06/25/1978
IWDM Study Library
Interfaith Religious Jubilee

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Distinguished members of this platform, members of our audience here, Muslims, Christians, Jews, people, peace be upon you, As-Salaam Alaikum. We're grateful to the religious community here in Flint, Michigan, the mayor, and the city for this opportunity to address this beautiful gathering here today. All praises due to Almighty G-d who created us in an excellent form, of excellent material, and who sent us messages from Himself to guide us and show us the way to our mission on this earth. We thank Almighty G-d, especially for this day, a day in which we are witnessing church people, our people, and synagogue people come together as brothers and sisters. This is indeed a wonderful day in America, a wonderful day all over the world, because the same movement is all over the world today. In Arabia, in Europe, in Africa, all over the world, the people of the great religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Al-Islam are coming together to recognize each other, to recognize the great work in the religions, and to recognize the common bond between the great religions.
We have more in common than we have as obstacles in the way of us uniting. And the only way this world is going to be saved, that is, the only way we are going to turn back the tide of social destruction, is that we join together hand-in-hand and show the unG-dly people, the vandals, the self-destructive elements in our society, the blind sensation craved people in our society, that we are not going to commit suicide. We want to live on the earth until G-d says it's finished. I know we can convince our blind brothers and sisters, misguided, drunken brothers and sisters, to come back to civilization, to come back to human excellence. If we speak with one voice, the synagogue, church, and mosque.
We have only divided ourselves. G-d has not divided us. As Father Prophet says, Abraham, the great patriarch, is called Father by not only Jews and Christians, but also by Muslims. In our Holy Book, the Qur'an, G-d reminds us that we are members of one family, one humanity, one spiritual society. He says that it is He, G-d Almighty, who named us Muslim in the Qur'an. And he has told us in the Qur'an that our order is the order of our Father Abraham, in Arabic, your Father Ibrahim.
So I think we can begin right there and decide that we are going to work together as one community, following scripture, against the elements that want to bury us so that they can have an orgy on the earth by themselves. All praises due to Allah who has given us guidance to open the way, turn on the light for us, and make it possible for a Muslim to put his hand into the Christian's hand, into the Jew's hand, and walk as brothers and sisters. Allah has never said that there will not be peace on earth until everyone becomes Muslim. No. But Allah has told us that if He had wanted people to be all one religious community, He would have made it so. That's right. He sent messages with one message that is with one truth, but he permitted the people to become divisions, to become communities separate from each other.
And it explained to me and to anyone who reads and understands the simple words of us, it explained to us that G-d intended it to be this way. Again, G-d says of the human family that he has made us racist, our tribes and families, so that we will know each other, and not despise each other.
So I take this lesson in the variations of our skin color, our hair texture, our features, our races to be similar or the same message that we read in the differences of our religious communities. If all of us were of one religious community, of one mind, of one persuasion, there wouldn't be a test for us. We have to be tested. We have to grow to love each other to the point that we sacrifice for that love. If all of us are the same, there's no room for sacrifice. But when we are different, I have to sacrifice my needless prejudices for the sake of a sound, healthy, peaceful order. And I'm happy. I welcome the test. I thank G-d that He has given us the test, that He's made it possible for us to be tested. Without being tested, we don't know the great worth that is in the human being.
When we can live with each other, despite our differences, when we can tolerate each other, in spite of our hatred for the things we have to tolerate, that makes us a giant of a people. I thank Almighty G-d who has united us as people of the book, people of scripture. Allah refers to us as people of scripture, Al-kitab, in the Arabic language, followers of the scripture, people of the Holy Book. Aren't we all people of the Holy Book? Our book tells us that G-d raised Adam, gave Adam a mission, and behind Adam, He raised many, many messengers or prophets and gave them the same mission.
The people who have been guided by those prophets are called Jews, Christians, and with the last prophet, Muslims. So we are all brought together into one family by the prophets who are brothers. They are not divided, one against the other. Allah tells us in the Qur'an that the Muslim has to accept all prophets, can't reject one as being less qualified than the other. Every prophet of G-d has equal qualifications because G-d gave missions to every one of them. That's right. This is our religion. We have to accept that as Muslims. We accept Jesus. We accept his qualifications as being no less than the qualifications of Muhammad. That's right. We accept Moses and all the prophets as having equal qualifications as messengers of Almighty G-d. If all of us, people who follow the great prophets, can accept that, won't the family of prophets unite us into one family? Certainly, how can we be against each other if our leaders are united in a brotherhood?
Dear beloved people, we are faced with serious problems today, very, very serious problems. In fact, we are living in judgment. We are living at the end of the world. I'm not talking about the time when your house will be bombed, or the earth will blow up from the inside and throw lava all over the planet, and disappear from the skies. No. We're talking about the disappearance of something that we can feel. Before that day comes, we would have been long gone.
No one will witness the sun cracking up. When it starts suffering any serious problems, we will already start leaving this earth because the unity, the state that the heavens are in, is needed to keep life as it is. Just minor changes in the order of the heavens can cause just wholesale destruction of life on the earth. But the social order, that's the order that's being threatened. Humanity, human life, as we have known it, is threatened. People are giving themselves to influences of self-destruction rather than to guidance that builds a healthy life. People are rushing to self-destruction. People are rushing to excitement that they know is going to diminish and degrade their image as human beings, and they don't care. They like it. They're going to death with the eyes open, smiling, urging it on. Come on, let me face it. Let me get it.
This is a sign that something terrible has happened in our lives. Why am I so concerned? Because I have learned from the study of scripture that these things are not happening by accident. This condition is a trend, an ugly trend. This ugly kind of spirituality that we have seen. We have witnessed it taking over our big cities as vandalism, self-destruction, cruelty to each other, and against each other. All of these things are just manifestations of the validity of the scripture itself. It has already been told in scripture that these things would happen. We read in scripture, in the Qur'an, where G-d says that there would come a time when the mountains will just fall down like carded wool, soft, loose wool.
And many of us never think to interpret this in our social life, to see the meaning in our present social life. We think G-d is simply saying to us that the mountains are going to be eroded or reduced to feel soft like carded wool. No, if we study the scripture, as a student of scripture, we understand that G-d is talking about leadership, leadership in society. We need leadership. The government offers leadership for safe, civilized order in our society. We need this leadership. We need leadership in our home. The leadership in the home offers us a healthy and productive family life. Without leadership, we are doomed.
We're living in the day and time where all these things have happened or are happening. Authority is being discarded. No respect for authority. We have been struggling with many other religious people, civic leaders, and world leaders to turn the tide, to bring the good sense of the people back to the position that it was taken from or dropped from. But still today, there are so many of us caught up in the flood waters of self-destruction, and we are enjoying it. We don't want to change our lives. We don't see a way to change our lives.
We are told in the Qur'an that there will come a time when the burden on the individual in the society will be so heavy, so great, that the individual will not have any strength, any patience, any time to attend to the needs of another, that he will be more than occupied with his own problems. Don't we see this in the world today? Our mothers don't have time for their children. Fathers don't have time for their children. Husband doesn't have time for wife, and wife doesn't have time for their husband. They are constantly running from each other. Yes, we are running from each other. It seems that we have become frightened by the things that once held us together. The things that once attracted us and pulled us together are now fighting us, such as in husband and wife relationships.
We run from it. We frighten each other away with kindness, with courtesy, with love. We frighten each other away. Didn't G-d make these sentiments, these human sentiments and human principles to attract us and not repel us? But we are repelled by human goodness. You want to turn people away from you, just love them. They run from your love. If you want to draw them to you, abuse them, misuse them, treat them like garbage, and you can't get them away, they're like flies. Yes. They come like flies, and you have to kill them to get them out of your midst. But if you offer them beauty, health, sound doctrine, sound arguments, rational teachings to build their life on, compassion, brotherhood, then they don't have patience. They don't have time to listen to it. They're ready to go.
But open up the door, open up the floodgates of social destruction, of moral corruption, and you'll find they rush in. They will rush in. Dear beloved people, we cannot make it without preserving our family life. Society is preserved by relationships remaining good and healthy. Without those relationships remaining good and healthy, society can't remain; society can't exist. We will gradually vanish from the earth. And that's exactly what is happening. The earth is more populated now, perhaps more than it ever has been since it was created. It's still loaded with human beings. But as for the human beings that G-d Himself desires, there are perhaps fewer now on earth than there ever has been since Adam.
So aren't we a vanishing species? While yet remaining around here in the image, we don't have the content. Where is the true human being? He's a vanishing thing. Isn't that a fact? Yes. What is the problem? The problem is false concepts. We're living in a false reality. Reality doesn't reach us anymore. That is true reality. It doesn't reach us anymore. False reality is reaching us. So we think a good life means a life filled with excitation. If I'm excited, if I get a big bang, if I get a big kick, a big thrill, then I'm living.
Living is a struggle to maintain the order of human life. That's living. I don't have to be getting a big kick out of drugs or a big kick out of sex or a big kick out of destroying things. Do you know they even have therapeutic exercises now just to give release to people who want to destroy things? And they pay money, they go to the place, and they just destroy things. It's a business. Now we are too poor to afford it, so we destroy things without any guiding principles or protection. We just turn against the school, turn against the beautiful trees in our neighborhood, turn against the beautiful lawns, turn against the institutions that were established to preserve our lives, turn against the teachers, turn against the beautiful monuments.
This is a suicidal day we're living in, and it all has been predicted. The book, the Qur'an, tells us that the earth will behave as though it had received revelation from G-d. The earth itself will rebel. Don't we find the earth rebelling? Don't we find the physical things rebelling against the human being? Yes. We used to drink a glass of water and get great satisfaction from just drinking a cool glass of water. Now, a glass of water doesn't give it. Pop won't give it. Not even a shot of liquor gives it. We have to go and mix up some weird concoction and perhaps turn into Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Yes. We've become weird, weird people. Our weird nature calls for weird things. The dancers, the sickness in the name, the dances, the stink, the bump, the spank, the sperm. A little child asked my daughter the other day when she came out waiting for me to pull off in the car. While we were there in the car getting ready to go, the little child walked up and asked my daughter and Nina, who is about 12 years old. "Can you do this stink?" She said, "Yes." Say, "Can you do the sperm?" I wanted to sperm him.
But you can't. He didn't know. He's innocent. Can you do the sperm? We are laughing at the precious might that G-d has given us. The evil spirit in this world is Satan himself, the devil himself, coming from a human diabolical mind. The materialistic, commercial-minded devil is on this earth, turning the nature of our people around. This evil spirit has our little children just making a mockery of the precious life that G-d created due to sperm. Look how we make a mockery of all the things that we once held sacred and precious. Religion is laughed at. G-d is laughed at. Human dignity is laughed at. We make a mockery of these things, and we're out here complaining that we don't have jobs.
We don't have enough welfare. We are suffering racism. Worse than that is the deterioration of the human form. All these problems can be overcome. If we get our good senses back in our lives again. But as long as we don't have good sense in our human life, what can we do about any of our problems? I talk to people, some of them would like to keep on the race problem. The race problem is a dead dog. Nothing but a foolish person will get up and whip a dead dog. It's a dead dog, so let it be. The real problem is self-ignorance. Ignorance of self, blindness in the home life, and blindness in the streets. This is the real problem. We don't value what we are anymore. We are not struggling to become what we are anymore, simply because we don't know what we are.
G-d has made us something unique and special. G-d made us human beings. G-d has said of the human being, in the Christian language, that He made them just a little below the angels. It's a little below the angel. Now I know in the Christian mind, the angels are mighty high because some Christians pray to angels. G-d has said that He made the human being a little below the angels. That's right. I know it means the Christ. But Christ is only a type of every human being, if you'll only come alive to what G-d meant for you to be.
The Qur'an deals with the subject a little differently to explain that angels are really non-rational beings. They do not have the power of reason. They can't disobey. They can only live within their nature. And their nature is decided by law. The human being can come out of his nature because he has a choice. He can choose destruction, or he can choose production. Yes, we can choose either. You see? The human being has the freedom to destroy himself or to follow divine discipline. Whereas the angel has no freedom of choice. So because of this fact, in the difference between the angel life and the human life, Allah revealed further explanation, saying to us that the human being is a degree above the angel, a degree above the angel. Yes. And if we understand the scriptures that came before the Qur'an, they're saying the same.
The scripture says, "When did He ever say to an angel, sit on my right hand"? So that should tell you that there was something a little bit more special about the man than there was about the angel. But he said, when did he ever say to the angels, "Sit on my right?" Yes. "For Allah revealed upon Muhammad clear guidance to let us know that the human being is a creature created in a form and with potential for developing himself on high, high levels, for expanding his mind, embracing the total creation that G-d has put within our reach. And he's capable of resisting sin and choosing righteousness, resisting ignorance and choosing good sense. And because he's capable of this within himself, to make this decision himself, and restrain his energy to do what G-d says, of his own free accord, he's above the angel. He's above the angel.
So the human being should never pray to the angel. And in the Qur'an, we are taught that we should never pray to any except Allah, who created us.
And again, this is just a clear explanation of what came before in the scripture. It is in Revelation, I believe, where the prophet, after he was shown great things by the angel, started to bow down to the angel. And a voice said from heaven, "Do it not. Do it not." What am I saying with these references from scripture? I'm saying that scripture is a continuous line of communication. And that Al-Islam, the religion Islam, the Qur'an is not a separate knowledge, but is a fulfillment, a correction, and a completion of that which was revealed before. And this is what the Qur'an says.
That what went before was a solution, and also a sign of things to come. Part of the scriptures, the Gospel, and the Torah point to the future that is to be fulfilled. Jesus was the answer for many of the things that were promised in the Torah. And Muhammad and the community of Muslims are the answer for many of the things that are promised in the Gospel. So we, Muslims, Christians, and Jews are one community, though we are separate communities. We are one community, and separate communities. We do not have to be separated because we are different. We can be one in spirit. We can be one in our efforts to fight the common enemies of human life.
Dear beloved people, I would like to now briefly comment on some of the touchy things that we find in the Qur'an that people have misinterpreted and misapplied to create ugly hatred and division. Allah says to us in the Qur'an, do not take Jews and Christians as Wali a word which some of the translators have translated as friends. The translation "Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends" is a great mistake, a big mistake. A mistake that has cost us too much. Many Christians and Jews have been turned away because they have read or heard that this language is in our Qur'an. They have read or heard that Muslims are not supposed to take Jews and Christians for friends. That's incorrect. The word "wali" does not mean friends. When I refer to a man as my friend, I do not say he's my "wali". I say he's my "sadiq". He's my rafiq." There are different words for friends, but you never say he's my "wali".,
G-d is the "wali".
And those who preserve the order of the religion under G-d are also "wali". It means those who accept responsibility for preserving the order of the religion. How can I trust Christians and Jews to preserve the contents of my Muslim life when they are not Muslims? They are Christians and Jews. Can I trust them with the run of the mosque? Can I trust them to produce for us halal meats? That's our term for kosher meat. No, this is not their business. This is not their concern. Does that mean I reject them? No. Because our religion has taught us and taught Muhammad that a Christian can pray at our mosque.
More than that, G-d has ordered us to protect churches and synagogues against people who have no respect for religion, no respect for reverence. G-d said in the Qur'an, if He had not caused one people to rise up against another, to check their destructive march, then monasteries, synagogues, and churches in which the name of G-d is pronounced would have been toppled. So in the days of Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) and even today, the Muslim is obligated to protect the holy houses of Jews and Christians against vandals, who will commit sacrilege. Yes? So how can we explain these things? We cannot dismiss this. If G-d has obligated us to protect the houses of worship of other people of the great religions, Judaism and Christianity, then certainly we cannot accept being enemies of these communities. If we say that we do not accept Jews and Christians as friends, that means that we take the position that there must forever be hatred and enmity between Jews and Muslims, between Christians and Muslims.
And this is contrary. This is directly against what Almighty Allah has inspired us to do. He has inspired us to embrace these people, to help them preserve their religious orders, because we need good Christians on this earth. We need good Jews on this earth. We need good Muslims on this earth. The wicked world will outnumber us if we don't join together and help each other.
Another quote that has been misused, misinterpreted, and applied in the wrong way, not by the great majority of Muslims, but by a small minority of people who I believe were misled by unG-dly Jews and others in the religion. We read in a translation, not the Arabic. The Arabic doesn't present these problems. It is the English translation that presents this wrong. We read that G-d says, "On the day of judgment, He shall gather the guilty blue-eyed." Oh, that's the white man. That's the white man. What is the meaning of guilty blue-eyed? The Arabic word is ...
Or you may make it the blue eye, but it's xxx. Certainly, it is blue. If we want to understand our scripture, we have to see our scripture in the context of all the revelations that came to the prophets from G-d because they're all connected. The Qur'an is not only a revelation. The Qur'an is also an explanation. It explains previous revelations. So there's a mention here of the blue. If we call it blue eyes, then we have to find understanding if Brother Mohammed is not here to tell us exactly what that means.
We are not to guess at it. We have to try to find its likeness in scripture that came before, and see what the scripture that came before has to say. How about the blue? And scripture that came before G-d speaks of the great people that had become powerful materially and otherwise, that they had fallen from the way. It says that your protection was once an awning of blue and purple, of blue and purple. Then we read in the Revelation where the trouble for the religious society will be found in the lake. Lake is water. And we read again wherein the air would be poisoned, and the sea would be poisoned. Is that right? When we look at the sky and water, tell me the color. Blue. The color of the sky and water is blue. And in scripture, what is blue symbolic of? It is symbolic of the spiritual life.
The spiritual life. The sky represents the spiritual life and the water represents the human spirituality, the human spirituality. You see? So this is the spiritual life. Blue represents the spiritual life. And blue is the kind of cool color, isn't it? And isn't it spiritual life designed to cool our passions?
Yes. So the wise people of scripture were inspired by Almighty G-d. They used these symbols because they had special meanings for them. If we separate from ourselves, from that ancient language, from that ancient communication, we don't understand the meanings and the ancient communication. Then, we pick up these words and try to apply them without guidance, without understanding. And we say blue power, bluish means the blue eye is white man.
And G-d always protects His own truth. We find, among those people who are not Caucasian, a blue-eyed person occasionally. Now, maybe the majority of the blue-eyed people are among the Caucasians. But if G-d is going to gather the guilty blue eyes, He can't miss those that are among the Bilalians. If it's a guilty blue-eyed, that's the mark of the devil, then that gets us too. There are some of us who have blue eyes.
Yes. The blue eye is a characteristic of the Caucasian people because they have blue eyes, the bluish eye. But listen to how the translation goes. It says the guilty blue eyes. I don't like the translation, but it says the guilty blue eyes. If the blue-eyed person is innocent, then it's okay. G-d is not going to punish the innocent blue-eyed people. According to that man's translation, He's going to gather the guilty blue eyes. Is that right? Yes. Shouldn't this tell us that not every blue-eyed person is guilty? What exactly is this talking about? This is talking about something that is very, very relevant right here today.
One of the most, in fact, the most serious problem we have, the most serious problem for human society today, is too much blue in our lives, and not enough of the other colors. Remember, I said the blue represents spirituality. Within the last 20 years, America has given birth to so many weird religions, so many strange kinds of religious cults. I thought astrology was something of the past. But over the last 20 years, astrology has become a religion for many people. Is that right? Yes. We find people not deciding upon a rational life or upon G-d's guidance or with G-d's guidance. They're not deciding what they should do in their life.
By not using G-d's guidance or rational sense, they're just moving spiritually, instinctively, intuitively. Many of the people, in fact, I think the great majority are trusting instinct, spiritual instinct, and some kind of maturity intuition that they can't be sure of. They're deciding to trust that to decide what form and what condition they should have in their lives. We have become gamblers, trusting, blind spiritualism. Too much blue in their life. Yes. You know the rain when it falls is water, isn't it? And G-d in scripture, He calls the rain revelation. Another symbol or term for revelation is rain.
But look, the rain falls not only on the water. In fact, rain is not appreciated when it falls into the sea. Rain is appreciated when it falls onto our land. Is that right? Yes. And it is the coming together of water and dry land that makes for life. Grass grows, trees grow, fruit, vegetables, flowers, everything. And the animals feed upon those things. And we use the trees, the wood, to build homes, to build other things. Civilization and nations rise because water meets land. Where water has not met land, we don't find cities or towns of any great work. In the desert, what is there?
In the desert, because water and land have not been reconciled, they are not cooperating with each other. Spiritual life is not a life by itself. Spiritual life must also be a rational life. Spiritual life must also be a rational life. G-d has not made us spiritual with no sense. Man shouldn't find his spiritual destination with his eyes closed, his fingers in his ears. The spiritual destination must be found just like any other destination. It must be found with your eyes open, your ears open, with all of your good senses operating. Yes. This is the way G-d guided us. G-d guided us to come alive first in our senses.
This is how society is generated. The human being comes alive in his five senses and sentiments, and he grows in knowledge. Where does he get the knowledge? He gets the knowledge through his senses. He studies his environment. He senses it. He seeks to have some practical understanding, some practical grasp of the reality around him. Is that right? With his senses, knowledge is established. After so long, the knowledge serves the human being directly. Then we don't have to depend so much on our senses. Is that right? Why? Because people have already experienced and gained the knowledge of the truth through the application of that good sense.
When the knowledge is established, then we stop using our good senses so much. We take knowledge from our mother. We take it from our father. We take it from the teachers. They tell us this is the way. Now, when we lose faith in mama, faith in daddy, and faith in the teachers, how can we survive? We cannot survive unless we go back to our good senses. The society of civilization started by making good use of our five senses and our sentiments. After all, the sentiments are not anything but another form of feeling, which is one of the five senses. You say, "I feel with my heart. I feel with my soul, but isn't it feeling?" It doesn't have to be feeling with the skin to be feeling.
Sentiment and spirituality are another form of the five senses, the sense of feeling, an expression of that sense of feeling. In our cut-and-dry, rational environment, we interpret the sense of feeling to be physical only. But no, it's not physical only. In fact, it is not physical at all because when I feel something with my physical hand, it is physical in the skin, but the message that comes to me affects my whole being, my psychology, my mind, my heart, everything can be touched by what I touch with my physical hand. The five senses must be alive in the human being. What does the scripture say to the Christians and Jews? It says that David took five smooth stones from the water and he armed himself to defeat Goliath, the great Giant. Most of the Christian leaders and the Jewish leaders know that the Giant stands for materialism.
Material power and worldly might are described as the giant with six toes on each foot and six fingers on each hand. Is that right? And again, the six, this mysterious six comes up in Revelation, which says, "who can count the number of the beast or know his number? The revelation knows that this is the number of a man, and his number is six, six, six, three, score, and six. And again, this mysterious combination of figures, six, six, six, appears in earlier revelations before the last book called Revelation. And it says the weight of the gold that was collected, the taxes and gold that were collected in the time of Solomon's material glory was six, three score and six. Again, six, six, six. So we find the six connected with Goliath, the mighty giant, connected with the collection of taxes, and connected with the beast and revelations. So that tells us beyond the shadow of a doubt, beyond any doubt, that the six is the term identifying or the figure identifying the materialistic creatures devoid of human nature.
They've become so materialistic that they have lost their human nature. They have become beasts of materialism. Yes.
How do you overcome that? Aren't we under the beast? The beast is feeding you through the TV. He makes you go out and buy things you don't want. He creates a want in you that you didn't have. Makes you buy needless things for your children. Children got enough socks, got enough shoes, but he brings out a pair of shoes with rabbit ears on them. Then you have to go get those rabbit-ear shoes for your children. You already don't have enough money to keep the rent up and keep the other bills up, but here's the beast feeding your appetite that you don't need, giving you the desire that you would never have if he didn't design anything for you. Oh, baby, you've got to get those rabbit-eared shoes for my baby. Honey, you have to do that. If you love me, you will go out and get my baby these shoes.
He saw them on TV. If he hadn't seen them, his poor heart wouldn't want it. You have to get these shoes, honey. Well, look, I can't afford any more shoes, woman. Now I've got bills to pay, and you have to feed the baby. We just can't afford these shoes. Do you love my baby? Nigga? You don't care about my baby, nigga. Well, if you want me, you'd better get my baby those rabbit-ear shoes. Now, the beast of six has not only fed appetites to breed, appetites that shouldn't have been there, but now he's destroying a good family. Destroying the relationship of a good husband and wife. They were doing fine together. They didn't have any problems. But now they have a problem. Pretty soon, a woman says, "Oh, I can't stand you anymore. I have to get a divorce." Who brought about the divorce?
The beast is materialism. Yeah. So aren't we suffering the same thing? So let's see. How do the books, the Bible of your Christianity, and the Torah of your Judaism deal with this problem? Scripture says David took five smooth stones from the water. The waters of what? Human spirituality. Human nature. Well, the five stones are in our human nature. The five senses. See it. Hear it. Taste it.
Touch it. Smell it. Examine it with every tool that G-d has given you before you make a decision.
And G-d has not just given us five raw senses. G-d has evolved these senses so that we can work with them in a logical rhythm with rational vision. We can refer matters from one thing to another, and we can consider the point. We can weigh all the factors in the problem. G-d has evolved our human senses so that they do not go separate from the heart. G-d has tempered our rational life with sentiments, with human understanding of the heart. Is that right? Yes. The blood of these five senses is the feeling of the heart, but we are not to say, oh, close the eye. The heart is a listening device. Don't you know that? We have grown to even see the heart as something that is not. Do you know what a symbol of the human heart is in Al-Islam?
It's the cornerstone for building civilization. The black stone in the Kaaba is a symbol representing the human heart. It is the cornerstone. The human heart should not be diseased. It has to be healthy. The human heart listens. The human heart wants to do what is right and just. The senses only bring information in, but the heart wants to do what it is feeling, what is right, what is just. Is that right? But we think the heart has just been created for one purpose: to have sex. The heart has become a symbol of sex. The heart used to be a symbol of conscience, a symbol of the good conscience of the human being. It used to be a symbol of his sentiment, a symbol of his long life that he doesn't want his heart to lose. And his heart says, obey what is just, do what is right.
Respect what should be respected. Be loyal to what we should give our loyalty to. Is that right? Be loyal to G-d. Be loyal to our parents. Be loyal to the vital relations that we have in our society. This is what the heart dictates. Yes. So we have five senses, but the guiding light to interpret what the five senses come up with, and to thresh out what is not fit for human consumption, is the human heart. How can that human heart come into decision-making if it only wants lust?
Out of Greek mythology, they bring us Cupid, flying arrows into the human heart, mating people sexually. But isn't Jesus himself described as a heart in the symbolic language of the church? Isn't he a heart-to-heart? He's a human heart. We can't survive unless we understand what this human life is. The human life is strong, it's powerful, and it's capable of surviving. The human life can meet any challenge that this physical creation can present to us. G-d has not reduced us. He has lifted us. G-d has not made anything in this physical world to overcome us. G-d has made us to overcome everything in this physical world. But we can only overcome when we use the vital tools that G-d has given us, which are our good five senses, and the sentiments of the human heart, and not the broken sentiments following us, such as material greed, putrid vulgarity, and every other weird and strange thing. We can overcome with a heart that is human.
May G-d bless us to walk the straight path and work all together as religious people, respecting our Creator and respecting the precious life that He has put on this earth in the form of the human being, peace be upon you. As-Salaam Alaikum.

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