well i want to not waste any time with pleasantries that's all right because i i remember as a student bringing you to the university of toledo as a black student union president hearing you speak and how i knew young men and young women on that campus that day who became more involved not just in campus activity but in their community as a result of your words and i think it was history repeating itself as you heard one day the honorable  and i was wondering what was it that you heard him say that got not only into your intellect but your spirit to change you he was a man that i had been looking for all my life growing up in the home that i grew up in where my mother always was black conscious and being a very black woman herself in complection she didn't want her light skinned child to grow up not loving black so she brought me the crisis magazine with the writings of w she made sure that i kept up with what was happening in the south with the lynching and humming of a people in the afro american in the pittsburgh area so i always grew up with a longing for somebody who would deliver black people so while i was in sunday school i asked my sunday school teacher well look you know the bible is is full of prophets that came to deliver people when we were gods and that somebody to deliver us of course my teacher could not answer and it was when i was around eleven my uncle lived in new york and i went to visit him and on his mantel piece was a picture of a black man which was very strange because my mother had a picture of jesus and he was cook asian and there was a picture of king georg queen elizabeth because she was a british subject being from the caribbean but this black man's face on the wall in my uncle's house i asked him who was that man and he said he's a man that came to unite black people well i knew that that was the man that i wanted to be with and being a surety in real terms they took a chair my uncle took a chair and i stood on the chair to drink in the features of this man and i asked what was his name and where could i go to meet him and that man was the honorable and my uncle told me that he had passed away and i began to weep because i had come so close to what i had been looking for so when i heard elijah mohammed say that things that he said and he looked to me to be the one that was for our people i wasn't quite sure the first day i heard him but my uncle came and said your wife is already general and was trying with you being disrespectful of my elders that got up to tell and when i went to new york and heard brother malcolm i was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that he lied to mohammed was where i wanted to be and i join the mosque and i never looked back and i'm so grateful to god that he allowed me to believe in what the honorable elijah muhammad taught because it gave purpose greater purpose to my life and i live today to see the rise of our people here and throughout the world i ask you this not to cause further division between  christians and muslims because lord knows any conversation we do have right now i can't add any more to that but i'm wondering if you came up christian raised in a christian home what was it that you heard was there a specific thing because i understand the methodology and even the theology but it was about it it was about blackness you know my christian upbringing was wonderful and i go back to the church that i grew up in and preached sometimes i will never let division keep me away from my christian family because that's my roo but it didn't deal with the problem of black people and their suffering in america i love jesus but to talk about jesus and not the lynching to talk about jesus and not the jim crow to talk about jesus and not the segregation that took place in the church and the hypocrisy of the church that bothered me so when i heard brother malcolm anonyma lied to mohammad heard what i was looking for somebody concerned with black people and that's what i never heard in the chants and so i do but as i toured in the word of the honorable elijah mohammed and in the words of the bible and koran i hate the division that's that's the family of abraham against each other jews christians and muslims so i study that talk about i study  and i study the course to see where this train of truth is that can bring the whole family of abraham together and that's what you heard say this day in my lect staying along those lines and talking about you coming up i think people know the honorable minister louis farrakhan the fiery and the inspirational but many don't know the honorable louis minister fa khan the artist the concert violinist and in many cases even the playwright when you look back at those times when prior to joining the nation of islam loving the violin and even as you came into the nation of islam understanding that your gift could be used there what was it that is so many young people that watch this network and television shows all over the country even those in college carrying around demos and their backpacks because they're more interested in getting a deal than a degree want to be in this intertainment industry you in many cases turned it down with the love that you had for your art and the love that you had for performing what was it that caused you to say i'm not going to go in this direction to go on another i was in the mosque maybe about thirty days and illogic mohammed sent down a directive to get out of music or get out  isn't it down to me personally but send it down to all the musicians who were in one clubs and by playing and whatnot well that was that was me i was playing in greenwich village at the time and at a place called the village bonn and i missed a lecture that day and i came up to the restaurant to get bowled bean soup and my brother dropped in on the said man and lied to mohammed sent a message man if you've got to get out of the moscow get out of music i got up from the table and i walked outside i may have walked about twenty no more than thirty paces and i made up my mind i could live without music but i couldn't live without truth and so i decided i would give up my music right then but i had thirty days till the in the december so i was up in man came downstairs and said how you under management i said no sir he said when i'm the manager pro bailey and billy daniels he said if you would agree he said i will put you in the stable with them that whatever supper club would take billy daniels impro bailey i'll make them take you and i'll start to offer five hundred dollars supposed to meet downtown for dinner and sign a contract that night i lay down and god gave me a vision of two doors one door had success over it and a mound of gold and diamonds that came up to just about this house and the other door had guests alone over it with a black veil and i was taught to use and i chose the door of this line even though i knew that if i had pursued my music i would have had a great future musically not knowing what the future was going to be islamic lee i chose islam not to close this question which is a very profound question when jesus met peter he was already fishing from when he lied to mohamed met me i had audiences in all the nightclubs in which to make you a fish in a man it was more important to me to draw people to the word then by my personal charisma to draw people to me as an entertainer because i can entertain you musically and you'll feel good but it won't change the way you think about yourself about your people it won't help you to discover your own purpose in life so i made a conscious decision to give up my music and of course i wrote plays in the early days when i was on the brother malcolm i wrote songs that were racially conscious but it got so popular that mosques were filling up so but the people were more interested in me because i was a musician and an entertainer and then a serious teacher so i play it here in chicago we played it kind of the hall we played at town hall we played here in chicago and was at the dunbar high school and i had to muhammad team in the theater in the second show and then he invited me over to his house which was next door at the time and he pulled me close to him like you and i sitting he put his hand on my thigh and said brother you have a great musical talent he says but y spiritual side is greater even than your music so i'm going to ask you to give it up and concentrate on the spirit so take me now yes sir i gave it up hundred seventy four just as he's about to go in this house i bring my violin after dinner i play the violin for him he looked up at my brother you really could play that  couple of weeks later he called me on the telephone and said i want you to come out tuesday and i want you to bring your violin nobody will be here but me and sister tenet and her children so just as the chair the piano and played and then he says well i'm going to play your violin so i played and after i played he said isn't that the same song you play for me the last time i said yes or he said well don't you know anything new and of course i couldn't know anything new because i had stopped taking lessons that stop practicing and what not but later on it dawned on me the message of islam is a universal message it starts off in nationalistic and then it grows universally like the message of prophet muhammad peace be upon him it started off with just the arabs in arabia but then it of the house of israel very specific instructions very narrow focus but then at a certain time he said into all the world and preach this gospel to every nation kin universal gospel where the heart this just focused on your people so when he brought me back to the violin the violin and music is so universal he put me back in my music in the closing stages of my life now i'm working on an album and i pray that god will bless me to finish it before this year is out it's like a ray charles album surrounded by superstar and my life this story is told in music with ideas and my playing classical my playing jazz my singing ball but everything has meaning this time around and so my heart now has expanded i can i can say that the black masses of american the world o cornerstone of my work and my life but i feel the pain of hispanic people and i feel the pain of the palestinians affeldt the pain of all those who suffer all pression in the world so now my voice is not just a voice for black people we have to con a stone of it but my voice now is a voice for humanity you talk a lot about your evolution and malcolm in converting in many cases you from one path to something totally different sacrificing in many cases what the world would have said were yours what was it in one nine hundred seventy hundred seventy eight seventy six these me that would cause you to leave the nation after all that transformation well at all that sacrifice i tried my best to work with the new direction of him m w d mohammed abu loved him from the time we were little youngsters together but i didn't completely agree with the direction he said well preach what you agree with and i said but if i preach what i agree with some of what i disagree with will come out and it will have a tendency to divide an already divided community so i decided to leave the mosque and go back into show business and at that time godfrey cambridge to form a comedian died in california and i was asked to come and participate in his film i was on my way to california at the time so brought peter's you may know of him a great black actor who recently passed away i went to his home and we did the funeral of godfrey cambridge and so many hollywood personalities were there and they had a chance to experience farrakhan when i got back to the house for the the brother who wrote the book next time james bowman was there and my angelou and others and i said i i wanted to get the arab world to give me some money because i wanted to do the life of brother malcolm i want to play his life in a movie because i felt i had walked right up in his shoes so i could do it and james bone said well i wrote the screenplay and he said i'll send it to you brother and he sent it to me and it was titled one day when i was lost he was living in southern france at the time and i was on my way to egypt and so he was going to come over from southern france to cairo and we would discuss the book and the play because there were certain things in it that i i couldn't do better malcolm had a romance with a cook asian and i couldn't play that role in the movie because it went against my principles so i wondered if we could doctor the books out but in between that time i went to libya i went to there unfortunately the time that i was to meet with brother good dappy was in benghazi and the plane that i was to go to him on my gunny and driver said og don't worry they're always late and we missed their flight and the libyans laughed you know at my wanted to make a movie on the life of malcolm and then i went to the holy city of mecca in arabia and i was trying to see if they would raise money or help me get money so we could do the film and they turned it down because of cultural reasons but when i was mecca i slowly began to think of the nation the condition of the followers and i decided i'm going to try to rebuild eli muhammad's work and when i came back from mecca i met a brother and we started but that's my evolution let me ask you because i think that when to say you started you found a brother and started i think in the context of many people who may be watching make sense you came back after a great deal of travel after knowing that you had sacrifice so much but i don't think that it accurately describes how much more was there because you're saying to me that after you've been gone you come back to start something in the vision that many followers had shifted gears to do something else that's correct what gave you the gumption to say that i have the ability and i never said that because i doubt my own ability but i love the honorable elijah muhammad so much and i love the community so much i thought it least since his name was being written out of history that i should do something because a man that great who did that much should never be written out of history there wouldn't have been a malcolm x if there were no elijah there wouldn't have been a mohammed ali if there were no make the students greater than the teacher and among worthy to on lace his show us no matter what i do his inspiration is what has guided me all of these years and if it were not for my love for him and my desire not to see him written out of history because he is the man there white folks most said they didn't fear malcolm especially when he left and they didn't fear the change of direction of the nation they feared the idea of elijah muhammad in fact if if i may say this i was on the island of jamaica when brock peters was doing a movie called lost in the stars and i had just appeared on national television with tony brown on the black journal and they were highlighting parts of my speech  before the black the congress of african people in atlanta and the person who was the the producer of the film when brock told  that i was on the island he wanted to meet me so when i came to the set to meet him during their lunch break he said these words to me you seem like a nice guy for a it's not you that b c it's your idea nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come so if we have an idea that undercuts white supremacy that undercuts a social political economic religious system that has suppressed an oppressed the masses abducted people all over the world and white people themselves to then that idea must be crushed you can kill the man but it is that their lives he lives so godly when he was deported the whole idea of god back to then that was struck martin luther king was more than i have a dream martin luther king was a brilliant brilliant oratorical genius and what martin luther king was when he was assassinated he was coming to grips with america and they were a problem and the wall so what do you do you take a man great like that and you don't allow people to get into the body of knowledge that martin luther king represented who was reading martin luther king's words all you're reading is i have a dream but that man was more than that what about for the malcolm you say well by any means necessary what  does that mean you can slogan eyes man that had that kind of knowledge that he put before black america and white america but how much of malcolm do you really know very little but i think that's interesting because i'm asking the same question about you and i i continue to be honored by your humility but i but i'm thinking about that time when you decide to say to yourself before saying to anyone else that we're going to get this going again and the fact that in the one nine hundred seventy they were haters just like they are in two thousand and seven and what did the haters say the people that said farah khan this isn't going to happen to me by my life was in danger but there is no movement that starts with the persons that give life to movement i'm not in some kind of danger if it were not for god i would not be here today there were many pardon me they wanted to take my life and i'm just lucky to be here but when you when you have a purpose for your life you don't think about consequences you think about doing what it is that god put you here to do and so even though my life was threatened and certainly there was some concern on my part in my family's part about my being killed god was m l to me and protected me and young men and women as i said saviors day came around me to give their lives to preserve my life and i was just fortunate that i have guided them in a way that none of them have lost their lives child to protect me and mine the evolution of minister farah khan has had several points that i don't know if you ever will be able to  shake the kind of questions that people continue to ask no matter how much time passes and one of those obviously is about brother malcolm and i've heard stories and interviews where i think you've even admitted to being engaged in helping to create the environment through some of your writings and some cartoons but what the how do you feel  as you enter into the final third of your life well about the fact that people continue to ask that question i don't i don't really want you to answer the question were you involved because i'm more concerned with not but but you know if you go back in time when brother malcolm was assassinated new york  when i wrote this and nineteen thousand people came out in los angeles and nearly fifty thousand i couldn't even get into the madison square garden and the other arena that whole six thousand we packed that place out in the midst of controversy where people were saying who do you want for our con how do you want him did well emerging now as a voice for black people when i left madison square garden some of the papers were calling in fact come the premium leader among black people  me that could amount to a real i would say or a version to the minister then they raised my brother from the dead do you know that when brother malcolm was assassinated the papers rejoiced and is then go back and read do you know that  hundred sixty five when he was assassinated was called by the anti defamation league the leading black anti semite do you know that it was brother malcolm who exposed the real powers behind the end up with a c p a in the civil rights movement do you know that it was brother malcolm who put on our reading list the the protocols of the learn i love brother malcolm because he was eliza mahomet's greatest helper so when he split from elijah mohammed and i split from him he began attacking the moral character of his teacher but the real movie was to damn the image of elijah mohammed and the nation of islam and to bring brother malcolm back was to really say to the young black people who this man became a hero to to some young black man with a gun in his hand with think that they're doing god a favor back illinois is back on the aim of the enemy as never changed they don't love malcolm didn't they didn't love and then but they would out of that atmosphere he was assassinated but it was by the mountain himself who started that atmosphere by the charges that he may against his teacher which we were bound to defend and in defending this charge is discounted charges and who benefits f b i sit back from the enemy sitting back now we've got them fighting and killing each other and that's what they would like to do today well and what has been the difference i mean if we look at that environment or whether we look at the united slaves in the black panther party for self defense and brother kurang guns and bro and the counterintelligence program of j edgar hoover absolutely but here's my question because big and many young people don't know about cointelpro the counter intelligence program and don't know about the f b i s role but i guess my question to you in being an elder at this point is as we see these kind of things play out even at the local level with young people on the block who kill their own brothers and their own sisters as a result in your window and rumor that's cast out what would you say to the community about how you would handle that situation differently as a result of what you've been able to see in your life well naturally retiring you should grow wiser if malcolm had been alive today and martin had been alive today we would probably be in a much better position and condition but god is the best no and we lost malcolm and we lost martin and here we are we're a long ways from where we were in the sixty's when the honorable elijah muhamm changed the language from negro to black on light skinned but i'm a black man then i was in league and in sympathy with black people not only in america but in the caribbean and central and south america in africa in the isles of the pacific i saw them as my brother and my sister so the language at that time was how you doing brother and how you do in sr thirty years later what's the language yo dawg what's up  and then the n word see elijah mohammed struck that n word from the vocabulary of all muslims we never use that kind of language to describe your brother because if you use that kind of language that tells you what you thank of your brother so look at the condition of our community today we weren't killing each other wholesale then like we're doing now and it's because we don't have mind that that's my brother that's my sister no you not in my gang you not using the right color you're not given the right fan you live on the wrong side of the tracks then you are my enemy enemy has won that phase of the battle and we have lost and the thing that you just said was the young people don't know about the counterintelligence program why don't they know young people today don't know what their grandfathers the great grandfathers and their great great grandfathers went through to bring us to where we are today my own grand daughter when we were in detroit went to the museum the child's right newseum of african history and she saw the beauty of africa and then the fall of her ancestors in slavery and she was crying all the way through it and came home to me and sa didn't know that we went through something and deep is that well that is the story if these young people don't know what their grandparents went through what their parents went through what we came through to get to this junction how then can there ever be continuity in struggle harry belafonte was at howard university and he came back and he said to me by the bark on the children do not know their recent history much less the history of slavery and so we're at a loss now so we've got to turn all the way back around if we want to when this generation we have to go back in the schools and teach them about themselves so they'll have a healthy respect for them seven when they look across the aisle they see a black brother a black sister she may not be in their neighborhood she may not wear the same color but she is their color we got to change the language back the enemy was so smom black journal became tony's term who black news in new york was but stop program in baltimore black programs in chicago everyone with a black adjective describing the noun was taken off the television so the talk of black was a change of language minority disadvantage multicultural oh please so once you change the present language you change the way they think and if you look at our young people today you can tell that we're sick because there is no continuity and i struggle some of these young people think we've already made it because they can marry a white man or a white woman but but but even the bible says raise a child in the way that he should go so that when he grows old he won't depart from that's where we fail we did not raise our children in the way that they should go we got lost with integration we could go to a white restaurant now we could go to a white hotel a white motel we could hobnob with white people we could marry white women they pick men white men can marry black women everything is hunky dory now we've come to pass that and some white people today when you talk about reparations  talk about the price of slavery they say get over it get all over it they will never tell a jewish child that talks about the holocaust get over it but they've got the nerve to tell you and me get over it let me have no we'll never get over this until justice comes to the black man and woman who have suffered injustice all these i want you to stay there because i've heard you be very critical of the fact that in many cases the jewish community controls the imagery that's put out over television ways motion picture music of black artist and black actors so on and so forth where in many cases we can add black movie that we'll talk about in a comical way figures within african american history but you would never see that happen with a jewish historical figure  you think that this is obviously bad design and if so what can our communities begin to do to have greater institutional control over the images that are cast out of us well if it's not by design it certainly looks that way when michael jackson i think on his history album and talked about do mean to me like me  they made him take every one of those outcomes off the shelf and change the language because they didn't want michael with his fame and love of people love him all over the world to use language that would even suggest possible anti semitic semitism i have heard black rappers in meetings with me say that they've gone to record executives with conscious rap and the record executives would say to them this won't sell so you either go home and call a black woman out of her name or use the foul language call each other dog call each other the n word that fail who made itself public enemy didn't stop like that  conscious rappers were taken over by another kind of rap that began to be promoted and conscious rap almost that the rapper is the leader of young people all over the world they're leading them today in one way but with their lead you in a much better way well and i was that the the first hip hop summit that russell had that he invited you to and i don't want people to think that that was the first time you engage the hip hop community you were invited because you had been engaging the hip hop community but at that event which was themed taking back responsibility you gave harsh words to a number of artists the artist community about their ability and capacity to be able to lead six years later do you feel like much has changed and do you believe that these artist in two thousand and seven not have the capacity but have the desire to lead they have the capacity to lead i don't think they have the desire to lead is something forced upon them because millions of people buy their records but to change the language since the children are listening more to rappers than they listen to their teachers then the rapper could become their teacher in a much more profound way than the rappers do it i don't like to not rap and i love them and i see their greatness beyond themselves and i'm always trying to pull on what i know is in them but there are also this that don't want to see change so how do we how do we a collective action on our part against the executives and then when we get to the point where we don't want to use the n word anymore and we understand the just like stepin fetchit in the nineteen ninety's and two thousand we're going backwards in time because our god has become money so all the enemy has to do is give you a good paycheck and then you compromise principle over money and that's why jesus said you can't serve god and mammon to no man can serve two masters you love one and you hate the other if you hate the way your people are being destroyed then you must love the way that will help you let joe people from their destroyed state but let me ask you this because i i sometimes have a problem with the notion that artists should be held responsible to be leaders if they do that's great but what makes us believe that's critically thinking people that going platinum gives me the intellectual capacity to mentor somebody when this is the first time in the history of our people when artists have been given this responsibility if we if we look at the past if we look at the sydney  movement but they didn't lead are we now asking artists and entertainers to lead and in lieu of a volvo eight of real leadership in our community that that's a very good question because they did leave because real leaders were meeting right today there's a vacuum and nature of course a fact him so the young people have stepped in if you can teach a young boy to go out and sell some drugs you can teach him out or sell products that are legitimate is just how you teach your baby what to do people young people quoting him he comes out on the stage to rap and everybody in the audience is rapping right when they know that but they don't know any lessons in school they don't they don't know what's going on in the world around them so now the rapper has become the mom of the papa the rapper has become the leader bad diffs defacto leader leading by the pope because there's a of preachers to reach the young so now we've got hip hop in the church we've got you know we've got all kind of stuff going down so the people rockin on sunday like the rock on saturday night in the club up to stand in front of our people and talk to them but the honorable elijah muhammad was a bearer of good news and i wanna a black person comes male or female and l people the minute they're gone the enemy touches the snooze button and we just drop them back to sleep waiting for the next person to entertain us with knowledge knowledge is not entertainment once you are the recipient of knowledge you have a responsibility to act on the principles of that knowledge or the knowledge will be a means of your own destruction it's not that i people don't know they know better but in front of me mocking jesus because jesus is apollo at the language we use to describe one another yet when we take our emmy or our grammy we say i'm thanking my lord and savior jesus christ you know did he save you from the madness that projected you into the limelight and you want to stay to be a man because it brings you money how long will it take for you to be hot as a rapper you have today gone tomorrow you know having a longevity and what happens to the person that hits the lottery they get money so fast it kills them but let me ask you this because i've seen you in gauge artists and i know about meetings that have happened that never reach the press violence that was curtailed as a result of you having to sit downs with individual artists and their camps to come before but where have your contemporaries been where have those that have been quick to condemn their own children for the language that they use in the behavior that they're engaged in because you and i both know that even though shorty on the block may not listen the artists will if you come if jesse comes if sharpton comes if others come but in many cases i've only seen you come and so what about your contemporaries who have had the capacity to mentor these artist who have the ability to reach the masses but have only been engaged in condemnation first is this what is the spirit out of which the condemnation come i watched a sister that lives in philadelphia that passed away maybe two years now i'm sorry a name escapes me but she was the first one to condemn and just like your mama would take you aside and put that switch on your backside and then send you back out to play sit in laura's taco was like a mother saying to her children this is unacceptable we've come far for you to do this to your sister to your brother but it appeared like a mean spirited condemnation she went to the record executives  blasted them she's a mother we are her children she wants to see her children better bill cosby because me was speaking in a black environment and his words were taken out of a black environment to the national environment and it looks like bill cosby now who is had the father image on the cars be show is now talking down to his people he's talking to the reality of the condition that he wants to raise us from maybe you didn't do it in the best manner but his spirit was not a spirit of hatred for people i'm in love with black people i don't care how you present yourself i'm in love with you whether you gay you straight that i know that there's an essence in black people that if you touch it right then bring it forward that same black man that doing what he's doing today will do something greater tomorrow malcolm is one of the best example that he went all the way down to selling now women and selling drugs and pimpin and rob but when he got a message that touched deep inside of him malcolm the pill became malcolm the professor the teacher the leader and that's what's not in these rappers when you look at fifty cent who is hot that kanye west these young men have millions of people in the palm of their hand i don't want to see condemn them i want to see us teach them encourage them in lighten them and encourage them to do better because the whole world is listening you go to africa it's r you go into the islamic world where they hate western culture the young maybe had it under the bed or somewhere but then listen to rap artists so to me that says to the young rapp man you didn't want to be a new leader but you've got millions that are hanging on every word you say why don't you become a teacher of them i can give you wisdom put it in rap language jessica give you knowledge and you put it in rap language and start instructing your people but then the record executives would say they don't want it so let's set up our own distribution company  we have to distribute something better to our people because as a man thinks jesus said so is he you are what you eat so if you eat in can't have a clean system and if you are eating filth in your head day in and day out you can come out with clean language and clean actions if that's what you're feeding on so mou don't to me one of the greatest revolutionaries about time he had a billion people to convert to his idea what did he know he saw the value of the cultural community so he took his ideas and they took his i did put it in song put it in dance put it in planes put it in books and before you know it china became a great great nation  will never become a great nation without i guess i was the key not only to the liberation of black people but the liberation of humanity itself and that was why i'm sure th during the million man march you included artists in many cases a time when other people would not in that kind of forum and as i look back not just at the million more movement but as i look back at the million man march going myself as a college student and remembering being on the turnpikes and how trucks couldn't get in because they were so many busses