Friday, December 14, 2007

catching up

I've had the seeds of a lot of different posts rattling around in my head but I'm short on time so I think I'm "forced" to just do a link dump instead of a more thoughtful consideration

Over at Umar Lee's blog, “Ugly Black Women”, Perfect Arab Wives, and Matters of Race starts to discuss some of the less idealized aspects of race relations in the Arab world. This piece was originally inspired by Not Sure What To Make of this “Discussion” over at Soliloquies of a Stranger (The life of an African American, Muslim, Muhaajirah (Expat), from the hood, in an Inter-Racial Marriage. It Doesn’t get any stranger than that!).

Abdur Rahman Muhammad finally concluded his series with Why Blackamerican Muslims Don’t Stand For Justice Pt. 5

Ever since my post i and i and thou I've been meaning to find and share information about Baye Fall, an African-based, dreadlock-wearing Sufi order who are sometimes called "Muslim Rastas". Recently I saw a pretty 'Grenada-esque' entry over at Pa' Africa Muchacho tu ta loco?, written by Dominican blogger Francisco Perez who is currently travelling in Senegal. He has a brief entry on Cheikh Lo an African musician who is a member of the Baye Fall. I wish I had a more detailed understanding of the group, but I suspect that they could be a very strong example in my favor with respect to the ongoing discussions with Sondjata (see islam and afrocentrism, afrocentricity and islam ii) on whether Islam is consistent with being African.

Francisco also has another entry on the upcoming Eid al-Adha entitled What Would Jesus Buy? I'm not sure what else to say about the holiday. This year I feel like the holiday has surprised me. I'm not totally certain which city I'll be in for Eid. I have a couple of old posts about Eid al-Adha but I don't have any genuinely new comments for now.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've known at least one ex-Rasta Sufi (belonged to some Naqshbandi or Qadiri branch, I forget which), no longer had dreads but still way into Marcus Garvey and smoking herb, which he maintained was wisdom weed.

--Dave, http://parallelsidewalk.wordpress.com

Abdul-Halim V. said...

The reminds me that besides Baye Fall, the other group which is vaguely reminiscent are the Murabitun. As far as I know, they aren't into weed or dreads, but there is this one book called the Forbidden Dialogues which talks about Pan-Africanism and Islam in an interesting way.

And the founder is head of a branch of the Darqawi-Shadhili-Qadiri Tariqa

Anonymous said...

Interesting. I'm actually a Qadiri-Darqawi initiate but not part of the Murabitun movement. The shayk I'm studying with is like a Tariqa third cousin to guys like Abdulqadir As-Sufi moreso than in direct linear relation. Since the order's roots are very African (albeit more North African, not so much Sub-Saharan)and they were on the forefront of the efforts to expel the French, the Pan-Africanism wouldn't surprise me. I would be interested in reading it though.

--Dave