[Editor’s note: The following article is based on excerpts from an address delivered by Minister Farrakhan on October 23, 2005 at Mosque Maryam in Chicago, Illinois. It followed the Millions More Movement gathering in Washington, D.C., which was initiated on the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March. To order the message in its entirety on MP3, CD/DVD, visit store.finalcall.com or call 1-866-602-1230.]
In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
I thank all of the Brothers and Sisters throughout the nation who really worked for about 10 months to produce, not a march, but the beginning of a Movement. Even though there were many who may have wanted to come on that day, but were not able to come, that is not important.
What is important is that we take a part in creating a movement that will ultimately lead to something that maybe you have not envisioned. What is that? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, for 40 years, talked to us about separation. He knew that no matter how much we tried, we would never be able to get along in peace with our former slave-masters and their children.
Allah (God) is so caring that He delays His own Judgement until the people of His choice understand His Judgement. In the Book of Genesis, God visits Abraham and tells him that He is going to destroy the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, except Lot and his family. Abraham asked God, “Would you destroy the righteous along with the wicked?”
Abraham’s question reflects that he was not completely in agreement with God’s decision against Sodom and Gomorrah. God did not want to chastise Abraham, His friend, for not believing in the farseeing knowledge of God—that when He pronounces a judgement, that is it. God wanted Abraham to agree with Him.
So He said, “Abraham, go and see if you can find 50 righteous and I’ll save the city.” Abraham went out looking because he believed, evidently, that God’s Judgement was not correct. He believed that there were righteous people other than Lot and his family. Some people may ask, “How could a friend of God think like that?”
We sometimes do not agree with the Judgement of God, because we do not have a comprehensive knowledge of things. When God, Who is Omniscient, makes a determination, sometimes we believe His Determination to be harsh; but God takes all of that into consideration with someone that He loves.
Abraham came back, but he could not find 50 righteous people. God told him to go back to see if he could find 40. Abraham came back, but he could not find 40 righteous people. God told him to go back and maybe he could find 30. God kept Abraham going back and forth, until he came back and could not find 10 righteous people.
Then God said, “If you can find one, I will save the city.” But when Abraham came back and said that he could not find one, the Bible says “on that very day, fire and brimstone fell on Sodom and Gomorrah. As it was in the days of Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man.”
Even if we may not wish to believe it, Allah (God) has already given His Judgement on America. Although people sing, “God Bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her,” and we get emotional, God has sent down His Judgement. America is that modern mystery Babylon that is written of in the Book of Revelations.
America looks good on the outside, but she is filled with filth and abomination of every kind on the inside. God is angry with her because she is a rebel against God and leads others into rebellion. Whatever God says, “Thou shalt not do,” America says, “It’s alright.” So, the Holy Qur’an says that the devil has made evil fair seeming to man.
The God of Judgement and Justice raised the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to separate us from White America. If God’s Judgement is coming down on White America, why are they holding Black people? They really have let us go but, in another sense, they are holding on to us. You are a hostage now because the enemy knows that we are the people of God. We are the people of God’s choice to bring in a world of righteousness and justice.
As a people, we are in a terrible condition, but that is what makes God’s choice of us so special. God said, “I will choose a people that were no people at all. I will choose a foolish people.” I do not think there is a people more foolish than Black people in America. Not only do we continue to act foolishly, but we also have a foolish love of our oppressors. In every generation, we believe that we can change them. We believe that there is some good in them—like Abraham.
Yet, in every generation that we work and work and work for racial justice, racial harmony, racial peace, we only get old, tired, gray, sick and dying—and the enemy has not changed yet. We are fighting him like our parents fought his father and our grandparents fought their grandfathers. So, when are we going to decide that God’s Judgement is proper?
In the 18th Chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, God says to Moses, “I am going to raise them up a prophet like unto you, Moses; and I am going to put my words in his mouth and he will speak unto them all that I shall command him.”
You cannot have a man like Moses unless you have a wicked ruler like Pharaoh and a people like the Children of Israel who are under torment and misery for 400 years. Nobody fulfills that prophecy better than Black people. As the solution for the Children of Israel, God told Moses, “Go tell Pharaoh, let my people go.”
God had something for them to do, while Pharaoh had them making bricks without straw. While Pharaoh was oppressing them, God wanted to make them His people. He already marked out a land for them because they were going to be His people and He was going to be their God. That leads to conflict. So God had to plague Pharaoh until Pharaoh finally let the Children of Israel go.
If God is going to raise up a man like Moses, that man will not come with a message to integrate you into your enemy.
During a recent conversation with Harry Belafonte in Atlanta, Ga., Bro. Harry recounted a meeting that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. held with his staff to plan the march in Memphis. The sanitation workers were on strike and Dr. King was going to Memphis to participate. At this meeting, Harry Belafonte said he noticed that Dr. King was very melancholy, so Harry Belafonte sat beside him and said, “Martin, I notice that you are very melancholy. Is something troubling you?” He recalled Dr. King saying, “I fear that I am integrating my people into a burning house.”
Now, that is something to realize in the last week of your life—that you have worked so hard for racial harmony and racial justice. Dr. King mentioned that the White liberals don’t want any Black person to rock the boat because it disturbs them. So he said that even the White liberal was not somebody in whom you could put trust and confidence. This meeting takes place only a few days before his assassination. And he said to Bro. Harry, “I think we have to be firemen and put the fire out.” But how can you put a fire out that God, Himself, has ignited?
In the Book of Revelation, there is a story of a man going among the people crying, “Come out of her, my people, that you be not partakers of her sins and her plagues, for her sins have reached unto heaven.” Even Jesus said, “Be ye separate.” He was not into integrating the righteous with the wicked. His beautiful parables were parables of separation, such as the parable of the wheat and the tare, or the parable of the sheep and the goat.
Can the righteous have good relations with the wicked? No. So Jesus was not integrating his people into Roman society. He said, “Render unto Caesar, what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s.” He did not join the Army nor did his followers. I do not think his followers voted. Jesus taught separation because he was the foundation of a new government.
You cannot get all wrapped up in democracy and think it is salvation, while at the same time you recite The Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth … .” Your hope is not in George Bush’s version of democracy; your hope is in Jesus Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
We have been in the United States of America for over 400 years, wrestling with the problem of where do we fit or do we fit at all? Our youth do not know what we, elders, know about Jim Crow. You have not felt the pain of someone telling you that you cannot drink out of this fountain or use this toilet because it is marked “White Only” or they cannot go to a restaurant, movie or church because it is not for n—rs.
People bled and died so Black people could go in a toilet that White folks use. We bled and we died, so we would not have to sit in the back of a bus, but could sit anywhere that our money would allow us to sit. I cannot say that some things have not gotten somewhat better, but the overall condition is worse.
In the Book of Isaiah, God says to His people, “Your agreement with hell will not stand and your covenant with death will be disannulled.”
Hurricane Katrina was a scourge that ripped the face off governmental ineptitude, hatred and neglect of Black and poor people. Yet, they had aircraft carriers moving with food and water when Hurricane Wilma was heading to strike Florida and the Keys. Four hurricanes of high magnitude struck Florida in the last year. They did not cause any significant loss of life, if any, but a lot of property damage. One year later, many people in Florida were still living in trailers. FEMA did not do its job there, because those people were promised things that they never received.
New Orleans is a special case. The Secretary of Housing said the population of New Orleans was 70 percent Black, but, “It’ll never be that again. It’ll be about 30 to 35 percent.” They do not intend for the Black people who were displaced to ever return to New Orleans. What are we witnessing? This is 2005, Brothers and Sisters, and the same enemy that did evil to our great grandparents are doing similar and worse to us.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “This is a people disagreeable to live with in peace.” He said, “The solution to the problem between Black and White is complete separation in a state or territory of our own.” Critics charge that it is crazy to think that Black people could live in a separate state or territory—as though we could not exist without White people. But we lived for billions of years before they ever came.
Nevertheless, Black people are fascinated by their wealth. That is the reason some of us do not want to separate. But either we will unite to do something to help ourselves, or we will be destroyed within the next 20 years; you will not find too many Black people left. That may sound terrible, but they are killing us right now by degrees. It is a slow death, but we are absolutely in the valley of the shadow of death.
I have never seen Black people more desirous of doing something for self than I saw since Hurricane Katrina.
What was the victory of October 15th? You cannot say it is in numbers, because we did not have the numbers that we had at the Million Man March. But yet, there was a victory. None of the Black organizations and leaders were with the Million Man March, but when they heard that morning about the great number of people already on the Mall, many came to speak at the microphone.
Yes, there was not the kind of planning that Reverend Jesse Jackson criticized the Million Man March about. “It’s nothing if it’s not tied to public policy,” he said. But I did not go to Washington to think about public policy. In order to determine if something is successful, you should ask the man whom God gave the vision to, “What did you have in mind?” I did not have in mind public policy. I had in mind Black men atoning to God for our failure to be the men, husbands, providers, protectors and builders of our community as we should, and as we must. That did not have anything to do with the government. It had everything to do with us.
The theme of the Million Man March was a statement from God in the Bible, Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by My Name, would humble themselves and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then would I hear from heaven, forgive their sins and heal their land.” So our duty is not to be pleasing to White people. Our duty is to get ourselves right with God, so that He Who has power over everything can forgive us and heal our condition and our land.
Rev. Jackson was the first person that I wrote, as well as Imam Warith Deen Mohammed. I told Rev. Jackson that I could not go down this road by myself, reaching for a million Black men, and that I would love for him to come with me.
He never responded; neither did the Imam—at first. Rev. Jackson eventually came, but the dialogue that he could have shared from the beginning was so valuable, but we were missing his mind. On the day of the Million Man March, Rev. Jackson was the only person who spoke relative to a law that was being put before Congress dealing with powdered cocaine and crack cocaine.
The very next day, Congress passed this law, which endangered every Black Brother that deals with crack—and Rev. Jackson was the only one that spoke to that. That is how valuable his mind was, and is, but he was not present to give the benefit of his thinking. So, I did the best I could, with what I had.
You must ask yourself, “What hindered you that you would not submit to something that you knew was in the best interest of our people? What was in your heart and mind that stopped you from helping me?” Some of us are worried about who is going to be the leader, or get maximum press, so we withhold our hands.
What you did not see is that the opposition to the Millions More Movement came from the White House itself. Most pastors who I have a relationship with, if they feel me at all, they know that I love them for the work that they do, spiritually, on behalf of the people of God. Those who are intimate with me know they do not come in a private room with me and hear me talk down on any of those that talk against me.
President George Bush directed his officials at the White House to call Black pastors to tell them to have nothing to do with the Millions More Movement. Pres. Bush is not a fool. Through this faith-based initiative, he wants to make the church a vassal of the state, rather than let the church be the servant of God.
So Allah (God) says, “In their hearts is a disease and Allah increases their disease because they lie. And He leaves them alone in their inordinacy, blindly wandering on.”
We have to create a Movement bigger than religion or the name of religion, bigger than organization or organizational philosophy. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “We have to separate.” All of the Black people and leaders who attended the October 15 mass assembly, they may not support separation—not yet.
But what they are in recognition of is that the government of the United States has no desire to do justice by us. We have to unite to do justice by ourselves, and this is the reason I introduced the nine ministries necessary to establish an independent nation.
We must learn Spanish, French and Arabic, and master English, and we will be able to talk to all of our people all over the world. If we want to master Swahili, too, that is fine. The world is looking westward for the rising of the sun and we need ambassadors. We have to connect with Africa. We have to connect with Central America, South America, the Caribbean and the Isles of the Pacific. What is happening? We are forming a Nation. Allah (God) has sent down His Judgement.
