Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | THE FIRST FIFTEEN DAYS IN PHOTOS
By Bassam Tariq
I am typing this in Atlanta as Aman sleeps and I am running on less than two hours of sleep. We have travelled across America in the past 15 days and we are only half way through our trip. This calls for a look back at some of our favorite moments and also an opportunity to share some great photos that didn’t make the cut for the blog posts.
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | Day 16: The Quiet Life
By Bassam Tariq
In 1987, Warith Deen Muhammad, the son of Elijah Mohammad, took a shovel and dug it deep in a small farmland. It was the groundbreaking for New Medina, a small community in rural Southwest Mississippi that would celebrate the values of Muslims and the African American experience.
The story made the front page of The Muslim Journal and many members of the African American Muslim community were enamored by the idea. The promise of a self-sustaining community that championed values, harmony and healthy living was compelling. More than 5,000 families inquired to buy land. The plans were drawn out and many families began to move into the New Medina. They were all pioneers part of this large and revolutionary initiative that hoped to create a unique and vibrant Muslim American culture.
***
Aman and I enter the gates of New Medina and make our way to meet the Imam, the spiritual leader, of the community. We aren’t sure which one is his house so we begin to knock on all the doors we see. The town is quiet. Not a single car or soul passes by. Soon enough, we find ourselves at the door of a man named Abdul Shareef (Brother Abdul) and he is happy to take us on a tour throughout the New Medina property in his Toyota pick-up truck. Shareef is 81 years old. He hunches when he walks and speaks with a soft, disarming cadence. I ride shotgun in his truck as he takes us through the neighborhood.
The following photos were taken while riding in Brother Abdul’s truck tour through New Medina
Brother Abdul is a pioneer of the community. He was one of the founding members of New Medina. I asked him why he wanted New Medina to be in Mississippi.
“I grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. After being in Chicago, I wanted to figure out a way to move back here.”
Brother Abdul worked as a mailman for the post office his entire life. He retired in his 60’s and now spends most of his time at the mosque. His wife and him have been married for the past 62 years. There are only eight families in all of New Medina. Two of the eight are Christians, but all are African American. There is a sea of wild grass on all sides of the area with small vegetation areas fenced up.
“We have to fence the vegetation otherwise the deer will come and eat it all.”
Most of the families have their own farms, some grow chicken, others grow vegetables and fruits. All the street signs are named after the attributes associated with God: Ar-Rahman, the merciful. Al-Halim, the Forebearing One, etc.
“To be honest, we expected there to be more growth by now.” Shareef mumbles, “but I guess we’ll have to be patient.”
The majority of the families that live out in New Medina are retired or have some sort of supplemental income that allows them to live out as far as they do. The lack of career opportunities in rural Southwest Mississippi made it less appealing for young people and that’s why New Medina has now become more of a retirement community than a haven for young Muslim cultural development. This has been the most difficult hurdle for the growth of New Medina and that’s why development has been stagnant.
***
We all gather in the mosque to break our fast. The mosque serves as the center of all the community activities. There are two women and four men present. They welcome us with open arms and dates. Most people in the community have retired and are enjoying the quiet life. The imam of the community, Alvin Shareef, is the son of Abdul Shareef and teaches computer classes at the local community college in Southwest Mississippi. Him and his wife seem to be the youngest members at the dinner. Everyone has a glass bottle in their hand that they use for water.
“We try to cut back on as much plastic as we can.” Imam Alvin says.
The community dug a well that serves as their primary water source. It is some of the best tasting water I’ve had. The members of the congregation are all health conscious so a lot of the food we have for dinner is grown locally.
“You all need to help get the word out about New Medina.” Says one of the community members. “We need younger people. More pioneers”
“I get what you’re saying, but I like living in New York.” I say, “why would a young professional want to move here?”
“But we want people to enjoy living a full-life.” Says Imam Alvin. “Right now, a lot of young people are stuck in these unnatural concrete jungles and the life is just so artificial.”
There is a part of what he’s saying that makes a lot of sense, but there is a part of me that refuses the idea of living out and away from everyone else.
“But don’t you feel like you are just escaping from everything else?” I refute.
“But what does the fast city life have to offer? The days we get tired of the country life we go visit Hattiesburg or Jackson. Sure, it’s no Chicago or New York, but it has all the amenities we need.”
We agree to disagree.
“How old are you?” Asks one of the ladies sitting in the distance.
“24,” I say.
“Yeah, well you’re too young to understand what this means and why you would need it.”
Everyone laughs. A part of me is upset that my point isn’t understood but when I look around I can’t help and notice that everyone here maybe 30 to 40 years older than me, but they are in great shape, have very healthy eating habits and most importantly are happy doing it. So I join them in the laughter. I have to accept that most people in New York in their age are not as healthy or as happy.
***
We head out in the night with Brother Abdul as our guide. There are no lights on the road, just a Toyota Tacoma leading the way. We follow him as carefully as we can.
I stick my head when I notice the stars in the sky. I flip out.
“Aman, look! Stars!”
Aman shrugs. Living in New York City the lights from the buildings blind what’s above us. It had been over a year since the last time I saw stars. The sky stands naked, the way they looked in my astronomy textbooks, the way we all are supposed to see them.
A minute later, the highway stands in front of us. The flood lights of the highway blind the sky but will help guide us through the night.
Brother Abdul waves goodbye and turns his Tacoma around and takes the skies and stars with him.
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | Day 15: Something Is Not Right In Me
By Aman Ali
My father is battling one of the strongest demons he’s ever faced in his life. He’s 66 years old and began working at the age of 9. Health reasons forced him to recently retire and ever since he’s been coping with what relevance he feels like he has in this world.
“The only thing I know is work,” he said before pausing and staring at a wall. “As long as I’m able to work, I want to work. Right now I feel like a cripple.”
New Orleans wasn’t a scheduled stop on our tour, but I wanted to surprise my parents with an unexpected visit. My brother Salman lives here and my parents moved in from their home in Columbus, Ohio about a year ago when my dad was forced to retire. After spending over 30 years working in the baking industry, my dad had a severe heart scare last year and had to stop working.
Now, he spends his days in my brother’s apartment wrestling with a retirement he wants no part of.
“I cannot relax,” he said. “I have to do something. That’s my nature. Maybe I’m not used to it yet but I don’t want to get used to it.”
I cannot begin to tell you how hard my father worked to make a better life for my brothers and I. I’m sure your father did too. But I feel like it’s something we can never mention enough. But it’s times like this that make it so painful to watch my father go through this struggle when I feel like he doesn’t have to.
Because I live in New York City and am constantly traveling, it’s a rare gem to see my parents and any of my four brothers who are scattered across the country. Anyone who knows my family knows our passion for verbally berating each other with jokes, one-liners and insults. So I was eager to break fast with everyone at the mosque and throw some verbal jabs at my dad when he totally snubbed me and my brothers and sat with some of his friends.
“It’s weird, dad has friends now,” my little brother Zeshawn snarked. “He’s BFFs with those guys over there and they formed their own clique. It’s like the Muslim version of Mean Girls.”
I interrupt my dad’s bromance session and convince him to sit with us and he begrudgingly agrees. I asked him what his daily routine is like in New Orleans now that he’s unofficially retired. He wakes up every day to take my mom to work. He then comes home to do a little bit of cooking, watch tv and maybe pray at the mosque before it’s time to pick my mom up from work at the end of the day.
“Sometimes I get jealous dropping her off because she gets to work and I don’t,” he says while drinking some tea. “It’s tough seeing somebody work and all I can do is be the chaueffer.”
My dad raised my four brothers and I by making huge sacrifices. He worked for a baking company and was on the road 4-5 days a week meeting with clients all around the country. Working is the only thing he knows how to do. When I asked him what hobbies he has in order to relax, he says “I work.”
Our family heads home to my brother’s apartment to discuss some exciting new changes in Salman’s life. As you recall from the blog last year, Salman at the time was making peace with a divorce. In September, he will be getting married to a (un)lucky lady and together the two will move to Ohio. It’s one of many reasons my family should be happy right now because of all the good news in me and my brothers’ lives.
“This is the time we should be thanking Allah,” my mom pleads to my dad. “All the mistakes we made and things we didn’t do, our five boys are fixing those mistakes with their success. When I see Aman, I feel like I’m inside him and doing what he’s doing and I’m inside Zeshawn doing what he’s doing.”
“What’s Zeshawn doing?” my dad said with a wry and squeaking chuckle. “That kid is a bum.”
Zeshawn rolls his eyes and my mom consoles him with a hug.
My dad has a personality switch that goes from stoic to goofball in seconds. One minute he’s quiet and will barely even utter a peep and the next minute he’s riffing about how dorky my glasses are. I giggle incessantly everytime he opens his mouth.
I ask my dad why he can’t sit back, relax and smile at all the joy in our family right now. My mom responds instead.
“Your father worked hard all his life for the past 40 years,” she said. “He can’t stay one day at home. He feels very good when he’s working and helping people and right now he feels like he can’t.”
But there’s no reason for him to work. My brothers and I are blessed to be independent adults who don’t need him to support us. Maybe that’s what the problem is, Salman said.
“For dad’s entire life, he’s wrapped his identity around doing work,” Salman said. “He’s used to being the one that’s in control. He’s used to driving the bus and he’s having difficulty sitting in the backseat.”
My brothers and I have tried what feels like everything to comfort my dad during this difficult time. We call him every time we get a free moment and visit whenever we can. We’re all doing very well in our respective lives and why can’t that be enough?
“We don’t know what makes him happy in life, honestly,” Salman said. “It’s important that we want our father to be proud of us, but it’s his personality he’s always going to find something to be unhappy about.”
My father has a success narrative similar to many fathers out there. He grew up in India and at a young age was determined to move to the United States when he married my mom. He was extremely poor and one of his first jobs was mopping the floors at a Dunkin Donuts. From there he worked his way up the ranks and onto corporate baking companies.
“You worked so hard, so now is the time you should be praying to Allah thanking him for all that he’s given us,” my mom said.
My dad wiggles around on the coach and squeams. He stares at a wall and I can tell he’s beating himself up on the inside. My father is extremely hard on himself and always feels like nobody likes him. Maybe it comes with the territory of being a father, a job most people often don’t give enough credit to.
“All I want is for my kids to respect me” Dad said.
My dad had a pretty traumatic upbringing in India, the details of which I barely know. But for that reason, he doesn’t often keep in touch with relatives because it reminds him of the past. But my mom asks him how can he expect us kids to respect him when he neglects people pivotal to him in his own upbringing.
“You haven’t seen your aunt in almost 15 years,” my mom said. “She practically raised you like her own son.”
“I raised you Aman like you were one of my own sons too,” my dad said with his goofy chuckle again. “Good thing I saved the receipt on you though.”
My dad mentions he’s happy to see me though because for the past few days he’s been feeling down.
“I’m feeling sick,” he said. “Something is not right inside me. I don’t know what. The last two days I didn’t do nothing but sleep. Something is not right inside me.”
I’m too scared to ask what he means by “Something is not right inside me.” But it’s been stuck in my head and I’ve been praying ever since he no longer feels like this.
I wake up the next morning and my dad asks me to come with him to a pond nearby the apartment complex. He’s carrying a loaf of bread and all of a sudden more than 25 ducks see my dad and run towards him in anticipation.
“The ducks here love me,” he said. “They wait for me every morning by my car. They don’t do this to anyone else.”
And he’s right. Bassam pulls out his camera to take pictures and the ducks begin to run away. My dad walks over to the other side of the pond and the ducks follow him. He hands me some bread slices to feed the ducks.
“I come here every day,” he said. “It feels good how much they love me. They’re like my pets.”
I asked him who loves him more, his sons or these ducks.
“Well, these ducks never talk back to me or ask me for money,” he quipped.
Thinking about my family keeps me up at night these days. I’m blessed to have so much success in my life but at home I feel like my family is broken. Its moments like this when this roadtrip means nothing to me if I can’t hold down my home. Maybe something is not right inside me too.
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | Day 14: Google Chat In The Car
By Bassam Tariq
The following is a Google chat conversation with my wife while driving to New Orleans. A larger story on Houston will follow.
A-dawg: sup
B-unit: Not much, on our way to New Orleans.
B-unit: Aman and I just stopped to take some pictures of the cotton growing you mentioned before leaving:
A-dawg: those are great!
A-dawg: so do you miss Houston already?
B-unit: family and friends, yes. The place, not so much.
A-dawg: what’s wrong with Houston?
B-unit: I duno, it’s never been encouraging.
B-unit: there is nothing to do here.
B-unit: last year, when we did the trip – we visited the community i grew up in, which was great.
B-unit: http://30mosques.com/archive2010/2010/08/day-11-texas-synott-mosque-in-houston
A-dawg: yea, I read it.
A-dawg: we were supposed to meet up that day..
B-unit: haha I remember that. There just wasn’t enough time.
A-dawg: there never is. You are always on the run. m
A-dawg: is that why you like NYC better?
B-unit: It’s not that i like it better. it just feels like there is no sense of urgency here.
B-unit: and people just were never very encouraging here.
A-dawg: what do you mean?
B-unit: like last year, before we embarked on the 30 Mosques trip, i came to visit my parents (and you) when i told some people what i was doing. They just couldn’t understand why.
B-unit: they wondered if the project is profitable..
A-dawg: yeah, but i gave you a hard time too when we met.
A-dawg: that was a nice meeting
B-unit: ha yeah, i bought that big book from pakistan and a collection of photos i took in pakistan.
B-unit: hoping to impress you. haha
A-dawg: lol
A-dawg: but anyway – i don’t know why the lack of urgency is a bad thing
A-dawg: i think people do a good job here of soaking it all in.
B-unit: what does that even mean?
A-dawg: iftar parties last into the night. things may move slower but maybe it’s because people here are taking time to enjoy the things that matter to the
A-dawg: like being around family and friends
B-unit: yeah, good point. People in new york never stop for one another. Everything is work, work, work.
B-unit: here’s what I think of Houston:
A-dawg: yikes thats rough.
A-dawg: here’s what I think:
B-unit: riveting..?
A-dawg: lol but there is heart here. In the strip malls and large winding freeways. nyc may have more history but it just doesn’t have the kindness and big hearted
B-unit: mehhh check out this gif i just made.
A-dawg: what? whos that?
B-unit: some uncle that was screaming at the pakistani independence day flag raising i went to. i was hoping there would be singing and dancing. but there really wasn’t much happening.
A-dawg:hm ok. i dont know if it’s doing anything for me.
B-unit: here is a picture of the event:
A-dawg: did you stay for the flag raising?
B-unit: couldn’t. they were taking too long.
B-unit: plus your family was coming over to break fast with mine. I had to get ready and stuff.
A-dawg: oh yeah, thats why you couldnt make it to the mosque.
B-unit: yea… i didnt want to disrespect your family or even mine.
B-unit: my mother cooked so much.
A-dawg: lol. she did.
A-dawg: so are you worried that you didnt get a chance to break fast at a mosque?
B-unit: I was a little bit in the beginning. but we needed a pitstop. It’s sad that it’s houston thats the pit stop. but i’ll figure out how to talk about the comunity.
B-unit: btw i really liked this man’s mustache. i think this is my next stab at it.
A-dawg: lol
B-unit: so are you back to work today?
A-dawg: yeah, back in the office.
B-unit: better than being out in this crazy heat.
A-dawg: lol. again hating on houston.
A-dawg: I guess i’ll never understand what your problem with houston is.
B-unit: ….
B-unit:
A-dawg: there’s just no getting to you..
B-unit: but you know. houston is still home for me.
A-dawg: really?
A-dawg: you have like disowned this place
B-unit: no i havent
A-dawg: alright. other then your family being here. what makes this home?
B-unit: because this is where we met.
B-unit: the debate tournaments, borders bookstore.
A-dawg: har har.
B-unit: lol, im being serious. i dont know if we’ll be here in the future, but for a starting place i dont think i know a prouder place to mention where it all began when sharing our story.
A-dawg: 
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | Day 13: Mind The Space
By Bassam Tariq
Stepping into a mosque everyday, we miss the other side of the community and just accepted that being men, we’ll never be able to make it passed what we see. But arriving in the Little Rock, Arkansas mosque, I realize how tired I am of photographing men, hairy men, brown men, Arab men, black men, men wearing kufis, men laughing, hobbit looking men, bald men, Aman and the occasional ambigious man boy. And that’s how I decided it’s time to spend a day in the women’s area.
In my headspace, Muslim women exist only as my wife and my mother. There are a couple of friends sprinkled here and there, but largely my Muslim world is informed by the men that I’ve surrounded myself with. So perhaps that is one of the reasons why it has taken a while to finally jump into the women’s side.
A large swarm of Pakistani ladies (aunties) walk in wearing their traditional garb. Some are covering their heads, others are casually strolling in. They quickly start laying food and pouring drinks in preparation for break fast. Many of them don’t notice me taking photos, others are apathetic. I strike up conversation with one of the younger girls who is in college and ask her to help me navigate through the space.
“Yeah, that’s what it looks like here.” Sairah says.
The majority of the female congregation is the Pakistani and Indian. There are also some that have embraced Islam and a small number of Arabs, East Africans, and Bosnians seasoned around the space.
Sairah continues speaking about the congregation. The Little Rock community is a well-to-do one. Many of them are doctors, engineers, businessmen and professors at the local university. Many of the wives are also doctors and professors.
I jot these things down and start scribbling some larger thoughts that are swimming in my head..
A lecture begins right before break fast time. A man from Trinidad speaks about how Muslims need to get involved in the media. I sit out with the men for a while. Many of them wait for the call to prayer so they can break their fast. But people listen on. They nod their heads in approval.
Some women are sitting outside in the men’s area, they listen attentively. Some sit off to the side, whispering to each other and chuckling. I want to know what they are talking about. Hell, I’ve always wanted to know what women are whispering about in the corners of the mosque. Back in high school, the same girls I would see in the hallways I would sometimes see at the mosque. Many of us would never acknowledge each other’s existence even if our parents knew one another. All we would do is whisper something into a friends ear and make cryptic eye contact. Thank goodness there was no Facebook when I was in high school. Would I add the girls from the community as friends? We’d only do it so we could compare the different lives we were living in and out of the mosque.
The mosque was always this place where we put on a face, added a “God willing,” an “alhamdullilah” and a scented oil to cover up wherever we were coming from. It was how we felt was best for us to be accepted into the mosque environment. We played parts in a play where we were both the audience and the actors. It was quite meta.
I stand again in the women’s area after breaking my fast and praying. The area is jam packed now. More than it was before. I pull out my camera and take a couple of shots.
“What are you doing?” A lady asks.
I try to give her our 30 mosques spiel but she cuts me off.
“You are not allowed to be here.”
“I got permission earlier and a lot of the women are okay with me taking photos.”
“That’s ridiculous!” She says, “I am going to talk to the president of the mosque myself.”
She storms out of the room, visibly upset at how I can just walk into the women’s area. I follow her into the kitchen, where she is sharing her concerns with an elder lady. The complaining lady looks like she is disturbed by me in their space. I feel like I have done something very wrong, like I threatened or harassed her with my eyes. I want to apologize for something, but don’t know what, so I hold my fort. I may not know much about the happenings on the women’s side, but it didn’t seem like the women were that distraught with me being there. We all live in America, we walk through malls, classrooms, hallways and parks with people from the opposite gender. But at the mosque, we become hyper-sensitive. Granted, the women’s area could be a safe space. There are a couple of women that wear the face veil and there privacy needs to be respected. This is there space to be comfortable, why would they be okay with someone like me ruining it? And that’s our limit. That’s as far as a Muslim man can ever get into these communities. They will never be as comfortable with me as they would with another woman – at least not in this space. So do we just twiddle our thumbs and wonder what it’s like in the women’s area? Or do we get a female partner in crime joining us to add some depth to the story? Or do we stay stubborn and continue trying to get a foot into the women’s area?
“The men’s side is a lot bigger than here. You should go there!” another lady scorns.
The women can barely take a step without knocking down a kid. The area is loud. Many kids play tag and jump over half-eaten plates. They make grunts and speak in a very sweet broken Urdu. The kids are no more than 8 years old and have a loving and innocent quality that almost makes you forgive them for being so disruptive during prayer.
For those who may not know, kids between the ages of 2 to 8 are a handful at the mosque. The one or two kids that will do a backflip in front of the prayer congregation will be quickly transferred to the women’s section to deal with.
“So yeah, the women area gets really loud.” Sairah says as kids scream in the background.
“Well the kids have to go somewhere right?” I refute.
They shake their heads. I guess that’s the part I don’t understand. The limit of my own understanding. Is a man’s concentration in prayer more important than a woman’s? Or is there maybe another solution, like an in-door day care at the mosque so both men and women can worship easier? But that means a facility, hiring staff and putting on an entire operation. It just seems easier to throw it on the women, right?
By this point in our conversation, an auntie comes by.
“Do you boys not pray?” She asks us.
We leave immediately. It was her nice way of telling us to take a hike. This is their space, I shouldn’t be trampling it.
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Comments Off on Day 13 – VIDEO – First Qur’an Festival
You should/might be seeing a Video Unavailable Error from Youtube. The video is still being processed at the time of posting. Because it may be difficult to update the blog while in transit, it was included here as is. InshAllah, video will be available by your next visit. — HiMY SYeD
The First Qur’an Festival continues TODAY in the Ontario Science Centre.
Located at 770 Don Mills Road. The Qur’an Festival is on until 8 p.m. tonight, Sunday August 14 2011. Admission is FREE.
For those who aren’t able to make it in person, you will be able to get a sense of the festival in the video above. Because time is short, it was hurriedly edited. Hence, a very rough cut. Please forgive the poor editing job.
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Comments Off on Day 13 – First Qur’an Festival — FREE this weekend — Ontario Science Centre
30 Masjids has taken an afternoon detour inbetween blogging Iftars, Masjids, and Tarawih. We’re still behind in posting, InshAllah, we’ll be back to posting on time by Monday. Because this is happening THIS WEEKEND, it was important to blog this NOW! Please try to pop by and see and experience The Qur’an Festival in person.
— HiMY SYeD
The First Qur’an Festival is happening this weekend at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto, Canada.
A number of Muslim artists are showing Qur’an related art works. There is the expected Calligraphy, but there are also abstract pieces, as well mixed media.
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | DAY 11: Live from Iowa
By Bassam Tariq
Thanks to everyone who joined us for a live video chat we broadcasted from Des Moines, Iowa. Over 200 people showed up! We’ll do the next one on Day 20, stay tuned to details for it. If you missed the first one you can see the video HERE
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | Day 11: Lutfullah’s Walls
By Bassam Tariq
In the quiet northwest corner of Omaha there is a home adorned with colorful signage blaring pro-Muslim and pro-African slogans. Inside the home a man will be sitting among roaches and rats who will smile and welcome you. His name is Lutfullah Wali and he is one of the first Muslims in Nebraska. He embraced the faith in the 1950′s after fighting in World War 2, traveled across the world and then single-handedly built the first mosque in Omaha.
The man is now over the age of 100 and spends most of his time at home. He is fiercely independent and doesn’t like anyone telling him what to do. When you will try to ask him a question about his life, he will rudely interrupt you and demand that you go upstairs.
“All your answers are upstairs. You will know everything from 1896 to today.”
After looking through all this, you will be worried and concerned about Lutfullah’s mental health. But he doesn’t want your pity. He already knows what you must be thinking. He will argue with you that you had already made up your mind the minute you met him.
“People think I’m crazy,” he will say to you, “but I’m not crazy. Everyone else is messed up.”
All the answers are there in the walls but he feels that you won’t see them. It’s your prejudice that’s keeping you from seeing the truth.
“People think I’m crazy, but I’m not crazy. Everyone else is.”
You will wonder if he thinks of himself as a prophet or inspired by the Divine. To this thought, he will be offended.
“I don’t talk that kind of shit. This is for real. I am no holy ghost man. This is for real. I believe in God and am a Muslim. And anyway, everything is inspired by God.”
When it will come time for you to leave, Lutfullah will get up from his chair. Don’t try to help him. He will push your hand away or cuss at you. He will take his time walking you out of his small house. Stay in front or behind him, he doesn’t care. He might get in his large van and move it from one parking spot to another and then get out and just sit around his house. He will look disturbed, but Lutfullah is fine. Leave him be.
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | VIDEO: Day 8: Nor Reads Poem To David
By Bassam Tariq
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | VIDEO: It Runs In The Family
By Bassam Tariq
Think Brother Ali is the only one in his family with talent? Think again. Check out his son Faheem spitting a few hot verses
Brother Ali’s son, Faheem, breaks it down.
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | Day 9: The Champ Is Here
By Aman Ali
Brother Ali is just as beautiful on the outside as he is on the inside. When you talk, he listens by nodding in excitement with a nirvana-like smile that stretches across his face. He sports a primped beard that straps down the sides of his face and flows down his chin like a waterfall. I’m looking forward to this conversation because I’ve been a fan of his music for almost a decade and like Pac-Man I gobble up just about every hip-hop record he puts out or interview he does.
Bassam and I met up with him and his son Faheem in their native Minneapolis for dinner at an Arab restaurant by the mosque we prayed at. I order a few platters for everyone and within minutes our table is toppling with luscious plates of lamb shawarma, beef skewers, roasted chicken and kabobs. Hands start flying in every direction grabbing food as our conversation begins.
“Your son is a beast,” I say to Brother Ali while pointing to how much food his son was eating.
Faheem smiles and grabs a bottle of hot sauce.
“Faheem is ‘The Hot Sauce Man,’” Ali said with a chuckle. “Sometimes for snack he’ll just eat hot sauce and bread.”
“Sometimes at home my mom will have to raise her voice at me because half the bread is gone from all the hot sauce I eat” Faheem said as he puffed his chest.
Brother Ali was born with albinism, a genetic disorder that takes away pigment in your skin, hair and eyes. He’s also legally blind. He had trouble fitting in at school because he didn’t think there was anyone he could relate to.
“The schools I went to had mostly white kids in it,” he said. “Then you’d have like one Vietnamese kid and maybe one Indian kid.”
“I was that one Indian kid at my school,” I chimed in.
Being teased about his appearance was tormenting, he said. Until he was seven years old when an African American woman at school told him something that he still remembers to this day.
“She said ‘You look that way because you’re special,’” he said. “’If God wanted you to be like everybody else and just be normal, he would have made you that way. But he made you look special because you’re supposed to be special. If you’re going to be special, all the stuff you’re going through is training for that.’
“And the thing is,” he added. “She didn’t just say it. She made me believe it.”
Intrigued by what she said, Ali began hanging out with the black kids in school and cracking jokes with them.
“I got the same laughs they got when I gave jokes,” he said. The jokes they told me weren’t cruel, they were meant to be funny. That was the first time I ever felt like a human being – when someone called me Santa Claus or Phil Donahue.”
Hanging out with African Americans started his journey on finding his identity which became even more clearer when he became Muslim in the late 90s.
“Islam was just a natural extension of that journey,” he said. “In the sense that you were made exactly the way you’re supposed to be and that God has a plan for you.”
Ali may be white but has said repeatedly in interviews he credits the African American community for raising him. I’ve heard him make that point a lot and was intrigued to find out his reasons why.
“When it comes to the African American experience, no group of people has had to be completely reset in terms of humanity,” he said. “That all has meaning in the plan of God. I’m convinced they’re here to teach us. We have centuries of accumulated stuff. Just this junk that’s been added on to us over time. Not as Muslims but as humans. African Americans are here to live an example of what it means to be a human being again, what it means to be Adam again.”
Ali is on fire right now dropping some serious knowledge on this table and I insist he eat some shawarma in front of him before it gets cold.
“I’m good,” he said while placing his hand on his heart and flashing his radiant smile again. “It’s not polite to talk with your mouth full.”
Brother Ali’s early records focused a lot on his identity struggles and his rocky upbringing. As he started gaining buzz among fans he didn’t expect he’d have, kids from privileged backgrounds that didn’t have even a remotely similar upbringing compared to his.
“All of a sudden, I realized a majority of my fans are privileged people,” he said. “For a couple of years I struggled with trying to figure out why and I realized they might not listen to my content coming from somebody else but they might listen to it from me if I did It right.”
His more recent albums focus heavily on his spirituality, social justice and the connection between the two. Now, times are good for he and Faheem. Ali tours the globe regularly to a steady fanbase and Faheem comes along too whenever he can.
There’s a school of thought out there that says to be a good artist, you have to be dealing with tragedy or torment. Since times are good for Brother Ali, Bassam and I asked him how that impacts his creativity on the mic. He said he turned to the Sufi traditions within Islam to learn there was a whole new world of expression he could explore.
“The Sufi art is what made me know that there is art to be made during times of love,” he said. “They always concentrate on the connection between love and suffering. You can only love as deep as you can suffer.”
I work as a standup comic and I’ve always admired Brother Ali’s stage presence. On stage early on in my career, it’s easy to constantly overthink about everything like “Am I talking too loud?” or “Am I standing to straight?” or “What am I going to say next?” But when I first saw Brother Ali perform at a hiphop show I went to in 2004, I couldn’t help but marvel at how much fun he was having on stage. He was in the zone, dancing on stage and even grabbing the mic to do a quick beatboxing session.
“All that stuff growing up that I’ve always had that nobody cared to see, now all of a sudden I’ve got an hour on stage to give that to you,” he said. “It’s an incredible feeling.”
One of the most difficult things to battle with as a public figure is ego. I have nowhere near the success as Brother Ali does, but it’s a constant struggle to keep yourself in check when people are constantly coming up to you to say they like what you do (or in some female cases they like you period). I asked him how he’s been able to handle his ego battle.
“I wish I could say I’ve been successful at battling it,” he said. “Anybody that’s in front of people, it automatically makes you a narcissist.”
“Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer once said ‘Whenever I go in front of people, I go between feeling inadequate to delusions of grandeur,’ he added. “And that’s so true man. We go from feeling like “Ahhh this is so terrible!” because we’re examining ourselves to ‘I’m brilliant, so brilliant.’”
When fans ask for his autograph, he said, one of the things he does to check himself is sign his name with Arabic phrases underneath like “Alhamdulillah” (All praises are for God) or “Allah Akbar” (God is the greatest).
“It’s a double thing for me because it’s reminder to me that you’re signing this autograph because Allah favored you and gave you this opportunity,” he said. “But then when they’re also like ‘Hey dude, what does this mean?’ I say back ‘You’re going to have to find a Muslim and ask them what it means.’”
It’s time for the Ramadan Taraweeh prayers at the mosque and Brother Ali wants to leave the restaurant and head over there. I noticed he barely touched his food and carries it outside in a box with his son.
“Dad, I think we should feed this to a homeless person or someone else in need,” Faheem said.
While Ali attends the Taraweeh prayers, I duck out of the mosque and make a quick food run for him with a friend. After the prayer finishes, I hand him and his son a halal Stromboli stuffed with pepperoni, beef sausage, lamb gyro and chicken. Ali bites into it and pauses.
“That’s what’s up,” Ali beams with his smile.
But Ali can only get a few bites in before Faheem devours the entire thing.
“I told you, the kid is a beast.” I said.
I’m going through my notes from my conversation with Ali right now and keep saying to myself “Damn, I didn’t fully realize what he said until rereading it now!” I don’t even think I’ve typed up half of the things we talked about because we covered so much ground over the course in 45 minutes. It’s the exact same thing he does with his music. He orchestrates his insight into the human experience in ways that only he is capable of doing. But I say all this not as a fan nor as an attempt stroke his ego. But rather, as his friend. At first I thought to myself “Ok, we’re friends now because we hung out and I got his phone number.” But then I realized I’ve been connected to him ever since I stumbled upon one of his records over 10 years ago. It’s people like him that helped me embrace my own identity and make sure I feel good about the work I do and make sure it is done to please God most importantly. I don’t know how successful I am on this objective, but I’m blessed to know he has always been here to help me in the process.
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | Day 8: We Are All Related
By Aman Ali
Basheer pointed to his gleaming skin and said the no-facial hair stereotype about Native Americans is true.
“Open up a history book and you’re not going to see Geronimo or Sitting Bull with a beard or nothin’” he said.
“Wow, I think you’re probably the least hairiest Muslim I’ve ever met,” I quipped back.
Basheer Butcher is a full-blooded Native American that converted to Islam in 2001. He hails from the Sioux tribe and grew up on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. He now lives in Sioux Falls and is active in the Muslim community here of about 3,000 people.
We chatted at length by kicking back on some stones in front of a gaping waterfall in a nearby park. He said he may have abandoned certain traditions in his culture when he embraced Islam, but becoming Muslim actually strengthened his Native American identity.
“A lot of virtues in Native American culture are very similar to values in Islam like sincerity, courage, wisdom and generosity,” he said. “My whole life I was searching for this connection with God and with Islam I felt like I finally found it.”
Basheer has a towering physique and a distinguishable face that looks like it was chiseled from stone. He wears a soothing sandlewood cologne and speaks with a gentle tone that brought comfort to my senses in more ways than one. When he began opening up about his life, he often reflected with brief pauses before he spoke giving me the impression it’s been a rocky journey to get to where he is today.
Basheer’s birth name is Louis Butcher Jr. and his family name is High Elk. Growing up on a Sioux reservation, he had a rough upbringing and was in search for divine answers to understand what he was dealing with.
“My father was an alcoholic and my parents got divorced when I was really young,” he said. “I had a lot of anger and feelings of resentment because I couldn’t make sense of anything.”
He also had his own demons. He battled with alcoholism and got into fights on the reservation that landed him in and out of jail. He said he never felt much of a connection with many of his Native American spiritual traditions like sweat lodges, a ritual where you ask tribe leaders to pray to spirits on behalf of you.
“I never understood why did I have to tell someone to talk to the spirits or God for me,” he said. “Why can’t I connect to God directly? My whole life that’s what I was seeking.”
He left the reservation at age 31 and moved to a small town in South Dakota called Rapid City. That’s where he met a co-worker that embraced Islam. Basheer was intrigued and in 2001 began researching the religion.
9/11 happened in midst of his studying of Islam and I asked if that tragedy altered his views of the religion.
“I already had my mind made up about being Muslim when 9/11 occurred,” he said. “I saw what was going on with the backlash and how Muslims were getting attacked. Going through what my people have gone through for the past 250 years in this country and seeing what the Muslims were going through, I felt that connection.”
Basheer’s family speaks Lakota, a Native American language that uses many throat sounds found in Arabic. He shared with me a Lakota proverb that helped lead him on his journey to Islam.
“In Lakota, we have a saying – Mitaku Oyasin,” he said. “It means ‘We are all related’.”
Through God, he said, he felt more connected to humanity and the environment. It was the connection he had been seeking his whole life. His family wasn’t upset with him leaving behind his Native American spiritual traditions, especially his grandmother.
“When I became Muslim, my grandmother told me a Lakota proverb – Taku oyagagmi hantas ihab ichuwo,” he said writing down the proverb on my notepad. “That means ‘If you don’t understand something, then leave it.’”
I drove Basheer home to his apartment at night and we passed by a Native American woman that seemed to be drunk as she stumbled down a sidewalk. Basheer’s face began to ache looking at the window before he quickly turned away.
“Alcoholism is one of the biggest problems Native Americans face anywhere,” he said. “A lot of people deal with their issues by turning to alcohol. Before I was Muslim I had a problem with it. Inshallah (God willing) I will never have to live that life again. It took my father’s life when he was 41 years old and it took my mother’s life in a fatal car accident when she was 36 years old. Being a Muslim and trying hard to be a good Muslim made a big change in my life.”
He may not practice many Native American customs he grew up on, but Basheer emphasized he doesn’t look down on his peers for doing them.
“Everyone has their own sense of a higher power whether it be a connection to God or spirits,” he said.
This year marks 10 years since Basheer has been Muslim. Given his tumultuous past, I asked him where he thinks he’d be today if he wasn’t Muslim. It was a heavy question for him to process and he looked away and took in a few deep breaths before he answered.
“You know, that’s something that’s always in the back of my mind but I try to keep things in a positive perspective,” he said. “Allah has blessed me and I’m always trying to do something good and focus on change in my life.”
“It’s always a worry for me to slip and go back to my old ways,” he added. “But as a believer in God, our faith is always going to go up and down. It’s always important to keep that in perspective to avoid going astray.”
With Islam in his life, I asked him if he has been able to find the answers he was seeking when he began longing for his connection to God as a child.
“Everything happens by Allah’s will,” he said. “All the things I experienced, they happened for a reason and made me the person I am today. There is a connection to everything in this world through Allah.”
Our conversation ended there and I drive away and get a phone call from a friend in New York. I’m quickly pulled out of the spiritual high I was on talking to Basheer to deal with some petty drama my friend had dropped on me. While on the phone, I scratch my nose and notice Basheer’s sandlewood scent is still on my hand. I’m reminded about the connections I have to people in this world and to roll my eyes at my friend’s problem would be rolling my eyes at God’s beauty. I immediately give my friend the time of day he deserves.
Basheer is right, we are all related.
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | Day 8: Nor’s Letters
By Bassam Tariq
Before prison, David only knew one world — the biker one. He was part of a biker gang and got himself into a lot of mess. Once a man pulled a loaded gun to his face and nearly killed him. Another time, two men opened beer bottles on his scalp and left him to die. Before Islam his enemies were the people around him, after he became a Muslim his biggest enemy became his own anger and aggression. David lacked self-control and vowed to become a better man in prison.
David picked up a Qur’an only so he could refute his sister who embraced the faith. After reading it cover-to-cover he was so moved by the book that he accepted Islam. Later in his life, David was sentenced to three years in prison in South Dakota. He knew very little about Islam, but saw this as a chance to turn things around for himself. His cellmate was an observant Jewish man who was serving a life sentence. Since David didn’t know Arabic and believed that the call to prayer had to be made before praying, he got his cellmate to do a call to prayer in Hebrew just so he could pray. The other prisoners would mess with them and call their cell “Little Jerusalem.”
A year into his sentence he decided he wanted to get married. He had been in a number of unsuccessful marriages and knew now what would work for him and what wouldn’t. It was important for him to find someone while he was in prison so they could accept him for who he is. Somehow or another, the Islamic Pink Pages, a matrimonial directory, found their way to him. In it, he found a listing for a lady in Singapore and wrote her a letter introducing himself. The lady, Nor, received the letter two weeks later. She didn’t know what to say, Nor was the assistant principal in a prestigious Islamic School, David was in prison in South Dakota. She sent him a letter apologizing and saying that he might have gotten the wrong person, but still went ahead and introduced herself.
Nor’s husband died in a brutal car accident. She was left to raise her three children on her own. Her eldest son felt that she should look to get married again as she was still young, so he put a listing out in the Islamic Pink Pages. Nor was understandably uneasy in the beginning with her correspondence with David, but felt she should at least give him a chance. His honesty and candor caught her off guard. It was different, it was refreshing. They kept in touch for a year. Nor studied Shariah Law in college so David would ask her questions about Islam that he and his fellow inmates would have. They would wait patiently for “Sister Nor’s” responses on many legal Islamic issues. They would take her word as if it were the Quran itself. The inmates had very little exposure to Islam. Once, a Muslim was admitted to the South Dakota prison who knew some Qur’an. They all would gather around him just to hear him recite it in Arabic.
A year into talking, David finally built up the courage and asked her hand in marriage. He sent the letter and waited impatiently for her response. Everyday as the mailman came by he would run frantically up to the bars and ask if there was any mail for him.
“Sorry, David,” the mailman would say, “nothing yet.”
A month passed and no word came from Nor. David was devastated. He started getting into fights with other inmates and lost his job. His prison mates saw him falling into pieces and comforted him as much as they could. David felt all was lost with Nor, until a month and half later he received a letter from her. David was sitting in a cell when the mailman came with a letter. Nor had agreed to marry him.
David’s sister, Aneesa, couldn’t believe it. Nor had never seen a picture of David. Only David had seen a picture of Nor.
“Are you crazy!?” Aneesa asked Nor on the phone once, “He could be blind or deaf or have a bad limp. You have no idea what he looks like or who he is in person!”
“That is fine. He just needs to have a good heart.” Nor replied.
A couple of months later, Nor finally made it to South Dakota. It had been a whole year now that they had been corresponding and Nor finally called David on the phone. The prison was rowdy that day and David couldn’t hear anything on his end.
“Quiet down!” said one of the inmates, “He’s talking to his lady for the first time!”
The entire prison went mute.
“Hello?” David said on the line.
There was no response.
A minute later, Aneesa picks up the phone.
“David, she got so nervous she fainted…”
Today, we sit together in their small house in Sioux Falls. David laid the hardwood floors himself and made some holes in the floor that have made Nor unhappy. They have been married now for 11 years. David sits next to a stack of National Geographic magazines that they got on Craigslist’ Curb Alerts. Nor walks out a little while later. She greets us and stands by the dining table. She is small and reserved. As David shares a story about growing up in the farms, she covers her face laughing and rolls her eyes.
“I’ve heard them all,” she says to us.
David’s life is an open book. No part of his life is off limits to talk about. In the first ten minutes we met him, he had shared three stories and told us about his big mouth and bad temper. Nor is the opposite, she is reserved and soft-spoken. Ever since he was released from prison, they have lived together in South Dakota.
Nor brought her two younger boys to live with them. The adjustment for Noor was difficult. She wore a scarf when she would leave the house and many would cuss at her and call her a terrorist. She took a job at the local K-mart as a cashier. In the beginning, her co-workers gave her a difficult time, but she slowly won the hearts of her customers and supervisors.
David leaves the room for a second and comes back with a stack of folders that reads “Nor’s letters.”
“You kept all these?” Nor says, surprised.
“Of course.”
David starts scouring the folder to find the first one she wrote to him.
Nor picks it up and reads it.
“ ‘I am a fair skinned, skinny Malaysian Singaporian.’” she covers her face laughing, “I can’t believe I wrote that.”
The letters in the beginning were very formal. She addressed him as “Brother David.” They were terse and cut straight to the facts. After marriage, ‘Brother David’ became “My Beloved Husband,” and the letters began to carry an emotional weight they never had before.
I see a letter in David’s hand and ask him if I can take a photo of it. He puts it down for me, but Nor quickly points at a part in it and blushes.
“Uh, well you can’t see anything past this point.”
David covers the entire page.
The day before their marriage, they were to meet each other face-to-face for the first time. David was still in prison, so when they saw one another it was through the glass separating inmates and visitors. When they gave them a minute to meet one another without the barrier, David came close to hug Nor, but she quickly moved away.
“It’s haram for us to hug!” she said to him, “we are not married yet.”
David began apologizing. He felt so bad and thought he ruined everything. For the past year, she was just words on a paper and now, she stood right in front of him and all he was allowed to do was smile and wave from a distance.
The next day, David was brought down from his cell to sign the marriage contract. When he was given a pen, his hands started shaking and he was unable to sign it.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” The Warden said, frustrated by David’s nervousness.
He then walks up to David, grabs his hand and helps him sign it.
Later that day, David and Nor came together in a cold prison room where they finally saw each other as husband and wife and held hands for the first time.
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Comments Off on 30Mosques.com | Day 7: Quiet In Laramie
By Bassam Tariq
In a still and quiet night, Laramie is sleeping. The bars have closed, the homeless have vanished and the city is left to gophers and armadillos painting the night with a melody so benign that CD’s are made of it and sold to you at Target.
Laramie is a college town and since the University of Wyoming has not started fall classes the town is desolate. We watched the sun fall waiting for someone to open the door of the mosque. The brother who greeted us was patient and left us a large meal to break our fast. His wife and daughter awaited him at home, so he rushed back to them after dropping off the food.
The Muslim community in Laramie is very small. There are close to ten to fifteen families. The congregants that make up the majority of the community are international students studying from Libya and Sadi Arabia. The community got together and bought a run-down church and converted it into a mosque. Even now, the remnants of the stained glasses have been kept paying an homage to its past.
After breaking our fast, I walked the streets to find Laramie.
The stillness can move you. The pitch dark can scare you. The Divine will demand to be remembered. The cold weather will test you and the wind that blows will ask – if you can accept the city for what it is and not what you want it to be. It will ask you to look past the bleak history that taints the empty streets and closed bars. It will plead you to move on from the tragic killing of Matthew Shepard and find something deeper.
But how can one look over such a tragic killing? In 1988, two men were giving Matthew Shepard a ride home, when they instead took him to a field and tied him to a fence. They broke his skull, cut his right ear and left him bleeding. His body was found 18 hours later by a cyclist. His killers confessed in court that they killed Shepard because of his sexual orientation.
Knowing this, how do you walk around a desolate, empty town with predominantly white folk no prejudice? So when a man slows down his truck or when someone stares at you from their porch– how can you not be paranoid?
I have found a subtle side of America that is triumphed in abstract rock formations and desolate street corners. In broken shopping strip malls and 24hr Adult Stores. There is simplicity cemented in the concrete and Laramie celebrates it. To understand it, you must meet her on her terms. You must find Happy Jack Summit, a majestic mountain summit or indulge in the echoes from the freight trains passing by downtown. At night, Laramie sleeps, but it is still breathing.
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