Saturday, October 8, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Jackson on were Malcolm X alive today
Were Malcolm X alive today, he would be able, in good conscience, as a practicing Sunni Muslim, to abandon his earlier rejectionism and proclaim without hesitation, "Yes, I am an American." This would neither threaten nor compromise his status as a champion of protest in the Blackamerican community. For such a proclamation could now be made in a spirit and as act of protest. Nor would this jeopardize his status as a committed Sunni Muslim; for he could now argue and show that such a position was consistent with the best tradition of Sunni Islam. In fact, by this time Malcolm himself might be leading the way in the transfer of Islamic religious authority from immigrant to native-born hands. And in this capacity, he would have come full-circle from a marginalized consumer of "Islamic" ideas to being among the producers of the parameters of a properly constituted orthodox Islam in America, in effect from Malcolm X to "Ibn Taym-X." Being grounded in both American reality and the classical Tradition, Malcolm would be in a position not only to challenge the authority of articulations of the religion that are rooted in the vision and experiences of the modern Muslim world but to re-evaluate America as well, as a political arrangement to be embraced as part of an effort to "protect his protection" as a Muslim-American.-Islam and the Blackamerican (2005) by Sherman Jackson, pg. 167-168.
15 more to Madinah
In a second letter to [M.S.] Handler [a NYT journalist], dated the following day, he [Malcolm] criticized his former belief in Elijah Muhammad "as a divine leader who had no human faults." What had prompted the letter, however, was the news that Surur al-Sabban [shaykh, the secretary general of the Muslim World League] had named Malcolm as the World Islamic League's representative in the United States, with the authority to start an official center in New York City. The league offered fifteen scholarships to American Muslims to attend the Islamic University of Madinah (Medina). This gift, combined with the twenty scholarships offered in Cairo, gave Malcolm thirty-five fully funded scholarships.-Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011) by Manning Marable, pg. 370.
20 scholarships for Malcolm's organization to Al-Azhar
A high point for Malcolm during his Egyptian stay was a reception in his honor in Alexandria, hosted by the Supreme Council on Islamic Affairs on August 2. More than eight hundred Muslim students representing ninety-three countries were present to hear the SCIA announce that it would award Malcolm's organization twenty tuition-free scholarships to attend Al-Azhar University. Malcolm was overwhelmed, writing to Betty that the event was "the biggest and warmest reception of my life." The fact that Elijah Muhammad had been able to send only one African American to study at Al-Azhar - his son Akbar - while the MMI [Muslim Mosque, Inc.] would soon be sending twenty students to enroll was certainly a "wonderful blessing."-Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011) by Manning Marable, pg. 364.
Malcolm X in Gaza
I didn't know he had been to Palestine, ma sha Allah.
"In early September Malcolm took a two-day trip to Gaza, meeting a number of local government officials and visiting several Palestinian refugee camps near the Israeli border. He prayed at a local masjid, accompanied by several religious leaders, before holding a press conference in Gaza's parliament building. The Nation had admired the state of Israel as a concrete expansion of Jewish Zionism; henceforth Malcolm would view Israel as a neocolonial proxy for U.S. imperialism.-Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011) by Manning Marable, pg. 367.
"Every gun that is made,
every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." -Dwight Eisenhower in 1953-Quoted in Arianna Huffington's "Third World America" (2010), pg. 32.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Malcolm X in Egypt
"Malcolm also kept encountering Egyptians who refused to believe that he could possibly be both an American and a Muslim. One waiter dismissed his assertations, telling el-Borai that Malcolm "was probably from Habachi (Abyssinia)."
-Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011) by Manning Marable, pg. 313.
-Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (2011) by Manning Marable, pg. 313.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Monday, October 3, 2011
JFK and the UNSPEAKABLE: James Douglass, Oliver Stone, Lisa Pease (Ep. 1 of 5)
Imam Shair highly recommended this book which I haven't got to yet,
but this morning I watched this conversation with the author,
publisher, a reviewer and film producer:
but this morning I watched this conversation with the author,
publisher, a reviewer and film producer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUovOtDBYJk&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Sunday, October 2, 2011
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