QUESTION: Do you feel that it is incorrect to use the term " power struggle" (in reference to recent events) ?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: As I said here some time ago, this thing has been happening for forty years; but I never pay it any attention. It doesn’t annoy me, because I know a person of that sort has as yet to learn what really Islam is, here in America. Islam in America is to reclaim our people and put them in there own. This is the Resurrection of our people in America.

 

QUESTION: Is that struggle more intense now than it was in the past? You say it has been going on for forty years.

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: Well, I do not meet any different with what I met thirty five or forty years ago. They always will be striving to be something of there own but I do not pay them any attention because I know they will never be successful.

 

QUESTION: Your son-in-law, Raymond Sharieff, is second in command?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: I would say this: since I am not going to come back and look over the staff and see who is on it, let us just forget about asking such questions.

 

QUESTION:  Has somebody been caught trying to get their hands in the cookie jar?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD:I do not know of anything like that, because I do not pay any attention to this annoying talk about someone taking over. I Am Assured by God, Himself, and by the Prophets. I am not particular about others who talk just to hear themselves talk. I would say they are just wasting time. In the Last Days (if you will allow me to say this,) in the Last Days, it is plainly written that you will have Elijah to put you on the right way and this man starts way back here, almost in the beginning. He "travels" with you, throughout your Bible. This man will fulfill that which is written of him. This is the Resurrection I refer to of our Black people in America. And this is the place that they must come up first. They are in the "crossroads" here and they have to be pointed out the right way to go out. I do not mean to say they go out of America, but out of the evil of America. They were made unrighteous by the slave-masters. They are not even charged with it. You are forgiven everything of evil, on your accepting Islam-your Own. That is all God Asks you to do today, go back to your Own. You are forgiven for everything, because all the evil you did in the past, it was not you, it was the slave-master who made you do evil.

 

QUESTION:One question how old are you now?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD:  I am three-score, ten, and three; I am 73 years old.

 

QUESTION: How is your health?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: Well, as I just said a while ago all the afflictions of the other fellows (Prophets) I have to go through.

 

QUESTION:  When is your birthday?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD:  I do not know exactly my birthday. I just know the month it came in (October). So when October passes, I say I am so old and so old.

 

QUESTION: Mr. Muhammad, have you increased your security staff in recent months.? MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: No, I would never do that only according to the people that come to us .....But, I always go with the hopes and with the knowledge that God Will Protect us, if my followers do as I tell them. I never depend on a group of security guards, only in the way of searching the people to see that the people don’t enter the meeting with weapons and such things as whiskey on them, or playing cards or gambling material.

 

QUESTION: Have you had many inquiries from the Muslims about Baton Rouge?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: No, I have not been confronted with a lot of people from across the country asking me question about Baton Rouge,or what took place in Baton Rouge. No, they have brought me most of what I have heard was going on; not, say, questioning me.

 

QUESTION: How many Mosques do you have throughout the country?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: There are a little better than 50 actually set up. There are so many little Mosques that come up overnight, I do not know the total, myself.

 

QUESTION: Sources at the Temple denied that the ten Blacks were Muslims. Does each town have a registry of the people in that town?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: They would know more than I would know. Those are the people you should be questioning (the ones that are already there). The Muslims there in that Temple, they have very little knowledge of someone coming down there, starting trouble, until it actually broke out.

 

QUESTION: What do you do for recreation? Do you play chess?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: No, I do not play any games of chance. No. I do not ever have any time to do anything but teach and instruct Laborers how to go about their Labor.

 

QUESTION: How long is your work day ?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: We work seven days and we do not have a limit on how many hours we will work. Sometimes we work up until11 or 12 o’clock at night. Our work has now become so enormous on us we hardly let go. When we go to sleep or to bed, we just have it to do.

 

QUESTION: Will you spend your entire winter here?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD:For the last few years I have been spending the whole winter and summer in Chicago.

 

QUESTION:  Have you been going to Phoenix in recent years?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: No I have not been to Phoenix in recent years.

 

QUESTION: I would like to ask a religious question. Do you have visions.?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: I do not say really have visions, but I do have voices, at times.

 

QUESTION: Under what conditions does thereat occur, when you seek it to happen?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: That comes when I am not,say, really confining myself to expect something like that or seeking something like that. That just comes-just so.

 

QUESTION: Do you see this as the Voice of a Spiritual Teacher, or the Voice of God?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: I know God. I was with Him about three years and about four or five months. I know His Voice. And when He Speaks, I know it.

 

QUESTION:  Not trying to be funny, have you received any of your spiritual feelings that perhaps something is amiss in the Nation of Islam: that perhaps some people are plotting to try to, say, destroy what you and others have built?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: I do not have to guess on that ever. Since I been Missioned by Allah, there has been someone around trying to get a chance to kill me. and I have met with some of them face to face.

 

QUESTION: You do not plan a retirement, Mr. Muhammad?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD:: No, I would not lose any time with a man that has been talked and talked about for years. If the people do not have a knowledge of him after these many years, I am not going to waste my time with going into Malcolm’s history. Malcolm, I do not have any time to waste with him, as I think everyone know Malcolm or did know Malcolm and they know Malcolm’s death. He was teaching, according to what I heard, and the people that were there should give a better report than me.

 

QUESTION: The Person you refer to as living with God for three years or four months...?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: I am talking about the Person that Is God, and I myself, was with Him for three years and four or five months.... It began in 1931. I was able to recognized Him by His Help and by the help of Scripture. It has been very well lined up to us; we find here in Genesis the making of the man that started trouble. Even his sons started trouble. When they got old enough they started murdering each other and it has kept going ever since, because white people kill white people. They go to war with each other. They stay at war with each other. According to history, they had a thirty year war in England and a hundred year war in Europe and I see in the paper over here and on the radio, that they are fighting over there, one another, now. They are even fighting the church over there in Ireland. They cannot get at peace with each other, there is the area where they fought the thirty and one hundred years wars.

 

QUESTION: The press states that you label all white people blue-eyed devils. Is this true?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: Whether they are actually blue-eyed or not, if they are actually one of the members of that race, they are devils

 

QUESTION:What would be an out for me? Is there any hope for me?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: Now, I must tell you the truth. There will be no such thing as elimination of all white people from the earth, at the present time or at the break out of the Holy War. No, because there are some white people today who have faith in Allah and Islam though they are white, and their faith is given credit. They are not born or created Muslims, but they have faith in what the Muslims are and trying to live. It is only through Islam that white people can be saved. But you see there would be a Holy War (they call it a Holy War which means right is against wrong and wrong against right).

 

QUESTION: You do not mean white fighting Blacks or that sort of thing?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD:I do not say I should say " no because the right is the Black and the wrong is the white, and naturally the Muslim world is bound to clash with the unrighteous world.

 

QUESTION: Do you mean through guns and that sort of violence?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: I see a lot of them have been prepared. I do not know what you are going to use, but I know there are lots of weapons prepared. But we are not to use carnal weapons, which you will use. We do not need it. And the sun shining on your back, we can use that, if necessary, for weapons. God Has every kind of weapon out there to use against you, even to the earth you are sitting on. If He Shakes that for a half a minute, all of your cities could lie sprawled. There is no such thing as Him Preparing the kind of weapons you are preparing. You cannot win in anything. You cannot stop the snow and cold weather from blowing down from the Northwest. There are mountains of it lying there, waiting for a certain time. We cannot do anything against the forces of nature. We have no defense and it is written in the Bible that He Keeps this thing stored away for the day of battle and war, to fight you with. And we cannot do anything about that. There are storms also. Who is it out there who feels so brave with a twister out there tearing up houses on both sides?

 

QUESTION: You do not feel that members of the Nation of Islam will have to take up guns?

 

MESSENGER MUHAMMAD: No, they would not have to do that, if they obey Allah, anymore than, I would say, Moses and Aaron had to take up arms against Pharaoh. You have been fighting us with guns and what not ever since John Hawkins brought us here, over four hundred years ago. We have to find something more effective and the most effective are the forces of nature

END OF INTERVIEW.