The Holy Qur’an teaches us
that Allah (God) created the heavens and the
earth with truth. The Bible teaches that God
established the heavens and the earth with
wisdom. So, we are birthed into a house of
knowledge. The universe is full of
knowledge. Everything in the universe is
truth. There is nothing false that God
created, and as long as you live, if you
live to be 1,000, you could never exhaust
the knowledge that is in this universe. The
Holy Qur’an teaches that, if all the trees
were as pens and all of the seas with seven
more seas added to them were as ink, you
could never exhaust the words of Allah
(God).
Since we recognize from the
Bible and the Holy Qur’an that this universe
is created by a wise Creator called the
Author of the Truth, then He must have a
purpose for authoring the truth by which all
of us exist, subsist and maintain and
perpetuate our lives. What is his purpose
for learning? Surely, the wise Creator did
not intend for us to learn to come to any of
these fine institutions to come out and get
a fine home, car and a good paying job, and
then become totally corrupt.
What is the purpose for
knowledge? The Honorable Elijah Muhammad has
taught us that the purpose for knowledge is
to feed the development of the human being
until that human grows into divine and
becomes a true manifestation of the
characteristics of God. Both books, Bible
and Holy Qur’an, say that from God we had
our origin and to God we return. Does that
mean we came up out of the earth and we go
back to the earth, and that’s our return?
No. It means that the Author of your
intelligence is the Creator and the
evolution of your intelligence is to the
Creator.
***
If the purpose of knowledge
is to evolve man into a true manifestation
of God, then the hunger for knowledge is a
natural desire in the human being that
should never be frustrated. The Honorable
Elijah Muhammad has said to us that God
created himself in darkness. From the first
atom of life, He, God, created Himself and
He makes all life bear witness to His
self-creation in the darkness of the womb of
space. None of us who come to life come to
life except we bear witness to His coming to
life.
Our first beginning is from
a watery substance called sperm. The Holy
Qur’an teaches that man, in his first state,
is nothing to speak of. The first state in
the evolution of men and women from
ignorance into knowledge is also nothing to
speak of. Beloved Black Brothers and
Sisters, you are right now in your first
state along the path of human development.
You are a long, long, long way from where
you and I yet have to go. White people today
rule the world. They are not in their first
state of development, but Caucasian people
should not mock the development of those who
are coming out of colonialism, up from under
imperialism, up from under a dark night of
ignorance as they struggle to evolve. They
should not make their evolution make them
think that they are superior, lest it
produce an arrogance that stops their growth
and development. The first stage of the
Caucasian people was not something great to
think of. They, too, struggled with the life
in the hills and cave-sides of Europe. They
did not know how to bury their dead or cook
their food. They lived the life of the lower
animals until the divine light came to them
through Musa or Moses. They do not talk
about their beginnings. It is nothing to
speak of. You do not find Caucasian people
glorifying the caves. They put that behind
them, because they have put it behind them.
One day, we will never look back at this
stage of our development. We will have
evolved so far above where we are that we
will never speak even of this condition that
we find ourselves in because, like sperm, it
is nothing to speak of.
***
The cell becomes a clot in
the second stage. The cell is where you
begin and you cannot begin until there is a
unit and a union. Likewise, our progress as
a people does not begin, Brothers and
Sisters, because we are fragmented. It
begins when we recognize the value of each
other and come together as a unit; then,
life begins for us as a people.
The cell becomes a clot, a
lump of congealed blood, but in that clot
there is a growing intelligence.
In the Holy Qur’an, the
first word that Prophet Muhammad of Arabia (PBUH)
heard was “Iqra” in Arabic, which means
“read.” The words appear in the 96th Chapter
of the Holy Qur’an, but it is the first word
that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) had and the
name of the chapter is “Al Alaq,” which
means “The Clot.” It says, “Read in the name
of thy Lord who creates.” Read “and thy Lord
is most generous who taught men by the pen
what man knew not.” A clot is a lump of
congealed blood, but intelligence is
hungering to grow within that clot. It just
needs to be fed and it will evolve.
It is only through reading
that your intelligence is developed. When
you open a book, it looks like a bird with
open wings. When you learn to read with
understanding, when you can open the book of
knowledge, when you can understand what you
read, then that is like giving a man wings.
There is no condition that we suffer from
that we cannot rise from with knowledge. We
are not oppressed because we are Black; we
are oppressed because we are ignorant. It is
ignorance that keeps us on the bottom, not
Blackness.
The Blackness that we must
fight against is not the Blackness of our
skin, but the Blackness of ignorance is
something we must remove. It is a scourge on
Black people. As long as you do not open the
book, as long as you do not know how to read
with understanding, you will always be
looking at White, Yellow and Brown people,
crying about your condition; but it is not
anybody’s fault. You have to get up and
learn what there is in order to evolve.
The next stage of life is an
embryo. The head has to be formed first,
because you do not need hands without a
head. It takes the head to put hands to
work. God would not give you hands without a
head first. The head has to develop first,
then calls into existence the hands and
feet, and gives them something to do.
How can we, as Black people,
say that we do not need a leader? No wonder
our hands have not done anything. What do
you do with your hands and feet? You disco
and party. What are you building for your
people? Nothing.
If you are building nothing
with your hands and going no place with your
feet, then that is a sign that you really
have not developed a head to direct your
hands and feet. This is why this society has
worked to destroy leadership among Black
people because, once you get the right kind
of leadership, we have to get up out of the
condition that we are in. Every Black leader
who has stood up for us has been castigated
and destroyed, because as long as you do not
develop a head, then somebody else’s head
will direct your hands and feet.
People criticize
underdeveloped Africa and other
underdeveloped countries, but you only have
an underdeveloped country because you have
an underdeveloped intelligence. Nobody wants
to sit down next to or look at a lump of
congealed blood. We are rejected in the
society and nations because we have not
formed yet as a people of intelligence.
After the head is developed,
the fourth stage is called a fetus. And all
of this develops in darkness. These four
stages are the basis of a life that is ready
to come out of darkness into light, and
master the forces of life. When the baby is
born, that is the fifth stage.
Within 12 months, the baby
is walking, doing things that none of us
taught them to do, because there is a native
intelligence in that sperm that is of
divine. That intelligence must be fed in
order for it to grow, as that sperm grew
from a cell to a clot, to an embryo, to a
fetus, to a baby, to a child and then to an
adult, which is the completion of that
physical development. How far can the
intelligence grow if the intelligence is
properly fed?
The scripture says, “God
made man in His image and likeness.” Then,
He says to man, “Replenish the earth, and
subdue it.” He wants man to master the laws
that govern the earth. You can do that. All
we have to do is be fed properly.
Where are you on the scale
of human development? Have you reached the
human level yet? Frankly, there is hardly a
human being on the earth. The whole earth is
populated by beasts. We have been
short-circuited in our growth and have
degenerated into the lower forms of life. We
have not justified our existence on the
earth, and thus sentenced ourselves to
death.
***
The mind is created to feed
on truth. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad
taught us that the brain cell is created to
think rightly because the brain cell is
created to feed on the truth of the
universe.
When you feed on truth, you
think in harmony with the truth, you think
right. When you feed on lies, you feed on
that which is against the nature of the cell
of the brain, and destroy the beauty of the
brain cell. It is like planning wood against
the grain. The more you plane it against the
grain, the uglier you make it. The more you
think against truth, the uglier you become
spiritually, mentally and even physically.
This is how important it is
for us to be taught right. We live in a
world in America where a people have not
treated us right. If we have not been
treated right, do you think that a man who
will not treat you right would teach you
right? We have never been taught right from
the cradle, and that is why we are in our
current condition.
Thirty million Black people
and we do not produce anything. We all have
on shoes, but we do not have one shoe
factory. We all have clothes, but we do not
have one clothing factory. We all eat food,
but we are losing the little land we owned
in the South. We are totally dependent on
Caucasian people to feed, clothe, educate,
shelter and employ us. What have we been fed
in our minds?
Our beautiful Black students
are ashamed of the Blackness of our skin.
How could you be fed properly and hate
yourself? How could we have been taught
properly and feel that there is something
divinely wrong with kinky hair that we have
to burn it out, pull it out, blowing it up,
curl it up to try to look like White people,
because we hate ourselves? How can other
people love us if we do not love ourselves?
How can other people respect us if we will
not respect ourselves? Why should we expect
other people to do for us what we are
unwilling to do for ourselves?
Something went wrong in our
learning, but do you think it was an
accident or was it on purpose? How far have
we gone in our development?
In the darkness, we are like
a clot in that we have never developed a
hint of leadership to direct our arms and
legs to make progress. As a beast walks the
earth with his head down, following the
plane of the earth, a human being that is
not fully developed walks the earth with a
head after low desires. We walk the earth
following our low desires. In fact, man has
become so weak and wicked that his knowledge
serves his low desires. His desire is to
rob, steal, plunder, exploit, enslave,
oppress and suppress. His knowledge is used
to destroy, rather than build, because man
is not a man. Man is a beast in human form.
We are not being taught by human beings; we
are taught by beasts, so how can we manifest
human qualities when a beast is our teacher.
***
The education from these
institutions is worthless; feeding from
archaic principles of a decadent mind that
is not keeping pace with the onward motion
of men and women’s minds; feeding these
youngsters methods that have been dead a
long time ago; feeding them psychology that
they cannot use. If the teachers do not
grow, how can they grow their students? They
are already dead because they think they
have arrived. They do not study anymore, so
they cannot grow others. When the students
feed from their teachers, they are feeding
from death itself. All the teachers want is
a salary. The students are suffering for the
lack of knowledge; the whole of America is
suffering for the lack of knowledge.
When God gives man
knowledge, He gives man a duty and
responsibility. A man who knows is
responsible for the one who does not know.
When God gives you knowledge and
responsibility, and you fail in that
responsibility, you forfeit the right to
know. So your knowledge that you profess to
have becomes darkness; and you lose a grip
on the light because you refused to carry
out your duty because you knew and you would
not teach those who did not know.
If you do not have character
development, knowledge will bring out the
worst in you and it will make the one who
knows suppress and enslave the one who does
not know. When the poor person who does not
know seeks to get free, you suppress and
kill them to maintain your position of
preeminence that you cannot maintain by love
and right; you can only maintain it by
force. This is the way America has become
today. America cannot maintain her position
in the world by right, so she has to
maintain it by might. When you suck the
blood of the peoples of the world, at some
point there is going to be a natural
combustion because people are going to
revolt against the man who knows and kept
knowledge from others to oppress, enslave
and exploit them.
***
They have allowed us to
attend all of the fine academic
institutions, but there is something
missing. With all that we have learned, we
cannot quite put it together to do something
to help our people. We have more education
than the respected country of Great Britain:
over 14,000 Bachelor of Science degrees
every year, 775 Master degrees every year,
125 doctorate degrees every year. Every
year, we are producing scholarship, but the
scholarship is producing nothing for the
people. It is because we have been deprived
of the knowledge of ourselves.
It takes God, Himself, to
intervene to get us up out of this—and God
has intervened. I thank Almighty God for His
Coming, for without Him we were totally lost
and inhuman. But thanks to Almighty God
Allah, He gave us Elijah Muhammad, a man
that the prophets predicted would be among
us. Your Bible ends in the Old Testament
prophesying that Elijah would come. The Holy
Qur’an prophesied that a man named Muhammad
would be around at the time of the
resurrection of the dead—not ghosts from the
cemeteries, but Black men and women
mentally, morally, spiritually,
economically, socially and politically dead.
People would get the truth and the truth
would begin pulling the dry bones together;
and the bones would stand up and they would
start evolving again into true
manifestations of the characteristics of
God.
The man that you have been
looking for all your life is to come from
among a dead people that have been
dehumanized. Powerful wisdom of God is going
to rise up in the last days from out of a
dead people. When you hear a people—whose
intelligence was killed by the
world—speaking words of wisdom and the
institutions of learning did not teach them,
then you know that God, Himself, has
intervened.
The system is set up to
destroy the cream of the Black crop, because
White people do not want to see a head
develop among us. They are watching at every
turn for leadership, to destroy that leader.
But God has given us a leader who has put
his thoughts and wisdom in our heads. Even
though he is absent from among us, he is
very present in the knowledge that he has
disseminated among us. You can kill the man
but you cannot kill the plan. You cannot
kill the idea. He is come to birth now in so
many of us, until you do not know where to
start to kill.
The scepter of rulership and knowledge is
passed away from the Jews, Christians and
Old World Muslims, and it has come to the
despised, rejected, unloved and unwanted. In
the Bible, God says, “I will choose the
despised and the rejected. I will take a
foolish people as my own. I will take a
people that once were a people, but now are
no people at all, and I will bring to naught
those that are wise with a foolish people;
and I will be their God and they will be my
people; and I will be in the midst of them
and they will not need neither the light nor
the moon, for I will be in the midst of them
and they will feed from me.” By feeding from
the pure truth of Almighty God, our minds
will be reshaped and reformed, and we will
start to grow out of bestiality into
humanity.
We have to make a change; we
have to stop feeding from corrupt sources
and start feeding from God and grow out of
the bestiality into humanity into our
divinity. We will walk out of death into
life, out of an old world into a new world,
and fulfill our destiny. We are born to
become true manifestations of the
characteristics of God.
Editor’s note: The above
text is an edited excerpt from a message
delivered by Minister Farrakhan at Wellesley
College in Boston, Massachusetts on Feb. 16,
1983.]
