1984-July-20

A.M. Journal

Imam Muhammad On The Tony Brown Show

(Editor's note: Following are exclusive excerpts — continued from last week — from a transcript released by "Tony Brown's Journal." The program "Two Forks in the Road" is to be aired beginning July 19 through July 25, 1984. Check local listings for time and station. Don't miss this informative telecast.)

MR. BROWN: Now according to the teachings of your father, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and according to the currant teachings of Minister Louis Farrakhan, Fard Muhammad was actually Allah or God who came to Earth? –

IMAM MUHAMMAD: Yes, that's what we were taught. And that's un-Islamic. That's not Islamic!

MR. BROWN: Why is that not Islamic?

IMAM MUHAMMAD: Simply because our religion, our Holy Book,..Farrakhan has the same book I have and the (book} Muslims all over the world have. Our Holy Book — more than any other scripture I know of, and I've read the Bible, the Old and the New Testament — attacks that idea and tears it apart. (The idea) that any human being or any created thing can be defined as God.

MR. BROWN: In other words, "Allah/' which is Arabic for "God/' would never manifest in human form?

IMAM MUHAMMAD: That's right. We don't believe in any manifestation....

Our Holy Book says that in any direction you turn, there you'll find God. God is present with us everywhere. But He never can be limited to any form.

MR. BROWN: Now Farrakhan also believes that your father, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, was the Messenger or the Prophet — am I accurate?

IMAM MUHAMMAD: And again that is not Islamic!

MR. BROWN: That is not true?

IMAM MUHAMMAD: That's not Islamic. It's not true! Maybe in his own concept he saw himself as a messenger of this mystic, this man...(Fard).

My father obviously was convinced that this man Fard was like the Messiah coming back — a return of God in the body of this man.

My father can't be blamed for his misconceptions in the religion. My father was the son of a Baptist preacher; he was not worldly informed. He was an uneducated person.

He was a sharp man mentally but (he) was not worldly informed. So whatever this man told him the situation was in the international world — that Muslims believed this way — he wasn't in a position to question.

He was not even in a position to go to sources and see if this is true — to substantiate it either.

So we don't blame my father. I don't blame my father for any of these misconceptions. I blame the one who was worldly knowledgeable for taking these pieces of ancient mythology and pieces of the Bible and pieces of Islam and putting them all together and putting the label "Islam" on it. I blame him.

(To be continued)