05/30/1992
IWDM Study Library
Atlanta Banquet

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Voiceover: The following is part one of a lecture by Imam W. Deen Mohammed recorded at the first graduating class of the W. Deen Mohammed High school in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 30th 1992.
Warith Deen Mohammed: As-salamu alaikum.
Audience: Alaikum salam.
Warith: Peace be on you. We witnessed that there is but one Lord and Creator. Muslims know Him by the name, the most popular name and the most inclusive name, Allah. Highly praised and glorified is He. We witnessed that Muhammad, to whom the Qur'an is revealed about 1400s and a few years ago, is the seal of the prophets, Allah’s servant and messenger. [clears throat]
I again, want to say that I congratulate you on very successful occasion, the graduation of W. Deen Mohammed High School. Congratulations to the students first, and the teachers, and the parents, and also to your Director, Imam Plemon Al-Amin, and to you the community of Muslims in Atlanta, and your friends, and your supporters. We congratulate you all.
What you have here is wonderful, very wonderful, and I expect that it’s going to improve yearly as you are planning it to do that, and I expect that it will improve yearly. [clears throat] I was very touched by the emotional ceremony along with the formal ceremony, [laughs] very much touched by it, and it was beautiful. I don’t think it took anything away from this wonderful occasion. Very beautiful. If it’s followed up next year, then I’ll start to wonder.
[laughter]
This is your first year, the first year of the high school graduation, so I expected, and it was beautiful, and very, very touching, moving for me. I hope to get you to give me a little bit more support on something that is very dear to me. It’s not easy for me, because we like to make things as light as possible on us, and we like to make things as simple as possible. We like to reduce many words down to as few words as possible. Sometimes you just can't do that and feel comfortable with it if you have something on you that requires more burden than people are presently willing to accept, more words than they are presently willing to listen to, and so on. [clears throat]
I have delayed or postponed my interest in doing the other half of my work, that I believe to be my work, waiting for us to get into a spirit or mood where what I’m interested in finishing up will not be a burden on you. [clears throat] I know I left many behind who were as excited as I was about seeing the work continue, that is the work of addressing the mental state of our people. To seeing that work continue.
I know I left many behind who were as excited about that as I was, and as I am, but the great majority didn’t want to hear any more about that. It seems as though since we thought [clears throat] that a lot of mistakes, and a lot of mistakes were made. We thought a lot of mistakes were made in the old day, we'd call it, in the day of the Nation of Islam's life and history, that anything that brought that back up was an aggravation or burden, something that we didn’t want to hear. Speaking of most of the leaders and most of the people that have been supporting me now for 15 years or more. It might have been longer than that now. [clears throat]
At no time was I not prepared to address what I thought was every serious problem we had, but as I’ve said, time wasn’t right for it. I think that time has changed now. I think that most of us are settled now, and most of us are not in any kind of mental situation where we're afraid to think backwards or forwards, or in the present times. Most of us I say. Some of you are scared as hell right now.
[laughter]
I want to talk to you about the need to continue building the mind of African American people. That’s our calling here in America. It’s not just to be Muslims. Our calling is to build up the mind of the African American people, or black people. [clears throat] Now, the best way to do that is to call our people to Islam, and they accept Islam, the Qur'an, they accept the way of our prophet, the life, example of our prophet, and follow in the best tradition of his companions, the early followers and those who followed after them in that best tradition. That’s the best way to get our people to come to something that will build up their mind, and finish building the minds of African American people until we are satisfied, comfortable with our soul.
Our souls are not comfortable because our minds are not comfortable. If you make the mind comfortable, the soul would be comfortable. [clears throat] Now, that is the best way. Let me tell you something that I know to be a fact. Islam is not a religion that leaves out anything important to people. Islam is not a religion that says, “Read this and don’t apply it. Read this and apply it.”
Now, if I read the Qur'an in Ghana and I want to apply it, how am I to apply it? I’m to look at the situation or circumstances in Ghana, the people, the life of the people, the environment there in Ghana. Then I am supposed to apply the Qur'an, so how the Qur'an will come out in Ghana is not necessarily the way the Qur'an will come out in England. That is not to say that we should have two different readings of Qur'an. No. We have the same reading of the Qur'an but the emphasis will be different.
Those people in one part of the world other than United States, somewhere else, they may not have the problem of identity that we have, so when they read the Qur'an, their emphasis won't be on building up the identity of a group. For us, when we read the Qur'an, we should have in our minds applying the Qur'an to our needs, our condition to our needs. We are not victims, so much of a race of people, as we are victims of condition. Because even as early as the time when they brought the first slaves to this country, there we can say, "Yes, we look directly at what’s responsible for my being put on a slave ship."
Yes, I look directly at what’s responsible for that. That’s this man. That’s this man, but a person who wants to correct problems, who wants to solve problems, a thinker, will not just look at that individual and what that individual’s doing, but wants to know what is causing that individual to do that. Because you can stop that individual, but if the same disease continue to exist, another individual will come up and do the same thing. You won’t stop the wrong by stopping one individual.
So the better thinkers, the better minds of man, on this earth are those that will not just treat the immediate thing but look for the cause, and try to get at the cause like a doctor will want to get at the cause of disease and not just treat symptoms or effects. You see?
We have been blessed, the Muslims, African American Muslims that are still in this association, and I do prefer to say this association, that are still in this association. We were associated together. I like the word "association" because we have a history of association with each other. We were associated with each other when we followed the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. May G-d forgive him his errors, his sins, and grant him Paradise along with my mother, and all of those great people that helped to make that day what it was, the good and the bad. May Allah forgive them their errors and their sins and grant them Paradise.
Now, [clears throat] we have an association going back to that time, and we're still together. You may say, "We're together brother, Imam, because of what you did for us." Yes, but there was a cause behind that. A cause becomes an effect when you discover a cause before that cause. I myself was only an effect. There was a cause before that, producing me, so we have a very beautiful history. Even if we just think of ourselves as a people professing Islam, we have a beautiful history because there's greatness behind us. There's greatness in the old days for us along with the other things too, but there was greatness back then.
There was greatness back there, great achievements back there. If we just look at ourselves as people professing to be Muslims, we have a great history, but we have even a much, much greater history if we can be a little philosophical, if we can appreciate abstracts more than concretes. When you talk about the man that enslaved us, you're talking about a concrete. When you're talking about the condition that made him a slave master and made us accept slavery, you're talking about abstract with potential. They have more consequences. They produce much more consequences than concretes.
The Qur'an, the word of G-d, the last and final word of G-d, gives us the best explanation for things, and the best position for which to address things. [clears throat] We look at this universe, the world, the external world, especially at night with all the heavenly bodies up there, so many you can't count them, and we're told by science of their massive size, how great and how big they are. It's too much almost for the average mind, but we know it's there. We accept it. Allah tells us in the Qur'an to look at those bodies that are up there in space.
Now, we hear science tell us how many megatons and many megatons that each body we're looking at, many of those bodies, most of those bodies that you're looking at are great in size, especially when we're looking out at the bodies and what we call our system, the sun system, the solar system, planet Jupiter and Mars and those other planets. Allah says, highly glorified is He, "Look how they are held up there seemingly with no structure supporting them." There's a big old concrete, but to explain its being held up there I must appreciate abstract. Huh? I must appreciate abstract.
Now, I don't know if I'm correct in translating mythology, what these stars mean in mythology, but I do know just as G-d has helped me to digest many things that I have been taught all over my life, and it's not so short now. If down the hill is what they say it is, I'm going down the hill now. I see those bodies up there as principles, principles that are of great meaning, great significance in the life of man and society. Those principles have influence. They have attracting power. They even can hold each other in check and balance like the universe is held in check and balance by the gravitational pull and pushing of those bodies in the space.
To me, this is more palatable. It tastes better than everything you can tell me about the square mileage of the earth, and the deportation of the moon, and the size of the planets and all that, because you're just talking about concretes. When you're talking that kind of language, you're talking about concrete. If you tell me about the white man did, talking about what they did there, I want to know what caused the white man to do what he did, and what caused us to be the victim.
See, that kind of thinking in me is a blessing from Allah, and it came to me by way of Elijah Muhammad, and his ministers, and his captains, and his secretaries, and all of his associates, his workers, his great workers, his teachers in the schools. It came to me by way of them. It came to me by way of that circumstance, or that time, in that situation we call the Nation of Islam. It came to me by way of that, but the Nation of Islam itself was an effect, not the cause. It's a cause in a certain time frame. If you expand, extend that time frame, then the Nation of Islam stopped being a cause. It started being an effect.
That's the line of reasoning I want you to be all with me now, that line of reasoning that is causal, the causal process. Now, we had no way of calling ourselves Muslims. We were Christians.
Audience: That's true.
We had no thought to get outside of America and visit Islamic world, and study it, and come back here and tell the rest of us, or tell our people, what Islam is. We had no interests, nothing. Somebody came over here who had experience in the Islamic world, overseas, a man named Fard. He came over here and introduced that to a man who had never heard it before, to a man that couldn't even tell you what was on the other side of United States, not to talk about what's on the other side of the world. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was a man with only four years formal education. By formal, we mean from an institution, from a formal institution or school. Only three years, pardon me, education here in this state, the beautiful state of Georgia. I don't know if it was beautiful then, but I can say now, this beautiful state of Georgia, yes. He didn't get a vision to go to Detroit, Michigan. Bad conditions in Georgia pushed him out of Georgia into Detroit, Michigan, with his whole family, and there he met Fard. Fard himself stops to be a cause when we extend the framework of time a little more.
He was once a baby. He got all of his influence from an environment that he was put in. He was influenced by Islam by Muslims believing in that religion. When he came to America and saw the condition of us and himself-- Anybody peddling silk also needs some help of one type or one kind of an another, right? We were told he was peddling silk and asked for donations. He himself was taken care of by those donations that his followers gave him. This is fact and reality.
Now, I'm not criticizing. I'm not laughing. You're laughing. It is kind of comical. It's kind of humorous, but I'm not laughing. I'm very serious. He himself was in a bad condition. His material condition was not good.
If his material condition was good, the first thing he would have done was said, "You all don't have to donate. I got enough money to take care of this, so all I want you to do is work. I'm opening up this kind of factory. I'm opening up this kind of business. I just want you all to work. I'm going to teach you how to work. When I get through, I'm going to turn these factories over to you all. I'm going to wait until you're educated and, I'm going to teach you how to work. Them. I'll let you learn some skills and send you to school, send you to college and university, and you're going to take over this factories."
If he had wealth, he would have also used his wealth in his work. He had no wealth, so a man like that may be inclined to be bitter toward the west because he was not of the west. He was from the east. Now, if he came over here thinking that he was going to get more opportunities over here, in this wealthy United States, than what he really got, so he might. I'm just surmising. I'm guessing. He might have been disappointed with his visit so much that he got angry with the west. He might have looked at us too and sympathized with us, and identified with us.
Then he might have got his head together and says, "Well, I'm going to pay them back. I will put a hurting on them for disappointing me like this." He might have devised a way to do that, and he might have been also of a mind to make a contribution to his religion. Maybe he was trying to put a hurt on the white man and at the same time make a contribution to his religion.
See, because if you were really a product of something while you were doing something out of line with that, or guess whatever it is, a product of another society or a product of parents that were good parents, a product of an idea or a belief. While doing something against it, you feel guilty, you want to make up for it, so maybe stepping outside of the limits of Islam, maybe he felt guilty, and maybe he went overboard to make up for it. Not necessarily going overboard. Maybe not going overboard with that, but made a real serious effort to help Islam. That's my guess. That's me, I'm guessing.
I believe that this man made a real serious effort to help Islam because he had a picture of him taken, the most popular picture, he's holding the Qur'an showing in a reverence way, very reverent way. He's holding it very nicely in his hand like that, and he's appearing to be giving it attention and reverencing it. I believe that's one thing. Then there are so many other things I can tell you about him that make me believe that he made a real effort to make up for his wrongs against Islam.
As a gambler, I believe that, and I'm using a language that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad himself gave us. He did tell us. He didn't use the term "gamble", but he did tell us in what he told us, that this man took risk and actually gambled with results, with methods and results. Use this method, take a risk. Use this take a risk. Use that method-- to get the result. He gambled with methods and results but, as I said, he himself, when we go back far enough in time, he stops. He ceases to be a cause that he himself becomes an effect.
Now, I'm sure you can understand him as an effect when we're told that his father wanted a child, so he married a particular woman from the white race to have this special child. Well then, at that time, he definitely was an effect, and a cause was working to produce him, right?
Audience: Yes.
If you buy that much, then possibly you can have patience with what I gave you. Now, we trace this effect that I call the Muslim life in the African American people. We trace this effect back to the Islamic world overseas. You have to trace it back there. No other way can you get it around that. You've got to trace it back there. Something changed for Islam when Fard brought it to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
Something changed. It was no more Islam in its true picture. It was another idea mixed with Islam, or put in the same company with Islam, but Islam was kind of pushed back out of view while the name "Islam" was brought forward. The name brought forward so that you'll be associated with Islam, but the real Islam kind of pushed in the back. He brought his ideas forward but didn’t gives his ideas a name except within the context, or the framework, of Islam, so we were around here talking all kind of talk and thought we were talking Islam. It was a surprise when somebody overseas couldn't understand what we were talking about.
Cause and effect. What happened that was so different? What happened that was so special? Fard had no faith in Islam as it exists in the Qur'an in its literal translation. What do I mean by that? In the way that any Arab without insights would get the Qur'an. He reads the words in Arabic, and he reads as beautiful if his heart is so inclined. It's beautiful if his condition is such that he can appreciate it.
Your condition can be such no matter, can be in a state no matter how beautiful something sounds, if it doesn't communicate to your condition, it'll just be another beautiful song like another bird singing this morning, you heard it and forgot it in two seconds. All right. Fard, or call him Master or something. He ain't my master no more. You call him Master. I call him Mister. I call him Professor. I call him even doctor. Now, I don't believe what he held was a Doctor, not really a Doctor when we talk about a Doctor of Ecology, a Doctor of a particular field of study. No, I don't believe he ever was a Doctor.
Now, this is not to discredit him, but I'm just being plain, truthful, straight, and trying to get the fantasy to disappear and reality to show up. Now, is there any support for my guess that he himself that he didn't think the Qur'an as it is would do the job? Yes. I have met other Arabs, others from overseas, before and after I became your leader, after you nominated me your leader, or elected me. I don't know what they call that, but you sure got up there and used it, and all your leaders. Big Red from Georgia, he was there too, swearing allegiance.
[laughter]
As far as I'm concerned, you can scrap all that behind me, but if it's important to you then, you did it. I didn't make you do it. All right. [clears throat] Sometimes the way they talk about me makes me think that I put a gun in somebody's face and made them follow me. I never forced anybody to follow me. You had the right to even disagree with me right on the spot, and I'd tell the security guard, "No, don't bother." I'd hold the dogs off you while you speak your peace, yes. [laughs] [clears throat] 
The proof of it is that before I became leader, and after I became leader, I have met those from overseas. I'm not talking about fools. It's educated people who have expressed the same kind of lack of faith in the Qur'an as it is to bring change for us. They said, "Well, only he could have done it. Only your father could've done this." I have been told, "You change too fast. You've changed everything your father did too fast." Not by you, by them. "You changed too fast. You should have gone slower."
Why? Is this really something that works or not? Their condition is that this can't help and I have to help them with some other thing and then later get this? Well, that tells there's something weak in this then. Huh? I never believed it. I never believed that we needed something other than this, but you needed to be gradually, safely, brought from the wrong to the right, from the wrong belief to the right belief.
I agree with that, but I always felt that once I saw the Qur'an with my eyes and understood its beauty and its values in it, its values and principles, its wisdom, not wholy but as much as my mind at that time could understand it, which was not superior, just ordinary but sincere, diligent, devoted mind. I said to myself, "If the religion had been brought to us and applied to our condition straight from the Qur'an, straight from the life of Muhammad, straight from Islam, if it had been brought that way, we would've got the best result."
I believed it then. My belief hasn't changed, except it has grown stronger, stronger. The more knowledge I get off, the more stronger my belief is that the best way for us would have been to bring it straight from the Qur'an, straight from the life of the prophet, and that would have been the most effective. It would have got the best results for us, but apply it to the condition. Apply it to the reality that you're dealing with. Don't just come up here and read to people like you're standing in Pakistan somewhere, or in Egypt, or in Saudi Arabia. You're not there. You're in America.
Here I am treating a patient in Saudi Arabia and really he's you in America. In my mind I'm treating the patient in Saudi Arabia, but the patient is not in the person in Saudi Arabia. That's you. It's you in America. I'm looking at the person in Saudi Arabia. He speaks Arabic. Some of us even think he speaks Arabic. They don't want to speak no English to you. Give a khutbah and everything in Arabic, and you go.
[laughter]
Now, I know that's a little far-fetched there but, believe me, you can find them just like that. They'll give you nothing but Arabic, nothing but Arabic. Not that much in extreme, but what about this? The khutbah prepared for the citizens in a village somewhere are 2,000, 4,000, 6,000, 10,000 miles away from us, the same khutbah prepared for them, they want you to read it here on Vine Street in Detroit, or whatever street in Atlanta. What street are we on now?
Audience: Hunter Street.
Hunter Street in Atlanta.
[laughter]
They want you to read the same one to these people on these streets in Atlanta. Cause and effect. The thing I'm bringing out to you is this, that when Fard came over, he saw a need and, regretfully, he didn't see how to apply the Qur'an as it is, the religion as it is, so he made a mistake and invented something that he thought would work. At least he knew that if it didn't work as the Qur'an worked, it would certainly work against the thinking that was in you at that time, Christian thinking, negro thinking, whatever you want to call it.
He knew that it would work against that, so he was successful in breaking the mold, the mental mold of the mentally enslaved. He was successful in breaking that mold and in getting you to think that you were Muslim, and you were in nature, and in many other ways too, and to think that your religion was Islam. He was successful in doing that much.
What did he see as our special problem? The answer is very quickly gotten. He called us the mentally dead. That's what he saw as our special problem, that we were not alive in our own minds. Now, we know we had minds. We had minds. We know we could think. Some of us were even very intelligent as many of us are now. It's not that we were actually dead minds, but we were dead as individuals with a history in the history of society.
We couldn't think as Africans. We couldn't think as Muslims, though many of us were descendants from Muslim people. That's proven by history too. We couldn't think as Muslims. We couldn't think as Africans. We could only think as American. To think as an American without some independence patterns of thought in you, that identify you also separate from American thinking, is the same as putting that khutbah that was intended for the man in Saudi Arabia in your head and you on Hunter Street.
[laughter]
You see? Even worse, because at least that khutbah is taken directly from a universal and pure language, whereas the American thinking is so far from any contact with divine revelation or origins that it makes it risky for even the white American who can't trace his ancestry back to Islam, or to Africa. Fard identify our main need, and that is the mental need, but it's just not mental need without even more, more identity given to it, or more, I would say, more accuracy in identifying what we're talking about. It's not just a mental condition, but it is a condition of identity, a condition of identity.
When we were taken from our ancestors, from whatever culture we had, from whatever life we had before we were enslaved, we were taken from our group and individual identity. The absence of that in us burdens our souls more than anything else. We're not so much burdened by material need, not even by the white man's rejecting us, as much as we are burdened by a need to feel comfortable with our perception, with our picture of ourselves in our own eyes, or before our own eyes in our own minds.
As I said, the Qur'an is the best answer. Go to the Qur'an, try qur'anic remedy to the condition. If I'm dealing only with the Muslim audience and African American Muslim audience, I will be using a lot of Qur'an, but we ourselves, we're a small minority in the great population of the African American people. We are told we are numbering about 30 million now. We're a small group, so I'm not a person who can concentrate on 10 people and there are 10,000 needing the same. I can't put what I want to give in the language of 10 people when they're 10,000 out there requiring a different language or communication that they can't get if I only talked to this 10.
It's been a burden on me trying to talk to you, when I know that what we need to do with address all of our people's conditions. I don't care how high you are up in education, or up in professions, or up in money, or whatever, social status, or economic status. I don't get how great it is for them. They can be the President of the United States next year, four years from now or 10 years from now. We can have an African American in the presidency of this United States and he would be a poor burdened soul. If he told the truth, he'd break down and cry like a baby.
Yes, I'm a shell of a man. If it's a she, she would have to admit she's a shell of a woman. What do I mean by "shell"? Everything in you is something new that you can't really feel comfortable with because you know that you don't have enough of your own reality in you. It's different for us. We are different and I know of no other people on this earth like us, even the American Indian.
American Indians still have a, -- he still has contacts with a culture in the past, with a language, with a thinking, with an American Indian or a tribal thinking that goes back. He doesn't know when it started. He just goes back as far as he can, so he's comfortable with his identity though his identity is not as consequential, not as significant for him, or as impacting on this society, or as getting recognition from this society as our identity. We're just a shell of a person, but within himself and alone to himself, he is more comfortable than we are with more recognition and with more consequences for us on this society. He is more comfortable.
Not that they're very comfortable now. They're not. Their minds have been messed up too, but you don't hear anybody talking about the Indians who've got an identity crisis. When we talk about identity crisis, we're talking about us. We're the people with an identity crisis. [clears throat] We need, most of all, to build our minds. Most of all, to build our minds.
Nature has a way of taking care of problems. When we were free, or emancipated from bondage as slaves in this country, our people, the better minds of our people, they were responding in a natural way. In time, I believe they would've been liberated even from mental bondage, in time, if so much had not happened to complicate their coming into an independent mind such as the invention of the Nation of Islam and its ideas.
Do you know? Many of you all know. I believe you're aware of this. Even though our black intellectuals, our African American intellectuals, the better minds of our race, even though they do not want to be Muslims, when it comes to looking to the future for hope, for the identity and a comfortable identity be established for us, they are waiting for us. They are looking to us. They're looking to the Nation of Islam under Farrakhan. They're looking to Imam Warith Deen Mohammed and his associates. They're looking to African American Muslims, or black Muslims. They're looking to us to one day solve the problems of identity crisis for the race. They have given up.
We had independent thinkers when we were freed, and I'm sure there was some even before we were freed, those who learned to read or started studying on their own. I'm sure that even when we were physical slaves, among those physical slaves were some independent thinkers dealing not so much with concretes but dealing with abstracts, not just looking at the physical cause but looking for the cause before the physical cause, or the cause that's ruling over the physical effects. I believe we had thinkers even when we were in bondage, physical bondage.
We know of men like Frederick Douglass. That man was not just asking for freedom, for equal opportunities in the jobs, for jobs, or for a chance to make money, or for a chance to be a mayor, or a governor, or a high up in the government of America, no. He was asking for freedom for his intellect. It was more important to them to have freedom from physical bondage so that they would have freedom for their intellect. He began to speak out independently.
So there was nobody really attacking what they were doing until Frederick Douglass and, I guess, a few others before him, protested so loudly that they awakened, shocked, the conscience of other free people, European Americans, or white Americans, and then they came to the aid. They joined the voice. They came to the aid. They said yes this is wrong. "We shouldn’t treat these creatures like this." We read about the abolitionists, those who wanted slavery abolished, but we know before that there was an--
[00:47:31] [END OF AUDIO]



