Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Shobana Xavier
Guest: Alaina M. Morgan
Book Discussed: Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora (UNC Press, 2025)
Recording Date: January 27, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode features a deep discussion between host Shobana Xavier and historian Alaina M. Morgan about her new book, Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora. Morgan’s work introduces the conceptual framework of the “Atlantic Crescent” to map the overlapping movements and encounters among Black, Afro-Caribbean, and South Asian Muslim diasporas, focusing on 20th-century freedom and resistance movements. Their conversation spans the book's conceptual innovations, methodological approaches, and its engagement with histories of Black Muslim organizing, internationalism, anti-imperialism, and diasporic knowledge.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Morgan’s Intellectual & Personal Journey

• Morgan’s route to academia was untraditional; after starting her career as an attorney, she shifted to the academic study of religion and Islam, influenced by her own complex religious upbringing and a desire to find empowerment through religious frameworks ([04:30]).

• Experiencing 9/11 as a New Yorker importantly shaped her desire to challenge and complicate prevalent narratives about Islam.

  “I started to think about the ways that people, like, the reasons that people choose the religious traditions that they choose… What does religion mean for people? What does it do for people?” — Alaina M. Morgan [04:30]

Methodology: The Archive and Storytelling

• Morgan emphasizes the importance of “stretching” the archive and her stylistic focus on people and stories over rote chronologies ([09:34], [10:29]).

  • She uses rich archival material, including Black Muslim newspapers like Muhammad Speaks, to uncover layered, interconnected histories.

  • Sees sources as “palimpsests”—layered, multi-sourced, multidimensional.

    “I’m a people person. I’m interested in the stories and the themes that unite people and more willing to use different sources, right, differently… I guess anything constitutes a story.” — Morgan [10:29]

  • Morgan notes that historical archives around marginalized communities are often thin, necessitating creative forms of historical fabulation inspired by scholars like Saidiya Hartman ([17:36]).

Conceptualizing the "Atlantic Crescent"

• The “Atlantic Crescent” is a metaphor for the overlapping, dynamic relationships among Black and Muslim diasporas; inspired by the image of a crescent moon, it symbolizes shifting perspective and multiplicity ([18:26]).

  “I think of the crescent as frozen—not frozen, but like a part of multiple moon phases… it’s about every person’s individual experiences with Islam and race… and thinking about the things that it can do for them in terms of fighting for freedom and justice.” — Morgan [18:26]

• The concept allows for an analysis that resists seeing racial or religious communities as isolated and instead centers contact, exchange, and mutual transformation.

Overlapping Diasporas: Beyond Silos

• Morgan challenges the siloed treatment of movements like Garveyism, Moorish Science, Nation of Islam, and Ahmadiyya Islam, pushing for an analytic of overlap ([21:43], [22:38]).

  • Diasporic histories are entangled: immigrant South Asian Muslims lived and organized politically within Black and Afro-Caribbean communities.

  • Overlap introduces tensions, creativity, and new forms of solidarity and contestation.

    “Communities are not siloed… they’re brushing up against each other, they’re sliding up against each other… If you’re shoved up against people, whether you like them or not, there’s going to be some sort of engagement.” — Morgan [22:38]

Microhistory: Abdul Basit Naim

• Chapter two exemplifies Morgan’s approach through the Muslim journalist Abdul Basit Naim—a Pakistani Muslim deeply involved with the Nation of Islam in the US ([25:55]).

  • Naim’s life, pieced together from columns, police files, and family correspondences, reveals how South Asian Muslims provided international legitimacy for Black Muslim movements.

    “He’s trying to, like, he’s being hired to, like, give these people legitimacy… as a real Muslim, quote unquote…” — Morgan [26:19]

  • The process of reconstructing his life story highlights the limitations of the archive and the need to read laterally, integrating oral history, inference, and family contact ([36:42]).

Internationalism and Political Solidarity

• The book tracks strong currents of anti-imperialism and global vision, particularly as expressed via Muhammad Speaks and diplomatic incidents like Malcolm X’s relationship with Fidel Castro at the Hotel Theresa ([38:05]).

  “I think that the pictures of that night are very compelling… there’s not a hint of ‘this is a diplomatic duty’… It’s very late when they’re meeting, like something like 2am. The ease, the laughter—there’s something there.” — Morgan [38:05]

• The Nation of Islam leveraged these international connections for political capital, while negotiating ideological differences, such as support for anti-imperial Cuba but ambivalence toward communism ([38:14]).

Shifting Geography: The Case of Bermuda

• The second half shifts the lens to Bermuda, showing how diasporic Black Muslim movements translated into robust anti-colonial organizing in the Caribbean, distinct from other islands ([43:04]).
  • Morgan’s research in UK national archives and fieldwork in Bermuda allowed her to unearth rich and often inaccessible sources.
  • Bermuda’s unique position—physically and as a British colonial holdout—shaped the form and fervor of local Black Muslim activism ([49:12]).

Labor, Education, and Gendered Mobilization

• Chapters 4 and 5 chronicle labor organizing, union activism, and especially Black Muslim women’s pivotal roles in founding independent schools for Muslim children ([49:12], [50:00]).
  • Morgan found that both women and men were deeply involved in “political” religious activism around schooling, often in ways that confounded gendered assumptions.
  • These educational struggles, including the purposeful adoption of U.S. over British textbooks, manifested resistance to colonial imposition in everyday life ([50:00]).

The Crack Crisis and the "Dope Busters"

• The final substantive chapter explores the “Dope Busters” initiative of the Nation of Islam under Farrakhan as a grassroots response to the crack cocaine crisis in U.S. Black communities ([54:28]).

  • This case illustrates the intersection of community organizing, critiques of the state, and self-policing—problematic yet innovative.

    “To me, I was like, oh, this is very interesting that people are just taking this into their own hands… our community’s dying. We need to do something about this.” — Morgan [55:23]

Presentism, Legacy, and Continuing Struggles

• In the epilogue, Morgan directly connects her historical analysis to contemporary movements—Ferguson, Gaza, campus protests—reflecting on how histories of Black and Muslim organizing illuminate present solidarities and future possibilities ([58:47]–[65:45]).

  “Why does history matter? …when your body takes—when the body that you live in is constantly being assaulted with imperialism and racism… you can’t help but think about how the past actually informs the present.” — Morgan [60:01]

• She emphasizes the importance of recognizing collectivity, solidarity, and shared struggle amid ongoing attempts by empire and racism to divide.

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the emotional work of history:

  “I want to—like, I hope and I hope this comes through—what I care about the most is people… What are people doing? What are people feeling? How are people being affected, right?” — Morgan [15:41]

• On the book’s conclusion connecting past to present:

  “If you think the way my subjects think, which is, we’re not a minority, we’re a global majority—what are the possibilities from that?” — Morgan [65:45]

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [04:30] Alaina M. Morgan’s intellectual and personal biography
• [10:29] Approach to archives and storytelling
• [18:26] Defining the “Atlantic Crescent”
• [22:38] Overlapping diasporas and critique of siloed histories
• [26:19] Life and role of Abdul Basit Naim
• [38:05] Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, and internationalist solidarities
• [43:04] Transition to Bermuda and the diaspora’s Caribbean geographies
• [49:12] Labor and educational activism, gendered mobilization in Bermuda
• [54:28] The Dope Busters, crack crisis, and community self-defense
• [58:47]–[65:45] Epilogue—present struggles, solidarity, and the use of history

Natural Language and Tone

Morgan speaks with candor, warmth, and self-reflection, often moving between rigorous analysis, narrative storytelling, and personal anecdotes. The tone is dialogical, with host and guest mutually exploring complex questions and continuously returning focus to the lived experiences at the heart of diasporic history.

Looking Forward

• Morgan’s next research project will explore “space in the Black imagination”—from UFO encounters to Black science fiction, religion, and speculative futures ([66:25]).

  “So the next book is going to be about space and the black imagination. So outer space in the black imagination. And it actually comes out of this…” — Morgan [66:25]

Summary Takeaways

Atlantic Crescent presents a powerful model for thinking about the entangled histories of Black and Muslim populations, refusing boundaries and making visible the circulations of people, ideas, solidarities, and resistances across the Atlantic world. Morgan’s rigorous yet empathetic approach asks us to reckon with what liberatory histories can offer in the ongoing fight for justice.