Muhsin Corbbrey and a Different Kind of Fight

Muhsin and those like him answer “no!” to the cloud that hands over Palestine.

Muhsin Corbbrey

(TUCSON, AZ) - With flying fists and kicking feet, Muhsin Corbbrey has, over the past decade, made quite a name for himself in the volatile world of mixed martial arts.

Jamal 'JB' Belica

He has been fighting the good fight in sports arenas at home and abroad. More recently, he has undertaken another kind of battle, one that requires weapons of a different kind.

His martial arts background provides some of the qualities needed for this new battle: stamina, endurance, patience, perseverance, determination, health, heightened physical and spiritual sensibility, and above all a sense of fair play.

Others must be acquired through old-fashioned academic study and living experience. He must be able to see beyond himself and even his own family.

Perhaps, as a competitive athlete, it was Muhsin’s sense of fair play that brought to look again at the plight of the Palestinians.

Not from a privileged background himself, he was naturally attuned to the suffering of the underdog whose cries go unheard amidst the cacophony of this age’s media frenzy.

He means it!

Plenty of time for the shimmering spectacle of the London Olympics; very little for the disenfranchised—Why won’t they just shut up or go away?

But Muhsin is one of the few—although fortunately their numbers are slowly increasing because of his work and the work of others, among them the TJP—who demand, Why should the Palestinians go away from their own land?

Because they are an inconvenient obstacle on the way to the fulfillment of some imperialistic dream to control and manipulate the Middle East with its oil and strategic position at the juncture of three continents?

Muhsin and those like him answer “no!” Injustice is injustice however clever lawyers and politicians may be in giving it other names. For the Establishment, Palestine is an anachronism. The UN is too timid to rectify the situation.

So the burden falls upon people such as Muhsin who, in addition to his martial arts activities and his family responsibilities, sits in college studying Political Science in order to better prepare himself for the people’s struggle that lies ahead. Jamal Belica’s music video Give It Up For Ya, Boy commemorates Muhsin’s undertaking.

—Jay R. Crook, PhD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2inz3m9VR80&feature=youtu.be

Dr. Jay R. Crook spent his formative years in the New York metropolitan area, where a chance acquaintance awakened his interest in Islamic culture and civilization, and he soon embraced Islam. After military service and saving some money, he ventured to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to study and ultimately, spent most of his working life in the Middle East, especially in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

He received his Ph.D. in 1978 in the Doctoral Program of Persian Literature for Foreigners at Tehran University. His doctoral thesis was A Comparison of the Quranic Stories of Surabadi With the Bible. Subsequent to leaving Iran in 1980, he worked as an English teacher in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia before retiring in 1997. He now resides in Arizona and has translated several books from Persian into English, including Kashifi’s The Royal Book of Spiritual Chivalry and Ghazzali’s The Alchemy of Happiness.