AS1  

Word count: 461

 
In Black Star, Crescent Moon, Sohail Daulatzai explores the crucial realm
surrounding the “compass of suffering”, as elaborated by Aimé Césaire of the
Muslim International experience. He provides an alternative cultural and
political history of black people, Islam and the Muslim third world in light of
Malcolm X on the practices of the social movement history, prisons,
documentary culture, literature and hip-hop within the Civil Rights era until the
post-9/11 environment of the perpetual “War on Terror” and decolonisation.
Daulatzai’s insight on the vessel of Muslim Internationals as artists, activists,
movements alongside the hip-hop culture is an exhibition of the struggles and
poignant narratives of rebellion. He analyses Malcolm X through a historical
lens and contemporary frame to understand Islam, especially relevant in the rise
of black people converting to Islam in prisons, which is perceived as a return to
a preslavery past. He discusses on the Muslim International as an accumulation
of multiple overlapping diasporas resulting from slavery, colonialism and
migration that had erupted a realm of struggles bedside solidarity for ‘new
kinds’ of politics.
 
The first few chapters establish the history of black Islam after the second
World War led by Malcolm X and how Daulatzai views his influence on the
politics of the Muslim third world. He focuses on Frantz Fanon's literature as
forming the literal and ideological backdrop for the redefinition of black
cultural practices. In the third chapter, he elevates a discussion on Malcolm X’s
impact on the political dimension of the Muslim International through the 1980s
and 1990s hip-hop culture during the hypernationalism of the post-Civil Rights
era. Daulatzai further elaborates this by referring to the lyricism of artists such
as Rakim and Mos Def as having contributed to the notion of black freedom
stretching beyond the United States into the Muslim third world. The final
chapters examine Muhammad Ali’s legacy as a national hero during the 1990s
and a symbol of fear for Black Islam which has propagated to the post-9/11
climate ‘war on terror’. He argues on the attempts to erase black Islam in the
United States by the contemporary domestic prison regimes and emergence of
imperial imprisonments including Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
 
Daulatzai's delivery of a rare analysis of the interlink of the American blackness
and Muslim International unified identity considers each radical, political,
social and cultural element. Interestingly, he lacks the observation of the impact
of the global Islamist movements on the marginalisation of black Americans.
His scope of discussion on Malcolm X as having a significant role for black
Islam in the United States and the world stretches beyond Islam. Non-Muslim
black political groups have valued his legacy, which reveals that this text is
most beneficial to academics, black activists and individuals interested in the
black Islam American identity.