1979-October-19

Bilalian News

Growth Of A Community

Imam W. Deen Muhammad


With the Name Allah (In the Name of God), the Gracious, the Compassionate
As-Salaam-Alaikum

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from Imam Wallace Deen Muhammad's address delivered in Tallahassee, Fla., April 2, 1979.

All praise is clue to Almighty God, the guardian evolver and sustainer of all the worlds. The blessings and peace be upon Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah to us all.
0 Allah, guide us, forgive us our faults, and grant us the blessings of faith. I bear witness there is no deity except Allah, and I bear witness Muhammad is His Servant and His Messenger. Peace be upon him, his descendants, his companions, the righteous servants, all of them, and upon us in America and throughout the world:
The world society is one big mold that shapes us in it. It has been told to us in scripture that God makes the human being. He creates the germ out of the male and it goes into the female and finds a place of rest. If it doesn't find a place to rest, it will never mature. But if it finds a place of rest, it will start to develop. It will start, to grow stage by stage until it comes into the complete structure or the complete design that God intended for it.

But it has to find a place of rest, meaning an acceptable place, an ideal environment, the kind of environment that God intended for it. If it finds that kind of environment, a kind of Eden, a kind of original paradise, it will rest and begin to grow.

God wills it stage by stage until it reaches the full pattern that God intended for it, then it's ready to be delivered; once it's delivered, it can separate from the world in which it was formed.

They cut the navel cord. You don't have to breathe by your mother's system anymore; you don't have to feed by your mother's system anymore; you have your own independent system. You can live with your mother so she can help you get on your feet, and your father can help raise you up, but you're growing on your own now—right?
We wonder why we as the African-American people can't make it in America, why we can't get some economic standing, some political clout, some power more than just a vote.

I'll tell you why we can't get it; the navel cord hasn't been cut. We are still feeding on the system of our mother. We haven't learned yet that we have to grow up. There comes a parting time, a time when you have to think with your own brain, breathe with your own nose, see with your eyes, walk with your own legs—your system has to be independent though you belong to a great system we call the United States of America.

You have to have enough independence to make you an individual responsible to himself or herself. We have to have that responsibility.
The Nation of Islam—as it was created, and as it has developed now into an integral part of the world society of Al-Islam, is a good demonstration that the environment is the enslaver, the environment is what denies us our freedom, our self-independence, our self-dignity, our selfhood.

A person should be able to survive, should be able to think for himself; a person should be able to sit on an iceberg away from all people and not go crazy. Most of us in this society can't be alone for two seconds or we go crazy. If there aren't any people in the house with us, we have to turn the record player on—turn it up so high we can't hear the doorbell if it rings. Privacy is a terrorizing thought.

"I don't want any privacy, that will kill me." Why—? Because you are going to be alone with something that's dead. What living thing wants to be with a dead thing? You have let your nature die so if you are by yourself, you are with a dead thing, you have nobody in your company but a dead thing.

Look what happened in our lives when a new environment was created. We didn't have to leave America, a new environment was created, we were given a new world. It wasn't the best of worlds, but it was a world that said "no" to the things the other world said "yes" to.

We were given a new world that said no to immodesty, no to vulgar tongue, to obscene language; it said no to laziness, no to filth, no to curses, to swearing, to self-hate; it said no to liquor, no even to a cigarette, no to vulgar dancing. And because the environment, the new world of authority we were put in, said no, the environment had the influence to make the inner-being, the nature, obey it.

We say in the religious language that God creates us in our mothers; the term for nation is "mother." In the Arabic language, or Quranic language, mother is "umb." Nation is "ummah," mother is "umb." If I say "my mother," I say, "ummi." If I say "My nation," I say "ummati." Mother, "umb"; nation, "ummah." So they are the same word, the root is the same.

We speak of nations now as our mothers, don't we? Nation—the mother. But we also speak of something else as mother—Mother' Nature. Before there was nation, there was a Mother Nature—is that right? Nature was replaced by nation. If nation goes wrong, then we are formed in the wrong mother.

God says that He forms us in the wombs or in the abdomens of our mothers. He doesn't form us in our fathers. He forms us in our mothers.

We are formed in this environment, people, and until we do something to create an environment that is agreeable with the growth and nature that is within us, that God put in us, we will always have problems, we will always be confused, we will always be in misery, we will always be in hell, we will always be struggling to get ahead, and never make it.

But once we do what the scientists have done in chemistry, in physics, in mathematics, we'll go back and study what nature wants and start giving ourselves what is best for human nature.

God gives us an intellect to see, to search, to look for what nature is asking for, to make judgments and decisions to go out and order, to give our nature the best.
So, dear people, this is the knowledge we need: You don't have to go to school four years, six years, or two years to learn how to manage your life. The key to managing your life is to come back home where God intended us to be in the first place.

Allah is the perfect being. Allah is all righteous, truthful — no imperfections in Allah. Allah is Supreme and Perfect without any imperfections.
0 Allah. Make us of those who purify themselves and of those who repent, and guide us in your path. Amen.

Peace be to you
Your brother in service to Allah,
Wallace Deen Muhammad
