06/08/2006
IWDM Study Library
Interview about Muslim Convention

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

With G-d's Name, the Merciful Benefactor, the Merciful Redeemer. We salute the last Prophet Muhammad, Sa Ala Alahi Wa Salaam. That is the Prayers and the Peace be upon him. And that is what follows of that salute to Muhammad the Prophet, the traditional salute given to him by over 1 billion Muslims, well over 1 billion Muslims throughout the world. We are preparing for our annual Muslim Convention that we have been identifying as Islamic Convention, but we have changed it this year to read Muslim Convention, because Islamic Convention, it points directly or puts religion in focus. And actually, our Conventions that have been going on for a number of years, for a number of years now are not to put the religion in focus as much as it is to put the members of our association in focus. And that was started back in the sixties and even long before that by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, our late leader.

We pray G-d forgive him his sins and grant him the paradise. And we are, since that time we have been keeping the same spirit. That is a spirit of coming once a year together to see one another, to be with one another and most importantly to hear what our leader has to say about the state of affairs for our association or for our community. With that, I now go to the particulars for our Convention. Our Convention will be having workshops on CPC ComTrust, LLC. That is our collective purchasing effort to increase business for small people coming together with their small means, but great means when it comes to character and virtues. We have great means. And in my opinion, that's what makes business successful. And I believe this is generally accepted in the business world. What makes business successful is sticking to your principles, establishing yourself upon character, good character, and a virtuous life.

So, this is what we expect from our business people who have come together. We are an association of business people independently doing business, but collectively buying, making big purchases, volume purchases. And we'll have workshops, we'll have a conference, we'll have also Graceline Fashions also sponsored by the same business effort. We'll have a Graceline Fashion Show, headed by Bina Muhammad, which will give an opportunity for designers in our community to put their designs on display and to have their designs modeled so that we see what we are producing in our community and support those who are excellent in their works. More than that, that's the business side. We have more of that, but I have to quickly, I'll go to the spiritual side. For the spiritual side, there will be Jumu'ah, which will open our Convention. Jumu'ah will be on that Friday of the Labor Day weekend this year, Muslim Convention 2006. After Jumu'ah, there will be vendors, there'll be a vendors market and it's exciting just to walk through the vendors markets and see all the fine products ranging from garments, dress suits, leisure suits, women’s dresses, some children’s also. Items in the market, cosmetics, oils, incense and jewelry. Fascinating jewelry, some very, very attractive jewelry that I find our vendors having in the market area, our marketplace for our annual Convention.

And Sunday we'll have what will be the State of Affairs or State of our Community address of this association addressed by myself. But we are expecting to have, if not on Sunday, on cultural night, which I believe will be Saturday night, Saturday evening, and Saturday night, we're expecting to have a guest speaker and a keynote speaker. Our guest speaker will be the President of a university in Indianapolis, African-American man, a Catholic, a devout Catholic, but a very down to earth person who has a lot of admiration for our history going back to the Nation of Islam and especially for what we are doing now in the community. And we'll have a keynote speaker who's a lady reverend. And I hope that we'll have a lot of youngsters out to hear her. She can really move or motivate youngsters and we expect to have her address us.

I don't know if they will both be addressing us on cultural night, that may be the case. But one of them may be addressing us on Sunday when I make my major address of the year, public address. Especially on the state of our community and also our address to the public, addressing the public life and how we can become more productive citizens, and citizens enjoying our life more as G-d designed this life to work for us. G-d designed our life to work for us. And those who have done the most with the world are those who have been guided by scripture to know what G-d designed for us in this world to do with our life and with our opportunities in the public. With that, I say we are happy to be preparing for our Muslim Annual Convention and we are expecting many more than last year to be present for this year. And I thank those who have recognized my, that is those in our leadership throughout the country who have recognized my 30 years of leadership and the growth that we have realized around the country and some outside of the country like in Bermuda and a few other places. And they're celebrating or we are celebrating, 30 years of my leadership. Thank you all and again, Peace, As Salaam Alaikum.
Speaker 2:
Brother Imam, we want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come and be with us today and talk to us in reference to the upcoming Convention.
Imam WD Mohammed:
My pleasure.
Speaker 2:
We have a couple of questions that we would like to ask that's relevant to the upcoming Convention and also over the years. For an example, last year you had the theme for the Convention was Human Nature: Earth's Most Valuable Resource. And then this year we have Earning Freedom and Economic Empowerment. We Are a Friendly Neighboring Community. How does these two subjects, or how do you see these two subjects coming together to benefit us as a whole?
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes. Well, last year the subject was more on nature to bring our attention to the inherent human worth that we have that most of us don't realize because of bad circumstances for our life, either bad home conditions or bad neighborhood conditions or bad world conditions. It was time when the world was very bad for us. We had a hard time surviving. One of our guest speakers who will be speaking at the Convention this year said that when we were struggling and all of us were hurting together, we were focused better. Yes. So, the attention was given to the good nature that is in all of us that G-d put in us for us to rely on when pressure comes, when bad times come, rely on that good nature to carry us through. So, the attention was on that and how we allow everybody to benefit from that but ourselves. Everybody making billions on our good nature except ourselves.

They're either getting the benefit from the good side by appealing to the good side or they're getting benefit by appealing to our weaknesses and corrupting us so we buy things that we shouldn't buy and give our life and our monies to things that we shouldn't give our life and our monies to. So, they put us in a hell if we don't employ our own resources. So that what that was all about last year.

This year we are looking more at the community rather than the nature. We are going to be focusing on community life and how G-d has also made inherent in us community life. Every individual is born with the urges and hunger for community life, with the urges to prepare himself for community life and with the hunger inside for community life. Man's life is never complete and that includes women. Man's life is never complete until he finds his life established in community. So, this is also inherent. It says inherent as the soul with its righteousness and as the soul with its curiosities to develop intelligence for us. It is as inherent as that, the community. That's why G-d says you are the best community evolved, of the best communities evolved for the good of all people. He's telling us that we are inherently a people born to come into community life. G-d has put that seed in us so that we come into community life. So, it'll be focusing community life and how we are to prepare ourself for the full community life so that we have people representing us well in religion, also in spiritual life, in business, in politics, in government, et cetera. Yes, sir.
Imam Darnell Karim:
And Imam Mohammed, in keeping with that spirit of the question that was asked, the question would be here is that each Convention, even though you have different subjects.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes.
Imam Darnell Karim:
Do you have any particular focus as you are headed toward, as you give the various subjects where you are headed to with them?
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes. Yes. Destiny. Destiny for the human soul, cannot be realized except with other people. Even eating a meal at home with your family. The Prophet encouraged us not to eat alone, but to seek to eat in the company of others or have company when we eat. He said the blessing is on the numbers. The blessing is on the numbers. If one eats, there's a small portion. If two eats, it gets bigger. If 10 eats it's even more. If 20 eat together, it's even more. 30 together, it's even much more. And that's why we feel so good when we eat with a crowd, especially a crowd that's compatible with our own good nature and aspirations. When we eat with people like that, we still feel good. We feel much better than we do when we're eating at home sitting by ourselves, with a couple of people, a couple of persons from the family. When the group comes together oh, look how the spirits just so alive and how good we feel.

So, in the long run, what we are hoping for in the distance is to see year by year. We don't want any year to be less impressive than the year before. We want every year to be more impressive. That's our goal, that's our effort, that's what we are straining for. And the long-distance aim that we have is to see this community life blossom more and more, come up structured well, more and more. Having more and more of what we call for in our life as a community. And that means most importantly, clean and decent places that we can respect and others will respect if they come from any religion. Places of worship, Masjids we say, or Mosques, places of worship. But in the same, I would say importance, the same importance, when we measure importance. In the same measure of importance, we have education.

There's no education separate from religion in Islam. There's no way to separate education in Islam. And it was that way for Christians and for many it's still that way for them. It was that way for Christians in the early history of this country. Government was not funding schools. Schools were funded by Churches, by religious communities. So, there's no way to separate our interests in education for our adults, but also for our children who inherit us. No way for us to separate it. So down the road we hope to have quality schools, fine schools, schools that light us up when we see them and know that our children are attending those schools. And we hope to have also neighborhoods where Islam will be present there. Not just Muslims without Islam, but Islam will be present there in the Muslims. They will have Muslims conducting businesses following the moral principles and guidelines of our religion.

Not having something that our religion objects or having people who are letting down our standards, but people holding our standards in business. We hope to have thriving business community. We hope to have the adhan heard in that neighborhood. And I have heard from our townspeople, our government people in these towns where we are, I've heard that they would not only welcome our places of worship, but they would welcome the call to prayer, our adhan to be heard in the neighborhood just as they welcome church bells to ring. And that's what we hope to see one day. But we also would like to see us having everything within our own responsibility that we can possibly have. I would never be completely pleased myself with a neighborhood that can't take care of itself financially. Neighborhood should be supported by business people and business people should make the neighborhood strong financially, should make the neighborhood strong financially.

And we should be able to go to within reasonable distance in our own neighborhood to buy what is convenient for us to have. The convenience store should be the whole neighborhood. So we can go and buy whatever eggs, flour, food items, a garment. If we need something to wear for Sunday, we shouldn't have to go way across town. We go right to our store in our neighborhood, we should have everything that we need. Even real estate. If you want to talk to a real estate agent about property or selling or buying property, we have our own realtor, everything. I'll be only satisfied when we have a neighborhood that's sufficient in every respect. Business people are strong and they belong to that neighborhood where the neighborhood provides the tax base for the whole area. That our neighborhood, the tax base is provided by our own area. That the city is not looking to us, looking at us weeping, saying, I wish those people hadn't moved in here. But they'll be telling their friends and everybody, we are proud of these people. They have a strong community and a strong and safe neighborhood. That's what we aim down the road. That's what we want. And we have to make improvement on the development of that every year. We have to see us reaching, getting closer and closer to that every year.

Sounds like work to me. We have our work cut out for us. And that kind of work sounds like happiness to me.
Speaker 2:
Yes. Yes sir.
Imam WD Mohammed:
A real man is sad because he ain't got no work. He got no work to do.
Speaker 2:
Brother Imam, getting back, staying on, should I say the theme for this year's Convention, earning freedom and economic empowerment. It brings to mind our youth. We are I think at this moment, I think we are about 30 years into your leadership and some of us who was back during the time of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, we had about 30 or 40 years of his leadership. And what do you think is the reason why it has taken us so long economically to develop and what effects is this having on our youth today?
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes. The first part of the question.
Speaker 2:
Yes sir.
Imam WD Mohammed:
What has caused us to not achieve sustained growth for our economic effort interest? The reason for that is mainly two. There are other reasons to, but mainly two. Two is enough as an answer.
Speaker 2:
Yes sir.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Firstly, under the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, we were a protest movement, just like our Civil Rights movement was a protest movement. We were a protest movement. We were protesting bad treatment and limits placed on our life by the government itself. The government permitted it. The government was permitting that. So, when our idea started in America in the early thirties, went through the thirties and the forties and the fifties to the sixties, all those years there were two laws and two Americas. As our Civil Rights brothers say- Two laws. One for white folks and one for us and two Americas, one open and one closed. The one closed to us. Yes. So that was the reality. So that's one of the reasons. When you see that the Nation of Islam was protesting that, and the Nation of Islam was condemning the whole society, the whole white society of America as a race of devils, blaming them for all these evils.

Now we know many of them were innocent, but when you're hurting like that, you don't say that there's three, four people around here that's not hurting me. It is just this 100,000 that keep beating on me. You don't say that. You say these people are beating on us. These people are hurting us. So that was the truth. That was the reality. That's one reason. Now, when we accumulated the money and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad passed away, the government people, they watched the Honorable Elijah Muhammad come from nothing to where he came from. Almost nothing in the thirties to where he was in the sixties. They watched that. And in the seventies he passed, in 1975. So, they watched that and they knew that this man is a wise leader and he's safe. He's a safe leader. We can trust him that he's not going start any senseless violence or have his people corrupting our society.

So, they didn't feel anything, any harm coming from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. But now he's going to pass. The next leader may not be the man that Elijah Muhammad is. He may not be as wise and as safe with those explosives they're working with. So, they feared that the next man came up would not be able to handle the explosives in the language of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam like he handled them. So, they planned to deprive the next leader of financial strength because that's what makes you more powerful, it's money. So, they want deprive him of financial strength. What did they do to the Nation of Islam, to us? They did the same thing to us that they did to Garvey and all the rest. When those leaders got of old age and about to pass or when they passed, then the government comes in with charges of taxes unpaid and whatever.

Come in with all those charges and take all the money away so we won't be strong financially. If you get the wrong leader, you won't be strong financially to support yourself. So that's one of the reasons. That's one of the reasons. The other reason for it is that we depend on leaders too much. We see our whole life in a leader, and for some reason our leaders have been all Messianic leaders. A Messianic leader is a leader that you believe G-d gave you, and he has a mission to complete something for you that G-d assigned, G-d gave him that assignment. So, when he's gone, the spirit is knocked out of most of the followers. They have no spirit to go forward when he's gone. To have sustained economic growth, you have to see the job as being more important than your persons, even though that person be the leader. And that's what I have done over 30 years. I've built up that kind of reality in the mind of the people, especially in the minds of our leaders. And I expect our growth to continue. Whether I'm here or not, we will have sustained growth.
Speaker 2:
Yes sir.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes. Yes, I have.
Speaker 2:
So, what effect do you think that has had over the years on our youth?
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes, that was the other question. Pardon me. Yes. On our youth. Well, it has its impact in the life of our adults much stronger or much more evident than it is in our youth. I think youth, they're young. So, youth either go away from you and find something to do, or they get a spirit to pull you out of your misery and out of your sleep. They wake you up out of your sleep. And we can see our youth doing that. We have youngsters, males and females all around the country who are very enthusiastic and optimistic and they're leaders all to themselves within their own association. They're real leaders. So, I don't think we have to worry too much about our youth being hurt by these setbacks. It's usually the adult people, the ones who have families, children, and they have not seen this fulfilled for their children.

So, it's those that are set back, they're set back. They're the ones who are mostly set back. Our youngsters, they'll find something to do. They'll leave something that's dried up, passed away, they'll leave the dead and they'll go find the living. Or they will have a spirit and a vision for bringing the dead, the dead to come to life again. I don't worry about the youth right now. Only thing I'm worried about is us not making it clear to our youth that we appreciate those that are alive and going after the real life, the good life. And we are not so disturbed by those who give themselves to violence and indecencies and whatever, filthy language and whatever. We are not so disturbed by them that we can't see our good youth and good merits that they have earned by sticking with the good life and working to establish a good life in society.
Imam Darnell Karim:
Yes. Just one more here and that is on the Conventions each year that we have and all of these different programs and concepts, things that you are talking, directions that you've given to the community. Should that be a part of the Convention progress. A report of progress to say we were here last year or two years or so ago now we are here at this point.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes. All around growth. Our progress is what we would like to report on. When I say all around, I mean for education, for our schools, our private school system, our schools in the various cities of United States, but also for our business people, for our creative business people. We have creative business people. For our business people. The same for our message of Islam too. Our message of Islam. We'd like to report on it, how we are doing, what are the keys, what is the key language, what is the most important language in our religious message. So, we need to make that clear on Convention Day. Because many who are not in touch with a big community, they hardly ever get a chance to pray with Muslims from our association, the same association that they're in. They're in small towns or they're in places distant from places that we can attend to get that kind of information. They depend on the annual Muslim Convention, which we used to call the Islamic Convention before. They depend on the annual Muslim Convention to fill them in, to bring them up to date on what's going on and to make it clear to them how they are to look at things, how they're to see Imam WD Mohammed, how they are see the effort for education, how they are to see our patriotism as Americans, how they are to see it.

Our patriotism is not the patriotism of skinheads or Afro wearing people. Our patriotism is our own. So, they want to hear that. They want to know clearly what is this, what is new relationship we have with the United States. So, they have a lot of questions that they're wanting answered. And Imam Darnell Karim, we should also have workshops on the what is the focus, where should we be focused? Where are we focused in terms of our interests in education and schools, where are we focused as citizens who uphold the law and all the good life of America, where are we? So, we should have workshops and if we have enough months coming, we have enough months between now and then. We only need them a month or so to put this all together. So, I think you all, I am speaking to the leaders now and with me, who work with me. You all should be working to see that we have workshops with something of real substance and something that's really addressing our community and not just addressing ideas or interests, but addressing our community and our community needs.
Speaker 2:
Brother Imam, we thank you for taking this opportunity. I know that you're very busy. You have to get back. I have one last question that'll be off of the record of course. But before I ask the question, we would like to have you to make your last statements for the Convention that you would like the people to know that would be going out on the air.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yes, yes. You can be free and yet be not free. You can be free as far as your knowledge of the Emancipation Proclamation or be free as far as your knowledge that citizens, all citizens in America are free. This is the land of the free, all citizens in America are free. You can be free with that awareness, but that awareness is not enough to have freedom become real for you. To have freedom become real for you, you have to qualify. And that's what we are going to talk about at the Convention Sunday public address.
Speaker 2:
And we want everyone to be there to make sure they hear you speak on this subject. So we are encouraging everyone to be present. And I think it's going to be at the UIC Provision?
Imam WD Mohammed:
Pavilion.
Speaker 2:
UIC Pavilion on Racine and Hostage Street here in Chicago.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yes sir.
Imam WD Mohammed:
And I hope they'll get carpools and I hope that we'll get buses, few buses and assist the people who will be present here from around the Midwest and distances as far as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City.
Speaker 2:
Yes sir.
Imam WD Mohammed:
Atlanta, Georgia. People will be here and I hope we will have, with the effort, with a united effort, I hope that we'll have buses to say, do you have a way to get to the pavilion? Yes sir.



