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COVER STORY situations, RAP has brought together Muslim, Christian, and Jewish individuals and organizations to help the more than 500 refugee families from Iraq, Africa, and Burma. Refugee leaders serve as liaisons to their refugee communities, providing RAP with input that often shapes the services offered. “You cannot imagine how many organizations I have contacted, and RAP is the only one that has even bothered to call back, let alone donate and give me info on other sources of help. Thanks so much for all the help you have given! I appreciate (their team) so much,” said Nancy Lee, a volunteer working with Iraqis in Chicago. RAP recently became an affiliate of the
global interfaith service organization World Faith (www.worldfaith.org). It received the CIOGC’s “Excellence in Community Service” award in 2009, and founder Naazish YarKhan received the Muslim Women’s Alliance “Inspiring Woman” award the same year. RAP currently is part of the Golden Door Coalition (www.goldendoorcoalition.org), working with the State Department and other refugee resettlement organizations to improve the system. RAP partners with ICNA Relief Chicago on various projects to raise and distribute donations among refugees. ICNA Relief also has a food pantry, hosts Eid gatherings for refugees, and offers Qur’an
classes for them at its Da’wah Center in Chicago. It is now in the process of setting up another food pantry in a neighborhood that is home to many refugees. ^ Masjid Al-Farooq: Southeast Chicago’s Masjid Al-Farooq (www.alfarooqoutreach.com), perhaps one of the region’s most diverse mosques, consists of first- to sixth-generation Muslims with origins in West Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Its leader, Imam Ousmane Drame, can be credited with removing the artificial barriers that may have existed between these groups. His success, in large part, stems from his ability to deliver the khutbah in Arabic, English, French, and his native African lan-
Ever Vibrant Imam WD Mohammed set the course for Muslim African Americans to establish themselves here at home in the US. BY AYESHA K. MUSTAFAA mam W. Deen Mohammed (1933-2008) was born out of the need to advance the Muslim African-American community beyond its origin during the days of the African-Americans’ oppression by the strong arm of white supremacy that dominated the country’s political, social, and religious life. Although racism and oppression did not start with the transatlantic slave trade, this river flowing through the African-Americans’ history has its birth there. Herded onto slave ships through the “Door of No Return,” which still stands on the west coast of Senegal’s Goree Island, millions of men and women and some children were deported from such Muslim strongholds as the Ghana Empire and the Ivory Coast. As the process of restoring the freed slaves’ human dignity began with many historical players, their ancestors’ religion — Islam — also emerged through several channels. The most outstanding process was that directed by the person known as Master Fard Muhammad, a member of the Muslim Indian community who in-
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troduced Islam into the AfricanAmerican communities. Cloaking Islam between the pages of a mythology that was as much about breaking the yoke of white supremacy as it was to bring the new audience of African-Americans to the proper worship of God, he fought fire with fire by creating a black supremacy movement. At the same time, however, he pointed to the purity of the Qur’an and what it embodied as humanity’s Final Destination. His star student, the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, was left to build the Nation of Islam (NoI) with the ever-present objective of restoring the exslaves’ human dignity and put them in touch with their glorious past in Africa. In addition, he set up a scenario in which even Elijah Muhammad’s successes would be concluded by passing his leadership on to Wallace D. Mohammad, the one son who was raised to differ with him and the black supremacy theology he had brought in the first place. Named by Master Fard, from his very birth Wallace was set on a course to overcome the flaws in the NoI’s teachings. Later known as Imam Warith Deen Mo-
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hammed, his father arranged for him to learn Arabic from Dr. Jamil Diab, a Palestinian refugee. Although other children of the NoI were among these students, Wallace, just as Master Fard had predicted, was the quickest among them to grasp Arabic and, ultimately, the Message of the Qur’an, or “Islam proper,” as it was referred to by those who transitioned with him out of the NoI’s racist teachings and into the Prophet’s (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) message. From the onset of his leadership on 26 Feb. 1975, Imam Mo-
hammed deciphered the messages, ideas, and direction left by Master Fard embedded in the NoI’s original teachings. Thus he formulated a safe passage for many thousands of his father’s followers to the salvation awaiting them in the Qur’an, to be purified of false worship and to see God as having no partners or equals, the Creator, the One Supreme, All Knowing God of all the systems of knowledge, over the heavens and Earth, and over all worlds of which we do and do not know. Given that Muslims the world over, for the most part, distanced themselves
PHOTOGRAPH BY HAROON AZZAAM RAJAEE (©) FOR THE MUSLIM JOURNAL. REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION.