09/15/1975
IWDM Study Library
Ministers Meeting
Pt. 5

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Imam Mohammed: Once the FBI was talking to me and they were mentioning me in Philadelphia. They said, "You really had something going in Philadelphia, didn't you?" I said, "I don't know. What do you mean?" They said, "You're pretty strong." I said, "Well, I really believe in what I teach." They said, "You're a hard man to get to." [laughs] They didn't say no more, but I understood. I stick to the straight and narrow path.
If they send infiltrators, they're going to pay the price. They would like to make the place comfortable for the infiltrators. They like to break your discipline. Destroy your discipline. Destroy your faith and the things that you worship so that you'll be relaxed. You let them drink, let them play with the women and the sisters, let them get corrupt. Then, the infiltrator, he feel relaxed here, he ain't paying no price for infiltrators. I'm making them pay a price. He has to play his game real, real hard. He has to keep it uptight.
This first pillar now, first pillar is Allah. What is our religion establishing for us? The means for our survival. Religion is the answer to the plea of humanity for survival. If you want to know what religion has been aiming at, then that's it. Religion has been aiming at guaranteeing the humanity, the people survival. How has this religion grown to this kind of [unintelligible 00:03:34] picture that we have we call Islam?
Because problems have popped up, the Holy Quran, in the Holy Quran, it says that, "Never will Allah deliver a people until they change their condition," which means deliver a people, "until they first change what is in themselves." Do you see? All right. What does this mean then? He won't deliver them, "I won't change them until they change what is in themselves." It means that Allah is telling us, trying to get us to recognize that there's already a natural force working in you for your salvation.
Until you do something to show that you recognize and respect that natural force working in you, he's not going to assist you. He's not going to help you. There's a consciousness working in us, telling us that we shouldn't do certain things, that is beneath us, beneath human dignity to do certain things. There's a consciousness working in us telling us that it's selfish for us to grow big and ignore the cry of other people for the basic, very bare necessities of life.
Until people recognize this, Allah is not going to do anything for us. They have to first make one step. Is that right? The step might be small, no matter how small it is, maybe you just decided, "Well, I'm going to stop lying. That's at least one step. For that step, Allah is going to make, according to the teachings, 10 steps toward you. He's going to reward you with 10 steps, but first, you have to change something in yourself. You can't just keep going in the same way without any change on your part and expect some change from Allah. Is that right?
The religion, in saying this, is recognizing or telling us to recognize that there is a natural working in life and in creation, and it's divine. Divine is just not working on the plane of revelation as is seen coming from angels or coming from messengers of G-d, but it's working also on the plane of ordinary human being. If you don't recognize G-d or the revelations on the ordinary plane of human being, then what justification have G-d for bringing you up to the other level or to a higher level? You see, that's what he's saying.
We have a progress, a movement that's natural in the world. If we can recognize that natural movement, then we can walk the path of human survival because that natural movement shows us the path of human survival on earth or in our own human family. Do you understand? Now, once you get in accord with the natural way, then Allah begins blessing you and rewarding you. He increases your blessings and makes your travel better and easier for you.
There is nothing revealed out of the sky. There is something that has been pointed out on earth. You see? After pointing it out, then the way to perfect it is given, from divine truth or from divine source. We have Allah as the first pillar. Now, let's go and look at something in creation. If we want to look at the growth of creation, and I think the best example is creation. That's all we have creation. If you want to know the workman, if you can't reach the workman, you can't get to him, study his work. Is that right?
In studying his work, you'll learn something about the workman. My mind is in my work because my work came out of my mind. Is that right? I know how to make it simple enough to get an amen. You see, I'll get that amen. All right. [laughs] We have the creation now and we have to look to the creation to get the best picture of what we are trying to see. Creation, it comes into being and whether it's rock, metal, ice, living matter, I don't care what it is, it all have something in common. Is that right?
We might say it is an active world. An active world. We look at a stone and we don't see no visible activity, but we know that that stone is made up of particles, and the particles are made up of molecules, and the molecules are made up of smaller particles, smaller matter that we call atom. Is that right? The atom still made up of different charges that we call electrons, protons, neutrons. We see motion in all matter. There is motion in everything that exists. There is motion.
Not only a motion as a body, I have a form, but there's also inside, an inward motion. Is that right? Internal motion. This motion is necessary for life. There is no life until there is some motion. I don't mean same old motion, a new motion has to come into birth. When this new motion comes into birth or as a being, we say life has formed in there. We even speak of things that are dead as far as animate and inanimate is concerned as being alive. We say this is a live wire. Right? Because we ourselves with our own limited scientific knowledge, we are able to recognize that this wire is not dead as any other wire is dead. We recognize that there is a power here, we feel it, so because something is there active, we call it a live wire, but really the whole creation is alive. Is that right? Because if we are scientifically learned enough, we can see and recognize motion and activity in everything that exists and this motion and activity follows a pattern to bring in life.
Before life is formed, new activity comes into existence and as it comes into existence, we see things begin to form, and these things will be in motion, and these things will be looking for something. They don't come into existence to exist alone. They come into existence to unite. Though they might have come in as one, they come in as one and begin to break up, or they might come in as many, but they come in to become one. Their effort is to become one, so we see the small particles moving and they look like they are just rambling for something.
I don't know where they are going, I don't know what they are trying to do, but as we watch them, we see they are not just rambling, they know where they want to go. After a while, they come together. If you have ever watched the life forming the slide, (unclear), you've seen how the forms, the more simpler forms trying to bring about the true form that's trying to come into existence, you can see them grabbing to each other. The closer they get, the stronger their power is to grab each other. Pretty soon they interlock and become one.
We are talking about Allah oneness. They become one and as they become one, then they begin to grow as one, but when they weren't one, we couldn't see any growth, could we? [laughs] When they were pieces of something that should have been one, we couldn't even see any growth, didn't look like a thing was growing. Once they embraced each other and became one, now we see that thing, boom, boom, boom. It's getting on out there, right? All right.
Then as it enlarges itself and gets bigger, we discover something else in it, it's looking for some order. It's not just satisfied to become, it wants its own identity. So we see something shoot out from the bottom of it, boom. And after a while something would shoot out from somewhere else, boom, and that's why we recognize a star fish. Thing that shot out there and got its identity, so it struggles to get an identity. It struggles for self, to get self identity, so its really self is its form, that identity is its form, it's struggling for form and we may say this form is its order.
After getting motion, it now wants to find order, so it finds order, so let's put these up here. (writing on a chalk board). Motion, order, and we may say form. Because form is only order rested, we may say. Can you follow with my language? If you all come with some better language, give it to me, I'm trying to talk to you. [laughs] We may say then that form is order rested. The thing is searching for order from the very beginning, but once it gets the order that it was searching for completed, we call that its form. All right. Let's go to three now.
After it gets its form or its order, still ain't satisfied. It wants to get something else. It wants to get a kind of a working existence with other things, is that right? You might bring it its food and feed it, but that still won't hold it there. You can bring its food to it, if you don't lock it up, it ain't going to stay there. I don't care if they say scientist say it's looking for food. They say, "Well, it's looking for food." Its looking for food, but there must be a lot of different kinds of food because once it gets this one and you keep giving it that one he's asking for another one after a while, right?
We are talking about the physical food now. The physical food won't hold it there. You give it its physical food and it grow and grow and grow, it stays there that depended on it, but as soon as its belly is kind of satisfied, it want to move out. Why? Because it has to find its place in the other creations because it recognizes, it knows that I'm not one alone, I'm one even with a bigger one. I'm one with creation, so I've eaten plenty, but I still have to go out and visit my family.
I have to get with my family, so you feed that little pup, but he's got to run off play, got to run out there and jump over little twigs and what not, bark at the other dogs, chase the cat, look at the birds, [laughs] jump in some water and see what's that's like because he is a part of that big environment. Now he is looking for, we may say, togetherness or family or order on a broader or higher plane. Still looking for order, but he is moving out, so we may say that he is looking for- I didn't want to use this word, but it's about the best one, agreement.
Agreement, harmony, fulfillment, lots of words we can use, but let's keep this one here, agreement. Now he will go out or he might be looking for himself and that's still looking for agreement because he agrees with himself, so he wants to find something else that's like himself that he can agree with. He goes out and he will find maybe some high grass and he will lie down in that high grass and feel comfortable there.
That's because he found agreement, he found peace. He might go and get with some other life like his life and he will find comfort there and he will enjoy there because he's found peace or agreement. He will run into something and he doesn't look like him, he can't relate to it, there's a communication problem, and he begin attacking it, maybe holler at it first. He fears it and his fear is not natural in him, the fear is unnatural.
It is natural as a protection, but it's unnatural as a reality. I hope you can understand my language. Okay, so he is not really trying to kill something, he is trying to really see if this thing can agree with me, but he does it by barking and attacking. He hopes that maybe it will give in and he can talk to it, but if it doesn't give in, they get to fighting each other and they might injure each other and destroy each other and they break apart and they go their own way.
They couldn't stay together, but don't think that this is disagreement all the time, it's disagreement, but the disagreement is not real. This thing wants to live with him and it wants to live in peace with everything. Okay, let's go on now. We're going now down to number four. No, I better go back. We didn't finish talking about agreement. That peace, agreement, which we may call peace, it manifests in many of our struggles. The little child, he struggles to get up to move. That movement is too slow. He struggles to get up on his feet and to walk, but in trying to walk, he's searching for balance too. Once he can balance, then he's at peace. As a walker, he's at peace. He can walk without being bothered by the problem of walking, so he's found peace as a walker because he struggles trying to get balance. He moves on up, after he gets his balance then he can walk. What he wants then? Direction. He wants direction now. He's gotten up, he's gotten his form, the activity of his life have brought into order his life and that order has rested in what we call form. The form has managed now to gain smooth movement. He wants to move. It has to move to come into existence and then it has to move to get out to get what it wants, so it wants to move. It's moving, but in moving, it wants direction and to get direction, it needs vision. For some animals, this vision is eyesight like we have. Only eyesight. For others, it's the kind of a hearing, our radar. For others, it's a sensitivity. There are many kinds of vision, but they're all are vision.
A man that has no physical eyes, he see's with the eyes that he has. With his hearing, with his feelings, he see's. That's why in religion and the scripture, vision is emphasized. It doesn't mean just physical vision, but it means the ability to get some kind direction and make some contact to enable you to connect yourself with something. It's a movement out. Vision permits more movement outwards. We look out in order to move out. For this movement, we have to have direction. The sight in the two eyes, both eyes have sight, but the sight is one.
We have sight in this eye, sight in that eye. These sights blend to become one sight, but if you'd never saw two eyes in your head and never felt or recognized that you had two things moving to give you sight, you would think that sight was one. There's one eye before your face or in your head.
Can't you see that there is movement and the movement is moving toward unity, toward agreement, toward oneness, and it's seeking direction and the direction it's looking for also is unity and oneness. When these religious people establish G-d as one G-d, and that one G-d as a idea, a concept, a belief before your face as an object for your direction, as an object for you to seek, they knew, brother, what was best for human survival. In order to survive, you must have one as the strongest concept in your life. One. The musician he plays it from one string and he gets all the notes on the scale out of that one string.
I have a musician here, he knows. I believe that's right. I don't know much about any of these things, but I remember reading certain things and I saw the likeness to the divine world and I picked it up and didn't forget it, but that's what they say. One string but all the notes on that one string. If you put different strings together, can make a different music, but really the music is one string. That's like English is one language. One man can sing and they call that what? When one person's singing.
A solo. When you put two together, then you got something else, but we don't need all them for a song.
[laughter]
[applause]
In mathematics, one stands in mathematics.
You talk about 10 or 50 or 1,000, you talk about fractions, but you're talking about one.
When we say 50 we mean 50 ones. We mean one expressed 50 times, not one created 50 times. One can't be created, one is original. You can't create it, you can only express it again. That's the true, it's true for mathematics. Then we have light. Light comes and if it hits, but the thing has to be ordered right now it just can't get anything. It hits those flying particles of water in the air. The Creator was able to make a prism to break up light by throwing a handful of water out in the sky, but man has to tool glass in order to come up with a prism that will reflect light. Is that right? [laughs]
Man takes and makes a prism. Believe that's what they call this thing, a prism and he sends the light through it with the aide of a screen, the light breaks up and it shows what was hidden in the one light. I don't think we have created something when we come up with these colors. We haven't created anything, we just brought out something or saw something that was original, and it was original in the one light. We're talking about importance of oneness for us. Moses, when he came, he said, "Your G-d is one G-d." Abraham said, "The Lord is one." Why did these men emphasize one? One is necessary for human survival.
This is the most important thing in human life to see and that is that one dominates throughout creation. There is the physical world, whether it's the inanimate world, pardon me, or the animate world or whether it's the physical world or the so-called human world, whatever it is, this one dominates in the world. The one is the growing power, it's the controlling power, it's the ruling power, it's the forming power. It's trying to form you. One is attracting you to come into order. One is attracting you to take your proper form. One is attracting you to move, grow and progress. It's one throughout the creation. One is growing the creation.
G-d is one and once we arrive at that concept, that there's one being out of whom everything came and that that being is the one to focus your attention on for existence, for form, for order or for form, for progress or movement and for direction and for peace because we had peace in there too. You have to focus upon one if you want to achieve these things that are vital to human life or human existence. If you don't focus upon one you're going to miss the mark. As the Holy Quran says [foreign language] and those who miss the mark, they're striving for it. They are not condemned as those who don't want to hit the mark, that Christians are called daleen those who miss the mark.
They're striving for it, but they keep missing the mark because they don't have one. Pure as a concept. Pure and unadulterated for them to direct their movement on. This is very important and Muhammad the prophet, peace and blessings upon him, he said that the five pillars of Islam are like a tent. They are poles. This post you see, (drawing on a chalk board) five of them. How many do we have there four, right? Can you see four? Did I make it plain enough so you can see it?
This one here is supposed to be behind the screen. Four pillars and one right down through the center. He said that one is the first pillar of Islam, Allah. He said the other four can all fall down, but if you keep that one, you won't lose the tent. All you have to do is come back and grab the corner of the tent and replace that one and put it there, walk over there and grab the other corner and put it there and go all the way around and you got your tent in order again.
If this one fall, we lose the tent. These can fall and the height of the tent won't drop one half an inch. If this center one fall, the tent drops. Why? Because this center one is giving elevation. It's giving height to the tent and these (unclear) stakes are holding the tent in its proper form so we can enjoy movement under the tent. [laughs]
[applause]
All right, let's go and look at the other stakes now. We have prayer as a stake. We don't want to just have a tent, we want movement and in order to move, we can move as one person. We can just have a stake up there and stand under the stake and exist, but life demand that we move and that we seek agreement with that that is one with us. Our brother is one with us. We want to pray and acknowledge or glorify the main structure of the tent.
The main support of the tent and we want to do this in unity and in agreement with our brothers and sisters, so prayer is established. Prayer in Islam is not prayer that you go and pray in a closet brother to brother. You don't pray by yourself in Islam. That kind of prayer is called optional prayer. You're not punished for not saying that prayer. That's just something you need but not something we have to have.
You can forget about praying alone as long as you come together and pray with us, our society will continue to move under the tent. All right, we have prayer. Prayer is to enable us to move. We acknowledge to G-d now, but don't stand still acknowledging him, move and in order to move, I've got to get with you brother. We got to get together and we have to pray. All right. For more than one to be under this tent, we need room. If we have a stake here giving support and we take a corner of that material and attach it here, it's going to give us some space without even establishing in another corner.
It's going to give some space for us to stand at least right in that corner and we can do something. Okay, that's the limited activity in the field of Islam, we're praying. All right, so we come out here and we got another one and that is charity or zakat. Now charity requires an extension, an extended movement on our part. A man who prays doesn't have to move out from himself as much as a man who gives to charity.
We need a little more room for movement under the tent so we have another stake tied now. We have half the tent now giving us area of movement. You understand that? A man who prays, he doesn't have to move out like the man who gives charity. A family can pray together. A local community can pray together, but to be charitable, he's going to have to move out. Maybe he himself has been living on charity.
Maybe the whole praying community has been living on charity, but now in order for them to live up to their commitment to also be charitable, that community is going to have to move out. Somebody got to get a job. Somebody got to dig up some earth and bring out the material wealth in order to make the material life a little bit more comfortable and a little bit more easier for movement, for the movement of his brother and sister. All right. This charity enables more movement.
We have to move. We come here and we go out another one now. Now we got that one. The next one is fasting. F-A-S-T-I-N-G. How does fasting come after charity? If a man can give charity, it means that he has more than it takes for him to survive materially. He don't have to, he can outside with clothes. He has a room, or apartment or a house. He has food to eat, he can survive from one day at another. Now he's able, he's got a nickel more, a quarter more, a dollar more.
He's able to perform the duty of charity. He can give. Now we're talking about materially. We know a man with no material wealth, he might be spiritually wealthy or humanly wealthy and he still can give. Whatever wealth we have, we're supposed to give but we're talking about the hard currency now. Let's go here now he says, when he gets able to get charity he has to give charity.
A man with no existence prays, with no means of existence prays. You don't have to tell him to pray, he prays without you telling and if the Lord above don't answer, he will start praying to anybody around here right? "Oh, minister, please give me a dollar? Please give me a quarter for a sweet roll or something. Well, can you give me a nickel for a candy bar?"
We don't have to teach him to pray, he's going to pray brother when he gets in trouble.
All right, but this prayer, in order to advance human society, this prayer should be advanced. Nothing should remain undeveloped. Praying or begging is natural enough, but we should seek to refine that and complete that that is natural enough. That's why prayer is established as an institution in Islam. Now we go to beyond charity. Now before this man can fast, he has to already be able to give in charity. You can't tell a man who's starving to fast, he's fasting already.
[laughter] Isn't that the simple truth? Fasting is to make us feel the pain of hunger. The pains of want. The body wants something to replace what's being lost in it. You can't tell a starving man to fast. He's like, "Well, hell, man. I've been fasting. I want to get off my fast."
[laughter]
We have fasting here now, but it has to come after charity. Can't come before. The man has to be able to give something before he can sacrifice something. We have fasting here now. Now, let's see. We have one more. That's hajj. Hajj, which is called pilgrimage. What is this pilgrimage now? It's many things, but I'm going to introduce another word here. I'm going to introduce the word economy, E-C-O, econ, N-O-M-Y. Economy. We pray. We give in charity. We fast. We sacrifice so that we can continue. Fasting is an effort to preserve charity. You understand? You see? Charity is an effort to preserve prayer.
You see how wide Islam is laid out? Some people get something and forget to protect what they got. They say, "Now that I got this, I want something else." They go and invest in something else, and that thing ends up destroying what they had before. Isn't this what happened many times? This is the danger in growth. When you want to grow, the danger is when you step out to grow another step, you got to be careful to don't jeopardize what you've already gained. Working scientifically, you can increase without putting what you've gained in jeopardy. Everything in Islam is done to, what they call it, fortify. Fortify. We have this structure here, this belief here, but we want to strengthen it. So to strengthen it, we move on to prayer.
[00:43:13] [END OF AUDIO]

