A Black African Muslim Perspective on Black Panther
It was Friday 16th February; we’d waited an entire month for the release of the much-anticipated Black Panther movie. I don’t recall ever feeling so excited about a movie. But this wasn’t just any movie. This was a movie that promised to be different. It was a movie that would put Africans and black people centre stage. The screenwriter, director and most of the cast were black, and it was set in a fictional African country with vivid costumes inspired by real-world African tribes. To say I was excited is an understatement, and so my sister and I bought our tickets early and dressed in our colourful Bulji’s we headed to the cinema in Nairobi. The cinema was packed; I’d never seen such a turnout for any movie, there was a real buzz in the air, and some people had worn full traditional attire for the occasion. We queued for about half an hour before we could enter the theatre and find our seats.
The movie opened with an animated scene explaining Wakanda and how it’s built on a mountain of Vibranium. This is an African country that has never been colonised and we all wish it existed. I hope that I live to see the day Somalia (my birth country) becomes as powerful as Wakanda. The film transformed a mainstream superhero into a great expression of afrofuturism with beautiful costumes, set design and world building. The women of Wakanda were overall the best feature of the movie for me — I loved the character of Shuri. The film took great pride in its African-ness, from the colourful fabrics to the tribal rites, the drumming and the Xhosa language. I was one proud African.
But then just as the story began to unfold, there was a scene in a forest, presumably in Northern Nigeria, where T’Challa attacks a caravan of trucks to find Nakia. Nakia is working undercover trying to liberate a group of women, in distinctly Muslim dress, from terrorist kidnappers — presumably Boko Haram. In the scene a soldier puts a gun to a girl’s head saying, “Walaahi (I swear by Allah), I will kill her”. At the end of the scene, the women take off their long jilbaabs, showing the colourful bandanas underneath.
I felt very uncomfortable throughout that scene, wondering why it was there. We’ve all seen different versions of this countless times. It was the standard Hollywood movie script — evil Muslim terrorists abusing helpless women. It’s this same Noble Saviour trope that continues to add fuel to imperialist wars in Muslim lands — Muslim women needing to be freed from the twin oppression of their men and their clothing. I understand that the film producers wanted to highlight the plight of the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria, but it was irresponsible to do so without context showing how Muslims are also at the forefront of the fight against these terrorists, or a balancing counter-narrative somewhere in the film. Black Panther set out to subvert the typical stereotypes about Africa and in many ways it succeeded brilliantly. So why did the film choose to uphold a typical Hollywood stereotype for a religion that is embraced by nearly half of the African continent? Why did African pride stop short of including African Muslims?
We live in a world where Muslims are shown as one thing and one thing alone, over and over again creating what the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called the danger of a single story. Too often it’s the only narrative others hear about us, and the only narrative we hear about ourselves. It’s deeply problematic to link the identity of black Muslim Africans solely with terror groups, and there are repercussions in real life. Somalis are often associated with Al-Shabaab, often profiled at borders, and questioned about a terror group that has destroyed the lives of our countrymen. As Somalis in East Africa, we are frequently stopped by police and investigated for “potential links to Al-Shabaab”, an all-purpose phrase giving police license to harass and extort bribes as they wish. A landlord once refused to rent their apartment to me in Kenya, retorting, “Are you one of those Muslims? Who knows what you Somalis get up to!” As black Muslim women we carry the triple burden of misogyny, racism and islamophobia. A Kenyan taxi driver once challenged my choice of dress, exclaiming “You sound like you came from the West, so why do you still wear this clothing?” referring to my hijab because presumably I should be a liberated Muslim woman with my “Western” accent. That is what happens when all you hear about a group of people is a single story.
Sadly, islamophobia is on the rise in some countries on the African continent. In a 2015 report, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights tells the stories of ordinary Kenyan Muslims who lost family members to brutal deaths or disappearances under the banner of Kenya’s War on Terror. The report details extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and illegal detentions, extortion, theft, torture and inhumane and degrading treatment. These violations were found to be widespread, systematic and well-coordinated. I’m certain the producers/writers didn’t intend to forever link us to terror groups such as Boko Haram but by referring to them and by giving those villains a clear Muslim identity in the film (even if the scene was very brief), that is sadly the representation of Black African Muslims that will be left behind in the minds of millions who will watch this globally. It was completely unnecessary prejudice in a movie that portrayed itself as combating the usual stereotypes.
Overall, I don’t think the movie was islamophobic, or that the bias was intentional. It was a great movie with lots of positives. I still tell others that they should go watch it and I might even go see it a second time myself just to hear that coloniser line by Shuri. In a film that promised a real cultural shift in black representation and offering beautiful role models for black children, that one short scene was a disappointment. Black Muslim children shouldn’t have to choose between being uplifted as black but degraded as Muslim.
