1976-September-10

Bilalian News

"The Birth of the American Spirit": Part 3

Imam W. D. Muhammad


In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful; peace and blessings upon His Servant and His Messenger, Muhammad, forever. Amen.

There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters:
In America, the people are motivated and dominated by a belief in "freedom.'1 If you try to correct someone, sooner or later he will tell you, "You have no right to tell me anything, I am free just like you." Freedom has become an excuse to continue downhill and an excuse to be a failure with a sense of dignity. In America people are free to become drunkards, free to be robbers, free to murder innocent and weak people, free to corrupt themselves, and free to poison the community. Who wants that kind of "freedom?" Freedom is a beautiful word when it is in the right place, but it is as ugly a word as you can find when it is in the wrong place.


Opportunity For Destruction

The builders of democracy never had the foolish, ignorant idea of freedom that we find in America today: the privilege to do anything you want to do. The word "freedom" was passed on to the masses of the people without being thoroughly defined. Freedom without proper balance is no more than the opportunity to destroy yourself without having anyone to guide you or to help you. Freedom among the masses on these terms works against the ability to arrive at unity and leadership in the society. People that keep the song of freedom on their tongues are not going to work hard for unity or for togetherness. The cry for "freedom" works against the movement of people towards each other because the very word suggests a movement away from each other. The corrupt minds in the society that fed the people this false concept of freedom are the very minds that destroyed nations abroad. They have also worked to destroy the American people with the same stick that they used to destroy other nations — the stick of "divide and conquer." They know that if they set the elements of the society against each other, they (who are together in unity) will rule forever. A part of their plan for universal rulership was the color scheme of naming the races of man "black," "brown," "yellow," "red," and "white."


Color Consciousness

People that were physically black, brown, yellow, red, and white were all once tied together by family blood, by tribal blood, by national blood. All of a sudden, the strong ancestral relationships that had existed for generations were broken loose because people started to accept the identity of color label that Western powers put out for the world to buy. People had problems before, but they were problems that could be handled without breaking the social order and without disrupting the society. They were able to live on the same continent with each other without letting their physical skin colors be a cause for them to go to war with each other.

By building up racism and color consciousness, the Western powers fed color identity into the hearts of the people. Their evil scheme made a black man feel inferior to all other men and it made a Caucasian man feel superior to all other men. It made a brown man feel superior to a black man and a yellow man feel superior to a brown man. By dividing the people up into color camps, they created new social patterns for the people to think in: Divide and conquer.


Sacrifice Individual Freedom

After we were divided like this in America, they divided our loyalty by telling us that we were "free." A man who is "free" has no loyalties. When a man and a woman marry, the preacher does not tell them that they are free — he tells them they are bound to each other. When society makes the first step to develop a social order, it is not freedom that is given to all the people. The people must each give up a part of their individual freedom so that they can become a bigger entity, a bigger organ. The man gives up part of his freedom so that he can join on to a woman in marriage. She also gives up part of her freedom and they come together to form a bigger party. In time, they have children and the family becomes still a bigger party than just the man and wife.

The man and woman can only grow as a family when they have given up some of their individual freedom.


Limits Of Physical Freedom

You hear many people in America saying, "This is the land of the free. I don't want nobody ruling me. The trouble with this world is that we have too many leaders and too much organization." These people are speaking with the diseased concept of democracy that was intended to keep the majority of the people as mental and moral slaves. Most Americans are only free in one sense, and that is in the sense of physical freedom. Even that physical freedom is limited depending on your wealth, your sex, your education, or your skin color. There are many beautiful spots in America that we would love to see. It is not that we want to live there or to eat and sleep with the residents, but we would like to walk through some of the beautiful communities in America just to see how beautiful America is all over. Many Americans, however, are not physically free to go into these communities. You will find an army of "fellow Americans" wearing swastikas saying, "Nigger, go home." There are Chinese that are not free to walk the streets in many parts of America. There are Latinos that are not free to walk the streets in many parts of America. There are Jews that are not free to walk the streets in many parts of America. There are poor Caucasians that are not free to walk the streets in many parts of America.


A Haven For Filth

In speaking of an old nation, the Bible gives a description that serves as a prophecy for the West (America). It speaks of a place that had become a haven for every foul, unclean, and filthy bird (people). You cannot be too bad for America. There are immigration laws that say that you can be too brown for America or too black for America, but there are no laws that say you are too corrupt for America.

Moral corruptors and vice peddlers can come here and set up business. No matter how farfetched or ridiculous a thing is, there is a place for it here in America. If you want to teach people that human beings are suppose to bark like dogs and walk on their heels, I guarantee you that you can have a society of dog-barking people started here in just a few days. You will find willing subjects and a place to do your work in America. Because nothing is too ridiculous for this environment, more is demanded from you for survival's sake than in any other spot on the earth.

Brothers and Sisters, do not take life for granted in America. If there is any place on earth that you should be on guard, it is in America. You are worse off here than you would be among the wild animals of the jungles.


Land Of Parasites

America is a land of parasites. If you have sweet blood, there are parasites waiting to suck your blood on radio, on television, in the newspaper, on street corners, in a church or a synagogue or a so-called mosque. Everywhere in the air, corruption is coming at you. Today, man's fear of big creatures is gone. The primitive man feared the dinosaur, but today we fear viruses and social forces working in us and on us that we cannot even see with the physical eye. They bring about the wrinkling up of the skin, gray hair, baldness, heart failure, cancer and leukemia. The things that are enemies to us now are not in a big form like the dinosaur, they are so hidden that we have to search for them with fine
looking glasses. But do not think that the society is any less threatened now than it was in the days of the primitive man. In fact, it is much more threatened now than it ever has been. The only people who will survive today are those who have their hearts and their minds fixed on truth and who are willing to submit to truth. They must be willing to say, "I believe in God, I follow God, I obey God, I cannot live without God." They must say this with courage, with power, with strength, with faith, with confidence, and with pride. The rest of the people are going to go down to destruction.


In The Dark

The Western powers have been shaken and their institutions are reeling and rocking, yet there is no news that the governments or the society are going to overcome these great threats against their life. When the leaders speak to you on television and on radio, they are not telling you that they have managed to over come the problems or that they see a bright future ahead. They are telling you that they do not know how to get society back on the road to progress or how to deal with the problems and the confusion in the society. They admit that they are all in the dark. Times have become so critical that preachers cannot stand up and preach the Bible anymore, they have to entertain the people with music, with business, or with politics. The preachers have been deprived of the ability to pick up the word of God and preach. How many preachers do you find today who are telling you to follow God's word because God's word is the best? No, they are telling you what is happening in Russia, what is happening in China, or what is happening in Africa. They are telling you what the rich people are doing to the poor people. But they are not telling you what God has done for you and can continue to do for you to keep you alive and progressing. Most of them have given up the scripture and are content just to follow the trends of the people.


The Common Need

I do believe, with my whole being, that America's destiny is a divine destiny. I do believe that America will be victorious and that America will overcome, but she will not be victorious with the same old mentality. America will have to take on a new mentality. She will have to prove strong enough, morally and spiritually, to shed off her old wicked mentality, to take on the new mentality and wear it proudly, to defend it and work for it as much as she worked for her wrong mentality. If she has the strength, I do believe that America will become the leader of the world again. If America does not have the strength to do this, she is going down and the time is not far off.

America does not have too much time left to talk about what America is going to do. America must start doing the things right now that she knows she must do. America does not know what she wants because America is in the dark. Some of the people want "the niggers" out of their schools, some of them want more welfare, some of them want to start a war  but these are isolated wants. No one is representing the common wants and needs of the American people because they do not know their own common needs anymore. The truth is that the common need of the American people is moral leadership and spiritual leadership. America is not yet demanding moral leadership that stands upon the foundation of truth. The society itself is too corrupt, too sick, too confused and too deep in the mire of wickedness to stand up and say that they want moral and spiritual leadership. It does not take a lot of political knowledge to see that we are a country that is politically confused. We are divided because we do not have anything in our environment that reaches all of us. In order to unite people, there must be something in the environment with which all of them want to identify and to give themselves.

When America was founded, the newcomers as a majority all shared a common desire for a place to work, a place to pray, and a place to live in peace. Because there was a common desire, there was great strength in their unity. Over the years, however, America has become so divided by its own philosophy of divide and conquer that there is really no central force or rallying banner for all the people. We are a people thoroughly divided with racism, with all kinds of prejudices, with all kinds of fears, and with all kinds of unclean interests.


The Expense Of Freedom

Lies and vices cannot unite a society, only truth and righteousness can unite a society. When a society becomes so heavily saturated with lies and vices, you have to purge it by burning out the lies and the vices. When you get them burned out well enough, you will again see human life coming to the surface and you will see people trying to get together in unity. Until then the people will just be groping in the dark to make an effort, but they cannot commit themselves. Although we make an effort to identify things in the dark, we are not able to commit ourselves until the light comes on.

In America there are a lot of movements, and a lot of darkness, but there is little commitment. The people want freedom, but who values freedom enough to pay the price? They think that freedom is free. "Freedom" and "free" are two different things. The most expensive thing in the world is freedom. If you want freedom, you must pay a price. The people say, "Give me liberty or give me death, the land of the free, the home of the brave." They never talk about commitment, sacrifice or responsibility. Responsibility goes with freedom. The more freedom you get, the more responsibility you have. The leadership of America has fed us the idea of freedom and has deafened our ears to the accompanying demands of responsibility that we have for every ounce of freedom that we get.

Your brother, 
W.D. Muhammad
