[Editor’s note: The following article contains edited excerpts from the above-titled message delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan at Muhammad Mosque No. 11 in Boston, Massachusetts on Sunday, June 26, 2016. To order this message in its entirety on DVD, CD and MP3, please visit store.finalcall.com or call 1.866.602.1230, ext. 200.]
In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
When you live your life only for yourself, then you are already dead; you’re just waiting for time to return you to the Earth. But when you live your life to serve others, to make life better for others, to improve the condition of the world that we came into, that when we leave it, we leave it in a better state—and those are the people whose names live.
Though physically they are dead, they are honored down through the generations for the sacrifices that they made. Such men and women are those who are our ancestors in the struggle for liberation since our fathers set the soles of their feet in the Western Hemisphere as slaves.
Always among us were men and women who fought to make life better for the rest of us; always among the Native people were those who gave their lives to improve the quality of life of their tribes, their nation, and their people. Today we remember Geronimo, we remember Sitting Bull, we remember Marcus Garvey, we remember Nat Turner, we remember Martin Luther King, Jr., we remember Malcolm X, we remember the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. We remember all of those on whose shoulders we stand today, as we should. But now, this is our time; we are yet alive. And Jesus said it best: “I didn’t come into the world to be ministered unto, I came into the world to minister to others,” so he said, “He who would be chief among you, let him be your servant.” (Matt. 20:23-28)
The enemy tried to and was successful in destroying in us that quality of love that makes us desire to serve one another. We are in the condition we’re in because we have been living under an enemy whose purpose was to render us an unthinking, uncaring people that would be perpetual slaves or servants to him and his people, and his cause—to build his world—while we never do that for ourselves. Every time after slavery we built a town: In fact, we built 60 towns after slavery, but not one exists today because the enemy never wants to see the slave really free.
‘Satan’, ‘The Devil’: The natural enemy of The Original Man and God
When God creates a creature, He gives it a nature that justifies its existence when it behaves as The Creator created it to be. You don’t justify your existence by being other than who you are; you justify being here by learning and being yourself. Every creature that God created, He gives it an aim and a purpose that’s not written in a book. It’s written in the nature of that creature.
You and I are the Supreme Creatures of God: There is nothing greater than the homo sapien (or a man and woman). Whether you want to believe it or not, there would be no mankind if there were no Original Man—and “Original Man” is you, Black man and woman. White people are Johnny-come-latelys on our planet. I’m not making mockery. They were given a purpose, and they have fulfilled it.
Have you noticed that everything in nature has a natural enemy? Do you like your little bird in the cage? Don’t let it around the cat: As you love your bird, you know the cat is always scheming to get to the bird; the cat is always scheming to get to the mouse. Though you may have a dog and a cat in your home, you would have to train them from little to accept each other but by nature, they are not like that.
Who is your enemy? Who is the natural enemy of the Original Man? Think about it. If everything in nature has an enemy, God has one too.
Who is the enemy of God? If you said “Satan,” that’s right. But God, aren’t You The Creator of everything? You mean you created an enemy for Yourself? What’s the “yin” and the “yang” in the human being? Everything in nature has an opposite side; so the Black man being The Original Man, you have a Natural Enemy just like God has a Natural Enemy in Satan, who is always working against God’s purpose for man. Let me give you a picture from the Holy Qur’an. … Did you know God and Satan have talks together? It’s like [the U.S. president] talking with [the Russian president], and they will tell you, “Well, the U.S. president is visiting Russia and meeting with the Russian president.” You don’t even get excited and say, “I wonder what they’re talking about?” All of them are looking for control, mastery of the planet, so when they talk, they’re always jockeying for position.
Study, in the Holy Qur’an, Surah 7, Al-A’raf (“The Elevated Places”), the section titled “The Devil’s Opposition to Man” (verses 13-18) and Surah 15 Al-Hijr (“The Rock”), the section titled “The Devil’s Opposition to the Righteous” (verses 32-40). In these verses, Satan is having a talk with God. God has already judged Satan to be of those who are erring from His straight path, so Satan is upset and he says: “Well, because you have judged me as being in error and made me disappointed, respite me (delay my doom) till the day when they are raised.”
What did he mean “they are raised”? Two things can’t occupy the same place at the same time: If the enemy is up, the people of God are down. So God and Satan are talking about the future, and Satan is telling God, “Well, I know you’re going to judge me and destroy me at some point in time.” All of you who read Bible or Qur’an, or whatever scripture you read or believe in, there is an Ultimate Battle that is going to take place between God and Satan, is that right? Both of them are busy. Satan is telling God: “Because you judged me as erring, caused me to remain disappointed that I am not going to stay around here forever, like your people, then I’m going to lie in wait for them, right in your straight path, and I’m going to cause all of them to deviate.” God replies, “Whosoever follows you, I will certainly fill hell with you all.”
Satan is always looking for followers, but he wants to take followers out of the path of God. That’s heavy business. When you think you’re worshiping God, you better check it, because you might be a Satan worshiper unaware.
Do you know what “deviation” is? It’s breaking from a natural and straight course. If as Muslims we say, “O Allah! Guide us to your straight path,” once you are on the “straight” path, you are to be victimized by a smart crooked deceiver who’s going to come at you in the path of truth, in the path of righteousness—in the path of God—in the way of religion. “I’m coming right at you,” this is Satan talking, “and I am going to make all deviate.” The Qur’an says Satan is so clever, that he is going to make evil “fair-seeming.”
Now that’s deception at the highest: When somebody can do something evil and make you think it’s all right, and make you a defender of what is all wrong, using the power of your being to defend what is indefensible.
This legal system is a mess. … A “lawyer” that passes the bar is sworn to give an adequate defense to his client whether the client is innocent or guilty. “Dang, I killed somebody. I’ve got to get lawyered up, now!” “Liared up” is a better term. Now that the client has hired a lawyer, he’ll ask: “Well, did you do it?” The client says, “Well, you know, I mean, it wasn’t my fault! Uh, but yeah, I did it.” The lawyer says, “Well, tell me the circumstances of it.” The client responds: “Well, you know, we got into an argument, and I mean, I got overheated.” The lawyer asks, “What was the argument about?” The client says, “Well, the man was looking at my woman, you know what I’m saying? I reached for my pistol, and I got him!” Then the lawyer will tell the client: “Okay, now, we’ve got to figure out what is the best defense for you, so I’m going to set up a series of lies to make your act of murder justified, and then I’m going to sell it to a jury, supposedly of your peers. But, the cost is going to be pretty high. … We’ll start off, you know, my fee is about $500 an hour, and this is going to take a little time to get you off of this.”
But remember, this is murder—you may be going away for life—so you want your lawyer to put up the best defense. And the best defense for wrong is a series of lies and circumstances that can deceive the jury into coming back with a “Not Guilty” verdict.
In The System of God, when you are wrong, I can’t defend you. If you are wrong, what is the defense for wrong (in The System of God)? The only defense for wrong: “Is there a mitigating circumstance that will limit the punishment for what you did?” But if you’re wrong with God, you’re wrong. So when God delivers His judgment, He wrongs no one.
‘Homosexuality’, ‘male-female relationships’: Who interfered with the natural way we relate to each other?
In our reading of The Qur’an during the Holy Month of Ramadan, we read where Allah punishes so many nations, and He always says He is just. But sometimes we don’t understand His judgment; because He is so much wiser, naturally, than we are, and He would kill a lot of us just by making a judgment that we disagreed with. Let me give you an example of the three men who came to visit Abraham—and one of them was The Lord. In the Bible, in the 18th Chapter of the Book of Genesis, verses 1-8, three men came to visit Abraham in the plains of Mamre, and one of them was The Lord. In the Qur’an it says three angels, messengers: Abraham saw them; they were not “spooks” (but they were transparent, all right); but they were frightening-looking individuals, because Abraham wanted to know their purpose. (Surah 15, verses 51-52 & 57-60)
Abraham called to his wife who was somewhere in the back: “Sarah! Bring some food.” My The Lord eats! “Bring something for The Lord to sit down. He’s a little tired from the journey.” The foolish say, “Well, hell, this can’t be God. He eats.” Well what do you think God should do if He is real? He has eyes, so He sees. He has ears, so He hears. The Bible said, “His arm is not too short that it cannot save,” so He’s got arms; “on His thigh was written a name.” It’s in The Qur’an, too. Abraham told God that he really wanted to know their purpose for this great visit, and the angels spoke to Abraham and said: “Well, we have an assignment, and we’re on our way to Sodom and Gomorrah”—and Lot was the nephew of Abraham … . So [the angel] is informing the uncle of what they are about to do to Sodom and Gomorrah.
If the scripture teaches God is delivering a judgment against Sodom, first He says, “What are you doing, men coming to men with lust in their heart as they should a female?” Then The God says, “I abhor what you are doing.” (Surah 26, verses 165-168 & 172-175) What do you mean “abhor”? He hates it. He hates to see a man kissing and having sex with another man.
Now, I don’t want you to take it personal, if that’s what you’re doing. I’m not against you, I’m just talking about scripture and what God said “He hates,” that’s all, because God created man to have a natural attraction to the female. Sisters, He made you in such a way that your body attracts a man. That is how procreation begins, with attraction. … That is why there has always been another generation coming: People live, people die, they procreate, and humanity continues over millions of years, because of the nature of God and the way He set this up—and it doesn’t fail.
The woman is the natural complement to what’s in the man, and the man is the natural complement of what’s in a woman. A woman, according to both the Holy Qur’an and Bible: She is created as a consoling agent for a man that’s doing what God asked him to do. God says to Adam: “Adam, multiply! Replenish the earth; subdue it.” That’s my command. As a man, you’re supposed to be a producer. The word “multiply” don’t mean just have babies, the word “multiply” says you are a multiplier; the universe is the multiplicand, and when you tap into this universe, you can extract from it whatever you need to fulfill your purpose in life. But you have to tap into that, and you become a producer. “Producing” is hard work. Do you believe that? A person who is a music producer, that’s hard. You have to gather people, put them together and make something out of nothing. That is a “producer.” All men are born by nature to be productive. … And a producer, when he’s had a long hard day of producing—not a long hard day of doing nothing, coming home expecting comfort from a woman: You don’t deserve comfort for doing nothing.
You’re not working? You’re not producing? You don’t need a woman. Because (if you have one), now you’re becoming a pimp. That’s hard language; I know you may not like it, but you can’t disprove it. When you don’t produce, and you are living with a woman that is producing, you’re the little boy in the house. And she doesn’t need you for sex; they make little toys for that. If you’re not producing, she has nothing to do for you. “Uh, baby? Cook me a little meal.” “Arrgh.” She’s mad as all get-out, because who wants to cook for somebody that’s going to eat, but won’t work? See, the White man has us all upset with each other; because the man doesn’t have a job, and the White man sees to that.
***
There was a time in Boston when I was a little fella, in the morning I would see the men, who were in the house with their wives, with a pail in their hand with a little lunch in the pail, going out to work. Because there were factories all around the inner cities that allowed us to work and bring home something to make a home for our families. Today, 70 percent of homes with children are run by females, and no man is present, what kind of condition is that? I attended a graduation of my great-grandchild from college, and 92 percent of those who graduated from the University of Illinois were females. Women wanting to be engineers. Women wanting to be doctors, women wanting to be lawyers; women reaching for the heights in this world. Where is she going to find an appropriate companion if a man can’t match her in intelligence? …
I have to tell you, brothers, I have never met a dumb woman. When it comes to man, women are very cagey (cautious, guarded, frank, direct), and smart and wise when it comes to dealing with men. That’s why men seem to want it “simple” and “fall in love” with another man who doesn’t make natural demands. But if you’re going to fall in love with a woman, brother, we’re going to have to bring it. I mean, at first it might be easy; you know, a smile and “Good morning sweetheart”—she bypassed the bad breath and all of that, and gives you a little something to eat. Smile. Maybe she even comforts and consoles you with what God has given her as a consoling feature of her being. But after a while, she’s very tired of being used to give comfort and consolation to a man who refuses to work to help feed the babies that he produces.
You may not have expected to hear that, but this is the kind of teaching we need. Because if a man finds it easy to take pleasure from a woman that he is not serving to complete her make, then that man is a cheater. And The Qur’an says, “Woe to the cheaters! Who, when they take, they take in full, but when they give, they give less than what is required.” (Surah 83:1-3) Somebody has interfered with the natural way that God wanted us to relate to each other. God never made us to be enemies: Women, enemy of man; men, enemy of woman. But there is a Natural Enemy.
Proof of who is our natural, open enemy
Every creature that God created must free itself, or be freed, from the womb that bore it to pursue its course in life. There is no life without freedom. Freedom is the essence of life itself because the creature that is freed from the womb now has a chance to justify its existence by being what God created it to be. The creature that justifies its existence is equal; though it be a bird, though it be a flea, though it be a fly, though it be a butterfly, though it be a lion or a tiger, it is equal to the sun that gives life to all. The sun is doing what God created it to do and the bee and the ant are doing what God created them to do.
But somebody came among us … A new world opens up called the Western world; White folk came out of Europe after being confined there for nearly a thousand years, and they discovered America—but people were already here. So, they not only discovered land, they discovered people who are the natural owners of the land. In order for them to be on this land they had to get rid of the natural owner of the land. That’s my Native family. So there’s always been a conspiracy against the Original People of anywhere on Earth where they went, because Whites were not natural in any part of our planet. To gain access to land, they had to supplant the natural owner, the natural ruler, the natural people of their natural habitat, and replace them with themselves. Is that a friend? No. It is a Natural Enemy. Only an enemy of God would deprive another human being of what God intended for that human being to have.
Now, we are above the beasts of the field; we are human beings. So as a human, you have a right to knowledge, because it is only the possessing of knowledge that separates man from beast. Would you agree? So “human rights” demands that every human has access to knowledge. What was our condition? Did we have access to knowledge? Did they deny us the human right to know? How long did we labor in slavery not learning how to read, or to write? Over 300 years. Would a friend do that to us? …
How are we to survive in a world where a Natural Enemy is the doorway to any progress that we make? We have to move him. Did you want to vote? Did you deserve the right to vote? Yes you did, if you are called a “citizen.” Now, they didn’t ask us whether we wanted to be; some of us might have had a different opinion. But we were made “citizens,” and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments of the Constitution guaranteed us citizenship and protection, and all of that—and that was a trick. Would a friend trick you like that? Is an “enemy” someone who makes you think you have something of value, and you find out it’s worthless? How did the enemy get Manhattan? We were fascinated with trinkets. He knew better; he wasn’t going to give a fair bargain, “But if you like the trinket, I’ll give you a lot of that. Just sign this over.” Well, they were going to take it anyway. … That’s a friend? No. Do you have a hunger and a thirst to know God? A hunger and a thirst for someone to treat you right? … I’m not trying to be upsetting, but the White man treats you like this, treats us like this, because he sees us as his property.
What name did you go in? Whenever you signed your name to any document, you didn’t sign your name because you don’t know it. You signed the name of the last slave master of your ancestor. … Don’t you think if we are free, shouldn’t we be free enough to take a name that connects us to God, or to our own African people? Do you remember the comedy, the sitcom Diff’rent Strokes? The two brothers who were stars in that were Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges. Now, I met Todd, as a grown man, in the home of Jim Brown the great football player, out in California. And Todd told me, pay attention to the words, that he was going to change his name while he was on that show; he was going to take an African name. He said he was then visited by the FBI, who told him if he did that the type of punishment would come to him—if Todd used his fame to show you the road to freedom starts with your right to name yourself. …
“The Road to Freedom” When African nations started getting independence, they weren’t “Rhodesia” anymore. They took a name that was an African name (“Zimbabwe”) that they had before the White man came. Is this the action of a friend, a friendly government? That’s your enemy.
***
How many of us have somebody in our family who is presently incarcerated? In the 13th Amendment, you’re a citizen, as long as you don’t commit a crime, because if you commit a crime that’s a felony, they have the right to put you back in slavery again. Go read the 13th Amendment, for yourself: “Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” How many of our young people that are in prison went there for the sale or possession of a small amount of drugs? If they search you, and you have a blunt (joint, reefer), all you had to do is have that in your pocket (and sometimes they’ll put it in there), and you go to prison. What do you do in prison? You work for Motorola; you work for Fortune 500 companies for next to nothing.
When you finish doing your time and come out, do you think you can go to Motorola and get a job paying the legitimate wages? No. They got your labor for free. The whole objective is to turn you back there again. How much recidivism goes on? Our people in prison are slaves and they justify it by falsely accusing us of crimes.
Would a friend do that? Would a friend conspire, as in Ferguson, Missouri, to stop people in their cars, charge them with something light that they are not guilty of, extract fines from them, put them in jail, and the fines support city government? That’s not just going on in Ferguson, that’s Boston, that’s New York; that’s Hartford, Connecticut; Springfield, Massachusetts; Worcester, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island—you are the victim in every city and in society. You have a natural, open enemy.
We have to break up the colonial status of the Black community
We are in a colonized state of existence. The Black community is not a “community,” it’s a colony. Go downtown and look at Chinatown: The Chinese control every aspect of what goes on in their part of town. They are separate, and they’re happy. You don’t see them picketing: “They ain’t treatin’ me right because I’m a Yellow man!” They’re treating themselves right, as Yellow men, and making a way for themselves; and they are smarter, now, than the White man. So they’re happy. You see police in Chinatown, but they look like the people they’re policing; and if a White man is in there, he is serving and protecting.
But in the Black community: The police are not there to serve and protect but to make sure that the savagery of our community does not spill out and upset the White community, and the business community. We are a colony, like the original colonies in the United States that were tied to a wicked king; and here we are, in a colonial status, tied to downtown. … Any pastors in the house? You always respond when the mayor calls because you are the controlling agent in the colony of those who are colonized. That’s not an enviable position to be in in the time of the awakening of the masses.
I’m not trying to upset you; I want you to see that we are a colony. So whenever the White man wants to put something over the city fathers (i.e. councilmen, aldermen), they call the preachers. And they call those of you who are aldermen or councilmen or politicians: You are in their system—but you don’t know how to make their system work for your constituents; because your constituents are not really yours. … They are a part of the colony of the colonial master. You send your children to school. What kind of education are your children getting? They’re getting a colonial education. So when you get your education, you come out: You’re not trying to do something for yourself, you’re trying to find a White person that will give you a job.
Sisters, Koreans have about 90,000 stores throughout America selling hair products; and you will find they’re all in the Black community. So, my dear sisters, the money that you give them, you’ll find if there is a Black bank in our community they won’t put their money in our bank; they take their money and put it in their banks. So you can’t get a loan even though the money that they got in their bank is from your community.
So we have to break up the colonial status of the Black community. You can’t make this community a decent place to live unless we control the education; the education is part of the trick. And if the education were right for us, we wouldn’t lead in dropout. It’s not an appealing education because they’re educating us, and the base idea of that education is White Supremacy. You need an education that will make you love you, that will make you see what you have contributed to the onward march of civilization. You need an education that you can use to elevate yourself and your people. And we have scholars—I’m not talking about “we” Muslims, I’m talking about Black people. We have scholars that can devise an educational system for us. But we have to have the control of the school board, and tell them what kind of education we will receive. Then every school in our community should be ours. … Then we should dot the landscape with businesses that we put up.
There are a lot of abandoned buildings in our community, sitting around doing nothing. We should take those buildings, or buy them, and then with a little money, rehab them. Take our young men that don’t have a trade, and take the tradespeople, and make our young people their apprentices and let them learn how to rehabilitate these buildings. Then sell the buildings, and build our own treasury to own the community where we live.
***
The 10,000 Fearless: We have to be the ones to stand in between the guns and the gangs. These are not bad youth; they are youth that have never been given a proper education and guidance, and opportunity, to make a better life. That’s not for White people to do, that’s for you and I to do. I don’t see any government being angry with us for wanting to take control of where we live. If the government is angry with us for trying to control and own where we live, they have manifested as the Enemy, and that demands complete separation in a state or territory of our own.
