03/22/1997
IWDM Study Library
1997-03-22 Production Of Publishing

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

Imam W. Deen Mohammed:. Praise and thanks to G-d, the Lord, Sustainer of the world. We witness that He's one. We witness that He is one and has no G-d with Him. We witness that Muhammad is His servant and His messenger. Prayers and peace be upon him, and what follows of that traditional salute or salutation.

We’re happy to see so many of you here and we pray Allah bless all of us to be productive and to get rewards, and Allah rewards us as He will, for our good efforts. Before addressing the interest itself and that is the production of publications, I want to read from Quran something here from the Chapter called, the bee. 
This is from the section of this chapter that really introduces the topic or the title of this Chapter, the bee. I'm reading ahead of that and then we’ll come to that part of this chapter, Sura, that addresses the bee. 

 Down to you the book, that is, reveal to you the book, except to make it clear for them who were differing therein and as guidance and as a mercy to a people who have faith and G-d sent down . And G-d sent down from the skies, water or rain that is, thereafter giving life to earth that was dead. After death, giving life to the earth after its death.
. Surely, in this or in that is a sign for people who heed, who listen, who heed.  And surely there is for you and the animals an instruction. . And you are fed from it substance  that come  from their stomach issuing from between the blood upon me and between their issues, blood and milk. For the drinkers, satisfying the drinkers those who would drink. , the drinkers.

There is the milk is given and the blood flowing in the same body and in the same vicinity but the blood is not contaminating the milk. The milk is kept clean and pure for the drinkers.  And from the product or the fruit of the palm trees and the grapes that we get. Of them we get the sweet, delicious provisions and beautiful handsome products. . Surely, in this is instruction or signs for people who have good sense.
 Here are instructions or signs instructions, for people who heed, who listen, and then again here are instructions or sign for a people who have good sense, who use their good brains, who have good sense.

 In it are benefits for the people. Now, from the -- first of all, we go back to the beginning. G-d inspired the bee. G-d inspires the bee to take places for their homes in the mountains and in the trees and in the open areas then eat of every fruit and make your paths for your Lord. Now this word here is like shadows and the bees have been scientifically observed that bees use shadows also that their own shadows to steer themselves, to guide themselves where they want to go they know how to go and get to the place for direction.

Help for direction for directing them to the place they have to go out from or return from. There are issue from their stomachs, a drink of different colors and it is a healthy benefit for the people. Like curative benefits, medicinal benefits for the people. Surely in this is instruction sign or signs for people who will reflect.
People, who reflect think back on it, think it over, look at it again, think on it, dwell on it. This is the meaning of . Now again, we said these are instruction signs for people who will heed, who will pay attention who heed. Then this is signs for a people who use their good senses, then the instructions or signs for people who will think it over, ponder it, dwell on it, reflect.

Here we have three graduations, don’t we? Three graduations for the attention of the mind. Three graduations. One is just to get the attention and the next one is to use your good brain, your good intelligence, use your good intelligence your good senses and the last one that I read, for us to go into another refrainment now. It’s open to another refrainment. It is within the one mood going into a different mood.
The third one is that you consider it over and over again, you think on it, you dwell on it over and over again. Do we do this? This is what we should do we should give the thing of importance or significance of use to us give it first your attention. Don’t have your mind going here and there and everywhere while you’re attending a matter. You have to concentrate your attention, concentrate your mind, focus your mind on what you’re interested in and don’t let your mind wander about.

While you’re here your mind shouldn’t be going outside this area here on other things and on different people and on different things. Some people have difficulty just putting their mind on the interest and keeping it there. If you don’t do that you can’t have the next step and you certainly won’t get to the third step.
You come, then put your mind on what you came for, keep your mind on what you came for and then use your best senses. Don’t use the worst that you got in that brain, use the best you got in your brain and don’t be satisfied with one look at a thing look it over many times. Look at it many times, the first time you look at it maybe you’ll get so much, second you time you look at it maybe you’ll get more third time even more tenth time much more.

You have to reflect on a thing and search it more than once or just reflect on it more than once, many times. This is what makes minds productive, this particular part that we talk with you in here is talking about production, are you aware of that? Is talking about production, the trees and the fruits themselves are production, aren’t they?
The animals are products. All these are products and all of these things multiply they produce, they reproduce. This is life we’re talking about. They reproduce so we actually talking about production and here is a little bit in insect, it’s a producer.
It’s about production, it’s created by G-d to have the special senses, to know the route the roads to different trees and flowers and everything and to come right back there, go back home and come right back directly to those places the same way it went there it comes back the same way. Doesn’t wander like a blind person. It goes as though it has vision and not only that, a roadmap.

It goes that’s the way it moves and that’s the way it operates according to what G-d is telling us here and what science has told us. To verify that 14 centuries later almost 14 centuries later science came, comes and verifies what Allah has revealed of the bee and look what G-d is telling us, here you have the blood of the animal and the milk flowing in the same animal and we get from that animal milk but that animal got blood.
We’re not supposed to eat blood especially blood flowing forth.  It’s “haram” forbidden but they are flowing together and the milk is acceptable is “halal”. Not affected because G-d has designed that animal, where there are passageways for the blood and the passageways, don’t permit any disobedience to the passage or the plan for travel. No disobedience to the plan for travel, the blood travels and then the milk travels so therefore because they each have discipline routes that they can’t violate we get the milk pure.
Now that’s a sign of the world, of society. In this world, the life of this world is just like that. You have certain life flows, the life flows flowing right along with another life flow and it may be necessary that you have it like that, yes.

We have our social life, don’t we? Like the blood, we have our social life and we have our moral life and they both support the body, right? The social life and the moral life both support the body and the social life can corrupt the moral life but G-d has designed the animal where the blood doesn’t touch the milk, yes you see.
Then G-d want us to see that variety is a spice of life, yes, I’ve made these things in different colors and the product of the bee having different colors, different taste even. They have arrived at taste too, they’re variety but the essence is the same. Same essence but variety and these little creatures, little bees, they go to the flowers. You might say what does that have to do with what we’re going to have today? It must have a lot to do with it. I wouldn’t be spending time. These little bees, they go to the flowers and they get the palette of the flower, the dust. They get the dust of the flower that has really the germinating power in it, the dust.

The germinating power is in the palette, the dust. They go and collect that and they make a drink. They making a nice drink for themselves. They're going to enjoy. That’s their staple food and their delicacies both. It's the staple food and the delicacy for the bee.
He's taking it back to enjoy, he and his family or she is, to her family whoever is taking it. They're taking it back to enjoy it but when they were getting something for their own enjoyment, they were helping that life be more productive.  now you need to do that reflection, right?

They went out there to get some food for themselves. They went out there for their own interests but they wouldn't serve their own interests. G-d designed them so they don't serve their own interest without also contributing to the betterment of that life that they took something from. They also increase the production of that life that they took something from. Now, can we be that way? If we can, we'll be great people. 

Imam W. Deen Mohammed:  G-d out spoke the truth. That's a wonderful chapter, the chapter of the bee. It had a lot to do with what we are about to do now. This chapter has as its main focus the cultural life,the cultural life. The essence represents the pure form of a thing too. The essence usually represents the pure form of a thing, its essence.
The honey is said to be good for health according to the chapter, it's said to be good for the health. These bees are producing something that's good for the health. Taste good, is tasting sweet, nice. Everybody likes honey on the bun, honey bun, whatever you know. Honey drink, I do. I know I like honey drinks and honey in certain dishes, I love it. Honey in milk always tastes good. It tasted good when I was four years old, it tastes good now.
Honey in milk, delicious but it's also healthy. The big importance here is not to tell you that the honey itself that you buy from the store is healthy, the big importance is to say if you work in the cultural life to improve the cultural life be sure that you produce something that's healthy. The bee gives us something that’s healthy but the bee also carries a poison that it fights with.
It gives you health but it if you make it angry or you attack it or come to it’s hive and mess with it then it will give you some poison, not help. We don't want to be that like. That that's a sign of the world. That they give you something in your culture but when you don't please them they poison you. We don't want to be like that.
G-d didn't mention anything about that sting. It's not acceptable that we carry a stinger.

That's right G-d didn't mention a stinger. We want to plan the production of publication. We’ve never done it. I've never done it. I've always wanted to do it for many years. I've been taking notes, making notes and wanted to write books but I haven't sat down to do it. I sat down and wrote portions but never a book.
This is time to do this now. To produce publications. We want publications that are quality publications. Publications that will qualify to go in libraries, best books bookstores, publications that publishers will want. Even the publishers will be wanting our publication, that's what we want. We can produce them. We’ve never tried before. We can produce them.

We have some pretty good efforts. In fact, the journal produced a couple of good books for us for myself, the Muslim Journal, but it can be done even better than that. We can do much better than that. Some books will be just the
quick effort and won’t require a lot of research or anything. Those books will be very simple.
Books like that I'm seeing them as books that we will have just to promote our interests. In other words, we won't be looking for a price or money gaining on those things. We will sell them for cost or maybe almost below cost just to get those publications out but there'll be other publications that we would do.

We hope that researchers, students who are in school who want to research things, they'll find those books attractive and we hope they'll be available in their college libraries and whatever and some of those books we hope will have great appeal so much appeal that NBC or ABC, some hosts or some person that’s hosting a show or something will learn about it or get it in their hand and say, “Look we have to have someone come on and discuss this book with us. We would like to interview such a person on this on the material that's in this book.”
We talk about quality books. We want quality books. We want to form not one team but more than one team. All of us the teams will be in one team that will be the book production team but we’ll have more than one team.

One team will take maybe one area to work with. A literary area, subject area. Another team will take another area. We want the same teams to also have the same area the same assignment because many times two writers writing on the same subject, when you bring the two pieces together and take from them the best you end up with a masterpiece whereas just looking at them individually maybe you don't have anything that exciting.
We want we want competition I think everything we should do we should everything we do we should make room for competitions because competition improves production and also improves quality yes competition. That's what we’re looking for too.
We're looking for persons who have first of all the interest and the desire. If you have the interest the desire you . The interest and the desire to do research and see as very successful. We’re undertaking a project here or work or assignment. Well, a challenge really to produce publications. We want persons who are excited about this who find this exciting or who have strong desire in their hearts and their spirits to see it's very successful.

Those are the people we want and we want those who love to do research who love to go to the library and do research material for us We do not want to just say what we say. That’s not impressive, that doesn’t impress the world. Although you may say the golden thing. Everything you say may be golden, pure gold but you didn't recognize anybody else as silver not to mention the brass.

Or their gold. They’ve got gold too. That’s not going to go too far and I don’t like to do it. If you’ve been listening to me for a few months, you’ve heard me mention people before me. The honorable Elijah Muhammad, Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington. You’ve heard me mention these people and others. Drew Ali. You’ve heard me mention them. Marcus Garvey. You heard me mention these people.
We can’t pretend we came into the world by ourselves. We came into the world with others and others preceded us. They’re even ahead of us. They went before us. If we give respect, recognition to others, we’ll go much further and it’ll be much better for us. The piece of work is much better and much more enjoyable when you see others giving support to it. You just doing it is not the same. There’s nothing new under the sun, one philosopher said.

Participant: Solomon.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Solomon. There’s nothing new under the sun. Peace be upon Solomon. Believe me, you may come up and say it differently but somebody else said it.  You do not have anything really new.

Allah gave Muhammed the Quran and said, "And this is no newly fabricated work." This is not a newly put together work but it’s a reproduction and improvement upon what was before, right? Yes, that’s what it is. That’s the Quran. . It’s a reproduction and an improvement and a completion and an improvement on that went before.  That’s the best literary work we have in the whole universe. I shouldn’t claim more than that.

 Now, I know everybody needs money. All of us are poor and I’m going to offer you money. Only when we make money [silence] it becomes profitable. I assure you, those that contributed will get benefit but I can’t say when it’s coming. We don’t know. Let us give it our best effort and money will come. I assure you. I’m living in debt because  right now, I’ve got people who can take over everything I’ve got. Right now. If I died, would nothing be hurt. Just missing me, that's all but the account will still be in the hands of people. You don’t have to go to the bank and the bank say, “Well now we have to hold this account until.” No, you don’t  

I’ve got people who sign on there just like I do independently. Just like I signed on independently. That’s the way I live. I live respecting reality. Go  and die -- right now, at this instant. I can be dead. Why mess up things and be selfish and hold things so that nobody else can handle them. No, you have to be trying to find somebody all the time to handle everything so that if you die, the work is not interrupted, the business can be done and the enemies won’t come in and take advantage.
That's what happens.  like that the enemies comes in to take advantage. Make you through court to get released. That breaks you. That makes you spend your money and this how they break you.

We’ve got enemies still. We're making a lot of good friends but we still got enemies. So much for the cost. We want to do it without cost. As much as we can -- even if you’re able to pay for some papers, have some Xerox copies made out of your pocket. Do that. I do it. That's my charity. I pay a lot out of my pocket. It is my charity. Sometimes, if it’s too much, I tell the brother to go. I say "Okay, here’s one. I’ve got to give you. Give my money."

I can’t pay it anymore. I am going to hurt  pay my bills. I can only give so much  and that’s true to all of us. Some of us can’t give any. If you can’t give any and that’s legit, okay, good, that’s no problem. We want to look at participants also from outside. Other ethnic groups.
I have some associates, friends of mine that have asked to help this community. They have faith in this community. Really faith. There is many of them but I have some who’ve really asked to help. I brought some materials from one right now. I got in this package right here and then there is a non-Muslim who was contacted, he’s a writer. He used to write for one of the well-known publications. I think he used to work for one of the well-known networks too.

This person has sent me his resume and has offered his services. We might use him especially for ACLA Magazine. The name for ACLA Magazine -- ACLA Magazine is one of the items we have on the table today for this meeting. ACLA magazine is not nearly where we want it to go. It’s just a little sample of what we want. We want the content to be much forward, much more varied that they are now and we want writers. Not just one writer. Not just somebody, compiling materials. We want writers.
I thought of going to Al Azhar  University and get a writer. I still may do that. Get a writer from Al Azhar  University to write on Muhammad, the Universal Prophet or something like that. Peace be upon him. Give them something to write on from a person at Al Azhar  University. I thought of even getting president Yasser Arafat of the Palestinians to write an article in ACLA.

We want to extend the title to, and you should write this down in the minutes because I'm not taking minutes the recorder is but I would like for you to write it down in your notes. We want to extend the title to read Ocula colon dot over dot Muslim eye on the world.
Yes. Muslin eye on the world and we will mostly be bringing news from around the Muslim world from  globe for Muslims from Muslim communities of the world. This is what we want for ACLA. We want to have opposing opinions in ACLA. We want to give Jews, Israelis, Zionists the opportunity to right in ACLA.
We would like to have one of our good Christian friends who live in upper the regions to give us an article. I think we have one. We have a good one in mind. Christians to write, also in ACLA and we won't interfere with what they say. We’ll say that this is the real established policy, like it is established in the Muslim journal. We establish a policy for this publication.

The policy allows for people to have their opposing opinions put in the magazine, but we don't take any responsibility for what they say, that's all, that clears up. But give us a chance and the world a chance to hear from the other side, too, not just from our side. This is what will make the book value -- pardon me, qualify the book to be on the market as a classical piece of material, that's what we want.

We want a very classical piece of material. We want to be quality in every respect, quality in appearance, and quality in its content to . Yes, so much for that. Now we have a writer, we have some writers, we have a writer, a brother who went to--, in fact, he went to a college for writing. I've been in conversation with him. He's among us, a young brother, with a lot of future ahead of him, a lot of years ahead of him. Inshallah, he'll be working with us on the-- author magazine, too, to improve the content.
Anyone think they have that ability, if you have a professional training, then let us know, that's what you should do before you leave here. Any of you with professional training in any field or area that will contribute, or will be required by this work project, we've taken up to produce publications, then let us know before leaving. Make sure that I have your name and how to contact you before we leave. We’ve put in the time limit of two hours on it, but we may finish before two hours.

We've got a time limit of two hours on this meeting, first meetings for producing publications offered by us. Yes the Imam has done the job here for us already, so if you fill this out -- yes, good, I remember him asking me, Imam asking me some questions and I gave him some answers, so you already got it done,  thank you. We stopped at the participants, we don’t include participants from other ethnic people or groups, and also those writers with opposing views or opinions, and writers of another religion of different religion, Jews and Christian, Inshalllah, both.

Now, let's see-- before going to the actual -- identifying some product, so we want identify some products before we leave here. Before doing that, I want to share with you some information on two -- first, yes, the ministry of W.Deen Mohammed website, all of you have the information?
Participant: Yes, sir.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Well you who have time and enjoy that, please watch that website for me, because I don't have time to do it, and when you see something troubling on there, let us know right away.

Participant: Yes sir.

Imam W. Deen Mohammed: We have here as correspondence from the two brothers, Greg Marrow and Earl Mathias. Greg Marrow is the brother that was really initiate--, really made -- that brought us to be on the website, very fine young man, and the other brother works with him, and so they're appreciated, very much. He just showing me here, he put together something for me to see, it's very good, too, he's putting quite a bit together here. There is a sister, she's not with us today, but I have really -- I told her that she's in charge of my publications now -- pardon me, public relations.
She does such a wonderful job. I have her as my main or chief public relation secretary now, on person. Her name is Sister Ijlal Yemini, Ijlal Yemini. I-J-L-A-L, Y-E-M-I-N-I. I think, Yemini, I’m not sure but it might be. Y-A-M-I-N-I. Yes, I think so Yamini. She has a spirit and just a love for putting materials together, and making it look good, making it look very good. You got that desire in you that makes your work good, got to have the desire.
For a long time, I've had an association with Pakistani Muslims, and some of them have been what we call Sunni Muslims, but most of them have been Ahmadi Muslims. They were really close friends of mine, and we were close friends, and some of us still close friends, but with -- you can be, you have a close friend, but you just-- something happen and you’re still close friend, you still love each other, you still care about each other, but something has happened and you just can't freely mix it anymore.

Participant: Yes.

Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Well, that's what has happened. I have changed this community around, and now we can't freely mix anymore, but the same love is there, the same love same friendship is there. Some of them are Ahmadis, but they're not what I call real serious Ahmadis when it comes to having differences with what the majority of Muslims believe in the world. They are not that kind of -- they’re not Ahmadis of that make.
They’re Ahmadis who have changed more than they realize that they have changed, and they just carry a name, mostly their name and a history, an association that they can't give up, but really their minds and their hearts have really changed from what Ahmadis are thought to believe in, or what they are. I love them, and some of them will tell me, I don't identify with the belief of the rule of Ahmed, may G-d forgive him for his errors, who was the founder of the Ahmadis.

He was from Lahore, the area of Lahore Pakistani is near that area, from a place called Qadian. Really the hardcore believers are those who believe in extremist, say the extremist of them, they’re called Qadianis after that village, Qadian, they're called Qadianis. This person, material that I have right here now, he's an old man, is a professional man, the editor of encyclopedia, and he's done a lot of literary work.
He's known by the leaders in the field of literature. He, like a few others of them, they see me as a very special person. They think myself to be a very special person in Islam. And this man say all of his life, he'd wanted to do nothing but contribute to this group. Our group. We met together, I met him, I had known him before, I met him before, but I met him for the purpose of discussing what we could do together, or how could I help him, them, and him, and how could he help us.

So he come up with -- we had a discussion and we came up with some topics. One is the Qur’anic Dictionary. He has done a lot of work on dictionaries, encyclopedias, things like that. So they came up with Qur’anic word dictionary, dictionary of Qur’anic words. That's one of them. That's one of the projects that we made, worked together on. And what I'm reading to you now is the result of our meeting and discussion, okay? So I'll just read it to save time.

Publishers, this is only a proposal now, this is not final. Publishers W. Deen Mohammed Publications and New Foundation International, that's where he's associated. And by Abdul Mannan Omar, editor, encycl-- I had  encyclopedia of Islam, published under the auspices of Imam W. Deen Mohammed. This is called Dictionary: Qur’anic Words (Arabic roots, English meaning). Let's see, that's the one, I think. I'm saving time by not --you don't need to go through all these. I'll just read it briefly to bring to your attention.
And after that I have one other person I mentioned from the outside. Although there will be others, but just one more right now, and then we'll get back to our agenda here today. This is part of the agenda, though, this is not outside of it. I included this photo. Then kindly go through and identify certain papers and save time, we don't have to go through too many papers. So just have patience with me--, it's a little long. Oh here, I think I got them all out already.

Okay. Another work that we discussed and he's proposing, Muhammad, The Ideal Prophet. Or, the title can be The Ideal Call. C-A-L-L. Again, publishers W. Mohammed Publications and New Foundation International, authors, these should be co-authors, W. Deen Mohammed, W. Deen Mohammed, Muslims American Spokesman for Human Salvation, you put all of that in there, and-- and Abdul Mannan Omar, editor encyclopedia of Islam.
Another one, Blessings of Prayer and Qur’anic Prayers, Blessings of Prayer, Blessings of Prayer and Qur’anic Prayer, and he got the publishers again saying that's for the others, and published under the auspices of Imam W. Deen Mohammed. I don't think we have do this one. This is what I don't think we'll do. Not together. I want to do review on the . Yes. Let's do that. All right. So that is it. That's it.

Here's another one that was added after he had put those other things together. This is suggestions and options, this is how he had this listed, and he's suggesting that we co-publish and co-author his books which were discussed, all these was discussed when we had the meeting. The publisher, will be two publishers, authors will be Imam W. Deen Mohammed and Abdul Mannan Omar. Two publishers, two authors. And all of them will read published under the auspices of W. Deen Mohammed. That should tell you something. That should tell you something.
So here's a man with no credits at all from any form of institution. From any form of institution. Well, here are people with more than one doctor's degree needing my good name  as their credential . Thank Allah. Oh yes, so this -- we couldn't be doing something like this, so I don't know if we agreed to this either. The Rise of Islam in United States, when we get to our project here, you're going to see me get something as we're going to be doing something.

So I don't think we're going to do that with him. Now, you got your notepads, if you have any serious comments, don't waste my time. I respect your time, please respect mine. Don't waste my time. If you got any serious comments, then make your comment and get that to me, too, before I leave, on anything that I'm proposing here or sharing with you.
I think-- I don't want to miss any here, I think that covered all, I believed that covered all of them. So he agrees even to have-- his name not even mentioned. He says, with or without mentioning any of the author's name. So he's saying that, "If I don't want to be a co-author, I can omit my name," or, if I don't want his name to be mentioned in a work that I will be associated with, we could omit his name, so he's making it very easy for us.
But I'll tell you right now, I won't accept that. His name would have to be mentioned, and my name has been. I'm responsible for my part and he's responsible for his part. And I'm responsible for associating with him, he's responsible for associating with me.  All right. So much for that. I'm so busy, I do so many things at one time. As for you, get back to me  .
No need to mail on this, but I'm going through them now. Got stuck right in there where I wouldn't forget. Now we have some problems but really I'm not to disturb by. One brother, years ago, , some of the brothers got on him. So, he came to me and he said,  are these brothers talking about breaking my leg. And all I’m doing is trying to get your word out." Now he’s bootlegging tapes. 
I knew him, I knew the brother, I knew him. He’d been around a long time, I knew him. He’s a good brother, he’s just trying to make a few pennies for himself, and he really loves the work, too, he loves the work. I said, “You scared him enough, just leave him alone.” They stopped bothering him, I'm sure he’s still selling tapes. What I asked him to do, I said, "If your tape is not a quality tape, it doesn’t sound good like the ones you hear in the broadcast, let us know, so we can give you a good tape. Just don’t sell bad tape."
We ought to respect rights of each other. You all find somebody doing that you should put some pressure on them, don’t break their legs, though. Let them know them that’s not legal, they aren’t supposed to do that, that’s against the law. Let’s tell them we’ll expose them, we’ll put their picture and name in the paper, in the journal, and expose them. We can’t have that, we can’t have people doing that. Something may be going on bad quality or something, and then it’s not right.

I stand by principal even if it hurts my pocket. I stand by principal, what’s right. You have to stand on what’s right, and sometimes it hurts you to stand on what’s right because it's against the person you would like to do a favor to. But you can’t do no favor, this is established procedure, these are the rules, these are the procedures, this is what I have to follow and that’s it.
We have to know when we have to stand, even against the person that we want to do a favor for, upon principle, upon what is proper procedure. You have to live by that, that’s all. You have to live by that, because if you don’t, we'd be in trouble. Now, I want to give you some name of some product, books, a topic, that you'll like to work on. First, I’m going to give you a category. The first category is the Islamic belief and practices.
Muslims beliefs and practices. You know there’re plenty books out, everybody got books out, right? It doesn’t mean anything, everybody got suits, too, but there will be a new manufacturer, maybe while we’re talking, there's a new manufacturer, going to be manufacturing some more suits under his name, another name. We, this community, we need to produce our books.

We need to establish a name, our own name for being able to produce our own books, our own literature. We need to do all these books that will come under that heading, Muslim beliefs and practices. Those are the simple books that we find everywhere on the articles of faith, and the pillars of Islam. The pillars.
We don’t want just do these books to just assist someone who wants to know how to do their prayer, or how many pillars there are, pillars of Islam, five  . We don’t want to do just for that reason. We want to do it to introduce the idea and the obligations. We're going to understand that better as we go, because when we leave here, we all want-- going to start doing something. All those who want to work, and I’m going, too, I’m going to start doing something.

So the next time we meet, I’m going to have something on prayer. I’m going to have something. What I will have will help you understand what we are looking for. What you will have, perhaps, will help all of us decide what’s going to go into the publication. We don’t want a big thick book for this first category, we don’t want thick books, we want small books. You want small books ranging from 20 pages to about 50 pages maximum.
We don’t want a lot of pages, 20 to 50 pages maximum, okay? So much for that category. I will say we’re still in the same category that’s not the end, I’m sorry, we are not finishing with that category. We also want to write on personality of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, which will come in the same group of books publication, and the companions, but mainly on the Prophet Muhammad himself. Companions, we’re going to be brief, very brief, but on the prophet, we’re going extent it, we’re going to discuss his personality very extensively.

The Muslim world is geography, we don’t want to put together gazette--, so you can get all the facts on a country. What we want to put together is a look at the Muslims of the world, something like that, we can change titles, a look at the Muslims of the world. It'll be maps showing where they all located, a map showing what kind of resources they have, and their culture, just a quick look at them. Like what Life magazine used to do, some time ago, it’s not the Life magazine it used to be, but Life magazine used to do that.
National Geographic does it very well. It would be something similar to that. We can use National Geographic’s materials, some of those materials. We use them, they have excellent materials. We’ll be producing now, this ain’t just compiling. We ain't all be just compiling, we going to be writing. We going to have something to say about it. Let me see. I don’t want to leave-- and eventually this a long range.

Eventually, we want to start on – but I think we ought to complete, at least, the whole category, and leave it as the last, translation and commentary on Quran. Quran translation and commentary. We don’t wait till we finish it, we do it exactly the way Maududi and some others have done it May G-d be pleased with Maududi  .
He did so many sections and he made those available, he died before completed the work. Maybe others behind, his students, his disciples will complete the work for him, I don’t know. Also, a critique of the Hadith  Not to knock them out, just stand some of them up and put some of them down based upon a principle.

Participant: That's right.

Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Based upon a principle.

Participant: That's right.


Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Okay, I think that completes that category now. Now, here's a work here that we have to do, and that is write our own history. Not our history as Muslim. I thought of that first. We should write the history of the African people. Not the Afro-American people, the African people. Go to Africa and start there. With the earliest information on African civilization. And write on it and bring it up to the present time. The big focus is going to be on Islam, entering America. Under the cover of darkness. How do like say change the language  a little bit but we'll keep the meaning

Audience: Right.

Imam W. Deen Mohammed: We might change the wording, but we'll keep the meaning. Okay. And that's where our main focus would be. We got to do it ourselves. And then we should have a vision into the future. We should, the concluding chapter, should be our projection. What we forecast, what we predict, for America. What will be the America of year 3000.Yes, we should have vision. Based upon what we know. We can have a vision. And we'll be influencing, the course of history. Yes, that's how they do it. They write the facts and then they predict.
We are going to do the same thing. And we are not going to have any stinger. No poison in the rear. Now, let me make a few comments on this history we to write. To give you some feel for it. First of all, there have been good writers. There have been some very good writers. So we want to do research, good research. JA Rogers.
They look at him as a crack or something, but JA Rogers did some very good research and came up with some very good information. So, we don't want to ignore even JA Rogers. Let's look at what he did. We might want to include something from JA Rogers. I'm just giving you a feel for what we wanted to do now. Yes, even storytellers like Esau. You might not see that as history or education, or fact, but it is.

It is. Even Esau, we don't want to miss people like that. I don't want to miss them. Because that's a good contribution to civilization. So, we want to begin with Africa, and go quickly through the history of civilization on the continent of Africa. Up until the time of the first slave ships that come into America. When we come to the slave ships coming to America, that's where we are going to do more elaboration, more concentration, more extensive work. We want to extend it, extend it, extend it.
To show better, what happened. Nobody believe me. Nobody understands better than we do what has happened to us. Nobody. I stand on the world, I stand on top of the world,  now tell the world, that nobody understands better what has happened to black folks. The African, and the African-American people, and the African people of the world. Nobody understands it better than we do. That's why we fascinate all of them. Yes, and all of them are listening to some of us. If it ain't the honorable Elijah Muhammad, it's Malcolm, Farrakhan, Naim Akbar

 Yes, these are the people that they listen into. And the secret is all of them, listen to Imam W. Deen Mohammed.  All of them. A thousand years from now, they won't, they're going to record their teacher was W. Deen Mohammed. Because I  know how they was talking before W. Deen Muhammad. You are talking quite differently; you got a new voice now.
Well, this is a long while. When we get to the slave history, we are going to spend more time. And I personally want to handle, the issue of psychology. And the experiences of the slaves and the free slaves. When we write this book, we're going to be--, it's going to be expose. Exposition, and it's going to be analytical or interpretation. Me, I thought going to write it, we go to have something to say about it. Why it happen like that. We want to give our opinion of how, why these things happen.

Not just to say it happened, but let's give some reasons for it. Correct. So, that's the analytical work, right?  Yes. So we want to do an analytical work, too, as well as reporting. Just reporting facts, but we want to report facts and then do an analysis. And, lastly, a projection or a prediction. Yes. So, that's how we want to treat the history. And we wanted show the people in their spirit, in other words, the spirituality.
Not the religion, but the spirituality. We want to look at the spirituality of the black family tree, or the African family tree. Look at the spirituality and the analytical, and also critical.
