Introduction, Overview

This project employs the participant/observer model. Brother Donald Hopkins noted that I am close to the subject, psychologically and physically, although I maintain a psychic distance from all things in order to allow the artist's touch to happen.

Sometimes being too close to the subject destroys all objectivity. This occurred when I viewed Spike Lee's film Malcolm X. I left the theatre in tears at a point because I saw too much of my life before my eyes. Additionally, I was disgusted that Malcolm claimed not to know Elijah had a plethora of women, since he and Elijah were so close. And, more so, Elijah taught all of us to trust no one, including him.

This project began and ended in 2004 because my advisers warned me I would be killed if I published it. For several years, until now, I put the manuscript aside although I have no fear of death: Inna salati wa nusuki wa mahyaya wa mamati li-Lahi Rabbi-l-alamin... (Surely my prayer, and sacrifice and my life and death are for Allah, Lord of the worlds).

I did not resume the project until 2012, inspired by the release of Thomas Steele's book Killing the Messenger, his socalled expose of Black Muslims and their role in the assassination of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey. Part One of this project deals with my view of who killed Chauncey Bailey. For sure, as James Baldwin said of Malcolm's killers, "The hand that pulled the trigger didn't buy the bullet."

I would like readers to understand that for all my psychi distance, I am yet a captive of the Islamic spirit and cannot deny this. I'm also a captive of the African spirit and lastly the human spirit, though I do consider myself divine. For the purpose of this project, I will try to dwell on th human plane.

As I overview this work, it is crystal clear to me that we are a superhuman people. It is so wonderful to explore the beginnings of our evolution in the Nile Valley. What is amazing is that when we conclude the African man and woman are indeed Adam and Eve, we must then recognize Africans as the progenitors of humanity. What an awesome responsibility to be burdened with, and yet I have no doubt once we regain our mental equilibrium, we shall handle the matter handsomely.

Yet, this puts us on a plane superior to most of humanity, despite our inferior condition today. After difficulty comes ease, the Qur'an teaches us, so we know everything is going to be all right once we master the Sisyphus syndrome of rolling the rock up the hill only to have it slip from our grasp and then we must go to the bottom of the mountain to begin anew. If this has been only a test of strength, surely we have mastered the test. The problem is that some people continue praying when Allah has already answered. Why are you on your knees when you have acquired the trappings of freedom, i.e., knowledge of self and others.

Our history is so awesome it staggers the mind, making one tremble with tears in the night, and yet so much ignorance prevails in spite of knowledge blowing in the wind. Perhaps this is why the Bible says the people were destroyed for lack of knowledge. Who can pity you if you die of thirst when the well is beneath your feet?

It is well known today that Africans or the Aboriginal Man developed from the four thousand miles of the Nile Valley that begins in the Congo and ends on the delta. Four thousand miles of history and culture, acquired over thousands, yea, millions if not trillions of years, once we escape the White Supremacy paradigm of time.

From the Nile Valley we evolved religion, from many gods to One God, from ancestor worship and the trinity. In his Dawn of Conscience, James H. Breasted told us, "Monotheism is but imperialism in religion." And so when we evolved to empire building, it was a natural thing for monotheism to rule. Nile Valley religion expanded to rule the world. And with the decline of the West, the pure monotheism appears to surface again.

Diop and others have dispelled the notion of Whites creating civilization, including Arabs and Jews, actually, both Arabs and Jews have been found to be non-white. And furthermore, the first white man was a black man! Call me Grimaldi and Negrito!

As per Islam, Diop tells us "the fundamental ideas of Islam were in Arabia a thousand years before Muhammad. Dr. Ben taught us the African origin of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Other scholars have confirmed this: J.A., Rogers, W.E.B. DuBois, Chancellor Williams, DeGraft Johnson, J. G. Jackson and the wonderful Druisilla Dunjee Houston with her Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire. And from Homer down to the present, there are a plethora of White scholars who transcended their white supremacy to tell the truth about our history as a people of genius. What is astounding is that even under the worse conditions of the slave system in the Americans, our genius flowed like water. Imagine victims of the vicious American slave system producing a body of literature, i.e., the socalled slave narratives.

For sure, there could be no Islam without the African Bilal, or even in pre-Islamic Arabia, there is no Arabic literature without the African poet Antar. Bilal was held in such high regard by Prophet Muhammad that he saw Bilal's footsteps ahead of his in paradise! Bilal is considered the third part of Islam after Allah and Muhammad. And who originated the call to prayer said five times daily throughout the Muslim world? Bilal! Even under torture, it was Bilal who refused to renounce the one God Allah, who cried again and again, Al Ahad, Al Ahad, Al Ahad! (The One, the One, the One).

After Muhammad's victory in Arabia, Islam took off like a jet plane. As per Africa, Egypt was conquered, North Africa soon after. And then the Moors (led by Africans or blackamoors). J. DeGraft Johnson makes plain it was an African conquest, African Glory. It was the African general Tarik who conquered Spain, for whom Gibraltar is named (Gebel (rock) Tarik. The Moors ruled from 711 until 1492. Spain has languished in darkness since the fall of Grenada.
And yet the glory of Moorish Spain that permitted the Europeans to escape the Dark Ages was nothing unique for the Africans. Simultaneously light was shining brightly in West Africa. Nile Vally civilization reappeared in Beled Es Sudan or land of the Blacks. We need only cite the kingdoms and empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhay. Diop has shown us the cultural similarities
between the Nile Valley and Beled Es Sudan, linguistically, socially, religiously, ritually, mythologicaly, politically, etc. Timbuktu became the center of intellectual power in West Africa.
Scholars came to study from around the world, most certainly the African and Islamic world. Books were as precious as gold. Almost everyone had a library, and one of Timbuktu's greatest scholars, Ahmad Baba, said his library was the smallest, compared with his family members.

Ghana, Mali and Songhay gave full expression to the African genius prior to the Maafa or great disaster of the American slave system. Now any intelligent person will ask the question, "If we were so intelligent, so great, how did we fall?" Chancellor Williams told us in Destruction of African Civilization that our doom was sealed 6,000 years ago when we welcomed strangers into our land, despite this being an African custom. Europeans shoot strangers, Africans welcome strangers. But Dr. Walter Rodney explains we fell from much the same that is occurring in Africa today: corruption, corruption, corruption. All social, cultural institutions fell victim to greed and wanton materialism. The political, judicial, religious, military and other segments of society fell victim to the slave system. We must be brave enough to consider the African side of the slave system, not simply blame the white man, for there can be no buyers without sellers.

From a society that valued knowledge, we degenerated to one that valued trinkets above human beings. Is it not the same today in the modern slave system called America, wherein one can be killed for a pair of tennis shoes, or because one possesses a nice car someone else doesn't have, or a nice woman who departed to another because she was continually abused, physically, verbally and emotionally. In the manner of slave system psychology, we truly believe we own the woman or man, that he or she is chattel property (personal).

What is interesting is that prior to entering the slave system, we were quite familiar with the Americas, having traveled there for centuries, it being a distance of 1,600 miles from Africa to the Americas. See They Came Before Columbus by ancestor Ivan Van Sertima, also Kofi Harun Wangara's writings.

And then shit hit the fan! The slave system. What horror, bestiality, savagery, eternal servitude.
Who are these people? They really make you wonder, hurry Allah with the fire and water! Can these be human beings, an African wrote when observing them aboard ship. He had never seen white people before and could not believe the savage treatment they meted out.

From a culture that allowed the full expression of our genius, we found ourselves in a situation when ignorance was the order of the day, where hands were cut off to keep us in darkness, as if we had never known literacy and literature, science and philosophy. And even in the triple darkness of the slave system, there were many of us who spoke and wrote multiple languages, Arabic, Hausa, Yoruba, Spanish, French, Portuguese, often times we were more intelligent than those who controlled the slave system, many of whom could not read or write their names, yet believed themselves superior to Africans. We should have the common sense to know the slave system master had no need of ignorant slaves, but rather those with skills in agriculture, architecture, construction, plantation management, iron making, bricklaying, etc.

The docile African was made so by terror, beatings, whippings, emotional and verbal abuse, much in the same manner as men beat their wives into submission today. The Slave Narratives abound in tales of white terror and black submission, see Frederick Douglass or recall how Kunta Kinte was beaten until he acknowledged his "real" name was Toby. We call this the first step in the psycholinguistic crisis of the North American African. Who am I and what is my name? It has taken over four hundred years for us to settle this question for ourselves, and even today we are still not quite sure who we are or what is our name! African, Negro, Colored, Bilalian, Nubian, Arabian, Nigguh, bitch, ho, motherfucker, American, Afro American, North American African. Alas, if the white man knows nothing else, he knows he's white. He may not know whether he's straight or gay, but he knows he's white, and at any given moment the lowest white man can take advantage of white privilege.

For the black man to claim his racial identity is a constant war, yes, a war of liberation, since slavery and after, down to the present moment. Blackness is not a color but a condition and that condition is freedom, independence and self determination. Blackness is thus a state of mind, a sense of being in harmony with the universe, with the living, the dead and the yet unborn.

Resistance to the American slave system was widespread and constant, almost daily, yes, as Richard Wright told us in Native Son, his very presence was a crime against the state, every glance of the eye a threat.

Men and women who came from a tradition of great literature, art, science and philosophy cannot submit to a slave system, only for a time, then the human soul revolts at the travesty of its condition. Africans planned and plotted and took a variety of actions, see Herbert Aptheker's Negro Slave Revolts. There was the burning and looting of plantations, the Maroon tradition of running into the bush. In Palmares, Brazil, the Africans liberated space for a century, after a series of Hausa Muslim revolts in the 17th century. In North America and the Caribbean, Africans escaped to live among the Native Americans, after all, not all the Africans had arrived here on slave ships but came before Columbus and were indistinguishable from the indigenous people.

In the early 19th century, there were revolts by Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey and Gabriel Prosser, the liberation essays of David Walker and others inspired by God, Allah, and Jesus to liberate themselves. Their writings were suppressed by the slave system. A bounty was put on David Walker's head and he died mysteriously in Boston a year after David Walker's Appeal was published in 1829. Yes, no wonder the slave system called for cutting off the hands of those who could read and write. Even today, the African who is able to think, read and write is a dangerous person. He must be watched, his writings suppressed if he
expresses radical consciousness. Not only do the white publishers run from him, but the Negro publishers as well.

Often the African sang in code, call it the Blues, the music Muslims brought to the Mississippi delta from Mali and elsewhere. What did the great Malian musician (RI), Ali Farka say, "Blues! I don't play Blues, but the music my people have been playing for thousands of years." Blues, Spirituals, the Sorrow Songs, told our story of life in the American slave system, songs and tales of lost love, rejection, hope and liberation.

The Gullah Africans of South Carolina and the Georgia islands not only brought rice to the Americas but an infusion of Islam as well.






















A Short History of Black Muslims in The Bay Area (Circa 1954-2012)
by El Muhajir (Marvin X, M.A.)


Contents

Chronology of Original Man
Introduction
1. African Origin of Religions and the Cultural Unity of Africa
2. Mythology of Allah: Egyptian Religion and its steps toward Islam
3. Muhammad Ibn Abdullah: The fundamental ideas of Islam were in Arabia a thousand
years before Muhammad (Cheikh Anta Diop)
4. Blackamoors in Spain (711-1492)

5. Belad Es Sudan (Islam in West Africa): Ghana, Mali, Songhay, Usman Dan Fodio and the

Fulani Jihads, Ahmadu Bamba in Senegal and the Holy City of Touba (More sacred than Mecca to Africans)

6. Moorish Muslims in the Americas before Columbus

7. Muslim victims of the American "Slave System"
See the "Slave narratives" , Maroon communities, slave revolts, Seminoles and especially Hausa revolts in Brazil, Gullah Negroes

8. Muslims Up South:

Newark, Detroit, Chicago: Edward Wilmot Blyden, Duse Muhammad Ali, Noble Drew Ali, Marcus Garvey, Farad Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X

previousLouis Farrakhan holds up a copy of his book during his sp... Noah Berger / Special to The Chronicle


9. Black Muslims in the Bay Area of SF/Oakland: Toward National Consciousness or the Mental Revolution

10. Mosque #26

a. Min. Robert X. Ashford (Aaron Ali), the linguist
b. Bernard Cushmeer
c. John Wesley
d. Henry Majed
e. John Muhammad
f.Billy X, aka Rabb Muhammad
g. Minister Keith Muhammad
h. Minister Christopher Muhammad
i. Imam Shauib
j. Imam Alamin
k. Capt. Nisa Islam
l. Lt. Joan, aka Tarika Lewis
m. Capt. Mae Helen, Fatimah
n. Lt. Fahizah
11. The Little Manger or the "Hypocrites"
a. Aaron Ali's house
b. Brother Green's barber shop

12. Muslims and the Black Arts Movement (1966)

a. Marvin X
b. Duncan X
c. Hillery X
d. Ethna X
e. Farouk, aka Carl Bossiere
f. Alonzo Harris Batin
g. Ali Sharif Bey
h. Ed Bullins
i. Danny Glover

13. Muslims and the Prison Movement:

Eldridge Cleaver, A Case Study, Folsom, San Quentin, Soledad; Bunchy Carter, associate of Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, Messiah of the Prison Movment, Brother Booker, Kumasi, Geronimo Ji Jaga

14. Muslims and the Black Student Movement: Brother Edward's Jihad, Mar'yam Wadai and the Black Studies Curriculum

15. Islam and the Black Panther Party:
"Marvin X was my teacher", Huey P. Newton
a. Source of the Ten Point Program
b. Terminology: Pig, Babylon
c. Malcolm influence

16. Muslims, Zebra Killers and the Kidnapping of Patty Hearst
a. Ali Sharif Bey as runner for SLA
b. Marvin X's M.A. thesis on the SLA
c. Fatima Shabazz and the SLA


17. The Melvin Black Forum on Human Rights, 1979
a. Minister Farakhan
b. Angela Davis
c. Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour
d. khalid Muhammad
e. Marvin X
f. Eldridge Cleaver

18. The Black Men's Conference: The Honorable John Douimbia, Founder
a. Dr. Wade Nobles
b. Dr. Oba T'Shaka
c. Dr. Yusef Bey
d. Dr. Nathan Hare
e. Dezzie Woods/Jones
f. Louis Freeman
g. Marvin X


19. From Black Nationalism to Global Islam:
Khalid Muhammad Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour: A Case Study, The African American Association

20. His Holiness Guru Bawa in the Bay: Man/god/God/man

21. Conclusion: Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality
22. Notes
23. Bibliography: A Short History of Black Muslims in the Bay

 

 

 


Allah, Wakeel, In the Name of Allah, A-Team, Atlanta, 2007
Allen, Robert L., Black Awakening in Capitalist America, AWP, New Jersey, 1992
Al Mansour, Khalid Abdullah Tariq, Black America at the Crossroads
________, The Reflections of an African Arabian in American Captivity
________, Talal, The Challenge of Spreading Islam in America
Ali, Yusef, Holy Qur'an
Armstrong, Karen, A History of God
________, Muhammad
Aslan, Reza, No god but God, Random House, 2006
Baldwin, James, The Fire Next Time, Dial Press, NY, 1963
Bloom, Alexander, Wini Breines, eds, Takin' it to the Streets, Oxford, 1995
Bontemps, Arna, Black Thunder, Beacon, Boston, 1963
_______, Conroy, They Seek A City
Breitman, George, The Last Year of Malcolm X, Merit, NY, 1967
_______, Malcolm X Speaks, Grove, NY., 1965
Clarke, John Henrik, ed, Malcolm X, The Man and His Times, Collier, NY, 1969
Cleaver, Soul on Ice
______, Soul on Fire
______, Post Prison Writings, Ramparts, 1969
Diop, Cheikh Anta, Cultural Unity of Africa, TWP, Chicago
DuBois, W.E.B, The Souls of Black Folk, Penguin, NY, 1996
_____, The World and Africa
_____, Black Reconstruction
Foner, Philip S., ed., The Black Panthers Speak, Da Capo Press, 1995
Frazier, E. Franklin, Black Bourgeoisie, Collier, NY, 1975
_____, Race and Culture Contacts in the Modern World, Beacon, Boston, 1957
Franklin, John Hope, From Slavery to Freedom, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1980
Genovese, Eugene D, From Rebellion to Revolution, Louisiana State U. Press, 1979
Gitlin, Todd, The Sixties, Years of Hope, Days of Rage, Bantam, NY, 1987
Hilliard, David, Huey, Spirit of the Panther, Thunder Mouth Press, NY, 2006
Houston, Drusilla Dunjee, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, BCP, Baltimore,
1985
Howard, Elbert "Big Man", Panther on the Prowl, BCP, Baltimore, 2002
Jackson, George, Soledad Brother
Jackson, John G., Man, God and Civilization
______, Introduction to African Civilization,
Jamal, Mumia Abu, Live from Death Row, Avon, 1996
James, George G.M., Stolen Legacy, AWP, New Jersey, 1992
Kenyatta, Jomo, Facing Mt. Kenya, Vintage, NY, 1965
Lincoln, C. Eric, The Black Muslims in America, Beacon, Boston, 1961
Martin, Tony, Literary Garveyism, The Majority Press, Mass, 1983
Muhammad, Elijah, Message to the Black Man
________, Theology of Time
________, Fall of America, Muhammad's Temple No.2, Chicago, 1973
________, How to Eat to Live
Oliver, John A, Eldridge Cleaver Reborn
Polk, William R., The Arab World Today, Harvard, 1991
Sertima, Ivan Van, They Came Before Columbus, Random House, 1976
Soyinka, Wole, The Open Sore of A Continent, Oxford U. Press, 1995
Ture, Kwame, Hamilton, Charles, Black Power, Vintage, 1992
Udom, E.U. Essien, Black Nationalism, Dell, NY, 1962
Vincent, Theodore G., Black Power and the Garvey Movement, BCP, Baltimore, 2006
Walker, David, David Walker's Appeal, 1829,
Washington, Booker T, Up From Slavery, Bantam, NY, 1967
Williams, Chancellor, The Destruction of Black Civilization, TWP, Chicago, 1987
Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery, University of North Carolina Press, 1994
Williams, Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose, Berkley, New York, 1987
Young, Henry J, Major Black Religious Leaders, Abingdon, 1977
X, Malcolm, Autobiography of Malcolm X, Ballantine, NY, 1965
X, Marvin, Eldridge Cleaver, My friend the Devil, BBP, Berkeley, 2009
_______, Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, BBP, Berkeley, 2007
_______, How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, BBP, Berkeley, 2008
_______, Wish I Could Tell You The Truth, BPP, Berkeley, 2005
_______, Somethin' Proper, BBP, Berkeley, 1998
_______, How I Met Isa, MA thesis, San Francisco State University, 1975, unpublished,
_______, Fly to Allah, Al Kitab Sudan, Fresno, 1969
_______, I Am Oscar Grant, BBP, Berkeley, 2010

AUDIOGRAPHY

Nisa Islam (Bey), Cherokee, 2004.
Nadar Ali, Fresno, 2004.
Manuel Rashid, Fresno, 2004.
John Douimbia, Grand Ayatollah of the Bay, San Francisco, 2004.
Minister Rabb Muhammad, Oakland, 2004.
Antar Bey, CEO, Your Black Muslim Bakery, Oakland, 2004.
Norman Brown, Oakland, Oakland, 2004.
Kareem Muhammad (Brother Edward), Oakland, 20

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