Among the strongest factors giving currency to the assumption that black life was circumscribed in Muslim society is the erroneous notion that blacks in Islam were a slave class as they were in America. Not only does this add credence to the notion that black life was circumscribed, it also confers upon all statements and actions that are or appear to be racially biased the appearance of being part of an ongoing effort by the ruling class to confirm the propriety of its position of domination over its subjugated wards. In point of fact, however—and every historian of Islam knows it—most slaves in Muslim society were probably not black but of Turkish origin, and there is no evidence to the effect that most blacks were slaves. But even if we assume that blacks were a slave class in Muslim society, there is a major distinction, as Ira Berlin points out, between “societies with slaves,” such as Roman society or African society, and “slave societies,” such as America, where color and slavery, incidentally, were coterminous. According to Berlin,

“In societies with slaves, no one presumed the master–slave relationship to be the social exemplar. In slave societies, by contrast, slavery stood at the center of economic production, and the master-slave relationship provided the model for all social relations: husband and wife, parent and child, employer and employee, teacher and student. From the most intimate connections between men and women to the most public ones between ruler and ruled, all relationships mimicked those of slavery… “Nothing escaped, nothing and no one.” Whereas slaveholders were just one portion of a propertied elite in societies with slaves, they were the ruling class in slave societies; nearly everyone—free and slave— aspired to enter the slaveholding class.”

The presumption that blacks under Islam were a slave class in a slave society is a major premise of Black Orientalists and a primary means by which they are able to impose one and only one interpretation upon every racially tinged statement or action by an Arab or nonblack Muslim. But if views such as that attributed to Malik regarding blackness as an affliction are to serve as proof that Arab Muslims were all Jim Crow segregationists, what is to be made of Martin Luther King Jr.’s statements about dark-skinned women, or Frederick Douglass’s reference to the “ape-like appearance of some of the genuine Negroes,” or Alexander Crummel’s reference to West Africans as “virile barbarians,” or, for that matter, comedian Chris Rock’s declaration, “I hate niggers!”? Clearly, Muslims south of the Sahara, who overwhelmingly adopted the Maliki school of law, went against the view attributed to Malik and upheld the requirement for a male relative to validate a marriage. Why should the prejudicial view attributed to Malik or some Malikis be put forth or accepted as the final, definitive word?

Or, take the statement of Ibn Khaldun. Is this necessarily a genetic antecedent to such scientific racialist theories as those of Jensen, Shockley, and the authors of The Bell Curve? And in our attempt to make such a determination, how justified are we in ignoring Ibn Khaldun’s explicit statements to the effect that “race” is an imagined social construct, the notion of black intellectual inferiority is flatly bogus, the Old Testament story about Noah cursing his son Ham mentions nothing about blackness (only that Ham’s descendents be cursed with enslavement), and that it is climate, not blood, that affects such endowments as intelligence or civilization? According to Ibn Khaldun’s theory, the further removed a people were from the moderate climate of the Mediterranean, the less intelligence and civilizing potential they would have. Thus, the same savage status he imputes to Africans furthest removed to the south is imputed to white “Slavs (Saqalibah),” who are furthest removed to the north. Race, in other words, was simply not Ibn Khaldun’s thing. And one must ask why the history of race relations in America must serve as the only prism through which his statements can be understood.

It is true, and no amount of apologetics will change it, that the examples cited (and one could cite more) clearly indicate that Arab and other nonblack Muslims were afflicted with race and color prejudice. The insinuation, however, that such attitudes issued from the same place, psychologically, and translated into the same social and political reality as that erected by white Americans is grounded far more in ideology than in fact. In the year 659/1260 (some seven centuries before the Civil Rights movement) a black man appeared in Cairo claiming to be a member of the ‘Abbasid House, following the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols. The Mamluk Sultan (himself a former slave of Turkish origin) ordered the Chief Justice to make an official inquiry into this claim and, amid great fanfare, his genealogy was confirmed and, taking the name “al-Mustansir,” this black man was inaugurated amir al-mu’minin!, that is, temporal successor to the Prophet Muhammad and leader of the worldwide community of Muslims. To date, not only America but no major Western democracy has been headed by a black man.

Not only does the record reveal numerous instances where blacks were held in high esteem or occupied powerful positions in Muslim society, but there are even expressions that connote black superiority over whiteness. In fact, early in their history the Arabs—or more properly the Arabians— actually identified themselves as black, against the generally lighter-skinned Persians, Greeks, and others, whom they generally referred to as “red.” But even later, when this is no longer the case, we encounter expressions such as the following by the sixth–seventh/twelfth–thirteenth-century Arab poet, al-Baha’ Zuhayr:

Do not revile blacks because of their features

For they are my portion of this world

As for whites, I am repulsed by them

I have no appetite for the color of old age.

Similar is the declaration of the third/ninth-century poet, Abu al-Hasan al-Rumi, this time speaking of black women:

Part of what renders blackness superior to whiteness—

And truth has many levels and depths—

Is that darkness is never blamed for being black

While extreme whiteness may be rebuked for being

white.

Clearly, if the real, as opposed to imagined or ideologically driven, significance of race and color prejudice in Arab /Muslim society is to be apprehended, facts such as these must be duly considered and objectively assessed. Black Orientalism, however, proceeds on a deliberate and consciously sustained ignorance and or suppression of such facts. This is in order to be able to impute to race prejudice in the Muslim world the same significance it has in America. On this logic, however, cultural narcisism on the one hand, and deliberate, race-based monopoly and abuse of power on the other, become so indistinguishable that a cultural idiosyncrasy such as Rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot’s contempt for the gaunt figures and flat buttocks idealized by Cosmopolitan magazine takes on the same significance as Jesse Helms’s and the Republican party’s opposition to Affirmative Action.

Like any society, Muslim society (modern and premodern) included its share of good and evil. And like every people, Muslims (especially immigrants) like to think of their heritage as being essentially good and only accidentally evil. This may even deliver them into some rather facile and embarrassing apologies. But if the Muslim predilection for explaining away every unlovely fact finds little justification, Black Orientalism’s attempt to turn every indiscretion into proof that Muslims were the precursors or imitators of “Whites Only” racism must be condemned as being equally biased and unjustified.

But beyond this seemingly intentional myopia, Black Orientalism engages in an even greater indiscretion that itself borders on cultural/political heresy. From David Walker to Nat Turner, from Henry McNeil Turner to Malcolm X and even Martin Luther King Jr., the perennial nemesis of Blackamericans was identified as white supremacy and its debilitating false universal. Against this trend, Black Orientalism imagines Islam to be an equal if not a greater threat. One is tempted here to suggest that a significant contributor to the development of Black Orientalism is a tacitly accepted post–Civil Rights–era modus vivendi. As the Indian intellectual Ashis Nandy writes of Indian anti-Muslim bias, “the anti-Muslim stance of much of Hindu nationalism can be construed as partly a displaced hostility against the colonial power which could not be expressed directly because of the new legitimacy created within Hinduism for this [colonial] power.” Similarly, it may be that part of the price of sustaining the gains of the Civil Rights era is accepting the obligation to devise a critical discourse by which the black predicament can be addressed without expressing too much ingratitude or giving too great an offense to the powers that define the parameters of acceptable critique. In the end, however, it may be that such an approach, as the Sudanese say, “looks at the elephant but only curses its shadow.”

The complete excerpt, including endnotes, can be found in our new issue, available now at select Borders and Barnes & Noble stores nationwide.