Islam has always enjoyed a level of esteem within the Blackamerican community of the United States. One reaction to this prestige is Black Orientalism. Drawing from the classic critique of Orientalism by Edward Said, Sherman Jackson explains how Black Orientalism seeks to undermine the relationship between Blackamerica and Islam

Ubadah understood a lesson that many have forgotten today, namely that real victory takes place not on the battlefield but in the hearts and minds of people. In the American context, the process of indigenizing Islam, i.e., of endowing the indigenous population with a sense of ownership in the religion, has been largely ignored in favor of transferring old-world priorities and patterns of authority to the Western world. This can only result in conversions that are ultimately superficial, because it can never put the convert in touch with his or her self or with the religion. Instead, it is the carrier peoples and their vision with whom he or she relates. And to the extent that relations with the carrier people are altered or manipulated, so too is the convert’s relationship with Islam.

Here is where Islam in America, and particularly black America, faces an important challenge. While, through the efforts of proto-Islamic figures such as The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Blackamericans as a whole acquired a sense of ownership in “Islam”—even if this Islam was more imagined than real—immigrant Muslims have proceeded in a manner that both ignores and threatens this relationship. Whereas during the proto-Islamic era, to be a “Muslim” meant to be a dignified Black man!—indeed, the most dignified black man—Islam has now come to be identified with being an Arab, a foreigner or one of “them.” As a result, especially in the aftermath of 9/11, Blackamerican Muslims have increasingly come under the charge of cultural/ethnic apostasy by those whom I refer to as “Black Orientalists.” Ultimately, if the Black Orientalists are successful, there will remain nothing to complicate the efforts of the enemies of Islam to convince the American population at large that this religion is a foreign, alien, hostile threat that all patriotic Americans must work to contain if not eradicate. In the end, it is only indigenization that will determine whether black, white or any other Americans enjoy a sense of ownership in Islam or are hopelessly alienated from it.

If the stigma of Blackness and the trauma of admitting to being creations of the modern West impede immigrant preparedness to assimilate an historical consciousness that ties them to Blackamericans, Blackamerican Muslims are also confronted with incentives, beyond simple frustration, to disassociate from their immigrant coreligionists. For at least a century, there has existed in Blackamerica a cultural/political orthodoxy dedicated to policing the boundaries between blacks and “pseudoblacks.” Pseudoblacks have traditionally been identified as those who are of questionable cultural authenticity and or political loyalty to the black community. This cultural/political orthodoxy has always been indexed into the sentiments and mores of the folk. And paying homage to it has always functioned as the sine qua non of success for any serious movement among Blackamericans, including those, such as that of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, that sought ultimately to alter the substance of Blackamerican culture. All of the early Blackamerican Islamizers and even the early Old Guard understood and respected this fact. Immigrant Islam arrived, however, oblivious to, where not contemptuous of, it. Much of this myopia passed to Blackamerican Muslims who came under its sway. The result has been the emergence within the greater Blackamerican community of a phenomenon I shall refer to as “Black Orientalism.”

In its primary manifestation, Black Orientalism seeks to cast the Arab/Muslim world as a precursor and then imitator of the West in the latter’s history of anti-blackness. In a secondary manifestation, the Muslim world is rendered not only the source of anti-black racism but of the most toxic reactions to this, reactions that continue to infect the otherwise civil approach of non-Muslim Blackamericans long after the propriety and usefulness of black radicalism in America has passed. In both cases, the implication is that through their association with immigrant Muslims and historical Islam, Blackamerican Muslims have contracted the disease of cultural/racial apostasy, alongside a set of sociopolitical attitudes that jeopardize the Blackamerican cause overall. On these attributions, Black Orientalism sets out to question, if not impugn, the status of Islam in the Blackamerican community and, by implication, the propriety of Blackamerican conversion to Islam.

The rise and logic of Black Orientalism must be seen against the backdrop of several converging facts. First, every Blackamerican convert to Islam defected either from the Black Church or some other secular movement among Blackamericans. In this context, Islam’s gains were perceived, virtually from the beginning, as someone else’s loss. At the same time, the charge of Christianity being the white man’s religion only aggravated this feeling and perception of loss. Second, the early Islamizers’ critique and reform of traditional Blackamerican culture announced the arrival of a new contender for cultural authority in Blackamerica. So did the cultural and linguistic innovations introduced by the rise of black Sunnism. Third, the dislocations engendered by Immigrant Islam resulted in a certain cognitive dissonance among Blackamerican Sunnis, according to which fossilized doctrines and practices from the Muslim world were imagined to be viable tools with which to confront the challenges of urban America. The resulting dysfunctionality, along with the appearance of being intellectually and culturally overrun by immigrants, saw the power and prestige of Islam in the black community dissipate and give way to a sense of betrayal and disappointment and a feeling that Islam and Muslims were irrelevant where not detrimental to the black cause. In this multilayered light, the emergence of Black Orientalism must be seen not simply as a desire on the part of Blackamerican non-Muslims, particularly Christians, to regain lost ground. It must also be seen as confirming the fact that the perspective and approach of Immigrant Islam and its Blackamerican clients are liabilities that threaten the status and future of Islam in Blackamerica.