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 →]

Robotech was one of my favorite cartoons in the 80s.

For those of you have not seen the show, here’s a brief summary - An alien spaceship lands on Earth, ending a global war as different countries banded together to study the ship. 10 years later, it’s about to go on its maiden voyage in space when the Zentraedi, a race of giant human-like warriors, attack. The SDF-1 (as the ship is now called) jumps into space, accidentally jumping too far into space and taking an entire city, Macross, with it.

Anyways, it’s a long story.

So the other night I was at my sister’s and she and my brother-in-law happened to be watching Robotech on DVD. As the episode progressed, my brother-in-law made a comment that I’ve heard expressed before:

“You know, the Zentraedi are supposed to be Muslim.”

The Zentraedi are completely segregated - men and women generally seem to be on different ships. They have no concept of romance and do not have any idea about, y’know, ’stuff’. On one occasion, a Zentraedi ship was able to view a live feed of the the Miss Macross pageant happening on the ship and didn’t know what to make of girls in skimpy outfits. When Rick Hunter, Lisa Hayes, and Max Sterling were caught by the Zentraedi, Rick and Lisa had to show the Zentraedi what a ‘kiss’ was, which resulted in a disgusted group of Zentraedis. Minmei, the singing sensation of Macross, was their downfall as the soldiers were introduced to an entirely different way of life through her songs. Many Zentraedi wanted to defect to the human ship and, thus, embrace the human way of life because of her.

In short, the Zentraedi could portray how some of the world see Muslims while the humans, more specifically the humans of SDF-1, could represent the Western World. Note that I said how the world sees Muslims but not actually what Muslims are actually like

OR

There is no meaning behind anything and we all just think too much.

(I’m thinking the latter…)

Notes:

“Macross” is the name of the city that was taken into space when SDF-1 jumped. The city was essentially rebuilt within the ship and the citizens tried to live a normal life onboard. “Macross” is also the name of the original Japanese cartoon that was translated to become 1st Generation Robotech (this is the generation with Rick, Lisa, SDF-1, etc. and is my favorite generation)

Robotech is a very violent cartoon if one thinks about it. So many people die, the earth is almost wiped out, the future looks bleak, and one has to listen to Minmei’s songs. Seriously though, I can’t believe we all watched this as little kids.

I don’t generally watch TV during Ramadan, a personal choice as I try to limit distractions (I say this while I’m on the interent. huh.). But, I was over at my sister’s place and didn’t want to make them turn it off or anything. (Dunno why I need to make this point, but oh well)

When I grow up, I want to be a Veritech pilot.

So I’m a few days late in this post but I still felt the need to acknowledge that it is now Ramadan, the holiest of months to Muslims.

They say that the only thing that some Muslims get out of this month is the feeling of starvation from dawn to dusk. I think that’s how it was for me the past two Ramadans.

I want it to be different this year so I will be striving to work on my spiritual side and get closer to Allah (swt) (or, y’know, ‘God’ as the masses call Him ;))

Muslims go by a lunar calendar and according to most scholars, the lunar months begin and end with the actual physical sighting of the new moon by the naked eye. So for me, it means that if the new moon is sighted anywhere in North America, the month begins. These days, we all have a much better idea of when and where the moon can be seen due to astronomy, math, and all that good stuff.

I happened to see the new moon from my house Monday night and it was a beautiful sight. The following was taken Monday night in the Hayward Hills by someone over at Zaytuna Institute:

My aim is to be a better person this Ramadan. Here’s hoping that I can accomplish that.

I can’t believe I didn’t know about this site until I saw a post about it in io9.

Another thing I can’t believe - that I’ve never Dune before. I dug out my brother’s Dune books from the garage yesterday and plan on reading the first one on the plane.

Side Note - It took me ages to find the first Dune book among all of my brother’s books in the garage. I was digging through the multitude of sci fi books (Star Trek, Isaac Asimov stuff, etc.etc.) and every time I thought I found Dune, it turned out to be one of the 50 prequels or sequels. I finally found it after wading through books and dust and then asked my brother why he didn’t have the foresight to put all the Dune books in one place. Because, I don’t know, that would have made things slightly more organized?!

Actually, while trying to find Dune, I found a few other books of his that I didn’t know he had or maybe I wasn’t interested in before, like Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. I’ve never read anything by him and have wanted to for a while now.

So that means that while I’m still really stressed about all the stuff I need to do before England, I already have my plane reading material - Dune and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which I picked up last week. At least I have that taken care of. Now for everything else. . .

Last Friday, I conducted a presentation at a class at San Jose State with a few other people on behalf of the media committee I belong to. We first did our presentation, which lasted a half hour, and then the class broke off into groups with one member representing the committee in each group. The purpose of this was to answer any questions a student may have either about Islam, the media, or both. This segment last about an hour. I didn’t know that we would do this (break off into groups) but it turned out pretty well.

Anyways, the professor sent an email to one member of our committee to thank him and all of us for taking the time out to go to the class. Here’s what she said about me: “Bushra really helped the girls in the class understand things from a woman’s perspective and she’s such an open person.” That meant a lot. I wasn’t sure if I was just babbling when those girls asked me their questions but I guess it all worked out.

Muslims prefer a democracy? They condemn the acts of 9/11?? Get out!

The Gallup polling agency released the results of a survey that began soon after the events of 9/11 to determine what the heck it is that those crazy Moslems think.

They surveyed about 50,000 Muslims from 35 countries and found that the religion of Islam did not actually fuel terrorism:

“Religion is an important part of life for the overwhelming majority of Muslims, and if it were indeed the driver for radicalisation, this would be a serious issue.”

But the study, which Gallup says surveyed a sample equivalent to 90 percent of the world’s Muslims, showed that widespread religiosity “does not translate into widespread support for terrorism,” said Mogahed, director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.

Not only that, but Gallup found that the majority of Muslims favored a democracy. . . just as long as it wasn’t imposed on them by an outside force.

Article here - Major survey challenges Western perceptions of Islam