Conflicts and controversies at home and abroad have led Americans
to focus on Islam more than ever before. In addition, more and more
of their neighbors, colleagues, and friends are Muslims. While much
has been written about contemporary American Islam and pioneering
studies have appeared on Muslim slaves in the antebellum period,
comparatively little is known about Islam in Victorian America.
This biography of Alexander Russell Webb, one of the earliest
American Muslims to achieve public renown, seeks to fill this
gap.
Webb was a central figure of American Islam during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A native of the Hudson
Valley, he was a journalist, editor, and civil servant. Raised a
Presbyterian, Webb early on began to cultivate an interest in other
religions and became particularly fascinated by Islam. While
serving as U.S. consul to the Philippines in 1887, he took a
greater interest in the faith and embraced it in 1888, one of the
first Americans known to have done so. Within a few years, he began
corresponding with important Muslims in India. Webb became an
enthusiastic propagator of the faith, founding the first Islamic
institution in the United States: the American Mission. He wrote
numerous books intended to introduce Islam to Americans, started
the first Islamic press in the United States, published a journal
entitled The Moslem World, and served as the representative of
Islam at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. In
1901, he was appointed Honorary Turkish Consul General in New York
and was invited to Turkey, where he received two Ottoman medals of
merits.
In this first-ever biography of Webb, Umar F. Abd-Allah examines
Webb'slife and uses it as a window through which to explore the
early history of Islam in America. Except for his adopted faith,
every aspect of Webb's life was, as Abd-Allah shows,
quintessentially characteristic of his place and time. It was
because he was so typically American that he was able to serve as
Islam's ambassador to America (and vice versa). As America's Muslim
community grows and becomes more visible, Webb's life and the
virtues he championed - pluralism, liberalism, universal humanity,
and a sense of civic and political responsibility - exemplify what
it means to be an American Muslim.
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