Though
building on a unique cosmology and legendary characters, Allah positioned
himself as anti-religion. Known as a High Scientist during his time in the
mosque, he later discouraged high science in favor of "city science".
Many Gods take a practical look at their divinity; the word God to both Fard
and the Father, in I Majestic's interpretation, "has no religious context
here, it's not claiming to be an astral being" The Five Percenters would
respond to anarchism's ethos of "no gods, no masters", with I God, I
Master. For a black man to call himself God means that he will take
responsibility, as the Father of Civilization , to lift himself up in the here
and now- as opposed to waiting for a mystery to solve his problems or reward
him in the afterlife...
I thought of
Allah and the Desert Fathers that came before him: Father Divine, Noble Drew
Ali, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. They were all born in the south and came
north as young men in search of a better tomorrow, but found the American Dream
to be a mystery god: an empty promise that took blind faith and gave only hard
times.
There really
is a devil, and like the Lost-Found Muslim Lesson No 1 says, he does keep you
from his social equality. The bloodsucking Ten percenters, peddlers of the
Mystery God, rule the Eighty-five Percent with priests, imams, ministers,
mullahs and theologians, trained experts in phantoms, selling what cannot be
seen. An old man who has only been an MTA bus driver all his life cannot stand
up in a mosque and give khutbah on what he learned while struggling in the city
and supporting a family. It's not enough, he has to go to Al-Azar, perfect his
Arabiyya, master tajwid, eat up the medieval scholars, fill his head with fiqh
and learn all the schools of thought. But in the new Mecca of Harlem, he can
come to the front of the Harriet Tubman's auditorium in his MTA work jacket and
he's God as is.'
Making
information widely accessible should not be a bad thing; but as Muslims often
complain that reading the Qur'an in a language other than the original Arabic
will sacrifice its meaning, the 120 gives up its heart when translated to
hypertext.
Shared on a
playground or prison yard, the degrees become living things. I received my 120
on a hallway floor in the St. Nicholas House. The lightening was dim, the walls
tagged with graffiti, my teacher stoned but still holding a lineage to his own
teacher, who went back to his teacher and his teacher and so on through the
unbroken trees of transmission drawn in the Sun of Man to the First Born, to
the Father, To Malcolm and the mosque and the Muslims on back to Elijah Muhammad
himself on Feb. 20,1934, answering questions as they were given to him by
Master Fard.
The lines of
the teachers and students all begin at that same original source and are
cousins to one another. On the project floor with a document soft in a way that
paper gets when it is old, the creases becoming tears, stained with coffee and
scented with the same oils that Muslims put on their Qur'ans, I became a link
in one chain. In contrast, a computer screen offers only dead words, an
experience about as real as sitting on your couch to watch Muharram
self-flagellations from Tehran on the Discovery Channel.
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