September 9, 2008

Imam W. Deen Mohammed, one of the most prominent African-American Muslim leaders in the nation and the son of the late Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, died Monday, sources told the Tribune.

"Brother Imam," as he was affectionately known, was 74. There was no immediate confirmation of his death by his family. The Cook County medical examiner confirmed that a Wallace Mohammed was pronounced dead at his home in the 16100 block of Cambridge Drive in Markham, a spokesman said.

Muslim community leaders said Mohammed was scheduled to speak Tuesday in Chicago, and many grew concerned when he did not appear. His last speaking engagement was at Navy Pier on Saturday at an event sponsored by the Inner-City Muslim Action Network.

Mohammed inherited from his father the Nation of Islam, a religious movement crafted out of black nationalism and bits and pieces of Muslim practice. He immediately tried to move its followers toward mainstream Islam, eventually leading to a split between those who agreed with Mohammed's approach and those who joined a revived Nation of Islam under Louis Farrakhan.

Mohammed was a spiritual wanderer who was banished several times by his father for filial impiety—once for remaining close to Malcolm X, Muhammad's prized disciple who turned into a critical voice within the Nation of Islam before he was slain.

In 1961, Mohammed refused to serve in the U.S. military and went to prison in accordance with his father's teaching that African-Americans shouldn't defend a land of lynching and segregation.

While incarcerated, Mohammed studied the Quran and found its teachings at considerable variance with his father's. After his father's death, Mohammed in 1975 took the bold step of aligning the Nation of Islam with mainstream Muslim beliefs and giving the movement a new name, the first of several.

In 1976, Mohammed made a public appearance carrying an American flag. He proclaimed the time had come for black Americans to celebrate America. The following year, Farrakhan broke away to revive the Nation of Islam and its traditional teachings.

Mohammed's lifestyle was markedly different from that of his father, who presided over a religious empire from a family compound he constructed amid the historic mansions of the Kenwood neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Muhammad was surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards, dubbed the Fruit of Islam.

Mohammed also rejected his father's sometimes overtly anti-white preaching—a rhetorical style continued by the fiery Farrakhan, Mohammed's rival for leadership of African-American Muslims. Farrakhan and Mohammed long traded barbs and theological jabs before publicly reconciling at a joint worship service in 2000.

"For me, [Islam] is too big a cause for our personal problems and differences to stand in the way," Mohammed said.

Mohammed was also deeply committed to building bridges between African-American Muslims and the increasing numbers of immigrants from the Middle East and Asia.

In 2003, Mohammed unexpectedly announced his resignation from his organization, the American Society of Muslims, saying he was frustrated that many of its imams had refused to adopt mainstream Muslim thinking.

During his final years, Mohammed lived quietly in a modest home in south suburban Markham. He headed a charitable organization, Mosque Cares, and spoke to congregations across the nation. His lectures were reprinted in the movement's newspaper, the Muslim Journal. But he had no mosque of his own.
 

Special Ramadan

Announcement

Ramadan Mubarak!

There was no sighting of the moon

this evening, therefore, we will

begin the Ramadan Fast Tuesday,

September 2, 2008 at the dawn.

Alhamdulilah!

This has been  confirmed by the

Council of Imams in support of

Imam WD.Mohammed and The

Islamic Circle North America!

By: Imam W Deen Mohammed

Fasting is as popular today as it has been in the history of humanity. Today people are fasting for health reasons and for spiritual growth and experience. But it seems that people are more weight conscious today than they have ever been, and many are fasting to lose weight. In Islam, fasting has its own special meaning—a meaning that is natural in the religion. It is a meaning that is understood by religious people all over the world who truly practice divine worship.

Fasting in Islam is no new institution or new practice. With the following quotation from the Holy Quran, we can see that Prophet Muhammad, to whom the Quran was revealed, did not at any time claim to be offering any new fundamental teachings in religion to the religious world:

"O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that ye may (learn) self-restraint, . . ." Holy Qur’an; Sura II Verse 183

This verse clearly tells us that fasting was prescribed in other revealed books before the revelation of the Holy Quran to Prophet Muhammad of Arabia (upon whom be peace), and that fasting is no new institution for the religious world. The proper practice of fasting in religion has withstood many threats to take it over and to corrupt it.

by Imam Faheem Shuaibe; Oakland, California.

August 9, 2008

African American Muslims have a role to play when it comes to the widespread Islamophobia (an irrational fear of Islam) that is prevalent in the West.

The unfortunate fact is that some Americans see Muslims as a disease to be rooted out. However, as is the case with immunisation, the “disease” can sometimes also be the source of a cure.

African Americans have faced derisive stereotyping before — including public name calling and a complete exclusion from basic human rights. Such behaviour created a marginalised cultural category and position in a pathological culture. And African Americans have struggled for generations to overcome this categorisation.

So, when some in the United States negatively and aggressively stereotype Muslims as many people once did African-Americans, it provokes a latent hostility in the United States, conjured up by certain talk show hosts and others who use such labelling to garner support with their audiences, and reinforces an ethos of opposition or aggression.

Shortly after September 11, 2001, a woman wearing Muslim clothing while grocery shopping in San Gabriel was attacked by a Caucasian woman yelling, “America is only for white people!” This was reminiscent of the treatment of African Americans at “Whites Only” lunch counters during the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. Such incidents demonstrate the extent to which Muslims have become the new ostracised minority in our nation, how they are being “Other-ised” in the present atmosphere.

The solution? Nothing less than a cultural revolution.