The Salaam Restaurant: 'The Palace of The People'

By the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Jul 3, 2012 - 1:10:29 PM

[Editor’s note: The following article contains edited excerpts from an address the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered to a special gathering of pastors and religious leaders at The Salaam Restaurant in Chicago, Illinois on Wednesday, June 27, 2012.]

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

I understand that there are tortoises that live over 400 years, and there are trees that live 1,000-1,200 years. Well, Isaiah the prophet promised us that we would be like the “planting of the trees,” and in the Book of Isaiah it teaches even in that day a baby will die at 100. However, when someone gets to be 100 years of age, you may think, “Oh, that man been here a long time”—but if you get there, see how “short” 100 years is!

We don’t live long enough… And as one of the pastors said, “Getting old gets a little inconvenient,” but it wasn’t “inconvenient” for Abraham! He was an old man making babies. And his wife Sara was way up in age; who laughed and doubted God when He said that she will give birth to a child. And she did bring forth a child, but you “die too young”; your eggs die too young. So when the scripture teaches, “I came that you may have life, and have it more abundantly,” then this means someone has to teach us “how to eat to live.”

Next year I will be 80 years old; and I intend to join the “120 Year Club”—and I want you to get here with me, because “120 years” is nothing! If you look at me, and say: “Gee, Farrakhan, you look well!” it is because I went back to my discipline.

I want you to look at Elijah Muhammad’s Teachings on How To Eat To Live. Dear pastors, we’ve got so much work to do; and like the song you sing in church: “We’re busy building The Kingdom! We ain’t got time to die …”—don’t kill yourself through undisciplined eating. You don’t have to eat if you’re not hungry; that’s why “breakfast” is called break fast.

When you’re not disciplined, and you eat all the time, it is just as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us: “You dig your grave with your teeth.” So, food keeps you here, and food will take you away.

Our Law: Love and respect for the creatures of God

To the men and women who preach The Word of God: You cannot preach The Word, and become proficient in The Word, and then die of a stroke! Look at what we lose with a heart attack, or a stroke, or disease that is not necessary if we took better care of The House of God (the body). So we’re not only going to feed you the best, but we realize that if we really want to give you “the best,” we had better grow it ourselves, because agribusiness is killing The Human Family. We have to get back to farming, but get back to farming as farming should be done.

Rev. Bass of Chicago delivered the invocation at the gathering.

It’s not an accident, brother imam, that the 2nd Surah, or Chapter, of The Holy Qur’an is Al-Baqarah, “The Cow.” Now, why would God give us a book, and name a whole chapter after a cow? Because there is something in a cow for us to consider! The Holy Qur’an says, “… from between the blood and the dung, a pure drink agreeable to the drinkers.” But if you don’t take care of the cow, which we get so much from, the cow will not take care of us.

The Nation of Islam has started “dairy farming” and “cattle ranching,” where Our Law is: You cannot mistreat the creatures of God. You have to treat the creatures of God that He gave us dominion over with love and respect for Him Who gave them to us for our service! If you feed the cow the right thing, the cow will give you that “pure drink”; and if you feed the sheep right, then you can take the wool and make a garment … And while waters out there are poisoned so that even the fish that we eat is not good, there are still clean waters—we used to bring fish to America by the millions of pounds from the clean waters of Peru, and we’ll do it again!

So knowing these things, we’re going to gradually move our people toward the best diet. At our Farm we have set up an absolute state-of-the-art greenhouse, and we will be growing food through the winter. We also just planted 50 acres of the navy bean.

Did you know that the navy bean is a protection against radiation? Everything that you need to sustain this life of yours is not in a “pill”—it comes from good farming! So we’ve got to get back to the earth.

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Some of you wonderful preachers that came from Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, you know why we left! After we came North, we never wanted to see land anymore. “Don’t even tell me Grandpa left some land. I’m sick of that place down there”—because sharecropping is hard when you’re working like “you know what” for somebody else, and he lies and tells you that you owe him after you worked for him.

You know what we’ve been through, but let’s do it one more time. This time, let’s do it for ourselves! It’s going to take not “one” of us, but it’s going to take all of us with The Vision, pooling our resources, and learning how to trust one another so that you know that you’re not going to put your money with somebody who is going to rip you off.

We have to learn how to really be Christ-like, because Christ was a strange kind of man in a world like this! Imagine a man making a blind man see, and then asking for nothing; a deaf man coming up to him, and he touches his ear, and the man hears; raising Lazarus from the dead … Jesus healed, and all he asked was for us to give God The Glory.

Mrs. Howard Morgan greets Min. Farrakhan.

What The Salaam Restaurant offers us

We built The Salaam Restaurant with steel and concrete; that’s why we could close it for 12 years and come back and find it still here! Because brothers and sisters: For you, there is nothing “too good”! For you, we call this “The Palace of The People.”

Why a “Palace” for you? You are the royal priesthood! You are kings and queens, the natural rulers of the next world! So why shouldn’t you have a fitting place to come and sit down, and bring your family and eat? People walk by and may say, “That’s that Moozlum place”; others thought that it was a church or something in here, and it was just for “Muslims.” Yeah, it is! Just for you—because you are the Muslim that we built it for!

Min. Farrakhan with Queen Mother Helen Sinclair.

It’s not “The Palace of Muslims,” but it is “The Palace of The People”: This is your House; so I want you to understand what we did and why we did it! It’s for you, and it always has been for you!

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From our Bakery, we intend to put out “Your Daily Bread”: Fresh-baked bread made of the finest ingredients. The Salaam Restaurant also has a wonderful vegetarian cuisine. But for those who just “gotta have” a tenderloin steak, or lamb, come on here to The Salaam!

And as you know, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad took pork out of our diet a long time ago. So at The Salaam Restaurant, you won’t get any pork here, sorry… But, if you like turkey sausage, and turkey bacon, then you can have breakfast here and you will not feel bad. However, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that meat is not the best for you: Beef is the hardest, because it’s very difficult to digest. Lamb is easier; chicken is yet easier, he said, but the “best of flesh,” if you’re going to eat it, is a squab, or a pigeon that has not flown yet from the nest.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches: “We can’t stop you from dying, but we can slow down your rush into the grave,” and the best way to slow down our “grave traffic” is to make sure that what we put in our mouths for drink, and what we put in our stomachs for food is good for our bodies, which are The Houses of God. There is no better House of God than this form that God has given in which can be the indwelling of His Spirit, if we will let Him in.

Gradually, we’re going to take us away from meats, and even fish, and get right down to the finest vegetables and fruit, because that is what is best for human consumption. So for the “steak lovers,” the “lamb lovers,” the “chicken lovers,” and for the lovers of good, clean fish: We pledge to you that we will bring you the best and the cleanest of that to preserve and protect your life as you go on to gradually get away from anything that will shorten your life.

The Final Call