Muslim Americans Who Changed History

From the Olympian who broke a 181-year rule to the engineer who redesigned the American skyline to the ancestors who were here before the nation existed -- a look at Muslim Americans who shaped this country.

The story of Muslim Americans who shaped this country does not begin with Muhammad Ali. It begins centuries earlier, in cotton fields and trade routes and prayer rugs spread on the ground of a continent being violently claimed by others. Understanding the full scope of Muslim-American contribution requires starting at the actual beginning.

The Enslaved Muslims Who Came First

Historians estimate that 15 to 30 percent of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were Muslim. Many came from regions of West Africa where Islam had been the dominant religion for centuries -- Senegambia, the Mali Empire, the Fula people's lands. They arrived literate in Arabic when many of their enslavers could not read in any language.

Omar ibn Said, enslaved in North Carolina, wrote his autobiography in 1831 in Arabic -- one of the few existing first-person narratives in Arabic from an enslaved person in America. He described his education in Senegal, his enslavement, his continued practice of Islam. His manuscript survived. His name belongs in every conversation about American literary history.

Job Ben Solomon -- known in his homeland as Ayuba Suleiman Diallo -- was enslaved in Maryland in 1730. He could recite the entire Quran from memory. He wrote three copies of it from memory while enslaved. Through a series of extraordinary events, he was freed, met the British royal family, and eventually returned to his homeland. His story was documented by contemporaries and is one of the most detailed accounts of an enslaved Muslim's experience in colonial America.

These men and the millions like them are the foundation. Their faith, their literacy, their resistance, and their endurance are part of what America is.

Fazlur Rahman Khan: The Man Who Built the American Skyline

If you have looked at the Chicago skyline, you have looked at Fazlur Rahman Khan's work. The Bangladeshi-American structural engineer, born in Dhaka in 1929 and educated in the United States, designed the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower) and the John Hancock Center -- for decades the two tallest buildings in the world.

Khan revolutionized how tall buildings are built. His "tubular" structural system made skyscrapers dramatically more efficient, allowing them to go higher with less material. He is called the "Einstein of structural engineering" and the "father of tubular designs for high-rises." His work did not just change Chicago. It changed how cities look worldwide.

Khan was a practicing Muslim who brought a philosophy of humility and purpose to his work. He believed architecture should serve people, not impress them. He died in 1982 at 52. His name should be as well known as the buildings he made.

Muhammad Ali: The Conscience of a Generation

Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali in 1964 when he converted to Islam and joined the Nation of Islam. The conversion was not a quiet personal matter -- Ali announced it publicly, changed his name publicly, and spoke about his faith publicly at a time when both the Nation of Islam and Islam broadly were widely feared and misunderstood by mainstream America.

Then came 1967. Ali refused induction into the U.S. Army, citing religious objection to the Vietnam War. He was stripped of his heavyweight title, convicted of draft evasion, and banned from boxing for three years -- prime years of an athlete's career. He appealed all the way to the Supreme Court and won.

"My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America," he said. "And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn't put no dogs on me, they didn't rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. Shoot them for what?"

Ali is universally recognized now as a hero and a giant. In 1967, calling him that would have gotten you looks. He was right then too. His willingness to stand on principle while the whole country came down on him -- that is an American story. That is also a Muslim-American story.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: The Athlete Who Never Stopped Thinking

Lew Alcindor converted to Islam in 1971 and became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He played 20 seasons in the NBA, won six championships, earned six MVP awards, and retired as the all-time leading scorer in NBA history -- a record that stood for 38 years.

But Abdul-Jabbar's contribution is not just athletic. He has spent decades writing -- newspaper columns, books, essays -- explaining Islam, addressing racism, engaging with American history and culture with precision and patience. His writing about the civil rights of Muslim Americans, about Black history, about the obligations of the privileged to speak -- this is work that belongs in the record.

He was never a comfortable figure. He refused to do press interviews for years. He declined to attend the 1968 Olympics in protest of American racism. He was criticized constantly. He kept going.

Ibtihaj Muhammad: The Olympian Who Changed the Rules

Ibtihaj Muhammad became the first American athlete to compete in the Olympics while wearing hijab, at the 2016 Rio Games, where she won a bronze medal in fencing. She was also one of the first athletes to compete under the banner of a Muslim-majority country while representing the United States -- representing the full complexity of what Muslim American identity is.

After Rio, she became an author, an activist, and the inspiration for the first hijab-wearing Barbie doll. She has spoken about the double consciousness of Muslim American life -- the experience of having your patriotism questioned while standing on an Olympic podium -- with clarity and grace.

Keith Ellison: The First

In 2007, Keith Ellison of Minnesota became the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress. His swearing-in ceremony used Thomas Jefferson's personal copy of the Quran -- a copy Jefferson owned in 1765, two hundred and forty years before Ellison stood in the Capitol holding it.

That detail is not a coincidence. It is a reminder that Islam and America have been in conversation for longer than the country has been a country. Jefferson wrote about Islam in his notes on religious freedom. The first Quran in the Library of Congress was purchased in 1800. The architecture of Islamic governance influenced some of the founders' thinking about checks and balances.

Ellison later became Attorney General of Minnesota. He was not the last Muslim American elected to national office. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Andre Carson followed. The list grows.

Dave Chappelle: The Artist

One of the greatest comedians in American history, Dave Chappelle converted to Islam in 1998. He has spoken about how his faith has grounded him through the specific chaos of being a famous Black man in America -- the pressures, the compromises demanded, the ways fame tries to reshape you.

His comedy has always been about identity, about race, about the distance between how Americans see themselves and how they actually are. That kind of comedy requires a center, a place to stand. For Chappelle, Islam has been that place.

The list continues. Mos Def (Yasiin Bey), Lupe Fiasco, Ice Cube, Queen Latifah, Shaquille O'Neal, Janet Jackson -- Muslim Americans in music and sports and culture, shaping what Americans hear and see and feel. The contributions are everywhere. They have always been there.

Related reading: The First Mosques in America: A History You Didn't Learn in School | Famous Muslim Americans Who Shaped This Country