[Editor’s Note: The following article contains edited excerpts from the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s keynote address delivered October 15, 2017, on the occasion of the 22nd Anniversary of the Historic Million Man March & Holy Day of Atonement held at Newark Symphony Hall in Newark, New Jersey.
To order this message now available in its entirety on DVD, CD and MP3, please visit store.finalcall.com or call 1.866.602.1230, ext. 200.]
Many people do not wish to say that the human is divine, but we call The Creation divine. The sun is divine, the moon is divine, the stars are divine, the trees, the seas, the oceans, the mountains, the rivers. … They are divine because they come from The Originator of Divine. So if we can ascribe divinity to the things that He created, and the greatest of God’s creation is the human being, then why should we not understand that in the human being is the spark of divine that has been put out in the last 6,000 years of the rule of other than divine?
So we may be divine, and we are, but we have acted differently. It’s not our fault—it really is God’s doing. “You mean our savage behavior is God’s doing?” What kind of God would permit evil on our planet, and subject humanity to evil where we have become reflections of rebellion to God? “Did You do that, God?” May I answer? I will answer from God Himself, His words from the Holy Qur’an (Surah 2, verse 30).
God was with the angels, according to The Qur’an, and He made a declaration. He said: “I am going to place a ruler in the earth.” And the angels said, “But what will You place in it other than that which will create mischief and cause the shedding of blood?” Allah knew the angels extolled His holiness and His righteousness, but He answered tersely, but truthfully: “I know what you know not.”
So evil was allowed a period to rule, and a people were made to fulfill that which God permitted. We can say with knowledge that the rulers of this world, who happen to be Caucasian, have not been good. We are proof of that. And their history proves that they have not been good, not only to Black, Brown, Red and Yellow, but they have not been good to themselves and their own people. Nevertheless, the last message of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in 1974, February the 26th, he said: “Who is responsible: The Potter or The Clay?”
(Saviour’s Day address “When The Sun Rises in The West”). He said, “The White man could easily say, and rightly so, ‘I did not make myself.’ ” So you geneticists, and students of biology, you know that “white” is an absence of color that came from color. So if he is not the “original man,” and he is not; and he is not the “aboriginal,” and he is not. … He is not “man” as such, he is mankind: A kind of a man, made in the image and likeness of the Original Man.
So whatever he has done of evil, he was given a season to do it, but we have not understood the reason. If there is only one Creator, God made devil. So we can ask God, “Why did You do such a thing?” And The God will answer you very intelligently, and say: “What is the greatest of all knowledge? It is the knowledge of self and the knowledge of God.”
Don’t you want a perfect knowledge of yourself, and a perfect knowledge of God? Don’t you want to know what is inside of you that has been causing trouble for you and for me, and for God? Don’t you want to know that?
God, in His infinite wisdom, set all creation on an evolutionary course. So in Arabic, we call Allah “Rabbil ’alamin” (“The Lord, Nourisher, Sustainer, Maintainer and Evolver of all creation”). Allah causes everything to evolve, making stage after stage until it reaches its eventual perfection. There was something inside of The Originator and the Original Man that has been giving us a problem.
It’s the father of rebellion; it’s the father of that which is contrary to peace. So in the Year 8,400 of this particular cycle of history—and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that we, the Original Man, make History to equal our home circumference.
The circumference of our Planet is 24,896 miles, so we make History to last in cycles of 25,000-year periods. So we are now in the 16,000th Year of this 25,000-year History; and in the Year 8,400, The Scientists that wrote the History said they saw one coming: A Scientist named “Yakub.”
Not a madman, a scientist … The greatest experiments in creation are the experiments that God and man have made with self. If you want to know more about yourself, you experiment, to find out “who” you are, “what” you are—and what you’re capable of.
So Yakub studied the life germ of the Original Man, and saw in us a brown germ; that if he could separate it from the black germ which kept it under control, he could take that brown germ into its final stage and make a people pale-faced, different, unalike, give it form, give it expression, and teach it a system of tricks and lies that would enable it to master the Original Man.
And we have been mastered by a system of tricks and lies, so today you are not who you were created to be, you are who the White man made you to be. And that is why he called you “boy”: Because you have been made little boys and girls, looking to them like a child to a parent for food, clothing, shelter, education, justice and jobs.
So, we are about tired now of being “little boys and gals,” we’re tired now of being “Sambo” and clowns and buffoons for White people. We’re tired now, and we want relief. And as long as the Caucasian has ruled on our planet, the Original and the Aboriginal people of color have longed to be delivered. So Isaiah the prophet writes (Isaiah 9:6-7): “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (And) Of the increase of his government and peace there will never be an end …”
We had an infinity of time: The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that God taught him over 78 trillion years of time on our planet—not his (the White Man.) Our planet, in Our universe—we are the makers of all that you see of creation. And when a son would be born to end the rule of the enemy of God, his (the enemy’s) job would have been made complete.
Now, you can be angry with White people if you want to, and you could curse them out and say ugly things, because they have done ugly things. But wait a minute: They couldn’t have done any of this if Allah (God) didn’t permit it. He (the White Man) justifies his existence as a “devil” by being himself.
Well, if he did what God brought him into the world to do (to teach us the full knowledge of what’s sitting up inside of us), then you’re not just a killer “by accident”; you’re not a liar and a thief and a hustler “by accident.” It couldn’t come out of you if it wasn’t in you. You cannot be perfected until all of our weaknesses are manifested, and, the White man brought it all out, now. “Well, he made me a prostitute!” No, he showed you what you were capable of.
I know that kind of “grabs you a little,” doesn’t it? I’m going to take the onus off of him, and I’m going to put it where it rightfully belongs: on God. Are any of you wise enough to charge God for just 6,000 years, a moment in infinity of time to suffer, to learn that which will perfect us, that would enable us to produce a perfected man to produce a perfected world? …
God, in His infinite wisdom, caused us to suffer for a moment in time to give us an infinity of time in a world that we, with God, would create, wherein no more hate would exist, no more murder, no more rape; none of us killing each other over color, over education, over substance that the White man hands out to the few that he hires and buys.
You should be happy to see a world like this end. You should give God a handclap of praise, because He has come to end this. All of it! Like Michael’s wife, in The Godfather (Part 2), when she said: “Oh Michael, you really are blind. It wasn’t a miscarriage, Michael; it was an abortion, Michael—and it was a son. And I had it killed, because all of this must end!” So, that is why we chose the subject “Separation or Death.”
What The Muslims Want: Separation
“Separation or Death”: Recently, an FBI report (dated August 3, 2017) has been circulating in the media, a new version of the “Counterintelligence Program” (COINTELPRO) that talks about “Black Identity Extremists” (“BIEs”); and they’ve included the Moorish Science Temple, and the followers of Noble Drew Ali. They didn’t mention us (The Nation of Islam)—but we know they’re coming.
So I thought, since they said that separation of Black people from White people was one of the things that “upset them,” I want to upset them a little more today; and in the process of upsetting them, unfortunately I might have to upset some of us. I don’t intend to hurt your feelings, but I will get to you today. Like the old preacher said when he had his Bible, and his .45 on the rostrum: “One of these things is gonna move you today!” (Smile.)
Now, I’m asking you to reason with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad; I want us to look at what Elijah Muhammad put on the back page of our newspaper, The Final Call.
He introduced The Muslim Program during a lecture delivered in July 1962 at the Arie Crown Theater in the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois; then in the next year it was on the back page of the Muhammad Speaks newspaper. And from that day to this, we have kept his Program before the world (“What The Muslims Want” and “What The Muslims Believe”).
So I want to say to the government: We are not just somebody that’s desirous of separating from you on our own. The Program of “separation” is given by God, and backed by God as the only solution to the toxic relationship between Black and White.
“What do you want, Muslims?”
Now, you may say, “Well, I’m not a Muslim, so you ain’t talking about me!” Oh, yes you are a Muslim. Whatever you call yourself, that’s you—but God called you best. He said it like this: “Set your face for religion, being upright, the nature made by Allah in which He has created the human being, and there is no altering Allah’s creation.” (Surah 30:30) Everything in creation submits to the will of God except the rebellious devil. And of course, he has made us into himself. He made us call him “massa” (“Yes, massa!”), and he made you, and me, into this grotesque manifestation of the Original man.
Elijah Muhammad put it on the back page of the paper in Point No. 1: “We want freedom. We want a full and complete freedom.” Don’t you want that? Do you have it? If youdon’t have it: Why don’t you have it? Could that be why Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free?” What kind of Truth should you know that will cut the umbilical cord between you and your master?
Point No. 2: “We want justice. Equal justice under the law. We want justice applied equally to all, regardless of creed or class or color.”
That’s what we want. Isn’t that what you want? Do you want to see any human being deprived of freedom, or deprived of justice? Well, we are in “the same pew in the same church.”
Point No. 3: “We want equality of opportunity.” Isn’t that what you want? “We want equal membership in society with the best in civilized society.” That’s what we want. But here are the things we’ve got to ask …
Do you know how long we’ve been in America?
Four hundred and sixty-two (462) years—and we have suffered every day for 462 years. So now most of you who have been involved in civil rights, we salute you, because your love of America, and White people, has caused you to suffer every kind of indignity to get a little glimpse of freedom. So my sister Nina Simone said, “I wish that I knew what it means to be free …”
We don’t know freedom! So, how have you suffered to get change?
We had to die to go to toilet with White people. We had to die to eat in a restaurant with them. We had to die to be buried in the same cemetery with them. We moved into their neighborhood, and the minute they saw us, some of them burned crosses, some of them drove us out, or they left. They don’t want to be with us. You beautiful sisters (in this audience), look at how pretty you look when you want to, you know, show yourself.
What is it that when you come out and you’re so beautiful, and somebody isn’t paying you any attention? To some of us that’s worse than a slap in the face (“I look so pretty, and that man didn’t even look at me!”). And you’ve been “prettying yourself up” for White people: We want to talk like them, we want to walk like them, we want to be like them, only to be rejected by them.
Aren’t you tired? What will it take to make you see they don’t want you?
We can’t get justice under this construct called “The American Way of Life”; we can’t get full freedom; we can’t get equality of opportunity.
So Elijah Muhammad said in Point No. 4: “We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents were descendants from slaves to be allowed (isn’t that nice?) to establish a separate state or territory of our own—either on this continent or elsewhere. …” Sisters, have you had an abusive man in your life? Can the church say, “amen”? (Smile.) When you have an abusive man in your life, and the more you try to show that man how much you care, how much you love, and then he keeps abusing you, what thoughts come to your mind? (No, wait! Don’t kill him.) … But don’t you think about moving somewhere else, or doing something else, or being with somebody else? But not you (Black people in America):
No matter what he does, we are like that dog (that won’t go away, even when kicked); the dog will run back (to its master), and wag his tail … And lift his leg and urinate on your leg thinking it may be a fire hydrant. You’re kind of pitiful. But, Elijah Muhammad continues Point No. 4 by stating: “…We believe that our former slave masters are obligated (remember the word, now) to maintain and supply our needs in this separate territory for the next 20 to 25 years—until we are able to produce and supply our own needs.”
Don’t say it can’t be done. For all these years the American taxpayers’ money has been given every year to Israel to maintain them on the land of the Palestinians. Don’t you tell me that we have not earned, by our sweat and our blood, a land of our own—and obligate them.
Point No. 4 closes with this statement: “Since we cannot get along with them in peace and equality, after giving them 400 years of our sweat and blood and receiving in return some of the worst treatment human beings have ever experienced, we believe our contributions to this land and the suffering forced upon us by White America justifies our demand for complete separation in a state or territory of our own.”
Do you know White people of intelligence feel the same way?
Somebody told me that the “Alt-Right,” Mr. Trump’s people, had a tweet stating (something to the effect that) “We kind of like what Farrakhan and The Nation of Islam is saying; we are with them to separate in a land of their own.”
I said, “Very good, Alt-Right.” You all want to talk about it? Well, the talking has been done—there’s nothing to “talk” about. Because now it’s either separation, or death.
‘Reasonable White men’ and separation
Let us study what President Thomas Jefferson writes in Notes on The State of Virginia (pub. 1782): “Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made”—and many other circumstances—“will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.”
That’s what one of the founding fathers said. And later on in his life, in his Autobiography (pub. 1821), Jefferson writes: “… Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people”—meaning us—“are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.”
In Notes on The State of Virginia, Jefferson said Blacks “should be colonized.” Just a moment, Tom. We’re not going for that part; but I’m just telling you what he said. He wrote: “… they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms … .” This is what the president [Jefferson] is saying (“We can’t let the Negroes go and not arm them.”) … [(Compare this nowadays to) the Israelis, who want a “peace deal” with the Palestinians, that the Palestinians have no arms.]
But this is a reasonable White man, who recognizes the evil that has been done, was being done, and continues to be done to us. Mr. Jefferson said, “we’ll send them out with arms,” and: “… implements of household and of the handicraft arts, seeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, to declare them a free and independent people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they [shall] have acquired strength. …” You have to say this White man was reasonable—we just correct the “colony” part.
Now let’s go to “Honest Abe,” the 16th president. Nearly a century after the founders put the slavery problem on him, Abraham Lincoln called into his office a delegation of five Washington pastors who were former slaves.
Now pastors, beloved pastors: The White man never taught you theology that you would apply the principle of equal justice to him. He taught you to be more amenable to your condition of suffering, and go out, when the slave was going to revolt: “Go and quiet them down!” That has been the traditional role of pastors. And I have to tell you, reverend: Young people today ain’t going for that at all. Not today …
In his “Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes” on August 14, 1862, Abraham Lincoln said to our Black pastors: “… You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races … your race suffers very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence.” That’s pretty rough, isn’t it? And imagine him seeing you walking down the road with his woman, ending the White man with a shot—from “the royal gun”? (Smile.)
Now we are producing an album, and Brother Snoop Dogg is on the album, and his song is the title of the album; it’s called “Let’s Change The World.” You haven’t heard it yet, but soon you’ll hear it! But one of the favorite lines is in the beginning, when Snoop says: “Now put this on the wire: The Devil is a liar.” Well, you all say that in church, but what makes him a “devil”? It’s because he starts from the basis of a lie while God starts, always, from the basis of truth. Truth is the Nature of God and the Original people, and lies is the mother tongue of The Devil.
I don’t need to tell you that somebody is in the White House that has a different mother tongue. But all of them lie—but this one … This one has made an art out of it.
‘The Flag Code’: How to respect the symbol of a (corrupt) nation without pledging your allegiance to it
Colin Kaepernick took a knee. That brother was not trying to disrespect the flag; he was disturbed over the police killings of Black and Brown people outside of the law of justice, and he wanted to draw attention to it. Because all of the evil that we have suffered, we suffered it under the Confederate flag, and we suffered it mostly under the so-called American flag. So, Colin took a knee on September 1, 2016, when the flag was presented and the national anthem was played. It has generated much controversy … But did you know that there is a code on how to respect the American flag?
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) prepared a report for members of Congress in 2009 on the federal law relating to the U.S. flag and its display, which was enacted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president, in 1942. The CRS report says the “Flag Code” is designed for the use of such civilian groups or organizations
“as may not be required to conform with regulations promulgated by one or more executive departments” of the federal government. You don’t have to conform—and there is no punishment, according to the code. Section IV of the “Flag Code” covers “The Pledge of Allegiance.” Congress has, by U.S. Code Statute 36, designated the national anthem as “The Star Spangled Banner,” and set out the proper conduct during its presentation.
But pay attention to this: No penalty or punishment is specified in the “Flag Code.” Lastly, the “Flag Code” is not a mandate of federal law: it does not proscribe [forbid] conduct, but is merely declaratory and advisory (meaning it does not give punishment). Section 8 of the Flag Code is entitled “Respect for Flag,” and it gives all the things that are in the code of disrespect for the flag. And guess what? One such act that shows disrespect for the flag reads in point no. (c): “The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.”
Now, (as we have seen during football games): Is that flag horizontal? That’s disrespect of the American flag. And when my brother takes a knee, and his brothers join him, the president of the United States calls us “sons of bitches.” Now, when I was young, say something about mom: those are fighting words, brother. And to add insult to injury, the National Football League, and the Department of Defense have been paid millions of dollars to display the flag in that way, and play the national anthem.
It leads to people joining the armed forces. It doesn’t have anything to do with “patriotism,” they get millions of dollars from the Department of Defense for displaying the flag in a disrespectful manner. It’s about money. It’s about recruiting. It’s about using the patriotic zeal of the people.
Mr. Trump has changed the narrative. Black people don’t hate the flag, as such; they don’t hate America as such, but they just wanted to draw attention to what we are suffering under the flag. And the police that shot us down, they have a flag somewhere on their uniform. When we go to court, the flag is there—and we can’t get justice. My son’s father-in-law fought in World War II, and he saw his buddies shot down, blown to pieces, on Normandy Beach. So every time he sees the flag, he stands, puts his hand over his heart; not so much for the flag, but for the noble men and women who have died for that flag.
But Mr. Trump: When did your father get here from Germany? And you so-called “patriots,” see, when you all came here from Europe, you had a country to come home to. The Statue of Liberty welcomed you: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” It never was a golden door for us.
The first man to die in the Revolutionary War that gave America a nation was a Black man. Black folk died in the War of 1812; Black folk died in the Civil War on both sides, North and South. Black brothers have died in World War I, World War II, Korean Conflict, Vietnam, and the army is full of them now.
Mr. Trump, no wonder the general is a little kind of “p.o.’d” at you; because these same Black men whose mother you referred to in such a negative way for producing giants in the world of sport and play, you’re going to be calling on them to fight the war that you’re building up to now.
I want you to understand our Position. Evidently, The Messenger saw this years ago; but the Honorable Elijah Muhammad told me you can stand for the flag out of respect for a symbol that governs a sovereign nation, because that’s what you want for yourself one day (to fly your flag over a sovereign nation of your own). But we can’t pledge allegiance.
Oh, you didn’t hear me. I can’t put my hand over my heart for you, but I’ll stand. See, I don’t take a knee; because, in the prayer service of Muslims: we bow to Allah, we kneel to Allah, we prostrate to Allah. We don’t have nothing for you like that. I’m not going out in front of the White House, and kneel down, and throw my fist up like [“Black Power”]. No, the hell with that. Your salvation is not in the house that’s called “The White House”—salvation wasn’t there when they put a Black man in there for you. It’s Jesus who saves.
