My Personal Disappointment with the New millennium Muslim
As an African American, who came of age in the 1980s, I spent most of my youth looking at the rise of Islam in the disenfranchised ghettos of black America. In my youth The Nation of Islam were men of high standards and character who wore bow ties and sold bean pies. Muslims were what men who went to prison became after they reflected on their lives and then determined that their ways were hurting their people and themselves more than helping the community. These were men, who like Malcolm X, made their way from the American Nation of Islam, to become connected the the global religion of Islam. They were men who had lived hard lives, served time in prison, and then dedicated themselves to god and improving the black community. They were, at that time all men, but they were men I admired. I respected the religion for bringing these men back to the community as productive human beings.
Although, as a Christian, at first I saw these men and their religion as something foreign to me and the way I was being raised, once I read a history book or two I soon realized that many of the blacks brought here as slaves would have been Muslim. After that rather than seeing this religion as foreign, I began to think of it as something natural to being black in America. Some nugget that my ancestors had been able to keep and to pass onto the community. A nugget that gave us guidance and reminded us of our worth as human being. However, I soon had to reconcile the image of these men of high character, building the black community, with the terrorist of Arab decent who highjacked planes, and killed people in the name of Islam. I tried for years during my childhood to understand why these men preferred to kill innocent civilians, rather than face the tyrants head on. I watched as they threw people on tarmacs, turned themselves into mobile explosives in crowed malls and restaurants, and asked how? How could a religion I associated with men of high character, reduce itself to no more than the actions of white supremacist, who cowardly terrorized minorities in America behind white sheets . In my minds eye Muslims were brave and nobel people who through their practice uplifted mankind. However, these men who highjacked planes and exploded bombs were cowards who preferred to terrorize civilians rather than take their grievance to the hall of power.
I am more and more disappointed in those who profess to be Muslim. For more often today they are people who order the deaths of civilians from mountain bunkers, or they are people who hide and secretly agree with the actions of these cowards. They applaud the release of video and audiotapes telling the infidels to convert to Islam. However, these men do not represent the Muslims I knew in my youth. The Muslims of my youth did not hide in bunkers, they walked the community and changed our hearts and souls with each handshake. The New Mellinum Muslim, like Osama Bin Laden, can't hold a candle to the men who lived hard lives, came to understand their place in the world through Islam, and then passed that on through good deeds in the community.
