The news of yesterday’s Muslim Challenge has prompted my colleagues with the last names like “Smith” and “Jones” to share touching stories of horrible victimization their British grandmas endured when locals didn’t immediately recognize their pronunciation.
The participants of the discussion are feeling suitably and joyfully victimized. Nobody who is an actual immigrant is participating in the pity fest.
(And please don’t ask why a mention of Muslims in a region with a significant African American population immediately leads everybody to think of hijabs and immigrants.)
Clarissa's Blog 
\ (And please don’t ask why a mention of Muslims in a region with a significant African American population immediately leads everybody to think of hijabs and immigrants.)
Which % of African Americans are Muslim?
Do they see themselves as being together with other Muslims worldwide, like many Muslims in the Middle East do? The latter may hate one another, but if it’s Muslim vs non-Muslim, they will support the Muslim side automatically.
For instance, do African Americans support Palestinians more than average American because of being Muslim?
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The history of African American Islam is fascinating. I don’t have time to discuss it at length right now but it’s a very special form of Islam that was developed, primarily, as a rejection of the Christianity that was inherited from the times of slavery. Slaveholders found the message of Christianity very useful to keep the slaves at the plantations in check. They were not the only ones, of course. The great tragedy of Christianity is that its message of suffering and death as a reward from God can very easily be used by horrible, unscrupulous people against the believers.
In the post-slavery era, many black thinkers were looking for ways to recover the black heritage and define it outside of the traditions imposed by the slaveholders. Islam was one of the religions of Africa, so it was chosen by some people as “the true” religion of blackness. Islam was also very useful specifically for the African American communities because of its strict prohibition of alcohol. This was extremely useful in communities that (as a result of the heritage of slavery) were being ravaged by alcoholism and drug addiction. (This is early XXth century I’m talking about right now).
The early proponents of African American Islam were very creative with the original sources. It is quite easy to be original with the Koran because of its deeply poetic nature, so they were not entirely unjustified.
These popularizers often went way too far in their creative reworking of the Koran. When their followers finally had the funds to travel and got to meet Muslims in the Middle East and Africa, they were often stunned to find out that what they considered Islam was often utter heresy for their Muslim brothers and sisters.
In my personal experience, the African American Muslims have a very distinctive and fascinating religious culture of their own.
This was me trying to be brief on the subject. 🙂
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“In the post-slavery era, many black thinkers were looking for ways to recover the black heritage and define it outside of the traditions imposed by the slaveholders. Islam was one of the religions of Africa, so it was chosen by some people as “the true” religion of blackness”
Kind of ironic given that a large portion of modern slavery is found in the modern Muslim world (and the slaveholder mentality is very much alive in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States……)
There was no way for them to know this of course but it is weird.
I find almost all African American religious practice to be really interesting. African American Christianity is also pretty different from white practices.
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“do African Americans support Palestinians more than average American because of being Muslim?”
Only a minority of African Americans think of themselves as Muslims.
I’m not sure of the origins of African American anti-semitism but it is definitely a thing (most commonly associated with Louis Farrakhan but hardly limited to him). It’s found (or used to be found) all through the African American intelligentsia as well.
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“For instance, do African Americans support Palestinians more than average American because of being Muslim?”
Not because of being Muslim but because they know what oppression is.
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According to this logic, they should be even more supportive of Ukrainians who saw slavery abolished only 4 years before they did.
Let’s not simplify or sentimentalize complex issues.
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Come to think of it, why not identify with the Jews? Their history has everything for African Americans to identify with: slavery, marginalization, exclusion from certain professions, the enormous frequency of their women being raped, expropriation of their property, being a stranger in your own land.
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The news of yesterday’s Muslim Challenge has prompted my colleagues with the last names like “Smith” and “Jones” to share touching stories of horrible victimization their British grandmas endured when locals didn’t immediately recognize their pronunciation.
Is that an exaggeration? I have some very funny name related stories which will reduce them to salty puddles. Perhaps it’s their very clumsy way of trying to empathize?
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“… my colleagues with the last names like ‘Smith’ and ‘Jones’ …”
You rang? 🙂
I don’t feel victimised when someone can’t understand my accent.
I just wonder how such a person can be that thick.
You see, I can actually sound like the bloke who does the “Mind the Gap” announcements on the Tube if I focus a bit, and I don’t exactly hear people going around saying that they can’t understand him.
“MIND THE GAP BETWEEN YOUR BRAIN AND MY ACCENT” 🙂
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You are obviously not an American. Americans can feel victimized by somebody else’s accent not being understood. It’s like, “I stood next to a victim once! It rubbed off! I’m totally victimized now!”
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“As further punishment, we’re going to send you to a no-expenses paid journey to Penzance in Cornwall, with no assistance other than this Cornish English dialect guide that was probably put together by some fans of Monty Python, in the hopes that when you go back to America, you will talk like a pirate …”
🙂
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“Americans can feel victimized by somebody else’s accent not being understood. It’s like, “I stood next to a victim once! It rubbed off! I’m totally victimized now!””
It’s because the closest most Americans get to true victimization is a contact high from others’ misfortunes.
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Why, why can’t more Americans understand this like you do? Great, wonderful people but so prone to this baseless, self-righteous sense of grievance.
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Oh fantastic, I now have a vision of Americans snorting social injustice as if it were lines of cocaine … 🙂
[the obligatory picture of the Cocaine Snorting Bear has been omitted for your reading convenience]
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