As we near the observance of this year’s Easter celebration, also known as Resurrection Sunday, I am inspired to consider the spiritual principle of resurrection as it has been described within the pages of scripture.
Resurrecting the ‘Negro’ is resurrecting the dead
Growing up in the Deep South, I have fond memories of celebrating Easter within the Black church culture and environment. As children, we used to hunt Easter eggs, recite Easter speeches and get new clothes.
Looking back on my wonderful Christian upbringing, I can see the importance of the Easter observance, being an occasion for lively communal worship and the spending of quality time with family and friends.
Now at a more mature stage of life, I can see the need within the Black community to approach the Easter observance in a way that operationalizes the principle of resurrection. The Black community has a need to be resurrected from the dead.
It would greatly benefit us as a people to consider the resurrection of Jesus and determine that conditions such as crime, poverty, poor health, homelessness, and domestic violence are conditions of community death that we need to be resurrected from.
I would argue that Black leadership nationally should pursue an honest and thoughtful assessment of the Teachings and work of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad; and go about the work of mining out of His noble work and Teachings, solutions to all that ails our people.
He stated in the Muslim Program, which graces the inside back cover of every edition of The Final Call newspaper, the following:
“WE BELIEVE in the resurrection of the dead—not in physical resurrection—but in mental resurrection. We believe that the so-called Negroes are most in need of mental resurrection; therefore, they will be resurrected first …”
The powerful words of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad in Point No. 5 of “What The Muslims Believe” should be studied. His words are appropriately paired with the words of the Prophet Hosea of the Bible who stated: “My people are destroyed (put to death) from lack of knowledge …,”—Hosea 4:6
These words are born witness to by many conscientious observers of the Black experience in America, an experience that produced mental death among us, in the form of ignorance and self-hatred.
In 20th Century American life, there was a man named Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He wrote in his historic report “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action,” the following: “That the Negro American has survived at all is extraordinary—a lesser people might simply have died out, as indeed others have.”
The mental death of the Black man and woman of America has been acknowledged over the years. Consider the following observations and insights:
Frederick Douglass stated: “I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.”
A powerful Virginia state legislator, reacting to Nat Turner’s rebellion, passionately argues for the mental destruction of the Black people of America when he stated the following: “Pass as severe laws as you will to keep these unfortunate creatures in ignorance.
It is in vain unless you can extinguish that spark of intellect which God has given them. … Sir, we have as far as possible closed every avenue by which light may enter their minds.
We only have to go one step further to extinguish their capacity to see the light and our work will be completed. And they would then be reduced to the level of the beasts of the field and we should be safe.”
—Henry Berry, Virginia House of Delegates, 1832
The condition of mental death has created the need for resurrection of the Black man and woman of America. The process of resurrection is the process that resurrects us from a state of existence that caused us to be called Negroes to once again being the Original man and woman.
If we consider that the very usage, by our oppressors, of the term Negro to identify the Black people of America, serves as a “hidden in plain sight” admission that they murdered our minds in order to make us chattel slaves.
The ruling class of Whites in America is well aware of the damage they did to us, because it was no accident; it was deliberate and intentional murder of the mind. The word Negro in English derives from the Latin prefix Necro, which means of or relating to that which is dead or inanimate (non-living).
Necrology is the study of the dead; a necropolis is a city of the dead; a necrophile is a lover of death. From “necro” in Latin comes “negro” in English as a descriptive moniker for the condition White America produced for Black people in America.
Resurrection: We must make our communities a safe and decent place to live
Within the messianic ministry of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, he has trailblazed a history of being an instrument that Allah (God) has used to bring about the mental and spiritual resurrection of millions among our community as well as other communities.
This year, Minister Farrakhan, chose as the theme of Saviours’ Day 2026 message: “We Must Make Our Communities a Decent and Safe Place to Live.” If we parse the language and understand the words and spirit of our beloved Minister, we can see that he is calling us to operationalize the divine principle of resurrection within the Black community to solve the problematic conditions that we suffer from.
In his now historic work of rebuilding the work of his beloved teacher, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, has modeled for us the kind of qualities we must be in possession of in order to resurrect our communities.
Minister Farrakhan is a model of strength, commitment, long suffering, patience, forbearance, drive and determination. And these qualities that we can easily identify within the messianic leadership model of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan are really outgrowths of his chief quality, which is his undying love for the Black community.
If we love like Minister Farrakhan, we too can be instruments that Allah (God) can use in the resurrection process. In my humble judgment, this is the only way that we can make our communities safe and decent places to live.
Minister Farrakhan’s example is important because our challenge to make our communities safe and decent is fraught with great challenges. Our work of resurrecting the Black community within the current environment within America.
As she is exhibiting all the signs a failing empire, reminds us of the important portrait within the Bible in Judges 14:8. It is in that passage of scripture that we see an unusual scene that most in the world of zoology would argue against it ever being an actual scene in nature. This passage describes a hive of bees inside the carcass of a lion producing honey.
Applying this passage of scripture to our work today inspires the thoughts of America as the lion’s carcass and inside a busy hive of activity—a resurrected Black community working to produce honey in the form of peace, love and justice. Really honey here represents the healing presence of truth and love as the building blocks in the establishment of a righteous “nation inside a nation.”
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad: First Begotten of the dead Black nation
For the Children of Israel, slavery was death and liberation was resurrection in life. The Bible states they were liberated from bondage because God visited them in person and made a Messenger to lead them.
Consider important biblical scriptural passages like Numbers 12, wherein God describes Himself as singling out Moses from all other prophets as special. He refused to allow Moses to subsist from receiving guidance in dreams and visions, He instead chose to have a personal relationship with Moses; speaking to him “face to face as a man speaks to his friend” and allowing Moses to “behold the form of the Lord.”
The description of God’s relationship with Moses in Numbers chapter 12 is a powerful portrait of the relationship between the man who visited Black people in America from Mecca, Arabia, and His Messenger; I am referring to Master W. Fard Muhammad and the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
The Bible in Revelation 1:5 calls Jesus the “first begotten of the dead.” The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the first begotten of the dead; the so-called Negroes in America.
The good news is that the Divine Wisdom that resurrected Him was left with Him by Master W. Fard Muhammad so that the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad might use that wisdom to resurrect the dead Black nation.
Master W. Fard Muhammad came to Black people in America as Allah’s Spirit in the form of a well-made man as the Holy Qur’an states in Surah 19:17, regarding Mary and the birth of Jesus—the Messiah. His work among us caused the spiritual “begetting” of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad used the Wisdom of Master W. Fard Muhammad to resurrect all who submitted to His Teaching. But the crowning achievement of His resurrecting work was that He produced a prototype in the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan serve as two witnesses of Master W. Fard Muhammad’s Power to resurrect the mentally dead Black man and woman of America.
And Minister Farrakhan is the prototype or pattern made by Allah and the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad as the standard that all the rest of us must follow in order to complete the process of resurrection successfully.
Those of us who follow His Teachings are no more to be dubbed “Negroes”; for His wisdom and love has caused us to enter into a process of resurrection where we are being raised from the conditionality of mental death that White America produced among us. We are now in the process of returning to our true selves, which is the Original Man and Woman, once again. All Praise Belongs To Allah!
Demetric Muhammad is a Memphis-based student minister in the Nation of Islam, author and a member of the Nation of Islam Research Group. Follow him on X @BrotherDemetric. Read more at www.researchminister.com.