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Jalil Abdul Muntaqim: Political Prisoner Since 1971

Jalil Muntaqim has spent forty one of his sixty years locked behind bars, paying a heavy price for his participation in the Black Liberation Movement, a struggle he has never abandoned, even behind bars.

A Youth of Concious 

Jalil, born on October 18, 1951, in Oakland, California, grew up in a family environment imbued with an awareness of the political battles of the day, of the history of Black people in amerika and the struggle for freedom that has been waged on this continent for centuries. As he has explained,

My mother taught us [my sister and I] that we are African. She made that a very important lesson for us; she said, “You are African, don’t let anybody call you anything other than that.” … In our house we used to have pictures of H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X – so these individuals, these were our icons in the household …

In the 1960s Jalil attended high school in San Jose, California, where he earned a scholarship to an advanced high school math and science program. He also received a summer scholarship for a San Jose State College math and engineering course. Jalil participated in NAACP youth organizing during the civil rights movement. In high school, he became a leading member of the Black Student Union, often touring in “speak-outs” with the BSU Chairman of San Jose State and City College.

As he has stated in the documentary Jalil Muntaqim: A Voice for Liberation:

The assassination of Martin Luther King, that’s one thing that impacted me. The other thing that really impacted me was the 1968 Olympics when John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists in protest – that was significant. John Carlos used to be one of my math tutors, so the culture, the African culture and the politics and the time, the struggle that was going on, the civil rights movement that was going on at that time, being a part of that and being impressed by that – and then, on the other hand seeing the Black Panther Party taking this other stroke after the death of Martin Luther King – after his assassination I began to realize that maybe this non-violent protest thing in not going to be all that there’s going to be in order to make real changes in this country.

The Dark Day

Two months shy of his 20th birthday, Jalil was captured along with Albert “Nuh” Washington in a midnight shoot-out with San Francisco police. When Jalil was arrested, he was a high school graduate and employed as a social worker.

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Posted by on May 22, 2012 in Biographies, Campaigns

 

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Tariq Mehanna: May 17, 2010 (What’s It Like… 4)

At this moment, I can glance out my window and see a 60-ft. stretch of grass patches, dirt, sunflowers, and gravel that ends at the perimeter fence. At various times of the day, droves of small birds swoop down onto the grass before my window, hopping around from one place to another while rapidly pecking the ground with their beaks. They keep at this for maybe ten minutes before flying off in the same formation they landed in.

To be able to witness their grace and beauty is a treat in here, thanks to Allah. But more significant in my mind is the fact that they were choosing to land here, of all places. These creatures possess the wings to carry them soaring heights and great distances to land on any plot of land they so choose. Human beings that we are, we have no such wings and are here against our choosing. Yet, the birds make a daily choice to land behind the razor wire, on prison grounds.

There must be a sign in this …

By definition, prison is a tool of confinement. the sovereignty of its inhabitants is usurped. It is characterized by limitation. It is not designed to offer much to those who it swallows into its cold, gray belly … conventionally speaking. For certain people, however, there is an exception to this. For certain prisoners, there is a treasure hidden here that only they can find; it is a treasure that, when found, turns this institution of confinement upside down and inside out. It is the treasure of the very freedom that was intended to be usurped – rather, a freedom greater than the one intended to be usurped. This treasure, when found , can transform a tool of confinement into a tool of liberation, as Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah realized on his way into prison while reciting: {… inside, it will be mercy, and on the outside, it will be torment} from Surat al-Hadid, v.13.  Read the rest of this entry »

 
 

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