04/06/2008
IWDM Study Library
MEETING OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Pt. 3
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

00:05 Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Dr. King followed in the best tradition of our black leaders, or our African-American leaders. He followed in the best tradition. Frederick Douglas, how did Frederick Douglas seek to better the situation for himself and his people? He sought to do it by standing upon moral strength, and addressing the wrongs of the white world, or the white man. Dr. King advanced that a bit. He addressed the color issue, and he said that he believed there's coming a day, or he prayed for the day, no, he said it will come, I am sorry, he did say it would come when a man will be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin.

01:06 S?: That's right.

01:07 IWDM: That's what Dr. King said. Now, black leadership, influenced by the nation of Islam's teaching, saw the black people become proud, happy to say they black. When they used to fight each other up there and beat each other up if you call one black. In my lifetime, okay? So this leadership we have, have just turned the appreciation for your black skin into an orgy. Obsessed with the word. Everything is black. So that really frightened me. And I said, "People are really leading themselves astray, and making it almost impossible for us to make progress with our minds, and our intelligence, and our communities." Yep, that's the way I saw it. But just as I saw the nation of Islam's teaching as a real problem, basically that God is a black man; a black man made the devil. And God is a black man, and Allah is in the person of Mr. Farad and his skin is white.

[chuckle]

02:50 IWDM: Yeah, these very bold contradictions, that this wouldn't be accepted by my mind, and I'm sure many more of you. So after looking at the problem of black identity, and how our black leadership was really making serious problems for us, I did the same thing that I came to do, while thinking on the nation of Islam's problems. I said, "That must be something hidden in this. Must be more to this than meets the eye." So I analyzed it from the position of psychology. I analyzed it, and this is what I came up with. The white man had this attitude, had a attitude to support this, even if they didn't use this language, but I heard this language in my life, and in my adult lifetime. The charge that black men can't produce anything but babies. So, our black leaders registered that, subconsciously, and I believe consciously, they registered that and responded to that charge. And now they name things black to say to the white world, "There's another production. There's something else I have produced."

[chuckle]

05:00 IWDM: Black magazine, Essence... Essence is not the black, but Essence is black too, if you understand it.

[chuckle]

05:10 IWDM: Jet, Ebony, ebony means black. Jet black, and you can go on and on. I think I saw a magazine called Black Hair.

05:19 S?: Yeah.

05:25 IWDM: I mean, that's really stretching it. Black Hair. But if you look into it, it might be correct language, Black Hair.

05:39 S?: Black Enterprise.

05:41 IWDM: Black Enterprise, yes. Black Enterprise, business magazine. What this seemed to be just an overly excessive abnormal amount of black terminology to identify what we are, and who we are, and what we're doing. The only way I can justify it and understand it is by saying that this isn’t speaking to us. They're not speaking to us. They're speaking to the white man. And they're telling the white man, "Yeah, you say we can't produce? Well, here's another. There's another business we did, we established, or created. And here's another publication we established," etcetera. "Here's another service that we have." [chuckle] So they're telling to the white man, "You said we can't produce, but chalk up another win for us." [laughter] And if that's the motivation, it isn’t going to ever stop until [laughter] the leadership leads with an honest, loving, psychologist, Imam W. Deen Muhammad. [chuckle] If you're put on the defense to prove yourself, your adversary have tied up your energies forever. Children's sense tell them that they're not to engage someone who has no intent or interest in them but to put them down.

07:53 IWDM: They're welcome to get away from that person, and they'll tell that person, "Sticks and stones may hurt, break my bones, but words will never hurt me." I heard little children say that. "I'm black, something, something sweet as a berry... "

08:19 S?: The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.

08:24 IWDM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, these are children. These are children responding that way. And here's the black leadership, not understanding their own spirituality that has been developed under white supremacy. They don't even understand their own spirituality, and they're given to just proving that a black person is not what you said a black person is. You said we are not producers, but we going to prove we are producers. And there's a stamp black on that, black on that. See, another one might chalk up another white man, black, black. So after I saw into the psychology that is behind this proliferation of the term black, I had a little more respect and less troubled. Yes, I have more respect for our black leaders now, and I'm less troubled by their use, over-use of the term black, exaggerated use of the term, black.

09:51 IWDM: That is harmful, in the long run, it can be nothing but harmful. In the nation of Islam, as a young minister preaching to the congregation, I look at the congregation and I see black, mostly black skins, but I see brown, a good number of brown, and I saw some with complexion, light enough, or bright enough, or white enough to actually pass. That's what I've seen in the congregation of the audience that I have addressed of the following of Elijah Muhammad. And thinking free, my mind has never been enslaved. I can't recall any time my mind was enslaved. I was a boy, maybe about 11 or 12, and my father and mother went out to the temple on Wednesday night. And I was home by myself; that's unusual, 'cause there was always more than one member of the family at the house.

11:05 IWDM: And he came down the steps. The wooden frame house, the first house that they ever owned, that my parents ever owned. 6116, Michigan, on south side Chicago. He coming down those steps and he looked at me, and I was doing my homework, he said, "Son," all dressed up, "Your mother and I have to go to the temple on some business." Now, I don't know if any of you all remember what kind of business was taken care of on a Wednesday night. It was court time. Somebody was going to be sentenced, most likely. So anyway, they left me in that house alone, and the sun went down. It was down already, pardon me. And the night got cooler and the house started talking to me. That old frame house started talking to me, and I got scared.

12:03 IWDM: I heard things in the basement, like somebody was down there. I know isn’t nobody was supposed to be down there. I go down the basement and I isn’t tell you everything that I experienced, but I know God put me in that thing. God scared the life out of me almost, by making me see and believe things that I don't think existed, but they appeared to me real in my eyes. And I came back upstairs and now it's late, I'm sleepy, and they isn’t home yet. And it's much later than the time that I expected them to be back, okay? So I said to myself, "They must be taking care of a lot of business at the temple tonight." So I got ready for bed, and I didn't want to turn the light out, scared. I put my hands up like we were taught to do, dua form, put my hands up like this here and I said, "Allah, if I'm not seeing you correctly, will you please help me see you correctly? Amin." That was my Dua. Now, I have grown much... Have grown in many years old, and every time I look back at that, the first time I looked back at that picture of myself and what I was faced...

13:31 IWDM: What I had been faced with, being alone by myself in that house, I said to myself, 'cause I hadn't thought of myself this way, I said to myself, "I never was comfortable with believing God as a man, even as a child, 10 or 11 years old." Actually, I'm going to get my age... I'm going to get... I can get my exact age almost.

[pause]

14:16 IWDM: Yes, about... Yes, I was right, about maybe 12 or 13, 12 or 13 years old maybe. But anyway, when I look back, I understand that I was never pleased with God being presented as a man. See, a child that didn't experience what the average adult experienced, I was born after my father had already accepted the new teachings. The teachings of Islam given to him by Mr. Farad, the Professor Farad. For I was born after that, so I didn't... I wasn't told the things you all were told, the Christian idea of God in the person of Jesus Christ, a man. I wasn't told that. So my mind, because I wasn't taught that or told that, my mind was free-er, free-er to question that idea. So that's what I did, I questioned it. And I came to see the same thing. I said, "How can we condemn the church, and we have flesh man too, that we say is God? How can we condemn them and say, 'They're wrong and Jesus Christ is not G-d?'" Well, here are the same ideas given to us, a white man from Asia, and we say, "He's God," and it didn't bother us. Yeah. But all is changing now. Yeah, we reached the end time for the great issues and scripture. It's the end of time.

[pause]

16:38 IWDM: Now, lastly, let us look at what meaning has come to us when we read black in Islamic term, in Islamic language, or in the Islamic teachings. I've already given you the biggest part of it, and that is that the meaning of black as faith and spirituality, spirituality or the spiritual life. In the Quran, black is associated with water. And it says that water is darkness. Darkness. Water is darkness, or water is blackness. Water. Water is a term, what we call in grammar, language, grammatical language, a metaphor.

18:00 IWDM: Water is a metaphor for human sensitivities and human spiritual life, but for human sensitivities, spirit. And a little bitty gnat or something, or ant, can crawl on your feet, and you get it instantly. You feel it right away. Sometimes the thing crawling on your skin is too small for you to see with your eyes, but you feel it. And it sends a sensation through your body, to your mind.

18:56 IWDM: Now, that sensitivity can be seen or understood, by not addressing. You don't have to address flesh, skin, or human body. Just take the smallest thing, and drop it in the water. And it will send waves, ripples over the whole surface of the water. The smallest thing, the waves get smaller and smaller as they go outwards from the point of contact, so you may miss seeing that the waves continued. But those waves will keep going. They will keep going. If you could really use a stronger looking glass, you would see that they're moving, still moving, even though your naked eye cannot detect it. They're still moving out. So, like broadcasting, little slightest touch, and it goes all over the surface of the water, disturbs the water. Well, that is the way our sensitivities are. Our sensitivities are the same. You hurt my feelings; it goes all through my body. It goes all through me. You touch me kindly, it goes all through me, too.

21:00 IWDM: So water is only a term used in scripture to address that kind of life and sensitivity, water. When we hear about the drowning of the people and the flood, don't think of that water that you drink out of the faucet and bottles, and et cetera. But think of the sensitivities of people. They drowned it in their own sensitivities. Now, haven't we as a people become so sensitive to skin color that we're drowning in the waters of our sensitivities? Drowning, drowning out reason, drowning out intelligence.

22:09 IWDM: So the meaning in Islam for blackness is sensitivities. And it's the same in the Bible if you understand, if you can understand it. It's sensitivities. A companion nearby our Prophet Muhammad, prayers and peace be on him, spoke derogatorily, or really used racist language against a companion, the African companion of Prophet Muhammad, Bilal. May God be pleased with his companions, the companions of our prophet. And the prophet checked him right on the spot. And what was the prophet's words to that person who was laughing or putting Bilal down, saying that, "Well, that he's an African, he's black. We don't expect him to do much, to be of much good or much worth upon me"? The prophet said to him, he say, "We are all Bilal." Now, what was he saying when he said that, "We are all Bilal"? Firstly, he is saying that we are members of the Islamic family, the Islamic brotherhood. And what you do to him is felt by all of us. If you offend him, you're offending all of us, if what you say is unfair or unjust.

24:04 IWDM: At first, it might be understood, but what is the deeper meaning, the deeper meaning when he said, "We all are Bilal"? This nature that you see present and seem to be dominate in a black person, Bilal, is also your nature. You have the same nature that you criticize in him. You have that same nature. You're sensitive, too. And I'm sure the person will say, "But I don't give in to that sensitive side like Bilal does." I'm speaking to Bilal right now, lost Bilal. Yes, I'm speaking to the lost Bilal, lost in the wilderness of North America.

25:12 IWDM: God brings about situations, circumstances and time is in God's plan. That's what I mean when I say God brings it about. It's in God's plan. He knows the nature of his creation. He knows what his creation is capable of. He knows what his creation will go after as a way of life, etcetera, and he knows the conclusion for his creation. He knows where they're going to end up. Okay? The good ones will end up keeping their good nature. Bad ones will lose their good nature. God knows that. So in time, those that look down on blacks because they say we are the simple-minded, fickle-minded, tending to play and laugh too much like Ham, among the three sons of Noah. But look now, Ebony said the "browning of America", and now the CNN special says "Black America", and they are talking with a forked tongue. They're speaking out both sides of their mouth. Out of one side of the mouth, they're saying, "We're addressing the black community. It's all about Obama and the black community." But out the other side of their mouth, they're saying, "The spirituality of the people we brought here enslaved has now affected the spirituality of the whole population in America." So believe me, they're not just saying black people or black community of African-Americans, they're saying the whole America has become black.

27:35 IWDM: Yes! We fed these people influences to lead them in more extremes of spiritual behavior, so that they wouldn't have much rational behavior. We encouraged situations and created circumstances that would influence them to give their life to spirituality, to blind faith, to fun, to emotional expressions. All that's part of spirituality. And now they have influenced our population. Us. With their spiritual nature, they've influenced us, and we have also been made spiritual more than rational. So they have now an imbalance. Too heavy on the water side. [chuckle] Yes, so what they planned for us have now got them. Isn't that something? They planned to contain us in a spiritual mould. To contain us in a spiritual mould while they take the material world. And now circumstances have, what did they say, turned the table on them. [chuckle] And it's more than just the browning of America. CNN says, "America's deeper than brown, it's black." [chuckle] That's how I see it and it's the way to see it. Yes? White people are no more productive. They're no more productive. Why? 

29:51 IWDM: Because they have been put under the same circumstances that they put us under, and putting them under the same circumstances they put us under, have now made them heavy on the water side, and light on the material side. On the land side, huh? Standing in Atlantic ocean. On a... What is that flat that floats on top of the water? 

30:25 S?: Algae? 

30:27 IWDM: Uh-huh. No, it's a beautiful flower. It floats on top of the water.

30:32 S?: Lotus? 

30:33 IWDM: Lotus, yeah. Got one foot on the ocean surface, and the other foot on the lotus. That's the only material they're supported by, the only land product they're supported by, a little lotus flower. [chuckle] Pitiful. But that's justice. That's Allah's justice. Say you have robbed me of whole people. They took us from Africa and brought us here, and robbed God of a whole people. What does it mean when they say, "robbed God"? Just change God to the creator. Don't say, "God," say, "the Creator". Use the name for God that was first given to Muhammad, "The Creator".

31:26 IWDM: They have robbed The Creator of a whole people. Allah created the earth, and he created that that grows out of the earth. If you take us out of our natural life and our nature-supported traditions, you are robbing creation of this people. And that's the same as robbing The Creator of his people. Yes, you have robbed me a whole people. And Mr. Farad took on the role of the suffering savior. And he says, "I come as a thief in the night," using the language of the Bible, the New Testament, "I come as a thief in the night, dressed in cavey clothes." Caveman's clothes. That's satire. See, calling a white man that's boasting of his superiority, he call him a "cavey", a caveman. [chuckle]

32:51 IWDM: And he said, "Why he come? Why is he coming as a thief in the night?" To redeem a lost people, huh? To redeem a lost people. One of the meanings of redeem is to get back, isn't it? Yes, get back. So as you stole these people from God, I'm no thief in the night. But I have a hidden plan, like you had a hidden plan. You had a hidden plan when you brought them over here and put them on the plantation. You had a hidden plan when you so called freed them from the plantation slavery, and gave them the open way to come up north. You had a plan. You had a plan when you took them from the cotton field into the factories. Huh? You had a plan. You had a plan when you told them they're great singers and great dancers. You had a plan. You had a plan when you opened up the church door and filled it up with music and dance and songs and fun. You had a plan. Uh-huh.

34:10 IWDM: And the one who comes in the role of the suffering savior, he says, "I come as a thief in the night," meaning "I come with a plan." Peace to you. Assalamu Alaikum.

[applause]
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