Dear Mama

Through Tupac's struggle to be true to his upbringing and disposition, this FX documentary provided a window for introspection, highlighting “the roads to God are as many as the breaths of humanity.”

Apr 26, 2023

FX’s new documentary, Dear Mama: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur, initially grabbed my attention simply because of Tupac’s cultural significance as one of the greatest rappers. But upon watching, I realized my understanding of Tupac the man, not the rapper, lacked depth. Defying traditional documentary styles, unbound to any particular chronology, Dear Mama delves into the link between Afeni Shakur and her son, the famous 90’s rapper, Tupac. By the end of the second episode, it was clear that this documentary transcends Tupac’s individual life. It is a masterclass on how all human life is shaped by its complexities—our personalities and dispositions, what we’re exposed to, and how we respond to the myriad of situations throughout our lives—each one weaving together, thicker and overlapping another, like a grandmother’s handmade quilt. Furthermore, it epitomizes for me, although ultimate success in Islam is found in Taqwa (God-consciousness)1 achieved through a process of Tazkiya (self-purification)2, the road to salvation (in this life and the next) is not monolithic and may be contrary to what’s apparent.

During Black History Month, I was on a panel discussion and a large portion was on Imam Warith Deen Muhammad and his community. The discussion was extremely rich but, after polling the audience, none of the students had a grasp on the historical context at that time. None previously heard of Imam Warith Deen Muhammad and only a few knew anything about the Nation of Islam. Without surprise, they were equally oblivious to the Black Panther Party, so I asked them if they knew who 2Pac was and they did. I don’t fault them for their ignorance, all of them were born post-9/11, so their childhoods, as Muslims growing up in America in the 2000s, were more focused on Islamaphobia and Anti-Muslim bigotry than the Civil Rights Movent. But, I explained, to properly understand Islam in America post-9/11 you must understand pre-9/11, and to understand Islam in America pre-9/11 you have to know Imam Warith Deen Muhammad (and the greatest mass conversion to Islam in History3), and to understand who Imam Warith Deen Muhammad was and the time he was living in you have to understand the Nation of Islam. What made Tupac so unique, as a person and artist, starkly different than other rappers of his time (Biggie, for example), was his intellectual genealogy—running parallel and intertwined with Islam via the Black Panther Party.

Tupac was born in 1971, just 6 and 3 years after the assassination of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King (respectively), and 3 years after the official end of the Civil Rights Movement with the passing of the Federal Housing Act of 1968. Established in 1966, in the words of its co-founder Bobby Seale, “The Black Panther Party was an ‘All Power to All the People!’ organization. It was a powerful grassroots activist organization that formed coalitions seeking to further our civil human rights and achieve real freedom and justice for all the people.”4 The Panthers was a political organization where “at the center of their politics was the practice of armed self-defense against the police”5 that earned them the full attention of then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s counter-intelligence program (COINTEL-Pro). Tupac's mother, Afeni, was a high-ranking member of the Party—as was his stepfather and Godfather—and was pregnant with him while on trial for conspiracy (of which she defended herself and was later acquitted).

Tupac was and remains - Image 5 from Mother to Son: 7 Afeni Shakur Quotes About 2Pac | BET — David Fenton/Getty Images

Dear Mama shows an interview6 where Tupac described his anger because all of his heroes—his mother, father, stepfather who raised him, his Godfather who was serving a life sentence, and Fred Hampton who was murdered before his birth—had been to jail for the very beliefs his mother raised him to hold and their unrealized sacrifices. An extremely intelligent and articulate woman, Afeni saw the effects of social inequality firsthand while in high school—dropping out of Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts due to a lack of funds and feeling displaced7—and raised Tupac to be socially aware. In another interview, young 17-year-old Tupac recounts that his mother told him “no lies [and] total truth. [She told him] everything that’s real about society” and instilled in him a great sense of responsibility he’s had for as long as he could remember. She raised him to be socially aware, and “not the because it’s trendy”8. As the Black Panthers viewed themselves as a continuation of the efforts of the Civil Rights movement, Tupac viewed himself as the continue where the previous generation stopped. Had it not been for his record deal he was going to assume the position of President of the New Black Panther Party.

While Tupac was nurtured by revolutionaries at home, his nature was one of apparent high extroversion and creativity. His mother was a journalist, poet, and former drama student and he followed in her footsteps, using his art (both rap and acting) to describe the world as he saw it. Tupac’s high school drama teacher said, “Feelings unite us. Thoughts kind of separate us, but no matter what we think, we all feel the same things the same way. It’s kind of what makes art work … I don’t think Tupac had any fear of expressing his feelings” His family, friends, and teachers all testify he was a pure empath without any inhibitions in expressing his emotions. Even though this caused proved to be a challenge, particularly in his romantic relationships (being accused of being too nice and not masculine), his confidence and intelligence allowed him to, instead of whimpering, not change who he was and grow stronger. These natural qualities—of extroversion, creativity, genius intelligence, and confidence—coupled with the revolutionary spirit that was nurtured in him from a very young age remain present in Tupac throughout his early career and well into fame. Though only two episodes of this season have been released (the next is scheduled for April 28th), Dear Mama’s vivid depiction of the impact of both nature and nurture deeply resonated with me, personally and in my roles of responsibility.

Tupac’s relationship with his mother deeply resonated with me. Like Tupac, my mother is my closest confidant and best friend, and, like Afeni, she raised my younger sister and me by herself; it wasn’t always easy for Mom. God bless her. Though she always tried her best to shield us from whatever struggles she had, I had a sense it wasn’t easy and there was very little I could do about it. Robert Bly said, “Some men who fail to rescue their mothers become therapists, and attempt to rescue a woman repeatedly. They bite off the finger of their emotions, and listen to other people’s emotions the rest of their lives.”9 Since first reading this, before I started serving as pastorally as an Imam (still during my undergraduate seminary studies abroad), I frequently reflect on this quote because it describes me to a ‘T’. The question I struggle with (answering and upholding) is how do I remain aware of this proclivity in myself and purify my intention? I must make sure I’m serving for Allah’s sake and not trying to fill something unhealed inside myself as that can become an uncontrollable and dangerous passion.

Even in my role as Imam, despite my achievements and recognition, I perpetually feel a sense of imposter syndrome—that it’s all due to providence and undeserved10. This doesn’t come unwarranted or from some false humility either. I know the efforts I did, and didn’t, exert during my studies and my level of knowledge and understanding compared to my peers and teachers. When I first met Sh. Yasir Fahmy, in what was realistically an interview for the Associate Imam position under his auspices, I told him, “I didn’t study hard and I cannot give Fatwa, but I love people and deeply care about them.” I’m naturally an empath, whose life experiences and work have disenabled me to externally emote my feelings, but serve in an area where I constantly feel underqualified. My task is to ensure my insecurities don’t divert my intentions from pleasing God to satisfying my ego.

Dear Mama highlighted for me how Tupac, and all of us, are complicated people. There’s so much more to each one of us—ourselves and others—than what we are exposed to or think we know. We have parts of ourselves that are from our personalities and dispositions and others that are formed by our experiences. Regardless of which one it is, or isn’t, it is all the work of God. Comparing ourselves to others and/or wishing our circumstances were different falls outside the limitations of our sphere of influence. Tupac was born into a single-parent household stricken by poverty and raised by a mother living with drug addiction, yet he never let that impede his fight for freedom and justice. Our work, our responsibility, is to struggle with ourselves to ensure our morals are aligned with the ethics revealed to us by God through the Prophet ﷺ. How we go about achieving that self-purification will be different for everyone, as the Arab proverb says, “The roads to God are as many as the breaths of humanity”. It isn’t easy, oftentimes isn’t pretty, and may even be alienating, but it is one of the few things in our lives we can control. Despite the material outcome, the quality of Taqwa of Allah and commitment to Tazkiya is the true metric of success.

Allah aid us all!

Khawatir

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