From the Book Message to the Blackman in America

QUESTION: Mr. Muhammad, would you make some statements about Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement?

ANSWER: Yes, I think Rev. King has been doing a good job according to his knowledge. He has been trying to do his best to get our people some justice in the way of civil rights. I believe that he means well, and I believe he would have done better if he had known more about the time and the people and the history and what must be done in such times.

He has the desire to see his people dealt with according to justice and not according to injustice. But he does not know that he is living in the time when justice is bound to come to his people. However, it is only through Divine and not through civil government. And that goes for most of the groups who are trying to do something for the betterment of our people.

By The Hon. Elijah Muhammad from the chapter "And We Made The Son Of Mary And His Mother A Sign, And We Gave Them Refuge On A Lofty Ground Having Meadows And Springs"  From the book Our Saviour Has Arrived

"If Mary and her son are a sign, or an example, of that which is to come, then whose birth and enslavement could correspond with these prophecies and signs any more than we, the American So-Called Negroes here under the white man?"

If the Bible students would have taken this 50th verse of the 23rd Chapter of the Holy Qur’an, under study together with the birth, ministry and death of Jesus, as given in the Bible, Matt., Mark, Luke and John, they would agree that the man, Jesus, 2,000 years ago and his mother were a sign of something to come.

But the preachers of Christianity have always been overly anxious to put some fancy myth (other than the truth) around Jesus’ birth, ministry, and death, 2,000 years ago, to the extent that the Catholics make monuments of an imaginary Mary and her son, Jesus, and bow down and worship their handmade statues.

The Christians have no true pictures of Jesus and his mother, Mary, in possession, so they use imagery and the ignorant take it for truth.

By The Hon. Elijah Muhammad -  from the book Message to the Blackman in America

"Their world is getting very small and if you are dependent upon this world, yours too, is getting very small. Self-preservation is the first law of nature. Everyone tries to provide a future of his own but the American so-called Negro. "

I am asking that we (the whole nation) sacrifice for the next three years and when we get enough in our bank, we will put it to work to make more money. We do not mean to let it lie idly for three years; we could invest in anything to help the Nation improve our economic condition.

Heretofore our distrust in each other has kept us down. We have to trust each other as other nations trust each other in order to do something constructive for the original Black people of this country.

By The Honorable Elijah Muhammad - From the Book Message to the Blackman in America

"The American so-called Negroes are like the Bible story of Lazarus and the rich man, the story that Jesus must have foreseen at the time. This Bible beggar was charmed by the wealth of the rich man to whom he was a servant, and he could not make up his mind to go seek something for self." - The Hon. Elijah Muhammad

Click on photos above to learn about a portion of the economic program of the Nation of Islam under the Hon. Elijah Muhammad.