When the Word is Given... / A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World

by Louis E. Lomax

We see by reports in the daily press that even many of you who are scholars and scientists think that this message of Islam that is being taught here in America among your 20 million ex-slaves is “new,” or that it is something Mr. Muhammad himself has made up.

Mr. Muhammad’s religious message is not “new.” All of the scientists and prophets of old predicted that a man such as he, with a doctrine or message such as this that Mr. Muhammad is spreading among your 20 million ex-slaves, would make his appearance among us at a time such as we are living in today.

It is also written in your own scriptures that this prophetic figure would not be raised up from the midst of the educated class, but that God would make His choice of a man from among the lowly, uneducated, downtrodden and oppressed masses ... among the lowest element of America’s 20 million ex-slaves.

Just as it was in the days when God raised up Moses from among the lowly Hebrew slaves, and missioned him to separate his oppressed people from a slave master named Pharaoh, and Moses found himself opposed by the scholars and scientists of that day, who are symbolically described in the bible as “Pharaoh’s Magicians.”...

And just as Jesus, himself a lowly carpenter, was also missioned by God in that day to find his people (the “lost sheep”) and separate them from their Gentile enemies, and restore them back among their own people ... Jesus also found himself opposed by the scholars and scientists of his day, who are symbolically described in the bible as “scribes, priests, and pharisees.”

Just as the learned class of those days disagreed and opposed both Moses and Jesus primarily because of their humble origin and status, today Mr. Elijah Muhammad is likewise being opposed by the learned, educated intellectuals from among his own kind primarily because of his humble origin and status in their eyesight, and efforts are made by these modern-day “magicians, scribes, and Pharisees” to ridicule Mr. Muhammad by magnifying the humble origin of his many followers.

Moses was raised up among his enslaved people at a time when God was planning to remove the power of the slave master and bring about a great change by placing the slaves in a land of their own where they could give birth to a “New Civilization,” completely independent of their former slave master. Pharaoh opposed God’s plan and God’s servant, so Pharaoh and his people were destroyed.

Jesus was sent among his people again at a time when God was planning to bring about a great change. The new dispensation preached by Jesus 2,000 years ago ushered in a new type of civilization, the Christian civilization, better known as the Christian world.

The Holy Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of ALLAH be upon him) came 600 years after Jesus with another dispensation that did not destroy or remove the Christian civilization, but it did put a dent in it, a wound that has lasted even until today.

Now today, God has sent Mr. Elijah Muhammad among the downtrodden and oppressed so-called American Negroes to warn us that God is again about to bring about another great change ... only this time, it will be a FINAL CHANGE! This is the day and the time for a COMPLETE CHANGE.