Satan Is a Black Man

In light of this historical report, certain people allege that Prophet Muhammad was a "racist Arab supremacist" who thought Satan was of an African descent, since he called a black man "Satan."

First of all, this report is from ibn Ishaq's famous biography of the Prophet, and as we all know, the reports in ibn Ishaq's book weren't always authentic as he often quoted weak and fabricated narrations, or even mere hearsays, such as in this case. Such biographies aren't authentic sources, and this mere fact obliterates the argument.

Furthermore, by just reading the report, we can see that it doesn't say what the allegation claims it says; the context of the story is clear and the reason Nabtal was called "Satan" was for his hypocrisy and sinful actions, not because he was a "black man" and certainly not because he was literally Satan (i.e., Iblis). In Arabic, or even in English, wicked human beings can be called Shayātīn (شياطين), or "devils"; not because they're literal non-human demonic jinn entities but rather because they're evil by heart:

This is comparable to Jesus (supposedly) saying to Peter: "Get thee behind me, Satan" in Matthew 16:23, Mark 8:33, and Luke 4:8; this doesn't mean that Satan was a Jew.

In addition, the claim that the Prophet is an "Arab supremacist" is absolute nonsense when the Arabs themselves used words like "black" and "white" to describe a person's skin regardless of ethnicity, even for an Arab. In other words, an Arab with a particular complexion (i.e, dark or light) could be called "black" or "white." The Prophet, for example, had a light complexion, thus he was called Abyad (أبيض), or "white" in multiple occurrences:

This of course didn't refer to ethnicity, but only to the skin color; being "white" didn't mean that the Prophet was European or literally Aryan, it just meant he was an Arab with a light wheat-colored complexion. In fact, even people with darker skin could be metaphorically called "white," because the Arabs' use of the word "white" was relative, and was mainly used for fair-skinned people; the Romans and Persians were considered "white" in comparison to the Arabs, whilst the Arabs were "white" in comparison to the black Africans. "White" thus could also be used metaphorically for dark-skinned people.

Rather, in the Arabic language, the word for someone who was literally what we would call a "white" person in the English language (i.e, European) wasn't Abyad but rather Ahmar (أحمر), which meant "red," and this applies to the non-Arabs, especially those amongst the Byzantine Romans and Persians because of the paleness of their skin. Thus metaphorically, "red" meant the non-Arabs and "black" meant the Arabs, that's right; even Arabs could be called "black," and the Prophet made a reference to that:

This brings us back to Nabtal ibn al-Harith; it turns out that he wasn't even a "black man" in the way that some people allege (i.e., a black man from Africa), rather, he was an Arab; a brother of Banu Amr ibn Auf, a notorious Arab tribe, and this debunks the claim of racism: