4/11/2003
IWDM Study Library
Jumu’ah Ramadan Session Chicago

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Imam WD Mohammed:
Yeah, this is the healing in your loved ones. Yes. You see your loved ones feeling better, looking better. Sent me news. Oh, I don't have that problem anymore. What a blessing. I'm looking for my notes. I think I got all of them. Now I have it.
I don't know if you have the Journal. It came out today. I have one. We get it here today, but most places it have to be mailed so they don't get it until about a week from today. The week next Friday. You're going to see a statement or you'll hear about it and I want comment on that before we start because maybe some of you didn't hear this that are sitting here. Raise this up a little bit. Darryl, where's Darryl? I don't want to bend over. Put this where it should be. I don't feel any discomfort in the throat today so I don't have to put it too close. I was whispering last time I had that bad case of laryngitis. I had a lot of hoarseness. I went to Walgreens and I think Walgreens is the Jesus Christ of the drug stores.
Something bothering me, I go to Walgreens. It's been around a long time and was hiring our people long time when most public places were not hiring our people. Walgreens hired us and you could move up in Walgreens long time ago. Anyway, I went and I told the man, I went to the Pharmacist I said, I need something off the shelf for this bad case of hoarseness that I got. He said, I don't know what to get. He said, are you feeling any pain in your throat? I said, no, not yet. He said, well drink plenty water. Keep your throat wet. He said, if you have a piece of peppermint or something than suck on it, you don't have water. That's all he could recommend. I said, yeah, this is the Jesus Christ of drug stores all right, and I got all right too. Give me a little time to get my notes all together.
Something I noted for my presentation today while I was on the plane, Southwest Airline coming from really from St. Louis, but I started in Little Rock leaving Little Rock, Arkansas. Plane stopped in St Louis. I usually get direct flight from Little Rock, Arkansas. Now anyway, I had a little experience and I said, well I want to share this experience with my students. I said, because I think it goes right along with some of the, I would say at least subject matter that I'll be giving you today. And the theme we can start writing now because you should know what we are going to be talking about.
The theme is for the whole time of the session today and the Kutbah too today and after Jumu'ah presentation today and tomorrow, after Fajr prayer all day tomorrow, up until the next day Sunday, up until the time of Zuhr prayer, the noon prayer or the after noon prayer, the immediate after noon prayer. The prayer that comes immediately after the noon time, 12 o'clock. We think of noon as 12 o'clock. But noon is when the, I mean the real noon, the actual noon is when the sun is straight up, not East, not West, Not east, Nor west. And Zuhr time is when the sun starts to appear a little bit in the west. As soon as you know it is not between neutral between the east and West and it's starting to fade with the West. That's the time for Zuhr prayer. And that time continues on for a period of time.
So just like we are doing the Zuhr prayer and the Salatul Jumu'ah at once, but these short days, the time had already started maybe hour earlier, but that's okay as long as we're in that time period and as long as we have this excuse- We are not in an established Islamic community neighborhood. It's not our neighborhood, not our house, not our hotel. We don't employ ourselves here in this area. We are not employed by us. So Muhammad the Prophet, you all should understand this. This is very important to understand. Muhammad the Prophet instituted these prayers after he got a situation to have an independent community of Muslims.
An independent community of Muslims in Medina. He was persecuted, treated bad, real, very bad, horrible things were done to him and to some of his relatives and friends by the Meccans. And to him. He was stoned until blood was dripping from his body into his sandals and the sound of the slushing, the blood could be heard slushing in his sandals. He had been treated very bad, very badly, cruelly. And the people of Medina, they were not afraid of his message. Rather they were interested in his message. So they, as the history goes, they came to make pilgrimage one year and they let him know that he was invited to come to Medina and to do his work there to set up his work there. Finally that was done and Muhammed the Prophet had a situation for the new nation or the new community of Islam, the Ummah. And it all started right from a new Masjid that they built. He actually worked himself bringing bricks or blocks to the site with his own hands. He helped himself. They built the Masjid in Medina and I understand that that was not the first Masjid. They built a little small one, had built something very small in a place called Kuba and that's what the name of the Masjid is, the Kuba Mosque.
Anyway, then he instituted. G-d revealed to him to institute the prayer. They were praying before, but prayers had not been made regularly, obligatory or a must and made at specific times publicly, it wasn't done. But when they had a situation in Medina it was done. It was established. So that should tell us something. You work eight hours for a non Muslim a day or four hours, whatever it is. And your time, how you can spend it is determined by your obligations to your employer, et cetera. So it's too difficult. Someone told me, I make up all my prayers when I get home. It's okay for me to make up all my prayers when I get home.
Well it may be okay for you but's not okay for me. I don't think Allah want me to punish myself like that. So when I came home I wanted to sit down and eat or go get in the bathtub. And sometimes I would be so tired. I was a welder. I'd be so tired I didn't know whether to eat or go to bed. So I know I wouldn't want to do those five prayers. Listen to some of these people I think they're enemies of Islam. You have to make up the prayers brother. Make up your prayers. And don't forget the Sunnah and the Nafil. And the sun be rising, time for you to go back to work.
Allah doesn't want us to be crazy folks. He don't want us to punish ourselves unnecessary. So we should know that our leaders should be telling us this. Our leaders should be telling us because the sincere followers like me, if I didn't know I would do the same thing. I'd be trying to do it. To tell you I actually did. I did. Yeah, I tried to do it. I listened to this fool telling me I had to make up my prayers and I'm trying to do it. One time I got so lightheaded I couldn't see the floor. I say, wow, these prayers are powerful.
I was about to go to the mental hospital and didn't know it. Well Allah blessed me to find another person that had some sense and was nice. Tel me, no you can't do that. That's too much. Allah doesn't want us to punish ourselves like that. So we leaders in the religion, we know how Muhammad the Prophet did it. He was the Prophet, Messenger of G-d for about 11 years before prayers were instituted, before the order was given to establish the prayer and have the believers come at the time of the Adhan, at the time of the prayer, announcement of the prayer. To come on site and pray. The obligation as you know is on the males. The females come voluntarily, but it's an obligation on the male. It's not an obligation on the female to come outside of her house into the public. She can stay at home and take care of her children or if she has no children that's different. But she has no children and no husband still, she shouldn't be coming to the public like that alone, especially in a bad environment. So she's not, still the obligation is not on her. Allah is most merciful to understand that.
Yes. So let me share this experience with you all. This is the beginning of my presentation for today, Friday, SaIatul Jumu'ah. As I said, the theme for the duration of the sessions is life and death, but understand, write life and death, but then make a note for yourself. And the Qur'an is express death and life. Death comes first. G-d is the one who created death and life. Death first and then life. Okay. And He did it He says in Qur'an to manifest those of you who are best in their deeds, in their deeds. Deeds and works the same thing. Deeds cover more than work because usually when you say work, we think of you and your performance on the job or your performance in that particular situation or whatever. But your deeds are going on even while you are sitting in that chair. Your deeds are going on. Muslims have to have halal thoughts. Halal appetites. Not just for food but appetite for anything should be halal. So our consciousness for G-d is all the time and our deeds are to be guarded all the time, whether it's activity in the mind or the heart or carried out with action, physical action, we are to keep our deeds for Allah. And that's Taqwa, that's real Taqwa. That's the real meaning of Taqwa. As you love G-d and you regard G-d with such high estimation or opinion that you fear to displease him and it hurts you or saddens you to know that you displeased G-d or you didn't measure up to what he asked for.
It was yesterday I was in flight back to Chicago Midway airport and I experienced an uncomfortable situation as I was prepared to sit down in an available seat, an aisle seat where two white men were occupying the window and middle. I heard one of them say, I studied the prints and noticed that the black one shows up. Now, that was right at the time when I showed up. The man in the window said, black shows up on white. I said, yes, black does show up on white. I said, and white shows up on black. The one that gave me that opening to say that after a few seconds of quietness, he said, that's correct.
And then the one right next to me said, I treat people like they treat me. I was moved to say I treat people better than they treat me. I said, I'm like Christ Jesus. And I added, may G-d give him peace always. I gave them a powerful Kutbah in about two minutes or less, powerful Kutbah in about two minutes or less. That's how G-d blesses me in Ramadan. Now look what I told him in just a few words I told him that I love Jesus. I love Jesus Christ, Peace be upon him. And I told him also that Jesus Christ is not G-d.
I told him that too plainly because I said, may G-d give him peace always. Now, he didn't say, well, he is G-d. He didn't say that. They both stood over there like a daddy was whipping two bad youngsters, like a daddy was wearing their butts out. They sit there just as humble and subdued, looking like two bad mischievous boys that were feeling very, very guilty and were sorry that they had done what they did. I'm going to share something else with you. In a vision I saw an inscription on human nature pointing to a prescription for the treatment of the worst of man's social disease, racism. While reading the Qur'an, recalling the impeccable human nature of Muhammad the Prophet Peace upon him, G-d's servant. The last Prophet. There in that scene was the nostrils of the one influenced by the Shaitan. And I seen them breathing. I see them breathing out. He was breathing out poison that had been extracted from a human body's waste system. He was breathing this poison out into humans that were innocent. I was shown among those with knowledge.
 I saw myself among righteous looking people, but it was obvious to me that they had special knowledge and skill for administering the cure for the disease that Satan was breathing into innocent human beings. And I said to myself in this vision, those true students of mine must be attendants working with me on this problem. And I thought I should share that. We all have to work on the problem of ignorance that we identify too often as racism. It ain't racism more than it is just pure ignorance, pure weakness on the part of human beings. The same person that may come with that racial expression from his racist thoughts or ideas may in another situation not come that way at all, but may show you nothing but just a nice kind person but irritated by something maybe by his friend whose sitting next to him. His friend was very talkative. I guess his friend was bugging him to death. Or by something that occurred at home that was unpleasant. So he comes into the public irritated. So he sees you, you black.
They see you, you black. It's like I walked into an elevator once, me and the secretary once at the airport again. Wasn't one airplane we was at the terminal. We walked into this elevator with this white man and the woman that was with him both looking like a senior retired person or senior citizens with gray hair. As soon we start to step onto the elevator, they said "Suddenly it's dark in here." So there be a lot of times they letting out their own frustrations. They're trying to vent their frustrations. Take some of the misery off themselves by attacking you, making you feel bad. They'd say misery like company. You heard that? Yeah. So they want to make you feel bad too see. And they don't have to be racist. They don't have to be racist at all. Like I said, in a different situation, maybe they would become beautiful. They would come in a beautiful way and you say, oh, that was a very nice person I met I spoke to or spoke to me, yes.
Getting back to color I said , I look in the mirror and said, when I look in the mirror, I see brown. I don't see black, I see brown. And I'm looking at him up in his face almost, and I'm going like this. I said, I don't see black, I see brown. I said they taught me in school that this is brown. And when I first said it, the response, although he didn't make, he started to make a sound, something like that. But the expression said to me that he's saying, are you crazy? Are you making a joke? I said the race is called black but my color is brown.
I wanted to tell him I also have white skin and I could prove it to him or you right now. I mash my fingernail like that real hard it's whiter than he was. You don't get whiter than that. If you could see that right now where the blood is out, you don't get whiter than that. That's white as white. That's milk white. That's milk white without cream. And I used to hear old folks talk about how senseless we were on Saturday nights out partying and how we would just fight each other over nothing. They said black man hitting another black man with a razor said you could see the white of his skin, see the fight of his skin. So that made under the thin layer of black is white. It's white up under there. The only thing that made it black was exposure to more sun than the white race was exposed to up there in the cold dark north.
So all these things can be explained scientifically. People have all the same flesh and same everything. There ain't no white and black. Mr. Fard, he exposed it, called them the colored man. Called a white man a colored man, but he didn't mean it nice like colorful, like we are all these beautiful colors we got. He didn't mean it that way. To color in literature means to falsify or to lessen the purity or the correctness or truthfulness of what you present. To color something means to falsify it. Yes. So that's the meaning of colored Mr. Fard had given a white man. He was saying that you a liar, you misrepresent the truth. You color things, you color the truth.
They have an expression now, transparency. We want to achieve transparency. Companies, organizations, non-governmental and governmental audiences. I meet with them occasionally and I hear them use that term we should achieve transparency. Transparency means you don't have any color, do you? It means the absence of color. That's what it means. So you live in a new time, new day, new day, the world is getting better and better all the time. Although we think it's getting worse, getting better all the time. Now I've mentioned that with you also to tell you that we are in the worst situation for living a good life as a people than any other people I know on this planet earth. I'm a student of psychology too and I know how human beings mind can be affected by certain perceptions of themselves or others that will hurt their ability to achieve.
And if you could just get that problem off of them or out of the way, they would achieve much better as a people and individual, and as individuals. I was a minister for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, a young man, and I remember being pressured by desire to tell my father's following.... And I put it that way to say that I recognized they were not my following and I had no authority over him to be guiding them differently or doing something that he wouldn't approve of. I recognized that. That's why I said my father's followers to let you know that I recognize then and now that he was boss over his own house. Okay? So anyway, but I was a brave little boy. Brave little man, young man. I would take chances and if my father wanted to stop me, all he had to do was stop me. He could sure stop me. He told me once, I guess he thought I was thinking that getting by this stuff had gone to my head thinking that I had some power or something. He said son, I'm the flint stone.
If you run against the flint stone. He had his reason for doing that too. He knew how to get your attention, hold your mind there for a little while. He wanted to say flint stone. You'll get bruised. That's what he told me. if you run against the flint stone you'll get bruised, but if the stone runs over you, you can be ground to pieces. I didn't feel I was guilty of anything, so I didn't say anything and he let me go just like that. He let it go just like that. He didn't say anymore.
So I used to get up there on the rostrum and I would say to them, you all ain't black in the same degree. I said, I'm looking at some of you who really looks black, just like a black leather shoe. I said, I'm looking at other of you who look almost like a white person. I said, I'm looking at you that's different colors. I say for a white man, white unites him. It doesn't hurt his unity. But for a black man, black hurts his unity. We are saying we are black, but look how different our colors are. And don't think this ain't real. I have heard brothers say who were very black, I'm the original man.
He was bragging that I'm black, I'm really black. And he's saying that to a lighter brother. I'm the original man. I'm the G-d. That's what I heard one say, Big Robert. Called him Big Robert. I told him, I said, now I'm about 17 years old, maybe a little older, maybe 18. I said, you ain't my G-d. That's what I said. I didn't say Brother Roberts. He could hear me just like I heard him. I said, you ain't my G-d. And his expression on his face changed. Different set of thoughts came into his mind. He never was the same.
David hit him with the stone out of his slingshot. Goliath was weakened. Truth liberates. Truth frees us. That's in the scripture. Falsehood enslaves. There is no superiority of black or white, no superiority of white or black. These words are more than 1400 years old. Came from Muhammad the Prophet, still preserved in his sayings the Hadith. You will find it in Muslim and other Hadiths. The collections do have the same thing. No superiority of white over black, no superiority of black over white. Now I guess some of the whites back then they laughed when they said no superiority of black over white. They probably laughed. "That's obvious." But they didn't know a time was coming when it wouldn't be obvious. A black man was going to rise up again. Now it's not obvious. So you have the rising of black people who think they're superior to white because they're black.
I do believe physically in terms of biology. Now I ain't black. I told you I'm brown. So this ain't helping ain't helping my ego at all what I'm getting ready to say. In a way it is helping my ego because to argue with your ego strengthens it sometimes more than any other thing. Yes. I have noticed in the study of animals, you understand? Yes I do. G-d gave us the universe. I study everything that my mind take me to. So I studied animals and humans and I'm convinced along with many others who were academic. This is not academic, this is just my observation, life, studying life. Just like others who have authority, credentials from colleges and universities, I have observed that the African-American or black person and the blacker, the more you have it has more physical strength normally. More physical strength in more than just one sense, physical strength in the physical sense to lift everything or to deal with hard jobs, but against diseases, strength against diseases, a nervous system stronger, to stand up stronger.
What I'm saying that I'm convinced that black people are stronger as a human creation in the body, in their body, even in the nervous system, et cetera than white. Now there's always exception. You'll find a black person who is weak. But on the whole, I'm convinced that black is stronger than white I'm convinced. Not only in people I repeat, but also in animals. True also in animals though you'll find exception. Now does that mean black people is superior to all others because they have that superiority? No it does not because a human being most precious life is not the body or the biological nature, not even the nervous system. The most precious life of the human being is his intelligence or her intelligence checked by a sense of decency and correctness or rightness.
So it's a state of mind that makes us better or worse. And G-d says the criteria is our Taqwa, our Taqwa, that we are not superior to each other in any sense except in Taqwa. The one who has the better taqwa is better than the one who has the less or the weaker Taqwa. So don't think you superior because you have some kind of physical advantage. If that was so, if the physical makes us the superior, we might as well give up civilization and trying to have a human society and try to communicate to the apes and say, Hey, you all more qualified than us. One on one an ape will make a sissy out of a man. He's a strong group, strong animal.
We shouldn't think that we are treating, seeing, viewing racism just because a racist expression came out. Most likely it wasn't racism that caused that person to come out with that racist expression. Most likely it was not racist. People are not naturally racist. They impose that kind of stuff upon themselves against their own good thinking. Now, perception of human beings, the human family. For us, the perception of the family of Jews are people, just to use common measures. People in religion begins with Adam. Adam is given to us in scripture as the first person or the first man or the first human, Adam.
Now this is a man in this particular picture or definition we have from scripture. This is a man before his own thinking and his own creation or his own world of created things was made. He had not began thinking on his own. He had not began making things on his own. He was not living in an environment or in a world of his own doing. He was living in a natural garden of paradise, living in the world, the natural world that G-d made, created. And the picture is a picture of a beautiful environment, a beautiful garden. And he's in that environment. And G-d made him, nothing else made him.
The world that G-d created for him to live in was feeding his thoughts. Not the world he would later make, but the world that G-d had made by Himself. G-d had made by himself was feeding his sensitivities, feeding his thoughts, feeding his soul, feeding his spirit, et cetera. And in that state, scripture says he had not committed any sin. So far his record was without saying. Then came the whisperer, the enemy of human nature. And whispered in to him the suggestion to rationalize what G-d had taught or prescribe for him in his nature. And that was that he should not eat from a certain tree, the tree of falsehood, the tree of deception, the tree of selfishness, the tree of greed for eternal life.
But when the enemy of human nature suggests to him to rationalize what G-d had said, what does rationalize mean? Look up these words. Don't be satisfied as my student to hear me say, rationalize, you don't know what I'm talking about. A student is supposed to have a pencil and a notepad or a pen and a notepad and you're supposed to take down what you don't understand. You're supposed to go home and look rationalize up in the dictionary. I shouldn't be your dictionary and I'm not going to be your dictionary. You look up rationalize please. Okay, if you don't know. So he was seduced suggested to him that he rationalized what G-d has said now. Now he uses his own mind independent of Taqwa. So now the Satan, the enemy, Shaitan means the enemy has caused him to forget his Taqwa and go his own way. So he comes to the conclusion that the suggestion, the suggestion was okay, so he ate of that tree.
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