african aspects of the puerto rican personality

African Aspects of the Puerto Rican Personality by (the late) Dr. Robert A. Martinez covers some familiar ground and rehashes some well-known topics like the African contribution to Puerto Rican music and popular religion. What I found a bit more interesting is how the paper touched on Arab/Spanish racial attitudes as well as some of the economic factors which determined the course of Black enslavement in Puerto Rico.

ranks of latinos turning to islam are increasing

Puerto Rico Herald: Ranks Of Latinos Turning To Islam Are Increasing by Daniel J. Wakin

"when in the course of human events..."

A holiday sampler from Grenada's past with words from Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Filiberto Ojeda Rios and an alternative perspective on Black Freedom and the American Revolution. Also, if you want to read more broadly, I also found an interesting list of Movements for National, Ethnic Liberation or Regional autonomy. I often wonder to what extent we as Americans believe in the ideals and principles of the Declaration of Independence. Do we celebrate the 4th of July because it is simply the national birthday? Or is there a real affirmation of the idea that government authority depends on the consent of the governed?

Planet Grenada:
what to the slave is the fourth of july?
for the fourth of july
"querido fbi"
black loyalists

egypt and the shias

Since I'm on the Su-Shi web ring, every once in a while I feel obligated to blog on the subject every once in a while. To be honest, I don't think I've significantly deepened my thoughts about how to understand the Sunni-Shia split since the last post. I'm basically Sunni but I'm intrigued by the idea of how close to Shia Islam a Sunni can get. I occasionally recall how almost all the Sunni Sufi tariqats trace their lineage through Ali (ra) and some of the exalted titles given to Sufi Shaykhs (like Insan al-Kamil or perfect man) seem to come awfully close to the Shia concept of Imamate. So even though Abu Bakr (ra) was the valid khalifah, a Sunni could still say that a unique spiritual characteristic was transmitted through Ali (may allah enoble his face [1] [2]) and touched several of his descendants. (Some of the Shia imams also appear in the chains of Sunni tariqats).

I'm rehashing some of this, because I recently came across the following article from Al-Ahram: Egypt: Sunni but Shia inclined which discusses the role of Shia Islam to the history of Egypt.


Grenada's past:
sushi revisited: part one
sushi revisited: part two

mumia abu jamal: hispanics, latin america and the struggle against the empire

Hispanics, Latin America and the Struggle Against the Empire an interview with Mumia Abu Jamal by Rafael Rodriguez-Cruz on the Black Panthers, Cuba, COINTELPRO, the Patriot Act, the immigration movement and other issues.

See also: mumia abu jamal - death blossoms

a "new" look at engagement?

In A "New" Look at Engagement? Motazz Soliman looks at African-American and Hispanic-American struggles for inclusion in order to gain insights to guide Muslims in American society.

black versus brown

MSNBC: Can the venerable black-Latino coalition survive the surge in Hispanic power?

the senselessness of guantanamo

In These Times: The Senselessness of Guantanamo

better formatting?

For most of the time I've had this blog I've surfed the web with Internet Explorer, but I've recently learned (first-hand unfortunately) that the program has weaknesses which can be exploited by viruses so then I switched to Mozilla. But then I realized that Grenada hasn't been displaying properly on Mozilla so recently I started to tweak the html a little and now things seem to be looking a bit better. I've also noticed an upswing in hits. I wonder if it is all related?

the south park where chef becomes muslim (the comeback)

I posted this before but You Tube removed the clip from their site so the old link is no good. But I recently found another site where it is still available. This is the episode where Chef decides to protest the flag of South Park because of its racist overtones (undertones, through-tones) and along the way becomes Muslim and changes his name to Abdul Mohammed Jabar-Rauf Kareem Ali.

the one who got away

On the personal tip: I found out a few days ago that "the one who got away" has a daughter who is a little less than a year old. It's weird. When I found out she got married it was bittersweet but I can still honestly say I was happy for her. This time around it's still bittersweet but I think its more bitter than sweet. Odd. Maybe I'm just in a different place. Or maybe it's just me getting sad about the road not taken.

Also, it's funny that I'm getting into this at all because I also recently found out that Grenada is even less anonymous than I thought it was. Anyway... I have some posts on the back burner and I'm still figuring out life stuff. More later.

amish drug rings or why profiling is really stupid

This recent mess in Miami (where many of the news reports jumped to the false conclusion that the Seas of David were Muslim) reminds me of some of the dangers of profiling. The problem is, any time you single out one group and treat them with greater suspicion, then logically it means putting everyone else under less scrutiny. And when some of those people realize how much they can get away with, they will often take advantage of it.

For example, when I was in high school I had the sense that for some of my white classmates, shoplifting was almost a "rite of passage". When they went to the stores, no one was paying particular attention to them, and they could nab things with a certain amount of confidence and impunity. After all, why would anyone suspect a fifteen-year old white kid?

I thought I'd share with you my two "favorite" examples of how this logical flipside of profiling can lead to some rather spectacular misdeeds.

The first is an Amish drug ring. Yes, you heard me correctly. An Amish drug ring. Apparently from 1992 to 1997, two Amish youths had entered into an arrangement with a local motorcycle gang and sold $100,000 worth in cocaine to youths in the Philadelphia area. This was possible, precisely because the police would generally ignore the Amish. After all what could they be up to in their buggies and hats?

The second example happened after 9/11. Everywhere in the U.S. , Middle Easterners/Muslims were obviously being singled out as a threat. Security in many public places was elevated and racial profiling was becoming more blatant. The amazing thing is that in this atmosphere of heightened attention to certain ethnic groups, where people can't even bring cigarette lighters or nail clippers onto airplanes, a fifteen-year old white kid still manages to fly a plane into a building!

If we really want to be safe and secure, it means (among other things) looking objectively at the world and not taking for granted that certain demographic groups are innocent and harmless while other groups are scary and threatening. We have to be willing to look objectively at the world with fresh eyes instead of taking the prejudiced (and intellectually lazy) route of merely rounding up the "usual suspects".

woman of color blog

Brownfemipower moved her women of color blog to a new location:
www.brownfemipower.com

And check out her post: reclaiming space for a brief but intense expressive piece which puts patriarchy and life/death in the Middle East in perspective.

what would a white mosque be like?

Check out: What would a white mosque be like? at Third Resurrection

"sing dis song. doo dah, doo dah!"

By the rivers of Babylon‚—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How could we sing the LORD's song
in a foreign land?
Psalm 137:1-4

I started this post over a week ago and I had intended to talk about how Muslims might make sense of the Psalms (and the Torah and the Gospel) which are mentioned in the Quran as other examples of revelation. But I think I'll save that larger discussion for later. Instead I'll just share a few thoughts on a more specific issue.

The above passage from the Psalms is one of the most intriguing for me. Firstly, it is probably among the more ancient songs which you'll ever hear on the radio. Don McClean (more famous for the song American Pie) recorded a version of this song in the form of a round simply called Babylon. A second version with was composed by the Rastafarian group, the Melodians as Rivers of Babylon and was subsequently covered by other artists.

The second reason why the above passage interests me is because I was really impressed by how the comedy film maker Mel Brooks uses it in a famous scene from Blazing Saddles. (warning: crude language). His films have a huge amount of silly humor, but he can be deep when he wants to be.

juan cole on the miami group

Juan Cole has some rather interesting comments to add about the Seas (or C's?) of David on his Informed Comment blog. See: CAIR: Miami Cult not Muslims

But contrast the grandstanding of Alberto Gonzales on this group of poor unarmed ghetto folk with the way in which the Robert J. Goldstein case was treated. He actually had the bombs in his house and was going to blow up Floridians. No press called him a "Jewish" terrorist and no questions were ever raised about his possible international links.

miami and the seas of david

When I first heard the story of the "terrorists" who were recently arrested in Miami and were talking about blowing up the Sears Tower, I was struck by how similar some of the details were to Sleeper Cell. The cell lived in some kind of warehouse. They were planning a spectacular public attack. They were a mix of immigrants and non-immigrants. And apparently the FBI did some kind of undercover work in apprehending them... in this case, by claiming to be a representative of Al-Qaedah.

But there the similarities pretty much end.

First of all, the group doesn't seem to be Muslim in any sense (But "lucky" for me, they are mostly Afro-Caribbean... Haitian and Bahamian). The group is called the Seas of David and they have a "militant" vibe but are more Bible-based. Perhaps they just hinted at being Muslim so that the FBI-agent who was pretending to be from Al-Qaedah would be more willing to work with them? I don't know.

Some of the members of the group are also described as "teenagers" or "young adults" and no weapons or bomb-making materials were found by the FBI which makes me wonder how seriously we should take the whole thing. I'm not saying that no wrong-doing occurred. The group had apparently gone as far as shooting (photographs of) various targets in the Miami area. But they were never actually in touch with Al-Qaedah. I seriously pray that the judge, jury, etc. looks at the situation with wisdom. By all means, punish them as appropriate. But I hope the government isn't ruining the lives of a group of harmless poor black teenagers (if that's what they are) just so that the FBI can look good.

It will be interesting to see how the story develops. Will American society treat "Christian" terrorists differently from "Muslim" terrorists? And in any case, when is the last time that white Christian militants got on the FBI's bad side?

Grenada's past:
eric robert rudolph
iraq and al qaeda, america and the kkk

nammu muhammad?

Also, I should add that I got a few more hits searching for information on "Nammu Muhammad" than "Nammu Mohamed" so it is possible that the former is more accurate than the latter.

vote nammu mohamed

From: African American Green Candidates to Watch in 2006

Nammu Mohamed, candidate for County Council in Richland County, South Carolina, is focusing his campaign on the needs of local families. "Families and children in Richland County need more than just words from the council, they need action," said Mr. Mohamed. "From jobs to education to juvenal justice, the county has let the people down long enough. It's time to elect a defender of children and families to the county council."

I honestly, don't know if Nammu is Muslim but given his last name, you kind of have to wonder.

It kind of makes sense. After all, green is the color of Islam. And for past Planet Grenada articles on the connections between the Green Party and Muslims or Muslim causes, you might want to check out:
the spiritual left
khalil bendib
malik rahim
the green party supports divestment

sleeper cell (part 2)

I had read about this series some time ago before it actually aired, but I haven't actually seen any of Sleeper Cell until now. (The series just came out on DVD and so I can watch the whole thing over a weekend) I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it yet. I've gotten through the first two DVDs and I'm taking a break before starting the finale.

Michael Ealy stars as an African-American Muslim FBI agent who is working undercover in a terrorist cell. I think the premise had a lot of promise, and the show is entertaining so far. It has its interesting bits. But to be honest, I'm not totally geeked about the series.

SPOILERS AHEAD
DON'T READ FURTHER IF YOU PLAN TO SEE THE SERIES

Simply by virtue of having to tell a story over a long period of time about a small central cast, the writers had to flesh out the Muslim characters and give them different backstories. So it's portrayal of Muslims almost couldn't help but be more humane and realistic than the typical stock terrorist villan which usually populates this type of story. The terrorist cell consists of: A Bosnian who saw his entire family being butchered by Serbs. An ex-skinhead from France who found Islam through his Morroccan wife. A young white American with liberal parents (clearly modelled on John Walker Lindh). The head of the cell is Saudi (Although for most of the series, his background is not specified, and during work hours he passes as a Sephardic Jew. This character is by far the most cartoonish).

In general, most of the Muslim characters are portrayed as deeply conflicted and contradictory in matters of religion. From the very first episode, we see the members of the cell hanging out in strip clubs, drinking. We find that they raise funds by dealing in heroin, child prostitution and pirated DVDs. The French Muslim is married but commits adultery with little restraint (At one point, he has sex with the mother of one of the other terror cell members).

We even see the "good" Muslim FBI agent order (and presumably drink) beer in a bar as a part of an assignment given to him by the terror cell. On top of that (and this takes us into a whole other level of issues) the "good" successful Black Muslim FBI agent also starts a sexual relationship with a white Catholic beautician (a "single" mother who later turns out to be married). We later meet one of his former girlfriends, an African-American women with a successful career in the State Department but we are never told explicitly why their relationship didn't work out.

Another level of contradiction appears when the members of the cell actually kill a genuine mujahid. In fact, pretty much all the pious (non-terrorist, non-drinking, non-fornicating) Muslim characters of any significance (a mainstream Yemeni scholar, a white American who fought to defend Muslims in Bosnia, a young Afghan boy who spent time in Guantanamo) end up dead by the end of whatever episode focuses on them. It makes it seem as if the "subliminal" message behind the series is: Compromise or die.

As I said in the beginning, this is definitely better than most Hollywood portrayals of Muslims (e.g. see Planet of the Arabs). And it is definitely a huge step to have a television series with an African-American Muslim lead character, and with actual Muslims involved both in front of and behind the camera. At the same time, there is definitely room for improvement.