Is THEM Guilty of Shirk? - Dr. Wesley Muhammad

which He bestowed on Mary, and a spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His
apostles. Say not "trinity": desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is one Allah. Glory be to
Him: (far exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on
earth. And enough is Allah as a Disposer of affairs." (Qur'an 4:171 Yusuf Ali translation)
So, in my opinion, there is room to differ and engage each other about our differences, yet the good
people amongst us can find common ground to do good deeds.
THE BLACK SHEEP AND THE WHITE SHEEP
Dr. Wesley makes two major points in his opening comments. The first is that the debate is not about the
meaning of shirk, but about the nature of Allah. Is He a man or not? This point has been the subject of
most of the discussion and will be commented upon later in my reply to Dr. Wesley's evidence on this
topic. It is his second point that I would like to address first, which is how most of the Muslim world came
to believe in a G-d that we cannot see with our physical eyes rather than as a man, albeit super or divine
man who is different from a regular, mortal man.
My reading of Dr. Wesley's words is that Prophet Muhammad and the other original black Arabs
conceptualized Allah in one way (the way of what he refers to as the Semitic tradition) and then
afterwards the non-blacks, non-Arabs became Muslim and brought their non-Semitic conceptualization of
Allah into the Islamic religion, which drowned out by their sheer numbers the black Semitic way of
looking at Allah. Eventually, the white way of seeing (understanding) Allah became the dominant concept
and the black way was pushed into the background and obscured.
Dr. Wesley says:
"Bro Mubaashir begins his review by echoing the sentiment of Bro Imam Salim Mu'min that
"the only way Dr. Wesley's case proves that the followers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad
are not guilty of shirk is if he changes the definition of the word shirk to something other than
what it means." This, Beloveds, is deflection. The problem is not at all our respective
understandings of shirk: we three all agree that a mushrik is one who associates partners with
Allah. The problem is our respective understandings of "Allah" to whom no partners may be
legitimately associated. We who adhere to the Islam taught to us by the Honorable Elijah
Muhammad understand that Allah is a man - a divine man rather than a mortal man, but a
man nonetheless. In my most recent book, "Take Another Look: The Qur'an, the Sunna, and
the Islam of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad," I demonstrate that this understanding of Allah
is absolutely consistent with the Qur'an and Sunna when these are no longer read through the
lens of al-Ghazzali and other non-Arab converts to Islam who rejected the Black Arabs to whom
the message first came and their understanding of the religion. These non-Arab converts -
particularly the Persians and Byzantines - introduced a new understanding of God and a
peculiar way of reading the Qur'an so as to locate this new God therein. I introduced this
history in Philly and identified there the great Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855) as the
champion of the Islam of the original Black Arabs against those who tried to de-Arabize the
religion by (among other things) replacing the Semitic God of the Qur'an with the Greek God of
Hellenism." (Response to Mubaashir Part 1)
Dr. Wesley goes on to say:
"In my lecture (and book) I emphasized this Black Arab/White convert dichotomy in
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