Habeeb Akande - Illuminating The Darkness: Blacks and North Africans in Islam

ILLUMINATING

THE DARKNESS

Blacks and North Africans in Islam

Habeeb Akande

Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd.

1433 AH/2012 CE Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd. First Published in February 2012

Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd. Unit 4, The Windsor Centre Windsor Grove, West Norwood London, SE27 9NT, UK www.tahapublishers.com

Written by : Habeeb Akande Edited by : Abdassamad Clarke

Cover design and Typeset by : N.A. Qaddoura

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13: 978-1-84200-127-1

Front cover image: Ibn Tulun mosque, Egypt

Dedicated to my parents

Lord, show mercy to them as they did in looking after me when I was small.

(Srat al-Isr 17:24)

Transliteration Key

The transliteration convention used throughout this book represents the Arabic script as follows:

The definite article is rendered as al- before moon letters, thus alqamar remains al-qamar , and it is assimilated to the following letter if it is a sun letter, thus al-shams is rendered ash-shams . The t almarbah is represented by a final h .

Contents

Part I

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9

Part II

• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Conclusion

Foreword

This is a timely work. With black people in the US beginning finally to emerge from the centuries of degrading slavery and the false start of the Civil Rights movement, and with Africa itself increasingly looking to be the continent of the future for Islam, nothing written in this area is without politics. Thus, it has been vital for orientalists, themselves often faithful servants of powerful oligarchic elements in world finance and corporatism, to back-project modern racism and the horrific history of Judaeo-Christian slavery into Islam. But make no mistake about it, this is entirely a political issue, or rather we should say an economic one, since today academia serves politics which in turn serves economics. One should not, in defending against this attack, resort to a rosetinted and romantic view of the history of the Muslims for, unsurprisingly, Muslims have had their tyrants, murderers, adulterers, drunks and thieves just as have others. And Muslim culture itself has suffered tremendous low-points in its cyclical history, a history which comprises an initial exuberant bursting forth, a high point with its cultural achievements, gradual decline into decadence, followed by renewal, a cycle best exemplified by Madnah al-Munawwarah itself and often but not exclusively illustrated by the Islam of the West and Africa in particular, of which this book has splendid examples.

The reader needs no other discrimination while reading this book than the one the author strives to make clear throughout: the dn of Islam is not only free of racism but is utterly opposed to it as the most aberrant form of jhiliyyah (ignorance). This is clear in the Qurn, the Sunnah and in the extensive hadith literature.

Where the book is utterly fascinating is in its vignettes of whole African civilisations and empires, one uses that term advisedly, that rose and sank, and the fierce resistance mounted against colonialism and its imperial projects, and also of the luminous scholars from an often forgotten tradition that sustained that history. This is a revelation of a kind for those who think of Islamic history exclusively in terms of the great Arab empires of the Middle East and their long decline into decadence and finally extinction. Perhaps few things are more damaging for Muslims sense of identity today than this spurious identification of Islamic history with that of the Arabs, who are after all, only a small percentage of the Muslims, neglecting in the process the sultanates of the Far East such as in Nusantara (Indonesia and Malaysia), the Mughals of the Indian Sub-Continent, the numerous Turkic Stans that were absorbed into the USSR, the glorious Osmanli dawlah, and the huge and inadequately explored history of Islamic Africa. The books extensive bibliography contains enough pointers for the reader to pursue that line of enquiry.

Just as the constituency of modern Muslim societies is clear evidence of the absence of racialism and colourism from Muslim hearts at their best, it contains then a sign for the future. Globalisation increasingly mixes peoples up all over the earth and once-subject peoples, impoverished and often made refugees by it, flee to the West. The Wests own subject peoples, its indigenous peoples, are also bewildered by the modern age, misled by the media servants of high oligarchic finance. They allow their rage to be deflected from the usurious monetary order of the age onto the flood of the bereft from the once-Third World. It is only Islam that offers a multi-racial brotherhood for the people of the future from both disadvantaged groups. Indeed, it is only Islam that has successfully allowed peoples of different races and religions to live together, as in Andalus and the Osmanli dawlah. When the Muslims themselves wake up from their slumbers and emerge from the ghettoes, both physical and intellectual, that they have foolishly allowed themselves to inhabit, they will have to take their place as generous hosts of humanity in an increasingly alien and predatory age. In having given us resources for that, the author has done us a tremendous service.

Abdassamad Clarke

Introduction

Praise be to Allah Who has honoured the human being and preferred the people of taqw and faith from among them. He made the human heart the area of His concern, not the colours of our skin. He looks at the purity of our intentions and not at our guises or forms. I beseech Him to send His blessings and peace upon the best of creation, the master of the whites and blacks, the leader of the Arabs and non-Arabs, the Chosen One, the Beloved Messenger, the Seal of the Prophets, Muammad the son of Abdullh.

The message of Islam is the affirmation of the one truth that has always been and will never cease to be there is no god but Allah. The Arab Prophet of Islam was sent to the whole of humanity. In his final address during the Farewell ajj he proclaimed, O people! Your Lord is one. Your forefather is one. Truly, there is no superiority for an Arab over a non-Arab, nor is there any superiority for a non-Arab over an Arab, there is no superiority for a black person over a red person nor a red person over a black person, except by taqw (righteousness).

O people! Bear witness! Have I conveyed [the message]? They replied in the affirmative. Then the Prophet said, Then let the one who is present today inform the one who is not here.

Unfortunately, after the death of the Prophet, some of the Muslims began to deviate from Islams teachings of racial equality. Among other signs of decadence, Arab ethnocentrism and colour prejudice towards blacks sometimes crept into Muslim thinking and literature as Islam spread across the known world. However, there emerged many Muslim writers who attempted to restore the purity of the Islamic faith by producing valuable works citing the virtues and achievements of black Africans. Written by a British-born Muslim of African descent, Illuminating the Darkness is about blacks and North Africans in Islam. Part I of the book explores the concept of race, blackness, slavery, interracial marriage and racism in Islam. Part II of the book consists of a compilation of short biographies of noble black and North African Muslims in Islamic history.