04/16/1989
IWDM Study Library
Tony Brown Journal WDM Siraj Wahhaj NY

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Siraj Wahhaj: An Ethiopian former slave who was a great Muslim is called the black monster in this book. Prophet Abraham, peace be upon him, is called the bastard. The wives of the prophet are compared to prostitutes in this book. Prophet Abraham, peace be upon him, is called the bastard. The wives of the prophet are compared to prostitutes. Even the holy city of Mecca which millions of Muslims go there to make an annual pilgrimage is called the bitch city.
Very slanderous book and some people had recommended to the publishers that they shouldn’t publish this book. That many Muslims would be outraged. Tony, you have to understand the implications in Islamic religion. First of all, we wouldn’t even slander each other. We wouldn’t defame each other. There’s very beautiful verse in the Quran, “Do not even defame the names of other G-ds other than Allah lest the people in their ignorance defame Allah, the one G-d." We’re polite that way.
I won’t even slander one person much less to slander the prophet Mohammed and so many of his companions. The point here is this. We’re saying that there are standards that every publisher has standards. Whether they abandon it or not that’s up to them but as a publisher should have standards and as Imam W. Deen Mohammed has definitely said there’s has been cases where other people have complained to publishers about a particular book and publisher said, “No. I’m not going to mess with that book because it’s offensive to a few people."
Now you’re talking about, Tony, not a few people. You’re talking about one billion people. This book, Satanic Verses, is very, very inflammatory, it’s-
Tony: It's obscene.
Siraj Wahhaj: -it's obscene and definitely it’s hated by those who practice the faith of Islam.
Tony: Those who practice the faith obviously are extremely upset and understandably so. I will ask this question to you, Imam Mohammed. Do you feel or do you agree with Mr. Khomeini, Imam Khomeini that Salman Rushdie should be killed because he wrote the book?
Mohammed: No, I do not. I agree with the organization of about 48 Muslim states that haven't taken-- they refused to take that position. 48 Muslim states refused to take that position.
Tony: Why? What is it in your religion that prohibits you from wanting-- for calling for his death? What is there in your teachings that tells you that his death is wrong?
Mohammed: Well, so many things. There were people who did more than that. Much worse things in the times of the Prophet, peace be upon him, Prophet Mohammed himself. There were people who sought to kill him and defame him. They sought to kill him and did horrible things, physical things. Very cruel things, brutal things to relatives and companions of the Prophet. When he came into Mecca, his hometown that he had been put out of by the idol worshipers or heathens maybe we can say, he called for a time of forgiveness and he asked that there be no more bloodletting. That there be peace and that if anyone would support the peace that they would be spared.
Tony: Are all of the prophets in Islam Muslims? Are there any non-Muslim prophets?
Mohammed: Seriously speaking and technically speaking there are no non-Muslims on earth that are human beings. Every human being is a Muslim.
Tony: How do you historically regard Jesus and Abraham?
Mohammed: All Muslims. All Muslims. Yes.
Tony: Do you read? Do you study the Bible? Is that a part of your religion [crosstalk] the Christian Bible?
Mohammed: I most certainly do. I have done a very extensive study of the Bible.
Interviewer: Why do you read the Christian Bible?
Mohammed: Because I have Christian relatives, and Christian friends, and Christian public. I’m an American in a Christian country.
[laughter]
Tony: Is there a part of your faith that embraces a part of the Christian faith or part of the Jewish faith?
Mohammed: There are so many very basic similarities.
Tony: I’m probing [crosstalk] here.
Mohammed: For example, all of us believe in the same G-d. We say Allah and the Christians may say it by another name but we all believe in the same G-d. We don’t accept the trinity but we believe in the same G-d.
Siraj Wahhaj: Tony, I want to say this. Most Christians don’t know if a Muslim say they do not believe that Jesus was a Prophet of G-d that person is not a Muslim. He must accept every prophet of G-d. Moses, Abraham, and when you read the Quran, the Quran is a completion of the revelation that came before it. The revelation that came to Moses and the revelation that came to Jesus is from the same one source, Allah, G-d, The Supreme Being.
In fact, in the Quran, it said that the prophets are one brotherhood and if they were here today, Mohammed, and Abraham, and Jesus, and Noah and Lot, all of them, they would be brothers and they wouldn’t differ with one another. It is only we who came later who differ with them and are different about them.
Tony: In this part of the world, in America in particular, we are really given a picture of members of Islam as wild-eyed terrorists. That anyone who is Islamic is going to kill you.
Siraj Wahhaj: You know why? I tell you, it’s so unfair. Sometimes this media is so hypocritical because any time a person commits some kind of atrocity or crime if it’s a Muslim, "Muslim terrorist," but yet Christians and Jews they commit crime every day. They don’t say this person who killed that poor girl was a Jew.
Tony: Well, the only other group I know they pick on is ex-marines.
[laughter]
Siraj Wahhaj: You know Tony, Imam Mohammed has said a very, very important point and I think I want to key in on that a little bit. You see, Prophet Muhammad is our example. It’s not Imam Khomeini. Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he is our example and what did he do? Because Allah mentioned in the Quran you have in the messenger of Allah, Prophet Muhammad. A beautiful pattern of conduct. He’s the one that we try to zero in and follow and if you, Tony, and if your audience, and if the people of America and the people of the West know prophet Muhammad they would love him. You have to love him.
Tony: I read an article in the New York Times on the conversion of African-Americans to Islam that quoted one Islamic leader in America who has observed that Muslims in America of African descent are more G-d-fearing than his traditional Muslims. Do you agree with that either of you?
Mohammed: I disagree but that is being said.
Tony: Please tell me A, why you disagree and B, how do you account for the fact that 90% of converts to Islam in America are from the African-American community?
Mohammed: Well, first let me say this first. Let me address something else. The reason why it appears that we are more G-d-fearing, the new converts, people who are newly converted they are more energetic. The new convert is always more energetic. More energetic, more enthusiastic. The people who have been in the religion for generations they’re not subject to be that excited about it. That’s one thing that accounts for what appears to be a greater degree of G-d-fearness or respect for G-d in us.
Another thing is we don’t have a nation of our own. We don’t have industries. We are not responsible for an industrial country like some of them are. At least third world countries, they are responsible for their countries, their nations. When we become responsible for national territories and great industries or even a small third world industries and great institutions, I think a lot of our energy’s going to be taken from the spiritual and given to those things.
Tony: You’re saying that since we are blessed with poverty we are blessed with G-dliness, right?
[laughter]
Siraj Wahhaj: Tony, I want to add something to that if I may. I’ve heard this by many Muslims from different parts of the country and told me in fact that, "Why are you Muslims in America you guys really you believe in Allah, you’re strong in your faith," and things like that. One of the things that we notice around the world is that most people have religion have inherited that religion from their parents and I didn’t inherit this religion from my parents. My parents were Christians.
I have found Islam 1969 and I wanted to know about it. I wanted to practice it. I loved this religion and it was new. I wanted to study the Quran, and understand it and practice it. Then we began to understand it and practice it. We have that zeal and that spirit. Sometimes some of our Muslim brothers from foreign countries, the immigrant Muslims, they say some of them in a kind of way to brag and say, "I was born a Muslim and you’re only a convert," but the greatest Muslim that ever was as far as we’re concerned was a convert, that’s prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him. He converted into the religion.
Tony: If we took the Americanized Africans as a community and subtracted the Americanized Africans who are believers of Islam and compared them to the black Christian community in this country, what do you think we would get when we compare rates of family disintegration, rates of drug addiction, rates of unemployment, rates of crime, rates of social disorders? How do you believe the one million African-American believers of Islam compared to the 29 million black Christian Americans?
Mohammed: No doubt they would stand with the tallest Christians.
Tony: Who would?
Mohammed: The Muslims.
Tony: The Muslims would.
Mohammed: The majority of us would stand with the tallest Christians in the country.
Tony: What does that mean Imam?
Mohammed: Those who have the best going for them.
Tony: In other words, you’re saying that family stability is greater among black members of Islam?
Mohammed: In all those areas.
Tony: Drug addiction is lower?
Mohammed: Yes. Much lower.
Tony: I also heard a similar statement made by a Christian minister who said, "If you extrapolate the black Christians from the general black population you’ll get more family stability, less drug addiction and so forth."
Mohammed: You said it well.
Tony: What are we discussing then? What is the relationship we’re making?
Mohammed: Well, I think it’s the positive influence of religion. Serious religion.
Siraj Wahhaj: I think the problem in society they have completely taken G-d out of their lives. They have separated State and Church so much that you don’t see G-d in their lives at all except for maybe on a Sunday or Easter.
Tony: What about this concept we have of the separation of Church and State? Do you feel we've exceeded the limits of being concerned about State over Church? Then when we have the PTL or the so-called scandals with televangelists. We got a lot of that and some of us get to believe that people who are leaders of organized religion, in essence, are people who are crooks.
Siraj Wahhaj: Some of them.
Mohammed: Democracy, it brings great blessings and also brings great responsibilities. What I think is happening as we become a more democratic society American's democracy has been improving and becoming more true to the name, to the meaning. Now, the public, the average person, the common person in the public has to carry the weight of great ideas and great responsibility that we didn’t have to carry when democracy wasn’t as progressed as it is now.
That was left to the better educated leaders, government people but now that’s on us. We share all that responsibility and I think we haven’t grown enough in terms of understanding the world, how the world operates. We haven’t grown enough in terms of understanding self, knowledge of self and society to manage our lives to deal with these various responsibilities.
Tony: Well, let’s deal with knowledge itself. Another quote I read from a convert to Islam, a black convert was that he found a greater sense of tradition and history in Islam than he had in Christianity. Is that something that’s common, is a common ingredient?
Siraj Wahhaj: I wanted to quote, Tony, a verse from the Quran, "And I seek refuge with Allah from the rejected Satan." It says, now let's do the to the English translation, "Oh, mankind we have created you from a male and female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know one another. Verily the most honored of you in the sight of G-d is he who’s most G-d conscious, most righteous."
In Islam, and in the old days of the nation of Islam we really was taught to love our black selves but now I love myself more than ever before. Why? Because Allah made me this skin color, my nose like this, my hair like this. I love it because Allah made me that way and the same way how Allah created other people and other races they should love themselves because G-d made them like that and the beauty of it is us all working together.
Tony: That’s not unlike Christianity. You had to have learned the same thing as a Christian. Why is it that--?
Siraj Wahhaj: Unfortunately, I’m not necessarily going to blame the so-called Christian religion for that but this nation has become a nation of racism. Many African-Americans were absolutely taught to hate themselves on purpose. Taken from them the knowledge of themselves and as one good brother said that we all ourselves now African-Americans but we’re more Americans than Africans.
Tony: Then you are saying and tell me if I’m wrong, you’re saying that the Christian Church then has participated in this cultural disenfranchisement of Africans.
Siraj Wahhaj: Of course, they have. That’s historical fact. [crosstalk] We’re not saying all Christians.
Tony: Of course we’re not.
Siraj Wahhaj: Of course. We’re saying that the Christian religion definitely was used to also help to enslave the Africans. There’s no doubt about that. That’s a fact.
Tony: What about Islam’s role in slavery? Muslims were slave traders long before it got to the United States.
Siraj Wahhaj: I can tell you this though, I can tell you this. People assume that every Arab is a Muslim and there were many non-Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs who participated in the slavery. A lot of that were blamed on Muslims in reality when it wasn’t Muslims but it is a historical fact, I won’t deny the fact that there were some Muslims that enslaved but, Tony, if you would compare the so-called slavery during the time of the early stages of Islam to the slavery of American is night and day.
I’m saying that if you had a so-called slave and you were a Muslim you had to dress him like you dressed yourself. Feed him like you feed yourself, and prophet Mohammed said that if you had them and you gave him a task to do and it was too hard for them to do you help them do that task. That was the so-called slavery under Islam.
Tony: Well, there were also some good Christians slave owners although I prefer not to get into good and slavery in the same term.
[laughter]
Mohammed: If I may, another thing we should at is this. Slavery in that time of the world was quite different from slavery in the south of America and in the southern part of our country. The slavery in the southern part of our country is called by the Encyclopedia Britannica “the peculiar institution of slavery” because it stood out for its horrors, for its cruelties more so than any form of slavery and I might add that not only were black slaves during that time but anybody could be a slave that time. Slaves were mostly captures of war, the captured people, the captured during the war or people that sold themselves to you. They couldn’t find jobs and they want to sell themselves to you.
Tony: Slavery was so comfortable in America that they tanned white people and sold as black people [crosstalk] I want to ask you a question.
[laughter]
Participant 1: In your discussion of the subject today you focused on the media perceptions created about Muslims and specifically the examples you used was the example of a Muslim terrorist as opposed to a criminal not being called of another race or of another religion. What specifically is the Muslim community doing to address this problem because I think that one of the reasons that other religions aren’t highlighted as being criminals when in that instance. It’s because they are actively involved in creating better media perception. What is the Muslim community actively doing?
Siraj Wahhaj: I appreciate that point but I want to say this is that I believe that there are some conspiracies. There’re some people who don’t want Islam to be viewed as we really are. Just to ask you a question. If you know Imam Mohammed himself he goes all over the country, in fact, all over the world teaching the religion of Islam. All the imams they do the same thing to the degree that we've begun to create our own media, electronic media.
Tony: We are very short of time. I need to get some questions but I just like to interject this that as you've said so eloquently both of you that all Muslims are not good people an all don’t do what G-d or Allah has instructed. People who blow people up and kill people in the name of Allah or G-d, if you do that in the name of Islam then it’s not far-fetched to call them a Muslim terrorist. [crosstalk] I think the point we all to make is most Muslims--
Mohammed: Don't you think we have to call Manson something too, right?
Tony: Absolutely, and I think people have called him that and some other things over and over but I do think it’s important to leave everyone with the fact that--
Mohammed: I think we have these strange people among us. Christians have them, we have them.
Tony: Absolutely.
Siraj Wahhaj: Consistency is what we want, Tony.
Participant 2: Indeed. Anyway, what I would like to say that when we’re judging the nature of the institution where there is Christians and where there is Islamic, we have to look in a historical sense that they are part of a society. The Christian society was a part of society around racial lines that accumulated a lot of wealth but going back to the nature of the novel we have to look at its political implications. A lot of the oil comes from that region of the world.
If people can undermine the culture and the people of that area it would facilitate and give a better condition for the invasion of their country viz a viz Libya. I think the discussion should be more around the political implications and the use of literature to undermine a people’s moral standing and a people’s assessment of their reality in the world.
Tony: Exactly.
Mohammed: Good point.
[clapping]
Participant 3: Mr. Brown, one way of fighting the book Satanic Verses without getting physical is really is to give out the Quran. Imam Siraj, I know on many occasions has given out the Quran to people who are Muslims and as well as non-Muslims, because in the Quran it tells you exactly the things that the Satanic Verses-- about the lies that they're telling in Satanic Verses. By giving out the Quran it gives you accuracy right there.
Tony Brown: I think something else positive perhaps that has come out of the whole unfortunate incident, is that you can see from the ignorance that the vast majority of Christians have of Islam, that it would be very helpful if Jews and Christians in America could read the Quran, or know as much about Islam as Muslims know about Christianity and Judaism.
Participant 4: Also, Imam Mohammed has instructed us to write our own materials so we can give a better idea what Al-Islam is about, especially in the African-American community. Muslims should get together and actually begin to produce materials to correct the wrong.
Tony: If we can be candid, Imam Mohammed, you know this better than anyone in the room. A lot of this hostility toward Muslims who are black in America stems back from the '50s and '60s and the so-called Black Muslim days, the nationalistic movement which you two at a very great extent shifted in the direction of traditional Islam and the current interpretation of that faith. Is that not one of the antecedents that we're constantly dealing with when you put racism together, because they never called you Muslims even then, they called you Black Muslims when they didn't call white people White Muslims.
Mohammed: That's True.
Tony: Isn't that the antecedent really? When you put together, in America, the black community and Islam?
Mohammed: Yes. We have a lot to overcome. I believe that's the biggest thing we have to overcome as Muslims in this country. We have to overcome the imagine that was projected before of Muslims. A lot of good was done in terms of moral teaching, moral discipline, economic development, business mindedness, a lot of good was done. We don't think anything from that and we hope we can continue that tradition.
When it comes to the image of the religion, the theology and the image of the religion, it was hurt by a black superiority kind of belief, belief in black superiority, black supremacy and was hurt by a belief that white people are inherently evil or devils.
Tony: Would you give us the current position on that last-- because I know that's what they're waiting for.
[laughter]
Mohammed: About white people being devils?
Tony: Yes.
Mohammed: They have more devils than we have, but we all have devils.
[laughter]
Tony: They have more devils maybe because there's more of them. Is that what you're saying?
Mohammed: They have more money and more power.
Tony: If we had that much power and money we'd be more devilish.
Mohammed: I don't know what would happen.
[laughter]
Mohammed: -and I would say not too bad.
Siraj Wahhaj: But it's not inherent.
Tony: Just one second.
Participant 5: A Muslim is one who submits his will to the will of G-d. Bill Tatum came to our banquets, Sister Clara Mohammed School banquet. He made the statement in regard to Muslims and drugs, that Muslims have done more to decrease drug abuse than anybody else in this entire country. If we want to know what to do, why don't we turn to the Muslims?
Tony: Let me say something converse. The Sister Clara Mohammed School has done more for education among blacks than any other institution in this country.
[applause]
Tony: Thank you very much, thank you.
[clapping]
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[00:23:48] [END OF AUDIO]

