A look back at Min. Farrakhan’s journey

JABRIL.MUHAMMAD

Previous Farrakhan The Traveler Articles

This short article will give the reader part of my reason for the title of this column titled Farrakhan The Traveler. It includes the reason why I wrote the material titled More Than A Vision.

I wrote this article in March 1982. I don’t recall the exact volume and number it appeared in The Final Call. When you look up the meaning of the word “Honorable” you would agree that this word fits him, even at that time. I intend to get to this by the help of Allah.

(Many people have asked me of my health condition. I could see they have not read my public statement. Please go to www.cuttingedgeknowledge.org.)

Let’s go back 27 years ago when this article was written for The Final Call.

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“By the time this article appears, the 40-plus-city tour of Minister Louis Farrakhan will have been completed. Its spiritual significance is the purpose of this series of articles, of which this is the first.

“Ultimately, the spiritual significance (in the highest sense) of any person, the events they produce, and the time in which they work, has for its source the mind and will of the Almighty God. Let us, then, attempt to see the significance of this tour, or journey, from the perspective of God.

“Where ought we to begin? Let us begin with the facts of the tour. What happened? Let us begin in a general way.

“Minister Louis Farrakhan’s national tour began in a sense, in June of this year (1981). It ends, in a sense, in November of this same year. He will have covered well over a quarter of a million miles; most of it by air. Many thousands of Black people have and will have heard him in person. A much greater number will have gained a better understanding of him, his message and of him whom he represents, through those who heard him these five months.

“In most weeks he taught six nights (or days) per week –his talks lasting two or more hours. There was no time to prepare for each event, in the usual way speakers prepare for audiences, especially in situations of great importance.

“I was among those with him on several of these trips. His pattern was: get up early in the morning, make preparations and get to the airport, get to a city, get a few hours sleep, get up and eat dinner with others in that city, while to one degree or another enlighten them on this or that; teach hundreds or thousands, as the case may be; get back to his room and teach and /or consult/advise others late into the night. Get up early the next morning and on to the next city, if he wasn’t going back to his home in Chicago, where he would work, work, work …

“There were problems of different kinds that added needless, and at times, sorely depressing weight to his already difficult mission. He would speak of these difficulties as that which went with the job. And yes, there was and is the ever present threat of death.

“None of us do what we do without a motive. Motive grows out of purpose and is directed or aimed at some goal. He demonstrated time and again, both in words and deeds, that his motive was the love of Allah, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the truth from and about him (the Messenger) and Black people, with an extraordinary degree of compassion for humanity at large. There can be no sane denial that in terms of effect, his purpose, aim and goal was and is to plant deeper the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, his message and program in the minds and hearts of his hearers. The effect or results can be seen in the improved condition of those who accepted his preaching, It is, in fact, the same as that of his teacher, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

“The Minister gave himself no credit for these results which is ongoing. He claimed to do no more than to deliver the truth of and about the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He stated time and time again that the God of this truth backed it and that these were among the underlying factors of his success.

“At the core of his message was the identification of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad as the Christ, who was written about in the Old Testament and presented in the New Testament.

“The prime preacher of Jesus as the Christ in the New Testament was Paul, whose conversion to Jesus was strikingly similar to that of Umar to Muhammad of Arabia 1,400 years ago so says Mr. Michael H. Hart in his book The 100 Ranking of The Most Influential Persons in History.

“The prime preacher of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad as the Christ today is Minister Louis Farrakhan.”

The next paragraph is an excerpt from an article that I wrote in April 1982 for The Final Call.

“We are considering the work of Minister Louis Farrakhan, especially the significance of his nearly 300,000 mile, nearly 50 city tour in 1981–a most significant year.

Let’s now look at the next two paragraphs written November 28, 1982.

“One of the major points of this series of articles was to show that even as Minister Farrakhan traveled the length and breadth of modern Babylon, issuing the Final Call, he was traveling inwardly towards his Lord. This inward, forward motion is what was going on in this unusual Brother as he outwardly made his near 300,000 mile journey during a six-month period in 1981.

“Of course, this was and still is the case–externally and internally–during the whole of the 60 plus months since he rose up for, took his stand with, and invited 30 or more million Black people to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Let us take the same kind of look at Who backs Minister Farrakhan up and with what.”

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I hope this gives you a good idea of the reason why I called this column Farrakhan The Traveler. I have a little more to say on this point, be it the will of Allah. Of course the reader must appreciate the fact that he has grown much from that time to now. For example, he has become a world leader, and then some.

More next issue, Allah willing.