Islamic Mission

History

Sheikh Daoud Ahmed Faisal was a Spanish Muslim who immigrated to New York City in 1924. He met Sayedah Khadijah Faisal, a Muslim from Bermuda, and they married that year. Sheikh Faisal worked on Muslim causes and established a Muslim village named “Madinah al-Salaam” near Fishkill, New York in 1934. He and his wife moved from Harlem to Brooklyn in 1939 and established a mosque there, which became the Islamic Mission of America, New York City’s largest mosque for many years. ³

The Islamic Mission was a gathering place for Muslim organizations, and Faisal recruited new imams to serve his community from Morocco and Indonesia. Members of the Islamic Mission later founded the Dar-ul-Islam in Brooklyn, New York. Mosques associated with Dar-ul-Islam spread; at the height of the movement, there were over 40 mosques connected with the movement in the U.S. ³

Faisal evangelized for Islam in New York prisons, and during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement he defended the members of his community and distanced the members of the Islamic Mission from the militant Nation of Islam. ⁴

Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little) converted to Islam during a stint in prison in the 1940s, joined the Nation of Islam in 1952, and helped raise the profile of the organization by encouraging self-sufficiency for Black people separate from White Americans. He changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X, inspired by Nation teaching that Black Americans’ given names were unwanted relics from white slaveholders. Malcolm X later defected from the Nation to standard Islam and spent the last years of his life working with the Islamic Mission as a silent partner before he was assassinated in 1965. ⁵

Advocacy

Same-Sex Relations

In 2012, The Islamic Mission published a paper named “The Intelligent Design”, expounding on a theory that homosexuality violated the laws of ‘sexual physics’. The paper called for Christians, Jews, and Muslims to decline treatment by any doctor licensed by the American Psychological Association, because the APA had issued a declaration to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. ^{4 6}

Ralph “Plukey” Duke

Ralph “Plukey” Duke is a former cocaine dealer, convicted of heading a drug ring from 1984 to 1989 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1990 for drug and firearms charges.  In 2016, Duke’s drug charges were reduced by the court, which he had exceeded after accruing credit. But the guidelines changed again in 2018 and he was re-sentenced to life in prison. ⁷

The Islamic Mission supports Duke being released from prison, arguing that he has served the longest sentence of anyone involved in his initial arrest and that he has served his time without disciplinary infractions. ⁸ The Mission has made multiple social media posts calling for him to be freed while invoking the name of several black men killed at the hands of police in Minnesota, such as George Floyd, Daunte Wright, and Philando Castile. ^{9 10}

Financials

The Islamic Mission has been a nonprofit since 1968. As a religious community comparable to a church, it is exempt from filing annual tax returns. ¹¹