One Man's Quest for Spiritual Fulfillment and the Rise of Islam in America

Editors Note: I first wrote about Alexander Russell Webb and his work to bring Islam to the United States back in 2009 for the Register Star and later expanded on the subject in 2012 for Columbia County History and Heritage magazine. The following is adapted from the latter. I felt in the current climate of Islamophobia it was worth highlighting the nation's historical view of that religion and of the man who helped spread its message at the turn of the century. 

Alexander Russell Webb felt the sun on his face and listened to the birds chirping, glad to be out of Sunday school. Even then, just a young boy, he felt closer to God out of doors than in the stuffy confines of the church.

This restlessness of both body and spirit would lead Webb from Hudson, New York, where he was born in 1846, to Chicago, the frontier towns of Missouri, and later to more exotic locales. It would also take him on a spiritual journey from his staid Presbyterian upbringing to a total embrace of Islam, which he would help spread across America. And although he may not have known it, the city of his birth, by dint of time and place, may have planted the seeds that led him to his faith.

As a youth he was not inclined toward religion and by his twenties had completely given up on the church and was a self-proclaimed “materialist” whose only compass was the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Hudson, N.Y. about the time Webb was born there. 

His break with the church apparently came after the loss of his first wife and destruction of his jewelry business in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Webb had moved to the city after graduating from Claverack College. Webb, like so many other young men of his generation, had left the East and headed to the wild and bustling cities of the Midwest to seek his fortune. 

After the fire he moved to New York City before again returning to Chicago where he eventually made enough money to buy a small newspaper, the Unionville Republican, located in Unionville, Mo. Webb’s journalistic interests were likely due to his father’s influence. Alexander Nelson Webb had been the editor of the Hudson Daily Star for years. 

The younger Webb would eventually find himself drawn to a spiritual life and sought this out by reading such writers and philosophers as John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Aldous Huxley. Webb found their theories, explanations and conclusions on spirituality wanting. His studies of Buddhism, Theosophy and Christianity likewise left him feeling unfulfilled.

While working as the editor of the Missouri Republican in St. Louis, Webb began corresponding with Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of a Muslim community in India. There is some dispute on when exactly Webb converted, but by the late 1880s when Webb was consul general to Manilla, in the Philippines, he was publicly calling himself a Muslim and corresponding with a number of Islamic scholars in India.

President Grover Cleveland appointed Webb to the position as consul in 1887 during Cleveland’s first administration. Webb left the job five years later to travel in India in order to further study Islam. His second wife, Ella, and their three children went with him. 

Webb would later say of his conversion that it “was not the result of misguided sentiment, blind credulity, or sudden emotional impulse, but it was born of earnest, honest, persistent, unprejudiced study and investigation and an intense desire to know the truth.” He believed that Islam was “the best and only system adapted to the spiritual needs of the humanity.”

Webb never publicly addressed, what, if any, influence his hometown played in his quest for spiritual fulfillment, but the fact remains that Columbia County and its environs, especially Western New York, was a hotbed of religious fervor when he was growing up. Umar F. Abd-Allah in his 2006 book, “A Muslim in Victorian America,” believes that this era which saw an upswing of Christian off-shoots come to the fore may have played a part in Webb’s later embracing of the Muslim faith. 

“There is no question that the religious ambiance of the times helped form the attitudes and expectations that guided Webb through life,” he wrote.

In Columbia County, besides Roman Catholics and a number of protestant denominations, there were also the Shakers and Quakers, while in Western New York, during this period known as “the Second Great Awakening” there were a slew of new religious movements that sprang up. Known as the “Burned-Over District” so often had it been swept by religious fervor, the area was home to the Mormons, tent revivals, the Oneida Community — which practiced a form of free love — the Millerites, who believed the end of the world was nigh (the original 1843 date was incorrect and the end was pushed back a few times), and the followers of Jemima Wilkinson who believed she was the reincarnation of Christ in female form, to name a few of the spiritual and religious groups that came from this well-spring.

Webb’s spiritual rebirth was completed in India and he soon longed to return to America to proselytize. With the backing of a group of influential Muslim leaders in India, Webb set off from Bombay in December 1892 and was soon back in New York. 

In Manhattan he established a weekly journal “to be dedicated to an exposition of Islam,” according to The New York Times. He also had plans for founding a publishing company.

Back in the U.S., Webb was shocked by the lack of knowledge Americans had of Islam. 

“Since my return…I have been greatly surprised, not only at the general ignorance prevalent among so-called learned people regarding the life, character and teachings of the  [Muhammad],” he wrote, “but also at the self-confident readiness and facility with which some of these same people express their opinions of Mohammed and the Islamic system.”

Three months after he arrived in New York City the first copy of his “Moslem World” came out and although the journal would later fold, Webb would continue to promote Islam in America by writing, publishing and lecturing on his faith until his death in Rutherford, N.J. on Oct. 1, 1916.

Webb’s long quest for spiritual fulfillment spanned many years and took him to distant lands. But it was likely his early life in Hudson during a flowering of religious expression that provided him with the openness of spirit that helped lead him to what he had so fervently desired. 

Sources and Notes

Abd-Allah, Umar F. A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Pgs. 27-28.

Islam - Our Choice (Karachi:Begum Aisha Bawani Wakf, 1970).
Webb, Alexander R. Islam in America (New York, 1893).
Some information was taken from the transcript of a speech given by Nadirah Florence Ives Osman at a meeting of Muslims held in Steinway Hall, New York, in November 1943
There seems to be some disagreement on when exactly Webb became a Muslim. A letter from 1886 seems to indicate he was already following the tenants of the religion, but other sources have Webb self-declaring his faith publicly around 1889.
For more on Western New York's religious past see John H. Martin’s wonderful “Saints, Sinners and Reformers: The Burned-Over District Re-Visited” from the Fall 2005 edition of The Crooked Lake Review.

True Collaboration: An Interview with Tim Watkins and Carol May

Editors Note—Unless otherwise noted the major voice of the piece is Tim's, with additions by Carol.

Artists Tim Watkins and Carol May are a married couple who collaborate on public arts projects, including one of their latest, an exhibition and activity area for youngsters at the revamped Brooklyn Children’s Museum.

Watkins, who was born in London, England and grew up in Alberta, Canada, is primarily a sculptor while May, a New Yorker who has an MFA from Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, is a painter.
The couple was kind enough to answer some questions for Look, Read, Listen.


How long have you been together and how long have you been working together?

Carol and I have been married almost 30 years. We met at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. I was the Canadian scholarship, she the New York scholarship. It clicked. We both had careers as independent artists. We both had some success showing in New York and elsewhere, but in the mid 90’s, we began to collaborate, and we realized that we had complementary skills and that if we put our heads and skills together we would have more opportunities. Besides it was fun.

What is your process like when working on public pieces? Is there a give and take between the two of you as well as with clients?

Most Public Artwork commissions begin as a competition. Artists answer open national or regional calls (RFQs), by sending images of past work and a resume. The selection committee chooses finalists, who then submit concept models and drawings. Final selection is based on this preliminary work.

We develop these initial concepts together. Each of us has different strength, so we pass the lead design role back and forth, as the art develops.

Do your artistic backgrounds—painting in the case of Carol and sculpture in Tim’s case—make it easier or more difficult to work together?

We have very different strengths and weaknesses, and by working together we can create better work than either of us could achieve alone.
Carol has strong training in both 2 and 3 dimensional design. I have strong technical skills, and I know material and processes. Together, we have a wide skill set.

Also, something amazing happens when true collaboration occurs.

Both of your personal work seems to have a lot to do with the natural world. Is there a relationship between being in the Hudson Valley and this predilection towards reflecting nature in your work or perhaps were you drawn up here because of the fertile landscape?

Our decision to move our shop from Brooklyn to Athens was a happy solution to the real estate problem in New York City. Until 2004, our shop was in Dumbo, Brooklyn, in a large industrial building. We shared the floor with several other artists and art businesses until the landlord decided he could make much more money by renting the whole floor to West Elm as back office space. Our options were to either rent something else (and fix it up and lose that in 5 years), or buy a property that would work for us as a permanent shop. As far as I am concerned we got very lucky.

I have always loved the landscape of the Hudson Valley, particularly our area, which includes Athens. Having grown up on the prairie in western Canada, I more readily identify with the combination of open space with mountains in the background. I am not a live-in-the forest type of person, I like meadows and fields and old architecture.

As far as our work and the relationship to nature, we have both worked with natural forms for years. A lot of my work was developed looking at the relationships of man, nature and technology, and my resulting exploration of ‘man-made’ nature. Carol’s painting explores natural forms and how they relate to human form, in both a physical and psychological way.

How does your public artwork differ from your personal artwork? Is there a parallel between the two? Does one play off the other or are they completely separate?

Tim: Yes the personal work is distinct from the public work, but the two do feed each other. In art school I started working with installation and ‘public’ sites very early on. I have always been interested in the interaction of viewer and art, and was always more of an ‘art for the masses type of person’.

Carol: Yes there is a parallel between the public and personal artwork. They feed each other, not in all projects, but in many of them. I find that ideas that I am exploring in my personal work are often translated into the media and scale of public art and vice versa.

What has been your favorite public work you have done and why?

Tim: Here we have to answer separately, although both of us feel our best one is yet to come. My favorite is ‘Roadway Boogie Woogie’ at Turkey Lake rest stop on the Florida Turnpike outside of Orlando. I like it because it is big, the mechanics work well and have survived 5 hurricanes, and a lot of people see it. For better or for worse, when you mention the propeller like pieces to anyone in Florida, they know what you are talking about.

Carol: My favorite permanent installation is ‘Blossoms’ at Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter. Although they are functional seating, the forms are sensual and sculptural, and the mosaic color is subtle and effective.

What projects—personal and public—are the two of you currently working on?

Last fall we had all of our scheduled work, but one, disappear into the black hole of the recession/depression. I likened it to having everyone’s wallets snap shut like bear traps. We hit the streets with applications for public art opportunities, rented a booth at the American Children’s Museum conference, and not so quietly freaked out.

I am glad to say that we are now currently working on three new public art commissions, one in Florida, one in Maine, and one in Oregon, and there is ‘chatter’ in regards to other projects.

In theory or in the good old days, it would seem that a downturn like this would allow one an excellent opportunity to dive into the studio work. Unfortunately, we now seem to be encumbered with things like health and liability insurance and a mortgage.