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Re: Message from the Wilderness of North America:
« Reply #5 on: Aug 4th, 2008, 9:31am » |
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…The separatism of the Muslims is traceable to black nationalists of previous times, such as Martin R. Delany, Henry McNeal Turner, and Marcus Garvey. His call for black emigration, though cloaked in prophetic terms, both concedes the futility of resisting white supremacy and at the same time, acknowledges the exterminationist tendencies evident in some of the violence that was being used against civil rights activists of the period.
To him, a mass departure from America, reminiscent of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt, was preferable to living “under the shadow of murder and death. . . .” Within the context of the early 1960s, this proposal did appeal to those blacks who were living on the margins of american society, or were caught up in the euphoria over the decolonization of Africa, or who simply could see no dignified future for themselves or their children in the United States.
At the same time, the separatism of the Muslims was in sharp contradiction to the goals of integration and racial reconciliation that civil rights proponents were striving toward.
Though he would have hardly admitted it, Muhammad (PBUH), in fact, was not just appealing to whatever separatist impulses that existed within the black community, but to the duality of African-American identity.
He was counseling blacks to give up the slave master’s names and religion, but to embrace his capitalist economic model and many of his notions of race, all be they inverted to suit Muhammad’s needs.
Even his stated desire for blacks to be “separated…in a place to ourselves” was couched in equivocation, for he never publicly specified an exact destination for the exodus or made any serious attempts to bring it to fruition.
The argument for separation was a convenient one, framed in a way that relieved the Muslims of having to effect it on their own. While African americans were at “a crossroads where they have to make a choice” regarding their future, it was Allah who was ultimately responsible for ushering in the last days.
Furthermore, the wicked would be gathered and destroyed by Allah, but the righteous could not initiate this process through armed struggle, civil disobedience, or any other disruptive means.
This was a conservative approach to social change, an acknowledgment that black people—or at least the Muslims—did not have the agency to change their situation alone.
The racial separatism that Muhammad practiced was more symbolic than anything else, restricted to constructing a black identity and creating black-run institutions and businesses. The earth-shaking changes, such as the destruction of the “white devil” and the monumental task of transporting and resettling twenty million black people elsewhere, were left to Allah, who would choose his own time to act.
Altogether, the themes entailed in Muhammad’s talk are representative of where the Muslims were ideologically by 1960. Territorial separatism, Islamic heterodoxy, economic self-help, and a puritanical moral code would be the enduring motifs of subsequent years, though pressure from critics in the “orthodox” Muslim and civil rights communities never completely subsided.
As revealed in his speech, Muhammad flirted with politics and was particularly critical of the failures of various administrations to protect the rights of African Americans. But mounting censure by law enforcement agencies, especially the FBI, led him to avoid forms of activism that might encouraged more state repression.
On this score, what Muhammad omits from his speech—for instance, there is no reference to the recent presidential election—is as revealing as what he includes.
In a sense, the Nation of Islam was coming into its own, increasingly aware of the power of the media, the appeal of its racialized Islam, and the economic wherewithal that its expanding membership provided.
Yet, in other ways, 1960 was a critical year for the Muslim movement, inaugurating an era in which internal and external forces would present some troubling dilemmas.
Sources:
Elijah Muhammad, “Radio talk,” WNTA (New York), November 23, 1960; Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Chicago: Muhammad Mosque of Islam No. 2, 1965); C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961); E. U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: The Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Claude A. Clegg, III, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); and Malcolm X (with Alex Haley), The Autobiography of Malcolm X 1965; Reprint, New York: Ballantine Books, 1988.
http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol1no1/elijahmuhammad.html
As-Salaam Alaikum |
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To : Reiscuiblab
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