“You are all from Adam, and Adam is from dust. There is no virtue for an Arab over a non-Arab, nor for a non-Arab over an Arab, nor for a white person over a Black person, nor for a Black person over a white person, except by righteousness.”
— The Prophet's ﷺ Last Sermon (At-Tirmidhi)
Black Muslims, especially those on college campuses, are both hyper-visible and invisible. Standing at the unenviable intersection of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia under the shadow of the ivory tower, Black Muslim students draw micro-aggressions from their fellow peers, the scrutiny of campus police, the ire of college administrators, not to mention the burden of representation on a campus where they may be a 'double minority'—someone who belongs to two marginalized communities.
At UC Berkeley, for example, Black students make up just 1.98% of the total student population, with the number of Black Muslims being significantly lower. In the same way that visibly Muslim students often shoulder the burden of representing 1,800,000,000 of their fellow adherents in class, Black Muslims face tokenization not just in educational contexts on account of the identities they hold, but also among the Muslim community, where they may be the only Black individual in the room.
Ahmad Mahmuod, a Black Muslim student before lecture at UC Berkeley. Photo: Peter DaSilva/LA Times.
Ahmad Mahmuod, a Black Muslim student before lecture at UC Berkeley. Photo: Peter DaSilva/LA Times.
This isolation goes far beyond just collegiate environments, and extends even to scholarship in popular Islamic discourse. In a supposedly post-racial, color-blind society, Muslim institutions have also been complicit in the erasure of Black narratives. In an article for Al-Madina Institute, Imam Dawud Walid writes, "many Muslims who are Black have been made to feel as if black people don't have real interpretative authority within Islam or can speak on behalf of our faith. This in part may be due to an unconscious omission to even deliberate white-washing of the early period of Islamic civilization." So how can Muslims in our generation break down the invisible barriers that segregate our community?
"[M]any Muslims who are Black have been made to feel as if black people don't have real interpretative authority within Islam or can speak on behalf of our faith. This in part may be due to an unconscious omission to even deliberate white-washing of the early period of Islamic civilization."
— Imam Dawud Walid, Why Centering Muslims Who Were ‘Black’ in Early Islamic History Matters
Perhaps the answer lies in history. Thanks to the Civil Rights Movement, during which prominent Black Muslim activists such as Malcolm X, Imam Jamil Al-Amin, and Muhammad Ali rallied alongside Asian American organizers for revolutionary change, the 1965 Immigration Act passed, enabling the mass influx of Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants who have since founded largely insular suburban Muslim communities at the expense of their Black co-religionists. It has since taken 9/11, the subsequent War on Terror, and the rise in Islamophobia targeting Muslims of all shades to inspire interest among non-Black Muslims in spiritually-guided social justice, and the Black Lives Matter movement a decade later to encourage a thorough examination of dominant Muslim institutions' relationship with the Black Muslim community.
<aside> ❓ Reflection Question: Why is it that Black Muslim contributions to Muslim communities in the United States are minimized or erased in popular discourse?
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All of this explains why Black History Month serves a unique purpose to us in the Muslim community. For twenty-eight days in the shortest month of the year, it is incumbent on the Muslim community to celebrate the resilience of Black Muslims, to educate ourselves on the rich tapestry of Black Muslim history, and to reform our intentions of combatting racism in a manner firmly rooted in our Islamic theology. We know that our faith is anti-racist, but what does that mean in practice? How can we adapt our learnings from books, articles, and documentaries into meaningful action?
This guide is written as a companion for Black History Month. Every Monday, a new module will be released focusing on topics such as Blackness & Early Islam, Indigenous Islam in the Americas, or Black Muslim Culture. These topics have been carefully chosen to interrogate our understanding of Black Muslim contributions to Muslim communities. Every week, you will have the opportunity to engage with events, articles, podcasts, videos, and interviews that will further your understanding. These resources have been selected to complement, supplement, and at times deconstruct mainstream knowledge and to highlight the erased stories of Black figures in early Islamic and modern history who have made lasting, meaningful change for Muslim communities.
