By Walter E. Block
Shamsud-Din Jabbar By 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army – originally published on Facebook, Public Domain
Why is it that so many famous black people, actors, athletes, others in the public eye, have adopted Arabic names? The latest person widely thought to have done so was famous alright; correction, infamous. That is, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, murderer of more than a dozen people on Bourbon Street in New Orleans during the reveler’s celebrations this past New Year’s Eve. (It turns out that Shamsud-Din Jabbar was indeed his birth name. Presumably, the switch to this nomenclature occurred in a previous generation of his).
The reason this issue popped up in my mind was the name change of an entirely different type of person: Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who was once Lew Alcindor. This is an entirely different type of man. The only “murders” he ever committed had to do with the previous records for success in basketball. It would be difficult to point to a kinder, gentler man than this former basketball star and world class athlete, except for when he was swatting away his opponents’ shots at the basket, or engaging in slam dunks. Then he was thunderous. However, his “sky hook” was actually pretty gentle.
We cannot say that Muhammad Ali, the former Cassius Clay, was “kind and gentle,” at least not during his boxing engagements. There, he “floated like a butterfly,” alright, which is gentle, but then “stung like a bee” which is anything but. However, outside of the ring this is not an inept description of that man. I once had the actual honor of shaking this magnificent athlete’s hand. He was standing on the corner of Broadway and 58th street in Manhattan, near where I once lived. Brazenly I marched up to him and said something of the order of “Hello, champ.” I stuck out my hand and he was kind enough to shake it; he did so very gently, thankfully.
By Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA – Muhammad Ali and wife Lonnie, CC BY-SA 2.0
Other famous black people who changed their names in an Arabic direction include Bobby Moore who became Ahmad Rashad, Keith Wilkes (Jamaal Abdul-Lateef), Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (the former Chris Jackson), Tariq Abdul-Wahad, who was born as Olivier Saint-Jean. This a small sample, the veritable tip of the iceberg of this phenomenon.
What accounts for this occurrence?
Malcolm X also changed his name, but this had nothing to do with embracing Arabs. The former Malcolm Little did so for entirely different reasons. “X” is not Arabic. I don’t like to brag, but I also had the honor of being in an audience when I was a student at Brooklyn College on the occasion of his speech there. I didn’t shake his hand, there was too big a crowd surrounding him, afterwards, but he was truly mesmerizing. He is the best public speaker I have ever witnessed in person or on any other venue.
By Unknown Author – Saudi Press Agency, Public Domain
So why the move in the direction of Arabic oriented nomenclature?
There are various theories that have been put forth to try to explain this occurrence. One of them goes as follows: “Part of the shift away from things European and the forces of the culture that causes them to be marginalized aka White culture. They do not want to be William and James anymore and seek to distinguish themselves culturally from the dominant race-class.”
It cannot be denied that this is a plausible theory. However, other “marginalized” folk did no such thing. For example, Jews have been chased out of country after country, and, understatement, not always welcomed in their new homes. Yet, Levy, Cohen, Rabinowitz, Levine, Blum, Greenberg and other such last names persist. For first names, David, Daniel, Adam for boys are still popular as are Hannah, Rebecca, Ruth, Sharon for girls. It cannot be denied, moreover, that many Oriental immigrants to the west, in sharp contrast, take on westernized first names; I have never heard of them adopting those common in Arab countries.
If black people want to differentiate from those who enslaved them in the US, and later subjected them to Jim Crow along with lynchings, why oh why resort to Arabic names? Long before whites subjected them to servitude, Arabs did so. Why not choose, instead, names prevalent in China, Korea, Japan, amongst the Eskimo peoples? None of those nationalities ever did much in the way of preying upon black folks. Better yet, why not resort to names used in black Africa? Kunta Kinte was forced to take up the name of Toby in the movie “Roots.” Now, there is nothing, per se, wrong with the latter. But why not utilize names like the former, instead of going Arabic?
Some mysteries will just have to remain mysterious. Well, maybe, matters are not all that mysterious. Black people are not naming their children Moshe, Avraham, Ze’ev. Instead, Muhammad and Jamaal are more popular. Could this be an indication that the long-standing alliance between blacks and Jews is fraying, if not altogether all gone? After all, it was blacks and Jews who were instrumental is setting up groups such as the NAACP. Yes, unhappily, there is indeed evidence for this claim. Many black people have supported Hamas, and not Israel, even on the eve of that day of atrocity, October 7, 2023.
https://www.jns.org/farrakhan-betrays-todays-black-slaves/
It seems logical that most American blacks who are Muslim, take on Arabic names to stay consistent with their chosen religion. The same holds true for the majority of Jews and Christians. It makes sense.
What is a little more vexing, however, is why, since the civil rights era, have so many American blacks turned to Islam. Certainly, some of them may have made an informed choice to switch to Islam, but I’ll wager that the majority did it strictly because they saw Christianity as a “white man’s religion”, and Islam as a “non-white man’s religion”, and a repudiation of Christianity. For American black Muslims, therefore, the decision to adopt Islam was based on anti-white racism.
One other possible reason blacks have turned to Islam is that they may prefer to identify with their brothers in Africa who are Muslim rather than with black African Christians. They would reason that black African Christians were forced to accept Christianity through colonial oppression, whereas black African Muslims were either indigenously so, or joined the sect voluntarily. A counter argument can be made, of course, that Islam is more imperialistic and oppressive than Europeans ever were.
I don’t care, therefore, that American blacks take on Arabic names, or even that become Muslims. It is a pity, however, that they leave behind the rich heritage that black American Christians have established over the years. Martin Luther King Jr. did much more for his people than Louis Farrakhan ever thought of.