Remembering Abdul Wali Muhammad
“Jesus said, ‘Let him that would be great among you, let him be your servant.’ You cannot serve if you think you are greater than that which you are called to serve. To be a servant means you must see those whom you are called to serve as greater than yourself.”
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, speaking September 23, 2001,
at Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.
As we look forward to 2025, we pray for Almighty God’s blessings and protection. We pray for progress, good things and most of all that we withstand whatever the new year brings—whether good or bad.
Often, we remember lives lost, reflect on their contributions and thank Allah (God) for these gifted ones He gave us.
Our memories may relate to private or personal contributions to our lives. Such recollections may also be of those who touched our lives and the lives of our people because of their work in the cause of freedom, justice and equality.
We honor their work in a difficult mission as servants of a destroyed people and a cause much bigger than themselves.
It doesn’t mean their lives were easy or without sacrifice. Their sacrifice is what makes us consider their legacy and the work they left behind.
Blessed are those who forge a way for others. Blessed are those who don’t lead lives devoted to leisure and frivolity. Blessed are those who show and prove their love through their work.
Blessed are the institution builders and those who lay foundations for institutions that, by God’s Grace, are growing in longevity.
We are blessed when we understand and respect such sacrifices. We are doubly blessed when we are willing to keep making sacrifices so these institutions will live and the names of those who helped build them will be remembered.
Abdul Wali Muhammad is such a person and holds a special place in the history and development of The Final Call, the history of our people and the history of the Black sojourn in America.
Brother Wali, as he was called, was both a builder and an inspiration. The circumstances of his death and our belief that he was poisoned only cement his place as a martyr in the cause of Islam and one who gave his life as he breathed life into The Final Call.
The son of legendary civil rights era journalist Simeon Booker, Brother Wali was fiercely and unapologetically devoted to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the global liberation of Black people.
Though he attended Cornell University, where he was introduced to Islam through the Five Percenters or the Nation of Gods and Earths, Brother Wali was always proud to declare he held no degree from “the devil’s institutions,” but was educated through the Supreme Wisdom of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the guidance of Minister Farrakhan.
He entered the Nation of Islam in Washington, D.C., served as a captain of the Fruit of Islam, and later became a Muslim minister when Minister Farrakhan asked him to come to Chicago to play a bigger role in the rebuilding of the Nation.
Brother Wali was blunt, sometimes brusque, hard-charging and fearless. He was demanding and commanded obedience. He gave no excuses and he accepted none.
With his commitment and his drive, he fostered a spirit in those who labored under him to accept the challenge to make an intermittent journal, an award-winning bi-weekly and then respected weekly publication. His work also produced two editors-in-chief after his death, past editor James G. Muhammad, who remains a Final Call contributing editor, and current editor-in-chief Naba’a Muhammad.
Along with his sharp mind and candid speech was a deep, hearty laugh and a great sense of humor. There was also a kindness in his steel-handed glove that engendered respect, admiration and love.
And, if love is duty, and it is, Brother Wali loved deeply and his efforts and accomplishments showed it. Early on he pushed The Final Call into the world of technology when few had personal computers. Cyberspace meant connecting via bulletin boards and e-mail addresses were assigned numbers, not names you assigned yourself.
He deeply loved his beloved wife Zenobia and their children and was proud of her sacrifice in homeschooling the children prior to the reopening of the Muhammad University of Islam in Chicago during the late 1980s.
Vital to Brother Wali’s life were his loving and faithful wife, his sons Akmal, Luqman and Farrakhan and daughters Crescent, Amira and Zainab. He was a devoted son to his mother and loved his siblings, a brother and a sister.
Minister Farrakhan gave him the name Abdul Wali Muhammad, which means servant of the Protecting Friend and is an attribute of Allah (God.) After assisting others with the newspaper, he became editor-in-chief in 1984.
Brother Wali had a heart attack and was 37 years old at the time of his death. It was believed that he may have been poisoned through something added to his coffee.
He departed this life on December 26, 1991.
“The Nation mourns the passing of one of its brightest stars, Minister Abdul Wali Muhammad,” Minister Farrakhan said at funeral services for Brother Wali on December 31, 1991. “His brilliant mind reflected in his speech and in his pen will be greatly missed among us.
I personally have lost a brother, a companion, a friend and a son in the most difficult of all endeavors, the transformation of the lives of our people here and throughout the world.
I thank Allah (God) for the privilege and honor of having known him. His memory shall be with me to my dying day and his work shall endure in the history of the Nation of Islam.”
With the end of 2024, we will close the 45th anniversary year of the founding of The Final Call. We are building on the sacrifice of lives. We are building a legacy. We are working to expand the longevity of a vital tool in the resurrection of our people.
Through these commitments, we honor Brother Wali, hope to help cement him in our national memory and history and keep his name and his life’s work alive.
