Islam and Blackness

by Jonathan A.C. Brown

The most comprehensive examination to date of the claim that Islam, as a system of scripture, law and spirituality, is antiblack

It is commonly claimed that Islam is antiblack, even inherently bent on enslaving Black Africans. Western and African critics alike have contended that antiblack racism is in the faith’s very scriptural foundations and its traditions of law, spirituality, and theology. But what is the basis for this accusation?

Bestselling scholar Jonathan A.C. Brown examines Islamic scripture, law, Sufism, and history to comprehensively interrogate this claim and determine how and why it emerged. Locating its origins in conservative politics, modern Afrocentrism, and the old trope of Barbary enslavement, he explains how antiblackness arose in the Islamic world and became entangled with normative tradition. From the imagery of ‘blackened faces’ in the Quran to Shariah assessments of Black women as ‘undesirable’ and the assertion that Islam and Muslims are foreign to Africa, this work provides an in-depth study of the controversial knot that is Islam and Blackness, and identifies authoritative voices in Islam’s past that are crucial for combatting antiblack racism today.

Genres: Islam, Race, History, Religion

416 pages, Hardcover

Published December 13, 2022

About the author

Jonathan Andrew Cleveland Brown is an American scholar of Islamic studies. Since 2012, he has been associate professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He holds the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University.

He has authored several books including Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy, Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction, and The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim. He has also published articles in the fields of Hadith, Islamic law, Salafism, Sufism, and Arabic language.

Reviews

[Khalid Sharif · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book covering the complex history of race, desirability, and blackness in Islamic Law and History.
Rather than reflexively interpreting the past, consuming it’s complexity, through the lens of the present the author works to engage texts within their socio-historical contexts.

Discussions include Race/Racism, contested understandings of Blackness and the rise of anti-black racism, Western Narratives of Islam and Slavery, Maliki Marriage Law, and much more.

[Potter Wickware · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slave trade in Islam more prevalent than in trans Atlantic slave trade. Islam is an antiblack slaver religion. The book is a self consciously academic treatment of the proposition. Boko Haram, a modern version of Barbary pirates, captured women and girls and enslaved them. Book expresses anti-black, anti-woman attitudes embedded in Islam. Curse of Ham. Book is a census of racist attitudes. It attempts a comprehensive view of an important and seemingly timeless topic, but is marred by a turgid style and use of academic non-words, eg normative, appetitive. With 7 appendices its organization is questionable.

[Miroku Nemeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent discussion of the topic. One of the few works that really sorts through all the layers of confusion and goes to the source. There is just so much that is plainly false and propagandistic and Islamophobic on this topic out there when the truth of the matter is that Black folk have always been at the core of Islam any way you measure it, though most of the ideas of Blackness that say, an American has, are very peculiar to modern American history and identity and most Americans are so American and Eurocentric that they cannot actually conceive of entirely different frameworks of understanding. Brown does a good job of setting things straight, as have many of the contemporary writers he mentions in his work from Mustafa Briggs and Dawud Walid to Habeeb Akinde and Adeyinka Mendes. Alhumdulillah, there is so much great literature on this topic now. Folks just need to read and understand it.