MrUniteUs
14-Feb-07, 12:41
Islam in the Trans-Atlanticby Hasim AidiThe West Indian-born Christian missionary, Edward Blyden, was the first African-American scholar to advocate an alliance between global Islam and pan-Africanism, the system of thought which is considered his intellectual legacy. After studying Arabic in Syria and living in West Africa, Blyden became convinced that Islam was better suited for people of African descent than Christianity, because of what he saw as the lack of racial prejudice, the doctrine of brotherhood and the value placed on learning in Islam. His seminal tome, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (1888), laid the groundwork for a pan-Africanism with a strong Islamic cultural and religious undergirding.
Blyden's counterpart in the Arab world was the Sudanese-Egyptian intellectual Duse Muhammad Ali. In 1911, after the First Universal Races Congress held at the University of London, Duse Mohammed launched The African Times and Orient Review, a journal championing national liberal struggles and abolitionism "in the four quarters of the earth," and promoting solidarity among "non-whites" around the world. Published in both English and Arabic, the journal was circulated across the Muslim world and African diaspora, running articles by intellectuals from the Middle East to the West Indies (including contributions from Booker T. Washington). Duse would later become mentor to Marcus Garvey when the American black nationalist worked at the Review in London in 1913, and would leave his indelible stamp on Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, whose mission "to reclaim the fallen of the race, to administer and assist the needy" would become the social welfare principles animating myriad urban Islamic and African-American movements.(5)
In 1926, Duse created the Universal Islamic Society in Detroit, which would influence, if not inspire, Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple and Fard Muhammad's Temple of Islam, both seen as precursors of the modern-day Nation of Islam (NOI).Blyden's and Duse's ideas, which underlined universal brotherhood, human rights and "literacy" (i.e., the study of Arabic), had a profound impact on subsequent pan-Africanist and Islamic movements in the US, influencing leaders such as Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. The latter two inherited an "Arabo-centric" understanding of Islam, viewing the Arabs as God's "chosen people" and Arabic as the language of intellectual jihad -- ideas still central to the Nation of Islam today. The NOI's mysterious founder, Fard Muhammad, to whom Elijah Muhammad referred as "God himself," is widely believed to have been an Arab.(6) "Fard was an Arab who loved us so much so as to bring us al-Islam," Minister Louis Farrakhan has said repeatedly. For the past 35 years, Farrakhan's top adviser has been the Palestinian-American Ali Baghdadi, though the two fell out earlier this year when the Minister condemned suicide bombings.(7) In the NOI "typologist" theology, Arabs are seen as a "Sign" of a future people, a people chosen by God to receive the Quran, but who have strayed, and so God has chosen the American Negro, who like the Arab is "despised and rejected" with a "history of ignorance and savagery," to spread Islam in the West.(8)
Blyden's counterpart in the Arab world was the Sudanese-Egyptian intellectual Duse Muhammad Ali. In 1911, after the First Universal Races Congress held at the University of London, Duse Mohammed launched The African Times and Orient Review, a journal championing national liberal struggles and abolitionism "in the four quarters of the earth," and promoting solidarity among "non-whites" around the world. Published in both English and Arabic, the journal was circulated across the Muslim world and African diaspora, running articles by intellectuals from the Middle East to the West Indies (including contributions from Booker T. Washington). Duse would later become mentor to Marcus Garvey when the American black nationalist worked at the Review in London in 1913, and would leave his indelible stamp on Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, whose mission "to reclaim the fallen of the race, to administer and assist the needy" would become the social welfare principles animating myriad urban Islamic and African-American movements.(5)
In 1926, Duse created the Universal Islamic Society in Detroit, which would influence, if not inspire, Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple and Fard Muhammad's Temple of Islam, both seen as precursors of the modern-day Nation of Islam (NOI).Blyden's and Duse's ideas, which underlined universal brotherhood, human rights and "literacy" (i.e., the study of Arabic), had a profound impact on subsequent pan-Africanist and Islamic movements in the US, influencing leaders such as Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. The latter two inherited an "Arabo-centric" understanding of Islam, viewing the Arabs as God's "chosen people" and Arabic as the language of intellectual jihad -- ideas still central to the Nation of Islam today. The NOI's mysterious founder, Fard Muhammad, to whom Elijah Muhammad referred as "God himself," is widely believed to have been an Arab.(6) "Fard was an Arab who loved us so much so as to bring us al-Islam," Minister Louis Farrakhan has said repeatedly. For the past 35 years, Farrakhan's top adviser has been the Palestinian-American Ali Baghdadi, though the two fell out earlier this year when the Minister condemned suicide bombings.(7) In the NOI "typologist" theology, Arabs are seen as a "Sign" of a future people, a people chosen by God to receive the Quran, but who have strayed, and so God has chosen the American Negro, who like the Arab is "despised and rejected" with a "history of ignorance and savagery," to spread Islam in the West.(8)