missing the point ....

Submitted by jamil (United Arab Emirates), May 17, 2006 at 07:48

islam is islam, and does not belong to muslims who claim islam, any more than to orientalists or political propagandists disguised as academics who claim to have knowledge of islam ...

that aside, religion, what ever that really means, which is so many things to so many different people that it really has no meaning, is no more than a facet of an individual's identity, and may be claimed as identity by any group of individuals, or be ascribed to a group by others, whether friend, foe or media ..

bed-stuy ... black brooklyn / crooklyn is spike lee turf, yet a mix of so many different immigrants over time that will always remain a dynamic palimpsest ... atlantic avenue, original home to syriani arab, armenian, circassian, immigrants, muslim, druze, & christian ... opened the levant to brooklyn ... sheikh dawood, the grand patriarch of afro-amerian muslims had his storefront mosque there ... sort of built on a foundation of marcus garvey, 7 teh west indians who led afro-centric political thought and action, from adam clayton powell to charles wrangle ... to wyclef jean & lauryn hill ... "we are all re-fugees"

atlantic avenue, atlantic -- is appropriate as it symobolizes the sorrowful crossing from africa in which millions of african men, women and children died & were thrown overboard to feed the sharks, often a better fate than being sold down river to plantations deep in southern swamps ...

discourse about islam in brooklyn or north america belongs first to african americans, as it has become as much a symbol of resistance as was the black christian church, but that died with martin luther king, to be taken over by opportunistic neo-conservative funded "prosperity gospel" of individualistic greed ...

but when malcolm X was assassinated by the power behind the hand that klled him, it sparked a movement toward islam, not to Farrakhan, who remains our west indian brother, a spiritual descendent of garvey & frederick douglas as much as a continuation of early malcolm, his rival, ... but afro-americans turned to a multiple range of islams from sufism to political justice, to codified doctrine and ritual ... when we listen & dance to salif keita or baaba maal afro-pop in the clubs, we are joining in their dhikr, their praise of islam, allah and muhammed, even though most of the words are unknown the spirit lives ... thus africa and islam meet as much in the dance halls as in the mosques ...

in short, if you are not black, not muslim, not living in the hearf of resistance to WASP domination and exploitation your comments either represent the oppressor, or merely voyeurism, quasi-intellectual tourism to places you dare not walk …

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