Imam Luqman Ahmad Mosque Without Borders

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ، وَالصَّلَاةُ وَالسَّلَامُ عَلَى رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ، وَبَعْد

We are not quite there yet. In fact, we are still a long way off, and Allah knows best. But sometime in the near or perhaps distant future, a mindset will emerge, in sha’ Allah, in which Black American Muslims, descendants of the enslaved, from the W.D. Muhammad community, the Salafi community, the traditional Sunni community, the orthodox Sufi community, the madhhab-based community, and the community of the unattached, will arrive at a single, inescapable conclusion: they are fundamentally the same people. 

The Black American Muslim community is in flux right now, but this conclusion is inevitable. Perhaps not in this generation, but two or three generations from now, I could see it happening. 

Why Convergence Is Inevitable 

Consider what actually separates these communities. Not geography—Black American Muslims still populate the same cities, from Philadelphia to Atlanta to Detroit to Sacramento. Not economics—they face the same socioeconomic conditions, the same underfunded schools, the same mass incarceration pipeline, the same wealth gap that has haunted descendants of the enslaved for over a century. Not even history—because every last one of these communities traces its Islamic lineage, directly or indirectly, through the Black American conversion experience of the twentieth century. 

What separates them, in most cases, is methodology—and much of that methodology was imported. The Salafi movement, as I have documented extensively, arrived in Black Muslim America backed by petrodollars and an air of scholarly certainty at a moment when communities were already in transition: former Nation of Islam members searching for Sunni orthodoxy, W.D. Mohammed’s followers navigating a massive theological shift, the Darul Islam movement fracturing, and thousands of incarcerated Black men discovering Islam behind bars. The sectarian walls that rose up between these communities were not organic to the Black American Muslim experience. They were, in large part, the product of foreign ideological currents meeting a vulnerable population in a period of spiritual reconstruction. 

But ideologies age. Movements lose their novelty. The newness and excitement of Islam in Black Muslim America will wear off. There will still be converts to Islam—there always will be, al-ḥamdu lillāh—but in the future, the majority of Black American Muslims will not be converts, still trying to fiqure out islam. They will be second-, third-, and fourth-generation Muslims, born into the faith, raised in it, and no longer swept up in the fervor of discovery that defined earlier generations. When that happens, the question will no longer be, “Which manhaj do you follow?” It will be, “What are we going to do about our schools, our institutions, our governance, our economic future?” 

The Shared Wound Beneath the Labels 

The deeper truth, one I explored at length in my book, Double Edged Slavery, is that the colonial dynamics affecting Black American Muslims do not discriminate by sect. The Salafi brother in East Orange and the W.D. Muhammad sister in Chicago and the unattached Muslim in South Philadelphia all experience the same marginalization within the broader American Muslim community. Immigrant-led institutions have, by and large, treated indigenous Black Muslims as a second-class community regardless of whether those Black Muslims call themselves Salafi, Sufi, or simply Sunni. The shared wound runs deeper than methodology. It is a wound of displacement within one’s own religion on, one’s own soil. 

And yet, and this is critical, acknowledging that shared wounds does not mean we have to build our Islam around it. As I have argued, and still argue, our challenges are real, but they do not justify a turn toward racial nationalism, exaggerated ethnic pride, or the idea that Black people require a special creed, a special fiqh, or a special door to Paradise. Contextualization is not racialization. It is simply applying the universal principles of Islam to the lived reality of a particular people—something the Sharīʿah has always done across cultures and centuries without creating separate religions for each group. The convergence I am describing is not a “Black Islam.” It is the inevitable recognition that Black American Muslims share enough common ground—historical, socioeconomic, institutional, and spiritual—that their sectarian divisions are a luxury they cannot afford. 

Institutional Fragility: The Common Denominator 

Here is the uncomfortable reality that every camp must eventually face: none of them have built durable institutions. The Salafi masājid, for all their doctrinal rigor, have largely failed to produce lasting governance structures, educational systems, or economic engines. The W.D. Muhammad communities, despite their numbers and early organizational promise, have struggled with leadership succession and institutional continuity in the decades since his passing. The traditional Sunni and Sufi communities remain small and scattered. The unattached, perhaps the fastest-growing segment, have no institutional home at all. 

This is not a critique of any one group. It is an observation about all of them. And it is precisely this shared institutional fragility that will, in shā’ Allāh, force the convergence. Because you cannot build a hospital with one wing. You cannot fund a school with one neighborhood. You cannot establish civil governance, real shūrā, real deliberation, real policy, with a fraction of a fraction of a community. The math simply does not work. At some point, the instinct for survival will outweigh the instinct for sectarian purity. 

From Spectacle to Order and Governance 

When that day comes, and I believe it will, the work will not begin on a stage. It will not begin with a grand public gathering or a viral clip or a celebrity lineup. It will begin behind closed doors, where Imams and community leaders sit together and do the unglamorous, essential work of shūrā: honest deliberation, evidence-based reasoning, actionable policy, and collective commitment to a shared course of action. Public spectacle builds momentum; private counsel builds the future. The transition from Islamotainment to order and governance is not optional. It is the precondition for everything else. 

Honesty About Uncertainty 

I do not have a crystal ball. I do not know the future. However, looking at the Black American Muslim community—what has happened over the past seventy-five years, where we are today, our trends, our impediments, and where our country is headed—I can see such a mindset emerging. The trajectory bends toward convergence because the conditions demand it. 

I can also see it not emerging. I can see sectarian pride, one-upmanship, and jealousy calcifying into permanent division. I can see personality-driven leadership continuing to substitute for institutional governance. I can see another generation lost to internal arguments about manhaj while the socioeconomic ground crumbles beneath all of us equally. Both futures are possible. The question is which one we choose to build—and whether our leaders have the humility and the vision to put the community’s survival above their own platforms. And Allah knows best. — Imam Luqman Ahmad 

Shaykh Luqman Ahmad, born and raised in Philadelphia Pa, and son of American converts to Islam, is an American Muslim thinker, scholar, writer, educator, and community leader with more than four decades of service. A graduate of the Islamic University of Omdurman, with time spent at Umm al-Qura University, and in classes at the Haram in Mecca. Imam was first introduced to Islamic learning by his parents. He studied with numerous scholars, most notably the late “Sayyid Sabiq”, author of the book “Fiqh as-Sunnah”.  For a list of his teachers, consult his blog at imamluqman.wordpress.com. He served as the Imam of Masjid Ibrahim Islamic Center in California for 20 years, guiding one of the region’s most diverse Muslim communities with a blend of classical Sunni scholarship and deep awareness of American social realities. Over the course of his career, he has also served as an Imam and or resident scholar at several masaajid across the country, including in Philadelphia, Toledo, Sacramento, and Folsom, California.  

He is the author of several books, most notably The Devil’s Deception of the Modern-Day Salafi Sect, a widely discussed critique of contemporary Salafism, and Double Edged Slavery, an original work examining the mentality, history, and lived experience of Black Sunni Muslims in America. His writings, lectures, and community work continue to influence conversations on Islamic law, identity, leadership, and the future of American Muslim communities. Currently, he writes, conducts research, and serves as a guest khateeb at the Quba Institute in Philadelphia. He can be reached at: imamabulaith@yahoo.com