02-18-1994
IWDM Study Library
Al-Islam

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Sharif Abdul Salam: Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim, in the name of Allah, the merciful, the gracious. As-Salaam-Alaikum, peace be unto you and welcome to Al Islam in America. Let us also extend the greetings of Ramadan Kareem to our listeners, and we thank Allah for blessing us to be here again on this Saturday morning here on radio station WNWK FM, 105.9 on your FM dial. This radio program we feel is somewhat unique because this program is aimed towards correcting the contemporary and historical misconceptions about the religion of Al Islam.
We strive to address concerns and show in our spirit and posture the justice, balance, and fairness in the religion of Al Islam. Al Islam in America can be contacted at Post Office Box 362, New York, New York, 10039. That's Al Islam in America Post Office Box 362, New York, New York, 10039. My name is Sharif Abdul Salam, I'll be your host this morning. We do invite you to stay tuned to Al Islam in America.
[music]
In the background, the opening theme of our program is a composition entitled Come to Allah, and we do invite everyone to come to Allah. It was written by Eric Nouri, and performed by The Wisdom Kids. Come to Allah. Let's begin our program with an address from Imam Warith Deen Mohammed.
Introduction: You are listening to W. Deen Mohammed, The Muslim American spokesman for human salvation. Now, Imam W. Deen Mohammed.
Imam Warith Deen Mohammed: The wealth of this country is owing to good minded people. People who have charity in their hearts, people who are benevolent, people who wanted to do some good for more than themselves, for more than their relatives, for more than their friends, but people who wanted to extend the opportunities, carry a charity, the opportunities for work, and the opportunity for a better life to millions and millions of people. There are people who work hard for wealth in this country, I'm not going to name any of them today. There are people who work hard for wealth in this country, but they weren't working only for the American citizens.
They were thinking of people in the third world, what we call the third world now. They were thinking of opportunities eventually reaching depressed areas outside of the United States. They had those people in their concerns too, and that is why they were able to build such great wealth because G-d was with them. I don't care whether they were Christians, Jew or even Atheists, G-d rewards good efforts. The situation for your religion with G-d will be taken care of in the judgment if it's not taken care of here, but while you're here, G-d must reward good efforts.
Do you think Honorable Elijah Muhammad because he didn't conceive the teachings of the Quran correctly and mixed up the teachings of the Quran with black nationalism and other things, do you think he won't be rewarded for the good intentions or for his good work that he did with the hope of bettering the lives of his people, black people, and other people? Yes, he will be rewarded. He was rewarded while he was living, and I'm sure he'll be rewarded after. Yes, Allah is not us, Allah is so much bigger than us. If somebody told me, "You've really messed up now, you really messed up now." I say, "I'm glad I don't have to face you in the judgment. You're not going to be my judge."
[laughter]
It doesn't bother me. It doesn't bother me at all. I have come to the point where I know for sure that G-d is not a human being. If G-d was a human being, I stop worshiping him right now because I'm a human being. Now, dear Muslims, we know that we have everything for our life already supplied in the Quran the Holy Book, and in the life of Muhammad the prophet. We know that. I don't think we'll find any Muslim that will disagree with that. Even those Muslims who haven't read two pages of the Holy Book, but they have been converted and they believe. They believe the book is holy.
Yes, whatever we need is there, G-d provides for everything. That's what the believer says, whether you're Muslim or not. G-d provides for everything, so we believe it, whether we know the Quran or not, whether you read two pages, it doesn't matter. If we are sincere in our belief, we believe that Allah has provided for us everything all our needs are provided for in His holy book and in demonstration of how that book is to be lived,- Muhammad the prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, we believe that, but that's not enough, is it? Is that enough? No, that's not enough.
We have to be aware that there is a great demand for better preparedness in the life of Muslim, the Muslim individual because of our circumstances, not only in America but in the world today. The Islamic countries that are 90% and 100% Muslim, most of them have recently come from under colonial domination. For centuries, they did not have the power, the authority in their own land to live their religion, to protect their religion, to preach their religion, to pass their religion onto their children in the correct way. Many of them had to go to schools of the missionaries.
Though they did not have missionary schools for some countries that they did not have missionary school, many of them had to accept to come under the authority, the power, influence, and control of the colonial powers who dictated the limits on the authority. Don't think, "We are in America and we've been here America as Muslims and land where we are small minority and persecuted." No, the Muslim in his own land, 90% Muslim, sometime 100% Muslim has been persecuted more in his land for his religion than we have been in America for our religion. You have to understand that.
Then you have to accept the burden to prepare yourself better because our numbers are very small. Though we're number one billion people believing in this religion throughout the world, the number of us that are free to live the religion, to practice the religion, to advance the religion as is should be advanced are very few. The few of us in America that have this opportunity, we have to accept the burden of the many. We don't have to have the opportunity, we have to accept to advance this religion for the many who don't have the opportunity.
If we are free in America, then we should feel this responsibility to the million of Muslims who are not free in their own country to advance their own religion as it should be advanced. Not during colonialism, - now. Some of the same people who have been spoiled by those days of corruption are still in power. In power in countries and I don't want to name a single one. In power in countries that we look to as a Muslim country, as Islamic country. They're in power there. If you think you escaped the Jew by going to the Muslim world, you're crazy. I'd rather live with the good Jew next door in Chicago than to go to some of these Muslim countries and have the influences of the bad Jew dictating what's happening over there.
Not only the bad Jew, the bad communist, the bad capitalist. A lot of the bad people are right over there running the scenes in the Muslim lands, but in America, we have an opportunity, in a new time, in a desperate time where most people can't watch each other anymore. They got too much hell in their own quarters, they don't have the convenience, they don't have the situation to be watching what you're doing. We can work hard and advance at our religion, improve our lives, establish a good Muslim life, establish the good human life right here in America in these circumstances that are good and excellent when you know the facts of the world situation.
Don't go around here with your heart headed, your head hung. "What are we going to do? Yes, the religion is beautiful, but where can we go with it?" You can go to the White House with it. You can become a president in the United States with it. You can become a senator and a governor with it. You can become the leaders of America with Al Islam.
[Applause]
This is the time for it. The opportunity is greater here than anywhere else. A long time ago, presidents of this country put themselves on record for having recognized this religion. President Madison did. There are others who are on record for having recognized the great worth of this religion. Don't think that this religion was left out by those people who founded this country. Sometimes when I look at the concepts in a way that those concepts are worded, the concepts of inherent human word, et cetera, the concepts of a true democracy and informed electorate quoting some of the great American leaders.
When I look at that, I wonder if they were not reading the Quran and the Bible because I can't find all that in the Bible. I find a lot of it in the Quran and I can't find it in the Bible, so I said they had to have been reading the Quran and the Bible or G-d just blessed them with those universal insight that we have in the Quran. Whether they read the Quran or not, it didn't matter to me. They have the pure substance that I find in my book. They have it as a foundation for their democracy. Then that tells me that I can become a leader in this country, it doesn't mean that I'm going to say, "I'm a Muslim, vote for me." No, vote of me, that's all.
You think that many of the good Christians would have gotten up there and said, "I'm a good Christian, vote for me"? [laughs] "I'm a Jew, vote for me." That's not the way to get there. We have to be courageous people. When the burden of a competition, when the pressure on the need to survive, the pressure on the very spirit to survive becomes greater and greater, eventually it's going break you if you don't increase your imagination, if you don't enlarge your vision, if you don't come into greater courage, you going to be eliminated. Don't be afraid to, what did Dr. Du Bois say?
He said the measure of progress that we will make in the future depends on how far we would go to teach our children independent thinking. Be brave enough to think outside of the structures and context that you're put in. That your mind is put in, that your thoughts are put in, that you've lived by. Don't be afraid if they got it. A white man once said, within my hearing, he said, "You know the difference between the white and the black?" He said, "The white man has imagination." When he first said that I said, "Shit, you crazy man." I was a young fella then. I can't tell you what I said really. I was young fella then. I said, "This dumb sucka so and so and so, he crazy."
That's all we do is imagine, that's why we don't have anything real. As I got older, I understood what that man was saying. See, he wasn't talking about the small world that I was thinking about, that I was relating to, he's thinking about that that man had in his mind the desire to move forward.
Imam Mohammed: The hope of not only this society but the hope of world society is better put here than anywhere else. Believe me, we have some people right now who are super, but they are so few. We can't really know what is going on, but we have some super performers right now, not just Muslims, Christians and Muslims. We have some super performers. They are not anxious to get the camera on them to have their picture taken, they are not anxious to tell everybody about their achievements, they're not people who toot their own horns, they're real people and we have some great ones.
Some tremendous men and women right now that are Christians, and Muslims, and others from these generations, or forefathers are slaves. Right in the present day descendants, we have some tremendous people, and we have more than we realize we have. In fact, right out here in this audience, we got some tremendous people. We have some great leaders right here in this audience, great leaders. We have some people who could come into position of responsibility and could do much more with those positions than the people who are presently holding those positions.
Yes, I'm aware of that. I know that for a fact. The time will come when you will be able to just move right into those positions. The time will come, but first, G-d has to give us time to repent. Yes, to repent and you might say, "What is our crime?" The good ones, the free ones, the real ones, you have no day of repentance that you have to face, but the majority of our people must repent.
The majority of our people must repent because our mothers and fathers from the days of slavery, in their time of slavery and after, in the time when there was discrimination in this country, no equal opportunity for us in this country, when we were marked and scorned in this country, when our worth as human beings was degraded as the monkey, on the level of the monkey or worse. Those parents of ours, even the worst ones who couldn't stay away from the liquor bottle or couldn't follow a job, even the worst ones were better than we are today.
Were better than we are, I mean as a whole, as a majority, they were better than we are today because they at least had somewhere in that make up the fear of G-d, and the belief that it was G-d that was delivering them. They believed that it was G-d that would bring a change in this country. The didn't put their hopes in the white man, they put their hopes in G-d. They didn't think they had to wait for the right president to come into office, they believed that if they could press upon the minds of the white race that they would find enough sensible white people. Enough white people with their life in good human form to respond to the demands of G-d.
They were no different in their position than the Hebrews and the Pharaoh, they were no different. The Hebrews and the Pharaoh, they didn't go to Pharaoh seeking salvation, they went to G-d seeking salvation, and then they pressed upon Pharaoh that this is G-d's position and your position is in direct conflict with G-d's position. They were eventually able to win their way to overcome the evil influences and the evil power or opposition of those Egyptians under that wicked Pharaoh, under that wicked ruler. Our people situation was similar, very similar.
They were not looking to the white man for hope, few Uncle Toms were looking to him for hope openly, but privately, even those few Uncle Toms were praying to G-d and fooling the white man. Making the white man think that, "Yes, you’re the master. We know we won't go nowhere, we won’t get no opportunity without you, master," but in the private room behind the scenes, in the cornfield somewhere, out of the eyesight of the white master, that poor black man, that poor Uncle Tom was praying to G-d. We have changed. We went from black power to greed power to nothing. I'm talking about on the whole. We went to greed, to getting over at any cost.
To getting over at your brother's expense even if it means selling them dope, cheating them at the game, tricking him into buying your products. They were not fair. Yes, so this is what we did. Preying in him with a gun, robbing him, taking his little money. Extortion games, extortion rackets. Oppressing your own neighborhood. All of this has occurred during the last 10 or 15 years and it brought the state of the African American people to such a state that the white man doesn't respect our aspirations anymore. The white man as a whole do not respect the aspiration of the black community anymore.
He's not even listening to your cries, he does not even care about what you’re being bothered with. He see you as a people who lost your opportunity, he see us as a people who turn our back on our better motivation, on our better principles. We turn our back on our better way of life and just went out greedy and chasing the material things, and chasing the dollar, and living a life of fun and pleasure, doing the boogie, shaking the booty, doing all these crazy things, popping the dope, popping the pills, shooting the dope, so he see us as a wasted lot and we have to repent. Repent before G-d before change will come for all of us.
We're not looking for any change to come for the millions of American blacks, we're looking for a change to come to the few courageous Muslims, and the few courageous good Christians of this country who will not turn their back. Yes, and that's what makes the time so good for us. That's so good for us. You don't say, "Hey, the best to come in on the ground floor," they say, "Hey, come in on the ground floor. See, this is a new company, come in on the ground floor. There ain't no competition here, very little competition." The scene in America has changed. America is being discovered all over again. Too many people are being eliminated, have been eliminated.
A few are qualified. We are ahead on the ground floor, let’s take advantage of our opportunity, let’s go forward to become the new industrialists of America. Let’s go forward to become the new leaders of America in government, in industries, in everything. Let’s have the courage to think idealistically for the new vision for America. Let us be writers of a new constitution if any one is to be written. Yes, why not? We know the good side and the bad side of America. Yes, our soul, our spirit have been carried through the fiery furnace. We know the good and bad side. White men knows the good side, we know the bad also.
White men can look at the good side, we have the courage, we have the situation. Not the courage, but we have the situation to look at the bad side too. I don’t see how all of us can look to America and where she is today, and where her people have guided her, I don't see how all of us can look to that and say, "That's where our hope is." Some of us, I know some of us have been qualified by experience. Some of us have been qualified to have a desire, to having a mission to go further than America has ever taken us. I want to go further than America has ever taken me.
I'm not satisfied with the limits, I see on America's vision and aspirations. No, I want to go further than this country have taken me. Believe me, if we don't do it, somebody else will. This country now has to trust the energies, the vision, and disciplines of the newcomers. The Asians, the Cubans, the Haitians, Japanese, the Koreans. It has to look for its strength and its future in those new Americans. I believe that in time, the Japanese that came here, set up this house, drove his stakes into the ground, the Korean, the Haitian, the Cuban, in time, they're going to be overcome by the pressures of this society.
They're going to give up their culture, they're going to give up their disciplines, and the only people that are going to be left around is those that are inferior now, me and you. We're going to be better off than them in time. We can't go any more distance backwards, buddy. I don't care what happen to America, we can't go backwards no more. We have backed up as far as is possible for a human being to back up. We must go forward and the spirit is going to become stronger and stronger in us to go forward. The great fortune that is with us is the Quran and the life of Muhammad. That's the great fortune.
Because that's what we need more than anything. Now, I'm not saying the church hasn't been good for us. The church during the time of no opportunity was excellent for us because the church is an escape. The church as is conceived by most people, as a religion that’s practiced by most Christians, the church is an escape from the obligations of the world. The church is a relief situation from worldly situations. Our religion accommodates the need of a man who’s free now to live in the world. When we were not free to live in the world, perhaps the church was the best situation.
Although, I won't agree with you, I'm saying I can compromise, I can kind of sympathize. I do believe that slavery and Jim Crow and all of that, that time would have been cut short if we had embraced the teachings of Al Islam, the Quran and the life of Muhammad. That time would have been short. We wouldn't have waited that long for no equality in this country. Buddy, that time would have been cut short. Because of the rational teachings of Al Islam, we would have changed the establishment so much that they would have changed all the laws.
They wouldn't have feared no integration, no rushing to the dating a white woman. They wouldn’t have feared that because our religion, when it's accepted in the right way, it doesn't leave us with any desire to take out our grievances on other people, to fulfill old animal desires that were denied, no, it doesn't leave us in a situation like that. Our religion puts us in a situation where we are comfortable and are best situated when we are in our own life and identifying as ourselves. What I'm saying to you is that our religion does away with that old inferiority idea, inferiority complexes, identity crisis. All of that vanishes in the light of the teachings of our religion.
We have no false or silly things staring at us that will have to be satisfied only when we have experienced, going with a pretty white woman. Whether we realize it or not, a lot of our people are not really burdened with that as they used to be. Most of our men used to be really burdened with that. They just wanted a white woman but that has changed now. Good times have given opportunity for the mind to become normal and many of our men, we don't have that problem anymore. We're not cared about no white woman, we are satisfied with our women.
Still, there are some of us still around who'd rather be in a bed with a pretty white woman than embrace Jesus on the streets of Chicago in heaven. Yes, and it was said that the most powerful symbol standing as a proof of emancipation is a black man with a white woman on his arms or in his bed. It's true for some of us right today. Some of us will work hard for a better car, a home, more wealth and really what we have in our sites down the end, what's going to cap all of that is that we going to have a white woman in our bed one day, one morning.
One morning, we going to wake up and a white woman will be laying on that sheet with us. Don't laugh sisters because some of you all have that. You don't have the problem as much as we do, but some of you all have that problem too. You going to buy you a white man. "I'm going to get rich enough and buy me a white man. I bet then I’ll get me some respect."
Yes, so G-d has given us a situation, it’s a blessing. The opportunity to be Muslims, contact with the Quran and the true life of the Prophet, the last prophet. Oh, the prophet who came to establish what? He said, “I have been sitting in the world for the express purpose of promoting good character.”
[00:05:40] [END OF AUDIO]


