ERICTOUREM -Contributing Writer-

Imam Abdul Malik (fourth from right), the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan (second from right) and his son Student Supreme Captain Mustapha Farrakhan (right) at Salat-al-Jumu’ah (Friday congregational prayer service) earlier this year in New York.

This year more than 10,000 listeners are estimated to have tuned in live to hear the 5 a.m. Fajr, Ramadan prayer message from the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam.  

Marking its 10th anniversary this year, the Ramadan Prayer Line, organized by members of the Nation of Islam, has become a heralded institution, where Islamic scholars and believers from all schools of Islamic thought grace its airwaves with hadiths, recitations and guidance for the sacred and holy month. According to organizers, this is by far the largest one-time, listening audience in the prayer line history with 5,000 phone lines carrying the July 16 message from Min. Farrakhan. Boston, Mass. carried it live over radio station, Touch 106.1-FM. The numbers exponentiate in volumes, when made to consider how many phone lines and radio users had multiple listeners.

“I pray Allah will bless me, to again be on this line and all of us to see another Ramadan. But the clouds of war are gathering over America and the world,” Min. Farrakhan warned listeners. “I can only promise that, those of us who hold fast to the rope of Islam; you will have a victory. Your fear will be removed and your religion will be established regardless to the power of the enemies of Islam!” he charged.  

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“Thank you for listening. Thank you for the work that you do, but let’s step up the pace. Get out in the streets where our people are dying,” he continued.

“It was the biggest phone audience we had. It shows that the interest in the prayer line when the Minister is on there is tenfold in terms of people who tune in,” said Student International Representative of the Nation of Islam, A. Akbar Muhammad. “And the fact that the prayer line has been on for 10 years is significant.”

Min. Akbar Muhammad said that if he could use one word to define its significance it would be “relevant”. The Minister directed his words and spiritual guidance based on the teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, to the contemporary challenges that Muslims and Black people have in the world today, explained Akbar Muhammad.      

At 82-year-old, Min. Farrakhan conveyed his personal grief for not being able to join the Muslim world in the actual fast, due to health considerations, but expressed that he rarely missed a day of following the prayer line, listening intently and enjoying all that he heard. And he thanked Allah (God) for allowing him to crisscross this country during the Holy Month to spread a kind word, and rally the world to 10-10-15, the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March, themed “Justice or Else.”

“So many when they heard the theme justice or else, thought that, maybe the ‘or else,’ was too strong a term,” he reflected. “But, while I was in Atlanta, Georgia speaking at the Theological Seminary (ITC, April 10), when I mentioned the subject as ‘Justice’ I paused. And there was a tap on the side of my head, and I uttered the words ‘or else’,” he said, sharing the process of revelation from Allah to His servant.

“There has never been a prophet of God that came among the people that was given a message from Allah to that people; that in that message, there was not contained a threat,” he said. “The prophet of God is not among us to teach us and warn us where there is not a consequence for our rejection of his message. Every nation has received a messenger,” he noted, turning his focus to the Muslim world.

“I plead with the Muslims of the world (that) America, the great nation in the West; the most powerful nation that has been in this world for the last 6,000 years–I plead with Muslims all over the world to understand that this great nation called the United States of America; the greatest of all of our nations on this planet started its journey with murder and bloodshed,” the Minister continued.

Decimating the ranks of the Native Americans from Central and South America, throughout the United States and then producing the TransAtlantic Slave Trade bringing scores of enslaved African ancestors, where our humanity and the dignity of our humanity had been violated for more than 460 years, “I ask my Muslim family, do you think that Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Powerful, the Omnipresent, and the Omniscient One; seeing the slaughter of us in the Western Hemisphere, did not think to do for us what He did for nations on our planet?”

“Do you not think that we deserve a Messenger of God, to speak to us and to deliver a word to us that would transform our lives from the wretched condition that we are in?” “Of course, the Most Merciful would give us a Messenger,” he exclaimed.

Does not the United States of America deserve a Warner from God for the evil that she has poured out on and against Blacks, Native Americans and her plotting against entire nations would not warrant a visit from “the God of Justice   (that) would one day visit America with the consequences of her evil?,” the Muslim leader continued.

“How blind can you be that all of those that have received a Messenger of God are more worthy of a Messenger of God than the Black man and woman of America and the Native people? Is there a nation in the Qur’an that we read of in these 30 days, more wicked than the nation in which we live today?”

The Minister continued to expound on the call to Washington, D.C. in October and assured the audience if America does not answer our demands, not to worry because “Allah is here to do that Himself.”

He closed acknowledging the recent apologies on behalf of the Catholic Church that sitting Pontiff Pope Francis gave to the people of Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay for the church’s evils committed against those nations.

“It’s good that you admit the evils of the church, but it would be better in admitting the evil the church repents of that evil and then atones for that evil by lifting the people under your charge out of the valley of poverty and want,” said Min. Farrakhan.

“Tell the European leaders that accept you as their spiritual guide (to) forgive the debt, you say Africa owes Europe. Africa owes Europe nothing!   Europe owes Africa and the Caribbean, Central and South America everything for the wickedness you have poured on our heads.”