Category — Events

Imam Warith Dean Muhammad passed away earlier this week. He was the son of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. I just wanted to post a bit about him, taken from an article from Altmuslim.com:

Even though he was seen as the natural successor for leadership within the Nation of Islam, WD Mohammad became increasingly open about his rejection of his father’s teachings: the divinity of blacks, the divine origins of Nation founder WD Fard as “Savior Allah incarnate”, and the belief that whites were the Devil incarnate. While serving time in prison for concientious objection to the military draft, Mohammad studied the Qur’an and built up the courage to confront his father’s teachings, even as he was groomed to succeed him. Once released from prison, his rejoined the leadership of his father’s movement, all the while his doubts growing stronger.

His refusal to endorse the unorthodox teachings of the Nation, combined with his open confrontation of corruption within it, kept him in obscurity among other leaders of the group. It was not until ten years later, after the death of his father, that WD Mohammad was able to ascend to leadership and begin turning the movement towards the vision he had spent the last decade crafting. By 1977, he formally broke the Nation away from its original teachings and discarded the name, leaving it and its few remaining believers to Minister Louis Farrakhan, who runs a much smaller Nation to this day.

While WD Mohammad was determined to re-orient his organization towards orthodox Islam, he did so without rejecting the positive teachings that the Nation brought to that community, such as self-reliance and personal discipline. “[He] was able to do two remarkable things,” says Sulayman Nyang, a professor of African Studies at Howard University. “One [was] the re-Islamization of the movement; the second, the re-Americanization of the movement.” Under his leadership, Imam Mohammad’s community reached out to other faith groups, stressed civic engagement as a means of self-empowerment, and worked for economic self-sufficiency. By some accounts, the community under his influence grew to nearly one million people.

Imam Mohammad’s influence, however, was felt outside the African-American Muslim community as well. While some immigrant muslims were (and still are) unaware of what WD Muhammad gave to their community, his influence was most profoundly felt within Muslim leadership. As he reached out to predominantly immigrant Muslim organizations, he brought the lessons of nearly a half-century of organization and vision-making to the table. After his invocation to the US Senate in 1993, he led two more for President Bill Clinton. He shared a stage with Pope John Paul II and The Dalai Lama in 1999, addressing 100,000 people at the Vatican. In 2000, he had a public reconciliation with Louis Farrakhan, though that was seen as a sign of the Nation’s increasing subordination to the global, mainstream Islam Mohammed steered his community towards.

Read more.

There is an email going around from Azhar Usman, a Muslim comedian, that he wrote after he attended the funeral of Imam WD Muhammad and is being reposted on a lot of blogs. The entire email is under the cut.

© 2008 Azhar Usman

An Apology
Heartfelt reflections on the passing of a legendary Blackamerican Muslim leader

[Read more →]

This was all over the news yesterday:

Sudan questions British teacher over Islam insult

She was jailed because she named a teddy bear ‘Muhammad’?! The school officials say she was insulting the Prophet (pbuh) but Muhammad is a really common name. Besides, that was the name of one of the kids in class, the one the teacher and students named the stuffed animal after!

This is ridiculous. Could these people not make Islam into a joke? Pretty please?

On Wednesday, April 25th, the students at San Jose State did something a bit different in honor of Palestinian Awareness Week. Instead of scheduling a lecture to explain how life for a Palestinian is, they showed it.

Securing a section of campus, students from the club Students for Change staged a dramatization of a checkpoint, one in which many Palestinians must pass multiple times a day. Students played both soldiers Palestinians. The soldiers continuously pointed fake guns at the Palestinians and detained them by making them kneel down, tying them up and, at times, blindfolding them.

This dramatization went on for a few hours in middle of the school day, piquing the curiosity of many passing students and faculty alike.

Of course, a demonstration like this cannot go unanswered by those who believe such checkpoints are necessary. Protestors of the event wore custom made t-shirts that read “If I were a suicide bomber, you would be dead by now.”

Check out the article written in the Spartan Daily, San Jose State’s daily newspaper: Spartain Daily Article

College has always been an important venue in which activism thrives. Add that to the fact that activism has always been prevalent in the Bay Area, and you get an event like this. I have to admit, I thought it was pretty creative and, judging from the article, the multitude of pictures I viewed from the event, and from what I heard about it, it attracted a number of students and brought the issue of life of Palestinians and the oppression they face right to them, creating a lot more awareness than previously existed.

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I wrote this for the other site I manage for my committe, but figured I’d post it here too. My younger sister who still goes to San Jose State told me about it. I was looking at the number of pictures she took and it was crazy.

The protestors, the ones who wore the ill-worded t-shirts, apparently left after a short time because the students involved in the demonstration took to ignoring them after an initial discussion/debate.

After the event was over, SJSU’s administration came by to say that the club did not indicate the proper nature of their event when they reserved the area. Apparently they did though, including the fact that this was a dramatization.

I told my sister that maybe they were a bit uncomfortable with the nature of the act because of the Virginia Tech shootings, since the students portraying the soldiers were carrying around psuedo guns made out of cardboard tubes. Yeah they looked fake, but maybe the mere idea of guns on campus made them a bit weary.

I really miss that aspect of college. I remember putting on events with the MSA that were protested for the stupidest reasons by those that opposed the speaker, the event, or whatever. The protestors represented only a very small minority of students as I would sometimes get stopped by other students who were at the event to say how good it was.

I remember one time we had to play serious damage control as the Spartan Daily published an article for an event we hosted with only the viewpoints of the opposing side. Good time, good times.

The other day, I attended a lecture at UC Berkeley titled Can We Talk About God? Devotion and Extremism in the Modern Age. The event was sponsored by Zaytuna, KPFA, and Cody’s Books.

To tell you the truth, I wasn’t about to go.

The event was on a Tuesday in Berkeley and while I already told my mom that I would just head there after work, I spent a great deal of time debating myself as to whether or not I should even go. Eventually, I decided to go because every time I miss a Zaytuna event, I hear about how awesome it was.

So I went.

And it was awesome.

The talk featured British philosopher Roger Scruton and Muslim scholar Imam Zaid Shakir. The two of them first spoke separately and then joined in a discussion with moderator Sandy Tolan, author and professor at UC Berkeley.

Scruton, a conservative himself, discussed how secularist law should should be the dominant form of law over religious law in a country. He ended his talk by asking if Muslims could deal with secularist society, such as that of the U.S.

After pointing out that God has always been present in many aspects of the U.S., mentioning how Presidents swear their oath on Bibles and so forth, Shakir talked of the issues that God presented in this society. Out of the three issues he presented, the last one dealt exclusively with Islam, the issue of how we can talk about Islam in the public realm.

It was a really good lecture and my summary here doesn’t do it justice at all (I almost started typing up my notes to put here, and well, this would then become a lot longer post). They talked about so much more than the above mentioned. I have some more thoughts on stuff that came out of this lecture that I may post about later.

It was interesting that these two people held a captive audience and nearly filled the auditorium on a Tuesday in Berkeley (Please note italics above). Not all of these people were students. A lot of us had to expend effort to get there and it was well worth it.

Y’know what was also awesome about the night? The nonfat white mocha from Caffe Strada, which is one block away from the International House. It was most excellent. Thank you Yelp.

I went to Max Barry’s book signing for the paperback version of Company at Rakestraw Books, an independent bookstore in Danville. I had never heard of this bookstore but apparently a lot of famous authors have conducted book signings/events there. I was surprised considering how many of us who read Barry’s blog were baffled as to why he was going to be in Danville and not in, say, a place closer to civilization. Rakestraw Books has an extensive list on their website of notable authors who have been there, so I allowed myself to feel just a bit ashamed.Come on, though. What was I to think? I had only been to Danville once in my life. Usually I don’t have a need to go that north on 680.

After wandering around Danville for some dinner, my friend and I decided to just go to the bookstore. We were early but since we had nothing better to do, we hung out at the store.

The owner was quite nice and told us that he was going to order pizza and asked if we had any preferences. We didn’t but it would not have mattered anyways because I misunderstood what he said. Ah well.

My friend and I were still wandering around the store when 2 other people came into the store for Max Barry’s signing as well. We talked a bit. And then. . .

Max Barry came in with his tour escort (is that what you call them?). He actually told the owner how his readers had complained about this stop the most. I allowed the shame to creep back in a bit.

Then, he turned to us and asked if we were there for the event and walked on over to talk. We all made bit of idle chatter when he proceeded to make my day:

“You look familiar,” he said to me.

“I was at your book signing last year,” I answered.

“Bushra, right?”

Say what?!

He said that I comment on his blog a few times as well so maybe the name on the blog comments added to the fact that he saw me last year resulted in him knowing my name.

More people milled in and Max Barry got to talk to most before he began his reading. He then read from the draft of his latest book, The Exceptionals. This is his first book not related to corporations at all so I was intrigued.

He took questions and signed books, talking to each individual while signing his or her book. He even did that last year when there were so many more people present. Because this was his paperback tour, the crowd was smaller, consisting of only 15-20 people.

Hands down the best book signing I’ve been to.