{"id":604,"date":"2008-12-31T11:02:13","date_gmt":"2008-12-31T11:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/12\/warith-deen-mohammed-the-most.html"},"modified":"2008-12-31T11:02:13","modified_gmt":"2008-12-31T11:02:13","slug":"warith-deen-mohammed-the-most","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/12\/warith-deen-mohammed-the-most.html","title":{"rendered":"Warith Deen Mohammed, The Most Important Muslim in America, RIP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our gallery of spiritual leaders includes many great men and women.  I wanted to ponder for a moment <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Faiths\/2008\/12\/spiritual-leaders-who-died-in-2008.aspx?p=5\">Warith Deen Mohammed, who did more than any other American to bring Islam into the mainstream here.<\/a> He was the son of Elijah Muhammad, who had founded the Nation of Islam.  But after Elijah died, Warith drew the movement away from radicalism and toward mainstream Islam.  I can&#8217;t help but wonder whether Islam in America might have evolved in a different direction &#8211; perhaps more like the more radical strain of Islam we find in Western Europe &#8211; had it not been for Muhammad.  He&#8217;s a truly important and underappreciated figure in modern American religious history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our gallery of spiritual leaders includes many great men and women. I wanted to ponder for a moment Warith Deen Mohammed, who did more than any other American to bring Islam into the mainstream here. He was the son of Elijah Muhammad, who had founded the Nation of Islam. But after Elijah died, Warith drew&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Warith Deen Mohammed, The Most Important Muslim in America, RIP - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/12\/warith-deen-mohammed-the-most.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Warith Deen Mohammed, The Most Important Muslim in America, RIP - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our gallery of spiritual leaders includes many great men and women. I wanted to ponder for a moment Warith Deen Mohammed, who did more than any other American to bring Islam into the mainstream here. He was the son of Elijah Muhammad, who had founded the Nation of Islam. But after Elijah died, Warith drew&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/12\/warith-deen-mohammed-the-most.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-12-31T11:02:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Warith Deen Mohammed, The Most Important Muslim in America, RIP - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/12\/warith-deen-mohammed-the-most.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Warith Deen Mohammed, The Most Important Muslim in America, RIP - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Our gallery of spiritual leaders includes many great men and women. 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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