After reading the book titled 'The Development of Islam in Bermuda" written by Dr Radell Tankard and forwarded by Dr Sulayman Nyang, I am compelled to offer both my compliments and criticisms.In my first book I wrote of a hope that one day some persons would have the interest and take the initiative on the subject and history of Islam in Bermuda and would find the funding to have it more thoroughly researched.My hope was of providing a more broad-based academic approach than that which I wrote of as my own story. I had the belief that a properly researched book would be beneficial for scholarship around the world to find available references and particularly be of benefit for Bermuda and posterity.It was several years ago that I had heard that Dr Tankard was writing a book on the history of the Muslims and Islam in Bermuda. Given his doctorate I had great anticipation, and even an expectation, that his work would be a reliable theses, which would be unbiased and accurately portray that history.What distinguishes a Doctorate’s work from that of lay writers and commentators is not simply having knowledge, but more the skill sets of enquiry, which allows them to look deeper and offer broader perspectives. Doctorates are trained on how to look at situations and extract data and present them in arriving at positions. Dr Tankard’s work was perhaps the best physical production to date of a book about Islam and the Bermuda branch of Nation of Islam group’s origins in Bermuda. However, for those who know and have lived through those eras, the glowing presentation could not outshine the glaring omissions, contradictions and miss-truths.To his credit the account he gives on the origins of the Nation Of Islam (NOI) in Bermuda could not be more accurately portrayed. He gave detailed information embellished with real information of general orders and teachings which only those from within would know. He set the organisation and its purpose within the time and the social issues that merited or at least set the stage for the Black Muslim movement during the Sixties and Seventies. He rightly characterises the supporters and followers dedication and commitment to the beliefs of the NOI. Perhaps in his uncovering the depth of sincerity he underestimated the entrenchment and how enduring those beliefs were held by many members. He makes no accommodations for the varying levels of intellects, scholarship or the propensity to read among that group hence writes of a narrative that would suggest that the show and display of mere belief in Warith Deen Muhammad also meant understanding him and his message.As a result of not investigating what people actually thought philosophically and following a trail of evolution of those thoughts from 1975 onwards, his work stumbles when he writes his version of the transition from the Nation of Islam towards mainstream Islamic ideology. I am concerned that the omissions left out of Dr Tankard’s book pertaining to that era in the history of transition, could be misunderstood by some readers to be deliberate. If he deliberately omitted information that would show the evolution in thoughts among the peoples in question (and I am not stating that he did) then his writings are misleading.Looking at the list of persons interviewed, it is inconceivable that he deployed any of his doctoral training in pursuit of the data that would disclose the thoughts of that period. He mentions my name and offers a reason why, as he says, I left to start another community because, as he alleges, I did not like the direction of the World Community of Islam in particular when you read the preceding paragraph, meaning the direction of Imam WD Muhammad. Where did he draw that assumption, he has never interviewed me to ask why I left or if I left and under what circumstance. Truth is I was, as a follower of WD Muhammad and elected assistant Imam, banned for trying to introduce the very orthodoxy Dr Tankard attributes to others.He alleges that Albert Muhammad bought the community to orthodox Islam but admits that his successor Nashid Umrani was still on the old format of meeting Wednesday and Sunday. Nashid Umrani never instituted Juma (Friday prayer) as a practise for the community, and his leadership around 1981 which was many years from 1975 and way beyond the 700 days which Dr Tankard says it took for the community to smoothly transfer from black nationalism to orthodoxy.As a matter of course sometime after I was banned from the Masjid property, Hamaad Talibdeen began Juma with some members, but not in the main hall but rather downstairs near the kitchen area, whenever he would return to Bermuda. Such efforts of his were not part of the community’s official or even accepted programme as a Juma (Friday prayer) community obligation. In fact during this period of Imam Albert Muhammad’s tenure, that Fadullah Haeri a renowned foreign Muslim had visited the Island and one of his family members was lured by the huge sign “Masjid Muhammad” over its entrance only to discover a building filled with chairs facing the west and a stage with a rostrum with no place for salut (Muslim prayer). What orthodoxy was Dr Tankard referencing of Imam Albert Muhammad bringing to the community before he resigned as its leader? If he was talking about Ramadan or fasting, we began fasting according to the traditional way during the leadership of Amir Abdullah.Dr Tankard says that it has been said that a group made hajj around 1977. Why does he have to say “it was said”, when all of those who went with the exception of Ali Shabazz (deceased) are all still present and could testify replete with pictures and passport data that shows it was in fact during the week of October 29 1978 that I and two other persons met HRH King Khalid on the sixth floor of the now Fairmont hotel, in Southampton, and the King invited us to make hajj and we were given six tickets, and that on November 3 1978 we met in London with Saudi Ambassador Alhegeian who put us on the November 5 Saudia flight SV 172 to Jeddah with our hajj visas he had given us. This is documented and the documentation is displayed in the first history book on Islam in Bermuda, published in 1999, by a Bermudian Muslim who today attends the same masjid Friday services as Dr Tankard and the existence of that first book is generally known in the Bermuda Muslim community.If missing the fact that six of us made hajj doesn’t raise eyes, what of the fact that the group of six left at the behest of the Saudi Monarch King Khalid Bin Saud. Dr Tankard makes no mention of the King’s visit which was monumental. Why does he not mention the visit of a ruling monarch? Is it because he would have to write about those who went at the King’s request and perhaps about those who did not and would have to justify a reason to suit his narrative? How could a doctorate miss such a huge, well publicised historic event? The King’s visit and events surrounding, demonstrates the polarities within the Muslim community at the time of his visit and the true status of the transition among the Muslim community.Two written historical accounts preceded Dr Tankard’s work, the first (I mentioned above) by Abdul Rahman Brown who was the secretary for the community during the transitional period immediately following the removal of Amir Abdullah (Byron Phillips). The second work was written by me and I followed up with a second addition. All three books have been available at the Bermuda Library and in my case, online.Dr Tankard says that the resignation of Amir Abdullah followed the recommendation of a New York delegation. Amir Abdullah was deposed, he did not resign or followed a recommendation to resign. He was deposed and the entire administration under him was removed without a choice by a delegation authorised by Chicago and Imam Warith Deen Muhammad. Dr Tankard would have to look at the details of Amir Abdullah's removal, which is somewhat available in my book. He can't ask Amir Abdullah's former administration because they, like he, would not have known how the delegation came to remove him. The delegation came like a thief in the night and removed the whole bunch and installed an interim leadership, which was ratified months later. I, as was Abdul Rahman Brown, were inserted right in the middle of the decision-making and in collaboration with the delegation determined what made up the interim leadership to be ratified by a community vote several months later.Dr Tankard makes the point that Bermuda has opened up trade agreements with several Muslim countries, like Bahrain and Indonesia, without mentioning that the individual who negotiated/wrote the treaties was Abdul Rahman Brown, a Muslim who works as a civil servant for the Government of Bermuda. The role of Abdul Rahman Brown is another role which has public notoriety and is hard to miss but somehow is avoided in Dr Tankard’s work. This omission is very relevant because he makes the case for the followers and philosophy of WD Muhammad as being conciliatory and working with and for the betterment of society, but doesn't recognise Abdul Rahman Brown.The other area in his book, for me, that lacks the sense of independent scholarly verifications, was in his generalisation on much of Bermudian history. He uses the works of authors like Dale Butler, Dr Clarence Maxwell and Cyril Packward as source material without using his own doctoral methodology to validate his own synopsis. In that regard he says as one example, Sally Bassett was burned at the stake in Crow Lane (at the foot of the Hamilton Harbour). I stood at the Cabinet grounds with a rope around the statue (that photo of me appeared in The Royal Gazette at the time) because I wanted to demonstrate the more likely location of her burning, part of which is my family folklore and a point researched by Leyoni Junos, that Sally Bassett was possibly burned at the stake on Tobits Island in the Great Sound, off Southampton, which at the time was in Crow lane because there was no Hamilton Harbor until around 1810 and the whole area now called Hamilton Harbour, at the time of her death in the early 1700s, was called Crow Lane (all the early maps show this). If Dr Tankard would have interviewed me or followed local events he could have written and raised this other possibility, but may have had to mention my name in the process because I publicised it.He gives Roosvelt Brown the full credit of bringing Universal Adult Suffrage to Bermuda. He may have been responsible for popularising the term Adult Suffrage but he was not responsible for the movement. Others who remained hidden were the ones who invited him to the movement and set up the public occasions for him to speak. That aside as far back as 1947 you will evidence the likes of Arnold Francis and others in parliament fighting to extend the voting franchise (people used the term extending the franchise before the term adult suffrage came to be used, but same intent). I would think that writing a history book should be more than an exercise of printing gossip and should involve diligent research. I came away from reading Dr Tankard’s book happy about some of his work but feeling as though he was being led by both his sympathies for the funders of his book (the PLP Government’s Department of Community and Cultural Affairs, which awarded a grant out of the Cultural Legacy Fund) and some of the old hierarchy of the Masjid. While the book is wonderfully presented as a production and has some very good and useful information, his omissions are too huge.My comments would not be complete without adding that Dr Sulayman Nyang’s endorsement is also unfortunate because he is very well known and I would think he should know a bit more than to lend credibility to published work without visiting the respective periods mentioned in the book and checked the voracity.