[Editor’s note: The following article is based on excerpts from an address delivered Aug. 20 at Mosque Maryam in Chicago, Illinois by Minister Farrakhan during the Women’s Mobilization Rally for the Millions More Movement. Click here to order CD/DVD.]
In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
Why are women important? Why is women’s participation important for the creation of a Millions More Movement? To go right to the heart of that, no movement is going anywhere without the woman.
I would like to share with you some of what I was taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad of the value of a woman. I am hoping that the word that God lays on my heart and mind to speak to you will resonate in your hearts and minds, that you will begin thinking on a higher level about who you are and how valuable a woman is in the sight of God.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that the first act of creation after the Self-Creation of God, He studied Himself, knowing that it was painful and difficult. He studied Himself and brought from Himself a second self. The female, according to the Bible, is a part of the man. But she is more than a part of man, the woman is the second self of God. Sisters, if you know why you are as you are, it makes it better for you to be yourself.
You are not the woman of man; you are the woman of God. The more men grow to reflect God, then the hearts of women will calm down and you will be more at peace. You are not at peace today. You are very disappointed, disillusioned and hurt by us, because you expected something and did not get what you expected. An illusion attracted you, but reality woke you up. Were you wrong to expect? No. Why do you expect something from a man? The Holy Qur’an deals with the nature of things, because no person can rule unless you understand the nature of that, which you are trying to rule. You must understand your own nature, in order to develop self-mastery.
What is the nature of the woman and what is the nature of the man? The Holy Qur’an says, “Men are the maintainers of women.” It is the natural role of a man to work hard and produce what is necessary to maintain a woman and the children that are produced from that woman. As a maintainer, he is a protector, provider, and he is supposed to guide. You cannot guide a woman with sex, and if a man is dumb enough to think that sex can guide a female, then the marriage falls apart and the relationship tumbles down. Guidance comes from the brain, not from any other part of the body. Guidance must manifest wisdom and since you are the second self of God, then the man must bring to you wisdom and truth that is from God, because the only thing that can maintain the woman of God is the word of God, rightly brought from a man who is in the image and the likeness of God.
When a man works hard to maintain support, guide and protect his wife and family, what comes up out of his wife is a natural desire to console, comfort and give that man peace and quiet of mind. When you fall in love, it makes you want to serve. You do things to please, whether it be in a meal, the way you fix your home, or the way you fix yourself. You try to make it nice for him because he brought that out of you by being what he is supposed to be.
But when he acts the fool, he shuts you down and you do not have any desire to console, comfort, cook or clean for him. You don’t even want to rear his children, especially if they look like him.
Sisters, something has happened to us, as men, and something has happened to you, as women. Something terrible has happened to men because we can attract you, but we cannot hold you. We can give you children, but we do not know how to help you rear them. We can make money, but we are rather selfish. Women have been greatly misused and abused. It is so painful that we live in a world that has raised sex to the level where we get lost in a pleasure that was to create a heavenly existence. The more we get lost in it, the more painful our life becomes. So, having raised sex to the degree that a Satanic mind has raised it, men have lost respect for the second self of God and the second self of self. Men, then, use women for pleasure and discard women as you would a wrapper from a cookie, cake or candy. It was sweet to you, but you cannot use the wrapper, so you throw it away.
The worst part of this sexual madness is that fathers have sometimes abused their daughters; uncles have sometimes abused their nieces; grandfathers have abused their grandchildren; and cousins and brothers have abused their sisters. When a woman is innocent, a virgin, and is raised in a wholesome environment, she loves purely. The first love of a girl in a wholesome environment is the male image of her father. She wants to serve and she loves to be hugged by her father because it gives her a sense of safety and security because, by nature, you desire to be made secure. The man’s nature is the same. He desires to be made secure. A woman is made secure in a good man and a good man is made secure in God. So you have a natural sequence, as the Bible teaches: God is the head of man, man is the head of woman, and woman is the head of a child. When this natural order functions properly, there is joy and peace.
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The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “Civilization is measured by the woman.” If you want to take the world down, the place of attack is the female. If you want to build a world up, you start with the female.
One day, one of the companions of Prophet Muhammad asked, “After God and His Messenger, who should we honor next?” The Prophet said, “Your mother.” He said, “Who after that?” Prophet Muhammad said, “Your mother.” The companion asked again, “Who after that?” And Prophet Muhammad said again, “Your mother. Then next, your father.” A woman is three-times the value of a man, because she brings forth life. Women teach and train the offspring. So, if you are an ignorant, unlettered and foolish woman, you will make a foolish people. So when somebody wants to take the world down, they destroy the value of knowledge in a woman.
How could the Taliban say that they are Muslims and deny education to a female? When you deny education to the female, you are denying it to a nation. When you deny education to a man, you have denied education to an individual. When you deny it to a woman, you have denied it to an entire people. That’s how valuable a woman is.
We have to recognize that something went wrong with us. In The Final Call (Volume 24, Number 44), the infamous Willie Lynch letter is reprinted. Every one of you should study this letter because he wrote this letter in 1712, yet 300 years later, what he wrote and what he carried into practice still exists among the Black, Brown, Native Americans and, even now, you can see it reflected among Caucasians. You are very independent as a woman and some women are quick to say, “I don’t need a man for nothing!” And you are not lying. You go to work every day. You bring your money home. Some women are foolish enough to keep a man while he is making excuses for why he cannot work. She speaks to him as she speaks to her child, because she is taking care of him. How did the roles get reversed?
Willie Lynch, a White Caribbean plantation owner, said: “Both horse and niggers are no good to the economy in the wild or natural state. Both must be broken and tied together for orderly production, for an orderly future. Special and particular attention must be paid to the female and the youngest offspring. Both must be crossbred to produce a variety and division of labor. Both must be taught to respond to a peculiar new language, psychological and physical instruction of containment must be created for both.
“You can’t sleep, because if they are left in their natural state, they might kill you in your sleep. They sleep while you are awake and are awake as you sleep. They are dangerous near the family house and it requires too much labor to watch them away from the house. Above all, you cannot get them to work in this natural state.
“Therefore, both the horse and the nigger must be broken, breaking them from one form of mental life to another. Keep the body and take the mind.
“You must keep your eye and thought on the female. Keep your focus on the female, but concentrate on the future generations. Therefore, if you break the female mother, she will break the offspring in its early years of development and when the offspring is old enough to work, she will deliver it up to you, for her normal female protective tendencies will have been lost in the original breaking process.”
Here is how they did it. They desired to reverse nature. Instead of the female being dependent on her natural male counterpart, the slavemaster wanted to make you completely docile and dependent on him. He did not want any Black or Brown woman to depend on her man. When he reverses nature, a female is produced that will be independent of that male figure, but dependent on the slavemaster, and a male will be produced that will be dependent. The female that you produce will be independent of the male image—just like women today.
Today, our girls are independent, while our boys are broken. Women have broken their male children, unknowingly, but this is the way the slavemaster fixed you. Willie Lynch said, “Take the female and run a series of tests on her to see if she will submit to your desires willingly.” These are White people who know the nature of things, plotting the destruction of an entire people by taking the female down. He said, “Test her in every way because she is the most important person in the making of a slave.”
Sisters, if you are the most important in the making of a slave, then you are the most important person in making a people free. That is why there can be no Millions More Movement without women playing a proper, equal and even dominant role.
Willie Lynch wanted to destroy the male image in the woman’s eyes completely, so she would not look at any man in her race with honor and respect. He said, take a strong nigger man and have that woman and her child watch. You take two strong Black men. The first one you tie his hands and legs to a horse on both sides, then set that nigger ablaze. As the fire touches the horses, they start running in opposite directions and pull the Black man apart.
The woman is horrified and so is the child. Then, you take the second strong nigger male and you take a bullwhip. You do not kill him; you beat him until he is nearly dead and you make her watch this. She will go into a frozen psychological state because the man that nature tells her to look to for maintenance and protection, she cannot get it from him because she saw a White man pull a Black man apart and beat another Black man within an inch of his life.
Then, Willie Lynch says, “Now, you have reversed the roles. For the fear of the young male’s life, she will psychologically train him to be mentally weak and dependent, but physically strong.” You have trained your boy children and men to be docile in order to live. You broke the man yourself. Your girls grow up psychologically independent, so the female trains her female offspring to be psychologically independent. So, we have the nigger woman out front and the nigger man behind and scared.
So when you get married, he seems like a man. He’s handsome and has really attracted you, but he has already been broken. After you marry him, you realize he is weak and so you start looking somewhere else, only to find somebody else who is in the same state. You run from one man to another, and you end up disappointed with this man, disappointed with the next man, and disappointed with the man after that—so why not stay with the man you have and help make him into a man?
It may be easier said than done, but Sisters, we have to break the cycle and the reversal of nature because it is the reversal of nature that keeps you very, very unhappy and disappointed as a woman. You are not a lesbian. You may have a woman who you are with, but you are not a lesbian. You are just so upset with men and so hurt by men that you would rather lay next to a woman who shares your pain. But the moment a real man comes along, you’ll get up out of bed with that woman.
Every Black leader who has ever tried to reverse this process has been falsely accused, maligned, brought to jail, beaten, and even put to death. White people, in order to rule, must keep the process the way they made it so that you will always look to the Caucasian. As a woman, your nature is to be made secure. If your husband works downtown and is bringing home money, you are very happy because you know the bills are going to get paid, and he will be able to get you the little things you need or want.
But let him tell you, “Honey, I went to sleep last night and an idea came to me for a business and I think I’m going to leave corporate America and go into business for myself.” His first opponent is right in the bed next to him. “You’re going to leave your good paying job to go out on some foolish idea to go into business for yourself? Who do you think you are anyway?” You criticize him. Your nature is to be made secure and you are not sure that he will be able to make you secure by going into business rather than staying on the White man’s job. So in the house, there is a tug of war between the male and the female.
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God created a woman’s form to be appealing to a man’s eyes. You can call him holy, you can call him divine, you can call him prophet, you can call him saint, you can call him apostle, but if he is a man, your physical form is appealing to his eyes. The Holy Qur’an says you were created to give him peace and quiet of mind and to be a consoler for him, so every aspect of you reflects this. But that beauty of you is not for every man to see. The beauty of you is for that special individual who has earned the right to be consoled by what you offer. But Satan said no.
How were women dressed 60 years ago? They covered from the top all the way down. It was not considered proper to wash your underwear and put them on a line in your backyard so that your neighbor can see what your underwear looked like. A Black man in the South would get killed simply for looking under a White woman’s dress on a clothesline. If the enemy saw him, he would know that not only would he look under her dress on a clothesline, but he was angling to get under her dress in real life; so he would kill the Black man just for that.
Over the past 60-70 years, look at how women have been taken down; and when you go down, you take us down because the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “Where there are no decent women, there are no decent men, for the woman is the mother of civilization.”
When World War II came, he took women out of the kitchen. Most of you today do not know how to cook, but you want to get married. When he put you in the factories, as the men went to war, women became the top bread-winners. As men came back from the war, society was changing and they had a new style of clothing for the women. Long dresses were out, and gradually the hemlines rose and he began taking your clothes off. In the Book of Revelations, there is a description of a beast, with a woman dressed in scarlet sitting on top of the beast, because the beast is going to use the woman to attract the man to his destruction.
Then gradually, your clothes start coming off and the dances and music began to change. Now that he has taken you down like this, your attracting power has nothing to do with the way you think. Your attracting power is your sex and your willingness to give yourself to a man. Music is now all about sex. In order to groove to a beat, the body is moving, but what you are doing is the sex act standing up.
When you go to the disco or a party, what is in your mind? We can tell what is in your mind by how much flesh you are showing. You may say, “This is just the style,” but you are not creating any style. Satan is creating the style to take you further and further down, so that civilization now is in a degenerate state because the woman is in a degenerate state, and there are no holy men. We have been ruined and so have you. So, Sisters, the Millions More Movement is about repairing the damage that was done to us through slavery.
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You can be disappointed with your man, but if you keep beating him down with your mouth, you will always be disappointed. In his nature, he knows he is supposed to be the boss even though he does not have what it takes to be the boss. But, Sisters, if you really want to have peace in your home, learn how to handle your man in his ignorance and foolishness, because when God said, “Let us make man,” He needs your help. If you do not help God, you will not find a man that will satisfy your soul. We need your help. We need your support.
So, are you willing to be a part of the Millions More Movement? Do you want to reverse the condition in which the enemy has put us and go back to the natural way? If you do, then let’s go to work.
