The Time and What Must Be Done: Houston, Texas

As Salaam Alaikum,

Dear Brothers, Sisters, Friends, and Supporters:

On June 4, 1972, during the Theology of Time lecture series, The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad said: "The resurrection of Jesus means the resurrection of justice among you and me, that's what it means."

 

Today, the death of Trayvon Martin has struck a nerve in justice loving people in America and around the world. We applaud the efforts of Minister Quanell X, Krystal Sonia, Kofi Taharka, Jolanda Jones, Bishop James Dixon, and countless others for their stand for our people.

There is a mood on the streets and among the Joshua-Caleb generation that despite the so-called progress that has been made in race relations, the people realize it will take another 450 years for Black America to close the gap of wealth, education, health, and life expectancy disparities. They are waking up to the fact that the political, economic, and social system has been "gamed" so that they have little or no chance to advance.  The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is

laying out a context for our current condition and the root of the thinking of those who hate our very presence and would exterminate us if it were not for Allah's(God) intervention.www.noi.org/thetime

Today, we must multitask. We must continue to demonstrate for justice while we continue to deal with the pathologies that plague our communities. Let us begin with simple things, like peacefully settling our differences within our families and communities. Love ye one another and stop the killing! Stop spending 95% of your money with people you blame for 95% of your problems. Pool your resources and create jobs for Self! Purposely seek out businesses and professionals who share your worldview and that support our struggle for justice and equality. Circulate your dollars within our own community! Put public officials on notice that we expect as much attention to our needs as the lobbyist that visit them receive at City Hall, Commissioners Court, Austin, and Washington, DC. Set an agenda and judge them by the standard we, not our enemies, have set for them!

 

To all Black leaders, real or imagined, we better not play with the people today. To do so is to take our lives in our own hands. The condition of our community bears witness against our collective stewardship. No matter what the sycophants around us are telling us about how great we are, LOOK at our community! Our leadership is only as good as our results. Let us set aside our egos and ask Allah (God) to remove envy, jealousy, and rancor from our hearts for the sake of God's chosen people. What are we willing to sacrifice for our people's redemption? Please don't say we would give our lives if we won't subordinate our arrogance and egos for the sake of operational unity. If we don't learn from history, we will certainly repeat it. Thank you for reading these words.

May Allah bless us with the light of His understanding.

 

New Stewards of the Earth Part III

      The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Saviours’ Day 2013 keynote address was a monumental paradigm shift in the approach of Black leadership toward true liberation and salvation for Black people in America and throughout the Diaspora. The foundation of Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint is more than saving and investing money. The underlying solution to the multiplicity of economic, political, social, and physical problems facing humanity in the 21^st century can be summed up in two words: spirituality and morality.   

       The Minister’s spiritual insight regarding our economic plight is backed up by proven scholarship. Preeminent Black psychologist Dr. Naim Akbar wrote the following in his observations regarding Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint: “The brilliance of the Program is that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad prophetically and insightfully sees that Black people have come under the influences that represent deterioration in our self-determined and morally-guided behavior. And the result of this behavior is that our economic condition will similarly decline as we become increasingly like the immoral role models that are before us.” Dr. Akbar went on to conclude: “Implementation of the Economic Plan becomes achievable only with a preliminary transformation in the minds of Black America.” This is made perfectly clear by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as he painstakingly revealed the immoral and perverse manner in which we spend our money and how we are being manipulated into doing so.

The Minister said: “Scientists have studied our spending habits, and our buying habits; so they know how to market their goods to us! And their data shows that we spend far too foolishly and recklessly; and we spend our money on products and services that are leading to our own self-destruction. We have to cut back on the things that are killing us! That’s what makes Dr. Naim Akbar’s words to us so fantastically wonderful, because we have to “attack” the condition of our people morally and spiritually in order for us to become strong economically! It cannot be just economics with us – we have to attack “The Spiritual Problem” and “The Moral Problem” that facilitates our economic demise.” The Minister offered some sobering statistics from Target Market News: The Buying Power of Black America 2010 (16^th edition) to back up his premise.

Here is the mirror of truth the Minister put before us: Blacks spend $3.3 billion a year on tobacco, $3 billion on whiskey, wine and beer, $2.8 billion on non-alcoholic beverages, $3.1 billion on leisure time spending, $3.5 billion on toys, games and pets, $19 billion on telephone services – (54% of Blacks own a “smart phone”) $10 billon gift buying,  $29.3 billion on clothing, $65.2 billion on food, $23.6 billion for healthcare, while only spending $321 million on books. He also estimated that the Black share of the $100 billion a year spent on gambling in America is $13 billion. The Minister focused like a laser on the root of our problem stating: “When we analyze all of this, we have to agree that our whole way of thinking about money has to change…so regardless to what religion we belong to: Our religions are obviously not informing us on how to spend our money. So we think we are “God centered” while we are financially illiterate. The problem is that we are not really “God centered.” How can this be, given the level of religiosity in the Black community?

We have been “conformed to this world” following occidental, westernized, industrialized, northern hemisphere practices rooted in Aristotelian-based scientific philosophy that finds no intrinsic value in nature except that it can be used for man’s pleasure. This utilitarian and hedonistic philosophy undergirds the made man’s approach to nature, politics, economics, and human relations. His scientific approach to nature is amoral and his usurious banking system and valueless fiat money is immoral.  The ‘wicked husbandmen’ are destroying the environment and enslaving the entire human race with debt. What the modern day Apostle Paul, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, has called us to do is to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds.”

As Muslim followers of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, we must exhibit “quickness, fast moving, cleanliness - internally and externally - right down to the modern times.” Our modern Islamic thought and practices as it relates to the environment, whether as farmers, ranchers, or businessmen, should be based on Quranic principles. Fazlun Khalid, in an essay entitled Islam, Ecology, and Modernity: An Islamic Critique of the Root Causes of Environmental Degradation identified four principles that form the basis of an Islamic model “to help human beings to function within the natural pattern of creation.”  He identified: Unity (Tawhid), Creation (Fitra), Balance (Mizan), and Responsibility (Khilafa).

Here are some scriptural references for each principle:  the Unity Principle - Holy Quran 112:1-2 and 25:2; Creation Principle - Holy Quran 30:30; Balance Principle - Holy Quran 55:1-13; and the Responsibility Principle Holy Quran 6:165 and 24:55. As the new stewards of the earth destined to replace the wicked husbandmen, we must now forge a new relationship with our natural and built environment based upon the eternal principles found in our faith tradition. We must also lay the base for our own banking system or medium of exchange rooted in equity, justice, and actual value, not usury which is forbidden by the Holy Qur’an in Surah 2:275-276.

 In Romans 8:22-23, Paul writes: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” Celia Deane-Drummond wrote in Eco-Theology: “The proclamation of the good news [Gospels] cannot be detached from concern about the natural world in which people are placed: people and planet form an interwoven community that needs to be considered together, rather than separately.” In other words, our Christian family members also have scripturally mandated ‘new stewardship’ responsibilities to the creation. Time is dictating the agenda of what must be done today. Who will heed the “final call” and accept the universal mission of stewardship being proclaimed by the National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad?

Are we the new stewards to replace the ‘wicked husbandmen’? We certainly can be if we follow Allah’s guidance coming through the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and recognize that our problem is moral and spiritual before we attempt to implement Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint to end poverty and want.

The New Stewards of the Earth (Part II)

Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

In the Holy Quran 3:190, Allah (God) revealed: “In the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day, there are surely signs for men of understanding.” The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Saviours’ Day 2013 keynote address ushered in a new phase in our present 25,000 year cycle of history. What the Minister brought forth in his talk to us and the world regarding Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint was on time and exactly what must be done. Do we grasp the magnitude of the duties and responsibilities the Minister and the Two that back him have put before us?

            Reflect on his words. “Now, it’s clear that their [wicked husbandmen’s] stewardship is what has led to the condition of the earth today, and it demands a new steward…if God gives us [the] kingdom, and makes us stewards over creation: what kind of stewards are we going to be?” Again, the Holy Qur’an 7:34 says: “And every nation has a term; so when its term comes, they cannot remain behind the least while, nor can they precede (it).”  We are witnessing the old world going out, as a new world is coming in, just as the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us.

Why has the old world been sentenced to death? Because the made-man’s arrogant approach to science in his mastery of nature is without reverence or respect for the Author of Nature. The present world rulers have set themselves up in “the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” as it is written in II Thessalonians 2:4. His anthropocentric (man centered) approach to development without regard for environmental impacts has created a socio-ecological system that is unsustainable and without resiliency. In other words, the current practices of mankind will end and they will be unable to bounce back from the catastrophic consequences of their misguided stewardship. Therefore, there must be new stewards placed on the earth. We have now been placed in the valley of decision. Will we accept this phase of the mission?

Student Regional Ministers Robert Muhammad and Abdul Sharrief Muhammad

In Proverbs 1:5-6 it is written: “A wise man will hear, and will increase learning, and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels to understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their riddles.” Materialistic consumerism has replaced Christianity as the religion of the West and will soon replace Buddhism in the Far East. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said to us: “We must start teaching the babies, and begin to regenerate a culture of purposeful saving and investing.” It is imperative that we curb our media driven appetite for the latest gadget or consumable product. The Minister pointed out, “… there is no end to what we can do, if we start putting them nickels, pennies, [and] dollars together.” Therefore, our primary objectives are to control spending, while increasing saving and investing. The meaning of the Minister’s weekly series The Time and What Must Be Done is: we must change, adapt or perish! “Surely Allah never changes not the condition until they change their own condition” Holy Qur’an 13:11.

MGT of Muhammad Mosque No.45 Houston, Texas

Professor William Rees of the University of British Columbia states: “…mechanical assumptions must give way to dynamic analysis. The role of science shifts from facilitating the restructuring of nature to helping people adapt to natural variability.” He states further, “Understanding and coping with change is at the heart of resilience thinking.” In order for Black people to be resilient or bounce back from our terrible condition of poverty and want - change or adaptation is required.

Make Our Neighborhoods decent places to live

The first two of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s five ‘basic principles’ he outlined before giving us ‘the details’ of his Economic Blueprint were “Recognize the necessity for unity and group operation (activities) and Pool your resources, physically as well as financially.” This is what planning and management experts call an “inside-out” or “asset-capital based” approach. It focuses on looking at the glass half full rather than the glass half empty.

            Instead of focusing solely on our needs, problems, or deficiencies, we must now reorient our thinking to focus on our strengths, assets, and community capitals. In order to be successful, we must organize ourselves, associations, and institutions in our community to attract the resources we need to bring into existence what we desire. We must identify the human, social, cultural, economic, political, physical, and environmental capital-assets in our midst.  The Minister reminded us: “The enemy will never recognize us as an equal if we are in a begging position! We’re gonna have to get up and go to work, and do something for self!” It is as our Eternal Leader, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad told us: “Help self first, then others.” 

Fruit of Islam Muhammad Mosque No.45 Houston, Texas

Genesis 2:5 says: “And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth: and there was not a man to till the ground.” As it was in the beginning, our first order of business after organizing and pooling our resources is to acquire land for agriculture. The Minister made it crystal clear when he told us: “In order to build a nation, we had to give our people a vision of what it’s going to take. And we have to have land and there is no compromising this.” Today, we must now feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves.

          Are we the new stewards to replace the ‘wicked husbandmen’? We certainly can be if we follow Allah’s guidance coming through the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, organize, pool our resources, and implement Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint to end poverty and want.