Fahiym Abdul-Wasi was born in 1973 in New York City. He grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. Since adolescence, he has explored different Muslim traditions, including the Five Percent Nation, the Ansaaru Allah Community, the Nation of Islam, and Sufism. Abdul-Wasi’s work as a hip-hop journalist has been featured in a variety of publications and he served as the editor-in-chief of music magazine The Source under the byline Joshua Fahiym Ratcliffe. See this narrator’s full biography and oral history.

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Oral History Clips:

Fahiym Abdul-Wasi describes the racial tension in New York City in the 1980s, specifically the danger he felt as a Black man attending school in the predominantly white neighborhood of Bensonhurst.

See this Oral History Clip’s interactive transcript.

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