04/04/2004
IWDM Study Library
Passions

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

Speaker: You now, the director of The Mosque Cares, Imam W. Deen Mohammed.
Congregation: Allahu Akbar.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Allahu Akbar. Thank you, As-Salaam-Alaikum.
Congregation: Wa-Alaikum-Salaam.
[applause]
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Well, let me first apologize for being late here, but I'm going to tell you the truth whether you believe it or not. My angel wouldn't let me come here sooner.
[laughter]
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: But I'm happy to be here if you are. I have a lot of good news, in a couple of minutes from Imam Plemon Al-Amin, from the Atlanta masjid that good things are happening here all the time. Let us begin by saying, we praise Allah, the creator that is. Allah of the worlds, Lord of all the worlds and we thank Him for the gift of revelation, we thank him for the gift of Mohammed the prophet, the last prophet, The seal all the prophets, who is of mercy to all the worlds.
We salute him in the traditional salute or salutation, salah walaikum salam, the prayers and the peace be upon Him, and upon the righteous servants, messengers and prophets of G-d, all. Ameen.
Congregation: [unintelligible 00:02:08]
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: One of my daughters, Ngina, asked that I come in and make a comment on my feelings about our monthly meeting this fourth month, fourth day, zero four, year 2000 being on Palm Sunday. Well, she asked that I include a comment in the address for today. That's what she asked. Well, another daughter of mine asked that I include a piece from Poetic Reflections too, but she asked this sometimes ago and she asked that I include it whenever I'm making an address to a gathering.
She asked this, she thought it would be nice, it'll go well with my address and I could make a poem, I've become very good in rhyme. I could make a poem for every occasion and I do have one for today as she asked, and I really have some comments on Palm Sunday. It's titled Bossing Me. Bossing me.
[laughter]
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Let me see if I got it here.
[laughter]
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: I don't try to-- Good to see all of  all the time when I see all of your faces, I know you. You make me feel so good. 
“When wrong am I trusted to be alone, most private as a trust is my life from pre-mortal dust. And our streets down for me, my body members do badly, when I recall what mama said, a sharp pain runs up my body into my head. She wishes she had never had me”.
“Nature gone to those streets, crossed me. Funny bone bossing me until all my fun is lost. Moral thought from every immoral boss, free me, only you are faithful to what I ought to be. When tempted to turn from you, you call me back. When I'm put down or held up, please do that. Don't leave me free to live a lie. I can't count up what the life of lies is costing me. Moral thought there's every reason why you should keep on bossing me”.
[laughter]
[applause]
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Allahu Akbar.
[applause]
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: For a few minutes, I want to just talk on passions. Passions.
Love is an emotion, you know, but love also becomes a passion. You could love someone passionately and we should love G-d and love righteousness and love kindness, et cetera. Passionately, it’s the things of this passing world that cause our passions to become destructive, very destructive. And they destroy us and they destroy others and they destroy the good in our life. Passions.
This world is designed by or I should say, yes, man's world allows Satan to design the culture to take life out of our control and burns up our own passions in the fires of our own passions. I'm not speaking anything that's not in Scripture. I'm just coming from that, I'm expressing my thoughts and my words are coming from that, from what is in Scripture.
Yes, we want to establish ourselves as a people responsible for our life, at least in the amount that is expected of any intelligent person or intelligent people, and we have not done that. We succeed individually and perhaps in isolated groups' separate efforts from the effort of establishing our life as a people, our life in our neighborhoods.
We succeed. We got many very successful individuals that I can mention at this time but as a people, when we look at our condition on the whole by looking at our condition in our neighborhoods throughout these United States, we see that we stand out as an unnatural people. It's natural for a people to support their group life. It's natural for a people to try to, as much as possible, be responsible for the life of their neighborhoods, that is, for those structures that supply or represent their daily needs. Grocery stores, restaurants, currency exchange, banks, et cetera. All of the business structures and the residential structures should be accepted by us as our responsibility. You can measure the industry of a people not a member from among them, not a particular group from among them but the people taken all together collectively. You can measure their industry by the structures that they support their life with or buy in their neighborhoods. You go to ethnic neighborhoods and you see them having grocery stores, clothing stores, restaurants, travel agencies, banks, et cetera.
You come to the African-American neighborhood and you see other people with those things not us. I say this is peculiar to us because even in the Spanish neighborhood and the Haitians they just came here recently and they came here really on charity. On the charity of good people in the government, our government. Helping them get over here because they were in bad shape, terrible shape.
But only here a little while they able to work together and improve their condition and pretty soon they are coming into our neighborhood running businesses because we neglect to do that ourselves. We leave that big opening on the broom for others to come in and do the job that we should be doing. It's passions that we can't managed our own passions. As a people we’re ruled by emotions and passions. That's not good. People can never be established if they want to be ruled by emotions and passions. When the Scripture remind us of the order of the heavens and of the bodies that we know to be up there, planet, stars, moon, stars, et cetera, obeying the design given to them by Creator, that is telling us that even the sun that itself is a symbol of passion. It follows the discipline, it follows order in the heavens. Its movement is already regulated. Where it goes and what it can do, is already designed for it. And it has followed that for unknown numbers of years and it obeys and every day the same. G-d in the Scripture points us to that, to tell us that we are created too to conform to the natural disciplines that G-d himself designed for us when he created our first fathers in the garden of paradise.
They were tempted by the Satan according to the scriptures, they were tempted out of their original obedience that G-d created them for. Seduced, tricked by Satan and that brought our down fall, trouble, bad behavior, self-destructive behavior like so. Then G-d also tells us that his, Their measurable mercy saved our parent. He was relieved and got back on the path of obedience and was lifted up to heaven by Almighty G-d his Creator. That is to say, that we don't have to remain out of our nature that G-d created for us. We have in our own make up what we need to change that for us. G-d made us vulnerable, subject to error, limited as a creature but he also gave us something in our hearts, something in our souls, something in our intelligence, et cetera that can save us, they can redeem us if we will only respond to the best of our motives, to the best of our motives. We can save ourselves. As a people we are characterized by playfulness, lust and stupid crimes. We can change that. There are many words in Scripture addressing this either to condemn the wrong, show the wrong guide us to the right or just pointing to what is excellent, that supports life, and accounts for the good state and progress of life.
When G-d says that the religion revealed to us is a religion of the original nature or the religion of man's origin, - origin as an intelligent and moral life or creature, ( He says the following in Arabic), “ is religion of origin upon which he has fashioned or patterned all people”. All people. Not one people, all people.
When you find people respecting human nature, respecting human values and reflecting that respect and all of their works, you'll find the people not neglecting themselves individually, not neglecting themselves collectively. They will be responsible for themselves at home, they will be responsible for their public. I didn't say in the public, intentionally.
They will be responsible for their public. Where is the African-American public? The Polish has a public. He steps out into the public life and for blocks and miles maybe he drives through the area that is the public and who is in that probably responsible for that area, Polish. Similarly it is similar it is for me for the Irish and others when you drive to our neighborhood, who is responsible for the public? Everybody but us. That has to be changed. That has to be change. I don't have any time to teach you how to pray. I don't have any time to teach you how to be good until we learn how to look at our neglect as a people in our neighborhood, and do something about it. The answer for us individually and the answer for our families is for us to wake up to our shameful neglect as a people on our neighborhoods.
Congregation: Right.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Nothing else is worthwhile talking about, until we wake up and follow the good advice for changing that. I said so much with that poem. I am going to conclude it right here. Thank you very much for being here. Hope to see you next month in the first Sunday of the month. And a blessed day to you here and also to the Christians, a blessed day to them come Easter Sunday. Peace be unto you. As-Salaam-Alaikum
[applause]
[background noise]
[00:22:06] [END OF AUDIO]
 
