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Youssef J. Carter, "The Vast Oceans: Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafawiyya Sufi Path" (UNC Press, 2026)
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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Hello 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're safe and well wherever you are, and thank you so much for joining us today. On today's episode, we are joined by Yusuf J. Carter, who is an assistant professor of Religious Studies and the Keenan Refai Fellow in Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to talk about his new book, the Vast Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafa Wiya Sufi Path, which is published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2026. Carter's new book is a stunning meditation on Black Atlantic Sufism, specifically as it travels between South Carolina and Senangal through the Mustafa Weya Sufi community and Sheikh Orona fai. The book flows around Sufi conceptual frameworks which perceive much more nuanced renderings to the register of Black and Africana studies. For example, these include baya, which is framed as solidarity or hitmark as labor. Such attunement of Sufi concepts opens capacious possibilities for Sufi studies at the intersection of Black and Muslim studies. The book then uses deep ethnography to capture the flow of stories, rituals, and piety and also black radical labor, mother work, and becoming to highlight how, in spite of ongoing violence of racial capitalism and plantation modernity, Black Africana Sufi communities are vital spaces of world making, one that is not merely metaphysical, such as through ritual piety, but also necessarily political, anti racist, and anti colonial. This book is necessary reading for scholars of Sufism and those who work on Black and African Islam. In our conversation today, Yousef and I spoke about his framework of Black Muslim Atlantic and the metaphoric and archival possibilities of the ocean, the reproductive labor of Black Muslim women in Sufi communities, and his meditation on Black and Muslim studies as pathways forward. So without further delay, here's my conversation with Yusuf J. Carter on his new book, the Vast Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafa Wiya Sufi Path. Hello Yusuf, how are you doing?
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I'm well, Chobana. Thank you so much for having me. How are you?
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I'm doing really well and I'm so excited to talk to you about this new book that you have come out, the Vast Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafa Weya Sufi Path. So, as is tradition on our new books and Islamic Studies podcast, we'd like to get to know a little bit about who you are and what led to writing this particular book. So what was your intellectual journey and what got you to where you are right now?
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Wow. So I. Yeah, I feel very blessed and grateful to be a part of this. So thank you again for having me. So what a great question to start with. So, as far as my intellectual journey, I suppose I'm not terribly unique in this regard, but I have a non traditional path that led me to where I am now. I didn't start out in humanities. I actually did my undergraduate work as a biology major. Right. Some people don't know that. So along the way, though, I quickly discovered that I wasn't really interested in research development. And so I found my way into education. Although I did take an honors African American Literature course during my senior year. That kind of, I think, sparked something within me. And so in terms of thinking about what my work does now, the questions that I'm interested in, that really, really begins when I go back to school at North Carolina Central University, when I got a master's in history with an effort to see African Diaspora Studies. And although I'm not a historian, during that time I had a mentor who was a professor in that department who said to me, literally, if I could do it all over again, I go into anthropology. And so that's how I ended up going into anthropology, getting my doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, in which my first anthropology course was on the first day of my graduate program. Didn't know what anthropology exactly was. Not sure I still do, but I want to just backtrack really quickly. During my history program, my master's program, I wrote a thesis about the Islamic Party of North America, which was a predominantly black led Muslim organization that was headquartered in Washington D.C. for the majority of the life of the organization, which commences in the late 60s and into the 70s and 80s. And they take their organizational kind of framework from different Islamic revolutionary movements like Jamati Islamic Pakistan, Uzbek Bukhariya and others, and Ikwani Muslim as well. But then also the political philosophy from people like Malcolm X. And so I was really interested in this question of Muslim movement, Right. And so as I endeavored to sort of think about, like, what would be my dissertation research, I shifted from this sort of emphasis on black American Muslim movement to taking more of a black Atlantic or African diasporic view in terms of being interested in Muslim life, being interested in the sort of devotional practices of people of Akman descent in places that extend beyond the United States. And initially I was, you know, I thought I was going to write a dissertation about Senegalese Muslims in Paris. And so, yeah, I'm just giving you all of the. So I wind up going To Paris. I think my, my. My wife and our daughter at. Who was six months old at the time. And when I'm in Paris, I kind of go through this existential crisis of like, not really feeling like I can find the field, not really feeling like I could find my footing. And so after deliberation and sort of sharing, you know, and pouring my soul out to my wife and kind of voicing my concerns, she reminded me that, you know, there's a much more interesting and unique opportunity and community that you already have access to. Why wouldn't you just do your research on that community? And that community is the community, Muslim community amongst Horner that, you know, a few years prior I had come in contact with and had grown close to Sheklodo Nafai and decided then and there, pretty much upon her encouragement, that I would pivot and lead the sort of crowded field of talking about Islam in France and questions of race and religion, et cetera. Albeit from my view, I wanted to kind of enter into this crowded conversation through a particular niche of thinking about blackness and Islamic, to pivoting to an understudied, very much not well known community in the American south that has strong ties to Senegal. And so. But yeah, that's just sort of a kind of an overview of how I landed here. So like a kind of the through line is like an interest in black and Africana Muslim movements in community building. Yeah.
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I love hearing about the before lives of books. Right. Because it's so fascinating to see what ships and pivots led you to this moment. And that's so fascinating. I'm also like fascinated by the idea that you said that you are still not sure if you're an anthropologist or do ethnography, whereas I think this is really just such a beautiful ethnographic work with just a lot of, I think, respect and kind of consideration and awareness, but also navigating some really interesting challenges because you, as you said, you are part of this community, you're studying and you have a close relationship to the teacher who you were also writing about, but also had a personal connection with as well. So can you talk us through that a little bit more and where this hesitation to kind of really embrace the identity of being an ethnographer who's coming from.
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Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I, I don't necessarily have consummation or like trepidation with regards to claiming the identity of an ethnographer. Right. I think many of us who reflect on who we are and, and whether we're sort of growing into the person we intend to be, the scholar we intend to be, the. Yeah. This is the human that we. That we envision ourselves as being formed into in some way, I'm sure you can relate to grappling with. Am I a writer? Right. Instead of claiming that as an identity, I will say that I remain. I don't say skeptical. I wouldn't say. I identify as an anthropologist, actually. I have a doctoral degree in the cultural anthropology. But if I am an anthropologist, I am a black anthropologist, and not just that, a black Muslim anthropologist. And for me, that qualification is intentional and meaningful. And so far as I see my sort of, I guess you could say scholarly forebears and ancestors as well as conversation partners as being rooted in Black studies and rooted in Islamic studies. Right. And not just anthropology, but like black anthropology being a kind of an arm within or a corner within black studies. Right. Just as, you know, the black study of religion is an arm within Black studies as well. Right. Thinking about black study not just as an intellectual project, but is names, first and foremost, a political commitment through. That operates through intellectual production. Right. But that doesn't seek to sort of divorce itself from the ethical, moral, political and spiritual commitments, realities, needs of the communities that we write about, the communities that form us and shape us, the communities that we advocate for, the communities that we try to draw attention to and shed light on, et cetera. So as well as sort of thinking about the kinds of interventions, theories of knowledge, theories of the body, theories of the self, the heart, the soul, the worldly, the otherworldly, et cetera, that comes by and through, you know, Sufi epistemology, systemic philosophy, et cetera. All right? And so there are all of these sort of figures and people that I see myself as being sort of shaped by, convinced by, or in conversation with or arguing with sometimes. Right. As is quite natural. And so I think it's important to make that caveat. I'm not interested in anthropology as a discipline, naturally. And I don't say that to steam obnoxious. I'm not necessarily interested in any disciplinary framework, honestly. Now we can have a conversation about, like, the distinction between disciplines and fields and what that might mean. But in. In the. And I think that try, I. I try to sort of do that in the book, right. I try to sort of embody that in my writing where the means of, like the. The. The source material that I draw from in order to come to certain conclusions and answer certain questions that I think are pressing and important come from, not just like nonfiction scholarly works that you Know, academicians have, have produced, but the kinds of film, art, music, poetry. Right. The visions that. That or, or the kinds of reflections that visionaries. Right. Have, have conceived of black and Muslim and otherwise. And I try to sort of weave that into, into the writing because sometimes a poem or the scene of a film or a, A mural in public view can sometimes say much more, much more quickly than what we might find in a book that's been published through an academic press. Sometimes. Yeah.
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And I appreciate that kind of clarification and intervention because I think that speaks to the heart of the project and the book itself, because I think you are, as you say many times, trying to skip these different kind of maybe feel fields, you know, literatures together. And one of the things that I really appreciated about this is kind of the structure of the book. Right. And you're kind of very intentional on how you structured the book. And you structured it in really kind of these important Sufi, sometimes metaphysical terminologies or theological or philosophical terminologies. But you. The interventions you make with them, I think are so profound. So can you tell us a little bit about what was the decision to structure the book the way that you did?
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Yeah, no, absolutely. So the first and foremost, the foundation of how I kind of think about structuring the book is comes viand through a commitment of writing about this community, writing about the Mustafawiyyah using the concepts and language that Muslims themselves use. Right. Muslims who are part of this community use. Right. As opposed to taking, say, theories and concepts and language and terminologies that come from someone or somewhere else, and then inorganically trying to describe or articulate what people are doing and why they're doing it and why it's meaningful by and through a language that people themselves who are part of this community don't use in order to refer to themselves, refer to their practices, refer to their own commitments, refer to their projects of journeying as practitioners of Islam and their commitments to grow spiritually. Right. So the book is sort of structured in a way that. Where. According to several concepts. Right. So I start with bea, right. Sort of. And I do almost like a translation project. Right. So bea, which normally means a kind of like an oath of allegiance, I try to think of as solidarity. Right. To. To think about the project of actually studying and studying with the community. Right. The kinds of personal commitment or commitments as someone doing ethnography, Black Muslim ethnography, I suppose. Right. Who sort of stands shoulder to shoulder with other Muslims of African descent, be they American born or from elsewhere in the Diaspora or from the continent. But then also I wanted to kind of articulate when we think about, say, for example, the Sufi tarita, or the relationship between a student and a teacher or a sheikh and amurid, right? We often think about that. As for those of us who are aware of what that means and what that entails as a kind of hierarchical relationship, as opposed to something akin to a sacred partnership between someone who's. Who has taken upon themselves to guide others to Allah and relies upon, I guess you could say, people who agree to be guided, right? To do their work, to do their khidma, right? I also talk about zikr, right? Leaving that as remembrance, right? But thinking about remembrance not just as a liturgical practice, but then also a cultural practice, right? A way of reapprehension of the self, right? And this kind of bears out in the subtitle remembering Allah and self, right? So if to know oneself is to know one's Lord, perhaps remember oneself is to remember one's Lord, right? We might, we might say, and then Ziyarah, which in scholarship about pilgrimage practices that Muslims do, both referring to the Hajj, but then also minor pilgrimages to visit shayuk or sacred sites or what have you, I render that into movement, right? In order to think about not just the practices that people participate in as they migrate from place to place or visit from place to place, but thinking about the intentionality or the motive for moving one's body. The motive is to move one's heart, to move one's soul, right? To move oneself internally, right? I then talk about fidma, right? You know, and where people might translate it into service. I use the term labor, right? And again, this might seem trivial, but I, you know, we could kind of maybe talk about this, but perhaps this chapter is my favorite one, but I'll come back to that. But anyway, I translate that or I render that into labor as a conceptual framework to think about the transmission of sacred knowledge that Muslims do, particularly people who engage in mothering, right? Mothering others, right? Or mother work or what have you. That also coincides with histories of plantation labor, of compulsory labor. And so agricultural labor, kitchen labor, reproductive labor, instructional labor, right? And so the kind of working through line for that is. And I know I'm just kind of jumping around randomly here, but the kind of working ethos of that chapter is to sort of pay attention to the way in which labor in the context of the plantation and the colony that gets extracted from Africana people, Africana women, in the context of the chapter that I try to highlight is something that dehumanizes or disempowers, whereas labor dispensed in the madrasa that is the Quran school and the Zawiya or the Sufi large is something that empowers, right. Something that plays a part in the formation of humans, of human beings.
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Right.
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The holistic, spiritual, emotional, psychological, healthy formation and reproduction of humans. Right. That I follow with a chapter called Taskia, which I render into cultivation, which isn't too far off, I think, as well, we might think about that as the kind of. It has kind of the term tuskia has connotations of purification and as in Tuskegee of the nafso, the purification of the nafs, or the self. Right. I use the term cultivation to. To highlight the way in which the commitments on the part of a successive generation of Muslims who are part of this community and other communities is informed by and coincide by the pious devotional labor of a prior generation of Muslims who are committed to empowering themselves and remembering Allah. And then I end the book with a chapter called Shita, which normally would be translated as healing. I render into the language of repair or reparations, actually. Right. Making the argument that the sort of project of. That the investment in spiritual growth, in expanding one's understanding and possession of sacred knowledge is ultimately a project of repair. Right. And this is also connected to the prior chapter in a certain way because, you know, one of the kind of foundational questions that I ask or that is sort of motivating, you know, my reflection throughout the book, throughout this journey. It's more of a journey than a book, I think, is what does it mean to. What would it mean to attempt to dismantle structural racism, for example, or plataceologics or race as an idea without first addressing and dismantling how race inhabits the soul. Right. That is to say that for those of us who are committed to transformation, both self transformation, but then also a kind of a project of progressive social justice or kind of social transformation, social political organizing, activism, et cetera. The hand can only ever build that which resides in our heart. Right? And so if what resides in the heart is faulty or is corrupt, then surely what one builds will also be korat. Right? And this sort of coincides with this, you know, a very, you know, well known hadith for people who are familiar with this literature in which the Prophet Muhammad said that there, you know, there's a piece of flesh in the body, that if it is sound, then the body is sound, and if it is Corrupt, then the whole of the body is broken and that piece of flashes the heart, right? And it's sort of coinciding with the sort of superior epistemology that in fact it's the heart, right, of a human being that determines and plays a part in one either being pious or impious, that if a person is evil and hateful, despiteful, greedy, what have you, or racist, right? This is actual disease of a heart. Of the heart, right? And there are others who have talked about this even beyond the sort of Sufi epistemology and Muslim philosophers that acknowledge that, you know, say, for example, race, for example, racism isn't a problem of policy. Racism is a problem, is a spiritual disease, right? Because the work, the foundational kind of understanding is that you would believe that there are people who are inherently superior to others because of the their ancestry or the color of their skin or what have you as opposed to their character, right? And what else is this other than kibbut or arrogance, right? Which is a satanic impulse according to how Muslims understand, tend to understand this problem. And so in that last chapter in the, you know, entitled Shifra, I also try to make a case for bringing black study into conversation with Islamic study or Black studies. In the conversation with Islamic studies, right? And not pushing for a kind of, a kind of an interdisciplinary, you know, engagement, but rather a kind of inter. Theoretical framework for which we can understand the, the, you know, for all of the kind of inroads that have made through Black studies in terms of thinking about, you know, embodiment, the flesh, fungibility, race, et cetera. And with regard to, I won't say like Islamic studies per se, but Islamic study, right? Or classical Islam studies or, you know, Islamic philosophy and Sufi epistemology has spent so much time thinking about the heart, thinking about the, in the internal dynamics of the human being, you know, psychology, spirituality, et cetera. Well, in Islamic theology, a human is properly understood as both spirit and flesh, right? And so there's something important, there's an important opportunity to bring these two profoundly important intellectual and spiritual pursuits in conversation with each other, right? And so I pitch a case for, I try to make a case for Black Muslim study, right? And so, you know, and so that's this kind of overarching sort of framework of the, of the, of the, of the book. Again, I said it's not meant to. I don't write it in a way where it's. The outcome is like, I have this book. Yes, there is this sort of physical remnant that is the book. But for those that read it. They hopefully are meant to notice that I attempt to take them on a journey. Right? And there's a certain way in which the book kind of rehearses the Sufi journey in a certain kind of way. Right. That is not necessarily linear. The book is not linear in any regard. It's actually for people who expect that this book will be very frustrating, and I apologize for that. But it's just the way my brain works. It was just the way my heart moves.
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Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit botox botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more. Effy, you do not have to apologize. I mean I read it as a meditation, right? Ultimately and I you see this in the last page, ultimately, that it is your. Your kind of meditation or you're prayfully guiding us through what you're thinking about. And for me, the renderings of kind of what we might assume as classical Sufi thought concepts. I think this. Probably. There's many things I loved about the book, but that was one of the things I took away a lot from. As somebody who's located in Sufi studies and thinks a lot about some of these concepts, you have helped me, at least as a reader, rethink some of these ideas that are just, you know, sometimes very basically translated, and we just kind of move on. But I think what you're bringing together and in. Through your meditation of the different literatures and the people that you're in conversation with, you give us a different. You know, you light a different. We see it through a different prism, ultimately. And I found that was intellectually and also very personally, very useful. We have a bit of the overarching project, but in the. In this book, you're moving between Senegal and South Carolina, as you've said, and you're located specifically. I mean, in some ways, if you were to make a case, it would be kind of like a institutional ethnography of one community ultimately across the Black Atlantic. So one of the things that you frame in the book is this idea, Black Muslim Atlantic. And I just thought this is. I know, as you said, you're. I mean, I love the. Your. You say that your renderings are very, like, slight changes, but it's like, profoundly like, you know, the slight change. Just a profound shift in us thinking about it. So in moving in between South Carolina and Senegal and other places, you do move between other places over. Over time. Why is this, like, intervention of thinking about the Black Muslim Atlantic important?
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No, I mean, I think it's. So what I want to say. I want. I should sort of start. I should respond first by saying that the term Black Muslim Atlantic does not come from me. You know, but what I. What I will say to that is I think it's important to. I think there's much to learn from an emphasis. I mean, granted, I might be biased, but I think there's a lot that we can gain from meditating, reflecting, theorizing, studying the lives of Muslims about 100%.
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Right.
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The movements they foment, the revolutions they. They initiate. Right. Or rebellions. The. The organizations they found, the communities that they feed and are fed by. It contribute to the personal spiritual journeys, the cross, you know, the oceanic migrations and circulations. Right. Sufi studies would do well, and I think it's moving in this direction and I hope to be considered part of the. Part of this wave. Sorry for all this sort of oceanic puns.
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No, but I. You are. You're like, leading the trajectory thinking about, like, Black Atlantic Sufism. That's huge.
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No, I mean it. I think there's something important to. To be gained from thinking about what Tasawa does in the hands of people of African descent, right. On the continent, but then also in diaspora, what Sawif does, what Islam does in the hands of people who have been racialized, people who have been victimized, but then also committed to expanding a. Not just an Under a proper understanding of the human being and a righteousness, but a prophetic understanding of what a human being actually is. Right. The human has been disformed and desiccated by and through our understanding of the human has been desiccated and disformed by and through white supremacy. Right. Ultimately, community building that we see all organization founding movements that we see by and through Black Muslims. And by black, I mean that in a capacious manner. Right.
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And.
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And that's not just. That's not just naming the reality of being of African descent. That's also naming a political, ethical, moral commitment. Right. As well as a kind of cultural milieu that all forms and shapes what it means to be. To be black. These have been projects of repair. Right. One of the things that I sort of try to think about is how these movements are projects of world making. The book the Vast Oceans is named after one of the most prolific spiritual odes, or placidas, that was composed by the founder of the Mustafuya Tariqah, Sheikh Mustafa Gaydar, who was born in chess and initiated the Tariqah in 1966. So it's a pretty recent Sufi order. And so his. His the Vast Ocean is a celebration and his display of love for the Prophet Muhammad. But the book the Vast Oceans is also. I use the ocean as a metaphor to talk about three things. To talk about an arena of Sufi thought and philosophy that is very much present in and throughout West Africa, in particular Senegal, which I describe as an ocean, the depths of which we do not know, that has the capacity and the potential to tell us and teach us something foundational and important and meaningful and generative about the human. That that ocean has engaged with and intermingled its waters with another ocean, with its histories of. Of. Of. Of black suffering, but then also black movement, migration, et cetera. And that is the. The Atlantic, the black Atlantic. And that these two oceans sort of mingle the waters together to have impact on the third ocean, again, the depths of which we do not know which is the heart, right? And so I think of the Atlantic, I think of the ocean not as a kind of a vast expanse that is a kind of a void between two or more bodies of land, but I think the ocean, I think of the ocean itself as a dialogical space, right? Both in the sort of metaphorical, I mean, the physical sense insofar as, like, you know, the ocean is the medium by which people have moved across from. From one side to the other or, or what have you. But then also more metaphorical sense, right? I think of people like Sheikh Khurdunafai, who is or was the protege of Chek Mustafa, who is instrumental, was instrumental in bringing the Tariqa to South Carolina, to the United States and elsewhere around the globe. As an ocean himself, insofar as like an ocean, he brings together people, he brings together bodies of land that he is himself by virtue of being the sort of well of sacred knowledge is this ocean and people, even though he passed away almost 12 months ago, throughout his life, and I talk about this in the book, throughout his life, he spent every waking moment, in addition to sleeping, very little teaching, immensely giving of himself, right? Being so, you know, practicing this sort of, this prophetic commitment to the transmission of sacred knowledge, of, of love, but then also generosity, right? He is somebody who was not at all comfortable being by himself, right? Because, you know, and I mean that in the sense of not, you know, he saw his work as guiding others. He saw his mission as, as guiding others, right? And he was not comfortable having money in his pocket either, right? That is to say that he, he gave of himself. He gave of everything he had in his pocket. I have even witnessed him literally give clothing off of his back to other people, right? And so these days, people like that are rare, right? But he comes from. He is. He comes from this sort of deep well that out of which came people like Sheikh Ahmad al Bamba, that came Sheikh Ibrahim Iz, that came Sheikh Mustafa, that came, you know, Umm Khadija, Sheikh Khorun's mother, Sheikh Hasan Sise, who, you know, who many have written about and these people who have either founded, contributed to or fed these movements that through which millions upon millions of people have grown spiritually have been empowered, right? And so as I think about the Black Muslim Atlantic, to me, it feels and it's. And what I don't want to do is kind of over determine the Atlantic Right. Because, you know, there's ways in which we can talk about the Black Muslim Pacific. Right. And there are people shout out to, you know, one of my colleagues and comrades, Dr. Fatima Sawaju, who, you know, whose work is going to be, will be an ocean unto itself in terms of her thinking about the legacy of Islam amongst black folks in the Colombian Pacific. And so for me, I think what I'm sort of trying to think about is, is to do a number of things. One, to push away from this idea of Sufis as being apolitical and not having any, you know, regard for worldly matters. And as well trying to sort of shed light on and draw attention to the way that scholarship on Islam amongst black folks must be, must have an internationalist lens. Right. Because Black Muslims themselves are internationalists in terms of their personal commitments, in terms of, you know, where they visit, where they live, where they, you know, where they move to, but then also their politics. Right. The multi, you know, the multi geographical or the transnational. That's what I was looking for. The transnational sort of connections and solidarities that are born into how they think of themselves.
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No, I mean, I think in hearing you speak, there's several chapters in which you do this, but in the Ziyara chapter or the one you trace the travel routes, you have this interesting opening where you have marids going to Senegal to make pilgrimage to see the Shayts Macabre. But then you also move us through the museum in. I wrote it down, the International African Museum as well. Right. So you're doing this multi sided sense of moving which as you say, is both material and metaphoric. Right. There's movement towards like the pilgrimage of the heart to go visit your teacher and pray up. But then there's also very material reality of going to the International African Museum and seeing, seeing the stories and also the exhibition curation, which itself is also political. Right. And so I think how you layer that and the composite of that is what I think is what you're trying to get at and I think you do so beautifully is capture the material and the metaphoric. Right, yeah.
- [43:22]
A
So one of the things that I try to do in that particular chapter is highlight how the various makams or mausoleums of, of teachers who have passed on, who have returned to Allah are commemorative sites. Just like museums are commemorative sites, just like masjids themselves can be commemorative sites insofar as they're designed for commemoration, designed for zikr, they're designed for remembrance. Right. Of a particular kind. And each of these Sites are designed to do different things in certain ways, depending on what we're talking about. So I think it's important to say that the Masjid Muhajir Al Ghul Ansar, right, which is a site of commemoration, you know, in addition to being a mosque, it's a place of worship, a Muslim house of worship, right? A masjid in which people worship Allah, they do their ritual obligations, et cetera. They teach, they learn, but then also they practice Sikhir. Right. And in our. Participate in this collective project of repair. And why do I say that? And this is, and I think about repair both sort of spiritually as well as politically. The Masjid Mahdir B Ansa, right, sits in South Carolina, in Mosque 1 of South Havana, sits on land that was formerly a slave plantation, right. That is situated 2 miles or less from the Berkeley County Museum and Heritage center, right. Which is a museum, a local county museum that is. Has been built to resemble a working plantation home, right. In front of which sits a monument to Confederate soldiers as well as a replica of a submersible that was used during the Civil War in defense of South Carolina, which is one of the states that seceded from the Union. Right. And so I think of the Masjid, in contrast to the Berkeley County Museum, as doing very different things, right. In terms of thinking about heritage, right. What kind of past is being remembered? What kind of past is being named and claimed, Right. What is very much present in these framings of. Of the past? And how did they shape how people understand themselves in relation to the past, the present, you know, ideas about race. Right. And so the museum that you named, right, the International African American Museum, which is in Charleston, I sort of talk about as a way to think about the history of African presence. In other words, how that gets commemorated in a way that is generative, that is respectful, that is that names that space as sacred insofar as that particular location on Gadsden's Wharf is the site where 800 or so Africans in the winter of 1807 died as they were being held because they were captured and extracted from West Africa to then be sold in Charleston and then enslaved wherever they were going to end up. I put this in conversation with the maqam of Sheikh Mustafa, which is in Chess in Senegal, in a local cemetery that people who are part of the Tehrika go to visit. And I talk about the varying ways in which people who visit these different locations, whether it be the maqtam of Sheikh Mustafa, whether it be the International African American Museum, whether it be the Masjid. Masjid Muhajil Abul Ansar or even the Berkeley County Museum, as small and antiquated as it is, people go to commemorate some kind of past through which they understand themselves, that shapes their. And plays a part in the formation of their identities. And so that's what I sort of am trying to do with that. With that chapter in terms of sort of tracing the. And if you. You know, for people who. Whether they notice or not, you know, the act of ziyada or movement or a sacred pilgrimage is also an act of zikr in a certain kind of way.
- [47:48]
B
Right.
- [47:49]
A
Which is part of the reason why writing this book was kind of difficult. Right. Because in each of the stories, in each of the sort of narratives, each of the sort of ethnographic vignettes I draw upon in order to kind of reflect on and meditate on what it means to be black and Muslim or Muslim of African descent in either the American south or elsewhere in the global south, like in Senegal, that each have their varying histories of race, ethnicity, and coloniality or colonialism that I could have. I could have sort of put each of these vignettes in any of the chapters, right? Because each person, each of these sort of concepts, I think, is embedded within these stories. And maybe that's a sort of a different conversation about, like, the craft of writing, I suppose.
- [48:45]
B
I mean, I think that's why I love that you didn't. Like. I'm trying also really hard not to call them chapters, but I like, there's sections that ultimately flow into each other. They're like waves into each other. And we're just. Each section is essentially a ripple that we're just encountering because it could be told in multiple different ways. And I think what you named as could be frustrating for a reader who wants a traditional narrative is that you also have to show up to the book and to, like, kind of stretch yourself as well. Right. Because you're not. You're not compartmentalizing stuff. You're just kind of peeling. And those things are all intertangled, and we just have to kind of roll with it, which I think also feeds into the oceanic metaphor a little bit more. I mean, let's talk about your favorite chapter one. I would like to know why this is your favorite chapter. And I think, obviously, I also enjoyed it in terms of the. I mean, the stories of women are throughout the book, you know, throughout all of the different sections. But I think this is. Takes center stage here, especially, as you said, around Islamic motherhood, mother work. I'm drawing from Patricia Hill Collins work on, like, mother work and things like that. I think this chapter is doing. And how. I think in many ways, you know, black women, African descent women, have been the backbone of black religious movements historically. Right. So. And I think what you're trying to name as, like, Hikman spiritual care, but really signaling it as labor is, I think, doing important work in terms of how a lot of reproductive labor is either invisibilized or just not recognized as significant or valuable labor in some way. But I want to know first, why is this your favorite chapter?
- [50:27]
A
Yeah, so one of the reasons why it's my favorite chapter. I think it's my favorite chapter. I mean, it's my favorite chapter. I mean, I love the other chapters, too, for different reasons, but this chapter in particular gave me the opportunity, or gives me the opportunity to shed light on. On something that, like, doesn't get a lot of. Of credit, doesn't get a lot of focus. And as the work of women, right. The work of mothers and people who do. Who. Who. Mother in particular. Right. And so I think about the work that my mother and her mother, the work that all of our mothers, who. Or people who have mothered us do so that we can be who we are. Right. I open the chapter with two. I mean, I open each chapter with a few different kind of like, reflections. But this particular chapter opened with two, if I remember correctly. One is the prophetic injunction that paradise lies at the feet of mothers, right? A hadith that comes from. That is attributed to Prophet Muhammad in which he says that, you know, paradise lies at the feet of mothers, right? And then the other is, you know, a quote from Sheikh Hurul Nafai, my teacher, you know, may Allah be pleased with him. And what she says during, like, a kind of a private moment in which I'm driving him around and we're running errands. And I asked him about this sort of process of, like, having a sheik and, like, you know, of what it means for me to take him as my shek, et cetera. And so he says to me, literally, a sheikh is like a mother and a father, right? And so I use that as a way to kind of think about how we think about where sacred knowledge comes from, right? The prevailing assumption just, you know, in a kind of lay sense. But then even amongst people who study Sufi movements, who have written Sufi literature, et cetera, might have written extensively about their own shiyuk, most of whom have. Who have been male. And so the prevailing assumption, I guess, whether it is voice or just kind of sits under the surface is that the transmission of sacred knowledge, of knowing who Allah is, of how to grow spiritually, of the kinds of spiritual care that gets dispensed, the growth that one has and the pedagogy that one has access to in a formalized manner, comes by and through male teachers, while ignoring the fact that there is no Shek male teacher, famous or not well known, who could be described as a wali or a saint, who did not have a mother, who was a pious woman, who did not instill in that person first and foremost, the importance of being generous, of being caring, of providing for others, et cetera. And so I wanted to really name that in a particular kind of way. The Muslim community of Monk's Corner, Mustafuya Tariqah gets introduced into South Carolina, into North America by Sheikh Harun. But the Masjid Mahajulu Ansar is possible in large part because of the contributions and sacrifices of Umaisha, who he married before he moved to, from West Africa to South Carolina. And while he spends his time filling the hearts of students, she spends her time filling their bellies. And they have this kind of, obviously this marital relationship, but it's also this enjoying spiritual mission that I, that I, that I want to sort of point to and highlight and respectively give her her flowers, right? She is probably the one person throughout the book who I spend the most time telling her backstory, because I just, I think it's so. And her backstory is amazing. But then also it's emblematic of so many stories of other Black Muslim women and Black Muslim, Black Muslims who have found Islam, period, right? I talk about where she learns to care for others from, right? And so there's a sort of a genealogy of care that I'm trying to sort of to highlight and to draw attention to that movements like this, just like. And I say something to the effect of just like, you know, nourishing meals don't arise out of nowhere, right? They are made intentionally on and on behalf of someone who is cared about. Movements like this don't arise out of a vacuum. They come from somewhere, right? They come from people who care, from people who take on these missions of care and labor intensively, hence the term khidma, right? In order to form and shape other human beings. I also talk about Umm Khadijah, the mother of Shaharun, May Allah be pleasing to her. Because. And I, and I opened the chapter by talking about the first time I hear about Aisha, I mean, um Khadijah, which is from the lips of Shahrun, who talks about who's standing. We're sitting in the living room of Umaisha in her, you know, as we're. As we're being fed, right? And he's teaching, he's giving, he's just talking, talking to us about this journey, but he's spending time specifically talking about his mother, right? And this is one of the first times I hear about his mother. And he talks about what it means for. He talks about, like, her, her upbringing, her childhood, being raised by Sheikh, his grandfather, Sheikh Samba, him being a famous Quran teacher in just Senegal and being taught the Quran in its entirety, right? And she memorizes the Quran by like the age of nine, right? And by the way, she is the elder sister of Sheikh Mustafa, the founder of the Tariqah, right? And so by the time she memorizes the Quran, she starts then assisting her. Her father, Sheikh Samba, in teaching, right? She winds up even assisting, helping Sheikh Musafa with his Quran lessons when he was a young boy, right? And so if we're going to talk about, you know, the founding of, you know, global Sufi movements, the prevailing ethos tell the whole story, right? It's not just like one person who, like, has this special relationship. These people come from somewhere. These people come out of, you know, righteous people, right? Literally. And. And so he's. He's talking to us about his mother and he talks about the relationship that she has with the Quran and he talks about how special it was to be breastfed by a woman who had only the Quran in her chest, right? And I realized as I'm sitting there that as he's talking about his mother, there's a picture of his mother on the wall where he's standing. And for some reason, I hadn't yet thought to ask, who is this woman in this picture who was sitting on the floor wearing white and with her Quran open? And so I sort of do a kind of an excavation of, I guess you could say, mother work and the men, the transmission of sacred knowledge that comes from women, right? In addition to thinking about that transition of sacred knowledge as a project of repair, as a project of remembrance, but then also a project, a kind of a genealogy, a genealogical project, right? That is to say, sort of tracing the journey of, you know, of where people learn how to read the Quran, who they will learn it from, but then also how people learn how to care for others, right? And so that's my favorite chapter because of, because of that right, by honoring, we can't fully honor our own mothers without honoring what they do. And so this is my attempt to honor what they do, you know, my mother included. Yeah.
- [59:15]
B
It's such a beautiful chapter, especially as you were talking about nutritional labor and, like, food, I really felt, well, I was wanting some of the food, really, in stepping back a little bit, I know we haven't gotten to all the chapters and there's so much things to talk about, but I'm thinking, you know, zoning out. I made a note in terms of the final chapter, which, you know, you framed as healing, which I think is like really the intervention of the book. Right. Like, you kind of bring us back. And I made a note, and this is something you wrote that you want to theorize more deeply Black Muslim community building by drawing from both the study of Islam and black studies. And here you're very intentional in saying Muslim study and Black study. And really, I think this is one of the most significant contributions and interventions of this book. Right. And you've modeled for us in our conversation right now how you do this in different sections of the book. But stepping back, can you speak to us a little bit about, you know, you use repair. You're seeking repair from disinheritance, and how do we, you know, speak about inheritance, and how can that be brought together with Black studies? And I think black studies often is seen as something that's siloed somewhere else. Right. And. And religion doesn't often come up in Black studies, which is a whole conversation we could talk about, even though we have people like Sylvia Winters or Charles Long. I mean, I still don't really understand this weird amnesia that we tend to. Like, not everybody, but some people tend to participate in. And then in religious studies or Islamic studies, where we don't recognize people like Sylvia Winters or Charles Long. And I think you're naming all of this in terms of the folks that you've introduced in the book and the people that you have in conversation throughout the book. So then what would you want people to take away, the listeners, the readers of this key intervention of Muslim study of black study. And for me, I think. Which is so pivotal, which is what it's adding to the study of Sufism. Right. Like Black Atlantic Sufism as well.
- [61:18]
A
Yeah. So my reflection on this sort of framework that I'm trying. Or language that I'm trying to kind of conceive of in terms of, like, Black Muslim study is not. It doesn't. I want to say, first and foremost, it doesn't come from me. Right. I'm just sort of describing What I see, right, and that's throughout the, and that's true of the entirety of the book like this. You know, I, what I was able to put in between the pages is the result of the blessing of sitting in a company of people who are much smarter, more generous, more brilliant, you know, more well formed than myself. I, I just have had the honor of, of, of being given the task of, of, of, you know, writing some of this down. Right. But in terms of thinking about Black Muslim study, right, I, I, it's, it's my argument, it's my contention, again, me taking from others that this is the most direct insofar as race, which is, I think of as a satanic impulse or the ideology of race, in other words, is one of the things that has contributed to the dispossession, the disinheritance and disempowerment of people of African descent as well as everyone who has been racialized, which is virtually every human being on the planet. Right. You know, the, the ideology of race is so pervasive that the way we understand the human being has been disformed, Right. That there's seems to be this sort of, this, this, well, not seems to be, it's quite obvious that there seems to be. And this is something that, you know, is evident in the United States, Europe, everywhere. Right. Especially pronounced in places like, you know, South Africa, the uk, the United States, just for example, right. That there are people who are more deserving of resources than others because of their ancestry, because of their purported race. Right. That there's a kind of, there's a hierarchy that is, that informs how people understand the human right, in which there are humans, certain humans that are, you know, according to people who are committed to that ideology, more enslavable than others and less deserving of freedom. Right. And as informed through Islamic theology, yes, there is a hierarchy that concerns the human, but the only hierarchy properly that sort of, that we sort of should look at is a hierarchy that exists between creator and creation. Right. That there is no hierarchy that is to be respected within the bounds of what we describe as humanity. Right. And this is also, you know, informed by and through the Quran as well. And so as I think about Black Muslim study, you know, my attempt to kind of give language to what I see as a commitment to a prophetic commitment, a moral commitment, an ethical commitment, a political commitment to reapprehending the human so that it is properly understood. Right. Which has been the work of people like Sheikh Karun, like people like Sheikh Hassan, Sise people like, you know, Sylvia Wynter, you know, all of the, you know, you know, we can go on and on in terms of, you know, scholars, activists, you know, intellectuals, organic and otherwise, freedom fighters, revolutionaries, et cetera. Right. There's a kind of a certain way in which, if we understand. I mean, yeah, if. If Black studies is a commitment to a kind of a project of emancipation, the expansion of freedom, but something that doesn't attend to the development of the human being, the soul. Right. The heart, then it is insufficient. Right. If there is a commitment on the part of, you know, the study of Islam. And I don't mean that in the academic sense. I mean that in terms of what you. What we tend to encounter in, you know, religious, you know, circles or seminaries or, you know, Muslim communities, you know, wherever we may find them. If there isn't an accounting to the political realities of people, of the way in which so many people experience unfreedom while at the same time trying to communicate and transmit Quranic knowledge, then it is also insufficient. Right. If one's understanding of the Quran doesn't produce the impulse to participate in projects of abolition and projects of freedom, then one's understanding of the Quran is insufficient. And again, that doesn't come from me. That comes from people who are better than me. That comes from people who are smarter than me. It comes from people who have founded movements and who have inspired millions to follow in their footsteps.
- [66:48]
B
Right.
- [66:49]
A
And so Black Muslim study is an intervention that tries to sort of name the potential for bringing these arenas of thought together in a way that I think more directly, more quickly, more completely gets us closer to a reapprehension of the human. Do you a re understanding of the. Of prophetic work?
- [67:19]
B
Right.
- [67:20]
A
Of what khidma is for, of what we are trying to remember when we engage in remembrance. Right. You know, that. That's what I'm. That's what I'm trying to do through that, through that chapter. Right. I think about to how to salaf as. Or Sufism as inherit as an inheritance right that provides a. A curative, a medicine to the problem of disinheritance and that inheritance is prophetic and Quranic. And by the way, I, I just. To sort of, you know, for the purposes of citation, I. I take that particular framing or that language of the salwaf as inheritance from Sheikh Abdul Karim Yahya, who is an African American Muslim whom I met in Atlantic City, New Jersey several years ago. I just wanted to shout him out and thank him for that.
- [68:18]
B
There's so much to talk about. I think I'm really moved by how you beautifully bring in kind of anti colonial, anti imperialist registers, from Frantz Fanon to Malcolm X to, you know, to thinking deeply about how to read the Quran from, like a Sufi metaphysical perspective. Right. And how all of this is actually deeply intertwined. And what we get from those readings and by reading alongside and reading along with is these kind of deeper understandings of the metaphysical. But as much as the political. Right. And I think the. This is a really true testament of the important work that you've done and what important service that you've done for a lot of people. So congratulations to you on this beautiful work. It was a pleasure to read and to engage and think with and to learn. I learned a lot. So thank you. The book has just come out, and as you know, I usually do worry about asking this question, especially as we're thinking very critically about care, work and repair and labor and all of this stuff. And I know you're doing amazing things in Senegal, and I'm glad that that's where you are with your belove family and are soaking all that in. And what are things maybe down the horizon, maybe it's not even academic, but what. What's. What's like other things?
- [69:37]
A
No. Yeah. So what a violent question for someone who just finished. Oh, no, I'm kidding.
- [69:44]
B
It's so violent.
- [69:45]
A
No, no, no, you're good.
- [69:46]
B
You're good.
- [69:47]
A
No, it's a great. No, it's a great question. You know, so, like, where. Where do we go from here? Where am I going from here? Like, what's my. This. This journey of mine's not over. Right. Um, and so, I don't know. I, like, right now I'm sitting with. I'm sitting. I mean, granted, like, I have my ideas of what I'm. What I want to do, and I'll get to that in a second. But I kind of was just sitting with, as I was preparing for, to kind of, like, have this conversation with you. The. This. This is a way in which, like, the. The. The more I read, the more I mature, the more I realize how ignorant I am. Right. And I don't say that from the standpoint of, like, oh, I need to, like, read all these things. But I mean, you know, I sit. I sit with, like, you know. You know, there are certain things that this book doesn't do or didn't do or things that this book didn't engage with, which is. Which is fine. You know, I'm trying to Start a conversation and that's sufficient. I'm trying to sort of give flowers to several people. I mean, Umaisha are some of those people as well as, you know, people who make up the community, the Muslim community of most corner shout out to them, as well as the Fukara throughout the United States, as well as Senegal and the Gambia, as well as other places, Indonesia, in Spain. But in terms of what I envision now. So I'm interested in this question of continuing on this question of Black Muslim study as both a thing to draw attention to, but then also an ethos to write with and think with and produce with and reflect on. I'm interested in cultural production, right? Black Muslim cultural production and how it plays a part in ideas about the otherworldly and this sort of emphasis on otherworldliness. I am not sort of naming that as a that for me. I'm not thinking about the afterlife. I'm thinking about how Black Muslim artists, writers, poets, visionaries, think about a different world. Right. Think about the potential for a different world. Right. And so there's a kind of Afro futurist tinge to, like, how I'm thinking about that. But I'm not interested in spaceships. I'm not interested in, like, you know, outer space, especially having, you know, Gilstad Herons poem in mind while he's on the moon. I'm interested in how people think about repair, right. And how people engage in the project of critique, but then also testimony, right? How Black Muslims think about testimony. And so I'm also interested in how and continuing to think about how Africana Muslims, people who are part of. Who found Sufi movements and are part of social movements, remember and love and celebrate and honor Prophet Muhande. Right. I'm also. And these are. These are like scholarly works, I suppose, or we'll, you know, formulate into scholarly works. I'm. I'm also. I really said this to a lot of people, and I'm thinking about doing a quilting project with my mother. I'm interested in kind of doing more with my hands, right. And sort of crafting, right. And not in the sort of, you know, for this, for the. As a hobby, but rather a different medium through which to explore how I think about what the. My research, right. And then also, more concretely, I am part of a collective of people who have founded an organization called aisha, the Africana Islamic Social Sciences and Humanities association, who are interested in retreating from the university. And I don't mean that in terms of quitting our jobs, but rather thinking about the university as what it is, which is a, an artifice for racial capitalism and white supremacy, that the kinds of repair, the kinds of generative work that we are interested in doing, we're not interested in doing it in the United States and not in the Western academy. Right. We're interested in sitting with, learning from, being in solidarity with Black Muslim communities. Right. Africana Muslim communities. So last year we curated a conference called in the Shadow of Malcolm X in Dakar in Senegal to commemorate the 100 birth anniversary of Malcolm X. And in 2027, we're going to be doing this sort of a follow up convening in Trinidad in which we sort of think about Black Muslim movement, we think about Caribbean Muslim intellectual production, organizing revolutionary work, art, et cetera. Right. It's going to be dope, right? So this is what we're doing, right. We're trying to, as I've said in the past and others have said, we're trying to build higher ground. We see the university crumbling. We see a lot of things crumbling. We see that which is unsustainable, being unsustainable. Right. And so the answer to so much sort of atomize, you know, the atomizing of, of oppressed communities, of the suffocation economic, political and otherwise that many of us sort of witness the medicine for that is coming together, engaging in what my friend and colleague Samiha Rahman calls collective care. So that's, that's what I have on. That's what I have on that, what we have working.
- [75:51]
B
That's amazing. That is dope. I heard about the conference in Senegal with Anne, Malcolm X, and I just heard amazing, beautiful things. And so again, I said this to Samiha when we had our conversation on the podcast about collective care. I'm just so inspired by it, I think with the work that you're doing and the worlds that you are creating in spite of. I think that's important for us right now, for all different communities that are collectively trying to move ahead and learning about it and being in solidarity with each other is so significant. And I think, yeah, sometimes university as a settler colonial project is not often the space in which that needs to unfold. And we see the realities as your book talks about racial capitalism. Right. And so there needs to be other worlds built. And so thank you for sharing, thank you for being here. I wish you only infinite moments of peace in all the work that is ahead of you. And I hope you really take time to celebrate what you have done here. So congratulations.
- [76:46]
A
Thank you. Thank you so much.
- [76:48]
B
And that was my conversation with Yusuf J. Carter about his new book, the Vast Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafa Weya Sufi Path. I hope you enjoyed our conversation, and I hope you'll join us again next time. Until then, take good care. Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and BlueSky with the handle ewbooksnetwork, and subscribe to our weekly substrate newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.