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Challenger Community News • t hec hallengernews.com •June 14, 2017
Simmons Enters The Race for Book Review By Professor Hakim Bruce Cosby Herbert Berg, Elijah Muhammad- Makers of the Muslim World City of Buffalo Mayor This week was the unofficial kickoff of the 2017 mayoral campaign in Buffalo and local activist Taniqua Simmons has announced that she is running for Mayor as an independent candidate. Simmons, 42, has worked with groups like with Power in Numbers and Black Lives Matter, and was endorsed by the Erie County Libertarian Party Wednesday. She says she's running for mayor because she feels the concerns of regular citizens are being ignored. "The more time I spent down in the Common Council and speaking with the mayor, I decided that if we are to save the commuTaniqua Simmons nity, we need someone who speaks for the people,” she said. Incumbent Mayor Byron Brown, Buffalo Comptroller Mark Schroeder and Erie County Legislator Betty Jean Grant will face off in a Democratic primary in September. No Republican has declared for the office.
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lijah Muhammad, by Herbert Berg is an effort to understand the significance of Elijah Muhammad to African Americans and the Muslim world at large. How is it that a man who labored successfully for forty years to build the Nation of Islam, an Islamic organization, is so grossly neglected by scholars? Heretofore, only two scholarly books have been written about Elijah Muhammad: Claude A. Clegg’s An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (1997) and Karl Evanzz’s The Messenger- The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (1999). Berg, a professor of religion specializing in Islam in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the
Celebrating African Liberation Day
African Liberation Day Celebration
May 25th was African Liberation Day, although many celebrated this wonderful occasion on the 27th. It was founded in 1958 at the 1st Conference of Independent States in Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah. Originally called Africa Freedom Day, the purpose was for Africans worldwide to come together on that day and mark their yearly progress in freeing themselves from colonial rule. By 1963 seventeen countries had gained their independence, and on May 25th leaders renamed the day African Liberation Day. Locally, Sankofa Ministries along with Buffalo UNIA-ACL Historical Society, held an observance of this and many other achievements of African people, at The Dorothy Collier Center on May 27; honoring Black History legends such as Malcolm X(OAU), Kwame Nkrumah, and Marcus Garvey. A focus of this observance fell on local Black Historians such as Doug Ruffin, Eva Doyle and Karima Amin, and the next wave of Buffalo OURstorians like Dominique Griffin and the evening's guest of honor from the Buffalo and Western New York African American History Group, Michelle Ragland. Ms. Ragland is the first recipient of the Buffalo UNIA-ACL Historical Society OURStory Award. The French called them Griots the West African term is Djeli, these are the keepers of our story. We must continue to honor our historians, for "Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." ~Chinua Achebe
BLACK HISTORY JUNETEENTH continued from page 3 tion. While many lingered to learn of this new employer to employee relationship, many left before these offers were completely off the lips of their former 'masters' - attesting to the varying conditions on the plantations and the realization of freedom. Even with nowhere to go, many felt that leaving the plantation would be their first grasp of freedom. North was a logical destination and for many it represented true freedom, while the desire to reach family members in neighboring states drove the some into Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Settling into these new areas as free men and women brought on new realities and the challenges of establishing a heretofore non-existent status for black people in America. Recounting the memories of that great day in June of 1865 and its festivities would serve as motivation as well as a release from the growing pressures encountered in their new territory. The celebration of June 19th was coined "Juneteenth" and grew with more participation from descendants. The Juneteenth celebration was a time for reassuring each other, for praying and for gathering remaining family members. Juneteenth continued to be highly revered in Texas decades later, with many former slaves and descendants making an annual pilgrimage back to Galveston on this date.
University of North Carolina Wilmington, seeks to add to this meager scholarship by situating the Nation of Islam in American history and comparing Elijah’s theology to other Islamic movements. He grounds this analysis in the sporadic history in which Islam was introduced to the United States. Documents confirm that Islam came to North America as early as 1527 with the presence of Estevan or Stephen the Moor, a Moroccan Muslim. He was followed by Job Ben Solomon (d.1773), Abd ar-Rahman Ibrahima (d 1829), Lamine Kebe (d 1837), and Umar ibn Said (d.1864). It is estimated by some scholars that one third of enslaved Africans shipped to North America were Muslims. Berg is clear on what happened to this history: “Slavery as practiced in the United States erased many African ethnicities and identities, replacing them with a single racial identity: the Negro.” This was a stark contrast to “the Caribbean and Brazilian expressions of other African religions such as Candomble, Macumba, Umbanda, Santeria, and Voodoo.” Islam therefore had to be reintroduced to African Americans. There was little missionary zeal among the Arab Muslims, who immigrated primarily from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine to the United States between 1875 and 1921. The first Muslim missionary was actually a white American, Muhammad Alexander Russell Webb (d.1916), who had converted to Islam in the Philippines. However, his message of universal brotherhood made few converts. Shaykh Daoud Ahmed Faisal founded the Islamic Mission, the first Sunni African American organization in New York City, in 1924. His political philosophy paralleled Franz Fanon’s anti-colonialism, while simultaneously advocating American patriotism. The first Muslim-born missionary to come to the United States was an Ahmadi- Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, who arrived in the America in 1920. His proselytizing Ahmadiyya school of thought among African Americans was not well received. The Ahmadis were founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1875-1951), who was proclaimed to be the divinely appointed Mujadid (Renewer) of Islam, the promised Messiah of the Christians and Mahdi awaited by Muslims. (However, Berg does not mention, which is significant, the impact of Ahmadiyya on some of the most creative jazz musiciansArt Blakey, Ahmad Jamal, McCoy Tyner, and Yusef Lateef, to mention a few.) Indirectly the
Hon. Elijah Muhammad
Ahmadis influenced the Nation, as evidenced by the adoption of books written by Maulana Muhammad Ali, a leading Ahmadiyya; his English translation of the Quran and Anti-Christ, Gog and Magog were required reading in the Nation of Islam. The first indigenous African American formulation of Islam was established around 1915 by Noble Drew Ali in Newark, New Jersey. Drew Ali wrote his own “Koran,” which was an eclectic mix of Christianity, Freemasonry, Egyptology and theosophy. He taught that African Americans were not Negroes, Black or even Colored -- they were “Asiatics” or specifically Moors. Thirty thousand Moorish Scientists survive today. In addition, Muhammad Ezaldeen, a former follower of Noble Drew Ali, founded the Addeynu Allahe Universal Arabic Association in the 1930s, an impactful movement in New Jersey and Upstate New York. Elijah Muhammad would establish the second indigenous African American formulation of Islam in the United States. According to Berg, the more direct antecedents of “prominent features of Elijah Muhammad’s Islam” can be found in the teachings of two African American Christian clergy: the Pan-Africanism of Edward Wilmot Blyden (18341912) and the African-centric theology of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834-1915). Blyden’s classic Islam, Christianity and the Negro Race, theorized a unique African Personality and the notion that being an African is affirmed more in Islam than Christianity. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church is best known for the proclamation that God (or at least the image of god) was a Negro. Elijah Muhammad “almost single-handedly developed an indigenous form of Islam in the United States.” He “converted a large number of Americans
to a religion which at that "time was almost completely
foreign to American soil.” And he did so “in face of strong and sustained opposition [from the United States government].” By the end of his life there were mosques in almost every major
city, and Islam was no longer a religion merely of immigrants and their descendants. He converted hundreds of thousands perhaps millions to Islam. His significance is often eclipsed in the dominant media by his high profile followers, Malcolm X, Warith Deen Muhammad, Muhammd Ali and Louis Farrakhan. However, in Berg’s assessment, scholars have missed the foundation of these well known Muslims by not paying sufficient attention to the legacy of Elijah Muhammad. Berg’s analysis seeks to move beyond the racial mythology of Elijah Muhammad teachings. He achieves this by focusing on two questions: was Elijah unique in his seemingly unorthodox teachings, and in the final analysis, can he be considered a Muslim? On these questions Berg introduces a set of novel conceptual tools. Berg argues that it is a major mistake to approach Islam as a monolith. Few scholars “recognize that Muslims have been divided from the beginning on doctrines, practices, and polity…” Schools of thought will vary from Sunni, Sufi to Shia. A Sunni Muslim in Indonesia may not recognize the practices of a Mouride of Senegal. Because the history of Islam is characterized by different schools of thought (or denominations), it is more proper to speak of multiple formulations or Islams. Another way of understanding the theology of Elijah Muhammad in the larger Islamic context is to compare his teachings with those of the ghulat, a term “used by heresiographers to accuse Muslims of exaggeration or hyperbole (ghuluw) in religious matters.” It was employed (often in internal debates among Shiites, Druzes and Ismailis) to disapprove of the exaltation of imams above ordinary humans. One example is the idea that “Ali did not die or that he was an incarnation of Allah.” Though different, Elijah’s theology suffers from three similar characteristics:
P.E.A.C.E. Inc. Offering Fair Haven Grief Support Sessions P.E.A.C.E. Inc. (Parents Encouraging Accountability & Closure for Everyone) is offering grief sharing sessions from 6:30 -8 p.m. at the Sherman L. Walker Center, 608 William Street, June 14 and 28.For more information call 842-8700.