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Insight News
April 18 18,, 2022 - April 24, 2022
Vol. 49 No. 16• The Journal For Community News, Business & The Arts • insightnews.com
Ramadan Mubarak
Lou Michaels/ Insight News photo
Imam Makram El-Amin at Masjid An-Nur, the gold-domed mosque at 1729 Lyndale Avenue in North Minneapolis.
By Al McFarlane, Editor I interviewed a dear friend and elder in our community, Imam Makram El-Amin on last Wednesdays edition of Conversations with Al McFarlane. The interview is available on the Insight News Facebook Page. Imam El-Amin leads Masjid An-Nur, the golddomed mosque at 1729 Lyndale Avenue in North Minneapolis. The city recently approved an ordinance allowing mosques to do daily calls to prayer over external loudspeakers. Imam El-Amin says soon that public call to prayer will be heard from Masjid An-Nur. Masjid An-Nur means The Mosque of the Light in Arabic. In talking with the Imam, you get the sense that he is the Light as well, and that his work enables the Light in others, in neighbors and community. He says it’s all about relationships. He reveals a vision and raison d’etre that celebrates the sacred functionality of the family,
and its role in sustaining humanity across generations. The Wednesdays program included an interview with John Wilgers, CEO of Greater Twin Cities United Way, who was announcing that the United Way would be making $12.1 million in grants to partner organizations whose work disrupts racial inequity and fuels lasting change. A story on the grants announcement is on Page 4 of this edition. The excerpts of the Imam’s remarks, are infused with pull-quotes describing the rare occasions when Ramadan, Passover and Easter overlap on the calendar. Some say it is a special time to focus on the essential sameness of the human family. Imam Makram El-Amin: It’s really challenging to talk about the Islam in America, particularly among African Americans, without acknowledging, the freedom movements in this country. The guiding idea is that people really, want to be free, and be liberated, and they want to serve God in living
their best lives, unencumbered. You mentioned the transatlantic slave trade, but also in the days of Jim Crow,
there were various movements in the fight for the civil rights. The emergence of Islam in the Black community has to be
seen with within that context. It was not in a vacuum. You know, I remember as a child sitting around the
Ramadan, Passover and Easter By Victor Ghalib Begg, Excerpted from TC Palm.com, April 12,2022 Lent, Passover and Ramadan converge in April. It’s a time for prayers and family gatherings for Jews, Christians and Muslims. In their own ways, the three Abrahamic faiths seek to remind us of our responsibility for each other and for the world. What brought these religious observances together? And, what is the significance of it? The answer to the first question is in the lunar cycle that plays an important role in aligning the calendars. The dates change due to the monthly phases of the moon. Therefore, the convergence of these holidays around the same time doesn’t happen every year. Ramadan is the ninth month on the Islamic lunar calendar, which is roughly 11 days shorter than the solar year. The first of the month of Ramadan was April 2 — it lines up this close to the Jewish and Christian holidays every three decades. At the time of Jesus and the Biblical prophets, people followed a lunar calendar, not a solar calendar. Lent, for the Christians, marks the 40 days leading up to Easter. Easter usually occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring, the paschal full moon. Passover is always on the 15th of the Jewish month of Nissan, which is also a full moon in the spring. These holidays often end up close on the calendar. The answer to why this unusually holy month is significant would be to recognize that there’s more in common between the religious practices than we know. We live in religiously diverse communities — another sign of an inclusive America. Victor Ghalib Begg is a Muslim community activist and interfaith leader who lives in Fort Pierce, FL.
kitchen table with my parents, my mother, my father, really teaching us and orientating us. And they would always lead in, my father particularly, and say, Islam is about freedom, justice, and equality. This idea of those three principles was really ingrained in me and my siblings and our extended family. So it was really always about a justice movement. It was always about allowing people to be, be free again, to serve their best life, to show up in their best way and to serve God. So I think that the different iterations that we’ve seen in Islam and other movements besides the Nation of Islam were, all were striving in this vein. All of them were really reaching towards allowing people to be free and to really, to live the ideals of what this country was built upon. And it continues to challenge this country to be who we say we are on our label -with the content consistent with the label and the label consistent with the content. So the idea of us
RAMADAN TO PAGE
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Hallie Q. Brown and partners Easter hams distribution ”Last Monday, Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, partnering the Saint Paul Police Department and Hy-Vee for their One Step Hams for the Holidays event, distributed 500 hams out to the community for the Easter Holidays as part of HQB’s Basic Needs program. The Hallie Q. Brown Food Shelf gave out 1.5 Million pounds of food in 2020 and 2021, helping families across the state of Minnesota. While other food shelves closed or transitioned to a pre-packed box, HQB innovated and created an online form for individuals and families to
select the food that was right for their own households, allowing them to maintain a Client Choice model. This innovation resulted in clients coming from across Minnesota to HQB. The Center saw a 4000% increase in new clients in 2020, and remained open throughout the pandemic to ensure families had the nourishing food their household needed. HQB continues to provide food to anyone in need regardless of where they’re from and work with their strategic partners like Hy-Vee to make the Holidays happy for the community.”
Lou Michaels/Insight News photo
In the Food Shelf from left to right: Jessica Jereczek, Food Shelf Assistant Phoebe McGowan, Executive Assistant Althea Lankford, Food Shelf Coordinator, Jonathan Palmer Executive Director.