Blessed are the Peacemakers

By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Nov 28, 2017 - 12:13:25 PM

[Editor's note: The following article is an excerpt from an address commemorating the Holy Day of Atonement and the Ninth Anniversary of the Million Man March by Minister Farrakhan delivered on October 17, 2004 in Chicago, Illinois. Order address in its entirety at Store.FinalCall.com or call (866) 602-1230, ext. 200.

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

When you pick up the newspaper and you read about Muslims, you say, “My Lord, these are some terrible people.” But the Muslims in the Nation of Islam have been in America now for 74 years and we have no record of terrorism. Even though the government does not like us, we are acting a lot better than many of the Muslims that they are dealing with overseas, so maybe they’ll open the door a crack because we have something of value to offer America and the Islamic world, as well. The old world is going out with a big noise. The old world won’t accept the new, therefore, it is written that the old world will be destroyed.

In the Bible it says, “Behold, I make all things new.” Why would God want to make all things new if everything that was old was satisfactory to Him? Religion, as it is known, has failed. Government, as it has been known, has failed. Education, as it has been known, has failed. Everything has failed to cultivate the human spirit to make manifest in human beings their connection to the Divine. So, human beings are like a mountain of dung. Good for nothing, but to be used to fertilize, unless somebody comes to show us our potential and help bring us there.

Religion is not interested in the transformation of human beings. Religion is show. Religion is song. Religion is dance and a false worship. Religion is ritual, but religion is not the cultivation of a human being, that that human can reflect God in our actions, in our character, in the way we deal with our children, and our wives and our community and our world. We have failed.

With the election coming up, we have two men seeking to lead this nation, which is in deep trouble. I’m expressing this with deep concern, because I know that neither one of them can bring this nation out of where George Bush has led this country.

This country has been led along a path that is taking it down very quickly. The Bible teaches about a mystery Babylon that, in the end, the nations would hate her and make her desolate. George Bush’s policies have turned the world against America. She’s losing her friends in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America. All over the Earth, there’s dissatisfaction with the policies of the government of the United States of America, and there is in our government, the government of the United States, a fear of the growth of Islam.

What is Islam that they should fear it? Is it a religion of hate? Is it a religion of intolerance and bigotry? Is it a religion that teaches people to hate Christians and Jews? No, it is not. It bothers me that White Christian pastors have said that Islam teaches hate when we have been the victim of their hate ever since our fathers set the soles of their feet in the Western Hemisphere.

It bothers me that they could say that Islam is a religion of violence when Christian Europe has been violent among itself with a 30-year-war, a 100-year war, a first World War, a second World War, among themselves. These are Christians killing Christians. Why do they fear? It is because they know scripture. The beloved Jesus said, “As a man soweth, the same shall he also reap.” You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. The Prophet Obadiah said, “As thou hast done, so shall it be done unto you.”

Jesus again said, “He who lives by the sword, will die by the same sword.” This is why the Western nations want no dark people to have a “weapon of mass destruction,” because they know a Day of Judgment and a Day of Justice is coming and they will have to pay for the evils that have been brought to all of the people of the world. So they must keep such weapons out of the hands of the darker people, and particularly of Muslims.

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The Bible in the Book of Thessalonians reminds us that “That day, Judgment, shall not come except there be a falling away first and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” So the man of sin is covered, because he has a work to do. He leads people into perdition or hell. Isaiah, the 14th Chapter says, “Oh, Lucifer, son of the morning, how art thou fallen from heaven that does weaken the nations. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee and say is this the man that did weaken the nations.”

You’re not dealing with a spirit that is void of matter through which the spirit makes its force known. We are surrounded by spirit. Electricity is spirit. It’s energy, but it must have something of material to manifest itself through.

So, they say God is a spirit, but why would God, being a spirit, produce a material world? He leaves a material universe for us to grow up in to study Him. But the material world is governed by spiritual unseen laws. So are we. We are physical creatures, but we are governed by that which is unseen. I don’t know what’s in your head, but all I have to do is listen to you speak and watch the work of your hands, then I can identify you.

You can tell somebody you’re righteous, but if they listen to your words and watch your actions, they’ll say, “Oh, no, no, no. He is lying.” He’s deceiving and Satan has to be a deceiver. He has to make “up” look “down” and “down” look “up.” He has to make “right” look “wrong” and “wrong” look “right.” The Holy Qur’an says that the devil would make evil fair-seeming to man.

So we’re dealing with a spiritual reality manifesting through human beings, through governments, through systems of government, systems of education, social systems, political systems, systems of jurisprudence and economic systems. How can you tell where it comes from?: You look at the system and see what the system produces.

Some people say it’s not the human being, it’s the system. Well, it’s not the web, it’s the spider, because you can’t have a web without the spider to spin it, and you can’t have a system without a man to produce it, move it forward, develop and perpetuate it.

Look at religion. Can we say that racism hasn’t poisoned the bloodstream of Christianity? I didn’t say poison Jesus. No. No. No. He’s holy and pure, but what has been perpetrated on humanity in his name is not holy and not pure. There’s a system here at work. You come up, you believe, but you never rise to equality with those who run the system. And the same people that run the religious system also run the political system. You’re still fighting to get out of second class citizenship mode.

The same people that run the religious and the political system run the educational system, and you have been given inferior education and an inferior education will always allow your enemy to continue to rule you. Equal education means he can’t rule you anymore. The enemy does not want Black people, Brown people, Asian people, Arab people equally educated. You can prove that your education is inferior. Look at what you’ve done with it. If you have done nothing with it, nothing from nothing leaves you with nothing; but you have paid for somebody to deceive you and give you a degree that he knows you can’t use to free your people.

We have a few powerless billionaires. He does not mind if you have a little bit of money, but he will not allow you to do anything with it to free your people. They’re wise today, wiser than their fathers, so they’re more deceptive.

They tell you, “Come on now, young man, I’m going to push you forward. I’m going to make you a multi-millionaire.” We have a lot of multi-millionaires and they do good things for our people. It makes their hearts feel good and glad, but the masses continue to go down. When you get a business and you get it up to a certain level where it looks like you’re going to be independent, here they come and they make you an offer that you can’t refuse. Before you know it, they have control over what you and your sweat, blood and intelligence developed.

Now, you are the CEO of a company that you once owned. You’re just a worker in a bank that you once owned, because it’s an unwritten law that the Black man must never be independent of White tutelage, rule and governance. In our ignorance, some of us do not want to be free from their rule. You love them because they give you nothing. They have made us fall in love with their way of life.

So you can’t even say to your people—like in the Bible’s Revelation says that the righteous man should say to the people—“Come out of her, my people, come out.” And you ask, if I come out, where will I go? If it is God calling you to come out, don’t worry about where you should go. Come on out and see what God has for you.

Islam is not a religion that does not love Christian people. I wouldn’t be in it if that was the case, because I was born from a mother that took me to church. I grew up in a loving church that nurtured me. How could I then hate what nurtured me? In a news report this morning, they said the Christian church in Iraq was being bombed and Christians were being persecuted. I thought about that, because that did not happen under Saddam Hussein. So, what’s going on?

When I was in Iraq, there were Christian churches. When I was in Egypt, there were Christian churches and Jewish synagogues. They went about their worship, nobody bothered them. What is going on in Iraq today?

My subject is “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” We have a great role to play in the lives of our people. I understand, by the Grace of God, the universality of the message of Jesus Christ and I understand, by the Grace of God, the universality of the message of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) found in the Holy Qur’an. We who preach religion are not deep enough, and have not made the sound that can unify all of those who love what is good and what is right.

We preach doctrine, but we preach it with hate over somebody else’s doctrine. We preach in a way that turns people away from us. I‘m speaking of preachers now. When we come into the world from our mother’s womb, we make a universal sound. Babies do not cry in English, Arabic, Spanish or Swahili. They cry and make a universal sound. Every mother who has had a baby can listen to a Chinese baby cry and know what that baby needs. Every mother understands the universality of the first sound that the baby makes. We come into the world making a universal sound and we go out of the world making a universal sound. We die making the sound “aaahhh.”

You see the breath rising, coming up to the throat, and they say he’s gone, she’s gone. We have universal sound in birth and death, but in life, there’s no universal sound to make men and women the Brothers and the Sisters of each other, so that our life can be pleasant and beautiful on the earth. We are divided by color, education, nationality and ethnicity. Everything is division. Human beings have unity coming into the world, unity going out of the world; but division all through life.

Jesus was a universal man, but he started his mission narrowly. He had to focus on his disciples. He said, “Go ye not in the way of the Gentiles. Don’t go in the way of the Samaritans. Go ye to the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel. You stay right there, until I tell you expand.” At a certain point in his ministry, he said, “Go ye into all the world and preach this Gospel to every nation, every kindred and every tongue.” The message needed a vehicle. If you have water, you have to have a vessel in which to put the water. God was looking for a special kind of vessel; and Jesus was to shape that vessel, discipline that vessel and then pour into that vessel new wine to bring about something brand new that would bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth.

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Where is the peace? Where is the good will? It is nonexistent. It’s a word you say around Christmas time, but the reality is not there. It’s not good will in your own home with your family. It’s not good will between a husband and a wife, or with children and parents. It’s not good will between the student and the teacher. It’s not good will between the governor and those who are being governed. We need a change. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

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