Words of Experience - Translating Islam with Carl W. Ernst - Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst
Sons of the Green Light: Khidr and Sufism in the Ansaru Allah Community/Nubian Islamic Hebrews
Words of Experience - Translating Islam with Carl W. Ernst - Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst
Michael Muhammad Knight [+]
University of Central Florida
Michael Muhammad Knight is Associate Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Florida
Description
In his scholarship on South Asian Sufism, Carl Ernst provides us with a salient framework for resisting religious as well as regional essentialisms, and encourages us to problematize the familiar scholarly trope of “syncretism.” Extending Ernst’s insights to the study of African American Islam, I discuss engagements of Sufism by the Ansaru Allah Community, also known as the Nubian Islamic Hebrews (AAC/NIH), a movement that became prominent in the northeastern United States in the 1970s and 80s. Informed by Ernst’s critical challenge to the study of Sufism, I interrogate dominant narratives concerning the AAC/NIH and argue for alternative approaches.