Why Islam?
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Particularist notions become isolationist and then end up reinforcing racialist notions. Ali’s attempts to redefine (or recast) black identity in terms of some sort of pan-Asiatic identity not only seems isolationist, but also very exclusionist. Peace among all creeds seems like a beautiful vision (Curtis 55). But achieving it through creating defined restrictive racial categories is something that will not be conducive to any kind of peace.
It might appear that at least Ali’s ideas are not hierarchical. But they are. He thinks of the Asiatic to be the only one to be of divine origin and salvable (55-56). It is still better than the colonialist belief of civilization through subjugation. But at the end of the day, it is still “my race is better than yours” or “we are God’s chosen people” ideology i.e., racialism. Islam being not too big of a racialist religion, these Ideas were kind of contradictory.
Now, it is interesting to see what role Islam played in the reimagination of black identity. It is even more interesting that this reimagination owed a lot to the Ahmadi movement which in itself is a reimagination movement. Mufti Sadiq’s presentation of Islam where sexism and racism didn’t exist was what attracted the racially-discriminated (Turner 102). Meanwhile, racialist narratives are very present in the Islamic world despite not being part of the scripture. So, when people like Drew Ali claimed the Christian racism was because of the whites rejecting the Christian principles, it is very much because of the colonialist and subjugation-based spread of Christian and white superiority is what Black people were denouncing.