Al-Ghazzali and the Aryanization of Islam

(Excerpt from my new book, Take Another Look: The Qur'an, The Sunna, and the Islam of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad)

2. Al-Ghazzālī: Proof of (What) Islam?

THEM’s claim that God is a man is certainly at odds with the normative or orthodox Islamic view, a view well articulated by the Persian scholar Muhammad Abu Hāmid al-Ghazzālī (d. 1128), called Hujjat al-Islām or the ‘Proof of Islam,’ in his Kitāb al-qawa’id al-‘aqā’id, 1.3:

“He [God Most High] is not a body with a form, or a limited, quantitative substance…He does not resemble anything that exists, nor does anything that exists resemble Him. There is nothing whatsoever like unto Him, nor is He like unto anything. He is not delimited by magnitude, contained by places, encompassed by directions, or bounded by heavens or earth.

He sees without a pupil or eyelids. He hears without ear canals or ears. Likewise, He knows without a heart, He seizes without an extremity, and He creates without an implement-because His attributes do not resemble the attributes of the creation. Likewise, His essence does not resemble the essences of the creation.”

Al-Ghazzālī’s influence on later (and current) orthodox theology is unparalleled. He is called ‘The Proof of Islam,’ Hujjat al-Islām in part because his articulation and rationalization of a formless, bodiless, immaterial God is the articulation and rationalization of Islamic orthodoxy today. Thus, the theological interpretation of the scriptures of Islam against which THEM is often judged and found guilty of shirkand kufr (unbelief), and the interpretation which he himself rejected, is an interpretation substantively influenced and informed by al-Ghazzālī. And while THEM has been accused of reading his anthropomorphist doctrine into the Qur"ān where it (presumably) does not naturally exists, it is demonstrable that al-Ghazzālī read his anti-anthropomorphist doctrine of incorporeality into the Qur"ān and Sunna where, by his own admission, this doctrine is completely absent. In his important treatise,Iljām al-awām an ilm il-kalām (“Bridling the Common Folk Away From the Science of Theological Speculation”) the Persian Proof of Islam confesses that, even though the Prophet Muhammad was in no way lax in terms of his desire to propagate the full truth as he knew it; though he had no intellectual deficiency that would have limited the truth as far as he possessed it; though he lacked nothing in terms of linguistic and semantic facility that would have precluded his clear articulation of the truth as he knew it; yet the Prophet never affirmed this incorporeal god to whom he (al-Ghazzālī) and the speculative theologians were calling the people. Why didn’t the Prophet, fully capable of affirming the truth of this incorporeal deity, actually do so? Because, al-Ghazzālī claims, the Prophet was commanded by God to speak “only at the level of the people's intellects.” Because the people to whom the Prophet was sent were not intellectually capable of grasping this ‘truth’ and therefore would have rejected this god as an impossibility and rejected Islam, the Prophet withheld the truth of the incorporeal god (see below)! It is not necessary here to deconstruct al-Ghazzālī’s elitist and condescending presumptions regarding the masses of the Muslim followers of the Prophet. It is enough to emphasize that al-Ghazzālī here clearly admits that the ‘Islam’ of which he is said to be the ‘Proof’ is NOT the Islam that the Holy Prophet articulated!

Relevant page from al- Ghazzālī’s Iljām al-awām an ilm il-kalām

Al-Ghazzālī thus had to read his incorporeal god into the Qur"ān and Sunna by applying allegorical exegesis (ta’wil) to the passages that would otherwise seem to affirm or support an anthropomorphist reading. His ta’wil was informed by Hellenistic logic, in particular Aristotelian Logical Analogies. It is therefore no surprise that his incorporeal god is but the god of the Greek philosophers in a turban.

3. Whose Orthodoxy? The Black Sheep and the White Sheep

To understand the full significance of this ‘Persian Proof of Islam’ and his revision of the Prophetic legacy, one must see him in the light of a prophetic report of Muhammad.

“Zayd b. Aslam related that the Prophet (s) saw a vision and told his companions about it. He said: “I saw a group of black sheep and a group of white sheep then mixed with them [until the white sheep became so numerous that the black sheep could no longer be seen in the herd of sheep.] I[1] interpreted it to mean that [the black sheep are the Arabs. They will accept Islam and become many. As for the white sheep, they are the non-Arabs (i.e. Persians, Turks, Byzantines, ect.)] They will enter Islam and then share with you your wealth and your genealogy [and become so numerous that the Arabs will not be noticed amongst them.]” The Companions became surprised by what he (s) said. Then one said, “The non-Arab Persians will enter our land, O’ Messenger of Allah?!” The Prophet (s) then said, “Yes. By He Who Has my soul in His Hand, if the religion was hanging on the distant star, men from the non-Arab Persians would reach it and the luckiest of them would be the people of Faris.”[2]

The original recipients of the Prophet’s message, the Arabs or ‘black sheep,’ are here said to have been (or in the future to be) engulfed by later non-Arab converts to Islam or ‘white sheep’ who will not only ‘share’ their wealth (e.g. the riches generated from Middle Eastern oil), but also share or, rather, ‘appropriate’ Arab genealogy. In other words, non-Arab converts to Islam will assume Arab identity to such an extent that the actual ethnicity of the original Arabs will be forgotten. The fact that the original Arabs and Arab followers of Muhammad were black is well-documented.[3] So too is the fact that these original Muslims have been lost within an influx of non-Arab converts to Islam.[4] The face of Islam went from black to white.

It is not to be doubted that the ‘black sheep’ metaphor in this report alludes to the black ethnicity of the original Arabs. This is confirmed by numerous reports. See especially the example of Muhammad b. ‘Abd Allāh (d. 762), known also as al-Nafs al-Zakiyya (“The Pure Soul”). He was a pure descendent of the Prophet himself through the latter’s daughter Fatimah, wife of ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, and in fact “prided himself on being a Qurayshi [Arab] of pure lineage…[with] a pure descent from the Prophet.”[5] This point is clearly evident in a letter he sent to the ‘Abbasid caliph Abu Ja’far al-Mansur (r. 754 – 775), against whom he rebelled in 762. Al-Nafs al-Zakiyya felt Abu Ja’far al-Mansur’s mixed lineage (his mother was a Berber) disqualified him for leadership over the community. He wrote to the caliph:

“You well know that no one has laid claim to this office (the caliphate) who has a lineage, nobility, and status like ours. By the nobility of our fathers, we are not the sons of the accursed, the outcasts, or freedmen…I am at the very center of the Banu Hashim’s lines. My paternity is purest among them, undiluted with non-Arab blood, and no concubines dispute over me.[6]

What did this pure Arab descendent of the Prophet look like? “Muhammad (Al-Nafs al-Zakiyya) is described as tall and strong with very dark skin”.[7]  Indeed, al-Dhahabi describes him as “black-skinned and huge.”[8] But it is al-Tabari’s description that is most informative:

Muhammad (Al-Nafs al-Zakiyya) was black, exceedingly black, jet black (adam shadid al-udma adlam) and huge. He was nicknamed “Tar Face” (al-qari) because of his black complexion (udmatihi), such that Abu Ja’far used to call him “Charcoal Face” (al-muhammam).[9]

Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, a Qurayshi Arab whose pure lineage on both his father’s and his mother’s side put him “at the center” of the genealogical lines of the Banu Hashim, the Prophet’s kinsfolk, was so black he was called ‘Tar face’ and ‘Charcoal face’. He best represents those ‘black sheep’ to whom the message of Islam first came and who disappeared from view once non-Arab groups converted in large numbers.

It is not incidental that the Qur’an emphasizes that it is an Arabic, not a non-Arabic (a’jamiyya) revelation (41:2-3, 44). This suggests that the proper context in which to understand the revelation is a 7th century Arab linguistic and, thus, cultural context. It is the case that the Bedouin Arabs (a’rabi) were seen as the purest representatives of the Arabic Islamic way. Fine points of Islamic law were frequently decided by appeal to Bedouin tradition, and Arabic philologists privileged ‘pure’ desert Bedouin usage over the more cosmopolitan Arabic of the town when ruling on matters of correct Arabic grammar. The pure Arab was the Black Arab, the black sheep of the Prophet’s vision. This was the original recipient community of the message of Islam, and their linguistic-cultural way provided the context in which to properly understand the revelation.  

The Persian al-Ghazzālī best represents the ‘white sheep’ – those non-Arabs who converted to Islam and appropriated the wealth and even identity of the original Muslims, the black sheep or Black Arabs. It is quite telling that al-Ghazzālī would dismiss the original Muslim followers of the Prophet, the black sheep, as too dim-witted to have received the ‘truth’ of the incorporeal god from the Prophet – thus the conspicuous absence of this god from the Prophet’s message. This sentiment no doubt reflects not only a condescending elitism on al-Ghazzālī’s part, but also racism: the latter characterized much Iranian (Persian) Muslim literature in his day.[10] These ‘white sheep’ introduced non-Arab, even non-Islamic elements into Islam, such as an anti-black racism. They also, however, introduced the ‘God of the Philosophers’ and the Hellenized interpretation (ta’wil) of scripture so as to locate that god within Islamic revelation.[11]

Endnotes

[1] Or Abu Bakr with the approval of the angel.

[2] There are several versions of this report here conflated. See e.g. Al-Suyutī, Tārikh al-khulafā (Cairo: D§r al-Fajr lil-Turuth, 1999) 86. 

[3] See Wesley Muhammad, Black Arabia and the African Origin of Islam (Atlanta: A-Team Publishing, 2009) Chapters Six and Seven.

[4] Robert Goldston, The Sword of the Prophet: A History of the Arab World From the Time of Mohammed to the Present Day (New York: Dial Press, 1979) 87: “the original Arabs, those lords of the desert who had formed the vanguard of Islam and presided over its golden age…(almost) all had long since become so submerged into the cosmopolitan empire that they were indistinguishable from their neighbors.”

[5] Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “The Nature of Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya’s Mahdiship: A Study of Some Reports in Ißbah§nÊ’s Maq§til,” Hamdard Islamicus 13 (1990): 60-61.

[6] Quoted from al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, Vol. XXVIII: 'Abbasid Authority Affirmed, trans. annot. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985) 167-68.

[7] The Encyclopedia of Islam (New Edition; hereafter EI2) 7:389 s.v. MuÈammad b. #Abd Allāh by F. Buhl.

[8] Al-'Ibar fi khabar man ghabar (Kuwait: Tur§th al-ArabÊ) 4:198. 

[9] Al-Tabari, Ta'rikh al-rusul wa'l-muluk, edd. Michael Jan de Goeje and Lawrence Conrad,Annals of the Apostles and Kings. A Critical Edition Including ‘Arib’s Supplement (Gorgias Press, 2005) 10:203.

[10] Mino Southgate, “The Negative Images of Blacks in Some Medieval Iranian Writings,” Iranian Studies 17 (1984): 3-35

[11] See Wesley Williams, “A Body Unlike Bodies: Transcendent Anthropomorphism in Ancient Semitic Tradition and Early Islam,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 129 (2009) 19-44.

Disrespecting Kemet and Ma'at? Dr Wesley Muhammad in His Own Words

Part I:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sngrlDb7z3o

Part II:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asLdCWWTrJA&feature=related

The Ma'at - Islam Debate

Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZRqTBrBh7k&feature=youtu.be

Part I: Dr. Wesley Muhammad's Opening

                                                           
                                                             http://vimeo.com/33673883

Part II: Bro Mukasa Afrika Ma'at's Opening

                                                            http://vimeo.com/33687494

Part III:Dr. Wesley Muhammad's Rebuttal

                                                            http://vimeo.com/33697486

Part IV: Bro Mukasa Afrika Ma'at's Rebuttal

                                                           http://vimeo.com/33712078

Part V: Q & A

                                                           http://vimeo.com/33741367

Abyaḍ and the Black Arabs: Refuting the Would-be Refuters

Wesley Muhammad, PhD 2011.

This is only the Intoduction.  To see the full, 22-page response go to: 

http://www.drwesleymuhammad.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Abyad_and_the_Black_Arabs_Final.336113349.pdf

1. Determined to Defend White Supremacy in Islam

Waqar Akbar Cheema from Pakistan and Gabriel Keresztes Abdul Rahman the Romanian have written what they believe is a refutation of my and other’s documentation that the Arab prophet Muhammad was black-skinned, contrary to popular representations in both the Muslim and non-Muslim world according to which the last prophet of Islam was ruddy-white. Their “refutation” may be found here:

http://www.islamdunktv.com/2011/11/exposing-wesley-muhammad-on-prophet_05.html

Cheema and Keresztes believe, or try to make their reading audience believe that their motivation is non-racial/racist; that their concern is only to deal with the “racist theology” of the NOI which supposedly has no place in the Islam that they are urgently trying to protect. The simple claim that Prophet Muhammad was black-skinned rather than white-skinned is seen as “racist”:

“Mr. Wesley Muhammad in his article tries hard to ‘prove’ that Prophet Muhammad may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, was black in complexion. The racism within him prompts him to come up with such ‘interesting research’.”

Yet, Cheema and Keresztes unequivocally declare themselves that “In fact (Muhammad’s) complexion was white but not extremely white.” I maintain that it is in fact the racism deep within them – their terrified disdain for the thought that their Beloved Prophet was black - that prompted this amateurish attempt at a refutation which seeks to reassure for all readers that the Holy Prophet was not one of ‘them’, but one of ‘us’. Cheema and Keresztes claim:

“Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is not venerated or worshiped (except by deviant-ignorant), nor is his color important to the ideology or practice of Islam.  It is true that scholars have written books and composed poetry on the physical characteristics of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), but never has such an issue become a theological one.”

But the hegemony of this fabricated white-skinned Muhammad has had profound theological consequences, for white and black peoples. Anthropologist Prof Janice Boddy reveals in her study of black women in a Northern Sudanese village:

“Hofriyati (village women) are especially conscious of skin color. White skin is clean, beautiful, and a mark of potential holiness. I, being Caucasian, was repeatedly told that my chances of getting into heaven-should I chose to become Muslim-were far greater than those of the average Sudani. This is because the Prophet Mohammed was white, and all white-skinned peoples are in a favored position of belonging to his tribal group.”[1]                

The fabricated white-skinned Muhammad has been the license for racism  - theological and practical - in Islam throughout the ages. All of Cheema and Keresztes’s efforts in this so-called refutation were to preserve and protect this chimera of White Supremacy against the deconstructing force of the available evidence.   

Cheema and Keresztes try to demonstrate that I have misrepresented the meaning of the Arabic termabyaḍ as it relates to Prophet Muhammad. The term normally signifies the whiteness of such objects as milk, teeth, ect. However, Classical Arabic has a linguistic phenomenon called al-addad, which we call antiphrasis, in which in certain contexts a word signifies its lexical opposite. In Classical Arabic the term abyaḍ when applied to human complexion rarely means ‘white-skinned’. For that, the term aḥmar– lit. “red” – was used. As an Arab self-description abyaḍ normally denoted a clear, blemish-free blackcomplexion. This is the crux of the issue with Cheema and Keresztes and myself, as well as between them and Tariq Berry, author of The Unknown Arabs (2002). Cheema and Keresztes want to insist that the descriptions of the Prophet in the Classical Arabic literature that describe him as abyaḍ intend to describe him as white-skinned. In this Part I of my response to Cheema and Keresztes I will address this issue.

Before I begin, a caveat: reading through some of the exchange between Cheema and Keresztes and Tariq Berry compels to me make this point. Tariq Berry is my Brother whom I respect and admire. We travel in two different lanes though. While we have numerous fundamental agreements and are both (along with some others) trying to get the information of the historical blackness of the early Arabs and Muhammad out to a critical mass, it is also the case that I take positions with which he fundamentally disagrees and he takes positions with which I fundamentally disagree. Thus, he or anyone else should not be saddled with or called upon to answer for my positions. Tariq can answer for Tariq, and Wesley can answer for Wesley.

[1] Janice Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zār Cult in Northern Sudan(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989) 64. 

Islam and Africa: A Critical Analysis of Dr Chancellor Williams' 'The Destruction of Black Civilization'

 http://vimeo.com/31594674

Lecture given at Howard University, Washington DC, on February 13, 2010. Sponsored by the Howard University Nation of Islam Student's Association.

Kemet's Prison: A Note on the Problem of Giving Blind Deference to Our Master Teachers

"The student's obligation was to build upon the previous generation's work, to find what is missing, omitted (intentionally or not), neglected, and flat-out incorrect, so we can make the necessary changes for the following generation..." Dr John Henrik Clarke

Taqlīd is an Arabic-Islamic legal term signifying “blind deference” or the act of following the decisions of a religious authority without question and without examining that authority’s proofs or reasoning; blind obedience or face value acceptance due to the perceived ‘authority’ of a religious figure. Taqlīd is the opposite of ijtihād, independent reasoning and personal intellectual striving. The majority of the (Sunni) Muslim world today advocates taqlīd: Muslims are expected to simply defer to the decisions and opinions of such authorities as Ahmad b. Hanbal (d. 855), Malik b. Anas (d. 795), al-Shafi’i (d. 820) and Abu Hanifa (d. 767), the eponyms of the four orthodox schools of Islamic law.

The practice of taqlīd has ill-served the Muslim world in the long run, resulting in an intellectually and culturally stagnant ummah. The prevalence of the spirit of taqlīd is in fact a prison in which has been arrested and confined the intellectual creativity and cultural maturity of most of the Muslim world. I myself cannot be a muqallid (i.e. one who practices taqlīd), neither to the Classical Islamic authorities nor to the current Islamic authorities. Nor can I make taqlīd to the great Master Teachers of African History. Dr Chancellor Williams; Dr Yosef Ben Yochannan; Dr Ivan Van Sertima; Dr John Henrick Clarke; Dr Cheikh Anta Diop. These, and many more, are our luminaries. Their work is foundational, but NOT final. They have all made contributions that have greatly advanced the Black community intellectually and spiritually. These revolutionary scholars have helped us tremendously along the path of freedom from the psychological and spiritual chains of white supremacy and black inferiority. These luminaries have also, however, made scholarly contributions that must be reexamined and updated today.  These great Black Minds have earned and deserve honor, respect, and an honest hearing of everything they have said. They are not due taqlīd, however. There are errors and omissions in each of their work, as there are in the works of all us human intellectuals. It is the duty of every new generation of scholars to build on, correct, and move beyond the previous generation of scholars, all the while paying the proper respect to our predecessors.

The above words state a general principle, but I feel the need to demonstrate the soundness of this principle in this Note by showing a concrete example.

The great Dr. John Henrik Clarke is no doubt one of our paramount Master Teachers. He is one of the greatest warrior scholars that we have produced, and his influence on Black Thought, particularly with regard to Self, is almost unparalleled today. Many in the Afocentrist and African-Centered movement have such an emotional attachment to this luminary, however, that they believe that his scholarly output was infallible, and to simply quote Dr. Clarke on any subject is believed to be a sufficient guarantee of truth and accuracy. This is perfectly understandable, even if misguided. We in the Nation of Islam likewise have such a confidence and emotional attachment to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (hereafter THEM), and it is generally believed (errantly) that he could speak no errors. But THEM himself admitted having to correct in his later years statements he had made earlier, and his teacher, Master Fard Muhammad, declared THEM’s early theo-historical recitations only “almost nearly correctly.”Regardless, in as much as THEM affirmed an ultimate truth value to his Teachings, the academic and scientific community has the right and duty – and was indeed invited – to subject all of his claims to critical objective scrutiny. No Black Muslim should presume that THEM’s Teachings are beyond being critically analyzed. The truth claims of Dr Clarke and our other luminaries are no less eligible for dispassionate academic critical scrutiny.

In a lecture now posted on Youtube and there entitled, “Dr John Henrik Clarke on Organized Religion vs Spirituality, Part 1” which can be accessed here,      

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zai4AQ8v324          

the Master Teacher made the following statement (starting at 1:30):

“Every element that went into the making of every major religion in the world started in Africa. Why is it that you (Black people) are so naïve that you let people redress something that you invented, sale it back to you, and then enslave you with it. I’m saying that all organized present religions are male chauvinist murder cults…There is no exception…

“We created peaceful nations that had no word for jail, because no one had ever gone to one. No word for old peoples’ home because no one had ever thrown away grandma and grandpa. No word for orphanages. We did all of this, and over half of human civilization was over before we knew that a European was in the world.”

I would like to parse this statement into three basic claims. The first, that “every element that went into the making of every major religion in the world started in Africa,” is no doubt accurate, particularly if by ‘every major religion’ we mean Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is also true that the forms that these religions took when most Black people of the medieval and modern worlds encountered them were “redressed” versions, redressed by European/Caucasian peoples, rather than the original African versions of these religions.

The second claim, that these religions are “male chauvinist murder cults,” is certainly hyperbolic, and it gives no awareness or recognition of African precedents for such. I will document these precedents in an upcoming writing.

The third claim is what I would like to focus own in this Note: that Black people in the past created peaceful societies which lacked any need for jails, convalescent homes, or orphanages, and this lack of need is reflected in our ancient languages in which there are no corresponding terms. This strikes one as a quite romantic vision of ancient African society. While there are documented fundamental, philosophic and ethical differences between Western and African civilization, it is also well documented that the latter was in no way utopic prior to our encounter with whites. But more importantly, this romantic view of ancient African nations – presumably Kemet (or at least including Kemet) - is supported by a factual error.

The single greatest and most richly documented African civilization of antiquity was Kemet. Kemet was certainly great, but was Kemet utopic? Or at least, was it peaceful with no jails, old folk’s homes, or orphanages, such that no corresponding terms even existed in Medu Netjer?

The Oxford History of Prison (1998) informs us:

“The earliest records of prisons in Egypt date from the period of the Middle Kingdom (2050 BC – 1786 BC). The pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom acknowledged a sacred duty to preserve public order. Every injury inflicted on (or by) an Egyptian troubled the sacred order, which the pharaohs were bound to reestablish through the judiciary, legal procedures, and punishments…Middle Kingdom pharaohs appear to have preferred public beatings and imprisonment to the death penalty…

”The prisons of Egypt…might have resembled fortresses with cells and dungeons or institutions like a workhouse or labor camp, since Egyptian prisoners appear to have be expected to work during their time of confinement…The prisons were directed by an overseer with a staff of scribes and guards. Prison records were meticulously kept, and prisons themselves seem to have housed the criminal courts…”[1]

Indeed the records of Middle and New Kingdom Egypt make it clear that Africans in the Nile Valley had the need for and utilized jails and prisons. See for example Papyrus (hereafter P.) Westcar, dating from the Hyksos period (c. 1650 BCE - 1550 BCE) but recognized as a Middle Kingdom text relating Old Kingdom tales of magic. The text may be found published in Adolf Erman, Die Märchen des Papyrus Westcar (Berlin, 1890) and an English translation is available in Adolf Erman and Aylward Manley Blackman, The Ancient Egyptians (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966) 36-47. In one passage we read of King Khufu who wishes to see a ghastly magical display: he wants a magician to replace a severed head. For this trick, a not-yet decapitated (in)volunteer is needed. The king orders: “Let there be brought to me a prisoner (ḫnri) who is in the prison (ḫnrt), that the injury may be inflicted on him!” (P. Westcar, 8, 14-17).    

Adolf Erman and Hermann Grapow, in their authoritative Wörterbuch der aegyptischen Sprache(hereafter Wb), inform us that the ancient Egyptian terms ḫnrt and ḫnri derive from the verb ḫnr, “to restrain,” “to confine.”[2] As Sir Alan Gardiner pointed out, ḫnrt signifies a “place of restraint,” “place of confinement.”[3]

According to P. Brooklyn 35.1446 (probably dating to the reign of Amenemhet III, c. 1860 BCE – c. 1814 BCE), as well as other Middle Kingdom sources, there was a ‘Great Prison’ ḫnrt wr located at Thebes, modern day Luxor.[4] P. Brooklyn 35.1446 indicates that this Great Prison was, among other things, where fugitive corvées or statute-laborers served their sentence when caught. The corvée system was an old and long lived institution of forced labor in the Nile Valley. Free citizens were obligated at regular intervals or when called upon by the state to labor for the state with no recompense other than the necessities. By this means Egypt’s irrigation system was maintained, crops were harvested, and public buildings were erected. This, of course, was not slavery, which was a different institution that did exist in ancient Egypt/Kemet. Nevertheless, some citizens fled their temporary service to the state. P. Brooklyn 35.1446 contains government directives on the various punishments to such fugitives or deserters. Not only are the recovered fugitives consigned for life to penal servitude in the Great Prison, but also their families are seized while the fugitive is still on the run and assigned to a labor camp. According to David Lorton, the term ḫnrt implies “a sort of concentration camp for persons assigned to penal servitude on government lands and building projects.”[5]  William C. Hayes, who published the text of P. Brooklyn 35.1446, notes:     

“While ‘prison’ is probably as good a one-word translation of ḫnrt as can be achieved it almost certainly does not convey a complete picture of the institution in question…it appears to have functioned also as a workhouse or labor-camp, a sort of combined barracks and administrative center for housing, disciplining, and directing the efforts of those unfortunates condemned temporarily or permanently to a life of compulsory labor on behalf of the state. Its inmates evidently included not only the convicted criminals, some awaiting execution for capital crimes, but also gangs of statute laborers such as peasants…”[6]

Besides the Great Prison in Thebes, there were also local jails in the different towns. It seems that these smaller, local prisons or jails were given the generic term ἰth (Wb i, 148, 24), also deriving from a stem meaning “to restrain.”

Besides imprisonment, public beatings were also a form of state-sponsored punishment. P. Mook, dated probably to the reign of Thutmosis IV of Dynasty XVIII, records an unfavorable hearing of a soldier named Mery, who was sentenced to be “beaten with 100 strokes.”[7]  In the Old Kingdom, beatings for non-payment of taxes were handed out on-the-spot. See e.g. the beating scene inscribed on the West Wall of the tomb of Mereruka from Dynasty V. A citizen is restrained by two Egyptian officials to a whipping pole, while a third official whips him.[8]    

New Kingdom royal decrees treating crime and punishment, such as that of Seti I of dynasty XIX inscribed on a rock at Nauri below the Third Cataract, mentions punitive mutilations such as the cutting off of the ear or nose of an offender for such offenses as trespassing on official land. This text, and others, also mentions capital punishment by impalement.

In the flag ship nation of our ancient civilizations, jails existed and the language had distinct terms for them. And as great as Kemet indeed was, “peaceful” is an apt description only if by ‘peaceful’ we mean not overly aggressive and bellicose to other nations. This too will change however in the New Kingdom and is in fact only relatively true for the Old and Middle Kingdoms.

It would thus be very inaccurate for us to go around quoting Dr Clarke’s claim that “We (Africans) created peaceful nations that had no word for jail, because no one had ever gone to one.” Our flag ship nation had need of jails, we (and others) were imprisoned within them, and the language of that nation has corresponding terms for them.

Now, the fact that such a Master Teacher as Dr John Henrik Clarke can make an historically inaccurate claim does not at all mean that he is any less of an authority on African and even world history. We all make errors. The greater our scholarly output, the more errors we are prone to make. That is, frankly, a matter of simple mathematics. What this does mean, however, is that even the great works of our Master Teachers must be scrutinized and, at times, corrected. This also means that making taqlīd to them is as ill-advised as our making taqlīd to Classical and/or modern Islamic ulema on matters of Islam.  Taqlīd to our Master Teachers is just as much a prison, not unlike the Great Prison of Kemet. Making taqlīd to our Master Teachers imprisons our generation’s scholarly achievement and advancement. This is not, I suspect, what our Master Teachers wanted for us.  

 Now, before anyone accuses me of subjecting Afrocentric scholarship, which is often hostile to Islam, to the type of analysis that I don’t welcome for Islam, please note that I have offered the same criticisms and subjected my own communities (which includes the African-Centered community) to similar critiques. See my Notes, “Ending Hustle Scholarship and Black Muslim Dogmatism: An Imperative,” and “Has the Nation of Islam Become a Personality Cult?” I am painfully aware of both the mote in my brother’s eye and the beam in my own.

Peace  

Notes

[1] Edward M. Peters, “Prison Before The Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds,” in Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (edd.), The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) 8-9. 

[2] Adolf Erman and Hermann Grapow, (edd.), Wörterbuch der aegyptischen Sprache in Auftrage der deutschen Akademien (Leipziq, 1926-1963) iii, 295-6.  

[3] See further Sir Alan Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs, 3rd edition (London, 1957), 201, 444 sign D19.

[4] For the text and translation of the papyrus see William C. Hayes, A Papyrus of the Late Middle Kingdom In the Brooklyn Museum [Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446] (Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Museum, 1955).

[5] David Lorton, “Treatment of Criminals in Ancient Egypt: Through the New Kingdom,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 20 (1977) 17.

[6] Hayes, Papyrus, 37-38.

[7] On which see Lorton, “Treatment,” 23.  

[8] The Sakkarah Expedition, The Mastaba of Mereruka, Part I (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1938), pls. 36-38. 

Imam Shafi'i and That Early Black Islam

Abū ʿAbdullāh Muhammad ibn Idrīs al-Shafiʿī (d. 820), or Imam Shafiʿī, is the eponym of the Shafiʿī madhhab or School of Law, one of the four orthodox schools of law in Sunni Islam. He is the founder of classical Islamic jurisprudence or fiqh. Imam Shafiʿī was a pure Qurayshi Arab from the Banu Muttalib, the sister clan of the Banu Hashim to which the Holy Prophet Muhammad belonged. He was thus described as "tall and dark brown skinned (asmar)," which is the standard description of Arabs in that day. And like most dark-skinned Arabs of that era, Imam Shafiʿī did not like white-skinned folk, as the following anecdote reveals: 

روى أحد تلامذة الشافعي أنه إشترى له طيبا بدينار ، فسأله الشافعي : ممن إشتريت ..؟؟ ، فقال : من الرجل العطار الأشقر الأزرق .. فقال الشافعي : أشقر وأزرق ..؟؟ ، إذهب ورد العطر ، ماجاءني خير قط من أشقر 

"One of Al-Shafa'i's students related that he bought some scents for Al-Shafa'i for a dinar. Al-Shafa'i asked him (the student) who he bought the scents from. The man replied, 'From that blue-eyed, very fair-complexioned (أشقر) perfumer.' Al-Shafa'i said, 'Blue-eyed, very fair-complexioned (أشقر)?! Take it back! Nothing good has ever come to me from a very fair complexioned (أشقر) person!'"

That's that early Black Islam :-)

Props to Bro Tariq Berry for excavating this important anecdote.  

A Brief Note on Arabic and Hebrew as African Languages

By Wesley Muhammad, PhD

© 2011 Wesley Muhammad

(Excerpt form Black Arabia and the African Origin of Islam)

Al-Tabari (d. 923), the famed Muslim historian and Qur’anic exegete, recorded in his Ta’rikh al-rusul wa’l-muluk (“The History of the Messengers and Kings”) the following on the authority of ‘Abd Allāh b. ‘Abbās, the cousin of the prophet Muhammad of Arabia:

The Children of Sam (Shem) settled in the center of the Earth, which is between Satidma and the sea and between Yemen and Syria. Allah made the prophets from them, revealed the Books to them, made them beautiful, gave them a black complexion, luminous and free of blemish…The children of Ham settled in the south..Allah gave them a black complexion and gave some of them a black complexion, luminous and blemish-free…The children of Japheth settled in Safoun toward the north…They are light-skinned and very fair-skinned.

A tradition according to which both the Semites and the descendents of Ham were black, Japheth being the only white son of Noah, is found in Rabbinic Hebrew tradition as well, e.g. the 8th centuryPirke De-Rabbi Eliezer (Chapter 23):

Noah brought his sons and his grandsons, and he blessed them with their (several) settlements, and he gave them as an inheritance all the earth. He especially blessed Shem and his sons, black but comely, and he gave them the inhabitable earth. He blessed Ham and his sons, black like a raven, and he gave them as an inheritance the coast of the sea. He blessed Japheth and his sons, they entirely white, and he gave them for an inheritance the desert and its fields; these (are the inheritances with) which he endowed them.[1]

That the Semites, along with the so-called ‘Hamites,’ were originally a Black people is confirmed by linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidences. “Semitic” is properly a linguistic designation, not racial, and describes native speakers of one of the several living or dead Semitic languages. But Danna Reynolds observation here is critical:

“the indigenous or ‘black’ tribes of Arabia were those who in ancient times migrated from Africa…and were the earliest purveyers and dispersers of the Semitic dialects.”[2]

The Semitic family of languages, the most widespread of which is Arabic, is a branch of a larger language phylum called Afroasiatic which consists of the Semitic, Ancient Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic, Omotic and Chadic families. While some scholars maintain that Afroasiatic originated in Asia, most linguists now accept that it originated in Africa where five of the six generally recognized branches still reside,[3] likely in the Darfur-Kordofan region along the present-day border between Chad and Sudan.[4]  Regarding the Semitic branch in particular, a number of scholars postulate an African origin of the linguistic family and its speakers.[5] According to Nicholas Faraclas, several lines of evidence converge to suggest that the Proto-Semites separated from the Proto-Afroasiatic in Middle Africa and followed the Blue Nile to the Ethiopian Highlands (where most of the Semitic languages are found to this day), crossing over into Arabia from the Bab el Manded[6]; others probably continued north down the Nile eventually entering Syria-Palestine from the Isthmus of Suez. As Gregorio del Olmo Lete, Semitist from the University of Barcelona, noted most recently:

[Proto-Semites] formed part of a mass of peoples  who, moving out from the heart of Africa, spread north and reached the Mediterranean coast and beyond…The Semitic family [was] the spearhead of one of the expansive movements of peoples toward Asia  (from Africa)…[7]

Other scholars postulate a Levantine origin of Proto-Semitic. Peter Bellwood from the Australian National University affirmed: “Proto-Semitic is undoubtedly of Levant origin”.[8] That is to say, a group of African Afroasiatic speakers migrated northeast into the Levant and there evolved the Proto-Semitic language, maybe as early as the 8th millennium BCE. Renowned Russian linguist Igor M. Diankonoff initially argued that the origin of the Afroasiatic family, including the Semitic languages, was in the north-western part of the modern Republic of the Sudan.[9] The Semites were said to have been a group of East Africans who branched off from the Proto-Afroasiatic stock in Africa and migrated to Syria-Palestine in 9th-8th millennium BCE.  Later Diankonoff modified his position: still maintaining that North Africa is the origin of the Afroasiatic family in general, he moved the origin of the Proto-Semitic language to the area between the Nile Delta and Palestine, to where a group branched off from the parent Afroasiatic stock, migrated to the Levant area, and then became ‘Semitized,’ if you will.[10] Diankonoff points to the archaeological and architectural remains of the Jericho culture of 8th-7th millennium BCE Palestine as part of this early ‘Common Semitic’ culture. Whether the ‘Semitization’ of this ‘Proto-AA’ branch took place in the Sudan or the Levant, we are talking about a group of migrating Africans evolving African languages.

Arabic has preserved a large majority of the original Proto-Semitic phonological, morphological and syntactic characteristics, such that many linguists consider Arabic the most representative of Proto-Semitic. De Goeje’s opinion that “of all Semitic languages the Arabic approaches nearest to the original mother tongue,”[11] has much to recommend it.  Nineteenth and early twentieth-century Semitists pretty much identified Arabic with Proto-Semitic. This is due to Arabic’s extremely conservative evolution. Thus, Hitti (Arabs, 8) suggested:

 “(The Arab’s) language, though the youngest among the Semitic group from the point of view of literature, has, nevertheless, conserved more of the peculiarities of the mother Semitic tongue-including the inflection-than the Hebrew and its other sister languages. It therefore affords us the best key for the study of the Semitic languages.”

Arabic is indeed most conservative in terms of phonetics and derived models: it is said to preserve almost the complete original phonetic set of South Arabian and Ugatitic. Thus, for the most complete catalogue possible of the Proto-Semitic lexicon one should still start with the Arabic dictionary.

It is the Black Arabs, descendents of the original Kushite Afrabians, who are the original speakers of the Arabic language. University of Michigan Professor Emeritus George Mendenhall, one of the world’s leading authorities on the Near East and Near Eastern languages, notes that “Arabic could not be a gift of the prophet Muhammad, as many Islamic clerics claim, since its origins are in the early Bronze Age," over 3,000 years before Muhammad.[12] Mendenhall has identified the “earliest identifiable Arabic-speaking social group” as the Midianites, an important political entity that came into existence suddenly in the 13th century BCE in northwest Arabia. This highly sophisticated culture spoke a language which is an archaic ancestor of modern Arabic.[13] This is significant because, as David Goldenberg affirms: “Kush is the ancient name of Midian.”[14] These Midianites, the earliest identifiable Arabic-speaking social group, are documented as a Kushite or Black Arabian tribe.[15]

 Observing that the earliest segments of biblical Hebrew as a rule exhibit the highest percentage of Arabic cognates, Mendenhall affirms that the further back we go the closer Hebrew is to Arabic.[16] Indeed, Canaanite/Ugaritic, Hebrew’s predecessor and source, was very similar to Arabic as well. Documents excavated in Ras Shamra by the Lattakia Department of Archeology show that Ugaritic is very close to Arabic in grammar and vocabulary, with around 1000 cognate terms.[17] This fact of the closeness of the oldest biblical Hebrew layer and Ugaritic to Arabic comports well with Kamal Salibi’s conclusions, based on toponymic analysis, that the original Hebrews were a group of West Arabians who later migrated north to the Levant.[18] According to Salibi, the Hebrew Bible is from West Arabia and principally a record of ancient Israel’s historical experience there. Most place-names in the Bible, he argues, identify West Arabian locals, not Levantine. In other words, the original ‘Hebrews’ were in fact ‘Arabs’, in a sense.  

Notes

[1] Chapter 23 [28a] (Friedlander edition).

[2] Reynolds, “African Heritage,” 105.

[3]John Huehnergard, “Afro-Asiatic,” in Roger D. Woodard (ed.), The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 225; Christopher Ehret, S.O.Y Keita and Paul Newman, “The Origins of Afroasiatic,” Science 306 (2004) 1680-1681; Carleton T. Hodge, “Afroasiatic: The Horizon and Beyond,” in Scott Noegel and Alan S. Kaye (edd.),Afroasiatic Linguistics, Semitics, and Egyptology: Selected Writings of Carleton T. Hodge(Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press, 2004) 64; ML Bender Upside Down Afrasian, Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 50 (1997): 19-34; Christopher Ehret, Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): vowels, tone, consonants, and vocabulary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) 487; Joseph H. Greenberg, "African linguistic classification," in Joseph Ki-Zerbo (ed.), General History of Africa, Volume 1: Methodology and African Prehistory (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1981) 292–308. On the Africa vs. Asia AA Origin dispute see Daniel P. Mc Call, “The Afroasiatic Language Phylum: African in Origin, or Asian?” Current Anthropology 39 (1998): 139-143.

[4] Nicholas Faraclas, “They Came Before the Egyptians: Linguistic Evidence for the African Roots of Semitic Languages,” in Silvia Federici (ed.), Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and Its “Others” (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 1995) 175-96.

[5] See e.g. Gregorio del Olmo Lete, Questions of Semitic Linguistics. Root and Lexeme: The History of Research (Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press, 2008) 115; Edward Lipiński, Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters and Departement Oosterse Studies, 1997) 42-43; A. Murtonen, Early Semitic (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967), 74.

[6] Faraclas, “They Came Before the Egyptians” 190.

[7] del Olmo Lete, Questions of Semitic Linguistics, 115. Earlier George A. Barton already spoke of the “African origin and Arabian cradle-land of the Semites,” suggesting that the Afroasiatic (or to use the old term ‘Hamito- Semitic’) proto-language originated in Africa, from which a group migrated to Arabia forming the Semitic languages. George Aaron Barton, Semitic and Hamitic Origins: Social and Religious (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1934) 8; idem, “The Origins of Civilization in Africa and Mesopotamia, Their Relative Antiquity and Interplay,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 68 (1929) 303-312: “As many of the linguistic phenomena which Hamites and Semites possess in common appear in the Hamitic languages in a more primitive form than in the Semitic, the one theory which satisfies the facts is that the Hamito- Semitic race originated in North Africa and the Sahara region, and that at a very early time-say 10,000 to 8000 B.C. or earlier-some of this stock migrated to Arabia-probably South Arabia via the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb-where they spread over the peninsula in the course of subsequent millennia. As Arabia suffered desiccation, in common with North Africa, they were gradually forced to migrate in various directions in search of subsistence. It was under this pressure that, by migration and mingling with other races, the various Semitic nations of history, other than the Arabs, were formed.”

[8] Peter Bellwood, First Farmers: The Origin of Agricultural Societies (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) 209.

[9] “Earliest Semites in Asia,” Altorientalische Forschungen 8 (1981)23-70.

[10] Igor M. Diankonoff, “The Earliest Semitic Society,” Journal of Semitic Studies 43 (1998): 209-219.

[11] Quoted in Samuel Marinus Zwemer, Arabia: The cradle of Islam: studies in the geography, people, and politics of the peninsula, with an account of Islam and mission-work (Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1912 [ Revised edition]) 240. See also Satkari Mukhopadhyaya, “Preface to Reprint Edition,” in Mortimer Sloper Howell, A Grammar of the Classical Arabic Language 4 vols. (Delhi: Gian Publishing House, 1986) I: 3-4.        

[12] Quoted in interview by Jeff Mortimer, “Language of the Desert,” Michigan Today, Spring 1997 online version: http://www.ns.umich.edu/MT/97/Spr97/mta8s97.html accessed July 30, 2009.

[13] The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman et al, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992) 4:815 s.v. Midian by George E. Mendenhall.

[14]Curse of Ham, 28. See also Restö, Arabs in Antiquity, 139.

[15] “the people of Northwest Arabia (Midian) were called Kushites.” Goldenberg, Curse of Ham, 54.

[16] George Mendenhall, “Arabic in Semitic Linguistic History,” JAOS 126 (2006): 22-3.

[17] “Archaeologists: Ancient Texts Show Similarities between Arabic and Ugaritic Languages,”Archaeology Daily News, April 16, 2010 at http://www.archaeologydaily.com/news/201004163825/Archaeologists-Ancient-Texts-Show-Similarities-between-Arabic-and-Ugaritic-Languages.html. See also Gary A. Rendsburg, “Modern South Arabian as a Source for Ugaritic Etymologies,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 107 (1987): 623-628.

[18] Kamal Salibi, The Bible Came From Arabia (n.p.: Naufal, 2007).

Were the Pre-Islamic Arabs Racist? The Evidence of Bilal ibn Rabah

By Wesley Muhammad, PhD

© 2011 Wesley Muhammad, PhD

It is popularly believed that Bilal, the Companion of the Prophet Muhammad and first mu’adhin or Caller to Prayer, was an Abyssinian and, thus, the first “black Muslim” or Black man to accept Islam. The latter claim is certainly false, and the former claim is no doubt wrong as well. That is to say, Bilal certainly was NOT the first Black man to accept Islam, and he was likely not an Abyssinian in the strict sense of that description, viz. he likely was not from Abyssinia. This means that the whole question of ‘racism’ in early Islam must be reconsidered.  

1.] Bilal the Ethiopian?

The important Syrian Muslim scholar and historian of Islam, al-Dhahabī (d. 1348), in his entry on Bilal in his encyclopedic Siyar a’lam al-nubala’, reports the following tradition attributed to the Prophet Muhammad:

“There are four Forerunners (in Islam, al-Subbaq): I am the sabiq (forerunner) of the Arabs; Salman [al-Farsi] is the sabiq of the Persians; Bilal is the sabiq of the Ethiopians; and Suhayb [al-Rumi] is the sabiq of the Romans.”  

This hadith would seem to suggest that Bilal was an Ethiopian. However, interestingly al-Dhahabi goes on to affirm that Bilal was in fact born, not in Ethiopian on the African side of the Red Sea, but in Sirah in Yemen (I:351). It was Bilal’s mother, Hamam, who was actually an Abyssinian. He therefore inherited not only her slave-status but also here “Abyssinian-ness”. On the other hand Bilal’s father, Ribah, was an Arab. The Egyptian writer Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad (d. 1964) thus notes:

“There is a consensus of opinion among historians that Hadrat Bilal (ra) was not a pure Abyssinian. He was, however, born of [an] Abyssinian mother. His father was an Arab. Bilal’s complexion was dark brown. His body was slim and tall, with a prominent chest. His hair was thick and his cheeks were thin.

“These features are found in races of the Saud and the Samis. These races mostly lived between Abyssinia and Yemen from ancient times. His features are not identical with those of the Zanj or the sons of Sam (Shem, i.e. the Semites). His complexion was black and his hair was thick; but his nose was not snub, nor was his hair curly. This betrayed that he came of parents of two different races…

“There is a difference of opinion about his birthplace. Some historians claim that he was born at Mecca, whereas the others were of the opinion that he was born in Sarat (=Sirah). The latter view seems to be more plausible for Sarat is a town near Yemen and Abyssinia, where there can be found a mixed race. It is also stated that he went to that place once to get married.”[1]   

2.] Not The First Black Muslim

Even though Bilal was of “mixed race,” one should not think of him as a mulatto in the popular sense, a black and white crossbreed, as one is tempted to do on the false assumption that Arabs are white. Such mulattos in Arabia, like in America, tended to be swarthy in complexion, not intensely black as Bilal was.  The Arabic description of him is more telling than the English ones above: he was ādam shadīd al-udma, black, exceedingly black.[2] How could Bilal, as an Arab/Ethiopian hajin or mixed race, be so black-skinned? It is because both of his parents – his Arab father no less than his Ethiopian mother – were black-skinned. As the famous grammarian Muhammad b. Barri al-‘Adawi (d. 1193) noted: an akhdar or black-skinned Arab was “a pure Arab (‘arabi mahd)” with a pure genealogy, “because Arabs describe their color as black (al-aswad).”[3] And pure Arabs whose blackness was equal to that of Bilal’s preceded him in Islam.  

Zayd b. Haritha (d. 629) was the Prophet’s adopted son and likely the first male to accept Islam after the Prophet. He was, like Bilal, intensely black-skinned, ādam shadīd al-udma.[4] He therefore would have looked like Bilal in complexion. Zayd even had a flat nose, something Bilal didn’t even have. Because of his short stature, black skin and flat nose Zayd has occasionally been mistaken as “a negro,”[5] i.e., an African black. Dr John Henrik Clark even claimed that both Bilal and Zayd were Ethiopians. However, Zayd was a true Arab Bedouin (a’rabi) from the Arab tribe Banu Kalb.[6] Nevertheless, he was a Black man who preceded Bilal in Islam.

Scene from the 1977 film, "The Message". Johnny Sekka (center right) as Bilal and Damien Thomas (center left) as Zayd. Yet in Classical Arabic literature both Zayd and Bilal were described thusly:“Kāna ādam shadīd al-udma,” “He was black-skinned, excessively black-skinned”

‘Ali b. Abi Talib (d. 661) was the first-cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet. Many claim that it was he, not Zayd, who was the first male convert to Islam after Prophet Muhammad. Whether the first or the second convert, these two both preceded Bilal. And like Zayd, Ali was intensely black, ādam shadīd al-udma. [7]  He too is described with precisely the same complexion as Bilal. ‘Alī’s own son, Abu Ja’far Muhammad, according to Ibn Sa’d (d. 845), described ‘Alī thusly: “He was a black-skinned man with big, heavy eyes, pot-bellied, bald, and kind of short.”[8] ‘Alī’s descendents, the sharifs/sayyids, were similarly described as black-skinned.[9]  Zayd and Ali were thus ‘Black Muslims’ before Bilal.

3.] Bilal and Arabian Racism?     

Bilal is also the centerpiece of another misconception: that his situation and treatment in Mecca illustrates that the Arabs at that time were white and racist. In fact, details of his biography clearly indicate the opposite.

Bilal inherited his Ethiopian mother’s slave status. The fact that this Black man was an abused slave to an Arab family is often taken as proof of the anti-black racism that allegedly characterized pre-Islamic and even Islamic Arabia. This conclusion is falsified not only by the fact that most slaves in Arabia at time were actually white slaves, but also by a more telling fact:

Bilal and his mother Hamam were slaves to the notorious Qurayshi tribe, Banu Jumah. Their owner, Umayya b. Khalaf b. Safwan, a Meccan Arab, was a leading Qurayshi and head of the Banu Jumah. Umayya is the Qurayshi Arab who so abused and tortured Bilal to make him recant his monotheistic proclamation: Ahad (“One God”). And it is Umayya whom Bilal sought out and killed at the Battle of Badr in 624. This is important here because the Banu Jumah were a famously black-skinned Arab tribe. According to al-Dhahabi, they were, like Bilal, “exceedingly black-skinned, shadīd al-udma.” (I: 359). Thus the scene in Moustapha Akkad’s 1977 movie The Message depicting a white-skinned Umayya (played by Bruno Barnabe) torturing in the hot sun the black-skinned Bilal (played by Johnny Sekka) is all wrong. A more accurate depiction would have an intensely black-skinned Bilal tortured by an equally black-skinned Umayya. Now, while this correction doesn’t make the enslavement and torture right, it does make it about something totally different from the putative “white Arab racism.”  

Lastly, another good illustration of this point and the fallacy of the “white Arab racism” theme is the case of Abu Dharr al-Ghifari (d. 652), a famous Companion of Muhammad, and his insulting Bilal.  It is reported that Abu Dharr, from the Arab tribe Ghafar, insulted Bilal by calling him ‘son of a black woman’. While this is frequently cited as an example of an early (white) Arab anti-black sentiment, several factors invalidate this:

(1) Abu Dharr was himself a black-skinned Arab. According to al-Dhahabi, it was said that Abu Dharr was “black-skinned (ādam), huge, with a thick beard.” A-Dhahabi goes on to quote Ibn Burayda who claimed: “Abu Dharr was a black man (rajul aswad).” Siyar, II: 47, 50, 74.

(2) The insult is social, not racial, expressing the contempt of the highborn for the baseborn. The slave status of Bilal’s mother was the point of the insult, not her dark-complexion.

(3) The insult comments on the fact that Bilal’s mother was a non-Arab, and Bilal was thus a hajin or half-breed. Such persons across the board were looked down upon by purebred Arabs. “Son of a Persian woman (ibn al-farisiyya)” and “Son of a Frankish woman (ibn al-ifranjiyya)” were insults hurled around equally.[10]

(4) Abu Dharr later explained the insult, and made it clear that race was not the factor: Al-Dhahabi,Siyar, II:72-73 reports Abu Dharr as saying:

“Once there were heated words between a friend (Bilal) and I. His mother was a non-Arab and I insulted her. Then the Prophet (s) asked me, ‘Did you insult so-and-so?’ I said yes. He (the Prophet) asked, ‘Did you mention his mother?’ I said, when a person insults another he usually mentions his mother or father. The Prophet then said: ‘Surely you are one with the Days of Ignorance in him.”[11]

From this report it is clear that Bilal’s or his mother’s blackness had nothing to do with the insult, but non-Arabness and slave-status did.

4.] Conclusion

Bilal b. Ribah was a tremendous Muslim and his history (thanks to his mother) has much to teach us about the African experience in Islam. However, he was not the first Black man in  Islam, as is often claimed. At least three preceded him in this distinction: Ali b. Abi Talib, Zayd b. Haritha and, indeed, Muhammad b. Abd Allah.

Nor do Bilal’s experiences in pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia give evidence for the popular narrative of white Arab racism. They more so give evidence of Black-on-Black abuse, something we in America and in Africa can certainly relate too.      

NOTES                                    

[1] Hazrat Bilal (English Adaptation; New Delhi: Islamic Books Service, 2001) 5-6.  

[2] Baladhuri, Ansab al-ashraf, ed. Muhammad Hamid Allah (Cairo: Dar al-Ma’arif, 1987) I:193.

[3] Ibn Manzur, Lisan al-‘arab, s.v. اخضر IV:245.  

[4] Ibn Sa’d, al-Tabaqat al-kubr§, III/i, 30; Baladhuri, Ansab al-ashraf, I:470; Al-Tabari,Ta’rikh al-rusul wa’l-muluk, XIII: 2301; Ibn ‘Asakir, Ta’rikh madinat Dimashq, ed. Umar Gharamah ‘Amrawi (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1995) XIV:351. See also Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb tanwīr al-ghabash fī fa∙l ‘l-sūdān wa’l-Èabash, ed. and trns. by Imran Hamza Alawiye, “Ibn al-Jawzī’s Apologia on Behalf of the Black People and their status in Islam: A Critical Editon and Translation ofKitāb tanwīr al-ghabash fī fa∙l ‘l-sūdān wa’l-Èabash,”  (PhD. Dissertation, University of London, 1985) 298 [Ar.]; 132 [Eng.]; Khalid Muhammad Khalid, Men Around the Messenger (New Revised Edition; Kuala Lumpur, 2005) 232.

[5] E.g. J.A. Rogers, World’s Great Men of Color 2 vols. (New York: Collier Books, 1996 [1973]) II: 539-40; idem, Sex and Race: Negro-Caucasian Mixing in All Ages and All Lands (St. Petersburg, Fl: Helga M. Rogers, 1967; 9th edition) 96; Vasudeo B. Mehto, “If Europe had been Muslimised,” Islamic Review 2 (1932): 220.

[6] Ibn ‘Asakir, Ta’rikh madinat Dimashq, XIV:349-50.

[7] Al-Suyuti, Tārikh al-khulafā, 134.

[8] Ibn Sa’d, al-Tabaqāt al-kubrā (Beirut: Dar Sadir) 8:25.

[9] Ibn al-SabbAgh, Al-Fusul al-muhimmah fi ma’rifat ahwa l-a’ummah (Najaf: Dar al-Kutub al-Tijariyah, 1950); Tariq Berry, Unknown Arabs and Tariq Berry, “A True Description of the Prophet Mohamed's Family (SAWS),” http://savethetruearabs.blogspot.com/2009/08/true-description-of-prophet-mohameds_26.html.

[10] See Lewis, “Crows,” 89; Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I:120.

[11] See also Tariq Berry, Unknown Arabs.