HERITAGE
From the Back of the Bus to the Back of the Camel? Reimagining Muslim African American identity in 2022 BY JIMMY JONES
G
od has ordained: “O humanity! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other (not that you may despise each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of God is (the one who is) the most righteous of you. And God has full knowledge and is well-acquainted (with all things)” (49:13). I first met the erudite, acerbic Sherman Abdul Hakim Jackson (Distinguished Professor, King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture; Professor, Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity, Southern California University) when I was a struggling Arabic Intensive student at ISNA headquarters’ Islamic Teaching Center in the summer of 1991. As a rel atively new convert, this was also the first time I was participating in the powerful spiritually anchoring experience of living in a community that prayed the five daily prayers in congregation. I was immediately drawn to Jackson’s audacious personality because he was an
instant role model and “homeboy” for me, the new Muslim. I marveled at his ability to seamlessly “code switch” from the demand ing Arabic professor to an encouraging mentor (in colloquial Egyptian Arabic) to a recent Arab immigrant; to a well-informed public intellectual (in eloquent English) to “a brother from the block” who still easily identified with the struggles of being Black in the U.S.. The attraction was even stronger because we were both African Americans from eco nomically stressed East Coast inner cities that are only approximately 100 miles apart — him from Philadelphia, me from Baltimore. More importantly, we were both bibliophiles who loved the world of ideas and took pleasure in thinking deeply and enthu siastically about solving complex, daunting problems. Consequently, we often talked about how to use the sentiments expressed in 49:13, and elsewhere, to combat this coun try’s deadly, daunting race problem. And so I was surprised when I found out that we didn’t exactly agree on the framing of the U.S.’s original sin of racism,
22 ISLAMIC HORIZONS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022
especially when it came to the plight of Muslim African Americans. Dr. Jackson’s groundbreaking book “Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection” (2011) was a bracing wake-up call Muslim African Americans and the broader Muslim American community. This characteristically nuanced, thoughtful tour-de-force provided not only a trenchant analysis of what’s ailing Muslim African Americans, but also practical, achievable ways to remedy it. Nevertheless, we differed about some of his book’s critical details. I recall a rather spirited back-and-forth via cellphone during a long layover between connecting flights somewhere in the American heartland. The crux of the disagreement focused on his witty assertion that by converting, African Americans, as a group, had gone “from the back of the bus to the back of the camel.” I demurred for several reasons. First, his assessment didn’t fit my expe rience as an African American revert to American Islam. As a person who grew up in 1950s Roanoke, Va., under the “back of
