Hey Laila

Being “white” I don’t appreciate the comment that whites are converts and that you are a revert.
IMO the use of the word revert is used to “prove” that Islam is the only correct religion and that everyone else is on the wrong path.

Laura

If you are offended think of it this way.  I am not speaking to the white you, I am speaking to the white they.  I am speaking of the black me which is foriegn to you.  I define myself as I see fit.  I cannot prove Islam as being the "only" correct religon for a black person, no I can’t do that.  Religion is a choice, however given that religion is a choice why is it that many thousands of blacks who came here as muslims could not practice their religion at all, and became psuedo christians or hidden christian at best, to stay alive.  If you don’t want to be muslim, don’t.  If you converted good.  I am speaking about an experience unique to this diaspora, the diaspora of Africans. 

Look, attempts to racialize religion piss me off. It’s the reason why South Asians and Africans are somehow considered less Muslim than Arabs, why those in Western Europe and the Americas are somehow less than "real" Muslims. Last I heard, the copyright on Islam was held by one without race. And She will guide whom He wills, not those of  certain phenotypes. You can think, Lailah, of Islam as being part of your ancestral tradition, but it’s a bit presumptuous to brand others as being interlopers- especially as there are descendants of the Quraysh that could well see you in that way.

I can see that you jump to extremes,  I am trying to racialize Islam? Why don’t you take a stroll down Islam lane?  Google images of Islam.  Even if I shop for an abaya online the faces of the models, are white.  Did I racialize Islam? No, Islam was racialized from the beginning and no one as usual addresses it.  for fear of what is happening here, someone stands up and points a finger.  Point a finger the next time you see a black muslim man married to a white muslim woman, point a finger the next time you see some obviously racist in islam.   Interlopers? No, I was merely saying that in this diaspora this is a reality and clearly one you can’t seem to understand, how sad.  Whites can be muslims, truly, just look at Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, and Syria.  Of course whites are muslims, but when we seek to describe the religion, to trace historical facts, and give emphasis to this or that point, its interesting that this point I make is always left out.

And it is cogent.  Very much so.

Perhaps as I said, not for you.  But for me, and others like me.

I did not say that you and you alone were trying to racialize Islam; I merely said that subscribing to such an outlook is rather presumptuous. If you are inclined toward such, that is your right, just as I have the right to believe that you assume a bit much.

"  I am not speaking to the white you, I am speaking to the white they."

"I am speaking of the black me which is foriegn to you."

"I am speaking about an experience unique to this diaspora, the diaspora of Africans."

"No, Islam was racialized from the beginning and no one as usual addresses it. "

"Point a finger the next time you see a black muslim man married to a white muslim woman"

"And it is cogent.  Very much so."

"Perhaps as I said, not for you.  But for me, and others like me."

If I seem a little unfocused it’s because I have no idea what the fuck you’re ultimately trying to say.

I think you don’t have an idea of what the (????) I am trying to say because you are being argumentative.  I gave you an opening and you jumped in without a battle plan.  Ultimately for me I am trying to say one thing, I am glad that I am a revert that I found Islam and that it gives me a connection to my ancestors even though this country erased all tangible evidence of any such evidence for all intents and purposes.  But really do you have to use vulgarity? Come on….

Okay, how do you know your ancestors weren’t Animists? Christians? Or either of the above, plus sold to some cracker as slaves BY MUSLIMS?!?!?!

There’s nothing special about you or your Islam, you’re just another raghead like the rest of us.

DA,  I think you should tone it down. You’re making good points, but the language is really harsh. And yes, I am blackAmerican- I’ve stated so in a few articles and posts, and my pic is in two spots on this site.

Sorry you are so angry.  I do know more about my ancestry based on DNA.  The origins of my ancestors tells me clearly where they originated from.  Not animist or pagans perhaps like yours, but then, you don’t know like i do.  Raghead? That’s an interesting term, because its was used in the south to denigrate black women, for covering, wearing hijab.  "head rags" or "rag heads"  you are a very angry person. 

You’d need more than DNA to prove that African ancestors are Muslim- as all three faiths co-exist in the same areas, at times within the same clan. If you had documentation listing names, dates of arrival, or accounts of events involving your ancestors, you’d be able to make a stronger claim.

Hahahahahaha.

DNA? Are you serious? Why not just tell me you had a seance where your ancestors told you directly that they were muzzies? That would be more beleivable. Man, it reminds me of right wing politicians in Europe who claim that they’ve had a blood test that confirms they’re not part Jewish.

Okay, let’s say for a minute that your ancestors all came from the same part of Africa; that is to say, that you’re part of an undisturbed breeding line that lasted centuries with nobody from another African region or (god forbid) European or Asian or Amerind ancestry contributing. Then lets say without fail you could trace the genetic markers to a very specific region. Then let’s say that this region is 99.9% Muslim. That’s a LOT of assumptions right there, and you STILL couldn’t know. And let’s say you did; so what? How would that connect to your life now? And before they were Muslims, your ancestors were probably pagans or Christians or khemetists or something right? Yeah, I’m of mostly Germanic extraction with a little Indonesian ancestry thrown in, and so what? Maybe my ancestors were pagans. Maybe a few were Muslims. Maybe not. What, I should run around pledging loyalty to Odin or something? Let’s not be ridiculous.

And I’m not angry, just using strong words to make a point. I’m eating a croissant right now (oh, how crypto-Muslim of me!) and enjoying it quite a bit as I type this. Raghead to me is just a catch all term thrown at Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs. I <3 hijabis.

" I <3 hijabis"
DA: getting into the spirit of the day, are we?
I’m suspicious of anyone who makes any sort of claim about ancestral origins involving either faith or purity. You can make good guesses, but being sure is not likely to happen in this life.  And DA, I hope you’re having a good cheese with that croissant; I’m currently depriving myself of both. sigh

Yeah, I’m on the Warrior Diet so technically I probably should have had like, I dunno, a raw pro-biotic smoothie or something but that croissant just looked so good. No cheese though. I am having some Stilton with dinner tonight. Why are you depriving yourself?

And I do like Valentines Day, even if it is kind of a scam.

Ah, my figure is looking a bit too fertility idol-like to be entirely healthy: hence the deprivation.  And to me, holidays are what you make them- they can be festivals of conspicuous consumption, or times to enjoy the people in your life. Personally, I think V-day.org is brilliant- taking a day when men usually attempt to buy a woman’s happiness, and using it to help buy women safety and good health.

Valentines day has morphed from a celebration of St. Valentine to a bacchanal of chocolates and lingerie.  I prefer the old fashioned V day when I waited in the classroom among others who couldn’t wait to see the hand made cards from your friends.  It can be a day of love.

Also DA, my ancestors have been traced through a very well respected DNA research group to various "villages" in North Africa.  Languages and tribes identified.  I did pay alot for it, but for me its worth it. 

Again, that’s not enough to prove Muslim ancestry, unless your ancestors never moved or intermarried, something not terribly likely in the past 5,000 years or so. Also, unless you had your father, and perhaps a maternal uncle or grandfather tested as well, you’re missing Y chromosome information. The only way to get a reasonable idea would involve testing several family members and haunting historical societies, churches and courthouses for records. You’ve only got a few pieces of the puzzle, not nearly enough to say anything for certain.

my mtdna shows direct connections to north africa, villages and language groups.  Oral history, which I also have and a family "bible" which turned out to be Quran, tells me more.  I know, most people don’t have these kind of dots to connect, and its enough for me, not for you, but then its not about you is it? My father before he died told me loads about his father and his origins.  So, I don’t know why you are so negative, actually you should be happy.  But then we don’t know who you are.

Who’s we? And I’m not so much being negative as pointing out that it takes more than a few facts to build solid conclusions. It may be enough for your emotional satisfaction, but it takes more than emotion to build a rational conclusion.
And DA: Stilton? (breathes a sigh of longing)
OK, time to work out, and daydream of Stilton and triple creme brie while I do crunches.

Lailah
Yo, I’m sorry if I come off as hostile. But, and I mean this as non-confrontationally as possible with these words, you’re talking nonsense. Now, this in itself is like, eh, whatever, but you’re making a blood purity claim and correlating that blood purity claim with religious merit, well, I’m calling bullshit. To illustrate my point; if you somehow found out tomorrow, definitively, that you had NO Muslim ancestors, would you renounce Islam? My ancestors could have been a bunch of cannibals and pagans, maybe not. I don’t know my mom’s family tree well because, frankly, that shit isn’t all that important. I know my dad’s only slightly better. We are who we are and we’re defined much, much more by what we do than who we came from. My extended family is fucked up and to some extent I’d rather NOT know much of our history. I’d rather be who i am and not invent a mythical past around the people that form a spermy string from me back to a bunch of Vikings and Headhunters or whoever. Your Islam is no more less valid than mine because you (maybe) share some genes with a Muslim who died 300 years ago.

FM
I work out a fair bit and am still chubby, I’m kind of a foodie, it’s just a trade off I allow myself. I try to stick to mostly veggies and cook at home as much as possible but it’s the one vice I have left so I sort of overindulge in it. I guess if I was pickier it’d be better, but I love everything from pizza and junk food and $3 jumbo burritos to raw vegan cuisine, traditional Chinese, and fine French. Brother Ali raps about eating organic vegetables with fast food, I can relate. Strangely, my fiancee is considered a bit chubby in her home country (China), but here she’s pretty slim. God we’re a bunch of pigs! Some Brie sounds great right now.

Hey, if Allah didn’t want us to enjoy food, S/He wouldn’t have made it so darned tasty.
I think one of the blessings of such a short lifespan is that the things we’d rather not deal with in our heritage, well, wait a century or three, and it’s forgotten. I’ve got slaves and Confederate generals on my family tree; they may be glad that they aren’t around to be invited to family reunions.

Lol, as they used to say, there is a dead cat on the line.  That was a slaves way of saying "white folks in the family tree" .

I think that DNA has them rolling in their graves…he hehehe

DA

Your language is awful, astafurallah

The interesting thing is I hear in your voice anger, jealousy and many other sad things.  I am expressing something very personal here.  If I found out tomorrow that I did not have one muslim ancestor, no matter how remote, I would not renounce my Islam.  Because it was a choice.  However, I believe in genetic memory and that we do not make choices in a vacumn, that somehow we are led to make choices by our genes themselves.

Leilah
Yeah, you convinced me. I dropped Islam today, started learning to speak Bokmal, and slaughtered a chicken and read it’s entrails to see what the weather is gonna be like tomorrow. I’m planning to loot my Irish neighbor’s toolshed and maybe steal his wife to be a thrall for my tribe, and don’t want to get held up by bad weather. It’s a lot of fun. I’d invite you to join but you’re, well, you know, black, so you wouldn’t get it on the same level as me; it’s in my "genetic memory". I’ve reverted to it and, well, Gods bless ya but you’d only be a convert to it because it’s just not a part of you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I got mead to brew. I was gonna end this with "inshallah I’ll see you in Jennah" out of habit, but silly me, I can’t go to Jennah, maybe if I’m lucky I’ll go to valhalla and feast with Odin and his valkyries. Wait, I have to die in battle for that? That sucks. Fuck it, I’m just joining the 5%ers. Please call me C-God Fard Cypher Allah from here on out. I don’t have any 5% ancestors, but I got plenty of crazy in my family, so close enough.

By the way, I hope you meant the stuff about hearing x, y and z in my voice figuratively. If not, I’m really creeped out.

FM
Yeah, I think mortality is a blessing in more ways than we typically imagine. We’d have some pretty awkward family reunions if we lived forever.

My dad’s family are from Tennessee and Georgia, and have been there for donkey’s years, so I imagine they probably were confederates. I also, like every other white person everywhere, supposedly have 1/16th native blood (Blackfoot in my case) but I rarely mention that because I don’t want to sound like the people who walk up to Navajos and announce that they’re 1/16th Cherokee (and yes, this does happen).

LOL, DA, I had to look up Bokmal. And the "My great-great-grandma was a Cherokee princess"  line wouldn’t have been quite so annoying if people used it to work for justice, instead of trying to get a free "get out of white people guilt" pass.
You know, all of this makes me even prouder to know that, like most Americans, I’m a mutt  (family photos are quite colorful, more like rocky road than straight chocolate), and being a mutt can be a pretty neat thing.

Yeah, I only know what Bokmal is because I used to live in Norway and people explained the distinction between Bokmal and Ni Norsk (the latter I learned a bit of but not much, everyone there speaks almost flawless English). Apparently Icelandic people speak something really archaic kinda like Bokmal and have an aversion to changing their language at all. Instead of saying "computer", or inventing a new word for it, they just call it two words that roughly mean "prophet box". They’re like really, really mellow and liberal vikings.

As for Leilah’s thing, eh, I’m past caring. If she wants to believe she has a magic blood link to Islam, fuck it, who am I to argue? It’s no crazier than my friends who refer to themselves as sayids or sayidas (like we have any idea ayway). To each their own.

You have every right to be Bokmal, and to be Muslim.  In fact if you decide not to be muslim because of soemthing I said, than really, you weren’t much of a muslim at all.  And its a pity this site doesn’t have moderators because the language you use is haram.

So is aasibiyah, and being too stupid to understand obvious sarcasm should be.

If your family was from North Africa and you immigrated to the U.S. or came to the U.S. for school today, no matter your heritage, you would be classified as white. When I worked for the government and had to classify people for paperwork, this used to piss off certain applicants to no end…they weren’t my rules and I had to refer them to my standards book. A misclassification would result in a rejection of paperwork.