Article Two:
Islam in America and the Historian:
How to write our history in America
Dr. Sulaiman Nyang
and
Muhammad Abdullah al-Ahari El [1]
The Muslim community of North America contains a mosaic of individuals which are but a reflection of the variety of peoples, cultures and classes found in the larger society. Muslims living in America must realize that blame for their being ignorant of Islam and their history can be placed in nobody�s lap but their own. This country has libraries that have public access, interlibrary loans, and Internet on computers. There is no reason for ignorance except one wanting to remain that way.
If you are a Muslim in America and you are serious about Islam and want to know about Islam, you can learn a lot about Islam. There are people who can verify the data and clarify your doubts. If you say, "this person is saying this or that person is saying that," you can check with the persons who are knowledgeable to its veracity. They will tell you if it is true or not true.
At the Graduate Students Panel of the 1992 Muslim Social Scientists Conference Muhammad al-Ahari stated that a Muslim, "need not write in Pakistani English or Arabian English." That is true, there are plenty of individuals who can correct the grammar and word usage for you. Why not write your own thoughts and then give them to an editor to correct. The audience who reads it will not question whether it went to an editor, but some of us have big egos and feel the way we word things and put them together should not be changed.
Another problem that can occur is from the side of the editor. A good editor not only needs to correct grammar, but needs to verify spelling of names, places, and the accuracy of dates and quotes in articles, essays, or longer pieces they edit. This hastiness in editing actually deviates from our Islamic past. We have the case of Bukhari (the editor of the Hadith collection of the highest veracity) who went for years collecting Hadith and patiently analyzing, sorting, and accepting or rejecting them based on a strict scientific, linguistic method which sought to find the chain through which each Hadith passed and how strong each part of the chain was. This included not only looking at the language of the Hadith but also the memory, character, and possibility of the narrator even hearing the Hadith through a good chain. What we have now is the result of his work, where he separated the real from the false, the truthful from the invented made-up Hadiths.
Today we do not have the moral ethical standards of the past to judge scholars. So, how
do we judge them? Today so many Muslim scholars will take materials from other scholars
without attribution (plagiarism). This issue need not be an Islamic one because in the West they already have a paradigm against which to measure a scholarly piece and part of the accuracy is in quoting and listing source materials. People have lost their jobs over such things. [2]
We have strayed somewhat from our original topic -- Islam in America and American Islamic Nationalism and need to return to it. There are several things that need to be done and one of these is compiling a serious, scholarly bibliography on Noble Drew Ali which includes all available sources on him (including old newspaper articles). We know who the man was based on these sources, but they have to be looked at critically.
The sources can be divided into four basic categories: 1) material written by the founder or transcribed from his speeches and table talks, 2) material from his followers, 3) material the founder was influenced by, and 4) material written by outsiders.
First we must look at materials which originated from Noble Drew Ali hand. This is a tricky area because there are some letters attributed to Noble Drew Ali printed in the Defender and in Arna Bontemps They Seek a City (revised ed. Any Place but Here) [3] and we need to have the veracity of these checked against the originals of these letters and that requires some degree of openness on the part of Noble Drew Ali's followers. One could write an article comparing the various renditions of his letters or one about the sources of his Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple.
The second source to look at is internal histories of the various movements. Scholars need to look at these sources more closely since they are primary source material from people closest to Noble Drew Ali. One such source is Timothy Dingle El's The Resurrection, the Moorish Science Temple. [4] Even though it is a hodge-podge of materials (letters, excerpts from Noble Drew Ali's works, President Lincoln's writings, etc.), it is the job of the scholar to sift through this maze of materials and analyze his treatment of Noble Drew Ali and his message.
You need to look at the coherence of the work from the view of the compiler first and your own second. Far too often the scholar places himself/herself far too removed from the people they are studying to be objective; however, the converse may be true also. The scholar needs familiarity with a topic, but an ability to view it from a distance at the same time. Each piece needs to be analyzed according to where he got the piece and how it fits into the general scheme of the work.
Next come sources of influence: where did they get their influence? This can also refer to the first idea (the works of Drew Ali) since his work derived from the Aquarian Gospels [5] and from a Rosicrucian work Unto Thee I Grant. [6] There are two versions of the Aquarian Gospels -- one with an introduction by Levi Dowling's wife Eva and another with an introduction by the former Wyoming Congressman Asa Coffeen. Unto Thee I Grant also exists in three versions: one by the Oriental Literature Syndicate, one by DeLawrence (Infinite Wisdom), and the latest version (after 1925) by the A.M.O.R.C. Rosicrucians. The scholar can compare these with Drew Ali's work to determine the most likely version to influence him.
When the scholar determines the sources of the work, many of the group's mythologies and those developed by later scholars will explode. One might call such a piece -- "Noble Drew Ali and His Movement: a critical bibliography." A person or a group may pirate a poem or a work of another author, but unless and until this becomes a pillar of belief it cannot be cited as an influence but only as a work used by the movement. This is a delicate point because Christians claim that Muslims plagiarized the Qur��n from the Bible and Christian and Jewish folklore. Muslims disagree with this and see the similarities being due to both being religions worshiping the same Creator, the same God. A scholar walks a tightrope when writing in this area because they have to prove their case to a point of irrefutability or they can be accused of an unscholarly bias against the movement.
How does outsiders writing on the movement influence the view insiders have of their group identity? C. Eric Lincoln [7] (for example) influenced the development of an "Orthodoxy" within the Nation of Islam. There is one dissertation on the education within the Nation that has been translated into Arabic, this work has influenced how people within the Nation have seen how the education process that was started by Elijah Muhammad worked.
In the case of the Garvey Movement they had two schools -- Liberty University and Booker T. Washington Institute. [8] They were used to educate the leaders who in turn proselytized the message of the movement to the masses. One of the problems of the Garvey Movement was a lack of an education system for the masses.
However, in the case of Elijah Muhammad (a man who was not well educated himself), he had a vision and he had charisma. This is where we go into nativism. Some scholars (properly or improperly) see the movement as a nativistic one. Why is that so? It is a cultural revitalization movement.
One point that is missed is that history does not repeat itself. But there are the rise and fail of great men, religions, and ideas. When you look at the Nation of Islam you see a movement which combined psychology and sociology to develop some teachings that allowed for a people to rise above their social condition and develop "a Black Muslim work ethic." Webber writes on the Protestant Work Ethic in much the same fashion. [9]
The Moorish Science Temple, Father Divine, and Daddy Grace also reshaped how these recent Urban immigrants saw themselves and related to the larger society. The only real difference in these leaders is that they had their own personalities and idiosyncrasies. All of these organizations were created by charismatic individuals who were very strong willed visionaries who recognized that their audiences were not likely to make it in society due to barriers against their entrance into the larger society. So, their solution was to create a greater a parallel universe for them. [10]
What makes them different from Millenarian movements is that those only gave placebos. The Nativistic movements gave a new reality. The Nation of Islam, Jehovah Witnesses, Seven Day Adventist are all Millenarian movements. In the case of the Nation of Islam they speak of the "Fall of America." How can you speak about the fall of a nation, a people, or the end of an era of time without being a millenarian movement? The constructs of an ideology determine how social scientists classify it. [11]
However, the Nation of Islam is not only Millenarian; it also has Adventist and Nativistic elements in its theology. There is an "End Time" in these theologies. The Nation of Islam has an eschatology which incorporates this. The eschatology is that there is a time limit for the one who oppresses. The Religious pluralism in Africa discusses these issues in an African context.
The ideology can be changed due to outside influences. In a large movement a hierarchy of leadership quickly determines the canonization of doctrine and dissenters are displaced. This is especially true after the death of the founder of a movement. That is the case of the Nation.
Malcolm X (later he was renamed al-Hajj Malik Shabazz) was creating a split vision in the Nation and the leadership wanted only the vision of the Messenger to be presented. Elijah Muhammad position about the death of Kennedy and Malcolm's inability to keep silent eventually drove the leadership to remove Malcolm's name from Nation of Islam membership.
The Nativistic movements try to reconstruct the past in light of their doctrine. They are inventing a past not based on historical fact. For example, the modern Greeks are Albanians but claim to be the original Greeks. Their languages and cultures were totally different. However, after a time the mythology became the accepted history. New identities are constantly being invented. History is like an ocean, the rivers of mythology are constantly emptying into it but they only change it at the edges not at its depth. This is more evident in the case of studying religious groups.
In the Nation of Islam, each group is trying to redefine themselves and their role to make themselves "the Orthodox." In Christianity Constantine did much the same thing. Warith Deen Muhammad's teachings (if they become the Orthodoxy) will eventually displace the role of Farrakhan and Silas in the minds of historians on the Nation much like Muhammad Abdullah was displaced by Elijah Muhammad in carrying forth the teachings of Master Farrad Muhammad. People don't really know about Silas or Calistran and only know about the Five Percenters due to their music. You had small groups like these in Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, in all world religions. [12]
Even in Mormonism, the same process of the making of the Orthodoxy occurred. The main group is in Salt Lake City. Much smaller groups like the Reorganized Church and the Strangites still exist. [13] However, most people only see Salt Lake City Mormons in their minds when they speak about Mormonism. That group, of course, ameliorated their teachings to reject blood atonement, anti-black doctrine, and polygamy for acceptance by the wider society.
This is always the case with all religious movements. The most successful change their teachings and modes of operation with the circumstances. They are influenced by their mythologies but they also change with time.
In Islam, you have the same process. Sunnis and Shia agree on the sources but fight over their applications. Their Hadith collections have much the same material, but due to political differences lead to Shia accepting Hadith through only certain individuals. Even here, those who changed with time survived. The Twelves and the four Sunni schools control more than 99% of believers. The Khwarij, Ismaeli, Zaidi, and others are slowly coming to either the mainstream Sunni and Shia camps or are being delegated to the wastelands of the pages of history texts and have little influence in the present times.
What you have in the case of the Moorish Science Temple is much the same thing. The outsider's view determines how the newer members see themselves. There is no internal history of any length or level of scholarship.
In the case of the Nation of Islam there is no internal history. The work Seeds of Abraham by Minister Ibrahim Beyah was never widely disseminated (less than one hundred copies were printed). As far as I know (never having seen the work) it was an oral history no where near the scholarly level of Lincoln's work. [14]
In Orthodox Islam a similar process occurred where new converts to Islam from Jewish and Christian camps formed how Muslims viewed the previous Prophets through a new literature of folklore called Israeliyyat. Of course, the Qur�an and Hadith mentioned the stories of Jews and Christians, but when Muslim historians wished to go further the logical source was the writing of Jews and Christians about their Prophets. If you look at the index of Yusuf Ali you can pull all the material about Moses from the text and do the same for Hadith. However, when you go to historical texts, they have many more details. Where did they come from -- the Jews and Christians, of course.
Above Bukhari was mentioned. He had a methodology for accepting and rejecting Hadith. Some collections using his methodology were compiled later and inevitably some Hadith he rejected crept into their collections. Some of these include Abu Daoud, Tirmidhi, etc. That is not to say their collections are full of false Hadith, but Bukhari had his own reason for accepting a Hadith and reasons for rejecting one. Much of the Israeliyyat Hadith is interpolated or was never spoken by the Prophet. A true scholar would use such materials with caution (but would not immediately reject them as spurious).
The Nation of Islam provides an experience for scholars that they never had with other religions. It is under the glare of history. It provides some very good models for how religious and social movements develop orthodoxy. Right now you could write a comparative essay on Farrakhan, John Muhammad, and Silas Muhammad and see the attempts to develop orthodoxy. In the case of Silas, he has his work on the Rise and Fall of the Nation of Islam entitled the Wake of the Nation. [15]
Another problem scholars face is vandalism and theft of texts. The copies of Timothy Dingle El's work, another work on the Moorish Science Temple (and astrology) called the Circle of Life and a text called the Holy Koran of the Ancient Moorish School and Temple of Religious Science are missing from the Library of Congress. [16] There is a dissertation by Salaby (?) on religious groups in St. Louis that may give background to the social situation of these Moorish Science Temples but doesn't mention them by name.
Besides the disappearing of sources, we face the problems of secrecy and disinformation on the part of these cultic groups who have a certain degree of distrust of the outsider. What Muslims know about the Kharajites is mainly what their enemies have said and increasingly so, this is the case of American born Islamic groups. Even when these groups have survived they are secretive. In the case of the Kharajite Ibadis in Oman, they are the rulers, but the outsiders know little about their history and faith. So, you only know them from outsiders.
When Muhammad al-Ahari and Peter Lamborn Wilson did their research on the Moorish Science Temple, they found that Arna Bontemps and Arthur Huff Fauset studies were the best sources available and later sources relied on them. A study by the WPA has never been published and needs to be done in a scholarly, annotated fashion. [17]
A reason for this is that the Moorish Science Temple is seen is a marginal group. The Nation was able to become mainstream due to the spread of their message in such mainstream African-American papers as the Amsterdam News and the Pittsburg Courier. Farrakhan has continued the level of growing influence. The media focuses on him now due to the Jewish pressure to cut his level of influence. [18]
Another difficulty the scholar has is this process of becoming orthodox. At the recent World Parliament of Religions, we had Farrakhan and various Sufi leaders speak but it was only after much debate and the Muslims protested Farrakhan much like the Jews did. The Ahmadiyyah was only allowed a spot in the bazaar and other groups such is the Moorish Science Temple were not even in attendance. The only papers on Islam in America were Muhammad al-Ahari's on "Proto-Islamic Movements as a Response to Racism" and Akbar Muhammad's on Muhammad Alexander Russell Webb. [19]
Many of these problems would vanish if the Sufi groups united and sent speakers to speak. A national organization would provide a platform to discuss Sufism in a National contact. The history of Islam in America would have been discussed if a similar group of American Muslim historians was started.
In Fayetteville, N.C. the mosque was named after a local Muslim leader `Umar ibn Said. The group decided on the name after a local Muslim there wrote a pamphlet called Seven Muslim Slaves. If there was a national organization the research able to be done would produce a work more on the lines of Austin's work instead of a small pamphlet of 12 pages. [20]
A final issue we need to approach in discussion of Islam in America is the development of an American Islamic literature and history. Sterling X Hobbs The Black Angels [21] is a novel on the Nation and the Rosenwald Fund's "I Your Prophet" is a short story on the Moorish Science Temple. Other novels such as the River World series, Hezekiah Butterworth's In the Days of Jefferson [22], Claude McKay's Harlem Glory [23], and Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo [24]have Muslim characters. In order for this to be done individual have to novelize the history of Islam in America and poets need to write on Muslim themes. A local or national workshop for Muslim journalists and writers would help as would a handbook for Muslim writers. But this is a long difficult task that requires a vision of the future and a willingness for Muslim writers to Islamize their writings and to work in the genres of fiction and poetry.
Pickthal did this in the case of British literature. A possible scenario would be a novel where Muslim characters relate to each other and the problems of living in America. Characters would go through real life problems and would have names such as: Muhammad, Sulaiman, and Ali. We already have some works such as George Ibrahim's Islam and the Arabian Prophet [25] The Invincible Abdullah series, the Adam's world series, and the works which were already mentioned but they are only a start -- a significant one, but only a start.
How do we get such works to be taken seriously? One way is to develop a program of their study in college. This is a difficult task. You have to give reasons for their study. Works such as the Book of Mormon and the Aquarian Gospels are still regarded as cult religious texts and not as religious literature or novels of the American frontier. The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple could also fit into a discussion of this problem of literary canon development. Currently these works are not studied as religious texts, novels of the frontier, or even as historical novels or texts.
Someone has to do the work. These have to be pulled together. Poetry clubs, historical societies, etc. have to be formed. This is not the work of one, or two or a few individuals.
In Europe, if you look at the phone directories of the smallest countries, there are pages of such organizations. Hundreds and thousands of persons must be together in such a program. There is no excuse for not having hundreds of such organizations in America. An American Discipline Council needs to be fully developed. At present it is only an idea being kicked around by the Association of Muslim Social Scientists.
This needs to be done now before we are cutoff from our potential sources. The work we are talking about here will eventually find its way into being written as footnotes if not chapters in the history of Islam in America.
Text Notes
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