languish—without leadership, institutions, hope or an agenda. In your terms, the inner-city was left without wholeness and integrity. And, of course, the black middle class has not found utopia through integration. I think we will see a return of the black middle class to their roots in the black community because they are not finding the acceptance they once thought they would among their white colleagues. Q / Is the basic agenda of the Muslims to restore cultural integrity to the black community as the bulwark against drugs and other social problems? Muhammed/ Yes. Starting with the individual and the family, the black community needs to be rebuilt. It needs to be rebuilt economically, spiritually, psychologically and educationally. The Nation of Islam faces up to _ the devastating effect of four centuries of slavery. We have no illusions about what happened to the black family. It was destroyed. Our approach is to rebuild the total individual. .We don’t attack the drug problem, for example, as a mass phenomenon. We realize that the key to community development is the self- affirmation and self-improvement of individuals—one by one, two by two, family by family, the black community must be rebuilt. While each effort seems insignificant, the cumulative effect over the decades, I would argue, has been more effective than all the mass programs financed by the government and other social agencies. Even though Drug Czar Bennett talks about restoring moral authority, do you think his approach can be effective? Muhammed/ I think Bennett wants to restore social order, not moral authority. He is a law and order man who is not particularly interested in social justice, economic opportunity or elevating the life of people caught in the web of drugs and violence. He wants safe streets. Despite his rhetoric about restoring parental authority, his only solution is to warehouse tens of thousands of young black males who he views as the cause of all the problems. He wants them off the streets. Ultimately, this approach is going to lead to a society that resembles South Africa. Already, Washington, DC has the highest incarceration rate for black males of any urban area outside South Africa. Out of a population of 200,000 black males in Washington, DC, more than 10,000 of them are incarcerated. Almost all of those incarcerated are under 30 years of age and about 70 percent have been jailed for drug-related offenses. Obviously, building more prisons will not solve the problem. So, the Nation of Islam looks at what it will take to make these young, black men productive and civil members of society. We must face up to the fact that If we will not pay to educate, train and provide jobs for our troubled black youth, then we will pay another way. society at large has failed to provide these young people with the proper avenues for development.. As a consequence, they have gotten involved in drugs and related criminal activity. Because many are just as unsuccessful at that kind of activity as they were in other areas, they end up in jail. Q / It seems what you are really saying is that police force can’t substitute for restoration of moral authority, which, in the last analysis, must come from within the individual and from within the black community. The government simply cannot weave integrity back into the black community. Muhammed/ I think you are right. That is why the Nation of Islam can be one of the brightest of President Bush’s thousand points of light—voluntary organizations who deal with America’s problems without reliance on government. The Bush Administration must come to terms with our successful track record in putting what you call "integrity” back into the black community. We have given people honor and self-respect; promoted self-help and self-reliance; made people productive and interested in learning; helped people to become entrepreneurs and to go into business; and, we have put families back together by making men and women responsible, law-abiding members of the community. When the force for these things comes from within the individual, it works. It cannot be implanted, or enforced from without. Decades of government programs have proven the failure of that type of approach. Q / In practical terms, just what kind of programs accomplish these objectives? Muhammed/ We have regular Womanhood and Manhood Training classes for young men and women. We teach these young people their responsibilities to themselves as self- respecting individuals, as well as their responsibilities to their families and their community. We teach them everything: hygiene, how to take care of their clothing, shine their shoes, apply for and keep a job, how to pay bills on time, etc. In the larger society, many of these things are simply taken for granted. But in the poor black community, with our legacy of slavery, who has there been to teach mothering skills? In many cases, our women have been more involved in raising other people’s children than in raising their own. Further, who has there been to teach fathering skills to the children as they grow up? What model has a black male had for being a father and a husband, if his own father was absent from the household? So many of these fundamental parenting skills, family skills, are just missing and, as far as I can see, no one other than the Nation of Islam wants to begin reforming the poor black community at this basic level. We take people where we find them. Then, with humility in the manner of Jesus washing his disciples feet, we help people do the things they are unable to do for themselves. Q / What about your “dopebuster” program in the northeast section of Washington, DC? How did it begin? Muhammed/ About a year ago we were invited by the residents of the Mayfair Mansions and Paradise Manor public housing projects to help them put an end to the drug siege, which had overtaken them in the previous two years. They noticed that when followers of the Nation of Islam came through the projects selling their newspaper, The Final Call, it had a chilling effect on the drug activity. We met with the tenant council and management of Mayfair Mansions and developed the idea of patrolling the area on a regular basis. We began the program on April 18th of last year, the first day of Ramadan—the traditional month of fasting in the Islamic world. That first day, we confronted approximately 300 people who were milling around at Mayfair Mansions, buying and selling drugs in what is called an “open-air market.” People would just hang out in the breezeways, the porches and the parking lots. Customers would drive in off the 295 freeway, swing into the parking lot, buy some drugs and drive away again. A group of us went up to the milling crowd and let it be known we were from the Nation of Islam and that we were there to restore order to the community. We asked who were and were not residents of the project. Of course, almost none of them were residents. We told the non-residents they would have to leave the premises and we escorted them to the perimeter. There was instant respect and just about universal compliance, because the Muslims have a certain moral authority in the black community. There was no resistance except for two individuals who came back a little later, one with a sawed-off shotgun and the other a handgun. But we managed to take the guns from them, gave them a little spanking and held them until the police came. Within the first week after we shut down the drug trading, we identified eight crack houses in Mayfair Mansions and several more at Paradise Manor. With the cooperation of the management, the marshall’s office and the housing authorities, we obtained eight evictions in three days. Once those crack house were shut down, the drug traffic in the area evaporated. So, what we have created in these public housing projects is a drug-free environment. Because it is drug free, it is also virtually crime free. We work very closely with the police, who now only have to patrol here once or twice a day. In the last year, there has been only one serious crime—a domestic homicide. Q / What have you done on the rehabilitation and treatment side? Muhammed/ We took the apartments opened up by the evictions and transformed them into what one could call “treatment” centers, where we walk and talk the addicts through withdrawal. As soon as we started doing that, of course, more and more people began coming to us for help. Over the last six months, we have had more than 40 individuals who have come to us for help, including Louis Farrakhan’s son, Joshua—most of them trying to get off crack. So far, only three of them have failed to really turn around. Q / Are these individuals kicking drugs as part of a religious conversion to Islam, or is it something less religiously specific? Muhammed/ Most people who went through the program didn’t convert to Islam. We were simply able to give them something they sorely needed, which can be summed up in the phrase “knowledge of self”: who they are, where they come from, their purpose in life. Q / Kind of like Alcoholics Anonymous? Muhammed/ Yes. And if we can extend our short-term success into the long term, we can really begin to have an impact. The health commissioner of Washington, DC, for example, finds our program much more effective as a model than the old drug rehabilitation programs designed 20 years ago to deal with heroin. But our treatment principle can be applied in any city. It is not racespecific or religion-specific. It simply requires a dedication to the universal principle of self-affirmation. This interview was first published in the summer 89 issue of New Perspectives Quarterly. Ann Morgan is a Twin Cities artist. Eric Walljasper is a Twin Cities art director. MuslimDopebusters The Brightest Point of Light Art hyAnnMorgan, Design by Eric Walljasper Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1989-90 9
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