Speaking of our “spiritual warriorhood,” another example entered the news this week when the world’s “first openly gay Imam” was shot to death in South Africa. Muhsin Hendricks, 57 years old, ran a mosque in Cape Town as a safe haven for gay and other marginalized Muslims.
In a documentary in 2022, when asked about the threats he faced, he responded this way: “The need to be authentic was greater than the fear to die.”
How like this statement is to that of MLK Jr. who was asked one day how he could march in Skokie, Illinois knowing that people wanted to kill him. He replied: “One must love something more than the fear of death if he is going to live.”
Muhsin Hendricks championed interfaith dialogue and the need to address mental health and trauma issues faced by LGBTQ+ individuals within religious communities. Hearing of his murder, one gay Nigerian said, “He’s a mentor to many queer Muslins in Africa especially in Nigeria, because of religious extremism…I’m still in shock and devastated.”
A parallel story is unfolding as now dozens of competent and experienced civil servants in the DOJ and other departments are quitting the current administration rather than violate the oaths they made to the constitution. Exiting one’s work can be a kind of “death” and they are demonstrating moral courage by choosing that over servile obedience.
Every Republican representative and senator could take a lesson from these people who are leaving their jobs because of conscience, that is to say, because they believe in something more than the fear of death, death being defined as “losing one’s job.”
Where is the conscience in these legislators as they sit by and watch the environmental laws being ripped up? As they listen to immigrants being called “rapists and murderers”? As they watch the richest man in the world, with the president’s approval, remove American aid to some of the poorest people in the world and food destined to feed them rotting in ships because USAID had been halted? And being deprived of AIDS medicine and more? In other words, as they watch murder going on in our name?
Where are these congress people when they watch the Constitution of the United States being ripped up before their eyes? And lies spewing out of the mouths of the current co-presidents of the United States on a daily basis?
We know where they are. Cowering in a corner because they don’t want to be primaried by people even more to the right (i.e. more fascist) than they are.
Such cowardice, such moral timidity in a time of crisis by people who talk differently in the cloak room than they do in front of cameras, are a disgrace to their profession. And to their claims to love this country. Much less, this planet. Character matters.
And many of them love to wrap themselves in so-called religious clothing. But they worship false gods. Antichrist, not Christ. They are rendering America not “great again,” but “grotesque again.”
Meister Eckhart: “God is the denial of denial.”
See Matthew Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
And Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine.
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion.
And Fox, Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
Banner Image: Senate Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries bewails Democrats’ lack of leverage in a Republican-controlled Congress. Screenshot from CSPAN recording, 2/7/2025.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you see a parallel between leaving your job because of conscience and overcoming the fear of death? Do the choices of Muhsin Hendricks and Dr. King inspire you to live your life more fully and bravely and thus call on the spiritual warrior in you?
Recommended Reading
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Time
While Matthew Fox recognizes that Meister Eckhart has influenced thinkers throughout history, he also wants to introduce Eckhart to today’s activists addressing contemporary crises. Toward that end, Fox creates dialogues between Eckhart and Carl Jung, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Heschel, Black Elk, Karl Marx, Rumi, Adrienne Rich, Dorothee Soelle, David Korten, Anita Roddick, Lily Yeh, M.C. Richards, and many others.
“Matthew Fox is perhaps the greatest writer on Meister Eckhart that has ever existed. (He) has successfully bridged a gap between Eckhart as a shamanistic personality and Eckhart as a post-modern mentor to the Inter-faith movement, to reveal just how cosmic Eckhart really is, and how remarkably relevant to today’s religious crisis! ” — Steven Herrmann, Author of Spiritual Democracy: The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
3 thoughts on “Imam Muhsin Hendricks & Other Spiritual Warriors Among Us”
Yes! Yes! There should not be any doubts among Americans who are awakening and morally intelligent with a conscience that Trump, his cult MAGA followers, Republican senators and representatives, and greedy billionaires are destroying Our Democracy! Every spiritual warrior from all walks of life has to stand up daily to stop and resist the growth of autocracy and extreme conservative racism in our daily lives, especially not voting Republican in any upcoming local, state, and national elections! Our Source~Co-Creator’s Spirit of Love, Wisdom, Truth, Peace, Justice, Strength, Compassion, Diverse ONENESS… is within and among Us in this long but righteous struggle!
Of course, these spiritual warriors inspire and call us to act with courage in the work toward justice. I appeal to everyone to contact their senators and representatives frequently. I have been doing so and reminding them that they have abdicated their responsibilities and powers and calling on them to work with colleagues in a non-partisan way to stop this carnage. Will it do any good? Who knows, but it is my responsibility as a citizen to call them to account.
Will we wave the ‘white’ flag and leave the warrior and divisiveness behind and pick up the mantle of peace and unification? — BB.