The Muslim Council of Boston
The first Muslims in Massachusetts were almost certainly enslaved Africans whose spiritual heritage was largely suppressed. Fortunately, Boston was the hub of American abolitionism from 1831 to 1865. “Led by a strong Black community on Beacon Hill and by William Lloyd Garrison (who published The Liberator), the movement utilized the Underground Railroad and public demonstrations to oppose slavery, often facing violent, upper-class backlash.”
In 1972, after a substandard housing development was demolished to make way for the Inner Belt of the Big Dig project (Interstate 95), local activists and leaders, who were mostly African Americans, successfully opposed the project to protect their neighborhood. One result was an abandoned lot known as Parcel R-14. Inspired by the life of Malcolm X and under the leadership of Warith Deen Muhammed, a large group of Boston’s African American Muslims left the Nation of Islam and reverted to mainstream Islam in the 1970s.
The Masjid Al-Qur’an has a long history that dates back to Malcolm X’s earliest days in Boston. It is located in an historic neighborhood in Dorchester, where the architecture ranges from the old Victorian homes of wealthy Bostonians to the multi-family dwellings of later immigrant groups. In 1977, the American Muslim community was further shaped when the late Imam Shakir Mahmoud became the first Imam to lead the community's gradual shift toward mainstream Islam. To date, the religious leader is Imam Taalib Mehdi, who has helped grow and diversify the community for more than forty years.
Earlier, in the 1950s, another group of African American Muslim brothers in Boston, seeking fellowship and a place of worship, began meeting in each other’s homes. Led by the late Imam Dawud Ahmed, the group founded the Society for Islamic Brotherhood (SIB). The Mosque for the Praising of Allah (Masjid Al-Humdulilah), located at 724 Shawmut Avenue in Boston, was chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1973. It is the oldest continually operating mosque in Boston, marking its 50th anniversary in 2023. The African American founders, such as Imam Abdullah Faarooq, also started the first Islamic Multi-Services Organization (IMSO) to help community members, both Muslim & Non-Muslim.