I love Islam and cream soda

إِنَّ مِنْ أَزْوَجِكُمْ وَأَوْلـدِكُمْ عَدُوّاً لَّكُمْ Verily, among your wives and your children are enemies for you - Quran 64:14 Lemme, tell you a story. First a prologue:   My mom and I had a horrible relationship as I grew up. One day, I made the resentful comment that she "wasn't even my real mother".  I really had no idea how asinine that comment was until my father sat me down and deconstructed my pseudo-intellectual assessment of my mother. I will save the details for my book - but I learned that children are hardly able to give a just estimate of their parents - even into adulthood. It is always up to parents to bear that cross - and bear the witness where kids can't see. ***** Once upon a time: A man went to jail facing charges for crimes that he did not commit, He sadly realized he was fighting a case that everyone but a handful of people thought he was actually guilty of.  That realization made him even more determined to fight and beat...

It was July, 2010. That summer, my daughter was preparing to move to Baltimore with her mother, who had recently married a brother living there. Being the dutiful father and Muslim, I helped my ex pack and straighten the apartment for their departure. As I was gathering up Umarah’s things, I came across as small, girly-pink notebook labeled, “JOURNAL”. I’ve said it before – as a father, when it comes to kids, I am nosy. Unapologetically. I don’t subscribe to Leave-It-To-Beaver notions of parenting. Being a step/father to girls made me super vigilant, super protective. And super nosy. Sue me – and good luck. All that, of course, is to say, I opened and thumbed thru Umarah’s journal. What I read ripped my soul out and tied it in a knot.

Click HERE for Part 1 I got out of prison in August of 1996 on a Friday, released early from my sentence to community based supervision in a halfway house. I was initially housed at the County Jail, awaiting bed space, and was given the opportunity the following Monday to hit the streets after 7 years. I made a bee-line to my wife’s apartment on the Eastside. I had just missed her leaving to work but the kid's were home. A bunch of hugs and high-fives later, everyone was off doing homework and chores and I stood in the living room soaking my freedom in and basking in the glow of my new castle. The responsibility didn’t escape me, though. I was a full-fledged stepdad, and my wife was also my baby mama, being a couple months pregnant at the time. “You need to protect those girls.” That edict from my Sister rung over and over again in my ears. I not only had to provide for my step-kids as head of household, I had to keep them safe from a predator (allegedly) w...

“You need to protect those girls.” These were some of the first words my Sister told me after I had gotten married (for the first time) – words about my new stepdaughters that rang out to me very loud. Very clear. My first marriage occurred while I was still serving time for a robbery I committed at 19. I was 25 and Muslim and despite my circumstance (and very much because of my spiritual transformation) I had been lucky/blessed enough to snag a gorgeous, devout, and intelligent woman who took an interest and liking to me. My wife had been a friend of a friend – a blind Pen Pal hook-up that quickly blossomed into matrimony. Maybe too fast – because not long after I got a cautionary letter about my new nuptials.  Among a couple red flags waved at my marriage was this: my wife’s ex-husband was a suspected child molester.

Originally published in the Denver Post, July 12, 2006 "Something's not right with him," I told his mother... My stepson, Meeka'eel, was 2 years old. He cried so incessantly that we couldn't help but think it was a substitute for talking. He would stare into space but never look anyone in the face. In the middle of the night, he would either giggle to himself or shriek loudly for hours. When he was 3, our suspicions were confirmed when Meek was diagnosed with autism. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in every 166 children born in the U.S. is, like our son, confined to a mysterious world marked by abnormal interaction and behavior. That was 10 years ago. In that time, we have watched Meek struggle and grow into an uncertain future. As a toddler, he'd never eat right and couldn't master toilet training. Early on, we were fortunate enough to enroll him in a program at University Hospital that studied childhood disorders. Bu...

I am going to talk I've been back to prison for parole revocations twice now, because I was upfront, vocal, and honest about why I first went to prison in 2013. Simply put, I went because my ex-wife Dominique made false claims of domestic violence against me. Claims that began falling apart as my case progressed. However, in the middle of my marital turmoil, I made attempts at reconciling with Dominique, despite the fact of being barred from interacting with her by automatic protection order. That love-blind decision came back to bite my behind when, as her hoax began to unravel, the DA salvaged her prosecution by filling 19 cases of misdemeanor violation of protection order. I was literally facing an unprecedented 19 years in the county jail. It seemed improbable, if not absurd, until another local defendant made news being sentenced to an unprecedented county jail sentence of over 10 years. Long story short, I took a deal for an "open" sentence, expecting proba...

It’s a constant question: What do men look for in a woman? Yet, it seems that every time it is asked, the answer is never very honest, or it’s clichéd or just plain off-target. And so the question goes.  And goes... So here’s an answer I hope will be appreciated. (As I write this, I am single – and looking.) Men, as humans go, are primal and what we look for in a woman is driven by primal and sensory instincts much more than we realize or care to admit. Sil... Ever watch the movie Species ? In one scene, the evil alien Sil, intent on mating and reproducing, rejects a potential subject after she senses (sniffs out) he is diabetic. We men are like Sil. Our selection of women is sensory. Our brain tells us to size up a woman and based on what we perceive, we select the one that we innately desire to have our babies in order to carry on our “line”. This explains why as much as we are interested in a woman’s brain, our eyes always stray to t...

I've come back into the world to a Muslim father's worst nightmare. When I left my kid, she was all of 15. Now, she's 19 - and to my chagrin of chagrins, she has a boyfriend.  He aint Muslim. Yeah, I'm a bit perturbed. Okay, I'm pissed. I would like to have imagined that nothing like this could have happened in any type of reality. My religion is my life and so I have had every intent in making it as important to my child. After all, she is my flesh and blood and the only other person carrying my name (legitimately) – and because I am a first generation Muslim convert, it’s her I am relying on to carry on the family religious legacy.