Susan’s initial research on American engagement with the Muslim world explored the alternative religions of 1920s Chicago, and the complex cultures and politics surrounding an African-American group called the Moorish Science Temple of America. Their struggle to get across specific ideas about the non-Western world, black American identity and Islam - without being attacked or ignored - showed that the process of communication was governed by unspoken but important rules about who could claim to speak for the black community, for Islam, or for God.