The Islamic world needs a Martin Luther, someone to usher in an Age of Reform that will radically alter some of the fundamental values of Islam that are retrograde, archaic, primitive and must be discarded into the dustbin of Muslim history so that Islam can regain its position as a culture of enlightenment rather than darkness. At an Islamic Art Conference I attended this past weekend in Oakland, California, along with Muslims from around the world, there was discussion of how Islam has suppressed artists, calling Muslim art haram (religiously proscribed), shirk (associating partners with God) and other negative terms that essentially condemn Islamic art as evil.
When I addressed the audience, I noted that I am the “father of Islamic literature in America” by default because other Muslim writers were told to give up the art of writing, creative anyway, but I ignored the ban and thus my work is all that remains, aside from poet Sam Hamad and a few others who’ve written during the last forty years that may surface with proper research. Not only writers, but painters, musicians, dancers, singers and others were suppressed. Even minister Farrakhan, a musician and singer, was made to give up his art. But we know it is artists who give people visions and prophecy, thus when they are suppressed, the people are likely to walk in darkness as we see at the present moment. In my remarks at the conference, I challenged the Muslim artists to be revolutionary and yes, disobedient — to hell with those who desire to suppress Muslim art, they are the backward ones, they are the evil ones and must be opposed by, yes, any means necessary. So much that goes for Islam is ancient and primitive, really, not worthy of discussion in the modern world among people of intelligence. Elijah Muhammad used to say the wisdom of this world is exhausted, and this includes Islam. It must be revolutionized or thrown into the dustbin of ancient thought. The Islamic revolution must, will and shall be led by Muslim artists with vision for a day when Islamic culture will be the vanguard of world culture, projecting the most positive and scientific aspects of the new millennium. Islamic culture must come from behind the veil, or if anything, put the veil on men and let the women march forth as harbingers of the new world order. Contrary to what men think, women have been found to be the most advanced sector of society, intellectually and spiritually, so we would do well to listen to them for answers to the right path.
Clearly, Muslim men are not on sirat al-mustaqim (“the straight path”). Over a billion people of Islamic faith are currently steeped in poverty, ignorance and disease, wallowing in political oppression of the most backward, Stalinist variety. And when the politicians are not oppressing, the mullahs and Imams do the same work, even to the point of following the Christians in the sexual exploitation of boys and girls. Let a Muslim Martin Luther step to the front of the line and represent the way of truth, freedom, justice and equality. Muslim collaborators with imperialism, colonialism, and all manner of retrograde religiosity and political oppression must be condemned. Islamic scholars whose theology is based on primitive laws, edicts, fatwas must be ostracized because their actions only add to the utter confusion and ignorance pervading the Muslim world. Surely, the destruction the Tsunami brought to South Asia is a sign of Allah’s displeasure with the Muslim people, along with Christians, Hindus and others. If we continue down the path of primitive worship of myths and rituals, surely Allah has even greater destruction planned for those without eyes, ears, the deaf, dumb and blind. After Allah has blessed us with light, how can we yet walk in darkness? How can we possess “supreme wisdom” yet have nothing, behave as spiritual slaves to any storefront imam with a rote memory of Al-Quran? Let a Martin Luther Muslim arise to destroy idols of ignorance and suppression of creativity. Yes, let everything praise Allah, from the flute to the lute, from the dancer to the poet.
* * *
Marvin X is a distinguished poet, playwright and essayist of the Black Arts Movement (BAM). He is the founder and director of Recovery Theatre in San Francisco. He also co-founded the Black Arts/West Theatre and Black House, which served briefly as the headquarters for the Black Panther Party and as a center for performance, theatre, poetry and music in the Bay Area. He works as a lecturer, teacher and producer.
Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC
www.politico.com
Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.
I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.
So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.
Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was. How much control Brooklyn had and for how long was still something I had been trying to uncover for the last few weeks.
By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart.
***
The Saturday morning after the convention in July, I called Gary Gensler, the chief financial officer of Hillary’s campaign. He wasted no words. He told me the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt.
“What?” I screamed. “I am an officer of the party and they’ve been telling us everything is fine and they were raising money with no problems.”
That wasn’t true, he said. Officials from Hillary’s campaign had taken a look at the DNC’s books. Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign—and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.
If I didn’t know about this, I assumed that none of the other officers knew about it, either. That was just Debbie’s way. In my experience she didn’t come to the officers of the DNC for advice and counsel. She seemed to make decisions on her own and let us know at the last minute what she had decided, as she had done when she told us about the hacking only minutes before the Washington Post broke the news.
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On the phone Gary told me the DNC had needed a $2 million loan, which the campaign had arranged.
“No! That can’t be true!” I said. “The party cannot take out a loan without the unanimous agreement of all of the officers.”
“Gary, how did they do this without me knowing?” I asked. “I don’t know how Debbie relates to the officers,” Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party’s national committee.
Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the 32 states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.
“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”
Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.
“That was the deal that Robby struck with Debbie,” he explained, referring to campaign manager Robby Mook. “It was to sustain the DNC. We sent the party nearly $20 million from September until the convention, and more to prepare for the election.”
“What’s the burn rate, Gary?” I asked. “How much money do we need every month to fund the party?”
The burn rate was $3.5 million to $4 million a month, he said.
I gasped. I had a pretty good sense of the DNC’s operations after having served as interim chair five years earlier. Back then the monthly expenses were half that. What had happened? The party chair usually shrinks the staff between presidential election campaigns, but Debbie had chosen not to do that. She had stuck lots of consultants on the DNC payroll, and Obama’s consultants were being financed by the DNC, too.
When we hung up, I was livid. Not at Gary, but at this mess I had inherited. I knew that Debbie had outsourced a lot of the management of the party and had not been the greatest at fundraising. I would not be that kind of chair, even if I was only an interim chair. Did they think I would just be a surrogate for them, get on the road and rouse up the crowds? I was going to manage this party the best I could and try to make it better, even if Brooklyn did not like this. It would be weeks before I would fully understand the financial shenanigans that were keeping the party on life support.
***
Hachette Book Group Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. A Politico story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through the states the summer before, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild “the party from the ground up … when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”
Yet the states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary’s campaign was holding, just as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in August. When the Politico story described this arrangement as “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign, Hillary’s people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady. Bernie’s people were angry for their own reasons, saying this was part of a calculated strategy to throw the nomination to Hillary.
I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way.
When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.
When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996 or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party already is under the control of the president. When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.
I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none. Then I found this agreement.
The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.
***
I had to keep my promise to Bernie. I was in agony as I dialed him. Keeping this secret was against everything that I stood for, all that I valued as a woman and as a public servant.
“Hello, senator. I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,” I said. “But I will not kill the patient.”
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I discussed the fundraising agreement that each of the candidates had signed. Bernie was familiar with it, but he and his staff ignored it. They had their own way of raising money through small donations. I described how Hillary’s campaign had taken it another step.
I told Bernie I had found Hillary’s Joint Fundraising Agreement. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the interim chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election.
Bernie took this stoically. He did not yell or express outrage. Instead he asked me what I thought Hillary’s chances were. The polls were unanimous in her winning but what, he wanted to know, was my own assessment?
I had to be frank with him. I did not trust the polls, I said. I told him I had visited states around the country and I found a lack of enthusiasm for her everywhere. I was concerned about the Obama coalition and about millennials.
I urged Bernie to work as hard as he could to bring his supporters into the fold with Hillary, and to campaign with all the heart and hope he could muster. He might find some of her positions too centrist, and her coziness with the financial elites distasteful, but he knew and I knew that the alternative was a person who would put the very future of the country in peril. I knew he heard me. I knew he agreed with me, but I never in my life had felt so tiny and powerless as I did making that call.
When I hung up the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, but out of anger. We would go forward. We had to.
Donna Brazile is the former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee. Excerpted from the book Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House to be published on November 7, 2017 by Hachette Books, a division of Hachette Book Group. Copyright 2017 Donna Brazile.
Calling for Real Reform, Ellison Says DNC 'Rigging' of Primary 'Cannot Be Dismissed'
"The DNC must be an impartial and transparent organization that welcomes all people who share our core values of economic justice and human rights for all."
"As leaders of the Democratic Party, it is our responsibility to acknowledge that millions of Americans still feel hurt and betrayed by the events of the 2016 presidential primary," Ellison said. (Photo: Center for American Progress/Flickr/cc)
Democratic National Committee (DNC) deputy chairman Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) waded into the growing outrage over the party organ's "rigging" of the 2016 primary in a statement on Friday, arguing that Donna Brazile's explosive account of the committee's moves to stack the deck against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and in favor of Hillary Clinton "cannot simply be dismissed."
Highlighting the necessity of "real reforms," Ellison said it is Democrats' "responsibility to acknowledge that millions of Americans still feel hurt and betrayed by the events of the 2016 presidential primary."
"We can't allow this idea to persist that any candidate has an inside track," Ellison added, "because the DNC must be an impartial and transparent organization that welcomes all people who share our core values of economic justice and human rights for all."
With his public remarks, Ellison joins a chorus of progressive organizations and Democratic lawmakers—including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—calling for a systemic overhaul of the DNC's structure, agenda, and message, particularly as the 2018 congressional elections approach.
JFK files: FBI documents allege Martin Luther King Jr. had secret lovechild, orgies
www.sacbee.com
The National Archives published more than 600 new records Friday relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- and some addressed civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and his multiple alleged affairs.
The FBI document, titled “Martin Luther King, Jr. A Current Analysis” and dated March 12, 1968, compiled background information on King, includinghis influences, associates, alleged affairs and more. King was assassinated April 4, 1968.
“The course King chooses to follow at this critical time could have momentous impact on the future of race relations in the United States,” the 20 page document’s introduction reads. “And for that reason this paper has been prepared to give some insight into the nature of the man himself as well as the nature of his views, goals, objectives, tactics and the reasons therefor.”
One of the sections in the document in the section titled “King’s Personal Conduct” mentioned alleged affairs, which were alluded to in the 2014 film “Selma” and an infamous letter from the FBI urging King to commit suicide.
The document repeatedly referred to some the alleged sex acts King engaged in as “unnatural” and “abnormal.”
One of the events mentioned in the document are workshops King held in Miami, Florida, in February 1968 with funds from the Ford Foundation to train black ministers in leadership
“One Negro minister in attendance later expressed his disgust with the behind-the-scene drinking, fornication, and homosexuality that went on at the conference,” the document reads. “Several Negro and white prostitutes were brought in from the Miami area. An all night-sex orgy was held with these prostitutes and some of the delegates in attendance.”
“One room had a large table in it which was filled with whiskey. The two Negro prostitutes were paid $50.00 to put on a sex show for the entertainment of the guests. A variety of sex acts deviating from the normal were observed.”
The document continued to say that such occurrences were well known by King’s acquaintances.
“As early as January, 1964, King engaged in another, two-day drunken sex orgy in Washington, D.C. Many of those present engaged in sexual acts, natural as well as unnatural, for the entertainment of onlookers. When one of the females shied away from engaging in an unnatural act, King ... discussed how she was to be taught and initiated in this respect,” the document reads.
“Throughout the ensuing years and until this date King has continued to carry on his sexual aberrations secretly while holding himself out to the public view as a moral leader of religious conviction.”
According to the document, King had a frequent affair with a woman, which may have led to a baby girl being born. The FBI said the sources of the information was “a prominent Negro who is related by law to King’s mistress,” who referred to King repeatedly as a “hypocrite.”
“It was learned in February, 1968, from a very responsible Los Angeles individual in a position to know, that King has been having an illicit love affair with the wife of a prominent Negro dentist in Los Angeles, California, since 1962. He believes King fathered a baby girl born to this woman inasmuch as her husband is allegedly sterile,” the document reads.
“The child resembles King to a great degree and King contributes to the support of this child. He calls this woman every Wednesday and frequently meets her in various cities throughout the country.”
According to the document, the source also said that King had affairs with three other women, including Joan Baez, a folk singer.
“The prominent Negro who furnished the information said he was appalled that a man of King’s low character could cause so much trouble for both Negroes and the Government,” the document reads. “As can be seen from above, it is a fact that King not only regularly indulges in adulterous acts but enjoys the abnormal by engaging in group sexual orgies.”
The document noted an alleged disconnect between King’s actions and messages.
More documents related to JFK’s assassination have yet to be released. Last week, President Donald Trump allowed the release of 2,800 documents but withheld thousands of other documents at the request of U.S. intelligence agencies. The withheld files were placed under a six-month review, and Trump ordered the intelligence agencies to release approved documents throughout the period.
Information from the Associated Press was included in this story.
Standing on the shoulders of warriors gangsters killers
"That’s real history. Brings up many memories. Many truths. Many Revelations." --Fahizah Alim
marvin x and muse fahizah
"I don't know how Marvin X survived dealing with all those killer ass niggers he was dealing with, from Alonzo Batin, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Amiri Baraka, Sun Ra, Charlie Walker, Dr. Yusef Bey and all the other Muslims who wanted to kill him, especially the Chicago gang, to say nothing of the white man who was after his ass for five years because he refused to fight in Vietnam. He had to have the armor of God on him."
--Rashid Easley
"Courageous and outrageous! He walked through the muck and mire of hell and came out clean as white fish and black as coal!"
James Sweeney, Berkeley
STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF WARRIORS GANGSTERS KILLERS
I'm standing on the shoulders of warriors, gangsters, killers Can't be no punk bitch ass nigguh weak ass nigguh prison nigguhs taught me nigguhs you never heard of Alonzo Harris Batin Guru of Black Arts West Theatre Fillmore Street San Francisco 1966 Batin raised us from the dead Hillary X Duncan X Ethna X Marvin X from deaf dumb blind level of life feed us bean soup whole wheat bread butter honey spread Whitting fish bean, carrot pies Islam all night long marijuana too science all night long history of sun moon stars history of yakub history of aboriginal Asiatic black man woman Al Batin nigguh ain't been to prison can't tell Al Batin shit not a motherfuckin thang you ain't been ta prison nigguh get yo punk ass up outter here Al Batin socalled hypocrite Muslim NOI couldn't pimp Batin kill for Elijah Muhammad ain't goin round corner with punk bitch ass nigguhs steeped in prison Islam solid wouldn't bend solid Al Batin Hidden One Paper hanger counterfeit money counterfeit ID income tax fraud Al Batin stone criminal Muslim
prison comrade of Eldridge Cleaver Me and Batin moved Eldridge
Eldridge Cleaver and Marvin X outside the house where BPP had shootout with OPD, 1968. Lil'Bobby Hutton murdered in cold blood by OPD.
photo Muhammad Al Kareem
from white woman's house to Black House
only killers move killers Earl Anthony yeah Earl the Squirrel
international self confessed snitch ass Black Panther
Earl the Squirrel
lived at Batin's house
as we all did
even nigguh's like Earl the Squirrelt ate
Batin's
food
slept in bed provided by the MOST Gracious host Batin
yet Earl talked against Muslims
bitch ass ungrateful nigguh
wrote play bout Eldridge and Batin Woody King produced Off Broadway Love you Alonzo Batin put spine in my back told Batin I confessed to fornication in Chicago Hurriyah confessed too before Supreme Captain Raymond Sherriff Captain Elijah Muhammad, Jr. National Secretary John Ali when I came home to San Francisco Batin say why you confess to dogs they dirtier than you will ever be Batin put me to shame upped my game never the same Al Batin Hidden One. Appreciate you Know you in Gangsta Muslim paradise! --Marvin X/El Muhajir
Good
teachings, Baba Marvin. But grandparents teachings permeate and last an
entire lifetime. The unconditional quality of their love is needed to
offset the stress of their parents. I think if we were good parents, our
children want our input- to a point, as you were outlining.
--Dr. Kweli Tutashinda
Let not our regrets and frets from our past cast a
shadow on the possible lessons that our wisdom and the extra time we
have for support and babysitting loved ones.However, one
should not be overbearing sharing our seeds of knowledge. Let the little ones teach us what we need to learn, In time
the tables will turn given the blessing of aging. Let us not squirm
from hearing our neglects, overdue frets and debts unpaid.
--Monsa S. Nitoto
Marvin,
I’ve just read this. Fritz Pointer is right, as usual. It’s an important issue.I
had an entire chapter in my Ph.D dissertation on a black boy I treated
who was caught in the conflict between mother and grandmother (“
everybody’s mother”), though a lot of the conflict comes from the birth
mother who had dumped the kids temporarily on the grandmother then got
halfway on her feet and wanted them back; but the grandmother had bonded
with the children by then, plus she and the mother remained attached to
the child dependency check. In other words, both felt, let me have the
check and you can have the kids. So it works both ways. But it’s a
problem that originates with the parents though driven by social forces
and the righteous feeling on the part of the grandmother that she hasn’t
done a perfect job of raising the mother and would like to try her hand
on her grandchild if not rearising the mother.. But this complex and
variegated issue you point to is just one of the projects in black
social engineering neglected and lost in the winds of tough talk of
black family strengths after the black intellectuals turned away from
combat with oppression after the Sixties to patching up black identity
and self-esteem image-making largely through denying the very pathology
our oppression had wrought.
--Dr. Nathan Hare
Of Grandparents, Parents and Children
by Marvin X
Gibran
taught us children come through us but they are not us, we are the bow,
they are the arrow. As much as we love our grandchildren, they belong
to their mothers and fathers who have their visions for them, so we must
ultimately step back and let their parents raise them, no matter how
much we love them and want to give them our vision.
So
I say to myself and other grandparents, let the parents raise them no
matter how much you want to instill your vision, you had your chance
with your children, now it is your children's turn to raise their
children as they see fit. If and when they call upon you, be ready to
serve and don't overwhelm your children with your dogmatic ideas of
child raising notions infused with ideological and spiritual dogmatism.
Your
children are your children and their children are their children. If
your children never desire you to see their children, so it is. You had
your chance with your children, your grandchildren are just a last
chance to scoop your poop and join the ancestors with a clean slate or
ma'at, the balance of right and wrong, good and evil. Don't push the
issue, after all, you shall be gone soon and so shall your children,
then it will your grandchildren's turn to see if they can walk the
straight path!
Surah al-Fatiha, “The Opening”, is the first
chapter of the Holy Quran. Its seven verses are a prayer for God’s
guidance, and stress Its lordship and mercy of God. This chapter has an
essential role in daily prayers; being recited at least seventeen times a
day, at the start of each unit of prayer (rakah).
The surah is described in various Hadith as “the mother of the Book”
(Umm al-Kitab), and said to be the seven verses alluded to in Surah
Al-Hijr (15:87); “We have given thee seven of the opt-repeated (verses)
and the great Quran.”
Bismillāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm
1:1 In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy!
Al ḥamdu lillāhi rabbi l-’ālamīn
1:2 Praise belongs to God, Lord of the Worlds,
Ar raḥmāni r-raḥīm
1:3 the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy,
Māliki yawmi d-dīn
1:4 Master of the Day of Judgement.
Iyyāka na’budu wa iyyāka nasta’īn
1:5 It is You we worship; it is You we ask for help.
Ihdinā ṣ-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm
1:6 Guide us to the straight path:
Ṣirāṭ al-laḏīna an’amta ‘alayhim ġayril maġḍūbi ‘alayhim walāḍ ḍāllīn
1:7 the path of those You have blessed, those who incur no anger and who have not gone astray.
Then, again, perhaps we should delete Surah Al Fatihah, since I am
not trying to convert children to Islam, although I know the power of
Islamic consciousness in our history, not to mention in West Africa,
but the Moorish pre-Columbian presence in the Americas is profound and
undeniable. America's first treaty was with the Moors, and the US
Marines were established to subdue the Moorish presence in the Barbary
coast, Northwest Africa. Except for the music of Muslim Africans, would
Blues have originated in the Mississippi Delta?
The
Malian kora master Ali Farka said his people have played what is known
as the Blues for ten thousand years, and he didn't have any problem
playing with the Rolling Stones and BB King. Their music was not Blues
to him, rather, it was the sacred music of his people.
I
never forced Islam on any of my children but I taught it to them. Of
course they may have shied away from it after seeing the contradictions
in my behavior, my Negrocities ( Amiri Baraka term he told me not to
steal from him, RIP).
My son's, Darrell/Abdul,
Islamic consciousness and linguistics took him around the world,
Brazil, Japan, Egypt, Jerusalem, Damascus, Europe. As we know, he
graduated from UC Berkeley in Arabic and Near Eastern Studies, won a
Fulbright Fellowship to University of Damascus, Syria, also studied at
the American University, Cairo, Egypt, with graduate study at Harvard.
So Islamic consciousness took a little boy from Fresno, CA around the
world, and for the most part, without money, as it did his father who
traveled throughout the Americas and Caribbean with hardly a dime,
especially while in flight from US imperialism. I bear witness a good
name is better than gold and as the Qur'an teaches, "If we flee in the
name of Allah, we shall find in the earth many places of escape and
abundant resources."
From the Sufi perspective,
after a study of such masters as Ghazali, Hazra Inayat Khan, Rumi,
Guru Bawa, Ahamadu Bamba and other Sufi Masters, including Saadi and
Hafiz, (with whom I have been compared (Bob Holman) and when I briefly
perused them, I saw myself in them, and most of all Duse Muhammad, Marcus Garvey, Noble Drew Ali, Master Fard Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad;for sure, I am in harmony with them all
as per the religion of the heart, thus I am rarely, if ever, a visitor to
mosques, temples, churches, and other establishments for the worship
and fellowship of the Supreme One by whatever name, please don't get me
in the name game! I am a writer who enjoys solitude, a recluse, hermit, thinker 24/7, thus people are overwhelmed with my anti-social behavior.
Guru Bawa would say we must transcend the one billion ten million
illusions of the monkey mind! Hazrat Inayat Khan taught, what does it
matter if it is not in the heart? Would the heart allow one to kill
anyone, whether believers or non-believers? My heart will not allow me to do such an abomination to believers and/or non-believers! James Baldwin said,
"The murder of my child will not make your child safe!" You mean the Crack epidemic would not lead to the opioid pandemic?
So
much trouble in the world, ancestor Bob Marley said, so much trouble in
the world. When my comrade in the Black Arts Movement, Askia Toure',
apologized to young students at University of California, Merced,
for leaving their generation in a mess, I initially objected to his
comments and followed him to the mike to express my feelings that our
generation was simply not able to defeat the US Army, Navy, Air Force,
CIA, FBI, local police, National Guard, et al. We challenged an
overwhelming force of state power and suffered a military defeat--let's
be clear, a military defeat!
But as per those
valiant warriors who fought the good fight for freedom, justice and
equality, I have long called for a day of recognition for their valor
and patriotism, just as we honor veterans of American's imperialist
wars. Ironically, when I have befriended such American veterans, they
are amazed that we are able to not only converse but seek to redress all
the injustices they and we know exist, and they are surprised to
discover we are warriors as much as they are. We are patriots as much as
they are. Just as they did, when MLK, Jr was assassinated, we and they
felt the same level of pain. For example, one US Air Force officer said
when he was piloting a plane over Vietnam and he was informed MLK, Jr
was just assassinated, he said he sent a message to his crew that nobody
should move, if they do, he was blowing up the motherfucking plane!
So
let us walk together children, yes, to the promised land. And look at
this beautiful land, look out the window as you fly coast to coast, and
look again after you land, look at the land, the beauty of it all and
tell yourself we can and must all get along, that there is enough for
all, so why should we be greedy, selfish and narrow minded. Why can't we
share the wealth? Wasn't this the meaning of the first Thanksgiving?
Obviously,
many of us didn't get the concept, didn't believe and/or know we could
share the wealth, that there was enough for everyone. As a result of our
sub-consciousness, we are ignorant of the fact that what goes around
comes around in the simple mystical order of things. We conquer land but
never pray to those ancestors buried in mounds underneath the land. We
don't ask their permission to be on the land. We presume it is
sufficient to "buy" the land yet don't understand there are souls on the
land beyond payment, beyond any amount of money, gold, diamonds. This
is why we cut down sacred trees of ancestors as if no spirits live in
them, and then when fires erupt on the land that destroy all we have
accumulated, we are in shock, traumatized to no end that all we
accumulated is no more.
--Marvin X/El Muhajir
11/1/17
See the November/December issue of The Movement, journal of BAM writer Marvin X, artistic freedom fighter. The issue is dedicated to Children, especially two of his grandchildren, Naeemah and Jahmeel. Now we know Gibran taught us our children come through us but they are not us, we are the bow, they are the arrow. And as much as we love our grandchildren, they belong to their mothers and fathers who have their visions for them, so we must ultimately step back and let their parents raise them, no matter how much we love them and want to give them our vision.
And so I say of grandparents, let the parents raise them no matter how much you want to instill your vision, you had your chance with your children, now it is your children's turn to raise their children as they see fit. If and when they call upon you, just be ready to serve and don't overwhelm your chldren with your dogmatic ideas of child raising notions infused with ideological and spiritual dogmatism.
Your children are your children and their children are their children. If your children never desire you to see their children, so it is. You had your chance with your children, your grandchildren are just a last chance to scoop your poop and join the ancestors with a clean slate or ma'at, the balance of right and wrong, good and evil. Don't push the issue, after all, you shall be gone soon and so shall your children, then it will your grandchildren's turn to see if they can walk the straight path!
The National Archives published more than
