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.
I have been a white Southern all my life. There are a lot of white Southerners who are also white trash.
The guy fits the imagination of the writers so they hail him and lift him up to us. It won’t work and the idiots who wrote this story can keep living in their fantasy world while the rest of us live in reality.
From one screwed up family to another.
IMHO converts do it because there’s no age of consent in islam.
They’re after one thing.
“Atkinson – a working-class, white Mississippian”
Aww, c’mon. It’s appropriate how he named his club (the Southern Hospitality Islamic Society) after his tribe: S.H.I.T.
The Southern Hospitality Islamic Tribe.
I feel the love already.
I’m not all that far from Mississippi and I’ve noticed - loud and clear - the vast majority of African-Americans are Christian. Loud and clear, lol! I’ve only seen a couple of muzzies here (always in Walmart!) and they are generally middle-eastern.
yes, for a person of African heritage to become Muslims is like for them to join the KKK — Islam specifically calls black people as a slave people.
Well, the south is very different from New York City where you do see idiot blacks in muslim garb. Fools.
There are a surprising number of white supremacists who made this shift. You go from being scum of the earth to a protected minority. You can be sexist and anti-Semetic as you wish, and no one dares criticizes you. You’ll get Islamic legal aid societies helping you and foreign women encouraged to marry you so they can help family immigrate.
He’s an army of one
A wigger to the extreme
Wiggers are believe it or not fairly uncommon in Mississippi unlike Tennessee where they are ubiquitous
Despite being nearly a forty percent state of color
There was a time when the Ku-Klux Klan, the National States Rights Party, the Louisiana White Citizens Council, etc. were all very pro-moslem--because they hated Jews.
It's very tiresome to keep hearing islam presented as some sort of super-tolerant, super left wing, feminist phenomenon when we all know the opposite is true.
Are you sure this isn't satire?
That's because practitioners of inverted chrstianity ("satanism"/"luciferianism") ritualistically celebrate everything that standard chrstianity condemns. It doesn't matter that the things celebrated contradict each other, like homosexuality and islam, or western science and "indigenous pipples." The whole thing is just one big childish "nya-nya!"
Ever notice that in ole timey rasslin' the heels never feud among themselves?
Lol!
I wish it was satire.
The KKK was pro-Moslem? Shows how non-Christian they were/are.
Islam is the exact opposite of tolerant, feminist phenomenon. It is left wing in the sense of total government control over mind, body AND soul
This surprises you?
As General McAuliffe said, “Nuts”. He’s so full of bs, and what a shame to defame his own parents and grandparents this way.
This is all no deeper than a fashion statement to him, that’s as deep as it goes.
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