Professor Rudolph “Butch” Ware, aka Prof. Belal, Drops Unapologetic Wisdom On Middle East Eye’s Podcast With Host Ashfaaq Carim

My people.

You’re in luck today.

If there’s a modern-day intellectual lyricist, his name is Rudolph “Butch” T. Ware III. I’m stretching the meaning of the word “lyricist” to something that sounds really good to my ears. I liken Professor Ware to taking his listeners down beautifully scented paths filled with golden nuggets of age-old intellectual wisdom, that for some reason get intentionally dropped from society’s collective understanding of humanity. The man, who is known as Butchware on social media, is filled with so many of those aforementioned golden nuggets, that you’ll find yourself repeatedly hitting the pause button and going back to listen over and over again.

Alhumdulillah is the only word that comes to mind. I know he will find that as a compliment.

Professor Ware, if there’s that 0.0005% that you’re actually reading this: We need to get you down to San Diego for a chat over some Indian masala chai (my own blend) surrounded by loving people who want to get a whiff of your jannati attar that surrounds you like some sort of intellectual halo.

I am intentionally keeping this post short because I want to get you to his latest interview on one of my favorite shows/podcasts—none other than The Middle East Eye’s UNAPOLOGETIC. Ashfaaq Carim is the show’s host and you’ll soon come to admire him as not only a patient & super well-informed interviewer, but also as an intellectual himself. He seems to always have the right question at the right time.

Before I allow you to enjoy the main meal—and it’s going to be a long one, mind you—I’ll let you nibble on a few quotes as delicious appetizers:

“Empire, believe it or not, is actually crumbling under the weight of its own moral depravity. We just need to give it a push.”

“Whatever you might think about how to weigh that moral question regarding resistance, it is absolutely clear that the October 7th uprising has undone 70 years of Zionist propaganda in six months. It has done through armed resistance what negotiations and political commentary and voting and liberal hand-wringing had not done in the span of decades. OK, it revealed the fundamental nature of what Zionism is—as settler colonialism, imperialism and white supremacy and the whole world is on fire with resistance.”

“One of my favorite MC’s—I told you hip hop was my first teacher—poor righteous teachers—the great MC Wise Intelligent once said, ‘Narrative scripts human behavior the way that code scripts computers.’ The stories that we tell create the reality that we inhabit and that we populate. The imperialists, the Zionists have lost control of the narrative. We are now able to communicate with one another without them as the intermediary.”

Professor Ware has written books that might interest you: The Walking Quran: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge & History in West Africa and also Jihad of the Pen: The Sufi Literature of West Africa. More info about Prof. Ware & his works at UC Santa Barbara.