Amina Amatul Haqq
Amina Amatul Haqq | Image captured at the Paper Monday Studio in New York
بِسْمِ ٱللَّٰهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
The audio shared above is from an intimate interview with sister Amina Amatul Haqq after her portrait session with Rog & Bee Walker of Paper Monday. This was sister Amina Amatul Haqq’s final formal portrait and interview. We thank Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer for granting us permission to share the audio file, which connects to a much larger project, Umi’s Archive.
Umi's Archive is a multipart, multimedia research project that digs deep into the life of one woman, Amina Amatul Haqq (1950-2017), neé Audrey Weeks, to explore the meanings of being Black in the world. Umi’s Archive launched as a “(re)claimed space where we remember and dream” in 2021 with a six-part online exhibition series curated by Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer.
Umi means mother in Arabic, and the exhibitions explored many themes, from anti-Black racism and Black girlhood to Blacks in the military and religion and spirituality, through the lens of Dr. Su'ad's mother’s life. The project draws on a family archive that includes over a thousand items dating from the late 1920s and spans multiple continents. Beginning with the questions – Whose account of the past counts? Whose lives should be remembered? – the series, which ran from April to October, was an invitation to think about power in archives and the significance of Black women’s stories.
A relaunch of the exhibition series is in the works. Subscribe to learn more.
Rog Walker: Let's start the 70’s. Right…
Amina Amatul Haqq: You don’t wanna start with '68?
Rog Walker: Huh? You wanna start with '68?
Amina Amatul Haqq: Yeah. I graduated from high school, well MLK was killed on my 18th birthday, April 4, 1968.
Rog Walker: Wow.
Amina Amatul Haqq: And that it was significant because I was already becoming a Black militant. So that just pushed me over the edge, you know? And if you go to the 70’s, I was embarking on a political journey.
I was member of the African Liberation Support Committee, Pan African Congress, Black Panther Party, the All African Liberation Support Committee. I might have mentioned that. And I got into my culture. When I went to Ohio State, we brought African dance to Columbus, Ohio. And I organized this group called the, Uhuru Dancers, 100 pounds ago. And they actually later on went to FESTAC in Nigeria, you know. But I wasn't going to squander my parents tuition money. So I went ahead and got my BA and my Masters at Ohio State. We shut the school down in 1970 and came in the Black Studies program, you know. We understood that we demonstrated on campus for Black studies. The white kids were against the war in Vietnam. So we had sort of like a coalition. And I remember when the National Guard came and its the first time I ever smelled tear gas, you know, and we actually shut down. That was a quarter system. So, the spring quarter got disbanded, and I had to make up all my incompletes over the summer, ya know, of 1970.
Rog Walker: So a lot of times people remember we study a lot of these things, like Stokely Carmichael and all that.
Amina Amatul Haqq: I met Stokely Carmichael.
Rog Walker: Yeah.
Bee Walker: Amazing.
Rog Walker: I just love it. A lot of people talk about the climate now versus the climate during that time. Do you see similarities or do you feel like, okay, well the, I guess the Black liberation at the time versus like what the Black flight is for, the black fight is now. Do you think it's similar?
Amina Amatul Haqq: There are some similarities, but I think we had chartered territory we never charted before. I grew up seeing dogs being put on Black people for voting rights on the six o’clock news, and it made me very angry, you know. And you heard about people being lynched, found out in Mississippi swamps. I had missed Emmet Till because I was only four when Emmett Till was killed. But I remember my mother crying about it, and I said, who the heck is Emma Till? Found that later on as a teenager who Emmett Till was, you know.
My mother had me read the autobiography of Malcolm X when I was in the 11th grade in high school. She read the books because I sort of grew up in a middle class community. I played classical piano, my were parents of Caribbean descent. So they were very much about education. My father was a lieutenant in the fire department, which was like having a degree back in the 50’s, being a Black man in the fire department. My mother was primarily stay at home mom, she worked part time. And, umm, we had heard about this man Malcolm X. I said who the heck is Malcolm X?
But my mother had me read his autobiography in 1967, and I used to love to go to house parties. I used to love the party, party, party. And I remember locking myself in my bedroom the whole weekend. I couldn't put the book down. And I never forgot the last part of the book when he converted to orthodox Islam, and had talked about his trip to Mecca. That stayed in the back of my head for years to come. And so I read that in '67, went away to college in '68, you know, came back to New York in '73, and I ended up meeting a brother that was doing time in prison. Umm, that impacted my life, and I thought I had ran into one of my Malcolms [clicks tongue a few times], you know.
So, and that sort of got me really thinking about what's the purpose of life, what am I living, what is marriage, what is commitment? All of that as I got into my middle twenties, ya know. And even though that brother and I never got together, the person that gave me, what we call it taking your shahadah, bearing witness that there is no G-d but Allah, and that [Prophet] Muhammed is his messenger. I bore witness at a prison. They let the Muslim brothers in prison have different ceremonial things. So, I was there. And the man that actually led me to take my shahadah was Rasul Sulaiman, aka Robert 35X ak Karate Bob. That was one of Malcolm’s right hand man. He was doing time for killing the Jersey State Trooper at Green Haven Correctional Facility. And my mother’s friends would call up on Sunday, you know, Audrey, because my other name was Audrey, you know, Audrey was up at the prison, and I became very friendly with some of the sisters that were going to see their husbands in prison.
And I just investigated and I read, I got a Quran six months before I became Muslim, from a masjid that was called Yasin, it is not there anymore. 52 [inaudible] Place. And that was a whole community that was intact from the early '70’s, cause now we're talking about '74 going in '75. And so in my search, eventually, I decided I would do it under my girlfriend in town, which is still my friends say, “you ain't going to be able to wear lipstick. You ain't going to be able to party. You ain’t going to have boyfriends.” But something inside me, sort of the faith was building inside of me. And one day I went up there and told him I was ready to become Muslim. And that was March 23, 1975. I'm a date person. I like dates.
Amina Amatul Haqq | Image captured at the Paper Monday Studio in New York
Well, Muslims were looked upon as kind of strange, especially because I had become Sunni Muslim. I didn't join the Nation, even though I had respect for people in the Nation of Islam, but religiously I knew they doctrine really wasn't genuine. Even though I like some of the how you say some of the things the outcomes were a lot of brothers that were on drugs or drinking clean their act up became family men and stuff like that, but to me it was too regimented and too robotic. So that sort of kept me away. And then I wasn't going to worship Elijah Muhammad. So, those are things that sort of kept me away. I respected it, but I sort of kept away.
So, when orthodox Islam came, I met people like the late Sheikh Daoud Ahmad Faisal, he was one of the early African American converts to Islam and an Imam. He died in 1980 at the age of 89. I'd become close to him and, his now late wife, Mother Khadijah, they had something called The Islamic Mission [of America] on State Street [143 State Street, Brooklyn, NY], and it turned out to be coincidentally, three blocks from my first real job, which I was working in the criminal justice system as a pretrial release lawyer, pretrial release counselor. I was thinking about going into a criminal law at the time, but I still had my ED degree. There was a freeze on hiring, so I couldn't get into Board of [Education] right away. And so, I did the job as a pretrial release counselor for four years and found out State Street was just four blocks for me. So, on Fridays, I would have an extended lunch and I would go to jum’uah.
And State Street, and I became friends with some of the people that became Muslim in the 40’s and the 50’s, African Americans. You know, a lot of them were, you know, jazz artists converted to Islam. And I was definitely a progressive jazz person, as well as into African music.
So, umm, in terms of Muslims. The Sunni Muslims are looked upon as kind of strange, different. Maybe people thought we were just being super African because all of us did wear African prints and stuff. But in terms of the climate, I still was supporting it, sort of got calmed down a little bit. Where before, if you saw me in '73, when that kid Clifford Glover got shot by the police, I was out there with picket signs and everything talking about, you know picket at the 103rd precinct, all of that. And my heart I still was against that type of oppression. But I sort of calmed down as I was trying to navigate my way into Islam.
But I say in terms of the political climate, umm, I think there's some similarities as things happen. But we've been a reactionary community, African Americans. We react when things happen, and then we cool off for a while, and then something else will happen and we react. And you got people that are leaders that will try to keep things going, but I think it was more consciousness. I think now it's more materialistic, you know. Which I understand too, because everybody wants to live, the quote unquote, the good life. But when I went away to college at '68, my thing was to become a teacher, and I was going to bring the knowledge back to the community and help my people elevate themselves. That was always my goal. It wasn't to become rich overnight or to have some fancy dancy job, uh uh, I wasn't into that, you know, but some people are. Some people went into business and did very well, you know, it depends.
But I think all of us will agree that racism is still alive and well in America. Some things is not as overt as before, you know. People have made moves, you know, going up to the political corporate ladder a little bit, but then look what's happening with the prison system, you know, look what's happening, you know, with a lot of our young Black males.
And when I taught, you know, I always sort of got along with the guys more so than the girls that I taught, basically it was secondary. I was high school teacher. I taught Spanish history and English as a second language. I majored in Spanish and history. I liked them both. So I majored in both and minored in political science, you know, and I basically wanted, you know, to do things, you know, to offer some guidance to the community. Even as a Muslim, you know, I would sit up and people would say, who this lady? Miss Weeks got this thing on her head. And they would constantly ask me about why I took my religious choice, because I also felt we needed a certain level of morality, you know, that, I was I grew up in a very moral type home environment, and I felt that we had to bring that morality back into the community, but, you know.
The first time I was teaching a family tree, in Spanish, when I was teaching at one of the high schools and kids were coming up to me with, “well my baby’s daddy is different than my sister baby's daddy,” And suddenly I couldn't even do the project, ya know. I realized then there was a break down in the family units. Women were not being married anymore. There were serial relationships. And not to pass judgment, because I've been married several times myself as a Muslim, so I ain’t gon’ pass judgment. But at the same time, it is a breakdown of stability. The family life and having the man outside the home has been detrimental to us as a community, ya know. So that's another thing.
The proliferation of gangs. There was the Black Savage Skulls and some other people in the 70’s. You heard about them, but you didn't see all this gang activity that you see now, ya know, and the cruelty. There was violence in the 50’s with The Bishops and the [Mau Mau] Chaplains in Brooklyn. They were people, they're probably dead now because people would be ten years or so older than me. And then when I said when I was coming through. You had the Black Savage Skulls and the Decepticons and all of this. And I couldn't understand that cause I didn't grow up with a gang mentality. I grew up with a community organizer mentality. And then I was a female, so that affected more than men.
My brother didn't, I had one brother. He didn't even relate to the gangs, but he got caught up with the drugs. You know, he died from his aorta exploding on him, you know, in 2006, when he was only 53. And that's my only sibling. My mother tried her best to do everything in the world. He had been in rehabs, everything. He just couldn't cut loose that drug, cocaine.
Rog Walker: How does your faith inform, like the way you go about things now?
Amina Amatul Haqq: Umm, basically, you know, well, we have loads of mosques now that we never had before. I live in Jamaica Queens, and I remember a cab driver picking me up one day, a gypsy cab driver, saying, it used to be just black and white, and I now like Black and Indian. And so I'm more open racially to different ethnic groups. I love curry in a hurry. I love all kinds. I like Ghanese food, I like Malaysian food. I basically have, I'm really basically trying to learn more about my religion. So I just take Arabic, for example, I take classical Arabic classes, but at the same time, I just try to be an example of decency in the community. I have been a part of like the community watch the community boards. Most Muslims tend to try to be involved in things that is going to like uplift the community, whether the people are Muslim or not Muslim. But I also do support different Muslim ventures as well.
And, umm, I would say I got a little quiet in my later years cause, like I said, I'm 67 years old and I've had some heart issues, but I still, you know, try to relate to people in a very humane level, respectful level. You respect me, I respect you, you know. And, like, if there's a petition going around and sometimes if there's a demonstration happening, I'll be there, ya know, to support it. I'll put my money where my mouth is, you know. And right now, I'm on the thing where I can't stand the thought of people starving to death, so I give to a lot of programs to support feeding people, you know.
So, I would say the batons been passed on to, you know, this one over here [pointing to Su’ad] to some degree. To some extent Sharifa, but Sharifa has really been hooked up with school. Su’ad is very political and vocal about things as well. And, umm, I feel that right now I should be a source of wisdom. People should be able to learn from some of my mistakes and some of my observations as an elder in the community now. I can say elder, but I am an elder [giggles]. It is what it is.
I try to be a balancer. You know, I definitely, as an African American, know that like anybody else, I could be pulled over just for the color of my skin. And now sometimes I figure I'm wearing a double whammy because they see this because of all the anti Islamic stuff that's on the TV programs, the news about terrorists and people thinking that all Muslims are terrorists, even though the people in my neighborhood, know I've been Muslim 42 years, and I haven’t blowed up nothing. And I tell them all in a heartbeat, if I didn't blow up America in the 60’s, why am I gonna blow up America now? What sense does that make ya know? But I try to be clear that people know that basically I'm a peaceful individual. And I just set by example.
Like during Ramadan, when we have breakfast in the evening, sometimes we set out food for the homeless, for people that may be hungry. We have our Eïd celebrations at the end of the holy month. We'll invite people from the community to come eat with us, you know. So as a Black person, I'm still concerned about the plight of my people, about the gentrification that's happening in all the boroughs, you know, and my people being more likely to get arrested, especially a Black male - endangered species. So, I'm very much about all of that. And at the same time, like I said, I try to enlighten, even some people, like, more so in Su’ad’s generation that have grown up here. Even though they came from immigrant homes, they've come to understand what has happened, because they came over, even some Africans, Black Africans have come over here saying, stay away from the African Americans. They thieves and this and that, and realize things happen to them. Like, Amadou Diallo, he was from Senegal, you know, umm. They realized that they could fall into the same, you know, clutches even though they may have more of a solid family structure, a culture that they can relate to, they realize that this stuff called racism is real, you know.
And so, we do get some enlightened Muslims, even from some South Asian/Arab communities, will support our struggle. Not a whole lot, but some really do support our struggle. I don’t know if you ever heard of Linda Sarsour? She has the Arab American League, but she also, when you see her talk, she sound like a soul sista because she understands the whole politics of what's happenin’ right, right now. And you got people like that, that you know, we can easily coalesce with to try to, you know, do something to take the burden of oppression off of people of color, brown and Black, you know.
