One Black Allah: The Middle East in the Cultural - Bader Lejmi

36 Pages·2008·3.88 MB·English

One Black Allah: The Middle East in the Cultural Politics of African American Liberation,
1955-1970
Author(s): Melani McAlister
Source: American Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 622-656
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30042184
Accessed: 10/09/2010 15:10
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
American Quarterly.
http://www.jstor.org
One Black Allah: The Middle East in the
CulturalP olitics of African American
Liberation1, 955-1970
MELANIM cALISTER
The George Washington University
The Christian church itself-again, as distinguished from some of its
ministers-sanctified and rejoiced in the conquests of the flag, and encour-
aged, if it did not formulate, the belief that conquest, and the resulting
relative well-being of the Westernp opulation,w as proof of the favor of God.
God had come a long way from the dessert-but then, so had Allah, though
in a very different direction. God, going north and rising on the wings of
power, had become white, and Allah, out of power, had become-for all
practicalp urposes anyway-black.
-James Baldwin, 1962'
The Arabs, as a colored people, should and must make more effort to reach
the millions of colored people in America who are related to the Arabs by
blood. These millions of colored peoples would be completely in sympathy
with the Arab cause!
-Malcolm X, 22 19602
Two events, separated by just over a year, in two very different
sphereso f culturaal ctivitym, arkedth ee xtraordinarinyf luenceo f Islam
in the African American community in the 1960s. Two prominent
African American men, one an athlete, the other a poet and a
playwright,t ook highly visible and conscious steps away from their old
identities and affiliations and began instead to articulate a black
Melani McAlister is an assistant professor of American studies at The George
WashingtonU niversity in Washington,D .C. Her book on the culturalp olitics of U.S.-
Middle East encountersi s forthcoming.
AmericanQ uarterlyV, ol.5 1, No. 3 (Septembe1r9 99)© 1999A mericanS tudiesA ssociation
622
ONE BLACK ALLAH 623
consciousness and politics based on the teachings of Islam. These two
public transformations-rituals of self-identification and self-nam-
ing-point toward an often-neglectedg enealogy of black political and
culturala ffiliation:a n AfricanA mericani maginedc ommunityi n which
the Arab Middle East is central.
On 25 February1 964, the twenty-three-yearo ld fighter Cassius Clay
defeated Sonny Liston and took the world heavyweightb oxing title, the
most lucrative prize in professional sports. On the day after his
triumph,C lay, who had already become one of the most well-known
and controversial figures in boxing world, announced at a press
conferencet hath e was a Muslim.3U ntil that day, Clay had been known
as a playful, rather apolitical youngster with a fondness for pink
Cadillacs, extravagantb ragging, and comic poetry.4B ut in the months
before the fight, rumors of his association with the Nation of Islam
(NOI) had circulated widely; he had been seen frequently in the
company of Malcolm X, whom he had invited to his trainingc amp in
Miami.5A few weeks aftert he victory,E lijahM uhammadt, he leadero f
the Nation of Islam, bestowed on Clay his Muslim name, Muhammad
Ali. Ali's victory and subsequenta nnouncementw ere widely reported;
his association with the NOI was often viewed with skepticism or
anger. In the spring of 1964, when Malcolm X left the Nation, Ali
stayed, and quickly became the most famous Black Muslim in the
country and one of the Nation of Islam's most prominents pokesper-
sons.6 Just a few monthsl ater,A li embarkedo n a tour of Africa and the
Middle East. When he returned,h e announcedt o the press: "I'm not an
American;I 'm a black man."7
In 1966, Ali's status as political figure took a new directionw hen he
refused his inductioni nto the U.S. Army, saying "I'm a membero f the
Black Muslims, and we don't go to no wars unless they're declaredb y
Allah himself. I don't have no personal quarrel with those Viet
Congs."8T hat refusal-that risky stand on behalf of the politics of his
religious belief-transformed Ali's image: he soon became one of the
most visible and influential antiwarf igures in the country.H e was, in
the words of poet Sonia Sanchez, "a culturalr esource for everyone in
that time," a man whose refusal to fight in Vietnamb ecame an emblem
of the far reaching influence of the black nationalist critique of
American nationalisma nd U.S. foreign policy.9
In 1965, a little over a year after MuhammadA li's highly public
conversion,t he poet and playwrightL eRoi Jones left his literaryc ircles
624 AMERICANQ UARTERLY
in GreenwichV illage to move uptownt o Harlem,w here he foundedt he
Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS). In Harlem, Jones
turnedh is back on his earlier ties with Beat poetry, and even his more
recent success with plays on race relations( The Dutchmanh ad won an
Obie award in 1964).10H e focused instead on the task of building a
community theater, and on developing the themes and writing styles
that would launch the Black Arts Movement. During his time at
BARTS, Jones wrote A Black Mass, a one-act play that presented in
dramaticf orm the Nation of Islam's central myth: the story of Yacub,
the evil scientist who "invented"w hite people. Then, in 1968, Jones
changed his name to Ameer (later to Amiri) Baraka.H e studied Sunni
Islam under the tutelage of Hajj Heesham Jaaber, who had been
affiliated with Malcolm X near the end of his life." By then, Baraka,
whom his contemporariesc onsidered to be "the most promising black
writer" in the nation, was also the best-known representativeo f the
Black Arts Movement, a champion of black cultural nationalism, a
significant theorist of the re-emergence of committed art, and an
articulate critic of U.S. imperialism. Baraka would turn away from
Islam and toward Maoism in the 1970s.12B ut from at least 1965 until
1973, he and others saw Islam as a primaryn ationalistc ulturalr esource,
an authenticallyb lack religion that would be central to the requisite
developmento f an alternativeb lack culturea nd a liberateds pirituality.
This article analyses the significance of the Middle East in African
Americanc ulturalp olitics in the late 1950s and 1960s. In particular,i t
explores the impact of Islam as a religious practice and as a cultural
poetics, including its more diffuse impact even on those who were not
converts. In recent years, scholars in religious studies have amply
documentedt he remarkabled iversity of Muslim practice among Afri-
can Americans, from orthodox Sunni Islam to the less traditional
doctrines of the Nation of Islam, but the larger political and cultural
influence of Islam as a religious/cultural/politicaln exus has been
remarkablyn eglected.13I n the 1960s, this influence was significant.B y
1965 or 1966, one need not have ever entereda Muslim temple nor read
a Nation of Islam newspapert o know that, within the AfricanA merican
community,I slam had moved far beyond the sectarianc uriosity it had
been just ten years earlier.I n a cultural field that ranged from poetry
and plays to highly charged sports matches, from local community
theaterst o the boxing ring, Islam was a significantp resence. In various
manifestations,I slam-and the Nation of Islam in particular-played a
ONE BLACK ALLAH 625
central role in reconfigurationso f black radicalism, challenging both
the hegemony of black Christianity'sr eligious values and the politics
of integrationa ssociated with it. At the same time, the centralityo f the
Middle East to Islamic histories and to many Muslim rituals encour-
aged the increasing visibility of Arab cultures and Arab politics in
African American communities.
Islam, like Christianityh, as traditionallyt urnedt o the Middle East as
a "holy land," making salient not only its ancient histories, but also
contemporaryp olitical events in the region. In the 1950s and 1960s,
this religiously-infused transnationalismg ained a broader currency:
African Americans in this period constructed cultural, political, and
historical links between their contemporary situation and the Arab
Middle East. In doing so, they articulatedw hat Michael Shapiro has
called a "moralg eography,"a mappingo f themselves in relationshipt o
the world. This moral geographyi magined a communityv ery different
from dominant constructionso f "America."A nd despite the fact that
what emerged from this mapping has often been called (even by its
adherents)" blackn ationalism,"t he communityi t envisioned provided
an alternativet o-and in some sense a fundamentalc ritique of-the
nation-state.14I will trace several sites for this alternativeg eography:
the religious teachings and daily practices of the Nation of Islam; the
influence that the Nation of Islam and other Muslim sects had on
culturalp roducers,e specially the young men and women who would
become the heart of the Black Arts movement; and finally, the impact
of both religion and art on the anticolonial radicalism of a new
generationo f AfricanA mericansB. y 1967, thesec onnectedi nfluencesh ad
become an importantf actori n AfricanA mericanu nderstandingosf U.S.
foreignp olicy in the MiddleE ast, particularlyth e 1967 Arab-Israelwi ar.
Scholarshipo n the 1960s, so often interestedi n tracingt he sources of
black radicalism,a s well as the rising tensions between blacks and Jews
in the civil rights movement, has consistently painted the Nation of
Islam as simply a political movement with a religious gloss.15A s a
result, a whole history of culturalp roductiona nd religious belief has
been seen as marginal, or merely reactive. This analysis suggests a
more expansive framework for understandingb lack culture in this
period. It highlights the cultural politics of non-Christianr eligious
formations, suggesting that a proper understandingo f the salience of
religion in the African American community (and in the United States
more broadly)m ust look beyond the well-documentedi nfluence of the
626 AMERICANQ UARTERLY
Judeo-Christiant radition. By attending to this cultural and religious
history, our understanding of political events also becomes more
nuanceda nd complex. In particularw, e begin to see the ways in which
AfricanA mericani nvestmentsi n, and interpretationosf , the Arab-Israeli
conflict developed, at least in part, out of the religious and cultural
alternativesto black Christianityth atb ecome influentiali n the 1960s.
By History and By Blood
[T]he historic practice of bowing to other men's gods and definitions has
produceda crisis of the highest magnitude,a nd broughtu s, culturally,t o the
limits of racial armageddon.
-Addison Gayle, 196816
In the early to mid-1960s, the Nation of Islam broughti ts interpreta-
tion of Islam to prominencei n the African American community,a nd
defined Islam as the religion of black American militancy.F or African
Americans disaffected with the Christianc hurch-those frustratedb y
the commitment of black Christians to brotherhoodw ith whites or
angered by the continuing violence by white Christiansa gainst non-
violent civil rights activists-Islam offered an alternative. Islam, its
adherentsa rgued,p rovided the basis for a black nationalistc onscious-
ness that was separatef rom the civil rights goals of integrationi nto a
white-dominateda nd oppressive nation. Islam offered a set of values
and beliefs that were at once spiritual,p olitical, and cultural.A s LeRoi
Jones described it, Islam offered "what the Black man needs, a
reconstruction. .. a total way of life that he can involve himself with
that is post-American,i n a sense."'17T he Nation of Islam in particular
provided an both an alternative religious affiliation and a counter-
citizenship, an identity that challenged black incorporationi nto the
dominantd iscourse of Judeo-ChristianA merican-ness.
The NOI emerged as a significant social and political force in the
black community in the late 1950s after a period of disarray and
declining membershipi n the 1940s. When Malcolm X was released
from Norfolk prison in 1952, he quickly came to play a major role in
the organization'se xpansion, establishingt emples in cities all over the
country. By December 1959, the Nation had fifty temples in twenty-
two states; the number of members in the organizationi s difficult to
estimate, but by 1962 was probablyi n the range of 50,000 to 100,000,
ONE BLACK ALLAH 627
with many more supporters.I n 1962, MuhammedS peaks, the major
NOI newspaper,f ounded by Malcolm X, had the largest circulationo f
any black paper in the country.'8
Although the Nation of Islam was an avowedly "black nationalist"
organization,i ts vision of black nationalismc annotb e fully understood
separate from either its explicitly religious content or its insistently
transnationald imensions. In fact, the religious and the transnational
aspects were intimatelyr elated:w hile the Nation of Islam was unortho-
dox Islam, Elijah Muhammad had, since the 1930s, consistently
affirmedt he significance of its connection to other Muslim communi-
ties aroundt he globe, particularlyt hose in the Middle East. The Nation
challenged the assumption that African Americans were simply or
primarily a subset of all Americans; its political imaginary never
posited black nationalism as a self-contained sub-nationalism,e ven
when Elijah Muhammado r Malcolm X made claims for the right to
control specific tractso f land within the United States. Instead,t he NOI
built on the fact that Islam was a major world religion with a strong
transnationaol rientation;M uslim governmentsa nd Muslim communi-
ties often forged ties across borders,p olitically and culturally,a s well
as religiously.19D rawing on this global vision, the NOI developed a
model of communityt hat linked AfricanA mericansb oth to Africa and
to "Asia"( by Asia, Elijah Muhammads eemed to mean primarilyw hat
is usually called the Middle East).2"B y the time it began to reach a
larger audience in the 1950s, the Nation of Islam's vision drew on
several decades of black anticolonialista ctivity,l ed by intellectualsa nd
activists from W. E. B. Du Bois to Paul Robeson to Walter White,
which had envisioned African Americans as part of a pan-African
diaspora.2'A t the same time, the Nation's theological politics departed
from that earlier activism's primaryf ocus on Africa, opting for a more
expansive transnationalismth at included much of the non-white world
(Latin America is somethingo f an exception). Like the pan-Africanist
intellectuala nd culturalm ovements of the 1930s and 1940s, however,
ElijahM uhammadd escribedt he connectionsb etweenA fricanA mericans
andc olonizedp eoplest hrougha languageo f naturalizedra ce.M uhammad
simplyc laimedb othA fricaa ndt he MiddleE asta s blackh eritage,i nsisting
that the Arabianp eninsulaa nd the Nile valley were the historich ome of
what he called the "Afro-Asiaticb lack man"n ow living in America.
The significance of this religious and racial geography was pro-
found. In the NOI temples being rapidly established in urbana reas in
628 AMERICANQ UARTERLY
the late 1950s and early 1960s, ministersb roughta message of world-
wide black Islam to thousands of African American converts.22T he
Nation taught that Islam was the "naturalr eligion of the black man,"
which had been strippedf rom the Africans who were sold into slavery
and taught their masters' Christianity.L ectures in the temples often
harshly indicted the traditionalC hristianityo f the African American
church and arguedt hat African Americans should recognize their true
heritagea s the descendantso f the Muslim prophetM uhammed.A rabic,
the Nation taught, was the original language of black people, not only
because many of the Africans who were taken into slavery and carried
to the new world spoke Arabic, but also because "the so-called
Negroes" in America were descendantso f the originalA rabic-speaking
peoples to whom Islam was revealed.23A s the religious service began,
the minister greeted his parishioners with the Arabic greeting: As-
salaam-alaikum( peace be with you) and the membersr esponded,w a-
Alaikuma s-salaam (and also with you). At the Islamic schools set up
by the Nation, Arabic lessons were an integral part of the curriculum:
Arabic language instructionw as said to began at the age of three.24
The Nation's theology included an alternativeg enealogy for black
Americans, who were understood to be descendants of the original
inhabitants of Asia in general and Mecca in particular.A s Elijah
Muhammadw rote in his 1965 treatise, Message to the Blackman in
America: "It is Allah's (God's) will and purpose that we shall know
ourselves. ...He has declared that we are descendants of the Asian
black nation and the tribe of Shabazz ... [t]he first to discover the best
part of our planet to live on. The rich Nile Valley of Egypt and the
present seat of the Holy City, Mecca, Arabia."25
The Nation of Islam's assertiont hat all black people were by nature
Muslims was part of its critique of black Christianity-a critique that
was at once theological, political, and historical. NOI meetings often
had a display, drawno n a blackboard,f eaturingt wo flags: on one side
of the boardw as a U.S. flag with a cross beside it, and underneathi t the
caption, "Slavery,S uffering, and Death."O n the other side was drawn
a flag bearing the Crescent, and underneath it the words, "Islam:
Freedom,J ustice, and Equality."B eneath both was a question:" Which
one will survive the War of Armageddon?"26E lijah Muhammad's
message to African Americans focused on pride and transformation.
The Christianityo f their slave mastersh ad functionedt o continue their
spiritual enslavement, he argued, but Islam, which built upon the
ONE BLACK ALLAH 629
teachings of the Bible but succeeded them with additionalr evelations,
would provide the key for understandingo ld teachings in the way they
were intended,r athert han throught he perversionso f white Christian-
ity. In this way, NOI teaching revised, without discarding, important
aspects of Christians ymbolism that were salient in the black commu-
nity.27A t the same time, this teaching also carried with it a racial,
political, and moral geography:i t pitted (black) Islam against (white)
Christianityi n a world-wide and historic struggle.
This religious mappingo f the world-a practicec ertainlyn ot unique
to Islam or the Nation-was directly opposed to contemporaryb lack
Christianc onstructionso f the Middle East as a "Holy Land"i n which
Israel (both ancient and modem) was a strong source of religious and
political identification. Black Christianityh ad traditionallyp resented
African American history as a not-yet-completed retelling of the
Hebrew story,a potentials ite for the re-entryo f God into history on the
side of a people.28 By the late 1950s, the Christian-dominatedc ivil
rights movement was making highly effective use of the exodus as a
figure for African American liberation.T he alliance between African
Americans and Jews in the early civil rights movement, though
grounded in the active Jewish participationi n the movement, was
almost certainly strengthened by a strong metaphorical affiliation
between the narrativeo f ancient Hebrew liberationf rom bondage and
the purposefuli maginingo f AfricanA mericanl iberationf rom discrimi-
nationi n the United States.T he exodus tropew as a link, one articulated
in churches and meetings, in songs and in sermons, as well as in the
writings of African American intellectuals and activists, from Martin
LutherK ing, Jr. to James Baldwin to Joseph Lowrey.
The connection that Black Christiansf elt with the Hebrew story
extendedi nto contemporaryin ternationapl olitics. The establishmento f
modem Israel in 1948 was a source of enthusiasma nd even inspiration
for many African Americans: In 1947, Walter White, the Executive
Director of the NAACP, had played a crucial role in lobbying African
nations to vote for the UN resolutionp artitioningP alestine into Jewish
and Arab areas. Ralph Bunche, the UN Secretary for Peacekeeping,
was active in negotiating the end to the Arab-Israeliw ar in 1948 on
terms generally considered favorable to Israel. And in 1948, the
NAACP passed a resolution stating that "the valiant struggle of the
people of Israel for independence serves as an inspiration to all
persecutedp eople throughoutt he world."30
630 AMERICANQ UARTERLY
MartinL utherK ing, Jr.e xemplified the move that connectedb iblical
history with contemporaryp olitics. He believed that civil rights was
part of an internationalt ransformationin power relations. He saw the
rise of anticolonialisma nd the rise of civil rights activity not only as
parallel sets of events, but as a connected force, with the two
movements affecting and influencing each other in direct ways:
everywhere, the enslaved people were rising up against Pharaoh and
demandingt o be free.31T he success of the new nationalisms,p articu-
larly in Africa, Egypt, and India,p rovideda living model for the kind of
successful struggle that King envisioned in the United States. Within
this frame, Israel, as one of the "new nations" seeking freedom and
national rights, represented a relevant model made all the more
powerful by the biblical story of exile and return,a nd by the ways in
which this rhetorich ad played a centralr ole in the successful transfor-
mation of the Zionist movement into the Israeli state.32
The Nation of Islam's vision of a world-wide Islamic alliance
confrontingw hite Christianityc hallenged the black Christians anctifi-
cation of ancient Israel and offered an alternative sacred geography
with Mecca as its center. Significantly, Elijah Muhammadt aught that
the stories told in the Christian Bible were prophesies rather than
histories, and that, as prophesy, they spoke of the contemporary
experienceso f AfricanA mericansr athert han the historicale xperiences
of the ancient Hebrews:
Before the coming of Allah (God), we being blind, deaf, and dumb, had
mistaken the true meanings of these parablesa s referringt o the Jews. Now,
thanks to Almighty God, Allah...who has opened my blinded eyes, and
unstopped my ears, loosened the knot in my tongue, and has made us to
understandt hese Bible parablesa re referringt o us, the so-called Negroes and
our slave masters.33
Within the NOI paradigm,J ews were not those whose ancient history
was the prototypef or contemporaryl iberation,a s was the case for King
and other civil rights leaders, but those whose putative status as "the
chosen people" had usurpedt he position of the black people in relation
to God. This scripturali nterpretationd id a complex culturalw ork for
the Nation. Surely this metaphoricalr emoval of Jews from the stories
of the Old Testamenth ad particulars alience in terms of the domestic
tensions that were alreadyr ife in urbana reas between African Ameri-
cans and Jews.34O bviously, it carried the kernels of the NOI's anti-