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The Connected Ministries of Malcolm and Farrakhan!

The Connected Ministries of Malcolm and Farrakhan!

Last updated on: June 18, 2017 at 4:31 pm by Hakeem Muhammad

The Connected Ministries of Malcolm and Farrakhan! 2017-06-18T16:31:13-05:00 Hakeem Muhammad

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In my last article, I stated, “Do not speak to me of Malcolm X if you believe the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has no valuable insights to contribute to the betterment of the Black Muslim community.”

In response, I received several “hate-mail” from critics who harbor anti-NOI/anti-Farrakhan sentiments claiming their views are a product of the tragic events surrounding Malcolm X’s assassination. Due to the commitment I made in my previous article,”Stop Bickering and Continue the work of Malcolm X,“I will not respond to such criticisms.

However, what I will do is seek to explain as best as I possibly can why I believe the ministries of Malcolm and Farrakhan are inextricably connected.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has stated it was Malcolm X who placed him in the ministry and he has said Malcolm X was like a big brother to him. However, as many brothers do, they went in different directions.

Malcolm X split ways with his brother in the Nation of Islam and in the last interview of his life expressed his desire to look upon the traditions of Sunni Islam as the way forward for black liberation.

Minister. Farrakhan is different in this regard as when Sunni reforms were made to the Nation of Islam and the name was changed to the world community of Al-Islam in the West, Farrakhan departed from the community and then embarked on a determined and successful mission to rebuild the Nation of Islam.

I am a firm believer that the ministry of the Hon. Minister Louis Farrakhan is relevant not just to the Nation of Islam but the entire Muslim world including those looking to continue the work of Malcolm X.

In rebuilding the NOI, the ministry of the Honorable Minister Farrakhan contains a profound critique of the inability of the shaykhs of Sunni Islam to grapple with the issues of black religion in a manner which quenches the spiritual thirst of black people which would subsequently inspire them to improve their socio-economic and political conditions, how certain foreign interpretation of Islam became a tool of Arab cultural hegemony over black people, and the ubiquitous nature of anti-blackness within the the Muslim world and how this implicated their ability to teach black people Islam in a manner that would actually instill within them self-dignity.

Thus, the ministry of Farrakhan actually forces and pressures Muslims to contend with the issues of Black religion (the theological issues emerging from slavery) if Islam is to be a viable and empowering faith in the African-American community and if Muslims truly want to bring about what Malcolm X envisioned.

Each of the video clips of Min. Farrakhan are under two minutes and are important to watch for understanding each aspects of the aforementioned critiques. I urge all readers to take the time to watch them.

Farrakhan’s critique of the inability, unwillingness, or apathy of the ulema/scholars of the Muslim World to confront anti-blackness and evoke their tradition for countering white supremacy.

https://youtu.be/VuLgz4zkdB4

Under the tutelage of foreign Shaykhs, Farrakhan expresses the belief that Blacks American Muslims were learning the rituals of the faith and the Arabic language. However, they were not regaining a “knowledge of self” to advance their social, political, and economic conditions.

Farrakhan indicates mosques were places one entered to engage in ritualistic acts of worship but not centers to improve the reality of black life outside the mosque.

While black Muslims were learning tajweed or qu’ranic recitation, Farrakhan argues this is not all there is to being a Muslim. Instead, Farrakhan maintains that black people need to be brought “back to what you were.” Just who were black people prior to slavery destroyed our ways of being and knowing?

Farrakhan implies then that Islam among black Americans needs to cure them of the detrimental social and political conditions they have been subjected to since the transatlantic slave trade. Black people must be healed and brought back to who we were prior to slavery. Farrakhan questions the ability of being under the tutelage of traditional shaykhs from the Islamic world to provide this healing.

Farrakhan’s critique Arab Cultural Hegemony of Black Muslims and the inability of foreign shaykhs to teach black people Islam in a manner which would eradicate self hatred and internalized racism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRsUXtxHqWE

According to Imam Amin Nathari, being a Muslim once meant having a commitment to uplifting the black community. However, with the emergence of foreign ideologies, Imam Amin Nathari stated that “to be a Muslim now meant to disregard problems in the black community and to act, eat, and dress as a person from a Middle Eastern country .” For a movement which sought to instill black pride, what was most devastating is that even among foreign scholars Imam Amin Nathari states,”Some of them even taught that the Arabs were racially superior to blacks – and thus commanded a higher level of respect.” Further discussing the dysfunctionalities which began to impact black American Muslims, Dr. Sherman Jackson, states among black Americans,” ….Middle Eastern clothing(as markers of a commitment to a more authentic Islam) came close to burying the old folk piety and the pursuit of racial justice in the graveyard of “American Jahiliya” or pre-islamic ignorance. “

Malcolm X once asked who taught you to hate yourself? It was his critique of how white supremacist Christianity breed an inferiority complex within black people. Decades later, Minister Farrakhan similarly discussing black imitation of Arab culture asks the same question. This time he asks it with regards to Saudi Arabia who sent various shaykhs in the black community who systematically detached Islam from black liberation and African consciousness. To Farrakhan black imitation of Arab culture was a sign of the inability of foreign shaykhs to teach Islam in a manner that would eradicate them of self hatred.

The Exclusion of Blacks from Islamic Revivalism

In “Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection,” Dr. Sherman Jacksons writes the mass conversion of African-Americans to Sunni Islam coincided with massive the influx of Immigrant Muslims who, “introduced theological, juridical, and revivalist discourses that effectively banished native Blackaamerican instincts and understandings to the periphery. ” What is fascinating is that Minister Farrakhan whom Dr. Sherman Jackson , ““refused to recognize immigrant and overseas authority,” articulates what is perhaps the only theory of Islamic revival which centers oppressed black communities!

Whereas most theories of Islamic revival are predicated upon geopolitical changes in the “middle-east,” Minister Farrakhan is the only Muslim who has posited a theory of Islamic revival centered on oppressed inner-city black communities.

Minister Farrakhan narrates a story in which he traveled to the Gulf States and many Arab Muslims shared with him that despite growing up in the Muslim world, they never really practiced their faith or cared for their faith until they came to America and observed the zeal for which black Muslims practiced Islam.

From this, Minister Farrakhan posits that in working to turn desolate black ghettos into the finest Muslim community in the world, the faith of the entire Ummah can be potentially reawakened, “We are going to be made that which will make the Islamic world admire us and become revived by the Islam that comes out of the hearts of those classified as dead.” The outcome of the theory of Islamic revival leads to black community engagement by NOI that is frankly unrivaled by other Muslims. This is because they are not guided by Minister Farrakhan’s belief that it is the urban centers of black America which are the center of Muslim revival.

The Connected Ministries of Farrakhan and Malcolm

Any movement to bring about what Malcolm X envisioned which was Islam being the faith for black empowerment must respond to Farrakhan’s critique of the inability, unwillingness, or apathy of the ulema of the Muslim World to confront anti-blackness and evoke their tradition for countering white supremacy. It must also address Farrakhan’s critique Arab Cultural Hegemony of Black Muslims and the inability of foreign shaykhs to teach black people Islam in a manner which would eradicate self hatred and internalized racism.

Lastly, it must be guided by Minister Farrakhan’s theory of islamic revival which centers and calls for islamic transformation of ghettos in the black community. For without Minister Farrakhan’s theory of Islamic revival, there will be a continued black Islamic brain drain as black Muslims work in immigrant Muslim communities to the exclusion of black ghettos.

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