8/30/2002
IWDM Study Library
Islamic Convention Jumuah Chicago IL

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
IWDM
Bismillahir Rahman nir Raheem, with G-d's name, the merciful benefactor, the merciful redeemer. (Arabic), I witness that there is only one G-d, He is G-d alone, and there is no associate G-d or partner with Him in the rule of the heavens and the earth. (Arabic), and I witness that Muhammed is His servant and His messenger, (Arabic) and a mercy to all the worlds. (Arabic), the prayers and the peace be upon him and what follows of that salutation or salute to the last prophet. Muhammed, the prophet is called the seal of the prophets and also the last prophet, the last prophet and the seal of the prophets. Muhammed the prophet, represents the conclusion of prophecy and the conclusion of G-d's plan for mankind or human beings on this planet earth. G-d says of him in the Qur'an, that he is enough for all people. (Arabic) That's the words of G-d, (Arabic) that he is enough. He's sufficient as a leader, that he's enough for all people, all colors, all nations, all people. The prophets that G-d sent, peace be upon them, beginning with the earliest of the prophets, Noah and all the prophets after him to Muhammed, peace be upon them. They all came to give guidance and be examples to their publics so that their publics would be doing the will of G-d, serving the will of G-d, Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, according to the gospel as it exists with the Christian people of the world, he said, not my will, but your will, meaning G-d's will. He came to do the will of G-d. G-d is the one that gives guidance for success on this earth. And if we go against His guidance, we'll never have success. In the Qur'an, it is said, "You're the one who directed us to our path. Not one path, many paths. The path of science, the path of government, many paths, the path of culture. Many paths we have, and the sciences are broken up into many paths. It's the plural, the word used is the plural of, (Arabic) and most of you, Muslims sitting here on this blessed day of Jumuah, this most blessed day of Jumuah, most of you, you know that the word (Arabic) is path, the path of G-d, the plural of (Arabic) is and (Arabic) and (Arabic) means our path, our path. Not one but many. We had taught by G-d in the Qur'an to say that G-d is the one that showed us the way to our path. We couldn't even have found the path to astronomy, the path of astronomy, the path of the many sciences, the path of medicine, had G-d not shown us the way to those paths. His hand is the whole creation. His hand is the whole creation. So whatever you have gotten from creation, you got it from His hand, from G-d's hand. And we get all sciences from creation. Man has not invented or said 'Shazam' and come up with the sciences. Man has gone to G-d's creation, the material universe, and there he has discovered and extracted knowledge and science, guidance for his life. So he got it out of G-d's hand. Who gave it to him? G-d. G-d says in the whole creation, He holds in one hand. So if we can imagine everything that exists, it's like in one hand of G-d, one hand of G-d. And then man's future is in the other hand, He holds man's future in the other hand. And hands for G-d does not mean hands like this. It mean controls. These are our controls for doing the wonderful work that we do on earth for mankind. And G-d has in His one control everything that exists in the material world, skies and earth combined. And then in the other hand, He has the spirit of man. He has man's destiny, and He controls man's destiny, and He controls the destiny of the universe. This is G-d and He has created everything to help man. (Arabic) He has made the whole skies, everything there and the earth to yield its utility to you, to yield its service, to yield its usefulness, to yield its utility to man. And we know there was a great prophet, prophet Abraham who faced the powerful Pharaoh and a powerful Pharaoh was trying to impose his authority, and the prophet resisted. And (Pharoah) said, "well, how are you going to make it without me?" I'm  putting it in my words. But that's what he would say. Well, how are you going to make it without me? And the prophet replied, (Arabic)," the one who created me shall guide me."
Praise be to Allah. Was Muhammed guided by a teacher? No. Was Muhammed guided by any except G-d? No. And Muhammed was created by G-d, by Allah, (Arabic) the merciful, G-d taught the Qur'an and created the human person. Muhammed, (SAWS), is the creation of G-d's word, the Qur'an. He was already a perfect human creation. That's why G-d selected him. He had created him already from the people. He says when He wants a son, He has only to take him from those that he already created. So he had already created Abdullah, the father of Muhammed. So He chose one from those that He had already created and he was a perfect child, a perfect child, a perfect youngster, and a perfect man at 40. And G-d gave him the mission to be a mercy to all the worlds at 40 years old. (SAWS), prayers in the peace be upon him. So Muhammed was not guided by the world or any of the world's knowledge or any of the world's authorities. Muhammed was only guided by G-d and he was not taught by anybody. He didn't know the scripture. His people were not a people of the book, until the Qur’an came. Then they became a people of the book or a people of the Qur'an. But before that, they were not people of any scripture and they were all called (Arabic). And prophet Muhammed is one of them, the single for (Arabic). He is the (Arabic), prophet, messenger prophet, promised in the Old Testament that would come to break all the bonds, take the heavy yolks off the people. And we think of just the common people. He's just coming to help the common people. Sometimes the ones carrying the heaviest yokes are those that are leading the people. There's a saying too. G-d says, oppress not and be not oppressed. Oppress not and be not oppressed. This is not to the common people. This is to the leaders. If they oppress their masses, they oppress their publics and deny their publics the blessings of this creation, the many benefits of this creation that G-d created for all of us, their own action, their own decision will eventually oppress them and they will become the most oppressed of all the people in their kingdom, the leaders themselves. Yes. And we see that today. Leaders are in all the terrible trouble. They have so much trouble they have to face every time they open their eyes in the morning they have to face the trouble. Why? Because they have messed up the world for the people and have not given the people the world that G-d gave, not just for some, but for all. (Arabic) Seek by the means. G-d makes possible for you the after- life, which is the long-lasting one and the better. But G-d says, (Arabic) "but don't forget your share of this material world." This is the kind of teachings the world rulers don't want you to get. That's why Islam is persecuted in Islamic lands. Islam is persecuted in so-called Muslim countries or nations. Why? Because if they would let Islam be, the people be free to have Islam, then they would have to come down off of their high towers that they do not qualify to be up on in the first place. And they know that and they know that. I like this saying from the Bible say, "will a man rob G-d, will a man rob G-d? "Yes, a man will rob G-d. Allah said to us in that "they're cheaters." They're cheaters. They cheat you out of the life G-d created you for. So if they cheat you out of the life, they're robbing G-d because G-d is the one that possessed all of that and He gave it to you to use for your own benefit. He trusted you with it. Now they take it. It wasn't given, it was yours to use. So they take authority over it. Who did they take it from? G-d. They're robbing G-d. And another part in the Bible says, "and before me all were thieves." Before me. All were thieves. That's a sign of Jesus Christ as a sign is pointing to Muhammed the comforter the come. And He is saying that before the creation of G-d is presented to the world and made free for all, the world will be under or in the hands of nothing but thieves. And when you study history, you see that powers have done nothing but rob the masses, rob the masses. That's all they have done, just robbed the masses and took the world as though it was their exclusive right to have it, and all people that they decide to be out of it are out of it. No more, no more. Muslims cannot accept that. When I saw the wisdom, the beauty and the kindness of the word of G-d for myself, studying the Qur'an, I made up my mind that no one would ever possess my spirit. No one would ever possess my mind. That is for G-d and for G-d alone, it makes you free. The word of G-d frees us when we get it directly from him, the way he gave it to his prophets and messengers. When we get it from him, it frees us. It makes us humble ourselves and we are happy to say, I'm nobody. I'm nobody. G-d is so great. I'm nobody. G-d is so high. I'm nobody. G-d is so beautiful. I'm nobody. Praise be to Allah. It humbles you. And that's what we need today. We need people who are not just our leaders, but they're also our brothers and sisters in obedience to G-d, the creator of the heavens and earth, then we can have success.
Muhammed the prophet, also said that he came to guide us and be an example to us of good character, good character. And G-d says of him, we have seen you. G-d says "we" He speaks for all in His service, the angels, the prophets and messengers, all. He said, we have seen him established on a mighty foundation of character, Muhammed, that his character. (Arabic) Mighty foundation of character, great character, a man of great character, Muhammed the prophet. And he comes to invite us to pursue the best behavior, to choose the best behavior in human life so that we can also be on a mighty foundation of human excellence. Great character. Great character, (Arabic) great character, praise be to Allah. Now, also we should understand that G-d does not want us to suffer. Many people in the past and some even nowadays, they join religion and they accept suffering. They think religion is supposed to be suffering. Oh, my stomach is not paining from fasting. Well, let me whip myself a little bit. Hand me a stick or a whip. Let me flog my sinful soul, my sinful flesh. Let me flog myself, they must be suffering all the time. Then they think they're holy. "Oh no, please get that lady away from me and she will kill my righteousness. She will destroy my righteousness. She will pollute my soul. Get her away. No, I do not want a wife. Don't offer me one." Some people think that the religion is suffering, suffering. No. The message of the gospel, the message of the New Testament is against that idea that G-d does not want suffering for his people. He wants ease. But look what they did. They put all our suffering in one figure and say, oh, he was sent into the world to carry all of your suffering. Now you don't have to suffer. You want the woman, take her. You want the wine, drink it. You do whatever you want to do. Just say, I believe in Jesus Christ and be saved. I think a lot of our troubles in the world, especially for the masses, is right there. Right there. The guidance of G-d is the guidance. And without His guidance, we all are lost. We are going to miss the mark. We are going to lose the way. We're going to come to a bad end in time, doomed to come to a bad end if we don't have the guidance of G-d. "He who created me shall guide me." He who created me shall guide me. We know that the Christian's world, the West, is supposed to be the manifestation of the new Jerusalem, is supposed to be the new destiny, the new destiny. In other words, the answer to the promise to Abraham, G-d's promise to Abraham, but not through Abraham, through Jesus Christ, peace be upon the prophets. This is their claim. But their progress in the road to the destiny had stopped and they were not able to make any progress on the road to the destiny until Muhammed received the Qur'an from G-d and began preaching it and awakening the intellect of intellectual men and women that had been resting and sleeping without any stimulation until the coming of the Qur'an. G-d says in the Qur'an, (Arabic) Everything exists and extends itself, multiplies itself, et cetera with knowledge and mercy. Everything G-d has created will extend to man, if he obeys G-d, if he respects G-d, not only science, not only knowledge and science, but also mercy. We know that with the Qur'an coming in the world, sciences were revived, the sciences were revived, the intellect was reawakened, and science began to flourish again in the communities of mankind. This is the reality. This is a fact of history. Not a myth, not a religious claim only, but a fact of history. So, where was the destiny for the people of the book? It was lost until the Qur'an came to Muhammed and Muhammed preaching the word of G-d, awakened the intellect of men and excited their interests in the material universe for positive and good benefits, and they became the new generation of scientists. And who led it? The followers of Muhammed, Muslim followers of Muhammed. I have been at international meetings for peace with Jews, Jewish leaders, rabbis, and I have heard them say in my presence that it was the work of the Muslim scientists that made it possible for them to work side by side with Muslims in Spain and they owe that enlightenment credit for their revival, for the revival of that kind of interest in the Jewish people. Not just the Christians. So think about that now. What is missing in the message of Islam today? Why don't we have that kind of presence in the world of science today? We are getting it slowly, but not only us. Hindus are getting it Chinese. Many others, there's Russians we know, but many others are engaging the work of scientific research and et cetera, and they're contributing. The universe is not for white folks. The universe is not for black folks. The universe is not for yellow people. The universe is for all people. And if you don't block the way, you have all people making their contribution to science and to the society of mankind so that we have conveniences. And when you have conveniences, you also have mercy. So when G-d says that He has incorporated all things, that He has caused all things to be extended to us with knowledge and mercy, with knowledge and mercy, He is saying to us, if you want a more merciful society, you want a more merciful human life on this earth, pursue G-d's creation for its knowledge and its sciences, and then when you get it, you will bring comforts. Look what came to replace the donkey and the horse, Mercedes-Benz and all the other cars. I didn't forget America, General Motors, but you African-Americans, when I come in your neighborhood, I say your neighborhood, I'm you, but I say your neighborhood. When I'm driving around in your neighborhood, I see more Mercedes-Benz than I do anywhere else. You poor African-Americans. I'm talking about you. I pulled up in a parking lot just two days ago, a Mercedes-Benz on my left and then one on my right. I said, good G-d, almighty, it must be a black neighborhood.
Something's missing. Muhammed the prophet didn't get with the brightest people he knew, he got with all the people that were ready and enthusiastic, excited about being good Muslims and working to advance the cause of G-d. He got with of 'em all, he got with all of them, he included all of them and he obligated those who knew more to teach those who didn't. He started a public school long before we had public school in this America, every citizen had to be educated, both males and females. So it took centuries for us to come to that, to that civilized position that all human beings are entitled to the knowledge that G-d made possible when he created the world. If we had that kind of recognition and that kind of willingness, to give knowledge like that and to point to the truth and share the sciences with everybody and excite the minds of everybody, poor as well as rich, to get the benefits that G-d has given to you in this created world, this material world. When you do that, you put yourself in a position then to be replaced by somebody else. And those that want to have power and authority, they don't want to ever have a situation where someone can rise up as high as they are and replace them. Well, I insist that the Muslim-American Society be against that, and you take down from position of authority all headed Negroes that want, cool it, cool it. I'm not excited. All big headed Negroes that want to control your life and decide how much of what, this or that, that you're going to get. Nobody should, but G-d should decide how much we get. If I qualify to get more money, you shouldn't stand in my way. If I qualify to get more recognition as a teacher of Islam, you shouldn't stand in my way. If I qualify to get a higher position in the military, you shouldn't be in my way. I'm qualified. You should believe in freedom, justice, and equality. And this is just not available to everybody just because they want it. It's available to those who qualify for it. You have to qualify for freedom. The more you qualify for freedom, the more freedom you can get. And if you want to qualify for the maximum amount of freedom that a human being is created to have, then please put a limit on your freedom. You put a limit on your own freedom. When you see your freedom, it's too much, causing trouble for you and others, you withdraw. Say, oh no, that's too much freedom. I don't want all that freedom. That's destruction I'm asking for. Then you'll have not only freedom, but you'll have justice. You'll be a man of not only freedom but a man of justice. And the equality is the equality of our creation. There's no equality for rich and poor. There'll always be those richer than others and those having to depend on others to open the way for wealth and material development or whatever. They'll all always be that, you can't change that. That's the way of creation, that's the way of G-d. You can't change that. So let us not follow the Western world in their thinking and put poor against rich so that rich will be against poor. Let us condition poor, to be friendly and appreciative, to be friendly with the rich and appreciate the rich so that we will have the rich not fearing us and not hating us for envying what they've got. This world wants to create the breach and keep the breach growing bigger and bigger. If you know the guidance of G-d as revealed to Muhammed, you want to heal the breach, heal every breach that G-d didn't intend to be there and G-d did not just tend to divide people on class lines of wealth and poverty, et cetera, of those who know, the professional and those who don't. We're all brothers and sisters. In Islam, the habit, I won't say tradition because we are not consciously doing it, but habit has remained. In Islam and you meet with Muslims of different nationalities, different ethnic groups, different status in the society, in the world, one high, one low, one doctor, one's not. When they meet and greet each other, they're all the same. You can't tell one is a doctor. You can't tell one has a PhD or several PhDs and the other one does not. As long as they are brothers and they're decent by their brother, they meet and the doctor will be speaking and looking up to the little man that has not one doctor's degree. He will look up to him because he has excellence of character, just a little bit more than the professor has. And the professor will be looking up to him and praising him and saying, "make du'a for me and my family, brother." This is Islam. Praise be to Allah.
So in conclusion of this, part of the Khutbah, I strongly stress to emphasize to you, the need for you to fall in love firstly with G-d and then love G-d's work. G-d is a worker. You hear that? Love G-d's work. G-d is a worker and He says, at every time in time, any little part of time you can think of, every time in time He is at some marvelous event. He is at some marvelous work, doing marvelous work and science have discovered with their long reaching telescope glasses, now they have discovered that the world is not at rest like they used to believe, that G-d created the world and then rested, He took a rest. No new galaxies are coming into existence. There is new creation, just exploding out there in the distance. New worlds being made. There'll be new suns and new moons and new planets. They're being made all the time. They are generating just like people are generating. We are not rested. We keep having children. Praise be Allah. And the creation is not resting. It keeps having more and more suns and moons and stars, et cetera. This is what science has discovered. G-d has not taken a rest. And Islam says there is no sleep for Him nor slumber. A rest? He does not sleep. He does not even nod. All awake, all the time, this is G-d. It says the prophecy is one day He shall bring in a new heaven and a new earth, a new heaven and a new earth. We sure need a new heaven because the one President Bush is in and Cheron, it sure needs renewing. They need a new heaven. And G-d says, it's not going only to gather the people from the earth. You think when judgment comes, there's just going to be people gathered from the earth? No, He says He's going to gather also those in the sky, those in the heavens too are going to be gathered. What are they going to be gathered for? They must have done some wrong. That's why we need a new heaven. And so we can have a new earth too. If we get a new heaven, we can have a new earth. Now understand this, I'm not going beyond my authority given to me as a preacher of Islam. I'm to obey G-d's word, the Qur'an, and obey his messenger. Muhammed. G-d says, (Arabic) "Obey G-d and obey His messenger." Well, I wouldn't be just qualified to be your Imam if I was disobeying G-d or disobeying His messenger. Muhammed the Prophet said, for everything, for every word of G-d, there is an expressed meaning and one not expressed, an obvious meaning and one that's not made obvious. It's a shrouded meaning. It's a hidden meaning. You have to use your intelligence to find it. If you are pure at heart, you'll be blessed to find it. So, when G-d tells us about heaven, it's not just one heaven, He says, and there are seven tracks in the sky and a like number in you, seven in the heavens and seven in you. There, it says, did not you observe, for the learned, the intellectuals, the inspired, to seek the knowledge that's hidden in the universe. He says to them, "don't you observe that this world, heaven and sky was once a continuous whole, all connected before it was separated?" So Muhammed comes, the mercy to all the worlds. He comes and he reconciles spiritual with material. He reconciles, brings back the wholeness, the wholeness and the purity that G-d created when He created the world before the Satan decorated it to deceive us and make us go in the wrong path. This is from Muhammed too, I'm giving you, (SAWS) the prayers and the peace be upon him. So let's understand that. I would not dare give you something that I didn't have firm belief that it was the right thing approved by the Qur'an and approved by Muhammed the prophet's sunnah, his tradition, his teaching, his behavior, his ways. That's what I see. I'd rather be nothing, destroyed or burned up eternally than to go against that. G-d knows it. And I've told G-d that. And if you tell G-d that enough, He will make it so. He will make it. So we praise G-d and we thank Allah for His mercy. And we know that we are not to disassociate ourselves from the work of developing the material community. We, all of us, no matter how poorly we are equipped, there's somebody that can pick up a brick. There's somebody that can carry wood. There's somebody that can turn on the motor, start a machine up. No matter how small the job is you can do, you help us take responsibility for our material environment and do something with it because that's where African-Americans are the most lacking. And I thank when the Satan inspired the English word to be formed, B-L-A-C-K. He knew he was going to put it on us eventually, single out of people to be called inferior. And spell your color, color was chosen for you, not for a black Cadillac. And it says lack L-A-C-K, say, yeah, the black, we are going to see that they'll be lacking. Lacking in intelligence, lacking in spirit, the spirit that G-d wants in people and lacking in knowledge. They made the situation, the circumstances so, that we were not as opportune as they were, not as advantaged as they were to get knowledge to know what is G-d's way for us, et cetera. So they took our lives and made us lacking. And now G-d has brought His word and Muhammed to us, our brother. Listen, our brother Muhammed. Man, just like we are a man that was not a priest or a monk, he was not a knowledgeable man in scripture. He couldn't even read their scriptures and understand anything because he never had their scriptures. He was dumb in their scriptures. But G-d took a man uneducated and educated him. He took a man that was worthy of great honor and He gave him great honor and He lifted him above all other men in character and also in mission and gave him the mission to be a mercy to all the worlds. And I repeat what I said earlier, Jesus is a sign pointing to that man, Muhammed, may G-d's peace be on both of them. and I thank you for your attention. Our Lord, let our hearts not deviate after you have guided us and save us from the fires of sin. Ameen.
As salaamu alaikum! (Arabic) The praise and the thanks is for G-d, the Lord of all the worlds. And we pray that prayers and peace be upon Muhammed, the last of the prophets and the seal of the prophets. Dear believers, dear Muslims, males and females, the world today has many, many serious problems. On the one hand, we see the world and we begin to think that its hopeless. But on the other hand, we see the world and we have great hope. We are optimistic. We cannot look at what is presented to us as news. It is presented to us as news on television or in our newspapers or magazines, and let that dull our spirit, let that influence us to think that the devil has the upper hand. The devil has not been in as much trouble as he is and in today since he began his existence in creation. He's in more trouble now than he's ever been, and he's so desperate now, he's even doing his thing like he's not a professional And he is the first of the professionals. Don't let the bad news deceive you and influence how you feel about your life and what you can do with it. G-d has brought this world to a state now into a position now where this world cannot watch poor people. G-d has busied them like they busied us. They used to work us from sun up to sundown and tell us to go to bed in the sun's down. 'Nigga, you don't need to be staying up. You ain't going to do nothing but go to the field for me tomorrow and you better be rested. The sun is down, go to bed. Hey, what you doing with a candle? You better not light that candle nigger, go to sleep so you can wake up with that sun and do that, work that field for me.' But now they're so busy, they're so occupied, they don't have time to watch us. So let us get busy not doing the master thing. Let's do G-d's thing. The real master. Let us get busy and do G-d's thing. The real master! Praise be to Allah. I remember reading and reflecting on the prophet in the Bible. Says he came to the widow's son and they wanted him to help the widow's son and they thought he was dead, but the Prophet said, oh no, he's not dead, he's just sleeps, sleeping, you know, the old ..... Oh, he's just sleeping. He's just sleeping. Well, this world have had us sleeping, but not really dead. Dead to our responsibilities. Yes, dead to our honor that G-d created us for. Yes, dead to our love and respect that we shall have for one another. Yes, but not really dead, just sleeping. And the call comes, the Adhan, (Hayya as salah) be alive for prayer and worship. (Hayya al Falah) Be alive for community development. You ask any peasant in Arabia, in an Arab country or other countries that knows Arabic, ask him, what does he understand when he says Falah. He'll say, "well I'm a falahi myself, I'm one of the falahi. It's a farmer, a cultivator of the land. The honorable Elijah Muhammed, before he died, he established "Progressive Land Developers, a sign that one day, maybe it won't work now because of our situation, maybe the courts will take it all, as he said, he said they're going to take it all. That's what the Honorable Elijah Muhammed told us. But I have already put it in your mind to be progressive land developers. So let's not look at a corporate title. Let's look at the message in that title. Be progressive land developers. Haya al salah! Two times cultivate the soul and cultivate the neighborhood. "Haya al salah". Two times, educate the soul and educate the intellect. Become wise in spirit and wise in the world. What do you want other than that? Anyone who wants a religion other than the religion of Abraham makes himself a fool. That's what G-d says in the Qur'an, and it was Muhammed who came to the world as a mercy to all the world, to guide us to the promised land, to what G-d promised Abraham, our father Abraham. And I conclude with that. And may G-d have mercy on us. Forgive us our sins and grant us guidance for only He can guide. Without His guidance, we have no guidance. Ameen

37


