On Sunday, 3July 2022, Muslim-American leader and successor of the late Imam W. Deen Mohammed, Imam Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed will deliver his second annual Independence Day Address in Rochester, NY. Themed, The Burden of American Freedom, Mohammed’s address continues the momentum he and his supporters have built over the last two years in their efforts to re-establish the Muslim-American perspective in America’s social tableau.

The reasons for the choice of Rochester as the host city for these annual addresses is both practical and symbolic. Among Mohammed’s growing base of support within the Muslim African-American community, members in Rochester were among the earliest and most vocal. Their story is emblematic of many throughout the country. Frustrated with the community decline in the aftermath of W. Deen Mohammed’s passing, Abdulmalik Mohammed’s emphasis on public engagement, civic duty, and preservation of the group’s unique Islamic character signaled a return to form for the community’s nearly 100 year old leadership tradition.

The city is also well known as the home of Frederick Douglas, the ex-slave who became the father of the African-American freedom struggle. It is here where Douglass gave his famous What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? speech, a scathing critique of the peculiar institution and America’s hypocritical race-based oppression. Among Muslims, Douglass’ speech is regarded as a sort of rhetorical antecedent to the condemnation of white supremacy that characterized part of the community’s appeal among African-Americans during the mid-twentieth century.

In 2016 while serving a seven year sentence in federal prison for a single count of mail fraud, the then 50 year old Imam was publicly recognized by a small but well-regarded group of Muslims as the successor of Imam W. Deen Mohammed whose passing eleven years prior left a vacuum in the leadership of America’s oldest Islamic tradition.

In keeping with certain democratic principles established by Muhammed the Prophet, W. Deen Mohammed did not specifically name a successor, but his public statements and gestures toward the younger Mohammed—then his National Representative—were such that news outlets such as the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune took note.

Within the community, officials who once openly denounced the new Imam’s leadership have grown conspicuously silent in recent months. A few have stepped forward publicly and expressed support while privately, others have confirmed that there is a growing realization within their ranks that Mohammed’s momentum has reached a tipping point. In the aftermath of W. Deen Mohammed’s passing, they opted for a more localized approach to leadership that gave primacy to the more ritual aspects of the religion—Friday prayers, Eid celebrations, Masjid fundraisers, etc. To an outsider, this may not at all seem unusual. However, since the community’s founding in the early 1930’s as the Temple of Islam (aka Nation of Islam) it has distinguished itself with a unique focus on public messaging and community engagement.

Under W. Deen Mohammed’s father, the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, that messaging was aimed exclusively at addressing the oppressed condition of the African-American community and what the NOI characterized as the spiritual and psychological death of the “so-called negro.” When W. Deen Mohammed became leader in 1975, he moved the community toward a more universal picture of Al-Islam that -while still addressing their unique history as a people, insisted upon a sober appreciation for and expression of American citizenship and universal principles of freedom, justice, and equality.

Retreating to a more insular expression of the faith would no doubt be seen as a betrayal by the late Imam, as well as by the man he once described as having “…done more than any other person to help me get the correct picture of Muslims and Imam W. Deen Mohammed to the public of America and the world.”

Even prior to his imprisonment, Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed was approached repeatedly to step forward and provide leadership. Each time, he resisted the entreaties. After a series of terrorist attacks in Europe and virtually no response from the officials of his own community, Mohammed surmised that the community had largely abandoned its mission. He wrote and published his first book, Islam, Democracy, and Civic Virtue: The Muslim-American Jihad Against Extremism.

In less than two years since his release from federal prison, he and his supporters have established regular activities in Rochester NY, Philadelphia PA, Cincinnati OH, and Newark NJ—the later of which will serve as the host city for the annual Muslim-American Leadership Day, an observance that coincides with the birthday of W. Deen Mohammed on October 30.

While a reemergence of national leadership for the community is a welcome return to form in the eyes of supporters and sympathizers, of more importance to them is discipline in maintaining ideological continuity with what Muslim scholars would refer to as W. Deen Mohammed’s Medthab, or school of thought, or philosophy. While Islam has certain basic tenants which must be adhered to by followers, flexibility is given to to Muslim leaders and their peoples to apply those tenants in a manner tailored the particular cultural, historic, and political characteristics of a given environment. The most well-known Medthabs in Islamic jurisprudence are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali, all of which emerged in the ninth and tenth centuries.

While W. Deen Mohammed forged strong ties between his people and Muslim populations which followed other Medthabs, he insisted that his community maintain independent perspective on Islamic practice, one that took into account not just the unique needs of American society as a whole, but also America’s role as a global leader.

Mohammed reasoned that because of the peculiar form of oppression that African-Americans were subjected to, one which completely separated them from any form of their previous life as a human community,

While

is in harmony with Imam W. Deen Mohammed’s vision for his people—a vision that he publicly excoriated them for failing to uphold.