I love Islam and cream soda

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...

Like that last tribe of Israel My past in invisible My original name has been left behind And my bloodline lies fossilized In the ruins of grown over slave quarters That they forget to talk about on Tuesday plantation tours That all men ware created equal has always Been a bit of a White Lie Most days, were still trying to find That remaining 2/5ths of humanity They like to say: That's not today, so get over it already But that's not likely to happen until I take my story back The one that they tell about: Buck-toothed rabbits in the briar patch Pickininnies with bare feet and braided plaits Black bird buffoons in Saturday morning cartoons And in Tarzan movies with mite midgets in blackface Pretending to be pygmies See, nobody else will ever get YOUR story right Everybody still dreams of a White Christmas But Black Ice... Is dangerous and insidious They like to say: That's just not today But let's be honest: Ebola only became a pr...

By 2007, I had been training at Edge MMA (then known as Grapplers Edge), for about 3 quiet years, concentrating mostly on Jujitsu and nogi grappling. One Saturday, I was visiting the Denver County Jail as a volunteer chaplain for Islamic services​, driving directly from an Open Mat grappling session, so I was wearing an Edge t-shirt at the time. One of the deputies approached me in the hallway and asked me where I had gotten my shirt. I told him that I got it from the school that I train at. The deputy frowned and replied that he trained there as well and had never seen me there... “Hmmm…Is this another of those challenges?” I wondered - it was commonly known at the jail that I was an ex-con who was now providing religious services to inmates and I had clashed with a deputy or two who did not necessarily respect me or what I was doing because of my past; so my hackles went up immediately at this possibly becoming another one of those incidents. I told the deputy that I had prima...