Ahmadiyya in jazz as a tool for Black American self-assertion
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Turner’s exploration of jazz musicians’ engagement with the Ahmadiyya movement presents a powerful moment in Black American culture, where music, faith, and resistance intertwine. For many African American jazz artists in the 1940s and 1950s, Islam wasn’t just a new belief system—it was an avenue for asserting dignity and rejecting the racial confines of American identity. Turner reveals how these musicians embraced Ahmadiyya Islam’s vision of universal brotherhood and equality as an antidote to the spiritual and social alienation produced by segregation. Figures like Sahib Shihab and Yusef Lateef saw in Islam a way to transcend the “Negro” identity imposed by white society, recasting themselves as part of a broader, inclusive narrative.
This convergence of faith and art didn’t simply influence their personal lives; it reverberated through the jazz scene, shifting the music’s cultural resonance. Jazz, already a genre deeply marked by improvisation and boundary-pushing, became a space for exploring an alternative Black identity that connected artists to the global struggle against racial injustice. Musicians who embraced Ahmadiyya teachings saw their art as a bridge, one that linked their experiences with those of oppressed communities worldwide. In fact, Turner’s account of this movement is reminiscent of hip-hop’s later alignment with Pan-Africanism and the Five Percent Nation, where artists used their platforms to critique systemic inequalities and affirm a complex, diasporic identity.
Turner’s analysis ultimately captures that jazz, for these musicians, became more than an art form; it was an act of resistance, an articulation of solidarity with a global vision of justice. By aligning themselves with the Ahmadiyya, bebop artists weren’t merely converting to Islam—they were rejecting the boundaries of American racial politics and embracing a world where racial and religious divisions held less power. This reimagining of jazz as a transnational language of freedom underscores how artistic movements can be sites for both spiritual exploration and social rebellion, shaping new modes of belonging that defy simplistic notions of identity and nationhood.