By Richard B. Muhammad – Editor
There is an old joke that goes if Jesus got out of a boat and walked on water, today’s media headlines would read: “Jesus can’t swim!”
Deliberately deceptive and dangerous mis-characterizations of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam take the modern Jesus reference out of the realm of humor and into reality.
Why is it dangerous? It’s dangerous because miscasting a divine man means that some may miss the blessing and wisdom that he possesses for their benefit. Absent such Supreme Wisdom, people can find themselves suffering or even losing their lives because they don’t have vital information about the time and what must be done.
If the work of Jesus is to open blind eyes, make the deaf hear, the dumb speak and raise the dead to life, it cannot be denied that words Min. Farrakhan spoke on October 10, 2015 at the U.S. Capitol and in the lead up to the overwhelmingly successful “Justice Or Else!” gathering opened eyes, opened ears and had those who were not speaking about the Black condition talking and increased political-social consciousness and spiritual awareness.
Yet the mainstream media and some envious ones are squawking about what was accomplished by the Million Man March 20th anniversary demonstration? These ever ready carpers, who one brother noted on social media, could not draw 10 people to a cookout, are self-delusional. They presume to make an “impossible” task which the Minister has done at least four times something anyone can do. Yet no one did it and none would dare try.
The 1995 Million Man March came after about two years of work following the public invitation and disinvitation of Min. Farrakhan from the 1993 March on Washington, which marked that demonstration’s 30th anniversary. Despite criticism, mockery, opposition and ever-present negativity and Negro envy and self-hatred, the Million Man March was a miraculous success.
Instead of finding joy in the fact that one from among the most oppressed and rejected people in America is steadily rising into power and is devoted to their rise, these sideline pundits and Facebook revolutionaries complain. They talk of organizing but can’t show any massive work. They speak of revolution but can’t point to any revolutionary acts or programs. Dedication to revolution takes more than laying claim to a name and wearing berets. These unhealthy critics bemoan Justice Or Else! as just another gathering, but tag on to the end of their diatribe, “won’t you please come to our march.”
Does this mean that Minister Farrakhan is above criticism or above question? Emphatically not.
But to question a man whose work you can’t hold a candle to, a work which is daily and has lasted for 60 years in a reckless and disrespectful way is ludicrous. It may just earn you the “Donkey of the Day” award bestowed by Charlemagne Tha God of the Breakfast Club, a popular hip hop radio program. And one such self-appointed critic was bestowed with that high honor.
Min. Farrakhan is open to collaboration and dedicated to unity, but the naysayers don’t want to change anything–they simply want someone to attack. The sad thing is such negative activity only makes those who engage in such acts insignificant.
How can anyone look at a major mobilization with no corporate backing, no political backing, no mainstream media coverage, no major Black organization public endorsement and say nothing happened? Disingenuous, dishonest and foolish.
It would be better to find a way to join the effort by bringing your ideas and your great skill to the effort to make it successful, if you desire freedom for your people.
But Min. Farrakhan is not a man to be maligned or trifled with.
This is a man who by Allah’s (God’s) grace resurrected the Nation of Islam, a movement killed by the federal government. This man can actually produce followers working to uplift Black communities and build Black institutions on a daily basis. What about you who carp and harp? For all the carping and the social media violin-playing, the detractors can produce little or nothing.
If you can assemble 1 million people, 750,000 people, 250,000 people, 150,000 people or even 100 people, please do so and execute your plan and program. But you are foolish to attack a divine man and a towering figure of the 20th century and the 21st century–who is working for your rise.
Here is a man who has inspired hope and vision in young people and embraced young activists when others shun and reject them. While others may be non-committal or uncomfortable with the tactics of Black youth that rose out of the ashes and the tear gas of Ferguson, Mo., Min. Farrakhan embraced and supported these young leaders. He gave them a place and an international platform Oct. 10 at one of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history. They didn’t have to bum rush the stage or snatch the mic. Torry Russell, one of this new crop of leaders declared from the main stage, “Ferguson is the Or Else!”–giving a forecast of what America faces if she refuses to change.
A great teacher, mentor and the preeminent leader in Black America, Min. Farrakhan is consumed with nurturing and developing a new cadre of leaders inside and outside of the Nation of Islam. In the roughly six or seven months that he traveled the country tirelessly, often speaking three, four or five times a day, to promote Justice Or Else! young people and hip hop artists were always a major focus.
A preeminent leader doesn’t strut, preen and demand tribute, a preeminent leader calls others forward into leadership. Min. Farrakhan is doing that by touching youth and impacting hip hop and entertainment culture which have an incredible influence on our people.
An impromptu boycott of BET’s hip hop awards show pulled down its viewership. The network was targeted because it failed to cover the Justice Or Else! gathering. This is an example of the Minister’s influence and impact. He has infused the idea of personal power into Black young people. His words and vision inspired action to hurt BET in ways traditional groups have been trying to do for years.
In a nation rapidly moving from White to Black, Red, Brown and Yellow, the Minister is forging relationships out of a true understanding of a common enemy rooted in White Supremacy and based on the words of his teacher, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who declared that the Black and the Red were divinely chosen to ascend to power inside America. Consider these points:
Instead of squabbling over who will be the top “minority” and first in line for crumbs from White America’s table, Min. Farrakhan is calling attention to the reality of a Black, Red, Brown and Yellow global majority that obliterates the need to engage in begging-on-bended knee, minority-infighting-petty politics.
Instead of begging the federal government for money the president could not deliver if he wanted to, Min. Farrakhan is advocating a revolutionary act: Reject Xmas time spending as a way to spread the pain economically to a society that loves money but hates us. He is calling on us to harness some of the $1.1 trillion in spending power to help ourselves. What makes more sense, calling for Black America to engage in selective buying and community investment of its own dollars or begging a broke federal government for an urban Marshal Plan?
Instead of calling for more police to brutalize and kill us, the Minister has called for 10,000 fearless men, joined by fearless women, to go into our neighborhoods and stop fratricidal violence. Local Organizing Committees are working on cities and towns across the country. College students and youth are organizing to make the demand of justice real. A new movement has started and is growing.
Instead of fostering the lie that America is the great democracy and light of the world, the Minister focused the spotlight Oct. 10 on those who have lost loved ones to police violence. He used a major event with millions of people attending, watching, hearing tweeting, posting and repeating the stories of Blacks who have lost lives in human rights violations inside the United States. He exposed America’s hypocrisy on a global stage.
Instead of saying all is lost if political people don’t help us, the Minister has started a storm of activity that could decide who will win 2016 presidential and congressional elections just as Black men decided the winner of the race for the White House in 1996.
“There can be no freedom, no justice, no equity without the willingness of some to sacrifice for the rest. What good is life if we are not free? What good is it to be alive and every day that you live you see your people suffering? What good is it to continue in life under tyranny? So there must come a time when we say, ‘Enough is enough.’ It must change–and I am willing to do whatever it takes to bring about that change,” said Minister Farrakhan on Oct. 10.
He is calling our people to the action, sacrifice and fearlessness needed to go free. We won’t be free without a struggle and we won’t be freed by a benevolent White male or White female in the White House–if one can be found and actually elected.
“ ‘How could Farrakhan tell the FBI and the CIA and the IRS to go to hell, when others tremble at their name?’ They don’t have a name big enough to make a man who has been shown the arm of God to be afraid of a man who can never do to me nothing more than what God would have them to do–and if He permits it, I am for it, even if it’s my death. Our problem is there’s too much fear among us,” he said.
“We were prophesied to be in America 400 years–let’s deal with that. Go home, get your Bible, open to the Book of Genesis, the 15th Chapter, the 14th, 15th and 16th verses. It reads like this: ‘Know of a surety, Abraham, your seed is going to be a stranger in a land that is not theirs. And they shall serve them, and they shall be afflicted 400 years.’ Who you think that’s talking about? It’s you! You are the only people that have been under a strange man, in a strange land, for 400 years,” said Min. Farrakhan.
“Look at what the scripture says: ‘But after that time’–God talking–‘I will come. And I will judge that nation that they shall serve.’ We are now living in the Day of Judgment. … Now the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said America is in ‘the crosshairs’–these are not his words, they’re mine–of the Judgment of God. He’s after America. … We paid a price to own this, with our Indigenous brothers and sisters. We paid a price. I know you’re an immigrant, bless your heart. When you got here, the streets were ‘paved with gold’ for you from the sweat and blood of slaves that worked for 310 years for no pay. And another 150 years as a free slave, never getting what we are worth. America is under Divine Judgment.”
“You want to know about what is ‘Or Else?’ See, you all, with your tender hearts: You never understood what ‘Justice’ is ‘Justice’ for Pharaoh is not the same as ‘Justice’ for the Children of Israel. Justice for the oppressed is not the same as justice for the oppressor. Mercy is for the oppressed. So Jesus said, ‘God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, the same shall he also reap.’ ”
There is a root to what drives the Minister, which is his unshakable belief that Allah (God) has chosen Blacks as his people in this modern era. He has no army, no billionaire benefactor, no political godfather and no White puppet master behind the scenes. He is a man of faith and his works prove his faith is not misplaced. You don’t have to agree, just keep watching Jesus walk on water.
