Hanif J. Williams, youth organizer, podcast and online radio host<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nNbA Muslims had an opportunity to ask Aziza questions about the Black Muslim Atlantic, specifically as it relates to relationships between African American and African diaspora Muslims. She also talked about prevailing attempts to frame Muslims within a \u201csingle story.\u201d<\/p>\n
As African American Muslims venture out into this Black Muslim Atlantic, how do they keep from drowning in antipathy and biases towards them from non-African American Blacks?<\/strong><\/p>\nFirst, connecting with Afro-Caribbeans in the U.K. will be very powerful. Just like African Americans, they embraced Islam after ruptures due to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. We can see its effects on all of us and understand our heritage and the ways that experience shaped us.<\/p>\n
We can also explore the influences of Muslims in the Americas and the Caribbean on African independence movements. They were empowered when they connected with us. We were some of the foundational constructors of pan-Africanism and Black identities. It\u2019s through the works of people like\u00a0Henry Sylvester-Williams, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X as well as others that a global platform for Blacks to struggle against slavery, racism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism began to form.<\/p>\n
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We need to examine and uproot the origins of anti-African American sentiments. When we look at our rich heritage, we can understand how those sentiments serve white supremacy and don\u2019t have a strong basis in historical realities and points of convergences that allowed Black people to rise up against colonialism.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still important for us to be deeply aware of the impact of four hundred years of slavery and one hundred years of Jim Crow on Black people. We can\u2019t just get lost in other people\u2019s movements. When we uproot racism in this society, we\u2019ll free everybody, inshaallah.<\/p>\n
Do the Arts have a place in the Black Muslim Atlantic and can it feed into social justice?<\/strong><\/p>\nThe arts are essential in the affirmation of our identity and imagining a future. The arts give us a space for healing and connection.\u00a0 We have to be able to tell our stories. If we can\u2019t talk about our current realities and depict them with an artist\u2019s eye, whether it\u2019s in literature, visual art, storytelling and so on, then we will not be able to go anywhere.<\/p>\n
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Narrative work is very important. Storytelling is essential to organizing and connecting our struggles in a way that reaches our hearts. You can\u2019t do that with data; you have to give meaning. Art helps give meaning. It shows the aesthetics.<\/p>\n
In the Black Muslim Atlantic, we see an aesthetic in the productions of artists like Alia Sharrief, Amir Suleiman, Bobby Rogers, Umm Zakiyyah and others. We can see ourselves and Black folks. We see our cultural patterns like our vernacular.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very important that we create our stories not for the gaze of others but for creativity and expression. What stories do we want our own children to hear? What are the stories we want to pass on to other people?<\/p>\n
How are Black Muslim stories muted in the society?<\/strong><\/p>\nI think that when an Arab or South Asian tells their story that it\u2019s important to present it as their particular experience and one articulation of a complex identity. Some people represent their culture as normative-this is what all Muslims look like-and that\u2019s not true.<\/p>\n
We have to be wary of the dangers of the single story, which is what mainstream media wants to do. It wants to show Muslims as Brown, Middle Eastern\/South Asian and foreign.<\/p>\n
Showing multiple stories is important and American. Share the stories of Indigenous people whose land was stolen, enslaved Africans and Latinos. How they navigate their Islam speaks to the struggles of this country and nation building. It has many tragedies, but there\u2019s also hope that we can build a better society.<\/p>\n
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