The Agricultural Theme of Scripture: Cultivation of the Land and the Man By Demetric Muhammad ”Hayya ala Falah” ”Hayya ala Falah” Empirical data abounds to demonstrate that while we take pride in a Black man being in the white house most other Black men, women and children suffer and toil at the same moment in time. In October 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported white unemployment was 8% and Black unemployment was 15.1%. This is nearly twice the unemployment rate for whites. The Pew Research Center records that the median income gap between Whites and Blacks in America is 20 to 1! These alarming economic statistics, among others, have caused many to question if rather an alternative over-arching principle like Black Independence should be pursued with the same vigor and thrust as Black Integration was pursued in the past. The prime expositor of the modern concept of Black Independence is the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. He has interpreted and clearly communicated to Black America and the world what was always a staple of the program and position of the Nation of Islam under the direct leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. (See point no.4 What the Muslims Want, backpage) This call for land and independence has been renewed in the recent speeches of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan wherein he addresses the top 2 ills facing Black America: economic ruin and moral decay. And it is within this core tenet of the Nation of Islam’s teaching that the solution to both lies. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is quoted as saying that: “The solution to our problem is divine.” Therefore it is on the pages of the divine sacred texts that we find the guiding principles to apply this divine solution. The Bible and Holy Quran specifically give guidance to Jews, Christians and Muslims in ways that expose a strong agriculture or agrarian theme running through both books. Consider that both books offer creation narratives that reveal that Allah (God) created man from the soil of the earth. “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground…”Genesis 2:7 “And when thy Lord said to the angels: I am going to create a mortal of sounding clay, of black mud fashioned into shape.”Holy Quran 15:28 1 | www.researchminister.com
The man that God created called Adam was told in Genesis 2:15 to “keep and dress the garden.” According to Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible this passage reveals that “Horticulture, or gardening, is the first kind of employment on record, and that in which man was engaged while in a state of perfection and innocence.” Barnes Notes on the Bible quips similarly: “Gardening was the first occupation of primeval man.” Thus a theme begins as the very setting of man’s origination pictures him being from a garden and employed to manage, oversee and cultivate a garden as his duty to his Creator and therefore the primary means by which he is to justify his existence and fulfill his ultimate purpose for being. That a garden provided the original man of the scripture with employment is of specific value in our quest to solve the problems of Black people in America. Our grandparents and parents worked the lands of agricultural plantations in the south under conditions of extreme suffering. So when the industrial revolution began many Blacks left the south’s plantations and agrarian based economies in pursuit of what ended up being a different form of slavery in the manufacturing plant(-ations)s of the North . An excellent portrait of the potential of land and agriculture as a solution for our economic woes can be found in a study of the European Jews. On pages 286-287 Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews Volume 2, we learn of the role of European Jews in the economic monopolization of Cotton production. “A single bale of cotton, picked by a Black man or woman for the meager daily wage of $0.43, in the hands of Jewish clothing manufacturers throughout the Lower East Side of New York could be transformed into 215 pairs of jeans, or 690 terry bath towels, or 1256 pillowcases, or 2104 men’s boxer shorts, or 3,085 diapers, or 249 bed sheets-and not a penny of these value-added cotton products accrued to anyone with black skin.” In 1907 1 bale of cotton could produce 800 men’s dress shirts generating $4,400 in revenue. Adjusting for inflation $4400 in 1907 would be $105,516.08 in 2011! Thus the cultivation of the land for cotton production became an economic juggernaut for Northern and Southern Jewish merchants. So much so that today the Jewish community is according to Steven Silbiger’s The Jewish Phenomenon “45% of the top 40 of the Forbes 400 richest Americans are Jews.” Silbiger also includes the facts that “1/3 of all American multimillionaires are Jewish and the percentage of Jewish households with income greater than $50,000 is double that of non-Jews.” Thusly America has been a “promised land” of economic salvation for European Jews. For the Black man, America has been a place for him to build “treasure cities” for others while reaping none of the benefits for himself and his children.
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In 2008 Forbes Magazine used the Bible’s list of 7 deadly sins to interpret crime statistics and produce its list of Top 10 Sin Cities. What is relevant about Forbes listing that includes Memphis,TN; Detroit,MI; Washington,D.C.; New York,NY and Miami,FL among others, is that even though the colossal sin of Black slavery helped establish these cities, today the sin of these cities grows out of criminal behavior that grows out of high levels of poverty and unemployment among Blacks. Black crime rates and Black incarceration rates have been directly related to Black poverty and unemployment. These correlations between crime and poverty are codified in economist and Nobel Laureate Gary Becker’s Economic Theory of Crime and Punishment. Becker’s basic idea is that criminal behavior is not irrational behavior but is rather a type of risk management where members of impoverished communities routinely consider if the costs of committing crimes are less than the benefits gained. From this theory have come strategies of crime reduction that focus on the reduction of poverty. We can see clearly then how Minister Farrakhan’s call for the acquisition and cultivation of the land as a solution for Black America’s economic plight is simultaneously a call for the cultivation of Black America’s morality. The agricultural theme is present as well in Islam’s famous call to prayer. The muezzin looks to the right and says “hayya ala salah”. But he looks to the left and says “hayya ala falah”. In geography the right hemisphere is the Eastern Hemisphere and the left hemisphere is the Western Hemisphere. “Hayya ala salah” means “come to prayer” but “hayya ala falah” means “come to cultivation.” The Western Hemisphere is dominated by America. Her “Sin Cities” underscore the areligious history of America that has never recorded the ministry of a prophet of God and the subsequent founding of a religion on American soil. This has left American people largely undeveloped in the light of the scriptures criteria and standing in much need of mental, moral and spiritual cultivation. The agricultural theme in scripture theme continues Quranically as believers and doers of good are promised a hereafter or heaven called “jannah.” Jannah is defined as a garden, so the idea of heaven in Islam is the idea of man and woman being in a place of cultivated land and cultivated humans; a divine garden. The Holy Quran also beautifully describes the raising of Allah’s Messenger and His ministering to the people in agricultural terms. “And Allah is He Who sends the winds, so they raise a cloud, then We drive it on to a dead land, and therewith give life to the earth after its death. Even so is the quickening.” Holy Quran 35:9 This is a beautiful passage that aptly describes what is going on now in Minister Farrakhan’s leadership of Black America, because the wisdom that he is offering our people can give us all
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economic life and moral life. His call is a call for us to “take our swords and beat them into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks.” So let all of us who believe in scripture support and promote Minister Farrakhan’s call for land acquisition if we hope to survive the economic and moral collapse of the United States of America.
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