By Adisa Banjoko (interviewer)<\/p>\n
\n
Rap music has seen more than its share of influence from the religion of Islam.\u00a0 With groups such as Public Enemy rapping about their respect for the Nation of Islam, to people such as Q-Tip of a Tribe Called Quest embracing mainstream Islam, the religion seems to be a recurrent theme in the genre, both impacting lyrics and lives.\u00a0 One artist more recently touched by Islam is Eric Schrody, better known in music circles as Everlast.<\/p>\n
While Everlast began his musical career as a rap artist, he has recently shown himself to have much greater depth and diversity.\u00a0 His current album, Whitey Ford Sings the Blues (currently ranked #49 on billboard\u2019s charts after peaking at #9) exhibits this in its reflective and somewhat philosophical tone, showing glimpses of the influence Islam has had on his life.<\/p>\n
What follows is an interview in which Everlast discusses his journey to Islam and the challenges he faces as a new Muslim.<\/p>\n
AB: Tell me about the first time you learned about Islam?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
E: It was probably around the late 80\u2019s.\u00a0 I was hangin\u2019 out with Divine Styler (a popular Los Angeles rap artist).\u00a0 He was basically at the end of his 5% period (referring to the pseudo-Islamic \u201cNation of Gods and Earths\u201d sect).\u00a0 He was starting to come into Islam.\u00a0 He lived with the Bashir family.\u00a0 Abdullah Bashir was sort of his teacher; and mine it wound up later.\u00a0 As he was making the transition from 5% into Islam, I would just be around and hear things.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m trying to think of the first time I recognized it as Islam.\u00a0 I think it was when one of Divine\u2019s friends took Shahadah (the Muslim profession of faith) and I was there.\u00a0 I heard him say, \u201cI bear witness that there is no God but God, and Muhammad is the servant and messenger.\u201d And I remember me being like, \u201cWhat is this? \u00a0I\u2019m white.\u00a0 Can I be here?\u201d \u00a0It was outta ignorance, you know? \u00a0\u2018Cause here in America, Islam is considered a \u201cBlack thing.\u201d And that\u2019s when someone pointed out to me, \u201cYou have no idea how many white Muslims there are in the world.\u201d I was like, \u201cReally,\u201d and somebody broke it down.\u00a0 I said, \u201cThat\u2019s crazy.\u00a0 I had no clue.\u201d<\/p>\n
AB: Do you feel any extra pressure being a white Muslim in America?<\/p>\n
E: I don\u2019t think of it on the grand scale.\u00a0 To me, Islam is mine.\u00a0 Allah is the God of all the worlds, and all mankind and all the Aalameen (worlds\/universe).\u00a0 Islam is my personal relationship with God.\u00a0 So nobody can put any more pressure on me than I can put on myself.\u00a0 But as far as the mosque where I pray, I have never felt more at home or more welcome.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not just mine.\u00a0 The few mosques that I\u2019ve gone to around the country, I\u2019ve never ever been made to feel uncomfortable.\u00a0 Like in New York, the mosque is big and there\u2019s so many people that nobody is lookin\u2019 to notice you.\u00a0 There were Chinese, Korean, Spanish – everything, which was a good thing for me because at my mosque I\u2019m the only white male, [although] there are some white females.<\/p>\n
I think at first, I thought about it more than anybody else the first couple times I went to Jumma (the Friday congregational prayer).\u00a0 The first time I went to Jumma, I was taken by a friend of mine in New York.\u00a0 It was in Brooklyn in Bed-Stuy (Bedford Stuyvestant).\u00a0 I was nervous about the neighborhood I was in, not the mosque.\u00a0 But I was just so at ease once I was there.\u00a0 I was like, \u201cThis is great.\u201d I didn\u2019t feel any different than anybody else in the mosque.<\/p>\n
AB: How did your family take your turning to Islam? \u00a0Because you were raised Catholic, right?<\/p>\n
E: Well, you know my mom is very open minded, very progressive.\u00a0 My mother lives with me.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve been raised all my life with not a belief in God, but a knowledge that he exists.\u00a0 I was taught [that] if [I were to know] anything in the world, [I should] know there\u2019s a God.\u00a0 And my mom, even though she was Catholic, she was the first person to point out hypocrisy in the church.\u00a0 My mom really hasn\u2019t attended church in a long time.\u00a0 But as far as me, my mom is just happy that I have God in my life.<\/p>\n
She sees me making prayers.\u00a0 And Divine is one of her favorite people in the world.\u00a0 She knows how much different we are than when she first knew us as kids.\u00a0 When me and Divine first hooked up, we were wild.\u00a0 We were out partyin\u2019, fightin\u2019, doin\u2019 whatever we had to do.\u00a0 We thought, \u201cYeah, that\u2019s what being a man is about.\u00a0 We\u2019re gonna go out here and be thuggish.\u201d<\/p>\n
[But] she has seen how much it\u2019s changed me and him; and how much peace it\u2019s brought me since I\u2019ve started to really accomplish something with it.\u00a0 I actually had a long talk with my mother the other day and we were on the topic of religion.\u00a0 We were actually talking about life and death, and the future and when she might go (die, pass away).\u00a0 That won\u2019t be for a long time, inshallah (God willing).\u00a0 But I asked her to do me one favor.\u00a0 I said, \u201cMom, when you die there might be some angels who ask you a question, and I want you to answer it; and I\u2019m not sure exactly how it goes, \u2018cause I ain\u2019t died yet.\u00a0 Remember that there\u2019s only one God, and he\u2019s never been a man.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said, \u201cI know what you are trying to tell me.\u201d [And] I said, \u201cJesus wasn\u2019t God, Ma.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of what I know has definitely shown up in my mother.\u00a0 She\u2019s no Muslim, but she knows there\u2019s only one God.\u00a0 And that makes me very happy.\u00a0 I know guys that have turned towards Islam and their families have turned them out (i.e. rejected them).<\/p>\n
AB: My family tried to.\u00a0 I just can\u2019t understand that.\u00a0 But you know what? \u00a0That\u2019s a trial.\u00a0 Although I\u2019ve changed my name for like 8 years now, they still run up calling me by my birth name.\u00a0 Then it\u2019s, \u201cOh I forgot that you\u2019re Muslim.\u201d Then it\u2019s the pork jokes.\u00a0 It never stops.<\/p>\n
E: It\u2019s one of those things where people laugh at what they don\u2019t understand.\u00a0 Or they fear what they can\u2019t grasp.\u00a0 The thing is that nobody can pretend that they don\u2019t understand it.\u00a0 Because I\u2019ve never come across anything more simple in my life.<\/p>\n
Like I remember that when I sat down and asked, \u201cSo, what does a Muslim believe,\u201d and I got the list run down to me.\u00a0 I was like, \u201cYou don\u2019t put up the wall between Christianity and Judaism.\u201d They were like, \u201cNah, it\u2019s all the same story.\u201d<\/p>\n
If when you finally get down to reading the Quran, the Bible and the Torah, which is pretty much just the Old Testament, you find that the Quran is just an affirmation of what is correct and isn\u2019t correct within those books (the Bible and the Torah).\u00a0 And then you say to yourself, \u201cHow did that go down when these cats were all from different parts of the world?\u201d \u00a0But they are all confirming each other\u2019s story.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m reading a book right now called Muhammad: The Life of the Prophet, by Karen Armstrong.\u00a0 It was written by a non-Muslim.\u00a0 So far, I\u2019m only about a quarter of the way through; but it starts out telling you how they originally tried to make Muhammad look like the most evil man on the earth; that he established Islam under the sword.\u00a0 But then you learn that Muhammad only fought when he had to.\u00a0 Muhammad only fought to defend Islam.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very good book about the man.\u00a0 It just lets you know that this cat was a man.\u00a0 We ain\u2019t trying to tell you that he was anything else but a man.\u00a0 We\u2019re telling you as Muslims that he was the most perfect example of a man to walk the earth so far.\u00a0 And from what I\u2019ve read he is the last one to come of his kind.<\/p>\n
When you get beyond being scared of Farrakhan and what he\u2019s sayin\u2019 — and here as a white person I\u2019m speaking — when you get beyond the ignorance of believing that Islam has anything to do with just people that are blowing up things, that doesn\u2019t have anything to do with Islam.\u00a0 They might do it in the name of Islam.\u00a0 But it has nothing to do with Islam.\u00a0 You can\u2019t argue with it.<\/p>\n
When I explain Jesus to a Christian, he can\u2019t argue with me.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t mean argue, saying, \u201cJesus isn\u2019t God!\u201d \u00a0I mean, how much more sense does it make that he\u2019s a man? \u00a0If I was Christian, which to me means to be Christ-like, and God asks me, \u201cHey how come you weren\u2019t more like Jesus?\u201d \u00a0I\u2019ll say, I wasn\u2019t more like Jesus because you made him half of a God [and] I\u2019m only a man?\u201d \u00a0That doesn\u2019t make any sense.<\/p>\n
God doesn\u2019t want things hard on us.\u00a0 God wants things easy as possible.\u00a0 God is going to make it as easy as possible.\u00a0 If you ask and you are sincere, God will bring it to you.\u00a0 He might throw some rocks on your path, to make you trip and stumble.\u00a0 But it\u2019s gonna come to you.<\/p>\n
AB: Talk to me about the first and second time you took your Shahadah (profession of faith).<\/p>\n
E: Well the first time, it was right after I had heard a tape from Warith Deen Muhammad (son of Nation of Islam founder, Elijah Muhammad, who took most of the Nation of Islam into mainstream Islam).\u00a0 That just kinda broke down the whole Jesus thing.\u00a0 He explained that we (Muslims) do Christians a great favor by bringing Jesus down to the level of a man.\u00a0 Why would God create a man who is half a God and compare us to him? \u00a0And it just sent off a bomb in my head.\u00a0 So I took Shahadah.\u00a0 And then the initial high wore off.<\/p>\n
It was almost like a Christian who says that they accept Jesus.\u00a0 Then they say, \u201cNo matter what I do now I\u2019m saved.\u201d \u2018Cause I was raised with that kinda mentality.\u00a0 Like, \u201cOK, I accept the truth so let me just go out here and sin my butt off and I\u2019m saved.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t really claim to be Muslim though at that time.\u00a0 I picked and chose what I wanted to believe.\u00a0 God gave me leeway for a time.\u00a0 But eventually it was time to fish or cut the line.\u00a0 I was coming to a point where I was unsatisfied emotionally, and spiritually.\u00a0 I had money in the bank and a $100,000 car, women left and right — everything that you think you want.\u00a0 And then just sitting there being like, \u201cWhy am I unhappy?\u201d \u00a0Finally that voice that talks to you — not the whisper (of Satan) — the voice said, \u201cWell, basically you\u2019re unhappy because you\u2019re living foul and you\u2019re not trying to do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
My stubbornness at that time wouldn\u2019t allow me to talk about it at that time.\u00a0 You get in that state of mind where you\u2019re like, \u201cI can figure this out all by myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
I finally got humble enough to talk to Divine and Abdullah about it.\u00a0 They asked me, \u201cHow do you feel? \u00a0What do you think it is?\u201d \u00a0So finally I\u2019m sittin\u2019 there taking Shahadah again.\u00a0 From that point on I\u2019ve made a commitment where I\u2019m going to try my best.\u00a0 I\u2019m gonna do my best to make my prayers, let\u2019s start there.\u00a0 Let\u2019s not beat ourselves up because we went out last night and had a drink.\u00a0 Let\u2019s make our prayers and pray for the strength to stop doing one thing at a time.\u00a0 That\u2019s what I\u2019m still dealing with.<\/p>\n
You know, once you get over the big things, it becomes very subtle.\u00a0 It can be as subtle as looking at a man, and not even speaking bad about him, but back-biting him in your mind.\u00a0 The easy ones to beat — well I shouldn\u2019t say easy — the big ones are easy to notice.\u00a0 It\u2019s the subtle psychological stuff that helps you get into who really you are.\u00a0 You gotta be able to face the truth of who you are.\u00a0 If you are not able to face that truth of who you are, you\u2019re gonna crumble, man.<\/p>\n
People question me and go, \u201cYou\u2019re Muslim?\u201d \u00a0And I\u2019m like, \u201cYeah I\u2019m Muslim, but I\u2019m also a professional sinner.\u201d I\u2019m tryin\u2019 to get over it, tryin\u2019 to retire.\u00a0 I won\u2019t front and say I\u2019m better than you.\u00a0 I just believe that I\u2019ve been shown the truth and hopefully that will save me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adisa Banjoko is a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay Area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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