Notes on The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience Book Tour 2020

Notes on Revisionism

After my poetry reading, people came up to thank me for informing them about Nisa Bey, but were especially thankful I honored the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Clara Muhammad in my poem.
Even though some of the scholars had Nation of Islam roots, most had become Sunni Muslims and this Sunni/NOI theological difference has caused revisionist scholarship by academic Muslims and also in the field of Black Studies. Of course Sunni Muslims do not consider Nation of Islam "real Muslims" just as they dismiss Shia Muslims. We need only look at the present conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East, i.e., Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example. Of course the Sunni/Shia differences began upon the death of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). A succession battle insued over whether the successor would be from the prophet's bloodline, Ali, or elected by the people, Abu Bakr. The Sunni won and achieved orthodoxy, the Shia were malinged as Shirk for belief in their imams as equal to the prophet. Shia imams were assassinated and Shia celebrate annual mourning rituals of grief and suffering.

As per North American African Muslims, we are convinced the assassination of Malcolm X/El Hajji Malik Shabazz, created a similar chasm between the Nation of Islam and Sunni Muslims, especially followers of Malcolm X, and not only Sunni Muslim followers but many in the general North American African community, especially in the radical liberation movement, and deepened the Crisis of the Black Intellectual (Harold Cruse), thus Black Studies avoided the study of Black Islam except for its focus on Malcolm X. As a result, Sunni Muslim scholars and Black intellectuals and especially Black Studies professors perennially give revisionist lectures on Black history that jump from Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X, no matter Elijah was the tree, Malcolm a branch, if not leaf. Did not Elijah Muhammad create thousands of X's who received the same teachings as Malcolm X, men and women?

So what is the root cause of the revisionism. We think it transcends the theological and dwells in the psychological of unresolved grief and trauma at the loss of our Black liberation hero, Malcolm X. We maintain the theological difference is surface structure, the more profound difference lies in the deep structure of the psychological. As with the Shia grief, Sunni Muslims and the North American African community in general has not healed from the Elijah/Malcolm split.  No matter that James Baldwin, who wrote the script used by Spike Lee in his film on Malcolm X, said to me in my December, 1968, interview with him, "The hand that pulled the trigger didn't buy the bullet," and no matter the NYC police and FBI clear involvement in the murder of Malcolm X (I have not yet seen the current film on the murder of Malcolm X) and it doesn't matter because no film can assuage the grief and suffering of those of us who loved Malcolm X. In my case, I love Elijah and Malcolm equally, simply because of what Elijah told Malcolm when the Los Angeles raided the LA Mosque, basically Elijah told Malcolm, shit happens in revolution, get over it, don't endanger the entire Nation of Islam because of one killing. It revolution many will go done, but we must survive to fight another day. So if one has a modicum of understanding of revolutionary history, one must surely agree with Elijah. One need only study the history of the Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban, African, French, Mexican and other revolutions, including the Haitian, to conclude Elijah was right. No matter what went down between Elijah and Malcolm was classic revolutionary behavior. We need to get over, yes, by any means necessary. As Black Arts Movement mystic Sun Ra taught me, "The Creator got things fixed: until we do the right thing we can't go forward or backward, we just stuck!"

Thus, Sunni Muslims and the Black liberation movement in general must make a great leap forward and reconcile for the advancement of our cause. Did not Black Panther Party Southern California leader Geronimo Ji Jaga give the leader of US, Maulana Ron Karenga, who orchestrated the assassination of Alprentis Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, a pass when Karenga arrived at San Quentin prison for torturing black women? Did not Minister Farrakhan forgive Malcolm's daughter for conspiring to assassinate him?

As per Sunni/Shia/NOI/Ahmadia theological differences, we can and must transcend them for the greater cause of Black liberation. There is no need to be revisionist, to be guilty of the sin of omission. In the Q and A with Temple University Islamic scholar Zain Abdullah who addressed Islam and Race, discoursing on Black African Muslim heroes such as Senegal's Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba whose holy city Touba is more sacred to West African Muslims than Mecca, I asked him why he can recount African Muslim saints and holy men but neglect to mention Noble Drew Ali, Fard Muhammad, and Elijah Muhammad? Why and how can he tell the mythic tale of Sheikh Bamba's capture by the French colonialists and while a prisoner being transferred by ship to another country, jump off ship to say prayers in the water, then jump back aboard the ship to continue into captivity? Is this myth more reasonable than Elijah Muhammad's Myth of Yakub? Myth is myth! Is the myth of Yakub less fantastic than the Qur'anic myth of Prophet Muhammad ascending to heaven on a white horse from the Dome of the Rock? What I'm speaking about is honoring our national saints, heroes and sheroes. Again, people thanked me for mentioning Clara Muhammad. How can she be neglected? Did she not hold the Nation of Islam together for the twelve years Elijah was running for his life and and imprisoned? Zain Muhammad replied that he had the information but said it was too much to present at the time. Another critic in the audience called the revisionist scholars the Talented Tenth that W.E.B. DuBois promoted as opposed to Booker T. Washington's call for industrial education. The Talented Tenth would likely be those scholars and intellectuals in Harold Cruse's Crisis of the Negro Intellectual or in my poem Tenured Negroes.

What I'm suggesting to our Academic brothers and sisters is that they, in the words of Mrs. Amina Baraka, "If you're going to tell the story, tell the whole story!" Alas, her husband and my most beloved friend and comrade, Amiri Baraka, was jammed at my San Francisco Tenderloin Book Fair by Minister Farrakhan's International Representative, Akhbar Muhammad, for Baraka paper on Black history in which he was guilty of revisionism in the manner I've described above: his history lectured jumped from Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X as if the Honorable Elijah Muhammad never existed, and this is, again, typical of a plethora of Black Muslim and Black Studies scholarship.

Could this be the reason European, Asian and Arab scholars have a more objective understanding of the North American African role is establishing the genre known as Muslim American literature? The Syrian Dr. Mohja Kahf says I am the father of Muslim American literature, along with other Black Arts Movement poets Amiri Baraka, Askia Toure, Sonia Sanchez, Yusef Iman, et al. These non-black scholars do not get hung up in religiosity, whether Sunni, Shia, Nation of Islam, Ahmadia, Sufi. These their scholarship transcends the black studies scholars who are mired in the mud of Malcolm X psycho-paralysis to the degree they lag begin in honest and objective scholarly analysis of the Black Muslim impact on North American African Muslim and non-Muslim culture and political ideology.

I will conclude my commentary on the Black Muslim Atlantic scholars with remarks on the presentation by Richard Brent Turner, "Islam and Jazz". He gave an excellent summary on how Islam impacted Jazz or Black Classical musicians, climaxing with John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. But he made what I consider a blatant omission by neglecting to mention Sun Ra. What musician was more closely associated with Black Islam than Sun Ra and his Myth-Science Infinity Arkestra? Surely you know he arranged the music for Amiri Baraka's adaptation of the Nation of Islam's central myth, The Myth of Yakub, who created the white man through genetic engineering. Not only Sun Ra's music but his philosophy reveals his time in Chicago, headquarters of the Nation of Islam. Sun Ra's linguistics include this descriptive of the white man, "You so evil, the devil don't want you in hell!"

----Continued---
Remarks and comments welcome
Marvin X