The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam

by Ula Yvette Taylor

The patriarchal structure of the Nation of Islam (NOI) promised black women the prospect of finding a provider and a protector among the organization's men, who were fiercely committed to these masculine roles. Black women's experience in the NOI, however, has largely remained on the periphery of scholarship. Here, Ula Taylor documents their struggle to escape the devaluation of black womanhood while also clinging to the empowering promises of patriarchy. Taylor shows how, despite being relegated to a lifestyle that did not encourage working outside of the home, NOI women found freedom in being able to bypass the degrading experiences connected to labor performed largely by working-class black women and in raising and educating their children in racially affirming environments.

Telling the stories of women like Clara Poole (wife of Elijah Muhammad) and Burnsteen Sharrieff (secretary to W. D. Fard, founder of the Allah Temple of Islam), Taylor offers a compelling narrative that explains how their decision to join a homegrown, male-controlled Islamic movement was a complicated act of self-preservation and self-love in Jim Crow America.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Islam, Feminism, History, Race, Gender

286 pages, Paperback

First published October 9, 2017

Reviews

[Daphne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ula Yvette Taylor's monograph on women in the Nation of Islam does what I wish more feminist texts did -- contend with the fact that there are women in these hyper-patriarchal movements. Elijah Muhammad, The Holy Apostle of Master Fard Muhammad (God in the Flesh) was an enemy to women's liberation. The Nation of Islam's newspaper Muhammad Speaks! ran diatribes against the women's movement saying that all feminists (regardless of individual sects of politics) were white women that were trying to lead Black women astray from their God-given mission of being submissive housewives to their husbands and the nation. The NOI required that women strive to weigh 120lbs or below, domestic abuse was common, Elijah Muhammad raped several young girls, women couldn't go out at night. The women that worked in Nation-owned factories, bakeries, and other businesses made less than minimum wage. You weren't supposed to go on welfare. The Nation of Islam was a totalizing environment.

That being said, however, it is understandable why a hyperexploited population of people, Black Women in America, would join an organization that promised them a road to middle-class status and the protections that white women took for granted -- they wouldn't have to work in degrading jobs for white families anymore. The nation provided some buffer between Black Women and racist american Jim Crow society.

We, as feminists, can not contend with the 20th century without contending with the richest Black organization in history. The Black Nationalism of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation was anti-feminist, anti-Africa, antisemitic, fatphobic, classist, pro-capitalist, and hyperpatriarchal all the while claiming that they were "apolitical" in short the Nation's nationialism was a bourgeois nationalism. They invited George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, to speak at an event in the 60s ffs.

The feminist impulse is largely to write these women off as traitors to women, but as Dr. Taylor shows there is some level of resistance to be had by the women as they navigated through life in the Nation -- a life that oftentimes meant some level of stability for people that hadn't experienced stability before joining. The resounding lesson becomes how do we build dual-power, as feminists, that doesn't mirror the hyperpatriarchal capitalist NOI, on one side, nor the settler-colonial, "socialist" + often transmisogynistic lesbian separatist communes, on the other.

Overall, a highly informative read in the history of Black Women in America

[Lucia K · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for my rethinking american religious history class. it was fine, but i don’t agree with taylor’s premise that within the confines of patriarchy women are able to find power.

[Sam McLoughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for an independent study this quarter on Religion, Race, and Politics in 20th Century America. Really fantastic book, simple, and so well written! (Simple in the way that Taylor makes all the source work and narrative seem easy when she’s actually doing incredibly concise and difficult work.) The biggest contribution is her problematization of the “empowerment” and “self-determination” women found within the patriarchal, and hierarchical Nation of Islam. Within the NOI, Muslim women gained access to much needed protection and respect that they lacked in the “white world,” yet were often subordinated to roles as wives and mothers. At key moments, told mostly through the NOI’s more prominent women leaders, NOI women resisted these patriarchal norms in favor of their own ambitions, and other times, conceded to the organization’s patriarchy. Excellent book + excited to put it in conversation with Griffith’s Moral Combat (as assigned).

[Jada · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really interesting read. The book takes a deep dive into the history of women in the Nation of Islam and how their roles were shaped within that space.

What stood out to me most was the idea that women were, in a way, trading one kind of patriarchy for another. Many working-class women left behind the struggles of wage labor only to be relegated to the household under the rules of the NOI. One example that stuck with me was that women had to ask for permission from male leadership if they wanted to go to night school or travel out of town—and the only way around it was often by knowing someone high up in the movement.

I will say, at times it felt like the author was pushing hard to frame women’s participation in the NOI as a kind of victory over patriarchy, even when the examples didn’t fully convince me. Still, I came away with a lot to think about. It’s a thoughtful and well-researched book, and I’d recommend it if you’re curious about women’s history, religion, women within the NOI.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ultimately this is a history of some women in the NOI, not an exploration of why they felt compelled to join an inherently patriarchal, conservative movement. The author uses this phrase a few times, "trumping patriarchy," but doesn't go into detail how submitting to patriarchy actually subverts it (her claim, not mine).

[Alexander Alhymov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I've read closely the half of the book, the rest I've skimmed. It is an interesting view on the relations between patriarchal movement and women but the author is too positive on the Nation of Islam

[Benni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it for a class, pretty interesting

[Mills College Library]

297.87 T2468 2017