Siraj Wahhaj
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Siraj Wahhaj (né Jeffrey Kearse) is a well-known[citation needed] African-American Muslim convert speaker in North America, and a supporter of Islamic causes in America. He's currently the Imam of Masjid Al-Taqwa in Brooklyn, New York.
Born and raised in New York, he became a sunday school teacher as a teenager, then later went to New York University (NYU) where he studied Math Education.
In the 1960s, he became attracted to the Nation of Islam, then later left it for Sunni Islam. He changed his name to Siraj Wahhaj, which means "Bright Light" in Arabic, and was chosen to receive Imam training at the Umm al-Qura university of Mecca in 1978. he also briefly taught a course in Islamic studies at Howard University. In 1981, he started his own mosque in 1981 in a friend's apartment in Brooklyn. Although it originally started out with only 25 people, today it is a well-known mosque in New York City.
In 1988, he led his community in an anti-drug patrol in which they staked out drug houses Bedford-Stuyvesant in the cold of winter for 40 days and nights, forcing the closure of 15 drug houses. This effort received high praise from the NYPD.
Imam Siraj has been active in many Islamic organizations. He has been Vice President of the Islamic Society of North America since 1997, has served on the Majlis Ash-Shura, a consultative council of Islamic scholars, since 1987. He is a member of the Board of Advisors for the American Muslim Council, and has served on the national board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Imam Siraj is a fairly prolific speaker in America. He makes many appearances at the major North American Muslim conventions, and numerous forums and lectures in New England. His English audio lectures are fairly popular among the Muslim community, with titles like "Allah's Word is Supreme," "Are You Ready To Die?" "Confusion of the Ummah," "Control Your Anger," "Easy Way To Paradise," and "Good or Bad Company: How to Judge."
He has also appeared on several national television talk shows and interviews in America.
In 1991, Imam Siraj Wahhaj offered an invocation (opening prayer) to the United States House of Representatives. He was the first Muslim to do so.
In 1991, in an address to the Islamic Association of North Texas, he referred to Operation Desert Storm as "one of the most diabolical plots ever in the annals of history."[1]
On 2 February 1995, Wahaj was listed by the United States Department of Justice as one of several "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators in the attempt to blow up New York City monuments," including the World Trade Center in 1993. He was a character witness at the World Trade Center bombing trial of convicted Islamic terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman (a.k.a. "the blind sheik").
