AFRICAAM 191: Black History in Islam

Course Description

This course is an introduction to the histories and cultures of black Muslim societies from the heartlands of Africa, the Atlantic world, and the Ottoman Empire to the arid landscapes of the Mediterranean Arab World and the Indian subcontinent. This seminar-style course will showcase the contributions of Black Muslims to the global transmission, circulation, and preservation of the centuries-old Islamic intellectual heritage. We will examine the knowledge networks, long-distance border crossing, community building, and place-making practices that have helped to sustain the transnational flow of ideas and intellectual exchanges between Black Muslims on the continent and the Global Black Diaspora. We will move beyond the narrow definition of scholarship that prioritizes written texts and authors educated in Western canons and institutions of learning alone. Throughout the quarter, we will study and engage with the primary texts and scholarship of Muslim scholars, thinkers, and 'organic intellectuals' of African descent, most of whom did not study in European-language instruction but whose ideas shaped the past and present of Muslim societies in Africa and the Diaspora. Beyond the popular narrative of slavery and the social construction of blackness, we will ask how Black Muslims have deployed the Islamic discursive tradition in the struggle for Black racial liberation, social justice, civil rights campaigns, grassroots activism, emancipatory politics, and resilience in the face of oppression.