Sheikh Musa Drammeh, founder of Muslim Media Corporation, loves New York City. In fact, his love of the Big Apple is what led him to start his news group in 2017, a company that continues to grow year after year with more locations and more online content.
Drammeh knows NYC has its challenges, such as the ever-increasing cost of living forcing New Yorkers to go elsewhere, but his continued love of the city — specifically its diversity and the people he and his family love most — keeps him here.
Running the Bronx-based Muslim Media Corporation is a combined passion for the city he loves and informing people of important and enlightening news from the city, nation and across the world.
“I’ve traveled around the world, and there is not a single place under the sun that can rival New York,” Drammeh, who lives in Indian Village near Morris Park, said. “It is the best, the greatest, and most beloved city under the sun. No other city can be New York. The diversity, the vibrancy, the inventiveness, the innovativeness, the strength, the positiveness.”
Muslim Media does not only cover Muslim-related news. Through four news sites, Muslim Media covers topics ranging from city politics to global events. The sites include: The Africa Parrot; the Muslim Parrot; the New York Parrot; and Parkchester Times.
Much of the news, he said, aims to connect the Muslim world to other communities while knocking out notions that Islam is a violent religion.
“Our goal here is to provide a platform where people understand the realities, not these crazy creatures that use Islam as a platform for every crime they are committing,” he said.
Launching Muslim Media Corporation
After moving here in 1986 from Gambia — the smallest country in Africa — Drammeh quickly discovered New York’s allure, which eventually led to his interest in journalism and covering current events. Even tragic ones.
Sept. 11, 2001, was a day he and many other New Yorkers will never forget. Terrorists from al-Qaeda purposely crashed planes into the World Trade Center complex, as well as into the Pentagon in Virginia. Passengers on another hijacked plane — Flight 93 — fought the terrorists and the plane was crashed into an empty field in Pennsylvania.
Thousands were killed. And Drammeh was angry— very angry; 9/11 is something he and so many others will never get over.
“I was completely out of my mind. Everyone who knew me that first year after 9/11 can tell you, I was radicalized with anger,” the married father of three said. “I wanted to eliminate any person that had any connection to this.”
As a Muslim, he said he needed to reflect on what happened. What can cause a human to have such hatred as to do something as horrible as 9/11?
With so much on his mind, he went through seven months of intense study of his religion.
“I studied, why do we have antisemites, extremism, and violence within Islam? Why do we have it? I traveled, I met scholars, I read books,” he explained. “Everything led me to the conflict in the Holy Land between Palestinians and Israelis, including those who hijacked planes and killed people.”
From there, he went on a life mission to do whatever he could to combat hate.
“At the end of the seven-month journey, I promise you I found Islam in a way that I was never ever taught before,” he said. “I found Islam to be a platform of justice, peace and love and diversity.”
At the time, Drammeh was running a Muslim school in the Bronx. He started a program called Youth Community Report which was a talent competition among students to write and speak against hate and other newsworthy topics.
That program morphed into the Muslim Community Report, and then eventually it became what it is today, Muslim Media Corporation, in 2017. The names changed, but the mission to show the world Africa and peaceful Muslim communities remained the same.
“The idea is there are two communities that are underreported and misreported. The African community is underreported and the Muslim community is misreported,” the publisher said.
He wants New Yorkers – and everyone – to know what is going on in Africa and Muslim communities in New York and abroad.
“When people read about what happens in the African community and Africa and the Muslim community and their contributions, that may sway their opinions and views about Africans and Muslims,” he said.
Stories in the Africa Parrot range from hard news, such as a suicide bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia, to lighter topics, like police officers holding youth summits and travel pieces about the majestic continent.
The Muslim Parrot has similar content. Topics lately have been about oil in the Middle East.
Although all the Parrots are headquartered in the Bronx, Muslim Media has a second location in West Africa.
Drammeh also plans to open more locations across the world, including a site in Washington, D.C. He also intends to make Muslim Media a publicly traded company in part so he can “save the world from the ravages” of Islamic extremism.
“Our publications, yes we want to make money, but money is not our main objective,” he said. “We want to save lives. We want to save the world. We want to protect Islam. We want to protect innocent people from criminal ideology, hateful ideology, antisemitic ideology, misogynistic ideology that have no basis in Islam.”
