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FinalCall.com News
National News
God's judgment: South slammed by storms
By Brian E. Muhammad -Contributing Writer-
Updated May 4, 2011 - 3:58:38 PM
(FinalCall.com) - Terror recently rained down on six Southern states in the form of tornadoes, high winds, rain and hail—the magnitude unlike any in the history of such storms according to meteorologists.
Over 300 twisters ripped through the region April 25-28 leaving casualties and mayhem in their path.
NEWS ANALYSIS
Search and rescue teams were still sifting through the scattered rubble of homes, mangled cars and remnants of lives torn asunder by the tornadoes. The treacherous winds caused complete instability and erased lifetimes of history and memories in minutes.
The worst damage from the storms was in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham Ala., but some smaller cities resembled war zones.
“This is one of the greatest examples of shock and awe,” reflected Maurice Muhammad, an Alabama magistrate judge and long time helper for the Nation of Islam in the state.
The devastation happened in “less than four minutes,” he said.
According to the National Weather Service, the death toll at Final Call press time had reached 366 people, mostly in Alabama. With the fatalities numbering nearly 400 people, it is possibly the single deadliest tornado ever, and many people are still unaccounted for in Tuscaloosa.
Entire towns including businesses, homes, churches and schools were vanished by the whirlwinds some said sounded like “10 freight trains” clattering in the air.
The National Weather Service said a 3/4 mile wide EF4 tornado demolished Tuscaloosa with wind speeds upwards of 165 to 199 mph and maintained full strength for nearly 80 miles. The service also designated at least three tornadoes at level EF5, the highest level winds, and there were many others at different high speeds.
The storms started their corridor of destruction in Mississippi and traveled the region through parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and the Carolinas.
The great display of power in the weather and its frequency has caused people to think and ask why America?
“It's interesting that God is conspicuously absent from the explanations within in the news reports,” said Abdul Akbar Muhammad, a Final Call columnist and international representative of Minister Louis Farrakhan.
“It's as if no one wants to deal with this (divine) as the reason behind what is happening,” Akbar Muhammad said.
These are only the beginning of sorrows for America according to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the patriarch of the Nation of Islam who for 40 years warned about the fate of America for her treatment of Black people, her former slaves. He declared that a divine judgment had been rendered and the weapon of God's choice would be the forces of nature.
“These are some of Allah's (God's) weapons, the storms that we see going on,” Elijah Muhammad wrote in his instructive book, “The Fall of America.”
“The fall of America is now going on! She is falling! The cause of her fall is universally known, as it was with ancient Babylon,” he said.
“Righteousness, justice and freedom are despised and fought against regardless to the clear knowledge of God's hourly punishment and destruction of America by His divine plague of storms,” he further explained in Chap. 34 titled “The Judgment of America.”
Mr. Muhammad's warnings and direction continues in the work and mission of his top student and representative, Minister Louis Farrakhan. The Minister has exhorted the world to pay attention to the weather as a sign of God's presence to defend the oppressed and downtrodden Black people who have been under the foot of America for over 400 years.
“The reason that His (God's) anger is kindled against America and His threat to destroy America is because of what America has done, is doing and plans to do against the Black man and woman of America whom I have declared to the world of religion … that we are the Children of Israel and we are the fulfillment of God's prophesy and promise,” said Min. Farrakhan during a March 31 press conference at Mosque Maryam in Chicago. During the session with the press the Minister predicted the worst disasters were yet to arrive and warned that a major earthquake will hit America.
“Allah is fighting now to deliver us in the exact manner that he said he would through the mouth of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” said Minister Farrakhan bearing witness to what his teacher prophesied.
“Remember his words. He said God is going to use four great judgments: rain, hail, snow, and earthquakes. The forces of nature are great weapons as we see them in play not only in America but throughout the world,” Min. Farrakhan said on another occasion. The Muslim leader has travelled the world with the message of the time and what must be done to survive. The use of the weather affects both the adversary of God and the people of God.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated that there were 362 tornadoes during the entire outbreak from April 25-28, 2011. During the 24-hour period from April 27-28, the National Weather Service estimated there were a total of 312 tornadoes.
According to the weather service, the largest previous number of tornadoes on record in one event occurred from April 3-4, 1974, with 148 tornadoes. The National Weather Service also pointed out that there had been more than 600 tornadoes in the month of April 2011.
The storms that battered the South were one part of a series of big weather events across the country. In Saint Louis, Mo., a “Good Friday” tornado swept the state wrecking destruction from West to East across the St. Louis metropolitan area. The tornado reached a maximum intensity of an EF4 and left millions of dollars in damage at Lambert St. Louis International Airport. The total path length of the storm was 22 miles, with a width of up to 0.4 miles.
Then there are the drought conditions afflicting Texas and causing fires to engulf the state. “We're pretty vulnerable right now,” said state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon to the Christian Science Monitor.
“We need rain,” lamented Mr. Nielson.
Up to 650 blazes have scorched 400 square miles of rolling plains in west Texas, the Monitor said. This year so far has rivaled the 2000 and 2006 Texas wildfire seasons, which killed 11 people and destroyed 400 homes. In 2000 the Southwest, including Texas, 6.5 million acres burned, which was more than double the 10-year wildfire average at the time according to the Monitor.
On May 2, the weather service issued “red flag warnings” indicative of “critical fire weather conditions” in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Jeff Davis County, Texas is under a federal emergency as a fast-moving wildfire has consumed 80,000 acres, destroying 40 homes in Fort Davis. Residents say the scenes have at times been “apocalyptic.”
Severe weather is impacting Cairo, Ill., where the Ohio River is over 20 feet over the flood level as a result of excessive snow during the winter. The Army Corps of Engineers has begun pumping explosives into a Missouri levee as it weighs whether to blast the levee open to ease pressure along the rising Mississippi and Ohio rivers and spare Cairo. The controversial plan is a reminder of the desolation of a flooded Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina. The Army Corps of Engineers has struggled with whether saving the predominantly poor Black town of 3,000 is worth flooding farmland in Missouri that belongs to 200 Whites.
“Open your eyes and look at the increasing rain, hail, snow. There are several hundred earthquakes that have already come to America, little ones. God when he sends a Warner, the Qur'an says He seizes the people with distress and affliction that they might humble themselves,” said Min. Farrakhan.
Both Minister Farrakhan and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad gave interpretation to the scriptures as relevant verses for today. Such as the Holy Qur'an Ch. 13:41, “See they not that We are visiting the land, curtailing it of its sides? And Allah pronounces a doom—there is no repeller of His decree. And He is swift in calling to account.”
According to guidance offered by both men, this passage refers to the United States, a land bordered between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
“In the beginning of this year we have witnessed some of the severest snow in recorded history, and the news called it ‘Snowmageddon'—a take-off on “Armageddon,” observed Min. Farrakhan.
Elijah Muhammad wrote: “Snow is of the most dreaded plague…it destroys your highways, your cities; your concrete and gravel in towns and cities. It puts a great burden of expense on the cities.” Chicago faces a budget crisis and winter snow removal and damage added to the financial difficulty.
“Too much snow, you can't fly your planes! Too much snow, your tractors can't move; your tanks can't move! The Bible teaches that God treasured up snow in the North to use it ‘The Great Day of Battle,' and here comes the snow,” the Minister said at Saviours' Day 2011 in Rosemont, Ill., in February.
In 2010, more people were killed worldwide by natural disasters than were killed in terrorist attacks in the past 40 years combined, the Minister noted. An Associated Press article stated that 2010 was “the year the Earth struck back.”
“Those of you who read the Holy Qur'an: Read it again. But don't read it ‘just to read,' read it because it is a Book that describes what goes on right up to the Day of Judgment. The Qur'an speaks of calamity after calamity, until the enemy is laid low, so now the oceans are rising; and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said he would build nothing on the East coast or the West coast, even in the South because soon the waters will over-flood. Yes, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said the people would be pushed more toward the center of the country,” said Minister Farrakhan.
