For the last 70 days the youth of Ferguson, Missouri have led protests and vigils every night in remembrance of 18 year old Michael Brown and the countless other black lives that are cut short at the rate of at least 400 annually by police in the United States. This past weekend protesters merged on Ferguson for a weekend of action called for by the youth of Ferguson with actions, protests and acts of civil disobedience taking place from Friday to Monday, October 10th to the 13th.

Mustafa Abdullah is a community organizer originally from North Carolina who moved to St. Louis two years ago to work for the ACLU of Eastern Missouri. In the days after Michael Brown’s shooting Mustafa went to work with a number of other Muslim leaders locally and nationally to organizer Muslims for Ferguson who are helping to lead the call to get American Muslims more deeply involved in community organizing around issues of racial justice, mass incarceration and police brutality throughout the United States. What follows is an in depth interview with Mustafa Abdullah about the organizing taking place on the ground in Ferguson, and his hopes for the Muslim community, as he stated clearly to us in our interview,

“my hope is that Muslims really begin to see that our own liberation, and our own freedom are intricately intertwined with the freedom of the youth that are on the street in Ferguson.”

Ummah Wide: Within a few days of the killing of Michael Brown you all started organizing the Muslim community to be actively engaged in what is happening in Ferguson. Can you tell us about Muslims for Ferguson, what the local response has been like and also what the national response has been so far to this call to action?

Mustafa Abdullah: In seeking justice in Ferguson, and justice for Mike Brown for me it’s about building a just world and it’s about building the values that are of the utmost importance to me. I take very seriously the verses in the Qur’an that if one part of the body is in pain then the whole body wakes up in a fevered state and I think that is making a deeper metaphorical statement about world. That we are aware of the pain that people are going through and a we have a belief that we should be there to support communities in ways that are authentic…read more.