{"id":1025,"date":"2020-07-13T15:21:42","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T12:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/13\/islams-anti-racist-message-from-the-7th-century-still-resonates-today\/"},"modified":"2020-07-13T15:21:42","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T12:21:42","slug":"islams-anti-racist-message-from-the-7th-century-still-resonates-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/islams-anti-racist-message-from-the-7th-century-still-resonates-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Islam\u2019s Anti-racist Message from the 7th Century Still Resonates Today"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Asma Afsaruddin<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n
One day, in Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad (God bless him and grant him peace) dropped a bombshell on his followers: He told them that all people are created equal.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll humans are descended from Adam and Eve,\u201d said Muhammad in his last known public speech. \u201cThere is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, or of a non-Arab over an Arab, and no superiority of a white person over a black person or of a black person over a white person, except on the basis of personal piety and righteousness.\u201d<\/strong><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
The noblest of you in God\u2019s sight is the one who is most righteous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In this sermon, known as the Farewell Address<\/a>, Muhammad outlined the basic religious and ethical ideals of Islam, the religion he began preaching in the early seventh century. Racial equality<\/a> was one of them. Muhammad\u2019s words jolted a society divided by notions of tribal and ethnic superiority.<\/p>\n
Today, with racial tension and violence roiling contemporary America, his message is seen to create a special moral and ethical mandate for American Muslims to support the country\u2019s anti-racism protest movement.<\/p>\n
Challenging kinship<\/span><\/h2>\n
Apart from monotheism \u2013 worshipping just one God \u2013 belief in the equality of all human beings in the eyes of God set early Muslims apart from many of their fellow Arabs in Mecca.<\/p>\n
Chapter 49, verse 13<\/a> of Islam\u2019s sacred scripture, the Quran, declares:<\/p>\n
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\u201cO humankind! We have made you\u2026into nations and tribes, so that you may get to know one another. The noblest of you in God\u2019s sight is the one who is most righteous.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
This verse challenged many of the values of pre-Islamic Arab society, where inequalities based on tribal membership, kinship and wealth were a fact of life. Kinship or lineal descent \u2013 \u201cnasab\u201d in Arabic \u2013 was the primary determinant of an individual\u2019s social status. Members of larger, more prominent tribes like the aristocratic Quraysh were powerful. Those from less wealthy tribes like the Khazraj had lower standing.<\/p>\n
The Quran said personal piety and deeds were the basis for merit, not tribal affiliation \u2013 an alien and potentially destabilizing message in a society built on nasab.<\/p>\n
Give me your tired, your poor<\/span><\/h2>\n
As is often the case with revolutionary movements, early Islam encountered fierce opposition from many elites.<\/p>\n
The Quraysh, for example, who controlled trade in Mecca \u2013 a business from which they profited greatly<\/a> \u2013 had no intention of giving up the comfortable lifestyles they\u2019d built on the backs of others, especially their slaves brought over from Africa.<\/p>\n
The Prophet\u2019s message of egalitarianism tended to attract the \u201cundesirables\u201d \u2013people from the margins of society. Early Muslims included young men from less influential tribes escaping that stigma and slaves who were promised emancipation by embracing Islam.<\/p>\n
Women, declared to be the equal of men by the Quran<\/a>, also found Muhammad\u2019s message appealing. However, the potential of gender equality in Islam would become compromised by the rise of patriarchal societies.<\/p>\n
By Muhammad\u2019s death, in 632, Islam had brought about a fundamental transformation of Arab society, though it never fully erased the region\u2019s old reverence for kinship<\/a>.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t breathe<\/span><\/h2>\n
Early Islam also attracted non-Arabs, outsiders with little standing in traditional Arab society<\/a>. These included Salman the Persian, who traveled to the Arabian peninsula seeking religious truth, Suhayb the Greek, a trader, and an enslaved Ethiopian named Bilal.<\/p>\n
All three would rise to prominence in Islam during Muhammad\u2019s lifetime. Bilal\u2019s much-improved fortunes, in particular, illustrate how the egalitarianism preached by Islam changed Arab society.<\/p>\n
An enslaved servant of a Meccan aristocrat named Umayya, Bilal was persecuted by his owner for embracing the new faith. Umayya would place a rock on Bilal\u2019s chest, trying to choke the air out of his body so that he would abandon Islam.<\/p>\n
Moved by Bilal\u2019s suffering, Muhammad\u2019s friend and confidant Abu Bakr, who would go on to rule the Muslim community after the Prophet\u2019s death, set him free.<\/p>\n
Bilal was exceptionally close to Muhammad, too. In 622, the Prophet appointed him the first person to give the public call to prayer in recognition of his powerful, pleasing voice and personal piety. Bilal would later marry an Arab woman from a respectable tribe \u2013 unthinkable for an enslaved African in the pre-Islamic period.<\/p>\n
Black lives matter<\/span><\/h2>\n
For many modern Muslims, Bilal is the symbol of Islam\u2019s egalitarian message<\/a>, which in its ideal application recognizes no difference among humans on the basis of ethnicity or race but rather is more concerned with personal integrity. One of the United States\u2019 leading Black Muslim newspaper, published between 1975 and 1981, was called The Bilalian News<\/a>.<\/p>\n
More recently Yasir Qadhi, dean of the Islamic Seminary of America, in Texas, invoked Islam\u2019s egalitarian roots. In a June 5 public address, he said American Muslims, a population familiar with discrimination, \u201cmust fight racism, whether it is by education or by other means<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many Muslims in the U.S. are taking action, supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and protesting police brutality and systemic racism. Their actions reflect the revolutionary \u2013 and still unrealized \u2013 egalitarian message that Prophet Muhammad set down over 1,400 years ago as a cornerstone of the Muslim faith.<\/p>\n
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About the Author:<\/h3>\n
\n
Asma Afsaruddin<\/p>\n
Professor of Islamic Studies and former Chairperson, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source: theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n
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The Quran recognizes ‘no superiority of a white person over a black person.’ That notion, radical in 7th-century Arab society of slavery \u2013 remains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[341,2],"tags":[5344,5345,5346,5347,5348,5349,5350,5351,5352,5353,5354,5355,5356,5357,5358,167,5359,5360,5361,145,5362,5363,5364,1164,5365,5366,5367,5368,5369,5370,5371,5372,5373,5374,5375,3263,5376,5377,5378,5379,5380,5381,5382,5383,5384,5385,5386,5387,5388,5389,5390,5391],"class_list":["post-1025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acts-of-worship","category-new-muslims","tag-black-lives-matter-i-cant-breathe","tag-black-lives-matter-i-usa","tag-black-lives-matters","tag-challenging-racism-5k","tag-egalitarianism","tag-egalitarianism-3-principles","tag-egalitarianism-definition","tag-egalitarianism-examples","tag-egalitarianism-in-a-sentence","tag-egalitarianism-in-australia","tag-egalitarianism-meaning","tag-egalitarianism-meaning-in-hindi","tag-egalitarianism-vs-complementarianism","tag-egalitarianism-vs-feminism","tag-egalitarianisme-adalah","tag-featured","tag-i-black-lives-matter","tag-i-cant-breathe-black-lives-matter","tag-i-support-black-lives-matter","tag-prophet-muhammad","tag-prophet-muhammad-life","tag-prophet-muhammad-quotes","tag-prophet-muhammad-story","tag-racism","tag-racism-definition","tag-racism-i-america","tag-racism-i-australia","tag-racism-i-canada","tag-racism-i-football","tag-racism-i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings","tag-racism-i-south-africa","tag-racism-i-sport","tag-racism-i-the-uk","tag-racism-in-healthcare","tag-racism-in-spanish","tag-racism-meaning","tag-racisme-i-sport","tag-slavery","tag-slavery-i-africa","tag-slavery-i-america","tag-slavery-i-islam","tag-slavery-i-libya","tag-slavery-i-the-bible","tag-slavery-i-the-us","tag-slavery-i-usa","tag-slavery-in-africa","tag-tribalism","tag-tribalism-2020","tag-tribalism-in-south-africa","tag-tribalism-in-the-21st-century","tag-tribalism-psychology","tag-tribalism-solution"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Black-lives-matter.jpg?fit=1000%2C667&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ZvKT-gx","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quran-for-all.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}