defeat, but they ended up fighting against each
other as well as other groups for control of the
country. From bases in Pakistan and central and
southern Afghanistan, the Taliban took advantage
of this chaotic situation to make their own play
for power in 1994–96. Mujahidin continues to be
a term used by various armed factions that are
contending for power and influence in the coun-
try since the United States overthrew the Taliban
regime in December 2001.
See also Jihad movements; mujahid; qaida, al-.
Caleb Elfenbein
Further reading: M. Hassan Kakar, Afghanistan: The
Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Gilles
Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); Ahmed Rashid,
Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002).
Africa See algeria; east africa; egypt; libya;
morocco; sudan; tunisia; west africa.
African Americans, Islam among
The first African American Muslims were slaves
captured in West Africa in the 1700s and brought
to the American colonies. The few accounts of
them from the early decades of the United States
indicate that the Muslims formed somewhat of
an elite in the slave community, that many
were literate, and that they became known for
their resistance to the conditions in which they
found themselves. They also resisted attempts by
Christians to convert. There remains, however,
little evidence to connect Islam within the slave
community with a new Islamic movement that
developed among African Americans in the urban
north in the 20th century.
A new phase for Islam among American blacks
began in 1913, when Timothy Drew (1886–1929)
assumed the name Noble Drew Ali and founded
the Moorish Science Temple of America. This
organization can best be seen as an attempt to
adapt Muslim themes to the struggle of African
Americans for a place of dignity and equality in
American life. From his personal research, he
concluded that American blacks were descendants
of the Moors and that their true homeland was
morocco. He suggested that in the founding of
the United States, the nationality, freedom, and
religion of African Americans had been taken from
them. Not having access to an English translation
of the qUran, he adapted a Spiritualist text, the
Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ, by Levi Dowling,
and issued it as the movement’s Quran.
The Moorish Science Temple spread among
African Americans through the 1930s but declined
in the decades after World War II. The thrust it
began, however, was picked up by a second orga-
nization, the nation oF islam, dated to 1930, and
the activity of a mysterious man known as Wallace
Fard Muhammad. He continued Noble Drew Ali’s
emphasis on African Americans having an African
origin and developed an elaborate myth of the
primal origin of black people. Leadership of the
movement was soon assumed by Elijah Muham-
mad (1897–1975), who steered it through some
controversial years to great success in the 1960s,
coinciding with the heyday of the Civil Rights
movement.
As the Moorish Science Temple and the Nation
of Islam were spreading, the ahmadiyya movement
in Islam sent representatives from India to begin
proselytizing. Their greatest success proved to be
among black Americans, who for a generation
formed the largest community of African-Ameri-
can Muslims. Also competing for the attention of
blacks attracted to Islam was a movement formed
by Shaykh Daoud, who came from Bermuda in
the 1920s.
The shape of the African-American Muslim
community began a dramatic transformation in
the 1970s. Following the change in U.S. immi-
gration regulations in 1965, a number of Indo-African Americans, Islam among 17 J