By By Rob Tokanel, News Staff

Amir Sulaiman says he began writing poetry at such an early age, it was as commonplace to him as eating or sleeping; he was too young to realize not everyone skipped the playground to pen verses.
On Thursday, the Islamic spoken word poet performed for a crowd of about 50 at the John D. O’Bryant African-American Institute as part of the Islamic Society of Northeastern University (ISNU)’s Islam Awareness Week.
‘I thought it would be such a great idea to bring him, and from the response of the crowd, everybody loved it,’ said Vice President of ISNU Omar Duwaji. ‘Through his lyrics, you can tell that he’s all about spreading a message that is pure and represents what Islam is.’
The event was the group’s third of the week, including a presentation on the future of Islam in America led by Islamic law researcher Faraz Rabbani; a discussion about students who had converted to Islam; and an in-depth examination of the life of the Prophet Muhammed, featuring Muhammed Abutelab. The week ended with a speech on the history of Islam and African Americans with Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Freedom Society Foundation.
Duwaji said the week was meant to enlighten students about current events relative to the Islamic religion and the tenets of its belief system.
‘The goal each year is to spread awareness about Islam and its true teachings so people on campus have a true picture of what the religion teaches and asks of its followers,’ he said.
Sulaiman, an Atlanta-based artist who has toured with Mos Def, said it was important for him that the show double as a conversation with the audience. After reciting poems, he fielded questions about his upbringing, his influences and the meaning of his lyrics.
His poems often employed intense imagery and politically and socially vitriolic themes, including rape, terrorism and slavery, and he delivered them with passion proportional to their content. But Sulaiman remained calm and deliberate between poems.
The disconnect, he said, comes from the fact that he writes about other people as often as himself, and embodying characters like Palestinian teenagers or Native Americans brings their spirit out of him, even if it’s not directly reflective of his experience.
‘It’s like a certain unveiling,’ he said. ‘It’s like a light bulb, or a candle that has a veil over it, and as I start to speak the veil falls away and the light becomes more intense.’
In the poem ‘Danger,’ Sulaiman argued for the justice of several historically disenfranchised groups, positing that freedom exists ‘between the mind and the soul, the lock and the load, the zeal of the young and the patience of the old.’
In ‘How Beautiful,’ he addressed a domestic abuse victim, begging her to realize her worth before it was too late.
And in his final poem, ‘Corner Store Folklore,’ he turned the focus inward, ruminating on the idea that his poems don’t come from God. Sulaiman said he was inspired to write the poem because of the public praise for his work that he feels is unwarranted.
‘People would come up to me, sometimes people I didn’t know, and say, ‘Your poetry changed my life,’ and I would always feel a little bit embarrassed, and had the feeling of getting credit for something that isn’t actually mine,’ he said.
Yasmin Hosein, a Boston University junior majoring in early childhood education, said she had seen Sulaiman in the past and was so impressed that she made the trip to Northeastern when she found out he would be performing.
‘It’s kind of the feeling you get when you hear a song and you get chills,’ she said. ‘I think that people might [think about] what he writes, but he puts it so eloquently, and you can see that he’s very passionate about what he was saying.’
Sulaiman also records some of his poems as songs. Although his messages may differ from a lot of popular hip-hop artists, he said the medium has been a major influence on his writing style.
‘The people that inspired me most to do what I do are people that are rappers as opposed to poets,’ he said. ‘Black Thought of the Roots, Nas, Common, Saul Williams; some people that are really considered rappers are people who provoked me to start writing what I’m writing.’
First year Northeastern law student Liz Nettleton said she was impressed by how well Sulaiman was able to connect with a diverse audience.
‘Amir Sulaiman is just amazing,’ she said. ‘I really identify with some of his lyrics. He writes in a way that’s really in depth about politics, about social relations, about gender relations, about everything.’
Duwaji said Sulaiman set a positive example in his craft by demonstrating the diversity of Islamic Americans and their contributions to society.
‘The thing that I love about [Sulaiman] is that he proves to everybody that Muslims aren’t just these guys who pray five times a day and fast,’ Duwaji said. ‘We’re a diverse group that includes different professionals and artists.’