Sofian Zakkout is director of the American Muslim Association of North America. It is based in Miami.

Siraj Wahhaj is an African-American convert to Islam who is the imam of Masjid Taqwa in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1991 he became the first Muslim to offer the invocation for the U.S. House of Representatives. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Islamic Society of North America.

Ishmael Muhammad is the national assistant minister of the Nation of Islam. He is widely considered to be a possible successor to Farrakhan.

Read about the history of the Nation of Islam and Beliefnet.com’s FAQs about the Nation of Islam.

The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has an online exhibit about Malcolm X.

Read an outline of African-American Muslim history from On Common Ground: World Religions in America (Columbia University Press, 2002). It’s reprinted on the Pluralism Project’s website.

Read an excerpt of Taylor Branch’s book Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65 (Simon and Schuster, 1998) about the break between W. Deen Mohammed and his father, Elijah Muhammad, one of the founders of the Nation of Islam. It’s posted on Beliefnet.com.

Read a Beliefnet.com article about W. Deen Mohammed’s decision to step down as head of the American Society of Muslims.

Senior writer and editor for the Family Research Council.  Her previous jobs have included serving as communications director for the Best Friends Foundation, an inner-city abstinence program.