05/05/1996
IWDM Study Library
Excellence of the Human Spirit

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Speaker: Next year by Imam W Deen Mohammed, Muslim American spokesman for human salvation, title The Human Spirit, Allah Wants Us to Have Good Establishment in Society was recorded May the 5th 1996 at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio.
IWDM: Praise be to Allah. We greet you with peace, the Muslims greeting As-Salaamu Alaykum.
Congregation: Alaykum Salaam.
IWDM: We praise G-d, we witness that He is the Lord, creator of the heavens and the earth and everything. And that He needs no help from any of His creation. And we witness that Muhammad to whom the Quran was revealed, the holy book of the Muslims about 14 centuries and so ago is the seal of the prophets mentioned in the Old and New Testament, the last of the prophets. And G’d's servant and His messenger. A mercy to all the worlds as G-d says in the holy book Quran, “that Muhammad is a mercy to all the world.”
We are Muslims, we are followers of that prophet, we are believers of that book, the Quran. And we have as our example, our human example, the Prophet of the Quran, Muhammad, upon Him be the prayers and the peace and what follows of that salutation or that salute to the last prophet. We're happy to be again on this campus, the University of Cincinnati campus. And we pray Allah that we be blessed with results that we are aiming for, and that all of us be pleased. We witnessed the awards last night and especially awards to our pioneers. It was very touching.
Some of them, I know their faces, I've seen them when I was a young man, and they were young men too at that time. And maybe even younger than me, some of them. But some of them are older than I am and I remember them as a young man. It was very touching to see, you're still soldiering, still standing with dignity and pride and faith in what we all have devoted ourselves to, that is wonderful. So, congratulations to each of you who were recognized and awarded last night. We certainly enjoyed our speakers. The keynote speaker, Kenneth Blackwell, I had heard of him, and I think most African-American leaders have heard of him, a man in charge of 90 billion, pardon me, 100 billion now.
100 billion dollars. I’m sure most of our leaders have heard of him, especially being a black man, African-American. We have heard of him. It was really wonderful to hear him speak and to see his strong character up-close, and his great mind, to see him up close, it was wonderful. I congratulate you, citizens of Cincinnati and Ohio, I congratulate you because I'm sure that many of you have supported him and have helped him. As our Imam, Iliyas Nasheed has been acquaintance of the state treasurer for a long time. And I'm sure he has given him good support. So, congratulations to you all for such a wonderful servant of the state of Ohio, and this nation, and this world. I want to begin this address with the observation that most scripture students will appreciate. And I believe most of us will appreciate as we proceed, or go on step by step to finish this presentation. The creation of man in religion, and that is in classical scripture, the Quran. Before it, the Injeel or the gospel, and before the New Testament, the Torah, or the Old Testament.
And before them, according to our Quran, many prophets, some named in the Scripture and some are not. Many prophets and messengers of G-d. They brought to us what we would like to call the classical message of religion, the classical religion. In this religion that we would like to call, Al-Islam. Because, our holy book says every prophet or messenger of G-d was a Muslim, his religion was Al-Islam. And I might say, her religion, their religion was Al-Islam because we have two women, maybe more. But there are two women mentioned in scripture for having received revelation from G-d too. And one of them is the mother of Christ Jesus, upon them be peace.
The creation of man in religion is not the creation of man in so-called, science. And I say so-called science because, really, science can’t tell us very much about the creation of man. It can only speculate about the creation of man. In religion, the creation of man is the creation of human conscience, human conscience. And we should really get our mind off of the flesh. The flesh, that's not the real creation of the human being in scripture. The real creation of the human being in scripture is this creation of the human intellect with a conscience. The conscious mind or the human intellect that is moral essentially, or basically moral and rational.
The moral and rational property of the human mind, this is what G-d wants us to focus so we will know what is our special identity. That is our proper or special identity. If you don't have a human mind, an intellect that is rational and moral, by that concept, you are not human, you're not human. Even though you’ll be in human form in this picture. This human picture with a head and all the other members of the body that we have, that we identify as the human picture. Even though you'll be in that human picture, by that concept in religion, proper, if you don't have moral life and rational mind, you are not human, you’re something else. You’re either animal or jinn, you're not human.
Conscience. The conscience described in Al-Islam in the Quran, the revealed book of G-d, is really a consciousness that is first in the soul, that is created by G-d. G-d created the human soul. And He deposited in that soul, reason and obedience, reason and obedience. Obedience translates eventually into moral life. Reason becomes rational life, and in time, ethics. It evolves man from the little simple level of behavior that's good and bad behavior, right and wrong behavior to ethical behavior that has to depend upon the intellect with its rational power, rational perception, rational power.
Now, success in life, that's what G-d wants for us, success in life. Success for this precious, true and pure identity of man, success for his rational and moral life. That's what G-d wants, success for man’s rational and moral life. And when we say man, we're talking about females too. We include females when we say man, we include females. Because G-d says to us that, “He created us from nafsal-wahidah- from one person, or one personality, or one soul, or oneself.” Nafs is translated in all those ways out of Arabic into English. So, He cleared us from one self and He made from that self, listen closely. He made from that self its mate. Its mate, we can't be sure that it means a man or a woman. Its mate. It. We can't be sure that it's a man or a woman. It is feminine in the Arabic term. The Arabic term, grammatically, “it” is feminine. Zawjaha, its mate, is feminine. So, that kind of confuses the thinker who thinks in the line of the Genesis or thinks in the reasoning of the Genesis of the Bible. Because here is the mate being called, masculine and the original being called, feminine. Zawjaha. He created from it its mate, Zawjaha.
So, “ha” feminine, is the possessor and Zawj, masculine, the mate, is what was made from it, from the feminine entity. So, I am pretty much certain, I'm open to scholars in Al-Islam to debate the issue. But I'm pretty much certain. So certain that I offer to you and encourage you students of scripture to take notes and use them. I'm so certain that I offer for you to include in your notes and use it, that the “ha”, the original, is the soul itself. The complete self. The whole self that has as its properties, the male and the female entities. The male and the female entities. And what was made from that was the masculine entity. The masculine entity, which in this reasoning is the spiritual force. The spiritual forward or driving force.
That's the masculine force, the force that goes out like they have in the symbolism, the arrow and the cross. The arrow for the male going out and the cross for the female means holding the fort, keeping the fort. One goes out and the other one holds the fort. The female holds the fort, the male spirit drives him out. These are the two entities. Then G-d says that He made from the both of them all the men and women we see scattered all over the world. Made from them, the male principle and the female principle. He made from the two of them all of the men and women we find scattered all over the world. Like seeds, one translator puts it. He says, "Scattered over the world like seeds."
Our theme has been, and is, human excellence. The excellence of the human spirit. I think it will help us to understand our life, personal life and the life of society, to know that excellence performed or success gained must have success already. You can't begin and succeed without success already. We think of the new infant coming here for the first time, delivered just a few minutes ago or a few seconds ago as the beginning of another human life. That's the beginning of another individual human's life, this newborn infant. What success does that infant have? Birth? Birth is its success. It has successfully developed from an ovum and sperm, man's sperm.
From an egg, the female egg and sperm of a male, it has successfully developed in the womb of the mother or in the abdomen of the mother over a period of so many months. Nine months normally. It has a great success story. It has a great success story behind it even though it just was born just now. There's a great success story behind it. Not to mention this developmental process in the body of the mother. Just the germ itself sometimes fails to even impregnate the egg of the mother. Fails sometimes. It doesn't always succeed. The pregnancy itself is the beginning of success for that life.
As that life go on in the enclosure of the mother, to complete its form and be delivered out to us, it has another long success story. The baby has to come through pain and uncertainty and darkness. G-d says that He delivers us through three veils of darkness. Three veils of darkness. That’s scripture and Quran. This new life has a success behind it. It's not conscious of that success. None of us recall what happened when there was impregnation or when there were the steps of development from a little life germ to a clot of blood and on and on and on until it was a complete flesh picture of a human being. None of us can recall any of that.
In fact, G-d is so merciful He doesn't even allow or let the newborn baby recall the pain. And the doctors tell us, science. The doctors tell us that that baby underwent tremendous pain to be delivered but none of us recall any of that pain. We know the mother, she went through pain and she recalls it. She sometimes reminds me.
"You didn't suffer for this child." I can't do nothing but be quiet and wait until she gets through punishing me.
We have success stories, life needs success. G-d, in inviting us to Al-Islam, invites us to success. If we understand the call to prayer, it is the call to Al-Islam. It is the call not only to prayer; it is the call to Al-Islam. It says, "hayya alaa salah" "Come to prayer." "Hayya 'alaa falah. Come to success." G-d invites us to life, to worship, which is life. Proper worship is the life, that's human life. Nothing is more accurate as a description of human life for males and females than proper worship of G-d, that is the life. Once you have achieved a certain amount of appreciation for service to G-d performed by you, not only at the ritual time but at every moment of your life. Once you have realized that you have life.
You have life and that is your life. And you know the difference between this life and the death of the world. Yes. Praise be to Allah. So, this life needs support, it needs the support of success. Success was in our record, in our life record or in our life history before we even became conscious. Success was in our life history, our life record. We had success. In this world, we must continue to have success in order to be successful. But we need someone inspired by G-d or someone with that kind of curiosity to look at reality of the matter and study it and look for the unseen in the picture to bring out to us what we wouldn't ordinarily know.
We need somebody to continue to do that for us while we're living this life, conscious life. The worst thing we can do to a people who want to make a better showing for themselves as a people is constantly give them failure stories, failure reports. We have to give ourselves success stories, success reports in order to keep the spirit to go forward, live and accomplish things. Life, the birth of life. It’s a victory of great victory.
After that child is born and start crawling around and pretty soon it's trying to stand up, once it achieves the ability to stand up by itself, if you ever saw a child achieve that feat for the first time in its life, you saw victory on the face of that young child. Victory, that's what the face says. "Victory, I got it, I did it." It has the expression of great victory. It has achieved a great victory so proud of itself. So happy that it has managed to stand up by itself and not fall over. But it may fall, but it has that victory and the faith. Faith in self is there to stand up, so it will continue to stand up and pretty soon, walking around with ease. Standing and walking about with ease.
Success stories is what we need. What is working in the life to make that possible? The success, yes. But what is behind the success? It is the destiny that G-d created for that life. G-d created a certain destiny for that life, a certain goal for that life. And that destiny or that goal is the fuel, the power, the energy that's going to keep moving that life. And if you give up faith in your own self, then that spirit is going to punish you, that energy, that spirit is going to punish you for giving up on yourself.
It’ll punish you in strange ways sometimes. It makes you want to hurt your own self. It makes you want to even kill your own self because, you are failing the best part of yourself and that is your excellence that G-d created. Your excellence, G-d created an excellence for the human being that's better in degrees of value than the excellence He created for any living thing. No other living things that he created with the excellence to equal the excellence of the human person. Not even the Angels have been given a value as precious and as high as the human excellence.
The Prophet Muhammed, our Prophet the last prophet, he said “G-d didn't give anyone or any living thing anything more valuable than the intellect.” The intellect, the human intellect that has in it the power of reason and moral life, moral life. A desire, a nature to be correct, to be correct. Morality depends upon what that morality has been established upon. What was the beginning? What was the beginning of this morality? What was the basis for this moral thinking or this moral idea? What is it based upon? Morality will be based upon different things.
We have now, in this world life, in this new time or era of human life on earth, we have started to base morality upon the right to do whatever you wish to do or the right to be free as you want to be free, as any individual wants to be free. That’s the morality. So, what is moral yesterday is not necessarily moral today. What is morally correct in the gospel is not necessarily morally correct in the public of Cincinnati.
You see, and we can go on and show the difference. We have with this decadent culture, popular culture that's all over the world now, not just in America. We have with this decadent popular culture, we have this new decadent morality that says, “what is good for you is right for you. What you want is what you should have. Don't deny yourself whatever you want. Listen to yourself before you listen to anybody else.” Now, the Satan would never have encouraged that kind of thinking in society. If the Satan hadn't been very much convinced that the Satan had reproduced the human intellect.
Once the Satan succeeded in reproducing the human intellect for the people, the population of the world, then the Satan inspires in the people this particular position: “You listen to nobody before you listen to yourself. Not even mom and dad. You don't have the right to even listen to them before you listen to yourself. Believe in yourself. Trust in yourself. Do what you like. Do what you want to do.” That’s what they encourage, inspired by the Satan. That’s not the original teaching. The original teaching was, that we come into this world knowing nothing and we need good people to show us the way.
Parents, if we are fortunate to have good parents, which we expect most people or most the individuals will be fortunate to have good parents. After the parents, the leaders in the society and the church and the religion and the school, the school teachers, et cetera. We have all of these fine models in society, precious models in society to help us along the way. Until we can feel comfortable that we now are mature enough and informed enough to act on our own, to think on our own, to make decisions without depending so much on other people. But this is a learning process.
This is a maturing process, not what Satan is suggesting that just because you're a person, you have the right to do your own thing. So, the popular morality and the popular conscience is diseased, is rotten, is detonated. And we are now experiencing a new era, a new way, a new spirit, a new trend that's going against the old, questioning the old, putting the old up for examination. And it seems that the Republican Party leading that with the moral right. But, believe me that's not true. It’s happening the same way it has happened for millions of years on this earth.
It is the most conscious of the people that's leading that. It so happened that before the people on the ground floor can get recognition for what stared in them and calls them to send out waves, the people that's already in focus, in high places, in the view of the people, in the media, they get the credit for what the ordinary good person started down on the ground floor. They have our movement now and they're claiming our movement. But it's the movement of the common people who dislike what Satan has inspired and created on the world to oppress the world of human life. Yes, it happens that way all the time, all the time. It’s never the people on top.
They’re the one that's responsible for messing things up. It’s never the people on top that brings about a major change. It’s always the people on the bottom that brings about the major change. But, the people on top, they have access to the airwaves. They get it from the people on the bottom and then they put it in their language and all of a sudden, we think, there are introducing to us a new world order.
The human being needs parental love. After the victory of birth, the children male and female, all of us, we needed parental love. If we don't get it from natural father and mother of our own flesh and blood, we get it from some adult that accepts to take care of us. If we don't get it from either, then we are scarred until we can be healed. We must have parental love, someone to care about us and to help us alone while we are too little to do these things, those things for ourselves.
After being mature so much in age, we then have to have the freedom to compete in society, in our group, and in the society, the neighborhood, the town, the school, whatever. We have to have the freedom to compete in society. And we need a sense of community, a sense of community. I thank G-d that I came up in what was called, and still, they still call it, those who still with it, the Nation of Islam. It gave me a sense of community. We need a sense of community and appreciation for community life, appreciation for community life and, a spirit to do more than just succeed in that community but to also make a contribution back to that community, that's what we need.
That gives us more power to live and more power to produce. What makes success in community is what makes success in the family. When the children appreciate their parents who suffer for them, most of all, love them and care for them. They have a sense of indebtedness; they have a sense of debt. “I owe my mother something, I owe my father something.” Sometimes, it's a grandparent that gives you a lot of attention, a lot of care and a lot of support. So, you feel that indebtedness to that parent or to those parents. And that helps you be successful in life. All of this can be put into one word, the special human mind with a conscience, that special conscience that G-d created for the human beings.
That sense of indebtedness and then, gratitude, thankfulness and all of that. And that desire in us to pay back or to give something that we have received, to give something to that or to those from whom we receive or from that which we receive something. We also have in us a divine, a divine power, a divine power. We are not gods, no, we are not angels even. We have an angelic principal or an angelic agent in our human make up. Or an angel agent in our human make up. The description of us as a composite creature, as a whole creature is not angel, its human.
And human means that we are subject to error, we are subject to commit sin, we subject to make mistakes. But we are created for great station, a great station, that great station in life, great station in the world on this Earth. This divine power that works in us is G-d's Will, G-d's Will. G-d's Will is in everything that exists, G-d's Will. But G-d's Will is not greater in anything that He has created than it is in the human being, this special conscience that He created in this human being. G-d's Will is the strongest in human being. G-d's Will in us is that divine agent in us that will give us additional power to be successful in life. It will make us super people, super people.
This Will in us, though it is G-d, of G-d and G-d's Will, it too was created. G-d creates His own Will. G-d is before creation, but then He creates His own Will. How He creates His Will is by creating something, and if He creates it, it automatically carries His will. If it came from Him, it must bear His Will. So, whatever He creates bears His will. So, He creates the human being, and in creating the human being, He has also created His will in that human person. The human being in his purely human description or attributes is a creature of great value, a creature of great dignity.
Allah says in the holy book. "He has certainly made dignified, honorable, noble.” All these meanings are true for this word that's in the Quran. Karumna from Kareem. That He has certainly made dignified, honorable, noble. Noble means in England, high-born. Born to govern, born to rule. That's what noble means in England, where they have the Lords and the Commons. Born to govern, born to rule. I want you to know if you don't know already that G-d is saying just that to us, that He has made every human being to govern, to rule.
We're created on this Earth to be rulers and governors. Every one of us can't be a ruler and governor on a high plane of leadership in the system. But if we understand the religion of Al-Islam, given firstly in the Quran and then in the life practices of Muhammad the prophet. If we understand this religion, this religion is saying to us, that a certain amount of responsibility for authority, government and rule is placed upon each and every one of us. And that's true democracy.
That's the highest evolved democracy that we know of in this world today. That democracy that says government must be representative government. And the people have the right to have a say in the constitution of their ideology and in the constitution of their government and in the practices of their government, policies and practices of their government. So, we have a right to determine ourselves what will rule us, what will be our government. And any time we're not satisfied with it, our constitution says, “we can scrap the whole thing and have it rewritten all over again.” That's a great Constitution, that's an eternal constitution. Eternal in the human sense on this side of the world.
That's an eternal constitution, it never has to be discarded or scrapped, never. Why? Because, we’re given the right by the constitution, by those who set the frame for the constitution. We are given the right to take the best of it and scrap the whole thing if we have to and take the best of it and write it all over again. So, it is an eternal constitution, it never has to die. And I do believe that it was inspired by the eternal script, the script of G-d, the Quran the last of them. So, what we are saying is that man has been created with an aim in his life. It may not always be reaching his conscience, but there is an aim in his very creation that was created in his creation by G-d Almighty, the Lord creator of everything. If we fail that aim, we fail our soul. Our soul then begins to punish us, to let us know, we are not having the right life. But as long as we are respecting that aim and making some progress for that aim, then the life feels good. The soul feels good, the mind is not burdened. If it is, the burden is light.
Now, let me make a couple of comments on that. The burden is light. Some people will be burdened to death by the same thing that another person carries very easily. That same burden will be killing that person, and the other person will be carrying it as though they don't have a burden at all. I'm sure you understand that. I don't know from where you are looking and what you're looking at. You might be looking at a whole lot of misery and you probably say, "Well, that consciousness that G-d wants in us is not enough to take this burden off of me." I say it is, something's wrong with your perception of it.
You have to prove your perception of your excellence. Once you have that right perception of your excellence, you can carry a tremendous burden. Look at the burden that they give us in a kind of mystery of one that is reported to be the Jesus Christ, Jesus the prophet, peace be upon him, carrying the cross. I've seen stories in the movies, and they can dramatize it in those movies. I've seen him carry that big thing like a tree almost. I don't believe I can lift it. He's carrying it. Of that figure, it is said in the Bible, "Come and take my burden. My burden is light." That's what the burden of that figure is called, that the Bible has called light. It's called, a light burden.
Now, G-d created man when He created human consciousness. The human spirit exists to achieve success, to realize success. Its fulfillment is the success of the creature with that human spirit. We believe that in order to have that sense of success, that sense of achievement that satisfy our soul, we must have G-O-O-D, good establishments in the world. Maybe I'm just different, but I have never seen a happy saint. Now, when I say saint, I mean a hermit type person, a person that says, "No, I can't have women. I'm here in this world just to be an angel for G-d. I can't have women, I can't have sex. I devote myself to the religion only, and I don't want money. I don't care how good that movie is and how intelligent it is, I don't want to go to the movie, show, et cetera."
These people who live separate from the world, I have never seen a happy one. I don't mean I haven't seen them smile. I don't mean I haven't heard them laugh, but when I've looked at them in their face, I saw sadness. How can the soul of a human being be happy without having the life of a human being?
Now, there is a thinker, a modern thinker, 20th-century thinker among the scholars of Al-Islam that I myself feel somewhat indebted to. As a young teenager in my father's house, on 4847 Woodland av in Chicago, Southside. I had the privilege to go to his collection of his books and open the cabinet door, it had windows, and read some of those books. And I would do it. My father, he liked it. He never showed me anything other than that. He liked that I was reading his books. A casually he would express his concern that was on his mind because, he didn't want any of his followers following anybody else's thinking.
He would have a concern sometime and he would express it, but he had those books, and I'm sure he wanted me to be acquainted with the materials in those books. One of the books that I read that had an impression upon me was a book on the thinker who created the ideology for actually bringing about the creation of an independent Muslim's State. His name Iqbal, the philosopher, scholar, Iqbal, I-Q-B-A-L. Dr. Iqbal attracted me because he had such great appreciation for the human individual, for the human individual. And he wanted every human individual to have faith in his own excellence, own created excellence, inherent excellence, created excellence.
He described the human constitution, the core human life in these words that, "It is soft like water, but it can become hard like a diamond." And he was advising the human individuals to be flexible so that, upon their own will when it was necessary, they could become hard like a diamond. Be soft like the water, but when it's necessary, become solid and hard and rigid like the diamond. And that's the more precious part of your life. That's the more valuable part of your life, your ability to conform to an idea, to a principle, to a belief, et cetera, and conform to it so strongly that you become so solid.
You become so strong in your conviction that your rigidity, your stubbornness is like that of a diamond. It can cut through steel, diamond can cut through steel. Yes, I liked it. He says, "If you drop a drop of water into the ocean, it makes ripples and then you can't find it. If you drop a diamond on the surface of the ocean, it will make the ripples and it will not be changed. It won't be lost, it holds itself, it holds its form.” This philosophy report, he satisfied something I needed in deep, real deep down there. Real deep, think about seven to six trillion miles deep.
Yes, something real deep there. He satisfied something there. I became an admirer of Dr Iqbal. I began to read his papers on G-d, man and universe. G-d, Man and Universe. The next one to influence me was also of Pakistan and that's the one that I mentioned that I'm getting back to you about. Maulana Maududi. His full name, Syed Abul A'la Maududi. Maulana Syed Abul A'la Maududi. He describes the consciousness of the human person in his book, The Islamic Way of Life. He says many things that I would like to share with you but we have a limit on our time. I hope to be finished in the next half an hour. I know you thought it's going to be in the next five minutes, but no.
I can't do it that quick. To save time. He says that, in words, "We need faith in the superiority and supremacy of a creator who is over all that exists." That's G-d almighty. That's the almighty one and true G-d. He said, "We need faith in an authority over us like that." And he said, "In Al-Islam, the beginning of that faith comes with the teachings of tawheed," which means, unity.
This unity is the unity that G-d has incorporated everything by. He's incorporated everything by the certain unity. It starts with Himself, that He is one, a unitary, unitary whole all to Himself and nothing can penetrate His whole or His oneness or His unitary whole. Nothing can penetrate it. Nothing outside of Himself can come into Himself. His unity is, preserve, pure and perfect eternally. It's given in the word Allahus Samad. That He is existing by Himself and He is refusing because of His own G-d nature, divine existence, He's refusing any attempt by anything from outside of Himself to come inside of Himself.
He stays protected as He is and will always be, G-d the perfect, the unit, the one, the unitary whole in Himself. All complete, needing nothing from outside. Then and that's only true of G-d, that's only true of G-d, that's true of nothing else that He created. Everything else that He created has to depend on something from the outside. And it goes from there, from that premise, it goes to the second premise that everything that He has created or made also is contained by a unity or upon a unity.
Science tells us that the system of matter that includes all material things that exist whether here in this galaxy or in galaxies beyond the Milky Way. A billion light years away from us, all this matter stretched out across the universe and universes is held together by one system, the system of matter. So, that's its unity. It has a unity. It has a universal law. All of it comes under a universal law. It is contained by a universal system or in a universal system and it comes under a universal law.
So, we believe in that tawheed of the universe itself, of matter itself that it is also one. Though it diversified and even in conflict with itself, so it seems. But the thing that we see as conflict works for the better unity and destiny of the whole. I hope you could follow, this is philosophical. Yes, what we see as conflict is not for G-d conflict for Him. No big deal with Him. He says, "Come willingly or in conflict." It doesn't matter with Him. That's what G-d said. "Come willingly, come liking it or come in conflict. Come conflicted."
It doesn't matter with Him because, He has set the goal, He has set the destiny, He has formed, framed the universe. He knows what's going to be the conclusion of all things and your little differences is just going to promote His Will. It's just going to glorify and testify to His Will. In the end, the atomic bomb that you dropped here is going to be in sajda at the end of the road.
You’ll say “Oh, that atomic bomb was really serving Allah. It worked to bring about the better consciousness in the people. It worked to arouse their moral nature a little more. It worked to make them more sympathetic for the weak and the helpless.” You see that's how it's going to be interpreted down the road. So, the conflict will really be serving the will of G-d. That's what we believe. But for us, there are conflicts. There are conflicts that's going to punish us directly and sometimes, immediately.
Therefore, we should be more about working for unity and consistency, the real peace in our life. So, we should be contending with these things that's working against us, that's going against the grain of the right consciousness in man. The consciousness that G-d wants in man. We should be contending with these things to bring about harmony, unity and peace because, it is for our own good.
A day with the Lord is like a thousand years and we are not going to live that long. We want to hurry up and get our things straight. The tawheed goes on to address race consciousness. And to let man know that these differences, though they're important, they shouldn't be a cause for us to miss what is more important for man's identity, and that is man's humanity. The humanity is more important for us than our racial classifications. If we can lose our sense of belonging to a tribe or to a nation or to a particular color of people, as long as we hold our humanity and appreciate our humanity and grow in human excellence, we'll be progressing, we'll be on a good road.
But we can have and cherish racial identity and have great race pride, but if we fall from the foundation of our humanity or if we slip from the foundation of our true humanity, then all that we've accomplished as a race conscious people will not amount to real progress. The road will be painful and disappointing for us. So, this is tawheed. This is the unity that G-d wants us to see. And the diversity, it makes movement for the unity. But the unity is encompassing. The unity encompasses all diversity and the diversity is created by G-d so that there will be movement and not a static life, not a complacent static life that we would have movement. So, believe me, the first Kalimah was told to me by Imam, explained to me in this way by an Imam that I have great respect for. He passed away several years ago, Imam Muhammad Abdullah, originally of San Francisco. Then he moved to Haywood, California. We appointed him the Imam over the Oakland Masjid for a while. Imam Muhammad Abdullah, he told me, he said, "Some of our scholars, thinkers among our scholars, they say that really, the Islamic creed begins with a negative, not with a positive.
It says, "La," and la means, "No." The Muslim's creed or the Islamic creed, it reads like this, "La ilaha illallah."
It's translated, "There is no G-d except G-d." There is no G-d except G-d, or there is no G-d except the G-d, the real G-d, la ilaha illallah. He said it begins with a no. From the moment you say, no to something, the mind turns on. The baby that's born is born to say yes to everything that mom and dad says. When the baby starts saying no or start acting like it has some differences or difficulty, that's a sign that that baby's mind is beginning to operate on its own. You might not like the behavior you're seeing, but appreciate that the child is beginning to grow up, beginning to grow into his own special dignity, beginning to come into his own self-respect. Appreciate that at least, and don't be so harsh on them.

We want to differ. We want to differ, we want to question. We want to be curious. We don't want to be like fish, opening their mouth and get hooked.

Sometimes you get hooked through the ears. You open it and let everything coming over the ear, you get hooked. After a while, the hook takes the brain out of the head. Fishing for your brain, that's what Satan does. He fishes for the human brain, and you let his hooks come in your ear and take out your brains. Maulana Maududi goes on to say, “that G-d has created the human being with an inborn. Well, maybe I should just go to Maududi and just take us through time here, an inborn moral law has been created in him. He says, "Islam's moral law, Islam's moral law does not really depend on these external pressures alone."
By external pressures, he means, what influences us in the environment, firstly in the home, to make us think about right and wrong behavior. But he goes on to actually introduce scripture, Revelation itself from G-d. And he's saying that all of these external things, even the Revelation of G-d is not what Al-Islam depends upon only. Listen, “Al-Islam morals law does not really depend on these external pressures alone. It relies upon the inherent urge for good in every man and woman, which is derived from a belief in G-d and a belief in the Day of Judgment.” But as a philosopher, myself, I'm going to explain to you what this philosopher is saying.
He's not necessarily saying that you have to be consciously aware of the belief in G-d. You don't have to be consciously aware of faith in G-d or faith in the last day, judgment day. It could be an unconscious force in you that's working without you being consciously aware of it, working to make you question your behavior and to improve upon your behavior, make your behavior more presentable in the estimation, in the higher estimation that you have of your performance. So, you have an estimation of how you should perform. And your own estimation of what is proper and decent or good or beautiful for you is so high that when you perform on a lower level, you're not satisfied.
Whether you know it or not in the philosopher's mind that motivation, that influence is the influence of faith that G-d has created in you when He created you. Faith in a higher authority and faith in a consequence that's coming down the road if you make the wrong decisions. So, that is translated in religious language as faith in G-d and faith in the judgment, the last day. It's better when you have a conscious awareness of that, but even if you don't have a conscious awareness in that, G-d has created you so it works for your benefit. It works for you even though you're not aware of it. Because, don't forget that we said that every human being too is created with the Will of G-d in him or in her.
The Will of G-d itself that divine agent is there too. Yes, I should repeat that there. “It, meaning, that law, relies upon the inherent urge for good in every man, which is derived from belief in G-d and the last Day of Judgment.” I'm going to continue and read another part. “There may or may not be any police, law court, or jail in the world to enforce the observance of these moral injunctions and regulations, but this belief, firmly rooted in the heart is the real force at the back of the moral law of Al-Islam, which helps in getting it enforced.”
So, he saying if we didn't have this already created in us, this particular kind of high moral light or nature, if we didn't have it in our own creation or in our own human makeup, those laws, no matter where they come from, they wouldn't be enough to get compliance from us. Where is the evidence of this? There are some people who have followed wrong, so long that their souls that G-d created have given up on them. So, their soul won't even prick their conscience anymore. There should let conscious go on doing whatever they want to do. Let them be at ease in their wrong doing. This is in the Quran too, what I'm saying, the description of these people in the Holy Quran.
These people go on as if they have no conscience, that they don't have a conscience. And they don't obey anybody. You say, "Hey, why don't you stop behaving like that? Don't you know the laws against that? That's the law." Say, "Don't you respect your parents?" I can't continue that there. Say, "For goodness sake, don't you know G-d didn't create you to be like that?" The reply is all the same, same reply to everything. They don't care, "Don't you know you're destroying yourself?" They said, "Yes." There is a condition there right where we're just talking right now, in that particular condition is a person that cannot be affected by any moral law or by any authority. Why? Because they have ignored their own created policeman. G-d in creating each human being, created us with a policeman in the core of our life. They have ignored their own created policeman for so long that their policemen have given up on them. They say, "Well okay. You're own your own." Because they don't have that inherent policeman in their makeup, that created inborn policeman. They don't have it. No outside authority can have any effect on them.
That should tell us that we should appreciate this belief or this concept of man, of human life. That says, man is created by nature to be morally responsive and responsible. And to be rational, rationally responsive and responsible. G-d has created that. And if we based our political order, our governmental order on this belief, that the cornerstone or the real support for a democracy is respect for this inherent human value. That all of its citizens should be respected for having this inherent human value. As the constitution or the introduction to the constitution puts it.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. And are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Now, they translate for us the constitution people. They translate for us the pursuit of happiness, means the right to have property. The right to have my own little piece of land. The right to have my own house, my own real-estate. The right to have property. What about that right to life? They don't discuss it. The life that we all have the right to that make us equal, put us on equal footing is the right to freedom of mind.
To have your own intellect operate for you. The intellect with its rational agent and its moral agent. That's life. Without that, you don't have no life. When there is no brainwave on the chart, the doctor says, "He's dead." He may be still breathing but no brainwave. The doctor says, "He's dead or she is dead." The doctor knows more than some of the preachers know. Obviously. Now, in the Quran, I began with this consciousness when I first opened the address. I'm going back to this consciousness with a reference from the Quran, the holy book of the Muslims.
I'm going to give you the translation given here by Maulana Maududi. Although its translated slightly different by other translators. Or the one that he approves for his publication. Quote, 
"G-d has revealed to human nature the consciousness and cognition of good and evil." This is how translates it. Now, I will myself translate it because I know Quranic Arabic. And I’m a pretty good translator. “Then G-d revealed for it” meaning, the soul, “its cognition and its regardfulness. It's taqwa. He who know the term taqwa. 
I don't have to elaborate on it. Taqwa, and it's taqwa. Revealed for it is fujur. Fujur, its cognition and its taqwa, its regardfulness, its regardfulness. Its regardfulness is this sense of good and evil. This sense of right and wrong. This sense of correctness and error, et cetera. Moral sense. The moral sense is the taqwa. This fujur is the impulse in the mind. The urge in the mind to know. The urge in the mind to know, to see, to accept responsibility, mental responsibility. To accept responsibility for its own function. This fujur, it is the urge in the mind.
It comes before the taqwa. This urge in the mind or in the intellect to be curious, to want to know, to question things et cetera. To want to make the proper judgment, et cetera. This urge is before the moral conscience or before the moral consciousness. That urge is there. He gives the word, cognition for that. I feel a little bit uncomfortable with that word but I use it. I'm using it too. Cognition. We may use that word, cognition. Cognition. This urge, burst or impulse in the intellect that wants to accept responsibility for its own created life and functions.
Now, some translations call this urge in intellect the wrong in intellect. The defect. The defect in the human being. The wrong in the human being. The sin in the human being. The impurity in the human being. They call it all these names. In my opinion, this kind of thinking is influenced by certain thinkers in Christianity who hold that “man original life nature is sinful or the belief in original sin. The original sin. That Adam was created imperfect. And he committed the sin of the flesh or sin. That is the original sin. The first sin. All of us were lost from grace because of that sin of our first father. The original sin.”
That idea is unacceptable in Al-Islam. There is no such thing as original sin in Al-Islam. We believe that originally man was pure, without fault, without flaw, without error. What makes possible his flaws or his errors is the margin of freedom that G-d has created him for. G-d has created him for a margin of independent action or life. This margin of freedom that G-d has given us is what makes possible the errors.
When we start to act on our own, we are subject to error. But just as we are subject to error because, we're acting on our own, if we ever depend solely upon our creator, then our creator aids us. Comes to our rescue. And we will not be acting solely on our own again. And the same independent thought, the same independent action that caused error will then contribute to our wellbeing and keep errors out of our life. So, this is not a flawed human creature. This is a perfect human creature. But its perfection needs its G-d. It's creator to be respected, to be over it, then it can perform perfectly.
Now, I may go so far as to say, even by their own reasoning. They're saying not that man is originally flawed or sinful, they're saying that man is originally perfect. Why? Because they say that because of Jesus. The Jesus that they perceive in their own ideology, Christian ideology. Because of Jesus, all people are saved from that original sin. And how come Jesus now is not defected or imperfect like Adam? It's because, he has G-d with him and working in him. He is from G-d. That's what they say. Right? I'm won’t use all the language because it's not acceptable for Muslims to use all that language. I'm ignoring a lot of their language.
And at the same time, they say, "He is human.” Right? “He's human and divine." They're saying that, if a human being can be given to us who is perfectly human because he ate, he cried, he slept. He did everything human beings did and you know if he ate, he also defecated. I know you kind of frown upon that but this is reality. I'm sure you who signed up to be doctors, you frowned upon a lot of things, too that you had to do if you want to be a doctor. But it's the reality. He did all those things and when you read the Bible of him saying, “He had to be sanctified.” That's what the Bible says.
He had to be sanctified. He had to be taught. He was taught. He was sanctified. Read the Bible for yourself. You students of the book. Read again. He was taught, sanctified. Sanctified. Now, how can G-d be sanctified? See, it's more there than meets the eye. Right? That's what the Gospel said, “that this man they say was G-d on earth was sanctified and taught, baptized. Right? Yes. Baptized. Sanctified and taught. So, that's telling us that he was a human being in every aspect. That's what it's trying to tell us. He was a human being in every respect. What makes the difference? He had the divine agent in him, too.
What I've told you with this presentation today is that, G-d created every one of us with the divine agent. But if we keep ignoring it, we lose it. It won't work for us anymore. It will write us off and not work with us anymore. The divine agent is not quite the Will of G-d. It is the human nature responding to the Will of G-d that's in the man, too created by G-d in the human being. Now I'm trying to wrap this up quickly now. G-d says to us in the Quran, “that He has given everyone something of His Ruh.” And we know that Jesus Christ, the prophet Jesus, the Christ, he's Christ too in Al-Islam too, he's Christ. But not quite like the Christians believe.
That this prophet is also called, the prophet of the Holy Spirit, the prophet of the Holy Spirit. And this same Holy Spirit that is used in reference to Jesus. With reference to Jesus, it is also used as reference to every human being. G-d gave every human person something of His Ruh. Something of His Ruh. The Gnostics in the history of Christian thought, the early Christian movement. They believe that every man was born with the divine spark, the divine spark. And that if you didn't show that, that there was no evidence of that was in you, you weren't supposed to be treated as a real human being.
So, the majority of the people, the public under those Gnostics, the gnostic rule was considered like an animal public though they lived in human bodies. And for centuries, they oppressed the public. They ignored the needs of the public and treated the public like animals. That was their error. They made a big error. Education was needed. That's all. If you educate the public then the public will show that they have that special agent in them too. That G-d has created in them responding to the will of G-d in their own life or in their own make up. To have this excellence that we want, this spirit of human excellence, free and working in the society for the betterment of society that it continues.
That it doesn't ever stop and becomes stagnant and the society ever moves forward. Ever grow better and more rewarding for the human soul and the human life on this earth, we have to have public education. And public education should be more than public education as we understand it in school systems of this government. Public education should be also moral enlightenment, moral and rational enlightenment. And whenever our school systems, or governmental system fail to reach the public with the proper rational and moral guidance, it should fall then more heavenly on us as service of G-d to reach the public with moral and rational truths.
If we do this, then the Satan will be defeated. Satan can only be victorious in the world of man if we ignore revealed knowledge and ignore the sacred temple of the human conscience with its rational and moral life. Thank you very much and may G-d guide us and forgive us our errors always and peace. As-sal?mu ?alaykum.


