Muslimerica...

As I come up on my 49th year and my 26th as a Muslim, I'm reflecting on the amazing fact, and a fact that a lot of our older grumpy uncles and aunties don't realize, that our future lies at the feet of our youth.

I became Muslim because of Hip Hop, Black Culture, and Prison - three things that most of the Muslims of the world do not want to even recognize as sources of Islamic culture itself. Despite their ignoring, discriminating, and even abject horror, droves and droves of people enter into the religion through these very avenues.

In our pop culture, Islam is extremely prevalent - something that would make Trump and his ilk lose a lot of sleep if they even knew. If you watch the last episode of season 8 of The Walking Dead then you know that Rick's quote at the end comes from a Hadith of the prophet Muhammad. If you listen to the Jon Jones interview with Joe Rogan at the end of his last fight, you heard him make an Islamic exclamation - the same one made in ASAP Ferg's "Plain Jane":

Ride with the mob
Alhamdu-Allah
Check in with me, and do ya job

You know that Kevin Gates, Dave Chappelle, Shaq O'Neal, or Everlast, the white boy from The House of Pain are all Muslim...

Or, you don't know.

Perhaps you think Islam is about burqas and oil barons in long white robes, or extremists who are interested in killing Jews or everyone that's not Muslim.

Perhaps you think all we're concerned with is hating on Christmas or whether or not Doritos have pork in it.

Reality is, it's hard to peg all Muslims in one box. That's because we refuse to be treated that way. This new generation of Muslims in this country are very American and very Muslim. We wear baggy clothes and skinny jeans (to my abject horror), head scarves and baseball caps. We have tattoos and nose rings and know the words to most Cardi B songs (again, to my abject horror).

And we read and write Arabic, pray 5 times a day (struggling like hell to make the early morning prayer), we give food and time to the homeless, and struggle with hunger and gratitude for a whole month every year at Ramadan along with a billion others.

Despite suffering the idiocy of islamophobes and extremists alike, we've been all this for a long time. We are and have been 1000% Muslim.

And we plan to be the same for a long time to come.

Allahu Akbar.