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In Washington, D.C., where drug wars have turned our national capital into the world`s murder capital, the most effective anti-drug unit has turned out to be an unusual bunch of volunteers who call themselves ''the dopebusters.''
They have no official connection to the police, the FBI or drug czar William Bennett.
They are Black Muslims, members of Minister Louis Farrakhan`s controversial Nation of Islam.
Armed with walkie-talkies, they patrol certain apartment buildings and housing developments in characteristic Muslim duds: Conservative suits, bow ties, white shirts and clean-shaven heads.
They began patrolling Mayfair Mansions, an all-black, formerly middle-class apartment development, last year after residents invited them to try their luck against local drug dealers.
The results were immediate and decisive. After a few confrontations with Muslim-style rough justice in Mayfair and the Paradise Manor apartments next door, local drug dealers took their trade elsewhere.
Local crime went down. Drug-related killings stopped. Though the District of Columbia police chief criticized the Muslim patrol as vigilantism at first, the support of some District council members brought cooperation. Residents breathed easier. Children again played outdoors. Senior citizens walked in peace.
Requests for more Muslim aid poured in from neighborhood, civic, tenant and religious groups throughout the Washington area. Just as criminal activity feeds on itself, so does community crime-fighting.
Yet the Muslim success has received little coverage outside the D.C. area. We are reluctant to take the Black Muslims seriously, it appears, even when they are making a serious dent in a serious problem.
By ignoring such grass-roots, community-based efforts, we may be cheating ourselves of information that can lead us to more effective solutions, with Muslims or without.
Like others, I have reservations about the use of Muslims as irregular volunteers in the anti-drug war. Their recent history has been riddled as much with controversy as their earlier days were riddled with bullets.
Take their regard for constitutional rights, for example. When a local television camera crew recorded about 10 Muslims meting out their special brand of rough justice on a man wielding a shotgun, the Muslims beat up the camera operator, too.
Then there are the charges of extortion. One apartment building manager said a Muslim representative told her that the Muslims would appreciate a
''donation'' of, say, $5,000 in exchange for dopebusters` security work.
Granted, the Muslims` clean-shaven bruisers can seem intimidating. Then again, good security costs. Public demand has outstripped the Muslims` ability to bear all costs themselves. What price safety?
When his men roughed up the TV crew, Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, the black physician who heads the Nation of Islam`s D.C. mosque, apologized. You have seen us at our worst, he pleaded to news media; now come back and see us at our best. Perhaps we should.
Robert Woodson, the black conservative who heads the Washington-based National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, is dismayed that, as federal officials call for more police and beefed-up security in public housing, they overlook grass-roots crime-fighting efforts like the Muslim ''dopebusters.''
''We would rather risk failure with people with whom we are comfortable than risk success with those who hold unorthodox views,'' Woodson said.
It has become axiomatic among black commentators to wax nostalgic about the old days when those of us who grew up in black neighborhoods (they were not called ''ghettos'' then) looked out for each other, helped each other through hard times and disciplined each other`s children when they misbehaved. Our wealth was in our spirit and our moral network, woven too tight for social decay to eat its way through.
Back then, the Muslims were generally regarded as a quaint, if eccentric, group, selling their newspapers, philosophy and fresh fish door to door. No one would have guessed that now, in an age of unprecedented progress for black Americans, we would be looking to these same Muslims for a semblance of law and order.
Yet, today, with desegregation and upward mobility, our old support network is frayed and tattered, and the black poor find themselves more isolated than ever.
Although whites still outnumber blacks among those whose household income falls below the poverty line, Census Bureau data show most white poor live integrated with better-off whites while almost all black poor live in
''poverty areas,'' the ghettos.
In those areas, we find less to fear from the Ku Klux Klan and other threats of the past than we do from what Woodson calls ''the enemy within,'' a social decay that has mothers trading children for drugs and youngsters wielding Uzis in urban drug wars.
The Muslims are trying to tell us something. Maybe we should listen.
In Washington, D.C., where drug wars have turned our national capital into the world`s murder capital, the most effective anti-drug unit has turned out to be an unusual bunch of volunteers who call themselves ''the dopebusters.''
They have no official connection to the police, the FBI or drug czar William Bennett.
They are Black Muslims, members of Minister Louis Farrakhan`s controversial Nation of Islam.
Armed with walkie-talkies, they patrol certain apartment buildings and housing developments in characteristic Muslim duds: Conservative suits, bow ties, white shirts and clean-shaven heads.
They began patrolling Mayfair Mansions, an all-black, formerly middle-class apartment development, last year after residents invited them to try their luck against local drug dealers.
The results were immediate and decisive. After a few confrontations with Muslim-style rough justice in Mayfair and the Paradise Manor apartments next door, local drug dealers took their trade elsewhere.
Local crime went down. Drug-related killings stopped. Though the District of Columbia police chief criticized the Muslim patrol as vigilantism at first, the support of some District council members brought cooperation. Residents breathed easier. Children again played outdoors. Senior citizens walked in peace.
Requests for more Muslim aid poured in from neighborhood, civic, tenant and religious groups throughout the Washington area. Just as criminal activity feeds on itself, so does community crime-fighting.
Yet the Muslim success has received little coverage outside the D.C. area. We are reluctant to take the Black Muslims seriously, it appears, even when they are making a serious dent in a serious problem.
By ignoring such grass-roots, community-based efforts, we may be cheating ourselves of information that can lead us to more effective solutions, with Muslims or without.
Like others, I have reservations about the use of Muslims as irregular volunteers in the anti-drug war. Their recent history has been riddled as much with controversy as their earlier days were riddled with bullets.
Take their regard for constitutional rights, for example. When a local television camera crew recorded about 10 Muslims meting out their special brand of rough justice on a man wielding a shotgun, the Muslims beat up the camera operator, too.
Then there are the charges of extortion. One apartment building manager said a Muslim representative told her that the Muslims would appreciate a
''donation'' of, say, $5,000 in exchange for dopebusters` security work.
Granted, the Muslims` clean-shaven bruisers can seem intimidating. Then again, good security costs. Public demand has outstripped the Muslims` ability to bear all costs themselves. What price safety?
When his men roughed up the TV crew, Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, the black physician who heads the Nation of Islam`s D.C. mosque, apologized. You have seen us at our worst, he pleaded to news media; now come back and see us at our best. Perhaps we should.
Robert Woodson, the black conservative who heads the Washington-based National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, is dismayed that, as federal officials call for more police and beefed-up security in public housing, they overlook grass-roots crime-fighting efforts like the Muslim ''dopebusters.''
''We would rather risk failure with people with whom we are comfortable than risk success with those who hold unorthodox views,'' Woodson said.
It has become axiomatic among black commentators to wax nostalgic about the old days when those of us who grew up in black neighborhoods (they were not called ''ghettos'' then) looked out for each other, helped each other through hard times and disciplined each other`s children when they misbehaved. Our wealth was in our spirit and our moral network, woven too tight for social decay to eat its way through.
Back then, the Muslims were generally regarded as a quaint, if eccentric, group, selling their newspapers, philosophy and fresh fish door to door. No one would have guessed that now, in an age of unprecedented progress for black Americans, we would be looking to these same Muslims for a semblance of law and order.
Yet, today, with desegregation and upward mobility, our old support network is frayed and tattered, and the black poor find themselves more isolated than ever.
Although whites still outnumber blacks among those whose household income falls below the poverty line, Census Bureau data show most white poor live integrated with better-off whites while almost all black poor live in
''poverty areas,'' the ghettos.
In those areas, we find less to fear from the Ku Klux Klan and other threats of the past than we do from what Woodson calls ''the enemy within,'' a social decay that has mothers trading children for drugs and youngsters wielding Uzis in urban drug wars.
The Muslims are trying to tell us something. Maybe we should listen.
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