Jonathan Brown's latest book Islam and Blackness queries whether Islam is a uniquely "antiblack" religion; one with an ontological predisposition towards the enslavement of Black or African diasporic people writ large. Brown is far from the first (non-black) scholar to tackle this subject; specifically from the vantage point of classical Islamic traditions. Rather, Brown's book exists as one of several academic books and articles that attempts to distinguish the mechanisms of race and racialization that exist within classical Islamic texts (and their religio-political milieus) with how race and racialization operate in the West; specifically the role of race and racialization in the enslavement of Africans in the United States. On the one hand, this kind of scholarship seeks to demonstrate not only the complexity of race/racialization in the Muslim past, but the complexity of how classical traditions conceptualized race or harnessed racialization. Deployment of race and racialization within classical Islamic traditions specifically operate in light of the Quran'ic injunction that establishes the "brotherhood of Islam" as one where distinctions between tribal or ethnic groups are irrelevant insofar as being a Muslim and believing in Islam is concerned. On the other hand, this kind of scholarship simultaneously extends and participates in larger discourses on antiblackness within Muslim communities. These conversations on "antiblackness and Islam" reached a particular fever pitch during the era of Black Lives Matter and the emergence of Muslim anti-racism onto the mainstream Muslim American consciousness. In both respects, the goal is to disabuse the notion that Islam is ontologically antiblack, provide a pathway for the inclusion of Black and African diasporic Muslims in the present, and diffuse any potential Islamophobic canards. Demonstrating the capaciousness and complexity of race and racialization in classical Islamic texts and their adjacent Muslim worlds is understood as a necessary precondition for addressing the issue of antiblackness within Muslim American communities. Yet from the standpoint of the Black Radical Tradition, particularly its interlocutors in the 21st century, the question might not be whether Islam is antiblack (or not) but why there is a current, persistent fixation on refuting Islam's status as an "ontologically antiblack religion" wholesale. What undergirds the preoccupation of debating whether Islam is an "ontologically antiblack" religion, as well as the underlying logics that answering the question attempts to refute?What is the psychic investment in proving that Islam is not "ontologically antiblack" and what does the performance of that psychic investment, scholarly or otherwise, say about the way the question of antiblackness in Islam haunts the contemporary religio-political imaginary. In this paper, I investigate the way the question of and the need to refute of Islam's presumed "ontological antiblackness" reflects what Calvin Warren would describe as a form of ontological terror. In his monograph of the same title, Warren argues that the affect associated with answering such questions is mani-fold; "it is not just that the solutions make us feel good because we feel powerful/hopeful, but that pressing the ontological question presents terror- the terror that ontological security is gone, the terror that ethical claims no longer have an anchor, and the terror of inhabiting existence outside the precincts of humanity and humanism," (Warren, Ontological Terror, 4). Utilizing the work of Warren and Frank Wilderson as a conduit to the Black Radical Tradition, with the philosophical playfulness of Marquis Bey's The Problem of Gender is a Problem for the Negro; I demonstrate the way scholarly attempts to refuse Islam's presumed "ontological antiblackness" reveals how the question forms the basis of a contemporary ontological terror, one that cannot be abated by recounting the complicated past, particularly as the religio-political conditions that guide, if not circumscribe Black Muslim being within Muslim American communities remain largely unchanged.
This paper investigate the way the question of and the need to refute of Islam's presumed "ontological antiblackness" reflects what Calvin Warren would describe as a form of ontological terror. In his monograph of the same title, Warren argues that the affect associated with answering such questions is mani-fold; not only because it provides the power of finding "solutions" but because pressing ontological questions provokes terror, a terror related to the issue of existence "outside the precincts of humanity and humanism," (Warren, Ontological Terror, 4). Utilizing the work of Warren and Frank Wilderson as conduits to the Black Radical Tradition; this paper demonstrate how scholarly attempts to refuse Islam's presumed "ontological antiblackness" reveals how the question forms the basis of a contemporary ontological terror, one that isn't abated by recounting the complicated past, particularly as the religio-political conditions that circumscribe Black Muslim being in Muslim American communites remains unchanged.