In the past human beings lived very close to nature and it was unthinkable to be separate from nature, including animals, weather patterns, and other things that are rarely part of "human" life today. We have enveloped ourselves in cities and buildings, living in so many boxes, controlling every feature of temperature and light, in an artificial environment. We no longer have a sense of where our food comes from. If we have contact with animals, they are for the most part domesticated. I think the Qur'an presumed a kind of human existence that was somehow closer to nature than most of us are today.
There are two different types of consumerism. One is associated with shopping and advertising, the other with consuming in general, which can include consuming ideas, thoughts, practices, behaviors, what have you. On one level, a consumer society is that which likes to shop a lot, but on another level a consumer society is a derivative society, one that has no sense of itself other than what it consumes, and this can be with respect to knowledge, education, technology and many other things.
Great men live in people’s consciousness long after they have left the physical world. Sayyid Jamaluddin Afghani (Asadabadi), Allamah Muhammad Iqbal, Syed Qutb, Imam Khomeini, Maulana Maudoodi and Dr. Kalim Siddiqui all come into this category. They were men of great ideas which have helped shape the destiny of millions in this century.
1Although he was best known in Britain for his stand against Rushdie, and as the founder and Leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, Dr Kalim Siddiqui’s involvement in British Muslim community affairs was a new direction for him in the later years of his life. His life’s main work was as an intellectual and visionary of the global Islamic movement.
Although he was best known in Britain for his stand against Rushdie, and as the founder and Leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, Dr Kalim Siddiqui’s involvement in British Muslim community affairs was a new direction for him in the later years of his life.
Let me acknowledge at once that there now exists a state of war between the 'progressives', whose representation of 'European values' Rushdie finds 'attractive', and those 'in revolt against history'. The latter Rushdie rightly and accurately names as 'Siddiquis and Hizbollahs and blind sheikhs and ayatollahs'.
When we say “our” we do not mean Muslim nor Christian, Catholic nor Protestant, Baptist nor Methodist, Democrat nor Republican, Mason nor Elk. By “our” Harlem Freedom, we mean the black people of Harlem, the black people of America, and the black people all over this earth.
One who practices this Divine Obedience is called a Muslim, commonly known, spelled, and referred to here in the West as Moslem. There are over 600 million Muslims on this earth, predominantly in Africa and Asia, and we here in America under the Divine Guidance of Mr. Elijah Muhammad are an integral part of the vast World of Islam that stretches from the China Seas to the sunny shores of West Africa.
In the past two years, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has become the most talked about black man in America because he is having such miraculous success in getting his program over among the so-called Negro masses. Time magazine last year wrote that he has eliminated from among his followers alcohol, dope addiction, profanity—all of which stems from disrespect of self.
Well, any form of integration, forced integration, any effort to force integration upon whites is actually hypocritical. It is a form of hypocrisy involved. If a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that’s brotherhood. But if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that’s not brotherhood, that’s hypocrisy.
As students, scholars, professors and scientists you should be well aware that we are living in a world and at a time when great changes are taking place. New ideas are replacing the old ones. Old governments are collapsing, and new nations are being born. The entire “old system” which has held the Old World together has lost its effectiveness, and now that Old World is going out. A new system or New World must replace the Old World.
Yes, I think there is a new so-called Negro. We don’t recognize the term “Negro” but I really believe that there’s a new so-called Negro here in America. He not only is impatient. Not only is he dissatisfied, not only is he disillusioned, but he’s getting very angry.
The Western World finds itself today constantly engulfed in crisis after crisis. The ingredients for disaster lurk constantly on all sides...both at home and abroad. The Western World’s leading diplomats are whispering in the halls of the UN that catastrophe can come any moment, any hour, any second.
When I pointed out that there are two kinds of Negroes—some Negroes don’t want a Black man to speak for them. That type of Negro doesn’t even want to be Black. He’s ashamed of being Black. And you’ll never hear him refer to himself as Black. Now that type we don’t pretend to speak for. You can speak for him. In fact you can have him.
The brainwashed black man can never learn to stand on his own two feet until he is on his own. We must learn to become our own producers, manufacturers and traders; we must have industry of our own, to employ our own. The white man resists this because he wants to keep the black man under his thumb and jurisdiction in white society. He wants to keep the black man always dependent and begging—for jobs, food, clothes, shelter, education.
First, however, there are some questions we have to put to you. Since the black masses here in America are now in open revolt against the American system of segregation, will these same black masses turn toward integration or will they turn toward complete separation? Will these awakened black masses demand integration into the white society that enslaved them or will they demand complete separation from that cruel white society that has enslaved them?
Whether you’re educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you’re going to catch hell just like I am. We’re all in the same boat and we all are going to catch the same hell from the same man. He just happens to be a white man. All of us have suffered here, in this country, political oppression at the hands of the white man, economic exploitation at the hands of the white man, and social degradation at the hands of the white man.
Just ten years ago on the African continent, our people were colonized. They were suffering all forms of colonization, oppression, exploitation, degradation, humiliation, discrimination, and every other kind of -ation. And in a short time, they have gained more independence, more recognition, more respect as human beings than you and I have.
1They kidnapped us and brought us here; they deprived us of our rights; they made us slaves; they sold our people from one plantation to another, from one auction block to another. And even right now, 1963, they have to confess they are still depriving the black people here in America, not only of civil rights, but even of human rights.
We see the increase of racial animosity, the increase of racial hostility, and the increase of outright racial hatred. We see masses of Black people who have lost all confidence in the false promises of the hypocritical white politicians. We see masses of Black people who are thoroughly fed up with the deceit of the so-called white liberals, or the white so-called liberals.
