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IWDM Study Library
How Religion and Science Compliment Each Other

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Imam WD Mohammed:
Bismillah Ar-Rahma Nir Rahim. That is with G-d's name, the Merciful Benefactor, the Merciful Redeemer. We are recording now the second part and the last part of a discussion on scriptural reasoning dialogue for the Abrahamic faith based communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims mainly. Father Abraham's Way is highlighted for this discussion. Destiny is in finding how to establish one's self-support. The soul needs to find it's support. And this support once found, gives every individual that experience it self-support, spiritual self-support. The process is initiated or set into motion by human life's universal soul. And that is to say that though we have individual souls, we are all having one common soul, and that is the soul of all people, the soul of all human beings, the human soul, the universal human soul. The soul's life force is always reaching out or reaching for wholeness. That is understanding. Understanding that makes our life acceptable and comfortable in a situation with other people and other nations. After finding common existence and common spirit, cosmological finding as I see it and as I believe it's revealed in scripture, the scripture we call Abrahamic scripture. We can reason our way, our path to self-identity and purpose. Islam first address purpose, the purpose for human life. And the purpose for human life in Islam is to serve the creator whose common name and proper name for Muslims is Allah. The human soul engages a process for locating its security and discovers it's existence, is placed firstly in cosmology. The study of the universe.
The soul's life force is now liberated after finding its first place. It is liberated to establish self-support and secure its viable self-interest. Self-interest can be selfishness, selfishness. But if it takes this route from the universe or from the cosmos and seek it's destiny from the cosmos to its place where it's going to reside and have its life, it will not be selfish. Connecting cosmologically an environment framework is now reached for identifying our soul's inclusiveness. From this common cosmological home, a direction is found mapping frameworks that will support one's human existence. Beginning in cosmic wholeness, thereafter in planetary or global wholeness, further inward to frameworks for the national and social interests and security.
Our souls seek the security that is natural for it. Some of us are secured in situations that will not rest our souls because those situations are not natural. Destinies are natural homes for our souls. Destiny is home. Returning from cosmology, the human soul arrives at its address in its natural, in it's national boundary to view itself as a member in it's cosmological, global, national and social family. Self-support is support of family, families supporting themselves and contributing to the support of others have found home for the soul and can realize then a true sense of security. We thank Allah, that is G-d, who made all that is in existence and made it for us to mate our intelligence with that universe or with that creation so that our life will develop intelligently and we will have a condition that is a must for us now in this time of global reality and global inclusion. And with that, I introduce again our participants for this discussion. We have now with us for the second part of this discussion, one, a person that we know very well as an exceptional student of Principal Clyde Al-Amin, Lynn Al -Amin. And that's by coincidence. If you would, could you begin for us?
Lynn Al Amin:
Thank you.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes.
Lynn Al Amin:
First of all, in response to the introduction Brother Imam, that you've given for this particular segment, I wanted to start off by saying, as a science teacher, the way that you are introducing the concept of the cosmos and the universality of our environment, et cetera, falls right in line with where science has begun to move. You're steps ahead of what the science curriculum is actually looking at. And we're moving more and more into that direction. In the past, science was basically a response to the needs of the environment. The environment, the people, the community said that we needed more of this and more of that. And science basically responded by providing solutions, medical solutions, technological solutions, et cetera. But the way we're moving now in our curriculum, we're looking more at science as being something that works hand in hand with the system, with society, with the environment, with people.
So science itself is starting to look at itself. The field is looking at itself more as one of discovery, of looking at the environment, looking at Allah's creation, looking at what's been presented to us by way of our scripture. And we're now looking to see the signs that are out there and what can we deduce from this. Instead of science saying exactly, this is what happens, we're doing more studying now. A lot of what we're doing is we're saying, you know what, we can't just take everything on face value. We have to start to examine. But we are recognizing that we don't have all the answers as scientists. We are examining things based on the signs that are out there in creation. So this topic is one that will not only help the religious community, it'll also help the science community in general.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes, yes. It's recent in our history that media, the media printed media and the visual media has informed the public that we are living in a time now when science and religion are coming together, that actually religion itself is rooted in the material universe. It is not superstition, it's reality
Lynn Al Amin:
Based on some evidence, based on some understanding of how that evidence is to be interpreted. And if we use the scripture, if we use Allah's word to interpret, then we get a better understanding of the discoveries that we're coming across instead of bumping our heads, instead of just trying to figure out what's actually going on.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes.
Lynn Al Amin:
So we can't look...
Imam WD Mohammed:
That's the position of the religious servants and teachers.
Lynn Al Amin:
And that's the position the scientists are starting to recognize too.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes, I believe so.
Lynn Al Amin:
We don't have all of the answers.
Imam WD Mohammed:
We don't.
Lynn Al Amin:
And the way we've been approaching it, we have truly as scientists been bumping our heads over the years,
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes, the true saints in the religion, they say, "G-d you know, we know not." Yes.
Clyde El Amin:
That's really, really interesting what Sister Lynn was saying. The science of everything is being influenced by this. Because if... this is certainly perhaps giving the field more credit than it's due, but I think it's trying to earn this credit now. The science of human nature, or they call it sometimes the science of psychology is also being positively affected by this trend, if you will, that you're describing about science and religion coming together. Because as you know, and earlier in these conversations, we talked about how that field developed originally from a premise that human beings basically were just creatures of appetite. And the Freudian notion that if you study the human being from that premise, you'll understand the human being. We came really a couple of decades ago to realize the shortcomings and the failings of that because it taught us so little about human potential. And you open up talking about destiny and how scripture addresses human destiny. We could never, ever achieve that human destiny if we approached human beings or understanding human being from the premise that they are limited and controlled by their appetite and that for all their lives, that remains a controlling factor in their development. And that has an impact on education and how we approach education and what we even believe is possible in terms of accomplishment or achievement in our students. Whether we are talking about elementary school students or whether we're talking about adult students in a university, if we approach them from the premise that it's already destiny that so many of them, only certain ones of them will ever achieve because it's a constant state that they only have so much ability, as opposed to believing that really it is the interaction of their human nature with their environment that is the best explanation of what they have achieved so far. So if you change that interaction and change that approach and approach it from a different belief system that in fact what you'll conclude is they have not had the right approach given to them for them to actually realize their potential or to even realize where they are, how they fit in the grand scheme of Allah's purpose for being here.
Imam WD Mohammed:
And you can't find yourself until you find your place in Allah's scheme.
Clyde El-Amin:
That's right. Right. And you certainly can't help others find themselves to realize that potential if you come from that framework.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes. Yeah. Lynn mentioned before we began here, she mentioned expression that I'm aware of, and I wish that we could at least elaborate on it a bit. And that's intelligent design.
Lynn Al Amin:
Yes. Yes. For years, the concept of evolution has pretty much guided the science arena as far as the origin of man. And we've looked at the concept of evolution as the process where things accidentally happened. There was an accidental explosion there was that caused the earth to be here. Supposedly there's supposed to be an accidental merging of energy together to give us the atoms, and then the atoms accidentally bumped into each other, made molecules and whatnot. What the concept of intelligent design is saying is that these were not accidents, these were activities that were planned, that were planned by a higher power than man has the ability to even encompass in its totality. And when you look at that, that definitely says that there definitely is the presence of G-d, Allah and the design of how creation came about. But the people who are promoting this particular concept, they're not only saying that our creation was designed by a higher power, they're saying that we can't stop at just looking at the concrete concepts that are in front of us. We have to start to think and reason.
We can't just take what's there and absorb it and say, this is it. We have to start looking at motive. We have to start looking at intentions and why things are there. And as a Muslim, I'm taught I don't make any moves without being aware of my intentions. Am I doing this to serve Allah, am I doing this to do whatever? So in science, we're seeing that there's a purpose behind every single act, that none of it is accidental. And I'm receiving a lot of opposition as I introduced this concept to my colleagues because they're saying there's no evidence of that. But the majority of the science arena is based on theory. It's theoretical.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Exactly.
Lynn Al Amin:
We have some concepts that are out there that suggest that this is the case, overwhelming evidence that this appears to be the case. But how many laws do you find in science? Very, very few. Newton's laws, that's one. There's some chemical laws, that's another. But other than that....
Imam WD Mohammed:
I'd like to interject here.
Lynn Al Amin:
Yes.
Imam WD Mohammed:
That when you examine how the Prophets, the thinkers in religion came to their conclusions, it was based upon faith. When you examine how the scientist comes to their conclusion, came to their conclusion, it's based upon theory. You mentioned that. And theory is a process that goes to science. And faith is a process that goes to understanding scripture. Takes us to the understanding of it.
Lynn Al Amin:
Exactly. Exactly. So in reality, we're actually starting to think more now that maybe our theories need to be reevaluated. And the theory of evolution is one that people are starting to investigate.
Imam WD Mohammed:
If I may, I'd like to read something here from, well, I'll just read it and let it explain itself. This is from a person, Rabbi that I met recently in dialogue with Jews, Christians and Muslims. And he's writing me, and he says, I have been eager to ask you if you might recommend two or three more members of your community to join in a three day session with Mr. Shaheed. That's Ronald Shaheed of Milwaukee, the Imam. And his request is that these Imams participate at the University of Virginia with him and about 30 others or more who are students, religious representatives, et cetera, are all connected by faith to discuss scriptural reasoning, scriptural reasoning. And he is Peter Oche, professor of Modern Judaic studies, university of Virginia, religious studies, religious studies. When I met him in dialogue, he was impressed with my reference that I made to the Qur'an, how the Qur'an wants us to see G-d's work, material work of the creation. And I was taken to him to read this at this time because I had planned on reading it at the end. Because I am seeing as you explained it more for me, I understand it better, the expression, intelligent design, in connection for me in connection with the Qur'an where it says G-d has formed everything to broadcast knowledge and mercy,
Knowledge and mercy. And the exact words in Arabic, Qur'anic, Arabic is ILM which is knowledge, but it's also science. The same word means science too, and mercy. And when I made this reference in the dialogue, this Rabbi stood up and he says, "There's no need for us to say anymore. I don't know how to come behind Imam Mohammed." And after the discussion he told me, he said, "You speak Arabic, you read Arabic." I said, no, I don't speak it fluently. I said, but I read the Qur'an in Arabic. I understand in Arabic. He said, "You must." He said, "Because I read the Qur'an, I've never been able to get that." And it's right there in plain Arabic. But the way you think is the way you're guided.
Lynn Al Amin:
In education, we use the concept paradigm to reflect the neurological network of experiences, concepts that you've learned over time that kind of guide the way you process information that you've received. So if I'm approaching any situation considering that I have studied Islam, studied the scripture, studied under your leadership, a person can't help but to see more of what's in that particular circumstance or situation. A person who has not had that kind of background and that kind of experience will only see what their experience or their background will allow them to see. And we use the expression in our culture using rose tinted glasses and how the rose tinted glasses tend to distort what you see. So when we look at our arena, the science arena specifically, I'm thinking about, and as a science educator, I have to look at education and science merged together. I can't help but to think about the history of how education actually started in this country. How education itself was a sidebar of a religious move. The Protestants move to America seeking the ability to freely practice what they thought was the appropriate way of religion. And they were fleeing a situation where they were being persecuted from trying to practice what they were trying to do.
So when they set up their educational program here in America, which was the precursor for our public educational system that we have here, they set their schools up based on that same premise that they were trying to implement a particular way of doing things. And for them it was about follow this particular method, don't think about it, just do exactly what you're told to do. And in the educational arena, for years, we've taught the students "Do the essay, don't ask, don't question." So this whole concept of reasoning, whether it's scriptural reasoning or educational reasoning, is newer to our profession as educators and as scientists. Because for years we've just told the children, just do an essay, just follow what you were told to do. Here's the scientific method. There's one way of doing things. We're now saying, no, there isn't one way. Every particular process doesn't have to have a hypothesis. You don't have to do an experiment. Your data does not have to look this way. It could look this way, it can look that way. So we're starting to see that I don't have to use those rose tinted glasses anymore when I'm interpreting things, when I'm analyzing things. And we're starting to realize maybe I need to step out of my box and start to study more of what's going on in other areas. So you mentioned the concept of us coming together globally, and this whole concept of the dialogue between the Abrahamic religions, the more we learn about each other, the more we learn about the concept of the oneness of Allah and the oneness of the creation that's here and how we all answer to Him, we can start to see things without those glasses on. See things without these lenses being tinted.
Clyde El Amin:
Certainly. And I'm taking a little bit of a risk here, but I think this scriptural reasoning is obviously something that has to be brought to more of the religious communities also because the religious communities have been impacted by what Lynn just finished speaking to. So in many religious communities, there is a certain caution about bringing reasoning to the religious activities. Because there's a fear that the reasoning takes you away from the security of being right. That the religious rituals, the religious teachings, the catechisms, et cetera, there's a certain security about being right, that those things bring you. And we thought that there was a wall between the religious communities, some of the religious communities, obviously I'm not speaking of all of them, and the school where we thought intelligence was taking place, but really they both were constrained by similar paradigms. And so she's absolutely right. There's kind of a paradigm shift going on now, and we are looking at other ways of knowing, but the need to bring reasoning to the religious community is as dire as the need to bring it more to the educational community.
Imam WD Mohammed:
As a Dr. Ibrahim Izzadine, he was interviewed by the Focolare publication, The Living City I think it's called. And he was asked to explain or give his opinion, how come these religions have been against each other and they're belonging to the same tradition really if we go back to Abraham. And he said "Politics took over." He said, "Governments and conflict and politics took over." He said, "If it wasn't for that happening, we wouldn't have to call attention to the need now for these great religions to come together." And during the first recording of this discussion, you mentioned George Washington Carver. And from what you have shown me of his own perception of the field for his studies, education wouldn't have had so many difficulties if they had stayed on track with George Washington Carver.
Lynn Al Amin:
But the wonderful thing about him, about George Washington Carver is that he wasn't indoctrinated by the current educational system and the history of how it's changed over time. He explored, he didn't just use what he received in his classroom, he explored, he traveled outside of that arena and he started to pay closer attention to the land, to the plants, to Allah's creation, the environment and the living organisms that are there. And the more we do that, the more Allah teaches us what we need through the environment and through the creation.
Imam WD Mohammed:
That's exactly how Adam was formed in the earth. He had nothing to interfere with the world that G-d made.
Clyde El Amin:
And I think George Washington Carver began his point, his formal education already inspired by his study of nature. He may not have known that the word botany exists. And Lynn can correct me if I'm wrong. I guess if you had to classify him, you might kind of think of him as a botanist. He was so universal, agriculturalist, et cetera, he may not have known that that word existed, though he was studying the subject matter of that field, studying it in nature. And so he was already, in some ways, liberated from the constraints that formal education might have placed on him when he entered formal education. So what he did, he came to formal education ready to take the advantages of it and build on his foundation.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Could you share with us the beautiful reading that....
Clyde El Amin:
The quote that I showed you?
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes.
Clyde El Amin:
This is from a book written by a gentleman who knew Carver, Glenn Clark. It's a life story of George Washington Carver. The book is called The Man Who Talks With The Flowers, which is a good description of him. And in this chapter, he starts this chapter out to explain the secret of Dr. Carver's power of talking with the flowers. And he asked about this power when he was alone with Dr. Carver. He asked him about this power and he said, Dr. Carver reached out his long sensitive fingers and tenderly touched the flower on the table. And he said, "When I touch that flower, I am not merely touching that flower. I am touching infinity. That little flower existed long before there were human beings on this earth. It will continue to exist for thousands, yes, millions of years to come."
Imam WD Mohammed:
Wonderful.
Clyde El Amin:
So that's cosmological, that's cosmological connection. And so he was liberated before and he tried to do this with his students. He tried to teach from this paradigm. And maybe it was a blessing that Tuskegee was kind of isolated then because he probably would've gotten a lot of heat, as they say, for teaching from that paradigm in some of the more well-known institutions of his day and certainly of our day.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Because too bad Darwin couldn't have been motivated as Dr. Carver was.
Lynn Al Amin:
But even when you look at the way Darwin did what he did, Darwin left the confines of his laboratory. He left the confines of the city that lived in and he traveled the earth. He took a boat ride, literally a boat ride, and went to various continents gathering data, looking at Allah's creation and gathering data from Allah's creation. His problem was, the paradigm he operated with was one coming from a household of an atheist of a person who did not believe in G-d. There's a question mark, whether or not he himself was an atheist, but the paradigm that he was using to examine the things that he saw in nature was not that of a person of faith, was not that of a person of the Abrahamic religions. So his method of saying that, yeah, this was an accident that we got this and the survival of the fittest and blah, blah, blah. It wasn't looking at it from a religious standpoint, from the standpoint that there's a higher power, that this intelligent pattern that we see here was designed by a higher power.
Imam WD Mohammed:
His situation brings to my mind expression in Qur'an that's very important, especially for believers who want to understand the Qur'an. The expression in Arabic is "Mukhlusina Lauhuddin." Mukhlusina means they follow the logic to its conclusion. They don't conclude for the logic. And we accept evolution. We know everything that is real undergo evolution. Even the knowledge of Islam undergoes evolution. As we learn more, we are taken into new dimensions of vision, of perception and vision. But that's not concluded when Darwin tells us about the evolution when he says our existence goes back to the primates, the monkeys and apes. He makes a big problem for my soul. For many other souls that rejected him, even rejected him in education.
Clyde El Amin:
And he doesn't realize the limits of his paradigm. He doesn't even realize that it is a paradigm. People take their limited experiences and draw universal conclusions from them.
And it was the same with Freud. No one ever talks about the fact that Freud developed all of his theories from studying his patients, almost all of whom were severely mentally ill. So you come to conclusions about the healthy people from studying the people who are severely mentally ill. So other scientists who came behind him tried to break away from that. I mentioned Carl Yung last time when there was another gentleman named Maslow who talked about the hierarchy of needs of human beings. And the highest one is really what he calls the transcendent need, a need for us to transcend limitations. And this gentleman, Seligman, who I was talking about earlier, he studied optimism and pessimism in human beings. And how if you come from an optimistic perspective that you will come to certain conclusions about yourself, about what the possibilities are from you. But if you come from the optimistic perspective, you will take what tend to be called negative experiences and you will give those negative experiences a positive role in your life. And you know In Qur'an and other scriptures, we talk about trials from our Lord and that they are to benefit us. We don't talk about them as defeating us, but if you come from a pessimistic perspective, you will come to the conclusion that it says something about you. And if you come to the conclusion it says something about you and limitations, permanent limitations that you've been given, it's easy for you to come to the wrong conclusion about your creator being just and fair.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Exactly. The creation as seen in revelation. Revelation does not blame G-d's creation. It blames our misunderstanding of G-d's creation, our misperception, misperceptions. And everything in G-d's creation has beauty. You can find ugliness too, but beauty is so is predominant. Even winter, winter, cold winters, I dread cold winters now more than ever in my age, at my age, but still I see the beauty of snow. Snow is beautiful. It covers the earth and it cushions. The ground is hard, that's been frozen hard. It cushions it and it decorates the trees and everything. It's beautiful, beautiful. And because we are so cut off from mental contact with G-d's creation in this advanced world that's closing in on us, man's world, our time is always used for something outside of the soul, not in the soul. We come to conclusion that everything is bad. The world is bad. But Satchmo Armstrong, he sings a beautiful song and it's about the world being beautiful, beautiful. And so in G-d's creation, there's a predominance of beauty and the rational conclusion that we should come to that if G-d has put a predominance of beauty and usefulness and comfort in His creation, then that's His choice. That's his choice for us. And Mother Nature is not bad. She's good.
Lynn Al Amin:
And when you look at Mother Nature, as we use that terminology, the storms, the tsunamis, the tidal waves, et cetera, the cold weather, each one of those is a wonderful phenomenon. Because if you look at it as a wonderful phenomenon, then you can see the beauty of it ,represents bringing balance to the earth, to Allah's creation. That freezing cold temperature during the wintertime keeps microorganisms from growing out of control. And we have just enough to do exactly what's needed to keep the community in balance. Keep the community in what we call in science homeostasis. And the balance between the positive and the negative helps to keep that homeostasis. And homeostasis is the environment where living organisms reach their optimal ability to survive. So you do your best. So if I look at the pros and the cons and I bring both of them together, the good and the bad, I see that I need a little bit of this and as Brother Clyde mentioned, the struggles and challenges that Allah tells us we have to go through in the Qur'an. We're going to be tested, but that test is not a negative thing. That test is to strengthen me. Just like the blessings. If I see my blessings correctly, that's also a way to strengthen because I say, the G-d that gave me these blessings is the one that I'm actually giving credit to. I'm not saying that I earned these blessings myself. The blessings came from my G-d. And so the positive and the negative helped to keep that balance and that balance helps us to live in the best possible way that we can be under Allah's guidance and teachings.
So it's, it's all about how we perceive our role, how we perceive our responsibilities within this culture. Are we Allah's servants to follow His will or are we the ultimate? And science people tend to think because I have control over this... We're doing genetic engineering now. You can determine the gender of what you want your baby to be. You can decide if you want your baby to have blonde hair or brown hair. If we allow genetic engineering to move further than where it is right now, all those decisions could be made by human beings instead of being made by Allah. And so are we looking at ourselves as being creator or creation? And as long as we see our place in Allah’s creation, we won't make the mistakes of becoming arrogant like Hitler and going off on a tangent like he did.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes. The expression in Qur'an "Inama Al-Usri Usra"-Surely with difficulty, accepting to face difficulty, you'll come to find ease. You will find ease. Meeting the difficulty, you will find ease. And another expression in the Qur'an, in the Qur'an, G-d advances human life by stages after stage after stage. And these stages, Kafhan, meaning can be very difficult. You can face very difficult stages, but one difficulty prepares you to defeat another difficulty. And it goes on and on and on.
Clyde El Amin:
It's amazing that people find that concept hard to understand, but at the same time, people go to the gym and purposely lift 300 pounds and really feel good about the achievement of lifting the 300 pounds because it could bring some, maybe self-aggrandizement is a motive, maybe there are other motives. But to be able to understand that so easily, but not to be able to understand Allah's message to us through scripture.
Imam WD Mohammed:
And you enjoy it. I'm physical myself. I can't do what I used to do. I'm physical myself and I know I enjoy it. Meeting the difficulty, training against the difficulty.
Lynn Al Amin:
And it's like the harder you work, the more you feel that you've accomplished whatever the task is like you just mentioned. Because you accept that you have to go through these challenges as part of you moving forward and moving towards the goal.
Clyde El Amin:
And the task becomes easier as you accept those difficulties and move through them. You move through them with greater ease and beauty. We're talking about beauty in the creation. Earlier, I was just amazed this morning there was a news report about scientists capturing alligators and extracting blood from the alligator because they believe that the blood from the alligator holds great promise for treating certain illnesses. And there was another species, and I don't remember the name of it, but it was a very, very, very, very unattractive, unattractive animal. And they were extracting....
Imam WD Mohammed:
Must have been a human.
Clyde El Amin:
Yeah, I am sure there are some humans that have this characteristic, but they were getting some secretions from this animal. It lives on the bottom of the ocean and it's not anything you would if you went scuba diving or whatever you do to go down to the beneath the surface of the ocean, you wouldn't look for this animal, you would look for starfish and other beautiful things.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Wouldn't be urchin.
Clyde El-Amin:
It's something like that, it's something like that. Because they now know that this secretion actually will control and maybe even control the growth of tumors. And they believe it actually holds the potential to actually destroy them. And I thought I said, now you look at these creatures and you would say they're ugly. You would say alligators are dangerous. But if you believe, if you coming from the place that you believe that there's a purpose, a good purpose for everything.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Exactly.
Clyde El Amin:
And scripture tells us that Allah put this whole creation here, even the universe to serve us, then you know that everything has a purpose. If you stay out of the alligator's way, he won't do you any harm. But there was a purpose there other than just shoes and handbags. That alligator has a purpose and they're finding this more and more with animals. They've done it. They've been doing it for decades now with plants going to the Amazon and other places to find these natural cures.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Recently I read a scientific article of science article and it was showing the hyenas and how unattractive they look and what it says that they have one of the most impressive family orders.
Lynn Al Amin:
And in community spirit as well as the ability to build communities, the bee and its ability to go out and extract from the environment and bring it back to the hive and make that beautiful nectar that we call honey that's been found to have so many wonderful properties as far as helping human beings. And we look at science and we look at all of the different things that are out there, but the concept that we're moving towards now in the field of science is scientific inquiry. We're questioning more. We are not just making statements about whatever. We're questioning, we're investigating. So the concept of scientific inquiry says you're not just looking for, like I mentioned at the beginning, just the face value or just to surface. You now want to understand more. You want to see how things fit together. And this concept of reasoning, you're looking at the clues, the clues around you, and you're trying to come up with something that could help better explain why things are happening the way they're happening, not just what's happening, but why. And in Islam, we are not taught to go through rituals as far as our religion. Actually it's shunned upon in Islam to do something just ritualistically. When I fast Ramadan, we all know we have to make our intentions first. And it's your intention. That's the most important part of starting that fast is to make the intention.
The spiritual benefits firstly, but also the social benefits.
Right. Exactly. And when I make my prayers, I have to make my intentions. When you make your Hajj, you're making your intentions. So we look at the reason. We are not just saying I intend to, but I'm doing this to please Allah. I'm doing this to improve my social, my spiritual mind, my own inner self. But the whole purpose is Allah has guided me. He said to me that these are the things that I need to do. And so now in science, we're not saying, okay, here's photosynthesis, but why is it like this? And how does this impact upon the society? How does this impact more upon Allah's creation? So we're paying more and more attention to nature, more and more attention to nature.
Imam WD Mohammed:
It is the best time for man on this planet. I'm convinced of that. And the Prophets, especially Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, the major Prophets that we identify mostly with for our religious, for our religion, for understanding of our religion, they pointed always us forward. And they didn't say that in their life you're going to realize everything. No, they said in the future you'll realize even much more than you realize in their individual lifetimes.
Yes. They pointed us to the future, always the future to get more, get more knowledge, to get more of life, to get more of what we need to manage society without abusing society.
Clyde El Amin:
Yes. I was really fascinated when you made the point about our understanding of religion also evolving as everything else evolves. Because we are at a point where if you realize that you, in a positive way, not in a negative way, you are so proud to be religious. I remember when I started college, I didn't don't want to say I didn't have much of religious foundation. I had the best religious foundation that my parents understanding was able to give me, but it couldn't withstand the professors strong enough. And I never left faith in Allah. And that point I said, faith in G-d. And my mother was so happy about that. She says, as long as you're searching and you haven't become an atheist,
Imam WD Mohammed:
I heard that expression. I've heard that expression from parents.
Clyde El Amin:
But now students can come to the academic enterprise with their religion if they understand scriptural reasoning or if they're pursuing scriptural reasoning and they're not afraid to bring reasoning into that part of their lives. And that they understand that their intellect is in fact a gift from Allah that also evolves. And it's intended to evolve. And it's just such a major, to me, it's just such a major era to be in that era where we are actually able to talk about our understanding of religion or religion evolving. Because 20, 30 years ago, that could get you trouble.
Imam WD Mohammed:
There was a slave, I think his name is Ibn Said. I, I'm pretty sure his name. Ibn Said. And he was in prison and he starts studying the Bible and Qur'an similarities, similarities for the Bible and the Qur'an. And he stopped his work. He didn't live to see the work really developed much. But I see a lot of similarities for Bible and Qur'an. And reading that about him has given me a desire really to complete his work of comparing Bible and Qur'an In the Bible it's said "As a man thinketh in his heart." It didn't say in his mind. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." And they said, people will be wondering, where's Christ Jesus? And it's said, "They will look in the sacred chambers, they won't find him there. They'll look to the mountain., they won't find him up there, say, but he'll be in the heart of the earth, in the heart of the earth." And then the Qur'an comes and says, G-d has formed everything to broadcast knowledge, or science and mercy. . The heart is where we find mercy.
"And He revealed it upon Muhammad's heart." So the two books are saying the same thing. They're saying the same thing.
Clyde El Amin:
One clarifies those things about which maybe doubt has come. And of course, since I was raised in Christianity, actually until I was in college, my mother was there until I was about 15 because I told her, I said, I got a problem. I really have a problem. She said, you don't have to come to this church anymore, but just stay faithful. I had a real problem with what they were presenting, but I never saw a conflict in Qur'an and the Bible. Sometimes I had to, the Qur'an made me come to a different conclusion about what my understanding had been, what I'd read in the Bible. And I said, well, I always had a problem with my understanding of that, though the understanding I got left me a little confused.
Imam WD Mohammed:
That was purposely done.
Clyde El Amin:
Yes.
Imam WD Mohammed:
That was purposely done by the leaders in religion, especially Christianity who feared that if the religion was clearly understood by Pagan rulers, the people would suffer too much. They would kill 'em all out. If G-d didn't stop 'em, they would kill everybody. They feared death and persecution so much from coming from Pagan authority that they designed scripture to attract Pagan authority.
Clyde El Amin:
Yes.
Imam WD Mohammed:
And now everything has to be studied again for us to come to a better understanding and perception and understanding of what our scriptures really want us to have to have, what our scriptures really want us to have.
Lynn Al Amin:
My background is a little different than Brother Clyde's. I did not grow up in a home of parents who practiced the Christian faith. I grew up in a home of parents who practiced Islam under the leadership of your father, Elijah Muhammad, May Allah's Peace and Mercy be upon him. My way of looking at my college experience was a little bit different. I questioned everything. I didn't believe anything they said. They had to prove to me that the knowledge that they was bringing represented something that I needed to take as a serious concept. And so as far as them saying that this is what happened, and this is what happened when I took my psychology courses, I'm like, but wait a minute. This man had this type of a background or that type of a background. So how could he be the one that we relish as far as interpreting the way human beings think, reason, et cetera. When they introduced his concepts of science for biology or chemistry, I wanted to know why, why does this particular law fit this particular process? Why this equation, et cetera. So my paradigm was a little different, similar to what we were saying about George Washington Carver.
So when I got out into the workforce and I started teaching, others were like, "But that's not the way we were taught to teach." And who's to say that there's one way to approach this? And who's to say that all I have to do is tell the child to open the book and read? Why can't I help the child understand why this is the case and why this is important and their role in society? Because coming up the way I did, I became, and the way I was taught, I had the responsibility of contributing back, not just taking, not just using it for my own benefit, but contributing back for the good of all. And when we look at the concept that's in the Qur'an about the Khalifa, I saw my role as a Khalifa. I saw the role of every student that I taught as that of a Khalifa. So I made them aware of what their role was in society. And Alhamdulillah, just recently, I was informed that I had received some funds for a grant proposal that I had put together. I didn't write the proposal alone. I wrote the proposal with the help of some children. The children and I sat down, we looked at the problem that was in that particular environment and we said, let's come up with a solution. And the implementation of this grant will be, Insha’Allah, with the help of the children. So we should start to give our students and the people that are working with us more autonomy to be able to be a part of the solution. And that's what I see the field of science is moving more towards. And as I learn more about Islam and learn more about the religion, and I'm studying now some of the teachings of Christianity and Judaism, as I learned more about it, it's not to restrict us. And one of the statements that you used at the beginning of this session was the liberation of the human being. And that this knowledge should free us.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Exactly.
To be able to do more instead of restricting us to say that this is the only way that you have to think and figure things out. That's reasoning to me.
I have to acknowledge that the Bible turned me off because when I'll hear it and attempt to read it, there were things that gave me, it didn't show intelligence to me. I thought that this was not intelligent the way it was stated. And the same thing for my father's teachings, some things in his teachings. I said, well, this is not respecting intelligence or human intelligence. And since then over the years, I've come to really appreciate the Bible so much. And the same for my father's teachings. I've come to appreciate his teachings so much. And if we look for purpose and aim and purpose, what is it aiming for? What is the purpose? What is it aiming for? And I can make a conclusion right here regarding the teachings of my father Nation of Islam's teachings. That it's mainly the designed to take a people, African-Americans, especially those who have not experienced education, haven't grown up in academia. And that's the great majority. To take a people that was cut off from their traditional life, that means their culture, their knowledge, their history, everything. And put them, make slaves of them for the slave masters and cut them off from any reference independent of the slave master.
All their references for understanding what I am, why I'm here on earth, and what is my purpose. They have no way of finding it except by looking at the slave master and going on what he exposed them to or what he gives them. Such a group that's so thoroughly dominated, have their minds colonized and spirits colonized. Everything is colonized. And the power that colonize them is actually dominating them without interfering directly in their lives with their own hands. So people like that need to be motivated or maneuvered into a position where they're forced to think on their own. To think on their own. So I see the main benefit from the teachings of the Nation Islam or my father's teaching Elijah Muhammad, may he have peace in paradise and be forgiven for all his sins and have peace in paradise, is free thinkers, designed to make us free thinkers. And that's what you just told me.
Lynn Al Amin:
That's what I experienced.
Imam WD Mohammed:
But it did.
Lynn Al Amin:
That's what I experienced when I went out there.
Imam WD Mohammed:
It made you a free thinker.
Clyde El Amin:
And the interesting thing is, I came into contact with those teachings when I was in college. And college was never the same from that point forward I was a problem for everybody. Exactly. And I had to apply my paradigm to them. And I found myself saying, I know there's more to this. Even if something seemed unreasonable in it's literal form, I started telling myself, I see, I know there's more to this. And I started looking for a way for him to be right, because the impact that it had had on my life said to me that there's something potent here. What also was very potent was my need for it. My need to become an independent thinker. And once you taste that, you can't go back. You can't go back. And it wasn't just me. The impact that it had on so many African-American students at University of Michigan was amazing. That the teachings, and even more so the vision, because that paper would have the cartoons in the middle about build your own engineering and all this, build a hospital. It was amazing. It was so attractive to them that they demanded that that paper be regular reading in the African-American studies course at University of Michigan. The last two semesters I was there, it was brought there every week for students who signed up for that course. So you didn't just have African-Americans reading it, but it was interesting to see white and Jewish and others reading that paper. But the African-American students enrolled in this course to a great extent than others. And it was what it caused to happen for us. And I think that you're talking about the aim.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yeah.
Clyde El-Amin:
Because sometimes the aim was achieved without one consciously being aware of the actual teaching.
Speaker 2:
Even the idea that Islam was within his teachings, but there were so many other things that were there. So we weren't getting Orthodox Islam totally. We were getting a lot of other things. The black nationalist concept, the community spirit, the economic component, and the reverse psychology with the deity in Christ, we had Fard Muhammad. So all of this was there, but Islam was at the base and we were taught to respect the Qur'an, read the Qur'an. We were taught to pray. So that's not by accident. And this is going back to the concept of intelligent design. Allah had His hand I feel, strongly by faith. I feel that Allah had His hand, even in the Nation of Islam and the way things came about and the way that this culture that had been stripped of everything as you just mentioned, and was taught to rely on those who were the slave owners. Were taught to rely on them for everything because we'd been stripped of everything. Allah still brought us Islam to bring us out of that, to get us to the point where we could follow Islam totally. But Islam was still there. So that shows us Allah's grace even then.
Imam WD Mohammed:
I remember recalling words from scripture had reached me, both Bible and Qur'an, I believe. And I recall a saying, and I think that in this form, it is found in the Bible, but also in the Qur'an, in other descriptions, in another description. Where it says, "If you use My name, G-d speaking, if you use My name, you obligate Me." If you use My name, you obligate Me. So if you use His name to do wrong or to harm human beings, you obligate G-d to straighten it out. If you can't straighten it out, if you wont straighten out, G-d is going to straighten it out. And the slaves, they said, G-d is a just G-d. They knew that in their soul. They knew that this is G-d. He's a just G-d. So why is this situation like this? So I believe truly that my father getting his plan for establishing the Nation of Islam from Mr. Fard or Professor Fard that he saw as G-d incarnate or Jesus Christ returning. It can't be approved by the Qur'an and its teachings except that G-d permits certain things to happen and be developed to check a worse, something that is worse, something that is much worse. And I see that in the Nation of Islam as G-d's intervention. So if G-d intervenes, then His presence is there. And not only is His presence there, His protection is there.
So He protected my Father, He protected me. And He's still protecting the followers of my father who are still in that time and in that idea. Like Minister Farrakhan and his following and others, a few others, not as big as he is, but not as big as Farrakhan. But there are a few others who chose to stay in that mind also. And G-d is their protection, their protector or their protection because the world created the problem that make us go in these different extreme directions. So I think that's a good note to stop on, to conclude on. And I do want to say that the language or the expression, Save The World, is getting to be more and more popular.
Clyde El Amin:
Yes.
Imam WD Mohammed:
This is a quality magazine, Wilson's Quality magazine, and on the cover says, Saving The World. So we all have a responsibility, we all contribute to messing it up. And we all have responsibility to do something to make it better. And I conclude on that and we hope that this can be transcribed and come out as a publication soon.


