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IWDM Study Library
Al-Islam in Action Program

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Hanif Wahid:
As salamu alaykum. Peace be unto you, and welcome to Al-Islam in Action. My name is Hanif Wahid, and I will be the host of your show this evening. Al-Islam in Action is being sponsored by Masjidul Taqwa, 370 North Street, Rochester, New York. Feel free to contact us at Masjidul Taqwa, 370 North Street in regards to the contents of our programming. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy Al-Islam in Action.
IWDM:
Same language, but they did it long before us. Perhaps we'll get a better look at it or see it from a new side, see a new aspect of it and advance it a bit, but we cannot make any claim of discovering anything new in the way of nature, especially human nature and it's potential and need for progress. All right, this man, he points to us and shows us that birth for an individual is continuous. Birth for society is continuous.
And many of you in the field of education, especially in the field of humanities or politics, I'm sure you are well aware of what I'm talking about and nothing I'm saying here is new to you. I know nothing is that new to you that I've said so far, but the point I want to make here is that it's important for your future and also for your present. Your future and your present performance. How you perform now and how you will perform in the future. It's important that you understand something about your own self, your own nature, your own function as a species, as a creature, et cetera, et cetera. And this learned man has brought to the attention of his readers and to the attention of the society and his day, and perhaps many people reading even now his works, Erich Fromm.
That man experienced continuous births. If we haven't found home in a situation, every new situation is going to form us all over again. But once we find home in a situation, then we kiss the context of that found life. It may be augmented, or it maybe improved or attitude, but we never take off that dress. Once we find home in a context of life, we never take off that dress.
The African-American's life, the African-American's group spirit, the African-American group form, the African-American group identity has never been established. Right or wrong? Has never been established. And that's why you feel so lonesome. That's why you feel so lost. That's why you feel so depressed. That's why you feel you are not yet there. With all of this material affluence all around you, color TVs, wealth piling up over your head. You have to push through the wealth sometimes to get through to the washroom.
With all of that in your life, with all of your degrees. PHD Degree in this, Master's degrees in that, BS degrees in that. With all of that, you still feel lost. You still feel short of the mark from arriving at home, simply because we have not retreated, stepped back from the white man and say, "Look, you've led us far as you can take us. Now, we going to build an ideology. Now we are going to build a philosophy. A philosophy of life for the African American man. And you can't help us. Stand aside and watch us do it, and if we want you, we will call on you."
Don't you know in your soul that that's the work that's yet to be done? DuBois started it. He made a hit at it. He struck at it. DuBois made a strike at it. Carter G. Woodson made a strike at it. Man wasn't even on this land, not even on this territory. Franz was his name. Name is Franz. No, no, not him. I can't think of his full name. His name is Franz. He made a strike at it. Not only him, man just died. He was battling, he was striking at it. He was hitting at it. He was trying to do something about it. Benjamin E. Mays. His sensitivities were for that. His sensitivities indicated that that's the direction he wanted to take his people in, but we have not been able to accomplish it. Why? Because we think more of civil rights struggle, more of civil rights protest. We have been conditioned by past experience to think the only way home is through the politicians and the preacher. And that's wrong.
I wish we had all day and all week and all month. We need to have a camp. Go to a warm climate and make a camp. And sit up six months, a year, two years, if it takes that long. Stay together until we come out with what we need. That's what Moses had to do. Moses got his people, and he had to go off into the wilderness. And he had to stay out there until they got what they needed. And when they came back, woo. Now, I'm not trying to pretend that I'm the only one that have this kind of concern, that I'm the only one that want to move us in that direction. I'm not trying to pretend that.
So Erich Fromm, in his book The Sane Society, he dwelled on this need in man. He was fascinated by what he saw in this dynamism of man. And he recognized that that dynamism in man's potential, that dynamism in his spirit of his potential, from that potential arises or emerges a spirit. And many times you don't even know it. You don't even know your potential, but there's a spirit that keeps telling you, "That ain't enough. No, ... You ain't situated well enough yet. No, you haven't realized freedom enough yet." And you go, hey, well, I'm free as a bird. Not enough yet. I want to be free as the shuttle plane. Even freer. I want to be free enough not to putter out while I'm going the way I want to go, right? Yeah.
You see, so man's spirit, it wants to go and move. That's the spirit of your potential. That great potential in you is telling you, "Get up out of this mediocrity. Out of this mediocrity. Get up out of this inferiority. You have a greater destiny. You are not home yet."
Then we have another man, John H. Scanzoni and his book, The Black Family in Modern Society. He tells us something that's revealing, and since we're addressing the need for us to coexistent and cooperate, and we are taking an opportunity here today to extend compliments, to convey compliments to our Christian, to our Jewish, to our socialist people, that while doing this, it is important for us to look at something else. And in this book, it is brought out that the deteriorated condition of the African American social life, his family, should not be taken as an indication that all of us are given to such situations. That there has been, and still is, still is, African American Christians who hold to the Protestant work ethic. They are not lost. Their families are not lost.
They still have disciplined children, healthy children, forward looking children, children that are not filling up the jail cells. They're successful. And they represent the strength and maybe even the future of the many, many others that have left the better foundation of life. He goes on to say... And this was at a time before my time, before I came into the leadership. He goes on to say that also having similar critics are Black Muslims, who could not find that in the churches, who could not find that in Christianity. They were unfortunate. They were the unfortunate ones. They were not blessed to have that Christian work ethic and that Christian principle of fine performance in life imparted to them. So they left, disappointment, turned their backs from Christianity in disappointment and followed the loud call of the Elijah Muhammad to a new way of life, to a new concept, to a new future, to a new self image. And he says that they latched onto to that, and now after research, this man did research on the following of Elijah Muhammad. He says, now after research, we find that the Black Muslims from the lower poverty strata were able to achieve that same work ethic, were able to perform in the same way, and are also coming in. They're emerging into the mainstream of American life. That's what this man said even before me, before I came along.
So what does that tell us? That if we don't have it from Christianity, and most of us don't. I'm talking about like 97 and 8/10% don't. Okay? We need something different. The same old thing ain't going to get it? What is Wallace talking about? Said, what is that man name? What do you call him? Wallace, Wallow, Warrow Deen. Warith Deen? So what is the imam talking about? I ain't no iman, I'm Imam, but that's okay. They don't know. What the Imam talking about? Ain't interested in that. That's that old Arab stuff. Arab. See, I liked his father better than I like him. Say, he's talking that Arab religion and stuff.
If you can't pronounce the name, that should tell you something too. Maybe you shouldn't talk so much against something you don't even know. Investigate. I believe with all of my heart, with every fiber of my being that G-d has blessed us as a people by putting us into this situation. Encyclopedia Britannica, just to go back and tighten the thread a little bit, Encyclopedia Britannica, I studied the history of slavery in the Encyclopedia Britannica. That's no ordinary encyclopedia. Okay. And in one chapter of that book, dealing with what is called the peculiar slave system, America's slave system that it had in those days of the South, it tells us that it was unlike any other condition of slavery that existed for man in history, in its nature, in its attitude toward the enslaved, it was more different, drastically different, from any other slave system in the history of man.
Who experienced that? The genes that are in me right now. The genes that are in me right now, the genes that represent the core of my genetic life right now... Don't think of your ancestors always as back then 1800. Back then the 1700's. Understand that man has upgraded his understanding of human genetic life, and those people are buried and gone, but the genes of those people are in us right now. That's why long time after the man is gone, the man has done his work and gone, some people who read about that man would say another man, say, Hey, he got traces just like that man. He got traces just like that man. Man dead gone maybe 50 years ago. But they knew him, they read about him or something. They, Hey, he's just got that trace just like that man. That's why many people believe in reincarnation. It ain't no reincarnation. The sperm puts it there. It doesn't have to come back. Does that make sense? It's as clear as crystal.
Yes. I got the genes of Clara Muhammad in me right now. My mother. I got the genes of Elijah Muhammad in me right now. My father. I got the genes of Willie Poole, called Wali Muhammad later, my grandfather, in me right now. Quartus Evans, my grandfather on my mother's side. I got his genes in me right now. I got all those people's genes in me right now. The same for you. I got Adam in me right now. I got the genes of Adam in me right now. It didn't go nowhere. It's just been passed on. His genes, just as his genes were made by G-d... Just exactly as his genes were made by G-d, in me right now. In you right now. That's how come you can put a man in the dark, but you can't keep him there if he got the spirit from his better ancestors. If he responds to the genes and the better spirit of his ancestors, oh, you can't keep him in the dark. You come in there and find him with a light. Say hell, how do you get a light? Wasn't no way out of this place. How in the hell you got a light? G-d is the one who lights from within.
Now, you know my critics and those who are too weak to follow me through rough ground, after I talk, they go behind my back and they try to lash down the importance of what I'm saying to you. They say, "Did you hear what he said? Man, I got a headache. Really gave me a headache. He really spaced out. He went way out today." Now, somebody that small should be discounted.
All right, now let me continue, because I've already spent a lot of time here. There are many things peculiar in our situation as a people. The situation of our enslavement, the nature and degree of cruelty that we experienced while we were enslaved is peculiar in the experience of human beings on this earth. But that's not all we have to look at when we are looking at peculiarities. We have to also look at our own behavior. We are a people who have a peculiar behavior, and our peculiar behavior is in the main, I believe, the result of, or the effects of, I should say, the effects of the peculiar experience behind us, more so than it is owing to any other thing.
Though, the present, as I said, the present environment, cultural environment that works against the natural functions of human life contribute much to our peculiar behavior as a people and as individuals. But I believe it's owing even more so to that peculiar past experience behind us, the ugly pages of history, the enslavement of the black man or the African and African American man. This odd way of behaving is seen also in our choices. Our choices as a people. Where in the history of a people have you read of treatment like we received coming to a people by their superiors and when they get free, they walk arm and arm with the people that did that to them?
Join their religion, accept their concept of G-d, even though their concept of G-d does not admit their race. But they accept their concept of G-d, walk into their religious houses, accept their concept of G-d, bow and pray and kneel before the images that they have in their religion, that the master's religion has, that doesn't admit my image. That doesn't admit my ethnicity. It doesn't admit my race. I see no African Americans in their image. I see no African American in their heaven. The heaven is filled with Caucasian angels, European American or European angels. The image is in their own image, but they invited me to it. I went right into it. I joined that religion. I raised up their image over my black loss. My black, suffering loss. I lift up their image and said, this is Savior. This is the Lord. This is Jesus. This is the Lord.
I'm not knocking Jesus. Jesus never saw the damn pictures they paint. So forgive me, forgive me if I seem harsh. I was reading a book on English once, English composition, and the author of the book, he was trying to help the new writer or the would-be new writers learn how to write. And he said something there that caught my attention. He said, "Quality means a lot." He said, "But the best writers who really are true writers, they will tell you that if you're faced with a dilemma and you have to choose between quality and substance, choose substance and forget about quality."
I'd much rather have somebody talk to me about substance than to talk to me in a lot of flowery language, academic language, overly exaggerated language, eloquent about (beep). Can I get away with this today? I hope so. Talk to me for hours and haven't said nothing, but just left me with a whole encyclopedia of word, nothing but fancy rhetoric. Not knocking education. I study the dictionary all the time, and always try to improve my vocabulary at least by one word a week. So I think it's very peculiar in the behavior of the African American that he has gone all the way for everything that his oppressor has established for him.
Now, you may say, well, they're not oppressing us now. That's right. But they will respect us more now if we establish more independence in terms of making choices for ourselves by ourselves. They will respect us more now if we have the courage to follow our ancestral spirit, the best of our past, and grow into something more uniquely ourselves. They will have more respect for us now if we were more a legitimate ethnic pattern. Are you following me? Do I make sense? Am I a clear voice? If I'm not, let me know, I'll go work at it some more. I ain't going to give up.
I think it's very strange, especially for those generations who will read our history 50 years, a hundred years from today. It's very strange that we came from Africa. Before it was named Africa, we were there. Scipio Africanus, Julius Africanus. It was named, that whole continent was named from white explorers, it was named for a white explorer and white conquerors. Africa. And frankly, every state over there bears a foreigner's name. These are the facts. So what I'm talking about is not only a situation that we have to address, even our motherland has to address it one day or another. And there are some people who go around explaining the low spirit and low state of the African American man and his descendants. And they charge that the condition of us is because of the white man's dominance. No, no, no. That's only part of it.
The condition of us in us is because of our confused sensitivity. Confused sensitivity. We need to work for home life. Home life for the race, home life, for the family, home life for the individual, where there's a context, a spiritual context, a spiritual context, a set of principles, a set of principles, a set of sensitivity, a network of sensitivity, shared by all of us to make us a people, to give wholeness to our life. We need to do some philosophical thinking. We need to go back to what DuBois said, "The extent to which we will progress in the future depends on the extent that we will go in teaching our children to think, think for themselves."
Now, I think it's very strange. It's peculiar that coming from Africa, coming from an Islamic past... Say, "Oh yeah, but the Muslims sold us into slavery." If that's true, which it is not. Muslims didn't sell us into slavery. Many of us were captured by marauders who raided the coastline and the small villages and took us from our land by force. And they were not natives of Africa. They were marauders from Europe. This is a fact.
All right, now, not only that. Many of us were sold into slavery by non-Muslims who wanted to get rid of their unruly population. So they sold their unruly population to slave traders. Not only that, I could go on naming the incidents, the conditions and incidents that contributed to so of many numbers, millions of us being brought to this land and put in slavery. No matter what happened on that side, look at our judgment. If I don't want to be an Arab or Muslim, I don't want to associate with Arabs, I don't want to be close to Arabs because they-
PART 5 OF 6 ENDS [02:50:04]
had a hand or they sold me into savory, then let's use the same... Rules, let's use the same rule. Let's use the same measuring stick. How can you tolerate integration and love and intermarriage with the a people that, after getting you into their hands, did a much worse job on you than they did on you, sending you over here. That's a fact. Hey, be level-handed. If you don't want to associate with our religion, because Arabs are in it, then you shouldn't want to associate with Christianity because white people are in it. Did that make sense? Perfect sense.
Would that heal the mind of the African American as a race? Oh, yes, buddy. That's healing salve. That's healing salve. That's what we need. And those who fear to say these things, they don't have G-d's backing. Those who fear to say these things, those who fear to address the whole life of the African American person and deal with his problems, his deficiency, his weaknesses in every aspect of his life. Even his spirit, even his sense of worth. If they're not willing to go into the deepest quarters and recesses of the black man's life and experience to make him ... for whole success and progress in this world, they're not ready. They're not ready. They're not qualified. They ought to just sit back and wait till we do the job.
They're cowards. They're still foster home children, and they talk tough talk, and call me passive and sheepish. But my moral courage make them look like cowards. Now, what am I leading up to, my dear beloved people? And I don't say that to woo you. I say that because it's in my spirit, in my soul to say it. I love my people.
Now, it says to us that the experience, this peculiar experience behind us, we call the plantation life, or slavery in the west, or the new world. Slavery in the new world, they call it. That peculiar experience set us back, so far back that none of the ordinary remedies will work for us. It set us so far back, I repeat, that none of the ordinary remedies will work for us.
The socialist theories of Marx, they won't work for us. The capitalist theories of the west, or the democratic theories of the west, won't work for us. We look at it and we can't get the benefit from it. The man looked at it and it sent him jetting forward into the future. Made him a great industrial nation, a powerful leader among the nations of the world. His fathers wrote that for him. It's beautiful. It's profound. It can help us a lot, but it falls short of getting us home.
I repeat, the circumstances behind us that are peculiar in the history of man, they set us so far back that we need something more than the ordinary remedies. Say, "Well, what is that?" Or if you will, believe the Qur'an is enough. We can just take the Qur'an and do the job, if you will believe. But you can never get the general community to believe in a holy book. You think it ever happened? It never happened.
In the days of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, He had a core of excellent believers, and they were the ones that established the life, brought in the system, brought in the environment and imposed that environment on the dumb ones who couldn't see beyond the tip of the nose. That's a fact. And not only a fact for Muhammad the Prophet, the peace and the blessings be on the prophet. . Not only a fact for Him, but the fact for every liberator. He have had to have a core of people who had the sensitivity... Sensitivity's first, you can be all so smart, but if you're sensitized in a way to be adverse, you going to be adverse. He has to have a called people with the sensitivity to respond first to the importance of the issue and have the courage to join him and be his staunch supporters.
Then he can make progress. Then in time, the strength of the people, because people with that sensitivity, they represent the strength of that people. They will be able to foster in, to force power. That concept, that life, that theory and ideology and those structures that will house the life of the people, they will be able to accomplish that. And in time change the whole life of the whole mass. But it takes time. Takes courage, takes love. Love for what's right.
I say again, it's peculiar that coming from Islamic experience, they want to play up primitive experience in our African past. I'm talking about the so-called educators. They make a point of trying to play up the primitive experience in the African man's past.
What would the Germans do if we or anybody would search their past? They were some of the most superstitious and savage people the earth have ever birthed, the Germans. But they met the torch of enlightenment. They found the torch of enlightenment, and they grew out of their superstitions, and they began the history of civilization for the German man.
Now, suppose somebody had the power or suppose the west.... and Russia and America, that now ruled in Germany. Supposed they would impose an idea on the Germans and make them think that their past, the best that they have done in the past was done during that time of wild man back wood, dark region, superstitions. That would be awfully cruel, wouldn't it?
Where you are, on the college campuses, you students on the college campuses, African-American students on the college campuses, on these university campuses, on these high school campuses or playgrounds, et cetera, et cetera, you have been duped. You are being fooled. You are being told that your past in Africa is primitive religion. Ancestor spirit worship, animalism or animism, et cetera, et cetera. And they don't want to tell you that you had centuries of a history as scientists.
Even before Prophet Muhammad, but it didn't last too long. It was only in a small quarter of the African continent. And then Prophet Muhammad came and established the religion that brought about in a renaissance, a revival, a renewal of the interest in science. He didn't only waken and quicken the intellect of the west, Europe, but he also touched the black man's mind in Africa, and brought him back to his scientific pursuits. And the result was Mali, Mali, Timbuktu, Ghana, et cetera, et cetera. That's the glorious past of us here. Islam, Africa, Islam. Who can challenge that? Ain't nobody on earth that can challenge that.
And you know it. I'm talking to the learned ones here today, and you know it. So join me and stop fooling our people. Join me in correcting this mis-education, that's designed to just descend our people away from the thing that will best help them. And because it's Islam, something that will make them different in America, something that will give them a different distinctionality in America, there are people, bad elements in the American society, bad elements in the American government, bad elements in the halls of academia, that don't want to see us come into that because they take pride in us being their children.
They take pride in us being their adopted daughters and sons. They take pride in having us in their foster homes and looking at us as a foster home generation. They take pride in that and they know if we become Muslim, we will break out of the damn foster homes. We'll be our own man. They don't want us to be our own man. That's all it is. Sick love. Sick jealousy, on the part of arrogant white man.
Don't love us too much, white man. Your love is cruel, when you love us so much, you don't want us to come into our own, that love is cruel. That's jealousy. He's the great savior. He's the great redeemer of falling civilization. He's the civilized of backward nations. He is the civilized. So, his subject here must follow him. They must not take the dress of a different culture. They must not take the dress of a different religion, because these are my boys. I'm their daddy. Me and my fathers raised them, and they better stick to the life that we choose for them. They better imitate daddy, or they'll have no life at all.
Give me liberty or give me death. And that came from your father. Did I mean it? You think I'm joking? I'm as serious, more serious than AIDS. As much as I like to be in the gathering with you like that, if somebody called me and tell me that the test came back, Brother Imam you got AIDS. I would say, As salaam alaykum, " I'd be gone to a doctor right away. Although they say it's not much hope.
Praise be to Allah. Now, if we want to normalize the spirit and behavior of the African American, as a people, we're going to have to have the courage to follow the poem of those leaders that addressed the whole need, the traditional need in the life of our people. And there ain't many of them around anymore. We had quite a few of them, but most of them are gone.
Dear beloved people, it's strange that the European comes over here to America and he becomes an American. His generations, Americans, but he has the religion of his homeland. The Asian comes over here. He becomes an American, but he has the religion of his homeland. The new immigrants from Africa comes over here. They're black, they're brown, few Africans are even white, like the Libyans or like the Algerians. They come over here... The Syrians, these are whites, but they're Africans. They come over here, whether they're white or black or brown or red, they come over here and they build their home, and in it they have a sanctuary for their traditional religion.
We were cut off too abruptly and cut off too thoroughly to have that kind of sensitivities. We were just suddenly cast upon a new planet in the galaxy, with no recollection of how we got there and how we should get out or whether we should stay or not. So, we had to take all of our signals from the new environment, from the new situation that offered us little or nothing from the past. Except negative things, except negative things. Tarzan, a savage white man, not even a civilized white man, Tarzan, a half naked, savage white man can't even talk. He had to holler. "Jane, move quick. He can't even talk.
"Jane, move quick. Tarzan, Cheetah. Go, go. Let's go". But he is the lord over the black people of. Africa. That's the kind of pictures, that's the kind of cartoons, that's the kind of movies they show to your young children, two and three and four generations back. I saw it. To condition our minds to believe that my cheapest white man is Lord among your ancestors.
Where there came an opportunity for Muhammad Ali to be made a mythological hero for us, and there was interest in him being that mythological hero, in fiction, they fought it and they didn't even give him the break, played a little bit of it, took it out. Huh? Because those who love us as their field animals, their domestic pets and their foster home children, they cannot separate from us. And if they see a trend that's going to take us out on our own and start us up in our own manhood, in our own dignity as a people, they fight it, though they know it's against their better principles of civilization. They fight it because they too weak in their sentiment. They're too much attached to their old property called Uncle Tom, black boy, et cetera, et cetera. Too attached to their property.
We know this in psychology. We know this in sociology, that a person can become too attached to their own children. So attached that they become a cruel task master, a cruel task, master. A domineering restraint on the potential of their own children, holding their children back from dignity and progress because they love them too much. That love is coming from a dependency in them. It's coming from a weakness in them. It's coming from an insecurity in them. And they're coming from that weak situation, loving their children and sending their children right to inferiority, behind inferiority.
And that's the same thing the white man's supervision of us does for us. Same thing. I don't want his supervision anymore. Let us walk together as men. Let me carry the light of education and enlightenment and destiny and future and philosophy. Let me carry it for myself. I don't want you carrying it for me anymore.
Now, if I may, I would like to go on and on and on, but I know we have to cut short, but if I may go a little bit further and cover one more section of this material that I wanted to bring to you today. Whether we have lived in the old world or a new world, the third world, or the world of the superpowers, we are going to find ourselves in environmental situations where the very nature of man challenges man. The dynamism of man himself, challenges him
And you are going find bright children and slow children. You going to find those that will become unruly, and you will judge their unruliness wrongly, because of your shortsightedness. You will think that your own children or your own subjects in that environment, wherever it is, are really against you, resent you, don't appreciate you, and they try to overthrow you, but it might be because they're so out of touch with what you really represent. For some reason, they have been separated from what you really represent from your traditional strand, your traditional life, your traditional progress. They have been separated from it. You've let them be left by the wayside and you didn't bring them along with you, so now they have become a factor for undermining you.
Also, it can happen if you neglect to see that there are some bright ones around you who have insights and vision, that will take your society much further than you can take it yourself because you don't have that. You'll be in the ruling position, but you won't have the insight. You won't have the genius that has emerged in your subject. So, because you see an unruliness in them and a tendency in them to undermine, you will then go against them, and many times you destroy your best people. You destroy your best people. You destroy your best future, in ignorance.
We look at our American society now, the African American, we look in these big cities and we see our teenagers. We see our youth in these youth gangs, and they have a code. They have a code of ethics. They have a law, they have laws. They have a code that they live by, and they really exercise more respect for each other and more loyalty to each other than we exercise in our so-called legitimate society. I'm talking about these gangs. They're more committed to each other. They care more about each other. They have loyalty. They have band immunity. They have much more in terms of social evolution or social growth or development in that sense of society than we have in the so-called legitimate public. In the so-called legitimate public.
Our homes, we don't have that kind of bond. We don't have that kind of commitment to principles. We don't have those loyalties. We are just turned against each other, ignoring each other, walking away from each other, dying and going into dope and wine and prostitution and everything. Going into stuff, being recruited by gang leaders, and we're just letting it happen. We are looking at all that happen. And sometimes the terrible destiny that G-d allows to happen is better than the situation that we have our children at home.
That's pitiful, but we're going to do something about it. Oh yes, we're going to do something about it. We can become ignorant and become the oppressors of our own. We can become the very forces that suppress the siege, our potential and suppress the spirit in that potential.
Now, we have to understand the complexity of life, the complexity of society, whether it's in 1986 or in 1786, or earlier. We must understand that there are competing forces and competing systems, and there are always personal needs. And many times these competing forces and competing systems can become misguided in war, and an environment will be created that is insane. Then the urge and human potential will begin to emerge, and with that spirit, that energy from that human potential will come personalities who, as individuals, will address the wrongs of environment and begin to recommend remedies, set remedies while correcting the problem of the environment.
If we are too caught up in our own traditional way, if we are too fascinated, too fascinated, too charmed, too excited over our own achievements, we won't be prepared for the factor of liberation that is emerging in the new individual. We won't be prepared for it. Now, dear beloved people, let me relate a little something to you that happened to me. About five days ago, I was shopping near one of the better high schools in Chicago, south side. Also, in that vicinity, there's a very nice candy store. The name of that school is, I think it's Kenwood High School. It's known to be one of the better schools there.
I thought to go into the candy store for a rainbow sherbet cone. Now, some of you all maybe you don't do those things no more, but I like to get a little piece of penny candy every now and then. Ice cream cone, a rainbow sherbet cone. You know, I like that. Excuse me. You got all these lights on here, you know? No, no, I got it. You might see my black eye. Yeah, this eye is black. I know somebody's going to see it. And like germs, what they say? It's going spread.
Said what happened to Imam? They got in a fight. His eye was black. I haven't been in a fight, and that's all I'm going to say. Nobody hit me, nobody fought me. That's all I'm going to say, because no matter what I said, it wouldn't convince those who want to make me look bad.
Okay. Now, I thought to go into that little store for a rainbow sherbet cone. Students were leaving, students of Kenwood I believe, because that was the high school that's right near there, within one block almost of that store, and I'm sure that they were students of Kenwood. They were very bright youngsters. They were leaving as I was leaving. I overheard one bright girl say, "In the USSR, basic necessities are free. Russians don't have to pay for education, for housing." And I was listening there, walking right along with them.
So, moving along slowly with them, stepping in front of them, I turned my head to them and I said, "The Libyans, they don't have to pay for basic necessities either." Now, you know, it's not a general freedom. It's not a general freedom that Muslims and American citizens share in common. It's not a general freedom. It is a special freedom. A freedom that emerges, dawns in the very deepest recesses of the soul of man. In the phenomenal spirit of man that ties us to one and the same personal and environmental human concern. That's special freedom.
So, being myself, stirred by that special freedom, I understood something and understanding it, I said to the young students that were there, passing, walking along, returning to their classes. I said, "There is something, and some things, that I like to pay for myself." And a young male this time, he turned it like that, he looked at me, he said, "What kind of things you like to pay for yourself?" And I was praying for that kind of response, and it came just like that. I said, "I, my own self, like to pay for my freedom."

