Boston’s National of Islam community gathered this weekend to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Muhammad Mosque No. 11 in Grove Hall, and to mark an expansion of the group’s services to the Black people in the area.
The weekend events — a “reunion” gathering Saturday and a rededication of the newly renovated mosque Sunday — also served as a celebration of emeritus Minister Don Muhammad, who led the congregation for decades before handing the reins to Minster Randy Muhammad in 2021. Don Muhammad is now 91 and in frail health.
“We want to just take this moment to recognize Muhammad Mosque No. 11, being in the heart of Grove Hall for over 40 years, providing service to our community in so many different ways to transform the quality of life for our people,” Randy Muhammad said. “So we have to take a moment and just pay homage to all of those believers, past and present, who were part of a work to build a firm foundation that we are now poised to build upon.”
In July, the mosque celebrated the grand opening of Torchlight Recovery, a “recovery café” providing services to people struggling with addiction and also people returning from incarceration.
“We want to really expand that work to help our communities be safer in decent places,” Randy Muhammad told GBH News. The mosque also has an initiative called 10,000 Fearless Peacemakers, which he described as “a group of men that go out into the streets in the community to promote peace.”
“We actually have a ‘Stop the Beef’ hotline. We offer conflict mediation. So we want to expand that,” he said.
Brother Jamil Muhammad attended the events as a kind of ambassador from the national organization, and said Boston holds a special place in the Black Muslim movement, as both Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan spent time here early in their careers. Boston, he said, was formative for the Nation of Islam, with the city serving as a source of both revolutionary inspiration and deep racism.
Even Martin Luther King Jr., who studied seminary theology at Boston University “wasn’t thinking about freedom, justice and equality till he came to Boston,” Jamil Muhammad told the crowd Saturday. “He began to see how this city is not only a northern commercial hub, but it’s also the educational blueprint from which America is based and by which they frame and institutionalize the systems that keep you and me in hell.”
Black separatism is a deep thread of the theology of the Nation of Islam — a controversial idea that Black people would best thrive in a separate, independent Black nation. But Jamil Muhammad told GBH News that the real goal is the lifting up of Black lives. “The self-respect of a people should not be negotiable. It should not be a sliding scale of self-esteem,” he said. “There should only be that people can be who they are with safety, security, peace, freedom, justice, equality, economic security, family stability. These are the aims and goals of the Nation of Islam.”
And, he added, “Nobody has to fail in order for us to succeed. Nobody has to fall in order for us to rise.”
