1979-May-11

Bilalian News

The Freedom Movement Lives: Part 3

Imam W. D. Muhammad

With the Name Allah (In the Name of God), the Gracious, the Compassionate

As-Salaam-Alaikum

(Editor's Note: Following are excerpts from Mujeddid Wallace Deen Muhammad’s 4th Sunday address delivered at Masjid Elijah Muhammad in Chicago, March 25, 1979 -- Continued from last week.)

All praise is due to Almighty God, the guardian evolver and sustainer of all the worlds. The blessings and peace be upon Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah to us all.

O Allah, guide us, forgive us our faults, and grant us the blessings of faith. I bear witness there is no deity except Allah, and I bear witness Muhammad is His Servant and His Messenger. Peace be upon him, his descendants, his companions, the righteous servants, all of them, and upon us in America and throughout the world:

You can have all the resources you need but if you don't have the correct vision, there is no progress.

We have had leaders with partial vision, seeing part of the needs, seeing one side of the problem, but now the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Dr. King - the civil rights movement and the movement to dignify the social creature, up from slavery — have come together and there's balanced vision in this leadership.

The opportunities are here. Nothing is holding us back now but your allegiance. This government that had a face of Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde—a diabolic drooling beast on one side of his personality and a democratic minded society on the other; that could bring out either face it wanted for the circumstances to keep us in hell-has purged its blood and accepted to be a human personality with one face for all the citizens of this country.

The ugly signs of Jim-Crow days have gone from the South. Emmitt Till would not be crucified now the way he was. He might find it more pleasant in the South now than in many of the northern quarters.

I've been to the South and I find more hospitality there, more welcome, more genuine human sentiments than I find in many northern cities.

We have  lived  to see Eisenhower,  a Republican  President bring out the National Guard to threaten and punish his own  people at  the  point  of a  bayonet. Threatening them with death if they stand in the way of our justice.

We have seen a great President Kennedy assassinated because of the stand he took for justice in this country. We have seen his brother, the Attorney-General, assassinated because of his firm attitude toward justice.

They couldn't bargain with those men. They couldn't bribe those men. They couldn't force them to back up.

They were men who died for the cause of justice in this country. That meant they died for the cause of our justice also. The   courts   are   on   record   for   standing up for all the rights of every citizen equally.

This is a new day in America, but a big price was paid. The leaders of the establishment paid with their lives and our leaders have paid with their lives. Sacrifices — spirit, anguish of mind and soul all went into the price that was paid in addition to the loss of physical life. Dr. King was assassinated. Malcolm X was assassinated. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was assassinated.

Yes, he was assassinated, too. It wasn't a gun that killed him. It was infiltrators -the pressure of infiltration of the Nation of Islam that made him weak in mind and body, that made his willpower weak so that sickness took over his body and caused his death.

The same forces that killed President Kennedy and his brother, the same forces that killed Dr. King are the same forces that killed the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

They didn't do it with a bullet. No! But they did it all the same.

Corrupt elements from a corrupt society and a corrupt government came into the Nation of Islam and virtually imprisoned the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, fed his weaknesses, fed his lust and deprived him of his good nature, his good tendencies, deprived him of his aspirations of realizing anything at all and gave vent only to his weaknesses. They came in and destroyed the moral and virtuous achievements of the Nation of Islam.

And in time they destroyed our leadership. They even found their way into the private lives of the civil rights leaders and corrupted them the same way they corrupted the leadership of the Nation of Islam.

This is had and good. It's bad that we would have these weaknesses. It's also bad that a society would be so wicked as to exploit our weaknesses.

It's good that Allah has revealed to us a weakness and a wickedness that will keep ps on guard for the future.

Let me quote the words of one of our slave ancestors, a woman by the name of Julia. Responding to the cruelties she had witnessed as an African - American slave. She said, "White people look like God in the face, but act like the devil in their heart."

See how this was hinted before the Honorable Elijah Muhammad spoke it? It was in the ancestral spirit. When the opportunity came it had to come out!

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, "You're a race of white devils." It had to come out because our innocent souls could not understand a human being that cruel unless he had become possessed by the devil himself.

A lot of you don't understand my leadership yet. "His father taught that the white man was the devil. He says he's not the devil."

I say he is the devil!

But not all of them. And you're the devil, but not all of you.

At one point in our history, we were so much subdued and overwhelmed by the white man's power that we had no room to be devils. So the only devil here was the white devil. With freedom came room for us to be devils. Now we have all kinds of devils here in America.

I hope you'll never forget the words of that slave woman, Miss Julia. In her words is a revelation. I mean that God let that woman's words stay here until today as a sign.

A sign of what? A sign that the Caucasian Western world gave us their image as the image of God—gave us a Caucasian image on a cross as the image of God.

It made the slaves think Caucasians were in the image of God more than we were because they looked more like the image on the cross.

And that woman speaking out in innocence said, "They look like god in their faces,"—meaning they look like Jesus—the image she thought was the face of God—"but act like the devil in their heart."

That woman suffering great anguish of mind and spirit, trying to reconcile, trying to understand—"How could a people looking like Jesus more than I do be so far from being righteous?

I'm telling you, that is a prophetic statement. Of all that I say today, I'm trying to point out this—God has been in this struggle all the way! We haven't been deciding. God has been deciding for us all the way!

Nat Turner didn't receive a revelation on Mt. Sinai or any other mountain, but he was an instrument of God to bring this freedom movement closer to its destiny.

He showed the Caucasians that although overwhelmingly outnumbered, thoroughly subdued, having no hope to do anything, "I will commit suicide." He knew that would kill him. But he did it.

Nat Turner—your genes are in me! You didn't lose out, we are all here together.

How else can you inherit an ancestor except that you inherit his hope, his spiritual needs, his social yearnings, his economic and political ambitions? Those who have inherited the aspirations of their upright and courageous ancestors—in them our ancestors rejoice! This is nothing spooky, this is reality.

We are trying to review what has happened historically in the leadership that is behind us in hopes of better appreciating the great opportunities that we have today.

Sometimes you have to go back and count your sheep to realize your blessings. (Splinting your sheep means counting those you lost and those you still have.

To become a free social being in the context of American history means that you have to have selfhood. You have to gain selfhood and you have to gain the ability to evolve self along the same lines of historical, social, cultural development that the other world societies came along.

Do you think that I have abandoned that? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad saw the need, but it's my mission. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad never realized it, he just gave you a superficial dress of achievement: the selfhood is being built now.

These past four years of leadership. growing on the foundation that was laid by Dr. Fard Muhammad, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Dr. King and the Freedom Movement, has brought you spiritually, mentally and intellectually into new birth.

Everyone who has embraced what I've taught and not fought it can bear witness with me that you have a new mind! A new spirit! A new vision! A new light on what you are!

You can travel about now in the world of yourself and locate most of your members in the world of yourself. You have achieved a sense of selfhood!

They can put you on an island away from all human beings and you can live on that Island and find peace.

That's the man God created and that's the man God brought back through this leadership.

God didn't want us to fall short of this blessing. Salvation and liberation has to go beyond civil rights, equality before the courts; it has to go beyond that, even beyond economic strength.

I could talk to you until the sun goes down and comes up again. Almighty God knows this is what I love. This is what my soul has been hungering for over 400 years in the genes of my ancestors that are with me.

Allah is the perfect being. Allah is all righteous, truthful — no imperfections in Allah. Allah is Supreme and Perfect without any imperfections.

O Allah. Make us of those who purify themselves and of those who repent, and guide us in your path. Amen.

Peace be to you
Your brother in service to Allah,
Wallace Deen Muhammad