04/26/2006
IWDM Study Library
Imam Mohammed in Atlanta GA

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

Praise be to G’d. Thank you. We say in the language of our religion, peace be unto you, As-Salaam-Alaykum.
It's such a wonderful day here. When I got off the airplane, I saw the sky. The sun was obvious it was shining and I looked up and saw the sky. It is very clear for Atlanta with all of these pollution makers who are run all over roads. It's a very clear day today and we thank G’d. We say we thank Allah for our presence here and we thank Allah for being with us. G’d is with us. When we come together in His spirit, know that G’d is with us. We witness that Muhammad to whom the Qur’aan was built is G’d's servant and his messenger and our salute always to our prophet Muhammad, G’d's prayers and peace be upon him.
I want to begin by first saying that the work that I am doing is the work being done in many places of the world and we are part of it. And I want those who support me especially those in this association to know that we're not alone. That's what I wanted more than anything else when I realized that I was going to be responsible for leading the big following of our late and honorable leader, Elijah Muhammad, my father.
When I realized gone means that, well he is not here anymore and you have to accept the responsibility. The first thing that came to my mind, , we are too small. Though the numbers of African-Americans and the number of Muhammed Speaks Newspaper was big especially for the African-American community---in fact, I think we had the largest circulation of all black or African-American papers at one time. So we were big but I saw that we were really, in numbers very small. And we are living in neighborhoods that are mostly Christian---and I said to myself, if we grow, we're going to be growing from these conditions and from these circumstances; upon these conditions and circumstances. I said to myself, we have to become aware that what we really want in our souls, what our hearts really want for ourselves as a people is what every decent community of people wants all around the globe. And they want the human life to be good and to be free to progress.
And they want a community they want an environment that is friendly. An environment that makes them feel safe and that's what I set out to do. I said first, we have to prepare ourselves to dress up in our best, our best human life. And we have to welcome ourselves and the human family. We have to say to ourselves, "Welcome, Wallace into the human family." The human family---family of all human beings, and I accept myself the same things that are not really for this time that I'm in. There was a time of my father where those things were necessary but now, in this time that I'm in, they're not necessary.
There was a time when they were not only necessary, they were desired because they did produce great results for our self-image, made us feel better about ourselves as a people especially the people that were put down in a world divided---America. A place divided where there were those who wanted to see white supremacy rule and reign; and there were those who wanted to see the Constitution of the United States fulfill itself or exist and live to be true in every word of that Constitution so that citizens will be judged and accepted upon the content of their character and upon their membership in the human family---in the human family.
And I said to myself, I think the followers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad are a very special following. I said, they have come through a lot, survived a lot and they have remained faithful and sincere, most of them. I have faith in you. I have faith that you could go the rest of the distance to see that what's necessary for us to first become a family, an African-American or black family, comfortable with one another, enjoying closeness to one another, enjoying sharing life and a future with one another. That was first because slavery, segregation, discrimination, putting down the value of the black person under the influences of white supremacist mind, I knew that we needed that boost for our spirit. We needed that approval for our human life.
We needed that exaggeration of our value, because why? Why did we need an exaggeration of our values? Don’t think we're the first ones who exaggerated or were the first people who experienced an exaggeration of their values. I won't name any of them but there are a lot of people on this planet earth who have lived an exaggeration of their value so we were just another one who had to go through an exaggeration of our value. And it was exaggerated to kind of bring us in the normal position by throwing us into an extreme exaggeration of our worth. When you've got a man and the world has been telling the man he's sub-human; the world has been telling them that he's created to be a failure. If you want to shock him out of that, don’t whisper to him.
You have to scream him and maybe set off a few rockets (chuckles) to get his mind to separate from those things that he has lived with and inherited it all from his family; from his parents, from his mothers, fathers, inherited almost. It had almost become an inherent behavior in him to put himself down or to be afraid to raise himself up. Especially in an environment that put him down for so long and so thoroughly. I accepted that we needed those extremes and now, we have to come from the exaggerating picture of our human worth to the truth that G’d reveals. So we cannot call ourselves G’ds or the original man. The owner, the maker, the cream of the planet earth, the father of civilization, the G’d of the universe. But you know the one who gave us that trusted our human nature. Yes, because that could mess you up for life.
If you go around really believing that you are G’d of the universe that can mess you up for life. He trusted our human nature. Who am I talking about? I'm talking about W.D. Forty (40).
WD 40, have you ever hear of WD 40? Yes, normally but not me. WD 40 was before my time but now, WD 40 is popular.
It is popular in service stations and department stores, some of the---yes, W.D. Forty. I'm talking about W.D Forty. I think you all know his name. That is the man I'm talking about, not me, not myself, not this person. He trusted our human nature. He believed that he could tell us those things and that we would still be able to accept our reality but we'd be free from the belief that we are inferior to white folks. "Oh, we didn't believe that we were inferior to white folks." Yes, you did. I know what you used to say in the house when white folks weren't around to hear it. "You nigger", "You black nappy headed nigger" "Call me black again I'll knock your teeth out"…
(Recording appears to skip to :)
Mr. Fard took the dress that he dressed the man in and he put it on the members of The Nation of Islam. In the early 30s, '33 and '34 and maybe I believe, as late as ’36---1936, the FOI wore a fez, like a Moroccan fez with the tassel behind it. The same head gear that Moorish Americans were wearing; the Moorish Science Temple members were wearing---same.
He was smart enough to do that and get our attention and attract those who have given up hope or never had any hope of living and being accepted. Living in the United States of America and being accepted by whites in this country. They felt that it was hopeless that that day wouldn't come. That it was impossible. The white man wouldn't change.
When he thought preaching separation from whites and having your own nation, he attracted those African-American Christians who had no faith in having a future where we'd be equal or treated as equal citizens with whites; didn't have any faith in that. Many of those first followers, and my mother a part of them, were very sincere Christians; very sincere Christians. Devoted Christians but they couldn't accept this contradiction, this moral contradiction, in the American society where you would have the image of Christ Jesus in His righteousness and His Holiness all claiming to believe in that but one segment of the American society---us---the blacks, African-American, are separated and put down by the other majority members of this society. And kept in bad conditions and treated very cruelly at times.
They couldn't accept that this was a right so when Fard came and said, "No, it's wrong and these people are devils; their world is doomed," they were ready to accept it. And they accepted his teachings, and the love and sincerity that they had expressed as Christians in the Church and for Jesus Christ, it was transferred by the change of their minds; it was transferred to Mr. Fard, to W.D. Forty the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and their new reality, the Nation of Islam. That's exactly what happened.
Now, I brought you to the book, the Qur’aan. The book of G’d for all Muslims and there was the help that I needed to bring our mind from the old teachers that have lived their day. Separation from whites, belief that America is doomed belief that all whites are created wicked and can't be anything but devils. We couldn't accept that. Though we posed it upon our minds, our soul in its depths could not accept that, because there were so many whites that you knew were good people.
It was difficult to accept that blanket condemnation of all whites reducing them to devils. It was an extreme that the teachers knew that you would throw off of you once America changed to accept you. And the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in the last two or three of his annual addresses where he addressed The National Convention Saviors Convention, he actually made a very passionate appeal to us to change. He said, "If the white man can change, then we too should change". These are his words he gave to us. He didn't leave us without any help. A lot of us think that, that the Honorable Elijah--- it's natural for us to recall the fiery language, the extreme things that he said, that's natural. That those things will ring loudest in our minds. But if we just sit quietly for a while and reflect, he said many things to prepare us to accept the Qur’aan and Imam W. Deen Mohammed. Not only that, to accept to be members in the international Ummah or in the international community of Muslim worldwide.
[END OF AUDIO Tape 1]
I remember him preaching many times and there might be some of you hear him say these things he said “when you become a member here you automatically become a citizen of every Muslim government on this earth.” That is what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught.
Now if he didn't intend for us to one day identify with all Muslims, why would he tell us that, that when we become a member of the Nation of Islam---the Lost Found Nation of Islam in America, we automatically become a citizen of every Islamic government? So please just don't shut out those things that are a help for your mind in this time that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad shared with us. Don't shut them out. Don't play their importance down.
They are very important. He prepared us for a bigger world. He put us in a small world we called the Lost Found Nation of Islam. But he didn't want us to stay there forever; he prepared us also to enter the big world---the big world of Muslims. But even more than that, I have to tell you these things, I know what you are expecting, but I have to tell you these things. You won't even know where I'm coming from if I don't share this with you. I didn't create myself I’m a product of my fathers' environment that Mr. W.D Fard designed. I'm a product of that environment.
Okay so anyway. Mr. Fard said "There are 17 million" ---now he said this in the early 1930s around 1932 and 1933---He said "there 17 million so-called "Negros"--- he called us "so called Negros"---"he said 17 million". He was counting everybody he didn't leave out any of our people. He wasn’t counting just Muslims; he was counting all of us. That's the figure he came up with"17 million" in the early 1930s. Could have been---I think it was less than that---maybe a lot less than that. But he picked a symbolic figure, "17 Million". And he said of the teacher, the liberator, the savior, he said that “he has 17 million keys, K- E- Y- S keys.” So he was seeing all of us, the whole people, the whole race, as needing help, as needing freedom.
Not physical freedom. Thank G’d we were physically free from the plantations, the slavery the slavery down south. We physically free from that. But he saw that though we were physically free we were yet held in check, held in bondage. We were yet slaves to a false and slavish mental make-up. So to free a mental slave, you have to have the tools of psychology. He had those tools---obviously. Yes.
He said, “He has”---speaking about the teacher, the Liberator, he said “He has 17 million keys which he turns to unlock the lock the mental lock, at the rate of 16 and 17/100s per minute, he's turning the keys to unlock the mind at the rate of 16 and 17/100s per minute.”
Now, he’s giving this language and this language is attractive, it was esoteric language, secret language of a special order of religious people. And he's giving this language because he knows that it will---it was magnetism that would---hold our attention; that would grip us and hold us for a better day to come.
And that it would also produce new thinkers, philosophical thinkers in time. Like this man [pointing to himself]. Yes. I'm a philosophical thinker and have been one for many, many years. I'm a philosophical thinker. I don't just see something. I want to know, what is its nature? Why is it behaving that way? Why does it appear to me that way? Why does it influence me in the way that it does? I want to know more than just what my eyes tell me on physical contact. My mind wants to take it apart. My mind wants to know what is its relationship to me is or how is it affecting me or the way how I live or think? That is the kind of mind I had since I was a boy.
My brother Elijah---I'm next to him---he's only 2 years and some months older than I am. And I remember him standing up after I was the leader and he was commenting on me and he said, “That boy has always been different." He said “he would be out in the yard we would be busy doing things boys normally do" he said “He would be out in the yard looking at a tree for an hour.” [Laughs] He exaggerated a bit. He said "He looked at a leaf for an hour." I don't remember ever looking at a leaf for that long. [Laughs] But he said “I was looking at a tree and said I was looking at a leaf for an hour.”
No. That was my make-up. And I guess (it would have been yours also) if you had been put in a word environment---a word---a spoken language word environment like I was from my mother's womb from birth. I was put in that environment. See this W. D. Forty His Works started from 1931.
The pamphlets we received said 1930 July 4th, July 4th, 1930, the date that it all began. But that has another meaning. That date has another meaning. It's not real. He started most likely in early 1931.
I was born in October 1933. So my mother and father had already accepted the teachings of Mr. Fard. They had already changed their names from Clara Poole or Clara Evans Pool, my mother; and my father had changed his name from Elijah Poole and he had become Elijah Muhammad. I got my birth certificate right now. Same one that was given to me at birth and it says my father is Elijah Muhammad and my mother Clara Evans…Clara Evans Muhammad. And her name also on that birth certificate is Clara Evans Muhammad and my name given to me at birth Wallace D. Mohammed, Wallace D. Mohammed.
So, my mother, she told me she said “Wallace, do you know that before you could speak or talk I would recite to you the Lessons in your ears.” The Lessons---now I am not going to mess up the minds of the whole audience. See it took you a long time to get nursed by the Lessons to be comfortable with them Okay. I don't have that much time here today I don't want to leave anybody all screwed up in the head so I’m not going to share the Lessons.
But imagine me now I'm an infant and my mother reciting this strange secret language of the Nation of Islam. Reciting it into my ears and I am hearing and getting the language that says “The world that you are born in is a lie. The world that you are hearing in this new language is the truth.” Okay? So the white man and his whole world I was taught from the time I was a baby before I could speak, “That he and it is a lie. And that the picture of a world that I'm getting in this new language is truth.” And I come out here in this world and I'm told that this is a lie but you can't do anything about it waiting on W.D. Forty.
That he is going away but he is coming back. And when he comes back, he is coming back with a Mother Ship. And they are going to drop bombs on this false world and send mountains up a mile high with explosives. That's what I'm told you see and then when I'm looking at this world, and I'm told that all white people are wicked by nature created to be devils.
Then I go to this store and a white man looked at me---I am a little child---white man looked at me admiringly with appreciation in his eyes because I was a decent obedient child; and they would see that and they would smile approval. Now here is this little child that is told that every one of them is a wicked devil; but this little child got a natural heart, natural soul, and a natural mind and nothing could change that. G’d made it that way. Okay. Now I can shut it out of my mind as I got older and learned how lie and rationalize reality or the truth.
But I was too young to lie and rationalize the truth, so the love of the white person touched my heart and I didn’t live with this and he is a devil but that man touched my heart. That lady that said, “Hi son, you look so beautiful in that suit, your mother must really love you.” That's a white person talking to me. Now I am not supposed to say, “You devil you” because the same one that told us that all of them were devils said, “Respect them; even if you work for them give them an honest day's work. Show them respect.” Well, that was difficult sometimes for some of us but for me, it wasn't because I was innocent in my nature and I was following the better teachings. 
So, you see if you take a human being and you give him a choice. You show him one extreme that is against, that is really against his better nature and then give him another picture on the other side that pleases his better nature He has a choice. No matter how extreme the Nations of Islam’s teachings were, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad emphasized the other side too. Didn’t he? Yes, he emphasized the other side too. Don't you let your hatred or your dislike for the Whiteman make you copy his wickedness. Don't copy his wickedness. So we had one side say, "Affirm your human innocence and good nature that want you to keep your innocence and good nature" and the other side tempting us to have differences with that nature because it is saying “The world is evil. The world is wicked. The world is devil.”
These extremes can be survived and you will come out good if you really mean well. If you open yourself to wickedness, if you open yourself to evil you're finished. It will finish you all. But most of us were innocence as I said from the beginning, we were sincere in Christianity, and were sincere as followers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And our sincerity has earned for us, salvation. Yes our sincerity has earned for us salvation.
So we thank G’d. We thank G’d for intervening in our lives and by his strange way and ways of rescuing life, He has saved us. And as I said this is strange and difficult problem. So we have survived, and G’d have saved us. I say G’d, not Mr. Fard, not W.D. Forty. W.D. Forty is only a tool for G’d's intervention in our lives. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad a tool for G’d's intervention in our lives.
Yes, and I, too, a tool for G’d's intervention. One tool ran out of usefulness, he had to be put away in a toolbox or thrown away to become rust and go away with dust and become dust and be taken away from existence, that one tool. And the other tool became a tool for use, the tool we had to use. Really, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad had to really put down Mr. Fard as a tool for working on the African- American people. Some of you will recall that he said, "You have to put those lessons down, that you should turn them in. I don't want any of you to use those lessons and I'm the only qualified to do that." Yes, that's what he said so he actually called those things in. All those mystical teachings, esoteric teachings he called them in and said, "They're not to be used anymore by his following and that he was the only one that can be trusted with such." 
I don't think any of you in 1960's were given you those lessons. But in the 1940's, 1930's, 1940's, 1950's, you had to have those lessons, they were a must. You were given those lessons and you were told to commit them to memory.
I memorized most of them as a child and committed them to memory; The “Question and Answers”; the “Problem Book”; the “English Lesson C-Number 1”; the “40 Problems” all those things, the pamphlets like catechisms. They were our catechism like the catechisms for the Catholic Church. Those pamphlets served like that for us. We had to memorize, committed to memory.
Many of you came in, joined us and you were already strange. I guess you were attracted to strangers. Many of you who came in like that, strange with all that strange makeup you already had then you tripped-out so far that you never could come back. That's too bad. But thank Allah, we are here and we are not few in number, we're many. Many have survived to come out and still retain the best. You know the big mistake many of us make---I never did this---my father put me out of the Nation of Islam for not accepting his teaching about G’d. He put me out more than once, twice. And a third time for something else. In all three counts I was innocent---innocent.
But an old man told me, he was an Indian from Asia, a Muslim too he said, he knew I had been rejected by my father. He was talking to me. He said, "Do you know Buddha?" I said, "No, I don't know Buddha."
[Laughter]
He said, "Well, Buddha, he had to be rejected by his father." He said, "When he was rejected by his father he went out searching for the light. That he had to encounter the darkness and survive the darkness to get to the light." Yes, he told me that he'd help me out a little. He didn't help me much.
[Laughter]
Anyway, getting back to Mr. Fard and what he wanted. He wanted to help all African Americans. He didn't teach us Islam. That wasn't Islam, but he told us what Islam was. And he told my father to make a flag with a star and a crescent, and put on the flag the letters F J E and I---Freedom, Justice, Equality, Islam. That became our national flag, the flag of the Nation of Islam. I was a staff, [indistinct] the staff of your religion Islam. The free---the F the J and the E were on the other corners, the 3 corners around. That stuck with me, Islam is Freedom, Justice and Equality. When I look at Islam in the world of today, in the international world, I think the best definition was given by W.D. Forty that Islam is freedom, justice and equality.
When you all are looking at the Islamic world and all the mess that the Islamic world is in; the failure of Islamic people of the world to come together and address their problems together, to unite themselves for the betterment of the human population in Muslim lands, Africa, Middle East, Asia, everywhere, America too, but more so outside America; that failure to be able to address their problems as a united body. 
When you look at that and see that each one has his own little small methodology for introducing and propagating Islam to others and see that each one has his own little school of thought. If you don't go to his school of thought he has to teach you all over again or turn his back on you. When you look at that, I say to you, that you are better off believing what I was told as a child. That Islam is freedom, justice and equality. Because believing that Islam is freedom, justice and equality, it set me on the path to discover the excellence of my human life human life in its best picture, human life in its excellence.
Because free---I want to be free---I wasn't free, I was not free. My spirit wasn't free with that confining language environment that was containing me in my spirit, my mind and everything. I wanted to be free of that. I wanted to be in a bigger reality. And he said Islam is freedom, justice and equality. So that motivated me to go after more freedom; to go after more justice; to not to see injustice done by you inside the Temple or by anybody, especially any African American person who was already put down and suffering too much in the world.
That motivated me to move toward my human excellence. And to try to recognize what is best in my makeup; my better human urges, and to accept those better human urges and reject the bad human urges in me. It made me a person wanting decency, wanting righteousness, wanting intelligence, wanting human excellence for myself but also for others who are not free; not receiving justice and not treated as equals. So I think that was the best thing that could have ever been told to us: That Islam is Freedom, Justice and Equality.
[Applause]
Hold on a minute. The time is passing and they are going to turn the lights out on us. 
We don't want that to happen. Believe me brothers, especially the men, but all of you brothers and sisters, male and female; believe me I'm coming from my heart to you. I love every one of you. I much rather you see Islam as freedom, justice and equality and stop believing all of this stuff that you get from all these books---so called books on Islam that have you tripping, that have you giving more value on the dog-gone five dollar or three dollar and fifty cent piece of carpet for a prayer rug. Have you putting more value on that than you put on the life of your brother and sister. You're in love with a prayer rug; you're in love with dhikr beads; you're in love with a thoab, a garment that makes you look like a different person, a member of a different---a person from another world. You're in love with that more than you're in love with your brother or with your sister.
That stuff has no value compared to the life of your brother and your sister. No value at all.
When a thing becomes so confused that the life of it is now corrupted to the core, it's best to just throw it out, throw it way and start anew. Start anew. That's what many of us have to do. We just have to start anew. If the way you see Islam is not helping you, you do a better job of being true by your husband, being true by your wife, being true by your children, throw it away. Throw it away I don't care what it is. Throw it away and start all over again. And pray to G’d that you will be saved this time from that fascination with those little trifling things that you put great value on. And that you will wake up and see that what is really meaningful in the book is human excellence.
Do you think G’d reveals scripture to man to show himself to man? No, G’d is too big for that. That's us, we are vain; we want somebody to see us, how powerful we are. We can't have real big muscles and not show them. We wear those little tight T-shirts.
That is not G’d's makeup, G’d is not like that. That kind of thing can't touch G’d, can't even get near to G’d. Don't think G’d revealed scripture so you will see G’d. No, G’d revealed scripture so you can see yourself. So you will be inspired by the wonderful and beautiful excellence of yourself. So you would devote your life to its excellence, not to self destruction or to corruption. Yes, G’d wants you to see your excellence, your marvel in his excellence and beauty so you will devote yourself to that excellence, preserving it, making improvements on it, fighting influences in the world so that the influences in the world doesn't warp it, doesn't corrupt it, doesn't change it, doesn't corrode the precious metals of it. You begin to fight the influences of the world because now you value highly this creation of G’d.
Yes, G’d did not reveal scripture so you would just see G’d, no. Most of us can't see Him anyway. No matter what He reveals most of us can't see Him. And He tells us, "Nobody can see me," not directly. And most of us don't have the patience to go the indirect route to see G’d. This is for us to see ourselves.
Don't ever say you follow Imam W. Deen Mohammed and that you belong to an association of followers that are with me; don't ever say that and play down the value of the human person. There was something recently in the Muslim Journal where an interview of persons from different parts of Europe---of the world, urging Christians to come together in unity. And the Islamic world is asking, "What can unite Muslims?" It the same thing that united the Christians into a government that has survived and prospered till this day.
You have to come to your human identity and its excellence that G’d intended for all men and women. If you come to that and put that---make that more important than your racial, more important than your race, make that more important than your nationalism, more important than your national identity, make that important part than your ethnicity, your dress, your language, your songs, your dance, your spices that you have in the kitchen. That stuff is trivial compared to the interface that G’d made when He made the human being in excellence.
And they want to know, how can Muslims unite? Look at the Kaa’bah hinting to you, look at the Kaa’bah that we make pilgrimage to hinting to you, look at it and listen to its hints, listen to what it is saying, it is not speaking Arabic, it is not speaking Urdu, it is not speaking Hausa, Yoruba it is not speaking French, it is not speaking Italian, it is not speaking any of those languages, it is speaking the oneness and unity of human creation under its Creator the Lord G’d of the heavens and earth.
It is speaking to the human identity in its best picture that G’d intended for all people, that is what it is speaking to---the Kaa’bah. Why don't we listen to Mohammad the prophet and his Sunnah. Oh his Sunnah; his Sunnah is to make so many rakats of prayer, and his Sunnah is to wash this way. The right hand first, then the left hand, his Sunnah. 
Oh he has a bigger Sunnah than that! His Sunnah is to point to that destiny of human excellence. The same way Christ Jesus, peace be on the servant of G’d, points to that. Both of them, Christ Jesus, pointed to the destiny that human excellence, that excellent perfect thing as G’d intended for human life to be, pointed out. Muhammad pointed to it, he said, "Do my sunnah." He said pray in congregation but also you are obligated by me to pray alone. A woman has to be able to pray alone; a man has to be able to pray alone. Why? Because you as individuals are given as individual persons, you are given the same freedom, justice and equality that the whole ummah is given. That gift of G’d to you personally and individually may survive the downfall, the corruption of the whole Muslim society. It might be one of you all doing my sunnah reading the Qur’aan revealed to me and following the steps that I guide you to, you may be the only one still standing to bring the others back to the path of G’d. 
Praise be to Allah. Praise be to Allah. Now, brothers and sisters, listen brothers and sisters, there is a Hadith that they quote that all of them quote---when I say all of them---all of those different schools of thought, all of those madhabs, yes and mishaps. All of them claim the same thing. They all say, yes, Muhammad said that there will come a time when Christ Jesus and he would be seen together. What does it mean to be seen together? That they came into the world to point mankind to the same destination, the excellence intended by G’d for a human being individually and for human beings collectively.
In my conclusion, I want to say to you that we're working with good people. We don't reject an opportunity to work with good people. Their religion can be Islam, their religion can be Christianity, their religion can be Judaism, their religion can be Buddhism or their religion can be Hinduism. This is a time in life for the world when we can't afford to turn away from good partners in the work of making the world better for all of us. No, we can't afford to turn away any of them.
This is a time when we find persons like Archbishop Keeler of Baltimore Maryland, or Cardinal George of Chicago are embracing Muslim leaders like myself, facing audiences, public audiences together to show that there is more in common for our two worlds than there is difference. And that we should recognize that and speak with one voice, join each other in promoting peace, decency, intelligence, intelligent behavior et cetera for the whole of mankind on this planet earth.
That work is too big and too precious for us to be looking at small differences like, "How do you see the light? Do you see the light in the colors of the rainbow or do you see it as transparent?" We don’t have time for that kind of discussion. The urgency of [Tape ends] A human life threatened by so many things on this Earth, is calling us and demanding that we look away from these small differences and stop nitpicking. Stop looking for faults. Don't you know a fault finder goes to hell before anybody else?
Yes, he's first in the line for hell, the fault finder. You want to be the person in the line for heaven? Fight the tendencies in you to find fault and go with the tendencies in you to love people and to see beauty and excellence in them.
Those are the ones G’d love. G’d loves those who love people and want to see, not faults, but who want to find something beautiful to approve of and to embrace. Some of us need to be that way to our husbands and wives. Brother lived with a woman for 20 years and just because she wakes up with bad breath he starts seeing her as bad breath. And she's got all the other things that are so nice and, she has bad breath. You're supposed to help her with the toothbrush. Help her with some more mouthwash and while you're doing that, you're supposed to smell perfume coming out of her mouth, no matter how bad that breath is. You're supposed to tell it to her too. Say, "Girl, your breath smells like the best perfume. Come here, give me a little kiss you sweet thing." [Laughs]
See, I learned this psychology from my father. I guarantee you that her breath will stop stanking.
[Laughter]
You heard what I said? I didn't say stop stinking. I said that her breath will stop “stanking."
[Laughter] 
That's “Black English.” Lord have mercy. And Sisters be that way by him too. You be that way by him too. The next time he leaves some dirty drawers for you to wash don't you start planning on leaving him. Tell him, say, "Come here honey," and throw the dirty drawers into the garbage and tell him to take it out to the garbage. [Laughter]
That's right, "Every time I see some dirty drawers, I'm going to throw them in the garbage and you're going to have to take them out there to the garbage pickup. I'm doing that honey because I love you."
[Laughter]
You'd be surprised at the small things that start biting and chewing on our long years of relationship and after a while it's gone. Relationship destroyed because we let little things build up. Don't let those things build up. I'd put some mouthwash in my mouth and kiss her. I'd say, "I'm sorry girl. I forgot I had mouthwash." [Laughter] Do that before you lose her. Then both of you run to the toilet and spit. Everything will be all right. 
What I'm saying is, we have to learn how to love each other in spite of little faults, little problems. No, the relationship of human being to human being is too important for these little trifling things that we allow to destroy our happiness and our peace and break up homes. No good. I'm going through this by pulling the family. Family, Scripture says that in the beginning, man was one, one alone and G’d made of the one soul its mate and they became two, male and female. One soul became two souls; one male and the other female.
We're told that these religions that we call, "the heavenly religions" the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, we are told that all of us are here on this earth because of those two people created by G’d. We all came from them; first father and first mother. All of us came from them. That is saying very clearly, which we all know, saying very clearly that all people are one family, one family. That all the people are of one ancestor of male and female or from the ancestry of one male and one female; we are all are the children of them.
What we need in the world is to first understand that human beings are burdened by things that they can't understand. By a world of natural phenomenon that is too big for the average person to understand, and then have it complicated more by a world of conflicts, a world of decency and indecency, a world of life and death and higher risk through the vital life and the vital ideas that we have. We are burden by a world that is bombarding us all the time with confusion, noise, indecency, freakish behavior, et cetera. All of this that bombarded us and we are threatened; our peace is threatened. Our life is invaded by all these things and it makes us want to withdraw, have a moment of separation from all these things in order to survive.
An individual will stay in the house or go to the church or go to the prayer room and maybe stay there for hours. Or just go away, just disappear for a while, be alone so we could be with our own soul and consciousness and work on our own selves; strengthen our own spirit and our own souls. That is necessary. That was necessary for man and the man, when he finds himself and he finds the peace in himself, then he has to go back in the world. And if he is strong enough, he will look for others like himself and he will try to change the world from going to hell away from heaven and he will try to change things in the world.
But to change things in the world is very difficult when the world as a great majority, is going against the grain of peace and salvation. But understand this, when G’d gave us the picture of man's life beginning in paradise or in the Garden of Eden, G’d was really presenting a picture of what he intends life to be, not what it was, but what he intends it to be. G’d give us a picture of heaven or paradise for the beginning of human creation, to give us a picture of what he intends human life to be. Don't think there was a Garden of Eden in your past. If it was, you can't recall it. But think this, that G’d gives us this picture as a projection to tell us what he wants life to become for all of us. He wants for it to become a place where man and wife are together and where they are united as one in an environment that is good and safe for them; a family environment, a home environment, a family environment. We have the human family populating the world; we have the growth of population. See, when there is one, one alone, you can be at peace until you need something.
G’d made need come into the consciousness of that one so that he couldn't be happy anymore. He had to get something. When that one would multiply, multiply and multiply, after a while there are too many sharing, too many bumping heads, too many too crowded and the spirit is not pleasant anymore, the spirit is disturbed, the spirit is aggravated and it is very difficult to keep that Garden of Eden, to keep that peaceful state in us. It gets worse and worse, and worse. Now what is going to happen, what is happening? This is the will of G’d, this is the way of G’d, to put you on Earth and give you plenty of room where you can run from each other, you can say, “oh her breath stinks. I'm going to live down the road there, leave her here by herself.”
You can do that, you got to plenty of room. But now we've become so crowded, so pushed together so closely that we can't run from each other, the stink from your neighborhood is paid for by my neighborhood. You don't pay for your stink in your neighborhood you have me paying for it in my neighborhood. I'm not a stinky, my neighborhood is not stinking, but I have to pay my taxes and pay for your stink that you are not paying for.
That's the whole world, I wouldn't just see it not just your neighborhood, see the whole world. The whole world is like that, if one nation stink itself up, it's going to put a financial burden on all other nations, because we are sharing a global economy now. What affects your economy, affects mine. Yes. You see what's happening? We are being forced to do what? We are being forced to become one family. G’d created us and He gave us the projection that you are one family as a projection, not a reality of the past, but it is a projection for the future, you are to become one family.
Now, man, you going to want to live by yourself just to have your own personal happiness, to have your own personal paradise, your own private paradise, you are going to want to live by yourself. You are going to become a spiritual teacher and you want to get your little following together, and you going to cut yourself off from the rest of the world. But there comes a time when the multiplying of your bodies, the multiplying of your individual flesh body is going to become so numerous and so great that you're going to be unable to escape each other, unable to escape each other's problems. You are going to be affected by the person's problems that you ran away from for a thousand years, their problem is going to come to you and you're not going to be able to run away from their problem. Man is being forced to become one conscious again, one conscious again, one soul again, one family, and work with each other for the betterment of the whole. That's being forced upon us, we can't stand it anymore. This is the time for the family spirit, not the family of the Blacks or the family of the Whites or the Reds or anybody else, but the family of humanity, the family of humankind.
This is a time for the spirit of the family of humankind and if we will promote the spirit, support for the spirit of the human family all belonging to the human species, one family; if we promote that in all quarters of the world, if every nation promote that for its public these publics will be prepared for a much more beautiful and a much more productive world and a much more intelligent and decent world than we are living in right now.
In fact it is a must that we promote the family spirit for the whole population of the Earth, it's a must that we promote that because the economy is going to be threatened by our differences, the economy is not going to work well---the global economy---is not going to work well for us until we come into the family spirit. And I have to congratulate Chiara Lubich, the Focalore people, the movement, that international movement. I have to congratulate them, they stay on that theme, that we are family, we must be one family. They're talking about everybody and are not eliminating any or excluding any; we have to have that theme.
And I'm telling you right now that this is the coming together of Mohammad and Jesus Christ, peace be upon the servants of G’d. This is the coming together of Mohammad and Jesus Christ, peace be upon the servants of G’d. We both have to promote the same thing because the destiny the two point us to is one destiny. Praise be to G’d, thank you and may you live a good life and may you have the protection of the Creator, the Lord of the heavens and the Earth. As Salaam Alaykum. 

