Cairo, Kemet (Misr) - As Black women, we are
excellent at blaming ourselves for the state of the Black world.
Despite the fact that men documented and conducted the Atlantic,
trans Saharan, Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean slave
trades from Africa, Black (African) women argue that our greed
and materialism have ruined the race. In spite of the fact that
the same white man who beat Black men unconscious also beat
and raped Black women, we argue that we have not supported the
family in the Americas. We also argue for the Arab-oriented
regime in Sudan, though literally, hundreds of thousands of
Black women are starving, being raped, and murdered daily. As
Muslims, we don't mention the numbers of women who were enslaved
by Muslims and went east, probably because the enslavers were
relatively brown. Life seems not to be the issue, and self-respect
seems to be lacking among Black activists in much of the female
Black Atlantic Diaspora.
As members of the Nation of Islam, we are wonderful
at agreeing with foreigners that our people have problems, but
we fall short on the question of why "we" wrote a
Book that said men could beat their wives. Were our foremothers
on an early form of crack? And where are our (women's) houris
in heaven? I get as tired, if not more, of the average male
as they get of the average female. Maybe this disregard for
self is the reason clitoral excision, adult male sex with female
infants, and child soldiers of both sexes plague the African
continent. If the American experience rendered African men "boys,"
can we not acknowledge that it rendered African women "girls?"
Disrespect of African women ran rampant through
the Arab slave trade. Although the population clearly shows
African descent, one finds that modern "Arab" and
"Iranian" tv programs reflect about as much acceptance
of "black" Africans as tv in the United States. Maybe
less. The occasional Black man or woman makes the occasional
appearance, while the commercials in the "Arab"' world
are dominated by women with clearly pressed hair, doing their
best to sell European-made products. The Iranians are still
following the Rig Veda, and poisoning themselves with bleach
in order to resemble black-haired ghosts. Fortunately, most
of the replications of artifacts in Egypt still show their Black
African origin – not that the heavily immigrant modern
Egyptian populace wants to have anything to do with Africa itself.
As always, Muslims are generous. And thus far,
it's fairly easy to travel as an individual woman or as a group.
It simply requires politeness, generosity, humor, and will power
to disabuse some men, including some of our own, who translate
Islam as a way to have women reflect their reputation. It's
also good to see the state of other women in the Muslim world.
If you really believe that we wrote the Book, you cannot travel
the Muslim world without wondering why we didn't erase slavery,
wife beating and child marriage from its pages.
In spite of the Torah, Injil, and Quran, as well
as the Gita, Vedas, sayings of Confucius, and other works that
indoctrinate the populace to believe that males are higher in
the Creatress/tor's estimation, humans continue to have wars,
slavery, murder, rape and mother-child mortality. In other words,
people continue to suffer many of the same ills when women shut
off our Right to exist independently. We don't have to open
up fearlessly, but the fact that we exist means we should exercise
that Right. Since Black women are on the very bottom of the
human economic and cultural rung at the moment, we have nothing
to lose and everything to gain by questioning the world as it
has been given to us and by writing for ourselves.
Maryam Sharron Muhammad Shabazz: PhD Graduate
Student, Department of History, Howard University - Returned
Peace Corps Volunteer, Uzbek Group 14, 2002-2003 - TransAfrica
Intern, Fall 2006 - General Member Association for the Study
of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC). Click
here to contact Ms. Shabazz.