02/26/1978
IWDM Study Library 
Ethnic Survival Day
Chicago, IL

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Into the true history of man.
Brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters, we happy today brothers and sisters, It is my pleasure and great honor to present to you the Mujeddid, Chief Imam Wallace D. Muhammad. I greet you As Salaam Alaikum.
Sheik Shabazz, Imams from the regions, staff officials Muslims, all of you, our guests, brothers and sisters, As Salaam Alaikum.
Audience:
Wa Alaikum As Salaam.
IWDM:
I pray that Almighty G-d bless us with clear vision, with understanding, and with the determination to stay on the straight path that leads to truth and faith and a faithful life under Almighty G-d whose proper name is Allah. Dear beloved Muslims, we have done quite a bit of traveling over the last week or so. Our Ethnic Heritage Survival Week has taken us from Chicago to New York City to Atlanta Georgia, to Kansas City, to Los Angeles, and now back to Chicago, after stopping in several other places to speak to other community gatherings, mostly students, college students. I'm very happy and thankful to Allah that we have been so far exceedingly blessed to have good spirit, good minds in our gatherings and to have appreciation expressed from our gatherings for the kinds of ideas and programs that we are introducing and calling your support to. So, I would like to, but I can't do it, I would like to really tell you all what we have been saying during the whole week of Ethnic Heritage Survival celebration. I'll begin the talk here with a reading first just to open up some questions or to remind us of the kinds of serious problems we have in our society.
This magazine I have here now is called Psychology Today. And there's a feature article in this magazine titled Sensation Seeking: The Biological Need for High Sensation. Well, I question the definition of the high sensation that we are seeking in our society, or I question this writers concept or idea of the cause or source of this high sensation that is troubling our society. He calls it biological. It's not biological. If people were left alone, the biology of the people would never make them weird sensation seekers. It is the cultural environment, when it becomes decayed and destructive to human development. It is that cultural environment that seeds destructive things in the minds and nature of the people and make them become weird sensation seekers. He describes it as a search for high sensation.
In this article, the writer points to many problems in the emotional and psychological makeup of our Western society. He mentions boredom. Now, isn't it strange that a people in this great advanced civilized society, land of affluence, are bored? And boredom has become a real sickness for us? With all of these things clouding in our lives, buildings stacked up sometimes look like a mile high. Apartment buildings, projects, stretching for miles and miles. Business Avenues just packed jam tight with all kinds of business activities, entertainment places. With all of this in our lives, we are people suffering a real sickness that the psychologists and sociologists are calling boredom. Bored, bored, sick. And this writer, as many other writers on this problem says that this boredom is sending us out to destructive things, self-destructive things. Some people will just sit up at home and watch TV all day and all night or play records all day and all night. Others have to go to the party, they have to go to the tavern, to the club, and they sit in the dark tavern all day and all night. Then there's still others who just can't stop eating and drinking. They just eat and drink all day and all night.
Boredom driving us to self-destruction. Why are we bored? We have left the intelligent life that was our protection. When people leave intelligent living for sensation living, they can expect to go down to the bottomless pit. Dear beloved Muslims, religion has always been aware of the need in human nature for moral ideas, high moral ideas, fine moral principles and for a belief in something superior to yourself. But a society that comes to the point that they don't recognize any authority in their lives above themselves? Oh, they're finished. It's just a matter of time. Because their forces, their human forces are going to destroy them. The human forces have to have something bigger than human intelligence to control it. We've seen what happened in the world when human forces are left to pure dry, cut and dry rational intelligence of men. Without the water, the moisture of religious ideas and respect for Almighty G-d, the intelligence, dry intelligence of the human being, is almost helpless to keep the society intact. When we look at the strange world, the strange light of our world that is in terms of the human behavior problems we have, we see a very, very strange and peculiar thing.
America, the most learned of all societies, the most industrious, the most scientifically developed, and the people who have the finest concept of human dignity. And a Christian people, have the worst human problems of all the nations or societies on the earth. No people have these terrible human problems that we have except us. Even Europe, the mother country for most of the American, Caucasian Americans, it's not in the bad shape that our society is in. Anytime housewives have to go and pay money for weird therapy that involve furniture breaking up, fine furniture breaking up, fine chinaware, there's something very strange in the society. When people have to or when people feel that they have to pay money for somebody to create a skin rubbing program for them, something very, very strange is in the society. There are so many, many unbelievable therapeutic programs now for releasing hostilities and frustrations in the American people.
Opportunities have never been greater for the Bilalian people than they are today. So why has the uphill march stopped for most of the Bilalian people and the people are falling back? There's a logical explanation for it. It's simply because we have become high sensation seekers as the writer termed it or described it. And we are not recognizing the vital right that we must keep in order to survive as a civilized people. We waste our earnings in extramarital sex, in pornography, in all kinds of carnal enjoyment. Our monies are going to drugs in some form. Pills, cocaine, heroin, and even the reefer, though it's not technically a drug, it has the same effect. It numbs and dulls the mind, slows down the adrenaline, make you less concerned with the problem of bettering your social condition or the community. So, it's a drug too. It is not legally termed a drug, but it has the same affect. You go riding on public transportation now and it's nothing to smell reefer. You smell reefer like you used to smell cigarettes. You go to a public gathering or to see a movie and you're smelling reefer. If there's nobody in authority to protect the good life of the people, the people have to take it into their own hands and protect their own good life if they expect to survive. In fact, people always should take the responsibility in their own hands for protecting their good life.
But the reason why we can't recognize that responsibility is because we have been trained over centuries to wait for others to tell us what is right and what is wrong for us. I'm not just talking about Bilalians. All people in America, they have been trained to wait for the society to tell them what is right and what is wrong for them, what is good and what is bad for them. Movies are supposed to tell us. Novels are supposed to tell us. TV programs are supposed to tell us. And until Hollywood or the publishing companies give us a new lifestyle, a new direction in life, we have to wait and just do what we were left with. This is the mind and the state of the American society. What can save us? Almighty G-d. Almighty G-d. People who believe in Almighty G-d, people who believe in Almighty G-d and an established religion. By that I mean a proper religion, stable religion. They don't give themselves to the winded forces of the environment. They have their own discipline. They have their own moral principles. They have their own high concepts of the human being and human dignity. So, the world can change. But they remain the same. I remember some years ago, I believe maybe 15 years ago reading an article and the bold letters, the bold wording on the magazine, one of the most popular magazines in those days, said "G-d is dead." Now isn't this a reckless way to handle a problem? Bishop...What was his name? I think it was a big Bishop. What was that fellows name? Pike, I believe. I believe it was Bishop Pike. Bishop Pike, big popular Bishop in Christianity allowed the magazine people to put on the front of the magazine In bold letters, "G-d is dead." Most of the ignorant people, they're not going go into the cover, pardon me, into magazine to read anymore. That's a complete sentence. That's an emphatic complete sentence with a stop. It leaves no questions to ask. If G-d is dead, what questions do I have to ask? How did He die? In bold letters "G-d is dead."
I can't help but believe that the bad sex influences that that statement produced in the minds of religious people was intended. I believe it was intended. I believe that some people in the establishment decided that the only way we are going to get the American people to support the kinds of things that we are instituting for the future, we are going to have to break them from their religious devotion. And American people, the masses of American people have been broken from their past religious devotion. We don't have the same devotion anymore. I remember as a young boy, it was hard to find anybody bold enough to laugh about G-d. But now the ignorant laugh about G-d, the educators laugh about G-d. In fact, it was the educators who started us laughing about G-d.
And you wonder how come you can't make progress in the face of all these opportunities? A devil is working against you. A human devil on this earth is working against you to destroy not only the Bilalians, but to destroy the great masses of all people in America so that a few will survive and repopulate the world all over again. You better wake up.
Dear beloved people. This evil has a beginning. It wasn't here always. It has a beginning. When we look at the personality of the Western world, the mentality of the Western world in the history of the Western world, we see a peculiar thing. We see a people who embrace fine ideas, who embrace cultural, inspiring ideas, human dignity, inspiring ideas of people marching for freedom, equality, human dignity, marching for the rights of the individual, having at the same time the mind of a drunk savage.
Study the history of Europe. Look at the ugly things that Europe did while it was Christian and while it was Democratic. Look at the ugly kinds of things it did. And look at the ugly things that America did a century or so ago. Christian America, a people with high ideas, beautiful concepts. The ideas are so powerful you wonder how any kind of racist, destructive, racist mind can exist in a society that has such fine principles. But it existed. Even the government protected their existence. I know many of you don't like to hear these things, but we have a psychological sickness and when you go to the psychologist, he wants to know your past. He wants you to tell him your problem. He wants it all to come out so he can look at it and see it.
Say, "Well, I don't do those bad things now, doctor." Well, that's okay. I still want to see it because maybe something from your bad past is still influencing your present behavior. Is that right? Well, that's the only reason why I'm mentioning these things because I know that the ugliness of the past is still quietly working in the subconscious of the American people, deforming them and denying us the opportunity to really come into the beautiful life that America was formed to go toward and gain or achieve. Dear beloved people. some problems can't be corrected by simply ignoring them or simply bearing them. The Greek doctors of the nature of the human mind, they say that these problems, these problems can be suppressed and forgotten or put completely out of the conscious mind, but they will wreck, we're told, through the subconscious and destroy the human being.
Unless we have the kinds of influences and environments that recognize these suppressed dangerous influences, there is nothing but room for those things to come out in subtle ways, in ways that we can't recognize and turn the human behavior into a drunken savage behavior.
This is an Intelligence society. We know high science, high human science but look what the intelligent society is doing.
Look what the educators are doing. Look what the leaders in high places do. Dear beloved people. We have a very serious problem and merely taking the evils out of view, physical view, is not going to solve the problem. We have a mind sickness. That's what we have. The American people have a mind sickness and the only way we are going to cure it is to take up the method of the psychologist and that method is to study rational, rationally, scientifically, the conditions in the human being, both the mental and psychological makeup and don't leave any stone unturned. That's the only way. Ever since the Nation of Islam has been in America, the Nation of Islam has been asking the people to go on an exploration trip with us into the past to look at the problems, to look at the evils.
Why? So that we can understand the present problems and the present evils it's necessary brothers and sisters, I'm far from having any problem, racist problems. Me, I don't have any race problems.
I don't have any hostilities. I don't feel the need to get revenge for anything that has happened to me or my family or my race. Thank Almighty G-d Allah. The guidance of the Holy Qur'an has saved me from such problems. So, when I ask you to go back with us on an exploration trip to study what has happened in the past, it's only to get the kind of knowledge and understanding we need to deal with the problems of the present. We have to go all the way back to our religious language. A lot of us don't want to do that, but that's what we have to do.
The Christian Bible, we call it Christian Bible, but most of the pages are Judaic, not Christian. Only the last few pages are Christian. The great bulk of the Bible is Judaic from Genesis to what, Malachi I believe, isn't it? Yes. Genesis to Malachi, Yes.
We have to go back to our religious language and translate that language out of fiction, fantasy, fiction, allegories, into language that we can understand. For what reason? To see the problems that religion has put into our nature, into our minds, into our psychology. That's the only way to get it out. You have to go back and look at those concepts and examine them and see if religion is responsible for leaving us with this self-destructive heritage we call the present American mind.
The beginning of the human growth, the growth of the human being as a human being. Intelligence, morals, sentiments, everything. The beginning of this really starts when you open your eyes and see the world, see the environment and hear the sound made in the air. That's when the development starts. If the wrong thing, if unhealthy, self-destructive things come in the ear, enter the eye, then you are going to be destroyed. You're going to be destroyed. The human being is fed from the environment. There's no hope for a human being without knowledge or intelligence to deal with the environmental problems. If the environment itself is not healthy, if it's not conducive to the fine human development that we want, there is no help for the individual because he cannot create himself unless he has the tools for creating himself and if he doesn't have the tools for creating himself, the environment is going to create him. What kind of tools have we been given for the work of creating ourselves? You might say fine Christian ideas. I agree. But how come those fine Christian ideas are now of hardly any effect? And others will say, we have been given knowledge and fine image of the human being, a great image of the human being and the language of the Declaration of Independence. A creature born within inalienable rights. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A creature born equal with all creatures. This is the language of the precious document that our whole governmental life stands upon. Is that right?
But how effective is that beautiful doctrine to keep that life or to keep the people of America marching towards that beautiful concept of the human being?
Look how that beautiful concept has to struggle in America and suffer defeat in America at the hands or by the onrush, the angry onrush of racists in America. That tells you that there's something in the American life that is stronger than the fine language of the Declaration of Independence. There's something in the American life stronger as a poison than even the fine principles of Christianity.
The proof of this is that the ugly influences have won out. Look what has happened to government authority. How many people respect government authority? How many American people respect government authority? Where went American patriotism? Now the reciting or the preaching of American patriotism, it's just like preaching fear, the fear of G-d. You start telling people to fear G-d, they say what's wrong with you? You're strange. And if you preach American patriotism, the American citizens look at you and in their minds they're saying, "He's strange." You are not supposed to be a defender of American ideas. You are not supposed to defend the preservation of the powers of government, right? You are supposed to be an antagonizer. You are supposed to be an accuser. You are not welcome unless you attack governmental powers, unless you attack governmental authority. What can people get if they don't have respect for those things that have been requisitioned by human beings, by the American citizens? Nobody came from outer space or from another world and imposed this concept of government on us. Nobody came from a different world and imposed this concept of human dignity, of moral strength on us. It was our forefathers who gave their leaders the requisition. Say, "Give us this form of government. Give us strong leaders, give us strong leadership." And now the people are saying "They imposed this on us. They imposed this upon our life. We don't want it because it was forced on us." It was not forced on you. Your mothers asked for it, your fathers asked for it. And you don't want it because you have lost the good sense of your mother and your father. You say "Oh Chief, you don't have anything to do with this. You are a Bilalian. Let the nation fall. Let the world be destroyed. You don't have anything to do with this." Well, that's why the world has fallen because there are too many people that say, "I don't have anything to do with this." We do have something to do with it.
You cannot get yourself up by waiting for others to fall. If you want to go up, you have to show those falling how to stop falling and they will lift you up. Let's move quickly because our time is running out. Let's quickly look at some of these so-called religious concepts. And they are religious concepts, but in their composition that we, in the composition that we get them, they are more concepts of fiction, fantasies, mythology, than religion. We are told that the world was made out of void and that there was nothing but water and light rose out of the water and formed the sun, moon and stars. This is the kind of idea religious people have been given of the creation of the world, the making of the world. Then we are told that after the world was made in six days, pardon me, in five days, no, in six days, pardon me, there was other things still happening. On the sixth day G-d made man.
How did He make man? He formed him of the dust of earth or of clay and then breathed into the man the breath of His nostrils. What kind of picture has this given us of Almighty G-d? It's giving us a kindergarten storytelling picture of Almighty G-d. Those who got this, see G-d with nostrils. And some of these Bibles show G-d with nostrils and breath coming out of His nostrils, flowing down to the people. They ask any Preacher, "How did man get on earth"? "Well, G-d made him." "Made from what?" "The Bible say from clay." You notice how when they get in trouble they say, "The Bible say." They start off just speaking from themselves, but the more trouble they get into, the more they refer to you to the Bible. "How did man get on earth"? G-d made him. They know that. See the G-d fearing person, he knows that G-d did. They are speaking from themselves. It says G-d made him. Say "How did G-d make him?" The Bible say......
Yes. And then the Bible goes on to say that the first mother was made from the rib of our first father. That G-d had made our first father complete. He was finished. Then He forgot that the man had a lonely nature. The man got lonely. Then He said, "Oh, I have to make him a mate." No, I'm not laughing at the Bible. I don't laugh at it. To tell you the truth. I respect it,
But I'm giving it to you in this language so you can see the kind of childish ideas that we grown ups have been holding on to.
So, he took a rib, one rib from the man and sealed up the hole that was made by the incision. It doesn't say He made an incision; it leaves you with the impression that it was just gouged out, not even a good surgeon. And then He would put the flesh that was taken out back in its place, right? Yes, just a patch up job, butcher job.
And then made the woman with this rib. What does that make the woman? It makes her a different creation from the man.
The Bible says flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. How can she be flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone when she was just made from the bone, just one bone? In the forming of human life in the womb of the mother, bones don't come first.
Flesh comes first. So, if this woman is made from one bone, she doesn't have the full value, the full human worth of the man. So right from the beginning, the woman is put in an inferior image. Is that right? Right from the beginning. Now if you don't believe that this is the trend, we don't have time today, but you keep reading about the woman as her story is told from Genesis to Revelations. She becomes more and more ugly, inferior and wicked. I'll just name a few of the stars for you in your Bible. Eve, Jezebel, Delilah, Salomi. There they are. We can look right into the language of the present environment and that these evils, that these concepts, these destructive concepts in human ideas or in human minds are still hurting human development. They're still being preached.
And they're still hurting our human development. What do they call the tornadoes and the hurricane? Think about it. These terrible violent forces that make human beings fear for their very lives, that take away their houses and their cattle destroy their hard earnings that they have worked so hard for and build up in homes and businesses. These strong violent forces are called by women names. Is that right? Yes. You know it. Isn't that proof that the same mentality exists, the mentality of the writer of the Bible is still existing? Will you attack the writers of the Bible? I'm just doing what you do. You just don't know how to attack it. I'm attacking it in the right way. You attack it by suppressing those objectionable ideas that the Bible put into your mind. That's the way you attack it. You suppress those things. You don't want to see the contradiction, you don't want to see the ugliness in the Bible language, so you suppress it. That's your way of attacking it. You push it out of your mind. But remember, anytime you push something out of your mind, you are only pushing it out of your active mind. It goes into your subconscious mind and cause mental problems if the environment doesn't do something to bring about the kind of healthy change needed for you. Yes. Alright. The idea of the creation of the world, the origin of man has created in us materialism, materialistic cravings, devilish ideas have even made some of us feel that we should play the role of Satan himself and have made us racist.
If you want to go to the very source of racism, go to the Bible. The Bible gives us two concepts of the origin of the races. One is that all people come from one father Adam. The other is that bad people come from one mother Eve. Read carefully the wording of Genesis. Cain is not Adams Son, Cain is Eve's son. Talking about the Cain who killed his brother Abel. You see? This kind of racist breeding idea begins to grow in the Bible as you read from Genesis to Revelation. And part of the New Testament Old Testament, pardon me, in Genesis we run into the man Noah. Noah gets three sons. This is the man that G-d chose to give the world to so they could be repopulated after the flood. Is that right? And this man Noah gets drunk. Is that right? And his sons come in and they see him drunk. Now I know there's a correct translation. There's interpretation, that there's a beautiful meaning in this ugly language. There's a hidden language under this ugly surface language. I know it. That is beautiful. I know it Preacher, I know it. But we didn't get the beautiful language under the surface. We got the self-destructive, socially destructive language on the surface. You Preachers don't give us the beautiful language under the surface. When you read the Bible, you read it just as it is literally. The hints revealing the evil of the Bible are also given in the Bible. The Bible says that a certain religious man took another man who's called son of man in the Bible, on a tour of the society.
To show him the extent that evils had grown in this society. Say he took him to the gate of the city and he told him, "Son of man, look at the evils that these people are practicing in the gates of this city." He said, now come on a little further. And he took him to the court, the yard of the temple. He said, "Look at the evils that these people are practicing right around the temple." He said, "Come, Son of man. Let me take you into the temple." Saying he took him into the sanctuary where there was the Holy of the Holies and there he found the abomination of abominations. This is your Bible. I didn't dream this up. I read it in your Bible. So, the Bible says, and it is not given in the Bible as something that was presently existing. It's given in the Bible as a prophecy revealing what will come. And the Bible tells us of the last days it says that the greatest evil will be in the Holy Sea. Now I'm not talking about the Catholic Church. It so happened that they called their Holy Sea, Holy sea. I'm talking about the lake that G-d intended to be a lake for religious life and religious development. The Bible says that in the end that that lake would be ruled by a beast and that beast would have to be destroyed. Said and G-d will destroy that beast out of the lake by turning the lake itself into a lake of fire. Haven't our Church life been turned into a lake of fire? Wasn't it once a cool water for us to bathe in and now it has become a lake of fire?
Burning the conscious, pardon me, of the great numbers of Christians who go looking for high sensation and yet calling themselves Church goers. That burns the mind of the Christian. Burns his conscience. Every now and then a thought comes up, our conscience have almost been buried six feet and left without any sign of life in it. But there's still enough life in most of the American Christians minds to feel guilt occasionally when they're doing the things they're doing. Now that those Christians that really are sincere and really are giving their life, trying their best to be good Christians, they are really in a lake of fire. They're really in a lake of fire. Their conscience is not only a fire because of the sins that they're now doing. Don't you know Priests, Ministers and Priests are just changing the role of the Preacher or the Priest into a role of an opportunist, preaching money, preaching song and dance. They preach whatever they think will appeal to your needs for high sensation.
I know there's still the good preacher, but look at him today. Even he have gone back. He has fallen. He's fallen. I saw in one magazine where a Priest, a Catholic Priest, he was sitting down in some crazy meditation position before the skull, the bare bone skull of some animal. Looked like it was a donkey. And he was meditating and we could get this for you if any of you just have to have it, we can get it for you. He was meditating and was saying that he didn't see anything wrong with the Christian leadership or Priest, a Priest doing that as long as he kept his Catholic religion. How's he going to keep his Catholic religion and give himself to that kind of pagan exercise? We have seen the Catholics supposed to be dignified, though the atmosphere was ghostly. They've always been dignified. We have seen them bring in the band, bring in the electronic, what they call that stuff. You know what electronic kind of music they have now that hurt your ears, destroy your ears, hurt your hearing.
Rock. Acid rock. Yeah, and it is acid too. Long ago the Christian churches turned themselves into bands. You go to hear the Preacher preach and you wonder when is he going to preach. He comes up. Amen. We say amen when we finish something. He's finished before he starts.
Audience:
Allahu Akbar.
IWDM:
And then the choir starts and he comes in. His part is intermission. I am talking about great majority of the churches in America. His part is intermission. They come in and they say, "Wooha, wooha." Then when they exhaust themselves, then the preacher come in, it's intermission and he just comes in to build the momentum up again. As soon as he gets the momentum, "Have you got the feeling?" And somebody say "Haaa, Haaa." And the band starts again. "Baam, baam." High sensation cravings. Where are we going to get if we only crave for sensation and don't want any sense? I thought that the correct definition for the human being is homosapien- thinking individual. I thought that's what separate us from apes and other creatures, that we are the thinking man. The thinking being. If we are not going to think, but give ourselves to the sensation, to the influences in the air, then where will our life be that G-d created? The religion teaches the Christian, Muslim, Jew that G-d created the human being to be a thinking being.
Let me quickly speak on the symbolic tree in scripture. Excuse me. In the Bible, family Bible that is, you have what they call the family tree. Family life is symbolized as a tree. Is that right? Now if I'm a tree and the Bible says, some of you might remember this, this might really bring the idea back to your mind. Says that, and Bilalians used to really, really repeat this quote from the Bible, especially when they were thinking about their problem trying to get equality and opportunity in America. Says that the Bible says that every people shall sit under their own vine and fig tree. Is that right? Vine and fig tree. So, a tree is a symbolic picture of the human society. Community life. Family is the smallest unit. The family is pictured as a tree and then the nation is pictured as all races, cultural groups, religious groups are pictured as trees. When we look at the tree, we see a beautiful picture, a beautiful symbol of community development. The poem says, and it was Al Hitler that I heard saying it. In fact, I used to have that record by Al Hitler.
He says, "I have never seen a poem as beautiful as a tree." What is a poem? A poem is a message in symbolic language. Is that right? So here the poet is saying that a tree is a symbolic message and he has never seen a poem written by man as beautiful in his message as a tree. Look at a tree. Its roots are feeding under the earth in the dirt. Its body is growing up from the ground. The ground is its base. Is that right? Yes. And it's feeding in the ground the roots, the eating from the ground, but it doesn't only eat from the ground. In its bow, I think that's what you call the top of the tree, right? The bow or the head. In the head of the tree, the leaves are feeding on sunshine. The leaves feed on sunshine and the roots feed on water and the minerals from the earth. Is that right? Water and minerals from the earth. That's what the roots are getting. And the leaves are getting sunshine and in that sunshine is the energy for photosynthesis, making the leaves green, giving them color and also for building up carbon in the tree. So, it's getting its material body from below and above and also its life from below and above. Is that right?
Audience:
Yes.
IWDM:
And look how beautiful the tree is. It inspires first for beauty, a love for beauty in the human being that sits and looks at the beautiful tree. A tree without leaves doesn't have that power to wake up the molecules of appreciation for beauty in us. A bad tree affects us like a graveyard affects us. Sometimes even worse, doesn't it? It affects us like a graveyard affects us. I remember looking out of my window after the leaves had fallen from the trees and seeing the whole skeleton tree and I remember how it affected me. It affected me and made me feel as though I was looking at death. A people without culture is a bad tree.
Audience:
Right.
IWDM:
A bad tree does not have beauty. A bad tree does not have beauty. A bad tree does not invite you to come to comfort. A tree clothed in leaves invites you to come and sit under it and find rest and comfort. Is that right? We wonder how come people don't want to live in the Bilalian neighborhood that are not Bilalian. It's because we don't have leaves on our tree. The leaves of a highly developed culture, we don't have it. We are culturally deprived. In fact, we are culturally dead now because even the little ingredients for building culture in Christianity is now not even noticed or paid in attention to by most of the Bilalians. Some of you might not like for me to call you Bilalians.
Audience:
It's ok.
IWDM:
You know the Romans got their name from an ancient ancestor called Romalus? Do you know the Arabs too, many of them get their names from ancient ancestors. Ancestors. I think it's more dignity in identifying with an ancient ancestor than in identifying with skin color. When I say I am a Bilalian, I'm saying that I am a man like Bilal. When I say I'm black, I'm saying I'm a man like black skinned people and black skinned people are not only in the Bilalian ethnic family, they are also in the Indian ethnic family.
Audience:
That's right.
IWDM:
So, I should ask you, you are black? Which black? And most of you will answer and in the answer that you give, there will be, the answer will be I'm racist black.
Audience:
That's right.
IWDM:
The very people who have written a beautiful history of courageous battle to get the racist to give up his racist mind have now taken on the racist mind. I'm black.
What does that mean? Means that my color stays, "Honky loses his color, put him out on the beach and son, he gets red or brown. I'm black."
"I don't lose my color. His skin peels. Mine can stay baby. Racist mentality. My great forefather was Cheavas. Cheavas was the man. You don't know who Cheavas was? Look here. Cheavas was our great eonic ancestor who was stationed in solar system 0 5 5 4. He's the one Jim who introduced reefer, and sent the mighty black five throughout the universe, the cosmos, the cosmomatic." Now you are laughing, but we have people who talk like this and they serious. Don't you know it's time for somebody to direct us to sense away from the search for high sensation. We must have culture dear people. The people who dressed the world and made it look good were people of culture. In fact, the Genesis of man in scripture is the Genesis of a culture minded people. The Bible say that He charged the man to attend the garden. Is that right? And to dress it, I believe it says that is that right? To attend it and to dress it. Dress means give it culture, attend the need for culture and give it culture. Dress it. A tree dresses up when the right environment, when the right climate comes. How come we can't dress up? The right climate is here and Islam is here. Bible understanding is here. Opportunities for progress as an ethnic group is here.
How come we can't take on our beautiful dress as a tree in this fine spring season?
Audience:
We can.
IWDM:
Certainly we can, but we have to stop following sensation and start going towards sense. Dear beloved Muslims, Almighty G-d is on our side. What do I mean by on our side? Almighty G-d, His mercy, His compassion goes out to a people uprooted, dispossessed, cut off from their past history and placed into an environment designed to reduce them to brute savages. Almighty G-d's compassion goes out to them and He began to work and influence the circumstances, the conditions and the circumstances, the minds of the people, and in time He brings about a good climate, a good climate, a good fertile climate for receiving His truth. And in time He sent you people with right guidance to bring you back to the life that He wanted you in from the very start. We have lived to see that. G-d has aided us in our struggle. He blessed us to come into a kind of plantation environment that had nothing to feed us really but spirit. So, we became a people of religious spirit moved by religious spirit. I say spirit because we had little religious sense. We had religious spirit. We were a strong people in religious spirit and this spirit, recognition of a G-d existing over all things. And the belief that that G-d has power to change conditions. And in time when He so please, He will change those conditions. Under Christianity, that kind of spiritual environment gave us hope, gave us hope, gave us the strength we needed to endure to come through the factory of slavery and Jim Crowism that was designed to make us accept that we are subhuman, but we came out of the factory still remaining in human form. The factory was not able to take the humanness out of us. It was designed to produce a brute, not a human being. Plantation slavery breeded male and female just like you breed horses and dogs. Many times, sister was mated with brother, son mated with mother. Why? Because some of the slave masters had no sense at all of respect for morals or human nature, moral nature or human nature. They had no respect at all. All they wanted was wealth. So, if they didn't have a slave out of the family to mate with a slave, they would make a member of the family go with a member of the family to produce another slave for the slave master. We wonder how we come to be, some of us, lovers of our own relatives. Do you know some of the Bilalians think nothing of going with sister as long as it doesn't get out. He doesn't think he committed any sin. Don't laugh. This is sad. Father, go with daughter. I know of a grandfather going with a granddaughter. Now we don't go back and explore the past and discover those old evils that are still speaking in our subconscious and through our genes. Don't you know certain kind of behavior can be clocked into your genes if you are put under that kind of behavior for a long enough time? It can be clocked into the very genes.
Audience:
That's right.
IWDM:
The moral outcome cannot be affected by this kind of thing, but the human tendencies can be formed. You do these things and you don't know why you're doing them. It's not that you have been formed morally bad. That ain't why you're doing it, but a weakness for this have been clocked into your genes. Why do you think we are foolish people? And many of us are. Why do you think we are still song and dance bufoons? And many of us are. This is not our normal life tradition. This is a hangover from slavery. The slave master, on the weekend when he wanted entertainment he would tell you make jokes, laugh, dance, make faces. This is history. I've read it. Caucasian wrote it themselves. We didn't write it. What I mean by that, the Bilalian people didn't write it. Caucasian people wrote it and they tell how the slave master on the weekend would have the slave put on a show for them, laugh and stretch their lips and show their teeth and dance and crack stupid jokes
Audience:
That's right.
IWDM:
And you're still doing the same thing, many of you. In your home, in the bars on the street corners when the weather's good, you are just out there doing nothing but cracking crazy, silly, vulgar jokes to try to make somebody laugh.
Audience:
That's true.
IWDM:
We have to study the past and see how much of this is our own fault. How much of this is conscious and how much of it is subconscious. How much comes from our own actions and how much have been clocked into our genes and into our human behavior by horrible conditions that were created for our ancestors about a hundred less years ago. We have to look at these things. We go to the school, we study psychology. We got doctors of psychology, but none of us will establish any leadership as psychologists, we just follow the programs, the plans and programs of other psychologists. We don't say, "Look, I have an obligation to study the psychological problems in the history of my people and in there present mind and makeup." We don't say that. Do you think the Caucasian psychologist is going to take up your problems as an ethnic group and study your history and see just how much adverse behavior, destructive behavior has been clocked into your life? They're not going to do it because this shines the flashlight of indictment back on them. And they don't want that. Plus it puts them in a position to be hated and attacked violently by you. You'll say "Whitey, what hell right you got to tell me about my psychology? You the psychological maniac. Don't listen to it." So, we have to do the job ourselves.
We are almost at a standstill because we can't see where to go from here. When the people go that limit, then they have to stop following the old direction and look for new direction. Our problem is we can't stop following old direction and look for new direction. We think you just have to keep following the same old direction. It has to be Civil Rights and integration or separation and racism. It just can't be any other. That's what we say. We think we don't have but two choices. To be integrationists or separatists. White or black. Is that right? That's what most of us think.
We are caught up in the white and black of the racist. We didn't invent those terms. White and black is a racist invention. People never did call themselves white and black before the racists started using that language. Now here we are. We reinforcing it. We are perpetuating it. I'm black. I'm black. "What's wrong with the Chief Imam saying we are not black." I never said you weren't black. I said there's a more dignified term that we can get than black. There's a term we can get that have more social meaning than black. What does black tell you? Nothing but the pigmentation is black. Doesn't tell you anything about history or human development. But Bilal is a person. There's a history. If I say I'm African American, that identify me with the people.
It identifies me with social shame. That's what it identifies me with. Black used to be degraded and ugly. So, I'm telling you that black is dignified now. It's no more degraded and ugly. Good, very good. It was very good and very beautiful for its time. If people called you black and ugly, then it's good that you say, "No, I'm not black and ugly. I'm black and beautiful." If they say you are black and inferior, it's good that you say, "No, I'm not black and inferior. I'm black and proud." That's good. But once that correction is heard by all the people, if you keep saying it, it's going to begin to deform yourself. Because you are more than skin color. You are also a human being. And if you keep calling yourself black, black, black, black, black, pretty soon you'll see yourself in blackness and not in humanism. Don't you know that's what the racist want? You following his program. I was too. Until I caught on to him. I peeped his card. I'm going to beat the hell out of that damn racist now. I am going to deny him his followers. Don't think we are not going to be successful.
Our numbers are increasing. The reception for the kinds of things we are saying in America is increasing. People high and low in religion and in government are every day increasingly acknowledging and paying tribute to the fine kind of ideas that we are now preaching. It's just a few more years. Give us a few more years and we are going to make that racist poor. We're going to make him so poor until he's just going to have 2 cents, 2 cents. We are going take all his followers away from it and we are going to do it in many ways. We are going to do it by preaching as we are preaching now and we are going to do it in education. We are going to make our own social science textbook and we're going to tell the scientific truth about the origin of races, the origin of color, skin color, the origin of broad nose and thin nose. Of fat, nose and tight nose. Of thick lips and thin lips. Of kinky hair and straight hair. We are going to tell the scientific truth about it.
Audience:
That's right.
IWDM:
And that's going to kill racist like magic.
A civilized society, shouldn't it correct the wrong in its knowledge? Don't just preach. They think it's enough just to show Bilalians and Caucasians jumping rope together in the textbook. Sitting down at the dinner table together in the textbook. That's not enough. Those Bilalians and Caucasians are not discussing the lies that were told to discredit a race. They're not discussing that. They're not shining light on the real problem. They're just showing that we are willing now to integrate with the brute. They haven't said that he's not a brute. They haven't used scientific language to say to America, he's not a brute. They have just spoken from emotionalism, sentiment, love for humanity, and they say he's not a brute. He deserves the same as we deserve. He's equal. But my mind has been fed the lie that there's something different in my physiological and human makeup, that there's something different about me, that my musk even smells different, that my musk is mostly stronger, that my hair is not natural, that my hair is a foreign hair in the human family.
I've been told that my features are ugly. And they're ugly like that because I'm a near relative of a baboon. That's what they told us. This is what the so-called social scientists told the American people in the world just a few years ago in our history. They told them that we are by nature inferior, that we are close to the brute monkey in nature and baboon and that they should have sympathy for us as Christian people. That they should try to dignify us, but we only have a certain capacity for human dignity. We are going to have to keep these niggers in their places. We are going to have to use a certain amount of force and we are going to have to deny them opportunities to get up in high halls of our civilization and government because they can't be trusted. Their matter, their human matter is inferior by nature to ours. That's what we were taught. In some of the wicked amendments that was added to the Constitution, they described us as percentages of a man, not a whole man. This is existing right now in print. They describe the Bilalian people as percentages of a man and not a whole man.
How is this going to be corrected? Can it be corrected by simply saying everybody's equal? The black man or a black boy is just as great humanly speaking or as in terms of human dignity as the other fellow? Can it be corrected by me saying those things? No, because there's enough of the old knowledge still in existence and there's enough determination in the old racist to keep it in existence, to make that preaching of a beautiful picture almost of no effect.
Audience:
That's right.
IWDM:
Where is the proof? The proof is in the community right now. What has that done? We've had this integrated school thing, the idea and the pictures in the books. Still in our neighborhood, we got Bilalian children who are ashamed of their black skin because their parents are calling them-"Come here, your little black nigger you." You nappy head ugly black nigger. If you do that again, I'm going to beat that damn black off of you." We got the living proof of this. Excuse me, brothers and sisters, I'm getting a little upset and I don't like to get upset. It's nothing but hypocrisy. Don't you know the social scientist of American society, the psychologists in the American society, these people who know human nature. Don't you know they know a better way to direct these evils. Now, let's not wait on them. Let's take responsibility for saving our own matter into our own hands. That's the way. I know time is racing, but this is very important. Let me quickly show you the humor and the foolishness in our black white consciousness. Some people think that their blackness is a superiority because it can stand the sun. But in the summertime that blackness holds the heat.
The Caucasian suffers skin damage sometimes, but you suffer a lot of heat. Say, "Oh, but we can take it." Yeah, you can take it just like the man put in the dungeon, kept in there for 10 years, he’ll say, "Oh, it's okay, in here." Keep him in there for 20 years, he'll say, "I'm afraid to go out." In the hot weather, go out in the street and just touch things that are black when the sun is very hot, burning hot heat of the sun, touch things that are black and then touch things that are white. You'll find the black things burn you. The white things are a little cooler. Black holds heat, it absorbs heat takes it in, it holds it and makes you uncomfortable in the heat. See, right now I'm sweating and it's good that G-d gave us a little help. We sweat more than the Caucasian. Caucasian don't sweat like we sweat. He gave us black skin, but he gave us a lot of rain. When we get real hot it rains all over us, cools us off. G-d is a Merciful G-d. All Praises due Allah. Dear beloved people, the Holy Qur'an tells us to look at the colors.
Not only that, the Holy Qur'an says that "In the heavens and in the earth, in the workings between heavens and earth as well in yourselves and yourself too." I'm not quoting it word from word. I'm just giving it to you all in one. "That you'll find instructing signs from G-d." G-d teaches us through His creation. He designed His creation to speak wisdom to the mind of the thinking man. How do you think the Caucasian have come to the high position that he has in science and in other fields of human endeavors and achievement? It's because that he got the message from the Qur'an and was able to see the problem in the Bible and separate his intelligence from the Bible and give his intelligence to the great kinds of influences, the nourishing, productive influences of Qur'anic teaching. Even the Constitution of America is influenced by Qur'anic teaching. Even the business, the capitalist concept of business is influenced by Qur'anic teachings. The idea of human dignity that the Constitution expresses is more in accord with the concept of man in the Qur'an than it is with the concept of man in the Bible. We don't know this and they wonder how come the Chief Imam now wants to save America. I want to save America because I see two lives in America The lifeblood of truth and the lifeblood of lies. And I think that all we have to do is just separate ourselves from that lifeblood of lies and we'll have a beautiful America indeed. The good high reaching spirit has always been in the life of the American people. Some of us rejected it, but the great majority of Americans have always identified themselves with the good high reaching spirit in the American life. We have the spirit to go to the Mount Everest of human dignity and social progress. All we need to do is take this anti-human out of the Bible life, out of the church life, and out of the social life of the American people. That's all we have to do, and we should do it as the Statesmen. We should do it as the Doctors of science. We should stop approaching the problems from a ungrounded, pardon me, unrooted sentimentality. Emotionalism. That won't get it. Dr. King did a great job preaching love for your fellow man, but it reached the point of diminishing return and it began to produce more hatred between people than love. Even his own people began to reject him as their leader. His own people, the Civil Rights movement, his own people that he led and that worshiped him and idolized him, broke off of him.
Said, "No, we can't get it this way." Dr. King finally recognized that an emotional remedy is short lived and you have to know when it's time is out and start feeding the program with good sense.
Audience:
Go ahead.
IWDM:
Teach the people to understand in rational logical language that crazy human problem. Dr. King recognizes and he stopped preaching the brotherly love doctrine and he started preaching equality and jobs. Is that right? Job opportunities. You see, he recognized the end of that, but he left us without direction. He didn't point out the problem to us. He just merely started taking another course. Is that right? The answer is to deal with human problems with the strength of the human being. And the strength of the human being is moral excellence and human intelligence. A beauty of the human being is human sentiment. Oh, human sentiments are beautiful, but human sentiments cannot design the world. They can only influence the design of the world. It takes intelligence to design the world. You can become oh so sentimental. As long as you are contained in a sentimental womb, you'll never come up with any mathematical desire for solving problems. But once you come out of that sentimental womb and come into a rational womb and start approaching things with the tools of intelligence, then you can use the great reservoirs of your beautiful human sentiment to influence the colors that you put into the scale and into the diagram. But let mathematics design and structure the thing, not sentiments. By mathematics, I mean a calculated, exact calculating thing. What does sentiment calculate? Sentiments can't calculate. Sentiments can't find points. Sentiments don't know the degrees, longitude and latitude. Intelligence knows that. Sentiments don't know the nature of a disease. They know the effect.
Audience:
Right.
IWDM:
Intelligence knows the nature of a disease. And a doctor is one who knows the nature of the disease and a doctor is the one that cures. Is that right? Oh yes.
Dear beloved people, it's bad enough just to be in a kind of world, an idea that is highly charged with sentiment, but now we have come into a world of life and an idea and a mind that is highly charged with sensationalism. We just got to have a sensational charge. Shame ourselves, so called, civilized people. Bilalians too. Go into a trio having sex, two males and one woman. Sometimes just a whole pig stye of males and females having sex. Do anything. Nothing is bad. We have been conditioned, programmed to believe that nothing should be denied a human being if it is not harming other people. Whatever he wants to do with his own life is his business. How can you do with your life what you want and not hurt my life?
Audience:
Think about that.
IWDM:
Did G-d create one person at any time? I've never known a time where there existed only one person. Doesn't scripture say that G-d made a man, he existed alone and then He made the woman? The Holy Qur'an says, "You are mates one of the other." Which tells me that human beings are from each other. The male is from the female and the female is from the male. How can you get a child without putting sperm and ovum together? I never heard a sperm alone getting another human being. I've been taught that sperm and ovum gets another human being. The ovum of the female and the sperm of the male unite together and we get a human being. Even these people that's trying to create human beings artificially, they know they have to have ovum. They take the sperm of the male and they inject it artificially into the female. They still have to have an ovum. Is that right? Now they think they can even design a kind of womb, artificial tube, glass womb for developing the child into. Have you read about that? Where they develop the child through the stages. They think that they don't even need to develop it throughout its stages in the mother, but they're going to have to have ovum and sperm. They didn't say they don't need the two. When you come here, you find two being your parents. Is that right? Nobody told you one parent brought you here. Maybe you weren't married to your mother, but he was there and he's your father. Or was your father. Yes. Takes two. The human being is born from two. is form, his body comes from two. Where does he get the right to say I don't owe anything to anybody?
Audience:
His mind comes from his mother and father and his home environment. When he gets out into the society, the society helps contribute to the development, enlargement of his environment. So, your mind don't belong to you exclusively. Most of it came from your parents and the environment, home environment and the society. Your body doesn't belong to you. It came from the same. Your sentiments came from the world. How can any human being claim a right to do what it wants or he wants or she wants with themselves? You don't belong to yourself. You belong to the world. You got your matter and your life from the world. Now what gives you the right to think that you have the right to do what you want? "I have the right to do what I want with my body." We don't believe that way. If a member in our society begin to abuse their body, we will punish that member by bringing them before the congregation and showing this crazy thing to the congregation to shame him out of his craziness. We will put him in a restricted class. We'll deny him full membership or full membership activity. We'll restrict his activities. We'll restrict his voice in the community, limit his voice and restrict his activity in the community. Why? Because we know that if he treat himself like that, some ignorant person, grown up, or some little child will see that and think it's okay to be that way. Society is supposed to correct your behavior. We have the right to correct your behavior. Who's teaching you that kind of crazy stuff? The American establishment. They teach the citizens that you are an individual with individual rights. They tell us something about the autonomy of the individual. What do autonomy mean? Self. Self rule of the individual. And they interpret this to mean an independent unrestricted freedom of the individual. The autonomy of the individual is a self rule. It means that each individual is obligated by the nature G-d has put them in to take responsibility for themselves, to discipline themselves, to check themselves, to make themselves conform to the good life of the society even when mom and dad is not around to check them. That's what autonomy of the individual is. That you should be given the dignity to enforce good principles, morals, good discipline, discipline into your own life. But if you don't have the ability, the strength or the respect for yourself to take that kind of charge over yourself, then we should write you off as one that was disqualified for any autonomy of the individual. He was not able to execute his autonomy. So, the society has to take charge for him and see that he doesn't destroy himself and the society. You know freedom, it's like the guiding, right? When you go to take the test for driving, they give you a permit, not a license. A permit. Is that right? Yeah. They give you a permit. If you prove that you are responsible and know how to drive later on they give you a license. Is that right? That's right. You have a permit. You are driving with a permit. That's a permit, not a license.
It's a trial period for you. Nature, G-d Almighty has designed it to give us a permit and then a license. And while we are getting ready for the license, we are going through a discipline. Is that right?
Undergoing discipline. In the wombs of our mothers, we are formed. The Holy Qur'an says "You are formed in the wombs of your mothers." And the Holy Qur'an instruct us to reverence the wombs of our mothers. Says, "You are formed in the wombs of your mothers." While we are formed in the womb of the mother, is that freedom? That's not freedom is it? No, that's discipline. The baby comes from small germ and as the Holy Qur'an says, he comes from the minerals of the earth, from clay and then he becomes semen and ovum and blood. Is that right? And a fetus lump and bone and flesh. And it's completed as a physical creature of a physical human being. Is that right? All the time while he's being formed in the physical form, while he's being formed as a physical human being, he is in a cell, a prison cell undergoing discipline. You can't do what you want in there. When that baby get about seven or eight months old sometimes you can see that baby rebelling against the prison authorities. A elbow try to push the stomach out. He can't get out. G-d say, "You got to wait. Wait. I'm clocking discipline into your cells, into your genes. I'm teaching you how to respect authority." Wait. That baby come out from the womb of the mother. Just willing to accept authority, not rebelling.
And then we with our crazy self, forget the direction that G-d gave us in the physiology. "Oh leave that boy alone. Let him play with that thing if he want to. He's a cute little child." Pretty soon that little thing he's playing with done killed somebody. Him or somebody else. Discipline. G-d put us first that He forms us not in freedom. G-d forms us under discipline in a cell and only when we got the form complete does He let us out in the world. And even then He got a rope on us. And we can't take the rope off. Those who have got the license, more than the permit, they cut the cord and separate us from our mother. Isn't that right? Yes. Have you locked up, than when they let you out you on a rope.
It's not one of your peers that can cut that rope and free you. It has to be one with a license. And you grow up in a child under the discipline of your mother and then you come up under the guidance of your father or the society. Is that right? Long time ago, the father used to educate his children, used to teach them a trade. He used to establish his child in society. But now the school takes the place of the father. Is that right? But still we have the same thing there. It's just a bigger body doing the job. And you go there and you get a permit. Is that right? And after you get enough knowledge to master, you are on your own. Before you become free to do those things, you have to take a test and prove worthy of a license. Is that right? And after you take the test and prove worthy of a license they say you are free to practice. As Salaam Alaikum.



