 While the Nation of Islam under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad was a transitional nationalist movement, the present emphasis of Islam in America is more cultural and religious.--Molefi Kete Asante, "Afrocentricity" (1988)

The term "black orientalism" was first used by Kenyan academic Ali Mazrui in his Internet critique of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s documentary "Wonders of the African World".Mazrui had criticized the film for having markedly deemphasized the history of Islam in Africa, to the point where the history of Nigeria – half of whose population is Muslim – was all but absent from the general coverage by the documentary.