From the Archives: Marvin X--the USA's Rumi

photo Doug Harris, Harlem, NY 1968

Fly to Allah by Marvin X, is more than poetry--it is singing/song, it is meditation, it is 

spirit/flowing/flying, it is blackness celebrated, it is prophecy, it is life, is all of these things and 

more, beyond articulation. Brother Marvin X is flying us/our/selves to Allah. And his strength is 

not merely aesthetic....--Johari Amini, Negro Digest/Black World, 1969

(Her complete review is below)

Land of My Daughters

Review by Bob Holman
Bowery Poetry Club, New York City

Last year Marvin X released his magnum opus, Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 (Black Bird Press), poems that put me in mind of Mawlânâ Jalâl ad-Dîn Muhammad Rûmî....--Bob Holman

Where I’d like to start this 2005 Poetry Roundup is Iraq, as in, how did we get there and how do we get back? The consciousness-altering book of poems that tells the tale, in no uncertain terms and yet always via poetry, is the astonishing Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 (Black Bird Press) by Marvin X.

Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi, and his nation is not “where our fathers died” but where our daughters live. The death of patriarchal war culture is his everyday reality. X’s poems vibrate, whip, love in the most meta- and physical ways imaginable and un-. He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English –- the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi. It’s not unusual for him to have a sequence of shortish lines followed by a culminating line that stretches a quarter page –- it is the dance of the dervishes, the rhythms of a Qasida.
“I am the black bird in love
I fly with love
I swoop into the ocean and pluck fish in the name of love
oceans flow with love
let the ocean wash me with love
even the cold ocean is love
the morning swim is love
the ocean chills me with love
from the deep come fish full of love”
(from the opening poem, “In the Name of Love”)

“How to Love A Thinking Woman”:
“Be revolutionary, radical, bodacious
Stay beyond the common
Have some class about yaself…
Say things she’s never heard before
Ihdina sirata al mustaquim(guide us on the straight path)
Make her laugh til she comes in her panties
serious jokes to get her mind off the world.”

There are anthems (“When I’ll Wave the Flag/Cuando Voy a Flamear la Bandera”), rants (“JESUS AND LIQUOR STORES”), love poems (“Thursday”) and poems totally uncategorizable (“Dreamtime”). Read this one cover to cover when you’ve got the time to “Marry a Tree.”

ChickenBones Poetry Book 2005

Land of My Daughters

Poems 1995-2005

By Marvin X

Reviewed by Rudolph Lewis

Marvin X (El Muhajir) is a marvelous writer in a black skin situated in America, and proudly a Muslim in these days and times when it ain't safe to be nowhere near or associated with Arabs and Muslims. He knows that White Supremacy is strutting mightily on the global stage, with no military and economic peer. Worst, the FBI got their bloodhounds out, kicking-in doors to save America from Muslim terrorists. So Marvin plays the odds, when the poor and weak need a voice, but mostly because like all artists he can stand momentarily outside the turmoil, challenged to take chances, just for the experiential hell of being near the fire.

For three years, in me, he has had a sympathetic observer. He is one of the most intellectually engaged black men in America making use of cyberspace to communicate nationally and internationally a unique, vital, and provocative African American perspective. His writings are at once political and personal, religious and secular, academic and street. And this integration is all done so seamlessly. As one of the proponents of the Black Arts Movement (60s and 70s), one might expect Marvin X to be rigidly ideological. Marvin X is rather a chameleon. Most of all Marvin is Marvin. But to become one's self is no small achievement. And that's the wonder of him as a contemporary poet.

Marvin uses the past rather than glorifying it as some romantic poets tend to do. He confronts what is now happening straight up, straight on. That is what is so delightful about Marvin, who is much freer than many of us could ever be. His was no freedom given, like Abe in '63. Marvin's run the gauntlet, the gamut, and came through it all like High John the Conqueror. He freed the Sisyphus, lodged in all our souls. And the rest is gravy. 

He has come out the other side whole, far beyond his youthful work as a proponent of the Black Arts. He deals now with subjects other than race and race pride and race oppression. He deals with the ethics of the actual life we live moment by moment, the daily agents that confront you daily for food clothing shelter and a bit of joy. He has lived the horrors of America and filters all through the harshness and victory of that world he has lived as both a man and a Muslim. .

There's no sugar coating deception in Marvin's writings. Expect to get it the way it happens, get it like you would from an Uncle or an Aunt. The real deal, the low down, the mamma-jamma. His vision is as diamond hard as the gunpowder night streets he frequents and the street people he saves from a life of drugs, prostitution, and criminality. He sympathizes with the outsider, the down and out, because he's been there, and knows everybody needs a chance and a little love and understanding.

Marvin's last decade can be experienced vividly in the recent collection of poems, Land of My Daughters (2005). Often dated, these poems are strong responses to some event, some feeling, some word that required nurturing introspection and report. And Marvin was there ready to put his contribution on the table for consideration. Many of the poems in this volume are already familiar; Marvin shares his poems and his essays with those on his email list and those on Kalamu's e-drum. Because Marvin be writing because he be on the case every day dealing with local, national, and international events trying to make sense out of a world being reshaped disastrously by Democrats and Republicans. 

In any event, there ain't no poem that ain't special in Land of My Daughters. Because that's how Marvin loves his people, every individual as if she the One. A poem unfamiliar "Why I Love Lesbians" is a controversial poem of such simplicity and honesty -- it is disarming. Marvin says, "I love them cause they hate me / In their hatred is drama / . . . / They step backward / At my manly aggression." 

Marvin bees the man ("arrogant masculinity") he been trained to be. But the times have changed; Cleaver the Id (Super Gun) is dead. And Marvin is Man Plus: "But I wouldn't take the pussy / Have become wiser / In old age." Marvin, sixty years old, is still adapting to his environment (like a Green Beret) yet retaining his own integrity and worth. Violence solves nothing. He now believes in the power of the word, to transform the thinking, change the training not only of others but himself (the poet) as well. 

This gender reorientation and realistic appraisal of women is also mirrored in the popular How to Love a Thinking Woman. Get me right, Marvin ain't gone soft or nothing, just "wiser." And it's good advice to listen to those who have gotten their ass whipped over foolishness,  those who have traveled the trail we now trying to traverse. So a "Thinking Woman" is about more than women: it is about how to be a man in contemporary times:

Make her laugh til she comes in panties With serious jokes to get her mind off the world Never let her figure you out Be always a mystery When she figures you out you're through Don't be that dumb

Giving the Other what she wants or thinks she wants is not enough. There is more to man than just repressive patriarchy and violence. A manly identity is not all that needs or solicits hatred. Viva la difference. There's a sacred place man and woman can meet beyond yesterday's crimes.

Marvin has a few dedicated poems of those who have come and stood on the world stage and made their notable contributions to the struggle: for the Barakas on the loss of their daughter (When Parents Bury Children and "Remembering Shani Barka"); Eldridge Cleaver ("Soul Gone Home"); Stokely Carmichael ("For Kwame Touré"); Lil Joe ("Revolutionary Rain");  Dudley Randall ("Black Man Listen"); and Sherley A. Williams ("Two Poets in the Park"). 

Sherley was the girl that got away, the girl his Mama told him he "ought / to marry" and didn't -- "a bad relationship was better than no relationship." So there they were "sitting in the park after 17 years of silence . . . now there is only one." It is a poem of love without sentimentality.

Marvin, I believe, has integrated Islam into his sensibility and thinking and it has provided him a certain mental discipline which in turn is reflected in his poems. "I Am" is such a philosophical poem, and Marvin concludes "If you are the best / pass and go." "The Devil Stole My Children," a poem of loss, might draw on some Islamic folktale. I'm uncertain what Jerusalem and Damascus symbolize in this landscape. I suspect Christianity, or, at least, a certain form of commercial Christianity. It's not unusual for Marvin to take swipes at Christianity in the Malcolm tradition, which is done very openly in the poem "Jesus and Liquor Stores": "JESUS / CAN'T HELP YOU / COULDN'T HELP HIMSELF."

This rough kind of humor, primarily mockery and sarcasm, this putting to shame approach can be found in "The Negro Knows Everything." But I like Marvin's humor. He's persuaded me that we should take ourselves so less seriously in that stiff ass way of being  unable to learn to laugh at ourselves again: "On her dying bed, my Mama said, / 'Marvin, leave then nigguhs alone. . .' " And, of course, one cannot leave one's self alone "And Mama died and I love dem nigguhs." 

Doubtless, Marvin X is a revolutionary poet. In these days and times of the Repression of the Poor, the era in which every dime is contested, and corporations have the executive key to our lives, how can one be anything else but? "Yesterday, more than 20,000 people perished of extreme poverty." And we suspect the same to happen tomorrow as far as we can see. That kind of action will make even the dullest think there is something amiss. That we are not getting "all of the news." 

And here is where we need the most skillful of poets, to fill in the gaps, to show us what really has value, in a world in which human life is being steadily eroded to objects (resources) for profit, and endless money making. In his "Poetics 2000," an update of Amiri Baraka's Black Art, poems don't kill. "Poetry will raise the dead / Make Lazarus stand."  The poet must struggle against opportunist rhetoric and "Speak straight and plain about the world / Like Clay in Dutchman."

Here's a poet committed to his people despite their weaknesses and evils or rather, in a way, because they have them.

"Joy" and "You Are Spirit" are just delightful. For Marvin the spirit or soul of man is reflected in how he uses and to what purpose he delivers his body to man or woman. He believes that right love can transform lust into love, into meaning, and purpose. But there is lots more to sink your teeth into like "Terrorist" and "Poem for 9/11/03." If you want serious artistic writing, a bit of comfort in the evening by the fireplace, Land of My Daughters will make you feel alive and whole again.

*   *   *   *   *

Love and War

poems

by Marvin X

review by Mohja Kahf

Have spent the last few days (when not mourning with friends and family the passing of my family friend and mentor in Muslim feminism and Islamic work, Sharifa AlKhateeb, (may she dwell in Rahma), immersed in the work of Marvin X and amazed at his brilliance. This poet has been prolific since his first book of poems, Fly to Allah, (1969), right up to his most recent Love and War Poems (1995) and Land of My Daughters, 2005, not to mention his plays, which were produced (without royalties) in Black community theatres from the 1960s to the present, and essay collections such as In the Crazy House Called America, 2002, and Wish I Could Tell You The Truth, 2005.

Marvin X was a prime shaper of the Black Arts Movement (1964-1970s) which is, among other things, the birthplace of modern Muslim American literature, and it begins with him. Well, Malik Shabazz and him. But while the Autobiography of Malcolm X is a touchstone of Muslim American culture, Marvin X and other Muslims in BAM were the emergence of a cultural expression of Black Power and Muslim thought inspired by Malcolm, who was, of course, ignited by the teachings and writings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And that, taken all together, is what I see as the starting point of Muslim American literature. 

With respect to Marvin X, I wonder why I am just now hearing about him-I read Malcolm when I was 12, I read Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez and others from the BAM in college and graduate school-why is attention not given to his work in the same places I encountered these other authors? Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because recontextualizing it will add another layer of attention to his incredibly rich body of work.He deserves to be WAY better known than he is among Muslim Americans and generally, in the world of writing and the world at large. By we who are younger Muslim American poets, in particular, Marvin should be honored as our elder, one who is still kickin, still true to the word!

Love and War Poems is wrenching and powerful, combining a powerful critique of America ("America downsizes like a cripple whore/won't retire/too greedy to sleep/too fat to rest") but also a critique of deadbeat dads and drug addicts (not sparing himself) and men who hate. "For the Men" is so Quranic poem it gave me chills with verses such as:

for the men who honor wives and the men who abuse them

for the men who win and the men who sin

for the men who love God and the men who hate

for the men who are brothers and the men who are beasts....

"O Men, listen to the wise," the poet pleads: there is no escape for the men of this world or the men of the next.

He is sexist as all get out, in the way that is common for men of his generation and his radicalism, but he is refreshingly aware of that and working on it. It's just that the work isn't done and if that offends you to see a man in process and still using the 'b' word, look out. Speaking of the easily offended, he warns in his introduction that "life is often profane and obscene, such as the present condition of African American people." If you want pure and holy, he says, read the Quran and the Bible, because Marvin is talking about "the low down dirty truth." For all that, the poetry of Marvin X is like prayer, beauty-full of reverence and honor for Truth. "It is. it is. it is."

A poem to his daughter Muhammida is a sweet mix of parental love and pride and fatherly freak-out at her sexuality and independence, ending humbly with: peace Mu it's on you yo world sister-girl.

Other people don't get off so easy, including a certain "black joint chief of staff ass nigguh (kill 200,000 Muslims in Iraq)" in the sharply aimed poem "Free Me from My Freedom." (Mmm hmm, the 'n' word is all over the place in Marvin too.) Nature poem, wedding poem, depression poem, wake-up call poems, it's all here. Haiti, Rwanda, the Million Man March, Betsy Ross's maid, OJ, Rabin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and other topics make it into this prophetically voiced collection of dissent poetry, so Islamic and so African American in its language and its themes, a book that will stand in its beauty long after the people mentioned in it pass. READ MARVIN X for RAMADAN!

Mohja Kahf

Associate Professor

Dept. of English & Middle East & Islamic Studies

University of Arkansas-Fayetteville

Fly to Allah

Review by Johari Amina

Fly to Allah, 1968, established Marvin X as one of the key poets of the Black Arts Movement 

and the father of Muslim American literature. See Dr. Mohja Kahf on Muslim American literature.
In the September, 1969, Negro Digest/Black World magazine, Chicago poet Johari Amimi reviewed 

Fly to Allah. 

Fly to Allah by Marvin X, is more than poetry--it is singing/song, it is meditation, it is 

spirit/flowing/flying, it is blackness celebrated, it is prophecy, it is life, is all of these things and 

more, beyond articulation. Brother Marvin X is flying us/our/selves to Allah.
And his strength is not merely aesthetic

who killed uncle tom
who killed uncle sam
Allah!
Fly to Him
If you are from Him

Do not beat your woman
Love her!
She will leave you
If you beat her
She will leave you
If you do not beat her
Guard against her
she is weak
by nature
Protect her
Elevate her
Fly with her to Allah
You will be successful
You will dance forever
in the here/after
on earth
behind drummers
who never stop....

but in the many positives we blkpeople need in order to be to build ourselves 

(which precludes 

building a nation). Things we really need

For the moon submits
to the morning sun
where are you
in the circle of time
dry your eyes
sweet woman
let me rock your soul
with my Father's hands
Come
I will not be here long.

...We are gods
black and beautiful we are
sailing through space/time
to a higher place
mountains/cities fall
as we march
into another world
much blacker than this....

There is more beauty here than should be spoken of in a review. Fly to Allah should be read & 

read & read & meditated upon & reread & reread &.... Thank you, Brother Marvin, 

for your gift to blkpeople....

...Farewell Harlem
Mecca of the west
Though saddened
I am moved
I smile within
I see my children
and I am a child
rising/taking control
and I am moved
to be here
a star
in Allah's heaven
As-Salaam-Alaikum
Wa rah-matu-llahi
Wa barakatuh.
--Johari Amini (Jewel C. Latimore)
Negro Digest, September, 1969

During 1968-69, Marvin X lived underground in Harlem, resisting the Vietnam war. He worked at the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, serving as associate editor of Black Theatre magazine. His Harlem associates included Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Don L. Lee, Sun Ra, Askia Toure, Milford Graves, Mae Jackson, Barbara Ann Teer. Ed Bullins was his host, along with the NLT family. He also associated with Minister Farakhan 

and Akbar Muhammad at Mosque #7.

Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality
by Marvin X

Review by Bob Holman

Last year Marvin X released his magnum opus, Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 (Black Bird Press), poems that put me in mind of Mawlânâ Jalâl ad-Dîn Muhammad Rûmî. He just published Beyond Religion Towards Spirituality, Essays on Consciousness (Black Bird Press, 2006), and all I can say, folks, is this is the Bible of the Hood and is bound to stir up plenty of opposition -- and maybe even cut through the BS to move towards God. “Imagine we are the generation of Parker, Coltrane, Dolphy, Monk, Duke, Bessie, Lady Day, Ella, Sarah, what on earth can follow us but the earth shaking children of tomorrow...­ who will smash the atmosphere with sounds...”

“If the mate leaves, we should be happy. Why would you want to keep someone who wants to go? If she wants to be with Joe, let her go -- you don’t own her. If she wants, she has the human right to give Joe some pussy. I know you don’t like it but get over it. Don’t kill her and Joe behind the funk. The world is full of infinite possibilities. God will provide wou with the perfect mate... Let go and Let God.”

Black Bird Press News & Review: The Hypocritical USA: On the Road to Damascus/Armageddon

The Hypocritical USA: On the Road to Damascus/Armageddon

Firstly, we ask did not the US support Iraq in its use of chemical weapons in the Iraq/Iran war? Did not the US use chemical weapons in the battle of Fallujah? Did not The US's client state Israel use chemical weapons in Gaza? How then can the US and her allies decry the use of such weapons by the Syrian regime?--Marvin X, Editor, Black Bird Press News & Review

California Prisoner Hunger Strike Continues

Posted on August 27, 2013 

by prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity

As prisoners mark day 51 of their hunger strike, lawyers and advocates continue to express outrage at the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) attacks on prisoners’ peaceful protest. After being internationally lambasted in the media last week for threatening prisoners with force feeding as well as ignoring their medical wishes, the CDCR continued to punish strikers by moving as many as 50 prisoners from Pelican Bay to other prisons. The CDCR issued a confusing press release on Monday evening, claiming it had met the demands of the strikers, while also maintaining it did not recognize the legitimacy of their protest, nor would it negotiate with them. Attempts by the strikers’ mediation team to keep open dialogue with the strikers and prison officials have been rebuffed by CDCR.

Lawyers and advocates have just learned that, in an attempt to break prisoners’ hunger strike, prison officials abruptly awakened more than 50 long-term Pelican Bay hunger strikers between 4:00 – 5:00 a.m. last Friday morning and moved them to various prisons around the state.

Anne Weills, attorney for the strikers responded to this news: “Just think of the state of these men, psychologically, physically and medically. The CDCR chose to arbitrarily move these men—many of whom may already be on the a verge of a cardiac arrest—making them get out of bed, chaining them up by the legs, waist and wrists, performing invasive cavity checks, making them march to a van, and then taking them wherever. And then isolating the four representatives who remain in the Stand Alone Administration Building at Pelican Bay.”

“These people are starving for a cause bigger than themselves. They have been very clear that they are fighting so that new prisoners, particularly younger men and women, do not have to suffer what they have had to suffer.” Said Azadeh Zohrabi, spokesperson for the Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. “Instead of going to meet with the prisoners at Pelican Bay, CDCR is governing by fiat–responding in a public statement to prisoners’ demands rather than negotiating with them as human beings. The public should be disturbed by this, to say the least.”

Late last week, as the CDCR was likely planning its early morning raid, strike mediators attempted to meet with both the Department and with strike representatives as a way of exploring options for resolving the crisis. The CDCR refused both attempts. “Regular dialogue was a common practice during the 2011 strike that led to some moderately constructive discussions between strikers and the CDCR,” said Marilyn McMahon, of the strike mediation team. “Why would the CDCR foreclose on these completely reasonable options? They can either be open to change or continue to cause suffering. They can’t do both.”

“Governor Brown and the CDCR are playing with peoples’ lives to make a point – that they are in control,” said Donna Willmott of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition. “They are using their emergency motion for force-feeding as justification to move against the strikers without restraint. Against all human decency, they have used every means at their disposal to destroy this peaceful protest: character assassination, coercion, isolation, and intimidation. And yet the strikers have not been broken.”

Despite CDCR’s apparent attempts to close the issue with its muddled press release Monday, mediators and lawyers continue to try open negotiations between the Department and the prisoners. Supporters continue to urgently request the California Legislature’s Public Safety Committee to convene a special session. Speaking to the strength and resolve of prisoners still on strike, family member and mediator Dolores Canales said yesterday, “I am filled with absolute awe at the strength and character of these individuals who have endured decades-long isolation. And I think it must be hope that fills them with such a determination… hope for long overdue change, hope within a system that has kept them in isolation for decades. And I think of great changes in history that only took place when people did not give up and when the awakening of a moral consciousness was stirred within the heart and soul of the public.”

From the Archives: Shallow Scholarship at Howard University Black Arts Movement Conference

Askia is not all wrong. I have heard many black intellectuals give revisionist black history talks, skipping from Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X, leaving out any mention of Elijah Muhammad. This is sick and reveals some black intellectuals are still grieving over Malcolm so much they can't think straight, their understanding of history is clouded by emotionalism. Who will deny Elijah took Marcus Garvey's work to another level and Malcolm took it even further, albeit under the guidance of Elijah Muhammad.--Marvin X, Editor, Black Bird Press News and Review

by Askia Muhammad

March 30, 2006

First, there are some sour grapes in these upcoming observations…might even be a case of Playa Hatin’. That said, I proceed in behalf of the countless others with similar experiences who never bother to footnote their experiences or keep a paper trail of their slanders…

I am sick and tired of the shallow prevailing Black intellectual view of the Nation of Islam. It’s not just the Neo-Cons and the White Evangelicals of the World who have problems with Muslims, our own Black intelligentsia have issues with the Islamic influence—particularly the Nation of Islam—on Black literature and culture in the United States and they refuse to admit it.

Black literature and academia lionizes Brother Malcolm X, highlighting only the 14 months or so of his life after he broke with the Nation of Islam, while trying to wipe out his 12 years of steadfast service and leadership within the Nation, his platform for earning national attention in the first place. We’ve done the same with Muhammad Ali.

Howard University’s English Department concluded an elaborately produced yet faintly publicized conference celebrating the Black Arts Movement March 24, and when I saw the program, I went bonkers! “They’ve done it again,” I thought. “They’ve kicked the Nation of Islam’s contribution to Black intellectual development to the curb.”

They had a truckload of Ph.D. candidates chaperoned by real professors, presenting papers and performances for two whole days at Howard, talking about the Black intellectual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s—the Black Arts Movement.

The topics genuinely reflected the prevailing mood of that period: “It’s Nation Time.”

The panels and paper topics ranged from “Black Fire” to “Nation Building,” to The Last Poets, to Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Amiri Baraka, Marvin X, Haki Madhubuti, to Women Writers, to “New Frontiers: Black Publications of the 1960s and 1970s,” to “Black Panther Party Contributions to the Revolutionary Aesthetic,” all the way to “Organic Intellectuality.”

Naturally the assembled educators referred anecdotally to the NOI or its products often, but they never really talked about the Nation’s impact, nor did they have any intellectuals from the Nation to talk about its role.

After the final speaker had spoken, I indelicately raised the subject and at the same time expressed my vexation over this omission. I was told that my friend Marvin X had spoken for Muslims. Now, I love Brother Marvin like a Play-Cousin, but with all due respect: his scholarship concerning the Nation of Islam is badly flawed and unreliable.

Prime example. In a July 2005 essay called “Marvin X: A Critical Look at the Father of Muslim American Literature,” El Muhajir (Marvin X) wrote that he was the “Foreign Editor” ofMuhammad Speaks in 1970, and: “Note: a few months later, Marvin X was selected to be editor of Muhammad Speaks until it was decided he was too militant. Askia Muhammad (Charles 37X [sic]) was selected instead.” That is pure bogus history, riddled with inaccuracies. That is also indicative of the shallow scholarship at the root of Howard’s English Department’s conference.*

I’m not angry at the panelists, they did not organize the event and call it an academic exercise. But I was so angry when I saw that someone had presented a paper: “Voice of the Black Arts Movement The Legacy of Negro Digest/Black World,” that I went and dug out copies of both Negro Digest and Black World, in which poems I had written were published, and one Fiction Edition which featured my picture on the cover and a short story I wrote inside. “Am I not a writer, thinker, poet, intellectual?” I wondered to myself.

Howard English Professor Eleanor Traylor even publicly commended a student for writing a paper about writer Leon Forrest. For many years Leon Forrest was the Associate Editor and then Editor of Muhammad Speaks. He in fact hired me in 1972 and prepared me to edit the newspaper after him in 1973. So, let me get this straight. Leon Forrest made a contribution to the Black Arts Movement that is worthy of scholastic attention (of course he did), but Muhammad Speaks did not? Excuse me! Something’s wrong with that picture!

While I was looking through my files, I discovered my original manuscript—sent by Western Union Telegram—of the article I wrote for Muhammad Speaks when Angela Davis was acquitted in San Jose California, June 4, 1972. I found my manuscripts from the funeral of Jonathan Jackson in 1970 and the murder of George Jackson in 1971.

By the time I had reminded myself of my own role in the struggle, and of my own fitness to recount it for a new generation of thinkers and writers, I was not just intellectually perturbed, I was personally offended. “What am I supposed to be? Some kind of Fake Writer?” I thought again to myself.

Granted I wrote using the names Charles K. Moreland Jr. in poetry anthologies and magazines, and Charles 20X and Charles 67X before I was named Askia Muhammad. But we translated LeRoi Jones into Amiri Baraka, didn’t we? We know that Haki Madhubuti was Don L. Lee, don’t we? The contradiction is, that the Black—just like the White—intellectual establishment does not want to know about Muslim writers, accept when they go against the Nation of Islam.

Maybe I should recognize that the Nation of Islam was simply a “change agent,” a catalyst like the War in Vietnam, like the Civil Rights movement—a completely unstudied change agent, I would complain—which helped make the climate in the Black community receptive to the Black Arts Movement and its new way of thinking. Maybe, I should concede that the Nation of Islam was a change agent and not the object of the change.

No. The object remains the same, and it is independent of a religious label. It is to change the minds of Black people to realize that the six most important words for us in the English language today are: “Accept your own and be yourself.”

That is intellectually and artistically distinct. Name. Culture. Religion. Language. Diet. That is the new paradigm injected into our culture by the Nation of Islam. That is the thinking which the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s reflects. That is the 800 lb gorilla in the Black intellectual meeting room, which most scholars, even Black scholars, overlook, or try to ignore.

________

* Contrary to Askia Muhammad, Marvin X did  indeed serve as Foreign Editor of Muhammad Speaks, appointed by Herbert Muhammad, while exiled in Mexico City and Belize during 1970. Marvin met and befriended Herbert's sons in Mexico City, Sultan and Elijah. Marvin provided them with copies of Muhammad Speaks.

One need only go to the editions of MS during that time to see his articles on Afro-Mexicans, including artist Elizabeth Catlett Mora, also he covered the trial in Belize of Black Power Movement brothers Evan X. Hyde and Ishmael Shabazz, for which he was ultimately deported back to the USA.

Marvin X was indeed offered and accepted the position of Muhammad Speaks editor. He was told to go home to pack, but later was told Askia Muhammad got the position. Most people consider Marvin X a loose cannon with an uncontrollable pen, Askia was definitely a more passive personality but a good journalist.

As per the conference, Marvin X spoke on the role of the NOI in the Black Arts Movement on both days of the conference. Although Askia is a DC journalist, he did not arrive at the conference until the afternoon of the last day. His remarks seemed out of place since the audience was aware that Marvin X had discussed the NOI for two days.

For the role of the NOI in BAM, see the paper below by Dr. Mohja Kahf who refers to Marvin X as the father of Muslim American literature. She gives credit to the NOI for being the foundation of Muslim American literature and influencing the Black Arts Movement poets such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Muhammad Toure (Roland Snellings), Marvin X, et al. My brother Askia Muhammad was himself guilty of shallow scholarship and pettiness. His remarks upset the audience and he was booed for being disruptive. Askia is still my brother!

Teaching Diaspora Literature: Muslim American Literature as an Emerging Field

Dr. Mohja Kahf∗



Is there such a thing as Muslim American literature (MAL)? I argue that there is: It begins with the Muslims of the Black Arts Movement (1965–75). The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of its iconic texts; it includes American Sufi writing, secular ethnic novels, writing by immigrant and second-generation Muslims, and religious American Muslim literature. Many of the works I would put into this category can and do also get read in other categories, such as African American, Arab American, and South Asian literature, “Third World” women’s writing, diasporic Muslim literature in English, and so forth. While the place of these works in other categories cannot be denied, something is gained in reading them together as part of an American Muslim cultural landscape. Like Jewish American literature by the 1930s, Muslim American literature is in a formative stage. It will be interesting to see how it develops (and who will be its Philip Roth!)

I suggest the following typology of MAL only as a foothold, a means of bringing a tentative order to the many texts, one that should be challenged, and maybe ultimately dropped altogether. My first grouping, the “Prophets of Dissent,” suggests that Muslim works in the Black Arts Movement (BAM) are the first set of writings in American literature to voice a cultural position identifiable as Muslim. 

Contemporary Muslim writing that takes the achievements of the BAM as an important literary influence also belongs here, and is characterized similarly by its “outsider” status, moral critique of mainstream American values, and often prophetic, visionary tone. In contrast, the writers of what I call “the Multi-Ethnic Multitudes” tend to enjoy “insider” status in American letters, often entering through MFA programs and the literary establishment, getting published through trade and university book industries, garnering reviews in the mainstream press. They do not share an overall aesthetic but are individual writers of various ethnicities and a wide range of secularisms and spiritualities, and indeed I question my placing them all in one group, and do so temporarily only for the sake of convenience.

On the other hand, my third group, the “New American Transcendentalists,” appears to cohere, in aesthetic terms, as writers who share a broad Sufi cultural foundation undergirding their literary work. Their writings often show familiarity with the Sufi poets of several classical Muslim literatures (e.g., in Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu), as well as with American Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century, and that which tends toward the spiritual and the ecstatic in modern American poetry. Finally, the “New Pilgrims” is my term for a loose grouping of writers for whom Islam is not merely a mode of dissent, cultural background, or spiritual foundation for their writing, but its aim and explicit topic. Of the four groups, the New Pilgrims are the ones who write in an overtly religious mode and motivation, like Ann Bradstreet, Cotton Mather, and the Puritans of early American history. This does not prevent them from being capable of producing great literature, any more than it prevented the great Puritan writers.
Here is an example of just a few writers in each category, by no means a comprehensive list: 

Prophets of Dissent
From the Black Arts Movement:

• Marvin X, whose Fly to Allah (1969) is possibly the first book of poems published in English by a Muslim American author.
  
• Sonia Sanchez, whose A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1974) is the work of her Muslim period.
  
• Amiri Baraka, whose A Black Mass (2002) renders the Nation of Islam’s Yacoub genesis theology into drama. As with Sanchez, the author was Muslim only briefly but the influence of the Islamic period stretches over a significant part of his overall production.
  
  Later Prophets of Dissent include:
  
• Calligraphy of Thought, the Bay area poetry venue for young “Generation M” Muslim American spoken word artists who today continue in the visionary and dissenting mode of the BAM.
  
• Suheir Hammad, Palestinian New Yorker, diva of Def Poetry Jam (on Broadway and HBO), whose tribute to June Jordan in her first book of poetry, Born Palestinian, Born Black
  

(1996), establishes her line of descent from the BAM, at least as one (major) influence on her work.

• El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) is an iconic figure for this mode of Muslim American writing and, indeed, for many writers in all four categories.
Multi-Ethnic Multitudes

• Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali, an influential figure in the mainstream American poetry scene, with a literary prize named after him at the University of Utah, brought the ghazal into fashion in English so that it is now taught among other forms in MFA programs.
  
• Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian American, likewise a “crossover” poet whose work enjoys prominence in American letters, takes on Muslim content in a significant amount of her work.
  
• Sam Hamod, an Arab midwesterner who was publishing poetry in journals at the same time as Marvin X.
  
• Nahid Rachlin’s fiction has been published since well before the recent wave of literature by others who, like her, are Iranian immigrants.
  
• Mustafa Mutabaruka, an African American Muslim, debut novel Seed (2002).
  
• Samina Ali, midwesterner of Indian parentage, debut novel Madras on Rainy Days (2004),
  was featured on the June 2004 cover of Poets & Writers.
  
• Khaled Hosseini, debut novel The Kite Runner (2003).
  •Michael Muhammad Knight, a Muslim of New York Irish Catholic background, whose punk rock novel The Taqwacores (2004) delves deeply into Muslim identity issues.
  • There are a number of journals where Muslim American literature of various ethnicities can be found today, among them Chowrangi, a Pakistani American magazine out of New Jersey, and Mizna, an Arab American poetry magazine out of Minneapolis.
  New American Transcendentalists
  

• Daniel (Abd al-Hayy) Moore is an excellent example of this mode of Muslim American writing. California-born, he published as a Beat poet in the early sixties, became a Sufi Muslim, renounced poetry for a decade, then renounced his renouncement and began publishing again, prolifically and with a rare talent. His Ramadan Sonnets (City Lights, 1986) is a marriage of content and form that exemplifies the “Muslim/American” simultaneity of Muslim American art.
  
• The Rumi phenomenon: apparently the most read poet in America is a Muslim. He merits mention for that, although technically I am not including literature in translation. Then again, why not? As with so many other of my limits, this is arbitrary and only awaits someone to make a case against it.
  
• Journals publishing poetry in this mode include The American Muslim, Sufi, Qalbi, and others.
  New American Pilgrims
  •Pamela Taylor writes Muslim American science fiction. Iman Yusuf writes “Islamic romance.” This group of writers is not limited to genre writers, however. Dasham Brookins writes and performs poetry and maintains a website, MuslimPoet.com, where poets such as Samantha Sanchez post. Umm Zakiyya (pseud.) has written a novel, If I Should Speak (2001), about a young Muslim American and her roommates in college. Writers in this group also come from many ethnicities but, unlike those in my second category, come together around a more or less coherent, more or less conservative Muslim identity. Websites tend to ban erotica and blasphemy, for example. The Islamic Writers Alliance, a group formed by Muslim American women, has just put out its first anthology. Major published authors have yet to emerge in this grouping, but there is no reason to think they will not eventually do so.
  My criteria for Muslim American literature are a flexible combination of three factors:
  Muslim authorship. Including this factor, however vague or tenuous, prevents widening the scope to the point of meaninglessness, rather than simply including any work about Muslims by an author with no biographical connection to the slightest sliver of Muslim identity (such as Robert Ferrigno with his recent dystopian novel about a fanatical Muslim takeover of America). It is a cultural, not religious, notion of Muslim that is relevant. A “lapsed Muslim” author, as one poet on my roster called himself, is still a Muslim author for my purposes. I am not interested in levels of commitment or practice, but in literary Muslimness.

Language and aesthetic of the writing. In a few cases, there is a deliberate espousal of an aesthetic that has Islamic roots, such as the Afrocentric Islamic aesthetic of the Muslim authors in the Black Arts Movement.

Relevance of themes or content. If the Muslim identity of the author is vague or not explicitly professed, which is often the case with authors in the “Multi-Ethnic Multitudes,” but the content itself is relevant to Muslim American experience, I take that as a signal that the text is choosing to enter the conversation of Muslim American literature and ought to be included.
In defining boundaries for research that could become impossibly diffuse, I choose to look mainly at fiction and poetry, with autobiography and memoir writings selectively included. I have not included writings in languages other than English, although there are Muslims in America who write in Arabic, Urdu, and other languages. I have looked at the twentieth century onward, and there is archival digging to be done in earlier periods: the Spanish colonial era may yield Muslim writing, and we already know that some enslaved Muslims in the nineteenth century have left narratives. More research is needed. If one expands the field from “literature” to “Muslim American culture,” one can also include Motown, rap, and hip-hop lyrics by Muslim artists, screenplays such as the Muslim American classic The Message by the late Syrian American producer Mustapha Aqqad, books written for children, sermons, essays, and other genres.
There are pleasures and patterns that emerge from reading this profusion of disparate texts under the rubric of Muslim American cultural narrative. It is time! I hope, as this field emerges, that others will do work in areas I have left aside in this brief initial exploration. 


∗ Mohja Kahf (Comparative Literature, University of Arkansas) is the author of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (1999), E-mails from Scheherazad (poetry, 2003), and The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (novel, 2006).