11/16/1988
IWDM Study Library 
Oakland, CA

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
And Allah manifested to them their mistake, they changed from that position, and they started giving charity rather than exploiting or capitalizing on ignorant nations and ignorant people. Yes, but at that time they thought it was morally right for them to use their resources and also the resources of the people who neglect their resources to advance the good or the welfare of the civilized man on earth. They thought that was justified. Hey, I think it's kind of justified myself. No, no, I'm joking now, but I'm telling you, sometimes you have to stop and think, and you may make the same mistake, but we should answer the obligation to everybody. We should answer the obligation to justice in all situations. But in certain situations, man cannot see justice. He can't see it clearly. He only sees the good that he wants to reach.
And he thinks serving that good is serving justice. And sometime it takes, as I said, the time of history, the clock of history to roll around to the point where the developments have taken place in the world to show him his mistakes. And most of the time a moral man, when he sees his mistake, he will change. Not going to hold you very much longer because the time is gone. But we want to become informed people, conscious informed people. Informed on the matter of our deficiencies and the way or the steps that we should take to get out of it. We want to be informed. And I think once we're informed, we can do better with our lives, Allah offers us a good life. And I quote, this is quote from Qur'an, a good life and enduring establishment. Now I know that this has reference also to garden, to paradise, but you must understand that whatever we expect in paradise is expected also on this side in the measure that this world can provide it. It is also expected on this side. Where is the proof for that? Many proofs. But I bring you one.
Allah Most High says that when they behold the delight that He has prepared for them in the heaven, this is the souls now after the judgment. They will go into heaven and they will behold what Allah has prepared for them. They'll say, this resembles what we had before.
So, If Allah says to us that He's going to give us a good life and establishments that will endure, won't fall, won't be destroyed.
Won't weaken before the problems of the world but will stand, while nations that disobey Allah are falling and lose establishment. Our establishment will stay. Allah is saying that that will come to us on this earth and this life also.
Allah invites men and women to marry suitable compatible mates. This is another problem. Big problem. The family is in bad shape, the house is in bad shape, the finances are in bad shape. And many times we can point to the problem being nothing but these people ain't supposed to be together. These two people just shouldn't be together. Now don't look at her now. You've been with her too long. You should have looked at her before you said "I do." It's your problem now. Don't put it out here for another man. And keep it right there with you. That was your decision. And sister, I ain't picking on you. I'm saying the same thing to you about him. Too late now. But let your daughter know and your son know to be sensible and don't go out there like a hot dog looking for buns.
Let me tell you something, if you just reflect on what I said so far, and this is a little bit, this is nothing but a little bit, a drop out of the ocean. The Qur'an is full, filled. If you just reflection what I've said so far and measure that, the value of that, the merit of that kind of teaching, the merit of that kind of sensitivity, measure that with what's coming from the best that the world has to offer, what should be our decision? We should become so strong as Muslims that we don't even give a second thought to another choice. Don't give a second thought to it. "Say, have you ever thought about you being a universalist, a unitarian?" I can't even think about it. It is like asking me when I'm running my store and ringing up the $1,000 that I took in this hour, asking me, "Have you ever thought about playing marbles?"
Allah cautions us against following the line of least resistance. Another thing that gets us into a great problem. "Well, I want to see my children in some better clothes this winter."
Honey, I don't know how we're going to get them. Already it's November. Hey mama, how you like this jacket I got? Oh, that's nice. Where you get that boy? Where you get the money to get that? I got him from a fella. He sells them around here. Honey, we ought to see that fella that we can get those coats that we want real cheap. You can get leather ones. There you go. Buying stolen goods, the line of least resistance. Instead of having the muscle to go at it and endure and have the patience to wait until you get it with dignity. Follow the line of least resistance. Our Prophet, Peace and Blessing be on him, he said "No descendant of Adam has enjoyed any meal more than the meal for which he worked."
So, we be trying to get happiness with these quickies, but that's not the kind of happiness that really satisfies. We got to go to the doctor, we got to go to the psychiatrist sooner or later with that happiness. Yes. Where the Most High has said regarding this tendency in us, "Certainly with difficulty comes ease." It is the difficulty. Certainly, with difficulty comes ease. So, you want ease? The best way to get the ease that really will be realized afterwards as ease on me is by meeting the difficulty now. The difficulty now begs for my attention. And if I meet the difficulty now, I'm going to get the situation of true ease later. We are typical of the majority of the people that have been victimized by the super culture. And just think about us. You got a friend, a relative in this situation. They have ran after the quickie gone for the quickie.
And if they're not seeing the psychiatrist, it is not because they don't need to. There's some other reason for it. Now I know that. I believe 80% at least of the happy Americans need a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a whole clinic, right now. And where Allah says quote, "There can only be for the human person that for which one strives and it shall come into view." Meaning that if you strive after something, there's just natural circumstances, natural circumstances are working, that's going to bring what you're striving for into view. Now I've thought about that so many times and the more I think about it, the more enriched I am by it. Yes, no matter what you striving for. If a girl is striving to get a boy, the more she strives, the closer the day going to come that everybody's going to know what she was after. It's going to come into view. Same thing for anything. Anything you're striving for, you're striving for wealth, money. Don't worry, it's going to come into view, going to reach a point in your striving where everybody going to say, "Oh yeah, now I know what you all about." And where Allah says, actually talking to the Prophet, but understand that the Prophet has said, "Allah has not ordered the Prophet anything that He has not ordered also for the believers." So, understand that quote. And when you complete a task right away, get involved without lapsing, get involved right away without lapsing. Because if you lapse, you may never get back into the race.
So, what is it? This religion is designed to make winners of us, not losers. To make winners of us. Allah says, "And if you are truly believers, you must triumph." You must triumph if you are truly believers. He didn't say if you're truly wise people. He didn't say if you're truly rich. He said, if you're truly believers, that's where our power is, in being sincere, honest believers. If we would follow this, we'd be successful. Some of us work for ourselves. We don't punch clocks, but we don't know how to work for ourselves. We get a good job and just because it brought in a whole lot of money, we go into a lapse and spend it until it run out. Obey Allah, obey His invitation. Soon as you finish that job that brought you in 5,000 this week, right away, get right in. Don't lapse, get busy. If you don't have one, go at one quick. Get another one that's going to promise 5,000 or 10,000. And that's what will bring you up and that's what will influence your growing up, will influence your family, will influence your sons, son sons, daughters, daughters daughter. Will influence people around you in your immediate circle and also outside your circle. Why don't you know just one African-American, one person from the deficient lot making great achievements and it reached the news, just does so much for so many of us that are lapsing.
What we have given here today is the best medicine for the deficiencies in the people. For this modern time that we in right now, the situation in the United States of America and under the influence of the Western world, this is the best teaching. Now Allah want us to be successful. Allah want us to have a constructed life. Allah want us to have an established life or an established life, depending on what grammar rule you follow. Allah want us to have an established life. Alright? All right. This is the key. An established life. That's the key. This world sensitize us not to establish our life, but to establish a means of support for our life. And they call that establishing our life.
And that means of support just represent one item in the construction of life. It represents one item. They make us think a successful career going to be the answer to all our problems. That if we take this course or go to this trade school, that once we graduate and be placed in a job, the whole life is taken care of from then on. No more problems. Oh, that's a lie. Don't believe that. You can't even believe the material guarantee, even the material guarantee you can't believe. But if we could just pass that, I'm going to allow that we pass that and accept the material guarantee is going to be there. I will never be without, $20,000 a year, $35,000, whatever the career promise is, $50,000 a year. I will never be without that. Just say we accept that. Who knows what kind of situation gonna come into your life or into your loved one's life, your children, your wife life, that's going to wipe all that income out for the year in one minute and throw you right back down there with the man ain't got a job. You make it, still making 50,000, but it's just like you ain't got a job now because the hospital bill has taken every penny that you can get. If not the hospital bill, something else. The legal bill, the legal fund, whatever. So there ain't no guarantee. The best guarantee that you going to be successful in life is not that the career that the secular world offers you, but the career Allah offers you. That's the guarantee that you are going to be successful for the rest of your life. Because Allah establishes your life. He structures it in such a strong structure that nothing of this world can topple it. It will stand under all pressures and before all trying situations, it stands. He said, He shall give us Masakin. He shall give us establishment that will endure. Take seriously what Allah says to us. Take most seriously what Allah says to us. And if we can get the people that will become not only just believers but conscious believers, we will have the people to lead this world today.
Don't you know that? Give me men and women with no more education than elementary or high school. And if they sincerely come and accept this religion and stay with it, I will promise with my life that in a matter of generations, these people are going to be the new leaders of the world. I would promise it with my life at stake. If I could do that and pay with my life, I would be most willing to do it. Yes. These people are sincere. They're dedicated for life to this religion. They're conscious of it. They're conscious believer. Because so many people say they're Muslim and read the Qur'an, they ain't conscious.
So, Allah wants to give us an established life. We want to structure our life. Listen at our religion. The Prophet, Peace and blessings be upon him. He was asked, what is the religion? What did he say? Buniya. What is Buniya? Built, structured, built. Structured. We have a structured religion. Our religion is an edifice, an establishment, a definite structure with systems definite. You can't have that on the water. His throne was first on the water, no more. His Throne now is over the heavens and the earth. So, are we going to still live in the water like its Noah flood? And that passed thousands of years ago. Thousands of years ago. No. What I mean, are you still going to trust impulse? You still going to trust human impulse? You still going to trust your human feelings? Oh, I just feel like I should just stay where I am. I feel like I shouldn't do anything other than what I'm doing. They talk like that. You feel. Hell, a feeling don't belong to you, fool. No more than that remote control you got for changing the channel on your TV belong to the TV. The remote control belong to you in your hands. The TV can't help it. TV might want channel nine. You say channel two.
That's just the way the influences of this world operate in your feelings. You ain't conscious of those subtle influences you feeling in obedience to the dictates of the super culture. So, we must have a constructed life, an established life for surviving alone. If I'm not married, don't have no family, don't even care to go out with friends, I must have a constructive life. The loner can have happiness in this religion. Yes. Not that our Allah wants this. Allah want us to love the company of each other, especially the company of our family members. So, the Prophet has said the reward, the blessing is in the group, not in the person living his life by himself. When associating with a person or with persons, we should have an established life to deal with that. When sharing living space, a lot of us don't know how to share living space. The home life is supposed to teach us how to share living space. So, when we come out in the world, we are not a public nuisance. We are not a public hazard. And you're going to look at the home and you say, "Hell shoot how in the world the public is surviving."
And you can understand how come a guy comes making 35 miles an hour out of the parking lot onto the street and you had to hit your brakes. You'd turn to wherever, try to keep from getting knocked into judgment. And he's gone on. He didn't even touch his horn. And if you go home with him, he in house doing the same thing. The pieces, pieces of furniture and stuff in the house just making 90 miles across the room. They ain't physically moving nowhere, but it's just a wreck situation. Everything is in a wreck situation. I'm going to quickly talk on this. To do justice as to what I want to talk about, we'd be here too long. And it is time for prayer now almost. In fact, we have gone beyond the time and we might be able to make it in two minutes. If I can sum this up in about two or three minutes, which I'm going to try to do. We have to have respect for each other and respect for each other's rights in the given situation. Now, if I live in this house or in this room with you, I have rights to living space.
You cannot put your stuff all over this room and leave me nowhere to put my stuff. You cannot do your thing all over this house and leave me no space to do my thing. Now that's the big subject. I wish I had time. That's a whole chapter to itself in a book of volumes.
I don't have time right now to do justice to it, but we have to respect each other and respect each other's rights. We have equal rights in this living space. Now, this ain't my teaching. I'm coming from the teaching of Qur'an and the Prophet. Also, when working for an employer. When you working for somebody, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, he was on this really at one time in his life. He said, even called the white man the devil and told you the white man was going to be destroyed. His world was coming to an end. He said America would be first and then England would be second. At one time they all going to go, be nothing left on earth but black people. And that was good news for you in total blackness. Well, I have to admit it was good news for me too at a time in my life. But then when I saw a higher understanding, I moved on up to a higher understanding and thank Allah for that. Now, if you work for an employer, as a Muslim, you have an obligation to either refuse to work for him on solid grounds, or work for him and be fair and just and right by him and respect him in his position of employer over you. "Oh, he ain't no better than me. He a human being too." That's not Muslim thinking. That's not Muslim attitude. No. You have to have a higher respect, a higher regard for things of higher consequences, for things of higher meaning, for things of higher merit, for things of higher benefit. Here's a person of higher position. His activity is helping a thousand or helping 10. Your activity, not helping anybody but yourself. You have to have a different kind of attitude, a different kind of spirit. Doesn't mean you're supposed to disrespect anybody on the lowest level. You're supposed to respect everybody. But your way of treating that person should reflect an awareness in you of the difference in his statue or his merit. You don't treat everybody alike. Get out of that foolish mind. That's another thing that's holding us down. Look at the Japanese, how they have just gone up and gone out and just taking over everything and the theorists of the trends. The trends of the world. What are they saying now about the Japanese? They say pretty soon if they keep going like this, they gonna own the world.
Long time ago, outstripped American business in business ingenuity. Long time ago. In fact, what you find now in this country as a regeneration of factories most likely is because of the foreigner's involvement. This is what they're telling us in the news. It is not America doing it by herself. No. America is getting the help of those foreigners and that's what's given new life to her economy and new life to her industry. That's a fact. You have to accept that. It's history too. Whenever G-d sent somebody to rescue the slaves or the oppressed people, there was always some of them that took everything that G-d's Messengers said against the oppressors to be directed at them. They challenged, they were the defense for their slave masters. They were the defense for their oppressors. Oh, Egypt is a fine place. Oh, Egypt is a fine country. That was Dafon. Yeah, Dafon. Moses was talking against it. But Dafon was in the same, he was in the same situation with all the other slaves, but he just ate more. He had to access to more food and he wore better clothes. You see? But he was a slave. Pharaoh called him a slave too. Pharaoh didn't call him nothing but a slave, you see? But he would defend Pharaoh. "What's wrong with Egypt? Nothing wrong with Egypt."
"Look what we have in Egypt. You going to take us out there in the desert where there's nothing? Why? Egypt is the greatest country on their map, which is the greatest nation in the world. The Pharaoh, he's the Lord." Same thing we have today. We had this 40 years ago, but we still have it today in 1988, November. Almost 1989. We still have that right now on this floor. On this floor. We still have that right now on this floor, in this place today. Those that are out of their bodies. Their bodies are here. We see that body, but they ain't in their body, they in the oppressor's body. Now I'm not saying, "Oh yeah, he called the white man oppressor." No. Whoever the oppressor is. You, Chinese or the African or whoever the oppressor is you, in the oppressors body. You are in the name of out of style America. You in the spirit of out of style America. It's not even in style now for us, for any people to have the sensitivities that some of you all have. Can't stand to hear that a Japanese have outstripped America. What's wrong with you? You crazy.
Did you form United States Steel or you the original members of the Corporation, the board of directors that formed United States Steel. Why are you stressed so much when we say a Japanese now is the top man in the steel industry? Oh, you S-H-I-T.
I can't have no sympathy with a person like that. No sympathy whatsoever. In fact, if the time was right, I'll just say, come here with the guns. Don't bloody the walls of the Masjid. Keep them all out there in the alley. Shoot them down right now. Bury them right away. In fact, I say if steel was shore, I say don't use steel bullets. Hit them in the head with a hammer and use the hammer over and over again. Don't waste no steel. We have to learn respect for our employers, respect for things that deserve, that have greater merit, greater significance. Respect those things as they should be respected. When associating, pardon me, pardon me. I'm going too fast now. With a participant at a gathering right now, all of us are participants at this gathering. There's a respect we have to have. There's a consciousness that we have to have. Be aware of it. Just don't behave any kind of way.
When faced with a situation that challenges your strength to uphold trust and loyalty, be on guard, to keep the trust and the loyalty. We mentioned in a previous talk that the ignorant customers, they just follow any new thing. They announced that a new shopping plaza, a new mall has opened up. Right away, you leave the store that you've been supporting and go there even though you pay gas and risk having an accident and losing your whole car, losing $10,000 in the value of the car to go way across the highway, 20 miles to that plaza. You just got to go because it's the new thing. We have to work at consciously building confidence, building loyalty, building trust between ourselves, between the family members, between the neighbors, between the customers and the stores. The business people. Build loyalty, build trust, and your neighborhood will get strong. There's no reason for the African-American neighborhood to be the weakest of all ethnic groups. I mean, on the whole, we might have certain streets or certain corners that's strong, but on the whole, our neighborhoods and communities are weakest of all the people. Weaker than the Hispanic, weaker than the Mexican, weaker than all the people. Ours, the weakest of all.
If it's strongest, because the foreigners are there operating. Ours are the weakest of all. There's no reason for that except that we do not have the consciousness that we should have. We do not have the personal discipline that we should have. We do not have the personal discipline for given situations. There's a discipline for every given situation. We do not have these disciplines for the given situations that other people have. The people best in these disciplines are the people most successful in life today. And according to what the sociologists and all the so-called qualified thinkers and educators are saying, the Japanese are succeeding as they're succeeding because they have the best family discipline. They have the best cultural discipline of all the people they're competing with. So, I'm going to summarize it and close on that note. Pardon me. I'll give reference from Qur'an and then we, I'll conclude. "And the role for securing of securing the heavens was offered to the angels and to the mountains. They declined the offer, but man accepted it. Indeed, man tends to be given to rations of impulse, hasty and ignorance." But did Allah take back the offer because man was in that situation? No, He still left the offer there because He knows that man will grow up out of his baby state and will qualify for the responsibility.
In concluding, believers are to build their lives and their deeds. You are to be conscious of your deeds and construct those deeds. Give some kind of construction to your deeds. Don't just do things without a plan, a foundation of taqwa, consciousness for Muslims. The most powerful influence in that consciousness is reverence and fear of G-d. Love, reverence, fear of G-d. Devotion to Allah to assure the best performance, whether we be alone or with family or in public. Now we thank you. And we make a du'a.



