealing
to Webb, who surely valued the practical occultism of his early days in the
St. Louis Theosophical Society and his communications with men like Gould.
There are, however, no known confirmed connections between Martinism and
Webb after March 1896. For this reason, it is difficult to say how important
Martinism actually was for the convert.
Nevertheless, Martinist connections to both Islam and the broader white
Muslim convert community continued to appear for the next few years. In
March 1896, the same month Blizt announced his initiation of Webb, Blitz
wrote to Quilliam’s Crescent requesting materials on Islam.32 Two years later,
Blizt established ties with various Muslims in Tunisia, convincing a person
named, simply, Bey to join the Union, and coming to an agreement with the
editors of the reformist Tunisian paper El-Hadira to promote the Union.33 By

27 André and Beaufils, Papus, 103–04.

28 André and Beaufils, Papus, 105.
29 Blitz to Papus, 1886 (month and date are in a cipher, but they are filed before a March 1886
letter), fp.
30 Chanel, “ ‘Fraternite Hermetique,’” 315; Blitz to Papus, March 3, 1896, fp.
31 M’d Alexander Russell Webb, “Criticism on ‘Mohamed’s Place in the Church,’”
Miscellaneous Notes and Queries 14, no. 6 (1896): 128¼–128½.
32 “Answers to Correspondents,” Crescent 7, no. 168 (1896): 632.
33 Blitz to Papus, undated and August 30, 1897, fp. On El-Hadira, see Arnold H. Green, The
Tunisian Ulama 1873–1915: Social Structure and Response to Ideological Currents (Leiden:
Brill, 1978), 165–67.
166 chapter 6

early 1898, Martinists had initiated a few Egyptian residents, including one Si
Ali Ben Ahmed Nourisson Bey,34 and by mid-year, Blitz—just before he was
named honorary president in Quilliam’s group—was communicating to
Quilliam in language that suggested either that he had converted to Islam or
that he saw Islam as one of the few traditional “True Faith[s]” in the world.35 It
appears, though, that 1898 was the end of Blitz’s public engagement with
Muslims. After he was announced as one of the vice presidents of Quilliam’s
group in July, he was never mentioned again in the Crescent or in any known
documents connected to Webb or other American Muslims. There would be
other lingering effects of Blizt’s efforts to unite American esotericists with
Islam, as we will see, but from 1898 on Blitz was at best in the background of
these activities.
Besides Blitz, meanwhile, there were a few other lmi-linked American con­
verts mentioned in the Crescent,36 but there is neither information about any
post-1896 organized Islamic activities they may have participated in, nor any
evidence that anyone else served as an official representative of Quilliam’s
group after 1900.37 In fact, out of all the old leaders from the movement years,
the evidence suggests that Webb was probably the most active in Islamic pro­
motional efforts after 1895, and he certainly received the most attention from
the press. After his last Islamic newspaper stopped production in February 1896,
for the rest of the year Webb still wrote articles on Islamic topics, continued to
attempt to lecture, and publicly invited Muslims to visit him at his home.38 In
1898 he moved to Rutherford, New Jersey, where he worked in the newspaper
industry again for at least a few years and became involved in civic life.39 Then,
in late 1900, Webb left on a several month-long journey to Constantinople (and
possibly Mecca), during which the Sultan of Turkey gave Webb medals for both

34 André and Beaufils, Papus, 157; Blitz to Papus, March 12, 1898, fp. It is likely that he was the
same person as the Swiss man named Nourisson Bey who was living in Egypt at the time.
35 Dr. Edouard Blitz, “Kind Letter from America,” Crescent 11, no. 285 (1898): 413. Blitz praises
Quilliam’s “noble efforts in [sic] behalf of the True Faith.”
36 For instance, Dr. Hazzard of New York, who converted under Lant, and J. Lecky McGregor
Gough of Hamilton, Ohio.
37 This is true despite the fact that some British converts—but particularly Louise Hanifa
Jones—moved to the us and continued to correspond with the Muslims in Liverpool.
38 “Mohammed Webb’s Account,” New York Times, March 27, 1896, 3; M’d Alexander Russell
Webb, “Criticism on ‘Mohamed’s Place in the Church,’” Miscellaneous Notes and Queries
14, no. 6 (1896): 128¼–128½; “News of the Week,” Moslem Chronicle and the Muhammadan
Observer, October 31, 1896, 483.
39 Singleton, introduction, 47; “Mr. Alexander R. Webb, Friend of Commuters, Dead at
Seventy,” New York Herald, October 3, 1916, 8.
The Post-movement Years 167

the Order of Merit and the Order of the Mejidieh and appointed him as the
Honorary Consul General of the Turkish Government in New York.40 According
to Webb, at this time he was also named Sheikh-ul-Islam—religious head—for
America.41 Whether or not this was true, the fact remains that until his death on
October 1, 1916, Webb continued to write and speak in promotion and defense
of Islam. He even did so with organizations from which he had previously disas­
sociated himself, such as Theosophical Society, from which he had resigned in
1897, and Ghulam Ahmad’s Ahmadiyya movement, for which in 1910 he assisted
in revising Ahmad’s The Teachings of Islam.42
Webb also kept in touch with at least some American converts, although
how many is uncertain.43 Throughout the active years of his movement,

40 “Rejoicings in the New World in Honour of the Sultan,” Crescent 16, no. 404 (1900): 229–30;
“Editorial Notes,” Crescent 16, no. 410 (1900): 329; “Sultan Honors Alex. R. Webb,” New York
Sun, September 29, 1901, 6; Leonard, Who’s Who, 4:1352. Webb had been defending the
Sultan since the days of the movement, when he received support from the Ottoman gov­
ernment; see Singleton, introduction, 47–48 and Şahin, “Sultan’s America,” 62. It might be
pointed that the Order of the Mejidieh honor was the same thing given to Papus, who
merely created an Islam-themed journal that lasted for two issues. Quilliam also received
a medal from the Sultan, but one for the Order of the Osmanieh, which was a higher honor,
being reserved for “Muslims who rendered great service to the Ottoman Empire.” On these
medals, see “Turkish Orders of Knighthood and Honour,” Crescent 11, n. 281 (1898): 346.
41 Leonard, Who’s Who, 4:1352.
42 Singleton, introduction, 48. See also M’d Alex. R. Webb, “A Letter from Muhammad A.
Russel Webb,” Moslem Chronicle and the Muhammadan Observer, February 15, 1902, 89–
90; Muhammad Webb, “Muhammadan Society and its Pressing Needs,” Moslem Chronicle
and the Muhammadan Observer, March 29, 1902, 170; “Miscellaneous,” Brooklyn Daily
Eagle, March 25, 1905, 12; “Religion of Mohammed,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 20, 1911,
4; Maulana Dost Muhammad Shahid, “Review of Religions: A 100 Year History of the
Magazine,” Review of Religions 97, no. 11 (2002): 21–23; Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, The
Teachings of Islam: A Solution of Five Fundamental Religious Problems from the Muslim
Point of View (London: Luzac & Co., 1910), ix.
43 In 2014, five letters written by Webb in 1907 and 1909 to what appears to be a convert living
in Ohio went up for auction on Ebay. The seller put excerpts from the letters online, and
they contain a few interesting bits of information. One thing revealed in these letters is
Webb’s aversion to politics and anything that creates divisiveness, particularly among
Muslims. He says, in fact, that he “will gladly join any association of men which has for its
real object the spiritual up-building of humanity.” Furthermore, Webb remarks that he does
not believe Islam opposes Freemasonry, although he feels that he has never met a Mason
“who was seriously religious”—which perhaps gives insight into the friction he experienced
with Rawson and the other Shriners in the 1890s. Webb also comments on women: “I believe
that as a rule they are superior in spiritual susceptibility to men. When they are convinced
of the truth of Islam they are more earnest and indefatigable in their efforts to guide others
168 chapter 6

despite occasionally publicly naming the original members of the American

Moslem Brotherhood’s study circles, the majority of whom were not converts,
Webb rarely discussed actual converts by name, and never publicly announced
how many individuals had joined Islam in the us. The most likely reason for
this was that there were simply not many converts to talk about. This would
help explain why throughout the three years of the movement, the same con­
vert names were brought up over and over, and why none of the Islamic orga­
nizations created by Webb, Lant, or Nabakoff had any staying power. In 1902
Webb did claim that Islam had made, over the previous decade, a “steady silent
advancement” in the us.44 But in September 1893, which was probably the
peak of Webb’s movement, an Indian Muslim visiting the World’s Fair met
Webb, who told him that the movement had so far only generated thirty-nine
converts.45 In 1895, Webb suggested that this lack of success in converting was
due to potential converts’ fears of becoming social outcasts: Webb asserted

into the true faith than are men.” This surely reflects Webb’s experience with the active
female converts in his movement in the 1890s, and perhaps also his time in spiritualism, in
which women were the majority of the mediums. Finally, a large part of the letters seems to
have been devoted to counseling and encouraging this convert in his effort to spread Islam,
which Webb of course regards as a great challenge in the us. Webb, however, is hopeful; he
had recently “been invited to occupy the pulpit of the Unitarian Church at Montclair, n.j.,”
and “this, and other similar evidences of interest, shows, at least, that there is less violent
prejudice among church-going people against Islam than there was a few years ago.” Here,
Webb reveals that he believed deeply that the failure of his movement was due to prejudice
against Islam, and not his inability to successfully navigate a religious market, which, like
any market, was composed of pre-existing consumer baises. While it is true that anti-Islam
sentiment shaped religious consumers’ tastes, as the last sections in this chapter demon­
strate, Asian-majority religions towards which Westerners had less antipathy, such as
Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Baha’i faith, also failed to gain many converts—and in some
cases got fewer converts than Webb—when they did not successfully appeal to the religious
tastes of the individuals most likely to convert. In other words, anti-Islam sentiment cannot
singularly explain the failure of Islam to spread on American soil in the 1890s and early
1900s. “1907 MOHAMMED ALEXANDER RUSSELL WEBB—FIVE HANDWRITTEN
LETTERS re ISLAM KORAN,” accessed January 13, 2015, http://www.ebay.com/
itm/1907-MOHAMMED-ALEXANDER-RUSSELL-WEBB-FIVE-HANDWRITTEN-LETTERS-
re-ISLAM-KORAN-/400702561026.
44 “A Letter from Muhammad A. Russel Webb,” 89. Webb explained that the majority of
these were liberal Christians, particularly Unitarians, who are “practically Moslems in
everything but name.” Webb’s wife, however, did not see it that way, and reverted from
Islam to her Unitarian faith later in life (see Singleton, introduction, 50).
45 However, it is not known if Webb was actually discussing the number of members of the
American Moslem Brotherhood, which probably came to about thirty-five at that time.
The Post-movement Years 169

that there are hundreds of Americans who have accepted the truths of
Islam but who will not acknowledge the fact even to the Moslem for fear
that in some unforeseen [w]ay, it will become known.46

Specifically, they feared ostracism and financial difficulties.47 Given what we

know about earlier efforts to spread non-Christian religions in the country,
even if Webb was overestimating the number of closeted Muslim converts, this
is probably a fairly accurate assessment of one of the main reasons people
resisted converting. Indeed, it is precisely this reasoning that, as has been dis­
cussed, explains why organized esoteric and non-Christian groups did not start
growing until the 1870s and 1880s, when their markets were finally legitimized
by various entities.
In any case, there were undoubtedly at least a few converts with whom Webb
had contact who were willing to make their conversions public. One of these
was Rev. James Laurie Rodgers, a Scottish resident of Santa Cruz, California.48
In 1902, Rodgers was featured in a story that received wide circulation in us
papers when he, days after announcing his conversion to Islam, set fire to a
number of buildings on the dairy farm on which he was working.49 The first
part of the story initially broke on Saturday, May 31. The newspaper for Gonzales,
California, a town fifty-five miles southeast of Santa Cruz, reported that Rodgers,
who a year before was a pastor of Gonzales Baptist Church, had “after much
study and correspondence with learned Moslems,” embraced Islam.50 The day
before, May 30, an acquaintance of Rodgers had received a letter from him pro­
claiming his conversion and adding the suspiciously prophetic assertion that

I have got sense to know I will received no material benefits from my

religion, but instead may be killed or allowed to starve to death.51

Sayyid `Abid `Ali Vajdi al-Husaini, Maulana Barkatullah Bhopali: Inqilabi Savanih (Bhopal:
Madhyah Pradesh Urdu Akademi, 1986), 107.
46 Alexander Russell Webb, “Mr. Md. Alexander Russell Webb Writes to Us the Following, on
Islam in America,” Moslem Chronicle and the Muhammadan Observer, December 7, 1895, 521.
47 Ibid.
48 Interestingly, a James Rodgers is listed as a member of the Brooklyn Islam study circle in
1893; however this was almost certainly not James Laurie, as the latter makes no mention
of New York in his discussion of his earlier life in the us; see “Rev. James Laurie Rodgers in
Jail,” Santa Cruz Morning Sentinel, June 4, 1902, 1.
49 “Preacher Confesses Arson,” Sun (Baltimore), June 5, 1902, 1.
50 “Changes His Faith,” Gonzales Tribune, May 31, 1902, 3.
51 “Rev. J.L. Rodgers Found,” Santa Cruz Morning Sentinel, June 3, 1902, 1; “Parson Goes
Wrong,” Gonzales Tribune, June 7, 1902, 3.
170 chapter 6

In the letter, Rodgers goes on to make a series of requests concerning the

proper performance of religious rites at his burial “if such a thing happens any­
where near Santa Cruz.” Finally, he asks, in the event of his death, for his friend
to contact Webb,

who is the Sheikh-al-Islam (head) of the Religion of Islam in this country

and he will communicate with such friends or relatives as I may wish him
to correspond with and tell them all I wish to know.52

With these curious preparations for death clarified, on the afternoon of June 1,
the convert committed his act of arson.53 Rodgers, who had a grievance with
his employer but was also generally considered mentally unstable, was quickly
jailed, and he appears to have died in prison the follow April without the press
ever learning more about his conversion.54
Another notable post-movement convert with whom Webb had contact
was Dr. Anthony George Baker. After graduating from Jefferson Medical College
in Philadelphia in 1887, the thirty-year-old Baker began practicing both stan­
dard and homeopathic medicine.55 Fascinated by history, languages, and the
religions of the East, in his spare time he also studied various European lan­
guages, Arabic, and Chinese, and published and presented historical papers on
the cultures and religions of the native speakers of these languages.56 It was in

52 Ibid. The only other evidence I have been able to find concerning Webb using the Sheikh-
al-Islam title is in a Who’s Who entry, presumably written by Webb (see Leonard, Who’s
Who, 4:1352). I would like to thank Brent Singleton for this entry to my attention.
53 “Rev. J.L. Rodgers Found,” Santa Cruz Morning Sentinel, June 3, 1902, 1.
54 A twenty-six-year-old James Rodgers from Scotland is listed as having died in Sacramento
(where California Supreme Court trials were held, and near the Bay Area’s famous pris­
ons) on April 3, 1903; see California, San Francisco Area Funeral Home Records, 1835–1979,
accessed April 15, 2014, https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/JNJZ-VY7. The only age the
convert James Laurie Rodgers was ever given in the press was twenty-nine in 1902 (see
“Rev. Rodgers is Crazy,” Salinas Daily Index, June 4, 1902, 1); while not a precise match, the
Sacramento James Rodgers’ biographical data is closer to that of the convert than the data
in records for other known James Rodgers from the period. Unfortunately, I have not been
able to locate any police, trial, or prison records for James Laurie. I would like to thank the
Genealogical Society of Santa Cruz County for their help in trying to find out the fate of
Mr. Rodgers.
55 See his records on Ancestry.com.
56 Lewis R. Hamersly, ed., Who’s Who in Pennsylvania; Containing Authentic Biographies of
Pennsylvanians Who Are Leaders and Representatives in Various Departments of Worthy
Human Achievement (New York: L.R. Hamersly Company, 1904), 28; Journal of the One
Hundred and Twenty-fourth Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese of
The Post-movement Years 171

August 1893 when Baker had his first known public connection with Muslim
converts; that month, Webb ran in the Moslem World a section of a piece Baker
had recently published concerning the relationship between medieval
Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem.57 However, Webb’s frustrating tendency
to not say much about American converts leaves one to wonder about their
relationship. Baker was one of the few known Webb affiliates from Philadelphia,
so it is possible that he ran that city’s Oriental Publishing Company. This was
the name of the company Webb had set up in New York to publish Islam in
America, but in 1892 and 1894 the company used a Philadelphia post office
box and published a spiritualist work—which was the only other book the
company published, and which Webb himself advertised in his Muslim
­newspapers—in which it was claimed that Christianity was derived from
Asian religions.58
Despite these connections with Webb, other Muslim contacts may have
been more important for Baker. In January 1896, when he was explicitly identi­
fying as a Muslim in a letter to the Crescent, Baker expressed his belief that
Quilliam’s magazine was the only English-language Islamic journal available,
even though Webb’s Moslem World and the Voice of Islam was still being printed.59
He also appears to have early ties with the Ahmadis, who claim that Baker
accepted Islam through correspondence with Ghulam Ahmad.60 In as late as
1913, in fact, one of Baker’s speeches appeared in the English-language Ahmadi
journal, Review of Religions, a journal with which Webb had corresponded in
the early 1900s.61 Another Islamic organization with which Baker was probably
associated was the group of about twenty converts in Philadelphia who were
meeting secretively in 1907. Almost nothing is known about the community; in
the only known newspaper article about the group, its meeting place is not

Pennsylvania Held in the Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany, Philadelphia May 5 and 6,
1908, with Appendices (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1908), 277.
57 “A Moslem Hero,” Moslem World (August 1893).
58 This was Jonathan M. Roberts, Antiquity Unveiled: Ancient Voices from the Spirit Realm
Disclose the Most Startling Revelation Proving Christianity to be of Heathen Origin. The first
edition appeared in 1892 and a second edition in 1894.
59 A. Geo. Baker, m.d., “Encouraging Letter from America,” Crescent 7, no. 160 (1896): 509.
60 Mubasher Ahmad, Approaching the West (Silver Spring, md: Majlis Ansarullah usa, 2008),
7–8. It is likely, however, that Baker’s embracing of Islam through Ghulam Ahmad came
after 1901, and thus after his 1896 pronouncement of having converted, as the Ahmadis
typically recognize F.L. Anderson, who converted in 1901, as the first American Ahmadi
(see below).
61 Dr. A. Geo. Baker, “The One God and Islam is the Religion of All Men,” Review of Religions
12, no. 8 (1913): 327–40; Shahid, “Review of Religions: A 100 Year History,” 21–23.
172 chapter 6

disclosed and none of the members are named.62 The article does contain a
brief description of the group’s “proselyter”—who was said to have once lived
in Turkey and was responsible for translating and commenting on the Qurʾan—
but his identity remains uncertain.63 Although during this period Baker was
also acting as an Episcopalian preacher,64 given the fact that he identified as a
Muslim in the 1890s and as late as 1913, and that he was probably the most well-
known lecturer on Islam in Philadelphia at the time, it seems probable that
Baker was secretly a Muslim and a member of this group.

Islamophilic Organizations

In addition to impacting actual converts to Islam, the first Islamic movement

and its leaders left a legacy in organizations that supported the study and
sometimes practice of both Islam and Sufism. Whatever their original purpose
was, in 1900 Rawson’s Islamophilic Sheiks of the Desert—now called ‘Sheikhs
of the Kaaba, Defenders of the Mystic Shrine’—wrote a new “manifesto” and
were declaring that the group was founded for “the purposes of social inter­
course and intellectual culture, but more particularly for the study of the tradi­
tions and literature of the Orient.”65 In 1902, the year of Rawson’s death, many
of its original members were still involved in the group, which had also gained
John H. Russell, one of the American Moslem Brotherhood study circle mem­
bers from Brooklyn.66 The Sheikhs of the Kaaba appear to have still been active
as of 1907,67 but nothing is heard from them after that date.
The original Islamophilic Theosophists, meanwhile, possessed their own
organization, in which they promoted the reading of Sufi poets as well as the
orientalist E.H. Palmer’s Oriental Mysticism (1867), which they declared to be
the best exposition of Sufi doctrines. In November 1896, Thomas M. Johnson’s
occult correspondent and fellow H.B. of L. and Sufic Circle member, S.C.
Gould, discussed in his esotericist magazine Miscellaneous Notes and Queries

62 “Mohammedans in Philadelphia,” Daily Review (Decatur, il), October 23, 1907, 6. I have
not been able to locate the original article for this story, which appeared in the Philadelphia
Record.
63 Ibid. If this was an English translation of the Qurʾan, it would be a previously unknown
work.
64 Journal of the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Convention, 277.
65 Order of Ishmael manuscript, 1; Freemasons Chronicle, August 10, 1901, 1.
66 The World Almanac and Encyclopedia 1902 (New York: Press Publishing Co., 1902), 326.
67 Yarker, “The Order of Ishmael.”
The Post-movement Years 173

an organization identified as the Order of Sufis.68 In his brief description of

the group, Gould explains that this para-Masonic order, which possesses three
degrees and eight “stages,”69 represents “the Sufistic and Unitarian Theosophy
of the Persians” and it “consists in endeavoring to reconcile Philosophy with
revealed Religion, and in assigning a mystical and allegorical interpretation to
all doctrines and precepts.”70 Its “first principle” is “I am the Truth”; the group
also values a quote from Palmer, who was himself quoting George Sale’s ren­
dering of a notion from the Qurʾan: “I am a hidden treasure, and I would fain
be known.”71 This all, unsurprisingly, was very close to the ideas promoted by
the various esotericist and New Thought communities with which Johnson
was connected.
It is probably significant that earlier in 1896, Gould ran in his magazine a few
discussions of Islamic topics, including a letter from Webb, and it was around
that same time that both Gould and Webb were initiated into Edouard Blitz’s
Martinist Order.72 Given this timing, it is likely that the Order of Sufis was
being linked to Papus’ Martinist Order in the spirit of unifying ‘traditional’ reli­
gions. This would make the Order of Sufis an important predecessor to the
Traditionalist Shadhiliyya Sufi order of Ivan Aguéli and René Guénon, which
was itself significantly influenced by Papus’ Martinist movement.73 Again,
though, lacking other evidence, this cannot be confidently confirmed.
Like with many of the esoteric orders he discussed, Gould was fairly reticent
about the Order of Sufis. In 1896, he did not even publicly reveal the identity of
any of its members, saying only that its us representatives resided in New York
and Missouri. Twelve years later, however, when Gould next publicly discussed
the order (which had been renamed the ‘Persian Order of the Sufis’), he
revealed that Thomas M. Johnson, C.H.A. Bjerregaard, and Gould himself were

68 S.C. Gould, “Masonic and Arcane Societies in the u.s.,” Miscellaneous Notes and Queries 14,
no. 11 (1896): 274.
69 The description of these were as follows: “The Ascent. 1. A Talib, or search after God. 2.
A Murid, or One who inclines. 3. Salik, or Traveller. There are eight stages: Worship, Love,
Seclusion, Knowledge, Ecstacy [sic], Truth, Union, Extinction, or absoption [sic] into
Deity—The Light”; Gould, “Masonic and Arcane Societies in the u.s.”
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 See above.
73 See Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual
History of the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); for a summary
of this history, see Mark Sedgwick, “The ‘Traditionalist’ Shadhiliyya in the West:
Guénonians and Schuonians,” in Une voie soufie dans le monde: la Shâdhiliyya, ed. Eric
Geoffroy (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2006), 453–71.
174 chapter 6

members.74 The naming of these three—and the fact that their residences cor­
responded with the residences listed in 1896—suggests that the group had
grown out of the Johnson-Bjerregaard Islamophilic Theosophy and Johnson’s
Sufic Circle of 1887, and it therefore strengthens the possibility that Webb may
have in fact been involved with it. Unfortunately, none of Johnson’s extant
letters discuss these manifestations of the Sufi-focused group. Indeed, a 1906
letter from Gould to Johnson indicates that they had not spoken for several
years, so it seems that the order was not particularly active.75 Still, it seems that
either Gould or Johnson had attempted to make the order more than a paper
organization. In his 1912 autobiography, Bjerregaard revealed his contempt for
the group—an emotion that does not seem to be proportional for a group that
never actually produced any activities.76
It is noteworthy that in between the first and last announcement of the
Order of Sufis, Bjerregaard’s interest in Sufism was revived, and its manifesta­
tion revealed a significant clue about his—and possibly the other order mem­
bers’—concept of Sufism. In 1902, Bjerregaard wrote a book critiquing
FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam from the viewpoint of what Bjerregaard
presents as a true Sufi, which, for him, is “not always a […] Mohammedan […,

74 S.C. Gould, “Arcane Societies in the United States,” The Rosicrucian Brotherhood 2, no. 3
(1908): 113. It may be worth noting, too, that in the January 1909 issue of Gould’s journal,
he ran a piece by Quilliam (under a pseudonym), reprinted from one of Quilliam’s
journals.
75 Gould to Johnson, December 18, 1906, tmj Papers.
76 Bjerregaard writes: “An attempt was made some years ago to introduce what was called
Esoteric Mohammedansim, but Esoteric Mohammedanism is not Sufiism [sic] proper.
And that brand which was offered presented the grossest form of the Koran and did not
contain any of[?] the beauty or the philosophy which has come into Sufiism [sic] from her
Platonic sources. Esoteric Mohammedanism was only an attempt to introduce
Mohammedanism. It failed on account of the utter incapacity of the missionaries who
seemed to be men without any impulse, without any proselyting disposition, without any
fire or intensity. When I think of Mohammed, pictures immediately arise of Desert-life,
Arabs kneeling in the burning sun saying prayers or camel-camps at night or the Muezzin’s
everlasting call to prayer, and over all the thoughts which rise is spread and furore and a
fanaticism; but all these things were missing in these fat-bellied Americans, who couldn’t
even pronounce Arabic nor Persian correctly and had neither linguistic nor ethnological
knowledge” (Bjerregaard, “Auto-Biography,” 54). Interestingly, while Bjerregaard is clearly
discussing Johnson and Gould—as Webb certainly had a “proselyting disposition”—as
I have shown above, Webb did sometimes claim to be promoting “Esoteric
Mohammedanism.” This, then, is further evidence that there was some link between the
Sufic Circle/Order of Sufis and Webb.
The Post-movement Years 175

but] simply a Mystic in Mohammedan garb.”77 This notion that beneath the
Islamic elements of Sufism was a universal mystical spirituality is consistent
with Theosophy, with Johnson’s view that all occult teachings were manifesta­
tions of Platonism, and with the Martinist view that ‘traditional’ religions were
simply exterior forms of an esoteric spirituality, such as that practiced in the
H.B. of L. It was also similar to the approach to Sufism taken by Aguéli and
Guénon as well as (as will be shown in Chapter 7) another Sufi teacher popular
in the West named Inayat Khan, a figure with whom Bjerregaard would later
work. It is undoubtedly significant that the ideas of Sufism promoted by all of
these men share a fundamental influence from both Theosophy and the
Western occult initiatory movements that broke off from Theosophy—the
Martinist Order and the H.B. of L.78 These direct ties between, on the one hand,
the first known modern Western Sufi groups and, on the other, Theosophy and
related initiatory occult orders, reaffirm the importance of the historical devel­
opment of the Western esoteric and non-Christian religious markets for
shaping—reterritorializing—early expressions of Islam and Sufism in America.
A final Sufi study organization from the period most likely did not have, as
far as is known, any ties to Webb’s movement, but its appearance at the time
reflects the environment that his movement helped cultivate. The Omar
Khayyam Club was originally formed in England in 1892.79 Its purpose was to
preserve the memory and appreciation of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat through host­
ing quarterly dinners at which the fifty-nine members of the club could cele­
brate and discuss the work. Although the club was primarily social, not literary,
members often wrote poems to present at its meetings, and its mere existence
helped solidify literary appreciation of Muslim mystical writings in England
and abroad, particularly when it invited American guests like Charles Scribner
and Henry James.80 The American club, meanwhile, held its first meeting in
Boston in 1900, and among its attendees was the old Unitarian spiritualist and
sympathizer of Islam, Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson.81 Like its British
counterpart, members were people who wanted to encourage the cultivation
of appreciation of Muslim mystical writings and frequently composed their
own Omar Khayyam-inspired poems.

77 Sufi Interpretations of the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam and Fitzgerald (New York:
J.F. Taylor & Co., 1902), preface (unpaginated).
78 For Inayat Khan’s ties to the Martinist Order, see Chapter 8.
79 Yohannan, Persian Poetry, 202–03.
80 Ibid.
81 Charles Dana Burrage, Twenty Years of the Omar Khayyam Club in America ([Boston]:
Rosemary Press, 1921), 7, 9.
176 chapter 6

Independent Converts and New Muslim Proselytizers

Just as some Islam-focused clubs were not directly connected to Webb’s move­
ment, not every turn-of-the-century us Muslim convert had ties to him either.
These independent converts, however, were relatively few, and seem to have
been individuals less motivated by ideological reasons than their Webb-
connected counterparts. The dozen or so converts of this type who appeared in
newspaper articles at the time can be grouped into three camps: (1) women
who married wealthy Muslim visitors to the us who, soon after the marriage,
returned to their homeland with their new wives;82 (2) American visitors—
usually missionaries, teachers, soldiers, or families of diplomats—to Muslim
countries (often it was Turkey) who married local Muslims and then stayed in
the country;83 and (3) women who married Muslim immigrants.84 Although
very little is known about these individuals, it is clear that the deterritorializing
force of modern travel was a major component in these conversions, as was the
desire to marry, which appears to have been for these people a motivation
so powerful that it superseded reservations about religious differences and
social consequences. Travel and marriage would, in fact, only continue to
increase the numbers of us Muslim converts—particularly non-ideologically-
motivated Muslim converts—in the years to come.

82 In the early 1900s, there was a small rash of newspaper reports of wealthy Muslims marry­
ing American women, and some of these women were said to have converted. See “Weds
Mahometan,” Boston Daily Globe, December 1, 1904, 5; “Actress Weds a Prince,” New York
Times, August 16, 1911; “The Smart Set,” San Francisco Call, April 23, 1912, 11; “Weds a
Mahommedan, and Adopts His Faith,” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1912, 11; “Abandons
the Cross for the Crescent,” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1912, 11; “One American Girl’s
Oriental Marriage,” The Milwaukee Sentinel, September 14, 1919; “American Girl Gives up
Faith to Marry Turk,” Evening Independent, August 18, 1926, 1; “Rajah Wants Bride—or
Death,” Los Angeles Times, February 3, 1928, 7.
83 George Horton, The Blight of Asia (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926),
244–45; “He Traveled in Turkey,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 25, 1895, 3; “Brides of…
Turkish Beys,” The Saint Paul Globe, July 1, 1900, 19; “A Convert to Islam,” Indiana Progress,
July 16, 1902, 3; “How Gray Became a Datto,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 27, 1902, 33;
“American Officer a Datto,” New York Times, February 19, 1903; Philadelphia Inquirer,
February 20, 1903, 8; “U.S. Bluejackets Wed Turkish Girls and Stay in Turkey,” Atlanta
Constitution, February 18, 1919, 1 (the last of these does not mention conversion, but con­
version would have been very much encouraged for these men who had taken Turkish
wives).
84 “New York Mohammedans,” Hartford Courant, September 9, 1889, 2; “With Moslem Rites,”
Daily Inter Ocean, September 7, 1893, 1; “Alice Noonan, Mohammedan,” New York Times,
March 31, 1895.
The Post-movement Years 177

Interestingly, the one seemingly independent turn-of-the-century convert

for whom we have a little more information did not marry a Muslim woman
and, unlike most independent converts, appears to have been motivated by
ideology. It is not surprising, then, that there is some evidence suggesting that
he may have been indirectly connected to Webb, although all indications point
to his conversion and life as a Muslim as being for the most part independent
of American ties. On October 27, 1907 a story filed by an American newspaper
correspondent stationed in Tangier revealed that local resident George Knox
MacIlwain was an American Muslim convert with a Roman Catholic Mexican
wife.85 The red-bearded, thirty-one-year-old “son of a wealthy American” was
from Philadelphia and therefore had possibly been involved with the city’s
small secret convert community.86 MacIlwain, however, appears to have sev­
ered ties with Philadelphia, leaving a white American wife behind when he
moved to Tangier in about 1905. Once in Morocco, he traveled to Fez where he
met with the sultan, and, after purchasing many goods from the ruler and mak­
ing donations to a mosque and to poor locals, he “read the Koran in translation
through an interpreter” and formally converted to Islam.87 At that point,
MacIlwain, now known as Hadj Omar, left for England for six weeks to have, as
one reported explained, “one of the ironclad rules of Islam complied with in
London”—perhaps referring to a Muslim marriage ceremony.88 Next, he
returned to Morocco to live in the northern town of Tetouan where he report­
edly “began observing the rules of Mohammedanism with more punctuality
than most of the Moors themselves,” giving generously to street beggars, per­
forming his five daily prayers, and regularly practicing Arabic presumably to
help him read the Qurʾan.89 MacIlwain attempted to take the hajj in 1908—
which, if he succeeded, would have made him the first known American con­
vert to have performed this pillar of Islam—and then he returned to Morocco,
where he lived until his death in March 1910.90

85 R.W. Emerson, “Thirstier’n Suez; Worse’n Portsaid,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 27,
1907, 4.
86 Emerson’s “Thirstier’n Suez” says MacIlwaine’s family was from “one of the New England
states,” but MacIlwaine was actually from Philadelphia; see “Wife, in u.s., Gets $100,”
Special to the Washington Post, February 4, 1911, 1.
87 Emerson, “Thirstier’n Suez”; “American Risks Life for Mecca,” Chicago Daily Tribune,
January 19, 1908, A1.
88 “American Risks Life for Mecca.” MacIlwaine later showed people his Islamic marriage
certificate.
89 “American Risks Life for Mecca.”
90 “American Risks Life for Mecca”; “American Mohammedan,” New York Times, December
17, 1907; “Wife, in u.s.”
178 chapter 6

There were undoubtedly at least some additional ideologically-motivated

converts who were living in the us and who were not directly connected to
Webb. One was possibly F.L. Andersen who, after beginning to correspond
with Ghulam Ahmad in 1901, became the first official us Ahmadi Muslim91 and
remained an active member of the Qadiani movement at least through the
early 1920s.92 Still, these people must have been rare; without the presence of
American Islamic organizations, the looming fear of ostracism had to have
been a serious concern for those considering converting. As long as promoters
of Islam failed to concentrate their efforts on drawing converts from among
those already involved with the New Thought-influenced occult revival—
and therefore individuals already socially connected to, and psychologi­
cally adjusted for, an exclusive commitment to a non-Christian religion—­
ideologically-motivated converts would not be numerous.
This situation, however, does not appear to have been appreciated by the
various international Muslim proselytizers who came to the us between 1893
and the early 1910s. Despite the suspicions many Indian and Arab Muslims had
of Webb’s motives, his multiple successes in generating a good deal of press
attention for his movement, publicly explaining and defending Islam, publish­
ing books and newspapers, organizing study groups, and even in converting
people, all convinced many Muslims that spreading Islam in the us was not an
impossible task. Webb and other converts had in fact been eager for more
international Muslim propaganda and missionaries to be sent to the country,
and publicly supported the idea.93 Indeed, as has been mentioned, Webb wel­
comed an Egyptian Muslim missionary who came to help the movement in
July 1893. Then, in the following fall, during his visit to America to attend the
World’s Fair, the Nawab of Rampur met with Webb and discussed the preach­
ing of Islam in the country.94 Based on this conversation the Nawab decided to
appoint a highly respected Indian Muslim teacher living in England,
Mohammad Barakatullah, to be his ambassador to the us,95 although it would

91 Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 1 (1921): 13; ibid. 1, no. 2 (1921): cover; Ahmad, Approaching the West,
8. The Ahmadis report that Anderson was “in the First Scientific Station, New York City.”
After extensive searching, the only entity that I have found with such a name is a brewery
college in New York from that period.
92 Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 2 (1921): 39.
93 Webb, “Mr. Md. Alexander Russell Webb”; Rawson to Lant, April 19, 1895, John A. Lant
Papers; J. Le Roy MacGregor Gough, “Interesting Letter from America,” Crescent 9, no. 212
(1897): 77.
94 Al-Husaini, Maulana Barkatullah, 170; “Personal,” Moslem World (August 1893).
95 Al-Husaini, Maulana Barkatullah, 170.
The Post-movement Years 179

take another six years and an additional failed international Muslim propa­
ganda effort for Barakatullah to finally make his way across the ocean.
This additional failed international propaganda effort was the creation of
another Muslim who had visited the 1893 World’s Fair: a North African named
Hassan Ben Ali, one of the many Muslims who had traveled to the us since the
1870s to perform in Arabian troupe shows.96 Since the 1870s, Arabian troupes
had been successfully incorporated into the expanding American entertain­
ment industry, as they—dressed in their robes and turbans and performing
exotic rituals, dances, and acrobatics—were understood by common
Americans as real-life representatives of the Arabian Nights-like East. Ben Ali
was one of the handful of immigrant Muslim recruiters and managers who had
discovered that the best way to convince Arab and North African tribes to
allow their best acrobats to join him was by telling tribal leaders and local rul­
ers that he was going to use these people to spread Islam in the us.97 After
arriving around 1885, Ben Ali became the head of one of the most popular and
largest troupes of Arab performers in the country, a troupe that was often being
replenished during his frequent trips to North Africa for training and
recruitment.98
Probably in around 1894, after the World’s Fair had ended, Ben Ali began
attempting to secure further support for his business from Muslims around the
world by telling potential backers that, after being inspired by the mosque con­
structed at the World’s Fair, he was preparing to build a real mosque in New
York, primarily for the 600-odd Muslims he believed were living there.99
Ultimately, seven international Muslim societies pledged support, and
England’s Mohammad Barakatullah—probably because of his having been
appointed the Nawab of Rampur’s American ambassador—was invited to help

96 See Nance, How, 115–35.

97 “Mission of Muley Ali,” Philadelphia Times, December 4, 1898, 15.
98 See, e.g., “The Ramadan,” The Standard (Brooklyn), April 29, 1892, 5; “Hassan Ben Ali,
Manager,” New York Sun, May 28, 1911, 3; “Hassan Ben Ali Dies,” Variety, July 24, 1914, 8.
Unfortunately, the us consulate dispatches from before 1907, while they confirm that Ben
Ali maintained business activities in Morocco, reveal very little other information about
his activities. The only report concerning Ben Ali that I have found deals with his
Moroccan brother-in-law who, it appears, stole Ben Ali’s money that was sent to the
brother-in-law for business purposes; see Report of Consular Agent at Mogador, May 4,
1903, United States Consulate, Despatches from United States Consuls in Tangier 1797–1906
(Washington: The National Archives, National Archives and Records Service, General
Services Administration, 1959).
99 “Mosque for New York,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 17, 1896, 5.
180 chapter 6

with the effort.100 By April 1895, Barakatullah, who was an important member
of both the London Muslim community and the Liverpool mosque, was telling
the American converts affiliated with Webb of these plans and his intentions
of coming to the us.101 However, because Ben Ali’s intentions were not sincere,
progress was extremely slow. In late 1896, he made a big announcement of the
project for the press, but he never followed through with the plans.102 Ben Ali,
nevertheless, continued to exploit religious themes to promote his troupe,
such as by labeling members of his troupe ‘sheikhs’ and ‘whirling dervishes,’
and quoting from the Qurʾan in his advertisements.103 He also, by 1895, joined
the white Shriners’ Mecca Temple in New York, and frequently promoted his
affiliation with the organization as a means of drawing on the popularity of the
Shriners’ connections with oriental themes.104 Through these efforts, Ben Ali
became perhaps the us’ single most successful Muslim performance manager
during the period, spawning many imitators who, because of their sheer num­
bers, helped to establish a new genre of for-profit Muslim performer: the
Muslim mystical ‘professor,’ who claimed that he could share his advanced
oriental esoteric knowledge with paying customers (see Chapter 7).105
Barakatullah, meanwhile, would, after finally arriving in the country in 1899,
promote Islam in the us for over decade.106 Here, he wrote numerous articles

100 “Mosque for New York”; M. Irfan, Barkatullah Bhopali, [‘liberal’] trans. S. Iftikhar Ali
(Bhopal, India: Babul Ilm Publications, 2003), 41.
101 Rawson to Lant, April 19, 1895, John A. Lant Papers.
102 “Mission of Muley Ali.”
103 See, e.g., his many advertisements in the New York Clipper in 1913–15.
104 Ibid. Given this and what we know about Noble Drew Ali, who would later lead the Moorish
Science Temple, an important early African American Islamic organization, it seems very
likely that it would have been Hassan Ben Ali’s troupe that was the Arab ‘circus’ Drew Ali
was rumored to have joined in the early 1900s. For further discussion, see hctius vol. 2.
105 Hassan Ben Ali seems to have influenced this wave by occasionally employing such types
in his troupe. For more on the topic, see chapter 7 in this volume as well as hctius vol. 2.
106 There are only a few English-language in-depth discussions of Barakatullah’s life, and we
still know very little about his time in the u.s. See Charles Brodie Patterson, “Mohammad
Barakatullah: A Biographical Sketch,” Mind (October 1903): 493–95; Shafqat Razvi, “Mawli
Barkatullah Bhopali (A Revolutionary Freedom Fighter in the Early 20th Century),”
Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 37, no. 2 (1989): 139–58; Irfan, Barkatullah Bhopali;
al-Husaini, Maulana Barkatullah; Juhi Aslam, “Life History of Maulana Barkatullah
Bhopali,” in The Contribution of Raja Mahendra Pratap and Prof. Barkatullah Bhopali in
Freedom Struggle and Its Importance in Contemporary Society, eds. M. Hassan Khan &
Ayisha Rais Kamal (Calcutta: M.K. Bagchi, 2008), 36–46; Mohammed Ayub Khan,
“Universal Islam: The faith and political ideologies of Maulana Barakatullah ‘Bhopali,’”
Sikh Formations 10, no. 1 (2014): 57–67; Humayun Ansari, “Maulana Barkatullah Bhopali’s
The Post-movement Years 181

and lectured on Islam and Sufism for many people across the us—including
the New Thought community in 1903 and attendees of a 1908 interreligious
conference that also hosted Webb.107 During the early twentieth century, how­
ever, the evidence suggests that the only people he explicitly urged to convert
to Islam were African Americans, and this call seems to have been either
ignored or rejected in the black community at the time.108
There were, of course, other missionaries who, like Barakatullah, appear to
have been sincere in their efforts but failed to bring Americans to Islam. In
September 1905, a North African named Hadji Ali arrived in Boston with two
purposes: to attend Harvard as a student and to propagate Islam through build­
ing a mosque in the city and promoting the religion.109 Ali was in fact being
backed by the Moroccan sultan, who was, despite Hassan Ben Ali’s plans falling
through, continuing to make a strong effort to spread Islam abroad in order to
generate support against European colonialism.110 Once again, though, nothing
is known to have come out of this effort. Ten years later, in 1914, throughout the
country there were various reports of Muslim missionaries, including a Turkish
missionary in Kentucky in early January and another one of unknown ethnicity
reportedly on his way to Portland in March.111 The latter may have been Harry
Dean, a black American of non-slave ancestry who was a great-grandson of
Paul Cuffe, a noted American captain and African nationalist of Ghanese
descent.112 Like his famous ancestor, Harry Dean became a ship captain and

Transnationalism: Pan-islamism, Colonialism, and Radical Politics,” in Transnational

Islam in Interwar Europe: Muslim Activists and Thinkers, eds. Götz Norbruch and Umar
Ryad (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 181–210.
107 On Barakatullah’s New Thought ties, see “Summer School of the New Thought,” Arena
(June 1903): inside cover. His lecture for their community was titled, notably, “Esoteric
Mohammedanism.” An article he wrote on Sufism and a short biography were also fea­
tured in the October 1903 issue of the popular New Thought journal, Mind, and were
reprinted in many other periodicals. On the 1908 interreligious conference, see “Church
and Religious News and Notes,” New York Tribune, July 4, 1908, 8.
108 Mohammad Barakatullah Maulavie, “‘White and Black in the South,’” New York Tribune, May
3, 1903, 11; Colored American, November 28, 1903, 6. For more on this subject, see hctius vol. 2.
109 “Bits from Boston,” Washington Post, February 5, 1906, 6; “Editorial Notes,” Crescent 27, no.
699 (1906): 361.
110 “Moorish Awakening,” Moslem Chronicle and the Muhammadan Observer, September 28,
1901, 2075.
111 Hartford Herald, January 28, 1914, 1; Walter B. Hinson, “A Challenge and a Defense,”
Oregonian, March 22, 1914, 12.
112 Captain Harry Dean with Sterling North, The Pedro Gorino: The Adventures of a Negro Sea
Captain in Africa and on the Seven Seas in his Attempts to Found an Ethiopian Empire
(Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929), 3–13.
182 chapter 6

African nationalist, and his vigorous efforts to build an empire in southern

Africa eventually earned him the epithet of “the most dangerous colored man
on the face of the earth.”113 In addition to all of this, currently circulating in us
Muslim circles is a report that Dean was associated with the Muslim Mosque of
London and “distributed Islamic literature in Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and
Washington State” in the early twentieth century.114
By this time, there were reportedly several Ottoman Muslim sheikhs coming
to the us; they apparently had been attracted by the work done by an imam
connected to the Ottoman ambassador in Washington, dc, one Shaykh
Mehmed Ali.115 Mehmed, in addition to being the imam for the Ottoman
Embassy, led religious worship at one of the earliest immigrant mosques in the
us. The Ottoman consulate, beginning in 1910, paid the rent for an apartment
on the third floor of 17 Rector Street in lower Manhattan so that it would be
used as a mosque.116 The building at this address, in fact, had been, at least
since the early 1890s, a popular destination for immigrant Muslims; many
resided there, and several also ran oriental wares businesses out of the bottom
floors—all of which apparently earned the building its nickname, which
appeared on the front doors, ‘The Oriental.’117 From this building, Mehmed was
a very influential Muslim leader in the city. It was reported in 1912 that, as a
result of Mehmed becoming the imam two years earlier, local Muslims had
begun more closely adhering to Islamic practices, and as many as seventy-five
to one hundred Muslims “often” visited the Manhattan mosque for prayer.
Mehmed, who claimed that the Turkish government had named him head “of
the spiritual affairs of the Mohammedans in this part of the world,” even had

113 “‘Most Dangerous Colored Man in the World’ Dead at Age 72,” Afro-American, August 3,
1935, 12.
114 Amir Nashid Ali Muhammad, Muslims in America: Seven Centuries of History (1312–2000)
(Beltsville, md: Amana Publications, 2001), 45. The apparent source of this rumor is
Dean’s unpublished diaries, which I have not been able to examine, but are housed at the
DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago.
115 See Ahmed I. Abu Shouk, J.O. Hunwick & R.S. O’Fahey, “A Sudanese Missionary to the
United States,” Sudanic Africa 8 (1997): 141–42. I would like to thank Abdullahi Gallab for
pointing this fact out to me.
116 “Mohammedans Now Have a Place of Worship Here,” The Sun (New York), February 25,
1912, 15. This article gives extensive biographical details for Mehmed Ali.
117 “Mohammedans Now Have.” This is confirmed by the fact that searches for 17 Rector
Street in New York newspapers often reveal Muslim surnames affiliated with this address,
at least until the early 1920s. It seems that these Muslims represented a wide variety of
ethnicities and nationalities.
The Post-movement Years 183

an influence that went beyond New York.118 He regularly traveled to and was
the religious leader for Muslims in various New England cities, including
Lowell, Boston, Worcester, and Providence. News of Mehmed’s religious work
had made its way back to Muslim-majority lands where it attracted several
Syrian sheikhs to come to the us, and may have been part of what drew the
more well-known Sudanese proselytizer Satti Majid to New York.119 Majid, after
spending perhaps a few years under Mehmed, went to Detroit, from where he
began working with immigrants and African American converts across the
eastern half of the country.120
On August 12, 1915, yet another Ottoman sheikh arrived in the us. This
man, however, was distinguished by his verifiably holding the title of Sheikh
al-Islam, a title given by Ottomans to the highest religious official in a region.121
Sayid Muhammad Wajih Gilani Effendi had been the ‘Imperial Ottoman
Religious Commissioner’ (apparently his English interpretation of the position
of Sheikh al-Islam) for the Philippines, which was still under us control at the
time,122 though, due to conflicting reports, it is not known exactly how long he
had acted in this capacity.123 Upon his arrival in New York, Gilani, who was
accompanied by his secretary and a servant, announced that he had

come to tell the American people that there are half a million [Muslims]
in the Philippines […] and they will become citizens of whom the United
States will not be ashamed.124

118 “Mohammedans Now Have.”

119 Abu Shouk et al., “Sudanese Missionary,” 141–42.
120 See Abu Shouk et al., “Sudanese Missionary,” passim; Patrick D. Bowen, “Satti Majid:
A Sudanese Founder of American Islam,” Journal of Africana Religions 1, no. 2 (2013):
194–209. For more, see hctius vol. 2.
121 There is in fact a long history of this title being used by Muslims, but the Ottomans
employed it a unique way. See Richard W. Bulliet, “The Shaikh al-Islam and the Evolution
of Islamic Society,” Studia Islamica no. 35 (1972): 53–67. It is not clear if Webb, as he and
James L. Rodgers claimed, had officially received this title (Mehmed’s being named the
head “of the spiritual affairs of the Mohammedans in this part of the world” would have
conflicted with this); Quilliam, however, did receive the title for Britain.
122 “Sheikh here to Lecture,” New York Times, August 13, 1915.
123 In one report, he claimed to “have spent several years in the Philippines”—see “Skyscrapers
as Prayer Towers,” Miami Herald, August 28, 1915, 10. In a later article, however, he is said
to have only served as Sheikh al-Islam there for a “few months.” See “Descendant of
Mohammed,” Le Grand Reporter, November 12, 1915, 6. There are also discrepancies in his
reported age. While most newspaper articles at the time said he was forty, his ship’s mani­
fest lists him as thirty-three.
124 “Sheikh here to Lecture.”
184 chapter 6

Gilani carried with him a book entitled What Sayeth the Sheikh ul-Islam,125 and
over the next several months apparently gave a number of lectures, “promot­
ing good will of all Moslems toward the government of the United States,”
encouraging Muslims to have “religious and racial tolerance,” and teaching “a
new Mohammedan creed of the brotherhood of man.”126
Gilani’s us impact extended beyond promoting better relations between
Muslims and non-Muslims. While in the us, he corresponded with at least one
convert to Islam, Ella May Garber, a white woman originally from Indiana, who
had first converted to Sufism in 1911 after reading Sufi poets (see Chapter 7).127
In Sufism, however, she felt she had only

first beg[u]n to see Islam’s light, not in a very serious way. I was only grop­
ing… A glorious teacher of light came into my life in 1915, the late Sheik
[…] Gilani […] He lifted me far above this world, so it seemed to me […]
In one letter he said to me: “Your salvation now depends upon your
actions towards those who see the light of faith through you.” […] I lived
only for him [for over two years] after his departure.128

Gilani died in Richmond, Virginia on May 6, 1916, so it was only with the 1920
arrival of an Ahmadi missionary that Garber would feel that her soul was
“lifted” again. In spite of his success in having redirected the faith of Garber,
however, as far as is known, Gilani, like the other Sunni Muslim proselytizers in
the us before 1920, could not generate a conversion movement.

Asian-Majority Religions in Turn-of-the-Century America:

A Comparison

As we have seen, in 1895, Webb attributed Islam’s relative failure at gaining

large numbers of converts during the turn of the century largely to anti-Islamic
sentiment, which he asserted made potential converts fear ostracism that they

125 “Skyscrapers as Prayer Towers.”

126 “Descendant of Mohammed.”
127 See Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 6 (1922): 147. I am dating her conversion based on comments
made in this source, as well as one found in Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 1 (1921): 13. Garber
appears to have been in San Francisco at the time of her introduction to Islam, and so may
have been an original follower of Inayat Khan, who is recognized as being the first Sufi
proselytizer in the us, or his first American follower, Rabia Martin (see Chapter 7).
128 Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 6 (1922): 147.
The Post-movement Years 185

might face if they were to convert.129 There is undoubtedly some truth to this,
but, it is rather difficult to demonstrate, as there are almost no known exam­
ples of direct suppression of or retaliation from non-Muslims against the turn-
of-the-century converts. This theory also does not explain why before the 1890s
no other Asian-majority religion had succeeded in starting a movement in the
us. Therefore, in the interest of better understanding the relative failure of the
various Islamic proselytization efforts of the period, it would be helpful to
examine the increase in us conversions to other Asian-majority religions—
Buddhism, Hinduism/Vedantism, and the Baha’i faith—in the 1890s and early
1900s.130 In doing so, we will take what will at first appear to be an unrelated
divagation, an examination of the rise of yet another esoteric organization,
called the Oriental Order of the Magi. This discussion will be necessary to
understand how the Baha’i faith—a new and relatively small religious sect—
generated far and away the single most popular Asian-majority religious move­
ment in the turn-of-the-century us.

Buddhists and Vedantists

Out of all the Asian-majority religions to have claimed converts in the late
1800s and early 1900s, perhaps the most difficult for distinguishing between
who was and was not a convert is Buddhism.131 Hundreds, possibly thousands,
of late nineteenth-century Americans at some point claimed to be Buddhists
without having made a formal commitment to the religion and, in many cases,
without identifying exclusively as Buddhists.132 Frequently, these people saw
Buddhism as representing a pure, ancient type of Idealist philosophy—a
notion that had been popularized by the Transcendentalists—and, like
the Transcendentalists, the Buddhistic Idealism of these new ‘converts’
undergirded and reinforced their liberal belief in the truths of other religions

129 Webb, “A Letter from Muhammad A. Russel Webb,” 89.

130 There is, admittedly, an important difficulty with this approach: particularly with the
Buddhists and Vedantists, there is not a great deal of available information on the early
converts. Often, the leaders of early Asian-majority religion organizations did not publi­
cize membership details and scholars apparently have not found many relevant unpub­
lished records. Nevertheless, there have been respectable attempts to sift through the
available data and some valuable—if sometimes tentative—conclusions have been
arrived at. The available data and these conclusions, as well as the other known facts
about the history of the spread of the various Asian-majority religions in the us between
1890 and 1910, help put the Islam movement’s failure into better perspective.
131 See Thomas A. Tweed, The American Encounter with Buddhism 1844–1912 (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1992), esp. 39 ff.
132 Tweed, American Encounter, 46.
186 chapter 6

as well. If we consider these people converts—which is a somewhat difficult

proposition to accept, especially for those who did not commit exclusively to
Buddhism—the trend that emerges is that many of these people were already
committed to liberal religion and Free Thought groups. Since the time of the
Transcendentalists, Buddhism had been much more popular among such
people than Islam or Sufism, which may explain the preference for Buddhism
towards the end of the century—although, again, it is difficult to consider
these individuals true converts.
A similar, but perhaps slightly more widely accepted type of Buddhist con­
vert was the Buddhist Theosophist, which included Alexander Webb at one
point in the early religious exploration stage of his life. In the 1880s, many
Western Theosophists began regarding themselves as Buddhists, especially
after the publication of Alfred P. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism in 1883, which
asserted that Theosophical teachings were the true essence of Buddhism.
While some of these Buddhist Theosophists, such as Marie de Souza Canavarro,
after identifying as Buddhist, abandoned Theosophy to pursue an exclusive
commitment to Buddhism, for the most part Buddhist Theosophists contin­
ued to accept Theosophical doctrines. Although this meant that many
Buddhists who followed more traditional Buddhist teachings would not
embrace Theosophists as true Buddhists, the fact that Buddhist Theosophists
exclusively chose Buddhism and not another traditional religion with which to
identify makes them Buddhist converts on at least a superficial level. As long as
one acknowledges this caveat, it would therefore be legitimate to count the
over three thousand turn-of-the-century American Theosophists as Buddhists.
The major factors contributing to these people’s ‘conversions’ to Buddhism,
then, as we have seen, came in a two-stage process: first, joining spiritualism,
Free Thought, or another esoteric or New Thought-based movement, and then
joining Theosophy, which claimed to be a legitimate representative of
Buddhism.
In addition to these more questionable conversions to Buddhism, there
were others who made exclusive commitments to what they regarded as tradi­
tional Buddhist teachings. Prior to 1897, these were largely, like many early
Muslim converts, isolated individuals with liberal religious, and sometimes
esoteric backgrounds. They were not many in number, perhaps fewer than a
dozen.133 Starting in 1897, though, conversion to non-Theosophical Buddhism
increased when the religion began to be promoted by organizations interested
in spreading non-Theosophical Buddhism in the us. The main organization
doing this at the turn of the century was the Maha Bodhi Society, a South Asian

133 Tweed, American Encounter, 39–40.

The Post-movement Years 187

Buddhist group formed in 1891 by Anagarika Dharmapala—one of the speak­

ers at the World’s Parliament of Religions—and British author Sir Edwin
Arnold to encourage a revival of Buddhism in response to what was perceived
as the encroachment of other religions.134 By the early 1890s, the group had
gained a single American Buddhist convert and an additional sympathizer as
the organization’s ‘representatives,’ but when Dharmapala returned to the
country in 1897, he was able to gather a small core of followers in Chicago who
would establish, within a few more years, additional groups in New York and
San Francisco. Those few convert followers about whom we have some infor­
mation were, notably, either Theosophists or active in other liberal move­
ments.135 Unfortunately, there is very little additional data about the early us
Maha Bodhi Society groups; however, since they allowed as members (and
were in fact started by) sympathizers in addition to converts, the Society prob­
ably could claim only a handful of—perhaps less than twenty—converts by
1910, given their apparently minor growth. Similarly, the Dharma Sangha of
Buddha, established in 1900 by Japanese Buddhists in San Francisco, only had
seven original members and apparently never obtained more than twenty-five
members who were American-born.136 It seems, then, that Webb’s organiza­
tion was perhaps more successful in the short term than either of these, which
suggests that, since Buddhism was much more popular than Islam in main­
stream American thought, public appreciation of a religion was not a direct
determinant for the success of particular organizations.
There were, nevertheless, some non-Theosophist movements for Asian-
majority religions that were verifiably more successful than Webb’s. Protap
Chunder Mozoomdar was perhaps the first Hindu missionary in the us; how­
ever, he appears to have primarily intended to spread information about
Hinduism, not to make converts, in his three visits to the country between 1883
and 1900.137 A more clearly conversion-focused movement was brought by the
famous Swami Vivekenanda. After traveling to the country for the World’s
Parliament of Religions, Vivekenanda established in the us his Vedanta Society,
which by 1906 had four American groups and 340 members.138 Again, data on

134 Tweed, American Encounter, 31.

135 Edgar A. Weir, Jr., “The Whiter Lotus: Asian Religions and Reform Movements in America,
1836-1933” (PhD diss., University of Nevada, 2011), 208–17.
136 Weir, Jr., “Whiter Lotus,” 217.
137 See Sunrit Mullick, The First Hindu Missionary to America: The Pioneering Visits of Protap
Chunder Mozoomdar (New Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 2010).
138 Carl T. Jackson, Vedanta for the West: The Ramakrishna Movement in the United States
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 108.
188 chapter 6

the early followers is very limited, but Carl T. Jackson has examined existing
biographical information of early leading members as well as other clues to
offer some generalizations.139 Every early prominent leader Jackson looked at
was either in Theosophy, New Thought/Christian Science, esoteric, or liberal/
left-wing communities prior to joining Vivekenanda’s movement, with
Theosophy and New Thought being most common. With these types of people
as leaders, it is highly likely that they were able to bring in other former follow­
ers of esoteric and New Thought groups. The two other patterns Jackson
noticed in the Vedanta Society were that there were more women than men
and that there was a larger proportion of European immigrants than there was
in the us overall.140 Vivekenanda’s relative success in gaining converts, then,
seems to reflect his greater ability to recruit more from groups that were of the
type predisposed to generate people exclusively committed to esoteric and
non-Christian religions, and there also may have been something to his group’s
gaining numerous women and immigrants, neither of which, as far as the evi­
dence shows, were significant in Webb’s organization.

The Baha’i Faith

In terms of enrolling official members in an organization, the most successful
us conversion movement for what was understood to be an authentic Asian-
majority religion was that led by America’s early Baha’is. The story of the
Baha’is’ impressive expansion in the 1890s puts into relief the benefits that
could be had by early us Asian-majority religion movements if they success­
fully attached themselves to New Thought/esoteric organizations, which the
early Baha’is did exceedingly well. The early American Baha’i movement also
had several direct and thematic connections with Webb’s movement, which
makes it particularly useful for comparison.
In the 1890s, the American Baha’i movement was led by Ibrahim George
Kheiralla, a Lebanese Christian and graduate of the Syrian Protestant College
(now known as the American University at Beirut),141 who first encountered
the Baha’i faith in the late 1880s while living in Cairo.142 Prior to learning about

139 See Jackson, Vedanta, 89 ff.

140 Jackson, Vedanta, 93.
141 Kheiralla was in fact part of the school’s first graduating class.
142 The most valuable works on the early Baha’i movement in the us are Robert H. Stockman,
The Baha’i Faith in America Volume 1: Origins 1892–1900 (Wilmette, il: Baha’i Publishing
Trust, 1985); Richard Hollinger, “Ibrahim George Kheiralla and the Baha’i Faith in
America,” in Studies in Babi and Baha’i History Volume Two: From Iran East and West, eds.
Juan R. Cole and Moojan Momen (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1982), 95–133; Richard
Hollinger, “‘Wonderful True Visions’: Magic, Mysticism, and Millennialism in the Making
The Post-movement Years 189

the Baha’is, Kheiralla had taken an interest in the rational study of religion,
occult knowledge, and, reportedly, Egyptian Masonry,143 and it was through his
research into the latter topics that he was put in touch with a Persian Baha’i
merchant living in Cairo, ‘Abdul’l-Karim-i Tihrani. For about two years, Tihrani
taught Kheiralla, introducing him to the idea that spiritual powers could be
obtained “only through a process of moral and spiritual development,” and
interspersed through these lessons were ideas about the Baha’i faith, which
were presented as important for this occult teaching.144 The Baha’i movement
had emerged as an outgrowth of the mid-nineteenth-century Persian Shiʿi-
connected ‘Babi’ movement, in which in 1844 one Siyyid `Alí-Muhammad
began proclaiming himself to be the ‘Bab’ (gate), meaning the foretold mes­
siah. After the Bab was executed in 1850, in 1853 one of his followers, Mírzá
Husayn-`Alí Núrí, took the title of Bahá’u’lláh, and claimed that he was the true
messiah for which all the world’s religions had been waiting. He soon amassed
a large following in Persia, which he maintained even after his suppression and
exile to Palestine. At the most basic level, Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings emphasized
three main ideas: that all humanity was a single race and should unite; that all
religions come from the same source, God; and that there is only one God, who
is the source of all creation—all of which were notions that were popular
among Western esotericists, as we have seen. Bahá’u’lláh’s full teachings were,
of course, a great deal more complex than this, but Kheiralla apparently only
learned the very basics from Tihrani, as he was probably mostly interested in
Tihrani’s promises of occult powers. Nevertheless, in 1889, Kheiralla, who
reportedly understood the Baha’i faith as a global occult, Masonic-like order
that allowed in members of different faiths, formally joined the movement.
Kheiralla came to the us in December 1892 in order attempt to market
inventions he had come up with while living in Cairo. At first, he resided in
New York with his Syrian Christian friend, Anton Haddad, who had also been
introduced to the Baha’i faith in Cairo, and who had arrived several months
earlier to promote one of Kheiralla’s inventions. Practically as soon as he
gained his bearings, Kheiralla began trying to spread the Baha’i faith to the

of the American Bahai Community, 1892–1895,” in Search for Values: Ethics in Bahá’í
Thought, eds. John Danesh and Seena Fazel (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2004–05), 207–39.
I would also like to thank Dr. Stockman, Mr. Hollinger, and Dr. Cole for answering my
many inquiries on the topic. The following account of the Baha’is’ early us growth—with
the exception of the discussions of the Order of the Magi—is derived almost exclusively
from these sources.
143 “Abdel Karim Effendi,” Star of the Magi (July 1900): 9.
144 Hollinger, “Wonderful True Visions,” 210–11.
190 chapter 6

various people he encountered in New York, which were primarily Syrian and
liberal white American Christians. It appears that at the time Kheiralla had
little to no success in converting others, but through his efforts he was able to
make many new friends and business connections. In the summer of 1893, just
as Webb’s Islamic movement was getting off the ground, Kheiralla entered into
a partnership with a local Syrian merchant with whom he would, for the
remainder of the year, travel throughout Michigan selling various oriental
wares. Haddad stayed behind in New York, where, as mentioned in Chapter 5,
he became involved with Webb’s group, giving speeches at the American
Islamic Propaganda’s lecture hall and even working with Lant on the Muslim-
American trade bureau.145
When Kheiralla went to Michigan, he gave a number of public lectures on
Middle Eastern religions, possibly as a way of generating interest in the goods
he was selling. He also continued a practice he had started in New York of talk­
ing with people privately about religion. This was done with both members of
the general public and local Protestant religious leaders, for whom Kheiralla
carried letters of introduction that he obtained from the religious leaders he
had befriended in New York. The existing evidence suggests that while
Kheiralla’s public lectures did not address the Baha’i faith, he did speak about
it in these informal conversations, and some of those whom he met in Michigan
were possibly among his first converts. Grand Rapids, in particular, seems to
have been especially warm to Kheiralla, and in Kalamazoo, Kheiralla report­
edly became involved with a group that practiced “healing the sick by meta­
physics, by laying on of hands.”146
In early February 1894, Kheiralla arrived in Chicago accompanied by friends
he had made in Michigan who were plugged into the region’s New Thought
and esoteric community. Kheiralla’s friends began introducing him to various
groups and leaders. In less than two weeks, he obtained an l.l.d. degree issued
by the New Thought-based American Health University. One of the ‘doctors’
who signed his certificate would eventually play a leading role in his Baha’i
organization, as would another New Thought/homeopathic doctor whom
Kheiralla met in his first few months in the city.147
Kheiralla’s connections also gained him entrée with some of Chicago’s lead­
ing liberal religion writers, spiritualists, astrologers, and esotericist figures,
such as the popular medium Cora L.V. Richmond and William Phelon, the

145 “Headquarters Opened”; Kuddus Badsha and Hadi Badsha to Lant, November 2, 1893,
John A. Lant Papers.
146 Hollinger, “Wonderful True Visions,” 217.
147 Hollinger, “Wonderful True Visions,” 220.
The Post-movement Years 191

head of both Chicago’s Theosophical community and of an offshoot of the H.B.

of L., known as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Atlantis, Luxor, and Elephante.
With their help, Kheiralla spoke before many Chicago groups and made a host
of new friends, including J.R. Francis, a prominent spiritualist who had started
a popular spiritualist newspaper, the Progressive Thinker.148 Just a few years
before Kheiralla’s arrival, Francis had become involved with another emerging
esoteric organization, the Grand Rapids-based Oriental Order of the Magi,
which Francis had convinced to move to Chicago where he made the Progressive
Thinker the group’s official organ. This was to later become an important con­
nection for Kheiralla.
In June 1894, Kheiralla taught his first class on the Baha’i faith and, report­
edly, every person who attended was involved with New Thought, esoteric, or
non-Christian religion studies, and many were interested in all three of these
topics.149 Kheiralla, believing his faith’s teachings to be from a secret order, did
not reveal all he knew to his students, and, as was his modus operandi later,
probably interviewed them before deciding which of his students was permit­
ted to be taught what he believed were the most secret instructions of the
faith. His students, however, also introduced Kheiralla to new ideas, encourag­
ing him to read New Thought and Western esoteric writings, which Kheiralla,
not having a strong understanding of the intricacies of Baha’i thought to begin
with, began incorporating into his teachings.150
Progress was slow at first. By the end of 1894, Kheiralla probably had only
about four converts; by January of 1896, probably around a dozen.151 To support
himself in these early years, Kheiralla started charging people who came to
him for his healing powers.152 In the meantime, he began corresponding with
inquirers from throughout the us, and, as word got out about Kheiralla, more
people attended his classes. By late 1896, there were around thirty American
Baha’is, most of whom were people already involved in alternative religions; by
April 1897, about sixty, and financial contributions to the group had apparently
become so numerous that they were now being recorded.153 Eighteen ninety-
seven was in fact the year the us Baha’i movement went from being one of the
several small new Asian-religion groups in the us to the first truly major one.

148 Hollinger, “Wonderful True Visions,” 221; Richard Hollinger, email message to the author,
February 8, 2014.
149 Hollinger, “Wonderful True Visions,” 223.
150 Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America Volume 1, 37.
151 Ibid., 33–39.
152 Ibid., 30–31.
153 Ibid., 40, 85, 102–03.
192 chapter 6

This achievement was not made simply by Kheiralla becoming increasingly

well-known in the Chicago area; a significant factor in this transformation was
the movement’s establishing a connection with the esoteric group known as
the Oriental Order of the Magi.

The Oriental Order of the Magi

In the 1890s, no organization brought together the various elements circulating
in the occult revival more completely than the Oriental Order of the Magi (also
referred to as the Order of the Magi, oom, or om).154 While the oom may have
been another offshoot of the H.B. of L.,155 it was without doubt a very different
organization. It explicitly incorporated New Thought, homeopathy, spiritual­
ism, astrology, Kabala, tarot, belief in Atlantis, magnetism, pyramidism and
Eyptology, interest in ancient (especially oriental) religions, magic mirrors, psy­
chic and magical powers, messianism, hidden superiors, reincarnation, an
emphasis on science terminology, Freemasonry, and other ideas popular in the
alternative religion milieu. It was, moreover, the first to popularize in an orga­
nized esoteric group other much rarer notions, such the claim that the fifty-two-
card playing card deck has astrological significance and powers, an astrology
that was heliocentric and emphasized knowing the distance of planets from the
sun, the belief in life on other planets in our solar system, and the idea that all
these types of esoteric teachings should be called ‘mathematics.’ (Not coinci­
dentally, a number of the oom’s unique notions and practices would reappear
in an African American Islamic sect, the Nation of Islam, as will be discussed in
hctius volume two.) Much like the Theosophical Society’s American growth in
the 1880s, the oom’s ability to bring together the many alternative religious
ideas present in American religious culture at the time appears to have been
one of the keys to its success: the majority of its members had often, prior to
joining, participated in one or more groups focused around the above concepts,
and they believed that the oom, because it incorporated these teachings along
with many others, possessed a higher level of spiritual knowledge.
The oom had other factors contributing to its success that were similar to
those that helped Theosophy spread in America. For instance, the order’s

154 As has been mentioned, there has been almost no scholarly work on this group. However,
some non-academic researchers have compiled and analyzed documents concerning the
group’s history; Arline L. Richmond’s Yenlo and the Mystic Brotherhood ([Chicago]: n.p.,
1946) was the first, and it was significantly improved upon by Iain McLaren-Owens, ed.,
Articles on the Order of the Magi & Its History, 3rd ed. (Scottsdale, az: Astro-Cards
Enterprises, 2007). The following is largely based on their research.
155 For a discussion, see Bowen, introduction to Letters to the Sage.
The Post-movement Years 193

founder and leader, Olney H. Richmond, early on obtained a core group of

loyal followers who served as the organization’s initial leaders. When Richmond
started the oom in Grand Rapids in 1889, he was the owner of a drug store that
sold ‘magnetic’ and homeopathic products, and his business partner—Louis
Judd Shafer—became a head in the occult group, as did Richmond’s then-wife
Cornelia.156 Then, Richmond, who was also a widely respected chess and
checkers player, had fellow chess and checkers enthusiast E.E. Burlingame
establish an early branch of the oom in Rochester.157 Richmond even, after a
few years of running his order, divorced his first wife and married another early
leader in the organization, a follower of numerous alternative religions named
Verona Doane.158 In addition to having these close social bonds among the
early leaders, the oom, like Theosophy, also greatly benefitted from the sup­
port of a periodical; in the oom’s case, this was, as noted above, J.R. Francis’
Progressive Thinker. Lastly, for the oom, like for Theosophy and Martinism,
Masonry was a crucial element in its development. Richmond was himself a
Mason and he used the Craft as a foundation upon which he would erect an
occult organization that could both incorporate many ideas and, at the same
time, emphasize exclusive commitment to particular ones.
In early 1890, Richmond started gaining attention from the Grand Rapids
press after telling several locals that he had special insights into the nature and
history of the universe, the planet earth, and occult knowledge.159 By late
February, when a reporter visited Richmond’s ‘temple,’ the group supposedly
had thirty members, several of whom were Masons, and many of whom lived
in different Michigan cities.160 Richmond explained to the reporter that he was

156 Richmond, Yenlo, 71; McLaren-Owens, Articles, 2, 3, 112, 205; New York State Association of
School Commissioners and Superintendents, Proceedings of the Thirty-Forth Annual
Meeting of the New York State Association of School Commissioners and Superintendents
(Albany: James B. Lyon, 1889), [262]; Order of the Magi certificate for John Osenbaugh,
dated July 22, 1882, John Osenbaugh Papers, National Baha’i Archives (this document is
signed by Cornelia and Shafer). Shafer sold a book by Richmond for which no copy has
been located: Astropathy, which in an advertisement claimed to give information on
“Astro Magnetic Treatment”; see McLaren-Owens, Articles, 2, 3.
157 McLaren-Owens, Articles, 1, 95–99; “Syracuse,” Columbia Chess Chronicle, January 10, 1889,
13; “Mysteries of the Magi,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 1, 1886, 14.
158 McLaren-Owens, Articles, 163–64; “Mysteries of the Magi.” At least two of the names listed
by McLaren-Owens as Doane’s contacts in Boston—Hulse and Miller—were well-docu­
mented as members of the alternative religion community.
159 “A Mysterious Tale,” Grand Rapids Daily Democrat, March 2, 1890. This article was reprinted
in both Richmond, Yenlo and McLaren-Owens, Articles.
160 Ibid.
194 chapter 6

first introduced to this esoteric knowledge in 1864 in Nashville, where

Richmond, who was serving as a Union soldier, was approached by an unnamed
stranger.161 This stranger—who was said to be a Frenchman—knew Richmond’s
name and birth date, and explained that he had gained his knowledge through
his membership in the ancient order of the Magi, a group that had “flourished
in Egypt thousands of years ago,” but into which he had been initiated in India.
The stranger then told Richmond that he (the stranger) was about to die, and
that “the powers that rule [him]” had instructed him to convey the magis’
secrets to Richmond—who was to be his successor—before this happened.
Seven years after his initiation, while Richmond was visiting Chicago, he
befriended a Dr. Hamilton from Charleston, South Carolina who gave him an
old book that contained “some of the mysterious words which the Frenchman
had given [him].”162 The book “cast a flood of light on [his] studies,” and
Richmond spent the next eighteen years engaging in deep study of esoteric
and historical knowledge. He purportedly learned, among other things, that
this order was the true Freemasonry, that it was the true Christianity (believing
that Christ was a Magi), that it was based on heliocentric astrology, and that its
religion requires no faith because all of its principles would be shown through
mathematics and ‘proof.’ In 1889, “the powers who rule [him]” instructed
Richmond to communicate his knowledge to others and form the Oriental
Order of the Magi.
By May 1890, Richmond’s story had caught the attention of the Progressive
Thinker, which sent a reporter to visit the Grand Rapids temple two times in
May, where the reporter witnessed Richmond perform feats of magic.163 Soon,
not only were more and more readers interested in the order, but so was the
magazine’s editor, Francis, who, after meeting converted followers in Chicago
and seeing some of Richmond’s powers for himself, asked Richmond to bring
his group to Chicago where the Progressive Thinker would become its official
organ.164 Richmond left for Chicago in mid-October and by January the group
apparently had over one hundred members, many of which were Masons,

161 Ibid. The following narrative is taken from this article.

162 There is of course no evidence corroborating Richmond’s claim of meeting these men.
Researcher McLaren-Owens, however, has pointed out that it is possible that one of
Richmond’s distant cousins who was (a) very well versed in religious and Masonic litera­
ture and (b) was working at the same hospital Richmond was staying at in the Nashville
during the Civil War, may have been the source of Richmond’s occult education; see
McLaren-Owens, Articles, 206–07.
163 McLaren-Owens, Articles, 9–16.
164 Ibid., 16–26, esp. 21; “Order of the Magi,” Pittsburgh Dispatch, January 4, 1891, 2.
The Post-movement Years 195

although a wide variety of alternative religion followers were present as well.165

The group began receiving a decent amount of attention in the local secular
press and, perhaps more importantly, it started attracting a significant follow­
ing of Scandinavian immigrants. Being part of a minority group—like the
German-speaking converts to Islam on the Philadelphia in the early 1800s
and the immigrants in Vivekenanda’s Vedanta Society—meant that the
Scandinavians had comparatively strong social bonds, which produced a chain
reaction of conversions. The initial impetus was probably the conversion of
Bernard C. Petersen, a prominent Norwegian immigrant businessman who
since a young age had studied various religious histories, theories, and prac­
tices, both popular and obscure.166 When the World’s Parliament of Religions
came to town in 1893, Petersen made an effort to learn all he could from the
representatives of various beliefs (including Alexander Webb, whom Petersen
would still remember in 1897), and he felt confident enough to conclude that
only one religion contained the essence of the wisdom of all the others: the
oom.167 Petersen joined the group, almost immediately becoming a leader and
paying for the construction for a new temple for the order.168 Soon,
Scandinavians made up a strong core of the order in Chicago and had spread
the group to Scandinavian-heavy cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul, and, evi­
dence suggests, other cities as well.169 By the end of 1894, in addition to the
probably at least 150 members in its several small groups that were spread
across the northern part of the country, the Chicago temple now reportedly
had over 400 Magi; two years later, the group claimed that one thousand people
had been initiated in Chicago and nationwide there were “several thousand”
Magi.170
In late 1896, however, something had changed in the group. The Magi had
begun to proclaim that Chicago was built directly over an ancient city known

165 Inter Ocean, January 20, 1894, 4; “Temple of the Magi,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 4,
1892, 44.
166 “Order of the Magi,” Inter Ocean, January 10, 1897, 24.
167 Ibid.
168 Ibid.; “Order of the Magi,” Inter Ocean, December 13, 1896, 16.
169 For Chicago Scandinavian members, see, e.g., A.E. Strand, A History of the Norwegians of
Illinois (Chicago: John Anderson Publishing Co., 1905), 179. Later, in the early 1930s, there
was even a portion of the community that held its Sunday worship rituals in the
Norwegian language; see “Welcome to the Magi!,” Magi Star, June 22, 1931, contained in
the A Century of Progress Records, Box 30 Folder 1–729, University of Illinois at Chicago.
170 “He Reads the Stars,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 29, 1894, 4; McLaren-Owens,
Articles, 44; “Order of the Magi,” Inter Ocean, December 13, 1896, 16.
196 chapter 6

as ‘Bab.’171 The Magi, it seems, had begun incorporating the Baha’i teachings of
Kheiralla.

Siphoning Recruits
The precise circumstances and date of the Baha’is’ coming into contact with
the oom is unknown. It is possible—and perhaps even likely—that Kheiralla
had been encountering members since the fall and winter of 1893, when he
was meeting esotericists during his tour of Michigan; the oom’s home, Grand
Rapids, as pointed out above, was in fact the city in which he originally had
wanted to settle. By 1895, Kheiralla must have at least met, through his healing
activities, Dr. Chester Ira Thacher, a magnetic healer and homeopath who kept
an office at Chicago’s Masonic temple and who was an early important leader
for the oom.172 Thacher would join the Baha’is in 1897 and by 1900 Kheiralla
had moved his own office into the same Masonic temple.173
The earliest period for which we can confidently connect the Baha’is to the
oom is February 1896, when Sarah G. Herron, who was probably still a member
of the oom at the time, began Kheiralla’s Baha’i class, officially converting in
May.174 On October 8, 1896, John Osenbaugh, a former Christian mystic, spiri­
tualist, and oom member, accepted the Baha’i faith.175 Both were part of the
group of the first thirty American converts, and it is likely that other oom
members were also among the early followers. Then, in 1897, several more
oom members joined, probably making up a significant part of the huge rush
of converts that year.176 The American Baha’is had apparently even success­
fully tapped into an important well for oom recruitment: Scandinavian immi­
grants. Scandinavians, in fact, ended up making up a significant percentage of
the early Baha’i community in Chicago and other Midwestern towns.177 The
evidence therefore strongly suggests that Kheiralla’s success in spreading the

171 “Order of the Magi,” Inter Ocean, December 13, 1896, 16.
172 Inter Ocean, January 20, 1894, 4; McLaren-Owens, Articles, 2, 20;
173 Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America Volume 1, 89–90, 213n2.
174 Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America Volume 1, 39; “Order of the Magi,” Inter Ocean,
December 13, 1896, 16.
175 Handwritten biographical questionnaire, 2, contained in the Osenbaugh Papers.
176 Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America Volume 1, 89–90, 93; Typewritten letter of life
events, sections 7–11, contained in the Osenbaugh Papers. Since we do not have a full list
of members from each movement to make a comparison, we cannot be sure at this point
as to how many early members of the oom joined up with Kheiralla, but the evidence
suggests that it was a significant number.
177 Ibid., 94, 100, 113–14.
The Post-movement Years 197

Baha’i faith was largely due to this ability to, in his early years, siphon off many
people from the large oom following.
Given Kheiralla’s background in esotericism, the study of religion, New
Thought, and Freemasonry—plus the oom’s emphasis on the ‘orient’—it is
easy to see how a connection between his teachings could have been made by
the followers of the oom. The oom even had millennial and messianic aspects,
which were often not present in other esoteric groups but were present in the
Baha’i faith. It was likely due to seeing these links, then, that Richmond, ever
ready to incorporate anyone else’s doctrines into those of the oom, added the
notion of Chicago being the ‘Bab.’ Kheiralla, on the other hand, may have
borrowed—or may have been inspired by—some of the more Masonic ele­
ments in the oom, such as keeping the teachings secret, teaching only in stages,
and having the highest stage of instruction be for the purpose of telling the
initiate the true name of God.178 Kheiralla also probably exploited the tendency
for the oom to claim to incorporate almost all other religious ideas; justified by
the Baha’i teaching on the unity of all religions, and using his background in the
rational study of religion, Kheiralla would have been prepared to build off of
this theme. There was one additional element that Kheiralla had that Richmond
did not, however: being from the East himself. Kheiralla was an actual ‘oriental’;
so, for a religion that stressed authenticity of religious truth, as well as the idea
that the orient was where that religious truth was born, by being a Middle
Easterner, Kheiralla had a significant advantage vis-à-vis Richmond.
Gaining the oom members was not the only reason for Kheiralla’s success.
His followers were amazingly successful at recruiting esotericists and New
Thought believers who were not in the oom in other cities—even connecting
with prominent Martinists.179 Still, the recruitment of the oom people gave
the Baha’is an established philosophical foundation that justified the inclusion
of all alternative religious beliefs, permitting proselytizers to confidently claim
to almost any potential recruit that their religion subsumed the religion of the
recruit. The absorption of a large number of oom people in a short period was
probably exhilarating for the members; generally, rapid growth of a religious
organization can create significant emotional excitement, which in turn can
spill out in the form of increased proselytization work form existing members,
which then grows the group more and thus restarts the cycle.180 By January

178 Ibid., 52.

179 The relationship between the Baha’is and Martinists is mentioned in Stockman, The
Baha’i Faith in America Volume 1, 156, but is described more completely in the letters from
Blitz to Papus in the fp.
180 See Stark and Finke, Acts, 151–55.
198 chapter 6

1898, the American Baha’is had shot up from sixty members in the previous
April to around 300; by September 1898 there were around 700; by May 1899,
perhaps 1,100; and by the beginning of 1900, 1,500.181 No other turn-of-the-
century organized movement to promote an Asian-majority religion in the us
(if we exclude Theosophy, which many would) had success anywhere close to
what the Baha’is had during that period.
Within months, however, it all came crashing down. In 1899, after the Baha’i
heads in Persia learned that Kheiralla had invented most of the concepts he
had taught his students, they attempted to end the spread of his incorrect
views and have Kheiralla give up his position so other teachers—who had
technical knowledge of Bahá’u’lláh’s doctrines—could correct the errors.
Kheiralla, however, ultimately refused to give up his power. He broke off from
the main movement, taking a few followers with him; meanwhile, about half
of the original converts eventually left the faith, many surely disillusioned and
embarrassed by their having believed completely invented information.182
Recruitment for both factions, meanwhile, briefly came to a virtual standstill
and never resumed the conversion rates of the earlier years. Kheiralla had lost
a great deal of the respect and legitimacy he had once had and the reformed
faction, without being able to make the strong, multiple connections with all
the various alternative religion groups, did not have the appeal the earlier
movement had. They could no longer hope for waves of converts; at best the
occasional small group of friends who were Theosophists, esotericists, or New
Thought followers would join independently. The Baha’is had now become like
all the other Asian religion conversion groups.

Conclusion

Kheiralla’s background and skills that made him knowledgeable and flexible
enough to appeal to a wide variety of Americans were rare, and his coming into
contact with the young oom—which was at the same time both one of the
most popular esoteric groups of the 1890s and a perfect fit for Kheiralla’s occult-
influenced notions about the Baha’i faith—was for him an incredible stroke of
luck. Neither Webb, nor any other promoter of a non-Christian religion in the
1890s and early 1900s, had been so fortunate. In fact, nothing like it would be
repeated for several years because most of the foreign proselytizers for non-
Christian religions were relatively well-trained in and committed to their

181 Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America Volume 1, 104, 158, xiii.
182 Ibid., 158–84, 191.
The Post-movement Years 199

groups’ teachings, and were only minimally familiar with American esoteri­
cism. Even most American promoters of non-Christian religions, meanwhile,
did not have the knowledge and skills to reach the variety of people that Olney
Richmond could, and they certainly did not have the ‘oriental’ appeal of the
Eastern immigrants. While American notions and prejudices about Asian-
majority religions probably played some role in the growth of those religions in
the turn-of-the-century us, the ability to recruit directly from other similar
religious movements and immigrant communities was the key for success in
drawing converts at the time. The relative failure of Webb and other Muslim
proselytizers reflects their relative inability to recruit successfully and incorpo­
rate multiple occult revival movements.
Although great success could be had only under very rare conditions, the
fact that it was even possible, and that smaller groups could still thrive as well,
reflects the major religious metamorphosis that the United States had gone
through since the early 1800s. The de- and reterritorialization of American
religiosity—through international contacts, the spread of Transcendentalism,
the emergence of spiritualism, and the creation of organized occult groups—
transformed the country from a land in which converts to Asian-majority reli­
gions were virtually unheard of and where those who embraced Islam were
labeled as traitorous ‘renegades,’ to a place where perhaps thousands of whites
freely criticized the Christianity of their parents and identified themselves as
followers as Buddhists, Hindus, Baha’is, and Muslims. A real non-Christian reli­
gious market had finally been established.
The implications of this transition were immediately felt. Self-proclaimed
oriental masters, prophets, messiahs, Rosicrucians, swamis, astrologers, healers,
clairvoyants, and fakirs began springing up left and right. Competition for the
attention and money of the liberal, radically deterritorialized American reli­
gious public was now intense. Success would go to those who did not just inno­
vate, but offered something extremely rare and valuable, and did it in a refined
way. The winners in this new religious market would still often have to appeal to
American religious tastes and cultures, but this was becoming easier as those
tastes expanded. As the Civil War generation died off and the us prepared to
enter the First World War, the country would see a brand new wave of non-
Christian identities and movements that were both much better prepared for
and welcomed by the country’s deterritorializing culture. Beginning in the sec­
ond and third decades of the twentieth century, Islam and Sufism would finally
take root and create, for the first time, lasting movements and communities.
 part 2
The Years 1910–1974

∵
 chapter 7

The Non-Orthodox Transition

Deterritorialization and the Impact of Non-Christian Immigration

Within three generations after Webb’s death, the traits and positions of white
American Muslims had change dramatically. By 1975, the typical white convert
in the us was a female who had married a college-educated Muslim immi-
grant. She, furthermore, was frequently college-educated herself and was
almost never interested in Western esotericism. Dozens of white Muslims,
moreover, had become leaders within immigrant-majority Islamic organiza-
tions, and a small number of converts had even gained international respect
and acclaim for their efforts as Muslim intellectuals. By 1975, in fact, white con-
verts had produced at least three near-translations of the Qurʾan—one of
which received wide praise from highly-trained Muslim religious leaders.
Beginning as early as the 1920s, several white Americans also became impor-
tant participants in the still-ongoing effort to unite Muslims of all races and
sectarian affiliations. These individuals, even more so than their nineteenth-
century predecessors, were committed to the cultivation of peace, justice, and
brotherhood. Indeed, when the 1970s reached its midpoint, us whites were
frequently joining multiethnic Islamic communities and were notable for their
public involvement with a wide variety of Islamic and Sufi movements, includ-
ing some in which African Americans and women played leading roles. In the
fifty-nine years that had passed since 1916, the American religious landscape—
and white Muslims’ position in it—had undergone yet another tremendous
transmutation. It was a change that, at its core, was a product of a new era of
deterritorialization.
There were two principal reasons for deterritorialization having such an
enormous impact on American religious life in the twentieth century. First is
the fact that the occult revival was no longer a new, emerging market—it was
now a well-developed, increasingly accepted part of the country’s religious
culture. By the turn of the century, there were dozens, possibly hundreds, of
esoteric, New Thought, and non-Christian groups, and their mere presence
ensured that the numbers of new groups and converts would continue to mul-
tiply exponentially. Average Americans, who in the 1880s would have shown
little interest in or even awareness of esoteric and non-Christian movements,
were now increasingly cognizant that many such groups had a presence on
American soil—and that, if one were so inclined, he or she could seek them

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_009

204 chapter 7

out and join them. Some of the fear of ostracism associated with following
these groups had thus begun to melt away. As a result, commitment to a fringe
religious movement was no longer going to be a necessary precondition to
becoming a Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim.
The second and most important reason deterritorialization caused incredi-
ble changes in twentieth-century American religion is that immigration—the
physical deterritorialization of people—was dramatically increasing the num-
bers of us residents from non-Christian backgrounds. This meant that more
and more mixed friendships and romantic relationships were developing
within the borders of the country. These social ties with people of different
faiths would have a huge impact on religious conversion because, for one, they
had even greater power than the growing esoteric and non-Christian move-
ments to significantly ease the sense of insecurity about non-Christian conver-
sion. The social, psychological, and financial benefits of friendship and
marriage can be so valuable for those involved that they can overcome fears
around going against cultural norms, particularly when such relationships are
not prevented by de jure or de facto law, or violent suppression.1 The increase
of mixed relationships between white Christian Americans and non-Christian
immigrants was also important for shaping the trajectory of American reli-
gious conversion because, initially, these relationships were much more likely
to occur among the larger lower-middle and working classes than were conver-
sions to esoteric or New Thought groups, which tended to be dominated by the
smaller middle and upper-middle classes. Even after World War ii, though,
when middle-class Muslim immigration began increasing, many of the whites
these immigrants came into contact with were usually not from the small sub-
cultures that had an interest in esotericism. Ultimately, this meant that, as time
went on and immigrant communities grew larger and more stable, social ties
with immigrants would begin to replace involvement with esoteric and New
Thought groups as the primary gateway to conversion to non-Christian reli-
gions for white Americans. While the presence of non-Christian immigrants
did not mean that the old esoteric-type converts simply vanished—on the
contrary, they proliferated, particularly when some of the immigrants
themselves began participating in, and occasionally leading, various esoteric
movements—the immigrants’ non-esoteric orthodox practices started pre-
dominating in the convert communities.
The present chapter examines a phenomenon primarily related to the first
of these two factors of twentieth-century religious deterritorialization: the
emergence of pre-1950 forms of white American Islamic mysticism, Sufism,

1 See Lofland and Stark, “Becoming a World-Saver”; Stark and Finke, Acts, 117–35.
The Non-orthodox Transition 205

and ‘Qadiani’ Ahmadiyya Islam. All of these movements, notably, shared sev-
eral distinct characteristics. One is that none them could be legitimately
labeled ‘orthodox’2 or ‘Sunni.’ Even if they claimed, as some did, to be following
Eastern traditions, these groups were in fact unique in the Islamic world and
were often criticized and shunned by more orthodox Muslims. Another shared
trait is that these were the first known Islam-connected movements in the
twentieth century to obtain several American followers. Organizations that
could be more accurately described as ‘orthodox’ or ‘Sunni’ did not gain note-
worthy numbers of white American converts until the 1930s, after Muslim
immigration had created relatively stable and strong Muslim communities in
the us. The Muslim mystics, Sufis, and Qadiani Ahmadis, on the other hand,
had all started obtaining followers by the 1910s and 1920s.
This earlier popularity of the non-orthodox groups reflects the fact that in
certain aspects they were similar to the convert movements that were com-
mon in the nineteenth century. Indeed, in the early twentieth century, non-
orthodox groups represented, in many ways, the transition between the late
nineteenth- and mid-twentieth-century white Muslim convert communities.
Like their nineteenth-century predecessors, for instance, these non-orthodox
movements connected themselves to the kinds of Western organizations and
philosophies that were sympathetic to exclusive adherence to a non-­Christian
religion. There were in fact even a handful of direct links between important
nineteenth-century esoteric and non-Christian movements, including some
of the period’s Islamic and Sufi groups, and the twentieth-century non-ortho-
dox ones. And, just as it was for the nineteenth-century organizations, the
non-orthodox groups’ connections with esotericism were almost certainly
the key to their success. As was pointed out in Chapter 6, in the first few
decades of the twentieth century, there were several proselytization attempts
by foreign orthodox Muslims who presumably did not reach out to the eso-
teric and non-Christian communities—as far as is known, that approach
failed to win them white converts. Indeed, the only convert we can confi-
dently tie to these particular orthodox proselytizers is a woman who most
likely had already been exposed to the non-orthodox Sufism of the period.
Meanwhile, combined, the non-orthodox groups made hundreds of converts,

2 In this chapter, I use the terms ‘orthodox’ and ‘non-orthodox.’ While, in a strict technical
sense ‘orthodox’ means ‘right doctrine’ (ortho = right, dox = doctrine), a notion that implies
a judgment of which forms of a religion are better or worse than others, the term is also often
understood as roughly equivalent to ‘mainstream tradition.’ I am using the term in the latter
sense to avoid repeatedly utilizing the much longer equivalent.
206 chapter 7

several of whom—particularly the leading converts—were verifiably former

members of esoteric communities.
Despite this similarity, there was a major difference between the non-ortho-
dox convert movements of the early twentieth century and the convert move-
ments of the nineteenth: the fact that the former were created and led by
foreigners. The Sufis, Ahmadis, and even some of the mystic groups were often
directed by people not born in the United States and who, like Kheiralla and
Vivekenanda before them, were able to take advantage of the stereotype that
non-Westerners and non-whites possessed more authentic spiritual knowl-
edge. Still, unlike in the mid-twentieth-century groups, which often had numer-
ous immigrant members, the foreigner presence in the non-orthodox groups
was typically numerically minimal—usually limited to the groups’ leaders,
who were rarely in the us for more than a few years. The level of presence
of foreign Muslims in these early twentieth-century groups, then, reflected
the relative growth of Muslim immigration at the time: it had increased
significantly since the 1890s, but was still not yet close to the levels of the mid-
twentieth century.
Another shared transitional characteristic of the mystic, Sufi, and Ahmadi
groups of the early twentieth century was that several were able to avoid—just
as many immigrant organizations would later—the rapid disintegration that
earlier groups experienced. Instead, these new communities remained in exis-
tence, in some form or another, for sometimes over one hundred years. Because
of this, and because the non-orthodox groups were the closest that the us
would ever have to heirs of the nineteenth-century movements, it was through
them that the religious currents connected to the early occult revival would
finally take root in Islamic and Sufi forms and therefore be able to continue to
have a presence in America’s Islamic culture. This would play a particularly
important role in African American conversion, but it would also later be influ-
ential among white Muslims and Sufis, especially when Sufism became popu-
lar in the 1960s.
Finally, the early twentieth-century non-orthodox groups represent a transi-
tion in terms of Islamic identity. While among the Sufis there was an awareness
that many if not most of the world’s Muslims did not believe in or practice the
same doctrines or rituals as them, the Qadiani Ahmadi converts believed they
were joining the same Islam that was being followed by millions of people of
all races and classes across the globe. This notion that the convert was joining
a religion practiced by millions of non-whites had been present to an extent in
Webb’s movement, but it was not emphasized to nearly the same degree. Part
of this stemmed from the fact that Webb, who sometimes looked down on
the lower classes, occasionally privately expressed racist sentiments, despite
The Non-orthodox Transition 207

­praising exoteric Islam precisely for its ability to unite all people.3 In the twen-
tieth century, however, the feeling of multiracial and multiclass brotherhood
was much stronger, particularly among the white Ahmadis and friend converts
who joined more orthodox communities—both groups that, in many instances,
happily united with Muslims of all races, including African Americans. This
fuller sense of a truly global Islamic identity was, to a great extent, then, a new
phenomenon in the twentieth century, and it would be an increasingly domi-
nant theme as the century progressed. The deterritorialization of religion
through immigration therefore had a profound effect on not just the American
religious landscape, but, by transforming race and even class relationships
within these new religious communities, deterritorialization was even begin-
ning to reshape the larger American culture.

The Tide of the Turbans4

One of the earliest-developing elements of the non-orthodox transitional cur-

rent was the appearance of a relatively large number of men who claimed to be
oriental mystics.5 We have seen how the 1893 World’s Fair brought both edu-
cated and uneducated mystics to lecture and perform for an American audi-
ence that had already been introduced to images of oriental mystics through
Transcendentalism, the Arabian Nights-connected stories of the magical East,
spiritualism, Rosicrucian literature, and Theosophy. There had even been,
prior to the rush for the 1893 Fair, a handful of little-known performers and
proselytizers who helped sow the American religious soil for their successors.6
But starting in the 1890s, it was increasingly common to see an array of
‘swamis,’ ‘fakirs,’ ‘yogis,’ ‘Hindoos,’ and even occasionally ‘Sufis,’ ‘dervishes,’
and ‘Mohammedan High Priests’ advertised in the newspapers of big cities.

3 See Chapter 3 and Singleton, introduction, 47.

4 This quote is taken from Herman Scheffauer, “The Tide of the Turbans,” Forum (June 1910):
616, quoted in Nance, How, 212.
5 See Nance, How, 205–29; Jamie J. Wilson, Building a Healthy Black Harlem (Amherst, ny:
Cambria Press, 2009), Chapter 2, 31–58; Jacob S. Dorman, “The Black Israelites of Harlem and
the Professors of Oriental and African Mystic Science in the 1920’s” (PhD diss., University of
California-Los Angeles, 2004), esp. 174–93; Wendell Thomas, Hinduism Invades America (New
York: Beacon Press, 1930).
6 E.g., the Arab performers managed by Professor James Rosedale in the early 1880s. Another
troupe leader, Hadji Cheriff, first came to America for the 1876 World’s Fair in Philadelphia,
but he would remain in America for several more years, becoming one of the more promi-
nent troupe leaders of the nineteenth century.
208 chapter 7

Frequently, these mystics were Fair performers who remained behind after
1893 and populated the various Streets of Cairo-like exhibits that were popular
across the country, and who sometimes worked at the later World’s Fairs in
Buffalo (1901), St. Louis (1904), and San Francisco (1915).7 More often, however,
particularly in the years between the Fairs, these mystics worked indepen-
dently, serving the role of a new, exotic form of spiritualist medium or fortune
teller, and frequently also claiming—taking advantage of the emerging homeo-
pathic and New Thought currents—to be able to heal either through mystical
powers or herbal remedies, similar to what Kheiralla had done in Chicago.
These types of independent mystics were so popular that competition almost
immediately created a whole, largely mail-based industry—often dominated
by whites and African Americans posing as Eastern immigrants—for selling
magical herbs, dream books, and other oriental curios.8 These mystics, then,
were primarily interested in selling their goods and services and not religious
propagation; they rarely sought, and probably were not skilled enough to
obtain, devoted converts, and those who posed as mystics most likely did not
view themselves as genuine converts.
Perhaps because they were not particularly knowledgeable about the orien-
tal religious themes they appropriated, the vast majority of these mystics pre-
sented themselves as Indian but not attached to any particular religion, relying
on Americans’ only vague awareness of the diversity of ‘Eastern spirituality.’
Typically, those who obtained a more definite Muslim or Sufi identity were
connected to a performance troupe or Streets of Cairo exhibit, both of which
were frequently managed and populated by real immigrant Muslims who were
capable of confidently distinguishing their performers from the ambiguous
‘oriental’ fray. Only on occasion, then, were independent oriental mystics
explicitly identified as Muslims or Sufis, and when these types did appear, they
were often notable for two other reasons. First, starting in the 1920s, they seem
to have been much more popular among African Americans than whites,
for reasons tied up with African Americans’ much greater interest in Islamic
identities.9 Second, even when these mystics emphasized their affiliation with

7 For more on this topic, see Adele Linda Younis, “The Coming of the Arabic-Speaking People
to the United States” (PhD diss., Boston University, 1961), 182–215, esp. 208 and hctius vol. 2.
8 See Carolyn Morrow Long, Spiritual Merchants: Religion, Magic, and Commerce (Knoxville:
The University of Tennessee Press, 2001) and Mary Schaeffer Conroy, The Cosmetics Baron
You’ve Never Heard of: E. Virgil Neal and Tokalon (Englewood, co: Altus History llc, 2009).
9 For an introduction to Muslim mystics in the African American community and its relation
to African American interest in Islamic identities, see Nance, How, 231–54; Dorman, “The
Black Israelites,” 174–93. Also see hctius vol. 2.
The Non-orthodox Transition 209

Islam or Sufism, they were often still labeled ‘Hindoo,’ which at the time was a
generic term that could mean either ‘Indian’ or, occasionally, ‘mystic.’ The loose
application of this term could produce somewhat strange, mixed public identi-
ties, like people presenting themselves as ‘Hindu Sufis’ or ‘Hindoos’ named
Mohammed.
One of the earliest known independent, distinctly Muslim mystic-like fig-
ures was the Indian Moula Bakhsh, a New York ‘physician,’ ‘herb doctor,’ and
‘Mohammedan priest,’ who had immigrated in 1884.10 Although Bakhsh’s white
American wife had converted to Islam, Bakhsh did not actively proselytize; he
acted as a religious authority only for the local immigrant Muslim community,
and his healing and herbal remedies were sold purely to make a living—not to
win converts. It appears that the same can be said—at least concerning their
professional activities—for many of those who came after Bakhsh in the 1890s
and early 1900s. There was the purported physician, Professor Mohammed
Green, who was in Kentucky in 1892; the astrologer and clairvoyant Prof. Abdul
stopped by Syracuse in 1900; and in the 1910s, a Prof. Mohammed read palms
and minds in New York while an Abdul Mohammed Berrkut cast spells and
told fortunes in San Francisco.11 By the 1920s, Muslim mystics were extremely
common: Billboard magazine’s “Magic and Magicians” section listed names
like Abdul Hamid, Alla Rageb, and Khyam (a name undoubtedly being a refer-
ence to Omar Khayyam);12 and in just one popular esoteric journal from the
decade, Chicago’s Occult Digest, among the regular contributors were Ali Ben
Raben, Haasan Osiris, and ‘the Cabir, Premel el Adaros.’ And these were just
some of the men featured in the white press; there were many others, and the
black press had an even greater supply of such figures.
Not all of these mystics, however, were mere independent salesmen. When
Chicago’s ‘Cabir, Premel el Adaros’ was not writing articles for the Occult Digest
about Hinduism’s secret powers and the esoteric knowledge of ‘adepts’ like the
Sufi Rumi, he served as president of the city’s Society of Transcendent Science.13
Judging by his advertisements, the program of el Adaros’ organization was
basically set up as a correspondence course through which those interested

10 “New York Mohammedans,” Hartford Courant, September 9, 1889, 2; “A Mohammedan

Missionary,” Amsterdam Daily Democrat, March 4, 1893, 2.
11 “It Didn’t Go,” Cincinnati Enquirer, February 2, 1892, 4; “Clairvoyant,” Post-Standard
(Syracuse), April 8, 1900, 5; “Fears the Roses Were Not Burned,” San Francisco Chronicle,
October 25, 1912; “Engineer Pays $400 to Cast Spell on Girl,” San Francisco Call, October 25,
1912, 14.
12 Billboard, November 18, 1916, 35; Billboard, July 8, 1922, 43; Billboard, November 18, 1922, 46.
13 See his numerous advertisements and articles in the 1924 volume of Occult Digest.
210 chapter 7

would buy each of his pamphlets on various esoteric topics. Still, people did
apparently come to his Chicago ‘studio,’ where he reportedly hosted Sufi whirl-
ing Dervish performances.14 Interestingly, while in 1924 el Adaros emphasized
his affiliation with Hindu and Egyptian themes, by 1927, after moving to New
York and reaching out to the black community, he now used a more Muslim-
sounding name, ‘Abd-el Rahman El Adaros, Effendi,’ and was depicted in his
advertisements wearing both turbans and an Arab-style scarf (keffiyeh).15 Just
how organized or successful his efforts were, however, is unknown.
Perhaps one of the more successful of the interwar ‘Muslim’ mystics was
Hazrat Ismet Ali. In 1926, advertisements for the long-haired, beard- and
turban-wearing, self-proclaimed “oriental mystic” began appearing in Mid­
west newspapers announcing his lectures on “New Revelations That Will
Revolutionize Your Whole Existence!”16 By early 1927, Ali had established in
Chicago an organization known as the Himayat Society, which quickly made it
to New England where it claimed as followers a black reverend, one Rev. Father
Hollinsed, and a black poet, George Reginald Margetson.17 Ali was one of the
mystics who capitalized on having an ambiguous religious identity: although
he told people he was an Indian and sometimes added that he was Hindu, he
also on occasion promoted himself as a “Sufi Mystic,” and at other times
appears to have insisted that the topics of his teachings would not conflict with
any religious creed—a theme that was becoming increasingly popular among
self-proclaimed Sufis probably partly due to, as we will see, the popularity of
Inayat Khan.18 Ali developed followings in New York, Buffalo, and Detroit, and
by 1928 was calling his organization the Islam-themed name the Kaaba Alif

14 The Cabir, Premel el Adaros, “The Acts of the Eastern Adepts,” Occult Digest 3 (May
1924): 21.
15 See his advertisements in the New York Amsterdam News in August and September of that
year. He also appeared in Los Angeles the previous May, all while keeping his Chicago
address.
16 The earliest advertisement I have found was in the Milwaukee Sentinel, July 28, 1926, 7.
17 J.W. Youngblood, “Boston,” New York Amsterdam News, May 18, 1927, 14; “Hazrat Ismet Ali
to Lecture Here,” Hartford Courant, May 7, 1927, 7; “Hasret Ismet Ali Will Lecture Here
Monday,” Hartford Courant, May 8, 1927, C5. The latter article indicates that he had
recently come from Minneapolis. In 1927, the Himayat Society published in Chicago a
book called Power of Silence by Madame Corinne Ali (Hazrat Ismet Ali’s wife, Cazjorin Ali,
aka Amber Corinne Steen/Stein); unfortunately I was not able to locate a copy of this
book.
18 “Sufi Mystic to Give Oriental Interpretation of ‘Bible’” (advertisement), Detroit Free Press,
September 22, 1928, 8; “Hasret Ismet Ali Will Lecture Here Monday.”
The Non-orthodox Transition 211

Society (which probably also had an Inayat Khan influence).19 Things seem to
have been going fairly well for Ali until the summer of 1929 when his white
wife, Cazjorin Ali (born Amber Corinne Steen)20 purportedly went missing,
and Ali said he thought she had been murdered by an enemy of the Society.21
As it turned out, although Steen had only gone into hiding, probably as part of
new scheme planned by Ali, there was indeed an enemy trying to destroy the
group. One S.Z. Abedin, a “young Hindu” with a Muslim surname who was a
former secretary of the Kaaba Alif Society, claimed that Ali was a fraud and did
not follow the true “Hindu” ritual. Ali, it was soon learned, was a Trinidadian
immigrant who, after coming to the us in 1925 as a valet, used his knowledge of
Indians—presumably acquired in Trinidad, which had a fairly large Indian
immigrant population—in order put on this charade with his wife for financial
gain.22 For the deception, Ali was sentenced to one to five years in prison, while
his white wife was acquitted.
Prior to Ali’s immigration, another mysterious figure laced his idiosyncratic
‘Eastern’ teachings with references to Sufis and Islamic themes, but this person
would have a much longer-lasting influence on American culture. In January of
1924, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, along with thirty guests, arrived in New York
on the SS Paris. An Armenian-born mystic who incorporated a wide variety of
Central Asian religious traditions into his teachings, Gurdjieff had, over the
previous eleven years, become something of a sensation in Europe, and was
now attempting to spread his ideas across the Atlantic. During the December
before his arrival, A.R. Orage, a British editor, had been building American
anticipation for Gurdjieff by contacting many influential figures in New York’s
literary scene. Orage also apparently sent out a prospectus for the dance per-
formances Gurdjieff directed, in which it was indicated that Gurdjieff’s work
was inspired by various Sufi sources.23 By the time of his ship’s mooring,
Gurdjieff had an intrigued audience waiting, and he quickly gained a large
American following.
The question of whether Gurdjieff’s ideas were essentially Sufistic has been
a rather contentious one, as his more orthodox followers have denied it due to

19 “Ali’s Mysticism Didn’t Foretell Prison Term,” Chicago Defender (City ed.), January 11, 1930,
11. His New York headquarters at Steinway Hall were known as the Kaaba Alif Center; see
“Religious Services,” New York Times, February 27, 1929, 19.
20 Her last name was possibly spelled ‘Stein.’
21 “Wife Lost in Cult Mystery,” Dubois Courier (Pennsylvania), July 31, 1929, 6.
22 “Cult Leader’s Nationality Puzzles New Yorkers; Claim Man A Fakir,” New Journal and
Guide, August 3, 1929, 12; “Ali’s Mysticism.”
23 Anna Terri Challenger, “An Introduction to Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub: A Modern Sufi Teaching
Tale” (PhD diss., Kent State University, 1990), 13.
212 chapter 7

the fact that the original promoter of this theory, John G. Bennett, was himself
a Sufi follower of Idries Shah (see Chapter 11).24 Still, textual analysis of
Gurdjieff’s writings reveal a strong presence of Sufi and Islamic elements. In
his 1995 dissertation that critically examines Bennett’s analysis of Gurdjieff,
William James Thompson shows that Gurdjieff consistently used in his various
writings (and presumably the speeches that his writings were based on) refer-
ences to well-known Islamic figures and locations, especially Mecca,
Afghanistan, and Naqshbandi Sufis in Bukhara.25 Anna Challenger, in her dis-
sertation, identifies other references to Islam and Sufism (especially the Sufi
figure Nasreddin) and sees a Sufi influence in Gurdjieff’s storytelling style.26 In
addition to all of this, Gurdjieff was known to employ Sufi spiritual practices as
well as Mevlevi Dervish dancing in his organization.27 Indeed, the Sufi elements
in Gurdjieff’s writing and practices are so prevalent that some researchers have
included Gurdjieff in their overviews of Sufism in the West and the us.28 While
the majority of Gurdjieff’s American followers regard his teachings as distinct
from Sufism, and they themselves usually have not seen themselves as Sufis or
Muslims, the presence of Sufi themes in the advertisements, teachings, and
practices of Gurdjieff’s movement reflect the growing interest in mystical
Muslim themes as presented by immigrants to the United States in the first
half of the twentieth century.

24 Bennett writes that “Gurdjieff was, more than anything else, a Sufi”; see his Gurdjieff:
Making a New World (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 278.
25 William James Thompson, “J.G. Bennett’s Interpretation of the Teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff:
A Study of Transmission in the Fourth Way” (PhD diss., University of Lancaster, 1995),
Chapter 4, 291–348.
26 Challenger, “An Introduction,” 11–38. Michael Scott Pittman, in his own dissertation
(“G.I. Gurdjieff: Textualization of Medieval Storytelling and Modern Teachings on the
Soul” [PhD diss., Stony Brook University, 2005]), for the most part follows Challenger’s
analysis on the topic of Sufi influences.
27 Mark Sedgwick, “European Neo-Sufi Movements in the Inter-War Period,” in Islam in
Inter-War Europe, eds. Nathalie Clayer and Eric Germain (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2008), 210–12.
28 See, for example, Jay Kinney, “Sufism Comes to America,” Gnosis 30 (Winter 1994): 18;
Peter Wilson, “The Strange Fate of Sufism in the New Age,” in New Trends and Developments
in the World of Islam, ed. Peter Clarke (London: Luzac Oriental, 1997), 180–81; David
Westerlund, “The Contextualisation of Sufism in Europe,” in Sufism in Europe and North
America, ed. David Westerlund (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 20; Sedgwick,
“European Neo-Sufi,” 207–13; William Rory Dickson, “Living Sufism in North America:
Between Tradition and Transformation” (PhD diss., Wilfrid Laurier University, 2012),
92–96.
The Non-orthodox Transition 213

Hazrat Inayat Khan and the ‘Sufic Order in America’

Without question, during the first half of the twentieth century, the single
most important transitional Sufi figure in the white American religious land-
scape was Hazrat Inayat Khan. Although Khan is primarily known for spread-
ing a non-Islamic form of Sufism, he was important for the history of
conversion to Islam in the us for several reasons. First of all, because Sufism
was, for the most part, at the time still regarded by Westerners as a religious
current that was connected to Islam, his success in popularizing Sufism
helped increase awareness of and interest in Islam generally. Second, Khan
was himself a Muslim and in the early years of his effort he incorporated
numerous Islamic elements into his teachings and practices, particularly for
his American followers. To this extent, then, these early followers, while not
fully Muslim, adhered to a hybrid, Islam-like system. Interestingly, Khan
developed many of the elements of his non-Islamic, ‘universalist’ Sufism
only after having won Western followers and having gained a strong under-
standing of the movements with which many of them had previously been
allied, especially Theosophy. Indeed, like the us’ other successful oriental
religion teachers before him, Khan’s ability to build a movement consisting
of hundreds of Westerners—including nearly 250 Americans29—seems to
have been largely due to his skill in recruiting Theosophists and other eso-
tericists and aligning his teachings with what they had already adhered to.
The growth of Khan’s movement therefore confirms the trend—particularly
in the years before conversion through immigrant-majority organizations
started becoming common—of non-Christian groups finding the most suc-
cess when they connected with pre-existing popular esoteric and New
Thought currents. Finally, Khan’s movement is important for understanding
conversion to Islam because some of the influential white American Sufis
who followed Khan had ties—if only indirect—with other more orthodox
Muslims, including nineteenth-century converts and immigrants as well as
converts from the twentieth century. In fact, at least one possible former fol-
lower of Khan completely abandoned Sufism and eventually converted to
orthodox Islam. Khan and his ‘Sufic Order’ were therefore, in many ways,
highly representative of the transition from the nineteenth-century esoteric-
based conversions to the mid-twentieth-century immigrant-based orthodox
conversions.

29 Zia Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order at the Crossroads of Modernity” (PhD diss., Duke
University, 2006), 226.
214 chapter 7

Inayat Khan was born in western India in 1882 to a family of mystically-

inclined professional musicians.30 As a young adult, he followed his family’s
trade, teaching and writing music and music theory, which earned him praise
in various parts of Muslim India. Khan, however, had other interests and influ-
ences. He had, for example, gained from his maternal relatives a passion for
Muslim reform and sympathy for Hindu and European thought, and he had
even briefly come into contact with Theosophy. Khan also trained in Sufism
under Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani of Hyderabad, who besides having Khan
study the Qurʾan, hadith, and Persian mystical literature, gave him instruction
in four types of Sufi orders: Chisti, Naqshbandi, Qadiri, and Suhrawardi.31
Khan’s training, notably, also included the development of occult powers, such
as communicating with the dead and living through psychic forces as well as
cultivating clairvoyance and intuition.32 As a young adult, Khan desired to
integrate his various influences and create “a universal system of Music”33 that
united the East and West, but after Madani’s death in 1907, he apparently
decided to dedicate his life to spirituality, and his career as a musician would
merely be the guise he would use while pursuing this endeavor.34
Khan would later say—in what has become part of the standard narrative of
his spiritual activities—that Madani, before his death, had given Khan an
“injunction” to bring Sufism to the West. Although the precise circumstances
and authenticity of this injunction have been called into question,35 when
Khan first traveled west, arriving in New York in the fall of 1910, he did almost
immediately begin spreading religious knowledge. Khan left India with a
brother and cousin—both musicians, like Khan—who together billed them-
selves as ‘The Royal Musicians of Hindustan’ and gave performances that
included both the playing of music and explanations of the spiritual aspects of
their music and religion. The trio quickly joined up with the performance
troupe of Ruth St. Denis, a dancer who specialized in what was presented as
Eastern-style dance. With St. Denis, the Sufis traveled across the country, visit-
ing performance halls and, occasionally, the meeting places of various religious
and esoteric groups.

30 The following history of Khan’s movement is drawn primarily from Inayat-Khan,

“A Hybrid Sufi Order” and Inayat Khan, Biography of Pir-O-Mushrid Inayat Khan (London:
East–west Publications, 1979).
31 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 62.
32 Ibid.
33 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 57.
34 Ibid., 63; Khan, Biography, 89.
35 For discussions of the contradictions and difficulties concerning this topic, see Inayat-
Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 64–67 and Sedgwick, “European Neo-Sufi,” 191.
The Non-orthodox Transition 215

Six months into his American tour, Khan’s spiritual career reached a major
turning point. On April 16, 1911, the Royal Musicians gave a presentation at San
Francisco’s Vedanta Society temple,36 and in attendance was the person who
would become Khan’s first and most important American disciple: Ada Martin.
Born Ada Ginsberg in San Francisco in 1871,37 Ada’s parents—both of whom
were Russian Jewish immigrants—were of the intellectual type; her father was
an artist and her mother, who came from a family of rabbis and Jewish mystics,
a scholar. Ada herself, by her late teens, had begun studying religion, philoso-
phy, and mysticism, and after marrying and bearing a daughter, the young
mother also dedicated much of her free time to philanthropic activities. In the
early 1900s, Ada’s interest in religion and mysticism intensified; she read more,
sought out spiritual teachers, and, according to Samuel Lewis, her most well
known follower, even joined Edouard Blitz’s Martinist Order, presumably by
way of the Groupe Indépendent d’Etudes Esotériques (g.i.e.e.).38 In France
the g.i.e.e., an organization in which members studied the various religions
of the world, was frequently used as a gateway organization to bring people to
Martinism. However Blitz, who was essentially the only official promoter of
Martinism in the us in the late nineteenth century, usually had people join
Martinism directly, and did not establish a branch of the g.i.e.e. in America
until 1899.39 The branch he established that year, however, happened to be
located in San Francisco, where a Martinist Order branch was also opened
and no doubt received the Groupe’s students who were most interested in
esotericism.40
This connection between Ada Martin and the Martinist Order commu-
nity—particularly the g.i.e.e.—is significant for several reasons. First is the
fact that it demonstrates that Ada, who would become the most important
American Sufi in the first half of the twentieth century, came to Sufism out of
the same movement as René Guénon, whose own introduction to esotericism

36 Murshida Carol Weyland Conner, “Recognize the True Teacher,” Glow International
(November 2004): 7. I would like to thank Ira Deitrick, president of Sufism Reoriented, for
providing me with a copy of this article and for answering my many inquiries.
37 Conner, “Recognize the True Teacher,” 6. The following biographical information is
derived largely from Conner’s article.
38 Conner, “Recognize the True Teacher,” 6; Andrew Rawlinson, The Book of Enlightened
Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), 436; Murshid
Samuel L. Lewis, Six Interviews with Hazrat Inayat Khan (Eugene, or: Sufi Ruhaniat
International, 1978), 5.
39 Blizt to Papus, April 3, 1899, fp.
40 Blizt to Papus, undated, fp.
216 chapter 7

was through the g.i.e.e., which duly led him to Martinism.41 But the connec-
tion also raises the possibility that Martin was in communication with one of
the most prominent American Martinists of the period, S.C. Gould, who was at
that time a member and leading promoter of what was a continuation of the
first Sufi group for white Americans, the Order of Sufis/Sufic Circle.42 This may
explain why it is, in 1915, in one of the earliest known newspaper articles to
mention Ada as a Sufi, she is identified as the us representative of ‘the Order
of Sufis’43 and why, later, another Order of Sufis member, C.H.A. Bejerregaard,
was also linked to Khan’s ‘Sufic Order.’44
To connect Ada with Gould’s group would thus tie her, and even Khan him-
self, to the earlier Theosophical and H.B. of L. Islamophilia to which Alexander
Webb was linked. This is a tantalizing genealogy, as it would help explain how
it was that Khan decided to add an element to his movement that would
become one of its hallmarks and lasting legacies: not requiring his followers
to convert to Islam. This feature, which reflected the experimental, scientific
mentality of the early American occult revival, could be found in the Theo­
sophical Society, H.B. of L., the Sufic Circle, and even Webb’s American Moslem
Brotherhood. Since Khan’s movement eventually gained significant popularity
in the us and even seems to have inspired a number of imitators, to connect
this feature of Khan’s movement to Johnson’s Islamophilic Theosophy and the
occult revival that bore it suggests that the occult revival of the 1870s and 1880s
was indeed the genesis of some of the most important currents of Islam and
Sufism in us religious history. A connection between the occult revival and
Khan would, furthermore, help to put in perspective the significant appeal of
non-Islamic Sufi movements for white Americans: to an extent, this seems to
be a legacy of Islamophilic Theosophy and the occult revival.
In the end, however, even if Ada—and therefore Khan—was not in fact
directly tied to the Order of Sufis, her background in Blitz’s Islamophilic
Martinism and (probably) the g.i.e.e. made her particularly receptive to

41 Sedgwick, Against the Modern World, 47–48. When Guénon joined the Groupe
Indépendent in 1906, it had been renamed the Free School of Hermetic Sciences.
42 Further circumstantial evidence is that in 1900, there were only six Martinist branches in
the us, and San Francisco and Gould’s branch in Manchester, New Hampshire were two
of these (see Blizt to Papus, undated, fp). In such a small national community, it is very
likely that the members would have all known each other through correspondence, and
Gould would have been one of the most popular because of his publishing an esotericist
journal.
43 “Harem a Shelter for Women, not Place to Keep Them Ignorant,” Morning Echo
(Bakersfield, ca), August 11, 1915, 1.
44 See below.
The Non-orthodox Transition 217

Inayat Khan’s esoteric Sufi teachings. By 1911—two years after Gould’s death,
which presumably also meant the end of any activities the Order of Sufis may
have done—Ada had herself become a teacher of Martinism and comparative
religions (most likely through the g.i.e.e.), and when she learned about Khan’s
Vedanta Society performance, she decided to have her comparative religion
students attend.45
When Ada first caught a glimpse of Khan at the performance, she immedi-
ately felt that she recognized him.46 Then, when she heard his voice, Ada—
who by then must have been very familiar with occult experiences—went into
an ecstatic state and believed she could understand the true, profound mean-
ing behind all of Khan’s words. Khan himself would seemingly verify this,
claiming that during the presentation Ada appeared to be—far more than
anyone else in attendance—absorbing all that he was saying. After the presen-
tation, Ada approached Khan and asked for spiritual guidance. Khan, however,
was about to leave for Seattle, so he advised Ada that if she wanted time for a
serious meeting, she would have to follow him. Confident that she had discov-
ered a true spiritual teacher, Ada made arrangements for the journey, and on
May 11, 1911 she arrived in Washington. There, Khan visited Ada at her hotel,
where he initiated her as his first Sufi student, giving her the spiritual name of
Rabia, after the Muslim saint.47 For three days, Khan instructed Rabia on medi-
tation and spiritual study, and over the next several months, while Khan was
touring the country, the two corresponded regularly so that Khan could con-
tinue to instruct her.48 Rabia was encouraged to perform Sufi prayers (dhikrs)
every night; meditate in Chisti fashion; learn Arabic; and read Rumi’s Masnavi,
Hafiz’s Divan, and Sa‘di’s Gulistan and Bustan.49
It is unclear if at this time Khan introduced Rabia to what would eventually
be called the ‘Esoteric School’ in Khan’s movement. This esoteric initiatory sys-
tem of Khan’s—which may have been developed after 1912—contained twelve
grades and four ‘Circles of Initiation.’50 At some point, however, Khan did pro-
vide Rabia with a set of instructions entitled “Book of Instructions for the
Murshid,” which presented a system of seven stages of Sufic training that was

45 Conner, “Recognize the True Teacher,” 7.

46 Ibid., 7.
47 Ibid., 8.
48 Ibid., 8.
49 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 73; Conner, “Recognize the True Teacher,” 8.
50 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 175–77. The Order of Sufis, as will be recalled, had
three degrees and eight ‘stages.’
218 chapter 7

very close to what was practiced by Chistiyyas in India.51 Later students of

Khan would not receive these instructions, reflecting Khan’s increasing ten-
dency to move away from the Islamic Sufism he had been taught in India and
towards a simplified, universalist form. Although in 1911 Khan was insisting to
Rabia that he did not teach “Islamic mysticism,” it appears that at this early
stage, Khan’s teachings were still not as non-Islamic and Theosophically-
influenced as they would be at the height of his activity in Europe.52
Khan spent the remainder of his first journey to America in New York City.
In early 1912, Rabia joined him on the East Coast, serving as his secretary and
observing his practices and actions as a murshid (teacher) and representative
of Sufism.53 Khan told her that his goal was to fulfill Madani’s injunction by
establishing a “Sufic Order in America,” and that she should be his “successor
in America” to continue his mission, appointing her as murshid and his khalifat
(official representative/deputy) for his Sufic Order.54
Before Khan left the country in the spring, he had made other significant
ties with Americans. One was with C.H.A. Bjerregaard, the old correspondent
of Gould and Johnson and member of the Order of Sufis, whom Khan described
as “the only student of Sufism known in New York.”55 Khan made Bjerregaard
an honorary member of his Sufic Order and in 1915 had his group publish a
revised version of Bjerregaard’s 1902 critique of FitzGerald’s translation of the
Rubaiyat, which now contained a strong influence from Khan.56 Soon after,
however, Bjerregaard and Rabia—who had apparently been in contact at least
through Khan’s group—had a falling out and it appears Bjerregaard gave up his
connection with the movement.57
The visit to New York was not made in vain, however. Khan’s New York
address was circulated in the New Thought press and this surely attracted

51 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 76–78.

52 Khan, Biography, 97, 107; Conner, “Recognize the True Teacher,” 8. Khan’s non-Islamic,
universalist Sufism had some non-Theosophical sources; see Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi
Order,” 137–45.
53 Conner, “Recognize the True Teacher,” 9–10.
54 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 74–76.
55 Shaikh al-Mashaik Mahmood Khan, “Hazrat Inayat Khan: A Biographical Perspective,” in
A Pearl in Wine: Essays on the Life, Music and Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan, ed. Pirzade Zia
Inayat Khan (New Lebanon, ny: Omega Publications, 2001), 88; Khan, Biography, 125.
56 Elisabeth de Jong-Keesing, Inayat Khan: A Biography (London: Luzac & Co., 1974), 103;
Khan, “Hazrat Inayat Khan,” 88; C.H.A. Bjerregaard, Sufism: Omar Khayyam and
E. Fitzgerald (London: Sufi Publishing Society, 1915).
57 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 79n44.
The Non-orthodox Transition 219

numerous visitors.58 In fact, Khan verifiably converted a few people in New

York, some of whom would prove to be long-lasting Sufis.59 It was in New York,
too, where Khan met Ora Ray Baker, second cousin to Christian Science
founder Mary Baker Eddy and half-sister to Pierre Bernard, the founder of the
oriental-themed occult group called the Tantrik Order of America. It was
Bernard who originally arranged for Ora Ray to study with Khan,60 and soon
after meeting, both Ora Ray and Khan came to believe that they had previously
seen each other in visions, so Khan proposed marriage. Then, against Bernard’s
wishes, Ora Ray joined Khan and his entourage when they left for London in
the spring.61
Khan spent the majority of the remainder of his life in Europe. At first, he
lived in London and cultivated friendships within the local Muslim
community,62 but he also started developing strong ties with the Theosophical
Society, which increasingly influenced his teachings to make them less Islamic
and therefore less attractive for the Muslims.63 Khan found in Theosophy a
movement whose universalist message was close to that which Khan was him-
self drawn,64 plus its followers were the people most interested in and sup-
portive of his teachings. His European presentations were often arranged by
Theosophists, and many of his leading followers were former Theosophists
who were perhaps seeking something that they felt the Society lacked. Since
the 1880s, Theosophy had not maintained a strong, consistently-respected eso-
teric initiatory order. The H.B. of L. was the first to take advantage of this
lacuna, followed by the Martinist Order, the Order of the Magi, and other New
Thought-influenced esoteric groups. What made Khan’s movement stand out
from all of these was, first of all, that he was an authentic Eastern adept, which

58 See “Metaphysicians and Teachers,” Bulletin Board 1, no. 6 (March 1912): 13 in J. Gordon
Melton and University of California, Santa Barbara Library, American Religions Collection,
American Religion Collection Series 1: Nontraditional American Religions: Western
Esotericism from Witchcraft to the New Age (Woodbridge, ct: Primary Source Microfilm,
an imprint of Thomson Gale, 2005), reel 91.
59 Khan, Biography, 126, 169.
60 De Jong-Keesing, Inayat Khan, 106–07.
61 Ora Ray—who took the name of Ameena Begum—would write numerous poems, several
of which were published in Rosary of a Hundred Beads: By “Sharda” to “Daya” (Zurich:
Edition Petama Project, 2007).
62 Including Quilliam, who by this time was using the name Henri de Leon; see Khan,
Biography, 147.
63 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 101–17.
64 For a technical discussion of the Khan’s thought, and its relationship with Theosophy, see
Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 277ff.
220 chapter 7

immediately gave him an authoritative status in the eyes of Theosophists and

other esotericists. Furthermore, Khan’s authentic and sophisticated religious
knowledge, as well as his embracing of Theosophy’s teachings, put him at an
advantage vis-à-vis the numerous turbaned fakirs who hoped to sell religious
oriental goods to Western consumers without significant training in the ideas
that would appeal to Americans interested in Eastern esotericism. After set-
tling in in Europe and formally establishing his community as the Sufi Order
(1915), Khan helped create a universalist ‘exoteric’ religion and ‘church’ for his
movement—known as Universal Worship and the Church of All, respec-
tively—which appear to have been significantly influenced by Theosophy-
connected movements.65 His initiatory, esoteric teachings—now called the
Esoteric School—were considered separate. The conglomerate of these insti-
tutions was formalized in 1923 as the Sufi Movement.
In the us, meanwhile, Rabia attempted to fulfill her duty of spreading the
Sufism she had been taught by Khan. Before she had even left San Francisco for
New York in January 1912, Rabia was already connecting with Theosophists,
lecturing at a local lodge in December 1911.66 The following summer, after Khan
had left for London, Rabia formally established the Sufic Order at 1504 O’Farrell
Street in San Francisco, complete with a ‘School of Philosophy’ that held lec-
tures every Wednesday and Friday.67 According to Samuel Lewis, Rabia was, at
the time, teaching her students an understanding of Sufism that integrated
knowledge gained from her study of comparative religions and Martinism.68
By December, she was calling the group’s meeting place a ‘Sufic Temple’ (later,
‘Sufi Temple’), promoting it as a “school of religious philosophy, mental and
moral culture, [and] elementary and advanced instruction in metaphysics,”
and offering, in addition to the weekly lecture, a “devotional service.”69
Although it is not quite clear what took place at the devotional service, and it
may very well have been a time for practicing dhikr prayers, the name suggests
that it may have been a more church-like activity, similar to what would take
place in Khan’s Church of All. By 1915, however, ‘devotional service’ no longer
appeared in advertisements for the Sufi Temple, although the temple itself was

65 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 125–32.

66 “Theosophical Meetings,” San Francisco Call, December 3, 1911, 68.
67 “Sunday Meetings,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 4, 1912, 49
68 Lewis, Six Interviews, 5.
69 “Sufic Temple,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 1, 1912, 55; “Sufi Temple,” San Francisco
Chronicle, February 16, 1913, 54; “Sufi Temple,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 11, 1913, 43. By
May 1913 she had moved the temple to 1333 California Street.
The Non-orthodox Transition 221

to stay active for several more years.70 Rabia remained active as well, struggling
to build and maintain a stable Sufi community and occasionally making
appearances at interfaith events, such as at the Congress of Religious
Philosophies, an auxiliary to the 1915 World’s Fair that was being held in San
Francisco.71 In 1918, she expanded the American activities of the movement by
establishing in the town of Fairfax, California a communal home known as
Kaaba Allah,72 and in the following year, she gained what was to be her most
loyal follower for the next two decades, Samuel Lewis (later known as Sufi Sam
or Murshid Sam).73
Unfortunately, there is not much known about the early American Sufi com-
munity and why Rabia did not quickly gain a strong following. As we have seen,
popularizing a new religion was no easy task and even some of the more suc-
cessful turn-of-the-century non-Christian movements had only a few hundred
members. Rabia would also face the challenge of attempting to recruit people
during the First World War, when generating interest in an Islam-connected
movement might have been especially difficult, given the political climate.
Further insight into Rabia’s difficulties in winning loyal converts may be
gleaned from a person who was—in all likelihood—briefly one of Rabia’s ear-
liest followers. After coming into contact with the Ahmadiyya movement in
the 1920s (see below), Ella May Garber explained that her journey to Islam
began when she converted to Sufism in San Francisco around 1911.74 In Sufism,
however, Ella May felt she had only “first beg[u]n to see Islam’s light, [and] not

70 “Sufi Temple,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 12, 1915, 52; “Sufi Temple,” San Francisco
Chronicle, December 18, 1921, C1; In 1915, the temple was located on Leavenworth Street
and in 1918 it moved to Sutter Street, where it remained at least through late 1921.
71 Murshid Wali Ali Meyer, “A Sunrise in the West: Hazrat Inayat Khan’s Legacy in California,”
in A Pearl in Wine: Essays on the Life, Music and Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan, ed. Pirzade
Zia Inayat Khan (New Lebanon, ny: Omega Publications, 2001), 396–97; Inayat-Khan, “A
Hybrid Sufi Order,” 120; “Harem a Shelter for Women, Not Place to Keep Them Ignorant,”
Morning Echo (Bakersfield, ca), August 1, 1915, 1; Khan, Biography, 575. At the Congress,
Islam was apparently represented by one Mrs. Sidney Sprague, a native of Persia, who
gave a speech correcting the stereotype of harems as places of oppression.
72 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 110. “Kaaba Allah” was probably the inspiration for
Hazrat Ismet Ali’s Kaaba Alif Center.
73 Meyer, “A Sunrise in the West,” 398.
74 See Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 6 (1922): 147. I am dating her conversion based on comments
made in this source, as well as one found in Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 1 (1921): 13. While Ella
May makes no mention of either Rabia or Khan, she claimed that what initially converted
her was reading Sufi poets, which Rabia—following Khan’s instructions to read Rumi,
Hafiz, and Sa’di—would have had her do. This, plus the timing and location of her conver-
sion, make it extremely likely, then, that she converted through the influence of Rabia.
222 chapter 7

in a very serious way.”75 As mentioned in Chapter 6, in 1915, she began corre-

sponding with, Sayid Muhammad Wajih Gilani, the Sheikh al-Islam for the
Philippines who was visiting the us at the time, and this led her to convert to
Sunni Islam prior to her joining the Ahmadiyya movement.76 Ella May’s per-
ception that the Sufism she was exposed to in the early 1910s was not “very
serious” may reflect the fact that Rabia had only recently become a Sufi leader
and therefore may not have had the knowledge and experience needed to
win the confidence of many converts.77 Along these same lines, while Rabia
had ties to various esoteric communities, including the Martinists and the
Theosophical Society,78 as far as the evidence shows, she—like Webb—was
not a widely-respected leader and therefore had a difficult time convincing a
significant number of people from those groups to convert en masse.79
Judging by the available evidence, it seems that the creation of new
American Sufi Order groups did not really start to pick up until the 1920s, and
perhaps 1923, when Khan, after an eleven-year absence, finally returned to the
us. Khan’s success in Europe over the preceding decade, along with his ability
to draw American converts to visit him from across the Atlantic, had greatly
increased his reputation in America,80 and he seems to have received more
attention than he had in 1910–12 from both the media and converts. The Sufi
communities in New York and San Francisco were greatly revitalized by Khan’s
visit. The local Sufi centers (as they were now typically called) were becoming
more active, running numerous advertisements and instituting Universal

75 Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 6 (1922): 147.

76 Ibid.
77 However, Rabia did win the confidence of one early convert, Rebecca C. Hepburn-Miller,
who is today remembered as being Rabia’s first student, converting in 1912 (she may have
been Rabia’s first student who remained loyal to her, unlike Ella May, who apparently
quickly left the Sufic Order). Miller stayed with the movement at least through the late
1920s. See Khan, Biography, 523.
78 In the 1930s, apparently Rabia’s students frequently consulted with Theosophical Society
members; see Mu’min Nurah Haq, “Biography,” accessed May 7, 2014, http://veracorda
.com/MVC_Biography.html.
79 Unfortunately, my searches for information about the pre-Sufi religious activities of the
people who were verifiably involved with the movement in the 1910s through 1930s have
so far produced very little information. I did discover, however, that one of her later fol-
lowers from New York, Marya Cushing, was an active member of the ts break-off, the
Temple of the People. On this group, see Paul Eli Ivey, Radiance from Halcyon: A Utopian
Experiment in Religion and Science (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
80 Khan, Biography, 494, 524.
The Non-orthodox Transition 223

Worship—all of which appears to have led to an increase in membership.81

After Khan’s tour, in fact, several American converts either accompanied him
to Europe or went there later to see him.82 The American community was also
growing organizationally: Khan was able to start a new group in Los Angeles,83
and by 1925, there were additional new groups in Detroit, Michigan and in
Santa Barbara and San Fernando, California.84 When Khan returned again to
the us in late 1925, his popularity had increased further, with more and more
people joining the movement and his lectures even better attended than they
were in the past—he even gained the attention of New York’s Jewish and black
nationalist communities.85 Khan left the States for a final time in June 1926,
but in 1928, when the Movement was perhaps at its pre-World War ii peak in
the us, there were at least 236 American members and thriving Sufi centers in
New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.86
Khan died on February 5, 1927 without having ensured that there would be
a widely-accepted successor. He had personally told Rabia on several occasions
that she was to assume the role, but—as Zia Inayat-Khan has pointed out—
anti-Semitism appears to have turned many among the group’s international
leadership in Geneva against Rabia, and it was decided that the successor
should be Inayat’s brother, Maheboob.87 By 1930, this had caused a schism

81 See, e.g., the “Sufi Movement” advertisements that ran in the New York Sun’s religion sec-
tion from late 1923 through 1924. In 1924, advertisements were also run in the American
New Thought press; see, e.g., the advertisement in Herald of Light 6, no. 11 (November
1924): 4 in Melton, American Religion Collection Series 1, reel 101.
82 Conner, “Recognize the True Teacher,” 10; Khan, Biography, 502–04, 524.
83 Khan, Biography, 172.
84 William C. Hartmann, ed., Hartmann’s Who’s Who in Occult, Psychic and Spiritual Realms
(Jamaica, ny: Occult Press, 1925), 154. The list of Sufi groups given in this 1925 book does
not mention the Los Angeles group, which was verifiably active, but struggling, in 1925
(see Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 181). However, since the Los Angeles group had
been started by E.P.A. Connaughton, who was listed as the head of the Santa Barbara
group for 1925 (and this group was confirmed to exist in 1930—see Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid
Sufi Order,” 226), it seems that the Los Angeles group had already grown enough for
Connaughton to appoint a successor—although leadership problems in the group would
soon rear their heads; see Khan, Biography, 172, 181, 494.
85 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 182–87; “Indian Philosopher Here with Message,”
Negro World, December 19, 1925, [3?].
86 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 226. I have deduced that these three cities were the
locations of the group’s major centers from the fact that it was only these locations, and
not the other centers, that were being listed as the American distributors for the organiza-
tion’s materials in its 1920s journal, Sufi Quarterly.
87 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 194–96, 204–13, esp. 213.
224 chapter 7

among American members, with the New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and
Santa Barbara communities affiliating with the group’s headquarters in
Geneva, and the rest staying with Rabia.88 American membership in the
Geneva-based Sufi Movement thus dipped down to 141, but soon it was report-
edly experiencing renewed growth, particularly in Indianapolis, Cleveland,
New York, and possibly Philadelphia.89 Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, interest-
ingly, some of the Sufis began to take an increased interest in Islam and reached
out to local and international Muslims (see Chapter 8). With the advent of the
Second World War, however, the Sufi Movement, being primarily based in
Europe, began to face many challenges in the effort to maintain stability. The
difficulties were further exacerbated by internecine squabbles and growing
factionalism. As a result, the us community began to decline.90 After the war,
particularly following the death of Maheboob, the infighting continued, and
one of Inayat’s sons, Vilayat, began to gain an independent following that
would only several years later gain traction in the us (see Chapter 11).
Rabia, meanwhile, continued to lead her small American following. Having
become an independent leader, she began modifying the subject matter and
literature that was being used for spiritual instruction, introducing the Kabala,
the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead.91 In the late
1930s, after she was initiated by a prominent Indian Chisti leader who claimed
that Khan had previously told him that Rabia would be Khan’s successor,92
Rabia increasingly believed that Sufism needed revitalization and a new direc-
tion.93 In 1942, she was introduced to the movement of Meher Baba, an Indian
spiritual teacher who had been influenced by Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and
Sufism. Rabia became convinced that she should integrate her movement with
his, and in 1945, she formally dedicated to Meher Baba her group and its
resources, creating what would eventually be called Sufism Reoriented. Just
before her death in 1947, Rabia initiated one Ivy Duce as her successor and the
American movement’s new leader, despite the fact that Samuel Lewis, Rabia’s
long-time follower, had expected to be named successor. In the late 1940s,
Lewis broke with Sufism Reoriented and in the ensuing decades become one
of the many new American Sufi leaders (see Chapter 11).

88 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 217; “New Cult Seeks to Unite All Faiths,” Dunkirk
Evening Observer (ny), December 1, 1934, 9.
89 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 226–27; “New Cult Seeks to Unite All Faiths.”
90 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 255.
91 Conner, “Recognize the True Teacher,” 11; Mu’min Nurah Haq, “Biography.”
92 Conner, “Recognize the True Teacher,” 12–13.
93 Ibid., 15–17.
The Non-orthodox Transition 225

The ‘Qadiani’ Ahmadis

The movement that most represents the transition from the late nineteenth- to
mid-twentieth-century converts is that of the Qadiani Ahmadis. As discussed
in Chapter 3, the Ahmadi movement was thoroughly connected with both the
nineteenth-century converts and the occult revival out of which they emerged.
Through its founder, Ghulam Ahmad, the movement had developed direct
contacts with both the Theosophical Society and Alexander Webb as early as
1886, and throughout the 1890s and early 1900s, it maintained ties with other
early American Muslim converts. Then, in the early 1920s, after the community
underwent a schism that resulted in those who believed Ahmad was a messiah
being popularly labeled ‘Qadianis’ and those who believed Ahmad was merely
a divinely sanctioned reformer being labeled ‘Lahoris,’ a new era of the move-
ment was launched by the Qadianis, which better linked the faction to the
orthodox converts of the period. During this phase, although esotericism was
still important, there was a much greater attempt to unite under the name of
Islam all Muslims and converts, no matter their background, foreshadowing
what would become more common in the immigrant-majority communities.
And, like those communities, during the interwar period the Qadianis were
able to establish a stable institutional basis in the United States.
The transitional character of the Qadiani movement in the us owes a great
deal to the selection of the person who would be its first proselytizer. In a deci-
sion that would have enormous consequences for the direction of conversion
to Islam in the United States—particularly for African Americans—the
Qadianis sent a dark-skinned, highly educated Indian named Mufti Muhammad
Sadiq to be their official missionary for the us. Prior to his arrival in New York
in early 1920, Sadiq has spent the previous three years living in London where
he was attending medical school and working with the Ahmadis who were
very influential in the Muslim community in London and the surrounding
counties.94 It is significant that Sadiq had been a member of this particular
community. Islam in the London area at the time was characterized by a great
deal of Muslim intermixing; in fact, after Quilliam left England in 1908, many
of his followers moved to the London area and joined that community, as did
Quilliam himself upon his return.95 Also, starting in 1912, the mosque in Woking

94 On Sadiq and his time in America, see Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American
Experience, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 116–18. On the Qadianis
in England, see Gilham, Loyal Enemies, 138–40.
95 Geaves, Islam in Victorian Britain, 263–69; Ali Köse, Conversion to Islam: A Study of Native
British Converts (New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996), 14–16.
226 chapter 7

(about thirty miles outside of London) became an important hub for Indian
Muslims and was at the time strongly influenced by both factions of the
Ahmadis, who were making great strides in converting several local whites,
including Lord Headley, who, with Quilliam, established the British Muslim
Society in London. Having been plugged into this mixed Muslim community,
Sadiq would have heard about the American Muslims with Ahmadi ties: Webb,
Baker, and F.L. Andersen. He would have presumably also learned of the eso-
teric interests of many of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century white
Anglo converts to Islam, several of whom—including, again, Quilliam—had
taken an interest in Inayat Khan’s Sufism during that decade. Sadiq would skill-
fully use this knowledge to his advantage in the United States.
Sadiq left for America in January 1920, but, upon his arrival, he was detained
for about seven weeks due to immigration officers believing Islam required
polygamy, which was against the law in the us. During this period, Sadiq began
making converts of other immigrants who had been detained with him, many
of whom, however, would have to return to their home countries. In April, after
convincing authorities that polygamy was not required by Islam, Sadiq went to
New York City where he set up an office on Madison Avenue, began lecturing,
and, while wearing a black robe and green turban, walked along the city’s
streets handing out large cards containing, on one side, his photograph and, on
the other, a condensed lesson in basic Islamic principles.96 Sadiq converted a
few white residents—such as Harold Johnson and Sadiq’s first American
female convert, S.W. Sobolewski—and he connected with converts who had
been Muslim for several years, F.L. Andersen and Ella May Garber.97 Having
established a small community with committed converts as leaders, in October
he left for Chicago, giving lectures along the way, and converting a few more
people. An articulate and thoughtful speaker, Sadiq made a strong impression
wherever he went, which garnered him attention in the press and led to him
having numerous correspondence with Americans from throughout the coun-
try, of whom a handful converted without even meeting Sadiq in person.98
Although Sadiq was a Qadiani, in an effort to avoid confusing Americans,
who largely did not even know the basics about Islam, let alone the differences
between factions of an Indian Muslim sect, he chose to downplay this associa-
tion and to not emphasize Ghulam Ahmad’s prophethood. He even did this
with other Muslim immigrants, many of whom never realized that Sadiq was

96 This description is given in M[uhammad] Yusof Khan, “Some of our Missionaries,” Muslim
Sunrise 42, no. 4 (1975): 14.
97 Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 1 (1921): 13.
98 Ibid., 13–14.
The Non-orthodox Transition 227

an Ahmadi. In early 1921, in fact, Sadiq was warmly welcomed by the large
immigrant Muslim community in Highland Park, Michigan, near Detroit,
where he began to teach Islam, convert locals, and assist with the building of
the city’s first mosque. After his sectarian affiliations were discovered, how-
ever, he was persuaded to leave and, at the request of Muhammad Yaqoob, an
African American convert, Sadiq returned to Chicago, where he established
the Qadianis’ national headquarters.99 Over the years, other immigrant
Muslims would occasionally join Sadiq’s movement, praying and studying
alongside converts from various backgrounds, but the widespread Muslim
unity Sadiq had briefly achieved in Highland Park would never be seen again in
the American Qadiani movement.
Nevertheless, it was only after his departure from Michigan that Sadiq was
able to make his movement a truly effective one. He started a monthly maga-
zine, the Moslem Sunrise; he continued responding to the now thousands of
letters he was receiving; and he used Chicago as a base from which he lectured
across the Midwest. During this time, Sadiq also began emphasizing Islamic
mysticism and started building connections with the country’s esoteric and
liberal religion communities. He lectured, for instance, for spiritualist groups,
Unitarians, and the Theosophical Society; he sent out over 500 letters to appar-
ently both white and black Masons; and he obtained cheap degrees for esoteric
knowledge from organizations like St. Louis’ College of Divine Metaphysics
and Washington, dc’s Oriental University.100 The evidence suggests that
Sadiq’s movement did indeed benefit from this connection with esotericism.
One of the few advertisements his magazine ran was for a non-creedal ‘Occult
Circle’ located in Tampa—Sadiq’s only other known connection to Tampa was
with two Latina/o converts there who were actively converting others to Islam,
so it is likely that they ran this Occult Circle.101 Another important convert who
apparently had esoteric connections was the white Joseph Livingston Mott,
Sadiq’s “esteemed friend.”102 Mott’s background remains somewhat uncertain:
In the Moslem Sunrise, on more than one occasion, he is explicitly associated
with New Orleans—where he ran an ‘Ahmadia American Asiatic agency
(export and import)’ and planned to build a mosque.103 But on one occasion he
also is ambiguously said to be residing “in the city,” suggesting the city of the

99 Khan, “Some of our Missionaries,” 14.

100 In the first volume of Moslem Sunrise, see no. 2: 35, 37, 39; no. 3: 54; no. 4: 95, back page;
no. 5: back page.
101 Ibid., no. 2: 36, 39; no. 3: 61, 66, 74; no. 4: 82.
102 “Mr. J.L. Mott,” Moslem Sunrise 2, no. 5 (1922): 111; Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 1 (1921): 13, 14.
103 “Mr. J.L. Mott”; Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 1 (1921): 13; Ibid. 1, no. 2 (1921): 36.
228 chapter 7

magazine’s publication, Chicago, and he is reported as helping Sadiq with

his correspondence—which would, logically, be done primarily in Chicago,
where Sadiq received his letters.104 Establishing his location may be of some
value because Mott, who was said to belong to the Masons “and several other
fraternal organizations,”105 if he can be connected to Chicago, can be linked to
one of the important early esoteric groups: the Hermetic Brotherhood. In
the early 1900s, a J.L. Mott was the head of the Chicago branch of Phelon’s
Hermetic Brotherhood of Atlantis, Luxor, and Elephante, a break-off from the
H.B. of L.106
In Chicago, Sadiq’s American mission had one important additional devel-
opment. During his first stay there, he converted an African American man
named Andrew Jacob, renamed by Sadiq Muhammad Yaqoob, who became
the city’s most active proselytizer when Sadiq left a few months later.107 Sadiq’s
Ahmadi movement was therefore now a religious organization that had both
black and white members—an extremely rare occurrence in early twentieth-
century America. Nineteen-twenty was the tail end of what has been identified
as the ‘nadir of race relations’ in the us. Oppression of and violence towards
African Americans had recently reached its post-slavery peak, with hundreds
of lynchings and countless acts of overt racism appearing throughout the
country, but particularly in the South. Partly in response to this, but also due to
the increased demand for labor during the First World War, tens of thousands
of American blacks had migrated northward where, after the war, racial ten-
sions intensified. In the summer of 1919—the ‘Red Summer,’ as it has been
called—numerous violent race riots erupted in the North, further deteriorat-
ing race relations. Since, even prior to this period, integrated American reli-
gious communities were extremely rare, the fact that Sadiq had started
converting both whites and blacks was a significant achievement. It was also
one that would redefine the importance of his movement, as over his first two
years promoting Islam, Sadiq began to see that African Americans were much
more interested in the religion than whites. There were multiple reasons for
this phenomenon,108 but a major one was the presence of the relatively wide-
spread notion—at least in that racially-polarizing period of us history—that

104 “Mr. J.L. Mott”; Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 1 (1921): 14.

105 “Mr. J.L. Mott.”
106 [Hermetic Brotherhood of Atlantis, Luxor, and Elephante], Proceedings of the Annual
Convocation H.B. of A.L. and E. ([San Francisco]: Hermetic Brotherhood of Atlantis, Luxor,
and Elephante, [1900–04]), 1902 proceedings, page 5.
107 Moslem Sunrise 1, no. 1 (1921): 13; Ibid. 1, no. 2 (1921): 36–37; Khan, “Some of our Missionaries,” 14.
108 See hctius vol. 2.
The Non-orthodox Transition 229

Islam was a ‘non-white’ religion. Sadiq therefore began asserting that Islam—
unlike Christianity—had no color line and he began to make an effort to con-
nect his group with Marcus Garvey’s popular black nationalist movement, the
Universal Negro Improvement Association. Soon, African American Ahmadis
would outnumber whites perhaps nearly seven to one. The evidence suggests,
then, that whites who joined after this transition were often people intensely
committed to the idea of racial equality.109
The Qadiani movement was by far the most successful Islamic movement in
the us up to that point; Sadiq converted around 700 by the time of his depar-
ture in the fall of 1923 and his successor and the converts they promoted to the
level of proselytizer converted that same number over the next two years—by
all accounts, the vast majority of these converts were African American.110
Between 1925 and 1928, however, the country had no official missionary, and
interest in the movement declined significantly, with active members drop-
ping down to about 400 by 1927.111 Nevertheless, there may havebeen some
active proselytization among whites during the period. A 1927 report claimed
that the group had converted the family of one Mr. Lewis, “the famous lawyer,
and a man of wealth,” who declared “that he will spend a great part of his
remaining years in the study and propagation of his new faith.”112 The same
report also relayed that another (presumably white) convert named

Prof. Smithen (?) who specialized in theology, […] [had been] planning
on going to Africa as a Christian missionary. While in Rochester College
he had studied Islamic lore, and his heart “had become emptied of his
Christian convictions,” but […] he continued to live like a hypocrite until
the hour came when his conscience blamed him, and he renounced
Christianity.113

When the new missionary, Sufi Bengalee—whose very name reflected the
mysticism emphasis in his teachings—arrived in 1928, he devoted his efforts to
converting whites, leaving African Americans to Muhammad Yusuf Khan, an

109 The author has been told a rumor by contemporary American Qadianis that many early
white members refused to interact with black members. However, I was unable to verify
this and the available documentary evidence does not suggest this.
110 See, e.g., John Van Ess, “A Moslem Mosque in Chicago,” Neglected Arabia 141 (1927): 13–15;
“Moslem Religious Influence in the United States,” Moslem World 25, no. 1 (1935): 42.
111 A.T. Hoffert, “Moslem Propaganda,” The Messenger 9 (May 1927): 141; Van Ess, “A Moslem
Mosque in Chicago,” 13.
112 “Mohammedan Converts in America,” Syrian World (April 1927): 57–58.
113 Ibid.
230 chapter 7

Indian immigrant who had worked with Sadiq since 1921.114 After two years
there were eighty to ninety white Qadianis and by early 1934, when the group
was claiming the vastly exaggerated number of 3,000 converts, the total num-
ber of white converts may have been close to 200.115 In 1934, after several of
Yusuf Khan’s followers became convinced that he was exploiting them for per-
sonal profit, many African Americans left the Qadiani sect and joined the
Lahoris and Sunnis, significantly reducing membership again.116 By the com-
mencement of the war, there were probably at most one hundred white
Qadianis in the us; unfortunately, very little is known about their lives and
activities during the interwar and wartime periods other than the fact that
Islamic mysticism does not appear to have been a central concern for these
later converts.
Despite the many ups and downs in the growth of the Qadiani movement in
the us, and despite the fact that most of its followers were African Americans,
the Qadiani movement was significant in the history of white American con-
version to Islam. It was through the Qadiani movement that white American
conversion first underwent the type of changes that were to characterize later
periods. Far more than ever before, white converts were joining up and identi-
fying with immigrant and African American Muslims. This reflected the shift-
ing demographic composition of the country as more and more non-Christian
immigrants arrived and more and more blacks fled the South. As whites’ social
bonds changed, so did the appearance of their religions. And, as time went on,
esotericism became less and less important for white converts who identified
as Muslim, especially as non-Islamic Sufism was emerging as the primary loca-
tion for esoterically-inclined whites who sought Islamic religious themes. It
was a divide that would widen much more over the years to come.

114 Andrew T. Hoffert, “The Moslem Movement in America,” Moslem World 20 (1930): 309.
115 Hoffert, “The Moslem Movement in America,” 309; Moslem World 7, nos. 1 & 2 (1934): 30.
The number of whites and total Qadianis in 1934 has been deduced based on the known
locations of American Qadianis centers at the time and knowledge of which locations
were primarily African American, and which left from the movement later that year
(see below); for more on African American Qadianis in the 1930s, see hctius vol. 2.
116 See hctius vol. 2.
 chapter 8

New Bonds

Before 1975, no manifestation of deterritorialization would have a greater

impact on white American conversion to Islam than immigration. It is a testa-
ment to both the power of personal relationships and the relative social free-
dom that the us granted many non-Christian immigrants that, within a
generation of Webb’s passing, most white converts were from completely dif-
ferent backgrounds than those of Webb’s era. Even the twentieth century’s
new ‘friend converts’—many of whom, like those of the 1890s, had intellectual
inclinations and strong commitments to liberal principles—had generally not
passed through involvement with esotericism before embracing Islam.
Deterritorializing immigration had therefore, basically, made it easier for com-
mon white Americans to become Muslims—and they did so by the hundreds.
While it would take over thirty years, a second world war, and the passing of
new federal laws before the white American Muslim community could arrive
at its late-twentieth-century identity, many of the essential shapers and pat-
terns of that identity were making their mark in the era of the Great Depression.
During this period, both friend converts and converts through marriage laid
much of the groundwork and built several of the structures on which future
converts would thrive. It was in fact within this process of attempting to reter-
ritorialize Islam that many of the elements of the modern white Muslim iden-
tity were born.

The Immigration Impact: Conversion through Relationships

It is, frankly, impossible to give an accurate number of how many Muslims vol-
untarily came to the United States before World War ii.1 Due to various fac-
tors—such as religion not being recorded on us censuses, inconsistencies in
immigration record-keeping, bureaucrats’ failure to note or distinguish immi-
grants’ ethnicities, immigrants hiding their religious backgrounds, and Muslim
immigrants coming illegally or via European or South American countries—
the best we can hope to achieve is a very rough estimate. The data presented in
one of the most thorough and recent analyses of the subject suggests that there

1 For a more thorough introduction to this topic, see Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam
in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 135–150.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_010

232 chapter 8

were probably over 70,000 Muslim immigrants during this period.2 This num-
ber may be deceiving, however, as a large percentage of these immigrants
returned to their country of birth after having worked and saved for several
years.3 It is likely, then, that perhaps only thirty percent of the estimated sev-
enty thousand (about 23,000) permanently settled in the us—which is consis-
tent with known estimates of us Muslim community sizes from the period.4
Most of the immigrants who came were uneducated, unskilled laborers who
spoke little to no English. These Muslims, especially those who returned to
their home country, rarely interacted with Americans, spending most of their
free time with immigrants of the same ethnicity. Therefore, it was primarily
the permanently settled immigrants and their children who would bring in
converts.
The only white converts (besides Alexander Webb) mentioned in studies of
pre-World War ii us Muslim immigrant communities are those who converted
before or soon after marrying a first- or second-generation Muslim immigrant.
Unfortunately, given the lack of data on pre-World War ii Muslims generally, it
should come as no surprise that we also lack a large amount of good data on
these Muslims’ marriages and the converts they produced. Nevertheless, some
studies have made a few detailed observations that can be used to give us a
general picture. First of all, in terms of marriages, it has often been observed
that first-generation Muslims—particularly Arabs, who were the majority of

2 See GhaneaBassiri, History, 143–149. There is much more work to be done on this subject; as
GhaneaBassiri points out in his discussion of the topic, a great deal of new information will
likely be found through study of American and foreign embassy records.
3 Among Turks, perhaps up to eighty-six percent returned, and among Arabs—who repre-
sented the majority of Muslim immigrants—the percent was not as high but probably well
over fifty.
4 The largest Muslim community at the time, the Detroit metropolitan area, probably had around
10–15,000 Muslims in the 1920s and 1930s; see Sarah F. Howell, “Inventing the American Mosque:
Early Muslims and Their Institutions in Detroit, 1910–1980” (PhD diss., University of Michigan,
2009), 48. For New York City, perhaps the second largest Muslim community during that period,
estimates from the 1920s through 1940s vary widely, from as little as 500 to as many as 18,000, and
a few estimates from the 1940s and 1950s place the number in New York City only at a few thou-
sand; see H.J. Katibah, “Moslems of City Celebrating Pious Feast of Ramazan,” Brooklyn Daily
Eagle, April 18, 1926, 10C; Mary Caroline Holmes, “Islam in America,” Moslem World 16 (1926): 265;
“Moslems Observe Bairam Fete Here” New York Times May 10, 1930, 6; “First u.s. Moslem Mosque
Planned,” Bighamtom Press (New York), June 6, 1933, 17; “Arab-World in New York,” Moslem World
37 (1947): 81; “u.s. Tour Shows Ties of 2 Faiths,” New York Times, April 5, 1956, 34. For estimates for
other communities—which generally had only a few hundred at most—see GhaneaBassiri,
History, 145–149.
New Bonds 233

the Muslim immigrants—were fairly resistant to intermarriage with non-­

Muslim Americans. A 1947 study of Chicago Palestinians found that only seven
out of 128 married exogamously; in Springfield, Massachusetts, none of the
Muslim immigrants in the first generation did, and only about ten percent of
all married men did so in the next generations; in Ross, North Dakota, only
three out of thirty families were mixed; and in the Detroit metropolitan area,
for the first generation the rate was about eleven percent.5 Among Indian
Muslims and in a few other Arab Muslim communities—such as those in
Toledo, Ohio and Cedar Rapids, Iowa—the rate for the first generation was
slightly higher, closer to twenty to twenty-five percent, and overall the rate
seems to have increased to nearly forty percent for the second generation of all
us Muslim immigrants.6 On average, then, we could estimate that about fif-
teen to twenty percent of the settled, pre-World War ii Muslims—or about
3,450–4,600 people—married Americans.
The available evidence suggests that these American spouses were, for the
most part, white Christian females. This generalization is based on several
clues. First is the fact that at least three studies noted that in some of the larger
Arab communities there were no cases of pre-1965 Arab Muslims marrying
African Americans (although Indians did on some occasions) and there were
only a few known instances of marriages to Latinos and Jews—the rest were to
Christian whites of various ethnicities.7 As far as gender is concerned, there are
three reasons few of the non-Muslim spouses were male, particular early on.
First, the majority of Muslim immigrants were male and either did not already

5 E.g., Lawrence Oschinsky, “Islam in Chicago: Being a Study of the Acculturation of a Muslim
Palestinian Community in that City” (ma thesis, University of Chicago, 1947), 27; Ibrahim
Othman, Arabs in the United States: A Study of an Arab-American Community (Amman:
Sha‘sha‘a, 1974), 64, 97; Alixa Naff, Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993), 243; Atif Amin Wasfi, “Dearborn Arab-
Moslem Community: A Study of Acculturation” (PhD diss., Michigan State University, 1964),
253; Abdo A. Elkholy, The Arab Moslems in the United States (New Haven: College and
University Press, 1966), 30–31 (Elkholy’s numbers were readjusted for percent of married
people—as opposed to percent out of the total population—in Jen Cloyd Swanson, “Mate
Selection and Intermarriage in an American Arab Moslem Community” [ma thesis,
University of Iowa, 1970], 27).
6 Karen Leonard, Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1992), 67–69; Vivek Bald, “Hands Across the Water: Indian Sailors,
Peddlers, and Radicals in the u.s. 1890–1965” (PhD diss., New York University, 2009), 151–57;
Swanson, “Mate Selection,” 27; Wasfi, “Dearborn,” 253.
7 Elkholy, Arab Moslems, 31; Swanson, “Mate Selection,” 49; Wasfi, “Dearborn,” 177, 290; Leonard,
Making Ethnic Choices, passim.; Bald, “Hands Across the Water,” passim.; Oschinsky, “Islam in
Chicago,” 35.
234 chapter 8

have wives or could not afford to bring Muslim wives to the us. Therefore, most
Muslim mixed marriages would have been with female Americans. Second,
even for the few females who either immigrated without a husband or who
were born in the us, Islamic tradition holds that a Muslim woman should not
marry a non-Muslim man, so a female follower of Islam would generally be
reluctant to consider marrying a non-Muslim.8 Third, frequently when a young
adult female Muslim expressed interest in marrying a non-Muslim, her family
and community put a great deal of pressure on her to prevent her from doing
this.9 Parents would sometimes go to the extreme length of disowning the
daughter so that none of her siblings would imitate this behavior. In at least
one instance, a whole mosque community openly shunned the woman and
her husband because, although he had converted, he was not an Arab Muslim,
and families and imams frequently would talk to her directly in an attempt to
persuade her to reconsider her choice. Nevertheless, in later generations, the
gender distribution of non-Muslim American spouses may have begun to
balance out somewhat, most likely due to those generations being more
Americanized.10
There is little data on how many of these American spouses converted to
Islam. Generally, spouse converts appear to have been fairly rare.11 Some stud-
ies have suggested that, because Sunni tradition prohibits only female Muslims
from marrying a non-Muslim, in the pre-World War ii period, the percentage
of conversion was higher among non-Muslim males than among non-Muslim
females; indeed, in Dearborn, seventy-five percent of the known non-Muslim
males who wanted to marry Muslim women converted to Islam.12 Despite this

8 For introductions to Islamic traditions concerning mixed marriages, see Abdullahi

A. An-Na’im, ed., Inter-Religious Marriages among Muslims: Negotiating Religious and
Social Identity in Family and Community (New Delhi: Global Media Publications, 2005);
Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim
Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 160–193.
9 See Naff, Becoming American, 242–243, 245–246; Swanson, “Mate Selection,” 74–75; Wasfi,
“Dearborn,” 256, 289; Elkholy, Arab Moslems, 30.
10 I am making this claim based purely on the fact that in Swanson’s study there were seven
female and six male second-generation Muslims who married non-Muslims. However, as
Swanson points out, her research population was atypical in terms of exogamous mar-
riage, and this trend was not explicitly observed in other studies. See Swanson, “Mate
Selection,” 18, 75.
11 E.g., in two studies of early Indian Muslim immigrants who intermarried, there are no
explicit mentions of converts, and only two intimations; see Leonard, Making Ethnic
Choices, 130n36; Bald, “Hands Across the Water,” 357.
12 Naff, Becoming American, 245–46; Wasfi, “Dearborn,” 288–289; Elkholy, Arab Moslems, 30–31.
New Bonds 235

high percentage, though, since male non-Muslim spouses were far less com-
mon than female ones—a reality exacerbated by the fact that in Shiʿi commu-
nities all women were required to be at least nominally Muslim in order to
marry a born-Muslim male13—this phenomenon presumably did not have a
tremendous impact on the overall percentage of non-Muslim spouses who
converted. Only one study—that based on the Cedar Rapids community,
which had higher-than-average rates of exogamous marriage—gave an overall
percentage of non-Muslim spouses who converted: thirty-eight percent of
Cedar Rapids’ second-generation non-Muslim spouses (gender was not identi-
fied) converted, while sixty-two remained Christian.14 It is reasonable to esti-
mate, then, that, on average, about thirty percent of all non-Muslim spouses of
the first and second generation immigrants converted, which would be—given
the estimate above of 3,450–4,600 total non-Muslim spouses—about 1,200
total converts through marriage in the pre-World War ii period. While we can
confidently say that these converts through marriage were almost all white (at
least among the dominant Arab population), at this point we cannot be as sure
about the gender distribution. It should also be pointed out that although this
is little more than a highly tentative, very rough estimate, interestingly, in 1933,
Ahmad Nadji, one of the few American Muslim proselytizers at the time,
claimed that there were in fact 1,000 white converts to Islam in the us.15
These converts’ sincerity and commitment to Islam might not have been
particularly strong. In almost every discussion of early American males who
converted through marriage it is pointed out that the man converted specifi-
cally for the purpose of marrying; there is almost no indication that these men
had an independent desire to follow Islam. Other anecdotal evidence suggests
that the same was true for women as well—at least the wives of Shiʿi Muslims,
who were also expected to convert.16 For female Sunnis, while there was no
religious legal reason why they had to convert, conflicts over how to raise chil-
dren, the studies suggest, may have led Christian females to convert to Islam
for the sake of family stability—a phenomenon similar to what has been

13 See Liyakat Nathani Takim, Shi‘ism in America (New York: New York University Press,
2009), 22, 241n51.
14 Swanson, “Mate Selection,” 75. Interestingly, this was the only study in which informants
indicated that convert spouses were made to feel unwelcomed, which, one might assume,
would inhibit conversion.
15 “Contemporary Thought and Life,” Muslim Revival 2, no. 2 (1933): 170. It is unclear if Nadji
was including Qadianis in this number, but he almost certainly was not including Sufis.
16 Eide Alawan a prominent member of the pre-1975 Detroit Shi‘i community, phone inter-
view with the author, May 21, 2014.
236 chapter 8

observed in other types of religiously mixed marriages in the us.17 Perhaps

reflective of the pragmatic nature of the Muslim marriage conversions, one
imam noted that about half of all those he knew who had converted for mar-
riage later reverted to Christianity and even tried to impose that religion on
their families.18 There are, furthermore, very few testaments to the sincerity of
converts and only a very small number were known to volunteer for leadership
positions in their communities—although this can partially be explained by
the fact that in some communities there was probably resistance to converts
taking on such roles.19 Indeed, usually the immigrant communities only
begrudgingly accepted new converts, as they did not think a person who was
willing to convert for marriage had strong religious faith.20 It is likely, then, that
the typical pre-World War ii white convert was not particularly interested in
religious matters; while their conversion was not necessarily insincere, it was
done less for a personal religious desire and more to either enable a person to
marry a Muslim or create a stable community and family life. These individu-
als would have participated in the personal and community rituals only to the
extent that they were expected to by the rest of the community. Indeed, family
and community life were, presumably, what the typical white American con-
vert at the time was focused on—she or he was almost never interested in
esotericism and probably at best only mildly interested in political or philo-
sophical issues as they related to Islam.21 These converts were therefore very
different from the types of people who had converted either in the 1890s or
into the non-orthodox groups of the early 1900s.
Interestingly, in no study of pre-World War ii us immigrant Muslims is
there any mention of either immigrant Muslims trying to convert non-married
white Americans or white Americans who converted to Islam through Muslim
immigrant communities without marrying a Muslim. Muslim immigrants at

17 Marc Musick and John Wilson, “Religious Switching for Marriage Reasons,” Sociology of
Religion 56, no. 3 (1995): 257–70.
18 Wasfi, “Dearborn,” 288.
19 Swanson, “Mate Selection,” 74–75; Elkholy, Arab Moslems, 30. One convert became a
leader in the Cedar Rapids community; one Latina convert in Arizona helped run an
Arabic class; and one convert-through-marriage became a prominent figure in New York’s
Muslim community in the 1940s (see Chapter 9).
20 Wasfi, “Dearborn,” 288–89; Elkholy, Arab Moslems, 30; Yvonne Haddad, “Arab Muslims
and Islamic Institutions in America: Adaptation and Reform,” in Arabs in the New World:
Studies on Arab-American Communities, eds. Sameer Y. Abraham and Nabeel Abraham
(Detroit: Wayne State University Center for Urban Studies, 1983), 79.
21 In fact, I have been told by some white Muslims who converted in the late twentieth cen-
tury that this was true even for them.
New Bonds 237

the time, as we have seen, were very isolationist, and generally did not desire to
bring white American Christians into their communities. Although we know
from other sources that there were at least a few converts who were not mar-
ried (see below), the fact that they are not mentioned at all in the studies of
early immigrant communities suggests that these types of converts were
extremely rare. However, at the same time, they were also highly important,
both in terms of the historical dynamics they reflected and their roles in the
Muslim communities.
Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of these ‘friend converts’ was that,
while a few of them—we know of at least two—had been interested in eso-
terica or alternative religious ideas prior to conversion, evidence suggests that
most others had not. This makes sense, considering that Muslim immigrants,
including their imams and others who proselytized, generally were neither
interested in such topics nor knowledgeable enough to discuss them with
potential converts. Ultimately, this characteristic suggests that, like their mar-
ried counterparts, even these friend converts were different from previous
Muslim converts in this important respect.
It is true that friend converts, like their nineteenth-century predecessors,
seem to have been people who had a desire to join non-mainstream religious
communities, perhaps due to unhappiness in mainstream society or due to a
religious or psychological need to look at the world from an alternative per-
spective, common motivations for white American religious converts.22 Indeed,
it is suggestive that some of the most prominent Muslim and Sufi friend con-
verts of the 1910–75 era came from Jewish backgrounds. Whether they faced
anti-Semitism or simply felt ‘out of place’ in the United States, it is understand-
able that they and similarly marginalized whites might have sought out new
identities to better adjust to their social and psychological situations. It is likely,
though, that if these twentieth-century converts were living in the 1890s, they
would have been committed spiritualists or esotericists, and not necessarily
Muslims. Going from those ‘gateway’ groups to Islam was an extremely rare
phenomenon—one that often had personal contact with Webb as a prerequi-
site; and it would have been especially rare for American Jews, as none are
known to have become Muslims during that period. Other twentieth-century

22 See, e.g., Lofland and Stark, “Becoming a World-Saver,” 864; William James, Varieties of
Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1902),
“Lecture ix—Conversion,” accessed February 18, 2009, http://www.psychwww.com/
psyrelig/james/james8.htm#205; Lewis Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 46; John B. Holt, “Holiness Religion: Culture Shock and
Social Reorganization,” American Sociological Review 5, no. 5 (1940): 740–747.
238 chapter 8

friend converts would have been reluctant to convert to Islam in the 1890s
because, for whatever reason, they would not have joined a ‘gateway’ esoteric
group and therefore would have, like the closeted converts Webb claimed to
know, feared ostracism. For these people, having real Muslim friends gave them
the courage to follow the faith they presumably secretly desired.
This, however, brings up another important issue. It is of course possible
that only Islam, and no other religion, can appeal to certain people. Never­
theless, particularly for the interwar period, it is extremely difficult to say, since
we have very few testimonies from white Americans from the period, what
unique aspect of Islam had attracted these converts. Access to Qurʾan transla-
tions and other resources about Islam was very limited, and immigrants’
understandings of Islam generally was not only weak, but often incorporated
the assumption that many cultural practices from their homelands were uni-
versally adhered to by Muslims. These converts were thus exposed to a variety
of ideas about Islam, many of which were not particularly nuanced. We might,
then, look to the better-studied converts of the late twentieth and early twenty-
first centuries for some clues about their predecessors.23 These later converts,
like many of those who wrote about their conversion in the pre-1975 period,24
tend to point to Islam’s rejection of the trinity and the moral uprightness of the
Muslims they personally know as key factors in their deciding to convert.
However, a nineteenth-century American might have given the same reasons
for joining a Unitarian community or many other Protestant groups. There are,
in other words, few American converts who find in Islam something that can-
not also be found in various small Christian communities. Contact with immi-
grant Muslims therefore often simply increases the likelihood that the convert
becomes satisfied that only Islam possesses these particular traits—or, at least,
that Islam possesses these traits more completely than other religions.
Furthermore, because through conversion the convert has gained the ben-
efits of relationships with immigrant Muslims, he or she has little incentive to
continue seeking. In these situations, it can be easy to rationalize, become con-
vinced, or jump to the romantic conclusion that the behavior of the entire
Islamic world is the same as the behavior in the small Muslim community with
which they have come into contact, or that certain appealing ideas in Islam are
objectively more fundamental to the religion than they are to other religions.
Many twentieth- and twenty-first-century American converts, for instance,
have argued that Islam is objectively more accepting of racial differences, but

23 On contemporary converts, see hctius vol. 3.

24 A handful of American convert writings about their conversions appeared in Muslim
periodicals, such as the Light and Yaqeen International.
New Bonds 239

their evidence, typically, is primarily what they have observed or heard in

immigrant communities and read about in contemporary news reports or
short Islamic propaganda works—they almost never make a case based on
highly technical comparisons of scriptures or on in-depth research on the his-
tory of race relations in the Islamic and Christian worlds.25 Similar intellectual
patterns can be observed in individuals committed to the religion of their
birth—whether it be Christianity, Islam, or another tradition—the only differ-
ence being that they have accepted the relationships or other benefits that
come from being a member of their parents’ religion. Often, in these situa-
tions, the individual will justify their staying in the religion of their birth by
arguing that the particular Christian or Muslim denomination or sect they
belong to—the one to which they have ascribed romantic ideals—is the only
‘true’ version of their religion, while other denominations or sects are dis-
missed as deviations.
A final important dynamic revealed by the phenomenon of friend converts
is it seems that by these new converts not having a background in esotericism,
they did not have the experiences and connections that would help spread
Islam to other white Americans who were predisposed to conversion to Islam.
As we have seen, those who joined Islam after being in esoteric groups had
gained in those groups (which were typically led by people who already had
experience in spiritualism and/or Masonry) a good deal of knowledge about
religious topics and practical knowledge of how alternative religions could
successfully survive in the us. Therefore, these groups often provided a valu-
able training ground for future converts, who, when they finally converted to
Islam, were fairly religiously mature. With the esoteric ‘gateway’ bypassed due
to immigration, the chances were good that the friend converts would be rela-
tively less knowledgeable of both intellectual arguments in support of their
religion as well as of practical activities to effectively enable their non-Chris-
tian religion to thrive in the us. Because of this, converts often, for instance,
relied on appealing to Americans’ general moral sense in arguing that Islam
rejects social distinctions and encourages peace, but they did so without culti-
vating strong relationships with secular or other non-Christian peace-focused
communities that would have been valuable pools of potential converts.
Without having previously been involved with such communities, building
these types of strong relationships would have been difficult for interwar

25 The notion that Islam lacks racism became particularly prominent for converts after
African American Muslim groups started gaining significant press coverage in the late
1950s. For examples of this argument being used by white converts, see the numerous
conversion stories published in Yaqeen International between 1966 and 1971.
240 chapter 8

convert proselytizers; not only would they have lacked any strong social entrée,
they would also not have had good insight into the subtle values, knowledge,
and habits that might be used to appeal to and give them authority among
these groups. This characteristic of the converts would be exacerbated by the
fact that the vast majority of pre-World War ii Muslim immigrants lacked both
secular and religious education, so they could neither (a) effectively communi-
cate advanced philosophical or organizational knowledge to these converts
nor (b) attract many people who were themselves well-educated. There thus
does not seem to have been an equivalent of Webb or Rabia Martin among the
interwar orthodox converts.
Early friend converts, then, while they were often passionate and active in
their communities, and frequently attempted to promote Islam and organize
Muslims, did not necessarily make the best leaders. However, this meant that
these passionate converts would try their own unique strategies for calling oth-
ers to Islam, creating new types of institutions and propaganda efforts. Muslim
immigration had therefore not only created a whole new group of converts
that was completely different from, and far larger than, anything the us had
seen before, it had also set into motion a number of new attempts by converts
to shape Islam in America.

Convert Propagandists in the Great Depression

A New York Friend of Pan-Islam

Louis Glick was born in Chicago, Illinois on October 2, 1891.26 Both of his par-
ents were Jewish immigrants: his father, Max, was a Yiddish-speaking Russian
and his mother, Fanny, was a German-speaking Austrian. Although he never
became fluent in either of his parents’ native tongues, their influence on Glick
was strong, and he identified as a Jew for most of his early adult life. In terms
of personality, as a young man, Glick was of an intellectual bent. He only

26 Numerous genealogical records for Louis Glick and his family still exist, and many, such
as birth and death certificates as well as census records, are available through Ancestry.
com. In addition to these, I have relied on Glick’s Official Military Personnel File from the
National Personnel Records Center (hereafter, Glick ompf) as well as Glick’s fbi file. It
might be worthwhile to state here, for the record, that after careful examination of Louis
Glick’s biographical information and activities, it is my opinion that, although he shared
many similarities with the founder of the Nation of Islam, Wallace Fard, the two men
were without a doubt two distinct individuals.
New Bonds 241

attended two years of high school, but in his mid-twenties he boasted of being
well-read enough in history, philosophy, psychology, economics, and journal-
ism that he would have been happy to take university-level tests to prove his
mastery of these subjects.27 He also claimed to have worked as a journalist and
copy editor for several newspapers in the Chicago area, though he was fre-
quently unemployed.28 Hoping to find more job security in the us military, in
April 1917 Glick signed up for the Naval Reserves, with which he spent the next
two-and-a-half years of his life, being stationed in Des Moines, Iowa for most
of this period. Glick was sent to New York in 1919, and in November that year
was honorably discharged after becoming a conscientious objector due to the
fact that he believed the military’s practice of giving a privileged status to
Christianity violated the First Amendment.29 At some point around the mid-
1920s, Glick—who began using the names Lincoln and Selim—came into con-
tact with Muslims and converted to Islam.
In the 1920s, there would have been no city more likely to bring in friend
converts than New York City. This was due to a number of factors. First of all,
halfway through the 1920s, New York City was home to probably a few thou-
sand Muslim immigrants. This made it one of the larger Muslim communities
in the country, which meant there was a good chance for contact between
Muslims and non-Muslims.30 Also, unlike in the Detroit area, New York’s
Muslim community was extremely ethnically diverse, which meant (a) that
there was relatively weaker community identity, which created less pressure

27 Louis Glick Experience Report, 2/5/1918, Glick ompf; Glick fbi file, Report, 2/5/1940, Los
Angeles file 65–321, 5.
28 Louis Glick Experience Report, 2/5/1918, Glick ompf; Letter, Louis Glick to Commandant,
February 8, 1918, Glick ompf. I have been able to locate a handful of newspaper articles
from the 1910s written by an ‘L. Glick,’ including at least two from the Chicago Tribune, but
I cannot say for certain whether these were penned by our Louis.
29 See the copy of letter, Louis Glick to Secretary of the Navy, May 5, 1920 (originally written
November 18, 1919), Glick ompf; Glick to Secretary of the Navy, November 18, 1919, Glick
ompf.
30 Unfortunately, estimates from the period vary widely, from as little as 500 to as many as
18,000. In 1926, one observer estimated there to be around 900 Muslims in Yonkers alone.
But a few estimates from the 1940s and 1950s place the number in New York City only at a
few thousand. See H.J. Katibah, “Moslems of City Celebrating Pious Feast of Ramazan,”
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 18, 1926, 10C; Mary Caroline Holmes, “Islam in America,”
Moslem World 16 (1926): 265; “Moslems Observe Bairam Fete Here” New York Times May 10,
1930, 6; “First u.s. Moslem Mosque Planned,” Bighamtom Press (New York), June 6, 1933, 17;
“Arab-World in New York,” Moslem World 37 (1947): 81; “u.s. Tour Shows Ties of 2 Faiths,”
New York Times, April 5, 1956, 34.
242 chapter 8

for endogamy,31 and (b) since different Muslim ethnic groups would have
befriended and lived close to different American ethnic groups (e.g., Indians
tended to live closer to Latina/os and African Americans, while Arabs tended
to live closer to Poles and Italians), there were greater possibilities of contact
with diverse types of Americans. Lastly, as we will see, New York was home to
the most active orthodox Muslim proselytizers in the period.
Although it is not entirely clear to what degree and where exactly all the
New York Muslims were congregating in the mid-1920s, it seems that there
were four main immigrant communities: the Brooklyn Tartar community,
which had maintained a consistent presence since it established a religious
organization in 1907 and whose religious leader in the 1920s was the itinerant
imam Mullah Hussain Rafikoff;32 a fairly well-established Turkish commu-
nity that was able to produce two Turkish-language newspapers;33 an ethni-
cally mixed group called the Moslem Unity Association;34 and the
Arab-majority immigrant community that had developed around Rector and
Washington Streets in Lower Manhattan—an area known as ‘Little Syria’35—
since the 1890s. The post-war fate of the Rector Street Ottoman-funded
mosque at ‘The Oriental’ apartment building is not known, but it almost cer-
tainly lost Ottoman support upon the commencement of the First World War
and the Empire’s aligning with Germany, which led to the Turkish embassy
being closed. It is possible that a new Ottoman mosque was reopened in the
1920s, as in early 1923 it was reported that an unnamed Turk had been dis-
patched from Constantinople and was leading the Muslims in New York.36

31 As Swanson points out, exogamy was apparently inversely proportional to the size of the
Arab Muslim communities she compared; see Swanson, “Mate Selection,” 24–27.
32 The earliest reports identifying Mullah Hussain that I have found are various New York
newspaper articles from September 23, 1926 in which the funeral of Jacob Islamoff, a
Tartar Muslim, is discussed.
33 M.M. Aijian, “The Mohammedans in the United States,” Moslem World 10 (1920): 30.
34 My claim that this was an ethnically mixed group is based on the names of its incorpora-
tors, which appear to be from different ethnic backgrounds: Edhem Shukri, Zahy Agisheff,
Alex Wilson, Sam Yakubowsky, Mohomed Abdul. The 1927 incorporation form for this
group, on file with the state of New York, indicates that they were originally based in
Brooklyn, but by 1930 their headquarters were in Harlem (see Richard Dunlap, “City’s
Moslems Meet at Feast of Sacrifice,” New York Herald Tribune, May 10, 1930, 13). The use of
the word “unity,” and the fact that this was a mixed group with, apparently, a convert (Alex
Wilson), raises the possibility that this group was affiliated with the United Moslem
Society umbrella organization started by Satti Majid, a Sudanese Muslim missionary; see
Bowen, “Satti Majid,” 194–209, esp. 200 ff.
35 Dorothy Dayton, “Ameen Rihani Back from East,” New York Sun, January 26, 1929, 32.
36 Clair Price, “The New Era in Islam,” Forum (February 1923): 1208.
New Bonds 243

However, it is uncertain as to what part of the city this imam went. In any
case, by 1925 the most influential Muslim religious figure in Little Syria was
not a Turk but an Arab. Sheikh Salih Ahmad al-Kateeb, an imam from
Jerusalem who was living in an apartment above a Syrian café at 65
Washington Street, claimed to be the religious leader of all Muslims in New
York and throughout the us.37
Al-Kateeb, who was most likely a member of one of Jerusalem’s traditional
imam families,38 had been appointed to this position by the Supreme Muslim
Council,39 Mandatory Palestine’s governing religious institution for Muslims,
which had been established by the British in 1921.40 Although officially the
Council was designed only for control over pious endowments (waq fs) and
religious law (sharia) in Palestine, in reality its administration attempted to
oversee all Palestinian Muslim religious places and activities, including preach-
ing and Islamic education. In addition, its first president, Hajj Amin al-Husayni,
occasionally said that the Council should also “represent the Muslims of this
country honourably and properly inside and outside the country.”41 For the
Council, representing Palestinians “honourably and properly” frequently
meant promoting political and religious propaganda intended to rally both
support for Palestinian Muslims and criticism of the Jewish presence in the
region. It was probably primarily with this latter goal in mind that al-Kateeb
was sent to the us. By 1925, in addition to his regular duties as the local imam,
al-Kateeb had become involved with—and most likely led—an American
organization that worked to promote Palestinian independence as well as
other politically- and socially-oriented groups that provided support for
Muslims in various regions dealing with colonialism, such as Syria and North
Africa.42 He also promoted Islam itself through the printing of English tracts
about the religion, encouraging Muslims of various ethnicities to gather for

37 “Islam in New York City,” Moslem World 17 (1927): 199; “Riff Sympathizers Petition
Coolidge,” Sunday Oregonian, September 27, 1925, 2. Al-Kateeb may have actually been the
person described in 1923 as the “Turk […] dispatched from Constantinople,” since al-
Kateeb’s sponsor, the Supreme Muslim Council, was actually largely funded by the
Ottomans at the time. See Uri M. Kupferschmidt, The Supreme Muslim Council: Islam
under the British Mandate for Palestine (New York: Brill, 1987), 61.
38 See Kupferschmidt, Supreme Muslim, 62.
39 Katibah, “Moslems of City.”
40 See Kupferschmidt, Supreme Muslim.
41 Kupferschmidt, Supreme Muslim, 57.
42 “Riff Sympathizers.”
244 chapter 8

religious holidays, and establishing a Pan-Islamic organization called the

Young Moslem Society of America.43
Proselytizing and supporting Pan-Islam, however, were not activities
restricted to Palestinians. Particularly after World War I and the dismantling of
Ottoman power, the desire to cultivate Muslim unity with the hope of pushing
back European colonialism was spreading rapidly across Muslim lands. Among
Indians, one of the most popular forms of Pan-Islam was known as the Khilafat
movement, which aimed to preserve the Islamic caliphate in Turkey. This
movement both supported and was supported by the broader Indian national-
ist movement, which found common cause in the groups’ anti-colonial stance.
In the us during the 1920s a handful of independence-minded Indian Muslims
based in New York began encouraging Pan-Islamic cooperation and by 1930
they had established an organization in Harlem known as the Moslem
Brotherhood of the u.s.a. (mbusa) (no relation to the Hassan al-Banna’s simi-
larly named Egyptian organization). Through this group they explicitly backed
the Khilafat head and friend of the Supreme Muslim Council, Shawkat Ali;
encouraged Pan-Islamic activities in New York; and proselytized to local
African Americans and West Indian immigrants.44
Glick had probably come into contact with more than one group of New York
Muslims by the mid-1920s. He definitely had contact with Turks; he began using
the name ‘Selim’ and its English spelling that was common for Turks and he
would later be known to affiliate with Turks in New York. However, there is evi-
dence he may have also had ties with Indians during the mid-1920s in New
York—and he certainly did while living in California in 1928. Records of Glick
during that decade show that he moved back and forth between New York and
southern California, where his brother, Edward, had achieved a successful career
in real estate and his sister, Ann, had married a wealthy businessman. In April

43 “Islam in New York City”; “Riff Sympathizers.” This group, which would later be known as
the Young Men’s Moslem Association (and presumably connected with the Egyptian-
based organization of the same name), was established in 1924 with the help of the
Palestinian immigrant Akel Allie; see “A Brief Biography of Akel Allie,” Muslim Star 6,
no. 22 (1966): 6, imjc Papers, Box 8, bhl.
44 Its original address was 9 West 111th Street and soon after it moved to 58 La Salle Street,
both in Harlem, a borough where many Indian immigrants settled in New York. The lead-
ers of this group were all fairly well-known in New York for being exponents of Indian
independence and interfaith dialogue the 1920s and 1930s, including Syud Hossain and
Tafazzul Hussain Khan (T.H.K.) Rezmie. See V.V., “Le associazioni islamiche degli Stati
Uniti d’America,” Oriente Moderne 12, no. 11 (1932): 524; “What Is Going on this Week,” New
York Times, April 19, 1931, 52; “Moslems Hold Annual Rally,” Brooklyn Standard Union, May
9, 1930, 18; Dunlap, “City’s Moslems.”
New Bonds 245

1926 Glick used a Los Angeles address; in June 1927 he gave a New York address;
and in 1928 he resided in a place he called Lyons Valley, in the town of Jamul near
San Diego, California.45 From Lyons Valley, Glick wrote letters to various Muslims
in and out of the us telling them that he had established a college called the
‘Shieka Selim Institute,’ and he attempted to bring in several Muslims from India
to be its teachers.46 Glick, however, had, as far as can be determined, no formal
religious training that might justify his taking the title of ‘Shieka,’ and his
‘Institute’ was nothing but a small shack that he lived in by himself.47 When the
State Department investigated Glick’s college at the time, it discovered that,
while some Indians were interested, Glick had not enrolled anyone.48
Glick would not be discouraged, however. He returned to New York, moving
into a Harlem apartment with several immigrant Indian Muslims, and in the
spring of 1929 he organized at his apartment what he called the American
Islamic Social Centre and Library.49 The primary purpose of this explicitly
“non-sectarian, non-political” organization was to support Muslim immigrants
in their “Americanization.”50 The Centre provided lodging to Muslim students
and welfare support for Muslims living in the us and in colonized countries,
and it helped with finding employment. The Centre also offered a library/read-
ing room that was open three nights a week as well as a ‘Muslim News Bureau,’
which, presumably, collected and disseminated news from the Islamic world.51
It is not known how Glick was able to fund this organization, but it is telling
that two of the three men listed as being on the Centre’s advisory board were
Greek Turks and the other was a Russian Tartar—so Glick may have found
backing from the local Turkish and Tartar communities.52 In an attempt to

45 Letters, Glick to Board of Navigation, Navy Department, April 16, 1926 and June 4, 1927,
Glick ompf; Glick fbi file, Report, 6/25/1940, Los Angeles file 65–205, 1–3.
46 Glick fbi file, Report, 6/25/1940, Los Angeles file 65–205, 2–3.
47 Letter, Clara I. Bisbee to Inspector in Charge, Post Office Department, San Francisco, June
27, 1939, Glick fbi file.
48 Glick fbi file, Report, 6/25/1940, Los Angeles file 65–205, 2–3. Upon my request in the
spring of 2014, the National Archives attempted to locate records concerning this State
Department investigation; they were, unfortunately, unable to find any.
49 See Glick’s housemates in his 1930 Census on Ancestry.com; V.V., “Le associazioni islami-
che”; L. Lincoln Glick to E.A. Ross, May 22, 1929, Edward Alsworth Ross Papers, University
of Wisconsin.
50 Glick to Ross, May 22, 1929.
51 Glick to Ross, May 22, 1929; L. Lincoln Glick to W. Ernest Hocking, April 20, 1931, ms Am
2375 (6489), Houghton Library, Harvard University.
52 The names of the advisory board members are listed in the Centre’s letterhead in Glick to
Ross, May 22, 1929: Hasbey Abdullah, Mouhtar Abedin, and Eredjeb Muhtarem Chinghis.
I have determined their homelands based on genealogy records for these men found on
Ancestry.com.
246 chapter 8

g­ arner more support and attention for both the difficulties Muslim immigrants
faced and for the organization itself, Glick wrote letters to prominent intellec-
tuals who had shown an interest in the lives of Muslims.53
The timing of Glick’s late 1920s return to New York was beneficial for his
efforts in the name of Islam. By 1929, one additional international Pan-Islamic
organization with ties to both the Khilafat movement and the Supreme Muslim
Council had become an important part of the New York Muslim community:
the Young Men’s Moslem Association (ymma). The ymma was organized in
Cairo in 1927 for the purpose of countering Christian missionary efforts in
Muslim-majority lands.54 It had four principal aims: teaching Islamic morals
and ethics; spreading knowledge suited to the modern way of life; discouraging
dissensions and abuses among Muslims; and using the best of both Eastern and
Western cultures, while rejecting that which was considered bad in each. Led by
ambitious, influential men from a variety of professions, the ymma had imme-
diate success. By 1928, it was being praised and promoted by Khilafat leaders as
well as the president of the Supreme Muslim Council. In fact, at the time, the
two communities were already talking with each other about using the ymma
as the main international organization for fostering Pan-Islamic unity.55
As far as is currently known, nothing directly came of these talks other than
an increased desire for Pan-Islamic unity. Nevertheless, the Egyptian ymma
was so popular that it was still able to start expanding to non-Muslim-majority
countries. Unfortunately, we do not know how exactly the ymma was brought
to the us, nor the exact relationship between this organization and the known
New York-based ymmas. In 1929, al-Kateeb’s group, which at the time was
involved in pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist efforts, was variously referred to in
local newspapers as the Young Men’s Moslem Association of America and the
Young Men’s Moslem Society.56 And in April that year, a ‘Moslem Yong Men’s
Society of New York City’ hosted a meeting, which was attended by many
Muslim delegates from other American cities, during which the group made

53 E.g., Glick to Ross, May 22, 1929 and Glick to W. Ernest Hocking, April 20, 1931.
54 On the international ymma, see J. Heyworth-Dunne, Religious and Political Trends in
Modern Egypt (Washington: J. Heyworth-Dunne, 1950), 11–14; Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi,
“Muhibb Al-Din Al-Khatib: A Portrait of a Salafi-Arabist (1886–1969)” (ma thesis, Simon
Fraser University, 1991), esp. 74–82; G. Kampffmeyer, “Egypt and Western Asia,” in Whither
Islam?: A Survey of Modern Movements in the Moslem World, ed. H.A.R. Gibb (New York:
ams Press, [1932] 1973), 101–170.
55 Kupferschmidt, Supreme Muslim, 193; Rizvi, “Muhibb Al-Din Al-Khatib,” 76–78.
56 “Arabs Here Assail Jewish Riot Views,” New York Times, August 29, 1929, 2; “Arabs Ask
Stimson to Aid in Palestine,” New York Times, September 7, 1929, 3. At the time, the group’s
secretary’s name was Abd M. Kateeb.
New Bonds 247

plans for improving Muslim unity, both in the us and worldwide—a goal that
would be consistent with those of both al-Kateeb’s group and the Cairo
ymma.57 However, in the early 1930s, additional reports clarified that the group
in New York that went as the ymma was set up in Midtown, not Little Syria; it
was Cairo-based and not Jerusalem-based; and while it had an imam named
Kateeb, this was Khateeb Moulana Abd-el-Muttalib, apparently an Egyptian
immigrant, and not a Palestinian.58 If it is the case that the Cairo ymma had
indeed connected at first with al-Kateeb’s group, by the 1930s its characteristics
were now very different.
Nonetheless, with several Islamic organizations in the city and Pan-Islamic
feeling running high, it is unsurprising that at some point around late 1929/
early 1930, several—the ymma, the mbusa, the Muslim Unity Association, the
Brooklyn Tartar group, and Glick’s American Islamic Social Centre (but not
al-Khateeb’s Washington Street mosque)—came together to form what was
named the United Moslem Council of Greater New York (umcgny).59 This
umbrella organization planned to meet on a weekly basis for discussing local
issues, biannually for a national meeting, and annually for an international
Muslim ‘conference.’60 It was, essentially, the organizational base for a coordi-
nated American Pan-Islamic movement.
For a 1930 eid (Islamic holiday), the umcgny hosted, in addition to over 200
New York Muslims, a number of international Muslim figures, including a
Saudi prince61 and two leaders of the Syrian nationalist movement. It is under-
standable that the Pan-Islamic ymma and the mbusa—and possibly the
Supreme Muslim Council and the Khilafat movement—were behind an inter-
national Muslim gathering of this sort. Since the 1880s, the idea of having an
international Muslim conference—or ‘congress,’ as it was frequently called—
had become a popular topic in Pan-Islam circles.62 In the 1920s, in the wake of
the establishment of European mandates in the Middle East, at least five sepa-
rate Pan-Islamic congresses were held across the Muslim world. Then, in 1931,
the Supreme Muslim Council would host in Jerusalem—with the strong sup-
port of the ymma and the Khilafat movement—the most well-known, most

57 “Moslems in America,” Syrian World (May 1929): 55.

58 Dunlap, “City’s Moslems”; “Contemporary Thought and Life,” Muslim Revival 2, no. 2
(1933): 170.
59 “Moslems Hold Annual Rally”; “Moslems Observe Bairam.”
60 “Moslems Observe Bairam.”
61 This was Prince Mohiuddin, who had been living in the us since the early 1920s, after
coming to the country to follow his interest in music.
62 See Martin Kramer, Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congresses (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986).
248 chapter 8

well-attended, and most influential Muslim congress of the interwar period.63

At this conference, notably, one man served as a representative of the Muslims
in the United States: Muhammad Ali al-Humani, a prominent Lebanese poet
who had become very involved with pan-Arab politics.64 It is unclear how pre-
cisely al-Humani was connected to the us. Currently, it is only known that at
some point in the decade following the congress, he moved to Chile, which
served as his base of operations for several years.65 Whatever his connection to
the us, though, the congress had an impact on Islamic propaganda in the
country. Glick wrote in 1932 that “After the Congress of Muslim Jerusalem many
people have turned to Islamic missionary propaganda in the United States,
especially in Detroit, Michigan.”66 Unfortunately, almost nothing is known
about the propaganda and proselytization efforts that were being made in
Detroit at the time, although it seems possible that these activities contributed
to the Sunni-Shi‘i split in the community by 1935.67
We have only slightly better information about what took place in New York.
In spite of the congress fever and the increased desire for missionary work,
given that there is no evidence that the umcgny ever met or even functioned
after the 1930 eid, it seems that the city’s Pan-Islamic unifying organization
failed to stay afloat. There are probably several reasons for this. A primary one
that all the Muslim congresses faced was difficultly in obtaining sufficient
funding. Most Muslims and Muslim countries at the time were very poor, and
efforts to raise money to support Muslim congresses often failed, even in places
where Muslims might have a greater desire to unite for resistance purposes,
such as in countries under European occupation. In the us, Muslim immi-
grants were not just poor, but were also having to contend with the difficulties
of navigating life in a completely foreign nation; survival and saving money for
their families were their most immediate concerns, and the effort, time, and
money necessary to support Pan-Islamic activities may have been too costly
for the average immigrant. There had been a short-lived national Islamic
umbrella organization in the 1920s—the United Moslem Society, led by the
Sudanese Muslim Missionary Satti Majid—but Pan-Islam was only secondary

63 See Kupferschmidt, Supreme Muslim, 187–220, 267–271; Kramer, Islam Assembled, 123–141;
Basheer M. Nafi, “The General Islamic Congress of Jerusalem Reconsidered,” Muslim
World 86, no. 3–4 (1996): 243–272.
64 Kupferschmidt, Supreme Muslim, 271.
65 “Politica y economia: Mohamed Ali Al Humani nos habla del movimiento Pan-Arabigo,”
Hoy 8 (1939): 67–70.
66 V.V., “Le associazioni islamiche.”
67 See Howell, “Inventing,” 146–58.
New Bonds 249

in this group, with the emphasis being placed on helping immigrants adjust to
American society.68 There were, basically, simply not enough well-off and edu-
cated immigrant Muslims who were interested in and able to work together to
support the Pan-Islamic effort at that moment.
In any case, the failure of the New York community in generating a strong
Pan-Islamic movement disappointed Glick. The friend convert was highly
dedicated to uniting and supporting the Muslim community in the us and
internationally, but his failure in establishing his ‘Institute’ had taught him that
he could not do this without significant Muslim backing. If the umcgny was
not going to be of use, he would have to seek help from elsewhere.

The American Islamic Association

Nineteen thirty was an important year for Glick. His Centre had just become a
founding member of the umcgny, and at its large eid gathering in May,
although he had already been a convert for several years, Glick performed a
Muslim conversion ceremony, pronouncing a belief in one God and His mes-
senger, Muhammad.69 Later that year, in what would be a major turning point
in Glick’s career as a Muslim leader, he, probably motivated by the recent
Islamic activity—or lack of activity—in New York, joined an international
Islamic organization: the Western Islamic Association (wia).70
The wia had been founded by Dr. Khalid Sheldrake, a prominent British
Muslim convert. Born to a wealthy pickle manufacturer in 1888, Bertram
William Sheldrake converted to Islam in London in 1903 and soon after took a
leading role in a local Muslim organization known as the Pan-Islamic Society.71
As we have seen, England at the time had a relatively active and well-connected
Muslim community and Sheldrake, a learned man from a wealthy background,
was able to become one of the community’s leading figures, writing and speak-
ing through the several British Muslim forums and obtaining leadership and
supporting roles in a variety of Muslim organizations; he even converted his
basement into a mosque so that London Muslims might have a place to pray
together.72 Like many white Western converts, Sheldrake felt that Islam was the
solution to world’s problems, and he believed strongly in Muslim unity, freely
associating with Sunnis and Shi‘is of all ethnicities, and both Lahori and

68 See Bowen, “Satti Majid.”

69 Dunlap, “City’s Moslems.”
70 V.V., “Le associazioni islamiche.”
71 Dr. Khalid Sheldrake, “The Pioneers of Islam in England, Germany, France, and America,”
Genuine Islam (January 1936): 26.
72 Max Everest-Phillips, “The Suburban Kind of Tartary,” Asian Affairs 21, no. 3 (1990): 325.
250 chapter 8

Qadiani Ahmadis.73 Sheldrake, however, found disturbing the frequent Muslim

emphasis on sectarian differences, as well as the condescending attitude of
certain leading immigrant Muslims towards converts, so in 1926 he attempted
to establish with other converts a new Islamic group, called the United Muslim
League, which he hoped would counter these trends.74 When this new League
failed to get off the ground, Sheldrake obtained funding from the Aga Khan,
the head of the Naziri Isma‘ilis,75 to establish a new organization that would
soon be called the Western Islamic Association. Sheldrake then set about gain-
ing allegiances from various Islamic organizations both within and without
England. By 1929, he was even in contact with the Supreme Muslim Council
and, in a widely circulated news story, was propagating its pro-Palestinian
message.76
There was more than one possible source for Glick’s initial contact with
Sheldrake and the wia: the local ymma and mbusa would have probably
heard stories about the English convert via the Supreme Muslim Council and
Glick’s Muslim News Bureau undoubtedly had Sheldrake on its radar. Whatever
the initial contact was, however, Glick seems to have found the wia to be both
a comfortable fit and a tool that would better allow him to pursue that for
which he was really striving: Islamic unity and world peace. Glick continued to
perform his duties with the Centre—which he now promoted as an affiliate of
the wia—but he also began to take on new projects as the American represen-
tative of the wia, creating an American branch of the group, which he called
the American Islamic Association (aia). One of the aia’s main goals was the
raising of funds to establish an American Islamic Centre (a name borrowed
from Glick’s New York group) in Washington, dc, which would have a mosque,
a library, offices, classrooms, and conference and press rooms, as well as a dis-
tinct Islamic design that could be viewed from the air.77 Accompanying this
would be an aia umbrella organization that would start branches across the
country, provide Muslim-born imams for those branches, help establish

73 On his Qadiani connections, see Eric Germain, “The First Muslim Missions on a European
Scale: Ahmadi-Lahori Networks in the Inter-War Period,” in Islam in Interwar Europe, eds.
Nathalie Clayer and Eric Germain (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 106;
Gilham, Loyal Enemies, 200–201.
74 Khalid Sheldrake, “Muhammad and World Unity,” Islamic Review 15, nos. 3&4 (1926):
148–153; Germain, “First Muslim,” 106; Gilham, Loyal Enemies, 200–201.
75 On the Aga Khan, see Malise Ruthven, “Aga Khan iii and the Isma‘ili Renaissance,” in New
Trends and Developments in the World of Islam, ed. Peter Clarke (London: Luzac Oriental,
1998), 371–395.
76 See, e.g., “Holy Land Rioting Inquiry Ordered,” Washington Post, September 4, 1929, 1, 3.
77 V.V., “Le associazioni islamiche.”
New Bonds 251

Muslim cemeteries, and create a propaganda department that would be

responsible for publishing an Islamic magazine and defending Islam in the
press.78
In the meantime, Glick—who, like many Muslims across the world at the
time, was inspired by the 1931 congress in Jerusalem to establish both new pro-
paganda efforts as well as a future congress—would lead the aia in conducting
small-scale propaganda activities. Glick used his background in journalism to
attempt to start a magazine called the Congress Advocate, for which he sent out
many advanced copies in order to try to obtain subscriptions. In the Advocate,
which had received the moral and some financial support from the Egyptian
consulate, Glick explained that an annual Muslim congress should be held in
Jeddah, the coastal entrance to the Muslim pilgrimage region—the Hijaz—in
Saudi Arabia.79 Glick praised this “City of Destiny” for its magnificent size and
he discussed his hope that that it would continue to expand and attract new
pilgrims. The congress, he argued (using language similar to what he had been
using with his Centre), would be the “practical means of accomplishing most
under modern conditions […] on a non-sectarian and non-political basis.”80
To Glick’s disappointment, his efforts were generally ignored by American
immigrant Muslims, who, he believed, were neither particularly motivated to
support Pan-Islam nor willing to accept a convert as a leading advocate for
Muslims.81 Frustrated by the lack of interest in his organization and perhaps
realizing that immigrants would make better leaders for such a group, some-
time around late 1931, Glick resigned from his post as president of the aia in
order to allow two immigrant Muslims to fill the group’s leadership roles. The
men who would come in to help further the aia cause were Muharrem Nadji,
who served as the Association’s president, and Ahmad Nadji, the aia’s secre-
tary and probably a cousin of Muharrem.82 Both lived in cities with small
Muslim populations—Muharrem in Mansfield, Ohio and Ahmad in Holyoke,
Massachusetts83—which appears to have largely freed them from the immi-
grant-focused concerns of Muslims who lived in larger immigrant enclaves.

78 Ibid.
79 “E 4944/1197/25,” in British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the
Foreign Office Confidential Print, ed. Robin Bidwell ([Frederick, md]: University
Publications of America, 1983), 8:177. The conference was not planned for Mecca because
the Saud family, which controlled Mecca, had prohibited talk of politics in the holy city.
80 Islamic Review 21, no. 1 (1933): 391.
81 V.V., “Le associazioni islamiche.”
82 V.V., “Le associazioni islamiche.”
83 Holyoke is north of Springfield, and it had a small, but long-lasting Albanian Muslim
enclave.
252 chapter 8

Of the two Nadjis, Muharrem would have the greater impact on American
Muslim converts. Born in Albania in 1891, the same year as Glick, Muharrem
immigrated to the us in 1917, living in various small towns in Ohio and
Pennsylvania before choosing Mansfield, a middle-sized community with
almost no other Muslim residents.84 At some point after his initial arrival in
the country, during a period in which he was considering returning to his
homeland, Muharrem, a practicing Sufi, received a vision of Muhammad in
which Muharrem was, as he later explained, “reminded” that Muslims had
never attempted to teach Islam in America and that he was needed in the us
for that purpose.85 Once settled, he immediately commenced his own Islamic
propaganda campaign. Originally calling it the Islamic Mission, and later the
Islamic Center of America—perhaps as an homage to both Glick’s New York
group and the aia’s hoped-for national institution—Muharrem wrote and
published several pamphlets and books, sent letters to various Islamic maga-
zines, and took out full-page advertisements promoting Islam in the local
newspaper.86 Through these efforts, he became the central figure in the aia
community.
Muharrem’s propaganda efforts were significantly aided by the Lahori-
influenced Sunni Muslims in Woking, England who distributed his books and
published his letters in their English-language magazine, the Islamic Review,
the most popular Sunni magazine in the us during the Great Depression.87
Judging by the correspondence published in the Islamic Review, it seems that,
starting in the early 1930s, the Woking mission had instituted a new push to
spread information about Islam in the us. Letters began pouring into the mag-
azine from cities and small towns across the country, sent by either librarians,
who were happy to receive the Islamic Review and the mission’s other Islamic
literature, or readers, who had run across a copy of the magazine and found its
contents so interesting that they felt compelled to compliment the editors and
request more information about Islam. Through these efforts, the Islamic
Review became the century’s first successful English-language Sunni publica-
tion in the us, creating the first truly nationwide reader-based community of

84 Bob Liston, “He Wants People to ‘Know’ Mohammed,” Mansfield News Journal, June 8,
1954, 1, 11.
85 Ibid. As an Albanian, Muharrem was probably either an Alevi or a Bektashi Sufi.
86 I have only been able to locate three of Muharrem’s books so far: Muhammad and Other
Prophets/Islam and Modern Christianity (Mansfield: Islamic Mission, 1937); The Islamic
Faith and the Institution of Prayer (Mansfield: Islamic Mission, 1941); and Islam or
Christianity (Mansfield: Islamic Centre of America, 1956).
87 V.V., “Le associazioni islamiche.”
New Bonds 253

non-Muslim and convert Americans who were interested in Sunni Islam.

However, Woking had no official representatives in the us, so, like the readers
of Webb’s newspapers, without face-to-face contact with Muslims, or at least a
feeling that such contact would be possible, many of the Review’s readers who
became interested in Islam felt reluctant to convert. The timing was therefore
perfect for the aia to come in and capitalize on the religious market the British
Muslims had created. Without doubt, this would be the principal reason that
Glick’s early efforts were able to eventually spread nationally and have a real
historical impact.
The main events that led to the aia becoming a truly national organization
unfolded right in front of the eyes of the Review’s readers. It began in late sum-
mer 1931 when Harry E. Heinkel, a white man living in Los Angeles, California,
came across a copy of the Islamic Review in his local library.88 At the time,
Harry was losing his faith in God, and was teetering on the edge of agnosticism
and atheism. He had found the Bible’s stories so incredibly unbelievable and
obscene, and Christians’ inability to live up to the principle of “Brotherhood of
Man” so disappointing, that he was no longer able to bring himself to adhere to
the Christian religion of his childhood.89 The discussions of Islam in the Review,
however, piqued his curiosity, and he wrote to the editors to ask for more litera-
ture.90 By early November, after receiving a package of materials from Woking,
he became very interested in the religion’s principles, and he sent to the maga-
zine a letter expressing as much, which was later published in the magazine’s
correspondence pages.91 By late November 1931, Harry explained in another
published letter, he had come to believe—after re-reading the literature
Woking had sent, which included a translation of the Qurʾan by London con-
vert Marmaduke Pickthall—in Islam’s five pillars and he wanted to adopt the
faith, though he knew of no Islamic mission in Los Angeles that he might
join.92 In July and August 1932, Harry had more letters appear in the maga-
zine’s pages, explaining his conversion in more detail and thanking Woking for
sending him additional literature.93 Harry had become so popular in the
Review that other Americans were contacting him via the magazine. In the
summer of 1932, another Los Angeles reader of the magazine, one George
Bohn, wrote to Harry, in a letter published in the Review, telling him that Bohn

88 Islamic Review 20, no. 5 (1932): 163.

89 Ibid. 20, no. 5 (1932): 164; ibid. 20, nos. 2–3 (1932): 74.
90 Ibid. 20, nos. 2–3 (1932): 73.
91 Ibid. 20, nos. 2–3 (1932): 73–74.
92 Ibid. 20, no. 5 (1932): 164; ibid. 20, nos. 2–3 (1932): 74.
93 Ibid. 20, nos. 6–7 (1932): 213; ibid. 30, no. 8 (1932): 257–259.
254 chapter 8

was part of a small group of Muslim converts in the city who wanted to get
together with Harry to start an Islamic mission.94 Harry of course replied—in
a letter that was, again, published in the Review—that he was eager to do this;
and a Los Angeles Sunni Muslim convert community began to blossom.95
At the time, Glick and the Nadjis were avid readers of the Review, and by late
1932 they had apparently already recruited some of its correspondents into the
aia, which was now headquartered at Ahmad’s home in Holyoke.96 The wia’s
head, Sheldrake, had been involved with the Woking mosque practically since
the beginning of its revival in 1912 (led by the Lahori Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din),
and Glick would have surely come across its publications anyway, either
through his Muslim News Bureau activities or due to the fact that by the early
1930s Lahori-influenced publications were the main type of Islamic publica-
tions being read by practically all the American Muslims with whom he had
contact.97 The aia, then, was fully aware of Harry and the Los Angeles Muslims,
and in June 1933 Ahmad Nadji, writing from the aia’s new base in Massachusetts,
encouraged Harry to do Islamic propaganda and sent him an advanced copy of
Glick’s Congress Advocate, for which Harry praised its creator.98 Subsequently,
Harry and Glick began exchanging letters. By this point, Harry had had, just as
had Glick and Sheldrake before him, disheartening experiences in trying to
gain support and cooperation from the local immigrant Muslims for Islamic
propaganda work—so he was happy to join up with the convert-heavy aia,
taking the position of secretary.99 Around this same time, another white con-
vert living in Utah by the name of H.C. Stevens was made the wia’s official us
representative,100 thereby ensuring that the aia would both be fairly evenly
distributed throughout the country and have strong white convert representa-
tion outside of New York State—two important accomplishments that Webb
himself had failed to achieve. The aia had therefore developed the rudiments

94 Ibid. 21, no. 7 (1933): 240.

95 Ibid. 21, no. 7 (1933): 240–241.
96 I am making these claims based on three pieces of evidence: (1) Glick’s claim, which was pub-
lished in 1932 (in V.V., “Le associazioni islamiche”), that the group was mostly composed of
converts who were living in various states—the Review would be the most likely candidate for
how whites from different states were able to have first learned about and contacted the aia;
(2) the same 1932 article, which indicated that Glick was aware that most American Islamic
groups (including his own) used English-language Lahori (-influenced) publications as their
primary Islamic reading materials; and (3) Muharrem’s claim that he began reading the Review
shortly after moving to Mansfield in 1927 (Islamic Review 44, no. 7 [1956]: 35).
97 V.V., “Le associazioni islamiche.”
98 Islamic Review 21, no. 7 (1933): 241–242.
99 Ibid. 21, n. 11 (1933): 391–392.
100 Khalid Sheldrake, “The Muslim Creed,” Japan Times, September 15, 1933.
New Bonds 255

of what might have possibly become the first successful Sunni organization
with multiple white convert leaders.
However, just as the foundations were solidifying on both the national and
international fronts, the wia and aia began experiencing difficulties. The
breakdown began at the international level, shortly after making what at first
appeared to be a positive accomplishment. In April 1932, news reports were
indicating that there were plans for a full-fledged wia mission in the us. Earlier
in the year, Gladys Palmer, a wealthy British former Christian Scientist who was
at that time the Dayang Muda of Sarawak in Malaysia,101 converted to Islam in
a ceremony conducted by Sheldrake while flying over the English Channel. As
reported in the New York Times, she announced that her plan was to set sail

for the United States in August with Dr. Khalid Sheldrake, president of
the Western Islamic Association, and Michael Peltov, editor of Moslem
Information, a magazine which she supports. Her aim [was] the spread
of Mohammedanism, which she hail[ed] as “the only religion I’ve found
which allows me to have a mind of my own.”102

Palmer, however, never started this mission, and by the next year was announcing
in a popular Lahori magazine that she had never intended to travel with Sheldrake
and preferred to dissociate her name from his activities.103 Sheldrake responded
by pointing out that she had never actually helped the wia in any way.104
In the us, meanwhile, Glick moved back to Lyons Valley, apparently after
suffering a nervous breakdown.105 The dates are somewhat hazy in Glick’s fbi
file, but it seems he stayed in his shack—receiving no visitors, but frequent
letters from East and South Asians and various Muslim organizations—for a
brief period, and then opened a post office box in order to have all his mail
forwarded to his new home in Los Angeles.106 For the next few years he lived

101 “People,” Time, February 29, 1932, accessed July 13, 2014, http://www.time.com/time/
magazine/article/0,9171,882099,00.html.
102 “Englishwoman to Seek Moslem Converts Here; Bringing Tunic Reported Worn by
Mohammed,” New York Times, April 2, 1932.
103 “Princess Sarawak’s Disclaimer,” Light, July 16, 1933, 4.
104 “Dr. Sheldrake’s Letter,” Light, October 8, 1933, 7.
105 Glick fbi file, Report, 6/25/1940, Los Angeles file 65–205, 2. It is not clear when exactly
Glick moved back to California, several dates between 1931 and 1934 are given in his fbi
file, but he is listed in a New York City directory in 1933 (see Ancestry.com).
106 Letter, Clara I. Bisbee to Inspector in Charge, Post Office Department, San Francisco, June
27, 1939, Glick fbi file; Glick fbi file, Report, 2/5/1940, Los Angeles file 65–321, 1–5; Glick
fbi file, Report, 6/25/1940, Los Angeles file 65–205, 1–3.
256 chapter 8

alone in a poor, Japanese-majority section of the city, being sustained by gov-

ernment relief and a short-term job with the Works Progress Administration.107
He also apparently occasionally asked his wealthy brother, Edward, for mon-
ey.108 While Edward gave it to Glick, he thought little of him, as did many oth-
ers who encountered Glick in California. When the fbi investigated Glick in
the 1940s and 1950s, Edward and the other people they interviewed—none of
whom were Muslim—frequently characterized Glick as an extreme eccentric,
a possibly mentally-imbalanced “crackpot” and “religious fanatic.”109 The only
evidence these respondents presented for this, however, was that Glick was
singularly focused on Islam; there is no indication of other unusual behavior.
In any case, however, for the rest of the 1930s, Glick seems to not have had a
particularly successful time in helping the aia, or in securing the respect of the
non-Muslim community.
Nevertheless, during this period Glick reestablished his efforts to start a col-
lege, now calling it the ‘Selim Institute’; it was to offer correspondence courses
on law and engineering and Glick planned to put out for it an Institute bulle-
tin.110 Islam, of course, was not to be ignored. Glick reportedly had several let-
ters and articles published in various overseas Muslim periodicals during this
period and in June 1936 he revived his publishing and congress efforts by print-
ing—still using the Lyons Valley address while living in Los Angeles—a maga-
zine called The Mirror of Islam, whose main purpose was to promote Islamic
congresses.111 Expanding on his earlier ideas, Glick was encouraging the cre-
ation of an international organization to unite Muslims and facilitate not just
his, but all proposed Muslim congresses; he suggested that this should be a
world association of mosque societies, that it should meet annually at Jeddah
and twice a decade at Jerusalem, and that it should serve as a modern caliph-
ate.112 Glick also seems to have become more concerned with international
political and economic issues affecting Muslims. In his writings from that time,
for example, he criticized the British government’s treatment of Muslims
and discussed the lack of Muslims in Arab oil companies’ technical and

107 Glick fbi file, Report, 2/5/1940, Los Angeles file 65–321, 1–5.
108 Glick fbi file, Memorandum, sac Los Angeles to Director, fbi, 2/9/1950, 2.
109 Report, 2/23/1940, Los Angeles file 65–761, 2; Report, 6/25/1940, Los Angeles file 65–205, 2;
Report, 10/14/1942, San Diego file 65–205, 1, 7; Memorandum, sac Los Angeles to Director,
fbi, 2/9/1950, 1–2.
110 Revue des etudes islamiques no. 2 (1936): 191; V.V., “‘The Mirror of Islam’, periodic musul-
mano della California,” Oriente Moderno 17, no. 8 (1937): 372–373.
111 Ibid.
112 V.V., “‘The Mirror of Islam’”; Louis Glick (Selim), “A Caliphate for Islam,” Great Britain and
the East 51, no. 1 (1938): 417.
New Bonds 257

a­ dministrative staffs. Interestingly, in none of the extant information about

Glick’s writings and activities in this period is there mention of either the aia
or wia, suggesting that Glick had given up on using Sheldrake’s organization to
help support his vision of creating true Muslim unity.
This, however, does not mean that the community of Muslims that the wia
and aia had helped foster was no longer active. Throughout the 1930s, other
former aia leaders continued to strengthen their network and their Islamic
propaganda efforts. Beginning in 1933, Muharrem collaborated with the
Qadianis after their official representative, Sufi Bengalee, arrived in Mansfield
in order to organize a Qadiani chapter.113 While it does not appear that
Muharrem actually led a local Qadiani-influenced group, he frequently used
Qadiani writings—though only those that made no mention of Ghulam
Ahmad and his supposed prophethood—when he reprinted various Islamic
texts and took out large Islamic advertisements in the local newspaper.114 His
efforts produced at least one local white convert and, as we will see, helped to
solidify ties with numerous white and African American Muslims.115 The
Lahoris, of course, had not lost the attention of the aia community either.
Harry and the Nadjis, for instance, all stayed in constant communication with
the Lahoris in India, who had a representative in the us doing proselytization
work among African Americans in 1935.116 Meanwhile, the Los Angeles convert
community began to grow117 and it is likely that in 1936 Harry and Muharrem,
a practicing Sufi, came into touch with some of the Los Angeles members of
the Geneva-based faction of followers of Inayat Khan. That year, one of the Sufi
community’s members, Ilain Savage, wrote to the Islamic Review expressing
her desire to contact Muslims in her area.118 Harry and the other Los Angeles
converts, which would by that point include Glick, probably like most white
American converts to Islam at that time, did not fully grasp that some forms of

113 “Offers Doctrines of Islam as Cure for Economic Ills,” Mansfield News, May 18, 1933, 10.
114 Muharrem printed these texts under the organization name Islamic Centre of America—a
title that surely was based on Glick’s New York group. His advertisements ran for several
decades in the Mansfield News.
115 The only known Mansfield convert was Thelma Selman, a white woman (her race is noted
in census and other genealogy records) who apparently married a Muslim immigrant and
converted under Muharrem in 1933. See “Muharrem Nadji,” Islamic Review 49, no. 1 (1961):
37.
116 K.S. Chaudhri Manzur Ilahi, “The Ahmadiyya Movement Day by Day,” Young Islam 3, no. 4
(1936): 6. For more on the Lahori effort among African Americans in the 1930s, see hctius
volume 2.
117 Islamic Review 26, no. 1 (1938): 455–456.
118 Ibid. 24, no. 3 (1936): 112–113.
258 chapter 8

Islam and Sufism were not accepted by all Muslims as Islamic, and they most
likely happily welcomed the Los Angeles Sufis into their community.119 It is
clear, then, that while the aia as an organized entity seems to have failed to
remain intact, by using its Ahmadi and Sunni connections, the network it had
fostered was continuing to expand. The aia had ultimately linked and united
Muslims across the country and internationally, and cultivated a type and level
of outreach to white converts that had no parallel in the orthodox American
Muslim community at the time.
As the decade drew to a close, the country witnessed the eruption of a new
world war that would have a significant impact on the future of not just the
aia–connected community, but also that of American conversion to Islam
more broadly. Even before the war started, however, inklings of this new trans-
formation could be seen in a few peculiar events.
Towards the end of 1938 someone posted an unusual sign at a Los Angeles
train depot:

kalifat—nebi jefferson.
Yearly pilgrimage of muslims of Kalifat No. 5, known as North American
Kalifat, shall be concluded in Civic Center, Los Angeles, during the 30
days of the month of Muaram.
The purpose shall be educational.
This pilgrimage should particularly remind muslims of the teachings
of America’s first Karajite leader, Thomas Jefferson, loyal successor of
George Washington, tried-and-true founder of the Republic.
Terminating the pilgrimage, muslims should make the circuit of the
Los Angeles Federal Building which is situated in what is henceforth to be
known by muslims as Jefferson Square. They may make the circuit as
many as seven times, but it is not their duty to make it even once, since
they should make it only of their own free will and according to their
ability.
Muslims who make the pilgrimage to Mecca should make that to Los
Angeles also.
Muslims who make the pilgrimage to Los Angeles should also make
that to Mecca.
bismila120

119 Ibid. 26, no. 1 (1938): 455–456.

120 “Los Angeles as Pilgrim Center,” Moslem World 29 (January 1939): 97.
New Bonds 259

The peculiar content, the emphasis on the caliphate, the promotion of Los
Angeles, and the general strangeness of the poster all are suggestive of Glick, as
are clues that would appear when Kalifat No. 5 resurfaced a few more times
over the next dozen years. Unfortunately, the fbi file on Kalifat No. 5 has been
destroyed, and there is no mention of it in Glick’s file, so we may never know
with certainty whom the creator was.
Glick’s verifiable actions at that time, meanwhile, were also hinting that
many things were about to change in the American convert community, and
that he was going to be involved. It appears, first of all, that Glick had stopped
printing the Mirror of Islam sometime in 1938. Then, in July 1939, Glick sud-
denly moved out of the room he had been renting for the past three years in
Los Angeles.121 The Works Project Administration records for Glick indicated
that, at least in September and October, he was visiting Buffalo, Cleveland,
Detroit, and San Diego—all places that had significant immigrant Muslim
communities, and all but San Diego had strong African American Muslim
communities as well.122 What Glick was doing in these cities is unknown.
Perhaps he was involved with an organization known as the Islamic League, an
apparently Pan-Islamic organization that appeared in Detroit in 1939 and
attempted to run its newly-constructed Sunni mosque.123 All that can be stated
with confidence, however, is that by the end of the decade Glick had estab-
lished himself as a well-known figure in Muslim communities throughout the
country. In the 1940s he and Muharrem maintained a quiet presence as the
country’s various Muslim communities began developing stronger bonds
between each other, particularly among the converts.
Towards the end of the Great Depression, the majority of white American
converts were of the type that married Muslim immigrants and, because
they focused on family life, followed their immigrant spouses’ communities
and did little to alter the direction of Islam in America. But there were a few
converts—most of whom were friends who did not marry a Muslim—who
were especially active in their communities. While they did not achieve
many of their goals, these converts led organizations and propaganda efforts
and, in doing so, they created a new national network that laid an important
foundation for what would develop in the ensuing wartime and postwar
years.

121 Glick fbi file, Report, 2/5/1940, Los Angeles file 65–321, 3.
122 Ibid., 6.
123 See Howell, “Inventing,” 156–58.
 chapter 9

Uniting Muslim Communities

By continuing to actively promote Islam and connect us Muslims, even though

they were no longer formally organized, Louis Glick and the former aia com-
munity were laying an important foundation. As the 1940s began, several
emerging Muslim communities would link up with and strengthen the national
network that the aia had been establishing, helping to ensure that white con-
verts would play a role in the increasingly interconnected community of us
Muslims. The particular Muslim organizations that were most likely to affiliate
with the former aia network were those that shared many of the same ideals
of the aia—so they were often groups led by converts, second-generation
Muslims, and international proselytizers, all of whom were less concerned
with the difficulties of immigrating than they were with improving Muslim
unity. It was through their efforts, then, that white Sunnis began to interact and
work with both the increasingly influential groups of Arab and Indian Muslims
as well as the growing African American Sunni and Ahmadi communities. The
1940s therefore saw the development of a new multi-racial national Islamic
network, one that was fostering more ties and a greater sense of national soli-
darity than any previous effort, and one that further prepared the us Muslim
community for the changes that were to come in the postwar years.
The former aia network, however, was not the only avenue for Pan-Islamic
efforts of white Muslims. The international connections of other white
American promoters of Muslim unity, such as Nilla Cram Cook and William
Lutz, are testaments to the growing deterritorialization of Islam as the twenti-
eth century progressed. Cook, in particular, stands out as an example of the
diversity of conversions taking place by the 1930s. A product of both nine-
teenth-century esoterica and twentieth-century contact with immigrants, her
boldness in spreading innovative views about Islam reflects the fact that as
contact between white Americans and Muslims increased, new notions about
Islam and about what makes a convert leader would continue to spring up.
Indeed, both Cook and another leading white female convert from this period,
Nadirah Osman, would prove that many Islamic approaches and identities—
including that of a white Muslim female leader—could be both valid and val-
ued expressions of Islam. The activities of the leading converts of the 1940s
were therefore important predecessors to the various convert men and women
who, while holding a variety of Islamic perspectives, became influential figures
in the us Muslim community in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_011

Uniting Muslim Communities 261

Nadirah’s New York

By the late 1930s, the Pan-Islamic spirit was being revived in New York City. This
owed a great deal to the efforts of Dr. George Ibrahim Kheirallah, the Egyptian-
born son of the first Baha’i missionary in the us, Ibrahim George Kheiralla.1 At
some point in the early 1930s, George converted to Islam and became extremely
active in New York’s Muslim and Arab organizations. That he would soon
become more successful than Glick in helping to unite New York’s Muslims
was the result of him having several traits Glick lacked. He was, for instance,
more educated in both a secular Western sense, being a medical doctor, and in
an Islamic sense, as he would give many speeches and later publish numerous
well-written works about Islam and its history, including a book that was
widely read by us Muslims.2 Furthermore, although born a Christian and
raised as a Baha’i, George was still an Arab who had immigrated at a young age;
he could therefore relate and speak to many of the city’s Muslim immigrants—
of both the first and second generations—in ways Glick could never have.
Finally, having grown up around one of the most successful non-Christian
proselytization movements in the us, George possessed first-hand knowledge
of what it took to lead a non-Christian community in a us context. In the sec-
ond half of the 1930s, he began putting his background to use, becoming the
president of the Indian-majority mbusa by 1935,3 the leading lecturer for a
group called the Islamic Society of New York by 1938,4 and an outspoken oppo-
nent of Zionism by 1939. In the 1940s, he continued to be very active in the local
Muslim and Arab communities. He remained president of the mbusa for
much of the decade; he edited the popular high-quality English-language mag-
azine The Arab World, which often ran stories about Muslims; and he gave
speeches for a multiethnic organization known as the New York Islamic
Center.5 Through George’s efforts, the New York Islamic community was
increasingly influenced by the multiethnic, Pan-Islamic ideal.
One of the places where George had an influential forum, the New York
Islamic Center, was, it seems, the organizational hub of New York’s ­multiethnic,

1 The father’s name was typically spelled without an ‛h’ at the end, unlike the son’s.
2 This was his 1938 Islam and the Arabian Prophet. For a brief introduction to Kheirallah and his
writings, see George Ibrahim Kheirallah, Islam and the Arabian Prophet: The First American
Sirah, ed. Muhammed Abdullah al-Ahari (Chicago: Magribine Press, 2011), 1–4.
3 “Synagogues Mark Maimonides Day,” New York Times, April 1, 1935, 22.
4 See the classified advertisements for this group in the New York Sun on April 30 and June 11,
1938.
5 The Islamic Center had its meetings frequently listed in the New York Times and New York
Herald Tribune during the early 1940s.
262 chapter 9

Pan-Islamic current in the 1940s. Numerous Muslims of various ethnicities—

including white and black converts and international proselytizers—would be
associated with the Center and its leaders, and several would eventually play a
role in the national Pan-Islamic efforts of the decade. The origins of this impor-
tant Center are, unfortunately, still somewhat unclear. It is possible that it was
a reorganizing of George’s old affiliate, the Islamic Society of New York, whose
advertisements stopped running in New York newspapers in the late 1930s, just
before the New York Islamic Center’s advertisements began appearing in 1940.6
Currently, the only information about its creation that we have is a white
female convert’s claim that she was one of the Center’s three founders. This
convert, Nadirah Florence Ives Osman, would be an important player not only
in New York’s multiethnic Islamic community, but also in the connecting and
uniting of that community with the former aia network.
Born in Union County, New Jersey in 1895,7 Nadirah embraced Islam in 1926,
apparently through the influence of her one-time husband, an Egyptian of a
mixed Arab and Turkish background.8 Nadirah—who saw her choosing Islam
as “a continuation and logical development” of the beliefs of her English,
French, German, and Dutch ancestors—was proud to affiliate with different
races through a shared belief.9 She must have been elated, then, to discover the
emphasis on unity and equality prevalent in Ahmadi literature, which she had
acquired by 1931 while living in Turkey.10 Armed with a strong faith in the truth
of Islam, even after divorcing her husband, Nadirah was committed to promot-
ing her religion, and in 1939 and 1940 had several essays published in Woking’s
Lahori-influenced Islamic Review magazine.11 In the latter year, she officially
joined the Lahori movement, and it is likely that it was through this connec-
tion that she came in touch with Muharrem Nadji, who published several of
her essays in the early 1940s.12 In New York, meanwhile, she and two associ-
ates—one of which was probably Kheirallah—founded the Islamic Center,

6 However, these two organizations were associated with different addresses.

7 While her census, ship manifest, and Social Security Death Index documents have her as
born in 1896, the New Jersey, Births and Christenings Index, 1660–1931 records 1895; see
Ancestry.com.
8 Letter, Nadirah Fines [sic] Osman to [Wali Akram] [the latter was an important African
American Muslim leader at the time; his name has been redacted but it is obvious from
the contents of the letter], December 4, 1943, 1, fbi record.
9 Ibid.
10 “The Story of the First American Convert to Islam,” Light, April 16, 1944, 7.
11 Her articles appeared in several issues in 1939 and 1940; they were on the topics of “Islam
and the Bible,” “Islam and the Covenant of Abraham,” and “Islam and Jesus.”
12 Osman to Akram, 1.
Uniting Muslim Communities 263

and Nadirah maintained a strong connection to at least two other Islamic

groups in the city: Kheirallah’s mbusa and an organization known as the
Moorish National Islamic Center (mnic), for which Nadirah frequently
lectured.13
The mnic, located at 1 East 125th Street and led by Grand Sheik Walter Price
Bey, was originally part of an African American Islamic sectarian movement,
the Moorish Science Temple (mst).14 According to the group’s literature, the
mst was “founded” in 1913 in Newark, but it only “organized” while in Chicago
in 1925, in the wake of the Qadianis’ successful wave of proselytization. Its
leader and prophet, Noble Drew Ali, published a “Holy Koran” that was largely
composed of uncredited excerpts from two popular esoteric texts of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Perhaps because it more thoroughly
aligned itself with Marcus Garvey’s black nationalism and African American
religious currents, Ali’s movement was even more successful than the Qadianis’
in convincing African Americans to take on an Islamic identity. However, in
early 1929, a debilitating schism developed. The mst’s leader in Detroit, James
Lomax (later, Muhammad Ezaldeen), apparently became influenced by immi-
grant Muslims and broke away from Drew Ali, taking several mst temples with
him. The split led to violence erupting in mulitple temples across the country,
so, fearing for his life, Lomax eventually went to Egypt where he connected
with the ymma before returning to the us in December 1936. Meanwhile, Drew
Ali died in July 1929, leading to even more schisms.
The mnic was originally part of the dominant post-Drew Ali faction of the
mst, the Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc., which was led C. Kirkman
Bey. But beginning at least as early as 1935, a number of immigrant Muslims
joined and sometimes acted as teachers for the New York group, which had
about fifty to sixty regularly-attending members.15 One Egyptian immigrant
laborer later told the fbi that when he was a member, from 1935 to 1941, he
“taught a class of approximately fifty children the Arabic language and Moslem
religion.” By 1940, the mnic was leaning even more towards international
Islam. It appears that, for example, sometime during that year Walter Price Bey
adopted the Arabic name of Abdul Wadood Bey,16 probably under the i­ nfluence

13 Osman to Akram, 1, 4.
14 On the mnic and mst, see Bowen, “Search for ‘Islam’,” 275–276 and hctius vol. 2.
15 See Bowen, “Search for ‘Islam’,” 275–276; and hctius vol. 2.
16 In a 2012 article (Bowen, “Search for ‘Islam’,” 275), the relationship between Walter and
Abdul Wadood Bey was not fully understood. However, the existing evidence tells us that
(1) Wadood Bey was a convert (and the ‘Bey’ in his name suggests he was from the mst);
(2) Wadood Bey’s wife was known as Rezkah; (3) Walter also had a wife known as Rezkah;
264 chapter 9

of Lomax/Ezaldeen, who was extremely influential among former mst mem-

bers in New York.17 In September 1940, the group hosted an address by Hans
Stefan Santesson, a white book editor who was not only an associate of Louis
Glick, but also a strong supporter of India’s independence and programs to aid
Indian immigrants in New York.18 In November of that same year, the mnic
held an Eid ul-Fitr celebration for both its members, which included its Arabic-
speaking imam, Si Abdesalaam Sied, and its Muslim visitors, including some
from South Asia and Sheikh Daoud Faisal, a Grenadan immigrant who,
although he may have also once been in the mst, by 1938 was leading a Sunni
mosque in Brooklyn.19 Nineteen-forty also seems to be the year that Wadood
Bey became involved with an interfaith organization known as the World
Fellowship of Faiths, which over the next few years would put him in touch
with several other Muslims in New York.20
In addition to the mbusa and mnic, the New York Islamic Center was
also affiliated with another multiracial group that had several converts and

(4) Beginning in 1940 Walter no longer appears in newspaper or fbi accounts connected
to Islam in New York, while Rezkah continued to and Wadood Bey suddenly appears; (5)
In December 1939, Walter hosted a dinner with Si Abdesalaam Sied, who would later be
associated with Wadood Bey and the mnic, as a guest at his home (see T.E.B., “Chatter
and Chimes,” New York Amsterdam News, December 16, 1939, 16); and (6) A caption for a
photograph of African American Muslims in Harlem in 1942 identifies one of the men in
the picture as ‘Abdul Wadood Price Bey’ (the other identified man in the picture is Sheikh
Daoud Faisal). The above evidence very much supports the theory that Walter was the
same person as Wadood Bey, and perhaps changed his name due to the influence of
Ezaldeen, with whom Wadood Bey had a verified connection.
17 aauaa fbi file, letter, E.E. Conroy, sac, to Director, fbi, July 30, 1943.
18 “Events Today,” New York Times September 11, 1940, 33. On Santesson’s relation to Louis
Glick, see Glick Military Intelligence Division file, Report, 4/6/1943, 2–3. On Santesson’s
life, see T Byro, October 14, 2008 (4:12 p.m.), “Hans Stefan Santesson, Etc.,” Dispatch from
New York, accessed October 8, 2012, http://dispatchfromnewyork.blogspot.com/2008/10/
hand-stefan-santesson-etc.html. Also see Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and
Naturalization; Committee on the Judiciary, “To Permit All People from India Residing in
the u.s. To Be Naturalized,” hrg-1947-sjs-0023.
19 “Moslems of the Moorish Center break 30-Day Fast,” New York Age, November [16?], 1940,
2. This article mentions that in attendance was one “Daud Fathel”—presumably Sheikh
Daoud Faisal. It is noteworthy that in a 1942 newspaper article, Price Bey was reported to
have recently attended an eid celebration at Faisal’s mosque; see “Moslems: New York
City’s 5000 Pray for Democracy,” P.M.’s Weekly, January 18, 1942, 49.
20 See “Religious Parliament Holds Session in Boro,” Brooklyn Eagle, November 4, 1940, 4;
“Events Today,” New York Times, September 23, 1941, 27; “Many Faiths Join in a Prayer for
Peace,” New York Times January 2, 1942, 13; “Meetings and Lectures,” New York Times,
December 8, 1945, 12; “Interdenominational,” New York Times, April 17, 1948, 16.
Uniting Muslim Communities 265

­immigrants: the Academy of Islam (aoi).21 This international Pan-Islamic

organization was originally founded in 1938 in England by a female Muslim
reformer from India, Atiya Begum Rahamin. In the fall of the next year, she
opened up a branch in New York, leaving it in the hands of local immigrants,
mostly Indians. By 1943 the group was very multiethnic: it had several African
American converts, some of whom were aoi leaders;22 its president, Sheikh
Omar Ali, was a man of mixed Arab, French, and Assyrian blood with Catholic
roots;23 its vice president was an Indian named Mukhtar Ahmad; and its assis-
tant treasurer was a Saudi member of the ymma named Sheik Khalil al-
Rawaf.24 In December 1944, al-Rawaf—who, as we will see, was one of the most
influential figures in New York and the national Pan-Islamic scenes—lectured
at the Islamic Center alongside George Kheirallah.25
The Pan-Islamic, multiethnic attitude being fostered in New York fit per-
fectly with the project of the former aia network, and they would soon be
brought together. For scholars, one of the more well-known examples of the
connection between the two communities appeared in 1945, when George
Kheirallah published in his Arab World magazine an article based on a speech
about Alexander Webb that was given by the white convert Emory Howard
Tunison, secretary for the New York Islamic Center.26 Tunison’s speech was
originally presented at the Islamic Center in November 1943 for “a fiftieth anni-
versary celebration in honor of the memory of this truly great American
Muslim.”27 The event, held under the auspices of the ‘Webb Memorial

21 See hctius vol. 2. Interestingly, one of the founding members was a Palestinian immi-
grant who had also been a founding member of New York’s ymma in 1924, Akel Allie; see
“A Brief Biography of Akel Allie,” Muslim Star 6, no. 22 (1966): 6, imjc Papers, Box 8, bhl.
22 The incorporation records for one of its auxiliary groups, the Young Women’s Moslem
Association, shows that all the incorporators had non-Muslim names, which is strong
evidence not only that these were converts, but that the aoi did indeed have several con-
verts and that they were taking leadership positions in the group.
23 aauaa fbi file, Report, 10/9/43, Philadelphia, No. 100–19940, 15–16.
24 aauaa fbi file, Report, 2/[8?]/44, Philadelphia, No. 100–19940, 6.
25 See “Program of the new york islamic center,” New York Times, December 12, 1944, 11.
26 Emory H. Tunison, “Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb: First American Muslim,” Arab
World 1, no. 3 [1945]: 13–18.
27 Osman to Akram, 4; “The Story of the First American Convert to Islam,” Light, April 8,
1944, 6. I am assuming this was the Islamic Center for two reasons: (a) in the 1944 article
just cited the speech is said to have been given at a meeting of Muslims at Steinway Hall,
which throughout the early 1940s was the same building used by the New York Islamic
Center (see the group’s numerous listings in the New York Times and New York Herald
Tribune during that time period) and (b) in 1945, Tunison was the Islamic Center’s secre-
tary (see Tunison, “Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb,” 13).
266 chapter 9

Committee’ and sponsored by the Islamic Center, the mbusa, and the mnic,28
was led by Nadirah. Nadirah had first learned about Webb in 1931 while reading
the preface to Ahmad’s The Teachings of Islam, which Webb had helped edit,29
and in the early 1940s, after meeting Tunison, a chiropractor and homeopathic
doctor who had recently converted to Islam,30 the two began researching
Webb’s life, even going as far as contacting his daughter.31 Tunison was in fact
the only white convert Nadirah knew in New York during the war, so it was only
the two converts and Webb’s daughter who presented at the meeting in
November.32 Essays based on the speeches of Tunison and Nadirah were both
soon published and have, since that time, served as the main shapers of the
popular narrative of Webb’s life, which tends to paint him in a rather romantic
light that is attractive to many middle-class converts.33 Webb is presented as an
intelligent, capable religious seeker who simply—if not innocently—con-
cludes that Islam is the most rational religion. Webb’s ambition is downplayed;
his connection with esotericism is briefly acknowledged, as are Rawson’s ties to
Masonry, but neither subject is thoroughly investigated; and larger questions
about the ability of a non-Christian religious organization to succeed in the
1890s us are simply not considered, outside of somewhat superficial discus-
sions of the significance of Theosophy and the World’s Parliament of Religions.
Interestingly, Nadirah’s November 1943 meeting was not the first time a
‘Webb Memorial’ project was being discussed in the network of white Muslims
in wartime America. In December 1942, Louis Glick had published a new peri-
odical called Moslem American—Chaplain Letters, which stated that the paper
was issued in order to promote the “Muhammed Webb Memorial Mafjid [mas-
jid, mosque], Lyons Valley, California.”34 In fact, Glick was probably the person
who had initially come up with the idea for ‘Webb Memorial’ projects. In 1950,
a writer named Jermoe Kearful reported that in 1933 a “Mohammed Webb

28 “The Story of the First American Convert to Islam,” Light, April 8, 1944, 6; Osman to Akram, 4.
29 “The Story of the First American Convert to Islam,” Light, April 16, 1944, 7–8.
30 On his professional background, see his advertisement in the New York Call, May 26, 1922,
sect. 2 p. 12 and Benedict Lust, ed., Universal Naturopathic Encyclopedia, Directory and
Buyers’ Guide: Year Book of Drugless Therapy for 1918–19 (Butler, nj: Benedict Lust, 1918),
909. That Tunison was a recent convert is attested to by Nadirah in Osman to Akram, 2.
31 “The Story of the First American Convert to Islam,” Light, April 16, 1944, 8.
32 See the program for the meeting in Osman to Akram, 4.
33 Nadirah’s speech was published as “The Story of the First American Convert to Islam,” in
the Lahori journal The Light on April 8, 1944, 6–7 and April 16, 1944, 5–8.
34 moa fbi file, Report, 1/15/1944, Pittsburgh file 100–6685, 3. Unfortunately, only short
excerpts from this newspaper were reprinted in this file—we do not have a complete
copy.
Uniting Muslim Communities 267

Memorial Hanifah Mazjid [sic]” was established by American Muslims “under

the aegis of an impassioned, respected and high-minded, if somewhat eccen-
tric man”—a description that suggests Glick.35 This organization was report-
edly formed “particularly for the purpose of arranging for the observance of
‘high holy days’” and “Webb’s name was used in tribute to his leadership.” There
is even some reason to believe that in 1933, the fortieth anniversary of Webb’s
movement, Glick put on a ‘Webb Memorial’ meeting similar to the one held in
1943.36 In addition, according to Kearful, in 1938 the Webb Memorial Mazjid set
up a mosque and ‘promotional committee.’ This mosque, of course, was never
actually built, but Glick presumably did do work for the ‘promotional commit-
tee’ when he traveled to various cities with strong Muslim communities in
1939. Nadirah, being connected to the Lahoris, immigrants, and Muharrem,
would have undoubtedly learned about Glick’s efforts at the time. Her estab-
lishing the New York Islamic Center and helping to foster multiethnic Muslim
unity may therefore have been inspired and perhaps facilitated by Glick’s 1930s
activities and the network he cultivated.

American Muslim Rights in Wartime

A Glick-Nadirah connection would help explain an additional important

aspect of Nadirah’s position in the American Muslim community. In a
December 1943 letter, Nadirah wrote that she knew several Muslims of a vari-
ety of races in the military—including both white and black converts.37 Since
it is unlikely that Nadirah could have known many Muslim soldiers through
just the handful of groups with which she had contact in New York, it is likely
that she was linked to a larger network of people who were connected to
American Muslim soldiers—and Glick’s new journal was probably an impor-
tant resource for them. Chaplain Letters—which was produced under the aus-
pices of not the aia but an organization with a slightly different name: the

35 Jerome Kearful, “The Saga of Consul Mohammed Webb,” American Foreign Service Journal
(January 1950): 34. I am grateful to Brent Singleton for bringing this article to my
attention.
36 Akbar Muhammad writes: “At least two memorial meetings have been organized in
[Webb’s] honor, the last being as late as 1943”; see Akbar Muhammad, “Muslims in the
United States: An Overview of Organizations, Doctrines, and Problems,” in The Islamic
Impact, eds. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Byron Haines, and Ellison Findly (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1984), 199.
37 Osman to Akram, 2–3.
268 chapter 9

Islam Association of America (iaa)38—stated on its cover page that it was “For
Moslems in the United States Armed services, but free to all who request.”39
This emphasis on the military was reinforced by Glick’s use of the word ‘chap-
lain’ to describe American Muslim religious leaders. Early American Muslim
imams did sometimes use English Christian terms, such as ‘reverend’ and
‘priest,’ to describe their position in the Muslim community, but ‘chaplain’ had
probably never been used before. And, unlike the other two words, ‘chaplain’ is
a term that implies the specific role of a religious leader who serves a more or
less secular organization, such as the military.
The creation of this journal sprang out of an earlier related effort. In 1941,
the Webb Memorial Mazjid—in other words, Glick—had established what he
called the American Moslem Committee for Defense, an organization designed
specifically to address American Muslim issues related to the war.40 Perhaps in
an attempt to protect the practice of Islam in America during wartime, when
the religion might have been perceived as a threat, Glick, as Kearful reported,

drew up a constitution requiring that all American Moslem officials be

American citizens, that American Moslems refrain from “gambling, sell-
ing liquor, and similar enterprises,” and that a finance committee be set
up to administer the organization’s funds.41

Then, in 1943, Glick—presumably through his Committee for Defense—was

initiating a campaign to try to make the us military recognize and provide sup-
port for the religious beliefs and requirements of Muslim soldiers. Besides his
Chaplain Letters propaganda, there are two known aspects of Glick’s campaign.
First, he had the iaa issue medallions, to be worn with Muslim soldiers’ dog

38 There are only two pieces of evidence that the aia—under that specific name—contin-
ued to function after 1933, and they are both rather weak, as evidence goes. The first is a
1943 reference made in an Indian Muslim journal that sometimes reworded English-
language phrases (“Islam Mission for America,” Light, May 16, 1943, 3) and the second is a
mention of the aia, wia, and the New York American Islamic Social Centre located in
single paragraph giving an overview of Islam in the us, published in an Italian-authored
book in 1942 without citation, so it is not certain as to whether the author was relying on
new or old information (Carlo Gasbarri, La via di Allah: origini, storia, sviluppi, istituzioni
del mondo islamico e la sua posizione di fronte al Cristianesimo [Milano: Ulrico Hoepli,
1942], 279–80).
39 moa fbi file, Report, 1/15/1944, Pittsburgh file 100–6685, 3.
40 Kearful, “The Saga.”
41 Ibid.
Uniting Muslim Communities 269

tags, which contained the shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith.42 He also
had drafted a proposed bill for Congress “to correct existing injustice” and pro-
vide equal privileges to “certain minority religious groups.”43 The iaa’s bill
stated that members of minority religious groups should be

assigned to special units on the basis of their religious preference so that

their spiritual needs may be cared for by their respective leaders, who
shall in every case be recognized as ministers of religion [i.e., ‘chaplains’],
and that members of any group for whose religious interests it is imprac-
ticable to provide ministry shall be exempted from service or, if already
inducted, shall be honorably discharged.44

This ambitious project, which may have been the first of its kind in the us, was
almost certainly born out of Glick’s own experiences of feelings of religious
rejection in the military in the 1910s.45 In the end, however, the proposed bill
was a losing cause from the start. Its bold proposition of discharging Muslim
soldiers who had no chaplains would of course not be taken seriously by
Congress. Still, it at least alerted some us politicians to the concerns of their
Muslim constituencies and perhaps paved the way for a similar bill—one that
would allow for Muslims’ religious identities to be indicated on their dog
tags—that would be proposed a decade later and achieved much greater
Muslim support.46
In the later part of 1943, Nadirah also became involved with the issue of the
relations between American Muslims and the us military.47 It began in October
when Muharrem forwarded Nadirah a letter from a twenty-one-year-old white

42 “Moslem Medallions,” Hobbies (May 1943): 23.

43 “Chaplain or Exemption for Religious Minorities,” Christian Century, December 1, 1943,
1389–90.
44 Ibid.
45 Glick’s 1919 criticisms of what he believed were the military’s violations of the First
Amendment included the point that the government paid Christian chaplains. While
Glick was ostensibly critiquing this practice for violating the First Amendment, it is likely
that, being a Jew who did not want to out his religious identity, this was his way of trying
to obtain equal religious treatment; see the copy of letter, Louis Glick to Secretary of the
Navy, May 5, 1920 (originally written November 18, 1919), Glick ompf.
46 See Chapter 10.
47 The following information was extracted from three sources: Nadirah’s December 1943
letter to Wali Akram (cited above) and Civilian Public Service (cps) files of Nazeer Aleem
(Holman Whitson) and Marshall Hodgson, from the Civilian Public Service Personal
Papers and Collected Materials, Swarthmore College Peace Collection.
270 chapter 9

Quaker and conscientious objector named Marshall G.S. Hodgson. Hodgson

was friendly with Nazeer Aleem (née Holman Whitson), a black Muslim—and
the only Muslim—in the country’s conscientious objector camps during the
war.48 Nazeer had been a leading member in the Qadiani- and Sunni-influenced
African American mosque led by Wali Akram in Cleveland, Ohio.49 At some
point in 1943, Hodgson learned through a published report that was circulating
in conscientious objector camps that other African American Muslims who
refused to fight in the war were not being held as conscientious objectors but
were being imprisoned. He was aware that Aleem’s religious leader, Akram,
was himself not a pacifist, so Hodgson assumed that Aleem was not connected
to these groups. Hodgson was at least partially right: the Muslims who were
imprisoned for draft evasion were members of the sectarian Moorish Science
Temple and Nation of Islam, and the particular people imprisoned were from
specific sub-sects of these groups that rejected American citizenship. However,
Aleem was possibly a former member of one of these movements, as before he
joined the Cleveland group he had first come to Islam in 1930 while living in
Detroit, which was where the mst and Nation were strongest at the time—and
this could explain why he is the only known Ahmadi or Sunni to become an
official conscientious objector.50
In any case, Hodgson, not knowing the complexity of African American
Islam at the time, assumed that all the imprisoned Muslims might need for
obtaining conscientious objector status was help, especially from a white per-
son, who might have more sway among authorities due to the prevalence of

48 For more on Aleem, see hctius vol. 2.

49 Robert Dannin’s research into Wali Akram’s mosque (for his Black Pilgrimage to Islam
[New York: Oxford University Press, 2002]) inaccurately suggested that in 1937 Akram
rejected all Ahmadi groups and turned to Sunni Islam. This is contradicted by three facts.
First is that, while in 1937 Akram did change the direction of his mosque and renamed his
organization the Moslem Ten Year Plan, incorporation records from Ohio indicate that it
was officially called The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, & Moslem Ten Year Plan, Inc.,
and this reference to Ahmadiyya Islam was not changed even in 1942 when the records
were amended. Second, when Aleem applied for conscientious objector status in 1941, he
provided the us government the group’s ‘articles of faith’ and ‘initiation’ forms, which
explicitly stated that the group believed Ghulam Ahmad was a messiah (see Aleem’s cps
file). Finally, Akram proposed using a bay’at (pledge of loyalty)—an Ahmadi practice—at
the Uniting Islamic Societies (see below); Dannin was unable to explain this because he
assumed Akram was Sunni at the time. In the mid to late 1940s, however, Akram did move
towards Sunni Islam.
50 Aleem’s conversion in 1930 is implied in his April 13, 1941 letter to the National Service
Board for Religious Objectors, contained in his cps file; his living in Detroit at that time is
indicated in the 1930 census.
Uniting Muslim Communities 271

racist feelings towards blacks.51 He first wrote a letter to Muharrem, whose lit-
erature Aleem had probably shown him. Then after Muharrem forwarded the
letter to Nadirah, Hodgson gave Nadirah Wali Akram’s name and address (pro-
vided, again, by Aleem), for Nadirah to contact him to ask for advice. Nadirah
introduced herself to Akram by mentioning her essays in Muharrem’s publica-
tions, which she assumed Akram had read, and she expressed her hope that
Cleveland and New York’s Muslim communities would develop a relationship.
Akram’s reply is not known, but he would have been far more familiar with the
mst and the Nation than Nadirah, who was apparently as clueless as Hodgson
(her contact with the mst being only with the Sunni-influenced mnic). But,
whether from Akram or one of the former Moors of New York, Nadirah would
have probably eventually learned the political positions of the mst and the
Nation, and it seems the matter was dropped by mid-1944.
In the end, there were two important lasting legacies of this episode. The first
was that it apparently sparked an interest in Islam and its multiethnic dimen-
sions for the Quaker Hodgson. After the war, he would go on to graduate school
and specialize in Islamic studies. He then obtained a position at the University
of Chicago from where he became an acquaintance of the Nation of Islam leader
Elijah Muhammad and wrote two major works: one dealing with the Isma‘ili
Assassins and the other, the posthumously-published and highly revered Venture
of Islam, examining in three volumes the history of Islamicate world. The second
legacy of this incident was it further connected the Muslims of New York, par-
ticularly its Muslim unity-focused white convert leader, with the former aia net-
work and with the black converts in Cleveland. Although Nadirah’s influence in
this community was limited—she failed even to enlist a single person into a new
group she created, the Muslim-American Citizens Society—the making of these
connections further linked Muslims across the country and helped reinforce the
multiethnic Islamic unity that the former aia network had been fostering.52

Uniting Islamic Societies of America

Another project that Glick’s Chaplain Letters endorsed was one that he had
been working on for over a decade. Glick was now proposing an organization
called the ‘Committee for the American National Congress of Mafjids
and Moslem Societies’ whose purpose was “to serve all national interests of

51 Osman to Akram, 2; Hodgson cps file, Letter, Hodgson to Huldah W. Randell, Advisory
Section, February 3, 1944.
52 Osman to Akram, 1.
272 chapter 9

Moslems; particularly to foster American representation in all international

Islam conferences and affairs.”53 This, then, combined Glick’s old desires for a
national umbrella organization and an international association of mosque
societies that would meet at international congresses and represent a new
Muslim caliphate. It was probably this American National Congress, or some-
thing similar, that Glick was promoting during his 1939 visits to Buffalo, Detroit,
and Cleveland. It was possibly also what was behind the North American
Kalifat that first appeared in Los Angeles that year and would reappear on
posters posted around Washington, dc in the spring of 1944.54
Interestingly, the majority of the extant documents that reference this
Congress are the fbi files for African American Muslim groups from the early
1940s. At the time, the fbi, concerned with draft evasion and the presence of
anti-American views as the us entered the Second World War, began investigat-
ing various African American Islamic organizations across the country after
hearing rumors about such sentiments being expressed in some of their meet-
ings.55 In Pennsylvania, as a result of learning that some of the rumors pointed
to a number of African American-majority Sunni communities in the state, the
fbi started investigating the Pittsburgh-based Moslems of America (moa) and
Muhammed Ezaldeen’s Philadelphia/Camden-based Addeynu Allahe Universal
Arabic Association (aauaa). While examining the mail of the leaders of these
organizations, the fbi found copies of Glick’s Moslem American—Chaplain
Letters,56 which endorsed the moa’s head, the Palestinian immigrant and gro-
cery store owner Mohammed Jalajel, as a recognized and respected Muslim
‘chaplain.’57 The fbi also learned that African American Sunnis had several
books and pamphlets published by Muharrem Nadji, and, in fact, one particu-
lar unnamed book published by Nadji was used at every moa meeting.58

53 Ibid.
54 Willard Edwards, “Seeing Flashes of Green? It’s 4th Term Omen!” Chicago Daily Tribune,
May 1, 1944, 11. In this instance, the Kalifat revealed the formation of “a Moslem party for
political action” that would work to support President Roosevelt’s reelection. The poster
also indicated that the group was headquartered in Los Angeles and its leader went by the
name Savinien, a figure who would appear again several years later.
55 For more on this topic, see hctius vol. 2.
56 Moslems of America (moa) fbi file, Report, 1/15/1944, Pittsburgh file 100–6685, 3–4;
Addeynu Allahe Universal Arabic Association (aauaa) fbi file, Report, 2/8/1944,
Philadelphia file 100–19940, 9.
57 moa fbi file, Report, 1/15/1944, Pittsburgh file 100–6685, 3.
58 Unfortunately which book this was was not noted in the reports. See aauaa fbi file,
Report, 2/8/1944, Philadelphia file, 100–19940, 9; aauaa fbi file, Report, 3/24/1944,
Newark file 100–18924, 39; moa fbi file, Report, 9/5/1944, Pittsburgh file, 100–6685, 3.
Uniting Muslim Communities 273

It does not seem to be a coincidence, then, that it was around the time that
the fbi discovered Glick and Muharrem’s materials in the African American
Sunni community that that same community had established its own national
organization to unite Muslim organizations throughout the country. The
Uniting Islamic Societies of America (uisa) was established in 1943 and would
hold four annual meetings before its dissolution in 1947.59 The man who had
reportedly originally come up with the idea of the uisa was Nasir Ahmad, an
African American Muslim whose first exposure to Islam was in Pittsburgh in
the late 1920s when he joined the mst. Soon, however, several people in his
mst branch were upset with what they believed were the exploitive practices
of the branch’s head, and so, particularly after the mst’s prophet died, many
quit the Pittsburgh temple. In 1930, Muhammad Yusuf Khan, the Qadiani mis-
sionary who had spent years converting African Americans, arrived in town,
came into contact with former mst members, and made Nasir Ahmad (for-
merly Walter Smith Bey) the head black Qadiani in the Ohio River Valley
region. Building off the remains of the fractured mst, Ahmad quickly estab-
lished several mosques and connected himself to the other existing Muslim
communities in the region. It seems, however, that Khan was threatened by
Ahmad’s power, and in 1934, out of a desire to see Ahmad’s influence reduced,
decided to send him to Philadelphia, which would have been too far away from
Pittsburgh for Ahmad to maintain a real effect on the Ohio River Valley
Muslims. This would prove to be a poor decision for Khan, however, as in
Philadelphia Ahmad became affiliated with a well-connected Egyptian Muslim
who was possibly associated with the Supreme Muslim Council. Within just a
few months, the Egyptian helped Ahmad lead a revolt against Khan and con-
vert most of the Pennsylvania Qadianis to Sunni Islam. Before full stability
could be achieved, however, in the fall of 1935 yet another split occurred in the
community when a Yemeni proselytizer was able to convince a small contin-
gent to break away and incorporate as the Moslems of America. Soon after,
another group of Pittsburgh Muslims joined up with the Indian Lahoris with
whom Harry and the Nadjis had been corresponding. Then, to make matters
more complicated, in late 1936, Ezaldeen, the former Moor who had spent sev-
eral years training with the ymma in Egypt, returned to the country, connected
with various Islamic organizations in New York City, and subsequently joined
up with Ahmad to create the aauaa in Camden, to which Ahmad helped con-
vert several moa members in various cities. Meanwhile, in Cleveland, Wali

59 Dannin claims that the group did not hold a meeting in 1945, but this is inaccurate; see
“Honoring Mohammed,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 3, 1945, 10. The uisa will be discussed
in much greater detail in hctius vol. 2.
274 chapter 9

Akram, who had been part of Ahmad’s group, split from everyone in 1937, run-
ning his mosque as an independent Qadiani community for the next several
years, although he also maintained numerous ties with Sunnis.60
By the early 1940s, probably exhausted and disappointed by the sectarian
chaos, and probably at least partially influenced by Glick’s efforts to unite
American Muslim ‘societies,’ Nasir Ahmad decided to work towards reconcili-
ation and unification among all the different Muslim communities with which
he had contact.61 He organized the Uniting Islamic Societies of America and at
its first meeting in August 1943 appeared both African American-majority
organizations and a number of New York multiethnic groups that were tied to
the former aia network: (1) the moa; (2) the aauaa; (3) Akram’s Cleveland
community; (4) Muhammad Yusuf Khan’s Cincinnati-based Qadiani group
known as the Universal Muslim League of the Ahmadia Muslim Missionary;
(5) a group known as the Temple of Islam;62 (6) the New York-based multi-
ethnic Academy of Islam; (7) Sheikh Daoud Faisal’s own New York-based
multi-ethnic group, called the Islamic Mission of America; (8) the mnic; and
(9) an organization referred to in the convention’s paperwork as the Islamic
Association of Muslims.63
It is possible that last of these groups was in fact Glick’s iaa. An fbi report
shows that by the fall of 1943 Glick had developed connections with the aauaa
in Philadelphia and possibly Detroit, where he was now living.64 During the
1944 uisa meeting, furthermore, Glick’s presence was explicitly recorded.65 At

60 For a much more detailed account of these events, see hctius vol. 2.
61 Dannin, Pilgrimage, 51; aauaa fbi file, Report, 10/9/1943, Philadelphia file 100–19940, 2.
62 It is not clear if this was the name of another known group, or an as yet undocumented
organization. In the fbi report on the Convention, it is mentioned that an Islam Temple
of New York City attended, but it is not known if these were the same organizations. See
aauaa fbi file, Philadelphia, No. 100–19940. It is possible that this group was a faction of
the Allah Temple of Islam, the original name of the Nation of Islam. However, we have no
other direct evidence to verify this; and, in any case, it is highly unlikely that this was the
faction led by Elijah Muhammad, as his group, at the time, had neither a New York nor a
Philadelphia branch; plus, most of its leaders were incarcerated in 1943.
63 aauaa fbi file, 10/9/1943, Philadelphia file 100–19940, 17.
64 In the fall of 1943, Glick had a letter of unknown content sent from the Philadelphia
aauaa headquarters to the moa head Jalajel, and in that letter Glick indicates that he is
living in Detroit, which happened to be the location of an Ezaldeen-led branch of the
uisa. This was probably the local aauaa, which was locally led by one Karma Jee Karachi,
who would soon break from Ezaldeen. See Mohamad Salem Jalajel fbi file, Report,
11/20/1943, Pittsburgh file 100–5711, 6; Development of Our Own fbi file, Report, 8/1/1944,
Detroit file 100–5209, 2.
65 uisa fbi file, Report, 9/12/1944, Cleveland file 100–14077, 2.
Uniting Muslim Communities 275

that time, he was said to be representing the Islamic Association of California—

the fact that he used the term ‘Islamic Association’ for this group is consistent
with both his iaa and the uisa’s ‘Islamic Association of Muslims.’ Interestingly,
however, at the 1943 convention, a flyer that was passed out mentioned
the Islamic Association of Muslims, but the only group associated with it
on the flyer was Sheikh Daoud’s Brooklyn group.66 Also, Nasir Ahmad,
whose Philadelphia community sometimes went by the name of the Islamic
Association of Philadelphia,67 gave a speech in which he said that the
Convention was “a meeting of the Koranic faith and that the Koran was the
Bible of the Islamic Association of Muslims.”68 The widespread presence of the
‘Islamic Association’ name—a name that Glick had been using for his organi-
zations since the early 1930s—may therefore indicate a common influence
from Glick.
Nevertheless, we should not jump to the conclusion that Glick had been the
person responsible for either popularizing this name or creating the national
organization that would later become the uisa. The greatest evidence against
this is the fact that when Glick attended the 1944 Convention, he came only as
a visitor—not as a delegate—and when given the opportunity to speak to the
uisa, he had very little to say, other than to compliment the uisa for its orga-
nization efforts.69 One would imagine that if Glick had in fact been originally
responsible for organizing these groups, he would have had a more significant
presence at the Conventions. The most likely scenario, then, is that Glick had
succeeded in attracting a few of the members of the African American Sunni
community to his iaa/societies idea, but that they had only used this as inspi-
ration to create a new organization that Glick—not being African American
himself, and not being nearly as well-connected to these black Sunni and
Lahori communities as Nasir Ahmad was—could not have established on his
own. Still, through his various efforts, Glick seems to have contributed to these
Muslims’ organizing, and appears to have even influenced their political think-
ing by introducing the concept of arguing for Muslim chaplains.70 More impor-
tantly for Glick, he had finally achieved a goal for which he had striven for

66 aauaa fbi file, Report, 10/9/1943, Philadelphia file 100–19940.

67 It also used the name Islamic Center of Philadelphia.
68 aauaa fbi file, Report, 10/9/1943, Philadelphia file 100–19940.
69 uisa fbi file, Report, 9/12/1944, Cleveland file 100–14077, 2.
70 In 1951, the fbi learned that some of the members of Nasir Ahmad’s new group, the
International Muslim Brotherhood, resisted registering for the draft, and one of the argu-
ments they used to support their stance was that “the Armed Forces provide no Moslem
chaplains”—the critique Glick had apparently invented and popularized. See the Elijah
Muhammad fbi file, Report, 2/1/1952, Philadelphia file 25–26094, 4.
276 chapter 9

many years: helping to unify a large, multiethnic American Muslim communi-

ty.71 The ability of the former aia network to connect with African Americans
was partially due to their sharing mixed influences from Ahmadis and Sunnis,
but also the fact that, like Glick’s aia network, the African American groups
were mostly populated by converts. Unlike most Muslim immigrants of the
period, these converts had concerns that were reflective of a people thoroughly
familiar with American society.
There was one important additional connection between the uisa and the
now enlarged former aia network. New York’s Saudi Sheik al-Rawaf was
appointed to be the uisa’s “liaison officer to maintain relations with foreign-
born Muslims.”72 The wealthy son of a governor in southern Saudi Arabia, al-
Rawaf first came to the us in 1935 to pursue various business and educational
ventures.73 However, during his fifteen-year stay, al-Rawaf did not limit his
activities to worldly ones; he visited several us Muslim communities, includ-
ing those in Detroit and California,74 and in 1936–37, he was the imam for the
Cedar Rapids mosque, one of the oldest mosques still in use in the us.75 Then,
in 1943–44, after briefly joining the us Army, he served as an assistant treasurer
and Arabic instructor at the Academy of Islam and interacted with many

71 However, the desire to work with whites was not at all unanimous among African
American Sunnis and Lahoris. Indeed, this was a topic of much tension during the 1940s.
For more on this topic, see hctius vol. 2.
72 aauaa fbi file, Report, 10/9/43, Philadelphia file 100–19940, 21; “Moslems Chant Prayers”;
Dannin, Pilgrimage, 52. Dannin incorrectly identifies al-Rawaf as an “Indian immigrant
who operated a trading concern in midtown Manhattan.”
73 Al-Rawaf’s time in the us has yet to be fully documented. The following are sources that I
have collected on his stay: Philip Harsham, “Islam in Iowa,” Aramco World Magazine 27,
no. 6 (1976): 30–36; Yahya Aossey Jr., “Fifty Years of Islam in Iowa,” Muslim World League
Journal (August 1982): 50–54; “He’s a Sheik,” Nevada State Journal, April 6, 1937, 8; Joplin
News Herald (mo), February 26, 1940, 10; Carol Bird, “Debunking Sheik Lore,” Springfield
Sunday Union and Republican (Mass.), March 8, 1940, 3D (this story ran in several papers
throughout the country); “Arabian Sheik Visits Valley,” Charleston Daily Mail (wv),
October 22, 1941, 15; “Sheik Visits City,” Charleston Daily Mail, October 23, 1941, 14; “Sheik’s
a Private,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 20, 1943, 4; “Genuine Arabian Sheik Serves as Army
Private at Camp Lee,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 3, 1943, 6; Norton Webb, “Professor
‘un the Wide Horizon’,” Christian Science Monitor, December 27, 1946; “Emir Saud to Fly
on Truman Plane,” New York Times, February 17, 1947, 2; “Public Notices,” New York Times,
September 22, 1947, 3; Constance Wellman, “I Married a Sheik,” San Antonio Light, August
15, 1948, 9 (this story ran in several papers); “Wife Shuns Sheik’s Name,” New York Times,
July 3, 1951, 31.
74 “Emir Saud to Fly.”
75 See Harsham, “Islam in Iowa,” and Aossey, “Fifty Years.”
Uniting Muslim Communities 277

Muslims in different New York organizations.76 In 1946, al-Rawaf also became

the imam of a Manhattan mosque run by the local ymma.77 All the while, he
supported the growing us Muslim unification efforts by publishing several
Islam-themed works, which were almost always widely circulated among the
uisa and New York Muslim communities. In addition to authoring a beginning
Arabic pamphlet in 1943 as well as a 1944 booklet discussing basic Islamic ideas
and how to perform prayers,78 in 1947 al-Rawaf published an edition of Ahmad
Ahmad Galwas’s popular The Religion of Islam, a 200-page introduction to
Islam, which was fairly influential for African American Sunnis.79 Al-Rawaf’s
most significant publishing contribution, however, was the 1946 publication of
Yusuf Ali’s English translation of the Qurʾan.80 This was the first twentieth-
century us printing of a non-Ahmadi-influenced English translation of the
Qurʾan and it became relatively popular among American readers throughout
the country.81 Through these various activities and his using the national
Muslim networks that the aia and uisa had created, al-Rawaf supplied the
growing us Sunni-Ahmadi community with important intellectual tools that
would further increase their unification, even after the uisa fell apart in 1947.
The ties with New York immigrant Muslims remained important for African
Americans, and in 1949 apparently two new groups were created to institutional-
ize these connections, both of which appear to have been either revivals of or

76 aauaa fbi file, Report, 2/[8?]/44, Philadelphia, No. 100–19940, 6. For more on the aoi see
hctius vol. 2.
77 This is listed on the advertisements for his edition of the Qurʾan; see below.
78 aauaa fbi file, Report, 2/[8?]/44, Philadelphia file 100–19940, 6; aauaa fbi file, Report,
10/9/43, Philadelphia file 100–19940, 20; Sheikh Khalil Al Rawaf, A Brief Resumé of the
Principles of Al-Islam and Pillars of Faith (New York: Tobia Press, 1944).
79 Ahmad Ahmad Galwas, The Religion of Islam ([New York]: [Sheikh Khalil al-Rawaf], 1947).
PhD candidate Donna Auston has informed me that during the 1950s this book was the
most important study-text for the African American Muslims in Philadelphia, where it
was referred to as “The Ghalwash.” Email message to the author, March 28, 2013.
80 Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Quran (New York: Hafner, 1946). On al-Rawaf’s involvement,
see Stechert-Hafner Book News 1, no. 2 (1946): 1 and the “The Holy Al-Quran in Arabic and
English” and “The Holy Al-Quran” advertisements that ran in the New York Times between
the fall of 1946 and the spring of 1947. In 1950, the Saudi government donated an addi-
tional 4,385 copies of this version of the Qurʾan, along with numerous copies of Galwas’
book, to the Mosque Foundation, which had been established for building a mosque in
Washington, dc, for both Muslims at the mosque and so that the books could be sold to
help raise money for constructing the mosque. See Muhammad Abdul-Rauf, History of
the Islamic Center: From Dream to Reality (Washington, dc: Islamic Center, 1978), 25.
81 See, for example, two letters on his edition in “Letters to the Editor,” New York Times,
November 22, 1953, BR49.
278 chapter 9

splinters from the mbusa. Nasir Ahmad led a small number of aauaa members
in establishing what was sometimes called the International Muslim Brotherhood
(imb), to teach Islam in Philadelphia, and, perhaps, Harlem.82 Around that same
time, Ahmad’s protégé, Talib Dawud, along with the former mbusa leader Ibrahim
Choudry, created a national umbrella organization group known as the Moslem
Brotherhood of America, Inc. (and later known as the Moslem Brotherhood,
u.s.a.), which, like the imb, had connections to both Harlem and Philadelphia, as
well as other cities, such as Detroit and Youngstown.83 Characteristic of the diver-
sity of Islamic views within the community, although the Philadelphia-based
groups remained connected to the New York community and used Galwas’s The
Religion of Islam, they also maintained ties with the Qadianis through the late
1950s.84 The national Islamic network that Glick and other white Muslims had
helped create was therefore finally becoming solidified.

Nilla Cram Cook

The goal of uniting Muslims was not limited to American converts living on
United States soil. In a February 1942 dispatch, the us minister to Iran, Louis
G. Dreyfus, Jr., described the recent Pan-Islamic activities in Tehran of the
American, and “apparently devout Moslem,” Nilla Cram Cook:85

Miss Cook has been frequenting mosques, discussing theology with reli-
gious leaders, [and] working for return to purer Islamic concepts […] She
is interested in a Pan-Islam movement […]86

82 “History,” Quba Institute, accessed August 31, 2012, http://www.qubainstitute,com/about/

history/; Dannin, Pilgrimage, 61.
83 E.U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1962), 313; Paul Tobenkin, “Moslems Here Meet at Hall to
Mark Holy Day,” New York Herald Tribune, October 3, 1949, 7; John Reynolds, “Foto Facts,”
Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 23, 1950, 9. The relationship between these two “Moslem
Brotherhood” groups remains unclear.
84 “Three Hundred Attend Meeting of Islamites,” Cleveland Call and Post, September 8, 1951,
3A; Essien-Udom, Black, 313; Report, Aliya Hassen, “Muslim Organizations in New York
Area,” Aliya Hassen Papers, Malcolm X folder, bhl. Dawud was expelled from the Qadianis
in 1958; he will be discussed more in hcti vol. 2.
85 Mohammad Gholi Majd, August 1941: The Anglo-Russian Occupation of Iran and Change of
Shahs (Lanham: University Press of America, 2012), 386–88. I am, again, indebted to Brent
Singleton for bringing this important figure to my attention.
86 Majd, August 1941, 387–88.
Uniting Muslim Communities 279

According to the minister, the charming and intelligent Cook had recently
“caused something of a stir in religious circles.” When visiting mosques with a
Qurʾan that she had personally translated into English, Muslim women report-
edly fell onto Cook, kissing both her clothing and her translation of the holy
book. “Speakers in the mosques,” Dreyfus reported, “refer to her openly in their
talks as one who brings the true word from across the seas and teaches a purer
Islamic ideal.”87 By March 1945, before the war had reached its conclusion,
news of Nilla’s conversion, her liberal views, and her translation of the Qurʾan
had made their way to the American press, cementing her legacy in the history
of American converts to Islam.88
Unlike the other prominent friend converts of the 1940s, Nilla Cram Cook
and her views of Islam were strongly connected to the alternative religious cur-
rents that had developed in the nineteenth century. Born in 1910 to the theater
producer and author George Cram Cook, Nilla was exposed early on to the
well-educated, liberal religious views of her free thinking family.89 George
shared with his daughter his deep interest in ancient Indian culture and lan-
guage and their theorized connections with the ancient Greek world.90 Nilla’s
paternal grandmother, meanwhile, was a Theosophist who believed in reincar-
nation, owned books on Eastern philosophy, and took a six-year-old Nilla to see
a Theosophical Society dramatization of Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia.91
Throughout her childhood, in fact, Nilla—who was raised with little knowl-
edge of Christianity—was frequently drawn to the many oriental-themed reli-
gious and cultural elements that permeated her privileged upbringing. Visions
of Hindu temples, fascination with the Buddha, and fantasies of medieval
caliphs dominated her young imagination. At eight, Nilla even read for herself
the Arabian Nights, whose stories would long stay with her and later shape her
adult experiences.92 No single religion could retain Nilla, however; from her
childhood through at least her early adult life, she possessed a strong belief in

87 Ibid.
88 C.L. Sulzberger, “The Female ‘Luther of Islam,’” Milwaukee Journal, March 14, 1945, 12.
89 On George Cram Cook, see Susan Glaspell, The Road to the Temple (New York: Frederick
A. Stokes and Company, 1927). For Nilla’s own accounts of her childhood, see her My Road
to India (New York: Lee Furman, 1939), 3–16 and “What Religion Means to Me,” Forum and
Century 95, no. 2 (February 1936): 69–75.
90 Cook, “What Religion,” 71.
91 Cook, My Road, 4; Cook, “What Religion,” 69. In the latter work, which was published in
1936, Cook denies that her grandmother was in the ts; however, this was changed in 1939’s
My Road.
92 Cook, My Road, 6. Nilla makes frequent reference to the Arabian Nights throughout My
Road.
280 chapter 9

the idea that all religions were manifestations of the same eternal, natural reli-
gion.93 Nilla was at heart a theosophical perennialist, like many of the esoteri-
cist converts of the previous century.
As a theosophist, though, Nilla placed great value in studying the world’s
various religions, and desired to pursue her own unique religious journey. And,
like for so many other theosophists, Nilla’s religious journey eventually led her,
in 1931, to India, the land of the Hindu temples that she believed she had envi-
sioned as a toddler.94 Here, she traveled widely, visiting numerous towns, reli-
gious leaders, and political figures—Hindu, Muslim, and Theosophical. After
brief stints as a teacher and student of ancient Greek and Indian thought, Nilla
also became the first American to join Gandhi’s movement, being deeply
attracted to the ascetic’s work with and for India’s untouchables. Her religious
yearnings were still not fully quenched, however, and she continued to explore.
It was in India, in fact, where Nilla first read the Qurʾan, which revitalized her
spirits when both she and her young son became ill.95 Still, Nilla was not yet a
Muslim.
It seems that Nilla’s turn to Islam, like many of the other friend converts of
the period, was largely born out of an interest in spreading love and humanity
to non-white people. Gandhi’s greatest impact on Nilla, she would later recall,
was in his influencing her development of a deeper commitment to devoting
her activities to helping the world’s various untouchables.96 However, unlike
Gandhi, Nilla believed that such work was being done best by the Muslims.
While in India, before she had read the Qurʾan, Nilla had been impressed by
what she believed was the lack of racism in the local Muslim community. She
later wrote that “in Islam […] there were no distinctions. People as far apart
and racially different as the Moors and the Javanese were one and the same
[…]”97 Still, ever the religious universalist, after returning to New York in March
1934, Nilla came to the conclusion that her true church was not a mosque but
perhaps the New York Public Library, where she could saturate herself in the
texts of the East. Naturally, though, her interest in Islam combined with her
Theosophical-esoteric background, and Nilla was soon poring over the works
of the Sufis.98

93 Cook, My Road, 7, 45, 137; Cook, “What Religion,” 70–71.

94 Nilla’s time in India is thoroughly discussed in My Road.
95 Cook, My Road, 371, 374.
96 E.g., Cook, My Road, 437–40; Cook, “What Religion,” 75.
97 Cook, My Road, 279.
98 Ibid., 454.
Uniting Muslim Communities 281

Soon, Nilla became convinced that the Sufis taught the notion, as she put it,
that the “Spirit of Humanity” should be a person’s highest goal—and with this,
Islam had once again set Nilla’s mind and spirit ablaze.99 She commenced
studying both Persian and Arabic in order for her to vigorously consume a wide
swath of Islamic literature and begin translating the Qurʾan for herself. She
would also soon attend at least one lecture on Islam by the prominent Muslim
Indian nationalist Syud Hossain, through whose words, Nilla wrote, “the world
became an alabaster palace, lighted from within by golden flames.”100 Besides
being a respected nationalist and well-connected editor of the New Orient
magazine, Hossain was also regarded as a religious leader and was affiliated
with the mbusa.101 One wonders, then, if Nilla had visited or even joined the
mbusa, in which several “American Untouchables”—as she called African
Americans—were members.102 It seems that by the late 1930s, in fact, if Nilla
had not yet become a convert, investigating Islam was the primary focus of her
spiritual journey. After the war began, Nilla, now employed as a magazine
writer, traveled to Turkey, from where she reported to Gandhi that she had par-
ticipated in the Ramadan fast.103 From Turkey, Nilla left for Iran, where she
created the minor religious revival that the us minister would report on in
February 1942.
Part of what made Nilla interesting to the Iranian Muslims was her inno-
vative, if highly unorthodox, vision for revising the Qurʾan. Nilla had come to
the conclusion that the holy book’s “objectionable features” should be
removed “in favor of a more poetic concept.”104 In 1945, when her English
translation of the book was announced to the international public, Nilla’s
ideas were revealed to be highly influenced by the Theosophic-universalistic
notions that she had held since her childhood. Nilla felt, first of all, that the
“purely mundane and frequently political” elements of the Qurʾan “have no
true place in religious interpretation,” and were therefore the parts that
should be removed, leaving only the sections that reflect Muhammad’s
“inspired thoughts.”105 According to a news report, she argued that Islam has

99 Ibid.
100 Ibid., 462.
101 “What Is Going on this Week,” New York Times, April 19, 1931, 52.
102 Cook, My Road, 346.
103 While the precise circumstances that led to Nilla’s journey to Turkey are still not yet
known, in My Road she describes developing contacts with members of the Turkish elite
while in India; see My Road, 252–55. Indian journalist Mohan Tikku is currently (2014)
working on a biography of Nilla, which will, ideally, thoroughly document her travels.
104 Majd, August 1941, 388.
105 See Sulzberger, “The Female.”
282 chapter 9

long been misinterpreted by Muslims, which has led to intolerance and sec-
tarianism. Moreover, Nilla was of the opinion that Muslim prophet believed
that all religions are valid—a claim, she said, that is made in the Qurʾan
twenty-eight times—“and that no distinction should be made if members of
various faiths believe in God and do good.”106 Along these same lines, she
argued that “the Koran itself contains all religions”; therefore, the commen-
tary to her text would have “the opinions of all religions on all basic subjects
mentioned in the Koran.” Nilla’s non-orthodoxy went even further than this:
it was revealed that she “considers herself to be, and claims to be accepted by
the Mohammedan community as, a Moslem who believes in the oneness of
Hinduism and Islam.”107 Amazingly, according to the 1945 report, Nilla’s
highly unorthodox views were respected by government figures from Turkey,
Iran, and Afghanistan, and plans were being made to translate her book into
both Persian and Turkish. There is, however, currently no evidence that
Nilla’s Qurʾan translation was ever officially released. What became of the
manuscript and any published versions is unknown.108
Nilla, nevertheless, continued to have an impact on Muslims. After spend-
ing a short time studying Islamic art in Afghanistan in 1942, Nilla returned to
Iran where she was able to secure a position with the Iranian Ministry of the
Interior.109 Then, in October 1943, having long been interested in drama, music,
and dance and their relationship to religion and culture, Nilla proposed to the
rebuilding Iranian government that they establish a Theater Bureau to foster
national unity.110 As she was widely considered to be “better informed as to
[Iranian] tastes than any other American in Iran,”111 Nilla’s plan was taken seri-
ously and she was quickly made the director of the bureau. Nilla immediately
set to work creating what was originally called the Persian Royal Theatre (later

106 Ibid.
107 Ibid.
108 Nilla’s views of the Qurʾan and Islam are further discussed one her recently published
novel, The Bridge of Isfahan: A Persian Love Story, ed. Valentia Cook (Ft. Collins, co:
Burning Daylight, 2013). Nilla’s granddaughter informed the author that the family has
no information concerning the fate of Nilla’s Qurʾan translation.
109 Nilla Cram Cook, “The Theater and Ballet Arts of Iran,” Middle East Journal 3 (1949):
406–07.
110 Nilla Cram Cook, “Memo from Nilla Cram Cook, Director of Theatre Bureau of Iran to
H. Peters, O.W.I. Tehran,” November 1943, in us Department of State, Confidential, roll 6.
111 Letter, Richard Ford, First Secretary, to Secretary of State, September 23, 1944, in us
Department of State, Confidential u.s. Diplomatic Post Records, Iran, 1942–1944 (Frederick,
md: University Publications of America, 1984), roll 13.
Uniting Muslim Communities 283

renamed the National Opera and Ballet).112 After over three years working in
these positions, Nilla resigned from them all and founded the independent
Studio for the Revival of the Classical Arts of Iran, in which she taught and
trained numerous Iranian dancers. After receiving funding from the Iranian
government, the studio commenced a tour of Middle Eastern and eastern
Mediterranean countries.113 Nilla’s impact on her dancers was itself significant;
her studio had in fact initiated an important movement within Iran’s postwar
cultural revival.114
After 1950, Nilla’s interest in Islam seems to have waned, as there is little evi-
dence that she continued to consider herself a Muslim beyond that date. Even
during the 1940s, though, Nilla’s Muslim identity was highly unorthodox and was,
it seems, a practical, temporary manipulation of her universalistic views. Not
being a religious leader, Nilla, furthermore, left little-to-no lasting religious
impact. It appears, in fact, that her Islamic religious influence peaked with prom-
ises of the publication of her Qurʾan translation just prior to the end of the war.

After War

As soon as the Second World War came to an end in 1945, the us saw the reap-
pearance of two Islamic organizations that had had a presence during the
Great Depression and were attempting to once again to both unite Muslim
immigrants and converts. Although during the interwar period both groups
had focused their proselytization efforts on African Americans, now white
converts played important, if sometimes small roles.
The first of these was an organization whose name had appeared repeatedly
in the context of American Muslim converts in the 1930s and 1940s: the ymma.
There was the early branch in New York that Glick had ties to, Ezaldeen had
been trained by it in Cairo, and through al-Rawaf it was linked to various ele-
ments in the multiethnic Islamic network of the 1940s. As far as is currently
known, the group also made at least one additional significant attempt in the

112 Cook, “Memo from Nilla Cram Cook”; Cook, “The Theater,” 406. For more on Nilla’s activi-
ties with the Theater Bureau, see the us State Department records from 1943 through 1946
as well as Hamid Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 2: The Industrializing
Years, 1941–1978 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 4–9.
113 Cook, “The Theater,” 406.
114 Nilla and her studio are discussed in detail in the memoir of Nesta Ramazani, The Dance
of the Rose and the Nightingale (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002), passim.
284 chapter 9

mid-to-late 1940s to spread its Islamic reformist ideas to the us. This time it
was with a white American convert named William Lutz. Lutz was a former
Marine, Sunday school teacher, and trained singer who converted to Islam in
the late spring of 1944 while working in Saudi Arabia with the Arabian
American Oil Company (Aramco).115 Soon after starting with the company in
December 1943, Lutz befriended local Muslims and began learning Arabic. He
would later explain that through discussing religion with these Muslims and
seeing how they treated each other, he became convinced that Islam “properly
represented […] the human brotherhood” and was the religion that best pro-
moted justice, compassion, and equality.116 Lutz converted and became so
enamored with his new faith that he neglected his work duties and was, as a
result, fired from Aramco in June 1944. Lutz, however, had apparently made
arrangements with Saudi patrons and immediately returned to the us and set
to work promoting Islam. From his home in California’s Bay Area, Lutz orga-
nized what was intended to be a national organization for American Muslims,
the American Moslem Congress; he became a prominent member of an
Oakland mosque; and he wrote a handful of booklets and periodical articles.117
Through these efforts he frequently criticized racism and tried “to edify the
American public as to the lofty ideals of Islamic thought and to rectify wher-
ever possible flagrantly false ideas regarding Islam.”118
In early 1947, Lutz was invited by Egypt’s ymma—a group that, as al-Rawaf’s
activities revealed, was working with Saudis to promote Islam—to spend one
month studying religion and Islamic history at the renowned Azhar University
in Cairo.119 There, the ymma brought together several influential Islamic figures
and organizations to honor Lutz, and they bestowed upon him the prestigious
title of Grand Mufti of the Western United States.120 Lutz then returned to the

115 On Lutz’s conversion, see esp. us Embassy in Saudi Arabia State Department dispatch
257, 5/21/1947; Robert Vitalis, “Aramco World: Business and Culture on the Arabian Oil
Frontier” in Counter-Narratives: History, Contemporary Society, and Politics in Saudi Arabia
and Yemen, ed. Madawi Al-Rasheed and Robert Vitalis (Gordonsville, va: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004), 163, 178n46; John Roy Carlson [Avedis Derounian], Cairo to Damascus
(New York: Alfred Knopf, 1951), 82; “Lutz, William Edward AbdurRahman,” The Monthly
Supplement 7, no. 2 (November 1946): 241.
116 us Embassy in Saudi Arabia 257; Carlson, Cairo, 82.
117 “Lutz, William Edward AbdurRahman,” 241; W.E.A. Frr. Lutz, “Lauds Suspended Girl Editor,”
Chicago Defender, March 3, 1945, 10; “Bay Area Muslims to Hold Banquet,” Oakland Tribune,
August 28, 1946, 5; [Photo with no headline], Oakland Tribune, September 1, 1946, A-11.
118 us Embassy in Saudi Arabia 257; Lutz, “Lauds Suspended Girl Editor,” 10.
119 us Embassy in Saudi Arabia 257.
120 us Embassy in Saudi Arabia 257; “‘Grand Mufti’ Spars Skeptics,” Oakland Tribune, August
14, 1947, 9.
Uniting Muslim Communities 285

us and began attempting to help get mosques built across the country, promote
Islam and Pan-Islamic unity locally and internationally,121 and create both an
American Islamic university and a new national umbrella organization called
the American Mission Communities.122 Lutz’s Islamic propaganda efforts dur-
ing this period emphasized countering racism, encouraging the just and caring
treatment of all people, and spreading education about Islam to all Americans—
goals that reflected a very liberal vision of Islam, which was, as we have seen,
common among friend converts like Glick, Nadirah, and Nilla. Despite Lutz’s
obvious passion for spreading his new religion, however, a number of American
Muslims, both immigrants and converts, resented the fact that Lutz—who had
minimal Islamic training and was only twenty-eight years old—had been given
such a high level of religious authority.123 Many resisted listening to him, and by
the mid-1950s, after the establishment of the country’s first successful Islamic
umbrella organization, the Federation of Islamic Associations of the United
States and Canada (which apparently did not count Lutz as a member), Lutz’s
presence as an active promoter of Islam had become significantly reduced.124
Meanwhile, just as the American Sunni-Ahmadi network had started creat-
ing a stable community through the uisa, Glick and Nadirah played small but

121 In 1948, Lutz returned to Cairo, where he met with Islamic reformists, presumably people
in the ymma and an affiliated group, Hassan al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood. An
American reporter who happened to be in the city at the time learned that someone asso-
ciated with the Brotherhood claimed that “we”—without clarifying if he meant the
Brotherhood, the ymma, or Egyptian Muslims generally—gave Lutz his Muslim name;
see Carlson, Cairo to Damascus, 86–87.
122 Lutz’s return to the us as a Grand Mufti was a news story that circulated throughout the
country, though the first version was published in Oakland, his current home: “Oakland
Man Named Mufti,” Oakland Tribune, August 13, 1947, 1. Lutz’s Islamic articles appeared in
a South Africa-based Islamic journal, Ramadan Annual, and he published as a stand-
alone book a poem in praise of the Prophet Muhammad, Mohammed upon Whom Be
Peace (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1949)—see chapter 10 for more on these works.
During this time, Lutz also wrote to the British government asking for permission “to
establish a ‘semi-independent Amirate’ in which to form a Moslem Colony” on the Kuria
Muria islands off the coast of Oman. See British Foreign Office file 372 820 44, 4/13/1950.
Also see “Grand Cup for the Quaid-i-Azam—a Medal for Dawn,” Dawn, July 19, 1948, 3.
123 “‘Grand Mufti’ Spars Skeptics”; Saad Ullah Khan, “A Self-Made Grand Mufti,” Light,
September 24, 1948, 8 (Khan is referring to the Dawn article cited above); Letter, Samuel
Lewis to Abdul Rahman, February 7, 1961, Diaries, accessed August 1, 2013, http://
murshidsam.org/Documents/Diaries/1961.pdf. Also, Lutz’s name was rarely mentioned in
American newspaper and Islamic periodical articles at the time, even those in discussing
Islamic groups in California, where Lutz was based.
124 He would, however, appear in a few Islamic magazines into the 1960s.
286 chapter 9

important roles in strengthening and expanding the community even further

by motivating Indian Lahoris to start a new us mission. By 1943, the mid-1930s
efforts by Indian Lahoris to spread Islam among black Americans had been all
but forgotten in India. In fact, the us generally was almost completely off the
group’s radar, as at that time the Lahori Ahmadis were much more concerned
with more pressing issues, such as India’s looming independence and the idea,
which had been gaining steam since the late 1930s, of an independent state for
Muslims in South Asia.125 When William Phillips, President Roosevelt’s per-
sonal representative, visited Lahori representatives in Lahore in February 1943,
he was informed that the group currently had no mission in the us nor planned
for one in the immediate future.126
International proselytization, however, had not been completely eradicated
from the Lahoris’ program. So, when the story of William Phillips’ visit ran in a
March issue of the Lahori magazine The Light, it had the unintended effect of
stimulating a new discussion about starting a mission for the us. Muslim
India’s current political circumstances, the Light’s editor argued in the April 16
issue, “have made the need of cultural contact with the outside world […]
imperative,” and the Lahori movement “should address itself to this task.”127
The Lahoris of the 1940s, then, were motivated by the same political goal that
had driven Arab groups to send proselytizers to the us in the 1920s and 1930s:
gaining new pro-Muslim allies in the West who would support us international
political actions that favored Muslims. A chain reaction had thus been
initiated.
Almost immediately after the Light’s editorial came out, an American,
whose identity is unknown, wrote a letter—which was published in the
Light—to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of Pakistan’s independence
movement, asking that he send a mission to the United States.128 Jinnah imme-
diately agreed to do so, and began making arrangements for the mission.129 At
almost the same time, another anonymous reader sent to the Light a copy of an
issue of Glick’s Moslem America—Chaplain Letters, which the editors reviewed
in their May issue.130 In the opinion of the editors, while the existence of such
a periodical showed that there was a growing demand for Islamic knowledge in
the us, they felt that Glick’s paper was a “feeble and faulty” “indigenous”

125 See the early 1940s issues of the Lahori magazine The Light.
126 “Mr Phillips Sees Anjuman’s Representatives,” Light, March 1, 1943, 8.
127 “Islamic Mission for America,” Light, April 16, 1943, 3.
128 “Islam Mission for America,” Light, May 16, 1943, 3.
129 Ibid.
130 Ibid.
Uniting Muslim Communities 287

attempt to spread Islamic knowledge and unify Islam. Even part of the maga-
zine’s very title, “Chaplain Letters,” confused and disappointed them, as they
had no background information on Glick’s efforts to have the us military start
providing its Muslim soldiers their own chaplains. Instead, this was evidence,
they implied, that Islam could not properly be spread by those of the “plain
working and business classes” of America. They felt that the Lahoris them-
selves should be responsible for taking care “that the supply of this demand
[for Islamic literature in America] is not left to any but competent hands,” and
that this would require “men of very tall stature having the necessary mental as
well as moral equipment for the great task and worthy in every way of that high
role.”131 By 1944, plans were being worked out for a mission and the Lahori edi-
tors were, along with other members of the pro-Pakistan community, also
encouraging Indian Muslims to disseminate Islamic literature to American
troops stationed in the country.132 Lahori confidence in the mission was grow-
ing quickly; by late 1946 the movement had established good relations with the
Lahori Nadirah—who may have been the person responsible for sending the
earlier letters to the Light—who reported to the the Light’s editors the encour-
aging news that in 1945 or 1946 international Egyptian students had helped her
organize a Muslim women’s society, which might serve as a base for spreading
the Lahori movement in the country.133
The new Lahori mission to the us was not to be headquartered in New York,
however. The mission officially commenced in the fall of 1947, when the group’s
chosen representative, Bashir Ahmad Minto, arrived in San Francisco,
California and incorporated the Moslem Society of the u.s.a., Inc.134 Minto
quickly went to work, sending out hundreds of advertisements and letters to
local and national periodicals, giving dozens of lectures across the state, dis-
tributing Islamic publications to all who were interested, raising money

131 Ibid.
132 “American Forces & Islam,” Light, June 19, 1944, 3; Raghib Ahsan, “Foreign Tabligh: Urgent,”
Light, June 19, 1944, 4.
133 (Mrs.) Nadira Usman, “The ‘Light’ in New York,” Light, April 8, 1947, 2.
134 See Bashir Ahmad Minto, “Muslim in America in Danger of Conversion,” Light, July 24,
1949, 8; The Secretary, “Annual Report of the Muslim Society of u.s.a.,” Light, January 24,
1951, 7; incorporation records of the Moslem Society of the u.s.a., Inc., dated October 28,
1947, on file with the State of California. Interestingly, Minto was not the first Ahmadi to
come to California. A newspaper article from 1930 indicates that an Indian Ahmadi
named Mohammed Basheer was living in Los Angeles and desired to build a mosque
there to serve the immigrant Muslim community. His views on converting non-Muslims
are not mentioned, nor is his Ahmadi sectarian affiliation (Qadiani or Lahori). See
“Mosque of Islam May Rise Here,” Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1930, A3.
288 chapter 9

to ­purchase a building, and corresponding and meeting with hundreds of

Muslims and potential converts. However, despite all this activity, Minto’s suc-
cess in conversion was minimal. After two years of work, he had only converted
forty-three people.135 Most were white Californians with at least some college
education—the latter being a trait the Lahoris valued—none came from espe-
cially prominent backgrounds and, the evidence suggests, few if any had strong
ties to other non-Christian communities. They were therefore individuals who
were unable to bring in many other converts, and none would rise to signifi-
cant leadership positions in the national us Muslim community. Some, never-
theless, did have a modest amount of local influence. A handful of the early
white Lahori converts, for instance, wrote articles and booklets about Islam
and took on official positions in the San Francisco group,136 some converted a
small number of whites in nearby cities and states, and one, a resident of Los
Angeles who was currently a student at the University of Chicago, in 1950
helped establish and lead an Islamic Cultural Association at his school after
reading in the Islamic Review about the existence of a similarly named organi-
zation at the University of Wisconsin.137 This convert, Thomas Muhammad
Clayton, was one of the rare passionate friend converts. Having initially discov-
ered Islam in the mid-1940s through reading, Clayton became desirous to con-
vert only after befriending Muslims at an international Boy Scout Jamboree, an
event that motivated him to seek out and work with Muslims in the us.138 For
the most part, however, during this period white Lahori converts were rela-
tively rare and white Lahori leaders were even rarer. Undoubtedly, part of the
reason for this was that Minto did not know to try to appeal to the esoterically-
inclined, and, as we have seen, friend converts were inevitably going to be few
and far in between, particularly for a sectarian movement that was not driven
by immigration. The most active and influential American Lahori-affiliated
convert leaders at the time were black Americans, for whom Islam was per-
haps more attractive than it was for whites because it represented freedom

135 The Secretary, “Annual Report.”

136 For instance Tracey Cromwell Dudley; see Tracey Cromwell Dudley, “What’s in a Name,”
Light, December 1, 1948, 10–12; ibid., What’s in a Name? (San Francisco: Muslem [sic]
Society of u.s.a., [1948]); “Former Student Turns to Islamic Sect, Writes Pamphlet after
Conversion,” Oregon Daily Emerald, May 21, 1952, 3; “From Our San Francisco Missionary’s
Mail Bag,” Light, October 1, 1952, 7.
137 “Correspondence,” Light, July 16, 1948, 11; “Islam in America,” Islamic Review 37, no. 9
(1949): 42; Bashir Ahmad Minto, “Muslims in America,” Light, October 1, 1949, 4; Thomas
Muhammad Clayton, “Islam in America,” Islamic Review 38, no. 6 (1950): 52.
138 Thomas M. Clayton, “Why I Embraced Islam,” Yaqeen International, December 22, 1968,
143.
Uniting Muslim Communities 289

from prejudice. And for the Lahori-influenced African Americans, Minto and
the Indian Lahoris were only a secondary resource, as, like for the New York
Muslims, their strongest Lahori ties were through the Woking mission and its
Islamic Review magazine.139
Still, the new Lahori presence in the us was helping to improve us orthodox
Muslim unity, which in turn strengthened American Muslim identity and, ulti-
mately, weakened the power of Sunni convert leaders who lacked either sig-
nificant religious training or highly respectable backgrounds. As the national
community became increasingly unified and connected to strong international
missions and trained religious leaders, relatively uneducated white convert
leaders were valued less and less. The Light even published a letter by an immi-
grant Muslim openly criticizing and rejecting William Lutz,140 and later, in the
late 1950s, when the Lahoris chose an American to be their main representa-
tive in the us, they picked an immigrant—Muharrem Nadji—and not a con-
vert.141 This avoidance of uneducated white convert leaders would in fact
become a widespread trend in the American Muslim community in the 1950s,
as would be the other growing trends, such as connecting with new interna-
tional missionary efforts, following trained Muslim religious leaders, and fur-
thering unite American Muslims. Indeed, the Lahoris’ renewed efforts in the
early postwar period were indicative of a major reterritorializing transforma-
tion beginning to take place in the us Muslim community.

139 It should be pointed out, though, that since the 1930s the Woking mission had been trying
to downplay and even dissociate itself from its Lahori ties. For a further discussion, see
hctius vol. 2.
140 Khan, “A Self-Made Grand Mufti.”
141 Beginning in 1956, Muharrem had several of his correspondences appear in the Light—
far more than any other resident of the us—and by 1958 (after the group apparently
failed to resupply a new missionary when the last one left in 1957), he was elevated to the
position of the group’s us representative. See “Our Representatives,” Light, June 1, 1958, 9.
 chapter 10

The Postwar Shift

If one were to judge by the American press’ coverage of white Muslim converts
between the late 1940s and early 1960s, the typical white American Muslim
during this period would be presumed to be a man who converted to appease
the family and culture of a Muslim woman he met while living in a foreign
country.1 Although these types of conversions were indeed now more common
than they ever were before—being largely dependent on postwar changes in
international military and business relations, which led to more and more
Americans living in Muslim-majority regions—they received a disproportion-
ate amount of press, largely because they were so unique when they occurred.
The reality is that the postwar increase of instances of Americans converting to
Islam while living abroad only partially reflected the trends developing on
American soil. In the borders of the United States, white American conversion
was undergoing a much more significant kind of change, one that was deeply
connected to the broader us Muslim community’s transformation at the time.
Unlike in the first half of the twentieth century, when the greatest changes
in the us Muslim community were primarily due to the immigration of tens of
thousands of blue-collar Muslim men, between 1946 and 1964 the major devel-
opments in the us Muslim community were largely the result of increasing
numbers of, on the one hand, second- and third-generation immigrant Muslims
and, on the other, the new class of immigrants, which included numerous visit-
ing Muslim professionals, diplomats, college students, and trained religious
leaders. Not only were these people whose backgrounds differed significantly
from the previous eras’ Muslims, they were also people who were both
extremely interested in and highly capable of expanding and uniting Islamic
institutions in the us. These individuals would quickly begin reshaping the
country’s Muslim community and, in the process, they transformed the types
and roles of white American converts.

1 “Won’t Give up Iran Princess, Says American,” New London Evening Day (Connecticut), April 17,
1950, 12; “Texan Will Become Moslem to Marry Egyptian Dancer,” Milwaukee Journal, October 4,
1951, 14; “Princess Who Married American Expects Baby,” Reading Eagle, January 24, 1952, 32;
“Not Happy in Marriage, Samia Says,” Hartford Courant, May 19, 1953, 13; “Yank to Wed Moslem
and Become One,” Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1955, 12; “Yank Finds Oil Basin in Syria,”
Chicago Daily Tribune, September 8, 1958, A2; “New Moslem Settles for One Bride,” Pacific Stars
and Stripes, December 19, 1963, 30.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_012

The Postwar Shift 291

By late 1964, while the typical white convert was still a middle- or working-
class spouse of an immigrant, he or she was more likely to be college eduated
and there were now many other types of converts out there—and the most
prominent ones were very different from the leading white converts of previ-
ous eras. These new prominent converts were neither particularly esoterically
inclined (like the converts of Webb’s day) nor propped up by a somewhat ques-
tionable claim to authority (like Glick and Lutz). They had at least some col-
lege education and often had doctorates; they were writers of widely-read
books and articles on Islam; several were now connected with respected inter-
national Islamic organizations; and they were among the most influential
figures in many of the new local and national immigrant-majority Islamic
organizations. It was in this period, then, that white conversion to Islam
entered a new, more intense phase of reterritorialization, one in which some
converts became, for the first time, true leaders in a large, multiracial, inter-
connected, and increasingly diverse American Muslim community. It was in
the postwar era, then, that the convert types and positions that would be com-
mon by the mid-1970s started to become mainstream.
The present chapter closely examines how this transformation took place
by looking at the many ways in which the American Muslim community
changed in the 1950s and early 1960s. I focus primarily on three aspects of this
change: the development of new influential us Muslim institutions, the influx
of trained religious leaders, and the growth of the international Muslim stu-
dent population. I argue that it was due largely to the reterritorialization that
these three changes brought to the us that white American conversion to
Islam underwent its significant postwar shift. Deterritorialization, however,
did not cease during this period. Some attention will therefore also be paid to
the various unique converts and their efforts in the 1950s and early 1960s that
fell outside of the bounds of the mainstream trends.

The Nation’s New Builders

The emergence of this new era for white American converts was not of their
own making. To a great extent, it was dependent on the creation of something
that the us still did not have when the 1950s began: a truly popular and stable
national organization for the multiracial American Muslim community. People
like Satti Majid, Louis Glick, Muharrem Nadji, Nasir Ahmad, and Khalil al-Rawaf
had cultivated relationships and networks between Muslims living across the
country, but they had failed to successfully formalize a strong national network.
The reasons for their failures were complex, but it seems that, generally, the
292 chapter 10

d­ ifficulty of strongly uniting interwar immigrant Muslims—by far the largest

part of the American Muslim population at the time—was at the heart of the
problem. These were people who were primarily concerned with their families’
own survival and prosperity, so convincing them to (a) sacrifice time and money
for a sustained national project for Muslims who were often not even of the
same ethnicity and (b) follow and join with converts, was extremely challenging.
It took a world war and its aftermath, as well as the growing presence of second-
generation and professional immigrants, for this goal to finally be achieved.
The ability of the second-generation immigrants to succeed where converts
and the uneducated members of the first generation had failed was already
being demonstrated on a small scale by Dr. George Kheirallah in New York.
Although technically born in Egypt, because he came to the us as a child to
join a father who had already spent several prosperous years in the country,
and because he received an advanced Western education through earning a
medical degree, George’s background was similar to many of the second-
generation Muslims who would take the lead in the post-World War ii period.
He had the skills and knowledge to understand and work with both immi-
grants and Americans, he was adept at navigating and using us institutions for
the benefit of non-Protestant religious groups, and he had confidence that his
visions of Muslim and Arab unity within and without the us were worth striv-
ing for. Before and during the war, then, as we have seen, he became an impor-
tant leader for Muslims in New York and Arabs throughout the country, heading
or serving as the main lecturer for several Islamic organizations and editing the
Arab World magazine. After the war, and until his death in 1959, while he seems
to have decreased his penchant for lecturing, he remained an important figure
in the unification of American Muslims. By 1952, after al-Rawaf’s departure,
George, who by that time had taken the hajj pilgrimage,2 had become the
director of the local ymma, and was undoubtedly a member of the city’s
Muslim Council that was organized a few years later.3 He also continued to
write both books and articles in international English-language journals, such
as Woking’s Lahori-influenced Islamic Review and Pakistan’s new Voice of Islam
and The Islamic Literature.4 As we will see, the last two of these journals, and

2 “Between Ourselves,” Islamic Review (June 1949): 3.

3 “y.m.m.a. Leader to Speak,” Long Island Star-Journal, May 19, 1952, 28; Nadim al-Maqdissi,
“The Muslims of America,” Islamic Review 43 (June 1955): 31.
4 “The Oldest University in the World,” Voice of Islam 1 (1952): 108 and “The Najd: Mother of the
Sa‘uds,” Islamic Literature 4, no. 2 (1952): 35–40. For a partial list of Kheirallah’s writings, see
George Ibrahim Kheirallah, Islam and the Arabian Prophet: The First American Sirah, ed.
Muhammed Abdullah al-Ahari (Chicago: Magribine Press, 2011), 1–4.
The Postwar Shift 293

the international Muslim communities they connected Americans to, would

become increasingly important for educated white converts as the years went
by and the Lahori influence began to fade. George, it seems, was one of the first
Americans to ensure that these magazines, and the Pan-Islamic communities
they connected Muslims around the world to, would have us ties.
Despite Kheirallah’s continuing influence, however the most important
second-generation American Muslim was probably Abdullah Igram, an Iowa-
born Muslim of Lebanese descent and a veteran of the Second World War. In
1951, Igram brought together several Midwestern Muslims to discuss an issue
that had been bothering him since the war. At the time, us military dog tags
did not permit Muslims to identify their religion, which meant that they would
not receive Islamic rites when buried. Since numerous Muslims had served in
the us military during the war, Igram wanted American Muslims to organize to
effect a change in this rule.5 It was a project very similar to—and was perhaps
inspired by—Glick’s efforts in 1943, but now it was being led by a second-
generation Muslim from a respected and well-connected immigrant family.
Despite Igram’s better position vis-à-vis us Muslims, however, this proposal for
a national Islamic organization might not have bore fruit had it not benefitted
from the presence of other growing concerns shared by Muslims across the
country. Having established several communities and mosques during the first
half of the century, by the end of the war, like many Americans at the time, us
Muslims were increasingly stable and were more and more concerned about
the religious lives of their children born in the us. As the postwar baby boom
began, there was a strong desire to ensure that these children would retain
Islamic culture, and this in turn produced the idea of establishing more insti-
tutions to both teach that culture and secure a national network of potential
Muslim spouses to prevent exogamous marriage.6 At the same time, in the
wake of the creation of the state of Israel, there was also a widespread feeling
that Muslims should organize to encourage us support of Arab nationalist
efforts to counterbalance Zionism.7
The result of these mutually reinforcing desires was the creation of what
would later be called the Federation of Islamic Associations of the United

5 Howell, “Inventing,” 193.

6 Elkholy, Arab Moslems, 46–47; Howell, “Inventing,” 193. The organization would indeed serve
as a valuable meeting place for future spouses through at least the early 1970s; see Emily
Kalled Lovell, “A Survey of the Arab-Muslims in the United States and Canada,” Muslim World
63, no. 2 (1973): 148; Eide Alawan (prominent member of the fia since the early 1960s), phone
interview with the author, May 21, 2014.
7 Ibid.; Elkholy, Arab Moslems, 46–47.
294 chapter 10

States and Canada (fia). The fia held its first convention in Cedar Rapids in
1952, and over 400 Muslims attended; at its second convention, held the follow-
ing year in Toledo, one thousand people came.8 Igram was elected the organi-
zation’s first president, and would serve in that role until 1955; he was succeeded
that year by Hassan Ibrahim, then Qasim Olwan in 1957, and then Muhammad
Khalil in 1959—all second-generation Muslims. Second-generation Muslims
were reportedly also very well-represented among the conventions’ attendees.9
The fia had therefore become, to a large extent, the voice of the second gen-
eration, a group that represented the negotiation between the desire to main-
tain a connection with their families’ Muslim homelands and the desire and
ability to prosper in Western society. Second-generation Muslims grew up as
Americans, often being able to speak only English; while they valued their
Islamic faith and culture, they felt pride for their nation of birth, and several
had risked and sacrificed their lives for that country during the war. In many
ways, then, they were the group the most capable of establishing a strong link
between secular American society and American Muslims.
It was through the second generation finding this common ground that the
fia was able to achieve what was perhaps its most important accomplish-
ment: providing the first stable popular network of American Muslims. The
strong attendance at their early conventions reflected the fact that the group’s
efforts for national unity were being eagerly welcomed by many Muslim com-
munities throughout the country. In fact, the conventions drew several repre-
sentatives of uisa groups—including Sheikh Daoud’s ima, the aoi, the
aauaa, and Nasir Ahmad’s Philadelphia community—a fact that shows that
the national networks fostered by converts in the interwar and wartime peri-
ods had contributed to the success of the fia.10 Still, organizationally, the fia
was slow to grow at first, not even officially becoming a federation until 1954.
But unlike previous unification efforts, the fia was able to continue to grow
and expand its influence for many years. It appears, for instance, that the fia
was the inspiration behind the New York Muslim community’s new attempt to
create a Muslim Council, a formal city-wide Muslim organization designed to
coordinate local groups—a type of organization that the city had not had since

8 Elkholy, Arab Moslems, 46–47; Emily Kalled Lovell, “Islam in the United States: Past and
Present,” in The Muslim Community in North America, eds. Earle H. Waugh et al.
(Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1983), 104.
9 Herman Meredith Bowers, “A Phenomenological Study of the Islamic Society of North
America” (PhD diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1989), 98.
10 See, e.g., “Moslem Unity Advanced,” New York Times, July 5, 1953, 36; “Islam Crisis
Discussed,” New York Times, July 6, 1953, 3; Al-Maqdissi, “Muslims of America,” 31.
The Postwar Shift 295

the early 1930s.11 The fia also created its own national youth auxiliary, the
Islamic Youth Association, and it began producing several periodicals—the
scholarly-type journal, The Moslem Life, which the group had started to run by
1957;12 the Muslim Star, which starting in 1960 updated American Muslims on
local and national activities and achievements of both individual Muslims and
Islamic organizations; and the f.i.a. Journal, which began appearing in 1965. All
of these were very useful tools for establishing the fia’s position as one of the
preeminent national Muslim organizations through the early 1980s. As we will
see, the fia would even provide a valuable base for a new generation convert
leaders.
The fia, however, lacked one key element that might have made it even
more influential: a national Islamic center. Had the single most successful
Islamic umbrella organization (up to that point in history) possessed a nationally-
recognized Islamic center—an institution that contains a mosque as well as
space for cultural and auxiliary organization activities—the fia might have
become even more well-known among the wider American public and there-
fore been able to establish even stronger ties between the Islamic world and
the us. However, by the time the fia was conceived, plans for a separate major
American Islamic Center were well underway and were widely known to
American Muslims.13 The people behind this plan were part of a new wave
of immigrants who were often successful and well-educated, and like their
second-generation coreligionists, these new immigrants had the means to
make a significant impact on the American Muslims community. Many of
these individuals were diplomats and professionals who had the explicit
support of their home nations, which, having been recently liberated from
colonial control, were interested in expanding their influence and allies inter-
nationally. It seems in fact that the international ties of these savvy Muslims
were very important for the creation of the Washington, dc Islamic Center—
these new professional immigrants’ first major project.
After the idea for the Islamic Center was conceived by the Egyptian ambas-
sador and a prominent immigrant Muslim businessman in 1945, fundraising
efforts were set into motion and the project quickly gained the support of both
American Muslims and several governments of Muslim-majority countries.

11 Al-Maqdissi, “Muslims of America,” 31.

12 This journal was originally established by Detroit’s Albanian Muslim community, but
control was given to the fia by 1957; see Howell, “Inventing,” 195; “Coming Events,” Moslem
World & the u.s.a. (May–June 1957): 31, 34.
13 The Islamic Center’s creation is discussed in detail in Muhammad Abdul-Rauf, History of
the Islamic Center: From Dream to Reality (Washington, dc: Islamic Center, 1978).
296 chapter 10

By late 1953, nearly four years before the building itself was even completed,
the Islamic Center had achieved an important feat when it established an
‘Islamic Institute’ that supported study of issues related to Islam and the
Muslim world.14 Despite what was an apparently short life span, this Institute
far surpassed Glick’s failed ‘Shieka Selim Institute’ and it may have even been
the first functioning national Islamic institution of its kind in the country.
Then, in 1957, after years of strenuous planning, construction, and fundraising,
the Center had its official opening, complete with major fanfare and invita-
tions to virtually all Muslim organizations in the us. The current us president,
Dwight D. Eisenhower, gave a speech at the occasion, as did several Muslim
ambassadors. The ornately-decorated Center, which immediately became a
popular tourist attraction, was an immense source of pride for American
Muslims, many of whom had donated their own money to the project in the
first years of its development. But it was not just the Center itself that had
influence—so did several of its leaders, particularly when they were able to
connect with the fia network. For example, one of the early members of the
Center’s board of directors was Dr. Mahmoud Youssef Shawarbi. A figure who
was well-known in the New York Islamic community and later became presi-
dent of the fia–influenced New York Muslim Council, Shawarbi was a frequent
guest of the fia conventions until he was made its permanent director in
1964.15 The Center’s imam-directors, meanwhile, were respected Muslim schol-
ars from the Azhar University who made numerous efforts to connect with the
various us Muslim communities and organizations, including the fia. Through
these educated figures and their ties to the fia, the Islamic Center became an
important source of religious authority in the country, further establishing a
sense of unity and adaptation for American Muslims of different generations
and ethnic backgrounds.

14 This has been inferred from clues in Robert F. Ogden, The Place of Sufism in Islam
([Washington, dc]: Islamic Center, January 12, 1954).
15 “Moslems Celebrate Festival of Sacrifice, Holiest of Year,” Brooklyn Eagle, August 10, 1954,
7; Marc Ferris, “‘To Achieve the Pleasure of Allah’: Immigrant Muslim Communities in
New York City 1893–1991” in Muslim Communities in North America, eds. Yvonne Y. Haddad
and Jane I. Smith (Albany: State University of New York, 1994), 219; Malcolm X and Alex
Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965), 324; Jay Walz,
“Pianist-Investor is a Hit in Cairo,” New York Times November 20, 1959, 14; Charles Igram,
“Letter from f.i.a. President,” Muslim Star 5, no. 1 (1964): 1, 2, imjc Papers, Box 8, bhl;
“Federation of Islamic Associations in the u.s.a. and Canada,” Muslim World 54 (1964):
218–219; “Muslims List Lectures by Shawarbi,” New York Amsterdam News, November 16,
1963, 9.
The Postwar Shift 297

While the Islamic Center’s gaining of respected religious scholars from the
Azhar was without doubt a significant event for the development of the us
Muslim community, it was in fact only part of a broader change taking place at
the time. Starting in the late 1940s, several trained religious leaders began
arriving in the us where they led and influenced the growing Muslim com-
munities. In the previous decades, combined there were probably fewer than
half a dozen or so Muslim leaders in the country who had either graduated
from Islamic colleges or had spent several years of religious training with
respected teachers.16 In the postwar period, with Muslim religious institutions
and governments desiring to have an influence within the most powerful
country in the world, there were nearly a dozen. And, because by this time the
American Muslim community was much more developed, these new leaders
had far better American institutional and communication resources and sup-
port than their predecessors and were therefore able to have a greater impact
on American Muslims. For the first time, then, a relatively large number of
Muslims around the country—including white American converts—had
direct access to the broad world of advanced Islamic knowledge and connec-
tions to several international Islamic institutions and movements, resources
that facilitated converts’ growing involvement with the expanding us Muslim
community.
One of the first to arrive after the war was Maulana Azad Subhani Rabbani,
a South Asian Muslim mystic, poet, philosopher, and Indian nationalist, who
came as a guest of the multiethnic International Moslem Society (ims) in New
York.17 While in the country, Subhani promoted what was being called “Islamic
Culture and Unity,”18 but his main reason for coming was to collect, in his
words, “further data” for a philosophy he had invented called Rabbaniyyat.19
Over the next three or four months, Subhani, who reportedly had never stud-
ied English before coming to the us, wrote in English the booklet Teachings of
Islam in Light of the Philosophy of Rabbaniyyat, published by the Academy of

16 In fact, we can only confidently identify three who spent any significant time in the coun-
try: the Ottoman imam Mehmed Ali, New York’s al-Kateeb from Jerusalem, and the
Sudanese Satti Majid, who, while he did not graduate from the Azhar as he claimed, as a
child and young man was trained by the religious leaders in his family.
17 On this organization, see Bowen, “Search for Islam,” 268–70.
18 “Muslim Society to Hear Moulana Azad Subhani,” New York Amsterdam News, November
9, 1946, 25; Nabi Bakhshu Khanu Balocu [Baloch], World of Work: Predicament of a Scholar
(Jamshoro: Institute of Sindhology, University of Sindh, 2007), 92.
19 Abdullah Uthman Al-Sindi [Nabi Bakhshu Khanu Baloch], introduction to The Teachings
of Islam in Light of the Philosophy of Rabbaniyyat, for Beginners, by Subhani Rabbani (New
York: Academy of Islam International, Inc., 1947), 2.
298 chapter 10

Islam in 1947.20 This thirty-two page work argues that it is humans’ responsibil-
ity to develop their closeness to Divine Will through religion and, especially,
Sufism, as long as their Sufi practices do not deny the value of ordinary life.21
The greatest achievement a human can have is becoming a “man,” which for
Subhani means developing the correct balance between focus on the material
world and focus on God.22 The only things that can slow people in the process
of becoming a “man” are “calamities which beset the way.”23 Because of this,
Subhani argues, capable humans should ensure that human institutions are
set up so that people encounter few “calamities”; and for Subhani, this means
that people need to strive to achieve economic justice for all.24 In a commu­
nity in which many if not most of the members had come from places of
­oppression—whether immigrants from formerly colonized countries or African
Americans—Subhani’s message was an attractive one, and he had a real
impact at the time. In late February, he was invited to speak on the topic
“Freedom of the Common Man” at Liberty Hall, the former headquarters of the
black nationalist Universal Negro Improve Association (unia), under the aus-
pices of the pro-Muslim unia break-off group called the Universal African
Nationalist Movement.25 And in 1949, an aoi leader was noting the significant
influence that Subhani Rabbani and his reformist-Sufi message had had on his
own organization.26 In fact, it appears to have been largely due to Subhani’s
influence that the aoi reportedly became dedicated to the Hanafi legal school
(madhab) and gave special prominence to Huseyn Hilmi Isik’s Se’adet’i’Ebediyye
(Endless Bliss), which was comprised of the letters of Hadrat Imam’i Rabbani.
Later, one of Huysen Hilmi Isik’s students, Sheikh Beya-din-Gechi, served for a
time as the aoi’s teacher.27
Although there has been some awareness of the fact that, starting in 1952,
the quietest Indian revival movement, the Tablighi Jama’at, began sending

20 Subhani Rabbani, The Teachings of Islam in Light of the Philosophy of Rabbaniyyat, for
Beginners (New York: Academy of Islam International, Inc., 1947).
21 Ibid., 24.
22 Ibid., 30–31.
23 Ibid., 23.
24 Syed Abu Ahmad Akif, A Conversation Unfinished, unpublished manuscript, Microsoft
Word File, 2010.
25 “African Group Airs ‘Freedom of the Common Man’,” New York Amsterdam News, February
22, 1947, 4.
26 M[huktar] A[hmad] M[huktar], “Cultural Activities,” Islamic Culture 23, no. 1–2 (1949): 111.
27 Accessed on July 17, 2012, http://www.cmac.fcwcenter.org/index.php?option=com_conte
nt&view=article&id=62&Itemid=71.
The Postwar Shift 299

what was probably a small number of missionaries to the us,28 one of the most
influential South Asians for postwar American Muslims probably never set
foot in the us. This was Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf, a Lahore-based scholar
affiliated with the Deobandi movement, who was one of the biggest producers
of English-language Islamic literature at the time. In 1938, his company was the
first to publish in book form Yusuf Ali’s massively popular English translation
of the Qurʾan. Then, after Pakistan’s gaining independence in 1947, Ashraf
believed that there would be a great revival of Pan-Islam and Islamic reform, so
he set about publishing a large number of English-language Islamic books and
a journal to help facilitate the international revival.29 Through these efforts, he
quickly came into contact with American Muslims; in 1949 and 1952 he pub-
lished a book-length poem about Muhammad by William Lutz,30 and in the
latter year his journal The Islamic Literature ran a piece by George Kheirallah.
Ashraf’s publications had therefore started to receive some circulation in the
country and would retain a noteworthy presence for the next few decades.
There were in fact at least three South Asian reformist Sunni scholars who
began making an impact on American Muslims starting in the early 1950s.
However, when Maulana Muhammad Abdel Aleem Siddiqui came to the us in
1950, instead of only being welcomed by Muslims in New York, as Subhani was,
he was a guest of several Muslim communities throughout the country and he
would ultimately have a much more widespread impact. Siddiqui was revivalist
scholar, Sufi leader (of the Qadiri-Barkati order), and promoter of modern
Western education.31 In the 1920s, he began traveling across the world in an
attempt to foster universal peace and encourage reform of both education and
spirituality. Before his death in 1954, Siddiqui was one of the most popular
Islamic revivalist figures on Earth, having helped established new missionary
organizations in lands as disparate as the Philippines, South Africa, and Trinidad.
Prior to his coming to the us, in fact, there was already a connection between
American Muslims and Siddiqui’s movement, as in 1949–50 William Lutz, while
still using the Grand Mufti title, wrote articles for an English-language South

28 Barbara D. Metcalf, “New Medinas: The Tablighi Jama‘at in America and Europe,” in
Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe, ed. Barbara D. Metcalf (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996), 110–30, esp. 111; Dannin, Pilgrimage, 66; Howell,
“Inventing,” 223.
29 See “About Ourselves,” Islamic Literature 4, no. 1 (1952): 3–4; “About Ourselves,” ibid. 6,
no. 7 (1954): 3–4; Alfred Guillaume, Islam, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1956), 163–69.
30 Mohammed Upon Whom Be Peace (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1949).
31 See Yasien Mohamed, introduction to The Roving Ambassador of Peace, by Moulana
Abdul Aleem Siddqui, ed. Yasien Mohamed (Cape Town: iqra Publishers, 2006),
ix–xxvii.
300 chapter 10

African journal Siddiqui had founded, Ramadan Annual.32 In the late summer
of 1950, Siddiqui toured the us, visiting not only Lutz in Sacramento, but also
many other Muslims in Chicago, Youngstown, and New York, including mem-
bers of the ims, aoi, ima, and ymma, all the while encouraging them “to unite
and establish a powerful movement of enlightenment on Islam.”33 It was likely
during this tour that George Kheirallah became connected with Siddiqui’s suc-
cessor, Dr. Hafiz Mohammed Fazlur-Rahman Ansari, who was accompanying
Siddiqui in the us and who, in 1952, established the English-language journal,
the Voice of Islam, which published one of Kheirallah’s articles that year. Siddiqui
would be an important influence for American Muslims through the rest of the
1950s, during which he would be promoted by not only an influential Islamic
magazine publisher from Pakistan, Abdul Basit Naeem, whose efforts will be
discussed below, but also one of the country’s trained imams, Detroit’s Sunni
Albanian leader, Vehbi Ismail.34
Despite their prominence, South Asia’s trained Muslim leaders did not hold
a monopoly on Islamic instruction in the country. Imam Vehbi Ismail, for
instance, was influential in his own right.35 As the son of the Grand Mufti of
Albania and a former student of the Azhar, Detroit’s Albanian community was
very grateful that Ismail accepted their 1948 invitation to come to America to
teach and lead them. Ismail set to work right away. He helped prepare the local
Albanians to purchase a building to serve as a mosque; in 1949 he established
an Albanian-American Muslim academic journal, the Albanian Muslim Life, in
which he published his own writings to help introduce Albanian immigrants
to Islamic knowledge and principles; and he began visiting Albanian commu-
nities throughout the country. Being fluent in Arabic, Imam Vehbi was also
able to, despite initial resistance from Detroit’s old Sunni imam, Hussein
Karoub, become a well-respected leader among Arab immigrants in the area.
By the mid-1950s, his journal, in which he promoted the teachings of Siddiqui,

32 Sheikh Abdur Rahman Lutz, “Traditions,” Ramadan Annual (July 1949): 33–35 and “The
Third Pillar of Islam,” ibid. (June/July 1950): 69–71. On Siddiqui founding the Ramadan
Annual, see Mohamed, introduction to The Roving Ambassador of Peace, ix.
33 Publisher [Abdul Basit Naeem], “His Eminence Maulana Siddiqui Passes Away,” Moslem
World & the u.s.a. (January 1955): 41; Zainudin Mohd Ismail, “Footprints on the Journey
of Human Fellowship: The Early History of Jamiyah,” accessed June 10, 2014, http://arabic
.jamiyah.org.sg/sharing%20file/footprint.pdf, p. 61; “His Eminence, Siddiqui To Be
Honored Sunday,” New York Amsterdam News, August 12, 1950, 16; “Moslem Leader
Honored at Dinner, Urges Unity,” New York Amsterdam News, August 19, 1950, 13.
34 In 1958, Ismail was publishing one of Siddiqui’s books; see “Read a Masterpiece!” (adver-
tisement), Moslem Life 6, no. 3 (1958): 32, Karoub Family Papers, bhl.
35 For more on Ismail, see Howell, “Inventing,” 184–92.
The Postwar Shift 301

was even repurposed to serve a multiethnic audience and was published in

collaboration with the fia under the name Muslim Life.
Many of the Albanian immigrants to Detroit, however, were not followers of
Sunni Islam, but were instead practitioners of Bektashi Sufism. Unlike Inayat
Khan’s Theosophy-influenced universalistic Sufism, Bektashi Sufism is explic-
itly Islamic, although it is an order that contains elements of Shi‘ism and
Christianity, and therefore has typically been seen by Sunnis as lying outside
the boundaries of orthodox Islam. So, while Imam Vehbi and his followers
maintained a cordial relationship with the Bektashis, the latter group followed
their own Azhar-educated Albanian religious leader, Baba Rexheb.36 Rexheb,
like Ismail, initially came to Detroit by the late 1940s;37 in 1953 his community
established a Sufi center (tekke) in the town of Taylor, just south of Detroit.
Through the 1980s, the vast majority of Detroit’s Bektashi initiates were people
who were born in the Balkans; only two were white Americans.38 Despite this
small number, however, the Bektashi tekke in Michigan is probably technically
the us’ first Muslim Sufi center to have white American converts.
The third influential trained religious leader in postwar Detroit was Shaykh
Mohammad Jawad Chirri, a Shi‘i scholar from South Lebanon.39 Chirri had
graduated from the Islamic Institute at Najaf, Iraq and afterwards worked
alongside Shaykh Mughniyya, a highly influential Lebanese Shi‘i cleric. At the
time, the Shi‘ah of greater Detroit had a religious leader—Shaykh Khalil
Bazzy—who had been serving the community since the late 1910s. Shaykh
Bazzy, however, had almost no formal religious training, and the new genera-
tion of Shi‘i immigrants—many of whom were the children or grandchildren
of earlier immigrants, and, like many of the other second-generation Muslims,
frequently had college educations—desired to have a more educated religious
leader who might be able to better mobilize and connect their community to
Muslims both in America and internationally. Almost immediately after his
arrival in 1949, then, Chirri was able to win the confidence of many of the com-
munity’s younger Sunni and Shi‘i Muslims, who were all drawn to his modern-
ist views. Chirri soon announced ambitious plans to initiate reforms for

36 For more on Baba Rexheb, see Howell, “Inventing,” 180, 186–88 and the following works by
Frances Trix: “The Bektashi Tekke and the Sunni Mosque of Albanian Muslims in
America,” in Muslim Communities in North America, eds. Yvonne Haddad and Jane Smith
(New York: State University of New York, 1994), 359–80; The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,
2009).
37 Howell, “Inventing,” 180.
38 Trix, “The Bektashi Tekke,” 374.
39 See Howell, “Inventing,” 172–84.
302 chapter 10

religious education and practice for American Muslims, publishing his ideas
through a regular column in the Arab-American journal, the Nahdat al-Arab,
which helped him quickly gain a national reputation.
Chirri could not stay in Detroit, however. The city’s older imams, Bazzy and
Karoub, had not relinquished leadership of most of the city’s Muslims, so, in the
later part of 1949, when Chirri was invited to lead the Muslim community in
Michigan City, Indiana, needing a stable home community from which to do his
work, he accepted. Over the next six years, Chirri continued to promote his pro-
gressive views and his national reputation only grew. Eventually, he, along with
Imam Vehbi (who was also regularly featured in Nahdat al-Arab) and Imam
Hobbollah of the Washington Islamic Center, was being invited to visit various
mosques and speak at fia conventions. Then, in 1955, a number of Detroit’s
Shi‘ah, who had concluded that following Chirri would be the best way to ensure
growth for the community, pledged their allegiance to the teacher and convinced
him to return to their city, where he stayed until his death over thirty years later.
During the postwar period, other trained religious leader began appearing,
serving diverse Muslim communities throughout the country. Among the
Qadianis, four trained missionaries from India were sent to the us in 1946.40
Each was made head of one of the group’s larger mosques and Sufi Bengalee,
who by that time had been the sect’s head us missionary for eighteen years,
traveled across the country to visit and help train these new missionaries until
1948 when he left America for the final time. Dr. Khalil Ahmad Nasir was left in
charge of the us mission and in 1950 moved the headquarters from Chicago to
Washington, dc. From the latter city, he was eventually able to increase mem-
bership numbers, but primarily among African Americans.41 Whites would
remain only a small percentage of the us community even after 1955 when the
white German convert, Abdul Shakoor Kunze, was made the official mission-
ary for the Chicago branch.42

40 Rashid Ahmad American, “A Brief Summary of the Ahmadiyya Movement in America,”

Muslim Sunrise 42, no. 4 (1975): 13; Munawar Ahmad Anees, “Ahmadiyyat in America,”
Muslim Sunrise 43, no. 1 & 2 (1976): 12–13.
41 In 1950, the group had five branches (Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and
Washington, dc), and its largest, the Chicago branch, had at most fifty members, only five
of which attended on a regular basis. This suggests that the Qadianis at this time had at
most 200 members, perhaps fifty of whom were regularly active. See Hatim A. Sahib, “The
Nation of Islam” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1951), 54.
42 “leads chicago moslems,” Odessa American (Texas), May 1, 1955, 8; Tony Poon-Chiang
Chi, “A Case Study of the Missionary Stance of the Ahmadiyya Movement in North
America” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1973), 110; Nusrat Bashir, phone interview
with the author, August 28, 2014.
The Postwar Shift 303

Sunni Muslims from the Balkans, meanwhile, were getting new religious
leaders as well. Starting in 1954, for instance, Toledo and Chicago’s Bosnian
communities were led by Kamil Avdich, who had earned his doctorate from
the Azhar in 1951.43 In 1959, Avdich wrote The Outline of Islam, a seventy-five
page book to be used by children at the Islamic Sunday schools he ran in his
two communities. In Philadelphia, Imam Mohamed S. Egra, who had been
sent by the Azhar, was working primarily with the local Albanian community,
but was also affiliated with Louis Glick and presumably the other converts
associated with him.44 Glick had apparently moved to Philadelphia by the
mid-1940s and in the early 1950s began promoting two new organizations, the
Moslem Younger Brothers Council of Philadelphia and the Moslem American
Citizen’s Union.45 In 1952, the aims of the latter group—which was most likely
a revival of the similarly-named organization Nadirah Osman had created but
failed to popularize in 194346—were

to watchfully serve in defense of the American Constitution and

American world prestige, particularly in Islamite matters, and to defend
and promote the religion of Islam and the welfare of Moslems under the
principle of freedom and equality for all religious denominations.47

In addition, it was intended to have this group form a formal ‘union’ with an
organization known as the Moslem American Chamber of Congress, a local
Quaker group, and a Rosicrucian organization.48 Through this Union, Glick
also, consistent with his efforts in the 1940s, and perhaps in cooperation with

43 Muhammed al-Ahari, “Editor’s Preface,” in The Outline of Islam: A Textbook for Islamic
Weekend Schools, by Kamil Yusuf Avdich (Chicago: Magrabine Press, 2011), 5.
44 “in philadelphia,” Moslem Citizens Letter no. 13 (October-December 1956), [1].
45 Letter, Glick to William G. Stigler, [December 1951], William G. Stigler Collection, box 10,
folder 48, Carl Albert Center, University of Oklahoma; United States Congress,
Congressional Record, vol. 98 (Washington: United States Congress, 1952), 5749–50;
Moslem Citizens Letter (1956).
46 Letter, Nadirah Fines [sic] Osman to [Wali Akram], December 4, 1943, 1, fbi record.
47 United States Congress, Congressional Record, 5749–50.
48 “to brothers offering,” Moslem Citizens Letter no. 13 (October-December 1956), [1].
The Quaker group was the World’s Friendship Study Circle and the Rosicrucian group was
the Inner Circle of the Mystic Rose. It is possible that this Rosicrucian group was affiliated
in some way with the following of R.S. Clymer in Quakertown, Pennsylvania; however,
interestingly, in the 1950s the California-based Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, led
by H. Spencer Lewis, was one of the few American companies to run an advertisement in
Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf’s Islamic Literature magazine; see, e.g., vol. 4, no. 5 (1952): 46.
304 chapter 10

Abdullah Igram, encouraged the us Congress to pass “a religious equality bill

for the drafted personnel of the Armed forces.”49 It is unclear, however, as to
how involved Egra—or any other trained Muslim leader, for that matter—was
with Glick’s activities.
In the 1950s, at least one other Sunni Muslim with religious training was
providing religious leadership to various American Muslim groups throughout
the country. The Lebanese Sheikh Hussein Dahbour, a former teacher and
supervisor for Lebanese schools, was reportedly trained and “ordained specifi-
cally for the service of Moslems in America” after the Muslim community in
Cedar Rapids asked the Mufti of Lebanon to send them a religious leader.50
Although based in Cedar Rapids, upon his arrival in the us in 1948,51 Dahbour
also began working with Muslim communities in Youngstown, New York,
Philadelphia, Washington, dc, and possibly other cities.52 In 1950, his influ-
ence was expanded further when he started recording a regular radio program
for the New York-based, us government-run Voice of America, an international
radio broadcast,53 and he was given a prominent position at that year’s conven-
tion for the Moslem Brotherhood of America, Inc., a revival of the mbusa.54
What made Dahbour particularly unique, however, was that, unlike the other
trained religious leaders from the period, one of the reasons he had come to

49 United States Congress, Congressional Record, 5749–50.

50 Paul Tobenkin, “Moslems Here Meet at Hall to Mark Holy Day,” New York Herald Tribune,
October 3, 1949, 7; John Reynolds, “Foto Facts,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 23, 1950, 9;
“Hussein Dahbour Transfers to Engineers in Saudi Arabia,” topocomments 8, no. 13
(June 25, 1976): n.p., copy provided by Hussein Dahbour’s son, Dr. Omar Dahbour. In 2014,
Dr. Dahbour graciously answered several of the author’s questions and provided him with
copies of two articles about Hussein as well as one of Hussein’s resumes.
51 While 1947 is given in “Dahbour, Hussein A.” (obituary), Blade (Toledo), February 14, 2009,
copy provided by Dr. Omar Dahbour, 1948 is indicated in both Reynolds, “Foto Facts” and
Dahbour’s own resume, provided by Dr. Omar Dahbour.
52 Reynolds, “Foto Facts”; “Hussein Dahbour Transfers.”
53 Reynolds, “Foto Facts.”
54 Reynolds, “Foto Facts” refers to the group as simply “the Moslem Brotherhood,” but in
Tobenkin, “Moslems Here,” Dahbour was shown to be affiliated with Ibrahim Choudry’s
Moslem Brotherhood organization, which was called in this article the Moslem
Brotherhood of America, Inc., and which may have either been a revival or splinter group
of the mbusa, perhaps created in opposition to Nasir Ahmad’s International Muslim
Brotherhood, which was also established around the same time. The 1950 Moslem
Brotherhood of America, Inc. convention was being held in Youngstown, Ohio. It is likely
that the Moslem Brotherhood of America, Inc. had branches in several cities in the late
1940s and 1950s—at least enough to justify a convention in 1950.
The Postwar Shift 305

the United States was to obtain a degree from a Western university.55 In fact,
after graduating from the University of Iowa in 1952, Dahbour ended his activi-
ties as a religious leader for us Muslims, and moved to Washington where he
earned a master’s degree from George Washington University and commenced
a long career as a language specialist and political liaison for the us govern-
ment. In his focus on college education and employment, then, Dahbour was a
link between the new influx of trained religious leaders and the postwar devel-
opment that had the most direct impact on white American converts: the
international Muslim student boom.

A Key Change: International Students

The postwar period’s trained religious leaders and new national institutions
were primarily focused on serving the us’ first and second generation immi-
grants Muslims. This essentially meant that their emphasis was on ensuring that
Islam was practiced in, and adapted to, an American setting without becoming
too watered down by us culture. Most of these new religious leaders and groups,
then, were not particularly interested in converting Americans, who, through
marrying Muslims, were often thought to be a major source of the dilution of
Islam in the country. It was partly for this reason, in fact, that at least some
imams, including the very influential Imam Chirri, refused to marry a Muslim
with any American—male or female—unless that person at least nominally
converted to Islam.56 Nevertheless, the intermarriage rate increased with the
second and third generations,57 and a new cohort of Muslims was significantly
contributing to the transformation of the character of the white convert com-
munity in the 1950s and early 1960s: international Muslim college students.
Prior to 1945, no Muslim-majority country sent more than 138 students to
the us in any one year, and most typically sent fewer than fifty.58 As soon as the

55 Reynolds, “Foto Facts”; Tobenkin, “Moslems Here.”

56 Eide Alawan (a prominent member of Imam Chirri’s Dearborn community since the early
1960s), phone interview with the author, May 21, 2014. Of course, in not marrying women
who did not convert, Chirri was following standard Shi‘i practice, as was noted above.
Imam Karoub, meanwhile, only refused to marry men—not women—who did not con-
vert; see Naff, Becoming American, 245–46.
57 See the discussions of mixed marriages in Chapters 8 and 11.
58 Herbert H. Williams, Syrians Studying Abroad: A Comparison of Factors Influencing the
Numbers of Syrians Studying in the United States and Other Countries, Occasional Paper
Number 2 ([New York]: Institute of International Education, 1952), 4. For figures by year,
see the Institute of International Education’s annual reports for 1926 to 1949.
306 chapter 10

war ended, however, in an attempt to both foster better relations with the us
and provide their newly liberated nations with an educated leadership,
Muslim-majority countries rapidly increased the number of students they sent
to American colleges. In 1945, students from Near Eastern countries studying
in the us numbered 371; by 1950, the number reached 2,544, and by 1962, there
were over 11,000 students from Muslim-majority counties as well as, presum-
ably, a few thousand more Muslims from Muslim-minority countries.59 For the
most part, these were individuals from the middle and upper classes and, while
many had some difficulty in adjusting to American social life, their class and
their tendency to identity as ‘white’ allowed for regular interaction with their
white American classmates.60 For the first time, then, thousands of young,
college-educated Americans were meeting Muslims, and they were doing so
while living free from the restricting gaze of their families and in the relatively
liberal setting of college campuses.
The impact of the postwar Muslim student boom was immediate and would
eventually have profound implications for white American conversion to
Islam. As with the previous generations of Muslim immigrants, evidence sug-
gests that the largest proportion of white Americans who converted through
ties to the postwar students were the students’ new American spouses, who
were usually women.61 This is true despite the fact that the vast majority of the
us’ Muslim students—who were almost all men—did not marry Americans;
many were already married when they came to the country, and most others
planned on marrying a Muslim once they returned home, even if they dated
while staying in the us.62 While we lack an abundance of solid data on these
postwar student intermarriages, some clues to exist. A 1973 study, for instance,

59 Williams, Syrians Studying Abroad, 4; “Muslim Students in the United States,” Muslim
World 52 (1962): 263–64.
60 Valuable studies on early Muslim students in the us include Williams, Syrians Studying
Abroad; Khalil Ismail Gezi, “The Acculturation of Middle Eastern Arab Students in
Selected American Colleges and Universities” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1959); Iihan
I. Akhun, “Turkish Engineering Students Studying in the United States” (PhD diss.,
University of Missouri, 1961); Abdulrahman I. Jammaz, “Saudi Students in the United
States: A Study of Their Adjustment Problems” (PhD diss., Michigan State University,
1972).
61 There were, of course, some women who converted through marriage to Muslim students
before World War ii; see, e.g., John Sibley, “Al-Jamali Slain by Baghdad Mob,” New York
Times, July 16, 1958, 7.
62 See the previously-cited studies as well as Robert O. Blood and Samuel O. Nicholson, “The
Experiences of Foreign Students in Dating American Women,” Marriage and Family
Living 24, no. 3 (1962): 241–48.
The Postwar Shift 307

estimated that only about two percent of all international students married
Americans, and half of those returned to their homelands with their new
American wives.63 However, anecdotal evidence from some of the early
American wives of Muslim students suggests that the percentage for Muslims
in particular may have been closer to fifteen.64 Despite the significant differ-
ence between these figures, they both indicate that only a relatively small
number of Muslim students—probably fewer than 2,000—married Americans
in the 1950s and early 1960s. Furthermore, since many of those Americans were
women and were not expected to convert, the total number of converts from
these marriages was much smaller than this number, probably less than 500;
also, a large percentage of these converts, like many of the non-convet wives,
moved out of the us to their husbands’ home countries.65 In fact, by 1956, in
Baghdad alone there were fifty American wives of Muslims, although the vast
majority of these did not convert.66 Therefore, the total number of us resi-
dents who converted through marriage to a Muslim student in the 1950s and
early 1960s may have been less than 300. In comparison with the total American
Muslim population at the time, 300 additional converts was not particularly
significant. However, compared to the size of the existing white convert com-
munity, this was a major addition, as it increased that community’s size by

63 Lovell, “A Survey,” 151.

64 In early 2015, the author was able to talk with a few women who married Muslim students
in the 1950s. These women, who have asked to remain anonymous, estimated that the
percentage of Muslim students who either stayed in the country or returned with an
American wife was between ten and twenty, with about half of these Muslims staying and
half leaving with their wives. It is worth mentioning here too that in 1979 the scholar
Yvonne Haddad claimed that in the 1950s two-thirds of international Muslim students
married Americans and tried to settle in the us. This, as far as the evidence from the
previously-cited studies and anecdotes suggests, is completely inaccurate. Nevertheless,
Haddad’s claiming such a large proportion suggests that perhaps the percentage was
closer to fifteen than two. See Yvonne Y. Haddad, “The Muslim Experience in the United
States,” Link 2, no. 4 (1979): 2.
65 The early American wives with whom the author talked in 2015 estimated that the num-
ber of converts among the wives of Muslims in the 1950s was very small, perhaps only only
one or two out of fifty.
66 This appears to have been true even despite the fact that many of the Iraqi Muslim
spouses were Shi‘i, and, as we have seen, many Shi‘i clerics required women to convert.
See “Southland Girl Makes Good as Spouse of Iraqi,” Los Angeles Times, October 15, 1956,
B1, B2; author’s 2015 conversation with American women who married Muslim students
in the 1950s. For an example of one of the earliest college-educated female converts who
returned with her husband to Iraq, see Alice Mehdy, “An American Woman’s Life and
Marriage in an Iraqi Muslim Family,” Islamic Review 43, no. 2 (1955): 16–18.
308 chapter 10

roughly thirty percent. College-educated converts who had embraced Islam

through marriage to international Muslim students had therefore quickly
become an important element in the white American convert community.
But people who came to Islam through marriage were not the only converts
generated by the arrival of international Muslim students, however. The esti-
mation of the number of convert spouses points to the likelihood that there
were, by the early 1960s, at least a few dozen individuals who, through meeting
international Muslim students, became the rare, but comparatively influential,
‘friend convert.’ As the examples of Louis Glick, William Lutz, and other pre-
1950 converts have demonstrated, friend converts were more likely to attempt
to become a leader or representative for Muslims than those who converted for
marriage. In the post-1950 period, due to the change in the demographics of
Muslim immigrants, the new friend converts were different from those of pre-
vious eras, often having college educations and tending to be from wealthier
and better-connected families. Because of this, and because of the changes in
the us Muslim community that were making it give greater value to education
and adaptation to American society, instead of being ignored and resented,
many of these new college-educated friend converts were more often being
warmly embraced by the increasingly influential us Muslim institutions. The
coming of thousands of college-educated Muslim students had therefore initi-
ated an important transition in white American convert history.
Indeed, it should not be surprising at all that several of the most prominent
pre-1975 white American converts were individuals who had embraced Islam
after befriending international Muslim students and before—or without—
marrying a Muslim. Michael E. Jansen, who in 1974 became perhaps the first
white American female convert to perform the hajj, first gained an interest in
Islam when she met Iraqi students while attending the University of Michigan
in the 1950s.67 Similarly, Wilson Guertin, who in 1954 was elected to be the fia’s
first convert vice president, originally became curious about Islam in graduate
school in the early 1950s when his Iraqi student roommates started attending
Imam Chirri’s Michigan City’s mosque.68 Wilson, who had grown up with a
very weak religious identity but had recently taken an interest in religion,69
began visiting the mosque and having one-on-one meetings with the imam.

67 Michael E. Jansen, “An American Girl on the Hajj,” Aramco World Magazine 26, no. 6
(1974): 30–39.
68 “Iowan Joins Moslem Faith,” Waterloo Daily Courier, July 12, 1954, 1; Wilson Guertin phone
interview with the author, February 18, 2014.
69 Guertin’s spiritual search was pointed out in Mohamad Jawad Chirri, Inquiries about
Islam (Beirut: Dar Lubnan Press, 1965), 10.
The Postwar Shift 309

Through these conversations, which were later published in a book that would
become popular among American Muslims,70 Wilson became Chirri’s first
convert and joined the emerging national Muslim community in which Chirri
was taking an increasingly larger role. Wilson served as an fia vice president
for at least two years, wrote letters and articles for various Muslim journals,
and briefly moved to Baghdad before returning to the us and settling in Florida
in the 1960s.71
The path to conversion of Maryam Jameelah (born Margaret Marcus)—the
most well-known white American convert in the 1960s and 1970s—reveals a
similar, if more complex, connection between interaction with Muslim stu-
dents and an involvement with the growing us Muslim community. Indeed,
Jameelah’s journey to Islam epitomizes the multiple ways in which the numer-
ous developments of the us Muslim community influenced converts. Like
Wilson, Maryam had felt only nominal identification with the religion of her
family (which, in her case, was Reform Judaism) and as a child took an interest
in various faiths and cultures.72 Then, in 1953, when Maryam was nineteen
years old, she received a copy of Marmaduke Pickthall’s translation of the
Qurʾan. Similar to the experience of Nilla Cram Cook, Maryam had been par-
ticularly ill and low in spirits at the time, but upon reading the holy book she
suddenly felt an amazing spiritual revitalization.73 Maryam believed she had

70 Chirri, Inquiries, was first published in 1965, but the book’s popularity would increase
especially after 1975.
71 Wilson H. Guertin, “Freud’s Psycho-Analysis and Islam,” Islamic Review 42, no. 2 (1954):
37–38; “Programme” in Federation of Islamic Associations in the United States and Canada,
Fourth Annual Convention, July 22-23-24th, London, Ontario ([London, Ontario]: Federation
of Islamic Associations in the United States and Canada, 1955), unpaginated, bhl. In his
interview with the author, Guertin conveyed that, despite his contacts with Muslims from
across the country, he did not know of any other white converts in the 1950s. This con-
firms the theory that people who converted through marriage at the time—the vast
majority of converts—were not particularly organizationally active or prominent
Muslims.
72 Although Jameelah published an official explanation of her conversion (Why I Embraced
Islam: How I Discovered the Holy Quran and Its Impact on My Life, The Holy Prophet and His
Impact on My Life [Lahore: Muhammad Yusuf Khan, 1976]), the best resource for the his-
torical circumstances of her journey to Islam is her Quest for the Truth: Memoirs of
Childhood and Youth in America (1945–1962) (Delhi: Aakif Book Depot, [1989] 1992). There
has been one chapter-length biography on Jameelah and one recent book-length biogra-
phy: John Esposito and John O. Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 54–67; Deborah Baker, The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism
(Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2011).
73 Jameelah, Quest, 90.
310 chapter 10

discovered the one true religion, but knowing no Muslims, she was not yet pre-
pared to convert. She commenced to investigate Islam further, however, read-
ing the conversion narrative of the Austrian Muhammad Asad as well as other
writings by prominent Muslims from the period. Soon after this, while she was
attending college in New York, Maryam befriended a white teenage convert
who was plugged into New York’s diverse Muslim community. Before she even
decided to embrace Islam, Maryam had become friends with not only immi-
grants and other white and black converts, but also a number of international
Muslim students who frequently congregated at the home of a popular local
white convert named Halimah.74 By 1956, five years before she would take her
shahada, Maryam had already begun reading and writing to Islamic journals,
including Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf’s Islamic Literature.75 By 1959, she had
commenced visiting the various imams in New York and Washington, dc, cor-
responding with popular international Muslim thinkers, and regularly visiting
the Muslim student group at Columbia University. In May 1961, she formally
converted at Sheikh Daoud Faisal’s ima in Brooklyn. A year later, after having
been invited to live in Pakistan by prominent Muslim reformist Abdul A‘la
Mawdudi, Maryam was on a ship heading to her new home in South Asia, from
where she would become an internationally recognized figure (see Chapter 11).
That Jameelah had begun visiting a Muslim student group just prior to con-
version reflects the importance for converts of this additional network of post-
war Islam institutions. Almost as soon as the postwar Muslim students started
arriving in the us, they began to organize. In September 1946, several Indian
students in San Francisco created what became known as the Association of
Muslim Students in America, possibly the first such postwar organization.76 The
Association’s stated purpose was to promote “an understanding between the
Muslim world and the people of America,” and several of the members endeav-
ored to reach out to Americans through lectures, radio appearances, newspaper
articles, and the group’s bulletin, which was published in Canada in 1947. The
fate of this organization is unknown, but soon similar groups were springing
up.77 Perhaps inspired by the Association’s efforts, in 1948 Muslim students at

74 Jameelah, Quest, 121.

75 See, e.g., “Readers’ Forum,” Islamic Literature 8, no. 12 (1956): 59. Jameelah’s 1960s writings
will be discussed more in Chapter 11.
76 “Muslim Students in America,” Muslim World 37 (1947): 314–16.
77 A group called the Moslem Students’ Association was started at the University of Southern
California by 1949, and though it focused on serving Muslim students in Los Angeles, it
claimed members from all over the world; see Mahmoud Awad, “A Proposed Convention
of Muslim Students in London,” Islamic Review 37, no. 6 (1949): 57.
The Postwar Shift 311

the University of Minnesota organized for the same purpose that the Association
had, but called their group the Islamic Cultural Society.78 In 1954, Khurram Jah
Murad, a follower of Mawdudi, began leading prayers for the community.79
Soon Murad and the Islamic Cultural Society’s efforts were being supported and
presumably joined by a professor at the school named Thomas Ballantine Irving,
a white Canadian who had converted to Islam in the 1930s while living in
Toronto.80 In a short time, both the Society and Irving—who was one of the first
white Americans confirmed to have taken the hajj, having done so in 1957—
were affiliated with the fia.81 Irving became a highly active member of the
Federation, serving as a vice president starting in 1963 and taking on the editor
position of its Muslim Life journal by 1964, in which he published his transla-
tions of sections from the Qurʾan.82 At the University of Wisconsin, meanwhile,
an Islamic Cultural Association had been formed by 1949, and, after reading
about this event in the Islamic Review, Thomas Muhammad Clayton, the white
convert affiliated with the Lahoris, established another branch with Muslim stu-
dents at the University of Chicago.83 In 1956, Columbia University’s Muslims
formed the organization Maryam Jameelah would later join—what they called
the Muslim Students’ Association—with twenty-five Muslims, and within two
years it had over one hundred members, including two American converts.84
This trend of white converts joining Muslim student organizations included
the most influential Muslim student group in American history, the Muslim

78 “Islamic Culture Now on American Campus,” Tuscaloosa News, October 16, 1948, 4.
79 Ghulam M. Haniff, “Twinned with Faith,” Islamic Horizons 42, no. 5 (September/October
2013): 52–53.
80 Haniff, “Twinned,” 52; Sheila Musaji, “Interview with Prof. T.B. Irving,” American Muslim,
September 29, 2002, accessed June 10, 2014, http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/
features/articles/profile_professor_thomas_ballantine_tb_irving.
81 Thomas Ballantine Irving, Selections from the Noble Reading: An Anthology of Passages
from the Qur˒an (Cedar Rapids: Unity Publishing Company, 1968), [172].
82 Haniff, “Twinned,” 53; Washington d.c. 1958, Seventh Annual Convention, The Federation of
Islamic Associations in the United States and Canada ([Washington, dc]: Federation of
Islamic Associations in the United States and Canada, 1958), [20], bhl; “f.i.a. Officers
for’63-’64,” Muslim Star 5, no. 1 (January & February 1964): 1, imjc Papers, Box 8, bhl;
Muslim Life 11, no. 2 (spring 1964), imjc Papers, Box 9, Misc. Islam Organizations’
Newsletters, 1964–1990, bhl.
83 “Correspondence,” Light, July 16, 1948, 11; “Islam in America,” Islamic Review 37, no. 9
(1949): 42; Bashir Ahmad Minto, “Muslims in America,” Light, October 1, 1949, 4; Thomas
Muhammad Clayton, “Islam in America,” Islamic Review 38, no. 6 (1950): 52.
84 “Moslem Students at Columbia University Receive Prayer Rug from His Majesty King
Saud,” Moslem World & the u.s.a. (October-December 1956): 55–56; “Muslim Students’
Association at Columbia University,” Light, October 16, 1958, 1, 8.
312 chapter 10

Students’ Association of United States and Canada (msa). The msa developed
out of a fall 1961 meeting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
between Muslim students from various schools who desired to establish a cen-
tral meeting place so that they could, as the researcher Herman Bowers put it,
“gather, become acquainted, and learn of the customs of each other’s country.”85
Discovering how other Muslim students successfully navigated life in America
was an important need for these international students, many of whom were
not only the first people in their families to attend college, but sometimes the
first to leave their homelands. About 75 students, representing 10 Muslim college
organizations, met again in December 1962, and officially organized as the msa
on January 1, 1963.86 Word about the organization spread quickly; by 1964, 38
student groups had joined; 58 had joined by 1965, and in 1968, there were 105
Muslim college groups and 1,000 dues-paying members in the msa.87 With its
significant size and reach, it was inevitable that some of the white converts affili-
ated with local Muslim student groups would join the msa. By 1964, in fact—just
1 year after its founding—the msa had gained several white members, and at
least 2 of which served in official roles within either their local or the national
msa.88 After 1964, as we will see in Chapter 11, white converts would only become
more prominent in the msa, reflecting the growing importance of the connec-
tion between international Muslim students and American converts.

From Unity to Division: The Efforts of Abdul Basit Naeem

Some international Muslim students, meanwhile, were organizing and con-

necting with American Muslims outside of the college setting. This was the
case with the Pakistani Abdul Basit Naeem, who briefly became one of the

85 Bowers, “A Phenomenological Study,” 108.

86 Bowers, “A Phenomenological Study,” 108; Larry Poston, Islamic Daʻwah in the West:
Muslim Missionary Activity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992), 102.
87 Muslim Students’ Association, msa Handbook (Ann Arbor: Muslim Students’ Association
of the us and Canada, [1968]), 28, 35.
88 Astrid-Herma Smart became a prominent member in the University of Illinois’ group (see
her “How and Why I Adopted Islam,” Al-Ittihad 2, no. 1 [1965]: 8–11), Linda Clark was made
secretary of the msa of Southern Illinois University (see her “How I Became a Muslim and
Embraced Islam,” Al-Ittihad 2, no. 1 [1965]: 41), and Omar Theodore Kilgore of the
University of Michigan was made head of the national msa’s committee on Education,
Libraries and Lecturing (see “Resolutions Passed at the Convention of Muslim Students’
Associations of the United States & Canada,” Al-Ittihad 2, no. 1 [1965]: 14).
The Postwar Shift 313

leading figures in American Islam in the 1950s. Naeem first arrived in the us in
1948, and by 1950 was attending graduate school at the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia,89 where he married an immigrant from the
Caribbean.90 It was during his stay in Philadelphia that Naeem first encoun-
tered American Muslims, and in early 1951 he assisted an African American
convert named Abdul Rahman in founding an organization called the Moslem
League of Philadelphia.91 This League was apparently created for the purpose
of uniting local Muslims; it held its first meeting at the aauaa headquarters
where an Iraqi immigrant recited a section of the Qurʾan and the walls were
decorated with a us flag, a Saudi flag, and a poster of Maulana Siddiqui.92
Although the group also promoted the ideas of Mawdudi,93 the connection
between Naeem and Siddiqui would in fact become very important. In June,
one of the Siddiqui-created South African Muslim journals, the Muslim’s
Digest, ran a story obviously written by Naeem about the League’s first meet-
ing, and in the following year it published another Naeem article concerning
American views of Islam.94 The most important connection, though, as Naeem
would later claim, occurred when Siddiqui wrote to Naeem in 1952, encourag-
ing him to start a periodical for Muslims in the United States.95
After receiving the letter, Naeem left Philadelphia and, apparently in prepa-
ration for this project, spent the next two years familiarizing himself as best he
could with the us’ emerging Muslim community and its history. In January
1955, the fruits of Naeem’s efforts were revealed when he published out of Iowa
City the first issue of his Moslem World & the u.s.a. Naeem’s magazine was
impressive on multiple fronts. It was the first American Muslim periodical that
truly had a contemporary magazine feel, complete with professional-type lay-
outs, well-written short articles, numerous photographs, and magazine-quality
glossy paper. More importantly, it featured several influential Muslim figures

89 New York Passenger List, Pan American Airways, 2/4/1948, Ancestry.com; Abdul Basit
Naeem, “Islam in Philadelphia,” Moslem World & the u.s.a. (January-February 1957): 14.
90 Naeem, “Islam in Philadelphia”; Abdul Basit Naeem, “Islam and the United States: Religion
of the Year!,” Muslim’s Digest (June 1952): 123.
91 Our Special Correspondent, “Muslim Activities in Philadelphia,” Muslim’s Digest (June
1951): 85.
92 Our Special Correspondent, “Muslim.”
93 Asad Gilani, Maududi: Thought and Movement, trans. Hasan Muizuddin Qazi, 5th ed.
(Lahore: Farooq Hasan Gilani, 1978), 164.
94 Our Special Correspondent, “Muslim”; Naeem, “Islam and the United States.”
95 Publisher [Naeem], “His Eminence Maulana Siddiqui Passes Away,” Moslem World & the
u.s.a. (January 1955): 41; Abdul Basit Naeem, “The Late Maulana Siddiqui Al-Qaderi,”
Moslem World & the u.s.a. (August-September 1956): 39.
314 chapter 10

from both the pre- and postwar periods, including the imam of the Washington
Islamic Center, the Moslem League of Philadelphia founder Abdul Rahman,
the old Mansfield propagandist Muharrem Nadji, Sacramento’s white Grand
Mufti William Lutz, and Naeem’s Iowa neighbor and founder of the fia,
Abdullah Igram—and the issue’s last page even promised that the following
number would contain an article about Alexander Webb to be entitled the
“First American Moslem.”96 The other contents of the magazine were similarly
diverse, Naeem printed articles by scholars concerned with Middle East affairs,
discussions of current events related to the Muslim communities within the us
and worldwide, and a brief statement informing readers about both Siddiqui’s
1950 us tour and his influence on the creation of the magazine. Appearing just
as the us Muslim community was finally generating true national unity, the
Moslem World & the u.s.a. thus offered an appealing vision for American
Muslims by suggesting that the us had a real potential for fostering the world’s
first truly modern—but still religiously genuine—Islamic community. It was a
community in which Muslims of all backgrounds—including black and white
converts—could be on an even level with other Muslims, and ‘modern’
approaches to Islam (most of the Muslims pictured wore, notably, suits and
dresses) could be combined with classical Islamic knowledge and training.
Naeem’s choices of which Muslims to feature in the magazine suggested to
readers that American Muslims should acknowledge and respect the efforts of
all early Muslim leaders, convert and immigrant, and build on them while
embracing the new institutions and their approaches. This was a message very
much in line with what Siddiqui—who had died in 1954—had preached, and
would have resonated well with many white converts.
In late 1955 or early 1956, Naeem moved to New York and was now more than
ever claiming affiliation with the followers of Siddiqui. His magazine began giv-
ing a significant amount of attention to Sheikh Daoud’s ima and as well as New
York’s ims—both groups that had contact with Siddiqui in 1950—and he
announced that Siddiqui’s disciple, Dr. Fazlur-Rahman Ansari, was the maga-
zine’s main advisor.97 At the same time, Naeem provided more demonstration
of his ability to connect with many facets of the us Muslim community, noting
several Muslim subscribers and publishing articles and letters concerning a
variety of Muslims—including Wilson Guertin and Thomas Irving—from all
across the country. In the April-May 1956 issue, there was even a story about the
Nation of Islam, with which Naeem had recently come into contact through a

96 This article was never published.

97 See page 3 of the April–May 1956 issue.
The Postwar Shift 315

Palestinian immigrant who taught Arabic to the Nation.98 With this Pan-Islamic
approach, Naeem’s magazine and the community it fostered looked to be the
closest thing to the ideal Islamic forum and community that twentieth-century
white converts—particularly the liberal friend converts—had ever seen.99
In the next issue, however, instead of maintaining a spirit of universality
and optimistic hope for the us Muslim community, Naeem began to tie him-
self and his magazine to two particular and potentially divisive movements.
The least divisive was Fazlur-Rahman Ansari’s Jam’iat-ul Falah, a South Asian-
based organization that aimed to perpetuate the principles promoted by
Siddiqui. Naeem announced himself as the Jam’iat’s us representative and he
reminded his readers about the availability of the group’s magazine, the Voice
of Islam, for which George Kheirallah had already written.100 The Voice was, in
fact, an increasingly popular magazine for American Muslims, particularly
those in New York, and in 1962, it also became one of the first English-language
Islamic magazines to publish several of Maryam Jameelah’s essays.101 It is likely,
then, that it was partly thanks to Naeem that Siddiqui and the Pan-Islamic
movements and magazines he inspired continued to play a role in the American
Muslim community for over a decade after his visit in 1950.
Naeem’s own commitments, however, were increasingly political. His mag-
azine also began giving much more preference to stories concerning Muslim
nationalist movements, both those outside the us and the Nation of Islam’s
movement within the country. Starting with the July 1956 issue, in fact, the
Moslem World & the u.s.a. regularly devoted a great deal of text and photo
space to the Nation of Islam, which Naeem adamantly supported. It is not
entirely clear as to why Naeem seemingly abandoned the tolerant, unity, and
West-embracing vision of Siddiqui for the incredibly divisive Nation. Perhaps
Naeem believed that because the noi was the most mobilized us Muslim
movement at the time, an alliance with it might unite the us Muslim com-
munity and through this better support international anticolonial efforts.
Perhaps, too, the dark-skinned Naeem had come to appreciate the breadth

98 This was Jamil Diab, who was featured in the first issue of Naeem’s magazine. See
“Moslems in the u.s.a.,” Moslem World & the u.s.a. (January 1955): 25–26; Abdul B.
Naeem, “The South Chicago Moslems,” Moslem World & the u.s.a. (April–May 1956):
22–23.
99 Guertin, however, expressed displeasure with Naeem’s tendency to highlight political
issues; see his letter in the April–May 1956 issue.
100 See page 3 of the June–July 1956 issue.
101 A Jameelah essay ran in almost every issue between April 1962 and April 1964.
316 chapter 10

and wickedness of American racism, and saw the noi’s separatist message as
a practical response for not only African Americans, but also for many—if
not all—Muslims who were similarly victimized by racial prejudice. Whatever
the reasons, it was a fateful decision. At the time, the Nation was gaining a
significant amount of press coverage in the secular media, much of which led
to the popular perception that the group’s rather militant racial views were
antagonistic to liberal dreams of multiracial unity in America. Not desiring to
be affiliated with such controversial views, many immigrant Muslims and
African American Sunnis began to publicly denounce the Nation as ‘phony’
Islam.102 By not immediately severing ties, then, Naeem quickly lost his
initial popularity with the broader Muslim community and his claims of
adherence to the inclusivist Siddiqui movement were not going to be accepted
at face value.
In the May-June 1957 issue, Naeem ran articles announcing Fazlur-Rahman
Ansari’s planned 1958 visit to the country and the latter’s recent establishing
of a new international Islamic organization, the World Federation of Islamic
Missions. But this turned out to be the Moslem World & the u.s.a.’s final issue
and there is currently no evidence that Ansari came in 1958 or that Naeem
continued to be a propagandist for Ansari’s movement after the summer of
1957. The World Federation—or at least its journal, the Minaret—would end
up becoming somewhat well-known among American Muslims, particularly
white and black Sunni converts who had contact with Sheikh Daoud,103 but
Naeem had lost much of his influence among the Minaret’s readers by alien-
ating the immigrant Muslim community. Naeem, nevertheless, seems to have
felt that his position was the correct one, and he spent the next twenty years
working as columnist for the Nation of Islam’s newspaper, Muhammad
Speaks, while running the small, Brooklyn-based American Islamic
Educational Society, from which he taught Arabic and attempted to create
new journals, none of which ever achieved anything close to the popularity
that the Moslem World & the u.s.a. had obtained. With Naeem’s transforma-
tion, then, white convert hopes of finding a highly ethnically-mixed and lib-
eral American Muslim forum and community would not be realized for many
more years.

102 Essien-Udom, Black, 310–19.

103 Maryam Jameelah had several articles published in the magazine in 1965 and a few more
during the rest of the decade. In 1969, the Minaret noted two American converts to the
World Federation and five in 1971. Ansari’s group, in fact, became an important influence
for the black Sunni Dar ul-Islam movement, which formed in Brooklyn in the 1960s as a
splinter from Sheikh Daoud’s State Street Mosque.
The Postwar Shift 317

On the Frontiers of Deterritorialization

The fact that the Nation of Islam became a major point of contention for the
larger us Muslim community reflected the fact that as members of that com-
munity, white converts would have to make a serious evaluation of their own
relationship with African American Muslim sectarian groups. For some, since
white Americans were historically, socially, and psychologically much more
closely connected to the oppression of African Americans than Muslim immi-
grants were, it would not always be sufficient to take the same dismissive view
of the noi. This feeling represented a larger cultural division between white
converts and immigrants: No matter how much both groups would attempt to
stress unity with all Muslims, because of their distinct cultural histories, immi-
grant and white convert Muslims had different cultural and psychological
needs and desires, and these sometimes led to white converts taking different
religious paths than their immigrant coreligionists. In the postwar era, with
contact with new ideas and religions increasing exponentially, the distinctive-
ness of white Muslim identity would begin to manifest itself in several, some-
times surprising new ways.
There were of course a few predictable outliers: individuals who, like Louis
Glick and William Lutz, wanted to be leaders shortly after converting, despite
apparently not being well-connected or well-trained in Islam. Two of these fig-
ures appeared in California. In 1955, the Islamic Review reported that a mosque
in Los Angeles had been founded by a convert named Muhammad Abdullah
Reynolds.104 Unfortunately, there is almost nothing known about this man or
his mosque. He was probably the same person as the Boyd Reynolds of Los
Angeles who subscribed to Naeem’s magazine in 1956,105 but it is possible too
that he was the Los Angeles resident going by the name of ‘Savinien’ who wrote
to the Islamic Review in 1950, claiming he had a lot on which he hoped to build
a mosque.106 Curiously, Savinien is the same name that was signed at the bot-
tom of some of the wartime flyers for the Kalifat No. 5, a group that seemed to
be something that Louis Glick might have produced; unfortunately, we may
never know if there was indeed a connection between Glick, Reynolds, and
Kalifat No. 5. Further north, in San Francisco, a medical doctor who had con-
verted in 1952 while serving in the us Army Medical Corps in the Korean War,
Joseph DiCaprio, returned to the us where he was soon leading the Islamic

104 Al-Maqdissi, “Muslims of America,” 31.

105 “On to Madinat-Assalam,” Moslem World & the u.s.a. (April–May 1956): 2.
106 Savinien, “Islam in America,” Islamic Review (December 1950): 47.
318 chapter 10

Center of San Francisco.107 According to the Bay Area’s famous Sufi, Samuel
Lewis, DiCaprio’s Center was primarily made up of converts who rejected both
William Lutz and the Ahmadis,108 although by 1964, a Lahori missionary
named Muhammad Abdullah had become the group’s imam.109 Samuel Lewis,
meanwhile, had broken from Rabia Martin’s Meher Baba group and, after tak-
ing two trips to the East where he studied under Sufi teachers, would begin
creating a new Sufi following that would flourish in the mid-to-late 1960s (see
Chapter 11).
When it came to African American Muslims, most white Muslims simply
followed the lead of their immigrant coreligionists, whom they understood as
possessing ‘authentic’ Islam. The immigrants, although they frequently avoided
African Americans socially, tended to at least accept as religiously legitimate
most who claimed to be Sunni, while rejecting the Nation of Islam as ‘phony.’
Their tendency to dismiss the Nation was helped by the fact that some Sunni-
leaning African Americans, such as Sheikh Daoud and Talib Dawud of
Philadelphia, also publicly spoke out against the Nation of Islam. However,
some white American converts—particularly friend converts, who, by and
large, seem to have been very liberal and anti-racist in their leanings—were
sympathetic to the black sectarian movements, even despite some of the
movements’ highly racialized worldviews. In the interwar period, as we have
seen, when much of the immigrant community ignored them, a number of the
leading white converts happily collaborated with African American Sunnis,
Ahmadis, and Moors (mst members) connected to the uisa. People like Louis
Glick and Nadirah Osman followed these black Muslims’ tendency to look
past, and sometimes blend, sectarian ideas. Other whites, meanwhile, had
come to Islam in black-majority Muslim communities where the sectarian
influence of the Ahmadis was felt strongly. There were, for instance, still a

107 Joseph DiCaprio, “Prayer Urged,” Oakland Tribune, November 12, 1956, 48.
108 Letters, Samuel Lewis to Abdul Rahman, February 7, 1961; to Bashir Ahmed Minto, July 24,
1956; to Florie, December 16, 1960, Diaries, accessed August 1, 2013, http://murshidsam.org/.
109 The earliest mention I have found of Abdullah leading the icsf is “Israeli Officer Speaks
Tomorrow,” San Mateo Times, November 7, 1964, 7. After that date, Abdullah was fre-
quently mentioned as a leading member of the organization through the early 1970s in
both the secular press and the Islamic press. This was the same Muhammad Abdullah
who had briefly worked with the San Francisco Lahoris in the mid-1950s, Nasir Ahmad’s
imb in Philadelphia in the early 1960s, and the noi in the 1950s and early 1960s; see “Some
Impressions about the United States,” Light, May 24, 1957, 5–6; Turner, Islam in the, 194–95;
Muhammad Abdullah, ed. Religion and Society (Hayward, ca: Muslim Society of u.s.a.,
Inc., [1972]), 4.
The Postwar Shift 319

small number of white followers of the Qadiani movement110 as well as,

undoubtedly, a few others who embraced Islam among the Sunni-leaning
blacks, such as Maryam Jameelah’s friend, Halimah, and Ella May Garber,
whose tortuous Islamic journey eventually led her to follow the Sudanese
Sunni leader Satti Majid.111 Indeed, reflective of the liberalizing cultural trans-
formations that were simmering at the time, there seems to have been a rare,
but somewhat consistent urge among young, liberal whites to seek out and
embrace African American Muslims. A handful of non-Muslim whites even
attended Nation of Islam meetings in the early 1960s.112
Of course, not even all immigrant Sunnis rejected African American Muslim
sectarian movements. In fact, a few immigrants supported and worked for the
noi, and, despite the fact that the group generally did not allow non-black
immigrants to become full members, at least one third- or fourth-generation
immigrant Muslim went against his family’s wishes and successfully joined the
group in the early 1960s.113 The Moors in particular had a history of at least
partial acceptance from the immigrant community that dated, as we have
seen, back to at least the 1930s. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Naeem’s Moslem
World & the u.s.a. published a number of letters and news briefs about mst
members, Hameed Wahab Bey’s Philadelphia-based Moorish American
Islamic Society appeared in more than one fia convention program,114 letters
from Moors frequently ran in the Islamic Review without any apparent criti-
cism, and the Lahori Muhammad Abdullah worked with, in addition to the
noi, Nasir Ahmad’s Qadiani- and mst-influenced imb.115 Although it is not

110 Chi, “A Case Study,” 110; Bashir interview.

111 Jameelah, Quest, 121–22; Bowen, “Satti Majid,” 198.
112 “Muslims Invited Whites to Hear Muhammad at Huge Armory Rally[.] How Did They
React?,” Mr. Muhammad Speaks 1, no. 3 (September 1960): 16–17; “They Came to Hear the
Messenger,” Muhammad Speaks 1, no. 9 (July 1962): 18–19. Elijah Muhammad would ban
whites from meetings in late 1963.
113 Essien-Udom, Black, 184–85; Hazel Wanner Howell, “Black Muslim Affiliation as Reflected
in Attitudes and Behavior of Negro Adolescents with Its Effect on Policies and
Administrative Procedures in Schools of Two Easter Cities, 1961-64” (PhD diss., Teachers
College, Columbia University, 1966), 122–23.
114 Washington d.c. 1958, Seventh Annual Convention, The Federation of Islamic Associations in
the United States and Canada ([Washington, dc]: Federation of Islamic Associations in
the United States and Canada, 1958), [24], bhl; The Federation of Islamic Associations in
the United States and Canada, 11th Annual Convention, August 10th, 11th, & 12th, 1962,
Philadelphia, Penna. ([Philadelphia]: Federation of Islamic Associations in the United
States and Canada, 1962), [17], bhl.
115 Turner, Islam in the, 194–95.
320 chapter 10

clear as to what extent immigrant Muslims knew the doctrines of these sectar-
ian Muslims, these examples demonstrate that at least some were welcomed in
the immigrant communities and would have therefore been accepted by many
of the white converts in those communities.
In addition, a handful of whites who generally had little to no connection
with the immigrant community independently discovered that a few mst fac-
tions allowed them to join their groups. The faction led by Frederick Turner-El
sometimes made whites who worked with his organization honorary mem-
bers, and in the mid-1950s the Baltimore faction led by the Dingle-El brothers
gave a true initiation to Yahya Rafi Sharif (Yale Jean Singer), a Jewish convert to
Islam whom, after meeting him at a local mosque, they authorized to spread
the teachings to other whites.116 In 1957 or 1958, Sharif and three friends—
apparently after having taken an interest in Sufi thought and the mythical sto-
ries of the marijuana-smoking medieval Isma‘ili Assassins—established the
Noble Order of Moorish Science (later, the Noble Order of Mystic Sufis). Then,
in the early 1960s, the group began to expand. In 1961, Sharif moved with his
future wife to California, where they became involved with the immigrant and
Qadiani communities, and continued to promote the mst before moving to
York, Pennsylvania where they worked to establish a popular Qadiani commu-
nity and school.117 Then, in 1962 one of the Baltimore group’s young members,
Warren Tartaglia, left the city to attend New York University, where he intro-
duced the organization to Manhattan’s white hipsters, including the man who
would become one of the us’ most influential non-orthodox Muslims: Peter
Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey). The New York group, which was named the
Moorish Orthodox Church, would soon adapt other elements of Sufism, includ-
ing symbols and ideas from Inayat Khan’s teachings and the Guénon-influenced
Traditionalist school (see Chapter 11). This, then, was a significant development
in American Islamic history. By connecting the race-consciousness and teach-
ings of African American Islam with the Sufi movements that had developed
out of the nineteenth-century Western esoteric Islamophilia, although small
and lacking significant influence, the Moorish Orthodox Church represented a

116 Michael Muhammad Knight, William S. Burroughs vs. The Qur˒an (Berkeley: Soft Skull Press,
2012), 20–23; Ustad Selim, Arif Hussein al-Camaysar, Hakim Bey, Sultan Rafi Sharif Bey, Peter
Lamborn Wilson, and Muhammed Abullah al-Ahari (Ahari El), eds., History & Catechism of
the Moorish Orthodox Church of America (Chicago: Magribine Press, 2011); Sultan Rafi Sharif
Ali Shah Bey, “History and Works of the Noble Order Moorish Science Temple Moors,”
accessed July 18, 2014, http://moorishleague.webs.com/nobleorderhistory.htm.
117 Bashir interview.
The Postwar Shift 321

wholly new and important current in American Islam. They had institutional-
ized in America what Nilla Cram Cook was striving for abroad in the 1940s: The
combining of modern esotericism with the liberal desire to create justice in the
world by intentionally focusing on affiliation identifying with the ‘untouch-
able’ castes.
The emergence of these independent converts and movements reveals that
something new was taking place in the postwar period. What was, for the most
part, a simple bifurcation of white Muslims and Sufis in the early twentieth
century was becoming much more complex. Now, Sufism, which was coming
from a variety of sources and levels of religious training, was making contact
with white Muslims in religiously and ethnically diverse settings, producing a
wide variety of views on what it meant to be both a Muslim and a Sufi. As this
was happening, the numbers of conversions through marriage continued to
increase and the demographics of spouses and friends were more and more
leaning towards the college-educated. This, in turn, was leading to some white
converts taking leadership roles in the growing, modernist-leaning us and
global Muslim communities. And, in addition to all of this, although there had
already been white Sunnis who tried to lead independent Islamic groups, some
were now, it seems, actually able to lead and occasionally found real and some-
what long-lasting Islamic institutions. Ironically, then, the significant reterrito-
rialization of the us Muslim community in the postwar period had created the
conditions necessary for allowing white conversion to Islam to deterritorialize
at a tremendous rate.
It needs to be clear, however, that this religious deterritorialization was pri-
marily taking place on the fringes of the United States Muslim community. The
main trends were in fact showing increasing prominence and consistency.
Although it is true that this period saw the emergence of more varieties of
white Islamic identities than there had been before, more and more, growing
numbers of white converts were affiliating with a particular type of Muslim. By
1965, in fact, a trend that had emerged in the postwar period would come to
dominate and define the white convert community: contact with college-
educated immigrants.
 chapter 11

Reorientation

In the 1960s, white American religious culture underwent a metamophosis.1 To

a great extent this transformation was the product of a growing sense of alien-
ation among America’s youth as cultural and political changes destabilized
traditional moral and psychological frameworks. There was, for instance, a
growing fear that death was imminent, that it was going to come either from a
Cold War nuclear holocaust or being drafted to Vietnam. Meanwhile, confi-
dence in traditional us social and religious values was being eroded by the rise
of protest and counterculture movements, the increased awareness of the suf-
fering of non-white people in the us and beyond, and unhappiness with the
new cultural emphasis on conformity and material consumption as the coun-
try became wealthier and more suburbanized. Artistic and literary currents
also played a part. The spread of abstract, non-Western, and existential works
helped both challenge and reframe popular aesthetics, while the seemingly
innocuous rise of middle-class book clubs fostered the appreciation of all reli-
gious traditions as legitimate sources of spiritual knowledge.2
In terms of the history of white American conversion to Islam, one particu-
lar year from the 1960s stands out as especially important. In 1965, while there
was not a significant increase in conversion to Islam that year, racial and social
justice issues were coming to the forefront in white American culture, which
would have indirect but important impacts on us conversion to Islam for sev-
eral decades to come. The figure most associated with that year’s struggles in
race relations was Malcolm X, the former Nation of Islam minister who by that
time had become an internationally-recognized symbol of non-white resis-
tance to white oppression. His assassination on February 21 shocked the coun-
try, and his Autobiography, released later that year, quickly became a best-seller
and one of the most influential non-fiction books in American history.

1 On this topic, see, e.g., Robert S. Ellwood, The Sixties Spiritual Awakening: American Religion
Moving from Modern to Postmodern (New Brunswick, nj: Rutgers University Press, 1994);
Charles Y. Glock and Robert N. Bellah, eds., The New Religious Consciousness (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976); Robert Wuthnow, The Consciousness Reformation
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); Joseph Needleman, The New Religions (Garden
City, ny: Doubleday & Co., 1970); Peter Rowley, New Gods in America: An Informal Investigation
into the New Religions of American Youth Today (New York: David McKay Company, 1971).
2 On the latter point, see Matthew S. Hedstrom, The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and
American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_013

Reorientation 323

Malcolm’s murder, however, was not the only major episode of race-related
violence in 1965. On March 7, what became known as ‘Bloody Sunday,’ American
television audiences witnessed Alabama State Troopers attacking the over 500
nonviolent protesters attempting to bring attention to the suppression of
African American voter registration. Then, in August, less than a week after
President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act partly in response to the March
protests, a six-day race riot erupted in Los Angeles’ African American neigh-
borhood of Watts, further energizing the Civil Right Movement and the accom-
panying desire for a reconfiguration of race and class relations in the us.
In October, just as the country was beginning to come to terms with the
significance of these history-transforming events, President Johnson signed
into law the Immigration and Nationality Act, which replaced the nation quota
immigration system that had been instituted in 1924 with much more welcom-
ing criteria. This modification of immigration rules would lead to a huge rise in
the numbers of Muslim immigrants from all parts of the world, many of whom
were college-educated, middle-class individuals who were influenced by the
various Pan-Islamic revivalist movements that were popular at the time. The
timing of this change in immigration would mean that white Americans, who
were increasingly sympathetic to struggles for justice and equal rights of all
peoples and often disillusioned by the flaws they observed in their own society,
were being introduced to a major new wave of people and ideas to which they
might look for spiritual, social, and political guidance. This would prove to
have enormous consequences for the the direction of American religious
history.
With these issues in mind, this chapter makes four arguments. The first and
most obvious is that it was in fact largely due to the contact between post-1964
immigrants and young white Americans that the country began producing a
new era of conversion to Islam. With hundreds of thousands of Muslims enter-
ing American workplaces, enrolling in American schools, and moving into
American neighborhoods, it was almost inevitable that at least some white
Americans would begin embracing the religion of their new coworkers, class-
mates, and neighbors. Although completely accurate numbers are not avail-
able, the existing evidence points to there being several thousand—possibly
upwards of 10,000—new white converts during this period, a number that
represents a tremendous increase from earlier eras. Since a large percentage of
these converts were known to have married immigrants, there should be little
doubt that it was primarily post-1964 immigration that caused this enormous
change in white American conversion to Islam.
However, these numbers alone do not adequately explain the nature of
white American Islamic conversion during this period. The second argument
324 chapter 11

this chapter makes, then, addresses the issue of what conversion actually
meant at the ground level for the thousands who became Muslim. I make the
case that, generally, white conversions to Islam between 1965 and 1975 shared
the characteristic of being focused on creating a new ‘way of life’ for the con-
vert. The period’s numerous social upheavals and destabilizing intellectual cli-
mate produced a strong desire among many Americans to seek out new,
potentially better ways of living in the world. This was especially true of young
middle-class, college-educated whites, who were, because of their education,
social status, and relative wealth, the Americans most free to explore the many
new cultural currents circulating in us society. After they began befriending,
dating, and marrying Muslims, many whites grew attracted to what they under-
stood as Islam’s emphasis on social justice and morality as well as the prescrip-
tions, embodied in Islam’s five pillars, for living a spiritual life on a day-to-day
basis. It was on these foundations that deterritorialized white Americans were
able to build new ways of living that helped them reorient—reterritorialize—
their lives so that they could successfully and satisfactorily live in the new
world in which they found themselves.
Still, the knowledge that converts acquired about Islam came through par-
ticular filters, and the models they had of proper Islamic living were necessar-
ily going to be restricted to the types of models they encountered. Furthermore,
because the immigrant community was undergoing such a significant trans-
formation at the time, many of the institutions and trained religious leaders
that converts had relied on in earlier periods were no longer going to be the
central loci for convert knowledge. The third argument made in this chapter,
then, is that between 1965 and 1975 the Muslim Students’ Association and the
various currents of Pan-Islam that it connected its members to became key
sources for Islamic knowledge and models. The success of the msa in becom-
ing a principal Islamic organization for that generation’s converts is reflected
in the fact that many of the period’s leading converts who were not even col-
lege students, such as Maryam Jameelah, William Lutz, and Thomas Irving,
were frequently featured in the msa’s journal while they were increasingly
ignored by the fia. Of course, many converts continued to join fia-affiliated
mosques, some of which remained among the most influential Islamic institu-
tions in the the country, but these mosques too were increasingly influenced
by Pan-Islam. Therefore, it was through both the fia and the msa that the
country’s converts were exposed to the moderate Pan-Islamic notions of
groups like the World Muslim Congress and Muslim World League, and promi-
nent thinkers like Mawdudi and even Thomas Irving. This of course did not
mean that converts would march in lockstep with whatever ideas they read—
indeed, a number of converts were intellectual and artistic trailblazers in the
Reorientation 325

American Muslim community—but an examination of the Pan-Islamic con-

cepts they were introduced to provides a useful overview of some of the ideas
that shaped their views of Islam.
The final argument that this chapter—and book—makes is that during the
late 1960s and early 1970s, while many white Americans accepted Islam after
contact with Muslim immigrants, many others discovered various forms of
Sufism that were not immigrant-driven. From the universalistic mysticism of
Inayat Khan to the more traditional Muslim Habibiyya order, a relatively large
number of white Americans—many of whom happened to be living in ground
zero of America’s counterculture movement: the Bay Area—began embracing
a wide variety of Islam-related spiritualities. Although the more Islam-focused
Sufi groups did not gain large followings during this period, their appearance
helped lay the groundwork for much of what was to come after 1974.

By the Numbers

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the 1924 quota of one
hundred immigrants for most Muslim-majority countries, making the new
limits 170,000 and 120,000 official immigrants from the Western and Eastern
Hemispheres, respectively, with a 20,000-person limit for any one country.
Special preference was given to professionals, people who worked in fields in
which there was a labor shortage, and refugees. In addition, neither interna-
tional students nor Muslim us citizens’ immediate relatives, who were allowed
to join their family members in America, were counted in these numbers,
which meant that the actual numbers of Muslims coming to the us were going
to be much larger than what the immigration act alone could produce.
The results were clear and immediate. By 1970, us residents from Muslim-
majority countries numbered 174,223, an increase of 40,000 since 1960; by 1980
there would be 493,904.3 Of those who came between 1966 and 1982, twenty
percent immigrated as professional or technical workers and fifty-six percent
were these immigrants’ dependents.4 The remaining percentage was largely
composed of refugees and many former students and their families who stayed
in the us after first coming to attend college. Although we lack full data on
Muslim students in the 1970s, by 1978, the number of students just from Iran,

3 GhaneaBassiri, History, 294.

4 GhaneaBassiri, History, 293.
326 chapter 11

the Levant, North Africa, and Saudi Arabia was estimated to be 64,400.5 The
postwar demographic change that in the 1950s had slowly begun to bring in
more college-educated Muslims was now greatly intensified.
The early effects of this new wave of immigration on conversion were com-
plex, affecting the paths to, motives of, and activities after conversion in mul-
tiple ways. First of all, because new immigrants were allowed to bring their
families, proportionally not as many were intermarrying with non-Muslim
Americans as were in earlier periods. However, because so many more Muslims
were allowed to enter the country, the actual numbers of intermarriages
increased. At, for example, Imam Chirri’s Shiʿi Islamic Center of America in
Dearborn, Michigan—one of the few mosques whose marriage records from
the period have been preserved and made public—from 1966 to 1968, there
were on average only 5 intermarriages per year; from 1969 to 1971, the average
increased to 7; from 1972 to 1974, it was 8.3, and from 1975 to 1977, 10.7.6
Due to a dearth of studies on 1970s us Muslim communities, the precise
relationship between post-1965 immigration, intermarriage, and conversion in
the broader us Muslim community is not fully understood. We do not know,
for example, what percentage of either adult or child immigrants intermarried
and when exactly those marriages took place, so it is extremely difficult to
make even a rough estimate of overall intermarriage rates, without which it is
difficult to estimate rates of conversion through intermarriage. Complicating
the matter further is the fact that different Muslim communities had different
cultures and expectations concerning conversion, and we know only a little
about these. At best, we can say that while almost all Sunni imams permitted
Christian wives to maintain their faith, many American Shiʿi religious leaders,
like Imam Chirri, followed Shiʿi jurists who required both male and female
non-Muslims to at least nominally convert before the leader would marry
them to an immigrant.7
Ratios of male-to-female converts are only slightly easier to determine. We
know that at Imam Chirri’s mosque, 12.6 percent (13 out of 103) of its intermar-
riages from 1966 to 1977 were of male converts to female born-Muslims.

5 James W. Cowan, “Factors Influencing Arab and Iranian Students In-Country and in the
United States,” in Studies from the Arab World and Iran, ed. Gary L. Althen (Washington, dc:
National Association for Foreign Student Affairs, 1978), 5.
6 These numbers, which include five Latina spouses, are based off of the marriage records that
have been preserved in the imjc Papers, Box 6, Marriage Contracts, English, bhl.
7 See Takim, Shi‘ism in America, 22, 241n51. Chirri’s requirement of conversion for both males
and females is attested to in the wording of the Islamic Center of America’s preserved mar-
riage contracts and was confirmed by Eide Alawan, a prominent member of the Center since
the early 1960s, in a phone interview with the author, May 21, 2014.
Reorientation 327

Interestingly, although as a Shiʿi mosque, Chirri’s Islamic Center of America

was not typical in its requiring all female non-Muslims to convert for marriage,
the only serious attempt to count white American converts around that time
found this proportion to be fairly consistent for Muslim converts throughout
the country. M. Arif Ghayur’s 1981 study determined that about 15 percent of
white American converts were male,8 and that of the 85 percent who were
female, most “apparently converted at the time of marriage to Muslim
professionals.”9 As was pointed out in Chapter 10 and as will be discussed
below, there is good evidence that by the early 1970s the population of unmar-
ried friend converts, especially college-educated types, was also increasing.
Ghayur estimated the combined number of male and female white
American converts came to 3 percent of the total us Muslim population in
1980.10 Since he believed that the total population at the time was 1.2 million,
he put white converts as coming to about 40,000. However, this estimate seems
high for two reasons. First is that, while Ghayur’s total population number is
consistent with the early 1970s findings of the Washington, dc Islamic Center,11
this number is not consistent with the data concerning Muslim immigration
cited above and in previous chapters nor is it consistent with high quality
studies of the us Muslim population conducted twenty years or more after
Ghayur’s, all of which suggest that the estimate of 1.2 million for 1980 was
probably too high.12 Second, at least two other studies of the us Muslim com-
munity from the 1970s through the early 1980s suggested that the white con-
vert population was significantly smaller than 40,000 people.13 However, the

8 M. Arif Ghayur, “Muslims in the United States: Settlers and Visitors,” Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 454 (March 1981): 153, 158.
9 Ghayur, “Muslims,” 155, 151–52.
10 Ghayur, “Muslims,” 158.
11 Lovell, “A Survey,” 140.
12 See, e.g., Ihsan Bagby, Paul M. Perl, & Bryan T. Froehle, The Mosque in America: A National
Portrait (Washington, dc: Council on American-Islamic Relations, 2001), 3, 12; Pew
Research Center, Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream (Washington,
dc: Pew Research Center, 2007), 3, 9–10; Ihsan Bagby, The American Mosque 2011: Basic
Characteristics of the American Mosque Attitudes of Mosque Leaders (Washington, dc:
Council on American-Islamic Relations, 2012), 4, 9.
13 The Muslim World League conducted a study in late 1973 and their published report did
not include any mention of white Muslims, and in fact said that the us Muslim commu-
nity “may be roughly divided into two groups, one consisting of the immigrants and the
other of the […] Afro-Americans”—a rather surprising statement if there were truly tens
of thousands of white converts. However, as pointed out in the following note, their meth-
odology was more than lacking; see “Muslims in America,” Al-Ittihad 11, no. 3 (1974): 15–16.
In 1982, Yvonne Haddad reported that throughout history there had been only an
328 chapter 11

­ ethodologies for these two studies were far less rigorous than Ghayur’s, and
m
their conclusions were based on much weaker evidence.14 If we assume, then,
that (a) the total us Muslim population was just 75 percent of Ghayur’s esti-
mate, or 900,000, but also that (b) Ghayur’s reasonable estimate of the per-
centage of white converts (3 percent) was roughly accurate, then the total
white convert population by 1980 would be closer to 27,000. Even if the correct
number was less than half of this—say, 13,000—this would still have been an
enormous jump from the likely size of the white convert population in
the early 1960s, which probably did not exceed two or three thousand.
And because all but a handful of these white converts were affiliated with
immigrant-majority Sunni and Shiʿi mosques,15 it is clear that this explosion of
conversion was correlated with—and almost certainly caused by—post-1964
Muslim immigration.

Islam as a ‘Way of Life’

Contact with the post-1964 wave of immigrats and other societal changes dur-
ing that period led to white Americans having very new types of social and
spiritual experiences. The white person who met a Muslim, for instance, had to
decide how to associate with this Muslim—a decision that his or her parents

estimated 5,000 white converts in “America,” but, again, see the following note for a criti-
cism of her methodology; see Y.Y. Haddad, “Islam in America: A Growing Religious
Movement,” Muslim World League Journal (July 1982): 31.
14 Ghayur, for his study, “contacted over 300 community leaders, several embassies, visited
over 100 metropolitan areas and towns, corresponded with Muslims, and referred to the
us Census volumes, the Annual Report of the ins, and estimates of the Muslim popula-
tion by other writers” (see Ghayur, “Muslims,” 155). The Muslim World League study,
meanwhile, was conducted by representatives of the League as part of a large, but quickly-
done study of Islam in the West. Over the course of only seventy-eight days, these foreign
representatives visited a total of sixty cities in thirteen countries in Europe and the
Americas (see “Muslims in America,” 15). They based their generalizations of the state of
the us’ Muslim community on evidence derived from this obviously superficial approach.
Haddad, on the other hand, provides absolutely no information about her methodology,
and her assertion of 5,000 white converts appears to have been no more than an educated
guess based off of her familiarity with the us Muslim community and its history.
15 Later large studies of Muslims in the us, such as those conducted by Bagby (cited above),
as well as in-depth studies of African American Muslim communities, have revealed that
few whites ever joined African American-majority Muslim groups. There were of course a
handful of exceptions, but these represented a tiny fraction of the white Muslim
population.
Reorientation 329

had probably not had to make. In many if not most cases, of course, Muslim
immigrants and white Americans decided to become nothing more than
acquaintances, and the personal impact of encountering a Muslim was mini-
mal. However, as the numbers of Muslims in the country increased and cultural
changes made appreciation of different religions and ethnicities more accept-
able, the chances that some whites would chose to befriend, date, or marry a
Muslim rose—particularly when the ecounter happened in a college setting or
in another context in which the person was separated from his or her family.
Once such affective bonds between people from different backgrounds are cre-
ated, then each person is faced with many other new decisions about how to
navigate not only their own relationship, but also their relationships with peo-
ple and cultural and religious institutions that might resist such types of bonds.
For many, this process of making new social and spiritual negotiations becomes,
if not all-encompassing, the central focus of their lives, at least for a few years.
For those who developed relationships with Muslims, this tendency to con-
stantly examine one’s relationships with all people and institutions was often
reinforced by, on the one hand, their own internal negotiations with the rapidly
transforming society in which they lived and, on the other, the religion of the
Muslim to whom they had grown close. As has been mentioned, because the
period’s dramatic societal change was so widespread, many people—not just
the marginalized—were questioning various aspects of their lives and beliefs.
One could not but help to ask oneself where he or she stood on issues like drug
use, the Vietname War, and race relations. For some, these questions gave way to
major self-evaluations through which people began to reexamine even small
elements of their daily lives. For those who encountered Muslims, then, it must
have been a relief to discover that Islam not only apparently supported social
justice and worldwide brotherhood (see below), but also offered guidelines for
daily life through its nearly universal ‘five pillars’: (1) saying the declaration of
faith; (2) performing the obligatory daily prayers; (3) giving to charity; (4) fasting
during the holy month of Ramadan; and (5) making the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Along with these, there are several other daily practices that friends and spouses
of Muslims came upon and had to consider as their relationship with the Muslim
grew. It is at least partly understandable, then, that, particularly for post-1964
converts to Islam, their conversion and the process that led up to it was far more
than a simple change in their religious ideas. It was a change in their way of life.
The experience of Lisa Alfassi16 was probably fairly typical during the 1965–
74 period. In the late 1960s, Lisa had moved from her East Coast home to attend

16 This is a pseudonym for a pre-1975 convert with whom I conducted a phone interview on
July 22, 2014.
330 chapter 11

a state university in the Western us. She had been raised as a Christian and
lived a faithful and, in her words, “good, pure life.” However, when she went to
college, Lisa not only stopped attending church regularly, she also befriended a
number of convert and immigrant Muslims with whom she began spending
some of her free time. Prior to ever converting, in fact, Lisa even joined the
local msa and participated in the group’s activities, which included regular
meetings and holiday celebrations. She did not, however, read the msa’s jour-
nal or any other literature about Islam during her college days. The social and
spiritual aspects of the student Muslim community—not the intellectual or
ideological currents—were what had attracted her. Still, Lisa remained reluc-
tant to convert. Upon graduation, she returned to her home town where she
remained a Christian for a number of months. One day, though, Lisa suddenly
possessed a deep conviction that conversion to Islam was the correct path for
her life. She felt that the religion brought her to a higher level of spiritual
awareness, especially through its prescriptions for prayer, meditation, and
intellectual study. Lisa thus decided to convert, marry a Muslim she had known
in college, and begin to study her new religion. She later pursued a PhD, became
a professor, and published various works on Islam-related topics.
Richard and Najiba Moats’ experience, while undoubtedly less typical than
Lisa’s, similarly demonstrates that developing informal relationships with
international Muslim students as well as an appreciation for Islamic spiritual-
ity were important pathways to conversion.17 In 1946, when Richard was eight
years old, his family moved from Missouri to Cairo, Egypt where Richard’s
father, who was in the us Air Force, had recently been stationed. After graduat-
ing from the American University of Beirut and spending a year with his family
in Ethiopia, Richard joined the Air Force himself and was eventually stationed
at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, just outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming. While
in Cheyenne, Richard began frequently traveling to nearby Greeley, Colorado,
where a friend from Ethiopia was attending Colorado State University. Richard,
who spoke Arabic fluently, was soon welcomed into the school’s Middle
Eastern and Muslim student community. Through these acquaintances, in
January of 1970, Richard met Najiba, an Afghan who had come to csu through
a usaid scholarship after being the top student at Kabul University. Najiba was
an intelligent and highly focused woman who appreciated the respect Richard
showed her in their early interactions; however, hoping to eventually return to
Afghanistan, she was not willing to marry a non-Muslim American. In fact, she
told Richard, who was openly pursuing her by this point, that she did not want

17 The following is based on a phone interview with Richard and Najiba Moats conducted by
the author on June 16, 2014.
Reorientation 331

him to become Muslim purely for her sake, although she did encourage him to
study Islam for his own personal benefit. Having been raised in a Muslim-
majority country and in a home without a strong commitment to religion,
Richard was willing to take Najiba’s advice and he soon became convinced in
the truth and simplicity of the message of the Qurʾan. He converted, wrote to
Najiba’s family asking for permission to marry her, and arranged a civil cere-
mony in December 1970.18 Since that time, Richard, while not always praying
five times a day, has regularly fasted for Ramadan; when living in locations near
mosques, he has participated in and led many Muslim community activities;
and, with Najiba, raised his children as Muslims.
Of course, not all white college-educated converts from this period mar-
ried immigrants. The societal transformations of the 1960s were producing
other types of new paths to Islam, which the conversion story of Nusrat
Bashir exemplifies. The Florida native had originally first come into personal
contact with Islam while attending the University of Wisconsin in the late
1960s.19 Although Nusrat had been raised in a very liberal Jewish environ-
ment, the social upheavals of the period had caused her to question many of
her values. During the year 1969, she began dating an African American man
who was similarly disillusioned with the religion of his upbringing. When, a
year later, Nusrat’s boyfriend learned that a friend in Milwaukee had joined
the Qadiani Ahmadis, he and Nusrat began to read the literature of the
movement.20 Within months, the two were regularly praying and studying
Islam, and by mid-1971 they had converted and married. Nusrat, like many
Ahmadis, was not aware of a distinction between her religious community
and those of other Muslims. Having been drawn especially to the Ahmadi
message of inclusiveness of all people within Islam, she was of the under-
standing that she was following the same religion as all other Muslims, and it
would only be years later that she would learn about the Sunni rejection of
the Qadiani movement. When that time finally came, however, she chose not
to leave the Ahmadi community that had welcomed her and provided a rare
example of a successful multiracial religious life. She, in fact, remained firm
in her belief that, beneath the exterior differences, all Muslims essentially
followed the same religion.

18 Two years later, the couple traveled to Washington to perform an Islamic wedding cere-
mony at the Islamic Center.
19 Nusrat Bashir, phone interview with the author, August 28, 2014.
20 The first book they read, which had a tremendous impact on their spiritual journey, was
Ghulam Ahmad’s The Philosophy and Teachings of Islam, originally written in Urdu in
1896.
332 chapter 11

Abedi Shepardson’s interracial marriage, meanwhile, represents yet another

path to Islam that was surely increasingly common during this period.21 Abedi
was born Kenneth Shepardson to Methodist parents in a small Missouri town.
Like many white converts of his generation, Kenneth was college-educated
and fairly liberal; upon graduation in the late 1960s, he joined the Peace Corps
with which he traveled to Kenya to serve as a teacher for two years. There,
Kenneth was drawn to the Swahili language and culture and he also began to
take an interest in the locals’ Islamic faith. Three aspects of the religion—at
least as it appeared in Kenya—were especially attractive to him: the concept of
a unitary God, Islam being “quite pragmatic and concrete,” and what he
believed was the Islamic principle that

men are the basis of Islam. Christianity always seemed to me to be some-

thing for women. In Islam, if the men fall behind, then there is nothing
left.22

In 1971, Kenneth converted; he then took an Islamic name and began perform-
ing the Islamic practices that were followed by the Muslim Kenyans he knew,
such as praying five times a day, growing a beard, wearing a fez, and abstaining
from pork and alcohol. A year later, Kenneth—now Abedi—even performed
the hajj with a Muslim friend. After fulfilling this important pillar of his new
religion, Abedi, at the suggestion of his friend, took a Kenyan Muslim wife and
moved to Nairobi where he obtained a position with the city’s Islamic
Foundation.
For all of these individuals and numerous other white Americans who
embraced Islam after 1964, conversion meant more than simply joining a new
religious community. Above anything else, Islam became a ‘way of life.’23 It is

21 The following is based on Edward B. Fiske, “He Converted to Islam and Took a Wife,” New
York Times, September 13, 1974, 47.
22 Ibid.
23 I am basing this statement and the following discussion primarily on my many interviews
with white American Muslim converts throughout the country—some of whom con-
verted before 1975 and some of whom converted after—conducted over the past seven
years. Because I could find no previous research on the use of the term ‘way of life’ in a
religious context, on October 2, 2014, I used Google’s Ngram Viewer to do a search for the
terms ‘way of life,’ ‘is a way of life,’ ‘as a way of life,’ ‘Islam is a way of,’ ‘Islam as a way of,’
‘Buddhism is a way of,’ ‘Buddhism as a way of,’ ‘Hinduism is a way of,’ ‘Hinduism as a way
of,’ ‘Christianity is a way of,’ and ‘Christianity as a way of’ (Ngram Viewer limits a search to
five words), and interesting results appeared. First of all, the term ‘way of life’ only started
to gain popularity in the 1920s; it then made a huge jump in the late 1930s and early 1940s,
Reorientation 333

common for post-1964 white converts—both marriage-converts and friend

converts, especially those with college educations—to primarily equate fol-
lowing Islam with religious practice and discipline in their personal lives, as
opposed to seeing Islam exclusively as a private, internal spirituality. For these
new Muslims, conversion meant using religious discipline to sacralize both
their internal and physical behaviors. Since there is little information about
pre-1965 convert practices to compare with,24 it is hard to know to what extent
that this emphasis on daily religious discipline and sacralization was influ-
enced by the converts’ own struggles in negotiating what for them were
unprecedented encounters with social change and foreign cultures, and to
what extent this was influenced by the different types of religious patterns
their Muslim spouses and friends brought with them to the us. Undoubtedly,
the influence of post-1964 immigrants was stronger for those converts who

and, after a brief lull in use, it peaked in the early 1960s. When looking at how this term
was used with different religions (e.g., ‘Christianity is a way of,’ ‘Buddhism as a way of’), it
appears that the peak of the use of the term for Christianity was during the Great
Depression and early postwar years; it has not been used in any significant amount for
Hinduism; and the use of the term for both Islam and Buddhism increased significantly in
the late 1950s and early 1960s—corresponding to the rise of white conversion into these
two religions. Out of all of these religions, it is only with Islam that the use of the term has
continued to increase since the 1960s, a phenomenon that I cannot fully explain. It might
also be important to point out that since the 1950s, ‘way of life’ has also been commonly
used for political and lifestyle types that are not typically considered religious. So, for
example, there are several results for ‘democracy as a way of life,’ ‘communism as a way of
life,’ and ‘sobriety as a way of life.’ Unfortunately, at this point, it is unclear how and why
the use of the term ‘way of life’ became associated with particular religions, ideologies,
and lifestyles at certain times. It seems, though, that there may be a correlation with both
the general cultural exposure of different generations, and the associating of the ‘way of
life’ concept with what were seen as legitimate countercultural movements. This suggests
that the concept of ‘way of life’ and its corollary of changing one’s daily thoughts and
behaviors was at least partly used by individuals to address their individual sense of alien-
ation, as I discuss below.
24 Because I was only able to interview one white convert who embraced Islam before 1965,
and because the available evidence on other early white converts rarely if ever addresses
this issue, I cannot say with certainty whether this emphasis on personal discipline
existed widely before 1965. I would assume that it must have existed to some degree, par-
ticularly in mixed marriages, where conversions were often made to create peace in the
home—a change that, at least in some homes, must have entailed the convert following a
new religious discipline. We also know, of course, that Webb himself emphasized daily
practices, and that most friend converts joined immigrant-majority mosques where they
would have been expected to follow the religious codes of their new communities.
Beyond these observations, however, I can say little more.
334 chapter 11

joined new immigrant-heavy Islamic organizations in which there was a strong

commitment to movements that encouraged daily practice of spiritual disci-
pline. However, it must be remembered that not every new Muslim associated
with groups like the msa made these changes, whereas others who had neither
contact with college students nor regular organizational affiliation still some-
times followed these practices on their own. Indeed, although the concept of
Islam as a ‘way of life’ was a fairly common one, there were a number of ways
that it was understood and enacted.
To outsiders, the convert’s external changes were the most obvious signs of
Islam guiding that person’s day-to-day living. Most converts took Muslim
names at the time of their conversion; some were given them by their local
imam and others were able to choose their own. Once taken, if the convert did
not change his or her name legally, it was still common to use the new name at
home and in Islamic settings. Most converts also began abstaining from pork
and alcohol, which are forbidden by Islamic law. At least one convert is also
reported to having given up what she considered nonessential material objects,
her television and telephone, in an attempt to live more religion-focused exis-
tence.25 Sometimes converts—particularly those, like Nusrat and Abedi, who
joined communities that placed strong emphasis on gender difference—
committed themselves to performing new gender roles, which could include
attempting to follow gender separation in public settings, having the wife not
work, and/or allowing the husband to be the primary director of family life.
A related external act of religious practice included altering dress and physi-
cal appearance to conform to what was understood as proper in Islam for each
gender. Because this usually meant imitating the clothing styles of the family
and community with which their immigrant spouse and friends were con-
nected, dress and other aspects of appearance could differ greatly between
converts. Some female converts, for instance, made few changes. Typically, if
any changes were made at all, it was usually by wearing a headscarf and cloth-
ing that covered one’s arms and legs. Some, however, stopped wearing pants
and applying makeup; others wore a hijab, a larger scarf that covers both the
head and neck. A few women, such as post-emigration Maryam Jameelah and
those in the Qadiani movement, went even further when they began wearing
full-body niqabs or burqas. Men, on the other hand, frequently grew beards or
goatees and often wore robes and kufis while at home and at their mosque.
Of course, from the converts’ perspective, the changes associated with
embracing Islam were primarily internal. Constantly cultivating peace in one’s

25 Lucy Acton, “Baltimore’s Muslim Community,” Baltimore Magazine, reprinted in Criterion

(Karachi) 8, no. 5 (May 1973): 39.
Reorientation 335

behavior, thoughts, and emotions through submission of the ego and body to
God’s teachings was the true essence of Islam for many new Muslims. What
this ultimately meant, in practical terms, was spending a great deal of mental
energy throughout the day observing their own thoughts and behavior and
contemplating God and Islamic teachings—and how these were reflected in
and could be applied to their own lives. This internal spiritual practice was
frequently enhanced and assisted by regularly praying the required five times
a day. Although this was often a challenge in the working atmosphere of the
United States during the 1960s and 1970s, the effort was frequently made. For
some, especially those for whom performing the formal five prayers proved to
be impossible, they made sure to silently say prayers throughout the day.
Many if not most converts also began inserting Arabic-Islamic expressions
into their daily discourse. ‘Alhamdulillah’ (‘Praise to God’), ‘inshallah,’ (‘God
willing’), ‘mashallah’ (‘God has willed it’), and the greeting ‘as-salamu alaykum’
(‘peace be upon you’) became regular parts of their vocabulary. The use of such
expressions served several functions simultaneously. It reminded the speakers,
first of all, of both their commitment to God and of God’s ultimate power in
the universe, thereby assisting the converts in their inner spiritual discipline.
Like their other actions, the production of these sounds also helped sacralize
the converts’ external environment, which for the convert reinforced the sense
that their religion and God permeated every aspect of human life throughout
time and space. Uttering Arabic phrases was particularly important for con-
verts in this regard; since Arabic is understood by many Muslims as a God-
given language, the act of vocalizing Arabic words provided a sense of
connection with the divine throughout the convert’s day. Lastly, saying these
phrases gave the converts a sense of connection with the greater Muslim com-
munity throughout the world and throughout history as these expressions
were regarded as terms that have been used nearly universally among Muslims
of all periods.
Similar motivations appear to have also been involved with converts’ cre-
ation and promotion of Islamic poetic, visual, and musical arts. William Lutz’s
1949 poem, for instance, was in fact one of the earliest examples, if not the first,
of na‘tiyya poetry—a traditional Islamic poetic genre in which the Prophet
Muhammad is honored—to be published by an American Muslim.26
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Lutz would continue to write poetry that
would be shared with the new generation of American Muslims by way of the

26 For a discussion of na’ityya poetry, see Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His
Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1985), 176–215.
336 chapter 11

msa’s magazine Al-Ittihad.27 Islamic calligraphy, meanwhile, is claimed by con-

temporary American Muslims to have been first brought to the us around the
1960s by another white convert, Mohamed Zakariya, a California native who
had studied the art in Morocco under an Egyptian calligrapher, Abdussalam
Ali-Nour.28 Calligraphy and other forms of Islamic art were also promoted by
Dr. Lamya Lois Isben al-Faruqi, the convert wife of the prominent immigrant
Muslim scholar Dr. Isma‘il al-Faruqi.29 Like her husband, Lamya was a long-
time intellectual, and was even a published advocate for women’s rights prior
to her receiving her PhD in 1974.30 The arts, however, were her main passion.
Lamya had begun studying music at the college level in the 1940s, and after
finishing her doctoral dissertation on music in Islamic culture, she wrote a
number of scholarly works and taught courses concerning music in Islam in
both secular and Islamic settings. Lamya served, in addition, on multiple
boards for nonprofits that worked towards the preservation and education of
Islamic arts.
Lamya of course was not alone in her valuing education as it related to
Islam. As it was for Lisa, Richard, and Nusrat, studying Islam and its traditions
was an important component to the ‘way of life’ of many converts. Although
few pre-1975 converts learned Arabic—the resources for which were extremely
rare—many obtained copies of English translations of the Qurʾan, usually
Yusuf Ali’s. Since probably a large percentage of 1965–74 converts were not
affiliated with a mosque, and since, even for those who were, most American
mosques at the time did not have, as many do today, courses for converts to
study the Qurʾan and Islamic history, converts typically developed their under-
standing of their religion through discussion with their spouses, Muslim in-
laws, and convert friends, and occasionally by reading scholarly works on
Islam. Still, during the 1965–74 period, Islamic instruction was slowly develop-
ing; the msa commenced distributing English-language teaching materials as
did the Islamic Center in Washington, dc and a few other small American
mosques and international Islamic organizations. Converts, then, occasionally
had access to more well-developed Islamic knowledge. Some white Muslims,

27 See below for more on Lutz’s poems.

28 Steven Barboza, American Jihad: Islam after Malcolm X (New York: Doubleday, 1993),
64–69.
29 For a brief introduction to the writing and lives of both, see “Notes of the Quarter,” Muslim
World 76 (1986): 251–52 and Charles D. Fletcher, “Isma’il al-Faruqi (1921–1986) and Inter-
Faith Dialogue: The Man, the Scholar, the Participant” (PhD diss., McGill University,
2008). For more on Lamya, see the November 1986 issue of Islamic Horizons.
30 See, e.g., her “Women’s Rights and the Muslim Women,” Islam and the Modern Age 3, no. 2
(May 1972): 76–99.
Reorientation 337

like Richard Moats and Rashida James of Baltimore, even became teachers for
Muslim children’s schools at their local mosques.31
One of the most historically significant Islamic teaching works to be pro-
duced in the us during this period was, notably, the work of a convert: Thomas
Irving’s abridged and reformatted translation of the Qurʾan, published under
the title Selections from the Noble Reading in 1968.32 Although at least two pre-
vious American converts may have had already translated the Qurʾan, Irving’s
version is distinct for having verifiably gone to press and for being the first
published Qurʾan translation made by any American, not just a convert.
Selections is also important because its creation represented the coming
together of several of the country’s Muslims and prominent Islamic organiza-
tions of the 1960s. Both the fia and msa sponsored and helped distribute cop-
ies and the book was endorsed by Abdil Moti Al-Aseer, the Azhar-trained imam
of the Islamic Center of Toledo, as well as Dr. Abdul Sahib Hashim, the director
of Washington, dc’s Islamic Center and former dean of the Faculty of Law at
al-Azhar.33 In addition, Muslims from around the us donated money to assist
the Cedar Rapids Muslim community in the printing of the translation.34
Although written primarily for second- and third-generation immigrants,35
because Irving had arranged Qurʾanic excerpts in a way that would help those
with little to no knowledge of the Qurʾan begin to understand its various
dimensions, it would have also been of great use for many converts, and it was
probably somewhat popular among those converts affiliated with either the
fia or msa.36 After the book’s publication, Irving would continue to work on
the Qurʾan and in 1985 he would produce a full translation.
Although increasing one’s religious study, sacralizing one’s body and envi-
ronment, and disciplining one’s thoughts and behavior are practices enjoined
by countless religious communities—including numerous Christian ones—
many white converts to Islam after the Second World War felt strongly that
such spiritual discipline was not being widely cultivated in the religion or soci-
ety of their upbringing. At the same time, there was a sense that this important
aspect of religion was more fundamental to Islam and Islamic culture than it

31 Acton, “Baltimore’s,” 37.

32 Thomas Ballantine Irving, Selections from the Noble Reading: An Anthology of Passages
from the Qur˒an (Cedar Rapids: Unity Publishing Company, 1968).
33 Irving, Selections, 1–7.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., 5.
36 Instead of being a straightforward translation, this book arranges Qurʾanic excerpts by
topic, of which there are five: the introduction, divine principles, belief and practice,
aspects of morality, and prophethood.
338 chapter 11

was to other religions. Islam, it was often believed, was the only religion that
clearly contained a God-given set of instructions for religious life that could be
followed by any person. Because this does not seem to have been the view of
most of the early American wives of Muslims—as most did not convert to
Islam—such an attitude suggests that embracing Islam was at least partly a
response to the converts’ own anxieties or alienation from the world in which
they found themselves as young adults. So, while white American conversion
to Islam in the late 1960s and early 1970s was primarily a function of immigra-
tion and surely reflected, to some extent, the ideas and practices imported by
immigrant Muslims, the challenge of negotiating the transforming American
society was without doubt at least one factor in generating this emerging view
of Islam as a ‘way of life.’
Interestingly, this view held by 1960s/1970s converts is curiously similar to
the view to which Alexander Webb had adhered. Webb, who, like many post-
1964 converts, was well-educated and exposed to a world of increasing cultural
and religious diversity, had identified Islam’s having these ‘practical’ rules as
one of the religion’s most important traits. It seems, then, that the desire for
and valuing of an all-encompassing ‘way of life’ among the post-1964 non-eso-
terically-inclined converts connected them with those converts who had been
esoterically-inclined in the nineteenth century and after. This may partly
explain why, as we will see, Sufism began to increase popularity in this period
even when immigrant Muslims showed little interest in it, and why Alexander
Webb has remained for many converts an inspiring figure. Indeed, this desire
for a ‘way of life,’ as well as the tendency to emphasize the cultivation of peace-
ful relations between all people, seem to have been somewhat consistent ele-
ments in white American Muslims’ views of Islam over the generations.

The msa and Moderate Pan-Islam

Despite the importance of converts’ own personal- and cultural-based yearn-

ings for sacralization, religious discipline in their daily lives, and peaceful rela-
tions between all people, the role of Muslim immigration in shaping converts’
lives was still very significant, and perhaps grew in importance after 1964. An
obvious place to look for evidence of the particular types of influence that
immigrants had on American Muslims would therefore be within the institu-
tion that played a significant role in the lives of many of the generation’s immi-
grants and the college-educated converts with whom they were in contact: the
msa. Although some converts from the period, like Nusrat, Richard, and Abedi,
never joined the msa, dozens, possibly hundreds, of others did. Many of these
Reorientation 339

individuals were probably like Lisa in that they were primarily drawn to the
social and spiritual aspects of the community; intellectual religious develop-
ment and participation in the organization’s leadership were at best secondary
issues for them. Nevertheless, some converts regularly read the group’s publi-
cations and were highly involved with its administrative activities. Converts, in
fact, began to take on an increasingly prominent role in the msa community
during this period, reflecting both their growing contact with international
students and the changes in the ways white Muslims were impacted by immi-
gration over the years.
One can easily observe the post-1964 transformation in white convert demo-
graphics and social networks by looking at trends in the presence of white
converts in national Islamic organizations since the interwar period. The inter-
war network of Louis Glick and Muharrem Nadji had put moderately-educated,
immigrant-connected white Muslims to the forefront, but this network had
begun disintegrating prior to the Second World War and had all but disap-
peared by 1961, the year both Glick and Nadji died. In the postwar period,
highly educated white converts connected to Muslim college students, like
Guertin and Irving, served as fia vice presidents and were prominent figures
at national fia-connected gatherings.37 However, between 1965 and 1974 no
white American convert served as an officer in the national fia. Moreover,
despite facing declining membership and support from immigrant Muslims,38
white converts were rarely mentioned in the fia’s magazine, the Muslim Star,
and they were no longer featured speakers at the organization’s conventions.39

37 Guertin, as was pointed out in chapter 10, presented at multiple conventions and Irving
lectured at least for the fia’s Islamic Youth Association’s conclave in 1963, during the his
term as fia first vice president; see “Report on November: i.y.a. Youth Conclave,” Muslim
Star 5, no. 1 (January and February 1964): 3, imjc Papers, Box 8, bhl.
38 The fia’s declining membership and support is suggested two things: First, the decrease
in density of articles in the Muslim Star, which suggests few contributions were being
made. Second, the 1972 urging for increased membership and complaints of financial dif-
ficulties; see “Increase in Membership Mandatory,” Muslim Star 13, no. 84 (1972): 1, imjc
Papers, Box 8, bhl.
39 I have found no post-1965 issues of the Muslim Life, the journal that Irving had started
editing by 1964. Irving does, however, have a book review that appeared in one of the last
known extant issues of the f.i.a. Journal (1, no. 2 [January-March 1965]:26–28, imjc
Papers, Box 9, Misc. Islam Organizations’ Newsletters, bhl). In late 1967, the Muslim Star
also ran a few advertisements for Irving’s partial translation of the Qurʾan, which he had
published by the Cedar Rapids mosque in 1968 (see above for a discussion). For the most
part, though, mentions of white converts were extremely rare in the Star during this
period, and they were almost never featured in a prominent story in the magazine.
340 chapter 11

Meanwhile, during this same period, the msa was experiencing exponential
growth,40 and not only were multiple local branches and the national organi-
zation giving its college-educated white converts leadership and support
roles,41 the association’s journal, Al-Ittihad, published several white convert-
written pieces—many more than had been published by the fia, even during
the time of Guertin and Irving.
At one level, this increased prominence of white Muslims in the msa simply
reflected the demographic differences of these new Muslims: being middle
class and college-educated, these converts presumably had more experience in
voluntary organizations and better command of the written word than the
typical white convert who had been involved with fia-affiliated mosques.
Since the new immigrants who led the msa, being college-educated them-
selves, were in favor of promoting intelligent written discussions of Islamic top-
ics, it was almost natural that they would embrace the converts’ writings. But
there were other elements at play as well. There seems to have been, first of all,
at least a minor desire among the international students and immigrants to
emphasize for other Muslims their welcoming of college-educated American
whites. This desire was almost certainly born out of a feeling, held by many
Muslims around the world, that if Islam could convert even those who repre-
sented the elite of what was seen as the oppressive and largely anti-Muslim
Euro-American culture, the religion stood a good chance of ushering in an era
of worldwide peace and justice.42 This was a theme that had perhaps been
present in the American convert community since Alexander Webb was

40 msa, The msa Handbook, 28, 35.

41 E.g., Astrid-Herma Smart became a prominent member in the University of Illinois’ group
(see her “How and Why I Adopted Islam,” Al-Ittihad 2, no. 1 [1965]: 8–11), Linda Clark was
made secretary of the msa of Southern Illinois University (see her “How I Became a
Muslim and Embraced Islam,” Al-Ittihad 2, no. 1 [1965]: 41), Omar Theodore Kilgore of the
University of Michigan was made head of the national msa’s committee on Education,
Libraries and Lecturing (see “Resolutions Passed at the Convention of Muslim Students’
Associations of the United States & Canada,” Al-Ittihad 2, no. 1 [1965]: 14), and in Iowa
State University’s msa, a Keith Johnson was president and a W. Bowels was vice president
during the 1971–72 school year (see “msa—Iowa State University Ames, Iowa,” Al-Ittihad
9, no. 1 [1972]: 26).
42 Several older immigrant and convert Muslims, both white and African American, have
suggested to me that this was a motivation for favoring white converts. In addition, sev-
eral white Muslims I have talked to who have converted since the 1970s have told me that
they believed that their Muslim communities sometimes have attempted to make them
tokens for this reason; and this has been confirmed for me by a number of African
American and immigrant Muslims.
Reorientation 341

enlisted by Indian and Arab Muslims to run an Islamic mission, and seems to
have been partially behind the early promoting of people like William Lutz,
Wilson Guertin, and Maryam Jameelah, none of whom had much traditional
Islamic religious training or were even scholars of Islamic history like Thomas
Irving. They were, instead, largely serving as tokens of the white Western elite:
they came from educated, middle-class families, they had at least some college
education themselves, and they were relatively well-spoken. Now, having much
more access to college-educated white converts than previous American
Muslim communities, the msa was able to show them off fairly easily. And,
since the msa was quickly developing ties to the larger American and interna-
tional Muslim communities, they were also able to bring in prominent converts
who were no longer even students. Both Thomas Irving and Maryam Jameelah,
for instance, were mentioned and had articles published a number of times in
Al-Ittihad, while William Lutz—who, like Jameelah, had been ignored by the
fia—had several of his new poems showcased for the msa readers.43
Another important function of this promoting of educated, articulate whites
was it helped establish for other new white converts and potential converts
ideal images of white converts and their conversions. It is noteworthy that
almost all of the white converts who were mentioned and whose writings were
published in Al-Ittihad between 1965 and 1974 were regarded as leaders, or at
least very active participants, in their Muslim communities. This surely shaped
the idea of conversion to Islam for the growing population of college-educated
friends and spouses of Muslims, as it suggested that through conversion they
would be supported in actively participating in the creation of an improved
society. Many of the convert writers, furthermore, were women, confirming for
the majority gender of the new white convert community that their voices were
going to be respected and heard. Finally, the conversion narratives that were
promoted by the msa tended to emphasize two elements that would be impor-
tant for the msa approach to accepting white converts: the converts’ reliance
on the immigrant/student Muslim community for friendship and knowledge
about Islam and the converts’ choosing Islam after a process of rational evalua-
tion. These elements helped reinforce the social and religious necessity
(and therefore authority) of immigrant Muslims while also implying that Islam
itself was rational and therefore compatible with modern life, an important
concept needed for overcoming white prejudices concerning Islam’s supposed

43 Irving: 2, no. 2 (1965): 14, 22; 3, no. 1 (1966): 14; 3, no. 2 (1966): 7; 8, no. 1 (1971): 7; 9, no. 2
(1972): 7; 10, no. 2 (1973): 4. Jameelah: 3, no. 2 (1966): 23; 9, no. 1 (1972): 24; 9, no. 2 (1972): 20;
11, no. 1 (1974): 13; 11, no. 3 (1974): 6, 27. Lutz: 2, no. 2 (1965): 8; 3, no. 2 (1966): 13; 4, no. 1 (1967):
47, 48; 7, no. 2 (1970): 32.
342 chapter 11

i­ntellectual backwardness. In the years to come, these themes would be

repeated over and over throughout the community of white converts. Of course,
the msa was not solely responsible for the popularization of this view of Islam,
which had been present to some extent since Webb’s day. And, as Lisa Alfassi’s
conversion story demonstrates, not all potential converts—not even all of those
who were members of the msa—were directly influenced by this intellectual
model. Nevertheless, the group’s significant influence on the very immigrant
populations that were most likely to be interacting with white converts during
and after college undoubtedly served to strengthen this view’s popularity.
An additional reason for publishing the writings of white converts in
Al-Ittihad was that in some cases—most notably with Jameelah and Irving—
the white converts were known and respected in both the broader us Muslim
community and international Pan-Islamic circles, which therefore lent the
msa greater legitimacy amongst its readership. Due to her earlier articles in
Islamic periodicals and her moving to Pakistan with the support of Mawdudi,
by 1962, Jameelah had already become the most famous living white American
convert in the world. She would hold this position for several years by produc-
ing an enormous output of published writings on Islamic topics. Besides her
many books, in the early 1960s, Jameelah appeared in numerous issues of the
Siddiqui-influenced Voice of Islam as well as the London- (and, later, Pakistan-)
based Muslimnews International. Starting in 1965 she was also featured regu-
larly in the South Asian English-language journals Yaqeen International and
the Minaret—another Siddiqui-influenced periodical—and in the early 1970s,
her work frequently appeared in the Mawdudi-affiliated Criterion. Most of
Jameelah’s writings conveyed a very conservative Islamic view strongly influ-
enced by Mawdudi and other conservative Muslim thinkers of the period.44

44 In researching this topic, I consulted the following works by Jameelah: Quest for the Truth;
Why I Embraced Islam; At Home in Pakistan (1962–1989) (Lahore: Muhammad Yusuf Khan
and Sons, 1990); Islam and Modern Man (Lahore: Mohammad Yusuf Khan, 1976); Islam and
Modernism (Lahore: Mohammad Yusuf Khan, 1966); Islam and Orientalism (Lahore:
Mohammad Yusuf Khan, 1971); Islam and the Muslim Woman Today (Lahore: Mohammad
Yusuf Khan, 1976); Islam in Theory and Practice (Lahore: Mohammad Yusuf Khan, 1967);
Islam versus Ahl al-Kitab: Past and Present, 2nd rev. ed. (Lahore: Mohammad Yusuf Khan
and Sons, 1978); Islam versus the West, 4th ed. (Lahore: Mohammad Yusuf Khan, 1971 [1962]);
“An Appraisal of Some Aspects of Maulana Sayyid Ala Maudoodi’s Life and Thought,”
Islamic Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1987): 116–30; [with Mawdudi] Correspondence between Maulana
Maudoodi and Maryam Jameelah, 3rd ed. (Lahore: Mohammad Yusuf Khan, 1978); and her
articles in the Minaret, The Islamic Literature, Voice of Islam, Muslimnews International,
Criterion (Karachi), and Yaqeen International. For an accurate summary of Jameelah’s
views, see Esposito and Voll, in Makers of Contemporary Islam, 54–67.
Reorientation 343

She, for instance, follows the modern Salafi approach in defining ‘true’ Islam as
not only that which is recorded in the Qurʾan and hadith, but also only that
which existed in the early Muslim centuries—prior to the ‘corruption’ of
Islamic civilization by the West. According to Jameelah, furthermore, Islam is
the only truly ‘spiritual’ religion that enables humans to love and care for each
other in a complete way by providing clear codes for behavior. This is radically
different from and superior to Western ‘materialist’ culture, which, she claims,
promotes the destructive concepts of individualism, feminism, progress, and
hyper-rationality. All pain and suffering in the world is attributable to follow-
ing these non-Islamic values; therefore, there can be no compromise between
Islam and the West.
Irving, meanwhile, was far more liberal, and was in any case much less inter-
ested in theology-type writing, focusing more on Islamic history and the
adjustment of immigrant Muslims and their families to living in the West. He
was often featured in the Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf publication Islamic
Literature, a journal that sometimes exchanged articles for reprinting with
Al-Ittihad. Other less popular white converts also made occasional appear-
ances in these journals as well: Joseph DiCaprio and the msa’s Linda Clark had
articles reprinted in the Islamic Literature;45 William Lutz showed up on occa-
sion in Yaqeen International, Muslimnews International, and possibly the
Criterion;46 and a handful of other converts wrote their conversion stories for
Yaqeen International between 1966 and 1971.47
The presence of these converts in Al-Ittihad helped the msa in two ways. On
the one hand, it further connected and legitimized the msa for its readership
already familiar with these converts (especially Jameelah and Irving). On the
other, it helped broaden notions about Pan-Islam for the magazine’s Muslim
readers who were not familiar with these converts. Pan-Islam was in fact a very

45 DiCaprio: 7, no. 10 (1966): 37; Clark: 7, no. 1 (1966): 43.

46 Lutz is identified in the first two of these journals by his Muslim name: Abder Rahman.
Yaqeen International: November 7 & 22, 1966, 84; October 7, 1967, 81; Muslimnews
International: August 1963, 29. In the Muslimnews International piece, which was a letter
written to the magazine, Lutz identifies himself as a representative of an “International
Council of Islamic Minorities” based in Berkeley, California. This, and the fact that Lutz
was a known affiliate of the msa, suggests that Lutz is the author of a 1974 piece about the
Philippines, which appeared in the Criterion, was distributed by the msa at Berkeley, and
used a Berkeley address for a Philippines relief fund; “The Philippines: A Rebellion that
Won’t Go Away,” Criterion (Karachi) 9, no. 4 (April 1974): 32–34.
47 Between 1967 and 1971, Yaqeen International published over a dozen pieces written by
white converts to Islam explaining their conversions. The majority of these were by
Europeans, but at least a few were written by Americans.
344 chapter 11

attractive movement for both convert and immigrant college students. Many
white American Muslims were drawn to Pan-Islam’s romantic messages of
Muslim unity, working towards worldwide peace and justice, and the use of
what was often presented as a pure form of Islam as a ‘way of life.’ International
students also appreciated these aspects of Pan-Islam, but they had additional
motivations for taking an interest in the movement. Islam, first of all, was the
common ground many had used to befriend other Muslim international
students as they adjusted to living in the us, so finding an expression of Islam
that could overcome cultural and even sectarian differences was incredibly
useful. Perhaps more importantly, however, many students—particularly early
members of the msa—saw Islam and Pan-Islam as the key tools for Muslims
to resist oppressive Arab social regimes and Western imperialism in the
Middle East.48
As was discussed in earlier chapters, by the Second World War, Pan-Islamic
efforts had failed to take a strong hold both in the us and internationally.49
Internationally, Pan-Islamic efforts had tended to fail due to lack of funds and
mistrust of the personal motives of those who had initiated Pan-Islamic activi-
ties. In the early postwar period, despite an increased desire for Pan-Islam, the
prospects for a Pan-Islamic movement to gain true international prominence
were not particularly good, largely because for most Muslims the interwar fac-
tors inhibiting its growth were only exacerbated. Several Muslim-majority
nations had gained independence during and soon after the war, and they now,
as young and often fairly poor countries, had to focus on addressing their
national needs, which sometimes conflicted with those of other Muslim-
majority nations. An additional source of tension was the question of whether
each country’s nationalism should be Arab- or Islam-based, an issue that often
deeply divided Muslims following the rise of Nasser’s socialist Arabist govern-
ment in Egypt in 1956. In this context, numerous Pan-Islamic movements
emerged—particularly out of Pakistan, the only modern country created spe-
cifically for Muslims—but the vast majority either collapsed completely or
failed to gain widespread acceptance.50
In the us, the first generation of immigrants, having few skills and little
education, were primarily concerned with survival and establishing homes

48 Bowers, “A Phenomenological Study,” 103–06.

49 The following discussion of postwar Pan-Islam is drawn largely from Abdullah Mohamed
Sindi, “The Muslim World and Its Efforts in Pan-Islamism” (PhD diss., University of
Southern California, 1978) and Jacob M. Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and
Organization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
50 Landau, Politics, 276–79.
Reorientation 345

for their families, and they typically did so around ethnic lines. Ad hoc Pan-
Islamic efforts, such as fundraisers for victims of war, had occasionally gained
their support, but generally early immigrants were unable to maintain a con-
sistent Pan-Islamic movement. During the first two decades after the war,
several of the Pan-Islamic movements that had influenced Muslim
Americans—such as those of Subhani, Siddiqui, Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf,
the ymma, and even Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood—while important for both
having gained widespread Muslim respect and having connected Americans
to each other and to international Pan-Islam, were among the many move-
ments that had failed to achieve truly widespread adherence. They were
therefore, despite their supporters in the country, unable to generate anything
like a strong, organized movement in the us. Even Abdul A’la Mawdudi, who
was one of the most respected Pan-Islamic thinkers the world at the time, was
unable to have a stable and consistent influence. The circulation of Pan-
Islamic notions in the us before the 1960s had helped shape American Muslim
thought to some extent, but without influential organizations, when differ-
ences emerged, it was relatively easy to fall back on ethnic, national, and even
local loyalties.
There were in fact only two international Pan-Islamic organizations to gain
widespread support by non-politician Muslims before 1975, and one had a
much greater influence on us Muslim thought and activities than the other.51
The less-influential of the two was the Motamar al-Alam al-Islami, or World
Muslim Congress (wmc).52 The wmc was not formally established until 1949,
but it claimed to be the continuation of the congresses of the interwar period,
particularly the Meccan congress of 1926 and the Jerusalem congress of 1931,
neither of which had successfully established a lasting organization.53 However,
because of Pakistan’s recently gaining independence as a Muslim country, the
holding of the 1949 congress there allowed the wmc to benefit from both inter-
national Muslim pride in Pakistan and a highly-motivated core of local pro-
moters. At the two-day event in Karachi, the congress adopted a statute making
the wmc a permanent body that would meet at regular intervals.54 This was
followed in 1951 by another congress in Karachi, which was attended by repre-
sentatives from thirty-one Muslim-majority and non-Muslim-majority

51 That the World Muslim Congress and the Muslim World League were the only two truly
influential international Pan-Islamic organizations before 1975 is the assessment of both
Sindi and Landau.
52 See Sindi, “Muslim World,” 106–36 and Landau, Politics, 280–83.
53 For more on the interwar congresses, see Kramer, Islam Assembled.
54 Sindi, “Muslim World,” 122.
346 chapter 11

countries. For the rest of the 1950s, however, the wmc was relatively quiet, and
it would not be until 1962 that another congress was held. This time, though,
the congress, which met in June in Baghdad, achieved relatively significant
results by writing a constitution and generating plans to start a news agency
and establish wmc offices throughout the world.55 Before the end of the year,
an English-language journal, The Muslim World: A Weekly Review of the
Motamar, had been created and wmc offices were being set up in several
countries.56
The 1962 congress was particularly important for American Muslims not
only because it was attended by a representative from the us,57 but it was also
due primarily to the resolutions of that congress that us Muslim institutions
formally established ties with the wmc. A wmc office was set up in New York
by early 1965,58 and by 1967, the group’s journal was receiving regular updates
on the activities of both the msa and fia and frequently heard from various
local us Muslim communities.59 Indeed, out of all the international English-
language Muslim journals, the wmc’s Muslim World showed the most interest
in the activities of American Muslims, and was probably the most popular Pan-
Islamic journal in the country, especially among converts. The New York
Muslim community, the fia, and the Muslim ambassador-heavy Washington
Islamic Center—which were linked in the 1960s by Egyptian government sup-
port as well as the direct influence of the prominent Egyptian immigrant
Dr. Shawarbi—were the American groups most strongly affiliated with the
wmc.60 These American organizations shared the wmc’s comparatively toler-
ant view of Nasser and Arab nationalism as well as the desire to maintain good
relations with the West—that is, aside from Israel, which was strongly

55 Sindi, “Muslim World,” 128–29.

56 By April 1965, there were offices in Karachi, Beirut, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Dakar,
Mogadishu, and New York; see “Motamar Al-Alam Al-Islami,” Muslimnews International 3
(April 1965): 37.
57 Sindi, “Muslim World,” 125.
58 “Motamar Al-Alam Al-Islami,” Muslimnews International 3 (April 1965): 37. At the time,
the office’s director was presumably Omar Assouni; see “Our New York Office,” Muslim
World (wmc), June 21, 1969, 5.
59 I was unable to look at issues from before 1967.
60 For comparison, between 1967 and 1971, the Muslim World ran 20 news briefs on the fia
and fia-connected organizations, and only 13 on the msa. During this same time period,
it ran 13 (combined) briefs on New York and dc Islamic activities, and only 7 (combined)
briefs on other us Islamic communities. Finally, it should be pointed out that in 1969,
when the office of director of the New York office was filled, it was by Dr. M.A. Rauf, the
director of the Washington Islamic Center; see “Our New York Office.”
Reorientation 347

­criticized, particularly after the Six-Day War in 1967.61 After 1967, however, the
influence of the wmc began to wane, partly due to its having such an open-
minded stance during a period in which another form of Pan-Islam that was
less tolerant of Arab nationalism had started dominating international Pan-
Islamic discourse.62
The organization that had risen to overtake the wmc as the most influential
Pan-Islamic movement was the Rabitat al-Alam al-Islami, or Muslim World
League (mwl).63 Although less interested in political issues than that wmc,
the mwl was a more conservative Pan-Islamic group and therefore was
strongly opposed socialist and Arabist movements. The primary cause of the
mwl being able to rise to its high position in the Islamic world was that it had
considerable religious and financial influences from Saudi Arabia, a country
that possessed multiple reasons for opposing revolutionary and non-Islamic
forms of governance in Muslim-majority regions. As rulers of the country in
which resided Muslims’ two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, Saudis felt a spe-
cial responsibility for protecting and preserving their religion—a feeling that
was amplified by the ruling family’s 200-year association with one of the oldest
and most influential modern Islamic reformist movements: Wahhabism.64
A conservative theology that rejected medieval Islamic religious scholarship as
corrupted by foreign influences, Wahhabism was adopted as the official ideol-
ogy of the Saud family in the mid-eighteenth century. The Saudis, at the time,
had commenced a long-lasting military campaign to seize control of Arabia,
culminating in 1925, with their conquering of Mecca. Their international influ-
ence might have been minimal, however, had they not discovered oil in 1938
and soon learned that they possessed the world’s largest known oil reserve,
which, almost overnight, made Saudi Arabia the wealthiest Arab country.
Even before coming into this immense wealth, though, the Saudis had set to
work attempting to win the allegiance of Muslims throughout the world. They
hosted the 1926 Meccan congress and promoted their ideology to Muslim pil-
grims during the hajj and through international outreach. For several years,
however, there was resistance to the Saudis’ Pan-Islamic proposals, just as
there was resistance to other forms of Pan-Islam in the interwar and postwar

61 The fia’s pro-American stance was discussed in chapter 10. For a clear view of the fia’s
position vis-à-vis Nasser, see the various writings on him that appeared in the September
1970 issue of the Muslim Star.
62 Sindi, “Muslim World,” 135–36.
63 See Sindi, “Muslim World,” 140–47; Landau, Politics, 283–87.
64 See Natana J. Delong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
348 chapter 11

periods. But with the 1950s rise of socialist Arab nationalism and the accompa-
nying suppression of Islamic practices and movements, such as the Muslim
Brotherhood, Muslim resentment towards and fear of non-Islamic govern-
ments grew stronger, and the Saudis were poised to take the reins of the emerg-
ing current. In 1962, the Saudi government sponsored an international Muslim
conference at Mecca with the purpose of formulating methods to fight both
secularism and radicalism in Muslim countries—the latter because Saudi
dependence on the sale of oil demanded that they support the stability of
states who would consume their natural resource. The attendees decided to
establish the mwl, a religious organization that would be predominantly
funded and influenced by the Saudis. The mwl quickly proceeded to consoli-
date its power by beginning to support and coordinate the efforts of other Pan-
Islamic organizations, largely through offering financial and ideological
support. By 1963, the mwl had the allegiance of many of Siddiqui’s followers,65
and by 1968, after creating the World Islamic Organizations, a subsidiary body
established to coordinate the activities of the groups it supported, the mwl
had even gained the formal alliance of the wmc.66 Propelled by the deep Saudi
pockets, within just a few years, the mwl had rocketed itself to the position of
far and away the most influential Pan-Islamic organization in the world, and,
in the process, gained some influence over international Muslim students in
the us and the converts who affiliated with them.
Many of the original members of the msa, like many of their post-1964
immigrant coreligionists, had Pan-Islamic leanings, and some had even been
members of international Pan-Islamic organizations, such as the Muslim
Brotherhood and the Jamaat-i-Islami.67 Meanwhile, a few Pan-Islamic reform-
minded immigrant Islamic Studies scholars who had jobs at major American
universities, like Fazlur Rahman and Isma‘il al-Faruqi, were also supportive of
the growing Muslim student community.68 The msa and Al-Ittihad were there-
fore predisposed to being influenced by various Pan-Islamic currents, and the
mwl in particular. Over the years, the journal avoided any positive mentions
of Nasser and instead published numerous essays by Syyed Qutb, the leading

65 See throughout volume 1 of World Muslim League Magazine (Singapore).

66 Sindi, “Muslim World,” 145; “First Conference of World Islamic Organizations Held at
Mecca,” Islamic Review & Arab Affairs 56, nos. 11–12 (1968): 28.
67 Haddad, “Arab Muslims,” 70.
68 On al-Faruqi’s influence, see Fletcher, “Isma‘il al-Faruqi,” 22–23, 57–58. Fazlur Rahman’s
connection with the msa has been less well-documented by scholars, but he wrote at
least one article for Al-Ittihad (published in January 1978) and some of his students—
most notably, perhaps, the white convert Umar F. Abdullah—wrote pieces for Al-Ittihad
prominent figures in the community.
Reorientation 349

Muslim Brotherhood intellectual, Mawdudi, and other prominent interna-

tional Pan-Islamic writers. In 1965, the msa’s publications committee chair-
man and Al-Ittihad editor, Ahmad Totonji, attended that year’s mwl conference,
enthusiastically reporting for the journal’s readers that “a wave of Islamic reju-
venation [was] sweeping across the Muslim countries,” and that the interna-
tional Muslims studying in the us “will be called upon to lead, on [their] return
home.”69 mwl-leaning Pan-Islam had thus obtained a strong influence on the
msa and the people to which it was connected. Still, this is not to say that the
msa was exclusively committed to the mwl’s comparatively conservative
views. In fact, through the late 1960s and early 1970s, the msa maintained good
relations with more liberal organizations, such as the fia and the wmc.70
However, by the early 1970s the msa and fia began working together less and
less and were moving apart politically.71 Interest in the new Pan-Islamic per-
spective was in fact becoming so strong within the msa community that in
1972, the msa announced that it had changed its focus from uniting just Muslim
students in America to calling all Muslims to join together to become a van-
guard that would lead a worldwide unification of Muslims and revival of
Islam.72 This revival was primarily understood as a peaceful one that would
develop partly within, and partly in collaboration with the Christian West. It
was hoped that this revival would ultimately lead to world peace and
prosperity.
One indicator of the msa’s peaceful and moderate approach to Islam is its
connection with the post-hajj Malcolm X. When the noi began to obtain
worldwide attention in the late 1950s, a number of international Muslim politi-
cal and religious leaders, including Egypt’s Nasser, sought to gain affiliation
with the Nation, even despite knowing that its doctrines were far from ortho-
dox Islam. But after Malcolm performed the hajj in 1964 and subsequently—
partly due to the influence of prominent fia members like Dr. Shawarbi and
Aliya Hassen as well as the mwl, which began giving him funding73—­
converted to Sunni Islam and adopted a relatively tolerant attitude towards
whites, his status as an internationally-respected opponent of Western racism

69 [Ahmad Totonji], “Editor’s Note,” Al-Ittihad 2, no. 2 (1965): 3.

70 See the various issues of the Muslim Star and Muslim World (wmc) from during this
period.
71 Howell, “Inventing,” 254–57; Bowers, “A Phenomenological Study,” 122–23.
72 “Editorial: Redefinition of the Objectives of msa,” Al-Ittihad 9, no. 2 (1972): 1.
73 Shawarbi’s influence is noted in Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm
X (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965), 324, and Hassen’s influence is attested to in the Aliya
Hassen Papers at bhl. For more on this topic, see hctius vol. 2.
350 chapter 11

and imperialism made him an extremely attractive symbol for Sunni Muslims
with reformist goals. Then, when he was assassinated in 1965, many prominent
Sunni figures and organizations—particularly American ones, including
Maryam Jameelah—rushed to emphasize their social, spiritual, and intellec-
tual connections with the charismatic black Muslim.74 The msa, for its part,
had already been taking an interest in noi members-turned-Sunni by late
1964, when it received word that Elijah Muhammad’s son, Wallace, had rejected
noi doctrines.75 As soon as news of Malcolm’s death got out, then, the national
and numerous local msa branches began to take up collections for Malcolm’s
widow and children. Several msa representatives also attended his funeral, at
which University of Illinois msa member Gulzar Haider gave a speech.76 Then,
in 1970, Al-Ittihad ran a brief didactic biography of Malcolm.77
The embracing of Malcolm X by the msa was undoubtedly important for
many white converts. Due partly to the Nation and Malcolm’s influence and
partly to the spread of Ahmadi literature, many non-Muslim white Americans
had begun to consider the idealized notion—long appreciated in the white
and black American Muslim convert communities—that Islam could serve as
a tool for overcoming the scourge of racism.78 As we have seen, this feeling,
which was being reinforced by the postwar counterculture and the Civil
Rights Movement, had already led figures like Nadirah Osman and Nilla Cram
Cook to join with Muslims on an international scale and white hipsters to
embrace the mst teachings during the late 1950s and 1960s. Malcolm’s death,
however, gave it an even greater purchase. For the white convert Umar F.
Abdullah, reading Malcolm’s Autobiography in early 1970 was in fact what had
inspired the English PhD student at Cornell to embrace Islam.79 Two years
later, Abdullah changed his degree to Islamic Studies, and enrolled at the

74 See, e.g., Muslim Herald: A Bi-Monthly Journal Dedicated to the Cause of Islam (Philadelphia)
5, no. 3 (March 1965), Aliya Hassen Papers, bhl; Voice of Islam: The Islamic Society of
Greater Houston 4, no. 1 (January 1973), Labadie Collection, University of Michigan; Baker,
Convert, 26. I should point out that I found very little evidence showing fia interest in
Malcolm X after his death, although this may be partially due to the fact that the bhl’s
Muslim Star holdings do not include issues from early 1965.
75 “A Letter from Mr. Wallace D. Muhamad,” Al-Ittihad 2, no. 1 (1965): 13.
76 Al-Ittihad 2, no. 2 (1965): 12, 13, 47.
77 Sahir Sudad, “Malcolm X,” Al-Ittihad 7, no. 2 (1970): 25–29.
78 This theme appears in many writings of white converts from the period. I would like to
thank Nusrat Bashir for pointing out the importance of Ahmadi writings during this
period.
79 “Umar F. Abdullah,” Lamppost Productions, accessed June 18, 2014, http://www
.lamppostproductions.com/umar-f-abdullah/.
Reorientation 351

University of Chicago to study under the Muslim immigrant teacher Fazlur

Rahman, and from there he contributed to Al-Ittihad.80 Abdullah, however,
was not alone in coming to Sunni Islam through the influence of Malcolm.
In 1977, Al-Ittihad published a study of twenty-five us Muslim converts—
presumably mostly of white converts connected to the msa—and while
eleven of them said they first came into contact with Islam through “friends
and or Muslim students,” two indicated that Malcolm’s Autobiography was
their first connection.81
The Pan-Islamic feeling continued to be nurtured as the msa community
grew. On several occasions, after earning graduate degrees in us colleges, for-
mer msa leaders remained in the country and continued to affiliate with the
msa, but now as influential professionals. Notable among these individuals
was Dr. Ilyas Ba-Yunus, one of the msa’s first presidents; there was also the
early msa leaders Dr. Eltigani Abdelrahman Abugideiri and Dr. Mahboob
Khan.82 Other former Association members, upon graduation, found jobs in
the us, and, while remaining affiliated with the msa, often promoted the Pan-
Islamic message in the Islamic institutions they joined and helped establish
outside of the college setting.83 Several recent graduates formed, for instance,
American Muslim professional associations, such as the Islamic Medical
Association (est. 1967), the Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers
(est. 1969), and the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (est. 1972). Ahmad
Totonji, the former editor of Al-Ittihad, after earning his doctorate, by 1970 had
become the secretary general of the International Islamic Federation of
Student Organizations, which he connected with the msa and the fia.84
Several of the other former Association members who remained in the us after
college in 1975 would become the people behind the creation of other impor-
tant Islamic outreach and propaganda groups, such as the public institutional
outgrowths of the msa, the Islamic Teaching Center and the Islamic Society of
North America, further establishing the influence of reformist, but moderate
Pan-Islam in America.85

80 See his articles “Sabr” in vol. 10, no. 2 (1973) and “Progress” in vol. 11, no. 2 (1974).
81 Nafees-el-Batool Khan, “A Study on Conversion,” Al-Ittihad 14, nos. 3–4 (1977): 42–43.
82 Islamic Horizons Staff, “Those Who Served,” Islamic Horizons 42, no. 5 (2013): 44–47; “A
Scholar Activist,” Islamic Horizons 36, no. 6 (2007): 14.
83 Bowers, “A Phenomenological Study,” 116, 122, 125 ff.
84 “International Islamic Federation Secretary Reports on World Tour,” Muslim Star 11, no. 61
(1970): 4, imjc Papers, Box 8, bhl.
85 Bowers, “A Phenomenological Study,” passim., esp. 116, 122.
352 chapter 11

The Sufi Spiritual Awakening

The fact that during the 1965–74 period, there were many converts like Umar F.
Abdullah who were interested in the Qurʾan and the classical Islamic tradition but
also looked to African American Muslims was reflective of another related reli-
gious current developing at the time. Increasingly, white Americans were seeking
to challenge traditional white religious sensibilities and embrace ideas and prac-
tices that were not only considered foreign, but were also sometimes viewed as the
complete antithesis of the white Western religious tradition. While this may have
been partly the result of the psychology of Islamophilia, as discussed in Chapter 4,
it also seems to have come out of the larger response to the social transformations
of the period, which had led to thousands of white Americans joining mystical
groups based on Eastern religions during the 1960s and 1970s, in what became
known as the country’s ‘spiritual awakening.’86 It was almost inevitable, then, that
in this era of spiritual awakening a new wave of white Americans would suddenly
begin embracing Sufism. Although this revival of interest in Sufism would not hit
its full stride until after 1974, it is nevertheless valuable to look at the initial stages.
Important changes had been developing in American Sufism since the early
postwar period. As was discussed in Chapter 10, in the 1950s new immigrant
promoters of Sufism, such as Rabbani, Siddiqui, and Baba Rexheb, had started
visiting—and sometimes remaining in—the us. While these teachers pro-
duced very few white converts, their presence nevertheless helped spread an
interest in Islamic mysticism. Meanwhile, one of the older movements, Sufism
Reoriented, which was composed of former followers of Rabia Martin who
now looked to Meher Baba as their spiritual leader, after achieving very little
growth in the 1950s, underwent an explosion in the next decade, gaining an
estimated 7,000 followers.87 There were several reasons for this membership
surge, but, as pointed out by scholars who worked closely with the group in the
1960s, Sufism Reoriented held a strong appeal for the period’s new population
of ex-hippies and former drug users.88 During that decade, white American

86 See Ellwood, Sixties Spiritual Awakening; Glock and Bellah, New Religious Consciousness;
Wuthnow, Consciousness Reformation; Needleman, New Religions; Rowley, New Gods.
87 For overviews of the Meher Baba movement in the us, see, e.g., Sufism Speaks Out: Sufism
Reoriented Replies to Attacks from India (Walnut Creek, ca: Sufism Reoriented, 1981);
Needleman, New Religions, 76–104; Rowley, New Gods, 120–34.
88 Thomas Robbins, “Eastern Mysticism and the Resocialization of Drug Users: The Meher
Baba Cult,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 8, no. 2 (1969): 308–17; Thomas
Robbins and Dick Anthony, “Getting Straight with Meher Baba: A Study of Mysticism,
Drug Rehabilitation and Postadolescent Role Conflict,” Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion 11, no. 2 (1972): 122–40.
Reorientation 353

drug culture showed significant interest in Eastern mysticism largely because

both drug use and Eastern mysticism were seen as resources for expanding
one’s consciousness, which many young whites were desiring due to their
growing feeling of alienation.89 Because of the Eastern influence, several white
drug users gravitated towards Eastern-oriented religious groups, and some, like
Sufism Reoriented, encouraged the converts to give up drugs and actively par-
ticipate in society. Such mystical organizations therefore allowed these indi-
viduals to express their alienation, but through the relatively socially-safe
medium of private spirituality instead of the potentially dangerous drug cul-
ture, which meant they could also now have access to a stable middle-class life.
Once clean, the Sufism Reoriented converts were able to draw in other whites
with alternative spiritual leanings, which helped the movement become espe-
cially popular on college campuses.
Samuel Lewis, meanwhile, who broke away from the Meher Baba commu-
nity in the late 1940s, became involved with various Asian religion communi-
ties in the Bay Area, including the Lahori and the Sunni communities, through
which he knew both Joseph DiCaprio and William Lutz.90 In 1956, he traveled
throughout East and South Asia, studying various religious teachings, being
initiated in the Naqshbandi and Chisti Sufi orders, and visiting with Bashir
Minto, the former Lahori missionary to the us.91 In 1960–62, Samuel went on
yet another journey, traveling to South Asia and Egypt, where he was initiated
into more Sufi orders and made a full master in the Chisti order.92 Four years
later, he re-established an old San Francisco Zen center, called Mentorgarden,
as a center for his universalistic Sufism and he, for the first time, attracted a few
of his own disciples, whom he duly initiated.93 By 1968 Lewis had gained
around thirty followers.94

89 See, e.g., William Braden, The Private Sea: lsd and the Search for God (Chicago: Qadrangle
Books, 1967); Rasa Gustiaitis, Turning On (New York: Macmillan Company, 1969); Daniel
Abdal-Hayy Moore, phone interview with the author, September 19, 2014.
90 See Samuel Lewis, Diaries, esp. letters, Samuel Lewis to Abdul Rahman, February 7, 1961;
to Bashir Ahmed Minto, July 24, 1956; to Florie, December 16, 1960, accessed August 1, 2013,
http://murshidsam.org/; Samuel L. Lewis, In the Garden (New York: Harmony Books; San
Cristobal, nm: Lama Foundation, 1975), 54. Lewis’ followers give the date of his separation
from the Meher Baba community as 1946, but the Meher Baba community (Sufism
Reoriented) gives the date of 1949.
91 See his Diaries as well as Andrew Rawlinson, “A History of Western Sufism,” Diskus 1, no. 1
(1993): 45–83 and Lewis, In the Garden, 52–57.
92 See Lewis, Diaries; Rawlinson, “A History.”
93 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 263–64.
94 Ibid., 264–65.
354 chapter 11

In the latter year, one of Inayat Khan’s sons, Vilayat—who in 1956 had started
a new movement based on Inayat’s teachings, called the Sufi Order
International, and had begun establishing various new Sufi communities in
the us95—met Samuel and publicly recognized him an authorized teacher of
Inayat Khan’s Sufi Order. The two began to work together and the number of
Samuel’s followers quickly doubled.96 Over the next few years, Lewis began
writing down instructions for his Sufi-inspired ‘Dances of the Universal Peace,’
which became quite popular among his followers and sympathizers. In
November 1970, Samuel did two more significant actions: he named one of his
initiates, Carl Moineddin Jablonski, as his successor and he established a new
religious organization, called the Sufi Islamia Rhaniat Society, which his one
hundred followers joined. After Samuel died the following January, his follow-
ers stayed affiliated with Vilayat’s organization for a few years, but in 1977 broke
off on their own, looking to Samuel Lewis—not Inayat Khan—as their main
source of inspiration. Vilayat’s Sufi Order, meanwhile, grew rapidly, quickly
gaining reportedly 6,000 followers and establishing American meditation
camps near Taos, New Mexico and in Woodstock, New York.97 In 1974, in Boston
the group started a popular ‘Cosmic Celebration’ performance that they would
soon be giving throughout the country,98 and they also began looking for a
property to buy on which they would build a spiritual community, which was
obtained the next year in New Lebanon, New York.99
During this period, another pre-1965 Sufi-influenced group was undergoing
its own transformation. In the mid-1960s, several of the members of the
Moorish Orthodox Church began publishing non-conformist poetry, some
became regulars at Timothy Leary’s Millbrook mansion, and some had, after
reading writings of Inayat Khan, adopted his Sufi Order’s symbol of the winged
heart.100 By 1968, though, the motivation to keep the small group alive had
begun to wane, so one of its members, Peter Lamborn Wilson, decided to leave
the country on a spiritual quest, traveling first to Lebanon, and then to India. In
the latter country, Peter met with Vilayat, who encouraged him to study Sufism

95 Rowley, New Gods, 87–88.

96 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 264–65.
97 “Sufis Bring Religion Back to Shaker Site,” Chicago Tribune, August 13, 1975, sect. 1 p. 19;
Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 268. Unfortunately, I was unable to find much infor-
mation concerning the activities and growth of this community in the 1960s and early
1970s, so I cannot explain (or verify) its rapid growth at the time.
98 James L. Franklin, “Cosmic Celebration Keeps the Faith,” Boston Globe, March 26, 1977, 8.
99 Inayat-Khan, “A Hybrid Sufi Order,” 267.
100 Knight, William S. Burroughs, 39–43. For examples of their poetry from this period, see
Mike Maggid, ed., The Destruction of Philadelphia (Madison, wi: Quixote Magazine, 1966).
Reorientation 355

in Iran under a branch of the Nimatullahi order.101 Peter then slowly made his
way northwest, through Pakistan and Central Asia, frequently stopping to meet
with various Sufis and smoking opium and marijuana along the way, appar-
ently as part of a small movement of drug-using Western hippies who were
alarming Pakistan’s cultural and religious authorities at the time.102 After mak-
ing it to Iran, he encountered members of Frithjof Schuon’s Maryamiyya order,
a group that had splintered from Guénon’s Traditionalist Sufism because it
encouraged the embracing of some Christian images. In Tehran, the country’s
leading follower of the order, the American-educated Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
invited Peter to join the group’s philosophical academy.103 Wilson, who some-
times now used the name Hakim Bey, returned to the us and by the mid-1970s
had begun to publish poetry and host a New York radio show.104 Both he and
Nasr—who would later also return to the us—would have an enormous
impact on America’s religious and countercultural currents.
Other Sufis emerged on the American religious scene—both through texts
and in person—during this early period of the revival of Sufism. The 1960s and
1970s were in fact decades that witnessed a significant rise in English-language
literature related to Sufism, and this directly contributed to growing knowledge
of the Islamic mystical tradition. In addition to the several works published by
Inayat Khan, Samuel Lewis, and their respective followers, the New York pub-
lisher Samuel Weiser released three translations of Rumi, in 1971 Berkeley’s
Shambhala Publications reprinted a 1954 edition of Attar of Nishapur’s
Conference of the Birds, the Pakistani publisher Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf pro-
duced multiple Sufism-related works, and a number of academic presses pub-
lished scholarly works dealing with Sufism, several of which were written by
European Traditionalists.105 Perhaps the most popular writer on Sufi ideas at

101 Knight, William S. Burroughs, 46–47.

102 Knight, William S. Burroughs, 46–47; “Hippies in Pakistan,” Yaqeen International, March
22, 1970, 1, 192. This alarm was partly fed by a general increased concern over drug use by
Pakistani youths around this time; for more, see Yaqeen International issues for 1969
through 1971.
103 Knight, William S. Burroughs, 60–61.
104 Wilson’s return to the us by 1973 and his activities after are implied by the mention—in
the acknowledgements in his book The Winter Calligraphy of Ustad Selim & Other Poems
(Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1975)—that some of his poems that were published in 1975
were performed on New York radio and in New York theaters in 1973–74. It should be
pointed out that this date of 1973 is contradicted by what was recorded by Michael Knight,
who interviewed Wilson. Knight puts Wilson in Iran until 1975 and does not have Wilson
returning to the us between the late 1960s and 1975.
105 These works were often cited in the books by Inayat Khan and Samuel Lewis.
356 chapter 11

the time was Idries Shah, a figure who was even more universalistic than Inayat
Khan.106 Born in India to an Indian-Afghan father and Scottish mother, the
London-raised writer combined his interest in Islamic mysticism with a pas-
sion for the occult and other forms of ‘oriental magic.’ In the early 1960s, how-
ever, his Octagon Press began publishing a variety of works on traditional
Sufism that became popular in the us—particularly among the followers of
Inayat Khan and Samuel Lewis—and Shah even became one of the major pro-
ponents of the theory that Gurdjieff’s ideas were derived from Sufism.107
René Guénon’s following, meanwhile, gained a small number of American
Muslim and Sufi converts at this time. Although some Traditionalist works had
been translated into English and distributed in the us since the 1920s—and a
piece by Frithjof Schuon had even run in Kheirallah’s Arab World magazine in
1945—because Traditionalists were not required to embrace Islam and the
American followers were for a long time not formally organized, it is not par-
ticularly surprising that we do not see American Traditionalist Muslims before
the 1960s. Indeed, even the early American Traditionalist Joseph Epes Brown,
who gained an interest in the movement only after meeting and observing
Sufis on New York docks in the 1940s and who later moved to Morocco where
he studied Islam, was not willing to exclusively commit himself to the reli-
gion.108 However, in 1967 Victor Danner, a correspondent of Brown and a pro-
fessor at the University of Indiana Bloomington, not only became a Muslim
and Sufi, that year he also established in Bloomington a small Sufi circle.109
Starting in 1980, this group would serve as the base for Schuon’s Maryamiyya
Traditionalist faction when Schuon moved to the us.
During this period, the country also saw the arrival of new teachers of more
traditional (small ‘t’) Islamic Sufi knowledge. The Sri Lankan Bawa
Muhaiyaddeen, for instance, came to Philadelphia to teach a growing interra-
cial community of people interested in Eastern spirituality. However, after he
arrived in 1971, for the first five years Muhaiyaddeen only lectured on general
spiritual topics; it would not be until 1976 that he would begin to teach ­distinctly

106 Rawlinson, “A History”; Rawlinson, The Book of Enlightened Masters, 524–27.

107 See, e.g., the bibliographies in Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, Toward the One (New York: Harper
Colophon Books, 1974), 662; Lewis, In the Garden, 286. Both of these bibliographies also
reveal their respective groups’ awareness of John P. Brown’s book on Sufis, various writers
from the Traditionalist school, and several other English-language writings on Islam and
Sufism.
108 I am making this claim based on my phone conversation with the daughter of Joseph
Epes Brown on November 8, 2014.
109 David Bisson, René Guénon: Une politique de l’esprit (Paris: Pierre-Guillaume de Roux,
2013), 346–47.
Reorientation 357

Sufi ideas.110 On the West Coast, meanwhile, another traditional Sufi move-
ment gained multiple American converts to Islam: the Darqawi-Shadhili-
Qadiri tariqa (Sufi order), known as the Habibiyya.111 This tariqa followed the
teachings of the Moroccan sheikh Sayyidi Muhammad ibn al-Habib ibn as-
Siddiq al-Amghari al-Idrisi al-Hasani (1876-January 10, 1972), and was brought
to the English-speaking world by the Scotsman Ian Dallas (Abd al-Qadir as-
Sufi). Dallas was a writer who had been a popular figure in Britain’s drama
community during the 1960s and had entered the Habibiyya tariqa in Morocco
in 1967. Sometime around early 1970, while passing through Tangier, Abd
al-Qadir met an American artist to whom he recounted his recent conversion
and meeting with the sheikh. The artist explained that although he was not
personally interested in Sufism, he had artist friends back in Berkeley, California
who had studied it as part of their larger interest in Eastern mysticism, and that
they had even created a sacred theater troupe based on Tibetan Buddhist mys-
tical themes, called the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company. Coincidentally,
Abd al-Qadir, who was planning to go to Los Angeles to work on a film project,
had already heard about the Floating Lotus in a recent feature story in Rolling
Stone magazine,112 so after arriving in Los Angeles, he contacted Daniel Moore,
the writer and director of the troupe.
A poet since his youth in Oakland,113 after attending university in Berkeley
in the early 1960s, Daniel became actively involved with the flourishing coun-
tercultural poetry and art scene in the Bay Area. His book of poetry, Dawn
Visions, was published in 1964 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s popular City Lights
Books, and he quickly accumulated a slew of artist friends, which included
fellow City Lights Books writers and famous beat poets Allen Ginsberg and

110 For an example of his teachings in the early 1970s, see M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, Lex
Hixon, and Will Noffke, Truth & Light: Brief Explanations (Philadelphia: Guru Bawa
Fellowship of Philadelphia, 1974).
111 For a brief introduction, see Marcia Hermansen, “Hybrid Identity Formations in Muslim
America: The Case of American Sufi Movements,” Muslim World 90 (spring 2000): 170;
Kinney, “Sufism Comes to America,” 19–20. The following account, however, is based pri-
marily on my phone interviews with Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, September 19, 21, and 24,
2014 and with Hakim Archuletta, September 29, 2014.
112 Charles Perry, “The Lotus & the Toad,” Rolling Stone, February 21, 1970, 34–35. This article
incorrectly states that the group used the teachings of Gurdjieff.
113 In his phone interview with the author, Moore explained that while he was in high school,
his English teachers encouraged his taking an interest in poetry. Also at that time, Moore,
who came from an upper-middle class background, began listening to jazz and befriended
“broken or damaged” white youths who introduced him to counterculture literature and
poetry.
358 chapter 11

Michael McClure. At the time, in the Bay Area, Eastern mysticism was becom-
ing very popular. Much of this enthusiasm was due to local bookstores, partic-
ularly Berkeley’s Shambhala Bookstore, starting to sell and publish works
concerning Asian-majority religions. Also, several Eastern religious leaders,
such as Zen Master Shrunryu Suzuki, whom Daniel studied under for a
period,114 began teaching in the region, which fostered an atmosphere in which
Eastern religions were highly valued. Daniel and many other Bay Area artists
were drawn to this spiritual side of the counterculture largely because they felt
that these religions would both validate their drug-induced psychedelic expe-
riences and naturally establish the consciousness-expansion that they sought.
After their initial exposure to Eastern teachers and works, then, they began
looking for more books on Asian religious teachings and at one point discov-
ered a number of works on Sufism, including the writings of Idries Shah as well
as translations of Attar of Nishapur and Rumi. One of the artists who would
later convert, Hakim Archuletta, began using the poetry of Rumi in his musical
street performances; others read Sufi poems aloud while sitting in a medita-
tion circle and taking peyote or smoking marijuana.
Around 1966, Daniel had an inspiration that began with appearance of the
name ‘Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company.’ Finding deep significance in this
experience, he set about gathering several of the artists in his community to
form a sacred ‘ritual theater’ to protest the Vietnam War. The creation of such
a theater was fostered by the community’s involvement in the larger ‘happen-
ings’ movement of the 1960s, in which artists put on highly eccentric, unadver-
tised, and sometimes unplanned guerilla public art performances in order to
disrupt people’s consciousness.115 With the Floating Lotus, signs, themes, and
practices of Eastern religions—particularly Buddhism—were employed, as
Daniel later recalled, “with the naively ambitious intention of transforming
evil to good in the heart of humankind.”116 Through this sacred theater, the
taking on of an Eastern religious identity gained for its participants a social—if
not political—significance, and it was a significance that linked the artists to
many of the earlier white American Muslims and Islamophilic Freemasons
who had similar goals in their embracing of Islamic identities. For the next few
years, the troupe performed its operas throughout the summers, becoming a
popular attraction in the counterculture scene until it disbanded in 1970.

114 At whose lectures Daniel encountered Samuel Lewis, though he did not become a fol-
lower of Lewis.
115 Archuletta interview. For more on happenings, see Michael Kirby, Happenings: An
Illustrated Anthology (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1965).
116 Moore interview.
Reorientation 359

When Abd al-Qadir contacted Daniel that year, Daniel and his friend Robert
Luongo brought Abd al-Qadir to their communal house in Berkeley. There, the
white Sufi impressed the residents with his impressive intellect and artistic
and counterculture background, and shared his understanding of Islam as a
revelation of true enlightenment. After just a few days in the presence of Abd
al-Qadir, three California hippies embraced Islam. Hakim felt that the
Scottsman’s appearance in Berkeley was an answer to a recent spiritual sup-
plication for a true path; whereas Daniel, while listening to the visitor, came to
believe that the answer to seeking God did not require, as he had thought, trav-
eling great distances—the answer, he now believed, was right in front of him
in the person of Abd al-Qadir as deputy of Sheikh ibn al-Habib. Daniel, Hakim,
and Robert Luongo performed their shahadas and took Muslim names—
Abdal-Hayy, Abdal-Kabir, and Abdallah. After some months in which the
Floating Lotus became a puppet theater to raise travel fare, Abdal-Hayy, Hakim,
and Hakim’s wife Suzy—who did not commit to Islam until later, when she
met the Moroccan sheikh—set off to London from San Francisco, while
Abdallah went to Boston before meeting his coreligionists in England. In
London, the Berkeley group joined with nine British converts and together
they traveled by land to Morocco for the Mawlid (birthday celebration of the
Prophet) and Moussem (celebration of the sheikh). After visiting with the
sheikh, who gave each convert a copy of his diwan (collection) of spiritual
poems that are sung all over the Muslim world, they returned with Abd al-
Qadir to England where they helped establish and expand the Habibiyya com-
munity he had already begun to gather there.
Starting around 1971, every summer for the next few years, a group of the
American and English Habibiyya Sufis would come to the us where they would
publicize and hold meetings, prayers, and meals that were all open to the pub-
lic.117 At least two of these summers were spent in Berkeley, but during one
summer the group made teepees and traveled across the western us, inviting
people at various stops along the way to visit their camps. The dozen or so
Americans who joined the community during these summer excursions

117 In his 1975 dissertation, J. Gordon Melton reports that the Habibiyya community was estab-
lished in the us in 1973—a date that he has retained in his writings and that others have
used because of Melton’s authority as a scholar of American religions. However, in their
interviews with the author, both Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore and Hakim Archuletta indi-
cated that the group definitely started coming to the us in either 1971 or 1972, and that
nothing new or official was established in 1973. See John Gordon Melton, “The Shape and
Structure of the American Religious Experience: A Definition and Classification of Primary
Religious Bodies in the United States” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 1975), 245.
360 chapter 11

returned with Abdal-Hayy, Hakim, Suzy, Abdallah, and the other disciples who
had come to America, back to England.
Like the post-1965 immigrant-influenced conversion community, American
Sufism was only in its initial stage of growth by 1975. Yet, at the same time, both
communities had developed the fundamental elements of their identities. The
immigrant-influenced converts, who now dominated the white American
Muslim convert community, were frequently college-educated, connected to
several postwar Islamic institutions and movements, interested in cultivating
Islam as a ‘way of life,’ and aware of Pan-Islamic ideologies and their own
potential to be leaders. The American Sufis, on the other hand, tended to be
more from the counterculture movement and spent most of their religious
lives around other converts in their communities that were dedicated to spiri-
tual devotion. The traits of these communities—and the deterritorializing
conditions that produced them—would endure for many years, their persis-
tence revealing the significance of the changes in the us religious landscape
that came about after 1964.
Conclusion

From the Philadelphia’s sailors ‘turning Turk’ to the Berkeley hippies taking a
Sufi master, the history of white American conversion to Islam before 1975 is
one filled with hundreds of episodes of religious change. But, despite all of the
many examples of individual and cultural metamorphoses examined in this
book, the history of white American conversion to Islam is, at its core, the his-
tory of a single event. It is the story of how the world-historical transformation
caused by de- and reterritorialization simultaneously affected the us and the
global Islamic community in one small, particular way. With the emergence of
the relatively free circulation of ideas, goods, and people, traditional religious
boundaries were broken and new boundaries—which were often shaped by
market forces—formed. In the case of white American conversion to Islam,
this was a process that commenced very slowly, but its pace would pick up
rapidly as de- and reterritorialization spread and more thoroughly penetrated
the us religious landscape.
In the nineteenth century, Idealism, Transcendentalism, and spiritualism
were the main deterritorializing cultural forces that made Islam and Muslims
objects of curiosity and sympathy for white Americans, but for seventy years
these currents could produce no true Muslim converts on American soil. It was
only with of the emergence of non-Christian religious markets—driven by the
desire of their Masonic and esotericist creators for influence, profit, and world
peace—that Islam and Sufism were finally successfully reterritorialized in
white American culture. No longer was religious adherence going to be almost
entirely dictated by tradition, families, or ethnicities. It was now up to the mar-
ket, its consumers and its producers. Even in the twentieth century, when the
American religious community experienced yet another dramatic shift with
the influx of non-Christian immigrants, the market rules still applied. Now,
however, the desire for non-Christian religions was not limited to the small
consumer base of white esotericists, but included the thousands of spouses
and friends of the recent non-Christian arrivals. In an era of relatively free
intercultural interaction, the simple feelings of interpersonal love and desire
for peace in one’s family and community were themselves reterritorializing,
market forces.
Occasionally, particularly passionate individuals rose to lead and shape
the markets. Alexander Webb, Louis Glick, Nilla Cram Cook, Thomas Irving,
and Maryam Jameelah all played important roles in molding how both
Muslims and non-Muslims understood and interacted with Islam. Deeply
committed to their idealistic—if not romantic—visions for global peace and

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi 10.1163/9789004300699_014

362 Conclusion

harmony, these and many other Muslims helped ensure that there would
long be a place for white Americans in Islam and that they would have strong,
reterritorialized voices in a still-deterritorializing world. By the mid-1970s,
white American Muslim converts were respected leaders and intellectuals
both at home and abroad—no longer were they simply ridiculed or ostra-
cized ‘renegades’ at the fringes of the American and Islamic communities.
The story of white American conversion to Islam before 1975 is in fact one of
significant religious change.
As 1974 drew to a close, however, the American white Muslim and Sufi com-
munities stood at a precipice. A virtual tidal wave of Sufism was about to hit
the American religious market, led by the growth of already-present groups
like those of Inayat Khan, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, and Abd al-Qadir as-Sufi, as
well as the movements of new figures like Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh and Suleyman
Dede. Several of the numerous white college Sunni converts, meanwhile,
would finish or start PhDs in topics dealing with Islam, and would soon become
some of the most influential thinkers, not just among American Muslims, but
among Muslims worldwide. In 1975, the grounds would be purchased for the
msa’s new offshoot, the Islamic Society of North America—a group that would
have a tremendous influence on Islam in the coming years. Also that year, a
msa- and isna-connected organization, called the Islamic Teaching Center,
would be established and would serve as the first msa-connected group
devoted solely to converting Americans. While the majority of its workers and
potential converts were African Americans, the itc had one educated white
convert member, John Sullivan, a therapist who would publish several articles
on proselytization in Al-Ittihad. He and the other itc workers would soon col-
laborate with Thomas Irving and other converts interested in spreading Islam
to America’s diverse populations.
Sullivan, meanwhile, was not the only white convert to join a black-majority
Islamic organization in 1975. After the death of Elijah Muhammad that
February and the taking of leadership by his son, Wallace, the noi was being
quickly restructured, and Dr. Dorothy Blake Fardan, a white wife of a former
Black Panther, would become the first white American to join the movement
that had been famous for calling Euro-Americans ‘devils.’1 Meanwhile, in New
York that same year, the first us Latina/o Muslim organization, the Alianza
Islamica, would be formed. Latina/o Muslims, who had since the 1920s been

1 Fardan had been involved in black protest movements in the 1960s and, when she learned
about the noi in 1970, she was immediately drawn to it; see Dorothy Blake Fardan, Yakub and
the Origins of White Supremacy: Message to the Whiteman & Woman in America (Chicago:
Lushena Books, 2001), 12, 141–43.
Conclusion 363

frequently regarded by immigrant Muslims as whites,2 but had also often iden-
tified with African American Muslims, were now asserting a unique identity,
one that Thomas Irving—an expert in Islamic Spain—fully supported. Finally,
as Lebanon entered its civil war that year, uneducated Muslim refugees would
start flocking to the us, changing, once again, the demographics of the social
bonds that would be formed between Muslim immigrants and non-Muslims in
the country. By 1976, there were already nearly 120 mosques and Islamic cen-
ters in the us,3 but within fifteen years, that number would swell to well over
500, which meant that the us Muslim institutional landscape had been once
again significantly reshaped. White American conversion to Islam was there-
fore about to undergo yet another dramatic transformation.

2 This was more true with Arab immigrants, who, as several early ethnographies attest to,
tended to prefer whites over blacks, than it was with South Asians, who were often prevented
from marrying pale-skinned people due to anti-miscegenation laws.
3 I am basing this number off of mosques noted in Lovell, “A Survey”; Ecumenism Research
Agency, The State of the Churches in the u.s.a. and Canada, 1976: As Shown in Their Own
Official Yearbooks and Other Reports: A Study Resource (Peoria, az: Ecumenism Research
Agency, [1977]), roll 6; and the handful of other mosques mentioned in the various docu-
ments obtained for the present volume.
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Index

Abdullah, Muhammad 318, 319 Akram, Wali 269–271, 273–274

Abdullah, Umar F. 350–351 Aleem, Nazir 270–271
Academy of Islam 264–265, 274, 276, 294, Alfassi, Lisa (pseud.) 329–330, 336, 339, 342
297–298, 300 Ali, Hadji 181
Adaros, Cabir, Premel el- 209–210 Ali, Hazrat Ismet 210–211
Addeynu Allahe Universal Arabic Ali, Noble Drew 130, 263
Association 272, 273, 278, 294, 313 Ali, Shaykh Mehmed 182–183
See also Ezaldeen, Muhammad Al-Ittihad 335–336, 340–344, 348–349, 350, 351
African Americans Ali, Yusuf 277, 299, 336
Ahmadiyya Movement and 225, 227, American Islamic Association 249–258
228–30, 257, 263, 270, 273–74, 278, 286, American Islamic Propaganda 139–156
288–89, 302, 331 See also American Moslem Brotherhood;
Civil Rights Movement and 323, 350 Webb, Alexander Russell
connections with Glick and Nadji 257, American Islamic Social Centre and
259, 260, 272, 274–276 Library 245, 247, 249, 250, 251
Inayat Khan and 223 American Moslem 154
Mohammad Barakatullah and 181 American Moslem Brotherhood
Moslem Brotherhood of the u.s.a. and 244 creation of 143–144
Muslim immigrant marriage with 233 end of 158
Muslim mystics and 208, 210–211 expansion of 148–150
Muslims 57–58, 130, 206, 257, 259, 260, Islamophilic Mason involvement
262, 263–265, 270–271, 272–278, 281, with 130–131, 136, 144–148, 172
294, 297–298, 300, 310, 313–316, not requiring conversion to Islam
317–320, 322–323, 349–351 143–144, 216
See also Akram, Wali; Aleem, Nazir; Bey, outliving American Islamic
Abdul Wadood; Blyden, Edward; Propaganda 156
Dawud, Talib; Dean, Harry; Ezaldeen, See also American Islamic Propaganda;
Muhammad; Grimké, Archibald; Webb, Alexander Russell
Moorish Science Temple; Moslems of American Moslem Congress 284
America; Nation of Islam; Randolph; American Moslem Institute 156–158, 162
Paschal Beverly; X, Malcolm Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis/
Aga, Achmed 36–37 Memphis-Misraim
Aga, Khalil 36–37 See Yarker, John
Ahmad, Ghulam 98, 102–103, 105–106, 108, Ancient and Primitive Rite of Misraim
109, 167, 178, 225–226 See Freemasonry
Ahmad, Nasir 273, 275, 278, 294, 319 Ancient Arabic Nobles of the Mystic Shrine
Ahmadiyya Movement (Shriners) 119–122, 136, 144–148
early contact with Americans 109, 167, Andersen, F.L. 178, 226
171, 178 Ansaireh
‘Lahori’ movement 225–226, 230, H.B. of L.’s references to 82, 101
249–250, 252, 257, 262, 273, 285–289, Lant’s connections to 146
311, 318, 319, 353 Randolph’s reference to 64–66, 101, 146
‘Qadiani’ movement 178, 184, 203–207, See also Isma‘ili Assassins; Shi‘i Muslims
221–222, 225–230, 249–250, 257, 263, Ansari, Mohammed Fazlur-Rahman 300,
270, 273–274, 278, 302, 319, 331, 334 314–316
Index 397

anti-Islamic sentiment Clayton, Thomas Muhammad 288, 311

See Islamophobia Comstock, Anthony 145–147, 154–155
Arab, Hajee Abdulla 113, 140–141, 142, 152, Cook, Nilla Cram 260, 278–283
154–155 Coues, Elliott 149
Archuletta, Hakim 358–360 Cramer, Malinda E.
Asad, Muhammad 310 See Divine Science
Ashraf, Sheikh Muhammad 299, 310, 343, cubic stone 123, 131–136
355
Attar of Nishapur 355, 358 Dahbour, Sheikh Hussein 304–305
Avdich, Kamil 303 Dasa, Philangi (Carl Herman Vetterling)
139, 143
Baha’i faith 188–199, 261 Davidson, Peter 81, 164
Baker, Dr. Anthony George 170–172, 226 Davis, Andrew Jackson 56–57, 60
Baker, Ora Ray 219 Dawud, Talib 278, 318
Barakatullah, Mohammad 158, 178–181 Dean, Harry 181–182
Barbary Wars conversions 30–34 de- and reterritorialization 4, 7–16, 27–30,
See also renegades 43–47, 51, 55, 69, 87, 88, 92, 115, 176, 199,
Bashir, Nusrat 331, 334, 336 203–204, 207, 231, 290–291, 321, 324,
Bazzy, Shaykh Khalil 301–302 361–362
Bedolfe, W. Viner 133–134 DiCaprio, Joseph 317–318, 343, 353
Bektashis 117, 119, 121 Divine Science
See also Sufism Brooks sisters 85, 139, 150
Ben Ali, Hassan 179–180 Cramer, Malinda E. 84, 139
Bengalee, Sufi 229–230, 257, 302 movement 84–86, 139
Bey, Abdul Wadood (Walter Price) 263 possible connections with Webb 150
Bjerregaard, C.H.A. 98, 100–101, 104, 105, Dudley, Tracey Cromwell 288n136
172–175, 216, 218
Blavatsky, Helena P. 74–81, 121–122 Eddy, Mary Baker
Blizt, Edouard 163–166, 215 See Christian Science
Blyden, Edward 111 Egra, Imam Mohamed S. 303–304
Brooks sisters Elsner, Dr. C.F. 162–63
See Divine Science English, George Bethune 18, 28, 35–43, 47,
Brotherhood of Luxor 75–77, 81, 124 88, 142
See also Theosophical Society; Hermetic ‘Esoteric Mohammedanism’ 110, 141, 174n76,
Brotherhood of Luxor 181n107
Brown, John Porter 117, 118, 132–133 Evans, Warren Felt 84, 110
Buddhism 96, 106, 107, 110, 139, 185–187 Ezaldeen, Muhammad (James Lomax)
Burgoyne, Thomas H. 81, 85 263–264, 272, 283
Burton, Richard Francis 117, 122
Bush, George (Swedenborgian) 56–57 Faisal, Sheikh Daoud 264, 274, 275, 294, 300,
310, 314, 316, 318
Cables, Josephine 78–79, 107, 108 Faruqi, Isma‘il 336, 348
Chainey, George Faruqi, Lamya Lois Isben al- 336
See Gnostic Society Federal Bureau of Investigation 3, 256,
Chirri, Imam Mohamad Jawad 301–302, 305, 272–273
308–309, 326–327 Federation of Islamic Associations of the
Christian Science 84, 86, 219, 255 United States and Canada 285, 293–295,
Church of Islam (Snow) 154, 161 296, 301, 302, 308–309, 311, 314, 319, 324,
Clark, Linda 340n41, 343 337, 339–341, 346, 349, 351
398 Index

Field, Eugene 90, 108 Glick, Louis

First Society for the Study of Islam American Islamic Association and
154–155, 157 249–251, 254–255
Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company 357 as a friend convert 23, 240–249
Freemasonry Committee for the American National
Abd el-Kader and 116–119, 120, 122, 124 Congress of Mafjids and Moslem
Ahmadiyya Movement and 227–228 Societies 271–272
Ancient and Primitive Rite of Misraim criticisms of American military 241, 269,
(Little) 69 275n70
esoteric 19, 27–28, 52, 63, 66–74, 76–77, death 339
81, 87 early activities in New York 240–249
Freemason 70–73, 125, 134–135, 136 influence on Lahori missionary
history of 66–68 revival 285–287
in Egypt 189 Islamic publications of 251, 254, 256–257,
Islamic transmission theory of 116, 259, 261, 267–268, 272, 286–287
133–134, 135, 137 late 1930s activities 258–259, 272
Islamophilia in 20, 115–138 Lyons Valley activities 245, 255–257, 266
John Porter Brown and 117, 118, 132–133 Muslim soldier projects 267–269,
Military Order of the Knights of the Red 275n70, 287, 293, 304
Cross of Rome and Philadelphia activities in 1950s 303–304
Constantine 68–69 possible connections with Kalifat No. 5
Oriental Order of the Magi and 192, 193, 258–259, 272, 317
196, 197 pre-Islam life of 240–241
Richard Morris and 118–119, 121 Shieka Selim Institute 245, 296
See also Ancient Arabic Nobles of the Uniting Islamic Societies of America
Mystic Shrine; Hughan, William James; connections 274–276, 318
Kenning, George; Little, Robert ‘Webb Memorial’ projects 265–267, 268
Wentworth; Mackenzie, Kenneth R.H.; See also American Islamic Association;
Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Societas American Islamic Social Centre and
Rosicruciana; Yarker, John Library; Islam Association of
Free Thought movement America; Western Islamic Association
New York (Manhattan) Liberal Club Gnostic Society 82, 84
142, 147 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 72, 116,
Rawson’s connections with 144–48 126–127, 129
Theosophy’s connections with 75, 78, Gould, S.C. 104, 105, 164, 165, 172–75, 216–217
79, 147 Grimké, Archibald 86
Webb’s connections with 141, 142, Grimké, Sarah Stanley 85–87, 139
144–148 Grimké sisters 86
See also Comstock, Anthony; Lant, John Groupe Indépendent d’Etudes Esotériques
A.; Rawson, Albert L.; Webb, Alexander 163, 215, 217
Russell See also Papus
friend converts 23, 231, 236–240, 308, 324, 327 Guardians or Keepers of the Kaaba 123
See also Glick, Louis; immigration Guénon, René 21, 173, 175, 215–216, 320,
355, 356
Galwas, Ahmad Ahmad 277, 278 Guertin, Wilson 308–309, 314, 339, 341
Garber, Ella May 184, 221–222, 226, 319 Gurdjieff, George Ivanovich 211–212, 356
Ghazali, al- 84
Gilani, Sayid Muhammad Wajih 183–184, Habibiyya Sufi order 325, 357–360
222 Hacksener, Lewis 32–34
Index 399

Haddad, Anton 152, 189–190 Islamic Association of Muslims 274–275

Hafiz 47, 217 Islamic identification (non-­conversion)
Hajj 117, 177, 243, 292, 308, 311, 332, 349 55–59, 64–65
Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph von 116 Islamic Mission of America
Harvard University 28, 35, 39, 47 See Faisal, Sheikh Daoud
Heinkel, Harry E. 253–254, 257 Islamic Review 252–254, 262, 288, 289, 292,
Hermetic Brotherhood of Atlantis, Luxor, and 317, 319
Elephante 139, 190–191, 228 Islamophilia
Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor 19, 81–82, conversion to Islam and 130, 352
84–87, 96–97, 100–102, 103–104, 139, See also Freemasonry; Theosophical Society
163–164, 216 Islamophobia (anti-Islamic sentiment)
See also Burgoyne, Thomas H.; Davidson, before the nineteenth century 4–7,
Peter; Grimké, Sarah Stanley; Johnson, 129–130
Thomas M.; Martinism in the nineteenth century 64, 120, 128,
Higgins, Geoffrey 65, 116, 129 129–130, 168n43, 168–169, 184–185
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth 47–48, 175 in the twentieth century 341–342
Hinduism 187–188 Isma‘ili Assassins 65, 116, 135, 271, 320
Hobollah, Imam 302 See also Ansaireh; Shi‘i Muslims
Hodgson, Marshall G.S. 269–271 Ismail, Imam Vehbi 300–301, 302
Hopkins, Emma Curtis 84, 85, 139
Hossain, Syud 244n44, 281 Jameelah, Maryam
Hughan, William James 68, 70 as a token 341
Humani, Muhammad Ali al- 248 research on 1
connections with msa 324, 341, 342
Ibn Tufayl (Hayy Ibn Yaqzan) 44, 99 conversion of 309–310, 319
Idealism 18, 43–50, 72, 78, 83, 86, 110, 185 dress 334
Igram, Abdullah 293–294, 304, 314 published writings of 315, 341, 342–343
immigration reference to Malcolm X of 350
1965 u.s. reform of 24, 323, 325 James, Rashida 334, 337
Muslims, pre-World War ii 176, 179–180, Jam’iat-ul Falah 315
182–183, 203–207, 225–227, 231–249, Jansen, Michael E. 308
263–264 Jefferson, Thomas 47
Muslims, post-World War ii 290–316, Johnson Library and Museum 2
323, 325–328 Johnson, Thomas M.
marriage and 22–23, 176, 232–236, contact with British esotericists 81
241–242, 293, 305–308, 323–324, Hermetic Brotherhood involvement
326–328, 330–334 19, 81–82, 97
Muslim students 290–291, 304–316, 323, Theosophical involvement 19, 78–81,
325–326, 330 95, 97
Muslim trained religious leaders 296–305 Sufi interest and organizations 19–21,
See also friend converts 97–105, 172–175, 216
International Moslem Society 297–298, 300 Judge, William Q. 80–81, 149
International Moslem Union 157–158, 161
International Muslim Brotherhood 278, 319 Kader, Abd el- 116–117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 124
Irving, Thomas B. 311, 314, 324, 337, 339, 341, Kalifat No. 5 258–59, 272, 317
342, 343 Kant, Immanuel 44–45, 48
Islam Association of America 267–268 Karoub, Hussein 300, 302, 305n56
See also American Islamic Association; Kateeb, Sheikh Salih Ahmad al- 243,
Glick, Louis 246–247
400 Index

Keep, Nafeesa M.T. 156–158, 161–162 Majid, Satti 183, 242n34, 248–249, 319
See also American Moslem Institute; marriage conversions 22–23, 49, 176,
Webb, Alexander Russell 232–236, 241–242, 262, 290, 305–308,
Kelsoe, William 90, 92, 93, 95, 97 323–324, 326–328, 329–334
Kenning, George 69–71 See also immigration
Khan, Inayat 22, 105, 175, 210–211, 213–224, Martin, Rabia 22, 215–224, 318
226, 320, 325, 354, 355–356 Martinism 21, 22, 160, 163–166, 197,
Khan, Muhammad Yusuf 229–230, 273, 274 215–217, 220
Khan, Vilayat 224, 354 See also Blitz, Edouard; Groupe
Khayyam, Omar 49, 174–175, 209, 218 Indépendent d’Etudes Esotériques;
See also Omar Khayyam clubs Martin, Rabia; Papus; Union Idéaliste
Kheirallah, George Ibrahim 261–263, 265 , Universelle
292–293, 299, 300, 315, 356 Mawdudi, Abdul A‘la 310, 311, 313, 324, 342,
Kheiralla, Ibrahim George 188–199, 261 345, 349
Khilafat movement 244–248 McClenachan, Charles T. 119, 122, 130,
Kimball, Anna 136, 148
See Gnostic Society mental picture theory 86–87
Kunze, Abdul Shakoor 302 See also Grimké, Sarah Stanley
mesmerism 18, 52, 53, 56, 60, 65, 83
Lant, John A. 144–147, 149, 151–158, 161–162, 190 Mind Cure
See also American Moslem; American See New Thought
Moslem Institute; First Society for the Minto, Bashir Ahmad 287–289, 353
Study of Islam; Webb, Alexander Russell Moats, Richard and Najiba 330–331, 336, 337
Latina/os 227, 233, 236n19, 242, 326n6, 362 Moore, Daneil Abdal-Hayy 357–360
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 72, 125–126, 129 Moorish National Islamic Center 263–264,
Lewis, Samuel 215, 220, 221, 224, 318, 266, 274
353–354, 355–356 Moorish Orthodox Church 320–321, 350,
liberal religion 27–30, 43–50, 52–53, 55–59 354–355
See also Harvard University; spiritualism; Moorish Science Temple 263, 270–271, 273,
Transcendentalism; Unitarianism 318–321
Little, Robert Wentworth 68–74, 135 See also Ali, Noble Drew
Liverpool Moslem Institute 137, 150, 156, 157, Morris, Richard 118–119, 121
162–166 Moslem American Citizen’s Union 303
See also Quilliam, William Henry Moslem Brotherhood of America, Inc.
Los Angeles early 1930s convert 278, 304
community 253–254 Moslem Brotherhood of the u.s.a. 244, 247,
Lutz, William 260, 283–285, 289, 299–300, 250, 261–63, 264, 266, 278, 281, 304
314, 318, 335–336, 341, 343, 353 Moslem League of Philadelphia 313, 314
Moslems of America 272, 274
MacIlwain, George Knox 177 Mott, Joseph Livingston 227–228
Mackenzie, Kenneth R.H. Muhaiyaddeen, Bawa 356–57
connections with Theosophy 76–77, 81, 136 Muhammad, Elijah 271, 319n112
connections with William Henry Muslim-American Citizens Society 271, 303
Quilliam 136–137 Muslim missionaries (non-American) in
in sria 71–73, 134–35 the u.s. 178–184, 243–244, 248, 251–259
Order of Ishmael and 123–136 Muslim mystics (independent) 199, 207–12
“Papers on Masonry” 72–73, 86, 125, 127–130 Muslim student organizations
Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia 73–74, 76–77, convert members of 310–312, 330
81, 124, 125, 127, 130, 132 creation of 288, 310–312
Index 401

Muslim Students’ Association Oriental Publishing Company 142, 171

converts involved with 311–312, 330, 334, See also Baker, Dr. Anthony George; Webb,
336, 337, 338–351 Alexander Russell
creation of 311–312 ‘The Oriental’ (building) 182, 242
Muslim World League 324, 347–349 Osman, Nadirah 260, 262–266, 267, 269–271,
285–287, 303, 318
Nabakoff, Emin L. 150, 151–152, 153–158,
161–162 Page, Elliott B. 79, 93, 94, 149
See also First Society for the Study of Palmer, Gladys 255
Islam; International Moslem Union; Pan-Islam 24, 243–259, 260–287, 297–305,
Webb, Alexander Russell 314–315, 323, 324–325, 338–351
Nadji, Ahmad 251, 254–255, 257–258 Papus (Gerald Encausse)
Nadji, Muharrem 251–255, 257–259, 262, Groupe Indépendent d’Etudes Esotériques
269, 271, 272–273, 289, 314, 339 and 163
Naeem, Abdul Basit 300, 312–316, 317, 319 H.B. of L. and 163–164
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein 355 Islam connections of 164–165
Nation of Islam 270–271, 314–316, 317, Martinism and 160, 163–165
318–319, 322, 349–350 Union Idéaliste Universelle and 163
New Thought 53, 83–87, 100, 110, 139, 150, 181, Phelon, William 139, 190, 228
190, 191 Philadelphia 1907 convert community
See also Christian Science; Divine Science; 171–172, 177
Evans, Warren Felt; Grimké, Sarah Pickthall, Marmaduke 253, 309
Stanley Prince, Thomas 32–34
New York Islamic Center 261–266 Pueblo, Colorado 85, 150
non-Islamic conversions 184–199
Norman, Henry L. 58–59, 140, 160 Quilliam, William Henry 136–138, 150, 153,
156–157, 162–166, 171, 174n74, 225–226
occult
Ahmadiyya Movement’s American Rabbani, Azad Subhani 297–298, 352
connections with 227 Rahman, Fazlur 348, 351
Arabic sources for the 61–63 Randolph, Paschal Beverly
definition 51 Ansaireh/Ansairetic and 64–66, 82,
powers (practical occultism) 60, 101, 146
64–65, 77, 82, 96, 102, 103, 189, 192, connections with John A. Lant 146
194, 214, 217 death 65
revival 17–20, 27–30, 51–87, 129–130, 138, early life 59–60
139–140, 174–175, 216 H.B. of L’s use of 82, 101
See also Freemasonry; Randolph, Paschal Influence on later esoteric figures 139
Beverly; Rosicrucians; Theosophical references to Islam of 64
Society Rosicrucianism and 52, 60
Olcott, Henry S. 74–78, 98, 102–103 Theosophy’s use of 75, 77
Omar Khayyam clubs 49, 175 Rawaf, Sheik Khalil al- 265, 276–277,
Order of Ishmael 123–136 283, 292
Order of Sufis 20–21, 22, 104, 105, 172–175, Rawson, Albert L. 79, 120–123, 130, 135–136,
216–217 138, 144–148, 150, 154–158, 172
See also Sufic Order See also American Islamic Propaganda;
Oriental Order of the Magi 139, 191, 192–198 Ancient Arabic Nobles of the Mystic
Oriental Order of the Palm and the Shell 118 Shrine; Sheiks of the Desert;
See also Morris, Richard Theosophical Society
402 Index

religious markets 14–16, 27–30, 52, 54–55, Shriners

67–71, 80, 87, 88, 138, 160, 169, 175, 253, See Ancient Arabic Nobles of the Mystic
361–362 Shrine
renegades 5, 6, 18, 30–43 Siddiqui, Muhammad Abdel Aleem 299–
Rexheb, Baba 301 300, 313–316, 342, 348, 352
Reynolds, Boyd 317 Smart, Astrid-Herma 340n41
Reynolds, Muhammad Abdullah 317 Smith, Thomas 33–34
Rice, Miranda 84 Snow, Urban Hamid 154–155, 161
Richmond, Olney L. See also Church of Islam
See Oriental Order of the Magi Societas Rosicruciana
Rodgers, James Laurie 169–170 in America 76, 122, 123, 136, 148
Rosicrucians in Anglia (England) (sria) 63, 68–74, 76,
British Freemasons and 68–74 134–135
early modern history 60–63 connections with Islamophilia 134–135
Glick and 303–304 connections with Theosophy 76
Gold und Rosenkreutz 63, 68 spiritualism 18, 52, 53–60, 74–75, 88, 91–94,
in Gnostic Society 83 146, 155, 161n1, 191
in literature 61, 63, 96n35, 108 See also Davis, Andrew Jackson; Lant, John
in Theosophy 75–76 A.; Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Sargent,
Randolph’s use of 52, 60–66 Epes; Theosophical Society; Webb,
St. Louis community 79 Alexander Russell
Webb’s interest in 96, 108 Stubbe, Henry 130
See also Hughan, William James; Little, Sufi, Abd al-Qadir as- 357–360
Robert Wentworth; Mackenzie, Sufic Circle 19, 103–105, 144, 172–175, 216
Kenneth R.H.; Randolph, Paschal See also Order of Sufis
Beverly; Societas Rosicruciana Sufism
Rumi 209, 217, 358 Bektashis 301
Russell, John H. 150, 172 Bjerregaard and 100–05, 172–175
Ruswa, Mohamed Hadi 99–100 Freemasonry and 115–117
increased popularity after 1965 325, 338,
Sa‘di 217 352–360
Sadiq, Muhammad 225–29 independent Muslim mystics
Salt, Henry 36, 38 and 207–212
Sargent, Epes 57–58 Moorish Orthodox Church connections
Schuon, Frithjof 355, 356 with 320
Shadhilliyya order Muharrem Nadji and 252
See Guénon, René Rabbani and 298, 352
Shah, Idries 212, 355–356, 358 Siddiqui and 299, 352
Sharif, Yahya Rafi 320 Thomas M. Johnson and 99–105, 172–175
Shawarbi, Mahmoud Youssef 296, 346, 349 Transcendentalists and 48–49
Sheiks of the Desert 122, 135–136, 148, 150, 172 See also Attar of Nishapur; Brown, John
Sheldrake, Khalid 249–250, 254–255 Porter; Burton, Richard Francis;
See also American Islamic Association; Freemasonry; Guénon, René; Habibiyya
Western Islamic Association Sufi order; Hafiz; Ibn Tufayl; Khan,
Shepardson, Abedi 332, 334 Inayat; Martin, Rabia; Order of Sufis;
Shi‘i Muslims 24, 65, 235, 250, 301–302, 305, Rumi; Schuon, Frithjof; Shadhiliyya
307n66, 326–327, 328 order; Sufic Circle; Sufism Reoriented
See also Ansaireh; Chirri, Imam Mohamad Sufism Reoriented 224, 318, 352–353
Jawad; Isma‘ili Assassins Supreme Muslim Council 243–248, 250, 273
Index 403

Tablighi Jama’at 298–299 Waddington, George 37, 38

Taylor, Isaac 111–112 Washington, dc Islamic Center 295–296,
Theosophical Society 302, 314, 327, 336, 337, 346
as a source for other esoteric ‘way of life’ 24, 324, 328–338
groups 81–87, 174–175 Webb, Alexander Russell
connections with Freemasonry 75–77, activities after movement’s collapse
79, 81, 121–122 160, 165–171
connections with Webb’s Islamic Ahmadis, Ghulam Ahmad, and 105–106,
movement 141–144, 155 108, 167, 171, 224, 266
establishment 19, 28, 52, 74–77 anniversary celebrations for 265–267
Gnostic Society and 82–83 as a token 341
Inayat Khan’s movement and 213–223 becoming a missionary 113–114
Islamophilia in 19, 97–105, 115, 174–175, 216 bigotry of 112, 206–207
Nilla Cram Cook’s connections compares Theosophy to Islam 110–111
with 279–280 contact with S.C. Gould 165, 173
Randolph’s influence on 75, 77 contact with international Muslim
research on 2 proselytizers 149–150, 178, 180, 181
rebirth and spread of 52–53, 77–81, 139 conversion of 108–113
St. Louis community 2, 19, 79–80, 88, 93–97 converts possibly in contact with
Tuitt Bey 75 167–171, 177–78
See also Bjerregaard, C.H.A.; Blavatsky, ‘Esoteric Mohammedanism’ and 110, 141,
Helena P.; Cables, Josephine; Coues, 174n76
Elliott; Johnson, Thomas M.; Judge, explanations for failure of his
William Q.; Kelsoe, William; Olcott, ­movement 158–159, 187–199
Henry S.; Page, Elliott B. interest in Rosicrucianism 96, 108
tokens, White converts as 340–341 Islamophilic Masons and 114, 115, 144–148
Toland, John 130 Islamic publications of 142, 143, 156, 158
Toledo, Spain Islamophilic Theosophy and 97–105,
1085 conquest of 4–5, 61 174–175
translations of Arabic texts in 5, 61–63 Martinist connections 165, 173
Totonji, Ahmad 349, 351 Muslim colonies in America plan 142
Traditionalism Naeem’s planned article on 314
See Guénon, René; Schuon, Frithjof on Islamophobia 130
Transcendentalism 18, 27–28, 48–50, 55, 78, pre-conversion life 88–108
83, 86, 100, 185 research on 1–2, 89n1, 140n2
See also Idealism; Unitarianism Sheikh-ul-Islam title claim 167, 170
Tunison, Emory Howard 265 speeches at 1893 World’s Parliament of
Religions 150–151, 156, 195
Union Idéaliste Universelle 163, 164, 165 spiritualism interest of 88, 91–93, 155
See also Blizt, Edouard; Papus Theosophical Society contact of 19–21,
Unitarianism 27–28, 39–40, 43, 46–48 88, 93–108, 141–144, 155
See also Transcendentalism views on the superiority of Islam
United Moslem Council of Greater 109–112, 338
New York 247–249 William Henry Quilliam connections
Uniting Islamic Societies of America with 138, 150, 153
271–278, 318 See also American Islamic Propaganda;
American Moslem Brotherhood; Arab,
Vedanta Society 187–188, 215, 217 Hajee Abdulla; Keep, Nafeesa M.T.;
Vivekenanda, Swami 151, 187–188 Lant, John A.; Nabakoff, Emin L.
404 Index

‘Webb Memorial’ projects 265–267, 268 X, Malcolm 322–323, 349–350

West, Peter 33–34
Western Islamic Association 249–255 Yarker, John
Wilson, John 31–34 Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis/
Wilson, Peter Lamborn 320–321, 354–355 Memphis-Misraim 71, 123, 136–137,
Woking mosque 225–226, 252, 289, 292 163
World Federation of Islamic Missions 316 connections with Islamophilic
World Islamic Organizations 348 Freemasonry 122–125, 135, 136
World Muslim Congress 324, 345–347, connections with William Henry
348, 349 Quilliam 136–137
World’s Fair contact with Americans 81
in 1893 150–151, 154, 156, 168, 178, 179, 187, in sria 71
195, 207–208 See also Freemasonry; Societas
in 1901 208 Rosicruciana
in 1904 208 Young Men’s Moslem Association
in 1915 208, 221 246–248, 250, 263, 265, 277, 283–284,
World’s Parliament of Religions 150–151, 292, 300
156, 195
See also World’s Fair Zakariya, Mohamed 336