Clipped to the Root, Clipped to the Top, Never Reached Full Potential

First of all I want to assert the fact that it's too hard for me to write even a paragraph or two about such a personality, for I don't know , for the first time, how to begin.

Great history, great philosophy of life, great character, great thinker, great analyzer, great lecturer, great subject, dazzling speech, totally different point of view. These phrases just keep spinning in my head every time I recall the meeting with Imam Musa.

It felt so uncanny to sense that someone from somewhere else across the world knows more than me about my religion and my country's past. There were even times that I felt he loves Iran more than I ever did. His calling us "a miracle to have survived and lasted more than 30 years" sent an extra chill down my spine.

I myself didn't know a movement called "The Black Mafia" existed, nor did I know, moreover no way in world I could have guessed, that today-Imam-Musa used to be a member of it. Anyways, the point he wanted to highlight was that Dr. Martin Luther king's movement lasted some 12 years, Malcolm X' lasted about 3 years, but strikingly, Islamic revolution and its mobilizations all over the world, or in this case let's say in America, are alive and active more than before. The miracle of it is that in a place like America, where neither Dr. Martin Luther King nor Malcolm X could endure, Islam, which has originated somewhere else and revived in 1979 in even another ''somewhere else'', has managed to cling to life for 30 years, and to its enemy's surprise, add to its followers every day.

The meeting also concerned African American issues and how they've been always discriminated against throughout the American history. Imam Musa, a great speaker, pointed it out so well. Starting from the very beginning, he butted heads with the fact that they, African Americans, were taken, kidnapped and forced to get onboard and brought to America to become slaves. They were taken away, not just from their beloved land, but their religions, which was Islam back then for most of Africans, whatsoever, their language, culture, history, and their everything. Americans then, as Imam Musa put it, started to build up self images for Africans telling them:" you are from The Dark Continent, you have no roots, Tarzan is your savior, and he's your hero."

Imam Musa delicately used an analogy, resembling African Americans to an oak tree which is a hundred years old but it's still 1.5m of height, all because the gardener has clipped it to the root and clipped it to the top every time it has ever grown, preventing it from gaining its full potentials. Beautiful isn't it?

There was something about this great man; his eyes were shining like no one's do. I could relate. "Every set back is a set up for a comeback" is why he was and is happy for the people of his color. Because he has perceived Moses and how he left Egypt for desert for good so that later on he could come back stronger. That`s his belief, of how this oppressed minority will stand up one day, thoroughly, for its rights and make the voice of Islam heard.

I walked out of that room a "transformed" person.