[Editor’s note: The following text is taken from a speech delivered by Minister Louis Farrakhan on Dec. 22, 2002 in Phoenix, Az., and viewed via satellite transmission by tens of thousands of people in the United States and in Great Britain. Click here to order this speech.]
In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
For nearly 17 years, the British government has seen fit to deny me the right to visit the United Kingdom to address my own following there and to address the people of the United Kingdom. Minister Hilary [Muhammad] and the followers there engaged a number of lawyers to bring a suit against the British government to lift their ban on my travel there. Attorneys Nicholas Blake, Siddiq Khan, Matthew Ryder, Rosa Hussein and Tamara Muhammad, I truly thank you all. I would like also to thank the late Bernie Grant, member of Parliament, and all of the organizations that joined with Minister Hilary and the believers to fight for my presence in the United Kingdom.
These lawyers engaged in a hard fought battle, and it’s the first time in the history of the United Kingdom that a citizen took the government to court and won. Through Justice [Michael] Turner, the ban was lifted, but the government was upset. They wanted to have the verdict overturned so they (government) appealed to the higher court and they (the court), not wanting to go against the government, overturned the ruling of Justice Turner. The highest body of law in the United Kingdom is the House of Lords, and they have refused to even hear the case. So it looks as though I will be banned from ever setting foot in the United Kingdom, except as I am traveling there today by satellite.
They (government) said that since 9/11, it would be in the public interest to keep me out. I want to ask a question: What is it about Louis Farrakhan that the government of the United Kingdom fears? Great Britain has ruled and dominated, at one time, the whole world. They have instituted their system of government, jurisprudence, education and their social norms and values in every country that they conquered and became its colonial master. If you have superior knowledge and have given that superior knowledge to your citizens, why then should you fear anything coming from the mouth of a Black man from America, if you have taught your people the truth?
Great Britain has ruled the airwaves, the sky, the sea, the Earth. Britain has become the greatest and wisest slave maker and slave master of any of the colonial masters and teachers of Black people. The British system, like the American system, is designed to create in us a subject mentality. You are subjected to the power, the rule, the guidance, the tutelage of another master. They put you in a box (system of training) where you can’t think beyond the way they have educated you to free yourself from their domination.
In the Caribbean, you may have an independent flag but you’re not independent. You may have an independent flag in Africa, but you are not yet independent. You may claim that you are independent in the Middle East, but you are not yet independent. As long as you have to look to Europe as your master instead of to yourself and to your God, you are still under the tutelage of your former colonial master.
As long as Great Britain was ruling in Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and other parts of the world, Great Britain was more exclusively a White country. But starting in the ’50s when the surge for independence began in Africa with Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Nnamdi Azikiwe from Nigeria, and others, the British Union Jack started coming down and an independent flag went up, but their system was still in place.
Fear of Farrakhan
What is it that they fear from me? Look at my record. They argued my record in the court. They charged me with being an anti-Semite and a hater. But you can’t show one person that those who follow me have harmed. We have not plucked the nail or a strand of hair from one White person, one Jewish person nor our own Black brothers and sisters, but we are the hate teachers? We’re the anti-Semites?
It is fear on the part of those who have hijacked Judaism, it is fear on the part of those who have hijacked Christianity, and it is fear on the part of those who are hijacking the religion of Islam today that truth will uncover, discover and uproot. That is why Jesus said in the Bible, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
Jesus, speaking 2,000 years ago, spoke in the future tense: You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Set you free from what? Set you free from being dominated by a satanic mind and a satanic spirit that has you hating yourself and destroying your future by destroying one another.
What I offer that Great Britain fears is that particular truth that would free the Black man and free all those subjected to White rule and free White people from the sick mentality of White supremacy. All are being manipulated by Satan and all need to be set free.
Beloved Christians, I study the Bible and I reach from the Bible. But this is a Book (Holy Qur’an) that introduces itself to us from Allah (God). After the seven oft repeated verses (Al-Fatiha), it reads: “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. I, Allah, am the Best Knower.” God is introducing Himself to us as one Who not only has knowledge, but He is supreme in what He knows above all those who claim to know. Then He says, “This book, there is no doubt in it. It is a guide to those who keep their duty.”
I have picked up many books in my life, but I have never picked up a book that says from God that this is a book in which there is no doubt. That means every word here that I read is light. Every word is truth. I want to start with a Book in which there is no doubt. And since this is Mosque No. 32, I would like to read from the 32nd Surah (chapter) called Al-Sajdah. Sajdah means prostration; one who bows down to God because of adoration for God.
Listen to these verses: “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. I, Allah, am the Best Knower. The revelation of the Book, there is no doubt in it, is from the Lord of the worlds. Or do they say: He has forged it? Nay, it is the Truth from thy Lord that thou mayest warn a people to whom no warner has come before thee that they may walk aright.”
Great Britain, America, be honest. We are not walking aright. Our steps are not as God would have ordered them. To the Muslim world, we have believed that Muhammad Ibn Abdullah is the end of the prophets, and he is. This Book that Allah (God) revealed through Prophet Muhammad is the final revelation to come to this world before the judgment of the world.
He says, “that thou mayest warn a people.” You don’t warn somebody unless something terrible is about to happen and you want to warn the people that they may walk aright and escape what you are warning them against. Then it says, “that thou mayest warn a people to whom no warner has come before thee.”
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was raised by Allah (God) in Mecca, but Mecca had received a prophet. Abraham and Ishmael did their work in Mecca. Hud and Salih did their work in Arabia. So this verse of Qur’an is talking about a warner that’s coming to a people to whom no warner had gone before him.
Allah (God) says in the Qur’an, “I have sent a messenger to every nation and to every people.” Who is the messenger that God sent to Great Britain? And even more important, who is the messenger that God raised in the United States of America? I want us to think.
When a messenger or a warner comes, he comes to warn you about something of great consequence that will ill affect you if you don’t change your way. Britain has had her way all over the world. Europe has had her way. America now is at the pinnacle of power and influence over the nations of the earth. But is England righteous? Is America righteous?
Whenever nations have deviated from the path of God there is a consequence for that deviation. You can’t enslave a whole people and there is not a consequence. You can’t steal land from the Mexicans and there’s not a consequence. You can’t destroy the Native Americans and there’s not a consequence. You can’t make war all over the earth and destroy people at will and there’s not a consequence.
I live in America. This is the land of my birth. I do not want to see America face a consequence for the evils that she has done, is doing, and is planning to do. But who will take the courage to stand up and warn America of the consequences of her actions? Who will say to Tony Blair and the people of Great Britain, you are embarking on a dangerous course. Who will take strength by their faith in God and their fearless nature to warn the wicked of their wickedness and call them out of that behavior that they may save themselves from imminent destruction?
Somebody needs to help America come out of the mindset of White supremacy–I am better because I’m Black or I’m better because I’m White, or I’m better because I’m a Christian and you’re a Muslim. I’m the chosen because I am a Jew. These kinds of mentalities get you all messed up. It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t choose you, but He chose you to work. He doesn’t choose you to run around talking about you are chosen. If I chose you to be the plumber, then don’t let me see you with the pipe in your hand doing nothing. Do the work that you are chosen to do, then you justify getting the contract.
If you’re a Jew and you say God chose you, what did He choose you for? Did he choose you to hide the light under a bushel basket and corrupt the light? This is why you don’t like Farrakhan. I’m not anti-Semitic. But what I am anti are those who say they are Jews and they are not; those who say they are Christian and they are not; those who say they are Muslims and they are not. Satan makes Muslims, but not the right kind. Satan makes Jews and Christians. He gives you the name but not the spirit.
You can masquerade like you love Jesus, but what are your works? You can masquerade like Moses and the prophets that came to Israel are your prophets, but what are your works? And we can masquerade like we know Muhammad, but what are our works.
You can tell a tree by the fruit it bears. You can tell a man by his works.
