The articulation of pro-Japanese sentiments was evidence of sedition, and as the dream of a Japanese invasion spread among thousands of African Americans in the early 1940s, the government arrested the African American leaders suspected of stoking such feelings. Among the 25 leaders arrested was Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975), leader of the NOI. Muhammad was acquitted of the sedition charge, but was sent away for refusing to register for the military draft. 44 His arrest and prosecution signaled the emergence of a larger pattern for dealing with African American Muslims who criticized the United States. These black Muslims would rarely engage in any genuinely treasonous activity against the United States, but they did capitalize on their imagined ties with foreign states and “foreign” traditions like Islam to resist, at least in rhetorical terms, the policies of the US government toward people of color both at home and abroad.

XREF: Connects to broader scholarship on black internationalism and how marginalized groups invoke foreign connections as a resistance strategy.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 395