Posted on 07/18/2019 12:21:28 AM PDT by Cronos
During his time in that town, Atkinson – a working-class, white Mississippian – wore a homemade, leather necklace bearing the face of Malcolm X, a style choice he picked up from his love affair with Afrocentric, 80s hip-hop. While wandering the aisles of the local Walmart, Atkinson bumped into a Muslim family.
“They asked ‘Are you Muslim?’ And I think that's the first time I really thought about it. I said, ‘Yeah, I think I am Muslim.’”
At the time, Atkinson had yet to formally convert to Islam. His deep interest in the religion and to the black pride movement starkly contrasted with the narratives he heard growing up.
Atkinson was raised in Jackson, Mississippi, in a family steeped in white supremacy. His grandfather taught him to tie a noose as a bonding activity, and though his parents showed some awareness of their changing world, their own fundamental racial politics had not changed.
“My parents might let a racial slur slip out in traffic ... I can remember being a small child and repeating what they said, and them telling me, ‘Don't say that’ … They didn't tell me that it's wrong to say that word … They just said 'Don't say that word.’”
In the years following the Walmart encounter, Atkinson explored Islam and his own identity. He made the decision to convert after almost ten years of personal exploration. It was a means to distance himself from his upbringing. He recalls spending the early days of his conversion wearing a long robe and a turban to visibly mark himself as different.
As time went on, Atkinson came to understand that he would have to reconcile the culture in which he was raised with his new faith. That quest led him to start a Facebook group called the “Society of Islamic Rednecks,” which he envisioned as a space for Southern white Muslims to swap recipes, discuss the merits of Lynyrd Skynyrd and work to excise the influence of white supremacy and misogyny from their culture. The Facebook group became a hub for more than a thousand converts like him scattered across the South.
“Lo and behold, there are people all over the South … Maybe a white convert in Alabama or Arkansas … [who thought they were] the only one out there.’”
The idea of an Islamic, anti-racist re-envisionioning of Southern white culture attracted the attention and support of historically-black mosques, many of which had undertaken a project of cultural reinvention decades earlier. Those mosques provided Atkinson a space to host workshops and discussions, both for the Muslim community as a whole and for a smaller group of white converts.
Atkinson now serves as assistant Imam at two of the historically black mosques in the Triangle that supported his efforts: Ar-Razzaq Islamic Center in Durham and As-Salaam Islamic Center in Raleigh.
Filmakers Jennifer Taylor and Mustafa Davis profiled Atkinson in a 2018 short documentary entitled “Redneck Muslim” which helped propel Atkinson’s message even further. Guest Host Anita Rao talks to Atkinson, who currently serves as the Muslim chaplain at Elon University,
about his working-class white upbringing, brief rap career, experiences with chaplaincy, and the complexities of white Muslim identity.
This whole article reads of fantasy written by UNC SJW writers
As a kid for fun his family practiced lynching noose knots
I’m calling pure dee bullshite on that crap
Cronos
Step up your game ....I mean really
Like John Walker Lindh, this man has got issues.
He would be lucky to be alive after his Imam was through with him.
So, he went from a culture of hating blacks for no good reason to one of hating Christians and Jews especially and all others who do not follow his religion.
Haters are going to hate, eh. Well, at least in his warped mind, he has a reason. I guess that makes him feel better about himself.
Lo and behold, there are “a wigger”
Ahsolammalaikin y’all!
(That’s jes wrawng!)
Know your enemy - this is the crap that the MSM is pushing out there. I see it as critical that we know this is the message they are pushing and where. Forewarned is forearmed
Steve — you’re good! I bet the nutty Imam doesn’t even realize he broke 6 rules of Islam in one picture!
I agree wardaddy. The “noose” his granddad prolly taught him was a fishing knot, prolly hoping to get his fat azz lazy grandson out the house to go fishing.
This kid is an attention whore loser. He prolly didnt have many friends, or girlfriends, and did what he could to get attention.
In a society where Christianity has become weak and emasculated, apologizing for everything and standing for nothing while liberals have been empowered to make the rules, don't be surprised when white guys start discovering that Islam offers them a pretty good deal.
People like being a part of the winning team. Muslims apologize for nothing. For all their faults, there is no Muslim country ruled by liberals. No #MeToo in Islam. It is a patriarchy. Men run the show. And they're allowed to. Muslims get a pass on all the liberal rules that everyone else is supposed to follow.
There's no worse nightmare to liberalism than white, Western men converting to Islam.
What is the word, “makruh”.
Simple minded people are easily led down the wide road to perdition. Just look at Democrat voters
A pretty good speculative fictioni book based partly on this premise is "Prayers for the Assassin"
They found a self hating Southern white boy to pimp, yee haw.
IF he were to visit the Middle East he would find out just how Islam really treats Asians and blacks.
ok but he’s white
Is his Imam name Talcum X?
What a heartwarming story! Moronic fat hippy gains acceptance in a death cult, gets to grow beard, listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd and wear stupid hat.
Moral of the story: *slam is a wonderful, kind, tolerant, warm, glowing, harmless religion that we should all embrace.
LIKE HELL!
Yes he is....but the article suggested he didn’t like the racial component of his upbringing. It suggested to me that he equated Christianity with racism.
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