JABRIL.MUHAMMAD
In the book, Closing The Gap, we can read the words of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan:
“Well I understood that security was in my mom, but from a very early age, I don’t know the exact year, but I knew that security was beyond my mother and it was found in God. From a little boy I remember running down in the street which was like right around the corner of my house, or apartment, and I felt the spirit of God just something on me where I was extremely joyous. I was just running and I knew that spirit from a child, that it was God on me. In that moment feeling that overwhelming sense of joy, peace, and complete security in Him.
When I would find myself faced with a difficulty, it was not to my mother to whom I resorted. It was to Him. As my heart was being fashioned, as a young boy talented, I always wanted to share what came to me with my friends, but I saw that in sharing the good that came to me with my friends, it made what I didn’t know at that time, was envy. Some of them began to speak against me.
In my nightclub life I was sixteen then, I would talk to this woman who took sailors in and whatnot. I asked her why friends of mine would talk about me because I was a growing star and people would ring the block to get into this or that nightclub to see me perform. She said “Oh,” (they called me) “Gene.” She said “Oh Gene, they talked about Jesus, so you cannot escape their talking about you.”
That stuck with me. So there was never a spirit of retaliation toward those who spoke evil against me.
I remember when I was playing in the nightclub and I was the star of the show. I brought four young men in to surround me as members of the band. The Jewish owner of the nightclub, Mr. Eddie Levine, called me upstairs to his office. I was making $65 a week. He said “I will give you $125.00 a week if you get rid of those four that are around you.” He said, “because, I mean, they’re not the show. It’s really you.” And I told him “I came here with them. I’ll leave with them.”
He tried to induce me to get rid of my support for money. He didn’t realize money was not my objective. But one day, when I went up in my dressing room, one of the young men in the group spoke out very evilly towards me. It seemed as though there was an evil spirit in the group that this discontent had permeated.
So I fired the whole group. I told him, “You all feel this way, well I didn’t come in the world with any twin. So I’ll get along without you all. You’re dismissed.” I fired them.
I went home and I told my mother. Over days, she asked me to reconsider and bring the group back together. But I was pained to do that but as God is my witness I didn’t go to my mother for guidance. I went to the Bible. I picked up the book of Psalms. I began reading and I was comforted and I was strengthened.
I cannot remember what Psalm, but the words made me to know that I should put my trust in God and go forward, which I did. I never brought those Brothers back around me again except at my wedding to Khadijah. They were the ushers in my wedding.
We played again for the last time at my wedding. These are things that formed the heart [me] that was only desirous of serving, of healing, of uplifting others through the gifts that God had given me, and not harming people.
It was an Easter Sunday, I was 13; my mother had bought me a new suit. I went out with some of my friends after church. I went into a park called Franklin Park. There was a little White boy fishing. There was a bridge and he had his little pole. He pulled this pole back and he didn’t have anything on the hook. But some little drops of water got on my new suit. I was showing off for my friends. I took a bracelet that I had and I put it around my hand and I went over to that boy and I struck him and I ran.
When I got home there was such an aching in my heart because even though he was a White boy, a member of a race that had inflicted so much pain on my people, he was doing nothing to bother me In spite of the evil of his people toward our people,
I felt pain – a deep pain – for doing to that young man what I did when he gave me no cause.
These are incidents in my life–there are two more that I will bring out probably in my memoirs–that are indelible on my heart, that make me to know that the [my] heart was forming for justice, not for revenge, but for justice and truth and feeling the hurt of others.
By the time I was 19, and I heard that God had chosen a Messenger, at first I was sad because I felt that He was with me all my life. I felt His spirit on me. I felt His protection around me. I raised the question, “Why didn’t you choose me?” You know I love my people.” Those are the exact words. I’m crying because I’m sad that the relationship that we had from a child that, you chose somebody else. Right then, I said, “Oh when He came, in 1930, I wasn’t born.” So that dismisses that thought. Let me go find this man.
I’m saying that Jabril that my heart was already formed for Him and for our people, from the womb of my mother. See this is why the scriptures say, “He formed you in the womb of your mother.” I think I read that somewhere. I never applied it to myself, but at this moment I know that He formed me in the womb of my mother. He allowed the circumstances surrounding my mother to give me that total insecurity that would make me see Him and Him alone as my Protector.
Jabril Muhammad: Wise God.
Minister Farrakhan: So you know, Jabril, it’s a wonderful thing to be favored by God. You don’t know what you did to deserve such wonderful favor. I didn’t do anything really, but He formed me for His glory. I see that. He formed for His number one choice (the Honorable Elijah Muhammad) but I was in His mind all the time.
He knew the boy [me] because I was two going on three when the Messenger–I was three when He was leaving him, 1935, but He knew me. He knew me. That’s why, you know, Jabril, see when you say God came in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, but there was a God setting things up for Him. There was an Allah
Who was fashioning things for Him to come in and manifest what was in Him from the formation in His mother’s womb. The Messenger closes the Muslims Wants and What The Muslim Believe with “We believe that Allah (God) appeared in the Person of Master W. Fard Muhammad, July 1930; the long-awaited “Messiah” of the Christians and the “Mahdi” of the Muslims.”
Then he pauses and wrote: “We believe further and lastly that Allah is God and besides Him there is no God and He will bring about a universal government of peace wherein we all can live together in peace.”
Well, He’s paying recognition to that eternal force, that eternal mind, that eternal spirit out of which all of this comes, that Master Fard Muhammad manifests.
You know, we are in a very blessed state. I thank you for asking me such questions that brings forth from me things that–some things I thought of, other things I never thought of–of the forming of the heart and those kinds of expressions, that I never had a chance to even say such words before. But your questions help me to go back and see how I was formed. More importantly why I was formed the way I was formed.
This leads, of course, to the ultimate, that crucifixion–what will you give to see the devils brought into hell? “I will give all that I have and all within my power.” Those are his words. He proved it in forty-four years even to the death plot that he knew and said of, “If I didn’t know how I would escape, I would have no hope at all.”
But God gave him hope by telling him how. He said to you. “Oh I could tell you but you …” See, he knew. I may not know how but He knows. See, so it’s that scene again now, on a lesser level that his complete trust in his Master is absolutely necessary to get him through.
More next issue, Allah Willing.
