I love Islam and cream soda

By Brother Taj   - June 2019 In 2007 and 2008 while working as a political market research manager I had the privilege of having then–candidate Barack Obama as a client. However, I would have voted for him anyway on the basis of one consideration: he was Black. Voters who would admit to this motivation are decried as reverse-racist and a traitor to the idea of post-racism, but given a national culture that rides on 4 centuries of enslavement and exclusion, no apologies are needed. We have had enough of inhumane consideration and treatment. Enough of institutionalize bigotry. Enough of racially motivated violence and murder. Enough scourging by drugs and brutal policing. And, enough of mass incarceration. It should all cause Black Folk to rise up in protest, refusing to perpetuate anything similar with our own hands. What more effective repudiation to white supremacy and its insidious effect, then for a Black person to refuse to shoot, rob, assault, rape, chea...

Islam (and by extension, Arabia) has always been connected to (and saved by) Black people and Africa. First, notice on the map that the most populated regions of (western) Arabia are bordered by Africa. Among the first/original tribes of people called "Arabs", the majority of these tribes originated in the southern region, especially Yemen. The Qahtanite tribe, whose progenitor is held to have originated the Arabic language, after whom it is named, has a grandson that all Yemenite tribes trace their lineage thru.Muhammad also traces is lineage thru the Qahtanites. Yemen has always been connected to African peoples - dark ones from Ethiopia. For centuries, Yemen was run by the Abyssinian/Aksum (Axum) empire, (think, modern day Ethiopia and Somalia - as well as Sudan, since Aksum conquered the Kush empire). For centuries not only were Yemenis a mix of cultures but an ethnic mix of Semitic and African peoples. It was these dark tribes that migrated northward as far a...

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...

One Day, Your flattened fingertips Rubbed smooth by too many swipes Over too many screens Are going to miss me Yearning for the mottled texture of my insides I  may cut you at first - An injury of unfamiliarity But that nick will heal as i absorb your blood It shall be a token to worlds far away from here I am waiting to bear you by all sorts of magical transports That only an author can conjure Come to me hungry And let me feed you Nibble, gnaw and chew to your heart's content I am your escape I have keys to every shackle and hobble ever constructed Let me enter your veins and course through Make you addicted and detached From the Armageddon that is outside your windows Drink my Sufi wine, intoxicated by the most Divine Let my spine bear your weight as you recline For now... I live in a museum What you used to call a "library" Where I am still and dusty but wide awake and alive Waiting for your fingers to honor and humor me In exchange...