ASAMST 128AC | Midterm Study Guide

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Study Tips
- Review your lecture and discussion notes!
- Focus less on obscure dates and details, more on key concepts, terms and personalities
- Gather in small groups to discuss readings and draw connections among the different texts

Study Questions*
- What is the story of Prince / Abdulrahman? In what ways was his experience typical or atypical
compared to that of other Muslim slaves in the Americas?

- Why did Prince / Abdulrahmans former master make conditional his freedom on his departure
from the US?

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How did his movement and campaigning as a free black man threaten the status quo?
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- From what part of Africa did most Muslim slaves hail?
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What US states saw the greatest numbers of imported Muslim slaves?
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- How did Islam arrive to West Africa? How was it different from North Africas conversion to
Islam?

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- How did Muslim slave communities compare in Trinidad, Brazil and the United States?
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- What is the significance of a gris-gris? What does it tell about African Muslim slaves
perspectives on fate?

- Why didnt Islam persist in the Americas? What factors limited its horizontal and vertical
spread?

- How did Muslim slaves deal with pressures to convert to Christianity? How did they try to
maintain their literacy?

- What are some of the characteristics of Muslim slaves in the Americas that distinguished them
from their non-Muslim peers? How were their autobiographies different? Their demeanor? Their
past experience? How did all this impact their position on the plantation?

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- How was slavery in Africa different from slavery in America?
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- What effect did Islam have on West African populations in terms of mobility, education and

enslavement?

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- What were some of the characteristics and backgrounds of Muslim slaves in the Americas?
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- How was Spains trade in slaves different from that of other European powers? How did its
policies deal with religious rivalries and historic events?

- How were Protestant attitudes toward conversion of slaves different from those of Catholics?
How did this attitude change over time?

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-What significance does lynching hold in American history?
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- Into what context was Malcolm X born? What is the significance of the KKK and the Black
Legion to his family history?

- How does credit and fiscal independence play out in Malcolm Xs life? How did his father
perceive credit?

What parallels do we see between debt and slavery in the African as well as the African
American context? (Think back to Diouf.)

- Who are the main players in Malcolm Xs life up to this point? Who are the most important
women in his life?

- How does Malcolm X thwart authorities time and time again? How does he avoid the draft and
elude police officers?

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- What were Malcolm Xs different nicknames and how do they reflect the stages of his life?
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- What was Malcolm Xs relationship to religion, growing up and in his prison years?
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- What were the most poignant moments of Malcolm Xs middle school life?
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- How did Malcolm X background predispose him to embrace the message of Elijah
Muhammad?

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- Who is Dr. Yacub and what is the history of the world, according to Elijah Muhammad?
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- What is the significance of the sincerity of Umar Ibn Saids conversion to revisionist histories?
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- What are the African American communities that McCloud reviews? How are they organized?
What are the chief personalities and characteristics of each?

- Who are the main political and religious ideologues whose thoughts influenced contemporary
African American Muslim communities? (Austin names four.)

- What are the trends in Muslim immigration to the US? What is the Chinese Exclusionary Act?
How did it impact the Muslim population in the US? Why did some groups strive after
integration and white classification while others strove to carve a place for their communities
without dispensing with their Muslim and ethnic identities?

- From what Muslim-majority countries did many immigrants hail? What world events impacted
these waves of immigration?

- What was the World Parliament of Religions and what is its significance? Why didnt
Muhammad Alexander Webbs Islamic missionary work not find the traction the expected in the
US?

- What is liminality and how were Muslim slaves in the US seen as liminal figures? What role
did de-Islamization and de-politicization have in the lives of Muslim African slaves as well as
the spread of Sufism in the US and Europe?

-What is denegrofication? What purpose has it served in mainstream imaginings of Muslims? Of

slaves and African Americans?

*These are representative -- not comprehensive -- of the material youll be expected to know for
the midterm.