May 19th 1979
Awards Banquet Dinner
Imam WD Mohammed:

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. All Praise due to Allah. Allahu Akbar. Dear beloved people, students of the Board of Manhattan Community College, distinguished faculty members, Reverend Minister Coffin, it's indeed an honor, a great inspiring occasion for me to be here as your guest and as your keynote speaker this afternoon. I enjoyed a wonderful experience seeing the seriousness in the faces of the many who gathered, this wonderful structure, stately structure. I called it a classic structure, Riverside Church. This is the first time I've had experience of being in such a grand edifice like this, and I hope it won't be my last. The minister just invited me to come back anytime, so I'm liable to sneak in quietly one time. Thank you very much.
I hope that my visit here will in some way bring us closer together as people seeking a way out of all of our miseries, all of our humiliation, dignity, indignity, because there's much of it everywhere I go. The will of the people seem to be growing stronger and stronger to break from confusion, daily living, daily misliving I should say, and really do something constructive about changing their lives. I believe that over the four years now that I've been representing my community as their leader, I've witnessed change that most of us didn't expect to come in this country. There have been changes for the worst, but there have been changes for the better too.
I recall just a few months before coming into a position of chief minister of the Nation of Islam, as we called it in 1975, being questioned by an associate of mine who's right now working very closely with me in Chicago in the leadership position. He said to me, Wallace, he says, I can't see what you are saying. I don't believe that the world is going to change, not in our time anyway. You see, you are talking about a change from this wild kind of life and disregard for religious, precious religious values. Said we are just coming into a turn of life away from that.
So he said, explain to me. He said, what do you see? Tell me what you see so I can have faith. That's what he told me. So I told him, I said, well, I feel something that is in the spirit of the people. It's in me and I can feel that in the spirit of many others. I said, what you see is not what is really existing. The outward expressions are not really speaking for what is going on in the souls of these people. And what we were talking about was the rush out from all of the principles, defined principles and virtues that society, Christian society worked so hard to establish in the good Christian loving Christian people, G-d loving people, the very virtues that Muslims want and all people of the real religion want. And I couldn't interpret the rushing away from these things as some of the other people were interpreting them. I saw them as really a demonstration. I said, what the people are trying to do, they're trying to get G-d's attention.
Sometimes a child that can't get the attention of the parent will do something that it knows is against the parent to get the parent's attention. Why? I told my dear friend who's now one of the key people in our leadership in Chicago, I told him that the people are trying to get G-d's attention. And they're trying to get the attentions of the conscience of the society, and pretty soon I told him, you'll see a great change. If he was here, he would bear witness. He came to me, it wasn't hardly a year later. And he told me, he said, Wallace, you were right. We're just that close we call each other by first names. He said, Wallace, you were right. He said, I never thought this would happen. Said, look at how people have gone out for spiritual, spiritual rebirth now. All in the streets there were little youngsters trying to sell you faith in G-d, and just a year before seemed that nobody cared anything about religion.
That was about four or five years ago. Today you have the crushing weight of these deteriorated cities on us and they make us feel like we are trying to live in a graveyard. And people right now wonder how come the Chief Imam come here and talk about faith in G-d and human dignity, how come he don't talk about doing something about these physical conditions around us? It's because I believe that still the force for change is within us and it hasn't been released, it hasn't been freed yet. Too many of us still are prisoners inside of ourselves, but once we wake up to what the inside requires and let the whole soul blossom within ourselves and begin to listen to what nature, the inner conscience is asking for and get the willpower and the strength to act on what the inner conscience is asking for, then I believe we can make Mr. Koch move in the right direction and on time. I believe we can make President Carter move in the direction and on time. I believe we can make this country turnover like we've never seen it turn over before because the power within is a powerful change.
We need faith in something and we need faith in something bigger than ourselves. History tell us that man has grown because he's had faith in something bigger than himself, and once man measure his own deity in the limits of his own dimensions, he began to fall. But as long as his deity was greater than his own limitations, he was constantly moving forward and rising. Once we turn away from respect for G-d, the G-d Almighty who created the heavens and earth, we can expect nothing but downhill turns. Dear people, this is a night that I promised to speak on education and I hope before leaving here, I will say something worthwhile on education. But I can't see us making any progress before we establish again the cornerstone of society, that building block of society that sets the pattern for the structuring of the whole life, from bottom to top, from border to border, and that's human dignity, respect for the human being. This world has grown out of a recognition of what human nature is and what it's appetites are. That's how this world has been structured. Until we can call ourselves back from one nation under a groove, from the disco and all this other foolishness and get some people in our communities, we can't wait for the people in the academic fields to do something about our conditions.
They trying to find a way to serve G-d and man on the moon at the same time. They don't want to give it up. But people like you and me that don't have any billions in the reserves to worry about, we can get about the big business of putting human dignity in the center of society so that it can become the sacred shrine for our respect. We have to bring respect back to human dignity. That's why there is no respect for human life. The criminal department, they wonder how some people just have no respect for human life anymore. It is because they don't have the concept anymore of human life. We have to begin all over again. And once we get this, I think we can begin to make changes in the physical environment like they have never been before. We can do in the name of G-d what China has done in the name of Communism or in the name of Marxism. China has restrained itself. Red China, China closed up the undesirable prostitute dens. Then China drove out the dope peddlers. China stopped alcoholism. They did it because they valued and respected the human being.
What more could we do in this country? We could muster up much more strength than the Chinese people have been able to muster up. G-d is a greater force for change than Marxism. I've never read in any scripture, I've never read in any scripture of Marx, the great, beautiful description of the power of the human being that I've read in the context of the Qur'an and even in the Bible a concept that make me know I can overcome, and I mean overcome anything that's in my way except G-d Almighty. The scripture tells me that the human being is made with a dynamism inside himself that will move back all obstacles. Nothing can hold him down. I love peace and I'll be satisfied with peace along the side of a peaceful brook or a peaceful garden. But with this understanding that I have of what G-d has intended for the human being I'll never be satisfied with peace in a graveyard. And many of us have peace in a graveyard. Our homes have become graveyards. Our neighborhoods have become graveyards. And many of us are so complacent we're ,satisfied with this terrible deathly condition.
Once you know yourself, how greater you are in those things that you have given yourself to, you won't be satisfied with that graveyard. You'll rise up and you'll preach to get people to join you. You'll work with those who are walking in the right direction. You'll do whatever you can to bring an army about, a moral army for social change in this society and you won't stop until you succeed. Men go out and they die in war defending their land, defending the homeland. Sometimes the war started because of economic difficulties, political impasse. The man gives his very life to save his country, gives his life in the name of his country.
When men understand what the moral life of human beings is and how you can't survive as a human being without that moral life, they will fight just as bravely, just as courageously for moral dignity, the social dignity, the economic dignity, for political dignity, as they fight for the homeland with a gun fearing that if they don't do a courageous job or answer their call, the call of duty, they'll be brought back home to a court and punished for it. Men will be more dutiful in the name of G-d when they know what they're fighting for. When they know that G-d has not missioned them to fight for nothing. G-d has missioned us to fight for something more precious than the land, all of it, and that's the human being for which the land itself was made.
Dear people, I hope that education will take a new growth in our community. I know the outside world has everything to offer us in terms of research, knowledge, intellectual expertise, but we need our own independent leadership in the field of education. I see in our community, young men and young women graduating from college, many of them going on to get their Master's degree and Doctorate. I hope that all of them will be like Sisters Nashida who told me she's going on to get her Doctorate to come back home and work on the home front. I hope that we'll have many like her who will get those qualifications and come back into the neighborhood of the Bilalian, the neighborhood of the black, the American, and pay the sacrifice.
The conditions might not be as good as those conditions that will be offered you in other places, but we have to pay the sacrifice. The money might not even be as good, but I believe that if we get quality people from our community, we will find the money. If we have to cut back some more we'll find the money. If President Carter came into our community and heard what I was saying to these people. I think he'd be calling me up daily almost. I'm doing more for his energy program in our neighborhood than he in the whole State D,epartment and everybody else is doing about it. They're talking, saying little and it's heard and forgotten, but I won't let my people forget. If we are not ready for cat-like cars, I told 'em, let's buy bicycles.
We have to face the realities of this present time. The economic situation has been drastically changed in the world. This is not the America we used to lie down in our beds at night, close our eyes on and when we woke up seven o'clock, eight o'clock we knew that everything was going to be okay, that America is gone. Even for those receiving welfare, if you knew the reality, you wouldn't be sitting so comfortably at your dinner table eating that meat that your stamps bought. You'll be concerned. You'd be beating your brains out, trying to come up with better solutions. You'd be trying to map for yourself a new lifestyle.
The only way out for us, and I'm talking about the great masses of these dying cities, poor masses. The only way for us is to take command of our lives. You can't listen to the leadership that you find on the television tube, or what you pick up in a fashion magazine, or what you see in a movie. We have to stop letting those things influence our mind, direct our lives. We have to have a revolution in this country that is voluntary, but we have to execute it with the same kind of strict discipline that Mao Tse Tung executed his revolution to chase out corruption from the land, bring the people to make the material sacrifices necessary to survive as a nation with their own dignity. Now we in the United States of America. We don't want to separate physically from this country or politically from this country. We want to grow in the structure of the United States of America. We want to be a compliment here, complimentary part of the whole of America. We don't even want a culture that would cause us to be identified as outside of the culture of America. We want Islamic culture, but we want our Islamic culture to be part of the pattern of American culture.
We want to do it in the spirit of the preamble of the Constitution of the United States that I have found to be in accord with the fundamental teachings of the Qur'an itself. We want to do it that way, but we want our own independent leadership. We want some men sitting down studying the economic conditions, studying the economic development, studying our past, past habits, destructive spending habits, studying our future opportunities and making decisions for us. We don't want to call downtown, ask the Mayor's office or the Governor's office or some department or the Commerce Department in Washington to tell us what steps to take tomorrow. We want to feel that we can make a step tomorrow in the light of what we have found. For you students who will be getting this education ,come back home because home is a wilderness now. In fact it's worse than that, but if you come back it can really be a home.
Don't expect it to come from the outside. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was definitely a sign of a prophetic leader. He was a prophetic leader. He's not a Prophet in the sense that we understand Prophet in the Qur'an, but that man was definitely a sign of the direction that we should take economically as a people in America. In order to become a people in America with some economic dignity, we have to do what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad himself suggested that we do and pleaded to us to do. We have to learn to do it less until we get more. We have to learn to share. We can't rise separately. We have to rise together.
I'm not asking you to give me your money, put it in the treasure that you trust. Maybe it's First National, maybe it's some other bank. Keep your own account book, but let's sacrifice and let's save. Let's take the money that we would spend on a big expensive car and let's put that in a bank account for the uplift of the entire community. Let us establish some charitable institutions where if the money is not coming from the outside and we need some human institution to serve our human needs, we can finance it ourself and if we make an effort, we'll get help. We maintain our own self-respect, we'll continue to get help. But nobody will continue to help somebody that's satisfied with their hand out begging all the time. Dear people, I've been around this world almost. I've been in Communist countries, I've been in free world countries.
I've been in those that are in between. And I'm telling you, the saddest people I've ever seen are the people in the United States of America called Negro, black folk, colored folk, Africans, African Americans, every G-ddamn thing but what they should be called. Yes. A are a people confused, not even knowing their own identity, not knowing where the human dignity is, picking up all kinds of skin labels, pigmentation flags, waving pigmentation banners, trying to find their way back home. I find our people in the worst condition of all. I'm not talking about materially speaking. Some of us, we live like we own the nation. Oh yes, I've been to parts of what we call the developing countries and I have met the leaders, the chief, the President of the whole country and he didn't come out with a show of wealth that I see these dudes have who work for United States Steel. They ain't doing nothing but welding.
Riding down the street in a Mercedes, brand new big one. Who is this man? He must be the President of the first National Bank or somebody. And you follow him and he take his brown bag and he go to the same place you go. These are the kinds of things we have to change if we expect to rise as a people. I'm prepared to make the sacrifices that I believe the conditions demand. Those sacrifices are sacrifice wardrobe, sacrifice food, sacrifice living standards, lifestyle. That's the first sacrifice we have to make and take that money and put it to some better use.
Look at how many of us get great wealth into our hands. When I say great wealth, I'm talking about $50,000 or more passed through the hands that could have been saved for the future, but it goes in cars. You know how much we spend over a period about 20 years on cars? We spend a lot of money, a lot of money cause you want a new one. Soon as the thing get one or two years old, you ready to change it. If we put that money to good use, we could die with dignity. Look how many of us die. Whole life is nothing but a waste because you left nothing back here as an inspiration for your children. You left your children with a great burden. The child watched daddy with his carefree spending habits, Mama on welfare he's living like a rich man. Child sees that and he wants to live the same. He feel that he has to. I have to have $40 shoes, $60 shoes like dad, I have to have that leather coat that dad sported around. I have to have a car like dad. The child come up expecting what dad has. Dad leaves them nothing. He leaves him a car, he leaves them in debt. He has to run from the collectors with his car.
He leaves them nothing. Maybe a stolen car, but he feels he has to have the same thing the dad had. He can't get it honestly, so he follows his dad. He sells dope, or sell innocent women, or something else. Maybe it's something worse. So we are forcing our generations to give themselves to a life of crime and corruption because we're dangling before their faces an unreasonable lifestyle. Make them feel they have to be the same, they have to live the same way. We should do what the Socialist people do without a gun being pointed in our face to make us do it. And that is take off this wealth. We're not wealthy, we are poor. Take off this wealth and put on the poor clothes that really represent what we are. Look how much money we spend on cleaning. Some of us got 10 suits. I'm not joking people. Some of these poor folks got 10 suits, some of their children got 10 different changes of clothing, got 20 pair socks, 10 pair might have holes in it, but they got 20 pair of socks, all kind of costume jewelry and some of it's real.
They got to go out and stick up somebody to put their clothes in the cleaners. I had to have my suit cleaned man. I got to go out here and hit somebody in the head. If we would reduce the wardrobe down to our thighs, putting two suits in the cleaners when they need cleaning, it would be much cheaper. Wearing something that can be washed by hand or in the washer when you don't have to go to the special meeting. You remember when were coming up. You didn't put on no suit unless it was a meeting. Special meeting. We were going to church,we put on a suit, we were going to some business meeting,we put on a suit. We didn't put on a suit all the time. The Nation of Islam was responsible for making us go crazy like that to some extent. Had men out on the street looking like they were bankers.
Poor brother didn't know how he was going to get his $40 for his next 300 quota of Muhammad Speaks. The man out there dressed like a banker. Suit on, nice suit, white shirt and tie. Well, lemme tell you, this is a new day. That was good to attract people to stand up in dignity, but now that superficial thing is over. The psychology is no more needed. Let's put on the clothes that we can wear. If you see me at home daily, you'll find me in some blue jeans half the time, red short sleeve shirt jacket. And I come to the Masjid. I have some pants I wear to the Masjid with pants that cost me... One pair cost me $12. Another pair, the most expensive pair I think cost me 15, 14 something 15 with the tax. Yes.
I stand up before the congregation and I often remind them, I say how much your suit, how much your garment, what you wearing, how much your dress wear cost? I say mine cost in total no more than $25. And I keep mine up nice. I keep 'em clean. Most of 'em can be put in the washer. They come out dry and they still have the crease. I don't even put a lot of burden on my wife. She'll tell you, I put my Sunday clothes in the wash and they come out of the tumbler creased. She don't even have the press 'em. And the whole outfit didn't cost more than $25.
When I came into the office, we had overextended ourselves so much. We had so many assets but no business knowhow to make those assets profitable. Big buildings just standing, one of them brand new, the Pioneer building, the 78th block of Cottage Grove in South Chicago, on the south side of Chicago. Big beautiful business, big building, pardon me, but no profitable operations in those buildings. Four years later they say, look, how did you all, many of 'em ask. They said, I know the condition. I know what you came into. How have you survived? Don't just ask for a check on spending in the departments, the leader himself has to check his own spending and then he has to check every other leader. A lot of our ministers, they left us because I told 'em, if you going to ride a big Cadillac, you ain't going to ride it as a minister, you going to have to get out of that position. So many of them left. You still have some around. They went and bought compact cars.
They haven't escape. I got an axe that's coming down slowly on 'em. We have to set an example for the people. Are we rich? Herbert Muhammad, he's the manager of Muhammad Ali, a man makes millions in one night. I can see Herbert Muhammad riding around in a $20,000, $10,000 car. But I can't see any leader or any man in the leadership of the World Community of Al Islam riding around in such cars. You should have a Volkswagen. At best, a Toyota and not the big one, the little one. The great Prophets they themselves were the example of what their people should do. None of the great Prophets walked around in luxuries. They demonstrated to people the real struggle that had to be conducted in order to raise the whole community up. Prophet Muhammad refused to accept great wealth in his life. He lived on the level of the average person in Arabia in those days.
He was classified in his material life with the poor. And I'm telling you, you don't have to do nothing. Look at New Jersey and look at New York and you'll see that it demands the same thing of the Bilalians in America. We have never had anything and we never will get anything until we begin to live our religion and follow the example of Prophet Muhammad, Peace and blessings be upon him. That's what I want Imams to do. You don't have to dress like you are rich. Some of 'em say I have to do that to get respect. I'm the most respected one in this community and I don't do it.
I got a Ford at home, LTD. Going on three years old and I hope I have it when it's going on 10 years old. That's how we're going to get out of this. We're going to get out of it by tightening up the reins on our own wild lives and making ourselves do what is practical, what is realistic. We have to build up some solid base in our society. How do you think I feel calling my people to human dignity, telling them to embrace the nations of the world, to see yourself in the leadership, in the international leadership of the world.And I walk out of the place where I'm speaking and don't see nothing owned by us. Transportation lines, the transportation, most of the big buildings and the small ones too owned by other people. We living on a block, homes that we are living in, mostly owned by other people. How do you think I feel? I feel bad. I feel terrible. The whole world is being run by other people and we are satisfied to spend 80 to 130 billion dollars a year and don't care as long as we shake the booty along with one nation under the groove.
Dear people, let's build the shrine that will bring all people together, the shrine of human dignity and let us bring that education into the institutions of learning and teach it from the cradle to the grave. If we can do that, I think we can outlive this shallow, decadent condition of New York City, New Jersey, and other parts of the United States of America. I think we can even survive the hopelessness, that spirit of hopelessness that I think have overcome our leadership. We should be getting more inspiration from our leadership. All they're telling us to do is cut back, be prepared for worse times, but they're not showing courage at a time when great courage should be shown. Peace be unto you, Asalaam Alaikum.


