THE NATION OF ISLAM Office of The Supreme Captain In The Na me Of Allah (God), The Beneficent, The Merciful. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan Who Are My Helpers in the Cause of Islam? Part 3 of 7 Transcribed for Study for FOI Class
KEY WORD LIST What does rulership mean? Rulership is a person or group exercising government or dominion. What is meant by resolve? Resolve is a firm determination to do something; determination; firmness of intent. What is the definition of representative? A representative is a person that represents another or other; a person chosen or appointed to act or speak for another or others. What is meant by provoke? To provoke is to stimulate or incite (someone) to do or feel something, especially by arousing anger in them; deliberately make (someone) annoyed or angry. What is a scholar? A scholar is a learned person, especially one who has profound knowledge of a particular subject; a student; pupil. What does ignorance mean? Ignorance is the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information, etc. 2
(Beginning 6:00 into track 08) Who Are My Helpers in the Cause of Islam? (Part III) I didn t call you here to make you a paperboy. That just happens to be the way to get the message-- not the money, but the message. And if my helpers think money before they think message, then you corrupt the spirit. It s the message that has life in it. And if the paper has the message of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Minister and supporting teachings, every paper is a book. But you who have come have been so wonderful, that you would take that paper and go out among your people, unfortunately, you re not prepared for the abuse that you will get. And so when you get cussed out a few times, that s a spirit killer. Then you didn t sell all your papers and the next week, another group of papers has come. And now your lieutenant is on you. And it becomes a revolving door. Come in and get burned out and go out. Come in and get used up and go out. That s not the Nation of Islam. That s not what we want. I want you to be a clean people, but if you re clean and ignorant, you can t rule. You re gonna rule because you must have superior wisdom to rule. This is supposed to be a class that prepares you for rulership. I always want to come to a class that would make me a better man. The drilling is fine because we need to know that we are soldiers. I m a soldier. I m never going to let age stop me from soldiering. If I m blessed to see 80 years old, I ll be an 80 year old soldier. If I m blessed to see a hundred, I ll be a hundred year old soldier. I do not intend to travel all over the world. I have a few spots that I must attend to, but I feel it s my time now, not to step out of the picture, that ain t good at all, but it is my time to push the young ones out front. And be there to guide and help you young men develop, so that when I am not here, when ever that time will come, the Nation will not take one half step backward. The Nation will leap forward, because you are prepared to stand in my place and do the job. My son just reminded me of a point I that wanted to make today. You great, wonderful men of the great city of Chicago, you re the baddest Black men to walk the earth. Chicago west side, Chicago south Side, Chicago north I don t give a dog gone what side, you the baddest Black men that walk the earth. I don t want you to feel bad in New York, in Philly, in Boston, in Cleveland, in Los Angeles, in St. Louis, in Memphis, in Jackson, Mississippi, in Detroit, Michigan, in Milwaukee, in San Francisco and Oakland, in San Diego and Hawaii; you are the choice of God. Every one of you represents the Nation of God s choice. We got work to do. Let me tell you the work. Brother Akbar and I have visited many African nations. They are asking for representatives of the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I feel so bad, because they ve asked for you in the Gambia. We built a mosque over there in honor of Alex Haley s desire to build a mosque in honor of Kunta Kinte. He died and didn t do it, so I did it for him. I don t have a representative that s trained that I could send. They want you in the Cameroons. They want you in Sierra Leone. They want you in Nigeria. They want you in Liberia. They want to give you land. They want us in Nigeria. They want us in Gabone. They want us in South Africa. They want us in Kenya. This is true. And they want an outpost in Libya. This is true. They want us in Iraq. I said, Oh, Allah, I have to do something, because you are 3
needed in Central America. You have 80 million people in Brazil. You have to learn Spanish, French, Arabic, Portuguese. They want us in Korea. They want us in Japan. They want us in Australia and New Zealand. Who will help me? It is the FOI s responsibility. You are the men. If you train hard, then I can send you all over the earth to deliver your people from the clutches of an enemy. So this has to be, not only great military strength, because we are warriors. The FOI s not a punkified group. We just don t like to hurt our people. We will take abuse before we hurt you. We don t want our people to force us to hurt anyone of them. We love them too much, but we don t want them to test our resolve, because the love of the brotherhood will cause us to die before we let any member of the brotherhood be hurt. That s why we ask you to strive to be right, because we can only come to your aid in righteousness. If you out there doing wrong don t look for the FOI, cause you doing wrong by yourself. You re not representing God. You re not representing the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. You re not representing Brother Farrakhan. If you out there doing right, and somebody do you wrong, then we have to come to your aid, in whatever way that it takes. But most of you that come, that s all you know is fighting. Many of you that come, I mean, I m not asking you if you killed anybody. That ain t my business. Allah forgives you for whatever you did before Islam. I don t care what you did, brothers. Before you came into the knowledge of this, Allah forgives you for all of that. Your record is clean. I don t care what record you got with the devil or the Caucasian. You know who they are. That record don t count with God, or none of us would be in the Nation. But you must be scholars, as well as warriors. You must know how to win every argument, but don t get in arguments. I was telling you yesterday the skill I use to win our people. I ran into a scholar who said that interview, he s a professor at a university, that interview that you gave to Meet the Press, we study it as one of the greatest interviews that we ve ever heard from anybody. Listen to this now. College did not make me, though I went to college. I was made in Muhammad s Mosque. I was made in the FOI class. This class made me a man. This class made me to love Black men like I never loved Black men before. This class took fear out of me and made me a warrior. So that when I came to this city, Chicago, to a Saviour s Day, my first Saviour s Day 1956, as a follower the Saviour s Day preceding it is when I first heard the Messenger in 1955 1956 I came as a believer. Our little mosque was on 5335 S. Greenwood Avenue and I was called up into the balcony by the then Supreme Captain Brother Raymond Sharrief. And Brother Raymond said that day, There s a threat on the life of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And I want some soldiers who will give their life to protect his life. I was the first one on my feet. I was the first one on my feet. He said, Now, brothers, when you go out that door you may never come back in again. I want you to think about it and if you want to sit down, you sit down. When I walked down those stairs I was stomping. I was going to die, but I was going to kill anything that looked like it wanted to harm the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And I remember standing on post out on Greenwood; my body felt like it had become steel. And I believed that if a cannon was shot at me, I could repel a cannon ball. That s how I felt. You gon hurt my leader? You gon hurt the man that gave me life? You gon hurt the man that God raised to give life to all our people? I would kill you and all your seed, man, all the way down to the root! You will be ripped 4
apart! That was my spirit. And because I had that spirit, from my Messenger, now God has put that same spirit in you for me. And because I know that, I don t play with your love. Because I know that, I m careful about what I say out my mouth. Because I know how I was. Anybody that would hurt that man And I know that God has given me men and women like that. And the enemy knows that we have the power to create revolution in this country. So they may want to destroy me and us, but they have to be careful. So I take a lot of abuse and I swallow it and I do not speak ill of those who speak ill of me because I don t want you to hurt them. Because I don t care how ugly they sound, the ugly one today will be the great soldier tomorrow. Everybody should have a chance to outgrow their ignorance. So, if you are with me, you don t want to hurt your people. You don t provoke your people. Sometimes you like to argue with your people and make your people feel bad so that you could look smart. So you would go in a barber shop and start an argument just so you could say you went in and whooped everybody up in there. Them pig eatin, them chittlin eatin But they went right back and ate a pork chop and ate some chittlin s and hate you. When you find out that Jesus was not a white man, he was a Black man. When you find out the real truth about Jesus, you don t go back to the church and start dogging people. Don t do that, brothers. See how careful I am in handling people of faith? I remember once in Boston when I was the minister, I went in a barber shop, and the man wanted an argument with me. He was the no it wasn t a barber shop, I m sorry, a shoe shine parlor. And I went in this morning to get my shoes shined. And I was sitting in the brother s chair and he was shining my shoes, but he wanted an argument. He knew that I was the minister around the corner at the mosque. He said (looked at me), There s power in the water and there s power in the blood. I said, brother, you got that right. There s power in the water and there s power in the blood. He said, And, brother, there s no name under the heaven, ha, ha, ha, that will save you but the name of Jesus. I said, brother, you re right. Ain t no name under the heavens that will save us but the name of Jesus. Now he s popping but, and then he said, Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. I said you re right, brother. Every knee gon bow and every tongue gon confess, cause there s not but one lord, one faith and one baptism. He said, Well, what time is the meeting today? (Ending at 2:40 into track 13) 5
Questions for Discussion: 1. Why does thinking money before message corrupt the spirit? How should we properly prepare ourselves for the verbal abuse from our people, who we are trying to resurrect? 2. Why is a superior knowledge required to rule? What are we if we are clean, but remain ignorant? 3. The Minister says he does not have a trained representative that he could send to the various places all over the earth that have asked for us. What will qualify us to be sent around the world? How is our labor at home the foundation for service abroad? 4. The Minister describes his spirit when there was a threat on the life of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and that Allah has given him men and women with that same spirit toward him. How can we develop that spirit toward one another? 5. Why must we be careful in how we handle people of faith? 6