The passing of my Muslim brother Abdullah Muhammad (Hubert Pipersburgh) has saddened all of us in the Muslim communities both in the United States and in Belize that knew him. His life transcended volumes in terms of who he was, what he stood for, and the struggles he waged both in the Islamic and secular communities in the U.S. and in Belize.
Abdullah, as we Muslims knew him, was a very charismatic personality who was charming, diplomatic, educated, and dedicated. After his conversion to Islam in Belize in the 1970s while he was a high school student at Wesley College (he later finished his high school education at St. Michael’s College), he grew into this kind of socio-political Belizean activist, and that is what many Belizeans in those circles had come to know him as. It was the vibrant and progressive nature of the Belizean Muslim community of the 70s that molded him into this brilliant Belizean student activist who was fortunate to have learnt under the tutelage of those like Imam Nuri Muhammad and many others of the elder Muslims who were his brothers in faith, and he was the youngest of them all.
One of those Muslims was his own cousin, Saeed Rasool, who had embraced Islam years before Abdullah’s conversion and had invited his younger cousin to become a Muslim. It was Rasool’s nurturing and loving care that influenced the young Hubert to immediately take the step towards a faith that had appeared very strange in a predominantly Christian society like Belize. But even before my conversion to Islam, the energetic Hubert would come by my house in Belize City and we would have some of the most dynamic conversations about Belize, its politics, culture, society, and many other pertinent issues.
Abdullah (Hubert) was transferring knowledge to me as one who was searching deeply in the 70s as a St. Michael’s College student who was two years ahead of him. He was a very sharp intellect since then, and we argued constructively, and we loved each other so much for having such thirst for knowledge. He used to tell me that Islam was the faith for me because he saw in me that passion for the truth and identified that my thrust was one that was not typical. It was his invitation to me to start visiting the Islamic center on Racecourse Street that housed one of the most informative libraries of African and indigenous peoples’ history as well as some of the most educational books on Islam that sparked my own interest in it.
But what stood out were the constructive conversations at that Islamic center in Belize City, Belize, that were engaged in between some of the most brilliant and brightest of Belizean minds, from the former and late Belizean ambassador Adalbert Tucker, to St. Johns College’s (SJC) Barney Lopez, to the Belizean civil engineer, the late Victor Lewis, who had also become a Muslim at that time. There were many more Belizean intellectuals of that time who passed through there and engaged in some of the most educational dialogues. The Belize City Islamic Center on Racecourse Street was Abdullah Muhammad’s center of extended educational learning. It was where he developed a deep sense of consciousness as a 14-year-old youth who had already digested and processed so many volumes of world and Islamic history that many among his peers who were older than he was had not even come across yet.
Bilal, Nuri and Abdullah
Our friendship that developed across these lines morphed into a kind of camaraderie that existed beyond our confined recreational lifestyles within the present-day Belizean society. We saw each other at parties and functions throughout our years as Belizean youths in the 1970s, and these allowed us to socialize even more and enjoy our lives abundantly. Hubert was fun to be around, and we both, along with all our other friends, enjoyed life. But It was another Belizean Muslim brother, Nuri Akbar, seen in the middle of the photo, who had lived right next to the masjid on Racecourse Street, who had the most fundamental impact on the Muslim brother Abdullah Muhammad during his conversion. The young Wesley College student had once lived at the home of Akbar, and the Islamic chemistry and friendship that developed between the two made them into two inseparable brothers who were two of the youngest members of a cadre of Muslim individuals who came from some of the most respectable Belizean families. When the Belizean Islamic revolutionary Odinga Lumumba came through the Racecourse Street Islamic center in the 70s, it was these two most energetic and vibrant young Belizean Muslims that benefitted most from his African-centered Islamic knowledge, which Odinga had acquired while he lived and worked in Ghana, where he had embraced Islam.
Abdullah Muhammad’s migration from Belize to New York after his graduation from high school in the early 1980s was another transformation in his life. Visiting Los Angeles in 1984, he had come across the Los Angeles Muslims of Belize (L.A.M.B.), who again embraced his passion for activism — all of which stemmed from his integral role in the group of brothers who had formed the Belizean social group and who were his mentors and friends. These included Sisters Darlene and Eloisa, his longtime Muslim brothers Nuri Akbar and Saeed Rosool, as well as myself, who had embraced Islam in the US, and the late and legendary Belizean activist, Ishmael Omar Shabazz, of the United Black Association for Development UBAD). Shabazz was also one of the pioneers of the Islamic community in Belize who joined the Nation of Islam in Belize in its early years under the late and legendary Charles X Eagan, aka Justice.
The newspaper that Abdullah (Hubert) held in his hands in this memorable photo, was a publication that the members of LAMB had published in the Los Angeles Belizean community called, “The Belizean Focus”. Hubert was a writer and promoter of the “Belizean Focus,” and also one of the most charismatic advocates of its distribution in the Los Angeles Belizean community in the 1980s. His move from New York to Los Angeles in the 1980s began for him a new chapter in his activist life as one of the pioneering members of BREDAA, the Belize Rural Economic Development of Agriculture through Alliance, which was the brainchild of Shabazz. Abdullah (Hubert) became a loyal and constructive spokesman for BREDAA, representing the grassroots Belizean diaspora organization with zeal, and he stirred some of the most effective activism within the Belizean Islamic community. It was a passion and work ethic that Islam as a faith had developed in him, but which had already been within him, for this was his nature as a human being since his birth.
He later educated himself by earning a Bachelor’s degree in public policy in the 1990’s from the University of Southern California (USC), which was was one of his most sought after dreams as a Belizean in the diaspora. He told me once in Belize in the 70s that Islam encourages some of the highest educational pursuits, and that the Muslims are always called to champion some of the biggest endeavors in human history. And he was absolutely right about that, because my own quest for knowledge was activated by the discoveries I made, which began with what Abdullah had shared with me in our high school days at St. Michael’s College.
After the demise of BREDAA as an organization in the 1990s, Abdullah (Hubert) went on with his life and became an educator at the Los Angeles School District (LAUSD), which led him to pursue a teaching credential and to make a difference among some of the most challenging students of color within the culturally deprived communities of South Central, Los Angeles. But the passion that always burned deep down within him led to his desire to return to his home country, Belize, to contribute to its development, and in 1999 he was selected to become the police press secretary in the 1998-2004 Musa administration. Though he had declined the offer and continued living and working in L.A., he finally made the permanent move back to Belize in the mid-2000’s and later became an economic adviser to the newly elected Belize City mayor, Bernard Wagner, and the Belize City Council.
I had seen him for the last time just last year in 2019 in L.A. before his death, and over the last several days I’ve been reflecting on his illness and realizing how short this life is and that we are all bound to return to our Maker someday. Prior to that he had spoken at several BREDAA forums in 2016 in Los Angeles, California, on the Anglo-Guatemalan Claim, and he had become a charismatic activist in the Belize Citizens Abroad (BCA) movement, fighting for the restoration of the constitutional rights of Belizeans living abroad in the Belizean diaspora. That work was one of the last instrumental efforts he made for the cause for our people and country that Abdullah Muhammad (Hubert Pipersburgh) was engaged in.
Our brother Abdullah Muhammad’s (Hubert Pipersburgh) work for his people, the Belizeans, and his country, Belize, had led him to accomplish so much in terms of what God, the Most High, had called him on this earth to do. He has achieved the highest form of struggle, or jihad — working as a slave of God, Most High. Because he died from a plague, the coronavirus, doing the work for his people and country that was pleasing to his Lord and Creator, in the words of the prophet of Islam, Muhammad Abdullah (PBUH), Abdullah Muhammad died as a martyr in the way of God Most High.
Narrated Anas bin Maalik (upon him be peace, Allah’s Messenger Muhammad Abdullah, peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Death from a plague is martyrdom for every Muslim”.
As Salaam Alaikum (peace be upon you), Abdullah Muhammad (Hubert Pipersburgh). May Allah Most High grant you peace in the next life. Inshallah (If God is willing).
(Photo through the courtesy of the BREDAA archives)
Feature photo: Andullah Muhammad (Hubert Pipersberg)