EVENT DETAILS

Author Talk and Book Signing with Prof. Sohail Daulatzai

Return of the Mecca: Muslims, Multiculturalism, and the Enduring Legacy of Malcolm X

January 22nd at 6 pm in .

Event Information:

As the nation celebrates the King holiday and coronates Obama for a second term, the legacy of Malcolm X continues to haunt the American present. While some view Obama as the “post-racial” Dream, others see him as the closet Muslim, a racial panic that combines post-9/11 anxieties around Muslims with that larger assault on Blackness in the post-Civil Rights era. But this fear of Blackness, Islam and Muslims is not new in the United States. In fact, Obama's Blackness and his “proximity” to Islam is really a deeply seated anxiety around Malcolm X. As this talk will reveal, there was a pre-history to 9/11, a history when Blackness, Islam and the politics of the Muslim Third World found common cause, and it was Malcolm X who was its rebel sage, shining light on a landscape of hope that has profound implications for challenging the present, where endless war is waged, racism persists and inequality deepens.

Speaker: Dr. Sohail Daulatzai

Bio: Sohail Daulatzai writes about U.S.-Muslim relations, race, politics and culture. He is the author of Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America (2012) and is the co-editor of Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic (2009). His writing has appeared in Counterpunch, Al Jazeera, Souls, Black Routes to Islam, Amer-Asia, SAMAR, Basketball Jones, The Vinyl Ain’t Final, and as the centerpiece in the museum catalog Movement: Hip-Hop in L.A., 1980’s – Now. He has written the liner notes for the DVD release of Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme as well as for the 20th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set of Rage Against the Machine’s self titled debut album. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Program in African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He currently lives in Los Angeles and is working on a graphic novel.