[Editor’s Note: The following contains edited excerpts of a message delivered by the National Assistant to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, Student Minister Ishmael R. Muhammad, on Sunday, November 16, 2025, from Mosque Maryam in Chicago. To view this message in its entirety, visit media.noi.org.]
In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful,
As-Salaam Alaikum.
Our subject today is “Redistribute the Pain.” This subject was first introduced 10 years ago by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, when he was touring the country promoting the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March, when we gathered in Washington, D.C., in 2015. And the theme for that March and the call 10 years ago was “Justice or Else.”
Many were frightened. Farrakhan, “Justice or Else?” They were frightened at that “or else.” Well, in the Message of Allah, through His messengers, in that message is contained a threat. There is always with God, “or else.” If you don’t do this, then. So many young people, some that hadn’t been born, and some that were too young to be at the Million Man March in 1995, gathered on 10.10.15 (October 10, 2015), and it was an absolutely beautiful crowd, and the message was magnificent. Hundreds of thousands of us gathered, and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, leading up to 10.10.15, went around the country and was asking Black people to Redistribute the Pain of our suffering by withdrawing from spending money that we don’t have during the holiday season.
You all remember that? And encouraging Christians who believe in Jesus to kick that fat dude from the North, Santa, to the curb with Rudolph and all the reindeer. “Up with Jesus, Down with Santa.” Now, the Minister (Farrakhan) gave us a great guiding principle in redistributing the pain. Our pain and suffering is self-absorbed, and we direct our pain and our anger destructively against ourselves and against our community. And we are angry, but directing our anger and pain in a positive way, in a constructive way, alleviates the pain and ultimately removes the pain altogether that we have suffered from the enemy and redistribution of the pain affects a healing. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said, “Anger not channeled can be self-destructive. When God met with Moses in a ‘burning bush,’ it doesn’t mean an actual ‘bush.’ God was so angry in coming because He heard the moaning and the groaning of the Children of Israel, according to the wickedness of their taskmasters. Moses heard Him (God) out of a ‘burning bush,’ which represents the fire of His (God’s) anger, but that fire was contained. It’s very difficult when we are angry to contain our anger.”
We are a wounded people. Yes, we are, after 400 years being in a strange land among a strange people, made slaves to another. They never treated us then, and they don’t treat us today as human beings. You may not want to accept that, but our condition today bears witness that we are still in their minds’ property. If you and I were (seen as) human, then you and I would not be racially profiled. If you and I were seen in their eyes as equals, then they would not shoot us down, come into our neighborhoods and break into our apartments and tie our children by the hands.
Anyway, we’re wounded, and our wounds need to be healed, but you can’t, and we can’t have a healing without a doctor and a medicine that can affect healing. And remember, the process of healing is always from the inside. So, the Holy Qur’an tells us that Allah (God) will never change the condition of a people until they change within themselves.
The first change that I have to make within myself is to accept God, and my willingness to hear Him, submit to what He says, and if I’m willing to hear from my Lord, my Maker, the Author of my life, who knows this life better than me, better than those out here, then I have already put myself in a position for God to change my condition. Does that make sense? The prophet Jeremiah, he expresses his hurt and pain over his people’s condition. And look at what the prophet (Jeremiah) says, “I hurt with the hurt of my people. I mourn and I’m overcome with grief. I mourn, and dismay has taken hold on me,” (Bible: Jeremiah 8:21). …You can’t deliver these words—and this is talking about a prophet several centuries ago, in fact, about it more than several. Jeremiah was before Jesus, over 2,000 years ago—and not bear witness to a man that is the servant of God in our midst, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, who hurts and is hurting over the condition of his people first and foremost, but the overall condition of humanity.
How we handle disappointment and dissatisfaction is critical; how we handle pain. One day years ago, the Minister (Farrakhan) said, “Son, you cannot avoid pain, but one must learn how to manage pain.” Dissatisfaction and disappointment precede treachery. That’s big, because the dissatisfaction or disappointment goes all the way up to The God and the envy that’s in the hearts of people. They take it out against the person that is the recipient of a divine blessing or favor from God … . See, God is always in charge. He chooses whom He pleases. Well, God didn’t ask me who I thought it should be. How could He ask you and you’re dead? He knows how you would choose, that’s how you vote. You’re going to choose somebody based upon nice talk, choose somebody based upon eloquence, choose somebody based upon appearances.
God doesn’t choose His Messenger like that. Man looks at the outer appearance, but God looks in the heart. He knows best where to place His message, and He chose the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan because of the quality of his heart. And all of these that get puffed up with knowledge, Paul said it best, “if I have all knowledge and can fathom all mysteries and can speak with the tongues of men and the tongues of angels, but have not love, I am nothing.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., (a) great, great brother. He wasn’t killed because he had a dream. They killed him because he woke up. Dr. King was fighting for integration, and then he realized, before he was assassinated, that he was integrating his people in a house that was burning, and on the other side of Dr. King and the integrationist movement at that time was the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and He said: “No! Separation.” Separation is the answer, because He understood that God never wanted the Children of Israel to integrate into a house and a people who had caused them pain. And God had come to judge that nation which we have served. So, God didn’t send Moses to integrate them. He sent Moses to call them out into a land that He had prepared for them as their inheritance because they suffered pain and they were guilty of no crime. And the Minister (Farrakhan) points out, which is a fact that today, (that) we have more millionaires than we ever have had, more educated Blacks, more middle class. We have thousands of public servants in politics, hundreds of mayors, city councilmen, aldermen, sheriffs, deputies … everything that you can think of, but our minds are still not healed.
Dr. King pointed out to us in 1968 that we as Black people brought in $30 billion annually or more out of the American economy. But look at what Dr. King said. He said, “We have to redistribute the pain, and when we’re in pain, we’ve got to make them feel pain.” He said, “Now the other thing we’ve got to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now we are poor people,” he said. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with White society in America, we are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively—that means all of us together—collectively, we are richer than all the nations in the world with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that?
“After you leave the United States, Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name others, the American Negro collectively, is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than $30 billion a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power right there if we know how to pool it.”
Today, the collective purchasing power of Blacks is estimated to be over $1.6 trillion, and it’s projected to reach $1.7 trillion by 2030, which is comparable to the Gross Domestic Product of other countries. When you compare Black consumer spending to the Gross Domestic Product of nations like Russia and Canada, South Korea—Russia at $2.2 trillion; Canada, $2.1 trillion; South Korea, $1.7 trillion. But, it is not the purchasing power where our wealth is. That’s the power of us being consumers, but we do not reinvest what we receive in income so that we could develop an economy where we have a Gross Domestic Product that then we will be valued, not according to how we spend or what comes in and what we spend, but according to real wealth.
Real wealth is ownership. … Look at this: when you consider that Blacks as a whole control few resources, manufacturing, means of production, banking, finance (and) exports. It’s not found. So, we are not producing. We are consumers, but we are not producers or manufacturers of the goods, products that we buy at the stores, right?
The Chicago Crusader, back in May, wrote an article, and they were talking about … how under President Barack Obama, Black Americans were experiencing the greatest transfer of wealth and financial loss during the subprime mortgage crisis. According to the U.S, Census Bureau, 53% of Black wealth in the U.S. was destroyed between 2007 and 2010. By contrast, only 16% of White wealth was wiped out; 16% of White wealth to 53% of Black wealth. And our Latino family lost 66% of their wealth during that period. And between those years of 2007 and 2010 alone, Black Americans lost over half their total wealth, a collapse engineered by predatory lending and systematic racism. No major bankers were criminally prosecuted, despite reported widespread evidence of mortgage fraud, deceptive business practices, predatory programs and misleading investors. It’s about bundled mortgage securities. When it came time for the government to act, the banks, insurance companies and auto manufacturers received hundreds of billions of dollars in federal bailouts through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, while millions of American homeowners, especially Black and Latino families, were left to their own devices.
During that, the government gave $700 billion into the economy, with $182 billion, if you remember, went to AIG insurance, $45 billion to Citigroup, $45 billion to Bank of America, $25 billion to JP Morgan, $25 billion to Wells Fargo. The troubled homeowners were encouraged to renegotiate their mortgages, but only one million received permanent modifications, while the majority were denied relief or were re-foreclosed.
The Brookings Institute released the study that the devaluation of Black assets found that if Black-owned businesses had the same access to capital as White-owned businesses, they could create over one million new jobs. This is serious because we have to talk about economics when we talk about freedom and justice. …We have to redistribute the pain. See, we have to establish a national treasury … that every one of us put something in because the other thing that this article showed was how much ownership of land and property we lost.
So if we’re not owning as a collective, and we don’t have millions of acres of land that they took from us. The government through their subsidies supported White farmers, but the Black farmer was left out here, struggling. So, from the early 20th century, when we had more than 15 million acres of land, where do you think it stands today? Less than two million. … Little by little, they are running us into extinction.
So, you all are getting ready for Christmas and the only reason why they came to some compromise is because of this season. You’ve got to understand, these are tricksters. They have a system of tricks and lies. And then the president said he was considering from everything that they collected from the tariffs to give $2,000. What are you going to do with the $2,000? … I’ve got to go buy something nice. It’s been rough lately. That’s how we’ve been programmed. When you’re depressed, go buy something. Now don’t you go out here Christmas shopping. They don’t even call it Christmas anymore. It’s not about Christ-Mass. So, they put “Xmas” on it, because X in mathematics stands for the unknown. You’re going to put lights up; the utility bill is already increased. How are you going to say you’re a Christian and you believe in Jesus and have a tree in your house that does not have anything to do with Jesus Christ, that the Bible tells you “don’t follow the way of the heathen who goes into the forest and cuts down a tree and fastens it with silver and gold and decks it.” Now we are spending, spending, spending, and I mean, it’s all a scheme. …
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “Debt is slavery.” See, you’re not up to speed on modern slavery. Then someone says it, you’re thinking about chains. Look at your pocket. You’re chained financially. You’re chained educationally. You’re chained culturally. You’re chained, devices—slaves. … A slave is one whose power and authority is ruled over by another. … Look, we’ve got to redistribute the pain. We’ve got to unite as a people and do for self.