Response to Waqar Akbar Cheema and Gabriel Keresztes Abdul Rahman on the Classical Arabic Description of Prophet Muhammad: Part I
By Wesley Muhammad, Ph.D
Those invested in the preservation of White Supremacy in Islam fight back, using the same tactics of distortion and denial. The first real attempt in this regard has been accomplished by an article co-authored by a Pakistani Muslim and a Romanian Muslim, Waqar Akbar Cheema and Gabriel Keresztes Abdul Rahman Al-Romaani. The article is entitled, “Exposing Wesley Muhammad on Prophet Muhammad's Complexion: Refutation of NOI’s Racist Theology,” and can be found on the Canadian-based Islamic apologetics website, Islam Dunk TV, here:
http://www.islamdunktv.com/2011/11/exposing-wesley-muhammad-on-prophet_05.html
Waqar Akbar Cheema from Pakistan and Gabriel Keresztes Abdul Rahman the Romanian have written what they believe is a refutation of my and other’s documentation that the Arab prophet Muhammad was black-skinned, contrary to popular representations in both the Muslim and non-Muslim world according to which the last prophet of Islam was ruddy-white. Cheema and Keresztes believe, or try to make their reading audience believe that their motivation is non-racial/racist; that their concern is only to deal with the “racist theology” of the NOI which supposedly has no place in the Islam that they are urgently trying to protect. The simple claim that Prophet Muhammad was black-skinned rather than white-skinned is seen as “racist”:
Mr. Wesley Muhammad in his article tries hard to ‘prove’ that Prophet Muhammad may the peace and blessings of Allah
be upon him, was black in complexion. The racism within him prompts him to come up with such ‘interesting research’.
Yet, Cheema and Keresztes unequivocally declare themselves that “In fact (Muhammad’s) complexion was white but not extremely white.” I maintain that it is in fact the racism deep within them – their terrified disdain for the thought that their Beloved Prophet was black - that prompted this attempt at a refutation which seeks to reassure for all readers that the Holy Prophet was “not one of ‘them’, but one of ‘us’.” Cheema and Keresztes claim:
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is not venerated or worshiped (except by deviant-ignorant), nor is his color important to the
ideology or practice of Islam. It is true that scholars have written books and composed poetry on the physical characteristics
of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), but never has such an issue become a theological one.
But the hegemony of this fabricated white-skinned Muhammad has had profound theological consequences, for white and black peoples. Anthropologist Prof Janice Boddy reveals in her study of black women in a Northern Sudanese village:
Hofriyati (village women) are especially conscious of skin color. White skin is clean, beautiful, and a mark of
potential holiness. I, being Caucasian, was repeatedly told that my chances of getting into heaven-should I chose
to become Muslim-were far greater than those of the average Sudani. This is because the Prophet Mohammed
was white, and all white-skinned peoples are in a favored position of belonging to his tribal group.
The fabricated white-skinned Muhammad has been the license for racism - theological and practical - in Islam throughout the ages. All of Cheema and Keresztes’s efforts in this so-called refutation were to preserve and protect this chimera of White Supremacy against the deconstructing force of the available evidence.
Cheema and Keresztes try to demonstrate that I have misrepresented the meaning of the Arabic term abyaḍ as it relates to Prophet Muhammad. The term normally signifies the whiteness of such objects as milk, teeth, ect. However, Classical Arabic has a linguistic phenomenon called al-addad, which we call antiphrasis, in which in certain contexts a word signifies its lexical opposite. In Classical Arabic the term abyaḍ when applied to human complexion rarely means ‘white-skinned’. For that, the term aḥmar – lit. “red” – was used. As an Arab self-description abyaḍ normally denoted a clear, blemish-free black complexion. This is the crux of the issue with Cheema and Keresztes and myself, as well as between them and Tariq Berry, author of The Unknown Arabs (2002). Cheema and Keresztes want to insist that the descriptions of the Prophet in the Classical Arabic literature that describe him as abyaḍ intend to describe him as white-skinned.
I. Ancient Arabs and the Shades of Blackness
Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Minhājī al-Asyūtī (d. 1475) in his Jawāhir al-‘uqud wa-mu’īn al-qudāt wal-muwaqqi’īn wal-shuhūd [II:574], which is a two volume composition of principles and models to be followed by judges, notaries and witnesses in drafting legal decisions, has a section on human complexions in which he reports about the many shades of blackness (and whiteness) and their technical legal descriptions:
If a person’s complexion is intensely black (shadīd al-sawād), he is described as hālik. If his/her blackness has a red hue, he/she is daghmān. If his complexion is lighter than that, he is asḥam. If the blackness has a yellow hue, he is aṣḥum. If his complexion in dark (kudra), it is described as arbad. If the complexion is lighter than that (i.e. arbad), it is abyaḍ. If there is less of a yellow hue and the complexion inclines toward black (al-sawād), it is ādam. If it is lighter than arbad and darker than ādam, it is shadīd al-udma. If it is lighter than ādam, it is shadīd al-sumra (“intensely dark brown”). If lighter than that, it is asmar (dark brown). If lighter still, it is raqīq al-sumra [light brown]. If lighter and inclines towards a fair complexion it is described as light brown [safi al-sumra] with fair-skin [al-humra] prevailing. It is also described as raqīq al-sumra with fairness. If his complexion is very fair, it is described as (light) sumra rather than abyaḍ because white is [associated with] leprosy.
And if a person’s complexion is purely white, it is anṣaḥ. If his abyaḍ is a fair skinnedness (shuqra), it is ashqar. If a person’s complexion is lighter than that, it is ashkal. If, with this complexion there is additional redness, then it is ashqar. If this complexion has freckles, it is anmash. If his complexion is light, inclining to yellow but without illness, it is asḥ
The intense, unmixed black color is called hālik with a lām or hānik with a nūn. Black (sawād) with a yellow hue is called aṣḥam. The darker version of the color (aṣḥam) is called arīr and its lighter version is called aṣfar (yellow). (A shade) with no yellow hue and with a measure of blackness (al- sawād) is called ādam (dark) and a woman is called ādami. Darker than this is called shadīd al-udma, intensely dark. The opposite of this is that which inclines towards fair skinnedness (al-bayāḍ wa al-ḥumra, lit. ‘whiteness and redness’) which is light brown with red, ṣāfī al-sumra bi ḥumra. Lightness unmixed with redness is raqīq al-sumra. The document scribes do not refer to the (fair-skinned) appearances as abyaḍ because they claim that that is vitiligo … Apparent whiteness is called afṣaḥ and abyaḍ with shuqra (fair skinnedness) is ashqar…. اللون ، شديد السواد ، خالصه ، حالك باللام ، وحانك بالنون ، والممزوج ، سواده بصفرة ، أصحم ، وكدر اللون أرير
Ibn Khaldūn (d.1405), in his Muqqadima, has an important discussion of the seven zones and their inhabitants. According to Ibn Khaldun’s formulation, there are three ‘middle’ or moderate zones: 3, 4, and 5. The inhabitants are distinguished by temperate bodies, complexions, character qualities and general conditions. Included in these temperate zones are the Maghrib, Syria, the two Iraqs, Western India, China, and Spain. Iraq and Syria are in the very center, we are told, and are thus the most temperate. Zones 6 and 7 includes the European Christian nations, Eastern Europe, Russia and the lands of the Turks. These are the white lands and Zone 7 is excessively cold, producing excessively white peoples “with blue eyes, freckled skin, and blond hair.”5 On the other hand, Ibn Khaldūn inform us,
The first and the second zones are excessively hot and black…The inhabitants of the first and second zones in the south are called Abyssinians, the Zanj, and the Sudan. These are synonyms to designate the particular nation that has turned black. The name ‘Abyssinia’ however is restricted to those [Sūdān] who live opposite Mecca and Yemen, and the name ‘Zanj’ is restricted to those who live along the Indian Ocean…The black skin common to the inhabitants of the first and second zones is the result of the air in which they live, and which comes about under the influence of the greatly increased heat of the south.
While ‘Abyssinian’ and ‘Zanj’ denote particular black peoples of particular areas in the south, the term ‘Sūdān (Blacks)’ characterizes all of the black skinned peoples of the first two zones. These nations included: [First Zone] West Africa, Nuba, Ethiopia, Yemen and [Second Zone] Ghana, Zaghawa, Hijaz and Nejd, Buja lands, Upper and Lower Egypt. What is important here is that among the Sudanese areas of Zones 1 and 2 are the Arab lands of the Hijaz, Nejd and Yemen. This is an important acknowledgment by Ibn Khaldūn. The native peoples of Arabia in general and the Islamic areas of the Hijaz and Nejd are among the Sūdān or black-skinned peoples of Zones 1 and 2. However, they are in a more privileged position than the rest of the Sūdān. Because the Arabian Peninsula is surrounded by water on three sides, Ibn Khaldūn argues, the increased humidity of the air made the peninsula “to some degree temperate.”
The black Arabs, unlike most other Sūdān, thus benefit from certain qualities of the more northerly temperate zones: conditions for civilized life; religion; keener minds; perfect forms and – of critical importance here - a clear, unblemished complexion. Some other Sudanese like the Zanj who are, we are told, ‘burned’ by the excessive heat and dry air of Zone I, have patchy and blemished black complexions, while the Arabian Sudanese have clear and blemish-free complexions due to the more humid air and less excessive heat characteristic of their zone.
The Syrian al-Dimashqī (d. 1327) discussed the zones as well in his Nukhbat al-dahr fī ʿajā͗ib al-barr wa ‘l-bahr. He claimed that the peoples of the equatorial region in Zone 1 were burnedby the excessive heat and their complexion and hair are thus aberrant (munḥarf): their complexion burned excessively black, shadīd al-sawad, and their hair burned to pepper-corn.8 But the Zanj, claims al-Dimashqī, are less burned that the Nuba because of their respective locations within Zone 1. Zone 2 is less excessive in its heat than Zone I, and al-Dimashqī situates there the lands of Sind and India and
those like them from among the dark-skinned peoples who are not as excessively dark as the (other) Sūdān (al-ādam dūna ‘l-Sūdān)…
Rather, they are labeled ādam because the heat of the sun attain to such a degree that does not burn their heads and hair, nor does it
excessively blacken their skin. Rather, it makes them less dark than al-sawād and this complexion is called al-dakūna (i.e. from dakina
“to grow dark/blackish”; adkan/dukn “blackish, dark color”)…
Unlike Ibn Khaldūn and most others, al-Dimashqī locates the lands of the Arabs in the third zone rather than the first and second. He says the peoples of Arabia are described as sumra “brown” because they are on the edge of the heat which impacts them. But this is a dark brown, not the mythic ‘tan white’ that Cheema and Keresztes so desperately want to believe (see below).
Thus, all blackness is not the same, but it is all black, just as all whiteness was not deemed the same. But the ideal complexion, according to this theory, was the Arab’s complexion and it was a dark complexion, not a fair complexion, just not as dark as and of a better quality than (allegedly) other Sudanese or Blacks. Ibn al-Faqīh al-Hamadhānī, Persian geographer of the 10th century, in his Kitāb al-buldān, quotes apparently an Iraqi Arab describing the chromatic quality of Iraqi Arabs:
A man of discernment said: The people of Iraq have sound minds, commendable passions, balanced natures, and high proficiency in every art, together with well-proportioned limbs, well-compounded humors, and a brown complexion (sumra al-alwān), which is the most apt and proper complexion. They are those whom the womb has well-backed, and didn’t expel them fair-skinned (ashqar), ruddy (aßhab), blanched (amhaq) or leprous colored (mughrab), such as comes from the wombs of Slav women and others like them of similar light complexion . . . .