By Naimah Latif

The 20 year commemoration of the 1995 Million Man March and Minister Farrakhan’s call for 10,000 fearless men to stand up against urban violence has been purposely misrepresented by the mass media as a call for black men to attack white people. The fact is, this march, just as the one in 1995, is a call for men to go back to their homes, back to their communities, and correct the mistakes within their own families that allowed this violence to get out of hand. That means making peace with the women in their lives and helping to guide the children to a respectable, productive adulthood.

Those who enslaved African people never intended to let us go. Slavery was never abolished, it was merely redirected to the prison system. Check the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Free labor is just too profitable for the wealthy class to give it up. We must keep that in mind, so that we are not naive about the intentions of those who control this unfair economic system. Their intention was never to educate our children and empower them to take over the government and business industries. Their intention was always to keep our children ignorant and unskilled, keep us angry and frustrated, break up our families and make our children vulnerable for re-enslavement.

Sisters, we should have known something was up when the government offered to take care of us, as long as we had no man in the house. Do you think the urban gang problem would be this out of hand if fathers had been in the home, playing wholesome sports with their sons and teaching them how to make house and car repairs like men used to do? Do you think our daughters would be out here having sex and making babies they aren’t prepared to raise, looking for the love of a man they missed because of an absent father?

My sisters, we made a huge mistake. Let’s figure out how to correct it.

Brothers, I know the idea of free sex is appealing, but when the birth control industry started pushing pills and condoms as the ticket to “free love” you should have known something was up. That’s how they got us during slavery, remember? They encouraged the young men to have as much sex as they wanted. Sure, make babies! The more, the better! Don’t worry about raising them, you don’t even know if you or some other man is the father…and it doesn’t matter! Our enemies encouraged you to stay emotionally unattached to women and keep having sex, so you could keep making healthy new slaves to enrich the plantation owners.

Today you’ll get a woman pregnant and leave her, knowing the government will pay her a check for the children’s welfare. But think about this: Your enemies made sure they secured their wives and educated their children to maintain control of the American government and business industries. Yet, they convinced you that uncommitted sex and leaving your children unprotected was your ticket to freedom. Notice that the families that control the government, the major business industries and the banking system, have not changed. Those men kept their families intact so they could pass down wealth and power. But they convinced you to abandon your family so they could criminalize and re-enslave your children.

My brothers, you made a huge mistake. Let’s figure out how to correct it.

How many mothers are weeping who lost sons and daughters to urban violence? Sisters, it doesn’t matter how well you raised your children. Someone else’s abandoned, misguided child has been armed by our enemies to kill your child. It’s not accidental. This was the intention when the government offered us a check in exchange for keeping our childrens’ fathers out of the home.

For every group of 10,000 men who say they are ready to put their lives on the line to end urban violence, there are 50,000 single mothers who need help raising their children. Not just financial help, but the emotional support that a mother needs from a husband and the guidance a child needs from a father. The young men who have been criminalized and jailed need fathering from spiritual men that are willing to restore them to true manhood. That’s the kind of fearlessness that’s needed, and it doesn’t come from the barrel of a gun. So, how can 10,000 fearless men help 50,000 single mothers raise 100,000 fatherless boys to manhood?

Let me share a bit of history of another community that faced a similar a problem.

On March 23 , in the year 625 AD, the small Muslim community of Medina, led by Muhammad Ibn Abdullah, known to his followers as the Prophet Muhammad, suffered a violent attack in an act of religious persecution. A military force led by Abu Sufyan from Mecca slaughtered massive numbers of Muslim men in a skirmish fought at Mount Uhud in Northwestern Arabia. It became known as the Battle of Uhud, and was a big setback for the Muslim community, because the heavy casualties left many orphaned children and widowed women homeless and destitute. There was no one to make sure orphaned children received the rightful inheritance from their fathers who had been killed in battle. In an act of self sacrifice, some of the men in the Muslim army offered to try to take care of the orphaned children and the widowed women.

So the revelation was given by God to the Prophet Muhammad to tell his men, “And give to the orphans their property and exchange not the bad for the good and devour not their property by mixing it with your own. Surely it is a great sin. And if you fear that you will not be just in dealing with the orphans, then marry of other women as may be agreeable to you, two, three or four, and if you fear you will not be able to do justice then marry only one or marry what your right hands possess. Thus it is more likely that you will not do injustice.” (Holy Quran, Chapter four, verses 3 and 4.)

These verses define the reason for the system of polygyny (men having more than one wife) as a remedy for a disaster, a state of emergency that left many children orphaned and women homeless and destitute. When men are killed or taken away from their families, other men, fearless men, spiritual men, must step up and fulfill the role of father to the children and insure they are raised properly, for the future stability of the community. Marriages to additional women were allowed as a means of rebuilding a protective family structure in which to raise fatherless children and provide emotional and financial support for single mothers. Polygyny is not a means for men to have multiple sex partners, it is a means for women to get help with children after a massive loss of men from the population. The Holy Quran quotes God’s warning to those men who knew they were not emotionally and financially capable of being fair and just to all the women to stick to marrying only one.

Today, we are experiencing the results of several generations of men emotionally damaged by war, drug addiction, and economic desolation. Many men with children are dead, in jail, on drugs, or homosexual. Their absence left sons without fathers. Without the protection and guidance of a father in the home, many boys learned violence as a means of asserting their manhood, while others chose violence as a means of self defense. This urban violence is our state of emergency. We as sisters, Muslim, Christian and otherwise, have to have a serious discussion about how we can create an honest, respectful extended family system that enables a man, not a government check, to be a father figure in children’s lives. We as a community must see to it that all children are nurtured and protected. We cannot continue to allow the orphaned and abandoned children in our communities to be used by our enemies to create violence and disorder among us.

I’m sure Minister Farrakhan will successfully recruit 10,000 fearless men to stand up to those who are responsible for perpetuating violence in our communities. Now, can we get 10,000 fearless women to allow their husbands to become meaningful fathers in the lives of orphaned children and give support to single mothers?

Sisters, let’s talk.