Lights, Camera, Suspension: Freezing the Frame on the Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf-Anthem Controversy

Abstract

In March 1996, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (formerly Chris Jackson), Muslim guard of the Denver Nuggets, caused a stir when the NBA suspended him for refusing to stand during the national anthem. His stance, although consistent with the political orientation of many African-American Muslims, perplexed many immigrant Muslims unfamiliar with the long history of American dissent. By reexamining this controversy and the centrality of the media as the stage where the competition for religious authority was enacted, Abdul-Rauf's life serves as an ethnographic window into Muslim American communities and into competing constructions of race and patriotism.

Keywords:

• African-American Islam
• Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (formerly Chris Jackson)
• patriotism
• race

Notes

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, interview with author, July 28, 2001.

National Muslim organizations made public statements insisting that standing for the national anthem did not contravene Islam; only the Islamic Society of North America's (ISNA) statement was neutral. Jason Diamos reported in The New York Times on March 15, that ISNA's secretary general Sayyed M. Syeed told the Associated Press that the decision to stand for the anthem or the flag is a subjective one, and believers are responsible to their own consciences.

Karen Isaksen Leonard, Muslims in the United States: The State of Research (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003). Leonard offers a brief discussion of the disputed population figures among scholars.

Fareed H Nu'man, The Muslim Population in the United States. (Washington, D.C.: American Muslim Council, 1992).

Sherman A. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Jackson notes that the arrival of the post '65 immigrants transformed religious discourse in American mosques and that “the West” became the new “counter-category” of American Islam (72). Black Muslims often mistook immigrants' resentment and disdain for the West as a common opposition to white supremacy. The pursuit of the (racial) American dream that brought the immigrants to the U.S. often led them to distinguish whiteness (a status many immigrants coveted) from Western-ness (81). And thus, the anti-Western sentiments expressed in impassioned Friday sermons rarely connected to domestic social and political problems or to explicitly racial politics. Issues like police brutality, unemployment, drugs, and domestic abuse were overlooked because, in the eyes of immigrants, they paled as social justice concerns compared to oppressive Western policies in the Muslim world (72).

Daniel Pipes, “In Muslim America: A Presence and a Challenge,” National Review, February 21, 2000.

ibid.

Zareena Grewal. By the Dawn's Early Light: Chris Jackson's Journey to Islam. (Cinema Guild, 2004).

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, interview with author, July 28, 2001.

ibid.

ibid.

Grewal. By the Dawn's Early Light.

Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican.

Shareef Nasir, interview with author, July 28, 2001.

Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East 1945–2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

Gayraud Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of Afro-American People (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1983).

Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican. Jackson argues that although Black Religion is one among many Black religious traditions in the U.S., its hegemonic (but not universal) influence has been unparalleled in the U.S. over the past two centuries (25, 29).

ibid.

Kelly B. Koenig, “Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf's Suspension for Refusing to Stand for the National Anthem: A ‘Free Throw’ for the NBA and Denver Nuggets, or a ‘Slam Dunk’ Violation of Abdul-Rauf's Title VII Rights?” Washington University Law Quarterly 76(1) (1998). Available at 〈http://law.wustl.edu/WULQ/76-1/761-23.html〉.

Thomas v. Review Bd. of the Ind. Employment Sec. Div., quoted in ibid.

Thomas Hauser, Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times (Simon and Schuster, 1991), p. 172.

Dave Zirin, What's My Name Fool: Sports and Resistance in the United States (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005).

Mike Marqusee, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (New York: Verso, 1999) p. 5.

Jes Cortes, “Star Spangled Business: Labor, Patriotism, and Michael Jordan in a Nike Advertisement.”

Mike Marqusee, Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (New York: Verso, 1999). p. 295.

In my documentary the incident is mistakenly reported as occurring on August 1, 2001.

Leti Volpp, “The Citizen and the Terrorist,” September 11 in History: A Watershed Moment? (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 151.

Andrew Shryock, “New Images of Arab Detroit: Seeing Otherness and Identity through the Lens of September 11,” American Anthropologist 104: 919.

Sherman A. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 132–133.