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[[image - map of Africa showing the location of African countries. to represent the population ratio, a very tall black figure stands next to a very short white figure]]

In Africa, where blacks outnumber whites 41 to 1, Islam is the dominant religion, not Christianity. Besides, practically all the Moslem-majority areas are independent, and those not yet free are rapidly nearing their goal of gaining sovereignty.

12   MOSLEM WORLD & THE U.S.A.

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[[image - black & white photograph of children sitting at desks facing a teacher standing in front of a blackboard]]

[[photograph credit - Beatty]]

[[caption]] Nearly 300 young followers of Mr. Elijah Muhammad in Chicago are enrolled at the local University of Islam. Shown here are some of school's fourth-graders. [[/caption]]

might wish to establish his home and to follow any profession of his choice and for which he possesses the necessary qualifications.

The Arabic language, in which the Holy Koran was revealed and in which the followers of Islam are required to recite their daily prayers, will further bind him to the great Arab and Moslem world. 

In the year 1916, H.G. Wells had written in his well-known book "WHAT IS COMING?: A European Forecast" (The Macmillan Company, New York):

"...Africa will be a fair field for all religions, and the religion to which the negro will take will be the religion that best suits his needs. That religion, we are told by nearly every one who has a right to speak upon such questions, is Islam, and its natural propagandist is the Arab..."

In the year 1956, four decades later, we find that Wells had correctly predicted "what was coming" in Africa, for today a vast majority of Africans are Moslems.

And if Islam best suits the needs of black Africans, it should best suit the needs of black men in America as well, and it is claimed by those who are connected with a popular Moslem missionary movement among America's seventeen million black people that "it definitely does." "The number of persons who join our movement each month confirms our belief", they say.

The Moslem missionary movement among the so-called "Negroes" in the U.S.A., of course, has a unique aspect that it does not seek "converts" but "re-converts." "The ancestors of my people, the so-called 'Negroes,' were of the Islamic faith before they were brought here from Africa as slaves," says MR. Elijah Muhammad, the leader of thousands of black Moslem Americans. "When they turn Moslem today, therfore, that means that they become 're-converts' to Islam."

Whether this movement is gaining "converts" or "re-converts," the fact remains that thousands of black men and women, citizens of the U.S.A., are today leaving the ranks of Christianity each year and joining the world-wide Brotherhood of Islam, and it can be safely predicted that in a few years' time the strength of the U.S. Moslem community would become a major factor in the so-called "Negro" situation here.

It has also been proven by many an American Moslem, no matter how black, that followers of Islam are seldom Jim-Crowed even in the deep South. Bands consisting of black Americans of the Moslem faith, wearing Moslem identifications, have been able to give performances in entertainement halls around the country normally open only to white artists. Before the U.S. Army was integrated a few years ago, black servicemen of the Moslem faith were almost always attached to white contingents. They have never experienced much trouble in restuaurants or on buses either, not even in Alabama and Florida!

AUGUST-SEPT. 1956   13