Muhammad Adeyinka Mendes

Muhammad Adeyinka Mendes, known affectionately as Adé, is an American Muslim leader, imam, educator, and author. He leads the Bilal Spiritual Center for Peace and the Arts and founded the Nibras Foundation, initiatives that nurture spiritual growth, multicultural engagement, and community healing. He co-founded the African-American Healing, Ancestry, and Development (AHAD) Collective to reclaim and celebrate Black Muslim histories and legacies. Born in Dayton, Ohio in 1975, he was the son of a Christian African-American mother and a theist Nigerian father. In childhood, his family moved to Lagos, Nigeria, where he learned to appreciate diverse religious traditions and African cultural heritage. After returning to the U.S. for high school, he experienced a profound spiritual calling during a trip to Jerusalem at age seventeen and embraced Islam deeply. He has pursued classical Islamic learning since 2001, studying Arabic, Qur’an, Hadith, theology, and figurative arts in Syria, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, and Senegal. He received ijāzahs in sacred sciences and became an imam at centers including Masjid al-Mo’mineen in Georgia and the Muslim Center of Greater Princeton in New Jersey. Adé is a gifted speaker and teacher. His lectures explore spiritual purification, rites of passage, peace-building, and Black Muslim cultures. He also translated and published *The Spirits of Black Folk: Sages Through the Ages*, a text that revives early African Muslim wisdom. He currently serves as Founding Director of SacredService for Human Liberation and teaches Arabic at the Fawakih Institute in Atlanta. Today, Muhammad Adeyinka Mendes resides in New Jersey with his wife and seven children. He continues to walk a path of service, guiding individuals and communities toward spiritual authenticity, justice, and cultural healing.