Islam & White Nationalism - A Short Message to The White Man in America (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Cultural History of Islam: Race, Religion & Society
2024
Cup Foods is a Palestinian owned mosque, Halal store, and general corner store that serves the S. Minneapolis community. It is also the site of George Floyd's murder by MPD officer Derek Chauvin. What does the exploitation of Black communities by Arab corner stores have to do with Islamic history at large? How does the premodern effect modern civil rights movements, modern racial stereotypes, current social hierarchies, etc.? This course aims to take a look at how medieval Islam has a genealogy up to current American thought. The relevance of Medieval Islamic culture and civilization to current civil rights movements is evinced by the large number of Black Panther party members, who have not only converted to Islam, but have become Imams. This begs the question: what does Islamic ethics have in common with Black Radicalism? This course aspires to tackle such questions as: What does the Transatlantic slave trade have to do with Islamic slavery? What does medieval European anti-Blackness have to do with current Islamophobia? Why is anti-Black racism inherently tied to Islamophobia and Antisemitism? How do medieval bigotries live on in American culture? How has white supremacy controlled the narrative about Black Muslims in America? What did the civil rights movement of the 60s and the Black Power movement of the 70s have to do with Islam? How has all this history led to the intersection of Islam and Black Radicalism in the current #BlackLivesMatter movement?
NATION OF ISLAM: A Quest for Black Muslim Identity and Nationalism in America Javed Akhatar1
Nation of Islam is an American religious movement, consisting largely of Africans. The movement is essentially a ‘proto-Islamic’ movement, as it utilizes some of the symbols, features, rituals, beliefs, and trapping of mainstream Islam but its central messages are a racial pride, separatism, one Black Muslim identity and Nationalism. They involve the two core ideologies, Black Nationalism and Islam, i.e., Nationalism is necessary to connect to African-American with Africa and Islam will link them spiritually to Africa, Arabia, and Asia. The present research paper will provide an overview of the Black Muslims of America, their different views on Islam, racism, nationalism as well as their unity in the name of the colour, i.e., black. The apprehension between African-American Muslims and Americans as moving between two Arabic concepts of Muslims, the first is ‘asabiya’ and the later ‘ummah’. It further helps us to explain and rationalize the pain, suffering, and discrimination they endured as a racial minority in America. The research paper may possibly be unique of its methodology and relevant to its current context.
ABSTRACT This project employs critical race theory to argues against recent promptings to consider Islamophobia solely as a form of racism in the contemporary United States. In recent years, some scholars have moved to view Islamophobia in comparison to homophobia and others consider it more closely related to Anti-Semitism. Dissenters have repudiated these notions, accurately stating that doing so erases the racial and ethnic components associated with Islamophobia. Others still, have gone to deliberately classify it specifically as racism, yet, limiting the scope of Islamophobia to a racial lens both collapses the racial complexity and erases the racism and prejudice occurring within Muslim populations, as well as eliminates the external religious discrimination that Muslims face. The goal of this project seeks to examine historical racial demographics within the Muslim in the U.S., analyze the complicated relationship between race, religion, ethnicity, class and immigration status, and parse different types of oppression experienced by Muslims due to those identity categories. In his book Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking toward the Third Resurrection, Sherman Jackson outlines the social, legal and political contexts, including the shift in demographics of the Muslim population in the US following the influx of Arab and South Asian Muslims subsequent to the enactment of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 which led to the intra-Muslim racial tensions he defines as “Black Orientalism” and “immigrant supremacy”. Complicating the matter further, the project also introduces the occurrences of intra-racial anti-Muslim discrimination. The essay posits that the current usage of the term Islamophobia is vague and that the term Islamantagonism is a more appropriate designation for the complex set of prejudices and exclusionary practices using ethnographic and historical methods, supported by the work of Zain Abdullah, Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim, Rosemary Corbett, and Esra Özyürek.
In recent times, the topics ‘modern Islam’ and ‘Islam and modernism’ have been frequently discussed in the Islamic world. When people examine them more closely, it becomes very apparent that Islam, both historically and in the future, presents us with an understanding of the most modern way of life and the perfect social model for all people. However, at this point it is useful to clarify what the expression ‘modern Islam’ really means, which is often misunderstood or distorted by some people.
Islam and The Threat of Racism, Tribalism, and Nationalism
2021
We are brothers and humane until race disconnected us, politics divided us, wealth classified us, corrupt system separated us and innovation in religion split us. Midst the many trials and tribulations faced by Muslims around the world, there are the immoral of nationalism, racism and tribalism. It is a wide of the mark to believe that one is superior just by the mere fact that they reside in a certain part of the world, to see their race, culture and traditions to be better than or superior to other races and traditions around the world. This has no basis from the Sharee'ah, Allaah tells us why He created us different, so we can recognize each other. Boasting about lineage and ancestors is forbidden in Islam; We are all descendant of Adam (and Hauwah), and Adam was created from dust. al-Tirmidhi 3955
A Nawawi Foundation Paper Islam and the Cultural Imperative A
F or centuries, Islamic civilization harmonized indigenous forms of cultural expression with the universal norms of its sacred law. It struck a balance between temporal beauty and ageless truth and fanned a brilliant peacock's tail of unity in diversity from the heart of China to the shores of the Atlantic. Islamic jurisprudence helped facilitate this creative genius. In history, Islam showed itself to be culturally friendly and, in that regard, has been likened to a crystal clear river. Its waters (Islam) are pure, sweet, and life-giving but-having no color of their own-reflect the bedrock (indigenous culture) over which they flow. In China, Islam looked Chinese; in Mali, it looked African. Sustained cultural relevance to distinct peoples, diverse places, and different times underlay Islam's long success as a global civilization. The religion became not only functional and familiar A Islam and the Cultural Imperative at the local level but dynamically engaging, fostering stable indigenous Muslim identities and allowing Muslims to put down deep roots and make lasting contributions wherever they went. By contrast, much contemporary Islamist 1 rhetoric falls far short of Islam's ancient cultural wisdom, assuming at times an unmitigated culturally predatory attitude. Such rhetoric and the movement ideologies that stand behind it have been deeply influenced by Western revolutionary dialectic and a dangerously selective retrieval and reinterpretation of Islamic scripture in that light. At the same time, however, the Islamist phenomenon is, to no small degree, a byproduct of the grave cultural dislocation and dysfunction of the contemporary Muslim world. Culture-Islamic or otherwise-provides the basis of social stability but, paradoxically, can itself only flourish in stable societies and will inevitably break down in the confusion of social disruption and turmoil. Today, the Muslim world retains priceless relics of its former cultural splendor, but, in the confusion of our times, the wisdom of the past is not always understood and many of its established norms and older cultural patterns no longer appear relevant to Muslims or seem to offer solutions. Where the peacock's tail has not long since folded, it retains little of its former dazzle and fullness; where the cultural river has not dried up altogether, its waters seldom run clear. Human beings generate culture naturally like spiders spin silk, but unlike spiders' webs the cultures people construct are not always adequate, especially when generated unconsciously, in confusion, under unfavorable conditions, or without proper direction. Unsurprisingly, Muslim immigrants to America remain attached to the lands they left behind but hardly if ever bring with them the full pattern of the once healthy cultures of their past, which-if they had remained intact-would have reduced their incentive to emigrate in the first place. Converts-overwhelm-ingly African-American-are often alienated from their own deep indigenous roots and native cultural sensibility through the destructive impact of culturally predatory Islamist ideologies from abroad. All the same, Muslims in America have been silently forging sub-cultural identities over recent decades around our mosques, in Islamic schools, at home, and on college campuses. 2 Some of these developments are promising. The upcoming generation has produced a number of notable Muslim American writers, poets, rap artists, and stand-up comedians. We experiment with dress (special dresses from denim, for example) and coin words (like fun-damentalist) as parts of our daily speech. Cross-cultural and interracial marriages have increased and show that many Muslim Americans now find themselves more Muslim and American than Indian, Pakistani, Syrian, Egyptian, or anything else. In other ways too, the young generation shows signs of cultural maturity and is connecting on positive levels often unthinkable to their parents. Many of them are comfortable with their American identity, while cultivating a healthy understanding of their religion, pride in their past, connection to the present, and a positive view of the future. But, despite positive signs, much of the cultural creation taking place over recent years around the mosque, school, home, and campus has been without direction, confused, unconscious, or, worse yet, subconsciously compelled by irrational fears rooted in ignorance of the dominant culture and a shallow, parochial understanding of Islam as a counter-cultural identity religion. 3 The results-especially if mixed with culturally predatory Islamist ideology-may look more like a cultural no-man's-land than the makings of a successful indigenous Muslim identity.
A New Framework for the Unity of Muslims: Some Reflections
Afkar Research Journal of Islamic Studies, 2019
The phenomenon of the presence of Muslims all over the world by naturalization and migration is being understood in terms of a new concept, "Transnational Islam" for the united Muslim Ummah. The sense of the unity of Muslim Ummah has been always integral to Muslim conscience throughout the ages. Transnational Islam, it is expected, being a modern rubric, will create, on one side, the sense of oneness of Ummah in the presence of so many nationalities and, on the other, loyalty to individual countries. It would be helpful to face multi-dimensional challenges posed by the modern world for Muslims and humanity. To face and overcome the impending challenges, the Muslims need to study their current phenomena afresh but in the light of the teachings and spirit of the Qur'Én and Sunnah. They also need to come up with a realistic and practical framework. This proposal, therefore, identifies obstacles and suggests as solution, the regeneration of the revivalist intellectual tradition of Islam and its framework.
Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West, 2nd ed.
Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West. Second Edition, edited by R. Tottoli (with introduction, pp. 1-18, London – New York, Routledge, 2022, xv + 558 pp., 2022
With new topics and contributions, this updated second edition discusses the history and contemporary presence of Islam in Europe and America. The book debates the relevance and multifaceted participation of Muslims in the dynamics of Western societies, challenging the changing perception on both sides. Collating over 30 chapters, written by experts from around the world, the volume presents a wide range of perspectives. Case studies from the Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula between the Middle Ages and the modern age set off the Handbook, along with an outline of Muslims in America up to the twentieth century. The second part covers concepts around new conditions in terms of consolidating identities, the emergence of new Muslim actors, the appearance of institutions and institutional attitudes, the effects of Islamic presence on the arts and landscapes of the West, and the relational dynamics like ethics and gender. Exploring the influence of Islam, particularly its impact on society, culture and politics, this interdisciplinary volume is a key resource for policymakers, academics and students interested in the history of Islam, religion and the contemporary relationship between Islam and the West.