Black Muslims in the US

History, Politics, and the Struggle of a Community

S. Rashid

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137337498
• eBook ISBN: 9781137337511
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Black Muslims in the U.S. seeks to address deficiencies in current scholarship about black Muslims in American society, from examining the origins of Islam among African-Americans to acknowledging the influential role that black Muslims play in contemporary U.S. society.

I

A Theoretical and Historical Critique

1

The Hidden Transcripts

He is the First and the Last and the Manifest and the Hidden, and He is the Knower of all things.

—Quran (57:3)

This chapter is the first of three chapters in part I of this study that offers a theoretical and historical critic of the WOI theory, the dominant paradigm governing Islam in America studies. It introduces the study’s basic themes of struggle, flight, and community, and the critique of the dominant paradigm’s assertion that Islam among blacks in the United States disappeared or virtually disappeared during 1870–1930. Chapter 2 provides preliminary evidence based on original field research of the possible survival of political Islam and Islamic institutions in early Florida previously ignored by WOI theory. Chapter 3 rounds out the first half of this study by exploring important divergent perspectives. The second half of this study, beginning with chapter 4, continues to examine divergent perspectives on Islam in America but with emphasis on black Muslim attitudes and thought. Chapter 5 examines 21 cases of prominent individuals associated with blacks and political Islam with emphasis on black Muslim political behavior. Chapter 6 compares the impact of US policy on minorities including black Muslims in the United States with Muslims, overseas. Chapter 7 offers detailed conclusions.

Because the dominant paradigm treats the word “America” as though it were synonymous with the United States, and arbitrarily limits its domain of inquiry to the twentieth century with a primary focus on Middle Eastern immigrants, large portions of Islamic history in the Americas have been eliminated by default. Gone are those Muslims “faded away” by the dominant paradigm, who came to the Americas as part of the “first wave,” and gone are the influences, institutions, and cultural artifacts they brought, with one major exception. Black Muslims are universally recognized as the fastest growing Muslim population in the United States and are predicted to become the dominant religion in black urban by the second decade of the twenty-first century. To what can this be attributed? The dominant paradigm has been unable to explain this development, especially since for decades it has argued that the legacy of Islam among blacks has ceased to exist. Despite these developments, WOI theory still manages to overshadow all other versions of Islam in America in the largest and most culturally and ethnically diverse community of Muslims in the world.

Because the legacy of Islam amongst blacks in the United States is assumed to have failed, the presence and dramatic growth of Islam among indigenous black Muslims by default is attributed to Middle Eastern immigrants rather than to indigenous Muslim influence. Muslims in the United States continue to live in distinctly separate communities with very little integration across ethnic lines. The estrangement between indigenous black and immigrant Muslims is well-documented in the literature. Yet, despite these fairly well-known conditions, the survival and growth of Islam among black Muslims is typically attributed to Middle Eastern immigrants rather than to the more obvious source of indigenous black Muslims themselves, because the latter is assumed to have faded or virtually faded away. But evidence presented in Appendix I and II challenges this view.

The Primary Focus of this Study

The primary focus of this study is threefold. First, it seeks to examine the limitations in WOI theory, the dominant paradigm governing Islam in America studies as it pertains to the survival of Islam among blacks in the United States. Second, it attempts to demonstrate the survival of Islam among blacks in the United States. Third, it demonstrates the influential role that black Muslims continue to play in contemporary US society. The survival and influence of the “first wave” of Islam in America, as it is called by WOI theory, which includes African Muslims who first arrived in the Americas from Spain (moriscos, ladinos) and later more massively from West Africa is believed to have faded away before becoming permanently established in the United States. Only with the establishment of Islam by subsequent “waves” of immigrants from the Middle East after 1967 would the seeds of Islam in America be permanently established in the United States.

The marginalization of the legacy of Islam among blacks in the United States results in part from WOI theory’s arbitrary practice of limiting the domain of Islam in America studies to twentieth-century Middle Eastern immigrants to North America. Such a view precludes the possibility that indigenous black Muslims themselves may have played a role in the survival and dramatic growth of Islam among urban blacks in the contemporary United States. Critics may be correct in the assertion that blacks themselves may be partially to blame for black marginalization given the emphasis black Muslims place on black separatism as a response to perceived oppression including racism.

But it is important to note from the outset that both immigrant and black Muslims in the United States today adhere to the same basic beliefs that center around the five basic pillars of Islam, the tradition (sunna), and sayings (hadith), and pray at the same mosques, celebrate together the same Muslim holidays, and where social class is not a factor, participate in the same organizations (e.g, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), which was not always the case as most, though not all, blacks prior to 1975 remained separate from immigrant Muslims and subscribed to the ideology of the quasi-Islamic NOI.

Since 1975, the vast majority of black Muslims have repudiated quasi-Islam and has fully embraced mainstream Sunni Islam. Despite this change, differences between the two communities remain primarily over doctrinal interpretations (e.g., hijra), approaches to tradition (sunna), socioeconomic class disparities, and perceived racism. Full resolution of these issues is beyond the scope of this study, to be sure. Of primary concern is the need to reconcile the view that the legacy of Islam first introduced to the Americas by blacks and others suddenly disappeared despite the fact that the contemporary survival and dramatic resurgence of Sunni Islam among blacks remains largely unexplained. While both sides may be entitled to their own doctrinal interpretation, neither is entitled to their own facts. This study focuses on the latter and not the former.

During a January 2012 C-Span book TV interview with Brian Lamb, the WOI theory’s leading advocate, an Arab Christian describes how she first arrived in the United States from Syria in 1963. Two other proponents of the dominant paradigm frequently referred to in this study, Diouf and Nyang, first arrived in the United States in 1980 and 1979 making each of them either too young or physically not present to observe the disappearance or virtual disappearance of Islamic practice among millions of indigenous blacks during the period 1870–1930. Even if indirect methods of observation had been used, it is difficult to imagine how the observation of a negative would be possible to substantiate. This seems especially true when the phenomenon in question is a phenomenon as inherently personal, private, and intimate as religious belief and practice.

If a cornerstone of scientific examination is empirical observation, then the inability of scholars to observe empirically the disappearance of Islam in the United States is problematical. This limitation negates the scientific reliability and validity of the claim of WOI theory that early Islam among blacks either largely or entirely disappeared. If empirical observation is the very essence of science, then these WOI theory assertions belong more to the realm of interpretation and belief than to the realm of scientific fact.

In addition to this, the argument advanced by Phillip Jenkins toward the end of this chapter that evidence of blacks in Islamic history is “thin” is refuted by the evidence of a legacy of Islam among blacks as documented in the history literature in studies by Gomez (2005), Jackson (2005), Dannin (2002), Diouf (1998), and Turner (1997, 2003). Indeed, the legacy of Islam among blacks can be traced from the time of Prophet Muhammad to the present, and across six continents including North America.

The evidence offered in this study suggests that Islam among blacks is neither a “romantic” illusion nor a hostile ideology as suggested by Pipes who describes prominent black Muslims as “haters” of their own country. To the contrary, evidence exists of Muslims who continue to play prominent roles in service to their country. Accounts of these Muslims as presented in chapter 6 challenge Pipes’s negative stereotypes. Also, despite the fact that proponents of immigrant Islam in the United States continue to refer to them as “converts” in complete disregard for their collective role as one of the founders of Islam in the Americas, this study offers a more accurate depiction of black Muslims.

Because the meaning of jihad, hijra, and ummah—the basic themes of this study, require a basic knowledge of Islam, this chapter will offer a brief introduction to the religion of Islam as a precursor to a properly informed and judiciously documented analysis of the unseen aspects of political Islam. Just as heavenly shadows obscure a full view of the moon to create the image of a crescent—the universal symbol of Islam—human ignorance and arrogance may combine to cast earthly shadows that similarly impede our full understanding of Islam’s presence on earth.

The Religious Underpinnings of Political Islam

For most Muslims, understanding the religion of Islam is essential to understanding political Islam. This section introduces the religion of Islam. Readers already familiar with Islam may wish to proceed to the next section of this chapter.

The definition of Islam most often embraced by Muslims themselves is that Islam means submission to the will of God (Allah). Public confession of faith or the Shahadah, sincerely uttered, is the minimum requirement for becoming a Muslim. The Muslim confession of faith entails publicly declaring: la-illa-ha il-Allah, Muhammad-ar-Rasulullah, which means, there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.

Islam is the second largest and fastest growing religion in the United States, Europe, and the world. It is embraced by one-seventh of the world’s population. Estimates of the number of Muslims in the United States vary widely. A study in the April 27, 2001 New York Times estimates the number of Muslims in the United States to be between 6 and 7 million people. President Barack Obama’s Cairo University address to the Muslim world in 2009 refers to 7 million Muslims in the United States. A study sponsored by the American Muslim Council estimates the number of Muslims in America at five million in 1992, seven million in 1996 and eight million in 1999. The study goes on to note that the disproportionately high number of black Muslim converts to Islam in the United States requires an explanation.¹

If a Muslim is one who submits to the will of God, then even certain practicing Christians may be viewed as essentially Muslim. Afroz describes how Morisco and African Muslims in early America skillfully used this broad definition of Muslim to pretend to be Christian while practicing Islam in secret. Deception to conceal one’s true beliefs is called dissimulation by Brown, Gomez, and Perry,² and “systematic deceit” by Harvey.³ But whatever one calls it, taqiyah, the name afforded to this practice by Shia Muslims, is believed by some to be authorized by the quranic verse: “Allah will not call you to account for what is vain in your oaths, but He will call you to account for what your hearts have earned.” (Quran 2:25).

Western observers frequently use the word “syncretism” to denote the fusion of disparate religious faiths. But Islam incorporates Christian and Jewish elements as part of its fundamental creed. This practice is authorized by the quranic verse: “We make no difference between any of His messengers,” (Quran 2:285) and therefore between any of their religions. Although the Quran depicts the religion of Islam as Allah’s “perfected” religion (Quran 5:3 and 3:84), it simultaneously accepts the divinity of the other Abrahamic faiths. Therefore, what most Western scholars regard as syncretism, Muslims regard as distinctive paths to a common monotheistic faith.

As a fundamental element of faith, Muslims accept Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the angels, Abraham, divine judgment, and many other basic Christian doctrines. But ignorance of this and other basic features of Islam often cause non-Muslims to see basic Muslim beliefs and practices as evidence of religious syncretism. But, as we shall see, what would often pass for Christianity in early America in reality may have been crypto or secret Muslim practice. Thus, ignorance of Islam more often than not must have left non-Muslims unable to tell where one Abrahamic religion begins and another one ends.

The practice of Islam rests on five pillars of Islam, which for the most part are commonly shared by Muslims and Christians albeit in different forms and on different schedules. These are: (1) Shahadah, or public confession of faith and belief in God and Muhammad as the Messenger of God, (2) Salat, the most visible symbol of Islam involving worship five times daily facing Mecca, at fixed times and under strictly specified conditions, (3) Zakat, or almsgiving to the needy, (4) Sawm, or fasting during the month of Ramadan, during the daylight hours by able-bodied Muslims, and (5) Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in one’s lifetime for those who are financially and physically able. An October 30, 2009 New York Times account describes the hajj as the single largest gathering on the planet every year of 2.5 million people from 160 countries.

While the shahadah is an affirmation of, submission to, and belief in God, it is also a rejection of the idea of submission to anyone or anything other than Allah. This is best captured by the equally common translation of the shahadah which reads, “There is none worthy of worship except God (Allah), and Muhammad is the Message of God (Allah).” In either translation, the essential element is the Arabic word la, which mea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• Part I   A Theoretical and Historical Critique
• Part II   An Alternative Portrayal of Islam and Muslims
• Appendix I
• Appendix II
• Notes
• Index