07/11/2001
IWDM Study Library
Tolerance is a Must
Jackson MS

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Peace to you. The Muslim greeting is As-salaamu alaikum. We thank Allah for our presence here, that is, we thank G-d for our presence here in Jackson and for the program of the masjid here and the leadership of Imam Harrisuddin and his wonderful friends and supporters in the city. This is not my first visit to Jackson. We've had two, several, well, at least three, I'm sure in the area and to Jackson, I believe. I remember the visit to Whitman and we had many of you from Jackson to come to that meeting that we had in Whitman.
Islam is religion and religion is life, and religion is peace. When we hear the call to worship made five times a day in a Muslim community or a Muslim neighborhood where there's a Mosque nearby your home, you can hear five times a day the call to worship or the call to prayer. And the call is a call to life. The word for call for the verb call, comes from the word life, Hayye, hayye. You say hayya asalat. Come to prayer. Call to Islam then is a call to life. And if you understand that religion of Islam is also the religion of the people of the book, by our reasoning, not by their reasoning, by our reasoning.
We are taught in Islam and the Qur'an gave us this, that all creation was created to be Muslim. All creation was made to be Muslim. Muslim means accepting the will of G-d. That's what Muslim mean. Muslim means accepting the will of G-d, accepting it peacefully, accepting the will of G-d and accepting it peacefully, not rebelling against it, not dis-liking it.
I guess, for that reason, we are told by G-d, in our Holy book, la iqrafiddeen, let there be not any forcing people to accept the religion, la iqrafiddeen, let there be not any forcing people to accept religion, do not compel them in religion.
Islam is life, Islam is life. And as the Old Testament and the New Testament promise, G-d's worshipers life and a good life, so is the promise in the Qur'an is the same. G-d says that he will give his worshipers life and a good life and good establishments. I'm a familiar person with the Bible and also I've studied the Bible. So I may say I have... I was a student of the Bible, may in some way still be a student of the Bible. I'm very familiar with the Bible. And G-d says in the Bible also that he will give his worshipers mansions. That's a good establishment, mansions, good establishments and dwellings where they will have ...be secure and have the beautiful and good things that their hearts or that their souls wanted. This is a promise that is in the great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Then what has Islam specifically or particularly to offer them if we are called to life by the three great religions, and the three great religions promise good life and good establishments, the fulfillment of all good desires. And what is it that distinguishes Islam? What is the special feature of Islam? The special feature of Islam is to bring the knowledge in common, plain language. Or to put it in the common language of the people so that the people can more readily get the benefit of it.
Now, is Islam doing something against Judaism when it does that? Is Islam doing something against Christianity when it does that? No, because this is the promise in the Old Testament, that the message is going to get clearer and clearer, plainer and plainer so that there will be no mistaking, there will be no burden on the average person to understand it. It says it will be made plain so even a fool would not error if he wanted to go straight. This is the promise in books that came before the Holy book of Islam, the Qur'an.
In the Qur'an G-d plainly says to us, this, the Qur'an, this book is a collection of the former books in their correct form. And an explanation, explaining the former books so that it'll be easy for the common mind to understand more easy, for the common mind to understand. This is G-d's will. This is G-d's plan. G-d intended the way to bring the humanity, the whole population of mankind of people of earth to him by this strategy or by this, I would say, mystery, it is a mystery.
We know every child is created in darkness and delivered into the light of the world from its mother, but all human beings are formed in darkness and not only human beings, other life of the womb formed in darkness and delivered into the world, into the lights after being formed in darkness. We who came by the strange route that brought us to this religion and in the day of light, in the light of day, we were formed in the darkness.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, before he died, he gave a series of talks or lectures on the triple darkness. To leave it with us before he died, that we were formed in darkness, not one darkness, three wombs of darkness or triple darkness. The Qur'an mentions these three darkness' and it's translated in English, veils of darkness, three veils of darkness.
So we should understand that this is the way of G-d, to advance the peoples knowledge and life from darkness to light. And Allah says that he is the one who also reverses this. He brings people from the light into the darkness, just like the rotation in night and day or day and night. Begin with night, Genesis begins with the night. Oh, how does the Qur'an tell the story? Does the Qur'an say that night was before day? Yes. Khali ka thula mati wa thuhr He created the darkness and the night, darkness before the night.
And then the revelation of Qur'an that brings about a new creation and a new birth for the intellects and hearts of people said that he revealed it in the night of power. He revealed it in the night of power. And what is the night of power, laila tul Qadr, al ladhi, the night in which there descends, the angels and the spirit. The spirit, pardon me, and the angels following every errand that G-d gave them, not deviating or missing in any measure, but following exactly every errand that G-d, the creator, gave them. Thats the night of power. And it says the night of power in which the Qur'an was revealed, in which the revelation descended on the heart of Muhammad, the seal of the Prophets, the last Prophet, G-d's Messenger and his mercy to the worlds.
So if we don't keep in mind that there is a progression for scripture, and there as a progression for a life of man on this earth. If we don't keep that in mind, we will not become the 'A' students, the 'A' class students in religion. We will miss too much. We'll never be the first class or the 'A' students in religion. We have to remember that there that the Qur'an, the Bible and the Qur'an tells us that G-d advances the light so that the life will be advanced. And it is advanced in stages. It is progressional, progressing to a point. ....
But in the meantime, what is happening from beginning to the end, what is happening from the beginning of G-d, ushering in the light and bringing it to it's conclusion where we can have peace and understanding, peace and understanding, and justice, et cetera. Between the beginning and the end, what is happening? Satan, the enemy of mankind, not the enemy of G-d, Satan in his own mind thinks he's a friend of G-d. Satan in his own thinking ,thinks he's the friend of G-d. But because will not follow the will of G-d for society, for man, he is both the enemy of man and the enemy of G-d, but he does not know that. He thinks his way of advancing the life is better than the way that G-d revealed to man, to Muhammad, and to those before Muhammad.
Praise be to Allah. So in the meantime, there is interference and deceits. Satan works deceits to keep man from progressing as G-d wills that he progress in the light with his life, with the good life. Because G-d wants us to have not just life, but the good life. As it said in the Holy scriptures, the good life. And it is in scripture and also in one of Muhammad's prophecies.
And scripture says in Bible, Holy Bible, it says, there will come a famine and the famine will cover the whole earth. Famine means no food, people starving. And the famine will cover the whole earth. It says, there will not be a famine of food, it'll be a famine of hearing the word of G-d. So this interference by Satan, confusion that he brings into the path of man, to the path of life brings darkness to come on. So G-d says he is the one who brings darkness in the light, but he's also the one who reverses, and he brings the light from the darkness and the darkness from the light. Originally, it was a light from the darkness. Satan comes in and makes the darkness that G-d didn't create. It's another darkness, the darkness of the world. And then G-d has to bring the people from that darkness into the light, from that darkness, into the light. And then he reverses from the light to the darkness.
What is the light? The book, the revelation. That's the light. And the Bible says, it's in the Bible, say there will be a book and a man will come by this book. He will get it. He will have this book in his hands, but he won't be able to read it. This is the book, revelation. This is a book of life. And the Bible says he will go to one he thinks can read. And he will say, can you read this to me? And the first person he goes to is not even a reader of letters. That person says, "I'm sorry, I'm not a reader of letters." And he takes it on. And he takes it to someone who... Finally, he takes it through someone who can read letters. And this person looks at it and reads it. And he says, "I'm sorry, it's sealed. S-E-A-L-E-D. It's sealed. Meaning, "I can read letters, but I can't read this. It's blocked against me, it's sealed against my perception, against my sights, against my intelligence." So he couldn't read it either.
So that is another description of darkness coming upon the world. And no one can bring you lights, except G-d, those that he select to bring the light. And it's a sign that the light is there, but people can't see by. The man has the light. The light is in the book. We have plenty of light in these great revelations, these great scriptures. We have plenty of light there, but many and most are walking in darkness. So the light is here, but they're walking in darkness. But it says G-d is the one who can bring the darkness to come after the light.
And what is this darkness that G-d brings after the light? Is it the darkness of ignorance? No, G-d will never bring the darkness of ignorance on you. Is it the darkness of sin and corruption? No. What darkness does G-d bring upon you? G-d brings upon you the darkness of obedience without your intelligence. He brings the people to be babies again, like babies, having faith and not caring whether they see or not. But moving on faith, yes. Black light, huh? Moving on faith. I'm just taking something from the world, black light. They move on faith. And that's how all of us come into the light again, when the world comes under darkness and the word of G-d is not helping us find the light.
We come back in the light by accepting to obey G-d and not go ahead of G-d's help, stay with faith and not go ahead of G-d's help and just stay with faith and wait on G-d's help. And G-d's help will come eventually. And G-d's help will lead you out of the darkness of faith without guidance, of faith without logic, of faith without reason or reasoning. He will lead you out of that where you can use your intelligence again, you can use your reasoning again, you can use your human logic again, and you can walk in the light with those tools or those legs. Praise be to Allah, the wonderful.
I'm telling you of my personal experience and that's how I can read it so clearly in the Bible because I experienced that. And that's why I'm able to read it so clearly in the Qur'an, because I have experienced that. I was told that Islam was the religion, the right religion. I was told that Allah is G-d. I was told that Muhammad is the Messenger of G-d. But that Muhammad I was told was my father, not that Muhammad that really brought the Qur'an or the Holy scriptures of Muslims into the world from G-d. I was told that my father was that Muhammad.
I was told those things. I was told many other, things, some of these things I don't want to burden you with right now. I was told many things and I was following, not going ahead of my father, standing still in the darkness of my lack of understanding on faith. I stood And I struggled to be obedient, to obey my mother. She told me, "Wallace, be honest, be truthful, give your life before your word fail, before you let your word fail." That's the teaching I got. And many other teachings I got, that strengthen me, and made me very strong in my determination to be correct in my religion. I didn't want to be wrong in my religion.
And I had things that were conflicting. I remember something that occurred in the time of Malcolm, when Malcolm was the spokesperson, the speaker from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to the public, to the world, to America and the world by way of media. Malcolm went out to get the media's attention and he got it. He was shrewd and very sharp witted. So he got the media's attention and the American public saw Malcolm, came to know Malcolm, and the world came to know Malcolm.
And I remember something happening and there was a meeting, a public meeting, a public address, a big one that was attracting his followers from around the country. And Malcolm was appointed by my father to be the main speaker at that occasion. But my father asked me, and this is the only time that he asked me to accompany Malcolm and to speak on a program with Malcolm. I had done it before, but I had done it at Malcolm's invitation, not at my father's bidding. So my father, this time, he said, "Son," he called me son. He said, "Son," he called me Wallace sometimes, he'd called me son sometimes. He said, "Son, I want you to be there at that meeting. And I want you to be with Malcolm on the podium. And I want you to speak to the crowd. I didn't understand it back then. It took me years to understand why my father wanted me there.
And I wish my father had let me stay. And I wish he had gone. And you're going to understand why in just a few seconds. There was a representative from the white organization, the wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, KKK. He was invited to that meeting. And when I stood up to speak, it was after Malcolm had spoken, I looked at him. He was to my right, like here, right over there, sitting down. Rockwell representing the Klan. He had said some complimentary things about my father. You know what he said? He said, "We Know Elijah and we respect Elijah," say, "He's a man like our leader, Hitler." That's what he said at this meeting.
So when I got up to speak, my eyes, my spirit brought me just to fall, my eyes to fall right on him. So I messed up the day for that program and for Malcolm. Because Malcolm had accepted to invite him, Rockwell, to that meeting. Malcolm was so desperate to get something to help the argument, that he brought the devil in and had the devil sitting there to speak in the favor of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Now see, he was raised in the streets and in prison. I was raised in the home of Clara Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad. That's where I was raised. So we had a different spirit and a different conditioning. He had a different conditioning.
I looked at that devil and I said, "You're not welcome here." I said, "You are not welcome here, Mr. Rockwell." I said, "I can't understand it. I don't know why you're here. Here's the worst of the devils, sitting down there and made comfortable." I burned his ..., but he wasn't comfortable anymore. And I looked at Malcolm and Malcolm wasn't comfortable either. I said, "Well, you just have to burn baby with that devil over there." I didn't say that to him. I said that in my own mind. I said, "If you ain't comfortable, if you angry, just be uncomfortable, along with that devil I'm looking at over there." Rockwell.
Well, you see that was darkness. Wasn't it? Now I learned later that my father had nothing to do with inviting him. But for me, ... for years, I'm thinking that my father approved of the program, all of it, you see. So that was darkness for me. A hurting darkness, a darkness that hurt me. So I got to make sense of this message of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and this message of the Nation of Islam. I got to make sense of it. My parents formed me, influenced me, and formed me to want to make intelligent, good, moral sense of something before I accept it.
They did that to me. I didn't it to myself. They raised me like that. They influenced me to be like that. If I can't make intelligent, good moral sense of a thing, I don't want it. And as I said, I'll say it again, my parents made me like that. My mother first, and then my father. I didn't come to know my father really in my environment, in my physical environment, until I was about 13 years old. For the early years of my life, he was away preaching in other cities and also trying to escape being hurt or killed by enemies. And for seven more years of my life, my father was in prison, in jails or in the federal prison. So really, my brothers and sisters, we didn't have him, especially myself because I was the youngest child until my brother Akbar was born.
So we didn't have my father, we had our grandfather and he was wise to write from prison. He wrote a letter to my mother from prison and he said, have my father and my mother come and stay with you all. When he did that, he gave us a male figure in the house. And my grandfather was the one that made me his close friend and buddy, he didn't want to go anywhere, not even to the store, without me being with him. In the park, wherever he went, he wanted me with him. And I wanted to be with him. We just became like glue, glue, stuck to each other like glue. And my grandmother, she was a quiet woman, but occasionally she would give me attention to strengthen my spirit and to strengthen my obedience to G-d and to what is righteousness or what is right.
So, that's the kind of life I had. So here I am trying to make sense of things in the dark, but holding my steps, not stepping ahead of my father, I never wanted to step ahead of my father, never stepping ahead of him to draw my own conclusions against what he was telling us. I didn't do that until I got older. And he then influenced me again. He gave us an Arabic teacher from Palestine, from Jordan, pardon me, from the Palestinian, he was a Palestinian, to teach us Arabic so we could learn how to read the Qur'an in Arabic. My father gave us this help in Chicago, in the University of Islam, the school that he developed and kept for us, for the young boys and girls of the Nation of Islam.
So I attended that school and I learned from this Palestinian, Jamil Diab, who was professor, Jamil Diab, back then. Now he's Dr. Jamil Diab. He's an old man now living in Tempe, Arizona. And he has turned over a responsibility of the Mosque. He finally got his own Mosque. He was dealing in real estate, really buying old property, rehabbing it and selling it. So he was doing well when my father met him and he was also selling some other products, I forget what it was when my father met him. But he finally retired from that work and he became the Imam of the Tempe Mosque in Arizona. But his health, his years, his age, and his health won't permit him to have that responsibility now. He turned it over to his son, that was a boy, a little boy, in Chicago when he was working for my father in the Nation of Islam. So his son has that responsibility now. His son's name is Shakir.
And by the way, my son wanted to be named Shakir. So I have asked the lawyers to change his name. I understand that August 4th, I think, he'll be legally Mohammed Shakir Mohammed. That's the name he wanted. Shakir here means thankful. And he's thankful by nature. That's his nature, to be thankful, very thankful young boy. So I told him, that's the name that you should have. That's the name that your nature is, that says what your nature is, and that's thankful.
So anyway, this darkness conflicts and darkness, darkness, ugly darkness standing in the way. Then you get from light from the word of G-d, from his revelation, from his scripture. I got some light from reading the Qur'an, not only in English, but I began to read it a little bit in its original language that it was revealed in, Arabic. So I began to get some help, and I began to see things that told me that the only way you want to be at peace, you're going to have to either find a way to explain the things that are conflicting or going against what this Holy book is saying, that your father have taught you or the Nation of this Islam gave you, or you're going to have to just completely just drop it and say, "All this stuff is not for Islam, not for Muslims and just throw it aside."
At one point, I almost came to that point at one point in my own life or the development and my progression in my life studies and development. But something wouldn't let me do it, I just put it aside. I put the problems aside. In time, I want to get rid of this because we don't have this much time for this. And I want to go through this quickly. But for me, this is important because I'm looking at Muslims, and most of you I'm looking at, you know my father and most of you are indebted to my father in some way. So I know I am. Most of you are indebted to him in some way. So I want you...
I don't want to die. And I don't feel like I want to die. You'd be surprised I'm in pretty good shape, but I know I can die anytime. I don't want to die and not attend these sensitive areas for us. Conflict for the person who wants to follow me as their leader, but they also are appreciative and feel indebted to my father. And they don't want to have peace or conflict, peace broken or conflict broken for their relationship with the two of us, with both of us. And I don't want that either. I want you to feel at peace. Loving and appreciating my father and if you will, love and appreciate me too, that's what I want. So that's why I work on these areas in the understanding.
So I came to the conclusion that certain things I had to break from, and I couldn't understand it. I tell the truth at the time, I couldn't understand it. When I started out in 1975, I couldn't understand why these terrible conflicts had to be. I believe that there was good intent in the teacher of my father. And I believe that my father was a faithful, sincere, obedient servant of his teacher. I believed that. I saw that. So I accepted that. But here I am seeing something in his teachings now that with my understanding of the Holy book, Qur'an, now can't accept it. And then I look at the picture of his teacher, the only picture he left to be made available to us, is a picture of him holding the Qur'an. And he's looking down at it, looking down upon his pages, very piously with great respect.
His poise, his picture tells me, when I look at it, here is a man having great respect for the book he's holding. And then I read in his own teaching where he said "work out certain problems and your reward for working out these problems will be this, will be that." But the greatest reward, he said, is a family Qur'an, a family Qur'an, a Holy Qur'an. So here's a man that looked up and he thought it was the highest prize for its student to get is a Holy Qur'an. So I can't accept that this man is intentionally going against the Holy Qur'an.
So I lived with these conflicts for all these old years. 10, 15 years, I lived with all those conflicts and finally came to devote myself to studying his works and his mind, his mind. See, you can know a man's mind by examining and studying his works. So I came to study his works, but with the aim of really understanding his mind. And G-d blessed me to unlock the puzzle, to unlock the locks or to solve the puzzle.
And I came to accept him then as a person who created darkness to make us fight our way into the light or created darkness to make us struggle for the light. Does that make sense to you? It does to me. Here's a man that followed in the methodology of the wise, of the Bible who did the same thing. Created darkness to make you struggle for the light. And I think we have to repeat what I said earlier. And G-d is the one who brings light out of darkness and darkness out of the light.
Now to us, that darkness was light. Wasn't it? We wouldn't accept that what Honorable Elijah (Muhammad) taught us or gave us was darkness. We would say he gave us the light, pain truth, we said. Yes. So for us, that was light. But G-d brought us out of that light into the darkness of faith. And we followed his son upon faith. Didn't we? And then he brought us again from the darkness of faith into the light of knowledge.
See how we have the experiences on this earth that G-d talks about in scripture. We have experienced it. And this is no small thing. This is a great thing that a people have been so placed in the world, that no one could place them in the place where they belong, except G-d. Then G-d came and took us out of that bad place that the world gave us. And he took us by the way of scripture, by the way of divine revelation.
He took us by the methodology and the logic that we find in scripture. He took us out of what we thought was light and placed us into darkness just as a sperm goes from a man that lives in the light. And his sperm is placed in the darkness of a woman's womb and it stays there for nine months and is delivered into the light. How wonderful it is? Can you hand me those glasses over there? No. I'm sorry. I've got them in my pocket. I'm going to see if i can walk quite through this in a hurry now.
Good sense life. G-d wants us to have good sense life. And G-d gives us a parable, a parable of the light, he says is like a plant. And you know any plant, like take a tree. A tree is rooted down into the earth. And from the depths, it collects moisture, water, little things, little shallow penetrators into the penetration, into the earth like grass. It dies and turns yellow when dryness and heat comes, but the tree remains green because it's stronger and longer and its deeper penetration goes down, and get water beneath the shallow level. Beneath the shallow level, and goes down, deep and gets water that the grass roots cannot reach. And that tree is balanced, it's balanced. And it shows a logic. It developed from a seed and its pattern is logical. It sends branches out in every direction. So it can support its weight and not fall.
If it sent branches out in one side and not on the other side, it would lean and probably break in and not live, but it sends the branches out all around so that it is balanced as it's growing, balanced as it is growing. And G-d says, and he made everything from water. And we know that water seeks its level. Water wants to be on the level at all times, but it'll struggle if it has to, it will struggle against ice, against freezing, that's scientific. It struggles against freezing. It is the only substance or material that resists being frozen. When water, just before it comes to the freezing point to be solid, it expands. When it expands, it becomes more porous. So it permits air to come into it, ice, ice that is. it resists. Instead of contracting like other things do until hard as it can be, it will resist being solidified at the freezing point by expanding. This is scientific. You can ask science about this if you don't trust W. D. Mohammed. OK?
All right. And water seeks to be level. So the roots, G-d says that he created, I just saw in the wonderful museum, Islamic Museum of this community, that we just toured, had a tour guide of it. And I hope to come back many times with my family to tour the museum more because it is a great message of true Islamic history, Muslim life, a great message of that and worthy of research by students from college and other levels below high school.
Anyway, what I want to say is this, that G-d says in our Holy book and he began, and every thing, every living thing from water, every living thing, it says, from water. So here we have a parable of human life given in the plant and water is symbolic of faith. Symbolic of more than that, symbolic of your first spirituality. But it's symbolic also of faith or the psyche, the human psyche, or a mind that is not in our charge. The psyche is our mind, but is not in our charge. Well, that's too much to talk about. That's enough to say about the psyche.
So anyway, like the seed has to first receive moisture, water. And I said, water wants balance. Water wants to be at peace, wants to be on the level. And it structures itself downward, and then upward. It goes down to get a good hold on the earth that it is in. So you see, that's a logic, isn't it? Can't you see that's intelligent. That's a logic. That's intelligent. It's intelligent to anchor something that you're going to structure high up in the air. It's intelligent and intelligence and logic to anchor it deep enough to support the height you're going to put on it.
And G-d created that logic. So G-d says he has made us like a plant, to first be grounded in faith and then swell and burst into life. And send, our anchors down deep enough to hold the height we want to ascend, and branch out in a consistent way so that we don't put too much weight on one side. Do you love this? I do, because it causes us to think, and it takes us from the faulty thinking of just random living. And G-d does not want for us random life, or random living. G-d wants for us a good life, a life of good sense. Praise is due to G-d, Allahu Akbar.
Now I was watching on C-SPAN a recording of Urban Leagues Conference they had, national conference, on the state of Black America or the state of African America, African America. And they were beaming in on the status of... (silence)


