In the documentary, Hana Baba walks us through the stories of four Americans who have chosen Islam and the joys and challenges of their lives after conversion. This is a great episode to share and we hope you will. 

Did enslaved Africans bring Islam to America? Or did they sail with Christopher Columbus first? How did Islam spread in the United States and who spread it? Host Hana Baba dives into the history of Islam in America with Dr. Edward E. Curtis IV, a scholar of Muslim American, African American, and Arab American history and life.

Aaron Siebert-Llera and Raul Gonzalez both live in the Chicago area and both converted to Islam twenty years ago. And both have been trying to answer the question of how to reconcile their identity as Latinos — and Muslims — ever since.

Sofie Lovern is a Latina convert and comedienne who learned the difficulty of trying to merge two very different cultures in a marriage, even when their religions were the same. Her struggle with marriage is not uncommon with new convert women who are often rushed into marriage. Her marriage fails, but her comedy brings her through it all. She emerges unmarried but still Muslim.

Tyson Amir’s family knew he would become Muslim from a young age. He was influenced by the revolutionary example of Malcolm X. And also by the legacy of resistance embodied by his great-great-great-grandfather, an enslaved man who was Muslim, according to family lore.

Convicted of first-degree murder and sent to Folsom State Prison, Wendell El-Amin James gravitated towards the Muslim prisoners out of a need for protection. But ultimately his conversion restructured his life to one of education and purpose.

As a student and basketball player at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s, Abdul Raoof Nasir joined the Nation of Islam. In the years that followed, he was forced to make a choice: stay with the Nation or go with one of the groups that splintered away from it.

Rabi’a Keeble has been fighting discrimination and pushing boundaries her whole life as she searched for a faith and spiritual home that felt just right. She’s an innovator, which led her to found a women-led mosque that sparked a powerful backlash.

Searching for the “real” Islam. Diana Demchemko spent her young adulthood learning to become Muslim, but it was while on a journey to Cairo to study the Quran that she looked for answers to some of her deepest questions.

We explore the motivations and challenges of converts as they carve out a uniquely American path for being Muslim in the United States. Over seven episodes, we profile eight individuals from various cultural backgrounds. Each offers a different window into this diverse and complex religion. In a religion that’s often partitioned by nationality and culture, how do these new Muslims fit in?