Middlebury, Vt. (Special to Informed Comment) – Four years ago, before the 2016 election, I wrote in these pages about my search for the appropriate literary or folkloric character with we could understand Donald Trump and his supporters. As a scholar of religion and mythology I felt in dire need of archetype with whom i […]
Lady Zeinab: A British Aristocrat embraces Islam in the Shadow of European War
Middlebury, Vt. (Special to Informed Comment) – In 1934, Lady Evelyn Cobbold, a Scottish aristocrat and traveler, wrote that with the tightening of Nazi rule over Germany, many in England sensed that a European War was looming. Among the British elites ‘rumors of war’ were discouraged; the trauma and losses of the 1914-18 World War, […]
Blues in the time of Pandemic, 1919 — “In a few days influenza would be controlled”
Middlebury, Vt. (Special to Informed Comment) – The great influenza pandemic of 1918-19 , which raged in the aftermath of the 1914-18 World War, killed and incapacitated over 50 million people worldwide. In the U.S. over 600, 000 people died in the pandemic. Survivors of that pandemic have left us a rich cultural legacy , […]
Arif “The Greatest Ears in Town” Mardin: How a Turkish Muslim Nurtured the Music of Aretha Franklin, Dione Warwick, and Nora Jones
Middlebury, VT (Special to Informed Comment) – In the mid-twentieth century many American jazz musicians converted to Islam . Some took Muslim names ( Ahmed Jamal and Yusef Lateef) ; others identified as Muslim but kept their Christian names (Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner). These musicians helped shape the sound of American music and no less […]
James Baldwin’s Journey from Engagement with Israel to Pro-Palestinian Activism
(Special to Informed Comment) – James Baldwin was one of the first African American writers to visit Israel. In the fall of 1961, he spent two weeks in Israel as a guest of the government. Baldwin was thirty-seven at the time, and already well-established as an essayist and novelist. He had published his first full-length […]
How Turkish Muslims at Atlantic Records Marketed Motown, Jazz, Black Music to America
(Special to Informed Comment) – To those outside of the music business the title, “The House that Ahmet Built” might sound like the name of a Turkish folktale for children. But for those in the know, the ‘house’ was Atlantic Records and ‘Ahmet’ was Ahmet Ertegun, the great record company’s co-founder. In 1947 along with […]
Jazz Legend Talib Dawud: Be-Bop and Islam’s “Elevation of the Mind”
(Informed Comment) – Jazz Trumpeter Talib Dawud, whose given name was Alfonso Nelson Rainey, was one of the early American jazz converts to Ahmadiyya Islam. In the mid-twentieth century over a hundred other jazz musicians would follow in Dawud’s path. The background to these many conversions was articulated forcefully and dramatically by John Coltrane’s first […]
Jazz Great Yusef Lateef’s Journey to Islam
“I want my music to awaken something that’s already in your heart.” (Informed Comment) – Among the hundred-plus African-American jazz musicians who embraced Islam in the mid-Twentieth Century, Yusuf Lateef, whose given name was William Huddleston, emerged as the elder statesman and spokesman of the group. One of the reasons was his remarkable longevity. Another […]
Be-Bop to Bahai: The Spiritual Journey of Dizzy Gillespie
(Informed Comment) – In 1948 rumors spread that jazz trumpet great Dizzy Gillespie was considering converting to Islam. Gillespie told journalists that the important religious issue for him was not the success of another religion but the failure of Christianity. “Don’t say I’m forsaking Christianity, Christianity is forsaking me, or better, people who claim to […]
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