“The Nationalists have claimed Malcolm. The Socialists have claimed Malcolm. Now, it’s time for you Muslims to claim Malcolm . . . because he was a believer.” Betty Shabazz, the widow of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Malcolm X describes how her husband’s legacy had been taken up and interpreted in ways that reduced the significance of his Islamic beliefs and practices. In recent years Muslims in the United States, from all ethnic and racial backgrounds have returned to Malcolm X as an American Muslim figure. This presentation discussed how particular Muslims in the United States articulate a Muslim legacy of Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, fifty years after his assassination and considers how invocations of Malcolm enjoin Muslims in the United States to take on the difficult task of reactivating the full force and implications of his words.
Maryam Kashani is an Assistant Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A filmmaker and anthropologist, her research is concerned with the lived experience of Muslims in the United States through the lenses of epistemology, gender, race, visual culture, and political economy. Her book project is based on ethnographic research and filmmaking conducted amongst Muslim communities in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and at a Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, California. The related film works, Our Look Was As If Two Lovers Or Deadly Enemiesand Signs of Remarkable History premiered at the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates in March 2015. Her films and videos have been shown at film festivals, universities, and museums internationally.
Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Time: 6:00pm Light Refreshments; 6:15pm Talk
Where: Conference Hall, Main Bldg, American Islamic College