In October 1923, the Chief Secretary of the Caliph’s office sent a letter to Abdülhak Adnan Ad?var Bey, the Istanbul delegate to the Grand National Assembly of the newly established Turkish Republic, explaining news that came from their consulate office in New York. From the letter, Adnan Ad?var Bey learned of “el-Hac Doktor Abdülhamîd Süleyman,” who was presumably a man described as a Muslim leader in Newark, New Jersey, a Dr. Abdul Hamid Suleiman. The consulate report noted that Suleiman and his followers petitioned to be “recognized, acknowledged, and registered” as Muslims by the caliph and the Turkish Republic. Dr. Abdul Hamid Suleiman was an enigmatic religious figure who appeared in American newspapers in the early decades of twentieth century. He claimed to be “Mohammedan by birth, Master of the Koran, having pilgrimaged to Mecca three times and thus become an Eminent High Priest and head of all Masonic degrees in Mecca, Arabia, from the first to the ninety-sixth degree” (“Mecca High Priest Would Put Negro Shrines in Right,” New York World, 1922). Some scholars have associated Suleiman with a group of African Americans who were embracing Islamic teachings and practice. Recent scholarship even links Suleiman with Noble Drew Ali, the founder of the Moorish Science Temple (MST), which could mean Suleiman influenced Drew Ali and the development of MST. In this paper, I examine the confusion expressed by Turkish officials over this petition and the possible reasons a group of Muslims in America made such a request. This strange episode, I argue, exemplifies the changes that were occurring within the new Turkish Republic as political leaders shifted away from the previous decades of pan-Islamic rhetoric. The fact that this overture from Suleiman and his followers generated little interest in Turkey demonstrates that fostering transnational connections with American Muslims was not part of the Grand National Assembly’s geopolitical agenda. The abolition of the caliphate was still months away, but there was no reason to cultivate a relationship with these unknown American Muslims. For Suleiman and his followers, the possible recognition, acknowledgement, and registration as Muslims by the newly established Turkish Republic presented an opportunity for legitimization and support. However, this group of American Muslims displayed their naiveté in regard to the Islamic identity of the Turkish Republic and the potential for Islamic geopolitical solidarity after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

In his twenty-first century re-evaluation of the Egyptian nationalist project, Sunset Oasis (2006), novelist Bahaa Taher revisits the early moments of the British occupation that followed the 1881-82 Urabi Revolution. Tracing the story of Ne’ma, a black Sudanese slave and the male protagonist’s concubine, I argue that despite her scant appearances and the total absence of her voice, Ne’ma acts agentially, resisting epistemic violence by a text that forces on her an identity other than her own. Her real name unknown even to herself, and made to represent an essence of Egypt, Ne’ma is denied her history and memory except as an exotic, jasmine-scented Scheherazade whose folktales captivate Mahmoud, the protagonist, and whose sexuality satiates him. Lying on the margins of the narrative, Ne’ma’s story is central to Mahmoud’s stunted growth as his betrayal of the revolution is paralleled by his betrayal of her, and his failure to reach maturity reflects that of the nation. Despite his attachment to Ne’ma, Mahmoud refuses to acknowledge his love for her, alluding to their position as master and concubine. Ne’ma resists Mahmoud’s and the text’s cultural and sexual colonization. Her decision to leave Mahmoud’s house, in a late nineteenth-century Egypt where even manumitted slaves could be captured and resold into slavery, signifies refusal to be spoken for or constructed by the narrative. Her insistence on her individuality implicates the novel for its complicity in Egypt’s role as colonizer. The novel’s setting in Siwa, a remote village in the western desert whose people see Egyptians as foreign intruders, facilitates the critique of the nationalist project. Mahmoud, who is there to collect exorbitant taxes, sees in Egyptian-Siwan relations a replication of British-Egyptian relations, thus leading to his ultimate disillusionment with nationalist and colonialist ideologies alike. Yet, the novel’s sensitivity to Egypt’s minorities, its exposure of the inequality of the nationalist project, and its effort to recount the point of view of Siwans through use of multiple narrators, is undercut by oblivion to the ultimate minority – Siwan women and female slaves whose voices are erased from both the Egyptian historical narrative and the author’s fictive (re)vision of the history.

When reading conceptualizations of the Black diaspora out of any historical context, one may read those theories and concepts as exclusivist and alienating, from an Egyptian perspective, since modern Egypt has become of little relevance following the death of pan-Africanism which defined Nasser’s anti-colonial project. Africa was one of three circles with which Nasser (1959) associated Egypt, in addition to Arab and Muslim circles (pp. 57–78). However, when contrasting diasporan concepts in their political, historical and cultural contexts with Egypt’s anti-colonial nationalist legacy, one finds that alienation is self-imposed through the nationalist pursuit of an Egyptian modernity stuck in a diasporic “resistan[ce] to crossing over,”(Edwards, 2001, p. 65) and where “political notions of blackness” are untranslatable (Feldman, 2011, p. 152). Deconstructing race as a concept, and anti-Blackness as a byproduct of post-colonial conceptualizations of identity and culture in modern Egyptian consciousness, one cannot avoid questioning Egypt’s location in the diaspora. In this essay, I argue that the European colonialist legacy of whitewashing ancient Egypt is a history of displacement and diasporization. It involved “de-Africanizing” and “de-Moselmizing” Egyptians, leading to a diasporized Egyptian consciousness. In my analysis, I seek a comparative study building upon the work of two distinguished scholars in the Black and African diaspora—Stuart Hall, and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza—who called for expanding African/Black nationalism in the diaspora beyond the Atlantic. Zeleza criticized the limitation of the term/category caused by “privilege[ing] the Atlantic, or rather the Anglophone, …. the American branch of the African diaspora,” (Zeleza, 2005, p. 36). I, like Zeleza, resist the usual “homogenization and racialization of Africa,” and the whitewashing of Egypt in academia (p. 40). Additionally, Hall’s conceptualization of identity in the black diaspora as an analytic lens can help inform our understanding of geopolitical and cultural diasporization of Egypt, which led to Egypt’s geopolitical and cultural liminality. By inserting Egypt into the African/Black diasporan discourse, we can think deeply about African and Black “countercultures of modernity” (Gilroy, 1993, p. 1) that transcend Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, and the different conflicting strands of Egyptian nationalism. And how would that insertion complicate ideas of the African Diaspora, “Middle East,” North Africa, and the Arab region as distorted and divided geographies, and area studies by the hand of Western European colonial “schematic” and “textual” approaches of domination as described by Edward Said in Orientalism?

The creation of the “Egyptian-Sudan” in the 19th century as a product of Muhammad Ali Pasha’s expansionist policies in competition with European powers of the day is one example that highlights perceptions and views from the “Arab center” on “blackness” in the region. An amalgamation of various political entities and regions (Nubia, Sennar, Darfur, Nuba Mountains, southern Sudan) with a diverse ethnic make-up, the naming of this entity “Sudan” is telling as the Khedives would consolidate their power along the Nile Valley in an effort to achieve the goals of Egypt’s oldest foreign policy: water security. This, despite a large, if not majority, self-identifying “Arab/Arabized” population in “the Sudan.” The legacies of oppression, slavery, would inform the political developments that would follow including the Mahdist rebellion, the “reconquest,” the nationalist movement, calls for “Unity of the Nile Valley,” Sudanese independence, civil wars and popular uprisings. All in one way or the other have had to deal with the complex questions of Sudanese identity. Linked and overlapping with these debates are questions of economic underdevelopment, social relations and political power in the marginalized regions of Sudan and “who gets to speak” on these matters. How did various “Sudanese,” over decades, relate to the term “Sudan,” given to them? How did it change and why? What does this mean the experiences of “black-Arabs” in other areas of the Arabic-speaking world? How do we understand “Arabness,” “Africaness,” and “blackness” as a result? How do scholarship and journalism approach these complex categories and experiences, particularly as they become politicized by various actors ranging from governments, political parties and activists?

This article advances research on nation-building by examining narratives of national identity in the Amazigh (Berber) population of southern Morocco, home to the largest population of Imazighen (Berbers) in the country. The overarching question I attempt to answer is: What causes an ethnic group to accept or reject a state’s national identity narrative? Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork, over 40 interviews, ranging from 2 to 6 hours each, and discourse analysis of the kings’ speeches, public school history textbooks, and other state publications, I explore whether Imazighen buy into state narratives of national identity and what factors cause Imazighen to accept or reject the state discourse. The central argument in this study is that nation-building policies and narratives that marginalize a specific ethnic population cause that population to reject the narratives of national identity constructed by the state. Thus, because Moroccan Imazighen experience both state and community-level marginalization based on Arabization policies and discourse, they construct narratives of national identity that differ from those of the state. The novelty of this work is that it examines social marginalization of Imazighen in Morocco on the community level. The study uses interviewee stories to explain the various terms and identities Imazighen use to define themselves, how Moroccans are able to identify whether or not an individual is Amazigh, and in what ways, and through which words and actions, Arab Moroccans discriminate against the Amazigh population. The findings demonstrate that the state and societal definition of “Arab” is a fluid concept and allows for, and encourages, any Moroccan to define herself as such. The paper also explains how a person of Amazigh heritage is able to redefine herself as Arab and the incentives she would have for doing so. The article further contends that beyond Arab discrimination against Imazighen, the culture of Morocco is one of ethnic tribalism, where individuals from the same ethnicity, whether it be Amazigh or Arab, give preferential treatment to people they identify as being from their own ethnic group.