This book is a biographical analysis of Alexander Russell Webb, who should be taken as the first native American to narrate his conversion to Islam. The book explores his story of spiritual journey from Christianity to Islam, which later became a source and a model for extensive native conversion to Islam in the United States. Abd-Allah's work is a unique type of American studies in which the majority society is represented in the mirror of gradual emergence of native minority society – Native American Muslim. However, this book is a leading reflection of Victorian America in all its typical natures – cultural and educational as well as political and economic elements. In this period, collective changes are illustrated by the author as a vital cause for many transformations in relation to factors such as ethnicity, race, gender, age group, class, family structure and religious affiliation.

Webb's story is important for two significant reasons: first, it duplicates a changing period of time in which Victorian America transformed into modern America and lifestyles moved from the agrarian premodern to massive industrialization and city living; second, a serious shift took place in terms of the level of attachment to the Church and to religious beliefs as well as the world view of American values. This book explains how “religious dogmatism,” which played an important role in the emergence of the Civil War, caused both agnosticism and secularism. As a result it paradoxically searches for truth in other religions and how the emergence of theosophy and spiritualism became a momentous feature of the “post-Civil War era.”

In this book, five aspects of Webb as a moderated American Muslim who was looking for peace in a pluralistic society and who mediated the shift from Victorian America to Modern America have been articulated: (i) the photogenic character of Webb, which is considered one of the major factors in the creation of his vital position in contrast to Victorian American culture in which many portrait-sitters never smiled – Webb's photographs came out remarkably free of rigidity and crushing dignity; (ii) liberal orientation in political approach; (iii) theosophical orientation as a result of liberal thought; (iv) Webb's orientalism as a dialectical platform for understanding the differences between the West and the East; (v) the nostalgic approach of Webb to the First World's Parliament of Religions, which started on 10 September 1893 and concluded on 27 September in the Chicago's World Fair, and explains the “Webbian tradition” in structuring “American Islam” in a pluralistic society. This can be seen as a nostalgic conclusion, which ironically resembles the policy of post-9/11 more than a century after the clash of religions in the era of Victorian America.