Conflicts and controversies at home and abroad have led Americans to focus on Islam more than ever before. Little is known about Islam in Victorian America. This book is a biography of Alexander Russell Webb, one of the earliest American Muslims to achieve public renown. Webb was a central figure of American Islam during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A native of the Hudson Valley, he was a journalist, editor, and civil servant. Raised a Presbyterian, Webb early on began to cultivate an interest in other religions and became particularly fascinated by Islam. While serving as US consul ... More

Conflicts and controversies at home and abroad have led Americans to focus on Islam more than ever before. Little is known about Islam in Victorian America. This book is a biography of Alexander Russell Webb, one of the earliest American Muslims to achieve public renown. Webb was a central figure of American Islam during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A native of the Hudson Valley, he was a journalist, editor, and civil servant. Raised a Presbyterian, Webb early on began to cultivate an interest in other religions and became particularly fascinated by Islam. While serving as US consul to the Philippines in 1887, he took a greater interest in the faith and embraced it in 1888, one of the first Americans known to have done so. Within a few years, he began corresponding with important Muslims in India. Webb became an enthusiastic propagator of the faith, founding the first Islamic institution in the United States: the American Mission. He wrote numerous books intended to introduce Islam to Americans, started the first Islamic press in the United States, published a journal entitled The Moslem World, and served as the representative of Islam at the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. In 1901, he was appointed Honorary Turkish Consul General in New York and was invited to Turkey, where he received two Ottoman medals of merits.