The Truth about Trump and Muslims

A Vindication in favor of our worldly-wise, kick-ass billionaire patriot, President Donald Trump.

I did not vote for Trump in 2016. I was curious, like everyone else, because he was just weird and very wild. He seemed to be doing, and saying, everything that he could to lose — on purpose. “Make America Great Again,” automatically interpreted by me, a Black man — especially a former hardcore Black nationalist — as code language for “Make America White Again.” I was like, “This dude got BIG nerve!” It wasn’t a compliment, though my overall perspective of him would change greatly.

Then he jumps on Mexicans: (Continue reading below)

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems,” Trump said in a speech at Trump Tower in New York. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people, but I speak to border guards and they’re telling us what we’re getting.”¹

Not to leave anyone out, he targets my religious community, Muslims:

“Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Great Again.”²

Trump had also said something like, “We have to know who these people are.” Uh oh. This time I had to agree. Trump was right — 100% right. We had to know which Muslims were entering our country. Here again, personal experience comes into the picture.

The year was 1975. That was the year, recall, that I left the University. But before I left, I was converted to Islam by a Black man named Muhammad Al-Bakri. I became a Sunni³ Muslim, which is also called an “orthodox Muslim.” It would be one year later that Sulaiman would convert me to the peaceful Ahmadiyya sect of Islam.

Anyway, in 1975 I was living in the Blackwood Hotel, in the Hyde Park section of Chicago. One day I was shopping at the Hyde Park Co-op. I saw a bearded White man, who looked only a little bit older than me, shopping in another aisle. We kept glancing at each other. I had my kufi, my Islamic cap, on my head, and he had a cap also.

He looked White — blue eyes, blonde hair, pale skin. Yet, I kept thinking, “Maybe he’s a light-skinned Black — very light-skinned.” I’d never seen a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, Black person before, so I was baffled. I knew that White Muslims existed. But to see one — an actual White Muslim — was a bit hard for me to swallow at the time. I was confused.

We finally ended up in the same aisle. He said to me, “Assalamo Alaikum, achi,”⁴ with such a mellow voice and soft, inviting smile, obviously taking my kufi as a sign that I was Muslim. I fully knew the story of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbaz, aka, Malcolm X — how he’d met and prayed with White Muslims. In fact, I was to learn that he, Umar Faruq Abd-Allah⁵, as he would introduce himself, had accepted Islam directly due to how much he was inspired after reading Alex Haley’s, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. But I just stood there for a moment, staring at him as if he was an alien from outer space. Then I responded, finally: “Wa Alaikum Salaam………………Achi.” It was the first time in my life that I’d called a White man “brother.” And a true human brother he turned out to be (Although I know that he would highly disapprove of my potty mouth, as he rightly should).

Then came the regular, how long have you been Muslim; how did you find out about Islam; who brought you into the Deen⁶; where did you take your Shahada,⁷ questions often asked more so by converts to Islam when they make a new acquaintance of another Muslim. We got through that, and then he hit me with a surprise. “Achi, we have a room at our Mosque, Jamaat-ul-Muslimeen. We’ve been looking for a tenant. The rent is reasonable. Would you be interested?”

I was to learn, later, that this form of hospitality was very common amongst Muslims, and Umar was the very epitome of a typical hospitable Muslim. I took it as hospitality, even though I’d be paying rent. I responded that I already had an apartment, but “Jazakallah⁸ for the offer……………achi.” After some more talking, we gave our salaams and parted.

I thought about his offer for days. After a week had passed, I decided, “Why not!” I knew that his offer was made, in part, because I was new to Islam. His eyes sparkled with such care that it was clear, from his soul, that his offer was meant that I begin my Islamic days living in a Mosque, where there would be Muslims there for Juma⁹ prayer, classes, talks, discussions. So, I contacted him and moved into the Jamaat-ul-Muslimeen Mosque, then at 10050 S. Halstead Street, now a vacant lot.

I’ve lived long enough to know that no matter the religion, when one first joins, there is this strong feeling of other-worldliness. That’s how I felt as a new convert to Islam. Islam: the religion of peace. People? That’s another story. In every religion, there are people that just ain’t so peaceful. There are people with bipolar problems; people who believe that religion will solve their mental problems — say your prayers five times a day and you’ll be cured [NOT!] As a Catholic, perform prayer with your Rosary every day, and no human weakness will ever touch you [NOT!] Meditate in the padmasana (Lotus) position, and when your boss pisses you off, you will simply smile [LIE!] You’re now immune from certain physical temptations [DEFINITELY not!]

Aside from people with the same problems that any person can have, there were the fundamentalist Catholics; the fundamentalist Jews; the fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, etc. — the ones that take it upon themselves to attempt to bring into being, on this earth, by any means necessary, a version of the world they envision.

The first incident occurred when I was dead sleep in my room at the Mosque. I was the only one in the Mosque. I was shaken out of my sleep by someone banging on the front door, hollering, “Open this door IN THE NAME OF ALLAH!!!” over and over and over again. I got up, walked downstairs and went to the front door. “Who is it?” I asked. OPEN THIS DOOR, I DEMAND YOU, IN THE NAME OF ALMIGHTY ALLAH!!!”

I replied, “Brother, unless you calm down, I am not opening this door.” Then he said, “The Holy Prophet Muhammad said that when someone comes to the Mosque…” I cut him off before he could finish using Prophet Muhammad, and said, “Prophet Muhammad is dead!!” I was new to Islam, so all I heard was a maniac, and I didn’t care what Prophet Muhammad had said one-thousand four-hundred years ago, in Mecca. This was Chicago, today.

My reply must have shocked him, because he instantly shut his mouth and got quiet, apparently trying to figure out what he could use next, having been confronted with someone who, despite “in the Name of Allah” and despite “The Holy Prophet Muhammad” was not gonna let some raging maniac fool in the Mosque. I took advantage of the silence: Almost in one movement, I quickly opened the door, placed my hand on his chest, pushed him back as easily as I could, closed the door behind me, and said, “What’s up with you, brother? You gotta calm down.”

He started bitching about some altercation he had had earlier in the day with some brother that was associated with the Mosque. I knew a bit of psychology, so I just stood there listening, letting him get it off his chest. Then, strangely, out of the blue walked up two plain clothes cops. It was very weird, because I could not, for the life of me, figure out where they came from. It was as if they’d walked through another dimension.

One of them said, “Is everything okay here?” They were plain clothes, but there guns were in plain sight. I responded, “Everything’s fine, officer…right, achi?” The brother twisted his mouth in frustration, and said, “Naam…I mean, yes…officer.” The two officers cut their eyes at both of us, and said, “Are you guys sure.” I said, “We’re fine, officer. Everything’s okay.”

The officers left. Achi left also. I thought, “Why were those officers here? Why did they just happen to be here?” My intuition was telling me that they had been stationed there, for some reason. I couldn’t figure out why they would be stationed at a Mosque of Allah. That would be cleared up as time went on.

One day, after Juma, we attendees were told that a sheikh¹⁰, newly arrived to the States from Pakistan, would be visiting the Mosque one night with special gifts. That night came and the sheikh arrived. The gift turned out to be free scholarships to a madrassa.¹¹ The sheikh had a long white beard. He was wearing a turban. His eyes and humble smile spoke of great religious piety.

But my intuition was speaking of something else: suspicion. Why would somebody be handing out full scholarships to a school, somewhere in the Middle East, your plane fare, books, lodging, food, clothing, and everything being taken care of for free? In the hood when something was suspicious, someone would say, “There’s some sh*t in the game!” And that’s what it smelled like to me. I smiled, took the application he had handed me, and said, “Jazakallah.”

That same evening I went to a pay phone to call Sulaiman, who would bring me into Ahmadiyyat the next year. Sulaiman’s story might be akin to Malcolm’s, or maybe even a little bit stronger, the only difference being that Sulaiman was not known. He had been with me in the AANS when we were Black nationalists. His martial arts skills were so awesome that he reached a level of sparring with black belts and winning, and he didn’t even have official rank.

After the AANS folded, he became a hardcore, stomp-down pimp, pimping, as they say, “from Maine to Spain, from the Big Apple¹² to the Pineapple¹³, all across the Bubble¹⁴, Baby!” He eventually reformed his life, left The Game, and accepted Islam through the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam¹⁵. In Ahmadiyyat, he rose to the high rank of National Qaid¹⁶ of Khuddam-ul-Ahmadiyya, U.S.A, the youth wing (from ages 15 to 39) of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. In Rabwah, Pakistan, the then headquarters of Ahmadiyyat, he spoke before an international crowd of 500,000. Sulaiman had always mastered whatever he went into, whether it was karate, the streets, women, Islam, high-level chemistry courses he and I took together, hair-dressing, whatever. My dad liked his manhood. And because Sulaiman was short and tough, dad called him Mighty Mouse.

So there was no question in my mind, due to the depth of his multi-faceted life experiences and deep knowledge, that he’d pull my coat about the “free” scholarship to the Middle East to learn Islam more thoroughly. I ran it down to him over the phone. He said, “Yeah, they’re gonna teach you a lot over there if you go. You’re gonna be indoctrinated, and you’ll learn enough of Islam that you can then corruptly use to wage physical jihad and justify killing folks.

“Once you’re fully indoctrinated, they’re gonna teach you about grenades, mortars, shoulder-mounted heat-seeking anti-aircraft guns, how to blow up a tank or a busload of ‘disbelievers,’ and maybe even how to chop off some heads.” I decided that it was probably best to stay in Chicago. My intuition had served me well.

Another night and another repetition of noises had awakened me. This time it was not someone banging at the door of the Mosque. I had heard clicking sounds downstairs in the prayer room. A number of the brothers had spent the night there, which could be common at a Mosque — people just wanting to read Qur’an, pray, meditate, have a conversation, and then just spend the night at the Mosque, sleeping on the floor.

I got up and went downstairs. There were about eight brothers there, all with rifles. They were checking them, aiming them as if they were aiming it at something — or someone. And the clicking sound — the cocking and then de-cocking. They all had blank faces, as if this was some sort of regular routine.

“Uh….brothers, what’s up?” One of the brothers looked at me and said, “It’s okay, brother, go back to sleep…We’ll take care of it.” Instantly the words, “Oh no you WON’T!!” popped into my mind. Whatever it was, there was not going to be any taking “care of it” while I was in that Mosque. I go, “Brother, you gone have to do better than that.” He sighed a little bit and said, “Really, brother, it’s nothing to worry about. We had a little altercation the other day with a rival Mosque.

“They’re not happy, and they might be coming to pay us a visit.”

I just stared at the brother. And I was thinking, “What the hell is a ‘rival Mosque?’” We were all Muslims — part of the international Ummah¹⁷; the Dar-ul-Islam.¹⁸ This is Islam, the religion of peace. Rival Mosque? I turned around, ran upstairs, packed my sh*t, ran back downstairs, opened the front door, left, walked to a pay phone, called my mom, and said, “Make room.” I never heard, after that day, if the “rival Mosque” had come, and never asked. I’d already properly paid my rent, so I owed nobody a single thing, except my Salaams, which I quickly gave to the brothers when I reached the front door: “Assalamo Alaikum!”

I remained a Sunni Muslim for one year. During that time I visited many of the make-shift, storefront Mosques, formal Mosques, homes of Muslims, etc., for various things, in the Chicago area. It seemed a rule of thumb that, whenever I went to a Mosque, invariably there would be a group of men, sitting in the corner, in a circle. And I’d always hear the word “jihad” being said. They were always speaking in low tones.

I remember once when I was in downtown Chicago, and it was Juma. I could not get to a regular Mosque, but there was a large office space that was used for Juma prayer on Wabash Street, just south of Adams, on the west side of the street. It was called The Downtown Center. When I got upstairs, there was a sign saying that a visiting Imam would be leading the prayer and giving the Khutbah¹⁹. I walked into the Mosque, performed my individual prayers, and sat down.

When it came time for the Khutbah, the Imam went to the podium and started his sermon. He was dressed Jake, except he had no tie. His collar was open. He had a goatee and was not wearing anything on his head. He was Egyptian and looked more like a playboy than a sheikh. And then the Khutbah came. It was filled to the brim with “Death to America,” and how “Jihad is coming to America,” and all of that.

It pissed me off because I was there to enjoy a quiet sermon about the life of Prophet Muhammad, or about keeping good morals (For some strange reason, women never suddenly disappeared after I’d accepted Islam), or about going fisabilillah, that is, going in the Way of Allah, or about Zikr, i.e., remembrance of Allah. All this chump talked about — and loudly — was destroying America. I wondered how this chump had the brazen audacity to stand there, in downtown Chicago, one of the largest cities on earth, to talk sh*t.

Interestingly, no one gave the takbirs²⁰. Everyone was sitting on the floor, quietly, heads and eyes generally peeled to the floor in front of them. I found it kind of funny that no one gave the takbirs during any part of that man’s khutbah.

The congregants there were composed of Pakistani Americans, Indian Americans, Egyptian Americans, Indonesian Americans, Chinese Americans, a smattering of Black and White Americans. And no doubt there were doctors, lawyers, and people of other professionals who had offices there in the downtown area. This was not a “rival Mosque.” He’d come to the wrong place.

Most Muslim Americans don’t give a whit about the form of jihad²¹ that that chump was talking about. Like every other American, they just want to make a living, go to Juma, if they could find a Mosque close enough to their gig, raise their families, watch football on Sundays; try hard (or not) to stay away from women — just live their lives.

Every scene has its own flavor. And, unless you’ve been around Muslims a long time, you would not have noticed, that day, what I easily noticed. The quiet in that Mosque, called The Downtown Center, was pin drop. And not because of his rousing speech. Believe me, I know American Muslims. Juma is always quiet. But the pin-drop quiet was because everybody was hoping that he would not be long-winded, so we could get to the congregational prayer, and get back to work, our religious obligation having been fulfilled.

Unfortunately, he was long-winded. So, here were these regular Muslim Americans, listening to this recently arrived Muslim from Egypt who was associated with the Ikwan-ul-Muslimeen, i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood, “singing,” as my Indian friend, Muhammad Aziz Ahmed would say about people who were talking sh*t: “Brother, he’s just singing.” And he sang for what seemed like forever, which, by the way, was a violation of the practice of Prophet Muhammad, who had instructed that Kutbahs not be long, so as not to inconvenience the people.

By the way, as an aside, immediately after 9/11, the FBI started cracking down all over the U.S. On Devon Street, in Chicago, both a Muslim and Jewish business district, some 26%, I think the figure was, of Muslim businesses closed or moved to Canada, due, it’s claimed, to abusive and illegal pressure from the FBI. Young legal defense lawyers set up a storefront on Devon lending their expertise to Muslim businessmen in an attempt to protect their rights as U.S. citizens.

Of course, such pressure from the government, in my humble or not so humble opinion, had a good effect: All the singing that Muslims had been doing, all over the country, ceased. In the place of singing, Muslims suddenly started holding inter-faith meetings with Christians in a kumbaya attempt to shield Islam and Muslims from heavy scrutiny (Good job, FBI!!)

Aside from maniacs banging on Mosque doors, free scholarships to somewhere in the Middle East, rival Mosques, and singing, my first year as a Sunni Muslim was okay, once I began to realize that crazy doesn’t discriminate. No matter what religion, it will be occupied by crazy people, as well as sane people. It will be occupied by people who really just want to worship God, and others who just want to be God. Unfortunately, and forgive me for saying this, but religion often does seem to have some hidden ability to attract crazy people. Naturally, ahem, I exclude myself.

In time I decided that I just had to split Chicago. Thinking about my broken marriage had become too much. I moved to St. Louis with Sulaiman, as I mentioned earlier. In time, I left Sunni Islam and became an Ahmadi Muslim, converted by Sulaiman. It was in Ahmadiyyat, which was dedicated to spreading Islam strictly through peaceful means, that I learned why the hot jihad mentality in the Muslim world had developed, something President Trump had wondered about. The jihad mentality had not been rooted in political reasons.

I made up the term, psycho-spiritual malady to describe the corrupted form of hot jihad mentality. But it was the founder of Ahmadiyyat, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908) who explained fully. He had said the following in a book that he had written entitled Masih Hindustein Mein, i.e., The Messiah in India: I bold and italicize some sentences.

“I have written this book so that by adducing proofs from established facts, conclusive historical evidence of proven value, and ancient documents of other nations, I might dispel the serious misconceptions which are current among Christians and most Muslim sects regarding the earlier and the later life of Jesus. The dangerous consequences of these misconceptions have not only hijacked and destroyed the concept of Tauhid — Divine Unity, but their insidious and poisonous influence has long been noticed in the moral condition of Muslims in this country.

“It is these baseless myths and tales that result in spiritual maladies, like immorality, malice, callousness, and cruelty, which are almost endemic among most Islamic sects. Virtues like human sympathy, compassion, affability, love of justice, meekness, modesty, and humility are disappearing by the day, as if they will soon bid a hasty farewell to them. This callousness and moral degradation makes many a Muslim appear only marginally different from wild beasts. A Jain²² or a Buddhist is afraid of killing even a mosquito or a flea and detests such an act, but alas! there are many among Muslims who would kill an innocent person with impunity and commit wanton murder without the least fear of God Almighty Who rates human life higher than all other animals.

“Why then this callousness, cruelty, and lack of sympathy? It is because from their very childhood, myths and false stories regarding a false concept of Jihad are drummed into their ears and instilled into their hearts. As a result, they gradually become morally dead and cease to realize the heinousness of such abominable deeds. On the other hand, a man who murders an unsuspecting person and brings ruin to his family, thinks that he has done a meritorious and rightful deed and made the most of an opportunity to win social acclaim. This is because no sermons or lectures are delivered in our country to discourage such evils, and if at all there are any such sermons, they have an aura of hypocrisy about them; and the man in the street continues to think approvingly of such misdeeds.

“Hence, taking pity upon the plight of my people, I have already written books in Urdu, Persian and Arabic, in which I have proved that the popular concept of Jihad prevalent among Muslims, such as the expectation of a blood-thirsty Imam and cultivation of malice for others, are no more than false notions harboured by shortsighted clerics. Islam, on the contrary, does not allow the use of the sword in religion except in the case of defensive wars, wars which are waged to punish a tyrant, or those which are meant to uphold freedom. The need of a defensive war arises only when the aggression of an adversary threatens one’s life. Except for these three kinds of Jihad permitted by the Shariah — Islamic law, no other kind of war is allowed by Islam in support of religion. To highlight this concept of Jihad, I have distributed books in this country and in Arabia, Syria and Khurasan, etc., at great cost.”²³

Now go back and read, right now, the quote I supplied of President Donald Trump saying, in effect, that Muslims coming to America have to be vetted. The liberal elite, who apparently don’t believe Sandy Berger’s warning²⁴, are too naïve, ignorant, or inexperienced about the real world to understand the dangers. Either that or they’re deliberately conniving, for political purposes, and they’re being that way at the expense of the potential unnecessary loss of American lives.

When President Trump said what he said and said it without regard to the backlash he certainly knew would come, my respect for him jumped a number of notches higher, although I still had decided not to vote for him — not in 2016. The man knew what the real deal was in the Muslim world. And some unfortunate things that had happened to two American citizens, Muslim American citizens, mind you, right here in America, are instructive as regards Trump’s this-ain’t-no-play-pen correct perspective.

Dr. Rashad Khalifa was an Egyptian American biochemist. He obtained a Master’s Degree in biochemistry from Arizona State University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside. He became a legal, naturalized U.S. citizen and lived in Tucson, Arizona.

He also once worked as a science advisor for the Libyan Jamahiriya, the Libyan government.

Rashad was an ardent Muslim and a Qur’anist.²⁵ His stance as a Qur’anist would lead him into trouble within the orthodox Muslim world, which considers Qur’an, Sunnah²⁶ (including hadith), ijmā (consensus) and ijtihād (individual thought) as components of Islam, neither of which, it is believed, can be disregarded.

Rashad founded an organization called United Submitters International (USI), which promulgated his beliefs as a Qura’nist. He also wrote a few books that spoke to his beliefs and findings: Miracle of the Quran: Significance of the Mysterious Alphabets (1973), The Computer Speaks: God’s Message to the World (1981), and Quran: Visual Presentation of the Miracle (1982).

Prior to those writings, in 1968 Rashad performed a computer analysis of the frequency of letters and words in Qur’an. He discovered that the Qur’an contained a mathematical structure based on the number 19, and pointed to this as proof that the Qur’an, unlike Hadith, was incorruptible. His discovery of that mathematical structure led him to believe that two verses of Qur’an from Chapter 9, verses 128–129, must be rejected. That may have guaranteed the next thing that happened.

On Feb. 27, 1989, the 11th Majlis al-Fuqaha (Council of Religious Scholars) met in Mecca and branded Rashad Khalifa an infidel. The next year, on January 31, 1990, Rashad was stabbed to death, inside the Mosque, in Tucson, Arizona, multiple times. Nineteen years later, on April 28, 2009, the Calgary Police Services of Canada arrested a man named Glen Cusford Francis, on suspicion of murdering Rashad. It was also discovered that the murder had been a planned conspiracy, and that Francis, along with a co-conspirator named James Williams, were both members of a highly murderous group, based in Pakistan, called Jamaat ul-Fuqra. Both men were convicted.

On August 9, 1983, Dr. Muzaffar Ahmad, a practicing physician at Wayne County General Hospital, in Detroit, Michigan, was murdered. One year prior to that, a Muslim from Pakistan had become Imam²⁷ of a local Mosque there in Detroit. There he began preaching against Ahmadi Muslims. Dr. Muzaffar was an Ahmadi Muslim.

The national Jalsa Salana, i.e., Ahmadiyya convention, was being planned to be held in Detroit. The Imam that came from Pakistan put together a plan to disrupt the Ahmadiyya convention, due to sectarian hatred of Ahmadi Muslims. The plan was to murder members of the Detroit Ahmadiyya community, and then burn the Mosque.²⁸ One of the operators within the plan called the Ahmadiyya mosque to ask information about Islam. Dr. Muzaffar offered to be the person to talk to the individual about the Ahmadiyya interpretation of the teachings of Islam.

So, Dr. Muzaffar befriended this individual and began teaching him about the Ahmadiyya interpretation of the teachings of Islam. Eight weeks prior to August 9th, the individual had left a hat at Dr. Muzaffar’s house. That would be the excuse to go back to Dr. Muzaffar’s house and kill him. He called Dr. Muzaffar and asked if he could come and pick up his hat. When he arrived, Dr. Muzaffar opened the door and the individual shot Dr. Muzaffar dead.

Then two individuals went to the Ahmadi Mosque, which was unoccupied at the time, and poured gasoline all over the building. Strangely, as it was discovered later, they got trapped in the building, as one of the door handles to the back door was broken. They ended up going into the washroom but died of smoke inhalation. The perpetrators were Calvin Jones, and William Cane. It was discovered later, by the FBI, that both had been associated with the same Pakistan-based group, Jamaat ul-Fuqra, that, seven years later, in 1990, would be responsible for the death of Dr. Rashad Khalifa.

Two different Muslims, of two different sects, murdered by Muslims who were either direct members of a fanatic, Pakistani, intolerant, fundamentalist Islamic organization, or were heavily influenced by it. And people want to call Trump “anti-Muslim.” Trump was pro-SENSE. Americans are too naïve, especially, it seems, Americans on the left, as well as American liberals. Trump knows much more than people think.

I’ve spent 46 years in the Muslim community. From Day 1 I noticed that Sunni Muslims, or so-called orthodox Muslims, carried a deep and strong longing for the glorious days of Muslim rule, especially the 800-year Muslim rule of Spain. There was always a lot of casterbation, whatever Mosque I went to, about the glorious days of Muslim rule, such as the rule of the Ottomans. There was always the deep hope for, and lots and lots and lots of conversation about, a revival of Muslim temporal power. That seemed more important to many Sunni Muslims than the religion itself...

This is not to preach about Ahmadiyyat. Here’s the point: frustration. When I was a Sunni, I noticed that this constant focus on the past fueled the deep frustration that existed within Sunni Muslims regarding the decline of Muslim power. I had already experienced that within the Black consciousness community, where many young Black consciousness people (except those of us trained by Chaka) constantly engaged in casterbation; constantly agonized over the lost glory of the ancient Black past.

Sunni Muslims were well aware of the corruption of Muslim governments, and that added to their frustration. This was one reason that ISIS became very popular, especially when it declared its Khalifat. ISIS’s rapid land-grab across the Levant appeared to signal the prospect of the creation of a purified Islamic government operating under a Caliph, holding out the possibility of the end of separate Muslim countries and the re-establishment of one unified Muslim entity under a Caliphate.

When the Ottoman Empire officially folded in the year 1924, even deeper lamentations were voiced in the Muslim world, since the Ottoman Empire had represented a glorious episode in Muslim history. But now, the British were the dominating power. The glory days of Islam, it appeared, had ended.

Khalifat is the institution of Successorship and ultimate leadership. Sunni Islam demands that a Khalifat must have possession of land. Prophet Muhammad was succeeded by four Khalifas: Abubakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali. Khalifat ended after that, but various forms of leadership arose and continued up through the Ottomans. The desire, in the soul of the Sunni Muslim world, for Khalifat, is in part based on this verse of Qur’an:

وَعَدَ اللّٰہُ الَّذِیۡنَ اٰمَنُوۡا مِنۡکُمۡ وَ عَمِلُوا الصّٰلِحٰتِ لَیَسۡتَخۡلِفَنَّہُمۡ فِی الۡاَرۡضِ کَمَا اسۡتَخۡلَفَ الَّذِیۡنَ مِنۡ قَبۡلِہِمۡ ۪ وَ لَیُمَکِّنَنَّ لَہُمۡ دِیۡنَہُمُ الَّذِی ارۡتَضٰی لَہُمۡ وَ لَیُبَدِّلَنَّہُمۡ مِّنۡۢ بَعۡدِ خَوۡفِہِمۡ اَمۡنًا ؕ یَعۡبُدُوۡنَنِیۡ لَا یُشۡرِکُوۡنَ بِیۡ شَیۡئًا ؕ وَ مَنۡ کَفَرَ بَعۡدَ ذٰلِکَ فَاُولٰٓئِکَ ہُمُ الۡفٰسِقُوۡنَ ﴿۵۶﴾

“Allah has promised to those among you who believe and do good works that He will surely make them Successors in the earth, as He made Successors from among those who were before them; and that He will surely establish for them their religion which He has chosen for them; and that He will surely give them in exchange security and peace after their fear; They will worship Me, and they will not associate anything with Me. Then whoso is ungrateful after that, they will be the rebellious.”²⁹

The fall of the Ottoman Empire was a huge blow to the psyches of the Muslims of the Sunni world, and remains as such to this day. We all saw a powerful example of the desire for Khalifat and a return to Muslim glory when The Islamic State (ISIS) was rapidly gobbling up land in the Levant, and then, on June 29th, 2014, ISIS announced the establishment of a worldwide Caliphate, and Abubakr Al-Baghdadi was named its First Caliph, or Khalifa.

It was no surprise to me whatsoever that even young Muslim university students in Europe were forming discussion sessions on the new self-declared Khalifat, some expressing that they were planning on moving to the lands controlled by the new Khalifat, which, in the eyes of a growing number of Sunni Muslims, had established its authenticity by capturing sizeable amounts of land, although nothing in Qur’an speaks to the establishment of land as a requirement of Khalifat.³⁰ Sections of the Muslim world were buzzing with hope, especially Muslim youth. ISIS was gobbling up land so rapidly that, amongst some Muslim youth, this was being seen as a divine sign from Allah that a real Khalifat had been established.

Then, Muslim men and women began migrating to ISIS-controlled lands, in order to support the new Khalifat, as well as find (as youth will always attempt to do) something that gives them higher meaning in life. For example:

“Thus, for example, last summer The Economist profiled Nasser Muthana, a young man from Wales who rejected four offers to study medicine in British Universities in favor of joining the Islamic State. His story was far from unusual.”³¹

“Far from unusual” is correct, and, from my experience, it was more the usual for many middle-to-upper class young Muslims around the world, as well as for the lower class jihadis. And the increasing numbers of women joining ISIS became extremely worrisome to Western analysts, as two abstracts of articles that appeared in the Cambridge University Press demonstrate. This first abstract was written for an article that appeared in the International Annals of Criminology.

“More than 550 Western women have moved to Syria and Iraq to join the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS), showing a success of ISIS in attracting women from the West that no other jihadist group had before. To explain the reasons for such success, it is important to understand how ISIS lures women from the West, why ISIS persuasion tools are so successful, what motivates women to join such a notorious terrorist group, famous for its brutal violence, mistreatment and enslavement of women and what role women expected to play in the ‘Islamic State.’ Understanding the motives why ISIS Western female migrants left their Western countries of residence and moved to ISIS-controlled territories is crucial to find appropriate measures to prevent and stop the radicalization of women, to cut the support that ISIS receives from its female sympathizers, to properly treat female returnees and to prepare appropriate measures against women ready to plot against their countries of residence in the name of ISIS goals.”³²

This second Cambridge University Press abstract was also written for an article that appeared in the International Annals of Criminology, but by a different author.

“This article is part of an effort to understand the enthusiasm, attraction and admiration of the organization ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS) among the young Muslim female in Western Europe. The article specifically focuses on microblogging (Tumblr and Twitter) contents of young Muslim girls from Western Europe. The study offers a review of ISIS-adoring Tumblr fangirls in the West through the prism of cultural interpretation. The young girls, whether themselves manipulated or manipulating others, become part of a worldwide viral system produced in perfect unison and generating propaganda enticing more and more young Muslim girls in the West to become viral ISIS recruits. After maintaining for a while Tumblr and Twitter accounts, some of them even undergo the “giant leap” and migrate to the “Islamic State” in Syria, continuing there to reinforce their blogging and twittering efforts, reporting on their daily lives and attempting to tempt or to trap more young girls to join the new “Islamic State”.³³

There would be no limit that ISIS would impose upon itself in acquiring whatever it needed to affect its immediate and long term goals. It would do whatever it took (sell drugs, involve itself in human trafficking, whatever) to recruit, and pay for seasoned jihadis from around the world to join its forces. Although they don’t have the leadership, discipline and expertise of expert Western forces, or of the Lebanese-based organization, Hezbollah, what they do have is an easy willingness to die.

Do you want them in your country? Moussa Ibrahim Gaddafi, former official and Information Minister for Muammar Gaddafi and the Libyan Jamahiriya (government), at a press conference held on July 7, 2011, stated, referring to the easy willingness of Al-Qaeda members to die during battle:

“We kill dozens of rebels almost every day, in different fronts. And yet, they keep coming. No one else goes to death in such a glorious way except Al-Qaeda. We kill a hundred of them in Al-Brega. They attack again. The following day, we kill another hundred. They attack again. We kill another hundred. No one does this, except Al-Qaeda, because they believe they are martyrs. And once they are killed, they go to heaven.”³⁴

In another of his press conferences that I listened to in 2011, but that I could not find for this book, he claimed that thousands of jihadis from all over the world were somehow being imported into Libya to fight against the Libyan government. He said that the Libyan armed forces were highly trained. He said they would wipe out thousands of jihadis, and thousands more would come. And this, he claimed, kept happening repeatedly. It can happen in America, if we’re not careful.

The average American has no comprehension of what is happening inside the minds of a sector of the Islamic world that, as Ghulam Ahmad stated in the quote I gave earlier, are praying and hoping for the actual physical advent of Imam Mahdi and Isa (Jesus), who, they believe, will establish Islam as the final religion. I’ve lived with such people. I know the mindset.

The overwhelming vast majority of Muslims in the world, such as the 50,000,000 Muslims located in the areas that made up the 15 former Soviet socialist republics, just live their lives from day to day. But there is a dangerous sector that can do great damage. We should know who comes into our country from countries, like Pakistan, where jihadist groups do exist. Bottom line: Trump was right. He knows what the deal is. (And yes, I voted for him in 2020.)

NOTES:

1. S. Gamboa, ‘Donald Trump Announces Presidential Bid by Trashing Mexico, Mexicans’, NBC News, New York City, NBC News, 2015, Original Internet source, , (accessed 2 May 2021), (Archived file)

2. E. Stokols and D. Strauss, ‘Donald Trump calls for ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims’ coming to U.S.’, Politico, Politico, Original Internet source, 2015, , (accessed 2, May, 2021) (Archived file)

3. From the word “sunnah,” which means practice, referring to how Prophet Muhammad practiced Islam in his life. Please also note that any mention of Prophet Muhammad in this book should be understood to be followed by the words sallalaho alaihe wa salaam, which means “Peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.”

4. “achi” means brother

5. Today Umar is a well-known world-renown Muslim scholar of Islam. Here is a short biography of Umar, though there are longer ones online: Original Internet source; (Archived file)

6. The Way; The Practice. The Dao, you might say.

7. Your declaration of faith: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah,” the first and only thing that formally brings you into the Deen of Islam.

8. “May God reward you with goodness.” It is an expression of gratitude, like saying “thank you,” except that, in Islam, all things come from God. So the understanding is that, ultimately, the gratitude is gratitude to God.

9. Friday congregational prayer.

10. Muslim religious scholar

11. Religious school

12. New York City

13. Hawaii

14. The world

15. Now called The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

16. President

17. Community

18. The abode of Islam; the world of Islam

19. Sermon

20. Saying, or shouting, “Allahu Akbar!!!” When a Muslim, for instance, gives a great, fiery speech, people will shout, “Allahu Akbar,” i.e., “God is the Greatest!”

21. At root the word jihad means struggle. And Prophet Muhammad had said that the best Jihad was the Jihad Akbar: the Great Jihad, which, he said, was the struggle against oneself.

22. Jainism is a religion of Indian origin which forbids harming any living creatures, whether humans, animals or insects.

23. G. Ahmad, ‘Jesus in India’, Al Islam, Qadian, Islam International Publications, Ltd., First Edition (Urdu): 1908, First Edition (English): 1944, Present Edition (English): 2016, pp. 1–3, Original Internet source, (accessed 3 May 2021), (No archived copy created)

24. “This ain’t no playpen out here.”

25. A Muslim who believes only in the authority of Qur’an, but not in the written traditions of Islam, called Hadith. Hadith compose the alleged sayings and doings of Prophet Muhammad. There is an entire science on the authenticity of Hadith compilations, the two most authentic compilations, at least in the Sunni branch of Islam, being Bukhari and Muslim. Rashad rejected all hadith compilations.

26. The practices of Prophet Muhammad as recorded in hadith or by tradition.

27. Religious leader in Islam or whoever leads a congregation prayer.

28. This was all discovered later, as I recall, by the FBI.

29. Qur’an, Sura An-Nur, Iyyat (verse) 55

30. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has had a Khalifat since 1908, at the death of the founder, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. There have been five such Khalifas, who rule for life, the current one being Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, who goes by the title, Khalifat-ul-Masih (Successor of the Messiah). The Sunni Muslim world rejects Ahmadiyya Khalifat. Ahmadiyyat teaches that no requirement of control of land is needed to establish Khalifat.

31. T. Phillips and N. Eisikovits, ‘For some Muslim youth, Islamic State’s allure is a meaningful alternative to Western values’, The World, Boston, Nan and Bill Harris Studios at WGBH, 2018, Original Internet source, (accessed 3 May 2021), (Archived file)

32. A. Perešin, ‘Why Women from the West are Joining ISIS’, Cambridge University Press’, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, Original Internet source, , (accessed 3 May 2021), (Archived file)

33. G. Ben-Israel, ‘Telling a Story Via Tumblr Analytics: Europe’s Muslim Young Female Attraction to ISIS’, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, Original Internet source, (accessed 2 May 2021), (Archived file)

34. Moussa Ibrahim, YouTube, Press Conference Dr. Moussa Ibrahim 29–07–2011 1 of 3, Original Internet source, (accessed 9 July 2021), (Archived file)