by Alverda Ann Muhammad
I watched our Nation of Islam Flag raising ceremony on July 4, 2024, as the Muslims gathered saluting and reciting the pledge to our National (and I did also along with them) from a recording on the grounds of The Michigan Farm and broadcast on noi.org. The Flag raising was preceded by a national webcast and prayer service from The National Center in Chicago.
I remember when I saw our National Flag for the first time. In 1962 I had listened to a recording at a friend’s house of the awesome history lesson set to Calypso music, “White Man’s Heaven is a Black Man’s Hell,” sung by Minister Louis X, who later became the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.
When I inquired about the song’s origin and asked how could I hear more, I was directed to the Muhammad Temple No. 7 in Harlem and visited it the same week.
When I walked through the door, I was captivated by a blackboard in front of the room, with two flags painted on it: the United States of America’s flag on the left and the beautiful sun, moon and star painted on the right.
Under the Muslim National Flag were the words, “Freedom, Justice and Equality.” Under the American flag was the image of a Black man hanging from a tree and the words, “Slavery, Suffering and Death.”
This was by no means hate teaching or lies as witnessed in the almost 100 gruesome but real collection of photographs of lynched Black people in America published by Twin Palms Publishers in the book, “Without Sanctuary.”
It was love at first sight. Later in our Supreme Wisdom Book of Lessons given to each Muslim convert to study, I learned both from the words of Allah (God) in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad in His questions, and the answers of His student, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, that our National Flag is the “Holy and Greatest Universe Flag of Islam.”
The love was deepened
This July 4th we witnessed the hoisting of our National on the flag pole waving in the breeze. Oh Allah! Thank you. We were celebrating July 4th not as that on which our slavemasters’ children were celebrating—their independence from England—but as the date that “Allah (God) appeared in the Person of Master W. Fard Muhammad, July, 1930; the long-awaited ‘Messiah’ of the Christians and the ‘Mahdi’ of the Muslims.”
Years after I learned the words to the Pledge to our Flag, I knew that I could never pledge allegiance to any other flag. The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us, His followers, to respect the flag of the United States as it is the flag of a sovereign nation, but my heart is with our own.
I thank Allah for His Love and Mercy upon us for raising up the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan to guide us back to the remembrance that we, the Black man and woman in the hell of North America have: a Saviour, A Nation and Flag of our own.
Sister Alverda Ann Muhammad is a Nation of Islam pioneer and served as an M.G.T. and G.C.C. Student Captain, which means she was responsible for the teaching and training of Muslim women. She is the widow of Final Call senior editor Brother Askia Muhammad.
