Islam in America, specifically the Nation of Islam, provided a new image of Black American identity–one that represented order, protection, and purity to historically oppressed and demonized people. To White Americans, this image of domesticity threatened their own sense of hierarchy. While seemingly subversive, the optics and ideology of Nation of Islam act inherently in response to white supremacist attitudes in America, and replicate many of the goals of white supremacy.
The chasm that was created in Black American’s history through slavery also fabricated a spiritual need for answers and a physical need for order, which the Nation of Islam fulfilled for many. Muhammad and the Nation of Islam “has taught them “knowledge of ourselves . . . that makes it possible for us [Black Americans] to obtain freedom, justice, and equality in the world, no matter what the white man thinks, no matter what the white man does” (Chan-Malik 83).
Much of what attracted Black Americans to the Nation of Islam were its strict rules and traditional family and gender roles. Members “saw them as a means to reverse the breakdown of the Black family that had occurred under slavery” (77). This physical need for order after centuries of nonsensical, inhumane racialized violence–was fulfilled by the Nation of Islam, where “rules were strictly enforced, and the individual god within each black person was acknowledged and respected.” (84).
The need to be respected as a human being–as a Black human being, then, was a driving factor in the motivation of Black Americans to join the Nation of Islam. The ideology of the organization even answered unexplainable questions about “why” Black Americans had suffered such cruelty for so long at the hands of white people. “Whites, however, were the product of a mad scientist named Yacub, who grafted them as a new race of devils” (82). This mythologizing of white people as “devils”, thus un-human, explained and soothed the unease that comes with questioning the extent of human subjugation over each other.
A big appeal of the Nation of Islam was the taking back of power, which had always been held by white people. Black women, specifically, were attracted to the idea of being seen as pure, innocent, and revered–terms which had been “equated with white womanhood and thereby femininity—both privileged spheres in our society; spheres where black women have been historically denied” (84). In this same way, the patriarchal values established in the Nation of Islam gave emasculated Black men power over their women and their lives, which were constantly under threat. These traditional gender and family roles were reflections of the White American ideal at the time–something that was being threatened by liberalization, expanded post-war capital markets, and advancement of women’s rights.
Writer’s Q: Does my thesis effectively answer the prompt? Can I make this topic more narrow in any way?
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