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Review Blackamerican Jackson
Review Blackamerican Jackson
Review Blackamerican Jackson
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.
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.
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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.
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 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)
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)
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.
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)
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