Stan Moody

POB 240 Manchester, ME 04351 207/626-0594 Stanmoody1@aol.com

What Do A Baptist Minister and A Muslim Have in Common?

December 9, 2011 Author: Stan Moody What do a Baptist minister and a Muslim have in common? Aside from a doctrinal respect for The Book and a mutual respect for each other, what Maine residents Rev. Stan Moody of Manchester and Dawud Ummah of Portland have in common is a baseline belief in the dignity of the oppressed in our society. You might say that, as with many other reform advocates, they hold a view of money and time as tools to be employed for helping others. Moody, who has served in the Maine State Legislature and recently was a Chaplain at Maine State Prison, first met Ummah over the issue of Kufis, or skull caps for Islamic prisoners. He came to my office, and we banged out a compromise that eventually was accepted by the prison administration. From then on, we connected as fellow travelers with a passion for the least among us. Ummah, raised in Cleveland, OH, is a veteran of the First Gulf War and creator of the Center for African Heritage (CAH) in Portland. Divergent Personalities Coming Together: How did these divergent personalities arrive at the same place? For Moody, who grew up in Portlands North Deering area, poverty and religion were the catalysts. Being the oldest of 5 children in the poorest family on the street was one factor. Belonging to a Christian fundamentalist sect was quite another. I found myself in a life-long fight against biblical and cultural ignorance. While People of the Book are commanded to serve the least among us, most Christians are safely locked in a white suburban ethos protected from their mission. For Ummah, his moment of truth happened while he was following his older brothers criminal vocation by learning to become a pimp. I fell for this young lady who posed some interesting questions about the pimping business, like, Would you pimp for your Momma and sister? While I stumbled around that question, she asked, When were you thinking of recruiting me? That got a little too close to home for me, and I later eliminated drug dealing and debt collections for the same reason. Both of Ummahs brothers have done time in prison. Mentoring Prisoners, Their Families and Their Victims: How does their shared activity of mentoring prisoners fit into this picture? As founder of the Maine Prison Chaplaincy Corps, Moody has been working quietly with his local District Attorney, Sheriff and Probation Office as a backstop for keeping people out of prison. He also has been a resource for Moms whose sons are in prison or jail. He recently intervened in the case of an accused murderer whose Mom suspected civil rights violations by jail authorities. In another case, he investigated the suicide of a probationer who alleged abuse by his probation officer. He continues to push for an impartial investigation into several suspicious
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prison deaths in Maine. We cannot define a human being by what he or she has done but by their value as a being created by the same God who created Dawud and me, he says. Ummah, in addition to offering refuge for exiting prisoners by training them to grow food and giving them a place to hang their hats, has been deeply involved of late with the Taylor sister case in Westbrook. Kaylee Taylor, now 17, is the daughter of a Mom who was killed in 2009 by Kaylees Dad, who then took his own life1. A senior at Cheverus HS, it is not unusual for her to get a ride to or from school by Ummah. Kaylee, who lives with her two sisters in Westbrook, is the offspring of a mixed racial marriage. She, too, has found refuge in the CAF farming project headed by Ummah and hopes to pursue an education in agriculture. Rejecting the Self-Protective Lifestyle: Moody is quick to admit that his life and Dawuds has been anything but perfect. I think we both learned early and from entirely different cultures that we were incapable of living the self-protective life so familiar to those who seem to know the right answers to everything and just exactly who is their enemy. In the words of Pogo, We have met the enemy, and he is us. Both have learned that safety in life is illusive for most and that the protections of money, position and influence are simply safeguards against reality.

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