A Womanist Reading of African Women in Abrahamic Tradition

Support for this essay came from the Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop.

Yet, there was no absence of women who embraced Blackness within Abrahamic tradition in their political and artistic work, recovering glimpses of their own history and ancient representations of themselves. Moreover, though Abrahamic narratives of heroic male prophets and leaders became critical to male-dominated Black liberation movements, African women within Abrahamic narratives also became symbols of profound sacrifice and spiritual deliverance, catalysing powerful resistance and new cosmologies among masses of Black people fighting against erasure.

Embodying this spirit of sacrifice and spiritual deliverance, African women in Abrahamic tradition are often presented and re-presented through themes of divine maternity. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, African women (and women more broadly) are often responsible for literally birthing and nurturing new revelations, new nations, and subsequently new eras within Abrahamic tradition. Three African women in Abrahamic tradition in particular have historically been drawn on by Black leaders for physically embodying what Islamic scholar and activist, Shaykha Iesha Prime, described as the ‘meeting between the heavens and the earth,’ and ‘divine decree’: Hajar (Hagar), the Black Madonna (Mary), and the Queen of Sheba (Makeda/Balqis) (RA).

Though not the only African women in the Abrahamic tradition who represent this motif, their significance is marked by their direct bodily intercession and self-sacrifice to build new nations. Their roles inspired and are replicated through art and literature by Black women who identify with their struggles and triumphs, and through new interpretations of Abrahamic religion which recentre their roles as Black women. Their narratives are also replicated through other African cosmologies in both the ‘New’ and ‘Old’ worlds, which have historically integrated these Abrahamic traditions in the deification of motherhood and in the (re)building of narratives of the birth of a people.

Arguably the most critical narrative which links Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is the story of Ibrahim (Abraham) (AS), Sarai (Sarah), and Hajar (Hagar) (RA). It would be Hajar and Sarai who give birth to the two most significant lineages in Abrahamic tradition, Isma’il and Ishaq (Ishmael and Isaac), respectively (RA). According to Abrahamic tradition, the former was an Egyptian woman, a daughter of the pharaoh gifted to Sarai as a servant while in Egypt. In order to fulfil the prophecy which foretold that Ibrahim would father nations, Sarai, unable to conceive, permitted Ibrahim to conceive a child either in or out of wedlock with Hajar—a point of departure between Islamic and Judaic/Christian accounts, respectively. From this union, comes Isma’il, and begins the story of divine matrilineality, which leads to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad (AS), and of Abraham and Sarah, the Christian Messiah, Jesus (AS) . With or without malevolence and abuse from Sarai, depending on the tradition, Hajar is cast into the desert with Isma’il, where God offers provisions and the promise that Isma’il, too, will be a father of nations. Despite this, in the Judaic and Christian tradition, Ishaq is the rightful firstborn protagonist of the Old Testament and Hagar and Ishmael fade away from the narrative...