09/24/1996
IWDM Study Library
Citadel Charleston SC

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Speaker: A salaam alaikum. We all meet again in the name of G-d. The Gracious, the Merciful. The Merciful Benefactor, the Merciful Redeemer. We are very pleased to be back in Charleston and especially pleased and consider it as special privilege and honor to address this gathering on the campus of the citadel in Charleston South Carolina. Our greetings is the greetings of peace.
Whenever Muslims meet or they're leaving each other we always greet each other with peace, we say a salaam alaikum, peace be on you, peace be unto you. Peace is our name. We're called Muslim. Muslim means one who has accepted the life of peace, worshiping G-d, obeying G-d and serving the human society in the name of G-d or according to the will of G-d.
This is a religion of peace, we should understand that before we begin to say other things, we should understand firstly that Islam is a religion of peace. I regret that the topic was never given to me, and I was under the impression that I was to choose the topic myself. I think the topic that I have chosen, will satisfy perhaps what you have asked me, asked of me and that is to address religion politics in the society today.
I have chosen to speak on Muslims in the future of the America, of the society of America or American society. Our values that we have in common. We give praise to G-d the creator of new destiny. Our religion is Al Islam, the name was shortened by the English speaking people or by the western people. The name was shortened to Islam, but it is always found in our holy book Al Islam. Al is a definite article, “the” and Islam means willing, submission or surrender so that you have peace in your soul.
Peace for you with G-d and your fellow man who obeys G-d. More than any other influence, the protest, I'm calling it protest in the African-American Muslims called Black Muslims is responsible for the growing presence, a visible presence of Muslims are Moslems in the US. I use both expressions because they shouldn’t have two meanings, they should have only one meaning.
However because of the preachings of a kind of black religious nationalism or black religion. In a form of nationalism, we came to believe in America that Muslim is different from Moslem, it's not different. The French call the Muslim, Moslem and it was passed on to the rest of the western world, the pronunciation Moslem. It is now being corrected and certainly, we have been an influence for correcting that pronunciation, not consciously, unconsciously.
We were influenced for correcting that pronunciation. Actually informing the Muslims here that Muslim and Moslem are the same, no difference. It's just the French pronunciation Moslem and the Arabic pronunciation is Muslim. We in the following of the Nation of Islam of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad we thought we were the best Muslims on earth and we thought we were the most correct Muslims on earth. We thought we were the most informed Muslims on earth.
We thought we were the wisest Muslims on earth and we were left to believe that by a strategists who had a psychology or had the wisdom to apply psychology or perhaps even a student of psychology. He had the psychology and the wisdom in psychology to speak, address or speak to the poor, many of us who were illiterate at that time, uneducated, practically all of us were uneducated at that time when Mr. Fard came into our neighborhoods of Detroit and began inviting us to his idea, to accept his idea of religion.
For us, - his idea of religion for us. We accepted what he said and it lifted us up, it lifted our spirit up, it made us proud. It made us feel superior even because he was giving us something that we believed was correct and it was saying things that lift our spirit up and lift our ego up. Our ego had been knocked down. Our self-respect had been taken from us by slavery and the treatment during and after slavery in this country until the good change came for us in America.
He had listened to us who were not educated enough to question him and he had listened to us who needed their egos lifted up, from being crushed by discrimination, segregation, dehumanization of our people. Most Americans know more about Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, the great champion, the greatest heavyweight ever to step into the ring and about their teacher Elijah Muhammad than they know about Muslims and about Islam.
By the same token, the Muslim converts of America are responsible for Americans knowing much about Black Muslim protest, they know we dislike white rule over us. They know we want to be separated from white folks. They know we believe we were the superior race et cetera and little about our religion. We ourselves who preached our protest, gave our complaints to the American people and preached among ourselves with pride, with a sense of I would say exclusiveness that we were an exclusive group of Muslims with special knowledge, special wisdom and therefore having superior minds. Dr. C. Eric Lincoln the writer whose book' “The Black Muslims in America” did a great deal to bring us to be visible in America. His book and his works contributed much to our popularity. He describes the preachings of the Nation of Islam calling those teachings or those preachings proto-Islamic religion.
Dr. C. Eric Lincoln, Christian scholar, theologian knows more about America's Muslim converts than any one on the outside of the Muslim circle. After serious scholarly inquiry and research, Dr. Lincoln presented some precious observations. He said about Islam in black America is not a true type or true model of Islam. It should not be dismissed as unimportant for the future of Islam in America. Dr. Lincoln, his research reveal a progression. That's to say a strategy, and I would say a dark strategy designed to prepare the way for the presence of true Islam and to win a place in the religious life of the American religious community.
We know that African-Americans were not only attracted to this call to Islam that was not Islam but call to Islam, simply because it flattered or said great things about how our worth as human beings and made us feel proud or happy in our blackness but it attracted us also because, it told us to think, it told us to be curious. It turned on our intellect. It initiates new activity in our intellect. It told us to take pride in not having education or knowledge. Told us to respect knowledge to where ever we found it. The honorable Elijah Muhammad had one image in the public eye but what he was doing and even himself, he had another image among his followers.
He was not being seen by us as a preacher of hate. He was not being seen by us as a person who was interested only in us just disliking white people and rejecting white people's influence in our lives. He was seen by us more so as a person who wanted to see our life and our conditions improve. That's why he had such a very sincere following. Very sincere loyal religious following. Not Islamic.
[00:29:21] [END OF AUDIO]

