So once upon a time there was a fellow named Imam Jamil Al-Amin, this was a time when students were rampant in bringing justice to this Imam, this was a time when students were enraged with the American judicial system, but that was a long time ago...If you ask who Imam Jamil Al-Amin is now, ppl stop and shrug their shoulders...well here is a little refresher on who Imam Jamil Al-Amin is:
IMAM JAMIL AL-AMIN: FROM REVOLUTIONARY TO REFORMER
by Talha Rizvi
The world was at war in 1943. From the plains of Europe to the islands of the Pacific, the world was brimming with violence. America had entered World War II two years earlier and many of its young men were sent overseas to bring an end to an international conflict that had been started by the hegemonic aspirations of a few racist nations.
Ironically, America itself was built on similar grounds that led to the eradication of entire native populaces and the importation and enslavement of others. By 1943, though the enslavement of others was brought to a halt on paper, many racially bigoted practices remained. Another warfront was formed, this time within America itself. This struggle for human and civil rights, however, would be fought with patience, unification, and civil disobedience rather than with weapons.
This was the environment in which Jamil Abdullah al-Amin was born. With the birth name of Hubert Gerold Brown, he was the eldest of three children born to Eddie C. and Thelma Brown. Growing up on the streets of Louisiana, he was able to observe the damaging effects of segregation on blacks firsthand. He earned his nickname “Rap” for his quick wits and ability to win street games in which participants used rhyming phrases to insult each other. This name was later perpetuated due to his powerful speaking style at public forums.
In 1955, the civil rights movement was thrown into a new stage by the daring of Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat for a white man in a segregated Alabama bus. Though the civil rights movement had been underway before this, her actions and the subsequent boycott of the Alabama bus system by blacks brought the struggle into national focus.
Joining the Black Liberation Movement
In 1960, Rap Brown began attending Southern University with a major in sociology. He cut his studies short in 1964, however, opting to join the civil rights struggle instead. He moved to Washington and worked for a neighborhood development center called “The United Planning Organization.” During his involvement there, he became skeptical of the federal poverty program. He later wrote, “It was designed to take those people whom the government considered threatening and buy them off.”
He became an organizer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and succeeded Stokely Carmichael as its leader in 1967. This catapulted him and Carmichael into the national spotlight as they promoted an arming of the black population for self-defense and elimination of Jim Crow segregation. This ‘by any means necessary’ principle contrasted with, and met criticism from non-violence leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. As the non-violence movement was steadily losing ground amongst black youth in the late 1960s, powerful rebellions broke out in cities across the U.S. Rap Brown supported these uprisings as a just and powerful form of resistance. He traveled the country, talking to campus audiences and black communities across America. In July 1967, Brown addressed a civil rights rally in Cambridge, Maryland. He arrived late and gave a fiery address from the hood of a car. After he spoke, a young woman requested an escort home. As Brown and two others escorted her up the street, assailants opened fire on them from nearby bushes. Years later, reflecting upon that incident, Imam Al-Amin would remark, “We found out later the gunmen were black policemen.” After the shooting, there was commotion in the streets that quickly escalated into a riot. By the next morning, two blocks of the town lay in ashes.
Rap Brown was charged with inciting riot and arson. When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, over a hundred rebellions broke out in black communities nationwide. Six days later, Congress passed the “Rap Brown Amendment,” which was attached to the 1968 Civil Rights Act. The amendment made it illegal to cross state lines to “incite” rebellions.
Emergence of the Panthers
The Black Panther Party (BPP) was another emerging movement from Oakland, California. It was dubbed by the FBI as a dangerous force, even though the premise behind the BPP was economic empowerment and social aid programs. The SNCC and BPP had a brief period of unity in 1968, in which Rap Brown was given the honorary title of ‘Minister of Justice.’ This unification effort was to be undermined by the FBI. In secret, the FBI developed their ‘Counter-Intelligence Program’ (COINTELPRO) into a countrywide campaign to disrupt radical organizations and “neutralize” emerging leaders. Rap Brown was among those who were pursued, harassed, spied on, arrested, and targeted by covert operations. One FBI memo even called for writing unsigned letters to create distrust between Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown.
In 1969, Brown wrote an autobiography entitled Die, Nigger, Die!, in which he presented an in-depth analysis of the problems facing blacks in the time of segregation. As Maryland was preparing to try him for the Cambridge riot, Brown went into hiding in 1970. He reappeared later in 1971 at the scene of a bar hold-up and shootout with police in New York. Police officers shot Brown and arrested him, charging him with armed robbery and attempted murder.
Brown Enters Islam
A defining moment in the life of Rap Brown would occur while he was in jail and awaiting trial in New York. Having been exposed to it earlier in his work with the BPP, Brown embraced Islam and changed his name to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. Al-Amin emerged from prison a dramatically changed man. After his parole in 1976, he performed the Hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah). Upon his return, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, a particularly crime-infested and poverty-stricken part of the city, where he established a masjid (Muslim place of worship) and became its imam (leader). He opened a grocery store, and began doing community work.
From that point on, Imam Jamil encouraged others to reform their lives in the methodology prescribed in the Qur’an and expounded by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). The Muslim community under his leadership led a rejuvenation of the area. The success of his efforts have been recognized by both Muslims and non-Muslims. An area that was once drowning in crime, a place where hypodermic needles littered the parks, became a safer place to live, where parents didn’t need to worry about their children being exposed to drugs and prostitution. The mayor of Whitehall, Alabama, himself a veteran of the civil rights movement, invited Imam Jamil and his community to help with social works. The Imam’s efforts were recognized with the mayor’s appointing him to the auxiliary police force.
The Imam’s leadership has been accredited nationally amongst Muslims. His organization, Jamat Community of Imam Jamil Al-Amin is a coalition of nearly thirty masajid in the United States. He was also appointed to the Islamic Shura Council of North America. Imam Jamil traveled to different universities and conferences, teaching the next generation of Muslims Islamic values. Despite his transformation, Imam Jamil’s past made him a target for both the FBI and local law enforcement.
Hounding by the FBI & Friends
For at least five years during the 1990s, the FBI, ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) and Atlanta police carried out an intensive investigation of Imam Jamil and anyone associated with him. As part of their operations, the FBI kept paid informants within Imam Jamil’s Community Mosque.
In 1995, in their first attempt to frame Imam Jamil, the Atlanta police pressured a man who had been shot by an unknown assailant to point out Imam Jamil as the culprit. The man later recanted his accusation, saying the police had pressured him into making the false identification. The man later converted to Islam at the masjid of Imam Jamil. Strangely enough, the investigation for the shooting involved the FBI and ATF in what should have been treated as a routine case of aggravated assault. Although federal agencies have spent years trying to connect him to unsolved crimes and murders in the area, they have not been able to produce a single charge against him. Imam Jamil remains the changed man he became upon entering Islam despite the efforts of different organizations, agencies, and news media to connect him to a violent past. It was during this transformed period of his life that he wrote his new book, Revolution by the Book. In contrast to his earlier Die, Nigger, Die!, Revolution by the Book provides a completely Islamic analysis of the social problems which plague America and minorities in particular. Wasting no time on rhetoric, Imam Jamil exhorts his readers to follow through with “the program,” meaning by this, of course, the divinely revealed program of Islam. Two examples from his book give us a glimpse into the man he has become.
“It is criminal that in the 1990s we still approach struggle...sloganeering... saying ‘by any means necessary,’ as if that’s a program. Or ‘we shall overcome,’ as if that’s a program. Slogans are not programs. We must define the means which will bring about change. This can be found in what Allah has brought for us in the Qur’an and in the example of the Prophet [pbuh]... Successful struggle requires a Divine program. Allah has provided that program.”
“For more than ten years the Prophet focused his community on the all-encompassing power of the Lord of the Worlds. There was no warfare, no military preparations, no economic development programs, no political activism. First the total submission and reliance on the Creator had to be established firmly in the hearts of the believers. Once that was instituted all else followed instinctively, naturally, not in contrived, artificially-induced political programs... To be successful in struggle requires remembrance of the Creator and the doing of good deeds.”
(courtesy of http://www.al-talib.com)
10 FACTS CONCERNING ALLEGATIONS AGAINST IMAM JAMIL
AL-AMIN
Published by Coalition for Imam Jamil Al-Amin, Metro Washington,
D.C-Area.
Fact 1
In 1999, Imam Jamil was stopped while driving by Cobb County
Police. During the stop, the officers asked Imam Jamil for proof of
insurance of the vehicle he was driving. He had a valid driver's
license but no insurance. According to the Imam, when he went to
open his wallet, an officer spotted a metal badge. The officer was
informed by Imam Jamil that the badge was issued to him by the
city of White Hall, Alabama when that city's Mayor appointed him
to the city's auxiliary police force. At no time did the Imam Jamil
represent himself as an Atlanta police officer. (*Source: Essay of
Prof. Natsu Taylor Saito, Georgia State University Law School,
3/20/2000)
Fact 2
During the stop, the Cobb County policeman a check on the car
Imam Jamil was driving and their records listed the car as stolen.
Imam Jamil provided the authorities with a bill of sale for the car,
yet the police nevertheless arrested him for receiving stolen
property. He was also charged with diving without insurance and
impersonating an officer. (*Source: Prof. Saito, 3/20/00)
Fact 3
Imam Jamil attempted to seek legal representation to have these
charges dismissed. Wanting to avoid a trial and the attendant
publicity, he offered to plead to reduced charges and a sentence of
a fine and community service. However, the District Attorney
initially insisted on a minimum sentence of two years in prison,
never offering a settlement without jail time. (*Source: Prof. Saito,
3/20/00)
Fact 4
Imam Jamil missed a court appearance in January of this year, in
connection with these small, non violent charges. A bench warrant
was issued for his arrest. On March 16th, the day in which
Muslims from around the world were celebrating one of their two
holy days -- Eid Al Adha -- two police officers came to a store
which was owned by Imam Jamil to serve the warrant. (*Source:
Prof. Saito, 3/20/00)
Fact 5
There have been various reports of what lead up to the shooting.
Some claim that the deputies went to serve the warrant at a
grocery store in the Black community of West End which was
owned by Imam Jamil. Other reports, state that the officers went
to Imam Jamil's home. Still others state that the officers knocked
on the door of Al-Amin's store, got no answer, walked away, drove
around the neighborhood, and then returned to the store.
(*Sources: Prof. Saito, 3/20/00; Atlanta Journal Constitution, "FBI
Issues Warrant for Al-Amin," 3/18/00)
Fact 6
There have also been inconsistencies in statements concerning
how the shooting occurred. Some reports claim that the police
officers were confronted with a man near a Black Mercedes Benz,
near the store (Imam Jamil does not own such a car). When they
asked this man to show his hands, the man fired upon the officers.
Another report states that the man was inside the car and when
asked to show his hands, the driver fired upon the Police.
(*Sources: Prof. Saito, 3/20/00; Atlanta Journal Constitution,
"Sheriff: Deputies blindsided by attack," 3/18/00)
Fact 7
The shooting occurred at nighttime, around 10 P.M., in a inner city
neighborhood. Initially, the surviving deputy could not identify his
assailant, but nonetheless a nationwide man-hunt for Imam Jamil
was announced. The following day, in between operations, the
deputy identified Imam Jamil from a photograph shown to him at
the hospital. Despite these inconsistencies, the media reported
that the surviving police officer "positively identified Imam Jamil."
(*Sources: Prof. Saito, 3/20/00; Atlanta Journal Constitution,
"Sheriff: Deputies blindsided by attack," 3/18/00)
Fact 8
Atlanta and Fulton County police wrongly told the media Thursday
night that the warrant which the police had sought to serve upon
Imam Jamil was for aggravated assault. They now admit that the
information they put out was false. (*Sources: Atlanta Journal
Constitution, "Sheriff: Deputies blindsided by attack," 3/18/00;
Hype Newswire "Media's Rush to Judgement in the H. Rap Brown -
Al-Amin Case," Mar. 2000)
Fact 9
The Fulton County Police reported that the "shooter" had been
wounded and that they were following a trail of blood. Some
reports claimed that the blood was identified as that from Imam
Jamil. However, medical officials have now verified that Imam Jamil
is not wounded and thus the blood trail could not have come from
him. (*Sources: Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Police doubt
bloodstains linked to Al-Amin case," 3/24/00)
Fact 10
Imam Jamil stated that this incident was a part of a government
conspiracy. This would not be the first. On August 7, 1995, Imam
Jamil Al-Amin, while driving his son to school, was arrested in
connection with the July shooting of a young man in Atlanta. After
the arrest, the police interrogated his 7-year-old son for six hours
before notifying someone to pick up the child. The victim initially
pointed to Imam Jamil as being his assailant. Later, in a news
conference in Washington, D.C., this young man announced that
he did not know who wounded him and that the police pressured
him into making the identification. (Sources: Prof. Saito, 3/20/00;
Washington Post, "60's militant arrested in Alabama," 3/21/00, "Al-
Amin Calls Slaying Case A 'Government Conspiracy'", 3/22/00)
