[wvns] Evolution of the Nation of Islam

(Speech delivered before the American Academy of Religion, Nov. 19th, 1978 in New Orleans)

"As The Light Shineth From The East"
Evolution of the Nation of Islam
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
11/19/1978

With the name of G_d, Most Gracious, Most Compassionate, peace and blessings upon the Universal Prophet Muhammed, upon his descendants, his companions, upon the righteous servants, upon the Muslims all over the world and upon all the people of faith and sincerity—be peace. This distinguished body of religious teachers, I greet you in peace: As-Salaam-Alaikum, peace be upon you.

We are very grateful for the honor you've given us to come and address this prestigious body. We would like to speak briefly on the history of the World Community of Al-Islam in America , and also, speak on the appeal that the Nation of Islam and Islam today has for Black Americans. I am sure that most of you by now, know that we choose to call ourselves, Bilalian-Americans. And lastly, we hope to just quickly present to you our faith in the future of this religion among American people.

I don't see how it is possible to talk about the history of Al-Islam in America without first presenting the mystic whose name is Fard Muhammed. He is called by many names—Professor Fard, Wali Fard, Wallace Fard Muhammed, Wallace D. Fard. He had many names that he used, but most often he'd abbreviate the name and just refer to himself as W.D. Fard, or W.F. Muhammed. This man is little known in the history of this Community, but more than any other factor, he stands out as the cause for the existence of the World Community of Al-Islam in America , today.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammed, the late leader who successfully lead the Community he called the Nation of Islam until he passed in February of 1975, identified this mystic, this mysterious teacher as the second coming of Christ. In adding more force to that mysterious image were a few light magical feats that perhaps most of you would laugh at but for us they had real meaning in our lives.

We were told that in 1932 or '33 Professor Fard was with some of his disciples and he was trying to convince them that their success and future depended upon them supporting him 100 percent. He pulled a strand of hair from his head and asked the disciples about him to do the same. He put them all into one pile and he took the strand of hair from his head and he lifted the others up.

Now, mind you, this mysterious, man was appealing to people of the ghetto or the slums of Detroit , Michigan right in the time of the Depression. The Depression was in '29. He came in 1930 and remained among the members of the Nation of Islam for about three years or a little better. So, understanding this, we can quickly see that he really had followers who were open to his magic. Most of them were not educated and most of them were superstitious, in a good way, because they were spiritual Christians. That is true for most of the African-American people who embrace Christian religion from the ghettos. Their Christianity is mostly spiritualism, and there is little knowledge in the religion for them.

This man came with reverse psychology and he began convincing people of the black community in America that he was a saint or a mystic or perhaps even G_d in the flesh. I am convinced that he himself, never told anyone that he was G_d in the flesh, but I strongly believe that he hinted it intentionally so that others would say that he was G_d in the flesh. When he left, in 1934, his successor, the Honorable Elijah Muhammed, the late leader, quickly began to erect Professor Fard Muhammed as the second coming of Christ. Gradually he introduced him as Allah, G_d Manifest.

His concept of G_d in human body was not the proper belief that you find among those societies who believe in incarnation, an incarnated being, Divine being. He actually, preached a material concept of G_d, that G_d evolved with creation. And that God is the original the superior and the original—form of creation. The term creation actually does not fit the doctrine of this mystic and his apostle, the Honorable Elijah Muhammed. To them, the creation was something that lived and died, and is resurrected by its own self-power, and with it comes the G_d again because He is the superior part of creation, eventually manifest as the Supreme being.

In the last few years of his mission, the Honorable Elijah Muhammed gave us a kind of allegorical or symbolic teaching that you would associate or identify with some parts of Revelation, or the Book of Daniel—Apocalyptic books. He said that G_d had His beginning as an atom of energy in the darkness, or in the dark void of the Universe. Before there was anything formed, this atom on its own power began to rotate and spin itself into existence. Most of his followers accepted everything he said and didn't question one word.

You will understand why no one questioned the Honorable Elijah Muhammed's symbolic teachings when you understand the appeal, the bait, the attracting thing that was handed out to his followers, and the need for that new world, new identity, new life that the Honorable Elijah Muhammed was promising. I believe that for more than 25 years the members of the Nation of Islam—called Lost-Found Nation of Islam in the Wilderness of North America by Professor Fard—were as the people who followed the great emancipator, the great teacher, Moses the prophet, upon him be peace.

They were eating manna and quail. They were wrestling with the unknown, the mysteries, guessing, and they were sustained by curiosity. Curiosity kept them searching for answers to the great mysteries or the symbolic teachings called Mathematical Theology and Mathematical Logic, by the teachers of the Nation of Islam—this curiosity, this hunger kept them searching for answers to his symbolic catechism.

I think I should give you an example of his symbolic catechism. He gave us a book of symbolic teachings. I see this as his own allegorical interpretation of the birth of the Man of Sin and his growth as a terror and as a ruler, a scourger on the earth through Eve in her son Cain, the first murderer in Genesis. He says in one of his lessons that the black man grafted the white man out of himself, that before then there were no people on the earth but black, all black. He says that in the genes of the black man there are two germs, one dominant and the other recessive. One black and the other lacking in that original blackness.

He says that by separating the recessive from the dominant and mating the recessive with the recessive, that stage-by-stage or phase-by-phase, the race became lighter and lighter: black to brown, red, yellow and finally to white or Caucasian. In fact in the earlier days we never referred to the Caucasian race as a white race, and I understand why now. It was only later in the history of the Honorable Elijah Muhammed's leadership that he stopped his Community from calling the white race Caucasian and he began himself to call them white people.

He said, "No, they are not so-called white, they are white." But his teacher didn't say that; his teacher said they are so-called white.
And so the Honorable Elijah Muhammed changed his teachings slightly, and as he went on he changed many things-before I started changing things. He said the genes were finally grafted so far from the original that they were no longer original. They no longer had the original nature, and the results was a "devil race."

I can go on and give you more details of this on the Island of Patmos —madness. But I don't think it will be necessary, I just wanted to show the parallel between his race-based doctrine and that which we find by misreading or by misinterpretating the Bible.

I would like to offer two more examples, not from that same story but from a different booklet of his teachings. Professor Fard asked two questions. He asked, "Who is the Original man?" and he gives the answer, following the form of a catechism. Answer: "The Original man is the Asiatic black man, the owner, maker, cream of the planet earth, father of civilization, G_d of the Universe."

Then he asked, a second question, "Who is the Colored man?" Now, doesn't this sound kind of funny? Who is the Colored man? Watch the answer now—who is the Colored man? Answer: "so-called white man, or Caucasian, Yakub's grafted devil, the skunk of the planet earth."
Now, that one, I'm telling you, it really was a burden on all of us.

I don't think any of us ever digested that to our satisfaction. We couldn't understand how the white man became a colored I man. But that was his answer. And I couldn't understand that to my satisfaction until just a few years ago. While thinking, I said, "Well to color something means to slant it or present it in a false way. And the white man is responsible for slanting truth and presenting it in a false way," I said, "so he is the colored man. He colors everything."

Now, I don't know if that was the mystic's interpretation of that or not. He might have had something else in mind. For most of the people of America—and I would say the World—who know something about the history of the Nation of Islam in the United States, believe that it just got started about 10, 15 years ago. But we have a copy of a news bulletin right now in Chicago . There are others scattered about, dating back to the early '30s—a very nice news bulletin. In fact, it looked very much like our present paper, the Bilalian News.

This paper was called The Final Call, and it meant the final call to the religion of Islam before the destruction of the Caucasian world by G_d Almighty. Just here recently, some of the young folks have been hearing about flying saucers, but since I was a little child, I'd heard about flying saucers. Only, we didn't call them saucers, we called them ships from the Mother Ship. We were told, as little children, that an object was seen over Canada in the early '30s and Professor Fard explained it as being the Mother Ship.

He said the Mother Ship is a ship built on the Island of Japan by the black people. It was built to stay up in the sky above the earth's atmosphere for long periods of time. Whenever, they needed air they would come down low enough to drop a tube into the earth's atmosphere and take up more air. He explained that it was coming down to get more oxygen.

And that was another one that gave a lot of us a problem. We began to think, you know, it's like Noah's Ark. Nobody cleans out, nobody dumps out anything. We could understand them needing air but we couldn't understand why they didn't dump something out, too. There should be some waste; and then we were never told how they grew their food or anything, or how they manufactured their clothes. We were only told that they were up there manning the ship with their guns or bombs trained on the Western powers, ready to finish them off if they tried to erase the Nation of Islam from the map.

So we had assurance. We had a promise that something in the sky was watching over us. And many of us were of such minds that we could believe that. We felt safe down here even in the worst times, and you know that we had some very hard times during the '30s, '40s and even the '50s | in America trying to survive as a people. But we; were told that we were all taken care of; we were well watched over and to worry about nothing.

Then, the Honorable Elijah Muhammed was arrested for refusing to accept the draft. He wasn't eligible for the draft, that is to go to war, but he was of the age where he had to register. He knew that he didn't have to go to war, but he refused even to register. Many who refused with him also were locked up. The Honorable Elijah Muhammed, was given a five-year sentence in Milan Federal Correction Institution. There, he continued to teach and when he was released he came out with new vision.

He would often tell us to study Yakub's history.

Everything was made very real for us. We didn't say Yakub's story, or Yakub's allegory, but Yakub's history. And what he said in the form of fiction or symbolism was given in many cases as actual facts. As a matter of fact, we had a list and it was called the List of Actual Facts. Many of these things that were really symbolic were under the name "Actual Facts," although most of those things were not facts.
He gave us a feeling of superiority in every sense, and by not allowing us to mix- with outsiders, we could keep that feeling of superiority. If we had to mix with outsiders, we could have been challenged and our confidence would have been shattered.

But most of us believed so strongly that nothing could shatter our confidence. We would see such amazement on the people's faces when we would tell them of our wisdom, that we would interpret that amazement as if they were hearing something that they had never heard before, and they were really shocked at our wisdom. So it kept us feeling that we were much above everybody else in knowledge.

I remember some of the young children I never could do it as well as they could do it, but if I tried to, I believe that I could recite it right now. They would give the area of the earth in inches. After I got to be a man and started trying to think—with some sense—I said, why would you give somebody the area of the earth in inches? What kind of a program; what kind of project; what kind of job are you going to do that requires measuring the earth in inches? But believe me the youngsters could stand up there—and it took them about five minutes to run it down—and they would run it down, and I mean figure for figure, the size of the earth in inches.

Most of the Bilalians, or the African-Americans who met us, were so fascinated, so surprised by the things we would recite to them that really they feared us. And those who didn't fear us, they followed us. But most of them feared us too much to follow us. They were so afraid they just stood at a distance. I don't think that the late comers would know about that, but I remember those days.

There was a fear like the fear of G_d. I'm not joking. It was the fear of us like the fear you would have for a supernatural being or deity. And I can understand them fearing us.

Imagine a little child, 5-years-old, starts telling you the square inches of the earth the diameter and everything else. And some of those things could be verified. You know, they could go and check out some of those things and find them to be true. They would say, "Where did these people come from?" They thought maybe we came off the ship. Maybe, I don't know. But we didn't, we came off the earth; and that ship, I think it needs a good cleaning by now.

When the Honorable Elijah Muhammed returned from prison, he returned with the belief that his Nation of Islam, did not have to remain an underground movement. Now, I will explain what I mean by underground movement. The Honorable Elijah Muhammed never held his tongue; he never refused to teach anyone what he believed. But, up until he was released from prison, he would tell us that certain things were meant for us and we were not to give those things to outsiders.

When he returned from prison, he almost by force took all of the original pamphlets, or Lesson Books that were given by his teacher, Professor Fard Muhammed. He took those things out of circulation and then he began himself to interpret, to preach, and put the emphasis where he wanted the emphasis to be. From those booklets, we got a materialistic concept of life and a kind of fanatical belief in our own divinity and a rejection of everything Caucasian.

There are witnesses still around that will testify to this. In 1936, they were told to sell everything they owned, the end of the World is here. That after 1936, the Caucasian and America is going to be destroyed. So sell everything, get rid of everything. Even before then, they were not allowed radios; no TV's were in existence. We were not allowed to have radios, no music, nothing—no shows, no dancing, and no associating with the outside world.

When the Honorable Elijah Muhammed returned from prison it wasn't long before he, himself, got a TV. It became common, almost. We didn't know whether to look at it or not. We were afraid to turn the thing on; he had to teach us to lose the fear of approaching the TV. We would catch him sitting down watching a good show, patting his feet, laughing and smiling and enjoying it so we gradually moved up to the TV with the Honorable Elijah Muhammed.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammed said, "We have to show the people something—we cannot progress by talk." So, he changed from preaching this mysterious doctrine to doing something practical. He said, "We have to have businesses." So he began to promote the opening of businesses. He said, "You have to produce jobs for yourself."

Soon the Honorable Elijah Muhammed had a restaurant on 31st Street and Wentworth in Chicago . He had a grocery store and he, himself, was the butcher. He would come there and cut the meat. He couldn't afford to hire a butcher, he learned himself. He got charts and he asked the people he bought the meat from to teach him to cut the meat. So, he cut up the meat and it looked very good too.

He showed them how to butcher meat and how to sell groceries. He, himself, with his own apron, had his children in the business with him. I used to do everything from slaughtering the chicken to cleaning and picking it, and even to cooking and serving it and then ring up the money in the cash register. We did all those things.

It wasn't long before the mood in the country changed, especially in the Black-American community, and the Honorable Elijah Muhammed's image and appeal were heightened and made really very strong. This was brought on by conflict in the African-American community—in the 1960's civil rights demonstrations. With the violence that resulted, many of the African-Americans began to take another look at the Honorable Elijah Muhammed and what he was offering. Soon, there came into existence the Black Power Movement, and the Honorable Elijah Muhammed, being the wise doctor of the psychology of black people, I would say exploited the conflict and began to make a strong appeal to follow him and give up the idea of ever wanting integration in America .

The Honorable Elijah Muhammed was convinced that there was enough Caucasian support in America for what he wanted to do. He believed that he could convince the weak minded Caucasians—that is, those who live and thrive on ugly racial prejudices—that he was a Savior, a safe leader for American blacks. That he could separate his people and make them satisfied being separated, and they could live and survive and be a credit to American society. He convinced, I would say, all of us in his Community.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammed insisted upon cleanliness, he insisted upon industry, that everybody get a job and that everybody be active in some useful work. He insisted that his followers be law-abiding. The Honorable Elijah Muhammed presented a new and convincing image of the blacks in America . An image so convincing that those Caucasians, or whites, who were called devils by the Honorable Elijah Muhammed preferred the Honorable Elijah Muhammed to many other blacks who were calling them "my brother," "my sister" and saying "let us live together and love together." They were missing something, missing the power to change or reform the life of the slum people.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammed succeeded. He gave an alternative, a good alternative, to the integrationist movement.

I believe that most of us in the '60s had some sense, some acquired knowledge or suspicion that once the civil rights crisis subsided, the popularity appeal of the Nation of Islam in the Caucasians' eye would change and persecution would return. Most of you, perhaps, don't know that the Nation of Islam was persecuted. By subtle maneuvers we were denied places for our meetings. This was during the '30s, '40s and '50s.

The first Temple we got—our places of worship, as many of you know, were called Temples for most of the history of the Nation of Islam in America —the first building we got to worship in was an animal hospital. That was the only thing that we could buy; they wouldn't sell us anything else. So the Honorable Elijah Muhammed bought this animal hospital, a dog hospital. It took a lot of work. Finally, he eliminated the smell, painted the place up and made it so nice that when he moved from it, a good Christian preacher came and bought it from us.

So we feared that when the Civil Rights Movement was no more a constant thorn in the side of the Caucasian establishment, the persecution would start up again.

By the grace of G_d, things changed, minds changed, and spirits changed. New knowledge came that we didn't expect. No one ever expected that we would come up with an interpretation of Professor Fard's symbolic or mathematical theology—his material concept of G_d, devil and life— and make it understandable for the common man in the Community. But, that is exactly what is happening.

I once heard an old Muslim man say—I don't know whether he was speaking from Sufism or from Quran—he said, "Where there is a will there is a way." And in most cases I believe that's true. If the will is strong enough, eventually a way will open up.

Many of us had been struggling with those lessons but G_d blessed me with satisfactory interpretation of those mystical lessons of Professor Fard. It came as a result of my study: very delicate, tireless study, of his teachings, and of the Bible. I learned that most of his language was coming from the Bible and other religions non-Biblical religions.

So I searched mythology, the Bible, the Quran, and I studied his lessons to see if I could find the true connection, and in time the true connection came. But believe me, and I'm not trying to spook anybody up, it came very mysteriously. Many times what I was looking for was not the right answer and I was taken from that course by some strange happening, something outside of my study, and there I found the answer—far from the study.

Once, I was walking in San Francisco , just walking the streets waiting for my friend to come home so I could go visit him. I had come there to visit him but he was not home. So I walked into a store, a book store. And I was just passing time so I walked to a place before the shelves and I reached up and I pulled down a book. And the book I pulled down gave me the answers that I had been searching for at home. And many times it happened that way.

Sometimes, in a conversation— sometimes in a joking conversation somebody would say something and that would be the answer.
The answers have come in many ways, and most of the time, I repeat, they didn't come from my own direct involvement in the search for the answer but they came when I was not involved in the search. But they came.

I'm not trying to say that I am anything other than a human being. I love it. I learned from the scriptures that the human being is my nature and that's the best thing for me, and I don't want to be anything else. I don't see how any human being could want to be anything but a human being. And I don't want to be a prophet because, actually I know nothing to extend the scriptures; all that I've gotten is understanding of the scriptures that have already been revealed. And I'm a Muslim and I don't believe that G_d is going to reveal a new religion. I believe we have enough religions. We just need to understand the original religion.

My mother used to sing a lot of spirituals. My mother was a Holiness woman, herself, before she was converted to the teachings of Fard Muhammed, and she was all the time singing spirituals whenever she was cooking or washing or whenever she was in a bad mood or something. I used to hear her say, "Give me that old time religion, it's good enough for me."

And believe me, if we can really decipher from the weird codes in the scripture that old time religion, we'll all agree it's good enough for me. That's if you're a human being. If you're Satan, you'll say, "No, that's not good enough for me; give me what's on the top of the page, not what's down in the meaning."

For a last word on the appeal: The Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammed satisfied our hunger for identity and pride in self. The teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammed reversed the psychology that was used to dehumanize us and put all of the negative unwanted attributes on the Caucasian people, and all the positive, sought-after attributes on us. So, we felt very comfortable in our new image, our new identity. We didn't identify ourselves anymore as Negroes. In fact, we didn't identify ourselves as Africans.

Professor Fard was very shrewd. He studied the problems very carefully and he knew that Marcus Garvey had made a mistake in trying to give us a sense of identity and greatness in a reconnection or reunion with African ancestry. Professor Fard went beyond Africa and said, before Africa you were a great people. He said, that one of your great scientists looked at Africa and saw that it was a jungle, uninhabited, and he decided to prove his physical or physiological superiority, to prove that the black man was even more physically prepared to survive than anything else in creation. The monkeys, the apes, and everything else, they were less prepared then we were.

So he says this black man went into the jungle. Now, before he went in, his face was black but his hair was straight. He knew we wanted straight hair. What made your hair kinky, Professor Fard said, was leaving Asia and going into Africa . He said when you went into Africa you lost civilization and in time, your nose got flat, your lips got thick, and your hair got kinky.

Now I know a lot of you probably ask how could those people stand for that man to speak down to them like that? No—we thought he was a Savior. You know, we had been so thoroughly convinced that we were humanly inferior, that our hair and our features were marks of inferiority, that to us this man was the Savior, the Deliverer. That's what the Honorable Elijah Muhammed said, "This is my Savior, this is our Deliverer, the only one who cares anything about us."

And I've seen his relatives, the aged and young people my age, cry just at the mentioning of what he had done. I don't think the love for Jesus that you find in the Baptist Church or in any other churches in the ghetto were any greater than the love for Professor Fard Muhammed. We loved him.

So in my conclusion, I want to emphasize that the main element of strength in the appeal of the mission of the Honorable Elijah Muhammed was the Christ figure, the mystic, Fard Muhammed. The magical feats that he achieved—or it was reported that he achieved; such as dancing with a glass of water on his head—helped to mystify us and convince us that he had these powers and a kind of psychic mind. We were told, that he could see things before they happened. He would direct the Honorable Elijah Muhammed to avoid trouble by telling him before-hand what was coming. We don't know if much of that was exaggeration, but this man was definitely established in our minds as a Divine or supernatural being.

It was easy for him to be a substitute or take the place of Christ in our minds and hearts because he was, himself, resembling Caucasian people. I don't believe he would have been a success if he had big thick lips, a flat nose, kinky hair and black skin. I don't believe that we would have listened to him. The self-image was so hated and so rejected by us because of the brainwashing and the lies that we were given by the Caucasian in America of our origin as a people.

I don't think we could have accepted a Christ replacement if that replacement had looked too much like us, but Professor Fard had straight hair; there wasn't a wave in it, it was straight hair and very light features. He was not presented to us as a Caucasian, mind you, we were told that one of his relatives was Caucasian. And I think I must mention this, because this will help you understand something about this man's intentions.

I believe the man meant well, he was fighting fire with fire. He thought he was doing justice and maybe in his own mind he thought himself to be the second coming of Christ. He said of his father and mother, that his father was black, a complete, 100 percent black man. But his mother was a 100 percent Caucasian woman.

Now, we were taught that his father was a G_d before he was, and that his father passed down to him the godship. And the way he passed it was by transferring thought—the knowledge from his mind to the mind of his son. That's how that was done. After his son had studied, gone to many colleges, learned many languages and learned much on his own, then, the father gave him his own mind and he became the G_d. His mother was Caucasian because some white flesh was needed that would deceive Europe and the United States of America . If he had come looking like another race and not like the Caucasian, then he wouldn't find a comfortable place in the Western World. He couldn't go to their best colleges and universities of Europe and America . The Caucasian mother was selected for that purpose.

We were told that this Caucasian woman was not a devil. And the Honorable Elijah Muhammed would get awfully angry when some of his new followers who didn't know the story would refer to the mother as a devil. He'd say, "No she's not a devil."

"Well, dear Holy Apostle," (they called the Honorable Elijah Muhammed, Holy Apostle), "I thought she was a devil since I read she was Caucasian."

He'd say "Yes, she was Caucasian, but she never mixed with her wicked people. She was kept in the Muslim society all of her life and never mixed with her wicked people."

That was really a clue to understanding the whole idea of grafting or creating a Caucasian race of devils, because in the symbolic teaching on the creation of the Caucasian race, as a race of devils, he said there were two things contributing to the weakness and wickedness of the new grafted people: one was separating the genes and grafting them more and more into the recessive form; and the other factor was the teaching of lies, stealing and murder.

Professor Fard had two things: one was the gene factor and the other knowledge. This man played on the simple minds of the Bilalian (African-American) people and gave them something that they had no knowledge of and couldn't question. But, if we had been educated, if we had, had the knowledge that many of you distinguished people have here today, we would have deciphered much of that a long time ago and wouldn't have bought it from the very start. We would have understood what the man was saying.

I believe that if our minds, our learning were higher, he wouldn't have approached us that way. If he were a good Muslim, he would have approached us with the clear, straight teachings of the Quran, because those teachings are convincing without any false interpretations or false fabrications or doctrine.

Professor Fard said the genes and the teachings made the new race a race of devils. We know that some of our behavioral traits can come from parents, but according to science, as I understand it, no one can inherit a criminal mind from his parents. You can have a disposition towards something but it doesn't mean or is no proof that you will go in that direction and become a criminal.

Early in the history of American criminology, I learned that they once believed that criminality was inherited. Here is the problem—his mother was a criminal, his father was a criminal. Therefore he is a criminal. But America rejected that theory of criminology.

America is now of the Bible belief, the Quran belief that the human being is not born a criminal. The human being is born with an opportunity to go in either direction. And this is the Muslim belief.
I believe that if Dr. Fard had been dealing with a higher level of knowledge or education in the Community or among the people that he preached to, he would have approached it quite differently and would have come to us with a more sensible and rational, a more human doctrine. But definitely, he did not come to us with Al-Islam. He came to us with the label of Al-Islam.

He used the term, Islam, he used the term Muslim, he used the name Nation of Islam, and he gave us a feeling that we were a part of Muslim Communities all over the world.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammed would often tell us to "remember that when you become a member of this Temple , you have automatic, instant, membership in all Muslim lands. You become a citizen of all the Muslim lands the moment you register as a Muslim in this Temple ." And he told us that from the earliest days of his mission.
He always gave us the idea or belief that we were not separated from the Muslim world, and many of us were surprised when we ran into Muslims and they couldn't understand what we were talking about.

We'd ask, "What's wrong? How come he doesn't know?" And the Honorable Elijah Muhammed would tell us they don't have the superior knowledge—they have the inferior knowledge. He'd say, "Be careful, you'll make them wise and they will be the rulers tomorrow, and not you. So, leave them alone and let them go with their weak knowledge."

The Honorable Elijah Muhammed managed to keep us thinking that we were a part of World Islam and at the same time he was teaching us something that was as foreign to real Islam as anything you can dream up. A very, very strange doctrine. The Christians were closer to our religion than we were because they believed in the Eternal God, a G_d that is not creation, but Creator. We didn't. We believed in a g_d that was creation and not Creator.

And yet, we thought we were Divine. That we would live eternally, that we would come back on earth but always in this form, never in any other form. You cannot exist without the physical manifestations, without a physical body, but, we thought we could survive everything. If the earth were shattered apart, the black gene would survive. The atom of black light would survive, and eventually, come up in creation again as a man and manifest as the G_d, the ruler of the Universe.

This strange teaching was very, very far from Al-Islam. If I had the time to convey to you the understanding that I have of the connection between this strange teaching and the language, the symbolic language of the Bible, you would see, as I have come to see, that all of this strangeness really came out of the Bible, and out of other strange concepts of creation and human life. Most of it came straight from the Bible.

And that this man, Dr. Fard took it upon himself to be the executor, the scourger, to punish the Caucasian for his racism, for his race supremacy. To punish him for his bad treatment of the non-Caucasian races. He took it upon himself to be that scourger and claimed, according to his own lessons, that he was a Muslim and taught us to be Muslims, and attracted us to the Quran.

That's another thing that we have to accept in making some judgment. That that man with his strange teachings that were contrary to the teachings of Quran, also attracted his followers to the Quran. In one of his mystical lessons where he gives a lot of figures and asks for the solutions to the problems, he offers as prizes, money. He offers as rewards, Qurans.

He made a distinction between Quran and money. When you work, if you do a good job you'll get money as a prize, but you'll get the Quran as a reward. So a reward is for something done. A reward could be something good or bad. A prize has less value to a religious person than a reward. We seek reward from G_d. A prize can come from anywhere. So, he said, for your effort you get a prize of so many dollars and if your efforts are greater, you'll get a reward. The reward of a family Quran. Less work, the reward of a pocket Quran.

I don't think that man if he wanted his doctrine to survive would have attracted us or whet our tongues, our thirst for the Quran. No, he wouldn't have done that. This man devised a scheme and he followed scripture to the best of his ability. He followed the ways of the scripture and manipulators of the past and present. He formed himself a scheme in the same design of the scheme that was used by others before and now. He formed a similar scheme to reverse everything and to bring the people under his influence. He was successful.

He was successful, even, in destroying his own world. According to the words of the Honorable Elijah Muhammed, he said that Professor Fard would not live forever. We thought of him as G_d but we were told that he would die. The Honorable Elijah Muhammed said his age would be 500 years; after that a new God would come. He told us that the new G_d would not use anything that Professor Fard had produced. He would reject everything that Professor Fard brought and would give everything new.

We thought that would come but we were so busy bathing in our new identity of black superiority, divinity, etcetera, that we didn't even think about 500 years. Forget about that. That could have come and we would have been like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah of Noah's days. We would have been having a party and the day would have been just around the corner. We would have been at a party celebrating our blackness. We weren't thinking about what would be happening in 500 years, as if he never said it.

I am convinced that this mystic, who had a good knowledge of religious symbolism, left these things with the Honorable Elijah Muhammed, and when he said 500 years, he meant when your five senses come to life. That would be the end of Dr. Fard.

I hope I've helped you in some way to understand the evolution of the Nation of Islam. Peace be unto you, As-Salaam-Alaikum.

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