The Criterion
[Editor’s note: The following article is excerpted from the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s major July 4, 2020 address “The Criterion,” delivered from his home in Michigan. The day also marked the 90th anniversary of the Nation of Islam in America. We urge you to order this important message in its entirety on CD, DVD or MP3, please visit store.finalcall.com or call 1–800- 602–1230, ext. 200.]
In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.
I was very, very troubled by the passing of our brother Abdul Hafeez Muhammad. His passing affected me like no other. It affected me like that because God wanted me to stop and think because there was a message He wanted to give me that He wanted me to give to you.
As I mentioned in my message to the readers of The Final Call, I had to take this death up to where it belonged to Almighty God Allah. I asked Him why, why did He take this great brother of ours the Regional Minister of the Nation of Islam on the East Coast? Why now? Why in this manner of the death caused by this coronavirus? I had to get answers.
During Ramadan in the early morning reading of the Qur’an, I began to get some of the answers to the questions that I was asking of Allah. And all of you that are watching your brother from wherever you may be watching; there are many questions that you had in your mind over this virus and over the loss of life and over the pain, hurt and hardship of those who lost their loved ones without even being able to say farewell and goodbye and not even to touch your loved one; that was very painful.
But I want you to know that the life that you lost was not in vain. Abdul Hafeez Muhammad’s life lost to the coronavirus is not in vain. He is considered in Islam a martyr. Those who die in the way of Allah, the Qur’an says don’t speak of them as dead. They are alive because their death was in the Cause of God.
No one in this drama from China to Iran to Italy to every country in the world whose people have been lost to this virus, there’s no reason for us not to see them in the same light; they are martyrs.
You may ask how do they become martyrs? … Nothing is more powerful then when you offer your life to God in His Cause. I see all of those who have died in this corona-violence to us as martyrs — be they men, women or children. Be they White or Black and colors in between. Be they Jews, Christians, Muslims, Agnostics. Be they gay, be they straight. Whatever you were doing with your life now that death has claimed you with this virus, your life and your death have been raised and you are considered martyrs by the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. …
What is the cause of this loss?
Do you know the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that Master Fard Muhammad taught him that once every 50,000 years two stars appear in the South Eastern sky — a blue and a red star. That blue and that red star are now present. It signals the coming of a universal change. This world that we have lived in, are living in and soon will live in no more has to go and a divine change is on its way in. When you’re martyred to send an old world out, your life is lost to bring in a universal change of worlds. …
The dissatisfaction on our earth today is 100 percent. Everywhere you walk, everywhere you look the people are dissatisfied. When you have 100 percent dissatisfaction then there must be a 100 percent change. …
There’s a burden that the earth is carrying that the earth must be relieved of. What is that burden? Everything that is on the earth came out from the earth so the earth is not burdened by what comes out from it.
The earth is burdened by the wicked living on a planet that was made for the righteous. The burden is now being shaken. The burden feels something coming because they’re being overthrown. You can’t live in a world made by God on the basis of truth living your life on the basis of a lie. …
Did you know that Master Fard Muhammad made His appearance in North America on the Fourth of July? Why did the Great Mahdi leave Mecca, His birthplace and come alone to North America by Himself? Why? Why would He come while America was celebrating her independence? He came to offer the ex-slaves our independence from them. He came on the 4th so we don’t have to celebrate the folly of firecrackers and foolishness. Celebrating the so-called wisdom of the Founding Fathers of this republic because they were great men; great White men with not enough heart to write a Declaration of Independence that truly represents the population of the United States of America today. …
This has never been a country of the people, by the people or for the people. This is a country that never was made with a woman in mind. Therefore, they had to suffer years before they could even earn the right to vote. This country was not made for the slave because they only fashioned us as three-fifths of a human being. This country was not made for poor people.
It was made for White people of privilege, White people of scholarship, White people who felt that they are the masters of God’s earth and that they deserve privilege but no lesser being deserves that privilege. …
When Master Fard Muhammad came among us He came in the time of your celebration of a great event in the history of a nation that is now unraveling. He set before the world on that day a man, and He, Master Fard Muhammad, sets before the world on this day a man whom He has made. We celebrate the 90th birth anniversary of the Nation of Islam and you saw Master Fard Muhammad and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad as the founders of this Nation. Two hands that made the man that is standing in front of you today. … He’s presenting me to you, to the world today as the man that the two of them made that is to set down the leaders of this world and to make Satan fully known that you may fall away from Satan. … This is a time when you hear God’s voice and recognize God’s voice you have a responsibility to act on what that voice is telling you from God.
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Thomas Jefferson wrote beautiful words but his heart was not there to fulfill it. You can’t say that you believe that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that of these is life for liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You can’t say that and hold another nation enslaved. …
The dog whistle in President Trump’s cry “Make America Great Again,” under it is “Make America White Again.” That’s why the White nationalists and those of that mindset are fleeing to his call.
But the question that we have to answer today is: Are you a hypocrite America because if you did not mean for the Black, the Brown, the Red and even the poor White to enjoy the full rights of citizenship then why call us what we are not?
Now we have to call you out. You have to come on the carpet now. Don’t talk to us with stupid words because we’re deeper than we once were. You can’t pacify us with a smooth crooked tongue. We know you, we’ve lived with you for 465 years. Either you mean what you say or our covenant with death will be annulled, our agreement with hell shall be destroyed.
The Saviour offered His presence to the Constitution when He came on the 4th. But He offered us a heart that could fulfill those words. He was making us into a people that do not move on hate, that do not move on the evil of what people say or do; they move on the Will of God. …
I walked to this podium on a white carpet. I refused to walk on red because all you world leaders got your power from shedding the blood of those that may have been in opposition to you. I come on a white carpet. Because in the 65 years of my being a student of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad I have never, never shed the blood of another human being to get where I am today. …
So, you could say I’m a hater but you can’t prove it. You can say I am a bigot but you can’t prove it. You can’t say that I hate my homosexual, gay, lesbian and queer and transgender brothers and sisters, you can’t say that I hate them because I represent a God that came with the power to save.
Now to get into my work today: You’re very concerned about this pestilence. All of us have witnessed the effect of this coronavirus. China says it was the U.S. Army that dropped it in China and America says Wuhan, China produced this virus and they could have told us what they were doing. Mr. Trump, and all your scientists, why don’t you put your mask on and sit down for a minute while one of the ex-slaves whom God has awakened gives you guidance on what you seek.
I want to tell you right up front you will not conquer this virus because it didn’t come from Wuhan. It did not come from Fort Detrick in Maryland because if you had made it, you would know how to handle what you made. But you don’t know this virus, it’s new it’s different. It mutates and goes in different directions with a different strain of itself. You’re running trying to get a vaccine like you’re really interested in saving the world from this virus.
Mr. Trump was so happy. Oh, my president was looking forward to reelection. The stock market had gone up near 3,000 points. But all of a sudden, without warning, something happened. Overnight countries were being shut down. Think about it. God never takes a people when they’re sad. In the days of Noah, He waited until they were very happy. Having marriages and getting drunk and having a good time and that’s when the flood came. Be careful of your happiness because in that hour that he was rejoicing knowing that as long as that stock market was there and the economics of the country seemed favorable he knew that he would be reelected. …
The reality of Covid-19 is what we are facing today. I’m going to quote something from the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 26, Verses 20–21. Isaiah says, “Come my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.”
Shelter in place, hide yourself. … Even though you’re locked down, God is with you and if you seek Him you will find Him. It was during the coronavirus lockdown during Ramadan that I was given this assignment. Go into your chambers, hide yourself. “For behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.”
What is an inhabitant? God is going out for the inhabitants not of America, not of Africa but of the whole earth. What are you coming out for God? I come out of my place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. Let’s look at a definition. What is iniquity? It is when we not only sin but we willfully sin and even find delight in committing sin. And we have sinned to the point that God no longer strives with us and our conscience is seared. …
Are you an inhabitant of the earth or do you live on Mars? If you live on the earth it’s talking to you, it’s talking to me, it’s talking to us. …
Our iniquitous behavior is a pestilence on the earth so God answers with a pestilence. His anger is at a point where He has to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. So punishment from God’s pestilence is to turn against you the things that you depend upon for your sustenance.
Have you lost your job? How many millions have lost their jobs in America? Between 30 million to 40 million. How many of you have lost friends and loved ones? How many of us are being arrested in place in our houses, how many find it like a prison? How many of you are arguing with members of your own family? Staying with them day after day and week after week you’re discovering things about yourself and about one another, so you want this to end.
Mr. Trump calls it liberation.
“We want you to be liberated from the virus by asking you to come out of sheltering in place, come out from wearing a mask; come out from social distancing. Open up your society.” So the moment they opened up trying to get basketball on track several showed up with the virus. In the choir people singing and the melodious sound of their voices was also coupled with droplets of death coming out of their mouths. So now many in the choir have already died. You want this to end but you don’t know how. You want it to end Mr. Trump so you can go back to what was. But I’m here to tell you, sir, you’ll never see what was again; that is over.
Why do you say this Farrakhan? Because we are under the judgment of God. I want you to open your Bible to Genesis, Chapter 15:13–15, you can’t get away from this one. “Know of a surety Abraham that your seed will be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and they shall serve them and they shall be afflicted in that land for 400 years.” After that time God says … “I will come and judge that nation which they shall serve.” …
One day I was with Father Michael Pfleger, who is my brother in Christ, and we were talking about Mrs. Hillary Clinton trying to be president. He mentioned to me that she felt entitled.
Any of you that work with and for White people, the reason you cannot get them to bow to your wisdom — even when you are better at the job then they — it’s because of the way they were made. They were made to rule. White people wherever you find them on our planet; it doesn’t make any difference where their entity or their ethnicity is, they are the same way by nature. Wherever they are in relationship to people of color, they always dominate with tyranny. If you want trouble you just rise up even with a suggestion, they can’t handle Black intelligence.
So in order to hold on to your job you have to hide your growth. Because once you let them know your level of intelligence, they know they can’t master you anymore. The next step is to move you out.
It’s only two mentionings in the Qur’an of pestilence. It is Surah (Chapter) 2:59. It says a pestilence from heaven is sent down … “But those who were unjust changed the word which had been spoken to them for another saying. So we sent upon the wrongdoers a pestilence from heaven because they transgressed.” One verse. But the reason for the pestilence is forging a lie against Allah.
In Surah (Chapter) 7:162 … it says “but those who were unjust among them changed it for a word other than that which they were told. So we sent upon them a pestilence from heaven for their wrongdoing.” I want you to think about that because now you see why the Minister is hated. What have I done that members of the Jewish community that some of them would hate me with such passion? You, my brothers and sisters who have fallen out with me because they tell lies to make you think I am a bigot or that I’m an anti-Semite so that you won’t listen to what I’m saying. And, so far they’ve been pretty successful. But now I have to bring up the thing that I’m doing that makes me so hated.
Members of the Jewish community were given the Torah by Moses. And 300 years from the birth of Jesus, the civilization of Moses was broken. A man named Nimrod, Jewish scholars and rabbis wrote a word and they made that word in their minds — and in the minds of those who believed in them — greater than the word that God revealed. …
They attempted to kill me nonviolently with radiated seeds filling my body during cancer treatments — it was being burnt up on the inside from a 180 or more radiated seeds. I am not knowledgeable of the power of the rads that were put into each seed but they were sure that I would not survive. So when I went into the hospital the New York Times, CNN they had written my obituary. What did you know or what did you think you knew? …
I’m sure they’re looking at me today and wondering what’s keeping him up. It is Allah … only Allah. I should be dead by what they gave me. But successfully I toured the earth, five continents. Here I stand, here I am. I’m sitting but I’m standing tall.
You really think that I hate the Jewish people? You do not know me at all. You that have been in my close conversations have you ever heard me utter the words of death to the Jewish people?
My Jewish friends? No. My enemies raised the Talmud above the Torah and then spread the lie against God that they are stronger than God because they put their word that they made over what God revealed through the mouths of His prophets. The Holy Qur’an says, and they honor not Allah with the honor due to Him and the whole earth will be in His grip on the day of Resurrection and the heavens rolled-up in His right hand. … What will you do with corona, a pestilence from God? What will you do? What can you do? You are at your wits end.
I say to my brothers and sisters in Africa, if they come up with a vaccine be careful. Don’t let them vaccinate you with their history of treachery through vaccines, through medication. Are you listening? I say to the African presidents, do not take their medications. I say to those of us in America, we need to call a meeting of our skilled virologists, epidemiologists, students of biology and chemistry and we need to look at not only what they give us, we need to give ourselves something better.
My teacher told me, don’t speak to some, speak to the whole. I’m speaking for Black America, for Hispanic America, for the Native American and for those who are desirous of life. They’re making money now plotting to give seven billion five hundred million people a vaccination. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and Melinda, you want to depopulate the earth? What the hell gives you that right? Who are you to sit down with your billions and talk about who can live and who should die? That’s why your world is coming to an end quickly because you have sentenced billions to death. But God is now sentencing you to the death that you are sentencing to others. …
When the White man was made his father was a liar, his father was a murderer, so they’re born with lie and murder in their nature. How do they lie so easily? If you could read the record, the police records of what they say in their reports that they write. They have concocted lies to justify their murder of our brothers and sisters. Why are the police quitting now? You should all quit. Because if in your presence there you think that you’re going to come into the Black community and do what you’ve been doing you better quit. The “jump out boys” better stay in the White community. Don’t come where we live and jump out because you may never get back in. Real talk now. We can’t take it anymore. We won’t take it anymore.
Mr. Alan Dershowitz listen to the words of God from my mouth for you. You’re such a skillful deceiver, you deceived your brothers in the Senate to vote not to impeach Mr. Trump. You were very skillful. But see if you can impeach the Wisdom of God. You’re Satan masquerading as a lawyer. Satan walking in full sight deceiving whoever they can deceive; that’s Satan. … Mr. Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL, you’re Satan. Those of you that say that you’re Jews I will not even give you the honor of calling you a Jew, you’re not a Jew. You’re so-called, you’re Satan. It is my job now to pull the cover off of Satan so that every Muslim when he sees Satan picks up a stone as we do in Mecca. When you know who Satan is you don’t have to kill him … . The stone of truth, that’s what you throw.
Allah says, “had we wished to take a pastime from before surely we would have done it. Nay we cast truth at falsehood ’til we knock out its brains.”
Every one of you that knows the truth stand up and tell it from the mountaintop. Black people can’t take it no more. Wherever you are on the job, in the factory. I don’t care where you are, if you know the truth stand up on the truth and tell Satan … who the hell are you to try and pick my friends. Farrakhan is God’s man and you are from the enemy of God so to hell with you.
