JABRIL.MUHAMMAD
This comes from the book, Closing The Gap. How do you see this now? Does this involve prophecy and more? Does this involve you? Naturally this involves the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.
Brother Jabril: A few of us or some of us in those days are aware of the fact, that there were times when you would go to a hotel room and spend hours studying. Please elaborate.
Minister Farrakhan: I always desired to feed the Muslim community. They were feeding me. They were giving my family and I enough money to at least to afford bean soup. It was not the amount of money, because it was very meager, and we were very, very poor. But I felt obligated to study to serve this community.
They came to follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. In order to follow him they had to know him, they had to know what he taught and his aim and purpose. So if I loved him and loved them, then it was my duty to study to prepare these who love him and also to be strong helpers of him, in the cause of the rise of our people.
In those days I studied every thing I could get my hands on related to the message of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. By immersing myself in his message, then everything that I learned in high school, prep school and college took on greater significance. Biology took on greater meaning. Chemistry, Solid Geometry, Algebra, Calculus, everything that I studied I could now use because Islam, as taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was the key to use knowledge for the advancement of self, your family, your community and your people.
Brother Jabril: Now Brother Minister, talk to me for a moment about the time you received the order to put up your music.
Minister Farrakhan: Well, I was playing in a nightclub, in Greenwich Village, in New York, called The Village Barn. I could not come to the Mosque on that particular Sunday, because I had to do a Matinee show, at the time of the Mosque meeting. But after I completed my show and my responsibility to the night club, I came uptown to the Temple #7 Luncheonette on 120th Street and Lenox Avenue to chat with the Muslims and get a bowl of bean soup.
When I got in the restaurant and sat down to order my soup, one of the Believers, I don’t remember who he was, sat down and said to me, “Man you know, the order came down today that all the musicians would have to get out of music or get out the Mosque or out of the Temple.” This came as a shock to me. So I didn’t eat the soup right then. I got up, I walked out of the restaurant, I walked East on 120th Street, maybe 20 to 30 paces, thinking as to what I was going do. In that 20 to 30 paces, the thought came to me, “I can live without music. But I cannot live without the truth.”
I turned right around and went back in the restaurant and sat down and had my bowl of soup. Our dear departed Brother Captain Yusuf Shah learned that somebody had said that to me. He was very angry because he wanted to be the one to break it to me in a gentle way and measure my reactions. When he came I told him, “I already made my decision Brother. I’m giving up show business.”
I had until the end of December this was around the first of December during Ramadan or something like that, I think it was, and I had to the end of December. I had 30 days to make that decision.
Brother Jabril: 1955?
Minister Farrakhan: Yes it was the end of 1955. That’s correct.
Brother Jabril: And you just stopped?
Minister Farrakhan: Yes. In fact it was in November. It was not in December, but I had to the end of December to make the decision, but this order came down in November, one month after I had been a registered Muslim.
Brother Jabril: What then led to, and what were the circumstances, which were preparatory, under which the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to you, “You don’t have to study.”
Minister Farrakhan: Well, as he made me his National Representative and allowed me to carry on his National Broadcast, he wrote me a letter and gave me the assignment. He gave some subject matter in a letter for four weeks that I would have to deliver these subjects. After the four weeks he was very pleased. He said, “You can go on a little longer.”
As I went on longer, he was pleased. So after six months or so, he said, “You can go on for six years.” At that time, it would take me one week to do a half hour broadcast, because I would write down every word that I was going to say; every scripture that I was going to use. Then I would go back over the language and see if I could say it more succinctly and more effectively if I used this word as opposed to that word, this phrase as opposed to the other phrase. So then I would rehearse it; because I’m reading from a script. I did that for three years.
One day I went out to visit with him and he told me, “Brother you don’t have to do that.” He said, “You go and stand up and Allah will speak through you.” I did that immediately. I just obeyed him. I never used notes. I started speaking on a subject and would allow God to feed me. This gave the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (I would imagine) a chance to see how God was using me. At the end of the sixth year he called me. He said, “Brother, I will be coming on next week. So you let the public know that Elijah Muhammad will be coming back on the radio next week.”
So it’s like you give your baby a lollipop and he’s sucking on it. He gets use to it. But you gave it to him. It’s your lollipop. So then you ask him to give me back my lollipop. Well now he’s looking at the baby to see what kind of attitude the baby had. Well how would he know that? He would know that by the way I introduce his return to the microphone. So my next broadcast was called, “Hearken unto the voice of God.”
When I sent it out for him to play it in advance of his coming out, he then called me and said, “Brother, you may continue.” I never gave it a thought that I would tell them “hearken unto the voice of God.” Then he allows me to continue after I’m supposedly introducing him, and he puts me back on. Well what was he saying?
More next issue, Allah willing.
