by Imam Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed

We offer our congratulations to the island nation of Barbados in their choice of new leadership. We are a people in the United States of America knowing well the atrocities of slavery and its effects on the psyche of those victimized by its tentacles of oppressive systems and influences, and so we applaud the continuing steps taken by thoughtful peoples toward a free and more complete human life. We applaud them who are disproving the racist’s lie that the descendants of Africa were created for slavery and that they have no intelligent sense of responsibility for society or social excellence. The new republic of Barbados and its leadership crush that lie. A free people are cherished by all freedom-loving people.

We are reminded by G’d in our Holy Book that all people are to be respected in their native homes. Muhammed the Prophet and his followers were also disrespected in the city of his nativity, and G’d inspired him to embrace the principle that he and those with him were “free people in their city.” This is not speaking to the distributors and drunkards who desire and promote the trade in the wine of permissive-style freedoms. We do not expect them to appreciate such recognitions. It is a fact that we do not see and will not ever see Barbados as an island playground.

The face of the old British empire does not belong on a free people’s currency of human dignity and excellence. This new people of Barbados share and trade ideas and resources upon their created human excellence, and we cherish the same quality progress and successes for them what we cherish for ourselves. If it is to become an island Paradise it will be in the eyes of its sons and daughters pleased and pleasing with their own images of social excellence demonstrated before the world’s eyes. This is also our Muslim African American hope. We are inspired by the new leadership and praying G’d’s Favor on President Sandra Mason and her helpers and well-wishers in Barbados and the United Kingdom.

Even as we congratulate these new steps of dignity in Barbados, we are ashamed of our own American Republican Party leadership that appears bent on championing old-world white supremacist attitudes. A civilized people and its leadership will not sit idly as those claiming representation of them tear at their civilized existence. No, they will pull such leaders down and condemn them to the gutters and dungeons of censure and punishment where their ugly rhetoric and designs belong.

It is not our habit to comment on political hype. However, the voice of responsible leadership in America wanes in these very peculiar times in which we live now. Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota is deserving of our honorable recognition and support. She is in so many ways a symbol of universal human dignity, and the dignity of striving Americans. I am not her colleague or even her constituent. In the picture of American citizenship I am her fellow citizen, and in the picture of humanity I am her brother. The verbal assaults she endures intend and portend an unwanted and hated wave of the the ugly American-style bigotry of old that purposely directs itself to intimidate and chill the hopes of striving Americans and all global striving peoples.

There is more danger to the American Capitol originating in and from the segment of irresponsible leaders of this new American Republican Party, and a smaller group of duplicitous Democratic Party leadership that dances as partners with them in a cloaked collusion permitting this, than was ever threatened by any other known devilish force on earth, including the most dangerous Muslim extremists. I am not comfortable saying ‘Muslim extremist’ but there are too many that fit that label in this earth in influential seats.

Obviously, I am not speaking of every individual belonging to this leadership in our country and I am not speaking on true peoples of Islamic faith. But, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to discern one from the other. This kind of confusion in the public life of our great nation and the world is the work of forces to destroy the rule of decency and civility.

We Muslim-Americans will not sit idly. We have intellects, hearts, voices and hands of devotion and action focused upon the founding principles of American life rooted in universal principles of freedom, justice, and equality as endowed in man by his Lord-Creator. Our sound and enlightened hearts carry the commitment.

How in this climate of confused leadership could the story of Joseph in Scripture and the people it refers not be studied and consulted. I am from a small group but with a mighty messaging presence in American history and a great importance in this present world.