I am still trying to understand how the Hamline Islamic art controversy happened, and I am now wondering if there is a local gendered and racial context. Hypothesis: Hamlin Administrators and students, many of them self-identifying Black women, keep referring to 🧵

https://twitter.com/toddhgreen/status/1612105537813880834

anti-Black racism and violence in explaining why showing the image is Islamophobic.

The signifier, the decision of an instructor to show the image, was interpreted as anti-Muslim (the signified) because in the Twin Cities, anti-Muslim animus has a particular anti-Black valence.

An anonymous African poet’s lament for the people of Palestine:

Jerusalem, 2021
I saw thousands of prayers      rise up like flares
         nightly, o’er an iron dome
Then dozens of souls,       the young and the old
      dispatched by hearts  colder than stone The Prophets gathered  on mount and valley
        In spirit and deep in the bones
As Pharaohs parade in Moses’ clothes,
       new Edomites tear down old homes1

Rana Razek, Sally Howell, and I invite you to ur panel on race and religion in the Arab American Midwest. Thursday, May 27, 9 am on Zoom. It's free. Link and abstracts below. #sschat #amrel #arab #Islam

https://twitter.com/MwHWG/status/1394661485557731332

Today there is a general strike in Palestine for freedom. For my part, let me explain how I came to support peaceful boycotting, divestment and sanctions against Israeli institutions. For me, it’s a way to live out my deepest values of love and justice.... Thread

https://twitter.com/aj_iraqi/status/1394596279037140992

First, many do the Palestinian communities and leaders whom I admire the most asked me to observe the boycott. When they did, I was ready. I started formally studying Palestine in high school—my prep school had a whole class on what they called the conflict.

Midwestern solidarity with Palestine, a history....
It was in local chapters of the New Syria Party in which Midwesterners and Arabs from other regions organized for Palestinian and Syrian self-determination in the 1920s.

For example, in Sioux City, Iowa
@IaHistoryCenter

https://twitter.com/EdwardECurtisIV/status/1393948699651358721

Thew New Syria Party raised money for Syrians who resisted the French occupation of Syria and Lebanon.

In St. Joseph, Missouri, 1927.

@OzarksWatcher @RabiaGregory

If you consider yourself to be an ally of Arab Americans, please educate yourself about our long history of advocacy on behalf of Palestine.

We are your neighbors, friends. Please make room in your heart for our voices.

e.g.:
uncpress.org/book/978146963… utpress.utexas.edu/books/bawmak @UTexasPress

"The Nation of Islam, Caring for the Black Body, and #VaccineHesitancy," another thread for #BlackHistoryMonth

The history of the Nation of Islam (#NOI) *helps* to explain why some U.S. African Americans do not want a foreign substance injected in their arms.
#COVID19 As @COVIDBLK and others have revealed, the horrible impact of #COVID19 has had on Black people is due to the health care system's anti-Black racism as well as social and economic racism.

Any "cultural explanation" that blames Black people for #vaccinehesitancy repeats racism.

#MalcolmX and the #Arab World, a thread for #BlackHistoryMonth . Based on my "My Heart Is in Cairo: Malcolm X, the Arab Cold War, and the Making of Islamic Liberation Ethics," @JournAmHist

#AfricanaReligions #blkaarsbl #AfAmReligion #BlackLivesMatter #Religion #Black #African From the late 1950s until 1965, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz developed and maintained consequential relationship with Arab and Arab American leaders. His message to them, whether as #NationofIslam leader or Sunni convert, was: Islam requires you to support Black Liberation.