The first issue of Moslem World was dedicated to The Interests of the American Islamic Propaganda and “[t]o spread the light of Islam in America.”
Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb, one of the first native White Americans to convert to Islam, was its editor. It lasted for seven monthly issues (May to November 1893).
He grew up in a Presbyterian church in the Hudson Valley of New York. However, he switched over to the Episcopal church in search of more beautiful girlfriend material. His area was awash with religious effervescence at that time but around 1872, he had given up on religion.
His father was a well-known journalist, and the son started his own career in reporting for newspapers in Missouri, eventually becoming an editor. He left that work to become the U.S. Consul to the Philippines in 1887. About that time, he also started reading the works of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, India, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement. He converted in 1888. Soon, he traveled to India and the Middle East to personally get to know Muslims and their movement.
Coming back to the United States in 1893, he settled in New York City to start his propagation of Islam. He established a short-lived mosque in Manhattan, the American Islamic Propaganda Movement, and the Oriental Publishing Company at 1122 Upper Broadway.
At the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago, he lectured on “The Spirit of Islam” and “The Influence of Islam on Social Conditions.”
His most notable publication was his Islam in America. The book was 70 pages long and divided into eight chapters:
I) Why I Became a Muslim
II) An Outline of Islamic Faith
III) The Five Pillars of Practice
IV) Islam in Its Philosophic Aspect
V) Polygamy and the Purdah
VI) Popular Errors Refuted
VII) The Muslim Defensive Wars
VIII) The American Islamic Propaganda
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