Farrakhan to students: 'Be change you are looking for!'

By Ashahed M. Muhammad -Asst. Editor- | Last updated: Oct 30, 2012 - 9:43:58 PM

Minister urges students to take charge of destinies and create a new reality

BOWIE, Md. (FinalCall.com) - The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivered an inspirational message of empowerment and responsibility to a capacity crowd of mostly students inside the Martin Luther King Jr. Communication Arts Center on the campus of Bowie State University October 26.

Min Farrakhan greets student leader Devin Denzel Davidson. Photo: Mikal Veale

“I am the change that I’ve been looking for,” Minister Farrakhan told the crowd and those viewing live nationwide via Internet web-cast. “Don’t look for somebody else to make change for you. You have got to say I am the change that I’ve been looking for,” he added.

After words from Amir Cotton, president of the Black Male Agenda campus organization, and the group’s faculty advisor Raymond Shorter, who was the driving force behind the event, the audience enjoyed a soul stirring musical selection by Stephan Sertima. Devin Denzel Davidson, Mr. Bowie State University, warmed the crowd up even more during his introduction of Minister Farrakhan as “a glorious man of God who inspires us to step forth and become leaders amongst our people, our communities and eventually our world.”

The Minister said hearing the young students speak of love for him warmed his heart and was a reflection of how much he truly loves them.

“As we who are your elders go down into the valley of death, it is such joy to look back up at the mountain and see young giants that will take what you have attempted to do with your life and stand on your shoulders and the shoulders of others who’ve paved the way, to work totally for the liberation not only of our people, but the liberation of the human family that has been blinded by the touch of Satan,” said Minister Farrakhan.

Humanity is in need of transformation, and the institutions that shape the people have failed to produce human beings that “reflect God,” he said. Black people are “beautiful and innately brilliant, yet unproductive” in creating and producing their own necessities, primarily because they have been taught to rely on the educational, social and political institutions of this world, the Minister continued.

Bowie State University President Dr. Mickey Burnim enjoys message.

“This is not God’s world. God would not make a world like this, where there is so much pain, so much hurt, so much hatred, so much belligerence, so much religious and political misunderstanding,” he said.

Min. Farrakhan compared parallel language found in the Holy Bible and the Holy Qur’an, the book of scripture for followers of Islam worldwide. In the bible, there is a hypothesis found in 2 Chronicles 7:14 which reads: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

The conditional “if then” statement is the key to understanding God’s desire for the human family, and the encouragement for man to grow into a position in which he is able to control and subdue God’s creation, Min. Farrakhan explained.

Using the Holy Qur’an, he cited the 13th Surah (Chapter) verse 11 which in various translations reads: “Allah (God) will not change the condition of a people until they change within themselves.”

Many call for and acknowledge the need for change, however, most want change without fulfilling the conditions, the Minister said.

“You have to be willing to make the change that you’ve been seeking,” he said.

Challenging students and educators

A degree of knowledge conferred on a student should be a “passport to a higher standard of excellence not only in terms of how you live your life, but in your character development.”

An educated person should exhibit high moral character and integrity, he added.

“Morals are like the sea that the ship of knowledge floats on,” said the Minister. “If your morals are degenerate, then your knowledge will follow your morals and you’ll end up being a hustler in the name of your knowledge, you’ll end up pimping or you end up being a slickster—a little cheap-minded person with a degree that is filled with envy, jealousy and strife and all of these cheap things that a man of high knowledge should be able to overcome.”

Man is at the highest level among God’s creations and the struggles and difficulties that arise during man’s quest for survival qualifies one to be worthy of the gift of life, he said.

“When one is a possessor of knowledge, there is nothing that you should face that you can’t overcome,” the Minister said. “Life and the struggle makes you worthy to live it. Life is to be a struggle, it never was meant to be easy. It was one trial after another, one struggle after another but you keep on moving because that’s the journey from being a baby to becoming one with God.”

Minister Farrakhan in group photo with Bowie State students. He told them to prepare themselves for leadership and to make positive change. Photo: Mikal Veale

The journey of life beginning with hundreds of millions of sperm cells, prefigures the beginning of struggle for human beings, and even that struggle prepares one to succeed in life.

“God is so wise, he makes you run a race before you get here to make sure that when you get here you can run the race of life. Life is not meant to be easy. The ease of life does not bring out of you what God has put within. It is struggle and the willingness to face opposition and overcome it that brings out what is within,” he said.

Seeking mastery should be the goal of those studying subjects such as biology or mathematics, but in many cases, students give up once classes become difficult and this can be applied to life in general, he said.

Don’t be intimidated by something simply because it is considered to be difficult, Min. Farrakhan told the audience.

“The mastery of yourself is the mastery of all the forces that operate in the universe,” he observed. “You are the microcosm, the universe is the macrocosm, but when you become a self-master then there is nothing in the universe that you are unable to master.”

“No matter what the odds are, it’s your mental attitude that already defeats you before you start because you dare to think that something is difficult. You should approach learning with the mind of a master,” the Minister said.

He also chided school administrators who route Black students into non-challenging majors, calling them “misguidance counselors.”

Learning should also be fun and interactive, not a cold and stale environment, Min. Farrakhan noted. Much of this is done intentionally because those who have dominated the world with White supremacy created an educational system to reinforce their false historical narratives while maintaining inordinate control over the darker peoples of the earth, he said.

The darker nations of the earth are rising and have awakened, and a new teaching is emerging that will raise humanity to a higher level, and the earth’s natural rulers have to put the world back in order, said Min. Farrakhan.

“The reason the earth is in the bad shape that it is in is because the last became the first and you went to sleep in order to allow the last to be first,” he said. “Some say, ‘I am a child of God’ that’s right, but you can go a little further and say ‘I am God.’ I’m not the All-Wise, Best-Knower, but if I am made in His image and likeness and a child of God, and if I am fed the wisdom of God would not I grow up to manifest His characteristics?”

Human beings can achieve this level of spiritual development, he said.

“It’s the enemy that has cut us off from advanced knowledge,” said Min. Farrakhan. “You have got to think of yourself on a higher plane and when you think on a higher plane of existence, then you’ll rise to that plane.”

With the election coming up on Nov. 6, Minister Farrakhan said Black people should use good judgment and caution if Mr. Obama wins another term in office because White anger will grow to dangerous levels. But Black people should strive to be more than just managers of White people’s affairs, he said, also using President Obama to illustrate the point—likening being president to being asked to captain the ill-fated Titanic after it struck an iceberg.

“He’s the CEO of a White-owned and operated corporate body called the United States of America,” said the Minister. “White people don’t mind Black people of brilliance being a CEO, (since) they aren’t the majority stockholders. Black folks can rise to run White folks affairs until they see you didn’t do what they thought you would do.”

“These people are hateful, angry and they want to kill you,” he warned.

Bowie State University

Founded in 1865, Bowie State University is the oldest HBCU in the state of Maryland and among the 10 oldest in the country. Sitting on 350 acres of land, nearly 5,400 students attend Bowie, 65 percent of the students are female and only 35 percent male.

Students presented Min. Farrakhan with a plaque in appreciation of his visit and service to the people. Photo: Marc D. Muhammad

Upon his arrival on campus, university president Dr. Mickey L. Burnim and several administrators greeted Minister Farrakhan. Dr. Burnim was present for Min. Farrakhan’s entire lecture, and was seen applauding throughout.

Among those in attendance at the Oct. 26 message was the Minister’s longtime friend and companion in the liberation struggle Dr. Leonard Jeffries, who was in Washington D.C., making preparations for the upcoming State of the Black World Conference scheduled for Nov. 15-18. Once he heard Min. Farrakhan would be speaking, Dr. Jeffries said he wrapped up his business and drove 80 miles an hour straight to Bowie State University.

“It was an extraordinary experience, and he’s going up to 80 and here he is lighting up these minds and these spirits of these Black men and woman and taking up the critical questions,” said Dr. Jeffries. “These youngsters were feeling him.

“We’re on a mission and the mission is to go beyond ourselves, and to create a new world for ourselves, and we can’t use the old confused standards that come out of the European American or even the negroness. His message should really go to all of these institutions where there are critical numbers of Blacks,” Dr. Jeffries added.

Atty. Malik Zulu Shabazz, national chairman of the New Black Panther Party and Black Lawyers for Justice, said the Minister’s message to the students at Bowie State University and other HBCUs across the country will help better prepare them for the future, and counter White supremacist educational leanings.

“His speech reminded me of my own growth and development as a college student at Howard University and being blessed to host Minister Farrakhan for two speaking engagements,” said Atty. Shabazz. “That was the spark that launched my career in the movement. The Minister’s speech and outreach to college students is important because the root knowledge Farrakhan teaches is much needed in the academic arena as a critical counter perspective to the Eurocentric educational curriculum taught at majority White and Black colleges.”

Mr. Cotton, who spoke words prior to the main message, expressed admiration for Min. Farrakhan always being on the “forefront of the battle for freedom” for Black people for as long as he could remember. He encouraged fellow students to heed the Minister’s words and “use the blueprint he has designed for us.”

“Minister Farrakhan is our brother, and at the end of the day, we know that he is here for the salvation of our people,” Mr. Cotton, a 21-year-old business marketing major told The Final Call. “This is the second time I’ve heard the Minister speak, but this is the first time that I’ve been just eight feet from him, and then getting to shake his hand.”

Richard L. Lucas III, SGA sophomore class president, was zipping around the campus since the early morning making sure everything was just right for the evening event. It was his first time hearing the Minister. When it was all over, the event was definitely worth the work and one never to be forgotten, said Mr. Lucas III.

“He’s nothing like what he’s portrayed to be, which is very interesting. You can see parts where people could take sound bites and try to build an image of him, but his message was really inspirational and motivational,” said Mr. Lucas III. “I just feel like I don’t have any excuse to do anything other than be great. I am the change I’m looking for.”

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