The War of Armageddon

By the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: Jul 22, 2008 - 1:18:00 PM

How strong is the foundation? Can we survive? -Pt. 3

[Editor’s note: The following is the first installment of excerpts from the speech delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan at Mosque Maryam in Chicago, Ill. on April 8, 2007, which is Part 4 of the One Nation Under God Lecture Series. The entire address is now available on DVD and CD. Click here to order this message.]

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

The world of religion has been poisoned, whether it’s Christianity, Islam or Judaism. If you are Black, you are going to suffer rejection from others. Whether we are Socialist, Communist, Democrat or Republican—the Hamitic curse of Black inferiority, which says we are doomed to be servants of White people, is so ingrained in the people and unfortunately, even in us, that if someone is too Black, they are ostracized.

I heard that in New Orleans in the past that we had to pass the “brown bag test.” If our color was darker than the brown bag, we could not go into certain places in New Orleans. In Washington, D.C. and other places, the mulatto complex reigned. Even today, this poison exists, where some of us who are light-skinned think we are better than our darker-skinned Brothers and Sisters. We somehow think we are not as good as those who are of lighter skin. This is a poison that has divided us as a people and has caused us to hate ourselves. What we are caused to hate, we don’t mind destroying. This is why Black-on-Black crime is so prevalent throughout America, because of Black-on-Black self hatred.

Righteous people suffer to establish truth and righteousness. We cannot run from being tried as those before us who received revelation were tried. The Holy Quran teaches us that Allah (God) is going to try us with something of fear, hunger, loss of property, loss of life and diminution of fruit, but give good news to those who are patient and steadfast under trial. Let not your hearts be troubled over this.

It was the imposition of the political doctrine of White supremacy over the message of Jesus Christ that justified the killing and subjugation of Native and Indigenous people all over the earth. It was the imposition of the political doctrine of White supremacy in spiritual terms that justified the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade—one of the greatest crimes against humanity. What has this world set up? It has sown the seeds of its destruction.

Thomas Jefferson, as he looked at the evil of slavery, said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever.” Don’t be deceived by any judgment rendered by man’s courts that have ill-affected you, for the true law of justice set up by Allah (God) in the Universe that governs His creatures lies down with us, and the law of justice gets up with us. None of us can escape the consequences of our deeds except by the unequalled Mercy of Allah (God).

Those of us who believe in the Kingdom of Islam or the Kingdom of Allah (God), we know that we are going to be persecuted and prosecuted, as it is written in the scriptures of both Bible and Holy Qur’an. This is why the Honorable Elijah Muhammad asked us to pray a prayer from the Holy Qur’an, Surah 2, verse 286: “Allah imposes not on any soul a duty beyond its scope. For it is that which it earns of good and against it that which it works of evil. Our Lord, punish us not if we forget or make a mistake. Our Lord, do not lay on us a burden as Thou didst lay on those before us. Our Lord, impose not on us (afflictions) which we have not the strength to bear. And pardon us! And grant us protection! And have mercy upon us! Thou art our Patron, so grant us victory over the disbelieving people.”

I give credit to the early followers of Jesus Christ, who were very sincere people because they truly believed in Jesus Christ. When Rome was being turned inside out because of the presence of truth, the Romans blamed this on the early Christians, putting them in a coliseum, and having them eaten by lions. But they never gave up on Jesus Christ; they never gave up their faith. Those are true martyrs of Christ who will always be recorded in the establishment of God’s Kingdom.

When I was in the hospital, one of my doctors who is a Mennonite Christian, which is connected to the Amish religion that started with the Anna Baptists in Europe, gave me a book about Mennonite Christian martyrs.

Whenever we try to establish something new, something not necessarily believed in by the many, but accepted and believed in by the few, those few have to be able to withstand tremendous persecution and trials in order for the truth revealed to them to be established. My doctor was telling me about a Mennonite Christian who, while trying to escape from a group that was killing Mennonite Christians, ran across some ice. One who was pursuing him fell in the ice; however, the Mennonite Christian turned and went back, and saved his pursuer from drowning. When the group in pursuit reached that point, the man who was saved ordered the Mennonite Christian who saved him to be killed. My doctor was lamenting to me over the life of that man.

I said, “You’re telling me about his good deed that led to his death. If he kept running, and let his pursuer drown, you never would have been talking to me about him, but hundreds of years after his death, we remember him because of the good thing that he did that led to his death.”

Righteous people suffer to establish truth and righteousness. We cannot run from being tried as those before us who received revelation were tried. The Holy Qur’an teaches us that Allah (God) is going to try us with something of fear, hunger, loss of property, loss of life and diminution of fruit, but give good news to those who are patient and steadfast under trial. Let not your hearts be troubled over this. As the war widens, the enemy becomes more upset. Muslims are going to be persecuted. Black people and others who are against the war will be persecuted. Detention camps have already been set up. Christians who know us (Muslims) and have experienced us, know that we are not terrorists. Yet, we will be falsely charged.

America has military and nuclear bases all over the world. America is bombing right now in Somalia, in the Horn of Africa, which is a geopolitically-strategic area for war. Whoever controls the Horn of Africa controls that area’s waterway. Ethiopia is now being used by America against an Islamist regime that had nearly captured the whole of Somalia.

This is not as much a war against terrorism as it is a war against Islam. Whenever you find a country where Muslims are willing to live an Islamic life, follow the Sunnah (way or example) of the Prophet (PBUH) and live by the law of the Holy Qur’an, you will find that America wants to destabilize, overthrow and destroy that country’s government.

The Sudan is so rich, potentially, that this area—if cultivated—could feed the whole of Africa. Sudan has oil in the South, oil in the West, and an Islamist regime in the North in the capital of Khartoum. America does not want an Islamist regime in Khartoum, so it is a matter of foreign policy to foster, seed, supply and support anyone who has a disagreement with the Islamist regime in Khartoum. America has created trouble for the government of the Sudan by using Sudan’s neighbors to the South and East: Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda. The minute the conflict in the South was resolved and a peace agreement was reached, the western part of Sudan inflamed. This is where Darfur is—and that is where oil is.

America’s foreign policy supported the legitimate cry of those in southern Sudan to try and separate those in the South and in the west from the North in Khartoum. The propaganda was that the Arabs were enslaving the Africans. If you have ever been to the Sudan, the blackest person in this room looks like a mulatto compared to some of our African Brothers and Sisters there, particularly in the southern and western parts of the Sudan. In the northern part of the Sudan, Arabs have mixed with the African, producing a wide array of color, from the deepest black to a reddish brown, but never a mulatto.

These people who claim to desire to help the suffering people of Darfur don’t desire to stop the suffering of the Palestinian people that live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. America wants to set up a secular government in the Sudan and overthrow the Islamist regime.

America’s ships, armed with nuclear warheads, nuclear submarines and sailors, are in the Persian Gulf ready to strike Iran. America is preparing for a wider war. How will this affect you? How will it affect me? How will it affect us?

If America goes to war with Iran, widening the war, I don’t think the U.S. government may allow me to be free to talk to you. America will need every able-bodied Black man and woman; every able-bodied Latino or poor White. America may even reinstitute the draft. Through felony convictions of Black people, we are being stripped of the right of citizenship and denied the right to vote and denied the right to work. Either we go back to crime and become a part of the prison industrial complex, or we join the armed forces. One of the ways the undocumented immigrant is promised to become a citizen is to join the armed forces of America.

In 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, there was an Executive Order in 1942 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to take the Honorable Elijah Muhammad off the street.

They did not want him talking to Black people while they were trying to prosecute a war. This is not far away from the mind of President Bush, because my voice is probably one of the few that is speaking like this.

There is a “safe” Islam. Many of my Muslim Brothers want to be safe; want to be accepted. They preach some of the things from the Holy Qur’an that the enemy would not mind hearing, but other things they stay away from. The Holy Qur’an is a book for all seasons, especially this one, so for us to be Muslims in America requires us to stand up for truth; stand up for Allah (God), stand up for his Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah (PBUH), stand up for Islam, stand up for the Holy Qur’an, and those of us who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad will stand up for him and all the aforementioned.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad told us that Japan and China will unite, and in the news today, there is movement towards that goal between China and Japan. We must keep our eye on Germany and Eastern Europe. Many of the soldiers that were positioned in Europe when the Soviet Union collapsed were brought home. Those soldiers are going to have to go back to Europe because it appears that America is really threatening Russia—not with words, but with actions. America is taking those countries that were once a part of the Soviet Union and urging them to join NATO and the European Union. America is even placing military bases and nuclear weapons in some of these countries. Russia feels threatened and she is building up her military. These governments, while they talk peace, they are all preparing for war.

China could sink the U.S. dollar by calling in the debt that America owes China, or exchanging her huge dollar reserve for other currencies.

As this war gets hotter and hotter, Allah (God) will be bringing down more of His Wrath on the United States, which will be seen in the unusual weather the country is now experiencing. I heard the Honorable Elijah Muhammad say quoting from the Holy Qur’an how Allah (God) will push in America on all her sides. Al Gore, former vice-president, said that global warming, which the Earth is experiencing, will bring water from the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico over the land, on the East, West and Southern coasts of America, displacing hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Those that are in the center of the country may feel we’re in a better place, but you won’t be able to escape earthquakes, unusual weather and famine. Allah (God) is going to punish America Himself because of America’s injustice to His people and others. Allah (God) is not going to let a foreign power conquer America. As it was in the days of powerful Pharaoh and Ancient Egypt, Allah (God) wants to make Himself known to the world.

Army recruiters are all in our neighborhood. The country is not offering us jobs, but we are wanted in the Armed Forces because America knows she is going to fight many more wars. Mothers who have reared their sons and their daughters—suffering and scuffling for the little bit of money that they can scrape to give their children a decent life—they are asked to send their children away to Iraq and Afghanistan, only to come back broken and mentally destroyed. Your children are trained to kill, and then they are brought home with that same training in their head. Women—taken away from their babies—are being sent to war, and then they come home, broken. When they come home, Veteran Administrations are not treating them as they should. This is criminal.

Muslims, we have to now think more deeply into what we believe. If our belief system can be shaken again, then the War of Armageddon will have claimed us as its victims.

Brothers and Sisters, I thank you so much for your time, your attention. May Allah (God) bless you as I greet you in peace—As-Salaam Alaikum!

The Final Call