FEAR OF A MUSLIM PLANET: Hip-Hop’s Hidden History
The Muslim connection with hip hop and why its ignored.
“The most recent oversight, Jeff Chang’s exhaustive hip-hop history Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop (Picador, 2005) pays only fleeting attention to the Muslim connection. Elsewhere in mainstream media, the Muslim connection is never spoken aloud, even in the middle of thorough analysis and journalism. Ted Swedenburg calls this “almost willful avoidance.” In this, there are parallels to the larger invisibility of black Muslims, who have been shut out of many conversations around the role of Islam in America. This deliberate invisibility mirrors America’s continuing unease with Islam. Black Muslims and hip-hop are frozen out of the larger debate over Islam because they would problematize the entire conversation. If we acknowledge that the largest segment of American Muslims are blackamericans, it makes it more difficult to stereotype Muslims as “immigrants” or “outsiders.”
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May 28, 2009 6:54 pm
I applaud you on your openness. I am curious on your views on Muslims especially Black Muslims and your way of thinking in general. It is truly refreshing to read anything about Muslims in America, where I am included in the conversation except as a after thought.
Given a fair chance We could do more to change the perception of Islam in this country. Most people equate being Muslim to adopting Arab ways and customs, nothing could be futher from the truth. We simply are Blacks, born in America, who have chosen Islam as a Way of Life.