Black Muslims Don't Laugh

I'll tell you about my encounter with Black Muslims (hereafter referred to as BM's) at the Sears store. It happened in '70 or '71, I think. St. Louis was in the midst of a newspaper strike. On the parking lot of an inner city Sears store, long since closed, BM's would customarily peddle their newspaper, Mohammed Speaks (now renamed Final Call), and I would occasionally buy them. Even in those days I was fascinated by various religions, the weirder the better. With its twisted and racist view of human history, the totally humorless Mohammed Speaks suited my fascination for the strange. I never really understood Black Muslims, since they seemed to go out of their way to do things the hard way. There was a certain streak of asceticism which seemed almost dehumanizing, sort of like the Marines. This self denial touched upon various aspects of their lives, such as their attire. The women went about in an interpretation of the attire common in Mideastern countries, including a turban-like headdress. Immodest attire was definitely prohibitted, and the BM definition of modesty would make most Victorians look like Madonna. Thankfully, I never saw them wearing veils. The men, on the other hand, dressed in a very Western style, although this was always limited to dark-colored suits, with white shirts and curious little bow ties of the sort I had to wear one summer when I took on a job as a supermarket stock clerk. Of course, the bow tie I wore was a clip-on, while I imagine the Muslims eschewed such expedients. Besides, to have the clip-on tie work loose and end up dangling lopsided would have irreparably damaged the air of controlled, regimented drabness that these Ellija Mohammedans seemed to cultivate.

Then there was the matter of food. The Muslims stuck to a kosher diet, although that particular term was never used. But their adherence to this diet seemed to be rooted not so much in a traditional religious belief as in a rigid insistence that their eating habits were demonstrably healthier. There seemed to be no line between what was the right thing to do health-wise and what was correct religious practice. Therefore Muslims would frequently exhort even their non-Muslim friends to stop eating pork, which was the focal point of most of their dietary concerns. Pork was supposedly riddled with disease-causing microorganisms. Consumption of even well cooked pork would cause the dreaded trichinosis. The effects of this disease were not so much a physical deterioration as a psychological one, leading to such depravity as sex outside the race and drinking, two of the more well trod paths to ruin on the pages of Mohammed Speaks. While the faithful were not to partake of pork, they were encouraged in numerous advertisements to eat bean pies. I never found out exactly what a bean pie was, what kind of beans were used, or how it was made. I certainly never understood the attraction of this exotic offering, which was promoted as something of a delicacy, at once wholesome and, in contrast to the usual image of any dish composed of beans, gastronomically satisfying. It always seemed a totally uninviting proposition, but one, I must admit, entirely in keeping with the dour Black Muslim image. I could hardly imagine these colorless automatons pigging out on cherry pie. That might actually provide them with some pleasure.

On this particular day, as I emerged from the Sears store, I was approached by a BM who asked, in the usual fashion, "Hey brother, want to buy a Mohammed Speaks?" For some reason, I was not my normal, taciturn self that day, and decided to grace this devoted disciple of Allah with what I thought to be a bit of wit, to bring a little levity to his grim existence. So, with the newspaper strike in mind, I responded with the question, putting on as straight a face as I could muster, "Does it have the TV listings?" The reaction I got was not at all what I expected. The BM was quite offended, and became indignant, even advancing toward me as if to suggest a violent intent. Although his anger seemed genuine, his desire to engage me in battle appeared somewhat less than heartfelt since he was restrained by his fellow (BM's always seemed to work in pairs) with suspicious ease. Maybe he didn't really want to mess up his cute little suit and bow tie. In any event, I found it difficult to be intimidated by someone dressed like that. Somehow the image of being assaulted by a religious fanatic under the fashion influence of former Senator Paul Simon (D-IL) inspired amusement rather than terror. My smirking reaction to his hostile gestures did nothing to quell his sense of indignation. The BM's unswervingly humorless demeanor only heightened the absurdity of the incident and, in turn, my delight in having punctured this bubble of sanctimoniousness. I could not make anything of his muttered objections to my humor, so I can't tell you if the BM thought I had somehow blasphemed his god, or if he just hated television. In any case, the whole scene struck me as being the essence of comedy. Don't ever let anyone tell you that being a philosophical materialist can't be loads of fun.