The Muslim American of African descent has a cultural and religious identity that has survived in spite of external and internal assaults.
Indeed, no other socio-ethno-religious minority in America has had its sense of “being” so challenged.
Nonetheless they managed to carve out an identity and culture that is unique and specific only to African American Muslims.
African American Muslim cultural distinctiveness is found in many personal name choices and spellings.
As well as: dress styles of men and women, artistic development, marriage rites and practices, politics, and spirituality. Even something as simple as “the bean pie” is distinct and unique to the African American Muslim.
The influence of African American Muslims in outer society is prolific.
It is seen in attempts at Islamic names in the Black community, music and spoken word with political and uplifting messages, Afro-centric clothing like kufi caps or turbans, and even slang as inner city youths refer to their friends as their “sahaab.”
Not An Easy Task
But this was no easy task. The assault on the development of American Muslims from within American society has been a steady stream of challenges.
Over a 600-year period, three strategic events have produced the most severe and lasting challenges to maintaining and defining the African American Muslim identity:
- The transatlantic slave trade.
- The early nationalist Islamic movements.
- The massive immigration of Muslims from the developing world and their impact on outer society.
The Birth of Systemic Racism
Historically, those Americans of African descent, known as “Black” or “African Americans,” were involuntary immigrants to the Americas.
This forced displacement through the slave trade resulted in a systematic and conscious attempt to remove any remnants that would make these forced migrants less human and worthy of dignity and respect than the human traffickers and their accomplices.
However, even with government authorized institutions to destroy the cultural and religious identity of the Africans.
Still, these suppressed Muslims left little bread crumbs or pebbles of Islam for future generations. This included:
- Tomb stones with the forefinger raised to symbolize the Oneness of Allah.
- Writings in Arabic that were thought to be Biblical verses, but were in fact Quranic quotes and verses.
- Folktale stories passed down to children.
- Architectural design that reflected Islamic geometrical patterns.
- And even names like Bailey for Bilal or Salem for Saleem.
But the greatest maintenance of Muslim identity from these Africans was the constant influx of new Muslims from Africa. African Muslims could tell those in bondage or astray information about their true self.
With the abolition of slavery in the late 1800s the newly freed slaves attempted to maintain themselves in a nation that held them in disdain.
There was never a nationwide or worldwide apology or remorse for inflicting a three-continent atrocity and genocide upon these people.
A Nation Within a Nation
The newly free African Americans found freedom difficult without education, land, money, and human and social rights. And most importantly, they had no protection.
The wholesale lynching and murder of African American people was the norm. Even today, many older African Americans can relate a story of the horrible death of a distant family member.
So in the early 1900s, African Americans developed two distinct reactions to generations of mistreatment at the hands of so-called “civilized” “Christian” white men: fear and acceptance of their situation or resentment and anger at the situation.
Struggling to survive, African Americans began to build their own nation within a nation.
They banded together without government assistance and bought land, started “freedom” schools to teach their own young, opened what is today known as “historically black colleges,” and formed their own banks, businesses, beauty products, and all black towns.
Finding the Fitrah
It was in this environment of the larger African American community establishing itself that Islam reemerged.
Many of the early Islamic movements in the U.S. have been characterized as pseudo-Islamic because of their blatantly nationalistic overtones.
But, most African American Muslim early Islamic movements were by nature militant and nationalistic.
The people embracing Islam were categorically rejecting America, its racist institutions, culture, and politics. Even Christianity was rejected and seen as the catalyst for institutionalized slavery.
They were overwhelming to those who resented the injustices inflicted on their own.
The rejection of all anti-Black norms drove African Americans to embrace or examine other religions after generations of Christian indoctrination.
By this time, there were Muslim immigrants from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Out of necessity, they were isolationists.
These Muslims made no attempt to introduce Islam to African Americans, even though they might have had businesses in the Black community.
African American Muslims of the Last Century
Those few movements that did capture African American attention usually worked with the premise that Islam could change the condition of Black Americans.
These Islamic movements of the 1900’s produced the largest lasting African American Muslim cultural and religious identity that overflows into today.
That identity was that one was voluntarily a Muslim, indeed, as one nationalist group declared, “a righteous Muslim.”
This was in sharp contrast to the nationwide identity of Black Americans at the time as ex-slaves or victims.
The early Islamic movements reiterated that an injustice had been done to the “so-called Negro,” and that it was not rooted in the Bible as a descendant of Ham but rather in the jinn-like character of man to oppress and subjugate another.
During this time from the early 1900s to the 1970s, the African American Muslim became visible to the outer society in their politics, civic engagement, dress, marriage habits and mannerisms.
Today, we continue to break down barriers, insisting on our rightful place in this society.
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