Knowledge from Self: Twentieth Century Black Muslima Thought

Date of Award

Fall 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Religious Studies

First Advisor

Lofton, Kathryn

Abstract

This dissertation presents an intellectual history that examines the embodied modes of knowing employed by Black Muslima thinkers in the twentieth century. It traces these epistemologies across the public lives and teachings of three Black nationalists who played critical roles in the development and continuation of the Black Muslim thought popularized by Malcolm X in the mid-twentieth century: Louise Little (1894-1989), Betty Shabazz (1934-1997), and Safiya Bukhari (1950-2003). Louise Little was a Grenadian-born Garveyite who spread the message of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in the Midwest between 1921 and 1939; Dr. Betty Shabazz was a member of the Nation of Islam and later Sunni Muslim who served briefly in a leadership role with the Republic of New Afrika and whose thinking took on pan-Africanist, Black nationalist, anti-integrationist, and youth concerns across her lifetime; and Safiya Bukhari who was a member of the Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army, and Republic of New Afrika who co-founded the Jericho Movement to free U.S. political prisoners in 1998. These thinkers relied on their intuition, channeling of ancestors, and their connections to the Divine in their Black worldmaking efforts. Knowledge from self is the theoretical lens this project uses to name the centrality of these embodied, self-determined modes of knowing to Black Muslima thought in the twentieth century.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS