Sherman Jackson – AlimProgram – Insights

			A lot of
		

			a lot of people hear me talking about all this America stuff, American Islam stuff. And I'm sure it
makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
		

			Because a lot of them don't, don't really hear, they hear my words, but they don't hear my message.
And I'm not blaming them, they don't hear my message because they don't know me. They don't, they
don't, they don't recognize the fact that, you know, if you a convert, and I'm a black American male
convert, and that very enterprise in and of itself, has woven into the very warp and woof of its its
very existence, an ongoing, very deep and profound critique of America. So, you know, my talking
about America, American Islam, and the fact that Muslims have to get the slam, and it's it's
tradition, it's holy book, it's Sunday. It's, it's, it's, it's genius, to speak effectively to the
		

			realities that define their lives as Americans. When I when I say that many people hear, you know,
assimilation
		

			they hear, you know, you know, bowing to the dominant culture, and that's not at all what I what I
mean. And the reason I know that this sounds so uncomfortable for them, is that it used to sound the
same way to me.
		

			And
		

			stuff allows him you know, you know, it makes me really, you know,
		

			embarrassed, sad even think this. I remember when I was a young convert in Philadelphia, bad back in
		

			the 19, the late 1970s.
		

			I was three years old.
		

			I remember one of the major controversies we had was with Imam WD Mohammed Rahim Allah. And the
controversy was his insistence on putting the American flag on the front of the newspaper.
		

			And for many of us, this was anathema of the first order. This, this proves to us that, you know,
these people have still not fully entered into the Slough.
		

			And that's why I say, I know how this American stuff I talk now sounds to a lot of people because
you sound same way to me. But you asked me a specific question.
		

			I learned
		

			that I was an American.
		

			When I went abroad, when I went to the Muslim world, that's when I really discovered that I was an
American.
		

			And I think that, you know, if I had a gazillion dollars, you know, we could solve a lot of this,
this dissonance and dislocation, you know, six months in the Muslim world, Muslims in America would
discover that they really are American. And there's nothing wrong with that. And in the same way,
that if you are an Egyptian, you don't agree with everything about Egyptian society. You don't agree
with everything about Egyptian politics. You don't agree about everything about Egyptian foreign
policy. I see no reason for me to bear that that burden as an American, I think is what you know,
it's a sad fact that Muslims have become so you know, overly politicized politics is so saturates
		

			the psyche that they can't think outside of purely political, political terms.
		

			But I'm sure that you know, despite the fact that you know, Mecca was a
		

			pagan capital that the prosecuted the Prophet and turned him on and turn the Muslims. I'm sure the
Sahaba Mr. Mecca.
		

			I'm sure they missed Mecca.
		

			That was the whole
		

			you know, one of my favorite poems in Arabic.
		

			I'll say the poem I don't know if I shared in Arabic or English
		

			and Arabic It's delicate, difficult to come to attend the marathon which Hannah that even led me to
Cheyenne. Machina, we can then I can have some
		

			jamatkhana Bismil delicate work a daughter with a film of tadagra Lava 10th October her daughter we
had
		

			a you had to flee the country. Adam Mela, the mountain n omega center.
		

			That child who wants was me, came to me once and a strange face. He didn't say anything. We just
looked at each other and then
		

			walk along the way.
		

			We were joined together in the name of that leaf that dangles in the wind by our roots, then we
departed. And we went into a jungle whose author
		

			is the earth and whose narrator is the seasons.
		

			Old child who wants was me, come forward now. What is it that joins us together? Still? And what
shall we say to each other?
		

			So, in a sense, that's another way of saying, you know, the man grows up to be the child
		

			that you know, all the ambitions all the dreams, all of the hoped for possibilities, those are
developed in childhood. My childhood was here. You know, the things that shaped me fundamentally are
here. The things that I want to actualize most come out of, you know, a rearing an experience, a
dream in a fearing a hoping here.
		

			That's what I'm talking about in terms of being American