Internationalist Islam and the Question of Palestine

Following the al-Qassam Brigade breach of the "Iron Wall" barrier, Muslim Americans participated in protest movements across the United States in support of Palestinian liberation. Many of the Muslim American youth involved in such spaces of have drawn on religion to advance the issue of Palestine in U.S. urban centers, such as Los Angeles. However, instead of invoking those iterations of American Islam emerging from West or South Asian communities, protestors have turned to Black Islam to forge an internationalist politics of solidarity. This essay examines events held in the aftermath of 10/7 in solidarity with Palestine at Islah, a predominantly Black American mosque located in South Central LA, to consider how Muslim Americans engage with Islam as an ethical and political site from which to launch critiques against Zionism and US imperialism. Specifically, it probes how Black Islam can be best understood as Internationalist or Third World Islam, which deems coalition-building with non-Muslims to advocate for the oppressed in the US and the Global South an Islamic virtue. Attending to invocations of Malcolm X, I document how Muslim Americans are increasingly looking to Black radicalisms by way of Islam to establish a revolutionary politics that links the dismantling of policing at home to decolonization abroad, most notably in Palestine.