In the name of Allah,
the Beneficent, the Merciful.
I bear witness that
there is no God worthy of worship but Allah
And I bear witness
that Muhammad is his Messenger
O Allah, thou art the King, Thou art my Lord and I am Thy servant
I have been greatly unjust to myself and I confess my faults
As Salaam Alaikum Dear Brother Minister Farrakhan,
May Allah strengthen you and heal you that you may complete your assignment from your Lord and that we in turn grow from being disciples to your apostles and continue the great work of the resurrection of fallen humanity. It is in the spirit of Atonement that I write this letter.
As you have taught us, mistakes made in the public should be corrected in the public and Allah has quickened within me the Self-Accusing Spirit regarding my mistakes and to make public my atonement. While I wrote an apology to you privately, I did not go into the depth of the details that are in this public letter. I come to you a changed man, a repented man that truly wishes to atone for my mistakes.
I am Jason C. Muhammad (GodSon) and from St. Louis, MO. I live in the metropolitan area of Chicago presently. I am the webmaster of a website named The Farrakhan Factor. I created this website in 2001 as a vehicle for my own testimony of you, a platform for believers and sympathizers to come together and discuss the teachings and as a place for the defense of you and your works against the online attacks from your detractors. At one time, many considered me your greatest online defender.
Here’s
a very brief history of myself and Islam and what I believe led to my errant
actions.
When I was 15 years old a brother came in our
neighborhood and gave me two things that forever altered the trajectory of my
life: 1) Message to the Black Man and
2) a cassette tape of a lecture you gave in St. Louis called God’s Plan for the Black Man and Woman in
America (Nov. 1991 St. Louis Arena) which to this day I consider an
absolute masterpiece. Though there were two cassettes, I only had the one but I
studied it and I studied Message to the Black man every day.
My
life changed dramatically! Once a drug dealer, once a D and F student, once a
young man so troubled that my first year of high school I spent every single
week in Saturday detention… you touched my heart, mind and soul and caused me
to transform into a new growth before the eyes of everyone that knew me. I left
junior year of high school a "thug" and returned for my senior year a
righteous Muslim (at least striving to be). I was voted the most changed in my
high school. My grades jumped to straight As. I was voted Best of West (top
honors for my high school Hazelwood West High School). I was added Who's Who among
American High School Students. I became a member of the National Honor Society.
All of this and so much more happened after that one summer of 1993 and my
introduction to my leader, teacher, guide and spiritual father in yourself.
My friends and I would skip
lunch in High School and go to the school library and devour any and every book
we could find on Black history and the Nation of Islam. I read about the late
great Malcolm X. I read C. Eric Lincoln’s The Black Muslims in America. I read
Bruce Percy’s book called Malcolm. In hindsight, nearly every book back then,
surrounded the personality of Malcolm X when it came to the Nation.
In his autobiography he wrote that
he saw Master Fard Muhammad in his jail cell. He wrote how he would die for the
Honorable Elijah Muhammad. In fact, he said he would take a bullet for him but
then by the end of the book he seemed to forget that vision of Master Fard
Muhammad.
I
was perplexed at how he could say he’d die for his teacher but then turn around
and attack him so vehemently. I read about the corruption of the Nation at that
time and I read a quote by Malcolm that said, “We had the greatest organization the Black man ever had, but niggas
ruined it.” I vowed then that I would get in the Nation and eradicate
corruption because I felt that what was at stake was the very survival of our
people.
I’ve
longed for justice for our people after learning of our history. I sat and
cried at my parent’s kitchen table for their hiding certain books from me
because they didn’t want me to grow up hating white people for the evils they
had done to us. I was 15 at the time and I vowed to find the mosque and join on
and assist you in this work and to ensure the nation doesn’t fall to the hands
of corruption as it had in the past. I came in the Nation with that seed
planted from a teenager. I never came to the Nation to take, I came to give for
to me it’s a labor of love. My only desire was and is to serve.
After
seeing how your teachings transformed my life, my mother suggested I write a
book about what I believe, so I wrote The
Science of Christ: Farrakhan, The Word Made Flesh at
the age of 20. I don’t think anyone can read that book and
think that I was in any way insincere. While many refer to you as Jesus now, I
wrote that in and defended it in the 90s. I wrote from what I was inspired of
Allah to write and penned all 250 pages in a matter of weeks.
When
I turned 16 and could drive, I visited Mosque #28 in East St. Louis under
Minister Donald Muhammad with the intent on accepting, processing and
registering and then soldiering. My parents wouldn’t sign my forms as a
teenager so I didn’t formally registered until I was 18 years old. I was
attending Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, FL and I joined the study
group under Minister Ray Muhammad. I later transferred to Talladega College in
Talladega, AL. While there, I would travel to Birmingham Mosque #69 under
Minister Theo Muhammad. When I graduated my family and I moved to Austin, TX
and we attended the Austin Study Group under Min. Cedric Muhammad. I was made a
Study Group coordinator in San Marcos, TX until we finally moved and settled in
Chicago where I was working with Minister Karriem
Muhammad in the South Suburban Study Group were I served as his assistant
minister.
I
only give that history to say that I have a unique perspective on the Nation (at
that time) having been involved in so many mosques and study groups. I love
anyone I saw helping you in this work but I would clash if I saw injustices
done to the believers. In fact, I really never experienced many of the issues I
saw others experience but I am highly empathetic and thus their pain would be
my pain.
Believers
do not bring guests to a mosque that has a low spirit or if they believe they
are being mishandled or mistreated. They may stay themselves hoping a change
will come but they won’t bring guests. Charity will fall for the same reason. You
can always tell the spirit of a mosque by looking at the numbers. As the saying
goes, men lie, women lie but numbers don’t. (Unless it’s statistics)
When
I came to Chicago I would end up working with Bro. Minister Jabril Muhammad in
Phoenix. I made his eBook for Is It
Possible that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is Still Physically Alive???, This is the One and Farrakhan: The Traveler. I set up his website writtentestimony.com and jabrilsart.com
which was an online art gallery. He even allowed me to read some of the
book that he had given to you that woke you up in 1977. I also held post at the
Palace.
So
what happened? How did all of that love manifest as something so negative? A
pendulum pulled in one direction has a tendency to swing just as far in the
other direction. I wasn’t balanced. I saw the dissatisfaction in the mosques
and study groups from among the believers. I felt their pain and it pained me
greatly. I also saw that many attempts to make positive changes were being
thwarted. I misunderstood you and ran with that misunderstanding. I failed to
see the hand of Allah in it all.
I truly believed that the only person that
could change things was you. When I didn’t see you make the visible changes, I began
to question you in my own mind – doubt, the blight of belief. I believed you
became insensitive to the pain and suffering of the believers. Further when I
saw your language change in expressing the concept of God, I felt you were off
the path and I felt that too contributed to the struggles within the Nation. More
misunderstanding.
This is not my thinking now, but it was then
and I tried to use external pressure to force an internal change. This was
wrong and very wrong. I had not considered the Qur’an’s words:
64:11 No calamity befalls but by Allah’s
permission. And whoever believes in Allah, He guides his heart. And Allah is
Knower of all things.
64:12 And obey Allah and obey the Messenger; but if you turn away,
the duty of Our Messenger is only to deliver (the message) clearly.
64:13
Allah, there is no God but He. And on Allah let the
believers rely.
Dear
Minister, I didn’t even give you the courtesy of asking you which would have
given you the opportunity to correct my thinking. No, off I was making
judgments like Moses traveling with the wise-man; Thou has surely done a grievous thing, Thou hast indeed done a
horrible thing. Such intense
language for one lacking a comprehensive knowledge and patience. This was a value judgment that near cost me my spiritual life
and had it not been for Allah stirring me in the middle of the night to listen
to your message The Shock of the Hour
and when you said the Nation would never
fall again and you repeated never
several times, I knew what I had to do because if the Nation is to never fall
again, then it will take believers moved by Allah to ensure it never falls
again.
Now
here I stand, a new man with a renewed spirit. I contrast my value-judgments
with how the angels questioned Allah regarding the making of Iblis:
2:30 And when they Lord said to the
angels, I am going to place a ruler in the earth, they said: Wilt Thou place in
it such as make mischief in it and shed blood? And we celebrate Thy praise and
extol Thy holiness. He said: Surely I know what you know not.
They
saw that it would cause mischief and shed blood but they didn’t make a value
judgment, they brought it to the God’s attention but then said you know what I
know not. That would have been the proper spirit for me to approach what I didn’t
understand. That is my approach now and it is a conscious approach now because
I have learned and grown from my errors. I have come to know that I don’t know,
but celebrate Thy praise and extol Thy holiness.
I
allowed I forum that I created with such positive intent, to turn negative against
the man that gave me spiritual life. I imagine I feel somewhat like the brother
that hit Master Fard Muhammad and later found out what he did and to whom he did
it or Paul who persecuted the believers until he knocked down and blinded and didn’t
eat or drink that spiritual wisdom for 3 days. I’m not saying I am he as I know
I am unworthy to unlace his shoes, but the principle I can most certainly
relate to.
For
my own words to and about you, spoken from the hurt and pain of dissatisfaction
and perceived failed expectations, I
apologize. From the depth of my soul I
am sorry in the truest meaning of the word – sorrowful.
As
I opened with part of our prayer, I first went to Allah in private and prayed
and asked his forgiveness.
I apologize to you dear Minister, for any distress and hurt and pain caused directly
by me or by what I allowed.
I am sorry for the hurt caused your family who have sacrificed everything in having you
to themselves so an ungrateful people can have a Comforter, a warner, a leader,
a teacher, a guide and a father.
I apologize to Bro. Minister Jabril Muhammad for the hurt I caused him in my words and
actions.
I apologize to those laborers who were ill-affected and whose work was made
difficult because of my words and what I allowed.
I apologize to the believers because while I was fighting for them, I ended
up fighting with them.
I apologize to the general public because they may have been turned away from
you, the Nation and the teachings because of either my words and/or what I
allowed.
I am truly sorry and I ask your forgiveness.
My desire is to come back home to my Nation and use my skills, gifts and talents for your service, for the benefit of the Nation and to assist in the process of the resurrection of fallen humanity.
May Allah bless you to feel the sincerity of my words and accept my apology and forgive me. May Allah open the hearts of the believers to forgive me.
Your repentant servant in the cause
of Islam,
Brother Jason C. Muhammad