2002 October 5
University of Wisconsin
Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Speaker 1:
The following lecture is the sole property of Imam WD Mohammed and cannot be sold or reproduced without written consent or permission of Imam WD Mohammed. Anyone not compliant will be apprehended and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This is the national public broadcast of Imam WD Mohammed, American Society of Muslims leader. The following lecture was recorded October the fifth, the year 2002 at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The lecturer is Imam WD Mohammed.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Thank you. Thank you. We thank G-d we praise G-d. We say we praise and thanks to G-d, the Lord the cherisher, of all the worlds. We witness that He's one, and we witness that Muhammad to whom the Qur'an was revealed over 14 centuries ago, 1400 years ago, is His servant and His Messenger and a mercy, as G-d says in our Holy book, A mercy to all the worlds. The way that Islam promotes healthy citizenship is very easy to address and it only takes very few words really. It takes a very few words, but I will give it a little time. I'll give the topic a little, some of my time tonight and some of your time thank you. We know that what makes the society the city, a town bad for us is the people that are bad.
Without bad people, towns are good. So the simple answer is that Islam promotes healthy citizenship by promoting healthy minded and healthy people. Healthy minded, healthy people. And in Christianity, I read in the Bible "As a man thinks in his heart so is he." But it didn't say think in his head, it said think in his heart. Connected the heart with the thinking,with the thinking. And this is what Islam wants for us too, is that we reflect on things. When I was a kid, they told me in school, they told me I had to learn a lot of things by heart. One thing the school did for us, it really had us learn a lot by memory. They said learn it by heart. And I think that expression means make it very, very special.
Make it very, very special. Give it your concern. Give your concerns to it, value it, care about it. And I was talking with someone here very recently and they just kept forgetting things that we were trying to remember. And I said, the reason why you can't remember it is because you don't care enough about it. If you care enough about it, you will remember it. Learn it by heart. It has to be in your heart too, not just in your mind. When your heart and your mind are working together, then you can get the best benefit from your brain, from your mind, from your mind. But if your heart and mind is not working together, then you won't get the best benefit from your brain. This is how Islam promotes healthy citizenship. It wants us to reflect and reflect means do more than just think about it twice.
It means think about what it's worth to you. Think about what you want it for. Think about what you're going to do with it. Think with the heart involved. We have a saying in Qur'an, I tend to be a bit philosophical. Once I was told this and made me angry because I wasn't thinking about any philosophy. I was just trying to get my points across and a scholar of great reputation from Egypt originally. But he's well known in the Emirates. His name is Dr. Izadin Ibrahim. And he said to me after I finished, he said, "Yes, your statements are more philosophy than religion."
And it angered me because I thought it was just common sense. I tend to think in pictures and speak through pictures, et cetera. And there is the saying in the Qur'an, Holy Book of the Muslims. it's for all people, just like the Bible is for all people. It says "By the fig and the olive and Mount Sinai, and this town made safe, secure, and this town secured or this town made safe. Surely We have created the human in the best of mold, in the best of molds. Surely we have created the human in the best of molds." You know there was a time when there was no public schools. Public schools came late in the history of nations where you to send your children to school. If you don't, you are subject to be put in jail, locked up, taken to court and locked up for not permitting your children to get an education.
So education is enforced for the society. And I believe the reference that I just gave you from our Holy book, it has in it the importance of education, importance of education. And it is addressing the stages in the mind, the intellect, the stages for the mind, how the mind develops. And the first is given in a picture like I used to like to talk. I used to preach and they called me Minister Wallace. Young man. I wasn't a leader then. I was just a preacher for my father. And theywould say, "Brother, you paint beautiful pictures." And I liked it but didn't register too much on my mind then. But when I look back now I see that I need a picture to start talking. I need a picture.
So anyway, I see the fig and you think about fig. Qur'an doesn't say anything about, doesn't give any commentary on the fig. It leaves the commentary for the scholars. It leaves the commentary for the thinkers. The thinkers. And you think about the fig. The fig is bigger than the olive. And the fig has many seeds, many seeds. Whereas the olive has one seed, just one. So it went from a product or fruit that's easy to chew, you don't have to worry about a fig. Even if it's dry, you don't have to worry about it. If you bite a olive and don't have a little caution, you're going to break your dentals. Even a young person might hurt their teeth. If you bite down on that stone, it's a stone in there. It's hard. It's not like the fig. You can chew through the fig. So the olive has only one seed, but you must be careful eating it. You can't rush and eat it like you do the fig. And the fig has many seeds. It's just a burst of seeds. Boom, filled up, whole fig filled up with seeds. And think about the expression "That's a figment of your imagination."
And the olive. The olive, the olive is in the Bible and it's also in the Qur'an. And the Qur'an deals with the fig first. The fig is kind of put down in the Bible, it's put down. But here's the Qur'an picking the fig back up. And it says "By the fig, by the olive, by Mount Sinai." Mount Sinai is the mountain on which G-d, Moses went on the mountain and G-d spoke to him on the mountain, and G-d gave revelation on the mountain. On the mountain, Mount Sinai. So Mount Sinai is referring to ascending up, going higher up to G-d and getting communication from G-d and then coming back down. So the third is the mountain Mount Sinai. And the fourth is the town. Says, "And this town made safe." So how do you make the town safe? You make the town safe by respecting all the people. All of us have imagination.
All of us don't have olives, but all of us have imagination. We all can think and we have vivid imaginations most of us. So respect the common mind. I think the fig is symbolic of the common mind, it's a metaphor representing the common mind. Respect the common mind. Then respect those who are looking for a single thought or a single interest. Their focus, their focused on one thing. And that's the educated people, the people who become educated, they focus on one thing and they stay focused on that until it becomes illuminated, like the oil. You strike a match and poof, fire. So they focus on one thing so long until it illuminates for them and then they get the insight, they get the knowledge and they pass it on. So these are stages. And the town made safe. It includes the town because we have to develop in the town. You can go up on the mountain and you can get all that good knowledge and good insight.But if you don't come down and live with people, you'll never know how to use it. So where do we learn how to communicate with one another? By living with one another. We live with one another. We learn how to communicate with one another. We live with one another, we know how to apply it. We know how to apply our knowledge. It takes this interaction, this social interaction to show us how to apply knowledge and where to put it and how to use it. If we never had a chance to socialize or have this social interaction, we would never truly become educated. To have light and not put it to use is no education.
And I'm sure when Moses came down from the mountain, he had a great light, but he had to come down and look at his people's circumstances and then see how was he to use that light that G-d gave him on the mountain, to see how to apply it. And he wasn't selfish. This Moses, same Moses in Qur'an for both of us. He wasn't a selfish man saying I'm going to do this by myself. First thing he did was look around and see what resources he had. He said, okay, you doctors, you get together, you lawyers, you get together, you farmers here, you get together, you musicians, you get together. He start organizing people according to their skills, abilities, et cetera. And then he gave them what G-d gave him from the mountain and he charged all of them with responsibility to use it and apply it and make their life conform to it. Now we can't do all that. That's too much for us. We are not Moses.
But what we can do is respect everybody, have respect for everybody. Islam begins with the promotion of good character and good character is respect for everything that deserves respect. A person of good character respects your property. You give him, you say, okay, here's my keys, you can borrow, you can use my car to go to the store and pick up some groceries. You don't have a car. A good man, a person of good character will not abuse that trust. He'll treat the car just like it is his, even better. If he's a person that maybe doesn't care too much about Rolls Royce, it could have been a wagon, it would've been suitable for him, but you trusted him with a Rolls Royce. So he's going to give that the respect that a Rolls Royce deserved, not the respect that a wagon deserved. And a wagon would've been enough for him. A man of good character.
So you have to be of good character to have healthy citizenship. And lastly, I want to say to you the reason why we don't have many people having this kind of serious thought about the great interest that we are trusted with when we are trusted with responsibility for citizenship, it is because we don't have the perception of the country or the city that both religions Judaism included, gives us First of all, everything that we have was not ours to begin with. We came into the world owning nothing. The first people that came to this area, there was no Milwaukee here, there was no Wisconsin when the first people came here, they didn't make this land, they found land. They found land that could support their life. So the gift is from G-d originally. That's what we have to remember firstly, the gift is from G-d originally. And under G-d, you are responsible for how you treat everything. You may dislike the government at times, and you may want to say, "Oh, I don't have any citizenship. My citizenship is not worth the plugged nickel." You might feel like that. Remember that everything is temporary except G-d.
Bad circumstances are temporary and G-d is not going to excuse you for your responsibility. You're going to have to answer to G-d one day. He's not going to excuse you from any responsibility that you should have. Don't look at the land just as government land and private property. Look at it as land that G-d gave man. G-d gave man this land. And look at it as your possession. G-d gave it to all of us. So this land we call Milwaukee, it was given to all of us originally. It was the right of all of us to it. Nobody had established their right to exclude anybody else. In the beginning it was the right of all of ours. In some primitive tribes in society, they respect that. The lived with each other but they don't put any claim on land, on rivers, and if you use a boat, you can't even claim the boat.
Some primitive tribes, they won't even let you claim the boat. The boat is for traveling the river. And since the river doesn't belong to anyone especially, the boat cannot belong to anybody in particular. The boat has to be for anyone who wants to get on the boat. If no one is riding the boat and it's there beside the water, anybody can jump in that boat, it don't belong to nobody. So these are people who are still in touch with the first perception of these goods, these things. And the first perception is that we didn't do it, we didn't provide it. It was here when we got here. See? So we should respect the original owner. You should say, this is my city and mean it. Milwaukee is my city and you should mean that from your heart. Like I said, don't let the thinking separate itself from the heart.
You should think and think about it and have that also in your heart. This is my city. G-d did not give this land to one person. It's for human beings. And my government has made a beautiful city here and this is my city. Claim it. But also under the constitution of these United States, there's one nation under G-d and it speaks of a creator. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Back to the common person, right? That all men are created equal and endowed by certain inalienable rights that you can't take away. Among these life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It is saying that not even the government can take a right from a person. The right to life was not given by the government, cannot be taken away by the government.
Life, liberty, G-d created us to be free. The government didn't give us that and the government shouldn't take it away. G-d gave us the intelligence and the feet and the hand, the legs to go get things that we need to pursue happiness, to acquire wealth. Government shouldn't take that away from us. So our government is saying too that we have rights that the government didn't give to us. And the rights began with the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. So don't say anymore that this school that I attend, this is their school. I don't care if it's your private school or if it's the biggest school in the state of Wisconsin. Don't ever go to school and say this is their school. No matter how bad you feel or how bad someone is treating you there. Don't you let them take you out of your rights.
You need to be situated to be successful. And if your psyche is not positive, you'll not be able to perform as well. To have a positive psyche, you have to be positive. And be positive when it's right to be positive. And you have a right to say Milwaukee is my town. This school I'm going to is my school. This is my school. What it means? The wall is mine. The carpet is mine, the lights are mine. Then treat it like it's yours, respect it. Pick up the paper when you see trash on the floor. Don't wait for the janitor. You don't see the janitor pick it up. I do that. I do it out there in the streets, in the public streets. You might say there go a nut. Well, I'm a healthy nut, and I'm a healthy citizen. So this is a way to have healthy citizenship. You have to think the way G-d wants us to think and you have to have to know that great governments have respected the way G-d wants us to think. And then don't look at anything as the other persons, be also looking at it as your own. And that's even their life. Their life belong to them, but it also belong to mankind, to humanity. If their life is in bad shape, that's your business too if they will let you help 'em out. Thank you. Asalaam Alaikum.
Speaker 4:
The first question Brother Imam is have you always wanted to be an Imam?
Imam WD Mohammed:
No. I don't know if I want to be one now. No, I've never wanted to be Imam. Imam simply means leader for the congregation. Leader for the congregation. The most important day for the Imam is Friday, our day of congregation. Sunday is the day of congregation for the church and the synagogue have theirs Friday evening, Saturday. And we have ours Friday, Friday at noon, midday. At midday, Immediately after noon. And that's the most important day for the Imam. He leads the people by giving them first a short sermon or address, kutbah we call it. Speech, it actually means speech. And followed by two sections of prayer in congregation, everybody praying following the imam as he go forward with the movements in prayer, as most of you know that are here. Few may not have ever observed the Muslims at prayer in congregation. And I have never really wanted to be that, no. But I have just wanted to do what I could to see people in a better condition. I've always wanted to do that. I've always wanted to, and most of us have that desire. I've always wanted to do whatever I can do to help people get in a better condition. And especially those people who have lost, whose condition have been so bad for so long, for generations, and they have lost hope, lost spirit, lost enthusiasm to really face their difficulties or their problems and believe that they are going to succeed. Those are the people that I have wanted to serve the most and I enjoy that. That's what I enjoy. I'm not Imam to be an Imam, I'm an Imam to help people have better conditions in their lives. And that's why we should be Imams, to see people have better conditions in their lives or for themselves in life. So that question is finished.
Yes sir. Brother Imam this question says this week a group of children in Milwaukee beat a man to death. All but the 10-year-old boy were adjudicated as adults. How can we address this type of behavior and what is the responsibility of our judicial system?
New Speaker:
Oh, that's just a lot of questions. When I was a child, that would've been very shocking news because when I was a child, we expected children to respect all adults. That's what we expected. If we didn't see that it angered even a young boy to see another boy or girl disrespecting their parent or an adult. So it was a different time we lived in. This time is quite different. What we should first want to know is why would children feel that they can kill a man? Why would they feel they can do that? What makes them get the mind, the nerve, the courage, the shamelessness to do that. They have no shame. They have no fear. Something terrible has happened in their environment. And what we have to see is that the whole world has become a dangerous place for raising children. Very dangerous place for raising children. We are raising children in environments where their little young minds are receiving impressions from horrible things that's going on. Some of us will have Pay for View cable, tv, Pay for View, and we'll go out, leave the children, little children in the house and you don't know what they watching on that television while you are out of the house. And you don't know what's going into their minds, what's shaping their thinking, what's shaping their minds.
Then we have in the news all the time, violence, reports of violence, horrible violence. All of this is hurting the young minds. Then we have abusers sometime right in the house killing their sensitivities, making them not care whether they hurt or kill or not. So we should first think of, reflect on our own society that's not safe for our children. And we should try to do something about it. We should work with those who are working to get pornography off the cable television, off of Pay for View. Work with those who are trying to make our environment healthier for our young people and for our decent families. Safe to save our decent families and to keep young people from being exposed to these horrible things. But also we should be with those who are saying that violence breed violence, the news of violence will trigger violence in a poor person that's miserable and want to hurt somebody.
They say misery loves company. There are people who are so miserable, they want to make somebody else miserable, not just find a miserable person to be friends with, but they want to hurt somebody to have relief, to get some relief. They want to hurt somebody, they don't know anything else to do. That situation won't permit them to say, "Oh, I have to fight this and I have to resist this and this is bad and though I'm suffering and everything I shouldn't take it out on anybody else." It's very difficult when you're suffering and nobody's giving you attention. And many places where these children are, they get no attention, they get no healthy attention, they get no sympathy. They're treated like they're just nothing but beasts or something and that makes 'em worse. That makes 'em worse, not better. So we first should say children wouldn't behave this way if the world had not gone to the extremes to which it has gone and become so violent itself. So violent itself. The world is violent, the news is filled with violence. The movies are filled with violence. There's violence everywhere. So it's breeding violence. So let's not say that these horrible boys, these horrible boys, no, this horrible environment,
Speaker 4:
Prophet Muhammad went to the mountain of light for contemplation, meditation. What is our mountain to relieve all of this stress?
Imam WD Mohammed:
Well, he went to the mountain not just to relieve stress. I think he went up there mainly to do what Moses did, to see better. The higher you go, the more you can see, the bigger the field is that you're looking at. When you're low, you don't see much. You go up high, you can see a lot. So I think he went up there to see more. The same reason roses went up there, he wanted to see more. He didn't go up just to relieve stress. But going up there and G-d spoke to him, I'm sure if he had any stress it all was gone once G-d spoke to him.
But what can we do to relieve stress? Oh, a lot. I don't know what kind of stress you got. I love psychology too. I don't know what's that kind of stress you got, but if you want to hit somebody, come to my house. Well, I can't. I might live too far from you, you're two hours away. But if you could punch my big bag, I got a big bag. Big big bag, big punching bag. If you could work out there with me, I'll show you how, I'll get you started. And if you keep up with me, I guarantee you after 40 minutes you won't have any more stress. There are many ways to relieve stress. In the yoga exercise, just relax, try to relax, relax. Take a few deep breaths, count to 10 backwards, 10, 9, 8, and get to one. Try two or three times. Get rid of stress that way too. Just see how long you can blow your breath out too. That helps. I don't want to keep you here that long. I can blow mine off for about three minutes, maybe more. There are a lot of ways to relieve stress. Another way to relieve stress holler, just scream. Scream loud as you can until you make your throat sore until you get hoarse, just scream. (Imam starts screaming) I feel good. Many other ways. You don't have time. Many ways to relieve stress.
Speaker 4:
What advice would you give to teachers of today who are struggling with educating a society who actually do not feel that teachers are a very important resource for the society?
Imam WD Mohammed:
I want you to know that there are a lot of us around here that do know you're a valuable resource and we give you respect, we give you the proper respect. But there are many who don't and too many don't. But let me say this. We cannot do very much good by working with individuals one-on-one and when the world is so messed up as it is. We can't do that much good even by addressing big audiences. And this is small audience and everybody here is healthy practically. So what good are we doing? The good is done when we go out from here and each one of us try to do the best we can to change this world and make it better, make it healthier, make it more sane, et cetera. When all of us take on this responsibility, then we can do a lot.
But also we need to build institutions and keep these institutions safe and let us get into the competition. The public schools, yes, we know what's going on. And it's not all innocent on the part of teachers, we know that the quality of practically everything has gone down. The quality of teachers have gone down, quality of teachers have gone down. You have very few quality teachers around now. So let us build fine institutions privately like we have Clara Muhammad School. Let us give it all we got and let us make our private institutions models for the rest of the society and let us help those good government institutions stay good by giving them our moral support and any other support we can give them. We just have to all chip in and work hard. That's the only answer.
Speaker 4:
I think maybe there's really too many questions here. So we are going to maybe give this one question and then depending on how long Imam answers, then we might give another one, but we don't want to tire him out. Okay. It says, how can women become better communicators and form community ties with other believers?
New Speaker:
Better communicators? I don't know. I think you become better communicators when you form ties with others. That's how to become better communicators. I always say if you really want to make a contribution yourself, find a person or persons of like mind, that feels just the way you do, that share your concern and want to do exactly what you want to do. Find that person or persons and work with others. And then once you have a good effort going and you know some other people in the city having similar good efforts, then get acquainted with them also and keep making connections. That's what it's all about. Keep making good connections and before you know it, the whole world will be a better world. If we all do this, the whole world can become a better world soon. It gets ruined like that, good connections deteriorate. They break and you lose attachment, you're no longer attached. For family, for mommy and daddy. Long as they are healthily bonded, they're doing well, the children do well. Something happens and that bond is broken or seriously hurt. So it begins with the breaking of connections, the loss of good connection. So the way to make it right again, every time we see an opportunity to make a good connection, make a good connection, let us keep making good connections. Connect all the way up to President Bush and as far out as China, just keep making good connections.
Speaker 4:
And the final question Brother Imam. How do you suggest a group, more specifically a Muslim group, begin to involve their local community in healthy citizenship in these times since 9/11?
Imam WD Mohammed:
I think 9/11 we know it was a terrible blow to us. It was a terrible blow that hurt the country hurt us in many ways, but it also can help us be better, be better than we were before. When you run into trouble, if you learn from the trouble, you can be better at what you're doing than you were before. So let us learn from what happened and try to be better than we were before. I would say that we should just support our community, support the school you're in, support your school and know that without these things we would be much worse off. We are strong people because we have strong institutions, government, schools, all of our fine institutions. We should become more aware of them as progress for us. They represent the progress of society, the progress of civilization. We should think back into time and history sometime, just reflect. You can do it within a second. Just think. Man didn't always have schools. Citizens didn't always have these schools. We didn't always have fire department, we didn't always have police department. We didn't have these things, but we have progressed.
We have needed these things and good people have supported these things and that's why we have them. See, if we don't remember, we forget and we just see these things separate from time. We see them separate out of the growth line of the people and their environment. We see them out of that. When you see them out of that, they lose their importance. So we have to keep everything connected and we have to appreciate what we have as progress, then we can work better, we can think better, we can work better. We have more energy to work with. If you don't keep things together, you just lose the connections and your energy is dissipated and you can't go forward with your life. I'd rather talk to you like that than answer the question. Thank you.
Speaker 3:
Yes sir.
Speaker 4:
We thank Imam Mohammed so much. Okay brother, go ahead.
Speaker 5:
Yes. Could you speak louder?
Question (Unintelligible)
Speaker 4:
He's going to comment on that, but I will say he did respond to that question already, but he'll comment. Yes sir. Okay. Yes sir.
Speaker 5:
I just wanted,
Speaker 4:
Yes sir. Okay. Okay.
Imam WD Mohammed:
I can respond to that.
Speaker 4:
Alright. He has it brother, thank you.
Imam WD Mohammed:
We appreciate, we appreciate your question. We appreciate your question. We appreciate the way you asked it. Thank you. Yes, yes. Thank you. Yes. I've already answered the question, but I will add this. We are Muslims and Christians mostly here. We hear of the devil, Satan, the devil, and I think we don't know that it is not fantasy. It's not make believe. The devil is here. The devil is on earth, the devil is among us. The devil is still influencing the world and our life against us. Just as he did the first parent of ours. He came and he influenced their thinking so he would hurt the way they see truth so they would get in trouble. And that's still going on. The bigger the world gets, the bigger the job for the devil gets.
Okay? The bigger his work is, the bigger his work is. I remember the dance called the breakdown, the first time I saw it. And I said to myself, I was angered by the dance because I didn't just see a dance and children doing something. I saw the works of the devil. Here is a dance called the breakdown. You think children called it the breakdown. You think they named that the breakdown? No, they didn't name it the breakdown. Somebody, some devil suggested to them the name breakdown. The dance is called the breakdown. And what they do, they turn themselves upside down and they spin on their heads. They spin on their heads.
The expression, he had that little guy spinning on his head, meaning that he had him completely out of control. He had him completely out of control, and he was completely in control of the person that was spinning on their head. That's what it means, the expression means that I got him completely out of control and I'm the one controlling him. That's Satan. That's Satan. Now what are you doing when you're spinning on your head? You are showing no respect for your head. The head is the highest point in your body. It represents your height, your progress. You have progress and the progress is represented in within your thinking, what you have learned, et cetera. Now you are using it for a spinning top, spinning on your head, calling it the breakdown. I'm not here to make humor, I'm not here to make jokes.
I'm very serious. This thing was inspired by the devil, the Satan himself, the breakdown dance. And it happened a good while ago. He's telling us, Satan is telling us, I'm going to have your whole society. I'm going to have your whole society spinning on it's head and breaking down, not building up, breaking down. So how should we look at that horrible thing that those boys did? Look at it in this light, it's inspired by Satan. He has made the environment speak these things to the minds of our youngsters, and we have to fight Satan. How do we fight Satan? We fight his works. In our Qur'an G-d says, fight the schemes of Satan for his schemes are weak. If you use your good heart and your good human intelligence, you'll be able to see what he's doing. Now let's fight what he's doing. Let's defeat Satan. Get him out of our lives. The Bible say rebuke him and he'll run from you. He's not invincible. He can be whipped.


