[This article is part of a six-person roundtable entitled “African American Muslims and the Black Freedom Struggle.” Click here for the introduction by
Sohail Daulatzai
Sohail Daulatzai is the co-editor of Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic, and is the author of Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America. He has written liner notes for the 2012 release of the 20th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set of Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled debut album, as well as the DVD liner notes to the award-winning documentary Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme, and the centerpiece for the exhibit catalog Movement: Hip-Hop in L.A., 1980-Now. His articles have appeared in Al Jazeera, The Nation, Counterpunch, Souls and other venues. He is currently working on two projects, a book tentatively entitled Fifty Years of the Boomerang which will use the 50th anniversary of the film The Battle of Algiers to explore the current moment around politics, art and imperial culture, and the other is a graphic novel on Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door. He is also the creator of Groundings, a conversation series that has featured Immortal Technique, dream hampton, Robin D.G. Kelley and Jasiri X. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Program in African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Follow him @SohailDaulatzai