Afro-Americans that had been transferred forcefully to New World had had to convert to the religion of their masters and even change their African origin names to new European names. Thus, they were empty of the elements that always they were identified by them. Converting to Christianity, changing the name, being separated from homeland and having no human rights broke down whole of their self-identity and social identity. As Turner mentioned, "In setting terms of pre-twentieth century racial discourse in America, attempted to eradicate all aspects of African heritage in the slave quarters by stripping slaves of their culture, thus leaving them powerless. (Turner, 2004)
Reactions to this new situation, among the Blacks were different. Some of them easily subordinated to the masters and even because of showing loyalty to their masters, became the supervisor of the others, some obeyed the rules without full consent. The other started to resist against the White's power. This resistance had been practiced in various ways, from not working properly to clear disobedience and rarely violent rebellions.
Resistance against the discriminatory system among the African American, historically has divided to several periods. After prohibition of slavery that proclaim it illegal throughout the 13 Amendment, which had been ratified in 1865, the most important and crucial period was the Civil Rights Movement which started after WWII and lasted up to now and has led to condition that is more equal for African Americans.
During the Civil Rights Movement, three streams could be defined in terms of resistance against the white supremacy. Martin Luther King was representative of moderation and integrationism while fighting against racial discrimination, Black Panther Party was the revolutionary strands, and Nation of Islam was representative of Black Nationalism and Muslim communities.
Within theses streams, Nation of Islam that most of its members were African American converts and conversion to Islam as turning back to the African's origin religion could be interpreted as means of cultural resistance against the dominant Christian discourse and making a different religious identity as a sub-branch of the cultural identity. In other word, many African-Americans viewed Christianity as the White man's religion and associate conversion to Islam with recovering their ethnic heritage (Edgerly). Nevertheless, they transformed Islam to meet demands of survival and resistance in this "strange Christian land" (Turner, 2004).
Cultural identity and role of resistance against the dominant power to shape an identity and preserve it from distortion, has been one of the great part of debates among the intellectuals who think and work in cultural studies paradigm. Resistance has different forms and every individual, groups and communities could resist against the dominant power according to its own point of view and priorities. When the prominent discourse of a society is injustice and discriminatory against some parts of it, struggle for gaining power and resistance, would involve every part of it.
This pattern is clearly seen in the juxtaposition in the United States of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Coates, 1999) that among them Malcolm X as a leader and spokesman of Nation of Islam involved in a cultural resistance in a actual and symbolic battle for gaining more power. Symbolic battles are usually acted out against the background of others sharing the same ideology. For Malcolm X, religion was a means for the public dramatiza¬tion of problems of social disintegration and distinction. (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999) among African Americans who converted to Islam
In this article as the topic shows, three subjects and their relations with each other, would be discussed; religious identity, cultural resistance and Civil Rights movement. Religiosity as an important part of everyone's identity has a great role in differentiating some people from the others. During the Civil Rights movement, the rate of conversion to Islam among the African Americans who had suffered for a long time of inequality in social and cultural domains had been grown. This changing the religion from Christianity to Islam could be interpreted as a part of cultural resistance against the WASP-White Anglo Saxon Protestant- hegemony by emphasizing on a different religious identity. This resistance led to reinforcing 'Nation of Islam' as an association that believed in separatism, nationalism and Black supremacy.
Islam in African American History
Muslim population makes up about 6% of the population in the United States. The majority of the converts to this growing religion has been and still is occurring within the African-Americans' community (a little over 11% of America's population) although Muslim immigrants constitute almost sixty percent of the Muslims in U.S. (Edgerly).
Islam and Muslim population has passed several periods until reaching to this situation. The role of Islam as a non-Christian and counter-dominant religion and conversion to it was crucial in establishing an independent identity for Blacks. Historically, the main religion of most of the Afro-Americans before slavery had been Islam. After transferring to the New World, Blacks lost all of their freedom and they had to convert to Christianity as their masters' religion. In this condition, rarely some blacks were able to refuse Christianity. Bilali and after him his brother Salih Bilali who were living isolated with their followers and tribes in Sapelo Island and St.Simon island during the antebellum period were two example of resistance against this situation and erecting an Islamic community (Turner,2004). The important point is that even in 1930s, Bilali's descendants could remember his ancestors' legacy after almost 100 years and generation-by-generation they preserved their Islamic identity.
Historically, there were four important strands in the development of Islam in the United States in twentieth century that three of them were started in the 1920s. The first was Sunni Islam of the Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and the Islamic Mission of America, which was conservative, orthodox, Universalist, and also politically conservative. The second, the Moorish Science Temple movement, was heterodox, a racial-separatist interpretation of Islam, and Pan-Africanist with a "Moroccon" cultural base. Third one was the Ahmediyya Movement in Islam was heterodox, multiracial, and politically mixed: the Ahmadis were advocates of both Pan-Islam and Indian nationalism. And fourth, is the Nation of Islam that became more powerful during the Civil Rights movement and is center of my discussion here (Turner, 2004).
The first actual Mass African-American Muslim sect and movement was the Moorish Science Temple Divine, founded in 1913 in Newark, New Jersey by Timothy Drew (Noble Drew Ali) who called himself the 'prophet of the city' or the 'second prophet of Islam' in 1913 . He was familiar with Indian philosophy and "central Quranic concepts such as justice, a purposeful creation of mankind, freedom of will, and humankind as the generator of personal action" In 1925, the name of the sect was changed to the Moorish Science Temple of America'. (Edgerly, Turner, 2004).
The other Islamic movement was Ahmadiyya. The Ahmadiyya Movement had been started in India in 1889 by its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (Edgerly, ...). Nevertheless, in America, Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, found it and made the 'Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam' the first multiracial model for American Islam during the 1920s. From 1921 to 1925, Sadiq made 1,025 American converts. Many of the Ahmadiyya converts were Black residents of Chicago and Detroit (Turner, 2004).
Nation of Islam, the most longstanding Islamic movement, which is still alive after loosing some of its leaders, was founded in 1930 by W.D.Fard among the poor black people in Detroit. After disappearing of W.D.Fard, his most trusted discipline, Elijah Muhammad became the leader of the movement. Under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad, the nation of Islam evolved from a local movement to the most powerful Islamic organization in America (Turner, 2004).
Elijah Muhammad and W.D.Fard wanted to reconstruct African-American cultural, political, and religious identity and "make African Americans aware of Islam, its power and potential" (Turner in Bobo et al, 2004). In doing so, Elijah Muhammad proclaimed distinctive doctrines. The most important and controversial one was his contention that whites were by nature evil. They were snakes who were incapable of doing right, devils who would soon be destroyed by God's righteous judgment. White people, therefore, were identified as the sole cause of black oppression (Cone, 1995). Therefore, Elijah Muhammad as a way to resist against the constructed identity for African American as naturally inferior and unable in doing thoughtful jobs or relying on some Biblical justification for explaining Blackness as a sign of evilness, Elijah Muhammad made up the white Satan.
In that condition, Nation of Islam became a model of racial-separatist identity for African-American Muslims and just Black people were allowed to be a member of NOI (Turner, 2004).
Obviously, at that era or probably still now, African-American Muslims were not united but had different syntheses of religion, politics, and culture but the unifying factor for them was Islam- maybe in different versions- as a means for resistance against the WASP ideology and gaining equal rights to provide a new and independent identity for African American Muslims. In this way, Black ghetto dwellers were attracted to the NOI by its stress on racial pride and economic self-help (Verney, 2003).
Longstand¬ing African American efforts to secure legal rights and access to societal resources have benetted immigrant Muslims and helped Muslim identities become part of the range of American identities (Moore, 1995,Leonard, 2003).
This identity now serves other functions such as a defense against the 'domineering colonial or post-colonial contempt for their [Muslim] culture' (Leonard, 2003).
After death of Elijah Muhammad, his grand son, Wallace D. Muhammad became the supreme minister of the Nation of Islam. He renamed the Nation of Islam the "World community of Al-Islam in the west", in 1976, the "American Muslim Mission" in 1980, and the "Muslim American Community" in the 1990s. However, the Nation of Islam went on by Louis Farrakhan leadership.
NOI membership reached 65,000 to 100,000 by 1960 and some 250,000 by 1969. The Nation also enjoyed considerable influence and respect in the wider black community, with its official newspaper Muhammad Speaks enjoying a weekly circulation of 600,000 by the early to mid-1970s. (Verney, 2003)
Nowadays, Black Americans who are majority of Muslims in U.S., make up about 42 percent of the Muslims in the United States. South Asian Muslims constitute almost 25 percent, Arabs approximately 12 percent, and the remaining 21 percent are from Iran, West Africa, South East Asia, Eastern Europe, and White America. California (one million Muslims), New York (800,000 Muslims), and Illinois (400,000 Muslims) are the states with the largest Muslim populations (Turner, 2004). Dealing with the growth in the number of African American Muslims, conversion has played a great role. At some periods, conversion to Islam was reinforced by conversion of the informal cultural and social leader of the society like famous actors or actress, well-known sportsman or sportswomen and national champions. This phenomenon was very influential in 1960s. For example initially welcomed as an alternative to the louche Sonny Liston, new World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Cassius Clay, shortly after winning the title he announced his conversion to the Nation of Islam and took the name Muhammad Ali (Verney, 2003). Ali's public image suffered as a result because the society would not accept a champion who denies its norms. In American society, Clay by his skin color was distinguished from the majority, and he himself made a very important distinction by his denial of the Christianity. Muhammad Ali Clay's conversion to Islam showed that American society is still discriminatory in terms of skin color, race and ethnicity, religion and etc and they do not care whether he was a national champion or not.
The assumption is that these trends increasingly render African Americans suscepti¬ble to alluring messages of meritocracy, political equality, and race neutrality, which can confine and thwart African American resis¬tance against oppression(Schiele, 2002).
In This sense, conversion to a new religion is a kind of cultural resistance. In every society, the dominant power is able to advertise its ideology whether religious or non-religious. When majority of a society is Christian, converting to Islam is a sign of refusing the dominant power.
Conversion and Cultural Resistance
Cultural resistance is a path for trying to shape a new identity by referring to the cultural origins and historical roots. For African Americans who were separated from every thing that could give them a sense of identity, seeking a new means to shape a collective identity that in some extent could differentiate them from the White majority, Islam as the newly chosen world view, could give the other means for resistance. Monika Wohlrab-Sahr in her article; 'Conversion to Islam: Between Syncretism and Symbolic Battle', identified two forms in conversion to Islam: ''Syncretism'' and ''symbolic battle'' are distinguished as two different modes of adopting Islam and of relating to one's original frame of reference (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999). Syncretism means merging the old beliefs with new ones and shaping a complex unit of them. She mentioned that becoming believer of this new religion is a kind of alteration, believing in new religion without completely denying the old one and making a tolerance between them. In terms of conversion theory, these cases of adopting Islam should be labeled as cases of alternation. The new religion corresponds with the new circumstances in life, but does not express a fundamental reorientation. The symbolic space becomes enlarged, the old is integrated into the new, and a third situation is created. (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999)
On the other hand, those parts of the society who convert to a new religion, not alteration, would enter in 'Symbolic battle' with the other parts as a kind of cultural resistance against the dominant symbolic system.
Dealing with African American Muslims history, cultural resistance was practiced through Islamic rites. During the slavery era, the slaves' knowledge of Arabic and of the religion of Islam were key factors in their identification as African Muslims. In other word, African Muslims were noted for their bold efforts both to resist conversion to Christianity and to convert other African to Islam (Turner in Bobo etal, 2004). Therefore, conversion as a form of symbolic battle takes into account that the identity transformations connected with it are more than just situational adjustments that can easily be revised; they are permanent forms of transformation that imply the rejection of former commitments. (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999)
In conversion, forms of public dramatization play an important role as well. (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999) form of clothing, shaving or having beard, wearing hijab for women Muslims, saying prayer in public , Arabic names, writing in Arabic were different forms of Cultural resistance within the different movements.
In their quest for an alternate signification and identity, the Moorish Americans after converting to Islam, immediately changed their names as a primitive part of the identity to Arabic names and start to learn to write in Arabic. They also wore Black fezzes and white turbans (Turner, 2004) as exercising resistance through clothing and showing distinct appearance.
In Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad understood their mission as the establishment of Islam as a permanent religious alternative in the United States in the twentieth century. The basic social fact that predisposing Blacks to conversion to the Nation of Islam during this formative period was the great migration (1915-1930) (Turner, 2004). Elijah Muhammad required all converts to change their surname to X in order to eradicate their slave names. The X signified and symbolized the original name and former identity that was lost when Black people were taken from Africa by their enslavers (Turner, 2004).
Elijah Muhammad, in a radical perspective, instructed followers that only the Black race was the original creation of Allah. He believed all other races were not of divine origin but the result of a series of genetic experiments by an evil black scientist, Yacub. The last, and most depraved, of Yacub's creations was the white race. He called White people 'blue-eyed devils' as opposing the term Negro that was product of White supremacy. In his point of view, Whites were the natural enemy of all black people (Verney, 2000). Making a myth Black supremacy to oppose the dominant myth of White supremacy could be interpreted as resistance and cultural revenge of the White people who were brutal with Blacks throughout the slavery.
Since Islam was the "Black-Man's" religion and the Black-Man is the superior type of hu¬man and black people are by nature good and divine, they must be separated from whites so they can avoid the latter's hour of total destruction. (Cone, 1995, Haddad, 1986, 1997, Ammar, 2004)
Therefore, emergence of the Nation of Islam whose main premise of their teachings was that African Americans were, in fact, Muslims and that they had been separated from their true identity, gave African Americans a renewed sense of self-identity. Black people began to outwardly challenge the idea that they were an inferior race of people and gaining increasing self-respect for their race. Nation of Islam helped bring African Americans together and form a collective identity for them (Ammar, 2004).
The majority of those who joined the Nation of Islam were young, economically disadvantaged, African-American males from Christian backgrounds. Up to 80% of a typical congregation were between the ages of 17 and 35(Edgerly). There had been some causes for the conversion of these Afro-Americans to Islam that one of them was that prior to the Civil Rights movement the Black Church was criticized for allegedly promoting otherworldliness and political passivity among African American laity, instead of pressing for racial and economic justice (Ellison). Therefore, Islam could be a qualified alternative for whom were not satisfied by churches.
During that pre-Civil Rights period, Malcolm X who was arrested for criminality, converted to Islam in prison and later became a hero of Civil Rights movement. He established multiracial orthodox Islam as an option for African-American Muslims. Then he explored the religious and cultural links between African-American Islam and its West African roots (Turner in Bobo et al, 2004) and proposed to Black Muslims for rethinking their African roots as a means of resistance and collectivity.
He attracted tens of thousands with his emphasis on cultural concerns, discipline, solidarity of the brotherhood, and African identity (Edgerly). According to definition of 'Organic Intellectual' by Antonio Gramsci, Malcolm X fits this subject position who believed that to develop an effective "Afro-American liberation movement," African Americans needed to rethink their entire experience in the United States (Rabaka, 2002).
As an organic intellectual, who had gained public attention Malcolm X challenged the existing views on race relations and religion while firmly establishing Islam as a religious alternative for African Americans (Smallwood,2005). He emphasized on history along with religion, politics, sociology, and culture in an attempt to mobilize African Americans in their communities to address their condition. Malcolm X's support of Black people leaves a legacy that manifested itself in Black cultural pride and organizing that occurred in the late 1960s. (Smallwood, 2005). Malcolm for resisting against the dominant discourse refuses all of it.
In fact, he stated, "Don't go by their game, and don't play the game by their rules. Let them know now that this is a new game, and we've got some new rules, and these rules mean anything goes, anything goes". In other words, the "new game" and the "new rules" meant for Malcolm that African Americans needed to develop and adopt oppositional ideology, or an alternative series of thought, belief, and value systems "Black-minded" enough to both explain and criticize their oppression and their oppressors' ideology (Rabaka, 2002).
Toward the end of his life, Malcolm's 'jihad of words' that could be considered as a symbol of cultural opposition to the dominant power had shifted from a focus on religion to scathing critique of capitalism as an intrinsically evil economic system with connection to global racial oppression and imperialism (Turner,2004). In this way, he began to play a complete role of an 'Organic Intellectual' in terms of Gramscian Marxism to wage a symbolic battle against the current game whose injustice rules were determined by White powers.
Conclusion:
Identity, according to Hall and du Gay, is not a matter of 'being' but of 'becoming', especially in the modern, postcolonial world, where the search for identity is 'not the so-called return to roots, but a coming-to-terms with "our routes", which is a more denitely discursive approach to identity' (du Gay, 1997 cited by Roussou, 2006). During the process of becoming, resistance against the untrue presumptions and prejudice representations is a means of making true image for every individual. Resistance could be very manifested or concealed. Manifest resistance demonstrates in public protests that at the extreme could be violent rebellion. Concealed resistance is plasticized in symbolic battle by cultural means like rhetoric, literature, music and even sports.
African Americans in looking for an independent identity have used all of these means. In music, they sought to rediscover African American rhythm and improvisation. They played Jazz as an African rooted style and tried to insert it to American music or Rap, Rock and Roll musicians who tried not to use western rhythms as a kind of protesting music for showing the dissatisfaction of the status quo by different groups and mostly Afro-Americans.
Therefore both of the return to roots and routes has been exercised by Black Americans. Within these various kinds of resistances, conversion to Islam in a Christian society could be considered as a key factor. They convert to Islam as their original and primitive religion, which had been distorted by white Americans and adopt it with American condition.
Conversion could be conceptualized as a form of symbolic battle presupposes taking the symbols and forms of articulation, in which religious and identity change is expressed, seriously. (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999)
Dawoud Assad, president of U.S. Council of Masjid, says that "eighty-five to ninety percent of our converts are black ..." (Turner, 2004:464).
Although the number of converts is small, the phenomenon of conversion to Islam in contemporary western societies is nevertheless structurally relevant, because of its double frame: the religious, cultural, and social frame that converts turn away from, but stay related to, on the one side; and the new religious and cultural frame that they have chosen, but with which they cannot completely merge, on the other side (Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999).
Conversion to Islam is a sign of denying the dominant religious discourse that has made many oppressive relations in American society, is examined its implications for African American resistance.
Islam may provide more some important answers to African American economic, political, and cultural questions that have not been resolved by black Christian leaders. Already, in black urban areas across the country, Black Christian leaders are organizing special seminars to educate their people about Islam and to stem the tide of what they perceive as an alarming rate of African American conversion to Islam. Mike Wilson believes that "if the conversion rate continues unchanged, Islam could become the dominant religion in Black urban areas by the year 2020"
(Turner, 2004:466).
References:
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Coates, R.D (1999), 'Social Action, Radical Dialectics, and Popular Protests: Treatment of African American Leaders and Intellectuals by the Press', in Journal of Black Studies, Vol.30, pp85-102.
Cone,H.J.(1995), "Martin and Malcolm; Integrationism and Nationalism in African American Religious history", in Hacket.D.G, ed, 'Religion and American Culture', London New York, Routledge.
Ellison, C.G., 'Contemporary African American religion: What have we learned from NSBA?' http://www.rcgd.isr.umich.edu/prba/perspectives/winter1997/cellison1.pdf
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