Having said this much, Immigrant Islam cannot be made responsible for the actual substance of Black Orientalism. Substantively speaking, Black Orientalism is a thoroughly Blackamerican enterprise, an overtly ideological endeavor with far from objective methods or innocent aims. In this chapter, my objective will be to describe and critique three typologies of Black Orientalism: () Nationalist Black Orientalism; () Academic Black Orientalism; and () Religious Black Orientalism. I shall begin with a word about the genesis of the concept of Orientalism and how it relates to my construction of Black Orientalism. I will follow this with an important note on what Black Orientalism is and what it is not. From here I will enter my discussion proper of the three aforementioned modalities of Black Orientalism. In all of this, it should be noted that my aim is not to exhaust all instances and modalities of Black Orientalism. Similarly, my critique of the substance of Black Orientalism should not be mistaken for an attempt to deny or minimize the Muslim contribution, Blackamerican and immigrant, to the causes of its emergence.

BETWEEN ORIENTALISM AND BLACK ORIENTALISM

The term, “orientalism,” was popularized by the late Edward Said, a professor of English at Columbia University. In 1978, Said, a Palestinian of Christian background, published a book entitled Orientalism. This work, which would soon become a classic, was devoted to exposing and describing the manner in which the self-perception, prejudices, interests, and power of Europe and later America colluded to create both a geographical object called the Orient and a scholarly tradition of speaking and writing about it. This was not the Orient of Japan or China; this was the “Near” and “Middle East.” And while Jews, Christians, and others contributed to the history and cultures of this region, Islam and Muslims were the primary if not exclusive targets. As the incubator and projector of Western fears, desires, repressions, and prejudices, occidental discourses on the Orient normalized a whole series of self-serving and condescending stereotypes about Arab and Muslim “Orientals.” These, in turn, justified the propriety and inevitability of Western domination and privilege. This self-serving, power-driven, psychological predisposition, deeply rooted and often consciously indulged, was what Said aimed to capture by the designation “Orientalism.”

Said was keen to note that Orientalism was not a purely political affair, something that only Western governments and armies did to Oriental despots and their cowering subjects. Western intellectuals and academicians played a major role in the enterprise. Even when British, French, or American scholars approached the Orient with no conscious foreign policy commitments, they could neither transcend nor disengage themselves from the social, historical, and institutional forces that shaped their mental schemas. The Western scholar, wrote Said, “[came] up against the Orient as a European or American first, as an individual second.” As an individual, he or she might look across the Atlantic or Mediterranean to the Orient; but as a Westerner, he or she could only look down from his or her self-appointed perch of superior civilization, a perspective destined to shape the Orient into a reflection of the most deeply ingrained Western fears and obsessions.

If white Westerners approached the Orient as Europeans and Americans, one would only expect Blackamerican thinkers to approach it as Blackamericans. The meaning and implications of this would depend, of course, on where Blackamericans happened to be in their own existential struggle. Prior to the shift from Black Religion to historical Islam, the Arab and Muslim world are almost invariably included as constituents of an idealized Third World, a regiment of Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth grinding out the universal ground offensive against white supremacy and Western imperialism. In fact, at the height of the black consciousness/Black Power era, the masters of Blackamerican sociopolitical satire were none other than The Last Poets who within a span of five years, went from being partly to completely Muslim. After this shift, however, and the establishment of critical masses of immigrant Muslims in America, one begins to see a growing number of Blackamerican scholars who deny the Arab and Muslim world this status and portray it instead as a precursor, partner, or imitator of the West in its denigration, subjugation, and oppression of black people.

Unlike Said’s “white Orientalism,” this attempt to recast the Muslim world was unrelated to any desire to control or dominate it. Like Said’s Orientalism, however, its beˆte noire was unmistakably Islam. Black Orientalism was and is essentially a reaction to the newly developed relationship between Islam, Blackamericans, and the Muslim world. Its ultimate aim is to challenge, if not undermine, the propriety of the esteem enjoyed by Islam in the Blackamerican community by projecting onto the Muslim world a set of imaginings, self-perceptions, resentments, and stereotypes that are far more the product of the black experience in America than they are of any direct relationship with or knowledge of Islam, especially in the Muslim world. By highlighting the purported historical race prejudice of the Muslim world, as well as, in some instances, the alleged responses to this prejudice, the aim is to impugn the propriety of the relationship between Islam and Blackamericans by ultimately calling into question Blackamerican Muslims’ status as authentic, loyal Blackamericans.

BLACK ORIENTALISM AND WHAT IT IS NOT

None of the above should be understood to imply, however, that any and all criticism of the stereotypes, prejudices, and practices of Muslim Orientals constitutes Black Orientalism. Valid criticism, however, is distinct from ideologically driven projections. The former is based on direct experience, verifiable facts, and substantively fair and consistent interpretations; the latter is based on imagination, prejudice, and ideology. When Blackamericans condemn the bloodsucking activities of Arab (Muslim!) liquor-store magnates in the greater Detroit or Chicago areas, this is no more an exercise in anti-Muslim Black Orientalism than earlier critiques of Jewish slumlords were of anti-Semitism. And if the old antimiscegenation laws prove how deeply ingrained anti-black racism was among white Americans, de facto antimiscegenation among Muslim Orientals cannot be written off as a benign “cultural preference.” In short, if the association between Islam, Blackamericans, and the Muslim world should not be a cause for wild and unwarranted projections, neither should it be a cause for turning a blind eye to offenses and indiscretions that are known and or experienced firsthand.

Nor must Blackamerican criticism of Muslim Orientals be limited to contemporary facts or experience. Inasmuch as the premodern legacy remains the repository of the greatest authority for contemporary Muslims and continues to inform their thought and sensibilities, it remains a fair and reasonable target of critique. When we turn to this legacy, we find that Muslim legal, historical, exegetical, and bellelettristic literature are replete with anti-black sentiments. Exposing and holding these up for criticism or analysis constitutes neither Black Orientalism nor anti-Muslim bias. On the contrary, such criticism and analysis is critical to the establishment of a standard that can be applied fairly and consistently across the board.

Consider, for example, the following. In his famous al- Muqaddimah (The Prolegomenon), Ibn Khaldun (d.808/ 1406), the celebrated and true father of sociology, says of blacks in the southernmost portion of Africa that “they are not to be numbered among humans.”6 The early Meccan jurist, Ta’us (d.106/724), reportedly indulged the habit of refusing to attend weddings between a black and white because he deemed this to be “unnatural,” in accordance with his understanding of Qur’an 4:119, which speaks of the Satanic impulse to “alter God’s creation (taghyir khalq Allah).” Numerous early Maliki jurists (reportedly on the authority of Malik) held that while under normal circumstances a valid marriage contract required that the woman be represented by a male relative (wali), there were instances in which this requirement could be relaxed, such as where the woman hailed from lowly origins, was ugly, or was black. This, they argued, was because blackness was an affliction that automatically reduced a woman’s social standing. In a similar vein, the twelfth/eighteenth century Maliki jurist, al-Dardir, categorically affirmed the Unbelief (kufr) of any Muslim who claimed that the Prophet Muhammad was black! On a slightly lighter (but no less suggestive) note, when the black poet, al-Hayqatan, showed up at the annual Eid celebration all decked out in white, the Arab poet Jarir (d.111/79) mocked him in improvised verse,

It is as if, when he appears before the people,

He were a donkey’s penis wrapped in paper.

Nothing would excuse the casual dismissal or platitudinous explaining away of such statements issuing from white Americans or Europeans. Nor should their author’s status as Muslim Orientals earn them any such exemption. Critical references to statements and actions by Muslim Orientals only approach Black Orientalism when they proceed on the uncritical assumption that their meaning—direct or illocutionary—are and must be the same as it would be had they issued from the ruling class of white Americans, that such statements reflect not an isolated or limited bias or predilection but an all encompassing constellation of power relations that are driven by considerations of race (or color). Race and color, in other words, are assumed to function as consistent and permanent determinants of human relations and possibilities. In short, Black Orientalism implies not only that Muslim society produced expressions of race or color prejudice but that such prejudice defined these societies and circumscribed the lives and possibilities of black people within them.