Why Islam is my choice — Page 126
126 R: No, you can’t do that because legislation has no answer for racism. For instance, if you don’t like me, I don’t care how many laws I pass, you still won’t like me. And if you can find any way to get around those laws, you’re going to do it. For example, in 1929, the 20s I’d say, there was Prohibition here. Alcohol in America was illegal. And if you were caught drinking, you could go to jail. But they didn’t stop the drinking. You know why? Because they didn’t give the people a good enough reason. It was an unenforceable law because it was something people wanted to do. They said, you can’t drink because it was a law. They didn’t say, you can’t drink for a reason—this is the reason that you shouldn’t drink, because it does this and that and this other thing. They didn’t do that. They just said it’s illegal. So people think that if they pass laws, [they think] that people are going to abide by them, but they don’t. There’s no way I can legislate you to like somebody. You may not break that law openly, but you’re going to break it in a way that you won’t get caught at it. You’re going to find a way to get around that law just like the people found a way around Prohibition. So, racism is the same thing and it still is. These skinheads prove it. W: So, in summary, then, the answer to the question I asked—the relevance of Isl ā m for the African Americans is still as dire, still as necessary, today, in your opinion, as it was in the past. R: Yes, it is still necessary. W: In the last section, we were discussing the relevance of Isl ā m to the African American community and to the impact that it had on his life, vis a vis, his identity prior to Isl ā m, etc. I now want to quote to you a reference that you had mentioned in your talk [in the] last section. This is from Prof. Richard Brent Turner, who is an Assistant Professor at the University of California as he writes in his article, “The A ḥ madiyya Mission to Blacks in the United States in the