In the Spirit of the Gracious and Compassionate
Creator of the Heavens and the Earth
My mother’s father’s name was Moses, and his father’s name also.
They sang “Go down, Moses” in the New Chapel Baptist Church in Plymouth, North Carolina, where he was the choirmaster and a trustee.
I remember reading in the Gospels, as a child, that Jesus Christ had said that the stone that the builders had rejected would become the cornerstone, and that the last would be made first.
In the 28th soorah of the Qur’an, “al-Qasas” (“The Narration”), Allah tells us that Pharaoh had divided the people and made one group weak, slaughtering the men and allowing the women to live. And Allah goes on to tell us that his plan is to make the oppressed people leaders and inheritors in the land. (Qur’an 28:4-5)
We, the African American people, have long known – for at least two centuries – that we are People of the Book. We have seen our difficult sojourn in this land as a manifestation of the narrations we read in the Old and New Testaments. And now, this grandson and great-grandson of men named Moses, sees our story in the narrations of the Qur’an.
I call on the African American men to gird up our loins and rise up – not to disrespect our women – but because we are the ones who in the words of the Scriptures have been killed, and in the words of Elijah Muhammad we are dead, and in the words of Huey P. Newton we have been castrated.
We, the African American men, must acknowledge our situation, be healed, be raised from the dead, and embrace the promise – to become leaders and inheritors in the land.
Which Way Is Up? 