Re: RE: ProgressiveMuslims digest, Vol 1 #396 - 4msgs

hahaha, he (Son of Elijah Muhammad) was just on campus last night and I 
have to say I was underwhelmed by his style and especially his content and 
responses to questions from the audience. (Maybe there was some 
internalized oppression overshadowing things to some extent, not sure.)

I just wanted to point out (not so much like "You offended me w/ your 
generalization!", more like "Your Honor, I submit exhibit A for the 
consideration of the jury.") that there are other muslim leaders, 
movements, and groups in the states.

Example: My mother's uncle was a part of the Ahmadiyah movement here after 
the turn of the century. Correct me if I'm wrong but I assume that they are 
distinct from the Nation AND E.Muhammad's people. In fact, when I asked his 
son to talk more about the Ahmadiyahs, I seem to remember him reminisce 
that they were around before his dad showed up in Detroit, either that or 
WD Faraad's people.

Another example: My dad came to the religion on his own, not through black 
muslims and not through immigrants. I think he felt that blacks weren't so 
aware of the traditions of Islam and that Arab immigrants had a feeling of 
superiority due to their long history in Islamic civilization and their 
native grasp of Arabic. It was actually and interesting refrain he would 
make when I grew up about his mistrust of Arabs as far as native grasp of 
the language of Islam and on the Nation of Islam, I think he saw them as 
high on politics and low on religious grasp. I think he was also disdainful 
of their identification with anti-semitism (meaning jew-hating). It was 
really important to him having had a mother who served Jews in their home 
during the WWII/Great Depression era, having had great emphasis placed on 
the Old Testament in church when he was a young Christian, living next door 
to Hasidic Jews and noticing the religious (and social) parallels with 
Islam, and having himself placed such an emphasis on viewing religion more 
eclectically (our dinner blessing is a mix of hebrew and arabic, we have 
the Torah on scrolls on our mantle right near our tapestry of the Qaa'bah 
during Hajj, and a less serious note . . . we ALWAYS watched "The Ten 
Commandments" at Easter/Passover) I was sooo young and always ran into the 
"black muslim = Nation of Islam" stereotype as people assumed that we were 
a part of that movement. Since he was so NOT into them I never even learned 
about it, proud of my ignorance . . . as a sign of how off base that 
stereotype could actually be.

Anywho, the point was just that there are black muslims in other circles on 
the vendiagram . . . outside of Nation people and the Son of E. Muhammad 
people.

Please correct any of my erros . . . I mean errors. hahaha!

Moo :)


--On Friday, February 20, 2004 8:49 AM -0800 Afdhere Jama 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> when i came to this country, i was very curious about the nation (of
> islam.) people make  huge assumptions about them. for example, i bet many
> people on this list think they are the majority of african-american
> muslims. eeer. wrong. out of the 1 + million african-american muslims,
> only about 20, 000 are of the nation. the rest? traditional muslims led
> by the late elijah muhammad's son.