Author Archives: lesterknibbs

Every Complaint Is an Opportunity In the opening of the Qur’an (al-Faatiḥ ah) Allah has us say: “Eeyaaka na`budu (we work for only you)wa-eeyaaka nasta`een (and we ask only you for help).” A servant of Allah is never out of work, because as long as we are servants of Allah (which is forever) we haveContinue reading “Abolishing Unemployment”

The year 2012 of the Christian calendar marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Bible. To my knowledge there is only one book in any single language that has had a greater influence in the world, and that book is the Qur’an. The global influence of the KingContinue reading “The Qur’an, the King James Bible, and the Unity of Nations”

Eugene Chenhttp://www.ijebu.org/conquerors/eugeneChen/ Several years ago, I met the great-nephew of Eugene Chen (1878-1944). I was the first person he had met who knew who his great-uncle was. Eugene Chen was the personal secretary and advisor of Sun Yet-sen, the founder of Nationalist China. I read about Eugene Chen in World’s Great Men of Color byContinue reading “Individual Questions of African American Identity”

Some years ago – fifteen or twenty, maybe – I had just walked out of the Friday service (“Jumah”) held in the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan when a man I had never seen before walked up to me and began kissing me all over my face. My embarrassment was not because we were surroundedContinue reading “Brother-Love, Words, and the Disintegrating Society”

Most people in our society believe that reality is the physical world they see in front of them. They may call themselves Christians or Muslims or Jews, or whatever, but they consider this to be religion – which is to say, a state of mind. Not only do most people in this society not believeContinue reading “Mundane Reality — Vast Cosmos”

Some years ago, I read that we have billions of creatures living in our mouths – as many as there are people on Earth. They belong there. It is their home. The billions of tiny creatures that live in your mouth haven’t the slightest idea that you exist. We human beings constitute well over sevenContinue reading “Tiny Creatures — Enormous Pride”

The Great Terrorism (1619-1865)and the Lesser Terrorism (1865-1965) The Middle Passage and plantation slavery (as it is usually called) were and remain the defining events in the formation of our African American identity. It does not seem that the horrific traumas of the Middle Passage were deliberately designed as a form of cultural erasure, butContinue reading “Music, Slavery, and Systems of Terror”

There is a place in Kenya, about 50 miles southwest of Nairobi, called Olorgesailie, where evidence of humanoid activity is found. The activity was making stone axes. The stones from which these axes were made were carried from mountains several miles away. The stone axes themselves were too large and rather awkward to be ofContinue reading “Olorgesailie, My Piano-Fingers, and the Qur’an”