JABRIL.MUHAMMAD
More columns by Jabril Muhammad
The headline of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s article, of Volume 28 Number 7 issue of The Final Call reads, “Farrakhan Answers The World On President-Elect Barack Obama.”
I was blessed to produce an article in that issue of The Final Call. I have never written a headline. The editorial staff wrote this one that reads: Allah Writes On The Hearts And Souls Of His Servants.
I hope to bear witness, how this certainly applies to a man, right in our midst–Minister Farrakhan, in my next article, Allah willing.
In the Holy Qur’an Surah 64:11 reads, “No calamity befalls but by Allah’s permission. And whoever believes in Allah, He guides his heart. And Allah is Knower of all things.”
Now, back to a section in Closing The Gap of Minister Farrakhan’s trials.
“The believers would bring old clothes and put it on the steps of the house. My wife would take them in and wash and iron them and my children would have clothes to wear. We used to buy dresses at the Salvation Army and slips and things like that.
“I remember going on Saturday nights to the market place in Boston, K Market Square, where the end of the day when the merchant didn’t sell all of his produce. They would throw them in the street. My wife and I would get our shopping bags and go down and pick up food out of the street and fill our shopping bag and come back and feed our ever growing family.
“At no time did he tell me that I could get a hundred dollars a week, if it did not come into the administration charity that was to support the minister. I would not go into the rent treasury or the general treasury or other treasuries to make up the hundred dollars. I made my family and I suffice for whatever the believers gave me.
“Trial. The trial of poverty.
“As the Mosque grew, I was blessed to be able to introduce music but on an Islamic base using the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. So a play that I had written in 1956 in New York, I added to it other scenes and things and it became ‘Orgena’–a negro spelled backward.
“I used the talented believers of Mosque No. 11 and they were so highly spirited and the Mosque just grew and grew and grew. So I remember I was invited to Chicago and the Messenger came in the living room. He told me that one of the sisters had accused me of stealing her play and I was getting all this honor for my play when, in fact, I had taken the idea from a play that she had written. So the Messenger asked me, ‘Is that true Brother?’ I said, ‘No sir, Dear Apostle.’ So he said, ‘Oh, ok, well I’ll deal with it at the dinner table.’
“That night at the dinner table I was surrounded by Sharrieff. I didn’t know when they put Sharrieff to sit next to you, who was the Supreme Captain of the nation, that that was the sign that you were about to go on trial. If you did not respond well to the trial, you will be removed, not only from the premises, but removed from your post, etc.
“I got the soup down. Then he raised the questions. He was questioning me, from my vantage point, as though I was actually guilty of stealing the sister’s play. And like a prosecuting attorney he went after me. Every time he would say, ‘And didn’t you do such and such?’ I said, ‘No sir, dear Apostle.’ He said, ‘Well didn’t Brother Malcolm come and show you her play and then you?’ I said, ‘No sir, dear Apostle.’
“My voice was getting softer and softer and his voice getting sterner and sterner. Then Mother Clara Muhammad burst in and said, ‘Well he said he didn’t do it.’ In other words, ‘Will you leave him alone?’ You know, she saw that I was a good little minister and she felt that I may not pass such a test. So she was going to step in and he was just going after me.
“Then I got tired of saying, ‘No sir’ like I’m arguing and disagreeing with him. I said, ‘Well dear Apostle, it’s whatever you say I did that’s what it is.’ He said, ‘Well alright then.’ He threw his handkerchief down on the table. Then I’m dazed. I’m like a man that’s been hit with combination punches and I’m reeling on the rope and the bell rings. They have to come and get me and take me to the corner and throw water and ice to revive me.
“He let it stay, you know, like that for a few seconds, it seems. Then he said, ‘Brother I was defending you all the time.’ I didn’t understand that kind of defense. So he said, ‘Brother when did you write your play?’ I said, ‘1956.’ He said, ‘Well the sister didn’t come in the Temple until 1958.’ He said, ‘I was trying to get you to say that she stole her play from you.’ I said, ‘Dear Apostle, I couldn’t say any such thing as that, because I’m sure neither she nor I knew anything about the history of John Hawkins until we heard you. So in reality all that she and I did was take your teaching and put it in a way that is familiar with those of us who are in some form of show business or something like that.’
“He looked around the table as if to say, you see, here’s a man that I’m trying to set-up to charge somebody else with what they charged him with and he said he could never do that because all of us got this teaching from him.
“Wallace D. Muhammad was at the table that night. When it was over the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to me, ‘You and my son Wallace go and mop up the wilderness.’ It was probably in 1960–1959 or 1960 right in there. Trial.”
(I’m working, on my article that relates to an experience I had in the hospital in 2007 concerning Minister Farrakhan’s unique power of speech.)
More next issue, Allah willing.
