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

by Louis E. Lomax

Messenger Muhammad says that the teachers and religious leaders of our own kind here in America were as blind to the REAL TRUTH as we; therefore, they themselves were not even qualified to lead us beyond that which the slave master had falsely taught them. HOW CAN THE BLIND LEAD THE BLIND? Thus, we remained in the DITCH (the GRAVE of spiritual ignorance, mental bondage) which was dug for us to fall into by our white Christian slave master.

Not only did our own preachers and educators here fail to give us the truth, our darker brothers who were born in the East came here from the East and neglected to convert us back to the original religion (ISLAM) of our foreparents. Many of our brothers from the East even failed to recognize us as their long-lost brothers (“lost sheep”) who had been kidnaped from the Nation of Islam 400 years ago, and made to dwell here in this strange land, among these wicked people who are not of our own kind (Gen. 15:13), nor of our own choice.

Our brothers from the East passed us by, and instead, tried to lecture on Islam to our slave master, thinking, so foolishly, that they would be able to turn the slave master into a righteous Muslim ... knowing all the time that the same slave master was the very one who had kidnaped, robbed, enslaved, and lynched (murdered) their long-lost brothers. Yes, our brothers from the East came here and seemed to be apologists for Islam, instead of rightly spreading it, or defending it from the sly insults of the unbelieving slave master.

Messenger Muhammad teaches us that Almighty God, ALLAH, is all-powerful and independent. ALLAH needs no one to apologize for Him. Islam, His True Religion, is not a religion of compromise. Islam is truth itself, and this truth has long been kept a secret from us.

For 400 years, we (so-called Negroes) were deprived of Islam (life) by our white slave master, who in turn indoctrinated (brainwashed) us with his false religion of Christianity ... and like the biblical Lazarus, we soon became so dead mentally and spiritually, that our attitude (disposition) became offensive (stank) in the nostrils of the intelligent and civilized world. Our kind in the East failed to recognize us as their long-lost brothers (the lost sheep). Our people in the East forgot us completely, and we, too, soon forgot our blood-ties with them.

But Almighty God ALLAH forgets not. As He promised in the Old Testament (Mal. 4:5) that He would send ELIJAH to the “lost sheep” (the so-called Negroes of America) in the “last days” (of the white man’s world), to teach us the truth that would free us from our white slave master, and turn our hearts and minds back toward our own kind (our fathers in the East). And, in the last days of this wicked world, the hearts of our people in the East would be turned once again toward us (Isaiah 43:5).

We who have been raised by ELIJAH from the “grave” that was dug for us by the slave master, bear witness that this same ELIJAH, who was predicted to come, has been raised from our midst today and is even now with us here in America in the person of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He is the “first begotten” from this grave of ignorance, from the midst of we (so-called Negroes) who have long been a mentally dead people. He is the “First Fruit” raised from us who slept, and he has been raised from this grave by Almighty God, ALLAH Himself.

Examine his works among us, for his works are sufficient testimony to his identity. Only a fool, or an envious person, would fail to see the greatness of this man after examining his work. We who have been raised from the grave by him bear witness of his work.

In a short time, Messenger Muhammad is accomplishing what our educators and religious leaders here failed to do for 100 years, and what our brothers from the East neglected to do. Messenger Muhammad has brought our minds out of the sky (where the ignorant preachers had sent it), and has made us better able to face the reality of living. He has restored life (truth) to our long-lost dead people. Who else other than Almighty God, ALLAH, could have given Messenger Muhammad the power to do what all others have failed to do?

“And Allah sent down WATER from above, and therewith gives life to the dead earth after its death. Surely there is a SIGN in this for a people who listen.” (Quran 16:65.)