exotic

by suheir hammad ([1] , [2] , [3])



don't wanna be your exotic
some delicate fragile colorful bird
imprisoned caged
in a land foreign to the stretch of her wings
don't wanna be your exotic
women everywhere are just like me
some taller darker nicer than me
but like me but just the same
women everywhere carry my nose on their faces
my name on their spirits
don't wanna
don't seduce yourself with
my otherness my hair
wasn't put on top of my head to entice
you into some mysterious black voodoo
the beat of my lashes against each other
ain't some dark desert beat
it's just a blink
get over it
don't wanna be your exotic
your lovin of my beauty ain't more than
funky fornication plain pink perversion
in fact nasty necrophilia
cause my beauty is dead to you
I am dead to you
not your
harem girl geisha doll banana picker
pom pom girl pum pum shorts coffee maker
town whore belly dancer private dancer
la malinche venus hottentot laundry girl
your immaculate vessel emasculating princess
don't wanna be
your erotic
not your exotic

what kind of food am i?

I'm not sure what this means about me... but in case you were wondering, this is the result I got... It is sort of an odd concept, thinking of people as things to be consumed. The idea reminds me of a Suheir Hammad poem. Also, the movie Soylent Green

You Are Japanese Food

Strange yet delicious. Contrary to popular belief, you're not always eaten raw.

What Kind of Food Are You?

islam and the blackamerican: finally reading it

Yesterday, I finally started reading Prof. Sherman (Abdul-Hakim) Jackson's book Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection. In the section I've read so far, Jackson deals with the question of why African-Americans (or Blackamericans) seem to have such a strong affinity to Islam and why Blackamericans form the largest part of the American Muslim community.

One might be tempted to suggest (and I actually have in some early Grenada entries like it's a black thing? and my name is kunta) that that there is a general affinity between "Blackness" and "Islam" but Jackson questions whether it is even possible to meaningfully speak in such abstract and universal terms.

In South Africa, for example, the Muslim community is represented mostly by people of Asian descent and Islam hasn't really made significant inroads in the Black population. And this situation wasn't helped by the fact that the Muslim community was incredibly late in terms of getting involved in the struggle against apartheid.

While in Latin America (where Catholicism was prevalent), it was easier for people of African descent to resist white supremacy through following African-based syncretic religions (rather than Islam).

What Jackson argues is that there is a specific body of ideas and themes he calls "Black Religion" which arose in the United States and exists somewhat autonomously from any particular religious community.

Black Religion has no theology and no orthodoxy; it has no institutionalized ecclesiastical order and no public or private liturgy. It has no foundation documents or scriptures, like the Baghavad Ghita or the Bible, and no founding figures, like Buddha or Zoroaster. The God of Black Religion is neither specifically Jesus, Yaweh, nor Allah but an abstract category into which any and all of these can be fit, the “God of our weary years,” the “God of our silent tears.” In a real sense, Black Religion might be profitably thought of as the ‘deism’ or ‘natural religion’ of Blackamericans, a spontaneous folk orientation at once grounded in the belief in a supernatural power outside of human history yet uniquely focused on that power’s manifesting itself in the form of interventions into the crucible of American race relations.

But Black Religion isn't just a catch-all for all the religions of Blackamerica, only those with a certain "political" outlook:

[At] bottom, Black Religion remains, in its abiding commitment to protest, resistance, and liberation, ultimately more committed to a refusal to be the object of another’s will than it is to a positive affirmation of any particular philosophy of life. Subversion, resistance, protest, opposition: These are all key to the constitution of Black Religion.

Jackson argues that historically in the United States, Black Religion had been "married" to the Black Church but that the nature of that relationship changed and a "divorce" occured (this is reminiscent to some things we've mentioned before in no place for me and pimpin' ain't easy) If we want to extend the metaphor further, we might even say that for a long time now, Black Religion has been "seeing other people" which might help to explain Blackamerican willingness to explore certain non-mainstream spiritual paths (Islam, Nation of Gods and Earths, Hebrew Israelites, Rastafarianism, Ma'at, Santeria, African Traditional Religion, etc.)

In the early part of the 20th century, Black Religion was strongly associated with proto-Islamic movements like the Nation of Islam and Moorish Science. This affinity continued even after Warithdeen Muhammad took over the Nation of Islam (after the death of his father, Elijah Muhammad) and brought them into the Sunni fold. Now there is an interesting and complex relationship now between orthodox Islam of Blackamericans and Black Religion (which I'm assuming the book will discuss further.)

(to be continued...)

More on the book:
review of islam and the blackamerican
Islam And The Blackamerican: The Third Resurrection
black orientalism
an extensive excerpt from the book

More on Jackson's other work:
islam, past, present, and future: summary
more on sherman jackson
might as well make it sherman jackson day

good questions, better answers

Recently, in an op-ed piece for the LA Times, Dennis Prager put forth a series of questions to the world's 1.3 billion Muslims which probably express many of the nagging suspicions (or blatant accusations) many Westerners have towards Islam.

1. Why are you so quiet (about terrorism)?
2. Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?
3. Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?
4. Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?
5. Why do countries governed by religious Muslims persecute other religions?

Both Umar Lee (in Muslim Answers to the Questions of Dennis Prager) and former Bahai, Juan Cole (in Muslims and the 5 Questions) soundly address these suspicions on their respective blogs.

los cabildos

Los Cabildos is a rich portal for articles and other information of interest to Afrolatinos.

saxakali

I recently found the Saxakali People of Color Portal which has some excellent links to information involving multicultural and political topics. In particular, they have a section on Caribbean Studies with many good articles which fit in well with Planet Grenada.

oro negro

Oro Negro is a site I recently found with some overall information on Afro-Chilean people.

next french revolution

From the Christian Science Monitor:
Next French revolution: a less colorblind society

go back to mexico?

This is a very interesting piece from Seeingblack.com called The Black Man's White Man Fantasies by David Ikard. For me it is a reminder of how some Blacks in the United States are what I would call Afro-Gringos, people who are Black, but still very much Anglo and willing to use what little power they have (through U.S. citizenship, facility with English, knowledge of the "system" etc.) against non-Anglos. It also discusses a certain insanity behind the ways we participate in the oppression of ourselves, and people who should be our allies. Here is an excerpt:

The truth of the matter is that most Black men, whether they will admit it or not, have a love/hate relationship with White men. They covet the ways that White men are able to use their social and economic power to control minorities and women, even as they vehemently repudiate the ways that that power is being used to dominate and control them. It is this phenomenon of complicity in oppression that Audre Lorde had in mind when she noted that the "master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." The point that I am trying to make is simply this: In order to have a serious impact on the dismantling of racial inequities in the twenty-first century, Black men must own up to the ways that they participate in the maintenance of the White male status quo. I am not talking about the "treat-your-woman-as-a-Black-queen-and-take-care-of-your-children" kind of transformation. I am talking about a serious overhaul of the ways that we think about manhood.

roger bonair-agard

A poem by Roger Bonair-Agard (I imagine it was dedicated to Martin Espada, at least in part, because of this poem, previously mentioned on Grenada). At the very least, one poem reminds me of the other.


part 2 / electric boogaloo / song for Trent Lott (again) who said “…I want the president to look across the country and find the best man, woman or minority that he can find, …a strict constructionist -- yes, a conservative… I suspect there are a lot of really good, qualified women and minorities and men in America that could step up to this job.” / a sermon and some prayers

(for Amiri Baraka and Martin Espada)

this is the hardest poem
to write
I’d believed we’d agreed
on at least one thing
the fundamental human-ness
of us all

even your beloved Strom
(see my first song for you)
entertaining his black daughter’s
twice annual visits
(for checks for college and her silence)
I imagine
cringes
at this (less foot-in-the-mouth
than deep-seated hate)
projection

through bus boycotts and Martin’s sermon
on the mount
through apartheid’s fall
and the revelations of Sally Hemmings
through Muhammed Ali and Clarence
and Malcolm and Condoleeza
three-fifths is still enough
math for you to divide
man from minority

from Mississippi King Cotton’s bleeding
fingers to Harriet
even after Thurgood and Rosa
your rhetoric still
a white supremacist Nazi salute
to a nation that will excuse you
(again)

while it condemns Angela
and Amiri and Mumia and Assata
you pulpit for man or minority
a strict constructionist (spell revisionist)
to people the people’s highest court

so dig it

On this Halloween
may the spirits of 2 million
drowned-at-sea Africans
drag you to their graves
demanding a meeting

May the souls of men
- men I say – railroaded North
by Harriet pick the scabs
of their foot-blisters
over the soup
during your evening meal

May Nat Turner show up
naked and grinning
and covered in the blood
of plantation owners
in your daughter’s room

May you hallucinate
Martin’s little black children
and little white / little black
children and little white / little
black children and little white
children till all your grandkids
turn brown

May every black maid
you’ve ever coveted
show up nine months pregnant
in labor and deliver on the steps
of the capitol babies all of whom
have your eyes

This is the hardest poem
I never thought I’d have to prove
human again
though I’ve come to expect
to prove worthy
to prove non-threatening
to prove intelligent
to prove not hip-hop
to prove I won’t rob you
to prove English speaking
to prove innocent after being assumed guilty
but never human Trent
never human
Trent

What do you expect to prove
when you awake on mornings
how do you a Christian man (you say)
expect the spirits the saints
Jesus any just God
to let you get away
with all those bodies
all those hanging bodies
all those burnt bodies
all those scarred bodies
all those bottom of the Tallahachee bodies
and Amadou’s body
and Biko’s body
and my grandfather’s body
and Fred Hampton’s body
and Fred Hampton, Jr.’s body
and Jimi and Emmett and Medgar
and the invisible man who stole
Susan Smith’s kids
and all those boys shot dead in East New York
and Little Rock and Watts
and everywhere people know
the meaning of colonialism
and pre-emptive war
and first-strike option

how do you expect to get away
from your conscience
from all them black babies
born of all them colored people
all them orphaned Iraqi babies
all them orphaned AIDS babies
and children of disappeared Latin American
activists for the people Trent
from all them Bloods Crips
and Latin Kings from all them vatos
and re-incarnated of badass Indian and
runaway slave gun-toting
in the streets of America niggas Trent
how?

you keep talking and we’ll keep coming
showing up in your dreams
every Halloween in every revolution’s age
here’re a sermon and some prayers for you
what heaven do you think waits for you?
what hell are you living in right now?

the melungeons

From Hispanicmuslims.com
The Melungeons: An Untold Story of Ethnic cleansing in America By Brent Kennedy (full story)

Perhaps Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln, was Melungeon. It somehow seems fitting that one of America's greatest Presidents should be of mixed race and probably Muslim heritage. But who are the Melungeons? Historical records document that from 1492 through the early 1600's an estimated 500,000 Jews and Muslims were exiled from Spain and Portugal through a religious witch-hunt known as the Spanish Inquisition. Hundreds of thousands of Muslim exiles escaped to their ancestral homelands of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia. In fact, the well-known Barbary Coast Pirates of North Africa sprang from this group. They, along with their Turkish compatriots, were renowned for their seagoing exploits as they sought revenge against the Spanish and Portuguese in ferocious Mediterranean Sea battles.

Many of these people made their way to the Americas where, to varying degrees, they remained a distinct ethnic group.

rolling... rolling... rolling on the river

new blogs on my blogroll: A Beautiful Struggle and The Crime of Aquinas Just goes to show you, if you make enough cool comments on my blog, you'll be famous... lol...

keep me in your dua'

one of those days...

islam needs radicals

From In These Times: Islam Needs Radicals by Mark Levine gets at some of the label issues I have been wrestling with for a while now. Radical, Left, Right, Liberal, Moderate, Conservative, Traditional, Reformer, Extremist, Fundamentalist. All these labels have their nuances and they all mean different things and answer different questions: Do you follow traditional scholarship or do you try to re-interpret the source texts apart from tradition? Should Islam accomodate itself to the larger secular society or the other way around? What is your attitude towards American foreign policy? What is your attitude towards wealth and political power in general? Do you tend to read the texts literally or figuratively? Do you tend to read the texts in ways which restrict conduct/behavior or are permissive?

It is common to find Western commentary on Islam which seems to assume that there are two camps; "good Muslims" and "bad Muslims" who can be easily distinguished based on their answers to the above questions. But on the contrary, these questions actually outline a multidimensional space where for almost any given combination of answers one could probably find a group which espouses that particular combination.

Past Grenada entries on related subjects:
take a step to the left
progressive islam?
the spiritual left
what is progressive islam?
lily munir on indonesian islamic liberation theology
tariq ramadan and globalization
muslim anarchism
how progressive is the progressive muslim movement?

muslims in the caribbean

Muslims in America & the Caribbean - years before Columbus is an interesting article giving a historical overview of some of the early contacts between Muslims and the people of the Caribbean.

While Muslim Situation in the Caribbean from the Muslim World League Journal and Muslims in the Caribbean by Larry Luxner summarize the current condition of Muslims and Islamic institutions on the Caribbean islands.

octavia butler

When I started this blog I called it *Planet* Grenada to try to evoke Afro-futurism as a theme. In reality, I've only touched on the subject occasionally. So I figure that now would be a good time to mention it again.

Recently, on Democracy NOW! there was an interview with Octavia Butler on Race, Global Warming and Religion. The interview deals with Butler's new book Fledgling about a Black female vampire and also touches on the two books Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents which are about a near-future world where ecological problems and certain other factors have led to a much more brutal and violent society. One of the few bright signs of hope in this future world is a particular woman with a unique gift for empathy. On top of that, her journal, a collection of revelations and insights she makes for herself at first, becomes the scripture for a new religious movement which helps to bring new life to a crumbling world.


Some excerpts:

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

and

Beware, all too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see. Worse, we see what we are told that we see. Repetition and pride are the keys to this. To hear and to see even an obvious lie again and again and again, maybe to say it almost by reflex, and then to defend it because we have said it, and at last to embrace it because we've defended it.

Good advice in any world.

a history of the african-olmecs

From Race and History: A History Of The African-Olmecs

clippings on latino muslims

In fact, the Pluralism Project also has links to other brief human-interest stories about the Latino Muslim experience:

Chicagoland Eid Celebrations Expand with Immigrant Muslim Communities

Columbia Students Discuss Role of Islam in Latino Culture, Break Fast with Tex-Mex

Number of Latino Muslims Increases Significantly in the US

Growing Number of Latinos Converting to Islam in the US

Latino Muslim speaks about religion

the emerging latino muslim community in america

The Emerging Latino Muslim Community in America is an academic report prepared by student researcher Abbas Barzegar as a part of something called the Pluralism Project. The following is just an excerpt (for the whole report, click the link above) but it raises some interesting questions on where Latino Muslims are headed in the future.

Future research that aims at understanding the significance of the rising role of Islam amongst Latinos in the United States needs to be placed along a comprehensive matrix that allows for the analysis of a number of variables simultaneously. Some of the factors that need attention include the religious tone of the Latino community, the role of Latinos in the United States, the location of Islam in American civic life, the relationships between immigrant Muslim communities and Latinos, along with a host of other concerns. I briefly present a few directions for possible future research.

As alluded to before the presence of African American Muslims in major metropolitan areas has, in various ways, contributed to the rise of Latino Muslim conversion. Islam’s visible presence in the black community dates back to the early years of the 20th century and has grown exponentially since. Today the African American Muslim community is extremely diverse in its makeup, which has produced multiple layers of cultural contribution to American society by way of religious orientation. Furthermore, because most Latinos live in metropolitan centers and thus share the same space as many African American Muslims, it is safe to say that Latino Muslims have been influenced whether, directly or indirectly by the African American Muslim community. Researching the correlation between African American Muslim cultural visibility and contribution and its effect on Latinos who convert to Islam may require more than survey questions and interviews. An ethnographic assessment of Islam as it is portrayed in inner city life may produce the information we need to examine the larger implications of Latino conversion to Islam. We may soon be in a position to ask whether or not there exists an identifiable indigenous American Muslim culture, that is, a culture of Muslims in America that is a product of conversion and not immigration.

The fact that Latinos and African Americans are converting to Islam tempts the question of race and ethnicity in America. Why is it that segments of these two historically disenfranchised communities have found meaning in the religion of Islam? Does Islam provide something unique to these communities that they have not found in other religions? Many testimonies of both African American and Latino American Muslims address the way in which the structure of Islamic belief systems serve to combat deteriorating social conditions in both communities, such as drug/alcohol abuse, gang and domestic violence, the decline of traditional family settings, and so forth.

It is also interesting to note that at a time when Islam is dubbed in public discourse a hateful, dangerous and violent religion, conversion rates increase. What might explain this phenomenon? Can it be related to the different ways different communities perceive Islam? If so, what are the contours of these differences? Furthermore, it seems that there is a tendency to emphasize religious identity above cultural and ethnic identity in most Muslim communities, how might this factor into the lived experiences of community members, who have to occupy the Latino and Islamic worlds simultaneously? Are communities forging new identities or manipulating new ones? It is also necessary, no matter how fascinated we are with the idea of Latino Muslims, to ask why there are dozens of millions of Latinos who have chosen not to convert to Islam, and perhaps the thousands that were interested but decided not to? Opening a discourse on Latino Muslims in the United States can be a fruitful endeavor and should be considered.

The simultaneous presence of Islam in the national consciousness of the American public and its rapid growth among various groups in the United States raises an interesting set of questions. To treat the phenomenon of Latino Muslim conversion laxly would be a mistake. Roughly a half century ago there existed a group of ‘so-called’ African American Muslims. Leading opinions of the time considered the movement to be temporal one based off of the charisma of various leaders. However, today there are over an estimated 4 million African American Muslims in America. The empirical trend leads us to question the potential future of the current 40,000 Latino Muslims. If trends continue the landscape of American society in just few decades may look dramatically different. The study of Latino Muslims as a component in the Muslim American landscape may yield insights, not only in related academic fields, but also into the uncertain yet impending future of American society.

npr on malcolm x

Here are a number of reports related to Malcolm X which appeared on NPR for the past couple of years. Enjoy.