02/15/1997
IWDM Study Library
Business Investment Conference

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Imam Mohammed: Thank you very much. Thank you. We praise G-d and we give the greetings of peace to you in our language, the language of Muslims all over the world no matter what language we speak, we give the greetings in the same language As-Salaam Alaikum.
Audience: Wa Alaikum as-Salaam.
Imam Mohammed: We praise G-d and witness that he is one, the Lord creator of everything who cares about all that he created and especially the human being that he created to be responsible for his environment, to contribute to the creation of G-d by serving the will of G-d for himself and for his environment.
Islam is a religion that connects man back to his beginnings in the father or the first ancestor, Adam to remind us of what we should inherit as our responsibility. Adam was created representing mankind, the beginning of mankind and also the life and destiny of mankind. He was created and G-d gave him responsibility for everything in his environment.
Allah revealed the Qu'ran supporting that perception or that idea of the beginning of man that we find in the Bible as "[Arabic] Qu'ran" supporting it saying that he created man to be Khalifa. Khalifa means to inherit responsibility, to serve the will of G-d and to utilize, make good use of everything that G-d has surrounded us with or what we call the beautiful natural creation and everything else that will come into this Creation. G-d says that he has made it to yield its benefits to the man that he created.
Everything in the skies and in the earth and in between, G-d has created it to yield this benefit to man. We cannot get that benefit if we don't come alive, wake up and come alive in our mind. That is our rational mind, our intellect. That's where we have to come alive and wake up there, then we can get the benefit. Prophet Mohammad supporting this what I have said, Prophet Muhammad, the last of the prophets and seal of the prophets, he said, "G-d did not create anything better than the human intellect." Nothing created better than the human intellect and then science progresses. Now we understand that saying could be supported by science.
Science describes the human being as homo sapien. Homo sapien means, thinking man, rational mind, rational man, man with an intellect. Intellect means the ability to think and reason, to use your rational powers to make judgments et cetera. This is our description in science as well as the picture that G-d gives us.
We know the importance of the human heart and the human soul but sometimes we forget that that soul in the human heart has been created to express itself through the instrument of the human mind, the intellect. If your mind is not working in good order, we won't see the beauty of your heart. If your mind is not working in good order, we won't see the beauty of your soul, all of that might be destroyed. Now we know there is the exception. Some people go stark raving mad but they are still able to show us the beauty of their souls. I have run into somebody just like that.
[laughter]
Crazier than hell. But if you just stay there with them long enough, you'll see the beauty of their soul-
[laughter]
-enraged by everything but if you stay with him long enough you'll see the beauty of their soul. That's the exception though, some retarded but we still can see the beauty of their soul. That's the exception. Most people who lose the good control and good condition of their brains of the rational mind, they can't express the beauty of their souls and the beauty of their hearts. I think it's Ned Cole, I'm a fan of Ned Cole even now I still got his numbers and I still sing him in my home when nobody's around.
[laughter]
In one of his songs he had the expression "My Foolish Heart". A lot of us don't know the heart can become foolish. If the heart doesn't get support from the rational mind, it will become foolish. I have had a Foolish Heart at some periods of time in my young life, foolish heart. I just messed myself up and made myself so miserable. Giving into my heart without rational guidance. Yes. I love the woman so much until it made me crazy.
[laughter]
One day I had G-d blessed to come back and trust my rational judgment. When I start trusting rational judgment, I finally found an answer and I did what my father said. I looked at her and I said, so long girl.
[laughter]
That's what my father told me to do when I was all messed up. I couldn't do it. But years later I got the strength to do that, I said, "So long girl."
[laughter]
That was the end of that. Don't underestimate the value and role of the rational mind, the rational mind has led the way. Education, the rational mind seeking to know G-d's creation. Seeking to know G-d's will, command on this earth. The rational mind has been able to lead us down the path or up the path or in the path of education, correct education, quality education, useful knowledge as Prophet Muhammad put it. Useful knowledge, useful sciences and useful knowledge to benefit society, to benefit us.
So don't underestimate this and religion as revealed to his prophets from the beginning till now to the last prophet that is, religion is revealed to awaken the heart and the intellect. But because we are confused in this world, our brain, our senses, our experience is not good enough to protect us from deviating from the way that G-d has created us to go.
Sometimes the heart becomes so ignorant, so foolish that the brain can't make one step in the path of progress. G-d has to find a human being who still has his heart in good condition and the world starts all over again because G-d finds someone and gives that someone to us who has his heart in solid good condition. G-d didn't say he revealed the Qu'ran to Muhammad's brain because Muhammad was unlearned, he was unschooled. He was not the son or follower of any religious scripture or tradition.
G-d didn't say he revealed it to his brain, G-d says, "And we revealed it upon your heart." Because his heart was in good condition, G-d invested the knowledge in Muhammad's heart, and then the knowledge itself accepted in the heart begins to register on the intellect, the brain. It began to register on the brain, the intellect. I can tell you this now as though I was there witnessing. Why? Because I experienced the same thing. I had an innocent heart.
G-d, because of my innocent heart, G-d guided me to the guidance and because my heart was in good condition, my mind began to register what my heart was accepting.
[laughter]
It came to blossom like a plant in my mind, though it was beneath the soil at first in my heart. Isn't that wonderful? Praise be to G-d. We know our benefactor, our benefactor is G-d, the Lord creator of all of us, that's our greatest benefactor and man takes too much credit. We are here with the topic of leadership. We want to rise to the challenge of leadership.
We praise G-d who is the Lord Creator of everything. Most Merciful and most generous. Our Benefactor, our Redeemer. We praise him and we follow the word of G-d as revealed to us in the Qu'ran and we follow the model human person, Muhammad the prophet, the son of Abdullah, prayers and peace be upon him.
Leadership for us developed when we were ourselves, a people restricted to plantation, service, work, slavery. We were not free to develop our intellects, our intellects were enslaved or at least held back. I don't think you can enslave the intellect. Not of a healthy minded person, but it was at least held back from being expressed, from having the freedom to express itself in America, on this continent and there developed for us leadership. I'm sure there was leadership for us, there was leadership for us before Fredrick Douglas.
It's difficult to point to them before Fredrick Douglas, but it's easy to identify Fredrick Douglas as a great leader for the freedom struggle or the freedom movement. Fredrick Douglas. A man of great intellect. A man of superior intellect, who himself had manifested his intelligence, his ability to be a leader for the freedom struggle while he was yet a slave, while he was yet a slave. Freedom hadn't come yet.
Many others came after him, one after another. Sometimes many existed in the same time period. In the time of Booker T. Washington there was W Du Bois and others. One of the more recent ones that I recall who was serving us as a leader, and a leadership that we could recognize was Benjamin Mays. Benjamin E. Mays. A wonderful man that I was blessed to get to know personally before he died and may G-d give him paradise.
Yes, Benjamin E. Mays, we have a history of accountable, responsible, morally excellent leadership. We have a history but we lost it. Freedom blinded our eyes. Freedom blinded our eyes, blinded our eyes to what had supported our progress. We were blind. We started thinking of money and black power. The wrong ideas filled our minds and hearts and soon we forgot the great traditional African American leadership that G-d gave us.
Yes, G-d gave us Fredrick Douglas. G-d gave us Booker T. Washington. G-d gave us W E B. Du Bois. G-d gave us Mary McLeod Bethune. G-d gave us these great giants, but we lost the connection with our great leadership. Now with the new awakening, a new moral awakening, not just for us African Americans, there's a moral awakening going on for all Americans and for all the world. We talk about a global village and one world order. There's a moral movement as well as a material movement bringing that to be.
There's a moral movement because the material progress has turned on the intellect and made the fellow who was too dumb to realize what he is entitled to, rise enough now to realize what he's entitled to. The material movement, business, economics, technology, the great powerful media, especially television, bringing all these information to every home, even to Robert Taylor homes that my good business partner represents. He's doing a great work there.
Those people seem to be animals that media focusing on them as a project of animals. Dangerous place that you should stay away from if you don't want to get killed or raped, because if you're a woman, you don't want to get raped. It's not that bad at all. They're human beings there. Those human beings have been cut off from human life. From human life. A human being is a rational creature. We can't learn human life on our own.
No human being can learn human life to themselves. You put a human being in the jungle, he won't learn human life, he learns the life of the jungle, not human life. Science has taught us or proven that to us and given us experiments and the proof that that's the case for a human being. If you put that human being in a good social human environment, that human being becomes a human being.
Yes, so we are intellect and intellect decides for us. You can be in civilized environment. You can be in a civilized environment. If something happens to turn your intellect off, to make you not care about how you think, how you reason, you can lose your human life though you're in a good human environment. That's what is happening. The popular culture with all of these bad influences are creating animals and mechanical beings, make a stone get up and walk. That's the new popular culture we've got. It turns, animates everything.
It animates spit, who spit, then that spit turn into a human being. That's why you see that spit running across the street. Crazier than hell but that spit is alive. That's what our popular culture's doing for us. [laughs] I enjoyed this one.
Please, register what G-d has revealed in the Bible and also in the Quran and the role that G-d has given to man. We know we're passionate creatures. We enjoy expressing passions and all that. Don't forget that passions without the mind. Passions without the support of the rational mind can be a fire that can consume you. Passion can turn into a destructive fire that can consume your human nature, your human content, burn it out, make you a heap of ashes and out of the ashes will come a new beast on earth.
Up from the ashes will come a new beast to terrorize this world. [laughs] Be aware of these things and respect the concept of man and the job for man and the destination or the destiny of man that G-d has revealed. 
You can't get that without great leadership. We are not going to get anywhere following any and everybody. We have to be selective. Again the rational mind has to take over. We have to be selective and select leaders that are fit to lead human beings to the human destination. As a community of people or as a social group, and we want social establishment, that's what we want. Social establishment is seen in community. That's where you see social establishment, in community.
To be socially established means to have a good life for yourself not alone but yourself with your loved ones. Yourself with your wife. Yourself with your children. Yourself with your friends and your co-workers, et cetera. Yourself with your neighbors on the block. To have a good life as a member of a larger group. Of a bigger group of more than one.
When you really study the scripture to know just what G-d is talking about when He's talking about Adam. Yes, G-d gave us a single picture of a single person, but the Quran helps us to understand, and the Bible, I studied both, the Quran helps us to understand what is meant by the single picture. G-d says He's the one who made your single picture. He is the one who made your single picture and He made it most beautiful and most excellent.
Excellent means that it can perform excellently in the field of its responsibility as inheritor, or Khalifa who inherits G-d's guidance for mankind. The inheritor who inherits G-d's guidance for mankind. In other words, it can perform excellently, it can perform beautifully and excellently in the field of cultivating the environment so that the environment be a paradise so to speak for human beings. Now to do that you need great science, you need science, you need great insight into the nature of the things G-d has created, you need science.
G-d says that he created the human being with that ability. He says, look at your single picture. He wants us to see the single picture that he made most beautiful and most excellent, your single picture "s?ra" used in the single, this is Arabic term for us. He made your single picture, He says, He made it most beautiful, most useful and most beneficial et cetera.
What is that single picture? That single picture is our humanity that G-d created us for. G-d created us to have humanity. Look in the dictionary and see what it means if you don't know. Use that intellect of yours. He created us to have humanity, to be human and to have excellent humanity, what we call humanity. Excellent human form, excellent human sensitivities, excellent human aspirations, excellent human behavior, and performance et cetera, that's what G-d has created us for.
That we all recognize, I don't care if you never picked up a dictionary. All of us know what human means. Human means, your better self, human means your true self. We say, "Hey man, at least be human by me." I've heard that expression. "Hey, man at least try to be human by me man, I'm a human being." We will assert that when we're treated like a dog or like a wild animal or a beast or something that we don't like it. We say, "Hey man, I'm human, respect me some man, I'm human." Okay well, that voice is coming from the content that G-d created. That voice is coming from the identity, your identity that G-d wants in you and G-d wants that identity to become basic, fundamental and incorporate all other identities.
Let it become basic, fundamental, I repeat, and incorporate all other identities. So I'm firstly and lastly, a human person with my humanity. I'm that firstly and lastly. The Bible says in the gospel, the New Testament, "So as it was in the beginning so shall it be in the end," and G-d made us human in the beginning, we lose that and become beasts somewhere in between the beginning and the end.
But G-d says, "As it was in the beginning so shall be in the end." I will even go further than that, my pastor and friend brother--where is pastor, there he is. I'll go even further than that to say that, in the beginning, G-d put us in paradise and so shall it be in the end and not necessarily up there, all over. Yes.
We are given a soul and a nature to seek the beginning, the origin, that beginning condition for ourselves again. In the process of growing materially, blossoming above the surface of the ground. We have a lot of challenges from the environment. You get a lot to eat, lots to drink and a lot of this, a lot of that. There's a tendency to eat and drink and go to sleep, when you wake up, you might wake up in a nightmare and think that's daybreak.
[laughter]
It happens sometimes, but G-d knows what we're going to run into. G-d knows what we're going to stumble or how we're going to stumble and fall and eat too much and get drunk and can't see straight. G-d knew all that. G-d told the Angels when they said, "G-d, we have believed in you and we obey you. We follow you in obedience but this what you're going to create will have its own mind and will cause bloodshed et cetera." G-d responded to the Angels, this is the Qu'ran.
G-d in our holy book, G-d responded to the Angels and said, "I know what you know not." G-d told the man that he was presenting to the Angels for him to see, all of this is like on a screen. The world is not even created yet, G-d is showing on a screen the angels what he's going to do.
They looked on the screen and the man appeared on the screen. G-d says, "Man, Adam, my man I'm creating, that I am creating", He says I'm creating, means that he's in the process of creating him, He's not finished yet. First, he asks the Angels, He said, "Angels, tell me your names." And the Angels replied to G-d, "We have no knowledge but except what you gave to us." Then he said, "Adam", this is the man He's creating. He says, "Tell them their names," and Adam spoke and told the Angels their names.
When he did that, all the Angels submitted to G-d's plan except one and he was the leader of the Angels, he's called Iblis in our theology or in our teachings. He's called Iblis. He felt too proud to submit to the man that G-d was going to create and he was leader of the Angels, only the leader refused to accept G-d's plan for man. G-d says, "Didn't I tell you that I know the open and the hidden, what is revealed and what is secret?" That's what G-d said to all of them.
G-d said to man, "Adam, tell them their names," and he told them their names. This means that G-d created man to serve his will in the world of human existence. In the world of human existence where human beings have to be communicated to as rational creatures. G-d made man to be the leader, not an Angel. G-d says that there had been Angels populating the world of man, He said, he would have sent an Angel as a messenger to them. But since there are human beings populating this world, He sent you a human being as a messenger.
Now we know Angels are also messengers and Angels come as messengers, in fact, Angels has to come from G-d with G-d's message. They are the medium, Angel is the medium, the most important medium for receiving communications directly from G-d. Yes, we know that but they can't come down here and teach us. No, they can't teach us. They are not creatures of our nature [laughs]. What Nature? Rational nature. They obey without thinking, they just respond automatically. They don't question anything. G-d has created us to question. To ask questions. To be curious. To be skeptical.
With all of these creatures, man is the greatest and most productive creature. What has Miquel created in our environment? What has [Arabic name] created? The Arch Angel, the great Arch Angel Gabriel, what has he created? I see the products of man's intellect. The world is filled, my environment is filled with the products of man's intellect and most of these products, nobody claims that he's a prophet. Nobody says, "I'm a prophet, I'm a messenger of G-d."
All of these wonderful things invented, no one is saying, I'm a messenger of G-d. The Angel brought me this. No, He said, "I use my human instruments, I used my human instruments, my human instrument, the mind that G-d points us to, and Muhammad says is the greatest thing G-d created, the intellect. He said, "I use this intellect and I used it in the field of G-d's works." G-d's creation. That's how I was able to bring you all of these comforts, all of these wonderful inventions and comforts.
That's man. Earlier we heard from a brother saying to sister representing the women's organization and [unintelligible 00:42:52]. She mentioned faith, we have to have faith in each other. Faith in the people, faith in ourselves and that's very important.
A great preacher who has this television ministry, Dr. Robert Schuller. He comes on sometimes and he says, he come on like this, he says, "I believe in G-d or he might say, Jesus, I don't know, peace be upon Jesus Christ." He says, "I believe in G-d" and then he pauses, he let that sink in. He said, "And I believe you." [laughter]
That's what G-d wants. G-d wants us to believe in G-d and G-d wants us to believe in humanity, believe in G-d and believe in humanity. I say humanity, G-d wants to believe in G-d and believe in humanity. If you see humanity well established in a person, believe in that person because that's their true self, our humanity is our true self, the real self. Believe in that person, Allah says, "Believe in G-d and believe in his messenger," that's a man.
G-d says, "Believe in G-d and believe in his messenger." We need to have faith in our Lord creator first to understand what our reality is so we can appreciate our great reality as His creation, then that will give us or lead us to faith in ourselves, faith in our human creation and faith in leaders who are established very strongly in that excellent picture that G-d says is the single picture that he wants for all of us.
There is no room for any racism when I understand that, how can I be a racist when G-d has shown me that the best identity for me is not my physical picture. The best identity for me is my abstract picture.
You can't take a photo of my intellect. You can't take a photo of my taqwa, we mean religious consciousness for G-d's sake. Our consciousness that we submit to G-d, we call it taqwa, this is the Arabic term for it, the Islamic term for it. You can't take a photo of my taqwa. You can't take a photo of my [Arabic] is the urge in my intellect that wants. You first get the word guidance from G-d and see yourself in the real reality that G-d intended for you then you will know your true self. Then you will know your real picture, that single picture. When you have that, you can't be racist because really we are not looking at black and white, blunt and sharp features. We are looking at our humanity in its full picture, our humanity.
If someone could take a picture of our abstract value, there would be one picture wouldn't it? If that could be captured on a screen, that would be one picture and say "Hey, pick out the Russian", , "It's impossible man," you're only showing me the abstract human being.
[laughter]
That's what G-d wants us to see. He says "I'm the one who made your picture and made your picture most excellent and filled it with usefulness so that you can benefit so much from it." We know it's only when the human being comes into their appreciation of themselves that they begin to develop and show the world there are many resources. It's only then.
This country is not great because we had great intellect only. It's great because those great intellects perceive the identity of man or human beings that G-d want man to perceive. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator, - that's G-d. With inalienable rights, rights that can't be taken away from them, some say unalienable, I guess that's all right too.
[laughter]
With inalienable rights means rights that G-d gave you, G-d created you with these rights. Among them, life, - right to Life, liberty. Liberty means more than just freedom. Freedom means movement, opportunity to move, opportunity to go out of this place to that place.
Freedom means movement but liberty means a little more than that. Liberty means movement and also growth and quality. Liberty is growth and the quality of your life and also growth and expression and growth and quality. Expression of content and also progress for that content. Liberty suggests also, right to education, that's what Liberty suggests.
We have the liberal arts still connected with that term. Yes. This is what the Founding Fathers perceived that language and they gave it to us, life, liberty, lastly, the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of happiness. Now brothers, that's where we get together and go to work, pursuit of happiness.
[laughter]
Yes. You can have life and go nowhere, you can have liberty and shoot straight up in the sky like an inflated balloon with very light gas and get out with a string on it as someone gets excited and let's go of the string like Brother David did (David Hassan) He got excited talking about me, and he let go of the string and I saw myself go up and disappear in the sky.
[laughter]
I said, forget about that perception that he gave of me.
[laughter]
I'm going to have to be transformed and come again from the earth.
[laughter]
The pursuit of happiness. The interpreters of the language of the constitution, they interpreted pursuit of happiness means the right to own property. Am I correct? We have our people here to tell us, our leaders in the government, they can tell us whether we're right or wrong here. The right to own property. That's the pursuit of happiness. Now tell me, how in the world is a human being, male or female, adults are going to be adult, thinking human beings, going to be satisfied, going to be happy with no possessions.
[laughter]
Clothes make you happy, yes. You got good clothes, you close yourself nice, that makes you happy. Good food on the table makes you happy. The rent paid for the nice apartment, it makes you happy. The nice car to drive around, get places it makes you happy. Oh, but that's kind of materialistic isn't it? Yes, it's materialistic with a strong spiritual core.
[laughter]
If you don't keep that strong spiritual core then you'll become very unhappy with all those possessions.
[laughter]
You find somebody with a whole lot of possessions of the goods that G-d has created for us and G-d says that, G-d asked the question in our holy book, says "Who has said to my servants, to my religious faithful servants, who has said to them that these things, these goods of the world are forbidden to them." G-d says, "No, they are not forbidden, they are lawful for them and exclusively for them in the resurrection.
[laughter]
Isn't that wonderful? Exclusively for them when everything is concluded by G-d and Satan has had his freedom to do all of his works and G-d brings it all to a conclusion. It ain't going to be for Satan anymore. Satan will be cut out, that's what G-d says. Satan and his followers are going to be cut out of these things. Would that be wonderful the day when we can see Satan and his followers cut out of money?
Audience: Yes. [applause]
Imam Mohammed: If we select leadership very carefully and make sure that they are based in humanity and they have that spiritual core. All right? They are people of principle with our future interest way down the road at heart. If we select them very carefully, buddy, we can cut Satan out of the big share he got now of these goods that G-d created for his servants. Thank you very much, please. As-salaam Alaikum.
[applause]
[00:52:33] [END OF AUDIO]

