03/15/2003
IWDM Study Library
WD Mohammed Atlanta, Georgia

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
WD Mohammed: [foreign language] Muslim brothers and sisters, again, peace be unto you, As-sal?mu ?alaykum
[crowd chorus]
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdu lillaahi Rabbil 'aalameen We praise G-d the Lord, Cherishing and Sustaining the keeper of all the worlds, the Lord of the universe, Master of all creation, Master of the universe. We praise Him, we worship Him only and we do not associate any with Him in worship [clears throat]. He has no son. Any who come to Him according to His word in Quran, come to Him as servant. He created the jinns, and human beings, for the express purpose of worshiping Him and He requires nothing for himself.
It says nothing reaches Him from us except our taqwa , our obedience [clears throat]. Therefore, all of of our worship, our prayers, our fasting this blessed month of Ramadan, all is for the benefit of the Muslim community directly to us as individuals, and as a consequence of our improving our own spirituality and our obedience, getting closer to Allah in obedience, we have a better community because individuals make a community. Community depends on its individuals. When the life of its individuals has spoiled, the community is spoiled. The life of its individuals is kept good, the community is kept good [clears throat].
So we praise G-d and thank him for all of the wonderful creation that he made, especially for the obedient human being. When he says, the gates or the doors to the treasures are open to all, it doesn't mean that all will benefit and all will be happy? No. Sometimes, great wealth is the worst curse a man has in his life. It doesn't always make them happy, sometimes it becomes a great curse. So it is for everything else. He gave us beautiful women to be our wives, but the beautiful woman can turn out to be a curse. And so also it is for that beautiful man, he can turn out to be a curse in the life of the woman.
Nothing you can think of is guaranteed to give you happiness, the only thing that's guaranteed to give us happiness is our taqwa, our obedience to our G-d who created this world and created us for this world and created this world for us. How is it that he created us for this world? Nothing use this world like the [unintelligible 00:06:33] as Muhammad said, [foreign language] the brain of the human being utilizes the great creation that G-d made, and we were made for it and it was made for us.
Developing it, we make it more beautiful. And it's feeding our mind, making our minds more productive. We are made for the world and the world is made for us. Do we reject this world? No. [foreign language] Our Lord give us in this life, in this world, - dunya this world, good, excellence and in the next, good or excellence and save us from the fires of sin. This is the prayer of the believers given in the Quran [clears throat]. Also, we know that G-d says of this dunya, this world [foreign language] seek by the means G-d gives you or make available to you the afterlife, but don't forget your share of this world. This is clear guidance, clear guidance to us in the Quran. And the scholars and Imam, the great Imams and scholars of Islam, they say this ayat gives us the balance for Muslims. This ayat gives us the balance in life for Muslims. We should not go to the extreme of material appetite and we should not go to spiritual aspiration or to spiritual things so much that we neglect our responsibility, our obligation in this material world to develop it. Adam, our first father, why was he put in the world? He was put in the world to develop it.
And G-d said that he gave him all, everything that he see, everything that the man saw was open to the man for the man to utilize it, man to benefit from it and to cultivate it. A raw world in it's raw beauty was given to the mind of men for him to utilize it, to cultivate it and bring its benefits, its products, et cetera, into the community of mankind.
This is a beautiful way to see reality. If we don't see reality that way, we won't rule properly. Praise be to Allah, the Lord Sustainer of the worlds. [foreign language] highly glorified up is Allah, G-d the Most High who created the death and the life, He created the death and the life and this is the order given in the Quran by G-d, this is revealed by G-d, it's in this order He created the death and the life, the death first, then the life. What is this referring to? He created dead men? No. G-d forbid that He'll be that stupid.
[laughter]
G-d will not create a dead man and then a man alive, no. That He created the death means the dead things, the inanimate world. Science agrees with that, science has not changed that. They believe that the inanimate world was first, then things came alive in that inanimate world or that dead world. The dead earth gave birth to life, praise be to Allah. He is the one who created the death and the life. The earth was created as the dead thing, but in it was the germ of life, and it had to be germinated and watered, et cetera, and the sun fed it, for it to come to life.
Likewise it is for the mind of men. We were born as babies from our mothers, and we come here knowing nothing. But once we are in a human environment, the intelligence is germinated, and it becomes truthful or productive, insha' Allah, by the will of G-d. [foreign language] to manifest, who among you is best in deeds. He gave the world to us, gave us our intelligence to develop it, some will lose their taqwa, the in-born consciousness that G-d created everyone of us with, that comes on once we come into this world.
You will lose that and you may go to these things selfishly. And you may become an oppressor, not only of others, but an oppressor of your own taqwa, an oppressor of your own soul, or your good conscience. [foreign language] the one who made every little thing. Is this the first time this was said? 1400 years ago? No, it was said long before, prophets gathered long before, this is in the Bible that G-d created every living thing and here it is in the Quran, G-d created every living thing. What is the Quran then? The Quran is a narration, the Quran is revelation, the Quran is a correction on that that came before it from G-d and was lost, the purity was lost with it.
Have taqwa for G-d, have pure consciousness for G-d. [foreign language]. Reverence, the Lord who created you from a single soul. Nas it's called. He created from it or of it its mate and then sprang from those two, all the many men and women. [foreign language] And he began the creation of the human person from clay, not from water, from clay. Water is symbolic of the sentimental side of our life, and water is symbolic of the reactions nature, the nature in our life to react. You touch the water, it readily, it reacts to the touch. It wriggle all through it, all over the surface of the water, just the slightest touch.
One little drop of salt or sugar hit the surface of the water no matter how small that they are, the water reacts right away in proportion to the effect of the pressure that was put upon it. Water. But he didn't begin our creation from water, he began our creation from clay. What is clay symbolic of? Impressionable nature of man not as a sentimental creature, but as a rational creature. If we were to relate the material message to our rational mind and the water of this, of the material, too, to our sentimental nature or to our spiritual side.
All knowledge is in a material context. You can't progress in school studying non-material things. The first thing you're made acquainted with in school, pre-school, kindergarten, whatever you want to call it, material things. We have what they call abstract language to describe material things. We learn the abstract language after we are exposed to material things, there is no way to have abstract language without first being exposed to material things. This influences me, well, influence is not material.
But the thing that makes the influence is material. This makes me happy. Happiness is not material. But the thing that made me happy was material first. Now later on after material, you're versed in concept of happiness, then happiness will make me happy.
[laughter]
Your happiness makes me happy [laughs]. Praise be to Allah. [foreign language] He who created death and life to manifest, who of you, who are those among you that is best in their deeds, that are best in their works. And G-d says that he began the creation of the human beings from clay. [foreign language] then G-d says of our sexes that he had made us male and female from one soul. And then he also says in another place in the Revelations, he said [foreign language] and the male is not like the female, [foreign language] the male is not like the female.
Is that translation enough without any discussion? No. No, it's not, why? Because that only comes from an activity of the mind. That only is to addressing an activity of the human mind, the human mind is reflective and analytical . That's the activity that's called victor or vector for the male. Reflective and analytical . Praise be to Allah.
Now, it says, he made this man from water, clay, obedience, water now. Water is not only responsive, reflecting et cetera, reacting, but unlike clay that will give us a picture of something if you make an imprint upon it, something have to be imprinted upon, but water, if it's still, it will show you a nice picture, especially on the moon at night. You look in there and you see a nice picture of yourself in the surface of the water. It gives us concept doesn't it. It brings to the mind concepts. You bring the thing to the water and the water is still- it'll show you the concept.
So his man had to be made all over again, didn't he? Then he made him with water. Praise be to Allah. The Bible gives it this way, it says it hadn't rained. And G-d caused the rain to come down and wet the earth and formed the man. This is beautiful. That the man in the beginning of his life as a rational being must begin-- I will say, has already born sentimental life or sentimental nature.
Muhammad the prophet left his city of Mecca, the blessed city the [unintelligible 00:21:59] city, (unclear) and revered city of Mecca. He left there, the city part that is, to go up into the mountains, to get away from everything. He took with him a heavy heart, sentimental, he was sentimental, he was sad, saddened by the condition of his people.
And he went up to the mountain to get away from everything and hopes that maybe (unclear) in deep contemplation. That's something will come to him of understanding to help him with the problems of his people, and you know the story. Eventually, G-d communicated to him. The Quran, it began right there on the Mount of Enlightenment, [foreign language]. The Mount of Enlightenment. Enlightenment came, down from G-d, the Creator of the heaven and the earth to Muhammad, the unlettered prophet. A unlettered man who became the prophet, last prophet. And G-d's servant and messenger, and the mercy to all the world. [foreign language] The prayers and the peace be upon him. The male is not like the female. Do you know some of you all may be females, brothers?
[laughter]
By this description, some of the brothers may be females. If your mind is not a curious mind that wants to know things. Just don’t want to see it, but wants to understand what you see or contemplate the wonders of the creation, and analyze what you’re looking at. If you don’t have that nature in your mind, then you are female upstairs. Then you might be male downstairs.
[laughter]
And to our sisters, I say the same. If you have this activity upstairs, you may be more male than your husband who's lacking it upstairs. Upstairs, you may be more male than he is, though downstairs you are female. Allah will (unclear) with this language, without putting it also in narration that women have the same activity. [foreign language] The males who contemplate and analyze, and the females who contemplate and analyze. Letting us know that you don't have this alone is typical of you because you were free to go out in the field, and discover things and accumulate wealth, while she had to stay home taking care of your children.
So most of her life is tied up at home. That's how come you have that advantage over her. That's changing now. You're being domesticated. You males, you young males. You're being domesticated, and your females are becoming industrious. So we can be male biologically. But we can loose the role of a man, and we can loose our manhood.
Muhammad the prophet, coming back to the intellect or the (unclear), the brain, Muhammad the prophet payers and peace be upon him, he said, "Nothing was created more useful than the brain." And all we have to do is look at the world that we live in and see what has come out of the human mind, of the brain. And we can see that nothing, no animal, nothing has done as much to produce out of creation like the human being, and it's because of his intellect, his intelligence, his brain.
Islam advances society with the tool of intelligence, and its activity, or its interest, more than it does with anything else. Nothing, - it does not direct us to anything for our growth and development, for the enrichment of our life and creation, more than it points to the brain of the human being. You can not even get the Quran unless you respect your intelligence, over and over, Allah says. And isn't there a sign?
In that you have been given the intelligence, and can articulate? [unintelligible 00:28:48] to express your intelligence, and to express it clearly and correctly? Articulate what's on your mind. G-d points to this over and over in Quran to keep us aware that this is not a hocus pocus trick. It require that you be rationale and respect good sense, good human intelligence.
And cultivate your soul because your soul is not your brain. Cultivate your soul so it won't be exploited by others. And he who neglects to cultivate his own soul is reduced to the lowest of the low. This is Quran, the word of G-d. (unclear part) male and female in pairs, [foreign language]. Male functioning twice, or performing twice in this particular nature. Twice male, twice female. And He said that he made seven firm heavens, seven firmaments or seven heavens.
And he adorned or decorated the lower heaven with light. With light, the lower heaven? (unclear part) you can't see anything but the lower heaven. All we see is the light. Stars at night. Moon and stars at night. And he says, that's the lower of heaven. Then it must be one much higher than those lights we are looking at. Allahu Akbar. He said that also. [foreign language] To manifest those among you who are best in deeds.
We know that the enemy of the human soul or the enemy of the human nature. He too wants to go up in the heaven, he's curious. Just like we are. And G-d says he did go up there. But not after Quran is not open to him anymore. Say any now that try that will find it armed with shooting fiery missiles to take you down from the sky . Wonderful. And Quran is truth and clear truth.
It is help for any innocent human person, male or female who wants to understand religion as G-d gave it to your nature, or creates you. Anyone who wants to understand it. If you want to understand Christianity better, the Quran is there waiting to help you. If you want to understand Judaism better, Quran is waiting to help you. The Quran will help you understand an atheist better. Yes. Those that say, I reject this idea that there's a G-d. Matter takes care of itself. Matter is born of itself and takes care of itself. It doesn't have any G-d, no creator, evolved.
There's help for the atheist in the Quran to help him understand his atheism better. [foreign language] The human people were once one community. There's evidence of that. Even for the atheist. There's evidence of that. We find the same type structures in the new world, South America, that we find on the continent of Africa, in a land called Sudan and Egypt. Pyramids. That's just one thing.
We look at language. A baby says mama in Chicago and the baby says mama in Jordan or Egypt. Mama. It's just a few things. I can go on giving you examples of how we have these similarities though we've been separated by oceans and we don't have any historical record of there ever once being a connection but you know there are theories. One theory of the land mass is that once it was all connected.
They show it to you like a puzzle and they say if you push these parts together, they fit like a puzzle. The Holy Quran says you were once one community. All people were once one community. It doesn't say that you were all connected physically. It just says that you were all once one community. The earth is becoming one community again. Not connected physically but connected mentally. Mentally. The minds, the meeting of the minds. Of the man in the extreme north or the man in the extreme south, the man in the extreme west, the man to the extreme east, the meeting of the minds.
By our meeting of the minds, we start to work together mentally. Working together mentally is making us a one world order. Again one community. One community in terms of how we must function to survive on this planet earth. I don't know if that's all that is to that state that Quran tells us of in our past history in our life, that we were once one community. Maybe we were all in one physical or geographical area and we spread from there into all these other places. Maybe that's possible. Or maybe we were all connected like science theory insists, into one mass at one time. That we were not separated by water, by oceans. We don't know. But as Muslims, believing Muslims we don't question what G-d says. We question our own understanding of it, but we don't question what G-d says. If Allah reveals that we were once one community, that's it. [foreign language] We hear and we obey.[foreign language]
Allah, Most High also revealed in the Quran through Muhammad to all people especially the believers that man should not think of his community without also being aware of the communities that Allah made that are not human. The community of plants. The community of certain plants. The community of animals. The community of certain animals. G-d says, "There's nothing moving on the earth that does not have communities like you." What do you mean communities like you? They have (unclear) order, they have to survive. They have to hunt their food. So they have many similarities. They have to mate to keep their species. They have many similarities.
Allah wants us to be aware of it. Now those men or those minds that have not given thought to these things, the Quran energize their minds and cause them to want to go out and they study other communities to see how much they resemble man's community and they gave birth to scientists in many areas of life. Isn't that wonderful? The word of G-d come down like a gentle rain, quicken life, cause (unclear) to be expressed out of the womb of death. Yes.
Don't think of just the material death world when G-d tells us that he created the death and the life but understand that G-d is only giving you a picture of the world to direct your mind and interest to the human world. The human world started the same way, - dead non-productive. Barren, non-productive. Non-productive human society is a dead society. Then G-d aroused our sentiments, causing rain to come down. When we get sentimental don't we drop tears? The rain comes down.
In some myths that I've studied, they have silver rain and golden rain. Yes, silver rain and golden rain. Rain came down, but also sometimes fire and brimstone. Don't think we're talking about just the physical world out there. The world of man's mind. It drops fire and brimstone on mankind. We don't want that. We don't want punishment.
We want the gentle rain that won't break up the dust and scatter the dust, but to come down so gently it leaves the dust in place and soaks the dust and make the dust become fertile again. Every raindrop has in it also nitrates. It's not just water. It has nitrates in the raindrop. It feeds material life too as it comes down. Give life to a dead earth. Give life to the earth after it's death. The earth of man's mind too, or the soil of man's mind, too. When we're reading about the beginning of the world G-d is only giving us pictures of this material world to show us or teach us what has been created as the human mind that is in the world. Man carries his world in his mind, he's a special guy, he's a special kind of creature. What else can carry his whole world around in its mind. But the Honorable Elijah Mohammed says the Muslim wears the universe on his head. The sun, the moon, and the stars.
Then G-d says to us [foreign language] The selfish listener he registered we are the best community but the [foreign language] who is male up here as well as down there, he registers the last part of it that our purpose is to be of help, of service, of benefit to all people. If the Muslims had not lost that, they would never have lost their place as leaders in the world. Then G-d says [foreign language] struggle make jihad, the jihad of struggle and sacrifice effort, strong effort and sacrifice and form allegiance, too [foreign language] and form allegiance.
G-d has given us the answers for our success and for those who may be discouraged or disappointed because of them thinking they're too weak to take this responsibility G-d want to strengthen them and have them strong for the job, have them having faith that they can make it he says, "G-d does not want difficulty from you." As like mama, sometimes she knows she be so hard. I saw her turn white on the plantation, transform right before my eyes, - white man on the plantation and I'm a poor little black boy [unclear]. Then sometimes she knew she had taken that far enough sometimes she'd be so considerate, she said, "Mama don't want to see you work so hard, son, but I need help to get these things done." That's all I need to hear her say, - oh buddy was I happy working from thereafter. Allah says it's not that He wants difficult for you, but that he wants to purify you, save you from corruption.
Purity is strength, Allah wants a strong human community, purity is strength, impurity is weakness when rot sets into an apple it get's soft, rot sits into the flesh of an animal the flesh get's soft. G-d wants us strong and purity is strength. How come Muhammad was so strong? He was pure. How come Christ was so strong? He was pure. How come Moses was so strong? He was pure, purity is strength and the higher you go up the more purer the heights get and He said He made seven strong heavens.
Allah says that He made us of clay, water and then a clot of blood, blood adhering. Don't think of a blood clot that's bad for the body for the system. Think of like, - the translator he used the wrong word. He should have used another term, it means blood adhering, holding together, blood holding together.
Blood holds together to form [unintelligible 00:49:02] the beginning of membrane-like substance holding together, then finally gets a little stronger and becomes a fetus lump. It's still not formed good, the form has not been completed. It still could be anything. A fetus lump you can tell it's going to be a human being but in its first states as adhering, becoming firm. Remember what it's doing? It's adhering and becoming firmer, stronger, having more strength for holding together.
He says if it continues like that and then bones form in there, harder substance to give the framework for it so that it may take on the symmetry of a human person, of an anatomy of a human person. Again, he clothed the bones with flesh. He didn't say with skin, with flesh. And thereafter, another creation [foreign language]. Another creation. Two males [foreign language]. So you see two persons, one from the year 2003, another from 2000 BC.
And enlightenment had not reached them. They might not call him human. They gave him another name maybe it happened millions of years back. But somewhere back there, there is going to be person in the formed symmetry of a human being and they're not going to call him a man, he will not be called homo sapiens, human being like we are. He got another name. But G-d says [foreign language].
They didn't say anything that he wasn't without skin it just says that he clothed the bones with flesh. The skin was there, but dead to social community life. When the skin became sensitive to social community life and he enjoyed hugging a man and not being freakish.
[laughter]
He just loved to hug the man because he loves his fellow man, and he hugs him and he gets such a wonderful feeling holding his brother. Then there is something happened to his brother or arouses his anger arouses his fears. He had to learn about how to keep that from happening again. Pretty soon, he got an intelligent community, a social community established.
With rules and regulations to protect his good life and his good
interests. He'd become an enlightened community [foreign language]. The Arabs were lost from enlightenment and they had to be created all over again. So Allah says [foreign language] the merciful G-d. [foreign language] and created the human person. So he taught Muhammad the Quran, and created the model human person who already was modeled in his human nature, but now G-d is going to make him model in the second form of man. In the higher form of man. G-d made him a model for enlightenment as well as a model for modern man. As a result, all of his people that sprung off from him [foreign language], they were men too on the second level of the higher order of man, - enlightenment.
“Oh, Brother Imam, do you have authority to translate that like that? That's coming Brother Imam after this world is done away with.” It's already has been done away. You didn't see it go? I saw it go. Then what did He calls this man now, He called him Bashir, good news bringer. Bashir, the good news bringer. He is a Bashar, he is a higher man, he is a Bashar, that means male man, Bashar. But from that word you get Bashir he's a good news bringer We praise G-d. We worship him alone, we associate nothing in worship with him, and we pray to him asking that he give us in this life of the world good, and give us in the next good and save us from the fires of sin.
[foreign language] In concluding the jumah kutbah by today I want to say to brothers [pause] building a life is like building anything, - a structure from the earth, you must start in the foundation and go upon a foundation. Allah revealed in Quran when there were some Muslims following the Prophet Muhammad who were having their own mind outside of the nurturing provided by G-d through Muhammad and they were having their own thoughts about how Islam should be understood and preached and they build themselves a mosque so it was revealed in Quran that no Muslim should stand or pray in that mosque.
It says the only mosque fit. masjid fit is that that was built upon taqwa, the foundation taqwa. The reverence of G-d, the reverence of those things that G-d has made sacred, the reverence of life, human life, the reverence of life period, but especially human life. The reverence of parents, the role of parents, the sacred role of parents in the life of a human family. These things are fundamental, these things represent the foundation of our life that's trying to structure itself in a world of confusion and corruption.
If we lose the foundation, all that we build will just be suspended in the air without real support, without any real support. You brothers should work to increase your faith, increase your faith, stay with the Quran, read the Quran and don't read it as a duty only, read it as your love. Go to it and say, "I'm going to my love", "What you talking about brother?" "The Quran, I'm going to read the Quran, that's my love. I fell in love with it long time ago."
And Allah who has strengthened us and establish us. Allah promises us beautiful and excellent establishments. He doesn't want us to live in a ghetto looking place. In a neighborhood with no life, no decent structures, no decent structures for serving human needs in the neighborhood. Allah doesn't want us to live like that. And it's even worse when others have to come in and provide those things for us.
Let's not forget that those things that we think of perhaps only an abstract are very much necessary as energizers, as germs of life to manifest material existence in the beautiful picture. Taqwa. [foreign language] purity. These represents the precious beginning of real life for the mind of man, for the mind of man. Yes. He has sent us Muhammad, given us Muhammad to lead... (end of tape)

