1979-August-17

Bilalian News

New World Patriotism Day Address: Part 1

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

Following are excerpts from Imam Wallace Deen Muhammad's New World Patriotism Day address, delivered in Chicago's Grant Park on July 4, 1979 — Continued from the last two weeks.)

All praise is due to Allah, Almighty God.

Many of you might not know this but we were presented a theology from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad that was really Christian. We were told that W.D. Fard, the teacher of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, was God, and we were given his picture. His picture is Caucasian-looking — straight hair, light features — he looked like Caucasians. And we were told his mother was a Caucasian.

Now can you imagine what that did for our community? Some people wanting to be blacker because the Honorable Elijah Muhammad sail black is Divine, and others looking at the picture of the man that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said was God manifest in the flesh and seeing him looking Caucasian were wondering whether or not these people are being fooled. Maybe they are being fooled. Maybe the Divine color is yellow—high yellow.
We went along with that problem for over 40 years. When the Honorable Elijah Muhammad passed, he left us nothing as an authority because he said he would have no successor. He said no one would succeed him. He said, "If I knew, I wouldn't even name a successor because you would be after him like you are after me."
He didn't name his successor. He left us with the Holy Quran as the only established, real, perfect authority among us. He said this Book is Holy and pure, it's perfect.

He taught us to respect it, to keep our hands clean, not even to read it with dirty hands. He said when you read it, don't hold it low, to hold it above your waist.
So this was one thing that he had established respect for, the Quran, the Bible of the Muslims. He established respect for that in spite of the fact that his teachings went counter to the teachings of the Quran in many respects. When he passed from us, the strongest thing we had to lean on or to go to for rescue was the Quran, the Universal Book of Muslims.
So I went to that book and I said this Book tells us that God does not discriminate on the basis of color or racial origin. God says in this Book that I have made you tribes and families that you may get acquainted with each other and not despise each other. That's what God tells us in the Quran.

I said, this Book speaks very much like the Bible; it says that humanity is one family, that God made people one people and they became tribes and families, and God willed that to happen so that we would have to get acquainted with each other. Don't you know if we had stayed one family, all one race, we wouldn't know each other as we know each other today?
One dad and one mom went off in one direction and they became Europeans; another went off in another direction and became Asiatic; another one went off in another direction and after millions of years became Africans. Because the family was divided up like that, now we have to get acquainted.

I would never have known white folks if they had been born in my family? But because they weren't born in my family, now I know white folks, and now they know us. And believe me if you want to really upset white America, just let the majority of blacks in white America say we don't want to live here with white folks any more. While folks will have a heart attack. Even the KKK who says send them back to Africa; believe me if the ever really believed that we were going back to Africa, they would say, "Come back, we...we...could work it out."

We have had some ugly times together, but we haven't separated from each other during the ugly times, so it's just like a husband and wife or a boy friend and girl friend or two friends who have a hell-of-a-time stand-ding each other, but they can't get away from each other. After a while they decide, "well, look - we don't get along as bad as we did when we first met. Look, we've shared too much together." They begin to miss each other when they start talking about a permanent separation.

Well, believe me if you are talking about a permanent separation, blacks will miss white Americans and white Americans will certainly miss black Americans because we have been a little closer to them than they have been to us.
We used to be their mammies, we nursed them and we spanked their pink  behinds.  The old  slave-master gave mamma  that authority "Nurse him, and if he get out of line spank his pink behind."

Well, we have been too close to each other to just separate. And the only thing that hurts me right now is that those few people in America and throughout this world who want to keep an oppressive rule over the masses of people are cheering. They are cheering because blacks here outnumber Caucasians so much that this looks like a black affair.
That's a shame on the Caucasian people here in Chicago. They are still guilt-minded. Guilt still bothers their conscience. They are afraid that if they get with us in a free setting like this maybe the drunken hostilities might come out and they want some distance between us and them.
Caucasian people of Chicago and America — believe me; we are ready to live with you as Brothers and Sisters if you are ready to get rid of your own guilt complexes. I meet so many Caucasians and I am convinced that they are sincere; they really want to be Brothers and Sisters with us, and I'm not talking about any marriage thing.
I don't look for any wife but Shirley and she's not Caucasian. If something should happen that I don't have Shirley, I'll be looking for another non-Caucasion wife. And it's not because I have any color problems, it's because I just like what I'm used to.

Caucasian people, you should wake up and you should see that the black man has stepped out in front of you. He has taken the spirit of your Constitution; he has taken the golden pages of your own wisdom and he is respecting the golden pages of your own wisdom more than you are.
Caucasian America, you have to wake up and catch up with me before we take America away from you. America is not going back to any color division. America is not going back to any KKK-minded white folks. America is going to stay in the possession of the true human being that God created.
The Constitution promises us that the true human being shall be the owner of this America. The Constitution was designed for the true human being. It was never designed for the KKK mentality.

Dear people, I believe the next time we meet, we will find a better percentage of Caucasians in this group in our affair. I believe they are going to hear what I am saying and they are going to get the' message. The message is this: God's hand is on America. It always has been but this is his season. God allows us the chance to have our season so that all the things can come out and we know ourselves. God wants us to know ourselves so once we get together we can master our problems.
So God has allowed us to have our seasons, but believe me He was always present and always overriding everything that American has been doing.

And now this is the Day of ALLAH, of Almighty God, and if we get a President in the White House who is too small to stand up for the dignity of the common man; if we get a President in the United States of America that is too small to raise the dignity of the common man above the prejudices of a Caucasian racist or a black racist, he won't last long. He'll be out before his term is up.
If you don't straighten up and fly right, God is going to make old uneducated me the President of these United States of America because this is God's season. He's not going to give us any more time.

God has brought in the climate, the climate is right, the climate is ready. All we have to do is get with this universal spirit that says "blood is one blood, humanity is one humanity" and nobody can be oppressed as long as that force is moving in the land.
Dear people, we cannot get to this Zion without respect for Almighty God, and without knowing that Jesus was trying to open our eyes to the fact that the true Christ is the true human being. The true Christ is not a spook somewhere, the true Christ is not a Caucasian man, the true Christ is not a Jew; the true Christ is universal me and you.