06/05/2005
IWDM Study Library
FIRST SUNDAY LECTURE
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed


0:00:01 Imam W. Deen Mohammed: He said to them, "Give me your tired and unwanted." They're tired. Your way doesn't bring them happiness or peace... And you don't like them, they're not producing anything. They don't contribute hardly anything to your establishment. So why should you carry this burden on yourself? This is the strategy, right? Jesus Christ is using the strategy, guided by G-d, he's using the strategy. If I go to those people, they think they know everything, they're not going to listen to me. But if I get the common people, they don't think, they don't know everything, they'll listen to me. Now let me reduce the amount of trouble that I can expect from them by appealing to their need to get rid of this burden. That was his strategy. So, he didn't go through the mountain either, did he? He chose a path through the plains. He reached for the rejected masses. Now understand that way back then in that time, it was just a few people that weren't discriminated against. All females were discriminated against, they thought males only one that had the divine spot.

0:01:27 IWDM: And all ignorant people were discriminated against, they didn't have any morals or ethics that demanded of them that they opened up schools to educate all their public, no. They regarded their public like dumb animals, that should be treated like dumb animals. Work, if they don't work beat them, they get in your way and they won't move, shoot them. Hang them, kill them, that was a order of that time gone by. Okay? So he was appealing to not just blacks, probably some of you all say, "Oh yeah, I knew Jesus was for the black man." Yeah, he rode that donkey, he came in with that donkey into the city victorious, that's us. That's us. No, back then, the masses of people, the publics were all cheated out of education, cheated out of equal treatment, they all were treated like animals and Jesus came to save communities. Not governments, communities 'cause the governments were responsible for the communities being left in the situation they were in.

0:02:38 IWDM: So he came to save communities, and he came to offer a strategy and a way of life to the governments that would benefit them down the road. So he used a strategy to get them to open the way for him and not persecute him or stop him. And he said, to his disciples, he said, "Go and you'll see a donkey, untied." Untie, what did he mean? He doesn't have faith in anything. That's what it means. He doesn't have faith in anything, he's not tied to anything. They're saying, "Find a donkey that untied, except but one tie, and that's the tie of matrimony." No, they didn't even respect matrimony. Aren't we in a time like that right now? When the masses don't respect matrimony, they marry for material conveniences, and not really to have families? They don't marry to have family, they marry to have material conveniences, and a play thing, a bedroom to play in.

0:04:01 IWDM: Yes? There's a time like that again, don't think we so far from that time that... Look, the material world changes. The establishments change. The common soul of people, it could go back while the world is going farther. We can regress while the world is progressing, because we are really creatures of spirit. And when our intelligence don't support or like it anymore, we can't make sense of things anymore, the spirit life starts to rule. And when the spirit life rules, we follow spirit. Spirit to play, spirit to have material conflicts, et cetera. We follow spirits. Life needs the pattern that G-d created for it, and as one of the Imams said from abroad, "It means that manual that the manufacturer gave the prophets, so that you know how to manage the soul of human beings."

0:05:36 IWDM: So in my conclusion, religion is sincerity, is a prophecy. And religion obligates that people are the public and their leaders, to be sincere about one another. When prophet was asked and he said that, he says, "Sincerity religion, sincerity this... " Sincerity by whom or for whom? He said from the people to their leaders, and from the leaders to their people. Leaders are supposed to be sincere with their publics, with their congregation or whatever, and the publics or congregations ought to be sincere with their leaders. You don't be crooked with each other. Fool people here and then go back to your homes, as soon as you run into a little difficulty you start saying what they aren’t going to do. "Aw, you know they don't let us do that. They got it, they control it, they going to keep it."

0:07:05 IWDM: That's the negative talk we hear, coming from these hypocrites, voters that are hypocrites. Vote somebody in and then come back and when you get a little problem at home you start knocking the establishment, knocking the system and knocking even the political leaders that you voted in, blaming everything on them that it ain't going to work, 'cause you're too lazy to make it work, you don't have a hope or a dream or a ambition strong enough to lift you up and guide you forward against odds and against problems to overcome, to go over hurdles, and barrier behind barrier. If you have something that's your life that you believe in, you don't let no wall stop you. You just get to the wall and then you start thinking how I'm going to take this wall down or climb over it or dig under it or go through it.

0:08:04 IWDM: Okay. So, Imam W. Deen Mohammed will not change. G-d has made me the man I am and I will not accept to be any other kind of man. And if I see something in your secret language and G-d gave me the spirit to see it, G-d knows if I see it I will share it with my brothers and sisters, I'm going to share it with my loved ones, I'm going to share it with my friends and my family members, and I'm going to share with the most distant human being on this planet earth, because that's my nature. I will not keep a secret I know some will help a person. And this world got you all under falsehood. Think of the sky, I don't think any more of a heaven in the sky, heaven is wherever G-d want to give it to you. And I think G-d want to give us heaven right here in Homewood and every other town we're in throughout these United States. G-d want to give us heaven, but you have to learn Imam W. Deen Mohammed's way, his strategy, for getting the mountain to smile on us as we pass through walking the plain. You have to learn my way. Thank you very much. Peace. As-salamu Alaykum.

[applause]

0:09:43 IWDM: Allahu Akbar, we say "G-d is greater", greater than anything imaginable, G-d is greater. We greet you on this second day of the new year and by the way we wish you all a blessed new year. We greet you in peace as we always do in this religion of Islam. Our greeting is peace be unto you, As-salamu Alaykum.

0:10:10 S?: Wa'alaykum salam.

0:10:12 IWDM: We praise G-d, Alhamdulillahir-Rabbi-alaameen that is, we praise G-d the Lord and cherisher of all the world, all that is in the sky and all that is down here. We witness that he is one and he cares about all of his creation and especially his special creation, the creation of human beings. And we witness that Muhammad is the seal of the prophets, the last prophet. We salute him with the traditional salute, the prayers and the peace be upon him in the Quranic language of Arabic, Quranic language, "Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam... " and what follows of that traditional salute to the last prophet. We are grateful to Allah for our health and our presence here to address the radio and listening audience and we appreciate you caring to tune in for this occasion for this live broadcast. However there is something that has to be done before announcement, was overlooked, and we do have announcement, so I will now give way to Laila Mohammed the supervisor at the Mosque Cares, she has some announcements.

0:11:36 Audience: With G-d's name, the merciful benefactor, the merciful redeemer, As-salamu Alaykum, peace be unto you. Just briefly, I'm going to read this first announcement. The Mosque Cares is accepting donations for the victims of tsunami, 100% of your donations will be given towards this effort. Send your tax deductible donations to The Mosque Cares, PO Box 1061 Calumet City, Illinois, 60409. Please put 'Tsunami' in the lower right corner of the envelope, cashiers cheques, or money orders only. Allahu Akbar. We also have on sale, trinkets made especially for the Mosque Cares from Mexico, these trinkets have 'Allahu Akbar' engraved on them, as well as 'I Love Allah.' They're made from stone from Mexico and are beautiful, natural colors. They're $5 each, excuse me I believe $5.95. Finally, the last announcement is we're making plans for our African-American History Program, the first Saturday of February, which is February 5th, 2005. Details will be announced in the next Muslim journal, or you may call the Mosque Cares at 708-798-6750 for more information. Thank you. As-salamu Alaykum.

0:13:05 S?: Wa alaykumu as-salam.

0:13:16 Audience: The Imam Mohammed has just said that the trinket price has a special lower rate at $3. Thank you, Alhamdulillah.

0:13:26 S?: Alhamdulillah.

0:13:33 IWDM: Again, we greet you with peace, As-salamu Alaykum.

0:13:35 S?: Wa alaykumu as-salam.

0:13:39 IWDM: We praise G-d, the lord, Sustainer of the Worlds. He is most merciful, the merciful benefactor, the merciful redeemer, or as is translated often, the munificent, the merciful, and the compassionate, the merciful. He is Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim, those are the two names that we translate, both meaning the G-d of mercy, G-d of mercy. Mercy firstly, and that he gave us the life we have, he made us human, and he made the world to support us, support our life. And G-d says that he has made the earth to give us everything that we need for our life. All of our aspirations, G-d says, can be fulfilled on this earth.

0:14:41 IWDM: Praise be to Allah, that is praise be to G-d. We addressing community, the individual life and community, how we are to build up our communities so that our souls will be pleased. The human soul cannot be pleased unless you do what you were created to do, when you do what you were created to do, then your soul will be pleased, but as long as you have not fulfilled what you were created to do, or created for, then your soul will not be happy. And you can't be happy if your soul is empty, and sad, and pained, or hurting.

0:15:31 IWDM: G-d want us to care about ourselves, G-d want us to value ourselves, nothing communicated to man or brought to us as education, or news, has respected our value as G-d has respected our value. In the world today, there are publics populations influenced their way of thinking, is influenced by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There are other publics influenced by Buddhism, Hinduism, and many other religions. Great numbers of people, a great majority of people on this planet, are influenced by those major religions, and all of these religions place great value on a human person, and all of these religions invite the human person to wake up to the human value that they have by virtue of their creation, by virtue of their creation that they were created human. If you're created human, you have special, special possibilities for your life, possibilities that not open to any other life, but human life. Not even the angels... According to Revelation scripture, not even the angel have the freedom that the human beings have, not even the angels have the freedom to alter creation and recreate, and get the great satisfaction in their souls, and in their spirit and minds.

0:17:29 IWDM: The great satisfaction of doing things worthwhile, beautiful, and helpful to society, to the community, not only of the community of the family of man, but to the community of animals as well. Man has made history, history. And if you study history, you see that man has made progress. If you go get a book that is 1000-years-old, and look at the environment, the human environment, its miseries and etcetera, its diseases etcetera, and look at it now, you see that man has made progress. If you get a history book and read of what was existing for us just 200 or 300 years ago, you'll see we have made progress.

0:18:17 IWDM: I've been living in Chicago for most of my life and I know Chicago 70 years ago. I know Chicago 70 years ago, okay? When I was a baby in Chicago, that Chicago was not the Chicago that I look at now. It was backwards. It was a backwards city, when I look at the city of Chicago now. Traveling around in the city was not as convenient as it is now. The smell of the air in the city was not as nice as it is now, because horse-drawn vehicles or horse-drawn carriages were going down the streets, and the horses were dropping their waste on the streets and you could smell that sometimes as you walk or ride down the street. So we, man is making progress.

0:19:11 IWDM: And how are we making progress? We are making progress by building upon that work that others did before us. Building upon that work that others did before us, building upon that that was good for human life that others left with us. Building upon the progress in the material environment that others left with us. Fathers and mothers passing on their life story, passing on the life story of their mothers and fathers in. Passing on to their children, passing on the wisdom, and the good advice, passing on the good nature to their children. This is how we have made progress. If we stop doing that, then we will not have progress. We start to go backwards instead of forward, we start to go down instead of up. This is life and this is history.

0:20:08 IWDM: So let us all recognize this, become aware of these things and think seriously about life. Don't make a joke of life. Don't take life for a joke. Don't make your life a life of play. You're not babies anymore. I'm looking at an audience here of mostly grown ups. Very few children are here, very few babies that I'm looking at. So you don't make your life a life of play. G-d gave us play to train us for adult life and adult responsibilities. When you play, you use your muscles, you use your reflexes, you use your endurance. And that's building you up to be able to have a good job and manage a good job and not get tired so fast. It's building you up to have physical skills for an adult responsibility, for a life of adult responsibility. So don't even take play in children for fun, no, G-d... This is fun alright, but G-d gave that fun to teach the children skills that they would need for an adult life of adult responsibility. We should understand these things and wake up. We should prepare ourselves to live in a world that offers a human being much more than the world of the past offered human beings. We should be thankful to G-d for that.

0:21:33 IWDM: If we don't believe in G-d we should thank whatever we imagine is responsible for that. We should be thankful. The point is to be thankful. Be grateful. Be thankful. Be appreciative, and when you do that your soul will like you more, but when you don't do that your soul won't even like you, and your soul will make you destroy yourself, because your soul want to see you punished. Your own soul hates that you disrespect the wonderful creation that G-d has made you. No other creature has been made free to manage his own life and manage his or her own nature. No other creature had been made free to do that. The animals can't manage their own nature, they can only live within and under their own nature, but a human being can manage his own nature. You can take your nature into your own hands as your responsibility and you can improve upon your own nature.

0:22:41 IWDM: Every child is born crawling around or lying around and eventually crawling around on all four like animal. No matter how beautiful the baby, no matter how high the parents were in cultural development or whatever. The baby comes here crawling around, lying around and crawling around like an animal, and not able to speak a language. It learns the language from us, and according to those who study the development of society, scientists, they say if you leave a child alone and not have that child supported by human beings or intelligent human beings, leave it alone, if it's found by animal and live with animals, it will think itself an animal and it will try to behave and even try to speak like the animals, make sound like the animal that they survive among. History, this is history, too. History have shown us that.

0:23:38 IWDM: So don't think that G-d wants you to stay on your all fours. G-d created you to stand up on two feet. And there are monkeys that stand up on two feet and apes and other primates standing up on two feet and there are some birds that stand up on two feet. I like to watch the penguin do that little shuffle. As you know, they walk on two feet. So two feet is not enough, to stand on two feet is not enough. But that's a start. You have to elevate yourself and re-learn from the wisdom of the ancient. Re-learn by way of revelation that if you care about yourself, and you invest in yourself, you spend time on making your nature better, you spend time on making your intelligence better. You spend time on making your morals better if you spend on yourself. If you spend on your own self to increase your own value, you can become the person that can bring relief and happiness, cleanliness, civilization, education. You can bring the beautiful life that we can imagine now in this time.

0:25:03 IWDM: Don't you know that... Thousand years ago, a few thousand years ago human beings couldn't even imagine, living like human beings live now? They had no education, no science. They had no evidence that would give them that kind of mind and thinking. That they would think like we think, with the opportunities that we're looking at and be able to proceed to go forward with our life like we can go forward with our lives. So we're very special people, in spite of all the trouble you're facing and all the bad news you're getting by way of television and whatever.

0:25:42 IWDM: In spite of all of that, we are blessed to be on this earth at this particular time. And sometimes it takes disasters, natural disasters, to wake some of us up. Look how the people who have suffered that quake in the ocean, they're drowning, seeing a wave 30 feet high coming at them, that's frightening. That's enough to wake up the real person in that body. And maybe that's what we need to happen to us sometimes, a great tragedy to wake up the human person in our bodies. Because most of us are not respecting the human person in our own bodies. And we wonder how come we have so much trouble, we wonder how come we're suffering so much.

0:26:30 IWDM: We wonder how come drugs are being taken by everybody, because those bodies are only flesh, the human being is gone. Bring the human being back into those bodies and you'll see a difference. You'll see a difference in the way they behave, you'll see a difference in the way they behave before the temptations of drugs, before the temptation of violence. When the human being is in the body as the way he's supposed to be, or the way she's supposed to be in the human body, we can handle drugs. We can handle the temptation of drugs.

0:27:00 IWDM: We can handle the temptation to become violent. We can handle the temptation to put our burden on everybody else. To pour our misery on the public, on the public transportation, on the public traffic. Drive so we get somebody killed. Drive so you deny them their opportunity to make a left turn at the corner. This is what's going on. Rudeness, rudeness and cruelty on the streets. Motorists out there make another motorist miserable. These are sad times for the state of human life in the human body, so come back home.

0:27:43 IWDM: To have their human mind come back into those flesh bodies you got. And appreciate that G-d has made you more valuable than any other living thing. We degrade ourselves. We put ourselves down, when we mistreat human life, especially our own. I respect a suicide bomber who has a cause, who think he will get attention to his cause by killing himself and hurting his enemy by killing himself. I respect him more committing suicide in that fashion, although it's not permissible in our religion to do that. We leave that only to G-d. We never should take our own lives, only G-d to say when we die, not us. We don't say when we die. We didn't say when we should be born or when we will be born, and we shouldn't say when we die. That's G-d's right and we take a right from G-d, and we have to be punished for that if we do that, so we know that's terrible.

0:29:09 IWDM: But what is worse than that, is those who are committing suicide taking drugs. Those who are committing suicide just beating up on people and killing people. They have committed suicide for eventually somebody is going to beat up on them and kill them, and they're dying fast. Many, millions are dying all over the planet earth, because of insane behavior. Suicidal behavior, so this is a suicide that is ugly and more degrading than the suicide bomber. Let us wake up, it's wake up time. We should want to know something about this fine life that G-d has given to only humans. We should want to know something about it, and every religion that I know of, that is practiced or lived by great numbers of persons on this Earth.

0:30:12 IWDM: They attend that need to bring to the consciousness of their following human values. Human values. So that they respect human life and the society can make progress. You cannot make progress if you don't respect human life. If you respect human life, we can make progress. If you don't respect human life in your home, you may be in an apartment, you may be in your own house. But if you have members that are sharing that environment, sharing that space, if they don't respect human life, that space will be made a hell for all the members occupying that space. There's no difference for the town or the city. If the people are not respecting human life, then their behaviours are going to make a hell for the rest of us. A hell for everybody.

0:31:02 IWDM: And really, that's what life is and most of these supporters of these big cities is hell. Is hell. It's a virtual hell. The suffering that goes on, on this Earth today, it doesn't look any less frightening to me, than what I learned that hell has for those who are going to hell. Hell is a place where you burn. You will burn, and you will burn and will be burned up. Well, I see families miserable, mothers miserable, grandparents miserable, seeing their sons and daughters on drugs, going to the graveyard, violent, violent prone, sick with immorality. Sick with moral corruption. They're looking at that and can't do anything about it. That's hellfire. That's a fire that burns all the time. That's a fire that burns and won't stop burning and we're living in it, and we are not burned up. We'll just burn, burn, burn, burn, burn. With no end coming in sight, we think. Yes.

0:32:15 IWDM: But we can turn the thing around. Bring the human being, put the human being back in the body. Put the human being back in the body, and we will see a great difference. That's what religion is all about, if it's about anything, that's what it's about. Religion is not about you going and shouting and pretending holiness, and feigning and carrying on and go out and leave the place, leave the church or the temple or the mosque, or whatever it is. You leave that and go right back to the same old life of self destruction. Making others miserable and making yourself miserable. That's not religion. Religion is beautiful. Religion is intelligent. Religion respects human life, so much that it wants us to have the intelligence to manage human life for ourselves.

0:33:14 IWDM: This is Islam, this is Christianity, this is Judaism, this is Buddhism, this is Hinduism. Every religion wants you to have the intelligence to manage your own life, to manage your own selves, and to get the satisfaction of seeing your life progress and knowing that your actions, your behavior, is what made that happen. I came up in bad circumstances, and I'm not the only leader that's doing well, who came up in bad circumstances. I came up in bad neighborhood circumstances. I was a child that could walk out two blocks and run into a prostitute or run into a wine head. Sometimes I didn't have to walk anywhere, as soon as I stepped outside, there was a prostitute or a wine head, or sometimes a drug addict. And people who didn't care about themselves.

0:34:12 IWDM: But one thing, they were victims of the instruments of the devil. Like drugs and whisky and stuff. But now we're victims of the instrument of our own selves. We're not hooked on drugs, we're not so poor that we have to drown our misery with alcohol. We live in nice apartments. We have color television. We're doing very well. But still, the human life is not respected. We are mistreating our own human life, mistreating the lives of other human beings near us, our loved ones, our friends, our relatives. Parents abandoning their responsibility to their children. And I'm not talking about responsibility to see that they have food on the table. Or to see that they have clothes to wear. The greater responsibility is to see that they have good sense. To see that they have intelligent human behavior.

0:35:26 IWDM: And parents are abandoning their responsibilities, and letting their children do their own thing and saying, "Well, what can you do? Everybody's doing it." Well, I'm telling you, those who think they go to hell by themselves or with a whole lot of company, you're wrong. You're wrong. You don't have company when you go to hell. You go to hell alone. And if you have company, the company increase the hell, so you're still alone.

[laughter]

0:36:10 IWDM: You're still alone. Yeah, hell will surprise you. In fact, I think it has surprised most of you already...

[laughter]

0:36:21 IWDM: 'Cause you don't even know you're in hell. It's slipped up on you. Yes, there's some religions that believe hell and heaven start in this life while we are physically living on this earth. Some religions believe that. My religion is one of those religions that believe that hell starts in this life and heaven also starts in this life. But you don't get the fullness of either until this life goes away. Then you'll wake up in another reality and you'll get the fullness of your good life or the fullness of your bad life. It will be completed for you. This is a belief that is in at least two of the major religions that I am aware of, and maybe more than that. There are not many religions that are leading the publics of the world today, not that many religions. Thus, the religions that you don't know of, and there are many, thousands of them, they have very few followers. They don't have big followings.

0:37:38 IWDM: The big followings belong to the major religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism. These major religions, they have the majority of the people and the publics of the world. And the publics of the world. So can we then say, "Well, the state of the world is to be blamed on these religions?" No. Because I read these religions. I've been studying these religions for 40 years or more. And I know these religions. And I know I can read the beauty of these religions, that their various religions, I can read any of those books and I am put in a mind to respect what I'm reading, appreciate what I'm reading, and put great value on what I'm reading. So if I can go to these religions, that is go to their Holy books and read this and get this kind of feeling and get this kind of lift in spirit. It lifts my spirit when I see their beauty and their wisdom, and their purpose, their good, pure purpose. When I see it, it makes me feel good. It makes me happy and I am soothed by what I read.

0:39:07 IWDM: So, it's not the fault of these religions. It's the fault of the publics. The public life goes astray from the religions. And we, as individuals, get weak for the public life and we leave the good teaching, the good family gave us, our good parents gave us, and we join the public life. And go to hell. The public life, especially in the modern world, or I should say not modern anymore, I should say industrial world. The public life in the industrial world is a life that lets you know right away, it's all about money. It's all about money. You step out in the public, you see people trying to get your money. As soon as you step out there and you see some activity in the public, most likely somebody trying to get your money. In our neighborhood sometimes, certain quarters we live in, poor folks and people that have lost the respect for human life. We come out in our neighborhood and we can hardly find a dog. Dogs have disappeared.

[laughter]

0:40:32 IWDM: Yeah, I mean, I ain't seen a lot of dogs around no more. Dogs have disappeared. Everything has disappeared. Now, a prostitute gone.

[laughter]

0:40:43 IWDM: She ain't selling none, she ain't out selling no more. She's gone. She going to find another bag or another gig. Yeah. This world is really strange now. It's really strange. Now, in order for us to appreciate human life, we have to appreciate community life. There's no way to appreciate your life or human life, your individual life, without you and us appreciating community life. G-d didn't make us to live outside of community. G-d made us to live in community. G-d didn't make us to go to the mind that life is all about me. G-d made us to go to the mind that life is indebted to my family. Life is indebted to my community. Life is indebted to my city, my state, my nation. Yes, that's how G-d makes us. G-d makes us with intelligence to appreciate life in community and to understand that that's the only way you can have life.

0:42:00 IWDM: "Oh, I don't want nothing. I'd rather just be by myself." What about the electricity? What about the water? What about the heat for the house and telephone? You going to do all that by yourself? Can you bring all that into your house, into yourself, and by yourself? No. The reality is that you don't ever live alone. You always live the life of community. And if you didn't have community life, you wouldn't be able to survive alone. You'd have nothing. You'd have nothing but bad Earth. And I don't think this pampered generation that we have today can survive on the bad Earth. You'd go out there and cut your throat real quickly. Or look for something to kill yourself with, real quickly. "Oh, I can't make it. Where am I going to stay the night?" Under a tree. Up on a branch. Afraid some dogs will come and get you. Climb up the tree. Go up high on the branch. Hug the branch and go to sleep! 

[chuckle]

0:43:16 IWDM: Get a few winks, you can't go to sleep too long now. You'd be sleeping like, every few, a couple minutes, a minute or so, a half minute, you're waking up. Some of us are against government and against everything. Oh, everything is corrupt. And when we look at you, that's what we see, corruption! [chuckle] But everything is corrupt. Reject the world, reject everything. Well, try living without anything, but yourself. The big world is out there. Big Earth is out there. You think you can find some seeds from a... Nut, a seed from an apple or something, or a seed from corn and plant it and have the patience to wait for it to grow? And then, get out there and gather it? Go out there, and work, and bring it in? Taking it into your house, or into your yard, where there's no house? And no grass and no flowers? Take them in, get you some dry wood, or something, build up your fire? You think you can cook it? You think you can survive like that? No. You ain't got the spirit. You don't have the spirit and endurance to meet the challenge of a natural environment without man's work in it! 

0:44:45 IWDM: Wake up and let us appreciate life more. Let us appreciate living in community more. Let us realize that we owe community life for the things that we enjoy on this planet Earth. Some community life, whoever's responsible for the community or for the neighborhood, we owe them. The government order that protects the order of the neighborhood, and the order of the city, we owe that order. We pay taxes. We pay for that. You're supposed to, as a service to all of us. Don't be angry, 'cause you had to pay taxes. Be angry because your taxes are not directed properly or used in the best manner, or in the best way. Don't tear down the system. Correct the things that are wrong for the system, and help the things that are right for the system. But don't turn against the system. The system managed to give us an environment wherein we can live as human beings and feel comfortable. You can't feel comfortable when you turn yourself loose out there with animals.

0:46:00 IWDM: You can't escape human civilization. You can't escape man's progress. Embrace man's progress, because man's progress is really your progress. Whatever man is able to achieve, it's a proof that G-d made you valuable. Because you have the same thing that man has. You have a brain, you have hands to work with, you have a human soul. You have the same things the achiever has. Whatever the achiever has, you have. "Oh, yeah, but I've been held back." Well, don't you think the first man was held back? He go out there, and plant, and build a little house. Storm comes through, knocked his little cheap house down, wash out all his works. He go out in the morning, look, ain't nothing there. And he worked all his life for it. Did he give up? No, he didn't give up. Even though he might have been old, and too weak to work, his children and the young folks related to him, and his friends, they got busy. And pretty soon, they had another house up. Another house up! Another living established for themselves. Are we prepared to do that? 

0:47:32 IWDM: We let something wash us out, wash us out and knock us down, and set us back, we're finished. We on welfare eternally. No spiritual change. Wake up! Some of us, we want the life that respects the value that G-d gave us and put in us. We want a life that respects that value. I don't want to a life where I don't have to use my brain. Mohammed the prophet he said, "There's no greater thing that G-d has made than the human brain." And we look at the work of the human brain, we know the heart makes a contribution. The heart gets the brain started, and the heart makes requisitions to the brain. The heart show, "That's a beautiful house there, but it's a little bit rough, or it doesn't have enough flowers and plants, put some trees around it." This is the heart speaking, right? And the brain listens to the heart and the brain say, "That makes sense."

0:48:53 IWDM: But the brain is going to set out to achieve it, right? Make that beautiful house that your heart wants. Make it beautiful and comfortable like your heart wants it. Yes, but what did the work? Was it the heart or the brain? The heart makes the requisition, the brain does the work. Yeah, so you have to respect your brain. Respect your brain and know that your brain is above the brains of all other living things.

0:49:25 IWDM: That you're favored with your brains to do things that they cannot do. Don't you know a roach still lives like a roach did 3000, 4000 years ago in the palace of Pharaoh? I know because I read about the history of the Pharaoh. And they got pictures of the roach, and they got pictures in stone. They carved in stone, roaches. I don't know why yet. I guess if these roaches don't stop bothering us in our apartments one day some of us going to have a religion and we going to be pushing roaches up in stones too. Behold, these endurable creatures, these everlasting creatures, the roach. Might give them a place in heaven.

[laughter]

0:50:10 IWDM: Yes. Look, I'm making humor, but I'm not carrying on fun. I'm very, very serious. Very serious. So the roach, the way he move, the way he live 3000 years ago in the palaces of the Pharaoh, same way he lived right now in your palace. Same way. Same way he crawls around, same way he... When you turn the light on he's running. He's going to hide and go, and when you turn the light back off he's out there busy trying to find the sugar or whatever you dropped off the tables, stuff that you dropped off the table. Maybe a half of pork chop or something like... A half of chicken, whatever you dropped off the table. You ain't got no money but you just work the garbage collectors more than any other people. The rich don't work the garbage collectors like our poor folks at our neighborhoods work the garbage collectors. Yeah. So I don't know what it is, but there's something bringing out those roaches and those rats and things and they're busy, but they don't have no advancement. They don't have no history to show that their life advanced. They're still living on the same low level of nature that they were created upon.

0:51:39 IWDM: But man was created upon a life, human nature, but he was also created from animal nature. And he rose up out of animal nature. He woke up to his own value, and he saw himself higher than the apes and the other animals, the monkeys and dogs, and things. And then he prided himself and said, "I'm human." Meaning I'm not meant to act like a dog, I'm not meant to be an ape or wolf or something. I'm meant to be human. I'm not meant to be a buzzard not even an eagle. I'm better than that. And man proved in time that he is better than that. He proved that he's better than all the animals at everything that they can do.

0:52:28 IWDM: Man watched the ducks flying from the air, flying, land in the water and some of them were going down deep in the water. Swim in the water, swim like a fish in the water, duck, then come up to the surface, ride the surface. Then take off from the surface and fly in the air, man finally caught up with him. He said look, "I've got more on you than language. I got more on you than freedom of movement. I'm going to show you something."

0:53:00 IWDM: He made... Man made a vehicle, go in and hit the water, go down in the water, come up, take off of the water, did what the duck could do. Whatever man saw anything else doing, eventually he was able to do it. The eagle fly above the storm, the man said, "I ain't going to be satisfied 'til I make me a airplane to fly above the storm." Now we got airplanes fly high above the storms. Fly above the storms. The cloud, looking down on the cloud. Looking down on the lightning flashing in the cloud. Looking down on it. That's man. And that's what every one of you are. You're human. You're human. So wake up to your human value and stop disrespecting the great value that G-d made you. If you have a friend or a child and you give that friend or child a precious thing as a gift for a birthday or whatever, if you see they don't care about it, if you see them leaving it on the floor with the trash, it hurts you. It hurts you.

0:54:09 IWDM: And I know G-d doesn't hurt like we hurt. G-d is protected from this vulnerability or these weaknesses that we have. I know that. But you should at least imagine that whether G-d experienced hurt or sadness or not, how do you think G-d is, is by you when He sees you take the most precious thing He gave anything in the world, never gave any living thing or nothing dead the value that He gave you, and then He catches you putting your body in the garbage can? That's what you're doing by the corruption that you let come into your life. You're putting your body, the gift that G-d gave you, you're putting your life in the garbage can. Yes. And asking the government to pull it out.

[chuckle]

0:55:09 IWDM: They don't pull it out. They stopped pulling it out. It goes on the garbage truck, and the garbage truck takes you and your garbage to the garbage dump. That's sad, but that's the state of many of us right now. Some of us listening to this live broadcast are in that situation, where you're treating your own life as garbage and blaming everybody but yourself, blaming everybody and everything but your own self.

0:55:52 IWDM: Wake up to the great value that you have as a human being. Wake up to the great help that you have for yourself as a human brain. Human brain, not a freak brain. If you let the Satan's temptations, his vices and whatever, get you into a life of corruption and you like it, you got a freak brain not a human brain. You ain't happy unless you bouncing up and down like a yo-yo, you've got a freak brain, in your body controlling you. You have turned your human brain off. It ain't on for you anymore. You got a freak brain working in your body or working in your head for you. Wake up to your excellence, human excellence. Wake up to your human excellence and come back to human life from the hell you were making for yourself following the way of the immoral public. Don't go the way of the immoral public. Wake up. Be at the controls yourself.

0:57:36 IWDM: There's no better friend or helper than the true person that we were born with when we came from our mothers. When we were delivered from our mothers as babies, we were delivered true people, true people. If you go back to that innocence, to that goodness, to that innocent life we call the life of the infant or the baby, you'll be going back to your true life. And if you can get back connected with your true life, then you'll have a spirit to build upon the goodness and upon the excellence of life, and not live a life of recklessness, insane pleasures, violence, drugs, alcohol, stupidity. Some people give their lives to stupidity, and they're competing with... They're looking for stupid persons so they can have some competition.

[chuckle]

0:59:01 IWDM: Yes. Give their life to stupidity, and go outside and see if they can find a stupid person so they can have some competition: "This guy, bet he's nuts, let me show him. He hasn't seen a fool 'til he's seen me."

[chuckle]

0:59:25 IWDM: That's what happens when we get separated from our human life, so we have to get it together, please. You're hurting us. Your life is hurting us. Most of us don't care, but there are many of us that do care, and as long as there are human beings, separated from their human spirit and human life, suffering, corruption, violence, misery, we can't be happy. We can't be happy at home. We can't be happy anywhere. We can't be happy until we seem to come back to your human selves and appreciate and value your human life, then we can be happy. We need that if we're going to change the look of African-American neighborhoods or black neighborhoods. We know we have individuals who excel, who are making more money than blacks ever made since we've been on this continent, in this part of the world. Yes, making big money. But how do you think they feel when they go home, turn on the news, turn on television and get the reports of the black neighborhoods? When they hear the state of their black neighborhood or see the state of the African-American or the black neighborhoods, how do you think they feel? 

1:01:11 IWDM: How do you think Oprah Winfrey feels? When she become conscious of the neighborhoods of African-American people? How everybody but a black man can make business in a black neighborhood. How do you think she feels? She has to feel bad. So none of us can really be happy and be free from the misery of all of us until at least we look and like and resemble people who have a conscience. We don't resemble people who have a conscience. The Spanish people have a conscience, they have conscience of being Spanish. They have a conscience of respecting their own families. Respecting the Spanish people's lives. They have a pride. They take pride in work.

1:02:07 IWDM: Now we know a lot of them are violent too. They're big evils of the city, they are just too much for many people, but still, their achievements are better than ours. When we look at their community life. I can go into a Spanish neighborhood and ride down the streets for blocks and see nothing but Spanish stores. Spanish businesses advertised run for blocks. I come back home to my neighborhood. Boy, I'm telling you. So we're economically dead. As a people, we're economically dead. Yeah, I didn't say commercially dead, you're commercially alive. Oh, you spend some money. But you're economically dead. The economics is the science of how money works and how those things that represent money work. Goods, material goods etcetera. So economics is the study of that. It has to do with the life, the material life of society. And how it's converted into money. And how money is a medium of exchange for us to buy these material things and living these material quarters. Economics.

1:03:32 IWDM: So since we're not having business producing wealth, we are economically dead. We maybe dollar-wise alive. We maybe business-wise alive. Yeah, you dress up in your business suit and you go on, you work. You go work for somebody's business. Might be in your neighborhood. Most likely it's out of your neighborhood. And you come back to your neighborhood, but you don't have any business in your neighborhood. So your business... In business you're alive, money-wise you're alive, but economically you're dead. Economically, you're dead. And let me tell you something, when you read of great religions how they speak of multiplying and everything and great love for family and multiplying them, their family and numbers increasing in children, the joy of a man is more sons and daughters, the joy of the mother in more children. Until the blacks are free from slavery and then the joy is no more, having big families.

1:04:58 IWDM: We got everybody wanting to cut down on the number of children. We've changed everybody. So I'm saying, "Well, if I have too many children, I'm going to have too many headaches. I got another child that's going to go to public school. I can't afford a private school." And a public school is just what it says, public school. School with the public in it. I don't want my children going to that school and I can't... "Well, honey. I know we had planned to have 25 children like grand mama and grandpa had down in Georgia, but let's take it... Let's make it one baby, not 25. How about two? I think maybe we can manage two." And sometimes two would give them so much hell, they wish they hadn't have any. So times have changed that not because plenty is not here.

1:06:02 IWDM: We have more than we ever had. Time has changed because the minds have changed from being religious and human to being public crazy. And with that, I want to conclude this part of this address. This is a live broadcast and we are happy to be speaking to you, and we hope that you will tune in every first Sunday. I wish I could talk to you every day, it might happen too, one day. I wish we can have live broadcast every day. But our presence and our human family and the radio listening audience, we appreciate you being with us and we hope to see you next first Sunday, February, first Sunday of February, for this live broadcast. We want to thank our sponsors, we want to thank this radio station for welcoming us and we wish all of you all a beautiful, prosperous, blessed New Year. Peace be on you. As-salamu Alaykum.

1:07:20 S?: Wa alaykumu as-salam.

[background conversation]

[pause]

1:08:00 IWDM: Muhammad the messenger of G-d, it was no big deal for me to conform to that, in fact it was a relief for me to conform to that. My human nature, my human soul, just wouldn't let me be, knowing with my mind and my knowledge, in my mind that we are not in accord with that, made me uncomfortable and the more I got with that, the more comfortable I got in my soul and in my mind. Yes! It was no big deal for me to do that. I had plenty of help to do that, from my father. My father told me to think and be intelligent. My father told me to think deep and not to take things on the surface without digging beneath to see what's under it. So he trained me to dig and see what's under the cover of the book. What's under the cover of the language in the book.

1:09:06 IWDM: And I obeyed him, I started putting out stuff that said, "Well, this temple have to be torn down, in three days, so we can raise it up again." And I said, "Well, the temple wasn't put here to stay. It was built to be torn down in three days, so a new one would be erected." Praise be to Allah and that's what we set out to do under my leadership, thank G-d, and we accomplished it. But still I look at you all and you look like you're still waiting, look like it's February, 1975. I'm thinking, about 5 o'clock when I was speaking. And you look like you're still right there at that time, look like I'm greeting you this first day, your faces look the same way. I'm not speaking of all of you, but too many in this audience right now. Your faces look just like they did at the first day. Like you have no idea whatsoever of where we are and where we're going.

1:10:27 IWDM: Well, let me tell you where we are. We are 40 years from slavery in Egypt. And all the old heads that couldn't get any new ideas in them are dead. And Joshua is saying, "Let's move on." That's where we are. And Joshua is saying, "Don't forget why we are here. We chose not to stay slaves under Egypt, Pharaoh." So don't forget why we're here. We're here to build a new world of our own. We are not here to ask for another master. We didn't have a Egypt time, leaving Pharaoh, he killed a lot of us. He tried to kill all of us, that white Supremist, Pharaoh. But we escaped him with the help of good people and G-d's angels, we escaped him, now we're in a new land. We are out here in the desert, and there ain't no welfare department to go to. If it is, you should imagine, you should force yourself to say, "No!" to welfare.

1:12:00 IWDM: Welfare resembles the plantation life. Only it's worse, 'cause the plantation life kept busy my nature, my man nature. It kept busy my man nature, it kept me busy going on working and using my man muscles, my adult muscle. It kept me getting up in the morning and going out and working the fields, coming back in tired, but I was strong. I could lift 150 pounds or more. I was strong. Now the pimp can't lift anything.

[laughter]

1:12:45 IWDM: Yeah. So the situation now is worse than plantation! At least we're expecting somebody that says, "Okay, up, get up!" "Hey, go to the field, let's do a day's work." But now we got nothing, bored to death. "Oh man, give me a joint, let me smoke a joint. I'm bored to death. You've got a joint man?" And there... After a while the joint ain't strong enough, got to take something stronger. After awhile he's not even human, he looks like a stone in the face, and looks like an old tree with no leaves. Looks like a bark, as my brother say. He say, Warith, you should have seen so and so and so." Say, "He messed up his life. He look like a dead tree walking."

1:13:49 IWDM: Yes! That's a waste of our lives and everything so we have to change all of this. And we're going to change it by doing what I've been speaking on for another hour and around 10 minutes. That is, seeing ourselves as not individual life, community life. Every person has to see himself as community life. You know the great wisdom in the scriptures that you read, and you don't understand them. Things that Jesus said to get his people to see what is real life. Others say that in the Old Testament, it was said in the Old Testament, of David the same thing was said. David's men said to David. Said David, they said, "King, you are flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bones." They were telling the King, "You can depend on our cooperation because whatever you're here to serve, we are here to serve the same, and we are going to serve it as though we are one person. You can depend on us to conduct our life in accordance of your own personal life. If you can trust your hand, you can trust our hand. If you can trust your feet, you can trust our feet. Because we are telling you King, we are one body. We are bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh."

1:15:19 IWDM: Then Jesus come in the New Testament and he tells his followers, "You're members of my own body." Members of our own body, of my own body, and if we understand, Islam requires of us the same. Islam says your life and your death is the life and death of one single person. If one person can live, all the rest can live by following that way of that person. But if we follow one who is corrupt or stupid or insane in his behavior and his life, then it takes all of us to death who follow him. So we live in one and we die in one. And if there's any single one of us whether it be a prophet or a saint or whatever, or a wise man or a teacher or whatever, if there is any single one of us, male or female, that is able to rise up in the life that G-d created for us to roll up others unto us so they can have the life too, it is only because we have risen up in the human nature that G-d created us for.

1:16:29 IWDM: Jesus Christ was able to say that because he was in the perfect human nature that G-d created us for. Yes. David was able to say that before Jesus Christ because he was in the perfect human nature that G-d created us for. Muhammad was given to us, and G-d says of Muhammad, "You will certainly find an human excellent model of life for any who believe in G-d and the hereafter." Yes, G-d gave us him as the model life for us to emulate, become like that life, live like that. This is a human life. This a human life. Don't behave like those out there destroying the neighborhood, corrupting the neighborhood, making the misery for family, don't follow these crazy people. Find the one who will establish on the human pattern that G-d the Creator, the designer of the stars and the sky and earth, and whatever is on earth, follow that person.

1:17:27 IWDM: And I'm sure we can find more than one. We are not so extinct that there's only Imam W. Deen Mohammed standing up in the human model that G-d wants us in. No, I'm sure there are others, you can find others, but they're very rare. Very rare. I heard my father say at the table once, he was eating, like he did all the time, they call it table talk, that's the language that was given by Prophet Muhammad, but he did have, Southern people they had table talk, that's just the way of folks, regular folks is to eat and have conversation, enjoy, socialize and have conversation. So one of those times my father softly said, "Well, there was a woman and she had a bone and she was seen in the public walking with a bone in her hand. And somebody came up to her and say, 'Woman, why are you carrying that bone?' She said, 'That is a bone of a man. Bone of a good man.'" Good men were so rare, so hard to find...

[laughter]

1:18:49 IWDM: That she was holding on to the bone of one that died. It's a bone of a good man. Are you parents, you know, raising your children, spending all your money on them etcetera, etcetera, not giving in to the corruption of the public life and your daughter taken by one of these young men and you have to send her money to take care of her and him? I know some of you all want to walk out those graveyard and pick up, "This is where George died. Let me see if I could find something left." Take it and walk through the city, walk through the downtown area and hope somebody ask you a question. Yeah, this is a bone of a good man.

[laughter]

1:19:48 IWDM: Now, let me get back on a serious note here. Although that's serious. It is serious. G-d want us to see with our eyes. G-d want us to see clearly with our eyes, how we are to know ourselves in the external world. G-d want us to know ourselves in the external world. And you can take a lesson from man's world. It can put you back in a situation or a position to appreciate what G-d offers us, and G-d always offers the best. You look at man's world, everything he got, in order for you to benefit from it, you have to use your good sense.

1:21:12 IWDM: Man makes shoes. If you want to wear shoes, in a certain way, you put them on. You don't cut a hole in the bottom and try to stick your foot in that way. They got a place that'll put your foot. Your foot goes in the top. You put your foot in, if it laces up, you lace it up. If it doesn't, buckle up, you buckle it up. If you just slipped it in, you just slip it in and you walk in the shoe. But there's some kind of sense, there's amount of good sense that you need to benefit from anything man-made. Like this cap I'm wearing here. It's supposed to be worn like that, I can't stick it on my chin.

[chuckle]

1:21:53 IWDM: It won't work that well. It goes on top of my head. A car. Most of the youngsters want cars. Even before they get old enough to drive one. They want a car, everybody wants their own car. But when you get that car, you got to use good sense. You got to follow the good sense, instructions that they give to license drivers. And the manufacturer of that car who made that car, he knows more about that car than you. He knows how to treat that car better than you do. Now, isn't G-d a manufacturer of our human bodies? If you believe that, shouldn't He know better how to take care of this human body than we do? So we don't have a... They give us a manual and say, "Okay, service this car at the next 5,000 miles or whatever. Service this vehicle and do this, and get this, and get that." Then immediately you got it with. You got your bible, you got your car bible there. Right? Or you got your... Whatever it is. Automobile Quran.

[laughter]

1:23:12 IWDM: You got your automobile Quran and it's going to tell you how many prayers it has, how many wudu, how many ghusl and how many Salaats, and how many Rakats and this and that. It's going to tell you all that, right? And it's going to tell you if you miss these, if you miss too many of these, your value is going to go down. Maybe you'll still be driving this car but the value is going down because you didn't keep up the service. Huh? Yeah. So when we look at man's world, don't we see sensible instruction? And don't we find ourselves conforming to the direction that they give us? To live in this man world you have to follow directions that they give us, that man's world give us. Now you want to live in the world of spirits, in the world of G-d, in the world of soul and heaven and whatever, but you don't want to follow any direction.

1:24:00 IWDM: You don't want to follow the book that the maker gave us, the maker gave the book to Moses and before him gave the book to Abraham, the maker gave the book to Jesus Christ, the Gospel, the Good News, and the maker gave the book to Muhammad the Prophet, peace be upon his servant, the maker gave them those books, and those books are for us and all that you have in your world is nothing in comparison to what G-d gave those servants of his, nothing. Your world would not be surviving and wouldn't be even established if it was not for human beings believing, having faith in those great servants of G-d and preserving what they left and building a new world by the blueprint left to them from those great servants of G-d.

1:24:58 IWDM: This is what I know to be fact. We would have no democratic republic if it was not for wise men perceiving and seeing the wisdom in scripture and the direction for human society in scripture. That was the only way they came to this great idea we call America or a call the democratic republic, that's the only way they could have gotten here. I can prove that to anybody got some sense and got some knowledge, you have to have sense and knowledge. Anybody read, if you read, you know history, I can show you from scripture, and shine light on scripture on history. I can shine the light of scripture on political history. I can shine the light of scripture on industrial history, the history of the industrialized nations. I can shine the light of scripture on all of them and I can show anybody with good common sense, I can prove to you that the scripture was before them with the pattern, with the blueprint of how to establish that life. But you're being cheated out of a valuable life because you're weak for it, that's the only reason why. You're weak for it.

1:26:36 IWDM: You eliminate yourselves, nobody else eliminates you, you eliminate yourselves because you follow sleep, you follow death, you follow surrender, so you eliminate yourselves. I have no spirit to sleep in the face of work to do. I have no spirit to die, we pray hope for tomorrow staring me in the face. No, wake up people, please. It's time to de-mystify this world, take the mystery out of it for the common man. He's the only one that carries the burden and he's left in the dark because he can't be trusted with his own life, but that's the way of one disposition of mind under G-d.

1:28:11 IWDM: There are two main dispositions of mind under G-d. One is the disposition that you can't trust the common man with his life, so you have to hoodwink it. You have to keep him in the dark. The other position is that he's a valuable creature created to, may rise up to any challenge, but G-d gave us this life as a test or a trial, is to test us as the human body, you hear what I said? To test us as a human body. You know they say the body congregation. The body congregation. Now you know there are many people in the congregation but they use the single noun body, the body of the congregation. Well, that's exactly what we're talking about, one single person but in many, one into many and one living by the pattern that the whole... That the many live on or that the many live by and therefore the function, the essential function of life is the same for all of us equally as though it was one function and not many functions and many individuals.

1:30:02 IWDM: Yes. We're given language and we need to be educated. Religion... If it can't be trusted to the majority of the people, to the masses of the people, then it has to be entrusted to just the enlightened person or the person that's given revelation, we'll stay in the condition we're in right now. When most of the people are non-productive with terrible burden on their souls, know Jesus Christ, peace be on him, he said of them that, "You will arrest me in the night. And everything that I've done, I've done it in the light." Then Muhammad comes along continuing that work. G-d says of him, that "We've given it to you. That it may be delivered, or given in plain language for it to be made clear, and to clear up matters that are confused, are in error."

1:32:02 IWDM: This is the way. And great progress was made for the masses of people in his day and time. How come it's not done in these days? Great progress was made. And it was the common person, the common men that followed him. Common people. Slaves were free and even before that freedom, they were already insisting upon being called a Muslim or a follower of Muhammad the Prophet. And we know what happened to one of the slaves called Bilal because he wouldn't denounce the religion, and his masters tortured him beckoning him to denounce their religion. And the companion of the prophet Abu Bakr came and paid, bought him from his master so he could have the freedom to practice Islam, or to practice his religion. So Muhammad attracted the masses of the people. And there's a saying of his that makes it very clear what he's all about.

1:33:16 IWDM: This saying goes like this. It says that he was offered a path through the mountains to get where he had to go. And he was offered a path through the plains. He chose the path through the plains. This is a saying of Muhammad the Prophet, prayers and peace be on him. What does that mean? Means Muhammad was saying to them, "I am not of the nature to want to rule over people. I don't want to establish a government to control people and rule them. I refuse to establish a governmental order. My mission is not to guide people in the building of governments. My mission is to guide people in the building of human life, human families, human communities." That's what Prophet Muhammad was telling them.

1:34:25 IWDM: Islam is a religion of freedom, justice and equality. You know what my father told me and the more I learned about it I said, "Good G-d Almighty, it must've been an angel that brought them that kind of language." That Islam is freedom, justice and equality. Had to have been an angel of G-d's messenger. Had to bring a messenger in some form. A bird or something. A cat once brought me guidance whether you believe it or not. A cat once brought me help from G-d. Yes. And I still practice the wisdom I learned from that cat. I practice it right in my home. It helped me a lot.

1:34:58 IWDM: And I've shared with members of my family and I shared with my friends what that cat taught me. My cat, called P2, Panther 2, it was a child of his mother, mother was Panther 1. Both black, beautiful, black female cats. Yes. So I'm sure that that message, strong message... Look how easy it was. I heard it when I was six or seven-years-old from the ministers, from my father. He used to say it regularly in the early days, like '40s. Even in the '50s, he was still doing it. Islam is f
eedom, justice and equality. Well, that makes sense. You're telling blacks to leave the church and become Muslims. 
? Why should we leave the church and become Muslim? Well, for freedom, justice and equality. That's reason enough. Elijah, that's reason enough. Count me in. Why? 

1:36:00 IWDM: Because we were in this country, denied equal citizenship. And that lasted all the way up to the '60s. We were denied equal citizenship, so when the Honorable Elijah Muhammad began preaching there was no equal citizenship for us in this country. You might say, well, that was in the South. No, everywhere. In the South it was just more bitter, more cruel and bolder, shameless, but in the North it was existing, too. The same belief, that you are inferior, you're not human like white folks and you shouldn't be accepted in their society, with them, to share their society with them. Stay to yourselves. I remember reading the Chicago Tribune want ads as a boy in Chicago. I remember those want ads, and I know Elijah, and I forgot another brother here, Elijah and I might have another brother here. Members of my family, we can tell you that Chicago Tribune had want ads that said, "White Only," "Whites Only."

1:37:14 IWDM: They let you know you don't even go and ask for that job. Whites only. In Chicago, this ain't Mississippi. I'm talking about Chicago, not Jackson, Mississippi or whatever Greenburg, whatever. No, this is Chicago I'm talking about. And we have had Blacks lynched in Chicago. Why? Because it was in a neighborhood after dark, and some whites caught him and asked him what was he doing there. He said he was coming off of work, he worked late. They lynched him. You recall that Elijah? Yeah? In Cicero. Working over in Cicero and they lynched this young man. Brutal killing of this young man. So we're not talking about... You want to point the blame on the South. No. The blame has to be pointed on the white supremacist system that was ruling everywhere in America. White supremacy was the rule everywhere in the United States. You all wanted excuses, excuse the North. Excuse Boston, excuse that.

1:38:34 IWDM: Who was the president of Boston? When they had us on the plantation? It was the same President that was voted for by those people who had us on the plantations. They voted one President, not two. They didn't vote one President for the plantation South and another President in for the East and the North. They even voted one President in. So that one President was supported by all those white bigots that was mistreating us in the South. He was supported by them, they voted him in. And he was catering to them, not changing the system. Until the time came when the Quakers and others and the Jews joined in and mainly because of Frederick Douglass determination and his skill, his mental skills. His education and his ability to articulate the problem, to speak very clearly and sharply, and to reach the hearts and the minds of whites and Christianity and shame them out of that ugly thing that they were supporting.

1:39:47 IWDM: That's what happened to change things and it was changed, thank G-d! And thank G-d for all the good supporters we had, from Christians and from Jews. Thank G-d for human soul that couldn't accept to be de-valuated and put down the lowest dignity. Frederick Douglass and many like him, males and females, thank G-d that they still stood up in their human nature, in their human excellence and demanded their rights. Thank G-d for that. But now you look at the world today, and you see the laws have changed. Thank G-d for that, too. That the laws have changed. We can go to court now, and we can get the sentence to punish the people that denies our rights. We know we can get that now.

1:40:35 IWDM: But you waiting for Jesus Christ, to come and take you up in His arms and say, "You will have no more worries now, Mary. I'm here for you. I'll make sure the light is turned on at night in the house, and I'll make sure to turn off at bed time, whatever time you like to go to bed. And I'll make sure the water bill's paid and I'll clean up the kitchen for you. I'll make up the bed, get all this stuff you got strewn all over the room. I'm picking all this for you and that boy that's on drugs, I'll take care of him for you too. And daughter that won't go to school and just want to lay in bed with that pimp of hers, I'll take care of that for you too, honey." You waiting on Jesus Christ, some Saviour to come in. G-d says to us in our religion...

Ya ayyuhalladheena-amaanu-quu-anfusakum-wa-ahleekum-naaran.(quraan66:6)
1:41:37 IWDM: "Oh, you who have faith, save your own selves and your families from the fires of passion." Passion for wrong things, and not passion for the right thing. G-d says, "Save yourself for" so don't think you going to get a Jesus Christ to come to you and take on your burden and do everything for you that G-d makes you to do for yourself. Don't hope for that. G-d wants you to see the great edifice that He made when He made you. So He says, "Observe the sky." I'm getting a little warm here. I don't know if it's the heat but it's warm in here. I don't believe in mistreating myself. [laughter] Yeah, see some people care more about looking pretty, than being comfortable.

1:42:49 IWDM: Yeah. Young lady, go out and she got an outfit, she has got to wear this, 10 above zero, and she got to wear this outfit. And she out in the cold weather of Chicago wearing this particular dress and her breast is showing, breast is all showing and the body is all naked almost like she wearing a swimsuit. She have a good time, Christmas Eve. New Year comes, she's in the bed, sick as a dog. [laughter] I care more about life than I care about the way you look at me, and the way you feel when you see me. I don't want you to say, "Oh, he's handsome." No say, "He's ugly." I put a monster coat over me, I get in a monster's fur, look ugly. I don't care, if that's what it takes to keep me warm and keep cold, and keep me from getting sick tonight, and you don't have to like the way I look. Turn your head.

[laughter]

1:44:19 IWDM: So G-d says, He has made this world and He made it to support our life and to give us all that we need for our lives. Isn't that wonderful? And G-d says, when this world is finished, He says that hereafter that, He'll give to those who earned it, it will be the same as the space of the skies and the earth combined. So G-d didn't say in our religion, and I don't think He said it in other people religion either. G-d didn't say in our religion, that when you get to, hereafter after this world you going up in the sky.

1:45:05 IWDM: He said, "You want to go up in the sky, you go up in the sky," but also it's going to be the space down here too. The hereafter is going to be the space down here and the space up there, all of it. That's going to be the space for us to occupy. Now isn't that good news? That's what Jesus Christ came to give to the world. Some of them got it. Yes, some of them favorite leaders, the saintly leaders, they got the right understanding. G-d frees our soul to live in all the space that He Himself created. And man has gone to the skies, and man has also walked upon the earth. And it says when they get to the new life, they will say, "This resembles what we were in before." You hear that? 

1:46:06 IWDM: This is not me talking. This is what Muhammad the Prophet left with us from G-d talking. Says when they get in that new life or in the new world, they'll say, "This resembles what we were in before." Well, look, if G-d is going to do justice by me, don't give me something looking like ET for a wife in heaven. I want somebody looking like Shirley or some of these women that I fell in love with, [laughter] while I was down here on the earth. That's what I want. Now, don't mistreat me and call it heaven, G-d. Now G-d ain't going to mistreat us. He said you going to say, "This resembles what we had before."

[chuckle]

1:47:01 IWDM: He brought me some water and my throat is as clear as a whistle and I'm going to leave it just like that right now. I don't even got time for the water, but I'm tempted, I love water, this is good water. The older I get, the more I love water. I guess it's because I can't hold it like I used to.

[laughter]

1:47:24 IWDM: No really, I'm not drinking it because of that.

[laughter]

1:47:35 IWDM: Now, G-d tells us, plainly, but how many will see? G-d made it easy, but for us it's difficult. G-d made it very easy. You don't need everybody knowing how to get to the new or the world or the promised land, you only need one knowing. If that one is decent, that one is going to share it with everybody else. So the signs that G-d want us to see, don't ever expect everybody to see it. That's not the way of G-d. That's not the way of intelligence. The way of intelligence and the way of G-d is to give it to one, the one give it to others. And what's the good in this? Is it just economy? Oh, G-d made it less difficult or less expensive on him by giving it to just one. No, it's not just economy. It's not just to make it less a problem.

1:49:06 IWDM: G-d knows human nature and he wants to awaken human nature in us. He knows if he gives it to one, His right one, that one is going to share it with all the others. And that's going to awaken in the others. That same charity, that same goodness, when they see it displayed by one of them, they love that person, and they're influenced by his goodness and they become good or better.

1:49:40 IWDM: So this is how Allah awakens the best that's in us by giving it to one and the one share it to us and then we love him because of his goodness, his generosity, his unselfishness, we love him for that. And that awakens that same thing in us. The same excellence that he has, it begins to be nourished, nourished by his sentiments and by his goodness, nourish the ground for that thing to spring up in us and become a great life. This is the way of G-d. So don't think when I speak all of you should know. "Oh, I'm waiting to see if he's going to say the right thing." What? You know the right thing? Where you come from? Please, let me get acquainted with you. You sure didn't come from the ghetto if you know the right thing 'cause you would have changed that ghetto.

1:50:46 IWDM: You'd be doing just what I'm doing. You'd have a business in the ghetto. Or you'd be telling the people to wake up to the absence of business in our name. Do something about these neighborhoods. Yes, you'd be on the case. So don't pretend you know something, be like I am. And I got this from the saints before me. We say we know nothing. G-d you know, we know nothing. 'Cause whatever we know is only because of your mercy, only because of your mercy and your love for your creatures that we know. On our own we know nothing. We come in the world knowing nothing. And some of us go out the same way.

[laughter]

1:51:45 IWDM: Okay, so G-d talking to us. I know there are many who would say, "Oh, what is he doing? He ain't supposed to be doing this. If he's really blessed to see these things, he should know he's not supposed to be sharing this with the common people." G-d says in the scriptures, says, "Observe how the sky is raised up over you," raised high above you, the sky. And he says, "Observe the camel." He got humps that raise up going on the back of the camel. And he also says, "Observe the mountains how they are raised up." So G-d's pointing us to things that are structured higher than us. The canopy of the sky, way above us. The distance seem to be immeasurable. We can never imagine where it stops.

1:52:58 IWDM: So far out of reach. And mountains, we see some mountains, and I've been at the foot of some mountains and looked at the path, and had a little experience climbing so I know it was hopeless for me to want to climb up to the top of that mountain. It will wear you out, defeat you, you'll be found dead up there somewhere or just start falling back down. Yeah. Raise up high. And G-d says there are signs in these things, in the creation itself, and also signs in you. Also signs in you. Now, so what is G-d talking about there? When G-d tells us to observe how the sky is raised up over us, is G-d telling us just to look up at the sky like a dog or a monkey? They look up at the sky, what the sky going to do for them? They've been looking up at the sky for millions of years and the sky hasn't changed their life.

1:54:18 IWDM: So G-d says, observe the sky. What is he saying to us? Not the sky of that creation. The sky of your own creation. That's what he wants you to observe. The sky of your own creation, but take from the world that I made, a lesson. Let my world give you a message for the ordering of your world. Now see how my sky is raised up so high and beautiful, you see how peaceful it is. When the clouds go roll by, they're in the lower regions. The blue sky is far out there above clouds. When you look out there on a clear night and you observe my creation, my artwork, my design, my order, and how quiet it is up there. Isn't it restful? How peaceful it is. Now when you make your sky, pattern your sky after mine. So when your subjects look up at your sky they feel peace, they feel order, they feel the absence of trouble, they see beauty. Huh? 

1:56:06 IWDM: This is the reason why G-d is telling us about the sky. You don't need a prophet to come and tell you to look up at the sky, look up at the sky. Rats look up at the sky when they go outside, but they can't get up there. See the sky how it is raised up. Now, for English speaking people, the sky is called heaven, heaven. For Arabic speaking people, it's called sky. That's right. Ain't no heaven for sky and no two words for sky in Arabic. There's one word for sky in Arabic. So if you want to say heaven then you still have to say sky. So the little child that hear his father or mother or brother or uncle or somebody saying "Yes, one day we hope to be in the heavens," he going to hear skies. No different word. Same word for the one with stars in it, and the one clouds come down and blot out for earth and the same one that's what he's going to hear. One word. Skies. And when he hears heaven, he's going to get a picture of the earth.

1:57:58 IWDM: Clear waters, pure waters. Gardens, underneath which rivers flow. I don't want look up to find gardens. I don't look up to find rivers. I look down here. So in Arabic language when you hear the heaven, your mind comes down here. And when you hear heaven in English, your mind go up there. And it's true, peace is up there. What you need for your soul as a condition is sky. What you need for your mortal life as a condition is earth. And G-d didn't make us to be spirits without bodies. G-d made a body for a spirit to come into. Not a spirit to get rid of a body. And some people, some holy saints think the spirit has to get rid of the body. "I have to say this body is nonexistent, the body is nonexistent. And then I can live the spirit." But G-d wants you first in a body. And the body invites the spirit, right? Yes. And the G-d made for your soul the sky. How many skies are there? You know in this world you have more than one sky. You have Hollywood sky. Right? Hollywood sky. Los Angeles. There's a place where they make most of their stars.

[laughter]

2:00:08 IWDM: Los Angeles... Los Angeles... Lost Angels. A sky full of lost angels. If you're lost in Chicago, we'll give you a role, we'll give you a job acting! And you can go straight to heaven! 

[laughter]

2:00:26 IWDM: Become one of the stars in heaven. Go straight to heaven. Don't be a lost soul in Chicago, saying, "You have acting talent." Come here and go to heaven. So the world, the secular world, they feel so bad, they feel so bad, looking at the religious world... Talk, preaching heaven, and instead of heaven all the time, they're going to hell all the time.

2:00:52 IWDM: They say, "Hey, look. We ain't trying to compete with G-d, but we're going to tell Him to come here and be stars." Stars in the heavens, huh? Yes! Okay. Well, I want you to know there's seven heavens, if you forgot. There's seven heavens. And one of those heavens is a heaven of business accomplishment. One of those heavens is a heaven of material achievement. One of those heavens is a heaven of the fulfillment of material aspirations. Material aspirations. Yes! See the mountains? How they are raised high. Huh? How they are structured, and how they are raised high? The mountains. That's material establishment. Great material establishment, symbolized or pictured as a mountain. Moses went up in the mountain, and the Jews came out rich.

[laughter]

2:02:09 IWDM: Now Dr. King went up the mountain, too. He said, "I've been to the mountain top." But look at the ghetto. Look at the neighborhood. What mountain was that? No change over his followers. Not economically. They're still described as economic failures. Yes, the neighborhood of the business failure. The neighborhood of the blacks and African-Americans is one big business failure. So what mountain did our Moses, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., go up to? The Mountain of Enlightenment. The Mountain of Light. The Mountain of Enlightenment. He was able to see, with his intelligence, and his education, he was able to see the future. Yes, for those down here on Earth. So when you go up on top of a high mountain, you look down on Earth. It's like being in a plane. Some planes don't fly as high as some mountains are raised up.

2:03:33 IWDM: That's true, that's a fact. So when you go up to the top of a mountain, you look down on Earth, you look down on the people all around. So he was enlightened to see the future for society on this Earth. And he was ready to die. He knew they didn't want him around, and he knew they were going to kill him. But he was telling us, "I'm ready to die. Because I know they can't stop it. It's inevitable that freedom and justice be established." That's what he saw. He saw the hand of divine intervention, and he also saw the purpose of G-d, for the creation of man in society. And he knew that their way was in direct opposition to the will of G-d, and the way of nature. And that eventually, the way of nature in man would work him out of this bad situation.

2:04:31 IWDM: And there would be no more segregation. But there would be equality of opportunity for all citizens. He saw that, with his wisdom, and his insight, and he got great help from the Bible to understand it. And he was ready to die. A real Muslim or a real Christian... Christian, I mean, being like Christ nature, a real Muslim and a real Christian ready to die, anytime G-d calls. Anytime. And we're happy to go if we know it's G-d that's calling us. We're happy to go. Yes, so the sky, how beautiful it is. Beauty, order, peace. Isn't it wonderful? On a clear night, that's the feeling you get in your heart and your soul from looking at the sky. Beauty. Order. Peace. Now wouldn't it be wonderful if we could reflect on our Imams, who lead this community, in America and a few places outside America? 

2:05:50 IWDM: From this association that you are in with me. Wouldn't it be beautiful if we could look at them, and when we look at them, they give us the beauty of stars in the heaven. They give us the security of order and not conflict. And they communicate to us, impart to us from their statues, peace for our souls. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Well, that's the message in sky. G-d is saying, "Man, hope for sky of your leaders, of your stars. Like my sky that I made for you." That's what He's saying. Seeing how the mountains are raised up high, and G-d says He raised them up like that so that the earth would not give away or shake with you. What earth? The earth of material accomplishments. If you don't want your business to shake and fall, if you don't want your material life to crumble, then establish men in the leadership of business. Solid like a mountain, and towering up with material achievements for themselves like a high mountain. Don't follow nobody got peanut shells all around him. Ain't nothing going up higher than his peanut shells, eating his peanuts and dropping his shells.

2:07:25 IWDM: Find a man with achievement and model yourself after him and make him your business leader. You see the great wisdom? You see how G-d is communicating? Now you'd rather go and follow somebody that's going to tell you to count the beads. Count beads and make so many rakaa's and do this and... The sky, "No brother. The sky is the sky! What is this foolishness, that Imam is telling you? No! The sky is the sky! Everybody knows the sky. G-d told the sky, I mean the sky!"

[foreign language]

2:08:16 IWDM: "Put it in the basket, brother."

[laughter]

2:08:21 IWDM: Did you make salat? Make salat Here. Here's my rug. Make salat, you make now brother. Yes, you make now. And you fool, you make your salat and he's looking around for another fool.

[laughter]

2:08:39 IWDM: Come here, come here, brother. Come here, come here, come here. Did you make your zakat, did you make sadaqa? Oh no, Imam Mohammed, he's wrong. The mountain is the mountain! Moses went up a mountain. A real mountain. This stupid stuff, the Imam Mohammed. That's what he's talking about. You leave that, brother. You go on back to bidaa. You go on back Elijah Muhammad's darkness.

[laughter]

2:09:05 IWDM: Where you help yourself. If that's the way you're going, come to me, physically, come over here. Muhammad the prophet said, the time will come when they will see Christ Jesus in him to yet. He was saying that right now or in these circumstances or in this time, for the circumstances that man has to accept. You can't see us together. You think we are, or I am an adversary. Or I am in some kind of competition to pull away from Christ, to take from Christ, His following or to hurt, the Christian hope. No. He said, "You come to see one path. And there will come a time when you'll see us together." Now, I mentioned the prophet being given the freedom or the right of choice. To choose the path to his destiny that takes him through the mountains or to choose the path that takes him through the plains. And he said he chose the path that takes him through the plains.

2:10:32 IWDM: I choose to fulfill my mission with the masses, with the common people, not with the mountains. The rich. The mighty. The bosses. The rulers. No. This is good, but if you take what I'm saying at another way, it's bad. If you think that I'm saying he went out to topple governments, you are wrong and that's bad. That's a bad perception. No, he was saying that religion, connecting people back with G-d, does not depend on material wealth and power. It does not depend on academic knowledge and power. It does not depend on all of these mountains of achievements and power. It depends on nothing but the common person in his best human spirit and nature responding to the invitation that G-d has given me to give to them. And a new life will be bred. A new life will be bred.

2:11:54 IWDM: And from the ground will come up new, new worlds. And our people who will eventually have that mountain. But they don't know that the mountains didn't make them, the spirit of G-d and that guidance made them, and also made them able to raise up their mountains. This is the way of religion. Was Jesus Christ any different? No. That's why he said, "You'll see us together." Jesus Christ is pictured in the Bible being welcomed into the city. And the people threw their palm, Easter coming up pretty soon, too. In fact, I can already smell Easter. Yeah, this materialist over here, he got these holidays so close together, as soon as one's gone, you start smelling the next one.

[laughter]

2:13:00 IWDM: Thanksgiving, Christmas. Yeah, just stay at the house and eat popcorn and drink coffee and tea and whatever, and Christmas will be there soon. You only have a short wait. I mean, Easter will be here soon, you don't have but a short wait. It's okay if we live for G-d and not for the holidays. Then the holidays are beautiful, live for G-d and the holidays will be beautiful. And without hangovers, all the other stuff, without a jail term. More people from the ghetto go to jail in these holidays than any other time.

[laughter]

2:13:49 IWDM: And jails are so crowded, they'd be more of them going to jail. But not if we just take them out and say, "Okay. Go on home, man. We ain't got nowhere to put you."

[laughter]

2:14:03 IWDM: You didn't do nothing. Put out the eye of your friend on the dance floor, you stabbed him in the eye, you stabbed him in one eye. He was blind in both eyes already. Go on home now.

[laughter]
S:14:26 IWDM: Yes, getting back to Jesus Christ, peace be on the servants of G-d. Jesus Christ is pictured in the Bible coming into the city victorious, victorious. And they threw palms down, branches, leaves in his path for him to walk on. Not a red carpet, but a green palm carpet. That was their livelihood, palms trees supported them, that was their livelihood. So they threw what they cherished, what they valued, they'd submitted it saying, "You are the man, not us. We trust ourselves and our life and our way of life to you." So they dropped it at his feet, and he rode in on a donkey, rode in on a donkey, victorious. Riding in on a donkey.

2:15:18 IWDM: The same Bible in the Old Testament have Baal riding a donkey and keeping a donkey in donkey life. Now who the donkey? That's everything is signs, G-d is speaking through signs. Who was this donkey? Moses was trying to lead his people, and they were so busy questioning him and doubting him, that they made so much trouble, he could've gotten what he had to do done much faster if it wasn't for them just constantly questioning and doubting and making trouble for his leadership. So he... G-d blessed him with a sign to show them, then when they saw it, it was a healing for them to take them out of that argumentative state of mind where they wouldn't be just disputing all the time, with wisdom and guidance.

2:16:31 IWDM: It said in Quran, it said in the ignorance say, Qaala sufaha. And the ignorance will say... That's the way that section of the Quran starts, and the ignorance they say, the ignorant ones they say, "These are the ones that are discontent, that's always doubting and contending with people." So the donkey is a unruly animal in me. He's given to changes of spirit. He'll just be cooperating with you one minute, he'd do the boogaloo down the road.

[vocalization]

[laughter]

2:17:29 IWDM: You get out there and you talk to him, get back on his back. Yeaaaaaaah! One man said he got on, got off one a donkey like that and he said he took a two by four, say he hit it right back at the face with it. Said he got back up there and he rode without trouble for awhile.

[laughter]

2:17:46 IWDM: But I don't think so. The nature of a donkey, no, you had to kill it. And he said, "Well, you kill it and you kill your ride, too."

[laughter]

2:18:06 IWDM: So what is said of this donkey? This is... Donkey represents that type of spirit and mind in people. Donkey can be a white man, red man, yellow man, but most of the times negro.

[laughter]

2:18:35 IWDM: Here, it is said in the bible of Jesus Christ, peace be on Christ Jesus, it says that he told the leaders, the establishment.

