The Ties That Bind: Black Atlantic Muslims and African Islamic Intellectual Heritage Across Time and Space
May 29th – 30th 2024
A Virtual Conference
Hosted by Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD) at New York University
The bio-bibliographical documentation, cataloging, and digitization of the centuries-old Arabic writings produced by Muslim scholars and historians from Mauritania and Western Sahara to Eastern, Central, and Western Sudanic Africa have advanced from a neglected to a flourishing field. Several workshops, symposia, and conferences have been organized by academic centers, governmental organizations, and non-governmental institutions to evaluate the intellectual contributions of scholars of different demographics who participated in the study of Africa’s Islamic written heritage. This conference focuses on the contributions of Black Atlantic and African Diaspora Muslims to the global transmission, circulation, and preservation of the centuries-old Islamic intellectual heritage produced at different learning centers across Africa. The conference is dedicated to the Muslim teachers and scholars who, despite the lack of institutional support, devoted their lives, time, and resources to doing the actual work of archiving, studying, teaching, and translating the centuries-old African Arabic writings that have remedied the legacies of ruptures and resuscitated the ties that bind Muslims on the continent with Muslims in the African Diaspora, particularly in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
The select group of scholars invited for this conference from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences will address the following questions: What knowledge networks, long-distance border crossing, community building, and place-making practices have helped sustain the transnational flow of ideas and intellectual exchanges between Muslims on the continent and in the diaspora? What influences do the centuries-old writings of African Muslim scholars have on the religious experiences of Muslims in the African Diaspora? What roles have Black Atlantic and African Diaspora Muslims played in the bio-bibliographic documentation, preservation, and transmission of the Arabic writings of Africa? What spiritual values and theological meanings have Black Atlantic and African Diaspora Muslims derived from the texts, manuscripts, and scriptural treatises authored by African Muslim scholars? How have Black Atlantic and African Diaspora Muslims deployed the Islamic discursive tradition prevalent in the centuries-old writings of African Muslim scholars in the struggle for black racial liberation, social justice, civil rights campaigns, grassroots activism, emancipatory politics, and resilience in the face of oppression? The invited speakers will present working papers from their ongoing research projects that address these questions.
This conference was organized by:
Dr. Abdulbasit Kassim
Abdulbasit Kassim is an IDEAL Provostial Fellow at the Department of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. He is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in the histories and cultures of Muslim societies with a geographical focus on West Africa and the African Diaspora.
Abdulbasit completed his PhD at Rice University. He held the postdoctoral research fellowship at New York University’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD). He was a postdoctoral scholar for the Mellon Sawyer Seminar “Unarchiving Blackness: Why the Primacy of African and African Diaspora Studies Necessitates a Creative Reconsideration of Archives” at the Center for Ideas and Society University of California, Riverside.
Dr. Medina Thiam
Medina Thiam is the James Weldon Johnson Assistant Professor of History at New York University, where she is also Affiliated Faculty at the Institute of French Studies. In addition, she serves on the editorial board of the Journal of West African History, and as co-director of the Projet Archives des Femmes. Dr. Thiam received her PhD in African History from UCLA.
In 2024-25, she is a Newhouse Foundation Fellow and scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center.
Thiam’s work explores the circulations of people and ideas connecting West Africa to the Atlantic and Saharan worlds; social histories of Islam in Mali and the Sahel; Malian women’s histories; and pan-Africanism.
Keynote Lecture: Dr. Abdullah Hakim Quick “Reflections on the Living Legacy of African Islamic Intellectual Heritage in the Americas and the Impact of Shehu Usman Dan Fodiyo”
Dr. Abdullah Hakim Quick is an itinerant scholar, historian, world traveler, and religious leader. He pursued his study of Islam at the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia, where he graduated and received an Ijaza from the College of Da’wah and Islamic Sciences in 1979. He later completed a master’s degree and a PhD in African History at the University of Toronto in Canada. His PhD dissertation analyzed the early life of Sheikh ‘Uthman Dan Fodio. Dr. Quick’s research, outreach, and education work spans 62 countries. In December 2021, Dr. Quick was appointed by the OIC IRCICA (Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture) as a special envoy to the Caribbean. In October 2022, he delivered the keynote address at the 9th Usman Dan Fodio Week, sponsored by the Sultanate Council of Sokoto in Nigeria. He is the author of “Deeper Roots: Muslims in the Americas and the Caribbean Before Columbus” and “In the Heart of a West African Islamic Revival Shaykh Uthman Dan Fodio (1774-1804).
Closing Lecture: Imam Khalid Griggs “The Sacred Trust: Promulgating Our Legacy as Muslim African People”
Imam Khalid Griggs is the founding Imam of the Community Mosque of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a Former Member of the Islamic Party in North America, the National Chairman of the Muslim Alliance for Black Lives, and the Executive Director of the ICNA Council for Social Justice. He is the author of “Come Let Us Change This World: A Brief History of the Islamic Party in North America, 1971-1991.”
Conference Schedule:
Day One – Panel One: The Globalization of the Fodiawa Intellectual Tradition from Central Sudanic Africa to the African Diaspora
Speaker Profiles:
Imam Muhammad Shareef “The Imperative for the Recovery and Revival of Pan-African Islamic Civilization.” Imam Muhammad Shareef is the Founding Director of the Sankore Institute of Islamic African Studies International (SIIASI). He is a historian, translator, teacher, and master calligrapher who has done extensive scholarly research on those regions of Africa located south of the Sahara desert, traditionally referred to as “Al-Bilad As-Sudan” (The Land of The Blacks). For over three decades, Shaykh Muhammad Shareef traversed the countries of Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Sudan, collecting rare Arabic manuscripts and absorbing sacred knowledge firsthand from some of Africa’s most learned Muslim scholars. Shaykh Shareef received the bulk of his traditional Islamic education while living in the town of Maiurno located on the banks of the Blue Nile in Sudan’s Sennar province. While there, Shaykh Shareef became inspired to create an institution that would preserve and make known to the entire world the rich cultural legacy of Islamic Africa. Since its inception, S.I.I.A.S.I has collected and digitally archived over 2000 Arabic manuscripts some of which have been translated and made available to the general public and inmate populations throughout the United States. Shaykh Muhammad Shareef diligently continues his work of translating and teaching while also finding the time to compose his own scholarly works and handwritten Islamic African Calligraphy.
Dr. Usman Bugaje (Senior Adviser to the Sultan of Sokoto) “The Wealth, Depth and Breadth of the Fodio Intellectual Tradition and its Impact in Bilad Al-Sudan and the Diaspora”
Professor Mukhtar Umar Bunza (Usmanu Danfodiyo University) “Global Discernment in Knowledge Acquisition and Dissemination of the Sokoto Intellectual Tradition: Emphasis on the Mediterranean, Maghrebian and Middle Eastern Conduit”
Professor Beverly Mack (University of Kansas) “Fodiology and the Asmawian Movement: ‘Yan Taru in North America”
Dr. Oludamini Ogunnaike (University of Virginia) “Dreaming Sufism in the Sokoto Caliphate: Dreams and Knowledge in the Works of Shaykh Dan Tafa”
Abdulbasit Kassim is an IDEAL Provostial Fellow at the Department of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. He is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in the histories and cultures of Muslim societies with a geographical focus on West Africa and the African Diaspora.
Abdulbasit completed his PhD at Rice University. He held the postdoctoral research fellowship at New York University’s Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD). He was a postdoctoral scholar for the Mellon Sawyer Seminar “Unarchiving Blackness: Why the Primacy of African and African Diaspora Studies Necessitates a Creative Reconsideration of Archives” at the Center for Ideas and Society University of California, Riverside.
Day One – Panel Two: The Transmission and Reception of African Islamic Intellectual Heritage in the Caribbean and Latin America
Speaker Profiles:
Imam Hassan Anyabwile “Black Caribbean Crescent: An Account of Islam, Africans and the Caribbean.” Imam Hasan Anyabwile is a Muslim scholar from Trinidad and Tobago. He attended Dar al-Uloom in Trinidad and Tobago, where he earned his B.A. in Arabic and Islamic Sciences in 1996. He also completed a bachelor’s degree program in Politics and Sociology at Brunel University in 2010. He is a former member of the Board of Muslim Credit Union, Trinidad and Tobago. He is also the founder of Panchayat – a Talk Show on the i95 reading station for discussion on Islam, Muslims in Trinidad and Tobago, the Americas and the Caribbean, Social, Political, and Cultural issues, Shariah, and living as a minority under non-Muslim rule.
Dr. Daud Abdallah (Director of Middle East Monitor) “Islam, Race and Rebellion in the Americas: Transatlantic Echoes of the West African Jihads.” Dr. Daud Abdullah was born in Grenada. He is the director of Middle East Monitor (MEMO) in the United Kingdom. Formerly a senior researcher at the Palestinian Return Centre (London), he also lectured at the Department of History at the University of Maiduguri (Nigeria) and Islamic Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Engaging the World: The Making of Hamas’s Foreign Policy and a forthcoming book, Islam, Race and Rebellion in the Americas.
Dr. Ayodeji Ogunnaike (University of Virginia) “Revisiting the Theological Inspiration for the Malê Rebellion.” Sr. Ogunnaike is an Assistant Professor of Afro-Brazilian studies at the University of Virginia and a scholar of Afro-diasporic and African religions and communities. His research focuses primarily on the global oriṣa tradition with a special focus on the worship of Yoruba deities in Nigeria and Brazil, but also includes the practice of Islam and Christianity in Africa and its diaspora. His first book, Forms of Worship: How Oriṣa Devotion Became Religion in Nigeria and Brazil is under review with Duke University Press. Professor Ogunnaike’s work seeks to advance scholarship beyond only highlighting the importance of Africans’ cultural, religious, and historical impact on Brazilian society and culture by revealing how Afro-Brazilians have also had a profound impact on societies and cultures all along the Western coast of Africa itself. To this effect, his forthcoming book project, The Muslim Black Atlantic, documents the remarkable role African Muslims and their descendants played not only in the Americas but also in shaping the growth and practice of Islam in West Africa and African engagements with modernity through return migrations.
Dr. Gana Ndiaye (Yale University) “Contested Meanings of Africanness: Islam, Immigration, and the Politics of Memory in an Era of Affirmative Action in Brazil.” Dr. Gana Ndiaye is an Assistant Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. He received his PhD from the Department of Anthropology at Boston University. He is an ethnographer with previous training in intercultural mediation and literature. His interdisciplinary research and teaching interests include migration, race and ethnicity, informal economies, Muslim market ethics, and the ʿAjamī (modified Arabic script) literary traditions of Muslim Africa. Dr. Ndiaye’s scholarship includes translation and digital humanities. He has been a key contributor to the National Endowment for the Humanities Ajami Project based at Boston University.
Dr. Fatima Siwaju (University of Virginia) “Islam Came by Sea: A Tale of Two Communities in the Colombian Pacific.” Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Fatima Siwaju is an Assistant Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. She is a cultural anthropologist specializing in Islam in the Americas, citizenship and the politics of belonging, and African intellectual traditions. She is currently working on her first book manuscript, which explores the nexus of race, religion, and citizenship as they pertain to the spiritual and sociopolitical trajectories of Afro-descendant Muslims in the Colombian Pacific.
Waldemar Oliveira (New York University) “Back in Salvador: The Islamic Cultural Center of Bahia and the Return of the Malês.” Waldemar Oliveira is a PhD candidate at the Department of History at New York University. His research interests focus on the Afro-Muslim Community in Brazil, 20th Century West Africa and Brazil Relations, Slavery Memory, Black Islam, and Atlantic History.
Day Two – Panel Three: African and African American Muslim Presence in the United States
Speaker Profiles:
Mallama Aisha Adawiyya “Passing the Baton: Muslim Women, Revolution and the Elders.” Mallama Aisha al-Adawiya coordinates Islamic input for the Preservation of the Black Religious Heritage Documentation Project at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. She founded Women In Islam, Inc., an organization of Muslim women that focuses on human rights and social justice issues. She also serves as a consultant to numerous interfaith organizations and documentary projects on the Muslim-American experience. Additionally, she serves on the boards of numerous organizations related to the interests of the global Islamic community. She is a guest host and producer of Tahrir, WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York City.
Dr. Hisham Aidi (Columbia University) “The Music That Binds: Jazz and the Afro-Muslim Atlantic.” Dr. Hisham Aidi is a Moroccan-American political scientist, author, filmmaker, and senior lecturer in international relations at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His research focuses on migration and transnational movements, African migration into Europe, and race and ethnicity in Northwest Africa. He is the author of Redeploying the State (Palgrave, 2008), a comparative study of neo-liberalism and labor movements in Latin America, and co-editor, with Manning Marable, of Black Routes to Islam (Palgrave, 2009).
Dr. Su’ad Abdulkhabeer (University of Michigan – Ann Arbor) “Activist Sisters: Black Muslim Women and Black Revolution.” Dr. Su’ad Abdulkhabeer is a scholar-artist-activist and an Associate Professor at the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan Ann-Arbor. Her current project, Umi’s Archive, is an interdisciplinary research project that engages everyday Black women’s thoughts to investigate key questions of archives and power. Trained as an anthropologist, her first book, Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States, is a field-defining study of race, religion, and popular culture in the 21st century. She co-founded Sapelo Square in 2015 with a vision to create a digital platform that would offer a broad reflection of the Black Muslim experience and history in the Americas.
Dr. Alaina Morgan (University of Southern California) “Beam Me Up: Unidentified Flying Objects, Islam, and Black-Indigenous Knowledge.” Dr. Alaina Morgan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Southern California. Trained as a historian of the African Diaspora, her research focuses on the historic utility of religion, in particular Islam, in racial liberation and anti-colonial movements of the mid-to late-twentieth century Atlantic world. Her first book, tentatively entitled Atlantic Crescent: Dreaming of Black Muslim Liberation in the Contemporary Atlantic World, considers the ways that Islam and Blackness were used by Muslims and non-Muslims in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Anglophone Caribbean to form the basis of transnational anti-colonial and anti-imperial political movements from the end of World War II to the end of the twentieth century.
Dr. Rasul Miller (University of California – Irvine) “The Black Internationalist Origins of Twentieth Century African American Islam.” Dr. Rasul Miller is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California Irvine. His research interests include Black Muslim communities in the Atlantic world, Black radicalism and its impact on social and cultural movements in the twentieth-century U.S., Black internationalism, and West African intellectual history. His current book project, Black Muslim Cosmopolitanism: The Global Character of New York City’s Black Muslim Movements, examines the Black internationalist origins of early twentieth-century Black Sunni Muslim congregations in and around New York City and the cultural and political orientations that characterized subsequent communities of Black Muslims in the U.S. who built robust, transnational networks as they actively engaged traditions and communities of Muslims on the African continent.
Dr. Wendell Marsh (Rutgers University) “The Philological Imagination of Malcolm X.” Dr. Wendell Marsh is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. His scholarship focuses on African-Arabic textuality, the intellectual history of Islam in Africa and the African Diaspora, and religious studies. His first book, Textual Life and Afterlife: Shaykh Musa Kamara and the Fate of the Humanities (forthcoming from Columbia University Press), focuses on texts by and about the Muslim polymath from colonial Senegal, Shaykh Musa Kamara.
Day Two – Panel Four: Transnational Islamic Networks and Cross-Religious Educational Exchanges from Senegambia to the African Diaspora
Speaker Profiles:
Imam Adeyinka Mendes “The Healing Quran: Imam Fodé Drame and the Revival of the Jakhanke Intellectual Tradition for the Modern World.” Imam Adeyinka Muhammad Mendes is the Founding Director of Marhama Village, an organization focused on building holistic, spiritual, peaceful, indigenous, and joyous American Muslim communities dedicated to sacred service and justice for all. He has studied Arabic, Islamic Sciences, meditation, and peacebuilding with Muslim scholars from around the world, particularly in Nigeria and Gambia. As an imam, he helped establish Madina Institute USA in Atlanta, Georgia. He also served as the first Imam and Scholar-in-Residence of the Muslim Center of Greater Princeton. He continues to work as an interpreter of Arabic texts authored by West and East African scholars, leads retreats and speaks internationally, teaches Arabic and Islamic Sciences, serves as a community Imam, as well as work as a rite of passage leadership consultant. He continues to read with scholars and students. Imam Mendes is a recipient of the Center for Global Muslim Life “Spiritual Impact Award” and his latest work, “The Spirits of Black Folk: Sages Through the Ages,” a translation of Imam as-Suyuti’s renowned text, “The Excellence of Black People” (Raf’u Sha’n al-Hubshan), was published by Celebrate Mercy. He, his wife and children reside in Houston, Texas.
Dr. Butch Bilal Ware (University of California Santa Barbara) “Revolutionary Scholarship: Islamic Anti-Slavery in Atlantic Africa”
Ustadh Mustapha Briggs (Al-Azhar University) “From Kaolack to Calcutta: The International Relations of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse”
Dr. Youssef Carter (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) “Knowledge is a Millet: Mothering as Transmission of Islamic Knowledge”
Dr. Farah El-Sharif (Stanford University) “The Spears of Hajj Umar Tal: The Legacy of 19th Century West Africa’s Enigmatic Scholar-Warrior”
Dr. Samiha Rahman (California State University Long Beach) “Students of Shaykh Hassan Cisse: The History of the Black American Tijani Community”