Friday, October 14, 2005

black orientalism

Here is an exerpt from Jackson's latest book It is the chapter on Black Orientalism from Islamica Magazine.

If you are a Muslim of African descent living in the West just read this. It's good for you. It's food for your brain. Better than a bean pie. (I'm not a very subtle salesman) I am actually not certain that I have the words to adequately convey my thoughts about this stuff. For a very long time, orthodox Muslim discourse on race and racism in the United States has been extremely superficial. It mainly consists of a pamphlet about how Islam is anti-racist (and it is), a pamphlet about how when Malcolm X went on hajj he was treated really well by Muslims of different races (and he was) and a pamphlet about Bilal (the Ethiopian companion who used to be a slave but was freed by the Muslims and had a beautiful voice). And in some circles that's pretty much as deep as it goes. As a result, it is incredibly and intensely refreshing for me to read or hear from orthodox Black/Latino Muslims who talk about race and racism in an in-depth intelligent way. Hopefully, in some small way, Planet Grenada helps fill that vacuum.. although I don't think of myself as some kind of deep expert. But in any case, I'm just glad Jackson is out there talking about these issues, and if you are a fan of Planet Grenada then you'd probably enjoy his subject matter as much as I do.

4 comments:

Sharks said...

Hey! SALAM ALIKUM...u'r blog is exactly the kind of blogs i wanna read...u can't imagine the rush i get from reading about Muslims around the world...cus unfortunately Islam around here got mixed up with a lot of traditions n' i don't even wanna get started on the Muslim youth OUR youth!...i think u'r the real thin' ...
Can't wait to go through it all...but what exactly the "Planet Grenada "?!...r u a born Muslim...or u converted later on u'r life?!...
Peace out!

Abdul-Halim V. said...

wa alaikum salaam,

I'm very glad that you like the blog. The idea behind Planet Grenada is explained in the first entry if you go to the archives. But basically it's a play off of Granada (which was the last part of Spain held by the Moors) and Grenada (the nation in the Carribean which was invaded by the US when they moved too far to the left). So I basically blog about issues around Islam, people of African descent, Latinos/Hispanics and progressive politics... preferably in some kind of combination but not always.

And I'm a convert. What about you? What's your story?

Sharks said...

Hey!...i tried some of ur links pretty much interesting!...some times i hate it cus there's so much to read n' not so much of a time...So "Planet Grenada" -V- ...BTW u'r blog was the first result searching for the word Islam...how cool is that?!...so what's the story behind ur conversion n' how old was u?!...sorry if i ask too much but like i said b4 it's the rush thing...
about my story!...if u mean me being a Muslim?!...well am Syrian n' both my mom n' dad r Muslims n' very good ones too...they did a very good job raising us on the principles of Islam...cus other wise i don't know where w'd i be now!...if u mean my blog story well it's kinda personal blog n' also it's part of the "Syrian bloggers" group...it's a small group of highly intellectual young ppl...not necessary religious...we have meetups n' we'r about to start our own web forum...our main goal is to rectify the image of Syria n' it's ppl. cus u get to hear about Syria a lot more now in the news thanks to Mr. F**king Bush...n' the conflict between Syria n' Lebanon...there r growing concerns that we'r going to face the same fate as Iraq -God Forbidden-...all that besides our own lil peaceful fight against our very corrupted system...Never mind that...though we r getting some good response from outside Syria...some foreigners American reporter n' few others German n' Danish "i think" showed up at our meetings...
now back to Islam...unfortunately large no. of our youth is growing apart from Islam...like i said b4 Islam around here got mixed up with a lot of traditions...n' to be fair a lot of religion"Sheukh" ppl here r so up tight that they r setting the young ones off Islam...talk about reverse physiology!...am hopping that through my blog i can proof that being open minded while being religious Muslim at the same time doesn't contradict at all...
Peace out!

Abdul-Halim V. said...

Wow, that's alot of info.In terms of my conversion story, I'm not sure how interesting that would be. For me it was a really slow process that took years. From being raised Christian. To having "too many questions". Questions turned into doubts. Doubts turned into criticisms. Criticisms turned into me deciding that I couldn't be Christian. And at the same time, I was curious about different religions. And in particular became gradually interested in Islam. I read the Quran. read Malcolm X. Read other books on Islamic belief and practices. And the more I read, the more sense it made. Eventually I reached a point where it made more sense to be Muslim than to not be Muslim.

But in terms of Syria, wow. Hopefully your movement in Syria will have some effect. It would be bad if Syria became another Iraq.

Peace