Fatimah Fanusie is an independent scholar and historian of 19th and 20th century American religion whose work is at the heart of an evolving reappraisal of the study of African American Islam, the modern Civil Rights Movement and Islam in the West. She is the Justice Leader Fellowship Director at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Towson, MD and Historian Consultant for the Howard Thurman Historical home in Daytona Beach, Florida. Dr. Fanusie’s scholarship traces the development of Islam in America during the first half of the twentieth century through an exploration of the Indian Ahmadiyya missionary movement and places the Nation of Islam within a comparative Islamic framework. Her research also examines the relationship of bebop and jazz musicians to the spiritual and cultural transformations African Americans underwent from the end of World War II until the present and the influence of India on the 20th century religious thought and liberation practice of African Americans. Dr. Fanusie’s publications include the article “Ahmadi, Beboppers, Veterans and Migrants: African-American Islam in Boston, 1948-1963”, ed. Ted Trost and Wilson J. Moses, The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion, New York, NY: Macmillan-Palgrave Press, January 2008, 49-69; “African Americans” entry in Volume I of the Encyclopedia of Islam in the United States, ed. Joselyn Cesari, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007, 13-15 and “Elijah Muhammad” in Religious Leadership: A Reference Handbook, ed. Sharon Henderson Callahan, Seattle, WA: SAGE Publications, 2013, 634-638. Dr. Fanusie received her BA in History and Arabic from Lincoln University, her MA in American History from Tufts University, and her PhD in American History from Howard University in 2008. She resides in Columbia, MD with her husband and three children.