Islam and Blackness

Islam and Blackness PDF Author: Jonathan A.C. Brown
Publisher: Oneworld Academic
ISBN: 9780861544844
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
The most comprehensive examination to date of the idea that Islam, as a system of scripture, law and spirituality, is antiblack It is commonly claimed that Islam is antiblack, even inherently bent on enslaving Africans. Western and African critics alike have contended that antiblack racism is in the faith’s very scriptural foundations and its traditions of law, spirituality and theology. But what is the basis for this? Bestselling scholar Jonathan A.C. Brown examines Islamic scripture, law, Sufism and history to determine the extent to which this claim is true – and why. Locating the origins of the accusation in the old trope of Barbary enslavement, modern Afrocentrism and conservative politics, he explains how antiblackness arose in the Islamic world and became entangled with normative tradition. From the imagery of ‘blackened faces’ in the Quran to Shariah assessments of Black women as undesirable and the assertion that Islam and Muslims are foreign to Africa, this work provides a comprehensive study of the controversial knot that is ‘Islam and Blackness’, and identifies authoritative voices in Islam’s past that are crucial for combatting antiblack racism today.

Islam and Blackness

Islam and Blackness PDF Author: Jonathan A.C. Brown
Publisher: Oneworld Academic
ISBN: 9780861544844
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book

Book Description
The most comprehensive examination to date of the idea that Islam, as a system of scripture, law and spirituality, is antiblack It is commonly claimed that Islam is antiblack, even inherently bent on enslaving Africans. Western and African critics alike have contended that antiblack racism is in the faith’s very scriptural foundations and its traditions of law, spirituality and theology. But what is the basis for this? Bestselling scholar Jonathan A.C. Brown examines Islamic scripture, law, Sufism and history to determine the extent to which this claim is true – and why. Locating the origins of the accusation in the old trope of Barbary enslavement, modern Afrocentrism and conservative politics, he explains how antiblackness arose in the Islamic world and became entangled with normative tradition. From the imagery of ‘blackened faces’ in the Quran to Shariah assessments of Black women as undesirable and the assertion that Islam and Muslims are foreign to Africa, this work provides a comprehensive study of the controversial knot that is ‘Islam and Blackness’, and identifies authoritative voices in Islam’s past that are crucial for combatting antiblack racism today.

Islam and Blackness

Islam and Blackness PDF Author: Jonathan A.C. Brown
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861544854
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
It is commonly claimed that Islam is antiblack, even inherently bent on enslaving Black Africans. Western and African critics alike have contended that antiblack racism is in the faith’s very scriptural foundations and its traditions of law, spirituality, and theology. But what is the basis for this accusation? Bestselling scholar Jonathan A.C. Brown examines Islamic scripture, law, Sufism, and history to comprehensively interrogate this claim and determine how and why it emerged. Locating its origins in conservative politics, modern Afrocentrism, and the old trope of Barbary enslavement, he explains how antiblackness arose in the Islamic world and became entangled with normative tradition. From the imagery of ‘blackened faces’ in the Quran to Shariah assessments of Black women as ‘undesirable’ and the assertion that Islam and Muslims are foreign to Africa, this work provides an in-depth study of the controversial knot that is Islam and Blackness, and identifies authoritative voices in Islam’s past that are crucial for combatting antiblack racism today.

Hadith

Hadith PDF Author: Jonathan A.C. Brown
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786073080
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Contrary to popular opinion, the bulk of Islamic law does not come from the Quran but from hadith, first-hand reports of the Prophet Muhammad’s words and deeds, passed from generation to generation. However, with varying accounts often only committed to paper a century after the death of Muhammad, Islamic scholars, past and present, have been faced with complex questions of historical authenticity. In this wide-ranging introduction, Jonathan A. C. Brown explores the collection and criticism of hadith, and the controversy surrounding its role in modern Islam. This edition, revised and updated with additional case studies and attention to the very latest scholarship, also features a new chapter on how hadiths have been used politically, both historically and in the Arab Spring and its aftermath. Informative and accessible, it is perfectly suited to students, scholars and general readers interested in this critical element of Islam.

Muslim Cool

Muslim Cool PDF Author: Su'ad Abdul Khabeer
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479894508
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Interviews with young Muslims in Chicago explore the complexity of identities formed at the crossroads of Islam and hip hop This groundbreaking study of race, religion and popular culture in the 21st century United States focuses on a new concept, “Muslim Cool.” Muslim Cool is a way of being an American Muslim—displayed in ideas, dress, social activism in the ’hood, and in complex relationships to state power. Constructed through hip hop and the performance of Blackness, Muslim Cool is a way of engaging with the Black American experience by both Black and non-Black young Muslims that challenges racist norms in the U.S. as well as dominant ethnic and religious structures within American Muslim communities. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, Su'ad Abdul Khabeer illuminates the ways in which young and multiethnic US Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims. This is a form of critical Muslim self-making that builds on interconnections and intersections, rather than divisions between “Black” and “Muslim.” Thus, by countering the notion that Blackness and the Muslim experience are fundamentally different, Muslim Cool poses a critical challenge to dominant ideas that Muslims are “foreign” to the United States and puts Blackness at the center of the study of American Islam. Yet Muslim Cool also demonstrates that connections to Blackness made through hip hop are critical and contested—critical because they push back against the pervasive phenomenon of anti-Blackness and contested because questions of race, class, gender, and nationality continue to complicate self-making in the United States.

Slavery and Islam

Slavery and Islam PDF Author: Jonathan A.C. Brown
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786076365
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 539

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Book Description
What happens when authorities you venerate condone something you know is wrong? Every major religion and philosophy once condoned or approved of slavery, but in modern times nothing is seen as more evil. Americans confront this crisis of authority when they erect statues of Founding Fathers who slept with their slaves. And Muslims faced it when ISIS revived sex slavery, justifying it with verses from the Quran and the practice of Muhammad. Exploring the moral and ultimately theological problem of slavery, Jonathan A.C. Brown traces how the Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions have tried to reconcile modern moral certainties with the infallibility of God’s message. He lays out how Islam viewed slavery in theory, and the reality of how it was practiced across Islamic civilization. Finally, Brown carefully examines arguments put forward by Muslims for the abolition of slavery.

Illuminating the Darkness

Illuminating the Darkness PDF Author: Habeeb Akande
Publisher: Ta-Ha Publishers
ISBN: 1842001272
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
Illuminating the Darkness critically addresses the issue of racial discrimination and colour prejudice in religious history. Tackling common misconceptions, the author seeks to elevate the status of blacks and North Africans in Islam. The book is divided into two sections: Part l of the book explores the concept of race, 'blackness', slavery, interracial marriage and racism in Islam in the light of the Qur'an, Hadith and early historical sources. Part ll of the book consists of a compilation of short biographies of noble black and North African Muslim men and women in Islamic history including Prophets, Companions of the Prophet and more recent historical figures. Following in the tradition of revered scholars of Islam such as al-Jahiz, Ibn al-Jawzi and al-Suyuti who wrote about this topic, Illuminating the Darkness is structured according to a similar monographic arrangement.

Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering

Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering PDF Author: Sherman A. Jackson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199700389
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
In his controversial 1973 book, Is God a White Racist?, William R. Jones sharply criticized black theologians for their agnostic approach to black suffering, noting that the doctrine of an ominibenevolent God poses very significant problems for a perennially oppressed community. He proposed a "humanocentric theism" which denies God's sovereignty over human history and imputes autonomous agency to humans. By rendering humans alone responsible for moral evil, Jones's theology freed blacks to revolt against the evil of oppression without revolting against God. Sherman Jackson now places Jones's argument in conversation with the classical schools of Islamic theology. The problem confronting the black community is not simply proving that God exists, says Jackson. The problem, rather, is establishing that God cares. No religious expression that fails to tackle the problem of black suffering can hope to enjoy a durable tenure in the black community. For the Muslim, therefore, it is essential to find a Quranic/Islamic grounding for the protest-oriented agenda of black religion. That is the task Jackson undertakes in this pathbreaking work. Jackson's previous book, Islam and the Blackamerican (OUP 2006) laid the groundwork for this ambitious project. Its sequel, Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering, solidifies Jackson's reputation as the foremost theologian of the black American Islamic movement.

Islam in Black America

Islam in Black America PDF Author: Edward E. Curtis IV
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791488594
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Many of the most prominent figures in African-American Islam have been dismissed as Muslim heretics and cultists. Focusing on the works of five of these notable figures—Edward W. Blyden, Noble Drew Ali, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Wallace D. Muhammad—author Edward E. Curtis IV examines the origin and development of modern African-American Islamic thought. Curtis notes that intellectual tensions in African-American Islam parallel those of Islam throughout its history—most notably, whether Islam is a religion for a particular group of people or whether it is a religion for all people. In the African-American context, such tensions reflect the struggle for black liberation and the continuing reconstruction of black identity. Ultimately, Curtis argues, the interplay of particular and universal interpretations of the faith can allow African-American Islam a vision that embraces both a specific group of people and all people.

Being Muslim

Being Muslim PDF Author: Sylvia Chan-Malik
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479850608
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
"Four american moslem ladies": early U.S. Muslim women in the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, 1920-1923 -- Insurgent domesticity: race and gender in representations of NOI Muslim women during the Cold War era -- Garments for one another: Islam and marriage in the lives of Betty Shabazz and Dakota Staton -- Chadors, feminists, terror: constructing a U.S. American discourse of the veil -- A third language: Muslim feminism in Smerica -- Conclusion: Soul Flower Farm

Metaphysical Africa

Metaphysical Africa PDF Author: Michael Muhammad Knight
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271088532
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
The Ansaru Allah Community, also known as the Nubian Islamic Hebrews (AAC/NIH) and later the Nuwaubians, is a deeply significant and controversial African American Muslim movement. Founded in Brooklyn in the 1960s, it spread through the prolific production and dissemination of literature and lecture tapes and became famous for continuously reinventing its belief system. In this book, Michael Muhammad Knight studies the development of AAC/NIH discourse over a period of thirty years, tracing a surprising consistency behind a facade of serial reinvention. It is popularly believed that the AAC/NIH community abandoned Islam for Black Israelite religion, UFO religion, and Egyptosophy. However, Knight sees coherence in AAC/NIH media, explaining how, in reality, the community taught that the Prophet Muhammad was a Hebrew who adhered to Israelite law; Muhammad’s heavenly ascension took place on a spaceship; and Abraham enlisted the help of a pharaonic regime to genetically engineer pigs as food for white people. Against narratives that treat the AAC/NIH community as a postmodernist deconstruction of religious categories, Knight demonstrates that AAC/NIH discourse is most productively framed within a broader African American metaphysical history in which boundaries between traditions remain quite permeable. Unexpected and engrossing, Metaphysical Africa brings to light points of intersection between communities and traditions often regarded as separate and distinct. In doing so, it helps move the field of religious studies beyond conventional categories of “orthodoxy” and “heterodoxy,” challenging assumptions that inform not only the study of this particular religious community but also the field at large.