My World was an Urban Jungle...

My world was an urban jungle in the dawning of the age of crack and rap. When I was 5 years old I thought that the entire world was a sea of buildings. What shattered that reality was none other than my father.

There is a place just outside of New York City, just north, called Bear Mountain. You can get there by driving or even by bike. In the early 80’s my father took my older brother, my sister, and myself out there. I must have been 5 years old and that moment transformed the way that I would see the world forever.

Bear Mountain was a hiking paradise for the casual hiker and we were exactly that – little Black Muslim city kids walking around in the country for the first time. What I recall from that trip was moss growing on rocks, mushrooms on rotting wood, and drinking my first drink box where you have a straw to poke into the box. I had never been to a place that was not city. The lesson was the most clear and simple one.

On a personal note, I was raised Muslim by my parents who converted to Islam. Both my parents were attracted to the fellowship and empowerment message of the Nation of Islam. It is important to note that the Nation of Islam was more of a Black Nationalist religion and less of actual Islam. There is considerable writing on this. However the NOI had value in its emphasis on economic independence – an old fashioned self-reliance that was powerful enough to transform the lives of millions – like the lives of those in my community and family. The NOI contributed mightily to the Civil Rights movement which paved the way for Muslim immigrants coming from countries where immigration had previously been severely limited.

Where the NOI went wrong is that it did not officially follow the Sunnah – the example of the Prophet. My parents, along with many others, were then naturally drawn to a deeper connection with Islam and soon converted to Islam in its traditional form. I was the first child who, from birth, was “born Muslim” in my family. Meaning that my father recited the call to prayer in my right ear just as I was out of my mother, it was the first sound I heard on Earth.

  

My fathers’ family comes from Upstate NY where my grandfather was born on a Native American reservation in 1908 and from Virginia where my grandmother was one of nine in a traditionally well-educated churchgoing black family. When you go back to Scottsburg Virginia you can still see the grave markers from my extended family going back to the 1860’s. We are a proud people very much rooted in the land. There was some legend that suggested we even had family members that fought in the Revolutionary War. We are an All-American family in many respects.

My father was raised in Queens but took his summers in Virginia for this reason he always loved and respected the natural world. As a city kid and then a city father he took it upon himself to imbibe us with a love of the natural world himself. When he took us out to Bear Mountain my father stopped to pray one of the five mandatory prayers and told when we asked him if he could pray in the woods he told us: “the Earth is a Mosque”.

Comments

[Amelia]

i really love reading your blog, ibrahim. just wanted to let you know that :-)

[Jasmin]

amazing entry, mA.

[zhao]

salam

[alison]

Beautiful post Ibrahim...thinking of you in the natural world.