Title: Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward a Third Resurrection

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author: Dr. Sherman (Abdul Hakim) Jackson

This book is split into five large sections. It is organized mostly

chronologically, but it is not a history textbook, and more similar to a
sociology book. Dr. Jackson starts discussing Islam in Africa and then
proceeds briefly into the Africans that were forcibly brought over to the US.
Dr. Jackson however quickly states that 20th century Islam amongst
Blackamericans is not connected to the original faith of their forefathers that
were brought from Africa. This assertion is based on the fact there is no real
continuity of faiths between 20th century Blackamerican Muslims and those
that came before.

He discusses at length the fact that pre-1956 Blackamericans had ownership

of the interpretation Islam in America. In 1965 the US passed the
Immigration and Nationality Act, which in effect, lifted the ban of
immigration on Asians and Africans. Before this, the Immigration Act of
1924 was in place, which essentially only allowed those of north European
origins to migrate to the US. This results in very few ‘Sunni’ Muslims
migrating from the ‘old’ world to America before 1965, thus the
Blackamericans were free, and unhindered to be the sole representative of
Islam in the US. This gives rise to many strong movements, including the
Nation of Islam. Through the Nation of Islam, Islam itself was redefined and
made to suit the realities of America separate from the Traditional Sunni
Islam. During this time there was also much discussion regarding what was
the best religion for the Blackamericans. Christianity was a possible
alternative, however when Blackamericans joined the Christian faith they
were still regarded as ‘Second Class’ citizens. In other words, by joining
Christianity and becoming fully believing Christians they did not enjoy
‘ultimate authority’ with that tradition. Dr. Jackson feels that for a
community to become successful within a faith they need to acquire
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religious authority within the religion. For example how people from the
subcontinent embraced Islam, and their scholars have mastered the tradition
and now are considered an authority within the religion.

Dr. Jackson also states that Blackamericans also needed a large, world-class
and unifying religion. They could have opted for traditional African
religions, but they were diverse due to each village in Africa having their
own traditions. Not to mention any connection with African heritage, culture
and language was essentially lost due to the oppressions of American
slavery. Islam did suit their purpose, as providing spiritual meaning, strength
and disciple to live in post-slavery America. This is why, pre-1965, Blacks
gravitated towards the Nation of Islam and other Islamic movements, as
were able to control the definition of what it means to be Muslim and not
subject to any outside authority, white or otherwise.

This leads us into post-1965. This is when the large immigrant wave of
Sunni Islam comes into America, from Arabian, African and Indian lands.
This immigration wave significantly alters the exclusive power that
Blackamericans had over the definition of Islam. This created more
difficulties for the Blackamerican Muslims. Sunni Muslim immigrants
started to come into America and encountering Blackamerican Muslims and
Sunni Muslims begin to introduce a tradition that is different and separate
from the Nation of Islam. This begins to erode the exclusive voice that
Blackamericans had over Islam in America. As well, since Sunni Islam was
presented as the only true orthodox representation of Islam, the followers of
Nation of Islam find themselves being discredited as being true Muslims by
the Sunni Immigrants. Dr. Jackson refers to this as ‘lost authority’. As a
result of this, Dr. Jackson states that many more Blackamerican Muslims
have turned to Traditional Sunni Islam, and by learning and studying they
have become proficient in it. He encourages this path to reconciling the
Blackamerican history, Sunni Tradition and lost authority. In other words,
gaining proficiency in Sunni Islam can lead to scholarship in Sunni Islam by
Blackamericans, and thus regaining their influence over the definition of
Islam in America. The other key issue here is that Immigrants are woefully
unaware of American history; as such they will struggle to understand and
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connect with Americans. Thus Blackamericans could be better suited to
define what Islam is in America. No one can deny Blackamericans of their
‘American-ness’, thus in combination with Sunni Islam they would be
uniquely situated to best represent Islam in America.

Thus Dr. Jackson describes being a ‘consumer’ and a ‘producer’ of the

Islamic Tradition in America. Blackamericans in pre-1965 were ‘producers’,
then post-1965 became ‘consumers’, and he believes that once
Blackamerican Muslim take up the Sunni Tradition from a scholarly (but
also culturally) perspective, they again can become a ‘producers’ of the
Islamic Tradition in America. This would be a full circle. He believes had
Malcom X been alive today, he would have been leading the way of
transferring Islamic religious authority from immigrant to native born hands.
This is a critical transition for continued existence of Islam amongst
Blackamericans.

In the last section he refers to struggling against the social norms and
systematic racism, that it is within the Islamic Tradition a spiritual struggle.
He points of Sufism (Islamic Spirituality) as being a solid spiritual source
for this struggle, spirituality through resistance. Dr. Jackson states that it is
that psychological resistance is a means of receiving spiritual enhancement
from God. I quote: To acquiesce in the face of unearned suffering is both to
evince a paucity of faith in God and to forfeit the opportunity to increase it.
In my words: Not being tough when faced with suffering is to display a
weakness in faith and to lose an opportunity to increase ones faith in God.

Overall, this is a great book. It does read like a textbook, which is expected
considering it is written by a professor. His perspective is unique, and as
John Esposito states on the back cover, ‘No author is better positioned than
Sherman Jackson to write Islam and the Blackamerican’ and I highly agree.

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Review: Sherman Jackson - Islam and the Blackamerican

Islam and the Black American: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection by
Sherman Jackson. Oxford University Press (2005). ISBN 0-19-518081-X.
235 pages. Hardcover.

I was in Atlanta in 1991 when I heard a Louis Farakhan tape in which he

said something like, “We did not stop riding the back of the bus to get on the
back of the camel!” And, later, around that time frame, I remember reading a
line condemning African Muslim hujjaj (pilgrims to Makka) passing the
bones of their ancestors to worship at Arab shrines. (I think it was
from Molefi Asante’s book Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change.)
Lastly, I remember reading an article by Louis Brenner about the manner in
which a scholar taught the attributes of God to common people in West
Africa. And Dr. Jackson wrote a book which brought together all of these
experiences for me.

The existence of a large group of indigenous Muslims in the United States is

not duplicated in other countries ruled by Europeans and their descendants,
in the Americas, Western Europe, the Republic of South Africa, Australia
and elsewhere. Dr. Jackson sets out to explain why this developed in the
United States and not elsewhere, and at the same time project a path that
Blackamerican Muslims must tread if they hope to preserve their Islam and
succeed in overthrowing white supremacy. As it turns out, giving up the goal
of overthrowing white supremacy would in fact end Islam among the
Blackamericans.

A confluence of factors allowed Blackamericans to own Islam. The first was

the imperative of Black Religion, a primordial, fitra-like belief in a just God
who would not tolerate His people’s abuse and Who would Punish their

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oppressors. The second was that fact that their oppressors identified
themselves as Christians, not Muslims. The third was that Muslim
immigrants to the United States and white American converts were too few
to define Islam in the United States. The fourth was the leadership of the
proto-Islamists such as Noble Drew Ali and The Honorable Elijah
Muhammad, who allowed their Muslim followers to appropriate White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) values without identifying their oppressors
as the source of those values. The fifth was an early twentieth century crisis
in Blackamerican Christianity, which inculcated those WASP values yet
could not articulate them without surrendering moral supremacy to
whiteness. The sixth was features in Islam which met Blackamericans’
needs. These were Islam’s theology, which is simple relative to that of
Christianity, Islam’s Protestant-like absence of institutionalized
ecclesiastical authority and the Qur’an’s frequent references to the God’s
aiding the believers against their unbelieving oppressors.

Elijah Muhammad used the term “resurrection” to describe his movement’s

impact on the Blackamerican. Dr. Jackson borrows this term and identifies
Elijah Muhammad’s period as the First Resurrection. Blackamericans’
embrace of Sunni Islam since the 1970s is the Second Resurrection. And the
challenges facing Blackamerican Muslims today require a Third
Resurrection.

The Blackamerican Muslim today has lost control of the definition of Islam
to Immigrant Islam in the United States, not because immigrant Muslims
and their descendants practice a “purer” Islam but because of their relative
affluence, their ideological self-assuredness and weaknesses in Black
Religion. I would add to this list the foreign policy imperatives of the United
States as it embarks on the re-colonization of the Muslim world. Immigrant
Islam, by devaluing “the West”, prevents Blackamerican Muslims from
contributing positively to Blackamericans’ struggle against white
supremacy. The psychological dislocation of abandoning theirs own selves
in exchange for a foreign, identity-based Islam leaves Blackamerican
Muslims ineffective in both the secular and religious spheres.
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The Third Resurrection of the Blackamerican Muslim must center on
personal piety, mastery of usul al-fiqh, the bases of jurisprudence, to derive
judgments on what is permissible and forbidden for Blackamerican
Muslims, and an unwavering commitment to fight white supremacy. The
Blackamerican Muslim will at that point be self-authenticating, needing the
approval of neither white supremacists nor other Muslims. Blackamericans
would be in the position of the African teacher and his pupils whom Louis
Brenner described for me, neither colonizing nor colonized, with knowledge
of this religion being treated as a public good and not a personal inheritance.

I’ve summarized in just a few paragraphs a densely written book, and of

course I recommend reading it to understand Dr. Jackson’s arguments for
why this is necessary.

I believe that Dr. Jackson could have discussed in more depth the writings
and speeches of Blackamerican Muslims, especially those he identifies as
belonging to the Dar al-Islam movement and those involved with the
American Society of Muslims (pp. 48-51). Dr. Jackson notes himself that he
was unable to explore the difference between how Blackamerican men and
Blackamerican women view Black Religion, Christianity and Islam, and
how the Third Resurrection would relate to gender differences. (p. 20)

The remainder of this review is a discussion of the role of non-

Blackamerican Muslims in the light of Dr. Jackson’s arguments.

Dr. Jackson writes: I should add that Immigrant Islam is not synonymous
with immigrant Muslims, especially those of the second and third
generations, many of whom are actually opposed to its hegemony. Thus,
while a successful Third Resurrection will necessarily attack the false
pretensions of Immigrant Islam in general, this does not mean that it must
target immigrant Muslims. The Third Resurrection is aimed at ideas not at
people. Still, in the absence of a viable, American alternative, most
immigrant Muslims are likely to remain at least provisional supporters of
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Immigrant Islam, for, if nothing else, the latter goes a long way in preserving
their sense of authenticity, identity, and ownership. In this context, it
remains to be seen how disaffected immigrant Muslims will relate to the
Third Resurrection and vice versa. (p. 13)

Immigrant Islam is characterized by an attachment to “false universals,”

which is “the phenomenon of history internalized, normalized, and then
forgotten as history.” We humans take our own experience and assume
anybody who does not see things the same way is “stupid, primitive or
morally depraved.” (p. 9)

I see the situation facing U.S. immigrant Muslims and their descendants as
similar to Blackamericans with the important exception that many
immigrant Muslims can cross the “southern” border of America’s color line
into honorary whiteness.

Non-Blackamerican Muslims can choose to resist white supremacy, abandon

false universals and meet Blackamerican Muslims in presumable unity at the
other side.

Non-Blackamerican Muslims can choose to join white supremacy. Part of

the initiation into whiteness is the denigration of blackness. This was
certainly the route non-Blackamerican Muslims were on prior to September
11, 2001, and that event both strengthened and retarded that trend.

An interesting question is what will happen to non-Blackamericans’ Islam if

they choose to buttress white supremacy yet abandon their false universals.
While I feel that personal piety and knowledge of the shari`ah would
eventually force someone into opposition to white supremacy, Dr. Jackson
criticizes a faction of Modernized Islam as being “overly academic and
removed from the problems and sentiments of the folk.” It also “tends to
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view the legacy of white supremacy and racial terror as the special property
of Blackamericans rather than as part of the social, political, and
psychological history of America as a whole.” (pp. 90-1)

The third alternative is for non-Blackamerican Muslims to cling to the anti-

culture Modern Islam, in either its politicized form or its symbolic, pietistic
form. I think that this in the long-run is not viable, since it is difficult to pass
this down from generation to generation. In addition, the July 7th London
bombings demonstrate that it will produce at its fringes (or advanced stages,
depending on how you look at it) acts of extremism which will eventually
threaten the security of Muslim life in European and North American
societies.

Dr. Jackson calls on American Muslims “to accept their Western experience
as a primary element in shaping their respective identities, rather than as a
post-facto pollutant added to an otherwise unadulterated mix …” This would
“… greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the utility of appealing to [their
respective identities] as an ultimate or greater authority in the context of
contemplating American Islam.” (p. 92)

How should immigrant Muslims address white supremacy? The same way
Dr. Jackson recommends for Blackamerican Muslims:

[Being grounded in both American reality and the classical Tradition], that
is, within the American constitutional order, the enterprises of resistance and
protest would be able to reassert themselves as acts dedicated to reforming
America and to holding her to her own ideals, rather than as attempts to
destroy her or impose upon her an alien vision from without. (p. 168)

Finally, a personal interest of mine has been Afrocentricity. Dr. Jackson has

an excellent chapter entitled “Black Orientalism,” a reference to the
late Edward Said’s book Orientalism. This intellectual movement
“impugn[s] the propriety of the relationship between Islam and
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Blackamericans by ultimately calling into question Blackamerican Muslims’
status as authentic, loyal Blackamericans.” (p. 102) An on-line article by Dr.
Jackson which introduceds this topic is available
at http://www.islamicamagazine.com/ViewCompleteArticle.aspx?
ArticleCd=178.

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