05/18/2002
IWDM Study Library
Prosperity 
Masjid Khalifah Brooklyn NY

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
... is a message from G-d to all people. G-d said, "We have not sent you except to be a Mercy to all the Worlds." And we witness that he is G-d's Servant and His Messenger. La Ilaha Il Allah, There is no deity except G-d, the One G-d. Muhammad Rasul Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of G-d.
We are happy to be again here in Brooklyn and witnessing so much progress that you are making with your leader, Imam Adib Rashid. We're very inspired by what we have seen, increased work, increased accomplishments and your effort is strong, your spirit is strong. You make us very happy. We thank you.
Achieving for one's self and achieving for one's community. We have in both the Qur'an and in the Bible, which is older than Qur'an, as you know it came before the Qur'an, but actually if we understand it as students of Scripture, the Bible and Qur'an, it is one continuous communication from G-d. It is one continuous communication from God.
We have invoked the story of the Prophet Jonah, Peace be upon Jonah, and this incident is a message to us. I'm going to give it to you as I understand it, addressing this subject or topic, Achieving Prosperity For One's Self And For One's Community.
Let me say this before commenting on this story that's invoked in our Holy Books. As a student of Scripture I will say that G-d has given us the nature to be individuals, myself and a plural consciousness, that's a consciousness that holds a plural body as well as singular body.
In my physical body I'm one, but I have a consciousness that will not enable me to really perform in the midst of it as one. There's no way for me to think of myself only and not think of others. It's impossible. I have to include in my consciousness and my awareness the world that woke me up. As I became conscious, it was the world that woke me up, not just my mother or not just the doctor, that handled the situation of my birth. It wasn't the doctor. It was what you call the wet nurse or whatever. It was the woman assisting my mother.
Yes, so when we become conscious, we're not as conscious of ourselves as we are conscious of that that we are witnessing when our eyes and ears open up. And later, when we begin to hunger, the body needs something something, then we start to be conscious of ourselves.
So I will say to you on premise, but topical also, I will say to you that the first consciousness is not a consciousness or awareness of yourself, the one person, it is an awareness of your need rather than yourself. You become aware of your need and you need momma. You need your family and you need the world that's supporting momma and your family. So actually G-d created us to come into an awareness of our self interests, that the self interests that improves not only myself, but those persons close to me and those circumstances supporting our lives. And eventually we come to know that as the whole world. So G-d created us to be aware of our self interest as the interests of the whole family of mankind. We should have in our self interest, the interests of the whole family of mankind.
When we are healthy and fine, we're at peace and we are in a situation to make progress, great progress. But when you have that sensitivity and awareness, you don't have to even communicate it to people. They can feel your bond with the best that is in them. The best that is in them will feel the best that is in you and you can feel that bond. You'll have the experience of meeting people without opening our mouths, without them opening their mouths, we know that it's going to be a good acquaintance and a good relationship if it forms. We just know it before anybody opens their mouth.
Yes, so really we shouldn't have an idea of our self as our interests, without understanding that the self became aware because of momma and the family and other things made us to become aware of ourself. Because we just became aware of ourselves, we became aware of our ourselves as members in another whole or family, a part of another whole or family. And when we become aware of ourselves as members of our community and not alone but our reality is found when we see ourselves as a member in our community, needing our community, supporting our community, having only our community as the situation for us to progress in.
If you don't have your own community yet, you have to have a community and a situation for you to even progress and achieve. You want to achieve and progress, you have to find a community. You have to find a community for that.
So for us, it should be our community. So our life and future depends on us bringing up the support to our community and having it in our community. We can't have it by ourselves. There's an expression, "No man is an island," and that's a true expression. "No man is an island."
Adam, I choose to go to Adam before Jonah. Adam, the story of his creation is very much the same too for the Bible and Qur'an, the two Books, two Sacred Books, and Adam was incomplete when he was made as a natural man like we are, in the natural body. He was incomplete. G-d told the angels who rejected Adam, the mortal man, He said to the angels, He said, "Wait until I have given him of My own Spirit." So he was incomplete. So what is that saying to us, dear people, brothers and sisters and Muslims and others that are here who are interested? What is that saying to us?
That is saying that really G-d had not completed the human being's creation when He created the mortal first. He had, waiting for that mortal, His own Spirit. When His own Spirit comes into that mortal, then that mortal is a whole human being. So we are not even a whole human being without receiving the Spirit of G-d. When we receive the Spirit of G-d, we become a whole person, a whole human person.
And Adam, he was created and G-d had to make for him a mate. To complete his mortal right, He had to make for him a mate. So even as a model, he was not even complete without his wife. So G-d made for him his mate and then laid the circumstances or possibilities for us to be here and then from those two He spread males and females. He populated the world with many, with many both male and female from two, from the two.
So that's my first step that I'm taking in the development of this subject, that we are incomplete when we are thinking of ourselves alone. We're incomplete. For the male, you have to have the female to be complete as a person. You have to have a female in your life. She is needed to give your life what you need to become complete and you're needed to give her life what she needs to become complete. You both have something to give each other to make your lives complete and the Qur'an so that you will find in her comfort, and some of the translators have translated, tranquility, tranquility. Peace, just a good feeling of being at peace and accepting and being, feeling very accepting, accepting state and peaceful state, so that you have tranquility.
Yes, and we find that the name for resident comes from that word that's in the Qur'an, tranquility, tranquility, tranquility pardon me, tranquility. The word for resident comes from that word. I think the word to be quiet also is out of that, comes from the same root, to be quiet, quiet, so that you'll have quiet. And we speak of having peace and quiet, huh? The expressions. They come together. It's two words together. It's "peace" and "quiet" so that you'll have tranquility, tranquility and the place where we live is the ...
It's from the word, thakin, thakin. I can't think of it right now, in that term, the Arabic. But it means journey. It means journey. It also means residence, a residential area, a residential area. And by them choosing this term, to name that journey where they live or the community where they live, their towns and stores and things, their houses and their towns and stores, that place or the town, just like your town, can be called that same name. There's a place where you exist and find peace and quiet and happiness, where you rest your soul as to this need, where you rest your soul.
So G-d has created us to have this in our lives, to have this in our homes, this tranquility. We can't have it alone by ourselves. We only have it by living our lives and living with each other in peace and happiness, respecting each other and living as one. The Buddhists even have that idea, that we should live as one and living as one, living all connected, sharing in the plural body rather than the single body, sharing in the plural body.
I was talking to an Imam once overseas in Saudi Arabia in Mecca and he said, "Well, Imam Mohammed you know, Abraham was a community." And he didn't say to me Muhammad was a community with his mouth, but we had been talking about Prophet Muhammad, Peace be Upon him. So I know he was trying to project to me, he was passing on to me the idea, wanted me to see or believe that Muhammad is not only to be seen as a single servant, but Muhammad is to be seen as a community also, as a community. And I had studied the Bible years, for many years before I'd met the brother Imam in Saudi Arabia and I had seen in the Bible that Adam is also a community. Adam is singular, single, but he's also a community.
The whole human race is Adam and Adam was a single person created by G-d, but the whole of the human race is Adam. We are Adam and the whole of the human race is also Adam, or we should be, I mean also Abraham or we should be, if we follow the scriptures as followers of the scripture in both the Bible and Qur'an, we should be the followers of Abraham and to be the followers of Abraham, we should be an Abrahamic community. Abrahamic community. So he is in our life and we are having his life. His life is passed on to us.
When you say you're the child of your father, you're saying that your father's life, his biology, his genes were passed on to you. You're saying that you are carrying him on and that's what we mean when we say, "Adam is our father." That's what we mean when we say "Father Abraham". We mean that he is living in us. His life is completing in us and G-d wants for us not just the genes, the biology, he wants for us a purpose. He created Adam for a purpose. He conditioned Abraham for a purpose and we should have in our community plan, in our personal lives, we should have the plan for Adam and we should have the plan for Abraham. And the plan for Adam is big, it's not small.
G-d created Adam and He said that He had made all this creation for Adam to find pleasure in it and for him to find utility in it, make use of it. And the Qur'an says, G-d says, that he has brought down into your service all that is in the sky. He's made it. It's come down to you into your service all that is in the sky and all that is the earth and we know that when G-d told or said that He made Adam and placed him in the garden, that G-d is the whole world, but that whole world first must exist in the soul of the person, in the human soul.
For the whole world is in our soul, created to be in our soul and our soul that's urging us, pressing upon us, so like, "Hey, you haven't done enough yet. You haven't become the person that you should be yet. You're not good enough yet. You're not caring about enough yet. You must improve the other things and your concerns." Those were just coming out of our souls. Our souls connect us with other souls. And if you're blessed, you'll be connected with good souls and to realize that G-d has still set for us a single soul, though we're individuals. G-d has set for us a single soul. You'll become aware of yourself as a life sharing in one single soul with all good innocent people.
You'll touch each other. Yes. You can be distant away as China is from the United States and you'll touch each other and you can connect that path. There is no jet, no travel means can take you to your loved ones as fast as that soul's attractiveness, the attractiveness for the soul, that magnetism can just bring you instantly together.
And right away, this happens in life just like that. You say, "Hey, from China. I think our friend, Chen Yu, is having some problems." Later on, you learn that Chen Yu was taking abuse at that time and was having some problems. This happens.
So there has been connections for all of our souls in one soul, but we have separate souls and for me this is logical, because we came originally from one origin, one human origin. It had to start growing from somewhere, even if you don't imagine it the way scripture imagine it.
We have an imagination. We can imagine. We have a good outlook on how life goes and spreads from one, then two and then each multiplied. So we could, if we use our own common sense, we go back to, "Hey, this must have started somewhere from nothing." And then life appeared and started growing out and it got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more and more and more and more.
The original is the present. The past derives from the present. The original is still here. The original is the past and also the present. Yes.
The apple seed comes from an apple. You plant it. You produce an apple seed, growing an apple, right? But apple you got is the present apple. The apple seed is from the past apple, but they are the same apple, because the seed that came from that apple has reproduced itself in this apple you've got and has reappeared in the apple you holding.
So it is for our first life on this earth. Our first life on this earth is still here. And another proof of it is that when you give up on this life, you will go back into the past and you'll become less than a little worm. You'll become a little worm, little development, little advancement, little social advancement. You particularly go back to that first preaching and now ... What have I said now? I know what you're saying, when I said, "Hey."
What have I said now? What I'm saying is that if we depend on our biology for our existence, we will lose our lives. We have to depend on the spirit of G-d in us for our existence then we keep Allah. For the biology, it can go back to the first day, before there was even made a man, there was a little worm, a little simple worm.
Adam then, needed completion. If Adam needed completion then, Adam's the plural body us now. We need completion. We shouldn't have the great life we want without being complete. Don't just be a religous person, be close to G-d. It's not enough just to say you have faith. Those who really improve their lives and become of more value to the human society are those who struggle to get closer and closer to G-d, to become more aware of G-d is what we mean. You want to become more and more aware of G-d and in the Qur'an, Allah speaks to us by addressing our natural sense of mind and senses, or common senses.
G-d says, "If you remember Me, I will remember you. If you will remember Me, I will remember you." Now, isn't this your nature? G-d is speaking to your nature. If you got a friend that won't remember you once you stop remembering them, you'll start remembering them. They don't remember you? You always calling them up and wishing them a happy birthday. They never call you up and wish you a happy birthday? You always remembering it's Mother's Day or Father's Day and they don't remember you back? It's been a long time, you're separated a long time, you remember them, call up and say, "How you doing child? How you doing girl? How you doing man?"
But they never remember you? Pretty soon you forget them, don't you? So that's what G-d is trying to say. That the same sensitivity that I gave you for your relationship with each other, I want you to have that for your relationship with Me. If you remember Me, I'll remember you.
Well, you know interpreting Adam's meaning for us is deep, because G-d created it and said the spirit was the group or something like that. "Darkness was upon the deep. Darkness was upon the deep, was upon the deep." And G-d's, the spirit moved upon the face of the water, it says in the Bible, and G-d said, "Let there be light," and there was light. So it starts with depth, deepness.
Jonah wasn't so deep. He was very curious. He wasn't so deep. In fact, I think he was pretty shallow. He forgot his calling. He forgot his mission and, according the Bible story, and he ended up being attracted to material things, but still being spiritual, but attracted to material things and he's sleeping on the boat, resting against the cargo. That's the goods.
And now you all, you doing just like Jonah is doing and you're in the big fish too and you're sleepiing, resting on the cargo. What your money buys and what can get you more money. You're resting on that, but you have a calling. See, Jonah is not a single body either. Jonah is a plural body. He represents mankind. He represents all of us.
Yeah, so G-d is speaking to all of us when He's speaking of Jonah. He's speaking through Jonah to all of us. He's telling us that we all got a calling. Our calling is to serve G-d, serve G-d, and we have a lot of trouble. We have a lot of problems and the world is not always like we want it to be and then we start to hate the world and we want to see the world destroyed like Jonah did. And sometimes we wonder, "What's happening? What's going on?" G-d says He destroys people like this.
And now, here they are coming into a new happiness, like they've had a second lease on life. Well, that's up to G-d. He can give them a second chance lease on life if he wants to, but you got your mind fixed on what they did in the past. Now here they are shaping up their lives, but you still, your life hasn't changed at all and they shaping up their lives. Can't you see this is happening now.? It doesn't have to be back then in Jonah's day.
They shaping up their lives. They get their lives in shape for G-d, so He'll say, "Hey, now you have made the changes that I accept. Now you have made the changes that I accept and I'm not going to destroy you, I'm going to bless you more than I've ever blessed you before."
But you still seeing them in their old lives. You still seeing them in their sin and you still waiting on them to be punished and you're now questioning even G-d. You said you're destroying these people and now they're thriving. They're doing better than ever. They have a new lease on life. What's going on here? "Well, I ain't going to be a part of it. I'm going to stay on my boat and rest on my cargo."
And then when the boat that belonged to Jonah, so when they discovered him on there, he was absent minded like that and cared less about anything but himself, they threw Jonah off the boat into the water. And the water didn't even like Jonah. Isn't that something how G-d's creation won't accept you unless you fit into the shape He wants you in ?
... and the fish came along, and he said, "Well, hell, I guess this is bait for me." Jonah goes into the fish and then he's lost and finds he has no freedom now. He's in big trouble. He remembers his G-d. He turns to his G-d.
And when he turns to his G-d, the fish said, "Hey, I swallowed the wrong plant. This some bitter stuff I got in my mouth." Whew. Set him up on the sea shore, set him out on the sea shore. Now he is just like a new born baby, in full view with G-d. He sat out naked on the sea shore and he ain't got nothing to cover him up and the sun is beaming down on him. In the Qur'an, G-d says this in Qur'an, "And G-d had Mercy on him and caused the little gourd plant to go up and shade over him and give him shade".
And in the Bible I like what they said, Jonah say in that state wanting to go forward with his life, Jonah says, "I have a three day journey. I have a three day journey."
And that brings me to the main part of this talk, this address. Jonah had to be reconnected to a community life and community interests after he had lost his chance by ignoring G-d's calling. He had to be reconnected. So when he says I have a three day journey, Jonah is saying that I have to get back to the wholeness of myself in community life. He had to get back to the wholeness of himself to identify in community, to have one interest in community, an interest that provided also for his interest. That's community. Community provides for all of our interests.
So we have this in the Qur'an where it says, "G-d is showing us how we have to keep ourselves united." What is the formula or what is the guidance for our unity, for us to keep our unity. G-d says for everyone there is a direction. It says a face, but a face means a direction, a direction for your interests, a direction for your aspiration, a direction for your appetite, your hunger, what you want for yourself in the future. G-d says, "For everyone there is a direction so turn you all to this space, to this sacred house."
And wherever you are, G-d makes a promise if we'll all turn our faith or having our focus for our life that house. He says wherever you are, G-d will bring you all together. He will do it. That's the condition G-d asks of us to get G-d's help to keep us united. G-d says, in other words G-d is telling us, we can't keep ourselves united, but if we will focus all of us on that house for our future, for our life and our future, he says that he will bring us home together in unity. That's what G-d said.
And I repeat what I said earlier, the meaning of that house is the unity of the human family, the unity of the human family. So G-d is saying to us that if we will all have as our interest, our focus, the whole human family and seeing ourselves in that family, our indiviudality, our singleness must be seen in the whole family. The whole family is the context for our lives. That's what G-d wants us to realize and He says if we do that, we will assure that we will stay united.
I don't think any of us will have a problem with unity, Islamic unity, Muslim unity, if we would accept that. First, that that's more important than my nationality. That's more important than my culture. That's more important than my immediate needs in my town and city, more important than even my life in the United States of America. That's more important than my national life and my purpose here at home in these United States of America. That's more important that I see my life depending upon the wholeness of life for human beings, depending on me seeing in the context of human life, all human life that is good, not the bad, but the good, all human life that is good, because that symbol represents human life in its innocence and G-d says He made it pure and innocent.
It had not become nationalistic yet. It had not become racist yet. It was human and just human. It was not Black or White yet. It was just human. Not Chinese, it was just human and we know that ever child born to us in this world today at any time of the day is born human first. We make them Black. We make them White. We make them American. We make them Chinese. We make them Communists. We make them Capitalist. We make them these things.
They're not even born speaking our language. They learn to speak our languages after coming to us and being under us and hearing us, then they'll learn our language. You take my child and Africans and put them in China. Let him go there when his mother delivers him. He won't speak English, he'll speak Chinese. So he's not born English. He's not born Chinese. He's not born American. He's born human. The first identity is human. And humans given by G-d to our mothers is innocent.
G-d doesn't give any criminal baby. You don't see any aliens coming to us from our mothers, our wives. No, these aren't no aliens. They don't come and speak in another language and messing that up.
That happens later. When we invite them to the set and give them some drugs and stuff. So G-d has given us the answer. The answer is simple and some of us are not ready for the simple answer. But that's where we have to start. And don't they say you have to be reborn? It doesn't mean only in the spirit. You have to go back to your human innocence, the innocent nature that G-d gave you first. You have to get back to that innocent nature. And the way to get to back to that is to see your life and your welfare tied to the life and the welfare of all good people, see your hope and your future tied to the hopes and future of all good people.
And then you do that, oh, you had a rebirth. And it is said in Islam, "When whoever may come, whoever visits that house will have a renewal of life." That is for them a renewal of life.
If you don't visit that house, if you go to that house and you didn't have nothing on your mind but coming back to America and getting your drug money or coming back to America and doing a sentence, if that's what you went there with, and that was all in your mind while you was there, you never made the pilgrimage.
In reality, you didn't even make that pilgrimage. So you came back and didn't have a renewal of life brother, search yourself. If you really went there in the right sense, in the right mind, you went there having G-d first above all interests, you'll come back with a new life. You will have a renewal of life when you come back and even if you don't know what to think or don't know what that symbol means, Allah will fulfill this promise to you. You will come back with a new life.
I know because I went there. I went there in 1967 and I was so overwhelmed by just the environment and what I saw there and the multitudes of people coming from so many different nationalities, so many different cultures and et cetera.
I was just so overwhelmed by that until I was a buoy. I couldn't even really lead myself. I was just there floating. I was going around the town about like those pigeons I saw, like those pigeons. I was circling and that all I know, I was on wings. I was in the air somewhere. It only when I got back home that I started to find some sense and some guidance and some purpose for me and that was a rebirth. That was a rebirth for me.
When I got back home and connected my thoughts and started to think again, I was in a new frame of mind and I had a renewed spirit. It was a rebirth for me in 1967. Praise be to Allah.
This was the Muslim Student Association of the United States and Canada and I only paid $500. That's all the expenses was at that time. It included fare and accommodation. Can you believe that? You'd better get more than $500 you want to go next year or this year.
Now, I remember reading of an African American in a book ... I forget what that book was called, but I remember one line that he said that the whole book was worth it for that one line. He said, this is African American now and this is one of our activist militants, but not a negative militant. He was a positive thinker and he says in this book, in this one line, he said it seemed his life was disconnected. He said, "It seems that somewhere behind me I got separated from my social contract."
Your faith in community, your obligation to live in community, establish your life in community, it begins with life and children, family. That's your first responsibility in the social context. That's your first responsibility, but it moves out to your community. Your community is being supported by industrious people. And where does that spirit for the industrious come from? Adam.
He created Adam with the spirit to be industrious. He united Adam, He made Adam to engage the material world with his material nature and body and he did engage it and in time from Adam, that the Bible has it in Genesis, came iron workers, industrial people and they build cities and communities. All came from Adam.
So that's part of that social contract. Your obligation to engage the material world and do it in a civilized, human way and make it better, make your environment better. And your social contract is also to remember nations and suffering people around you and include them in your heart. Your heart should be a room big enough to house every needy person on this earth. And our hearts are big enough. Our house, our hearts are big enough to house every needy, suffering person on this earth, so that that's part of our social contract to open up to all of them.
Now, you say, "But I'm not going all over the world." Let me tell you something. When your life become whole, brother and sisters, you can do more for yourself individually, you can do more for your family, you can do more for your friends and neighbors, when your life becomes whole. And becoming whole means seeing your life not here, but see your life also in the context of the whole life of mankind. That's what a lot of people want. That's what Christ Jesus wanted for us. Peace be upon him. That's what Muhammad the Prophet wants for us. Peace be upon him.
Thank you very much, As-Salamu Alaykum.


