“Assalamu Alaikum,” Imam Hakim said in greeting, the long vowel sounds rolling smoothly and richly off his tongue.
A nervous titter ran through the throng of teenagers as they twisted and turned in their seats. All eyes settled on the Imam as he crossed the short breadth of the mosque’s multi-purpose room. He wore his body so lightly. There wasn’t the smallest twinge of self-consciousness in him. He knew how to stand, where to put his arms and feet, and how to accomplish what needed doing—and never seemed to doubt himself or any part of the world he moved in.
I didn’t know what stunned people more about Imam Hakim. It could be his towering height. It could be his glass eye. It could be that he was a Black man. Though his looks no longer took me by surprise, I couldn’t say the same for his words.
There was a rustle of anticipation as he prepared to drop a few pearls of wisdom on these young people. Gradually, a hush fell over the room.
He looked around at his audience with infinite fondness and, in his stentorian voice asked, “When did you first become aware of your race?” He hit on the word “race” with such bile it made me shudder.
The crowd conceded quietly among themselves, afraid their silence would betray their ignorance.
“Can anyone answer my question?” He looked around skeptically. “No? Well, how about I answer it first?” A murmur of approval rippled through the crowd.
He took a sip of water and smacked his lips as if he’d been in the desert for a month. “I was first confronted by my Blackness when I became a Muslim,” he said, spacing the words evenly, and made a soft clucking noise—as if swallowing air, or immovable fact. Twenty years prior, before he converted to Islam and long before he became a leader in the Muslim community, Kareem Abdul Hakim was a gangster. By fifteen years old—then known as Demetrius Cook—he was a thin, nearly seven foot swaggering member of the Bloods, a Los Angeles contingent whose wide reach spread east to his home in the streets of Oklahoma City. In time, selling weed turned into moving cocaine and heroin, carrying a knife turned into gun-slinging, rivalries turned into murderous feuds, friendships turned into faustian pacts and prison stints turned into stretches—at one point, he even did time with his father. While in the gang, he had been shot at twice, luckily by bad marksmen. He’d once told me that he witnessed a rival gang member bleed to death outside a liquor store.
Cook’s first spiritual mentor was an Oklahoma City rapper by the name of Chilly Price. As he recalls, the rapper was a “pseudo-Muslim.” He was a cocktail of Black nationalism, Judaism, and Islam—a “guy with dreadlocks who read the Qur’an and smoked a lot of weed.” Price spoke in cosmic terms, telling the impressionable Cook, “Islam is where Black people come from.”
Cook was intrigued.
He bought a copy of the Qur’an and began reading, clandestinely. When he neared the end of the eighteenth surah, he encountered these words: “If trees were pens and the oceans were ink, you could never exhaust the words of God.”
This set him off.
Significant instances in Cook’s life could be read as a checklist towards dangerous radicalisation: a gun-toting, drug-dealing outlaw jumps bail while awaiting trial for armed robbery, devotes himself to Islam and ends up in Yemen—a country notorious for being home to a number of jihadist training grounds. But his faith only deepened. He changed his name to Kareem Abdul Hakim, which translates to “the Generous, servant of the Wise.” He moved to Egypt and spent eight years studying Islam at Al-Azhar University. In Cairo, he learned to speak Arabic fluently. He became a hafiz, effectively joining the thousands of Muslims worldwide who’ve memorized the entirety of the Qur’an. It was then that he apprehended his mission in life: to be a guiding spirit. He’d connect with young Muslims by speaking the casual street patois of his youth—spreading the word of God through simple terms—and it would take effect.
On a cool, bright Sunday afternoon in September, he now stood before a congregation of adolescents who were raised Muslim—many reminiscent of the believers who followed Muhammad into the hinterlands of the Arabian desert—only to come of age in the fractured techno blur of the twenty-first century. He’s forty or so pounds heavier than he was in his gangbanging days, but his hard gaze has not softened.
“I will not deny that I have enjoyed a fair amount of celebrity.” He said this with a certain smugness, then allowed it to hang in the air for our benefit. I was surprised to see a crinkle of humor around his eyes and then a crooked smile on his lips.
In 1996, Imam Hakim was the first Muslim to lead a prayer before the start of a session of the House of Representatives. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had once hosted him and other Muslim notables at a State Department banquet of lamb, lentils and saffron rice to break the Ramadan fast.
“But make no mistake; the reception has not always been so cordial,” he said, his voice betraying an edge of bitterness.
When our former Imam was unexpectedly relieved of his duties—my superiors nibbled around the edges with enough innuendo to convey what they thought happened—the board recognized that change was necessary. But when Imam Hakim was appointed to his new post, the backlash was disheartening. Because the Islamic Mission of Orange County catered to a coterie of Arabs and Asians, a great wave of alarm shook the community. It was a reaction fueled by a volatile mixture of crass ignorance and a taciturn suspicion of outsiders. The rhetoric of moral superiority that comfortably inhabited this was all lies and bizarre logic and insufferable self-righteousness.
To have a Black man shepherding their ummah was a travesty.
Imam Hakim discerned this attitude as a distortion and stereotyping of a people rooted sometimes in malice and calculation, but more often in ignorance. He envisioned a space fashioned not on a racial, linguistic, or nationalistic basis, but created exnihilo on an ideological basis—the fruit of a movement deeply rooted in love for Islam. And at this unique juncture in American history, a great pressure rested on the shoulders of such leaders as Imam Hakim.
There were still glares and whispers directed his way by strangers and acquaintances alike, but these rolled off him now. He carried himself straight, which I thought made him look even taller, and ignored the hisses like white noise.
“Those busy fanning the flames of prejudice will have you believe that Black people have no rightful place in Islam. They are oblivious to the fact that the first Muslims in America were Black, stolen from the western coasts of Africa—Gambia, Nigeria, Senegal—and brought to the New World. Some twenty percent of enslaved Africans brought as chattel practiced Islam as their faith when they landed on American shores. Muslim slaves were not allowed to practice their faith precisely because slaveowners feared it serving as a locus for resistance. Despite such efforts, and often at great risk to themselves, many slaves retained aspects of their customs and traditions, and found new, creative ways to express them.
“From the genesis of the American project, their labor—Black Muslim labor—would build this country from the ground up. You see, Muslim existence as Black resistance is as old as America itself,” he said, in a way that invited no argument.
“Let’s travel back even further. The rites and pilgrimages we have in Islam were initiated by the efforts of a Black woman from Egypt—Hajar. Before Islam was accepted in any Arab societies, Islam was established in Africa. The first journey was to Abyssinia, where Muslims inaugurated a community where they could practice Islam freely,” he continued. “So, those who view Arab culture as a proxy for Islamic authenticity deny the legitimate spiritual expressions of others. Against the racial context in the United States, it’s not difficult then to see how this bias against Black Muslims persists.
“The reality for today’s Black Muslims is bifurcated into a war fought on two fronts. To be Black and Muslim in America is to live a sort of Du Boisian double consciousness. To be Black and Muslim is to occupy a space of simultaneous invisibility and hypervisibility. This signifies a subjecthood—a self whose identities are at odds with one another. It is a long, existential struggle for survival, a struggle not only to negotiate a place in the religious tapestry but also to gain legitimacy,” he said, solemnly.
“We have this myth of identity—that who we are is the summation of choices we’ve made in the past, that we’ve got a map for the life we’re supposed to lead, and we mustn’t deflect from it. But that’s assuming that we’re static beings, and that’s not how people work at all.” His impassioned voice went up a notch. “We are allowed to recreate, rediscover and rebirth ourselves whenever we so choose.
“Realizing that there is an internal authoritative voice that clouds our intuition is key. It’s a voice rooted in traumatic events—both subtle and harsh conditioning—and moments that we experience as failure. It dominates our self-judgement, doubt and fear, and grows stronger every time we submit to it. But I choose to say ‘no,’ to challenge this false voice. I choose to trust myself. I have no time for shame and no place to retreat. The Qur’an reinforces my presence here,” Imam Hakim said, his voice deep and loud.
“Some believe that the past wholly fixes our futures. But are we really condemned to a new millennium of misunderstanding between Muslims and Blacks without any hope of amelioration? Or is the time propitious for the heirs of these two great people to sow the seeds of peace and cooperation, to nurture them and gather their fruits for the benefit of the whole of mankind?”
I was mesmerized by his voice. His cadence was slow, with thought given to each word. His diction was perfect, every consonant treated equally, every comma and period honored—eloquence that came only from years of practice.
“Unless we collectively change our ways, we will bring the death of humanity to our own doors,” Imam Hakim counseled.
“In his last sermon, Prophet Muhammad reminded his followers that all Muslims are equal. He said, ‘All mankind is from Adam and Eve. An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab. A White has no superiority over Black nor a Black has any superiority over White, except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood.’ What Islam requires, above all else, is mercy. So, let us celebrate our differences, rather than strike one another down because of them. We know not what is to come, so let us rejoice in the unknown and welcome it with open arms and pure hearts,” he added, looking at me with a glint in his good eye.
A smile—a weird one—nestled in his mouth like an egg, and I felt my depths loosen. I suddenly felt a pleasant sort of sadness without having anything at all to be sad about, and a kind of wanting, without knowing what I wanted. I felt giddy, like I’d lit a fuse and an explosion of good news would soon be on the way. But what I learned later that evening was anything but good.
The mosque’s director called to deliver the news.
“Imam Hakim was shot,” he said, heaving a sigh of an old and tired man, relieved of an immense burden.
His words slid down my spine and made a hard landing at the backs of my knees. I was instantly caught in a whirlwind of emotions, with disconnected thoughts presenting themselves all at once, thoughts mingling and bursting with both hope and horror.
“His family is holding the janazah at the mosque tomorrow,” he continued. “They think it was a drive-by gone wro—.”
“Faisal, please! I can’t hear anymore,” my tortured voice croaked, tears lapping at the edge of my words. I felt my throat constrict and swallowed against the knot. His words crashed again and again in my ears like a thunderclap. My insides were in revolt, churning and twisting, and I felt as though all the color had seeped out of me. I fell into a silent wretchedness for the rest of the evening.
The following day was a blur of black cloth, long faces and trembling silences. I could only bear the service for so long before I began wandering aimlessly around the masjid—dazed and confused. The mosque was housed in an old, peculiar building built in the thirties, with black and white marble floors and walls, and enormous white pillars. The paint was peeling, the pillars resembled crumbling cheese and the floors were grayed over with seventy years’ worth of dust and disappointment. I unwittingly found my way to the pulpit Imam Hakim had sermoned from less than a day ago, unaware that it would be for the last time. I wanted to hear his throaty voice again, to see the way his bushy gray eyebrows arched and his eyes flashed. Now, I would turn these walls and sinks and turpentined dust to a memory, make it the scene of mild crimes, and think of it with a false willowy love.
After the funeral, I spotted Imam Hakim’s eldest son crouched beside the back door, crying. He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw bulged. His smooth face seemed turned to stone, and big tears rolled out of his dark eyes. Yet, he never made a sound.
I’d never seen a sight so frightening as that.
I looked inward then, stunned and absorbed by something unfamiliar in my life to that point—complete and utter loss. I felt my hold on the present growing increasingly fragmented, with nothing anchoring me to real life.
It took another catastrophe to jerk me back to reality.
When I awoke Tuesday morning, the headlines imposed themselves upon me. My parents and I were glued to the television screen, as grainy footage beamed live from New York City.
As the towers collapsed, my heart plunged into the depths of my stomach.
Everything stopped whirling for a moment and stood stock-still. Then, it hit me like a thunderclap. My mind began wandering and jumping around, and time seemed to leap forwards and backwards constantly. This moment was huge, and it seized me so quickly, so severely, so unlike anything else I’d ever known; I felt like I’d flatten beneath the weight of it.
The images from the attacks ran in a loop, each new repetition hitting harder than the last.
I looked at my parents earnestly, trying to read their expressions; all they could do was give me a pained, almost apologetic look. Language had always separated me from my family, but in this horrific instance, their wordless terror was enough to tell me all I needed to know.
I tasted cold metal in the back of my throat, and a delicate whiff of hate curled around my nostrils. It was a smoldering anger, a barely contained fury and desire to lash out, but at whom?
I thought about the violence that would be done, not just to bodies, but to language as well—the word “terrorism” becoming a catchall phrase used to indict individuals on accusations
alone. Grand proclamations about an “axis of evil” would preface wars that would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent humans—tabulated as mere casualties, the sanctity of their lives incinerated just like the twin towers.
I thought about the youth I’d been entrusted with leading. What will I tell them? Those idealistic hearts knowing destruction for the first time and learning it well. They will only ever know that the times in which they are growing up are indelibly marked by this singular tragedy—the paranoid and terrorized world that these attacks gave us. The hyper-militarized borders, selective detentions and enhanced interrogations, the constant surveillance of the national security state, the endless secret wars waged in the cover of night, in distant places where the victims are invisible—all to be taken as ordinary.
Yet, because these children hold blue passports, they may never fully understand the extent to which this day further shackled the vast swaths of the world not so fortunate—people born to the wrong countries—who’d be sent to the back of the line for as long as they lived.
I might tell them a few things my parents were not able to tell me.
All these thoughts lay on my conscience in a dreary, shaming sort of way. And when I looked in the mirror, there was a grayness in my face. My life seemed to be untacking itself— lying loose about me like a shirt.
A life could do that.
The reality of that sank in deeply and seemed to stretch larger as I struggled with it—like a patch of quicksand. Looking into the distance, where darkness gathered like a storm-cloud, I felt my courage weaken. And although chaos was sure to ensue, Imam Hakim would advise me to search for the bright spots within this bleak panorama. He’d somehow be certain that, far in
the distance, past these tempestuous hours, were traces of bona fide bliss.
I was not so confident.
Suddenly, all the emotions I had suppressed exploded inside me. They jumped from self-pity to anger to irony to guilt to a kind of feigned indifference. These feelings coursed through my veins and I could feel the tiny cracks starting to form in me, fractures of a self I was no longer sure of.
I was working myself into quite a state when I realized what I should’ve done sooner.
I fell to my knees, raised my hands to the heavens and began, “Oh Allah, Your servant is in need of Your mercy and You are without need of his punishment. If he was righteous, then increase his rewards and if he was a transgressor, then pardon him.”
“Oh Allah, forgive him and elevate his rank among the rightly guided, and be a successor to whom he has left behind. Make spacious his grave and illuminate it for him. He is under Your protection and in the rope of Your security, so save him from the trial of the grave and from the punishment of the fire. Forgive and have mercy upon him, for surely You are Most-Forgiving, Most-Merciful.” I forced back my tears and pushed ahead, despite a knot tightening in the pit of my stomach.
“Oh Allah, forgive our living and our dead, those who are present and those who are absent, our young and our old, our men and our women. Whomever you give life from among us, give them life in Islam, and whomever you take away from us, take them away in faith. Do not forbid us their reward and do not send us astray after them,” I pleaded, my voice baritone with tragedy.
“Oh Allah, keep me alive so long as You know such a life to be good for me, and take me
if You know death to be better.”
I paused and took a deep breath, hoping that my duas traveled further than the ceiling. “Amen.”
