02/19/1978
IWDM Study Library 
Ethnic Survival Day
Harlem, NY

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Bismillah Ar Rahma Nir Raheem. With the Name of G-d, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Brother Imam Rasheed, the Imams that have come from the East Coast region to meet here at Malcolm Shabazz Masjid, Number seven, to our distinguished guests, to all of the honorable people here, and G-d has said, you are honorable." I didn't say it. The scripture says, "G-d has made all people honorable." I greet you in peace again As Salaam Alaikum. Today I'm exceedingly happy, pleased, and proud of you and of our work. I think whatever doubts are being whispered around, they're all dispelled today. You know some of us, we make our judgment before we see the full product. Well, we started out like the rising sun about three years ago, February 26th, 1975. Our great inspiration, our hero, our courageous leader, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad had passed away, but we did not give up. We refused to pass away with him because we knew that somebody had to stay around here and keep the work going. All Praises are due to Allah, but our lights begin to rise. You know the sun comes up, goes down every day, and men, great leaders are rising and falling every century. But All Praise is due to Almighty G-d. If it is His work, He will preserve it.
Almighty G-d enabled us to rise and when many saw our light, they say, "This is not the light of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. This is not the light of Master Fard Muhammad. They say, the Imam is changing everything. I wouldn't let that cause me to sit down and weep. I stayed on the job because I knew that in a few years those doubters, those people who were trying to describe what was being born before it was delivered, would realize I knew that they would realize one day in the future that their judgments were wrong. They weren't seeing the whole thing.
All praise is due to Allah. We have been working now for better than three years, and Allah is blessing us now to show the full form of what we were working on. Dear beloved Muslims, there are bright prospects for a people choosing to grow in the natural anatomy of community life. The twin fountains of life are the forces in one life, not two. And if we understand those twin forces as being forces belonging to one life, we can get that balance that Prophet Muhammad came to give us and that other Prophets were sent to inspire us on towards. The balance between the religious life and the material existence. The anatomy of society should be the anatomy of the human being. By that I mean in the anatomy of the human being, you have bones structured well. You have muscles and you have skin covering the body. You have a head on top of the structure, you have a heart in the center, and that heart is pumping blood throughout the whole body. And you have the organs for discharging or releasing the waste there in the base of the body. And you have legs, two legs supporting the structure, carrying it, and you have the arms to build with the work of the day.
You have the vision before you and the ears divinely place to catch the sound in the front, on the side, behind and all around. So G-d has built a great edifice in the human structure, and if we would take the advice of scripture and pay some attention to G-d's handiwork in the skies, His handiwork in the earth, His handiwork in those things that operate between skies and earth, and His handiwork in the human being, the human being that G-d has said that He has made in the best of design. If we would take note of His hints in His creation, the hints that are in His design, I'm sure that we will get a philosophy, we'll get a sign to uplift humanity much greater, much more productive than any of the world has seen yet. Community life must exist by both our excellent human force and by material development. At the base of our community problems is the religious formed habits of seeing life and the world in mythological or through mythological eyes. What do we mean by mythological eyes? When I say that I'm going to Jordan, I'm going to cross over Jordan one day, this is not a clearly a religious expression. This is an expression colored or designed by the language of mythology. When I say that I'm going to a kingdom in the sky, that's mythology, that's not pure religion. When I say that G-d is a man of war, that's the language of mythology and not pure religion.
When I say that G-d created man from the dust of the earth, formed him as a person and created a mate for him with a rib taken from his body, that's the language of mythology and not pure religion. We have been given more mythology than we have been given religion in terms of the language that we use. And how can people understand, clearly understand what religion is all about if they they're using a language that is foreign to the purity of religion. They have to have a language that is consistent, that is consistent, that speaks clearly the word of truth that G-d revealed to His Prophets. The symbolic concept we have been given a first man, a first woman of the creation, of the origin of the races. All of this is so heavily covered under the mythological concept, the beautiful symbolism of the poets, that we can't see the realities that should be influencing and directing our lives. Our concepts of death, eternity, heaven and hell. All of these concepts help to keep us back from getting involved as we should and the real work of uplifting humanity and progressing the human society. Scriptural focus is on human development, is on freedom and government as innate natural forces in the human life.
G-d revealed to His Prophets the truth and that truth spoke to human conditions, to human problems, to human needs. G-d did not mission great men and send them to tell us to prepare for death. G-d missioned those great men to tell us to prepare for life. Freedom you know, is a natural development in life. We are born in prison, but we are delivered out of that prison into a world, into an open world.
The womb of our mother is a prison. We are born, we are formed in the prison. And in the prison, you know there's darkness. Every child, male and female is formed in darkness. And their forming is kept from the eyes even of the father and the mother, the father and the mother can't even see what is growing in the womb. They have to wait until the time. And then when the time comes, the baby is delivered. If G-d bless them, the baby is delivered and there the child is, say, we have been given a girl child or we have been given a boy child. That child was born in the dark. That child was born in blackness. Whether it was Caucasian or whether it was Bilalian, it was born in blackness. And no one can boast of anything over the other. We all, as the Constitution of the United States says the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution tells us that we are all born equal and all created with inalienable rights. Among these, as the Constitution says, is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So, we are born to be free. We are born to be free. But that freedom is also told in the natural development of the human life. That freedom is not a permissiveness, that freedom is not a disrespect for other people, for the order of life. That freedom is a freedom to grow. A freedom to grow intellectually, a freedom to grow emotionally and mature as a full grown healthy child in society. It is not the freedom to do our own thing, it's the freedom to do the thing. G-d, in structuring our bodies, our human bodies, He has hinted to us a need to grow into government. He put a head on our body and in the head messages are sent from all parts of the body and that computer digests those messages and makes decisions. The head is on top of the structure, and in the head is the vision that opens the path so that the whole structure may move ahead. G-d, in this is telling us that leadership is a natural requirement. All human beings must have leadership. G-d is telling us that government is a concept that every human being should embrace and should execute that the knowledge of government for building government in the individual. We don't exist by having government in Washington or in the City Hall.
We exist by having government in ourselves. They could have all the government in Washington, in the City Hall, but if we don't have government in ourselves, the government in the land will not be able to do us any good. In this clear focus that religion provides for us, we see the importance of nature or nature over form. Many people in religion, they read the allegorical and symbolic language of scripture.
And they can't see beneath the surface to read the real message that is in the symbolism and in the allegories. So, they come to the conclusion that religion is telling us how the sun was put in the sky, how the moon was put in the sky, how the stars were put in the sky, and how fish was put in the water, how trees and other life sprung up from the physical earth. But actually G-d is saying to us with scripture, and the great Prophets made this knowledge available to us. G-d is saying to us with His scripture that the world without is only a sign and a signal that I have made to direct you and your growth. As I have placed the sun that rises up from the horizon at night, breaking the night and giving day. I've also placed the sun in your nature and in your structure. The light of intelligence, the light of intelligence, and you fall asleep and darkness come over you at night, but you awake because I have designed you that way. You awake and you open your eyes and the light of intelligence begin to operate. And it operates until you get tired and it begin to set and you lie down and sleep again.
And these lights are descriptive of the kinds of leaders we have on this earth. Some are like suns, they rise and they cause a lot of activity. They make the little birds jump up out of their nest, they bring the animals out, chirping and making a lot of noise. They give warmth like the sun does and show us all the physical objects. But then there's some that are like the moon. They seem to be less than light, but their light penetrates the darkness that the sun has left on us. And then we have some that's like the stars, they're very far away and they seem small to us because they're so small away, so small, pardon me. They seem small to us. But in reality, most of those stars that we think to be small are bigger than our moon, bigger than our earth, and many of them bigger than our suns. We have people like that who are so far away from the foolishness we are involved in that we think them to be very small, but in reality they're bigger than the things that we are idolizing and admire.
Almighty G-d. He's the one that created us and almighty G-d is the one to inspire us. And Almighty G-d is the one to reveal the hidden secrets of the world and of our own life. And that has been done by Almighty G-d through His great Prophets from Abraham to Muhammad. Genesis tells us of the beginning of creation in these words. In the beginning the earth was without form and void and darkness covered the deep. And the spirit of the spirit of G-d moved upon the face of the waters and G-d said, "Let there be light." And there was light. And He hung a great light in the heavens to rule the day and a lesser light to rule the night and He hung the stars also. Now let's look at the Qur'an, to see how the Qur'an treats the same subjects to see how Almighty G-d revealed to a later Prophet that was to complete the message of religion for the total development of the individual in society. It reads "Read! In the Name of your Guardian, Evolver and Sustainer who created the human being from a clot of blood." Here we are getting the same message, but it is brought to us clear. The light is not merely flashing now like the flash of lightning, the light is coming on to stay. G-d says "Read! and your Lord is Most bountiful. Who taught the man the human being, the use of the pen." So here almighty G-d has revealed to Prophet Muhammad the real meaning of the Genesis. The growth of intelligence is the answer to the riddles, the rising of the sun, the hanging of a moon, the placing of stars in the heavens.
And as a result, fish come in the water, life grows all over the land, people began to populate. G-d is telling us that in order for us to have a healthy, beautiful, full life on earth, we must have intelligent life first. The Holy Qur'an doesn't leave us in doubt. G-d, the first verses that came to Prophet Muhammad said, "Read in the Name of your Guardian, Evolver and Sustainer. Who created, created man from a small clot of blood. Read. And your Lord is Most Bountiful, Who taught man the use of the Pen." And for those who doubt that G-d is speaking to the needs for the intelligence to grow, let us go again to the same term create in the Qur'an and G-d says "Create yourself." G-d challenge us to create ourselves. G-d says, "Create yourself with the building blocks revealed to you by G-d." Create yourself in the character image of G-d. This is character building. One speaking directly to intelligence growth and the other one speaking to character building. How can you build intelligent character if you don't have any good sense?
A foolish people cannot build an intelligent character. They have to be herded about, disciplined and forced to conform to good manners by adult people. Can we remain children forever on this earth? I don't want anybody disciplining me forever like I'm a child. We have the same potential, we have the same tools. We have the same capacity for development that every other human being has. Despite what the lying racists have said. In the scripture, we find the concept that really hold us in prison or release us from prison.
The concept of G-d as One G-d, One Creator. The Holy Qur'an says Allah is the Creator of everything. It didn't say that there is something that He didn't create. It says He's the Creator of everything. This is what brings peace. This is the kind of picture, a concept of G-d that brings peace to the worshiper. If I have to live thinking that the G-d that created me or the G-d that I worship is the Master and the architect of part of this universe, but there's a part that He didn't form, that He didn't create, it brings about disturbance in my soul and in my nature it makes me fearful of that second G-d who is a contender. But the Holy Qur'an tells us there is no contender. There is no partner. His rule is not a partnership. It is a dictatorship and it's the only dictatorship that man should have. Almighty G-d tells us very plainly for us that the worshippers are His slaves. G-d claims all worshippers as His slaves to tell the slave masters you have no slaves but those that reject Me and put themselves into your hands. Then the scripture gives us the beautiful concept of man.
Tells us that the creation of man with G-d is not the creation of a single individual, but the creation of society. For a single individual is not a unit. He's part or she's part of a unit. How can the male be a unit? Not for society. He's part of a unit. He has to mate with a female to reproduce his physical self and the female has to mate with a male to reproduce her physical self. So how can we see society as males and as females separate from the other? And how can we think that the whole society was generated from one man called Adam? How can any sensible intelligent people think that G-d made a man and then reached into his body and deformed that man after forming him rightly and made a female of his rib? That looks like guesswork to me. That looked like to me like the guesswork of a butcher who makes something complete and then go in and cut it and take out something that he had placed there. Why did He put it there and seal it in if he had to use it again to make a woman?
That's the language of mythology. That's not the language of pure religion. G-d gives us the beautiful concept of the man that He creates. The man that He creates is not a fleshing blood man. The man that He creates is a mind, a human mind, a human mind. A compassionate human mind, a rational and compassionate human mind. And from that mind is born not a woman. A society.
And the rib of the man simply tells us in symbolism that that society that was made from that man that G-d inspired called Adam in the Bible, that that society was a society that had a law, a principle, not many, one. Says He made the woman from a rib of the man, not from all of them, just one of them. From a rib of the man. So, this is symbolism telling us that this generation or this Genesis of the man that the Bible is telling us about is the story of the Church. "Imam, how can that be the story of the church when the Genesis was revealed and written long before Christ Jesus. But it was interpolated, interpreted and interpolated and reformed long after it was revealed.
So, they formed it to speak to Church doctrine. And the Church doctrine says that Jesus gave only one commandment, that you should love ye one another. So, the making of the woman means the making of society. And the making of that society from a rib of the man means the making of a society that was of the nature of the human sentiments that are close to the heart, a principle that is close to the human heart that ye should one another. So, all of these symbolisms, symbolic teachings, all of the allegorical things and symbolic things in the Bible has to be understood, has to be converted or translated into plain, everyday practical language. If they're not, then they're going to keep us in trouble. They're going to keep people within inhuman concepts or inhuman ideas of how man was made, how the woman was made, how the races were made.
One Christian student of the Bible wrote me and he said, "I would like to help you." He says that "I see that you are on the right track." He says that "I understand what you're saying. You are right and I support what you're saying." He says, "Do you know" he's telling me. He says, "Do you know that the story of Noah was an addition to scripture just to explain how the races were put on earth, the three sons of Noah" this particular Christian student, a scholar said, was an attempt to explain the reason for the different racial features that are in the people. One Black, one Caucasian one, what they call it Mongolian, Mongoloid or Mongolian? Yes. So, he said this was given to explain that the three people. And we know that we have been told by Church society, especially church society that was in the hands of the southern slave masters, we have been told that Ham is our father and Ham cursed Balab for laughing at his fathers nakedness. We know we've been told that. So, the Bible says that Ham is one of the children of Noah. And I believe that Japhet was another one and Shem another. So, if we are the Ham children, then who is the Japhet and Shem? So, this student, Christian student, a scholar told me that these figures, human figures, or sons of Ham, they were added to scripture to explain the presence of different looking people on earth. So, I didn't reply. I tell you, I'm sorry I didn't reply.
I know there is of a lot of truth to what he said, a lot of truth to what he said. So, I didn't even attempt to reply to that. I just thanked him for his letter and thanked him for his support and just told him to keep going on with his good work. The truth is there, but it's hidden under the figures and the symbolism. The three sons of Noah are not really flesh and blood sons. The three sons of Noah represent the three kinds of motivations that the human being come into, that dominate or that gives form to his whole life. He evolved up through three levels of motivation. When we are born, we are motivated by hunger for physical things. The little child want to touch something physical, want to see something physical, want to taste something physical. So, the little child is just hungry to eat up the physical environment when they come here.
But after a while the mind began to mature and the little child is just not hungry for physical forms. The little child wants to know the nature of physical forms. And as we said earlier, nature natures are superior to form. So, the little child comes into a desire to know the nature of forms. This little child now is a big boy and he's studying the properties of matter energy. He's studying the chemicals, the chemical workings, the chemical makeup of matter. He's studying the physical makeup of matter. He has gotten a vision stronger than the sun. The sun can only show the surface, but here this little child has been given a light that can penetrate into the gross object and see the form that that object takes in its molecular composition. Look into the atom. You looking at a solid stone, but it's more to it than a solid stone. There's activity here. There's movement where everything seems to be still. There are atoms, protons and electrons and neutrons. There are molecules containing little worlds of atoms, electrons, protons, and neutrons. That this solid thing that seemed to be still, it is filled with activity. It's a world of energy all to itself. My oh my, isn't that a great G-d, that he blessed human being with a greater sunlight than he hung in the sky.
The scripture gives us the proper concept of man. That man should not be seen in the individual, the male or a female or any single individual. Man should mean humanity. And humanity includes both males and females. Can't you see now that we've used term wrongly? We have been saying that G-d made man when we should have been saying that G-d made humanity, G-d made society. We've been saying that G-d made man in His own image and likeness, when we should have been saying that G-d intended humanity, society to be in His image and likeness to actualize or morally speaking. The scripture has meaning. The scripture can attract the rational mind, the logical thinker. The scripture can attract the ship builder, the banker, the chemist. It can attract all men if it's taken back to its original purity. If we just take off the false dress of poetry, mythology, symbolism, allegories that take us into wonderland instead of the promised land. This World Community of Al Islam in the West is a physical, a physical evidence of the great method that G-d has used with His Prophets, or by His Prophets to evolve human society, If I was a social scientists, or the follower of any human science, I couldn't devote my time to anything else other than the study of the World Community of Islam in the West. This is a phenomena, this is a miracle on the planet of earth.
Dear black people. About 40 some odd years ago in Detroit, Michigan, a man came calling himself Professor Fard. He introduced himself to the deprived downtrodden and deprived people in the slums of Detroit as Professor Fard. And he told the Honorable Elijah Muhammad that if you'll join me and follow me that I'll make you a great and mighty man. He told the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, that your people came from a Muslim background, that your fore parents used to wear Muslim dress and they lived Muslim lives. So, he asked the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to back him and support him in converting our people to Muslim lives and Muslim dress and mannerisms. And the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, you've got a willing servant. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad has told us the reason why he readily accepted it, said because there was no hope he saw in anything else. Said that he had tried everything else and he was left on welfare and left with a foolish mind. That he had become a drunk and his own wife was ashamed of him. He said that at times his wife would have to go out some days and bring him in off the street on her shoulder, said that he was so ashamed of living a life like that, that when this man offered him a new job, that when he told him that you can get in on the ground floor of this new business I'm establishing, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, I didn't have to think. I said, I'm ready.
We have his picture here today. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad had to hide this man's face for almost 40 years. He only allowed us to get it in secrecy. He never presented it in his open meetings. He never wanted the public to see it. Why? Because the very face of this man was a conflict and a contradiction in our society. He looked like the people that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was excluding from his society. He looked like the very people that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was charging with all the sins that had been brought to our life and to the lives of the people on earth. So, this man's image could not be public under the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, but you have now another man in me and G-d has blessed this America. G-d has blessed this America to come into new attitudes, to take new dispositions as human beings in relationship to each other, to other human beings. A new climate has been formed in America by the efforts of the nationalists, the black nationalists, by the efforts of the civil rights leaders, by the efforts of all of us, some of us that you don't know. A new climate has come into America and there's no reason to hide the teacher, the mystical teacher of Honorable Elijah Muhammad. There's no need to hide his identity. He's a human being. He's a great of great friend of the Bilalian people in America.
Let me read from the lesson that he gave. He knew that where he went in the slums of Detroit, there wasn't many people who were trained to comprehend a written message. He knew that he had to talk to them and in a baby language and he called them in those days a growing Baby nations. So, he put his language in church Sunday school terms or in Revelation terms. And for anybody that has read Revelations of the Bible, the last book, you understand what I'm talking about. But nevertheless, his pen was saying enough to the intelligence of those people that he was trying to convert to a new life, to inspire them to move in the direction that they had to go. Lesson Number 17 in his kind of catechism reads, "What is the meaning of civilization?" Answer: One having knowledge, wisdom, understanding, culture, refinement, and is not a savage.
You see the difference between a psychologist and a philosopher? A philosopher gives you 50,000 pages to read to see one thing, but a psychologist just goes right directly to the problem. Wisdom, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, culture, refinement and is not a savage. Now if anyone didn't know what culture meant, he didn't have to give them a definition of culture, he threw enough words around culture for you to understand what culture is. Let's go to question Number 18 of his catechism. He says, "What is the duty of a person? To teach the uncivilized civilization. Isn't that beautiful? Let's go on with it. By G-d, let's go on with it. Taste so good. I'm tasting it. I'm telling you they haven't made filet mignon or caviar to taste this good. Forgive me if I break into a Holy Ghost dance. Forgive me.
He says, "What is the duty of a civilized person?" Answer: To teach civilization to the uncivilized, to teach righteousness. That's my man. Now when he was talking about making a grafted devil out of one of our ancestors on the island of Patmos, he was talking from something else. That ain't my man. That's the man that I discovered. That ain't my man. But here that man is my man here,
He says here, "To teach civilization to the uncivilized. To teach righteousness." Righteousness. Some of them hate me for coming in February, 1975 and asking them to come on back to the righteousness of Fard Muhammad. He hated me for that. They're out right now charging me with being a turncoat, a hypocrite, for deserting the black flag. Oh, I think we sprayed it enough. It doesn't kill roaches anymore. And then they start rapping. Black flag wake them up. They start rapping. "Well, you know the G-d Cefus, who was born 55,000 light years from the point of zero blackness, he's the one who taught us how to work with the vibe. And the one that was born about 56,000 light years from him taught us how to burn incense baby." Poor Dr Fard crying, crying and weeping, said, "What in the hell has happened to these people that I tried to help? Yes, let's read on. Says the duty of the civilized is to teach the uncivilized civilization, righteousness, knowledge of self. How can I know myself if I'm going to constantly see myself in blackness? Is that the limit of myself? Blackness? I find whiteness in myself. My bones are white.
And you know what Ezekiel says in the Bible? He says that when the resurrection day come, the bones are going to start getting together. Hip bone, leg, thigh bone, every bone is going to start getting together. Isn't that what he said? And what's going to stand up in the graveyard? Bones.
So how in the hell we going be able to identify white and black people in that valley of bones. Well, I found something a little bit more heavier to resurrect. I'm not resurrecting black skin color. I'm resurrecting bone, muscle, blood.
I'm resurrecting vital organs of the human being and they come in more than one color. Knowledge of self, science of everything in life. Isn't that beautiful? Peace. This is the teacher, the mystical teacher of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
Peace and happiness. Love, pardon me, peace and happiness. Now, I don't know how many of you are acquainted with these little pamphlets that were put out in the thirties under the direction of Dr. Fadr Muhammad and I called him doctor because the man never got a degree for any schools. But he got a degree when he started the job of resurrecting our minds and I gave it to him. He's Dr. Fard Muhammad. And a doctor so big that I don't think these psychologists and sociologists in America can see him until I treat their vision. This is how it looks. See that pamphlet? It has a flag up there. Sun, moon and star and on the corners of the flag and it says the letters FJE. Freedom, justice, equality. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad didn't teach us that we should be unjust. We should be a just people. He didn't teach us that we should suppress our fellow man. He taught us equality, freedom, justice equality. How could we enjoy the symbols that are in this sign until someone like myself, someone like myself opened the way?
We had symbols here, the symbol of freedom, but the kind of regimentation, the kind of welders jig that we were fitted into just wouldn't permit any real freedom. We only had the freedom to think in the symbolic concepts that were given to us. We had no freedom to think outside of those concepts because we didn't have the knowledge to see outside of those concepts. And we didn't even have physical freedom. Our physical freedom was so limited. We went from the house to the Temple back to the home. Is that right? From the house to the Temple and back to the home. The kind of physical discipline that was put on us to make us say yessir boss and master to a Bilalian of our own identification or our own racial image. It was so close, so narrow that we didn't have much room to turn in it. I didn't like to hear it, but Minister Malcolm Shabazz was right. He said it's a straight jacket religion. That's what he called it after he departed, after he left. He said it's a straight jacket religion. And that's exactly what it was. And I'm telling you, in the slums of Detroit, Chicago and other places and the outside of slums too. In fact a lot of those so-called Professors, Bilalian Professors, they should have been in a straight jacket if they weren't.
That's right. Yes, we were silly people as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, A silly people. These symbols invite us to embrace the principles of freedom, justice, equality. What is the staff of that freedom, justice and equality? If you could see this emblem here up close, you'll see that an I is at the staff. The staff of that is Al Islam. As long as you hold Al Islam in your hands, you have a hope for freedom, justice and equality. But once you put down Al Islam and start teaching blackness like a racist and not practicing the fine moral principles of this teaching, the fine human principles of Al Islam, than you are lost. Your freedom, justice and equality is lost. I defy anyone from the first resurrection. I just said the first resurrection to give you some dignity in your yesterday. There was no first resurrection. You were dead. We were no more alive than the ordinary people we find in the world boasting about material accomplishments, boasting about their individual superiority and their racial superiority over other people. We were no more alive than they were. We were so dead until we couldn't even see that we were carrying a language that was working to divide us if we didn't hurry up and grow out of it before it was too late. Yes, we were calling ourselves black and we are people of many colors.
We are not the colored man, but we are certainly the colorful people. Our colors ranges from Kentucky coal black, almost albino white. Getting off the subject a little bit. I know some of you wonder what kind of nature we have. I've often wondered, I'm telling you the biggest puzzle to me was understanding the nature of the Bilalian people. Our Afro-American people. Some of you don't like the term Bilalian. It's okay with me. If you like the term Afro-American, then we still can talk. But you know, even the term Afro-American was a compromise. Afro-American. Why cut the word short? Because the niggas wasn't ready to say African. They were afraid to identify with Africa. So, Marcus Garvey got Afro-American. That's cutting the word short. That's just like an Irish American calling himself Ir American. The Irish American, he's not afraid to use the whole name Irish American. And I'm telling you, until we get that same kind of respect, get rid of that old fear in us, an unnecessary fear, an uncalled for fear in 1978. We have to get the courage and the appreciation for reality for truth to say African-American because that's what we are. We are African-Americans. Now, I don't like the term African. You know why? Because the Caucasian gave the continent that name. Now I ain't going to stand here all day with you and try to convince you. You go do some research and if you don't find it when I see you next year, I'll tell you.
I like the term Bilalian. What's wrong with the term Bilalian? I was on the program with so-called black man. Now he had black skin. I couldn't deny it. His skin was black. He told me, said, "Do you think you're going to get people to call themselves Bilalians? I didn't even ask him. What in the heck you think I'm out here spending all my time on it for? He said, why can't we call ourselves Fredrickian after Fredrick Douglas? I said, well, if you can get the people to accept that, I'll join you in that. We'll debate. We'll debate the value for us, the superiority of the terms for us later, but let's make the decision right away. I'm tired of looking for a name. Politicians can't hardly speak to us. Afraid to call us Negroes. Afraid to call us colored folks, Afraid to call some of us black. So, we are just a people all torn and separated from ourselves with those silly ideas of ourselves.
Shallow definitions, definitions that are shallow, that haven't just taken into account the history of the people, the cultural development of the people. We haven't taken these things into account. So, if we study the personality of the whole people of the ethnic group and studied that development from the time that they were brought to connecting it with the history that they were brought from originally, then we can come up with some terms. We can come up with some names that not only my ear can hear and accept, but the inner ear that my soul can hear and accept. And that's important brothers and sisters. We can't get anywhere just trying to satisfy, please the voice box that is in the ear. We have to please the voice box that is in the heart, that is in the soul of our people. And I'm telling you, as long as you coming up with shallow definitions that go no deeper than skin, you are not going to satisfy the majority of us. And those that buy it will have to one day give it up for a term with deeper meaning and with a deeper history.
Let me read to you a photostatic copy of a document, and we can bring you the original document too. We know where to go to get it, but not today, sometime in the future when you run into me and we both have time. Says here, written out from memory by Bilal Muhammad. Now let's see. Let's go on. We want to see who this Beal Muhammad is. You think that's somebody, the Chief named. Let's go on. A Muslim slave of Sapelo Island, Georgia. Portions of the message by Muhammad Abdullah Ibn Abi Zaid Akhilawan, a standard legal work by a North African author. Included the end papers of slave songs of the Georgia Sea Islands by Lydia Parish. 1942 Created Age Press Incorporated, New York. Bilal Muhammad was a Muslim slave on the Sapelo Island plantation of a Thomas Spalding. So, if he hadn't been a Muslim aware that he was a Muslim, he would be known as Spaulding. Maybe George Spaulding, William Spaulding or Thomas Spaulding or maybe L.T Spaulding, CD Spaulding, CJ Spaulding. RT and LT Spaulding. He practiced Islamic habits of prayer and diet. All Praise is due to Allah. He spoke the West African Fulani language as well as English and French.
Four of his seven daughters were named Fatima after her mother, Yoruba, Medina and Bintu. He was from Timbo, a city in Bambala kingdom. And apparently he was a young law student at the time of his capture. As famous as Bilal, the first muezzin of Prophet Muhammad was. As famous as that man was in the history of Al Islam, don't you know that there were many other Muslims of his hue who wanted his name? It's inconceivable that some Bilalian mothers, some African black skinned mothers didn't name their babies Bilal. Here is historical proof that they did. And also here is historical proof that our slave ancestors among them is Muslim Bilal. Now go back and study your history again. Go back and study black studies again. Believers, Muslims, brothers and sisters, you people who embrace the healthy concepts that we embrace. I'm not railing at you. I'm speaking to those so-called black people. I don't care if they're not here. I'm trying to torture those that are in the grave, I hope my voice will go down and strike the earth and disturb those that are in the grave who want to reject everything because their shallow vision of things and their limited intelligence didn't permit them to see the truth.
Yes, Bilal Muhammad. Bilal was Ethiopian and he was made a slave by Arab people and it was the Arab people who freed him. Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that a beautiful parallel? We were made slaves by the Christian Caucasian of the West, Europe and America, and it was a Christian Caucasian that said, these people have to be free.
It was a heathen idolatrous slave master that held Bilal, but it was a dignified man converted from idolatry by the name Abu Bakr, an Arab who became the first ruler after the passing of the great Prophet, the universal Prophet Muhammad, May peace be upon him and all the righteous servants. This Abu Bakr, he went and paid the slave master that owned Bilal the ransom money. He demanded a big price more than what was ordinarily asked for slaves. But Abu Becker paid the price anyway and bought the freedom of Bilal. Later in the history of Bilal, Bilal was sad and weeping and he didn't want to stay around Mecca and Medina because those places reminded him of his beloved friend, his emancipator Prophet Muhammad, the Prophet of Arabia sent to all the worlds. So, Bilal, he told Abu Bakr, I can't stay here any longer. I want to leave.
He decided that he was going to Syria. And Syria is a country that is not of a dark hue. The people are not of a dark hue. Their skins are not Kentucky coal black. Their skin look very much like Caucasian skin. In fact, by scientific description or definition, they are Caucasian, the Syrian people. But Bilal wanted to go there to Syria and Bilal expressed this desire to his boss. Abu Bakr was the Khalifa. Now he's the ruler. When he bought, paid for the ransom, the freedom of Bilal, he wasn't the ruler. He was just the one paying to buy Bilals freedom. But now he is the ruler. And Abu Bakr didn't want to let Bilal go. Bilal put this word, question to him, listen to it. He says, "Have you freed me that I should be the servant of Allah or have you freed me that I should be your servant?
Oh, that's Prophetic. That's Prophetic. Isn't that what we have been saying to the North for now more than a hundred years since Abraham Lincoln, the Caucasian man who freed us from the physical slave grip of the south. Isn't that what we have been saying to the Northern Americans? Have you freed me that I should be your servant or have you freed me that I can be free as all other human beings are free? Study the history of Bilal and if you don't see a Prophetic figure resembling us, the whole people of figures speaking to our problem and to our beautiful destiny, that we are not free to be possessed again by the one who free us. We are free to go independently for ourselves as all other people are free to do. He was going to Syria. He went. He went to Syria, he married there and he was buried there. They built a Masjid there for Bilal, a mausoleum for Bilal. When the Syrian President and the Muslim community of Syria got the news that I had named our race Bilalians, they got busy to build a new Masjid, a new mausoleum for Bilal.
I don't care what religion I believed in. I don't care if I believed it is something so foreign to what we believed in that it made me look like I didn't come from the same planet that the Muslims come from. Knowing that we share one history, share one history, we share one painful history and one glorious rise from that history. And we share one enduring spirit, the spirit to endure inhumane treatment and yet stand up as a human being and tell the inhumane racists his shame. Oh, isn't that beautiful? Isn't that beautiful? A people reduced to inhuman existence for three centuries, rise up time their slain or crucified or shot down. Rise up the next morning and say, "You should be ashamed of yourself. You inhuman slave master. You torturing racists. Oh, that's what I'm telling you. That's a thing to be proud of.
We are people that have been burnt in the fire, tempered in the fire and made rigid as a human being with a human spirit. And there's no diamond tool, there's no tool to break our rigidity, there's nothing to destroy our human cause. G-d, He has tempered us and formed us never to be broken, never to be broken. Dear beloved Muslim, don't you know this is the glory of our history. The great victory for us in our history is not saying that I'm black or saying that I must have freedom. The great victory for us is saying that I'm still human. After you've set me through the mill, right? That was designed to produce a monkey, a dog, a rat. I come out of the mill still in the human form.
Audience:
Allahu Akbar!!
IWDM:
Allahu Akbar! Shut out of the environment that is conducive to healthy human growth. Denied culture. Culturally deprived. Denied civilized, the kind of the encouragement and inspiration. Denied the opportunity to sit in an environment of culturally, culturally uplifted people.
Left us in the bad, poor, starved, neglected parts of the world and shut off from the civilizing and culture inspiring kinds of things that other people have. Is that right? This our history. This is not the condition today, but this is what we have come through. We haven't been formed under the new days. By the new days. We are people formed out of the old days. But in the new days, we don't have to be reformed, not as people loving the human spirit. We still have to embrace human beings right now. We can embrace any man. Though he looks like the very one who lynched or tortured us or denied us freedom, we can embrace him. If he proves to us that he is a human being and that he has no problem embracing us. That's the great victory. That's the great victory for us. We have not been reduced to animals, though we have been put in a factory that produced animals. That's right. Dear beloved people. Let me try to move on. If we want to make progress, we have to really look at our problems with sober eyes and use intelligence. We have to do some research. We have to make some scientific studies.
Why should I wait for this world or for the White House? See now we have come into those silly minds that the government is my daddy and my mama. And anytime I got a headache, I don't go to my medicine box. I ask the President, how come you don't have an aspirin? You know I got a headache. So, we have been conditioned by our own ignorance, our own ignorant habits to look to the government for everything. The government can't do for us those needed, very needed things that touches deep into our problems. We have to do those things ourselves. The government, their hands are tied. Not only the government, people in the private sector, people in the private society. Dear beloved people. Those Caucasian can't come here and solve our problems. We have to solve these problems. They'll be embarrassed. There are people who have intelligence and a knowledge of history, the knowledge of human development, society, the development of society in history. They know the first thing that has to be done. The first thing that has to be done is to take the emphasis, take the focus off of blackness and put it on ethnic development and human development. They know that's what has to be done. But how can it come in here and all of this blackness and say, the problem is we have been in blackness a little too long.
That's the first measure. It's time to go into the next measure. They can't tell us that. We'll say "Honky you don't come here and tell us what to do with our blackness. You congressman, you got to get rid of him. We going to the Whitehouse. We going to demand that they put a law that nobody but us tackle with our blackness." Yeah, that man would be in trouble. They can't do the job. We have to do it ourselves. Dear beloved Muslims. We should be very, very proud. We are a community that has come through the fiery furnace and we are still standing whole. The Bible says that the oppressive kingdom put the Hebrew boys in the fiery furnace and they thought they had burned them up. And when they went to look in the door and opened the door to take the ashes off, they found three Hebrew boys standing as though they were untouched by the fire. We have something now that we can boast of equal to that. We for 300 years was put into the fiery furnace of slavery of the worst type in the history of humanity.
And then left to almost a hundred years of Jim Crowism that almost shame that 300 centuries of slavery. Is that right? And they open the furnace door and here's Dr. King, with a white shirt and tie, appealing to the intelligence, to the moral dignity of the oppressors of the society. I'm telling you, don't go in that Bible looking for anybody to idolize. Don't go in there looking for some great people. The great people are here! We're the great people! I can't find no people in the Bible, brothers and sisters. I don't find no people in scripture who have been scarred as deep as we have in society, in civilization, in education, in every respect and have broken the clouds, come up through the dirt, break the clouds, topple the tombstone, come up like a bad monster, but not looking like one, looking like an intelligent, dignified human being. I don't find it in history. I don't find it in scripture. I don't find it in scripture dear brothers and sisters. Now I know that the Jews suffered a lot, but I don't think they should even mention their suffering in our presence unless they're saying you people understand. So maybe you can help us out a little bit.
When we study the history of the World Community of Islam in the West, we see a unique kind of creation. The mystic comes along and he takes the materials that had been reduced almost to nothing. All that was left in the material was love for truth, for goodness, for human kindness. So, he came as a good person, came saying he stood for truth. And he came with a hand and an arm extended to us of human kindness. And he attracted the people from the slums of Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and formed him an organization called The Lost Found Nation of Islam in America, in the wilderness of America. And anytime you've got Jim Crowism, anytime a country that the law of the land, let the KKK intimidate a whole people and deny them equal justice, you got a wilderness that was calling itself civilization. So, he preached to this people self-esteem, appreciation for your own kind, self-discipline, faith in yourself, faith in your ability to work out your own problem. He didn't even give us a philosophy and leave us there. He gave us a philosophy that he presented as an incomplete philosophy.
He said, "All of your students get busy and help solve this problem. He said, what means and methods must be used to remove all poison and rust from a said worst one." Now we know that poison is something that affects from within and rust is something that eats away from without. So, he was telling us, let us all work on this problem. There are things eating us away from within, poisoning us and denying the individual to be comfortable, to be healthy and comfortable internally. And there were things aggravating us from without. Slum conditions, inferior status, all of these things aggravating us from without. So, he described both of the conditions in the terms poison and rust. He said, "All of you students get busy then what must be done to remove all poison and rust from the worst one? And he didn't leave us guessing who the worst one was. He called the worst one, the old silly preacher in the church who is satisfied to preach people out of the earth, off the earth, out of the land of milk and honey into the sky of emptiness.
Those are the ones he called the worst ones. So, he involved, all of them. Said, "What must we do? What means and methods must be used? So here is a helper, a friend. He also called himself also Wali. Wali Fard Muhammad. Wali means not just a friend but a friend who takes it upon himself to protect your interest. No one in the Muslim world, in the Arabic speaking, world call each other wali for friend. They call each other Rafiq for friend. Rafiqi, but never Wali. We have Arabic speaking people here. Sheik Kafiya, in your country, Saudi Arabia. If you call someone friend, do you ever say Wali? Never. So the word, the translation of Wali in the Holy Qur'an friend is not a pure translation. There is more needed to qualify that word, to give proper meaning to the word Wali. In the Holy Qur'an we read says in Maulana Muhammad Ali's translation says, "Take not, talking to the Muslims, says, "Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends because they're friends of each other. Is that right? That's a bad translation. The Arabic word is Wali. It doesn't mean simply friends. It means this. Don't take Jews and Christians, and I will add. The quote ends there, but I'll add. Don't take Jews and Christians or any people outside of yourself as your friends protecting your interest. You have to be the friend protecting your own interest.
He came presenting himself to us as Wali too, a friend who takes up the challenge to protect the interest, the good interest of another people. Isn't it wonderful that now we can see things that we couldn't see before? Now we can get the full value of the great thing that happened to us in 1930, July the fourth, 1930. Doctor Fard Muhammad, he didn't just teach us to separate ourselves and to take on the responsibility for improving our life by ourselves. He also taught us the meaning of civilization. When I came into office, I say came into office because it's true. I was nominated, put into office by a majority of the staff, and I came into office. I had not presented convincing proof to the staff that I was ready to go into office, I wouldn't have gotten in office. So, I came with my convincing proof and I got in office. So, I was put into office, but I came into office. I knew where I was going, but I wasn't putting myself there. G-d had willed it, and if Almighty G-d had not willed it, I wouldn't have come into the great understanding that I'm blessed with.
He taught us the meaning of civilization. He said the civilizers duty is to teach the uncivilized, to teach him civilization, to teach him righteousness, to teach him refinement, to teach him culture. When I came in the office in 1975, we were leaving refinement. We were leaving culture, we were leaving civilization. We were getting a name for being a bunch of criminals, a bunch of hoodlums people who wanted to be Superfly in blackness. That's the kind name we were getting. I don't have to tell you. You know how your Ministers used to dress. I came to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's house one day, came to his house one day. He had a big Minister's meeting and I was shocked. The community, the Nation of Islam that I had known wasn't the thing that I was looking at. I said, "Well, here is Superfly, black fashion in black side. A bunch of Ministers sitting around. Glass boggling. And I asked one of my friends, I said, "Is that real? He said, "Yes. He said, "And Uncle John's real too. Uncle John is my uncle, my father's brother. He said, "And Uncle John's real too." And Uncle John had one so big on his hand and until it looked like he had take it off every now and then to give his little finger a rest.
I know that little finger developed some strong muscles, all that glass on his finger. I said, "Good G-d. What has happened to the mind of these people." One word. Look dear beloved people, I'm giving you nothing but the naked truth. I'm not dressing it up. I'm not adding a single to it. I came in one time, was in the wintertime, they came in, some of them had long fur coats. I don't know what they were. I never bought those things but it looked like racoons or something. Racoons or something. Some of them had. Yeah, that's right. I remember now they had Chinchilla. I'm talking about full length. Some of them had the hat to match. I saw one, he had mink I guess. I don't know if he glued it on with that sticky or something. It was on top of his shoe.
Yeah. Diamond rings. Wearing pimp clothes. And preaching nation building. Study history. That image is not the image of a nation going up. That's the image of a nation going down. Study history, study the ancient kingdoms or empires of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt and you'll see that when those people start putting on trippy furs, looking like panther peacocks and wearing tights like people out of a Sherwood Forest movie. That was a clear sign that they were not going up anymore. They were coming down. So, I came here and saw it. What do you think I'm going to do? When I get the power in my hand to tell the community what it should do to go forward? Do you think I'm going to let peacocks walk around, showing their colorful feathers?
Right? A lot of kids to hatch. They ain't got no time to be crowding, parading around like fancy peacocks. Lesson C Number one, the actual facts. He got it all in his head. He's a dedicated soldier. He would stand out in zero until the sun go down and come back out after he get a bowl of bean soup and sell Muhammad Speaks until he drop dead. He got one overcoat, and it cost $45. He hasn't even got a car. But this peacock pimp, calling himself a Minister for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He got two or three cars. A Eldorado, latest model. A Fleetwood Cadilac. A Mark IV. With his own personal interior. He picks it out. "No, I don't want that. Take that interior out." Say "Well maybe if you wait a couple months we can get you one like you want." "No, no. Just take that out and put the some mink in there on the seat." He riding around in two big expensive cars, living in fine apartment building somewhere up in the sky almost.
Or living in a mansion somewhere in the better part of the city wearing Chinchilla and diamonds. And that poor brother out there that says he is building the Nation, have to take $40 every week of his small check. Of his small poverty check and give it to the lieutenant for 300 Muhammad Speaks. And if he doesn't sell 300 Muhammad Speaks a week, he's brought up before the FOI, the military unit of sissies.
Forgive me for saying it. Now I know some of those FOI could break bricks with their hands. They can hit you one lick and send you into a 10 year coma.
The mentality was a frail sissy. They just had the muscle. But no man unless he was blind, deaf and dumb. And that's what I'm saying, you were blind, deaf and dumb. No man would mete out the kind of hardship and treatment that those strong, dedicated, helpless sacrificing FOI brothers were receiving from them unless they had a sissy mind. A warped distorted, freak, deformed ill-formed mind or they were just deaf, dumb and blind. A new day had to come in and thank Almighty G-d that he dumped somebody with the knowledge to see into the symbolic language of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Dr. Fard enough to show the community that we don't have to stay here. We can move on up a little higher. All Praise is due to Allah.
So, we decided that we were ready. Say, well we have the dedication. We've been in the habit too long to give it up. We have the moral strength to accept the job ahead of us and we have the character to act on that moral strength. So, the Nation of Islam is not going out of business. We said it was going to stay in business until we could evolve it up a little higher and that's what we did. We used the divine principle for evolving of society and we translated the language and put it in words that would lift the dead matter of 1975 up to another living level on a perpendicular to the square. All Praise due to Allah we were successful, we were successful, we evolved this community. They said, "How can you say you are the same people? How can you say you're the same people and now your doors are open to Caucasians and everybody? How can you say you still are the same people? And you now say that Prophet Muhammad is the last Prophet, not the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. They have all these questions and they don't understand the terminology that was given to us. The terminology that was given to us was a terminology that was meant to accommodate change. There was hints in that terminology that would accommodate change and G-d blessed me to find those hints and convince Sheik Shabazz and convince the imams, and the officers of the community that here is a way for us to keep our identity in the whole life and come into a new life.
When you look at the butterfly, do you see a worm? What was that butterfly yesterday or maybe this morning. It was a worm. It had no wings, it had no color pattern. It was just a worm. But it evolved from the existence of a worm to the existence of a butterfly. And it's form is more obvious. It's form now is more intricate, more complex. The simple worm. He's so simple. It doesn't challenge the intelligence. Anybody can draw a worm. Little kids in kindergarten don't have any trouble drawing a worm, but to draw a Murdoch butterfly requires some intelligence, some skill. Is that right? Well the community that Dr. Fard established, it was easy on the mind. It was easy on the intelligence because it didn't demand, it didn't challenge the intelligence that much. You are the Asiatic black man. Maker, owner, cream of the planet earth, father of civilization. Sisters, you are the Muslim girl. You are the mothers of civilization. That's all. Your role and your duty is to teach your children how to cook, how to sew, how to act at home and abroad. We through with you sister, go on.
What are you people want? We want separation. What else? Everything everybody else got. That's enough. Go on.
It is powerful. It's powerful. It has a powerful effect. It can reach the simple mind. It can reach the simplest mind and turn them on to do something about their condition. It was powerful but it was a psychology package. Had to understand that. Alright, so now I think brothers and sisters, we are a butterfly. We're are a bee. You know a bee was one time a worm too, you see? Alright, so the people say, "Oh, you changed, you no more the same." Well there was something we had to drop off, but the good life, we still have it. But to come from the first level of evolution to the second or the higher level of evolution, you have to leave off something. Is that right? You either leave off the shells or you break out of the cocoon. You don't want the cocoon anymore.
You put yourself in a small home to create an environment that will simulate you to grow into the mind to appreciate the big home. Is that right? You put the thing into a cocoon, in a little small hole. Lock him up in jail, get to condition his nature in a way to accept to be recommended, to accept to be disciplined. Life is wild. Every life is born like this. Yes, every life is put into a small place, a close confinement and it's held there so that it's born in nature. When it come out, it's clocked into the cell, it's clocked into the genes. It's in the very nature of that life once is released from that narrow cell or that narrow prison that it was put in to condition it, to accept, to come in and conform to a bigger world. Is that right?
Oh, it's been trained to say, excuse me, may I pass? Is that right? It's been trained brothers and sisters to say that's too big for me to handle. I'm going to go this way. But the fool who haven't been born naturally, "You don't tell me what to do sucker. I'm a man just like you." You know who he's talking to? The Mayor. He's talking to the Mayor. Or he's talking to the National Guard and they got a cannon pointed at his head. He don't care. "I'm a man just like you. I'm free just like you" And the man says "Boom, boom." And he look around and see some of this comrades fall dead. "Whoa man, they serious man. Let's go." It took to show him the difference between dreaming and an awake life. Yeah, he go out living a dream and it takes somebody death to wake him up. We thank Allah that we were blessed with strength in our community with the strength to go back and get the strength that we had left. And put down the weakness that our mature minds didn't need anymore. I thank Allah for that. This is a miracle that has happened on this earth.
People have evolved from one level to a higher level that measures about 5,000 years in the history of the rise of society. We have come in just forty years up through a measure of community development that equals what nations has taken thousands of years to do. We have come from very narrow, primitive ideas of human life, of civilization, of the world. We have come from the ugliest time of racism, black supremacy. The narrow kind of mind. We've come out of this in 40 years and now here we are standing up and the great builders of civilization, the great builders of nations in America, in Europe and Africa and Asia in the Middle East, taking their hats off to The World Community of Al Islam In the West. And just four years ago they said if the Honorable Elijah Muhammad died, no telling what will happen to those people. Do you know why I don't have the support that should be justly coming to me? I'll tell you why. People who thought they knew and knew they should have been qualified to predict, predicted and we made them a liar.
They're so hurt, they're so disappointed. They had put together books describing what would take place. They had planned to make thousands of dollars on their scholarly work, telling, analyzing and explaining the downfall of the Nation of Islam. And G-d through us made them a liar and made obsolete and worthless all of their great scholarly work. They don't have a market for it now. They spent hours making it. Hours into writing the explanations of our downfall. And now there is no market for their scholarly work. So those sociologists, those psychologists, those social scientists, political scientists, those government stooges, they're now crippled. They have no hands. Their pencils are broke. And they hate me for it. They resent that WD Mohammed had to come about. They resent me, they hate me and they wish I had been lost somewhere or that I had never been born. So rather than use their scholarly minds and their pens and their good intentions, their intelligence and compliment you, they denied their support and they remain silent, hoping that something still may happen in the future. Hoping that a defector, hoping that a grumbling whining, pitiful defector will divide us, will spoil what has been done. Will create the friction for violence and that we'll go at each other and beat each other up and kill each other up. Let me tell you something Mr. Scholar, I'm ahead of your again. It's not going to happen. I have people who love me as much as they love my father.
Allahu Akbar!!
Thank you. All Praise is due to Allah. Thank you very much. I have people who are not capable of savage violence, they're capable of civilized violence. And if they thought that I wanted some enemy mouth shut, they would shut it. I wouldn't have to ask. But I have told them that the enemy is not always the brother that's debating with you or the brother that's challenging your position and refusing to unite with you. The worst enemy is the ignorant and the minds of the brother.
So, we have to deal with that enemy. We're not going to act against a physical person. We're going to deal with the absence of understanding the problem of the absence of understanding and the minds of our people. That's what we are going to deal with. I'll never attack any Minister physically. He can leave me and say I'm a hypocrite. He can say I'm an Uncle Tom. He can say I'm a devil. He can say that I'm out to kill Dr. Fard Muhammad and to rob the Honorable Elijah Muhammad of the respect and the dignity and respect and the recognition that he's entitled to that he deserves. He can say whatever he wants to say. He can make me look like the enemy of G-d, the enemy of you and the enemy of my own father, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He can make me look like the enemy of my mother, Sister Clara Muhammad. I don't care what he does, I will never attack him physically. I'm going to strike hell out that damn ignorant devil in his brain. Thank you. Don't think you're going to provoke me in a fist fight. I'm above that. If I have to, I'll go up in the sky and drop three bombs on you out of the Mother Plane.
I ain't going to carry on no fist fight. I got a Mothership. I got 1500 bombing planes. And every single one of my bombing planes have three bombs. And one of these three bombs have a drill on it that's made out of the strongest material that ever existed in the earth. It can take the bomb down one mile deep and throw up a mountain a mile high. And if that doesn't do the job, I can put off by remote control a trigger that will throw out poison gas in the atmosphere of my enemy. And if I still get some complaints, if I still have some disturbance out there, I will put a shortage in gravity and set the whole atmosphere afire. You have heard the language. Now you're looking at the boss with the hot sauce.
There's no way to go up but the right way. Dear beloved people, If you grow up, you are going to have to grow up as all civilized people have grown up, you're going to have to use your intelligence and stop moving just on sentiments and emotions. The human being is held together into a family and emotions are needed to make people in the household appreciate each other, to hold them together. The world of sentiment, the world of the blood of sentiment and the emotional nature have to keep people together in the home when intelligence is not strong enough as a cement to hold them together. But if you want to build cities, if you want to build neighborhoods, if you want to build communities and cities, you have to get a cement that's a little stronger than sentiments and emotions. Because these people, when they get out here in society, they're pushed so far away from each other, they can't feel the warmth of the skin. The warm breeze of sentiments and emotions just don't reach us. Sometimes there's a cold atmosphere of distance between us and we are going to have to have the solid strong cement of intelligence to build up the society.
Dear beloved people, study the history of downtrodden people who worked their way up and you'll find the kinds of things they had to leave down. They had to leave down immorality, they had to leave down vulgar, vulgar kind of display. They had to leave down brothers and sisters wine drinking, prostituting, drug addiction, silly fist fights beating each other up, laming each other over a little of nothing. I read in the paper in Chicago where a Bilalian had killed another Bilalian, not a Bilalian Muslim. To my knowledge he was not a Muslim. Had killed another Bilalian because he bit his hamburger. Don't laugh. This is true. This is a fact. Killed him because he bit his hamburger. Now many of you, how many of us know cases like this, where a Bilalian lost his life. Or lost her life over something so silly. A people that's going to the top, they have to leave that foolishness, that destructive kind of mind at the bottom and then bury it. Bury it in soil that will destroy it. You have to destroy it from the earth.
Dear brothers and sisters, we can't go up anywhere, can't rise up in the eyes of the world as a civilized community, as a productive people. We can't do it. Carrying Chinchilla coats, Superfly pimps and sissies. Dope peddlers, wine drinkers, vulgar talkers who get satisfied to stand on a corner and talk nasty for 16 hours and go home and sleep, eat and get up right back on the job again and talk nasty for another 16 hours. Dear beloved people, we can't get up like that. And I'm telling you, we can't accept the responsibility to change until we know how we got in this shape. It's not our fault. We didn't naturally become people with the dozen. I think they what you call it the dirty dozen on our tongue day and night. We didn't come up like that. We talk about the immorality, the bad morals of the Caucasian people. But don't you know that we have morals worse than the people we're talking about. We talk about the cruelty of the slave master years ago and we don't want our people to forget that cruelty. And some of us are meting our cruelties to each other that equal the cruelty that the slave master was meting out to us in those days of physical bondage.
How are we going to rise? We can't rise until we strip off this kind of self inflicting ignorance filth that we have on us. That's maiming us physically, morally and spiritually. We have to dump this stuff first to move up. We have to go back. We can't start off in 1975. We had to go back further than 1975. Go back to the teachings of Dr. Fard Muhammad that said, tells us that civilization means culture, refinement, happiness, peace, love and happiness. And that the duty of a civilized person is to teach that to the uncivilized. We have to go back to that. We have to reform ourselves in the intelligent, dignified image. Got people around here, they just can't wait for an FOI to form again. They're so, so weak and helpless, so incompetent. Can't accept responsibility to wash their in the morning. Brush their teeth, comb their hair. "Where is that Captain that used to tell me to brush my teeth and wash my face. Nobody telling me to comb my hair anymore. The world is coming to an end. We losing everything." I respect you more than that. I'm not going to keep Lieutenants and Captains over you to tell you to shine your shoes, to crease your pants, to comb your hair, to brush your teeth, to take a bath. I'm going raise your level of intelligent conscience and you'll be able to discipline yourself. And that is dignity. That is dignity for real.
But some of you so weak. Some of you have been made so weak by the habit of being told everything to do from others in our community that you hate me for taking away the jig. Now a lot of you don't know what a jig is. A jig is a welders term, a concept in welding. A welder uses fire to form metal and also to cut metal. If you have a piece of metal that you have to work on a long time and if it is not so heavy, if it's weak, you really need a jig for it. But even sometimes big solid pieces of steel as deep as a foot, six inches a foot, if you are going to work on it a long time with heat, you have to treat it like you treat a baby. Believe me, I'm a welder by trade and we work on huge drops of steel and metal. And then wrap it up like it's a baby in blankets. Wrap it up so that it doesn't lose its heat too fast and crack. Wrapping a huge block of steel up. Now when the pieces are smaller, you have to have a jig. You have to have a jig. And if you are working on smaller pieces, you have a jig. The jig is a metal frame to hold the pattern while you work on it. So, when you set it, the pattern will stay like you wanted it. Okay? It will have that form and keep it. So, you put it in a jig. The jig is a frame that you put the pieces in and it there like a strait jacket hold the crazy person. And you take your welding rod and you put it to the metal and you begin to burn it. You weld it into shape. You'll make it unite where it didn't want to unite and you keep it separated. And you put the heat there and when you put it there sometime you hear it hitting against the jig, trying to break out that jig, hitting against the jig. That metal begin to expand. It want get out of that jig. But if you made the right jig it can't get out. It just has to struggle and stay right there in that jig and you burn it into shape and you leave it right there until it's cool. Can't take it out hot. You have to let it cool.
Thank Almighty G-d the Honorable Elijah Muhammad started cooling you off so I could take you out of the jig. I've never seen a whole thing completed in a jig. You complete parts of it. There are details of it that you complete in a jig. After you get those details completed, then you pick the parts out of it and you put them together. What I've done all this talk for is just merely to bring home this point: That the strength of a society is not its material wealth, but its human wealth.
The strength of a society is its human wealth. You have to have moral substance, healthy moral substance. You have to have human resonance. You have to have compassion for all people. You have to be strong, strong enough to act on truth though it be against yourself, against your concepts, against your ideas of what you are and what the world should be. You have to be willing to give up those concepts that won't conform, or won't gel, or won't agree with truth and keep marching ahead. Not for your skin, but for the great kingdom within the skin, for the human mind, for the human heart, for human intelligence, for human sentiment, for human development. That's what I've been trying to drive home, that that's the strength of society, that's the strength of civilization. That's the strength of a nation. America has become the Mount Everest of material achievement. But look how the conduct of President Nixon, and look how the silly mind of a permissive society suddenly came into focus. Suddenly came upon this world upon this earth upon this land we called America and just destroyed the hopes of the generation in their leaders, in their leadership in the institution. Dear beloved people that should tell us that great material wealth is not the answer.
Great intelligence is the answer. And that intelligence must not exist naked by itself. It is nothing unless it has its twin brother with it, twin brother that makes up one human life. Intelligence must harmonize with the human heart, with the conscience, the moral conscience with human sentiment, with the compassionate nature of the human being to embrace truth and to feel sympathetic, to give itself, to help any that is suffering. Whether it looks like it’s suffering or not. G-d has condemned the racist. I don't care what color skin he's in, G-d has plainly condemned the racist. What will G-d say to you in the judgment day if you say, "G-d, I thought I was a different race or different flesh. I thought my mate was different. I thought I wasn't meant to live with those people, to share the world with them." G-d will say "Didn't you share your world with dogs. Didn't you share your world with cats. Didn't you share your world with birds and a fish that you put in jars and fishbowls. Did those things look like they were born out of the same womb that you were born out of? Doesn't that man in that skin that doesn't look like you all colorized? Doesn't he look more like you than those animals that you brought into your home and nourished as pets?"
There was no hope for the racist. Not at all. Dear beloved Muslims. We weren't racists always. Not even the Caucasian man was a racist always. G-d didn't make no people racist. G-d made human beings. G-d made people with human heart and he give us a human heart before he matures our mind and give us the light of intelligence. Is that right? We are people living by the forces of the human heart before we are mature enough intellectually to live by the forces of intelligence. So, G-d having birthed any racist on earth, G-d hasn't told people to reject each other because they have a different hue. In Africa right now among the blackest people of Africa, occasionally there is an albino boy. They don't look at that albino and say, "This is a stranger, this is a yacht. Who grabbed the devil and throw him out or kill him. You'll find the albino, he's loved, he's accepted in the home just like the blackest African. Is that right? Right now you know that the Caucasian don't produce any Kentucky coal black babies. In their genes, there’s not that kind of recessive makeup to produce an albino to look any different from them.
They're very close to albino themselves. So, they have an albino, doesn't stand out so much. Is that right? So, they're not frightened by their all albino. It looks so much like them. But look, what about the Caucasian? He has no excuse. He has also been conditioned to accept blacks. Again, I go to the animals, Look at the animals that they love. I've seen them walking down the street with big black dogs. I seen them riding around in their expensive cars with big black dogs, black cats, black birds. They buy some black birds that cost more than my car. Yeah. What do they call them things. They talk. Minor birds. Yes. They go and they eat. Black grapes, right? Black caviar. That's expensive stuff. Black caviar. And they don't say this the quality of this food is inferior, it's black.
They don't say that. So, G-d will condemn them. So, you had double standards. You called that black in a human skin, inferior, but you didn't call it inferior outside of the human skin. So, what kind of double standard is this? So, they're condemned. No race ever rejected our blackness. Don't believe it. Now I know they will tell you. The educated people who will tell you we are rejected because of our blackness. Don't you ever believe it. From this day forward, never accept that. We were not rejected because of the blackness of our skins. We were rejected because a label, a stigma had to be put on us to justify the cruelties that slavery would have to beat out to us. Our skin was made degraded. That's the problem. Me as a skin color was degraded and made ugly. Made ugly. It became another term for all the kind of terrible things that people want to stay away from. Laziness, stink, ugliness. Animalistic. Animalistic habits, animalistic nature.
People didn't push us away cause we were black until they got this kind of picture of people in black skin. Isn't that a fact? But in the earlier history of the Caucasian travels in Africa, many of them went back and they gave beautiful reports of what they had found among black skinned people. They weren't frightened by black skinned people. We got an African right here. He knows what happened in his land. It wasn't black skin. Black skin was made ugly to frighten people away and to make people feel that the people deserve the kind of treatment that we are giving them. "They don't deserve to be treated as equal human beings. They're not equal human beings. They're subhuman. They're bordering on animal existence. Animal form more than they are bordering on human form. That's what they taught their children. So, their children were born with this false concept. Paul's idea of our origin and our makeup in nature. Black is not the problem. The lie is the problem. So, we should be trying to deal with the lie as intelligent students, intelligent students. We should use the scientific approach and we should deal with the problem of racism in America and anywhere else in the earth. We should deal with it from a scientist position.
And through the eyes of the scientists. The textbooks in the United States of America. The textbooks on general science, on social science that are given to the little children in elementary school. How come they're not dealing with the question of racism?
They think they're dealing with by simply showing a Bilalian and a Caucasian in the same setting. That's not dealing with, that's not the real problem. We tried to preach that and get bigots to accept that we live in the same setting. Now if we're going to work at it that way, there are going to be people who are going to keep secret. They're not going to speak it out loud because the mind of the public is so much now against that kind of ugly racism that the person can't speak it out openly now but they were quietly preaching at home. They will quietly pass on to their little children. Dear beloved brothers and sisters, the only way to change it is to deal with it with a rational mind. To unravel the lie with the tool of intelligence, with the tool of scientific teaching, scientific doctrine. That's the way to handle it. Tell the people that the Holy Qur'an says that in the of mountain, in the top of the mountain, black and white and other colors running in the stone, running in the top of the mountain. So beautifully put, so profound and yet so clear. What does mountain represent? A nation, a great nation. A government, a great nation. And the top of it. What does that represent? The leadership. The leadership. The Holy Qur'an doesn't leave us thinking that a symbolic teaching is far from the subject of society. The Holy Qur'an says that in yourself. You'll find that these colors are in the plant and similarly or likewise in yourselves. Isn't that what it says? That's the Holy Qur'an. G-d was speaking to the problem of color in the people. Prophet Muhammad, when he gave his farewell address, he says that there is no superiority of the Arab over the non Arab. The non Arab or over the Arab. Or the black over the white, or the white over the black. He said, the only superiority is righteousness. Taqwa. The only superiority is righteousness. Is that right? He put an end to the argument. There's no excuse any racism or any color consciousness in the Muslim world. No excuse for it. If any of our people have it, they got it from the new kinds of racist influences that have been brought about since the mission and the works of Prophet Muhammad in Arabia. They have no excuse for it. Dear beloved Muslims, the reason why we can't get on our feet financially, we can't get any economic stability is because we don't understand the dollar value of an enriched culture. You can't hold your money if you are not culturally prepared. If you think that it's more important for you to wear 200 dollar garments, 500 dollar garments and sport rings that cost hundred dollars two or $300, a thousand dollars, that that's more important for you than investing than investing in the total uplift of your community. Or investing and improving the education of your children, putting some money into account so that your girls and boys will have college tuition. If you think that pouring money into passable things like fancy clothes and all these other foolish things that we put our money into. If you think that riding around in an El Dorado or Mercedes-Benz or some of these other expensive cars is more important to your life, that investing in the future for the rise of the total society, you're a fool. You're a fool. You don't have cultural sense. So, your dollar can't count. Your dollar have no power to mature and grow. It has no power to produce fruit.
It has no power to produce for you. Why? Because you're culturally ignorant. You're culturally dead. They say what are you doing Chief Imam? We have the NAACP, we have the Urban League, we have this unit, this group and that group. What are we all doing? We're marching to the polls. We're asking for more money. We're demanding that our products be put on the shelf. Good brother. Good. You're working with the surface thing. I'm putting the heart back into a human being. I'm making it possible for human blood to flow through a human body again. I'm putting the brain back into an empty head. I'm putting eyes back into the head. I'm giving him a tongue so he can speak. I think that's important. I think that's more important.
Dear beloved people, the survival of a people, an ethnic group or even a nation is not as much in their material self or in their material makeup as it is in their human strength. Their moral makeup, their cultural makeup. G-d tells us so beautifully the importance of culture. He gives it to us in the description of the plant life. Trees come up, they have leaves. Leaves are the clothes of those trees. Is that right? It's beautiful. I'm telling you it's pleasant. It's really spiritually nourishing to leave the ghetto of asphalt, brick, and steel and go out to a garden or a park and look at a green tree, with its beautiful leaves.
G-d gives us a message to open our minds and set us in the right path for human development and community development. G-d tell us that He dressed the tree, but see how they die in the winter. They die. Bad conditions come, they die and they lose that dress. Look how that bad tree looks. It doesn't simulate our appreciation for life. It saddens us. Is that right? You look on a tree who instead have lost all of its leaves. It doesn't stimulate the appreciation for beauty in life. It saddens us. A people that loses the culture is like a tree that loses the leaves.
If that tree doesn't get new leaves, it will never live again. Isn't that a fact? It needed leaves to live. With those leaves the tree gets what? The tree gets the sunlight. What do they call it? Photosynthesis. There's a process, but they get the sunlight, energy from the sun and the energy they get from the sun creates the building of the cells in the trees. The carbon dioxide is what builds the body of the tree up and the tree gets it through the leaves. The carbon is sugar and the building of the tree comes through the leaves. It's feeding through its leaves. It also breathes through its leaves. Is that right? The sunshine comes through leaves and the richness of the sun gets into the tree through the leaves and the leaves are also breathing for the tree. Without these leaves, it will not live. It will die.
So, we look at the leaves now and they look like the cheap part of the tree, right? The richness of the tree should be the branches. The thick wood, the volume of the tree. Its wood, its branches, it's trunk. It's branches. But really the vital organs are formed of the tree is its leaves. Is that right? It's leaves. This is science. Now, some trees and some plants that don't only get leaves. They get flowers and they get fruit. Right? Flowers. And the fruit reproduce the trees. Now we know about the trees that don't get fruit. They're also reproduce. They get flower, right? They get flour or they get seeds. They get seeds and they drop the seeds or they get flowers and the bees help them reproduce. The bees, mix the pollen from one to another and help them reproduce. Is that right? Some plants like this. Some are produced with the help of the bees. Others are reproduced by dropping the seeds. And then some are produced by dropping a fruit with seeds, is that right? A fruit with seed. Now, G-d has inspired His Prophets to speak from this natural language, from these physical, natural concepts that G-d put before our eyes. G-d has inspired His Prophets to speak to our intelligence from these natural figures that G-d formed before our eyes. And to tell us that the life of man, the life of society is like a tree.
You have to have culture. And the culture is your life. And the culture is beauty. Culture is beauty. The human concepts that we all respect and reverence, they're beautiful as well as productive for civilization or in society. You see? So, this is a beauty brothers and sisters. So don't think that your physical earnings are going to put you on top of the world. Can't do it. As long as you are a bad tree with no cultural development, you can have your roots 10 miles deep down in the soil of the earth, but without culture decorating yourself and your society, your dollar value is nil. You don't have anything. Look how much money we waste. Saturday night party. Look how we waste money in cigarettes. Wine, whiskey, beer, dope. Look at the money we wasting on the pill. Pep pill, up pill down pill. Look at the money we waste in the Iron John. Get it ready for the night. You know what I'm talking about. You men do Zinc. Zinc tablets, Iron John tablets, zinc tablets.
And then go out and buy a whole lot of protection. Look, at all the money we waste. All we have to do is obey G-d and we can stand up strong on this earth, we'll have a beautiful culture and the beautiful leaves and the flower and the fruit will come on our tree. And brother and sisters, we'll start growing up youngsters in our image and we'll be productive. We'll find people coming to our neighborhood from our community saying, "You a beautiful community. I would like to sit under your shade tree. But now they don't want to stay in our community. We don't have any leaves. No shade. Sure would like to come around and see your flowers. There's a beautiful tree you have. These are beautiful flowers. No flowers. May I have a peach. No peaches, no culture. So, the people say, "Oh, I don't want them coming among us. They grow bad trees, bad plants, its winter all the time over there. They all people do to perpetual winter time. They can't live among those people. Let's get a civilized mind. Let's get on the job of developing and advancing culture for our ethnic group. And I love to call us Bilalians, but if you want to call us Afro Americans, that's okay with me.



