The Trouble With Black Muslims

By Amy Alkon | Jul 1, 2009

The Trouble With Black Muslims

A black African, Rudolph Okonkwo, talks turkey to one of the black American converts to Islam, a guy carrying a newspaper put out by the Nation of Islam:

 

"Why are you a Muslim?" I asked him at one point.

"Because my people were Muslims before the blue-eyed white devils bought us and brought us to America as slaves and forced us to be Christians and to worship a blue-eyed Christ."

"O' yeah."

"Yes!"

"But I am from Africa and my grandfather was never a Muslim nor was he a Christian."

He was shocked when I said that.

"It is OK if you want to be a Muslim and follow Elijah Muhammed and changed your name to Muhammed, too. But don't tell me you are trying to be like your forefathers," I said.

And for four years, we continued our debate. Like some members of the Nation of Islam, he became a convert to Muslim while in prison on drug charges. He had accepted the myths of the Nation of Islam. He told with all the seriousness in his bones that the white man was made in a laboratory in Egypt by a black scientist named Yakub.  ...First of all, I came from a country where there are Muslims. Those who have Arabic features assume superior position over those who are black. In many instances, the black Muslims are totally disregarded, treated as inconsequential.

I have asked black Muslims mad at how white people treated black slaves to ask themselves were the millions of slaves the Arab world took from Africa were? They disappeared. They were used and disposed of. If not, the Arab world would be booming with its own share of black men and women.

I have asked black Muslims mad at the "war" between the West and Islam to look at the genocide in Darfur and find out how Muslims treat their black brothers and sisters.

In Africa, the homeland of all black people, Islam came from the Middle East and Christianity came from Europe and they all exerted inordinate damage. But where Islam touched, there is no recognition of the ways of life of the people. Islam, being a way of life, swallowed all that was African in the people.

All black people must think before they jump from frying pan to fire. And before you pick up arms to fight for those Talibans dying in Afghanistan, spare a minute for two million children who die of malaria each year in Sub-Saharan Africa. Those are your people. For real!

 

Guess who takes in the black Muslim refugees from Darfur? That would be those evil Israelis, not Arab Muslims, who only care about other Muslims (Palestinians) if they're white and provide a really excellent excuse for hating Jews.

 

Most people don't have a clue about this, but the African slave trade was predominantly conducted by Arabs for something like 1,000 years before Europeans got into the act.

And what about that thought-provoking paragraph I put in bold print?  What did become of  the enormous number of Black slaves taken by Arabs?  Why aren't they all over the countries where slave trading took place?  What happened to them?

There's a lot of food for thought here.  Wouldn't you say?