(Editor’s note: The following article is taken from excerpts from a message the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered on Saturday, July 30, 2022 during the United Schools of Survival (USOS) International Martial Arts Training Conference held July 28-July 31, at the Wisconsin Convention Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.)
As-Salaam Alaikum.
In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
I bear witness that there is no God but He and I bear witness that God has come out of the shadows to make Himself known and He has chosen us to be His people.
›His love for us you can’t measure it, but of all the nations on the earth He chose us the despised, the rejected, the unloved, the unwanted, the unappreciated. He came among us and that’s a heck of a thing that a God, and we’re not talking about spook or spirit: We’re talking about a human being like you, like me, like us, but supreme in knowledge, wisdom, understanding and power.
He came to share Himself with us and then make us into Him.
As the scripture says, “Yea are all gods, children of the Most High God.” You are a direct descendant of the Creator Himself and you are a member of the Creator’s Nation. So when you come into the knowledge of yourself the biggest challenge is to be yourself. You don’t have to be anybody else but you.
I thank Allah (God) for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, our teacher, our guide. And I thank Him for making me who and what I am. I greet all of you with the greeting words of peace, As-Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you.)
I’m so moved by what I experienced being with you. Sometimes when you work hard to bring about change in your time of life, it’s so rewarding when you come among your people and see the effect of knowledge being imparted to us.
I want to thank Grandmaster Abdul Azziz Muhammad and all the grandmasters, male and female, that are here, and I want to thank you for demonstrating the greatness of your skill. But the most moving thing to me is that you didn’t keep your skill to yourself. That is what makes you favored by Allah (God) because you discovered your gift and, in discovering your gift, you discovered your reason for being, your purpose for being on this earth at this time.
So when you know that time is fleeting: I mean I’m looking at people that I’ve known for 40 or 50, 60 years. I have known Grandmaster Azziz almost for 60 years. That’s amazing. So I’m really touched to be in your presence because you gave me something today that made my day, my week, my month, my life because I saw in you and, in our young people, I saw the future.
During the month of Ramadan I was blessed to be a guest with my brother from St. Louis, Anthony Shahid, and his grandchildren, and the babies were reciting ayats (verses) of the Qur’an for me. As I listened to them as, Allah (God) is my witness, I started to speak and I broke down. I had to stop a moment to gather myself because I heard our ancestors rejoicing.
Because they died when they came to America as Muslims and the enemy did not want them to teach us about Allah (God), to teach us Islam, to teach us about the Holy Prophet Muhammad, to teach us about the Qur’an and here I was 460 years later listening to babies speaking Arabic. Listening to babies holding the Qur’an and I broke down because I knew the ancestors could rest now. Because what they died for is now alive and well. The enemy will never, ever put us back in that box again. Never, never, never.
The masters were marvelous today and the students trying out the different moves that they learned and this young brother right here, DeMonet. Come here son. I call you son because I’m honored to be like a father to you. And I watched you. It seemed like nobody was willing to take the whipping because these brothers were putting something on you, son. And like the good soldier that you are, you took it and you appreciated the artistry and that makes you a greater artist. So you sacrificed yourself so that these beautiful students could see how it was done. May Allah (God) bless you. Your parents give them the greetings from me. Let’s all give him a wonderful round of applause for his work today.
Now, beloved, there’s something that God has put on my heart to say to you from the time that I got out of the car and met my son and got the report of the wonderful classes that were going on here and the response to the knowledge that was given. It made me feel like the elder that I’m becoming and that our work was not in vain. Our work will never be in vain. And to use the term in vain: see when you work only for you, you’re already dead.
You’re just waiting for time to place you with the worms who are better than you. Because the worm is doing what Allah (God) created it to do. If we are vain, we’re thinking only of ourselves. But this is a beautiful gathering of men and women, boys and girls who see beyond themselves. They want to see a nation rise and they want to see an earth free from the burden of the wicked.
There are three short points that I’m going to give you. When Jesus was among us, he said these words, “Come unto me all yea that are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
When you think about a master teacher as he was and is: what burden are we carrying? There’s not a soul on this earth that is not burdened by the mentality of Satan that has captured, the mind, the heart, and the spirit of the people of our planet. And worst since God has chosen us for a reason, for a purpose, we have been the victims of Satan, so bad a victim because he made us into himself.
So we have become a bunch of little devils scheming and lying and deceiving and robbing and raping. You say, “well I haven’t done that.” But you’re not yourself. So if you’re not yourself who then are you? When you do wickedness, you’re not yourself. When you break the natural and divine law, you’re not you. That is Satan working through us so that his world will continue. But his time is up. His time is up. And just like the master teacher Jesus was casting demons out of the people, that’s the work of the Nation of Islam today.
We come to the Nation naked, hungry, raggedy, out of doors, ignorant. But we can’t stay that way.
We don’t care how you are when you come to us. Come as you are but you’ll never stay as you are. Because to stay as you are is unacceptable to God. He came to change us. And as the scripture says, we will be changed and in the twinkling of an eye, what was is gone and we will be like Him. That’s our destiny, that’s point number one. The burden of sin has to be cast off.
It is difficult at times to be right. But that’s the challenge that God is offering us today, His divine favor if we will cast Satan out and let God come in. I can say truthfully, I have let Him into my life. I’m not boasting or bragging. I’m showing you in my older years what you have in front of you that you can become.
Sin is against us. Wickedness is not good for us. So when you can let Allah, God, come in, where when you move your tongue it’s His words. When you move your hands to teach others how to defend themselves that’s what God has given you. Because you’re living among your enemies. So you have to know how to fight. And you must become skilled as fighters.
But the first war, the greatest war is with yourself. Never say what you can’t do because you can do anything that you wish to do and if you will let the Master have you. Notice how I said that.
Oh look at these great masters. But you couldn’t become a master until you let him have you. You had to surrender and submit that you didn’t know, that’s why you came into his class. Then you took instructions and you became you, a grandmaster.
I was blessed in my life to meet brother Moses Powell. He did security for me as I traveled in different parts of the earth. He was such a sweet, deadly person. He never pushed anybody around. He was so humble with a big heart, just don’t get it twisted. That man was deadly. And he taught you to be that yourself. But never to abuse your gift by misusing it for vain purposes.
Cast off your burden and He’ll give you rest: the rest that you will get when you throw off the sick you and strive to become healthy in God.
For Jesus said it again like this, he came into the world to free us, cleanse us from our sins. He didn’t ask you what your sin is, you know what it is. But whatever it is, it’s keeping us from being like him.
So if you will let it go and let Him come in, you’ll improve your skill as a warrior because there’s not a greater warrior than God Himself. None. I close with this verse from the Qur’an, Set your face for religion, being upright the nature made by Allah in which He has created the human being. And there is no altering His creation.
Everything that functions in accord with its nature has the power of God to do and be itself.
Set your face for religion not talking upright, not saying “well tomorrow I’ll be better.” Say it now being upright to Him who created us and gave us His nature.
Now to my homosexual and lesbian family. God is not here to judge you. He said He came to save us from our sins. I want to tell you something. My teacher, your teacher, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “the only heaven for man is found in a woman.” Now you want to go to heaven and you don’t even have to die. You just have to find a woman. Now wait, I’m winding this up.
It takes me a couple of minutes to wind it up. (Smile.) But listen, you know we don’t know women. And women you don’t fully know yourself. You are so precious. So magnificent in the eyes of your Creator that no matter what has transpired to make you other than yourself, He throws that out the window.
He has come to bring you back to the way He created you and for the purpose for which He created you.
Now to my dear sisters who feel you must play the part of a man. You know there’s man in every woman and there’s woman in every man. But God did not make a mistake in the anatomy that He gave us. Because along with that anatomy came nature. No man can be what God made woman to be. And you know this brother, you don’t know your wife. That’s why you get tired, because you lack the skill to bring out of her the heaven that God deposited in her for you to get.
So when you think of women and you think sex. No. Stop it. That’s part of it but why you going to make it the whole thing. Sex is for procreation and it doesn’t take long. That’s why the Holy Qur’an says, “Man is created in haste.” So this is why you’re so inpatient because patience is a virtue that must be acquired. You’re not born with it but without it you’ll never achieve the greatness of God that is within yourself. Am I making sense?
So brothers you may love women to the point where you would like to—RuPaul is a man. I love him, he’s my brother/sister. But as great as he is playing the woman that’s only a sign of what he is when he becomes fully himself, a man.
Don’t think that we are being negative to be hurtful to our people who are gay or lesbian or transgender. They’re just confused. And the devil is trying to accommodate all of the sickness and corrupt the society more and more. Be yourself. Learn about yourself. And develop yourself and cultivate yourself because yourself is God. God in a female body. God in a male body.
Look at the earth. How rich is the earth? Calculate the value of the wealth that is in the earth, can you do it? Isn’t that something? My teacher told me, when he was telling me something of my value to him, he said and I’m quoting, “You are more valuable to me than all the wealth that is in the earth. For I met that wealth when I came and I will leave it when I’m gone.
But through you I’m going to get all of my people.” That includes everyone that you think is a misfit. That includes the one that you shun. Don’t shun God, find God in what you’re shunning. That’s why Jesus again says, “Seek and you shall find. Ask and it shall be given. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”
God is sitting up in every single one in this room. And all of them that are outside the room. Seven billion human beings on this earth that have life because a God decreed it. Have a sex because nature gave it to them. And if you think that God made a mistake, how many people are on earth now? How many would be here if they all felt that “I’m a woman trying to get out of this male body?” So there would be no procreation. So sex is not just for pleasure. The real focus of sex is to bring on to this earth that which is going to replace you; better than you, greater than you, wiser than you. That’s why we have sex.
So, sister, if you can’t really be a man, nature just didn’t give it to you. That’s why I said, Set your face for religion, being upright, the nature made by Allah in which He has created the human being. Nature cannot be changed or altered; it’s who you are. They can change the physical anatomy. But what makes you the essence of you, they can’t deal with that. And every time you walk away from the discovery of yourself you delay the power of your own growth into yourself. So I said on the women’s side but man you can’t be a woman.
Now listen I’m not trying to hurt nobody’s feelings. I love you too much to hurt you. That’s not what I’m for. But I want you to know nature stops at a certain point you can’t go there. As the wealth that is in the earth you cannot deplete it, it’s infinite. So is the wealth that is in your wife. So is the wealth that is in your daughter. So is the wealth that’s in the little female baby.
That should be sought, seek it and you’ll find it. You’re supposed to be a scientist. People aren’t doing anything with the earth. So the earth just stays there waiting for somebody to say, “look what’s under there.” And they till the land and they get everything of value out of the earth. But we have not gotten everything of value out of ourselves nor out of our women and girls. So that’s the message that I wanted to give you.
So when you leave here today make a decision. I can only be me so let me discover who I am. I have to say this in leaving or closing. God has helped me to see God in me. If you saw me today get out of the car, you saw the brothers helping me. If you saw them helping me up why is that? The devil made an effort to kill me with radiated seeds. There was so much radiation they knew they were going to kill me silently. But it didn’t work. They failed in their effort to kill me but the poison of radiation is gradually taking its toll.
In a medical report that my brother, Nadir, got out of my medical records, they admitted that I was over radiated. I had a prostate condition. When they went in to look their words were “the prostate was obliterated.” They put so much radiation it burned up my insides. But here I am. Here I am. We are fighting for Islam and we will surely win. With our Saviour Allah the universal King. We are united with our Nation and called by His name. So let us rise ye Muslims, fight for your own. Fight, Oh ye Muslims, fight for your own. Fight for your Nation and we will all be free.
Fight for your Nation, fight for your own. Freedom, justice and equality we now must have. Four hundred years of slave for devils lost from our own. So let us rise ye Muslims, fight for your own. Fight, Oh ye Muslims, fight for your own. Fight for your nation and we will all be free. Fight for your Nation, fight for your own. The earth belongs to the righteous, fight for your own. Allah gave you and I for a national; the sun, the moon, the stars. The best of His creation He’s given to you. So let us rise ye Muslims, fight for your own.
Fight Oh ye Muslims, fight for your own. Fight for your Nation and we will all be free. Fight for your Nation, fight for your own. The earth belongs to the righteous, fight for your own. Allah gave you and I for a national, the sun, the moon, the stars. The best of His creation He’s given to you. So let us rise ye Muslims, fight for your own. Fight, Oh ye Muslims, fight for your own. Fight for your Nation and we will all be free. Fight for your Nation, fight for your own.
Allah-U-Akbar! (God Is Great!) Allah-U-Akbar! (God Is Great!) Allah-U-Akbar! (God Is Great!)
Now some of you may say, “Oh I’m not a Muslim.” Stop. A Muslim is only a righteous person who believes in obeying God. You are born that way by nature. Thank you for allowing me these few minutes of your time. As-Salaam Alaikum! (Peace be unto you!)
