Black History Month: Sister Sayedah Khadijah Faisal and Sheikh Daoud Ahmad Faisal: The Birth of The American Islamic Dawah

Sayedah Khadijah Faisal was born in Bermuda to Punjabi and African-Caribbean parents in about 1899. In the early 1920s she migrated to New York where she would encounter many immigrants from the Caribbean, but it was her meeting with Sheikh Daoud Ahmad Faisal, a devout Muslim from Granada, in 1924, which would change both their lives.

The couple were married that same year and four years later set up a school of elocution which  would transition to become the Islamic Propagation Center of America [1]. Daoud became one of the founding fathers of the International Muslim Society and also had connections to the Harlem-based Academy of Islam. This center and the International Muslim Society had members of Trinidadian, Malay, African American and Somali ancestry.

In 1934, Daoud attempted to establish a Muslim Village named Madinah al-Salaam near Fishkill, New York (it lasted until 1942). Eventually, he would move to Brooklyn from Harlem and establish the renowned Islamic Mission of America in 1939 which became New York City’s largest mosque for over two decades.

Khadijah and her husband were always Muslim pioneers in all their endeavors. With her husband, she also ran a speaking bureau and concert bureau as both were talented musicians — she was a vocalist and he a violinist.

Pictured: Sheikh Daoud in front of the Islamic Mission of America In the late 1940s and 1950s, Daoud started a federation of NYC Islamic groups that included eight major Muslim organizations. An advisory council was developed, to represent Muslims in the fields of public relations, social and missionary work. By the 1950s, Daoud imported Imams from Morocco and Indonesia. From then until the mid-60s, his Islamic Mission was one of the few places for five times daily prayer and Juma’ [1].

Daoud had three other interests: Making sure merchant seamen had insurance and burial plots, doing Dawah in prisons and representing the needs of Muslims in America to the larger world via the forum of the United Nations. When the Civil Rights Era started, he presented a calm voice in the storm and wanted the world to know that members of his temple were not angry Black Men or followers of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam.

Later he would serve as the United States Muslim Representative to the United Nations.

In later years Daoud retired from his job as an engineer at Amtrak and worked primarily at the Ismalic Mission until his death in 1980. At the same time, Khadijah worked to develop a group of Muslim American women who were trained Islamically to deal with the struggles of being a Muslim in the West (Shabi’yat , 1981). She was a teacher for generations of young Muslim women over the course of her long life and was eventually honored with the title  “Mother Khadijah” because of her beloved status. While Daoud was the administrator and Imam of the mosque, she was the secretary and treasurer.

No one else called for equality and justice for all minorities in as loud and articulate voices as Khadijah and her husband. This venerable couple were active in propagating Islam, trying to explain away misconceptions and present Islam in a way that was accessible to the American people. Following his death in 1980, Khadijah  continued her work with Muslim women until her own death at the age of 93 in 1992 [1]. 

Daoud was the spiritual father of the Dar-ul-Islam Movement whose founders were students from his mosque. He was also responsible for helping Somali and Yemini seamen settle in the United States. where they later founded Masjid al-Farouq within walking distance of the Islamic Mission [1]. His writings influenced Maryam Jamilah, an American Pakistani author, to convert from Judaism to Islam. He was also an associate of Malcolm X before and after his split with the Nation of Islam. There are many works that mention him and other early Jazz musicians as being influential in the spread of Islam. 

The couple, who spent their lives working together as an incredible team sharing their faith and serving their community were proponents of an Islam where you could be proud to claim both your African heritage and your Muslim religious identity [3].

References

[1] Al-Ahari, Muhammed Abdullah (2006). Foreword to Faisal, Shaykh Daoud Ahmed Faisal (2006). Islam the True Faith, the Religion of Humanity: The Works of Sheikh al Hajj Daoud Ahmed Faisal: Volume One. Chicago: Magribine Press.

[2] Unattributed (1981). Khadijah Faisal, The First of the Sahabi’yat in the United States, Sahabiyat I: No.4 (1981?), pp. 21-24.

[3] McCloud, Aminah Beverly (1995). African American Islam, New York: Routledge.

Dr. Muhammed al-Ahari is an American essayist, scholar, and writer on the topics of American Islam, Black Nationalist groups, heterodox Islamic groups, and modern occultism. He has published more than twenty books on Islam and American Muslim history through the Chicago-based Magribine Press.