Victims or Victors? The Challenges of Launching a Black American Muslim Conference

ABSTRACT This study combines participant observation and textual analysis conducted over a multi-year period. It analyzes the Black American Muslim Conference’s (BAMC) establishment of an annual forum for addressing issues pertinent to the descendants of African slaves in the United States practicing normative Sunni Islam. When announced, it faced backlash for its delimitations of Black American Muslims as an imagined community inheriting an ethnographically distinct theological legacy. A flood of contestations appeared on social media claiming the conference was divisive, irreligious, and racist. Repeatedly challenged on what bound them as an imagined community, organisers were compelled into clarifying the conference’s scope in exchanges on social media while maintaining their expressed inclusivity. The successive conferences have repeatedly struggled to gain wide support from Muslim organisations. Recurring panels have navigated polarisation by balancing individualist and collectivist themes while maintaining weariness towards endorsing victimhood or Uncle Tom narratives.