Yousef Drummond

ALEX de Tocqueville, a seventeenth-century French aristocrat and lawyer who  incidentally was commissioned, along with another influential lawyer, Gustave de Beaumont, by his country’s government, to assess the U.S. penitentiary system, wrote an illuminating text, Democracy in America (1835, 1940), ...

WHILE the U.S. president zigzags throughout Europe, calling on European allies to join enthusiastically in his efforts at supplanting governments throughout the Middle East, PBS television talk-show host Tavis Smiley will host the “State of the Black Union” symposium for ...

SOME time ago while watching a Jamaican news program I was somewhat shocked to learn that a Jewish synagogue existed on Duke Street, a few miles away from Kingston, Jamaica’s capital.  According to sources obtained by the news Louis ...

I TOOK the opportunity this past Memorial Day to make a trip to Time Square in Manhattan for a leisurely stroll and perhaps spot any building landmarks that I may have overlooked in the past.  During that time my mind ...

WHILE most whites seem not to be conscious of their skin-color as a privilege that has continued to sustain a veneer of scientific discourse relating to racial equality and thereby ensuring political legitimacy of majority rule in the United States, ...

AMERICA’s mainstream media is once again focusing our attention on the democratic presidential primaries and, in characteristic fashion, is painting a thirst-for-power relationship between Hillary Rodham-Clinton and Barak Obama, with the result that ordinary Americans will fail to gauge clearly ...

THERE is widespread opinion these days, among non-Muslims in particular, that Islam may not be a legitimate faith alongside Judaism and Christianity.  If so, should Islam, a universal faith sanctioned by Allah (SWT) through His final prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) undergo ...

IT would not be unfair to say that the Muslim Ummah today is undergoing a social transition throughout Europe – one that seeks to participate effectively as citizen and as Muslims. As citizens within European nation-states, Muslims co-exist peacefully ...

RIGHT-WING Dutch politician Geert Wilders’s appeal to Islam-bashing as a proxy to gain political prominence on Holland’s political landscape comes as no surprise to many political observers who say that other right-wing Western politicians, particularly in Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and ...

AN influential Islamic organization representing the Muslim world is drafting a “battle plan” to defend its religion from defamation by using the West’s most enduring and salient instrument: the rule of law.  The rule of law is by far the ...

“ON behalf of the government of the United States of America, I want to apologize for the role my country played in the African slave trade”. According to DeWayne Wickham, a USA TODAY columnist, President George Bush ...

I HAVE tried to illustrate in previous columns that liberal democracies must be re-examined and re-fashioned in light of its failure to assign no transcendent solutions to complex socio-economic and racial issues. Its citizenry assumes, as an ironclad principle, a ...

THERE will always be a familiar but disturbing story line traversing through the history of this republic: the issue of race and politics. Politicians in general steer away from such volatile issues; some lose credibility altogether when they hit ...

I STILL cannot fail to erase from my mind a disturbing episode that occurred in my neighborhood grocery store one recent night in Queens, New York. A young African-American male, with his pants down below his waist, was ...

IN January of 2005 the British and Western media expressed moral outrage at Prince Harry wearing a German Afrika Korps uniform - with a swastika affixed to it – at a party. What the mainstream media didn’t tell us ...

FOR the past month or so my private thoughts ruminate about the global Muslim Ummah and I try to outline factors that are contributing to our emasculation or ineffectiveness on both spiritual and political spheres. I am sure that ...

“THERE are really five companies that control 90% of what we read, see and hear. It’s not healthy”. These are the words of Ted Turner, the founder of CNN and the largest shareholder in the world’s largest media ...

THIS nation, a republic, prides itself on the rule of law. The rule of law is the single barometer or guidepost that guarantees political, economic and social stability, philosophically speaking. The rule of law is the only unassailable ...

I HUMBLY ask my Muslim brothers and sisters to turn off the “idiot-box” when they hear news and commentary concerning Islam and Muslims. I also ask that non-Muslims who read our articles do the same. Strangely ...

FEBRUARY 21st, 2006 will mark the 42nd anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination in New York City. After all this time, however, through a span of at least three generations, many mainstream media outlets, whether in print or on ...