let us be moors

This piece, entitled Let Us Be Moors - Islam, Race And "Connected Histories" by Hisham Aidi connects incredibly well with the themes brought up all over Planet Grenada. Historical connections are discussed along with more contemporary ones: The Cuban patriot, Jose Marti declaring "Somos Moros!" (We are Moors!) in solidarity with African independence movements, Jose Padilla's indefinite incarceration, the rich cross-cultural fertilizations happening in hip-hop, Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay, a Brazilian telenovela about Morocco, Shakira, the Murabitun in Mexico, and to Granada itself.

This amazing and wide-ranging paper ends on an inspiring tone:

With African-American and Latino converts speaking of the tragedy of 1492, and with Muslim minorities in the West becoming increasingly race-conscious and inspired by black America, the world is witnessing a new fusion between Islam and pan-Africanism. Today, however, this racialized Islamic internationalism contains elements of other cultures and diasporas as well. Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture, which post-colonial critic Robert Young would say incarnates a "tricontinental counter-modernity" that combines diasporic and local cultural elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors to generate "a revolutionary black, Asian and Hispanic globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity...constructed in order to fight global imperialism."