“Not Harder Than Being Black!”: Nijla Mu’min’s Jinn (2018) and Some Popular Articles

I recall when Nijla Mu’min’s film Jinn (2018) hit the festival circuit last year. Last night, I finally sat down and watched it on Amazon Prime. In thinking about the post I was preparing on Naz + Maalik (2016), there was a particular line in the film that stuck with me. When the protagonist asked her Muslim classmate if it was “hard” being Muslim in this current climate, he responded, “Not harder than being Black.” This line pretty much sums up my argument in some of my previous posts, emanating from Simone Browne’s central thesis regarding “naming the absented presence of Blackness” in discourses surrounding Islamophobic surveillance.[1]

Link: Trailer for Jinn (dir. Nijla Mu'min, 2018)

Unlike Naz + Maalik, it’s refreshing to see films actually by Black (Muslim) content creators such as Nijla Mu’min’s Jinn (2018), Qasim Basir’s Mooz-Lum (2011), and Sultan Sharrief’s Bilal’s Stand (2010) that clearly name this absented presence. 

These more recent popular articles (from VICE and The Establishment) also discuss issues related to Black Muslims having “been targeted by both government surveillance and the police state since America’s inception.”[2] While the articles do not draw all of the parallels from various directions (which were indicated in one of my previous blog posts on H. Rap Brown across SNCC, the Black Panther Party, and the Dar ul-Islam Movement), they do provide some insights.

Link: Many U.S. Prisons Deny Muslim Inmates Halal Food and Proper Prayer

Link: In Surveillance's Digital Age, Black Muslims Are Hit The Most

--Kam

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[1] Simone Browne, Dark Matters : On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham, [North Carolina] ; Duke University Press, 2015), 12–13.

[2] Leila Ettachfini, “Many U.S. Prisons Deny Muslim Inmates Halal Food and Proper Prayer,” VICE, July 26, 2019, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kxeyv/muslim-inmates-us-prisons-halal-food-and-prayer.