7. African American Islam

In some ways, Islam best represents the idea of African American religion as a practice of freedom and a sign of difference. For those African Americans who embraced Islam during the modern phase, their conversion was as much an expression of skepticism about Christianity and the United States as it was an acceptance of Islam. ‘African American Islam’ situates African American Islam within a broader global religious imagination that seeks to expand how African Americans understand themselves as members of a global community, an understanding that has shifted and morphed in light of the pressures of Muslim immigration to the United States. Those pressures have involved an insistence on decoupling Islam from the particulars of African American racial experience.

African American Muslims

This chapter sees the embrace of Islam within the African American community as a response to white supremacy and struggles for citizenship. It is important to recognize that while the community is diverse in its beliefs and practices, African American Islam is marked by an approach to faith that speaks to the continuing struggle for equality and social justice in the United States. The violence and institutionalized racism that have marked African American history were justified by theories of black inferiority. Many African American Muslims consider their faith protective in the sense that it uses a different set of authoritative discourses and ethical standards for measuring value and meaning. In particular, Islam authorizes new understandings of gender, race, and citizenship that African American Muslims find empowering and protective against racial self-hate.

The Question of Authority: Deracinating Race, Repositioning Religion, and Regenerating Gender in the History of African American Islam

A review essay devoted to Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection by Sherman A. Jackson. Oxford University Press, 2005. 256 pages. Hb. $29.95/£22.50, ISBN-13: 9780195180817.

The Question of Authority: Deracinating Race,Repositioning Religion, and Regenerating Gender in the History of African American Islam

Essay reviewing Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection by Sherman A. Jackson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 256 pages. $29.95 (hardcover)