Rashid & Muhammafd, American Muslim

American Muslim (Un)Exceptionalism #BlackLivesMatter and #BringBackOurGirls
Author(s): Hussein Rashid and Precious Rasheeda Muhammad

Source: Journal of Africana Religions, Vol. 3, No. 4 (2015), pp. 478-495
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jafrireli.3.4.0478
Accessed: 22-01-2017 17:17 UTC
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47 8 jour na l of a f r ic a na r e l igions
6. Deborah Thomas, Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica

(Durham, n.C.: Duke University Press, 2011), 2.
7. Ibid, 13.
8. Frantz Fanon, “On Violence,” in The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox
(new York: Grove, 2004), 1–2.
9. Mary Pattillo-McCoy, “Church Culture as a Strategy of Action in the Black
Community,” American Sociological Review 63, no. 6 (December 1998): 767–84.
American Muslim (Un)Exceptionalism:

#BlackLivesMatter and #BringBackourGirls
hu sse in rashid, Hofstra University
prec ious rashe ed a muham m a d, Independent Scholar
Abstract
The acceptance and performance of Americanness as defined by a
dominant discourse is manifest in the ways Muslims express their
religious identification and acquiesce to the issues that are impor-
tant to the state. In this article, we choose one particular example
to highlight a trajectory of responses that limits Muslim history in
the United States to positive and uncritical representations of the
self, thereby circumscribing avenues of dissent and challenges to
authority.
Keywords: nation of Islam, racism, nigeria, journalism, nicholas Said
To me, it is impossible to conceive how a human being can be happy through

any other channel, than to do as much good as possible to his fellow-man in
this world.
— nI C H oL A S SA I D 1
JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 478 16/09/15 10:47 AM

47 9 Roundtable: Black Lives Matter?
American2 Muslims represent one of the most diverse Muslim populations

in the world, bringing together different ethnicities and schools of thought.
While they may have transnational concerns, they are primarily socially con-
ditioned by the country in which they reside, the United States. This means
that Muslims may not be distinctive from other Americans in their conception
of the world.3 In particular, structures of race, belonging, and power express
themselves in representative ways throughout American Muslim communities.
The acceptance and performance of Americanness as defined by a dominant
discourse is manifest in the ways Muslims express their religious identification
and acquiesce to the issues that are important to the state. In this article, we
choose one particular example to highlight a trajectory of responses that limits
Muslim history in the United States to positive and uncritical representations of
the self, thereby circumscribing avenues of dissent and challenges to authority.
American Interests
The attack against the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a humor magazine based in
Paris, on January 7, 2015, received worldwide attention and condemnation.
It also came after a violent attack in the town of Baga and surrounding areas,
in nigeria, on January 3, 2015. The attack in Paris resulted in an immediate
loss of twelve lives, while the one in nigeria was reported to have cost over two
thousand lives.4 While both stories received news coverage, the Paris attacks
received more press attention in the United States.
The differences in coverage can be explained by structural issues within jour-
nalism, such as the lack of foreign bureaus, security issues for reporters, and the
fact that violence in an insurgency is not as remarkable as mass violence in a city
at peace. While these issues are no doubt important, they mask the deeper role of
societal decision making and values with the cloak of objectivity.
Many U.S.-based news organizations are closing foreign offices, and they
are also deciding where to close them. The decision to leave them open in
places that are familiar, such as Paris, London, and even Moscow, means that
the unfamiliar not only remains unfamiliar but becomes more so. These cities
are identified as important global cities through a particular set of criteria.
However, when looking at the size of populations and resultant newsworthy
events, the centers of news shift. Places like nigeria, Ukraine, Kenya, Syria,
Iraq, Venezuela, Iran, and China become more important.

48 0 jour na l of a f r ic a na r e l ig ions
nigeria is undoubtedly dangerous for reporters. However, there is no

indication that the security situation is worse than in Syria or Iraq, where
there are U.S. reporters. The fact that there are reporters in war zones
means that regular, ongoing mass violence is newsworthy, so the attacks
in nigeria cannot be ignored simply because they were part of a continuing
conflict. Ignoring the attacks is particularly problematic when so much
attention was paid to the kidnapping of over two hundred Nigerian girls in
April 2014.
These rationalizations demonstrate a preference. People are inherently
more understanding, accepting, and comfortable with others they identify as
“self,” however that identification is made.5 Foreign offices are open in places
that are like “home” or for which there is a nostalgic affinity. War zones are
more interesting where one’s national army is fighting. #BringBackOurGirls
was arguably accessible because it was a Twitter campaign—a favorite tool for
U.S. journalists—and involved voices familiar to media outlets.6
We do not believe that this sort of preference is categorically wrong. It is
tied to ideas of empathy and compassion and thus allows for more in-depth
and nuanced reporting. However, when this cohesion creates a monoculture,
with no room for differing opinions, experiences, or ways of seeing the world,
it marginalizes others.
Using the differential of coverage between Paris and Baga in January as an
example, we argue that American society generally conceives and values the
lives of others along a spectrum. There is a connection between the stories of
#BringBackourGirls and #BlackLivesMatter that shows how certain lives only
matter in certain ways.
By virtue of being located in the United States, some American Muslims
conform to these expectations of whose lives are worth noting. Socialization
and communal norms are an important manifestation of this conformity. In
addition, the American Muslim is aware of a double consciousness and performs
Americanness and Muslimness with that awareness. If these identifications are
portrayed as competing interests, then only certain narratives of being Muslim
are acceptable. While recognizing that there are a multitude of ways of being
Muslim and American, we focus on a construction in which these identifications
conflict with one another, and we do so in order to demonstrate the ways each
identification is curtailed when performing the other.
We believe that social patterns are illuminated through personal
stories. As such, we mix first-person narrative—the story of Precious Rasheeda
Muhammad in Texas—with a discussion of the ways in which stories are told
to give lives meaning, using the history of nicholas Said.

Precious Rasheeda Muhammad in Texas
“That was the worst book that could ever have been published.”
The Texan imam’s words hit me like a gale-force punch. I was
standing outside the African American Museum of Dallas, full of life
and laughter, chatting it up post-speech with two beautiful Muslim
sisters of African descent when he’d thoughtlessly interrupted our
conversation.
“What, no one ever told you that?” the imam continued, noticing
the smile drain from my face as the sisters looked on in horror. “They
brainwashed him,” he informed me.
It was Black History Month, nearly a decade ago, and I had
been invited to speak on Islam in the African American experience.
The imam was upset that I was talking to the sisters about
Nicholas Said, an African-born U.S. Civil War veteran of Muslim
heritage.
I had rediscovered and published Said’s long-forgotten 224-page
autobiography while a graduate student at Harvard. The sisters were
excited to hear Said’s story and wondered why I hadn’t brought any
books with me to sell.
I hadn’t brought the books with me because I had been told that
the imam did not want me to do so.
I had overcome many trials and tribulations to bring Said’s story
to the public, and now here was an African American imam, during
Black History month, shaming me for my efforts.
The Bind of Double Consciousness

W. E. B. Du Bois articulated the idea that Black people are always aware of how
they are perceived by dominant members of society.7 They live in their own
mind and in the mind of the observer, constantly in a state of performance.
What he observed in the nineteenth century for Black people can easily be
applied to almost any minority in the United States. In the twenty-first century,
the performance of Muslimness for the sake of public perception is acute.
Layering on minority identities of race, gender, and class makes it not double
consciousness, but multiple consciousness.8
In the exchange with the Dallas imam, or congregational leader, Muhammad
experiences an implicit attack on her being through the critique of her work.

In another context, a scholar with a graduate degree from Harvard, working

on a previously unknown manuscript that deepens the history of Muslims in
America, would be feted. In this Texas context, her work is belittled. While
we do not doubt her gender played an important part in this exchange, it
is more certain that the imam was deeply concerned about the image and
representation of Muslims in America. The story of nicholas Said is, like most
human stories, not a straight-line heroic tale, but one of conflict, transforma-
tion, contradiction, and messiness.
Such a narrative will never be a positive representation. nor will it be a
negative representation. It will be a human representation. Even under the best
of circumstances, people want themselves and their communities to be seen
in the best possible way. Under racist and Islamophobic gazes, the desire for
positive portrayals, especially to counter negative ones, can be overwhelming.
As strong and as important as Said’s autobiography is, it does not deliver that
“Muslim hero” fiction.
The Story of nicholas Said
nicholas Said was born into a Muslim family in what is now Kukawa, in Borno
State, Northern Nigeria, a place where Islam had flourished for over eight
hundred years. We now think of this land as the state torn apart by Boko
Haram: same place, different time, some of the same ethnic groups, different
living people, some similar issues. These issues include violent schisms over
what the proper practice of the faith is and who has the right to determine it,
economic instability, and external interference.
Said spent his formative years in his homeland acquiring religious
education and learning the history of his people, including the tribal wars and
the intrareligious wars among Muslims that killed thousands, destroyed cities,
and tore apart families.9
Muslim Tuaregs abducted Said during the month of Ramadan, when he was
barely a teenager, and sold him into slavery to other Muslims. of his time in cap-
tivity at the hand of Muslims, he wrote, “I began . . . to think that it was my fate
to pass from hand to hand, with never a sure and definite resting place.”10
For years Said was passed from Muslim master to Muslim master until he
was sold outside Islamdom, against Islamic law. Said points out this violation
in his autobiography: “He offered a large price for me,” Said wrote of his first
non-Muslim master, “but, under the then existing Turkish law, a [Muslim]
slave could not be sold out of the empire; so the matter was clandestinely

compromised.”11 Said’s final master was a Russian prince who “made up his
mind,” Said explained, to forcefully convert the devout African Muslim to Greek
orthodox Christianity. He promptly assigned Mohammed Ali Ben Said the
“Christian name” Nicholas, allowing him to keep only the last name Said. He
states, “I cannot help thinking the way I was baptized was not right, for I think
I ought to have known perfectly well the nature of the thing beforehand.”12
A series of events led to Said’s eventual freedom and a possibility to return
home. However, by 1860, he was marooned in the United States, barely twenty
years old. By the time Said wrote his book in 1873, he had served in the Union
Army, had educated Black children in the Midwest and the Deep South, and
had even dabbled in American politics, medicine, and law. The positive tone in
his writing about Islam had become less enthusiastic than when he first arrived
in America. He revealed a deep, bitter resentment with religious wars, pitting
Muslim against Muslim, that had ravaged his homeland. Even though the wars
occurred before he was born and he only knew them through his studies, they
appeared to take on new meaning for him as his condition in the United States
worsened.
He had gone from talking lovingly, in the 1867 Atlantic Monthly, about
“Allah, who protects the innocent and punishes the guilty,” to a more hostile
tone in his 1873 book, proclaiming that Islam had brought nothing but
“desolation and ruin” to his homeland via religious wars.13
Conforming and Controlling

Though Said was never a slave in the United States, his story mirrors the ways
in which Black bodies were explicitly controlled in the American antebellum
period, and it represents the continued implicit control in the postbellum
period, during which he was present in the United States. Said’s Christianity
was not his choice but was assigned to him by a slave master. He is conflicted
about Christianity, and his views of Islam are equally complicated.
At some level, we have to consider the ways in which cultural norms
and expectations contributed to his proclamations on Islam once he arrived
in the United States, where he first began to write and talk publicly about his
life experiences. Such an approach does not question Said’s sincerity. Rather,
it exposes the ways in which societal norms curtailed the speech and actions of
Black people, and the ways in which Said was expected to perform his freedom
and Blackness in the Reconstruction period.
Said did not write about his service in the Civil War in his autobiography.
He could not do so. He was living in Alabama at the time his book was

published, a place he had been warned about because, as a Black person, his
life would be “in great danger.”14 White people sent Black people to “pick” him,
or slyly pry him, for information to determine if he was a spy or an emissary
for the Yankees.15
In a similar context of social conformity, it is also possible he could not
write favorably of Islam while professing to be a Christian, especially since
two of his greatest supporters were influential Christian pastors. Prior to
America’s fascination and adaptation of Arab and Muslim themes—the period
of American Orientalism—the figure of the “Mahometan” was most closely
affiliated with Barbary pirates.16 Said would have been perceived as a traitor
on multiple levels. He had to construct an identity that would prevent him
from being labeled as a Union soldier or a “Mahometan.”
At the same time, he offers a trenchant critique of the Muslims with whom
he is familiar. He did not have to write his frustrations; they appear to be
unconditioned and offer a reflection on what he knew of Muslims. He was sold
and traded by Muslims and then sold outside of the Muslim world against both
religious and state injunctions. This resulted in his forced conversion.
Just as Said may have performed certain identifications to have a sense
of security, today’s American Muslims may have to perform certain identifica-
tions to be considered “acceptable.” This statement is not meant to question the
sincerity of anyone’s actions but to recognize that responses are conditioned
by environment.
At one point in American history, the nation of Islam reversed the gaze
on the Black body. Their spirituality laid claim to a humanity denied by the
dominant society. Through dress, economics, education, control over religious
languages and instruction, and even the food they consumed, their performance
did not seek to integrate into power but to revolt by making their own gaze
the critical one.17
Such dissent, because of political responses, economic access, and changing
demographics in the American Muslim community, is no longer possible with
the same impact. For example, the current nation of Islam’s actions against
social injustice do not receive significant media coverage. Until a more orga-
nized challenge to power emerges, performances of American Muslimness may
acquiesce to the gaze that generates double consciousness: the gaze of power.
As a result, the breadth and depth of American Muslimness are often curtailed
to serve a construction of Americanness. However, Americanness is historically
constructed on exclusion, which can be based on gender, race, religion, eth-
nicity, sexuality, and class. The idea of who is American has broadened and
become more inclusive only when challenged to do so.

To uncritically perform Americanness for a sense of national belonging

only reinforces exclusion, including the exclusion of those seeking to belong.
It perpetuates the idea that there is only one way to be American, and there
will always be ways to find the performance of others lacking.18 If one has
to say, on the national stage, “I am not Muslim” or “I am not African,” one
is also saying that being African and being Muslim operate in exclusion to
being American. At the beginning of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign,
Senator Barack Obama was called “Arab,” as a pejorative. He denied he was,
as though he could not be American and Arab. Senator John McCain came
to his defense by saying that obama was a good man, not an Arab.19 In the
entire exchange, “Arab” is clearly conflated with and serves as a metonym for
“Muslim.” Therefore, Obama’s Americanness was challenged on the grounds of
his perceived Muslimness. It was Colin Powell, former head of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff and secretary of state, who said that Obama was not Muslim, and “what
if he is.”20 It took Powell, as a third party, to break the oppositional construc-
tion of “Muslim” and “American.”
Effacing History, Effacing Self

To become an ideal American, Muslims must hew their histories in a particular
way so that a seamless joint is formed. Yet, that merger is not between equals;
it is not the formation of a composite culture.21 Instead, Muslims surrender the
texture of their histories that gives their narratives meaning.22
In the present, it is easier for some Muslims to say Said was brainwashed,
that he changed his views on Islam because of his exposure to racist, dis-
criminatory Americans, and that criticizing Muslims was the safer story for
him to tell in a country where he was under threat. His critics perform as
the “good Muslim” and the “good American” either by condemning “bad
Muslims,” as defined by the state, or by denying that Muslims can be less
than perfect. The imam in Dallas seems to choose this latter option. He could
not let the truth of Said’s story be told because it was not the perfect story
of belief and redemption. In this logic, Said had to be a perfect Muslim;
otherwise, his story is not worth telling. It ruins the veneer of perfection for
the community as a whole. By living as a Christian and criticizing Muslims,
by telling the story of his enslavement by fellow coreligionists, Said breaks
the fiction of an ideal Muslim. To discount the story of Said as an American
Muslim story is to erase part of the cultural memory of American Muslims,
to limit the ways one can be Muslim, and to perpetuate marginalization and
exclusion.

486 jour na l of a f r ica na r e l igions
The United States and nigeria have always had a connection, particularly
through trade: the Black bodies of yesterday and the material goods of today. As
early as the seventeenth century, Black people from what is now nigeria were
enslaved in what is now the United States. In some places, such as Virginia,
they made up a large majority of the slave population.
In a 1766 issue, the Virginia Gazette published information on a runaway
enslaved person of Nigerian origin. Note the use of the word “Ibo” with no
further explanation of what it means, giving the impression the Ibo were not
unfamiliar to readers.23
CoMMITTED to James City prison an Ibo negro fellow, about 5 feet

6 or 7 inches high, about 40 years old, has on a blue coat with metal
buttons, a cotton waistcoat, a pair of buckskin breeches, has five
gashes of his country mark on each cheek, and says that he was sold
about 6 years ago by Col. Hunter, late of Hampton, to David Sallen,
waterman. The owner may have him on proving his property, and
paying charges, of WILLIAM LAnE.24
nigerians were also involved in one of the earliest historical moments of

Black people in the United States resisting state-sanctioned violence against
Black bodies. In 1803, newly arrived and enslaved Igbo committed an act
of mass resistance against legalized theft of labor and enslavement of Black
bodies. They walked into Dunbar Creek, on St. Simon Island in Georgia,
until drowning overcame some of them. Their story has become legendary,
even making it into the creative work of Pulitzer Prize–winning author and
nobel laureate Toni Morrison.25 The historic site in Georgia is known today
as “Igbo Landing.”26
By the time of Said’s enslavement, participation in the international slave
trade had become illegal in the United States, but slavery as an institution
had not. Had the international slave trade still been an option for Americans,
it is quite possible Said—his face covered with well-documented tribal marks
of nigerian origin—might have become a slave in America instead of coming
later as a free man and eventually joining the front lines to end slavery in the
United States. Hence, the relationship between the United States and nigeria
may not have always been mutually beneficial, but it helped to define America.
Failing to acknowledge that complicated and difficult history creates new
complications and difficulties for Americans and American foreign policy. It
also makes it easier to perpetuate the idea that “Africa is a country,” and a
“dark continent,” with which we are unfamiliar. In fact, not only have Nigeria’s

sons and daughters walked in the United States since its earliest beginnings, but
they also helped build the country and fought for the freedom of its enslaved
peoples. And as much as the past is foreign territory, nigeria is not a stranger
to the United States.
We must also acknowledge race in the construction of American
Muslimness. Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, from Punjab, is considered the first
Muslim missionary to come to America. He is from the Ahmadiyya Muslim
community, a group that some Muslims consider heretical. While there is a
valid argument that Said offered criticism and at least a partial rejection of
his Muslim identification, the acceptance of Sadiq’s “heresy” is evidence that
there are ways in which difference is strategically accepted. There is a sense
in the modern period that “Black Islam” is somehow less authentic than the
Islams practiced by South Asians and Arabs. This applies not only to African
Americans but to Black people writ large, including Muslims from various
countries in Africa and the Black Atlantic. These histories are not unfamiliar;
they are in plain sight, hidden only because of where people have been condi-
tioned to direct their gaze.
#BlackLivesMatter
While many American Muslims must contend with their own shadeism and
racism, in the American context they are also wed to the racism of the nation.
Rather than distinguishing between social racism and structural racism, we
deal with the manifestations of racism as they affect Black communities. The
ways in which nicholas Said is, at times, excluded from the popular history
of American Muslims reveal the ways in which exclusion is internalized by
American Muslims. The ways in which the Baga tragedy largely escaped the
American Muslim consciousness, while the Hebdo one dominated it, reveal the
ways in which the dominant discourse in the United States is internalized by
American Muslims.
When Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and opal Tometi started
#BlackLivesMatter in 2012, after the murder of Trayvon Martin, it was not
about one person.27 It was a protest against centuries of marginalization of the
Black person: body, mind, and spirit. It was about modern lynchings at the
hands of state officials and those who believe they are acting in the interests
of the state, the erasing of Black contributions to America, and the system-
atic policies, even those under a liberal veneer, that disenfranchise those who
already start at a disadvantage.

488 jour na l of a f r ic a na r e l igions
Between the start of #BlackLivesMatter in 2012 and its popular resurgence

in 2014, there was another social media campaign, #BringBackourGirls, which
seemed to recognize that Black lives have meaning. However, the nation rarely
takes notice of women and minorities except for reasons of “national security”
or to further some other state need.28 While those involved in the campaign
may have been sincere, the “Muslim woman” is often deployed as a trope to
justify military intervention and action. A more specific variant of this idea is
the “Muslim girl seeking education,” which is the mold the Nigerian students
fit.29 Furthermore, these images are almost always deployed against Muslim
groups in the modern period. Despite gender-based violence being common in
war and failed states, it receives little to no attention when used against Muslim
women by non-Muslim communities.30 Were violence against women truly a
concern, perhaps more would have been done against the Lord’s Resistance
Army’s tactics, which were adopted by Boko Haram in the particular raid that
resulted in the rise of #BringBackourGirls.31
Such an argument does not diminish the necessity of aiding those suffering
from gender-based violence. However, the lack of consistency demonstrates
the ways in which the state is not an altruistic actor. Since the state is not a
sentient being but responds to the will of the people, such actions represent the
thinking of those who craft policy. As the state grows, it carries the weight of
previous policies, a container for cultural memories. The state and the citizen
are in a dialogic relationship, with each informing the other, so there is no
escaping the legacy of slavery, racism, conquest, and exclusion that formed
the nation. Every American inherits this legacy, and American Muslims are no
exception.
#BringBackourGirls entailed a complex of desires around humanitarian
intervention and national security interests. It was not an example to show that
#BlackLivesMatter. The loss of a library in Mali, holding thousands of priceless
ancient manuscripts, received more concern than the loss of lives.32 We are
deeply aware of the need for learning and culture to persist through times of
crisis; it is one of the points of #BlackLivesMatter. At the same time, to realize
that Timbuktu was important because of Mansa Musa, and not because of the
people there now, speaks to the ways in which Blackness is still constructed,
rather than valued.
In such a context, it is no surprise that the loss of two thousand lives in
nigeria goes underreported. There is not enough value placed on those lives
to deserve their own coverage. In the context of American Muslims, there is a
more pronounced silence tied to communal solidarity defined not by religion,
but by power. That power is informed by ethnic and racial in-group preference,

structural racism, and the need to perform a particular sort of Muslimness

acceptable to those with power. American Muslims were caught up in the
media frenzy of Charlie Hebdo because they are American, and it resonated
with ideas of free speech, the roles of Muslim minorities, and the pressures of
news coverage.
The call for American Muslims to condemn overseas acts of violence is a trap.
Whether one does so or not, one ensures one’s marginalization. To do so is to per-
petuate the idea that Muslims are somehow foreign or the myth that there is an
ummah, a universal, monolithic Muslim community. To not do so is to reinforce the
idea that Muslims are not truly American or are secret sympathizers with violent
extremists. The ways of performing Muslimness are limited. However, even in
that curtailed space, there is room to speak to the savagery of Boko Haram, as
well as ISIS. For example, one can state unequivocally that extrajudicial killings—
including those done by American drones—are absolutely abhorrent.
It is possible for Muslims to invert the gaze of power once more, but
only if the performance of Muslimness is owned by Muslims. Such a strategy
would involve recognizing the history, policies, and legacies of the breadth
of American Muslims and the range of ways one can be American, including
through dissent and opposition. It cannot be about co-opting a struggle, such as
the African American struggle for equality, but instead must be about recogniz-
ing a shared struggle. nicholas Said, in part, makes those connections possible.
His complicated history and relationship to Islam is a microcosm of the story of
American Muslim communities and the struggle for self-identification.
The result is that Black lives must matter beyond those cases when the
stories serve the narrative of perfection American Muslims want to put forward.
For example, Muslim histories selectively choose Malcolm X and Muhammad
Ali, and leave behind the story of Elijah Muhammad. The students are high-
lighted in the American Muslim narrative, but their teacher is excluded because
of how he performed his Muslimness and his Americanness. The lesson is incom-
plete with that exclusion. Both omar ibn Said and nicholas Said, men of Muslim
heritage, professed to be Christian once in the United States. Since the former
was not critical of Islam, his story is championed and great pains are taken to
make the case that he might have secretly remained an adherent of Islam.33 By
marginalizing the latter, a valuable learning opportunity is lost.
A closer look at nicholas Said reveals his fascination with the writings of
Emanuel Swedenborg. At one point in his autobiography he feels the need to
qualify positive statements about Islam with a profession that he is not Muslim.
He writes, “Reader, do not misunderstand me, I was a Mohammedan; I am now,
in belief, a Christian and a Swedenborgian; but I want to see fair play in these

matters.”34 of interest is that Swedenborg had teachings that appeal to Muslims

even today. For instance, one of America’s most famous Muslims, Dr. Mehmet oz,
confirms that he is both Muslim and a student of Swedenborg’s teachings.35 By
examining the life of nicholas Said, there is an opportunity to better understand
Islam in America and how both Americanness and Muslimness are performed.
Conclusion
Nicholas Said’s story is heroic. As a Union soldier, he risked his life to fight state-
sanctioned violence, legalized theft of labor, and systematic and institutional
oppression of Black lives. He wrote with complexity and care of the Islam he
knew in one of America’s most notable magazines and in his own autobiography.
He lived as a polymath, working in education, medicine, and politics. Through
all of his struggles, he did not just care about Black lives, though they were of
the utmost import to him; he cared about the lives of all people.
That sort of universalism is easily corrupted. When the #BlackLivesMatter
social media campaign begins to peak, it is paired with #AllLivesMatter.
The tag is deployed both by critics and supporters of the #BlackLivesMatter
movement. The former seek to attack what they perceive as special treat-
ment of Black people, and the latter see themselves as caring for everyone,
regardless of race. While no one argues against the sentiment behind the
latter tag, it, like the term “postracial,” is used to mask deep inequalities
in American society and the particular manifestations of these inequalities
on Black bodies.36 An “All Lives Matter” position only works when all lives
actually matter, which in turn requires recognizing the structures of power
that keep all lives from mattering. It is not an abstract concern but a practi-
cal one.
In a similar vein, after the murder of three young Muslims in Chapel Hill,
north Carolina, in February 2015, one could see the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter.
The use of the tag is as problematic as the #AllLivesMatter hashtag because
it co-opts a particular struggle and applies it to another marginalized group.
This is not to suggest that one cannot hold multiple identifications or engage
in cooperative work, but rather to point out the ways in which Americanness
is performed. The hashtag presupposes all things are equal, which may not be
true from the perspective of those engaged in #BlackLivesMatter. In addition,
the #MuslimLivesMatter hashtag accepts the racialization of Muslim religious
identity that exists in dominant American discourse and implies that Black and
Muslim cannot be overlapping identifications.

This performance of Americanness does not offer a shield against othering.

Rudy Giuliani’s critique of President Barack obama’s Americanness is a good
example. “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do
not believe that the president loves America,” posited the former “America’s
mayor” at a 2015 Republican fundraiser. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t
love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought
up through love of this country.” Unsaid here is that both Obama’s African and
Muslim background, which have been under constant attack since he first ran
for president, make him suspect. That he is both Christian and American does
nothing to bolster his Americanness in the eyes of his critics.
To tell a complete story of Muslims in America is to include the stories that
do not receive the attention of a Dr. oz and to make the diversity of American
Muslim experience more broadly known; it is also to tell the story of those of
Muslim heritage who lost their religion because of coercion based on their race
and, in some cases, as a result of acts committed by their own coreligionists.
To not tell the story of Nicholas Said is to strip him of his religious identifica-
tion again.
Bruce Lawrence looks at the late Imam Warith Deen Mohammed as a
commentator on the Qur’an who sees racial justice in the text.37 As a son of Elijah
Muhammad and leader of one of the largest American Muslim groups, his impact
on American history cannot be underestimated. After the death of his father,
he methodically transitioned members of the nation of Islam to a more widely
recognized Islamic practice, described by some observers as being in alignment
with Sunni Islam.38 This transition marks the largest declaration of Americans
calling themselves “Muslim” in the history of the United States.
From his father’s teachings, he kept the imperatives of self-reliance and
the fight for racial justice, but he rejected, starting the day his father passed,
anything incompatible with the Qur’an. Within that, he carved out his own
focus that would draw on African, Muslim, and African American identities
for, as he frequently stated, the “betterment of the human condition.” He
referred to himself as “Muslim American Spokesman for Human Salvation.” In
his vision, all lives mattered, and securing the sanctity of Black life, too often
ignored even by other Muslims in the world, was paramount. “There are two
things I will never give up, Al-Islam and my African American identity,” he
once said.39
one of his oft-quoted sayings, employed ubiquitously by his community
even seven years after his passing, is this: “The highest purpose for human
life and existence is community life.”40 A close look at the saying reveals a
purposeful application of Qur’an 49:13. This made clear to his community

that they had an obligation as citizens of the United States to “love-it-and-

make-it-better.”41 It expressed the understanding that they had the freedom
and the obligation to fully perform their Muslimness, their Blackness, and
their Americanness.
These are among the stories that are lost in conforming to expectations of
Americanness and Muslimness. While the response of the Dallas imam is not the
only response to performing these identifications, it highlights how Muslims are
conditioned by the societies in which they live. Muslims are not as distinctive as
popular discourses suggest. Their gaze may also be the dominant American gaze.
It can be redirected by applying a different lens. Fifty years ago, the march to
Selma offered one such perspective, with religious voices in action-oriented oppo-
sition to injustices of the state. This opposition included the nation of Islam, which
made a national call for a “united black front” against police brutality.42 Today,
the #March2Justice may offer a similar intervention. It is a multicommunity
attempt—including Muslims and a Muslim woman as cochair—to deliver crimi-
nal justice reform. It stands in contrast to the Dallas imam who could not fully
appreciate the complexity of American Muslim history.
Notes
1. nicholas Said, The Autobiography of Nicholas Said: A Native of Bornou, Eastern
Soudan, Central Africa (Memphis: Shotwell, 1873), 213.
2. We recognize that “America” is a broad term that should not refer simply to the
United States. However, we are opting for the colloquial usage because we are
focusing on the Unites States of America.
3. Cf. M. Steven Fish, Are Muslims Distinctive? A Look at the Evidence (new York: oxford
University Press, 2011).
4. Shirley de Villiers, “An Overview of Conflict in Africa in 2014,” African Security
Review 24, no. 1 (2015): 89–100; and Michelle A. Holling and Dreama G. Moon,
“Continuing a Politic of Disruption: Race(ing) Intercultural Communication,”
Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 8, no. 2 (2015): 81–85.
5. David Pizarro, “Nothing More than Feelings? The Role of Emotions in Moral
Judgment,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 30, no. 4 (2000): 355–75.
6. Marcel Broersma and Todd Graham, “Twitter as a News Source: How Dutch and
British Newspapers Used Tweets in Their News Coverage, 2007–2011,” Journalism
Practice 7, no. 4 (2013): 446–64; Ruthann Weaver Lariscy et al., “An Examination
of the Role of Online Social Media in Journalists’ Source Mix,” Public Relations
Review 35, no. 3 (2009): 314–16; Dhiraj Murthy et al., “Twitter: Microphone for the
Masses?,” Media, Culture and Society 33, no. 5 (2011): 779–89; Farida Vis, “Twitter
as a Reporting Tool for Breaking News: Journalists Tweeting the 2011 UK Riots,”
Digital Journalism 1, no. 1 (2013): 27–47.

7. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk,” in Writings, ed. nathan Irvin Huggins
(new York: Library of America, 1986), 363–71.
8. Jamillah A. Karim, “To Be Black, Female, and Muslim: A Candid Conversation about
Race in the American Ummah,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 26, no. 2 (2006):
225–33.
9. Said, Autobiography of Nicholas Said, 9–38.
10. Ibid., 121–22.
11. Ibid., 124.
12. Nicholas Said, “A Native of Bornoo,” Atlantic Monthly, 1867, 492.
13. Ibid., 486. Said, Autobiography of Nicholas Said, 15.
14. Said, Autobiography of Nicholas Said, 206.
15. Ibid.
16. Robert J. Allison, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim
World, 1776–1815 (new York: oxford University Press, 1995); Jonathan Curiel,
Al’ America: Travels through America’s Arab and Islamic Roots (new York: new Press,
2008); Robert Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam (new York: oxford University Press,
2002); nathaniel Deutsch, Inventing America’s “Worst” Family: Eugenics, Islam, and
the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2009); Timothy Marr, The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006); and Susan nance, How the Arabian Nights
Inspired the American Dream, 1790–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of north Carolina
Press, 2009).
17. Edward E. Curtis IV, Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in
African-American Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of new York Press,
2002); Curtis, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2006); Curtis, “Islamizing the Black Body: Ritual
and Power in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam,” Religion and American Culture
12, no. 2 (2002): 167–96; Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam; and Michael Angelo
Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
18. Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto, 2011); Deutsch, Inventing
America’s “Worst” Family; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (new York:
Grove, 1982); Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2000); Dhooleka Sarhadi Raj, Where Are You From?: Middle-
Class Migrants in the Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003);
Mia Tuan, Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites?: The Asian Ethnic Experience Today
(new Brunswick, n.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998); Takao ozawa v. U.S., 260
U.S. 178 (1922), http://laws.findlaw.com/us/260/178.html; U.S. v. Bhagat Singh
Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), http://laws.findlaw.com/us/261/204.html.
19. Douglas Kellner, “Barack Obama and Celebrity Spectacle,” International Journal of
Communication 3 (2009): 715–41; Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo and Mary K. Bloodsworth-
Lugo, “Black as Brown: The 2008 Obama Primary Campaign and the U.S. Browning
of Terror,” Journal of African-American Studies 13, no. 2 (2009): 110–20.

49 4 jour na l of a f r ica na r e l igions
20. Radhika Parameswaran, “Facing Barack Hussein Obama: Race, Globalization,

and Transnational America,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 33, no. 3 (2009):
195–205.
21. Richard Alba and Victor nee, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation
and Contemporary Immigration (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2003), 10.
22. Partha Chatterjee, “The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories,”
in The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus, ed. Partha Chatterjee (new Delhi: oxford University
Press, 1999); Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine
How We See the Rest of the World (new York: Pantheon Books, 1981).
23. The Ibo are also known as Igbo.
24. William Lane, “Classified Ad,” Virginia Gazette, March 21, 1766.
25. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (new York: Vintage International, 2004), 322–23.
26. Also: Ibo Landing, Ebo Landing, or Ebos Landing.
27. Alicia Garza, “A Herstory of the #Blacklivesmatter Movement,” The Feminist Wire,
october 7, 2014, http://thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/.
28. Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2013); and Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad
Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (new York: Pantheon
Books, 2004).
29. Shenila Khoja-Moolji, “Becoming an ‘Intimate Publics’: Exploring the Affective
Intensities of Hashtag Feminism,” Feminist Media Studies 15, no. 2 (2015): 347–50;
and Shenila Khoja-Moolji, “Suturing Together Girls and Education: An Investigation
into the Social (Re)production of Girls’ Education as a Hegemonic Ideology,”
Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority
Education 9, no. 2 (2015): 87–107.
30. Jacob Zenn and Elizabeth Pearson, “Women, Gender and the Evolving Tactics of
Boko Haram,” Journal of Terrorism Research 5, no. 1 (2014), http://ojs.st-andrews.
ac.uk/index.php/jtr/article/view/828/707.
31. Juan Cole, “Boko Haram and the Lord’s Resistance Army: Hunted Children and the
Problem of Fundamentalism in Africa,” Informed Comment, May 7, 2014, http://
www.juancole.com/2014/05/resistance-children-fundamentalism.html.
32. Baba Ahmed, “UN Assesses Damage to Timbuktu Manuscripts,” The Big Story,
Associated Press, July 2, 2013, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/un-assesses-
damage-timbuktu-manuscripts.
33. P. E. Horn, “Coercions, Conversions: Subversions: The Nineteenth-Century Slave
Narratives of Omar Ibn Said, Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, and Nicholas Said,”
Auto/Biography Studies 27, no. 1 (2012): 52.
34. Said, Autobiography of Nicholas Said, 70.
35. “Dr. Mehmet Oz,” Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., PBS, 2010, http://
www.pbs.org/wnet/facesofamerica/profiles/dr-mehmet-oz/4/.

36. Hussein Rashid, “Why the Post-Racial Label Only Perpetuates Racism,” Religion
News Service, november 25, 2014, http://www.religionnews.com/2014/11/25/
post-racial-label-perpetuates-racism-commentary/.
37. Bruce B. Lawrence, The Qur’an: A Biography (new York: Grove, 2006), 163–71.
38. It is important to note that the community does not self-identify as being part of any
school of thought or movement. They refer to themselves only as Muslims.
39. “The Late, Imam WD Mohammed,” Masjid Muhammad: The Nation’s Mosque, accessed
May 2, 2015, http://thenationsmosque.org/about/the-late-imam-wd-mohammed/.
40. W. Deen Mohammed, “Life: The Final Battlefield—Part 2,” Muslim Journal,
April 18–May 9, 2008; available online at http://www.newafricaradio.com/arti-
cles/5_9_08.htm.
41. Don Terry, “A Leap of Faith,” Chicago Tribune Magazine, october 20, 2002, http://
www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-021020-mohammedprofile-story.html.
42. Muhammad Speaks 4, no. 41 (September 3, 1965).
Freedom from Heaven: State Violence and

Religious Protest in the Early Black Atlantic
jo n sensbach, University of Florida
Abstract
From the beginning of European colonialism in the new World,
Africans and people of African descent used religious language and
ideology to protest the interlocking of religion, the state, and slavery.
Throughout the Americas, slavery was built on a legal superstructure
undergirded by imperial, national, and local power. Government
produced and enforced the slave codes that defined human beings
as property and legalized their torture, maiming, and execution.
Therefore, any protest or act of resistance against slavery was by
definition directed against the state as well. From slave rebellions
to freedom petitions to protests against the U.S. Fugitive Slave Law,
religion inspired resistance against the terror of state-sponsored
slavery.

Rashid & Muhammafd, American Muslim

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American Muslim (Un)Exceptionalism #BlackLivesMatter and #BringBackOurGirls

Author(s): Hussein Rashid and Precious Rasheeda Muhammad

6. Deborah Thomas, Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica

American Muslim (Un)Exceptionalism:

prec ious rashe ed a muham m a d, Independent Scholar

Keywords: nation of Islam, racism, nigeria, journalism, nicholas Said

To me, it is impossible to conceive how a human being can be happy through

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American2 Muslims represent one of the most diverse Muslim populations

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nigeria is undoubtedly dangerous for reporters. However, there is no

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Precious Rasheeda Muhammad in Texas

The Bind of Double Consciousness

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In another context, a scholar with a graduate degree from Harvard, working

The Story of nicholas Said

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Conforming and Controlling

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 483 16/09/15 10:47 AM

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 484 16/09/15 10:47 AM

To uncritically perform Americanness for a sense of national belonging

Effacing History, Effacing Self

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 485 16/09/15 10:47 AM

CoMMITTED to James City prison an Ibo negro fellow, about 5 feet

nigerians were also involved in one of the earliest historical moments of

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 486 16/09/15 10:47 AM

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 487 16/09/15 10:47 AM

Between the start of #BlackLivesMatter in 2012 and its popular resurgence

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structural racism, and the need to perform a particular sort of Muslimness

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 489 16/09/15 10:47 AM

matters.”34 of interest is that Swedenborg had teachings that appeal to Muslims

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 490 16/09/15 10:47 AM

This performance of Americanness does not offer a shield against othering.

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 491 16/09/15 10:47 AM

that they had an obligation as citizens of the United States to “love-it-and-

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 492 16/09/15 10:47 AM

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 493 16/09/15 10:47 AM

20. Radhika Parameswaran, “Facing Barack Hussein Obama: Race, Globalization,

JOAR 3.4_03_RoundTable.indd 494 16/09/15 10:47 AM

Freedom from Heaven: State Violence and

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