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IWDM Study Library
Clara Muhammad School Banquet
Columbia SC

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Assalamualaykum
That is, peace be on you. Praise with Allah, that is the G-d, Lord of all worlds, the prayers and the peace be upon his noble and generous messenger, servant, last Prophet Mohammad. And what follows of this traditional salute of the Muslims to Muhammad, the last of the prophets. Dear people we are most pleased to join you in this occasion to support fundraising effort by the mosque, by your masjid here and your Imam and those who working with him in the community, it is indeed a pleasure and honor. We thank you for the opportunity. We are very much pleased to see all distinguished guests here on the podium, and also the very distinguished persons in the gathering. And we greet you all, all our gathering, that is our respect for you and that is sincere. The expression new mind says a change occurred and the way we were thinking the change referred to for this address, wasn't incurred by changes in the thinking of our enslaved fore parents.
We would think for the first slaves, and we would think the first slaves thought their fate, their life, their existence was hopeless, but as a knowledge of their masters, as they gained more knowledge of their masters and of their society, of the master's society, of their master's culture, of their master's religion, and of their master's form of government, there grew among these slaves a new mind. Our fore parents began to change their state of mind for the better. They begin to have hope, hope that one day they would receive enough support from the better people in America, and that one day they would be free. Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Sojourner Truth and there are others were born slaves and we know from history that they were brave and courageous and advocating that slaves be free. And we know from history that they received support from white, or European Americans and eventually were able to awaken the conscience of the American people to get enough support, to have that evil removed from America. That is the evil of that, quote, peculiar institution of slavery.
They have faith in the human innocence, the human innocence of their masters and of their oppressors. They believe that the same soul, the same human innocence that were in them, G-d had put it in all people that, human innocence was in their masters. Human nature is innocence. Our fore parents believed if their case could be appealed to the ears of the American people, knock on the door of the conscience of the American people over a long enough period of time, a change of heart would come in the American people, that is in the masters and the white race of America, a change of mind would come. They believed that. This, in my opinion, as I see it, begins our freedom movement, this is the beginning of our freedom movement, as African Americans or as people up from slavery.
Emancipation saw us moving from the painful experience of slavery, from the bitter south to the brighter north, to find what we hope for freedom, freedom for the children of Africa, the freedom of our fore parents, that freedom they longed for, was the freedom to have establishment, to have their lot established as an honorable member in the honorable family of man equal to all other men. Not inferior humanly, not inferior as a creation.
The Hope was to have establishment in this land of promise. That freedom, the freedom of their bodies could not fulfill, the freedom of their bodies was only a release. A release of their bodies from captivity and a release from their souls because when the body is free physically better opportunity comes for the real freedom that they wanted. Free slaves were seen in large numbers. After emancipation they were seen reading or trying to read while sitting, while working, while taking a break in the field, resting against a plow handle, hence the greater freedom and the aimed for, the aimed for freedom, or the freedom to grow our minds.
They wanted the freedom to grow their minds, our fore parents but not without a purpose. To grow the mind for establishment in America as a people, for competition with other American groups, ethnic groups. We felt that G-d had created us equal to any other human being he had created. We felt and believed in our souls that G-d made the human being one human being with the same capacity, with the same nature, the same capacity, the same potential for progress, for establishing himself and establishing his society.
We believe that in our hearts and our souls, and we had faith after studying our masters, our master's religion, our master's document called the constitution of the United States, especially the introduction of that document or the preamble which states that "G-d is the Creator and created all men equal". We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. We believed that, and we had faith that if that is the document, the basis for the constitution or the spirit, or the writing, the introduction to step the spirit for the constitution of these United States, and there was hope for them, there was hope for us, our fore parents that is, and us. In this, their children, that was hope for us.
We have come to a situation now, and I see us kind of resembling the Hatfields and the McCoy's. The Hatfields and McCoys, you know, they had been fighting each other so long that they forgot why they were fighting each other. They forgot what got them into it. The sixties, those disturbing sixties, progressive sixties in many ways, but very disturbing 60s, when we were out confronting the white race, the civil rights movement under the leadership of Dr. King, may G-d forgive him all his sins and grant him paradise. And the Nation of Islam struggling hard to have his voice heard as an alternative, separation and integration. A desperate, and in many ways, savage law enforcement, in this country was responsible for killing the lives of many innocent people, maiming many innocent people, jailing many innocent people. So it was a bad time, but it brought a lot of progress. It brought out a lot that was hidden from the eyes of many innocent Americans who didn't want to really face racism, didn't want to believe the ugly, real ugly side of racism in America and change did come, but with great sacrifice.
But with that came a change of mind that we were not too happy with, not too happy with. The sixties saw a change of mind and us from the movement to free ourselves, that is to equip ourselves for establishment in America, establishment in our G-d given rights to a movement just to confront, what we began to call fighting the enemy whether it's right or wrong. Those of us locked into that groove lost our fore parent's noble desire or was separated from our fore parent's noble desire to be free. Those of us locked in that groove cannot hear the call in our souls for more freedom of our minds, more freedom for the mind.
Those suffering blind desperation of confrontation with the white man, suffering what I may call it ego, hysteria compelling them to engage the ghost of white supremacy, to confront the power structure, to confront America and the quote, "white world," because we know we have black nationalists, a kind of black nationalists, they are official black nationalists now. They have taken on the whole white world, and they are trying to organize the mind of all black people, the whole African family, Africa, American, African-Americans, the Caribbean, the Aborigines in the many parts of the world. They're trying to organize all of us against the evil as they see it, and the evil is the white, the white man, the white world. Our fore parents, I should say, our intellect was held forcibly out of reach of opportunity, opportunity to have freedom of mind, freedom of intellect.
The rights of citizenship represent only opportunity. It does not represent the finish line for the movement of freedom in us. The freedom, the freedom our souls call for, is freedom to rest and satisfaction, rest and establishment, rest and establishment that we don't have to be ashamed of, competitive establishment. We cannot separate individually from our group soul, that is if we try to leave the spirit of our group soul and go individually, I'll go and do it this way, I'll do it my way, I will find my, my future in violence, I'll find my future in drugs, I'll find my future in myth, I'll find my future in teaching black myths.
It won't work. We'll still have to come back home to the calling of our group soul. This may stake some of you, if not familiar with psychology, the field of psychology. In the field of psychology, we recognize that just as an individual member of a group has a distinct soul, the people taking all together have a distinct soul. This is a fact of life. We can not separate ourselves from our calling, dear people. One day we have to come back and answer, or we would die in misery, we die in pain, we die unsatisfied, we die in torment.
Therefore, we are witnessing again and our history as a people moving along the road of freedom, to that freedom that will satisfy us. We are experiencing again, a new mind growing among African-Americans. Human pride, human pride is pressuring this mind to move to the forefront of activities for bettering our race. Human pride. If human pride is permitted to move to the forefront of our battle for establishment and comparative excellence, recognition in this country for our race with other ethnic groups, with other members of the white race. If human pride is permitted to come, come to the forefront, we will begin to enjoy, what is putting this scene a unified spirit. But until then we have diverse aims that are directly against what our souls called for when we were in physical bondage and still calls for the day, because we have not yet reach the excellence that is demanded of us by our soul.
People put down so long by that peculiar institution, we call slavery in this country, slavery in the south, of slavery in America, and by the attitudes toward our essence, or toward our creation or toward our worth as human beings, that was coming not only from the south, but coming also from the north that we experienced just as ugly in the north, as we experienced it in the south. If we are to, if we are to ever ask for the calling in our souls, then we have to come together for more than just to have more money in our pockets, for more than just to have a false sense of superiority over another race. We have to come together for the real purpose in our souls. Thank you. G-d bless us. Assalamualaykum.


