ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the immigrant group, as the African-American community represents a particular historical and social experience that deserves to be described on its own. All of the informants are of immigrant background, and interviews took place during two periods of fieldwork, one in Chicago and one in Los Angeles. Both fieldwork periods were completed prior to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001. During those seven years, a wide range of Muslim social and political initiatives developed. They focused both on the civil rights and social needs of Muslims nationally, and not least given the embedded transnational perspective and experience of large segments of the community sought to affect US foreign policy. From a historical perspective one can say that in the 1990s immigrant Muslim communities gained a national voice within public discourses, rather than being communities mainly talked about.
