I keep wondering when Blackamerica is going to take stock. More and more, I see in my fellow young, black males, levels of aggression and intollerance that baffle my mind. Gun violence. Gang violence and even for those not associated with gang violence, the misplaced reverence that so much of pop-black-culture has on it. What, you may ask, is this reverence? In Philadelphia, one need not venture far to see the signs. Scarface T-shirts being sold on the corner or out of someone’s car in South Philadelphia. Grown men walking around in Biggie and Tupac T-shirts with fake bullet holes in them. And then of course, the glorifying of violence in the pop culture through acts of hyper-masculinity. How else could you explain Michael Vick’s behavior? In a discussion with a white associate, he expressed his dismay over Vick’s behavior [and rightly so] in his role in dog fighting. “He’s got it all, you know. Fame. Money. How could someone like that just f#ck that up?” I shook my head and replied, “manhood”. My associate looked quizzically back at me and said, “Manhood? What’s that got to do with it?” I chuckled, wryly, and continued, “it’s a black thing, man. You wouldn’t understand”.
At the risk of dabbling in pan-Islamic rhetoric, this, in my opinion, is one of the greatest things the Prophet brought with his Message. Beyond no god but God, the Prophet also brought about a new modality of manhood, one where you could fully be a proud, protective, strong character and yet it tamed the domineering, bombastic and even violent tendencies that were prevalent in the society he lived in during 7th Century Arabia. It is here that his Sunnah has so much potential for Blackamericans [though not exclusively] to address and resolve the pertinent issues of our time: Hyper Black Masculinity.
I cannot lay claim to the term, hyper masculinity, in reference to Blackamericans. As usual, it was a term I heard coined by Dr. Sherman Jackson. In a talk that Dr. Jackson gave last year at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Jackson urged Blackamerica to deal with three things: education, economics, and sex. And he tied all of these together in a talk that addressed the state of Islam in the Blackamerican community to the malfeasants on black males and their overt masculinity. Dr. Jackson drove home his points by illustrating that the Prophet, as our example, was a man who was never seen as a coward, though he was never full of bravado. He was never perceived to be a “punk” or a “chump”, even by his enemies. The Quraysh had many things to say about the son of Abdullah, but a coward or a chump was never one of them. I need not spend time here reiterating the blessed characteristics of the Messenger – he was kind, caring, compassionate, thoughtful and so on. Yes, we know them but we do not implement them. A recent case drove this home for me:
I was photographing a group of imams and when it came time for the group picture I placed the women in front, seated in chairs. This was done mainly out of photographic needs. But like clockwork, one of the imams boisterously raised his objections to have women siting in front of him.
“Akhiy, these are women and we are men! How can we be protectors and leaders of our community when we place our women in front of us? No, no! We have to have them get behind us.”
“If we have them ‘get behind us’ they won’t be in the picture. Can’t you be a man and stand in the back? No one here seems to be challenging your authority or place as a ‘man’. Need you be a tyrant to show it?”
Needless to say, I’ve had a few issues with this person before and I took this opportunity to stick it to him a bit but this is typical of the reaction of many Muslim men – and yes, the imam was Blackamerican. Instead of addressing real topics and real issues and standing up and dealing with those “like a man” we instead take our misplaced pride and break the proverbial stick over our leg so all can see how manly we are. So I make this plea, this cry to my fellow brothers [and sisters, as they will certainly be a part of this] regardless of religious affiliation, to look at, contemplate and rethink our approach to manhood and to be a man where it counts, to make the change.
It seems that Islam and more specifically Muslims just can’t stay out of popular discourse these days. The so-called rise of Islam in our Modern Time has scribed such sloganistic terms as Clash of Civilizations. Additionally, Islam has fostered a entire profession of self-loathing, self-serving arm chair apostates, who, having left Islam, crown themselves as self-proclaimed ex-Muslims, make a living off of an odd mixture of bashing and faux-reformation, supposedly aimed at rectifying the masses of Muslims, who they have deemed as having succumbed to the innate barbarity that is at the very heart of Islam.
