1981-June 19

Bilalian News

Descendants from Adam

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from Imam Warith Deen Muhammad's publication, "As The Light Shineth From The East." Bilalian News takes this opportunity to provide its reading public with brief glimpses of this historical work. We not only recommend that everyone purchase a personal copy, but also additional copies for friends and relatives.)

Again, Allah says, in the Quran, that you all are descendants from Adam, and Adam was made from dust. What is Allah telling us this for? To let us know that no man, no race, no ethnic group has any grounds for boasting of a superiority over another. Maybe I could trace my history back to the great history or to the great life of Sinmutsin, the great architect, the great builder who built pyramids for Hatshepsut, the Egyptian queen in ancient Egypt, Maybe I can trace my history — my ancestry back to Mina, the great Pharaoh that started the pyramid building.

The first Bilalian mentioned in American history is in the late centuries of the Egyptian dynasty. But, the Egyptians themselves say that Mina, the father of pyramid building, was a Bilalian. Why shouldn't he be? Isn't that the continent of Bilalian people? Why shouldn't he have been a Bilalian?

Dear beloved people, the Holy Quran lets us know that we're foolish trying to trace some superiority back in time. You might run into some greatness and superiority, but keep tracing and you're going to run into your inferiority, God shows us, He doesn't tell us. God never gives us the whole history of our existence to let us know how human beings came into existence. He shows us every time a child is born. That baby is born from a thick water—again, the teachings of the Quran— and from the matter that is in the ovaries of the mother. They come together and the baby begins to gradually evolve into human form. He takes on the physical human form in the womb of his mother. But he doesn't become a thinking, growing intelligent being until he's delivered out of his mother into the world of physical messages from God's physical environment and comes under the guidance of his mother and his father, and sisters and brothers of his community.

So, you want to know how you came about? God is showing you every time a baby is born. You want to see your origin? Look at the sperm, and if you can, look at the ovum. You'll find out where you came from.

How should we deal with the question of racism? Deal with it the same way we have to deal with the Bible—with a rational mind. Approach it rationally and scientifically. Treat it with knowledge, not with emotionalism, and explain it so that a child could understand his blackness if he's black or his whiteness if he's white. That's how we have to deal with it.

COLOR: SUPERIOR / INFERIOR?

In our textbooks now, we're trying to get rid of the racist feelings, or prevent racist feelings from coming into the children, by showing Bilalian and Caucasian children living together in peace, working in peace, and playing in peace. Will that do the job? No. Why? Because that's a picture of some people living together. If the racism is in the public that child is going to grow up to see that the book is a contradiction and not the reality. They go to school and the nice pictures are there. The child goes back home and hears the mother saying: "I hate them honkeys, 1 hate them white pigs," and the little Caucasian child perhaps hears his old bigoted mother saying: "What they should do is send those niggers back to Africa; or enslave them all again." What effect can the book have when the real world is full of racism? No effect. And you can't change people by simply creating a picture of what you want.

The way to change it is to teach the people to follow truth, to obey truth, to respect truth and follow it. Teach them to interpret and understand problems of racism as a doctor of anthropology would understand it. The facts that speak to racism from anthropology, from our sciences, are not above the heads of the elementary child, or the high school student. We have to design textbooks that deal with racism in a scientific way. We have to tell children at a very early age the truth about the origin of their color, the texture of their hair, their features and everything. You might say, well, do we know anything about that? Yes, we do. Get a good book on anthropology. Study physiology, and you'll see that a lot of these explanations are given in the books that we have presently.

We know that the sun is the painter that paints the color of creation. The sun gives color to the flowers, to the plants, to the animals, even to stones, and the sun has given us our color. Your whole make-up-how you look, your colors, your features, the texture of your hair, and your skin, everything—is determined by your physical environment. What you eat, what you drink, the climate where you live, the temperature; the dryness of the air or the humidity in the air; the cold and the heat, the intensity of the sun—all of these things form color and shape, plus language.

Even your language gives shape or gives features to your face. If you speak a language that's greatly different, then you're going to look different even though you have the same climate. Everything else can be the same, but if the language is greatly different, then the people in time would have different features because the habit of using your mouth in a certain way is going to make your mouth grow in a certain way.

If you live in a hot climate that is humid, the volume of air, the unit of air has less oxygen in it than the same unit of air in a cold climate that is not as humid. The humidity takes up the space in the air, and the heat expands the molecules of air, and makes the volume have less oxygen in it. In a cold climate the air is condensed, and if it's dry too there is much more oxygen in the same volume of air.

So, the people who come from the tropics— from the humid and hot parts of what we call Africa and the whole tropical belt going around the earth —find those people in that zone and study their features. I've done it. I find that they have broad noses. The Filipinos, many of the Asiatics, Aborigines, and the Africans—broad noses. Occasionally, you will find a Caucasian with a broad nose.

But you'll find many of those people living in the hot and humid climates—the tropical belt—with broad noses. Why? They need a big opening to get enough air. You're hot, you need more air. The air is expanded so you need more volume. The humidity is in it, you'll need more volume. So, your nose, in time...don't think it will happen in one lifetime, but over a period of about a half-million years it can turn a razor sharp Caucasian nose into an Isaac Hayes nose.

All of this talk—"I'm a black man, he's a white man." What are you talking about? What kind of mind do you have? You might be a black man with a boy's mind, or a Caucasian, with a boy's mind, right? Or a dog's mind. That's nothing to brag about. And if I would take a sharp razor and hit your black skin real fast and hard with it, you'll see that you're a white nigger. That's right. If I hit you real hard and fast with a sharp razor and lay that meat open, you'll see white. Is that right? I've seen it happen. Not a razor, but I've seen a black person—more than one, I saw one get a bad wound, a quick wound, and the skin was—the meat was—white. So, he's a white man under that skin.

(To be continued)