04/17/1991
IWDM Study Library
Little Rock, Ak

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Speaker 1:
This is the public broadcast of Imam W. D. Mohammed, a Muslim American spokesman for Human salvation. Today's lecture by Imam Mohammed was recorded in Little Rock, Arkansas, on April 17th, 1994.
Speaker 2:
And we witness that Muhammad is the last prophet, the prophet to whom the Qur'an was revealed. We pray prayers and peace upon the last prophet and what follows of that traditional salute to him, Imams, and all of you who have supported the occasion here today. We are very happy to join you here in Little Rock for this very, very important interest. Education is the focus for Muslim religion and Muslim society. For a few minutes, I want to talk about the role of education in Islam, but first, let me say that education has been listed as a top priority for my association of Muslims and workers in the cause. From the very first day I came into office with the support of youth throughout this nation, and that commitment stays forever, not only for me but for this community as leaders and those youngsters who are growing up now to take our places in the leadership.
That commitment is forever because Al-Islam establishes that for us, education is our top priority. For us, religious knowledge and religious progress can't happen for us without education and progress towards education to become a Muslim. Just in the ordinary sense, the idea of what a Muslim is, we are to study as an obligation. T,o be educated, to study is on all of us. And not just formal education, also informal education. I don't have that much formal education, but I have quite a bit of informal education. Thank G-d for the situation that I was put in as your leader. I've been educated over the last almost 20 years now of my leadership in this community. Everywhere I go, the experiences that I enjoy, the people I meet, many of them, very learned people, the discussions I have with them, the conferences I attend in this country and outside this country, the associations and exchanges that I have with people who are responsible for the educational system of a whole country.
So that kind of interaction that I'm blessed to have because of being your leader has really been a great education for me. You'd be surprised, sometimes I have conversations with scholars and even American educators, and they call me doctor, and I have to tell 'em, and say no, doctor. I smile and laugh sometimes, no doctor. The extent of my education is high school and about three hours at the Loop Junior College in Chicago. I did take an English one-on-one course and managed to get through it with a fair grade. So I told 'em that's the extent of my formal education. And they have very seriously on occasion, told me, no, you are a doctor. And on a few occasions, they told me that we are going to see that you get a degree. In fact, I'm being offered an honorary degree right now. Just recently, I've been offered an honorary degree. So I don't know whether it's coming or not. I don't encourage it. I like to earn what I get.
Education is very important. It's our top priority, and it will be that for as long as we are Muslims and serving ourselves and serving the community. So that includes, then, support for our schools, the efforts that are being made in Little Rock and throughout the nation, even outside of the nation. In Bermuda, we have a community and a couple of other places. We have a community wherever the schools are. And we feel good about places like Bermuda. It was the contributions that you all made to me when I came into the leadership that enabled us to buy that property in Bermuda. They have it, and they're still maintaining it, and that's very good. It is a very nice piece of property. They have a mosque and a school. They can accommodate children on the premises. The only regret is that we haven't had enough educated persons to support them down there, but I think that's going to change.
Now, perhaps you read in the Muslim Journal of the big meeting down there in Bermuda, and we had many imams go down there. So Insha Allah, G-d willing, that's going to change soon. We are going to have more people assisting them with the school. The desire is to have a very good school in Bermuda, on that island, and also in Oakland, California. We purchased a building in Oakland. The cost was reasonable. That's why we purchased those buildings. The Catholics were trying to adjust their financial situation and were not able to maintain certain properties. They were selling properties in Oakland, California. I was told about it, and it looked good. So we bought the building. There, they have a mosque and a facility for a school, similar to the facility in Bermuda. And I'm proud to say that with the good leadership of Imams there in Oakland, they have been able to maintain that property. With the support of a strong secretary, a strong sister who has been there even before the purchase of this facility, she has really helped us protect that property and keep that property. With Imam Shuaibe there, we don't worry about the property anymore. He's a strong and able leader.
So we do have something to feel good about when we think about property. I know the public knows about the loss of property. The Muslims lost everything. Property is not everything. The property that G-d gives us, that's everything. Yes. I want to speak a little bit about the role of education in Al-Islam. Societies may look at their security in many ways. When we think of the security of American society, we have to look at many things. We first look at our idea of American society, how this society is supposed to be established, and how it's supposed to be understood. It is supposed to be a democratic society that respects the role of the individual in society, et cetera. You know all that. So I don't want to spend a lot of time on that. But when we look at our religion of Al-Islam, and we say, what is our security in society? First of all, respect for G-d and sincerity in religion, respect for G-d and sincerity in religion.
But next to that is promotion of education, the promotion of good, sound education, that's next. And whether we talk about what we call orthodox Islam, Islam in international society, or Islam, American style, or Islam Black American style, education has always been right in the forefront. As a child and student of my parents, and especially of my father, who was our leader for a long time, I was always aware that Islam was respect for knowledge, that Islam was respect for education, that Islam was support for education for our schools, and that Islam was really school. That's what we were taught. We were all called students, no matter what our age was. And that's not in any way foreign to real Islam or Al-Islam. Al-Islam is the Qur'anic term used in the Qur'an. So you'll be hearing me say Al-Islam. And by the way, since I have been saying that in English, there is now a Qur'an in Arabic and English, and you won't see Islam in the translation, you'll see Al-Islam in the translation.
Yes. It's more correct to say Al-Islam. Al-Islam is more correct. Islam means surrender, peaceful surrender to G-d. Al-Islam means the peaceful surrender to G-d. Yes. So, to identify all of us in the religion, and my Islam, is my own idea and understanding of Islam. You could use Islam like that, but it means my personal Islam. If I say islami, it means in Arabic it means my understanding of Islam. Islam that I live personally. But when I say Al-Islam, I'm talking about religion proper for everybody; how all of us are to see it and understand it. Then, the reference for it is not you or me. The reference is the Qur'an, the holy book. So that's the difference. Yes. So anyway, for us in our religion, we are to see Islam as education, not just religion. Al-Islam is a religion, and it is education. We are to see education in the formal sense and also in the informal sense. We are to see education as the security for our society. Education is the security for our society that protects the interests of a Muslim society. Those who are rightly educated in Islam, those are the people we look to protect our society for us. We hope that they will be saintly people, that they will be the best in morals. But even when they're not, sometimes we find better people, better in morals, who are not blessed with that knowledge.
But, if the people blessed with an exemplary moral life don't have the education, they still can't serve us. They can't protect the community, no matter how well-meaning they are, no matter how good they are in their hearts and how morally conscious they are. If they don't have that knowledge, then they can't protect the community for us. They can only secure the community for us until the real protectors come, and the real protectors will be those people who are gifted and blessed by G-d to have knowledge, and know how to use it for the benefit of the society, especially for the benefit of the Muslim community, our Muslim society. So, we say that education then is the herald of progress for Muslim society, the herald of progress. What do we mean by herald? Herald means the force that goes out in front, the main force that goes out in front.
So, really, an educated Muslim should understand that the main battle, jihad, is the real battle, the real war, which is for us, the war with knowledge. That's the real battle, not the physical battle. We hope that we can avoid physical conflict, the physical clashing of people with each other. That's something that we don't want. That doesn't always advance society. In fact, most of the time it sets us back. What we really see as the tools of jihad are the tools of correct knowledge.
Speaker 1:
We will return to today's lecture after these important messages. Imam W. Deen Mohammed will be making appearances throughout the country. Believers wishing to support his mission of propagation and community assistance are asked to send their contribution made Payable to the Ministry of W Deen Mohammed, and mail to Post Office Box 1961, Calumet City, Illinois, 60409. W.Deen Mohammed and Guests is the name of a new hour of informative television with an Islamic focus on the important issues facing society. It is now being syndicated. For information on how to get it in your area called 1-708-862-7733. All right, WDM publication, Post Office Box 1944, Calumet City, Illinois, 60409, and now back to today's program.
Speaker 2:
When we read in scripture about the swords, G-d put in scripture, the sword and the bloodshed. Believe me, I'm not going to. I'm not orthodox when it comes to teaching. I'm an unorthodox teacher.
That's in Western language and in Eastern language. I'm an unorthodox teacher, and I carry that burden on me, and I don't mind. I'll answer to G-d for my deviating from what they say is the law for the teacher. Yes. So I'll tell you plainly, when you read of sword slashing and blood spilling, understand that it has two, mainly two meanings. The first meaning is what we all know, that people will confront each other physically. The other meaning is that we confront each other with the sword of truth. And in English, there is the revelatory spelling. S-W-O-R-D. Just take that secret S off, and you have word. And the word that we battle with is the word of G-d. No word is more powerful than the word that educates us, that enlightens us, and makes possible a very progressive society.
Now, this brings me to the unity of knowledge. I'm going to speak for a little bit on the unity of knowledge. We have a concept in Al-Islam called Tauheed. It comes from a word which means "one" Tauheed, the root word is one. Wahid means one. Ahad means "one alone". Only one. Tauheed means oneness, a consistent pure oneness. Tauheed, this idea that we have in our religion, begins with the belief that G-d is one and that His creation is one. No two creations. His creation is one. By that, we mean that the nature of creation is one nature. There's an overriding universal nature extending throughout the whole body of creation. And that nature is one. The law is one. The law may differ for things separate in creation, but there is a law that unites or combines everything. And that law is one for everything in creation.
And we are not saying anything contrary to beliefs in science. In science, we are told that this creation for as far as we can look at it with microscope telescopes, et cetera, or imagine with theories, the extent of it for as far as we can go, science believes now and has believed for a long time that it is one systemic unit, one systemic whole, that there's a universal system of nature and law that extends throughout this whole universe. So don't be worried too much. If we get some creatures visiting us from outer space. We'll be able to at least understand them because the law and nature are the same throughout the universe. And it might be a baffle for us for a while, but we'll figure it out. We have the tools to do that because the law and nature are universal. Now, since for us, knowledge has a unity, we won't find some knowledge here that will have no connection with some knowledge somewhere else, whether it's in living things or inanimate things, dead things.
So we believe that knowledge is one. So we believe that we could study our environment in this town and come into universal understanding of the application of knowledge, how to apply knowledge. And when we come into the universal application, then we can have an exchange with people of knowledge in any part of this world, and we won't be talking any foreign language. The language will be one. So with that, we can say that the language of knowledge is also one. The universal language of knowledge is one. If physics in America is physics in China, and physics in Saudi Arabia, then these sciences are the same everywhere, in every place. Just as we can find a unity or harmony for branches of knowledge we call science, we can find unity in harmony for our human language. And that is wonderful, no matter what we believe. We can believe in Christianity, or Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism, but if we get by our narrowness in our own religion, we can find the universal language of religion. Then, men of different religions can sit down and respect each other, appreciate each other, and work for the good of the whole of humanity.
Now, that's something recent on this earth, but it's coming. It's really progressing too. It makes me feel very good that Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and all others are meeting together now to help support the good efforts of all people to have a better life on this earth. Now, for the unity of knowledge and for those who study the Qur'an, G-d says that He has extended for everything, that it extends to cover everything. Two factors and two principles. Alim, science or knowledge in the Arabic language. Alim means both knowledge and science. Knowledge or science and Rahman, Mercy. Mercy. And I think that's very, very revelatory. G-d has given to the intellectual in our religion a respect for knowledge and mercy. Put those two together because men of knowledge, of great knowledge, they're able to punish society more than stupid men.
Men of great knowledge are able to manipulate even the behavioral nature of human beings in society. So, if the educators, the learned people, get this caution from G-d, that with knowledge also comes mercy, compassion for the weak, compassion for those who are not informed as you are. This is very important, and I would advise our educators, our teachers, our principals of our schools to keep that always in focus. With knowledge comes compassion, and how you use your knowledge, not proudly and not selfishly. Compassionately use your knowledge in a very humane way, so that we don't punish or oppress those who are lesser in knowledge than we are.
I think I've already mentioned the role of knowledge in society or the role of knowledge for progress. So I won't spend any time on that. I think we can readily see the evidence that education has promoted progress or been the factor for progress more than anything else. It's easy to forget that about education when we look at all these things that industry makes. Industry is supported by scientists, and scientists are educated people. They don't have an industry without education in science. Now, philosophy is my last point that I want to make today. I believe that it's time for us, principals and educators in the Clara Muhammad school system, to work for a uniform statement of philosophy of education. What should be our philosophy of education? In a word or two, I can explain to you the main concern that we have, and what we all can begin working on right away. The main concern that we have is that our education, first of all, be universal. It's not racist, it's universal. It's not necessarily black or white. It's universal. You see, it is not necessarily eastern or western. It is universal.
The Qur'an says that the olive is the blessed tree, the olive and its oil. This oil has light, and the light has its purity. And it is a tree, neither eastern nor western. It is universal. The tree of knowledge, the universal tree of knowledge. It is not Eastern. It is not Western. It is universal. And also G-d says of the Sun, it is rising in the East, and setting in the West, says He is the Lord, not us. G-d is the Lord of the two points of the rising of the sun in the east and the two points of the setting of the sun in the west. Praise be to Allah..
Now, if we can start off with a statement of respect for creation itself, for the natural order of creation that G-d made, and from that position, we arrive at another statement saying that our system of education should stress natural science along with other sciences, and that our system of education should promote a strong respect and appreciation for the natural environment because nothing we have of knowledge came from any place other than the natural created environment. Man is able to invent many things because he studies and gets that out of the natural environment that G-d made. Whatever we have learned to improve human health, we have studied human nature and got that information.
Everything comes out of the body that G-d created, and isn't that wonderful, how the sun is no more than the same matter that the earth is. The sun is a burning matter, an illuminated matter, and G-d has made it so it appears to really rise up out of the earth. In the eastern horizon. Primitive man thought the sun was really rising up out of the earth. If water was before him, he thought it was rising up out of the water. If land was all he could see in his vision, in his focus, he thought it was rising up out of the earth. So he thought it was a G-d or something at first. But now we know it doesn't really rise up out of the earth. It is millions of miles away from us. And Earth is just making a spin in circles, making circles. It appears that the sun is also doing that because of what's happening in this vast space, we call the solar system, not the universe.
The universe is much vaster and much bigger. It's a wonderful sign to us that a ball of matter that's ignited gives light to us so that we can have daylight and can see things, and study things, and have science. Before we had the light bulb, we had science, but we couldn't have had it if there had been nothing but darkness. You can't get science in the dark. You need daylight. Yes. So I think it's a wonderful sign for us. I would connect that sign with what I just said, that every bit of knowledge we have that we can really stand upon, it came out of this created world.
Speaker 1:
Tune in next week to the public broadcast of Imam W. Deen Mohammed, a Muslim American, spokesman for human salvation. For the Muslim journal Contact your local distributor. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2:
G-d has made you that way, and nothing will please you until you have fulfilled what G-d wants of you. And you can't get rid of your nature. It's there. You can close the ears to it. You can become deaf to it, but it's still there. It's going to register on you in some other way. Sometimes it registers on you in the form of nothing but a whip, and it whips you all the time, trying to get you to wake up. That's the nature G-d created for us. Now, I know some of us don't like to hear that the best position we have for dignity is really as a servant, but that's true. The best position we have for coming into real dignity is the position of a servant.
The people who have advanced our world, our societies, the most have been people who said they were servants. But look how high they were on the plane of servants. They were servants of the Lord, the Creator, the one who made everything. They were G-d's servants in our religion called Al-Islam. Commonly in this country, it is called Islam; however, as written in the Qur'an, it is Al-Islam. Al-Islam is our religion, the religion of Muslims. This religion tells us that we are the servants of the Lord Creator who created the skies and the earth and everything. That's what this religion tells us. Now, to me, that's enough. When I was a young man in my early teens, when I learned that from the Qur'an, from our Holy Book, I said to myself, no one can make me their slave. That's what I said to myself. I said, no one can make me their slave. No power, no idea. No ideology can make me that it's slave or their slave. I say, because now I know I'm the slave of the Lord, creator of the heavens and the earth.
That's what our religion tells us. Slave is the kind of ugly word, but G-d chose to take that ugly word and give it a new meaning. The same word that was used when the revelation came, the last revelation of the Qur'an. The Qur'an came to the people we know now as Arabs. In that part of the world, when revelation came, they were using 'ab' for slave. When they wanted to say, my slave, they said Abadi. If they wanted to say my slaves, they said in the plural. G-d came and said, we are the slaves of G-d. G-d comes to the people; some have slaves, and some are the slaves of others. G-d speaks through the man, the prophet. saying to the people, all of them, oh my slaves. Now, the man who has a slave, the man who hears this, looks right at his slave, and he wants to tell his slave, he's not talking to you, but the slave eventually understands it too. And he looks at the master.
The slave has a master, but now this is much bigger than just this one. So the prophet or the lecturer, he says, we are the slaves of G-d. And this slave, looking up to his slave master, says, when are you going to get the message? So in time, slavery was ended. That wasn't the only thing, but I believe that was the strongest influence in society for freeing slaves. I know there were other influences. The prophet himself, he led the freeing of slaves, and his family members also paid ransom to free slaves, not just 1, but on 2 occasions. I think one lady, may G-d be pleased with her, of the family of the prophet, freed about 60 slaves at one time with her money. She paid the money and freed the slaves. So slavery was done away with. That's the same understanding that we need now to finish freeing us from slavery, but not just slavery to the white man anymore, because the white man has gone, but he left us with his whiskey. He's gone, but he left us with his gambling. That's right. And with the other things that bring people down, if they give themselves to those things. So now we need to continue this freeing of ourselves, but we need to look at these things, not the white man, but these things that we are going after. No one is coming after us. We are going after them. We are driving 10 miles to a shopping plaza to get some liquor.
Speaker 1:
Driving to 10 miles, to a show tonight that's going to just remove all the consciousness that we had out of us. It's going to take it out. We're going to forget. We go to church, we're going to forget. We go to the mosque. We're going to forget all of that at the party, at the show. So that's another slave master we need to overcome. And if we could do the same thing that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad had his national secretary do for the members of the temples, our Nation of Islam, at that time, we would come up with the same conclusion, that the majority of our money is going into self-destruction. Most of the African-American money, most of their money, goes to self-destruction.
Speaker 2:
They spend most of their money on what they call the good times. The good times in America. That's what a good time is. The good times. Break up homes, the good times, make a man leave his wife or cheat on his wife. The good times take the money that we need to put into an account for the education of our children in the future. The good time is money that we need to make improvements on our apartment, or improvements on our home, or get a better vehicle. But the good times are taking all that money. The good times are not always seen at a party or at the liquor store. You are shopping for the liquor or for the drugs. The good times are not always seen on your person. Here's a man who has nothing to account for himself, his wife, his children, and nobody. But he's wearing gold just hanging all off of him. He's glittering. He's shining. You can almost see him in the dark. And his cap costs what my suit costs. Okay, that's the good times - wasting our earnings, wasting our resources. Still, they're telling us that money-wise, we are rich.
But as a community, we are poor. We are a dependent community. One of the most dependent communities in the United States of America is the African-American community. But don't think we are the only ones who are dependent. Now, there are other communities in America also dependent. We think of white people, and we think they're doing so great. Yes, because they are still in the leadership. But some white communities are worse off now than many or most African-American communities, or black communities. This thing has just spilled over into everybody's soul, and it's taken everybody down. This should be a time when we should be seen stepping forward into the leadership. That's right. Why do I say that? Because we are the first people to be put in a situation like that. We are the first people to have our lives critical because we can't live a life that pleases our sense of our own humanity.
We were the first in slavery. We were the ones as slaves. We were the ones needing freedom. Freedom to select better what we put into ourselves. Freedom to have movement where we could go after the things that we thought would make us feel comfortable with ourselves, have a home, and have, most of all, the education that will bring us a sense of pride. It wasn't so much material things for the slaves. They weren't looking at material things so much. They were looking at human values. They were looking at humanity. They were looking at human dignity.
Their freedom was a special kind of freedom. It wasn't an ordinary freedom. It wasn't freedom just to get away from the things that were bothering me immediately. Right now. It might be a mosquito. I might want to get away from this mosquito or get this mosquito away from me. It was a thing that stays with us and lingers on us a long time, because we don't have enough education. We don't have enough educated leaders to guide our community life, to address our community life, to question our community life, and to raise our community life to higher levels. Yes, those were the things that we needed. And those things are not gotten immediately. They're distant needs that most of us don't even register now, only the more alert-minded. G-d created us with one nature. Every one of us has humanity in us. It might be sleeping, it might be corrupt, it might be dead, but it does not really die. Our humanity never really dies like a plant that seems to die in the winter. But when the right environmental conditions come, the plant comes back to life. And that's how our humanity is. It appears dead, but it never really dies. All it needs is the right circumstances to come back. And that humanity will blossom again, will sprout up and blossom again, and produce. Our humanity is what we have in common. That's precious for all of us. That's most precious for all of us. It's neither male nor female. It's one.
It's neither black nor white nor yellow. It's one. Our humanity is the same for all of us, one humanity. And this humanity has a great capacity. Its capacity is never satisfied until we please G-d. It presses us to do better. It presses us to do more. Our humanity presses us to do more and to do better. And it'll never be satisfied in the core of our being or in our souls until we please G-d. Not our notion, idea, our perception of G-d, the real perception of G-d. And that's why man has had to grow in his understanding of G-d to get the benefit for his humanity that we are enjoying now.
Speaker 1:
Next week, tune in to the public broadcast of Imam W. Deen Mohammed, a Muslim American, spokesman for human salvation. For the Muslim Journal, contact your local distributor. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 2:
From the earth and the concrete surroundings, man was not able to make the great progress that was made until after he perceived G-d in the right way. When he perceived G-d in the right way, then G-d began to grow him in every aspect, for his human nature, for his humanity, for his human community. In every aspect, he began to come alive and grow and grow and grow. Why do communities serve G-d? I asked the question at the end of the answer, why do communities serve G-d? And now I want to ask, why do persons, individuals like me and you? Well, I won't say like me. Now, I used to be no leader. I used to work for Campbell Soup.
And that was before our chicken market, our poultry market, on Stony Island on the south side, when it was owned and operated by a Jew. That neighborhood back then was mostly Jews. And I worked in the chicken market and also took a bicycle and delivered chickens and turkeys or whatever for the holiday day to the Jews in that neighborhood. I want to think of myself as a person back then, not after I became a leader important to you. Why did I want to serve G-d? Because my human capacity is too big for anything but G-d to satisfy. But we don't know this. We don't know this until Revelation comes from the prophets and tells us and guides us into this understanding. But I'm giving you the facts. What I'm giving you here is more accurate than the facts of science. More accurate than the facts of science.
Yes, I'm giving you a fact. The fact is that my human capacity is bigger than anything. Anything around me. The people. All the people. My human capacity is too big for them. They can't satisfy my human capacity. In the Christian scriptures, Solomon, the prophet Solomon, was trying to imagine what kind of structure he should build to house G-d. And G-d tells King Solomon, Suleiman, in Arabic, in the Qur'an, our holy Book, G-d tells him that heaven, the skies, and earth are too small to house Him. Think about that.
Well, we know that Solomon still had to build a house. He had to build a temple. So Solomon said, I know this edifice cannot house you, cannot hold you. Nevertheless, he built it to G-d's glory, to G-d's name. He built the house. This is scripture. This is Christian scripture. Now, I think Muslims, we follow that belief. I don't think we got it from that scripture, but we follow the same belief. The mosque for all of us, for all of us on this earth, that one mosque in the vicinity, we call the sacred precincts, that mosque has no roof over it. And we get out there under the sky, and we pray. Yes. So I think I answered why communities serve G-d.
Why don't we just be common? Nobody wants to serve G-d for the same reason. Our capacity is too big to be taken care of by any person or group of people. Only our Lord, who created our humanity, can take care of it. So we have to find guidance. Find the best guidance. For us, the best guidance is the Holy Book, the revelation we call the Qur'an, the last revelation. Find the Quran. Go into it. Your soul needs it. Your mind needs it. Your brain needs it for your social needs. Go to it for your political needs. Go to it for your economic and financial needs. What? Yes, that capacity is big. It wants all the things that man has gone after. The capacity is big. It's not the things we go after that are wrong or sinful. It's the attitude and the use we make of those things that's wrong and sinful. I don't know a thing that's hurting us that can't help us. Alcohol that's hurting us can help us. Drugs that are hurting us can help us. Women who are hurting us can help us. Just cut down the number that you are interested in, and select better. Maybe go down and select better. Maybe your trouble is that you have women who are too good for you. Don't punish them. They'll punish you later.


1


