MASON FUNK:

Do us a favor, start by just stating and spelling your name.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Okay. My name is Imam Daayiee Abdullah. That's I, M, A, M. D like in David, A, A ,Y like in young, I, as in ice, E, E. Abdullah common spelling A, B, D like in David, U, L, L, A, H.

MASON FUNK:

Okay, great. Thank you. And please tell us the date and place of your birth.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Okay. My date of birth is January 11th, 1954. It was a few months before Brown v. Board of Education decision came about. And I was born in Detroit, Michigan.

MASON FUNK:

So tell us a little bit about your childhood in Detroit, family [inaudible]

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, I come from a family of many boys and I have a half-sister from my father's first marriage,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and then I have a sister, full-blooded sister, who's the youngest of all of us. The unusual thing is my father comes from a family of 12, and I think there were nine boys and three girls, and most of the boys had multiple sons. So there've been occasions when I've been with the family, larger extended family, and there would be 30, 40 men there and just a few females who would be there. So I grew up in a mostly male dominated

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

family group and extended family as well. But I think because of the circumstances of my parents, both of them coming from, provided a major situation that wasn't common at the time. My father was very bright, very educated, graduated summa cum laude

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

from his high school and they go to college. My mother comes from a business family. I'm not certain if you've ever heard of Madam CJ Walker, who was the hair producer. Actually, she was the first black female millionaire in the United States back in the 1910s. Anyway, my grandmother was one of those black women who were trained in doing hair.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

My grandmother and my grandfather migrated to Detroit as the auto industry started to open up for blacks to start working there. She opened up a beautician shop to serve those women, the wives of those men who worked here, but also she got a contract with the black funeral home. Because of that, my mother and her sisters, she has two sisters and a brother, during that time, they all learned how to do hair. On the weekends,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Thursday and Friday nights, they would go down to the funeral home and do women's hair, and during that time, that was $5 a head. Generally, there was three, six, sometimes as many as 10 women who needed their hair done for the funerals that weekend, so they made big money They own their own home. They had a vehicle and this is how my mother and her sisters saved the money so they could go to school, so that they wound up going to college

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

by doing that. That's a very different situation for most people who were migrating from the south with low education if they could get a job, paying very well at the time, to the extent to where people who had third grade education, working night shift, could buy a new Cadillac every couple of years, several members in the family doing the same thing, they lived very well. One of the reasons

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

why the civil rights movement did very well from the Detroit area, because many of those people had the money to give to the cause, as well as Motown developing, because all the auto industry people, on Thursday nights and Fridays, Thursday night for those who work working afternoon and evening shifts, and those who work on Fridays, and the record shops would sell the music, the 45s (RPM) records, the albums. These people could buy multiple pieces of music without it being a real strain on their money.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Motown grew from that type of atmosphere as well. Back to my family, I have three elder brothers, I have three younger brothers and my sister. One of my elder brothers, one of my younger brothers have transitioned within the last five years, one from cancer, the other one had some other medical issues, kidney failure type things, but the rest of us are still here.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Because of both sides of the family, I have relatives here in Chicago, both from my mother and father's side, the family was still around. I enjoyed growing up as I did because my parents were very much about education. They were very strong on that. Whatever you wanted to do you could do, in terms of that. My parents trained us in such a way that if you want to do something,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

you can do it, but you have rules and regulations you have to abide by. You break the rules, you'll be treated like a criminal. If you broke the rules, then you got punished, your privileges were taken away completely. If you had to go to school, you were at school, but you had to be home by such and such a time from school. You couldn't battle around. So it was great growing up. My parents were also scout leaders in the community. We went to the Scouts in our church,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and they were at the Brewster Douglass Community Center where they participated. They were well known in the community, all the kids, our friends and things like that, used my mother and father as sounding blocks, if you will, or if they didn't have a parent to come to, they were the people that they came to. The reason I know this is when my father passed, all of my brother's friends who I had not seen for years showed up for the funeral.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

It was just a wide array of people, young men to older men, who came for his funeral. And then for my mother's, same thing. All the younger women that I knew growing up, they showed up as grandparents, things like that. And so we knew that they were very much loved in the community, but they also gave a lot to the folks there.

MASON FUNK:

So they were like surrogates, almost,

MASON FUNK:

for a lot more people than just the people in their own children.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

That's correct. That's correct.

MASON FUNK:

You also mentioned someone named BL Jackson.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Yes. Well, BL Jackson was my scout leader, my boy scout leader at the church, and he was a great guy. He was a friend of my father, both in the male choir at the church, and they had known each other for decades. BL was the kind of person where I could talk with him and learn from him

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

as well. But also he would stand up for me. Like sometimes I have difficulties with my father, and he would step in and say, my father's name was John, "You know, John, the way you did things when you were a kid, well, they do it differently now." He put that kind of support there so that I knew that I could do some of the things that may have appeared unusual, but I was still allowed to do those things. When we were younger, elementary school, like second grade, we could go to the public library

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

once a week, pick up our books and things and bring them home, and we could do it on our own, meaning that, I learned later, the first time my mother would put us on the bus, well, my father was on the back of the bus, he was watching us. But we learned how to be responsible, do the things you say you're gonna do and get them done and then come back. The reason I say that is when I was 12, I went to high school, I was in high school at 12.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

When I was 13, 14 when we would have plays to go to and see there at the ... I forgot the name of the theater now. But anyway, when we would go to the theater to see the plays and things like that, I had permission to stay out until midnight. I would go with my high school buddies, we would go to the thing and then we stop and have a burger and fries and all that. Then we would go home. I had permission to

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

be home by midnight.

MASON FUNK:

It sounds like it was both a very structured environment, but also because you followed the rules, there was also some freedom for you to get out and explore and not feel like you have to just be [crosstalk]

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

That's right. And then I had a paper route with the Detroit news, one of the two newspapers there

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

in Detroit, and because of the situation as Detroit public schools integrated, there were a lot of people who moved out of the Detroit area to the suburbs, so there were a number of areas like Southfield and places like that that were growing in population. As a paperboy, I wound up selling a lot of papers

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

in the neighborhood. I came to find out why people weren't getting papers because either the delivery boys were not dependable or they didn't take the extra care for the people. What I did is, this was when saran wrap came out, I bought saran wrap and wrapped the newspaper, so if they didn't have a screen door, their papers wouldn't get wet. The only rule I had was that if your dog is in the yard and I throw the paper and they tear it up, that's your problem.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I have a time I'm delivering, and if you want your paper behind your door, make certain your dog isn't out during that time. That was the thing. I did very well. I wound up getting large numbers of new clients or new people taking the paper. I wound up being from the inner-city Detroit, and outdoing the kids in the suburbs who were moving into these new cul-de-sacs, when they would get 40 new customers, well, I'm in

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

the black situated part of Detroit and I'm getting 50, 60 new customers. I wound up going to the '67 Montreal World's Fair, a couple of trips to Washington DC, a trip to New York. Then, the newspaper had these contests, and they would have trips. And how many times I went to Sandusky, I don't remember, with free tickets. It was really good growing up there, in Detroit,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I think because of that atmosphere, the income levels, there were a lot of people who had a higher income level. They did a lot of different things for the kids there. In high school, I was in the AV group, Audio Visual group. We wound up getting special permission to do special events. We were the first high school in Detroit to have

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

an in-house camera system. That allowed us to go out. We got invited by W-4, which is a TV station there, Channel 4. When we went down for the Thanksgiving parade, they actually shared their platform with us. So it was that kind of thing

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

where we had opportunities that generally wouldn't happen for a lot of folks because of our interest and things that we did.

MASON FUNK:

That's cool. That's cool.

MASON FUNK:

I'm going to jump forward because the next place I have located you is Pride in San Francisco in 1977. By that point you're in your thirties. No, you're still in your twenties.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Right.

MASON FUNK:

Roughly speaking, skipping forward in time, how did you find your own sexuality, beginning to figure this out about you, to the point where you ended up

MASON FUNK:

in San Francisco for pride in 1977?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, that's really easy. When I was 40, I was talking with my mother. I just come back from overseas, and I was talking with her and I had shown her this card, then had two little black boys in Harlem, back in the 1940s. One of the little boys was on his bended knee holding another boy's hand who was seated on the curb. It was like he was proposing to the other boy and the boy had his cap pulled down and felt like he was embarrassed,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

type of thing. My mother said, "Oh, that was you at four years old, always talking about your boyfriend and who you're going to marry, and you're going to be the daddy and all that." So at four years old, I was quite aware of my sexuality and I knew there were rules, you get married, that kind of thing. But the sexual part, it should be opposite sex and all that, never occurred to me. But I knew that as I started to enter school that this was a subject you didn't bring up.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

And so I just kept it quiet in terms of that, but they didn't stop me. I had my first boyfriend when I was in high school, leaving junior high school, going into high school. His name was Otis. He was three years older than me. We were boyfriends through that time until my senior year in high school and he committed suicide. At that point, I realized,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and later years, that he probably did so because of the way people would treat gay people during that time. I really don't know for certain, because I didn't see any of the signs of him having some difficulties. His mother had died about a year before that, and my mom and a couple other ladies in the neighborhood he had a sister, a younger sister, told them that if you need anything, let us know, that kind of thing. It just didn't seem that there was a problem. And then

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I remember seeing Otis that Saturday, he had come by my house that Saturday and then that following Tuesday, his cousin William called me and told me that he had committed suicide. But I was very aware of my sexuality, even in high school. Although I wasn't sexually involved, I did have a girlfriend in high school just to keep folks at a distance kind of thing. But then

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

after graduating from college, I was working ... Well, I did my first year of college and decided, since I was only 16, I was too young for that atmosphere. Because young people drinking, smoking weed, bad sex, all that, and I'm still reading comic books. This wasn't the atmosphere for me. I was afraid that they may try to do something, induce me with drugs or something while there. I told my parents I wanted to come back home,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

go to school at night and then work, which they said was fine, and I did that. When I graduated, I worked for a couple of years and then I went to California. One of my good neighbors, Elaine, had just finished school at Michigan state university, getting her degree in psychology. She moved out to San Francisco for a first position. I went out to visit and fell in love with San Francisco. I came back a month later, I had quit my job and moved out to San Francisco.

MASON FUNK:

Was it kind of like an open secret, like you mentioned your mom always said, well, that was you at four years old. As you got older and came into junior high and high school, did your parents essentially ... Was it like a tacit awareness? He's got a boyfriend and we're not going to talk about it. Was it one of those kinds of deals? No, they never let me know that they even knew. The reason I say that is I graduated in December

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

of 1969, which was literally six months after Stonewall. We had a ritual with my father, when you graduate from high school, you proffer your diploma as proof that you're now your own man or your own woman. They didn't require that you go to college, but that you had to finish high school. With that, I could do what I wanted to do afterwards, that was the thing. While I was having the conversation, I told him,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I said, "Well, I want you to know this, but I think I'm gay." And then of course in the 1970s, parents would ask, 'what did we do wrong?' That type of thing. Those were the typical questions. I told him he didn't do anything wrong. I'm cool. My parents, both of them, said, well, you upheld all the standards that we have for all your brothers, so it's nothing wrong with you. With that ...

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

How do I put it? With that support and affirmation, I went forward knowing that I was a man loving man.

MASON FUNK:

That's great. That's so refreshing sometimes, to have someone not go through a lot of interaction turmoil about coming out and knowing who they are, because we obviously hear a lot of stories about people who have a lot of difficulties.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, the thing is that as I grew older, I kept meeting more people, particularly in the black and Latino community that had

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

the similar experience. Their parents were not negative. And as I continued to develop, get involved in the gay community, I kept meeting more and more people. So we eventually actually started our own black gay publication, back then in the early seventies. This was part of the way in which we developed ... The way we looked at is if you could take a magazine and we didn't have ads from bars and all that kind of stuff,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

but it was just a magazine that talked about LGBT topics, men and women's topics, women's health, that type of thing. You can throw it on the table with some Look magazine or Life magazine, and you wouldn't know it until you started reading it, that it was an unusual publication. My parents kept it on the coffee table. That made me feel and let me know that they were proud of me and that I was doing things and some of my other relatives,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

cousins and stuff who came out later, because of my coming out earlier, made it much easier for them.

MASON FUNK:

Okay. Jumping forward again, you mentioned 1979, at Howard university, the coming together, I think it was in conjunction with a March on Washington, but specifically the National Black Gay and Lesbian Task Force. By the way,

MASON FUNK:

we interviewed ABilly Jones, who of course, since I think they are

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

That's right. Well, he was actually one of the founders of the group. Yes. I have known ABilly for 40 plus years. It's been 42 years I've known ABilly and Chris.

MASON FUNK:

Introduce us to this conference and what was significant about it.

MASON FUNK:

Where it took place, against the backdrop of the March, and what was significant about it?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Okay, ABilly Jones, Gil Gerald. I'm trying to think of some of the people's names. A few of them have transitioned. So I think of some of the names Charlene Cheatham, a couple of members of the, I think it was Darlene, and I can't think of Darlene's last name. But anyway, these were some of the people

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

who were involved in the [crosstalk].

MASON FUNK:

If you can just say, "In 1979, a group of people," something like that.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Okay. When, 1979, I wound up, because I was working for governor Jerry Brown in California and told him I was going to the March and I was one of the referees, so they gave me time off to go. I wound up getting to DC about 10 days early, and that's when I met ABilly and some of the other people

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

in the National Black Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The reason they gave the conference then because of the March on Washington, people would be coming for that. Then they had a side conference and that was for people of color. There were a number of prominent, gay and lesbian people of color who were there,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and they actually came and did workshops and things of this nature. This was that Howard university hotel, Howard university itself was very homophobic, but we were able to get the space at the hotel and it basically was booked because of the March. Holding it there really turned out to be the best thing. We had different conference meetings, workshops, things of this nature. It was the first time they'd ever put together a people of color conference

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

on that scale. And that was what it was for. That's when I got a chance to meet a wide array of people from across the country. That made it significant for me being a young man in my mid-twenties, to come into this atmosphere with all these other people from all around the country, it just let me know that gay was everywhere. People were gay everywhere.

MASON FUNK:

Specifically black people. What was the significance of that? Like, why did it matter that this was a gathering of black gays and lesbians?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, as after the March and the conference, I went back to San Francisco and decided that DC was my black gay Mecca, and that's why I left San Francisco and moved to DC. It was a place where I felt more comfortable and more at home. San Francisco was good for getting free, so to speak, but

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

it was an atmosphere that was not conducive because, I mean, there were blacks in San Francisco, black gay folks in San Francisco, in Oakland, which was not a problem, but it was just not the right atmosphere for me. And when I say that, meaning that a number of different proclivities in the gay community were things that to me were, I don't want to use the term outlandish, but it was so uniquely different. Like, the leather community,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

things of this nature, which to me was just way out there. But I came to understand it. I mean, you meet people, you can learn about it, that type of thing, but it doesn't mean that you join in like that. So it opened up my mind to the idea of what does gay mean, the spectrum of it but also that I didn't have to be in everything in order to say I'm gay.

MASON FUNK:

Gotcha. So you kind of found your black gay tribe, if you will,

MASON FUNK:

in DC.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

That's correct.

MASON FUNK:

And there were a number of people who felt the same way, both gay men and lesbians.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Yeah. I think a lot of them did. And because of DC being, at that time, it was referred to as Chocolate city, that was the place to be. People came there particularly from the south, but folks from the Midwest went there as well. Rather than going to New York or San Francisco, more black people congregated to Washington DC.

MASON FUNK:

Well, it's funny, we interviewed a woman, transgender woman named Valda Prout, who currently lives in DC. After she finished her career as a hairdresser and stylist in New York, she said, where do I want to know? She said Washington DC, and she said, because it was Chocolate City Now, we're going to leap forward again. Because somehow or another, you made your way to China and you underwent a conversion to Islam. So

MASON FUNK:

maybe tell us that story, but maybe give us a little bit of a sense of what, I think you were raised in the church, so kind of where were you at with your faith, so to speak, when this kind of profound change happened?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, let's start at the beginning. At eight years old, I got baptized. At that point, I realized that the Baptist church I was raised in was not to the faith for me. I talked with my parents about it, because you know what I said,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

they were always open to conversation and I told them, and they say, well, it's not that you have to be a Christian, but you need to have some kind of faith for some of those times when you need something to hold on to. I started then investigating another for my friends who were Jewish, who were evangelicals things of this nature. I started going to their churches and places. Even had a friend of mine, his father was black American in the Korean war, his mother was Korean. We were in elementary school together.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I got exposed to Buddhism through that way. I got exposed to so much and I didn't make any determination, but I did know that there were many names for God and that many people worshiped similarly. So this thing called God is really much bigger than what one group will say 'well, we're the only ones and no one else will make it'. Leaping forward, by the time I graduated from high school,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I was actually studying metaphysics, science of mind. And that's the faith that I carried for several years. And then when I turned around 19, that was about 18 to 19, 19 going on 20 that I got introduced to Buddhism in a more formal way. I started going to a Buddhist group, chanting things, this nature.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

And it was through that process that I learned that the body and the spirit or the soul were separate.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

It was through that combination of things that I bought. I've seen that again, there was a much broader perspective and that experience said that as people have always said, no, the body dies and spirit continues on. So that was a confirmation of that because I was actually watching my body chanting, but I recognized that I was separate from my body, at the time.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

That's what I was doing at the time. Then I was working as a course stenographer for the IRS and it was through that I met one of the tax attorneys. I mean, I should say the tax judges. He talked with me and told me he had been a course stenographer for some years earlier. When back to school, became a lawyer, tax lawyer, and now it was his first year of being a judge and he said, "Well, you're a bright guy. Have you ever considered becoming an attorney?" And I told him, no, I hadn't. We talked. We continued to talk over that year, because we would meet up

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

for two-week periods several times that year. And so I decided I was going to become a lawyer, but what kind was the question? So I quit the job. I was stationed here in Chicago actually, and I moved back to Washington DC and stayed with some friends, sleeping on the floor in my sleeping bag, but it was something that I started meditating and the vision came to me to study Chinese. And that's what I did. I wanted to go into three schools, University of Maryland,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

George Washington University and Georgetown. Long story short, Georgetown gave me a full fellowship. They actually said, we've been waiting for you. And I want them getting what they call a community fellowship before people who had a career ever wanted to go into something different. Nine months later, I was at Beijing university and that's where I got introduced to Islam, with one of my Chinese classmates who was Muslim from Urumqi.

MASON FUNK:

But it sounded like you were going towards law school and then you had a vision

MASON FUNK:

that you wanted to study Chinese?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, it was to find out what kind of lawyer would I be? And the response for that vision was the vision said to study Chinese. So that's what I did. Becoming a linguist, both in Chinese and Arabic, that opened up the world to me, so that as a lawyer, I could be an international lawyer, area specific, things of this nature. So it made it broad. I tell people that when you ask God for something, be ready for something much

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

bigger than you anticipated, and this is what happened.

MASON FUNK:

So you did become a lawyer?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I did. Well, after I finished undergrad because I spent like eight school years, because I would do nine months and then three years in country, nine months, three years in country, then the final year. So when I finished, I went into law school and then the second year I was in law school, University of Michigan offered me a fellowship. They had offered before, but

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

they offered me the fellowship and I could go to continue law school there as well. I went for my master's in law school, then finished the master's and went back to my law school. Graduated and practiced law in the area of commerce, actually it was insurance, shipping insurance type thing. I did that for a couple of years and then decided law was not for me, went back to the Middle East.

MASON FUNK:

China was earlier?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Early, yes. I was in China

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

from '83 to '86, and then I came back for the year. then '87 to '90. I was in the Middle East. So that's how that worked out. And then I graduated, I came back in '90 and I graduated '91 and then went straight into law school. Hope that makes sense.

MASON FUNK:

It makes sense to the the degree that it has to, but

MASON FUNK:

let's talk a bit more about, you mentioned you had a classmate in China who was Muslim.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Right?

MASON FUNK:

So tell us more about how things progressed from having a Muslim friend to deciding to convert to Islam.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, in the evenings, because of the way the program worked is that the classes in the morning would be with your classmates. We were 30 of us from different parts of the world, Canada, UK, US, like that. In the afternoons, we would

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

take a clash at an interest, and I liked history, so I took a history class and then you're using the language all the time. You're listening, you're using the language and that way you're forced to really participate. In the class, the guy asked me, he said, "Well, do you know anything about Islam?" He said, "Where are you from?" I tell him from Detroit, blah, blah, blah. And to those evening conversations where we would go out for Jiaoza, those are the dumplings, we'd go out for Jiaoza and beer or something like that, for dinner.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

That was when the conversation, he said, "Well, do you know anything about Islam?" And I told him about NOI, Nation of Islam, and then also about some of the stuff that people in Saudi Arabia had been talking about, but none of those interested me. He says, no, no, no, the real Islam, and then he explained that his family had been Muslim for over 1300 years, so I knew then that I was going to get some insight to what Islam was long before many countries actually had become, or many societies had ever become Muslim.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

It was through those conversations that came about, then one Thursday, he said, well, tomorrow is Jum'ah, Friday prayers, would you like to go? I told him, sure. We didn't have class on Fridays, so he came by and picked me up. We went over to the mosque, it's called the Cow Street Mosque, and still exists there on Cow Street, niu jye,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

that's in Cow Street Mosque, basically. I went in and he showed me how to do the ritual, the washing and everything. I did that and followed him, then we went into the mosque and it was actually a converted pagoda. So many of the objects that were Chinese, like three legged yarns for burning incense and stuff. It was a Chinese yarn, but it just had Arabic writing on it. Many of the things

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

were converted to Islamic formulation, but they were still culturally Chinese. When we went in for the conversation, they were doing the khudhbah in Arabic, which I hadn't studied at the time, but when they did it in Chinese, it made perfect sense. I kept going like twice a month, during that year I was there. Kept going for the sermons and I knew then

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

that I was really interested in the faith, and I had to learn more about it. When at the end of that year, I went on to Taiwan to continue my studies at Taiwan National University, my language studies there, they had a Saudi mosque and I knew almost immediately from the time I stepped in that this was not the place for me. Also, the Imam's son had just been returned from Saudi Arabia, it was the third time he had been caught having sex with some of the other students. They had sequestered him

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

whenever he was there in the mosque, they were always people around him and things isn't there, so I never had a chance to tell him I'm gay too. Because I could tell that he was really being punished and shamed. Then I knew that the Saudi mosque was not for me, so I continued to study, but I didn't wind up going to the mosque a bit. There are a lot of Middle Easterners and Southeast Asian people who were in Taiwan, who work with businesses,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

they produce clothing, their toys, things like that, so you met a lot of people from all around the world and you get to know them as people. That's how I learned more about Islam, through other Muslims, from different parts, from Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and China.

MASON FUNK:

Wow. That's amazing. What would you say it was that felt really right to you about

MASON FUNK:

the Muslim faith or the Islamic faith as compared to any other faith you'd experienced thus far?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

It was really the prayer. That was the main difference. As a Christian, I always felt that I was supplicating. 'God, when you do this.' But with Islam, during the part of prayer when you're actually doing this do the Sujud, that's when you go on your knees and bow your head down to the floor, that's the time that you release all your questions, all your issues

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

to God. And the beauty of it was that sometimes by the time I was sit up, I would get a response or a sense of guidance or I was left with such a great inner peace that I could wait for the answer, and that made the difference for me. I never felt absent. I always felt present with God through the prayer because I could turn it over to God, 'God give you this, hold your hands out, both hands now.'

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

And that's how it worked. Through that response, back and forth response, it became much more comfortable in terms of that. And then I knew I would have to deal with the issue of being gay and Muslim because all the information you read was always saying it was wrong. But since I was going to study Arabic, I was going to go and live in the middle east and study there as well. That would give me an opportunity to see

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

what was the religion, what was the culture. I had that insight because the various places I had been in China, in different parts and traveling to Southeast Asia, Malaysia, places like that. While I was in China, I had an opportunity to see that a lot of things are cultural because the Chinese and Malaysia have several of the things from mainland China. Those things that they do that was culture that was passed down throughout whenever they migrate to other places.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

So it helped me understand that culture can be confused with religion and vice versa.

MASON FUNK:

Right. Okay. It's very interesting, let me see where I'm at. I don't know where this fits in the timeline, but in your questionnaire, you mentioned a relationship that ended, a long-term relationship of your own. I don't know where that fits in the timeline.

MASON FUNK:

Was that the boy in high school?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

No.

MASON FUNK:

Okay. But it sounds like it was significant to you.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

It was actually in my being an adult gay male, I had three, what I would consider long-term relationships. The first one was for five years when I was in San Francisco, that was Paul. We met each other through a lesbian friend of ours, a mutual lesbian friend of ours, BJ. We were together like five years

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and then later while I was in school ... Well, right before I started school I met a fellow by the name of Kirkland. And while I was in school, we kept our relationship going. But once I had come back, once I had finished the years, like the eight years in school, he had become addicted to crack. I knew that was not going to work, because I had a neighbor growing up

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

who wound up getting addicted to crack, and even today he's still crackhead. So I knew it was not something that I wanted to put myself or be involved with. And then the last one was with Tony, which lasted from '96 until let's see, we were together until 2010. Yeah. We were together like 14 years.

MASON FUNK:

And is that the one that, the way that relationship ended or the fact that it did, that caused a kind of a major change within you, would you say? Or just extreme loss or how would you describe that?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, I think it was an extreme loss. You don't take everybody home to meet your parents. And then Tony, I had taken him home. That was the thing. So my parents knew who my partner was. And I think if it had been a situation where

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

same-sex marriage was legal, it might've continued because today gay people have support in terms of maintaining their relationships and things of this nature, where before they could just walk away from things without really having a sense of responsibility in terms of that. So I think that made the difference for me in terms of that. Then here it is, a few years later, same-sex marriage came about.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I was telling Tony I see same-sex marriage is coming. I do understand that.

MASON FUNK:

Was it more you who was trying to kind of like hold a relationship together and Tony who was more like who wanted to leave it or end it or vice versa?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Let me put it this way, I noticed some changes that was happening, so I raised a question. Actually, his son, Tony had two kids, a son and a daughter.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I knew his children, so it wasn't like I was some stranger. His son called one evening and said, "Is my dad there?" And I say, "No, he's not here." And Tony had not said he was coming by to see me or anything like that, so where was he? When I saw him the next time, I said, "I got a question for you, what's going on?" You're lying to your kids. What's going on? Are you involved with someone else or something of this nature? And he admitted that

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

he had been involved with someone else for about a year [inaudible]. I said, "Well, the issue now is that I was going to try to see if we can save it, or are we going to let it go?" And so he agreed to go with counseling, but ultimately I knew it was best to let it go because it was not going to work. I was not going to be what he wanted to settle with, is that having an open relationship and I'm like, no, I don't need to

open relationship. I said mathematically, open relationships don't work.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

He says, "What do you mean?" I said, "How are you, as a hundred percent of a person, you're going to split yourself into 50%? I said 50% of any test is a failure."

MASON FUNK:

Did that cause a kind of a shifting for you internally in terms of your priorities, how you live your life, how you see the world?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

No, because I had already ... Once, I come back from the Middle East, the second time and done my studies

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and in Saudi Arabia, I came back and got involved with the queer Muslim community. They had just started up in 1998. I knew Faisal Alam and several other people who were involved in that movement, and eventually, I became a spiritual leader for them, the queer Muslim community. But because of my training, I was taking in 2000, I started with Dr. Taha, who's a major Islamic scholar here in the US, and

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

he was my mentor for three years while I was in the Institute. Through that training that I got, I started a group online, a Yahoo group called Muslim gay men. And for 15 years, I moderated that, but there was, in the early years, 2002, 2003, a lot of the people were having these discussions with a group of ex-Muslims, IMAAN in the UK. They were like, well, being gay was wrong. They would tell people

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

that it's wrong. I've said, no being gay is okay. And so we had these theological debates that went on, and I frequently out did them. They even tried to bring other people and it was like, no, that's not how it works. The way the system works is this, this and this, and you're saying that, that, and that, and they don't match. You're talking about something that's either based on something similar to Bible stories they call Hadith, stories about the prophet

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

versus what the Koran has to say, as if though you're reading the Bible and reading biblical concepts like that. It was the difference between it. I must tell you, this is sort of funny, a person wrote me a question and said that was anilingus permissible? Now in Islam, many people use their right hand to do things because the prophet was right-handed, so it's a blessing to do things with the right hand.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I responded to the question by saying, it depends on which cheek you begin with. The group grew, we went from like 200 and some people to over a thousand people in a matter of a week or so, because people heard about this and then it just blew up. That started the process of people coming to me for advice, and parents. I've done counseling for parents,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

people, all ages and things of this nature. I found two that work that I did that around 45% of the fathers, Muslim fathers, were supportive of their gay, and 55% of the mothers were. I learned through these processes that Muslims were not necessarily homophobic, they just have a thing about public displays of sexuality, even men and women don't walk hand in hand together

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

as Muslims. If heterosexual not doing this, [inaudible] the homosexual can do it and feel a sense of ownership that they don't have to abide by the community standards. So that's some of the things

MASON FUNK:

Let's go back a little bit, because you mentioned 1998 and a specific individual who started a group. Tell us that story. Do you feel like in some ways that was the beginning of anything like a queer Muslim community?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

In 1976, in Berkeley, California, students who were at the University of California, Berkeley were several Iranian students and they started the first queer Muslim group. But in '79, when the ship attack happened,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

a number of the students were called back to Iran and many of them were executed because Iranian government had been watching them, and we know this from several people who was part of the group. But since then, he passed like in 2004 from HIV. But I've heard him, he told the story. So that was the first one. Then in 1990, El-Farouk Khaki, who is in Toronto, started a group called Salaam.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

That only went for about a year because he got death threats, so they stopped. Then in 1998, this one phase, the alarm started the queer Muslim group, it was called Al-Fatiha, which is the first surah in the Koran, the opening. And that was really the beginning because there were then other gay people, out gay people in different parts of the world, Muhsin Hendricks, in Cape town, South Africa, At the beginning Al-Fatiha started in 1998

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and Faisal Alam, who was the one that started it. Then at that meeting, they had a meeting in 1998 where a number of people came and people like Muhsin Hendricks from Cape town, South Africa. There was a guy from the UK who was there, he's now deceased. A friend, I call him my son, my play son, Altaf,

from Atlanta, he was there, and several other people.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

El-Farouk was there. Some other folks were there. When I learned about this event, I was still in Saudi Arabia. I was still teaching there. When I learned about it, I wound up contacting Faisal and told him that I had done some research on a homosexual, positive interpretation of the Koran and sent it to him. This was still an unpublished work, but I sent it to him for him to ... He says, "Oh, this is great. When you come

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

back to the states, would you be willing to work with me?" That kind of thing. So at the end of 1999, Prince called it and I was partying like it was ... 1999, he came back from Saudi Arabia and then got hooked up with Al-Fatiha. And then in 2000, when I started studying with Dr. Taha Jaber al-Alawani. He actually was the Surah council president, meaning the Surah council is like

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

the Christian religious council. He was the head of the Muslim council and he was my mentor for three and a half years. It was through him that I learned a lot because when I would go to class, and his classes in particular, he would always ask me to critique the other students' responses. And so that's how I got to learn a lot more because of that.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Let me give you an example. During Ramadan, Muslims tend to overeat because they fast during the day, then they overeat at night, so they tend to gain weight. Dr. Taha asks the question should a woman lead prayers and it's considered that women should not lead prayers. So some other women say, no, they shouldn't lead prayer because they can entice a man, blah, blah, blah, and some of the guys also agree. So he says, "Daayiee, what do you think about it?" And I told him, I said, well, let's just imagine

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

it's Ramadan, the 30 day of our Ramadan. Your Imam so-and-so-and-so has now put on about 10 pounds. His pant's a little tighter than usual. And of course, we know that women, when they are interested in men, they do look at their buttocks in consideration. So I say, they considering the woman, he's doing sujood, bowing down, she happens to look up a little early and seeing that, she gets excited. That's a thing, I said, so whose fault is that?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

And they say, oh it's the woman's fault for doing that. I say, well then if a man is upset because a woman is bowing down in front of her leading prayer, it's his problem. It's not the issue of men and women because the Koran says we're equal. And we have different responsibilities, like childbearing and things of that nature. A woman can only have a child, so that's one of the things that's unique, but she's also a thinking, living person who can have

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

a better education than her husband or anyone else in their family. It's that kind of thing where you're making certain that people understand that the religion is not based on the culture that people have grown up in.

MASON FUNK:

That was good. And we'll let the train go by. I grew up in the Christian faith, very conservative. So for me, coming out was kind of a challenge, honestly. I wondered, from what you know

MASON FUNK:

of the struggles of LGBTQ people in the Christian church, conservative Christian Church, as compared to people in the Islamic faith, how would you say those journeys for queer people, in the context of those two faiths, are both similar and different? Like, there's obviously conservativism that you're dealing with, whether it's Christianity or Islam, but what are some of the nuances that make coming out in one faith

MASON FUNK:

easier or harder or just different from the other faith?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, to respond to that, I'll say that people follow Judaic faith, and Islamic faith have a lot of similarities. Many of their rituals are similar, things of this nature. But yet when you go to the Christian faith, because of the two areas in which the Christianity came from, both from the end of the Roman period, plus the Byzantine, Eastern Byzantine empire,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

you got a combination of two different things, melding into what we call Christianity today. And so some of the things about homosexuality, where in Judaism, it was about inhospitality, then to Christianity where they were dealing with, in the Western Christian faith, pedophilia, and the Eastern part, it was something that they were still adhering to, sort of by what the Judaic faith had had. But then you had these other pagan rituals and religions

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

there as well. And then Islam came along, so Islam wound up absorbing a lot of information from Judaism and Christianity, and that's how that prohibition came about. But in terms of modern day contemporary times, I think a lot of it is very similar, meaning that the people who go to the churches will go to the mosque. They're going to be shamed, berated

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

because of their sexual orientation, but not based upon true religious teachings but more on cultural adaptations as to what it is. The process is very similar, you have to stand up for yourself, you have to do the type of things that you cannot ... For example, people ask me question, I say, now you have to remember, I won't be there when you're having this conversation with so-and-so, so you have

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

to do a little reading on your own. You have to do a little study on your own so that you are assured of information that you have and that you're passing on. That's the only way that people really gain their freedom, is through the process of earning their freedom. Nothing is for free. You have to sacrifice some of your time and energy to learn. That way, you walk freely, you walk full chest, and people can't knock you down.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

They can't turn you around.

MASON FUNK:

Right. That's interesting. That was helpful. Thank you I'm jumping around here. One of the things that you said in your questionnaire was "our community needs to," I think it's a direct quote from what you wrote, "grow up and see ourselves beyond."

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Yes. I agree.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

When you do a historical review of homosexuality in the west saying the United States or North America, you go back into the 1850s, you find photographs of men together, obviously, gay men. Even some of the men would have on women's clothing. Baltimore was a famous city where people would go and get their portraits and stuff done there. Those records were left and you'll see a lot of these things,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

there's a book called Best Friends. That's one of the earlier examples that I've first read to learn about these things and then started doing more research in it. The idea of a sexual life was not based on just freelance sex. That was more of a San Francisco, California thing, and the New York city type of thing, or Paris versus something that was the norm

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

across the US. The way in which people got together, although they may have kept a relationship secret, they still had a relationship based on them caring for each other. I even ran into some people who were married but the wife knew about the husband's homosexuality and agree that the husband could go out and have an affair, that type of thing.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

It showed me that there was a wide array of how people were dealing with these issues, but that the aspect was based on sex and not on mutual respect of each other as human beings. When that comes into it and when you turn to another human being into a sexual object, then you lose all respect for them. Because after the sex is over, throw away like a used tissue. And we can't see each other. I, as a religious person, having a faith

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

in the God that created all of us, I cannot dismiss your spiritual person that you are, and then make myself feel good because I'm better than you. That just doesn't make any sense. I think that one of the ways in which we respect another person is not to turn them into sex objects and to respect them as a full human being. Now we happen to have sex, that's another issue, but the goal is not to go into it.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Because many times, back in the seventies and eighties, and particularly in San Francisco, you go into a bar, you're meeting with friends you go out and you have a drink, whatever. And then you wind up with someone coming over cruising you. Well, I was like, well, I'm not interested, but then you have other people who will actually be bold enough to put their hands on you. And it's like, no, you don't have the right to put your hands on someone without permission. Those are the kinds of things where it showed that people are

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

using people as sex objects and not respecting them as an individual, because I should be able to say to you, I'm not interested. Thank you for the offer, but I'm not interested and not to feel bad that someone just rejected you. My reason for rejection, I'm involved in a monogamous relationship. I'm just not into it today. You're not the type of person I like to be involved with sexually. So there are a multitude of reasons, but I'm not turning you into a sex object. I'm respecting you

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

as a human being, and that's it. That's why I use that terminology, when I responded.

MASON FUNK:

I'm thinking, I'll be very, very, very transparent here. I'm married to my husband. We have an open relationship and I have a very, very few ... I'm thinking of a person who I consider a good friend, and every once in a while, we have sex with each other, with my husband's knowledge. So you don't think it's possible for me to respect this friend,

MASON FUNK:

also to a certain degree, see him as a sexual object that I'm attracted to and be married to my husband and give him a hundred percent of my heart? I don't mean to put you on the spot.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

No, no, no, I don't feel I'm on the spot. I just think that those are things that are worked out, but in most open relationships, those discussions are not even of the conversation, is I want to be polyamorous and whoever I decided to be with that's my business and none of yours.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

What I'm trying to say about the sex thing is that people need to have standards that they stand by things that they believe in. They're not willing to throw it to the trash just because something different comes along. When you have standards, then you can stand up for things that you believe in. ABilly, for example, I know they had an open relationship at one time in the years they were together and

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

they had talked about everything, but then folks started getting jealous because sometimes a person would show up more often than they thought they should, that kind of thing. It was something that they worked out, but though they had discussed these things. It doesn't mean that you can't be involved with someone else, but number one, the other person, your partner needs to know it, they have to be in agreement with it. And the third party or the third cog in the wheel needs to recognize that

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

they have a particular position in that, they're both a friend and can be a sexual partner. And so it depends on the third person where they want to be.

MASON FUNK:

The objectification of people, just purely for like, kind of a fly by night kind of experience, that's where for me also the line gets drawn. Yeah. That's interesting. Needless to say there's still plenty of people out there,

MASON FUNK:

including people my age, who it's like, they're in a race against time. Like how many people can I get in bed with me before I'm so old that nobody wants to go [inaudible]. And that's kinda what it feels like sometimes, like it's a race to try to preserve sort of their sense of youth and vitality, but it's just like chalk marks on the wall.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Yes. And that to me is problematic. So I hope that responds to your question in a way.

MASON FUNK:

Yeah. I appreciate it.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I mean, I have a lot more to say, but then we'll get into some other issues.

MASON FUNK:

So now another thing you mentioned somewhere along the way, you said you picked up on the fact that we all worship the same God.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Yes.

MASON FUNK:

Do we all worship the same God?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I do think that we all worship the same God. Why I say this because our creator is the same and no matter what name you use, in my life experience

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and in meeting with other people, I have found through study and also participation that it's the same creator that's there. Just because someone, for example, in Islam, they have the 99 names of Allah, the 99 names of God. Well, in Buddhism, they name their attributes. They just give them deity names, but their attribute is the great provider, the protector,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

it's the same thing in Islam. People give names to different things, but they're talking about the same qualities and being a human being, the same qualities of developing a community, the same qualities of being part of a larger global community, and therefore it's not the name. A rose by any other name is still a rose. It just seems obvious to me that that's the case. We don't have to make things so narrow

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

in that, in order for you to be a Christian, you have to be such and such and such and such. Well that will drop off all the metaphysicians and evangelicals, and there'll be so many that you would just have this small core group of people. Now you've bumped off one and a half billion people who are not Christians anymore, where did they come from?

MASON FUNK:

Not to mention all the other faiths. I mean, I used to struggle with this when I was like a teenage and college age Christian.

MASON FUNK:

I could tell that I was too "broad minded" because it was so hard for me to conceive of a God who would basically say, oh no, this religion is true, and all those other people over there who are worshiping their gods, they're going straight to hell. But I felt like I'm an apostate for thinking that way, because I was making God too big and too all inclusive. And in most faiths, it seemed like the hardcore members of that faith think

MASON FUNK:

they want the number of people who are going to make it to heaven to be very small, otherwise, the religion doesn't seem to matter.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

But it's not a numbers game, as I explained to people. In explaining that faith, it's not a numbers game, I've had people say to me, Muslims say to me, well, because the Prophet is so-and-so-and-so, and everybody follows what the Prophet does.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I say, okay, I understand your logic you're using. I said, but when you go back to the foundational texts, it was the prophet and God together against all those other folks out there. So is it really a numbers game because it only needs you and God. So it's not about what everybody else does. It has to do with what you are doing and how you're living your life to the best of your ability

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

as a person of that faith. That gives people opportunity to make mistakes and to learn from them and the opportunity to grow. It gives them an opportunity to try something and it didn't work, but maybe the work this time, kind of thing. It gives you hope. It continues to give you an opportunity to become bigger than what you were before. The Koran has another statement, it says, "Look the Ayat," which, translated, would be signs.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

So you're supposed to look into the world for the signs of people who are doing good, people who are doing bad. Those things that are beautiful, those things that are negative, you have to look for them. As I became more involved in my faith, also did my vision, again, change and expand, so that today, I can walk down the street and say, oh, there's trouble coming, let me cross the street over here. You just see it coming. But it takes time

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

to develop that skill. You can hear lies when people are talking, so you can see behaviors that are not what people are saying, that they are. You start to see these things. Those who hear can hear. Those who see can see. Those who know, know, and that's part of that process. That has been part of my growth to where I don't hold anything against people, because I don't think it's important that as we're all fallible, so I can't hold

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

anything against you. I think it was Terrence, a Roman, a black Roman, I think was Terrence, I don't remember his last name, but he said that there's nothing human that I'm not familiar to. So I feel very much the same way. There's nothing human that I'm not familiar to. I can understand it. Now, am I going to do it? That's another story, but I can understand it. Yeah, yeah.

MASON FUNK:

Perfect. Tell us about the MECCA Institute. Let me give you a quick overview of what I want to cover. You said you think that generational interactions are important, I don't want to skip over that. You wanted to talk about three people. You might've already mentioned more than one of them, Bishop Rainey Cheeks,

MASON FUNK:

Kofi Adoma and Samar Habib. So we'll give a moment to each one of them. I also want you to talk about Joe Beam because you introduced me to Joe Bean by mentioning him. I had never heard of him. I've certainly heard of Marlon Riggs. I mean, I learned a little bit about Joe Beam just reading about how him, I wanted to make sure we make a moment for joe Beam. That's the overview of where we're going to go in the next 15 minutes.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

All right. So the question you have for me again?

MASON FUNK:

The first one is, tell us about the MECCA Institute.

MASON FUNK:

It seems like that's your current full-time more than full-time endeavor.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Yes. Well, MECCA Institute is an organization that is working to reeducate the Muslim community for contemporary times. The problem being that people looking to the past for answers for the present and the future, big problem. MECCA Institute is, through the process, reeducating people, women, LGBT,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

the youth, in understanding their Islam is a living faith for today. Now we can go back 1500 years and look at the nascent community and find human relationship tools that may be applicable to today, human beings haven't changed that much. So those things may be good, how they did their husbandry and how they built houses and they rode camels. We don't do that today.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

And in the future, there will not be camel caravans in space. Okay. So we got to realize that we're at a pivoting point. MECCA Institute is working towards that and building a greater progressive understanding of Islam as a living faith. And that things are global now. We pick up the phone, we talk to people from your cell phone, zoom in with someone 10,000 miles away. Things are changing, so

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

it's not for us to hold on to the past. And those items that you do is how you perform, that is something that you can take from the past and improve for today and increase and improve for tomorrow as well.

MASON FUNK:

You said there were five kind of key components of the MECCA Institute. Just kind of give us an overview of the plan.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Okay. The nonprofit MECCA Institute

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

started off and then we established a school where students come for training and eventually when they graduate, then they can open up a mosque, because there's a great need for that, particularly for the progressive Muslim community. The second is Saloonaat, which is our research center, where we do our research. One of the things that we did that we released in 2019 was our research on medical marijuana, was it permissible within Islamic context?

​​

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

And of course, it is. That was our first ... You can find that on YouTube, if you want to look for it. Then this year 2021, the publishing company came into being, and I published my first book with the publishing company and we have eight more ins= for release in 2022, they're on schedule for that. And then we have the community portal that we're developing at this point. It's a membership portal

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

that we're developing and that will bring the five aspects together or the five pillars of Islam or the five pillars of MECCA Institute. It brings it together. Now, we have a well-rounded way in which a person can enter without even being Muslim and enter and learn from a variety of different sources and not get caught up in some of the, what I refer to folk tales of the religion that people love to pass on.

MASON FUNK:

That's great. That's perfect. We'll hold for that helicopter. You're giving me such a wider view of the Islamic faith. It's fun. It's gratifying. You mentioned wanting to talk about how generational interactions are very important. What do you mean by that?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Okay. When I was 26 I met a gentleman by the name of Albert Hurt in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Albert was born in 1890 and in the 1910s, he was a Pullman on the train from Chicago to New York.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

And because of the money that he made, things of this nature, he was exposed to a lot. He was actually there during the Harlem Renaissance, when Madam C Walker, I was telling you about, she wound up funding a number of black literati during that time, in the 1920s, and also helped support the NAACP with Dubois. This is how these things are. He was one of the audience, he was not one of the people speaking, but part of the audience,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

he told me about that. Plus he talked about the history that back in the fifties, when people were starting to have sexual transitioning at that time, he talked about that, some of the people did these things without a plan on following through. So they mutilated their bodies and became very depressed about it, things of this nature. In my own time period, I met folks who were younger people during the forties and fifties.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

And some of the things I found that being intergenerational was very important because the tools that Albert talked to me about, always maintain your standards, don't get caught up in these kinds of things, blah, blah, blah, taught me to avoid them if they're coming at me straight on. Now, some things you learn because it slipped in the back door. You need that lesson, you gotta to get it that way, but you start to do that. So intergenerationally,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

when you talk to people, you start to see that some of the things in our community is the same thing, nothing new under the sun. And therefore, why are we repeating these same things when we can avoid some of them? So when you talk to older people, I've had young people say, oh, that old man just interested in me sexually. I said, no, you don't know if that's true or not. The thing is that don't you know how to say no?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

But he may have something to teach you. He may have something to help you and incite -- Not incite but to inspire you for other things. And this is how generational things transition. So it's very important that people pay attention. Now, my meeting Albert Hurt, when I was 26, Albert's been deceased since 1987, I think, or '88 No, he died in 1992, he was 102

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

when he passed. That information, if I was not along, they would not know anything about who he was, because they only read about it in the history books. But now I know someone who was there and he was alive. After the events, they would go out to the clubs and party and stuff. So you learn about those things too. Yes. Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes did have an affair, because he was there when he's up to do that. In the future, we will

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

pass on other things to those who are coming behind us. So as we used to have a gay joke, it says that don't get too comfortable in being the cute one because there's another young one coming right around the corner tomorrow.

MASON FUNK:

Great. Okay. Let's give a minute each to Bishop Rainey Cheeks.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Rainey Cheeks, a great guy. He actually started at the clubhouse in Washington, DC back in 1978,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and it was a great place with great dance place and stuff like that. That's when I met him. In 1983, I think it was, he became HIV positive. Then in 1990, he started his own church, and he's a metaphysician as well, so he started his own church then. Rainey has just been a very wonderful friend and

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

companion in the religious faith in our building this thing. Because when I decided I was going to open up a mosque in 2010, I talked with him about what are some of the issues related to running the organization, that kind of thing, and he gave me the kind of information I needed to know. When I approached the idea, churches wound up giving me space, things like that, this was how I learned through him giving me some clues and tips and things like that.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

He's always been a very wonderful person, and to today, we're still very good friends.

MASON FUNK:

That's amazing. I'll talk to you more about him because maybe he's someone we want to interview. Kofi Adoma.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Kofi Adoma, we met ... I told you University of Michigan had re-offered me the fellowship, I met coffee that year, that was 1992. She was starting her PhD program at the time. She's a psychotherapist.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

She's in Detroit and she helped start the roof ... What is the last name? I can't think of the name ... House of Ruth, there in Detroit, for gay and lesbian folks. She helped develop that, but I knew Kofi from the ... I mean we were just grad students at the university of Michigan, and we used to have a black gay group there. That's how we met and got to know each other through that time.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

There were a few events that we went to and things like that, but then afterwards, I didn't run into her again until the early 2000s. I think it was at a conference somewhere and we ran into each other. We've kept in touch since that time.

MASON FUNK:

Wonderful, another name, potentially, for our interview list. And then Samar Habib.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Samar Habib is a Lebanese Christian who grew up in a Muslim society,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and therefore, she's written the book on homosexuality in Islam and various other subject matter. Not because she was Muslim, but because she grew up in and all her friends were Muslim, gay and straight. It gave her an insight into things. It was very good. I've always enjoyed talking with her and we were good friends. That's one of the reasons I wanted to mention her because I think she's brilliant. Number one, and number two, the things that we get a chance to talk about, another one of those

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

intergenerational relationships. She's been growing and expanding, because she's like 40 years old now and I've known her maybe around 16 years now. It's that kind of thing. It's been the growth process of knowing the person through the time period.

MASON FUNK:

That's wonderful. Yeah. Okay. And then last, well then we'll have a few more, but [inaudible]. I'venever heard of Joe being, but he sounds extraordinary.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, what happened in Washington DC, when I moved there in '79, there must have been some spiritual process that was going on there at the time because DC became this mega place where all these black intellectual and artists came together and built a community up in such a way

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

that it was something that I think in response to the discrimination in the white clubs there, that they built their own clubs, meaning that there were a couple of black clubs there. They wound up starting the clubhouse. Ray Melrose was the person who started the clubhouse, a black gay activist at the time. Basically his carriage house, he turned it into the clubhouse and so people would come and they would have works, artists would perform, singing groups would perform,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

art displays, various types of events would happen there at that house. It was a very wonderful place because on Friday and Saturday nights, it was a good place to go to if you wanted to be entertained. Have you ever heard of Sweet Honey in the Rock? Well, they performed there from time to time. I'm just saying there was this kind of fermentation of people who were really involved. Joe Beam was one of those people, although he was from Philadelphia, a two hour train ride you're in DC. You come down for the weekend.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Joe Beam was one of those people, he was a poet. My reputation at that time was, 'oh that's a black guy who's studying Chinese." That's how I got to know a lot of people, not only because from a gay activities, but also I was doing something unusual. Joe Beam was a person I got to know as a person, nothing sexual or anything like that. I liked his poetry and bought a couple of his books, his early books. And so that's how I got to know him,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

but his work working with Marlon Riggs and a couple of other people from the Washington DC area that the film Tongues Untied came about. A number of those people who are in the film are from Washington DC. So that was that collaboration, Ron Simmons, who was a professor at Howard university and then eventually became director of Us Helping Us which is black HIV organization

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

back in the early nineties. So this is how the process expanded and how DC became this place where people felt proud, they were able to express themselves and people knew each other. Well, now I'll give you another example. Then we can move something else. In terms of like in Washington, DC, it was the first place

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

that made homosexuality permissible by law and then the trans community as well, the laws were passed there too. So it was a situation where I knew a lot of the trans community, people from the lesbian community. I was one of the few men that the lesbian community let in because I was known that if I saw a lesbian couple being harassed, I'd jump in, "No, you're going to fuck with them over my dead body," that kind of thing.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

In these different atmospheres, it came about. The community expanded in such ways, the lesbian community, black lesbian community helped the black gay male community during the time when HIV was rapant. Some of them were nurses, in this nature, they did things. They did condom distribution, various other types of things that black men themselves were not even doing. Gay men were not doing, even into the straight community,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

things that were not being done. It was those kinds of things that made DC the kind of place where there was just so much activity going on and that everyone was fine. Everyone was fine. So knowing the trans people, knowing the lesbians, knowing some of the gay folks, it was just a happy family. If I went down the street and I saw Ms so-and-so, a trans person, I was like, hi, how you doing, blah, blah, blah. And

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

my relationship with them was that when there was a vote, going down to city hall ...

MASON FUNK:

Typically, happens is we do two things. We publish your interview just as recorded, and we'll go through a process whereby, okay, we send you a transcript. One thing I've been chuckling to myself about is there's no way anybody on our team will know how to spell a lot of the names, but so you'll get a transcript back with like gobbledygook, where

MASON FUNK:

the names should go. You'll put in the correct spelling. So we'll go through a process. When the transcript is finalized, then we publish your interview on our website, full length, with the transcript. And then we'll create a short three to four minute video that's very watchable, that someone can watch on their phone while they're waiting for the bus. It's just to give a little bit of a sample of your story.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Okay, great. Great. Okay.

MASON FUNK:

Okay. So let's

MASON FUNK:

talk about your book, the book you published this year.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Right. The title of the book is Progressive Islam: The Rich Liberal Ideas of the Islamic Faith.

MASON FUNK:

Okay. We'll start over. Imagine that we're not going to insert this. Imagine this is a complete thought of itself. So, "This year, I published a book --"

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Alright, this year I published a book, my first, which is entitled Progressive Islam: The Rich Liberal Ideas of the Muslim Faith.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

In it, I talk about my experiences of converting to Islam and how I became Muslim in China. Then my other adventures, living experiences in the middle east, and then traveling throughout the Muslim world. I've been to 18 different Muslim cultures, so I've been exposed to a lot in terms of that. The book basically talks about those particular things, and what is progressive Islam? What has happened is there've been

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

people who've talked about progressive Islam, but no one has ever explained it. And so this is what my book is, is that in progressive Islam means to progress and to progress in Islam today means to become more inclusive and not exclusive to become more open to contemporary sciences. Whereas, 800 years ago, the Muslim world was the place of science. Here we are 800 years later, and we have knuckleheads

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

talking about the sun rotates around the earth, so it doesn't make any sense for such a great faith to have such lackluster and intellectual abilities. And therefore it's neat. The need for the change is here. And historically about every 150 years - 200 years, there's always been a reformation and a revival of

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Islamic faith. Therefore, we're in that timeframe because the last one was in 1875. Now we're in that 200 year period, 150 year period now, to where it's time for a revival.

MASON FUNK:

Wow. Are there signs of progressive Islam kind of emerging in other countries in the world?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

They are, but it's a

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

very different framework. A lot of it has to do with politics in many instances. The political situation often causes a skewing of the things to sort of go off, but there are other groups, I mean, like in Europe, you do find several organizations that work there, because it's a much more open society. But if you go to Northern Africa, I think Tunisia and Algeria may be the only two countries

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

that do not have laws against homosexuality at this point. It's the thing that's just sort of slowly evolving and it's not moving as quickly as it has been in the west, but places like South Africa, they made a major move when Mandela was freed and then the apartheid went away. They put into the constitution LGBT rights. So depending on the time and the place, you can wind up with Muslim societies with very different

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

laws and legal systems.

MASON FUNK:

Okay. Well, we have these final four questions. First one is, and these are intended to be just sort of short off the cuff answers, if you could tell yourself at 15 anything, what would you tell yourself? And

MASON FUNK:

please include my question in your answer.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, if I had to tell my 15 year old self something that's very important, I think it would be not to take things so seriously, and to give yourself a little more space in terms of that you will make some mistakes and you will look at them as failures, but they may not really be failures because they helped you to improve and not to do those same things again.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Whereas before, 15 year old, my God, the world is ending. So it very much could be how I would look at it.

MASON FUNK:

Gotcha. Okay. One of our interviewees introduced me to her notion of what she called a queer superpower. She thought that there's something that all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender nonconforming people share, that is kind of

MASON FUNK:

the special gift that we have in turn to give to the world. Do you relate to that idea at all? And if so, what would you call our queer superpower?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, in responding to your question, I really wouldn't consider it a superpower, but I consider it an attribute that many people have because they have gone through the process of dealing with a society that rejects them,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

that shames them, that berates them, that they have built a integrity, a tenacity within them that allows them to pull through the hard times. But also to the other side of it is that sometimes that particular same emotional strength can also turn upon itself and people turn inwards on themselves or towards other gay people. Because why is it that sometimes you have folks bickering

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

over nonsensical things? So it's that ability to pull through, but sometimes it becomes overwhelming or becomes tainted, if you will, and then it just turns inward.

MASON FUNK:

I mean the fatigue and the exhaustion and the pain of having to experiencing being berated, we sometimes turn that on each other.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Yeah. Because why do we have -- There are times

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

when you go to places and people, I don't know if I understand what camp is, for having fun, that type of thing, never had a problem with that. But when people would get into wanting to call other men girls, when they've said, don't call me a girl, then they want to do it anyway. Why do you want to do what someone just said to you that let's not go there, and then you want to do it anyway it doesn't make any sense. So

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

it causes a division amongst the community.

MASON FUNK:

Third question. Why is it important to you to share your story?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

It's important to me to share the story, because as I said, intergenerationally, others have shared it with me. When I was a teenager, a lady who was one of my teachers taught me, she said, always remember that when things are given to you, you have to pass them on That's what I believe in,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

that as people have given to me, I have to give to others. It's not the same thing. It's not a one for one exchange, but because someone was kind to me, I can be kind to someone else. Those are the kinds of things. I remember when I was in law school, I was doing work with HIV prisoners, and some of them were getting released early because of their health situation, and others were just coming out of the prison system. I did literacy classes

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

for them to help them learn to read, and it was one of my best periods in my life, being good to myself and being thankful that I did so, because when I saw these black men able to read, one fellow who's a grandfather said, I can read to my grandchildren now, what kind of gift is that?

MASON FUNK:

That's wonderful. That's great. Last but not least, this project,

MASON FUNK:

being called OUTWORDS, where we travel the country, recording stories of LGBTQ elders, of all sorts. What do you see as the value? Do you see value in doing that? And if so, what would you see as the value? If you wouldn't mind mentioning OUTWORDS in your answer though.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Well, then say it again because I want to make sure I get the question right.

MASON FUNK:

OUTWORDS is a project,

MASON FUNK:

basically a nonprofit where we travel the country, recording the stories of LGBTQ elders, generally defined as people near the ends of their lifespans. What do you see as the value? Do you see any value in doing that? And if so, what would you say the value of doing that?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

OUTWORDS and its purpose? Its mission, I think is a very important one because it leaves a record for future generations to be able to look back upon

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and to be able to see that their lives may inculcate some of the things that other people had decades or century before. It was very important to have that connection because if people doing their general our straight families, we can go back to great grandmother and great, great grand so-and-so. We need to know who great, great, great, great, gay so-and-so was, so that we can be proud of their accomplishments and so on

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

and so on and so on, though she was a lesbian, she had several children, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or so-and-so was transgender and then became mayor of so-and-so. It's important for us to have these stories so that people can aspire to something great. Many people can become great people if they have something, an aspiration, they have something to struggle for, something to try to make happen. I think that's what OUTWORDS will do for a lot of people in the future,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

for those, today, who still have time and can still get it done, and then for those people who are coming in the future, who may be toddlers today, who will in their twenties, be able to look back at these materials and say, oh, I felt that way myself.

MASON FUNK:

It's so funny. I'm so glad you use that. Great, great, great, great, great, great, great gay, because I sometimes say we're collecting the stories of your gay grandparents the ones we never had.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Right.

MASON FUNK:

Well, I think we're done. I think we've covered the waterfront as my mom used to.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Okay. any other question, I mean, do you have anything else on your mind or whatever?

MASON FUNK:

Honestly, it's rare for me to run out of questions, but I think I've covered, I think I've asked everything I can think of. Is there anything else that you feel like you want to say?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I do. I have one other thing I like to say. Let me wipe my eye again.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

I'm getting wet eye, rather than dry. I think one of the things that, for today's world, I think that social justice warriors are doing a disservice to our larger community, because what I'm hearing, and I'm a good listener, I've always been a good listener, and I listened to people. Quite often, what they're complaining about is

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

not that important. When I say that, meaning that yes, someone may have disrespected you, but did they have you removed from your home? Did it cause you to lose your bank account, those kinds of much more important issues than someone disrespecting you? That's important, but why do you want respect for someone who doesn't like you anyway? Doesn't make sense. I think that people need to really understand that when you take

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

a position like we did in the sixties and later, that we were willing to go to jail, we were willing to be beat up, some people lost their lives over very important issues, and some of the stuff that they want to argue about, people shouldn't lose their lives over. It's important that we have to understand that the things that you do should have some import to other people in the community.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

The second part is that the usage of words, I think it's important that our community understand that, fine within our community, you can have they/them, ZZ, whatever you want to use. That's fine. I respect that. But when you go into the larger community, you cannot demand that other people call you by those names because

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

they're not familiar with it and it's imposing upon them. Now, you can explain to them, these are the terms that we use today, and if they are able to pick up on it, so much the better, but if they're aren't able to do so, why hold that against them? Why? It's just no need for it. The important thing is for us to get along and build allyship, build relationships so that we know that these people support us and we support them. That's very important,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

but please, I mean, I just think people need to sort of step back a little bit and understand that when you're dealing with other people, we have to come to a neutral foundation, a neutral basis, and then you grow upon that.

MASON FUNK:

As opposed to sort of, I mean, I know that a lot of the people I've met who are transgender or gender nonconforming, they're very patient people. If they see someone wanting to understand their lives,

MASON FUNK:

but not necessarily getting it right all the time, they're more than accepting and more than tolerant. But they're afraid sometimes that on the other hand, the people who are learning are sometimes frightened of making mistakes. So you're talking about finding a place where there's kind of mutual understanding and grace.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Yes, absolutely. I will even be willing to say this in

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

the Dave Chappelle situation that blew out of proportion. Dave Chappelle, I followed him as a comedian for years and he attacks everybody, no one is sacred. So if you're that brittle that you can't laugh at yourself, you need to see a counselor and learn why, because we all have things that we do, our stereotypes. Stereotypes come from something real. We do silly things or we do things that we don't know, but okay, that's fine.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

They make a joke about it, laugh it off and move on so you can laugh at somebody else. I just think that's just very important that we can't be so sensitive, that we're brittle. One little thing and then we crack and then we fall apart. If we did that in the sixties, we wouldn't have the gay movement that we have today, 50 years later, it wouldn't be here.

MASON FUNK:

It's interesting. For some reason, it brings to mind a woman we interviewed in Denver,

MASON FUNK:

a incredible lesbian. She was very much involved with the community health movement in the HIV epidemic. When the community was trying to say, let us take care of our own people, she was a big part of that. But she talked about when she was also protesting, marching against the Vietnam war, and she said, you people spat at us but she just mentioned as an aside, because she was getting to another story. I said, "Wait a minute, people spat at you?" She said, "Yeah, they spat at us, whatever." And I was shocked because it seemed like, oh my God,

MASON FUNK:

if somebody spat at me, I wouldn't be able to go on. I wouldn't know what to do. She's like, yeah, whatever, it's gross.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Yeah, it's gross, but whatever, you get your thing, you wipe it off and keep on working.

MASON FUNK:

I'm trying to take it in the larger point you're making that you feel like there's too much, to use a word that's been used a lot lately, fragility?

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Yeah, I used the term brittle because when something is so rigid, it can't even vibrate,

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

it breaks down. And I think that we, as people, as you were saying earlier, that we have this superpower and we should utilize it for good and not for bad, or the negative, let me put it that way. For good or not for the negative or towards the negative. Okay.

MASON FUNK:

Okay. Well, thank you for sharing those extra points. I appreciate it.

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

Okay. Thank you, Spencer, for all that you've

DAAYIEE ABDULLAH:

done and help carry out.

MASON FUNK:

That's the mastermind of this whole process, me coming here and all this brainpower and like extra technology and so on.