00/00/1989
IWDM Study Library
Muslims and the Future of America

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
We pray the prayers and the peace be upon Muhammad the last Messenger, the last Prophet and Messenger of G-d upon his descendants, upon his companions all and what follows up this noble, this most excellent salutation to the noble Prophet and his family. And pray that G-d bless this occasion with results that its planners hope for. And from the looks of the setting here tonight, I would say that it is a great success. It is a great success. We are grateful also and we pray G-d reward the organizer, Brother Said Mahmud, for his great efforts and obvious knowledge and skills in bringing this about or in helping this to be a success.
To distinguished persons here and Imams and scholars that I see from around the United States and outside of the United States, we salute you for your excellence in this religion. I see you at all of these occasions and that tells me that we have great and strong brothers supporting our effort here in the United States to present the religion in the right way and to bring better opportunities for Islamic life to our Muslim brothers and sisters and families here in America. I'm to address you on the subject of the Muslims in the Future of America for the 21st century, coming 21st century. When I began to collect my thoughts for this address, a rush of thoughts slowed me down. Something is saying to me the situation is not the same for native indigenous Muslims as it is for nationalized Muslim Americans.
I know many of you are not yet nationalized, but I look to the nationalized Muslims who have migrated to America from other parts of the world, we may say from other parts of the Islamic world to America. I look to you who have become nationalized citizens of America, of the United States of America for a working relationship in the future, in the coming century, the 21st century. It's not that I don't value those Muslims who are living in America as students on work assignments or who are living here, maybe deciding whether they're going to be nationalized citizens or not. I value you also equally, but I look forward for the best situation for us in this country so we can progress and be accepted by the American people. And I'm speaking of the best of the American people. We never want to be accepted by the worst of the people. And I know that if we are nationalized citizens, we will sense the importance of working out a future for ourselves in America.
I wouldn't be fair to myself, and I wouldn't be fair to the African-American brothers here tonight if I wouldn't make it clear that our situation here in this country is the situation that needs the most attention, African-American Muslims. For the immigrant Muslims, your situation is made better than ours by contacts open to you overseas. We don't have any contacts overseas. You come from countries whether rich or poor, industrialized or not, developing or undeveloped or developing or industrialized, you come from countries that are living, existing and you have relatives that you left back in your homelands that are living and you can communicate with them. If there are opportunities opening up in the United States, you perhaps can get the assistance of your relatives back home to maybe if not invest capital, they will be able to help you maybe export something by giving opportunity for it to be imported overseas. Or they may have something that they can export and you have contact with them. And by that relationship you benefit. And because we do not have that kind of contact for ourselves, the African Americans, you in a better situation than we are in, much better situation than we are in to prosper in this country.
Your situation is also made better by the fact that you have more practical spending habits. Your spending habits are more practical than the spending habits of most African-Americans. And your situation is made better than ours again, by the fact that you have a more practical family concept and more practical family commitments than we do or than we have. And this puts you in a much better situation than we are in to benefit from the invitation that is extended to all of us in this land of opportunity as it is called. Immigrant Muslim situation is made better by your stronger ethnic identity, your stronger ethnic identity.
As African-Americans, we carry a burden of identity and we seem to be stressing our identity more so than perhaps any other group in the United States. And I think that's coming from our desperation, our awareness that we don't have a real identity. We don't yet have a real identity. That identity has to come by people living together and sharing life together and working together and having a lot in common with each other. Having a group identity that has been developed out of their experiences together and they're working together. They're having some attachment to a lifestyle, to a life form or a lifestyle for the whole group. And we don't find ourselves as African Americans having a strong attachment to any particular lifestyle or any particular group behavior. Our group behavior is not decided by choice. Our group behavior is influenced by whatever is popular in America and in what we call the popular culture of America.
And by whatever is happening in politics, by whatever is happening in the church, by whatever is happening mainly or I would say most importantly in the streets of America, the streets of America, the behavior of our people in the streets of America decides our group character, our group behavior et cetera. So we have a very weak ethnic identity, a very weak racial identity if we want to call it racial. And you have a very strong one when we look at you. Maybe you don't think that of yourself, but when I look at you I see you with a very strong ethnicity. I see you with a very strong group identity. I see you with a cohesive life as a people and we don't have that. So your situation in America in my opinion, is much better than ours. To take advantage of whatever is acceptable for Muslims in this land of opportunity and move forward politically, financially, and in every other way.
I am not speaking tonight on the need for cooperation, that's admitted. And I have said on other occasions that we stand to gain the most from a relationship with you, whether it's supporting the growth of halal products in this country or some other interests. We stand to gain the most. Now I turn my attention directly to my African-American brothers, African-Americans let us be informed and not enraged. We're so sensitive, we're so quick to be irritated, so quick to take offense, so quick to think that someone is looking down on us or someone wants to take advantage of us or someone is not given due recognition to our suffering in the past, our plight of yesterday and today. Let us try our best to come out of that oversensitivity and not let ourselves being raised while we are looking at the realities for ourselves in America.
We should be aware that our Statue of Liberty and I say our Statue of Liberty, that our Statue of Liberty becoming American by way of France extends her arms out to foreigners. If you've seen the Statue of Liberty in New York there with the arms stretched out to the ocean, Americans understand that symbol to be our invitation, the invitation of this country to people and lands overseas that can't find the freedom that they want to come here and find that freedom and take advantage of freedom and opportunity in America and grow with equal respect, equal invitation to you with equal respect and equal recognition with all of Americans. I think that's true for America. I don't see any group coming to this country and being denied opportunity to grow with America no matter where they come from or how foreign they may look in the eyes of some of us Americans.
So I think America is true when she extends her arms symbolically to the people overseas in distant lands and nearby lands that are desiring more freedom than they can receive abroad to come to America and find that freedom in the measure, in full measure, in fact, I would say in the inflated measure, because I'm sure most of you, if you were not able to turn down a lot of the freedom that America offers you, you would be in the same shape collectively that the African-Americans are in collectively. You have the good sense and the good discipline to know how much of this freedom to take and how much of this freedom to leave for somebody else.
Nevertheless, the freedom is here. And I do believe America's invitation is real and it is true. For Immigrant Muslim-Americans the situation is made better than the African-American situation by their foreign origin. Now this takes some thought for some of us, we have to think on this a little bit. But the fact that you have a foreign origin against our no origin connection puts you in a better situation. In America those of foreign origin have the charm of being foreigners, a charm that melts ordinary Americans. I have seen myself Americans observing a foreigner and being fascinated and charmed by their foreign dialect, their foreign speech and their language and how excited they are over a foreigner. The English can come here, the English foreigner can come to America and right away captivate the American audience. Whereas the American has to work very hard to captivate the same audience. Americans are weak for foreigners.
I know that would be a strange one for you, but that's true. Americans are weak for foreigners. And one people in this country that are not foreigners is the African-American, or let's say are African-Americans. The one people that are not foreigners, African-Americans, all the rest are foreigners. All the rest came from somewhere else. Say well, you all came from Africa. No, we didn't. We didn't come from Africa. We were brought from Africa. That's a great difference. If we had come from Africa, the arms would be out there. The symbolic arms would be right out there for us too, because we have Africans coming over here and Africans come over here and they have a better situation than we have. They have Africa back home. Like ET they can call home when they get lonely, but we can't. So our situation is quite different and the African-American should understand that.
 And we should take advantage of our religion, our Islamic teachings take advantage of the Sunnah of the Prophet, let us develop by hard study and hard emulation of the Prophet's way of life, let us develop. It's going to take us time, but we will develop a strong group identity, a strong family life, a strong family structure. We will develop a strong cultural identity influenced by Islamic teachings, Qur'an, the Prophet's life. And in time we will have too a strong ethnicity and we won't have to call outside of the borders of America because I do believe that if we ever structure our own lives and gain a strong identity, Americans, whites and all other colors will respect us and appreciate us and won't be afraid of us and will congratulate us and be well wishers. Thank you very much, Asalaam Alaikum.

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