Questions And Answers No. 5
QUESTION: Why is it that of all the race problems in America it seems that there is more tension between black and white than between the Caucasians and any other minority in America?
ANSWER: There is we feel several reasons for this. One is the political football that this race situation has produced, and which envelopes this idea. Another is the teaching of religion by leaders of the coloured people over the years, and yes even by the Caucasians. There is this teaching of “The nation of Islam” which has been with us over the years, and today is now led by Lewis Farrachan. Another is the idea of the way that the Black man came to America, this by the practice of slavery. This occurred in the past but there were black people here in the south, and into Central America long before that. But if you do not understand where the origin of the black race started, and then who instigated this practice of slavery and how it did occur, and the truth of this matter, you still do not have a complete picture either. But since the memory goes back only as far a Africa as to where the slaves came from, then this idea of African-American came into being. And even though they may be born in America then in tracing their roots, they go back to Africa. Thus an idea then had to be born as to their early existence, and this has certainly clouded the issue as they looks for their roots.
Now; in the book “Elijah Muhammad” the ideological foundation of “The Nation of Islam,” you will find some of the answers as to what brought about the thinking of many Negro people here in America who are searching for something, so they can remember being abused, and that they should be the most important people in America and they have not as yet reached that goal.
The man, Elijah Muhammad, then laid the foundation for the longest lasting and most enduring, and most influential black religious -Nationalist movement in American history. He took selected biblical verses from the Arabic Quaran with the idea of turning the Negroes from White-Christian belief. His teaching brought on Malcolm X and others to keep the Negroes from accepting the God of the White man of America, the God which America recognize from her beginning. Not of course understanding the bible of which he was not capable of, Elijah Muhammad then took White Christian eschatology, and aspects of Islam to divorce Black people, so he said from their slave mentality.