Ahmadiyya is an Islamic branch in the United States. The earliest contact between the American people and the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam was during the lifetime of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. In 1911, during the era of the First Caliphate of the Community, the Ahmadiyya movement in India began to prepare for its mission to the United States. However, it was not until 1920, during the era of the Second Caliphate of the Ahmadiyya movement, that Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, under the directive of the caliph, would leave England on SS Haverford for the United States. Sadiq established the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in the United States in 1920. The U.S. Ahmadiyya movement is considered by some historians as one of the precursors to the Civil Rights Movement in America. The Community was the most influential Muslim community in African-American Islam until the 1950s. Today, there are approximately 15,000 to 20,000 American Ahmadi Muslims spread across the country.
History
Early contact
The earliest contact between the American people and Ahmadi Muslims in India was during the early era of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. 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. Before 1886, Webb studied several eastern religions, including Buddhism. His first interaction with the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement was the first serious step towards understanding Islam. The initial correspondence consisted of four letters, two from both sides. Although Webb's letters indicate that he was becoming inclined towards Islam, to the extent of showing willingness to propagate it, the letters do not demonstrate that he had converted to the religion. However, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community does stress that the correspondences were instrumental in Webb's later conversion to the religion. Jane Smith writes that the correspondences were "key to [Webb's] conversion to Islam." On his visit to India in the early 1890s, Webb stated that it was because of Ahmad that he had the "honour to join Islam." His correspondence with Ahmad began during a period when the latter had gained fame throughout India as one of Islam's leading champions against Christian missionary activity in India during the colonial era. However, after the initial correspondences with Webb, Ahmad quickly became one of Islam's most controversial figures due to his messianic claims. As a result, on his visit to India, Webb abstained from paying a visit to Ahmad. In spite of this, he remained in contact with Ahmad until his death in 1908. In 1906, he wrote to Ahmad, regretting his decision to avoid him:
Although Webb kept in contact with Ahmadis and read Ahmadi literature up until his death in 1916, the Ahmadiyya literature does not record whether Webb was an Ahmadi Muslim, nor does his work show allegiance towards Ahmadiyya eschatology. Today he is known as one of the earliest Anglo-American converts to Islam.
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. Baker was among a number of European and American figures with whom Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, a disciple of Ahmad, had established contact. He was a subscriber and contributor of the Ahmadi journal The Review of Religions, a journal with which Webb had also corresponded. Baker was mentioned in the fifth volume of Ahmad's Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya (1905; The Muhammadan Proofs). He maintained contact with the movement from 1904 until his death in 1918. Unlike Webb, Baker professed allegiance to the Ahmadiyya movement and is counted within it as one of the earliest American Ahmadis.
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. 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 December 1899, moments before the turn of the century, Dowie claimed to be God's Messenger and two years later, in 1901, he claimed to be the spiritual return of the Biblical prophet Elijah, and styled himself as "Elijah the Restorer," "The Prophet Elijah", or "The Third Elijah." In his controversial relationship with Islam, Dowie prophesied the destruction of all Muslims around the world within a period of 25 years, upon the return of Jesus Christ. 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. Ahmad requested Dowie to set aside his prophecies concerning the Muslims for the moment and offered his own life instead. He challenged Dowie to willingly pray for Ahmad's death instead, while simultaneously Ahmad prays for Dowie's destruction. The proposal was published in dozens of local and national newspapers across the United States and queried Dowie's response to the challenge. Dowie neither accepted the challenge, nor did he decline it. His followers claimed that he did not have time to respond, as he was busy preparing for his rally of rallies to New York City. However, in 1903, he responded to the challenge indirectly, stating in his periodical Leaves of Healing:
Dowie died in 1907, roughly a year before Ahmad. In the years before his death, Dowie was deposed. The interplay between Ahmad and Dowie and the circumstances leading to the latter's death is seen by members of the Ahmadiyya movement as a sign of truthfulness of Ahmad as the Promised Messiah. Following Dowie's decline and his eventual death, multiple newspapers ran a discussion of Dowie's death in the context of Ahmad's prophecies. The Boston Sunday Herald ran a double page feature entitled "Great is Mirza Ghulam Ahmad The Messiah."
Arrival
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. On board, Sadiq preached the Islamic faith on each day he spent on the translantic liner. With many passengers intrigued by Sadiq's teachings on the life of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and the claims of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad as the return of the Messiah, seven people of Chinese, American, Syrian and Yugoslavian heritage converted to the Islamic faith. However, on the arrival of SS Haverford on the shores of Philadelphia, the authorities accused Sadiq of preaching a religion that permitted polygamous relationships. As an Ahmadi Muslim, Sadiq believed that the law of the land precedes the practice of non-essential Islamic principles. 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. Sadiq refused and submitted an appeal. 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. Before his discharge, he managed to attract 19 people from Jamaican, Polish, Russian, German, Belgian, Portuguese, Italian, French heritage. Perhaps in a connection with his own ordeal with the authorities, Sadiq would later remark that under the U.S. immigration laws Jesus would not be permitted entry into the United States.
Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad, the second caliph of the Community, with reference to the early missionary work in the western world, including that of Sadiq, later coined the term "Pioneers in the spiritual Colonization of the Western World," alluding to the Western colonization of the eastern hemisphere, the traditional East–west divide and their respective spiritual and secular identities. Several headlines remarked Mufti Muhammad Sadiq's arrival into the U.S, such as "Hopes to Convert U.S.", "East Indian Here With New Religion" and "Optimistic in Detention," alluding to Sadiq's continued missionary effort while taken custody on board. The Philadelphian Press, recounting Sadiq's experience, states:
1920: New York City
In April 1920, Sadiq was permitted entry into the United States. 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. As a philologist, with proficiency in Arabic and Hebrew linguistics, Sadiq successfully published articles on Islam in multiple American periodicals within a period of a few months, including in the New York Times. Moreover, as a lecturer and a charismatic public speaker, Sadiq secured approximately fifty lectures across several cities in the Northeast, including Chicago, Detroit, Grand Haven in Michigan and his locale, New York City. As such, within a period of a few weeks, a dozen people of Christian and Muslim backgrounds converted to the Ahmadiyya interpretation of Islam. Among those were some of the earliest converts to Islam in the United States, who converted to Islam in the early 1900s, such as Ahmad Anderson and George Baker. While a missionary in England, before his arrival into the United States, Sadiq had a dream concerning a female American convert to the faith. The moment S. W. Sobolewski walked into the Community's headquarters on Madison Avenue, Sadiq interpreted her to be the fulfilment of his dream. Sobolewski would later join the movement, and be given the name Fatimah Mustafa. She became renowned as the first white American female to convert to Islam. Nonetheless, the most active female preacher of the movement during the 1920s was an African American, Madame Rahatullah.
1920–1950: Chicago–Detroit
In October 1920, within a period of a few months of Sadiq's arrival to New York City, Sadiq moved the headquarters to Chicago, Illinois. Accompanying this was the shift of America's Ahmadiyya Muslim Community towards the problem of racial separatism, with particular focus on discrimination of black Americans. Perhaps triggered by segregation of African American Muslims and Arab Muslims who arrived in Illinois as labourers during the early 20th century, the Ahmadis made various attempts to unite and reconcile Muslims of different racial backgrounds and ethnicities. 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. Mohni, a non-Ahmadi Muslim and editor of the alserat, an Arabic newspaper was elected secretary. Shortly after, within the same year, Sadiq moved the national headquarters of the Community to Highland Park, in Detroit, Michigan. The city attracted Muslim workers of diverse ethnic backgrounds. The move came in an attempt to link various Muslim communities across the region.