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When A White Southerner Finds Islam: Meet Imam Shane Atkinson {a putz?}
WUNC<p> ^ | Juy 15, 2019 | By PAUL KIEFER, DANA TERRY & ANITA RAO

Posted on 07/18/2019 12:21:28 AM PDT by Cronos

Imam Shane Atkinson was raised in Jackson, Mississippi, in a working-class white family.

Imam Shane Atkinson is the founder of the Southern Hospitality Islamic Society.
Courtesy of Shane Atkinson
p>One of Imam Shane Atkinson’s first face-to-face encounters with Muslims took place while he was working at a tannery in Sturgis, Mississippi.

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.



TOPICS: General Discusssion; Islam
KEYWORDS:
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To: Biggirl
makruh (reprehensible) the Imam or other authority figure is required to inform you that you're not conforming to the Dawah (preaching of Islam.)

Once the person is told and no action was taken then it can be considered Haraam.

There isn't a Muslim alive that lives under Darul-Islam out side ISIS territory. but this is what ALL Muslims are required to achieve. The most common makruh i see nearly all muslims male's do is wear western pants.
This is as bad as a woman without any modesty (Hijab.) which is also makruh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahkam#Five_ruling_types

41 posted on 07/18/2019 11:30:09 AM PDT by Steve Van Doorn (*in my best Eric Cartman voice* 'I love you, guys')
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To: deadrock
taqiyya is shia. Most muslims are Sunni.

There are six different ways of deception that are permissible in Islam: 1) taqiyya, 2) kitman, 3) tawriya, 4) taysir, 5) darura, 6) muruna

•Taqiyya (Shia) or Muda’rat (Sunni): tactical deceit for the purposes of spreading Islam.
•Kitman: deceit by omission.
•Tawriya: deceit by ambiguity.
•Taysir: deceit through facilitation (not having to observe all the tenets of Sharia).
•Darura: deceit through necessity (to engage in something “Haram” or forbidden).
•Muruna: or flexibiity. Example would be the temporary suspension of Sharia to make Muslim migrants appear “moderate.”

Kitman or deceit by omission is what Islam mostly uses in the west.

42 posted on 07/18/2019 11:34:37 AM PDT by Steve Van Doorn (*in my best Eric Cartman voice* 'I love you, guys')
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To: Biggirl
Oh I should point out

i said, " this is what ALL Muslims are required to achieve."

This includes you. you're a Muslim if you didn't know that. Qur'an 30:30 says everyone is born a Muslim.
All non-mulsims that become Muslim revert back to the teachings of Islam. They where Muslim apostates or Kafirs(living under Darul-Islam.) Not living under darul-Islam they're Harbi Kafirs. (warmongering) Kafirs.

43 posted on 07/18/2019 11:44:30 AM PDT by Steve Van Doorn (*in my best Eric Cartman voice* 'I love you, guys')
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To: Steve Van Doorn

It is all nonsense which I reject.


44 posted on 07/18/2019 1:30:38 PM PDT by Biggirl ("One Lord, one faith, one baptism" - Ephesians 4:5)
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To: Cronos

John Quincy Adams on Islam

“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.

Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. It is, indeed, amongst the mysterious dealings of God, that this delusion should have been suffered for so many ages, and during so many generations of human kind, to prevail over the doctrines of the meek and peaceful and benevolent Jesus” (Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.).


45 posted on 07/18/2019 3:13:21 PM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here Of Citizen Parents_Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
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