name who helped to get the mess up and started again yeah and we're in the transition now to a monthly report was quarterly but things are happening too often the magazine will fall behind because events are changing magically and so starting in june the magazine will be going to a monthly magazine we're hoping to have your interview as a central feature for the july publication of course we'll send you a copy but the magazines really try and does it in english english it's in english even though it's based in amman jordan the readership is mostly in the u s and even in canada so you do you do you have anything that is translated  so what attracted you to islam and what in particular track did you to the nation of islam as a young man i grew up a christian and i had a wonderful church experience but the thing that disturbed me was that the church never focused on the plight of black people in america and as a sunday school student i saw how a lot always raised someone among the downtrodden  oppressed of the enslaved to bring them a message that would liberate them from their presence but here we were in america and we had no  and so i wondered if god sent moses to deliver the children of israel why had not he sent someone to deliver us from the heavy hand of oppression that we were suffering so even though i was in the church and i had no problem with jesus i had a problem with the hypocrisy of christianity in that eleven o'clock on sunday morning was the most segregated hour in america so i kept searching for something better and in one nine hundred fifty five i heard the honorable elijah mohammed and was it ready to come out of christianity and join islam i knew too little about islam but later that year in new york i heard malcolm x and the things that he was saying concerning the plight of black people in america and how islam would civilize us and solve the problems that we were having this drew me to islam and particular lee to the teachings of the honorable ali he was an avid reader so he introduced me to books on the plight of black people in america and throughout the world because our mission was primarily to black brothers and sisters in the united states so knowing  condition and nerve ending how to reach our people with a new teaching a new faith a faith that had been maligned by west oriented lists and movies always put tree as some false god and muslims as believing in a false religion so we had to break through all of the propaganda and the hatred for islam that had been projected in the american culture and society so brother malcolm was to me my first great teacher he was profound having come from prison and read every book in the prison library having debated many of the black scholars from harvard in the ivy league schools  having taught in some of the five black institutions and i had a chance to travel and hear him and then i watched his have never seen malcolm late for any appointment he disciplined us if we were late for mosque meetings  any appointment that we had and a lot of islam that he and forest was very very strict and so though we grew up as christians not using profanity not eating the swine flu not drinking or smoking or fornicating committing adultery and beginning to at five am even standing was a chore and after a while he introduced us to a muslim prayer and we began to pray as our brothers and sisters pray in this lonely world but he told us that he was raising us by degrees as the holy prophet peace be upon him raise the arabs from the state of jackie leah with by degrees he didn't make the worship of hard on the early converts to islam prayer was only twice in the morning and in the evening and they would even come to prayer intoxicated and he gradually removed alcohol from the believing community and degree by degree he raised the arabs to be examples of the and his his example so the honorable elijah mohammed taught us in that way he raised does degree by degree so that one day we would be recognized by the entire muslim  world as a true believer in islam have you ever struggled with the teachings of advisor mohammed on was there ever a moment when you had to examine the differences between what you understood of the teachings of the nation of islam and what was considered sunni orthodox you know i never struggled with the teachings of the honorable elijah mohammed because i knew very little of what is called all the d the honorable elijah mohammad raised in islam in a way that we were not affected by  islam he was very kind in that he always taught us respect great respect for the muslim world but we also learned through  study that the holy prophet peace be upon him knew that our world of islam would deviate from his path and the prophet in his in the ranks of islam and islam all of the muslims going off that path and from the death of the prophet the split between sh splitting up their religion into sects and parties due to envy any party rejoicing in its pot he did not want us to become a part of of these splits he was a muslim and he wanted all who followed him to be muslim and so even though there were these different but he did not want us to be corrupted by that corruption that had come into our world of islam that we are suffering from as we speak today so the charge by some  sudanese that the nation of islam is in some way itself a set would be inaccurate well from their point of view they feel you we are a sect and i understand their perception of us because we've come up in america and we've come up on the white supremest we've come up on the will an oppression of a government that is never respected us as an equal citizen in this country well when we came up on the white supremacy we have a color skin became a badge of shame a badge of disarming so that if we were not white or near white then we were not as good as someone who was white whose hair was straight and this was a problem that was existing during the time of the holy prophet and brother bill lal's acceptance of the prophet and weaned his followers away from any type of expression of racism but in america this is what america was founded on it was founded and hate the way out of creating as it created many different flowers and plants and planets of different colors rocks of different colors create a human being like that but i should not feel that i am inferior to you because my color is different the shape of my nose is different my hair is different i should not feel that way so how can you love a god who created you different and made you an object of hatred so it would be honorable elijah mohammed in his wisdom taught us how to in in its pure teaching book we had to deal with the paul is of white supremacy and so he taught us how to love ourselves how to been ended up imitating pakistanis dressing in the way of arabs it was like we had no root in ourselves but the honorable elijah mohammed taught us that islam is the nature of religion of the human being so that meant that i could see an arab or a pakistani or a caucasian muslim and see them as they are but respect myself as i am and respect them as they are because in islam is not pakistani culture or arab culture or somali and culture it is the culture of islam and once we raise the culture islam it unites us all regardless of race color or ethnicity but we had to grow in to that and that took time so i can understand why some of the an african scholar at the world islamic bank on the islamic bank he said it's not that we were against and line to line we just didn't selfies and others felt that we were true muslims then the dialogue between our communities didn't take place in order for us to understand all the do decided to rebuild the nation talk about that decision and some of the challenges you faced as a leader rebuilding the movement who first imagined why did dean i loved what he was doing to try and unite the followers of elijah mohammed with the muslim world and for the first time during ramadan we took ramadan with the muslim world and during the it we prayed with out brothers and sisters from all over the world here in chicago and in other places i thought that this was wonderful so i sat with him and shared with you my concerns for his father was what his father that burnt and for him is what he would earn but he's standing on a foundation built by his father and what is five the talk so i thought he should respect his father and respect his father's teacher and then take us we he felt we needed to came into leadership he stressed for the first time i mean prophet mohammed the honorable elijah mohammed taught us oh prophet mohammed with respect but he never when i could not endure that mockery of his father and his father this teacher and i saw the effect that it was having on those of us who had because i could not bear the thought that after all that work that he had done that he would be written out of history as a non muslim as somebody that didn't understand islam that it was at that point that i decided that i would read boom the work of elijah mohammed but rebuild it in a way where on of and respect to prophet mohammed would always be a part of growth and development and that the study of the prophet became central to understanding how he moved to establish islam in arabia is the same way we would have to move to establish islam in america and then as eyes steady elijah mohammed before he departed from us to me he said brother try to find a way to unite with the muslim world these instructions to me he didn't tell me how to do it he said find a way so i was do the searching for a way to unite us with the entire muslim world and i have found that in the very things that he took was a key to unite with the muslim world for instance founded mohammad gave lad to mohammad one hundred in the path of the prophet because he was told by the angel of debris you read and there was no book for him to read and he couldn't read at that time so  of the life of the holy prophet so i asked myself why would he give elijah mohammad books to study on the life of the prophet if the prophets wife did not have supreme meanings for how to go about establishing islam in america so i started there and changed the  introduced ourselves when we came out to speak we would say ramadan would not be as difficult for us as it would be if we were following the islamic calendar and all of the different months etc that we go through to perform ramadan so then i suspended ramadan in the month of december and i said we will fast and after brother malcolm was assassinated the mosque was fine and elijah mohammed rebuilt it and in the dedication of the mosque he sent a take and he did it by audiotape and when i called him to thank him for the dedication he says oh that's not the principles and teachings of the honorable elijah ok do you think that race plays in any way a factor in the divide between the orthodox perception of the nation  and if so how well race has played a part in the division among muslims themselves some blacks do not feel comfortable during in certain vestments where they feel you are treated as less than they should so by our concentrating on black people there they were christian arabs that with there they would jews that with their in arabia but the prophet peace be upon him taught each one of them the christians and the jews divided the arabs and he phoned them into a nation but not a nation just for arabs but that mation was to move out from  spread throughout the world that there would be one nation and that would be the nation of islam as the holy koran second sutra says when break eamonn you raise the foundation of the they prayed and asked the law to accept their work and then abraham prayed and raise up in them a nation ir own language they were in their own country big in and even though to the west of them was the room an empire and to the east of them was the persian empire they were not affected by the knowledge of either one of these empire as they were in a state of just a league the difference with us we have been really good in america by an opponent of islam and we have been related in a way that is against the level of over in june and we have been a latino education by the western standard of education so we already think we know a lot we know god we know religion we know jesus so elijah muhammad then has to empty the vessel what it thinks it knows and then put in the vessel what  tense so do you find that for example we're doing we're profiling some latino muslims here my parents are both of cuban origin for example and we're finding that the latino community there seems to be a common experience of of crossing the border into the mosque and being embraced as muslims that their ethnic identities are clean into it is that one of the reasons may be that the nation is kept a special space for blacks people to kind of keep a place where they can feel like they're a member of  community of islam before they actually move into a mosque where all these ethnic nationalistic differences might go first you must have a routine and we now want our to come into this because the lives of mohammed taught us that the root of the mexican or the latin america they're part of the original inhabitants of the western hemisphere and of auckland so he taught us that we should find a way to unite with the native americans so we go up on the reservation these people that will come to know much faster than the blacks because they have not been destroyed as the black people have been under chattel slavery so right now we have mexicans in the models we have with the regions in the models we have haitians in the models we have some chinese and japanese in the we have some whites that are coming well what we have to do is make our own what people feel that you are not an inferior when you meet with other human that are not black but they are muslims so it takes time but these batteries are gradually being broken down so that right now the mexican community we have very good relations with the nation of islam and the many muslims that are in the mosques all over america that mexicans we have some in when you went to miami it will cubans in the best of the mosque and it is reaching out to the home of central century will be the century for is spreading throughout the western hemisphere and so well ok in two thousand i was fortunate enough to travel to chicago and i saw the to dean i kind of grew up together i met him in one nine hundred fifty six i believe and we had been friends and we always respected him as a deeply spiritual s if you notice no matter how great the divide was between eman and myself and i was just thinking about this this morning after the death of the prophet the divide came over who should see the prophet and that division has been the root of conflict between try to set up something because i told him i was going to go back into my career as a musician but as i saw a community disintegrating i decided i would try and during all of this time if you listen to any speech that i made i never said anything negative against the man although there were negative remarks about me and us from his community i felt that that would be injurious to the future and so when we bought this house and the mosque we bought it from him that the mosque we said in a room back in this house and we talked about in a court which i modeled after the truce of who debut a truce that said he was welcome to come to our mosques and teach i only asked him to be respectful of his father and that was in accord i signed it he did not but the relationship between the and i began to grow i would meet him sometimes on an airplane sometimes somewhere in the city and we would embrace and it was always want between us so in two thousand where night was ill i invited the eve man to our farm and he came along with his brother and his daughter and his secretary we had a lunch together and i asked him if he would come to save his day and share the rostrum with me and deliver would have a speech he would like to deliver and on the sunday of the main media i wanted him to speak and say whatever he wanted but he said no he says you it out have a few words to say some of his followers were present and it was a day in february where the temperature went up to seventy degrees fahrenheit so we felt that a lot had smiled on coming together and from that day necessary that we do not allow anything of discord to come between us and the enemy may use us against each other and with the m it's a good example to the muslim because muslim blood is sacred to a muslim and we would never should have a muslim and we would pray that our brothers would never share the blood of another muslim even if we disagree with them they say  then we disagree with some aspect of the teaching our law says in the course that he will settle the disagreement between muslims but wish she would not take each other lives as though our life has no meaning so we've try our very best to live according to that and that's what makes what's happening in iraq so painful today there are stomach organizations all across the united states most of these organizations seem to be working on some kind of agenda that relates to promoting the message of islam in america at times that agenda has led to a distancing from the nation has not affected the work of the nation and what would be different today about the nation that say some other muslim organizations are setting and what the nation of islam is setting as an agenda well i don't think it has impeded our work after nine eleven it's an imperative that muslims who feel they have disagreement with each other should that because in the final analysis it is our belief that this is not about terrorism it's about the rise of islam in america there was a time twenty five thirty years ago when mohammed ali the boxer accepted the name mohammed ali and all over the muslim world muslims never cared about boxing became fans of mohamed badie and when he stood up and sit i'm not going to go to war q people in vietnam my religion for bids me to take the life of another human being outside of laws coming well it went before the supreme court and he won the muslim world except it and now all in this climate the muslim world should close ranks as the koran teaches us in sort of those ranging in ranks that we should be like a solid wall and we can't be like a solid wall if we don't break down barriers between us and our organizations i'm sure these muslim organisations are doing the good work trying to spread the message of islam we could do it better if we sat in a room and dialogue about the message what message should we in this out project to the american people with out disgracing ourselves as muslims because many muslims even though we love the country in which we live we can't act as though is doesn't teach what it teaches in order to get friendship with the government of the united states all with the christian community we could not all the jewish community we cannot act as though a lot did not say what he said in the koran and so some of us become quote unquote moderate muslims i don't with that term be moderate to some means ok we can get a loan but you have to hide the reality of color on under a bushel basket don't bring the full light of the doubt we should be able to defend islam in america you can't pick up a newspaper today without reading some islamic name some islamic country some islamic split it secular with the it's a mist every day so america lost to know what is this religion is it really true that they love death more than life and willing to strap bombs to themselves to do these hideous things what does this say about these things well we as muslims should dial how do we respond to what's happening and he had weapons of mass destruction was that america's role to do that i've been in iraq several times and iraq that i knew under sadam hussein is much better than the iraq that i see in the daily news today so what has happened and should i take a position that bush is right in what he's done or should i stand up and say is this really a war against terrorism or is this a war against islam so if the shiite majority in to western policy and we as muslims don't see anything is a hateful act atmosphere in america well that atmosphere is being charged every day and sooner or later if the war spreads to iran we're going to have to say something we have to say something about the suffering of the palestinians we have to say something and a law says this in the karate guides us as to how to do it and we should do  o there are muslims who want to be moderate and acceptable to the government of the united states we don't care if we were acceptable to a lot less efficient us than we would hope that our government would accept us by jus have to accept us on the basis of truth and justice anything else if we compromise our faith to please you then allies displease with us one of the most striking features of the nation of islam as a movement is both its willingness and ability to work across race religion in politics to advance the position the position of oppressed people  into that effort greatly as i study the holy prophet peace be upon him he was able to talk to christians he was able to talk to  he was able to talk to the followers of zora asked them it didn't make any difference what religion was presented the prophet was able to reach them out of their own books zeal to promote islam sometimes we disrespect christians belief in the bible we know it's been tampered with but how do you say  to a christian without alienating them when i grew into a muslim house of worship if i see a law ok but if i say mohammed is a clam that comes up among muslims because of our love for the prophet when you go in a christian church and you jesus was a muslim prophet so how do i effect christians by disrespecting jesus i can't so if i respect jesus then i go into a house that is dedicated to the worship of jesus and then i gradually teach them that he was not an object of worship and then you use the words of the gun school to prove my point so it's very hard for a christian to fight me if i'm coming out of his book and  on to verify the truth of the bible so i go into christian churches and i teach sometimes in christian churches during their eleven o'clock worship out and when i finish i mean the christians are just as happy but i have planted the seeds of truth from but i have not alienated them and that i visited a jewish synagogue in in jamaica in the caribbean and i had rabbis come here and have dinner with me and they asked me would i go before the board of rabbis i said tomorrow if you can arrange it and would you come into the senate that's it tonight if you can arrange it saddening why should i be afraid to go into any house where our l because to me islam if it's understood as that power to come next it then all of humanity together into one great family and all of the religions together into one great expression of faith and that's why to me i would not say to a christian oh the koran says islam is going to overcome the to the will of god and so i say submission entirely to the will of god is the true religion of god and that's what jesus taught that's what moses taught and until we are ready to