9/27/1992
IWDM Study Library
Human Intellect

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Announcer:
You are listening to W Deen Mohammed, the Muslim American Spokesman for Human Salvation. And now Imam W Deen Mohammed. The following lecture by Imam Mohammed is entitled Human Intellect. Part one, recorded September 27th, 1992, in FolInger Auditorium at the University of Illinois in Champaign Urbana, Illinois.
As salaamu alaikum, that is peace be on you. All praise to the one G-d, the Lord creator, sustainer of all the worlds and we witness that He is but one alone, that He depends on none for the run of the heavens and the earth. He sustains all things by Himself needing nothing from anything that He has created. And we witness that. Muhammad to whom the Qur'an was revealed about 1400 and a few years ago is the last prophet and Allah's messenger and servant and we salute him with the traditional salute, the most excellent salute, ameen.
We trust G-d to bless us with good results from our efforts. We obey His religion that He revealed to us by way of the prophets and completed and perfected with the last prophet. We seek to have innocent and pure intentions, and we trust that Allah will give us the good results.
Before beginning to address the topic, I would like to express something that is on my heart right now and we congratulate again the Muslim chaplains and the Imam of champagne, here in Champaign, Illinois, Imam Muhammad Abdullah and all those who worked with them to make the occasion last night what it was. And that was a very impressive, very impressive occasion. We'd like to also acknowledge that there was a speech given or lecture given by two people, and the lectures were filled with information, useful information, especially for me, for us, in the ministry. And was sincere, sincere, very sincere. And that's what impressed me most of all, that the speakers were very sincere and very well qualified and prepared and they complimented each other.
The first speaker, the director Peters, he addressed the problem of crime and our youth falling victim to crime and the burden, the burden on the taxpayers and how that burden could be lifted and money could be better used. And then he was complimented by the second speaker, Ms. Harris, Jalia Harris, who dealt with the conditions before even the crimes are noticed or even the crimes are committed, the home condition, the neighborhood, the community condition. And I understood her to be placing responsibility or at least trying to get us to see that responsibility is on us and our home, parents and families and in the neighborhood to create an environment to work, to create an environment that will be conducive to good productive behavior instead of self-destructive behavior.
So I really appreciated the evening last night and I just had to make those comments before beginning to address. It's very difficult to ever see the whole picture of a public figure. Very difficult. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who made the name Muslim, known in the African-American community, in the black community and made the name Allah and the name Muhammad and the Qur'an, the one who made all of that terminology known to us is Elijah Muhammad and I know many of us think we know him or think we knew him. We knew him as a public figure, but few of us knew him as a father. Few of us knew him as a husband, like my mother did. A few of us knew him on the basis of just friendship. Like some of these brothers sitting before me here did. I'm looking at some of them right now. They knew him as not only as a leader, but they knew him as a friend. They knew him as a brother in the ranks with other brothers. They knew him as a friend. And when it comes to me, the same thing goes or to any other figure, public figure. We only see what is presented and most times we are not able to really know the person in an intimate way or in a closeup, get a closeup look at that person to see the human side, to see the private life, the human side of that person. And it is very important to know the human side of a figure that you seek, or respect or seek guidance from.
If you respect the figure or a public figure and you seek guidance or respect what that person says enough to let it influence your life, then you should try to see the human side of that person as well. And the human side is revealed, but it's not the point. The speaker will never make a point of revealing his human side. But if you are a person that's turned on sensitive, you are sensitive to the human side of a person, you can listen to a public figure and also come to know him as the human side of him. You can come to know him in a way that most listeners would not know him. And a few did listen to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and they did come to know him in that way because I know, they told me.
When I would be telling them certain things about what I know of the honorable Elijah Muhammad, they tell me. They would say, brother Imam or Brother Minister. I used to be called Brother Minister. They would say, look, you know, I saw that in your father. Said, I knew that too. And they start telling me things that they registered and we would begin to feel real comfortable with each other because we were identifying with each other that we saw something in the Honorable Elijah Muhammad that we thought was very important. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said all white people are devils, but he didn't discover that someone told him that. The honorable Elijah Muhammad said A white person is born devil, they can't be born any other way except as a devil. All the babies are born devil. So if he didn't discover that, somebody told him that. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said the black man is G-d, the owner, the maker, the cream of the planet earth, the father of civilization, the G-d of the universe, and he knows every square inch of it. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad didn't discover that somebody told him that and it wasn't the black man, wasn't nobody from America, It was somebody from overseas that said he was bringing the religion, bringing Islam.
And when we look in the Qur'an, we don't find any of that. That's not in the Qur'an say, where is that? Where is that? We can't find it in the Qur'an. But he said he was bringing us Islam. And we look in the history of Islam, we don't find any of that, but he said he was bringing us Islam.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad told us many things and he told us, he said, I'm the messenger of G-d. I'm Allah's messenger. That's what he said. But he didn't leave us to wonder whether he's talking about G-d, invisible G-d or G-d of Judaism or something like that or G-d of the Qur'an or anything like that. He made it clear that the G-d he said that came to me came in the person of master Fard Muhammad. He said that came in the person of master Fard Muhammad. So he identified the same man that taught him those things. He identified that man as his G-d and then he said he was chosen to be the messenger of that G-d.
Now he didn't leave us totally dependent upon his G-d. How come He didn't leave us totally dependent upon his G-d because he told us that his G-d would live about 500 years. Well, I would like to see my children live 5,000 years or more. I would like to see my children outlive, the generation of my family outlive that G-d. So he didn't leave us totally dependent on his G-d. He said his G-d was going to die one day.
Now he didn't leave us totally dependent upon his teachings either. He said, “Someone will come after me and bring in the religion. I'm not teaching you religion so much as I'm cleaning you up.” He said, I'm cleaning you up, getting you ready. He said, “Someone will come after me and bring the religion. He said that one that comes may use part of what we have or may not use anything of what we have.” Now, should it shock those who believed in him, if they really accepted what he said. Should it shock them that now we come with something that is totally different? We put aside most of what he gave us. We put aside all the Yakub's history, we put aside all those things and we pick up the Qur'an and we put emphasis on the religion.
So, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad saw this happening exactly as it has happened or not. We certainly must agree that the man must have been in some way psychic. He must have been in some way psychic to predict an outcome that resembles very much what has happened. He said, someone will come and give you the religion, teach you the religion, and he said they may not use anything of what we have.
Well, if anybody is good in his heart and really means well, he'll never throw away, that, that is good. He'll only throw away that, that is incorrect or bad and he'll keep that, that's correct and good. So we find that we keep and cherish and thank Allah for the honorable Elijah Muhammad and thank him for his good works and we keep and cherish much of his good works and much of his good teachings because much of his good teachings is appliable right now to our conditions, but we can't raise what he told us though it'd be good and sound and acceptable. We cannot raise what he gave us above the book that he raised above everything and that is the Qur'an. He didn't teach us the Qur'an, but he did lift the Qur'an above everything, even the lessons, even Yaqub's history, everything. So, I thought I would say that to you before going into my topic.
Now I want to tell you something else. I realize that I'm on the campus of the University of Illinois here in Champaign Urbana and I realize that perhaps we have a few members of the student body here or perhaps even some of the faculty might be here. I realize that, but I also am aware that I'm looking at people that I became who I am among, I became who I am among you. I'm looking at people who knew me when I was a teenager. That's right. I'm looking at people who knew me when I was a teenager and that can't help, I can't help but have my mind and heart influenced by their presence. So my talk is going to be flavored a little differently because of their presence.
You'll find if you really listen closely to me, you who have known my father, honorable Elijah Muhammad, if you listen closely to me, you'll find that we are very similar. We are very similar. The older I get, the more I realize how much I'm like my father, the late leader Elijah Muhammad. Yes I do. I listen to myself sometimes I say, that sounds like daddy. Well, that's natural. It's natural that a son should be like his father. That's natural and I find that even my appetite for certain things, older I get, the more my appetite gets like his. And I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud of it. I like it. I love that.
The honorable Elijah Muhammad, if I would describe him without bringing in myths, you may call what I call myth, some of you who haven't studied myth, like I've studied myth from the following of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, you may call divine science wisdom, supreme wisdom or whatever, but I call it myths. Myths. And I find that when I'm talking, I tend to be somewhat influenced by the honorable Elijah Muhammad's ability, his skills, to juggle dynamite and oatmeal. I should say nitroglycerin and oatmeal. And he keeps his mind on the oatmeal and he keeps his mind on the nitroglycerin. And when he leaves, there was no explosion. Nobody got killed, everything was safe, everything worked out fine.
Now, the honorable Elijah Muhammad also, I see him as a man, and by that, when I gave you that little illustration there, really what I want to say that the honorable Elijah Muhammad though he had no high school education, no formal education. He never attended high school and he only went to the third grade of elementary school in the poor south. So we can say he had no formal education. He was a man who learned by reading and listening to others, encountering knowledge. That's how he learned. And most of what he learned was from the man that he say came as a stranger and he was a strange man.
The man that gave him his idea for the Nation of Islam, W.D. Fard or Fard Muhammad. So most of his education, his knowledge came as a result of that. Although he was a person who was reading and studying and questioning and everything in the early years of his life, we know that from his mouth and from the mouth of my mother and from the mouth of his mother, my grandmother, we know that he studied and questioned religion, the church and Christianity as a young man. And he came from the south like most of our people did to the north, to Detroit. He came to Detroit with his family and began working in Detroit and he continued to study and question.
He was influenced somewhat by Marcus Garvey who had his African-American movement before the Nation of Islam ever got to be popular. And also Drew Ali, Noble, called Noble Drew Ali, who himself introduced a kind of Islam. It was also Off-brand, off-brand, self- made up religion by a person or persons. But it was introduced as Islam. And I think these inventors of these artificial brands of Islam really feared that if they introduced true Islam to America in the black community, in the African-American community, that they would be killed or deported, if they were not citizens of this country, they would be deported or either killed, you see?
So I think that they were more interested in influencing African-Americans or blacks away from allegiance to the white man and to the white world and to more importantly to white man's ideas and to bring, wean African-American people off of white man's ideas in hopes that the African-American would one day begin to think with self-confidence, think himself, on his own, with self-confidence and become an independent thinker for himself and for his own people. I believe that was their intent. And if that was their intent, then G-d will reward them based upon their good intent. He will reward them even though they made terrible errors in presenting Islam incorrectly if that was their intent. We are told in Islam matters are judged by intent matters are judged by intent. If you believe you're doing right and you meet and you believe it sincerely in your heart and G-d will not punish you even though you were doing something wrong because you were not consciously erring, you were not consciously erring, you were doing what you thought would be good, so G-d will reward him.
If that is true, then I expect the honorable Elijah Muhammad will be rewarded with paradise because he did much more good than a lot of people who called themselves holy and straight. So I believe he'll be rewarded with paradise. And if Fard was sincere in what he did, I say the same thing of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's teacher. I do believe G-d will reward him with paradise if he was having good intentions and the feeling that his work would be good, be good, and his intentions were good. Most of all, his intent has to be good.
If you're doing it for money or for power, the intent is wrong. You can't do it for money, you can't do it for power. You('ve) got to do it to please G-d. You've got to do it for what's right. Not for the material benefits and not for worldly status or worldly fame. No, that won't work. If we do it for that we are sinners and we get the punishment. We go to hell for corrupting religion.
So we who love the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, we should pray for his soul. We should remember him and pray for his soul and we should pray for each other. I know some of you do and I know I do.
Another thing about the Honorable Elijah Muhammad that stands out with me is that he believed in what he believed in and nothing could break him from that belief. Nothing could break him from that belief and he didn't fear any consequences when it came to standing up for what he believed G-d wanted him to do. Nothing could shake him or break him. He might, if Fard says, don't eat peanuts, they take five years off the life, he might slip and eat some peanuts. He said well, these are not the red skinned ones. He said the red skinned ones are the real ones, so he might slip and eat some peanut, but that's not breaking allegiance to the teacher.
It's important matters that really count. If you uphold the important matters, then you are upholding that leader. You are upholding that person. He upheld important matters. He never backed off of those important matters until he was almost facing death and saw a change in America that was so convincing, he just had to acknowledge these changes. He saw America change from one of two laws, one for white people and one for black people, to one of one law. He lived to see that. Now whether some of us right now, we have people that'll blow up things and they say right now we in prison camps, I hear some blacks talking. They talk, they say we're in prison camps and I don't see nobody with the key to the prison, but them.
They say you're in prison camps they say they're locked up. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad realized that circumstances had changed so great so drastically in this country that he had to change his tune somewhat. So he began to soften his tune. He began to even appeal to us, and I never heard him speak like this before when he was speaking to our community. He said, I tell you this, he said, and I mean it from my heart, he said, if the white people can accept you, then you accept them. That's what he told us at one of his national conventions. Maybe not his exact words, but that's very close to his exact words. If white people can accept us and treat us fairly, it'd be nice by us then the burden of decency should be on us to at least return the same to them.
And a wise man like that, he would look stupid getting up there telling you Yacub's history was wrong and this was wrong and that was wrong. He just let you know by his attitude, I have changed my attitude. It's time for you to change yours.
The wisdom of the honorable Elijah Muhammad, he stands out for his wisdom, for his psychology. He had ability, he had a natural ability to rule us, be our leader and rule us with his own special psychology. He had his own special psychology and sometime we differed as to that psychology.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, to me once, say son, he said, I know you're going to be the person that you are to be. He said, but you can never get our people doing something talking soft to 'em. He said, Son, you got to ride what they call it, cow herd or something like that. He say, he said, and you have to have the whip. He said, and you've got to pop it every now and then.
He was right, but I'm not cut out for it, but he was right. You get the best result from our people when you don't listen to 'em, when you talk to 'em and don't listen to them. When you give them orders and don't accept any excuses. When you be the only superior and they all inferior, you get the best result from our people. Now I hope that day will change, but it hasn't changed yet. It ain't quite as bad as it used to be though. It's changing. But that's the description of us.
Not only that, we like to be led by false people. Yeah, we do. We like to be led by false people. The bigger, more phony he is and the more we like him and the more we give him, we go and listen to him and just enjoy and get up and give him a hundred dollars. If we ain't got number $2 left, give him a hundred dollars into the offering. Big phony. We'll buy him the latest car and the most expensive car. Dress him up. So he looks like the private pimp of the United States. Looks like he's pimping everybody that's available to support a pimp. He got the wardrobe out of sight, wardrobes and rings and everything. He just loaded with sparkling. He's sparkling all over steps out in the car. Looked like Buck Rogers designed it. And we just love him to death. Praise G-d for his life and safety and happiness. Many of us are still like that. Many of us are still like that, but we ain't satisfied with that. We going to change. That's right. We are changing and we going to change more.
Another thing that I admire about the honorable Elijah Muhammad as extraordinary attributes of his. His wisdom was an extraordinary attribute. His psychology that he used was an extraordinary attribute. His devotion and obedience was an extraordinary attribute. And one other thing I'm going to mention before going into my topic, his boldness, boldness. He was a bold man. He was bold enough to challenge the people that didn't want to do nothing but come in and sleep, sit down and chair and go to sleep.
He would challenge you to take over the supermarket and run it. "Wake up and get up in there and accept the responsibility to run this supermarket." And you sitting there sleeping while he's talking about business. You ain't interested in nothing, you sitting there nodding, "Wake up!" Man of bold faith, bold faith, bold courage and bold faith, very bold.
And he would try to excite us to be bold and courageous. He'd say, "You know what my savi or say about you, the whole race of these devils that he could put all of 'em on a string and tie around his baby finger. They come like that." Well, you see a man's talking to you like that. If you've been excited, intimidated to see the white man as a big power and figure, he starts to get smaller while that man is talking to you, if you have the courage to sit there and hear him out.
IWDM:
As Salaamu Alaikum, and it's peace be on you. All praise to the one G-d, the Lord, creator, sustainer of all the world's. And we witness that He is but one alone. He depends on none for the run of the heavens and the earth. He sustains all things by Himself, needing nothing from any thing that He has created. And we witness that Muhammad, to whom the Qur’an was revealed about 1400 and a few years ago, is the last prophet and Allah's messenger and servant. And we salute him with the traditional salute, the most excellent salute. Ameen. We trust G-d to bless us with good results from our efforts. We obey His religion that He revealed to us by way of the prophets and completed and perfected, with the last prophet. We seek to have innocent and pure intentions and we trust that Allah will give us the good results.
Before beginning to address the topic, I would like to express something that is on my heart right now and that is to say we congratulate again the Muslim Chaplains and the Imam of Champagne here in Champaign, Illinois, Imam Muhammad, Abdullah and all those who worked with them to make the occasion last night what it was. And that was a very impressive, very impressive occasion. We'd like to also acknowledge that was a speech given or lecture given by two persons. And the lectures were filled with information, useful information, especially for me, for us in the ministry. And was sincere, sincere, very sincere. And that's what impressed me most of all, that the speakers were very sincere and very well qualified and prepared and they complimented each other. The first speaker, the Director Peters, he addressed the problem of crime and our youth falling victim to crime and the burden on the taxpayers and how that burden could be lifted and money could be better used.
And then he was complimented by the second speaker, Ms. Harris, Jalea Harris, who dealt with the conditions before even the crimes are noticed or even the crimes are committed, the home condition, the neighborhood, the community condition. And I understood her to be placing responsibility or at least trying to get us to see that responsibility, is on us and our home, parents and families and on the neighborhood to create environment to work, to create an environment that will be conducive to good productive behavior instead of self-destructive behavior. So I really appreciated the evening last night and I just had to make those comments before beginning to address. So it's very difficult to ever see the whole picture of a public figure. Very difficult. The honorable Elijah Muhammad, who made the name Muslim, known in the African-American community and the black community and made the name Allah, and the name Muhammad and the Qur'an, the one who made all of that terminology known to us, is Elijah Muhammad.
And I know many of us think we know him or think we knew him. We knew him as a public figure, but few of us knew him as a father. Few of us knew him as a husband, like my mother did. A few of us knew him on the basis of just friendship, like some of these brothers sitting before me here did. I'm looking at some of them right now. They knew him as not only as a leader, but they knew him as a friend. They knew him as a brother in the ranks with other brothers. They knew him as a friend. And when it comes to me, the same thing goes or to any other figure public figure. We only see what is presented and most times we are not able to really know the person in an intimate way or in a closeup, get a closeup look at that person to see the human side, to see the private life, the human side of that person.
And it is very important to know the human side of a figure that you seek or respect or seek guidance from. If you respect the figure or a public figure and you seek guidance or respect what that person says enough to let it influence your life, then you should try to see the human side of that person as well. And the human side is revealed, but it's not the point. The speaker will never make a point of revealing his human side. But if you are the person that's turned on sensitive, you are sensitive to the human side of a person. You can listen to a public figure and also come to know him as, the human side of him. You can come to know him in a way that most listeners would not know him. And a few did listen to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and they did come to know him in that way because I know. They ttold me. When I would be telling them certain things about what I know about the honorable Elijah Muhammad, they would tell me.
They would say, brother Imam or brother minister, I used to be called brother Minister, say, look, say, you know, I saw that in your father. Said I knew that too. And they started telling me things that they registered and we would begin to feel real comfortable with each other because we were identifying with each other that we saw something in honorable Elijah Muhammad that we thought was very important. Thet honorable Elijah Muhammad said all white peoples the devils, but he didn't discover that someone told him that. The honorable Elijah Muhammad said a white person is born devil, they can't be born any other way except as a devil. All the babies are born devil. So if he didn't discover that, somebody told him that. The honorable Elijah Muhammad said the black man is G-d, the owner, the maker, the cream of the planet earth, the father of civilization, the G-d, of the universe
and he knows every square inch of it. The honorable Elijah Muhammad didn't discover that somebody told him that. And it wasn't the black man, wasn't nobody from America, it was somebody from overseas that said he was bringing the religion, bringing Islam. And when we look in the Qur'an, we don't find any of that. That's not in the Qur'an. Where is that? Where is that? We can't find it in the Qur'an. But he said he was bringing us Islam and we look in the history of Islam, we don't find any of that. But he said he was bringing us Islam. The honorable Elijah Muhammad told us many things and he told us, he said, I'm the messenger of G-d. I'm Allah's messenger. That's what he said. But he didn't leave us to wonder whether he's talking about G-d's, you know, invisible G-d, or G-d of Judaism or something like that, or G-d of the Qur'an or anything like that.
He made it clear that the G-d he said that came to me came in the person of Master Fard Muhammad. He said he came in the person of Master Fard Muhammad. So he identified the same man that taught him those things, he identified that man as his G-d. And then he said he was chosen to be the messenger of that G-d. Now, he didn't leave us totally dependent upon his G-d. How come he didn't leave us totally dependent upon his G-d? Because he told us that his G-d would live about 500 years. Well, I would like to see my children live 5,000 years or more.
I would like to see my children outlive, the generation of my family outlive that G-d. So he didn't leave us totally dependent on his G-d. He said his G-d was going to die one day. Now he didn't leave us totally dependent upon his teachings either. He said, “Someone will come after me and bring in the religion. I'm not teaching you religion so much as I'm cleaning you up. He said, I'm cleaning you up, getting you ready.” Says someone will come after me and bring the religion. He said, that one that comes may use part of what we have or may not use anything of what we have. Now, should it shock those who believed in him, if they really accepted what he said, should it shock them that now we come with something that is totally different? We have put aside most of what he gave us.
We put aside all the Yaqub's history. We put aside all those things and we pick up the Qur'an and we put emphasis on the religion. So, the honorable Elijah Muhammad saw this happening exactly as it has happened or not. We certainly must agree that the man must have been in some way psychic. He must have been in some way psychic to predict an outcome that resembles very much what has happened. He said, someone will come and give you the religion, teach you the religion. And he said they may not use anything of what we have.
Well, if anybody is really good in his heart and really means well, he'll never throw away, that, that is good. He'll only throw away that, that is incorrect or bad and he'll keep that's correct and good. So we find that we keep and cherish and thank Allah for the honorable Elijah Muhammad and thank him for his good works and we keep and cherish much of his good works and much of his good teachings because much of his good teachings is appliable right now to our conditions. But we can't raise what he told us, though it'd be good and sound and acceptable. We cannot raise what he gave us above the book that he raised above everything and that is the Qur'an. He didn't teach us the Qur'an, but he did lift the Qur'an above everything, even the lessons, even Yaqub's history, everything.
So I thought I would say that to you before going into my topic. Now I want to tell you something else. I realize that I'm on the campus of the University of Illinois, here in Champaign Urbana, and I realize that perhaps we have a few members of the student body here or perhaps even some of the faculty might be here. I realize that. But I also am aware that I'm looking at people that I grew, became who I am, among, I became who I am among you. I'm looking at people who knew me when I was a teenager. I'm looking at people who knew me when I was a teenager and I can't help but have my mind and heart influenced by their presence.
So my talk is going to be flavored a little differently because of their presence. You'll find if you really listen closely to me, you who have known my father, if you listen closely to me, you'll find that we are very similar. We are very similar. The older I get, the more I realize how much I'm like my father, the late leader Elijah Muhammad. Yes I do. I listen to myself sometimes. I say, that sounds like daddy. Well, that's natural. It's natural that a son should be like his father. That's natural. And I find that even my appetite for certain things, the older I get, the more my appetite gets like his.
And I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud of it. I like it. I love that. The Honorable, Elijah Muhammad, if I would describe him without bringing in myths. You may call what I call myths, some of you who haven't studied myth, like I've studied myth from the following of Elijah Muhammad, you may call divine science, wisdom, supreme wisdom or whatever, but I call it myths. Myths.
And I find that when I'm talking, I tend to be somewhat influenced by the honorable Elijah Muhammad's ability, his skills, to juggle dynamite and oatmeal, or I should say nitroglycerin and oatmeal. And he keeps his mind on the oatmeal and he keeps his mind on nitroglycerin. When he leaves, there was no explosion. Nobody got killed, everything was safe, everything worked out fine.
Now, the honorable Elijah Muhammad also, I see him as a man and by that, when I gave you that illustration there, really what I want to say that the honorable Elijah Muhammad, though he had no high school education, no formal education. He never attended high school and he only went to the third grade of elementary school in the poor south. So we can say he had no formal education. This is a man who learned by reading and listening to others coming in contact with knowledge. That's how he learned. And most of what he learned was from the man that he say came as a stranger. And he was a strange man. The man that gave him his idea for the Nation of Islam, W. D.Fard or W. Fard Muhammad. So most of his education, his knowledge came as a result of that. Although he was a person who was reading and studying and questioning everything, in the early years of his life. We know that from his mouth and from the mouth of my mother and from the mouth of his mother, my grandmother, we know that he studied and questioned religion, the church and Christianity as a young man.
And he came from the south like most of our people did to the north to Detroit. He came to Detroit with his family and again working in Detroit. And he continued to study and question. He was influenced somewhat by Marcus Garvey, who had his African American movement before the Nation of Islam ever got to be popular. And also Drew Ali, called Noble Drew Ali, who himself introduced a kind of Islam. It was also off-brand, off-brand, self made up religion by a person or persons. But it was introduced as Islam. And I think these inventors of these artificial brands of Islam really see it. That if they introduced true Islam to America in the black community and the African-American community that they would be killed or deported, If they were not citizens of this country, they would be deported or either killed, you see? So I think that they were more interested in influencing African-Americans or blacks away from allegiance to white man and to the white world and to more importantly to white man's ideas, ideas, and to bring, wean African-American people off of white man's ideas in hope that the African-American would one day begin to think with self-confidence, think himself on his own, with self-confidence and become an independent thinker for himself and for his own people.
I believe that was their intent. And if that was their intent, then G-d will reward them based upon their good intent. He will reward them even though they made terrible errors in presenting Islam incorrectly if that was their intent. We are told in Islam matters are judged by intent Matters are judged by intent. If you believe you're doing a right and you believe it sincerely in your heart, and G-d will not punish you, even though you were doing something wrong because you were not consciously airing, you were not consciously airing, you were doing what you thought would be good, so G-d will reward him. If that is true, then I expect all of Elijah Muhammad will be rewarded with paradise because he did much more good than a lot of people who called themselves holy and straight.
So I believe he'll be rewarded with paradise. And if Farad was sincere in what he did, I say the same thing of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's teacher. I do believe G-d would reward him with paradise if he had good intentions and the feeling that his work would be good, be good, and his intentions were good. Most of all, his intent has to be good. If you're doing it for money or for power, no, the intent is wrong. You can't do it for money. You can't do it for power. You got to do it to please G-d. You got to do it for what's right. You see, not for the material benefits and not for worldly status or worldly fame. No, that won't work if we do it for that we are sinner and we get the punishment. We go to hell for corrupting religion.
So we who love Bli Muhammad, we should pray for his soul. We should remember him and pray for his soul and we should pray for each other. I know some of you do, and I know I do. Yes. So another thing about Elijah Muhammad that stands out in me is that he believed in what he believed in and nothing could break him from that belief. Nothing could break him from that belief. And he didn't fear any consequences when it came to standing up for what he believed G-d wanted him to do. Nothing could shake him or break him.
If Ra say, don't eat peanuts, they take five years off your life, he might slip and eat some peanuts. He said, well, he said, these are not the red skin ones. He said the red skin ones or the real bad ones. So he might slip and eat some, but that's not breaking allegiance to the teacher. It's the important matters that really count. As long as you uphold the important matters, then you are upholding that leader. You are upholding that person. He upheld the important matters. He never backed off of those important matters until he was almost facing death and saw a change in America that was so convincing. He just had to acknowledge these changes. He saw America change from one of two laws, one for white people and one for black people, one of one law. He lived to see that. Now whether some of us right now, we have people that blow up things and they say Right now we in prison camps, I hear some blacks talking. They talk say, they say we in prison camps and I don't see nobody with the key to the prison, but they say in Prison County, they say they're locked up.
All Elijah Muhammad realized that circumstances had changed so great so drastically in this country that he had to change his tune somewhat. So he began to soften his tomb. He began to even appeal to us, and I never heard him speak like this before when he was speaking to our community. He said, I tell you this, he said, and I mean it from my heart, he said, if the white people can accept you, then you accept them. That's who he told us at one of his national conventions. There maybe not his exact words, but that's very close to his exact words. If white people can accept us and treat us fairly, it'd be nice by us, then the burden of decency should be all us to at least return the same to them. And a wise man like that, he would look stupid getting up there telling you Yakubs history was wrong and this was wrong and that was wrong.
He just let you know by his attitude, I have changed my attitude. It's time for you to change yours. Yeah, the wisdom of law. Elijah Muhammad, he stands out for his wisdom, for his psychology. He had ability, he had a natural ability to rule us, be our leader and rule us with his own special psychology. He had his own special psychology and sometimes different as to that psychology. Muhammad said, you mean once say son? He said, I know you're going to be the person that you are to be. He said, but you can never get our people doing something talking soft to 'em.
He say, son, you got to ride what they call a cow herd or something like that. He said, and you have to have the whip. He said, and you got to pop it every now and then. Pow. Yes, he was right, but I'm not cut out for it, but he was right. Yep. You get the best result from our people. When you don't listen to 'em, you talk to 'em and don't listen to them when you give 'em all and don't accept any excuses. When you be the only superior and they all inferior, you get the best results from our people. Now, I hope that day will change, but it hasn't changed yet.
It ain't quite as bad as it used to be though. It's changing. But that's the description of us. Not only that, we like to be led by false people. Yeah, we do. We like to be led by false people. The biggest, most phony is and more we like him and the more we give him, we go and listen to him and just enjoy and get up and give him a hundred dollars. If he ain't got number $2 left, give him a hundred dollars into the offering. Big phony. We'll buy him the latest car and the most expensive car. Dress him up. So he looks like the private pimp of the United States look like he's pimping everybody that's available to support a pimp. He got the wardrobe out of sight, wardrobes and rings and everything. He's loaded with sparkling. He's sparkling all over and he's stressed and he dumps out in the car. Looked like Buck Rogers designed it.
And we just love him to death. Pray G-d for his life and safety and happiness. Many of us still like that. Yeah, many of us are still like that, but we ain't satisfied with that. We are going to change. That's right. We are changing and we are going to change more. Another thing that I admire about the army, Elijah Muhammad, as extraordinary attributes of his wisdom, was an extraordinary attribute. This psychology that he used was an extraordinary attribute. His devotion and obedience was an extraordinary attribute. And one other thing I'm going to mention before going into my topic, his boldness. Boldness. He was a bold man.
He was bold enough to challenge the people that didn't want to do nothing but come in and sleep, sit down in the chair and go to sleep. He would challenge you to take over the supermarket and run it. Wake up and get up in there and accept the responsibility to run this supermarket. And you sitting there sleeping while he's talking about business. You ain't you sitting there nodding, what up, man? Of bold faith, bold faith, bold courage and bold faith, very bold. And he would try to excite us to be bold and courageous. He say, you know what my savior say about the whole race of these devils that he could put all of 'em on a string and tie around his baby finger. They come like that. Well, you see a man's talking to you like that. If you've been excited, intimidated to see the white man as a big power and figure he starts to get smaller while that man is talking to you, if you have the courage to sit there and hear him out.
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