(From which Muslims must learn)
written by Lion Bite a/k/a Gulf Coast African Lion
Bismillah was-salat was-salaam alir-rasul Allah. Hamdulillah, Rabil Alamin. Ashadu an la ilaha il Allah wa-ashadu ana Muhammad abduhu was rasuluhu.
Salaam alaikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuhu.
After discussion with an African American brother in the US we came to realize that the civil rights movement failed in almost every way possible. Now we might say “How so?” and “Where would America be with out it?” but the statistics available on Black Americans shows its failings. It’s easy for me to sit here in the Bahamas and say they failed but we were also under the heel of the British Crown and Parliament until recently. Mentally we still are in some ways. The following is where Brother GCA’s writing begins:
The damage done to Black Americans is worse after the Civil Rights Struggle we went through in the 50s and 60s than it was before then. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement the Klu Klux Klan lynched Black people in the south. After the CRM, the KKK is no longer necessary to this aim as Black Americans destroy each other. Before desegregation, “Blood” still meant the red fluid in our arteries and the word “Crip” was unknown. Before desgregation, we had our own businesses in their communities supported by Black patrons. We had no knowledge of African history or even African pride but we took pride in moral superiority over whites and therefore kept certain things out of the community. The communities organizedly raised the children collectively, so parents who had to work long hours or died knew that their children would still be raised. Children could eat from anyone’s house but they could also be chastised by anyone for bad behavior. Black manhood was not defined by one’s gang affiliation or time spent in prison, even in the poorest of neighborhoods.
Now with the Civil Rights Movement a memory and its so-called victories obvious to us, the Black community in America is losing its men and its children. Its men are going to prisons for longer sentences than whites and with less evidence for convictions. Its men aren’t in the community to raise the children. Its women have to be mothers and fathers and they’re so tired of Black men that growing numbers of them are refusing to even marry Black men anymore. “By now, these facts shouldn’t be hard to grasp. Almost 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Those mothers are far more likely than married mothers to be poor, even after a post-welfare-reform decline in child poverty. They are also more likely to pass that poverty on to their children. Sophisticates often try to dodge the implications of this bleak reality by shrugging that single motherhood is an inescapable fact of modern life, affecting everyone from the bobo Murphy Browns to the ghetto “baby mamas.” Not so; it is a largely low-income—and disproportionately black—phenomenon. The vast majority of higher-income women wait to have their children until they are married. The truth is that we are now a two-family nation, separate and unequal—one thriving and intact, and the other struggling, broken, and far too often African-American.” (quote taken from http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_black_family.html) At year end 2006 there were 3,042 black male sentenced prisoners per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,261 Hispanic male sentenced prisoners per 100,000 Hispanic males. Or you can read this page and see that many Black families are in a permanent recession even when white America is in a boom. In 2005, the poorest Black families earned on average 43.4% of the income of the poorest whites.
To make for easier reading, the mistakes made in their movement are in a list format below.
- Unconditional non-violence. Their community is now the most self-destructive one in America. The Muslims are already hurtling towards this.
- Requesting integration with those who hated them. (Hamza Yusuf)
- Not seeking separation or dominance.
- Not being prepared to die in armed resistance to their mistreatment, but being ready to die or be injured in non-violence.
- Rejecting and ridiculing Malcolm X when he was alive. He is loved by the community now more than before his assassination (martyrdom).
- Rejecting Islam as the base for their movement when Malcolm made the transition while accepting to make the church its base before this.
- Being too easily impressed by good speeches and good preaching.
- Not opposing the interests of white America enough and compromising too much.
- Ridiculing those of us who advocated leaving America.
- Fighting in the military for this country.
- Imitating those same people against whom they were fighting.
- Leniency with each other for moral lapses like adultery and drug use.
- Rumor-mongering.
- Inherently distrusting other Black people. Muslims have already arrived at this level.
- Being less reliable and trustyworthy to other Blacks than they would be to whites. Muslims have also arrived at this level.
Numbers 5 and 6 reflect the gravest of the errors. The movement has come in various forms and organizations, all of which refused to make Islam their ideological base. The Black Panther Party is a great example of this. They took a part of Malcom X’s philosophy (self-determination and self-defense) and left the Islam. Eldridge Cleaver wound up attempting to mix Islam with Christianity into a synthesized Chrislam. It failed miserably, as did he. He took his stand and shot at some police officers, only to surrender by removing all of his clothes and putting his hands up. The young brother with him in that attack on some police cars, Hutton, refused to take off his underwear and expose his privates to the surrounding police officers, therefore he was shot in the back trying to surrender. Eldridge Cleaver eventually became a born-again Christian and Republican, completely selling out. In the movement of Black Americans, this was equivalent to apostasy from a Muslim. Huey Newton eventually became strung-out on drugs. The Black Panther party as a whole turned on itself as its leaders began to believe forged letters written to them by the FBI, with signatures of other leaders being forged and affixed to them. Those who are still alive are just shells of their former selves, and those who have died have been disgraced in their lives and deaths, even Martin Luther King. Only Malcolm X lived and died with dignity and has remained unblamed since his death. No one can come out now and say that he was involved in any corruption after his Islam. He has been absolved of all charges of adultery by his wife and associates before anyone could ever say otherwise. Women who met him observed and told of how he kept a respectful distance.
But Martin Luther King was eventually exposed for adultery by his best friend, Ralph David Abernathy. Jesse Jackson is now so pathetic that he needs no explaining by me. “Up with hope, down with dope.” Shut up, Jesse, hope you choke. Al Sharpton is the one leader remaining who is still trying but there is so little he can do with a people so damaged, especially when he is dependent on hair relaxer. Louis Farrakhan is still not Muslim as of 2008. He has met with Snoop Doggy Dogg and called him a prophet and leader. The trouble is Snoop Doggy Dogg is merely an entertainer, not a prophet by a long shot. But the people are so lost that this is what results. This level of loss and deviance awaits the Muslim community as Shaytan lies in wait to capitalize on what our enemies are planning for us.
Muslims must not ignore the struggle of Black Americans or its mistakes. Nor must they ignore the present condition of the community. Without learning from the mistakes of their resistance movements, we’ll quickly fall into worse than those conditions.
