01/01/2006
IWDM Study Library
The Need for Reform

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
We praise G-d, and we witness that he is one and cares about all of us, all people, all nations, all the worlds. And we witness that the final revelation, the Quran is revealed to Muhammad, and he's a messenger to all the people of Earth, and he's a mercy to all people and a mercy to all the world. We appreciate this opportunity to address the radio audience and to be here on this first Sunday of the year, and this first day of the year. And I wish all of you all a Happy New Year and a very prosperous New Year. We hope that the year we're in now will be better than the year that just went out. And I believe it will be for all of us. We're addressing the need for reform. The future that we are facing is going to bring about more demand for reform, more support for reform, reform for public education in the United States of America, but also reform for almost everything that we have been supported by, everything almost that we have been supported by.
This is a new world we're living in, it's a new time, and a new world. The world was once having one-sidedness, just seeing one way and was not respecting the whole people or the whole population of this planet Earth. It was moving very selfishly in the direction of what it wanted and ignoring justice. Before 1945, the world had no "institution" or legal organization, whereby a nation threatened by another nation could take its complaints and be heard. A Catholic peace building movement publishes a magazine titled, Living City. One of its featured articles says, After 60 years, the United Nations will be facing a demand for more serious reform, public education in the United States, the natural environment, respecting the natural environment for the good of the environment itself, but also to save human life on this planet, shrinking fuel supplies, poverty and starvation are all on the world scene and on the agenda of conscious nations.
At home in our big and small cities, reform is becoming the more pressing issue. Feeling and perception also needs reforming. How we feel about things, and how we perceive or understand things. Communities must support efforts to reform popular thinking and attitudes. Emotions are too high. Human intelligence will be approached in the future more directly. People will be demanded to use their brains more and respect intelligence and respect intelligent behavior. As the world tries to keep its old habit of dancing and singing troubles away, the world gets more messy. Morals become more confused, and human abuses more horrifying. Think of human bodies as a human body. Think of the human body that it is a vehicle like an automobile, a truck or whatever, a motor vehicle.
Think of the human body as a motor vehicle. Now I know when I was young, I wanted to drive long before I was of age to drive. I used to ride in the car, with senior or older brothers. In the temple who had cars... We called it temple back then, the place of worship. And I'd sit there and I'd be imagining myself under the wheel. And my father sometimes occasionally he would drive, take us in his car, and I was there imagining myself under the wheel. I got the opportunity to drive a truck long before I was of age.
This brother asked me, I was about 14 years old, he said, "Would you like to go with me and make some extra money?" I said, "Yes." So I went with him. He had a nice truck like maybe a two-ton truck. That's the way I remember it. I think looking at it with my eyes now, I think it was probably about two and a half ton maybe. And he would load it, overload it with what we called junk. And he would take the junk to the junkyard, and he would sell glass, he'd sell metal he picked up, and he would pick up a lot of paper and cardboard. He would sell that, and rags, old rags.
And once we were driving along, I think it was 43rd Street. And he said, "Would you like to try?" I said, "Yes." So he pulled over and stopped and I got under the wheel, and believe me, I drove well, the first time under the wheel because I had been driving all the time.
[laughter]
Imagining myself in the driver's seat all the time, so it wasn't difficult, I just followed what I was observing. I did the same thing, and then I had to get used to... I even measured spaces. While the other driver was driving, I would imagine the space he could get through and the spaces he could not get through. So I drove that truck and seeing all these vehicles now on the road, and some of the people that's in them, they passed, they got their license, but really, they shouldn't be behind the wheel.
[laughter]
Some of them looked like they were trying to hit me, and I'm dodging them, and it looks like they're trying to follow me to hit me.
[laughter]
I don't know, this is really an unconscious world, a world that's got a spirit controlling it. Most of the people are controlled by a spirit that's not intelligent. It's not the spirit that came from good parents, it's not the spirit that came from good teaching, education, no, it's not the spirit that comes from the individual's good thinking, it's another spirit. And that spirit is really costing us a lot. So we are gonna have to reform our spirit. We have to reform our spirit, and we can reform our spirit, all you have to do is reform the way you think.
Reform the way you think and everything will change for the better. As the Bible says, and as a philosopher said before the Bible had it... A philosopher said, "As a man thinketh, so is he." And the Bible says, "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." And the Quran says, "Think, for surely thinking will profit you." Yes, think, think. And WEB Du Bois said, our political leader and... Well, really, he started the NAACP, he was the one to start what we call now the NAACP. He said, "Our people will progress in the measure that we are willing to teach our children to think." Think.
I remember parents correcting us, "You better use your head, you better think," they would insist that we think. Behavior without thought is blind behavior, and a lot of good habit is acceptable, but crazy habit is not. Imagine now you're a car or a truck, a motor vehicle, and you're going down the street, flying down the street at the speed limit or above, you have no brakes, your steering doesn't work, you grab the wheel and it doesn't work. It won't turn you left or right, no brakes and no steering. You wouldn't drive a vehicle like that, but many of us live like that, no brakes, no steering. In fact, and when we see the danger instead of turning left to get out of the way of it, we persist and just go on headlong the same way. So we're having a spirit and a behavior that's reckless at-risk behavior, terribly at-risk behavior. We need to reform it, and we got to reform it.
We don't have homes anymore, the majority of us that represent intelligent guidance for us. And it's not because it's not wanted in those homes, it's because the world scene, and for most of us, I'm picking up right now, in these towns and cities that I mentioned earlier, the world scene is a street scene. The behavior in the streets, the attitudes in the streets, the things that attract your attention, you who are in the streets, the songs you listen to, the music you like, the movies you like... And by the way, we need to reform our mind so that our minds will come up from being so low down.
It's a shame that I can't find hardly a decent movie in some of these African Americans' neighborhoods, some of the Black neighbors, I can't find a decent movie, and I got really fed up and I was getting a little angry. I said, "Alright, I'm going to approach the management," and something told me, "No, don't bother the management, the management is only showing what they will support."
And I recall watching a nice movie on the weekend, nice movie, hardly nobody there watching it, but me and my little son, my son, and maybe two or three other people. And I recall being alone, just with my son, and whoever was with us, sometime I have someone else with us. Now, my wife is with us when we go... Half the time when we go, she's not a habitual moviegoer like we are.
[laughter]
My son and I, we don't know anything to do when we get off of work. We say, "Oh, a movie. A restaurant and a movie." [laughter] Well, we were watching this movie and it comes to my mind, "Ain't nobody here." And after it happened several times that we were watching a nice, great, high-class movie, nobody there but us, then it raised it on my mind, "Our people don't support movies like this." The average one in these African-American neighborhoods, they don't support class.
They don't support culture. They don't support quality. All they want to see is violence and sex, violence and sex. They get the big crowds. The movies that have a lot of violence and a lot of sex, they get the big crowds. The decent movies that will feed your mind and help you get your life straight or help you keep your life straight, nobody wants to see those. So I've given up, really, appealing to those people of minds like that, whether young, old. Whether it's our youngsters, our teenagers. My address to you on this day, and every day I speak every first Sunday, or live broadcast, the live radio broadcast.
My interest is reaching those who care about life, not those who have given up on it. Those who care about life because they can't help themselves and they can't help you. If they could help themselves, they wouldn't be in that condition. And if we could help them, they would be here listening to us. They have no interest in what we are saying. They have no interest in anything but what's got them, what's holding them. Vulgarity. Vulgarity, violence, love for vulgarity, and love for crime. Crime. It's a crime to treat yourself that way.
It's a crime to treat your life the way you treat your life. And we want the conscious ones that are in our hearing range, in the radio audience, and here at this facility, we want the conscious ones to register more the hurt on society, the hurt on human life. Think about it more and register it more so you will do more about it. They can't help themselves. Spiritually, they're dead. Morally, they're dead. So how can you raise the dead if they insist upon living in the graveyard? And the big cities, they make more and more room for you.
If you want to live in the graveyard, they'll turn over some more land to you to increase the area for the dead. Oh, yeah. They ain't running out of no space when it comes to accommodating the dead. You want to die and go six feet under? They're ready for you, got plenty of land more if your graveyard in your area is filling up, they got plenty of land available. They'll accommodate you if you want to go down in the grave, the grave of moral decay, moral rot. We have to reform the behavior. We can save those who are conscious.
The best help that a conscious person needs and the help that helps them the most, is just to know that there's somebody else conscious. And we want you out there in the radio audience that are conscious, still alive, morally, still respect things of importance, still care about human life and human suffering, we want you to know that we are alive with you, and we want us all to be together. Let us be together, in one spirit. G-d has made us one spirit. And G-d has made us one life. Human life and human spirit. And if you are in human life, and like to remain human, you have human spirit.
So we are one and the same. And I'm thankful to G-d, as we say thankful to Allah. Muslims say thankful to Allah, that we still have conscious people on this Earth, who will not give in to the pressure to go six feet under. And there are plenty of pressure out there to go six feet under. Plenty of it. Not much help to keep your life in a good condition, but a lot of help if you want to destroy your life. You know, I was thinking on the subject of reform, and an old song, words from an old song came to my mind. It goes like this, "I'm gonna change the way I walk. I'm going to change the way I talk." [laughter]
Yes, I said to myself, whoever wrote that song, they put something together. Because walking and talking, are the developments that come almost at the same time in the life of human beings. Walking and talking. Usually a child that's walking, can talk a little bit, too. And if they're talking usually he's walking too. The walking and talking are like twins in the developmental progress of human life. They come around the same time, walking and talking.
And this world with its bad influences... When I say this world, I mean the corrupt world, the unconscious world or I should say, maybe, the satanic world, that not out to help human life but out just to exploit human life. To profit, to make money at the risk of human life. That world reaches us with its influences and it changes the way we think. First, it changes the way we think, then it changes the way we feel.
'Cause if the way you think changes, then you're open to feel differently too. So it changes, firstly, the way we think. Then it changes the way we feel. Then it changes the way we behave. And when the thinking changes, it's expressed in the language. The talk changes, and I don't know how this world managed to be so quick. I know I read in the Bible that says, "One beast has eyes all over him." And I took that that meant spies.
[laughter]
That that society beast has spies everywhere... Mix among of them and let me know what's happening. What the moves, changes are. Let me know what the trends are or what you see developing. So they'll find a youngster, [laughter] and he has went off from the norm. He've left the old behavior and he's indicating that he got another spirit in him and a different behavior. He be wearing his clothes hanging off his butt. And they can say, "Okay, there are a lot of them out there like him or they're ready to be like him. Let's put him on TV." And we're gonna sell a lot of baggy clothes hanging off the butt. Now, why am I saying this to you out there? Because I believe there are some good, conscious ones out there that's going around with your clothes hanging off your butt.
That tells... That tells the world that cares nothing about human life, cares more about money than anything... That tells that commercial mind in the world that you are one of them. Or you're of their customers, potential or buying already. So let us be conscious and let us fight the world that takes us down. And support the world that lifts life up. That's what we have to do. And this is an effort to reform the way you think. And as I said, if we can reform the way you think, I should say we think. We can reform the way we behave, because your thinking...
Your behavior doesn't change until your thinking changes. I'm sure you recall being at home with your parents and some child, a member of the family, sometimes a distant one or close one or an outsider may be in the house. 'Cause our parents, some of them, they don't care who's in the house. If you behave in an unconscious way, if you display ignorance and vulgar behavior, they'll correct you. They don't care who you are. They'll say, "Hey, this is my house." And they'll correct. So they would see someone behaving that way and they would say, "What's gotten into your mind?" Isn't that what they would say? What's gotten into your mind? Now, they weren't no psychologists. But they knew... Common sense told them if you're behaving differently, something has gotten into your mind.
So a lot of us, we think, "Oh, I know they're... I know they're bad but you got to love them. Love them. Come on. Come on, honey. I love you anyway, honey. Come on... Give me a hug." You should be be giving them the right cross.
[laughter]
Right cross. Muhammad Ali or whoever the popular fighter is now. Right cross, knock them flat on their back. And that'll be love. But saying, "Come and give me a hug," that's saying, "I like you just as you are." You don't have to change for me. "You ain't bothering me with your bad behavior. I like you just as you are." No, we don't. That's not like. That's not love. That's abuse. You're abusing them with that kind of treatment. Yes, and if you're conscious, you benefit from everything good. And when you're unconscious morally, spiritually... When you're unconscious, you are susceptible. You're vulnerable. You're open to everything bad. You lose everything. So we are a people who value human life. Your bad behavior hurts our feelings. The way you treat yourselves pains us right in our hearts.
But we are not going to go to the grave with you. We're gonna work with the best of us, and hope that one day our influence in our areas where we live, in our neighborhoods, will be bigger than the influence of those who don't care about anything but money, or will push everything, every other important issue off the desk if it hurts their money. They just wanna keep their money coming, keep their money coming, be. And they are responsible for all the misery we are seeing now, not only in the streets, but in our homes. They're responsible. This much damage could not be done to us if it was not for television. Television now brings what's happening from all over the world, right into your living room. And you can't be there all the time. You don't know what your children are watching or what they're not watching. So you got corruption having free access, free entry. And that's bad.
And what are you gonna do? You can't go crazy. I know I won't. I insist upon being sane and reasonable. You can't go crazy and say, "Hey, I'll beat you to death if you keep watching that." No, you can't do that. So if they insist that they're gonna watch that stuff, and they a teenager, they're going to school, you can't beat them to death. You can just keep talking to 'em and try to reason with them, that's all you can do. And some of us, we do that and we lose 'em. They go out of our house, pretty soon they don't wanna stay with us 'cause we irritate 'em. So they wanna stay with somebody else. So they leave us and go stay with somebody else. And pretty soon we find out that they've left the life, the good life, and they have joined those who waste life, destroy life. We only can do our best and have faith that eventually good wins out, eventually G-d takes over. We can only go so far with Satan. And after a while, G-d will say, "I will take charge of this matter." And then G-d brings His judgment, and the whole world begins to change.
People on high, they tolerate it. The abuse of freedom, freedom to make money at any cost, freedom to take over the culture and make it nothing but a culture for dollars, a culture to produce dollars. Yes? That's almost what our culture is now in the streets and on television. It's a culture to produce dollars. But there come a time eventually that the higher-ups in government, the higher-ups in church and church life, and for us, religion or Muslim life, the higher-ups get fed up too. G-d put in them the spirit to say, "Hey, this has gone too far. It has to be checked." The higher-up in religion, in Christianity, I mean world Christianity, Christianity not just here in America, Christianity in Europe, Christianity everywhere. The higher-ups, they meet and they say, "Something got to be done about this. It's got to be checked. It's gone too far." And they express themselves, and higher-ups in government hear of their concern. And those that have the same fear and the same concern, in high places in government, they meet with those of the religious establishment.
Now, I'm talking as though this is something that could happen, or something that has happened. But really, what I'm viewing in my mind right now is what's happening at this particular time. So don't think that everything is lost. No, we have people in high government positions and people in high religious positions, church position, mosque position, synagogue positions, we have people in high places with influence, and with money, and power. We have people who have looked at this ugly scene, this ugly life scene, and the public just going to the graveyard. And they've said, "Let them go on their own, but we have to stop those who are profiting on their bad behavior." So privileges that have been given, immoral moneymakers, is being taken away from them. And it won't be long. I think you can see the side of it in the movie theaters now.
You're getting movies that's coming out that's addressing moral issues, more movies are coming out now that address moral issues, more movies that are coming out now that address the forces of good and evil. How they are in conflict and in battle with each other, more movies are coming out that tells us that the influence of those persons or people in high places are reaching even the industry, the movie industry. We don't see it much or hear it much in the record business, the recording industry, for records and songs and stuff like that, music, we don't see it much, but it's there, it's coming, it's growing there too. And pretty soon, the rapper... To know we have good rappers. We have good rappers, there are pretty good rappers, but you didn't see them in that period that's still on us, but it's going away, it's a thing of the past. That spirit when the vulgar guy is welcome, the nasty mouth guy is welcome, and the clean mouth guys, "We don't want you. There's nothing for you to do."
Why don't you go back and get it together again? Nothing for him, and he really got was helps, he got medicine and healing and sweet stuff and good stuff, and the other guy got poison, that's all he got, poison, drugs, in the form of music and song, that's what he got. The time is changing. It's time for reform. And you who are Muslims in the audience, and remember the days of the Nation of Islam under the Honorable Elijah Muhammad; and there are many of you who never became Muslims, but you appreciate it, Honorable Elijah Muhammad's work for the black people, or for the African-Americans.
Elijah Muhammad, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, if I were to describe him in just one statement, I would say he was a man who wanted to dignify the life of his people. And that kind of work, when you look at the whole life and you wanna make it more respectful, more respectable and more respectful, you are looking at it with the eyes of a reformer, you wanna reform the life. You remember Carter G. Woodson?
0:36:05.7 S?: Yes, sir.
We celebrate him every February, Black History Month. He wrote a book challenging us to take on the responsibility ourselves for educating our children, and he said, he took the position that the way we were being educated by the public system was really mis-education. Miseducation. And he was correct. It has changed a lot since his time, a lot, like it's a completely new scene. It's not the same scene that Carter G. Woodson was looking at, but it still has a long ways to go yet.
It still needs more reforming, and I'm not saying this is the educators and the conscious teachers and also higher education and the institutions of higher education, they are saying it also that we have to reform our system of education. The textbooks, they still need more correction, and more corrections and reforming, need to form the way they are composed or the way the writers perceived knowledge and education. So the time is here and it's going to bring about a good change for the better. I'm optimistic, I see a good future coming. I think the sickness has reached its course and a healing time is here.
Yes, the healing time is here and life is going to be beautiful. Also, I want to say to the young people here in the audience that we have to reform the way we see old people. Human progress on this earth has been made more and better because the old folks deposit what they had of value from their learning and their experiences into the ears and heads of the young.
And during that period of time behind us a long ways behind us. Some of us still do it, but very few. During that period of time, youngsters didn't look at old people and say "Oh, I have nothing to do with them. And they have nothing to do with me." No, they felt a strong bond, child and adult, a strong bond. They felt a dependency. And even the rebellious ones, those that were of bad behavior, they had some respect for elders, some respect for senior citizens, some respect for old folks. But all of that was destroyed too with this new popular culture that took over. Yes. All that was lost. Also, adults you have to reform the way you see the young people. I hear them saying, "Oh, well, they just young. And they don't ask. And they don't know." You stop doing that. But I remember a time when you would say, "Oh, they just young, they don't know." They have learned so much, you don't say they don't know anymore, they know, they know more than every one of us, that's for sure. Especially about this world and life out there. Yes, but we have to change the way we look, we have to change and reform.
Change, reform, same. We have to reform the way we look at the youngsters. We shouldn't look at them and say, "Oh, they're young, and they're just caught up in that young life and I hope they survive it." Uh-uh, you can't look at them like that, you got to look at them and say, "If all of them go bad, we all are going to become extinct," because our future is in our children. And the good life and good spirit that G-d put in human life, human nature, had us wanting to deposit the best of ourselves as we see ourselves getting more and more away from the energetic life, getting near to retirement, a urge came over us to share with our children with the young what we got so that they will have more to work with for their future.
So we have to start looking at them like that again, we have to look at our children and our grand children. The Imam Daniel Karim, oh no, Ar-Rafi'I, I'm sorry. He mentioned that I'm a grandfather. Rafi'I, I'm a great grandfather. I got great grandchildren. Yeah, and you see how it's supposed to go, Rafi'I? See, you have a father, then you have a grandfather, and then you have great grandfathers. See it's supposed to get improved. Huh?
As the family line grows, you're supposed to be achieving more. So now he produced me, he's a father. Now he produced me, and then I produced a child from his line. Now he's a grandfather, grand. They try to make me feel uncomfortable saying, "Hey are you his grandfather?" Talking about my young son, he's my son, "Are you you his grandfather?" I say, "Yes, I'm his grandfather and he's my grandson."
[laughter]
Now if some of you become a great granddaddy, not only grand, you're great.
[laughter]
Appreciating life. That's where it all starts. Man, when G-d made him on this Earth, he thought about himself and he thought about the world all about him, and he realized that there was more in the world than he could possibly use. There was just too much out there for him. He didn't have an appetite to use everything out there, so it made him wonder, "Why have I been put in a world like this to think and understand and be free to benefit from all of this beauty and all of this wealth and good stuff out here?" And he started to reflect, and he came up with the idea that that couldn't have happened unless somebody was over it and cared about life, G-d. G-d.
And we know that the ancient and those of medieval times and those around us here right now, those conscious people and teachers in religion, they say the first bond you should have is with G-d, and they say, never break that bond, form a tie, a relationship with G-d, and never break it. That's the key to survival and good life on this planet earth. So they told us that. And some of us, we don't wanna hear anything. I was speaking once and a young lady, she's not young anymore, but she was young then. She said, "Will you stop talking? I don't wanna think. I don't wanna think."
Now, she was a little bit conscious. Yes, she was 'cause she knew that I was making her think. Now, they have regressed and gone so far away from the intelligent human life, that they don't even... You don't bother them. They don't even know you're talking. While you're talking they're chewing, popping gum, or shaking their booty. They don't hear a thing you say, can't hear a thing you're saying. Now that's dead, isn't it? Yeah, moral death. Spiritual and moral death. Yes, so another thing, we should see our youngsters doing well and let everybody know they exist, because those who want to use us and make money on our bad behavior, they are going to find a bad guy and a bad girl, and they're gonna make sure that they are known. So what is that doing to our good youngsters? It's making them wonder.
Yeah, I don't do those things, and look at them, hugging that bad guy. "Come here, come here. Honey, I still love you just like you are, give me a hug." And the good guy looking at that, right? The good son or good friend looking at that, they're saying, "Hey, I'm living right and I don't get no attention. And he's notoriously bad and he's getting all the attention." We have to reverse that. We have to stop that. We have to start recognizing the good child, let the good child come up here and speak. Yeah. And that'll help the good child. And eventually, it'll tell the bad child, you got to get popular another way.
A lot of them are bad just because they know it's popular to be bad. We can change all that. Another area we need to look at is the way we see the city, the public facilities, the sidewalk outside the house, the curb in the streets in front of your house, the lawn, the walk you take to go to the store, the walk you take through the park, the vehicle, the public vehicle you ride on, the bus, the train, whatever. We have to perceive it differently. These things belong to all of us. You have the ghost of the plantation in you. The ghost of the plantation say, "These are White man's. The White man's street, he own this street. White man own the side walk, let me dirty it up, let me trash it, let me spit on it, let me break out a window."
Become destructive and we destroy our environment. We make ugly our own environment that we're living in. And an ugly environment makes your spirit ugly. It either kills the spirit or make it ugly. Or it makes the spirit run out from that environment. It's gonna affect you one way or the other. You're gonna rebel against it and get away from it, which a lot of people do because they can afford to, they can afford to go out of that area, they go out of that area and move to a place where people are respecting intelligent behavior more, intelligent life more.
Yes? But most of us don't move out, we don't have the money to move out. We stay in that area and the area sometimes corrupt us. Just the environment will corrupt you, you're waking up in a ugly, filthy, trashy environment, it will corrupt you, or it will take your spirit, your positive spirit away from you, and you'll become unconscious, not caring anymore. You give up. I've heard some of them say, "I can't handle all this. I just, I had to throw up my hands. Now I see it and I just walk right by."
Too much for them. It overwhelms their spirit to stay straight. Yes. So you want a good spirit, you wanna feel good inside. You wanna feel like going to work. Make that environment pretty, pretty. Pretty up your environment. Parents used to insist that a child keep the toys where the toys belong. Put your clothes up, put the dirty clothes where they go. They used to insist upon these things. That's the natural spirit, that's the spirit in life, the original spirit in life, that G-d created human beings with. The original spirit wants to see order and beauty. And life thrives on order and beauty. So we would get up and make up our beds, put our shoes together, right shoe with left shoe. Now we just throw them around.
That burdens life. Now you have to go... You gotta go... You gotta go out to a date or go out to school or whatever, you have to find your shoe. You got a certain pair of shoes you wanna wear, you gotta find your shoe, you go crazy and start sweating little beads of sweat on your head trying to find your shoe. Now look how you're torturing your life, let us go back to the old. Let us reform.
Reform means do it again, form all over. Let us reform ourselves, and put those shoes together, right shoe with left shoe, and put them where they're supposed to go, under the bed or wherever they're supposed to go, so they'll be ready for you when you need them. Do that and everything else that you have to use. You know, we have a saying in religion that even a child is going to be made accountable on judgment day, and G-d is gonna ask the child, "How did you treat the properties that your parents put in your possession." So that means how did you treat your clothes? How did you treat your shoes and socks, huh? How did you treat your toys, how did you treat your books, huh? Did you treat those things with respect? If you didn't, the judgment is gonna fall even on a child.
Child gonna fall in hellfire. I saw one fall already. Yeah, I did, like a falling star, and down into the flames of consuming passions that take life to hell. We appreciate you are tuning in on us, we are happy on all occasions to address our audience, and we hope that in some way we benefit the living, and I think if the living are benefited, the dead will feel it.
So we pray that more of the living will grow in the good life that G-d created us for, and prosper in the good way. Don't be afraid to think big, as long as you're thinking right. Don't think small, because thinking is what profits human life, and thinking, G-d says, with him in mind, is the most productive of all thinking or all thought, thinking with him in mind. So let us keep G-d in mind as we think ourself into a better life and reform our attitudes, reform our understanding, our perception, our thinking, reform everything that's in the way of us having the life that we know is good for us. And may G-d keep us always, and have a good year. We greet our radio audience with peace, As-salamu alaykum.
[vocalization]
Allahu akbar. Allahu akbar. That's G-d is greater. Greater than anything imaginable. We're gonna begin our second hour in just a couple of minutes. I'm going to take a couple of minutes break to get my next... My paper, my thought... My notes together and direction for this next hour that we're gonna be spending. Do we have any announcements? A product, I think we have to make the audience aware of products. We have Dr. Diab, maybe I should get started. Dr. Diab has worked with a soap, Salam Soap, a bar soap.
He worked with it for sometime. He didn't give up patience, he didn't give up on it, and I didn't give up on him. He didn't give up on his product and I didn't give up on him. So he finally has a product now that is great. It's a bar of soap, it doesn't wash away or melt away. Some of this soap is made to keep you buying soap, some of the bar soap is made so you hurry up, you got to come right back to the store and get another bar of soap. It just breaks down underwater, it suds too much. You don't need that much suds. Some of us say, "Well if you want that sud, buy some suds. They sell suds too."
[laughter]
But if you just wanna wash your hands, then please get a bar of Dr. Diab's soap, because it's great now. He got it. It's a shea butter... It contains shea butter and nice bar, and you rub it on your hands, it rinses off real good, that's the kind of soap I want. They have lotion in soap and all that, but that lotion, I know it's lotion, but to me, it's something that I need to rinse off. So I'm trying to rinse it off, and I'm spending too much time. I get in the shower and I use that soap, it's got that stuff in, and I shower and I still... I feel slick.
I don't wanna feel like that, I know it's lotion or something, but I don't like that feeling. I think there's still something on me, I'm trying to get it off, trying to rinse it off. So this bar of soap is not like that. It's very nice. You put it on your hand rubbing it, rub it all over your hair, under the water, it almost instantly, it all rinses off. I love it. I love it. I have no money invested in it, I'm not saying that for money. I'm saying it... Yes, I am. I'm saying this so my brother can make money.
Yeah, I'm promoting his soap, so he will make money, and I might invest in it too, but right now that's not on my mind, my money ain't on my mind, it's his product that's on my mind. His product is excellent. So anybody who want to try this soap, Salam bar soap, he just got it right. Well, I tried it about a week ago, I got down to the last part of it, and it didn't slime. So it's right. So what he's gonna sell from now on will be the improved formula that I assure you that it's great, it's good, it's excellent.
It'll last you longer, so it'll cost you a little more, but it lasts much longer than the regular soap, the average bar of soap that you would buy. And the price is not too bad, it's a big bar of soap, and I think the price is around the retail price, I believe it is $4 or somewhere around there. It might be under $4, but it's not over that. It's a big bar of soap and very nice. Let's see what else we got? Also, he has lotions. He got a new product... What is that product? It's a product for...
1:00:10.8 S?: Shaving cream.
What it's called?
1:00:12.8 S?: Shaving cream. A shaving cream.
Oh, yeah, that's a popular one. The shaving cream. It's going well. Those who use it, they're crazy about it, and I can tell you it's good because shea butter is a healer, a skin healer. So if you get a nick, you can't get anything better on it for that than the shea butter, to keep your skin healed, it'll keep your skin healthy and well and healed, it heals cuts, little cuts. But please don't cut yourself up.
[laughter]
No, no, no, I'm talking about the shea butter.
1:00:47.3 S?: Okay.
There's another product. What's that product for runners? Athletes?
[background conversation]
1:01:00.6 S?: Muscle relaxer.
Yes, muscle relaxer. I hear that that's very good too. So he's got several products, anybody who want to reach the products, brother... The transportation, truck transportation man.
[applause]
Alright, so we now continue the address on this day, and the topic or the subject is reform, the need to reform. It's continuing, but for the live audience here, and I have many of my students here who followeth my language and understand it. Yes, now, let's look at reform from scripture. When we read the story of the creation of man. What we have to understand, students, is that it is not talking about the physical creation of man. And the way that we understand it or the way that most people understand it, the way it's given to most people, that G-d made the first man from the Earth, or from clay and formed him, and then breathed into him the spirit, and he became a living creature or a living person.
The way most of us understand that is kindergarten language, kindergarten knowledge, it's not the way real educated people and religion understand it. But the public allow it to have these kindergarten pictures of reality, because the public is not trusted with more knowledge. Do you know that the commercial world, TV, commercial TV, they compose their commercials to reach a 12-year-old mind. A 12-year-old mind. They don't compose it higher than that unless they changed it, and I don't know about the change.
But I've read documents on this, they compose it, compose the commercials to reach no higher than a 12-year-old mind, and you can just listen to many of them and you can see they're designed for children, the commercials are designed for children, and that's where most of the public is, right there, in a child's condition or a child's state of mind.
And so they design it for that mind, 'cause they found out that they reach more of the public when they come that way. So the same goes for religion. Religion has been allowed to stay on a kindergarten level for the public, the masses of people, and pressure is on the religious establishment now to reform the way they preach, the way they perceive the public, the way they preach and what they teach to bring about reform. And it's coming gradually, it's coming slowly. So we're gonna see a new time when religion is going to come in a way that respects adult minds and adult intelligence.
It still will reach children, but it will not ignore or disrespect the intelligence of adult people. So there's no animation. That's what it looks... Sounds like to me, animation. Figurines made or human figurines made out of clay of the earth formed into shape, and their spirit goes into it and it starts moving about as a human being like we are. So that's like animation. And what you have to be cautious of now is not to come to conclusions and judge this language, with your intelligence or with your knowledge. If you don't have direct knowledge from learned people or from insight into this language, don't come to a hasty judgment and say, "Oh that's fiction. That's not real." It's not. It's not fiction. It is real.
It's not fiction. Metaphor, yes, but fiction, no. So metaphors are used, you who have taken college English 101... You know the... Or English 201, I think. Yes, 101 gives you the mechanics of language, I think it's the next one gives you literature. If you've taken the higher course of English in high school, junior college or college, you should understand, they taught you what a metaphor is, and you should understand what we're talking about. Literature period, not just religious literature. If you read a good novel, you have to know something to appreciate it, and to get the best of that novel, you have to know that thing energy, principles, devotion, trends, abstract, abstract concerns are put in concrete pictures.
And the concrete picture will not be a horse, in reality, a horse would be used to say spirit, the horse would be spirit, not a real horse, but in the language on the surface, it says a horse, you see? And you have a bad guy in the woods, and he's called Sater or Satyr, but he really won't be a person, he'll be a disposition of mind, a critical disposition of mind. It'll represent a person criticizing the world that he lives in, his mind, his critical mind, how he's criticizing the world he lives in, and usually if it's satyr, he's criticizing the politics, the way the government operates etcetra.
Sater or Satyr, I think it's spelled S-A-T-E-R or S-A-T-Y-R, I'm not sure. I can't recall right now, it's been a long time since I've seen the word written or in print, and I don't use that kind of language, so I can't recall. But you can look it up in the dictionary, satyr. And wouldn't hurt those who interested in understanding WD Farad. Mr. Farad, who brought the Nation of Islam idea, because he was a satyr in the wilderness of North America. That's exactly what he was, more than any other thing, he was a satyr. He used even us. He created a theater, a living live theater to criticize the ideas that this society built itself upon and positioned in the mind of the whole world, that it's the boss, it's G-d, it's the son of G-d. And the G-d, represent G-d on earth, you know?
Believe me, that's what White supremacy thought, thought that it was the boss, that it was G-d's child on Earth. The White man thought that, that put us down and build the world to favor them going up and favor us going down. Yeah, they built that world that way, but they have repented. I never thought I would live to see them repent, but they have, they have repented. Doesn't mean you don't have some bad ones, don't be like that story of that man in the Bible now. What was his name? Jonah. G-d, revealed to him that the society, the order of the day was bad, and he was gonna destroy it. So Jonah, instead of him going to Nineveh and giving G-d's message to the people of Nineveh to warn them of a pending destruction. What did he do?
He followed the rich people and went and left the city, he traveling with the cargo, the commercial goods. And he goes to sleep on the commercial goods down in the hull of the boat. Now, you know he could have slept upstairs. But he just wanted to be down there with all that wealth. So he slept on it, just like a lot of these lazy Black folks.
[laughter]
Sleeping on a White man's wealth. And wanna be next to it, he doesn't own it but he can rest on it, he just loves that he can rest on it, rest on the White man's labor, and rest on his pocket book. [chuckle] Now he goes to Nineveh after all that experience, he expect to find Nineveh destroyed. And he get there and Nineveh is thriving... Thriving, pardon me, thriving. Nineveh is doing well. Now, he think G-d, he questions G-d now, after going through all his troubles, being thrown off the boat, etcetera. Now he goes back to... He wakes up after getting in all that trouble, he wakes up and remember he had a mission to go to Nineveh. Now he goes to Nineveh and Nineveh is doing well. Now he was questioning G-d, "You embarrassed me like this? Why do you embarrass me like this? You said you're gonna destroy it and look how it's flourishing." I don't think G-d even answered him.
[laughter]
But G-d told him in the beginning that if one repented, he wouldn't destroy Nineveh. I think he started off with three, then two, I think he said then if one repented he wouldn't destroy Nineveh. And some of us, we look at the world today with all this opportunity for African-Americans, nothing but opportunity, plenty of opportunities for you. In fact, it's changed a little bit now, but for a while we had the advantage over the White man. There were more opportunities in America for us than there was for White folks. I ain't talking about the old system, I'm talking about the new opportunities.
We know the old system, they are in power, you're not. But now the doors open for you to get in power and scholarships, and paid this and paid that and all kind of assistance and they didn't have it, they got jealous. And they started speaking against that. And Reagan got in and he changed all that. President Reagan, he got in and changed all that. And it was right, it was fair. All that opportunity open to us, and we're just taking advantage of it and just lazy and greedy and having a fun... Having fun.
I know a few of us were really serious, and we were doing something with our life, but majority of us were just taking advantage of all those opportunities just to live it up, just to live it up. We weren't saying, "Okay, now we got a better opportunity. We got better opportunities to increase our knowledge to become better educated and to make more money, let us now form an organization to start treating the social ills and other ills in our neighborhoods." That should have been a new movement.
That made the NAACP obsolete. Yes, but instead of a new movement, no, good times, good times are here. So Reagan said, "Yeah, your time has come and gone." I think that was one of our political leaders said publicly, "This is our time," and Reagan said, "Yeah? Your time?" I think he had a little bit of that disease or all the way on him 'cause he was doing this, "Yes, your time has come and gone."
[laughter]
I'm not a fool, I'm not foolishly in love with democracy or foolishly in love with people. I'm sane, sober, and I'm doing justice to the situation. The White man has repented. His world has repented the evils that it put on the world of African-Americans and minorities people, other people. It has repented that evil, so we shouldn't go on, keep going on in our spirit and attitude like the White man is the devil and while we are constantly taking over that position.
[laughter]
Yeah, we have constantly taken over the position of the devil in the world and still point to the White man, "Yeah, white man is the devil, can't trust him." But you burnt me it wasn't a White man. And I got proof that I've been burnt by Black folks, big. I mean, burned up bad. White man didn't do that to me. I mean, recently. Yes. Trust in them? You can't trust your own people, that's terrible.
We have to change the way we look at the reality so we can make real progress. We don't have too much time left here, I'll see what I can do here, okay? Kinda cut it short. Yes, I remember reading in the Bible verse that... I read the Bible after I decided to go and do a lot of reading and studying to prepare myself for the position that I had finally accepted that my father told me I would come into, and that is to be a helper to him. And his teacher Mr. Farad. So I studied a lot. I remember reading the Bible, and it said that... The Bible says that they were seeing a scroll, a scroll you had the rolled-up paper, paper rolled up like what the graduates carry at the graduation ceremony with the ribbon around it.
Yeah, a scroll was seen flying in the midst of the heavens, and the scroll was coming with a warning of the end of time, that time is out. That time is ended. And then I read in the Quran, this is also in the Bible, that there's gonna come a time when the people will no more live in the new life, in the new world... In the new world, or the hereafter, the new creation, they will no more live by the light of the sun or the moon, all that will go away. And it says that a new heaven and a new Earth will be brought about.
A new heaven and a new Earth will be brought about. And the Quran, Allah says in the Quran in the sky with the stars and everything we see up there... Said it's going to be rolled back as a scroll, rolled back as a scroll. Now a scroll is something to read, isn't it? A scroll has some... A message, some reading, so it means that... What it's saying is that we won't see heaven with our uneducated minds anymore, as a foreign life and a foreign creation or a foreign world to this one, but we will see this one with new eyes, with new perception, with new understanding. And it will give us a message as though a message coming off of a scroll.
Yes, it is prophesied. It's a prophesied event. There is coming the prophesied event. Oh, what a wonderful sench, when the stars are sent, sent out from under their cover. When rich and poor, when young and old behold the heavens being rolled back as a scroll. You're living in that time right now. Yes, you're living in that time right now, this is a wonderful time that we're living in, when those things that mystified us, are not going to mystify us anymore, but they're gonna speak to us in intelligent human voice. That's gonna free up our souls, free our souls. Freeing the soul gonna free the mind to do better and greater things. I say well this guy is strange, this guy is either nuts or he's blinded by his own understanding or knowledge, no, I'm not. We're living in the best time that human beings have experienced on this planet earth. No human being ever even imagined a time like we're in, in it's full... In it's full picture. They had hints of it, 'cause they predicted, they prophesied of it, but the full picture that we see now, they couldn't have seen that.
Can you imagine what our Greek religious leaders of the past of 1000 or 2000 or even 800 years ago, can you imagine what would happen to their minds if they would suddenly be put among us right now? You all be talking about the little things, like cancer and this kind of stuff and discrimination and this cooperation against blacks or minorities, you'll be talking about that little stuff, they won't hear a thing you're saying. They would be, "Wow, wow!" [laughter] Go to the airport, see those planes they go... They just sitting right there and meditate. Can't pull them away from the airport. Won't be able to pull them away from the airport. They just sitting out there watching planes take off. "This is more than I imagined. Don't tell me I'm not in a higher heaven." [laughter]
But they knew that the world was going to do bigger and greater things, bigger and better and greater thing, they knew that, and they prophesied that that time to come, and they knew that time was gonna come, when the intellect is completely free.
1:24:20.9 S?: That's right.
The old orders, the Government orders, they fear what people thought and they feared that you would think something that would challenge them and maybe sell to their publics better than what they had to give to their public, so they persecuted, they killed people. Galileo was killed, wasn't he?
1:24:44.2 S?: That's right.
Socrates was killed, right?
1:24:47.3 S?: Right.
Killing off the minds to preserve their order that they had. They didn't want them coming in and disturbing that order. We read about the crucifixion of... The crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. It's ain't nothing but the story of Socrates told all over again. That's all it is. The story of Socrates, told all over again. And whatever Socrates's story is talking about, it's the same thing, the story of Jesus Christ being crucified is talking about, and that's why that whole passage is left out of the Quran. It says, "No, he was not crucified." They neither crucified him, not killed him. Why? Because he was a word and a Spirit from G-d. And you cannot kill the Spirit that comes from G-d, you cannot crucify it. And the word that comes from G-d. You cannot kill it. You cannot crucify it.
[background conversation]
Praise be to Allah. Praise be to Allah. Yes. So, we should be prepared for education that respects our intelli... And religion. We should prepare ourselves for education and religion that respects our adult minds and adult intelligent. I used to read... Hear about what they preach to the Church. I went to churches too because I wanted to see and hear for myself. I said, if I'm gonna preach to Christians, 'cause that's who we preach to. We were told to go out and invite Christians to come to the temple, and we were trying to convert them to our way of faith.
1:26:34.2 S?: Right.
So I said, If I'm gonna preach to them, I should understand what they got. So I read the Bible, but I also went to churches. I went to Presbyterian church, I went to a Catholic Church, but first I went to Holiness Church, 'cause my people were closer to that kind of Church. So I went to the Church with of my people, went to first, I went to the Baptist Church, I went to Holiness Church, Sanctified Church. I went to those churches, and I finally went to Presbyterian Church, I went to the Catholic Church, went to all those churches. And I'll share it with you. When I went to the Catholic Church, I said, this is the spookiest situation I've ever been in.
[laughter]
It was dimly lit. Very dimly lit.
1:27:16.9 S?: That's right.
And statues was there, and my friend who was taking me, I was following them, she went... She lit a candle and she kneeled down before the statue, and she did whatever she had to do and kept moving. And I said, "Wow" That's a spooky trip here."
[laughter]
But I respected it. I respected the sacredness and the sanctity of the Church, I respected it. I wouldn't behave in any way to disrespect... Well, I wouldn't even heed to any behavior that would disrespect it, my father and mother put that in me. I wouldn't do anything bad. So I went to a Presbyterian Church too. So after going through all to churches... I got hooked in one. I mean, they had an entertainment thing that...
[laughter]
It was hard for me, to resist going back there, [chuckle] that entertainment was so good. They were swinging. They were swinging man. The joint is jumping.
[laughter]
Daniel Karim did not always respect the sanctity of the Church. That music got so good he got up and start beat boxing.
[laughter]
In the Church beat boxing.
[laughter]
He made me feel so bad. [laughter] He beatbox in the Church.
[laughter]
He got away with it too. Brother from the Nation of Islam went into one Church, and they went in there with that thing, they didn't do no dancing or nothing. But the preacher got on, the preacher put them up, "Yes and the Devil is right here." [laughter] Alright he put the spotlight on them. So we have to reform too. The truth comes like nature comes, the natural world comes at us and mystifies us, before education, when the people heard the thunder roar, the lightening, saw this lightning flashing, they were terrified, and it mystified them.
And they start fearing things and start perceiving those things to be a power much greater than them and they made them gods and they prayed to those things and worshipped those things that they couldn't understand.
1:30:28.2 S?: That's right.
Mm-hmm?
1:30:29.0 S?: That's right.
So the process of learning has been also a process of elimination, right? You perceive things and thought they had power, thought they were G-d, and you had to say no to them, and Abraham finally said, "La ilaha illallah." There's no deity except G-d, the one G-d, the creator of everything, that's Abraham, position he came to. And he's called the father of all nations... The father of the nation or the father of all people, meaning that he... That he himself now let us understand this. There was a man named Abraham. I'm not saying that there was not a man named Abraham in this instance that did great religious work. No, I'm not saying the man didn't exist, but I said that for the greatest benefit, for you to benefit the most from this knowledge, you have to understand that when we say, Father Abraham is our Father, father of all people, like Adam was, he's a second father of all people.
We are talking about a disposition of mind, an orientation in the intellect. We are not talking about a physical person, and that disposition in mind and that orientation for the intellect is what made it possible for the intelligence, the human curiosities and mental curiosities to engage them as objective world, the material universe, and come to understand that everything G-d created embodies science, knowledge. And that began the real process of higher learning or education.
So he is a father for our intellect and his thinking is different than Adam. So we have to reform the way we perceive these creatures, these beings. His thinking is different from Adam, mainly in this respect. Adam describes every common person in his natural ability without insight into matter. So G-d made man a thinker who thinks and reflects, thinks and looks at what he's thought, or look at what made him think, think and reflect. And he made the higher man an analytical thinker... Analytical thinker and that is a man that fathers education, and that's the position of mind that all of you have to come to before you graduate from college. You have to think analytically, not just think and see things on the surface, but you have to analyze what you're looking at.
They have even for grammar, sentence analogy, sentence analogy. You analyze the sentence. Then you have to analyze literature and pieces of literature and everything, become analytical, and it takes us into actually analyzing matter. Matter to understand the nature and composition of matter. Analysis. The doctor analyzes disease or whatever it is bothering us. So this is the kind of thinking that G-d created the brain of human beings to come to. All of us can't come to that level. All of us don't even have an interest to be on that level, but some of us are needed to come into that kind of thinking and be on that higher level for us to compete with other societies and other people who have that and who cherish that, who value that, we need to appreciate human creation much, much more, change the way we look at human life to have a high appreciation for G-d's creation.
No creation is as valuable to human society as the human creation itself. The human creation is the most valuable of all life. And our life comes to its fruition or to its maturity through human life. Now, I know this is heavily philosophical, deep for you, but I am the lowest form of life expressed in the highest form of life. Thank you very much. Peace.
And let's meet again on the next first Sunday. Inshallah. And I hope I will be able to give you a full hour. We were interrupted by news, good news. We are getting these good suits that you invest $1 we give you two, you invest 200, we give you... You invest 200, 400, and then maybe, who knows, you invest 200, maybe 600? Yes, because some suits will sell a little more than others. This is a great opportunity for us to build wealth, great opportunity for us to build wealth.
Of the last purchase, I was able to save for another purchase $8000. I invested money, I made money, and I shared my profits with the people who worked for me, and I mean, shared it good... They know I gave them a good deal and still was able to save or come up with $8000 to reinvest in these suits.
And Allah has blessed me with what I didn't expect. I got more than that to invest. I think I'm the biggest suit distributor in the Midwest. I do believe that. Yeah. So you better get my number. [laughter] You'll get the best deal too, I promise you, you'll get the best deal. I'm talking about wholesale distributors. Contact me if you want some suits. Is there any announcement?

