October 28, 1977

Human Nature

Imam Warith Deen Muhammad


Dear beloved Muslims, we ask that Allah's Peace and Blessings be upon Prophet Muhammad, the seal of the Prophets, the messenger Prophet to all human beings. We ask that His blessings be upon his descendants, his companions, upon the Muslims, the followers, all of them. And we ask that Allah aid the struggle of this community to gain more knowledge and understanding of the Religion and to practice it, and propagate it in the western hemisphere, so that Al Islam, the religion chosen for us by Allah, in Adam and in all of the Prophets who followed Adam, that this religion and nothing else but this religion become the way of life or the dominant influence in the lives of the people all over the world.

I have planned to discuss in this khutbah, the human nature, which is a big problem for the human being.  In fact, the ''Ingest problem for the human being Is human nature.  If we can know human nature, then we can manage our lite and our affairs much better.

Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'aala, Subhanahu. means "highly glorified is He".  Wa Ta'aala,"and supreme above all things".  He says in His Quran, "If the earth had been populated with Angels, or by Angels, I would have sent an Angel as a Messenger.  Since the earth is populated by human beings, I sent a mortal human being as a Messenger." This saying of Almighty God in the Quran to us, speaks to a real problem that we have in our lives; a problem that we inherit from unbalanced religious teachings. By unbalanced religious teachings, I mean "baby religious teachings". The whole world in its development; that is the whole human society and its development, is like the birth or development of one individual.  

The Holy Quran says, and it is God's words to us,     that your birth or your creation, that is your spiritual creation, and your death is as one soul. So if, dear beloved people, we understand the society life, the societal life; or the human social order to be a growth of the individual's minds and needs, or an expression of the individual's minds and needs, then we should understand that society comes up just like the individual, and the individual comes up from the cradle. We don't come here grown. We don't come here knowing everything. We come here knowing nothing as the Quran tells us. We come here knowing nothing and we have to gradually learn what the world is all about and what our place in the world is. We have to gradually learn this knowledge. When we study the history of society, the history of civilization, we can trace the nation, the national life of a people back to a time in their life or in the history of their life, when they knew little about civilization. 

They were babies in the knowledge of civilization. We can trace the religious history of the people back to that time when they were babies in their religious understanding. So Allah, He grows us up in every respect.  We don't grow up just physically or just politically.  We grow up in every respect. Our religious life is a growth.  It is a growth.  Allah says in His Quran, that he has created the human being as a plant.  You know that a plant is something that grows from a dead seed, not a living seed.  Even by scientific definition, a plant grows from a dead seed.  No science books will call it a living seed.  They all call it a dead seed.  So, the human being grows from the dead earth and from the dead world, and Allah brings us out of the dead earth and out of the dead world into life,-community life, spiritual life, religious life. And we have to grow stage by stage until we reach our full development that Allah wants for us. 

The spiritual life is the first expression of the religious development. It's such a basic or such a characteristic thing of the religious life that whenever we find spiritual people, we say that they are religious. They might not at all be Islamic. They might not at all be Christian or Jewish, but simply because they manifest the strong presence of spiritual life in them, we say those are religious people. Don't we?  Those are religious people.  This is the first expression of the religious life.  We have the fear in us of the those things we don't understand or those things that we feel are more powerful than we are. And we have the affections in us for those things that we like or those things that please us.  From fear and affection develops the religious life. Allah wants us to know our birth, our creation, and our development.  In knowing this we can better manage our lives.  It is only the revealed scripture that gives us clear focus on human nature. Nothing that science has come up with — Fraud psychology is fraudulent. 

All the other things that they have tried to come up with, without respecting the divine word, the revealed word, has been nothing but things that give us temporary pleasure, but cast us right back into the terrible bed of confusion. But Allah shows us the light and He shines that light first on the human nature to let us know how to manage our lives.  It is a good thing to know that the more important aspect of anything is its nature.  Not its material substance, its weight, its size, but its nature.  How has this industrial world become the Mount Everest of the planet earth? Talking about the west, and especially America has become the industrial Mount Everest of the whole earth.  The highest, the most powerful, the greatest, in terms of industrial achievements. How has it come to this great superiority? By studying the nature of the material world.  Not so much by studying the physical aspects of it.  The great knowledge opened up for the Scientist when he discovered that there is something invisible about matter that is more important than the visible aspects of matter.  That's when the great progress opened up for science.  When the Scientists discovered that it is not the visible that is important, it is the invisible that is important. 

I like sometimes to refer to the Bible in bringing home to you the point that I tried to make. The Bible speaks of evil growing upon the lives of the people.  Growing and growing with time and with generations.  Evils accumulating and becoming so troublesome, that those evils take over the intelligence of the people.  The leader's intelligence is of no power to deal with those evils. How does the Bible and God, because God also missions the Bible Prophets, in fact, the Bible Prophets are the same Prophets of the Holy Quran, but many things have not been mentioned by name in the Holy Quran, because those things have been dealt with in principles in the Holy Quran or in a saying of Prophet Muhammad's. 

Many things were not that important to be elaborated on in the Quran. The Prophet Muhammad, he had the understanding, he dealt with those things directly, himself. But, the Quran verifies whatever he did, whatever he established. The Bible says of these hidden things, that there will rise up a god, and the people will worship that god. Says it will be a strange god, a god that your forefathers never knew.  This is the Bible I'm giving you now.  It will be a god of forces. Now hasn't that become a reality? The Quran speaks of the same thing, but in a different language. Prophet Muhammad, he has talked of the same .thing, but in a slightly different language.  "Dajaal", the beast that speaks to us, materialism and its forces, the Quran speaks of the beast that will be made to speak to us.  Materialism, the voice of it is its forces. You see. The beast that will speak to us. 

So, this western society, more so than any other society, has taken up the worship of the forces of materialism, the invisible things of the materialism.  If you ask someone to describe the gods of the materialist, some people would say money; some will say lust and luxuries.  Is that right? But those with the better insight will say the influences of materialism.  Is their god visible? Their god is invisible.  The same people who told Moses, show us god in public, we won't believe in an invisible god,  Moses, show us god in body, in physical body, in the public.  The same people, the mentality, the same ignorant minds, crippled minds, one-sided minds, have come to worship themselves and invisible gods and don't know it. The forces, the forces, how can we manage this life to avoid falling under the influences of creation? God shows us our nature and God tells us that he wants us in this material.  He created us in this material world. Not only in this material world, but the Holy Quran clears up the mystery of man's creation. The Bible is so symbolic and secret in its language that you get confused sometimes and tit ink that the creation of Adam happened somewhere in a spiritual plane or in a spiritual existence that was devoid of flesh and material.  

Then after creating him as a soul or something, he was put in flesh.  Is that right? Allah and the Holy Quran clears up this confusion, they know from the physical world you are created. In your mother's flesh womb, you are created.  Step by step, stage by stage, then after God completes the forming of the fetus, the forming of the person in the womb, God says "Thu-ma An-sha-naa-hu Khal-can Aakar "afterwards another creation began".  So, the real human creation comes after the physical creation. The creation of our intellect, the creation of our sentiments and our emotions, all of these things are created after the flesh body is made.  Where is the personality of the fetus?  It does not exist, except in its mother.  But, once he's separated from his mother, his mind opens, his ears open, his soul opens to what is happening out here; he begins to take on personality; he begins to become an individual. 

Who gave us this understanding?  Allah through His Prophet Muhammad, the universal Messenger to all mankind, to all people, for all times. You see. Shouldn't we be very proud as Muslims? We shouldn't be arrogant, the devil is arrogant, but we should be proud. We should take pride in the great wealth of religious knowledge that has been put into our hands, into our charge as rewards for the efforts and the nature of Prophet Muhammad; one man representative of all men.  One man representative of all men and all human flesh, by his efforts and by his sincerity, by his righteousness he earned the reward of this knowledge, this precious knowledge.  So, if that man has earned it then the human being has earned it. That man was not an angel. Allah said if the earth had been populated with angels I would have sent you an angel as a messenger.  He sent you a mortal being as a messenger and it is a mortal and the essence of a mortal that has earned reward from God that is salvation to all people.

Isn't this a better concept of saviour then the one we got from the church? We can embrace this.  We can identify with it. We can follow Prophet Muhammad-has a mother, as a father, as a child, as a nation's leader, national leader, as a president, as a  king,
as a warrior. We can follow Prophet Muhammad in every way, but this crazy idea of Genesis's that split the human being and forgot to put the over half back, leads us to think that we need an unnatural being to lead nature beings. All praises due to Allah, He has cleared it up, we don't need unnatural beings to lead nature beings, we need natural beings to lead nature beings.

When we study the old ancient wisdom, and believe me much of it came from the fore-fathers of the Arab people.  In fact, we have a word that is called Paradise, Eden and the correct pronunciation is "Adhnan".  Adhnan is the name of an ancient ancestor of the Arab people. Adhnan.  So, that shows us that this idea of Eden is really a primitive concept of the beginning of the human life.  Don't all of us look back our beginning life as a pleasant life, as a Eden, as a garden, secured, no trouble.  Someone took the diaper off and cleaned you and powdered you and put it back on.  Someone rocked you to sleep or sung you a song, wasn't that heaven?  But Allah doesn't want us in that heaven, because it's not big enough for us.  So he puts us out of that heaven to bring us into a bigger one.  How did man put himself out of his baby teeth that he had gotten from Allah? The Quran says Adam slipped, Adam slipped, he made a blunder.  Is that right? He made a blunder. There was no resolve on his part to go wrong.  

He did not sit up one day and plan how to corrupt his life. He fell into corruption by ignorance, by accident, but there is another mentality that doesn't come into corruption by accident.  It plans corruption, schemes, plans corruption, this is called the Satan.  Not in some kind of un-material body, but in human body. I want you to understand this.  Satan never affects man in any big way except when he appears in human body. Now he can give you small nightmares without appearing in your human body but whenever he changes the political order, changes the religious order, and plaques the nation he has appeared in the human body.  So, when he gives you big trouble don't look for him in the dreams or in the mysteries of darkness, look for him in to the mysteries of crookedness, lies, deceit, and you'll trace that right back to a human body.  It won't be any human being in it, Satan will be in it.  The human nature and the human mind would have become the Satan nature and the Satan mind.

In looking at the human nature let us go back to the ancient terms that are symbolic or descriptive of our nature, symbolically descriptive of our nature.  Fire, water, clay, air; fire, water earth, air.  The Holy Quran says of God's creation,    Prophet, or the human being that He desired to populate the earth -that's all the Prophet is just a model of the human type God wants to populate the earth with, you understand? The creation of His ideal human being. And the Jinn is given in the Quran and the identity of the jinn is called "the fire". Says from the fire of a scorching wind.  Fire of a scorching wind, "Nares - Samoom"      I believe is the term. From the fire of a scorching wind. What is this talking about? is every jinn a wicked creature? If every jinn was a wicked creature Allah wouldn't have created jinn.  The nature of the jinn must not be wickedness because Allah says I created jinn.  All right!  Allah says in His Quran that I have not created man or jinn except to worship me.  So Allah has put it in the nature of jinn and human being to worship him.  What is this jinn? It is an aspect of human nature, an aspect of human nature.  

If that aspect of human nature deteriorates, or if it is misguided it can degenerate into a devil, into a devil or into Shaitan, the satan.  Did Allah create satan?  No!  Did Allah create the devil? No! Allah created the jinn.  And if we allow our jinn to deteriorate or degenerate and become devil and satan, that's our creation and not Allah's creation. Who creates the devil? Who creates the jinn? It is the human being that ignores God's guidance and goes off and starts grafting devils.  The term grafted means you use something real with something unreal or something natural with something unnatural or you corrupt the nature by using the natural purpose with unnatural purpose, combining the two.  Is that right? Okay. This kind of religion takes the boogerman out of your life.  It is Allah who takes the boogerman out of the human beings life.  It is ignorance that puts the boogerman in the human beings life. 

He says the He created the jinn from the flame of a scorching wind. All right, what is that? It's our passion; our passions. The hunger for food, clothing, shelter, sex.  Is sex a sin? No!  I have a hunger for sex.  Allah has put that into me.  The hunger for sex, this element in my basic nature, or this aspect of my basic nature, it influences ray mind.  It influences my culture.  Is that right? I end up speaking a language that can traced back to my sex appetite.  Can I speak that language and please God?  Certainly!  I don't have to become corrupt. If I speak the language sex in a healthy way Allah won't punish me. What will we call this language? 

We will call it passionate language. Is that right? Won't it be the flame that can start the passionate forces to moving? Won't it blow? Won't it feed the blowing, the wind of the passionate nature? But if we keep it right it won't corrupt the nature.  It will just unfold the nature like the rosebud opening up to show all of its secrets.  All of its secrets are beautiful.  The last thing the rose reveals to us is its sex organs and we say it all is beautiful.  Is that right? The little part in the center is the sex part of the rose.  It holds the germinating substance; it holds the germination for reproducing a rose.  We don't look at the sex of a rose that the rose reveals and say that it is ugly, it's filthy it's beautiful. Give me some scents, give me some perfume made from the substance of that rose's sex, I love it.

If we apply God's wisdom to the job of arriving at understanding of our own sex nature and make up we will come with the accumulation of knowledge, we will come to see the sex of the human being as a thing as beautiful, and as fragrant, and as pleasing as the rose. Among human beings, there are some that don't smell the sex of a woman and say "mmm", they say let's go!  So, hasn't God even made the smell of the sex pleasing to the appetite for it? Now, that shouldn't be your only appetite.  If that's your only appetite you're lower than a dog.  Because a dog has sex and he has affections for his wife, for his children, he has courage to battle for his wife.  If that's all you have than you're lower than a dog. This is not low, this is beautiful. It makes the human being low when the human being can't rise above it.  But on its level, its beautiful isn't it? All right.  Okay. 

Allah says He made the jinn from the flame or the fire of the scorching wind.  Allah is telling us that before you became the religious people that you are now, you didn't have the religion.  That's all He's telling us, that's simply what He's telling us.  You didn't have this religion. You were dominated by your passions.  I made this and I'm going to make better.  Is that right? I'm going to make a caliph, a ruler in the earth. The jinn didn't think he was going to be better. Allah says I know what you know not.  The angels that bow to God's plan, that say we have no knowledge except what you give us.  Is that right? But the jinn, these people who have been following passions and being ruled by passions and who had become wise in passionate knowledge, thought that no creature could be made of this submissive nature, of this passive nature.  

I'm aggressive.  I change the nature of things.  The passionate nature leads us to change the nature of things.  Fire burns up the form of things or transforms the forms of things.  Likewise this passionate nature in us, it leads us to change.  Pretty soon that nature^ it drives us, the appetite grows, and grows, and grows. When it is weak we are not too interested in just tearing up the earth. We are satisfied to take an apple, take an orange, take a piece of meat, drink some milk, but as it increases, it becomes so strong we aren't satisfied to just take the apple we want to open the apple up and see what's in the apple. "I've had all the thrills and kicks that eating the apple can give me. See can 1 find some other kick, some other thrill In this apple." We open It up and look for the thrills In it. This passionate nature drives us to open up the material world and to burn it up. We aren't satisfied with it like that. No, I'm not satisfied with the apple that God gave to me. I'm going to make apple juice and wine, apple wine, apple butter. 

This is the jinn nature driving us to change the thing. We want to get more out of it, get more out of it, get more out of it.  If we are not careful this nature will drive us into trouble and this nature did drive the human being into trouble. Then Allah says now that I've given you the time to run this course of your nature it's time for another course.  Then He revealed the proper religion to us. Before then our religion was that of a jinn, that of passionate nature.  Its leadership wouldn't accept the new way. Who was the leader? The leader was Shaitan. At that time was he Shaitan? No. He was called Iblis, Iblis, the chief of the passionate society, the ruler, the head, the chief force, the dominant, intelligence over the passionate humanity. You see.  But when God says I'm going to make the man to inherit the leadership, not from you jinn, the leadership from that nature that I want for man, human leadership, human leadership.  Because the jinn nature is not human leadership. You understand.  It's only an aspect of human being.  Human being has to be more than that, more involved than that.  To complete him you need more aspects than that. All right so God says He is going to make His man to inherit the leadership, the rule on earth and that was His Prophet, and that Prophet represents that human type that He wants all people to be -male and female.

So He says that I'm going to make a man of moist smelling earth. Moist earth, black moist earth, fertile earth, that's what it means, Going to make the man, black is a sign of fertility in the earth.  Moisture is a sign of fertility in the earth.  Smelliness is a sign of fertility in the earth.  So what does He mean by make  this man of black earth (fashion and shape) going to make him of fertile earth. Fertile earth, what does that mean for human being? Make him rich in material composition, rich, productive, materially speaking. But that won't only be the material production, there will be water which is symbolic of the human nature and the human nature is more characteristic of moral nature than it is anything else. The human being is peculiarly characterized as a moral being.  

That's what separates him from other beings. Other beings are not disturbed by moral questions, the human being is disturbed by moral questions. This aspect of his nature is there and the industrial nature is there too. We need materialism for production, for industry.  Is that right?  So that's there too, and then there is smell in that.  Smell,
smelling it.  Now, can we live just on material production and moral nature?  No!  We need flesh too.  The smell of something means something animate is there.  The inanimate world doesn't give off smell like that, well it does, but smell there represents that offensive thing.  God is talking about a human being and the term human being suggests human nature, the flesh nature.  God is saying the very flesh that has given the jinn all the trouble, I'm going to make it the corner stone of society Yes!  The very flesh that has given the jinn all the trouble, I'm going to make that flesh the cornerstone of the society.  

Where is there an explanation for this or verification for this?  The Kaaba, the first stone was once a bright body in the sky.  It was once a body that was a fire, flame .  Is that right?  And it gave off the light of passionate Light, didn't it? And it was up in Heaven, meaning that it represents the leadership for that passionate life.  But God caused it to fall, didn't He.  It reached its end and it had to come to an end, it fell. When it fell where did it fall?  On materialism, didn't it.  If fell on the earth.  God doesn't want the passions to go up in the sky.  Those religious people couldn't deal with the problems of passions in the flesh, it drove them up in the sky to become spirits. They didn't want to mix with the earth, you understand.  But God didn't want them up there He dropped them down to the physical earth, to the material world.  Why?  Because the cornerstone for His society is not angel, it's flesh and blood human being.

No light being in the stone means no guidance being in it, it has to be picked up.  Now, the next light that comes in it won't be the former light, it won't be the light of passions, that won't be the light that will guide it, direct its course of development.  It will be the light of Al Islam, a religion that won't take that flesh that the world calls black.  Now we think that we are the ones that the old religious leadership called black.  They called flesh black before they called us black. There are Caucasian people or light skinned people, ancient people of India and other parts of the world who have not really come to know black skinned people, but they had an idea that the evil force or the evil being in the creation was the blacks.  They didn't mean physically black, without light and light means knowledge to open up the way, to open up the path of ignorance, the path of confusion. Is that right?

All right, that's what the light means.  God says that His chosen ones will have light radiating from their faces.  Can light radiate from a black face?  Is their light radiating from the Kaaba?  Is there light coming from the Black Stone that we kiss? Certainly there is.  The light of purity has come out of flesh.  Is that right?-flesh that troubled the spiritual world and was condemned. The rejected stone has become the pillar.  Isn't that scripture? The flesh that the religious world rejected has now become the pillar and God says if the earth had been populated by angels I would have sent you an angel as a messenger, but since the earth is populated by flesh I send you a flesh man as messenger. That flesh man who wanted wives, who wanted food, who wanted a nation, who wanted a right government, who wanted to beat back the enemies with war instruments .  

That flesh man has become the corner, the foundation stone of the new world order. Is that right? And out of that black flesh comes purity, moral excellence, spiritual excellence.  Is that right? So I look, the light of the jinn had only one light, but look how many lights come out of flesh the jinn light, the moral one, the light of intellect, and the light of obedience, the light of submission.  All of these come out of the human flesh so look how rich this Black Stone is in light.  Look how rich the rejected stone is in light.  Isn't the best light the invisible light? It's not the visible is it? The best light is the light that we see in blackness. Listen so carefully. When we close our eyes and think, tell me what understanding or where is the understanding being formed? Is it being formed in light or in blackness? Hasn't  God put the very nature in us to close our eyes when we want to make a real, real desperate effort to get the light. We close our eyes, rub our forehead, close the eyes. Say come on out of darkness! Come out of darkness! Is that right?

What do we want to come out of darkness? Understanding!- the light that we need to show the steps for human beings,  to right the path and show the steps for human beings.  Is that right? So, where does It come out of?  Does it come out of light?  It comes out of blackness. Is that right?  Plain as day, it comes out of blackness.

God says that you have misunderstood, now let me correct it all. Here is the stone; I don't want it physically white.  I don't want the flesh to be denied its nature.  It doesn't belong upstairs burning. It belongs down here.  The same thing that burns has the nature to remain cool.  Isn't that right.  It doesn't burn until something acts on it from without, then it burns.  The thing that burns up the star is friction.  It's not burning in its place.  In fact; the earth isn't it in space?  It's not burning is it, because it's in its proper place. But if it drops out of this orbit to a lower depth or just thrown out of its path or its natural orbit, it will burn.  It will begin burning especially if it comes into the atmosphere of a bigger body. A smaller body can't kill it, it takes a bigger body.  If it passes through the atmosphere of a bigger body, a bigger force, a bigger sphere or force with something in its atmosphere that causes friction, the friction will create heat and will heat the body up too much and the body at a point will burst into flames.  Is that right? And burn up, but if we just leave it where God put it, it won't burn up.

We have in our nature, the passionate nature that can if it is fed, isn't there something in Scriptures that says that the Satan blows.  He blows the fire.  Is that right? Blowing the fire feeds it, makes it rage, you see.  So there is something in our nature that if we don't control it, take care of it properly, it will burst into flames and burn us up.  But if we leave it alone the same thing can be cool. The stone that was once very hot we go to it now and touch the Black Stone, it's not hot, it's cool.  Put it in the heat, it gets hot, right. Put it in the sun, the sun will heat it and make. It hot.  The sun. will never set it a fire.  It will heat it, but it's not going to set it afire.  We have to really go through a lot of work to set that Black Stone afire.  

There in the corner of Kaaba there is a silver ring around the atom-, that's the kind of halo  we should have.  Invisible bodies shouldn't wear halos.  They shouldn't wear a crown of victory over their elementary or lower nature.  It should be a flesh and blood human being wearing a halo -a crown representing his victory over the forces of his flesh, that he has gotten himself into control like a great horseman and he's riding the flesh body with the rings in his hands he- says "Use, Haa, Stop, Go".  He puts the oats into his mouth and leads it to the- water trough.  Is that right?  A horseman has got ton on his flesh and has mastered it, tamed it and now he sends it through the- city to carry goods.  He carries it out on the battlefields to fight the enemy.  

It obeys him in war where there's gun fire and explosion and obeys him in the city where there's lust and temptation.  So that human being has earned the halo. The sign that he has conquered his flesh and brought it under the discipline of God.  It's not lusting now for the filth of the world, it's hungering for purity and moral excellence.  Isn't this a greater victory for the human being than some idea of us dying being failures on this earth until the last breath leaves.   Then we go somewhere in purgatory as spirits and be tortured there to be made ready for the spiritual heaven.  Aren't you happy to know that God has made it possible for the human being to come into his heaven on earth? To wear his halo in this body - the sign of his victory over the elementary forces of his nature.  This is not only Religion but this is Science.   The human being grows because he's able to conquer the elementary aspects of his nature and his society.  That's why we have the terra elementary school and high school and university.  Because the human being has to conquer the first things first.  Then the second thing.  Then he should come into the knowledge of the final things and the final things are universal.  But in these universities there are not many university professors. 

Dear beloved people we want to review these elements quickly and call this khutbah to a close, Insha Allah.  The knowledge we have inherited we can trace it back to the most ancient of days.  There is an element of passion in human nature.  Passions operate for good, but if we misguide them they operate for self-destruction.  There is an element of moral in the human being.  This is termed the water.  God says he sends the rain cloud to the dry land and it rains down water. Where did the water come from?  It came from the earth.  God lifts the water up from the earth and sends it on a high plane by spiritual inspiration to land or to a communities of people that need moral excellence. We need our moral nature to be lifted up sometimes, it falls down and becomes polluted, smelly, filthy, dead, filled with dead things.  Is that right?  But the force of God to inspire human nature and lift human morality is given to us in the sun.  

The sun's rays strike the earth, warms the water, creates a vapor, a mist so fine the eyes can not see it and it lifts this mist up to higher levels of the spiritual nature until He brings it there where the heat is not so strong, the heat of human passion.  It cools and condenses into raindrops.  It becomes too heavy for the spiritual nature, it has to come down to the rational nature.  It takes rational force to deal with it, it's just too heavy for simple spiritual, understanding.  So the raindrops that God has lifted up from corruption and impurity comes back down and the man out on the ocean, living in the holy sea of Catholicism where the water is hard to drink, it's too salty;— he gets the raindrops from heaven.  Is that right? Where did it come from?  It came from the earth.  God inspired it upward to higher levels of excellence. Is that right?  It rains down and falls into the ark of Catholicism and they say "oh, this is water that we can drink".  The same water falls on all the land and give pure, moral guidance and understanding to the people.

God has not given us a morality reflected from angel nature or interpreted from angel nature.  Allah has given us a morality interpreted out of human nature just as the rain that is drawn up from the earth into heaven.  It's not heavenly water, it's originally earthly water. It is taken up to heaven to be transformed, to be purified and rained back down on the earth for the health of the earth.

Then we have the element or the aspect of human nature that Is called "clay".  This is the amenable nature in the human being.  What do we mean by amenable? We say Amin, Amin.  The Christians say Amen. What does it mean?  May God be pleased, may God be pleased, may it be vouchsafe and given to me.  May God be pleased, Amin.  We have an English term amenable.  It means pleasing, agreeable.  Isn't there an aspect of our human nature that wants to please?  Does this aspect drive people to destruction sometimes? The poor woman following the pimp many times her mind is not corrupt it is her inability to control this aspect of her nature that throws her into the grips, or into the clutches of the pimp.  She wasn't able to please mama.  She wasn't able to please Daddy.  She wasn't able to please her sister and brothers. She couldn't please the people on the block.  She finally got a pimp that she could please.  So that aspect of her nature finds its satisfaction in pleasing somebody if it's nothing; but a low, scummy, filthy, slimy pimp. Is that right?  All right.  So this is an aspect that we have to control.  We have this nature.  Why is clay symbolic of this nature?  Clay agrees for us to put it in any shape we want to put it In. You want to shape the clay In form of a pimp, okay.  You want to shape the clay in the form of a prostitute belonging to the pimp, okay.  You want to make the clay a hammer, okay.  You want to make it an apple, okay.  The clay agrees with you to make it whatever you want to make it. It is very amenable.  Is that right? So God directing or influencing the intelligence of His people, inspired them to use clay as a symbol for this amenable nature or aspect of human nature.

Lastly we have the air, air.  Air is harder to contain and harder to control than water.  It represents spiritual makeup of the human being, the spiritual makeup.  The sentiments, human sentiments, hasn't Allah blessed us with this nature?  He's not cursed us with this nature. Human sentiments are beautiful and very precious in society.  Sometimes intelligence won't rescue the society.  Sometimes moral judgement won't rescue the society.  Sometimes the desire to please can't rescue the human society, but tenderness of the human heart, sentiments come and do what none of the three could do and rescues the hum/in society.    God has given us these elements In our lives that are good for us when they are used properly, bad for us if they are abused. And actually the salvation or the tools for our salvation are not to come from without but they are already existing within, Alla-u-akbar!  

All praise and thanks are due to Allah, the Guardian-Evolver and Sustainer of all the worlds.  We pray that Allah give Prophet Muhammad the best    blessings, the blessings promised him and that is the blessings promised to Abraham.  Allah promised Prophet Muhammad that he would make Al-Islam the dominant religion of the earth or the world — Prophet Muhammad, the leader of the new world order, Al-Islam, the religion of the new world order.  So we pray to Allah that He rewards Prophet Muhammad by fulfilling this promise.  And I can almost say that He has done it.

I was looking at the number of countries in so-called Africa and other parts of the world that are predominantly Muslim and we find now, I believe that they out number those that are predominantly Jewish, Christian or some other popular religion.  Actually, in the Christian country they are registering persons that are simply citizens and not Christian people.  In Muslim countries, the Muslim register those persons who profess Al-Islam.  You should be very happy to know in 1977 that you belong not to a minority but you belong to the majority.  Allah has fulfilled His promise, He has made His Religion the dominant Religion on this earth.  The Christian influences are not the prevailing influences The Islamic influences are the prevailing influences.  

We have lived to see this, but we don't want it to stop here.  We don't want people to simply be influenced by some of the good seeds or germs of Al-Islam.  We want people to identify in their life with this fertility and grow by its fertileness or by its strength.  That is, we want this religion to be expressed inwardly and outwardly and to dominant the lives of the individual.  To get that we have to work hard. We have to propagate the truth everyday.  Don't wait until somebody gives you a degree from Chicago Masjid, an Imam's Degree or Minister's Degree, when you hear the  truth you have the degree.  All you need is a degree of knowledge to repeat what you have heard to others who haven't heard it.  Don't worry about defending it I guarantee that anyone who sits under the- voice of Al-Islam for one hour is better equipped to defend his religion than Christians and Jews who have sat under the voice of their religion for one year.  

Don't doubt your ability to defend your religion.  You don't have to be grade school graduates, you can have no school at all once you come in here and get this understanding it Lakes away the damage that this world has done to your brain.  It sets your mind in order to go back to grade school and get that diploma,  go back to high school and get that diploma, go on  to college and get those degrees.  Don't think human beings are born ignorant, human beings are made ignorant by an environment that is confusing.  The highest scores on the I.Q. Test are those who suffered the least confusion in their lives. The lowest scores are those who suffered the most confusion in their lives. 

Dear beloved Muslims in understanding the human nature or In knowing ourselves U-t us remember those who embraced the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad some time ago, let us remember that we are not selfishly  seeking to know self.  The purpose of self-knowledge is self-awareness, not arrogance.  It is the devi1 who gets a little bit of knowledge of his nature, of his passionate makeup and he becomes arrogant with a little knowledge.  And isn't it the fools that boast of small achievements?  Look back on your pass and remember those days when we were taught that to know your self is first.  We identified that with the supreme wisdom.  We taught that then- was not knowledge greater than the knowledge of ourselves.  But there is.  Well, what knowledge is that, Chief, you just said that the study of human nature gives us the knowledge to manage our lives.  

It won't do you any good until you accept, realize and accept that it is not your creation it is Allah's creation.  The greatest knowledge is to know your infirmities and your limitations. Your strength is in obedience, not in becoming an arrogant teacher or an arrogant philosopher.  Your strength is in your obedient nature.  The very nature of the baby is the nature that will save you.  The nature to submit to higher  authority, ( he nature to submit: your ignorance to greater knowledge, this is the nature in the human being that enables him to make bigger and bigger achievements.  Isn't it?  But once we come to the point that we think we know it all, nobody can tell us anything, we have aborted ourselves, we are finished, you see.  The purpose of self-knowledge is self-awareness.  Allah wants us to be aware of ourselves,  aware of our nature.  He gives us the knowledge. When we get the knowledge it shouldn't make us arrogant, it should make us submissive because we know we didn't have it until He gave it to us. The angels say " we have no knowledge except that that you have given us".  

So the human being should say the same thing.  Iblis refused. The human being should say the same thing.  Oh, Allah I have no knowledge except that that you have blessed me with.  All knowledge is a blessing from Allah, the scientific knowledge, the political knowledge, every knowledge, the revealed knowledge, every knowledge is a blessing from the Creator. We can not come into knowledge accept that we receive grace and charity from the Creator.  So this is the great awareness. The awareness of. my strength, the knowledge of my strength and my weaknesses, my firmness and my infirmities.  It is to see myself in right focus, proper focus.  If I see myself in  proper focus I will know myself in relationship with creation and in relationship with Creator and this should guide me to be humble and not arrogant in the earth.

Out of these elements come the forces that put us in all the trouble, forces of fear, forces of lust, forces of greed, forces of mysticism, forces of superstition, mysticism, superstition.  Brothers and sisters be aware of all of these boogy men in the life of society and follow the Way of Allah that He- has shown to His Prophet Muhammad.  Follow the way of Prophet Muhammad to salvation.








