10/03/2004
IWDM Study Library
RESEARCHING OUR RELIGION, ESTABLISHING BUSINESS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOODS
PT. 2
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

00:01 Imam W. Deen Mohammed: And we have gotten now a new lifeline. And it has become so valuable in our soul, [chuckle] that really the soul won't even let us try to connect again with a life that's before this one. You hear me? Yes. Bad circumstances sometimes produce wonderful things, precious things. And a comparison is made of a blacksmith, who heats the metals, burn the metals, make 'em loose their shape and form, and they become formless and shapeless, they become liquid, taking the shape of whatever is holding them, or the container that the liquid is in. They lose their shape and have to take the shape of whatever is holding them. But the blacksmith is not through there; he just reduced it down to zero. So he can begin working it on again, he's gonna make something better than it was before. So eventually he makes a beautiful ornament, or he makes a beautiful weapon out of something that you would just pass by and kick aside on the road. I'll say, "Hey! That's worthless." But he picked it up, and he melted it down, took it out of its form that it was in, so it could be put into another form.

01:36 IWDM: That's exactly what slavery has done to our soul. It melted it, burn, and tortured our soul until it melted all the precious elements in our soul. Melted 'em all, but in melting it, it brought the draws up to the top. The impurities came up to the top. That stuff put on us by white supremacy, all floated to the top, and when we stood up in our new form, in our new body, that stuff just peeled off and cracked up, and fell to the ground, and here we are a shining new metal. A shining new metal. Yes. With Fredrick Douglas in our thinking, with WEB Dubois in our thinking. Yes. With Booker T. Washington in our thinking, Carter G. Woodson in our thinking, I don't know if there be Elijah Muhammad in our thinking... Yes. Big ideas in our thinking. And we look back and say, "Oh! G-d, were you the one preparing me to be this new creature? Did you just use that stupid white man to melt me down so I could get back up like this?"

[applause]

03:00 IWDM: Thank you G-d. The angel whisper from heaven, "You black folks, would you like to go back to Africa?" "Hell no! Hell no! What we've discovered here, hell no! We don't wanna go back." [chuckle] "Do you realize that once you were so anxious to stay there, you jumped off the ship that they had you on, and you drown yourselves in the water, thousands upon thousands of you, jumped over board and kill yourself, you're telling me you don't wanna go there not?" "Hell no! I'm happy right here in the United States of America, where my life started again in a fiery furnace of plantation slavery." And G-d was overseeing my burning, and he lift me up, cooled me off, precious shining metal.

03:57 IWDM: Yes? Allahu Akbar. So what is that to tell you? That when people go to the extreme of erasing, removing from the soul's awareness is form and picture that G-d wanted for it. G-d intervenes. G-d intervenes. And another thing, when people lie in the name of G-d, and make people believe that what they're saying actually came from G-d. G-d in time intervenes, and G-d will bring the victims of the lie to know the truth. Yes? And G-d will be their friend and comforter. Oh yes. That's what is happening to those black leaders, or African-American leaders, who have been sincere and true to themselves, to their G-d, and to their people.

05:00 IWDM: G-d has made his presence known to them, and they knew that we would survive 'till the time come when we could get ourselves situated to not only survive, but to prosper with everybody else in this America. They knew it, and you need to be told that again, and our leaders need to become aware of that again. They're nothing but little children lost from the adult parents who taught us the right way, the right way, and situated us for a good future. They need to be connected again with their parents so they can stop being children trying to lead children.

05:54 IWDM: And the time is here, and more and more I'm seeing signs of new leaders coming on the scene. New leaders are coming on the scene. Now, freedom we have, but if we don't have the right mind, this freedom can be very harmful. Freedom is only good for people in their right senses. A person not situated right in their own mind will not know what freedom really is for. Freedom, for conscious people, is not the freedom to do anything good or bad. Freedom for a conscious people, is the freedom to do things to better your life now and for the future.

07:01 IWDM: It's harmful to tell people they are free and knowing that they don't have the sense to understand what you're talking about. Knowing that they'd say, "Oh, free? That mean I'd do what I please." G-d says he has not made any human being and left that human being alone to do as it pleases; G-d says that. He said, he has put over every human person a watcher, to watch us, to record our behavior, and to credit us with our good actions, and to write down our bad actions so that our bad actions eventually punish us. Yes. He had put over us a writer to record, angels.

08:03 IWDM: You may not believe in angels; I do. Put over us angels to record what we're doing, to watch over us, to even support us against the things that are too big and too difficult for us to manage. When we are being right, or when we're innocent, maybe being wrong but innocent. He gave us these angels as guardians over us. Say, "No soul is left alone. No soul is without a guardian watching over it." Believe these things, even if you can't understand them fully with your minds.

08:52 IWDM: You know, if a ignorant person had nothing to help it but what his mind could understand, it sure wouldn't have a chance. Not even in this little town that I live in called Markham, wouldn't have a chance. It's only because there are people who care and a society that wants its citizens educated, etcetera, and protected, their rights protected, that such a poor soul would have a chance to live and prosper in the world with other people. So, never think that a small mind of a average person is the protection for that person, or for that person's family, or for that person's friends, and not even mention the neighborhood or the society that we live in or are part of, no.

09:54 IWDM: We have to get away from this idea that, "Oh it's me. The big I is me. I'm the big I, and I don't have to accept anybody or anything if I don't want to." That's the idea that Satan promotes. That's the thinking that Satan promotes, so he can take advantage of the many. All that he convert to that thinking, he know that he can take advantage of them. He know that they belong to him. To farewell now in this freedom that we have, this world of freedom, that's what it is. America offers the greatest margin or the greatest amount of freedom to its citizens. But at the same time, America provides for intellectuals, high-schools of higher learning, freedom of thought, freedom of mind, freedom of expression, so that the best human qualifications can be seen.

11:17 IWDM: And people can have a choice whether they go to the way of the ignorant of the way of the unlearned who don't respect anybody's thinking or anybody's mind. Or whether they choose an intellectual and listen to that intellectual, or choose a fine institution of learning, and go there and be educated. We have these choices. These choices that our special freedom gives us in America. So, we do have choices and no matter how much we criticize the conditions in our life, our neighborhood, in our homes, and how much we wanna blame it on the establishment, the system, the fact is we do have choices.

12:19 IWDM: You're not badly situated in America because there's no way out for you. You are badly situated because you won't make free choices, or if you make choices, you make the wrong choices. You choose to do nothing with your life, but let other influences manage your life for you. Song and dance, violence and sex, freaking off all your life until you're dead. Those are your choices. So we can't even blame Satan. No.

13:11 IWDM: We're told in scripture that when Satan is blamed for what people did to make them go to hell, to bring them to hell, Satan is gonna look at G-d and he's gonna say, "I didn't do that to them. They did that to themselves. I never forced anybody to do anything. I only invite them and they come." That's what he's gonna say. "I threw a party and I invited them. I didn't force them, to come. They flooded the door. They piled up at the door. I couldn't even open the door fast enough for 'em G-d. It ain't my fault. That's in them." But G-d knows the Devil set the thing up. He set the thing up. He determined your behavior. Satan, without light and guidance from G-d, determined your behavior. So G-d ain't gonna excuse him. G-d is gonna say, "To hell, you and them, both."

14:20 IWDM: Now, you didn't know that, did you? You didn't know that the Devil can be put in hell, you didn't know that, did you? I really didn't tell us that in the end of the world, when G-d concludes the matters, he's gonna put Satan in the hellfire with all the sinners that deserve to go to hellfire. And you'd be surprised, the majority of sinners don't deserve to go to hellfire. The majority of sinners deserve to be excused because they didn't do it, because they wanted or because they had that desire in them or because they had the interest in it, they were victims of circumstances. And when the light comes on, they make a different choice. So they won't go to hell. Don't think that everybody's going to hell. I hear people say, self-righteous people, they think just because they married and never touched a girl before they're married, that everybody that did is going to hell. No. No, there's something much worse to touch than a girl that will get you to hell quicker.

15:39 IWDM: To fare well, we have to be situated well. And guidance comes to us whether it's in the form of education or in the form of religious language or teachings, guidance comes to us to help us better situate ourselves. And the best guidance is the guidance that G-d revealed to his servants, the prophets and the messengers. That's the best guidance for situating us. But we get help from education. Education can situate us for success in life so that we survive and prosper, but if we ignore it and don't give it any respect, we take our own self out of the rays, and we eliminate our own selves from the good life that G-d wants for all of us.

16:30 IWDM: The spiritual pre-scriptures is concerned with three molds of life, and it's true for all these great religions, although in our holy book it gives it this way. It says that there's a natural tendency in a man's soul, and in his whole life, to behave impetuously; that is to behave without thinking, on impulse. To act on impulse. To act on a feeling. If you feel something just quick react. Something gets your attention, you quickly respond to it without questioning it, without examining it. This is the first mold of life in the soul of people. That's the first mold.

17:30 IWDM: Now, it's just a coincidence that I have on loafers today. I doubt if any of you have seen me in loafers before. I wear them sometimes. They're called loafers. And they've got a little space, a little place there for a penny, and we used to call them penny loafers and some people would say, criticizing another person, "Oh, I could buy him for two cents." Well, I'm wearing loafers today. Only thing I'm missing is two shiny pennies, I wish I had them. Two shiny pennies to put in my loafers.

18:13 IWDM: Well, that represents, they go on... The loafers go on your feet. So that represents that first level in the human soul. Where the human soul forms in that mold where it just reacts without giving hardly any thinking, just react. And that's the mold that little baby is in, average baby is in that mold, right? They're in that mold. They're in the mold that says, This is good. This is bad. This is hot. This is cold. This hurts. This feels good. I like you. I hate you. This is the baby mold. Now would you believe that some of you all are 68-years-old and still in that mold? 

[laughter]

19:08 IWDM: And you with me just because I do something that you like. "Oh I like the way he cracks those jokes, he's got humor. I'm going to see my leader today." "Oh, he's the son of Elijah Muhammad. I loved his father. His father is gone, I'm gonna stay with the son." That's not enough my friend. You should see my mind, you should see my thinking, you should see where I'm going with my thinking. And you will love me more and you will value me higher and you will become men and women instead of little babies in the mold. [chuckle] Of an infant. But that mold is good so the Quran says. Allah says that mold is good no matter how grown we get we're gonna have to, at some times in our life, resort to that mold. G-d put some questions before us sometimes. G-d put some matters before us to concern ourselves with sometimes.

20:20 IWDM: And they are matters that we can't fully understand, but if G-d says to us, to an obedient soul, "This is what I have prepared for you," that soul will never say, "I can't handle that." That soul accepts it. And sometimes it's our baby mold that have to save us from our adult mold. Because the adult mold say, "Oh, I ain't accepting that, nothing my mind can't handle." But the soul will resort to that baby mold, the infant mold, and the infant mold will say, "Whatever G-d says I have to accept and I'm gonna obey it." Won't use this rationale, won't use this reasoning mind, but will just say, "On faith G-d wants it for me, I accept it." Saying a little child shall lead them. Huh! If the leaders, our adult leaders, with all of their rational powers, all of their education and rational powers, if they don't have also in their makeup that infant that makes sense to them and the mind won't, they cannot lead us very long and they cannot lead us very far.

21:42 IWDM: And a child shall lead them. Praise be to Allah. But there's another mold, a higher mold as we get older and as we experience more with our thinking, with our curiosities and our hearts, it is the mold called Nafsan Lawwamah. This is the critical mold where a man is not just accepting everything or anything and saying good or bad, hot or cold, hurtful or pleasant. No! Man wants to know why it's hurtful, why it's pleasant, why it's good, why it's bad. He wants logic to support what he accepts into his mind that G-d created to be also a logic seeking apparatus, a logic seeking machinery. Huh? So he wants to understand these things not just accept that good, bad, hot, cold, like that. So that's Nafsan Lawwamah.

22:53 IWDM: And this mold brings him to become critical of his own family life. I'm speaking of us in the big family now that come critical of the human family. This mold can bring him to become critical of the human family, it can bring him to estimate human value very cheaply. His intelligence, his sciences, whatever he discovered with his intellect make him feel so much above the self he was before that he judge all common people as being inferior and not qualified to manage their own lives. That is what brought the world into monarchies that persecuted the majority of the people.

23:41 IWDM: Dictatorships, kingships and etcetera that persecuted and held down the majority of the people. Kept women down, kept females down, kept the race that they thought was not, or the people they thought was not in their level or on their level of enlightenment kept them down, too, and denied them freedom to qualify for the higher levels of society. This is history. This is history of human societies.

24:14 IWDM: All over this planet earth, don't think just in one area. On every continent, there was that kind of intellectual arrogance that kept the masses of people in slavery, virtual slavery. Not always under chain of physical things holding them, but denied them opportunities to be equally educated. Denied them the opportunity to equally progress in the society, equal opportunities in society. They denied them that. They wrote them off as being not qualified because they were not members of the elite. They were not members of the intellectual high rulers managing the world for them. They were not qualified for that, they said.

25:00 IWDM: They said by nature they're not qualified, that we who have this, we have this nature that they don't have, and they confuse their perception. And they thought that what they were perceiving as being their nature was really divine and that they were godly. They were like angels and Gods, and the common people were like animals. There were common people in our form as we appear to their physical eyes, but they are not in our true form. Their form is the form of the animals. And our forms are the forms of angels and Gods. Huh? 

25:42 IWDM: This is history I'm sharing with you now or helping you to review, if you know it all already. This is history. This was the majority of the world. Yes, I guess that's why Allah says, G-d says in our holy book, Aktharan-nasee-la ya'alamun. The great majority of people, they don't understand. They don't have that knowledge. Well, look, right now, you are in touch with what I'm saying to you, with your ears, with your eyes, with the thinking that's going on in your mind. And all of that is happening in the heaven of your body. Heaven means highly elevated. I'm not talking about heaven as you understood [laughter] at the church or somewhere. Heaven means highly elevated. What's you're staying in touch with me is something that's in the heaven of your statue, your structure, your anatomy, your head.

26:55 IWDM: Now, if we could put your head on a scale and weigh it, then put the rest of the body on a scale and weigh it. Your head in comparison with your body is small in weight, right? 

27:09 S?: Right.

27:09 IWDM: So it's the small that's overseeing the big, isn't it? 

27:14 S?: Right.

27:18 IWDM: Right, when you get leadership more than the body, ooh, you're in bad shape. You are in bad shape. You would think that if an animal has more ears, it's supposed hear better. That donkey is bad at hearing, the worst hearing creature G-d made, I think, is that donkey, and look how big its ears are. Big ol' ears, but you can't get it to hear anything. It just keeps straining to hear, "Get big and bigger, try to hear."

[laughter]

28:04 IWDM: Little mouse got little tiny ears, hears so well.

[laughter]

28:12 IWDM: It doesn't grow big ears to here, it's got little ears, little tiny ears. You get a creature with big 'ol ears... Now, the elephant got big ears too, but it can hear. Elephant got huge ears, but the elephant shows you my ears are not just for hearing. I fan myself with these ears, these ears have more than one purpose. Big ears, but more than one purpose. Yes, so this is important. We want leaders and we just want too many leaders. You can have a lot of leaders because after all when you sleep, your hand may be the leader. When you sleep, your hand might be the leader. Something bite you, hand is the leader, then wait for the mind to say something bite... You sleep and just slap.

[laughter]

29:12 IWDM: So we're gonna be sleeping, we can have a lot of leaders when we're sleeping. But once we wake up, we better have a few. [chuckle] Yes, we need a few leaders, not a lot of leaders, and make sure that they are all harmonizing, especially on major issues of concern. They're supposed to harmonize. They're supposed to be thinking alike.

29:38 S?: Yes, sir.

29:39 IWDM: If you don't, you have war and turmoil in the head. Huh? 

29:43 S?: Right.

29:44 IWDM: Yes, you don't want that, war and turmoil in the head. Here comes the tornado knocking down every good thought, uprooting every good idea, making wasteland of our work, of our labor in the mind. Yeah. Because you got too many what they call, diverse spirits in your head. So we don't want leaders that's thinking against each other. We want leaders that's harmonizing. The African-American people have one life. It's called the African-American life. We don't want leaders for that life that's at war with each other. We want those leaders to harmonize. Then we can have progress.

30:39 IWDM: If they war with each other, they should war with each other like the ideas of one man war with each other. They war with each other to determine which idea is best. Huh? And I guess that's why we have the election coming up for the presidency of these United States. We have John Kerry and we have George W. Bush. And they are debating, they're clashing. Swords of mind, ideas, etcetera. Viewpoints, perceptions of what is right and wrong for us now in these United States. So they are clashing, but they are clashing to see what thinking will rule or will win out. And the thinking that will rule or win out, the one that represents that more is the one we will pick, right? Yes. Well, that's good for us to have the freedom to quarrel, to debate each other.

31:41 IWDM: That's good. But let that be a seasonal thing. Not a thing that's happening all the time. For the African-American family people, family of people, we ain't doing nothing but arguing all the time. Our argument is not to come to a conclusion. Our argument is just to stay in argument. It's pitiful. It's pitiful. They embrace a Muslim leader, Christian leaders, embrace a Muslim leader. My brother, Assalamu alaikum my brother. Walaikum salam. Peace be on you, my brother. That's what the Muslim saying back to him, you see. Embrace the Muslim leader. My brother goes back to his church and say, "We better be careful of those Muslims. Better watch those Muslims. Before you know it they'd be taking the lead in our neighborhood." They have become the leaders. Better watch them. Not all of them are like that, but the great majority of them.

