 Yes, good evening. My name is Ishmael Abdul-Hawk, and I am here today at the UC Davis Access Media. And what we're going to do this evening is have a discussion pretending to interfaith relations and the contributions that have been made by Muslims. So today here I have with me Imam Abu Khadir El-Amin, and then I have Imam Antar Jannah, and then I have Imam Omar Sharif. And just briefly, I would like for you gentlemen to give us a little insight into who you are, where you come from, and your association with this particular topic that we're discussing today. Imam Abu Khadir El-Amin, would you like to go first, please? Yes, thank you. It's an honor and a privilege to be here with you. My name is Abu Khadir El-Amin. I'm the Imam at the San Francisco Muslim Community Center. I've been serving at that community since 1984. I feel it's a privilege to be here representing that community. I've been a Muslim in this community for a short period of time, in some context, a long period of time in other contexts. I feel like it was just yesterday, the ideas about Islam and what it meant for giving me a new lease on life in a different way that I could recreate myself and make a contribution to the society at large. So I've been serving in San Francisco, been involved in interfaith activities prior to going to San Francisco, but greatly encouraged by the leadership of Imam Deputy Muhammad who encouraged us to get to know our neighbors, to get to know our civic leaders, our police department, law enforcement officials, our neighbors, our Christians and Jews that lived in the community with us. So that's been a labor of love on my part, and our community, we're all connected with people like that because we're a minority community in terms of numbers. Many of us have mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters that have different faith persuasions than us. So interfaith for us comes natural every time it's Thanksgiving. We're a faith gathering before that, and I'll just stop there. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Imam Antarjana, would you like to give us a brief introduction to you? Yes. My name is Antarjana, as he said. I'm the executive director of an organization called Masjid, it's acronym for Muslim of Dan School of Jannah, Iqsan and Dawah, based in Sacramento, California right now. I've been a Muslim since 1975 when Imam Muqtadi Muhammad took over the leadership of the Nation of Islam. I joined, and since that time I've been involved in interfaith dialogue. I was the national director of the CREATE committee, the committee for the removal of all images that attempt to portray the divine. I think we made a big impact on the interfaith dialogue all around the world with that organization. After that, I became the resident Imam of East Palo Alto, like Imam Antarjana, on the same day in 1984, and I served until 1994, and then I went into the California Department of Corrections and became a chaplain in 1994, and I retired in 2014, after 20 years, and now I'm directing Masjid, like I said, Masjid organization. Thank you so much. We appreciate that. Imam Omar Sharif? Yes. As indicated, I'm Omar Dawood Sharif, originally from Chicago, Illinois. I came into the religion of Islam back in 1970, under the leadership of the Imam for Elijah Muhammad, and I was a minister under his leadership for several years, until 1975, when Imam Wafdie Muhammad became the leader, and of course we went through the transition at that time, and I was an Imam for a brief moment until I moved to California, and I moved to Sacramento, California, where I eventually became the Imam for Masjid As-Sabur, which is a relatively new, no it's not a new community, but let's put it like this, we're in a new building. We were blessed as a community to construct the building from ground up, and it's about three years old now. I was the Imam there for about eight years prior, and until I took a back seat to our present Imam, who is Imam Hazem Rashid, who I'm assistant to him, and grateful to be able to serve in that capacity. I'm pretty much, that is my history in a nutshell, so we can move on from that. Thank you. I appreciate that. From our three U Distinguished Gentlemen, what I would like to do at this time is I would like to get into the transition period from 1975, and before you answer that, give me a little bit of background prior to you coming into the fold of Islam. I would like to start with Imam Abu Qadir Alameen. Before becoming a Muslim, where I described, declared my faith, I was heavily influenced by young people who were attracted to the message of the Honorable Muhammad as it was being publicly proclaimed by individuals like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, so that first got my attention while I was a teenager. My older brother, Eugene Robert Earl Jr., began to attend the mosque, and he began to bring literature home, and many of my peers began to attend the mosque. I didn't attend the mosque at 13 or 14 years old when my older brother and some of my friends began to attend the mosque, but I began to read the literature, and I remember once I was 14 years old, it's a little background, and you know, not angels, so I think I can talk about this. Absolutely. Maybe somebody will benefit. And I took some pills. Pills were popular in our neighborhood, you know, you probably heard of Red Devils, Lilly F-40s, Bullet Hits, Junkets, Alder, and I took quite a few, and I thought I was going to die. I was 14 years old, and I said, oh Allah, oh Allah, just let me come down, I won't do this again. So, and that was really, I was sincere, but I didn't do it to that extent. So that was my first introduction to Islam, was seeing young people that I grew up with changed their life. The message had a transforming effect on them, and I knew them in one way, and then when they got involved with the teachings of Islam, as they understood it at that time, they underwent a great metamorphosis. They went from being dishonest to being honest. They went from being rough-necks to being courteous and respectful and decent. So I saw a major change in them, and that made an impact on my life. And then at about 17 years old, after experiencing some things, some traumas in my life, I began to declare myself as a Muslim, though I wasn't a part of organization. So, I started learning a little bit about some of the beliefs, and I ascribed to those beliefs. I didn't know how to pray or any of those things, but I was in my heart a Muslim, and I committed myself to Islam in 1967. I stopped drinking alcohol, I stopped smoking weed, I stopped doing those things, and I didn't have a support system, so that lasted for about 90 days. But I was sincere. Then later, 1970, a life-changing event happened in my life, and I decided that from then on, I would be a dutiful Muslim, and I began to learn from Elijah Muhammad. I learned my prayers, I learned the beliefs of Islam, I learned to believe in Allah and to believe in the Quran and believe in Muhammad the Prophet, and I began to apply those states to my life, and it helped me to become a better person. So that was my early beginnings. And then when W.D. Muhammad became the leader, I'm trying to be brief without, you know, not really telling the story, when W.D. Muhammad became the leader, I was serving a life sentence in prison, and the language that he brought was different than the language his father was bringing. Though his father brought a language that helped transform our lives and make us better people, with the M.W.D. Muhammad's language and his new direction, I saw opportunity for freedom, and I said I can get out of this prison under this new message, and I began to apply myself in that way, and I was able to come home, I came home December the 4th, 1978, and I immediately went to the Mastery, and got involved with the community, and been there ever since. Which Mastery did you go to? When I first came home, I went to the Mastery of what was called Mastery of Muhammad in Oakland, California. Imam John Fakir and Fahim Shuaib picked me up from the jail, and brought me to the Mastery, and my first day there, they put me on the roster. And I said, it was so short, I can remember it verbatim. I said, Alhamdulillah, I thank Allah for being here. I hope I can be an asset to the community. As-salamu alaykum. Praise be to Allah. Imam W.D. Muhammad appointed me as Imam in 1981, and I've been serving in that capacity ever since. Thank you so much for that introduction. I appreciate that. Imam Antar. Okay, my story is similar. I think a lot of us came through the same door that Malcolm came through. Before, I accepted Islam. I was from East Palo Alto, and it was involved in a lot of crime. And ended up in federal prison, and 20 years old. And that's when I came in contact with the Muslims on an academic level, because they were trying to get me to come to the meetings. But I wouldn't go. But I would read the papers. And I would try to get familiar with it. And I didn't understand it. But when I paroled, I had read a book in prison called, Thinking Courage, by Napoleon Hill. And Napoleon Hill talked about Prophet Muhammad in his book, if you get an original copy. And so when I got out, I was running a room for my auntie, and it was a snack shop up in the corner on Randolph Street in San Francisco. So I'd go there and buy food, sandwiches, and they'd give me free papers. And so I started reading the papers. And these papers were different than the ones I was reading in prison, because Elijah Muhammad had passed, and David E. Muhammad was the leader now. And so I started reading, and then eventually I picked a book of my father's shelf in his bookshelf. He got a copy of A Best to a Black Man. And he must have went to a meeting or something, probably following a nice-looking sister there or something. And he gave him a book and a bean pie, so he brought the book on the shelf, and I read it. And when I read that book, that really turned me around. And I decided I wanted to join. I joined the Nation of Islam in 1975, and I moved right into the F.O.I. house on Oakdale Street in San Francisco. That was where the men who were working for the nation selling fish and things like that, we stayed there. And so I put on the fish crew, then I worked in the snack shops, I sold the papers, you know, I did all of that, and finally ended up in Oakland at Master of Warrantine. And then E. Muhammad moved to town. He became the resident Imam of Oakland, California. And that's when I was the director of the CREA Committee in Oakland. And E. Muhammad came and we were working together. And E. Muhammad made me the national CREA chairman. And then, you know, the rest is history. That starts our interfaith dialogue. And so coming from the prison all the way into, you know, Islam and actually, you know, becoming a leader, you know, that was all because of E. Muhammad. I think we were 30 at that time. I was 30 years old. All of us were around 30. And he started appointing people to positions. I think he was 48. And he started appointing people to positions. And I think that was a really bold move. Because, you know, we got to do that today. You know, get young people involved in the faith. And following his example. But that's how I ended up becoming a leader. Wow. That's interesting. I appreciate that. It was so deep because what it tells me about both of you is that you came from a good Christian background. And you knew how to already operate within that circle. But the soul was calling you to something more. Something more. And for you to be kind of like a bridge between the two. Already being, as you would say, preempted or preconditioned for the interfaith movement. I'm due live. E. M. Sharif. Yes. Well, I think my path was a little different than my brothers here. I don't know. Though I do appreciate and understand fully your story and can identify it. But yeah, my path was a little different. I went to, of course, being a tall person. I'm six foot nine. And I played sports basketball for a grade double. Actually, since the sixth grade I've been playing basketball. I went to, went a scholarship to school. A couple of schools. Well, one that I finally went to was Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, Texas. And there I spent my three years there. And the path started for me there. Because I came home one summer, in the summer of 1967. And that's when a lot of things were happening in the African American communities and in our society as a whole. There were a lot of things happening. And so I was fortunate enough to run into some people who were beginning to see things a little differently than we were raised as the brothers. I already gave you some inkling of the kind of things that went on in our communities. But I started seeing things from another perspective. When I went back to school, I saw the Boobasuits, which was a dashiki, I guess I could call that. The whole outfit. I had transformed from a, I would say from a Negro to an African. But that's what we were doing in those days. That transition was happening. That's a whole story in and of itself. But I got back to campus and of course my coach was astounded at my transformation and appreciated as much as I did. And toward the end of my last year there, which is 1968, on campus they had what they call Old South Week. And this is when they were dressed up in confederate uniforms in March all through the campus. It was their celebration of the Confederacy. So at that time my awareness had raised and I said, well, this is not going to do. So I organized the African Americans on the campus at that time in the fall war. We stenciled black fist on a white t-shirt with black power on the back. And we started from the opposite end of the campus and met the mid-campus and you can imagine it was kind of disrupted their party. And from there my eligibility was up that year. So if anybody knows anything about the black athlete when your eligibility is up the perks and things that I was used to that I was maybe getting a little difficult then to come to my rescue was no rescue. To make a long story short, I came home in this awareness and fortunately got drafted by the Baltimore Bullets so I had a letter of intention to go do that. But meanwhile, you know I got involved with the revolution as we used to call it and I went from the Panthers to the Black Nationalists to the Pan-Africanists to everything you can imagine. I went through all the isms and wound up in 1969 at a conference I was with the organization called the BCD and this was at the Pan-African Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. And at that time is when I realized something was wrong because the leadership had gotten to the point at that time had become somewhat co-opted and we were now fighting amongst ourselves if you can imagine that. So at this time they had a speaker and his name was Minister Louis Farrakhan and I knew nothing about him I grew up, I said before I grew up in Chicago Chicago was the headquarters for the Nation of Islam I grew up not knowing not one thing about the Nation of Islam I grew up as a Catholic in the Catholic Church I went to public school so I knew nothing about them I lived not more than less than two miles away from the main temple I still knew nothing about them growing up to show you how God works so all of a sudden I'm on security at the conference and I'm sitting in front of the stage I'm on one side and the other gentleman's on the other side and we're sitting here stern all of a sudden Minister Louis Farrakhan walks on the stage and I had no knowledge of him or nothing he started talking and I couldn't believe what I was hearing I was listening to myself who is this, what is he talking about who is this guy Elijah Muhammad I'm sitting here just going crazy I want to turn around but I'm not supposed to so I said I can't take it I turned around and Minister Farrakhan was representing the honor of Elijah Muhammad well I knew at that point that something had to change because the people I was following were going to eventually get me killed or make me crazy so when I got home from that conference back to New Jersey I told my wife I said we're moving and we moved to Philadelphia where I then joined the nation of Islam from there the story is old I was a soldier of course selling papers doing all that we do I was in Pennsylvania for about a year I was pulled from there brought back to Philadelphia I was the minister at 12D for oh I guess for the remaining five years until 1975 when he met with Muhammad Wallace Muhammad as he was known at that time came to be in the leadership of the nation of the of the world community and when he came in and I'm just going to say this we were at a point in time in the nation of Islam and Surin if the ma'am had not come in I dread to think what our community would eventually would have looked like because things were beginning to go amiss he came in it was like a breath of fresh air his language was completely different if you don't mind I like the digress for one minute I can remember before that time when he came back to the community two years prior to the honorable Muhammad's passing his father let him go and told him go teach anywhere you want you teach, you go I remember going home one day to Chicago and I went to the temple just because that's what we did so I went to temple one Wednesday night and I knew I never had met him didn't even know anything about him other than some of the stories they told so I'm sitting in there I'm just a guest at this time I'm not a fish or anything I'm just a guest and all of a sudden this brother comes on he starts talking you know our language was was kind of raw back during the nature of Islam so I'm listening to him and I'm saying what is he talking who is this and what's he talking about he's talking about submarines and birds and things like this in nature he's talking about nature and relating it to Islam something we just had it was like I said it was a breath of fresh air so I'm listening I said oh my goodness so eventually when I left I found out who he was two years later he's the leader like I said it was a breath of fresh air I was delighted when he came in so I was a minister at the time we were called imams we weren't really imams we didn't know nothing about what an imam was what it was really like to be an imam but we transitioned from ministers to imams so I was that I was that until I left Philadelphia and moved to California and when I left the state I became an imam in Sacramento so I'm skipping a whole lot but that's pretty much my history in terms of how I got to where I am today so forgive me for no it was very much appreciated it brought back so many other different points of reference in history doing the 60's in that turbulent time in the inner cities in the top of systematic oppression that was going on and so I see it was necessary for listening to each one of the growths that are taking place in you gentlemen believe me you could have a program on that alone that would be so eye opening to people who don't really know the things that we went through why we went through them to transition that's a very interesting history that people know nothing about sounds like a purifying fire but I wanted to touch basis also on on your relationship imam about with imam W.D.Mohamed could you elaborate on the personal relationship that you had with the imam I think my personal relationship with imam W.D.Mohamed began way before I met him because I met his mind I met his ideas I met his spirit I met his devotion in the things that I read about him and the things that he shared with us and the kind of encouragement that he gave us to have trust and faith in God responsibility for ourselves, for our family for our neighborhoods, for our communities so long before I met him I had already met him I met him before he became the leader reading about him in the newspaper and he had came back like imam Omar mentioned he had came back he had been excommunicated from the community and he came back and he was talking 1972 you would hear the van called in neighborhoods you would see minarets going up you would see Muslim women and children and families and neighborhoods and we were going to make our contribution to beautifying the fabric of America so long before I met him personally I had met all of those things that I wholeheartedly embraced and incorporated into my desire for the kind of life that I wanted to have so then when I first got a chance to meet him it was in 1976 he came to San Quentin Prison and he taught a lecture called the natural elements testified to the truth of the Quran and Muhammad and he tied that to nature and to history and it was such a beautiful lecture and at that time I was the secretary for the nation of Islam we just started calling ourselves the world community of Islam in the west San Quentin with George Jackson the same place where he was I was there when he got assassinated that's another story and I was holding a clock and a pair of shoes tailor made shoes and a $300 check for the man and a brother from Sacramento introduced him to Muhammad and they were giving him some gifts and one of the things that the man said his name is Emory Bilal Hanson he said when we heard that you had accepted our invitation to come here we wanted to lay down palm leaves for you you can't be too sure he said so but we couldn't get the palm leaves so we had a pair of shoes made for you a brother named James Abdul Musawir made a pair of shoes for the man handmade shoes and he put his initials in them in gold WDM so that was the first time I actually got to meet the man I gave him the clock I gave him the check Bilal gave him the shoes and I got to shake his hand but I had met him before that and then once he moved to Oakland to become our resident emem I was actually there the day he accepted to become our resident emem and I was just so happy that that happened I normally was going to the mosque in San Francisco but I also had a little part-time business so I would supply my customers with products twice a month so I was in Oakland to pick up some of my products and I would always drive by the masjid if I was in Oakland and when I drove by the masjid I saw the security brothers on the back door I said oh security on the back door must be somebody important here today so I'm staying so I'm back to San Francisco where emem Talabdina and sorry it was our emem at that time I went and emem Muhammad was there and after he threw his he said he wanted to throw his hat in to be the resident emem we accepted him as our emem I was the first person to greet him after he said he was our emem I greeted him I said brother emem I'm here anything you need me to do I'm here and he said well just disperse so we developed the closeness and then to be real brief I moved to Oakland I was living in San Rafael at that time and in my zeal and in my fervor I said emem Muhammad is in Oakland I'm moving my family to Oakland I want my children to go to the muslim school and against my wife's better judgment I moved to Oakland my wife said we can stay here and keep doing like we've been doing and you drive to Oakland so you know you know how I thought and I moved so close to the masjid I could hear there there from my house and whenever emem would go out of town emem and Talabdina would bring his car to my house and park it in the back it was secure so you know we became close friends as much as a follower a supporter supporting a great leader and we wanted to do everything that we could to make sure that his stay in Oakland was a benefit and we wanted to do the things that he was encouraging us to do to go out in the community build friends and relationships and to be involved in what was going on in our neighborhoods and make our contribution to beautifying the society so that's what he encouraged us to do so it was fun and then he didn't micromanage us he would tell us to go out and if we made a little mistake he would sometimes you know pull you to the side and if you made a big mistake and a lot of people knew about it he would correct you in the public but he did it with such love that it just brought us closer to and we appreciated having that opportunity he would send us into the churches and he would tell us what to say and then we would go and represent his message to the people in the churches and we got a great response and the people loved him and the people loved us and they said well you know give us some time to work with our people because we were dealing with racial images in religion at that time and the racial images in religion we thought was doing damage to our community and the human beings are fit to be worshiped as an object of worship we believe that only the creator of the heavens and earth the one that's unseen is deserving of our worship another human being shouldn't bow to another human being so that was the gist of it but at the same time he was trying to help us to correct a defective spirit that had impacted our whole community I appreciate that thank you E-M-M Antar can you elaborate on your relationship with the E-M-M, your personal relationship well when when I joined the Masjid in Oakland I was the local creed committee for the image and yeah, remove all images from worship and we would go to talk to the pastors like E-M-M Alamein said we would give them 90 days after we talked to them to remove the statues because we were going by the Bible Exodus 20 verses 0 and 5 said you have no graven images of anything in the air, on land, or below the sea absolutely we were taking the Quran we were taking the Bible and everybody had statues and pictures so if they didn't take them down we picketed the churches non-violently we were blocked in from coming in and out of the church and we were just trying to protest and so, E-M-M moved to Oakland when he moved to Oakland he witnessed what we were doing and we were a very active community around the Bay Area and then he appointed me to be the national creed chairman and it blew my mind what does that mean so I got an opportunity to travel around the country under his leadership and right after that I was making doer noon prayer in the Masjid and I looked over at the corner of my eye and he was making doer too and he came over to me after prayer and asked me, did I have a driver's license and I said yeah, I got a driver's license he said, let me see it so I showed him my driver's license he said, you know, I'm here now in Oakland I want you to ride with if you would like, you ride with me and my car is coming from Chicago and then I need somebody to be with me not to drive, because I can drive but just to be with me while I'm in Oakland and he offered me a job to be his assistant at that time I was getting ready to be a professional boxer manager, promoter, I had everything and I had to go back to all those people and tell them quit I went to work for you, man I've been for about $800 a month of me a little less and so for the nine months that he was in Oakland I was with him like every day and traveled with him out of town and I was also traveling with Craig so I got an opportunity I'll write a book about it one day or do something a video or something because for that nine months that was a very interesting time for me as a young man to be with him the leader of the community every day and one thing that was beautiful is I got to see him as a human being all the personality worship and all the stuff was out the window I got to see him as a man as a father, as a husband as a human being in the leader of our community and that was a blessing for me and that was my kind of orientation to leadership that's wonderful thank you, I appreciate that it's immensely I wasn't quite as fortunate as my brothers here to have been in that close proximity to E.M.F. Mohammed as far as physically it's concerned I relate very closely to what E.M.Cardiella means that in terms of I met him long before I actually met him through the mind and the expression of his vision and leadership that he was giving us and that made me very close to him and I want to say this about E.M.F. Mohammed we talk about him and all these glorious terms which we feel that way but I want you to know he never solicited that kind of thing from anyone he was a very humble down-to-earth person and if you tried to heap those kind of praises on him you would be in his disfavor because he didn't want that and because his objective was to deliver the message that he understood from the Quran and that was the whole purpose in life and everything he did reflected that now I had the occasion to meet the E.M.M. on several occasions but only in where someone, I was with someone in public gatherings actually and in private too but I was with someone who allowed me to be with them while and then I would be able to meet him shake his hand, give him the greetings and so forth on one occasion I had the opportunity one of the meetings that you brought him to and after that we would go have lunch and so we were in the restaurant and somehow I wound up directly across from him and so I was a little nervous because I had what I'm going to say to E.M.M. because that's the kind of feeling we had to respect but as I said it's not something he elicited it's just something we had in us but I said okay he's just a brother I said he got to talk next thing you know we were talking about movies he liked movies as much as I did a movie person so we got to talk about different movies that we've seen and it was just a pleasant thing to have experience with a man who I so greatly admired as much as I admired his father there's a history there that has to be told in full one day so people can understand this trilogy of how this community came to be how this community of African-Americans came to El Islam and it started with this gentleman called Farad Mohammed who gave it to Elijah Mohammed who raised a son, E.M.M. that's a significant history that people should understand because it is so significant not just to African-Americans it is significant to America to understand what happened and the effect that it had not just on our community but the community at large and the world I know it sounds fantastic but it is true and if you understand it then you'll understand what we're talking about especially in light of today when we see the kind of leadership that we have today that juxtaposed to that leadership that we're talking about is significant and it needs to be told so that was my experience with E.M.M. I appreciate that so much and I'd just like to for one moment after listening to you gentlemen and my personal self reflecting 96 Seattle Tacoma International Airport E.M.M. Plyman El Amin E.M.M. Clyde Rachman and there was a couple others there A.K. Hassan and I'm on Crutch's leg mangled up and I'm sitting there and here comes the E.M.M. and then he calls me out by name okay alright Salam alaykum how are you doing my good brother where are you on your way to Clyde comes in E.M. Clyde comes in and says E.M.M. we got to get priority seating for the elderly hold up I'm not elderly are you talking about you see I'm talking to the brother right here now back up they went on to scurry it out the way so I understand the humanism and the down to earth in this of him and didn't want to be seen in that particular type of life I'm grateful for that experience you know for the opportunity to sit and talk with him and to him to enlighten me so much with a lot of information it was a pleasure of having you you gentlemen on the show today hopefully in sha Allah God willing we'll have another opportunity to discuss and talk about you know some other in depth topics but mostly back onto this interfaith aspect because right now it was just a little bit of lead in history and to you guys and to where you come from into your points of reference and means of dealing with that again I'd like to thank all of you for coming here it's been a lot of pleasure thank you you know and coming to the Davis media access and with that I'll say good night to our guest and and to the television land audience thank you so much God's peace be with you