Black Muslims and the Angels of Afrofuturism

Abstract

One of these scientists, Yakub, bred the white race through experiments on the original people, a teaching that allegorically represents crimes of racial and sexual violence as a eugenics campaign of genocide against Black life. It also invokes an a priori Black past that existed before the poisoning effects of white racism—an origins teaching framed as myth science, if not considered science fiction. Just before his death, Malcolm X appeared as one of these “wise blackmenwho can tune in and tell what’s going to happen in the future.” In an interview, he is repeatedly asked: “Where do you think your future lies?” He responds: “I’ll never get old.” Startled, the interviewer asks, “What does that mean?” Malcolm answers: “A black man should give his life to be free and when you really think like that, you don’t live long. And if freedom doesn’t come to your lifetime, it’ll come to your children.” Though he clearly saw his life cut short, he perhaps could not have foreseen the extent of the impact of his life, voice, and vision, possibilities he opened for Black liberation through Islam, and outpouring of cultural and intellectual production he inspired. Malcolm X—as others before him—helped raise consciousness about the centrality of Blackness in Islam, decolonize Islam as an Arab religion (as with the shu’ubiyya movement previously), and revive possibilities for social justice, possibilities not yet fulfilled, but re-envisioned by new generations of Black Muslims in Chicago, Detroit, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Oakland, and in the diaspora. The Black Arts Movement (BAM), that partly grew out of Malcolm X’s life and death, converted teachings from African American Islamic movements—like the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), Ahmadiyya, and Nation of Islam (NOI)—into early Afrofuturist cultural production. In the process, BAM artists translated