This article is reprinted from the April 1, 1963 Edition of Muhammad Speaks Newspaper
Three years ago, while practicing in Chicago, I found out that there was a Muslim movement in the U.S.A. I was born and brought up in Turkey-----lived there the first 20 years of my life --- and two years in Cairo, Egypt. Therefore, the knowledge of such a movement intrigued me and I moved to get in touch with their leader Elijah Muhammad. He invited me to their Temple located on the south side, where I went with my wife, and, to my surprise, saw that they were Black Americans. As time went on, I became better acquainted with Elijah Muhammad, his sons, and many members--learned that he has the only rational and safe method of saving his people from the degrading and inhuman conditions under which they live, especially in the South.
Everyone belonging to his movement became a new man, in every sense of the word ---- fine appearance ------ disciplined ------ self - reliant - proud of their race - and eager to free themselves of all shackles and abuses that the white man has practiced and is practicing for the last three hundred years.
This uplift is due to the Muslim religion and the Koran which forbids the use of alcohol and the use of pork ---- that practices fasting for a whole month each year, and teaches charity.
His schools temples, and universities are giving the Black Muslim man, for the first time, a real education which is the only and best road to emancipation.
The Black Muslims do not hate the white man as some of their enemies maintain, but hate the abuses ----- humiliations, persecutions, jailings lynchings -- practiced on them. And why blame them?
It is now one hundred years since the black man was freed after a terrible Civil War. Is he really free, especially in the South?
In my contact with the Black Muslims, I found them honest, eager to learn, industrious and devoted to their Leader and to each other, and to their religion.
I found their Leader, Elijah Muhammad, a learned, devoted and dedicated man, inspired and determined to uplift his people from the degradation under which they are living at the present time.
Those who profit by the condition of the Black Man, fear their movement, but so did King George fear the American rebels and George Washington.
Elijah Muhammad is to his followers what George Washington was to the American Colonists who wanted to be free from British Colonial Rule.
The Black Muslims want to be free from the White Man's rule, abuses and shackles, and the American Constitution guarantees freedom to everyone - it does not exclude anyone on color- race-religion.
So Elijah Muhammad is on safe Constitutional, legal and humane grounds. All power to him and his devoted followers !
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