The Center for Global Islamic Studies hosted Dr. Zain Abdullah, PhD., as part of their Cluster Development Lecture Series to speak about Living Islam Out Loud: African Muslims in Contemporary America, at the University Center on Thursday.
Abdullah’s lecture focused on the experiences of African American Muslims in the United States. He specifically touches upon the recent arrival of over 100,000 West Africans in Harlem, which residents are now calling, “Little Africa.”
“Part of my talk is about how people negotiate multiple identities, in this case blackness, Islam and Africanity,” Abdullah said. “How does one navigate that social construct and those boundaries that circumscribe what these identities are about?”
“If you want to know whether you’re going back home or not just listen to the accent of your kids, then you’ll know,” said an interviewee in the documentary. “America is their home, you’re not going back.”
“It’s important for us not to see Muslims in a vacuum, isolated and bounded in their own world,” Abdullah said. “Africans have a longing to go back but often times it’s throttled by the fact that their home is changing as well, with political and economic shifts. They’re prevented to go back even if they’re successful here, but what it means to be successful here is often times not what they imagined before they migrated here.”
Abdullah says these groups of immigrants are merely trying to create a place for themselves in America. They want to thrive within the American way of life, while still maintaining a connection to Africa and their religion. Many westerners barely pay attention to the religion of these Black immigrants. According to Abdullah many view Islam as simply an Arab religion and dismiss the Muslims. However to counteract this, the African American Muslims walk around the streets of Harlem wearing their boubou robes and tasseled hats in order to remind themselves and others of where they’re from and they’re true identities.
“Professor Abdullah’s work provides key insights into the intersections of Muslim-American and African identities,” said Professor James Peterson, the director of the Africana Studies program which cosponsored the event. “Given the university’s commitment to Global Studies and to the study of Islam globally, students should welcome this opportunity to hear from and interact with an expert on these subject matters.
“My sense is that one way to counter some of the negative narratives about Muslim identity and/or the practice of Islam (that are regularly circulated in American society) is for the university community to engage people (in this case scholars) whose research and experiences provide us with a broader sense of what it means to be Muslim,” he said. “And this experience is what I hope students will take away from Professor Abdullah’s lecture.”
Kayla Stroz, ’14, attended the event.
“I came today to do research for a paper in my globalization religion class,” Stroz said. “His point about the plurality of identity for African American Muslims in America today and the challenges it creates gave me an interesting insight about the role of religion in society that I definitely found helpful.”
“I’m a religion minor and we’re always encouraged by our professors to go to lectures like these,” said Lo. “It’s good to get another perspective on things.”
Abdullah is the author of Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem. His work has appeared in many periodicals, and he has been quoted in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Reuters-Worldwide Religious News. Abdullah is associate professor in the Religion Department at Temple University, where he is also a faculty affiliate in the Geography and Urban Studies Department. He is currently a Ford Foundation Fellow writing a book on Black Muslim conversion and the Nation of Islam in mid-century America.
According to Professor Rob Rozehnal, the director of the Center for Global Islamic Studies and person responsible for choosing Abdullah as a speaker, the cluster development series host talks from professors and researchers from all over. They collectively aim to spotlight outstanding scholarship in the comparative, interdisciplinary field of global Islamic studies. The center will host a variety of other speakers throughout the semester.
