Rasul Miller
Muslims across the U.S. are mourning the loss of an immense spiritual, ethical, and political luminary – Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rasheed (1951-2025). Imam Talib served as the Imam of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood (MIB) in the village of Harlem, New York for over 35 years – a position he was elected to shortly after the passing of the mosque’s founding Imam, Shaykh Ahmed K. Tawfiq (1936-1988).
MIB is the lineal descendant of the Muslim Mosque, Inc. (MMI), which Malcolm X founded in 1964 after leaving the Nation of Islam. Imam Talib described his mosque as “a congregation born out of a spirit of resistance.” MIB remains the oldest African American-led orthodox Muslim mosque in Harlem today. MIB’s founding Imam, Shaykh Ahmed K. Tawfiq, was a member of both the MMI and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, the political formation that Malcolm founded.
Shaykh Tawfiq was already a practicing Muslim and studying Arabic before joining
Malcolm’s organizations. When the Egyptian government famously offered Malcolm X several scholarships to support the Islamic education of Black American Muslims in Cairo, Shaykh Tawfiq was the only person handpicked by Malcolm X to go. While Shaykh Tawfiq was in Cairo, Malcolm was martyred. He travelled back to the US in 1967, having been kicked out of Cairo by the Egyptian government for participating in student protests. Upon Shaykh Tawfiq’s return, he became the leader of the community of Muslims who had followed Malcolm in New York. Initially, Shaykh Tawfiq taught and delivered khutbahs at the International Muslim Society, an orthodox Muslim mosque in Harlem that was founded by African American and Somali Muslims during the 1940s and operated until the 1970s. In 1970 or 1971, Shaykh Tawfiq and his followers founded the MIB in Harlem.
Imam Talib was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1951 during the era of apartheid in the US South. Imam Talib moved to the South Bronx with his family during his youth. During the 1960s, he was significantly impacted by the growing influence of Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and anti-war activism. He became part of the Black Arts Movement that emerged in the wake of Malcolm’s martyrdom, performing as an actor and dancer and befriending the iconic Black radical writer and intellectual Askia Muhammad Toure, who attended MIB.
In 1971, at the age of 20, Imam Talib visited MIB for the first time. He took his shahada there that day and became an active member of the mosque. He learned the foundations of Islam from Shaykh Tawfiq and Imam Sayed Abdus-Salaam (1942-2017), the assistant Imam of the MIB, who later became the first American muqaddam (representative) of the Tijani Sufi tariqa in the US and a critical link between the African and African American Islamic traditions. By 1975, Imam Talib was serving as MIB’s assistant Imam and the editor of its newspaper, The Western Sunrise.
In 1989, the year after Shaykh Tawfiq’s passing, Imam Talib became MIB’s full-time Imam. For the next three decades, Imam Talib tirelessly served the Muslim community in New York City and beyond. In the 1980s and 1990s, he served as a critical mentor and one of the primary supporters for both the city’s Latino Muslim community and the burgeoning African immigrant community. He was a teacher, mentor, and spiritual guide for Muslim artists including the pioneering, Puerto Rican break dancer Jorge “Popmaster” Fabel, platinum-selling recording artist Amel Larrieux, and numerous others, earning him the nickname “the Hip-Hop Imam.” Other notable artists, such as Yasiin Bey and Q-Tip, also visited Imam Talib over the years, as well as veterans of the Black liberation struggle, including Sekou Odinga (1944-2024) and Dhoruba Bin Wahad. Imam Talib was a critical part of several efforts to unite Muslim communities, leading to his role as the Amir (president) of the Majlis Ash-Shura (Islamic Leadership Council) of Metropolitan New York and the Deputy Ameer (Vice President) of the Muslim Alliance in North America.
Imam Talib is mainly remembered as an unwavering champion of social justice and liberation. Perhaps the loudest and most consistent such voice within the Muslim community in the US for decades, Imam Talib consistently offered robust analyses of white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, and ethnic chauvinism during his Friday khutbas and lectures. From fighting police brutality and the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims, to protecting the environment, to resisting the gentrification of Harlem and cultivating Black self-determination, the topics of Imam Talib’s Friday khutbahs regularly addressed the various forms of oppression that faced Muslims, Black folks, poor and working-class people, and all communities victimized by the horrors of racial capitalism. Over the years, Imam Talib played a significant part in protests following the NYPD’s murder of several Black American and African immigrant men. Overall, he was a strong advocate of solidarity between oppressed people. In 1995, Imam Talib established “Original Nations Day” at MIB. For 29 years, the community hosted, on so-called Thanksgiving Day, this “cultural, educational, and alternative activity directed primarily towards Muslim Americans of African, Latino, and Native American descent.” As he explained, in his own words, “[t]hese two dimensions of my humanity – religion on one hand and the struggle for justice on the other hand – are at the core of my being.”
Imam Talib’s tireless and timeless voice, as one of the most dynamic and prolific representatives of the long tradition of Black Muslims fighting to establish justice, will be deeply missed. It will now fall on a younger generation, many of whom Imam Talib taught and mentored over the years, to answer the call and continue this tradition.
Dr. Rasul Miller is a second-generation Muslim and an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Miller’s current book project, Black World Revelation: Islam, Race, and Radical Internationalism in Twentieth-Century New York City, traces the Black internationalist origins of Black orthodox Muslim congregations, as well as the cultural and political orientations that shaped later communities of Black Muslims who forged transnational networks connecting with Muslims on the African continent. Dr. Miller has also studied Maliki fiqh with Shaykh Ameen Abdul-Awal at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York under the guidance of Shaykh Mouhamadou Mahy Cisse in Medina Baye, Senegal.
