This Week’s Latest
This week, The Unbelief Brief examines the brutal persistence of honor killings and the Taliban’s escalating repression in Afghanistan. EXMNA Insights explores the irony of the Nation of Islam rejecting slave names only to adopt others with similar implications.
Next week, we’ll begin our closer look at Ramadan. Stay tuned.
The Unbelief Brief
A Dutch court has convicted a man of honor killing after he brutally stabbed his younger sister to death in front of her toddler daughter. The victim’s other brother and two cousins were also found guilty of having conspired in the murder plot. The woman, aged 28, had recently begun a new relationship following a divorce, and her family desired that she move in with her father in a different city. Her refusal to do so seems to have motivated the killing—a completely senseless loss of life. All four men were sentenced to 25 years in prison.
A direct consequence of extreme conservatism and misogyny encouraged by Islamic doctrine, the scourge of honor killings simply refuses to go away. In Iran: a 23-year-old woman, Donya Hosseini was murdered by her father “with a bladed weapon”—“one day after returning to her family home.” Her husband had reportedly “divorced her 40 days earlier over allegations of a relationship with another man.” Misogyny is only one part of the equation: Islamic doctrine systematically fetishizes violence against those who transgress against the faith’s precepts, whether that be blasphemers, apostates, or women who forget “their place.”
Over in Afghanistan, meanwhile, the situation seems more dire than ever as the ultra-theocratic Taliban further tighten their grip over the country’s throat. Ryan Crocker, a former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, recently stated that “the Taliban’s current rule is even more oppressive than its first regime in the 1990s.” Following an insincere PR campaign attempting to soften their image after retaking power in 2021, all pretenses have been discarded. Earlier this month, authorities in the country raided the offices of Radio Begum, a “women’s radio station,” and ordered its shuttering, continuing their endless campaign to ensure that women have no rights. It is difficult to see any brightness at all on the horizon in Afghanistan.
EXMNA Insights
The Nation of Islam, in its rejection of the names imposed by white slave owners, encouraged its members to abandon their "slave names" and replace their surnames with "X"—a symbol of their lost African heritage. Yet, in a striking twist of irony, many then adopted Arabic names that directly translate to "slave" in another context. Names like Abdul (slave of), Abdullah (slave of Allah), Abid (slave/worshipper), and Abida (female slave/worshipper) became common among converts, unwittingly reinforcing the very concept of servitude they sought to escape.
This contradiction underscores the deep complexity of identity reclamation among African Americans navigating religious and cultural self-definition. The NOI’s emphasis on Islam as an alternative to Christianity, which they viewed as the "white man’s religion," led many to embrace Arabic and Islamic traditions without fully reckoning with their historical implications. Arabic-speaking societies, including Muslim-majority regions, were deeply involved in the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades, including directly capturing and selling slaves to the West. The term abeed (slaves, plural of abd or slave) is still used in Arab popular vernacular to refer to Black Africans.
Thus, the effort to sever ties with European oppression led to the adoption of another linguistic and historical framework, which carries the same subjugating connotations. The rejection of "Johnson" or "Smith" in favor of "Abdullah" or "Abdul Rahman" represents not an escape from servitude, but rather a tragic exchange—one more recent oppressor’s legacy for a prior oppressor. The true liberation they sought might have required a deeper interrogation of both Western and Eastern historical narratives.
Ironically, while many sought refuge in Islam as an alternative to Western oppression, the Eastern slave trade persisted for centuries longer—only ending due to pressure from Western abolitionist movements. Some of the last holdouts included Saudi Arabia, which officially abolished slavery in the 1960s, and Mauritania, which didn’t criminalize it until 2007. This history complicates the idea of Islam as a liberating force for Black Americans.
Until next week,
The Team at Ex-Muslims of North America
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