Islam AND/OR Falun Dafa (Huh? 🤔)

This AIN’T about preaching. All “non-believers” are welcomed.

Left: Islamic symbol; Right: Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) symbol

Been alive for seven decades, plus [None of your BUSINESS how much plus!!😡😊] Some of what I write in this article, I’ve written before. But, I include those things in this article because this, of course, is a different article with a different, new subject. Also, I have new subscribers who, of course, do not know anything about my background, and I feel that it’s important for new subscribers to know my background.

I was born and raised in Chicago, an international city. As my big brother once put it, “You can live in Chicago all of your life, never leave, and meet everybody in the world.” In other Substack articles, I’ve mentioned some of the everybody-in-the-world that I’ve met, a couple of whom stayed with us at our family home for weekends. (Continue reading below)

Courtesy duckduckgo

Courtesy duckduckgo

I attended Corpus Christi Grammar School, a Catholic elementary school, for eight years. I attended Hales Franciscan High School for four years. That was pre-1960s, when nuns were “the Brides of Christ,” [fully trained to physically kick your ass, as I related in a Substack article entitled, What, you got a PROBLEM with integrity??!!], and priests were addressed as “Father.”

Both the nuns and the priests were of the Franciscan order, founded 814 years ago, February 24th, 1209 A.D., a Catholic order pretty much on par, intellectually, with the Jesuits. They knew their sh*t. Kicked my ass, too, because I was not that good of a student, intellectually, in elementary school and high school.

The Roman Catholic Church had been a very formidable force throughout history, not to be underestimated on any level. See if you can find this old news item. I’ve tried, but failed: Once, either the Mossad or Shin Bet found a listening device behind the altar of a Catholic Church in Israel. They secured the device and examined it. Upon examination and research of the device, it was discovered that no government on earth had a device anywhere as sophisticated. I don’t recall how Israeli intelligence discovered it. At least up through the 1970s, the Church of Rome was a very formidable institution.

Once, many years ago, on a nighttime TV news show called Nighline, the host, Ted Coppel, interviewed a couple of people about whether or not the United States should have an embassy in Rome, Italy that was directly for relations between The Vatican and the United States. This was a hot and heavy topic, at the time, considered strongly touching upon the matter of the separation of Church and State. As I recall, one of Koppel’s guests was against it, and the other one was for it.

I noticed that while the anti-embassy guest was speaking, the other guest was openly expressing frustration, facially, frowning up. Finally, he interrupted and said something like, “Ted, Ted, can I get in here? He’s talking about ‘separation of Church and State.’ Look, we’re talking about an organization that has been on this planet for nearly TWO-THOUSAND YEARS! It’s accumulated a wealth of information that we CANNOT afford to not have access to, if we possibly can. We can’t afford NOT to have an embassy to The Holy See.”

Some have criticized Catholicism’s basic doctrine of the blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as a simple-minded repeat of pre-Christian savior-god motifs that existed all over the planet. But if you understand the intensity with which a belief system can be embraced by that human need, as I see it, to connect with The Divine, you’ll realize that there’s nothing simple-minded about Catholic doctrine and how it influenced its followers and the world at large. As noted at Wikipedia, Mark A. Noll has stated that the Catholic Church is the "world's oldest continuously functioning international institution.” From Wikipedia:

“The Catholic Church has been the driving force behind some of the major events of world history including the Christianization of Western and Central Europe and Latin America, the spreading of literacy and the foundation of the universities, hospitals, the Western tradition of monasticism, the development of art and music, literature, architecture, contributions to the scientific method, just war theory and trial by jury. It has played a powerful role in global affairs, including the Reconquista, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Investiture Controversy, the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe in the late 20th century.”

Incidentally, the Catholic Church is currently undergoing a huge “civil war,” it might be called, that threatens to destroy any semblance of what Catholicism has been, doctrinally, for the last almost 2000 years, although the beginnings of that destructive process began at The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) back in the 1960s. For more, check out this video by Michael Matt, a powerful Traditionalist Catholic who, as I’ve concluded from my studies, is somewhere near the head of one side of that civil war. You’ll understand, soon, why, early in this article, I took the time to mention Catholicism.

In the late 1960s, I got caught up in the counter-culture revolution of the times, which included challenges to everything: government, religion, racial status quos (as they were perceived), political/social/economic ideologies, such as Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, sexuality, etc. It was a madhouse. And I was studying all of it [Well, except sexuality. Sorry, but boys are boys; girls are girls. I’m the Black Archie Bunker], although I settled into Black nationalism.

Although the priests at Hales Franciscan High School were shocked, in 1967 & 1968, when I was still in school, and I had begun ruthlessly and intellectually challenging the very religion I’d formerly loved, it had been their Franciscan intellectual ethic that had caused me to “blaspheme,” as they called my challenges to Catholic doctrine. Now they were even threatening to not allow me to graduate.

In fact, when they threatened to not allow me to graduate, because I’d “blasphemed” the religion of Catholicism, it was my wise dad, whom the family called “Daddy Cheese,” who went to the Principal’s office, dressed Jake, and calmly said to the Principal, Fr. Titus, “Look Jones [Cheese called everybody, including women, “Jones”], you are the ones that’s been teaching him for four years. You taught him critical thinking. You taught him logic—both Aristotelian logic and Augustinian logic. You taught him St. Augustine’s principles¹ and form of logic. And now that he’s doing precisely what you taught him to do, you’re gonna stand here and tell me that you’re gonna block his graduation, just because he used your Franciscan intellectual traditions to evaluate your religion?” To Fr. Titus’s immense credit, he put his head down, then looked back up at my dad and said, “Mr. Chism, my apologies. You are absolutely correct. Your son will graduate.” Damn straight.

That intellectual tradition of challenging, not just accepting, has carried me throughout my life to this very day. I’m Muslim. I converted to Islam in 1975. But, nothing I’ve come across, since I graduated from Hales, has escaped my Franciscan-based intellectual scrutiny—nothing. Not even Islam.

The year was 1977. I had accepted the religion of Islam, two years earlier. I was visiting a Muslim friend of mine. He was a literal scholar. He’d studied Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Michigan, Spertus College of Judaica, the University of Chicago, and at the oldest and most prestigious Muslim university in the world, Al-Azhar University, in Egypt. I was no Islamic or Arabic scholar. But, I had been performing some research, at the main, downtown public library in Chicago, that caused me to ask him some questions.

I asked him, “Would you visit me, brother, if I had a dog in the house as a pet?” He answered, fairly vigorously, “La!!” (No). I asked, “Why not?” He said, “Brother, what kind of question is that? You already know the answer: It is recorded, in hadeeth², that Abu Huraira, razi Allaho Anho³, a Sahaba⁴, said that the Holy Prophet Muhammad, sallalaho alaihe wa salaam⁵, said, ‘Allah does not allow for the believer to have a dog within his dwelling. If a dog is inside one’s dwelling, the angels of Allah will not enter that dwelling.”

I then asked him, “Brother, can you refresh my memory. On the way here, I was trying to remember the name, in Arabic, of the Attribute of Allah that means, ‘The Life Giver.’” He quickly answered, “Al-Muhyi.”

Scholar or not, I had set him up. I said, “I was reading something very interesting today. It was somehow accidentally discovered that dogs can sense when a person is on the verge of having an epileptic fit. When that was first discovered, it was decided to attempt to train the dog to be as accurate as possible in his sensing. This training was refined almost perfectly, to the point where a dog could sense the oncoming of a human epileptic seizure 40 minutes in advance of that seizure. When the dog senses that, he will start barking in a certain manner so that his owner, the epileptic, can obtain and take his medicine, thus avoiding the seizure.”

I then purposely sat there quietly. After a while, I saw the expression on his face change. Whether he’d gotten it or not, I came in for the kill: “Well, now anyone who suffers from that ailment can obtain a trained dog as a pet. So…….Well, here’s what I was thinking: Since it is possible, though relatively rare, that a person can die of an epileptic fit; and since an epileptic can now have a trained dog to assure that he takes his medicine before the seizure begins, thus having his LIFE saved; and since ONLY Allah Al-Muhyi is ‘The Life Giver,’ wouldn’t that mean that it’s okay to have a dog in the house—a dog that gives life, that fact being an actual manifestation of Allah’s Attribute of Al-Muhyi, The Life Giver?” And then the angels can pay a visit?

“In fact, the ability of a dog to save a life is akin to Allah sharing one of His Divine Attributes, Al-Muhyi, with a dog. So, why would Allah disallow angels to enter the house where a dog exists, when the dog itself shares in Allah’s Attribute of Al-Muhyi?”

To my disappointment—but not to my surprise—he says, “La!!! The hadith is clear!! No dogs in the house.” I was not finished.

While at the library, I had done some research on who Abu Huraira, that Sahaba, was. I think I found information about him in the Encyclopedia of Islam, as I recall. Well, I discovered two very interesting things. First of all, the history showed that Abu Huraira loved cats. I also discovered that Prophet Muhammad had put him in charge of the management of a Mosque. And the history showed that, at that Mosque, cats were everywhere—outside the Mosque, inside the Mosque. Just everywhere near the Mosque. Abu Huraira loved cats. Abu Huraira, kept cats. DUH!!!

But, there was something else even MORE interesting that I found out. His very name, “Abu Huraira,” means Father of the cats. So, I’m supposed to believe that, something that was so questionable, at least in my mind, and was recorded ONE-THOUSAND, FOUR-HUNDRED (1,400) years ago is perfectly correct, because it passes the test of the “chain of narrators,” and all the other criteria used to determine whether something said was actually said by The Prophet?

I once took a psychology course, as an elective. The first day of class the Professor wrote something down on a piece of paper, and placed it on his desk. Then he walked to a student that was sitting in the front row, all the way to the left. He then whispered, in the ear of that student, what he had written on that paper, and told him to whisper the same thing to the student next to him, and tell that student to repeat it to the person next to him.

When everybody in the class had heard the message that was written on the paper, spoken to them in a whisper, the professor asked the first student he’d whispered to to state, to the class, the message. Then the Professor read the message from the paper he’d written it on. Then the professor randomly asked each person in the class, one by one, to recite what the person next to them had whispered.

The result was abysmal. There were only a few people, out of a class of about 40 students, who had correctly stated the message that the professor had whispered to the first student and written on that paper. It had only taken, at most, about 15 minutes for everyone to repeat what they’d heard.

So, in 15 short minutes, hardly anyone had recited the message correctly. So, I was supposed to automatically believe, without question, that, over a period of one-thousand, four-hundred (1,400) years, Abu Hurairah’s alleged claim that Prophet Muhammad had said, “No dogs in the house” was accurate? No. I don’t believe it. I don’t care if the transmission was recorded in Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, or any of the other compilations of hadith that are called the most reliable compilations.

We have souls. We have our consciences. We have our intuition. We have our common sense. I try to use them. When I read a hadith, I do not automatically believe it, just because it’s categorized as “reliable.” If it’s not in sync with conscience, with common sense, and, in fact, if it’s not in sync with the general spirit of the Islamic scripture, the Qur’an, I reject it.

It was inconsistent with the Mercy of God, in my view, that He would deprive, through The Prophet, an epileptic of his or her life, when all that was needed was the assistance of Rover. Islam teaches that Allah’s Mercy overrules all of His other attributes. Yes, there are hadith that I 100% believe to have been said by Prophet Muhammad, or that record things that Prophet Muhammad actually did. But I don’t believe them automatically. Blind belief can be dangerous.

I told the brother, “I reject that hadith. I don’t believe that Prophet Muhammad said that. Abu Hurairah lied.”

Of course, he was shocked that I’d called a Sahaba of Prophet Muhammad’s a liar who simply loved cats (and obviously hated dogs), and because he probably hated, or disliked dogs, he spread the word that Prophet Muhammad had said, no dogs in the crib. Well, then my Muslim scholar friend said the “appropriate” thing to say when a Muslim hears something bad: “Auzubillah-i-Mina Shaitan-i-Rajeem!!!” That is, “I seek refuge in Allah from Satan the accursed!!!” So, in one 45-minute visit to the brother, I had become “Satan, the accursed.”

Have you ever heard of how dogs are treated in Muslim countries? I began to wonder what it would be like to live in a dog-less world. Not as good as it has been with Rover here with us thus far. I’m Muslim. But I ain’t accepting no yockey-doc, as my friend Nazz would put it. And I don’t care where or who it’s coming from. I think that Rover would agree.

I’ve been this way all of my adult life. I’ve talked about the Franciscan intellectual ethic. But, to be 100% accurate, it was my dad from whom I inherited basic common sense. Well, except for the time I married a woman, in an arranged marriage, that I’d never known in my life. Needless to say, six years later the marriage ended.

Religion, ideology, and women, just ain’t a good mixture when it comes to trying to think logically. Of course, we all know that, often, when it comes to a man wanting a woman, logic ain’t got sh*t to do with it. She flashes those eyes at you, and your dad’s wisdom, 814 years of the intellectual power of the Franciscans, and the truth trees of a university-level logic course don’t mean sh*t. You will FALL—and fall hard. God wanted children on His earth. He knew what to do.

I’ve lived long enough to have accumulated a ton of such stories that involved my “inability” and unwillingness to just accept something just because it comes from somebody’s mouth or just because it was ALLEGEDLY said by a “holy” person. I sincerely believe that, without the Revelation of a scripture, we human beings have The Voice of God within us. We just often don’t listen to it, choosing, instead, to accept anything that’s written, or that’s said, and is deemed “holy” and/or to have been said by a prophet or a guru or a priest or a master, and do so even if it disturbs us greatly and even if it totally contradicts the wisdoms accumulated by the human family over who knows how long. I believe in scripture. But the “scripture” in our souls I give a lot of weight to also.

Okay, it’s time to get more directly to the point. But first of all, please, please, please note that I DO NOT proselytize. I do not preach about Islam to people. I just don’t. Been there, done that. As such, in this article, I ask you to not, for one nano-second, think that I want to convert you to Islam. I don’t want to “convert” anybody to anything. The very WORD “convert” sounds weird to me.

And have you ever gone to YouTube and pulled up videos of super eager converts, sharing their conversion story AS IF their experience with the religion, or belief system, they “converted” to somehow “proves” that their new-found religion is “the” one and only “true” religion? Apparently, they aren’t aware of the other I-found-the-truth “conversion” stories that can be found at YouTube and other platforms:

• “I was a Buddhist. Then I converted to Catholicism.”

• “I was a Catholic. Then I converted to Buddhism.”

• “I was a Hindu. Then I converted to Islam.”

• “I was a Muslim. Then I converted to Hinduism.”

• “I was a Jew. Then I converted to Daoism.”

• “I was a Daoist. Then I converted to reformed Judaism (And I apologize for not having a Jewish mother.”)

• “I was a Democratic. Then I became a Republican. (TRUMP IS GOD!!!!!!!”)

• “I was a Republican. Then I became a Democrat.”

• “I was conservative. Now I’m liberal (I LIKE BEAUTIFUL BLACK WOMEN!!!!!!!!”)

  

  Courtesy duckduckgo

• “I was liberal. Now I’m conservative. (BEAUTIFUL WHITE WOMEN WITH GUNS TURN ME ON!!!!!!!)
  

  

  Courtesy duckduckgo

No. I am NOT interested in your conversion or your non-conversion. I cherish, deeply, the free-speech freedoms that the Founding Fathers of the United States of America carved out for us—freedoms that are now being threatened by the cancel-culture IDIOTS who prefer “safe spaces” (translation: closed-mindedness) to challenges that cause you to grow and advance. And because I cherish the freedom of speech carved out for us by the Founding Fathers, I take advantage of that freedom of speech simply to share.

In this case I’m going to share a beef that I have about just a couple of things that I strongly disagree with and that are taught by Li Hongzhi, the “founder” of Falun Dafa. I have “founder” in quotes because, as Li Hongzhi himself has said, Falun Dafa (aka, Falun Gong) was founded not by him, but was founded at a time when religion did not exist, something that I found IMMENSELY fascinating and IMMENSELY attractive to me when it was first introduced to me.

He said that Falun Dafa had been secretly preserved within certain Chinese families, and that he was now, in 1992, revealing it to the public because of the stresses of today’s world that people are living under. Within three years of his unveiling of Falun Dafa, 150 million people had become Dafa practitioners, and were out in the open, in the parks of China, practicing the five Qigong exercise/meditation forms of Falun Dafa. This shocked the sh*t out of the Chinese Communist Party, which then began persecuting Dafa practitioners. Falun Dafa, to the immense consternation of the Chinese Communist Party, has spread all over the planet, an admirable achievement indeed.

Well, in particular, there is one Dafa belief that I feel is very, very, very dangerous potentially, for our human family, despite a lot of other things about the Dafa that are very great. We didn’t just get here, as a species. We may have been here billions, if not trillions of years, according to some. Throughout that time, we have learned that beliefs within religions, spiritual ideas, ideologies, belief-systems, etc., can be excellent, but that even some “religious” beliefs can also lead to disastrous consequences, such as the 3,000-year subjugation of the Dalit people (the so-called “Untouchables”) of India who are at the lowest rung of India’s caste system.

Once, the 60-Minutes TV magazine news crew visited a village in India. There they talked to a woman villager. Either Mike Wallace or Ed Bradley, I can’t remember which 60-Minutes team member, asked the woman, “What do you do for a living?” She answered, “I clean the community latrines.” Then she was asked, “And for how long have you done that?” She answered, “This job has been in my family for 1500 years.”

I’m sorry, folks, but, although Sanatana Dharma (“Hinduism”) is a world religion, something went very, very, very wrong. Something in the teachings of that religion was dead wrong, in that it created a system that kept a group of people permanently at the lowest rung of society, supposedly because of Samsara, the system of reincarnation. I saw videos in which some Dalits were digging up rats in order to eat—Yeah, eat the rats.

In order to try to figure out why such a condition had been birthed, and sustained for so long, through Sanatana Dharma teachings, which caused the servitude of a group of people that has lasted for thousands of years, I visited the headquarters of The International Society of Krishna Consciousness, on Lunt Street, on the north side of Chicago. That group is more commonly known as Hare Krishna.

I happened to have been pissed off that day, thinking about the poor Dalit people. So, I walked into ISKCON’S (the acronym they use for themselves) HQ, gangbusters. I walked into its bookstore, saw a young ISKCON member, dressed in traditional Hindu-style garb. He was an American convert to ISKCON’S interpretation of Hinduism as taught by its founder, Prabhupada.

Prabhupada, Courtesy duckduckgo.com

I said, “You got a moment?” He smiled and said, “Sure.” I said, “I’m going right at you!! Explain to me why any American would be interested in being part of a religion that has created a caste system that keeps one group of people at the bottom!” He smiled again and said, “Listen, I was just going upstairs to our cafeteria to eat. Would you mind joining me?” I was a bit surprised. He was very kind; very self-contained.

We went upstairs. We both got some food and sat down and started eating. Then he began explaining. Did he tell me that the Dalit people had “reincarnated” from a previous life within which they had done something wrong, and had been “re-born,” repeatedly, until they got it right and managed to escape Samsara? No. That is not what he explained, and, interestingly enough, he believed in reincarnation.

This is what he explained to me, from what I recall:

“The caste system is corrupt. There is no question about that. But it was not always that way. Prabhupada teaches that this is what happened: He teaches that the caste system, originally, was no different than the European guild system. You know, where, if your father was a carpenter, then you would train, under him, to be a carpenter and eventually qualify to enter the guild. If your father was a blacksmith, same thng: You would study, under your father, to be a blacksmith until you qualified to enter the guild.

Courtesy duckduckgo.com

“Well, this system became corrupted in India—obviously, very corrupted. Nefarious men, for selfish purposes, corrupted the former caste system and created a lower caste, the Dalits. That’s what happened. One of the things that Prabhupada is trying to do is reform that system.”

Had Prabupada simply made up an excuse, in some effort to “cleanse” Hinduism? I’m not qualified to answer that question. I’m not a scholar of Sanatana Dharma. But my gut, judging from the pure evil that, as history bears out, human beings have proven capable of conjuring up, I have no reason whatsoever to doubt Prabupada’s explanation. His explanation also had the potential to help cleanse Sanatana Dharma of that awful corruption.

What is the bottom line point? More than enough human history has passed so that we human beings, today, know a WHOLE LOT about the potential of a belief-system—better said, a belief within a belief system—to end up being not only harmful, but deadly. And the fact that, to this very day, there exists a people, the Dalit people, who have been held down in Indian society for THREE-THOUSAND YEARS demonstrates, concretely, that if an idea, especially coming from religion, is wrong, then that idea has the potential of adversely affecting the human family for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

I am now going to share a few things I’ve learned concerning some of the teachings within Falun Dafa, one of which, in particular, not only raises my eyebrows, but damn near burns them off. And please keep this belief of mine in your mind as you read: A belief, or a belief system, does not have to be in place, operating in society, for that belief, or belief system, to be potentially very dangerous and potentially very harmful.

Another thing that I ask you to keep in mind is this: I first learned about this particular belief I’m going to talk about, within Falun Dafa, in the year 2015, when I started practicing—and still practice—its exercise/meditation Qigong system. At first, I didn’t know about the beliefs I’m going to reveal to you. I was there only because I had heard that Falun Dafa taught Qigong.

Prior to that, my exercise/meditation form had been Yoga, which I’d practiced, off and on, since 1971. Anyway, it was at a Shen Yun Orchestra performance that I first learned about Falun Dafa. Shen Yun was created by Li Hongzhi, and is an absolutely excellent performance troupe. They have what they describe as a traditional Chinese dance troupe, as well as a full orchestra. The performance I and my wife attended was Shen Yun’s excellent orchestra, which plays classical European music as well as classical Chinese music. During the performance, I leaned over to my wife, herself a classical violinist who played in three symphony orchestras in her life, and asked, “How are they?” to which she answered, “Superb!!”

A Shen Yun performer, Courtesy duckduckgo.com

Anyway, on the handbill it stated that all of the orchestra members are asked, but not required, to learn Falun Dafa. At first, I thought that Falun Dafa was only Qigong. In other words, I thought that “Falun Dafa” was the name of its Qigong system. I did not know that Falun Dafa (Falun Gong) was both a complete belief system, as well as a group of people who were called “Falun Gong,” and who lived in China and were persecuted by the CCP (Communist Party of China).

So, I started going to their group Qigong practice sessions weekly, where they taught me their form of Qigong. And there was no charge. Li Hongzhi, the “founder” of Qigong, had created Falun Dafa’s unique Qigong system. I very, very, very highly recommend it.

Well, at one point, a Dafa practitioner informed me that there was more to Falun Dafa than Qigong, and that practitioner tried to start explaining. I immediately saw what was about to happen: The practitioner was an eager proselyte. I’d experienced GOO GOBS, to use that old expression, of proselytes in my life, and wanted no more of them. Indeed, I had once been a proselyte, standing on one of the corners of State and Madison, in downtown Chicago, shouting my particular Islamic truth. That had been in my very younger days.

So, I told the practitioner, “No. I am not here for that. I’m here for Qigong.” The practitioner kept insisting. I kept rejecting. Time passed. I began to feel badly that I had not at least given the practitioner a chance to explain the other aspects of Falun Dafa. So, we arranged to sit and talk.

I started reading about Falun Dafa. To my horror, I found something—and you can find it yourself, because I’ll give the reference below, eventually—that was absolutely horrifying. Li Hongzhi had written—and in more than one book or lecture—the following, and this is a direct quote:

As I said, I will give you the exact reference by linking to the URL where you can find it. Don’t take my word for it, if you’re interested. Check it out for yourself. It’s the Franciscan way.

I absolutely FLIPPED. I went to Falun Dafa’s website and gathered every email address I could find for Dafa practitioners in the United States, and pitched a bitch when I wrote to them. I was infuriated beyond words that I can express [or beyond words that I could express, but those words ain’t so nice]. The practitioner that had worked so hard to expose me to all of the teachings of the Dafa was very angry that I had written eebody and dey mamma. Remember: I had TOLD the practitioner that I was interested only in Qigong.

But, here’s the deal. In my younger years, back in the late 1960s, there had been a time when I was a “stomp-down, hardcore, down-with the game,” White-folks-hating Black nationalist for seven years of my life. It was a time when, had I heard that “It’s prohibited for the earth’s races to mix,” I would have shouted, “AMEN!!” But, time passed, and I worked my way out of my hatred in two ways:

1. Returning to the teachings of my dad, my mom, and the pre-1960s Black community at large.

2. Embracing the 4th part of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s (Malcolm X’s) life, when he embraced Sunni Islam, or “Orthodox Islam,” and proclaimed that Elijah Muhammad’s race teachings were false and against human brotherhood.

I told the short story, in another Substack article I wrote, about my mom. She’d been very patient with me during my “honkey”-hating days, always telling me, “Son, it’s not about White folks. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. Human beings, all throughout history, have been inhuman to each other.”

Nothing she would say to me would change my wish that every single “White” person on earth would somehow disappear. But, one day, while visiting her, I was watching TV. She was in her kitchen cooking. At one point, I heard her leave the kitchen and walk to her bedroom. When she exited the bedroom, she walked over to me and handed me a picture. It was a picture of a White man sitting on a white horse. I asked, “Who is that?” She calmly answered, “Your great grandfather,” and walked away.

My wise and patient Mom

OUCH!!! Believe me, that f*cked with me, BIG time. But, I threw it out of my mind—or so I’d thought. But, upon reflection, it’s crystal clear that my mom, in her wisdom, had permanently shaken the sh*it out of me. As of this month, my wife and I celebrate our 34th anniversary of marriage. She’s White.

Anyway, in the Black community of my era, we’d playfully refer to Black folks of my complexion as “sh*t-colored nigguhs.” Well, you know, I’m a sh*t-colored nigguh. My great-grandfather was a tall, arrogant-looking [as arrogant as I am!!] White man. And that “arrogance” inside of me is not really arrogance. I guess it can be called pride. Not because I’m a sh*t-colored nigguh, no. Pride, not because I’m Black. I’m proud because, throughout my life, I followed the strong example of my Black-as-coal dad, Nathaniel Spain Chism, never making excuses for my failures; always getting back up after I fell down. You know, as “old blue eyes,” Frank Sinatra, sang:

I am certain that the blood inside of me—that “arrogant” blood that’s from my “White,” great-grandfather—has helped me get through this tough life. It’s just as much a blessing as having two strong Black parents.

But, according to Li Hongzhi, my mother and dad’s marriage was some kind of violation of…..What? Hum? My mom was light-skinned. And what of my four, “mixed-race,” sh*t-colored children? What are they, according to Li Honghi? Some fluke of nature? Some violation of a Divine Law that I’ve never seen written in anyone’s scripture, nor in anyone’s heart?

In the 1950s, segregation was still on. So, Black folks simply could not afford to discriminate. We were all in the same boat: straights, gays, men, women, and any zebras that might have been around. Sometimes, my dad would invite the only White guy in the neighborhood, a Jew named Mr. Benson, to have dinner with us at 5138 S. Indiana.

One time he caught one of my big brother’s friends trying to sneak out the back door with my brother’s guitar. “Goddammit, boy, what the HELL you doing with Marcus’s guitar!” The cat answered, “I just came to get it for him. We getting ready to play some music.” Dad answered, “Why did you climb through the side window, instead of the front door!!” The cat could say nothing. Dad snatched the guitar from him, and the dude started running. Dad said, “And make sure you’re back here for dinner, nigguh!!” The guy stopped, turned around, smiled and continued running. And, yes, he came back later for dinner.

Cheese would even invite the gay guy of the neighborhood, even though, behind his back, people, including Cheese, would snicker about him. But nobody would hurt him, neither physically nor psychologically. He was a human being, and we treated him as such.

My beef, these days with LGBTQ is their militancy and attempts to unnecessarily force themselves on folks. Well, I’m getting off the track here, although my point should be clear: I do not support harming people. I see Li Honghi’s race teachings as harmful or potentially harmful.

Li Hongzhi’s anti-“race”-mixing sounds FAMILIAR, doesn’t it? Do you remember that “scientific” [NOT!!] name that “race”-mixing was called in our country at one time? Remember? Miscegenation.

“Regulated by state law, miscegenation was illegal in many states for decades. However, interracial marriage in the United States has been fully legal in all U.S. states since the 1967 Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia, that decreed all state anti- miscegenation laws unconstitutional.”⁶

So now, here comes Li Hongzhi—from China—in 1992 “informing” us that a large portion of Americans are all mistakes, or violations. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, dear reader, but it gets worse: He also says that mixed-”race” people do not have a heaven to go to. Again, I’ll give exact references later.

Now, I’m gonna fess up with ya’ll. I very much hesitated to reveal this, for two reasons. First of all, it’s already all over the web. You can find it easily, even at Wikipedia. But, the second reason I didn’t want to put this “on the wire,” as the old saying goes, is because I grew what I’d thought was a great friendship with the practitioner that had insisted that I learn more than just Falun Dafa’s Qigong system. I did not want to, in any manner, disturb the individual by mentioning this stuff in public. I think the practitioner reads my Substack articles.

So, why would I write this article? The answer comes directly from my religion, Islam. Prophet Muhammad is reported, in hadeeth, to have said something that I agree with from within my soul, and that I have practiced:

“If you see a wrong, stop it with your hand. If you can’t stop it with your hand, then speak against it. And if you can’t speak against it, then condemn it in your mind [some versions of the hadeeth say, “condemn it in your heart”]. And of those three choices, the last one is the weakest.”⁷

So, Rasoolulah (the Messenger of Allah, i.e., Prophet Muhammad) was stating, obviously, that the first and second options were preferable. But, you still had that third option. I chose the second option. I can’t stop people from believing what they believe. But I can, and will speak against what I perceive as something that is dead wrong, as well as potentially dangerous to human society.

Now, you may be wondering what the practitioner’s reaction was to my reaction when I told the practitioner that Li Hongzhi’s race teachings were “abhorrent,” is the word I used. This is what the practitioner said in response: “Haven’t I treated you well?” Yes, the practitioner had. I responded, “Can’t you see that Teacher’s statements about race are inherently wrong, just within themselves?” The practitioner emailed me, saying, “There are other Dafa practitioners who are mixed-race. And they have no problems with Teacher’s teachings.” Of course, I answered, “I’m not them. I know nothing whatsoever about them.”

Then the practitioner said something that they obviously was unaware was a kind of cheap, if not insulting thing to say to someone: “Well, we even have a famous Black musician, Sterling Campbell, who is a Dafa practitioner. And he doesn’t have any problem with Teacher’s mixed-race teaching.”

Sterling Campbell, en.wikipedia.org

To borrow an expression from our Jewish brothers and sisters, Oy vey! I “signed biat,” meaning that I joined The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam in the year 1976. Although I am not active, I still consider myself an Ahmadi Muslim. And every year, at our annual convention, called Jalsa Salana, I would sometimes sit, on the floor, next to Yusuf Latif, a long-time, staunch member of Ahmadiyyat. As anyone in music knows, Yusuf Latif was amongst the top jazz artists of all time.

Yusuf Latif, Courtesy npr.org

For a man of his stature, who was internationally known, brother Yusuf was the most humble human being I had ever met. While sitting together, at the Silver Springs Mosque of Ahmadiyyat, waiting for Salat⁸ to begin, brother Yusuf would lightly pat me on my leg and query, “So, brother, how’s the wife?” I’d answer, “Al-Hamdulillah⁹, brother, she’s just fine.” He’d respond, “Al-Hamdulillah. And what about Aisha?” Aisha was my daughter. I’d reply, “Al-Hamdulillah.” He’d then ask, “Are they here at Jalsa?” I’d reply, “Yes.” He’d ask, “And how was your trip here, brother” I’d respond, “Al-Hamdullilah.”

Now, I just have to go off topic a bit concerning Yusuf Latif. I want you to imagine this, and it is something I witnessed every Jalsa Salana. Jalsa hasn’t fully begun yet. Ahmadis are walking the grounds, finding friends from other Jamaats¹⁰, and just cooling out waiting for Jalsa to officially begin. Eventually, more and more people would come

And you could always tell when Yusuf had arrived: You couldn’t see him!! You’d see a large crowd of people, mostly Pakistani Ahmadis. So you’d think, “Well, there’s Yusuf!!” And why would they be gathered around him? Was it because he was a world-famous Jazz musician? Absolutely not. You’d hear them, one by one, asking for his prayers for them and family members:

• “Brother Yusuf sahib, my daughter is getting married! Please pray for my daughter’s success in her marriage!!!”

• “Brother Yusuf sahib, my son is making matriculation [graduating from college]!! Please pray that Almighty Allah guides him to a good job!!!”

• “Brother Yusuf, sahib, my uncle just had a stroke!! Please pray that Almighty Allah As-Shafi¹¹ will give recovery to my uncle!!”

It was common knowledge in the American Ahmadiyya community that Yusuf Latif’s prayers were always answered in the positive. That man was a saint!! Those Pakistanis barely gave a damn about Yusuf’s status as an internationally-known, famous musician. Indeed, sometimes you’d look at Yusuf and wonder how such a person could be so humble.

There is a special, not-required prayer that Muslims can say called Tahujjid. To perform Tahujjid prayer, you get up out of your sleep, in the wee hours of the morning, like 3:00 a.m., to perform that prayer. Every single year, at Jalsa, I would get up out of bed, at my hotel room, drive to the Jalsa site, run into the Mosque to try to BEAT Yusuf Latif before he got there. And every single year I failed!!.

I’d get there at 1:00 a.m. Yusuf would have already been there. Next year, I’d get there at 2:00 a.m. Yusuf had already been there. Every year, try as I may, I could never beat Yusuf to the Mosque for Tahujjid prayer!! It was as if he had a spiritual radar device that could detect who had gotten up to go to the Mosque for Tahujjid!! Well, sorry for the diversion, but I just had to share that with you.

Rosana Arquette, and her sister, Patricia Arquette are famous Hollywood movie stars. Both are practitioners of the spiritual system called Subud.

Courtesy duckduckgo

Now, should I make my decisions about the truth or falsehood of a belief system or a belief within that belief system based on the fact that a musician, or a Hollywood star, adhere to that belief system, or adhere to a certain belief within the belief system, hum? You adhere to a belief based on the truthfulness of that belief, or perhaps better and more honestly said, based on how you perceive that belief system or belief, in terms of its truthfulness.

By the way—and, again, I am not making religious or spiritual recommendations in this article—Subud is interesting. It has no doctrine. It has no scripture. It has no priests, gurus, teachers or masters. It is a very interesting spiritual practice. That is as much as I will say, because, in order for me to respect Subud and its practitioners, I feel it is only fair that I also respect Subud’s and its practitioners’ rule: not to preach about Subud.

Anyway, here was my good Dafa practitioner friend telling me about a drummer named Sterling. When I accepted Ahmadiyyat, I did not know that Yusuf Lateef, Ahmad Jamaal, Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner, Ahmed Abdul Malik, Idrees Sulieman, Talib Dawud, Dakota Staton, Abbey Lincoln, and other famous musicians were all members of The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam, now called The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. I accepted Ahmadiyyat only because its teachings appealed to me, not because great jazz entertainers were members.

So, trying to impress me about some drummer named Sterling was just a bit lame.

We had been reading Li Hongzhi’s book, Zhuan Falun, together, which doesn’t include the race stuff. At one point, the practitioner decided they wanted to read Li’s other writings aside from Zhuan Falun. I agreed, knowing, of course, about Li’s teachings on race, but just hoping it would not come up again. It did. I read with the practitioner. We alternated reading paragraphs. And there it was.

That evening, I emailed the practitioner and said that I just would not read that stuff about race again. Other teachings of his are great. Some are strange; some very strange. Me, being a refugee from the ‘60s, was not afraid of strange. I’d check out things that others wouldn’t—the St. Augustine in me. And there are some other teachings, regarding Samsara (reincarnation) that I, as a Muslim, simply will never accept. But, I was trying hard to learn more about Li’s teachings, as well as support the practitioner.

When I indicated to the practitioner that I wanted to go back to reading only Zhuan Falun, the practitioner insisted that they would not do that. They wanted to read every single one of his books and lectures until we’d gone through all of them.

I then made another suggestion: “I tell you what: Show me where Li explains, in detail, the origin of his race beliefs.” They answered, “No, I will not do that. That would be taking Teacher’s teachings out of context.” I responded, “I don’t see it that way at all. If I have a book on the history of countries, and each chapter deals with a different country, I don’t have to read the entire book to learn about the ONE country I want to know about.” So, that ended it. For certain private reasons, I’ll say no more about that conversation, other than that communication, of any type, has ended between us. What did old blue eyes say? That’s life. Life can present pain and disappointment. That’s life.

Another thing that I had a big problem with was Samsara. Li Hongzhi teaches that, if you see two people fighting, do not get involved. Because those two people might be working out some form of “karmic retribution,” whereas, in a previous life, one of them had assaulted the other one. And now, in this life, the one assaulted in a previous life now has a chance to get his retribution [What if he gets his ass kicked again, though?]

Now, mind you, I am not mocking that belief at all. I respect that particular belief. But, for the life of me, I could never accept that. Decades ago, I was walking downtown with my two little kids from my first marriage. We were nearing the Prudential Building. Two people were engaged in a fist fight.

I intervened, stopped them from fighting, calmed them down, and played the role of mediator. Everything ended well and my children and I continued on. Both of my children were looking up at me, smiling. They’d witnessed care. They’d witnessed, perhaps, bravery, although I simply would not call it that. I just acted. Anyway, as I see it, my children learned a lesson. And guess what?! My now-grown daughter, who has a PhD herself, has always spent her time mentoring kids to and through college. Did she get it from me? I don’t know. I’d like to believe that she did. But she did tell me that when she was a little girl, watching me study while I had her on my lap, the seriousness with which I pursued my studies impacted her greatly, and she told me she attributes her academic success directly to me [Just thought I’d throw that in there—brag a little bit!].

Now, again: I do not condemn Li Hongzhi’s teaching about not getting involved because someone might be living out some kind of Karmic existence that I should not interfere with. But what about Dee? That’s the prostitute I spent 9 months taking off the streets, as I recorded in my free book, Uncle Tom’s Uncle. You can read about it in the chapter of the book entitled, Dee. She lived in a hood, on the west side of Chicago, that was like an island. It was a place where, had she not changed, her kids may have ended up in the same life.

I didn’t assume that she was “walking,” as prostitution was called, back in the day, because of some karmic stuff she had to work out in this life due to something she’d done wrong in a previous life. I inspired her to quit “ho’n,” and she did quit. She became a real estate agent, and used her legitimate earnings to send her youngest daughter all the way through college to graduation.

Personally, I view the idea of “not interfering” in someone’s life, due to some karmic stuff from a previous life, as a belief that can potentially take away one’s humanity. I ain’t going for that, not ever. By the way, even the Indian government, to be fair, has been trying to erase caste in India. But one problem is that the people are so used to it that it’s hard to get people to change.

I worked at the Baha’i National Center for 10 years. Baha’i is a religion. A woman friend there told me the following: She said that, even though Indian Baha’is had converted to The Baha’i Faith from Hinduism, whenever they were out for a walk and were approaching the village where people of a “higher caste” lived, they would first take their shoes off before walking into that village, a self-condemning act designed to re-instill, every single time, in their minds, that their “place” is lower than the “place” of the people in that village, who were of a “higher” caste. Hey, THAT sh*t ain’t GOING in America!!! Sorry. Here is a sad documentary, entitled, India Untouched:

Here is the link to the document that includes Li Hongzhi’s statement, “It’s prohibited for the earth’s races to mix.” And here’s a link to a document that includes Li Hongzhi saying that mixed-”race” people have no heaven to go to. Don’t take my word for anything. Read it yourselves. And that’s just one document. He says it in other documents, also. Here’s a lengthy example from the link I mentioned above. Bolded emphasis is mine.

“In the reincarnation process it is the main soul that reincarnates, whereas what has mixed blood is the flesh body. Different divine beings created their own different peoples, and in history those divine beings have all along been taking care of the people they themselves created. White people are white people, black people are black people, and people of the yellow race are people of the yellow race. Any ethnicity in the world is a race that corresponds with the Heavens. After mixing blood people no longer have their correspondence to the divine beings in the Heavens. And then it is possible that none of the divine beings that created humans will take care of them. Then with regard to these people, they are very pitiable. Some people might be wondering what to do, then. I’ll tell you, don’t be anxious. I am talking about the situation at the human being’s surface. Since humans’ main souls haven’t mixed, if people want to cultivate I can enable them to cultivate. If you can cultivate to the last step you can Consummate all the same, and there won’t be any distinction. Cultivation won’t be a problem.

“If an everyday person is in the circumstance [we just discussed] then he will lead a very pitiable life. The divine beings above won’t recognize a region where there is a concentration of mixed races, so normally the people in such a region are destitute and have a hard life.”

To compare, here’s what Islam says, in Qur’an, about the origins of we humans. Again, bolded emphasis is mine.

“O ye people! fear your Lord, Who created you from a single soul and created therefrom its mate, and from them twain spread many men and women; and fear Allah, in Whose name you appeal to one another, and fear Him particularly respecting ties of relationship. Verily, Allah watches over you.”¹²

There’s nothing in Qur’an about “white, black, yellow” people being created by “different divine beings” and having different heavens. The very evolution in consciousness, which, in part, created means for people to travel, far and wide, away from their homes, in itself declares Li Hongzhi’s race teachings to be dead wrong.

As a Black man who was born and raised in the United States, despite my hesitancy in dropping this info here at Substack, I take life VERY, VERY, VERY seriously when it comes to this issue of race. My people—Black people—have already gone through being told that we were LESS THAN everybody else.

We were once told, by Whites, that we were “the cursed descendants of Ham,” one of Noah’s sons, who “looked upon Noah’s nakedness,” and that, because of that, we had been “condemned to slavery,” and that our slavery was “God’s Will.” And, I’m very sorry to report, even in the early 1960s, you could hear Black people, some of them, on Saturday mornings at the barber shop, actually saying, “Well, you know, we cursed!!” They weren’t joking. They’d been brainwashed even up to that late year.

Ideas and beliefs that are fundamentally wrong and that have the potential to endanger people for thousands of years, must be called out. By the way, to be fair: There are Dafa practitioners that have ignored Li Hongzhi’s teachings and married whomever they wished, and that includes people of a “different,” so-called “race.” As I said earlier: When those eyes meet, buddy, ain’t no teaching in the UNIVERSE gonna stop a man and a woman from get’n it on!!! That’s called life.

To my Dafa brothers and sisters, sorry. But, perhaps, if there did not exist living proof, in the form of today’s Dalits, that a belief or a belief system can have the inherent potential to place someone in a form of almost perpetual subservience, I might have not highlighted Li’s race teachings in this article. This is serious business, not just some religious doctrine that one just recites. Ideas have the potential for good or for bad, depending on the idea.

And, though this might seem a contradiction, I still very strongly recommend that people consider leaning the Qigong system as taught by Dafa practitioners. They will teach you for free. There’s no doctrine to think about while practicing Qigong. It is a system of slow and no movements that is excellent for your mental and physical well-being.

You can find all that you want to know, including Li’s teaching on race, at falundafa.org. Notice, near the top, towards the right, the “Books and Writings” tab. I believe that all of Li Hongzhi’s books and writings are there. So, you can check them out yourselves. Do your own research. Don’t take my word for anything.

About the two symbols at the top of the page. The symbol on the left is Islam’s statement about the Oneness of God. It’s called the Kalimah. As for the symbol on the right, that is Falun Dafa’s symbol, and I invite you to look up its meaning on your own. The part of the Falun Dafa symbol that sits in the middle is an ancient, Indian religious symbol, NOT the symbol of Hitler’s Nazi Third Reich. Hitler corrupted the symbol, something that pains some Indians to this day. The other symbols have meanings that I invite you to look up, one being the Yin/Yang symbol.

As we ended phone calls, meetings, and letters, back in the day, Peace out!

1. The major one influencing me being Augustine’s statement that the believer should be involved in the constant pursuit of truth.

2. Recorded testimonies of the doings and sayings of Prophet Muhammad

3. It means, “May Allah be pleased with him,” customary when saying the names of male companions of Prophet Muhammad, successors to Prophet Muhammad, great “saints” of Islam, etc. When speaking of Muhammad’s wives, one would say, “Razi Allaho anHA.”

4. When the word “sahaba” is used, it refers to a companion of Prophet Muhammad, or any Muslim alive during Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime.

5. It means, “Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him.”

6. https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Miscegenation%20laws.pdf

7. https://www.abuaminaelias.com/dailyhadithonline/2012/02/26/whoever-sees-evil-change-it/

8. The formal prayer that Muslims perform, preferably in congregation.

9. It means, “All Praise is due to Allah.” In Islam, Muslims try to remember that everything good comes from Almighty God, Allah. So, sometimes Muslims will answer, simply, “Al-Hamdullilah.” Or, as I answered brother Yusuf, “Al-Hamdulillah, brother, she’s just fine.” But answering, simply, “Al-Hamdullilah,” in general conversation, generally carries the assumption that everything’s cool.

10. Other Ahmadi communities around the country.

11. Allah The Healer

12. https://www.alislam.org/quran/view/?page=255&region=E3