The Crescent And The Mic

I sat there in my pajamas, hypnotized by the woofer pulsing as the crowd cried to the heavens with Malcolm. It was a happy, yet seemingly insignificant moment in my life, that is, until 1988. That was the year I bought Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back on the first day it came out.

As much as people talk about how rap music brought them to Islam, my earliest introduction started right at home in the sleepy, mostly white neighborhood of San Bruno Hills, Calif. Though we never had a Bible in our home until I was nine, I was technically raised in a Christian household. I was born in 1970 to parents who clawed their way up from Southern poverty. Dad is a Catholic from New Orleans, and my mother is technically a Baptist, originally from Monroe, Louisiana. We were never a big church-going family, only Christmas and Easter. I was raised to have respect for all faiths but our home was mostly secular.

Most Sundays, my parents would sleep in while I jumped up out of my Spider-Man sheets and filled up on all the cold cereal my stomach could hold. On certain Sundays, though, my dad would stage a preemptive strike on my cereal raids by cooking up some eggs, sausage and toast. We’d talk for a bit and then he’d play his Malcolm X records—Message To The Grassroots, Ballots or Bullets—and sit me by the speaker. My father would be washing the dishes yelling in sync with Malcolm, “We want freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody!”

My parents did not celebrate my obsession with rap music. And unbeknownst to them, I had also acquired a taste for alcohol. Pouring Brass Monkey over my already-mediocre grades led my father to take me out of Oceana High School before the end of my senior year. He figured it would be best if I got a GED, a job, or better yet, got serious about life. This was the same man who, back in 1983, had bought me my first mixer and taught me how to scratch. Five years later, I’m pretty sure he saw hip-hop as a cancer on my mind. I saw it as the only thing keeping me from slitting my wrists. The shame I felt after dropping out of school, mixed with confusion about where my life was headed, gave birth to some dark pockets in my brain.

Depression was setting in. I contemplated suicide often. I remember hating the sunrise, but never knowing why it made me so sad. Growing up in the ‘burbs, black was beautiful inside your home. But once you hit the curb, you were a nigger.

Mastering the lyrical, political and spiritual ideology embedded in Public Enemy’s masterpiece became my quest. I studied the use of every sample, its root song and what technology they used to manipulate the sound. I cut the intro to Bring The Noise back and forth about 100 times. “Too black, too strong.” The words struck a chord deep in my cerebral cortex. A quick check with dad confirmed that the quote was from one of his Malcolm X records.

“Thanks dad,” I said, leaping downstairs where I began sifting through his collection in search of those four beautiful words.

Everything Malcolm X was talking about resonated in the soul of a young black man. From New York’s subway vigilante, Bernhard Goetz, to Yusuf Hawkins’ murder in Bensonhurst, the struggle for black justice was all around me. Malcolm was speaking against these injustices from the grave.

I was soon carrying Malcolm’s autobiography with me everywhere I went. Looking at America through his eyes changed my self-perception. I was not some dropout with a GED struggling to get through an electronics class to appease his parents. I was the original man, sculpted by the hands of Allah. I had been misled about who I was and how I got here. My people were born to be more than dope dealers, pimps and thugs. And the path to refinement was paved by Islam, albeit my own self-taught version of the faith.

I started to use samples from Malcolm X speeches in more and more of my raps. One day I performed at San Francisco State University, a hotbed of political activism during the 1980s. I did a new song called Home of the Brave that talked in part about the “justified homicide” of a child by the San Francisco police department.

After I got off the stage, a powerful Muslim speaker, Abdul-Malik Ali, hit the platform. The sentiments in his speech matched the lyrics in my song. After the event, he approached me and asked if I was Muslim. After learning that I was not, he told me if I ever wanted to learn about Islam to ask him. He never pushed me to be Muslim. He just offered it as an option and left the door open.

Around the same time, I became friends with a former Black Panther, Kiilu Nyasha. Though confined to wheelchair she has been the most active political black woman in the Bay Area for the past 30 years. You can hear a clip of her voice on Paris’ Sonic Jihad album. A natural educator, Kiilu would hold black history classes at her apartment near the Broadway tunnel in San Francisco. She probably helped groom about 90 percent of the political rappers from the Bay Area at some point. Money B from Digital Underground’s father was also a Panther and he assisted Kiilu in the meetings. Sitting on the floor at her apartment, we would listen to old interviews or letters she had with George Jackson, Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu Jamal and others. It was not uncommon to cross paths with Money B, Del the Funky Homosapien, Michael Franti, Tone Boots of The Coup and Davey D, among many other activists involved in music, film and other arts.

Between my pilgrimages to Marcus Books, my visits to Kiilu and speaking with Abdul-Malik, I grew in knowledge, wisdom and understanding. I began to understand the various theological perspectives of the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths, the Nation of Islam and the Sunni Path that Malcolm X followed. The rhymes of Brand Nubian, Poor Righteous Teachers, King Sun and Rakim Allah coursed through my veins.

Little by little, my life began to change. I quit drinking and then I stopped eating pork. I started walking a little taller and discussing religion and politics with anyone I could.

I began selling my vinyl and walking over to Marcus Books in Oakland to purchase the works of J.A. Rogers, Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, C.F. Volney, Runoko Rashidi, Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Anthony T. Browder, Louis E. Lomax, James Baldwin, Haki R. Madhubuti, John G. Jackson and Dr. John Henrik Clarke. These writers became my closest friends. I would get up in the morning as if I was going to look for work and head over to the campuses of San Francisco State University or the University of California Berkeley. I read for eight hours a day, seven days a week for about five years. To this day, people see me on the street and think I am an alumnus of either school. The only time I stopped reading was when I was writing raps or doing shows.

Because of the charisma and oratorical skill of Louis Farrakhan, I sought to join the Nation of Islam (NOI). When the NOI’s second-in-command, Minister Khalid Muhammad, came to San Francisco State to speak one afternoon, I was there so early, I grabbed a seat in the second row. At the time, I considered Khalid Muhammad to be a shining example of blackwisdom and courage. I was set to join the NOI at that moment. Then out of nowhere he spoke vehemently against Malcolm X. My stomach turned cold and without a shred of hate, I just got up and walked out. I would always respect the works of the NOI to make the ghettos safer and cleaner but I had never again consider formally joining.

Then one day, I woke up earlier than usual. The sun was just breaking on the horizon and I felt deep sorrow. The same kind I felt when I was having suicidal thoughts. My body felt fine, but my soul ached. How many times had the sun risen and I wasted the day? How many more would pass before I accepted my true nature? Ignoring my souls nature was the source of my pain. I could not take it.

I picked up the phone and called Abdul-Malik Ali. I knew he’d be up.

“I’m ready.”
“You’re ready?”
“Yes.”
“Meet me at the masjid.”

A masjid is the proper name for an Islamic house of worship. The word masjid, “a place of prostrations,” is derived from the French mosqu’ee which comes from the Kemetic dialect masgid. It is a place where Muslims go to bow before God, to enrich their personal relationship with the Creator and engage other members of the Muslim community. Despite my many years of prayer as a Christian, I never felt the same level of peace and communion with God as a did before prostrating to the east.

Through all my studies I had never really understood what it meant to become Muslim. When I arrived at the masjid, I walked in expecting mounds of burning incense, robed and hooded men speaking in foreign tongues and possibly a fire ritual of some sort. I looked around at the plain beige walls, a thick brown rug and a few Arabic scrolls on the wall. This was nothing like what I had envisioned

We sat down, and there were two other people present. Abdul Malik Ali turned to me and said, “Now that you understand what it means to be a Muslim and you want to take your shahada (declaration of faith) repeat after me La Ilaaha II-Allah Muhammadan Rasul-Allah. Now say it in English. ‘There is no God but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.’”

“Welcome to Islam,” he said with a smile. The other two brothers hugged me and that was it. That’s it? I thought to myself. No fire ritual? No walking on coals? No dance ceremony like on Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America?

One simple sentence had changed my religion, my name and my life’s path forever. My parents were less than thrilled with this new direction in my thinking. They had raised me to appreciate and embrace African history—but Islam? My mother was particularly upset when I gave up what I called my “slave name.” Although my father was quite skeptical, he let me follow my own path, never trying to stop me. Still I’m not sure my family ever really understood my conversion. No one ever asked why I did it. Half of them were indifferent and the other half seemed to take it as a passing trend. Mom kept serving me pork “by accident,” most of my family still called me by my birth name and my mom often referred to my Islamic dress code as a “costume.” This made for some intense arguments and strained discussion at the dinner table.

But my girlfriend appreciated the change. If you ask her about how I acted before Islam, she’ll use words like flighty and self-centered. There’s no doubt in her mind that she could never have married the “old” me. I was too much of a loose cannon, too scatterbrained and unpredictable. After breaking up to make up for the 200th time, I proposed. She knew that I was Muslim now but I told her that I did not expect her to be Muslim. In fact, I told her I thought her spirit reflected a more Buddhist nature.

Two years after getting married, Mieko and I had our first child. Serious complications during labor left us wondering if she would survive. I went from thinking about a family to thinking about being a single father. She decided that if she were to die giving birth, she wanted to die a Muslim. She took shahada as the doctors inserted the epidural into her spine. Allah saw her through the labor and today we have two beautiful children. Since then, her knowledge of Islam has surpassed mine.

Thirteen days after our second child was born, two planes hit the World Trade Center. My heart collapsed with the towers. Even more painful was the idea that people of my faith were connected to the attacks. I did not become Muslim to destroy America, hate another race, or force people to pray and live as I pray and live. I became a Muslim to know God and be of service to creation. I believe my job as a Muslim is to outdo terrorists’ acts of horror with acts of honor toward humanity.

It became open season on Islam on the radio, on the TV, and, for some, on the streets of America. Not too long ago here in the Bay Area a Muslim woman was shot and killed walking with her children. Other times, Sikhs died when being mistaken for Muslims because of their turbans. Muslims became victims of horrific hate crimes. People in my family would eventually talk to me about how “those people are crazy.” I would remind them that I was not crazy, but that if they were talking about Muslims, I am one of “those people.” Violent acts by people professing any faith do not represent the essence of the greater whole.

Islamophobia has taken hold of neo-conservative radio and television, serving as a call to arms for those easily manipulated by sensationalist media. But those in the hip-hop community are not so easily fooled. Muslims have played an active role in brokering numerous peace treaties in hip-hop when there was conflict on the streets. When it gets grimy in hip-hop, folks turn to ministers in the NOI and imams—not pastors and preachers. There is a history of trust that Muslims have gained with the hip-hop generation that cannot be undone by those who promote fear seeking to create division.

But after the towers fell, I can’t lie, I was scared. I had visions of being thrown into Guantanamo Bay for praying next to someone I didn’t know was in a sleeper cell. I chilled on the kufi wearing in public and became guarded with my faith. I spoke less and less about Islam in public. In a strange way, Sept. 11 helped me purify my faith. I dug through the Qu’ran and the biography of life of the Prophet Muhammad. I looked into books like Ivan Van Sertima’s Golden Age Of The Moor and other works on Islamic history looking for a deviant pattern of militant mind states. I found nothing of the sort.

After the shock and confusion that overtook my mind on Sept. 11, I eventually got back to the podiums on college campuses reminding American students of the positive role Islam has played in hip-hop. I walked into lecture halls thinking they would be empty and found them full of Muslims, Jews, Christians and atheists, blacks, whites, Latinos and Filipinos—all gathering to share their observations. I took this as further proof of the power of hip-hop. There is no other music form on earth that could serve as the platform for such honest and open spiritual discussion. Nowhere else have I seen so many different races and classes unified by the drum.

While working on my second book, I met RZA of the Wu Tang Clan, whose music almost single-handedly revived the Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths within rap music. As we began to talk about chess, I found his numerological approach to the chessboard of life to be profound. After co-founding the Hip-Hop Chess Federation (HHCF) with a friend, I invited RZA to be our director of development. Through the HHCF, we have used hip-hop, chess and martial arts as a vehicle to promote unity, strategy and nonviolence for American youth of all walks of life. The organization is not religious. Rather, it is meant to bring together the best people from all walks of life to engage and enrich one another. Nowhere else does categories of religion, class and race matter less than on the chessboard.
The truth is every religion has its skid marks. Islam allowed me to fully embrace my race and move beyond it at the same time.

To be authentically and wholly black and at the same time be unified with the Creator without compromise. The same religion that allowed it for me allows it for a Filipino or a Chechen or someone from China. Through loving my Muslim family, I was able to love my Hebrew, Christian and Buddhist extended family. I read Islamic theology such as Purification Of The Heart, Purification Of The Soul and various works by Imam Al-Ghazali. At the same time music by Outlandish, Mos Def, T-K.A.S.H. and Amir Sulaiman reminds me that my faith and my place in hip-hop and Islam are eternally connected. How does a high-school dropout semi-suicidal kid addicted to rap music, go from the GED centers of the Bay Area to doing lectures at Harvard, Dickinson, Brown and Williams? The answer is the mic and the crescent because God is great.