[wvns] Keeping the Faithful in Massachusetts
After 50 years, this local mosque thrives but still faces challenges
KEEPING THE FAITHFUL
Omar Sacirbey
http://www.boston.com/ae/events/articles/2007/04/09/keeping_the_faithful/
Rafiq Akbar of Dorchester is one of the few people who can say they
went fishing with Malcolm X. But it wasn't fishing in the usual sense.
"Fishing means going out and informing the African-American of his
heritage and what he wasn't taught while enslaved here in America,"
Akbar, 80, explained one recent Friday morning inside the Masjid Al
Quran mosque, where the fragrance of sandalwood filled the air. Akbar
and a small group of Black Muslims with the Nation of Islam bought the
brick building at 35 Intervale St. 50 years ago, and since then he has
been a part of its sometimes turbulent but transformative history.
"We would inform the nonbeliever that he was Muslim by birth,"
continued Akbar, formerly Alfred X Sutton, "and that we were in slave
masters' names and not in our original names because we were all
separated during slavery, the child from the parent, and the slave
master did not have any interest in teaching the slave. We'd tell
history like it happened."
This year Akbar is telling history again, as he and subsequent
generations of worshipers celebrate Masjid Al Quran's golden jubilee.
Some members are collecting old newspaper clippings and videos
recalling important mosque milestones for an archive, while others are
planning interfaith meetings, lectures, and other public events. The
highlight is an expected visit by Imam Warith Deen Mohammed , son of
longtime Nation leader Elijah Muhammad , who became leader after his
father's death in 1975 and brought the movement into mainstream Islam,
jettisoning its black supremacist ideas and theology.
"It's very historical," said Ayesha K. Mustafaa , editor of the Muslim
Journal in Chicago, the weekly newspaper published by W. D. Mohammed's
ministry. "There are only a few locations that still stand today that
made the transition from the Nation of Islam days into Islam under
Imam W. D. Mohammed."
Originally named Muhammad's Mosque No. 11, the mosque today includes
Africans, Arabs, South Asians, and others, attesting to its evolution
from black nationalist stronghold to traditional Sunni mosque. Masjid
Al Quran, however, faces new challenges, from finding money for
repairs to keeping younger generations interested in faith.
"There's still a struggle," said Jamil Abdullah, 31, a
second-generation member of the mosque. "Now the struggle is to stay
together."
Starting point
Wallace Fard Muhammad founded the Nation of Islam in Detroit in 1930 ,
proclaiming himself Allah incarnate and Elijah Muhammad his final
messenger. By the time Akbar came to Boston in 1948, there was already
a small community of Black Muslims, many of them musicians who played
jazz at the clubs around the intersection of Massachusetts and
Columbus avenues . Akbar, a horn player, occasionally jammed with an
up-and-coming Calypso singer, Louis Walcott , who changed his name to
Louis Farrakhan and became the first preacher at Muhammad's Mosque No. 11.
The movement also ran a grocery on Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan and a
restaurant in Grove Hall where bean pie and carrot cake were among the
favorites. Members, when they went out in groups of five or six to
"fish," would also sell copies of Muhammad Speaks , the Nation's
newspaper named for Elijah Muhammad, and fish from Whiting H&G fish
company . Elijah Muhammad preached that whites were devils who
oppressed blacks, and that blacks needed education, work, and
discipline to overcome their oppressors. Akbar said the Nation's
antiwhite rhetoric wasn't downplayed -- "they'd never let you forget
it" -- but it wasn't the main part of the message, either.
"The main thing was what we needed," he said. "Elijah Muhammad's
programs were lifting the black man and woman through business,
through respect of person."
When W. D. Mohammed succeeded his father, he abandoned the theology
and black supremacist teachings but kept the black pride part and
brought his followers into mainstream Islam. Under Imam Shakir Mahmoud
, Muhammad's Mosque No. 11 followed along and in 1985 was renamed
Masjid Al Quran.
But not everybody followed W. D. Mohammed. Farrakhan clung to Elijah
Muhammad's teachings and in 1978 reestablished the Nation of Islam.
While Farrakhan set up his headquarters in Chicago, followers in
Boston bought a new Muhammad's Mosque No. 11 in Grove Hall, which
still functions today.
For those worshipers who came into mainstream Islam through the Nation
of Islam, reconciling their Nation roots with their traditional Muslim
beliefs is part of a new identity challenge. Racial supremacy is
anathema to Islamic teachings, while the idea that W. F. Muhammad was
Allah incarnate and Elijah Muhammad his final messenger are considered
heresies in Islam. But given what blacks in America had been through
-- slavery, Jim Crow, segregation -- a typical introduction to Islam
through learning the Koran and the sayings of Islam's Prophet Muhammad
would not have worked, some observers said. "We weren't a normal
people, and so a normal process wouldn't have worked for us, is the
contention," explained Ibrahim Rahim, whose father joined the Nation
in 1974, and then followed W. D. Mohammed into mainstream Islam.
"We're not defending that theology, but we're not denying its
existence, and there's a difference.
Looking ahead
If black pride defined the mosque in the '50s and '60s, and the move
into mainstream Islam in the '70s and '80s, the grind of everyday life
and heightened suspicions about Muslims characterize the current era.
"I think we have some challenges," said Imam Taalib Mahdee , a
Cambridge native who in 1992 was elected to succeed Mahmoud as the
mosque's imam.
Mahdee has sought a more visible role for Masjid Al Quran in Boston's
public life, taking part in interfaith lectures and attending Israeli
Independence Day celebrations at the Israeli consulate long before the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made such outreach imperative for
Muslims. Mahdee says the mosque can do more, but he also believes that
other faith communities could do more to reciprocate Masjid Al Quran's
efforts. Mahdee would also like to see the mosque's younger
congregants -- those in their teens, 20s , and 30s -- become more
involved in the mosque.
Abdullah, the second-generation member , agrees. As a boy, he attended
the Sister Clara Muhammad School, where his mother, Salwa Abd-Allah ,
was the principal. As a young man, he dipped in and out of mosque
life, but recently has become more active, helping organize a mosque
basketball team and public events, including a tribute to Malcolm X
last month at Roxbury Community College.
While African-Americans are the biggest part of the congregation,
immigrants from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia have brought a new
vitality, and many feel they have as much at stake in the mosque's
future as African-American worshipers. Papa Samba Diop came to Boston
from Senegal in 1986 to study and has been a regular ever since at
Masjid Al Quran. When his brother called one morning in 1992 to tell
him their mother had died, Diop, with no family or close friends in
Boston, went to the mosque.
"It was a place of comfort in that situation. Imam Mahmoud prayed for
me and asked the whole congregation to pray for my mom," Diop said. "I
came here, and I got a lot of support."
While Diop didn't experience segregation like some other worshipers at
Masjid Al Quran, their stories aren't lost on him. In fact, Diop
learned about Malcolm X and the civil rights struggle as a schoolboy
in Senegal.
"I'm old enough to remember what my father said about the struggle of
black people here," Diop said. "And looking back, I don't think I
would have traveled here in the early '60s, because it was awful for
black people. And these guys deserve all the credit, because they made
it possible for us to come here."
Omar Sacirbey can be reached at osacirbey @ hotmail.com.
*********************************************************************
WORLD VIEW NEWS SERVICE
To subscribe to this group, send an email to:
wvns-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
NEWS ARCHIVE IS OPEN TO PUBLIC VIEW
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
Need some good karma? Appreciate the service?
Please consider donating to WVNS today.
Email ummyakoub@yahoo.com for instructions.
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
wvns-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:wvns-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:wvns-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
wvns-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
No comments:
Post a Comment