LONDON: An Indian American who claims inspiration from Martin Luther King and is working with former British prime minister Tony Blair to roll out a global inter-faith youth movement has unusually become America Abroad’s poster boy for the black civil rights leader’s message on the 40th anniversary of his assassination.
On Friday, four decades after the black leader was silenced by the bullet of his white racist assassin James Earl Ray, Mumbai-born, Chicago-based Eboo Patel arguably ensured King’s voice carried farther than ever before.
Patel, 32, a sociologist by training and good samaritan by instinct, is the son of hard-working, middle-class, aspirational Ismaili Muslim immigrants to the US.
In delivering the keynote address at official ceremonies held here to mark the 40th anniversary of King’s death, he arguably takes King’s song of equality and natural justice out of its traditional confine of black pulpits and African-American podiums and to audiences as diverse as British Asians, European Muslims and 21st-century India.
Patel told this paper he was “ridiculously honoured” to be chosen to explain King’s continuing relevance in our turning world, rather than eminent black American figures such as Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, who might conventionally be considered the Baptist preacher’s rightful heirs.
“I emphasise what King learnt from India and Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha movement and thereby I close the loop on what this Indian (Patel) is learning from an all-American hero,” he said.
With the great and the good of the governing Labour Party, British clergy and civil society in attendance at the central London all-day event, Patel said it was King’s primary message about pluralism, “which is the thread that runs through America, India and Islam” that helped him make sense of his own heavily hyphenated identity – Indian, Muslim, American.
Patel’s recently-published book which is named ‘Acts of Faith’ details his tortured search for identity as “a brown Muslim in a white world”.
King, who famously went to India in 1959 and met Gandhi’s followers, became convinced that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom after reading the Mahatma’s words “Through our pain we will make them see their injustice”.
Even though King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech is still considered among the greatest ever made and his non-violent campaign for equal rights inspired millions, Patel says it may now be time to bring the wider post-9/11 world outside America to King’s primary message about “the beloved community”, where brotherhood is a reality.
Ismailimail 
This is very inspirational!
Eboo Patel, a Shia Ismaili Muslim, was inspired by Martin Luther King who himself was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. Mr. Patel closes the loop as follows:
“I emphasise what King learnt from India and Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha movement and thereby I close the loop on what this Indian (Patel) is learning from an all-American hero,” he said.
There was another very significant Shia Ismaili Muslim link with Mahatma Gandhi, his satyagraha and passive resistance movements and that was his close association with the Keshavjee family of South Africa during the early 1900s. This relationship has been most colourfully and eloquently described in 2 articles by elders of the Keshavjee family who witnessed this unique relationship first hand, Lella Umedaly of Vancouver and Mamdoo Keshavjee of Toronto:
http://mamajeeskitchen.com/mylife.html
http://mamdoochacha.blogspot.com/2008/03/languages-in-location.html
LikeLike