Living and Learning Islam in Black America: Education and Self-Determination in the Dar-ul-Islam Movement

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of education in fueling Black American Muslims’ efforts to achieve self-determination. It focuses on the Dar-ul-Islam Movement, a community that was active from 1962 to 1983 and, before 1975, comprised the largest national network of Black Sunni Muslims in the US. I argue that the movement’s educational efforts—which included independent schools as well as programs for youth and adults—were key to actualizing its vision of carving out sacred urban geographies where they could live freely without interference from the state. The Dar’s praxis challenges scholarship that silos Black and Muslim intellectual discourses, as well as those that separate religious ideologies from political visions. Instead, through a focus on the movement’s educational efforts during the Black Power era, I show how the Dar fused theological, moral, material, and sociopolitical concerns to actualize collective liberation for Black Muslims in the urban US.