User talk:Universal islamic society

The Universal Islamic Society was started in Detroit, Michigan in 1926 by the Sudanese-Egyptian Intellectual Duse Mohammed Ali. Duse Mohammed Ali was a counterpart of Edward Blyden the West Indian-born Christian Missionary and first African-American scholar to advocate an alliance between global Islam and Pan-Africanism, the system of thought which is considered his intellectual legacy. After studing Arabic in Syria and living in West Africa, Blyden became convinced that Islam was better suited for people of African descent than Christianity, because of what he saw as the lack of racial prejudice, the doctrine of brotherhood and the value placed on learning in Islam. Blydens' seminal tome, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (1880), laid the groundwork for Pan-Africanism with a strong Islamic Cultural and Religious undergirding. In 1911, after the First Universal Races Congress held at the University of London, Duse Mohammed launched the The African Times and Orient Review, a journal championing national liberal struggles and abolitionism "in the four quarters of the earth." and promoting solidarity among "non-whites" around the world. Published in both English and Arabic, the journal was circulated across the Muslim world and African diaspora, running articles by intellectuals from the Middle East to the West Indies ( including contributions from Booker T. Washington). Duse would later become mentor to Marcus Garvey when the Jamican born American black Nationalist worked at the Review in London in 1913, and would leave his indelable stamp on Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, whose mission "to reclaim the fallen of the race, to administer and assist the needy" would become the social welfare principles animating myriad Urban Islamic and African-American movements. The ideas of Edward Blyden and Duse Mohammed, which underlined universal brotherhood, human rights and "literacy" ( i.e., the study of Arabic), had a profound impact on subsequent pan-Africanist and Islamic movements in the U.S., influencing leaders such as Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and Malcom X.