Farrakhan Knocks Failures Of Religious Institutions:


By Candia Dames -
Nassau, Bahamas:


Religious and other moral institutions are failing in their "stewardship of human life" given the many social problems that plague the western world, leader of the Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan declared while the special guest on the Love 97 programme "Jones and Company", which aired on Sunday.

His comments came after the show’s host, Wendall Jones, noted that "looseness and slackness are the way to go these days, especially among young people" and questioned whether religious institutions were failing in making their message relevant.

Minister Farrakhan said, "All of us have to look at the results of our preaching…The street is what needs the message of Christ, the message of Moses, the message of Muhammed. So the church and the mosque have to come out of the buildings into the streets to become socially conscience."

The popular and sometimes controversial 72-year-old Black American religious leader said this is what made the message of the late Dr. Martin Luther King so vibrant.

"He saw the wickedness of a social and political order," Minister Farrakhan said of Dr. King. "So he came out of the church to marshal forces to demonstrate against a social order that was unjust and wicked and he paid with his life."

He added, "The church has failed, the mosque has failed, the synagogue has failed and now many churches have gone the way of the world. We don’t preach what Christ said he accepts; we don’t preach the law that Moses brought down from Jehovah; we preach what is acceptable so that the plate on Sunday is filled, so that we can live good, but would Christ be pleased with us on our return?"

Minister Farrakhan, born Louis Eugene Walcott in Bronx, N.Y. to Caribbean parents, was reportedly reared in a highly disciplined and spiritual household in Roxbury, Massachusetts, but he said while he was hooked on the message of Jesus Christ, he was turned off by the segregated church in America.

"The thing that disturbed me [was] because my father was a Garveyite and my mother was on the fringe of the [Marcus] Garvey movement, my mother instilled in me a love for Black people, a desire to see Black people free, and growing up in the church in the United States, the most segregated hour was the 11 o’clock hour of service on Sunday,"

explained Minister Farrakhan, who went to school in the South in the 1950’s.

He said he saw the hypocrisy, not in the message of Jesus Christ, but in the practice of those who claimed that God is love.

"I never felt or saw that love demonstrated to Black people in America, Black people even in the Caribbean or in Africa," Minister Farrakhan said. "So I decided I needed to look elsewhere. I wasn’t looking to change my religion; I was looking for something that would address the needs of us as a people."

While he eventually became a Muslim, he said he never left his love for Jesus Christ or the Church.

"But my love for Jesus and my love for the Church made me want to be the type of revolutionary fellow that Jesus was, a man [who] spoke truth to power; a man [who] looked out for the poor and the needy; a man [who] healed the sick and made the blind see and the deaf hear and the lame walk and raise the dead to life," Minister Farrakhan said.

"That to me is the condition of Black people all over the world. We have eyes, but we can’t seem to see. We have ears, but we don’t hear. We have tongues, but we’re frightened to speak truth to power, so we live and die undeveloped, uncultivated, unrealized as a people made in the image and likeness of God."

He said that as he matured as a Muslim, he came to see the oneness of God and the oneness of religious.

"Though I speak in mosques, I preach in churches at 11 o’clock. I preach out of the Bible; I preach out of the Holy Koran because truth embraces truth. Truth kisses truth," Minister Farrakhan said.

"The prophets of God – Moses, Jesus, Abraham, Noah, Lot, Jonah, Solomon, David, Muhummad – if they were in the same room, they would embrace each other. They would hug and kiss each other, but here we are a people who say we believe in God and yet as believers in God sometimes we have done the most heinous and wicked things in the name of God."

Minister Farrakhan said it is his aim to break down "artificial barriers" which separate God’s people.

"These denominations have divided the family of Christ and these sects in Islam have divided the house of religion," he said.

Asked by Mr. Jones about some of the contradictions that exist in the Koran and the Bible, Minister Farrakhan said contradictions exist within the denominations of Christianity itself, but he indicated that there was no need for great concern in this regard.

"We don’t all see it the same way, but the beauty of this is that we can come together and reason together on truth," he said. "When we do that, we would find that we have many more truths that intersect, that make us companions of each other in the struggle for justice."


According to the official website of the Nation of Islam, Minister Farrakhan achieved fame in Boston as a vocalist, calypso singer, dancer and violinist. In February 1955, while visiting Chicago for a musical engagement, he was invited to attend the Nation of Islam’s Saviours’ Day convention.

Although music had been his first love, within three months after joining the Nation of Islam in 1955, Minister Malcolm X told the New York Mosque and the new convert Louis X that Elijah Muhammad had said that all Muslims would have to get out of show business or get out of the Temple. Most of the musicians left Temple No. 7, but Louis X, later renamed Louis Farrakhan, chose to dedicate his life to the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the website says.

The departure of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in 1975 and the assumption of leadership by Wallace D. Muhammad (now known as Imam Warithuddin Mohammed) brought drastic changes to the Nation of Islam.

After approximately three years of wrestling with these changes, and a re-appraisal of the condition of Black people and the value of the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Minister Farrakhan decided to return to the teachings and program with a proven ability to uplift and reform Blacks.

The popular leader and the Nation of Islam enjoyed a banner year in 1995 with the successful Million Man March on the Mall in Washington, D.C., which drew nearly two million men.

Minister Farrakhan was inspired to call the march out of his concern over the negative image of Black men perpetuated by the media and movie industries, which focused on drugs and gang violence.

27 March 2006