Rudolph "Butch" T. Ware III (born 1974) also known as Bilal Ware in the American Muslim community, is an American associate professor and hip hop artist who was the 2024 vice presidential nominee for the Green Party. He is one half of the hip hop duo Slum Prophecy.
Education
Ware received his undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota in 1997. He received his PhD in history in 2004 from the University of Pennsylvania.
Career
A historian of West Africa at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he first began teaching at Northwestern University, and later at the University of Michigan.
Ware is also one half of the hip hop duo Slum Prophecy. Less than two weeks before he began running for vice president, Slum Prophecy released an album titled Aqsa Flood.
In August 2024, he was selected by Jill Stein as the vice presidential nominee of the Green Party in the 2024 United States presidential election.
On November 11, 2024, Ware announced that he would be running in the midterms to become the Governor of California.
Political positions
Gaza war
Ware has likened Hamas's 2023 surprise attack on Israel to Nat Turner's Rebellion, viewing Hamas as a resistance group against Israel's illegal occupation.
On October 11, tweeted "...Oppressed people don’t have a RIGHT to resist occupation, we have a RESPONSIBILITY to resist."
Informed by Black radical tradition, Ware is an anti-Zionist and believes that Zionism is rooted in white supremacy.
LGBT rights
In an interview with YouTuber The Black Authority in late October 2024, when asked "do you agree with the idea of biological males playing in female sports", Ware stated: "I don't think that biological males should play in female sports. I think it gives an unfair [...] competitive advantage." Ware has stated that his comments were taken out of context by media outlets, Tweeting, "The remarks in question, presented in a hostile interview, were misrepresented through selective editing to suggest otherwise. In context, I was engaging in what I thought was a discussion of a nuanced policy on Olympic inclusion based on information shared by the IOC, not making a statement against trans inclusion."
Abortion
When questioned on legal limits for abortion in the United States, Ware has said that he "think[s] a lot of the kind of common sense regulations that most Americans agree on is essentially 60/40 issues … something like 16 week[s]. I won’t go into the finer points of it, but of course there have to be limitations."
Personal life
Ware is a Muslim convert. Ware stated in a podcast with The Thinking Muslim that he converted to Islam at the age of just 15 after being introduced to it by an autobiography of Malcolm X and then reading the Quran. He follows West African Sufi traditions and stated that "the Sufi tradition that I know tethers together spirituality with social justice".
Electoral history
Discography
- Aqsa Flood (2024)
Selected publications
- Ware, Rudolph T.; Wright, Zachary Valentine; Syed, Amir (2018). Jihad of the Pen: The Sufi Literature of West Africa. American University in Cairo Press. ISBN 978-977-416-863-5.
- Ware, Rudolph T. (2014). The Walking Qurʼan: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-4696-1431-1. Project MUSE book 31232.
Notes
References
External links
- Faculty website
- "Christopher Brown and Rudolph Ware". The New York Public Library.
