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$1 from every purchase of Spoken Soul on CDBaby.com will goes towards Haiti Relief efforts

Check out the review of my album Spoken Soul by Zaufishan Iqbal. Zaufishan is an artist and writer based in [...]

Fish, Grits and Couscous: Islam and The African-American Experience
The following are some web quality stills from the event held at [...]

…But what Black Muslim does Qawwali? How many Latino Muslims do Arabic nasheeds? White British Muslims have a 100 year old history of Muslim hymns written and composed by White converts! If you are a Chicano Muslim sister that does devotional odes from your cultural reality and not Pakistan’s or Egypt’s then what (where) is your space?

This poem was inspired by an old 1980’s hip-hop record in terms of its style (YouTube the title). The content however was inspired by a conversation I had in a hallway after one of my performances where a brother was talking to me about how the youth were involved in gangs, drug selling and even pimping out teenage girls. So I wrote this piece.

One of my earlier poems this piece is done in a very ‘rhymey’ kind of style. The line ‘green monkey viruses’ refers to how early in the AIDS crisis scientists were trying to say that a Black Haitian was bitten by the green monkey. That was more racism than anything else but that is a glimpse into how I tend to put these little ‘nuggets’ in my poems for you to dig into and discover more information on yourself. Enjoy.

I plan to always have some sort of an ode to Women on my albums. On Poetically Speaking that ode was to Muslim Women. On Spoken Soul this ode is to our mothers regardless of faith. I thought about my own mother, Cheryl Brookins, when writing this piece.

The ChaiPod has a conversation with Muslim rapper Miss Undastood one of only a handful of Hijab wearing rappers. Miss [...]

I was inspired to write this poem specifically by the mother of my children and generally by Muslim women as a whole. Women as a whole have been endowed with qualities by the Creator that are quite incredible. When you combine that with the spiritual component of being a submitter to God and how many Muslim Women manifest it physically it is even more inspirational. So this poem is my ode to the Muslim woman. Reflect.

I wrote Masjid Marauders in response to the issues around culture, religion and nationality that are often at odds in mosques in the West. Many of us, myself included, are culturally American (or Western). We are Muslim yes but we are not culturally Arab or Pakistani and those who are not culturally Western should not dictate the Islamic narrative in Western countries. We can work together of course but we are not 2nd class citizens in our own countries that others immigrated to. Thus Masjid Marauders.