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IWDM Study Library
Civic Center

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
0:00:02.9 IWDM: Told us how to get the work of mosque going fast. You don't put a whole lot of money into it 'cause it hold the people back. They can't keep going with the Dawah for looking at the gold.
[laughter]
0:00:16.4 IWDM: So he built the mosque, first mosque for the Muslim, the Quba Mosque, very simple, very simple, plain and simple building, four walls, roof, plain, simple building. So he set for us the idea for a mosque building. You don't make it an elaborate place. Don't compete with the Catholics and others in building cathedrals. But the Muslims slipped off course, and they start competing with the builders of Christian cathedrals, and they had to build something more elaborate and richer than the best Christian cathedral. They got off path. They got off course. So we have that big, fine, rich looking place there that's making us look ridiculous. We can hardly pay our rent, some of us on welfare, most of us don't have any jobs, and we holding our meeting in something that the Rockefeller family ought to be having. Big ole place, the ceiling so high, you look at $1000 worth of gas bill going up in it at... In one day almost in January. Yeah, you turn the heater one day in January, you're looking at almost a $1000 going up into the cathedral, to heat the dome.
[laughter]
0:01:55.2 IWDM: So I said, "Maybe call it the cultural center?" And I felt if we really work on making it a fine cultural center, Muslim culture, ethnic culture center, that we would get support for it from even the non-Muslims. It hasn't happened yet. We haven't really built it up yet so that it can be seen and attract support from outside the Muslim community, but I believe that's possible. And we could have a fine cultural center there on 7351 South Stony Island, in the south side of Chicago, southeast side of Chicago. In fact, I wish that's all we had there. I wish we'd leave the lake shore. We shouldn't be that close to all that water. We should go on inland. It makes more sense. When you go inland, you find people that's trying to establish home life, family life, trying to establish business life. Over there where we are, the people are just playing in the water.
[laughter]
0:03:21.3 IWDM: But the first step in self-awareness is to see yourself in the order that Allah made, not to see yourself in the order that man made. The order that man made is class system, color culture system, racism. Don't see yourself in that. Don't think race before you think human being. Think human being and see your great value in the world of the human being. And no matter what your situation is as a race in a racist atmosphere, don't let that help hinder you, don't let it hurt you at all, but move forward to advance the recognition, the validity and the respect and recognition for your human excellence, for your human value in the world of human beings. And if you do that, you gonna be working along two dimensions of interest, your personal interest and also your interest in helping other people. But if you just think race, you do what our race is doing now, working as individuals, caring nothing about the collective concern, working as individuals to race and get ahead of each other. Now, I'm not saying all of us are in this shape, but this is the shape of the African-American, our Black community here. The shape of the Black community in America is just that. There is not the presence of the collective concern and the collective effort, but each one is trying to race to get ahead of the other.
0:05:19.7 IWDM: If he can't do it lawfully, he will do it illegally. It's terrible. That's because our mind has come into the wrong situation. Situate our mind back into the reality that G-d made. Don't come into the mess that the White man has made, and then let your mind form in response to the mess that he has made. Withdraw from that mess. Every great mind had first to withdraw from the circumstances he found himself in before he could do a great thing.
[pause]
0:06:24.7 IWDM: That first step is to see your human identity. Allah shows us the human identity in Adam. Was Adam a Muslim? To be a true human is the first step in being a Muslim. Adam was a Muslim. He didn't belong to some other religion. He was a Muslim. He had the Muslim nature. He didn't have the Muslim system. The Muslim system of religion came with Prophet Muhammad. He had the Muslim nature, and for that reason, the learned Imams, the learned scholars, the Ulama, members of the Ulama, they tell us that all of us are Muslims in our nature. And they make such statements based on the Quran, the Holy Book, and based on the son of the prophet and their interpretation and understanding of it, thick. Yes. They say all of us are Muslim in our nature. And do you know what I'm hearing from many Muslims abroad now? I used to hear it from just one or two, but now, I'm getting it from many. I just heard it... I've heard it first from a Jordanian and I heard it then next from a Indian, a Pakistani, and then I heard it from an Egyptian. Lately, I heard it from an Iranian.
0:07:50.3 IWDM: You know what they're saying? That in spite of the condition of the African-American people, they are the people on earth today that are closest to their natural Muslim identity. You are not in the system of Al-Islam that a law revealed and established. No. But you in your human make up, you're closer to the real Muslim in his nature than most of the people on earth today. Now, that's hard to see, looking at the condition of the majority of our people. But when you come to know them personally, you can see it because when they get the pressure of the fast, burdensome world off their back, or they say, "No, no. You sleep in my bed. You don't have anywhere to stay tonight? Sleep in my bed. You don't have no food? Here, come here." Say, "Honey, he ain't got no food. Take some of our butter. Take some of our flour. You want my wife to fix your dinner? How are you gonna go home? Oh wait, I'll take you home." And we had that kind of sense before Elijah Muhammad. Now, he must have had it before me. Yes. No kin to the family at all but see a child destroying herself, "Child, you shouldn't behave like that. Who's your mother? Where you live?" I've heard that from our women. "Who's your mother? Where you live? If I knew, I would tell on you. You shouldn't be behaving like that. I know your parents don't want you behaving like that." The collective concern. Yes. See a stranger, never met him before, embrace him the first day, first hour, the first minute.
0:10:32.6 IWDM: A stranger, embrace him the first day, the first hour, the first minute. Meet him and you'll say, "Oh, he's alright." Embrace him, take him home with you, right? Yeah. Well see, that's your Muslim nature. That's your true human self, which is your true human identity, I mean, your true Muslim identity and it's nature. But upon that nature should illumine a vision of how we could advance that nature and build a great society, a great civilization. For that purpose, Allah revealed the Quran. He says, "And he had patterned man on the pattern that he made when he created the universe." Upon that pattern, he has given us the religion. It is the religion of the original nature, din al-fitrah, the religion of the original nature, the pattern upon which he patterned man when he made the universe. Even if you don't believe you have an inheritance or heritage coming from Africa because of what your ancestors had before you came to America a slave or before you were brought here a slave, once you know the idea of this religion, you perceive the logic, the teachings of this religion, you being in the situation that you in, a beautiful Christian religion, a beautiful gospel but blocked against you because it's too Caucasian, it's too white racially speaking. African-American people you will never get up to compete with White America in Christianity.
[applause]
0:13:00.8 IWDM: Because the White man that accepted Christianity was the White man that accepted white supremacy. And his design on the world is also to be found in the Bible. He situated himself in a position of advantage in the world. He situated himself in the position of advantage in the Bible. The original man is white but black in his heart. Adam was a man doomed to sin. He couldn't avoid it. He had to sin, and all of his children had to be sinners. But they give you Adam as a White man, but his heart turned black. The same theology tells us that satan is the black angel. And then along comes a solution to the first problem: It is a White man born without a father to be savior of all people.
0:14:43.9 IWDM: Oh, don't you all believe Jesus was born without a father? Yes, we certainly do. But we don't say he's savior to redeem all men because Adam sinned. We don't make him the savior for all men because his nature was right and Adam was wrong. No. Our unity is first in Adam. And then our unity is in Abraham. And lastly, our unity is in the ummah of al-Isl?m, Layla bint al-Minhal, Muhammad Rasulullah. And we accept all of his prophets. And we believe that they came from all colors, from all nations, from all racial makes. That's what we believe about him. The problem cannot be corrected. You cannot make Christianity work for non-White people. It can't be corrected 'cause there's nothing in Christianity that corrects it. There's no help in Christianity for the situation. Maybe if Jesus would be quoted in the Bible as saying, "There's no superiority of a White over Black, no superiority of a Black over White, no superiority of a Jew over a non-Jew, no superiority of a non-Jew over a Jew," maybe, we would have some help. As-salamu alaykum. See you later.

