Eidfest Unites Diaspora Muslims

He started with a video of himself walking around Texas asking different people questions about Muslims. One person was asked to identify the holy month for Muslims and responded, “Jihad.�

 

(Brother Dash).

Andalus Media group entertained both Muslims and non-Muslims with a variety of cultural entertainers this past weekend in New Jersey.

The moderator Mohammed Amer, a new edition to Allah Made Me Funny, made the audience laugh throughout the ceremony with various jokes about Muslims and their everyday life. He started with a video of himself walking around Texas asking different people questions about Muslims. One person was asked to identify the holy month for Muslims and responded, “Jihad.�      

Andalus Media Group, a company composed of Dash Brooks and Hasan Johnson is an eighteen-month-old organization whose goal is to produce a variety of shows for Muslim families. Dash originally from Brooklyn, understands the importance of Muslim families needing an outlet of entertainment for themselves and their children.

This past weekend’s Eidfest goal was not only to entertain people with a post Eid celebration, but also a fundraiser for Muslim schools in New Jersey. Even though Dash and Hasan only planned the event in six weeks, more than 700 people appeared and approximately $24,000 dollars was raised for the schools.

Entertainers such as Shaam a South Asian group from the UK performed beautiful songs such as La illah inlla Allah and “There is No Islam without You.” The latter, expressed the importance of educating today’s youth and making them feel proud of being Muslim to a harmonious beat.

Mohammed Amir returned to the stage and told a joke about Muslims taking care of their health. He related a story in his childhood when he said he remembered his father having a broken toe but refusing to go to the doctor. “Dad your toe is broken and it is facing east please go to the doctor,� he recalled telling his father. His father replied, “Alhumdullah that it is facing east—at least I will always know what direction is prayer.�

The next group, 786, took us back to the old school days of beep-bop. They performed a song entitled “Everybody Make Dua� a beautiful song about the state of the Ummah, the Muslim community. It was remarkable, how the South Asian youth reminded one of the old school African-America rappers from back in the day.

Bro Dash himself a master at spoken word recited a few of his poems and the one that I really enjoyed was entitled “The Blaze.� It was a philosophically deep poem about our youth in America being overwhelmed with so many images of things, that influence their subconscious—how youth recognize the arches of McDonalds before they recognize important individuals in history.

Native Deen, fresh from Jerusalem performed a song on how their trip greatly inspired them especially when they visited the graves of Prophet Muhammad, Prophet Isa and Prophet Musa. Dawud Whamsby, a musician from Canada and Shaam sang a beautiful heart warming song entitled “Children of the World.�

Deen also performed a song to make light of the fact that Shaam was detained at the airport for four hours trying to come into the country for the performance.

To find out about more upcoming events you can visit their website at: www.andalusmg.com

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