Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition: Possibilities of a Rapprochement Wesley Williams In memory of the late Imam Warith Deen Mohammed (1933-2008) Abstract Elijah Muhammad declared unapologetically that “God is a man.” This anthropomorphist doctrine does violence to modern norma- tive Islamic articulations of tawú¥d (monotheism), the articula- tions of which involve God’s “otherness” from the created world. The Nation of Islam (NOI), therefore, has been the target of polemics from Muslim leaders who, from within and without the United States, have declared its irredeemable heterodoxy. But in premodern Islam, heresy was in the eye of the beholder and “orthodoxy” was a precarious and shifting paradigm. This paper attempts to, in the words of Zafar Ishaq Ansari, “examine how the ‘Nation of Islam’ fits into the framework of Islamic heresiology.” Introduction In 1981, Zafar Ishaq Ansari published a groundbreaking article on “Aspects of Black Muslim Theology,” namely, the theological claims of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam (NOI).1 These claims are quite eccentric and have no obvious basis in the time-honored doctrines of the more traditional articulations of Islam.2 In this remarkably thorough study, Ansari attempted to view the Nation’s theology “in the context of the religious experience of the Blackamericans, especially the Black sects and cults which arose in the early decades of” the twentieth century.3 This sociological approach was not Wesley Williams recently defended his Ph.D. dissertation, entitled “Tajall¥ wa-Ru’yŒ: A Study of Anthropomorphic Theophany and Visio Dei in the Hebrew Bible, the Qur’an, and Early Sunni Islam,” with the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan. His research interests include Islamic studies, the Hebrew Bible, and African-American religions. PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk uncommon.4 He was convinced that, while the substance of these doctrines had little to do with Islam and resemble rather the Christianity (and, more minimally, the Judaism) of the NOI’s urban American environment, ulti- mately the Nation derived its eclectic theology from neither of these world religions. Rather, “the reservoir on which the Black Muslims have drawn is the religious traditions of the Blacks, especially the ideas and attitudes prevalent among them during the first decades of this century.”5 By “reli- gious traditions of the Blacks,” Ansari seems to have had in mind that non- denominational folk orientation called “Black Religion” that characterized black religiosity in the urban areas at the beginning of the last century.6 His confidence in a non-Islamic “folk” context in which to properly understand Elijah Muhammad’s claims did not, however, preclude an awareness of a possible broader, distinctly Islamic context within which Black Muslim the- ology might be profitably studied: It would be interesting to attempt to examine how the “Nation of Islam” fits into the framework of Islamic heresiology … During its historical career, as is well known, a large number of sects arose from the Islamic body politic. Some of these sects deviated from the accepted doctrines of Islam in such a fundamental manner and adopted such a hostile posture that they ceased to have any relationship whatsoever to the main body of Islam (e.g. Baha’ism, Qadiyanism). There are other sects which remained on the fringe (e.g., certain extremist groups among the Shi`ah and the Khawarij). There are still other sects within the Muslim body politic (e.g., the moderate Shi`ah and the Khawarij) and are considered an integral part of the ummah. In this spectrum, where ought one to place the “Nation of Islam”?7 Ansari raises a very relevant question. The polyphonous and, indeed, cacophonous nature of premodern Islamic theological discourse is well doc- umented.8 Though it might be going too far to speak of distinct Islams in the way that Jacob Neusner speaks of distinct Judaisms,9 it is the case that early Islam was not monolithic.10 Even such conventions as the “main body of Islam,” while not totally anachronistic, must be used with more precision than is generally done by both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars if they are to have any substantive meaning at all. When viewed against the backdrop of this theological polyphony, how Islamic or un-Islamic might the NOI and its doctrines look? The most distinctive and defining aspect of the Nation’s theology is, no doubt, Elijah Muhammad’s radical claims about God.11 As Ansari noted: 62 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk Th(is) concept (of God) … is quite distinct, and indeed unique. Despite Islamic trappings, it is far too foreign for ordinary Muslims even to under- stand, let alone accept … The distinguishing characteristic of this concept of God is its unmistakable anthropomorphism.12 It is Elijah Muhammad’s bold claim that “God is a man, and we just can- not make Him other than man,”13 which is most at odds with traditional Muslim theology14; sympathetic Muslim writers often overlook or minimize this aspect of NOI dogma.15 Islam is often viewed as the religion par excel- lence of divine transcendence.16 God is khilŒf al-`Œlam, “the absolute diver- gence from the world,” and this characteristically Islamic doctrine of mukhŒlafah, “(divine) otherness,” precludes divine corporeality and anthro- pomorphism.17 The NOI has thus been the target of numerous polemics from Muslim leaders within and without the United States declaring its irre- deemable heterodoxy.18 But as C. Eric Lincoln pointed out: “Elijah Muham- mad did not achieve orthodoxy for the Nation of Islam, but orthodoxy was not his goal.”19 Rather, he was unapologetic and openly rejected the ortho- dox belief in divine incoporeality: The ignorant belief of the Orthodox Muslims that Allah (God) is some formless something and yet He has an Interest in our affairs, can be con- demned in no limit of time. I would not give two cents for that kind of God in which they believe.20 The status of various aspects of Black Muslim theology vis-à-vis the larger Islamic tradition is too frequently judged on the basis of an anachro- nistic view of the latter.21 Indeed, studies of Islam in America in general and of African-American Islam in particular are not infrequently dogged by a fundamental misunderstanding of Islam as an historical tradition, a misun- derstanding evidenced by a tendency to objectify and essentialize Islam.22 Thus Yvonne Haddad and Jane Smith, who have studied the similarly eccen- tric Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) founded in 1913 by Noble Drew Ali in the context of the “sectarian challenge in Islam,” suggest that Islam from earliest times has witnessed theological and political tensions between a “dominant body of worshippers, those who … identified them- selves as ‘orthodox’ and opposition groups that have tended to be viewed by the orthodox as sectarian deviations.”23 Envisioned here is the 1,400-year existence of a “mainline Sunni Islam,” to which Elijah Muhammad’s doc- trine is “sharply contrasted.”24 According to their reading, these “proto- Islamic” groups of urban America can be situated within the context of his- torical Islam, albeit on the sectarian margins.25 Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 63 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk Haddad and Smith’s concept of the (nearly) timeless struggle between “orthodox” and “sectarians” is patently ahistorical.26 Not that Islam failed to develop the mechanisms whereby “orthodox” and “sectarian” may be delin- eated.27 It did develop such mechanisms.28 But it is the case that, as in those other great monotheistic traditions of Judaism and Christianity, “sectarian- ism” preceded and, in a real sense, defined “orthodoxy” in Islam.29 It is also the case that these pre-orthodox “sectarians” of early Islam considered them- selves perfectly orthodox and the other articulations as sectarian.30 What is more, the theological tastes and preferences of this “dominant body of wor- shippers” often changed markedly, such that the history-of-religions’ truism, “one generation’s orthodoxy can be the next generation’s heresy” and vice versa, is particularly apt for the history of Islam.31 A more accurate image is surely one of diverse intellectual trends and influential personalities only later spawning distinct schools of thought that competed with each other for hegemonic recognition as “the right way.”32 It was still later that some of these articulations would be codified as “orthodox” and “heresy.” This point is well-made by Edward E. Curtis IV, who emphasizes “the changing nature of Islam’s tradition, its dynamism, and the provisional char- acter of its elements.”33 Rightly dismissing the erroneous notion of any “one” normative definition of Islam and its boundaries,34 he suggests that the study of African-American Islam has been too consumed with dismissing certain Muslims as cultists, heretics, and sectarians. All of these pejoratives and unhelpful labels presume, by their comparison to “orthodox” Muslims, a normative Islam that in no time and in no place has ever existed.35 This is an appropriately measured statement based on a careful reading of the history of Islam’s developing tradition. Yet in juxtaposing this discur- sive tradition with the theology of Elijah Muhammad, even Curtis is unable to completely avoid essentializing the former. In regards to his central anthropomorphic doctrine, Curtis claims: In the historical terms of scholarly Sunni discourse, these statements seem wholly inconsistent; it is not possible to believe simultaneously that a human being appeared as God and that God is One.36 While this statement rings true as far as it goes – the (non-mystical) Sunni textual tradition shows a consistent rejection of the largely Shi`i ten- dency to identify individuals with God or with divinity – the historical Sunni scholarly discourse could indeed accommodate belief in God appearing as a non-specific – though generously described – human being (i.e., anthropo- morphically) and simultaneously being One.37 Indeed, the “foundations” of Sunnism proved quite accommodating to this.38 64 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk In early Islam, “heresy” was in the eye of the beholder and “orthodoxy” was a precarious and frequently shifting construct. Can these African- American “proto-Islamic” groups and their doctrines be situated (doctri- nally) among the competing “orthodoxies” of classical Islam? Does Elijah Muhammad’s anthropomorphist doctrine have any serious precedents in Islam’s premodern period? We will present in this study evidence of an important precedent for the most defining aspect of Black Muslim theology, a precedent not just from the “sectarian” margins of the classical Muslim tra- dition,39 but from its very (epi)center. These questions are not simply academic. Identifying possible prece- dents for Elijah Muhammad’s most distinctive – and disqualifying – doc- trines within “mainstream” classical Islamic discourse has, in my mind, far reaching implications for the future of African-American Islam. Inasmuch as African-American Muslims constitute one of the largest groups of Muslims in America, the implications for American Islam generally are equally far reaching. The most immediate impact, I suggest, will be on the current dis- cussion of identity and authority in American Islam. As American Muslims are deeply involved in the process of determining the nature and authen- ticity of an indigenous American Islam,40 the question of identity is the “mother of all issues, umm al-masŒ’il.”41 Equally pressing is the question of who may legitimately participate in this process. The hegemony of the immigrant Muslim leadership in America and the concomitant non-recognition of indigenous (i.e., African-American) inter- pretations of Islam raise the issue of authority.42 Urgent is not only the ques- tion of who are the bona fide members of the American ummah, but also who has the authority to speak on its behalf and offer interpretations of Islam. If African-American Muslims are to (re)gain an authoritative voice, the continued adherence of the NOI under Minister Louis Farrakhan to the anthropomorphist doctrine of Elijah Muhammad begs the question of his future role and the role of the Black Muslims in general. This question is rel- evant because, while the membership of the NOI is likely relatively small, Farrakhan’s influence has always reached well beyond the “registered” numbers.43 We will conclude this discussion with suggesting some sociolog- ical implications of our findings. African-American Islam and the Authority to Define In his latest book, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking toward the Third Resurrection (2005), Sherman Jackson makes an important and no doubt Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 65 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk seminal contribution to the discussion of American Islam. Calling attention to the fact that the African-American Muslim population had its genesis well before, and thus independent of, the influx of foreign-born Muslims into the United States following the repeal of the National Origins Act and the Asiatic Barred Zone in 1965, Jackson points out that the “cultural legiti- macy” and esteem Islam enjoyed for a long time in the black community as a whole,44 a circumstance that is no doubt the sine qua non of the later phe- nomenal spread of Sunni Islam among Blacks, goes back to the “Islamizing” efforts of the so-called “proto-Islamic” movements of the early twentieth century: Noble Drew Ali’s MSTA and, especially, Elijah Muhammad’s NOI.45 As noted, the doctrinal eccentricities of these movements, particu- larly of the NOI, provoked the ire and condemnation of some traditional Muslim leaders (indigenous and immigrant) who did not hesitate to declare these groups and their leaders to be patently “un-Islamic.” Grounded as they were in the distinctly domestic phenomenon of “Black Religion” and lack- ing any relationship to or even real knowledge of the classical tradition of Islam (what Jackson calls “the super-tradition of historical Islam”), these proto-Islamic groups proved incapable of authenticating themselves in the face of the new critical mass of immigrant Muslims hailing largely from the Middle East and South Asia and who, by dint of their origin alone, were pre- sumed to be the authorities on the intellectual legacy of historical Islam and thus the legitimate definers of a properly constituted “Islamic” life in America. The MSTA and the NOI’s general unfamiliarity with the “her- meneutic and juridical tradition of historical Islam,” as well as that of other African-American Muslims, meant that they could not appeal to this super- tradition themselves in order to authenticate their doctrines as Islamic.46 Upon Elijah Muhammad’s passing in 1975, an event marking in NOI historiography the end of the so-called “First Resurrection” (i.e., African Americans’ “resurrection” out of the “grave of ignorance” into the light of “Islam”), leadership of the Nation was assumed by Elijah’s son, Wallace D. Mohammad (the late Imam Warithuddin Muhammad), who boldly transi- tioned the NOI away from the eccentric doctrines of his father and into mainstream Sunni Islam. In 1976, he changed the movement’s name to the World Community of al-Islam in the West (WCIW). Meanwhile, after a brief showing of solidarity with Imam Warithuddin, Minister Louis Farra- khan, national spokesman for Elijah Muhammad and the NOI at the time of the former’s passing, rejected the transition and left the new WCIW to reconstitute the old Nation of Islam. This period of divided leadership on the basis of Elijah Muhammad’s legacy has come to be known as the “Second Resurrection.”47 66 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk Elijah Muhammad, despite his “tenuous relation with the sources and traditions of historical Islam,”48 ceded no authority to the growing immigrant Muslim community to define Islam for him and his followers.49 If any chal- lenged his interpretations of the Qur’an, it was they, with their tafs¥r bi al- ma’th´r (tradition-based interpretations), who misunderstood the Book, not he.50 He, the claim was, had received his interpretations directly from God.51 However, during the transition to Sunni Islam, Imam Warithuddin, who jet- tisoned his father’s claim of divine authority and the doctrines based upon it, did recognize the authority of the new (largely) Arab and Indo-Pakistani adjudicators of all things “Islamic” in America. In so doing, Jackson and others argue, he relinquished to the new régime of immigrant Islam the reli- gious authority that had theretofore always been the preserve of African- American Islam.52 But the latter, in all of its articulations, harbored from the beginning a “critical weakness” that made this “régime change” as inevitable as it was consequential: non-mastery of the classical tradition of historical Islam and the consequent inability to appeal to it for purposes of self-authentication. African-American Muslims, now predominantly Sunni, could no longer define for themselves and for non-Muslim American observers what it meant to be Muslim. Henceforth, that authority rested squarely and exclu- sively with the new immigrant Muslim community. But, argues Jackson, in reality this community, despite the presump- tions, was only slightly less tenuously related to and only marginally more knowledgeable of this super-tradition of historical Islam than were those indigenous Muslims who were expected to recognize its self-authenticating authority.53 Under the new régime, instead of insights from the classical Islamic tradition, the priorities, perspectives, historical experiences, and interpretations of Arabs and other immigrant Muslims are made normative and all “Islamicity” in America is measured in terms of how intimately one identifies with these. The consequences of this régime change for African- American Muslims were significant. The introduction of Immigrant Islam into the collective space of Black- american Muslims resulted in the latter’s loss of their interpretive voice as well as their monopoly over what had functioned as a bona fide, indigenous tradition of proto-Islamic and Islamic thought and exegesis … From this point on, virtually every indigenous insight, proclivity or ambi- tion would be impugned or marginalized via a prima facie presumption that all that was alien and meaningless to the immigrant Muslim was alien and meaningless to Islam.54 Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 67 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk African-American Islam has thus fallen into a crisis of authenticity and an authority deficit. Lacking the requisite knowledge and training in the tra- ditional Islamic sciences that would allow them to appeal to the classical tra- dition in order to authenticate their interpretations, African-American Muslims have effectively lost the authority to define Islam for themselves and through the prism of their own socio-historical experiences in the same way that other Muslims do. No longer can they independently and auton- omously participate in the enterprise of defining for themselves a properly constituted Islamic life in America. The Challenge of a Third Resurrection and the Future for Black Muslim Theology This crisis of African-American Islam can be overcome, Jackson suggests, by African-American (or Blackamerican, to use his term) Muslim mastery and appropriation of the classical tradition of historical Islam, a develop- ment he calls the “Third Resurrection” in recognition of the genetic link between the spread of (Sunni) Islam among African-American Muslims and the earlier “proto-Islamic” movements. During this envisioned era, African- American Muslims will acquire competency in the classical tradition and apply it to situations and in ways that reflect their own indigenous concerns and perspectives, rather than those of their immigrant co-religionists. Such a development would allow them to “(re)emerge as self-authenticating sub- jects rather than dependent objects of and in this tradition.”55 During this dis- pensation, the agenda of Black Religion and the charismatic leadership of the First and Second Resurrections will be replaced as authenticating agents by learned appeal to the sources and authorities, though not necessarily to any fixed doctrines, of historical Islam. [T]he Third Resurrection will look to the classical legacy as a starting point rather than the end of its contemplation. More importantly, the struc- tural features of classical Islam will confer upon Blackamerican Muslims both the right and the responsibility to develop their own body of concrete doctrine.56 Jackson appeals to the ecumenicism of the premodern Muslim religious discourse as such a structural feature to be enlisted by the Third Resurrection into the cause of African-American Islam. Unlike Christianity with its ecu- menical councils, Islam chose not to adjudicate doctrinal disputes through a centralized ecclesiastical authority. Instead, the unanimous consensus (ijmŒ`) of the community of religious scholars and jurists regarding a doctrinal and/or 68 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk juridical point was the mechanism by which a doctrine or ruling was made probative on the community as a whole. Short of such a consensus, no doc- trine could be rightfully declared the Islamic position, nor could a doctrine be declared un-Islamic so long as it is grounded in the authoritative sources, based on recognized principles of interpretation, and did not violate a pre- existing unanimous consensus. Working within this framework and having mastered the classical tradition, African-American Muslims would conceiv- ably be able to proffer their own interpretations and get them recognized as authentically Islamic, thus becoming independent agents rather than passive recipients in the process of formulating doctrine.57 I share Jackson’s vision of a Third Resurrection. He has brilliantly illu- minated the path that African-American Muslims must tread if they hope to preserve their integrity and identity as both black and Muslim, and to regain the self-authenticating authority they lost as a consequence of the post-1965 “régime change.” Self-authentication can be achieved now, in any generally recognized way, only through the ability to responsibly appeal to the “super- tradition of historical Islam.” Here is the relevant question for our purposes: if this Third Resurrection is the future of African-American Islam, what role might these seminal “proto-Islamic” groups play in this development? In Jackson’s view, it seems, none. Not that able Black Muslims and Moorish Americans cannot acquire the requisite learning in the classical tradition; rather, it seems that Jackson would argue that it is these groups’ irredeemable heterodoxy – their “theo- logical and doctrinal excesses, omissions, and downright blasphemes”58 – that preclude a future for them in the new “classical sources and authorities” – centered era. These groups are of little or no significance today, he argues, and as early as 1976 the NOI had “ceased to be a contender in the ongoing competition to define Islam in America.”59 The astonishing success of the historic Million Man March in 1995 as well as a respected moderator’s injection of Louis Farrakhan into an important Democratic presidential debate in 2008 suggests that the reconstituted NOI has more than a “little” significance today. However, it is indeed doubtful whether this sociopoliti- cal significance alone could render the NOI again “a contender in the ongo- ing competition to define Islam in America.” In addition, Jackson is able to situate the NOI’s doctrinal “irregularities” in the context of classical Islam’s theological pluralism. Like Ansari, he frames that context by Islam’s heresiographical tradition and notes: While certainly condemnable from the standpoint of Muslim orthodoxy, these infelicities (i.e., God is a man, God is black, Elijah Muhammad is a Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 69 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk prophet, Noble Drew Ali is the author of another revelation, etc.) are no more outlandish than some of what we encounter in the early history of the Muslim world, where, incidentally, the people knew Arabic and had direct access to Muslim Scripture (Qur’an and hadith) and Muslim scholarship.60 Jackson cites exemplary precedents for some of the NOI’s heterodox doctrines from the famous work, MaqŒlŒt al-IslŒm¥y¥n (Doctrines of Those Who Associate Themselves with Islam), by the renowned theologian al- Ash’ari (d. 935), which chronicled various doctrinal trends among the early Muslims. He cites 1. The Bayaniyah sect, which held that God existed in the image of man and that He would entirely perish, except for His face. 2. The Mughiriyah sect, which held that its founder was a prophet and that God was a crowned man of light. 3. The Khattabiyah sect, which held that all Shi`i imams were prophets and messengers of God. 4. A Murji’ah sect that held that deeds were irrelevant to the constitution of belief, that belief is purely a matter of having the knowledge of God, and that ignorance of God is unbelief. 5. The Azariqah sect, which held that every major sin (e.g., adultery, wine-drinking) is an act of unbelief and that the territories of those Muslims who disagree with them are non-Muslim, enemy territories. Here, Jackson has taken an important step toward answering Ansari’s above question regarding the NOI’s place within the spectrum of sectarian thought in early Islam: every group cited by Jackson was an extremist (Shi`i61) group that is generally considered to have “deviated from the accepted doctrines of Islam in such a fundamental manner … that they ceased to have any relationship whatsoever to the main body of Islam.” Thus, as suggested already by Haddad and Smith, it is the sectarian margins of early Islam that provide the framework from which to view these “proto- Islamic” groups in America. Inasmuch as the anthropomorphist doctrines of the Bayaniyah and the Mughiriyah helped ultimately render them interest- ing side notes of history with no relevance to the modern Muslim world, the NOI’s anthropomorphist doctrine could only render it inconsequential to the future of Islam in America, at least in terms of that “ongoing competition to define Islam in America.” 70 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk The examples cited by Jackson from al-Ash`ari’s MaqŒlŒt al-Islam¥y¥n are as good as any to be found in that work. It is the case, however, that al- Ash`ari’s intent was specifically to log “sectarian” views as he understood this to mean. What were the views of the orthodox during al-Ash`ari’s time, the contemporary followers of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855)62? With them we find equally relevant parallels to Elijah Muhammad’s anthropo- morphist doctrine. These parallels re-situate the contextual view of Black Muslim theology from the sectarian margins of the classical tradition to within its epicenter. In this section of this study, I shall illuminate these par- allels and draw out their implications for the possibilities of a future role for the NOI in the third resurrection. From Orthodoxy to Eccentricity: Elijah Muhammad in the Context of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal In the ninth century, Sunni orthodoxy consolidated itself in Baghdad, and it did so around the theological creed of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855), eponym of the Hanbali school, one of the four legal schools recognized as orthodox by all Sunni Muslims.63 As noted by Christopher Melchert, the primary biog- rapher of Ibn Hanbal today: “Ahmad ibn Hanbal … was the central, defin- ing figure of Sunnism in the earlier ninth century CE.”64 His high reputation was initially based on his assiduous work as a collector of hadith, the trans- mitted reports of Prophet Muhammad. But when the `Abbasid caliph al- Ma’mun (d. 833) instituted a miúnah (inquisition) in 833 in order to force community assent to a particular sectarian dogma Ibn Hanbal refused to comply, thereby becoming the hero-victim of the affair and the champion of the strictest articulation of (emergent) Sunni orthodoxy.65 At the center of this orthodoxy was an anthropomorphist doctrine based largely on a literalist reading of the anthropomorphic descriptions of God found in the Qur’an and, especially, the Sunnah of the Prophet.66 Ibn Hanbal was an anthropomorphist in the strict sense of affirming for God an anthropoid form.67 He was not an anthropomorphist in the loose sense in which this word is generally used by Muslim and non-Muslim scholars translating the Arabic term mushabbih. This latter term, though normally (carelessly) translated as “anthropomorphist,”68 literally means “likener,” as in “one who likens the Creator to his creation.” On the basis of a Qur’anic passage (al-Shura [42]:11 “There is nothing like Him”), Ibn Hanbal, in agreement with practically all Sunni schools of thought, denied that God was like His creation.69 But this passage is ambiguous Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 71 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk (mutashŒbih), Ibn Hanbal claimed, and requires a proper, not-so-obvious interpretation.70 And the proper interpretation does not suggest that God is incorporeal. As Elijah Muhammad would do later, Ibn Hanbal rejected the idea that God is “an invisible spirit that exists everywhere,” as alleged by the heretics.71 Rather, he was emphatic that God had an anthropoid form accord- ing to which He created Adam’s form; however, His form was “transcen- dent” in that it lacks the limitations and fallibilities found in the human “copy.”72 It is in this latter sense that “none is like Him.”73 This particular doctrine of “transcendent anthropomorphism”74 did not derive explicitly from the Qur’an, but instead is based largely on a prophetic report found in the most authoritative and orthodox hadith collections, according to which Prophet Muhammad said “God created Adam according to His form.”75 This report was controversial in Ibn Hanbal’s day and beyond.76 Some scholars read the possessive pronoun “His” (hi) of “His form” as “his,” namely, Adam’s form. That is to say that God created Adam in Paradise in the same form that he, Adam, had when he was sent to Earth. In other words, Adam was not a giant in Paradise who then shrunk, as some had claimed.77 On the other hand, other scholars had no problem reading “His form.” The famous hadith scholar Abu Muhammad ibn Qutayba (d. 889) thus declared: “God possesses an actual form, though it is not like other forms, and He fashioned Adam after it.”78 This latter position was that of Ibn Hanbal. He states in one of his creeds, “God created Adam with His hand and in His form,”79 and argues elsewhere: “Adam was created in the form of the Merciful (i.e., God), as comes in a report from the Messenger of God ...”80 Ibn Hanbal rejected the exegetical devices that read “his form” rather than “His form.” When asked about a contemporary’s statement that “he (Adam) is according to the form of Adam, He is not according to the form of the Merciful,” Ibn Hanbal reportedly responded: “He who says that God created Adam according to the form of Adam is a jahm¥ (disbeliever).”81 Equally significant for Ibn Hanbal’s theological weltanschauung were the reports purporting to describe Prophet Muhammad’s alleged visionary encounter with God.82 The Prophet is supposed to have seen God in “the most beautiful form (aúsan s´ra),” that of a beardless, wavy-haired young man (shabb amrad ja`d).83 Whether this vision of God was with the Prophet’s eyes or in his sleep, he saw Him in reality (rŒ’hu úaqqŒn), Ibn Hanbal argued, “for the visions of the prophets are real.”84 While these reports were very contro- versial, affirmed by some and rejected completely by others, Ibn Hanbal not only affirmed them but made belief in their literal meaning a fundamental component of a Muslim’s faith.85 He was not alone in this,86 but it was cer- 72 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk tainly the unequivocal support given by this “champion of the Sunna”87 that made these reports and their anthropomorphic presentation of God a defining characteristic of Sunni Islam for the next four centuries.88 When Caliph al- Qa`im (r. 1031-75), in support of the leading Hanbali imam al-Qadi Abu Ya`la’ (d. 1066), made the Hanbali articulation of Sunni Islam the “official credo of the state” through his proclamation of the “Qadiri Creed (I`tiqŒd QŒdir¥),” at the center of this Sunni orthodoxy was an anthropomorphic deity who is a divine corporal person (shakh§) for whom “terms such as ‘young man’ (shŒbb), ‘beardless’ (amrad), [and] ‘wavy, curly (hair)’ (ja`d wa qatŒt) ... have all been established as designations that apply to God.”89 Ibn Hanbal affirmed the literal meaning of the Qur’anic and prophetic (anthropomorphic) statements about God,90 but he was no irrational fideist. His “literalism” was not the consequence of a rejection of all “reasoned” approaches to scripture, nor was it absolute. He was quite willing to inter- pret scriptural statements about God figuratively, particularly those that seemed “anti-anthropomorphist.” An illuminating example is his treatment of Qur’an 6:104: “Vision comprehends Him not, and He comprehends all vision.” For many theologians, this passage confirms that God is invisible, and thus incorporeal, and can never be seen under any circumstances.91 Ibn Hanbal and the Sunni orthodoxy that he represented argued otherwise: God can and will be seen in the Hereafter by the believers with their eyes.92 While much of the argument of those who affirmed the beatific vision rested on Prophetic reports (hadith), a small number of Qur’anic passages were also cited as proof-texts by both the deniers and the affirmers. In the following quote, Ibn Hanbal tries to reconcile this scriptural material: As for His statement, “Faces will be bright, looking to their Lord” (75:23) and He said in another verse, “Vision comprehends Him not and He com- prehends all vision,” (the heretics) said: “How is this?! It is reported that (the people of Paradise) will look toward their Lord and he said in another verse ‘Vision comprehends Him not and He comprehends all vision’.” And (the heretics) doubt the Qur’an and claim that it is contradictory. (But) as for His statement “Faces will be bright,” it means the Beauty and the Whiteness. “Looking toward their Lord” means to see their Lord with the eyes (ta`ayana) in Paradise. As for His statement “Vision compre- hends Him not,” it means in this world, not the Hereafter ...93 In harmonizing two ostensibly contradictory verses, one seemingly anthropomorphist and the other anti-anthropomorphist, Ibn Hanbal inter- prets them both. He makes the anti-anthropomorphist verse (“Vision com- prehends Him not”) conform to the dictates of the anthropomorphist verse Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 73 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk (“Faces shinning, looking toward their Lord”) and then interprets the latter in a way that enhances its anthropomorphist import; “looking toward their Lord” becomes “seeing their Lord with the eyes.” This seems to be his char- acteristic hermeneutic.94 Contrary to the direction in which Sunni theology will ultimately go, Ibn Hanbal reads the scriptural anthropomorphisms as muúkamŒt (i.e., admitting to only a literal meaning) and the seemingly anti- anthropomorphic descriptions as mutashŒbihŒt (ambiguous and therefore requiring a non-literal interpretation). Where the scriptural anthropomor- phisms are insufficiently clear in their corporeal import, he provides an inter- pretation that removes any ambiguity. This is instructive. As there is nothing in the Qur’an that necessarily warrants this hermeneutic, Ibn Hanbal must be understood to have made a theological choice to interpret the Qur’an as he did. And considering that the Qur’an itself offers little support for this anthropomorphist doctrine, and also that the authenticity and interpretation of many of the prophetic reports relied upon had been the subject of signif- icant debate, one cannot escape the question of how it was that Ibn Hanbal settled on such a doctrine. Whatever the answer, the question raises an important point: the major figure of ninth-century Islamic religiosity chose divine anthropomorphism as his dogmatic position, and he chose to interpret the Qur’an in the light of this dogmatic position. Aziz Al-Azmeh, the British scholar of Islam, has observed: When asked whether one may transmit a hadith … which related of the Prophet his statement that he saw God in the shape of a young man, Ahmad b. Hanbal readily declared that one may, given the authority of the transmission … It comes (then) as no surprise to us that, given the inter- diction of allegory and insistence on literalness, streetcorner religiosity purveyed an anthropomorphic Allah.95 This religiosity could have been found on street corners in any of the sev- enty American cities in which Elijah Muhammad established a temple. Now it is true that Ibn Hanbal’s anthropomorphist doctrine was not that of Elijah Muhammad. The “imam of Baghdad” certainly never spoke of a “self- created black God” or a divine oligarchy of twenty-four men-gods, as did the “Islamizing prophet of the [American] city.” Nevertheless, anyone familiar with the main heresiographical works of classical Islam, al-Ash`ari’s (d. 935) MaqŒlŒt al-IslŒm¥y¥n (Doctrines of Those Who Associate Themselves with Islam), al-Baghdadi’s (d. 1037) Al-Farq bayn al-Firaq (The Difference between the Sects), and al-Shahrastani’s (d. 1153) Al-Milal wal-Nihal (Sects and Schisms), and are appropriately aware and aloof of the authors’ own sectarian agendas, will recognize that the classical discussion on God 74 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk and related matters featured a very wide array of views among which Elijah Muhammad’s “irregularities” would have been quite at home. Despite the fact that Elijah Muhammad “seems completely unfamiliar with the vast tafs¥r (quranic commentary) literature produced over the four- teen centuries of Islam,” Herbert Berg is convinced that the Black Muslim leader could be considered “the first and only major African American mufas- sir – quranic exegete.”96 While certainly atypical, Berg finds precedents for “most of” the features of Elijah Muhammad’s Qur’an interpretations.97 Many classical and modern mufassirs worked in languages other than Arabic and relied upon Biblical materials (isrŒ’il¥yŒt) and personal opinion (tafs¥r bi al- ra’y), as did Elijah Muhammad.98 In many ways, the latter’s social and polit- ical readings of the Qur’an are comparable to the exegetical objectives of his Egyptian contemporary Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966).99 Thus, argues Berg, “what distinguishes Elijah Muhammad from Muslim exegetes is merely his unique understanding of the message of the Qur’an. His heterodoxy may have a bearing on his status as a Muslim, but not on his status as a mufassir.”100 Most Muslim exegetes would no doubt find Elijah Muhammad’s het- erodoxy completely disqualifying, both as a mufassir and as a Muslim, for he wholly subsumed the Qur’an under the framework of his anthropomor- phist doctrine. But this too has a classical precedent with the unassailably orthodox Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Of course, I am not arguing here for the “correctness” of Elijah Muhammad’s radical exegesis. I am, however, sug- gesting that the classical Islamic framework from which this eccentric doc- trine has been viewed can be and, indeed, should be broadened. The intra- religious pluralism of the classical period to which Jackson appealed as a structural feature to be enlisted by the “Third Resurrection” is the proper framework. But the postulate that “Islam rejects the attribution of any human form to God,”101 while certainly true for virtually all articulations of Islam today, is demonstrably not true for all articulations – orthodox or sectarian – throughout Islam’s long history.102 If the reconstituted NOI could embrace the spirit and the goal of the “Third Resurrection,” it might just make itself again at least a participant in the discussion regarding a viable formulation of Black American Islam. African-American Islam, Anthropomorphism, and the Sociological Implications But controversy aside, in terms of the impress he made on the world (Elijah Muhammad) must be reckoned one of the most remarkable men Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 75 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk of the 20th century. Among his more commonly recognized achievements were his enormous contributions to the dignity and self-esteem of the Black undercaste in America. Beyond that, and with infinitely more far- reaching implications, Elijah Muhammad must be credited with the seri- ous re-introduction of Islam to the United States in modern times, giving it the peculiar mystique, the appeal, and the respect without which it could not have penetrated the American bastion of Judeo-Christian democracy. If now, as it appears, the religion of Islam has a solid foothold and an indeterminate future in North America, it is Elijah Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad alone to whom initial credit must be given.103 C. Eric Lincoln’s observation regarding the decisive role played by Elijah Muhammad in Islam’s successful “penetration of the American bastion of Judeo-Christian democracy” is still worth noting, even while Robert Dan- nin’s ethnographic study suggests that African Americans encountered and embraced Sunnism long before Imam Warithuddin Muhammad’s “Sunni- izing” program.104 Also worth pondering is Elijah Muhammad’s “enormous contributions to the dignity and self-esteem of the Black undercaste in America.” As noted as well by Lawrence H. Mamiya: One could argue about the relative influence on the larger American society of any of these new religious groups and certainly the case can be made that the Nation of Islam had one of the more significant societal impacts. After all, it helped to change the self-perception and ethnic definition of some 34 million black Americans from a stance of self-hatred, confusion, and inferi- ority to one of self-affirmation, ethnic pride, and dignity. This awakening of black consciousness affected all other minority groups in the country …105 It must not be overlooked that it was no doubt Elijah Muhammad’s anthropomorphist melanotheosis that affected this change in self-perception among his followers and was at the root of the more general “awakening of black consciousness” spawned by his preaching and that of his fire-brand ministers like Malcolm X. For Elijah Muhammad, the African Americans’ collective experience of slavery, the noose, Jim Crow, and general discrimi- nation produced the “so-called Negro,” which he understood to be a “dead human being” (ostensibly from the Greek nekros, “dead body”). He declared his mission to be nothing short of the “resurrection of the dead.”106 The first step in repairing the damage done by the experience of slavery and its after- shocks, Elijah argued, is self-awareness – African-Americans’ discovery of their “true selves” – followed by self-actualization: “Accept your own and Be yourself” was the Black Muslim mantra.107 76 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk A critical step in this “resurrection” process, as Elijah viewed it, was the African American’s total disengagement from the political and, most impor- tantly, religious systems of America. In particular it was the “White man’s mystery God,” namely, the “formless spirit” of the slave master’s Christi- anity, that rendered the “so-called Negro” dead and powerless.108 And as Louis E. Wright Jr. pointed out, for Elijah Muhammad true “freedom” and authority is not achieved by simply disengaging oneself from the “slave- master’s religion”; it required disengaging from the slave-master’s “god- type” as well.109 Replacing Christianity and its incorporeal deity with Islam and an incorporeal deity was, from Elijah Muhammad’s perspective, insuf- ficient. The only antidote to Christianity’s “slave-making” effects and its “mystery God” was a masterfully appropriated Islam with a corporeal God! It was above all else his radical claim that “God is a (Black) man” that undoubtedly accounts for his “enormous contribution to the dignity and self- esteem of the Black undercaste.”110 The phenomenal sociological impact of Elijah Muhammad’s anthropo- morphist doctrine was nullified when, after the “Great Migration” in the 1970s from “Black Muslims” to “black Muslims” (i.e., African-American Sunni Muslims), the latter were compelled to “forfeit (this) prized owner- ship” of Islam to the new regime of immigrant Islam.111 As Jackson well- noted, this transition signaled the end of the African-American Muslims’ ability to “employ Islam in ways that promoted a dignified existence for themselves.”112 [P]erhaps the most lamentable development was the seemingly reversed effect that Islam was exerting on the pathologies and dysfunctionalities of the urban ghetto. Beyond the explicitly religious vices, for example illicit sex or alcohol consumption, Islam was fast losing its significance as a for- tifier of indigenous constructions of such values as manly pride, fiscal responsibility, or civic consciousness. Whereas under the “Islam” of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, education, work, and community-uplift were synonymous with Black Muslim, Sunni Islam was increasingly being invoked as a reason not to work (for the infidel), not to be educated (in the infidel’s institutions), and not to be involved in the (infidel) community … In short, on the new, immigrant-influenced understanding of Islam, Sun- nism was in many ways becoming a cause rather than a solution to the problem of Blackamerican Muslim dysfunctionality in America.113 From a strictly sociological perspective, these lamentable circumstances might raise the hope that a reconstituted NOI, despite its theological irregu- larities, might have a role to play in any prospective “Third Resurrection”; but Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 77 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk 78 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 a reconstituted NOI that has moved beyond its diffidence toward the clas- sical Islamic tradition.114 Only, as Jackson has argued, by mastering and appropriating this tradition might one become an effective self-authenticating subject in the plurality that is, indeed, American Islam. Part of the burden of this study was to demonstrate that the all-important sources and authorities of the classical Islamic tradition are worth seriously considering, even for the unapologetically eccentric Black Muslims. Conclusion Can the African-American “proto-Islamic” groups be situated (doctrinally) among classical Islam’s competing “orthodoxies”? The anthropomorphist doctrine and the Qur’anic exegesis of Elijah Muhammad and the NOI indeed can. This finding has significant implications. First, it problematizes most treatments of African-American Islam, inasmuch as these treatments are often informed by an ahistorical judgment regarding these groups’ doc- trinal relation to Islam’s global, historical tradition. The objectifying and essentializing tendency characteristic of these treatments is surely counter- productive to any attempt to adequately grasp the phenomenon that is African-American Islam.115 Such characterizations as “proto-,” “simulation- ist,” and similar terms, as well as the suggestion that these groups are more cultural nationalists that sincere “Islamizers,” precludes a more than super- ficial and sectually (sic) biased assessment of these movements that have had such an impact on the American scene in general and on the African- American community in particular. Our findings have further academic implications, I suggest. Once our new “polyphonic awareness” allows us to recognize Black Muslim theol- ogy as “one of the many voices and presences within the historical depth and cultural breadth of the Islamic tradition,” avenues for the study of Islamic theology open it. As Hava Lazarus-Yafeh has keenly observed in a different context: [I]t is impossible to understand (Islamic) literature properly without paying serious attention to its various predecessors … One should not think in terms of influences or cultural borrowing only, however. It has been said that the Near East resembles a palimpsest, layer upon layer, tradition upon tradition, intertwined to the extent that one cannot really grasp one without the other, certainly not the later without the earlier, but often also not the earlier without considering the shapes it took later.116 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk It is not impossible that the shape Islamic theology took in the West at the hands of these early African-American groups may shed some light on earlier developments in the East. The possibility that Ibn Hanbal’s anthropo- morphism might help elucidate Elijah Muhammad’s would be strengthened if W. D. Fard, Elijah’s teacher in Detroit, proves in fact to be an Arab who had access to some relevant classical Arabic sources.117 If so, there is also then the possibility that Elijah Muhammad’s anthropomorphist doctrine might shed some light on classical Islamic anthropomorphism – maybe, for example, the black-haired, white-skinned shŒbb (Youthful God) of the proto-Sunni Hashwiyyah condemned by the Zaydi imam al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim (d. 860)118 or the Hululiyyah (Incarnationists) condemned by the fanatical Ash`ari `Abd al-Qahir al-Baghdadi (d. 1037), according to whom the Qur’anic description of Adam’s creation and animation with a breath from God (e.g. 15:26-34) is a symbolic picture of God incarnating within Adam’s newly molded body.119 By taking seriously and better understanding Elijah Muhammad’s claims, we might be able to better understand these ear- lier Muslim claims. Our findings have social implications as well. While noting that “the most crucial element in the history and development of a social group is the maintenance of its identity,” Sulayman S. Nyang suggests that “the identity question is central to the Muslim presence in the United States.”120 Dannin has pointed out that “[i]n terms of Islamic identity, America has now become an arena for competing self-images where religious authority and cultural preferences are often conflated.”121 It is in this context that the polemics and counter-polemics between the NOI and its immigrant and indigenous critics should no doubt be seen. As Berg noted recently, the construction and main- tenance of an identity involves creating boundaries, and what we see here is “a struggle over who controls the ‘copyright’ over Islamic figures, texts, and terminology.”122 But as Jackson and Curtis have argued, these other (immi- grant) “Islams” are no less historico-culturally informed than are the so- called “proto-” Islamic groups, and these latter are not necessarily any less “authentic” interpretations of Islam than are the others. The positive socio- logical effect of Elijah Muhammad’s anthropomorphist doctrine should thus be as much a consideration as is the NOI’s alleged lack of “theological purity” in any discussion of the future of African-American Islam and American Islam more broadly. Thus there seems to be little reason why the NOI cannot be a legitimate contender in the ongoing competition to define Islam in America. Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 79 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk Endnotes 1. Zafar I. Ansari, “Aspects of Black Muslim Theology,” Studia Islamica 53 (1981): 137-76. I use here the term Black Muslim(s) to refer specifically to the Nation of Islam and its members, and African-American Muslims to refer to non-NOI Muslims. I also use African-American Islam as a catch-all referring to all articulations of Islam among African Americans. 2. Basic sources on Black Muslim theology include, but are not limited to, the fol- lowing: Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Black Man in America (Chicago: Muhammad’s Temple No. 2, 1965); idem, Our Saviour Has Arrived (Chicago: Muhammad’s Temple of Islam No. 2, n.d.); idem, The Theology Of Time Lecture Series, printed transcript by Abass Rassoul (U.B.U.S., Hampton, 1992). 3. Ansari, “Aspects,” 142. 4. As pointed out by Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the Black American Exper- ience (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), 170. 5. Ansari, “Aspects,” 168. 6. On which see G. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpreta- tion of the Religious History of African Americans, 3d ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999). 7. Ansari, “Aspects,” 174. 8. See, for example, Josef van Ess, The Flowering of Muslim Theology (Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); W. M. Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998). 9. See, for example, Jacob Neusner, “Comparing Judaisms,” History of Religions 18 (1978): 177-91. 10. On the other hand, Herbert Berg does speak of distinct “Islams,” even “African American Islams.” “Mythmaking in the African American Muslim Context: The Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and the American Society of Muslims,” JAAR 73 (2005): 685-703. 11. As opposed to Martha F. Lee, The Nation of Islam: An American Millenarian Movement (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), according to whom “the focus of (NOI) religious belief” was/is the Fall of America (p. 2). On the other hand, Lawrence Mamiya, “The Black Muslims as a New Reli- gious Movement,” (in Chuo Academic Research Institute, Conflict and Coop- eration between Contemporary Religious Groups: International Symposium Proceedings [Tokyo: The Institute, 1988], 210) suggested that the NOI’s “cen- tral theological myth” is that of Yakub and the origin of the races. While this latter is certainly the most noted by outside observers, it is clearly secondary to Elijah Muhammad’s myth of God, his origin and nature. As Warithuddin Muhammad, his son and successor, noted, the center of the NOI’s Islamic identity was the latter’s doctrine of divine anthropomorphism: “God incarnate … God in the flesh, God as man.” Quote from Turner, Islam in the Black American Experience, 203. 12. Ansari, “Aspects,” 142. 80 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk 13. Muhammad, Message, 6. 14. As Mattias Gardell points out, “the different interpretations of the religious creed of the NOI and orthodox Islam are so far apart that they are irreconcil- able.” “The Sun of Islam Will Rise in the West: Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam in the Latter Days,” in Muslim Communities in North America, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), 32. 15. See, for example, Aminah Beverly McCloud, African American Islam (New York and London: Routledge, 1995): “The core of the philosophy of the Nation (of Islam) was characterized by a combination of messianism and a form of chiliasm. A fundamental belief in Allah as one with no sons or part- ners dominate the theology …” The NOI’s fundamental belief is clearly that Allah is a man, a conspicuous omission here. 16. See, for example, William A. Graham, “Transcendence in Islam,” in Ways of Transcendence; Insights from Major Religions and Modern Thought, ed. Edwin Dowdy (Bedford Park, South Australia: Australian Association, 1982) 7-23 and Abdoldjavad Falaturi, “How Can a Muslim Experience God, Given Islam’s Radical Monotheism,” in We Believe in One God: The Experience of God in Christianity and Islam, ed. Annemarie Schimmel and Abdoldjavad Falaturi (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979), 77ff. 17. Muhammad Ibrahim H. I. Surty, “The Concept of God in Muslim Tradition,” Islamic Quarterly 37 (1993): 127f; Faruq Sherif, A Guide to the Contents of the Qur’an (Reding: 1995), 24. 18. See, for example, the fatwa (legal opinion) against the Nation of Islam and its current leader, Louis Farrakhan, on 7 March 1998 by the Board of Ulema of the Italian Muslim Association, which read, in part: “Regarding the ‘Nation of Islam’, their official doctrine is that Allah appeared in the form of a human being named Fareed [sic] Muhammad, and that this ‘incarnation of God’ chose another man, called Elijah Muhammad, as his Prophet. This is a clear contra- diction of the Monotheistic faith (Tawú¥d), and of the Koranic teaching accord- ing to which Mohammad (blessings and peace upon him) is the Seal of the Prophets. That is enough to say that everyone who belongs to the “Nation of Islam” is not, ipso facto, a Muslim, but an unbeliever.” On the Sunni critique of Elijah Muhammad and the NOI, see Edward E. Curtis IV, Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African-American Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002): 79-83; Turner, Islam in the Black American Experience, 189-96; Mattias Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), chapter 8. 19. C. Eric Lincoln, “The American Muslim Mission in the Context of American Social History,” in The Muslim Community in North America, ed. Earle H. Waugh, Baha Abu-Laban, and Regula B. Qureshi (Canada: The University of Alberta Press, 1983), 223 [art.=215-33]. Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 81 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk 20. Cited by Ansari, “Aspects,” 147. On Black Muslim responses to these polem- ics, see further Edward E. Curtis IV, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam 1960-1975 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2006), chapter 2. 21. See, for example, Lawrence H. Mamiya, “Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Final Call: Schism in the Muslim Movement,” in The Muslim Community, 240 [art.=234-55], who observes that it is said of Elijah that “he saw and knew Allah (Master Farad, Muhammad’s teacher) personally, which of course is doubly heretical in orthodox Islam (to identify a human being as God, and to say that one saw God).” Similarly Denis Walker, Islam and the Search for African- American Nationhood: Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farakhan and the Nation of Islam (Atlanta: Clarity Press, Inc., 2005) 273, 274, 282, who claims: “The cen- tral doctrine of Sunni Islam … is that there is no God but a non-corporeal Allah.” He points out Elijah Muhammad’s “anthropomorphist blurring of the Qur’an-affirmed transcendent God,” for “the Islamic concept of God reiterated throughout the Qur’an is that the Omnipotent Creator is beyond human sense- perception and unbounded by both time and space.” See further Ernest Allen, Jr., “Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Continuing Evolution of the Nation of Islam,” in The Farrakhan Factor: African-American Writers on Leadership, Nationhood, and Minister Louis Farrakhan, ed. Amy Alexander (New York: Grove Press, 1998), 58; idem, “Religious Heterodoxy and Nationalist Tra- dition: The Continuing Evolution of the Nation of Islam,” The Black Scholar 26 (fall 1966/winter 1977): 2-34; and Robert Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 4. As has been amply shown, anthropomorphic theophany and visio Dei were important elements of an earlier “orthodoxy,” as was the motif of “transcendent anthropomorphism.” See esp. Wesley Williams, “Tajall¥ wa-Ru’yŒ: A Study of Anthropomorphic Theophany and Visio Dei in the Hebrew Bible, the Qur’an and Early Sunni Islam,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Univ. of Michigan, 2008) and below. 22. For example, Amina Wadud, “American Muslim Identity: Race and Ethnicity in Progressive Islam,” in Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, ed. Omid Safi (Oxford: One World, 2003) 276, charges the seminal “proto-Islamic groups,” i.e., the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) and the NOI, with failing to “sustain the integrity of Islamic dogma involving belief in one supreme transcendent God, Allah, and in the prophecy and living example of the Prophet Muhammad.” Such a statement obscures the fact that both of these dogmas were debated and Muslims offered various interpreta- tions of them; thus God can be supremely transcendent and anthropomorphic, and God’s communication to humanity might continue even though Muham- mad is khŒtam al-nab¥y¥n, Seal of the Prophets (33:40). On transcendent anthropomorphism in early Islam, see below n. 74. On the different classical interpretations of khŒtam al-nab¥y¥n and the question of the cessation of pro- phecy, see Yohnan Friedmann, Prophecy Continues: Aspects of Ahmadi Reli- gious Thought and Its Medieval Background (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), chapter 2. 82 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk 23. Yvonne Haddad and Jane I. Smith, Mission to America (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 1993), 1 [art.=1-22]. 24. Ibid., 10. Likewise, Sulayman Nyang contrasts the “theological purity” of Sunni orthodoxy with the heresy/heterodoxy of Elijah Muhammad’s “simula- tionist” doctrines, for example, his selective, pragmatic appropriation of bona fide Islamic symbolism, suggesting that Elijah Muhammad’s Islam is other than “bona fide.” Sulayman Nyang, “Convergence and Divergence in an Emergent Community: Study of Challenges Facing U.S. Muslims,” in The Muslims of America, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) 236-49. 25. For another view of the MSTA and its relation to Islamic tradition, see Susan Nance, “Mystery of the Moorish Science Temple: Southern Blacks and Amer- ican Alternative Spirituality in 1920’s Chicago,” Religion and American Cul- ture 12 (2002): 123-66; idem, “Respectability and Representation: The Moorish Science Temple, Morocco, and Black Public Culture in 1920’s Chicago,” American Quarterly 54 (2002): 623-59. 26. See, more recently, Jane I. Smith, Islam in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), where Islam still seems to be objectified and essen- tialized, and the “orthodox” and the “sectarians” still make an early appearance in the history of Islam. 27. As argued by such scholars as Watt, Formative Period, 5f.; Alexander Knysh, “‘Orthodoxy’ and ‘Heresy’ in Medieval Islam: An Essay in Reassessment,” Muslim World 83 (1993]) 48-67. 28. Sherman A. Jackson, On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abuu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Faysal al-Tafriqa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 30-31. See further Norman Calder, “The Limits of Islamic Orthodoxy,” in Intellectual Traditions in Islam, ed. Farhad Daftary (London and New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2000), 66-85. 29. See, for example, Fazlur Rahman, Revival and Reform in Islam: A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000), 30. On Judaism and Christianity, see John B. Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998). 30. The classic example being, for example, the Khawarij, on which see Watt, Formative Period, chapter 1. 31. Henderson, Construction. 32. See, most recently, A. E. Souaiaia, “Reasoned and Inspired Beliefs: A Study of Islamic Theology,” The Muslim World 97 (2007): 331-49. 33. Curtis IV, Islam in Black America. 34. On the methodological inappropriatness of offering a “definition” of Islam, see also Carl W. Ernst, Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contem- porary World (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), chapter 2. 35. Curtis IV, Islam in Black America, 6. Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 83 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk 36. Ibid., 133. See also idem, Black Muslim Religion, 10: “To be sure, the religious thought of Elijah Muhammad was decidedly heretical from the point of view of traditional Sunni orthodoxy.” Curtis also suggests that “Muhammad’s unique version of Islam contradicted many of the foundations of both Sunni and Shi’i traditions.” Edward E. Curtis IV, “Islamizing the Black Body: Ritual and Power in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam,” Religion and American Culture 12 (2002): 181 [art.=167-196]. The anachronism here will be high- lighted below as we explore the theological “foundations” of Sunnism. 37. On anthropomorphism in the early discursive tradition of Islam, see especially Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra. 6 vols. (Berlin: 1992), esp. vol. 4; idem. “The Youthful God: Anthropomor- phism in Early Islam,” The University Lecture in Religion at Arizona State University, 3 March 1988 (Tempe: 1988); Claude Gilliot, “Muqatil, Grand Exégete, Traditionniste Et Théologien Maudit,” Journal Asiatique 179 (1991): 39-84; Daniel Gimaret, Dieu à l’image de l’homme: les anthropomorphismes de la sunna et leur interprétation par les théologiens (Paris: Patrimoines, 1997); Robert M. Haddad, “Iconoclasts and Mu’tazila: The Politics of Anthropomor- phism,” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 27 (Summer-Fall 1982): 287- 305; Merlin Swartz, A Medieval Critique of Anthropomorphism: Ibn al-Jawzi’s Kitab Akhbar al-Sifat, A Citical Edition of the Arabic Text with Translation, Introduction and Notes (Leiden: 2002); Wesley Williams, “Aspects of the Creed of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal: A Study of Anthropomorphism in Early Islamic Discourse,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34 (2002): 441-63; idem, “Tajall¥ wa-Ru’yŒ.” 38. While exploring the question of the NOI’s “Muslim-ness,” Allen Howard Podet (“Patterns of Classical Islam and Some American ‘Black Muslims,’” Religious Education 89 [1994]: 338-56) similarly emphasized the historical and modern diversity of the Islamic tradition, maintaining that “[t]here is no single religious tradition which is an entity called ‘Islam.’ Rather, Islam is a congeries of religious adaptations …” Yet in the final analysis, the NOI’s anthropomorphic doctrine may indeed put it outside the pale of Islam “despite the flexibility and variety that characterizes Islam (p. 355).” 39. Kathleen Malone O’Connor, “The Islamic Jesus: Messiahhood and Human Divinity in African American Muslim Exegesis,” JAAR 66 [1998]: 493-535) argues for the legitimate “Muslim-ness” of the various Black Muslim groups for which the notion of human divinity is pivotal (i.e., the NOI, the Ansarullah, and the Five Percent Nation of Islam) on the basis of classical precedents for such notions “within the history of Sufi and Shi`i Islam and the Islamic sectar- ian communities who draw upon their source texts for authority” (p. 497). We are thus still on the “sectarian” margins of Islam. See also Josef van Ess, “Drusen und Black Muslims,” Die Welt des Islams 14 (1973): 203-13. 40. Smith, Islam in America, xiii. 41. As pointed out by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, “The Dynamics of Islamic Identity in North America,” in Muslims on the Americanization Path?, eds. Yvonne 84 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 25. Sulayman Nyang says as well: “The identity question is central to the Muslim presence in the United States.” “Convergence and Divergence,” 247. 42. Wadud, “American Muslim Identity”; Haddad, “Dynamics of Islamic Identity,” 43-48; Jamillah Karim, “Between Immigrant Islam and Black Liberation: Young Muslims Inherit Global Muslim and African American Legacies,” MW 95 (2005): 497-513; Robert Dannin, “Understanding the Multi-Ethnic Dilemma of African-American Muslims,” in Muslims on the Americanization Path?, 331-58. 43. As pointed out by Walker, Islam and the Search, 548: “The capacities of Farrakhan and his followers to communicate ideas and motifs to millions of African-Americans in the last two decades of the 20th century ran far ahead of the slow expansion of the little sect itself and such modest institutions as it was able to build.” 44. Especially prior to the so-called “Afrocentrist” critique of Islam, for which see Sherman Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection (Oxford: University Press, 2005), 99-129; Yusuf Nuruddin, “African-American Muslims and the Question of Identity: Between Traditional Islam, African Heritage, and the American Way,” in Muslims on the American- ization Path?, 267-330. 45. See also Lincoln, “The American Muslim Mission,” 221. This stands true even as we take due notice of Robert Dannin’s suggestive ethnographic study, Black Pilgrimage to Islam. See below. 46. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, 3-5. 47. On this history, see especially Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad; Curtis, Islam in Black America, chapter 6; Lawrence H. Mamiya, “From Black Muslim to Bilalian: The Evolution of a Movement,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 21 (1982): 138-52. 48. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, 5. 49. Herbert Berg, “Elijah Muhammad: An African American Muslim Mufassir?” Arabica 45 (1998): 326 [art.=320-346]. See also Turner, Islam in the Black American Experience, 159 and 193. 50. Berg, “Mythmaking,” 700. 51. See, for example, Muhammad, Message, 187. 52. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, 5, 66-73. See also Curtis, Islam in Black America,107-27. 53. Ibid., 12-13. 54. Ibid., 70. 55. Ibid., 6. 56. Ibid., 8 57. Ibid., 6-8, 55. 58. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, 45. 59. Ibid. 59. 60. Ibid., 45. Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 85 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk 61. The Murjiah, however, were not Shi`i. 62. On orthodoxy and the Hanabila, see Williams, “Tajall¥ wa-Ru’yŒ,” 207-42. 63. Timan Nagel, The History of Islamic Theology, From Muhammad to the Pre- sent (Princeton, NJ: Marcus Wiener Pubs., 2000) 237; Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3 vols. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1974) 391-92. 64. Christopher Melchert, “Ahmad Ibn Hanbal and the Qur’an,” JQS 6 (2004): 22 [art.=22-34]. 65. On Ibn Hanbal, see Christopher Melchert, Ahmad ibn Hanbal (Oxford: One- world Publications, 2006); Nimrod Hurvitz, The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002). 66. For a discussion of Ibn Hanbal’s creed and the relevant sources, see espe- cially Wesley Williams, “Aspects of the Creed of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal: A Study of Anthropomorphism is Early Islamic Discourse.” IJMES 34 (2002): 441-63 and below. 67. Ibid. 68. See discussion in Williams, “Tajall¥ wa-Ru’yŒ,” 259-65. 69. See his statements in Ibn Taymiya, Dar’ Ta`Œruè al-`Aql wa al-Naql, 10 vols., ed. Muhammad Rashad Salim (Riyad: 1979) I:256. 70. Ahmad b. Hanbal, Al-Radd `alŒ al-ZanŒdiqah wa al-Jahm¥yah (Cairo: 1393 AH), 20. 71. Ibid. 72. See his arguments at Al-Radd, 36f. Cf. `Abd Allah ibn Ahmad, Kitab al- Sunnah, 2 vols. ed. Muhammad b. Sa`id ibn Salim al-Qahtani (Damman: Dar Ibn al-Qayyim, 1986), 1:280, nos. 533 and 534. 73. See his relevant comments quoted in Ibn Taymiyya, Dar’ Ta`Œruè, 1:256. 74. On “‘transcendent anthropomorphism” in the history of religions, see Ronald S. Hendel, “Aniconism and Anthropomorphism in Ancient Israel,” in The Image and the Book. Iconic Cults, Aniconism, and the Rise of Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. Karel van der Toorn (CBET 21; Leuven: Uitge- werig Peeters, 1997) 205-28; Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Dim Body, Dazzling Body,” in Fragments for a History of the Human Body: Part One, eds. Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi (New York: Zone, 1989): 19-47. On the same in Islamic tradition, see Wesley Williams, “A Body Unlike Bodies: Transcen- dent Anthropomorphism in Ancient Semitic Tradition and Early Islam,” JAOS, forthcoming; idem, “Tajall¥ wa-Ru’yŒ,” 252-72. 75. Al-Bukhari, êaú¥ú, vol. 8, book 74, no. 246; Muslim, êaú¥ú, “Al-Jannat wa êifat Na`imiha wa AhlihŒ,” no. 6809; Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 6 vols. (Cairo: 1313 AH), 2:315. 76. On these controversies, see Daniel Gimaret, Dieu à l’image de l’homme: les anthropomorphismes de la sunna et leur interprétation par les théologiens (Paris: Patrimoines, 1997) 123ff; Montgomery Watt, “Created in His Image: A Study in Islamic Theology,” in idem, Early Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990) 94-100. 77. Ibid. 86 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk 78. Quoted by Ibn al-Jawzi, KitŒb AkhbŒr al-êifat, in A Medieval Critique of Anthropomorphism: Ibn al-Jawzi’s Kitab Akhbar al-Sifat, a Citical Edition of the Arabic Text with Translation, Introduction and Notes ed. and trans. Merlin Swartz (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 175 (Eng.) 79. Ibn Hanbal, `Aq¥da I, apud Ibn Abi Ya`la, ÿabaqŒt al-HanŒbila, 2 vols. ed. Muhammad Hamid al-Fiqi (Cairo: Matba`at al-Sunnah al-Muhammadiyah, 1952), 1:29. I use here Henry Laoust’s classification of Ibn Hanbal’s creeds as found in Ibn Abi Ya`la’s ÿabaqŒt. See Henry Laoust, “Les Premières Profes- sions de foi Hanbalites,” in Mélanges Louis Massignon, PIFD, 3 (Damas: Institut Francais De Damas, 1957), 12ff. 80. Ibn Hanbal, `Aq¥da IV, apud Ibn Abi Ya`la, ÿabaqŒt, 1:313. From the report of Ibn `Umar: “Do not make your face ugly, because Adam was created accord- ing to the form of the Merciful.” Ahmad ibn Hanbal, KitŒb al-Sunnah, ed. `Abd Allah ibn Hasan ibn Husayn (Makkah: al-Matba`at al-Salafiyyah, 1349 AH), 56. See also idem, Musnad, 30 vols. ed. Shu`ayb al-Arna’ut (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risalah, 1993; hereafter Musnad 2), 12:275, no. 7323; 12:382, no. 7420; and 15:371, no. 9604. 81. Ibn Abi Ya`la, ÿabaqŒt, I:309. 82. Ibn Hanbal, `Aq¥da III, apud Ibn Abi Ya`la, ÿabaqŒt, 1:246; idem, `Aq¥da V, apud Ibn Abi Ya`la, ÿabaqŒt, 1:312. On these various reports, see Williams, “Tajall¥ wa-Ru’yŒ,” chapter 6; `Ali ibn `Umar al-Daraqutni, KitŒb al-Ru’yŒ, ed. Ibrahim Muhammad al-`Ali and Ahmad Fakhri al-Rifa`i (Zarqa’, Jordan: 1411 AH) 305-59; Muhammad ibn Khuzayma, KitŒb al-Tawú¥d wa IthbŒt êifat al-Rabb, ed. Muhammad Khalil Harras (Cairo: 1968), 197-230. 83. Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 1:368, 4:66, 5:243, and 5:378; idem, Ibn Hanbal, Musnad 2, 4:221, no. 2634, 4:351, no. 2580; Al-Suyuti, Al-La`Œli’ al-Masn´`ah f¥ al-AúŒd¥th al-Mawè´`ah (Egypt: al-Maktaba al-Tijariyyah al-Kubra, 1964), 29; Ibn Abi Ya`la, ÿabaqŒt, 2:45f; `Abd Allah ibn `Abi, Al-KŒmil f¥ Du`afŒ’ al- RijŒl, 7 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1984) 2:677; George Makdisi, Ibn `Aq¥l: Religion and Culture in Classical Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 130ff. 84. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziya, ZŒd al-Ma`Œd f¥ Hadiy Khayr al-`IbŒd, 6 vols. (Beirut: Manshurat Muhammad `Ali Bay·un, Dar al-Kutub al-`Ilmiyyah, 1998), 3:29. 85. Ibn Hanbal, `Aq¥da III, apud Ibn Abi Ya`la, ÿabaqŒt, 1:246; idem, `Aq¥da V, apud Ibn Abi Ya`la, ÿabaqŒt, 1:312. 86. See, for example, the declarations of Yahya ibn Ma`in (d. 847) and Abu Zur`a al-Razi (d. 878): Muhammad ibn `Imran al-Marzubani, KitŒb N´r al-Qabas al-Mukhta§ar (Fisbadin: Dar al-Nashr Frantis Shitayinir, 1964-) 1:48; Al- Suyuti, Al-La`Œli’, 30. 87. Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi’s description of him: Ta’r¥kh Baghdad, 14 vols. (Cairo: al-Maktabat al-`Arabiyyah bi Baghdad, 1931), 3:336. 88. On the association of Sunni Islam with Prophet Muhammad’s vision of God, see, for example, Williams, “Tajall¥ wa-Ru’yŒ,” 21ff; Al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim, “KitŒb al-Mustarshid,” in Anthropomorphism and Interpretation of the Qur’an Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 87 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk in the Theology of Al- Qasim Ibn Ibrahim, ed. and trans. Binyamin Abrahamov (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996], 133; Al-Jahiz, RisŒlah f¥ al-NŒbitah, apud RasŒ’il al- JŒhi`, 4 vols., ed. `Abd al-Salam Muhammad Harun (Cairo: Maktabat al- Khanji, 1964-79), 2:18; Ibn Babawayh al-Qummi, KitŒb al-Tawú¥d (Tehran: Maktabat al-Buzarjumahri Mustafavi, 1955) 66f; `Izz al-Din ibn al-Athir, Al- KŒmil f¥ al-Ta’r¥kh, ed. C. J. Thornberg (Leiden: Brill, 1851-76), 8:229ff. 89. Al-Qadi Abu Ya`la, KitŒb al-Mu`tammad f¥ U§´l al-D¥n, ed. W. Z. Haddad (Beirut: Dar al-Mashriq, 1974), 58. Cf. 85; Ibn al-Jawzi, KitŒb AkhbŒr al-êifat, 49 (Eng. 183). 90. Ibn Hanbal, `Aq¥da III, apud Ibn Abi Ya`la, ÿabaqŒt, 1:246; Abu Bakr al- Khallal’s `Aq¥da al-ImŒm Aúmad, ed. `Abd al-`Aziz `Izz al-Din al-Sayrawan (Damascus: Dar Qutayba, 1988), 32. 91. On the various debates over this, see Anthony Keith Tuft, “The Origins and Development of the Controversy over Ru’yŒ in Medieval Islam and Its Relation to Contemporary Visual Theory” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1979). 92. See The Encyclopedia of Islam New Edition (hereafter EI 2) 8:649 s.v. “Ru’yat AllŒh,” by D. Gimaret. 93. Ibn Hanbal, Al-Radd, 13f. 94. Ibn Hanbal, `Aq¥da 1, apud Ibn Abi Ya`la, ÿabaqŒt, 1:29; Ibn Hanbal, Al-Radd, 40f. 95. A. Al-Azmeh, “Orthodoxy and Hanbalite Fideism,” Arabica 35 (1988): 264- 65 [art.=253-266]. 96. Berg, “Elijah Muhammad,” 321. 97. Berg, however, does not discuss in this context Elijah Muhammad’s anthropo- morphist doctrine. 98. Herbert Berg, “Elijah Muhammad and the Qur’an: The Evolution of His Tafsir,” The Muslim World 89 (1999): 43 [art.=42-55]. 99. On Qutb’s exegetical methods, particularly as employed in his F¥ ZilŒl al- Qur’Œn, see Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi`, Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), chapter 6. 100. Berg, “Elijah Muhammad and the Qur”an,” 43. Cf. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 47-48. 101. World Assembly of Muslim Youth, The Concept of God in Islam (1997; brochure) 102. On anthropomorphist theologies in classical Islam, see above n. 37. 103. Lincoln, “The American Muslim Mission,” 221. 104. Robert Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam. Cf. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 176. 105. Mamiya, “Black Muslims,” 218. 106. Muhammad, Message, 306. 107. For example, Muhammad, Our Saviour Has Arrived, 92-95; idem, Message, 42-3. 88 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:4 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk 108. Message, 3. 109. Louis E. Wright Jr., “Elijah Muhammad’s Political Thought on God and Authority: A Quest for Authenticity and Freedom,” Journal of Religious Thought 51 (winter-spring 1994-95): 47-75. 110. Lincoln, “The AmericanMuslim Mission,” 221. 111. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, 5. 112. Ibid., 73. 113. Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican, 60. 114. As Jackson observes: “The traditional Islamic sciences had rarely been used to empower Blackamerican Muslims. Rather, they have been routinely deployed as instruments for bludgeoning them in conformity. As a result, especially among those descended from the Nation of Islam, there developed a sense that any attempt to gain authority on the new criterion would render one a perma- nent follower of immigrant, Old Guard, or overseas masters. This fear of dom- ination translated into a palpable diffidence if not aversion towards the tradi- tional Islamic sciences.” Ibid., 75-76. 115. As O’Conner remarks: “Regarding individuals and communities who claim Muslim identity … but whose views, ritual practices, and even lifeways diverge from the Sunni majority to the point of mutual exclusion, it is necessary … to create a more polyphonic awareness of the many voices and presences within the historical depth and cultural breadth of the Islamic tradition.” “Islamic Jesus,” 503. 116. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 4. Emphasis mine. 117. There are numerous theories as to the identity and background of Elijah Muhammad’s mysterious teacher in Detroit. All of these lack convincing sup- portive evidence (see especially the discussion of the various theories by Gardell, In the Name, 50-54). Muhammad claimed that Fard was born in Makkah and, as an adolescent, was given access to important “books of wis- dom” there. Richard Brent Turner finds support for the Middle Eastern origin of Fard from, among other things, the report by Akbar Muhammad, the son of Elijah Muhammad, that he (Akbar) had seen a sample of Fard’s Arabic hand- writing, a forensic specimen that convinced him Fard was “Turko-Persian” culturally. Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience, 165, 269 n. 53. 118. Al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim, KitŒb al-Mustarshid, 133 (Eng.). 119. Abu Mansur `Abd al-Qahir ibn Tahir al-Baghdadi, Al-Farq Bayn al-Firaq, trans. Abraham S. Halkin, Moselm Schisms and Sects (Al-Farq bayn al-Firaq), Being the History of the Various Philosophical Systems Developed in Islam (Tel Aviv: 1935), 79. 120. “Convergence and Divergence,” 247. 121. Robert Dannin, “Understanding the Multi-Ethnic Dilemma of African-Amer- ican Muslims,” in Musilms on the Americanization Path?, 353 [art.=331-58]. 122. “Mythmaking,” 700. Williams: Black Muslim Theology and the Classical Islamic Tradition 89 PDF created with pdfFactory trial version www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk http://www.software-partners.co.uk