Misrepresenting Islam

When the early Germanic tribes first accepted Christianity, they did so only after altering the religion to accommodate their view of the world. Until Charlemagne's conquest and reconversion of Germany eradicated this so-called "Aryan heresy," German Christianity had little in common with the message of universal fraternity fundamental to its mother religion. Today, another world religion has become the victim of a similar attempt at distortion.

In his recent speech at Harvard, Dr. Khallid Muhammad, a member of the Nation of Islam, unilaterally condemned all whites. His views represent those of a strident group of activists which has preached Black supremacy, the deviancy of Jews and the innate iniquity of whites, all, ostensibly, in the name of faith. The faith they claim to represent is Islam.

The Nation of Islam has its roots in the movement to rediscover African traditions which accompanied the campaign for civil rights. African-American activists of the era, in piecing together their ancestors' customs, sought a unique cultural identity for themselves, distinct from the European-American culture which had been imposed upon them.

In grasping for a definitive spiritual facet to their cultural heritage, they latched onto Islam, the first major world religion to incorporate a large portion of the African continent. The Nation of Islam began preaching Islam as both the ancestral religion of the African and the ideology which would liberate Blacks from their oppressed condition.

But as the reaction of some Blacks to years of suffering American society's iniquity became increasingly bitter, a reverse form of racism began to appear. Centuries of white bigotry against Blacks inverted into Black hatred of whites. The followers of the Nation wanted a spiritual rationale for racism. Islam, as promulgated by the Nation, became less the orthodox belief to which a fifth of the world's population adheres, and more a justification for the Nation's political agenda.

Thus, Elijah Muhammad, the late messiah and absolute ruler of the Nation, preached a message of Black supremacy and racial isolation as intrinsic to Islam. Malcolm X, the foremost among Elijah's ministers, was also a disciple of bigotry until he reached his crucial epiphany when, brought into close contact with Muslims of every color at Mecca.

The son of Elijah Muhammad, Warith Deen Muhammad, like the majority of African-American Muslims, has accepted the non-racist beliefs of mainstream Islam. A vocal minority in the Nation of Islam, however, continue, to preach their message of intolerance.

This small but loud group continues to condemn European and American society. Their anti-white, and often anti-Jewish, view of Islam is contrary to both the teachings of the Qur'an and the actual history of the religion.

Presenting whites or any other racial group as anathema to Islam implies that it is a racially exclusive faith. This flat-out contradicts current global demographics. Muslims are found everywhere, from Bosnia to China. The country with the largest number of Muslims is not Saudi Arabia, it is Indonesia. Anyone who claims that Islam belongs to only one ethnic group ignores the vast majority of Muslims in the world today.

Furthermore, those who present Islam as violently anti-Jewish completely disregard the centuries of cooperation and peaceful coexistence between believers of the two faiths. In portraying the Black-Jewish conflict as somehow ingrained in Islam, Muhammad and his cronies perpetuate the myth of an intransigent antagonism between Jews and Muslims.

Dr. Muhammad and the Nation's presentation of Islam is laced with half-truths and outright falsehoods. To someone not familiar with the actual teachings of Islam, Dr. Muhammad's speech would have been an unfortunate introduction.

Free speech is a laudable ideal but the preaching of untruths and intolerance remains detestable. Dr. Muhammad's talk had little to do with academic discourse. Not only did he insult Black students and faculty as "Uncle Toms," he similarly offended every Muslim when, as a Muslim, he called whites "liars." Such blanket invective has no place in true intellectual discussion.

Campus organizations and student groups who bring in speakers such as Dr. Muhammad in order to present a diversity of opinions taint themselves with the views of the speaker, damaging any credibility they themselves may have as tolerant and objective organizations. In a few sentences, Muhammad attached to both Islam and the African-American movement for civil rights stigmas of radicalism and racism which they do not deserve.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Afro-American Cultural Center should have been more wary of inviting Khallid Muhammad. And those who listen to him should realize that just as his views do not represent those of the vast majority of African-Americans, neither do they represent those true practitioners of Islam.