A RELIGION, NOT A RACE:

How can a country supposedly founded on principles of religious freedom be so quick to support policies that violate the civil rights of Muslims? That's one of the questions at the heart of a new book, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, by Rutgers law professor Sahar Aziz.

The Racial Muslim proposes an answer: that some American politicians and institutions have perpetuated a narrative that Islam is not a religion, and thus doesn't deserve such protections. In this view, Islam is instead a political ideology, and Muslims--in reality worshippers from diverse racial backgrounds--are viewed as a racial group, subject to racist discrimination. This phenomenon is different from religious bigotry, which tends to focus on theological arguments about why a particular set of beliefs is wrong, the book argues; here, Aziz sees a situation in which Muslims as a group are assigned a set of negative traits, such as the false notions that they are inherently untrustworthy, uncivilized and violent.

On April 13, 1964, Malcolm X left the United States on a personal and spiritual journey through the Middle East and West Africa. By the time he returned on May 21, he'd visited Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, and Algeria.

In Saudi Arabia, he'd experienced what amounted to his second life-changing epiphany as he accomplished the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, and discovered an authentic Islam of universal respect and brotherhood. The experience changed Malcolm's worldview. Gone was the belief in White people as exclusively evil. Gone was the call for Black separatism. His voyage to Mecca helped him discover the atoning power of Islam as a means to unity as well as self-respect: "In my thirty-nine years on this earth," he would write in his autobiography, "the Holy City of Mecca had been the first time I had ever stood before the Creator of All and felt like a complete human being."

Tweet   @brothersjudd