Today marks one year since I lost Abdul Hakeem. Unlike my ex-husband Asif, he could not be seduced by blond hair and blue eyes. Unlike my beloved friend Steve (without whom my science major would be a thing of the past) he was not alcohol’s marionette.
Abdul Hakeem lived on Baltimore's Garrison Avenue, a proverbial American ghetto. There he could live free of the daily taunts of “nigger” which pervaded his Anne Arundel County childhood, while affording the rent and court-ordered $700/month child support on his meager blue collar wages.
At that time, I had my ancient red Honda with “permanently” fused tail light (“permanently” because the entire fixture--not just the bulb, was in need of replacement, an expensive, if not impossible proposition for a student). Every trip up and down Garrison in the Honda was an ordeal. The pigs who haunted the block stopped and gave me a work order or citation nearly every visit. To me, a small-built Asian woman, the pigs were cordial. I could only imagine the harassment that poor and working class black residents of the area endured at their hands.
One block south of Abdul Hakeem’s apartment stood the trick. She looked sickly, her face ashen and devoid of emotion. Despite the freezing weather, she wore no coat. She stood shivering and looking miserable, as I wondered how I might safely help her. What a far cry from the pimps and hoes often the butt of jokes among the privileged and uninformed students on my campus.
Two blocks south, at Hilton and Garrison, was the nearest “grocery store.” Charging thrice the going rate for produce purchased at suburban grocers, it reeked with the stench of dead rats. On payday, the customer service counter was swamped with poor people with no bank accounts, trying to get money orders to pay exorbitant rents to Indo-Pak slum lords. The “grocery store” shared the strip with a liquor store and a dollar store. The shopping center housing the three was graced by a blue strobe light and surveillance cameras.
Adjacent to the strip mall but right on the main road was a bar and a pawnshop. Across from that was another liquor store. One block from Abdul Hakeem’s apartment was the bail bonds man. Another few blocks south was a McDonalds and a Duncan Donuts. And a block north was a church.
When I first visited Garrison Avenue, I was bemused: Where were all the grocery stores? Libraries? Parks? Restaurants (serving real food)? Coffee shops? Books stores? It made no sense. There were children living here. They needed playgrounds, libraries, community centers, grocery stores, toy stores.
Once, during a trip to New York, my father pointed out to me that Manhattan was the modern day Big House, and Bronx the Slave Quarters. In New York, the juxtaposition was glaringly evident, but a similar theme seemed to arise in many American cities. It occurred to me that Baltimore’s slave quarters included Garrison Boulevard and the area surrounding it. Slaves were not to consume nutritious food, or drink. They were there to eat chitlin’s and to serve the labor needs of the massa. They were not to read, study, or discuss issues. To do so could lead to a slave revolt.
Surrounded by depravity, Abdul Hakeem did not succumb. He did not patronize the liquor stores, the bail bonds men, the tricks, or the churches. He smiled, joked, laughed and loved his way through life, bringing joy to everyone who crossed his path. He enchanted me with his soft voice, gentle manner, and sweet smile.
He had a son, Hakeem, who lived with him. Abdul Hakeem adored Hakeem, and his whole life revolved around the boy. The first time I called their residence, the boy answered the phone in his high pitched child's voice, his impeccable manners coming across clearly on the phone line. He was a bright youngster, gifted in math, and deadly at chess. We clicked almost immediately, and I took him under my wing, tutoring him in math, buying him books and school uniforms, and taking him out for special treats when he did particularly well. I learned that the boy’s mother had died of breast cancer when he was very young. I knew that I could never take the place of the mother, but this made me even more protective of Hakeem.
Eventually, Abdul Hakeem and I became engaged, and I was thrilled at the prospect that I would be gaining a husband and a son. I picked out the red dress I would wear at our wedding. We debated where in Africa to hold the nikkah.
Abdul Hakeem worried a great deal about his son (and I—when I came to visit them) being in the drug-ridden climate at Garrison. After a great deal of apartment-hunting (between working ten hour shifts and commuting by public transportation), Abdul Hakeem found an apartment on the north side of town. The rent, while high, was not completely out of reach, as it was at some of the places he’d looked at, and it was, by all appearances, a “clean” neighborhood. By now it was summer, and while Abdul Hakeem worked long hours, Hakeem, on break from school, fraternized with the unemployed, marijuana-using neighbors in the apartment below. When Abdul Hakeem found out about this, he was furious and forbade Hakeem from subsequent visits. As a result, there was an altercation between father and son. Then another. And another. Then, tragically, the younger Hakeem called the police on his father, saying that Abdul Hakeem had threatened him. The cops came to the apartment and took the police report.
A few months later, the teenager ran away to Delaware, from whence his dead mother hailed and which he perceived as his Shangrila. Unfortunately for him, unemployment and poverty in the area was even worse than Baltimore, and the boy, who by this time was living with his mother’s unemployed, pothead relatives, joined their ranks. Within months, he was jailed for grand larceny. The charges were dropped, but an onerous pattern was emerging.
Abdul Hakeem and I went to Delaware to meet Hakeem and his social worker in court. We hoped to bring the boy home. But, Hakeem told his social worker that he would rather be a ward of the state of Delaware for the remainder of the time until he turned 18 than to return home with his father. In the waiting area outside the court, Hakeem barely spoke to Abdul Hakeem. When he did speak, it was as if he was addressing one of his homies, not his father. The last Abdul Hakeem heard from Hakeem was that he was attempting to enlist in the National Guard, but having trouble getting in due to his athsma.
That fall, Abdul Hakeem’s mother, Delma, died of cancer. He’d been very close to her, and was profoundly affected by her loss. Abdul Hakeem had two brothers, Mark and Andre, both of whom lived in what had been Delma’s apartment. Before passing away, she had asked Abdul Hakeem to take care of Andre, who was “a little slow.” Since neither of the other two brothers was responsible, and Hakeem was out of the picture, the need for a space of his own was less. So, Abdul Hakeem assumed Delma’s lease. No sooner had he moved into his mother’s apartment, which still contained her special scent, to take care of his retarded brother than he found out that both of his brothers were on crack.
The following May, Abdul Hakeem and I visited the National Zoo (it was his birthday). It was a beautiful day, and we spent much of our time in the Ape House, philosophizing on the inhumanity of imprisoning such intelligent creatures as primates, and sharing dreams of liberating them, before going on to have dinner at a favorite restaurant.
Ironically, the very next day, when Abdul Hakeem visited Child Support Services to make sure he was in good standing with his child support payments (he had two little girls—one from a previous marriage, and another from his jahilliya days), he was locked up. They nabbed him without warning, saying he was behind on payments (the notifications ostensibly mailed to him never arrived). He called me from Central Booking, and told me he was being held in a vastly overcrowded, steamy hot cell with 20 other men.
I immediately put down the carbohydrate biochemistry book I was reading, and ran across town to collect money to bail him out. As a student, I was quite broke, and so had to be creative. I called his employer and advised him of the situation. Abdul Hakeem was a well-respected and reliable employee, and the employer, to my amazement agreed to advance some of the money. The remainder I acquired as a cash advance on my credit card. I posted the money, and then called the employer to update him. Abdul Hakeem was released two days later. Central Booking officials refused to tell me his release time, and though I waited as long as possible to receive him, he was ejected, along with others being released, around midnight, when no public transportation was available, and spent hours traveling home. He went back to work shortly thereafter, and it seemed that things were finally getting back to normal.
But it got worse.
Tony was Abdul Hakeem’s nephew. He never knew his father, and was raised by a mother who brought different men home nightly. Like many young black men, he got caught up in the game, and went to prison for minor offenses. Martial arts, which he’d engaged in since very young, seemed to keep his focus while in prison, and the third degree black belt emerged to acquire his ASE-certification. He was a talented young mechanic, highly sought after by his employer’s patrons. Like Abdul Hakeem, he did not drink, smoke, or take drugs. Abdul Hakeem was proud of him, and considered him a success story in the family, even wishing at times that his son could have been more like Tony.
One day, Abdul Hakeem called to tell me that Tony had been shot to death in his home by the cops. Since Tony’s mother, Carla, was nowhere to be found (she was gallivanting about California with her Italian boyfriend), Abdul Hakeem went to the morgue to claim the body. He was clearly very shaken when he returned. After giving me the initial run down, he entered into a period of depression and refused to speak further on the incident. It was my penultimate semester at school, and, after a very long drawn out academic career riddled with trials and tribulations of every sort, I was doing my darnedest to focus so I might finally graduate. Abdul Hakeem and I started to talk less frequently by phone.
One day, shortly prior to my graduation, Abdul Hakeem became fodder for the prison industry. I feel a complete and utter sense of loss. Although he was not directly involved in the struggle at the time he succumbed, he’d demonstrated the possibilities of daily resistance. I weep at his loss. It is, indeed, a big blow for the Black liberation struggle. My Black shining prince, with whom I’d dreamed of living happily ever after, resides in the Ironhouse of Greed.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Quds (Jerusalem) Day 2007
I arrived at Dupont Circle around 11:15 AM., hoping to participate in the annual Quds Day procession down Massachusetts Avenue (Embassy Row). The street was unusually quiet--no protestors, no Palestinian flags, in fact nary a Muslim. Disappointed, I walked down Embassy Row to the Islamic Center. Outside this well-known Washington landmark, a small but spirited group, including some of the organizers of the Quds Day event, regularly hold juma'a prayer, known to locals as the Sidewalk Juma'a. The juma'a is held outside--not inside--the mosque, for reasons to be discussed later.
The imam of the Sidewalk Juma'a, Syrian-born Muhammad Al-Asi, had not yet arrived. About a half dozen people milled about, waiting for the khutba to commence. I asked one of them, an Iranian named Yousaf, who seemed to be in charge, about the Quds Day protest. He explained that the procession was cancelled due to the lack of a permit. In my backpack, I carried a Palestinian flag, picturing Masjid Al-Aqsa in the center. Given to me by a dear friend who is a Palestinian artist, activist, and imam in North Carolina, it has special meaning. I expressed my regrets at the march's cancellation, and asked if it might be okay to display the flag as a gesture of solidarity. Yousaf said yes.
I looked around for someone to help me hold the flag. The only brother I knew rather well was busy talking to someone, so I thrust one end of the flag in the direction of two older Iranian gents, figuring one of them would hold it, considering it was the flag of our beloved Palestine, or at least give it to someone else to hold.
One of them took it, but seemed rather embarrassed to be doing so. Although significantly taller than me, he insisted on holding the Palestinian flag much lower than me (almost at waist level), as if hoping no one would notice us. Ah well.
Yousaf, on the other hand, seemed smitten by the flag, because a short time later, he asked if I had any more. I didn't. No one else had any placards or flags, other than a Caucasian brother, who'd brought a yellow Hizbollah flag, with the famous depiction of the kalima in the form of a machine gun.
A short while later, Imam Al-Asi arrived. The khutba was about to commence, and I realized I was at the back of the men's section (necessary to hold the flag with the poor gent I'd impressed into service). The men, predominantly Iranian, were very respectful of me, and no one asked me to move. But, I voluntarily relinquished my end of the flag to a brother, and moved over to the women's section, which, interestingly, flanked the men's section, rather than posterior to it, as is the case at many juma'a congregations.
Asi's khutba powerfully commemorated Quds Day. He quoted verses from the Qur'an naming the characteristics of the Bani Israel. Their nature, as delineated in the Qur'an, he said, was to wreck havoc not just in a single city, country, or even continent--but throughout the earth. The "Muslim" heads-of-state who recognized Israel were complicit in the subjugation of Palestine, said Asi. Imams who refused to speak out against such misguided rulers were "Scholars for Dollars," he said, gesturing towards the Islamic Center.
The grey-haired, bespectacled khateeb's excoriation of corrupt Arab/Muslim rulers partly explained why he was outside a multi-million dollar Islamic Center rather than inside it. It is clearly a role to which he is accustomed. The Sidewalk Juma'a began after Asi was ousted from his elected position as the Center's imam by the Saudi government with the help of U.S. authorities in 1983, and briefly jailed. I asked him what would happen if he attempted to enter the Center today. Asi said he'd variously been barred outright from the Center; been told he could enter but not talk to or interact with anyone; and banned from preaching there. I noted that such actions appeared to constitute particularly flagrant violations of Asi's First Amendment rights (his Islamic right to access the Islamic Center notwithstanding).
Worshippers emerging from the Islamic Center proper appeared stunned at Asi's powerful message, and several of them stopped in the middle of the street, gawking at the kaffiyeh-adorned Sidewalk imam. Notably, few other imams around the DC area commemorated Quds Day, although ostensibly the freedom of Jerusalem--second most holy site to Muslims--is an issue on which Muslims are in complete agreement.
The imam of the Sidewalk Juma'a, Syrian-born Muhammad Al-Asi, had not yet arrived. About a half dozen people milled about, waiting for the khutba to commence. I asked one of them, an Iranian named Yousaf, who seemed to be in charge, about the Quds Day protest. He explained that the procession was cancelled due to the lack of a permit. In my backpack, I carried a Palestinian flag, picturing Masjid Al-Aqsa in the center. Given to me by a dear friend who is a Palestinian artist, activist, and imam in North Carolina, it has special meaning. I expressed my regrets at the march's cancellation, and asked if it might be okay to display the flag as a gesture of solidarity. Yousaf said yes.
I looked around for someone to help me hold the flag. The only brother I knew rather well was busy talking to someone, so I thrust one end of the flag in the direction of two older Iranian gents, figuring one of them would hold it, considering it was the flag of our beloved Palestine, or at least give it to someone else to hold.
One of them took it, but seemed rather embarrassed to be doing so. Although significantly taller than me, he insisted on holding the Palestinian flag much lower than me (almost at waist level), as if hoping no one would notice us. Ah well.
Yousaf, on the other hand, seemed smitten by the flag, because a short time later, he asked if I had any more. I didn't. No one else had any placards or flags, other than a Caucasian brother, who'd brought a yellow Hizbollah flag, with the famous depiction of the kalima in the form of a machine gun.
A short while later, Imam Al-Asi arrived. The khutba was about to commence, and I realized I was at the back of the men's section (necessary to hold the flag with the poor gent I'd impressed into service). The men, predominantly Iranian, were very respectful of me, and no one asked me to move. But, I voluntarily relinquished my end of the flag to a brother, and moved over to the women's section, which, interestingly, flanked the men's section, rather than posterior to it, as is the case at many juma'a congregations.
Asi's khutba powerfully commemorated Quds Day. He quoted verses from the Qur'an naming the characteristics of the Bani Israel. Their nature, as delineated in the Qur'an, he said, was to wreck havoc not just in a single city, country, or even continent--but throughout the earth. The "Muslim" heads-of-state who recognized Israel were complicit in the subjugation of Palestine, said Asi. Imams who refused to speak out against such misguided rulers were "Scholars for Dollars," he said, gesturing towards the Islamic Center.
The grey-haired, bespectacled khateeb's excoriation of corrupt Arab/Muslim rulers partly explained why he was outside a multi-million dollar Islamic Center rather than inside it. It is clearly a role to which he is accustomed. The Sidewalk Juma'a began after Asi was ousted from his elected position as the Center's imam by the Saudi government with the help of U.S. authorities in 1983, and briefly jailed. I asked him what would happen if he attempted to enter the Center today. Asi said he'd variously been barred outright from the Center; been told he could enter but not talk to or interact with anyone; and banned from preaching there. I noted that such actions appeared to constitute particularly flagrant violations of Asi's First Amendment rights (his Islamic right to access the Islamic Center notwithstanding).
Worshippers emerging from the Islamic Center proper appeared stunned at Asi's powerful message, and several of them stopped in the middle of the street, gawking at the kaffiyeh-adorned Sidewalk imam. Notably, few other imams around the DC area commemorated Quds Day, although ostensibly the freedom of Jerusalem--second most holy site to Muslims--is an issue on which Muslims are in complete agreement.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The King David Hotel Bombing—Min al-Erhabi (Who’s the Terrorist)?
July 22 marks the anniversary of the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Palestine by the Zionist Irgun organization. Palestine was then a British mandate, and the headquarters of the British Secretariat were located in the hotel. Ninety-one people were killed in the bombing. Forty-five more were wounded.
Irgun claimed responsibility. Chaim Weizman, then President of the World Zionist Organization and soon to be first president of Israel, cried when he learned of the bombing, saying he couldn’t help but be very proud for "our boys." (Crossman, A Nation Reborn, The Israel of Weizmann, Bevin and Ben-Gurion)
The lead terrorist was an Israeli named Menachem Begin. Begin was commander of the Irgun at the time of the attack. Irgun’s stated philosophy was that "political violence and terrorism" were "legitimate tools in the Jewish national struggle for the Land of Israel." (Perliger and Weinberg, Jewish Self Defense and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel: Roots and Traditions, Vol. 4, No. 3)
Indeed Irgun’s actions were congruous with its philosophy. According to author James Gelvin, “Irgun perpetrated some of the most appalling terrorist atrocities committed in modern Palestine,” including a campaign of bombings in Arab markets in 1937. From 1936 – 1939, Irgun carried out at least 60 attacks against Palestinian Arabs. In 1948 the organization carried out the Deir Yassin massacre, in which more than 250 Palestinian villagers were slaughtered (The Israel-Palestine Conflict, Cambridge University Press).
Begin went on to become Israeli Prime Minister in 1977, overseeing the bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 (while keeping Israel’s nuclear weapons--developed around 1967--a well-guarded secret), and the invasion of Lebanon and Sabra-Shatilla Massacre in 1982. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.
My American friends tell me that Israel is a bastion of democracy—indeed the only democracy—in the Middle East, and that Palestinians are terrorists. I laugh. And laugh. And laugh.
Irgun claimed responsibility. Chaim Weizman, then President of the World Zionist Organization and soon to be first president of Israel, cried when he learned of the bombing, saying he couldn’t help but be very proud for "our boys." (Crossman, A Nation Reborn, The Israel of Weizmann, Bevin and Ben-Gurion)
The lead terrorist was an Israeli named Menachem Begin. Begin was commander of the Irgun at the time of the attack. Irgun’s stated philosophy was that "political violence and terrorism" were "legitimate tools in the Jewish national struggle for the Land of Israel." (Perliger and Weinberg, Jewish Self Defense and Terrorist Groups Prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel: Roots and Traditions, Vol. 4, No. 3)
Indeed Irgun’s actions were congruous with its philosophy. According to author James Gelvin, “Irgun perpetrated some of the most appalling terrorist atrocities committed in modern Palestine,” including a campaign of bombings in Arab markets in 1937. From 1936 – 1939, Irgun carried out at least 60 attacks against Palestinian Arabs. In 1948 the organization carried out the Deir Yassin massacre, in which more than 250 Palestinian villagers were slaughtered (The Israel-Palestine Conflict, Cambridge University Press).
Begin went on to become Israeli Prime Minister in 1977, overseeing the bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 (while keeping Israel’s nuclear weapons--developed around 1967--a well-guarded secret), and the invasion of Lebanon and Sabra-Shatilla Massacre in 1982. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.
My American friends tell me that Israel is a bastion of democracy—indeed the only democracy—in the Middle East, and that Palestinians are terrorists. I laugh. And laugh. And laugh.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
HPV Vaccine Mandate: a Human Rights Violation?
The DC City Council passed legislation on April 19 stipulating vaccination against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) as a requirement for public school attendance for young girls. On April 4, a similar bill was passed by the Virginia legislature. I find the HPV vaccine requirement very troubling and an infringement on the rights of the U.S. female population. (Imagine the hue and cry if an Islamic country were forcing its female population to take an untested vaccine for any reason.)
Some reasons for my objections to the HPV vaccine mandate:
Some reasons for my objections to the HPV vaccine mandate:
- 90% of HPV serotypes do not result in cancer.
- Sexual activity is required to contract the virus.
- The HPV vaccine (Gardasil) has not been adequately tested on the subject (teen) population.
- So, 100% of sixth grade girls in Washington, DC (including the significant Muslim population), will be required to take a vaccine for a virus which is non-lethal 90% of the time, which occurs only as a result of sexual activity, and which has yet to undergo proper testing in their age group.
- HPV was simply not on the public agenda until (artificially) placed there by a multinational corporation. The vaccine requirement in DC and Virginia--and its very consideration in other states--resulted from extensive lobbying by the manufacturer, Merck. And Merck, like any self-respecting pharmaceutical company, has profit as its primary interest, not public health. The vaccine costs $360 per person to administer, so the bottom line in vaccinating the entire school age population of a major city such as DC is huge. It is clearly a case of corporate interests driving public policy.
- Gardasil's use was endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) upon the recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), without full disclosure of who sits on the ACIP (for instance, the number of Merck board members).
- While the option to opt out on behalf of their children is available to parents, it is feared that the procedure to do so will not be clear to many parents.
So, young girls will be Merck's lab rats. Side effects may not become evident for years, making it difficult to demonstrate Merck/U.S. government complicity in case of complications. And the U.S. government has a long and unsavory history of experimenting on its own population. My suspicion is the HPV requirement may even violate the Geneva Convention on the Rights of the Child--but that is something I'll have to research further.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Protesting the Death Penalty
On March 24, a UMBC friend and I attended a protest organized by the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty at the Super Maximum Security Prison in Baltimore. In recent years, conditions at the facility, including several incidents in which prisoners died while awaiting trial, were the subject of protests. The event at hand, however, focused on the death penalty, as Death Row, evidently, is housed somewhere within the confines of the sprawling, barbed-wire encircled facility, which encompasses several city blocks. Our spirited group of about 40, paraded around the perimeter of the dungeon-like facility, chanting “Death row, hell no!” My friend, who wore a Palestinian kaffiyah, proudly carried a freshly prepared placard which read “Money for jobs and education, not for racist incarceration!”
At an informal rally following the march, the moderator drew attention to the fact that the death penalty targets predominantly black and poor people, and that almost no wealthy, white men are put to death by the state.
A speaker from Physicians for Social Responsibility drew parallels between the killing of poor black prisoners in the U.S. with the killings of innocent Iraqis and Afghans. Another, from the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty, said that the policy of scapegoating, prevalent in the U.S., blamed Iraqis for U.S. foreign policy woes, immigrants for unemployment, and prisoners for social ills. He deplored the 70% increase in the U.S. prison population in recent years.
Kevin James, of Son of Nun, a socially conscious hip-hop group, told protestors, “Poverty exists because the system relies on it,” before launching into a potent, politically conscious rap. I have the utmost respect for James, who took it upon himself to personally invite me (and many others, I am certain) to the protest. For more on Son of Nun:
http://myspace.com/socialistmc
The mother of Vernon Evans, a well-known death row prisoner, spoke. Evan’s sister was recognized, but did not take the mic.
Afterwards, I extended Islamic greetings and support to the organizers and gave them information about the case of Imam Jamil Al-Amin. My view is that the death penalty, when administered by an unjust, racist state playing God (astagfirullah) should concern all people of conscience, but particularly Muslims, since our faith is about justice. Many death row inmates are imprisoned as a result of inadequate legal counsel, and later found to be innocent of the crimes with which they were charged.
At an informal rally following the march, the moderator drew attention to the fact that the death penalty targets predominantly black and poor people, and that almost no wealthy, white men are put to death by the state.
A speaker from Physicians for Social Responsibility drew parallels between the killing of poor black prisoners in the U.S. with the killings of innocent Iraqis and Afghans. Another, from the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty, said that the policy of scapegoating, prevalent in the U.S., blamed Iraqis for U.S. foreign policy woes, immigrants for unemployment, and prisoners for social ills. He deplored the 70% increase in the U.S. prison population in recent years.
Kevin James, of Son of Nun, a socially conscious hip-hop group, told protestors, “Poverty exists because the system relies on it,” before launching into a potent, politically conscious rap. I have the utmost respect for James, who took it upon himself to personally invite me (and many others, I am certain) to the protest. For more on Son of Nun:
http://myspace.com/socialistmc
The mother of Vernon Evans, a well-known death row prisoner, spoke. Evan’s sister was recognized, but did not take the mic.
Afterwards, I extended Islamic greetings and support to the organizers and gave them information about the case of Imam Jamil Al-Amin. My view is that the death penalty, when administered by an unjust, racist state playing God (astagfirullah) should concern all people of conscience, but particularly Muslims, since our faith is about justice. Many death row inmates are imprisoned as a result of inadequate legal counsel, and later found to be innocent of the crimes with which they were charged.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Notes on March 17
Okay, so I broke my “no-political-activities-during-the-semester” rule and went to the March 17 March on the Pentagon. What better way to start Spring Break, right? ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), which organized the protest, must be credited with a keen sense of history, in planning the event to coincide with the anniversary of the historic 1967 March on the Pentagon. It had been a while since I'd experienced the joy of participating in an independent Muslim contingent, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. As we marched down the hill overlooking the Citadel of Death (the Pentagon) reciting “Allah ho akbar” and “Free, free Palestine” I felt as if I were in a dream. Maybe the rednecks sending me hate mail were right, that I should thank ma lucky stars to be in this great country where I could spew such things and not get arrested. Then again, the protest was on a Saturday afternoon, sparing the tender feelings of the Pentagon brass in particular, and government officials in general. And why not let the proles blow off some steam if it’ll prevent a revolution, especially with Dick, Condi, and Alberto outta town for the weekend. So, I won’t lick Unca Sam's boots outta gratitude for allowing me to be there just yet.
I’ve gotten mostly negative feedback on the protest from Muslims: the protest was lackluster; ANSWER has no program; the turnout was miserable; the Muslims were few in number, disorganized, and undisciplined; and the ever popular it was too cold. My view is that the protest gave us badly needed experience as Muslim organizers. It should have taught us the importance of being on time (or, in some cases, simply showing up); of marching in formation; of good communication (both prior to and during the protest); and of making our voices heard (through distribution of literature, sloganeering, etc) instead of simply blending in. And it should have increased collaboration and trust between Muslims of diverse racial, educational, and socio-economic backgrounds, as is necessary for the building of an independent Muslim movement. Should have.
That the Muslim voice was much more evident than at previous marches was a victory in my view. I do not recall, for instance, hearing takbirat, or very evidently Islamic slogans at previous ANSWER, UFPJ, or MoveOn.Org protests. Distribution of Jamaat al-Muslimeen's "Boycott Israel" fliers, Free Imam Jamil postcards, and CDs of Imam Musa's speeches in defiance of the finger-freezing cold was another victory (thanks to Br. Nabil, Br. Aqueel, and Br. Bilal).
Some have asked me why the need for an independent Muslim contingent for the March 17 (and other) protests. After all, the Muslim American Society (MAS) was a major signatory to the protest, so why not simply join hands with them?
The answer is simple: MAS’ credentials are questionable, to put it mildly. In a July 25, 2005 press conference at the National Press Club, MAS leaders called for support of “law enforcement,” and promised to hand over Muslim dissidents to the FBI. The video is unfortunately not yet on youtube, but is available for purchase through C-SPAN:
http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=187913-1
The self-described "pioneering Muslim organization" has yet to take a strong stance on any major political issue in advance of the winds of political correctness. Even on the Palestine issue, MAS' position is feeble:
“It is not our argument to deny the fundamental right of the people of Israel to survive in peace and security. But it is our position that the long-term interests of the United States would be advanced if American foreign policy in the region supported the demilitarization of the current conflict between the State of Israel and the people of Palestine....”
http://masnet.org/articlesandpapers.asp?id=3974
According to its website, MAS has always worked very closely with ISNA, a pro-establishment organization which helped organize the bloc vote for Bush, among other things. On the same webpage, MAS refers to NAIT, a reactionary Saudi government-funded organization, as a “pioneer” in the Islamic movement.
http://masnet.org/aboutmas.asp
I would like to know why a seemingly radical political organization such as ANSWER would select the reactionary and reformist MAS as its liaison with the Muslim community. Why is MAS' announcement that it would effectively infiltrate and snitch on Muslim dissidents of no concern to ANSWER, particularly in view of the Left’s historical victimization under similar programs during the McCarthy witchhunts?
While working closely with ANSWER on a previous anti-war protest, I asked Brian Becker these questions. The reply was an odd one: ANSWER worked with MAS because they were out there (ie active). And the July 2005 press conference? Perhaps MAS did this to keep the authorities off their back, said Becker. And something is rotten in the state of Denmark....
I’ve gotten mostly negative feedback on the protest from Muslims: the protest was lackluster; ANSWER has no program; the turnout was miserable; the Muslims were few in number, disorganized, and undisciplined; and the ever popular it was too cold. My view is that the protest gave us badly needed experience as Muslim organizers. It should have taught us the importance of being on time (or, in some cases, simply showing up); of marching in formation; of good communication (both prior to and during the protest); and of making our voices heard (through distribution of literature, sloganeering, etc) instead of simply blending in. And it should have increased collaboration and trust between Muslims of diverse racial, educational, and socio-economic backgrounds, as is necessary for the building of an independent Muslim movement. Should have.
That the Muslim voice was much more evident than at previous marches was a victory in my view. I do not recall, for instance, hearing takbirat, or very evidently Islamic slogans at previous ANSWER, UFPJ, or MoveOn.Org protests. Distribution of Jamaat al-Muslimeen's "Boycott Israel" fliers, Free Imam Jamil postcards, and CDs of Imam Musa's speeches in defiance of the finger-freezing cold was another victory (thanks to Br. Nabil, Br. Aqueel, and Br. Bilal).
Some have asked me why the need for an independent Muslim contingent for the March 17 (and other) protests. After all, the Muslim American Society (MAS) was a major signatory to the protest, so why not simply join hands with them?
The answer is simple: MAS’ credentials are questionable, to put it mildly. In a July 25, 2005 press conference at the National Press Club, MAS leaders called for support of “law enforcement,” and promised to hand over Muslim dissidents to the FBI. The video is unfortunately not yet on youtube, but is available for purchase through C-SPAN:
http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=187913-1
The self-described "pioneering Muslim organization" has yet to take a strong stance on any major political issue in advance of the winds of political correctness. Even on the Palestine issue, MAS' position is feeble:
“It is not our argument to deny the fundamental right of the people of Israel to survive in peace and security. But it is our position that the long-term interests of the United States would be advanced if American foreign policy in the region supported the demilitarization of the current conflict between the State of Israel and the people of Palestine....”
http://masnet.org/articlesandpapers.asp?id=3974
According to its website, MAS has always worked very closely with ISNA, a pro-establishment organization which helped organize the bloc vote for Bush, among other things. On the same webpage, MAS refers to NAIT, a reactionary Saudi government-funded organization, as a “pioneer” in the Islamic movement.
http://masnet.org/aboutmas.asp
I would like to know why a seemingly radical political organization such as ANSWER would select the reactionary and reformist MAS as its liaison with the Muslim community. Why is MAS' announcement that it would effectively infiltrate and snitch on Muslim dissidents of no concern to ANSWER, particularly in view of the Left’s historical victimization under similar programs during the McCarthy witchhunts?
While working closely with ANSWER on a previous anti-war protest, I asked Brian Becker these questions. The reply was an odd one: ANSWER worked with MAS because they were out there (ie active). And the July 2005 press conference? Perhaps MAS did this to keep the authorities off their back, said Becker. And something is rotten in the state of Denmark....
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Another Heroic Hugo
The American Gulag was not birthed in Guantanamo. However ugly the conditions of incarceration for Muslim prisoners on the Cuban Island, black revolutionaries in the U.S., in particular those affiliated with the BPP and the BLA during the 1960s and 1970s, were among the first to be subjected to subhuman treatment a la Abu Ghraib. Today I celebrate the birthday of a forgotten warrior, Hugo Pinell. He is a black Nicaraguan, one of the San Quentin Eight, held in U.S. custody for the last 42 years. Pinell's "crime" was being black and a close comrade of the late George Jackson during the 1960s. Although the feds ostensibly dismantled COINTEL, and the racial motivation behind the prosecutions of the period are undisputable, Pinell remains in jail, denied parole eight times.
Through exercise, vegetarian diet, and writing, Pinell has survived 36 years of solitary confinement. The highest suicide rates across the prison system occur in solitary.
A summary of the Pinell case, by Mumia Abu Jamal, is here.
A look at Pinell's parole denial, by New Orleans native and long-time community activist Kiilu Nyasha, is here.
Through exercise, vegetarian diet, and writing, Pinell has survived 36 years of solitary confinement. The highest suicide rates across the prison system occur in solitary.
A summary of the Pinell case, by Mumia Abu Jamal, is here.
A look at Pinell's parole denial, by New Orleans native and long-time community activist Kiilu Nyasha, is here.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Israeli Propaganda Finds a New Home in UMBC Commons
So UMBC, where I go to school, now features Israeli propaganda in the main corridor of its Commons (student union).
It takes the form of a display described by the organizers as follows:
"Inside Terrorism: The X-Ray Project is an art installation that exhibits x-rays of terror victims together with their medical accounts and personal stories; the x-rays come from two major Israeli hospitals. The exhibition personalizes and universalizes the issue of terrorism and urges the understanding that terrorism is not a legitimate tool, that it must be strongly condemned."
Funded by the David Project for Jewish Leadership and sponsored by Hillel, the project appears to exploit students' fascination with technology as well as their susceptibility to the corporate media version of events in Occupied Palestine.
A complete description of the project is here.
The David Project claims its mission is "to promote a fair and honest understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict."
However, the 5,050 Palestinian men, women and children killed by Israeli state terror in the last few years are not represented in the exhibit. Ditto for the 49,760 wounded, and the 10,4000 detained during the same time period (source: Palestinian State Information Service). Nor is there any mention of the fact that the Israeli victims were killed in an internationally recognized liberation struggle against occupation.
The net effect is a one-sided and racist portrayal of loss as unique to Israeli side, reminescent of the slavery-era treatment of black people, whose deaths were dismissed because they were thought to be "soul-less."
An excellent letter of protest written by a good friend to the Retriever Weekly (UMBC's student newspaper), may be seen here.
I just sent my own brief letter of protest to the Retriever, and encourage others to write as well.
It takes the form of a display described by the organizers as follows:
"Inside Terrorism: The X-Ray Project is an art installation that exhibits x-rays of terror victims together with their medical accounts and personal stories; the x-rays come from two major Israeli hospitals. The exhibition personalizes and universalizes the issue of terrorism and urges the understanding that terrorism is not a legitimate tool, that it must be strongly condemned."
Funded by the David Project for Jewish Leadership and sponsored by Hillel, the project appears to exploit students' fascination with technology as well as their susceptibility to the corporate media version of events in Occupied Palestine.
A complete description of the project is here.
The David Project claims its mission is "to promote a fair and honest understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict."
However, the 5,050 Palestinian men, women and children killed by Israeli state terror in the last few years are not represented in the exhibit. Ditto for the 49,760 wounded, and the 10,4000 detained during the same time period (source: Palestinian State Information Service). Nor is there any mention of the fact that the Israeli victims were killed in an internationally recognized liberation struggle against occupation.
The net effect is a one-sided and racist portrayal of loss as unique to Israeli side, reminescent of the slavery-era treatment of black people, whose deaths were dismissed because they were thought to be "soul-less."
An excellent letter of protest written by a good friend to the Retriever Weekly (UMBC's student newspaper), may be seen here.
I just sent my own brief letter of protest to the Retriever, and encourage others to write as well.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
For Freedom
Another work by Bobby Gene Garcia, Native American political prisoner, which has personal meaning for me, and also relates to the looming Febrary 27 habeas corpus hearing of Imam Jamil Al-Amin. I pray for Imam Jamil, that Allah give him renewed strength, and for the People, that they may not forget his legacy:
--------------------
Great Spirit, I chant for your help
once again
The strength of the four winds braced,
my mind.
My song set me free for I have
dared to dream
before of life-giving
freedom.
I'm free as an Eagle flying over
spacious prairies
that stilled the soul.
Unconstrained,
life-giving freedom
soaring under the
aspect of eternity.
Mountains and seas are no match
for my wings.
What matters if I fly alone?
Where freedom lies
there I find
home.
--Bobby Garcia
January 7, 1980
--------------------
Great Spirit, I chant for your help
once again
The strength of the four winds braced,
my mind.
My song set me free for I have
dared to dream
before of life-giving
freedom.
I'm free as an Eagle flying over
spacious prairies
that stilled the soul.
Unconstrained,
life-giving freedom
soaring under the
aspect of eternity.
Mountains and seas are no match
for my wings.
What matters if I fly alone?
Where freedom lies
there I find
home.
--Bobby Garcia
January 7, 1980
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Mumit: Free at Age Fifty-Plus
A few days ago, I was messing around on the FBOP website. For once, it was good news: one of the brothers to whom I wrote regularly, at Lewisburg U.S.P., named Abdul Mumit (slave name: Lincoln Heard), was released some years ago.
Originally incarcerated for armored car heist(?), he was not a political prisoner in the sense of Sundiata Acoli, Geronimo Pratt, or the Sheikh. Like El-Hajj Malik Shabazz, he'd reverted to Islam while in prison. Because he stood up against the dehumanizing ("cruel and unusual") treatment accorded him and other prisoners, he was considered a "trouble-maker" and was repeatedly relocated from one prison to another. In between transfers, he was periodically thrown in the Hole. The relocations and the lockdowns created severe mental stress for Mumit, and he wrote me long letters expressing his fear that he would be murdered while in solitary. I did what little I could, writing letters of complaint to the prison bureaucracy, and letters of concern and support to him. He, like many Muslim inmates, felt isolated from the Ummah and craved Islamic literature, delighting when I sent him copies of New Trend (then in paper format), In the Shade of the Qur'an, the Burning Spear, and other literature.
I'd lost touch with him after my own (relatively insignificant) trials and tribulations, and so wasn't aware of his release. I exult in the thought that physically, he has survived, and is (technically) free. But, he is in his fifties now, robbed of his youth by the System, which continuously builds prisons for black youth, while closing libraries and cutting school budgets. I pray Allah help Mumit to survive the unemployment, disenfranchisment, and (more) racism which undoubtedly greeted him outside the gates of Lewisburg, and allow him to walk strong on the Sirat al-Mustaqeen.
Originally incarcerated for armored car heist(?), he was not a political prisoner in the sense of Sundiata Acoli, Geronimo Pratt, or the Sheikh. Like El-Hajj Malik Shabazz, he'd reverted to Islam while in prison. Because he stood up against the dehumanizing ("cruel and unusual") treatment accorded him and other prisoners, he was considered a "trouble-maker" and was repeatedly relocated from one prison to another. In between transfers, he was periodically thrown in the Hole. The relocations and the lockdowns created severe mental stress for Mumit, and he wrote me long letters expressing his fear that he would be murdered while in solitary. I did what little I could, writing letters of complaint to the prison bureaucracy, and letters of concern and support to him. He, like many Muslim inmates, felt isolated from the Ummah and craved Islamic literature, delighting when I sent him copies of New Trend (then in paper format), In the Shade of the Qur'an, the Burning Spear, and other literature.
I'd lost touch with him after my own (relatively insignificant) trials and tribulations, and so wasn't aware of his release. I exult in the thought that physically, he has survived, and is (technically) free. But, he is in his fifties now, robbed of his youth by the System, which continuously builds prisons for black youth, while closing libraries and cutting school budgets. I pray Allah help Mumit to survive the unemployment, disenfranchisment, and (more) racism which undoubtedly greeted him outside the gates of Lewisburg, and allow him to walk strong on the Sirat al-Mustaqeen.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Film Clip: "Victory for Palestine"
I felt inspired today, watching a film clip, forwarded to me by a returning Haji:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzygb6vf_6w&mode=related&search=
The song, said to be the Palestine Liberation Anthem, is by Tareq Jaber. Inshallah, justice will prevail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzygb6vf_6w&mode=related&search=
The song, said to be the Palestine Liberation Anthem, is by Tareq Jaber. Inshallah, justice will prevail.
Friday, February 2, 2007
They Took the Typewriter Today
The recent railroadings of Muslim and Black political prisoners, brought to mind a poem I first encountered years ago, as coordinator for the Leonard Peltier Support Group (LPSG) of Washington, DC. It is written by Bobby Gene Garcia, Native American political prisoner, who was found dead in his cell about a month after this writing:
-------------
The U.S. Government will kill me
in their Iron Houses
where they have killed many
Warriors before me
but I smile a smile
for I know
something.
Not an Army,
certainly not death,
no one can keep her away from me
while I bleed and die
and my blood covers
Mother Earth
My dreams
My hopes
Live forever,
In the People,
In the Village,
In the Children.
From They Took The Typewriter Today
--Bobby Gene Garcia
November 8, 1980
-------------
The U.S. Government will kill me
in their Iron Houses
where they have killed many
Warriors before me
but I smile a smile
for I know
something.
Not an Army,
certainly not death,
no one can keep her away from me
while I bleed and die
and my blood covers
Mother Earth
My dreams
My hopes
Live forever,
In the People,
In the Village,
In the Children.
From They Took The Typewriter Today
--Bobby Gene Garcia
November 8, 1980
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Panther Bonds Set at Three Million Each
Bail has been set for at least $3 million for each Panther ($5 million for some of them)! Can anyone--with the possible exception of some in the current administration--really be that dangerous? Clearly, the plan seems to be to ensure the defendants' inability to defend themselves, even within the severely limited scope of the Just-us system.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
New Website to Support the Panther 8
The corporate media sensor seems to have eliminated all mention of the Black Panther re-arrests from the Tube. Thankfully, a new website has been set up to cover the case, by the producer of A Legacy of Torture:
http://cdhrsupport.org
http://cdhrsupport.org
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Black Panthers Rearrested
Yesterday, at the protest against the Iraq War, a young Muslim-activist brutha was telling me about the recapture of eight members of the BPP, and their treatment during the their earlier prosecutions in the 60s/70s. Abu Ghraib, all over again. COINTELPRO is ostensibly defunct and discredited. (For those of you who live in the U.S., and are unfamiliar with COINTELPRO, please, please educate yourself on it. The U.S. fascination with torture did not begin at Abu Ghraib.) Yet, in the selective application of justice characteristic of the U.S., its perpetrators have gone unpunished/unprosecuted for the murders and torture committed under the program. Not a single leader--Black or Muslim--who claims to stand for justice and for the rights of the People, from Jesse Jackson to WD Muhammad, or even Farrakhan, has called for an inquiry into COINTELPRO. Today the system continues to victimize these innocents, as if they haven't suffered enough. Muslims and people of conscience must speak out against this injustice.
I'm not sure what's being done, if anything, to organize against this outrage. The Jericho Movement may be posting updates, as they become available:
http://thejerichomovement.com/
-----------
http://bombsandshields.blogspot.com/
Eight veterans of the Black Panther Party (BPP,) seven of whom are accused of belonging to the Black Liberation Army (BLA,) were arrested today on charges stemming from the 1971 shooting death of San Fransisco Police Sgt. John V. Young.
The August 29, 1971 attack on the Ingleside Police Station came only eight days after San Quentin prison guards gunned down BPP Field Marshal "Soledad Brother" George Jackson. The murder of Jackson provoked threats of retaliation and even sparked the Attica Prison rebellion.
Seven of the men arrested, all suspected BLA members, were charged with murder and conspiracy. They are Ray Michael Boudreaux, 64, of Altadena; Richard Brown, 65, of San Francisco; Herman Bell, 59, and Jalil Abdul Muntaqim formerly known as Anthony Bottom, 55, both currently incarcerated in New York state; Henry Watson Jones, 71, of Altadena; Francisco Torres, 58, of Queens, New York; and Harold Taylor, 58, of Panama City, Florida.
Another suspect, Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth, 62, was still being sought on murder and conspiracy charges. Authorities believe he could be in France, Belize or Tanzania.
Taylor and two others faced murder charges in 1973, but the case was dismissed after a San Francisco judge that torture was used to extract confessions from the men. San Francisco Police Department Inspectors Frank McCoy and Ed Erdelatz were present for the interrogation and torture which consisted of stripping the men naked and beating them with a lead pipe, blindfolding them and throwing wool blankets soaked with boiling water over their bodies, placing electric probes on their genitals and other body parts, inserting an electric cattle prod in their anus, punching and kicking, and slamming them into walls while blindfolded.
McCoy and Erdelatz came out of retirement to lead investigation when the case was reopened sometime in 2002. The decision to re-investigate the incident followed the Department of Justice's expanding prosecution of political crimes in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Bell's attorney Stuart Hanlon called the arrests a "prosecution based on vengeance and hate from the '60s." "There's a law enforcement attitude that they hate these people, the Panthers," Hanlon said. "Now they're going after old men."
I'm not sure what's being done, if anything, to organize against this outrage. The Jericho Movement may be posting updates, as they become available:
http://thejerichomovement.com/
-----------
http://bombsandshields.blogspot.com/
Eight veterans of the Black Panther Party (BPP,) seven of whom are accused of belonging to the Black Liberation Army (BLA,) were arrested today on charges stemming from the 1971 shooting death of San Fransisco Police Sgt. John V. Young.
The August 29, 1971 attack on the Ingleside Police Station came only eight days after San Quentin prison guards gunned down BPP Field Marshal "Soledad Brother" George Jackson. The murder of Jackson provoked threats of retaliation and even sparked the Attica Prison rebellion.
Seven of the men arrested, all suspected BLA members, were charged with murder and conspiracy. They are Ray Michael Boudreaux, 64, of Altadena; Richard Brown, 65, of San Francisco; Herman Bell, 59, and Jalil Abdul Muntaqim formerly known as Anthony Bottom, 55, both currently incarcerated in New York state; Henry Watson Jones, 71, of Altadena; Francisco Torres, 58, of Queens, New York; and Harold Taylor, 58, of Panama City, Florida.
Another suspect, Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth, 62, was still being sought on murder and conspiracy charges. Authorities believe he could be in France, Belize or Tanzania.
Taylor and two others faced murder charges in 1973, but the case was dismissed after a San Francisco judge that torture was used to extract confessions from the men. San Francisco Police Department Inspectors Frank McCoy and Ed Erdelatz were present for the interrogation and torture which consisted of stripping the men naked and beating them with a lead pipe, blindfolding them and throwing wool blankets soaked with boiling water over their bodies, placing electric probes on their genitals and other body parts, inserting an electric cattle prod in their anus, punching and kicking, and slamming them into walls while blindfolded.
McCoy and Erdelatz came out of retirement to lead investigation when the case was reopened sometime in 2002. The decision to re-investigate the incident followed the Department of Justice's expanding prosecution of political crimes in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Bell's attorney Stuart Hanlon called the arrests a "prosecution based on vengeance and hate from the '60s." "There's a law enforcement attitude that they hate these people, the Panthers," Hanlon said. "Now they're going after old men."
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
All I Need to Know, I Learned from a Brutha in tha Pen
What will convey unto thee what the Ascent is!
(It is) to free a slave...
--Qur'an 90: 12-13
At the age of 14, I began writing to (primarily Muslim) inmates in federal penitentiaries. The correspondence brought me to the realization that imprisonment is one of the worst forms of man's inhumanity to man. My view is that imprisonment raises grave ethical concerns. One who imprisons another human being controls when or if that human eats, drinks, bathes, procreates, or gets vital medical treatment, in effect, "playing God." The extreme example of "playing God" is, off course, capital punishment, where the State's irreversible act places it in the role of the Creator (nauzo-billah)--potentially taking the life of an innocent person lacking adequate counsel. Alternatives to imprisonment were practiced by indigenous societies through the ages. Considering the dismal failure of the U.S. prison system today, these examples merit rigorous study for potential adaptation to modern times.
Since the U.S. in-Justice system is unlikely to willingly capitulate to those whom it oppresses, an inquiry under the U.N. or other international fora on black males in the U.S. prison system is required. The question must be asked: Are black men inherently more criminal than all other segments of the population? If not, why do they constitute the preponderance of the prison population? Is the current prison system a continuation of the system of slavery and genocide of black people? If so, what remedy can be enacted by the international community--international sanctions, U.N. inspections of U.S. prison facilities, or peacekeepers to prevent U.S. mistreatment of its black population?
A few years after my first exchanges with Muslim inmates, I expropriated a copy of the Gulag Archipelago from my father's library. The work left an indelible impression. Imprisonment--dehumanizing by nature--is exacerbated when it is enacted as punishment for unpopular words, thought, and speech. Today, tens of thousands of primarily Muslim innocents suffer in the U.S. Gulag, spanning from Guantanamo to Afghanistan and beyond. And political imprisonment is the sword of Damocles which threatens any Muslim leader who advocates or exercises the internationally recognized (Geneva Convention affirmed) right of his people to self-defense against Zionist or imperialist aggression.
To me, the existence of such a Gulag--and the threat that any independent-minded Muslim is a candidate for it--is a major crisis, warranting the focus of Muslims and humanitarians alike. I believe the time for Picnics has passed, and Muslim leaders who insist on Picnicking--well, perhaps their leadership ought to be questioned according to the Islamic tradition of accountability of Muslim leaders to their constituents. Recall the famed example of Hazrat Umar's (RA) roughing up and questioning by a Bedouin, on the simple matter of the former's possession of a shawl. When will we finally seize our leaders by the shawl, and ask them why they silently allow the innocent Muslim imams, hafiz-e-Quran, Muslim fathers, husbands, and brothers to languish in U.S./U.S.-administered prisons, often under medieval conditions?
Clearly, a truly Islamic leadership must prioritize: 1) effective, legal organizing for the rights of the political prisoners; 2) a massive public awareness campaign, aimed at lifting the curtain of fear from the Muslim community, while also countering corporate media propaganda with objective information on political cases; and 3) providing necessary assistance to the families of political prisoners.
(It is) to free a slave...
--Qur'an 90: 12-13
At the age of 14, I began writing to (primarily Muslim) inmates in federal penitentiaries. The correspondence brought me to the realization that imprisonment is one of the worst forms of man's inhumanity to man. My view is that imprisonment raises grave ethical concerns. One who imprisons another human being controls when or if that human eats, drinks, bathes, procreates, or gets vital medical treatment, in effect, "playing God." The extreme example of "playing God" is, off course, capital punishment, where the State's irreversible act places it in the role of the Creator (nauzo-billah)--potentially taking the life of an innocent person lacking adequate counsel. Alternatives to imprisonment were practiced by indigenous societies through the ages. Considering the dismal failure of the U.S. prison system today, these examples merit rigorous study for potential adaptation to modern times.
Since the U.S. in-Justice system is unlikely to willingly capitulate to those whom it oppresses, an inquiry under the U.N. or other international fora on black males in the U.S. prison system is required. The question must be asked: Are black men inherently more criminal than all other segments of the population? If not, why do they constitute the preponderance of the prison population? Is the current prison system a continuation of the system of slavery and genocide of black people? If so, what remedy can be enacted by the international community--international sanctions, U.N. inspections of U.S. prison facilities, or peacekeepers to prevent U.S. mistreatment of its black population?
A few years after my first exchanges with Muslim inmates, I expropriated a copy of the Gulag Archipelago from my father's library. The work left an indelible impression. Imprisonment--dehumanizing by nature--is exacerbated when it is enacted as punishment for unpopular words, thought, and speech. Today, tens of thousands of primarily Muslim innocents suffer in the U.S. Gulag, spanning from Guantanamo to Afghanistan and beyond. And political imprisonment is the sword of Damocles which threatens any Muslim leader who advocates or exercises the internationally recognized (Geneva Convention affirmed) right of his people to self-defense against Zionist or imperialist aggression.
To me, the existence of such a Gulag--and the threat that any independent-minded Muslim is a candidate for it--is a major crisis, warranting the focus of Muslims and humanitarians alike. I believe the time for Picnics has passed, and Muslim leaders who insist on Picnicking--well, perhaps their leadership ought to be questioned according to the Islamic tradition of accountability of Muslim leaders to their constituents. Recall the famed example of Hazrat Umar's (RA) roughing up and questioning by a Bedouin, on the simple matter of the former's possession of a shawl. When will we finally seize our leaders by the shawl, and ask them why they silently allow the innocent Muslim imams, hafiz-e-Quran, Muslim fathers, husbands, and brothers to languish in U.S./U.S.-administered prisons, often under medieval conditions?
Clearly, a truly Islamic leadership must prioritize: 1) effective, legal organizing for the rights of the political prisoners; 2) a massive public awareness campaign, aimed at lifting the curtain of fear from the Muslim community, while also countering corporate media propaganda with objective information on political cases; and 3) providing necessary assistance to the families of political prisoners.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Runoko Rashidi and Afterwards
During winter break, I attended a thoroughly fascinating lecture on the African Presence in Early Asia, by historian Runoko Rashidi at Howard University with a UMBC friend. After the lecture, we mulled over where to have dinner. Options were somewhat limited by the fact that it was late and a weeknight. I am partial to African cuisine, and thought immediately of Dukem, an Ethiopian establishment on U Street nearby. Ethiopian troops were in Somalia, and my politically conscious friend and I did some soul-searching before deciding it was okay to visit the Ethiopian restaurant given the late hour.
On my last visit, I'd thought Dukem rather mediocre (in comparison with other Ethiopian spots around town). This time, however, was different. The place was bursting with African rhythms. Our server, a young woman with beautiful dark skin, aquiline nose, and thick lips, in traditional Ethiopian garb, reminded me of Cheikh Anta Diop's writing on the incredible diversity of native African features prior to Asiatic and European invasions. I glanced at my friend. A musician himself, he appeared immersed in the music. Four stunningly beautiful Ethiopian women in traditional garb--flowing white dress, accented with colorful red, green, and black sash--swayed to the reverberations of a drum, in a graceful, perfectly choreographed classical Ethiopian dance. At times, they were accompanied by a male dancer. I marveled at their movements, as graceful and coordinated as the dance of swans I'd seen on the bay near my house.
The food arrived--my perfectly prepared spicy doro wat, one of my favorite Ethiopian dishes, and my friend's spicy spinach entreé, both with spongy ingera bread. We ate with our hands from one huge round plate, an African tradition common to Afghan, Arab, and other Third World cultures, which I believe leads to harambee in these communities.
The night was perfect--almost. Shortly after the dance started, a white woman in a tight sweater, mini-skirt, and boots rose to her feet at the next table. Making moronic sounds and gestures, she poorly mimicked the dancers' every move. After a while, she abandonned any semblance of accuracy, and simply started shaking her volumptuous body. Then she progressed to grabbing at her own mammary glands, while shaking her buttocks. Earlier, I'd noticed that nearly all the restaurant patrons were Ethiopian or African. Now they stared at her, some with contempt, some with anger or pity. They were either too polite or too shocked to tell her to shut up and sit down. The security personnel had evaporated into the woodwork.
"It's a free country, and it's her right to demonstrate what a moron she really is," I thought to myself. The problem was that she was directly in my line of sight to the dancers, and instead of enjoying the performance, I was forced to watch her vulgar flailings. Elevated testosterone, the price of female athleticism, surged through my body, and I willed myself not to re-seat the b----. "Now you know understand where the term 'Ugly American comes from,'" I remarked loudly to my friend.
The woman looked over at me for a moment, then continued to gyrate at her table for a moment. Then she said something in what sounded like a Hebrew accent to her friends, and made her way onto the dance floor. There she partnered up with the male performer, who seemed to be trying to humor her random shaking, earning very dirty looks from the female performers. Her buds cheered her on. Deferred shame or alcoholic toxicity caught up with her, for shortly thereafter, she and her drunken friends staggered out of the restaurant.
Afterwards I wondered: Who exhibits utter ignorance of other cultures and customs? Who violates the social norms and protocols of other cultures and communities with impunity, here and on a global scale? Who proudly wears her ignorance and ignominy on her sleeve? Who else but Whitey.
On my last visit, I'd thought Dukem rather mediocre (in comparison with other Ethiopian spots around town). This time, however, was different. The place was bursting with African rhythms. Our server, a young woman with beautiful dark skin, aquiline nose, and thick lips, in traditional Ethiopian garb, reminded me of Cheikh Anta Diop's writing on the incredible diversity of native African features prior to Asiatic and European invasions. I glanced at my friend. A musician himself, he appeared immersed in the music. Four stunningly beautiful Ethiopian women in traditional garb--flowing white dress, accented with colorful red, green, and black sash--swayed to the reverberations of a drum, in a graceful, perfectly choreographed classical Ethiopian dance. At times, they were accompanied by a male dancer. I marveled at their movements, as graceful and coordinated as the dance of swans I'd seen on the bay near my house.
The food arrived--my perfectly prepared spicy doro wat, one of my favorite Ethiopian dishes, and my friend's spicy spinach entreé, both with spongy ingera bread. We ate with our hands from one huge round plate, an African tradition common to Afghan, Arab, and other Third World cultures, which I believe leads to harambee in these communities.
The night was perfect--almost. Shortly after the dance started, a white woman in a tight sweater, mini-skirt, and boots rose to her feet at the next table. Making moronic sounds and gestures, she poorly mimicked the dancers' every move. After a while, she abandonned any semblance of accuracy, and simply started shaking her volumptuous body. Then she progressed to grabbing at her own mammary glands, while shaking her buttocks. Earlier, I'd noticed that nearly all the restaurant patrons were Ethiopian or African. Now they stared at her, some with contempt, some with anger or pity. They were either too polite or too shocked to tell her to shut up and sit down. The security personnel had evaporated into the woodwork.
"It's a free country, and it's her right to demonstrate what a moron she really is," I thought to myself. The problem was that she was directly in my line of sight to the dancers, and instead of enjoying the performance, I was forced to watch her vulgar flailings. Elevated testosterone, the price of female athleticism, surged through my body, and I willed myself not to re-seat the b----. "Now you know understand where the term 'Ugly American comes from,'" I remarked loudly to my friend.
The woman looked over at me for a moment, then continued to gyrate at her table for a moment. Then she said something in what sounded like a Hebrew accent to her friends, and made her way onto the dance floor. There she partnered up with the male performer, who seemed to be trying to humor her random shaking, earning very dirty looks from the female performers. Her buds cheered her on. Deferred shame or alcoholic toxicity caught up with her, for shortly thereafter, she and her drunken friends staggered out of the restaurant.
Afterwards I wondered: Who exhibits utter ignorance of other cultures and customs? Who violates the social norms and protocols of other cultures and communities with impunity, here and on a global scale? Who proudly wears her ignorance and ignominy on her sleeve? Who else but Whitey.
Monday, January 22, 2007
African Presence in Early Asia:
Runoko Rashidi Speaks
Having been the only practicing Muslim at my suburban, all-white high school, I developed an understanding of racism early on. Yet the recent Howard University lecture of renowned historian and scholar Runoko Rashidi on “The African Presence in Asia” opened my eyes to the fact that I, too, had unwittingly swallowed racist ideas. The standing-room only, primarily black audience exuded afrocentricity and political consciousness with their red, black, and green caps, locks, and politically astute questions. Regrettably absent—in light of the subject matter—was HU’s significant Asian student population.
Rashidi’s first act, upon taking the podium, brought to light the unconscious eurocentricity of most of us living in the West. Employing a long-neglected Africanism, Rashidi recognized the elders. He asked their permission to speak. Only then did he begin the lecture. How often do we, Muslims, Africans, and others—whose religions and cultures emphasize respect of the Elders—bother to do this? In one stroke, Baba Rashidi, as he is respectfully called, returned us to our roots.
A solidly built, dark-skinned brother with bald head and gold frame glasses, he spoke in a no-nonsense manner devoid of rhetoric. “I’m tired of hearing of a black history which begins with slavery,” he began. “A perfect example is the popular black history book, From Slavery to Freedom.”
“I differ in my view of history. I don’t view it as Africans waited around for some white man to come and take them captive,” he told the appreciative audience.
Nuclear DNA polymorphisms have been used to study the origins and relations between ethnic and racial groups, said Rashidi matter-of-factly. “Mitochondrial DNA, inherited from the mother, is more important [in demonstrating relatedness]. This indicates that Africa is the mother country.”
Rashidi’s research focuses on black people in Asia and the Middle East. To this end, he has traveled to Syria, Jordan, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and a litany of other countries. “Israel,” explained Rashidi, “Is the only country I haven’t visited—for political reasons.”
Denial by Local Officials
At the start of each visit, Rashidi was invariably told: “There are no black people here.” Undaunted, he headed straight to the national museum. Almost without exception, he found artwork—often centuries old—depicting people with unmistakably black (Africoid, in archeological terms) features. Then, traveling the countryside, to remote and inaccessible areas seldom frequented by tourists—he found black people. The pattern repeated itself in nearly every country he visited.
Beyond his extensive travels throughout Asia, Rashidi has visited Africa 20 times. “Wherever I go, I meet Africans who are literally dying to leave Africa,” he said. Twenty-five hundred people line up at the [U.S.] embassy in Ethiopia each day. This is because things are so bad. They are the new boat people.”
The implication is that such was not always the case. As Ivan Van Sertima (with whom Rashidi co-authored African Presence in Early Asia) wrote in They Came Before Columbus, there was a time when Africans were leaving Africa because—as the ruling power—they had the wealth, resources, and naval capability to explore what was then uncharted territory.
Rashidi launched into his slide presentation. It is a small sampling of the thousands of slides of artwork from museums across Asia and the Middle East he has painstakingly collected through decades of research. There are black natives of the Andaman Islands, whose inner radar, said Rashidi, allowed them to flee just before the tsunami; an African nobleman from Laos; a 2,000 year-old bust of a Syrian African nobleman; and Antara the Lion. All have clearly Africoid features.
Then there is the tomb of Bilal (RA).
African Presence in Early Islam
“Bilal [RA],” Rashidi told the predominantly black, non-Muslim audience, “had an Ethiopian mother. He was one of Muhammad’s [PBUH] closest companions. His tomb was found in Syria.”
“There was an African presence throughout early Islam,” said Rashidi. “Ishmael [AS] was a black man, as was the grandfather of Prophet Muhammad [PBUH]. A well known saying of the Prophet is: ‘He who brings an Ethiopian man or woman into Islam, brings his house blessings.’”
Rashidi described a mural he’d observed at the Pantheon (burial site of Rousseau, Voltaire, Marat, Victor Hugo, and other notables) in Paris: “It is a painting of a very handsome black man. This is an African crusader.”
Other slides depict not artwork, but photographs of indigenous black people across Asia and the Middle East, which Rashidi has collected in the course of exhaustive field work: photographs of a black Saudi cabinet member, who held the position in 1954; black men of Kuwait’s Sabah family; and a black Iraqi.
Black Iraq
This last is perhaps the most astonishing. The black Iraqi is holding a submachine gun. This is not a U.S. soldier, Rashidi emphasized, but an African Iraqi.
“There was a population of Black captives in Southern Iraq, called the Zanji,” Rashidi explained. “They engaged in three major insurrections, with some success. Iraq has a 10 - 15 % African population in the South, but you don’t see them on TV,” he told the mesmerized audience.
At this point, Rashidi could have seized the occasion to bash Arabs/Muslims. But, he uttered barely a word on the Arab identity of the slavers. I wondered if this was due to a consciousness of a common oppressor, who today subjugated Arabs and Africans alike. Or was it perhaps in recognition of the efforts of the young Muslim graduate student, Sharron Muhammad, who’d worked hard to organize the Howard lecture?
Whatever the case, I was struck by the stark contrast between the attitude of this strong afrocentric brutha, actively engaged in uplifting his people, and that of the “Free Darfur” movement—Zionists who contributed nothing to black liberation, but were quick to spoon-feed black people news of their Arab “enemy,” feigning common ground with black people, while both blacks and Arabs continued to suffer and die disproportionately under the Zionist/capitalist/imperialist agenda.
Rashidi’s next few slides depicted women: “An Israeli sister” wearing hijab (“She looks very African”); an African-Palestinian woman, who attended Howard University (“The Black Panther Party was established among Palestinians”); and a group of African Turkish women. [All quotes describing Rashidi’s slides are his—editor]
Rashidi, who displays few pictures of himself, appears with the latter group. “These are African women of Southwest Turkey,” he explained. “Their husbands are dead, and they are discriminated against.”
There are so few blacks in Turkey, he continued, that these women had never seen a black man other than one from the Sudan or Chad. “I knew it was time to leave when one of the ladies started stroking my arm, and telling me I reminded her of her late husband,” he quipped.
There is a painting of black slaves standing in a line behind their Ottomon regent (“The Ottoman Empire had many blacks, but this is not acknowledged”); and a bust of an African-Afghan (“probably destroyed by the Taliban”). I longed to ask the scholar the reason for his latter supposition.
Indus Valley—A Great Black Civilization
Then there is the figurine of a black woman from the Indus Valley (“We know she is a sista--from the hand on the hip” joked Rashidi); and a painting of a black woman with long braided hair pinned up in a bun.
Amazingly, museum officials tried to convince Rashidi that the beaded appearance of the woman’s hair in the latter painting was not African hair in a braid, but “snails” which crawled on to the woman’s head!
“I am a very patient person,” said Rashidi, “So I spent the next 48 hours reclining under the same type of tree she was under, in the very same area, and no snails crawled on to my head.”
Rashidi’s main research interest is India. “In Greater India, more than a thousand years before the foundations of Greece and Rome, proud and industrious Black men and women known as Dravidians erected a powerful civilization....the Indus Valley civilization--India's earliest high-culture, with major cities spread out along the course of the Indus River,” says a handout accompanying the lecture. “The Indus Valley civilization was at its height from about 2200 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E.”
I thought back to discussions of the Indus Valley civilization in my high school world history classes. As in the treatment of Ancient Egypt, “they schools” somehow managed to overlook the minor detail that the Indus Valley civilization was a black civilization. But, they did not mind discussing blacks and slavery, slavery and blacks, I mused.
“The decline and fall of the Indus Valley civilization has been linked to several factors, the most important of which were the increasingly frequent incursions of the White people known in history as Aryans—violent Indo-European tribes initially from central Eurasia and later Iran,” Rashidi’s handout continued.
Oppression of Dalits
As the lecture reached its peak, Rashidi hit upon the major focus of his research: Dalits, or “untouchables” in India. Dalits—who are black—“are victims of Hinduism,” he explained. They are literally treated as untouchable—in other words, unclean. Even the shadow of a Dalit is believed to be polluted, and Dalits must announce themselves by beating drums or making loud noises, to allow others to avoid them. They live under apartheid-like conditions.
Then, Rashidi offered a startling statistic: Three hundred million people are Dalits in India. The significance of this? “This means there may be more black people in India than there are in Africa.”
Rashidi is a powerhouse of knowledge, dropping facts at lightening speed.
As the lecture wrapped up, he showed slides of a black Brahmin (“Very unusual”), and an early depiction of a black Krishna (“Initial depictions of Krishna were always black”), before moving on to speak briefly of his travels to the far east.
The Far East
Rashidi had no desire to visit China, and said he traveled there only for the completeness of his research. Predictably, he was informed by Chinese officials: “There have never been black people in China.” Rashidi had difficulty traveling around China, and, for once, did not encounter black people. However, in the course of his research, he found that one of China’s earliest dynasties, the Shang, were said to have “black and oily skin.”
In Japan, he found proverbs with references to African roots (“For a samurai to be brave, he must have a bit of black blood”); in Angkor Tom, Cambodia, he found bas reliefs depicting black people (shown on the cover of his book, Africans in Early Asia); in Central Vietnam, he discovered an entire living population of black people; and everywhere in the far east, he found black Buddhas (“All early depictions of Buddhas were black, and this did not change until much later”).
“Wherever there is humanity, you find black people,” said Rashidi, concluding the lecture. “I want all black people to embrace their African-ness. Why is this important for us? Because we are trying to become whole again. What you do for yourself, depends on what you think of yourself. And what you think of yourself depends on what you’ve been told.”
During Q&A, the question of Dalits came up again, as many audience members seemed shocked by what they’d heard. Elaborating, Rashidi told of a Dalit woman being paraded through the village naked, because she stole some vegetables to feed her family, and of a Dalit boy forced to drink urine in punishment for some very minor infraction.
“There is an affirmative action policy in India,” said Rashidi. A Dalit headed India’s Supreme Court for a time; another was President of India. The appointment of these token black people, like the appointment of Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice to high positions in the U.S., evidently had little impact on the condition of the majority of their people. Clearly U.S. foreign policy makers—in their embrace of the Hindu-dominated Indian government as a foremost U.S. ally—were unfazed by the apartheid-like conditions experienced by 300 million black people.
Reflections
The lecture was the most thought-provoking I’d attended in recent memory. Afterwards, I greeted Baba Rashidi with “As-salaam alaikom” and extended him my solidarity as a Pakistani and a Muslim. I told him that were it not for his book, I, like most Pakistanis, would be woefully ignorant of the African contribution to our subcontinent, and that the incredible history he’d presented was completely absent from schools across Pakistan and India. His lecture, coupled with my reading of New Trend coverage of the Dalit struggle greatly added to my awareness of the specter of racism and classism plaguing the Indian Subcontinent. The lecture brought me to the realization, that Bollywood’s (Indian cinema’s) acute racism closely paralleled that of Hollywood. Both popularized negative and de-humanizing stereotypes of black people, targeting them for genocide. Remarkably, Indian cinema is hugely popular in West Africa.
Like many Indo-Pak households, my childhood home featured Indian movies blaring in the background every evening. Although the sexism of Indian cinema sickened me even then, its racial intonations initially escaped me. Most of the movies featured Milky White Indian Hero and Milky White Indian Heroine, frolicking through gardens and fields in their glorious courtship dance--paragons of goodness and morality. Adivasis—a major black Indian ethnic group—were, almost without exception, depicted as savages, drumming and dancing around an open fire in remote areas far from “civilization,” encountered by Milky White Indian Hero only when he came to rescue Milky White Indian Heroine from their evil clutches. Dark-skinned actors were frequently cast as villains of various sorts, usually bent on raping the Milky White Indian Heroine. In addition to his work with Dalits, Rashidi worked closely with Adivasis, and he listened with interest as I mentioned this to him.
As I left the program, I started thinking how I would explain the relevance of the African presence in early Asia to Muslims. I knew a good many brothers and sisters would try to convince me that racism is an American problem; that Muslims don’t think along racial lines; that in Islam, the sole relevance of skin color is “so that ye may know one another;” and that one is judged solely on taqwa (level of Allah-consciousness). They would try to convince me that it is a waste of time to ponder the question of who settled where and when, and that these things were in the past.
The Pakistani sister who secures her coach bag walking through the garage because “a black man may be lurking there;” the Arab/Indian/Pakistani man looking for an arranged marriage whose stated criteria is “anyone but a black woman;” the Nigerian parents who teach their son or daughter not to hang with African-Americans, because “they no good”—all these, as well as others afflicted by more subtle and subconscious racial notions, reveal that racism has penetrated our oh-so-pious Muslim consciousness, whether we acknowledge it or not.
Racism is cemented by a myth which refuses to acknowledge the immense and positive contributions of powerful African civilizations throughout history, insisting that black people be viewed only in the context of slavery and its aftermath. As Baba Rashidi stated in his closing remarks, “The people of Sumer lost their history, so they died.” For Muslims to maintain the myth is to assist in the oppression and cultural genocide of black people. A Muslim, by definition, bears witness to the truth, even that truth which is discomfiting.
For more information on the Dalit struggle, Africans in early Asia, and related topics, visit Runoko Rashidi’s website:
http://cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
Rashidi’s first act, upon taking the podium, brought to light the unconscious eurocentricity of most of us living in the West. Employing a long-neglected Africanism, Rashidi recognized the elders. He asked their permission to speak. Only then did he begin the lecture. How often do we, Muslims, Africans, and others—whose religions and cultures emphasize respect of the Elders—bother to do this? In one stroke, Baba Rashidi, as he is respectfully called, returned us to our roots.
A solidly built, dark-skinned brother with bald head and gold frame glasses, he spoke in a no-nonsense manner devoid of rhetoric. “I’m tired of hearing of a black history which begins with slavery,” he began. “A perfect example is the popular black history book, From Slavery to Freedom.”
“I differ in my view of history. I don’t view it as Africans waited around for some white man to come and take them captive,” he told the appreciative audience.
Nuclear DNA polymorphisms have been used to study the origins and relations between ethnic and racial groups, said Rashidi matter-of-factly. “Mitochondrial DNA, inherited from the mother, is more important [in demonstrating relatedness]. This indicates that Africa is the mother country.”
Rashidi’s research focuses on black people in Asia and the Middle East. To this end, he has traveled to Syria, Jordan, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and a litany of other countries. “Israel,” explained Rashidi, “Is the only country I haven’t visited—for political reasons.”
Denial by Local Officials
At the start of each visit, Rashidi was invariably told: “There are no black people here.” Undaunted, he headed straight to the national museum. Almost without exception, he found artwork—often centuries old—depicting people with unmistakably black (Africoid, in archeological terms) features. Then, traveling the countryside, to remote and inaccessible areas seldom frequented by tourists—he found black people. The pattern repeated itself in nearly every country he visited.
Beyond his extensive travels throughout Asia, Rashidi has visited Africa 20 times. “Wherever I go, I meet Africans who are literally dying to leave Africa,” he said. Twenty-five hundred people line up at the [U.S.] embassy in Ethiopia each day. This is because things are so bad. They are the new boat people.”
The implication is that such was not always the case. As Ivan Van Sertima (with whom Rashidi co-authored African Presence in Early Asia) wrote in They Came Before Columbus, there was a time when Africans were leaving Africa because—as the ruling power—they had the wealth, resources, and naval capability to explore what was then uncharted territory.
Rashidi launched into his slide presentation. It is a small sampling of the thousands of slides of artwork from museums across Asia and the Middle East he has painstakingly collected through decades of research. There are black natives of the Andaman Islands, whose inner radar, said Rashidi, allowed them to flee just before the tsunami; an African nobleman from Laos; a 2,000 year-old bust of a Syrian African nobleman; and Antara the Lion. All have clearly Africoid features.
Then there is the tomb of Bilal (RA).
African Presence in Early Islam
“Bilal [RA],” Rashidi told the predominantly black, non-Muslim audience, “had an Ethiopian mother. He was one of Muhammad’s [PBUH] closest companions. His tomb was found in Syria.”
“There was an African presence throughout early Islam,” said Rashidi. “Ishmael [AS] was a black man, as was the grandfather of Prophet Muhammad [PBUH]. A well known saying of the Prophet is: ‘He who brings an Ethiopian man or woman into Islam, brings his house blessings.’”
Rashidi described a mural he’d observed at the Pantheon (burial site of Rousseau, Voltaire, Marat, Victor Hugo, and other notables) in Paris: “It is a painting of a very handsome black man. This is an African crusader.”
Other slides depict not artwork, but photographs of indigenous black people across Asia and the Middle East, which Rashidi has collected in the course of exhaustive field work: photographs of a black Saudi cabinet member, who held the position in 1954; black men of Kuwait’s Sabah family; and a black Iraqi.
Black Iraq
This last is perhaps the most astonishing. The black Iraqi is holding a submachine gun. This is not a U.S. soldier, Rashidi emphasized, but an African Iraqi.
“There was a population of Black captives in Southern Iraq, called the Zanji,” Rashidi explained. “They engaged in three major insurrections, with some success. Iraq has a 10 - 15 % African population in the South, but you don’t see them on TV,” he told the mesmerized audience.
At this point, Rashidi could have seized the occasion to bash Arabs/Muslims. But, he uttered barely a word on the Arab identity of the slavers. I wondered if this was due to a consciousness of a common oppressor, who today subjugated Arabs and Africans alike. Or was it perhaps in recognition of the efforts of the young Muslim graduate student, Sharron Muhammad, who’d worked hard to organize the Howard lecture?
Whatever the case, I was struck by the stark contrast between the attitude of this strong afrocentric brutha, actively engaged in uplifting his people, and that of the “Free Darfur” movement—Zionists who contributed nothing to black liberation, but were quick to spoon-feed black people news of their Arab “enemy,” feigning common ground with black people, while both blacks and Arabs continued to suffer and die disproportionately under the Zionist/capitalist/imperialist agenda.
Rashidi’s next few slides depicted women: “An Israeli sister” wearing hijab (“She looks very African”); an African-Palestinian woman, who attended Howard University (“The Black Panther Party was established among Palestinians”); and a group of African Turkish women. [All quotes describing Rashidi’s slides are his—editor]
Rashidi, who displays few pictures of himself, appears with the latter group. “These are African women of Southwest Turkey,” he explained. “Their husbands are dead, and they are discriminated against.”
There are so few blacks in Turkey, he continued, that these women had never seen a black man other than one from the Sudan or Chad. “I knew it was time to leave when one of the ladies started stroking my arm, and telling me I reminded her of her late husband,” he quipped.
There is a painting of black slaves standing in a line behind their Ottomon regent (“The Ottoman Empire had many blacks, but this is not acknowledged”); and a bust of an African-Afghan (“probably destroyed by the Taliban”). I longed to ask the scholar the reason for his latter supposition.
Indus Valley—A Great Black Civilization
Then there is the figurine of a black woman from the Indus Valley (“We know she is a sista--from the hand on the hip” joked Rashidi); and a painting of a black woman with long braided hair pinned up in a bun.
Amazingly, museum officials tried to convince Rashidi that the beaded appearance of the woman’s hair in the latter painting was not African hair in a braid, but “snails” which crawled on to the woman’s head!
“I am a very patient person,” said Rashidi, “So I spent the next 48 hours reclining under the same type of tree she was under, in the very same area, and no snails crawled on to my head.”
Rashidi’s main research interest is India. “In Greater India, more than a thousand years before the foundations of Greece and Rome, proud and industrious Black men and women known as Dravidians erected a powerful civilization....the Indus Valley civilization--India's earliest high-culture, with major cities spread out along the course of the Indus River,” says a handout accompanying the lecture. “The Indus Valley civilization was at its height from about 2200 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E.”
I thought back to discussions of the Indus Valley civilization in my high school world history classes. As in the treatment of Ancient Egypt, “they schools” somehow managed to overlook the minor detail that the Indus Valley civilization was a black civilization. But, they did not mind discussing blacks and slavery, slavery and blacks, I mused.
“The decline and fall of the Indus Valley civilization has been linked to several factors, the most important of which were the increasingly frequent incursions of the White people known in history as Aryans—violent Indo-European tribes initially from central Eurasia and later Iran,” Rashidi’s handout continued.
Oppression of Dalits
As the lecture reached its peak, Rashidi hit upon the major focus of his research: Dalits, or “untouchables” in India. Dalits—who are black—“are victims of Hinduism,” he explained. They are literally treated as untouchable—in other words, unclean. Even the shadow of a Dalit is believed to be polluted, and Dalits must announce themselves by beating drums or making loud noises, to allow others to avoid them. They live under apartheid-like conditions.
Then, Rashidi offered a startling statistic: Three hundred million people are Dalits in India. The significance of this? “This means there may be more black people in India than there are in Africa.”
Rashidi is a powerhouse of knowledge, dropping facts at lightening speed.
As the lecture wrapped up, he showed slides of a black Brahmin (“Very unusual”), and an early depiction of a black Krishna (“Initial depictions of Krishna were always black”), before moving on to speak briefly of his travels to the far east.
The Far East
Rashidi had no desire to visit China, and said he traveled there only for the completeness of his research. Predictably, he was informed by Chinese officials: “There have never been black people in China.” Rashidi had difficulty traveling around China, and, for once, did not encounter black people. However, in the course of his research, he found that one of China’s earliest dynasties, the Shang, were said to have “black and oily skin.”
In Japan, he found proverbs with references to African roots (“For a samurai to be brave, he must have a bit of black blood”); in Angkor Tom, Cambodia, he found bas reliefs depicting black people (shown on the cover of his book, Africans in Early Asia); in Central Vietnam, he discovered an entire living population of black people; and everywhere in the far east, he found black Buddhas (“All early depictions of Buddhas were black, and this did not change until much later”).
“Wherever there is humanity, you find black people,” said Rashidi, concluding the lecture. “I want all black people to embrace their African-ness. Why is this important for us? Because we are trying to become whole again. What you do for yourself, depends on what you think of yourself. And what you think of yourself depends on what you’ve been told.”
During Q&A, the question of Dalits came up again, as many audience members seemed shocked by what they’d heard. Elaborating, Rashidi told of a Dalit woman being paraded through the village naked, because she stole some vegetables to feed her family, and of a Dalit boy forced to drink urine in punishment for some very minor infraction.
“There is an affirmative action policy in India,” said Rashidi. A Dalit headed India’s Supreme Court for a time; another was President of India. The appointment of these token black people, like the appointment of Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice to high positions in the U.S., evidently had little impact on the condition of the majority of their people. Clearly U.S. foreign policy makers—in their embrace of the Hindu-dominated Indian government as a foremost U.S. ally—were unfazed by the apartheid-like conditions experienced by 300 million black people.
Reflections
The lecture was the most thought-provoking I’d attended in recent memory. Afterwards, I greeted Baba Rashidi with “As-salaam alaikom” and extended him my solidarity as a Pakistani and a Muslim. I told him that were it not for his book, I, like most Pakistanis, would be woefully ignorant of the African contribution to our subcontinent, and that the incredible history he’d presented was completely absent from schools across Pakistan and India. His lecture, coupled with my reading of New Trend coverage of the Dalit struggle greatly added to my awareness of the specter of racism and classism plaguing the Indian Subcontinent. The lecture brought me to the realization, that Bollywood’s (Indian cinema’s) acute racism closely paralleled that of Hollywood. Both popularized negative and de-humanizing stereotypes of black people, targeting them for genocide. Remarkably, Indian cinema is hugely popular in West Africa.
Like many Indo-Pak households, my childhood home featured Indian movies blaring in the background every evening. Although the sexism of Indian cinema sickened me even then, its racial intonations initially escaped me. Most of the movies featured Milky White Indian Hero and Milky White Indian Heroine, frolicking through gardens and fields in their glorious courtship dance--paragons of goodness and morality. Adivasis—a major black Indian ethnic group—were, almost without exception, depicted as savages, drumming and dancing around an open fire in remote areas far from “civilization,” encountered by Milky White Indian Hero only when he came to rescue Milky White Indian Heroine from their evil clutches. Dark-skinned actors were frequently cast as villains of various sorts, usually bent on raping the Milky White Indian Heroine. In addition to his work with Dalits, Rashidi worked closely with Adivasis, and he listened with interest as I mentioned this to him.
As I left the program, I started thinking how I would explain the relevance of the African presence in early Asia to Muslims. I knew a good many brothers and sisters would try to convince me that racism is an American problem; that Muslims don’t think along racial lines; that in Islam, the sole relevance of skin color is “so that ye may know one another;” and that one is judged solely on taqwa (level of Allah-consciousness). They would try to convince me that it is a waste of time to ponder the question of who settled where and when, and that these things were in the past.
The Pakistani sister who secures her coach bag walking through the garage because “a black man may be lurking there;” the Arab/Indian/Pakistani man looking for an arranged marriage whose stated criteria is “anyone but a black woman;” the Nigerian parents who teach their son or daughter not to hang with African-Americans, because “they no good”—all these, as well as others afflicted by more subtle and subconscious racial notions, reveal that racism has penetrated our oh-so-pious Muslim consciousness, whether we acknowledge it or not.
Racism is cemented by a myth which refuses to acknowledge the immense and positive contributions of powerful African civilizations throughout history, insisting that black people be viewed only in the context of slavery and its aftermath. As Baba Rashidi stated in his closing remarks, “The people of Sumer lost their history, so they died.” For Muslims to maintain the myth is to assist in the oppression and cultural genocide of black people. A Muslim, by definition, bears witness to the truth, even that truth which is discomfiting.
For more information on the Dalit struggle, Africans in early Asia, and related topics, visit Runoko Rashidi’s website:
http://cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Saddam: Demon or Demonized?
The psychologists in my extended family tell me that black and white thinking--the idea that something or someone is all good or all bad--is characteristic of (a) children; (b) people with certain psychiatric disorders (Borderline Personality Disorder, for example). It seems to me that demonizing a person is a classic example of black and white thinking. With the Ayatollah long dead, and Bin Laden out of reach, Saddam Hussein was the most recent to be demonized. Clearly, the picture painted was necessary to fuel the illegal U.S. war. Now that he is dead, it may be a good time to examine the extent of the reality behind the Saddam-Demon. Here is one website--evidently censored by Google and Google-News and restored only after massive reader protest--which challenges the conventional wisdom:
http://uruknet.info
http://uruknet.info
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Free Imam Jamil—An Evening at Masjid Al-Islam
He is one of America’s best and brightest orators. He is a nationally known and respected religious leader. He rid entire inner city neighborhoods of drugs, encouraged the establishment of small businesses, and established mentoring programs for black youth. For his efforts, he is currently serving a life term in Georgia State Prison. His name is Jamil Al-Amin.
Jamil Al-Amin was convicted for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy after a trial in which very significant exculpatory evidence was never presented. The reason for this, given by some Al-Amin supporters, is that his attorneys were not paid, and hence plea bargained with the prosecution. The neglected exculpatory evidence includes: 1) the absence of wounds on Al-Amin’s body when he was taken into custody (although the deputy involved in the incident which led to Al-Amin’s imprisonment clearly stated that the suspect was shot and bleeding); 2) a confession for the shooting of the deputy by another man, Otis Jackson; 3) ballistic evidence showing that the deadly shots were not fired by any weapon which could be associated with Al-Amin.
A habeas corpus hearing determines whether a person is serving a lawful sentence and/or whether he or she should be released from custody (Blackstone). It is viewed as an opportunity for the defense to convince the court that previously suppressed or unknown evidence warrants a prisoner’s release. In Al-Amin’s case, the prosecution has repeatedly requested postponements of this hearing, perhaps indicating the strength of the unpresented evidence. The hearing is currently scheduled for February 27, 2007.
For an excellent background article on the case, see:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020318/thelwell
On December 30, I attended a fundraiser for Imam Jamil Al-Amin at Masjid Al-Islam. The masjid stands proudly at the corner of Benning Road and C Street in Southeast DC, two blocks from the subway, in a poor black residential area, a far cry from the exclusive suburban mosques hidden away in the countryside, away from bus lines and poor people. I could imagine El-Hajj Malik Shabazz preaching at Masjid Al-Islam. The AmeriKKKan flag, found at the entrance of many U.S. masajid today, was nowhere to be found.
Inside, Imam Abdul Alim Musa was scheduled to lecture—but not before he personally served dinner to the men who were there to hear about the Jamil Al-Amin case. Imam Musa, for some reason, had determined that he—and only he—would serve food to the men. The result was a long line of hungry bruthas—perhaps an exercise in sabr? Just yards away, across the prayer hall, two sisters served food to the women. I found Imam Musa’s wife, and introduced myself. She greeted me with a warm hug and welcomed me. I was seated with three young women--Amatullah, Tazkiya, and Hajure. As we talked, I realized how politically astute they were. Tazkiya, a college student, had spoken in public forums on Imam Jamil’s case. Two of the sisters were either readers or contributors to New Trend (Muslim e-journal). Masjid Al-Islam clearly did not limit its women to the baking committee.
Finally Imam Musa began his presentation. A tall, built brother with dark skin, graying beard, and just the hint of a stoop that betrayed his position as a veteran in the Islamic movement, he looked distinguished in all black as he took the podium. He spoke comfortably without notes, his speech articulate and sprinkled with wicked humor.
“What makes Imam Jamil so special?” he asked the audience.
“He is the only one on the COINTELPRO list who’s still alive,” he said, referring to the U.S. government’s counterintelligence program, which used highly questionable means to target Black, Native American, and other activists during the 1960s and 1970s. “And he was the only non-immigrant imam on the Majlis-e-Shura [of North America.] The immigrant imams on the Shura Council, they couldn’t forecast things like Imam Jamil.”
“The big crews have not helped,” Imam Musa continued. He’d asked Muzammil Siddiqui and others for support for Imam Jamil—to no avail. Then he’d suggested if they didn’t want to help directly, they could just give him a letter of support for Imam Jamil—again to no avail.
I was aghast. The very Shura Council of which Imam Jamil was a member up until his arrest, refused to support him! What happened to the “Muslims are part of one body; if one part hurts, the rest feels the pain” popularly spouted at ISNA conventions and elsewhere?
“All the big fundraisers, they done sold out” said Imam Musa, shaking his head. “We Americans, they say, we going to stand up for America.”
“Remember when they kicked in the doors in Virginia, tore through their homes, with the wives sitting there with no hijab on?” said Imam Musa, referring to the March 20, 2002 FBI raids on the homes and offices of officials connected to IIIT, SAAR, WAMY, Safa Trust and other pro-government Muslim organizations. “Well, they [the Muslim leaders] stayed mad for two days. After that, it was business as usual.”
Imam Musa started fundraising. The atmosphere was solemn, quite unlike other fundraisers I’d experienced in the past, perhaps in the realization that the collective efforts of the community could determine whether a beloved imam-political prisoner would continue to suffer in jail.
Imam Musa teased and cajoled the congregation into emptying their pockets. During a lull in the fundraising, he told the audience, “Yeah I know, if you or I donate $50, we may not eat for a week. Them that got it, ain’t givin’ it. So, we gotta do this for our brutha.”
The resident Muslim women’s organization, An-Nisa of Masjid Al-Islam, donated $250, which they’d worked hard to raise, encouraging others in the audience to follow suit. Masjid Al-Islam’s working class Muslims, slowly but surely donated their hard earned dollars to Imam Jamil’s case. The imam himself donated a large bundle of bills, all one dollar bills, he jokingly assured the congregation.
The fundraising came to an end, and Imam Musa talked in a somber tone about Al-Amin’s condition. The Atlanta imam had already been imprisoned for six-and-a-half years; serious psychological changes occurred in a prisoner after his sixth or seventh year, said Imam Musa. The prisoner’s mind gets used to the concrete and the bars.
“Meaning he may be broken, disoriented, his spirit destroyed” I thought to myself. No wonder Islam talked extensively about freeing the slave, the modern day versions of whom, off course, fill America’s jails.
“That is why it is so important we get him out. We need him out here,” said Imam Musa.
During Q&A, a non-Muslim progressive, one of the few whites in the audience, brought up the important point that the very Habeas Corpus rights, which Imam Jamil had invoked as a legal defense, were under attack by the Bush regime.
Had any lawyers expressed an interest in representing the imam pro-bono, I asked. Imam Musa said they had not, running scared after the Lynne Stewart witchhunt.
The shooting in which Imam Jamil was railroaded and the Saddam execution both occurred on the eves of Eid, the former in 2000, the latter in 2006, pointed out a sagacious Caucasian brother. Subjecting the Muslim community to such acts on a major Muslim holiday exhibited the arrogant character of Dajjal.
I left the event inspired that this independent mosque, with its fiery leader, not only refused to celebrate the Eid on the incorrect date, despite the Saudi dictate, but used the eve of the holiday to bring to light the victimization of an innocent Muslim imam. And the next morning, the congregation would again come together for an Eid prayer, held according to sunnah. This, it seemed to me, was the true spirit of the Eid!
Further donations for Imam Jamil’s defense are badly needed. Checks may be made out to the Masjid (with "Imam Jamil fund" noted on the memo line) and mailed to:
Masjid Al-Islam
4603 Benning Road, SE
Washington, DC 20019
For updates on the case, and what you can do to help:
http://myspace.com/freetheimam
Jamil Al-Amin was convicted for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy after a trial in which very significant exculpatory evidence was never presented. The reason for this, given by some Al-Amin supporters, is that his attorneys were not paid, and hence plea bargained with the prosecution. The neglected exculpatory evidence includes: 1) the absence of wounds on Al-Amin’s body when he was taken into custody (although the deputy involved in the incident which led to Al-Amin’s imprisonment clearly stated that the suspect was shot and bleeding); 2) a confession for the shooting of the deputy by another man, Otis Jackson; 3) ballistic evidence showing that the deadly shots were not fired by any weapon which could be associated with Al-Amin.
A habeas corpus hearing determines whether a person is serving a lawful sentence and/or whether he or she should be released from custody (Blackstone). It is viewed as an opportunity for the defense to convince the court that previously suppressed or unknown evidence warrants a prisoner’s release. In Al-Amin’s case, the prosecution has repeatedly requested postponements of this hearing, perhaps indicating the strength of the unpresented evidence. The hearing is currently scheduled for February 27, 2007.
For an excellent background article on the case, see:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020318/thelwell
On December 30, I attended a fundraiser for Imam Jamil Al-Amin at Masjid Al-Islam. The masjid stands proudly at the corner of Benning Road and C Street in Southeast DC, two blocks from the subway, in a poor black residential area, a far cry from the exclusive suburban mosques hidden away in the countryside, away from bus lines and poor people. I could imagine El-Hajj Malik Shabazz preaching at Masjid Al-Islam. The AmeriKKKan flag, found at the entrance of many U.S. masajid today, was nowhere to be found.
Inside, Imam Abdul Alim Musa was scheduled to lecture—but not before he personally served dinner to the men who were there to hear about the Jamil Al-Amin case. Imam Musa, for some reason, had determined that he—and only he—would serve food to the men. The result was a long line of hungry bruthas—perhaps an exercise in sabr? Just yards away, across the prayer hall, two sisters served food to the women. I found Imam Musa’s wife, and introduced myself. She greeted me with a warm hug and welcomed me. I was seated with three young women--Amatullah, Tazkiya, and Hajure. As we talked, I realized how politically astute they were. Tazkiya, a college student, had spoken in public forums on Imam Jamil’s case. Two of the sisters were either readers or contributors to New Trend (Muslim e-journal). Masjid Al-Islam clearly did not limit its women to the baking committee.
Finally Imam Musa began his presentation. A tall, built brother with dark skin, graying beard, and just the hint of a stoop that betrayed his position as a veteran in the Islamic movement, he looked distinguished in all black as he took the podium. He spoke comfortably without notes, his speech articulate and sprinkled with wicked humor.
“What makes Imam Jamil so special?” he asked the audience.
“He is the only one on the COINTELPRO list who’s still alive,” he said, referring to the U.S. government’s counterintelligence program, which used highly questionable means to target Black, Native American, and other activists during the 1960s and 1970s. “And he was the only non-immigrant imam on the Majlis-e-Shura [of North America.] The immigrant imams on the Shura Council, they couldn’t forecast things like Imam Jamil.”
“The big crews have not helped,” Imam Musa continued. He’d asked Muzammil Siddiqui and others for support for Imam Jamil—to no avail. Then he’d suggested if they didn’t want to help directly, they could just give him a letter of support for Imam Jamil—again to no avail.
I was aghast. The very Shura Council of which Imam Jamil was a member up until his arrest, refused to support him! What happened to the “Muslims are part of one body; if one part hurts, the rest feels the pain” popularly spouted at ISNA conventions and elsewhere?
“All the big fundraisers, they done sold out” said Imam Musa, shaking his head. “We Americans, they say, we going to stand up for America.”
“Remember when they kicked in the doors in Virginia, tore through their homes, with the wives sitting there with no hijab on?” said Imam Musa, referring to the March 20, 2002 FBI raids on the homes and offices of officials connected to IIIT, SAAR, WAMY, Safa Trust and other pro-government Muslim organizations. “Well, they [the Muslim leaders] stayed mad for two days. After that, it was business as usual.”
Imam Musa started fundraising. The atmosphere was solemn, quite unlike other fundraisers I’d experienced in the past, perhaps in the realization that the collective efforts of the community could determine whether a beloved imam-political prisoner would continue to suffer in jail.
Imam Musa teased and cajoled the congregation into emptying their pockets. During a lull in the fundraising, he told the audience, “Yeah I know, if you or I donate $50, we may not eat for a week. Them that got it, ain’t givin’ it. So, we gotta do this for our brutha.”
The resident Muslim women’s organization, An-Nisa of Masjid Al-Islam, donated $250, which they’d worked hard to raise, encouraging others in the audience to follow suit. Masjid Al-Islam’s working class Muslims, slowly but surely donated their hard earned dollars to Imam Jamil’s case. The imam himself donated a large bundle of bills, all one dollar bills, he jokingly assured the congregation.
The fundraising came to an end, and Imam Musa talked in a somber tone about Al-Amin’s condition. The Atlanta imam had already been imprisoned for six-and-a-half years; serious psychological changes occurred in a prisoner after his sixth or seventh year, said Imam Musa. The prisoner’s mind gets used to the concrete and the bars.
“Meaning he may be broken, disoriented, his spirit destroyed” I thought to myself. No wonder Islam talked extensively about freeing the slave, the modern day versions of whom, off course, fill America’s jails.
“That is why it is so important we get him out. We need him out here,” said Imam Musa.
During Q&A, a non-Muslim progressive, one of the few whites in the audience, brought up the important point that the very Habeas Corpus rights, which Imam Jamil had invoked as a legal defense, were under attack by the Bush regime.
Had any lawyers expressed an interest in representing the imam pro-bono, I asked. Imam Musa said they had not, running scared after the Lynne Stewart witchhunt.
The shooting in which Imam Jamil was railroaded and the Saddam execution both occurred on the eves of Eid, the former in 2000, the latter in 2006, pointed out a sagacious Caucasian brother. Subjecting the Muslim community to such acts on a major Muslim holiday exhibited the arrogant character of Dajjal.
I left the event inspired that this independent mosque, with its fiery leader, not only refused to celebrate the Eid on the incorrect date, despite the Saudi dictate, but used the eve of the holiday to bring to light the victimization of an innocent Muslim imam. And the next morning, the congregation would again come together for an Eid prayer, held according to sunnah. This, it seemed to me, was the true spirit of the Eid!
Further donations for Imam Jamil’s defense are badly needed. Checks may be made out to the Masjid (with "Imam Jamil fund" noted on the memo line) and mailed to:
Masjid Al-Islam
4603 Benning Road, SE
Washington, DC 20019
For updates on the case, and what you can do to help:
http://myspace.com/freetheimam
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Saddam--U.S. Stooge?
Muslim, progressive, and Zionist agreement on an issue should be an occasion for raised eyebrows. The recent execution of President Saddam Hussein and the celebrations of a “dictator meeting his just deserts” were such an occasion. And the Zionist media’s characterization of the Iraqi President as American stooge was quickly adapted and parroted by Muslims and progressives. Cozy.
The question is: How does one become an American stooge?
The question is: How does one become an American stooge?
- By defying U.S./U.N. sanctions for a decade, ensuring decent healthcare, education, electricity, and clean water for the Iraqi people against overwhelming odds for that hellish period which we all seem to have forgotten?
- By providing free housing to the burgeoning population of Palestinian refugees then in Iraq?
- By honoring Palestinian freedom fighters with streets named in their remembrance?
- By helping widows and orphans living in the squalor of Palestinian refugee camps more than any other Arab ruler?
- By refusing to accept offers of political asylum, and remaining in Iraq after the invasion, to fight the imperialists to the death?
There is no shortage of stooges in the Muslim world, but I dare say Saddam, who died saying kalima, was not one of them. I am amazed and saddened that Muslims/progressives have adapted the corporate media refrain on Saddam: “He was America’s man.” Even after the destruction of Iraq, Muslims are regurgitating the official line of the party complicit in its destruction. We have, once again, failed to recognize wartime propaganda. Goebbels—no Wolfowitz—would be proud.
I do not doubt that Saddam made a grievous error in allowing himself to be used by the imperialists, during the Iraq-Iran war—an error for which, he will no doubt answer to Allah (AWJ). And yet, which national leader—Muslim or non—has not erred in their political life? The current discourse almost makes one believe that Saddam's reign ended with the Iran-Iraq war, and that he was somehow incapacitated from participation on the world stage thereafter. Accordingly, the man is tried in the realm of our imaginations only for actions he took decades ago. And the entire sanctions period has vanished from our minds.
The claim that Saddam was a U.S. stooge brings to mind similar Western claims of "blowback." The idea seems to be that any actions taken by Muslims, for good or for ill, cannot occur without the stewardship of the West—an arrogant premise to say the least. Such views, when embraced by Muslims, are symptomatic of a self-hatred, perhaps the residual effect of our colonial heritage, which has convinced us that we are incapable of any endeavor without the help of Gora Sahib (the Great White Master).
Monday, January 1, 2007
Eid al-Adha
I visited the Islamic Center in Washington, DC on Dec 30, Saudi-mandated Eid. The Center, located on Massachusetts Avenue in the Embassy District, is unusual in that its constituency includes a great many diplomats, and others affiliated with NGOs and government agencies. The police presence was much more muted than previously, with only an officer or two circulating about the courtyard and joking with administration members and other friends. Yet the iron bars surrounding the Center invoke a gated community. Symbolically, outside the iron gates of the Center where Washington’s most affluent pray, three beggars, toting small brown paper bags, waited to collect money.
After the prayer, I stood alongside the beggars, distributing fliers entitled "Boycott Major Supporters of Zionism.” Unlike New York, where I've conducted similar actions and encountered many more bleeding hearts trying to help out a begga woman (they assume that's what I'm doing--why else would a sista in her right mind be standing in front of a mosque distributing pieces of paper), only one person--an Arab woman who did not understand English--came to offer me charity. I thanked her anyway, and indicated that I was not in need. The overall mood of the worshippers seemed somewhat subdued, with less bantering and laughter than observed at many Eid gatherings. Oddly, although there appeared to be no prohibition on leafleting, no one else distributed anything--not even the usual "Eid bazaar" or “Eid picnic” literature, and certainly nothing on the Eid-day execution of the President of an independent sovereign Arab nation, under the auspices of the U.S. occupying power. Most of the worshippers accepted the fliers, but rejection came primarily at the hands of Arab men in expensive-looking djalabias and Pakistani men in voguish suits.
An Afrikan brother requested extra copies of the flier. An Iranian brother donated $20 towards its distribution. The flier displays the logos of various businesses (e.g., McDonalds, Disney, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks) with strong ties to Israel. A Pakistani brother asked if the businesses were Israeli. I told him, "No, but they might as well be. For example, the CEO of McDonald's is an honorary director of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce, and the Chairman of Starbucks has received awards for his services to Israel." In all, I handed out 240 "Boycott Israel" fliers to the Eid gathering.
After the prayer, I stood alongside the beggars, distributing fliers entitled "Boycott Major Supporters of Zionism.” Unlike New York, where I've conducted similar actions and encountered many more bleeding hearts trying to help out a begga woman (they assume that's what I'm doing--why else would a sista in her right mind be standing in front of a mosque distributing pieces of paper), only one person--an Arab woman who did not understand English--came to offer me charity. I thanked her anyway, and indicated that I was not in need. The overall mood of the worshippers seemed somewhat subdued, with less bantering and laughter than observed at many Eid gatherings. Oddly, although there appeared to be no prohibition on leafleting, no one else distributed anything--not even the usual "Eid bazaar" or “Eid picnic” literature, and certainly nothing on the Eid-day execution of the President of an independent sovereign Arab nation, under the auspices of the U.S. occupying power. Most of the worshippers accepted the fliers, but rejection came primarily at the hands of Arab men in expensive-looking djalabias and Pakistani men in voguish suits.
An Afrikan brother requested extra copies of the flier. An Iranian brother donated $20 towards its distribution. The flier displays the logos of various businesses (e.g., McDonalds, Disney, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks) with strong ties to Israel. A Pakistani brother asked if the businesses were Israeli. I told him, "No, but they might as well be. For example, the CEO of McDonald's is an honorary director of the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce, and the Chairman of Starbucks has received awards for his services to Israel." In all, I handed out 240 "Boycott Israel" fliers to the Eid gathering.
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