Bizarre Article on Five Percenters from MuslimWakeUp.com
Abdul-Khinzeer Kalb'ullaah al-Murtad Shabazz
Knight:
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/mainarchive/2004/06/000902print.php
I've seen some of Knight's other writings, and have always found them
witty and well written. Knight exhibits a good knowledge of Orthodox
Islam, as well as the ultra-heterodox off-shoots that have evolved
within pockets of the African American community (exempli gratia: NOI,
5%NGE, Ansar Allah, Nuwabians, et cetera). His humor is quite sharp,
and often laced with all sorts of Islamic or Five Percenter
references, which makes it all the more enjoyable to read.
Anyway, this introduction aside, when I found the article linked to
above (the text of which is posted below) I quickly devoured it, glad
to find another one of Knight's pieces. This time, however, I was not
always able to determine when Knight was joking (i.e. when he was
poking fun at his subject). At certain points I was left wondering how
much of this Knight actually believed, and the way the article jumped
around made me suspect that Knight himself may have smoked a little
"equality" himself just prior to writing it (this is adduced from my
own personal experiences approaching the act of writing with a mind
befogged). Anyway, enjoy the article!
[====================================================]
A Weekend with the Five-Percenters
by Michael Muhammad Knight
I'm swelling devils' melons for my man Fard Muhammad
--Gravediggaz, "Graveyard Chamber"
My rhyme torments MCs with the fear of God/you'll be cursed like
Fard,
and struck by the iron rod
--RZA/Bobby Digital, "Mantis"
The Nation of Gods and Earths (commonly known as the Five-Percenters)
was founded in 1964 by Clarence "Puddin'" Smith, who became Clarence
13X and is now known as Father Allah. Malcolm X had thrown him out of
the Nation of Islam, allegedly because he liked to throw diceóthough
another story says that Clarence was removed for questioning Master
Fard's divinity.
But once out of the fold he didn't have to listen to Elijah or Malcolm
or anyone anymore so he went the holy heretic wayólike al-Hallaj who
screamed, "I am the Truth!" and suffered a grisly murder for
itóchanging his name to Allah, calling Harlem his Mecca and Brooklyn
Medina, still playing craps, preaching on street corners to
high-school and junior-high kids, telling fourteen-year olds that as
Original Black Asiatic Men they were all Gods because Arm, Leg, Leg,
Arm, Head made A.L.L.A.H., getting arrested for assault and marijuana
possession in front of Hotel Theresa at 2090 7th Avenue, doing a year
in Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and finally
getting shot down on June 13th, 1969.
The Gods get their popular nickname from an emphasis on Master Fard's
old doctrine of percentages: that eighty-five percent of the
population (the blind, deaf and dumb) allow themselves to be exploited
by ten percent (the bloodsuckers) who manipulate them with religions
of a nonexistant "mystery god," which leaves five percent of society
to be the Poor Righteous Teachers: the Gods and Earths.
There's some Qalandar shit in thereóby the 1960s Elijah Muhammad's
Nation of Islam had swelled into a million-dollar industry led by old
men with big houses, but Father Allah took the deen and brought it
back to the streets.
As with Sufism, the Nation of Gods and Earths is a culture of poets.
Their influence on modern hip-hop is immeasurable. When you hear
things like "word is bond," that's Five-Percenter talk; as is
"dropping science" and "ciphers." When someone calls someone else "G,"
that's short for Godóeven if noone knows it anymore.
I began corresponding with Intelligent Tarref Allah at Eastern
Correctional Facility in Napanoch, NY. "Intell," as family and friends
called him, joined the NGE in 1994 while at Rikers Island and was the
plaintiff in a historic federal court decision (Marria v. Broaddus)
allowing incarcerated Gods and Earths the right to practice their
religion. Up until that point, correctional facilities regarded them
as a violent gang.
We had been going back and forth for a while. Intell told me that he
maintained a vegan diet and was enrolled in a Writer's Digest
correspondence course. He planned on writing his memoirs, tentatively
titled The Autobiography of God.
I asked him about his concept of the devil.
"We teach that white people are devils," he replied, "and that
includes you." So in my next letter, I asked Intell if this could
offer anything to one of Yacub's People. He replied that some devils
have already accepted the truth of their nature. There was Ida Hakim,
a white woman who studied with Silas Muhammad's offshoot of the NOI,
and Dorothy Fardan, author of Message to the White Man and White Woman
in America: Yacub and the Origins of White Supremacy.
But the real jaw-dropper: back in the beginning of the
Five-Percenters, among what are called the "First Born," Clarence 13X
had a white student. He named him Azreal, after the angel of death,
and said that he was in charge of the "inhabitants of hell," meaning
Caucasians. From what Intelligent Tarref Allah had heard, Azreal
maintained a circle of four or five whites, referred to as "Muslim
Sons," to whom he taught the Supreme Alphabets and Supreme
Mathematics.
***
I arrived in Harlem on Friday, just in time for jumaa prayers at
Masjid Malcolm Shabazz with the bulbous green dome. This mosque had
once been the Nation of Islam's Temple No. 7 but was now run by Warith
Deen's community. I checked my bag at the door and walked up a flight
of stairs to the prayer hall. A brother gave me a plastic grocery bag
for my shoes. I walked in right-foot-first to find security guards in
suits and ties positioned throughout the mosque. One pointed to an
open space in the back row so I went and did my sunna. When I sat down
he came over and had me sit closer to the brother on my side. I looked
around and found myself the only white guy but felt alright since we
were all Sunni there, this was the Islam of Malik Shabazz. The imam's
khutbah was long and went all over the place, quoting not only from
the Quran but also the New Testament and even Elijah Muhammad but most
of the time he read directly from a Warith Deen speech. Doctrine-wise
it was Sunni but he used old terms from the Nation of Islam like
"trickster" and "grafted minds" without their racial connotations.
Muslims are usually discouraged from saying anything during a khutbah
but the women in back kept yelling things like "tell it, brother
imam!" and "Allahu Akbar!" like it was a Baptist Muslim Church while
donation buckets were passed around with "SACRIFICE" written on them.
The imam kept going on, and for a moment I zoned out in contemplation
of the green curtains and white walls, the sounds of traffic and a
lonely saxophone on the street corner below, and the monumental
history of this place: Malcolm X was imam here in the 50s and 60s,
Louis Farrakhan was imam here in the 60s and 70s and this was where
Clarence 13X gave karate classes to the Fruit of Islamóthat big green
dome was like Harlem's Dome of the Rock, holy to three traditions:
Warith Deen Sunnism, the Nation of Islam and Five-Percenters. Playing
the role of Abraham, the common father of them all, would be none
other than W.D. Fardówho had wanted to build a temple in NYC because
"very wise men" would someday arise there.
We stood up and prayed, after which we did an additional funeral
prayer for the recently deceased Miami imam who brought Cassius Clay
to the deen, introduced him to Malcolm X and always hosted Sister
Clara when she came to town.
As I drove up to the Allah School my mix-tape just happened to hit
NOFX's "Kill all the White Man" and with right hand on the wheel in my
left I clutched my turba made from clay off the grave of Imam Ridha,
Imam Riza, Imam RZAÖ
Maybe half a dozen Gods stood in front of the Allah School building in
a circle. "Building" in Five-Percenter talk meant anything positive,
usually a conversation, where you built on your knowledge. I ducked in
past them and said peace to the God inside.
"Hands out of your pockets," he said. I complied and told him that I
was looking for Azreal, so he led me back out and into the yard on the
side, and there was a middle-aged Caucasian digging in the dirt.
"Azreal!" the God shouted. "He's here to see you, do you know him?"
"Yeah," said Azreal. And the God left us to build.
"Peace," I told Azreal. "My name is Michael, and I was building by
mail with Intelligent Tarref Allah, and he said that Father Allah had
a white student named Azreal so I came down here hoping I could find
youó"
"My middle name is Michael," said Azreal. He asked how I came to
knowledge of the Nation and I started on a whole big spiel about Fard
when he interrupted me to say, "there's already a new W.D. Fard, and
he's got blonde hair and brown eyes." So I just
looked at him to explain some more but he only added, "and he's four
years old."
"And he's the new W.D. Fard?"
"Hey," he said like we were about to cut a deal. We were. "Ten
bucks'll get me some equality, you know what equality is? Ten bucks'll
get me some earth. So you help me with some earth and I'm yours for
the rest of the day." So I gave him ten bucks and we walked up the
street towards Malcolm X Boulevard. "You turn right at the corner and
wait for me," said Azreal. "These are West Indians, some of them are
First Borns. I don't want them thinking I'm a cop." So I turned right,
Azreal turned left and after awhile he came out with his equality.
We sat on a bench outside the St. Nicholas projects and I whipped out
my notepad to jot down all of Azreal's magnetic ("magnetic is what you
get when you build with Supreme Truth"), but he told me "right now,
instead of writing I need you to be my eyes." So I looked out for cops
while he rolled the equality and licked the paper. "Father Allah's the
one who taught me to smoke," he said with a philosopher's puff. "And
he taught me how to bring out the sun when it rains. One time there
was a blizzard and he blamed me for it."
Now that he had his equality, the first thing I wanted to know was how
Azreal ever found himself mixed up with the Five-Percenters. He
started off telling me about spending his youth in psych wards
fighting guards, getting "two hundred Jack Nicholson specials" and
staging daring escapes ("I drove away in the cook's car") on through
to all the atrocities that would follow, right up to a few nights ago
when some teenage boys sicked their pitbull on him. He showed me a
long scar going all the way down his right calf and said that it was
from kicking through a chicken-wire glass windowóand he sprained that
same foot jumping off a fence, and then lost a toe for some other
reason. It all started because his real name was John Kennedy, and
when the chickens came home to roost in 1963 he just went all kinds of
nuts.
The guards at Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane were
all KKK or American Nazi Party and they didn't like John Kennedy's
name, so they beat the shit out of him and then sent inmates into his
cell, two at a time. After two weeks of that they gave him an
eight-week Thorazine coma.
When he woke up, fellow inmate Clarence Smith came to him and said,
"You are a righteous man."
"He told me who he was," said Azreal, "and after that I'd turn down
parole. I didn't want to be outside, I knew I was getting the truth
right there." Azreal then told me about when the Father was killed,
how he knew he'd "go home" and "he had nothing left to give us but his
life."
"Who killed Father Allah?" I asked.
"Nixon. Nixon put a hit on him."
"Where is he buried?"
"He was cremated. His ashes were scattered at Mount Morris Park. I got
my mom's ashesóMam in a Can, you knowóand when I die, my ashes and her
ashes are going out there too."
"Do you know what happened to Master Fard?"
"It's a mystery. It'll always be a mystery. But do you know who his
first student was, even before Elijah?"
"Who?"
"J. Edgar Hoover."
"No shit?"
"I heard that from a First Born out in Medina." I mentioned Malachi Z.
York's claim that Fard was an FBI agent, and Azreal replied that York
was at Matteawan at the same time as himself and Father Allah. "But
York kept to himself," he said, "and tried to steal the Father's
teachings, make ëem his own," and York was now a convicted pedophile
anyway.
Azreal pointed to his brain and said he had all the stories in there.
He had once written his three-part autobiography but burned the only
copy because he was afraid of it falling into the wrong hands. "If you
have it in here," he said with another point at his head, "you don't
need it on paper." He showed me the 13 tattooed on his arm. "The
Father went home on Friday the 13th, June 1969, and his name was
Clarence 13X, and one plus three equals Culture or Freedom. Everything
leads back to the Father."
"Is the white man the devil?" I had to ask.
"The Father said that the worst devil is the black devil, because the
Gods don't see him coming." He smoked and almost choked on it. "But
you know, I can say that I'm Allah because I wasn't taught by a man or
prophet or anything. I'm First Born; the Father was right there in
front of me. We can all be angels, you know, but I believe we can be
more."
"Intell told me that there are other white Five-Percentersó"
"Sure. There was Ariel, he had lots of money. He was into coke. He'd
go to the Caribbean and party with all the Wu-TangÖbut then he got in
a car accident, and he was only Wisdom Culture. He was Knowledge Born
when he began building, and Wisdom Culture when he went home." He
paused to smoke. "And there's a white rapper in Florida." He paused
again, this time in consideration of something. "You know," he said,
"somebody in the Five-Percenter paper wrote that ëEminem is the Azreal
of rap.' That really offended me, you know? I was really insulted. I'd
never say those kinds of things about my mother that he does."
Then of course there was the new four-year old W.D. Fard, whose father
was a "light-skinned man of understanding" and whose mother was
Polish. "So they named him W.D. Fard," said Azreal. "He's a little
kid, about this high. He's got blonde hair and brown eyes. His
sister's the same way." Azreal told me that he bought the new W.D.
Fard a blue t-shirt bearing the likeness of Father Allah, but it was
so big that the kid could only wear it as a night-shirt.
Then Azreal told me that he was going to be John Kerry's running-mate.
"Kerry needs a shot in the arm," he said, "and I'm the man to do
itóand I can get a lot more votes in the minority community than he
ever could."
"Have you been in contact with him?"
"Not yet. It's not my time yet. But just our names alone would be a
shot in the arm: Kerry-Kennedy. You see?"
I watched him build and smoke and sometimes cough, and he showed me
all his scars and I knew that Azreal was meant to be Azreal and that's
all I can really say about him, death-angel with the keys to Heaven
and Hell, the only one who can come and go as he pleases, the Devil
who met God in a mental institutionÖbeing Azreal takes a lot more guts
than being any of these Career Muslims like Ingrid Mattson or a Career
Enlightened Kafr like John L. Esposito. I even concocted an amazing
daydream of Azreal hanging around outside the CAIR office waiting to
stick Hooper with a crowbar for his Prince Talal riyals, just so he
could give it all to the Nation.
We walked around, ran into some Gods on another bench and built with
them for a minute before going back to Allah School. Whenever Azreal
introduced me to a God he made sure to say that I was a Muslim who had
been to Pakistan and was building with Intelligent Tarref Allah and
that Intell had told me about him. I eventually took my leave of
Azreal, drove downtown and crossed the bridge into Medina (Brooklyn)
to find the Ansar Allah's mosque. The Ansar Allah community no longer
existed since Malachi Z. York made the hijra to Georgia and built his
pyramids in the woods, but I figured at least the masjid that he built
would still be there. Maybe it was purchased by another group and
continued to function as a mosque of some kind.
But when I got to 719 Bushwick, the domes and minarets were all gone,
and it didn't look anything like the pictures I had seen. I went to
the All Eyes on Egypt bookstore next door and the woman told me they
were remodeling. I asked a gentleman if it was true that Farrakhan's
men scared York away and he said, "If anything, it was the Sunnis."
Malachi Z. York claimed that the "original" Fard (whose real name was
said to be Abdul Wali Farrad Muhammad Ali) was killed at San Quentin,
only to be replaced by an "imposter" who then founded the Nation of
Islam. According to York, this imposter Fard worked for both the FBI
and Nazis.
***
I slept at a rest-stop off I-87 and woke up around ten Saturday
morning. That afternoon I went to Napanoch.
Driving through the mountains on my way to a state prison called for
Johnny Cash with all his outlaw songs and prison songs, but even that
led me to contemplate Master FardóJohnny Cash recorded an album live
at San Quentin, but Fard knew what it was like behind the bars.
At the visitors' center they made me empty my pockets and take off my
shoes before going through the metal detector. You can't bring any of
this, said the guard. Phone, camera, keys, pens, walletóput it in the
lockers outside. I had an Ibn ëArabi book for Intell but the guard
said it was too late in the day to give an inmate anything, so I
locked that up too. Then I had to fill out all the paperwork for a
first-time visitor.
I read the signs on the wall. Physical contact was limited to an
embrace and/or kiss at the beginning and end of the visit. Hands must
be visible at all times. The guards opened a door. Once I stepped
through that and it closed behind me, they opened the next door. And
then I was in a room of families and kids and men in green pants. I
handed my sheet to the man at the desk and sat at a table. Intell came
through wearing a yellow kufi.
It's hard to have a real conversation in that situation; your time is
limited, so you talk extremely fast. You say everything you need to
say on a topic and then let the other person say everything he or she
needs to say, and then you reply in the same manner and on it goes
until the clock runs out. When visiting hours were over Intell wished
me a safe drive and I huddled through the door with all the wives and
kids and then waited for the next door to open. I unlocked my stuff
and walked out past a whole mess of women, one of them standing
against a railing with tears streaming down her face, her eyes looking
somewhere far away.
As I drove off it occurred to me to get a picture of the building so I
pulled over and stood on top of my car with my cheap disposable
camera. Then some guards drove by and told me to get down. They pulled
over and had me stand by my car while they made some calls.
One guard, who seemed a nice enough guy, told me that it was against
the law to photograph a state prison.
"The rationale," he said, "is that you may be trying to provide
information about the facility to someone on the inside who could try
to escape."
We're going to detain you, he said. It's a maximum security prison,
whole different ballgame. So we stood around making small talk about
the weather until another guard came by, examined my camera and then
said I could go.
Back in my car, I turned the ignition and Johnny Cash's "San Quentin"
came on blaring loud enough for the guards to hear. San Quentin, I
hate every inch of youÖ
When I drove away I felt something different in my face, like the
muscles I'd use in smiling couldn't work if I had wanted them to. It
was a weird sobering sense that I've only felt after funerals. Soon I
was back in the mountains with gusts of air blasting in from all four
of my car windows, watching the sunlight peek through thick walls of
trees, feeling things inside but not feeling them with any kind of
gusto or spunk as all of that had been drained out of me.
I stopped at New Paltz to get some food. New Paltz was a college town
with streets filled with hippies and some pop-punks all standing
around like they were posing for album covers. I went to the SUNY
campus to go online and find out if I was anywhere near Matteawan.
Turns out, it was maybe half an hour away.
The New York State Lunatic Asylum for Insane Convicts was originally
opened in 1855, in Auburn. It moved to Matteawan in 1892, renamed
Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and phased out in
the 1970s to become Fishkill, a medium-security general confinement
facility.
To get there I had to drive past Downstate Correctional and that was
some serious evil with tall fences and coils of razor-wire placed
everywhere possible. At Fishkill I drove up a hill and saw a pond and
some geese and learned that I couldn't get close enough to actually
see the building, it was all off-limits. I wondered if those geese
knew where they were.
***
It all reminded me of the time that my friend Crazy Dave drove me to
the Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center so I could see where the
Son of Sam used to stay. He pulled us right up to the place. It was
surrounded by two mesh fencesóthe outer one curving inward at the top,
the inner one covered with giant stretched-out Slinkies of razor-wire.
We saw some guys moping around on the other side. "From here you can't
even tell which ones are the real nuts," said Dave. "Dude, look at
those fences."
"They're pretty severe."
"I could climb it."
"The one on the inside? With the razor-wire?"
"I know for a fact that I could climb that fence."
"You'd get cut up to shit."
"Yeah, bro. True grit, right there." With that he drove on out, making
crazy faces at the security van and then checking to the rear-view to
see if it'd follow us. "NOBODY KNOWS WHAT IT'S LIKE," he sang in his
most tender forlorn croon, "TO BE THE BAD MAAAANÖ"
***
Saturday night I took a break from the Gods to hang with filmmaker
Cihan Kaan at a party in somebody's house. Cihan had spent all day
auditioning for the lead in his next project, and it was time to
unwind. He was like a real-life taqwacoreóa Turkish Sufi kid in his
Crass t-shirt walking around this Brooklyn backyard, talking to girls
and beer-pong players and watching a game of drunken fast-pitch
wiffleball. He'd point at a dude and be like, have you ever heard of
such-and-such band and when I'd say no he'd just go ahead and say
"well, that guy right there is the bass player." Then I met the hacker
who shut down Yahoo! for a day, and he didn't seem too comfortable
with me knowing about it. I sat in a lawn chair and just watched the
whole scene since my weekend was too bizarre for me to really connect
or relate to any of these kids. I listened to two guys talk about a
pills-for-porn trade and complain that the party was a sausage-fest,
nearly every girl was with someone and the handful that weren't all
moved together in a pack. There was this cool guy in a black derby hat
and wifebeater shirt, knowing the role he was meant to play. I went
inside the house where it was desolate and sank into a leather couch,
going into my bag for the Ibn ëArabi book that I wanted to give
Intelligent Tarref Allah. I kicked my feet up on a glass table covered
with sprinklings of leftover equality and trendy-shit magazines whose
covers promised articles on "THE NEXT WAVE OF CELEBRITY DESIGNERS."
Two girls came in and sat on the couch across the room. Then Cihan
found his way in and sat next to me to ponder the possibilities of
anything popping off with them.
"There's something going on here," he said, with a quick glance in
their direction.
"Is there?"
"I think there is. They're over there and we're over here, you know?"
"I'm in no frame of mind for it," I told him. "I've been living in my
car and haven't changed my clothes in seventy-two hours, what am I
going to say to these fuckin' girls with their Gucci bags?"
"It doesn't even matter," he said. "Confidence is like eighty-five
percent of it." So from there I said that eighty-five percent of it
was deaf, dumb and blind, and we started building on some Sufi shit
relating to the Bektashis or Naqshbandis or Jerrahis, I don't even
remember which but Cihan had seen some amazing things in his time. He
had this incredibly involving story from when he went to the Southwest
with a girl and all sorts of crazy things went down revolving around a
black dog with blue eyes that kept popping up at random places and the
Navajo tales of a creature called the skin-walker that could assume
animal forms and kill you. I looked at him with all the authority I
could muster and said the dog was the devil and I could back it up
with hadiths. His story was legitimately awesome and it made sense
that something like that would happen to him, since he was diving deep
into Sufi thought beforehand. Sometimes when you project enough energy
out there, the world just reacts to it and gives you something back.
At least I've found it to be like that, from time to time. Maybe it
was the magnetic from building with Supreme Truth but who am I to say?
Then two guys with more ambition than us came over to the girls and
sat on either side of them, cracking jokes and making playful contact.
So that was the end of that. We made our way out and ended up eating
at a Pakistani restaurant at three in the morning, talking over kabobs
about the great Muslim Punk Scene and how it'll all pop off someday.
In the subway station I had begun building a little on the
Mathematics, trying to do something with my little
baby-knowledgeóbeing twenty-six years old, my physical degree was
Wisdom Equality but two plus six equals eight and the attribute of
Build or Destroy, meaning that everything you did either built or
destroyed, adding positive or negative to the cipher. That about
summed up my whole past year.
***
Sunday morning I drove back to Harlem with Ghostface Killah in the
tape deck, parked my car on 129th and walked to the Allah School to
find Azreal mopping the floor. I told him that I tried going to
Matteawan and he reminded me that they were all KKK and American Nazi
Party there. I told him that I was almost arrested at Napanoch and he
said that "once you start really building with the Gods, you'll find
yourself getting ëalmost arrested' all the time." We went into the
yard and built. Azreal put on a suit over his yellow Gods shirt and
green shorts. I gave him a pair of clean socks from my bag. Then
another of Yacub's People showed up; he said he was from Sweden and
doing his grad research on Afro-American religion. He went with us to
get Azreal some equality at the same place as the day before. On the
way back we passed the Nation of Islam's Masjid Muhammad #7 and shook
hands with bow-tie brothers on the front steps. From the sidewalk I
could hear a taped Farrakhan speech playing insideóthat Farrakhan, he
could really drive a point home when he wanted. Azreal asked a brother
if we could have gone in. The brother said that it was too crowded,
but if we had asked earlier, it would have been okay.
"I don't like using who I am to get into places," Azreal told me, "but
I like opening the door for others." Back at Allah School we sat in
front and shared greetings of peace with all the Gods and Earths who
walked byóAzreal, the Swedish kid and me, three Caucasians occupying
space in front of the Allah School of the Five-Percenters, Azreal
teaching me the Supreme Alphabets, nobody having a problem with us.
"We don't teach pro-black or anti-white," said an older God. "We teach
pro-righteousness and anti-devilishment." Intell had said the same
thing when we were building by mail.
Then a Five-Percenter tour group walked by and stopped in front of
Allah School, the guide explaining how this place came to be. Azreal
told me that the tours stopped at all the historic placesóthe elevator
where Father Allah was victim to an unsuccessful assassination attempt
("it's a new elevator nowÖyou used to be able to see the
bullet-holes"), the Hotel Theresa, Mount Morris Park which was home to
the first Universal Parliament when thousands of Gods greeted the
Father on his return from Matteawan, and also the place where his
ashes were scattered. The tour group consisted of pilgrims from all
over the country, here to see their Arafat and Mina, their Cave of
Hira, their Mountain of Light, their Badr. Harlem really was a Mecca.
Azreal got up, grabbed a broom and swept the sidewalk in front of
Allah School.
In Harlem you can see a belief system at its beginning. Today, June
13th, 2004 was only the thirty-fifth anniversary of Father Allah's
going home and you could still find Gods from the First Born walking
around telling it as it wasóno less than Sahabas for their time.
There's even an Ahlul-Bayt, I guess you can call it, of Father Allah's
living children and grandchildren. I tried to imagine some fourteen
hundred years ago or whatever it was when Islam was that young and
Muslims were the Poor Righteous Teachers, a lowly five percent on the
fringe of society.
Azreal, the Swede and I went back to the St. Nicholas projects so
Azreal could elevate. We found a bench full of Gods and Azreal built
with them. Azreal could talk and talk and talk, fueled by a genuine
love for the Nation, and these Gods half his age sat and listened
respectfully. He showed us this spin-move that Father Allah taught for
when someone had a gun on him and told the story about a time when he
stood in front of Allah School with Father Allah and Old Man Justice
and asked, "if you're the Father, and Justice is the Son, then what am
IÖthe Holy Ghost?" to which Father Allah and Old Man Justice laughed
so hard that it brought all the young Gods outside wanting to know
what was up.
The Show and Prove was just across the street at Harriet Tubman
Learning Center. Inside it was almost like a smaller ISNA convention
and too crowded to really get around so I bought a couple shirts and
went back out to watch Gods build on the sidewalk. I met a God from
Pittsburgh who offered to help me achieve knowledge, but he warned
that it'd be a serious journey. Then I met Saladin, a God from Niagara
Falls! So I told him I was from Buffalo and we exchanged numbers. I
had to know whether Buffalo had been renamed, since Gods gave the map
a flavor of mythopoeia by renaming all the boroughs and cities: Harlem
of course being Mecca and Brooklyn Medina, Queens was the Desert and
the Bronx was Pelan, New York itself was Mecca or Now Why, New
Rochelle was Now Rule, Poughkeepsie was Power Kingdom and it spread
across the landÖNew Haven, Connecticut was New Heaven, Philadelphia
was Power Hill, Pittsburgh was Power Born, Chicago was C-Medina,
Milwaukee was Cream City, Atlanta was Allah's Garden, Dallas was the
Sudan, Seattle was Morocco, Los Angeles was Love Allah, San Francisco
was West AsiaÖSaladin told me that he heard one God give Buffalo the
name of Bethlehem, and he called Niagara Falls Atlantis.
As I stood around in front of the Show and Prove taking it all in,
they gave me nothing but love and warmth. There wasn't so much as one
dirty look. Gods and Earths greeted me with "peace" and I'd give it
back. .
I don't understand how the Five-Percenters came to be so demonized as
a "hate group." If someone wants to quote a teaching or rap lyric to
prove that the Gods and Earths teach hate, build on this: a blue-eyed
devil can walk in the front door of the Allah School in Harlem easier
than some Muslim women can enter the front doors of their mosques.
A few Gods asked my name and whether I had done my 120 lessons. I'd
say that I had just started building with Azreal and had been
corresponding with Intelligent Tarref Allah, trying to learn about the
Five-Percenters so I could build on Master Fard. I'd get into my whole
obsession with Fard and how I considered myself almost a Fardiyya Sufi
and they all replied with "that's peace." One God took the time to
explain that Fard's father was named Alphonso Allah and he had been
selected by "twenty-three wise scientists" in Mecca to have a son who
would go to the West and find the Lost Tribe of Shabazz.
"And Master Fard Muhammad met with Franklin D. Roosevelt
face-to-face," he told me, "and Franklin D. Roosevelt even said to
him, ëtrying to save your people is like putting a pair of pants on an
elephant.'" When the God asked my name I said Mikail, the Arabic for
Michael though I pronounced it Urdu-style, which was only my old Sunni
name anyway.
Sarah from the Daughters of Hajar was interested in checking out the
scene, so she came through and we stayed outside just talking to
random Gods. Every now and then Azreal would pop up wanting a dollar
for another beer. By the time we left to find a place for Azreal to
elevate again, he wasn't walking too well but he could sing and dance
and tell stories about elevating behind the Apollo with Sam Cook and
Patti LaBelle, and he'd point to me and call me his "Caucasian angel,"
which I guess I was since Mikail was the only angel besides Jibril to
be mentioned by name in the Quranóand if the devil's just a fallen
angel, maybe there's a chance he can go back. Azreal/John Kennedy
reminded me that his middle name was Michael, and he knew how to stop
the rain.
We walked back to the Show and Prove and Azreal quickly disappeared in
the mass of Gods and Earths. It was hard to keep track of him because
he quite literally knew everyone there and made the rounds from circle
to circle, building all over the place.
Last time I saw Azreal, I told him I'd write a book about him someday.
He said we could all play ourselves in the movieówe didn't need to be
actors since his name broke down into "As Real" and he was as real as
it got.
Michael Muhammad Knight is author of The Taqwacores, a novel available
through the legendary punk label Alternative Tentacles.
Copyright © 2003-2004 Muslim WakeUp! Inc.
The World's Most Popular Muslim Online Magazine
http://muslimwakeup.com
Email: in...@muslimwakeup.com
Walter Sickert
Popular Culture - The Truth Is In There
6/15/2004
Call me a bloody fruit loop, but I find more honest truth in The
Simpsons, for example, than in most scholarly texts. If you’ve attended
college, tally up all of the mentions of Freemasons you have encountered
in your studies. Are you done? I’m pretty sure it was a quick count, and
the answer was probably “zero”.
Now think about The Simpsons. If you’re an avid fan, as I am, you can
probably recall two great Freemason references. In one episode, Mr. Burns
is portrayed as a Howard Hughes figure. When the camera zooms in to the
microbes on his face, the microbes say, in unison, “Freemasons run the
country!”
Another more heavy-handed episode, deals with a Springfield organization
known as “The Stonecutters”. The elite in the town are members, and plot
schemes in secret. This culminates in the delightful song “We Do”:
“Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
Who keeps Atlantis off the map?
We do. We do.”
Say what you will about Masonry, but its very existence is unknown to
most people. When you consider how much influence Masons have had in the
formation of the United States, you realize you have been dealt a very
shady hand by the educational establishments. The Simpsons, however,
spelled it out in no uncertain terms, years ago. Mainly in mirth,
perhaps, but as I have said, the truth is in there.
Having read what I have regarding reptilians and blood sacrifices, there
was another line, delivered by Mr. Burns, which made me pause. In that
episode, Mr. Burns is dying and needs a transfusion. When he receives it
and is revived he remarks “…and all I needed was the blood of a young
boy”.
360 Degrees of Knowledge
“The Autobiography of Malcolm X” is a book I am ashamed to say I have
only recently read. Imagine my surprise when, on page 158, Malcolm talks
about first hearing about Masonry. His brother Reginald tells Malcolm
“The devil uses his Masonry to rule other people”.
Of course, at this point, Malcolm is introduced to an idea he later
discarded: the white man is the devil. Reginald, again, tells Malcolm all
white people know they are devils “especially Masons”.
How revelatory! I wish the millions who have read this book didn’t gloss
over this tiny part of his life story. He makes an interesting point: if
360 degrees is the maximum in life, why are the Masons limited to 33
degrees?
I realize that is sort of comparing apples to oranges, in a sense, but
had this line of thinking been pursued, America might have been saved,
instead of descending into the maelstrom of misery it currently inhabits.
On one hand, the libertarian in me says people should be allowed to
associate with whomever they choose, or to exclude whomever they do not
want to associate with. But, when you consider the influence Masons have
in law enforcement and the courts, you see that Masonry crosses a line
into immorality and becomes the very opposite of libertarianism: rule by
secrecy.
Harry Harrison is God
Author Harry Harrison dealt with this reptilian (actually, reptoid)
possibility more than twenty years ago. His novel, “West of Eden”, the
first of a trilogy, is a stunning exploration of “What If?’ and frankly
I’m amazed that I never hear it mentioned in the context of reptilian
research.
I suspect it’s not brought up because it is clearly a work of fiction,
not an attempt at explaining some great unknown. In it, Harrison details
two cultures on two separate continents. On one continent reside the
humanoids, our mammalian forefathers. On another, reptoids: thinking,
upright-walking descendants of reptiles. These reptoids possess a culture
that is in fact highly advanced in relation to the humanoids.
In addition to being highly organized as a group, they also possess
technology far superior to the humanoids. It is based in biology and
genetics. For instance, to develop a microscope, they genetically
engineer a large eye that serves as a magnification lens.
It is a stunning piece of work. Truly inspired literature, and it
predates modern reptilian research by decades. On one hand, it is a
brilliant examination of reptilian culture as a race that is as entitled
to the Earth as we humanoids are. On the other hand, it is fiction, as I
have said, and is the work of Mr. Harrison’s fiery imagination.
It illustrates, I think, the danger in getting too deeply involved with
reptilian research as a defining worldview. If people are accepting as
fact something that was written to entertain, without a solid basis for
those beliefs, without being aware of their origins, we are being set up
for a minor disaster.
Search the web for references to people who have killed recently, due to
voices in their head. Or in order to destroy a demon they believed
inhabited someone they knew. There are quite a lot more things like this
going on than you may imagine. I feel it is only a matter of time before
some troubled soul kills a “reptilian”. It will be tragic, and people
like you and I may be contributors to the occurrence.
I’m not saying there is no such thing. That would take all the fun out of
it, for me. But please exercise good judgment when pursuing these
matters. If you see things others don’t, hear voices, or are deeply
involved with reptilian research to the point of excluding all other
viewpoints, take a deep breath and a brisk walk down to the library or
bookstore and pick up “West of Eden”. Understand that the origin of these
beliefs lie, in part, in fiction.
Besides, I’m pretty sure this reptilian stuff is just a cover for the
real rulers of the universe - the insectoids.