Fuerst/Words of Experience, 3. Sons of the Green Light

In his scholarship on South Asian Sufism, Carl Ernst provides us with a salient framework for resisting religious as well as regional essentialisms, and encourages us to problematize the familiar scholarly trope of “syncretism.” Extending Ernst’s insights to the study of African American Islam, I discuss engagements of Sufism by the Ansaru Allah Community, also known as the Nubian Islamic Hebrews (AAC/NIH), a movement that became prominent in the northeastern United States in the 1970s and 80s. Informed by Ernst’s critical challenge to the study of Sufism, I interrogate dominant narratives concerning the AAC/NIH and argue for alternative approaches.