03/1997
IWDM Study Library
Celebrating Life

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Imam Mohammed: As-Salaam-Alaikum, peace be unto you, or peace be upon you. Really for the Muslim is peace be upon you. This religion obligates us to be responsible for keeping the peace and we want the good life and Allah wants all of us who are sane members of the Muslim society to accept responsibility for keeping the peace. We are the people of the book, the scripture. We are people of the promise pardon me, in the scripture that they would be peace-loving people and peacemakers. We’re the people of peace. Muslim means peace, Islam means peace, our greetings means peace. It obligates us to keep the peace and be responsible for the peace.
Life, celebrating life. It so happened that this is a time of the year when three great religions are really in a sense celebrating life. Either [arabic language] for us, as a celebration of life. The life that Allah wants for us, that our Lord, the creator of G-d wants for us is a celebration of life. Victory for life celebrates the victory for life. The Hajj is contention. Hajj. Hajj means contention. Forces are meeting. Forces are coming against each other for Hajj. Forces are coming against each other and that's life. Life is contention, the forces of life are in contention with the forces of death.
Death comes in many forms like life comes in many forms. Life comes in human form, the human form comes in many forms, emotional form, spiritual form, rational form. We have all these forms of life and death comes in many forms just like life comes in the many forms. Death comes in emotional form. Sometimes our emotions kill us, our emotions destroy us and so our reasoning kills us. The Satan suggested a kind of reasoning to our father Adam peace be upon him and he was deceived by the kind of reasoning that the Satan suggested to him. He accepted that kind of reasoning and death took away his life.
A form of death took away his life. He had the life before and he lost it, he lost it to the death, a kind of reasoning that the Satan sold him. We know that Scripture says, “Sin is death.” Bad morals take away the good morals and the good morals are life. The bad morals is the death. Death and life are in contention. Is that correct? They are in contention and G-d put us here to be victorious. Allah created us to be victorious not to be losers, not to be defeated. He put us here to be victorious and he trusted us in the arena of the universe.
Isn't that something? G-d created a little creature like me and trusted me to be in the arena of the universe and really equipped me to survive and be victorious. I just need a lot of help. That's all, I need a lot of help [laughs] to survive the many forms of death that come at me.
Thank G-d with the help of His revelation, we can always be victorious because the help that we need and the revelation to even survive Satan's suggestions, is right in the book, right in revelation itself. The help we need to survive this is the suggestions of Satan himself, that Adam, our father fell victim to the suggestions of the Satan. With the Quran, we don't have to fall victim to suggestions of the Satan. Really, G-d created us for life. To have the life, the good life and once we know it, the life is our salvation. The life itself is our salvation. Our salvation is the life that G-d chose us that G-d created us for. That's our salvation. The life itself is the salvation. I repeat the life itself is the salvation.
We don't expect salvation to come to us from persons. Salvation comes to us in the life if we accept the life that is the salvation yes. This is the Old Testament, this is the New Testament. This is Islam. Yes if we accept the life that G-d created us for, that is our salvation and the call of Islam isn't it the call to life? It’s the call to life. Haya alla salah.
That's the first thing we- call we get in the morning supposed to get it five times a day haya alla salah and they translate it come to prayer but the haya means life haya the word haya means life. Here haya is used as an imperative, a command and an imperative, an order, telling us to come to life. Haya alla salah.
Actually, it's an order to accept the life to come to the life. Where's the life firstly? The life is in the G-d's guidance. The life is in G-d's guidance and we receive the life from G-d's guidance and that life comes into us from G-d's guidance and once it comes into us, it becomes our life. Actually, to start with, we are asking for life. The little baby, newborn baby that comes here, it opens its mouth and it gasps and is breathing is asking for life. Then we give it the support it needs and it begins to come into the life of a human being, a person in the human environment or the social environment with mom and daddy and the children.
It comes into the human life that G-d wants for it but that life can only keep us for so long without the guidance of G-d. The Satan is too much of a challenge for us having only that life that the social environment enables us to come into because the Satan he has a bigger influence to attract us than the social life influence. He will come in later and take us away from that good innocent the baby life and we find ourselves in hell if we're not careful. He’ll invite us to the life that will be hell for us if we're not careful. G-d has to reveal his way and reveal the life.
The call to the Muslim every day is haya, come alive. That's what it means. Haya alla salah, come alive to prayer. Now, it means wake up, be conscious, become conscious and consciousness is a life. For the human being who loses consciousness, the medical profession will say that person is dead. If they can't be brought back to consciousness, they say they are medically or clinically dead right? They'll be clinically dead just like a vegetable no human life exercise there in that body.
This is the call to life is a call to become conscious of yourself and of your obligation to G-d who created you become conscious. Now when we come to the prayer, what are we going to be given? We think of prayer as prayer and very few of us will have it dawn on our mind that really our prayer is the Quran. Our prayer’s the whole Quran. In the month of Ramadan, we follow the prayers and when the month of Ramadan is finished, we have- we've heard, recited and followed the whole Quran in prayers. This is what is so special for Islamic prayer, the Muslim prayer.
By the way, the Hon. Elijah Mohammed said, in about 1959 I think it was, he published in an article of his, he said, “There is no greater prayer form than the Muslim prayer form.” That's what the Hon. Elijah Mohammed said. Some of us we only remember what the honorable Elijah Mohammed said about the white man. I remember what he said about G-d, about prayer, about Islam, about Muslims. I remember a lot of things he said and to me is much more important than just remember what he said about white folks.
Yes, the honorable Elijah Mohammed said, in his article that was published in the paper New Amsterdam. I think it was Amsterdam News, a black publication he said that there is no greater prayer form or service than the Muslim prayer form, or the Muslim prayer of service. He also put out a little prayer book at the time to help us learn how Muslims pray. That didn't last very long but he did do it, which tells us that that was one of his concerns, was to have us learn the real Muslim way. Yes, so getting back to the life now celebrating the life.
The life then is G-d's word, isn't it? The real life that we are called to, is the Quran and the Quran is G-d's word. So, the real life is G-d's words. We’re asked to come to G-d's word for the life G-d wants in us. Come to prayer. Haya, living alive, come living, come alive to prayer and what is going to support that life? The Salah and what is the Salah? The word of G-d. Haya alla salah. Come living, come alive upon what, - the Salat.
G-d says, “Every creature that He has made, birds and all, they know their mode of Salat. This Salat is a bigger-- It takes it takes the Islamic philosophers to really discuss these things to us and bring out the great messages for us, for our life that are hidden in the core of these terms. Hidden in the composition of these terms, it’s great, the message. Come to life. Come alive and come to the life. The life is prayer. The life is our prayer, pray five times a day. Why five? Because life is five. Life is five. The life and community is five. It can't be ordered by six or by seven.
It must be ordered by five because the common person must be able to understand the order of his society and be able to share responsibility for the order of his society. The real order for ordering society is the order that respect the common five senses of man. We can’t have a society based upon intuition or ordered by intuitiveness. We can’t have a society based solely upon moral life or moral taste. It must be a society that respects the common rational senses of every person, male and female, young and old.
This is the way civilization has moved. Civilization has moved to respect the five senses of man. Some people have six point stars some people have eight point stars representing their social order. We have five point star and most of the nation's got five point star representing the social order that the citizens must uphold and live under. You see, there’s the order of the common man and that was a great American during the revolution who said, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Give me liberty or give me death and liberty for even the intellectual, is the liberation of his common sense. I was watching TV and they were giving this lawyer a lot of attention on TV, I forget his name now I got it in my notes but I didn't come out here with that today but often, I refer to this to get us to appreciate common sense. Healthy common sense, natural life common sense. He was asked to explain what accounted for all his wins in court. He said, “Well most of my opponents," he said, "they come to court with the law books." He said, "I come to court with the law books and common sense.” [laughs].
With the law books and common sense and again one of the great Americans who helped us to get slavery off our backs and come to a liberating idea of what life is, of what democracy is. He said, pardon me, he didn't say he wrote a book putting importance on common sense. Paine, what’s his full name? Thomas Paine. Common sense, that was what he brought to the people. Common sense. He appealed to the citizens to respect what is common sense.
They could break the grip of old ideas on them and come to a more liberal society, a more liberal perception, a better perception, a clear perception of what a liberal society should look like, common sense.
G-d created us with common sense and if we going to be alive, we have to be alive as common sense people. We see the five senses first in their role in the biological body, in the flesh body. We see with our eyes, we see visually concrete objects or objects that we can perceive with the physical sight with our eyes. That’s the sense of sight. One of the great senses, the sense of sight and we smell objects that are in the air that give off aroma or some kind scent with all nose, the sense of smell and we hear, the sound of objects with our ears. The sense of hearing.
We taste things put in our mouths, to see if it’s salty or sweet or sour or bitter or whatever with our tongue and that’s the sense of taste, the fourth. We feel things with our skin, the sense of touch. We have these five senses in the physical body but these five senses also have counterparts in the abstract body. Perception with the eye should be associated with a higher evolution of perception, that's perception in the intellect.
We see also with the intellect, that's a higher perception, that’s a higher sense. All of these are common senses that we have by our natural creation. Our natural creation has provided us with these common senses and their counterparts in the rise or evolution of the senses. Perception in the physical body is evolved to perception in the intellect. Smell in the physical body evolves to intuitiveness, intuitive power in the soul. Hearing in the ear evolves to an intuitive hearing, that’s above hearing with just the ear in the intellect.
All of these senses even the touch. Our sense of touch and the physical body evolves to moral touch or I would say emotional touch in the abstract body. Emotional touch. We know what feels good emotionally, what feels bad emotionally. How we should respond to that feeling emotionally. This is a higher evolution. This is in the abstract body.
So, all of the senses are firstly in the biological body, the flesh, and blood body but they evolve. The human being is an evolving life, rising life, rising to higher planes of reality. Higher planes of perception. Consciousness, they say. Higher planes of consciousness. So, this is the human being. This is our common inheritance. These are our common properties. Our five senses are our common properties and you know that there’s the story about the prayers, the number of prayers that we say. How we came to have these five prayers ordered.
The story says that Moses saw Muhammad going to G-d for guidance and he told Muhammad, peace be upon the prophets. I'm going to give it to shortened in my own version of it. Okay. He said, “My experience tells me that you need to ask G-d to shorten the prayers.” We were praying 50 a little bit too much.
He suggested to the prophet that he ask G-d to shorten the prayers so G-d did. G-d shortened the prayers to five instead of 50 to five prayers. Now I don't know if that Hadith is really a sound Hadith or not. I don't know how much to trust that Hadith, but I do trust the wisdom of the Hadith but to say I really believe the prophet said that, I can't be sure that he really said that but I do trust the wisdom of that Hadith.
What he it is saying is that “The leader must lead the people through and with respect for their common sense." He must lead them through their common sense communicate to them through their common sense and lead them through their common sense and with respect for their common sense five. 50 to me, implies an educated perception of your common senses. That’s what 50 to me implies. An educated perception of your common sense. In other words, you are intellectually conscious of your five senses in your body. You see what I'm sharing with you now. What I've been sharing with you, the higher senses.
How the senses graduate and how the five move up into higher planes of perception and reality and that's okay for this discussion but we want to help everybody out there in the street, we better not trying to have all this discussion with them. Order the society so society respects the healthy life of the five senses and supports and feeds the healthy life of the five senses and that's what we should do. Then you take care of the business.
The Quran is the word of G-d and the Quran feeds life on all levels, feeds life on all levels. The most uneducated one of us is fed amply, sufficiently by the Quran when we hear it. And the most ardent one of us for learning, for knowledge, is also fed, amply, sufficiently, when they hear the Quran, is actually always ahead of us, bigger than us and ahead of us. The Word of G-d is always bigger than our minds and ahead of our minds. Those faithful students or scholars of Quran, they accept what G-d has revealed and they believe that the book is enough for us till the Day of Judgment.
No matter how long we human beings live on this earth, it will be supplying them with guidance. With the light, the guidance and the way to have a life and to have it as the Bible says more abundantly. It calls us to [arabic language]. Surely we have given you abundance. [arabic language]. Therefore, pray to your G-d make prayer to G-d and strive hard. Prayer and effort. Life and effort. Isn't that what life is? Life and effort, no effort, you lose a life. Life and the effort. Make the firm effort for the good life.
Now to have the life, G-d wants us to know that he is the giver of life. G-d is the giver of life, the same one who gave us this biological life that we must have in order to have a presence in the world. To have the life, to have consciousness and to be living in a real world, we have to have this biological flesh and blood body. The same one that provided for you a home for your first life, will give you the second life. He's going to give you a second life. What is a second life? Clear vision, how to reach the destiny he created you for.
He created you not just to be here but he created you to make progress here until you get all of the good excellence of mind and spirit and beauty. Beauty. Some of us ignore beauty as a motive in our life. G-d wants us to get all the good life that He has created for us.
To get that, we must not just be here we must make effort and make progress on the road and we must increase day by day our worth, to ourselves and to human society. This is growth that's the real growth, to increase our worth to ourselves and to human society. G-d tells us, He created us like a plant. When you study plants, you can get so many beautiful messages, so many eye-opening messages from the life of a plant. We think of a tree, "That's nothing but a simple tree." but that tree does not live, was not to created. Maybe it-- I don't know what it lives for, I can't talk to it.
But when I study it, I know that it is not existing, put it that way, for itself alone. When G-d created a tree, he created a home for the birds. Yes, he created a home for the birds and not only that, but he also created the timber so that man would have a better home. I still love wood houses. [laughs] Frame houses they call them. I still love them.
I think they got a warmth that the brick houses just ain't got. Nice, pretty beautiful frame house.
G-d created that and you think about it. That tree is in existence and it has its life, but it's life support other life. Then some trees they give nothing but the wood but that's a lot for the man, who need a better home to withstand the wind and the cold. That’s a lot. Just the wood and the wood will also give him a fire to keep the house warm. The fireplace. Just that one tree. Look at what the tree is doing. Look at the service the tree is giving to its own life form and also other life form. Now, those trees that are seasonal, they have life and they shed their leaves seasonally. The tree will drop off its leaves and become bare in the fall but what is it doing, is enriching the land below.
Yes, my grandfather taught me this. It's enriching the land below and supplying you, if you know how to farm, is supplying you with what you need to make your soil more supple so that things can grow in it better. We go to the stores and we buy moss, they call it moss and what is this stuff? Compost. We buy compost and we put it in our soil and we mix it in to give the soil the texture so it’s soft enough so the plants can come up through it and when the water come, it won't clog and become hard like a rock.
We put this organic matter in there and it helps to keep the soil suitable for young life to come up through it and grow. We do that yes but the tree is doing it. The tree drops those leaves, those trees their leaves go back to the soil and give compost [laughs] to the soil so that the soil is better for the next spring so that the next life can spring up through it. Also, it keeps the ground like a blanket, it keeps the ground beneath warmer it keeps the-
[silence]
- and when the spring comes, they pop up through the dead leaves quick because they were given protection by the tree, so much in the tree. So much in the trees. Some trees give more than just leaves, they give flowers, they contribute to the beauty of the environment. They beautify the area that you live in. With not only a leaf but also with a flower and they will also help you smell, - orange blossom. Boy, it’s terrific. If you've never smelled them go to Georgia, one day.
Orange blossom tree, that grows in America. You got them here? [laughs] I'm forgetting where I am.
[laughter].
I live in Chicago so much. I'm there, I forget I'm here in California. Smell the orange] blossoms, it’s terrific. All those beautiful smells. The tree just serving life. It's a life, - serving life with beauty, with food with beauty and everything is serving life. Then some trees like many plants, they give you seeds that you can hold until spring returns and get a bigger harvest than you got last year because of more seeds. If you’re a good farmer, a good study of the person who studied this you will learn how to select seeds and the life that you're using will give you the knowledge of how to even get better life than they gave the last year or 10 years ago by selection and it ain't no complicated thing. I can give you one lesson in agriculture that you’ll go to school eight years or ten years for and that is selection.
If you want string beans that look like the chain store, the supermarket string beans, when you plant your seed, when you get string beans, take the straight string beans, the ones that look perfect like you want them.
Save the seed. Take the ones that's curve and not like you want and save them separately. Next time you plant, plant them separately and you'll get all straight one from the straight string beans and you get all the bent ones from the- or sickle-shaped ones from the sickle shape. The ones that you got. Seeds that you collected. That's by selection.
If you get so many after a while you say I don't care for these sickle shape string beans. You can boil them in the pot and they make nice bean soup and you have nothing but straight ones growing in your yard. I know because I've done it. My wife and children will tell you. My string beans look better than the string beans they had in the [unintelligible 00:30:52] food store. Mine was best. They were the prettiest because I selected them myself. I selected only the best, and I attended to them and I thank G-d put a little green on my thumb or something. I believe I had a little help from the unseen forces too yes, I do.
Life. G-d want us to look at the whole life that he created plants, animals yourself. G-d said there are signs in the heavens and there are signs in the earth and also signs in you. Look at everything for the signs of G-d so that you read the messages of G-d in the natural created world and benefit from it. G-d doesn't tell us he made our life like a plant just for us to hear it and stop, G-d want us to think that's why he says and think for surely thinking profits you. Thinking. By thinking you will profit, P-R-O-F-I-T, profit, gain, have gain, increase more of what you want. A Jew, by the way, (I'd like to throw in a little humor in) a Jew by the way was sitting in a conference, we had high-level conference of religious people working for peace in the world and they kept on talking about the prophets. Christians and a few Muslims too. They kept on talking about the prophet of scripture. I wanted to just get a reaction from the Jewish rabbi so I told him I said, “Aren't those your prophet they're talking about?" and he knew by the look on my face that I was making humor. I said, “Aren't those your prophets they're talking about?” He said Imam Mohammed among the rabbis he said, "We often say we have given them profits and losses."
[laughter]
They see profits as prophets and losses, or gains and losses and that's right. It depends upon your attitude you go in the book you'll get nothing but losses if you got the wrong attitude. The rabbi was right you have to have the right attitude, right disposition on the path of G-d. If you don't have to right disposition, you'll get nothing but losses but you got right disposition you will get profits. That's what CPC was. Profits for us. That's our business venture. So life, - it's all about life, shouldn't we celebrate life? Are Muslims to celebrate life? I believe so. We have two Eids, two main Eids that the prophet left with us. Peace be upon him, Muhammad.
G-d left him in Quran, he left them with us and they are the Eids al-Fitr and the Eid of sacrifice, Abraham's sacrifice. Now you think about this. One is called Eid al-Fitr and when you look at the word Fitr, Fitr, means original life, our original nature, celebrating original life our original nature. That's what Eid al-Fitr is. Eid al-Adha is a celebration of the brighter life, al-Adha means more brighter. You just you just left one Eid is only three months behind you now here comes another in the Eid, that follows it and it is called Eid al-Adha, Adha means more brighter.
Brighter in what respect? In every respect. Not just brighter in the sense of more enlightened and it is. It represents more enlightenment. It represents the enlightenment. The first is the life, the second is enlightenment, the correct light and then enlightenment. Al-Adha is the life of enlightenment and it is also the life of more joy and pleasure. Yes, more joy and pleasure.
Brightness means happiness too. Happiness in my life is bright that suggests that I'm pleased, I'm happy, I'm I'm not sad. My life is dark or dull it suggests that my life is not happy, not pleased, I'm sad, downhearted so to speak.
Adha means the first one was bright and here comes the second one that's Adha, it implies that the first one was bright this one is brighter. Eid al-Fitr is bright, but the Eid al-Adha is brighter. Why? Because one is the natural life in is excellent, the second one is the intellect in his excellence. Make some more connections for you all?
Audience: No.
Imam Mohammed: Okay. Thank you. Praise be to Allah, praise be to G-d. The first celebrates life. Our first Eid is a celebration of life, celebrating the life of restraint, the life of discipline of the appetite. We discipline the appetite, we restrain the appetite for G-d's pleasure. So no thing that G-d forbids to come into this body comes in there. This body does not live for itself, it lives for G-d. So, darling, you feel sexy? No. The sun is still up, you have to wait. Now usually it's the other way around. The darling is a man, a male. "Darling you're sexy?" "No sweetie you have to wait. The sun is up."
When we finish the 30 days, 29 of 30 days of the fast month and new moon appears telling us the month is ended. There's a celebration and we are celebrating the life, the victory of the life of discipline that disciplined itself for G-d's pleasure. Isn't that wonderful? Then here comes the Eid al-Adha and we do the 10 days of Hajj and contention, life in contention. Life, struggling against the forces that bring death, moral death, spiritual death, mental death, ignorance et cetera not just physical death and we are victorious. We have completed the Hajj. We're victorious. Come down from the mount of Arafat celebrating the praise of G-d.
Lifting our voices, glorifying him with our tongues and our spirit and our expressions. Going down from the mountain for the sacrifice of Abraham the next day. Isn’t that beautiful? Yes and we go down from the mountain to the sacrifice of Abraham the next day on the 10th and the prophet said, "Be aware of five, the four-five be your failure. Be aware of five. Take charge of five before five undo you, be your undoing." Five what? Five senses. Again, returning to the common man's protection, common person protection. Our five senses. Be aware of five, therefore, five be your undoing.
Mean be aware of what your eyes look at, what your ear is open up to, what your noise sniffs, what your tongues speaks out for, what your hand want to touch. Be aware of five on a high plain that G-d guides you to, before these five in the gross body be your undoing.
Praise be to Allah. You know the prophets put it another way; plan for today, plan for sickness while you're healthy. Ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The prophet gave it to us in a lesson like that but I think what I've said says the same thing. It says the same thing.
Islam is not only spirit but also knowledge for guidance. Knowledge for guiding the life on the path of G-d. Islam wants us to be conscious followers of the way. Conscious followers of the way. We must follow the way, the path consciously. We can't accept the be following the way under the spirit. There's no Holy Ghost sermon, Holy Ghost arousing sermon in Islam to get you to be unconscious but in the grip of the spirit so that the spirit can hold you from the world. No. That's not Islam. That's not the path of Islam. The path of Islam is to awaken your mental awareness. Your mental awareness. To awaken your mind and then guide your mind with the knowledge that your body is asking for. Your body. G-d created it. It was asking for protection, it's asking for guidance, it's asking for the life and Islam want's your mind to wake up, to the need to be fed by the food that G-d gives in the word. The word of G-d feeds us and gives us the life that we need.
This is the beauty and we celebrate the life so that the revelations that G-d gave Abraham, our second father, was the revelation to bring us education, enlightenment so that we would be an educated society, an enlightened society and get all the benefits of G-d's creation. Science, technology and everything. That's what G-d created us for. This progress that we have seen on this earth for an enlightened and an industrial society, is what G-d created us for. So don't just think of prayer as something from G-d and think of fasting in the month of Ramadhan that's from G-d. Eating after the fast is also from G-d.
Riding on more than just the spirit, riding on a boat or airplane 747 that is also from G-d. Yes, all of it from G-d. He created the earth and you to have this great meal, yes the intellect and the life in us embraces the creation and the creation opens up to us. He created all of this to be our tilth. For us to engage it, plow it.
(unclear) say, “you wouldn't have got this from me if you hadn't plowed my heifer”. [laughs] He wants us to engage it, to plow it, it's our tilth. The whole physical environment that he created and just like we engage a female in lawful marriage, a lawful bonding, and G-d had approved of this. We are husband and wife.
If we would have the same sacred respect for relationships Allah wants us to have with this external world we call the material existence, we can have good products from this external world and many of them that will give us pleasures just like the beautiful obedient children give us pleasures at home when we look at them, look at your wife sometimes you want to kiss her again. We just got through kissing her, we thought we had kissed enough, we thought we were satisfied. When we look at the children and go, "Girl come here let me kiss you again." Beautiful children, healthy minded children, obedient children. We can have the same relationship with the material world. Celebrate life peace. As-Salaam-Alaikum
[00:43:20] [END OF AUDIO]

