The Final Call

A Syllabus For College Students

By Cedric Muhammad -Guest Columnist- | Last updated: May 17, 2012 - 10:10:32 AM

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Minister Farrakhan, Spiritual Economics and The Science of Business (Part I)

I—like so many others—experienced the joy of first becoming a Follower of the Most Honored Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan while enrolled in college. That was 20 years ago. There were three primary supporting factors which made this experience especially enriching. I’ll share two. First, I belonged to Mosque # 25 in Newark, New Jersey which provided a loving and nurturing environment, including Believers and a Laboring Staff –who while placing emphasis on soldiering as a Fruit of Islam—encouraged me to always seek to find ways to connect my studies with the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the latest Messages of Minister Farrakhan, with the expectation that I would be in a position to apply what I was learning on behalf of my people. Secondly, I became comfortable in utilizing the university library system. I never accepted Islam on face value or on the basis of dogma or ritual. Early on I experienced the fact that every aspect of this Teaching has a Witness and can be proven.

I was overjoyed watching Minister Farrakhan speak to College Students on his most recent tour. Last October, I had the honor of being with Minister Farrakhan and made a quick comparison between the magnetic relationship that exists between he and my generation; and the evolving relationship Allah and His Christ are guiding him to form with this current generation of college students. I made one distinction which one day I’d like to share. For now I’ll simply say that the distinction lies in a difference between data, information, knowledge, understanding and wisdom that most of us in my generation have ‘missed’ which this generation clearly grasps. In short, data and information can only be converted into the latter three and especially understanding and wisdom when they are organized, internalized and applied. This generation has a zeal for the application of knowledge that is unmatched in my view.

This is the most entrepreneurial and business-minded generation we have ever produced and they are already and will continue to decide to fit Minister Farrakhan into their life’s purpose and educational and professional development in a most powerful way. One sign of this is the number of students who are changing their college majors to agriculture, mathematics, engineering and business after only hearing a single speech.

A role for my generation is not to compete with this new generation but to share with them the benefit of our experiences, including the mistakes and errors we have made. One of the most important things we can do is engage them regarding the literature that best qualifies them to marry their academic experience with what Minister Farrakhan is teaching in a way that enables them to become masters of self and masters of their environment. To that end I thought of several books that are instrumental in this area of my life as I strive to better myself, perfect my professional discipline and serve my people first as well as all of humanity.

In summary the science of business is the science of life activity which is the science of one’s adjustment to environment in mastery of self and environment. Minister Farrakhan gives the best definition of it in Closing The Gap. As more of a formula of study I think of the science of business as having 6 elements: 1) natural law, human nature and universal order 2) essential business principles 3) case studies of the most successful 4) the power of the human mind to ‘create’ and attract 5) the mechanics of the political economy and 6) monetary history

In no particular order, here is a list of books (some of which I began reading while in college or discovered later at university libraries) that I have found helpful in each area and strongly recommend to the younger students I mentor or am Friends with:

The Restrictive Law Of Islam Is Our Success by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. Perhaps the most important statement the Honorable Elijah Muhammad made on our economic reality was “…on matters of economics there is entirely too much distrust among us. We trust everyone but ourselves. We therefore, have to build or produce trust in ourselves in order to do something for self and kind.” What is trustworthiness in economics based upon? Two factors primarily: competence in the performance of a skill, duty or service and integrity and character on a personal and group level. This book is the most penetrating commentary, analysis and parsing of moral, ethical and divine law I’ve read. It proves conclusively that obedience to law and living the golden rule are what produces trust - the basis of economic development, which I have written about previously.

Anatomy and Physiology (Volume 1 by Edwin Steen and Ashley Montagu). The Knowledge of Self is certainly accurate history but it also should include a grasp of our own biology. The structure and function of the human body holds keys to understanding the universe and human systems like economics. In fact, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad compared money to blood and Minister Farrakhan has expanded on some of the specific details of this more than analogous fact of nature. This should be considered in light of what Allah (God) teaches in Surah 95:4 of the Holy Qur’an: “We have indeed created man in the best of moulds.”

This Is The One by Jabril Muhammad. This may have been the most significant book for me in terms of clearly depicting and implying the direct relationship between academic study and the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Its references to and use of sociology, theology, mathematics, historiography, the physical sciences, anthropology, political science and economics make it one of the most unified presentations a college student could read. It is loaded with bite size statements that cause you to put the book down and just think into reality. One such example is, “One’s understanding of a society can be no better than one’s grasp of the nature of the people constituting that society. One does not know man’s nature unless one knows man’s origin.”

All of this relates to one’s ability to navigate in business.

Next week: More books.

(Cedric Muhammad is author of ‘The Entrepreneurial Secret’ (http://theEsecret.com/) and CEO of Africa PreBrief (http://africaprebrief.com/) – an economic consulting firm guiding U.S.-based investors. Twitter: http://twitter.com/cedricmuhammad.)