Who speaks for African-American Muslims?

Louis Farrakhan's bitter voice may get the most media play, but he represents only a sliver of black Islam -- and after Sept. 11, the more orthodox mainstream wants to be heard.

By Eric Boehlert

Oct. 23, 2001 | NEW YORK -- Tuning in to CNN last Wednesday night, Mustafa El-Amin caught a brief report crawling across the bottom of the screen that the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan had challenged the United States' bombing campaign in Afghanistan.

El-Amin, an African-American who converted to Islam 30 years ago when he joined a temple in Newark, N.J., quickly went online to find more details. There, he learned that a skeptical Farrakhan had urged President Bush to lay out the evidence against accused terrorist Osama bin Laden and not to "hide behind national security." In a speech marking the sixth anniversary of Farrakhan's successful Million Man March, the minister warned his followers that their government had "lied before, and there's no guarantee they are not lying now."

El-Amin was crushed: "It really hurt. Because what he tried to represent publicly, nationally and internationally, was the African-American Muslim position on the war."

The problem is, El-Amin argues, most African-American Muslims -- the majority of whom are not affiliated with the Nation of Islam -- disagree with Farrakhan's assessment, and resent being tarred by his rhetorical brush. Like many, El-Amin left the Nation of Islam in the '70s to embrace orthodox Islam.

"The first thing that should be said [about Sept. 11] is that this is a great tragedy. That those who committed this act ought to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and if they're calling themselves Muslims, they're not. They've hurt us so much," says El-Amin, a public school teacher who works not far from Newark's Malcolm X Shabazz High School, named after the assassinated Nation of Islam leader from the '60s.

More importantly, says El-Amin, African-American Muslims "love America and we'll fight for this country. Yet we've been getting an indirect backlash. You can feel it, it's in the air. People think, 'Y'all hate America.' So when Farrakhan comes out with statement like that, he plays right into that and he puts us all in jeopardy."

Since Sept. 11, perhaps no other American religious and ethnic group has been put in so unusual a position as have African-American Muslims. On the one hand they're being overshadowed by Farrakhan's brand of fiery defiance, and on the other they're being eclipsed by immigrant Arab Muslims who have moved to the forefront, thanks largely to the press, as the public picture of Islam in America.

Lost in that mix has been the silent majority, the nearly 2 million orthodox African-American Muslims who have no ties to either group.

"African-American Muslims are more invisible than ever," complains Aminah Beverly McCloud, associate professor of Islamic studies at DePaul University and author of "African American Islam."

Even before the terrorist attack catapulted Islam into the headlines, there was some discernible tension between the three distinct domestic Muslim groups in America. For instance, some orthodox African-American Muslims have resented what they see as the often separatist agenda embraced by the immigrant, and largely Arab, community. The two groups rarely interact socially or at mosques, and a sizable economic divide often separates them.

Last fall a serious rift was created when a coalition of prominent Arab and Muslim groups endorsed Republican George Bush for president.

"The Bush endorsement enraged African-American Muslims," James Jones, associate professor of world religion and African-American studies at Manhattanville College. "People are trying to figure out how to bridge that gap."

At the same time, some African-American Muslims have serious questions not only about the racist rhetoric on which the Nation of Islam was founded (i.e. white people are "blond blue-eyed devils," created in a genetic experiment 6,000 years ago), but also about the type of faith being preached. Although Farrakhan has worked hard in recent years to bring his teachings more in line with the Sunni orthodoxy, the Nation of Islam still insists, for instance, that its former leader Elijah Muhammad was a messenger, or prophet, sent by Allah, and that in 1930 Allah appeared in the person of Nation of Islam founder W. Fard Muhammad, a messiah on earth. Both tenets, and particularly the second, are considered blasphemy among mainstream Muslims.

Meanwhile, though Arab immigrants may shake their heads when it comes to the Nation of Islam's odd brand of religion, they embrace Farrakhan's rhetoric, perhaps privately, when he's out front condemning both Israel and American foreign policy.

Since Sept. 11, some African-American Muslims have felt increasingly uneasy toward the Nation of Islam, as Farrakhan unleashes more fervent condemnations, and also toward immigrant Muslims, whose international conflict appears to be the root of the terrorist attack.

Next page: How serious is Farrakhan's rapprochement with the Muslim American Society?