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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.