Let
Us Be Moors: Islam, Race and "Connected Histories"
Hisham Aidi
(Hisham
Aidi, a research fellow at Columbia University's Middle East
Institute, works on the university's Muslim Communities in New
York Project, sponsored by the Ford Foundation.)
"Seamos
moros!" wrote the Cuban poet and nationalist José
Martíí in 1893, in support of the Berber uprising
against Spanish rule in northern Morocco. "Let us be Moors...the
revolt in the Rif...is not an isolated incident, but an outbreak
of the change and realignment that have entered the world. Let
us be Moors...we [Cubans] who will probably die by the hand
of Spain." [1] Writing at a time when the scramble
for Africa and Asia was at full throttle, Martí was accenting
connections between those great power forays and Spanish depredations
in Cuba, even as the rebellion of 1895 germinated on his island.
Throughout
the past century, particularly during the Cold War, Latin American
leaders from Cuba's Fidel Castro to Argentina's Juan Peron would
express support for Arab political causes, and call for Arab-Latin
solidarity in the face of imperial domination, often highlighting
cultural links to the Arab world through Moorish Spain. Castro,
in particular, made a philo-Arab pan-Africanism central to his
regime's ideology and policy initiatives. In his famous 1959
speech on race, the jefe maximo underlined Cuba's African
and Moorish origins. "We all have lighter or darker skin.
Lighter skin implies descent from Spaniards who themselves were
colonized by the Moors that came from Africa. Those who are
more or less dark-skinned came directly from Africa. Moreover,
nobody can consider himself as being of pure, much less superior,
race." [2]
With the
launching of the "war on terror," and particularly
with the invasion of Iraq, political leaders and activists in
Latin America have been warning of a new imperial age and again
declaring solidarity with the Arab world. Some refer rather
quixotically to a Moorish past. Linking the war on Iraq to Plan
Colombia and to the Bush administration's alleged support for
a coup against him, the erratic Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez
has repeatedly urged his countrymen to "return to their
Arab roots," and attempted to mobilize the country's mestizo
and black majority against white supremacy.
"They
call me the monkey or black," Chavez says of his domestic
and international opponents. "They can't stand that someone
like me was elected." [3]
In less
contentious terms, Brazil's left-leaning President Lula da Silva
will visit the Middle East in early December 2003 to seek "more
objective" relations with the Arab world, to call for an
"independent, democratic Palestinian state" and to
launch a common market with the Arab world as an alternative
to the North American market (particularly with many in Arab
countries boycotting American products). [4] Brazil's
largest trade union federation strongly denounced post-September
11 US intervention in Colombia, Venezuela and the Middle East,
praising the protest movements that have appeared against US
and Israeli "militarism" and calling on Brazilian
workers to join in the struggle "against Sharon's Nazi-Zionist
aggression against the Palestinian people" and in support
of the intifada.
[5]
The
Other September 11 Effect
In the
age of the "war on terror," such expressions from
the Western world of affinity with the Arab world are not confined
to statements of political solidarity. In Latin America, Europe
and the US, for example, there has been a sharp increase in
conversion to Islam. At the first world congress of Spanish-speaking
Muslims held in Seville in April 2003, the scholar Mansur Escudero,
citing "globalization," said that there were 10 to
12 million Spanish speakers among the world's 1.2 billion Muslims. [6] In the US, researchers note that
usually 25,000 people a year become Muslim, but by several accounts
that number has quadrupled since September 11. [7] In Europe, an Islamic center in Holland reported
a tenfold increase and the New Muslims Project in England reported
a "steady stream" of new converts.
[8] Several analysts have noted that in the United Kingdom,
many converts are coming from middle-class and professional
backgrounds, not simply through the prison system or ghetto
mosques, as is commonly believed. [9] The Muslim population in Spain
is also growing, due to conversion, as well as immigration and
intermarriage. [10]
Different
explanations have been advanced to account for this intriguing
phenomenon, known as "the other September 11 effect"
-- the primary effects being anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant
backlash and infringements upon civil liberties. Commenting
on how the accused "dirty bomber" José Padilla
and the shoe bomber Richard Reid converted to Islam, French
scholar Olivier Roy observes, "Twenty years ago such individuals
would have joined radical leftist movements, which have now
disappeared or become 'bourgeois'.... Now only two Western movements
of radical protest claim to be 'internationalist': the anti-globalization
movement and radical Islamists. To convert to Islam today is
a way for a European rebel to find a cause; it has little to
do with theology."
[11] This portrayal of Islam as an outlet for the West's
political malcontents ignores the powerful allure of certain
aspects of Islamic theology, and begs the question of why for
at least a century, even when communism was still in vogue,
minorities in the West have seen Islam as a particularly attractive
alternative. Roy's formulation also neglects the critical elements
of racism and racialization. At least since Malcolm X, internationalist
Islam has been seen as a response to Western racism and imperialism.
Though
Westerners of different social and ethnic backgrounds are gravitating
toward Islam, it is mostly the ethnically marginalized of the
West -- historically, mostly black, but nowadays also Latino,
native American, Arab and South Asian minorities -- who, often
attracted by the purported universalism and colorblindness of
Islamic history and theology, are asserting membership in a
transnational umma and thereby challenging or "exiting"
the white West. Even for white converts, like John Walker Lindh,
becoming Muslim involves a process of racialization -- renouncing
their whiteness -- because while the West stands for racism
and white supremacy on a global scale, Islam is seen to represent
tolerance and anti-imperialism. This process of racialization
is also occurring in diasporan Muslim communities in the West,
which are growing increasingly race-conscious and "black"
as anti-Muslim racism increases. To cope, Muslims in the diaspora
are absorbing lessons from the African-American freedom movement,
including from strains of African-American Islam.
Over the
past two years, Islam has provided an anti-imperial idiom and
imaginary community of belonging for many subordinate groups
in the West, as Islamic culture and art stream into the West
through minority and diaspora communities, and often in fusion
with African-American art forms, slowly seep into the cultural
mainstream. Subsequently, many of the cultural and protest movements
-- anti-globalization, anti-imperialist, anti-racist -- in the
West today have Islamic and/or African-American undercurrents.
At a time of military conflict and extreme ideological polarization
between the West and the Muslim world, Islamic culture is permeating
political and cultural currents, remaking identities and creating
cultural linkages between Westerners and the Muslim world.
Latino
Back Channels
Recent
journalistic accounts have noted the growing rate of conversion
to Islam in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, and the often
violent clashes between Christian and Spanish Muslim missionaries
proselytizing among the indigenous Mayan community. The Muslim
campaign in Chiapas is led by a Spaniard from Granada, Aureliano
Perez, member of an international Sufi order called al-Murabitun,
though he is contending with a rival missionary, Omar Weston.
Particularly interesting about the several hundred Mayan Muslims
is the view of some of the converts that, though some of the
missionaries are Spanish like the conquistadors, their embrace
of Islam is a historic remedy for the Spanish conquest and the
consequent oppression. "Five hundred years ago, they came
to destroy us," said Anastasio Gomez Gomez, 21, who now
goes by Ibrahim. "Five hundred years later, other Spaniards
came to return a knowledge that was taken away from us."
[12]
The view
of 1492 as a tragic date signaling the end of a glorious era,
and the related idea that conversion to Islam entails a reclaiming
of that past, is common among the Latino Muslim community in
the US. That community, estimated in 2000
at 30,000 to 40,000 members, has grown in the past two years,
with Latino Muslim centers and da'wa (proselytizing)
organizations in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Fresno and Houston. [13] The banner hanging at the Alianza Islamica
center in the South Bronx celebrates the African and Islamic
roots of Latin America: against a red, white and blue backdrop
stands a sword-wielding Moor, flanked by a Taino Indian and
a black African. The Spanish conquistador is conspicuously absent.
Imam (Omar Abduraheem) Ocasio of the Alianza Islamica speaks
passionately about the continuity between Moorish Spain and
Latin America: "Most of the people who came to Latin America
and the Spanish Caribbean were from southern Spain, Andalusia
-- they were Moriscos, Moors forcefully converted to Christianity.
The leaders, army generals, curas [priests] were white
men from northern Spain...sangre azul, as they were called.
The southerners, who did the menial jobs, ...servants, artisans,
foot soldiers, ...were of mixed Arab and African descent. They
were stripped of their religion, culture, brought to the so-called
New World where they were enslaved with African slaves.... But
the Moriscos never lost their culture...we are the cultural
descendants of the Moors." [14] The Puerto Rican imam writes, "Islamically
inspired values were conveyed ever so subtly in the Trojan horse
of Spanish heritage throughout the centuries and, after 500
years, Latinos were now ready to return."
[15]
In the
past two years, Islam and the Arab-Muslim world seem to have
entered even more poignantly into the Latin American imagination,
gaining a presence in political discourse and strongly influencing
Hispanic popular culture. This Arab cultural invasion of Latin
America, which has reverberated in mainstream American culture,
is often attributed to the Brazilian telenovela El Clon
and Lebanese-Colombian pop icon Shakira.
El
Clon, the highest-rated soap opera ever shown on Telemundo,
a US Spanish-language channel, reportedly reaches 2.8 million
Hispanic households in the US, as well as 85 million people
in Brazil and tens of millions across Latin America. The series,
which began broadcasting shortly after September 11, tells the
story of Jade, a young Brazilian Muslim who returns to her mother's
homeland of Morocco after her mother's death in Brazil. There
she falls in love and settles down with Lucas, a Christian Brazilian,
and adapts to life in an extended family setting in the old
city of Fez. Filmed in Rio de Janeiro and Fez, the telenovela
offers a profusion of Orientalist imagery -- from veiled belly
dancers swaying seductively behind ornate latticework to dazzling
shots of Marrakesh and Fez spliced with footage of scantily
clad women on Rio's beaches -- and of course, incessant supplications
of "Ay, por favor, Allah!" from Jade's neighbors
in the medina.The Moroccan ambassador to Brazil, in a letter
to a Sao Paolo newspaper, criticized the series for its egregious
"cultural errors," "gross falsification"
and "mediocre images" promoting stereotypes of Muslim
women as submissive and men as polygamists leading lives of
"luxury and indolence."
Despite
the kitsch, El Clon has triggered what Latin Trade
called "Mideast fever" across Latin America. Belly
dancing and "Middle Eastern-style jewelry" became
"the rage in Rio and Sao Paolo," Brazilians began
throwing "A Thousand and One Nights" parties, "Talk
to a Sheikh" chat rooms cropped up online and two new agencies
opened up to offer package tours to North Africa.(In his letter,
the Moroccan ambassador acknowledged that Brazilian tourism
to Morocco had increased by 300 percent thanks to El Clon.)
A journalist visiting Quito, Ecuador, found viewers of the series
"wide-eyed and drop-jawed for all things Arab."
[16] Even in the US, where El Clon's broadcast was
almost blocked due to alleged potential controversy, it has
exerted cultural influence upon the Latino community and others.
In New York, observers note the El
Clon-triggered fashion for Arab jewelry and hip scarves,
the overflowing belly dancing classes and a recently opened
beauty parlor called El Clon in Queens.
[17]
Through
the Latino back channel, the impact of Shakira in bringing Arab
culture to the MTV audience has also been considerable. The
Lebanese-Colombian singer was bombarded with questions by the
media about her views "as an Arab" on the September
11 attacks, and advised to drop the belly dancing and the Arabic
riffs from her music because it could hurt her album sales,
but she refused. "I would have to rip out my heart or my
insides in order to be able to please them," said the songstress,
and expressed horror at hate crimes against "everything
that's Arab, or seems Arab."
[18] During the run-up to the Iraq war, Shakira's performances
took on an explicitly political tone, with her dancers wearing
masks of Tony Blair, George W. Bush and Fidel Castro. Backdrop
screens flashed images of Bush and Saddam Hussein as two puppets
playing a sinister game of chess, with the Grim Reaper as the
puppeteer. She also undertook a highly publicized tour of the
Middle East (though her concerts in Casablanca, Tunis and Beirut
were postponed), during which she visited her father's ancestral
village in the Bekaa Valley. Viewers across the region were
delighted when Shakira appeared on Egyptian television singing
the tunes of Fairuz. In Europe, the US, South America and even
the Middle East, the belly-dancing star has fostered a reported
mania for hip scarves with coins and tassels. In a random check
of Cairo nightclubs, Egyptian government officials confiscated
26 Shakira outfits, "weighing no more than 150 grams [5
ounces]," and deemed "scandalous," [19] but local filmmakers are currently
negotiating with government officials over rights to a film
project called Shakira fi al-Munira, about a young Egyptian
girl infatuated with the Colombian chanteuse.
While the
craze for Arab culture has occurred in the wake of September
11 and the ensuing war on terrorism, it is not necessarily political.
Commenting on the popularity of shawarma and hookahs
in Quito, one journalist observes that "the new fascination
with Arabia comes at a time when there are new reasons for anti-American
sentiment" -- the recent policy of currency dollarization
-- but adds reassuringly that, "El Clon's following
surely won't produce a new sect of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists
in Latin America." [20] It is also not clear that conversion to Islam
necessarily constitutes political or cultural resistance. Referring
to the vogue for Islam and Arabic among Spanish youth, one Catalan
journalist wryly observes: "It will take more than teenagers
converting to an Islam lite to stop [Spanish Prime Minister
José Maria] Aznar's Christian
nationalism and Castilian imperialism. We need a civil dialogue
about our relations with the Orient." [21] Belly dancing and learning
elementary Arabic may not be acts of resistance, but such activities
create important, albeit imaginary cultural linkages which can
be activated for political purposes. As Miles Copeland, head
of the Mondo Melodia label, who will release a film on the American
belly dancing craze in January 2004, told PR Newswire:
"Belly dancing is about art, not politics -- but in experiencing
the art, you also experience the culture, and that becomes political
in and of itself." Interest in Arab culture and conversions
are bringing Islam into the imagination of Western youth, feeding
powerful movements and cultures of protest.
From
Harlem to the Casbah
In No
Name in the Street, James Baldwin reflects on the "uneasy"
reaction he would get when, while in France in 1948, he would
"claim kinship" with the Algerians living there. "The
fact that I had never seen the Algerian casbah was of no more
relevance...than the fact that the Algerians had never seen
Harlem. The Algerian and I were both, alike, victims of this
history [of Europe in Africa], and I was still a part of Africa,
even though I had been carried out of it nearly 400 years before." [22] Most French-born Arabs have never been to Harlem but "claim
kinship" with African-Americans as they draw inspiration
from the black freedom struggle. Numerous French-Arab (Beur)
intellectuals and activists have noted their indebtedness to
African-American liberation thought,
[23] and the secular pro-integration Beur movement of the
early 1980s organized campaigns and marches modeled on the US
civil rights struggle. But in the early 1990s, as the impoverished,
ethnically segregated banlieues mushroomed around French
cities, the discourse of intégration began to
give way to talk of self-imposed exclusion and warnings that
the children of immigrants "had gone in a separate direction."
The region of Lyons, where 100,000 gathered for the famous march
for intégration in 1983, is today cited by commentators
as evidence of the failure of assimilation. Lyons, by one account,
has become a "ghetto of Arabs," and fallen to Islamist
influence, boasting six neighborhood boys in the US military
detention center at Guantanamo Bay. [24]
The generation
of black and Arab Muslim youth that came of age in crime-ridden
banlieues that periodically explode into car-burning
riots, and are monitored by a heavy-handed police force, is
in no mood for integration. By some estimates, 50 to 60 percent
of the French prison population is Muslim. [25] French commentators are increasingly wondering
if they have developed a "race problem" like that
of the US, with the attendant pathologies of ethnic ghettoes,
family breakdown, drugs, violence and, of particular concern
these days, Islamism. As in the American ghetto, disintegrating
family units have been replaced by new organizations -- gangs,
posses and religious associations, particularly Islamic groups,
[26] which provide services and patrol the cités,
the housing projects where most immigrants live.
The confluence
of Islam and urban marginality in France was displayed in a
consummately post-colonial moment on October 6, 2001, when France
and Algeria met in their first soccer match since the Algerian
war of independence. The match was stopped prematurely when
thousands of French-born Arab youth, seeing Algeria losing,
raided the field chanting "Bin Laden! Bin Laden!"
and hurled bottles at two female French ministers. [27] The ill-fated match, coming on the heels of September 11,
led to hysterical warnings of an intifada simmering in
the heart of France, an Islamic fifth column, the "unassimilability"
of certain immigrants and, again, an American-style "race
problem." Like American pundits, the French are concerned
about whether Islamic and Muslim organizations which have emerged
in the banlieues will keep youths out of trouble or radicalize
them.An American writing for the Weekly Standard notes,
"It's the Farrakhan problem. Mosques do rescue youths from
delinquency, idleness and all sorts of other ills. But in so
doing, they become power brokers in areas where almost all disputes
are resolved by violence and the most tribal kind of woospeh
[respect, in a French accent, supposedly]. And it is that mastery
of a violent environment -- not the social service record --
that these groups call on when they make demands on the larger
society." [28]
The French
media has shown a keen interest in the rising conversion to
Islam in the US and Europe -- and particularly in the overlap
of Islam and race, or more specifically, ethnic awareness, mobilization
and self-segregation. An exposé in an April 2003 edition
of the magazine L'Express opened with the following statement:
"Blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians...every year, 50,000 to
80,000 [Americans] convert to Islam. Internal enemies, members
of the 'axis of evil'?" The French government's attempts
to control Islamic mobilization in the banlieues through
elections for a national Islamic council (aimed, in the words
of the interior minister, at taking Islam out of "cellars
and garages") backfired when the conservative Union of
Islamic Organizations, inspired by Egypt's banned Muslim Brotherhood,
won 14 out of 41 seats.
Zacarias
Moussaoui, the "twentieth hijacker" awaiting trial
in the US, in many ways embodies the story of Islam and racial
exclusion in France. Although he did not grow up impoverished
in the cités, by all accounts, the French-Moroccan
harbored a deep racial rage. In his youth, Moussaoui was often
ridiculed because of his dark skin and frizzy hair, and repeatedly
called négre (nigger), but it was after the 1991
Gulf war that he became politicized. He began to consider himself
"black," joining the "Kid Brothers" -- a
university group modeled after the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
-- and came back from a stint in London deeply hostile toward
whites. "He became a racist, a black racist, and he would
use the pejorative African word toubab to describe white
people," said his brother.
[29] Moussaoui raged against Western permissiveness and
imperialism in Algeria, Palestine and Chechnya. [30]
Richard
Reid, the "shoe bomber," who became radicalized in
the same Brixton mosque as Moussaoui, embodies the similarly
distressing urban and racial situation in Britain. West Indian
and South Asian youth live in benighted "mill and mosque"
towns, devastated by capital flight in the late 1980s and 1990s,
where the anti-immigrant British National Party is making inroads
and race riots erupt frequently. Many of these youth have drifted
towards radical Islamist groups. By all accounts, the petty
thief and graffiti artist known as ENROL embraced Islam while
in Feltham young offenders' institution, to seek solace from
racism. His father Robin tried to explain Reid's odyssey to
Islam as a result of the difficulty of being of mixed race.
"Islam accepts you for who you are," the father told
CNN talk show host Larry King. "Even I was a Muslim for
a little bit ...because I was fed up with racial discrimination."
In an interview with the Guardian, Robin continued: "About
ten years ago, I met up with Richard after not seeing him for
a few years. He was a little bit downhearted. I suggested to
him, 'Why don't you become a Muslim? They treated me all right.'"
The mixing
of Islam and racial awareness in Europe is also leading to political
mobilization. The Arab European League (AEL), headed by the
fiery Lebanese-born Dyab Abou Jahjah, is explicitly modeled
on the American civil rights movement, borrowing slogans ("By
Any Means Necessary!") and protest techniques from the
Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam, and aiming to mobilize
Arab and Muslim youth across Europe to lobby European governments
to make Arabic one of the official languages of the European
Union and to gain state funding for Islamic schools. Based in
Brussels, but with chapters opening in France and Holland, the
AEL has launched a cross-border Arab pride movement, and organized
marches against the US war in Iraq and in solidarity with the
Palestinian intifada. Known as the "Arab Malcolm
X," Abou Jahjah, who says he finds the ideas of integration
"degrading," admits being inspired by the slain African-American
civil rights leader, who "was also against assimilation...fought
for civil rights and was also inspired by Islam."
[31] "We're a civil rights movement, not a club of
fundamentalist fanatics who want to blow things up," he
told the New York Times on March 1, 2003. "In Europe,
the immigrant organizations are Uncle Toms. We want to polarize
people, to sharpen the discussion, to unmask the myth that the
system is democratic for us." The AEL has also organized
Black Panther-style "Arab patrols" to "police
the police." Groups of unarmed Arab youths dressed in black
follow the police around, carrying video cameras and flyers
which read, "Bad cops: the AEL is watching you." Fusing
African-American, Islamic and Arab elements in its style and
rhetoric, the AEL has become a political force to be reckoned
with, even prompting the Belgian government to attempting to
ban its patrols on the basis of a 1930s law that proscribes
private militias.
"Le
Respect" and "Les Pitbulls"
Seul
le beat aujourd-hui nous lie et nous unit.
(Today
only the beat links and unites us.)
-- Saliha, "Danse le Beat"
Hip-hop
has emerged as the idiom for the urban activism of minority
youth in Europe. For Muslim youth experiencing the crackdown
on immigrants, as well as state withdrawal and welfare cuts,
hip-hop offers a chance to express critiques, vent rage, declare
solidarity with other marginalized youth (particularly African-Americans)
and display cultural pride -- to show, as New York rapper DMX
says, "who we be."
[32]
If American
rap has been criticized for its materialism, nihilism and political
nonchalance, French hip-hop offers trenchant critiques of racism,
globalization and imperialism. Numerous groups such as Yazid
and La Fonky Family deal explicitly with the challenges of being
Arab and Muslim in the West, and relations between Islam and
the West. In their hit single, "Je Suis Si Triste"
("I'm So Sad"), the Marseilles-based rap crew 3eme
Oeil (Third Eye), made up of the Comorian-born Boss One (Mohammed),
Jo Popo (Mohammed) and Saïd, offer biting social commentary
over an infectious, looping bass line. Decrying hate crimes
against veiled Muslim women in France, condemning police brutality
and mass incarceration (with a special shout out to Mumia Abu
Jamal), the rappers focus their lyrical fire on the West's "stranglehold"
(la main-mise) on the East.
In addition
to verbal release, hip-hop is also used to combat racism and
to promote black-white-Arab relations, as in the Urban Peace
Festivals and spoken-word poetry events (les slameurs)
organized by SOS Racisme. Hip-hop, interestingly, is also being
used to counter Islamist influence in the banlieues.
The Beurette leader Fadela Amara, who organized the march "Ni
putes ni soumises" ("Neither whores nor submissive")
-- a march that has now developed into a women's rights organization
affiliated with SOS Racisme -- often invites Muslim female rappers
to spread a feminist message. "Ni putes, ni soumises"
aims to mobilize youth against ghettoes and for equality, but
also to counter the Islamist organizations such as the powerful
Union of Islamic Organizations, which delivers services in the
cités in exchange for veiling. Amara says discrimination
and unemployment make many young men feel "excluded from
the French project." These youths, she says, often return
to Islamic traditions, opposing gender mixing and women's education,
and sometimes assaulting women who do not dress according to
their idea of modesty.
[33] French Muslim rappers and R&B singers publicly
and collectively condemned the September 11 attacks, saying
the terrorists were, in the words of Ideal J, a Franco-Haitian
convert to Islam, "dishonoring the faith." Al Malik
of the New African Poets, a Congolose convert to Islam, noted
the importance of rap and Islam to young ghetto dwellers: "Rap
has opened a world to us, empowering us young men, and Islam
has allowed us to flourish by teaching us respect for 'the other.'
[But] the Taliban are instrumentalizing the religion."
[34]
Attempts
by some French Islamists to boycott American products -- and
market products like Mecca Cola -- are failing since banlieusards
remain loyal to American streetwear labels like Fubu and Phat
Farm, often claiming that such clothing is an anti-American,
but pro-black statement. More recently, local banlieue
streetwear clothing lines have appeared with names like Bullrot
(a combination of pitbull and rottweiler) and Adedi (an acronym
for Association de differences), the latter founded by a Moroccan,
a Gabonese and a Senegalese to combat racism, extremism and
to celebrate difference.
[35]
8/19/03
French commentators associate hip-hop with Islam, claiming that
rap, like Islam, often brings rage, pathology and dysfunction.
The anti-immigrant National Front of Jean Le Pen and its splinter,
the National Republican Movement, have historically denounced
hip-hop. In March 2001, both far-right parties opposed the use
of public funds to finance the first Hip-Hop Dance World Cup
in Villepinte stating that "hip-hop is a movement belonging
to immigrants of African origin installed in France and which
constitutes a call to sedition against our institutions."
[36] More recently, however, the National Front has begun
to use hip-hop as a way to spread its political message, "win
back" French youth and counter Arab and American influence
in French culture. The white supremacist rap crew Basic Celto,
affiliated with the National Republican Movement, has as its
objective to break "immigrants' monopoly" over hip-hop
"which diffuses the immigrants' complaints." Basic
Celto aims to promote a "national revolutionary" rap
with a "Christian identity," and to draw "français
d'origine" away from immigrant influence.
[37]
But the
allure of Islam, and Islam-inflected cultures like hip-hop and
rai, to French youth continues to grow, prompting much editorial
pondering. Le Monde ran a story on how Ramadan is increasingly
observed in French schools, even by non-Muslims, and there have
also been accounts of many non-Muslim girls wearing headscarves
in solidarity with Muslim schoolgirls sent home for wearing
le foulard.Commenting on Le Pen's remark that hip-hop
is a dangerous musical genre which originated in the casbahs
of Algeria, rapper Boss One (Mohammed) of 3eme Oeil, said: "For
Le Pen, everything bad -- rap, crime, AIDS -- comes from Algeria
or Islam.... The more Bush and Chirac attack Islam and say it's
bad, the more young people will think it's good, and the more
the oppressed will go to Islam and radical preachers. Especially
here in America. Because life is hard in France, but we have
a social safety net."
[38]
Commentators
have also blamed hip-hop for bringing social ills associated
with the American ghetto to France. "[French-Arab youth]
intentionally imitate belligerent Afro-American lifestyles,
down to 'in-your-face' lyrics for booming rap music," moaned
one observer. [39] Some have pointed to the "African-Americanization"
of the speech patterns of French youth, noting that their verbal
jousting is similar to that of "American rappers from black
ghettoes." [40] Indeed, the culture of France's suburban
ghettoes is heavily influenced by the trends of the American
inner city -- the urban argot, street codes of conduct and "honor
system" are strikingly similar. [41] In January 2000, a law was
passed creating a police unit to monitor the behavior of pitbulls
and rottweilers in housing projects where, as in the US, such
dogs had become very popular during the 1990s among urban youth.
[42] The slurs used against blacks (négres)
and Arabs (in France, bougnoles, in Spain, Moros
[43] and in Belgium, makukas, which means white
ape) have become commonly used terms of endearment among Muslim
youth, as with the term nigger in the US. But clearly, Muslim
European youth have not learned misogyny and rage from hip-hop
or from African-Americans. The fact that hip-hop is being used
by secular urban movements to counter Islamism and racism is
an illustration of the growing racial consciousness of Muslim
youth in Europe, the deep resonance of the African-American
experience and how imagination can help construct a cultural
world to resist state oppression and religious fanaticism.
Keepin'
It Halal
Hip-hop's
changed, ain't a black thing anymore G
Young
kids in Baghdad showing 2 on 3
HollaWest
Coast? Nah, West Bank for life
Upside
down, holla for my Moros alright
Spit
rhymes in Arabic on the same level like Jada
You
wouldn't know if you should head bang or belly dance playa
I'm
that type of sand nigga type of Johnny Cochran yaw dig
Ya stereotype
me, I knock you out like Prince Naseem.
-- 8/19/03
Outlandish, "El Moro"
The hip-hop
movement has a powerful oppositional streak that makes it both
attractive and troubling to political actors. Hip-hop's ability
to jangle the hegemonic discourse was recently seen with Jay-Z's
"Leave Iraq Alone" verse and Outkast's anti-war hit
"Bombs Over Baghdad," denouncing the first Gulf War,
which was yanked off the air by MTV and Clear Channel when bombs
began raining on Baghdad in March 2003. [44] Hip-hop artists have strongly
opposed the war, without fear of the social opprobrium visited
upon the Dixie Chicks and other white pop stars. As hip-hop
mogul Russell Simmons put it, "Rappers don't have to worry
about anything. No one likes what they have to say anyway, so
they're not afraid to speak up." But when hip-hop is infused
with Islamic themes and political allusions, the Establishment
press has found it particularly unsettling. Hence the outrage
over rapper Paris' recently released -- and rapidly selling
-- Sonic Jihad, the cover of which features an airplane
flying toward the White House, and the alleged purging of Arabic
terms and references to Hussein from Tupac Shakur's recently
released Better Dayz (though the slain rapper was referring
not to the missing Iraqi dictator, but to Hussein Fatal, a member
of his Outlawz posse, which also includes Khadafi, Kastro and
Komani). [45]
In the
fall of 2002, accused sniper John Muhammad, formerly of the
Nation of Islam, sent notes to the police that referenced lyrics
from rappers who are Five Percenters -- a heterodox black Muslim
sect. The subsequent media frenzy triggered a soul-searching
conversation within the Islamic hip-hop community that was rendered
particularly urgent when Muslim hip-hoppers found themselves
linked to the war on terror by Niger Innis, chairman of the
conservative Congress of Racial Equality. Shortly after the
arrest of John Muhammad, Innis met with Department of Justice
officials to express concern over "domestic black Muslims
as a national security issue" and launched a campaign to
counter Islamic recruitment efforts in the nation's prisons
and colleges. [46] Muslim rappers asked themselves:should we
be expected to "represent" Islam positively, and avoid
the misogynist and materialistic excesses of mainstream hip-hop
artists? Or should the aim be to "get paid" and gain
wide success even if it means "playing with the haram
(illicit)"? Of the US-based Muslim hip-hop crews, Native
Deen and Sons of Hagar have been praised for their positive
political and religious messages. Native Deen, made up of three
African-American rappers who won't perform in venues that allow
mixed dancing or serve alcohol, have been profiled in The
New Yorker and even received praise from the State Department,
but have yet to garner airtime on mainstream radio stations.
The Des Moines-based Sons of Hagar, made up of Allahz Sword
(Ahmad) and Ramadan Conchus (Abdul), both Arab-Americans, and
Keen Intellect (Kareem) and Musa, Irish-American and Korean-American
converts to Islam, respectively, have also been praised for
socially conscious lyrics. Their poignant single "Insurrection"
("It's the Arab hunting season, and I ain't leavin'/I'm
pushin' the conscience button on you people/Where is the reason?"),
and their track "Sisterssss" in support of polygamy, [47] are popular in the underground
Muslim-Arab hip-hop scene. But Sons of Hagar have also not achieved
mainstream exposure.
The Muslim
rap crew that is gaining worldwide notoriety for its lyrical
dexterity, stylistic appeal and explicitly positive portrayal
of Islam is the Denmark-based trio Outlandish. Made up of a
Moroccan, a Pakistani and a Honduran, Outlandish has topped
the charts with hits including "Guantanamo" (the chorus:
"And I got all my Moros here, Guantanamo") and "Aicha,"
a remake of Cheb Khaled's 1995 hit. The latter track, which
saw heavy rotation on MTV Europe and climbed to fourth on the
charts in Germany, has been hailed as the most positive depiction
of Muslim women in a music video, with shots of pre-prayer ablution
and veiled and unveiled Arab, South Asian and African women.
Rather than playing with the haram, Outlandish is about
"keepin' it halal (licit)."
American
hip-hop commentators note that political, cerebral rap may be
popular in Europe, but if it cannot be "bling-blinged,"
or sexed up, it will not sell in the US. A recent dispute between
Simmons and a segment of the African-American Sunni community
is illustrative. Though not a Muslim, Simmons has frequently
declared his respect for Islam, and the Nation of Islam (NOI)
in particular. "I grew up on Farrakhan," he said in
one interview. "Where I grew up, there were dope fiends
and black Muslims. If Muslims came by, you stood up straight."
[48] He also tried to broker talks between the NOI and
American Jewish organizations, denounced the invasion of Iraq,
helped organize Musicians United to Win Without War and is currently
planning a Middle East youth peace summit. But when a recent
issue of his OneWorld magazine ran a cover with female
rapper Li'l Kim wearing a "burka-like garment over her
face" and "lingerie from the neck down" -- and
in the same issue saying, "Fuck Afghanistan" -- Najee
Ali, director of the civil rights group Project Islamic Hope,
demanded an apology to America's Muslims.As someone active in
brokering truces in the hip-hop world, Ali cited his Islamic
duty "to the people of hip-hop and humanity," and
called on Simmons to apologize for the magazine cover and for
the "pornographic female rapper" Foxy Brown, who in
her song "Hot Spot," produced by the Simmons-founded
Def Jam, says "MCs wanna eat me but it's Ramadan."
The Li'l
Kim incident instigated a discussion over other not-so-halal
trends in Islamic hip-hop. The cover of XXL magazine
showing rapper Nas holding a glass of cognac and wearing prayer
beads around his neck outraged many Muslims. "Why he imitatin'
the kufar (unbelievers, in Arabic) with the Hail Mary
beads?!" fumed one blogger. Many Sunni Muslims have also
criticized the style of some female Muslim hip-hoppers of wearing
a headscarf (hijab), and then a midriff top and the low-riding
jeans popularized by Jennifer Lopez. These sartorially adventurous
young Muslim women, known variously as "noochies"
(Nubian hoochies), "halal honies" and "bodacious
bints"(girls, in Arabic) -- have provoked heated
cyber-debates about freedom of expression, female modesty and
the future of Islam in America. "Our deen (religion,
in Arabic) is not meant to be rocked!" says hip-hop journalist
Adisa Banjoko, author of the forthcoming The Light From the
East on Islamic influence in hip-hop. "I see these
so-called Muslim sistas wearing a hijab and then a bustier,
or a hijab with their belly button sticking out. You
don't put on a hijab and try to rock it! Or these brothers
wearing Allah tattoos, or big medallions with Allah's name --
Allah is not to be bling-blinged!" [49]
Just as
controversial are the Arabic calligraphy tattoos that women,
even outside the hip-hop community, have taken to wearing. The
words halal, haram and sharmuta (whore
in Arabic, but a term of endearment in certain circles these
days) are tattooed on shoulders, thighs or lower backs, and
worn with bathing suit tops or hip-hugging jeans. Some of these
haram trends in Islamic hip-hop are deliberate responses
to orthodox or fundamentalist Islamic dress, like the "high-water
pants" or "total hijabs" seen in some
inner city areas.Among young Muslim males, equally provocative
are black T-shirts worn by some Shiite youth, which read in
crimson, "Every Day Is Ashura, Every Day Is Karbala"
-- references to Shiite rituals commemorating the death of Imam
Hussein in the seventh century and the Iraqi plain where he
died in battle. Also troubling to some is the growing popularity
of martial arts among urban Muslim youth, who say self-defense
skills are necessary against gangsters and violent police. If
many black Muslims in the 1960s were practicing syncretic forms
of martial arts like "Kushite boxing," many of today's
young male hip-hoppers are learning "Islamic wrestling."
"The Prophet was a grappler," one enthusiast told
Middle East Report. "The hadith (saying of
the Prophet) teaches us to never hit the face of our opponent
and that [Islamic] grappling allows you to win over an opponent
without punching them and risking brain damage."
Russell
Simmons has said that "the coolest stuff about American
culture, be it language, dress or attitude, comes from the underclass
-- always has and always will." [50] If so, then as Islam seeps
into the American underclass and as Muslims populate the underclass
in Europe, Islamic cultural elements will percolate upward into
mainstream culture and society. For many American youth, Islamic
hip-hop is their first encounter with Islam, and often leads
them to struggle with issues of race, identity and Western imperialism.
In Europe, many North African youth are rediscovering Islam
and becoming race-conscious through Five Percenter and NOI rap
lyrics. For many white hip-hoppers in the
US, the sought-after "ghetto pass" -- acceptance in
the hip-hop community -- comes only with conversion to Islam,
which is seen as a rejection of being white. The white rapper
Everlast, formerly Eric Schrody of House of Pain, claims that
conversion to Islam and mosque attendance allow him to visit
ghetto neighborhoods he could never enter as a non-Muslim white. [51] Curiously, Everlast's espousal of Islam
caused static with the white rapper Eminem who accused him of
becoming Muslim to deny that he is a "homosexual white
rappin' Irish." One young white Latino youth explained
the link between Islam and his street credibility as follows:
"In the Bronx, looking like me, you don't get much respect.
When I took the shihada (professed Islam), the brothers
gave me respect, the white folk got nervous, even the police
paid attention." [52]
Efforts
are being made to direct the energy of Islamic hip-hop. In late
July 2003, the First Annual Islamic Family Reunion and Muslims
in Hip-Hop Conference and Concert was held in Orlando, Florida,
with prominent imams from across the country leading three days
of workshops on Muslim youth and stressing the importance of
deen, family, schooling and organizing. Activities included
Islamic spelling bees, Islamic knowledge competitions and performances
by "positive lyricists" like Native Deen. The conference
also established Hallal Entertainment, Inc. and helped launch
the Islamic Crisis Emergency Response System, a Philadelphia-based
organization which provides services to needy Muslim and non-Muslim
families. [53] Fusing Islamic themes with
the preeminent global youth culture, Islamic hip-hop has emerged
as a powerful internationalist subculture for disaffected youth
around the world.
"Roaring
from the East"
"The
specter of a storm is haunting the Western world," wrote
the black power poet Askia Muhammad Touré in 1965. "The
Great Storm, the coming Black Revolution, is rolling like a
tornado; roaring from the East; shaking the moorings of the
earth as it passes through countries ruled by oppressive regimes....
Yes, all over this sullen planet, the multi-colored 'hordes'
of undernourished millions are on the move like never before
in human history." [54] Touréé was pondering the appeal of "the
East" to African-American youth in the aftermath of the
1955 Bandung conference. There President Sukarno of Indonesia
had told the representatives of 29 African and Asian nations
that they were united "by a common detestation of colonialism
in whatever form it appears. We are united by a common detestation
of racialism."Those were the days when Malcolm X met with
Fidel Castro at the famed Teresa Hotel in Harlem, and when Malcolm,
from his perspective of "Islamic internationalism,"
came to understand the civil rights movement as an instance
of the struggle against imperialism, seeing the Vietnam war
and the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya as uprisings of the "darker
races" and, like the African-American struggle, part of
the "tidal wave" against Western imperialism.
Some commentators,
pointing to the current anti-war and anti-globalization movement,
have suggested that a new era of Afro-Asian-Latin solidarity
may be in the offing. In the US, the past two years has seen
a political ferment and coalition-building between progressive
groups -- in particular between Arab and Muslim American groups
and African-American groups -- not seen since the 1960s when
the Black Panthers and the Student Non-violent Coordinating
Committee declared solidarity with the PLO, which in turn declared
solidarity with Native Americans. September 11 and the subsequent
backlash has led many African-American leaders to stand with
Muslim and Arab-Americans, not least because African-American
Muslims are also targeted in the post-September 11 profiling
and detention campaigns. Activists like Al Sharpton are mobilizing
against the USA PATRIOT Act "because it is used to profile
people of color" and "impacting Muslims everywhere,
including Brooklyn and Harlem." [55]
Given the
centrality of Islam and the Arab world to the war on terror,
and the presence of kaffiyyas and (regrettably) Bin Laden
T-shirts at protests from Porto Alegre to Barcelona, it appears
that the new Bandung may have a distinct Arab or Islamic cast.
In the past two years, a number of Latin American leaders have
called for "concrete action" to establish a Palestinian
state. Castro has signed agreements of bilateral cooperation
with Algeria and the United Arab Emirates, and continues to
rail against "global apartheid" in general and "Israeli
apartheid" in particular. Castro has also been accused
of building ties with Iran and selling biotechnology in exchange
for cheap oil. When he visited Iran in 2001, Castro spoke
of his rapport with President Mohammad Khatami and reported
that he "had the longest sleep of his life in Tehran."
Most recently, he has been accused by the US of jamming the
satellite broadcasts of US-based Iranian opposition groups.
[56] Recent articles in right-leaningAmerican
newsmagazines claim to have discovered evidence that Venezuela
is providing identity papers to suspicious numbers of people
from Arab and South Asian "countries of interest"
(as well as Colombians and Cubans). One article also features
the claim of the former Venezuelan ambassador to Libya, Julio
Cesar Pineda, to possess correspondence from Hugo Chavez stating
his desire to "solidify" ties between Latin America
and the Middle East -- including use of the oil weapon. [57]
Chavez challenged the reporters in question to produce "one
single shred of evidence" for their claims. [58]
These stories
of Cuban and Venezuelan ties to Middle Eastern radicals may
be little more than partisan puffery, and Chavez's repeated
calls for solidarity with the Arab world may be nothing more
than petroleum diplomacy or an embattled leader's desperate
plea for allies. Yet the Venezuelan leader's appeal to "Arab
roots" is indicative of a trend in the West. Among Western
subordinate groups and opposition movements that feel victimized
or neglected by globalization, the Arabs are seen as bearing
the brunt of the worldwide imperial assault in the era of the
war on terror. As Western nationalists portray Islam as a threat
to freedom and security, and launch wars to bring democracy
to the Muslim world, "the multi-colored hordes" of
the West are reaching for teachings and precedents (like Moorish
Spain) in Islam that they hope will make the West more compassionate
and free.
Islam is
leaking into the West through conversion, migration and media-driven
cultural flows, and to many, the Islamic world is presenting
a repertoire of alternative identities. As marginalized Westerners
are finding inspiration in Islam, Muslims in the diaspora are
inspired by the African-American experience. The cross-fertilization
taking place between Islamic, black and Latin cultures is creating
fascinating trends and art forms. Many would argue that the
fashion for Arabic tattoos, Allah chains, Orientalist soap operas,
belly dancing and hip scarves is just that -- fashion. But as
the Arab pride movement in Europe and Islamic hip-hop demonstrate,
the vibrant cultural intermingling can have significant political
implications. Cultural flows can spark forceful challenges to
state policies, state-imposed identities and the claims of Western
nationalism.
For many
of the minority convert communities and the diaspora Muslim
communities, Islamic Spain has emerged as an anchor for their
identity. Moorish Spain was a place where Islam was in and of
the West, and inhabited a Golden Age before the rise of the
genocidal, imperial West, a historical moment that disenchanted
Westerners can share with Muslims. Neither Muslim nostalgia
for nor Western Orientalist romanticism about Andalusia is new,
but it is new for different subordinate groups in the West to
be yearning for "return" to Moorish Spain's multiracialism.
In this worldview, the year 1492 is a historical turning point.
On Columbus Day in October, Chavez urged Latin Americans to
boycott celebrations of the "discovery," saying that
Columbus was "worse than Hitler." That the longing
for pre-1492 history is shared by many minorities throughout
the West is an indication of their lasting exclusion, and how
the stridency of Western nationalism since September 11 has
revived memories of centuries-old trauma. As one African-American
activist put it recently, "The profiling and brutalizing
of African-Americans didn't begin after September 11. It began
in 1492." [59] In a similar spirit,
after Moussaoui was arrested in the US and granted the right
to represent himself in court, one of his first demands was
"the return of Spain to the Moors."
With African-American
and Latino converts speaking of the tragedy of 1492, and with
Muslim minorities in the West becoming increasingly race-conscious
and inspired by black America, the world is witnessing a new
fusion between Islam and pan-Africanism. Today, however, this
racialized Islamic internationalism contains elements of other
cultures and diasporas as well. Islam is at the heart of an
emerging global anti-hegemonic culture, which post-colonial
critic Robert Young would say incarnates a "tricontinental
counter-modernity" that combines diasporic and local cultural
elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors
to generate "a revolutionary black, Asian and Hispanic
globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity...constructed
in order to fight global imperialism." [60]
