Welcome to L.A.-Lower Alabama!

By Liz Maziarz

March 18, 2004

Thursday was a day of religious diversity in Alabama. We encountered Civil Rights history, Muslim political action, Hindu faith, and a conservative Christian agenda.

We met the bus at seven, bade farewell to the peacocks of the Gateway Inn, and headed to Selma where we picked up Alabama State Representative Yusuf Salaam, a native Alabamian, attorney and Imam, who won a contentious race for the statehouse in 2002. Salaam is now in the second year of his four-year term.

About 20 minutes outside Selma, the bus turned onto Alabama Highway 97 and drove through rolling fields filled with cows grazing peacefully. As we gazed out at the Alabama sunshine, Salaam told us we were entering "Bloody Lowndes County", named for the extraordinary number of lynchings and hate crimes that happened there in the mid 20th century.

When the bus got to Hayneville, we filed off and assembled at the corner of the grassy town square. A stone memorial stands under a tree there, dedicated to Jonathan Myrick Daniels, VMI Class of 1961. Daniels was a white Episcopal seminary student who came to Hayneville in 1965 to work with SNCC. He was killed by a local white man in August of 1965 when he stepped in front of a bullet meant for Salaam's sister. The killer was tried, exonerated and died an "unpunished and free man," Salaam said.

Daniels was a good friend of Stokely Carmichael, and, according to Salaam, Daniels' murder was "a triggering event" in Carmichael's radicalization and the founding of the Black Panther Party.

Salaam shook his head as he mused that, in effect, "Black Power was triggered by the murder of a white man."

Representative Salaam converted to Islam in 1975, he said, after many years of spiritual searching. Born into a family of ministers, he ultimately rejected Christianity because he could not bear to see "the utilization of Christian doctrine to retard the growth of oppressed people." Though he flirted with joining the Nation of Islam when he was in college, he found their theology problematic and racially divisive. "A white man had died for my sister."

Instead, Salaam practices what he calls "universal Islam" which "embraces all of God's creation."

We left Hayneville and drove to Montgomery, where we convened in a conference room in the Statehouse. Representative Salaam spoke to us about his involvement in the recent controversy surrounding whether Alabama women could wear hijabs (headscarves) in their driver's license photos. In February, he led a group of Alabama Muslims in challenging a policy promulgated by the Department of Public Safety that prohibited the hijab.

As Salaam explained his strategy in dealing with the hijab issue, it was easy to see that he is adept at maneuvering through the treacherous waters of state legislative politics. Though he does not personally feel that wearing the hijab is important, he saw the issue as an opportunity for Muslims in Alabama to stand up and consolidate their political power. Salaam knew, he said, that Governor Bob Riley would not want another religious controversy on his hands after all of the attention given to Chief Justice Roy Moore's installation of the 10 Commandments monument. So, Salaam said, he decided to seize the moment, "go for the political jugular," and send a delegation straight to the Governor.

The issue was quickly resolved through the Alabama Legislative Council and the Governor's office. Alabama drivers can now be issued a license even if their heads are covered for religious reasons.

Representative Salaam feels that political leadership in the Muslim community will not come from immigrant Muslims, but rather it will come from "indigenous Americans who understand the culture."

Salaam yearns to see American Muslims "stop being scaredy cats and consolidate political power." He feels that a lack of cultural identity on the part of African Americans has led to the success of orthodox Islam within that community, but that it is essential for African American Muslims to retain a freedom of intellect, because he sees no point in "trading Caucasian slave masters for Arab slave masters."

The Hindu Society of Alabama temple sits among cattle fields outside Montgomery, Ala. Photo: Anne Lilburn Click Here For More Photos

After our talk with Representative Salaam we broke for a short lunch, met back at the bus, and made our way to the Montgomery suburbs to meet Chaaya Bhalerao a Hindu priestess. We journeyed through farmland until we arrived at the Hindu Society of Alabama. The Society is housed in a small white building with blue trim that used to be a church. We sat on the floor of the temple as Bhalerao lit incense and gave us a very brief overview of some of the main Hindu gods and how she came to be a priestess.

Bhalerao comes from an Indian Brahmin family and has been in America for 28 years. The Hindus in the Montgomery area, there are about 200 according to her count, needed someone to lead rituals and prayer services and she stepped into the role happily.

Unfortunately, we were pressed for time so our stay with Bhalerao was short. We said goodbye and drove back to the outskirts of the city for our meeting with former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, perhaps the state's most controversial figure.

We met Moore at the headquarters of the Foundation for Moral Law, a non-profit foundation established in December 2002 to run his legal defense. Moore was elected Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2000. In August of 2001 he installed a granite monument depicting the ten commandments in the rotunda of Montgomery's justice building. Moore was subsequently sued by several organizations, including the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center. A Federal judge ordered the removal of the monument, which now sits locked in a closet of the justice building. Moore refused to comply with the order and was suspended on November 13, 2003 on ethics charges.

Moore installed the monument, he said, to bring out an issue "that's been bubbling for 40 years," and to discharge his duties under the Alabama state constitution which invokes "the Almighty." He believes that over the last 40 years a series of Federal and Supreme Court decisions removing prayer from schools, outlawing the teaching of creationism and attempting to eliminate the word "God" from the Pledge of Allegiance are based on feeling rather than law.

Moore's essential argument is rooted in a strict literalist interpretation of the first amendment: since he's not Congress, and he's not making a law by displaying the statue, he says, he is not violating the first amendment by displaying the ten commandments. He is, he says, "trying to uphold the first amendment," by freely acknowledging God in his own way.

Our meeting with Moore was fascinating. As we questioned him, he threw questions back at us, encouraging us to challenge his arguments. He quoted scripture, legal precedents and the Constitution at length. Moore clearly has a prodigious memory, a solid faith, and a real love for debating legal and philosophical issues. He is a man with a definite moral agenda and our encounter with him provided us with a stark look inside that agenda.

(Updated April 13, 2004)