1979
IWDM Study Library
The life of Human Being and the Life of Society

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
All praise is due to Allah the guardian, evolver, the keeper, the sustainer of all the worlds. We ask for His guidance.
We ask for His mercy and His forgiveness. We ask that He bless us to be a community of Muslims, upholding the banner of Al Islam as it was upheld by the companions of Prophet Muhammed, (Arabic). Highly glorified is Allah, above all that we can imagine, above all that we might associate with Him, above all that we can give description for. We cannot come up with any idea to do justice to Allah. It is not in our capacity, it is not in our intelligence as human beings, as created beings, to come up with any idea to do justice to the supreme being of our creator.
Dear beloved Muslims, today in the Khutbah, we want to give serious thought to just what is the life of the human being and the life of society. Life should mean decency, progress, health. We may lose our good senses and good intelligent understanding of what life is and we may find that we have lost life and we are following death urges rather than life urges. A human being can lose life before he's aware of it and he can be following death urges rather than life. We live in a world, in a society, this society that we live in that is given to death urges, its not given to life urges. This the society, the way it is encouraged to go, tells us that the society is under death urges, not life urges.
They have an abnormal, abnormal sick idea of life, not a healthy, sane normal idea of life, a sick, abnormal idea of life, and we have to be careful because we might find ourselves under influences that won't make for life. They'll be making for death. Because of the nature of the human being, the nature of Allah's justice, death can seem the right road to walk down and you can fall in love with the path of death and you'd be thinking to yourself that you are really living and you won't be living, you'll be going fast downhill to self-destruction, to misery.
Dear beloved people, there is word, Qur'an, of Allah's justice and it comes in verses that a verse, words, a verse that is filled with great understanding, great enlightenment, great light of understanding. It reads (Arabic),
The gracious G-d, that is Allah, (Arabic- ar-Rahman) is on the throne of the (Arabic) That's an Arabic word and it's hard to give you one English word for that. In the context of the Qur'an, we can find what is the real meaning of this word. The word is used in different expressions or different contexts. In the Qur'an, an argument is presented to the people of religion that share one community of religious people, Jews, Christians and Muslims, and (Arabic) is directed at the Christians who insist upon making G-d a trinity of G-d, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It says Allah, invites us to invite the people who have these unbecoming ideas in religion to come to common terms of agreement. The word for that is (Arabic -Suwa) come to common terms of agreement. That's the translation, that's the English translation for that word.
But there is more to it than that. It means terms that does justice. Let's come to agree upon something that is just, something that is fair, something that does not take away from truth, something that does not do injustice to your side or to our side. Something that is truthful, just and not favoring any, but favoring only truth, what is right. That's a great challenge to a people, a great challenge. If we are to be the noble, the great noble creatures, human beings, don't you know are identified as the greatest of all creatures on this earth? Not only religion identify you as the greatest creature on this earth, but also science. Identifies you as the greatest creature on this earth. Religion identified you as the greatest creature on this earth before science did. Religion doesn't say that a human being is lower than a deer or lower than a lion or lower than an eagle, or lower than the chimpanzee or the monkey or the ape.
Religion say(s) you are higher than all of them and science says you are highest of all of them. Science says that you, the human being, you are the highest of all creatures on this earth. If that's true, then aren't you doing yourself a disservice? Aren't you shaming yourself when you act like a dog? When you act like a wild animal, when you become less intelligent than the average animal out there in the street, aren't you doing yourself a disservice? Aren't you shaming your own worth as a creature on this earth? That's beneath your worth. You are not living up to your own worth When you act like animals, when you act like dumb senseless brutes, when your morals fall lower than the morals of animals, you are shaming your worth. You are disgracing your own worth as a human being. Not only Allah says that you are better than them, that you are higher than them, science says it too. Many of you, you'll deny what Allah say, but you claim to follow what science says, but really you follow nothing but death urges, the urge to destroy yourself, the urge to join the blind movement toward disgrace and self-destruction.
The future of any society rests upon its concept of moral justice. What is moral justice to you? You should have some idea of what moral justice is. You can't prosper as a human being if you don't have some concept of what moral justice is. Again, science and religion agree that the human being is basically a moral creature. That's what distinguish(es) you from rocks, from stones, from trees, from cows, horses and other animals. The thing that distinguish(es) you is that you are a moral creature. You are not so much smarter than the rest of the creatures.
None of you can make a round circle without being taught how to do it, but many of the creatures we call animals can do it without anyone teaching them to do it. So you are not so intelligent, but you are a moral creature. You can get new and greater sense of your own worth and dignity that will put pressure on you and make you say, oh, I'm not on the level where I should be. The pressure of dignity on you make(s) you get up because you don't feel that you are really enjoying your full worth or your full dignity.
This is a force in the life of the human being to rise up to that level of self-image or self dignity that it can feel comfortable with. It want(s) to feel that it has what is meant for it, that it is not living beneath its own dignity or its own worth. How many of us care anymore whether we are living beneath our own worth, whether we are living beneath our own dignity? This society has stopped being responsible for human life. There is no responsible voice anymore that is dominating society, to keep society aware of the value and worth of human life.
Therefore, you don't have any concept of moral justice. You don't have any conscious awareness of your worth as an individual. You don't know what distinguish(es) you anymore from an animal. You have lost your own identity. You have lost your own sense of value or human worth. Who am I talking to? I'm talking to every one of you, because if there was one of you in here who had this sense, I would have more support. Your mind is not given to Allah. Your mind is like a floating leaf in the wind. Whatever pushes you emotionally decides where you will be.
You come to this masjid and you get the emotional push. It pushes you for a while, but as soon as you run into something else, another wind pushes you and we find that you're far away from where you were when we left you because you give yourself to emotional forces, emotional influences. You don't have any good rational sense. You don't have any rational concept, any rational idea, any logical principle that is ruling in your life. You need a logical principle ruling in your life to survive in this world. No one cares about you but Allah.
And if it wasn't for myself giving myself completely to Allah, I wouldn't care about you. I would be just like you, caught in the winds of the influences in the society. Human life can't prosper without moral vision. If you want to be successful in (the) business world, don't you have to have some object, some goal to reach for? Don't you have to have some business vision to be successful materially, to be successful in the business world? We are basically by human description, we are moral beings, moral creatures. You can be as wrong as you want to be. That doesn't mean that that's your nature. Your nature is not to be wrong. Your nature is to be right and you are going against the grain when you are being wrong and your own nature is a witness that you are going against the grain when you are being wrong.
None of us can be angels ,perfect without any defects, without any flaws, without any sin. Your Imam sins. I sin. I commit sin. I'm not an angel. I'm not a perfect being, but my path is not toward sin. My path is toward Allah and when I sin this because of a weakness, because of a mistake, because of a weakness, because of an ignorance on my part and because I'm that way, Allah loves me and he will hurt me. He'll trip me up. He will let me know that I went wrong because He knows I can be corrected. When I know I've gone wrong, I said, O Allah, forgive me for that mistake. Forgive me for that ignorance. Forgive me for that sin. Forgive me for that selfishness on my part. Forgive me for that. O Allah, I want to obey you.
Allah accepts the prayer of forgiveness no matter where it comes from. The greatest sinner in this earth. If he will pray sincerely for forgiveness, Allah accepts that prayer and then Allah gives you help, gives you help. I don't have the credentials of the high class people of this world, that is the institutional credentials. I don't have any credentials from any institution. No great school have given me a credential. Some people think I went to Azhar, Egypt, the school, I never went there for school. I'm a product of your school. You children go to Clare Muhammad school, that's the school I went to. Except for three hours credit in English and a couple of courses about six hours and a couple other courses. I have no schooling outside of this school.
I spent no time outside of this school hardly. I came up like you, under the honorable Elijah Muhammad and now you are coming up under Al Islam under the W.D. Mohammed and you are coming up in this school. I had no more opportunity than you had. I'm not a college graduate. I don't have one year college. But two days ago I was invited with a few, small number of people to meet the president of the United States. I met King Khalid,, the king of Saudi Arabia president, the president of Egypt. I met the presidents, the leaders of most of the Islamic world countries.
Then there's hardly a country on the face of this earth that wouldn't give me an invitation If they thought I wanted to come, they would give me an invitation from the state department. What has brought me to this level of respect in the world? Search my life. Is it money? I have none. Search my life. Is it money? I have none. Is it education? Is it education? By this world's judgment, I have none. I have no education. I don't have a BS degree. So what has brought me to this level of respect in the world? My obedience to Allah. I refuse to obey any except Allah and Allah has lifted me up because of my obedience to Him.
I'm a living proof to you that if you be right and try to obey Allah, Allah will lift you up and Allah will give you friends and Allah will secure you. You won't have to worry about food, clothing and shelter. You won't have to worry about threats upon your life. I worry about nothing. I fear nothing and physically I'm in as good a shape as average one of you. So I'm a living proof among you that Allah can give you more than the world can. Don't you make yourself stupid children when you follow people that are going against my way? You should follow me in my way, my way. My way is evidence to you that my way is the way of success Way. So you make yourself stupid when you follow people that lead you against my way.
I'm not saying my way to take the credit from prophet. No, my way is the way of Prophet Muhammed. I follow Allah and I follow Him through the guidance that was received by Prophet Muhammed. I'm also a follower of Prophet Muhammed, but I don't worship Prophet Muhammed. I worship Allah. It is not because I fear Muhammad that I'm this kind of a man. It's because I fear Allah that I'm this kind of a man. A people are really blessed when they are given physical evidence and you are that kind of people. You are blessed with physical evidence among you that Allah's way is the sure way.
If you don't accept it, then shouldn't you be punished for that? You think any of you all can turn away from the right religion and go out there and give yourself to the world of sin and disgrace and not be punished for it? If that's what you think you are sadly mistaken. Allah let the ignorant get by with a lot, but people are not ignorant. The youngest child in here, you are not ignorant. You know that there's moral force on earth and you know that moral force has respect in the world because your Imam is a moral force and your Imam has respect in the world.
If I was a dope pusher, do you think I'd have the respect I have? I could have millions of dollars from pushing dope. Do you think the President would want to see me? Do you think King Khalid would want to see me? Do you think the press and the professions would respect me? No. I'm respected by the press. I'm respected by the professions. I'm respected by everybody. Even the dumb fools respect me. Only Allah can give you that. I'm not shining a light on me for my sake. I'm shining on me for your sake.
I don't think about myself until I see how you behave. None of you can play ignorant in this community because I make it my effort to save your moral life, to save your human life. I'm not satisfied until I brought the truth, the right understanding to you, so simple that even the small child understood it. Simple facts of your life that if you understand them and respect them and live by them, you can be successful. Not only you but this nation. If this nation would hear what I'm saying, it could come back to its good senses.
The more moral, truthful. Moral can be false. Morals can be false, can be lie, it can be corruption. Morals are right and wrong. Morals are filthy and clean. Some people have filthy morals, others clean morals, some have right morals, others corrupt morals. Just the mere use of the word morals doesn't make a thing right. Morals is only a word that bring to mind right and wrong. The more moral truthful our vision becomes, the more secure life becomes for us. It's as simple as that. I want to repeat that because if you can remember these few words, you'll have the essence of religious truth, the more moral truthful your vision becomes.
Don't you know we like to blind ourselves? The reason why most of us can't see is because we don't want to see. The reason why we don't want to see is because we are too much a victim of the bad influences to give them up. In other words, we are weak. We have been beaten down by bad influences. We have been made a coward to bad influences. We have become a junkie to bad influences. We don't have enough strength to throw off bad influences. So since we can't muster up enough strength to throw off bad influences, we want to justify carrying bad influences. Dear people.
rendering a service is the world dear people! Doing something to improve life is the world, dear people! You can't see what is the nature, what is the order of the world by looking at yourself or by looking at your friends. You may be out of the nature and out of the order of the world. G-d has given us something that is in the center of our universe, in the center of our solar system, in the center of our planetary order, and that's the sun. There is nothing around us that gets or demands as much attention from us than the sun.
Trees, birds, the creatures, none of them are big enough to compete with the sun for our attention. When the sun rise, it gets everybody's attention. When it sets, it gets everybody's attention and look what it's doing? The sun is following a regular course. The sun is following a definite order. The sun is not doing what it wants to do. The sun is not a discretionary body that does as it pleases. The sun is following a law. This is what Allah's telling us in the Qur'an. The sun is following a law. The sun has some sense of time, duty and time to do it on. (The) sun is not late coming up. You were late coming up.
(The) sun is following in a pattern, following a definite order is following a time sequence. And look what it's doing. It's not eating up the world. The sun is helping the world grow. The sun is growing the grass, the sun is growing the vegetation, the fruits that feed the animals. The sun is growing the vegetation, the is growing the animals. The sun is growing us because we eat vegetation, we eat animals. The sun is waking us up and the sun is letting us go to sleep. Say, oh, I woke you up to work. You did a lot of work. Let me let you need to rest down, sun go(es) down so you can rest.
That's the biggest and most observable piece of matter in our solar system. If you had nothing but that, if you didn't have a Qur'an to follow, if you had nothing but that, G-d could judge you. You would be doomed to hell still. G-d will say, oh, how did you let the physical world fool you to think that just eating, drinking, sleeping, sex, playing and having foolishness was all to life? Say, couldn't you see an example in the biggest and most visible thing I showed you? What keeps this thing going? What keeps life going? What keeps the production increasing is something that follows a law, something that follows an order, something that renders a service, something that is not eating everything up but is giving something to the world. So what is wrong with you? Miserable creatures have allowed the wicked enemies of G-d to take over the world, take over your mind, and lead you against your own self, against your own well-being, against your own individual self- respect, self-worth and dignity, made you disrespect yourself, made you abuse yourself, make you throw yourself to hell.
When you know that you should hate the leadership of this world. You should hate the calling voices of this world that call you away from devotion to Allah, that call you away from righteousness, you should hate them. You should make it your decision to be a warrior, to fight them with every bit of energy you can muster up. You should never be out of a job anymore because you have a job. You have to fight for your life against the crazy influences that are in this world that call itself Americanism, modernism, civilization, good times. You should see that your friend is your creator and your enemy is this world that will take you away from your creator. Whoever will refuse to encourage you, to obey Allah, to obey your creator, to develop your moral life, to be righteousness, to be courageous with your moral strength, to be courageous with your righteousness. That person is your enemy if they will not encourage you to be that way. That person is a worse enemy to you than the boy that will hit you upside your head or the girl that will say, no, you're not my boyfriend anymore, after you gave her presents and treated her nice and loved her and showed her that you really cared for her, and she see another boy and she walk away. Say, what happened? You not my girlfriend anymore said, no, I like so and so and so. Why? Oh, get away from me. Leave me alone. No reason. Cold cold-hearted little children. Yeah, some of these little children are cold-hearted or they can treat each other so bad and then laugh at each other, laugh at the person that they have treated bad. You know where you learned that from - this world? You are learning that coldness. You are learning that coldness from this world. Be a Muslim, come back to Allah so you'll have your life, you'll have your good, sensible, intelligent human life and you'll have a future.
People who are weak for wrongdoing help each other, help to keep each other comfortable in their wickedness. The way they comfort each other is by trying to convince each other that what you're doing is not wrong. What you're doing is okay, so the weak people, they look for people like themselves who are doing wrong because they want that person to help them drown out their conscience. They need help. As they say, misery likes company, so they need help. One person talking to them saying that it's okay is not as effective as two voices coming into their mind saying it's okay. So they look for a second person to speak to their mind and say, oh, ain't nothing wrong with that. And if they can, they want a third person and they keep on. They need a whole lot of voices. If they can get a thousand people, oh they so happy. That makes it so wonderful. Big club, thousand members, all of them meeting together once every week or once every month and they telling each other, it's all right to do this. This is where it's at, where it's at baby. So they go on to get many, many voices to help ground out their conscience.
But Allah is, this is a way with Him. This is how He judges. This is how He brings the sinners to judgment in trying to keep out the voice of their own nature, which says you're wrong. They go to find somebody like themselves to help with their voice, the addition of their voice to drown out their conscience. In doing so, the wicked are being gathered to themselves and the righteous are being gathered to themselves. Oh yes, because you are taking yourself out of us and you are coming together with your friends company to hell.
So we are separated and that is our Allah's judgment. Now you have heard me, your children and you, grownups, and I challenge all of you or either one of you singly, each one of you as individuals to prove to me that you have the courage to go to hell by yourself. Not a one of you got the courage to go to hell by yourself and that's why you always trying to spoil the character of the person around you because you are weakling. You are a coward. You can't go to hell by yourself. Now, if you want to go to hell, you have my permission. After I've told you the truth, you've got my permission, go on.
Don't say I kept you back from hell. I invite you to come to what is right and after seeing what is right, if that's your intention to go to hell, you have my permission. All of you, you little children, you got my permission to go to hell. After hearing what I've told you and seeing what is right. If you still want to go to hell, you got my permission. You go on to hell, but you can't escape Allah. Don't forget that. Allahu Akbar. (Arabic - shahadah) With the name Allah, giving all praise and thanks to Allah and bear witnessing that there is nothing worthy of worship except Allah alone and nothing is lacking to him. We ask Allah's blessings upon the universal prophet, the example to all human beings, Muhammed, to whom the Qur'an was revealed about 1400 years ago. We ask blessings be upon his descendants, upon his companions, upon the Muslims, the believers, Muslims all over the world.
We asked that Allah keep us firmly in this religion, increase our appetite for the guidance of Al Islam, that He make us grow more and more anxious, to know more and more about our religion, to know more and more about the Qur'an, to know more and more about the life of Prophet Muhammed so that we can grow healthy and strong, intelligent and progressive, so that we can have a share in the life that Allah has given us on this earth, so that we can have a share of the material blessings as well as the spiritual blessings of this world that Allah has made available for all of us, so that we will become a strong people, become a people with a destiny, people with a purpose, people with a destiny. Our destiny is to serve Allah in this religion and to advance the Islamic causes over those causes that are immoral and unjust. Dear beloved people, I pray that Allah will sober up our minds in this world of drunken ideas so that we will progress intelligently, conscientiously, as moral beings in the path of Allah to earn for ourselves the great place in the world that Allah keeps open always for the righteous. The place of noble, honorable, respectable leadership. I'm disgusted with this world. This world cannot offer me leadership. I come from a people called blacks or African-Americans who have never had any representative leadership in this world. I thank Allah that this world is really bankrupt because if it had everything to offer, maybe I wouldn't keep struggling for what my soul needs, and that is a dignified place in the leadership of this world, the leadership of America and the leadership of the world. Keep your eyes open. Keep Allah and what Allah wants in front of you. That is your goal. That's where you should be going and remain courageous for righteousness sake, for Allah's sake. Don't be intimidated and made a coward. Don't think yourself too small to take the places of those people who are running the world. It's a shame that our people don't feel themselves capable of taking the places of the people who are running the world. Aren't they human beings just like you? They're making a mess of the world now, so you should have the courage to aspire for those high positions. We don't want to topple any government. We want government to have the right top. So we should struggle to replace weak leadership. I don't care if it's in the City Hall, downstate, in Springfield or in Washington. It should be our objective to struggle and replace weak leadership. And we shouldn't be buying the thinking of the church. We are not church. We're a mosque, we're a masjid. We shouldn't buy the thinking of the world. We are not the world. We are the life of the world. We are Al Islam. We shouldn't be followers in America. We should be leaders in America. And I pray Allah, bless(es) you children to see and understand this. I've observed some of you in the class when I was teaching in the class. Among them are a small number, and it's always a small number, the many are never the ones that do the job. But I have noticed a small number of those children who are going to be great leaders tomorrow. I've noticed among some of you grownups, those that can measure up to the test, and I pray Allah save you from the desperate attempts of those forces, those people in this world who've given up. They know they're going to hell. They don't have a muscle to turn them away from hell and they want your company. The future of any society rests upon its concept of moral justice. What is moral justice to you? You should have some idea of what moral justice is. You can't prosper as a human being if you don't have some concept of what moral justice is. Again, science and religion agree that the human being is basically a moral creature. That's what distinguish(es) you from rocks, from stones, from trees, from cows, horses, and other animals. The thing that distinguish(es) you is that you are a moral creature. You are not so much smarter than the rest of the creatures. None of you can make a round circle without being taught how to do it.
But many of the creatures we call animals can do it without anyone teaching them to do it. Well, you are not so intelligent, but you are a moral creature. You can get new and greater sense of your own worth and dignity that will put pressure on you and make you say, oh, I'm not on the level where I should be. So the pressure of dignity on you makes you get up because you don't feel that you are really enjoying your full worth or your full dignity. This is a force in the life of the human being to rise up to that level of self-image or self-dignity that it can feel comfortable with. It wants to feel that it has what is meant for it. That it is not living beneath its own dignity or its own worth. How many of us care anymore, whether we are living beneath our own worth, whether we are living beneath our own dignity? This society has stopped being responsible for human life. There's no responsible voice anymore that is dominating society to keep society aware of the value and worth of human life. Therefore, you don't have any concept of moral justice. You don't have any conscious awareness of your worth as an individual. You don't know what distinguishes you anymore from an animal. You have lost your own identity. You have lost your own sense of value or human worth. Who am I talking to? I'm talking to every one of you because if there was one of you in here who had this sense, I would have more support. Your mind is not given to Allah. Your mind is like a floating leaf in the wind. Whatever pushes you emotionally decides where you'll be. You'll come to this masjid and you'll get an emotional push and it pushes you for a while. But as soon as you run into something else, another wind pushes you and we find that you're far away from where you were when we left you because you give yourself to emotional forces, emotional influences. You don't have any good rational sense.
You don't have any rational concept, any rational idea, any logical principle that is ruling in your life. You need a logical principle ruling in your life to survive in this world. No one cares about you, but a Allah. If it wasn't for myself giving myself completely to Allah, I wouldn't care about you. I would be just like you, caught in the winds of the influences in the society. Human life can't prosper without moral vision. If you want to be successful in the business world, don't you have to have some object, some goal to reach for? Don't you have to have some business vision to be successful materially, to be successful in the business world? We are basically by human description, we are moral beings, moral creatures. You can be as wrong as you want to be. That doesn't mean that that's your nature. Your nature is not to be wrong. Your nature is to be right and you are going against the grain when you are being wrong. And your own nature is a witness that you are going against the grain when you are being wrong. None of us can be angels, perfect without any defects, without any flaws, without any sin. Your Imam sins I sin. I commit sin. I'm not an angel. I'm not a perfect being, but my path is not toward sin. My path is toward Allah. When I sin, it's because of a weakness, because of a mistake, because of a weakness, because of an ignorance on my part.
And because I'm that way, Allah loves me and He will hurt me. He'll trip me up. He will let me know that I went wrong because He knows I can be corrected. And when I know I've gone wrong, I say, O Allah, forgive me for that mistake. Forgive me for that ignorance. Forgive me for that sin. Forgive me for that selfishness on my part. Forgive me for that, O Allah, I want to obey you. O Allah, purify our intentions. Increase the goodness of our hearts to appreciate your graces in our life, the blessing of your guidance and your messenger, who is the example for us. O Allah, make us people who are conscious of what is morally right and morally just, and give us the strength to resist favoritism, to resist showing favors just for the sake of pleasing a friend or pleasing, forsaking of the world. Ameen.

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