Al X’s Blog

That’s my new short story, available for viewing here.

Mosaic

This restaurant is located right next to Masjid Al-Farooq in downtown Atlanta, and it’s rather nice. The owner is Aisha Tan and her husband, who just took it over from the previous management. The restaurant was good then and is good now. Mrs. Tan knows how to cook Chinese food, Thai food, Soul food, and some Desi dishes, and her food is very good! You can get all of it halal, and you can get small portions for a small price if you’re looking to eat just a little bit. If I didn’t recommend it, it wouldn’t be mentioned in this post. Even though I can no longer eat there for obvious reasons, I’d recommend it for other Muslims and non-Muslims. It’s not a coffee shop for the wuslims to sit and show off their kaffir friends, nor is it a place where Muslims or non-Muslims feel unwelcome.

Mina’s Safari Lounge

This restaurant has been very good to me for years. Mina Bestman is a Liberian whose ancestors came back from America to settle. She can cook Caribbean dishes, Liberian, Nigerian, and some soul food dishes. Her food tastes great, is reasonably priced, and it even comes in portions you can’t eat in one sitting. I recommend her tobagee, palm butter, spinach and rice (not quite that plain or simple, it’s much better), and her potato grains. Though she is Christian, she buys all of her meat from the halal store up the street and she never cooks with pork. Anything you can get from her, you can eat. I forgot, her fish is the bomb, too! (The non-explosive type! Relax, FBI!)

Dear Reverend Doctor Wright,

These are excerpts of what you have had to say in your tenure as Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ. The first will even show what you actually said as opposed to how Fu– I mean– Faux– I mean– Fox News quoted– I mean– misquoted you. You reminded the congregation that where governments lie, change, and fail, God Almighty does neither of these. You astutely backed up every controversial thing you said with historical facts that are well-known to even math majors who take only the bare minimum of history in their education. As a Muslim, I included the videos really for the benfit of Muslim readers of this open letter, as you know better than I do what you said. These were selected to show why I respect your intellect and your insight even though I am theologically opposed to supra-singular views of Allah Almighty or Muhammad not being the last of all prophets, peace be to him.

I will not even post the video wherein Barak Obama rebuked you, his former pastor, but you said here that you haven’t talked to Obama since he won the election. Ironically, you told the interviewing reporter that “those Jews” won’t let him talk to you, and that Obama is beholden to the Jewish lobbying group AIPAC. You informed those of us who knew not that Obama did not send a delegation to an anti-racism conference held in Geneva recently because Israel’s zionist interest would not allow this. I actually did not know that Switzerland hosted another racism conference until I saw that interview today, though I will never forget that now that I know because it was a few months after Bush kept the US out of South Africa’s racism conference in 2001 that the US was hit on what Ethiopians celebrate as their New Year. Truthfully, you have saved many a Muslim the problem of explaining our disdain for Zionist Jews and Judaism/Zionism. Between your words and those of Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney who at this time sits in an Israeli jail for attempting to send humanitarian supplies, we Muslims have a lot less work to do to explain why the Jews became an example of what not to do for us.

Everyday when we pray one of the five required prayers along with other bonus ones, we ask Allah to “guide us on the right path, not the path of those of those who earn Your anger, or those who go astray.” Though many lay Muslims are unaware, by “those who go astray” we are referring to the Christians for their breaking of the first and second commandments. By “those who earn Your anger”, we are referring to Jews for their rejection of faith on multiple occasions and the killing of some prophets like Zachariah (peace to him). When you and Representative McKinney address the Zionist conspiracies, intrigues, and injustices of the day, we get to skip this and go straight to that of which they are an example in our message to mankind. We need not explain why we count them as those who earned Allah’s wrath. In addition to their policies against the actual inhabitants of their false nation, they get other politicians of other nations to support them, until they have a political machine so strong that only it can approve of candidates to be nominated for positions, much less elected.

Reverend Wright, I understand that you are doing this and speaking as you do against injustice, period, because you subscribe to a liberation theology, and this is to what my own ancestors subscribed when they also pastored Black churches in Kentucky and Alabama. Though they may have never heard of the original liberation theology of which I am now convinced, you are well-informed and you deserve to benefit from it for your courage and lion heart in the face of the backlash of the oppressors and tyrants of the day. Today’s Pontius Pilates and King Herrods determine who gets to be a figurehead as they have always done, and even rule from behind them as they did during the times of the prophets sent to the people. So, what I am about to say to you is not because of your reknown or your fame if not your infamy, but because of your courage to become defined as infamous by the Roman press when that is the right thing to do. I invite you to the original liberation theology, beginning even before Adam’s creation, continued with various prophets up to Muhamad (peace to all of them), encompassing both the here and the hereafter at once. There must be an authority in the lives of all of us, and this must be an authority that will not oppress humanity or any other species for that matter. If that authority does not understand that it answers to the Most High in the final analysis, it will commit oppression to satisfy human greed. There is no government conceived in this aside from the one exemplified by Muhammad and carried on by his successors, and exemplified by Joseph and kings David and Solomon before him, peace to them. For this justice from the top down and the bottom up, and for our salvation do I write this message and invitation to you.

About the Jews whom you have pointed out as puppetmasters and others like them who cover up information with their own intrigues, Allah warned us, “Verily, those who conceal the clear proofs, evidences and the guidance, which We have sent down, after We have made it clear for the people in the book, they are the ones cursed by Allah and cursed by the cursers.” [al-Qur'aan, al-Baqara(2):159] You, sir, sound like one of the cursers, and I say this as a compliment. This is not a compliment to butter you up because I am inviting you to our religion, but rather the reverse is true. You are receiving this invitation because you honestly earned such a compliment by cursing those who openly ask for it even when it requires courage to do so. You deserve to know not only which religion is true, but why it is true and others not so, even though we are to do justice to all peoples.

The first reason I say this is because you may have learned as an educated pastor that another revelation was expected by the early Christian Church, and that some of this was based on the Old Testament, such as Deuteronomy 18:17-18, the description of which did not apply to Jesus (peace to him) as much as it did to Muhammad (peace and blessings to him) when he finally came. Jesus (peace to him) was an Isrealite, not from the brethren of the Israelites. The second reason I say this is that the Qur’an, which came to mankind later, contains information about embryology, geology, astronomy, and oceanography that was not known or even knowable to mankind at the time and that is still known today by scientists to be fact. For this, you must read the Qur’an’s translations for yourself if you have not done so. Lastly, I say so because this same Qur’an with knowledge that mankind could not have and that Satan had never disclosed to man before if he even knew, says that “If any one desires a religion other than Islam, never will it be accepted of him, and in the hereafter he will be in the ranks of those who have lost.” (Surah 3:85). This would make sense, because what name would one give to a religion that is true if the others are mistakes? The name of a person, like Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, or Christianity? Or would it be called something that separates it from the others, like “Submission”, which is what humans find it hard to do in the first place?

Lastly but not least importantly, I say so because Submission, Islam is not about race, nor is it about a foolish color-blindness that ignores the reality of racial diversity with which we’re created. It is about liberation, and yet it is not named “Liberation” because this principle is understood already in the grander scheme of what is Islam and therefore Submission. In accepting Islam, you are further rejecting the oppression of anyone at all, and you will not be rejecting the “white man’s religion” for an Arab religion. You will not be trading slave-masters, nor the back of the bus for the back of the camel. Arab culture might be a beast to contend with, as it was for Bilal, but as far as Muhammad (peace and blessings to him) was concerned, that was why only Bilal could call the adhan from atop the Kaaba, while no one else may do this. This was also why Muhammad said that the adhan was for the Abyssinians, and I am calling you to take up this mantle. Accept Islam and call your listeners to pray to the same Almighty to whom Jesus (peace to him) prayed, and in the same manner he and other prophets (peace to them) prayed; bowing his head in prostration. Because unlike many other Muslims already in the ranks, you would actually be working in between the prayer times to better things for everyone.

I am not telling you this will be an easy transition, nor a difficult one for you, but rather both. Many who now follow anywhere you would cease to follow you, not because you would be wrong, but because you would be right. Many who praise you as a strong Black man would disparage you as a terrorist sympathizer for some of the same views with which they currently agree. Simply put, you would be rejected by many you know, but you are no stranger to this, nor has this stopped you before from your convictions. Allah says about Muslim men who are similar to you in courage and resolve, “When the true believers saw the parties (ready to attack), they said, “This is what Allah and His messenger have promised us, and Allah and His messenger are truthful.” This only strengthened their faith and augmented their submission. Among the believers there are men who have been true to the contract they ratified with Allah. Some of them have fulfilled their pact, while some are still waiting to do so, not having faltered in any way at all.” 33:22-23. (Upright women are not left out of the Qur’an, but that’s another story my wife would love to share!) I invite you to be one of those men, from whose courage and knowledge other Muslims can benefit.

For you, I wish the best in both lives. All praise is due to Allah, and all I have said that is true is from him. Any mistakes have been my own.

This is the speech that Frederick Douglass made at a Fourth of July celebration. And he was one of the milder leaders of the anti-slavery movement! This is why I recommend everyone piss on the stars and stripes this fourth! Especially the patriotic Americans who should be the most disappointed! Allah, please embarass America, and every other oppressor.