By Mother Tynnnetta Muhammad
“I, Allah, am the Seer. A Book which We have revealed to thee that thou mayest bring forth men, by their Lord’s permission, from darkness into light, to the way of the Mighty, the Praised One, Of Allah, Whose is whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth. And woe to the disbelievers for the severe chastisement. Those who love this world’s life more than the Hereafter, and turn away from Allah’s path, and would have it crooked. Those are far astray.” —Holy Qur’an, Surah 14, verses 1-3
Within seven days from my last visit to the Island of Bimini, October 7th, where we participated in the commemorative event honoring the renowned Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., who had made several historic visits to this tranquil place, we were soon on the road again passing through Florida on the way to North Carolina.
The City of Charlotte is known as the Queen City, named after the Queen of Great Britain during the colonial period. We were here to participate in our 17th Commemorative Anniversary of the Million Man March and Holy Day of Atonement on October 14th. This event was truly more than commemorative of the nearly two million plus men that gathered on the Washington Mall at the Capitol steps on October 16, 1995.
This year’s Holy Day of Atonement converges directly with the upcoming presidential election as a sobering reminder of our 475 years of enforced servitude slavery that we have endured right up to the present hour. We are still confined to the American system and way of life that has deprived us of freedom, justice and equality. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered a blistering rebuttal for the travesty of mistreatment that our people have experienced on this American continent offering a plan of action to escape the treachery and untold miseries that we have endured well over four centuries. Being in a global crisis, we urgently need a strong voice of spiritual leadership that responds to the crisis of the time for all the American people. A solo voice is crying in the wilderness to stave off the Divine Punishment that is visiting America while we are still asleep to the responsibility to make a change.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has been chosen by God as that Divine Voice that is giving hope to America and to all its people an opportunity to make a change for the betterment of our world. The Great Divide has come to America once again as it was in the time of Abraham Lincoln and the challenge of government to unite the country to eliminate this racial divide. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan addressed his words with stern advice to government, to President Barack Obama and the incumbent Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.
A few days before this electrifying address on October 14th, I had the opportunity to be escorted to South Carolina in search of some of my father’s people and relatives who lived in Sumpter and Sumerton, South Carolina. Our initial journey took us on a three-hour trip on the highway from Charlotte to the coastal lowlands of its neighboring state. We passed through Columbia into Goose Creek where we met one of my cousins and her family.
The next day we traveled a short distance to the capitol of Charleston which contains some of the remaining scars of our forced servitude slavery in the trading market next to the port of entrance on the Atlantic Ocean. We met with some of our ancestors who still have retained some of the crafts of weaving beautiful baskets made from sweet grass and rice filaments and other materials which they had learned in their native land of Africa. They traced their origin to the time of Moses, along the banks of the Nile, 4,000 years ago to escape Pharaoh’s death plan.
We had an opportunity to interview several women of the Gullah Nation who openly shared with us their personal experiences of racism and those of their parents and grandparents that have been handed down the line of time. Many still speak the Gullah language and dialect which is also known as Geechee. While in the market, we were able to secure a Gullah Bible and we became more familiar with the strange sounds of a type of broken English. The Gullah language uses the letters of the English alphabet to form their words and particular pronounciations.
I reflected upon the history of one of our nation’s scientists in the making of the moon, who desired for every one to speak the same dialect of the language which was impossible according to the Teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad who explained that different altitudes on our planet make it impossible. This reminds me of the story of the Tower of Babel that we read in the Bible where everyone was confused in their speech and could not communicate effectively with one another.
What I found most interesting were the words written on the wall inside the Museum of the old Slave Mart in Charleston located near the old slave market on the pier, which stated that the first African slaves began their TransAtlantic journey to the Americas in 1519, 36 years earlier to the 1555 voyage of John Hawkins. This was the era of the Spanish and Portugese explorers to the Americas, and the date 1519 corresponds to the year of the conquest of Mexico by Hernandez Cortez.
If we include the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492, we are in the time of the European conquest of the Western world which includes the history of Central, South America and the Caribbean. This history tells us that some of our foreparents crossed over the Atlantic in earlier times in ships manned by the Portugese, followed by the Spanish before the English language was introduced. Most of the captured slaves were Muslims who had the knowledge of themselves and their origins. It was under the British slave traders where many Muslims who arrived in America were put to death or destroyed before the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619.
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that during that 64-year period between John Hawkins’ arrival with our foreparents in 1555 to 1619 many who had practiced Islam and were Muslims were destroyed before the institution of slavery could effectively be established. In other words, the White slave masters took away our language, our culture, our religion and our understanding of ourselves and our origins.
What secrets does the White man hold in their secret archives and records of the United States government which hide the truth of our great and noble past, while they are studying Islam in secret, while at the same time while forging a war against the World of Islam with particular focus on the Nation of Islam, the Divine Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and that of his greatest Representative, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan in this very hour?
The whole substance of this year’s 17th commemorative celebration of the Million Man March and the Holy Day of Atonement is to put America and its people on alert that Almighty God, Allah, has heard the cry of our people under their wicked taskmasters and has come in the Person of Master W. Fard Muhammad, and His Christ, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad to deliver us.
“And We sent no messenger but with the language of his people, so that he might explain to them clearly. Then Allah leaves in error whom He pleases and He guides whom He pleases. And He is the Mighty, the Wise. And certainly We sent Moses with Our messages, saying: Bring forth thy people from darkness into light and remind them of the days of Allah. In this are surely signs for every steadfast, grateful one.” —Holy Qur’an, Surah 14, verses 4-5
To be continued.
