Black Muslim brilliance: Confronting antiblackness and Islamophobia through transnational educational migration

Abstract

Black Muslim youth confront antiblackness and Islamophobia in US schools and society, yet few studies examine how this population navigates these intersecting oppressions. In addition, there has been a dearth of scholarly literature that explores the educational spaces in which Black Muslim youth are nurtured and affirmed. This article addresses these understudied areas by examining a community of African American Muslim youth who, amidst the overlapping deprivations of antiblackness and Islamophobia, opt to leave the USA and continue their education abroad. Based on a 14-month ethnographic study at an Islamic school in Medina Baye, Senegal that was established for African American Muslim youth, and additional fieldwork throughout the USA, this article utilizes data from classroom observations, participant observations, and interviews. I argue that the school, the African American Islamic Institute Qur’an School, and the communities related to it in Senegal and the USA operate from an axiomatic stance of Black Muslim brilliance. I further argue that such an affirmation of students’ inherent capacities expands these African American Muslim youth’s imaginative possibilities and provides them with new ways of envisioning what it means to learn at the intersection of being young, Black, and Muslim. This research: (1) demonstrates the affordances of transnational educational migration as a route to educational justice for Black students; (2) contributes a diasporic and intersectional perspective to understanding Black Muslim youth’s educational experiences; and (3) illustrates the value of providing opportunities for Black youth from the USA to study abroad on the African continent.

Keywords:

• International education
• Black Muslim youth
• transnational migration
• educational practices
• socio-political conditions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In this article, I use the term Black as a descriptor for all people with discernable African ancestry, including those from the USA, the Caribbean, and the African continent. I use the term African American to refer specifically to those people who are the descendants of African captives forcibly brought to what is now the USA during the transatlantic slave trade.

2 The school was originally called Nasrul Ilm, a reference to “Jamiat Nasrul Ilm,” which was the name Shaykh Ibrahim gave to his global spiritual community. Jamiat Nasrul Ilm is an Arabic phrase that translates to “the community of beneficial knowledge.” Following the establishment of AAII as an NGO, the school became referred to by the name of the NGO.

3 Memorizing the entire Qur’an by heart is an undertaking that Muslims throughout the globe aspire to complete. Many Islamic schools and programs are dedicated exclusively to guiding students through the memorization of the Qur’an.

4 The school day is structured around the first and last Islamic prayers of the day. Because the exact times of these prayers are determined by the position of the sun, and therefore vary depending on the time of year, the exact start and end times of the school day also change accordingly.

5 The recitation of the Qur’an is governed by tajweed, an intricate system of rules regarding the pronunciation of words and letters that demarcate whether one’s recitation is considered technically precise and sonically pleasing. Students memorizing the Qur’an must obtain both fluency in reading the Arabic script and mastery of tajweed.

6 This participant employs colloquial definitions used by Muslims to describe varying levels of knowledge of the Arabic language within the context of religious acts. According to this usage, a person who can read the Qur’an in Arabic is one who can fluently decipher and pronounce Arabic letters and words. Such a person may or may not have the ability to understand or translate the meaning of the Arabic text.

7 The Qur’an contains 77,430 words and is divided into 114 chapters. The exact number of pages varies based on the formatting of the copy, but one widely used version of the Qur’an is 604 pages in length.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Samiha Rahman

Samiha Rahman is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development at California State University Long Beach. Her scholarship examines how youth of color in the U.S. and on the African continent understand their identities, grapple with inequalities in their lives, and engage in activism to transform their communities. Her areas of research include African and African diasporic youth, anthropology of education, transnational migration, Muslim youth, and student activism.