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Samiha Rahman, "Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Pan-Africanism, and Collective Care" (NYU Press, 2026)
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Shobana Xavier
and welcome to another new episode of New Books and Islamic Studies, which is part of the New Books Network. My name is Shobana Xavier and I hope you are safe and well wherever you are, and thank you so much for joining us today. On today's episode we are joined by Samia Rahman, who's an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development at California State University, Long beach, to discuss her New book, Black Muslim Freedom, Islamic Education, Pan Africanism and Collective Care, published by New York University Press in 2026. Black Muslim Freedom Dreams follows three generations of Black American Muslims as they pursue education outside the anti black and anti Muslim racism of the United States, namely through the Tajani Sufi order in Medina Bai in Senegal. This deeply rich ethnographic book captures the transatlantic flows of Black American religious life through the prism of Black mothers and other mothers as conceptualized by Patricia Hill Collins, mother work and the young people whose lives are transformed through the process. By focusing on the Islamic education offered by the Tajani order in Medina Bai, such as Quran education, we learn about the intricate networks of kin that step in to support the young Black Muslims who have migrated for schooling, highlighting the tangible realities of collective care and service that circulates within the Tajani order. Much of these registers of care and service are informed by Sheikh Ibrahim Nias, the Senegalese Islamic scholar, Sufi sheikh, and Pan Africanist whose teachings have informed these networks of education, organizing and care work. The book then offers a critical insight to the flow of one particular Sufi community between the United States and Senegal and how dreams of better futures for Black Muslim youth and the liberatory goals of Pan Africanism intersect to form a significant economy of collective care, Sufi service, and Islamic piety. This book will be of interest to anyone who works on education, Sufism, Black and African Islam, and much more. In our conversation today, Sami and I spoke about the conceptualizations of mother work and collective care, the Tajani Sufi order, and how this particular group's stress of service and Pan African ethos distinguishes the Tajani Sufi community and notions of freedom dreaming and black liberation. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Samia Rahman about her new book, Black Muslim Freedom, Islamic Education, Pan Africanism and Collective Care. Hi Samia, welcome to the New Books in Islamic Studies podcast. How are you doing?
- [05:12]
Samia Rahman
I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me. This is very exciting to be able to talk about my work in a different format, so I'm excited to talk.
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Shobana Xavier
I'm very excited to have you. I just finished reading the book last night and I have lots of questions and thoughts and I mean it's an amazing book and so I'm just also happy to celebrate with you as this book has come into the world and kind of talk about the before and after lives of the book. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and your intellectual journey? Maybe people that have inspired you in some of the ways you think? And particularly what led you to writing this book, Black Muslim Freedom, Islamic Education, Pan Africanism and Collective Care.
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Samia Rahman
Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for that. And I appreciate the. That as an introductory question, because I think it's really easy to ignore who you are and the fact that literally all of your life experiences and passions are hopefully what shape our work as academics. So I appreciate you starting with that question. Yeah. So a little bit about me. So when I was 18, I moved to New York to go to school. And when I was an undergraduate in the city, I was spending a lot of time off campus, just kind of, you know, building with the local Muslim community. And through that experience or those experiences, one of my friends had invited me to come to the Tijani Sufi Zawiyah, which is kind of the community center of this Tijani Sufi Tariqa in Brooklyn. And my family is from Bangladesh. And so, you know, we have a history of Muslims in South Asia of, you know, our relationship with Sufism and things like that. But I had actually never been in a space, in a communal space where folks were just gathering, you know, to remember Allah in a collective, sustained way, which for me at, like, you know, at that age was really striking to me, thinking just about the grind of living in the US and how beautiful that was. So that was kind of my first introduction to things. And then I continued to spend time at the Azawiya, and I actually ended up talking to a lot of adults in the community who were telling me about their experiences, like, as young people studying in Senegal. And like I said, my parents immigrated here from Bangladesh, and they came to the U.S. you know, thinking that they came on, you know, scholarships for higher education, that this was, you know, the land of opportunity. And here I was meeting black folks, black Americans, who, because of anti blackness, because of, you know, economic marginalization and all of this, they understood that the US Was literally not a place of possibility, and they were voluntarily leaving the US in hopes of what they thought would be more liberatory educational experiences. And these were young people and adults who were going to Senegal. So that kind of also really piqued my curiosity. And then after I finished college, I actually visited Senegal, and then I worked in the education space. I was a teacher. I was a middle school writing teacher. I was a after school director for high school program. And in all these experiences and spaces, I was really interested in thinking about how education politicizes young people and in doing that work. Like, for example, I was teaching in Bed Stuy with middle school Students. And my students were writing about how the NYPD and it stopped in frisk policies, like how those harassing young people in the community. And all of these things made me realize I really want to think more deeply about education and kind of its liberatory potential. So that actually led me to go back to school, go to grad school. And initially I wanted to study what I thought were, like, the best examples of that in recent history, which were the schools of the Black Panther Party, in particular the Oakland Community School, and the schools of the Nation of Islam, the Muhammad University of Islam. And so that was going to be my graduate work. But in the meantime, I'm still as a human being, as a regular person. I'm still going back and forth to Senegal, really exploring my own, you know, spiritual growth as a Muslim. And ultimately that. That made me realize, like, oh, all of these things that I've been thinking about, I'm actually, you know, already part of this community. That's a really beautiful way to think about a. How to politicize young people and how. How education is the site that really can lead to, you know, a revolutionary consciousness. Also thinking about the liberatory potential of Islam. And. And then again, like, oh, what does it mean when we leave the US and go elsewhere? Right. And what does that reveal about thinking about freedom for black people, for Muslims outside of the U.S. so all of those things kind of came together to ultimately shape what became unexpectedly, my dissertation. And then now, after all these years, obviously a book. But yeah, so I guess that's kind of like a longer journey that the reality of it being that, like, the political and the intellectual and the personal kind of all came together in this way.
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Shobana Xavier
I love that. And I think I could really see it in the work in the book and then the research you've done. But I think so much of the work that we often do is inspired by all these different parts of our lives anyway, and I think that comes together really well. You speak about this a little bit in the introduction. That also presents some challenges methodologically, like having kind of a really insider, maybe proximity to some of the communities you study. I often think insider outsider binaries are not really real. And it's like a really far more complicated space spectrum than we like, maybe someone like me in religious studies thinks about it. And so I wonder, how did this research actually unfold in terms of traveling? You're moving through lots of different spaces. Some of them are analog and some of them are digital towards, you know, and you've spent a Lot of time, you know, a lot of years working on this field work, interviews. So what was some of that process like? Especially as someone who had deep relationships within the community and was ultimately, I think, a part of the community.
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Samia Rahman
Yeah. So, interestingly enough, when I started in grad school, I actually had no interest or plans to do ethnographic work. And now I'm like, am I an anthropologist? And so that was, like, a reluctant journey that I came to over the years. And part of it, I will say again, thinking about this insider, outsider dichotomy, all of the. Like, what it means to be an anthropologist and do ethnographic work with communities and in a sustained way. I am so, so deeply indebted to this tradition of black anthropology. My advisor in grad school, John Jackson, he was kind of the main one that kind of introduced me this whole world of possibilities of people who were. Who were studying in community and were kind of rejecting these dichotomies, but also thinking about what does it actually mean to write in service of community and service of liberation, not just for the academy, thinking about writing in ways that also, you know, like, undermine these. These distinctions. So I think that was really important for me, and that was really what helped me feel comfortable with, like, oh, okay, this is how I can. I can do this work as an anthropologist. And, you know, I kind of talk about a little bit in the introduction of my book. But, yeah, like, this idea of being objective is, you know, as Takufu Zubaire, one of my mentors in grad school, was saying, like, this is like a white supremacist idiot fiction, right? Like, this is not a real thing. And one of the things that has been, and it's taken time, but I've ultimately come to realize is that there is something really beautiful and important and significant about writing in a part. In writing about a community that you're a part of. And I talk about, in the introduction of my book, Mama De Quee, who is like, this amazing black radical feminist. She was talking about the work of Choco Lumumba and others, and thinking about how you critique, you know, as out of a space of love, because you love your community and you want to figure out lessons of how you can do better. And I think a lot of my anxieties with anthropology often had to be because of those. Like, we're trying to nuance things for the sake of it, right? But for me personally, I think about the fact that there's. Obviously, every community has its challenges, growing pains, whatever else, but a book an academic book is not necessarily the space to be, in my opinion, to be airing dirty laundry. That's not even some people might not think about it way, but that's not the most productive way to think about it. So for me, my book was really a space for us to talk about what's really beautiful about the community, people's stories, the complexities of their stories, but for the purpose of it being something, a roadmap for others to follow in terms of cautionary tales and also really exciting possibilities. So that was really intentional for me in terms of what I included in the book, what I did include in the book. And also, I'll just say one last thing. I think a lot of people, for better or worse, may say that my work is overly romantic. You know, if anything, like, I actually. I don't. I don't. That's okay. You know, maybe this is kind of challenging the conventional academic norms. But I really, in the process of writing this book, and again, very much indebted to the tradition of black anthropologists and black studies in general. My work, my primary audience is not the academy. And my primary audience, my primary purpose is, is to produce work that is actually beneficial in everyday people's lives. And so in that sense, I think that presenting these people's experiences and stories in this way is really part of my ethical, but also political commitments.
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Shobana Xavier
I appreciate that a lot. And I think some of those sentiments are the sentiments that I also have. And particularly when we're doing community or working with communities who are active and present and contemporary. I've been in situations where communities or elders that I've written about have read the work and have called me in and had conversation because they have post its in the book and they're like, we want to talk about this chapter and that chapter. And I think it's kind of doing fieldwork and having been producing, I've really started to think seriously about, oh, there's so many people in the community that are reading my work and I'm not really the audience isn't maybe five other professors who are going to read my work for review purposes or something like that, or the students. Right. That's a different audience. The other thing that I really appreciated is that you're. The method that you've discussed also aligns with the theoretical interventions that you're trying to make. Right. Like, it's like a really holistic approach in terms of theory and method and outcome. And I think some of this is really centered on one of the central themes of this book which is collective care. So can you talk a little bit about what collective care is or maybe some of the things that you're responding to as kind of an important contribution of this particular work? And then really this idea is what frames or maybe contains so much of the stories and people that we meet throughout the book.
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Samia Rahman
Sure. So I define collective care as an Islamic and black radical way of being and belonging in the world whereby people are invested in being those who are most pleasing to Allah and also those who actually can attend to the material realities. Right. So they can truly care for their community. And, and so I, I say that it's like a path to spiritual liberation, but also material relief. And part of that, you know, especially if we think about it, I mean, I mean this idea is relevant and in conversation with so many different things. But first, like within the context of discussions about religion, oftentimes religion and Sufism in particular, right, is seen as this private spiritual matter. You're disconnecting from the world. You're, you're not concerned, you're detached, you're withdrawing, you're in seclusion and all of these things. And one of the things that is really distinct about this particular Sufi community is that their approach to spiritual purification, their approach to spiritual enlightenment is rooted in this idea that, in this hadith or this teaching from the Prophet Muhammad that those who are most beloved to Allah are those who are most beneficial to his creation. So that means that you literally, in your journey towards gaining Allah's pleasure, you do that by serving your people, right? You do that by using your knowledge, your skills, your money, your time, your resources, all of this in, in service of Allah's creation. And this actually is how you become you, you, you kind of get to that, you try to emulate that prophetic example. So this is really, it really challenges this idea of like Sufism as this like, you know, disconnected from the world thing. And it's talking about, no, these are Sufis who, they're, they understand that actually being engaged in sociopolitical struggle, in really attending to people's material realities and needs is actually what it means to be like the Prophet Muhammad. Sallallahu alaihi wasallam. So that's the first part. And I think that's also significant because like, even if we think about Sufism, particularly like in this post 9, 11 US led global war on terror, the Sufis are seen as like the apolitical, like, you know, nonviolent, passive, friendly Muslims who are always like that foil against the radical, violent extremist Salafi, whatever. Right? So it's always these two dichotomies. And I think this work and this idea of collective care really challenges that, because you are seeing a community of people who, understanding that it is their ethical, religious, and spiritual obligation to really care for people both in this world and in the next. So that's kind of the religious aspect of collective care. And then it's also, I argue, a black radical praxis. Right. And for me, it's really important to say that it's both of those things because that in of itself is also, you know, countering this myth, quite frankly, that Islam is not a, quote, unquote, traditional African religion, or that Islam is separate, is not part of, like, how we conceptualize black religion, when in fact, Islamic on the African continent, but even here in the United States has been a central part of the ways in which black people have pursued freedom and liberation, spiritual liberation, and material as well. And so this idea of collective care, you know, really being a way of relating to one another, where we are collectively caring for one another's needs in ways that are beyond what the state can provide. Right. That is something that black communities have long had to do, often by necessity and also just because of the way folks are in terms of caring for one another. And then lastly, within the context of education, again, this idea that whatever you're doing is supposed to be a benefit to others, it really challenges this idea of education as, like, all about individual socioeconomic mobility. I go to school so I can get a job, so I can advance myself and my family, really. And it's like, no, actually, part of the purpose of education is to actually use that knowledge to benefit others. And, you know, in some ways, again, this is a longstanding, like, black radical praxis of, like, each one teach one, right? You have a responsibility with what you learn, to kind of share that knowledge with others. And so kind of collective care, it kind of operates in all of these different ways, but at the. At the core of it is, how do you know, how do people live in the world in terms of their relationship with one another that is really guided in this beautiful way of actually caring for one another's needs. And one last thing I'll say is, and I think this is really important, especially for, like, kind of, like the Islamic studies people. I want to clarify that it's, like, not a coping mechanism against racial oppression, because I think that often happens when we talk about Islam among black communities or even a lot of times, any type of, like, political dimensions. Of Islam that there's this dichotomy between like the religious and the political. And no, this is not like what people are doing, how they're seeing Islam as a way to like help them grapple with the material inequalities that they face. But what I talk about is these ideas of collective care are really rooted in prophetic models, right? Ways of being and belonging to the Prophet Muhammad Sallallah, the early community of Muslims. And Muslims for centuries have been doing in ways to live lives that are pleasing to Allah. So yes, they also allow us in this contemporary context to live in ways that allow us to challenge economic marginalization, racial capitalism, white supremacy supremacy and whatever else. But it's not just a response to those things. Muslims have throughout their history and from the inception of this religion, been doing that as a way of doing what is pleasing to Allah. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying.
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- [23:31]
Shobana Xavier
like, you map all of this out really well in the Tajani Sufi community. So there might be a lot of our listeners who don't know who this community is. And most of the book really focuses on kind of how this community kind of in terms of youth experiences across education and all of these different dimensions. So before we get into it, maybe for people who don't know anything about this community or this is the first time they're hearing about it and our audience is hearing about it, what would you say to introduce that? And mainly, perhaps also this focus on a Pan Africanism, which I think is quite central to the way that you introduce the Tijani community, at least in this particular. This book.
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Samia Rahman
Sure. So, I mean, I don't know how much I should back up, but, you
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Shobana Xavier
know, yeah, it might be a lot, and I'm not asking for historical background, but what might be relevant. You know, I mean, we're in Senegal. We're moving between the U.S. you know, there's obviously a huge following in the diaspora context. And obviously. And I think another sentiment is just this kind of Pan African ethos and community is one of the things that's quite important. I found also, and to your earlier point, also, this. This idea of not disengaging with the world, but actually, you know, being part of this community, especially in terms of perhaps service or work, not in a racial capitalist sense, but work in terms of contributing service to Allah, becomes really part of one of the spiritual economies and, again, economy. And I don't mean it in a capitalistic sense, but one of the things that moves this community and my sense of reading the work, I find this different or maybe distinct from some other Sufi communities that I might have, you know, learned about. And perhaps maybe the things that make this community distinct might be useful for some of our listeners to know about.
- [25:26]
Samia Rahman
Yeah, that's. That's helpful. So just for a little bit of context, the Tijani Tiriqa is called the Tijani because it's named after Sheikh Ahmed al Tijani, who was an Algerian scholar in the 18th century, who was the founder of this tariqah. And so it originated in Algeria, Morocco, and then it spread throughout the African continent. But my partic. This book in particular is about one particular branch of the Tijani Tariqa, which is led by Sheikh Ibrahim Nias. So Sheikh Ibrahim Nias was a Senegalese Islamic scholar who was born in 1900 and returned to Allah in 1975. He was a prolific Islamic scholar. He was a Pan Africanist, and he was the leader of the largest religious movement on the African continent in the 20th century. And I think that's significant, not just the largest Muslim movement, but the largest religious movement, because that and of itself, for those who aren't familiar with Islam in Africa, it's like, oh, Islam is clearly incredibly widespread on the African continent. So Sheikh Ibrahim was the leader of the largest religious movement in Africa in the 20th century. So he was the spiritual guide to tens of millions of Muslims throughout the continent and elsewhere. And so he was well known, you know, as a Sufi sheikh, but also by scholars at Al Azhar. He was given the esteemed title of Shaykh Al Islam, which kind of recognizes his widespread mastery of different Islamic sciences. In addition to all of that, he was really proudly and openly a Pan Africanist, which I think is again, another really important distinction, right, because there is. There is a misconception that Pan Africanism is a particularistic thing that is in tension with the universalism of Islam. And this is something I encounter often when I talk about my work in the U.S. right. I think a lot of people are really influenced by, for example, the Hajj of Malcolm X, right? And he going to Mecca and seeing, oh, you know, or the way it's portrayed in the autobiography by Alex Haley, right, Of like, oh, Islam is universalist Islam, as, you know, no distinctions between different people. We're all the same. Kubaya, blah, blah, blah, Right. And so with that, they say, oh, well, how can you be Pan African, right? Like that. That goes against kind of this Ummah ideal that we're all the same. And Sheikh Ibrahim is a really beautiful lived example of how that's just not. That's not the reality. So he, for example, was very. Had. Was in relationship in community with people like Kwame Nkrumah, who was the founding president of Ghana, Ahmad Sekhou Tore, the African Muslim, the African socialist and Muslim who was the founding president of Guinea, Gamal Abdul Nasser, who was also known as a pan, you know, pan Islamist and things like that. So he was in communion with a lot of these political leaders, some of whom obviously were not even Muslim. Right? And so, like, why is it that this religious scholar is being sought out by these political figures, these heads of state? It, again, is a reminder of their shared commitments to the liberation of their peoples. And so what I call Sheikh Ibrahim and this movement is a revolutionary Pan African Sufi movement. And, you know, there's a lot of ways in which people understand or misunderstand Pan Africanism, But I specifically call it a revolutionary Pan African movement because. And I'm drawing from the work of Ahmad Sehgutore on some of the six, like, for example, the six Pan African Congress. And in that he defined revolutionary Pan Africanism as, you know, often Pan Africanism is understood as a movement that's geared towards the total liberation of people on the African continent, typically through scientific socialism. But revolutionary Pan Africanism sees that struggle for African liberation as interconnected to this global struggle by oppressed peoples all throughout the world who are struggling against colonization, neocolonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, and all of these things. So what it means to be revolutionary in this sense is to be. Connect the dots, right? Not the particularistic thing of we only care about African peoples, but we understand that. That the liberation of African peoples, they're struggling against the same global structures of political economic exclusion and marginalization that all these other communities are. Are struggling. And so that's why I call it revolutionary Pan Africanism. But not to take away from the particularism of Sheikh Ibrahim. And all these people were invested in the liberation of their peoples. Sheikh Ibrahim even had a speech that he gave. Sorry, a letter that he wrote, which translates in Arab in English to Africa for the Africans, right? This is the exact same slogan that Kwame Nkrumah and Marcus Garvey and Edward Wilmont Blyden and all these other Pan Africanists have referenced, right? And this is a religious scholar using that language. But the reason why I say it's a revolutionary Pan African Sufi movement, right? All of these other heads of state that he. That he was in community with, they were trying to create countries in this moment of decolonization, right? How are we going to structure our governments? How are we going to try to, you know, remove ourselves from the weight, the stranglehold of European colonialism? Whereas what Sheikh Ibrahim was doing as a religious figure is he was able to create a grassroots movement, right? He wasn't trying to. He wasn't the head of a state. He wasn't trying to build a nation state, but he was kind of, you know, the leader of. And the spiritual advisor, like I said, of tens of millions of Africans throughout the continent. And Sufism being something that is a journey of inner and outward transformation, he is the advisor to all of these people who are striving to kind of live and learn in the world in ways that are just. And so what does it mean for him to bring that revolutionary consciousness and infuse it into the spiritual movement? So he is encouraging his Marids or his disciples to really live and be in community with one another in ways that allow them again to collectively care for their people in ways that transcend the nation state. So I talk about two particular practices that are really significant in the tariqah, which is hadiya, gift giving, and khidma, which is service. And both of these are spiritual but also material practices. They're ways in which you come to know Allah. But there are also ways in which they have, quote, unquote, practical benefit that actually helps you, you know, help somebody, pay their medical bills or feed somebody or whatever else. And this again is important because when we think about Sufism, often, you know, we think about those who, you know, are in seclusion, right. But this, because of its Pan African elements, because of all these other things, because of its particular approach to Sufism, you again, you gain closeness to Allah by being in community with people. And so these are all the different things that I think it does make it different from. Oftentimes what people may understand to be Sufism. Although I will say, like on the African continent, this is the widespread leg disease of the Sufis. Right. The Sufis were the only ones on the African continent who are challenging colonization. Right. There's a long history of Sufi scholars in Africa, in West Africa and North Africa, for example, who are at the forefront of using their dhikr, using their ibadah as a way to work towards the downfall of the European colonizers. So I think this is also just a really beautiful extension of this long standing history of Sufism on the continent.
- [33:01]
Shobana Xavier
I agree. And I think what you've like mapped for us is this legacy of decolonial, the relationship of decolonialism, revolutionary liberatory practices and Sufism that it's so enmeshed that it's really impossible to disentangle.
- [33:16]
Samia Rahman
Right.
- [33:16]
Shobana Xavier
And I think the element here specifically is education, which I found particularly fascinating. One of my favorite chapters, I have to say, is a chapter where you focus on Patricia Hill Collins work, idea of conceptual work, of mother work, and also these stories of. For women who, you know, you. We learn about their stories and their relationships to Islam and how it transforms through families and partnerships. But ultimately kind of this really big decision of sending children to Senegal or Medina Bay and to like get. Have them educated there or schooled there. But you, you start learning about, you know, the reasons why. It's ultimately a critique of the limitations of anti black racism in America, the limitations of schooling, particularly for black children, and how children, the police, systemically, you could Just start naming all of these reasons. And so this is a really powerful chapter, and really that it makes you grapple with this one, a big decision, and then you follow the journey of the decision. And then later on in the substantive chapters, we learn about some of the young people, Black American Muslims, who are in Medina by learn, you know, in the school and in the system and having really intense relationships in terms of their religious identity. So can you talk us through this chapter a little bit? And particularly this idea, you know, mother work. And I think kin craft is another terminology that you use. Really challenges the idea of what ultimately kin is, which I think is fundamental to kind of collective care. We think that kin is defined by blood relationships, but I think collective care, especially in a lot of organizing community spaces, mutual aid organizing spaces, you know, can we have to stretch what constitutes our relations, our people and who we need to care for ultimately, which is not just, you know, our blood relations, but everybody else.
- [35:17]
Samia Rahman
Right.
- [35:18]
Shobana Xavier
And I think this really gets at how that can Is stretched and who becomes the people who take in the children who are showing up right in Senegal. Very fascinating work.
- [35:30]
Samia Rahman
Yeah, thank you. This is actually also my favorite chapter as well. This also was a chapter that was written towards the end of this whole process. So just for some context, most ethnographies, they'll have an introductory history chapter. Let me give you all of the historical context before we zoom to the present, because we need to be situated and grounded and whatever else. So this was initially just like, okay, great, this is my history chapter. But then I realized that this history is about, like, really beautiful people doing really extraordinary things. And this really gets at kind of the heart of the book, right? Black Muslim Freedom Dreams, really inspired by the incredible work of Robin Kelly and his work, his book Freedom Dreams, right? These were people who, throughout the 20th century, black radical thinkers and organizers and mothers, right? Robin Kelly talks about how his idea of freedom dreaming was first and foremost implanted into his mind by his mother, who dared him and his sister to think differently. He says to like, through. See through a third eye of possibility, to imagine a place, you know, where there's total freedom. Freedom from toxins, freedom from all types of oppression. Just free, right? And that's exactly what, when I think about the history of, like, in 2026, how are there black Americans from Atlanta and from New York and from Detroit and whatever else? How are they studying in Senegal? How are they. The second, third generation of their family is studying in Senegal. Why are they studying the Quran there? In order to tell that why and how we have to go back to what was it that attracted parents in the 1970s and in the 80s and 90s, black American mothers and fathers, primarily working class folks, like to actually dare to think of a space in which their children would actually be free. They would. A space where they wouldn't be miseducated. The ways in which black children are miseducated in public schools and other institutions where they wouldn't be marginalized because of the. Because of who they were as Muslims. A place where they could truly be free. And so that's kind of what this chapter was initially supposed to be, kind of how we get there. But in doing that, I also realized that so many of the people who kind of dared to dream of being free and dared to do that, each person just had such a beautiful story. And so for me, this was a way of thinking about. I specifically focused on four women. Haja Karima, Abdul Karim, Haja Tawhida Abedin, Dr. Khadijah Askari, and Dr. Karima Joseph. Four women from four different cities whose, like, who kind of their own journeys from them growing up and being, you know, as black children in different US Cities, to them growing up to be black women, to ultimately embracing Islam, becoming mothers and thinking about how they wanted to raise their own children in ways that were similar or different from, you know, what they had experienced. And so I wanted to use these four women's stories to kind of talk about this broader history and what was really significant about these four women. If you talk to anybody who's, you know, kind of part of the community, their names are so beloved and well known to members of the community. But, you know, this is my historical chapter, right? So I'm out here, I go to the Schomburg, and I'm like, trying to look in the archives and stuff like that. And these are people who, as significant as they are, their names hardly show up in traditional archives, right? And so this is a reminder of this discrepancy between, like, the histories of who we know who has been written about and traditional sources and the everyday oral histories of people who are just beloved and preserved in the community. And so for me, it was really important to tell these stories of, quote, unquote, everyday people. And as Suad Abdul Khabir says, in terms of her own work with Umi's archive, which is about her mother, as a window into these broader experiences, these are everyday black women who are doing extraordinary things, right? And they can teach us, as Abdul Kabir says, things that we all need to know. And so that's what I really wanted to do. And then another aspect of it was that actually in the process of doing this research and writing it, two of those four women have returned to Allah. And that was also just like a really significant heavy part of it of you see in real time, like the significance of kind of trying to document and preserve stories because again, we all remember them orally and in our memories. But what are the quote unquote, archival traces? So that's how, that's kind of the methodology of how the project started, how that chapter started. But what I really argue in that is that we can't just take this decision of them deciding their send their children to Senegal. It's just not like one day they woke up and did that, that in and of itself, by the way, to send your child in the 1980s. And that's how I started the chapter, like stunned your 12 year old and 5 year old daughters to Senegal, a country in a continent that you've never been to by themselves as unaccompanied minors in 1987. Like that's radical, right? But for each of these women and their, their representative, so many other mothers and fathers in the community, this was not the first time that they were pursuing seemingly radical pathways because they dare to freedom dream, right? So these are mothers that I talk about, the ways in which they, throughout their children's schooling experiences, really trying to find spaces that nurtured them, right? Some of them homeschooled, some of them sent their children to homeschooling collectives. Some of them sent their children to independent black schools or Pan African schools, others sent them to public schools, but then, you know, tried to supplement that at home. One of the mothers sent her children, sent her daughter to a Muslim school where you know, surprise, surprise, she experienced anti black racism. Right? So these are the. And these parents moved around a lot and did all these different things. They were constantly doing the work of what Patricia Hill Collins says is mother work, right? The labor of black and other working class women of color in trying to figure out how to create nurturing spaces for their children within a broader society that does not care for them and in fact actually criminalizes them. And so education is a core part of what Patricia Hill Collins is saying is the work that people do, the mothers in particular do to really raise whole child and whole children and liberated children. So I say that this decision to send their children to Senegal is part of this longer standing process of them striving to be Muslims. Striving to create Black Muslim social worlds for themselves and for their children and being interested in African, Pan Africanism. So this doesn't come come out of the blue, but this is part of this long standing, multi gener, multi decade, often journey of these Black Muslim mothers to try and really find spaces of possibility. And then the last thing I'll say is, again, if we think about boarding schools, right, or the idea that somebody else is going to raise your children, and, you know, there's a long practice of this in black communities, both in the US and on the African continent, of people caring for other people's children. And that's another thing I talk about with Patricia Hill Collins of like, being other mothers, right? You may not be necessarily raised by raised by your biological mother, but there's other women in the community who are stepping up to raise you because we're challenging this, you know, capitalist framework of the nuclear family where all parenting caregiving responsibilities fall on the biological mother, right? And so part of what makes it possible for people to send their children is because there are mothers, one of them in particular, Haja Karima Abdulkarim, who volunteer to care for other people's children. She's actually the one who had the idea of starting the school. She visited Medina Bai twice in the late 1970s and was really amazed and impressed with what she saw. And she was like, I want my daughter to be able to have this type of experience. But she was also like, and it's going to be a boarding school. Because I know that even though I have the privilege and the opportunity to leave New York City and move to Senegal, there's other parents who can't, but who nonetheless would want their children to have this experience. So we're going to make this a boarding school where I and the Senegalese Sheikh Sheikh Hassan Sisi, they collect and other Black American and West African mothers and fathers collectively cared for other people's children. Right? So again, your idea of thinking about expanding kin, right? And this is something that Todney Thomas talks about, kin craft of making these bonds of a religious practice, praxis and Afro diasporic religious praxis and ethos where people are literally not just figure, not just like figuratively, oh, you're my brothers and sisters, but acting in ways that we are truly community. And this is coming up specifically through how we're educating our children outside of the US and then the last thing is that I think it's also really significant to tell this history from the perspective of mothers and women, right? Because again, we can think about all the problem that leaders in the community and oftentimes people assume or think it's primarily men. But women were really involved because again, mothers not always, but often really lead the charge of what types of educational experiences their children are going to get. So mothers were really at the forefront oftentimes of thinking about how do we really dream of better opportunities for our children? So that's kind of how. Yeah, that chapter goes. And it tells the experience of these mothers, their experiences, what led them to send their children to Senegal, and what that experience was like in the 80s and 90s.
- [45:15]
Shobana Xavier
I appreciated the background to the chapter so much because I think it was one of the chapters that really stuck out for me. And I think also with archival silence in so much of the work that we do, I often find that ethnographic work is one of the ways that we could stretch what constitutes the archive. And I think this was one of the chapters that really captured that, especially as feminists and women of color are really invested in retrieval and recuperative work of the archive that silences so much of other feminists and other women, you know. And so I think this kind of oral history really resonated in this chapter and the way that you did it as well, which I super appreciative of. So can we shift to what happens when these children arrive in Senangal and Medina Bay? One of the things that you focus on is that Quranic education becomes one of the most important aspects. And I also love that you were called in to participate because you were just sitting there as ethnographer watching. And so they're like, why don't you also memorize the Quran? Which I love. So what does the actual pedagogical practices look like in terms of what the children are arriving into? We learn, of course, some of the elders, the shaykhs, the shaikhas, are literally taking kids and feeding and housing. Some are in dormitories. And there's obviously a kind of community aspects. And there's a sentiment of just appreciation of being able of mobility, walking to the mosque and not being worried and just having access to things that for many of the black African young people, may not have been the case, perhaps where they were coming from.
- [46:55]
Samia Rahman
Right.
- [46:56]
Shobana Xavier
But a lot of this is also centered on kind of a pedagogical practice. And I felt that a lot of. One of the chapters you focused on was memorization of the Quran became a significant pedagogical practice.
- [47:08]
Samia Rahman
Yeah, sure. So. And it's funny, right, because this is how projects transform and evolve over the years. But initially this project, even if I think about like my first IRB application and stuff, right, it was very much focused on what is the pedagogy at the Quran school. And part of it was because in the West African context, but also globally, again, thinking about the US led war on terror, Quran schools or madrasas and stuff are just seen as like these sites of violent radicalization, right? Where there's rote memorization, which what does that mean? Oh, you're just memorizing, so you're like a robot, so you're not gaining any critical thinking skills. There's all of this, you know, work from the U.S. state Department and others about what's going on in Nigeria, what's going on in Afghanistan and all of these places, right? There's this, there's this broader phenomenon of like, oh, Islamic education. And in particular what they mean by that is Quran schools, how it's really these dangerous sites, right? So that's kind of the broader narrative. And then within the Senegalese context, even this isn't just like a war on terror, political security kind of rhetoric. This is also, and Rudolph Ware talks about this in the Walking Quran. This is piled on by humanitarian organizations, even middle class folks who look at these Quran school students and like, what are you doing? Why are you begging on the streets? You're a social nuisance, you're creating, you know, a moral panic and things like that, right? So both within Muslim, some Muslim circles, but also in this broader, like national security apparatus, Quran schools are really maligned, right? And so I was thinking, and again, this is not like, oh, I need to prove the humanity or like the, the recuperative possibilities of Quranic education, right? To people who literally don't, don't see it as valuable, but also wanting to understand like what's actually going on in these schools. Because for those who are Muslim, the idea of memorizing the Quran, whether it be just a little bit or all of it, is a really, there's immense sacred blessings in that, right? And so this is the reason why parents are again sacrificing so much emotionally, financially and whatever else, sending their children thousands of miles away to do this thing, to study the Quran with hopes that they'll become hoofas or those who have memorized the Quran. And a lot of the young people, it's like, you know, you may start when you're 8 years old or 9 or 10 years old. And so I was really interested in like what's actually going on. Why are parents Sending them and what is it like for young people on, in their day to day experiences? And one of the things for me again which was really significant is thinking about this chronic education in a transatlantic way, in a global black way. Right. So like within the Senegalese context, the way in which the school, the pedagogy of the school is very similar to what you would see in many other classical chronic schools throughout West Africa and other parts of the world where it's what it's a class where there's one teacher and then there's a bunch of students. Everybody is studying at their own pace. So this student over here may just be learning the letters of the Arabic Alphabet and the student over here may have memorized 30 surahs or chapters of the Quran. Right? Everybody's moving at their own individual pace. In the particular school that I was at, the African American Islamic Institute, it was a co ed classroom. So there's boys and girls by nature of it being one class where everybody is like if there's one teacher and 25 or 30 students and 25 or 30 different places, if the instruction is individualized, there's only so much time that each teacher can dedicate to all of their students. So because of that, I talk about how the pedagogy is inevitably very collaborative because in part by necessity and in part by design, one teacher cannot dedicate all of their time to as much time to each individual student. So the student, for example, who's almost finished memorizing the entire Quran, the teacher may say, hey you more advanced, more advanced student, why don't you help this person who's kind of starting out in their studies? And so that happens. And that could be like, for example, the more advanced student could be a young woman and the, the newer student might be a boy, you know, so there's all these different gender things happening too. But part of it is that it creates this ethos where every single person in the classroom is seen as having, as being knowledgeable and having knowledgeable resources where they can teach and support one another within the classroom. And so what I talk about in that is that this is obviously like a long standing pedagogy of classical Islamic, classical crown schools all throughout West Africa. But if we think about it from like a black American educational perspective, this is also what was happening, for example, in the United States, right, when there were one room class one one room schoolhouses, for example, where people of all different ages were actually educating one another. Right. I mentioned earlier this idea of each one teach one, right? Where people enslaved people were literally was like a crime, like literally violent, punishable by death for black people to pursue literacy, right? Despite that, people were still teaching one another. And this is kind of the ways in which black education has often functioned historically and contemporarily in the United States. It's very collaborative. This educate, this idea of you educate so that you can uplift your community, you can be in service of your community. And this is also what's happening in the West African context. As children are learning the Quran, they're learning to read. They're also reading the whole Quran. They're reciting the Quran on behalf of their community. So. So when somebody passes away, all the students may gather together to read Quran and dedicate the blessings of that to that person who has passed away. Or one of the things I talk about is amidst, like, the George Floyd uprisings in 2020, which started in the U.S. but, you know, sparked this global movement, right? There were black American and West African youth in Medina Bay who gathered together to read Quran, to do a khatam or a complete recitation of the Quran for those who are suffering under political and racial injustice here in the United States. So these become ways in which young people within the classroom are supporting and teaching one another, and also outside of the classroom are using their education to benefit others. And this, again, thinking about the intersections of Islamic and black radical practices. This is really the ways in which Islamic education and for a long time, black education on both sides of the Atlantic has functioned. And it's very different, again, from these capitalist and in the West African context, even European colonial schools that were introduced to the region, right? Where learning was very much like, all of you guys are in third grade. And anybody who is older than, I don't know what is third grade, like, seven, eight years old. If you're older than that, it's because you were, quote, unquote, left behind or you're remedial. If you're. If you're younger than that, it's because you're very advanced. But this idea of, you know, everybody should be at the same level, it's very competitive. One thing that I think about in my own middle school experiences in a public school, like when our teacher would post our grades, how we were doing, it would be people's ID numbers, but then it wouldn't be alphabetized. It would be from highest grade to lowest grade. And this is very common in US Capitalist schooling, Right. Also in European schools as well. And so this. This Quranic pedagogy is very much challenging historically and in the present, those dominant ways of schooling that are really undermining the liberation and the liberation of Black and Black Muslim students, but also really trying to undermine inherent ways of building community and supporting one another through education.
- [54:38]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [55:52]
Shobana Xavier
I used to be a primary school teacher in another life, and so when I was reading this I thought a lot about some of the ways in which, you know, teacher candidates are trained. So I would include Canada into the mix of all of this as well, in terms of colonial structures and really the Christian legacies of schools like schooling generally and in the global north or the west or however you want to frame it. One of the things that I really loved is that you traced some of your time with the students who are in Medina Bay and some may decide to go back to the US or their parents call them back. And a lot of them have different kind of aspirations. Some of them is still informed by capitalism and material wealth and having a home and all of these things. So what were some of the trends that you generally saw in terms of the students who went through maybe the school at the AAII in Medina Bay and then maybe were either returning back home? Did they have easy transitions into maybe public system? Some of them went on to university, did postgrad degrees, and all of that stuff. And some stayed. They wanted to continue to stay in a place that felt really. That really resonated with them and they felt was holistically serving them. So can you speak to a little bit about what kind of the pathways for some of these graduates from these programs would have looked like?
- [57:12]
Samia Rahman
Yeah, so that was actually the chapter that was one of the hardest for me to write, because this is a really basic question of, like, okay, cool. So all these people went there in hopes of discovering all these amazing things. And so what happened afterwards? Like, did it work? Were they transformed? Or was it a failure or whatever it is? Right. Just like, so what happened after that? Tell the full story. Right. And also it was about. Tell the full story. But also, you know, in the process of doing this work and, you know, being both academic but also community member, I actually became kind of like the admissions liaison for one of the schools. So when prospective parents from the US Were interested in sending their children, I would be the one oftentimes to talk to them, to tell them a little bit about the school, interview them, like, tell me about your students, your children, why you want them to go, and things like that. And it was interesting because this was also one of those things. This was also a very practical, serious concern among prospective parents. So what happens with kids after they go to the school? Because parents are thinking about, like, okay, well, what do I want my kid to do after they have this educational experience? And so what I talk about is kind of like three different groups of people. The first group of people are the ones that, you know, have always aspired to be kind of religious scholars. Right? They're going to be the imams, they're going to be the Quran teachers and things like that. And this is kind of the hope oftentimes. Right. You know, for example, if we think about, like, Zarina Grew well's work, there's a lot. There's this whole phenomenon of American Muslim student travelers who go to the Muslim world to seek knowledge so they can come back and be leaders in their community. Right. So I do talk about the fact that this is actually an aspiration and a reality for some of the young people who study in Medina Bay. And for them, it's about going there, getting an understanding of Islam that's rooted in the intersections of them being black and Muslim and coming back and using that knowledge to kind of serve and uplift black American Muslim communities here in the U.S. so there's. That's kind of the first group of people. The second group of people that I Talk about are people who studied there and had, you know, were, were impacted by that experience. But not everybody is going to be a religious scholar, right? Or kind of pursue professionally a position of religious leadership or authority in the community. So I talk about how a lot of those people were people who studied the Quran. Maybe they finished, maybe they didn't, but they were really impacted by their educational experiences in the Quran school and also living within this broader society wide Black Muslim social world. And so they come back and, you know, impacted by that strengthened sense of self, this emphasis on collective care. They continue to do work in their community in those ways. And then the third group. And this I think was the hardest thing for me to write about, but also what I think was the most important, I think we had started even talking about in the beginning, right, of like being part of the community. The challenges of that is that there were all of, there were a lot of young people. And like I said, I've been, you know, in community going back and forth to Medina Bay for like almost a decade and a half. And so for example, some of the people that I met in 2010 now, right, like who I met as 14 year olds, right, are in their 20s now, mid-20s. And so for a lot of I was like kind of, you know, in, in dialogue with these people over the years and seeing all of their different trajectories. So the third group of people that I talk about are people in their early twenties who lived and studied in Medina Bay at some point when they were younger, maybe their parents sent them to go to the Quran school. Like, for example, think about one person who went to the Quran school from when he was 10 years old to 14 years old, memorized the Quran and then came back to the United States, went to high school and then started college. And then like so many working class students, so many black students in the U.S. they recognize, oh, U.S. public education, higher education is really expensive. And so I'm either, you know, going into massive debt or I am working full time and trying to go to school full time, which is really hard to do because there's only so many hours in the day. And so ultimately a lot of folks are like disillusioned with the prospect or the possibilities of higher education in the U.S. so these are young people who in their early 20s, some of them pause their college education or ultimately drop out and they decide to come back to Medina Bay. And in some ways that's a really beautiful liberatory experience because for most people, most high school people who graduate High school in the U.S. especially those students of color, those working class backgrounds. You have either, you know, you go to college if you can afford it, or you work full time and basically like a low wage kind of job just to make it, or you kind of try to do both. This idea of gap years is not really something that you can really have the opportunity to access unless you have, often you come from generational wealth or you kind of have that opportunity. But because of, you know, thinking about this broader idea of kin, right? Who's caring for you? Us collectively caring for one another beyond our biological families. These young people feel safe and welcomed to have this fourth pathway, which is actually, I'm gonna leave the US Leave the rat race and the grind culture of the US and actually go to Senegal, a place where I don't have to worry on a day to day basis about economic survival because I know I'll have a roof over my head. I know I'll get three meals a day. I know that, you know, I'll be good in terms of my basic necessities. And so I talk about all of these young people from the US who return to Senegal, alumni of the school, but like, the question is, what are they doing? And for some people, that kind of just chillin, which is really beautiful because that's again, a luxury that a lot of people do not have in the US because of racial capitalism and this idea that your, your worth and your purpose is to make money, and the amount of money you make, how much your labor is exploited for other people's gain, determines your value in the world. Right? So for them to be able to go to Medina by a place where, you know, these are Muslims who understand that a human being's inherent dignity is because they are a creation of Allah. You don't. It has nothing to do with how much money you make or what your job is or whatever else. So that's a really liberating experience. But at some point it's like, okay, so now what? Because again, if we go back to the Hadith of those who are most beloved to Allah are those who are most beneficial to his creation. And this is kind of at the core of this idea of collective care, regardless of racial capitalism and everything else. As Muslims, if you're a creation of Allah, your purpose on this earth, what is your purpose on this earth? Right? You may not be required by economic necessity to work, but what does it mean to find value and meaning in your time? How do you kind of strive to be a person that is beloved to Allah to be following in the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad. And that means, you know, caring for your people, doing something, doing something of substance, of value, of benefit. Right? And so there's some young people who once they return to Medina by, are doing that, they're doing what I call khidma, not what I call, but a lot of people, right, serving. So they're doing different types of service to benefit the community. But there's also others who are kind of, at some point, kind of not really sure what they're doing. And so this is one of the hard things about we should be really grateful for the fact that. And a lot of people are very grateful for the fact that they have the safe refuge. But also how do we push, push one another to kind of live up to our fullest potential in ways that are again disassociated from racial capitalism. And this was again, one of the things, I wasn't sure initially if I wanted to write it out because this is kind of one of the challenges, right? Of like, how do we. Because, you know, there are some people who are basically people might think are not doing anything with their lives. And obviously that's very problematic. But how do we really strive to encourage people to really make, make use of their time and productive in meaningful ways? And so I did put that in there as that kind of third group of alumni because I think this is a broad community conversation that we've been having and reflecting on of what are the different ways in which you use this education, you continue to benefit your community. And this, I think is something that varies person to person also is to be seen like how do you, once you've escaped everything and you're in a place of refuge, how do you continue to freedom dream? And that's kind of, you know, how I end the chapter of thinking about that. How do we freedom dream when things aren't quote, unquote, as hard it is?
- [66:00]
Shobana Xavier
I think this is kind of the perennial, like, you know, people who are critical of capitalism, racial capitalism, and try to build anti capitalist societies. It's like the neoliberal agenda, like a precarity and like as you said, the grind culture and all of this, you know, how what is the escape? And what I found fascinating about this in the final chapter that you discuss is how there is this maybe moment of tension or dissonance between kind of the African youth and the black Muslim youth who are. Then there is this aspiration to go to America to get the wealth, right, but get the wealth and come back and build a house in Senangal and buy land and all of these things. Right. And so, as one would imagine, there are these kind of different groups of people who are coming and interacting with each other, but they're coming from different pathways and they're in this space in Medina Bay. And even though it is this, you know, as you frame, like this moon geography that creates this kind of alternative space of community building, there are still moments in which, let's say, the African Tajanis have aspirations that are counterintuitive to why the black, maybe African American, like youth or the folks from the diaspora have arrived in the same place and they're having these moments of interesting conversation that you really capture. Right. Which also gets up the tension that you've just named. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [67:22]
Samia Rahman
And I think this is, you know, this is also thinking about the long history along, like the fact that this is a multi generational community over multiple decades. Right. When I started by talking about Sheikh Ibrahim Mias, like, he was this religious leader who, you know, in, you know, tens of millions of Muslims were his spiritual disciples. At a moment where there's widespread decolonization movements, successful, successful struggles of people over Africans overthrowing the European colonizers and gaining independence, the kind of fervor of Pan Africanism among organizers, among everyday people, among politicians, was so strong. Right. Even in the US Context, we think about Malcolm X and his message to the grassroots, and there was this huge, huge emphasis on black internationalism, global solidarity, Third Worldism, all of these different things. And again, I call this a revolutionary Pan African Sufi movement. What does that actually look like in the 21st century where so many people are elite, are migrating to the United States. Right. Or because of, you know, all of these different things, because of media and whatever else there are, there remain this desire to. To leave Africa and come to the quote, unquote, global north, come to places like the United States and countries within Europe. And so one of the ways I start that chapter is by talking about this young Senegalese boy who approaches a black American and calls him one an American. Right. Which is really disconcerting to him and to a lot of other people who have experienced this, because it's like, oh, you're calling me an American? Like, I left the U.S. i'm not proud to be a U.S. citizen or whatever else. Right. But why are you identifying me as this? Because I've come to the continent assuming, or hoping, really anticipating that would be fully embraced by my African brothers and sisters. And this is the case. They are embraced by a lot of them, in particular their Senegalese Shuyu, who actually personally invite them to come. But, you know, with everything, this does not necessarily translate to every single person that you interact with. Right? So this moment of disconnect and tension when black Americans and other black folks from the diaspora are seen as American and therefore different from Senegalese and other Africans who are living in Medina Bay. And so that moment is like, okay, so then is Pan Africanism still alive in the 21st century? Like, do we have kind of this radical solidarity and this understanding? But one thing that I talk about ultimately, and I guess, spoiler alert, what the chapter. The chapter is about, and I guess kind of in the title it's called From American to C, say, is that ultimately a lot of these black Americans and other folks from the diaspora are seen by local people first initially called American and then ultimately, in a lot of cases, called Sisi. And Sisi is the last name of the Senegalese Shiyukh, der Sufi Shiyukh. So the last name of Sheikh Hassan Sisi, who, you know, like I mentioned, came to the US in the 1970s, actually helped kind of spread this movement to become the largest black Sufi movement among black Americans in the US and his brothers, Imam Sheikh Tijani Sisi and Sheikh Mohammed Umahi Sisi, who continue to welcome and, you know, nurture black American youth today. And these Shiyukh are really, you know, the social safety nets of the community. If somebody has a roof that's leaking or, you know, somebody needs to pay for their medical bills or somebody can't afford to pay their children's school fees and whatever else they come to, their shaykhs and their shakes inevitably break bread, like give them money to be able to. To attend to those basic things. And so the Sufi sheikhs in this community, again, thinking about this, it's not a dichotomy between the spiritual and the material. They're not only serving people's spiritual needs, but also material needs in terms of helping them finance and deal with economic hardship, right? So the Shiyuk have this position of leadership, not just spiritually, but also in terms of collectively caring for the members of their community. So ultimately, when black Americans become seen like their teachers, like their shayukh, as sisis, they have a different level or different type of way in which they're now in the system of collective care, where you're not just the wealthy foreigner who, because you're a wealthy foreigner, we expect you to give us money. No, we. We expect and hope and anticipate that you will collectively care for us because you're a member of the community, because you're a cc, which means that you're an esteemed member of the community who is seen to be in a position of leadership or just has an ethical, moral responsibility to care, to care for us. And so I talk about, again, thinking about going back to this idea of kin, right? Like what it means for you to shift from an American to actually literally be seen with a different last name, right? And especially for the descendants of enslaved Africans is really significant, right? What your last name is, what your last name become, whether or not you change your last name. And so to be really embraced and not even just by yourself adopting a particular last name, but being seen as part of a family by others, right? You know, a family, the Sisay family, you know, is a family of Muslim scholars in West Africa for centuries, you know, part of multisensional legacy. It also creates different ideas of kin and family for black Americans that happens not overnight, but through this long term sustained connection in being in the Sufi movement that again, is multi generational. So the Pan Africanism and the types of like kin and solidarity that happens in 2026 is different than when it. What was happening, for example, in 1956. But this is also the reality of changing global economic conditions, but also the ways in which people again figure out how to relate to one another in ways that are more nurturing and empowering than what the state provides.
- [73:27]
Shobana Xavier
And I think this goes right really seamlessly into the epilogue where you, I mean, one of the things I really appreciated about the work is, you know, what the value of like radical, like radical, you know, imagining otherwise and building otherwise and dreaming otherwise is so necessary, right? And I think as someone who also has personal investments, you know, intellectually and otherwise in Sufism, it's I, you know, Ibrahim Sheikh Ibrahim Niaz's revolutionary kind of ethos of Pan African Sufi movements for black liberation and the collective care that you really carefully have highlighted for us in this work is so important in this particular moment when just from Palestine to Sudan to Haiti to Congo to everywhere to Canada, where people, all people there is just the levels of suffering and injustices, genocide is just continual structurally. And. And so I think one of the things in the epilogue that you wrote that really resonated and perhaps just something that I needed myself at this moment, right? Aside from being a host or whatever, just as a human being is, you know, at what point do we, like, what do we do with all that suffering, right? And here's this particular message in which the work is, you know, sometimes just imagining otherwise and dreaming otherwise and, you know, building community, be that. Be mutual aid with your neighbors and all of this, but also the significance of Sufism as not something that gets to be disassociated or detached or passive, but is something, as you said earlier, that the spiritual, you know, maybe spiritual progression of states is really deeply tied to the outward, the outer work as well, that in service or help or however that looks like for you. And it's so pertinent in this moment for all of us, right? Regardless of maybe religious communities or things that we come from. It's just, what does a collective work look like? And I think here is just kind of, oh, this is what a freedom dream in one particular instance has manifested as, you know, and what is the significance of that? And so all this to say is that I really needed that, but I also appreciated that this is one of the works and things that you're kind of helping us think through is that how is this pertinent for this particular moment, Right. And how, as you said earlier, has manifested from, let's say, the second 60s and 70s during decolonial periods, to the moment that we're in, all of us collectively, and what is our responsibility to show up for each other, for our communities, but also dream with each other.
- [75:58]
Samia Rahman
Right, yeah, absolutely. And I think this is, again, thinking about this idea of revolutionary Pan Africanism, why it continues to be relevant and a roadmap today, because again, as you mentioned, all of these different things that we're witnessing, we're all interconnected in this way. And I mention in the book, you know, and I'm sure so many of us have seen this in Palestine, for example, people who are calling out husband, Allahu animal, right? Which is a verse from the Quran in which it means Allah is sufficient for us and the best disposer of affairs. And so this is these. These are people who are reciting these things, calling on their Lord at this moment of just. Just horrific, unimaginable, like suffering produced and inflicted intentionally. Right. By other human beings. And so in this moment, like, we can't just talk about, like, the refuge that, like Black Muslims have found in Senegal. That's beautiful. But as Sheikh Ibrahim reminded us, and he, you know, was really clear, right. In the late 1960s and 1970s, he was writing letters to the Arab League. You know, Farah Al Sharif and Buba Karnyang have translated a lot of Sheikh Ibrahim's Palestine letters, but he was writing to them, talking about he was condemning the state of Israel and, you know, global Zionism and saying that we are brothers and sisters in this, you know, Palestinian struggle for liberation. We as Muslims, we as Senegalese people, we as Africans, we as Tijanis, all of these different things, right? So, again, this is a reminder of these spiritual pursuits that we have are inextricably tied to what is happening again in this world and in the next. And that is really important. And if we think about revolutionary Pan Africanism, we have to think about the liberation of people on the African continent as inextricably linked to the liberation of other people who are also oppressed by similar processes, whether it be of settler colonialism, Zionism and all of these things. You know, obviously at this point, there's so many incredible scholars who have made the connections between, you know, for example, Israel's presence on the African continent with, you know, elsewhere and things like that. The US Is like literally a global war machine, all of these different things. And so in those moments, this is a real reminder, and you see it with people on the ground, is that they're not separating the spiritual from the political. They're not seeing that, okay, we need to wage this political struggle for freedom and independence. And this is separate from the dhikr that we make, the duas that we make to Allah, that we will win, right? Because we will win. It's promised, whether it be in this life or the next. And so I think it's always relevant, but especially in this present moment, this idea of religion and Islam, and in particular Islam and Sufism, as a roadmap, as something that is essential for people's struggles for liberation, is really important. And that's an important message, not just for the Muslims, but it's also an important message for kind of like all types of leftists who wonder about the role of religion, right? And this is a reminder that no religion and spirituality, Islam and Sufism in particular, can really fuel. Give you and fuel your revolutionary consciousness to keep going. Because, again, you know that you're promised victory, whether it be you see it in your lifetime or in the next life.
- [79:42]
Shobana Xavier
And I think this is kind of one of the critiques of maybe some forms of contemporary spirituality, which is really optimization of the individual as opposed to what you're capturing in this work, which is that this is spiritual practice and ethos. It centers on communal liberation. And the shift alone is kind of one of the critiques that we could offer. And again, kind of the impacts of racial capitalism that we've spoken about. I'M mindful that we've spoke about capitalism and grind culture. And I'm asking you a question. I hope, first of all, just to congratulate you and celebrate you on this important work that you've done and this book that's just. Just literally come out. I hope you're resting and I hope you're celebrating and doing all good things. I don't know what your hobbies are with your family and all of that, but maybe after the resting and there's more energy and what are future creations we might expect from you. And it doesn't have to be academic, because I want to make sure that I heard all the things you've told me and what I've read about.
- [80:41]
Samia Rahman
Yeah, well, actually, I mean, it's all of the things academic, creative, personal, whatever else. But I'm really, really excited. I'm actually working on. And I have, like. I mean, I took like, a class in grad school about, you know, ethnographic filmmaking. And this is something that I wanted to do all the times that I've been in Milina Bay over the years. I've always, like, either had a camera or, you know, use my iPhone or whatever else, but never really knew what to do with it. And now I'm actually making a film. So I taught myself how to use Final Cut, and then I learned that all the people that I want to collaborate with use Premiere, so that I taught myself that, you know, and all these things. And it's. It's. For me, it's really beautiful because basically I'm. I also recently had started an oral history project with other elders in the community. And so what I want to do as an accompaniment kind of to the book is I'm working on a film that, again, really is about the experiences of a lot of folks in the community as another way of preserving and sharing this history. Because I also understand and feel the need to creatively share these stories in different mediums. I know some people read, a lot of people also prefer other means. And for me, it's really exciting to think about different ways to share stories and to do this type of storytelling. So, yeah, I'm working on a film that I have. I'm working with animators and a composer and all of this stuff to really, hopefully create a really beautiful. A beautiful film about the community and other works as well, that really transport people not just through words, but also through sights and sounds, into Senegal, into Medina Bay, and into just the lives of people who are part of this community. So I'm really excited about that work. This is all very new for me, but it's also like, yeah, I mean, I've written, read and written and spoken for all this time. I'm kind of like, yeah, I want to do something different. So it's been really exciting to do that work. So who knows exactly when that will come about, but that's on the horizon. I love that.
- [82:58]
Shobana Xavier
I mean, and also, listeners can only hear our voices, but as you were talking and I could see your face, you're lighting up. So that also is amazing. And I think it's so important for us to. To continue to, as you say in the book, to dream and reimagine possibilities of who we are and be creative in all the ways that we can. So, Samia, thank you so much for your precious time today. Thank you for this beautiful work. I know it's going to go far, and I hope we get to connect again in the future. Thank you.
- [83:25]
Samia Rahman
Yeah, thank you so much. It was so nice to be here. So thank you so much.
- [83:29]
Shobana Xavier
And that was my conversation with Samia Rohman about her new book, Black Muslim Freedom Dreams, Islamic Education, Pan Africanism and Collective Care. I hope you enjoyed the conversation and I hope you'll join us again next time. Until then, take good care.