The Meaning of As-Salaam-Alaikum

By Messenger Elijah Muhammad

Transcribed from an audio-taped radio broadcast

To the radio audience, I am Elijah Muhammad, the preacher of Freedom, Justice and Equality, to the American so-called Negro. Not Negroes but are really lost and found members of the great Black Asiatic Nation from the Tribe of Shabazz as almighty God Allah has taught me in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad to Whom Praises are due forever for coming in this part of the world giving to us the knowledge of self, and the knowlege of others. The knowledge of God and the knowledge of the devil and making clear and understandable that which we had never before been able to understand of the truth. Today we are thankful, who have heard this truth coming from the mouth of almighty God, Allah, in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad. Islam! The Muslims greeting.... This is always greeted in the language of Arabic. Arabic language is that.....

The greetings, As-Salaam-Alaikum, which means peace - peace be to you- or unto you. This is a very very good greeting words to use. The Western world of mankind can not use the greetings of peace to one another because they are not at peace with each other. Therefore there would be absolutely false greeting if the world would try greeting each other with peace. Especially the Western world. Therefore the greeting of peace is the greeting of those whom we call the righteous, who are always at peace with God, and at peace with man, and peace with himself. Therefore they are justified in using this greeting of peace which is the greatest greeting words that we know of. Long before the creation of this world, it was the word or greeting of the righteous, peace. In whatever language was used, it meant peace. WE, today desire most of all to have peace with God and with ourselves. WE desire to have it but most of us are not trying to give peace or to enjoy peace between man and man, due to the fact that the greed of the riches and luxury of this world takes all of our love, all of our peace, from our hearts towards one another. Because the love of the riches of this world and its luxuries, it makes one desire to take advantage of the other one. And in this race for wealth we destroy the peace of the neighborhood. We destroy the peace of the world of mankind, seeking to enjoy wealth and luxury of this life at the expense of and ... of others. I say to you my beloved people, the so-called American Negro. You are "so-called" because you are not a Negro. You are an Asiatic man from the Tribe of Shabazz, so God almighty Allah has taught me To whom be praise forever. I want you to know that it is the great desire of almighty God, Allah to give to you, my people, who has been trodden under the feet of civilization for hundreds of years. peace he wants to give to you. He has spread forth his hands in your midsts and over you and has given to you this word, PEACE. He brings to you, peace. He removes grief, sorrow and fear from the hearts of you who believe. That I mean in His Religion. There are many of us thinks that we believe in God, but when we are tested to that belief, we are not believers. We are believers in fear. And fear takes away obedience to the Divine Supreme Being. It removes fear of almighty God, Whom we should fear because He has power over all things. And He is the Greatest of them all. He is the Wisest. He is the Most Merciful and He has the power to bring the living from the dead and the dead from the living. He's All-Powerful and is able to bring light out of darkness. And He's able to make darkness over this light. This is Allah! According to the Holy Quran and Bible. I am so sorry for you, my people. I grieve over you. I am really over-anxious to see you enjoy peace. I am over-anxious to see you united with each other. Showing the love of a sincere brotherhood among you, yourselves. You have been destroyed. You have been robbed. You have grieved and moaned and suffered every kind of evil that man could think of. There is no evil that you have not had experience of. Today I am your brother. And I am also a sufferer of these things that you suffered with and therefore I love you and desire for you what I desire for myself. I desire peace. I desire love for my brother. I desire unity with my brother. And I can not have unity with my brother unless I love my brother. And it is all possible, and not impossible for me to love my brother. He's flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone; blood of my blood and if I don't love my brother, who is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, and blood of my blood, then alright, I don't love myself. This is the condition that the poor so-called American Negroes are in in North America. Because of the robbery of the slave-master of you when you were in servitude slavery. You were robbed of the love for self. You were robbed actually of unity, which you should be enjoying. All of this was taken from you by the slave-master and his children. Now today, they are in unity when it comes to you and I. They love each other when it comes to you and I. They have proven beyond a shawdow-of-a-doubt that they do not desire that you and I love each other as brothers and do unto each other as we would have done unto us. And again, they not only don't desire that be united but they have and still are doing everything they possibly can to keep us from being united. Unity means Strength. Unity means power.Unity means love. Unity means peace. I say my beloved people remember that we are a people beloved of almighty God and has been lost for 400 years in a people that are not our people. The Blackman and the white man are two distinct people. They are not brothers of each other. No sir! They are not the same race No sir! These are two distinct people- races or nations- as you would call them. And by no means could you ever expect true brotherly love and absolute unity between the two. It is impossible unless that you make them all one nation. And since almighty God, Allah, did not make us one nation or one race of people but made us different and this difference is not in color alone. But the difference is actually in the very nature of us. I am so sorry for you today who are so spiritually blind, that you can not see and recognize even your own friend. Your own friend is almighty God, Allah. And the friend of you of your own self is those who believe in Allah and believe in His religion of entire submission and peace, called Islam. Now I said that almighty God is your only friend, He's your only true friend and you do not even know Him....This is the Muslims. Muslim, that word means a righteous person. One who has submitted to do the will of Almighty God, Allah. One who, the Holy Qur'an says, "walks the earth in humbleness." One who is not proud. One who is not aggressive. One who seeks not to take advantage of no one. One who greets, not only, another righteous in peace, but even he will greet the weak and foolish in that language of peace because he's at peace with the author of peace, Whose proper name is Allah. He's at peace with himself. He's at peace with the world of man. Therefore he can say, "As-Salaam-Alaikum (Peace be to you)" regardless to where he may be, or to whom he may be speaking with. This is true. We are that people. Though the Holy Qur'an teaches a Muslim that he never be the aggressor, seek not to use physical force against no one unless it is by the order of almighty God, Allah. Kill no one, the Holy Quran says, unless it is by the order of almighty God, Allah. Now, today, the whole world, every hour, every minute of the hour, are killing and destroying each other through their hatred and dislike of each other, through their divisions and confusion of each other. Their lack of understanding causes them to destroy each other and finally themselves. I say that we should have peace but we should be prepared for fight for peace. We must lay aside that which is causing other than peace and unite in love and your fellowman, your brother. Your own black blood and flesh. Love that black blood and flesh. Love that brother of that same flesh and blood. And hate not your own flesh and blood as the Bible teaches you. But the so-called American Negro, as I repeat, he has been made to hate himself. And this hatred of himself is from his slave-master and his slave-master’s children. He was divided in the cradle against each other. He was taken from his mother’s breast while he was yet unconscious to the knowledge of a mother. Reared by an enemy. Reared by those that hate him and had no love in their heart for that black baby and its black mother and father. But was taken and sold between each other from one to another of their kind for the purpose of enslaving the child robbing the child of it’s labor. Free labor. America used these hundreds and thousands and millions of us for three hundred long years, our labor, for nothing. They did not give our fathers anything like money for that three hundred years of servitude slavery. And it grieves me to see the leadership of the so-called American Negro, today, willing to forget all about those cruel three centuries that our parents suffered under the lash and gun-fire of their slave-master. You are willing to forget the killing for a naught. You don’t want anything but the love of their children. You are not asking America to separate you and put you to yourself or in the midst of your own people. But is asking America to allow you to be planted in the gate white race and become one of them, members. There is not any future, whatsoever, in your own children but total destruction, the loss of the identity of self. This is all the ignorant, blind, deaf, and dumb leadership of my poor people is asking for. They criticize you of asking for a future. I don’t ask to be planted in a place of people that is not my flesh and blood. I’m asking separation. I’m asking a place to myself and my own kind here. It has been proven and is still proven to be actually the truth and other-than-the-truth that the so-called Negro, the Blackman, can not live in peace with the white man. It is proven that the Blackman wants for himself what the white man wants for himself. So why keep troubling each other until we arrive at the boiling point. There is an end to these things. There is an end. And that end is now approaching. It is at our door what that we must lay aside even the thought and desire to try to make Blackman and white man two brothers. You can’t do that. It is against the Creator’s own will. He didn’t create you like that. There has been, ever since you have been on this earth, separation of nations. When the white man came to North America, he found Red Indians here. He didn’t find white people here, he found Red Indians here, whom he has annilated, killed off to take their home. Their home was taken by the price of blood. Blodd was the price paid for their home. “Woe unto thee that builds a city of blood and establish it upon sin”. This America has done. She has gotten her country by the price of blood. She has established it in sin and evil, and has acted with evil. ….under the worse evil murder and crime of our. This, today, you , my beloved people, denounce the God and God into his peace. I warn you that you are absolutely making a grave mistake by trying to force the white man to accept you as his own brother his own sister. Even if he would do so, he still would be the loser. He would not be able to live in peace with you in his home, while trying to intermix. with you. in hopes that you will separate and that you and I know and have known for a long time. We just cannot defeat God’s own plan, His own hopes. We cannot destroy that. If God has declared that He will separate us in the Last Days, then He will separate us. He separated us in the beginning. You have found it so beautifully situated off on this planet earth, the nations of this earth. The brown man living to himself. The black man living in a country to himself. The red man living to himself. The yellow man living to himself. The white man living in Europe to himself. But he came out of Europe and spread all over the earth upsetting the unity of the Black, brown red and yellow man, dividing them, one against the other...

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