Thoughts of Leonard Peltier on Eid

By Nadrat Siddique

In addition to being Eid ul-Adha, September 12 is Leonard Peltier’s 72nd birthday. Even though he’s not a Muslim, he made an Abraham-esque sacrifice for the oppressed Lakota (Sioux) people in 1975. His sacrifice stems from his participation in the American Indian Movement (AIM) camp on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Peltier is Anishinabe (Ojibway), and not of the Lakota tribe or Pine Ridge. Hence his actions could be considered rather self-less and internationalist (or at least intertribal). AIM was an national organization fighting for the rights of indigenous people throughout North America. In this context, it came up against both corporate greed and the corrupt local tribal councils which did the dirty work of the corporations. Like many movements which fight for self-determination, human rights, and against the seizure of their peoples’ resources by U.S. and European multinational corporations, AIM was quickly labeled a “terrorist” organization by the authorities.

The camp on Pine Ridge was established to protect the local population from the reign of terror being enacted on them by the puppet tribal council of Dick Wilson. (Indian reservations typically have neither city council nor mayor; instead tribal chair and tribal council are the nearest equivalent). As a Pakistani, I would compare Dick Wilson’s reign of terror to that conducted by the Pakistan Army in Waziristan. As in Waziristan, many Pine Ridge residents were driven out of the area, while others lived in daily fear of the regime over an extended period of time. Many of Dick Wilson’s opponents wound up dead, and it was believed they were murdered by Wilson’s goon squad. Day-to-day life was totally disrupted in Pine Ridge (as was life in Waziristan by the Pakistan army incursions), hence AIM was called in to protect the local people.

It was only as a result of his presence on Pine Ridge that Peltier could be charged with the murder of two FBI agents--a crime which all the evidence, including undisputable ballistic evidence, shows he did not commit. And so Peltier, nearing 40 years of incarceration, continues to languish in an American prison.

This Eid Day, please pray for Peltier, and for all other victims of the American system of Injustice.

© 2016 By Nadrat Siddique

The Passing of a Community Mother—Muneera Afifa

By Nadrat Siddique

May 20, 2016

Burtonsville, MD

Today I attended the janaza of a very old and dear friend, Muneera Afifa. Idara-e-Jaferia (mosque) very kindly hosted the services. Immediately after juma’ah prayers, the janaza (funeral) prayer was held. The scene at Idara resembled a reunion of Jamaat al-Muslimeen members, former members, and associates. I ran across Sr. Yasmine Abdul-Jalil; Sr. Fatimah Abdullah and Sr. Hamdiyah, both from Philadelphia; Sr. Amatullah; Sr. Safiyyah Abdullah; and Sr. Sumayah Nahidian and her daughter. Then there was Sr. Najah; Sr. Zainab Kareem; and Zainab’s son Natheer Kareem. There were others who looked familiar but whom I could not immediately place. Br. Mauri Saalakhan of the Aafia Foundation had cancelled a speaking engagement in New Jersey to be there. Br. Saifuddin Waliullah of Masjid Al-Islam and Br. Khalid Griggs from North Carolina were there. Jamaat al-Muslimeen Ameer Dr. Kaukab Siddique, a long-time friend of Muneera, was not physically present as he had a juma’ah khutbah to deliver at Masjid Jamaat al-Muslimeen in Baltimore, but had sent condolences with his daughter (this writer).

We met, wept, and commiserated with each other, and then left in a miles long funeral procession for the cemetery. The interment was held at the Maryland National Memorial Park in Laurel, MD, where Idara-e-Jaferia holds a section specifically for Muslim burials.

Muneera was a leading member of the DC chapter of Jamaat al-Muslimeen c.1978 – 1985. I remembered her being at every Jamaat meeting, along with her close friend Yasmine Abdul-Jalil, whom she knew from the Islamic Party. Yasmine—along with her then husband, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil—hosted many of the meetings in their Silver Spring home. She had given Muneera shahada, and the bond between them was tight.

Muneera was lively, outspoken, and down-to-earth, attending Jamaat al-Muslimeen meetings with her three small children, Sulaiman, Nafeesa, and Atiya, whom she did not hesitate to breast-feed during the meetings. The organization’s platform included racial and gender equality; permissibility of women’s leadership over men (contingent on their respective taqwa-levels); anti-imperialism; and internationalism. Muneera encompassed all of these tenets. A Black Washington DC, native, she appeared regularly at Jamaat al-Muslimeen protests at the Egyptian Embassy (against the regime of Hosni Mubarak, known for his torture of political opponents); at marches through poverty-ridden DC projects (carrying the revolutionary message of Islam to local communities); at pickets of the Saudi Embassy (calling for an end to the monarchy there); and at Jamaat al-Muslimeen local and national conferences, which relied heavily on her organizing skills.

“Patience and perseverance,” qualities of a Muslim mentioned throughout the Qur’an, were regularly mentioned at DC Jamaat meetings. And Muneera exemplified these traits, despite going through many trials and tribulations at various points in her life.

To me, she was a tower of strength, unflinching in faith. It was the era before political correctness, and I was then attending Annandale High School, a mostly White school in affluent Fairfax County (just outside Washington, DC). There were no other evidently practicing Muslims at Annandale High at the time, and I met major harassment for my adaption of the hijab. At the time, hijab was not the norm in my family—my mother wore it nominally; my sister, my aunt, and my grandmother wore it not at all—and support for my decision to publicly identify as a Muslim was nowhere to be found. As daily persecution against me at Annandale High, including physical attacks by ignorant, corporate-media informed youth, increased, I looked to Muneera. She gave me unconditional support for the path I had chosen, and an affirmation far beyond that of a mother. Somehow, she found the time and energy to be there for me, even while being the young mother of three small children. And- as I heard repeatedly at the janaza, I was not the only one for whom she did this. As a fellow janaza attendee told me, Muneera was the mother to an entire community.

As I stood in the cemetery thinking of the pivotal role Muneera had played during my teen years, and the selflessness with which she’d given of herself, tears rolled down my cheeks. The Iranian clergyman conducting the graveside ceremony went on at considerable length in Arabic—which most of the attendees clearly could not understand. He offered durood as-salaam to the Prophet Muhammad’s (SAW) family, including the twelve imams. Oddly, he could not remember or pronounce the name of Muneera’s father (Glover Collins), in his opening statement.

By this time, Muneera’s daughter Nafeesa and son Sulaiman were completely inside the (open) grave with their mother’s body. They adjusted and re-adjusted their mother’s body, until Muneera lay on her right, with head towards the ka’aba. (In an Islamic burial, the body is buried directly in the ground enshrouded in a white sheet, and no coffin is needed, other than perhaps for transport. Family members are encouraged to perform last rites themselves, rather than relying on an undertaker.)

Upon completing the task, Nafeesa emerged from the grave with shovel in hand, and asked the women to move forward, as they were to approach the grave first, to offer prayers, or to symbolically throw dirt on the body. A pile of dirt had been placed on a nearby cart by cemetery workers. After heaping several shovel-fulls of dirt over her mother’s body, she offered the shovel to the women watching. Several of the women, including the stylishly-dressed Fatimah Abdullah from Philadelphia, were grabbing up handfuls of dirt from the pile, and placing them in the grave. However, none stepped forward immediately to take the shovel from Nafeesa, perhaps because it was rather large and unwieldy. I stepped forward, and took it, placing several shovel-fulls of dirt over my beloved friend’s body, memories of the years in Jamaat al-Muslimeen with Muneera flooding my consciousness. I would have continued in my reverie, but Nafeesa reclaimed the shovel from me, and offered it to the other women, before turning it over to the men. The men then completed the job of covering the body with dirt.

Nafeesa was the heroine of the day. The burial ritual over, she stood before the crowd, speaking with grace, clarity, and without breaking down. She thanked the attendees for the outpouring of love shown her mother, and for their support of her and her family. I remembered Nafeesa as a small child, dressed by her mother in dark-colored hijab similar to the one she wore now. She had flowered into a poised, self-confident, and beautiful young woman. I knew that her mother would be proud of the manner in which she presided over this, most difficult of ceremonies.

Imam Khalid Griggs, of the Community Mosque of Winston-Salem, poignantly detailed his life-long friendship with Muneera. He mentioned how she would energize any Islamic project with which she was involved, and how it was hard for her to refrain from becoming involved any time she heard of positive Islamic work being done.

The last time I saw Muneera was at a gathering for Palestine (Quds Day) in Washington, DC. It was Ramadan and well into the fast, and everyone was feeling its effects. Traversing the crowd to get to me, Muneera greeted me with her characteristic loving embrace. From the time frame described by family members, she may have already seen the onset of the disease which ultimately took her life. But there she was, undaunted, by heat, fatigue, and hunger, a Black woman standing up for Palestine. May Allah forgive her sins and grant her Paradise.

© 2016 Nadrat Siddique

Letter to Dawn (Pakistani Daily Newspaper) on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui

March 26, 2016


The Editor

Dawn

Karachi, Pakistan

Dear Editor,

I am a Pakistani Muslim woman marathoner, living in the Washington, DC area. Since 2009, I have run 26 marathons in ten different states of the U.S. (A marathon, by definition, is 26.2 miles.) In at least five of these 26 competitions, I have qualified for the Boston Marathon. (The Boston marathon is an elite and exclusive race, for which one must first meet the rigorous qualifying standards set by the Boston Athletic Association in another marathon.)

On March 12, I ran the Washington DC Marathon to call attention to the plight of another Pakistani woman: Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.

Dr. Siddiqui holds a bioscience degree from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a PhD in neuroscience from Brandeis University. Although I have never met her, I can say with some certainty that she is highly intelligent, articulate, deeply Islamic, and cares about Muslim suffering in faraway lands. As such, she is a hero to me, as to many other Pakistani woman (and men).

March 31 will mark 13 years since Aafia was kidnapped from Karachi with evident collusion between the Musharraf regime and U.S. intelligence services operating on Pakistani soil. Her three minor children were captured along with her. Despite clear prohibitions on the imprisonment of children in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights—to which Pakistan is a signatory—two of Aafia’s children were imprisoned along with her. The third, an infant, appears to have been killed in the course of the rendition.

Running 26.2 miles without stopping is not easy. It can hurt. It can make one feel hopeless, very minute in the overall scheme of things. Many people never complete the race. Exhausted, they commence walking part way through.

There can be other complications like the one I had the night before the marathon. Due to some complication, the custom-made black and white “Free Dr. Aafia Siddiqui” tee shirt I had ordered to wear during the race did not arrive. So I took it upon myself to make one. The excitement of the race and painting the homemade “Free Dr Aafia” shirt kept me up the night before, and I slept only four hours. Around 20,000 people would be running the race, so parking near the starting line was out of the question. I got up before fajr, grabbed my gear, and boarded the Washington DC subway to the race start near the Washington Monument.

The race started at 7:30 AM sharp. As I ran up a steep hill near DC’s famed Dupont Circle, the lack of sleep caught up with me and my muscles ached. I wondered how I would complete the race. For some reason, as I ran along DC’s picturesque Southwest Waterfront, the picture of Aafia’s angelic face in hijab came clearly to my mind. I thought about the horrors she had endured. Aafia, mother of three, who loved children so much that her PhD thesis centered upon them—watching helplessly as her baby Suleman slipped from her arms and fell to the ground, his skull fractured, as Pakistani police roughly arrested the young mother. Innocent, sweet Aafia, with the face of a flower, repeatedly raped and tortured in a remote U.S. military base in Baghram, Afghanistan. What kind of sick bastards could do that to a Muslim woman? My physical pain melted away, to be replaced by psychic pain, and I ran faster, finishing the marathon in 3 hours, 57 minutes.

After five years of being held without charge, and denied even official recognition that she was a prisoner (her name did not appear in any prison, police, or military registry during this time), Aafia was officially handed over to U.S. authorities, and tried in a New York court. The trial was presided over by Judge Richard M. Berman, a Zionist who was clearly biased against Muslims. Not surprisingly, she was convicted and sentenced to 86 years in U.S. prison.

What is surprising—and indeed was the reason I felt compelled to run the Washington DC marathon in Aafia’s name—is that she remains in prison. She is in extremely poor health, has been denied proper medical attention, and can die in U.S. prison—without ever having seen her children and other family members.

The ordinarily vociferous feminist groups, quick to deplore the violations of women’s rights by “those horrible Talibans” have been completely silent on her case. In fact, it is noteworthy that feminists on both sides of the Atlantic, including those who embraced Malalai Yousafzai, have said not a word about Aafia and the very long range torture she endured. Similarly, the liberal U.S. media, such as the Daily Beast, Salon.com, and others, who are ordinarily extremely vigilant about the violations of Pakistani—and in general—Muslim women’s rights because they love us so much [sarcasm intended], have uttered not one word about Aafia.

The Pakistani government has taken no effective steps toward her release. “Israel,” when its citizens are captured, sends commandos to free them. The U.S. government, under President Jimmy Carter, sent a military mission to free American hostages then held by Iran. Other nations have interceded either militarily or diplomatically (eg, via prisoner exchange) when one of its citizens is wrongly held by a foreign government. General Musharraf, under whose reign Aafia was captured, is long gone, and largely discredited at least among some sectors. But- Pakistan, a nation headed by Muslim men—with Qur’an and hadith as their Guiding Light—continue to sit idly by while a Muslim woman is held captive, tortured, and raped for over a decade.

The Pakistani press, too, appear to have written her off.

Aafia is a political prisoner, being held not for any wrong doing, but for the crime of being a Muslim and in the wrong place at the wrong time. What is wrong with us, that we can’t stand up even in this most clear cut case of injustice?

As a Pakistani Muslim woman athlete, I urge the immediate release of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, and a cessation of illegal and unmandated (by the Pakistani populace) U.S. intelligence activities on Pakistani soil which lead to tragedies such Aafia’s.

Sincerely,

Nadrat Siddique

Maryland

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Juma'ah Reflections on Masaud Khan

I visited the Islamic Center of Maryland (Gaithersburg) for juma'ah prayers today. Political prisoner Masaud Khan and his mother, Elizabeth Khan attended here. She still visits time and again. I thought of them, as I stood distributing the New Trend (anti-imperialist Muslim newsmagazine), about how he, incarcerated as a young man, and now in his thirties, lost his youth to an incredibly unjust System. And- I thought about her, a mother, fighting desperately to get her son out of the clutches of that System.

In the last four weeks, I've visited four different masajid in the Baltimore-Washington area) for juma'ah. Three of the four masajid had political prisoner associations to them. That is, either a Muslim locked up on political (bogus) charges attends/ attended there, or the family of a political prisoner attends/ attended there. I realized what a tragic commentary this was on the state of affairs and suffering of the Muslim community: Many, many communities have been devastated by the targeting of political dissidents, or at least operate in fear. They dare not exercise basic First Amendment protected freedoms, not even in the House of Allah. Muslim-on-Muslim snitching is pumped as a solution to the "extremist problem," all speakers/ imams, other than government-approved ones, are excluded from most masajid; even imams on the government's "approved" list must sign agreements not to speak on certain topics, or to approach topics in ways objectionable to the authorities. While local and national government officials and candidates are welcomed into the mosque, dissident Muslim speakers are excluded. Literature from Democratic and Republican candidates for office is welcomed, while Islamic literature is frequently banned (or rules greatly impugning its distribution are enacted).

In the course of the FBI's "War on Terror," completely innocent men and women from communities across the U.S. have been locked up on the words of informants, or harassed and hounded by federal agents, often to justify intelligence budgets. All of this is meant to keep the public in fear of approaching "Muslim Hoard," which have replaced the "Reds Under the Beds," or to justify support for Israel and various dictators ruling Muslim lands.

Under such a climate, we have the choice of becoming apolitical, mindless drones, who question nothing, and swallow any nonsense directed at our people. Or we can speak, write, and go forth for that which we know to be just- at the peril of becoming political prisoners ourselves.

We then cannot afford to be silent. I encourage everyone to help the families of those unjustly detained; to write to Muslim political prisoners (as well as other political prisoners) so that they know they are not forgotten; to join a committee to free a political prisoner; and to educate others on the reality of political imprisonment in this country.