Mujahid Abdul-Karim

Consequently, due to this extreme poverty, in 1961, he ran away from home at the age of 16, after pretending to pay a "light bill" for his mother and subsequently purchased a bus ticket, traveling alone across the country to the city of New Haven, Connecticut, to stay with relatives.

While living at the Chicago Black Panther Party headquarters, Abdul-Karim lived alongside such notable figures as current U.S. Representative for Illinois's 1st congressional district, Bobby Rush (who was a member of the party at the time), and Deborah Johnson, (mother of Fred Hampton Jr. and wife of slain famous Black Panther, Fred Hampton).

[4] After founding Masjid Al Rasul in 1980, Abdul-Karim decided, inspired by traditions of the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, who worked to develop a lasting peace between the two warring tribes of the holy Islamic city Medina (the Banu Aws and Banu Khazraj - who had been fighting each other for over a hundred years), that his life's mission was to convey the message of "peace" to the two warring gangs of Los Angeles, California, Bloods and Crips.

Abdul-Karim began tirelessly community organizing in the three notorious project complexes located in the Watts area: Nickerson Gardens, Jordan Downs, and Imperial Courts.

It would take an approximate 12 years of talking to rival gang leaders to finally see the dream of a truce being signed in the Masjid Al Rasul.

However, in 1990, Abdul-Karim was forced to return to America to continue the work of "building" a lasting peace among gang leaders in the Watts community of Los Angeles, California.

The famed American color photographer Joel Sternfeld included a photo of the interior of Masjid Al Rasul (after the signing of the historic Watts Peace Treaty) in his book, On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam (1997).

The dull room is in the Masjid Al Rasul mosque in Watts, where members of the Bloods and the Crips, rival Los Angeles gangs, negotiated and signed a truce on April 26, 1992.