Please click on an image below to be taken to that section.
You've heard 'History'. You've heard 'Herstory'. You've even heard 'Theirstory'. Now prepare yourself for 'Ourstory'.
I am Aadam Muhammad and I am the founder of 'The Straight Path' project to support Muslim reverts of African descent in the UK. We are aiming to create an online archive of the history of reverts of African descent in the UK.
Under the heading of 'Ourstory', this section of 'The Straight Path' website will allow reverts to share their inspirational stories of reversion; relay the challenges and experiences they have encountered and provide encouragement to others on their life journey towards inner fulfilment.
Although we are based in Leicester, East Midlands, UK you will be able to access this resource at any time throughout the day and it will be continually online for you to view and contribute your stories, pictures and memories to.
The requirement for this unprecedented resource needs little explanation. The 'Ourstory' archive will allow current and future generations to learn about this unique aspect of British history, that has been largely overlooked in the overall history of Africans migrating to the UK from the Caribbean and the African continent, since the Windrush years of 1948.
Other communities and groups will further be educated about the history of reverts of African descent in the UK and how they have helped to shape the perception of Islam (and 'Black British' culture) in the UK as we know it.
If you would like to contribute any visual media (old photographs, posters, video footage, audio recordings etc.) of past and historic events hosted by reverts of African descent in the UK to this page, then please send your submissions to
info@tsp-uk.com or through https://wetransfer.com/ (2gb maximum size limit).
If you would like to submit your revert 'origin story' and photographs (optional) for consideration then please send your answers to info@tsp-uk.com for the following questions:
1. Who are you?
2. What experiences would you like to share about your life as a revert?
3. Where you are based?
4. When you became a Muslim?
5. Why you became a Muslim?
6. How you see your life as a revert developing in the future?
We look forward to building this extraordinary archive with you throughout the coming weeks, months and years, collectively, for the benefit of our heirs and the future of Islam in the UK. Thank you.
I am Aadam Muhammad and I am the founder of 'The Straight Path' project to support Muslim reverts of African descent in the UK. We are aiming to create an online archive of the history of reverts of African descent in the UK.
Under the heading of 'Ourstory', this section of 'The Straight Path' website will allow reverts to share their inspirational stories of reversion; relay the challenges and experiences they have encountered and provide encouragement to others on their life journey towards inner fulfilment.
Although we are based in Leicester, East Midlands, UK you will be able to access this resource at any time throughout the day and it will be continually online for you to view and contribute your stories, pictures and memories to.
The requirement for this unprecedented resource needs little explanation. The 'Ourstory' archive will allow current and future generations to learn about this unique aspect of British history, that has been largely overlooked in the overall history of Africans migrating to the UK from the Caribbean and the African continent, since the Windrush years of 1948.
Other communities and groups will further be educated about the history of reverts of African descent in the UK and how they have helped to shape the perception of Islam (and 'Black British' culture) in the UK as we know it.
If you would like to contribute any visual media (old photographs, posters, video footage, audio recordings etc.) of past and historic events hosted by reverts of African descent in the UK to this page, then please send your submissions to
info@tsp-uk.com or through https://wetransfer.com/ (2gb maximum size limit).
If you would like to submit your revert 'origin story' and photographs (optional) for consideration then please send your answers to info@tsp-uk.com for the following questions:
1. Who are you?
2. What experiences would you like to share about your life as a revert?
3. Where you are based?
4. When you became a Muslim?
5. Why you became a Muslim?
6. How you see your life as a revert developing in the future?
We look forward to building this extraordinary archive with you throughout the coming weeks, months and years, collectively, for the benefit of our heirs and the future of Islam in the UK. Thank you.
Our Revert Stories.
1. Who are you?
My name is Aadam Muhammad
2. What experiences would you like to share about your life as a revert?
Wow! That's a VERY big question. I've had so many in my 40 years of reverting to Islam. It has certainly been challenging, but these tests have made me become the confident and resilient person that I am today. I think one of the most defining experiences has been my efforts to establish initiatives and projects to help the reverts of African descent in Leicester. I've attempted to set up a good number of them in the past, which have seen varying degrees of success.
3. Where you are based?
I'm living in Leicester currently, although I was born in London. My family came to live in Leicester in the 1960s.
4. When you became a Muslim?
I became a Muslim on 22nd December 1984, so I've seen a lot of things within the community in Leicester.
5. Why you became a Muslim?
Hmm! I, like many other young people whose parents came from the Caribbean in the 1950's, were the first generation of Africans born and raised in the UK since 1948. Many of us had similar (if not greater) ambitions and dreams as our white counterparts had as we grew up. School was tough. Real tough, because my family moved to a white majority suburb called Wigston Magna in the 1970s from the Highfields area of Leicester, which had far greater numbers of our community living there. I never liked the fact that we moved away from Highfields and was upset about this for some time, because I left all of my friends behind too. The levels of anti-African hatred could only be described as 'Iblisic'. It was never ending as there was verbal and physical anti-African abuse encountered on a daily basis. The amount of fights I got into was worrying. With little support at home (my parents and siblings must have also being experiencing the same type of mistreatment, but must have just kept it in) and from my peers, It got to the stage ultimately, that I just gave up and lost my spirit. There was no hope for us.
I discovered that I had creative skills at about this time and began to excel in art. Perhaps this was my calling, but I never saw it through, because my parents didn't see much value in being creative. I was discouraged from this and pushed towards becoming a tradesman like a carpenter, electrician or plasterer. I had no real interest in this type of career, but went along with it all the same. By the time I had left school, I had little clue about what I wanted to do in life. I would've like to have entered into the world of music and performance (which allowed me to continue on with my natural creativity) but this never happened - although I made significant effort to do so.
As I got older, and had to start living by myself, I became more desperate for a career in music (as I didn't really have a 'plan B') but it just wouldn't happen. This led to me feeling more despair and aimlessness - and after one particular major musical let down (after a long list of them) I was feeling quite lost. Now, living in a high rise flat in one of the worst parts of Highfields, it seemed that there was no way out. This was the evening when I was met Abu Khalifah (an African Muslim revert born in Jamaica) as he shouted out to me to hold the lift door as I went up to my 17th floor bedsit. He was wearing a white gown (which I then learned was called a jalabiyah) and we struck up a conversation. He asked me what I was doing with my life. I told him what I was working towards and said I wasn't having much luck. He had also been in the local music industry as a sound system owner but had given that up.
He then asked me if I'd ever heard of Islam before. I said no. He began to tell me about it. It seemed interesting, but I didn't really want to become 'religious' as I thought I was a bit too young for that. We spoke for about two and a half hours about Islam that evening. I'd never done anything like that before.
He stayed in contact with me and began to introduce me to other Muslims from our cultural background who lived in the area like Muhammad Yusuf; Abdul Raheem; Ishmael Siddique; Muhammad Deen, Muhammad Ishmael and Jabeena Siddique etc. After going through a series of what I could only describe as being 'peculiar transformational events', they subsequently invited me to go to a Tablighi Jamaat in Yorkshire. I had no clue what this even was and could hardly pronounce it, let alone understand it! Interestingly enough, this was on the very same Friday night I wanted to go to a party at the local community centre, where anybody who was anybody was going to be in attendance. So, it was a stark choice between the party or the Jammat - and the car and venue door were open right in front of me. The ultimate showdown! It was one or the other. Looking back on it, this truly was THE crossroads of my life. The next day, I became a Muslim in Dewsbury at the ripe old age of 20. Who would've thought it!
So, the reason why I became a Muslim was a combination of several different factors really, but wanting to find a clear way forward in life was definitely the biggest one of them.
6. How you see your life as a revert developing in the future?
Well, as the founder of The Straight Path, I would like to continue putting effort into this to see it grow and develop into a key resource, that all Muslims can read and learn from regarding the UKs first ever grassroots revert communities in the history of the UK. I think I'm always going to be the type of man who's going to be trying to do positive things in the community. So, I reckon it'll be more of the same from me in the future. Watch this space ...
My name is Aadam Muhammad
2. What experiences would you like to share about your life as a revert?
Wow! That's a VERY big question. I've had so many in my 40 years of reverting to Islam. It has certainly been challenging, but these tests have made me become the confident and resilient person that I am today. I think one of the most defining experiences has been my efforts to establish initiatives and projects to help the reverts of African descent in Leicester. I've attempted to set up a good number of them in the past, which have seen varying degrees of success.
3. Where you are based?
I'm living in Leicester currently, although I was born in London. My family came to live in Leicester in the 1960s.
4. When you became a Muslim?
I became a Muslim on 22nd December 1984, so I've seen a lot of things within the community in Leicester.
5. Why you became a Muslim?
Hmm! I, like many other young people whose parents came from the Caribbean in the 1950's, were the first generation of Africans born and raised in the UK since 1948. Many of us had similar (if not greater) ambitions and dreams as our white counterparts had as we grew up. School was tough. Real tough, because my family moved to a white majority suburb called Wigston Magna in the 1970s from the Highfields area of Leicester, which had far greater numbers of our community living there. I never liked the fact that we moved away from Highfields and was upset about this for some time, because I left all of my friends behind too. The levels of anti-African hatred could only be described as 'Iblisic'. It was never ending as there was verbal and physical anti-African abuse encountered on a daily basis. The amount of fights I got into was worrying. With little support at home (my parents and siblings must have also being experiencing the same type of mistreatment, but must have just kept it in) and from my peers, It got to the stage ultimately, that I just gave up and lost my spirit. There was no hope for us.
I discovered that I had creative skills at about this time and began to excel in art. Perhaps this was my calling, but I never saw it through, because my parents didn't see much value in being creative. I was discouraged from this and pushed towards becoming a tradesman like a carpenter, electrician or plasterer. I had no real interest in this type of career, but went along with it all the same. By the time I had left school, I had little clue about what I wanted to do in life. I would've like to have entered into the world of music and performance (which allowed me to continue on with my natural creativity) but this never happened - although I made significant effort to do so.
As I got older, and had to start living by myself, I became more desperate for a career in music (as I didn't really have a 'plan B') but it just wouldn't happen. This led to me feeling more despair and aimlessness - and after one particular major musical let down (after a long list of them) I was feeling quite lost. Now, living in a high rise flat in one of the worst parts of Highfields, it seemed that there was no way out. This was the evening when I was met Abu Khalifah (an African Muslim revert born in Jamaica) as he shouted out to me to hold the lift door as I went up to my 17th floor bedsit. He was wearing a white gown (which I then learned was called a jalabiyah) and we struck up a conversation. He asked me what I was doing with my life. I told him what I was working towards and said I wasn't having much luck. He had also been in the local music industry as a sound system owner but had given that up.
He then asked me if I'd ever heard of Islam before. I said no. He began to tell me about it. It seemed interesting, but I didn't really want to become 'religious' as I thought I was a bit too young for that. We spoke for about two and a half hours about Islam that evening. I'd never done anything like that before.
He stayed in contact with me and began to introduce me to other Muslims from our cultural background who lived in the area like Muhammad Yusuf; Abdul Raheem; Ishmael Siddique; Muhammad Deen, Muhammad Ishmael and Jabeena Siddique etc. After going through a series of what I could only describe as being 'peculiar transformational events', they subsequently invited me to go to a Tablighi Jamaat in Yorkshire. I had no clue what this even was and could hardly pronounce it, let alone understand it! Interestingly enough, this was on the very same Friday night I wanted to go to a party at the local community centre, where anybody who was anybody was going to be in attendance. So, it was a stark choice between the party or the Jammat - and the car and venue door were open right in front of me. The ultimate showdown! It was one or the other. Looking back on it, this truly was THE crossroads of my life. The next day, I became a Muslim in Dewsbury at the ripe old age of 20. Who would've thought it!
So, the reason why I became a Muslim was a combination of several different factors really, but wanting to find a clear way forward in life was definitely the biggest one of them.
6. How you see your life as a revert developing in the future?
Well, as the founder of The Straight Path, I would like to continue putting effort into this to see it grow and develop into a key resource, that all Muslims can read and learn from regarding the UKs first ever grassroots revert communities in the history of the UK. I think I'm always going to be the type of man who's going to be trying to do positive things in the community. So, I reckon it'll be more of the same from me in the future. Watch this space ...
The first golden age - 1970s to 1990.
A change has finally come.
The mid 1970's saw several major cultural changes in the UK for its young people. For our white counterparts, it was the birth of Punk Rock which drew them towards a political and social awareness, that many had never known before. As the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten spat uncompromising lyrics of anarchy in the UK and there being no future, it became clear that many young people living here wanted to hear a new message that would help them to understand society and their own lives better.
On the other side of the spectrum, the children of the Windrush pioneers from the 1940s were coming of age and were now young men and women. Growing up in 1970s England, with the constant threat of white violent extremism and terrorism; the school (mis)education system and the growing disheartening 'generation gap' between us and our parents we had felt largely rejected, scorned and excluded by the wider society and we further suffered from a crisis of cultural identity. We couldn't entirely view ourselves as being 'West Indians' (because we were not born in the 'West Indies') yet we certainly weren't 'British' (as we were continually reminded of on a daily basis by white society). This led to a variety of cultural 'identity name shifts' such as Black British, Afro-Caribbean, UK Black, BME, Black European etc. throughout that and the coming decade.
The Rastafari faith reminded us that we were originally from Africa and that we should re-adopt that cultural description, instead of using these new terms that were created for us by white society. This term then began to be used more widespread within the 'conscious community' of Pan Africanists and Rastafarians - and soon to be adopted by the new Muslim reverts of the same background, through historical TV media, audio and video cassettes, conferences / cultural seminars and publications from America and the Caribbean.
Like young white people had Punk Rock to listen and relate to, the rise of Roots Reggae music had also began to become more popular in the UK. Increasing numbers of young people started to gain a brand new understanding of themselves, through the music of Culture, Burning Spear, Bob Marley etc. and the Rastafari faith. This experience played a significant role in helping to bring us closer to a deeper awareness of African culture and history - especially with their reawakening of the written works of Marcus Garvey and his philosophies. This would undoubtedly lead us to take one more step closer to another element of African culture that had been lost to us for at least five hundred years.
Roots - and the new dawning of Islamic awareness.
One of the most profound TV series' of the 1970s was produced in 1977 by ABC network television, after the publishing of a remarkable book that rocked (and shocked) America to its core the year earlier. Roots: the saga of an American family, written by Alex Haley about the life of a young African Muslim boy called Kunta Kinte from Gambia, West Africa who was kidnapped, trafficked and enslaved in North America, set the minds of many of us to begin to realise that Islam was undeniably and intrinsically linked to our history in the Caribbean - as we also arrived in those islands through the same oppressive acts.
Although we knew a small amount about Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali becoming Muslims in the 1960s (and we greatly regarded their self confidence, pride and strength of character etc.) the message of Islam still didn't really fully reach our generation here in the UK. However, with the world wide syndication of Roots on television, I believe that this seminal programme did more to help us understand our connection to Islam then perhaps anything else did at the time. Was this a coincidence - or maybe not?
Revert revolution.
As more of us began to explore Islam; Africa and and its connections with the history of the enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, it became more and more inevitable, that we came to know that our enslaved ancestors in the Caribbean (in all probability) could've originally been Muslims themselves from West Africa. This absolutely contradicted the historical tales we had been taught that our ancestors were nothing more than blood drinking savages, swinging from tree to tree, eating each other in Africa, before whites beneficently arrived and 'civilised' them.
Research additionally showed that African Muslims were some of the greatest men and women in human history, standing at the fore front of all ten areas of people activity - those being politics, economics, education, labour, religion, warfare, law, entertainment, sex and health. This new revelation then gave us an increased self confidence and esteem to then take that final step towards becoming Muslims ourselves and 'reverting' to the original faith of our fore parents. This laid the foundations of the first 'grass roots' beginnings of mass Islamic reversion in the history of the UK. Islamic reversions were being seen in all major UK cities including London, Manchester, Liverpool, Luton, Birmingham, Leeds etc. and provinces such as Leicester, Nottingham, Walsall, Derby, Coventry etc. In all locations which had been made home by Africans from the Caribbean since 1948, their children (as reverts of African descent born in the UK) began to grow in significant numbers. Verses in the Quran such as:
Chapter 3: Al Imran — The Family of Amran
3:110 You are the best nation raised up for mankind: you enjoin good and forbid evil and you believe in Allah. And if the People of the Book had believed, it would have been better for them. Some of them are believers but most of them are transgressors.
further helped to raise our individual and collective self esteem and feelings of self worth after decades of instilled negative and destructive thinking, indoctrinated upon us by school - and even (unwittingly) our own parents and significant others. We now knew we finally had 'someone' on our side.
The greater majority of reverts at this time were young males between the ages of 16 to 24. We were the most disenfranchised, disadvantaged and disaffected set of young people in the UK, who had pretty much been 'written off' by our families and society in general. Many of us left school with unremarkable academic qualifications - further making it difficult to potentially find satisfying employment. As a result, unemployment was excessively high amongst most of us as white employers favoured giving jobs to white young people in preference to us - irrespective of academic achievement. We didn't want the types of mundane and menial work our parents and grand parents held and we aspired for more fulfilling roles. This degree of worklessness further added to conflict within our homes, as many of our parents saw us as 'failures' (after all they had done for us to have a better future then they did) who now had shown ingratitude to their immense sacrifices and what white society had 'generously offered them'!
Many of our parents had little to no clue what deep rooted challenges we were facing growing up as the first generation born in the UK and often saw us as being the cause of social/communal disruption. We couldn't do anything right it seemed no matter how hard we tried. So, we found little help in our parent's homes and in white society - but it seemed we had found help from a completely unexpected source, as the following chapter in the Quran indicated to us:
Chapter 110: An Nasr - The Help.
110:1 When Allah's help and victory comes.
110: 2 and you see people entering the religion of Allah in companies,
110:3 celebrate the praise of your Lord and ask His protection. Surely He is ever Returning (to mercy).
We actually saw this happening in front of our very eyes. We were being helped to understand ourselves; our damaged condition and our history as young men and women coming through all that we had survived. This was beyond any doubt, a victory! It was incredible. We saw people who we hadn't seen for years; family members and even old enemies praying alongside us in the local mosque. Some of the most wayward and 'ragga-muffin' people we knew (or had heard of) were now strict Muslims living an upright life and following the Quran. These were the 'companies' entering Allah's religion who were prophesised of over a thousand years ago. And, thanks and praises were now being offered to Allah five times a day for leading us back to our true faith.
So, looking back, dawah (the act of telling non-Muslims about Islam) must have predominately be being carried out by us. This is the only sound and logical explanation as to why so many of us were reverting. Although the South Asian Muslim communities were in the majority in the UK, they were not doing any significant dawah activity to non-Muslims. They tended to engage in Tablighi Jamaats (religious preaching groups) to encourage their own community to start practicing Islam properly, if at all. As a result, it stayed almost entirely amongst their own people - giving the false impression that Islam was an 'Indian religion'. Were we the face and future of an Islamic revival in the UK - by Allah's will???
Unbeknown to us at the time, we were creating a very special point in UK Islamic history. We were the first nationwide, grassroots set of mass Muslim reverts the UK had ever witnessed and we were also the leaders of the UK dawah movement. Perhaps, we have greatly overlooked these important facts as the years rolled on, as we also faced other unexpected challenges that we were quite unprepared for as Muslim reverts.
The fire of Islam: the ice of the Mosque.
We were on the way up now. After spending so many years drifting through a seemingly endless spiritual limbo, we had an enormous drive to 'catch up' and be all that we were destined to be. With such zeal, it would appear that nothing could hold us back. But, we were wrong!
Entering the mosques to do our five daily prayers and Jummah prayer brought to us the stark realisation our parents must have felt, when they first came to England and began to attend white churches. They were essentially told (in the most polite manner of course) not to come back again because the white attendees didn't like them being there. Although I was never directly told not to come back to the Mosque I used to go to on Sutherland Street, Leicester there was no 'rushing to greet me' type response either. I was continually stared at; avoided and treated like an 'outsider'. This eventually made us all realise, that they couldn't have been doing any dawah work to non-Muslims since they'd been in England, because if they had been, they wouldn't have been so utterly horrified to see people of other communities come into their mosques to pray! I remember going to Fajr (dawn prayer) one morning and an older man came over to me from a group of people and asked why am I coming to the mosque? Puzzled, (you shouldn't need a degree to answer that one) so I just said 'because I'm a Muslim'! He went back to the group and continued talking (probably about me).
We were also treated with much distrust, suspicion and mistrust, as they didn't believe we were being genuine by becoming Muslims. They believed that we reverting because we wanted to get 'something from them' or their was some kind of deception we were engaging in. To this day, I've no idea what this 'something' ever was or what trick they thought we were doing. In my very early days, I said to one of them that I had become a Muslim and he immediately denied that I was. He started to ask me a number of quite complex Islamic type questions that I couldn't have possibly known the answers for. When I couldn't answer them, he said that I couldn't be a real Muslim, because I would know the answers to them if I was! I later found out that these questions were based upon a blend of Hindu/Pakistani belief that the majority of them followed. It wasn't real Islam at all that they were living, but a distorted version of Islam - with a foundation of Hinduism.
We were also subject to the true evil deception of their religious-financial exploitation, as many of us we were being misled into believing that we had to buy certain things from their shops in order to be accepted by them as being real Muslims. I never believed this and refused to buy their leather socks, prayer caps; Punjabi suits, turbans, 'I love Muhammad' door stickers, books written in Urdu, incense sticks, Arabic home decorations, stale halal meat and just about anything 'Islamic-ish' they could sell to us etc. thinking that this was going to make me a better Muslim - when in fact all it was doing was making them rich out of our sincere Islamic desire to better ourselves.
Sometimes, the small children would call me (and others of us) 'Kaliya', 'Shidee' or worse! I later began to understand that these words were foul racial insults used against African people. How would these children have known to call us these hate filled words, unless they had leant them from their own families and community friends?
The Imam never once came to me to greet me or ask me about my needs; if I wanted any support or even give me a simple Salam (greeting of peace). Some may say that this type of behaviour was the exception and not the rule, but speaking to all of the other reverts of African descent I met over the years, they all came back with pretty much the same answer. This was something that was nationwide. Whether we reverted in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester etc. you name it, the response from the South Asians was the same.
This came as a shock and disappointment. Why? We had a very idealistic understanding of Islam when we reverted. We believed that ALL Muslims were devoutly following the Quran because we knew that this is what was expected as Muslims. This made us have a type of unconscious deference to them as we believed they must know more about Islam then we do, because they'd had The Quran all of their lives! When we discovered that practically all of them had no clue about the principles and teachings within the Quran, we were understandably astonished! How could they have had the' book to the key of life' (The Quran) for all of their lives - and know so little? We didn't realise at the time that there is a world of difference between Islam and Muslims.
We later discovered that they had a system of teaching where they would recite Arabic words - but have no understanding of what they were actually reciting. They didn't even know if they were reciting the Arabic words correctly or not either. As a result, they had never read the Quran in a language that they clearly understood - even though some of them may call themselves an Hafiz of the Quran (someone who has completely memorised the Quran). They had quite literally memorised a collection of 'squiggles, dots, lines and accents' etc. which couldn't help them in the slightest to know what Allah expected of them. We now knew that we were the ones teaching them about the Quran (as we eventually got into discussions with them) about its contents. It still comes as quite a surprise that we became their 'teachers' after being so new in the faith. If we had not done this, the South Asian Muslims would have probably carried on as they were with their teaching methods. So, it was only after seeing us entering Islam and following it, that they began to seriously start learning about the faith. Perhaps they felt 'religiously embarrassed' that we had quite literally come from 'nowhere' (after such a short space of time) and knew far more than they did about the Quran.
Which raises yet another important milestone of our journey that has not been recognised or acknowledged. There was a revival of Islam in the UK in the 1980's which led to many South Asian Muslims wanting to learn about Islam. This was no accident or coincidence. It didn't happen in a vacuum or just by chance either. The entire basis of this new Islamic revival in the UK, came from us reverts of African descent entering into the faith and gaining a high level of Quranic knowledge through studying the Quran in English. This made them realise the value of Islam and know why they should practice it instead of just calling themselves Muslims (because they weren't Hindus or Sikhs) or because they were being nominal.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
The mid 1970's saw several major cultural changes in the UK for its young people. For our white counterparts, it was the birth of Punk Rock which drew them towards a political and social awareness, that many had never known before. As the Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten spat uncompromising lyrics of anarchy in the UK and there being no future, it became clear that many young people living here wanted to hear a new message that would help them to understand society and their own lives better.
On the other side of the spectrum, the children of the Windrush pioneers from the 1940s were coming of age and were now young men and women. Growing up in 1970s England, with the constant threat of white violent extremism and terrorism; the school (mis)education system and the growing disheartening 'generation gap' between us and our parents we had felt largely rejected, scorned and excluded by the wider society and we further suffered from a crisis of cultural identity. We couldn't entirely view ourselves as being 'West Indians' (because we were not born in the 'West Indies') yet we certainly weren't 'British' (as we were continually reminded of on a daily basis by white society). This led to a variety of cultural 'identity name shifts' such as Black British, Afro-Caribbean, UK Black, BME, Black European etc. throughout that and the coming decade.
The Rastafari faith reminded us that we were originally from Africa and that we should re-adopt that cultural description, instead of using these new terms that were created for us by white society. This term then began to be used more widespread within the 'conscious community' of Pan Africanists and Rastafarians - and soon to be adopted by the new Muslim reverts of the same background, through historical TV media, audio and video cassettes, conferences / cultural seminars and publications from America and the Caribbean.
Like young white people had Punk Rock to listen and relate to, the rise of Roots Reggae music had also began to become more popular in the UK. Increasing numbers of young people started to gain a brand new understanding of themselves, through the music of Culture, Burning Spear, Bob Marley etc. and the Rastafari faith. This experience played a significant role in helping to bring us closer to a deeper awareness of African culture and history - especially with their reawakening of the written works of Marcus Garvey and his philosophies. This would undoubtedly lead us to take one more step closer to another element of African culture that had been lost to us for at least five hundred years.
Roots - and the new dawning of Islamic awareness.
One of the most profound TV series' of the 1970s was produced in 1977 by ABC network television, after the publishing of a remarkable book that rocked (and shocked) America to its core the year earlier. Roots: the saga of an American family, written by Alex Haley about the life of a young African Muslim boy called Kunta Kinte from Gambia, West Africa who was kidnapped, trafficked and enslaved in North America, set the minds of many of us to begin to realise that Islam was undeniably and intrinsically linked to our history in the Caribbean - as we also arrived in those islands through the same oppressive acts.
Although we knew a small amount about Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali becoming Muslims in the 1960s (and we greatly regarded their self confidence, pride and strength of character etc.) the message of Islam still didn't really fully reach our generation here in the UK. However, with the world wide syndication of Roots on television, I believe that this seminal programme did more to help us understand our connection to Islam then perhaps anything else did at the time. Was this a coincidence - or maybe not?
Revert revolution.
As more of us began to explore Islam; Africa and and its connections with the history of the enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, it became more and more inevitable, that we came to know that our enslaved ancestors in the Caribbean (in all probability) could've originally been Muslims themselves from West Africa. This absolutely contradicted the historical tales we had been taught that our ancestors were nothing more than blood drinking savages, swinging from tree to tree, eating each other in Africa, before whites beneficently arrived and 'civilised' them.
Research additionally showed that African Muslims were some of the greatest men and women in human history, standing at the fore front of all ten areas of people activity - those being politics, economics, education, labour, religion, warfare, law, entertainment, sex and health. This new revelation then gave us an increased self confidence and esteem to then take that final step towards becoming Muslims ourselves and 'reverting' to the original faith of our fore parents. This laid the foundations of the first 'grass roots' beginnings of mass Islamic reversion in the history of the UK. Islamic reversions were being seen in all major UK cities including London, Manchester, Liverpool, Luton, Birmingham, Leeds etc. and provinces such as Leicester, Nottingham, Walsall, Derby, Coventry etc. In all locations which had been made home by Africans from the Caribbean since 1948, their children (as reverts of African descent born in the UK) began to grow in significant numbers. Verses in the Quran such as:
Chapter 3: Al Imran — The Family of Amran
3:110 You are the best nation raised up for mankind: you enjoin good and forbid evil and you believe in Allah. And if the People of the Book had believed, it would have been better for them. Some of them are believers but most of them are transgressors.
further helped to raise our individual and collective self esteem and feelings of self worth after decades of instilled negative and destructive thinking, indoctrinated upon us by school - and even (unwittingly) our own parents and significant others. We now knew we finally had 'someone' on our side.
The greater majority of reverts at this time were young males between the ages of 16 to 24. We were the most disenfranchised, disadvantaged and disaffected set of young people in the UK, who had pretty much been 'written off' by our families and society in general. Many of us left school with unremarkable academic qualifications - further making it difficult to potentially find satisfying employment. As a result, unemployment was excessively high amongst most of us as white employers favoured giving jobs to white young people in preference to us - irrespective of academic achievement. We didn't want the types of mundane and menial work our parents and grand parents held and we aspired for more fulfilling roles. This degree of worklessness further added to conflict within our homes, as many of our parents saw us as 'failures' (after all they had done for us to have a better future then they did) who now had shown ingratitude to their immense sacrifices and what white society had 'generously offered them'!
Many of our parents had little to no clue what deep rooted challenges we were facing growing up as the first generation born in the UK and often saw us as being the cause of social/communal disruption. We couldn't do anything right it seemed no matter how hard we tried. So, we found little help in our parent's homes and in white society - but it seemed we had found help from a completely unexpected source, as the following chapter in the Quran indicated to us:
Chapter 110: An Nasr - The Help.
110:1 When Allah's help and victory comes.
110: 2 and you see people entering the religion of Allah in companies,
110:3 celebrate the praise of your Lord and ask His protection. Surely He is ever Returning (to mercy).
We actually saw this happening in front of our very eyes. We were being helped to understand ourselves; our damaged condition and our history as young men and women coming through all that we had survived. This was beyond any doubt, a victory! It was incredible. We saw people who we hadn't seen for years; family members and even old enemies praying alongside us in the local mosque. Some of the most wayward and 'ragga-muffin' people we knew (or had heard of) were now strict Muslims living an upright life and following the Quran. These were the 'companies' entering Allah's religion who were prophesised of over a thousand years ago. And, thanks and praises were now being offered to Allah five times a day for leading us back to our true faith.
So, looking back, dawah (the act of telling non-Muslims about Islam) must have predominately be being carried out by us. This is the only sound and logical explanation as to why so many of us were reverting. Although the South Asian Muslim communities were in the majority in the UK, they were not doing any significant dawah activity to non-Muslims. They tended to engage in Tablighi Jamaats (religious preaching groups) to encourage their own community to start practicing Islam properly, if at all. As a result, it stayed almost entirely amongst their own people - giving the false impression that Islam was an 'Indian religion'. Were we the face and future of an Islamic revival in the UK - by Allah's will???
Unbeknown to us at the time, we were creating a very special point in UK Islamic history. We were the first nationwide, grassroots set of mass Muslim reverts the UK had ever witnessed and we were also the leaders of the UK dawah movement. Perhaps, we have greatly overlooked these important facts as the years rolled on, as we also faced other unexpected challenges that we were quite unprepared for as Muslim reverts.
The fire of Islam: the ice of the Mosque.
We were on the way up now. After spending so many years drifting through a seemingly endless spiritual limbo, we had an enormous drive to 'catch up' and be all that we were destined to be. With such zeal, it would appear that nothing could hold us back. But, we were wrong!
Entering the mosques to do our five daily prayers and Jummah prayer brought to us the stark realisation our parents must have felt, when they first came to England and began to attend white churches. They were essentially told (in the most polite manner of course) not to come back again because the white attendees didn't like them being there. Although I was never directly told not to come back to the Mosque I used to go to on Sutherland Street, Leicester there was no 'rushing to greet me' type response either. I was continually stared at; avoided and treated like an 'outsider'. This eventually made us all realise, that they couldn't have been doing any dawah work to non-Muslims since they'd been in England, because if they had been, they wouldn't have been so utterly horrified to see people of other communities come into their mosques to pray! I remember going to Fajr (dawn prayer) one morning and an older man came over to me from a group of people and asked why am I coming to the mosque? Puzzled, (you shouldn't need a degree to answer that one) so I just said 'because I'm a Muslim'! He went back to the group and continued talking (probably about me).
We were also treated with much distrust, suspicion and mistrust, as they didn't believe we were being genuine by becoming Muslims. They believed that we reverting because we wanted to get 'something from them' or their was some kind of deception we were engaging in. To this day, I've no idea what this 'something' ever was or what trick they thought we were doing. In my very early days, I said to one of them that I had become a Muslim and he immediately denied that I was. He started to ask me a number of quite complex Islamic type questions that I couldn't have possibly known the answers for. When I couldn't answer them, he said that I couldn't be a real Muslim, because I would know the answers to them if I was! I later found out that these questions were based upon a blend of Hindu/Pakistani belief that the majority of them followed. It wasn't real Islam at all that they were living, but a distorted version of Islam - with a foundation of Hinduism.
We were also subject to the true evil deception of their religious-financial exploitation, as many of us we were being misled into believing that we had to buy certain things from their shops in order to be accepted by them as being real Muslims. I never believed this and refused to buy their leather socks, prayer caps; Punjabi suits, turbans, 'I love Muhammad' door stickers, books written in Urdu, incense sticks, Arabic home decorations, stale halal meat and just about anything 'Islamic-ish' they could sell to us etc. thinking that this was going to make me a better Muslim - when in fact all it was doing was making them rich out of our sincere Islamic desire to better ourselves.
Sometimes, the small children would call me (and others of us) 'Kaliya', 'Shidee' or worse! I later began to understand that these words were foul racial insults used against African people. How would these children have known to call us these hate filled words, unless they had leant them from their own families and community friends?
The Imam never once came to me to greet me or ask me about my needs; if I wanted any support or even give me a simple Salam (greeting of peace). Some may say that this type of behaviour was the exception and not the rule, but speaking to all of the other reverts of African descent I met over the years, they all came back with pretty much the same answer. This was something that was nationwide. Whether we reverted in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester etc. you name it, the response from the South Asians was the same.
This came as a shock and disappointment. Why? We had a very idealistic understanding of Islam when we reverted. We believed that ALL Muslims were devoutly following the Quran because we knew that this is what was expected as Muslims. This made us have a type of unconscious deference to them as we believed they must know more about Islam then we do, because they'd had The Quran all of their lives! When we discovered that practically all of them had no clue about the principles and teachings within the Quran, we were understandably astonished! How could they have had the' book to the key of life' (The Quran) for all of their lives - and know so little? We didn't realise at the time that there is a world of difference between Islam and Muslims.
We later discovered that they had a system of teaching where they would recite Arabic words - but have no understanding of what they were actually reciting. They didn't even know if they were reciting the Arabic words correctly or not either. As a result, they had never read the Quran in a language that they clearly understood - even though some of them may call themselves an Hafiz of the Quran (someone who has completely memorised the Quran). They had quite literally memorised a collection of 'squiggles, dots, lines and accents' etc. which couldn't help them in the slightest to know what Allah expected of them. We now knew that we were the ones teaching them about the Quran (as we eventually got into discussions with them) about its contents. It still comes as quite a surprise that we became their 'teachers' after being so new in the faith. If we had not done this, the South Asian Muslims would have probably carried on as they were with their teaching methods. So, it was only after seeing us entering Islam and following it, that they began to seriously start learning about the faith. Perhaps they felt 'religiously embarrassed' that we had quite literally come from 'nowhere' (after such a short space of time) and knew far more than they did about the Quran.
Which raises yet another important milestone of our journey that has not been recognised or acknowledged. There was a revival of Islam in the UK in the 1980's which led to many South Asian Muslims wanting to learn about Islam. This was no accident or coincidence. It didn't happen in a vacuum or just by chance either. The entire basis of this new Islamic revival in the UK, came from us reverts of African descent entering into the faith and gaining a high level of Quranic knowledge through studying the Quran in English. This made them realise the value of Islam and know why they should practice it instead of just calling themselves Muslims (because they weren't Hindus or Sikhs) or because they were being nominal.
TO BE CONTINUED ...