How did Blacks become Kaffir?

Hyde Park Speaker’s  Corner is a unique place in London which calls for open public speaking, debate, and discussion.  In one particular incident at the park, Nation of Islam spokesman Leo Muhammad gave a highly powerful lecture discussing the history of lynchings which occurred against black people. 

At one point, his speech is heckled by a Muslim who questions the theological doctrines of the Nation of Islam asking the question,”Is this Islam?” Leo Muhammad fires back,”No. This is the reality of black people’s lives which you don’t want to hear because you have no concern for our pain and suffering. You are more concerned with trying to convert Caucasians into your religion.”

When a heckler in the audience states ,”They aren’t Muslim. kaffirs! That’s what they are.”, Leo Muhammad responds,”I warn you Orthodox Muslims calling people Kaffirs using the same word that the racist whites used for blacks in South Africa. That shows you have a relationship with those racist.”   The term “Kaffir” originally is an Arabic word used in the Qu’ran to describe those who reject the truth of Islam  but is often translated as “nonbeliever” or “infidel.” The term is often heralded by Muslims against those whom they believe to have deviant theological doctrines.  Yet, as Leo Muhammad points out, what is particularly appalling is that the Qu’ran term “kaffir” has also become a racial slur equivalent to the N-Word in South Africa. On the basis of this, Leo Muhammad charges Muslims with having a relationship with racists.  Is there truth behind this statement?

In the book titled,”Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid, South Africa”, Mark Mathabane discusses what exactly it meant to be a kaffir in South Africa. Mat South Africa”, Mark Mathabane discusses what exactly it meant to be a kaffir in Sohabane writes,”I  contemplated suicide because I found the burden of living in a ghetto, poverty-stricken and without hope, too heavy to shoulder.” The question is:  How did Kaffir context a Qu’ranic term with no racial implications in its origin usage become a racist term synonymous for  black people within European languages? Even Mahatama Ganhdi, while visiting South Africa advocated for the rights of Indians by arguing that they were not Kaffirs:

Ours is one continued struggled against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life indolence and nakedness. 

There is a lack of research and linguistic studies analyzing this. In my personal theory, Muslim slave-traders working with  Europeans  likely used the term for non-Muslim areas of Sub-Saharan Africa and overtime it became synonymous for black people.In contemporary times, the term “kaffir” is also utilized by some Muslims against non-Muslims who violate Islamic social social and moral codes. Discussing this, Leo Muhammad states:

“Farrakhan is the man who stopped me from using drugs. Farrakhan is the man that stopped me from drinking alcohol. Farrakhan is the man who stooped me from fornication. You Asians didn’t do that. You Arabs didn’t do that. You all saw black people in the condition we were in and you called us Kaffirs.”  

As a young black man growing up in wretched social conditions, Leo Muhammad states that Arab and Asian Muslims merely viewed him as a “kaffir” with no concern for him.  When Leo Muhammad states that Muslim missionaries who heckled his speech had more concern for trying to convert Caucasians than they did the pain and suffering of black people, it calls for us to actually analyze the dawah techniques utilized by Muslim organizations. 

                                                                               The Whiteness of  Muslim Dawah

A dawah pamphlet used by various Muslim missionary groups consist of a list of what prominent Non-Muslims  think about Prophet Muhammad. With the exception of Mohandas Ganhdi(who was anti-black), nearly all of the prominent non-Muslim are White Europeans. This list often includes Michael H. Hart’s 100: A ranking of the Most Influential Persons in history, despite the fact that Michael Hart is an active white separatist, advocate of eugenics and a man who holds that blacks are inferior.

Another questionable dawah strategy that many Muslim organizations frequently employ is pointing to “scientific miracles” in the Qu’ran. If European civilization was not so saturated in scientificism, would this even be a viable technique for dawah to attract converts? The reality is the primary  demographic and target of Dawah by Muslim organizations are largely white neo-atheists.

Nearly, the bulk of  dawah material of Muslim organizations are aimed at converting White Europeans to Islam.Their mentality is that if a European said something positive about the Prophet(pbuh)then certainly that must mean the Prophetic biography is worth studying. Some Muslims have such an inferiority complex that if a white Anglo-Saxon converts to Islam and begins a career on the Islamic speaking circuit giving really mediocre dawah speeches, it serves as an iman or faith booster for them. The mindset that they have is if a white person converts to Islam, then it must be the truth.

The whiteness of Islamic dawah movements has been observed by numerous black Muslims. Malcolm X once stated,” the Muslim world has seemed to ignore the problem of the Black American, and most Muslims who come here from the Muslim world have concentrated more effort in trying to convert white Americans than Black Americans.” The sad reality is that this statement still holds true today when one analyzes the techniques and strategies of mainstream Muslim dawah initiatives.  The fact that Qu’ranic terms such as “kaffir” and  “abeed” are utilized as derogatory racial slurs for Muslims should really lead to some Muslim communities doing soul searching about their neglect and mistreatment of black people.