I had mixed feelings about this week’s reading. For one thing, I would very much call Malcom X an extremist. The reason why I say this is because I comparing the readings last week of MLK. One of the post obivious differences between the two of them is King’s stance on passivism, and Malcom X’s conviction that the race has to completely rid themselves of “white men” in order to thrive as a society. For me, Black Man’s History was hard to get through. Maybe I am missing something that was in plain sight, but I got the impression that Malcom X was not fond of labels whatsoever. I also find it interesting that in this speech, Malcom X’s focal point centers on African Americans understanding their history, but he seems almost offended by the concept of “Black Africa” which goes against pretty much the mainstream thought of the era. I think for many African Americans, being able to link themselves back to Africa, and incorporate those beliefs into who they were as individuals. I also get the sense that for Malcom X, to bring blacks and whites together on the same grounds of equality was his nightmare. In Black Man’s History, Malcom X coins this phrase a lot, but I do very much get the sense that in his eyes, the best thing for blacks was to be self-governing, they could no longer show mercy or really depend on whites to help them, so he very much empathized that the black community needed to only support each other. In addition, I kind of feel like Malcom X manipulated his followers bit. As we can see from the Sernet reading, he knew that money didn’t really matter wealth wasn’t the number one concern for his followers. He knew his audience and I don’t doubt that he very much used that to his advantage. I do understand where he was coming from though. Having only been familiar with one of his speeches prior, I did still get that, “By any means necessary” vibe from him and that’s unsettling for me.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fard+muhammad&oq=fard+&aqs=chrome.1.69i64j0l5.12605j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#)

This chapter taught me a lot about the separation in the African American Muslim community during this time. WD Muhammad does a great job describing the views and beliefs of Fard Muhammad and his close relationship to Elijah Muhammad. I found it interesting how Fard Muhammad views white people and how he wanted to completely separate African Americans from and rename African Americans. While reading my book for the book report that was due back in October there was no mention of Fard Muhammad at all. This may be due to the fact that when Muhammad came to “power”, Malcolm X had already left the Nation. This is was previously stated in the prologue and Muhammad gained “power” after the assassination of Malcolm X.

Out of all the readings, Malcolm X’s speech, “Black Man’s History,” was the most interesting to me. In the beginning, I didn’t see Malcolm X as the most polished or charismatic speaker, like Martin Luther King for example, but a lot of the ideas he put forward were interesting and explained in such a way that they were actually believable. His explanations about how christianity and judaism weren’t God’s religions strangely made sense. I still don’t see him as the most polished, and as I read on, a lot of the stuff he said stopped making sense, and I was a little weirded out, but still interested. If i’m being honest, The Nation of Islam reminds me of a cult. But still, some of the things he said still resonated with me, like his explanation for why he couldn’t say “all white people,”

“And this is true; this is how they do it. They take one little word out of what you say, ignore all the rest, and then begin to magnify it all over the world to make you look like what you actually aren’t. And I’m very used to that.”

It just reminded a lot of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the way people reacted to it.

The essay starts off with a feud on “real” and “fake” Muslims. According to William Cummings, the real Muslims are Indonesian and everyone else that practices it is fake (pg. 660).  And this would begin the “who’s the real ancestors of this religion” question that is popping up more and more. As in many other storytelling of religion, there is an origin story of the black Muslims sort of similar to the black Jews. Apparently in West Africa was where you could find the first black Muslim.

Drew Ali writes how black people were descended from the Asian race and that their natural religion was Islam (pg. 666). He blamed Africans for being enslaved because they were not as Islamic as their parents and grandparents. I personally do not agree with this. I remember reading somewhere that if the parents did a wrong, then their children would suffer. But that was in the Bible and since we are discussing Islam that would not be the case here. I am also confused on how many religions were the first and ideal religion of a certain race.

This guy Omar or Umar was the first to oppose Islam and did some other wrongdoings. He beat his servant when he found out that she was Islamic. Then during his tyrant, he states that he has to kill the Prophet. Some person tells him that his sister is a Muslim and he hits her. He feels bad and apologizes, then she gives him the Qur’an and he reads it. Omar goes to the Prophet to embrace Islam and it is a happy ending. This story has an okay ending, but Omar does not face any consequences for going around hitting people and saying that he is going to kill the Prophet. Surely that would bring some sort of punishment, but no he gets off scotch free. The only bad thing that happens to him is the feeling of regret for hitting “his own flesh and blood” (pg. 671). This is clearly different than the story o Job from the Bible or any Bible story for that matter.

The idea that Black Muslims are normal because it can be inferred that Africans were Asians that dissipated in the sun for generations makes me wonder. If we are going that far back, then we can hold up the idea that everyone is technically African because that is where the first human emerged from. I think the idea of Africans historically being Islamic is accurate. The problem I have is the idea that it seems as if “Black Muslims” are only accounted for because of that reason. People should be allowed to practice whatever religion they want regardless of skin color, and I feel like the idea as a whole is just a justification of why it’s “okay” for Blacks to be Muslims. That’s just my discrepancy with Drew Ali’s majority idea that Eli Muhammad believed in. Maybe I’ve been reading too much into it and that is why I feel so strongly. On another note, prior to Curtis’ essay, I thought that Black Islam started with W.D. Fard. I thought that he created the entire movement. I thought he was the conductor of Islam within the Black community in the US. I wish Curtis went into more detail about Fard. His role was a lot more vital in this topic than the three lines he was allotted.

I thought this week’s reading was very interesting. I liked the part where he says that “you cannot teach the ‘heavens’ to a society that has not yet been formed in the earth.” He states that for people to comprehend religion, they must first have a solid society and foundation on the earth. He goes on to compare the Bilalian people to Adam and Eve in that they had no basis for their society, and thus needy help establishing their earthly lives before contemplating their spiritual lives. This logic makes sense, but I’m not sure about the comparison to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were the first two people on earth and had no society or concept of life at all. While the Bilalian people during this time certainly did not have as solid of a society as many other peoples, they at least had a very basic foundation for society and life, making the two situations actually very different.

In chapter 52, Wallace D. Muhammad talks about how he and the nation of Islam want to be free in the new world. All they wanted was their own self-government. I have found this chapter to be interesting because how Wallace D. Muhammad and nation of Islam make that push to become their own country. Muhammad did not push to make Islam their own country just by fighting and doing anything violent. In my opinion, he did it in a more wiser way. He taught the nation of Islam how something you start of with is weak and small and then it grows and gets stronger over time. I think that lesson helped the nation of Islam become free and have their own self-government.

“I don’t think we should run around trying to love somebody who doesn’t love us.”

Malcolm X, February, 1965.

Like Christianity, many African-American Muslims find their religious histories rooted in Africa. In all of the readings, there are links to Africa. Though they varied, depending on the branch. For Nation of Islam, seeing the black man as the “original man” is instrumental to the faith. Also within this “black consciousness movement” are the ideas of “Yacub’s History” seen in both the Curtis essay and in the words of Malcolm X. In Malcolm X’s later speech, after his conversion to orthodox Islam from Nation of Islam, he said there were “four different types of people in the Western Hemisphere who all have Africa as common heritage.”

There are an estimated 660,000 – 825,000 African-American Muslims (~23%) in the United States. Predominantly, they practice Sunni Islam (orthodox). There are also those that follow teachings of the Nation of Islam, the Moorish Science Temple of America, the Five-Percent Nation, the United Nation of Islam, and Ahmadiyya. Muslims in the United States are diverse. African-American Muslims, specifically, have “constructed what is ultimately an imagined communal identity…this is dynamic, not stable; negotiated, not given” (Curtis, 661). We’ve also discussed the idea of identity, and using Africa as an identity-marker, but some Muslims decided to use their religion as their first identifier: “Islam solves the identity crisis.” The idea is that religion is so powerful it is the only thing needed, because it’s all that God asks of you.

Last year, I went to a local mosque for a paper. While I was there, I discussed orthodox Islam with the woman I met, Aishah Hassan. I remember her telling me that in the United States, a lot of mosques have been converted from Nation of Islam places of worship to that of orthodox Islam. She made a comment along the lines that they realized they were not the “true” Islam. This could have a connection to Malcolm X’s own conversion and transformation from Nation of Islam to orthodox Islam. I’m also left wondering the connection between orthodox Islam’s history in the United States, its high concentration in the Midwest, and the origins of Nation of Islam and Moorish Science Temple in Detroit and Chicago. But at the end of the day, who are we to decide which is right and which is wrong? If it answers questions people have, gives them something to believe in, are we right to claim they are wrong for believing in it? 

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Nation of Islam Comic Strip by Majied

Illustration by Majied

There were 2 readings that really stuck out to me this week, the speech by Malcolm X called “A Black Man’s History” and the essay by Edward E. Curtis IV called “African American Islamization Reconsidered: Black History Narratives and the Muslim Identity”. In most history classes you take when you are younger, Islam in America is always looked at like it is a solely African American religion and not a more widespread and widely practiced religion that it is. We look at Islam like the Nation of Islam is the same thing when they have different objectives. The speech “A Black Man’s History” was given when Malcolm X was in the Nation of Islam and had not yet converted to Islam. He looks at the Nation of Islam of like it is one of freedom for only the blacks. He says “The white man doesn’t (separate race and religion). The white man never has separated Christianity from white, nor has he separated the white man from Christianity. When you hear the white man bragging, ‘I’m a Christian,’ he’s bragging about being a white man (Malcolm X),” He argues the point that African Americans never had their own religion like that and makes the point that the Nation of Islam should be that religion for them. Curtis is making the point that over time many nations have been “Islamicized” and that the Nation of Islam was an Islamicized religion. It did not follow the traditional Muslim values but still was kept under the same name and the “Religious values were of secondary importance (Curtis, 661).” Malcolm X later in his life converts to Islam and changed his practices and values but normally in history books the Malcolm X who practiced under the Nation of Islam is displayed,

First off I have never heard of Santeria as a religion. I have only heard of the song. Here’s the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMJ5mgEzSwM

Although, its members were Afro-Cuban so it would make sense about why I have not heard of it. Second, Santeria has many different names. I am not sure why there is a lot of different names, but there are.  Anyway, I think Santeria is my favorite religion to be discussed so far. It is interesting that the women were leaders and in charge. Several women thought of God as feminine and being the Mother instead of the Father. There is a separate book of rules to follow along with other names to call God and the Devil, this reminds me of the 7 pillars.

I have read some parts of the Holy Bible and those parts that I have read confused me. But this backstory of Santeria had me thrown for a loop. Talking about sisters, Orisha, Ogun, and a whole bunch of other “O” names, it was hard to remember who did what. After finishing the chapter, I can compare Santeria to more of a mythology standpoint. It kind of reminded me of when I read the Percy Jackson series.

Towards the end, we get to where the blood sacrifices are taken place. So the women are in charge of the life giving ceremonies and men give death. I am guessing that the men sacrifice their own blood or blood from an animal. I do not know why I thought that they did not do blood sacrifices, I only thought that the Aztecs did that.