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Highland Park is a city within the city limits of Detroit proper. In addition to being home to Henry Ford's first assembly plant (now defunct and abandoned), it is also home to a sizable, mostly African-American, Sunni Muslim community.
I was inducted into that community when my family converted to Sunni Islam when I was around 8-years-old.
Qasim was associated with the community in Highland Park. He is also the director of Mooz-Lem: The Movie - a locally-filmed movie that is still in development . It features Danny Glover, Nia Long and quite a few other impressively notable Hollywood cast members.
Its good to see a member of my old Ummah doing his thing. Neither of us could remember if we knew each other growing up. We do both know a young man named Kareem. I happened to bump into Kareem and Qasim a couple of weeks back and they were gracious enough to let me make a couple of frames of them (Kareem, you're next).
That said, I'm no longer a member of the Highland Park Islamic community. In fact, I've removed myself from the larger intellectual community of religious believers altogether.
I've always had a distrinct aversion to fanticiful thinking - no matter how reassuring and comforting. When I was in 1st grade, before my family converted to islam, a classmate opened a bag of chips, crushed them in his hand, turned toward me, started to wiggle his backside and sing an impromptu schoolyard nursery rhyme/taunt:
"I've got more! I've got more!..."
I remember calmly looking at him, shaking my head and saying,
"No you don't. They are just in smaller peices..."
He broke into tears and tried to fight me.
Sorry, kiddo. But the facts are facts.
Though I was devout through my high school years (at Highland Park High School, I'd stop in the middle of Mr. Wojinowski's Chem class to make the afternoon iteration of the 5 daily prayers required of Muslims), the religious explanations for how reality worked became exponentially less convincing with each passing year; and with each passing grade in biology, geology, and history.
The religious explanation simply did not accord with the facts. As much comfort, solace, and certitude my religious faith had provided me in trying circumstances, I found myself increasing unable to abide them.
Sorry, kiddo. But the facts are the facts.
By my second year of college I was more or less bereft of all superstitious belief.
I'm not sure what the tone of Qasim's finished movie will be. It's my understanding that the main character has a crisis of faith.
If nothing else, I hope that his movie will encourage people to take another look at their bag of potato chips.
[View the weekdaily blog and meet more of: The People of Detroit ]
I was inducted into that community when my family converted to Sunni Islam when I was around 8-years-old.
Qasim was associated with the community in Highland Park. He is also the director of Mooz-Lem: The Movie - a locally-filmed movie that is still in development . It features Danny Glover, Nia Long and quite a few other impressively notable Hollywood cast members.
Its good to see a member of my old Ummah doing his thing. Neither of us could remember if we knew each other growing up. We do both know a young man named Kareem. I happened to bump into Kareem and Qasim a couple of weeks back and they were gracious enough to let me make a couple of frames of them (Kareem, you're next).
That said, I'm no longer a member of the Highland Park Islamic community. In fact, I've removed myself from the larger intellectual community of religious believers altogether.
I've always had a distrinct aversion to fanticiful thinking - no matter how reassuring and comforting. When I was in 1st grade, before my family converted to islam, a classmate opened a bag of chips, crushed them in his hand, turned toward me, started to wiggle his backside and sing an impromptu schoolyard nursery rhyme/taunt:
"I've got more! I've got more!..."
I remember calmly looking at him, shaking my head and saying,
"No you don't. They are just in smaller peices..."
He broke into tears and tried to fight me.
Sorry, kiddo. But the facts are facts.
Though I was devout through my high school years (at Highland Park High School, I'd stop in the middle of Mr. Wojinowski's Chem class to make the afternoon iteration of the 5 daily prayers required of Muslims), the religious explanations for how reality worked became exponentially less convincing with each passing year; and with each passing grade in biology, geology, and history.
The religious explanation simply did not accord with the facts. As much comfort, solace, and certitude my religious faith had provided me in trying circumstances, I found myself increasing unable to abide them.
Sorry, kiddo. But the facts are the facts.
By my second year of college I was more or less bereft of all superstitious belief.
I'm not sure what the tone of Qasim's finished movie will be. It's my understanding that the main character has a crisis of faith.
If nothing else, I hope that his movie will encourage people to take another look at their bag of potato chips.
[View the weekdaily blog and meet more of: The People of Detroit ]
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