Suffer the little children

By the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: May 20, 2010 - 2:24:49 PM

[Editor's note: The following edited text is taken from a message delivered by Minister Farrakhan to a gathering of youth in Tchula, Mississippi on November 3, 2002. He was invited to Tchula by Reverend Eddie Carthan for the dedication of Good Samaritan Ecuminical Church. The youth summit was part of the weekend's activities.]

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

Why did Jesus say to his disciples: “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not for of such is the Kingdom of God?” What was it about the disciples and their zeal to follow Jesus, but they were not as they should be to the young? So Jesus had to admonish them, “suffer the little children.” He was telling them, “Do not drive the children away.”

Children presenting the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan with handmade greeting cards at Muhammad’s Mosque No. 11 in Boston, Mass. Photo: Kenneth Muhammad

Something was going on that separated the elders from the children. They had assigned a place for the children, but the children wanted to express themselves more. The elders had them confined in a certain place, in a certain attitude, and in a certain state of being. The elders in their way were keeping the children from the Master. But who, as a good Christian, would want to keep children away from the Master? What was it about the elders that caused them to not understand the yearning of children to be close to the Master that they, in ignorance, would forbid the children?

Jesus then told the elders: “Except you become as a little child you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” Why must the elders become like children when they feel that they are already grown up? The problem is that the elders are grown up in the way of their former slave-masters and grown up in the way of the world, but not mature in the way of Allah (God).

We have to be re-taught. I do not care how much we think we know, we have to be re-educated in order to be a part of Allah's (God's) Kingdom. The way we have been taught and trained by our former slave-masters and their children only makes us able to fit into their decadent world. Someone has to take on the huge responsibility of our reform. Reform is not easy when we are in the habit of doing wrong. The scripture teaches that we are born in sin and shaped in iniquity. The Holy Qur'an teaches that Satan has made evil fair-seeming to us.

Our desire is to speak to young people because this is the real Kingdom of Allah (God) sitting in front of us—the children. They are like potter's clay. But in whose hands are the children? Who is shaping their future? What is the quality of the institutions that shape our lives? Decadent school system and school teachers, decadent political system and politicians, corrupt system of justice and corrupt law enforcers, corrupt judges and even corrupt parents? Who is rearing our children for us?

Since mother and father have to work today, the devil is in our living rooms. The devil is in our bedrooms. The devil is wherever we have a television that is unsupervised. Television is rearing our children for us. How much time do we (parents) spend teaching our children and how much time do our children spend in front of the television? If church only has their minds once a week—on Sunday and maybe a Bible class—then pastors as well as parents do not have a significant influence on our children's minds. We are fighting an uphill battle, because Satan has our children 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Loss of respect

As we look at our children, we see their destruction before our eyes. In every city and every town, the funeral parlors are doing big business. It is not grandpa and grandma who are filling the funeral parlors; it is our teenagers and young people. They are being wiped out with biological and chemical weapons as well as psychological weapons. What are these biological and chemical weapons? Crack cocaine is a chemical weapon. Alcohol is a chemical weapon. Tobacco is a chemical weapon. Heroin is a chemical weapon. AIDS, herpes, syphillis, tuberculosis and cancer—these are biological weapons. Our minds are destroyed with self-hatred. This is what makes it easy for our children to kill each other, because we come from a different neighborhood or are a part of a different gang or wear different colors.

Suffer the little children—and they are suffering—to come unto a voice of real freedom, real justice, real equality and real truth that will attract a child's mind and make that child see his or her purpose for being on this Earth.

What happened to our thinking? Even in slavery, we respected life. Now, we are 150 years up from slavery and we have lost respect for life. That which is growing in the womb (the child) has no importance. It has interfered with your education. It has interfered with your fun. So you will kill the fruit of your womb, while you condemn the gangbanger who is killing his neighbor. But murder is starting in the abortion office.

The fruit of your womb is the answer to your prayers. This is how Allah (God) answers your prayers. You say you want to be delivered from oppression. But no spook god is going to come down out of the sky and deliver you; it is a baby born to a woman that is going to grow up and deliver us from our oppressor.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, became pregnant and the circumstances surrounding her pregnancy were such that she had to be put away privily because they could not see the father of the child. It was the law at that time, if they found a woman pregnant with no husband, then the woman was charged with committing fornication or adultery and would have to be stoned to death. So, they hid Mary away because the law would have killed her and the baby in her womb would have died.

Imagine the loss for the world that would have been. Mothers, you do not know what is growing in your wombs. You do not know what Allah's (God's) plan is for every one of these children.

I want to tell the youth that you are the best generation we have ever produced. You are different from your parents. You are stronger. You are less fearful. There is so much stimulation by the sacrifice of those who have gone before us that you know you can compete with White people on any level. The reason you are what you are is because your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were what they were.

Fifty years ago in the South, you would get off the street when White folks were coming your way. Fifty years ago, the police chief could come to a Black man's house and ask for his pretty daughter and he would better not refuse. We could not drink out of a fountain that said “White Only” on it, but the water coming out of both fountains was the same. We could not be buried in a cemetery that buried White corpses and we could not go to church with White people except that you sat in the balcony. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement changed all of that. Why don't you know that enough to stand up and defend Dr. King? He was more than a dream.

Satan makes mischief

Today, we can go to Memphis, Tenn. and Jackson, Miss. and stay in fine hotels. If there is a motel on the highway, you can stop and get a room, but someone paid a price for that. You call yourself Jamil, Hassan, Hakim, Jabbar, but someone paid a price for you to even wear a name like that. What's wrong, though, is that those who fought for equal employment opportunities, open housing and voting rights were busy enjoying the fruit of their struggle and did not pass on the wisdom of the struggle to the children. So our children grow up thinking that everything is all right. They do not know what we went through to make it a little better for them.

Satan is making mischief with the nature of the human being. While parents are working hard to provide a living for their children, the airwaves are filled with songs and dances that even a dog would not do. Listen to your language. Listen to what you are expressing. “This is my dog,” meaning that a dog is so faithful, loving and protective of his master, that when somebody says, “that's my dog,” they are really paying you a compliment. But they are using the lowest form of life to describe faithfulness, trustworthiness, protective nature and character. Why must I be a dog when David the Psalmist said, “Ye are all gods, children of the Most High God”? Satan has taken what Allah (God) meant for us and turned it around; Satan has turned gods into dogs.

But, Jesus is a revolutionary. I am not talking about the Jesus that you have been taught all of your life that looks like the same people that put you in the cotton field. The Jesus I am talking about, the scripture says, has hair like lamb's wool and feet like burnished brass. The Jesus I am talking about, whom Christians believe is the son of The Living God, looks like you and me. He is a revolutionary figure, but the enemy does not want you to know that.

Look at the revolution that is in the scripture: Jesus came that those who see may go blind and those who are blind may see. He is going to turn conditions around. Today, we are in the light of the sun, but on the other side of the Earth; they are in the shadow of the Earth, in darkness. But as sure as you travel on the Earth, you will be in darkness in a few hours and they on the other side will be in the light.

Jesus did not come to give the Kingdom to the same people that had it all the time. He came to give it to those who never had it. The blessing is for the poor and the meek. That is why the scripture says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Allah (God). The Kingdom is for us and our young people.

The Final Call