Jehron Muhammad: Arab Muslims can learn from black Muslims
America's immigrant Muslim community owes a debt of gratitude to the indigenous black Muslim population.
Khaled Beydoun spoke recently about the misperceptions about Muslims, especially about black Muslims and the Nation of Islam, during a wide-ranging interview. Beydoun is an associate professor at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law
Beydoun said both indigenous and immigrant Muslims share parallel struggles that focus on Islamophobia and the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement.
"It's important to note that black Muslims are kind of betwixt and between these two movements, and obviously their experiences … compounds discrimination, along lines of Islamophobia and anti-blackness, and the violence we see," he said.
He said it's counterproductive "to exclude the experience of black Muslims, who are experiencing Islamophobia and also simultaneously being exposed to the kind of aggressive police violence and societal racism by virtual of being black.
So it's important to intersect these two forms of discrimination, and the way you do that is essentially amplify the voices of black Muslims.
"People typically think of the Black Lives Matter movement and this emergence of Islamophobia as being non-converging and non-intersecting, said Beydoun, who spoke at the Black Muslim Psychology Conference at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia.
Nothing is further from the truth, he said. "If you look at the experience of black Muslims, these are individuals that are at ground zero of both forms of discrimination."
He encourages the wider Muslim community to join hands with black Muslims, this way he believes, you "intersect these two forms of discrimination," and bridge the gap between the struggles happening in the black and Muslim communities.
Concerning the religious rights enjoyed by Muslims in America, Beydoun said, as a legal scholar, "A lot of the domestic civil rights progress in political empowerment of the African American community, which has had a collateral effect on the Muslims at large, has been made possible by (Elijah Muhammad's) Nation of Islam … It has benefited Muslims of all races and of all sects."
In one study, focusing on the religious rights of Muslim inmates, Beydoun attributes "Nation of Islam litigants," as being responsible for such religious freedoms as "having a (Holy) Quran in prison, the ability to pray in prison and the ability to have Halal food.
"These are rights that all Muslims enjoy today that were made possible by the Nation of Islam," he explained.
"So knowing that history, what I try to do as a legal scholar, is put the Nation of Islam and its contribution (of helping establish Islam in America) front and center, and demonstrate that without the Nation of Islam, I think that many of the rights, privileges and liberties that Muslims of all races and sects enjoy today would not have been possible."
Beydoun called the conference at Chestnut Hill College a "welcome break" because, as an Arab Muslim, he's use to being in the majority at such conferences.
"Being a racial and ethnic minority at a Muslim conference really allowed me to kind of step back, listen and absorb the experiences and perspectives of Black Muslims, which added a new perspective," he said.
"It enriched my own perspective. It enriched my desire to want to do the kind of advocacy I do. So it was a very special conference, and one I'm hoping to be a part of for many years down the road."