Article: Black History Month: A Challenge to My Fellow Muslims by Chelby Marie Daigle
For me, Black History Month is not only about celebrating the contributions of my fellow Black Canadians, it is about remembering the impact that the enslavement of Black peoples has had on Africa and the world. It’s about building on the strengths of the Black community in Ottawa by working across the socio-economic, religious, ethno-cultural, and linguistic differences of the diversity of individuals who make up our community. It’s about examining how anti-Black racism still exists within Canadian society and recommitting myself to challenging it by trying to understand why it persists and how it affects my life and the lives of my fellow Black Canadians.
This year, I was honoured to be invited to speak about youth engagement through arts and media at the launch of Black History Month at the City of Ottawa and I was humbled to be presented with a Community Builder Award by Black History Ottawa. For me, Black History Month has definitely started out with a bang.
I have been asked by Muslim Link to write a piece commemorating Black History Month. I feel obligated to take this opportunity to admit something: I often find it frustrating to be around Muslims during Black History Month. Why? Because, although there is often a celebration of Black converts to Islam, like Malcolm X, and condemnation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade perpetrated by the West, there is little, if any, examination of the history of slavery in Muslim societies or of the persistence of anti-Black racism within these societies as well as within Muslim communities in Canada. The reality is I have faced more blatant anti-Black racism from my fellow Muslims than I ever did growing up in a predominantly White community.
Anti-Black racism, which includes beliefs that Blacks are inherently less intelligent, more violent, lazier, dirtier, uglier and more sexually promiscuous than other races, is just as prevalent within Muslim societies as it is in the West, if not more so, because there have not been similar movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement, aimed at combatting these prejudices, within Muslim societies.
Unfortunately, although Muslims will often cite the Quran and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, to demonstrate that racism is condemned in Islam, there isn’t really an examination of whether Muslims over the course of their history actually stuck to these beliefs.
It is important for Muslims to look deeper at their particular societies of origin in order to see how the enslavement of Black peoples in these societies has led to the development of anti-Black racism. For example, the fact that in several Arab dialects the word ‘abd, meaning slave, is used to refer to any Black person demonstrates that in these societies the equation of Black people with slaves still persists.
To read the my complete article visit Muslim Link
Further Reading:
Arab Views of Black Africans and Slavery by John Hunwick (academic essay available online)
Religions and the abolition of slavery – a comparative approach by William G. Clarence-Smith (academic essay available online)
Islam and Slavery by William G. Clarence-Smith (academic essay available online)
Islamic Abolitionism in the Western Indian Ocean from c. 1800 by William G. Clarence‐Smith (academic essay available online)
“Slaves of One Master:” Globalization and the African Diaspora in Arabia in the Age of Empire by Matthew S. Hopper (academic essay available online)
Straight, No Chaser: Slavery, Abolition, and the Modern Muslim Mind by Bernard K. Freamon (academic essay available online)
Oxford African American Studies Center: Middle East Page
Race and Slavery in the Middle East Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Empire (American University Press in Cairo) Review by Gamal Nkrumah available online
Slavery and South Asian History (Indiana University Press)
Reflections: Gaddafi, Mandela and “African Mercenaries”
You can compare Libya’s Gaddafi to Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak but for those of you who are “anti-imperialists” there is a particularly disturbing lesson here because Gaddafi was supposed to be “one of the good guys”.
Unlike the cases of Ben Ali and Mubarak, the case of Gaddafi really bothers me because it is clear that he has been, and continues to be, protected by some sort of Anti-Imperialist Old Boys Club who talk about justice but don’t seem to actually want to hold themselves or their parties or their “brother leaders” accountable for following it.
Mandela and Gaddafi
It’s easy to point fingers as Western Imperialists but if you can’t be accountable to your own people you are just as bad, perhaps even worst, because you came to power claiming to bring justice and go around the world saying you and your governments are examples to follow!!!
Gaddafi was/is often touted by the left as the Fidel Castro of the Middle East. He saw himself as a natural successor to Nasser‘s vision of Pan-Arabism. He used Libya’s oil money to support groups fighting for self-determination (such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and the African National Congress (ANC).
Nelson Mandela was instrumental in helping Gaddafi resolve the Lockerbie Affair and regain easy relations with countries like Britain and the United States. Mandela shrugged off criticisms within South Africa and internationally, particularly from the United States, when he reached out to Gaddafi. He had this to say to his critics: “Those who say I should not be here are without morals. This man helped us at a time when we were all alone, when those who say we should not come here were helping the enemy.” Clearly, Mandela’s support of Gaddafi is linked to Gaddafi’s support for the ANC during the Apartheid era.
Mandela was the first award winner of the Al Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights in 1989, an annual prize founded by Gaddafi himself (Other recipients include Lous Farrakhan, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and Turkey’s Erdogan). Mandela returned the gesture by bestowing one of South Africa’s highest honours, the Order of Good Hope, on Gaddafi in 1997.
Gaddafi turned away from Pan-Arabism (mainly because most Arab Nations couldn’t be bothered with his nonsense nor could they be manipulated by him because they had their own oil money) to Pan-Africanism (African countries are much poorer and lacked as much oil money and therefore were ripe for manipulation) He proposed the idea of the United States of Africa. The extent to which Gaddafi has been involved in financing conflicts in Africa is truly horrifying (Chad, Niger, Uganda, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo)
David Maynier of the Democratic Alliance, the official opposition to South Africa’s ruling Part the African National Congress (ANC) has accused the South African government of having sold sniper rifles to Libya, although South Africa’s Minister of Defense and Military Veterans Lindiwe Sisulu denies this.
Allegedly, African Mercenaries have been flown into Libya to attack protesters. Who are these African Mercenaries? The question might be asked “Aren’t Libyans Africans? That depends on who you ask. Often when the term African is used it means “Sub-Saharan” African ergo Black-Skinned. The fact that Gaddafi has many Sub-Saharan African Mercenaries at his disposal should come as no surprise. Such mercenaries have been trained in camps funded by the Libya Government across Sub-Saharan Africa. As Jose Gomez del Prado with the United Nations Human Rights Council states:
You can find, particularly in Africa, many people who’ve been in wars for many years. They don’t know anything else. They are cheap labour, ready to take the job for little money. They are trained killers.
But it’s important to not dehumanize these “mercenaries”. One of the central characters in Nigerian author Helon Habila’s novel Measuring Time is one of these mercenaries. He begins as just a young man looking to escape the dead-end poverty of life in his small village in Nigeria. He joins a Libyan-funded training camp and eventually ends up as a mercenary in Liberia. There, his conscience shaken to the core, he finds redemption. However, the poverty of these mercenaries doesn’t justify their violence against Libyans.
What really worries me is that preexisting prejudices against Blacks in Libya, given the long history of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, will erupt in violence against innocent Sub-Saharan African Migrant Workers in Libya who already face discrimination and harassment. In 2000, violence against Sub-Saharan African Migrant Workers by Libyan Citizens left allegedly 135 people dead. In an interview with the LA Times in 2000, one Ghanaian migrant worker had this to say about Gaddafi and the Libyan people:
“President Kadafi has a good idea, but his people don’t like blacks, and they don’t think they are Africans because of their skin color,” said Kwame Amponsah, 22. He spent three months in Libya before fleeing in October, returning to Ghana’s poor southwestern agricultural Brong-Ahafo region. As many as 80% of the nation’s returnees hail from this area, according to authorities.
Currently, the number of Sub-Saharan African Migrant Workers living in Libya is estimated at over 1 million (Libya has a population of over 6 million). They often work in sectors such as construction and agriculture.
I pray for the freedom of Libya’s people and the safety and security of the migrant workers living there.
Further Reading:
Muammar Gaddafi
WikiLeaks cables: A guide to Gaddafi’s ‘famously fractious’ family (2011 article in The Guardian available online)
Gaddafi Urges Pan-African State (2007 article from BBC News available online)
Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights Website
Human Rights Watch: Libya: Security Forces Kill 84 Over Three Days
Gaddafi and Mandela: Brother Leaders
Mandela Welcomes Brother Leader Gaddafi (article from BBC News available online)
Strategic Moral diplomacy: Mandela, Qaddafi and the Lockerbie Negotiations by Lyn Boyd Judson (2005 essay University of South California)
A Medal of Good Hope: Mandela, Gaddafi and the Lockerbie Negotiations by Lyn Boyd Judson (2004 essay from the University of Southern California)
Sub-Saharan African Migrant Workers in Libya
Migrant Workers from Ghana Flee Libya, Cite Racism (LA Times article 2000 available online)
Libya`s post-sanctions boom makes it African El Dorado (2009 article available online)
Has Gaddafi unleashed a mercenary force on Libya? by David Smith (2011 article from The Guardian available online)
Trans-Saharan Migration to North Africa and the EU: Historical Roots and Current Trends by Hein de Haas (2006 article available online)
Film Review: Hope and Redemption: The Lena Baker Story (2008)
Lena Baker was the first and only woman every killed by electric chair in the state of Georgia. She was executed in 1945. Sixty years later she was pardoned.
Lena Baker
The film Hope and Redemption: The Lena Baker Story by Ralph Wilcox is more than a biopic about an African-American woman who, like so many others, was a victim of the racism of the American Justice System, but it is also a harsh reminder that although there may be a Black President, America still has a terrible legacy of racism to overcome.
The film chronicles the life and unjust death of Lena Baker from her childhood picking cotton in the early 1900s to her death by electric chair for murdering her employer.
Lena Baker is played by actress Tichina Arnold. Arnold is best known for her comedic roles in shows like Everybody Hates Chris but she is excellent as Lena, a woman who has many demons to face. The filmmakers do not sugarcoat Lena Baker’s life. She is an alcoholic who once was a prostitute and did time in prison. She had three children who were mostly raised by her long-suffering mother.
When Lena seems about to turn her life around she is bullied by Eugene Knight to look after his father, Ernest, who has injured his leg. She is reluctant because Ernest Knight has the reputation of being violent but at this time in Georgia it is difficult for Blacks to refuse the demands of Whites. The film depicts Lena’s relationship with Knight with all the shades of grey that there probably were. Ernest Knight is an alcoholic and in his company Lena returns to alcoholism. They develop a sexual relationship and Lena often stays with him for months on end without being able to return to her mother’s home. When Lena is able to return, Knight repeatedly forces her back to his home. He even at one point takes her to Florida. Because sexual relationships between Blacks and Whites were illegal at this time in the State of Georgia, Knight’s son eventually intervenes to get Lena away from his father, however he blames Lena for the relationship and beats her severely but doesn’t take any measures to hold his father responsible for the affair. The film shows that this is all unfolding with the full knowledge of the town’s sheriff who also holds Lena responsible for the relationship and does nothing to protect her or prevent Knight from repeatedly kidnapping her. Finally, when Lena again attempts to flee from Knight, he threatens to kill her with a gun and in the struggle that ensues she shoots him.
Lena made no attempt to cover up what happened. She went straight to the town’s coroner and told him what she had done. She then told the town’s sheriff. Although Lena claimed self-defence, she was convicted of Capital Murder by an all-White, all-Male jury (hardly a jury of her peers). The film portrays her lawyer as incompetent and racist as he has no interest in listening to her suggestions for her defence. After a 60-Day reprieve, Baker was denied clemency and was executed. Her last words before her execution were as follows:
What I done, I done in self defence, or I would have been killed myself. I have done nothing against anyone. I am ready to meet my God.
In 2001, Lena Baker’s family, led by her grandnephew Roosevelt Curry, requested a pardon from the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. She was granted an unconditional pardon. The Board did not find Lena Baker innocent of the crime but suggested that a verdict of voluntary manslaughter would have been more appropriate under the circumstances.
Hope and Redemption: The Lena Baker Story is hardly an easy film to watch but I recommend it for anyone who is trying to educate students about the ways in which racial segregation in the American South perpetuated the economic and sexual exploitation of African American women.
Further Reading:
Pardon for maid executed in 1945 by Gary Younge in The Guardian
The Hope and Redemption: The Lena Baker Story Website
Commentary: Barack Obama is NOT a House Negro
Originally written in November 2008
“Back during slavery, when Black people like me talked to the slaves, they didn’t kill ’em, they sent some old house Negro along behind him to undo what he said. You have to read the history of slavery to understand this.
There were two kinds of Negroes. There was that old house Negro and the field Negro. And the house Negro always looked out for the master. When the field Negro got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put ’em back on the plantation.
The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived better than the field Negro. He ate better, he dressed better, and lived in a better house. He lived right next to his master-in the attic or the basement. He ate the same food as the master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like the master-good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. That’s why he didn’t want his master hurt.” (From the speech “The house negro and the field negro” by Malcolm X)
Malcolm X
I knew this was going to happen.
I knew that sooner or later some fool would call Barack Obama a house negro.
It was only a matter of time.
Unfortunately, it had to be a member of al-Qaida, and House Negro in Arabic translates as abeed al bayt, meaning house slave. Given that slave (abd) is a racist epiphet used against Black people in the Arab world the insult was compounded.
Thanks Al Zawahiri for further worsening African Americans’ perceptions of Arab Muslims…as if the whole history of the Arab slave trade in Africa, the war in Southern Sudan, and now Darfur wasn’t enough.
And of course now I, a Black Muslim woman, am going to have to explain to all my non-Muslim Black friends just what the hell he is on about.
Al Zawahiri is a big fan of Malcolm X. Malcolm X’s picture is supposedly hanging in the backdrop of this video along with a picture of Barack Obama praying at the Wailing Wall sporting a yarmulke. And we all know that Malcolm X liked to call Black people who he felt got along too well with white folks “house negroes”. So now, Al Zawahiri has been quoted as saying in reference to Barack Obama, Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell: “It is true about you and people like you … what Malcolm X said about the house Negroes.” The tape also allegedly includes a recording of Malcolm X’s speech “The house negro and the field negro” delivered in Selma, Alabama in February 1965.” where he discusses his contempt for the “house negro.”
I first became concerned about the popularity among Muslims, particularly Muslims who aren’t of African descent, of the word “house negro” to refer to Muslims whose views of Islam they didn’t agree with.
I remember reading an article by British Muslim journalist and editor of Q-News Fareena Alam entitled ” A humane Muslim future” published online in opendemocracy in which she wrote: “Terrorism must be beaten, but it cannot be defeated with its own weapons – bombs, bullets, and the denial of human rights. We must not be afraid to follow the middle way, away from the extremes of literalism and, as Malcolm X would say, “house negroism”. Muslims, and all the world’s people, deserve better.”
In this article she is referring to Muslims who are political allies of the Imperialist West as products of “house negroism”. Fareena Alam is not an African American; I think she’s British Bangladeshi. I know what she was trying to say but how she said it blighted an otherwise worthy article.
There are just certain terms I believe you should not appropriate. “House Negro” is one of them.Why? Well, because to understand why Malcolm X had so much contempt for house Negroes you have to understand fully just what a house negro was in the context of American Southern Plantation society: a product of the rape of a Black female slave by a White slave owner. The house negro’s identity cannot and should not be compared to other people “selling out” their communities. To do so, is to totally show contempt for and ignorance of the traumatic legacy of slavery in the American South and the West Indies.
From The Autobiography of Malcolm X:
“Louise Little, my mother, who was born in Grenada, in the British West Indies, looked like a white woman. Her father was white. She had straight black hair, and her accent did not sound like a Negro’s. Of this white father of hers, I know nothing except her shame about it. I remember hearing her say she was glad that she had never seen him. It was, of course, because of him that I got my reddish-brown “mariny” color of skin, and my hair of the same color. I was the lightest child in our family. (Out in the world later on, in Boston and New York, I was among the millions of Negroes who were insane enough to feel that it was some kind of status symbol to be light-complexioned-that one was actually fortunate to be born thus. But, still later. I learned to hate every drop of that white rapist’s blood that is in me.)”
“House Negroes” were light-skinned and were given less physically straining labour than the “field negroes” who were often more recent imports from Africa, and who were forced to do hard labour and were more likely to receive brutal physical punishment.
In his speech “The house negro and the field negro” Malcolm asserts that he’s a “field negro”. But the truth is Brother looks a lot like a house negro. Malcolm X hated his light complexion. The house negro had a light complexion that was a direct result of his or her mixed race identity. The house negro is torn between two worlds; his or her loyalty to his or her master could very well be because they are blood relations. Malcolm X doesn’t say this but it’s understood…”You have to read the history of slavery to understand this.”
Although it is wrong to deliberately “sell out” our communities, the reality is we as Black people have the right to be individuals. We have the right to vote for who we want or pursue whatever political ideology we want and not be accused of being traitors to our race. When a Black person isn’t “left-wing” or “liberal” they are considered traitors to their race but if a White person is right-wing they are just considered a knob. Why should Black people continually be denied freedom of thought and action?
Barack Obama, as well as myself, are mixed race. We have White mothers. We are not the products of rape but of love…or at least lust. We were claimed as our mothers’ children. We were not denied. Our loyalties need not be divided unless Blacks deny us our individualities, our unique voices, the truth of our experience…and this they often do.
The truth is I have never really much admired Malcolm X. I still find him fascinating to read as a study of a conflicted mixed race man. In that way, his work has been invaluable to me. But he’s not someone I can say I look up to. He was searching, as so many of us are searching, for a place to belong, for acceptance, to come out of the fields and into the house that he could call a home.
Barack Obama
When Malcolm X visited Mecca he was made a guest of the state by Prince Faysal “the absolute ruler of Arabia” as Malcolm X called him. Prince Faysal was eager for Malcolm X to learn the “true Islam”, not that of the Nation of Islam, and for him to spread this “true Islam” to his fellow Black Muslims, and hopefully, the entire United States of America. As Malcolm X said:
“America needs to understand Islam, because this was the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. Throughout my travels in the Muslim world, I have met, talked to, and even eaten with people who in America would have been considered ‘white’-but the ‘white’ attitude was removed from their minds by the religion of Islam. I have never before seen sincere and true brotherhood practiced by all colors together, irrespective of their color.”
Unfortunately, that isn’t the experience of many Blacks within Muslim communities, particularly in North America. Even outside of the Muslim community, Blacks are experiencing racism from Arabs and other Muslims.
Quite frankly, given the extent of ethnic conflict that exists in the Muslim World between Muslims I don’t know how anyone could presume that Islam can solve the racial problems of the US if it can’t even solve the ethnic problems of the Muslim world. People living in glass houses really shouldn’t throw stones.
But Malcolm X didn’t know much about the history of either Africa or the Middle East. He might have heard very different stories if he had spoken with the Nuba of Sudan or the Afro-Shirazi of Zanzibar…but he didn’t. I understand why he was so moved by his experience coming from the racially segrated United States where for generations slave owners had denied their own children born of slave women (this was much less common, but not unheard of, in the Arab World). And let’s face it…Brother looked like an Arab (so does Barack Obama when you come to think about it).
Al Zawahiri considers Malcolm X an “honourable” Black Man because he believes that Malcolm X’s thought and actions were in line with his own. Spreading Islam across America now that is definitely Al Zawahiri’s cup of tea.
Al Zawahiri has contempt for Obama, Rice and Powell partly because they are agents of American Imperialist Foreign Policy in the Muslim World. Fair enough. But what I can’t take is that he also seems to have contempt for them because they are “uppity negroes”. If you have a problem with their politics that’s one thing but if you decide to attack them using racial slurs because you don’t like their politics it’s because you are a racist not because you are resisting American Imperialism. What Al Zawahiri is really saying is: “How Dare Black People Threaten the Muslim World…don’t they know they used to be our slaves?”
There are Arab and Muslim activists out there who are trying to resist American Imperialism and not being total racist jerks while doing it. They are also trying to fight the racism and the legacy of slavery within their communities. Al Zawahiri’s alleged statements have just made their job that much harder.
Yes I am Muslim but I am also African and I refuse to be any one’s “house negro”. Not the White Man’s or the Arab Man’s. Not the Christian’s or the Muslim’s. Not the West’s or the Anti-West’s. The continent of Africa has been devastated time and again by the hegemonic machinations of both these communities. I could just as easily make a case for reparations for slavery against Egypt, Morocco, Oman, Iraq, Saudi Arabia (remember Mecca was a major slave market), and Turkey as I could make against the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Spain, and Holland. So neither community should ever dare to demand my loyalty.
The Woyingi Blog 
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