07/29/1989
IWDM Study Library 
Kansas, MO

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Now, some of us don't like this language, but when the person is mentally impaired and they have to go to a mental institution and has to be cared for all the time, and watched 24 hours a day, we accept that no matter how old he is, "oh he is 40 years old, don't treat him like that!" He has to be treated like that. It is mercy and kindness to treat him like that. And let me tell you something. There are many of us in the public of all nationalities, European, Asians, Africans, of all nationalities. There are many of us, all national origins. There are many of us grown, grown men, 21, 41, 61, 71, 81, 91, that are by clinical classification, sane, but are totally irresponsible and must be cared for by children. And that's mercy and kindness of us to care for that person as a child. We shouldn't insult him and say, boy, don't insult him and say, boy, we have to respect what Allah has created him to be and say, Mr.

But treat him as a child because he's not table of anything else. He's not ready for anything else. He's not anything different treatment. Mr. John, come over here and treat him as a child, a sister Mary, come over here. Treat her as a child. She must be treated as a child because she needs it so badly and she can't survive except that she gets that kind of treatment. Yes, that's mercy and kindness. It's not disrespect. It's only disrespect when you say "you dumbbells." We enlighten people in the religion. And I'm not speaking of just Muslim, but others. We enlighten people in the true idea that G-d has given to us. We enlighten people. We respect the sacred vessel, though the mind has lost its senses. We respect what Allah intended that creature to be. Though that creature has fallen somehow off the great, great, great pedestal. We have to respect what Allah intended to be.

So, we respect the human that Allah created. Although the person is not capable of respecting the excellence that is in the human Allah created, we must respect that. So even though the person is dumb and ignorant in his behavior, we don't say, "hey boy, come here." I say we, I mean the best of us. We know you can go to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Chicago. What you talking about? You, Chicago, Kansas City, and you'll find some Muslim behaving in ignorance. "Boy, come here" and be talking to a grown up man. "Boy, get your so and so over here." But that's just ignorant and bad behavior that we will find in the majority. Allah evolves the minority. And that minority should be responsible for bringing up the rest or at least serving the well-being and good future of the rest. Some want to even charge that we are a people who have false pride. You cannot type cast us that way because our religion condemns these things as major sins. The media in its treatment of news overseas and Muslim lands have carefully, carefully and very, very subtly concentrated on certain figures as Idi Amin, Qadafi of Libya. Khomeini, who has passed. And may G-d forgive him his sins if he had any and admit him to the paradise. Ameen! And I mean that from my heart.
But they have made it a point to put these kind of figures before us. Before they were putting these figures before us, who they published in America for you to look at as a Muslim leader, Elijah Muhammad, my father, Elijah Muhammad, my father. So, in doing this, in favoring the presentation of certain people, of certain types or characters and not presenting others, that are in the majority, majority of the people were not of my father's type and character. The majority of the leaders in Al Islam, in the Muslim lands and in the Muslim world are not of the character and type that my father was. Majority of them are not like Idi Amin. Majority of them are not like Gaddafi. And I have great respect for all these people I met. Don't think that I'm trying, that I have a desire to disrespect or insult them. No, everybody have good and bad and in their situations they're excellent. In Qaddafi’s situation, he has been excellent. You don't know the situation if you think otherwise. I know what Colonial dominators did for Libya. I know how they treated the Libyan. I know what the Libyans had to do and how they had to sacrifice and the blood they had to shed to get respect or at least to get them to get off their back.

So, I say given the circumstances, yes, Gaddafi has behaved in an excellent way. Given the circumstances, Idi Amin behaved in an excellent way. They used to make, Idi Amin, as a young man, when he came to visit the office of any of the colonial empire who occupied his land. When he came to visit the office, what he had to do, he had to bend down. They made him bend down and walk in like this....

And then stand up and to speak to the ruler, or the one in charge when they were dominating his land. So, what did he do? When he got in power, he built a door so low that nobody could come into his office. See, that's what the media wont tell you about Idi Amin. They just tell you, he's unruly, he's unpredictable, or his mind is taken over by syphilis. They tell you all that stuff. He's a crazy man, he's a despot. A despot means that he imagines that he has absolute power.

Like a G-d almost, that whatever he says has to be and has to go and whatever he wills has to happen. That's the mark of a despot. So, they want us to see Muslims as despots. They want to see Muslims as despots. Now, I mentioned Elijah Muhammad. Some of you probably say, well, he shouldn't mention honorable Elijah Muhammad in that kind of reference or in that kind of context. But let me tell you, I have no problem admitting that the honorable Elijah Muhammad presented himself as a dictator. He presented himself as an absolute authority. You didn't question him. You had to obey what he said. You had to just be afraid to even ask him sometimes an intelligent question, if you thought that it implied a little atom of disbelief.

So, I'm his son. I knew him. And there are many people who followed him. They knew him. In fact, my sister, Rayyah, my sister who knew him before I did, she's here and she looks so young, looked like I knew him before she did. But I'm the younger, she's older. So, we got many people here, witnesses, they knew him. Many of these brothers, some brothers out here, I see some faces. They have been in the private company of honorable Elijah Muhammad. And they knew him close up. In fact, we have one here who was as close to him as I was, maybe even closer because he had to stay with him in his old age and care for him and be with him constantly. And I didn't. And that's the excellent man, the excellent man that I tip my hat to all the time. Brother Albert Karriem. Will you stand with Albert Karriem, please stand. And I can't help though, its not particularly in line with the talk that I'm giving, but I have to also go off the subject and mention the one who's sitting right next to him. A man that I salute, man that I respect. To me, he's my father. Those men, they're like my bosses.

That's right. I respect them as I would my boss. And that is Marcellus Jordan, please stand up. Great man, great man! He knew my father before I did. He preached my father's, the message of the teacher of my father who was called Fard and teach my father's teachings before I knew anything about it. The man that just stood up there, Marcellus Jordan. So, if I was going to tell outrageous lies, I wouldn't pick this time. I wouldn't pick any time. I love truth.

So, why did they let the honorable Elijah Muhammad stay in the background for so long? They know that the African-American has been denied attention. He has been denied acceptance. He has been denied recognition in the public's eye, recognition in the world's eye. And they knew that psychologists told them, leave him in the dark, leave him in the background. Keep him hid for as long as he's hid, he's going to try to be seen, and that's going to make him grow. We want him to grow. We want his religion to grow. We want his following to grow so that we can show this picture of Muslims in America and get people to think that this is Islam. Yes.

So, they kept him in the dark for a long time. And then when the time was best for them, not for the honorable Elijah Muhammad, but when it was best for them, they needed something to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, the Civil Rights Movement. They needed something to discredit that. They didn't have any decent justification. The intelligent ones, the civilized ones, had no decent justification to deny what Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement was all about. No. So they needed someone to rebut them, someone to fight them, someone to oppose them, someone to criticize them. Hey, here's time for this group that we have been working on, this group that we've been keeping in check and letting just grow in a good incubator. Oh, it's time to let them out now. Let them out of the incubator and let them come out here and let them do our work, of holding the Civil Rights movement back. So, the honorable Elijah Muhammad was projected at that time. It was during the sixties when the Civil Rights movement came to its fullness and the honorable Elijah Muhammad's movement came to its fullness during the sixties. After that, both went down.

And how did they go down? The System! The wicked bosses in the System. Their policymakers designed it that the two were to neutralize each other so that the African-American people could never come to a unified purpose, a unified direction, a consistent direction and sense of where they should be going. So, we had the Civil Rights movement rejecting the honorable Elijah Muhammad and his movement for independence, for separation, and independence of African-Americans. They were , two, giving the people a choice here, who do you want? You want Civil Rights movement or the Nation of Islam? Who do you want? And knowing that many of our African-American people have been conditioned over the long period of history and abuses to want to get the hell away from all white people. But also knowing that there are many others that had enjoyed association with whites, as students of theirs, as cooks of theirs, as doormen of theirs, as chauffeurs of theirs, as teachers of theirs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there would be a great number of them that wouldn't want to get away from whites, but would have a strong compulsion to get more closer to being white.

And for many, many reasons, we don't have the time to deal with all of it, for many, many reasons. Now, I am saying that the honorable Elijah Muhammad was presented to us in America as the Muslim, but they didn't say the Muslim just only, they said leader of the black Muslim, leader of the black Muslim. Why leader of the black Muslim. So, you would not be hearing that there are other Muslims than blacks. They want us to think that the honorable Elijah Muhammad Muslim was the only Muslim. And don't you know, many of us still, in the population of United States are not aware of the 1 billion, hundreds and hundreds of millions of Muslims in Africa, in Asia and all over the world. Many of us right now, many of us African Americans, we are not aware of that. When we hear Muslim, we think Elijah Muhammad and his followers, Farrakhan, Malcolm. That's about it.

When the truth of the matter is, and this is refuting the lies. The truth of the matter is, and if you want to get, check the source that I'm quoting from the book that I'm now referring to is titled Race and the Democratic Society by a scientist of human behavior, human history and nature. Franz, F-R-A-N-Z, Boas, B-O-A-S. In this book, he is dealing with the evil of racism, in a part of it. But the book itself is dealing with the need to serve true democracy and the importance or the need in a democracy that every intellect be free, that the intellect of man be free. So that was his main object in writing that book. But he deals very seriously with racism in that book also. And what does he give as his strongest argument against the charge of the races that we are inferior?

That the children of Africa, the people of Africa are inferior. That Negroes in America, as it was called in that book or at that time we called Negro, are inferior. What is the main element he gave to refute that? He said, he quoted visitors, men of statue and intellect from the Western world that visited, but they made visits into Africa in the Sudan and other places where Muslims were before the colonial people had changed everything so much. And he gave that report saying that these particular people who visited, they found a striking difference in the mentality and attitude and disposition of the Muslim, the Muslim black, from that of other blacks that they had met of non Muslim classification. He said they were industrious and he points to Askia. That's one of the great Muslim leaders in the past history of the African people, Sunni Ali and others. He pointed to them, and one of them, he said of him that this man is a clear argument against the racist belief that black or the African man cannot rise to the same level of the European man. Said because, this man ruled over his people and brought them dignity, self-respect, industry, science and civilization on a high level. Said that there was public decency, respect for life, respect for property, respect for work, respect for science and industry. Some of us can't imagine that there was science and industry. Don't you know, science and industry has been around for a long time. Some of us think science and industry began with the steam, the invention of the steam engine or something. Yes, we are just that naive. Yes. So, science was around here, 5,000, this is recorded, 5,000, maybe even 6,000 or more years ago, science was being practiced in Africa. Yes, also in Asia many thousands of years ago. And perhaps if they keep researching, they'll find it in Europe. In fact, the white man has to find it in Europe. He's working on it. I don't blame him. I would be working on it too. Even though he has been so proud or hurt, everybody else, looked like he looked like. He would say, well, hell, I don't care if they did beat me yesterday, look where I am today. But still some of them, they want to prove that they were even up there yesterday.

That's good. Nothing wrong with that. Now, to say that this religion now has fed fanaticism, emotional blindness, false pride, despotism tyranny, racial supremacy, racial arrogance. So, they know what they tried to do with Muhammad. They tried to publish him. Say, oh, you think white supremacy is bad? Here is black supremacy and he's a Muslim.

Domination of females. All this charge, all these charges leveled at the Muslim, and they all are false. It was Prophet Muhammad who gave, sent it to every male because the males before the preaching of Prophet Muhammad that had been a prophet Muhammad, the males had been savagely treating their females. They saw their females as their property. Same way many of you see your females today in the West. They saw their females as their property, and they didn't even respect even the most sacred formalities, marriage and divorce. Whenever they wanted to divorce a female, they would simply say, be to me as my mother's rear, which is a terrible and ugly insult. Should have been punishable by at least 80 lashes, if it was a civilized society. But they did that. They used to have sex in the road in the broad daylight.

They marched around the Kaaba in the nude performing the rituals and many other things we can tell you about that time. They prided themselves in having men for their warring clans, for their work chores and et cetera. So, they valued men so much that it caused them to devalue women so much that they often buried the female alive rather than to acknowledge that they had a female child, another female was born. This is all in the Holy Book. And for the want of time we had to keep moving. So that's the kind of society the prophet came to. And he gave incentive to the males because the females had been held back. He said, if any male will educate two daughters, Allah will give them the paradise. Now, how is this religion now a religion that wants to suppress or hold women down when the Prophet gives the incentive to all, that's to us now, whatever the Prophet said is for yesterday and now the same invitation is given to us now.

Any of us who will spend time and interest to educate two of his daughters, we deserve paradise. According to the teachings of the Prophet, we will get paradise. That's for then and now. It is education that provides the best situation for liberation and equality. No other situation than the liberal education provides the situation best for human beings to rise up into equality. Not only females, but we are missing now, correct education. We are missing correct education. The emphasis are wrong for us in education. The African-American people have lost a sense of priorities, a sense of priorities for us as a people in our given conditions, we have lost a sense of priority. We have lost what our leaders had during the earlier days of our time. And I'm speaking of those in the South, those in the work field, going all the way back to Sojourner Truth, all of them. And the later ones, Dr. King, Benjamin Mays, and all of these excellent people, and many of them, they had a better perception and a better grasp on what we should be about as a people, where our emphasis should be, where our priorities should be in education and in life and everything that we have now. We have fallen, and we don't need anybody to preach that to us and to force us to believe that all we have to do is just walk through the African-American population, walk through the cities where we are, and see that anyone functioning in the people as a human being, and we know that we have fallen, we have fallen, we have fallen, we fallen low from what we were. Although there are still an excellent number, that few that is needed to lift us all up. If we would just come together and organize and get more serious and have more courage and not be defeated by what's going on in the African American population, but have the courage to say, Hey, we can handle this. I am not saying we don't have the excellent people. We still have the excellent people, but the majority of us, the great multitudes have gone crazy as shit. Excuse. Excuse me, crazy.

So crazy, they frightened a primitive man from the jungle. Man came out the jungle, never seen some of this..."Get back, get back!

And want to integrate with white people and better class people. They ain't ready. We've got to help those children, please. Now, there's much that I would like to offer today in support of the position I established when I began this address, and that is that the best argument to deal with all these lies, misconception is established when we conform to the best that we claim. Then they can lie. But people will say, no, that's a lie. I see those people. So, in my conclusion, let us not fail ourselves. Peace be unto you, as salaamu alaikum.


