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Abstract: The Curse of Ham narrative claims that Ham (the son of Noah) and his progeny were cursed by God with blackness and slavery. While the story can be located within Islamic literature, the tradition was refuted by numerous scholars for various reasons. Firstly, the story is not found within the Quranic text. Secondly, it was generally accepted that slavery was not linked to color but was a substitute for execution following defeat in warfare. Most importantly, scholars refuted the idea that blackness could be considered a curse due to a number of early Muslim heroes being described as black. This paper explores the debates and discourses surrounding blackness and the story of Ham.
Keywords: Islam, race, slavery, racism, Blackness, Black Excellence, curse of Ham, critical Muslim studies
We will remove every single infiltrator from the country, except Buddha, Hindus and Sikhs
-Amit Shah, president of the BJP
Don't move . . . I will shoot, Wallahi! I will shoot her!
- Black Panther (the movie)
It may appear slightly strange to begin a paper that seeks to address the curse of Ham narrative with a quote from the Bharata Janata Party. I would suggest, however, there exists a link between the study of blackness within Islamicate history and the claims of Amit Shah. Whether in the minds of politicians, Hollywood producers, dons of the academy, or indeed some Muslims, Islam has an intimate and enduring link with Arabness that ultimately renders it foreign and invasive to anywhere that isn t Arabia. 1 In the film Black Panther, Islam in Africa appears as a violent, invading force, with a scene in which a gunman kidnapping children shouts wallahi , a distinctly Arabic formula (see Hassan 2018). Within academic literature, Islam has consistently been framed as a religion of the Arabs that has been hoisted over non-Arabs. 2 What Arab has signified historically within differing contexts is seldom explored within such works.
Studies have either ignored the relationship between racism and the Islamicate or reproduced essentialist narratives regarding racial hierarchies that lend themselves to Eurocentric readings of history. Bernard Lewis s widely circulated and oft-quoted Race and Colour in Islam exemplifies this approach. Lewis focuses primarily on negative depictions of Africans by Arab authors. The...