Chapter - Clarification of Confusion Surrounding the Muslims
In order to clarify some of the confusion surrounding Muslim outlooks and objectives, I will confront the rumors and false allegations of Muslim threats of violence with a direct statement which answers the implied question; Will the Black Muslims Attack America? in a direct and forthright manner. These are some statements I gave in an interview to the New York Herald Tribune Newspaper.
We are not going to take part in any violence whatsoever. We're not going to do anything other than what we are doing. That is trying to deliver the truth to our people and teach them that they are supposed to be Muslims, and that means they are supposed to be righteous people and that we have shed all things that pertain to wickedness.
We have stripped ourselves of harm to let you know that we are not people of violence. We don't intend to attack you. We have no idea or knowledge of anything like that coming in the future.
Because if we attacked you, we would have to have superior weapons to attack you with, and we don't have factories nor earth to dig metals to manufacture tools or weapons such as you have.
"All of this is your creation, and, therefore, if we would get some of this, you would have to let us have it -- and you would not give me a gun to shoot you with. Therefore, God forbid us even to accept weapons and even to carry anything like weapons to fight with. Because to fight is with Him, and you are not with us."
The aim and purpose of Islam here among my people is to give them a knowledge of self and a knowledge of God, knowledge of their religion, Islam and to separate them in time, that these 17 or 20 million American dark people should go for themselves.
"This is the basis of the whole, it is to separate our people and put them by themselves."
We have respect for them and their professions, and we try to treat them as we treat ourselves, for that matter. We know they are not believers as we are. We know that.
"But as long as they tolerate our faith, we tolerate theirs, and we treat them as brothers."
"He would have to be in sympathy with us and he would have to have some knowledge of the aims and purposes of Islam in America."
This is the real trouble: the whites oppose us, the black people of America, who were their slaves once upon a time, from ever becoming anything like self-independent. They want to keep them subject to themselves in a more educational and scientific way, other than their fathers.
Their fathers only used the common knowledge of enslaving our people. But, today their children can use one of the smartest scientific ways against our people to keep them subjected to them that ever were invented by a race of people since time was.
We want what you want today, and that is independence. We want peace, and, whether you want peace or not, we want peace and security from you. You are our worst enemy. We have no other people who are an enemy to us but you, because we don't live in the country of other people.
We live only with you, and we have been here for 400 years, and you say now that we are free, but yet you are doing everything to keep us from exercising the rights as equals or of a free people.
This is what I want you to understand. We are tired of suffering, brutality, beatings, killings, just because you don't like us, and just hate us, and absolutely knowing that we are powerless to resist because you have all the odds against us.
You are absolutely the boss, and we have nothing. And we are asking to leave you, that's all we're asking. We can't get along with you in peace; you don't want us in peace.
If we sit over there in that house across the street, peaceful all day and all night, after a while that worries you. You will send someone around to see what is going on over there in that house.
It's the white man's way of starting trouble -- breaking the peace of people by interfering with their peace. We're not sitting over there in that house planning anything but are trying to plan peace for the house.
The American white man is not going to move out of his estate to give to the so-called Negroes. We are not asking you to do any such thing.
No, only unless you prevent our going to our own. If you are going to prevent us from going to our own, or back where we came from, where you found us, then give us a place here to ourselves.
There has been too much talk about separation and about our acting or demanding a territory here. We're not demanding territory in America. No, sir, we're asking America only if they don't allow us to go back to our own people and to the country from which we came.
Then give us a place to ourselves; as you know and we have learned through experience for 400 years, we can't get along in peace together. You're not going to accept us as your equals, and we know you're not going to do so. We disregard your promises because you are not going to live up to them; because 100 per cent of your people will not agree with such. And we have proof today in the South.
Allah has revealed that the black is the original Man, and that's what I teach. Now, where this supremacy teaching comes in that is charged by the disbelievers -- that I teach it in order to suit their particular purpose of charging us with being an aggressive movement, or intending to become such, because of the teachings of one being superior over the other.
We say that the black man is the first man in the sun, and then they take this and just change it around -- that he is teaching supremacy. And that we are not doing. We already know that we are inferior to you here in America.
We cannot say physically or even mentally that we are equal, nor say your superior, when it comes to actual physical or educational ability.
The head of this movement, Mr. King, is trying to force the white men in the South to do that which is against his will and nature, because some of the Northern parties of the white people, maybe in Washington, have said to him that this should be done and should have this in the Constitution and, therefore, you should enforce it and, therefore, have it enforced by the government.
But Mr. King has not learned as yet that the white man in the South is brethren to the white man in Washington and the Washington white man is a brother to the Southern white man -- that they are not going to go to war over the Negro and kill each other for the sake of the unlearned Negro -- of the knowledge of self and others -- to integrate into that which they don't master, give me a piece of your meat that you have there in your house.
Therefore, Mr. King is making a fool of himself in the South and acting like a dog around the house, where the master stands at the door and the dog wants something to eat and he just waddles all around the door, around the master's feet, whipping his tail on the ground and grinning and leaning his ears back on his neck to show that he is a good peaceful dog, and master, give me a piece of your meat that you have there in your house.
And this while there is plenty of meat for the dog in the bushes out there, if he would go out and hunt for it.
Poor fellow, trying to force himself into a school where it is 100 per cent white and they're telling him they don't want him. And then the Army is standing around trying to force him in there -- that's their crazy idea.
I wouldn't want the Army to think about coming to help me against a white man, to allow me to come into his house or in the school or his restaurant, or anything else that he owns.
If you tell me, I don't want you here, that's sufficient. I'm gone.
In a case where the person wants to fight and he pounces upon us, sometimes without even warning us, we want our own men and women and our girls to learn to try to protect themselves the best they can in case of attack.
But in the case of the so-called American Negro, we have nothing to fight back with. If you come to the door shooting, we have no guns here to shoot back with, so, therefore, the right is with God, as it is written in the Book.
He will defend us if we believe in Him and trust Him, and we're not going to start fighting with anyone to have Him to defend us. But if we are attacked, we depend on Him to defend us because He has stripped us.
What are we going to integrate for? What do we want to marry a white woman for, when we are black men? That is going to ruin our family. We will spot up our family. What does she want a black man for? Or what does the black man want the white one for?
This is ignorant on both parts to want to intermarry with each other. The very desire there is ignorant and evil. It's against divine law for either side to integrate in such a way.
God made all of us as we are. We have black nations, brown nations, red, yellow, and white. We have all these five major colors in races or nations. Why should they not remain like that? Why should they be thrown in like bones or birds into a pot to make soup out of?
I don't blame the white man in the South for not wanting my people to marry with them. But I blame the South for mistreating them.
You see, I am between life and death, and I have to say these things in the way I see them. There was a time when I had no knowledge of them. But they have been revealed to me, and now Allah would punish me if I did not say them.
Incidents on criminal insanity are now news, and the religion of Islam is no more responsible for one of its subjects succumbing to insanity than the Christian religion is responsible for the steady multitudes of their members becoming so afflicted.
Christianity has long taught Thou Shalt No Kill, but for centuries the most devastating killings have occurred constantly by Christians killing Christians, killing Buddhists, killing Moslems, killing Jews and killing members of their own families of friends or associates.
In the case of the recent Los Angeles family killing involving a Muslim, all Muslims throughout our nation have been deeply grieved and angered by the accounts of the alleged crimes committed by Melvin E. Jackson. This man had been accepted into Islam in January of 1961, and his wife had joined in May of that same year.
No one can foretell the future or anyone who joins this religious body any more than any other religion can predict the future of all of its individual converts. For such acts of madness alleged to have been perpetrated by Jackson, institutions for the deranged have been built by the federal governments. If this man is found insane -- and his act would suggest that of one insane -- he should be committed to such an institution.
In so far as the law of Islam is concerned, the penalty for such acts by a sane person against innocent human beings is death. And if the courts would give us permission to execute such criminals we would do so ourselves. For we desire to put a stop to such crimes -- including thefts -- and we feel that the courts should turn over such criminals to be executed under the real Islamic law. It is our desire to put a stop once and for all to such crimes being committed among our people.
That doesn't mean that we are in any way aggressive toward them and seek an aggressive act. We only just criticize them for being like that.
I love all my people, and I believe one day they all will believe as I believe. If they don't the prophets have lied, and we just can't make liars out of them.
It's what He revealed, and what He revealed is what I am teaching and believe in, and this term devil, or name devil, is applied to wicked people, people who are by nature wicked.
They were made white, or different color, because they had been grafted out of the darker people, and, therefore, they have that color.
The Fruit of Islam means the first converts to Islam here in America and the first people to be cleaned and made fit to be called Muslims.
And their training is on this basis, as being Muslims, to keep in practice, not just say it is their faith or belief. You must put into practice the principles of Islam that you believe in and serve as an example for others who would accept Islam.
They take physical training and exercises in many ways to keep physically fit and healthy and to try to get away from many of the physical ailments that they have suffered long before coming into the knowledge of Islam.
And trained into the knowledge of what the aims and purpose of Islam are, they are to clean up a people who are not clean, morally as well as spiritually, in America and to make them fit to become good members of the society.