Islam’s refusal of nonviolence made it harder for whites to support

Evidence

While Martin Luther King, Jr. was also surveilled, his avowed non-violence and mainstream Christianity was much easier to understand and easier for many whites to support. As Malcolm X pointed out, Islam was not a religion that advocated turning the other cheek, a demand for forbearance and forgiveness that even now is an expected response to racial violence. Rather, he said: … There’s nothing in our book, the Quran — you call it “Ko-ran” — that teaches us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That’s a good religion. In fact, that’s that old-time religion. That’s the one that Ma and Pa used to talk about: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and a head for a head, and a life for a life[.] That’s a good religion. And doesn’t nobody resent that kind of religion being taught but a wolf, who intends to make you his meal. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 193

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the surveillance state argument the reader is tracking, and to Aziz’s account of how Black Islam specifically was racialized; also evokes the Civil Rights vs Black Power split in reading lists on racialization.