Book Review

African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles. By Allan D. Austin. (New York: Routledge, 1997. xiv, 194 pp. Cloth, $59.95, isbn 0-415-91269-5. Paper, $17.95, isbn 0-415-91270-9.)

Richard Brent Turner's Islam in the African-American Experience and Allan D. Austin's African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles cover a familiar but very useful new ground: black experiences in the context of the Islamic religion. Similar to Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (1993), edited by Louis Brenner of the University of London, both books add to the scholarly understanding of the involvement of continental blacks (Africans) and diasporan blacks (African Americans) in the religion that has its roots in the Middle East but, where Africa is concerned, in North Africa.	1
According to Turner, who currently serves as a professor in the theology department of Xavier University of Louisiana, his book has its roots in an undergraduate course that he took at Boston University in the autumn of 1973. In the course he "was studying the early history of African-American Islam." That experience, as Turner further underscored, was buttressed by his perusal, at the time, of works by Noble Drew Ali, W. D. Fard, C. Eric Lincoln, E. U. Essien-Udom, Arthur H. Fauset, and Gayraud Wilmore, all of whom have made useful contributions to several aspects of black religion and nationalism.	2
Also, Islam in the African-American Experience, in its present form, is a transformation of Turner's earlier dissertation, as he confirmed: "During my years on the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara, I transformed my dissertation into this book." In doing so, the author traveled extensively to numerous prominent research centers—including the Schomburg Center and Harvard University's Du Bois Institute and Widener Library, as well as institutions and homes of black Muslims in Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco—and, as Turner explained to his readers, his book "has truly been enriched by the information and insights that I have acquired during these travels."	. . .