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IWDM Study Library
The Meaning of Abraham’s Sacrifice

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

We find in the scripture that came before Bible, Dawud, David in the Bible being charged with committing a great sin. And his sin, this sin that I'm referring to perhaps the only great sin that I know of, that he committed to my knowledge according to the Bible. And understand now this is the Bible and not Qur'an. Says that while Bathsheba was bathing herself, David saw her from his balcony and desired her, and then plotted to get her from her husband. Her husband was his dear friend and general in the army. So, he sent his general to the heat of the battle, in the heat of the battle, knowing that he wouldn't survive it and his general was killed there. And David, by that scheme, got Bathsheba as his woman. And according to the Bible, G-d condemned David for doing that. And He says in a parable, He said that, Here’s a man with many sheep and another man with just one." Then he plots against that man and take his only sheep. That sheep was Bathsheba, right? That was Bathsheba. I hope if you don't like this, you don't come here. If you like this, come here. If you don't like this, why come here? If the devil would announce that he's going to have a meeting, I wouldn't be there. Because I'm not interested in the devil and what the devil has to teach is his servant.

So, I wouldn't be there. My intelligence tell me that that's not a place for me. So, when people call people to things that I don't like, I'm don't come there. I don't come there. If you like it, then come. If you don't like it, stay away. And that's what Allah says in the Qur'an. This is a guide for those who want to go right. Qur'an doesn't invite people that want to do wrong. In the very opening, it lets you know this is not an invitation to people that want to go wrong. It's an invitation to people that want to go right. Alright, let's continue now with David. So, we understand we have to go from one source to another. Quote sources. Allah says in the Qur'an that with Allah is much sheep. If you desire sheep, then come to Allah. With Allah is much sheep. He has great multitudes of sheep. Don't kill nobody, don't rob. Go to Allah. Go to Allah. That's what it means. Follow Allah's way and you'll get much sheep. Follow your senses, and you'll come under Allah's punishment. The sheep must be in the human being. If the sheep wasn't in the human being, Bathsheba wouldn't be called a sheep in the Bible.

Bathsheba is not just a sheep. Bathsheba is a sheepish people. A sheepish people. And many people in religion are sheepish. And the world like to kill off their leadership. And David in the Bible is accused of being that kind of leader that will kill off the leadership of the sheepish people so he can bring them in unto him. Allah doesn't want it that way. Let us look at some of the characteristics now of the sheep. So, we'll understand what we mean when we say a sheepish people. A sheep is a great animal in one sense. In what sense is that? His social conscience is strong. Sheep want to stay with sheep. They flock together, they stay together. But perhaps their strongest attribute, because wolves also stay together. So perhaps their strongest attribute is their meekness, their meekness, They're not ferocious, not violent, very peaceful. And scripture say they don't even complain as you drive them toward the slaughter. They're driving them toward the axe or the hammer or the knife to kill them, and they don't complain. They go silently to their death. And when you kill them, they don't yell out. When you kill the goat or the pig, ooh, they yell out some terrible.

So, it's symbolic of what? It's symbolic of the makeup of people who give up the world to devote themselves to peace. For peace sake, I won't even fight with man.

This ain't the time to get nervous and tense. It's the time to be relaxed. This is salvation day for us. We've been in the dark all our lives and they have worked hard to keep us in the dark. And only Allah, His word and His Messenger Muhammad has freed us. Oh yes, Allah spirit influencing us to be right and His word as demonstrated in the life of Prophet Muhammad. That's what has freed us. Praise be to Allah. Alright, what does this sheep have to do now with us realizing that performance that is compatible with our capacity. I don't want to be performing on the level of a stupid brute beast when G-d has given me the capacity to perform on the level of great leaders in society. I don't want to be on welfare when G-d has given me the capacity to generate economy, to generate business, to stimulate the factors of production so we can have wealth. If G-d has given me that ability, I don't want to be laying up on welfare, satisfied with welfare. That's not a human capacity. That's not a human plane of life. That's beneath the plant. The plant is fed and it does work and it gives, it contributes. It contributes to production. Now I'm just going to lay up. I have become cheaper than a dead stone. I've become as cheap as a grain of sand.

Yes, that can't give anything. So, the glass makers pick it up, shovel it up, put it in the furnace, mix it with the materials and make glass because it has no ability of its own to do anything but just lie there on the sea shore. We don't want to be that. We want to function at our capacity. If we are sheep, we are contained in a form that is too small for our capacity. It is good, but it is not yet what Allah wants to see in His creature. We know that there are religious societies, holiness people, spiritualist people, puritanical people, et cetera that usually fall in that classification we call mystic, mystic, mystics. They give their whole life for the sake of being at peace. They don't try to get wealth, they don't try to go up into politics, they don't try to influence governments. They are satisfied just to live holy and peaceful to themselves. Now we find such people sometime are ferocious, mean, violent. If you bother them in their peace, they will show you they can bring the pain. They will show you that they can be wild too. Then we have others in that kind of image who have given up the world for their own idea of peace.

Who are like the sheep. If the world attack them, they don't fight back. They tell their people don't fight back. G-d does not love violence. Let us not be the ones to shed blood. They are the sheepish. The sheepish society, right, the sheepish society. But look at the sheep now in his attributes. He can balance himself on an edge only one inch wide way up in the mountains, way up in the mountains. He can stand on a little slip and not fall. He has some balance. Oh yes. Oh yes. Now dear beloved people I mentioned Abraham, all of these things going to tie together InshaAllah if Allah bless us to do it. Cause He can cause us to forget Him. You can have all your materials together and Allah can just blank it all out. So no matter how good we are at researching and putting things together, the result is in Allah's hands. I trust Allah will help us to give this to you in the right way today. Yes. So dear beloved, people in the attributes of the sheep, we see signs of great development, great development. How has that sheep developed that amount....I'm not talking about a sheep, don't go to the zoo now and say "The Imam was talking about..." That sheep ain't there. The sheep is here, right here.

And in many parts of the world. Now, how has that sheep developed that ability to balance himself so well? Oh, he's surefooted, isn't he? Sheep so surefooted, step on little thing, you wonder what he's stepping on. But he sees and his foot is designed to balance him. How has he developed that degree of balance? He has developed it because of his spiritual makeup. The sheeps spiritual makeup is balanced. His spirit is not agitated, his spirit is not violent, his spirit is not disturbed. His spirit is rested. So because his spirit is rested, he can rest his feet on something that you can't rest yours on and maintain his balance. Yes. In what kind of environmental influence, what kind of environmental influences have enabled him to do that? The social affection. The social affection. The sheep are hot blooded. Hot blooded animals. And they carry wool on their bodies in temperatures that you can't manage with silk. You'll be all disturbed and you all upset with silk. Thin silk on you and you fanning. And the sheep going along with four or five bushes of wool on him and he's just as cool as you. Cooler. Cooler than you.

So that's some great social discipline, great social discipline. Oh yeah, great social discipline. Now let us look at people who give themselves to G-d and who practice peace in their life, to the extent that they will let society abuse them rather than take on the animal characteristics of a wild animal characteristics of the society. Let's look at those people. We've heard about them in history. We have seen some of them. Gandhi was a type like that. Dr. King was a type like that. And we have known of many other societies that they themselves were only students of, right? Yes. Yes. So when we study their attributes, we see that they have developed this ability, they have developed an ability to stick close to each other. They stay close to each other. They share brave with each other. They share food with each other. They're not greedy. They're not selfish. What belong to one, belong to everybody.

They share all of that wealth, their goods. They share equally with the members of the community. That's their life, all right? Yes. And they stress this particular sense in their people. We belong to this. We are a not of the world. So don't mix with others. Stay close to your own. So they go close like the sheep altogether. And the enemy has trouble attacking them when they're together. The enemy wait until one straggle off or catch a weak one that can't keep up with the herd. And then he pounce upon that one that drags behind, right? But even the strong animals, they don't like to go in on a united herd of sheep. They wait till they catch one straying off or catch one lagging behind because of some deficiency. Yes. Praise be to Allah. Now are we a people, a sheep people? Yes and no. We are sheep when it comes to taking abuses from the white man. But when it comes to sticking with each other, no. When it comes to sharing, no, when it comes to having that balance, no. You can't hardly stand on the street, less more half inch or an inch ledge. Put you on the whole street and you can't stand up on it. You fall down in the middle of the street.

Drunk or crazy, right? Intoxicated or doped up or crazy. So I don't think now you the sheep, you ain't no sheep. I wish you were, the job would be much easier. Yeah it would. In fact, we'd have been home by now if you were sheep. We used to be told we were the lost sheep. Well maybe we were back then. What I see ain't no sheep. These are small rodents, Mississippi river bed snakes, mud cat vultures. I don't see many sheep. Not anymore. I hate to say that. But it's the truth. It's the truth. This world has destroyed us. Only a very few still remain in some kind of decent shape. Alright, so now what about the sheep? Sheep is very important as a concept in religion. We know that Jesus Christ in the church is identified as a sheep, Peace be Upon the Prophet. A sheep for slaughter, giving himself willingly to the slaughterer, right? According to the Bible. Now we know in the Qur'an we told that they did not crucify him, nor did they kill him. They neither slaughtered him nor crucified him. This is the teaching of Qur'an. But he's a sign. He's a sign of the slaughtered.

Though he himself was not slaughtered. He's a sign of the crucified though he himself was not crucified. Sign of many things. Now, dear beloved people in Abraham, we see the sheep appears again. And here Abraham was about to sacrifice the life of his only son because he had a vision. Men who want to please G-d, who just marshal all the forces of their life for G-d's pleasure? Men like that, they do get visions. Through visions G-d does tell them things. And sometimes we are at our wits end to describe our own vision and we seek others who have knowledge of interpretation or return to G-d. So Abraham was in this kind of predicament and he cried out to Allah. And he was really decided upon carrying out what he thought was Allah's desire in his vision. And he was about to slay, about to slaughter his only son. And Allah came and spoke to him through Revelation and said, the obligation of that vision, you have already carried it out. Allah wants no more than the spirit in you to obey him, regardless of the cost. And you have shown by your willingness to carry out your own vision that you'll sacrifice your all forAllah's pleasure. He doesn't want, as the Bible say, he does not want blood sacrifice. What goes up to G-d is not the blood or not the flesh of the animal, but your obedience. He does not want blood and dead animals. He wants obedience. And in Qur'an the term is Taqwa. And Prophet Muhammad says, describing to us what Taqwa is. It's to obey G-d as though you are seeing Him. For if you don't see Him, He is seeing you. So it's obedience when you think you're covered. It's obedience when you're alone and no one's looking at you. Obedience not for people's sake, obedience for Allah's sake. That's what Allah wants from us. So now here is a sheep now, symbolic of a sheepish people. And that sheep now is being sacrificed, which tells us this- That Abraham himself belonged to a sheepish society at that time. At that time he was a member in a sheepish society of people, a people who desired only peace. Therefore they walked in peace and they didn't fight or contend with the world for progress or for opportunities to progress in the world. All right? So G-d told him to sacrifice the sheep, not his son, sacrifice the sheep and then feed the sheep to the needy, to the poor.

Now here the sheep is sacrificed. What means sacrifice? What is sacrifice? Sacrifice mean you have done away with that order. So what does that also tell us about that order? The sheepish order. The sheepish order is an order that doesn't trust its wisdom to the general members of the community. The sheepish order is an order that keeps its wisdom in the lamb. And its wisdom governs the order of the sheep. But through the lamb, the sheep can't have that wisdom. It's only for the ram. It's only for the male, the leader. It's only for the leader in the sheepish community. Why now? Why is it that the sheepish community has to have its wisdom contained in its leader and it can't be given to the many? It's because the sheep are hunted all day and night by the world. And if the leadership of that community trust it's wisdom to any and everybody in the membership, the world will get his precious strategy, his precious strategy for survival and then do away with the sheep. So Allah, He sympathize with the sheepish community, but nevertheless He says, give up that order. Do what you are afraid to do.

You are afraid to trust your wisdom to the members of your society. You are afraid to trust your wisdom to the needy, to the poor in the society of the sheep. Now to please G-d, give up that fear. That's a fear of the world. That's not the fear of G-d. Give up that fear now and give that wisdom to the poor and needy sheep. And don't be afraid of the world because when you give that to them, you're going to change from a society of sheep to a society of men. Can you understand? Yes. How come you have to be sheepish? Because you don't have the knowledge that those who master you, govern you, and drive you from your potential. But once you get the knowledge, then you no more sheep, you men. So sacrifice the image of sheep by giving the wisdom of the sheep, of the ram, the shepherd for all the following. Educate them. And once you educate them, they'll be able to protect themselves against the wild brutes of the world. This is the meaning of Abraham's sacrifice. Therefore, he became the rational teacher. He became the rational teacher that didn't lead a society of sheep. That ended the society of sheep. And in doing that he's worthy of being called our second father.

First father is the spirit of nature. G-d gave us the nature and the spirit of nature to drive us to our potential. Ain't satisfied to be a dog. I look in the mirror and I say, hell, I don't look like the dog. Didn't have a Prophet to tell me that. That reflection in my own soul told me that. And upon the spirit of nature, we rise up to a dignified position. Is that right? And then the world come against us with their subtle wisdom, their subtle traps. And they cause our foot to slip.

So, we have to go then and search for another way and we come into society in the image of A society of sheep to survive. And then G-d comes along and show us how we can educate, give us a plan for educating the masses and then establish a learned man, a rational man as our leader, nature's personal leader. And then the upright rational man is your leader. Isn't that a fact of history? We don't need nobody to come up here and quote from a thousand volumes to tell us that. History tell us that that's the truth. History tell us that nature has evolved man. And when his nature couldn't evolve him any higher, than the man got the spark of enlightenment, the rational mind was turned on. And with the tools of science, he was able to again lead society. Two fathers. One, the purity of nature, the other one, the purity of rationale or reasoning. Praise be to Allah, how wonderful it is. Now if you accept that, then am I the right Imam or am I the wrong one? If you accept that, then I'm right to do what others in religion say I shouldn't do. They say he is stupid. To share the wisdom with ordinary people.

They say Imam is learned, he's wise. In the end he got insight. But he's stupid. He's yet a child. He doesn't know you ain't supposed to give that kind of knowledge out openly. They are the thieves, they are the robbers. That's how come the religious world is in the hell of a shape that it's in today. So I don't follow them. I follow the spirit. The spirit of truth. Oh yes. So we ask the question, has religion considered the need in man to function at the level of his or her capacity? The answer is yes. Oh yes. Allah has provided the way. He gave us the nature, He gave us the urges in that nature to go to higher and higher degrees of excellence. And then He has provided the means of revelation by which an upright person can be turned on to the secrets of the universe so that that person then can become a leader to lead the world against Satan and his hord. Oh yes. So it says, has not He given them two eyes, but has He made any progress up the path that is steep? It's not easy. Going down is easy. The only thing I do is give you into the gravity. Going down the hill, just give into the gravity. You going down. The downward incline helps you go down. But if you want to come up that same incline, you got to make effort, right?

It's work. Has he made any progress up the road that is steep? What will make him understand what the road that is steep is? It is the the freeing of the bondsman. The freeing of the slaves. What kind of slave is this? How come a man is a slave? Beasts are slaves. They wear ropes and shackles, yolks, et cetera. Men are not supposed to wear those things. Now when you find a man wearing those things, what's wrong with this? They get people like that dumb to their purpose, dumb to their destiny. And they lie to them. Tell them fancy stories of the past. Give them a myth, a dream concept of the world of reality. Put an image of their own race up before them and say, this is the son of G-d. And under all of that pressure, the poor deprived man can't make it. No understanding. And now all of these heavy lies that they speak in the name of G-d and Prophets. Yes, speak in the name of G-d and angels and Prophets, and then burn us with those heavy lies. Where is a door out of that? No door. No door except Allah. Allah. His spirit has to touch us and make us see that the capacity of a man is above what they confined us to.

Get so displeased with it you don't care if you're whipped a hundred times. You don't care if you're burned on the stake. You don't care if you're lynched on the tree. You don't care if they blow your body into billion pieces. You'll sit up and you say "To hell with this, I don't accept this level of life anymore. Now do what you want. I'd rather be dead than live like this." That's Allah's spirit touching you. That's Allah's spirit touching you. His spirit touch you and say, you are more than that. Wake up My creature. Don't accept that that is beneath you anymore. And man begin to rise. And in time G-d brings enlightenment that equip us and give us equal tools. Oh yes, Praise be to Allah, we should be happy. Oh yes, we should be happy because for the first time the door of freedom has been completely opened. Oh yeah. Well dear beloved people, now we look at the Prophet Abraham and his association with Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon them, Allah says of His order in Qur'an that the order that He prescribed for us for all times to come through the Prophet Muhammad is the order of Abraham, the upright in faith.

Are the completely devoted in faith. What does that tell us? In the Qur'an, what does the prayer of Abraham say? Surely I turn my whole self to Allah, who originated the heavens and earth, the Lord of all the Worlds being upright. And I'm not one to make G-d's with G-d. This is the prayer. What is the meaning of that now? What is the meaning of that? Excuse me. Do you mean to say that Prophet before Abraham did not give their whole self to Allah? Yes and no. Didn't the sheep give himself wholly? Certainly he did. But then when you look at the sheep again, did he give himself wholly? No. In his own heart he gave himself wholly. But his understanding, his rational faculty wouldn't allow him to see that in giving himself wholly that way, he felt ashamed of himself. Oh yes. So it was only with Abraham that we give ourselves wholly. Only with Abraham. For those religious leaders before they feared the world and didn't know it. They thought their fear was the fear of G-d, but their fear was the fear of the world. It's the fear of the world that drive you into a private quarter to live your life privately and secretly. That's the fear of the world. But they said in their own heart, because their intent was good, they said in their own heart that we're going into seclusion because we don't want the world, we reject the world. And those extremes drove them to what?

To be monks, to be nuns, to cut themselves off from the social life that G-d established for them. Allah says in the Qur'an, Never did He send any Prophets without prescribing for them wives and children.

So, this tells us that they went astray in doing that. They misunderstood. Not that the Prophets themselves misunderstood, but those who came behind the Prophets, they misunderstood and they went off in seclusion, separated themselves from the world and thought they were giving themselves to Allah or to G-d wholly If they were, why would the New Testament say, go on, you are healed. You have been made whole. So even Jesus before Muhammad found them not living a whole life. Yes, this thing is not as simple as you think it is. So our order is the order of Ibrahim, Abraham, the upright in faith, the one who turned himself wholly to Allah. And where is he? He's on the seventh plane. What is that plane? The plane of complete fulfillment, the plane of completion. The potential was in AdamcComplete. What came out as Abraham was in Adam. That's why it proceeds from Adam up to Abraham. And Allah says in Qur'an- "And He has established above you seven firm orbits." Seven firm orientation. He says, "And within you are the number," meaning that that's your potential. Within you there's a like number. That means that that is your potential. That is your potential. Now we know the Bible talks about this fulfillment and it's called the Sabbath. And Sabbath means seventh day.

And on the seventh day they are to give what is hidden to those who have deserved it. But you don't carry it outside of what they call it, the sanctuary. You are not to take it outside of the sanctuary and give it to the ordinary people. Isn't that a sheepish order? And David was condemned for doing what? Feeding people on the Sabbath, right? And Jesus was condemned for doing what? Feeding people on the sabath. And when Jesus was condemned, he referred them to David. Said, didn't David do this? But how did David do it? He must have done it by stealth, by deceit, because he deceived this general and got the leader of the sheep killed on the battle front. Then he took the sheep, right? That's the political order, stealing the sheep from the church order, from the ecclesiastical order, the political order stealing the congregation or the following of the ecclesiastical order. That's what this is a sign of in your bible. Through David he has given it to us. That the political order, the government kills the following of the ecclesiastical order by killing off their leader, bringing them into difficult contest that will embarrass them. They can't stand up in it, they get destroyed. And then the government gets those people over to themselves. Isn't that how they got a lot of you all that work underground for them right now?

If Allah showed me one thing, you knew He was going to show me another. You think Allah will show me all of this about Qur'an and about the Bible and about Elijah Muhammad and about the Qur'an and about ancient mythology and wouldn't show me what this little thing you're doing here today? And you only see the tail of it. All right, so dear beloved people, Abraham is that one. So our order is the order after the order of Abraham. What is the word? Millah, Millah. What does suggest suggest? A combining of two concerns. Spiritual and material are combined in one. They become reconciled in one concern.

So, Abraham was a Prophet who reconciled the material world with the spiritual world. He reconciled the material concerns with the spiritual concerns. Now wasn't this the goal of most of the Prophets, the major Prophets? That's why Abraham is named as the one. G-d said, I will bless, through Abraham, I will give you this blessing. But they were absent all the time, weren't they? They were absent. But G-d said through Abraham will I give you this blessing. And G-d said of Abraham, He said, I make you, Father of the people, the nations. Not one nation, Father of the nations. Who is the plural. In semetic language, that's the plural. He was called at first Abrum. And then his name was changed from Abrum. He was called Abram father of one community, father of the sheepish community. And his name, because he sacrificed the sheep, he was then, his name was changed to Abraham, father of all the nations, all the communities. And then G-d shows Muhammad Peace be upon him, for his lasting and universal revelation. And he showed him that the community is established on the order of the community of Abraham.

It is an international community, a community of all people and all nations. Oh yeah. So here we find the blessing of Abraham passing on. But it was a destiny that people sought. They wanted to reconcile worldly life. They want to reconcile material concerns with spiritual concerns. We have in us a spiritual nature, a spiritual soul, a spiritual concern. And we have to learn the place of the external reality in that concern. And man in trying to find that, he rejects it in ignorance. In ignorance, he rejects it. It's too difficult to carry this material burden alone. He says the highest discipline of the soul is to live without it. To live without a woman, sex, to live without children, to live without money, to live without business, to live without participation in government. So he intend right, but he goes off. So that's why Allah says in the Qur'an that Adam slipped. And the word that is used is similar to an earthquake. What causes an earthquake? Imbalance. Imbalance. Imbalance. The pressure is either out of balance or the crust is out of balance. And then you have an earthquake. Yes. So it says that he slipped. He didn't intend it, but his balance went off. His balance went off you see. Praise be to Allah. Now, if this is the order, if this is this order, then that tells us that in our community we can't be separated. Business mind, spiritual mind.

Material mind, spiritual mind. We can't be separated like that. Community goals, spiritual goals. We can't be separated like that. No, this is one life. It's all one life. And Allah has reconciled it through Prophet Abraham and have applied it or demonstrated it through Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon him. In his day and time, these things weren't separate. Prophet Muhammad was the chief over the material distribution. He was the chief over government processes. He was the chief over spiritual processes, the chief over morals and ethics, the chief over academics and higher learning. He was the chief over all these things. He was the complete Prophet who reconciled the life, brought man in line with his purpose, with his full capacity. So are you operating at full capacity? If you belong to the sheepish order, you're not operating at full capacity. And you fraternities and you sororities, you belong to the sheepish order. You are trained not to upset the boat. You are trained not to rock the boat. You are trained to do what the establishment wants. And your reward for obedience not to G-d. Your reward for obedience to the needs of the establishment is your assurance that you'll progress up through the establishment.

So, they say join a sorority, join a fraternity. So you'll have assurance that you will progress right up through the establishment. You have been free to join these sororities and these fraternities now for over 50 years. And look at the situation of the African-American today. What are these sororities in fraternities doing to change this condition of your people economically speaking, governmentally speaking. What are you doing to give more power to your people in government? What are you doing to bring the poor up from poverty? What are you in a secret fraternity for? You nothing but a hired, a hired slave plantation keeper. That's all you are. You're nothing but a hired keeper. You are one of their keepers for the plantation to see that other people of your own lot don't get ahead. You the special ones to watch their back when they ain't around. They train your eyes so you can watch their back, their hidden interest when they ain't around. And if you don't like this, you should be shot in your head. Cause you ain't fit to live. You ain't fit to live, belonging to some secret fraternity

You ought be ashamed of yourself. Paying them money, letting them break down your resistance. They break down your intelligent discipline. They ain't satisfied until they break you down. Then they tell you now you're ready to join us. If you got any moral inhibitions, they will break down your moral inhibitions. If your reasoning process is too natural, they will break down your reasoning process. They ain't satisfied with you until you accept just to be a broken vessel for them to put together for their purpose. Don't you know that's the only thing that keep us down. Lemme tell you what keeps us down. It's not nature. Nature will get us up. It's these trained people among us who watch the interest of the oppressor and sabotage efforts made by the people to dignify themselves. Throw confusion into the plan of the people who want to lift themselves up.



