Black Star, Crescent Moon by Sohail Daulatzai identifies the history and contours of the ‘Muslim International’, “a dissident and exilic space that encourages transgression, applauds border crossing, and foments forms of sabotage and resistance not possible within European and U.S. discourses about individualism, the nation-state, ‘democracy’, and the broader philosophical and juridical frameworks of the Enlightenment, modernity and Western liberalism” (p. xxiv). If this explanation sounds broad or enigmatic, the following chapters clearly demonstrate that the Muslim International is an intellectual tradition and cultural space, if not network, within which American Black Muslim intellectuals, activists, writers, and artists have located themselves politically since World War Two. Within the global context of the Cold War, globalization, the “war on terror,” the American Empire, European colonialism and neo-liberalism, the chapters “explore popular culture as a powerful site for revealing the struggles over ideology and power, race and nationhood, and the politics of identity” (p. xxvi).
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