Few people are able to tell history from the perspective of someone who actually helped shape it.
In Our Family’s Evolution from Nationalism to Al-Islam, historian, author, and longtime Muslim leader Imam Abdul Karim Hasan offers readers something far more intimate than a conventional history of Islam in America. Through the experiences of his own family—and his personal participation in some of the most consequential developments in twentieth-century African American religious life—Hasan tells the story of a remarkable journey from the struggles of post-slavery America, through Black Nationalism and the Nation of Islam, and ultimately toward the universal teachings of Al-Islam.
Hasan’s family has been connected to this evolving American story for more than 90 years. His memoir follows generations of African Americans searching for dignity, independence, identity, spiritual meaning, and a place within a country that had only recently emerged from slavery.
It is simultaneously a family history, a religious memoir, and a firsthand account of a movement that transformed the lives of generations of African Americans.
The story begins long before Abdul Karim Hasan became a prominent Muslim leader.
Hasan looks back to the difficult period following the Civil War, when formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants faced segregation, racial violence, economic hardship, and limited opportunities throughout much of the United States. His family’s experiences in the South and their eventual migration north become part of a larger story of African American movement, survival, and social transformation.
Within that environment emerged movements that encouraged Black Americans to reconsider their relationship with American society and to seek new expressions of racial, cultural, economic, and spiritual independence.
Hasan examines the influence of figures including Marcus Garvey and Noble Drew Ali, whose movements helped create an intellectual and cultural environment in which African Americans increasingly explored ideas of nationalism, self-determination, and alternative religious identities.
For Hasan, these developments were not isolated historical events. They were part of a progression—one that eventually led members of his family, and thousands of other African Americans, toward Islam.
One of the most significant chapters in that story was the rise of the Nation of Islam.
Under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad, the Nation became one of the most influential African American religious and social movements of the twentieth century. The organization emphasized discipline, economic self-reliance, Black identity, family structure, personal responsibility, and independence from systems its members believed had historically oppressed African Americans.
By the 1950s and 1960s, the movement gained increasing national attention. Among its most famous representatives was Malcolm X, whose speeches on race, religion, dignity, and Black self-determination helped bring the Nation of Islam into the national consciousness.
Hasan did not experience this history from a distance.
He joined the Nation of Islam in 1956 and rose through its leadership structure. His memoir includes personal experiences involving Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and other figures within the movement, giving readers an insider's perspective unavailable in many conventional historical accounts.
That firsthand perspective is one of the qualities that makes Our Family’s Evolution from Nationalism to Al-Islam especially significant.
In 1971, Elijah Muhammad sent Abdul Karim Hasan to Los Angeles, where he assumed leadership responsibilities within the Muslim community on the West Coast.
The community Hasan came to lead had originated as Muhammad’s Temple of Islam No. 27. Masjid Bilal’s own historical account says the Los Angeles congregation had begun developing during the 1950s and eventually became one of the most important centers of African American Muslim life in Southern California.
Under Hasan’s leadership, the community purchased property on Central Avenue in 1973. That property would become the permanent home of what is today Masjid Bilal Islamic Center. The City of Los Angeles' SurveyLA historical study also identifies the congregation as an important part of the development of mainstream Islam among African Americans in Los Angeles.
Hasan has now served as the community’s religious leader since 1971, making his personal story inseparable from the modern history of Islam in Los Angeles.
The year 1975 represents one of the great turning points in the story told in Hasan’s book.
Following the death of Elijah Muhammad, his son Warith Deen Mohammed—widely known as Imam W. Deen Mohammed—assumed leadership of the Nation of Islam and began fundamentally redirecting the community.
Academic studies of this period describe a profound religious transformation. Imam Mohammed moved his followers away from the racial separatism and distinctive theology associated with the Nation of Islam and toward the Qur’an, the life and teachings of Prophet Muhammad, daily Islamic prayer, Ramadan, and the broader tradition of Sunni Islam.
It was not merely an organizational name change. It represented a major theological and spiritual transformation.
Congregations across the country—including Hasan's community in Los Angeles—participated in that evolution. The language of the community changed as well: temples became mosques, ministers became imams, and Islamic religious practices became increasingly central.
Hasan's own memoir describes his participation in this historic transition under Imam W. Deen Mohammed.
The transformation lies at the heart of the book’s title: from Nationalism to Al-Islam.
The word evolution is particularly important to understanding Hasan’s story.
This is not simply a narrative in which one organization disappears and another replaces it. It is a story of people changing their understanding of faith over time while carrying lessons, experiences, institutions, and community relationships from one stage of their development into another.
Scholars studying Imam W. Deen Mohammed’s leadership have similarly cautioned against viewing the transition merely as a clean break with the past. His followers retained a strong sense of African American history and community even as they increasingly identified themselves with the worldwide Muslim ummah.
Hasan’s family history gives that larger transformation a deeply human dimension.
Readers see history through families rather than statistics, through relationships rather than institutions alone, and through personal spiritual development rather than simply dates and organizational names.
The story told in Our Family’s Evolution from Nationalism to Al-Islam continues today at Masjid Bilal Islamic Center in Los Angeles, where Hasan has served as resident Imam for more than five decades.
The congregation traces its history to the former Muhammad’s Temple No. 27 and today describes itself as Los Angeles’ oldest identifiable mainstream Muslim community.
The community’s history mirrors many of the themes explored in Hasan’s book: African American migration, racial struggle, religious transformation, civic involvement, education, institution building, and the expansion of Islam beyond racial and ethnic boundaries.
A 2021 Los Angeles Times profile of Muslim communities in South Los Angeles highlighted Hasan’s continuing emphasis on civic participation and his belief that Muslims should engage actively with the society in which they live. The article also documented Masjid Bilal’s longstanding role in the religious life of South Los Angeles.
Masjid Bilal itself underwent another dramatic transformation when, after decades of rebuilding efforts, its new mosque officially opened on December 1, 2023, on the historic Central Avenue property acquired under Hasan’s leadership.
The new structure stands as a physical reminder of a community that has survived enormous change while continuing to build for future generations.
Abdul Karim Hasan’s importance as an author rests in part on the extraordinary amount of history he personally witnessed.
He knew and worked within the movement led by Elijah Muhammad. He encountered Malcolm X. He participated in the growth of the Nation of Islam. He experienced the dramatic transformation led by Imam W. Deen Mohammed. He became one of the longtime leaders of the Muslim community in Los Angeles.
He also traveled extensively as an associate and ambassador connected with Imam W. Deen Mohammed’s community. According to Hasan’s biography, his international work brought him into contact with Muslim leaders around the world, and in 1993 he received Egypt’s Da’wah Medal of Excellence from President Hosni Mubarak.
There is also a particularly meaningful story behind the creation of the book itself.
During their years together, Imam W. Deen Mohammed encouraged Hasan to write what he reportedly called an “important book” chronicling his family's extraordinary experience.
Our Family’s Evolution from Nationalism to Al-Islam is Hasan’s response to that encouragement.
Another important feature of the book is its collection of rare photographs and historical literature documenting the people, organizations, and experiences described within its pages.
These visual materials give readers something written history alone cannot always provide: a direct connection with the people who lived through the era.
They transform the book from a memoir into an archival record of African American Muslim history.
Photographs, historical documents, family recollections, and Hasan’s personal observations combine to preserve a story that might otherwise disappear as the generation that personally experienced these events grows older.
Although Islam is central to the book, Our Family’s Evolution from Nationalism to Al-Islam belongs within a much broader American story.
It is about the consequences of slavery.
It is about the Great Migration and changing African American communities.
It is about Marcus Garvey and Black nationalism.
It is about the search for economic independence and racial dignity.
It is about Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Nation of Islam.
It is about Imam W. Deen Mohammed and one of the most remarkable religious transformations in modern American history.
And ultimately, it is about a family moving through each of these experiences while searching for a deeper understanding of God, community, identity, and humanity.
That combination gives Hasan’s memoir its lasting value.
For generations, the history of Islam in America—and particularly the history of African American Muslims—received relatively little attention in mainstream accounts of American history.
Yet African American Muslims played an important role in making Islam visible within American public life. Their communities established mosques, schools, businesses, publications, cultural institutions, and civic organizations across the country.
Abdul Karim Hasan has spent much of his adult life within that history.
With Our Family’s Evolution from Nationalism to Al-Islam, he has preserved not only his own memories but also a multigenerational family experience that illuminates a much larger American journey.
It is the story of a people who endured oppression, embraced self-determination, questioned inherited assumptions, transformed their religious understanding, and ultimately found themselves connected to a worldwide community of faith.
For readers interested in African American history, Islam in America, Black Muslim history, the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Imam W. Deen Mohammed, or the history of Los Angeles, this book offers a rare perspective: history told by someone who was there.
Our Family’s Evolution from Nationalism to Al-Islam is more than a memoir.
It is testimony, history, family legacy, and an important record of the evolution of Muslim life in America.
Book includes rare photos and historical documents
Paperback, 161 pages
Published March 27, 2019 by Baitcal Publishing
Original Title: Our Family's Evolution From Nationalism to Al-Islam
Author: A.K. Hasan
ISBN: 978-0985961923
Edition Language: English