“Four American Moslem Ladies”

Abstract

Chapter One is an examination of the earliest known photograph of self-identified Muslim women in the U.S. Taken in 1923, the photo features four African American female converts to the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam (AMI), a South Asia-based missionary movement that attracted significant numbers of Black women, between the 1920 and 1970s. The chapter offers a multilayered and at times, circuitous account of the histories which produced the photograph, specifically the racial politics of 1920s Chicago, the race and gender politics of Ahmadiyya missionary Dr. Mufti Muhammad Sadiq; and the desires for safety and spirituality that led Black American women to Islam.