(Reprinted from the Muslim Journal 7-28-06 to 9-22-06)

“The Interests Of All People At Heart”
Interview with Imam W. Deen Mohammed

Imam Abdul Ghani: We will be speaking with our leader, Imam W. Deen Mohammed. We will be giving a Tribute for the 2006 Muslim Convention to be held here in Chicago at the Downtown Chicago Hyatt, Labor Day Weekend.

Imam W. Deen Mohammed also will be giving a Public Address at the UIC Pavilion on Racine and Harrison Street, Sun., Sept. 3, 2006. At this time, we present to you our leader, Imam W. Deen Mohammed.

Imam Mohammed: As-Salaam-Alaikum. Peace be unto you. I will begin by saying that the Nation of Islam was built by the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, with its blueprint given to the Hon. Elijah Muhammad by an Arab or a Muslim from overseas, whose name was W. Fard Muhammad and also called W. D. Fard.

It is important for us to know that Mr. Fard was interested in all African Americans. Mr. Fard came from a people in India, who were also under British rule. And many of the Indians under the British rule, their skin color was black.

It was not black people like we know black people, but their skin color was definitely black. They ranged from white to black, the whitest of white and blackest of black.

Northern Indians are of white color. They have mixed all together now. But the Indians who live in the hotter zones are black in skin color. When Mr. Fard came to America, he experienced, as he had dark color - not white skinned; he was brown skinned - some discrimination.

I think what he experienced in his own country of India under the British with his people there and what he experienced when he came to America had something to do with him accepting to assist African American people in the ghettos with their lives. He came to Detroit, Mich., to the black bottom or poor area of African American poor people.

He began teaching "separation from White people and having your own." He told the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and other African Americans whom he would teach to or speak with, that the African Americans or Blacks in America had a great past, that they came from an Islamic past. He told them they should return to their religion.

That gives you an idea of how it all started. It is important also to know that Mr. Fard had all African Americans' interests at heart. There were approximately 17 million of us exiting then, when he came in around 1930.

In his exoteric language or teaching, a kind of cult or secret language, he said that he had 17 million keys to unlock or free Black people.

When I was questioned by some investigators from the Intelligence Department here in the United States, this was just before the passing of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and I had been put out of the community (Nation of Islam) - they investigated me and told me:

"We know that your father Elijah Muhammad does not only help Muslims, we know he helps other Black people as well. He even has given charity to some Black preachers."

I was told this by them. But I also know as a son of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and as a Minister preaching for the Nation of Islam under his leadership, that the Hon. Elijah Muhammad had the interest for all Black people - not just those who were Muslims.

What I mean by that is this: He did not see Muslims only benefiting from his teachings. He saw all Black people benefiting from his teachings.

That brings me to the direction that I have taken as leader upon the passing of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad in February, 1975. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad had been successful in establishing an organization that included preaching religion and schools and education, with also a strong emphasis on building a business presence for African American people or a business life for the African American people.

His economic blueprint was called by different names. He had farmland. He had businesses in the city that he hoped would be supported by farmland, such as grocery stores and selling of meats. So the Hon. Elijah Muhammad's vision was not small in any way. His vision was community vision.

Community vision is what Islam is all about. Islam addresses us as community and asks us to accept responsibility for Community Life. So the Hon. Elijah Muhammad was really Islamic in his programs and in the designing of his programs. He was very Islamic.

Islam requires, I repeat, that Muslims belong to community life and be about establishing their own identity as a community. That has been the direction that I have followed.

It might be thought that I have differed so much with the Hon. Elijah Muhammad's teachings and his programs, that I have been charged as the one who destroyed or did away with his programs. That is not correct.

I am, however, the one who changed the thinking of his following. I thank G-d for the help I got to do that. You may be surprised to know that the biggest help I got to do that came from the Hon. Elijah Muhammad. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad always encouraged me to be a man of Scripture, not of the Bible but of the Qur'an.

He always encouraged me to be a free thinker. He did not hold me to the thinking of the Nation of Islam. He told his followers, especially his leaders, that, "He (myself) is not going to preach like the rest of you. He is going to be different. He is going to use the Qur'an."

The Hon. Elijah Muhammad prepared his leaders to accept me in my different posture that I took, a different stand and posture from the Nation of Islam, in that I came to establish Islam as it is given in the Qur'an.

This was not easy to understand, moving from Mr. Fard and the Hon. Elijah Muhammad to my leadership. It is not an easy to understand movement, if you don't understand the strategy.

Mr. Fard planned to introduce the Qur'an and real Islam in America. But he knew Blacks were militant and angry with Whites, so he sought the angry ones, the dissatisfied ones. And they were accepted and accepted his teachings, but he planted among them the Qur'an.

He didn't say for them to teach the Qur'an, but he planted it among them and told them that that was the Pure Book, The Holy Book without defect or error.

He pointed to that Book only in that way. He never gave his esoteric teachings that kind of sacred respect that he gave the Qur'an.

M. Fard prayed and toped that I would become the one to assist my father and help my father to do the work. At that time, I was just in my mother, and he left right after I was born. In the early part of 1933, I was still in my mother. And Oct. 30, 1933, I was delivered.

Mr. Fard was still in touch with my mother and father and the small community that he had started. And he sent my mother the message, saying, 'Take good care of the new arrival." He was meaning me, the new arrival. Then he was gone.

Coming back to the present time, to myself, I definitely, always, no doubt about it, have always had an interest in all African American people - in human beings period, but mostly in all African American people. And what should be expected of me other than that?

It should be expected of me that I have the interest of all African American people at heart. We have a spiritual life together as well as a racial life together.

Racially, we are tied together, because we all came from Africa originally and are all from black people. We have a history of coming from slaves to the time of being liberated and a free people.

We are a free people who have been included in the American citizenry and American society and American life. We all share that history. But we should understand that certain events in that history have had really very deep impressions upon our souls. And spirit really is an expression of the soul, mainly.

To African Americans in Detroit, I said we have a champion inside of us, and that champion is the African American Soul - referring to the experiences that we had as slaves and through lynchings and Jim Crow, etc.

We share the experiences we had both in the South and in the North as a sub-class of people, struggling to get full recognition as citizens in America.

These are the experiences, including the lynching type murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi. Emmett Till was from Chicago and that affected the North. We have suffered even in the North. Not only discrimination and deprived of opportunities given to Whites, we also suffered in the North brutal physical treatment.

That time has passed, we hope, and it will never come back. But there were insane, deranged haters of Blacks and haters of Jews, haters of Catholics and haters of anything they could find to hate. They had to hate something.

Occasionally, we will see a demonstration of that hate. Even now, it is possible to see a demonstration of that kind of hate that has lingered and stayed in some of the sick people of our society. The point is that we have experienced this.

It has touched our hearts and gone deep into our souls. And it has influenced the way we feel and the way we think and has influenced what we want to achieve as a people. We have shared that experience and are all tied together by shared experiences.

We are tied together by that, more than anything else. The black skin alone is not enough. We will find black people in Africa divided and fighting each other. The black skin cannot unite them. It is likewise for us in America.

Black skin could never unite us. It has been our shared experiences on the road to progress that has made us a people of one and the same ethos, of one and the same racial spirit.

My leadership, then, has dealt more with the psychology of our struggle, with the psychology of our behavior, more than with the physical needs that we have.

I have come to the conclusion years ago that building the psychology of the individual and building the psychology of the race's spiritual life and the mentality of the individual is the key for putting us into a situation, where we will have the spirit, the ambition, the assertiveness to tackle the hard job of changing our physical picture in our neighborhoods, where our neighborhoods depend on outsiders for business Life.

That should not be and has to stop. That really is the scene that the Hon. Elijah Muhammad was addressing, too, when he said we must build businesses in our own communities, in our own neighborhoods. And have those businesses to be quality and to survive and thrive.

We come to the conclusion now. The conclusion is that here we are in 2006 approaching our Annual Muslim Convention, that will be held at the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Chicago, and we are bringing a message of not only spirituality, which is very extremely important.

We are to recognize our own spiritual importance, so we can be successful in managing our own spirituality. This is not religious Life, but spirituality.
Manage our impulses. Manage our tendencies to give support to certain things that are no good for us. To manage those tendencies, I call it managing our own spirituality.

You have to be able to manage your own spirituality. You have to have psychological insight into the nature of your spirituality in order to manage your spirituality. That is a necessity but not what we will be addressing at the Convention.

We will be including that as a element of importance in the address for the Public Address on the Sunday of this Convention. What we will be addressing mostly is how to qualify for complete inclusion, the inclusion that the community asks for.

If we are going to be successful in establishing a community, we have to be successful as business people, as educators and responsible for the education of our little children and our bigger children, teenagers, responsible for schools and be successful as people who know how to grow in the systems of these United States, to use the systems and to benefit from the systems as other ethnic groups do.

We are going to have to be able to manage our own life, as other ethnic groups do. We have great leadership, great Christian leadership that has brought us a long way to realize inclusion as a people. But now we need inclusion as a community. Our communities are not thriving financially, so they are not strong communities. They are very weak communities.

If they are strong financially, it is because of us contributing to the tax base and because of us being a consumer people contributing to the business strength of those who come into our community - because of our own neglect, we invite them into our communities.

They come to our communities and take over businesses that were boarded up, deserted and put a strong business there and bring in new life. One example is Madison Street on the West Side of Chicago. We traveled down Madison Street, and it is not the deserted business artery that it was some several years ago.

Very recently, life has come to Madison Street that separates the North Side from the South Side and runs down through the African American neighborhoods and communities. It is alive because of Indians from India and Pakistanis from Pakistan that borders on India. And there are Africans, Whites and some Arabs all doing big business on that property.

The consumers, the buyers, are African Americans - us. We are the ones keeping those people in business. That is not to attack them, no. They have the right to come in and do business. America is a free country, and we believe in free enterprise.

But that does not excuse us from the shame of neglect on our part, that we did not go in there and did not bring business life to our own neighborhoods. As the Hon. Elijah Muhammad said, we must continue his way of addressing the needs of African American people.

There is not only the spiritual and moral need, which is strong and is first. But also there is the material and business need. I have followed the excellent life patterns and community life patterns that have been established by the teacher of my father, as a blueprint, Mr. Fard.

And I followed the good works of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad. I hope that as his son and as the leader of many of those who followed him, I am continuing in the best traditions of the neighborhood concerns of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad.

I also hope that I am traveling in the traditions of the Universal Messenger Prophet, a Mercy to all people, Muhammed the Prophet of Mecca, who was preaching on this earth about 1,400 years ago.

We are in the Islamic Calendar now of 1427, since the migration of Muhammed and his followers to Medinah, where he set up a model of community that has become an international model for Muslim community life all over the world.

We pray the traditional salute to him, The Peace and The Blessings upon our Prophet, and what follows of that traditional salute to The Last Prophet.

We are hoping to have the most impressive Convention ever (Sept. 1-3), this year 2006 at the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Chicago. And come see and hear me, please, on Sunday (Sept. 3) at the U.I.C. Pavilion on Harrison and Racine Streets. See you there, G-d Willing.

Questions and Answers:

Imam Shaheed Abdul Ghani: Brother Imam, when did you know that you had to prepare for this Mission?

Imam Mohammed: When did I know for certain that I had to prepare for this Mission, for my leadership to continue the work of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad? I was told that all of my life. I can't remember a time when I wasn't told that.

My mother would remind me. My sister, Lottie, is still living; my sister Ethel has passed. Lottie and Ethel would remind me; I am about 7 or 8 years old or younger. They would say, "You have to remember that you are supposed to help your father."

You know they called Mr. Fard their Savior and we had Savior's Day. They would say, "Our Savior gave you his name." Rayyah, also called Lottie before, would say, "Mr. Fard wrote your name on the door. And I would have to go over it with the chalk to keep it bright."

My mother would say, "Son, you are not to be like other boys." And "like other boys," she meant I was not to let my spirit go to the streets. I am not to be one of the guys on the street with the street spirit. She would say, "You are to be different."

I heard that all of the time. And she would say, "Our Savior said you are to help your father in his work." Now she was telling this to a little child, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 years old.

I remember myself at 5 and 6 years old sitting on the front row in the Temple,
Freedom, Justice and Equality." They said that so much, I couldn't forget it.

Here I am now as a teenager with a mustache and my father says, "You have a mustache now and you have to join the men."

He would take me with him to business meetings and even to meetings where he had to make serious decisions on whether to keep this person in a position or to fire him.

I was there as a young teenager hearing all of that talk. And I said to myself, "Daddy really doesn't want to lose us; he wants to keep his sons with him." Later on as I look back after progressing in my own thinking, and as I accepted more responsibility when more responsibility was given to me, I say, "That man was wise! He was actually preparing me to assist him in the leadership."

The Hon. Elijah Muhammad was very wise. He let me see the kinds of things that came at him and how he dealt with those things. It was not at any of those times that I became aware of the heavy decisions I had to make to take on the responsibility of leading my father's followers. Never did that come into my mind.

Not even when I was preaching as a Minister, from about 1951 or 1952 until I went to prison in about 1960 and then came out. I was a Minister responsible for Temple No. 12 in Philadelphia, Penn. Even then, that did not come to my mind.

Only when my father began to show sickness, then I began to worry about the future of the Nation of Islam. That was when I started to take it serious. That was in the early 1970s or maybe starting out in 1968 and 1969.

Freedom is an important thing; you don't forget freedom, the day I was released from prison. I may forget the day they locked me up, but I will never forget the day they let me go. That was Jan. 10, 1963. When I was released, it was on parole. I was turned down for parole the first time, but the second time I made parole.

I was a parolee, not free to do just anything. I had to report to my parole officer. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad advised me to be low key and not to go on the rostrum. I could not do that anyway; the conditions of my parole would not allow me to do that. I was not supposed to preach to the Nation of Islam on the separation from Whites - not during my parole time served.

Not even then did I see myself becoming responsible for the followers of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and carrying on his tradition. But at that time, I did worry about the future of the Nation of Islam. Certain things had occurred in Philadelphia, Detroit and some other places that had given the Muslims a bad face.

There were charges of dope pushers contributing money to the Nation of Islam out of Philadelphia, Detroit, the Kansas City area and some other places, with a type of Black Mafia forming inside the following of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, which was very serious, very troubling for any of us who heard that. Most of the believers, I don't think they heard that.

The law enforcement knew about it, and top officials in the Nation of Islam knew about it. Some of the followers had to know about it, if they were in Detroit, Philadelphia and the Kansas City area. I did start to worry about the future of the Nation of Islam during that time.

That was during the late 1960s. So by 1971 or 1972, I was free from obligation to my parole, and I also was free to start preaching again. My father let me back in. As you know, I differed with some things - with Mr. Fard being G-d or a man being G-d.

It was not that I didn't love or appreciate the man. But I saw that having the religion correct was more important than having the man in a certain picture. We should take him out of the picture of G-d and put him in the picture of a social reform teacher.

I was making those changes, not in opposition to my father. I knew better than that. I told Malcolm, "Nobody can oppose the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and keep his following. If you oppose him, you will lose his following.'' I knew that and told Malcolm that.

I wasn't being a foe to the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, trying to take his place. I even had a foreign Muslim to tell me once, "You don't put two swords in one sheath." I did not reply to him. He was saying, "You cannot be boss; the Hon. Elijah Muhammad was boss."

I don't know what put that in his mind. Maybe he was trying to plant the seed of division in my mind. Maybe he was cleaver enough to try to do that. But I didn't respond to him, and I didn't like him at all for saying that.

I had friends and relatives who were very close to me, and they would be asking serious questions sometimes and sometimes evidencing that they had difficulty accepting certain things that they were taught.

I am thinking that I am among trustworthy friends and just sharing with them that what was not correct was Mr. Fard; he couldn't be G-d. I said that he invited us to Islam, and Islam has a Book that is the Authority for Islam. It is the Qur'an, and the Qur'an does not allow that we say any man is G-d.

That was the worse crime we could commit; to say that G-d is a man, according to our Qur'an. I would tell them that, and it got back to the lieutenants and captains and that's how I got put out. They brought it to the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, who called me into question.

He said, "Son, we have some charges against you. You are charged with saying that our Savior is not G-d. Who is G-d?" That is exactly the way he spoke to me. I said, "Daddy, you have the Qur'an and you have more knowledge of the Qur'an than most of us." Then I said, "I won't answer that question."

It didn't make him comfortable, but I wasn't going to pull a sword out and start fighting him. I came to help him, not to fight him. Then he put me out. And I knew about the drugs, and there was Malcolm's passing.

I said, "Wow! It is going to take a lot to keep these people." That was when I started to thinking seriously about it.

Bro. Morocco: At that point when you became serious about it, did you have a specific strategy to go about working with us to bring us through certain transitions, because you knew the condition we were in?

Imam Mohammed: Yes. When I was put out, I knew that the following would have to be saved: Saved from in fighting and saved from the attacks from the outside on us, on what we believed and on what we were all about. I knew that.

I went into deep studies. I said to myself that most of the following of the Nation of Islam had been taught the Bible and to see themselves like the Jews, persecuted and needing to come out from under the rule of their persecutors into an environment and authority of their own.

I said to myself that I am going to have to study the Bible. I was not a Bible Minister; I was a Qur'an Minister. But I said I was going to have to study the Bible and get familiar with the Bible.

And I did. I have told that story more than once and will not go over it again today.

I studied the Bible and came to the conclusion of how I should use the Bible, if I used it at all. I was already familiar with the Qur'an. But I obligated myself to study the secret teachings of Mr. Fard. I knew I had to study that, and I did.

That signaled me to mythologies of the world. I went to libraries and traveled out of Illinois. I traveled to libraries in other states looking for books.

I found books on mythology in different places and read the mythology of the Asian people, of African people and tribes - like Egyptian mythology.

All of this coming together was not my genius, but it was the Assistance of G-d. G-d was assisting me and giving me signals from Mr. Fard's teachings and signals from the Qur'an and signals from the Bible.

All these signals given to me were for me to do this kind of vast research and digesting or extracting from all of that research what I thought would be my strategy and a successful strategy to bring the following of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad out of a language prison to freedom.

Q: In reference to the advancement in our community, how do you see that advancement in terms of understanding religion and advancement in Islamic Studies and the Qur'anic Arabic? And also explain when you say, "We are a new people."

Imam Mohammed: Yes, we are a people shaped by our experience and community environment. In the Bible and in the Qur'an, there were people who were rejected by the society that they were in. And those people were backed by G-d to make a cultural and spiritual transition, an exodus, and find a new life.

We are a people like this, and we were forced almost to seek a new life because of being separated so completely from any conscious traditions that we had in Africa. We were not following any traditions that our people had in Africa. Slavery had obliterated and erased all of that.

We were uprooted, in being transported from Africa to the plantations. We had no recognition and no way to retreat, no way to return to Africa. Mr. Fard acknowledged that, when he said, "They could not swim 9,000 miles to go back home." He meant it was impossible for our minds to go back to Africa and start all over again.

We would have to pick up our lives here and build a life for ourselves. This will be our new origin, our new genesis. I gave a lecture once in New York on "The New Genesis for the African American People."

When I was preaching for the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, it began to vibrate very strong inside of my spirit that, "Hey, we have to recognize that we are a new people. We are not like any other people in America."

All of these people are tied to past traditions and life and culture and everything. We are not, so we are a new people. We are a new people born on this soil.

The first Americans, called American Indians, were here before the White man. And history says that they came to this land also. At that time, it was not populated, and they came here and populated this land.

Here we are brought here as slaves and completely separated from our past, babies taken from mommies and daddies and raised just to be workers on plantations with no ties to home life at all. Home life was slave life, and that is all it was.

Gradually, we became acquainted with Christianity and became Christians. But actually the big movement of the church didn't start, until we were freed from the plantations.

It started with the African Episcopalian Church. And they are a new people. They have a Christian origin that began in the soil of the South, as all of us have our origin beginning in the South.

So I said, "We are a new people." That helped me so much, when I accepted that we are a new people. Our history begins in America. Our history begins in the South and in the North as new people. So if we are a new people, then G-d is obligated to help us and work with us.

In the Bible, G-d asks the question: "Will a man rob G-d?" And G-d speaking said, "You have robbed Me of this whole people." I began to see that as being something that we should be concerned with more than even the Jews. G-d is speaking of the Jews in the Bible, that the world had robbed Him of them. They were under Egypt and Pharaoh and the world had taken them.

Yes, the world had taken them, but they were still in touch with their religious life. They were still in touch with their religious history.

Here the world had robbed G-d of a people again, but they had robbed more than the synagogue, robbed more than the church, robbed more than the mosque. You robbed the cradle; you robbed the birthplace.

You went and took the baby out of the cradle and took him away from all that he was familiar with and carted him off to a new environment and new circumstances, where he had no way of being in touch with the religious life that he once had, with the business life that he once had, with the political life that he once had.

He had no way to go back to any of this. He had no way to recall any religious connections or anything else. This was the most thorough theft of a people that had ever occurred on the planet earth. So we are a new people.

If we just register that and understand that, we will go forward. We don't even need the help from G-d. Your own nature will push you forward and will urge you to go forward.

A baby learns how to walk on its own intelligence, power and energy. A baby learns how to crawl, how to stand up, how to walk, and learns our language and how to talk on its own energy.

What is that energy? It is the energy of new life. So if we accept that we are a new people, we will have the energy of new life helping us. Now, if you believe in Scripture like I do, you will also know that G-d is on your side.

On one Convention, I said, "We can not stop now." And we can not stop now! With the light on, we have to build the leadership for Islam in America. We have to do it in America, and we are doing it for the whole world.

Q: Since you have come into leadership, you have met with so many world leaders. You have met with the Pope John Paul II of Rome, Italy. You have met with one of the Kings of Saudi Arabia. You also met with more than one of the Presidents of the United States of America.

Imam Mohammed: I said, "We are a new people." That helped me so much, when I accepted that we are a new people. Our history begins in America. Our history begins in the South and in the North as new people. So if we are a new people, then G-d is obligated to help us and work with us.

In the Bible, G-d asks the question: "Will a man rob G-d?" And G-d speaking said, "You have robbed Me of this whole people." I began to see that as being something that we should be concerned with more than even the Jews. G-d is speaking of the Jews in the Bible, that the world had robbed Him of them. They were under Egypt and Pharaoh and the world had taken them.

Yes, the world had taken them, but they were still in touch with their religious life. They were still in touch with their religious history. Here the world had robbed G-d of a people again, but they had robbed more than the synagogue, robbed more than the church, robbed more than the mosque. You robbed the cradle; you robbed the birthplace.

You went and took the baby out of the cradle and took him away from all that he was familiar with and carted him off to a new environment and new circumstances, where he had no way of being in touch with the religious life that he once had, with the business life that he once had, with the political life that he once had.

He had no way to go back to any of this. He had no way to recall any religious connections or anything else. This was the most thorough theft of a people that had ever occurred on the planet earth. So we are a new people.

If we just register that and understand that, we will go forward. We don't even need the help from G-d. Your own nature will push you forward and will urge you to go forward.

A baby learns how to walk on its own intelligence, power and energy. A baby learns how to crawl, how to stand up, how to walk, and learns our language and how to talk on its own energy.

What is that energy? It is the energy of new life. So if we accept that we are a new people, we will have the energy of new life helping us. Now, if you believe in Scripture like I do, you will also know that G-d is on your side.

On one Convention, I said, "We Can Not Stop Now." And we can not stop now! With the light on, we have to build the leadership for Islam in America. We have to do it in America, and we are doing it for the whole world.

Q: Since you have come into leadership, you have met with so many world leaders. You have met with Pope John Paul II of Rome, Italy. You have met with one of the Kings of Saudi Arabia. You also met with more than one of the Presidents of the United States of America.

During the course of this period, how essential do you see the meetings with them in enhancing us in the role that you have been trying to take us?

Imam Mohammed: Again, it is the doings of G-d. In the religious experience, people who were searching for themselves and who wanted to discover where they should be under G-d, people who were searching for their destiny under G-d, if they have had a liberator - I don't want to point to myself in this way, but I have to - that liberator has been fortunate to be put in circumstances where that liberator talks to the top ruler in the land.

Joseph of the Bible, or Yusuf - the same Joseph of the Qur'an, and Moses, Muhammed, you name them. Jesus Christ, anyone who was important to G-d to lead the people's lives had to meet with the top rulers. G-d knows the little boy needs to meet with the big men, so he can see what's to them.

But my thoughts of being rejected were much stronger than my thoughts of being welcomed to The Vatican, to be in the presence of the Pope. But I said to myself that I had heard that The Rev. Jesse Jackson was a guest of The Vatican at one time. So just on the strength of my friend, Jesse Jackson, being accepted, I said I was going to make a try.

I expressed a desire. And someone may say, and I can understand it, "Why would the son of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, a Muslim, want to go to overseas to Rome, Italy, The Vatican and be a guest visiting the Pope of Catholicism, of the Catholic Church or the Catholic world under the Roman Catholic Church?"

So I knew it would be looked at as strange and people would wonder why. But I said to myself, "If the Hon. Elijah Muhammad's son is accepted in The Vatican to have an audience with the Pope, the Head of the Catholic Church, that is going to make news everywhere. That is going to say that he is different. He must
like Christians. He must don't have anything against Christians. He visited the Pope."

And it turned out to be much more in it for me than I thought. It became much more than I expected. But that alone was enough for me. If it hit the news that I visited the Pope and came there as a Muslim, but also as a Muslim who came in friendship, to speak with the Pope and have an audience with the Pope, that would free my community to move throughout the United States and be more accepted by Christians.

This is important, because this is a Christian country. It is extremely important that we go in friendship and move friendly through these United States with our Christian brothers and sisters.

I (Imam Shaheed [Abdul Ghani) was blessed to be with you on the trip when you delivered the message in Rome at The Vatican. You would have to be there to feel the impact of the people's response of your presence there.

Imam Mohammed: Some Christian brothers openly befriend us, and they have done that since the time of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, from the time of Malcolm and further. This came from the Christian leadership.

I know there are some of them who are asking, "He grew up with us and he knows us. He went through the Civil Rights Movement with us. So why did he go to The Vatican?"

If there is any question in the minds of our people of whether I prefer Catholicism over Protestantism, I have to admit that the decision will crucify me. It is because I'll have one arm going out to one and the other arm going out to the other, and I will be stretched forever.

And the center will never change. The center is Ka'bah. The center is qiblah. The center is Abraham and the House that he built. The center is Muhammed and his community. The center is Al-Islam. I don't want to be crucified.

I love all good people. I am no more interested in Catholicism than I am in Protestantism, when it comes to supporting what is right and good.

Q: One of the things that helped a lot of us, who listen to you as your students, is to see you have the interest and the concern for the whole of humanity. At the same time, you have the understanding of all of the pressure and all of the punishment, as you were explaining a few minutes ago of all that we have gone through.

Really, you want to reach out to everybody. Is that necessary in order for us to be changed? Because if the atmosphere still exists, perhaps it will never change.

Imam Mohammed: Christ asked no less of the followers of the Christians. For Muslims, our G-d and Muhammed our Prophet ask no less of us, that we have a heart that can have room in it for every person on this earth - for all people.

This is strong language in both the Bible and the Qur'an, urging us to become charitable and open hearted, where our hearts open up to accommodate all people and to welcome all people.

But I have to say this also, that I am a product of my people's experiences, of the African American people's experiences as a people, coming from slavery to freedom. I am a product of that road and that experience, and that has worked positively in me to work with all human beings.

The issue is not how they treated a certain color, the issue is how they treated human beings. And all people are human beings. I am a fruit of Islam, and I am a fruit of the African American experiences — at the same time.

Q: One question was asked of us, and it was how essential is it to you or what is the big difference when we were saying "Islam" and you changed it to "Al-Islam"?

Imam Mohammed: Yes. It is important for students of the Qur'an to know the difference. When you say "Islam," you are talking about how I perceive, as a person, Islam and how Islam is in my mind personally.

G-d addresses that in the Qur'an, where He refers to "your Islam." This is really exposing those who have their own ideas about what Islam is.

G-d says, "/ have preferred for you the religion of Al-Islam," Here, it is not "Islam." It is "Al-Islamu Been." Al-Islam is your religion.

To say house and the house have different meanings. So Islam and The (Al) Islam have different meanings.

Q: Imam Mohammed, can you give a closing statement regarding your mission of peace?

Imam Mohammed: The mission of peace is the responsibility of all people who claim G-d is the Authority over their interest. If they claim G-d to be over their works and interest, then their mission on this earth should be a mission of peace - not war.

Prophet Muhammed said, "The ink of the scholar is more precious than the blood of the martyr who loses his life on the battlefield for G-d's Sake." G-d recognizes that and gives him great reward for that sacrifice.

Muhammed the Prophet, recognizing the importance of the martyr being willing to sacrifice his mortal life, addressed that.

The Prophet's saying is to call the Muslim following to this great deed, this great sacrifice that's done by an individual in the Cause of G-d -where he sacrifices his life. He takes his life in battle; this is usually where he takes it. He doesn't actually kill himself.

But he is at war and fighting to defend his religion, against persecution. He fights simply because it is in our Holy Book that "persecution is worse than outright killing." One translator of Qur'an puts it, "Persecution is worse than slaughter."

The Prophet addressed that, because that could be trouble down the road, where Muslims would be coming and wanting to go to Paradise or have Paradise.

Even some sinners would say, "If I do this, G-d will forgive me all my sins. If I go to war and fight and risk my own life and die in the Cause, that is good. And I will get the Paradise."

That is said; that you will get the Paradise for defending the Cause, and if you are killed you will go straight to Paradise. If many Muslims now come from sinning and other influences, and some will come too who are sane and want to have Paradise and will go and join the army....

This is an attraction for a lot of people to join the war, to join the army and become warriors and to fight. The Prophet is a man of peace, and I think one of the main purposes is to take some of the importance away from that - so many Muslims will not be attracted to war but be attracted to education.

Prophet Muhammed said, "The ink of the scholar is more important than the blood of the martyr." You don't think the Prophet had insight on the Blood of Jesus Christ and what it meant? That his real blood is education, not blood that is spilled out of an animal. G-d blessed him with that insight.

Prophet Muhammed was addressing the language to educate the scholars and at the same time addressing the blind spirit that could come into his followers and make them go to war, instead of going to education.

The great crowd should be coming to education, not to war. Education makes for peace. Education has opened the world for freedom, justice and equality.

Education is a necessary actor for industrializing society, for keeping it industrious and progressing.

Without education, we would be back in savagery. The great liberator is the ink of the scholar, not the blood of the martyr. That's the peaceful way, that's the best way, that's the most productive way. That's the way that liberates man - not any other way.

Are you waiting for the Peace? As-Salaam-Alaikum.