Thursday, August 29, 2013

NYPD says Mosques are terrorism havens



Muslims in America have been under siege since 9/11, but I do not share their suffering. I say welcome to the real world of the American slave system that North American Africans have been subjected to 400 years. Welcome to experience what it feels like to be treated like a nigger, to be watched, hunted and wanted at every turn, to be stopped and frisked on every block.  Yes, the mosques are thoroughly infiltrated just as our churches were during slavery and the Nation of Islam was since the founding of the FBI. Of course the FBI started off following Noble Drew Ali, then Marcus Garvey, then Elijah on down to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
So to all those Muslims who came to America seeking freedom and democracy, welcome to the house of the beast, home of the Great Satan or Shaitan Akbar. Remember we got our version of Islam from Noble Drew Ali and Master Fard Muhammad because you Arabs and other foreign Muslims did not bother to teach us Islam. And even now, you are no better than Christians, after all, contrary to Malcolm’s letter from Mecca, the most segregated hour in Islam is 1pm Friday, similar to the most segregated hour in Christianity, 11am Sunday. And in your mind nigguhs know nothing about Islam until instructed by you, yet the whole world can see you are nothing but a bunch of murderers in the name of Allah.  And you want us to accept your version of Islam as true Islam. To hell with you! I rather be a jungle savage than follow the shit you’re talking. Take that shit back to your desert oasis and feed it to your camel!
 
Learn to endure the watchful eye of the Great Satan on your behinds, every move you make, every glance of your eyes, your every thought, then and only then will you understand what North American Africans have endured these past centuries unto the present moment, no matter that we have a half nigger as President, yes, a Muslim turned Christian, who even turned against his preacher after twenty years in his church, of course, for political expediency.
 
Maybe you will learn how to treat us better in your liquor stores wherein you sell us swine and wine in the name of Allah, shortchange our children  and fuck our women at will but claim damage to your family honor if we fuck one of yours.
--Marvin X, A Nigguh for Life,
Editor, Black Bird Press News and Review

August 28, 2013

NYPD designates mosques as terrorism organizations


Photo: AP A Muslim congregation pray during a Jumu'ah prayer service at the Islamic Society
of Bay Ridge mosque on Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in Brooklyn borough of New York. The New York
Police Department targeted this mosque as a part of a terrorism enterprise investigation beginning
in 2003, spying on it for years. The mosque has never been charged as part of a terrorism

 conspiracy.



Photo: APZein Rimawi, 59, a leader and founder of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge and mosque,
remain kneeling as a Jumu'ah prayer service comes to a close at the a mosque on Friday, Aug. 16,
2013 in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The New York Police Department targeted his mosque
as a part of a terrorism enterprise investigation beginning in 2003, spying on it for years. The
mosque has never been charged as part of a terrorism conspiracy.
Photo: APA Muslim congregation pray during a Jumu'ah prayer service at the Islamic Society
of Bay Ridge mosque on Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in Brooklyn borough of New York. The New York
Police Department targeted this mosque as a part of a terrorism enterprise investigation beginning
in 2003, spying on it for years. The mosque has never been charged as part of a terrorism conspiracy.
Photo: APMembers of a Muslim congregation pray during a Jumu'ah prayer service at the Islamic
Society of Bay Ridge mosque on Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The
New York Police Department targeted this mosque as a part of a terrorism enterprise investigation
beginning in 2003, spying on it for years. The mosque has never been charged as part of a terrorism
conspiracy.
Photo: APDr. Muhamad Albar, far left, speaks to a congregation during Jumu'ah prayer service
at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge mosque on Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in the Brooklyn borough of
New York. The New York Police Department targeted this mosque as a part of a terrorism enterprise
investigation beginning in 2003, spying on it for years. The mosque has never been charged as part
of a terrorism conspiracy.
Photo: APZein Rimawi, 59, center, a leader and founder of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge and
mosque, join a congregation for a Jumu'ah prayer service at the mosque on Friday, Aug. 16, 2013,
in Brooklyn borough of New York. The NYPD targeted his mosque as a part of a terrorism enterprise
investigation beginning in 2003, spying on it for years. The mosque has never been charged as part
of a terrorism conspiracy.
Photo: APZein Rimawi, 59, second from right, a leader and founder of the Islamic Society of Bay
Ridge and mosque, meet with members in his office before a Jumu'ah prayer service at the mosque
on Friday, Aug. 16, 2013 in Brooklyn, N.Y. The NYPD targeted his mosque as a part of a terrorism
enterprise investigation beginning in 2003, spying on it for years. The mosque has never been
charged as part of a terrorism conspiracy.
Photo: APVisitors socialize outside the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge and mosque, after a Jumu'ah
prayer service on Friday, Aug. 16, 2013, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The New York Police
Department targeted the mosque as a part of a terrorism enterprise investigation beginning in 2003,
spying on it for years. The mosque has never been charged as part of a terrorism conspiracy.
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorist organizations, a designation that allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, often without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Designating an entire mosque as a terrorism enterprise means that anyone who attends prayer services there is a potential subject of an investigation and fair game for surveillance. Since the 9/11 attacks, the NYPD has opened at least a dozen "terrorism enterprise investigations" into mosques, according to interviews and confidential police documents. The TEI, as it is known, is a police tool intended to help investigate terrorist cells and the like.
Many TEIs stretch for years, allowing surveillance to continue even though the NYPD has never criminally charged a mosque or Islamic organization with operating as a terrorism enterprise. The documents show in detail how, in its hunt for terrorists, the NYPD investigated countless innocent New York Muslims and put information about them in secret police files. As a tactic, opening an enterprise investigation on a mosque is so potentially invasive that while the NYPD conducted at least a dozen, the FBI never did one, according to interviews with federal law enforcement officials.
The strategy has allowed the NYPD to send undercover officers into mosques and attempt to plant informants on the boards of mosques and at least one prominent Arab-American group in Brooklyn, whose executive director has worked with city officials, including Bill de Blasio, a front-runner for mayor.
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The revelations about the NYPD's massive spying operations are in documents recently obtained by The Associated Press and part of a new book, "Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden's Final Plot Against America." The book by AP reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman is based on hundreds of previously unpublished police files and interviews with current and former NYPD, CIA and FBI officials.
The disclosures come as the NYPD is fighting off lawsuits accusing it of engaging in racial profiling while combating crime. Earlier this month, a judge ruled that the department's use of the stop-and-frisk tactic was unconstitutional.
The American Civil Liberties Union and two other groups have sued, saying the Muslim spying programs are unconstitutional and make Muslims afraid to practice their faith without police scrutiny. Both Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly have denied those accusations. Speaking Wednesday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Kelly reminded people that his intelligence-gathering programs began in the wake of 9/11.
"We follow leads wherever they take us," Kelly said. "We're not intimidated as to wherever that lead takes us. And we're doing that to protect the people of New York City."
The NYPD did not limit its operations to collecting information on those who attended the mosques or led prayers. The department sought also to put people on the boards of New York's Islamic institutions to fill intelligence gaps.
One confidential NYPD document shows police wanted to put informants in leadership positions at mosques and other organizations, including the Arab American Association of New York in Brooklyn, a secular social-service organization.
Linda Sarsour, the executive director, said her group helps new immigrants adjust to life in the U.S. It was not clear whether the department was successful in its plans.
The document, which appears to have been created around 2009, was prepared for Kelly and distributed to the NYPD's debriefing unit, which helped identify possible informants.
Around that time, Kelly was handing out medals to the Arab American Association's soccer team, Brooklyn United, smiling and congratulating its players for winning the NYPD's soccer league.
Sarsour, a Muslim who has met with Kelly many times, said she felt betrayed.
"It creates mistrust in our organizations," said Sarsour, who was born and raised in Brooklyn. "It makes one wonder and question who is sitting on the boards of the institutions where we work and pray."
Before the NYPD could target mosques as terrorist groups, it had to persuade a federal judge to rewrite rules governing how police can monitor speech protected by the First Amendment.
The rules stemmed from a 1971 lawsuit, dubbed the Handschu case after lead plaintiff Barbara Handschu, over how the NYPD spied on protesters and liberals during the Vietnam War era.
David Cohen, a former CIA executive who became NYPD's deputy commissioner for intelligence in 2002, said the old rules didn't apply to fighting against terrorism.
Cohen told the judge that mosques could be used "to shield the work of terrorists from law enforcement scrutiny by taking advantage of restrictions on the investigation of First Amendment activity."
NYPD lawyers proposed a new tactic, the TEI, that allowed officers to monitor political or religious speech whenever the "facts or circumstances reasonably indicate" that groups of two or more people were involved in plotting terrorism or other violent crime.
The judge rewrote the Handschu rules in 2003. In the first eight months under the new rules, the NYPD's Intelligence Division opened at least 15 secret terrorism enterprise investigations, documents show. At least 10 targeted mosques.
Doing so allowed police, in effect, to treat anyone who attends prayer services as a potential suspect. Sermons, ordinarily protected by the First Amendment, could be monitored and recorded.
Among the mosques targeted as early as 2003 was the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge.
"I have never felt free in the United States. The documents tell me I am right," Zein Rimawi, one of the Bay Ridge mosque's leaders, said after reviewing an NYPD document describing his mosque as a terrorist enterprise.
Rimawi, 59, came to the U.S. decades ago from the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
"Ray Kelly, shame on him," he said. "I am American."
The NYPD believed the tactics were necessary to keep the city safe, a view that sometimes put it at odds with the FBI.
In August 2003, Cohen asked the FBI to install eavesdropping equipment inside a mosque called Masjid al-Farooq, including its prayer room.
Al-Farooq had a long history of radical ties. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik who was convicted of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks, once preached briefly at Al-Farooq. Invited preachers raged against Israel, the United States and the Bush administration's war on terror.
One of Cohen's informants said an imam from another mosque had delivered $30,000 to an al-Farooq leader, and the NYPD suspected the money was for terrorism.
But Amy Jo Lyons, the FBI assistant special agent in charge for counterterrorism, refused to bug the mosque. She said the federal law wouldn't permit it.
The NYPD made other arrangements. Cohen's informants began to carry recording devices into mosques under investigation. They hid microphones in wristwatches and the electronic key fobs used to unlock car doors.
Even under a TEI, a prosecutor and a judge would have to approve bugging a mosque. But the informant taping was legal because New York law allows any party to record a conversation, even without consent from the others. Like the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, the NYPD never demonstrated in court that al-Farooq was a terrorist enterprise but that didn't stop the police from spying on the mosques for years.
And under the new Handschu guidelines, no one outside the NYPD could question the secret practice.
Martin Stolar, one of the lawyers in the Handschu case, said it's clear the NYPD used enterprise investigations to justify open-ended surveillance. The NYPD should only tape conversations about building bombs or plotting attacks, he said.
"Every Muslim is a potential terrorist? It is completely unacceptable," he said. "It really tarnishes all of us and tarnishes our system of values."
Al-Ansar Center, a windowless Sunni mosque, opened in Brooklyn several years ago, attracting young Arabs and South Asians. NYPD officers feared the mosque was a breeding ground for terrorists, so informants kept tabs on it.
One NYPD report noted that members were fixing up the basement, turning it into a gym.
"They also want to start Jiujitsu classes," it said.
The NYPD was particularly alarmed about Mohammad Elshinawy, 26, an Islamic teacher at several New York mosques, including Al-Ansar. Elshinawy was a Salafist — a follower of a puritanical Islamic movement — whose father was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks, according to NYPD documents.
The FBI also investigated whether Elshinawy recruited people to wage violent jihad overseas. But the two agencies investigated him very differently.
 The FBI closed the case after many months without any charges. Federal investigators never infiltrated Al-Ansar.
 "Nobody had any information the mosque was engaged in terrorism activities," a former federal law enforcement official recalled, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the investigation.
The NYPD wasn't convinced. A 2008 surveillance document described Elshinawy as "a young spiritual leader (who) lectures and gives speeches at dozens of venues" and noted, "He has orchestrated camping trips and paintball trips."
The NYPD deemed him a threat in part because "he is so highly regarded by so many young and impressionable individuals."
No part of Elshinawy's life was out of bounds. His mosque was the target of a TEI. The NYPD conducted surveillance at his wedding. An informant recorded the wedding and police videotaped everyone who came and went.
"We have nothing on the lucky bride at this time but hopefully will learn about her at the service," one lieutenant wrote.
Four years later, the NYPD was still watching Elshinawy without charging him. He is now a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit against the NYPD.
 "These new NYPD spying disclosures confirm the experiences and worst fears of New York's Muslims," ACLU lawyer Hina Shamsi said. "From houses of worship to a wedding, there's no area of New York Muslim religious or personal life that the NYPD has not invaded through its bias-based surveillance policy."
 from Blackantiwar.com

Black Bird Press News & Review: Ishmael Reed Reviews The Sayings of Plato Negro, Marvin X

Ishmael Reed Reviews The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Marvin X

However, if I had to pin down the influences upon Marvin X’s The Wisdom of Plato Negro,  Parables/Fables, I would cite the style of Yoruba texts. I studied for some years under the tutoring of the poet and scholar Adebisi T.Aromolaran ( “ Wise Sayings For Boys and Girls”) and was guided through some texts in the Yoruba language which revealed that didacticism  is a key component of the Yoruba story telling style. Africans use proverbs to teach their children the lessons of life. Marvin X acknowledges the Yoruba influence on his book, The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/Fables....
--Ishmael Reed

Muhammida El Muhajir--Help a little sista go global!



Friends-
I am just days away from the launch of the Hip Hop: The New World Order international screening tour and I am asking friends to consider making a small contribution of $10 in support of me sharing this important global historical archive with artists and communities around the world!
A $10 contribution will allow you to be one of the first to view the film with a complimentary digital stream view of the film when it releases.

Feeling a bit more generous?? Donate a little more and also receive a limited edition DVD, tour T-shirt and more.
Thank you to everyone who has already supported with $$, contacts, encouragement, and spreading the word. It is very much appreciated. Check THE TOUR SCHEDULE and invite your international network.
Many Thanks!
Muhammida



Muhammida Muhajir wanted you to see this FundRazr campaign. Check it out!
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With your support of the international screening tour, I will return to the cities of production to share this relevant work with global Hip Hop artists and communities to provide context and importance to their contribution to Hip Hop history!
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AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD, STREAM & DVD: SEPTEMBER 1, 2013

 
 
The documentary, Hip Hop: The New World Order affirms Hip Hop culture as a powerful vehicle for self-expression by youth around the world, empowering them in the areas of education, economics, politics, entertainment, and new media. 

Shot in 8 international cities (Tokyo, Havana, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Rio de Janeiro & Johannesburg) over a span of 4 years (1998-2002), the project embarks on the groundbreaking mission to unearth the practice and business of Hip Hop culture worldwide.

The first documentary produced on global hip hop, Hip Hop: The New World Order has mushroomed into a rare archive and video survey of pioneering artists and communities around the Hip Hop world during the turn of the 21st century.  

Produced and Directed by Muhammida El Muhajir.

Black Bird Press News & Review: From the Archives: Shallow Scholarship at Howard University Black Arts Movement Conference

From the Archives: Shallow Scholarship at Howard University Black Arts Movement Conference by Askia Muhammad, Editor, Final Call, Washington DC

Askia is not all wrong. I have heard many black intellectuals give revisionist black history talks, skipping from Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X, leaving out any mention of Elijah Muhammad. This is sick and reveals some black intellectuals are still grieving over Malcolm so much they can't think straight, their understanding of history is clouded by emotionalism. Who will deny Elijah took Marcus Garvey's work to another level and Malcolm took it even further, albeit under the guidance of Elijah Muhammad.

--Marvin X, Editor, Black Bird Press News and Review

Black Bird Press News & Review: From the Archives: Marvin X--the USA's Rumi

 From the Archives: Marvin X--the USA's Rumi

Last year Marvin X released his magnum opus, Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 (Black Bird Press), poems that put me in mind of Mawlânâ Jalâl ad-Dîn Muhammad Rûmî. He just published Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, Essays on Consciousness (Black Bird Press, 2006), and all I can say, folks, is this is the Bible of the Hood and is bound to stir up plenty of opposition -- and maybe even cut through the BS to move towards God.--Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Black Bird Press News & Review: California Prisoner Hunger Strike Continues

Black Bird Press News & Review: California Prisoner Hunger Strike Continues


Jesus said liberate the captives! So many millions in the dungeons of America, most arrested while addicted to drugs and mentally ill, with no proper legal representation, confessing to crimes they didn't commit under torture or forced to snitch, but our best came from the dungeons, Malcolm, Elijah Muhammad, Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, Tookie Williams, Ruschell McGee.
Assata Shakur, Dessie X. Woods (Rashidah Muhammad). So let us liberate the captives, 2.4 million, fathers, mothers, children. Let us demand the General Amnesty! Power concedes nothing without a demand, see Fredrick  Douglas. Let us march to the square like the Egyptians, who didn't leave until the dictator Mubarak was deposed.

--Marvin X, Editor, Black Bird Press News and Review

From the Archives: Marvin X--the USA's Rumi

photo Doug Harris, Harlem, NY 1968



Fly to Allah by Marvin X, is more than poetry--it is singing/song, it is meditation, it is 
spirit/flowing/flying, it is blackness celebrated, it is prophecy, it is life, is all of these things and 
more, beyond articulation. Brother Marvin X is flying us/our/selves to Allah. And his strength is 
not merely aesthetic....--Johari Amini, Negro Digest/Black World, 1969

(Her complete review is below)


Land of My Daughters

Review by Bob Holman
Bowery Poetry Club, New York City





Last year Marvin X released his magnum opus, Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 (Black Bird Press), poems that put me in mind of Mawlânâ Jalâl ad-Dîn Muhammad Rûmî....--Bob Holman


Where I’d like to start this 2005 Poetry Roundup is Iraq, as in, how did we get there and how do we get back? The consciousness-altering book of poems that tells the tale, in no uncertain terms and yet always via poetry, is the astonishing Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 (Black Bird Press) by Marvin X.

Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi, and his nation is not “where our fathers died” but where our daughters live. The death of patriarchal war culture is his everyday reality. X’s poems vibrate, whip, love in the most meta- and physical ways imaginable and un-. He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English –- the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi. It’s not unusual for him to have a sequence of shortish lines followed by a culminating line that stretches a quarter page –- it is the dance of the dervishes, the rhythms of a Qasida.
“I am the black bird in love
I fly with love
I swoop into the ocean and pluck fish in the name of love
oceans flow with love
let the ocean wash me with love
even the cold ocean is love
the morning swim is love
the ocean chills me with love
from the deep come fish full of love”
(from the opening poem, “In the Name of Love”)

“How to Love A Thinking Woman”:
“Be revolutionary, radical, bodacious
Stay beyond the common
Have some class about yaself…
Say things she’s never heard before
Ihdina sirata al mustaquim(guide us on the straight path)
Make her laugh til she comes in her panties
serious jokes to get her mind off the world.”

There are anthems (“When I’ll Wave the Flag/Cuando Voy a Flamear la Bandera”), rants (“JESUS AND LIQUOR STORES”), love poems (“Thursday”) and poems totally uncategorizable (“Dreamtime”). Read this one cover to cover when you’ve got the time to “Marry a Tree.”




ChickenBones Poetry Book 2005




Land of My Daughters





Poems 1995-2005







By Marvin X









Reviewed by Rudolph Lewis



Marvin X (El Muhajir) is a marvelous writer in a black skin situated in America, and proudly a Muslim in these days and times when it ain't safe to be nowhere near or associated with Arabs and Muslims. He knows that White Supremacy is strutting mightily on the global stage, with no military and economic peer. Worst, the FBI got their bloodhounds out, kicking-in doors to save America from Muslim terrorists. So Marvin plays the odds, when the poor and weak need a voice, but mostly because like all artists he can stand momentarily outside the turmoil, challenged to take chances, just for the experiential hell of being near the fire.

For three years, in me, he has had a sympathetic observer. He is one of the most intellectually engaged black men in America making use of cyberspace to communicate nationally and internationally a unique, vital, and provocative African American perspective. His writings are at once political and personal, religious and secular, academic and street. And this integration is all done so seamlessly. As one of the proponents of the Black Arts Movement (60s and 70s), one might expect Marvin X to be rigidly ideological. Marvin X is rather a chameleon. Most of all Marvin is Marvin. But to become one's self is no small achievement. And that's the wonder of him as a contemporary poet.

Marvin uses the past rather than glorifying it as some romantic poets tend to do. He confronts what is now happening straight up, straight on. That is what is so delightful about Marvin, who is much freer than many of us could ever be. His was no freedom given, like Abe in '63. Marvin's run the gauntlet, the gamut, and came through it all like High John the Conqueror. He freed the Sisyphus, lodged in all our souls. And the rest is gravy. 

He has come out the other side whole, far beyond his youthful work as a proponent of the Black Arts. He deals now with subjects other than race and race pride and race oppression. He deals with the ethics of the actual life we live moment by moment, the daily agents that confront you daily for food clothing shelter and a bit of joy. He has lived the horrors of America and filters all through the harshness and victory of that world he has lived as both a man and a Muslim. .

There's no sugar coating deception in Marvin's writings. Expect to get it the way it happens, get it like you would from an Uncle or an Aunt. The real deal, the low down, the mamma-jamma. His vision is as diamond hard as the gunpowder night streets he frequents and the street people he saves from a life of drugs, prostitution, and criminality. He sympathizes with the outsider, the down and out, because he's been there, and knows everybody needs a chance and a little love and understanding.

Marvin's last decade can be experienced vividly in the recent collection of poems, Land of My Daughters (2005). Often dated, these poems are strong responses to some event, some feeling, some word that required nurturing introspection and report. And Marvin was there ready to put his contribution on the table for consideration. Many of the poems in this volume are already familiar; Marvin shares his poems and his essays with those on his email list and those on Kalamu's e-drum. Because Marvin be writing because he be on the case every day dealing with local, national, and international events trying to make sense out of a world being reshaped disastrously by Democrats and Republicans. 

In any event, there ain't no poem that ain't special in Land of My Daughters. Because that's how Marvin loves his people, every individual as if she the One. A poem unfamiliar "Why I Love Lesbians" is a controversial poem of such simplicity and honesty -- it is disarming. Marvin says, "I love them cause they hate me / In their hatred is drama / . . . / They step backward / At my manly aggression." 
Marvin bees the man ("arrogant masculinity") he been trained to be. But the times have changed; Cleaver the Id (Super Gun) is dead. And Marvin is Man Plus: "But I wouldn't take the pussy / Have become wiser / In old age." Marvin, sixty years old, is still adapting to his environment (like a Green Beret) yet retaining his own integrity and worth. Violence solves nothing. He now believes in the power of the word, to transform the thinking, change the training not only of others but himself (the poet) as well. 

This gender reorientation and realistic appraisal of women is also mirrored in the popular How to Love a Thinking Woman. Get me right, Marvin ain't gone soft or nothing, just "wiser." And it's good advice to listen to those who have gotten their ass whipped over foolishness,  those who have traveled the trail we now trying to traverse. So a "Thinking Woman" is about more than women: it is about how to be a man in contemporary times:
Make her laugh til she comes in panties
With serious jokes to get her mind off the world
Never let her figure you out
Be always a mystery
When she figures you out you're through
Don't be that dumb
Giving the Other what she wants or thinks she wants is not enough. There is more to man than just repressive patriarchy and violence. A manly identity is not all that needs or solicits hatred. Viva la difference. There's a sacred place man and woman can meet beyond yesterday's crimes.

Marvin has a few dedicated poems of those who have come and stood on the world stage and made their notable contributions to the struggle: for the Barakas on the loss of their daughter (When Parents Bury Children and "Remembering Shani Barka"); Eldridge Cleaver ("Soul Gone Home"); Stokely Carmichael ("For Kwame Touré"); Lil Joe ("Revolutionary Rain");  Dudley Randall ("Black Man Listen"); and Sherley A. Williams ("Two Poets in the Park"). 

Sherley was the girl that got away, the girl his Mama told him he "ought / to marry" and didn't -- "a bad relationship was better than no relationship." So there they were "sitting in the park after 17 years of silence . . . now there is only one." It is a poem of love without sentimentality.

Marvin, I believe, has integrated Islam into his sensibility and thinking and it has provided him a certain mental discipline which in turn is reflected in his poems. "I Am" is such a philosophical poem, and Marvin concludes "If you are the best / pass and go." "The Devil Stole My Children," a poem of loss, might draw on some Islamic folktale. I'm uncertain what Jerusalem and Damascus symbolize in this landscape. I suspect Christianity, or, at least, a certain form of commercial Christianity. It's not unusual for Marvin to take swipes at Christianity in the Malcolm tradition, which is done very openly in the poem "Jesus and Liquor Stores": "JESUS / CAN'T HELP YOU / COULDN'T HELP HIMSELF."

This rough kind of humor, primarily mockery and sarcasm, this putting to shame approach can be found in "The Negro Knows Everything." But I like Marvin's humor. He's persuaded me that we should take ourselves so less seriously in that stiff ass way of being  unable to learn to laugh at ourselves again: "On her dying bed, my Mama said, / 'Marvin, leave then nigguhs alone. . .' " And, of course, one cannot leave one's self alone "And Mama died and I love dem nigguhs." 

Doubtless, Marvin X is a revolutionary poet. In these days and times of the Repression of the Poor, the era in which every dime is contested, and corporations have the executive key to our lives, how can one be anything else but? "Yesterday, more than 20,000 people perished of extreme poverty." And we suspect the same to happen tomorrow as far as we can see. That kind of action will make even the dullest think there is something amiss. That we are not getting "all of the news." 

And here is where we need the most skillful of poets, to fill in the gaps, to show us what really has value, in a world in which human life is being steadily eroded to objects (resources) for profit, and endless money making. In his "Poetics 2000," an update of Amiri Baraka's Black Art, poems don't kill. "Poetry will raise the dead / Make Lazarus stand."  The poet must struggle against opportunist rhetoric and "Speak straight and plain about the world / Like Clay in Dutchman."


Here's a poet committed to his people despite their weaknesses and evils or rather, in a way, because they have them.



"Joy" and "You Are Spirit" are just delightful. For Marvin the spirit or soul of man is reflected in how he uses and to what purpose he delivers his body to man or woman. He believes that right love can transform lust into love, into meaning, and purpose. But there is lots more to sink your teeth into like "Terrorist" and "Poem for 9/11/03." If you want serious artistic writing, a bit of comfort in the evening by the fireplace, Land of My Daughters will make you feel alive and whole again.

*   *   *   *   *



Love and War

poems

by Marvin X


review by Mohja Kahf


Have spent the last few days (when not mourning with friends and family the passing of my family friend and mentor in Muslim feminism and Islamic work, Sharifa AlKhateeb, (may she dwell in Rahma), immersed in the work of Marvin X and amazed at his brilliance. This poet has been prolific since his first book of poems, Fly to Allah, (1969), right up to his most recent Love and War Poems (1995) and Land of My Daughters, 2005, not to mention his plays, which were produced (without royalties) in Black community theatres from the 1960s to the present, and essay collections such as In the Crazy House Called America, 2002, and Wish I Could Tell You The Truth, 2005.


Marvin X was a prime shaper of the Black Arts Movement (1964-1970s) which is, among other things, the birthplace of modern Muslim American literature, and it begins with him. Well, Malik Shabazz and him. But while the Autobiography of Malcolm X is a touchstone of Muslim American culture, Marvin X and other Muslims in BAM were the emergence of a cultural expression of Black Power and Muslim thought inspired by Malcolm, who was, of course, ignited by the teachings and writings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And that, taken all together, is what I see as the starting point of Muslim American literature. 

With respect to Marvin X, I wonder why I am just now hearing about him-I read Malcolm when I was 12, I read Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez and others from the BAM in college and graduate school-why is attention not given to his work in the same places I encountered these other authors? Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because recontextualizing it will add another layer of attention to his incredibly rich body of work.He deserves to be WAY better known than he is among Muslim Americans and generally, in the world of writing and the world at large. By we who are younger Muslim American poets, in particular, Marvin should be honored as our elder, one who is still kickin, still true to the word!

Love and War Poems is wrenching and powerful, combining a powerful critique of America ("America downsizes like a cripple whore/won't retire/too greedy to sleep/too fat to rest") but also a critique of deadbeat dads and drug addicts (not sparing himself) and men who hate. "For the Men" is so Quranic poem it gave me chills with verses such as:

for the men who honor wives and the men who abuse them

for the men who win and the men who sin

for the men who love God and the men who hate

for the men who are brothers and the men who are beasts....


"O Men, listen to the wise," the poet pleads: there is no escape for the men of this world or the men of the next.


He is sexist as all get out, in the way that is common for men of his generation and his radicalism, but he is refreshingly aware of that and working on it. It's just that the work isn't done and if that offends you to see a man in process and still using the 'b' word, look out. Speaking of the easily offended, he warns in his introduction that "life is often profane and obscene, such as the present condition of African American people." If you want pure and holy, he says, read the Quran and the Bible, because Marvin is talking about "the low down dirty truth." For all that, the poetry of Marvin X is like prayer, beauty-full of reverence and honor for Truth. "It is. it is. it is."


A poem to his daughter Muhammida is a sweet mix of parental love and pride and fatherly freak-out at her sexuality and independence, ending humbly with: peace Mu it's on you yo world sister-girl.


Other people don't get off so easy, including a certain "black joint chief of staff ass nigguh (kill 200,000 Muslims in Iraq)" in the sharply aimed poem "Free Me from My Freedom." (Mmm hmm, the 'n' word is all over the place in Marvin too.) Nature poem, wedding poem, depression poem, wake-up call poems, it's all here. Haiti, Rwanda, the Million Man March, Betsy Ross's maid, OJ, Rabin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and other topics make it into this prophetically voiced collection of dissent poetry, so Islamic and so African American in its language and its themes, a book that will stand in its beauty long after the people mentioned in it pass. READ MARVIN X for RAMADAN!


Mohja Kahf

Associate Professor

Dept. of English & Middle East & Islamic Studies

University of Arkansas-Fayetteville


Fly to Allah

Review by Johari Amina


















Fly to Allah, 1968, established Marvin X as one of the key poets of the Black Arts Movement 
and the father of Muslim American literature. See Dr. Mohja Kahf on Muslim American literature.
In the September, 1969, Negro Digest/Black World magazine, Chicago poet Johari Amimi reviewed 
Fly to Allah. 

Fly to Allah by Marvin X, is more than poetry--it is singing/song, it is meditation, it is 
spirit/flowing/flying, it is blackness celebrated, it is prophecy, it is life, is all of these things and 
more, beyond articulation. Brother Marvin X is flying us/our/selves to Allah.
And his strength is not merely aesthetic

who killed uncle tom
who killed uncle sam
Allah!
Fly to Him
If you are from Him

Do not beat your woman
Love her!
She will leave you
If you beat her
She will leave you
If you do not beat her
Guard against her
she is weak
by nature
Protect her
Elevate her
Fly with her to Allah
You will be successful
You will dance forever
in the here/after
on earth
behind drummers
who never stop....

but in the many positives we blkpeople need in order to be to build ourselves 
(which precludes 
building a nation). Things we really need

For the moon submits
to the morning sun
where are you
in the circle of time
dry your eyes
sweet woman
let me rock your soul
with my Father's hands
Come
I will not be here long.

...We are gods
black and beautiful we are
sailing through space/time
to a higher place
mountains/cities fall
as we march
into another world
much blacker than this....

There is more beauty here than should be spoken of in a review. Fly to Allah should be read & 
read & read & meditated upon & reread & reread &.... Thank you, Brother Marvin, 
for your gift to blkpeople....

...Farewell Harlem
Mecca of the west
Though saddened
I am moved
I smile within
I see my children
and I am a child
rising/taking control
and I am moved
to be here
a star
in Allah's heaven
As-Salaam-Alaikum
Wa rah-matu-llahi
Wa barakatuh.
--Johari Amini (Jewel C. Latimore)
Negro Digest, September, 1969

During 1968-69, Marvin X lived underground in Harlem, resisting the Vietnam war. He worked at the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, serving as associate editor of Black Theatre magazine. His Harlem associates included Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Don L. Lee, Sun Ra, Askia Toure, Milford Graves, Mae Jackson, Barbara Ann Teer. Ed Bullins was his host, along with the NLT family. He also associated with Minister Farakhan 
and Akbar Muhammad at Mosque #7.




Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality
by Marvin X

Review by Bob Holman

Last year Marvin X released his magnum opus, Land of My Daughters: Poems 1995-2005 (Black Bird Press), poems that put me in mind of Mawlânâ Jalâl ad-Dîn Muhammad Rûmî. He just published Beyond Religion Towards Spirituality, Essays on Consciousness (Black Bird Press, 2006), and all I can say, folks, is this is the Bible of the Hood and is bound to stir up plenty of opposition -- and maybe even cut through the BS to move towards God. “Imagine we are the generation of Parker, Coltrane, Dolphy, Monk, Duke, Bessie, Lady Day, Ella, Sarah, what on earth can follow us but the earth shaking children of tomorrow...­ who will smash the atmosphere with sounds...”

“If the mate leaves, we should be happy. Why would you want to keep someone who wants to go? If she wants to be with Joe, let her go -- you don’t own her. If she wants, she has the human right to give Joe some pussy. I know you don’t like it but get over it. Don’t kill her and Joe behind the funk. The world is full of infinite possibilities. God will provide wou with the perfect mate... Let go and Let God.”