08/31/2008
IWDM Study Library
2008 Convention Public Address
(Parts 1-3)
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

Speaker 1
Iman W Deen Mohammed: Thank you. Allahu Akbar. Thank you. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Thank you. We praise G-d Al-hamdu lillahi rabbil 'alamin. Lord of all the worlds. My greetings to you. As-Salaam-Alaikum,
Audience: Alaikum Salaam
[applause].21:33 starts Imam Mohammed pg.19
Imam Mohammed: It's a new time, a better time and I have strong belief that that healing of this broken world has already started and it's really getting to be really visible everywhere now.
We are in the "Motor City" of Detroit, Michigan where poor African Americans or blacks were living in the black bottom. If you are from Detroit, raise your hand. How many here are from Detroit, Michigan or the area? Good. Very good. Good to see you here. Really, you should have been here so early and you should have filled the place off and we should be asking you that -- will some of you all get up and let some of these others sit down, the elders and whatever.
Yes, because what was started in this city, it attracted and -- within three years, it attracted 25,000 to join the Nation of Islam. 25,000 within about three years. Poor African Americans, most of them deprived of culture and deprived of formal education, they joined Professor Fard. And for two years or more, he worked here in this city and he took his work and his new convert that he kept by his side, my father, the late leader to all, Elijah Muhammad, the Honorable Elijah Poole Muhammad. He took him with him -- yes, please.
I was pronouncing it she, like, she. She-wolf or something. Chicago. Our mayor is the son of his father. Our mayor who brought a great transformation to Chicago, Richard J Daly. Once, I was listening to him on television talking about the great city, our great city of Chicago. He said, "You don't pronounce it "she-cago". It's "che" like cheek or like chicken. Chi-cago. Ever since then, I try to remember to me to pronounce the name correctly. Chicago.
Mr. Fard, the mystical teacher who were very practical although he was the mystical, took the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, his new minister who he kept right by his side, to Chicago. And they began building up the Second Temple. This was temple number one and it's still temple number one because we still have following from that time. They're not with me. They chose to stay with that and that's their business. I don't impose anything or anybody.
He went from this city and built the second temple that was named Temple number two. Temple number two. Somewhat after that, I think it wasn't too much time after that, they went to Milwaukee and they built a third temple. Temple number three in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We have a very excellent scholar. He works with college students. He actually was of a program for college students at the University -- Cross the University of Wisconsin. Will you please stand?
This' Imam Ronald Shaheed. Imam Ronald Shaheed who's director of the Clara Muhammad School. He is also Imam in Milwaukee. He's also working directly with the Presbyterian Church representatives, our officers that we have just introduced to you. He's working directly with them for my office but also for the community, the general community. Milwaukee was established in little time. It didn't take long. They had established three temples before Professor Fard left the responsibility to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.
Now, the language of this teacher was really like a puzzle. On the surface, educated person who has formal education. When they look at his language on the surface, "Oh, that's ridiculous." They would say, "That's ridiculous. Unbelievable. Where does he come from? Who had the nerves to even say these things?"
But if they have scriptural knowledge, knowledge of the Bible, scriptural knowledge, knowledge of the Qur’an because he was speaking from both. He came from both and mostly from ideas and concepts and concerns that we have in common. Christians and Muslims have in common. He was leaving us with language that would help us down the road, help us get out of his created myth of the origin of the world, the origin of white people and black people, et cetera.
He had a myth that he created himself. Mythology or myth that he created himself and he designed it so that as we become more educated, we would -- especially educated in scripture, we would see his direction in this puzzle, direction that we need to take for our own lives and come to be a Muslim community par on excellence, on a standard of excellence. The man was a wonderful man. He did a wonderful job. A masterful job of getting us to come where we are today.
Professor Fard. My father called him Allah in person or Allah in the body or in the flesh. He put me out because I grew to not accept that. I was still the minister of the -- one of the ministers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. And people reported me for having different ideas about that. He called me into question and he excommunicated me. Now, we didn't use big fancy language like that. We say, "He got put out of the Nation of Islam."
Yes, he put me out and I accepted it. He asked me a question before he gave his final judgement on me. He said, "How can you not accept our saviour? And you know that he found your father, a poor man, a lost man in the streets, in the time of depression, too ashamed to come home to your mother because I couldn't bring any money to help the family out. And he put me where I am now." He said, "How can you, knowing that, reject our saviour?" I said, "Daddy, I don't reject your savior." And boy, oh boy I thought I was pretty smart. But man did that fire him up, did that anger him. "My savior? He is your savior!"
He told me to go. I had to get out of there.
And I was told as a child that my father would be in the City of Detroit with a Professor Fard. I keep saying, Professor because that's what he said and we have on several documents this "him" referring to himself as Professor. But I have to acknowledge also that there is plenty in his language that would cause any person who came from church background to believe also that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ or at least, a Christ type leader.
Because he refered to himself plainly as the son of man. And I'll give you his exact words. He said "No help came to them until the coming of the Son of Man in the person of W D Fard." That's his language. That's not my father's language, that's not my language, that's his language. That's what mister Fard said. He did leave the idea with my father and those of the Church who would understand that language, he left the idea that he came in the role of Christ Jesus. But if you look at that language, you would never come to that conclusion.
I don't know. Maybe some of you would but I'm going to give you now an expression that he himself made. He said, referring to the new community that he was building or the new nation that he was building. He pictured it as a car, an automobile, and he called it "an old touring car". "An old touring car." And he said that it could hardly make it up the hill. It could hardly make it up the hill.
Now, I'm going to just elaborate a bit on the car. If you look at the word car, C-A-R, and you think about the word carnal which means the flesh, the body, the fleshed body, you see "car" is in "carnal". The first part of the word carnal is C-A-R, car. Mystical teachers, they know how to put together language like that.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: They don't expect the average person to really know what they're talking about. Please no talking in the audience, we put people out for talking in the audience. You come here to hear me or hear this program, you have to listen to it. I'm going to tell security next time they catch you talking, they will have you go out and have your fun, have a beautiful day. The average person cannot understand this language but how come the average person, in fact, the following of in the early '30s they were all not average, they were actually below average. Because most of them didn't have formal education above about five or six-grade elementary school.
They were attracted to him, he called his language magnetism, powerful magnetic force, magnetism. Why did he call it that? Because it appealed to those who had become very dissatisfied with their life as Americans. They didn't believe that they would ever be full citizens. Now, this is not different than what we find in the Bible, is not anything different from what we find in the Bible. Jesus Christ who did we go after, peace be upon Him. This is the Bible, He said, "Give me your tired and weary people." Not those who are satisfied with the world that they're living in, those that the world had beat up and put down, those are ones he appealed to.
He appealed to them and he attracted them and they were happy to have him as their leader because He lift [sic] up their spirit and more than that He lift [sic] up their souls. The white world had put them down, had crushed their spirit and he said, "You are the righteous." speaking to His following, "You are the righteous, the best and the most powerful, you are the original man." That's what he said, and he said that the black man is superior to the white man, He said the black man created the white race by grafting them out of the black people.
Well, you tell people that in fact some of you right now you, I want to caution you, don't drink strong drinks like I'm giving you right now. Please don't, you can't handle it, you're here to go tipsy and may fall off. Anyway, he had what attracted them but he was only attracting us to something that would stand up temporarily, it wouldn't last forever. The more we became educated and informed of the realities of the world, the more we would question his language. Those who believed in his sincerity and who appreciated what he was doing to lift us up and he's certainly lift [sic] us up, he took us off our alcohol, he took us away from indecency.
He took people who were in the Christian Church and had been made good, had been made G-d-fearing in the Christian Church and had grew in decency as Christians. He took them and made them more decent, even more decent, even more, committed to decency and more committed to being sober. Yes, he was successful in doing that. Let's talk about the word car over here. We're in the Motor City, do you all know why they call this city, the Motor City? Because of the great history of automobile manufacturing in this city. Still here, but it's a long history of automobile manufacturing for this city, Detroit.
General Motors, Ford Motors, a lot of our people came from the south and our men got much better-paying jobs because they joined Ford Motors. There were men in our family who came from the South Georgia who got good jobs here, good-paying jobs. Especially, in that time working for Ford Motors. The Motor City, this word motor it has several meanings, you get a good dictionary and you'll see it's got several meanings. One of the meanings is the meaning that we find in psychology, the study of psychology and that meaning refers to habit, habit behavior, habit supported behavior inside of us.
When you say, "Motor reflex.", you're not talking about what's happening consciously in the person, you're talking about what's happening without their conscious awareness of it, motor reflex, motor reflexes. These motor reflexes operate in our life like fish perform in water. Mr. Farad, he identified African-Americans as fish and he said, "Go out and gather the fish and bring them in so they can be taught the religion of the Nation of Islam." That's what he said, okay, fish. Now he was again copying the role of Christ, peace be upon Christ in the Bible, in the New Testament Christ Jesus.
Christ Jesus, he went and called fishermen from the water and he told them, "Follow me and I will make you fishermen of men." He called them away from the water fishing and He told them to, "Come in land and I will make you fishermen of men." Mr. Farad was obviously using the same strategy and he was having the same perception of people whose life is nothing but a life in faith. Their life is a life in the waters of faith, they have no education in their religion. They are not educated to know the logic in their religion.
As it is written, they know the religion only by faith, not by logic. He calls them into the land, meaning that he's bringing them to a situation where they will not be fish in the water, they will not be depending only on motor reflexes but they will be able to start using their rational curiosities. He would be their leader to lead their rational curiosities into the light of understanding, where they will see the logic supporting their faith. For a car to be in a condition to perform its purpose it needs a workable motor. After which it needs all the necessary attachments, battery, fuel line system, cooling system, crankshaft, exhaust system, carburetor, axles, attachments for steering it.
Most important it needs a starter or ignition. A car is a machine, it is designed to get a qualified operator where the operator wants to go. Car kept in good condition can take the operator where the operator wants to go and take the operator less difficulty and less time. What am I saying? I'm saying that the spiritual science or special psychology and mythical language of Professor Farad was designed to reach us in the depths of our souls. Reach us in the depths of our spirituality and began turning light on, inside of us. That will eventually reach the brain and register in the conscience, a car is a transport. Ideas are transports. Ideas limited to self-concerns only are small transports. Small ideas leave one's mind to go it alone, and many of us, too many of us African Americans have stopped following our religion. We have stopped following the church. We have stopped following our religious teachers. We have even stopped following the direction given to us by the best of our leaders. The only remaining person that was re-leading all of us, and that was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
We have stopped following him too. He left us great ideas too, and we have stopped following those great ideas. Concern for neighborhoods and community is a transport. Large enough to transport a people and their lives, to whatever distance they must go to reach the whole nine yards. Ideas as transports by Professor Farad's estimation, ideas were left to develop us and advance us in nature and in mind and ability.
So that we come from small ideas to big ideas that are big enough to transport community life, to where community life has to go, big ideas. When he said, "This car was too weak to make it uphill." He was talking about Capitol Hill. He was talking about our knowledge, our minds were too small, too weak to make it up Capitol Hill. It was planned so that our ambitions-- we had great ambitions. His ideas and strategy was planned so that our ideas would even grow to be much bigger.
Grow to be much bigger, we grow to be more knowledgeable, and one day come to where we would begin to interpret or translate his language. He influenced my parents to move from where they were in Detroit, and move to a house on Yemen street. Yemen street does not bring to mind people who are whites or people who are Americans. It brings to mind people who came from the Middle East, where the country Yemen is. Those people, the people of Yemen, their history goes back into ancient times.
They are people of African origin, and they managed to build great structures, great houses, great building, even to have showers, in ancient time. They had showers, plumbing, and showers. The people of Yemen, the ancient kingdom of Yemen. If you heard about Queen Sheba. Queen Sheba was the queen of that land at one period of time. It's called Saba. The land called Saba and they called it Sheba in English or in the Bible her name, Saba.
Mr. Farad chose to have my parents find them a home on Yemen street. A street is needed to find a location. If you want to find our house that we were in on Yemen street, you would have to first find Yemen street. After you find Yemen street then you proceed to the number, our address. I believe it was 3946 Yemen street. I'm not sure of the 46 but I know it was 39 something Yemen street.
We have persons here right now, in this audience, who lived near only maybe five blocks or less from my birthplace on Yemen street, and they all lived together. I'm told that there was a family of five families, who lived close by one another. My father and mother was one. Our family was one of those family five, and we lived on Yemen street. What is the message in that? The son of Elijah Poole Muhammad is going to be born on Yemen street. My hope is that he will help me and his father, connect you all back up to your past history, and to your past great achievements in your life, in your past, to your great achievements in your path.
Help us inspire you to work for such honor, dignity, pride and success in the world again. That was his hope. A man's mind can be discovered, I don't care how complicated his language was or is. I don't care how symbolic or how esoteric or how mythical his language is. If you're sincere and you don't give up searching, you can study a man's language and discover his mind. His mind is in his language, his mind is in his expressions especially if he has focused his mind on a particular work or task. It's easy to study his language and discover his mind.
Now, I mentioned Milwaukee, most of you won't understand this language. If you follow me, if you really have faith and you wouldn't close your ears and your mind, I can give you in a matter of minutes what you would have to go to school and study for maybe ten years. I mean it's a particular school that will help you find such language. Milwaukee, why is it Mil? Milwaukee and you listen to the word Milwaukee. You hear Mil, you hear walk, and you hear key, I know how to spell Milwaukee but you hear at the end k-e-y.
What are you going to the mill for, you're going to the mill to grind the ideas that appear to be dead like little seeds, but they're not dead, life is sealed in those seeds. Not only life is sealed in those seeds, but a pattern for establishing the life is sealed in those seeds. From a seed the expression, the logic for establishing that particular form of life, comes out and grows and shows itself eventually, roots in the earth and it shows itself eventually as a whole picture, a whole concept, a whole idea. A complete idea develops out of darkness, out of the earth that is roofs went into the anchor so it could grow up. Do you know plants are also compared to faith life, life of faith, and the Bible has said, "If you only had the faith of a grain of mustard seed, you could do wonderful things." You could do the things that you didn't imagine that you could do if you only had faith as a grain of mustard seed. These plants also represent faith that G-d has caused these things to develop naturally. Their life and direction for their life is all clocked into their beginning, into their life as a seed that appears to be dead.
If you give it the right environment, the right situation, it will open up and free its life, free its life's logic and free its life pattern of growth. It comes up and it becomes a beautiful thing, visible for all to see. On the third stretch in our road and the Muslim road to freedom, real freedom, true freedom for the community we had to go to the grind and mill and grind, and grind, and grind, and grind. When we grind enough we break the seed down into flour. We take the flour if it's the seed of wheatgrass you ask, we take the flour and we make bread.
Look how you make bread, you add water to it and if you want the kind of bread that we ate, you add yeast to give it gas or spirit, to give it gas, puff it up. All the members of the Nation of Islam had to make their own bread, a lot of us didn't obey but my mother did and many others from Detroit they obey the teachings of the Nation of Islam. They would make their own bread at home, they wouldn't buy bread. I never ate store bought bread as a boy. We were told not to eat white bread.
Here, many decades later the cancer research department cell tells us it's best to stay away from white bread it can cause cancer. We were told it's bleached, we were told that long time ago and most of us didn't eat store-bought bread. Getting back to the language of Mr. Farad, so that we can follow him to where we can establish our community in the light and as a free Muslim community. He taught my mother and he taught my aunt Bernstein who have passed away several years ago of this city, of Detroit.
Both of them knew him personally and he visited their home, of my aunt and my mother. He taught both of them how to cook the new food called the Nation of Islam food, no bean pies were back then, that all came much later. Mr. Farad didn't introduce bean pies. We called it, bean soup was enough and we had plenty of that every day. Every meal had to be eat with bean soup. It couldn't be just any kind of bean, what kind of bean it was?
Audience: Navy.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Navy, back on the water, back on the water, navy beans. She would take that bread, let it rise, the yeast would give it air, spirit and it would rise, puff it up. She would wait until it got puffed up real good. I remember her telling us, "Don't go walking in the kitchen. I got my bread, my bread is in there. I got it rising, because if you shake it, it might go down."
She would take her hands and she'd beat-- sometimes her fist and she'd beat that bread down until it's flat again. Some black people, they're so dead they have to be resurrected at least two or three times. She beat that bread, she beat that bread down and then she wait for it to rise again. After she done that about two or three times, about two times I think, she would put it in the oven and bake it. I'm telling you, I still prefer that bread over all the breads you can give me. I don't want any store-bought bread, if I can get one of those whole wheat rolls cooked by one of the MGT sisters.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: We had to go to the mill, instead of Jesus Christ-- this language that some religious leaders give to their following. Language that's so difficult to understand, it's like chewing on rocks. You don't only chew with your teeth, you chew with your mind. You don't only swallow with the mouth and your throat, you swallow with your mind.
The expression, "He swallowed it whole, hook line and single." [laughs] I love the big mouth bass or something I'm telling you. This man shows us that he did not want us staying where he put us. You start in Detroit like a fish with motor reflexes, not conscious intelligence working for you. Then, you go to chick cargo, you become a temple of chickens. [rooster crowing sound] That's the minister, that's all he's saying. [rooster crowing sound] We like to see that male look proud, he put out his chest, first he flap his arms, [rooster crowing sound] teach that Yacub history brother.
We got no more out of it than we got out of our rooster crowing across the yard. Then he take you to the mill, Milwaukee, take you to the mill. The mill going to get you to walk, and the walking going to take you to the K-E-Y, the walking is going to take you to the key. Well, I don't know about you all, but I started in Detroit the original lessons of Mister Farad, and my wife used to see me at the table sitting there with books. I knew that his language was tied to myth, I could see that, in time I could see that his language was tied to myth.
I'm a young man with no more than a good strong high school education but I'm studying. You'd be surprised what you can find if you just strain the intelligence, you can do wonders. I'm straining and my wife she left me at the table and had to go to bed because I was sitting there and she said, "Well I've been waiting on him and look like he's never going to go to bed tonight." She woked [sic] up in the morning, she came back down-- it's morning now she found me just where she left me. She said, "Wallace, you've been up all night." There she is, Shirley stand up. You ain't shy, stand up girl.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: That happened for many days and many nights. It wasn’t easy, you think you got a leader that just jumped into a position? No, I worked myself into the position and worked hard, hard, hard.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: I got the invitation from Mr. Farad himself. He said, "The harvest is ripe, and the laborers are few". He said, "Get busy". You know what he said? Yes. Well his invitation finally reached me as a young man. In fact, just out of my teens, in my early 20s, and I began to work hard. Now, if my translation is correct why would he want us to think about going up Capitol Hill? [laughs]Well, I want to tell you right quick, I want to tell you right now and get it over quick. He wasn't directing us to Capitol Hill for us to beg the Federal Government for anything. He was directing us to Capitol Hill so we can see how to argue with those in the goverment who are not ready to give us what was taken away from us and that was.
Warith Deen Mohammed: The freedom to be responsible for our families and the freedom that was taken away by plantation slavery. The freedom to be responsible for our family. Though once we are free, and every time we make a effort, a strong effort behind the African-America or black leader to really begin establishing community life, there's some scheme and some trick, and powerful rich people that come in and just shatter everything we do. Beat us down to the ground again and we have to go and try it all over again. Go on and invest in our community all over again.
Every time they see us growing strong and getting stronger, they find some scheme, some strategy, urban renewal, something to wreck everything that we have done so we have to go beat us down to the ground and we have to start all over again. They know that if they do that enough, they kill the faith in our people to follow such leaders. That's what they have done. Over the generations, they have killed our faith to follow such leaders who would help us or lead us to economic freedom and economic independence.
Relatively speaking, we know nobody is independent in any full measure. No. Independence has to be relative. It can't be full. United States doesn't have any independence that it doesn’t have to compromise when it comes to other nations, when it comes to the interest of other nations and how the world should shape up. No. Right now we're coming to a one world order, a global community of all these nations and people. We have to respect one another. We cannot be that free and not independent to do our own thing without respect for what others want for their lives. This is a great time. I thank G-d that we have survived to live in this time.
Going to Capitol Hill as a Muslim follower of Mr. Farhad, or follower of the nation of Islam, we're going there to tell the government. We're going to tell the government that, "How did you come to your independence? Why did you have to have independence for the original 13 colonies? How come you even went to war to establish that independence? Eventually, you won that independence. You became an independent nation. Independent of your parent nation across the Atlantic Ocean". British, the English people. The British.
Yes. The colonies had to be freed from them. What was the argument they gave? People should be able to live their own will, to live their own will. Were you supposed to respect the will of other nations? They advanced that argument and they also said that they were entitled to be responsible for their new life in the new world. That's what they wanted as independence. The right to be responsible for their own lives in society, in the new land, in the new world. Without it being dictated to them or without them being bossed over by the once parent government across the Atlantic Ocean.
Now, if the United States of America is proud of that independence one and proud of the argument used to establish their right to have their independence, it should look at the children of plantation slavery who had their family life taken away from them, and who was separated from their African past, their African culture, their sense of history of their own, or history of their own. They were raised as an uprooted people. Suspended in the air and don't know where their roots were or if we ever had any roots at all.
We know there are few who are intelligent enough to find their way back to a sense of beginning in Africa, to a sense of culture. In fact, there were some small traits of past life in Africa, culture in Africa that remained. They remained because of habits of the people that were ingrained in them. It was not in their knowledge. It was not in their learning. It was only in their spirit. It survived because it was in their spirit. It was in their genes. It was in their spirit. Some small measure of connection or traits that go back to Africa were manifest in our lives on these shores.
It wasn't enough to support our people getting charge over their lives as community people and forming community life again. Even now, with all of this education that we have. Even now, we do not have a spirit for getting community life off the ground. We don't have a sense even anymore or what community life is. If we did, we would know that community life is more important than us dissipating our energies in fun life, corrupting our culture, diminishing our culture that was already a baby trying to find his adulthood or his maturity. Then we further diminish that life that was in us as a sense of culture by giving ourselves to entertainment culture, to fun life.
Now, we need a spirit of community again in us. When we had faith in our leaders, especially Dr. Martin Luther King, when we had faith in him, we had a sense of being together, we had a sense of being a community. We believed in a plan for our life that was really much different. In fact, it was opposite. It was the opposite or oppose to the one that Dr. King led. I bet you if all of us would speak truthfully, the followers of the nation of Islam would admit, "Yes, Dr. King touched our hearts. Touched our spirit and yes, inwardly we were his followers". They would tell the truth. They would have to admit that.
I was listening to Dr. King once and Nation of Islam teaching is not designed to give you the Holy Ghost. Now, I’ve never had the Holy Ghost in the Nation of Islam. I'm listening to Dr. King once and I felt electricity and trembling, and stuff. I said, "What the heck is happening to me?"
Yes. But since the passing of Dr. King and since seeing how African-American leaders have went to Black-Africa and going crazy over some idea. Myth of their great, glorious past and everything become Afrocentric. Forgot the road they were on as a people, up from slavery. Forgot it. Forgot that Dr. King said that he had faith that a time would come in this United States of America that a man would not be judged by the color of his skin but by the content of his character. Now, that kind of belief -- Yes, please, please.
That kind of belief has a reception and a bigger life than just a life identified by skin color. That kind of belief has a reception bigger than a nationalist's brain, bigger than a color brain. That kind of belief has a human brain ready to invite it and let it be rooted in that brain and grow in that brain so that that human person would have more spirit as a human person to go upon the bigger reality for their identity and for their reality, to go upon the bigger reality to the destiny.
Yes. He was speaking to our human identity. Every baby born of a mother at any time is born firstly not an African, not an Afro American, not a Chinese, not a Japanese, not a European, not a member of a frat. Every child is born human. Human is the first identity.
Thank you. All other identities have to be supported by the first identity. When you're trying to raise your child to be a African American and you just got the baby, you can't speak to no African American, I'm African American now. You got to speak to the human content of that baby. All babies cry in the same language. I never heard a Japanese baby cry in Japanese. Every baby cried in the same language. Every baby laughs in the same language. Every baby loves in the same language.
G-d gave us the human identity. He gave us the human identity because it's strong enough to support all other identities if you respect the drive in your human spirit for excellence. For excellence. You want your racial identity to be excellent, respect your human identity. First, all the time, lastly, first respect firstly your human identity and go all the way through life respecting your human identity above all of other identities. All your other identities will grow more, excellent.
I'm a nationalist. I'm proud of my nation. I was proud of it when it was the nation of Islam. I'm even prouder of it and even much more now that it is the nation the United States of American. That accommodates my nation, the nation of Islam. It gives me the freedom to have my nation of Islam inside of this great mother nation, The United States of North America. Yes. I'm a nationalist. Yes, I'm a nationalist. But I'm a human firstly. That's what I am, I'm human firstly. G-d made me human. I take more pride in being human that I take in being a member of the nation called the United States. Yes.
If we don't be that way, we cannot support the United States growing ever and ever more beautiful, more human, more productive, more comfortable for all of us. We can't support that if we leave the human identity aside and go after nationalism, or go after the nation's goal. No. The nation's goal to respect the human essence and the human spirit for excellence. Then we all can be beautiful together. We all can achieve the great task together of bringing better life to all of us on this planet Earth.
Nations working with nations. Citizens working with each other. Different religions working with each other. People having different political points of view but never giving up the human destiny. Working together for their future. Oh, working together for the common good.
Dear audience, I've done a lot of thinking over the years. I've thought about our plight as a people up from slavery. I've thought about our situation, our condition as a people now spoiled, going for fun life. I've thought about the positions we take mentally. America cannot belong to those not claiming shares in her. People will not enjoy a real sense of ownership without their sharing or accepting to be responsible for their share in that ownership. This great nation, the United States of America is the property of every citizen.
If we don't identify as shareholders in it, we will never have a real sense of ownership. You need a sense of ownership to appreciate things. Having that old slave ghost in us, the slave ghost that wouldn't follow the abolitionists, the slave ghosts that wouldn't follow Frederick Douglass, the slave ghost that says, "I'm comfortable right here under my master. He manages everything for me. I don't have to worry about how to plan my life. He has planned my life for me. I don't have to worry about some business to get into. He planned my job for me. My job is in his business." Yes.
That old sleeve ghost is talking, right? “Let my boss, he's big enough. He proved that he's big enough. He made the world that I was born in. Let him worry about all those heavy things. I just want to keep living on him.” That's that old slave ghost. We come into, we come here now. Oh, it's present, that slave ghost is present. It didn't go nowhere. It’s staying with us. It will only disappear when we change our disposition toward our responsibility as a member of our people and as a member of the United States, of a citizen of the United States of America.
When we change our disposition and start saying, "This country belongs to me too." Stop saying, "I have rights too.” This country belongs to me too. I am one of the owners of the United States of America. I don't care how small my share is. I'm going to recognize my share. I'm going to be responsible for my share. I'm going to join the other owners, the little poor person like me and the rich person, the shakers, the makers and the shakers, I want to join them. I'm a member in their club whether they like it or not.
I'm going to be responsible for my share. I'm going to work with our best African-American leaders and we're going to pull our neighborhoods out of this dependency on everybody but ourselves.
If our country let big people come in and wreck what we are doing, I'm going up on Capitol Hill. I'm going to remind them of how did colonies got their independence. Thank you very much. Peace. Asaalam Aleikum.
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