Why Islam is my choice — Page 124
124 benefits did you gain? R: It seems like life got better. I can’t explain what exactly got better, but life as a whole, overall, got better than it was before. When I was back in those days of ignorance, it seemed like you had too many problems—you were making those problems yourself. I think after I became a Muslim, my life actually got better. W: So today, though, when all these problems—certainly those ones about slavery and being the property of somebody else, and having to face the color barrier, and sit apart from the white, and sitting in the back of the bus—all those problems and all those unfairnesses have disappeared, is there still some relevance for the African Americans in the message of Isl ā m. Is there a need for Isl ā m? R: Yes. That need is still there. W: Is it dire? Or is it less dire? R: I want to point out something to you—those civil rights organizations back in the ’50s and ’60s, they thought they were fighting racism, but they were not fighting racism—they were fighting Jim Crow. Now let me explain what Jim Crow is. Jim Crow is a law that regulates racism. It’s not a law of just this and this, it’s not a law of murder, it’s not a law of robbing a bank. Jim Crow is a law that says that you can’t go in this restroom, you can’t go in this restaurant, you can’t go to the front of this bus, otherwise, you’ll be arrested. What the Civil Rights leaders admitted later was that in a respect, Malcolm X was right—we were not fighting racism, we were fighting Jim Crow. The Jim Crow Laws in the south—that’s what we were fighting. Today, you still have racism. The only problem is, it’s under the ground. But it’s still there because no one has dealt with it yet. And Christianity can not deal with it and the only religion that can deal with it is Isl ā m because Isl ā m deals with these different nationalities, different cultures. Ḥ a ḍ rat Mu ḥ ammad (peace and blessings