Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960-1975

by Curtis, Edward E., IV

• ISBN13: 9780807830543
• ISBN10: 0807830542
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-30
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam came to America's attention in the 1960s and 1970s as a radical separatist African American social and political group. But the movement was also a religious one. Edward E. Curtis IV offers the first comprehensive examination of the Nation of Islam's rituals, ethics, theologies, and religious narratives, showing how the movement combined elements of Afro-Eurasian Islamic traditions with African American traditions to create a new form of Islamic faith.Considering everything from bean pies to religious cartoons, clothing styles to prayer rituals, Curtis explains how the practice of Islam in the movement included the disciplining and purifying of the black body, the reorientation of African American historical consciousness toward the Muslim world, an engagement with both mainstream Islamic texts and the prophecies of Elijah Muhammad, and the development of a holistic approach to political, religious, and social liberation. Curtis's analysis pushes beyond essentialist ideas about what it means to be Muslim and promotes a view of the importance of local processes in identity formation and appropriations of Islamic traditions.

Table of Contents

What Islam has done for me : finding religion in the Nation of Islam	p. 15
Making a Muslim messenger : defending the Islamic legitimacy of Elijah Muhammad	p. 35
Black Muslim history narratives : orienting the Nation of Islam in Muslim time and space	p. 67
The ethics of the black Muslim body	p. 95
Rituals of control and liberation	p. 131
Conclusion : becoming Muslim again	p. 175
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