Syrian-American Muslim rapper Mona Haydar’s “songs come from her intersectional identity and sensibilities,” noted a 2022 profile by Northeastern University’s Asian American Center. Indeed, review of her Twitter account and her starring role in the recent PBS documentary series Great Muslim American Road Trip reveals that she affirms numerous, hackneyed “intersectional” beliefs.
“Each of her songs tackles issues of power, race and gender,” wrote Paper magazine about Haydar in a 2018 profile. Her tweet about her song “Barbarians” exemplifies these themes, in which she writes about idealized “BEAUTIFUL BARBARIANS,” who, according to leftist mythology, “lived in harmony w/ Earth.” In the linked music video, she and similarly stylishly dressed women in bright, pastel outfits sing of how they “keep it joyful and Bedouin,” for the “feminist planet is imminent.” In the video, hijab body coverings, an element of an Islamic civilization that colonized the Middle East and beyond, supposedly represent, not religious misogyny, but her desire to “decolonize” various body parts. By contrast, Western countries “start war over oilfields.”
Fittingly, Haydar completed a graduate degree in Christian Ethics at New York City’s Union Theological Seminary, “focusing on Empire, Colonization, White Supremacy and Ecology,” Paper noted. Upon her 2018 graduation, Haydar tweeted that “White Supremacy, Poverty, Ecocide, Capitalism, et al [sic] better WATCH OUT,” for she would “use this knowledge for LOVE & JUSTICE.” One of her graduate school professors was the radical black nationalist James Cone, hailed by her upon his death as a “giant,” whose repetitive screeds incessantly focused on “satanic whiteness.”
Many of Haydar’s other tweets are drearily predictable. For example, she referenced discredited sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his 2018 confirmation hearings. On this basis she concluded that “hell is for” Kavanaugh as being among “men who prey on the weak.”
In other tweets, Haydar has wondered why “Canadians seem nicer than Americans” and “HOW DO I GET MONEY WITHOUT SELLING OUT TO CORPORATE CAPITALIST EVIL?” Humans, she has also unoriginally tweeted, “are the only species which actively destroys its own habitat.” Yet precisely free markets, so reviled by her, develop the wealth and new technologies necessary for advanced environmental protection.
Racism, naturally, looms large in Haydar’s consciousness, such as with respect to her hyperbolic denunciations of President Donald Trump’s “MuslimBan.” “The spirit of The constitution is meant to protect while men [sic],” she tweeted in 2018 after the Supreme Court upheld President Donald Trump’s temporary anti-terrorist travel restrictions on global terrorist hotspots. “America has a problem with brown and black people,” she tweeted that same year, without any indication that America could redeem itself from racist sins.
Racial themes accordingly are prominent in Great Muslim American Road Trip, as in the third episode when Haydar and her husband traveling down America’s historic Route 66 reach Tulsa, Oklahoma. Here the couple learns, among other things, about the extensive influence of Islam in postwar America upon black jazz musicians such as John Coltrane. Due in part as a reaction to racism, many, including Art Blakey, converted, although ironically often to the heterodox Ahmadiyya sect, which faces bitter persecution worldwide from mainstream Muslims as a renegade cult.
The couple later takes a detour to Las Vegas, Nevada, where they visit a local Sin City mosque, Masjid as-Sabur (Mosque of the Timeless One), which had its roots in the radical Black Muslim cult of the Nation of Islam (NOI). It operates charity programs for needy individuals and ex-convicts recently released from prison in conjunction with Islamic Relief, an innocuous sounding entity linked worldwide to jihadist extremism. “This gift of giving has always been a part of Africa,” says as-Sabur’s black imam Mustafa Yusuf Richards. His fellow as-Sabur imam, Fateen Seifullah, meanwhile, discussed in a recent webinar how “Africa has long-established slave systems.”
Richards in his film interview mentions how Malcolm X, the militant black nationalist leader assassinated in 1965 who also was once a prominent NOI member, and Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser, influenced blacks including himself. All of this “steered us in the direction of Islam,” Richards says. Yet critical observers might wonder why Malcolm X, who shared with Nasser a vicious hatred of Jews and Israel, would garner such admiration.
Disturbing as well are Richards’ own views. In a 2020 interview, he entertained conspiracy theories about various assassinations of American political figures in the 1960s such as President John F. Kennedy. Richards also promoted the 1954 book Stolen Legacy, in which historian George G. M. James argued that ancient Greeks such as Plato owed their philosophical ideas to ancient Egyptian sources. Wellesley College Classics professor Mary Lefkowitz has debunked this thesis as “extreme Afrocentricism,” yet Richards maintained that “this Western world, this white world, has stolen the knowledge and put its stamp on it.”
As implied by the title, the Great Muslim American Road Trip aims for an all-American feel. However, the underlying realities of Haydar and other participants in the documentary series are far more controversial than her fun-filled cruising down one of America’s iconic byways suggests. Moreover, as the final article in this series will discuss, Haydar is not just far to the left politically in America, but also vehemently anti-Israel.
CogitoErgoSum says
I really don’t understand why those who hate white people would come to a country full of white people when there are, in their opinion, so many better places to live. I guess hate is actually the reason.
mortimer says
Exactly, her parents came to a majority-white country from Syria and then she complained there were ‘too many’ white people. Where would she prefer to live instead? Syria?
Oh, I get it … she wants to rid America of all those pesky whitey’s. And we should not call her a ‘racist’ for hating white Americans. That would be ‘Islamophobic’ to call her Arab racism ‘racism’, wouldn’t it? And Arabs are never known to be ‘racest’, are they?
(In fact … Arab racism is Islam’s biggest unmentionable dirty secret, isn’t it, Mona?)
Infidel says
Also, if she hates capitalism, her native Syria is a socialist country. Why doesn’t she go back there and join the Baathists? In fact, as a rapper, she can still fly under muslim opposition: I doubt that the ruling Alawites have anything against music the way sunnis do
gravenimage says
She wants to turn the United States into the same sort of Muslim crap hole she came from.
mortimer says
Mona Haydar has not explained how criticism of Islam (which is something she does herself) is ‘RACIST’. Hmmm. I wonder why.
Islam actually calls itself a ‘DEEN’ (system of governance). Now, that sounds like a political system, an IDEOLOGY OF GOVERNANCE, doesn’t it?
So will she explain how a political governance ideology evolves into a human and magically turns into a race? I would be FASCINATED to see how this transformation occurs. Or maybe, it’s all BS disguised with truckloads of pompous, impudent verbosity and a TON of anti-Americanism.
Hey, Mona, what country would you PREFER to live in besides USA? We will take a collection to send you there, but you must promise never to return, Mona, as a condition. Any takers, Mona?
(*crickets*)
mgoldberg says
She ignores all the obvious theologic and historic calls to homicidism by the Quran and sharia.
The Hindus are murdered by the so many millions over the last thousand years, and into our day today- the muslims burn down hindu temples and break up the figures of gods and the press can only right about ‘restive’ areas etc. That’s just done group, one religion, and I would say to her…’So Islam’s homciding and hatred of polytheists’ is okay for you?
mgoldberg says
‘Write’…. not ‘right’. And ‘That’s just ‘one’ group, not ‘don’
Sorry :^(
Westman says
Haydar: “We are the only species that actively destroys its own habitat”
I know you don’t get out much but come over to my pasture where the cattle void themselves on their own food. Be careful where you walk. Then we’ll go where pine beetles have destroyed their own habitat.
MONA HAYDAR: “SO HOW DO I GET MONEY WITHOUT SELLING OUT TO CORPORATE CAPITALIST EVIL?”
You’re doing fine. Just keep Mona-ing and Mona-ing about everything and blame it on “white” people. The Woke Corps will line up. You might even get a personal audience with Soros.
I’m still confused, what race is Islam? I can’t seem to find it on my census form.
Infidel says
I think you could write it in – next to ‘Other’
gravenimage says
Pious Muslims regularly characterize any criticism of Islam “racist”–because good people really do condemn actual racism, and they are hoping to cash in on this false trope.
mortimer says
I didn’t get what this Islamic heretic and BIDA-PRODUCING screwball was about until I read a bit of biography on her.
Quote: “Mona Haydar (born 18 May 1988) is an American rapper, poet, activist, and chaplain. Her EP is Barbarican (2018), and she is best known for her viral song “Hijabi (Wrap My Hijab),” a protest song.”
Let’s put this puzzle together : 1) rapper (un-Islamic), poet (haram ‘forbidden’ in Islam); chaplain … dubious; nickname ‘BARBARICAN’ … barbarians can do what?; Wrap my hijab? … is the hijab barbaric?
Well, that’s enough contradictory nonsense for one day. … another loose cannon on the Islamic deck. She would be whipped or stoned in Iran or Afghanistan, no doubt.
mortimer says
She has obviously ‘WRAPPED HER HIJAB’ too tight.
James Lincoln says
mortimer,
Now, if the hijab only came along packaged with a working brain…
gravenimage says
“Barbarican” is a “woke” version of the “noble savage”.
mortimer says
Is it true that the Arab barbarians “lived in harmony w/ Earth” or is that more of her BS?
Actually, it’s BS.
Wherever the Arabs went, they brought their carnivorous culture (Muslims consume three times MORE meat than other cultures) and thus with OVERGRAZING of Islamic flocks of GOATS (which remove the entire root of all plants and grasses), Muslims DENUDED and LAID bare all areas where they lived, thus creating DESERTS where they lived. The Arab barbarians DESTROYED the productive lands they moved into by conquest, then erosion occurred, then they moved and DESTROYED again.
Islamic eco-barbarism is very DESTRUCTIVE due to all those GOATS, isn’t it, Mona?
gravenimage says
+1
mortimer says
Perhaps Mona Haydar could explain the concept of ‘equality’ that is expressed in the PACT OF OMAR (the dhimmi contract) which explains EXACTLY how non-Muslim KAFIRS should be treated.
Mona Haydar should explain how the DHIMMI CONTRACT (which is the normative, DEFAULT position in Muslim-majority countries) should be implemented in the USA.
We eagerly anticipate a DEBATE ON THE DHIMMI CONTRACT FOR AMERICANS and we invite MONA HAYDAR to debate the DHIMMI CONTRACT with ROBERT SPENCER so she may demonstrate ONCE AND FOR ALL the compelling LOGIC of her progressive AND Islamic ideas and how they fit together with respect to THE PACT OF OMAR.
Please read: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/The_Pact_of_Umar
gravenimage says
Yep–she’s just hoping Infidels are ignorant fools–and sadly too many of them are…
Wellington says
A very confused, ungrateful and ignorant person. But then there is no way to fully embrace Islam and not be such.
DavidR says
jahiliyyahl
is an Islamic concept referring to the period of time and state of affairs in Arabia before the advent of Islam in 610 CE. It is often translated as the “Age of Ignorance”. The term jahiliyyah is derived from the verbal root jahala “to be ignorant or stupid, to act stupidly.
That’s how Muslim scholars view the “noble savages” that ran amok before Islam. Now here’s a couple Google reviews of the school she chose to attend:
“This ‘theological seminary’ is not a seminary at all. The president, Serene Jones rejects the virgin birth, the earthly resurrection, and denies the truthfulness of the Gospel. Do not call yourself a Christian minister if there is no Christ even in you. Stay away from this school as long as Jones is president and they teach bad theology!”
“This is only a theological seminary by name. This place doesn’t believe in the truth of the Bible!! I have heard of a minister whose faith was destroyed after attending there. Please stay away!!!
“If you’re looking for a seminary teaching biblical Christianity then keep on looking. If it’s institutionalized apostasy you are seeking then this is the place.”
There were 25 reviews. Most of the 5 star reviews had no comments, just stars. But here’s a couple of the positive ones:
“Good theological library.”
“Studying to be a religion leader, enroll today!
This is the most positive review and probably the one that led Mona to enroll there:
“Union theological seminary revend euan Cameron is a wonderful priest with alot of history from England and is great with worship and is very interesting to me I need to have a priest that I cant talk to and just to feel comfortable to talk and I am not a happy person I cant talk to him no more my names is Susan I knew to talk to him I need to come back to Heavely rest church for service and to talk to different revend and to talk to revend Matt hyde is the rector of that church my name is Susan kenney”
Mona is what allot of people would euphemistically refer to as “complicated”.
tim gallagher says
She sounds like a monumental, know nothing, brain dead bore. On the road to nowhere alright. I pity the fellow brain dead fuckwits who waste any of their time on her nonsense. Such a waste of anyone’s time. But I guess there is an audience for all sorts of utter crap these days.
gravenimage says
Mona Haydar’s Highway to Nowhere (Part Two)
……………………………….
Of course, if Mona Haydar was *really* living in a Bedouin Muslim culture she could never be a musician using social media like this.