
1990-07-22 The Burden of Misconception Part 5
 Imam W. Deen Mohammed
 (1990-07-22)
 Location: Video Lectures – Page 1

00:03: Alright, I think we doing fine. Thank Allah. I think we're doing fine. Now, Allah speaks directly to the concept of man. Allah says he has created you or made you into nations and families, our nations and tribes for the purpose of having you acknowledge each other. Not for you to stand over each other. This is what Allah says. Not for you to... What is the translation? 

00:58 S?: "Despise."

00:59 IWDM: "Despise." Not for you to despise each other. That's an English term. The original term in the Quran is Arabic. "Despise" is a good translation, but it means not for you to think yourself better than the other. Not for you to establish a superiority for yourself over the other. Now, if you take time to think over everything that I'm passing onto you, and many of you know it already. You're students like I am, and you're informed as I am, like I am. Perhaps as I am and better than I am, many of you. So, everything that I'm passing onto you from Quran and from the life of our prophet, if you think over it, and if you have good healthy mind and good intent. If you got bad intent, you don't know how the outcome gonna be.

02:00 IWDM: I know people that you be trying to get them to admit an obvious fact, and you say, "Well, I'm standing here trying to talk to you, am I not?" "No."

02:15 S?: [laughter]

02:18 IWDM: "Well, the wind is blowing, isn't it?" "No."

02:21 S?: [laughter]

02:24 IWDM: The curtain is down, and the window almost been broken out. "No." So, we know that the state of the person, the disposition of the person, is gonna determine how they gonna respond. But if we in a right disposition, and if we really think about what's being said here, think over it. You will find that it respects the human person, the common human person. Our religion respects the common human person, the common excellence of the human person. That's where the focus is, and it respects the order and the need of the human person to be supported by the universal order. The big scheme is more important. We couldn't come here without created matter. God didn't create us in some invisible spook pocket up there in the space somewhere, and then shoop, and we fell down here on the earth and start walking and stuff.

03:20 IWDM: Or somebody shot down here, and then clay and dirt start piling up together until it looked like a human being and it started walk. That's fiction. No. Allah created the universal matter, this universal matter. Do to this universe... Created is so powerful that in time, they say, "Oh, you know those temples, say they gonna be around here for hundred of thousands of years." The earth is not made to reprocess those things and bring it back into the earth. The earth can't do that, because the pastor can't do that. So, they're saying separate the panther. Good. That's good for us, and it's good for this time. But if you live around here long, ain't gonna be no panthers.

04:05 S?: [laughter]

04:08 IWDM: Ain't goin' be no panthers, ain't goin be no pollution. In time, Allah will make those rivers the same way they were in Eden. He'll make the land the same way it was in the time of Eden paradise. He'll make it all better in time 'cause you'll be wiped away by your mistakes. Creation is bigger than you. That's what Allah says. Now, I know that make you feel kind of lower spirits, but a lot of the truth makes us feel low in spirit. Most of you all were told the truth about your favorite parent, you'll probably become low in spirit. But if you mature enough, you will revive from it 'cause the positive things, the good things that have made you endeared you to the parent, will be stronger than the bad news that you get. You see? 

05:04 IWDM: So, tell us that the universe is a bigger scheme than we are, and more important than we are as a universe is a bigger and more... It kind of brings us down a little bit, because we have been given an idea in Western society that man is more important than everything else, and that actually man is the original excellence and the end. He is the microcosm, and he survives to again become over the microcosm and separated from the macrocosm. The microcosm will survive to outlive and rise above the macro, the big picture, the big universe, and become with God. God with a God over this big universe.

06:00 IWDM: We know. I don't care what human being, what prophet, they all were born babies. They all live the life of growing up. They all had to be assisted by adults. I'm talking about the prophets, the best human beings that Allah made, the most perfect human beings Allah made. They all had to be assisted by adults. They all were helpless as babies. They all boo-booed. They all urined, and they came here without knowing how to handle that, probably. And they had to be assisted by adults. They all had their problems, all of them. And they all got hungry, and wanted. Prophets, I'm talking about. The best, the most excellent and perfect. They all got hungry. "I want some beans. I sure would like to have some boiled beans." See back there far enough, you ain't talking about no fillet mignon and all that stuff.

[laughter]

07:00 IWDM: "I sure would like to have some boiled beans, and a dish of grapes, or a glass of milk." Say, "Well, I don't have no way to get it here. That's just a market about five miles." It might be 50 miles back then. I guess I'll walk to that market. I should get there by next week sometime."

[laughter]

07:23 IWDM: "I'm going to that market. I hope I don't starve before I get there. Maybe there'll be some water holes and some herbs and roots that I can live on until I get there. I just got to have me some boiled beans and a glass of milk." And the great prophet, they walk there and they're walking and going to get something to eat. Our religion tells us that the prophets were human beings like you. They walked in the markets, they had to go to the market and shop for their needs, just like you. This is our religion. That's the religion respecting what is truly the human person. That's respecting the human person.

07:56 IWDM: You ain't respecting the human person in the common constitution of man that we all have to base our equality upon. You're not respecting that by telling us that God made some man that wasn't natural. How can a natural man follow an unnatural creature? I don't see the way. You can do it, but you won't be successful. What I mean in terms of where you're supposed to go with your nature. You can do it, but you won't be successful, in terms of where you should go with your nature. So, we have become, I believe, the most unnatural society on this earth. What I'm talking about now, Western society. We have become the most unnatural society on this earth, though the most, I would say, the most richest in terms of what we've been able to produce and how we have benefited the world in this present time. We're the greatest, perhaps in the history of the world, of the earth. We don't know.

09:07 IWDM: This Western society has become great benefactors. We can't ignore that, and we'd be silly to ignore and try to pretend that it's not so. We have to give credit to the European people, and to Western society for having the courage to inquire into the nature. See how they got it? Inquire into the nature of the universe, and to the nature of matter in the universe, and bring our science. They were turned onto that by the first scientists of Al-Islam, who followed our prophet to revive the sciences for the civilizations for the nations all over the earth.

09:43 IWDM: They followed in that, but they followed with such thrust and with such concentrated interest, and with such hopes for the future. They were just fired up with such powerful ambitions that they ended up just doing wonders, in terms of bringing out the possibilities of nature, in terms of what could benefit man materially and in many other ways. Let's not pretend that they didn't do that. Let's not pretend that they don't deserve the credit for that. Acknowledge that. That's what Allah says when he have made you to acknowledge each other. A lot of us are guilty of the same thing. Though we are in the position of the oppressed or the subjugated, we too have a small person's arrogance that make us not wanna acknowledge the greatness of other people.

10:35 IWDM: Acknowledge the greatness of the white man, the European man, the American, the European American. Acknowledge the greatness of the European. Acknowledge the greatness of the Arabs if they have it. And believe me, the Arabs have a greatness. Many of the Muslims, we have a racial thing, even with our Arab Muslim brothers. We want to criticize them. We want to find fault in them. We want to believe that they are not to get the same kind of respect or the same kind of love that we give others. That's wrong. We want to believe that we have some justification for not really identifying strongly with them as Muslim. We don't have any justifications. That's ignorance, blind ignorance and jealousy. Blind ignorance and jealousy. We have to get rid of that stuff.

11:20 IWDM: And that kind of thing leads us into becoming what is the typical racist in this ugly world of racism. We don't want that. We are to acknowledge each other. Now, I think the West has shown recently. Although they tried to hide it, they at the top responsible for communication in America and in the West. They tried to hide it, they kept it suppressed for a long time, for generations, for hundreds of years. They kept the beauty and truth of Al-Islam, or Islam as it's commonly called, they kept it hid. But here lately in the last five years, we have seen the media bring the truth of our religion, much of the beauty and strength and truth of our religion to the American public.

12:07 IWDM: You have seen that. So, we see them acknowledging the Muslim, right? They're acknowledging the Muslim people. They're acknowledging the excellence of the Muslim people from Arabia, of Turkey, wherever. Of Syria, wherever the excellence was, they're not hiding that in history. They brought that to us. They recently have brought all that to us. Now, I know there are factors behind that, but you're not to think of that. You appreciate the good that people are doing. Appreciate their repentance. Appreciate them turning. Appreciate a new generation that's doing better, behaving better than old generation. Appreciate them, and don't say, "Well, we know the pressures that made them do that. We know if the Arabs wouldn't have invested all that money over here, they wouldn't be doing that."

12:49 IWDM: You don't know that. You don't know that. So, let us not be suspicious like that, and come from weaknesses like that. But let's be truthful and straight people. Now, Allah also says speaking directly to the problem of identities that desired us to establish and identity for ourselves exclusively, so we can then have something over the head of other people to oppress them and deny them. To abuse them, use them, segregate them, and discriminate them, and exploit them for our own benefit. That's what racism is, you know? The common racist, the common person who's a racist, he is just as much oppressed by racism as the victims of that thing, as a direct victim. He's an indirect victim of it.

13:38 IWDM: The direct victim may be the black, as we say in quotes, or the African American. But the one practicing that is also a victim of racism, and the people that are really behind, I should say the Satans, the dupes of Satan who are really behind that thing, they are not really racist in the sense that we understand race and racist and racism. No, they're not. They are exploiters. They are exploiters. And they give character, names to people to separate them from each other, and make them think that they are different by nature than each other, so they can never come together. Allah created the common excellence of man in his nature, in his natural constitution. As the condition for unity of man, they know that if they can confuse that and have us identify on some other criteria, then they can exploit us.

14:41 IWDM: But without us allowing them to establish our identity in some unnatural thing, take us away from the natural basis, they can't. They know that. They can't exploit it. They can't exploit us until they take us out of our original form. They must take us out of our original form before they can exploit us. So, believe me, don't feel so bad when you suffer racism from the hand of common citizens. Don't feel so bad. Look, from the common citizen, you call it racism. But when you go at home, you get the same treatment, you don't call it racism. You just call, "Hey, you just being cruel and ugly." You know? We got some people at home, "Don't sit by me."

[laughter]

15:33 IWDM: "I can't stand you in this room. Go in the other room, or I'm gonna go. I'm gonna leave." Now, that ain't racism. You don't call that racism. We have those that use tricks and try to exploit each other right in the home, right? Deceive them, misguide them, they take advantage of them right in the home. But you don't call that racism in the house, right? So, the same evil done in the house is called one thing, and evil done in society is called racism. The superiority attitudes that we have in the family, and especially on the block, and especially when we meet each other in public. I meet African Americans in public, on the plane I travel cause of you. You know, I travel big style sometimes. I'm on the plane, and I sit down beside African American. Irritated.

[laughter]

16:32 IWDM: Said, "Nigger, don't degrade me." They don't say this, but I'm trying to explain the situation. "Nigger, don't degrade black man. Don't degrade me by sitting on this plane beside me. You degrade me. If a white person sits here, that honors me. Don't you sit here." That's the truth. That's the reality. That's what a lot of us don't wanna admit. I'm talking about our leaders. They don't wanna admit that we have bought the lie that we are racially inferior by our creation by our nature. Many of us have bought that lie. If we haven't bought the lie, we have at least been influenced by the lie to the extent that we feel more comfortable and better when we think we are up in the world sitting by whites, talking to whites, associating with whites, than we do doing the same thing with each other. Then we do when we're doing the same thing with each other. That's a fact.

[applause]

 

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	1990-07-22 The Burden of Misconception Part 5	

05/25/15 		Page 1 of 5





