In a quiet neighborhood two miles southwest of downtown Atlanta, five times a day a soulful adhan erupts from a loudspeaker, marking the passage of time. Rows of small homes and thick oak trees line short, hilly blocks. Typical symbols of a rapidly gentrifying urban center are on full display: packed breweries, newly renovated homes, athleisure-clad joggers trailing their tiny leashed dogs. But if you look closely, you can spot what remains of the community that spent nearly fifty years pouring their radical imagination into these blocks, making it a desirable respite for all.
A cream house with green trim stands adjacent to a large grassy field. The only things distinguishing it from the other historic homes on West End Place are the words COMMUNITY MASJID mounted in gold letters on the front and the slow stream of modestly dressed congregants shuffling in and out of its back doors. This community, known as the West End, is where I was born and raised. It was established by Imam Jamil Al-Amin in 1976 and was one of the first masjids in Atlanta.
Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, found Islam via the Dar-ul-Islam movement while serving a prison sentence in western New York from 1971 to 1976. The Dar’s founders—Imam Yahya Abdul-Kareem, Rijab Mahmoud, and Ishaq Abdus-Shaheed—were African American converts who believed in the power of the Qur’an and Sunnah to uplift and liberate the poor, the marginalized, and the forgotten. They believed Islam might be the answer to the questions raised by the struggle for Black power: How do we liberate Black communities so that we can determine our own futures? How do we create what we need to flourish? If America does not honor our full dignity and potential, which value systems do? Upon his release from prison, Imam Jamil moved to Georgia to answer these questions by establishing the West End masjid.
The West End masjid’s founding coincided with an era of social and political upheaval. After women, communities of color, and anti-war activists made tremendous gains in their fight for justice in the 1960s, a newly energized conservative political movement responded with intense backlash. From Nixon’s administration through Reagan’s reign, progressives found themselves on the front lines of increasingly violent political and culture wars. Scandals like Watergate weakened public trust in government institutions. The Vietnam War surfaced questions about the morality of the bloodshed required to uphold and expand America’s empire. Reagan made $22 billion in cuts to social safety net programs. Conservatives protested affirmative action and school desegregation. The “war on drugs” criminalized drug use and addiction, disproportionately impacting Black communities like the West End.
What communities on the margins, like American Muslims, are grappling with in 2025 mirrors the uncertainty and political instability of that time. In the first month of his second term, Trump issued nearly seventy executive orders that eliminated foreign aid, threatened mass deportations, dismantled diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, detained student protesters seeking an end to the genocide in Gaza, and stripped trans and gender-nonconforming people of the right to self-determination. Although the speed and volume of these actions were dizzying, many of those impacted were not surprised. The playbook of oppression is not new. For centuries, those in power have desperately used every tool at their disposal to divide, control, and conquer.
But history also contains a plethora of stories about the creative ways people have rejected and built beyond whatever scraps were thrown to them by states uninterested in their survival. African American Muslims have used Islam as a tool for resistance and liberation. In the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and a country hostile to their very existence, our Black elders built thriving families, institutions, and communities. Envisioning a world beyond the one we’ve experienced is an inherently creative project; oppression is not. As we face the full wrath of today’s oppressors, American Muslims have an opportunity to decide what we would like to imagine and build toward. We also have the opportunity to look back and learn from those who did this before us.
My father, Imam Nadim Sulaiman Ali, planned to visit the West End for a week in 1979. Shortly after arriving, he decided to stay. Imam Jamil sat on a wooden bench outside his store in the sweltering Georgia summer heat. With long legs outstretched on the sidewalk, he engaged with any and everyone who sought his counsel. Bearded men dapped up strangers and exchanged soft-spoken salaams with the easy intimacy of brothers. My father took in the slow-paced, spiritually grounded village life that the West End had to offer and knew that he had at last found his peace.
My mother, Sister Mu’mina Ali, later joined him. She noted that the West End’s founders came from Black activist backgrounds so they were comfortable existing outside of American norms. “They’d been fighting against the prevailing political landscape for a while,” she said. “They had a vision of what they wanted and were going to do whatever it took to achieve it.” Their vision was simple: to build an Islamically grounded community, one where their children could grow up with an unshakable sense of belonging and a moral clarity that enabled them to positively contribute to the world.
The children she speaks of are now adults, known as millennials and Gen Z. These young adults struggle to accurately categorize their parents’ efforts into neat and narrow modern political terms: traditional, progressive, conservative, or liberal. But as one of the most diverse faith communities in the United States and the most diverse Muslim community in the world, American Muslims simply aren’t homogeneous. What they do share is the practice of radical imagination—the courage to envision and create that which does not yet exist.
For many American Muslims, the masjid is the center of communal life. But according to Ihsan Bagby, the foremost researcher on masjids in America, young adults no longer channel their activism through masjids. “In recent years, we’ve seen a resistance to formal authority and the bureaucracy of institutions,” he said. Bagby challenges this by asserting that human progress is not sustainable without organizations. There may be excitement for people coming together initially. But without a clear vision, a core body of people responsible for executing it, and an organizational structure that is accountable for carrying the work forward, their efforts will eventually fall apart. “Bringing people together who all have different motivations and interests and organizing their efforts is not easy,” he said, “but it’s necessary. You work through the conflict and differences of opinions and become better and stronger through it.” While the masjid is not the only way to engage in Muslim life, it is one of the most effective ways of bringing groups of Muslims together and sustaining their involvement over time.
Today, many young Muslims consider themselves “unmosqued” or unaffiliated with a masjid. Bagby published the first comprehensive survey of mosques in America in 2001 and carried out the decadal study again in 2010 and 2020. The 2020 study found that while 54 percent of American Muslims are ages 18 to 34, they make up only 29 percent of mosque attendees. Sister Mu’mina saw this shift in the West End, “we went from having fifty families who lived around the masjid to only three. Lots of people come through, but they aren’t getting the full benefits of community life.” Among these benefits are a clear sense of belonging, relationships, and a connection to a shared higher purpose. In times of societal upheaval, existing outside of a formal spiritual community can exacerbate feelings of isolation and despair. In other words, the unmosqued are more likely to fall between the cracks because they struggle to meet individual needs that could be better met in a collective.
In sociology, it is understood that groups are most vulnerable to decline during generational transitions. The first generation makes an intentional commitment to drastically change their lives for a higher purpose. “The second generation, because they were born into it, do not have the same sense of commitment … they need to go through their own identity exploration and come to an understanding that they must commit their lives to this work. A much smaller percentage of the second generation does that,” Bagby said. The third generation tends to be fully assimilated into the dominant culture, with very few traces of their grandparents’ mission alive within them. “The sense of purpose needs to be rekindled with every generation,” Bagby said, “And the masjid is the one institution in the Muslim community that can do that for the largest number of people.”
The West End’s first generation illustrates the outsize impact a few people with a shared purpose can have. They demonstrate what can be built, outside of what those in power deem us worthy of. African American Muslim communities embody the Black proverb “We all we got.” They remind us that while the state has always failed us, our faith in the unseen and in each other never has.
Mia Birdsong’s How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community sets out to learn from the genius of the marginalized. She writes, “People do not survive racism, xenophobia, gender discrimination, and poverty without developing extraordinary skills, systems, and practices of support.” While these communities are often described by what they lack, Birdsong argues that innovation thrives with those who practice every day, in community, getting to the future they want. “Freedom was the idea that together we can ensure that we all have the things we need,” Birdsong says. She rejects the toxic individualism of the American dream and calls for a vision of community “that brings us closer to one another.”
The West End’s vision was clear: to use the power of Islam to build a place that reflected its highest potential, where everyone had what they needed to thrive and grow safely and securely. “We were united in the goals of showing up for prayers, trying to follow the Prophet’s example, and trying to improve the conditions of our surrounding community,” Imam Nadim said. He noted that the congregants existed along a wide spectrum of political orientations and ideologies. They defined their vision by what they all were committed to working toward, but they understood that diversity was critical to their growth. Sister Mu’mina encourages today’s young adults to lean into their differences to determine how they can contribute to the greater vision. “You have to build what you want inside a community so that you are adding to it and diversifying it. You can come in with new thoughts, ideas, and activities that will benefit you and others. But if you’re always a visitor, you’ll never fully get what you want or need from it.”
The West End also prioritized establishing a strong physical presence that enabled folks to come together to bond and fulfill their shared purpose. “A big part of community is intimacy and the reciprocal social connections you build over time,” Sister Mu’mina said. “When a sister in our community had a baby, for the first month the rest of us would walk over and make sure her family was fed, her house was clean, and her other children were taken care of,” Sister Mu’mina recalled. She described raising five children in community as not only easy, but enjoyable. She underscored that none of us can have all our needs met by our nuclear families; this is not how our ancestors lived and it’s not how we’re meant to live either.
To support their physical presence, the West End took responsibility for its own safety and security. When my parents settled there, the neighborhood faced many challenges. “We did community patrols all night during the height of the crack epidemic,” Imam Nadim said. This was known as “sutra,” and required two men to sign up for shifts between Isha and Fajr to watch the blocks surrounding the masjid. “The park across the street from the mosque closed at 11 PM. If someone was there at 1 AM, we would tell them to leave. If we saw illegal activity happening in a car, we would pull up and write down the license plate numbers and they would take off.” When asked where they got the courage to do this, Imam Nadim stated that they were prepared to give their lives for this service. “This life is temporary. If you live life fearing death, you’re not living at all.” Imam Nadim grew up hyperaware of the impacts of gang activity in his neighborhood. He saw people risking their lives for much less. “Coming out of those experiences and then you find this noor, Islam, that you’re given the responsibility to protect? It’s an honor.”
Sister Mu’mina also emphasized the importance of a community identifying what knowledge is important for them to learn and pass on. As new Muslims, the West End’s founders took education very seriously. Sister Mu’mina, along with two friends, cofounded a small homeschool cooperative known as the West End Islamic Preparatory School, which ran for over twenty years. This is a school that I, my siblings, and my neighbors graduated from. This school started in a living room and grew into its own building, graduating dozens of students throughout its tenure. “It was important for our children’s values and critical thinking skills to be grounded in their Muslim identity,” Sister Mu’mina said. They prioritized an education that stood in opposition to a culture that diminished who they were and the gifts they possessed. And by many metrics, it worked. “People are surprised when I tell them I raised my children in the West End,” the so-called inner city, Imam Nadim said, laughing, “but by investing in this place, we got suburban results in terms of what our children went on to accomplish.”
None of this would have been possible without a leadership structure that had clear roles and responsibilities. “You need clear leadership in a community that you are accountable to and who is accountable to you,” said Imam Nadim. Today, many people follow imams from across the globe online, occasionally attending their conferences and retreats. But the lack of a mutually recognized relationship means no one has to really answer to anyone else. Accountability thrives on interdependence. Virtual followerships create the illusion of intimacy without the knowledge, mutuality, and responsibility required of community leaders. Imam Nadim noted that proximity to leaders also enables us to see them as human beings and recognize their fallibility. But if the only time you see your imam of choice is on a stage with lighting and special effects better suited for a pop star, it becomes easy to idolize them.
Finally, Imam Nadim noted the importance of establishing economic power and planning for how executing the purpose will be funded over time. African American masjids are often established alongside related businesses. In the West End, Imam Jamil’s corner store shared a building with Al-Fajr, once the largest distributor of incense in the United States. Residents were employed by both these businesses. They did not wait for grants to make their vision a reality; they pooled what they had to fund what they needed.
Eventually, the West End had to navigate transition challenges. After spending over twenty years leading and growing the masjid, in March 2000 Imam Jamil Al-Amin was abruptly arrested and charged with shooting two police officers, a crime he has insisted he is innocent of for the past twenty-five years. His arrest came after decades-long state surveillance efforts. His followers widely consider him to be a political prisoner. They believe that his arrest was a long-sought punishment for his activism in the Black power movement and a preventive mechanism to limit the influence of one charismatic Black leader. Imam Jamil’s imprisonment thrust the West End into crisis, one that they are still reeling from today.
Bagby’s research found characteristics unique to African American mosques that make them more vulnerable during transitions. These mosques tend to be smaller, less affluent, and impacted by the problems present in surrounding communities—poverty, criminalization, and state-sanctioned and intra-community violence. As subsequent generations become more upwardly mobile, they leave, resulting in an exodus of resources and talent. This puts a limit on how big these communities can grow and how long they survive.
African American mosques also concentrate more power and authority in the role of the imam, who serves as both the religious leader of the congregation and the administrative leader of the institution. This concentration of power can be useful in streamlining decision-making. But it becomes a huge liability when the primary leader is suddenly gone. The West End faced this twice: in 2000 when Imam Jamil was arrested and again in 2005 when his successor, Ibrahim Abdus-Salam, died suddenly and Imam Nadim was appointed as the community’s leader.
Imam Nadim led the community for 20 years. He vowed to thoughtfully transition leadership to whoever came next so that they were better prepared for the role than he was. Just last year, a few months shy of his seventieth birthday, he handed over leadership to the West End’s fourth imam, a millennial who shadowed the role for several years. While the West End masjid is not as packed as it once was, hope remains for what comes next. The community’s legacy rests in a future that my parents’ generation won’t be here to witness, but one they fervently pray for nonetheless.
The communities targeted by the Trump administration are not the first to stare their own apocalypse in the face, nor will they be the last. What can we learn from the stories of enslaved mothers who each day chose life and love and hope, just in case something better awaited their children on the other side? What wisdom can we gain from those who divested from the insatiable appetite of capitalism and invested in knowing and practicing divine mercy and generosity? What infrastructure is required to sustain our collective engagement, not just in struggle, but in deeply nourishing and caring for ourselves and each other?
To take this work seriously, my parents encouraged young Muslims today to consider themselves not just beneficiaries of communities, but contributors. Those yearning for a village must be willing to be villagers. “People think of community as a prison when it should be a prism,” Imam Nadim said, a prism that reflects the light, wisdom, and potential of each of its members. It’s possible that the very things that frustrate us most about our communities are the exact contributions we were placed there to make.
From the outside looking in, the West End looks like yet another inner-city mosque. But within those modest walls “you had people from every walk of life,” Sister Mu’mina said. “We all made a conscious decision that this kind of community was important. We all made a conscious decision to invest in that.” People grow toward whatever it is they pay attention to, toward whatever it is they choose to prioritize and put their energy behind. “If you are running after having the most money, the biggest house, the nicest car, and your kids getting into Harvard, then that will be your priority. That is what your whole life will be organized around” she warned.
This generation must decide what is worth organizing our lives around, what dreams we are committed to bringing to fruition, and what we are willing to let go of to make room for this work. What story will we one day tell our children about the world we imagined into reality for them? What sacrifices are we willing to make to get there? What new ways of being and working with each other will we embrace? By answering these questions—with courage, vision, and radical imagination—we will not simply inherit our history, we will write it.