As we close out Black History Month 2024 with the trials facing Gaza, the West Bank, and throughout the Muslim world, Arab world, and Africa, I would like to highlight a movement that is often not acknowledged, but serves as one of the bridges between Pan-Arabism, African American Muslims, and social justice. Addeynu Allahe Universal Arabic Association is an American orthodox Muslim movement that has operated below the radar for almost a century and has an interesting take on identity that might raise eyebrows in Black and Arab communities alike. However, as we will see, some of its progeny have been at the forefront of Black and Third World liberation movements. In this post, I will examine a manuscript I obtained from Abdurrashid Ishaq, a member of Addeynu Allahe who attended my Arabic classes in Greensboro, NC in 2012. His memory was fading and he could not tell me much about the document before he returned to Allah in 2019, but I will do my best to analyze the anonymous text and speak on one aspect of Addeynu Allahe’s legacy.

“Who Am I?”: A Forgotten Treatise on Black American Identity

The document is a manuscript of perhaps a talk given in 1969. It is directed to Elizabeth, NJ Board of Education following student requests to teach “Black Heritage” in its public schools. It consists of 28 pages, typed with a typewriter, containing prose, footnotes, a chart, and appendices of quotes from various Orientalist authors that elucidate some aspect of Arab and Hamitic identity.

The document was published a little over 30 years since the founding of AA in 1938 and almost 10 years after the death of Professor Muhammad Ezzeldeen. It presents him as a son of “Hamitic Arab” parents and someone whose post-secondary education came from traveling to countries such as Morocco, Libya, Turkey, and Egypt. He is even said to have worked as an Egyptologist and obtained a doctorate from al-Azhar University.[1]

With regards to identity, the author seeks to deconstruct the aptness of the terms Negro and Black. Negro, he says, is equivalent to the Latin word for dead and Black is insufficient because it conceals the national heritage of our people. Rather, he sought to connect so-called African Americans to Ham, son of Noah, who represents ancient Egypt, Ethiopia, and the rest of Africa. On top of that, he recognized the connection between the ancient Egyptian language and Arabic.

The author also provides a linguistic analysis of the Arabic words in question. He pulls from Hans Wehr’s Arabic Dictionary to demonstrate the positive connotations to the root s-w-d (سود) from which the word black aswad (أسود) is derived. He does the same with the word Ham, assigning it to the root ḥ-m-y (حمي), which connotes protection, rather than ḥ-m-w (حمو), which connotes warmth. Nor does he connect it with the ancient Egyptian root Kham (black) as in Khemet.

Additionally, the author takes a brief historical approach to this identity. He discusses Moorish exploration to the Americas prior to Columbus and Muslims taken as slaves. He concludes by saying their origins were from parts of Africa, Arabia, Asia, and Europe that were ruled by Hamites and visually maps this genealogy in a chart.

An Analysis of Language and Identity

This document is significant because it is a rare approach to identity; one that is controversial. Some debate the Hamitic Arab identity on grounds that it seeks kinship with a people who are not “Black” or may even be “anti-Black,” which is tantamount to cultural apostasy. Others my decry it as another form of cultural appropriation perpetrated by a lost and confused people. Others might take issue with its use of antiquated Biblical terms or the fact it conflates ethnic identity with religious identity.

Cultural Apostasy

With regards to the critique that the Hamitic Arab approach is cultural apostasy, the author makes it clear that that is not the case. Assuming that Black is an appropriate descriptor, the author sought to show that it has a negative connotation in English, but a positive connotation in Arabic. Similarly, he acknowledges that Bilād al-Sūdān was the name of the lands in Africa from which our ancestors came. This further solidifies the historical continuity between so-called African Americans and the Blacks of Africa.

Arabism

While the thought of African Americans calling themselves Arabs is an odd proposition, and is certainly not explained in depth in this piece, on face value can be considered cultural apostasy from an African American perspective and cultural appropriation from an Arab perspective. Yet the pretext for such an assertion comes from the Arabic saying that is often mistaken for a hadith: an Arab is whoever speaks the Arabic language (من تكلم بالعربية فهو عربي). To Arabs, this is a much more sound definition of Arab identity than one that favors biological lineage. Arabs are the descendants of people who were not biologically Arab, which would thus cause a paradox. So the criteria of Arabness or ʿUrūbah is proficiency in spoken Arabic. Perhaps the unintended result of such a definition is that it allows people from various backgrounds to acquire an Arab identity by acquiring the language. This is how many populations in the Levant and North Africa were able to acquire an Arab identity without intermarriage or conversion to Islam. This further debunks assertions that Islam is an Arab religion.

Terminology

The reliance on the Biblical term Hamitic can be considered antiquated and difficult to define. It is interesting that the author prefers to define Ham by an Arabic definition rather than a Hebrew or ancient Egyptian definition. His choice of etymology is also unconventional. Hans Wehr has an entry for Ham that is not at all informative, but he chose to relate it the word for protection. I am not convinced that the connection between the two is verified linguistically.

We generally understand that Ham from the Bible was the son of Noah who is considered the progenitor of the civilizations and people in which dark-skin dominates, Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan. What the text does not address is the so-called “Curse of Ham,” which Noah actually pronounced on Canaan after Ham supposedly sodomized his father or witnessed his nakedness while he slept in a drunken stupor, according to the Biblical narrative. There is no such reference in the Arabic scripture and is categorically rejected by Islam, which upholds the piety of all the prophets of God. No doubt a Christian audience may have pause in embracing a Hamitic identity, not to mention an Arab one.

Ethnicity or Religion

Another criticism of the author’s approach is that it focuses primarily on ethnic identity rather than a religious identity or morality. The author does not explicitly connect this inherited identity to spirituality although it underlies his argument. Perhaps, it is because he was addressing the Board of Education, a government entity that cannot endorse religion, that he is silent on this aspect. Or perhaps, during the 60’s, when Islam was not known to most African Americans and its most popular expression was heterodox, it was preferable not to get into specifics. Whatever the reason, the author does not bridge that gap despite its religious undertones.

In total, the entire philosophy of Addeynu Allahe cannot be gleaned from this one piece. However, we get a keen look into the author’s thought process and the tools by which he arrives at his conclusions concerning the true identity of African Americans. While on the surface, his conclusions seem to endorse cultural apostasy, promote Arabism, make use of problematic terms, and conflate between ethnicity and religion, he is debating and drafting an ontology of racial discourse that runs counter to the unquestioned status quo discourse on race. Perhaps this does not sound revolutionary nowadays, the truth of their legacy is to the contrary.

A Revolutionary Legacy

I gained some clarity on the contents of this document from the American Muslim Centennial Banquet held in Edison, NJ February 17, 2024. Shaykh Muhammad Jaaber’s talk followed the same historical sequence as the document updated with newer information and more recent figures in the history of Islam in America. His presentation highlighted the presence of Addeynu Allahe and orthodox Muslims in the fabric of Black history.

Just a month before, I attended the funeral of Baba Sekou Odinga, which was held at Brooklyn’s Masjid At-Taqwa. It was attended by his immediate and extended family, the local Muslim and conscious community, and a cohort of the living luminaries of the Black liberation movement, like Baba James Small, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Bilal Sunni Ali, Dr. Kokayi Patterson, and many more. Baba Sekou is remembered as one of the liberators of Assata Shakur and member of the celebrated Shakur family and Black Liberation Army (BLA). However, it might be easy to overlook his spiritual lineage, which goes back to Prof. Muhammad Ezzeldin.

El-Hajj Salahdeen “Aba” Shakur was a member of both Addeynu Allahe Arabic Association under Imam Hesham Jaaber and Malcolm X’s Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was the father of the revolutionaries, Zayd Malik Shakur and Lumumba Shakur. As members of their circle embraced Islam and political consciousness, they were absorbed into the Shakur family similar to the mawālāt system in early Islam in which Arab Muslim tribes would adopt non-Arab Muslim groups, eventually absorbing them into the tribe. Baba Sekou was from that circle and upheld his commitment to the political struggle as well as to his Islam until his death.[2]

The Shakur tribe of Hamitic Arabs have militantly stood against the oppression of Black people in the United States as well as oppressed people around the world. They serve as the bridge between the younger generations and the generation of Prof. Ezzeldeen, Malcolm, Shaykh Daoud Faisal, and our Maroon ancestors, merging social justice with the moral rectitude of Islam. Much of this story has yet to be told.

Notes

[1] It has yet to be determined the influence of the Young Muslim Men’s Association (Jamʿīyat Al-Shubbān al-Muslimūn) in Cairo, which sought to revive the Arab identity and culture in the early half of the 20th century. If he was involved with this organization during the 1930’s when he was there, he would have rubbed elbows with the likes of a young Maḥmūd Shākir and ʿIzz al-Dīn al-Qassām, two figures who would defend the Arab world in drastically different ways.

[2] Special thanks to Akil Fahd for compiling much of this information.