The Muslim Community Rises with Ferguson
From Palestine to Ferguson
For the last 70 days the youth of Ferguson, Missouri have led protests and vigils every night in remembrance of 18 year old Michael Brown and the countless other black lives that are cut short at the rate of at least 400 annually by police in the United States. This past weekend protesters merged on Ferguson for a weekend of action called for by the youth of Ferguson with actions, protests and acts of civil disobedience taking place from Friday to Monday, October 10th to the 13th.
Mustafa Abdullah is a community organizer originally from North Carolina who moved to St. Louis two years ago to work for the ACLU of Eastern Missouri. In the days after Michael Brown’s shooting Mustafa went to work with a number of other Muslim leaders locally and nationally to organizer Muslims for Ferguson who are helping to lead the call to get American Muslims more deeply involved in community organizing around issues of racial justice, mass incarceration and police brutality throughout the United States. What follows is an in depth interview with Mustafa Abdullah about the organizing taking place on the ground in Ferguson, and his hopes for the Muslim community, as he stated clearly to us in our interview,
“my hope is that Muslims really begin to see that our own liberation, and our own freedom are intricately intertwined with the freedom of the youth that are on the street in Ferguson.”
Ummah Wide: Within a few days of the killing of Michael Brown you all started organizing the Muslim community to be actively engaged in what is happening in Ferguson. Can you tell us about Muslims for Ferguson, what the local response has been like and also what the national response has been so far to this call to action?
Mustafa Abdullah: In seeking justice in Ferguson, and justice for Mike Brown for me it’s about building a just world and it’s about building the values that are of the utmost importance to me. I take very seriously the verses in the Qur’an that if one part of the body is in pain then the whole body wakes up in a fevered state and I think that is making a deeper metaphorical statement about world. That we are aware of the pain that people are going through and a we have a belief that we should be there to support communities in ways that are authentic.
This is exactly what we have been trying to build with Muslims for Ferguson which has really been a movement that has developed rapidly and organically. Two days after the killing of Michael Brown, I had been traveling that weekend and I came back to the office Monday morning and my inbox was flooded with a couple hundred emails, a ton of voice mails and around 9:30 that morning I got a call from Linda Sarsour, the Executive Director of the Arab American Association of New York. She asked me, ‘Mustafa where is the Muslim community on this?’
That hadn’t even come to mind for me yet because as Muslim organizers and advocates in our community sometimes it feels like we are in real isolation and she brought that reality check to me. When she made that call to me and she posed that question, she also said that we need to get with the Muslim community. So I called the executive director of CAIR St. Louis, Faizan Syed and we drafted a solidarity letter together addressed to Michael Brown’s family and we got 20 mosques and Islamic centers, all the major ones here in the St. Louis area to sign onto this letter that we had sent out.
Then I had a conversation with Muhammad Malik an organizer from Miami who has been involved with the Dream Defenders and the anti-police brutality movement there around the police killing of 20 year old Israel Hernandez last year. He suggested that we do a national call for the Muslim community, because Muslims need to hear from people that are on the ground in Ferguson. So we organized a few days later this national call and we had over 250 people on the call where we featured myself, Faizan Syed, and a few national Muslim leaders, Muhammad Malik, Linda Sarsour and Imam Dawood Walid.
Since then we have done a number of follow up calls with local organizers and activists on the ground here, including Torey Russell organizer for Hands Up United who was the first organizer on the ground the evening after Michael Brown was killed. That night he organized 12 other people to protest with him outside of the police department and the protests snow balled and people had the courage to come out and face the snipers, rubber bullets, and face the tear gas and face the tanks, and the long range acoustic device system, all this military equipment and intimidation from law enforcement, to peacefully protest the killing of Michael Brown and calling for the arrest of the officer who did the shooting.
Since then our online and Facebook presence has grown rapidly, members of the Muslim community have reached out to me, to Linda and Muhammad, and there are a number of organizers that we are in relationship with that are so thankful for all the people on the ground. I know that Muslims have donated to organizations on the ground doing this work, particularly to the Organization for Black Struggle who have been doing this police brutality work for 35 plus years.
This all really culminated over the last weekend when we had a block of Muslims and Palestinian rights folk as an organized block at this march and rally where there were at least 5 or 6 times where the rights of Muslims and Palestinians were brought up by speakers, where non-Muslim and non-Arabs speakers.
I think that for the Muslims who have participated, we are really beginning to see that our experiences of racial profiling, our experiences of surveillance, their experiences with their countries being torn up by war and the increasing militarization of the world and American police departments. We are really beginning to see that all of this is tied up with and connected to the experiences of African Americans, particularly black and brown youth in this country.
What my hope is, is that they are seeing their own liberation, their own freedom as being intricately intertwined with the freedom of the youth that are on the street in Ferguson.
The youth that have talked to us and shared their stories of being pulled over while driving a nice car in town, their experiences of being stopped and frisked on the street, their experience of not having any good after school programs with almost no options as to what to do with their lives, these are stories that we need to be listening to. One of the first memories that many of these organizers and youth in the streets of Ferguson have is when they were first in the streets getting hit with tear gas and rubber bullets for the first time and getting tweets from Palestinians telling them how to deal with the tear gas and the rubber bullets.
There has been an open invitation from the Don’t Shoot Coalition in Ferguson to have more Muslims actively involved, and our hope is that Muslims continue to accept that invitation and to grow into relationships with these people and not just to theorize or write about problems but to become actively involved and to see how tied up our liberation is to other people and other communities.
Ummah Wide: There’s a great status that Muhammad Malik wrote on Facebook as he was leaving Ferguson to head back to Miami, “I love resistance in #Ferguson and, yes, I say “resistance” because that is precisely what young sisters and brothers over here are doing. Resisting against racism, police brutality, militarization, and unjust systems of oppression. And resisting for a more loving world where #BlackLivesMatter. This isn’t some narrow-minded nonprofit campaign, defanged by slavish deference to the democratic party establishment, toothless opportunists disguised as “community leaders,” and clergy who are not willing to put their bodies on the line to righteously chomp at the system for complete liberation; this is a movement — one that inspires me and people across the world to roll out deeper transformative visions of change. Long live the resistance! We love you and will continue to pray for you and support you, through the ups and downs.” Reflecting on this statement, I wanted to ask you as the final question, with everything happening in Ferguson what role do you hope this can play in inspiring the Muslim community to play a greater role in the racial justice movement in the United States and connect all these issues from mass incarceration to surveillance to police brutality that the country is facing?
My hope is that we are really able to figure out ways to meet Muslims where they are at and bring them into the fold. What I mean by that is that I hope that if Muslim hasn’t had a conversation about the killing of Michael Brown or hasn’t had a conversation about race either internally within the Muslim community or more broadly, then I hope they grab a couple of their friends, that they go out for coffee and that they have a discussion about it. My hope is that Muslims who are theorizing, to paraphrase Tef Poe, when he spoke on Sunday night, he said ‘I’m not a philosopher, i’m not an academic, I’m not smart like that but for all of you who are theorizing or just studying racism, none of you were out there when the rubber bullets starting flying or when the tear gas started getting thrown, or when we were being attacked. So my hope is, I’ve seen some Muslims who write about their political views, but we have to do a reality check because our actions show where we stand. Our actions are what give us power, our actions are what show solidarity.
I remember the first Thursday after the killing of Michael Brown, I realized that I had been sending out legal observers with the ACLU to document what was going on, but I hadn’t gone myself and it was a reality check for myself. I had to say to myself, what am I really afraid of and am I putting my own safety and my own selfish concerns before the experience and the pain of an entire community? For some of us we need to start having these discussions and I would be happy to work with those in the Muslim community who are more knowledgable about how to create safe spaces and discuss issues of racism so that we can launch more Muslim communities into having these discussions.
I also am going to continue to help in providing avenues for the Muslim community to support what is going on here in Ferguson by continuing in my voluntary capacity to get Muslims plugged into this movement that is growing throughout the country. There is no doubt that this is a movement, what Tef Poe what Torey Russel, what these dozens of young local people in these communities who I can relay their names have started is incredible. There are people who are connecting dots across the country, there are grassroots organizations that are connecting those dots, and strong faith based organizations like PICO’s Lifelines to Healing Movement. There are these faith based communities that are following the lead of these people and in the major cities there are already solidarity actions that are happening, their are people that are developing local and national campaigns for police reform and I would encourage Muslims to take part in these actions.
One thing I heard this weekend from a couple of Muslims is that ‘oh nobody else from where I’m from really cares about that, they’re not into social justice.’ So then the question that we have to ask is, have we actually made sincere efforts to reach out to other members of the Muslim community, to ask them to come to a meeting, to ask them to come and sit down and have a conversation with an African American, with a Latino, with someone facing the threat of deportation. Whether it’s with someone who is not allowed to be granted in state tuition at public universities or whether it’s being profiled or whether it’s issues of surveillance, being targeted by the surveillance state. When you start having those conversations you organically begin to realize how all these problems are intertwined. One of the immediate demands of these young people is for the municipalities in St. Louis police departments to not get any more funding or material support for federal programs that give them military equipment. So our fight against war around the world is also intertwined with the fight for not allowing our streets and our neighborhoods to become increasingly militarized.
The last thing I’ll say is, many Muslims immigrate to this country for the freedoms that we have and I think what I can safely say is that number one, the issues around militarization and surveillance and all of this is an increasing threat to our democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of movement. If these issues are of concern to you then you need to join the movement. If you are concerned about war and the military industrial complex, you need to join this movement. If you are tired of being profiled by the TSA then you need to join this movement. My hope is that Muslims begin to see these issues in a much broader context and to see how they relate to us personally and join the movement because it will transform our communities.
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” — Assata Shakur
This article is part of the Ummah for Good Social Innovation Series, a new set of conversations with some of the worlds leading Muslim social innovators who are working across many different sectors. Ranging from social entrepreneurs to community organizers, the Ummah for Good series is about those trying to build a better world for all of humanity. Are you interested in having yourself or your company featured in the Ummah for Good series? You can reach out to us at — dustin@ummahwide.com
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