Today I'm talking about Blackness. And then, in honor of Eid-ul-Adha, a brief word about Muslims and Muslim-Cleansing.
I've been taking a workshop with Erin Washington of Soul Center. It is about exploring the intrinsic connection our time has to 1968 and about developing a personal project around the question "Who Am I?" and expanding the limitations of what that actually means. She recently sent me a conversation with Fred Moten talking about the root of blackness not just in relation to skin tone or phenotype, but state of mind. In part one, when I say "wash away whiteness to make room for blackness" I am using Moten's definition. I am talking about blackness in terms of values. You can watch the full conversation here: https://vimeo.com/100330139 The following is my response to Erin after watching the video; I'm also addressing a video of Barbara Ann Teer talking about the National Black Theatre. You can watch that video here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQVhaZpjkCU&t=546s Here is my response: Alright I went a little crazy after watching these. Thing is, I still don't understand what you mean by my "project." More on that in a bit. First, Fred Moten... I wish I was in that audience because I would have interrupted (disrupted) him after every other sentence. I feel like he was inviting the audience into an exercise in blackness that nobody seemed game for. But also because so many of his terms and references went over my head. And yet I understood everything he meant. I understood his literal definition of blackness as indiscretion, impurity, and being incomplete yet completely full at the same time. All of this is directly related to art... or at least my interpretation of who an artist is--someone gifted and cursed with an incorrigible ambivalence towards order. The self is a fantasy (understanding this actually gets rid of the fear of "presumption" that the audience member had when they were hesitant to identify with blackness. Understanding the self as a fantasy gets rid of the fear of rejection from a group or way of thinking. The mind can embrace two directly opposing ideas in a single moment). We must study the way the poor live for they make abundance out of depravity and embrace radical non self-sufficiency which is really what love is. The brutality to blackness that birthed the nature of indiscretion. The indiscernible body... These thoughts are paraphrased and incomplete because I'm not sure how to articulate my actual response. It is incomplete yet completely full at the same time. *********************************************************************************** On to Teer, She created the theatre that was in her heart. Invented an entire discipline that had not previously existed. To hell with equity and diversity this is what I feel I must do. I also wish I could talk more about the reading from the first week... because it struck me that even, beyond theatre, our sense of morality is defined by what the white gaze sees as "inappropriate." ************************************************************************************ I think all this helped clarify what I was really thinking when I posted to "theatre folks of color" talking about being in a group that excludes. We all want equity and diversity in the "industry." But what industry? We define ourselves by the rage and resentment we have against the way this "industry" degrades us. Degrades itself. Why do we give a shit? We'll all still end up speaking their languages and worshiping their gods instead of our own. I'll still take the money, whore that I am. But I won't lose sight of the danger. And I will risk the presumption to say I was embracing my blackness by asking that question in the theatre folks of color group. ************************************************************************************ Call it blackness or call it trouble making or call it dissent or call it impurity or indiscretion. This is my job. ************************************************************************************ WHO AM I? My ethnic ancestors come from the Nile and the African Sahara and the Arabian desert. I am a born American. I have skin some would call "dark" and others would call "light." I inherit a kind of African brutality. Not the brutality of the Atlantic Slave Trade, But another particular kind of brutality. This is why I respect the Black leaders in America who internationalize the struggle. As Baldwin puts it, they "understand" the white man more than anyone else. Because the relationship is so particular. They are tied together in mutual degradation. And even then, when Baldwin talks about his "privileged" status as an American being arrested in Paris, (Aside: Moten's understanding of the "privilege" in depravity and how that allows people access to different and more sustainable ways of living and more vital ways of expressing themselves is extremely exciting to me and something that I have in a way carried in my heart but never heard it expressed back to me in such a way.) Baldwin recognizes that the other prisoners are more able to deal with a depraved world than him, And he could see what the French "could do to Arab peanut vendors." What a beautiful thinker, Baldwin, to be able to name the acute suffering of his own people as distinctly harsher from the rest, and yet recognize the separateness he has from the acute suffering he has from others. None of us are liberated until the descendants of those kidnapped from Africa and brought to America are fully liberated. How do we go about this? ************************************************************************************ Anyway, disrupting the American establishment is what blackness is. You (Erin Washington) want to see how long it takes to talk about what we're talking about without talking about oppression. How do we not do that? Isn't that the whole dialogue of the world? The Prophet Muhammad said, "No god, but god." Before we invoke the positive, we must invoke the negative. Moten said that blackness is defined by the negative first, by what it is not. I think the only way to stop talking about "oppression" in the context of the "industry" is to negate the "industry" all together. Fuck the industry. Not the whiteness in the industry. The industry. It makes our innards suffer. Gives us cancers and autoimmune disorders. I have suffered this personally. I'm not interested in "industry." I'm interested in life. In story. In courage. This is so terribly idealistic, and I probably couldn't do it, but I think it must be done. My spiritual ancestors spoke the truth at all costs. I try to do this. I think if we all just spoke the truth plainly to one another a lot more would get done. To whites and to ourselves. Baldwin said, "I want to be an honest man and a good writer, I want to be an honest man and a good actor/ writer. It feels presumptuous to call myself a writer, but who cares? ************************************************************************************ Back to my "project" a bit. Something struck me when Moten was talking about "the indiscernible body." We're in a moment when actors are especially disconnected from their bodies. We're all "zooming" but in many ways this magnifies the isolation... and yet, audio drama and "oral" storytelling is such a deep and rich tradition. I maintain that the voice is the actor's most important and powerful tool. Maybe its because my ancestors developed a highly sonal tradition. But when we can only hear one's voice? What possibilities open up? When the body is not there at all? When we're only left with the unseen? I am not the first to ask this. But of course, we are in the business of uncovering the questions. Which were uncovered before but have since been covered. How do we convey blackness through the voice? Whether I'm in an audio drama or a courtroom or in a rehearsal space or in an "industry" where both whiteness and non-whiteness and blackness and anti-blackness is present. How does impurity and indiscretion and fullness and incompleteness sound in the voice? What does that all mean? I came up with a title. "In the world, out the mind: Disruptive Chronicles in the Interdimensional Search for Joy." Maybe I'll make stories based on whatever the fuck that title means, maybe not. The original title was "Disjointed Chronicles in the Interdimensional Search for Joy." I changed it to "disruptive" after listening to Moten's lecture. I'm so agitated. I want to break shit. But I'm not going to break shit, I'm going to make shit. Not in response to oppression, because I negate the oppression. I still don't know what the fuck you mean by "project." Or if what I'm beginning to talk about now is at all relevant to what you're trying to teach. Maybe I should ask, what the fuck are you trying to teach? Much respect, Mohammad *********************************************************************************** That was the email. Now as promised, a brief word about Muslims. I got to celebrate Eid-ul-Adha with my family. Alhamdulilah. It was fun, but towards the end of the day I almost convulsed in a violent wave of tears and vomit. My little brother is of that late Gen Z generation... so knows like everything about the world without actually having to pick up a book. He was explaining to me about this other global pandemic: Muslim-Cleansing. I convulsed because I realized I never actually think about it. Now, I'm a well read motherfucker. But it just doesn't register cognitively that my spiritual community is being slaughtered in masses. And this has been happening since their very beginnings. Internalized oppression much? There's really nothing you and I can do about it, other than change the way we talk about Islam and Muslims. I'm talking to my well-meaning liberal POCs here. Stop with the racialization of Islam. Just stop. It is a spiritual tradition, not an ethnic one. There is a bigger problem about otherizing the monotheistic traditions of Africa and the Middle World, on the pretense that they cause problems in the world. This otherizing has its roots in appropriation. Because these traditions--particularly Christianity--were appropriated by people (mainly white people) who only wanted to use and manipulate them to advance their own greed and blood lust. Would you consider all of those white moms in yoga pants true Siddharthas? No. Consider the fact that not a single religion, not a single popular spiritual tradition of the world came out of Europe. They all came from Africa, Asia Minor, and the remainder of Asia. Even less popular traditions that are still in practice have their roots in places like the Ancient Americas, but not in Europe. Consider this fact. And then remember how much your culture teaches you to demonize religion. These traditions are beautiful and perfect. People are weak. Judge a religion by its principles not by its adherents--those are the words of the legendary Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). But I want to talk about Muslims right now. Islamophobia and Muslim-cleansing in America is not tied to 9/11... it is tied to slavery and to anti-blackness. Slaves brought from Africa were mind-raped out of their African traditions. The tribal traditions, and Islam. Some of the most successful slave rebellions were led by muslims. Muslims died in every single American war--including the revolution. There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that Muslims reached the Americas before Christopher Columbus, and began a cultural exchange rather than an erasure of people and traditions. During the rise of mercantilism, when Europeans were robbing and raping the lands of the Americas and accumulating vast wealth, they began buying off raw goods from Muslims--who weren't wise to the going-ons in the "new world." The economic downfall of Muslim lands is directly tied to Europe's genocide of the Americas. Less than ten years after the Spanish Inquisition (when Muslims were kicked out of Europe) the Atlantic Slave Trade began. What a coincidence. You love the "Muslim Immigrant" and MENASA community? Cool. Let me be impolite: I loathe the catchy MENASA (Middle Eastern, North African, South Asia) grouping. Our narratives are far too complex for this grouping. Not all "MENASA" are Muslims and the majority of Muslims do not come from the "MENASA" territories. I'm saying this because their is a lot of pretense around whatever ambiguous narrative is implied by this acronym and the spiritual tradition of Islam. Less than 10% of Muslims are Arab. Let me tell you why this racialization is dangerous, beyond its roots in anti-blackness in this country: It feeds into a pernicious Islamophobic sentiment in the white world which sanctions the silence around Muslim-Cleansing. So called "Muslim" and non-Muslim entities are wiping Muslims off the planet in masses. In China In Myanmar In India In Palestine To name a few In the U.S. and Europe and Australia there is wide spread xenophobia and Islamophobia and every resident of those countries (including myself) lives under the umbrella of state sanctioned/financed murder of Muslims around the globe. Our countries arm Saudi Arabia/Israel and other mercenary states who pull the trigger on the people who's lands they govern--Yemen is experiencing perhaps the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. In Syria, Bashar Al-Asad is carrying on this work of Muslim-Cleansing in an unimaginably brutal way. He is expanding on the tradition of Saddam Hussein. Their power is directly rooted to support from western governments and the suppression of egalitarian tendencies in the Middle East. Turkey and the Kurds? More Muslims killing each other and dying. ISIS and the rest of that ilk? Mowing down Muslims more than anyone else. The existence of these groups is rooted in empirical suppression of muslim egalitarian principles in their own lands. These groups are not "fundamentalist." Their actions directly contradict the fundamentals of Islam. This is not my interpretation, this is truth. These groups are financed by empirical powers and recruit people who are angry, scared, betrayed by their own egos and have little to no knowledge of the Qur'an and the sunnah of the prophet. Let's stop with this linear narrative of history which implies that as humans advance (merely through time) they become wiser to their traditions. This is a Eurocentric narrative imposed onto the rest of the world. Look around at all the people who are growing wiser to ancient and sturdy traditions of love and truth. New discoveries are being made about societies witch elevate the status of women and other groups we now consider "marginalized" in a way we could never imagine today, thousands of years before our time. These histories have been hidden and erased by the Euro-centric pretense. Look at all the social media posts about "if you republicans actually followed Jesus then you wouldn't do this and you would do that." They're right. Egypt and Iran maim and murder their own citizens. Again, these tyrants' political power is directly rooted in the financed suppression of egalitarian movements by the United States and Europe. From the days of the prophet, muslim egalitarian principles were violently suppressed. At the end of the caliphate of Ali, just forty years or so after the prophet's death, the egalitarian muslim project was hijacked by the very people it came to inspire and to change. I'm still in the process of opening my eyes to this. Even now I'm just reading about the efforts of Prince Faisal after World War I. He upheld these egalitarian principles by trying to create an Arab State of equality and equity, and he protected Armenians from the systemic slaughter of Imperialists. His efforts were sabotaged by even more powerful imperialists in Europe. And now we blame Muslims for all the trouble in the Middle East, when their intention has continually been about egalitarian principles--and has been continually hijacked by greed and the greedy and white mentality. Anti-blackness, anti-semitism, and muslim self-hatred in the Arabic speaking world and beyond is rooted in this suppression by colonizing powers. I can't lie, I still love "Lawrence of Arabia." But how racist and Islamophobic is that movie for making it about the British guy who did like nothing except be the only one who actually had some sympathy for the cause. Fuck that shit so hard up the motherfucking ass. We're talking about the suppression of a way of thinking. A way of being. A beautiful way of being. Not about race or identity. And don't get me started about the erasure of female contribution to the spiritual tradition in order to justify muslim-bashing in the guise of (white) feminism. From its very beginnings, women like Khadija and Aisha had as much or more influence than the male companions of the prophet. And even as the tradition developed after that first community, contributions by women were not an exception--but a vital part of the tradition. Of course, all this had been erased by the aggressively patriarchal western eye... even I, a well-read motherfucker, have had a hard time remembering the men and women of my tradition. I was brainwashed out of being able to grasp all those "ibn"s (son-of) and "bint"s (daughter of). Muslim cleansing happens here in America. Muslims with black and brown bodies are being mowed down by systemic police brutality. And by radical nationalists. All this terror draws its power from Islamophobia in the "western" world. Again, there's not much you and I can do about it. Other than know what we're talking about when we're talking about Muslims. And recognize that the terms that we use to talk about them are subtly causing harm. Because they are riddled with hidden assumptions--ESPECIALLY from American liberals. Yes, a sector of us are immigrants. But when we're talking about Muslims, we're talking about a community bound by the spiritual oneness of being. And ravaged, from the very moment the prophet spoke his truth, by unbearable suffering. The Prophet said "The black is no better than the white and the white is no better than the black and the arab no better than the non arab and the non arab no better than the arab, except by their deeds--" and was actively anti-racist. When someone chooses to identify with the principles of this spiritual tradition, white or non-white, black or non-black, arab or non-arab, they become a part of that narrative. How American is it then? To be silent about so many people being erased and murdered just for what they think. For what they believe in? We are way beyond 1984, people. All of this is in the back of the head of each and every conscious muslim, all while there is a concerted information campaign demonizing them and turning a blind eye to the actual systems which are destroying humanity. I've had it with this brutal psychological trauma. I've had it. So next time you pick up that translation of Rumi, know that he was inspired by the divine mercy of the Qur'an, and that most of this inspiration has been erased from his verses, Muslims are a barometer of suffering in the world. And we've always been suffering--mocked, ridiculed, and maimed--for what we believe in. And that may never change, which is why the Qur'an says "By Time, indeed Humanity is in a loss. Except for those who believe and do good works and advise each other to Truth and advice each other to Patience." "Advise each other to Truth and advise each other to Patience." And know what you're talking about when you're talking about Islam and Muslims. Thank you. Comments are closed.
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Photo by Hillary Goidell taken for Anniversary! Stories By Tobias Wolff and George Saunders for Word for Word at Z Space
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