Brother Gregory Muhammad is the Nation of Islam Prison Reform Ministry Delaware Valley Coordinator and member of Mosque #12 Philadelphia. He was sentenced in 1978 to multiple 10-20 years consecutive and 5-10 years running concurrent sentences, where he served 34 years across prisons in Pennsylvania. In the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation, we know Brother Gregory as a close Brother and friend in the struggle for humanity.
We began a two-part conversation with Brother Gregory in 2025, in which we sought to learn from his life as an example for youth dedicated to transforming the evils of American society: white supremacy, poverty and war. We witnessed his testimony as embodying the teachings of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam Prison Reform Ministry.
Brother Gregory’s life is the story of the Second Resurrection, when the Honorable Louis Farrakhan in 1977 began to rebuild the Nation of Islam as a vanguard group in the struggle against white supremacy. His life also embodies the promise of Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the World House, in which Black America and world humanity are united in a common destiny. We also recognize Brother Gregory’s example as that of the transformed nonconformist, a model of nonviolent resistance in the 21st century.
In 2026, we believe America is in the deepest and most complex crisis since its founding. We see this as a crisis of imperialism and of Western civilization that has accelerated since King’s assassination in 1968. Since then we have lived six decades absent a broad people’s movement struggling directly against American imperialism, poverty and racism. We see the rediscovery of King’s vision as central to the path through this crisis, and seek to build unity with institutions from which such a movement would emerge again.
The Nation of Islam is one such organization. Minister Louis Farrakhan’s leadership has guarded and nurtured Black civilization, while raising generations of a revolutionary guard who have inherited his vision for freedom, community leadership, unity, education and governance, and have applied it in new and creative ways.
We recognize the Nation of Islam Prison Reform Ministry as a modern, creative advancement of the strategies and worldview laid forth in the Black Freedom Movement, and especially of nonviolence. Nonviolence, often misrepresented as passivity, is noncooperation with evil. It is the most democratic weapon for social change, granted that any person of any age, class or race; even a child, can wield it. Nonviolence exercises the force of morality, or the force of one’s soul to transform an unjust system.
The aftermath of violence is bloodshed, but the aftermath of nonviolent warfare is the creation of the Beloved Community. The core leaders of the Black Freedom Movement alongside King, such as Coretta Scott, Diane Nash and James Lawson, held a common belief that in the 21st century nonviolence is still the strongest weapon for social change for the oppressed.
This report summarizes a five-month long study of the Nation of Islam Prison Reform Ministry as a response to the criminalization of the Black community, told through the life of Brother Gregory Muhammad. Our study is part of a larger project of sociology we began in the Free School last year. We were especially guided by the work and lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and W.E.B. Du Bois.
Inheriting the sociology of Du Bois, we pursue knowledge believing it is the courageous moral choices of ordinary human beings who make history, and that Black civilization leads the struggle for peace and democracy in America. We also believe science and knowledge, in their purest form, are instruments for the liberation of humanity. Science, the discovery of the laws of social change, and Knowledge, the Truth, belong to the people in the determination of their destinies. We present this report on these terms, in hopes of contributing to humanity’s long struggle for freedom.
The Prison Reform Ministry, Jewel of the Nation
“And so, my children, I caused you to suffer in the furnace of affliction so that I might purify you and resurrect you from a grave of death and ignorance. I, God, put in your soul, not a law written on stone, but I have written the law on the tablets of your heart.”
Minister Louis Farrakhan, 1995
Million Man March speech
The Prison Reform Ministry is a jewel of the Nation. It is the most advanced program of prison reform in the country and should be known and studied as such, overcoming criminalization and recidivism by the creation of new men with a heightened moral purpose. The Prison Reform Ministry has been immensely successful in its purpose.
It has been a core ministry of the teachings of the Nation since its early years, when the Honorable Elijah Muhammad started Muhammad’s Prison Reform Program in the 1940s during his own incarceration. Elijah Muhammad, like Muslims across the country, had been imprisoned for refusing the draft during World War II. “He was teaching the truth, during the time that they were prosecuting a war. That’s why they really took him off the street,” described Brother Gregory. When Minister Louis Farrakhan took leadership, the program was restored as the Nation of Islam Prison Reform Ministry.
The Nation of Islam’s revolutionary theology is directly exemplified by the Prison Reform Ministry: Islam as a religion of the disinherited and strategy for an oppressed people’s liberation. The ministry is evidence of the Nation of Islam’s profound sense of love, especially for Black people, the most dispossessed of America. The teachings anoint these men and women as divine, Children of the Most High.
During Minister Farrakhan’s rebuilding in the 1980s, many state prisons sought to minimize the Nation of Islam presence because of their moral challenge to prison authorities. Brothers in the Pennsylvania prison system were especially targeted for their militant commitment to Islam. Mosque #12 Philadelphia, a stronghold of the Nation during the time of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, was the backbone of this discipline and struggle throughout Pennsylvania prisons.
Pennsylvania was the most progressive Nation of Islam presence in the prison. And a lot of the other states in the 60s and the 70s followed the example of the Muslims in prison in Pennsylvania. So that reputation stayed with us. After the transition of the Nation of Islam in 1975 and Minister Farrakhan standing up in 1977 and starting rebuilding the Nation of Islam, those of us who were in prison wanted to help him do that on the inside. So we started proposing, requesting, you know, to have the right to worship in the prisons, to have our classes and different things like that.
And, the prison staff knowing that; in the early years, the Muslims were the most disciplined in the prison. We had to fight to get the right to worship, but not as severe as some others had to fight. They wouldn’t allow no books in, no papers, nothing. But they were allowing us to get the books and permitting us to get The Final Call newspaper.
That had an effect on us, on our psyche, in prison, you know, to just walk in the footsteps of those before us who fought so hard to get the right to worship. And now we’re coming in to uplift what was established that was destroyed. So it was our mission to be obedient. It was our mission to follow the rules and regulations, as long as it did not conflict with our religion, as long as it did not violate our religion. So as such, we gained the respect from the prison staff and the guards.
It was at State Correctional Institution, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, which actually happens to be the headquarters of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. We were more level-minded, we were more obedient, we were more disciplined than any of the other prisoners in the prison. And to bring it back up to date, it was because of our study of the Self-Improvement study guides.
Criminalization of Black Men and Youth
“You have to struggle to prove there is character in you, Black man. And that is why the last will be the first. And that is why the stone that the builders rejected is going to be the headstone of the corner.”
Minister Louis Farrakhan, 1986
Self-Improvement: The Basis for Community Development speech
The American criminal justice system is incompatible with modern human progress, only explainable through the logic of white supremacy. It is an unusually cruel institution that reveals how deeply white supremacy and violence have guided the American state’s organization of society. Criminalization in the U.S. has been deliberately designed to destroy young Black men, to undermine the foundations of Black civilization and to halt the natural rise of Black leadership. It is evidence of the essential battle in America today — the struggle between two civilizations: white, and Black.
When the Black Freedom Movement moved North in the final years of King’s life, it united the struggle against racism, war and poverty in one worldview to address the suffering they confronted among the Northern poor. These campaigns were left unfinished following King’s assassination in 1968. Absent united leadership to carry this struggle forward, the American state initiated an overturning of the Black Freedom Movement in the 1970s that explains the problems we face today.
In the decades preceding the state’s attempt to destroy the Black man, Black men and women had been forging a new civilization, perhaps most deeply exemplified in their art and music. Songs of love and freedom emerged in Philadelphia: “Betcha By Golly, Wow,” “Darlin’ Darlin’ Baby,” “We Are One.” But the future of the Black movement was uncertain absent King’s vision. His assassination left the community vulnerable to the state’s suppression of this emerging civilization.
Deindustrialization was a new stage in the attack on Black men. North Philadelphia, a former center of industry and cradle of civilization, was already heavily deindustrialized when Brother Gregory was coming up in the 1970s. While state initiatives like COINTELPRO were used to decapitate the leadership of the Black community, deindustrialization decimated the social base that produced this leadership. It was an assault on the material basis that made the life of the Black man as a freedom fighter and builder of civilization possible.
Deindustrialization opened the door to the state’s successful introduction of criminalization in the 1990s as its most sophisticated weapon to undermine Black civilization. From 1970 to 2000, incarceration rates rose 400 percent, with Black men disproportionately imprisoned. The untrue narrative of Black men as inherently criminal has caused untold human suffering.
Brother Gregory, at a young age, looked out to a society that had failed him. His dreams were deferred in a white nation with fixed options for who Black people can become. He spent an entire adulthood, 34 years, unjustly imprisoned. How did he keep the faith? His strategy for freedom required divine intervention; the will of God, a force beyond the chaos and evils of earth, that could elevate him from a delinquent youngster into a divine man.
Looking back after coming into greater knowledge, Brother Gregory described himself as falling into delinquency as a juvenile due to peer pressure. His father was a police officer and other children did not want to be around him because his “pop a cop.” This led him to take risks to be accepted and graduate into joining the neighborhood gang, 25th and Allegheny.
And, one night I came in the house and my younger brother, he said to me, “Greg. I met a brother named Brother Raymond.”
I said, “A brother named Brother Raymond? Whatchu talking about? We only got two — me and Gerry, we’re the only brothers you know.” I don’t know what he’s talking about. He met a brother?
“No, he’s a Muslim.”
“What is a Muslim? What are you talking about? Is that a gang or something?”
He said, “No, no, no, it’s a good brother. He lived down here on Bailey Street.”
I don’t want to hear nothing about that, man. You know, being from Allegheny Avenue, I don’t want to hear nothing about that. So, few days, I guess, go by.
And one night, we were in gang wars, and, we were running down Allegheny Avenue chasing the opposite gang. Right? Not with guns, you know, because at that time, a gun was something that wasn’t available as guns are available today — in abundance. It was very special for a gang to have a gun, you know. So it was sticks, bricks, bottles and hand knives. Okay. So, I’m running down Allegheny Avenue and I had a soda bottle in my hand and I was about to throw the soda bottle. And when I lift my hand to go throw it, my arm was snatched. I’m thinking it’s the police.
When I turn around and look at them, it’s a Black man with a suit on and a bow tie, and he’s saying to me, “Brother, what are you going to do? Bust your brother in the head with that bottle you got? You don’t want to do that. You know, when you hit your brother on the head with that soda bottle, it’s like hitting you in your own head because that’s your brother. You’re bone of each other’s bone. Blood of each other’s blood. Flesh of each other’s flesh.”
I say, “Man, get off me.”
“My name is Brother Raymond.” Click. My brother told me about Brother Raymond a few nights ago, right?
So I said, “Oh, you brother Raymond.”
I calmed down and he began to talk to me about the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. I said, “I’d never heard nothing like that. Can I learn more about it?”
He had a storefront where he was and he just moved into the neighborhood. He had a storefront, and he offered me to come in. And I went inside and he had all of the books of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad — Message to the Black Man, Fall of America, Our Savior Has Arrived and the Muhammad Speaks newspaper. He was selling bean pies. So that’s the first time I ever seen a bean pie.
I said to him, “Can I go to the temple?”
“Sure. I told your brother that I could take him this next Sunday.”
Right. So I agreed to go. Me and my brother went to the temple together. When we went, my mind was clear of the streets, you know. I had no thought of my friends, nobody out on the street.
All I wanted to do was hear this man, Elijah Muhammad, and I knew that he was also the teacher of Muhammad Ali. And I loved Muhammad Ali as a child, as a boxer. And I’m saying, “Wow, you mean to tell me I’m going to be in the same place with his teacher? It’s going to be beautiful.”
Despite this inspiration, he still struggled with peer pressure taking him back into trouble. A small time break-in led him to the Marines as a way to avoid juvenile detention; racism in the Marines cut his service short and he found himself back in Philadelphia.
With Imam Warith Deen’s reforms having ended the welcoming environment of Mosque #12, and being told by a counselor at the Veterans Administration that he would “never find a job, never own property, never, never, never,” Brother Gregory returned to criminal activity. This led him to the incident resulting in his trial.
My part in the crime that led me to prison, with a 30 to 60 unjust sentence, was to help someone. I was criminally active, yes, but that particular crime was to help someone else who was faced with, allegedly, death. Everyone involved in my case was criminally active, drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes. No one involved in the crime was living right, straight or lawful. What caused me to be prosecuted to the extent that I was because I refused unjust prosecution.
The part of the crime that I committed was less serious than the other two I was with. Those two, another brother and a sister, the brother; he plead guilty, in 1978, he got 7 ½ to 15 years. It was a kidnapping case involving another state, NJ…
I’m not pleading guilty to crimes I did not do, only to what I did do. I didn’t know about the conspiracy charge; that if you were there, or if you left but had knowledge, you could be charged. I probably would have done it a little different if I had known about this conspiracy act. I would have plead guilty so that I would not have to do this extreme sentence of 30 to 60 years. But I was also, really wrestling with that, because in Islam you get charged for what you did. It ain’t no conspiracy act.
Brother Gregory received an unjust sentence because he resisted an unjust prosecution that charged him beyond the acts he committed. He was sentenced by a racist judge who told Brother Gregory that he would be released when Brother Gregory was “too old to ever commit a crime like this if you live.” Yet, the next chapter of Brother Gregory’s experience with the criminal justice system would bring developments in his life that neither the judge nor the system’s architects could anticipate.
An Emblem of Nonviolence
“Every method of nonviolence must conform to love, to the doctrine of the Cross, and to a vocation of the suffering servant.”
James Lawson
Unpublished book draft
Islam as taught by the Nation of Islam is an advanced theology for resisting and overcoming white supremacy. The teachings when practiced in prison directly undermine the state’s definition of the Black man as a criminal. In obeying divine law above an unjust law of society, the teachings reveal the immorality of the law of the state.
To understand the full meaning of these ideals, we turn to James Lawson, the primary theorist of the Black Freedom Movement. Lawson worked closely with King and developed nonviolence as the central political strategy of the movement. He identified nonviolence as a science of social change and emphasized that it must evolve beyond a political method and into a way of life. “Nonviolence stresses redemptive suffering; that is, the technique of breaking the power or suffering by absorbing the suffering inflicted by the opponent without retaliation in kind or spirit.”
We interpret the achievements of Brother Gregory’s tenure within the Reform Ministry as modern, creative advancements in nonviolence that contribute to the blueprint of the next broad freedom movement in America. Through the ugly and dehumanizing experience of 34 years in prison, Brother Gregory absorbed the teachings of the Nation of Islam to chisel himself into a divine man, witnessing and reforming the divine potential in others. He refused to yield to the state’s degradation. The instances of his sacrifice and courage demonstrate the moral vitality required to overcome the immoral authority of white civilization.
My experience with labor in prison was a struggle in the beginning of my incarceration. All prisoners had to start working in the prison kitchen before working any other prison job and their other jobs paid more money. The standard inmate pay rate was $0.14 an hour. Being Muslim and working in the kitchen was a challenge because Muslims do not handle pork, because it is forbidden by Allah. Prison staff threatened us with lockdown in a restricted housing unit if we refused to handle the forbidden flesh, swine or pork. I refused and was punished.
I said, “Come on, Mr. Salis. In the interview that I had with you, you agreed that I didn’t have to handle pork at all.”
“Yeah, but I had a talk with the Imam. He told me that Muslims can handle pork. They can make pork patties or they can wash the pots or whatever, and just go back to their cell and ask Allah for forgiveness.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Salis but that Imam is not my Imam — number one. Number two, my teacher is the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and we don’t have nothing to do with the Sunni community and none of that in here. That has nothing to do with us. We live by a divine law, and you can actually read it. It’s called How to Eat to Live book one and two, and it prohibits us to touch the pot, to touch the utensils; that is, more or less to eat it.”
He looked at me and he said, “Well, Mr. Moore, today you’re going to go and do it.”
“I’m not doing nothing. I’m not. I just explained to you, and now you try and violate my religion. Now you’re in conflict with me living righteously. That divine law is punishable by God. So what your punishment is that you talk about giving me is nothing. So just give me my ID and send me back to my cell block.”
“You want to get written up?”
“Do whatever you have to do, sir. I’m not going into that meat prep and I’m not making no pork patties. I’m going to my cell.”
To make a long story short, they shipped me out of Somerset. But the superintendent of Mahanoy City wasn’t taking me back in his prison. So they sent me to SCI Graterford.
I still have the misconduct that Salis wrote for me to this day. I have a copy of it. And it’s not easy dealing with that, you know what I mean? It’s not easy dealing with that. Because after you do that, now the word is out that you’re a rebel. So they do things to you. They lost some of my personal property, boxes of books and all kinds of stuff.
Brother Gregory made unbendable moral choices in prison which challenged the system and the people who upheld it to contend with his humanity; and in response, to change. Afterward, a Black prison official acquitted Gregory of these charges, and Salis came to regret his decision to prosecute Brother Gregory.
I had a conversation with one of the head inmate cooks at Somerset, called Mississippi. The week of my transfer I’m not working in the kitchen any more. Mississippi seen me in the yard, and he told me he talked to Salis, and told me Salis really regret what he did.
Mississippi said, “Salis hated to see you go through what you going through and now you gonna be transferred.”
He said, “I know Brother Gregory, you ain’t worried about how he feels, but Salis regrets what he did. The conversation we had with him when he hired you, he didn’t hold his end of it. That he shouldn’t have ordered you to go into meat prep.”
Peaceful Warrior
Brother Gregory showed great love for his brothers and went to solitary confinement multiple times as punishment (sometimes voluntarily) for his work in building the Prison Reform Ministry. Their lodestar was Minister Farrakhan, who showed great love, support and gave regular guidance by mail and phone to Brother Gregory.
At SCI Huntington, Brother Gregory was reading from The Final Call in the recreation yard, sharing news of Minister Farrakhan’s defense of Rev. Jesse Jackson during Rev. Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign. The guards used this as an opportunity to falsely persecute him, claiming he had called for an uprising with hidden weapons, and locked him for 60 days in solitary confinement.
It blew my mind. I’m a young brother at that time — I was disciplined — but I’m like, “What? They lied on me like that.”
When Gregory appeared before the program review committee, he pleaded not guilty. After the hearing, his counselor, a white man, pulled him aside. The counselor told him that charges were trumped up, and that the only way out was to write to the FBI. SCI Huntington was under investigation for unmarked graves. Gregory wrote the letter. Two agents came, one white, one Black.
The Black agent said, “I happen to like a lot that Minister Farrakhan says. Listen, they’re gonna ask you what we talked about. You don’t have to tell him. And if they pressure you, you write us back and we’re gonna come right into the institution.”
Within a week, Gregory was processed out but he still had a lawsuit pending.
Before I left, the deputy superintendent called me to his office and said, “I have the Pennsylvania deputy attorney general on the phone, ready to settle out of court on your lawsuit.” The lawsuit was the right to worship — violation of the 1st and 14th amendments — asking for the same rights that all the other religious groups in the prison are given: the right to our Ramadan, the right to our Eid, all of our holidays, et cetera. So I said yes, sir.
He said, “I’m going to get her on the phone and you’re going to talk to her right here.”
It was a female — I forget her name today. She said exactly what the deputy superintendent said, and she said, “You have filed monetary damages too of $10,000.” I said yes, ma’am.
She said, “Well, we’re ready to give you everything that you’re asking for.” And I said, “Well, I’m unable to accept it at this time because I have to first call Minister Farrakhan to ask him how to handle this.” She said, “You call Minister Farrakhan?” I said, “Yes, ma’am.”
When I told him, he was happy to hear that the state was ready for an out of court settlement.
He asked me, “Are they going to give you everything that you and your brothers need for your worship and your classes — your Ramadan?” I said yes, sir.
He said, “That is good, brother. Did you file for monetary damages?” I said yes, sir. “How much did you ask for?” “$10,000.” “They ready to give that to you?” “Yes, sir.”
He said, “Well, brother, you know, we don’t accept money from the government. But if you want to accept it as an individual, you can go ahead and accept it.”
And I said, “No, sir, Brother Minister. You just said we don’t accept money from the government. I won’t accept it.”
“Well, you go ahead and accept the out of court settlement and keep me updated on your services.” Yes, sir. It wasn’t no more than three or four days that I was transferred out.
Brother Gregory’s success in winning the legal right for NOI believers to worship was one example of a victory in the prison system. Brother Gregory faced unjust punishment for exercising his rights, but refused monetary compensation on principle.
According to Brother Gregory, he and the brothers of the Prison Reform Ministry Brothers of the Prison Reform Ministry succeeded, to an extent, in transforming the Pennsylvania prison system into a more humane institution. In struggles against the racist and unconstitutional policies of prison authorities, Brother Gregory found some officials who were willing to do the right thing by responding to his moral stands. The work of the Prison Reform Ministry in Pennsylvania prisons has gone from a period where the Nation of Islam was banned to a period where Muslim inmates had the right to practice their faith, to a time now when some authorities even request the NOI to work among the inmate population.
My Dungeon Shook
“It is an extraordinary achievement to be trapped in the dungeon of color and to dare to shake down its walls and to step out of it, leaving the jailhouse keeper in the rubble.”
James Baldwin, 1980
Dark Days
In 2011 Brother Gregory emerged from the prison walls a new human being, in a new century. The world had changed over 34 years; in 1979 Iran saw revolution, the 1990s saw the end of the Cold War and the Million Man March, then came new wars on the Muslim world and the 2008 global financial crisis. He had achieved the freedom of his personal authority, even before being freed from prison.
A made-up mind is a powerful mind. Easier said than done… I had to make up my mind. And I said that earlier that this is it. I don’t want nothing else. This is my life. I’m not going to be easy. I know all that, right. And I’ve been through the wringer on this. You know, everything but death. So I’m going to do this.
Made up my mind that Islam is my life. It saved me. It saved me. It preserved me. It delivered me from prison. So now, I’m out now but they keep rejecting you when you go seek employment. They do this and they do that. What are you going to do? Have faith. Strive to make a difference. Not allow them to keep me in the mind of a slave, because you’re still under them on parole. I didn’t mention parole, did I? On parole, you have a parole agent, and he coordinates your life. He want to know when you get a job, he want to know when you go to school. He want to know when you leave the state, the system wants to know. He’s the agent for the system, right? So you’re still under the Department of Corrections, which is the prison, which is the modern slave plantation. Now we’ve got to let you out. You mess up, you going back. So that’s still slavery, right? So how do you live under that and not feel like a slave?
Emerging from prison, he sought to use scientific knowledge to serve humanity, and became a dental assistant. The teachings of the Nation of Islam prepared him to move to the frontlines of serving and guiding society. American society must be reorganized and governed through such leadership of Black civilization, inheriting the experience and ideals of men like Brother Gregory.
I’ve heard in my early life that I would never be nothing. Without going into who said it, the teachings of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Louis Farrakhan helped me overcome that problem, that injury of my mind.
When that person recruited me to go to dental school, and said that I would have this opportunity to become a dental assistant. It really hit home on me that: “Wow, that’s big,” because I would have to care for another human being’s health, dental health. And I’m supposed to be “unreformable,” “never gonna be nothing,” but I want to do this. A lot of our youth are being told the same thing. When I speak to the youth, I share my story, because I am familiar with the pain, with the hopelessness. And how it can lead you to the street …
I went to dental school. Now, I was really, really, really inspired about getting that course done and becoming a dental assistant, because never in my dreams, I ain’t never even begin to — flicker of an idea that I would be some kind of a doctor. I could be a dental assistant? What? And I told them that I just got out of prison. They listened to me and all of that, right? Put me in the program. I completed the program, get my diploma, went to the graduation, now I’m a dental assistant. I did an externship with an Indian dentist. And I wasn’t just their dental assistant; I was also a person in their office, as they say to me, that help settle a lot of things that they had problems with. They wanted me to work there after I finished my internship and graduate from the dental program.
Well, lo and behold, they tell me, what the law says — if you have a criminal record, you can’t work in dental. So what was that about? It was about their pockets. I was just another number to get more money. They put me through the program, allowed me to graduate, and everything. Gave me my diploma. Got it over here on the wall. I’m proud of it. But anyway, a made-up mind is a powerful mind.
Islam and the World House
“Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation.”
Martin Luther King Jr., 1967
Beyond Vietnam
In 2026, fifteen years after Brother Gregory’s release from prison, the crisis of Western civilization has reached a breaking point. Generations of families have been devastated by the violence of the American state; deindustrialization, incarceration, unemployment, America and Israel’s genocidal wars in West Asia.
Meanwhile, generations of children continue to be born who seek and deserve a bright future. Asia, and China especially, has risen as an economic and civilizational force for peace. Iran has achieved victory against imperialism through deploying the moral force of their civilization.
The American people are more united than ever in their rejection of war and of the elites, and seek the promise of democracy and freedom. Yet they lack clear direction on a new sense of self that can allow them to live in peace with world humanity. Black people, ever the cornerstone of the future, as a people are still unfree. Only by knowing their strivings and suffering can a movement for a new nation and a new people who refuse the evils of militarism, materialism and racism be created.
Philadelphia is the most Black Muslim city in the country, largely shaped by the First Resurrection of the Nation of Islam. It has also been pressured and devastated by the same forces of war and violence as the cities of Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Islamic teachings for this time must directly address this reality.
Islam of Asia and of Black America must grow closer in their challenge to the evils of white supremacy. The Honorable Minister Farrakhan has called Iran a civilization leading by “the word and the will of God.” Iran represents this striving in the East while the Nation of Islam represents this striving in the West.
In this time which asks for the spirit of sacrifice and making of new heroes, the Nation of Islam Prison Reform Ministry and the flower of Brother Gregory’s life have a message for the world.
None of what I have been through, I would have survived. None of what I accomplished, I would have accomplished if it were not for the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and his taking the time to allow me to have access to him through most of my incarceration.
None of this would have been possible if I had not been his student. He saved my life.
In the Saturday Free School, we are anchored in Philadelphia. Many of us moved here as young people in order to dedicate ourselves to the project of the Free School. The better we know the reality of this city and the people who make it, the closer we come to discovering answers to questions of what is required to make a new civilization.
To deepen our knowledge, we researched existing statistics and history on the prison industry and the criminal system, and read James Baldwin and Michelle Alexander. We studied the life and teachings of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. We listened to Brother Joshua Muhammad’s interviews with members of the Nation of Islam, including his interview with Brother Gregory. We also closely studied a 2025 interview conducted by the Saturday Free School with Ishmael Muhammad, Student National Assistant to The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.
We attended Saviours’ Day 2026 in Detroit as the guests of Brother Gregory and Sister Catherine Muhammad, where we were in fellowship with Brothers and Sisters from across the country. We visited and had fellowship with Mosque #12 Philadelphia and Mosque #35 Wilmington. We spoke with and learned from the experience of avant-garde jazz musician Bobby Zankel, who worked teaching music across Pennsylvania prisons for 30 years.
Our work would not have been complete without Brother Gregory sharing the experience of his life with us. We are grateful for the generosity granted by Brother Gregory, friends of the Free School and the promising institutions which we grew closer to in our Work: knowing the the crisis we are living through, and how our people’s freedom will be achieved.
This study was conducted by Michelle Lyu, Jahan Choudhry, Edy Barraza and Santanu Ghosh.
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