|
Fatimah
Farooq
is
shown,
Tuesday,
March
14, 2017
in Ann
Arbor,
Mich.
Farooq
counsels
refugees
from
places
like
Iraq and
Syria,
who have
been
victims
of
trauma,
torture
or sex
trafficking.
Personally,
she
tries to
help
relatives
from
Sudan,
some of
whom
have
faced
barriers
resettling
in the
United
States
as her
parents
did
right
before
she was
born. In
between,
she is
trying
to
navigate
being
black,
Muslim
and a
daughter
of
immigrants.
(Photo:
Paul
Sancya,
AP) |
|
Black
Muslims
aim for
unity in
challenging
time for
Islam
By JEFF
KAROUB,
SOPHIA
TAREEN
and
NOREEN
NASIR
ap.org
DEARBORN,
MI - In
her job
as a
refugee
case
manager,
Fatimah
Farooq
would
come to
work in
a hijab
and
speak
with her
clients
in
Arabic.
Nonetheless,
she
found
herself
being
asked
whether
she was
Muslim.
It's not
easy,
Farooq
says,
navigating
her dual
identities
as black
and
Muslim.
"I'm
constantly
trying
to prove
that I
belong,"
said
Farooq,
who now
works in
public
health.
"It's
really
hard not
to be an
outsider
in a
community
-
especially
today,
in the
current
times."
Many
Muslims
are
reeling
from a
U.S.
presidential
administration
that's
cracked
down on
immigrants,
including
through
the
introduction
of a
travel
ban that
suspends
new
visas
for
people
from six
Muslim-majority
countries
and is
now tied
up in
court.
But
black
American-born
Muslims
say they
have
been
pushed
to the
edges of
the
conversations
- even
by those
who
share
the same
religion.
They say
they
often
feel
discrimination
on
multiple
fronts:
for
being
black,
for
being
Muslim
and for
being
black
and
Muslim
among a
population
of
immigrant
Muslims.
Farooq,
whose
Sudanese
parents
came to
the U.S.
before
she was
born,
said her
own
family
used to
attend a
largely
African-American
mosque
but then
moved to
a
predominantly
Arab one
- yet in
both
cases
still
felt
like
"outsiders."
The
identity
issues
have
rippled
into
social
media
with
Twitter's
#BeingBlackAndMuslim
and @BlkMuslimWisdom
formed
in
recent
weeks to
amplify
stories
of black
Muslims,
whether
it's to
praise
Mahershala
Ali, who
is black
and
became
the
first
Muslim
actor to
win an
Oscar,
or to
express
concern
over the
lack of
black
speakers
at a
recent
Islamic
conference.
Tensions
are also
being
aired at
community
town
halls,
with
panelists
questioning
why
there
hasn't
been
more
involvement
from
Arab and
South
Asian
Muslims
in Black
Lives
Matter
events.
In
response,
activists
say
they're
seizing
the
opportunity
to unite
Muslims
of all
backgrounds.
Kashif
Syed,
who
lives in
the
Washington,
D.C.
area,
grew up
in a
family
of South
Asian
Muslim
immigrants
around
Detroit
that was
insulated
from
black
Muslims.
Now that
he's
part of
a young
professional
Muslim
community,
he's
trying
to honor
the
experiences
of
others.
"We're
seeing
increasingly
visible
threats
to
Muslims
across
the
country
now -
it's an
important
reminder
of what
black
communities
have
endured
for
generations
in this
country,"
said
Syed,
who
volunteers
at
Townhall
Dialogue,
a
nonprofit
fostering
discussions
about
U.S.
Muslim
identity.
"I can't
really
think of
a better
time for
non-black
Muslims
to start
examining
how we
got
here,
and what
lessons
we can
learn
from the
hard-won
victories
of black
communities
from the
civil
rights
movement."
Organizer
Shamar
Hemphill,
a black
Chicago
native
who
works
for the
Inner-City
Muslim
Action
Network,
said
Republican
President
Donald
Trump's
executive
orders
such as
the
travel
ban have
made
organizers
"quadruple"
efforts
to form
alliances,
including
recent
calls
for
Muslim
groups
to
attend
and
organize
around
Martin
Luther
King Jr.
Day
events.
"We're
not
going to
allow
any
policy
or
federal
piece of
legislation
to
separate
us and
isolate
us.
We're
going to
come
together
and
protect
each
other,"
he said.
"It's
also a
great
opportunity
because
it
brings
us out
of our
silos."
Other
attempts
at unity
have
been
made
over the
years.
Imam
Zaid
Shakir
at the
California-based
Zaytuna
College,
a
liberal
arts
Muslim
college,
has
delivered
lectures
about
similarities
between
the
Prophet
Muhammad's
farewell
sermon
and
King's
"I Have
a Dream
Speech."
The
Council
on
American-Islamic
Relations
holds
events
around
the
birthday
of
Malcolm
X, a
Nation
of Islam
member
who came
into
mainstream
Islam.
And IMAN
in
Chicago
has
celebrated
hip hop,
featuring
Muslim
rappers
like
Grammy-winner
Rhymefest.
Asha
Noor,
whose
family
fled
Somalia's
civil
war when
she was
a baby,
helped
organize
a town
hall
after
Trump
announced
his
first
travel
ban in
February,
which
blocked
travelers
from
seven
predominantly
Muslim
countries
and put
the U.S.
refugee
program
on hold.
That ban
has
since
been
replaced
with a
newer
version.
Noor
said she
feels
there's
less
attention
paid to
the
plight
of
refugees
from her
native
Somalia
and
Sudan,
the two
African
countries
in
Trump's
executive
order.
She sees
it as
part of
a
"continuous
erasure
of the
black
Muslim
experience."
"Black
Muslims
often
face a
two-front
challenge,
both
within
the
community
and the
larger
American
society,"
said
Noor,
who
worked
for Take
on Hate,
a
campaign
challenging
discrimination
against
Arabs
and
Muslims.
"You can
never be
too sure
if
assaults
or
micro-aggressions
are
coming
because
you're
black,
Muslim,
or
both."
Central
to the
issue,
experts
say, is
that
Islam is
largely
portrayed
as
something
foreign.
That's a
misconception
University
of San
Francisco
professor
Aysha
Hidayatullah
encounters
when
teaching
an
"Islam
in
America"
class
where
she
looks at
Islam's
presence
in
America
from the
slave
trade to
civil
rights -
something
that is
a
surprise
to many
of her
students.
"It's a
class
that is
focused
mainly
on
recovering
the
black
memory
of Islam
in this
country,"
she
said.
"That's
the
element
that's
forgotten."
Compared
with the
general
population,
U.S.
Muslims
are more
racially
diverse
with a
larger
percentage
born
abroad.
There's
disagreement
on how
many
millions
reside
in the
U.S.,
but it's
commonly
accepted
that
American
blacks
represent
about
one-third
of
Muslims
in this
country.
Many
came to
the
religion
through
the
Nation
of
Islam,
which
veers
from
mainstream
Islam on
several
core
teachings,
leading
many
immigrant
Muslims
to
consider
it too
divergent
from
their
faith.
But Imam
W. Deen
Mohammed
transformed
the
movement
after
taking
it over
in the
1970s
and
gradually
moved
his
thousands
of
followers
toward
mainstream
Islam,
while
Louis
Farrakhan
took
leadership
of the
black
separatist
Nation
of
Islam.
Despite
the
history
of
blacks
in the
Muslim
faith,
Tariq
Touré, a
Maryland
writer
and
activist,
says
South
Asian
and Arab
narratives
still
dominate
the
conversation.
"It's
disheartening,
because
black
Muslims
can't
even get
a word
in as to
how
they're
navigating
all of
this,"
said
Touré,
who's
black.
"We
really
struggle
with it
all -
the
bridges
that
have
been
burned
and the
barriers
that
have
been
built
within
the
Muslim
communities
when it
comes to
race."
Abdul
Rahim
Habib,
an
American-born
college
student,
said
even his
close
friends
assumed
he
converted
to Islam
because
they
didn't
associate
being
black
with
being
Muslim.
That's
even
though
the
21-year-old's
Nigerian
father
and
grandparents
are
Muslim.
While
growing
up in
Chicago,
he could
remember
moments
when
Arab
Muslims
refused
to greet
him with
"As-Salaam-Alaikum,"
a wish
of peace
customary
among
all
Muslims.
"A lot
of our
Arab
brothers
and
sisters
didn't
really
care
about
being
brothers
and
sisters
until
this
point
when
they
started
having
problems,"
he said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|