Ahmadiyya in the United States

In 1886, roughly three years prior to the establishment of the Ahmadiyya movement, Alexander Russell Webb initiated a correspondence with Ahmad, in response to an advertisement published by the latter.

Other early American Muslims who had ties with the movement during Ahmad's lifetime included A. George Baker, a contact of Webb and former Protestant clergyman who had converted to Islam.

[11] Ahmad was an enthusiastic writer and was noted for his extensive correspondences with prominent Americans and Europeans, including some of the leading Christian missionary figureheads of his period.

[3] Among them was John Alexander Dowie, a Scottish-born American faith healer, who founded the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church and the theocratic city of Zion, along the banks of Lake Michigan, and established himself as the "General Overseer" of the theocracy.

In 1903, when Ahmad heard Dowie's claims in India, particularly his prophecies concerning the Muslim world, he proposed a "Prayer Duel" and set out certain conditions.

"[22] Despite the early onset of interactions with the American people, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community only began to prepare for its mission to the United States in 1911, during the era of the First Caliphate.

However, it was not until almost a decade later, on January 24, 1920, during the era of the Second Caliphate, that Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, the first missionary to the country, would embark on SS Haverford from England, for the United States.

Despite this, and his assurance that he did not preach polygamy on board, the authorities refused his entry into the United States and demanded him to take a return trip back to Europe.

Having successfully appealed against the decision, during the course of which he was temporarily detained and placed in a Philadelphia Detention House in Gloucester, New Jersey, for seven weeks, he continued his preaching efforts, but now limited to the inmates of the prison.

[31] The Philadelphian Press, recounting Sadiq's experience, states: While many religious sects in the United States are spending many thousands of dollars and sending hundreds of philosophers and teachers to the wilds of Tibet, the far reaches of Arabia and Hindustan and to the unexplored regions of Africa and China, Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, after travelling thousands of miles, alone and friendless, hopes to begin his crusade to convert Americans to the doctrines taught by the prophet Ahmad, of whom he is the principal disciple.

Possibly attracted to New York's reputed culture, he journeyed to the city and assembled the first national headquarters of the Ahmadiyya movement on Manhattan's Madison Avenue.

During the winter of 1920, Sadiq was elected president of an intra-Muslim society, aiming to combat separatism and promote multi-racial unity among Muslims across the United States.

In 1923, Sadiq gave multiple lectures at the Universal Negro Improvement Association, as a result of which he converted 40 members of the fraternal organization to Islam.

Muhammad Yaqoob, formerly Andrew Jacob; Ghulam Rasul, formerly Mrs. Elias Russel and James Sodick, a Russian Tartar, were some of the key figures of the Ahmadiyya activity.

[38] Although in contrast to Sadiq's era, the Ahmadiyya Community toned down its multi-racial rhetoric, perhaps in response to FBI's campaign to divide American Muslim groups in suspicion of potential sedition, it continued to address the issue of racism.

In light of this and a number of political and cultural concerns and rising tensions in the Muslim world, the African American identity and its local issues were occasionally obscured.

[41] In the summer of 1921, Sadiq founded the first Islamic magazine in the United States, The Moslem Sunrise and published it quarterly, with its first issue being released on July 21, 1921.

Sadiq, and the American Ahmadiyya Muslim Community utilized The Moslem Sunrise as a tool to defend Islam and the Quran against Christian polemics.

The publication had a profound influence on African American-Islam relations, including the early development of the Nation of Islam and the Moorish Science Temple.

In spite of the rise of Muslim immigrant populations from the Middle East, the Community continued to be an exemplary multi-racial model in the changing dynamics of American Islam, which was often wrought with challenges of diversity, and conjectures of racial superiority.

In the 1980s, Mirza Tahir Ahmad, the fourth caliph and worldwide head of the movement sanctioned five large mosque projects, to be built in and around major cities in the United States, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Washington, D.C.

For example, on October 23, 1987, he laid the foundation stone for the Baitul Hameed Mosque in Chino, California[49][50] with a brick specially bought from Qadian, India, the birthplace of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.

[51] Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the current and fifth caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community attended the Annual Convention of the United States in June 2012.

Senator Robert Casey, U.S. Members of Congress Brad Sherman, Frank Wolf, Mike Honda, Keith Ellison, Zoe Lofgren, and U.S.

Lofgren also presented Ahmad with a copy of a bipartisan U.S. House of Representative resolution (H. Res 709) welcoming him to Washington D.C. and honoring his contributions to peace.

[61][62] It was contended that converting to a Muslim faith provided spiritual protection from harmful pitfalls that accompanied the profession, alongside a safeguard from the stigma of white supremacy.

Some Ahmadi converts included Ahmad Jamal,[64] a pianist from Chicago; Dakota Staton,[64] a vocalist and her husband, Talib Dawud,[65] a trumpeter, both from Philadelphia; and Yusef Lateef,[64] a Grammy Award-winning saxophonist from New York City, who became the spokesperson for the U.S. Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

Other members of the Community included the drummer Art Blakey,[64] the double bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik,[66] the reed player Rudy Powell,[64] the saxophonist Sahib Shihab,[64] the pianist McCoy Tyner,[64] and the trumpeter Idrees Sulieman.

In the liner notes of the album, Coltrane repeatedly echoes Basmala, the opening verse of almost every chapter of the Quran: "Now and again through the unerring hand of God, I do perceive his ... Omnipotence ...

[70] Although Ahmadi Muslims have a presence across several U.S. states, sizeable communities exist in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and in Dayton, Ohio.