dhoruba bin wahad: four points

In an earlier post, I already excerpted from Dhoruba Bin Wahad's "Fatwa on Pan-Arab racism" but I also wanted to highlight and invite comments on Dhoruba Bin Wahad's call for specific actions from the Black/Muslim communities:

Africans are of diverse faiths, varying degrees of spirituality. But for all Muslims there are requirements of faith that exhort them to resist tumult and oppression. To enjoin the good and forbid the wrong is a social and political obligation. Muslims are urged to defend the weak against the tyrant, and oppressors – not participate in rape and oppression. And for fulfilling these obligations we will be attacked, murdered, imprisoned, hunted, and martyred. Muslims have a command from Allah, the Most High, to lead in the struggle for righteousness – not wallow in the wake of unrighteous calamity.

* I am asking for Imam’s and Muslim activists of African ancestry to deliver Fatwas on the issues mention herein. To mobilize the Muslim community to act in opposition to Pan-Arab racism towards Black people.

* I am urging Imam’s in the Diaspora of African ancestry to organize a Majlis to guide the conduct of Pan-African Affairs on behalf of the Ummah, and to deliver a Fatwa on Darfur and Pan-Arab racism in general.

* I am urging activists of African ancestry, both Muslim and non-Muslim to support a campaign to pressure the AU to act forthrightly with the Darfur genocide and to resist U.S. backed (UN) initiatives to deploy UN troops in Somalia in support of an unpopular transitional government.

* I am Asking Muslims in the African Diaspora to establish foundation and convene a forum on the African continent to lay out a strategic vision of the role of Islam in Pan-African unification of Sub-Saharan Africa.

a fatwa on pan-arab racism

A Fatwa on Pan-Arab Racism

by Muslim and former Black Panther, Dhoruba Bin-Wahad

In the Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful

As-Salaamu-alaikum,

Peace and Greetings to All.

I bear witness that there is no Illah but Allah, I bear witness that Muahammad ibn Abdullah is the Prophet of Allah.

We Muslims of African ancestry face difficult decisions. We stare the grim consequences of our multifaceted heritage in the face of; consequences of the long nightmare of enslavement by Europeans; preceded by an epoch of mercantile slavery and war at the hands of Arabs. Embedded in the fiber of our folk memory are dim recollections, like historical cultural DNA, of the successive waves of conquests - ancient and not so ancient that swept through North Africa - Hittites of antiquity, the Romans, Greeks, Arabs, and ultimately Northern Germanic clans of Western European origin, each left their legacy and impact upon Africa and our ancestors, and hence upon us.

We are today the sum total of what we were yesterday. That sum represents both failure and success, triumph and defeat, the sacred and the profane. Sometimes it seems as though we “can't win of losing.” Ask yourself, what became of our Moorish glory and hegemony over a third of Europe? Of what significance today are the trade routes and commerce of Songhay, or Dahomey, and the Niger Delta states to the political and moral bankruptcy of today's African nation-states? What have we truly learned? In what relevancy lie the appreciation of “Maroon” culture by declaring it a “national heritage” while depreciating the revolutionary impulse for freedom the burned in the hearts of Africans who became Maroons? Enslaved by a system of dehumanizing trade and commerce against their will, they revolted, organized resistance, and built a self-containing culture to keep their independence. Of what relevance are they today? Yes even our victories are subject to the vicissitudes of Time...“By the token of time [humans] are at lost”. Indeed we often are, but it is our consciousness, our intellect, our God given quality of “insight” or the human gift of abstract thought, that qualify us as Earth's vice-regent and therefore capable of learning from the past, overcoming the present, and plan our own salvation. As Muslims we are never done telling ourselves that we were molded in the best of images, We, Muslims are Guardians, not destroyers of life. Part of Creation – not above it. Nonetheless, we, like all living things are created beings. And as such we were created in different communities, of different colors, not as a basis for hatred, animosity, or war, but to appreciate the infinite variety of human possibility – to love each possibility in its own right.

But the age in which we now find ourselves will forever be shaped and judged by our actions and responses to the legacy history has imposed upon us all. There are events unfolding within western civilization and cultures of the East that are of the utmost importance to our physical survival, and the reemergence of a genuinely liberating Islam and progressive Ummah. These events have not only a history, they also are major struggles in which our freedom and salvation are at stake. These events represent for the benefactors of racism, exploitation, injustice, avarice, and elitism serious challenges as well. And we need be mindful of the monopoly on violence the benefactors of injustice, racism, and exploitation have, and their proven disposition to use legal and extralegal violence to hold on to power and privileges.

click here to read entire "fatwa"
click here for more from/about Dhoruba Bin Wahad