The Question of “Is Islam Antiblack” is a Question for the Black Radical Tradition

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.