When are you going to join the Nation of Islam?
By Gregory Abdur Rahman
Mr. Henry, I know you are a busy man, but somehow I feel compelled to thank you. You are a gatekeeper for Blacks left out of mainstream America. I have spent much of my life thinking about integration and nationalism and it all amounts to us deciding what is out of bounds in our American discourse. We talk to get an idea of the direction we need to work in, in order to solve our American problems. Our Constitution gives us freedom to choose any religion that does not inherently violate our laws. For me, our big problem is, when we entertain discourse we know is wrong (Paul Krugman calls them zombies). In Islam, Judaism and Christianity there are clear mainstream interpretations that order us to love our fellow man and the downtrodden. As a 13-year-old welfare boy, I spent three weeks getting free medical treatment at Mount Sinai Hospital. They saved my foot and saved me from a life of limping. We all like to defend those who appear as if they are with us and that is how we go wrong. The one that really looks like me loves his fellow man, regardless of color or faith and wants the best for every single person. There is no curse of Hamm. That’s evil Christianity. A Muslim who tries to teach me about Jewish inferiority is a bigot and a racist and I do my best to openly speak against such people. If a drug addict can only get off drugs through hate, that is a person who has merely traded one disease for another.
Nazi-KKK thinking is wrong and out of bounds in 2015. It’s not okay because this one particular set of KKK happens to be Black. Thank you for reading my e-mail and responding to it. I feel sorry for the young Ms. Adams. I am a Muslim, God willing, but it’s not about our labels, but what we think our labels call us to and in most faiths there are a few on the fringe who say their label orders them to hate.
Our national discourse at its core is a long fight to end that hate and its weak excuses. That hate is our real enemy that stops us from being One nation under God and this crippling hate is not solely found in white America.
