10/17/1977
IWDM Study Library
Dawa And Youth

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Imam WD Mohammed:
Akbar is a comparison. Akbar is a name of G-d that knows comparison, or indicates comparison. And there's only comparison with G-d between two things, not three. I hope you can understand the wisdom in this. This G-d cannot be three and more. There's either one or the other. There's either G-d or it's not G-d. You understand? It's either G-d or it's not G-d. It's either Allah or it's created. It's either Creator or its creation. See Allah has no several comparisons to be made. There's only one to be made and that is, it's either Allah or it's not Allah. It's either a Creator or its creation. So, Allah is the Akbar of two. He's the greater of two things, that Himself and creation you see? Alright, so we say Allah is the greatest, but really if you remember Akbar, it will help you understand, to help us understand, what Allah is, what Allah is. So, we call these descriptions of Allah.
We describe Allah as the whole. The Holy Qur'an gives us many, many descriptions of Allah. You don't have to write, but you can write if you want. Look what we use to make the sound Rabb. We use this letter. So, this letter must be like an R, right? If we use this letter to start the sound Rabb, then this letter must be like R. But it's not like an English R. If it was like an English R, we wouldn't pronounce it Ra. We would say rock. It's like a Spanish R. The Spanish R The Spanish, you heard them say Senor? But we don't put as much strong accent into it as they do, so we put a little bit there, Rabb. This is it. Two B's. So, we put Shada after Rabb.
Alhamdu Ilahi Rabb. I want to make it sound Rab-b. So, I have to have something on the B. So, it would be Rabbil. It can't be this, Rab-bu. It can't be this, Rab-ba. It has to be this, Rab-bil, under, underneath makes that sound, Rab-bil, like an I. There it is. We don't pronounce that A or M. When we are continuing the sound, when we make this sound go into the sound of the next word, we take away the sound of the A. So, if you go now and look in your Holy Qur'an and you see where it says Bismillah Ar Rahma Nir Rahim, if you know the Arabic alphabet and you can read fairly well, you know when you come to and you have Rab-be and you have Ah, Alif and then Lam. You don't say Rabbil and then pronounce this Alif L, you go right to put this sound with this one and say Rabbil and pass down the Alif. So, here's what you do.
This is how it happens. This is like an R, Rabb, this is like an A, Ra. So this is like two Bs, right? Rabb. And then this is like an I behind this B, right? Rab-be right? And we don't pronounce this Alif, we read this way, the letters go like this, we don't pronounce this Alif, we come right to the L. So, this becomes like an L by itself. Now once we put these together, they would be Rabbil. Let's take the first one, we read it this way. So Ra, right? Be, Be right? I right for this. And then L, right? Ra-bil, Ra-bil right?
Everything that you hear, it should be told in the light. If it says Alhamdu, what you see is Al-Hamdu. Al Hamdu Ilahl. Who knows what Al Amin means? We say Al Hamdu Ilahi Rabbil Al Amin. What does Al Amin mean? Anybody know? What does Al Amin mean? The world, right? What part of that that you just told me is Al Amin. It means Lord, but Lord in Arabic doesn't mean Lord. It means evolver, to raise the thing to perfection. Evolver, who creates something until it reaches its fulness, what it's supposed to be. That's Rabb. But they call it Lord because is easy for English speaking people to understand. But Rabb actually doesn't mean Lord in the Qur'an. It means evolver and one who made the world until it was complete as it is now as we see it. That's Rabb. Lord means the ruler or something., The word for that is Malik. Allah is a Malik to you. He's a master or the ruler over all the things.
I want you to know Al Fatiha. I don't want you to recite Al Fatiha from memory. I want you to know Al Fatiha. If I say, what does Al Hamdu Ilah mean? You supposed to know it means all praise. Al Hamdu means all the praise you see. If I say Rabb, you should know it means a Lord that is al evolver, maintainer and evolver, to evolve and sustain all the world. If I say what Rabbil Al Amin mean, you should know as it says here that it means All the world, all the world. But it actually means all the universes, all the universes. Because Alim is worlds. And Alim is also the whole universe. If you say Alim means all of this, if I say Alamin, then that means there is some more. Science didn't discover anything that the Holy Qur'an didn't know. He didn't tell the Prophet that there was only one Alim. He told the Prophet that that was an Alamin. And that means worlds, universes.
And we don't have to spend that much time on that, but we do have to spend some time on certain things to clear up certain problems that we face as Muslims. So actually, tonight we are going to deal with two statements which can help us to better understand how the Muslim life should be lived. Sometimes when I am on a panel, I'll pick up on the persons cue and answer questions. Many times, we have things on our mind but we never get a chance to ask these questions and if you ask a certain question, you never get the answers that you would like to get.
When a person lives a good life and does their best to be a good brother, good sister to everybody, even though you have left this earth physically, to the people you are not dead. Actually, you don't die, you live. The people won't let you die. They going to remember you. They going to mention your name and you live among the people I actually can't think of this brother as being dead. I have to think of him as being alive because he was too lively to die. But tonight, I would like to hold a community night and I hope that it would prove to be a shot in the arm for the community, for the whole community. Well tonight we are scheduled to have a short film, but we don't have the projector. So, I'll be talking to you for about 40 minutes and I want to begin with the idea of community life, how it develops, how it develops. It has to take some real effort to live this life, it takes some real effort to live. And you have to have some direction, some real direction. Now as you know, we are people who literally cut off from our past history and religion.
Other nationalities, they have their social life, they have that life, they have a political life, they have a cultural life. But for us, we are not sure about a lot of our past. We don't know, coming from that part of the world we most likely came from some political aim, some social aim, some religious aim. We had our own ideas about individual life, about community life, about national life. We had our own ideas of how life was supposed to be lived. We had our own food, we had our own culture, food, drinks, language. They were all uniquely ours. But when slavery came, they killed all that. They cut the people off from their history, from their culture, from their national identity. And eventually we came to be identified as American Negroes and American blacks. American blacks came to be identified as American. So now if you ask what is my nationality? It's American. What is my national identity? American. That's a fact we can't deny. If someone ask us to identify another life, African life, we can't do it. So, the only life we have to live now is the American life. But there are many problems and that's why many of you hesitate to respond seriously to what I said, I said that the life we now have is American. The only nationality is American. When they ask you what your nationality is what else can you say but American. You have to say American. Nationality means a nation. So, nationality should identify you with a nation. You say negro that's not going to be your nation. You say black, there is no black nation unless it is outside of here. This is a multicolored nation, right? Okay, so if they ask what is your nationality you have to say my nationality is American. Now we are a long way from being a people with a national life. And all people belonging to a nation should have a national life.
You may say, "Well my national life is the same as every other Americans national life." No, it's not. North America is made of people whose origin began outside of America. Except for American Indians, all those people have their origins, national origins outside of America. So, when the Irish come to America, he becomes an Irish American. The Italian becomes an Italian American. The Jews becomes Jewish American. And that Jew identifying as Jewish American ties him his national origin. Listen very carefully now. The Irishman when he comes here and establishes himself, he has some traditions that are Irish traditions. He still feels connected with the life blood, the original blood of the people that he can identify with. So, the Irish can identify with America and they can really support the national life of America because they are a part of the national life of America. That part of the national life that they connect with is called Irish American life. And what we have to understand is the essential power of the American Constitution.
It's not the Constitution that gives you a culture. But it does give you a national identity. What represents American culture? Hamburgers, hot dogs. Okay, that's American culture. Apple pie, hamburgers, hot dogs. So, we have a real problem that some think we don't have to deal with. But we do. The Afro-Americans that I like to call the Bilalian need a culture. You need a culture. You need a traditional life. Sometime before I said we shouldn't just take everything from the past life and throw it away. We shouldn't forget the good habits that we learned from mom and dad down south. Why don't we draw from some of these things and keep them in our life. The survival of people is really in their strength and in time their weaknesses. That's how people survive. What is my strength? I have to look back behind me and review my life to connect my strength. And when I review my life, I see certain problems that I had to face, and in facing those problems, there was a learning that came about that experience that amounts to learning. Okay. Now in your private life sometimes you have to stop and have an internal talk with yourself and say, how did I handle this in 1950?
Seems to me that I had a problem similar to this one. So, history is very useful in dealing with problems as they come. And I'm saying that we have never have done what we are supposed to do. And that is study the problem and applied sensible solutions to these problems. Now let us look at what we have inherited in terms of National life or Nationalism, black, whatever you might call it. Let's look at what we have inherited from both leaders that are in the history of the community of Al Islam. Now I include in this history, Marcus Garvey. Why do I include him? Because I know for a fact, as a historical fact that Marcus Garvey was inspired by a Muslim.
He was political in his language, but actually the man was spiritually motivated. One G-d, One destiny. Is that right? One G-d, One Destiny. He didn't leave out G-d. Where are his teachings on G-d? We don't have it. When he included G-d in the motto of his movement. One G-d, One Destiny, right? One G-d, One Destiny. Alright. And Marcus Garvey also understood the need for his people, that is us, to get rooted again in some kind of national life, in some kind of national life. So, he identified with Africa and taught his people to identify with Africa. That was his way of connecting us back with a real National life. Noble Drew Ali, he did the same thing. That is he made the same effort. He tried to give us an identity again with some real national life, something that we could identify with. So he called us Black Moors, Asiatics. He didn't call us African; he called us Asiatic Black Moors.
Alright? These were trying to deal with a real problem. We have other leaders who tried to fit into the life of America without identifying in some past history or identifying roots in some past history or in some nation behind us. They tried to do the opposite of that. Those leaders were Fredrick Douglas and many others, right? And they did an excellent job. But look at the difficulty for Frederick Douglas. Fredrick Douglas condemned the mentality and the morals of America as it existed in that time. He condemned their morals; he condemned their mentality. And he condemned them with such cutting language, such fighting language that actually his life shows the need for his people to identify in some past life.
Brothers and Sisters, we have to have eventually our unique culture. And if you would adopt Al Islam, we'll have our unique cultural life, our traditions, we'll have it, we'll have our own traditions and we will be equal culturally speaking with Irish Americans, with the Mexican Americans, with Chinese Americans, whoever they are, we will be equal with them. Stop wasting time. You should make time by doing things that has to be done in the time of need. So that those that are coming behind you won't have to wait on so much time to bring about those things that we have to have in our life. We can build our own life on the pattern of Al Islam. So we have the solution. We don't have to wait for the President to give us anything. We don't have to ask the President for anything. We don't have to wait until 1980 or the year 2000 to develop a lifestyle that we can envision today and to begin making concrete steps to bring about today. Why we gonna with till the year 2000? We need to sit down as men and women who have real love for ourselves, who have real compassion for our people and do something about our real problems. Nothing is going to be done about until you do something about it. There are only two ways to go. You either destroy your identity, that is you're marrying into somebody else's identity and you make it your own if you don't have one. We can intermarry with Indian, Mexican, Irish, Italian, if they'll let us. We can marry those people and eventually get blocked out of our identity as our blood becomes one with those people. Okay? Are we ready to do that? No, we're not ready to do that.
I believe most of us are ready to do that. I'm not with you. I believe most of these people calling themselves black and Negro, I believe they are ready to do that. You can't wipe out your identity. And as long as you have this identity, you're going to have a hell of a time trying to live in America and have the experience, the same treatment that all other nationalities are going to have, you are going to have hell until you get a culture, until you get a culture. Once you get a culture then the people around you, they don't fear you as much. But if you don't have a culture, they say you have nothing to stand on. If they mix with us, they going take away from what we stand on. Now isn't that a fact?
I'm not talking about people running around thinking that their music and singing, if they let it go, they’re going to hurt the musical life of the neighborhood. I'm talking about something much more serious than that. Your singing is not fixed in history. Your music, your singing, your dance is not fixed in history. By fixed in history, I mean it is not controlled by anything. We used to Be-bop, we don't Be-bop anymore. We had an established and unique musical identity. But the white man commercialized it. And once he did that, he turned it into Rock and Roll. And once he did that, they began to control what came directly out of our culture. In order to have something of your own, you need to have it in writing. The greatest invention of man is writing. You need something for them to present to their grandchildren and say this is us. Does that mean that we are going to give up any of our American life? No. It means that we are going come into a richer American life. We have the poorest American life of all people in America. Did you know that? How come our life is so poor as Americans? It's poor because we don't have anything but what people pass out to us that they don't want. We don't have anything but what we get in the form of charity. I want you to understand clearly what I'm saying. The language, your style of living, you don't control it, you don't direct it, it's charity. It's given to you by somebody else.
It's charity. Welfare is not the only form of charity. It's clear that welfare is charity. But everything else is charity. What are you making for yourself? You're not making nothing for yourself. You're not making anything for America. And that's what the Irish know, that's what the Italians know, that's what the Chinese know. And all other minorities in this country, that's what they know. They know that you are not making your life and that means you are not making American life. In order to make American life, you have to make your own life. You have to contribute to America. You can't contribute to America if you are always on the receiving end. You're not contributing to America. You're taking from other people.
Now it's hard, it's difficult to come into that mindset. What he's going to do is separate us from America. No, this is to unite you with America. You can't integrate in American life when you don't have no identity. How can someone that has no identity integrate into something. You are not going to integrate into that thing. You want be infused into that thing. To integrate into society doesn't mean becoming and desiring what the white man has. Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement, they had a problem with this. They said the Nation of Islam and the Black Nationalists, what they were talking about wasn't giving us an identity. Actually, what they were talking about wasn't addressing the problem of our identity. They were talking about having the same privileges, the same rights, and civil rights that other people have. That's all they were talking about. But the Nation of Islam, they didn't want us to marry Caucasian and lose our identity. They didn't want us to change our language and speak like an Irish or speak like a Jew or eat the food of a Jew or eat the food of the Italian.
They said that many of the Muslims, they never spoke Arabic like you. And many of them make mistakes. And I found out that there is real effort being made to correct it. And some say "Subhan Rabbil Azeem" because they have trouble pronouncing the th, but it's not Azeem, it's Atheem. So, there's a lot of bad pronunciations now in Muslim countries among Muslims. Because the teachers didn't insist upon perfect, perfect pronunciation. But here in the community of Al Islam, it was once called the Nation of Islam. Under the Honorable Elijah Muhammad there was a teacher hired; his name was Jamil Diab. Professor Jamil Diab. He insisted upon perfect pronunciation. And because he insisted upon it, our members became better speakers. In fact, we had people visit us from different parts world. And when they heard us speak Arabic, they were amazed. They said, you speak it just like you were born speaking it. They could not believe it. And Brother Imam here can verify this because he's been told the same thing. My brother Akbar if he was here right now too, he would verify this. They've come among us and heard us speak Arabic and they have been absolutely amazed. They say "You speak it just like an Arab speaks it." And that's because our teacher insisted upon us pronouncing the letters and phrases correctly.
The human beings tongue is not made difference. We're not made different. The people can speak what others speak. You just have to have patience and insist upon perfection. And that's what we do. We get good results. So it is really beautiful. I'm telling you, I really like to hear these children. You find out once you learn, you go among other people who speak the language and you will be proud of yourself. I've been absent for a few days; I've been flying in the air more than I've been on the ground. Seattle, Washington, back in the United States, not far.
I don't like to stay in the air so much. Muhammad Ali bough a bus, he wouldn't fly. He said, I don't want to go up there. If you bought him a bus, he'd be able to travel on the ground. He said he felt safer on the ground. But sometimes you have to do things fast and you have to take an airplane. But I agree with Muhammad Ali, I feel safer on the ground. And I'm sorry the way I came here, I've been doing other things today. I didn't have time to put on a jacket, so I'm going to keep on this jacket. Let's say Al Fatiha all together. And this time we let's not say it like we did before. Don't say Al udhu, say Al udzu. Say it like Brother Darnell Karim.
Now you see Al Udzu means I seek safety, I seek protection. I seek protection, safety, with Allah. All Muslims should trust Allah. And they should want Allah to protect them. When we get afraid, very afraid, terrified, very afraid. Sometimes we see it at the house when it is very dark. Or we might see that we're going have an accident. When you get really afraid and you want somebody to help you who you ask for? Your mother, your brother, your friend, your daughter. But when nobody can help you, when nobody can do anything for you that you want done, then you have to turn to Allah right? And even sometimes you have other people to do the same for us, help us, but still, we turn to Allah. So maybe we'd like Allah to help us reach those other people. So, Allah can do things for us directly and Allah can do things for us through other people. So, we say Al udzu Bilahi Min Nas Shaitan Ar Rajeem. And actually, the Shaitan, where is the Shaitan, the devil?
The devil, where is the devil? Actually, there is no devil except the devil that we let come into our own mind. If we let ourselves be evil and then the devil starts to take over us. The devil means the evil force. The evil force. Evil habits, evil thinking, bad thinking. Meanness. Bad thinking, destructive thinking. You want to tear down good things. You want to hurt good things. This is the mind of the devil building up in you. You understand? So, if you got that kind mind building up in you, or sometimes maybe we don't have it all the time, but maybe it's sometimes that mind start building up in us. We want hurt something. We want to do something wrong. So, we have to ask Allah to give us protection from that kind of mind building up in us. That's the devil mentality, the devil mind. So, we have to ask Allah to protect us.
Because any times we are weak minded. Somebody might be so tough that he likes to be tough and he hasn't got any bad person to beat up. He might try beating up a good person. So, there's people who like to be tough, start beating up good people because they don't have any bad people to beat on. There are people that's letting the devil mind rule them. So many times we are good. We say our prayers right; we are good people. We attend the Masjid right. We don't eat pork, we don't drink. But there might be some kind of devil mind that follow us here. The devil mind of filthy language, the devil mind of jealousy. So there might be some devil mind, a little bit of it, building up in us though we are good in many, many other ways.
So all Muslims say to Allah before they begin their prayer, Al Udzu Bilahi Mina Shaitan Ar Rajim. I seek protection with Allah or from Allah against the rejected enemy, Shaitan Ar Rajim. Or meaning the rejected enemy. Allah says in His Qur'an that the enemy of all human beings is the devil's mind, the devil mind. Not just my enemy. It's your enemy. It's the enemy of the person who has that mind. Because that mind is making him worse. It's going to get him in trouble. Might get him killed one day, might cause him great losses one day. Might cause him to lose his mother or his wife or his precious children one day. You see? So that mind is even the enemy of the person who has that mind.
And it is not the mind for human beings. It's not the mind for human beings. So, does anybody want to have the devil in them? No, we don't want to have the devil in us. We don't want to have the devil in us. Did you see a movie? There was a movie called the Exorcist. And in Exorcist, this little girl they say had the devil in her and she was doing terrible things. And there are a lot of movies they put out. They say people get the devil in them and they do strange things. These movies are like Superman movies and who else do you know?
Well, the movies about the devil being in people, making 'em do things like that. Yeah, they're just like Superman movie, Batman movie. Spiderman, right. Actually, there is no devil like that. There's no such thing as a devil like that. But people go crazy and act like that. It's not the devil. They just crazy. And I saw in that movie, I saw it. And I saw the bed come across the floor. The bed came up off the ground, off the floor. And the lamp and other things came, started flying all about in the room. They said the devil was doing it. So, we know no devil can do that unless it's a human devil with some kind of gadget, some kind of instrument, have to be some kind of trick, right? Maybe they could blow wind or cause something to happen to make the furniture fly around or something.
Or hide what is doing the thing. They don't have to show us what is doing the thing. The table can just crawl over and go up and there's something doing it. But they didn't have to put that on the film. They could have kept that out of the film. So, we think the devil or something, whatever they say is throwing furniture around. But nothing happens like that. And that's the beauty of Muslim life. Muslims don't believe that there's any G-d except Allah. If the devil has the power to make furniture turn over, to upset the nature, the natural order of the world that Allah has made to make spooky things happen. If the devil can come into the natural order that Allah made and make changes like this and make things go crazy, then the devil is a G-d too, isn't he? Because he's performing power against G-d's power. And that's not true. No such thing exists. No one can make this. No power. The devil can't make the sun change. No power other than Allah can make me and my nature change. Even Allah won't do it. Allah says that He has set the nature, He's made me this way. He likes me this way. He's going to keep me this way. This is what He want us. But sometimes people go crazy and they do crazy things to each other and they behave crazy. But that doesn't mean that there's something bothering them outside of them. The thing that bothers them is inside of them. They're letting their mind go crazy. And if you let your mind go crazy pretty soon you can't catch up with your mind, right? It's gone so far crazy you can't find it. The Muslim have to keep his mind right. He has to believe in things that make sense, Al Islam is a religion that makes sense. You have to believe in things that make sense. If things don't make sense, you shouldn't believe in it.
If somebody say, well how did that happen? Well, it happen because they have divine powers. That happened because he has a magic. He can make it happen. No, we can find out the magic. There's a trick to the magic. There's no magic. There are tricks that people don't understand. There's no such thing as magic. I can bring some chemicals in here that you know nothing about and I can make those chemicals do things. And to you it'd be magic. But once I explain to you the chemistry, you understand it, you say, no, it's not magic. That's how the things supposed to work.
Alright? So, we ask Allah's protection. We ask safety, refuge or safety or protection with Allah from the Shaitan. In the Bible, Christians and Jews called Shaitan. what? Who knows? Satan. Satan. S-A-T-A-N. Satan. Satan. And what is another name for Satan? Satan. Devil. Devil, devil. Now, how many of you little children can read this word devil. How many know how to read the word? Can you read? Okay, very good. If I take the D off of devil, can one of you children tell me what it says? Evil. So, what is the devil? Evil. Right. Evil. The devil means an evil person. Evil and powerful because they have a lot of knowledge that a lot of ignorant people don't have. So when an evil person gets a lot of knowledge and use that knowledge for his evil, for his evil mind, he's a devil. He's a devil. Okay, so now we know- Devil, Satan, and Shaitan all the same words, means all the same. And Shaitan, Satan and devil means the same.
The enemy of human the human being. Allah says the enemy of the human being is the evil mind. The evil mind is the enemy of the human being. Mischief mind, lying mind. Filthy, wicked, heartless cruel mind. But it gets enough intelligence to help it carry out its thoughts and it's actions and desires and get enough power to affect what it wants, to do what it wants in Chicago and in Detroit, in New York, pretty soon you got Satan. And he's the chief right? Satan is the chief of the devils. The biggest evil human being on earth would be Satan, Satan in person. Al uzu Bilahi Min Nas Shairan Ar Rajim. Al Udze means I ask, I seek, I want protection. There's a word Ana like this. Ana means I. Ana means I. A lot of verbs, we put just the first letter before them and it change the verb so it says I. So, we say Al Uzu, I see protection with Allah.
Min, this word means from. Min means from. Let's look at some of the letters in this word. This letter is like an M. This letter is like an N. See, you put them together like this and put a dash under this letter like this and it's pronounced Min. It's easy, very easy. See, this is like an M. This is like an N. Put 'em together like this. Always write from this direction to this direction. Begin from this direction, go this way. There are other languages that write like that too. And there's a language that write straight up. Anybody know that language? Chinese. Chinese, right Chinese. That's right. And there are a lot of other languages that go just like Arabic. Go from this way, that way. Okay. So we say put a dash under it and put a little circle like this. It becomes min. And it means from. Now watch what happens.
Watch what happens. See these are the same letters. This is meem in the Arabic alphabet. And this is nun in the Arabic alphabet. You can write meem like this too. So I'll just change not the word, pardon me, the letter, but just the sign. It doesn't mean from anymore. Before it was mim, which means from. Now it's men, men huwa, men huwa. You like Spanish right? Men huwa. Now it's Who is he? Men huwa. Who is he? So men becomes huw just by changing the sign.
See men come, change the sign. Men. Now watch what happens to them. One word as we change it. Let's make it this, okay. Men. Men. Now watch, watch how he greets it. Min. Min. Not men, min. Water. Okay, keep watching. Just watch. This is going to help you read. So what are these signs doing? They're changing some vowels. You see? They're changing some vowels. They make this M sound like MI when it's down here when the dash is below. And when I put a dash up here, it makes this M sound like MA. And when I put this dumma here, this thing is called dumma in Arabic. When I put it there, it makes the M sound like mu. Right? Now if I want to write Muhammad, I have to use this like mu. Muhammad. Now watch me write Muhammad.
Muhammad. See, I have to use that, Muhammad. So it's not hard. It's easy. All you have to do is believe that it's easy. And you'll learn this language. Muhammad, where this hamed come from? Come from this. This is ha, that's where this H come from, ha. And when we write, we don't take the whole ha like it stands alone. We just take this part of the ha. So, we say it's that part and we add like this, hammad, you see? So here the mu, the meem goes up here. Muhammad. In Muhammad we have meem, ha, meem, ad. Four letters, four letters in the word Muhammad. When we put 'em together, that's how we write it. You say me, ha, me, ad. See Muhammad, Muhammad. If we've seen that word a lot, we know without making signs that this is Muhammad. But if we've never seen that word before and we know how to read the letter, someone have to put the signs before it.
And that's what that's called. And this means take shada, which means two M's. Shada two letter, means double letter. Shada. And it also takes what? It has to be Muhammad. It has to have an A following it. So above shada see. So, it's Muhammad. And this would have to take something. If I say Muhammad, the sound is like that. That circle means don't pronounce a vowel behind this. That's what it means. It means don't pronounce a vowel sound behind that. Just stop there on the consonant, Muhammad, you see or stop on whatever it is, stop there. Don't add anything. So this is Muhammad. If I do, this it's Muhammadu. Look Muhammadu, Muhammadin, Muhammadun. In English we don't change words like that. But in Arabic, the sound of the word tells us something about the word. If it's Muhammadun, that I know without looking at the grammatical structure, the adults. And children you know something too about nouns verbs, right? So, I know by hearing the sound, Muhammadun. I know that this is used as a noun and as the subject. But if I hear something like Muhammadan, I know that it's used as a noun, but not as a subject, as an object. And when it's Muhammadin, I know that it is used as a noun, but as an object. Again, as an object. But here an object of a preposition, here, an object of a verb. Here, not an object, but just as a noun, subject, the subject.
When you want to learn how to read Arabic, the thing to pay attention to after you learn the shape, the main thing to pay attention to is dots. And if the writing is sign, like the Holy Qur'an, they put the sign. So, it'll be easier for everybody to read. If it is signed with these signs, then you'll want to look at dots and signs. They're very important because there are many letters that are just alike, right? We begin with the Bismillah, this letter Bi, like this. We don't begin with this letter, do we? That book, we can't begin Bismillah with this. It would ba. We begin it with this, Bis. And you notice that letter. Well, there's another way to write it like this, but the proper way is with these. And these things tell us something about the letter. It is an S, but it's an S, an S is crooked. You ever see a person say S with a straight tongue? You can't say S with a straight tongue. S is a crooked letter. And there are more S's in the English dictionary than any other letter. Yeah, see the tongue, the tongue has the bend to say, to make that sound, tongue takes a bend. So, these marks here mean that it's not straight, bent. So, Bismillah. So the Meem has to take this to make it Bismi. It can't take this. It'll be Bismu. It can't take this, it'll be Bisma, right? It has to take this to be Bismi. And then you put Allah and it becomes Bismillah. Or we can say Bismi Allah, but that's not the best way to speak. You can say Bismi Allah, which is correct. But the words, Arabic is written like Spanish and the, pardon me, the syllables flow into each other. The syllables flow into each other. It's like music, becomes like music. Bismillah, Bismillah. And this long mark over Allah like this, over this double letter, tells us to pronounce it like A, like the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. Pronounce it like Alif, which when written like this is pronounced A for Bismillah.
And here is the H, this little part here is the H. That's the H. Which H is it this H? No, it's not that H. This H is Ha, Ha. This is the H that's in the middle here, Mu-ha-mmad, Mu-ha-mmad. This H here is like the English H. Bismillahi or Bismilah. If I put it here, Bismillahi, Bismillahi. And that's the way it's written. If I want to stop on that word, I say Bismillah, Bismillah. If I want to continue. I don't want to stop there. I want say to say Bismillah Alhamduillah. I want say With the Name of Allah, All Praise is due to Allah, I would say Bismillahi Alhamdulilah. I would say it like that. But if I stop right there, I say Bismillah. So when we recite Al Fatiha, we say Bismillah Ir Rahma Nir Raheem we stop on Nir Raheem. But if we continue the reading, if we continue reading, we can't say this. And if we continue, we say this, Bismillah Ar Rahma Nir Raheem. Alhamduillahi Rabbil Al Amin. So you connect all the things you have to read. If you keep going, you have to read everything, every vowel or every sign at the end of a word. If you don't stop, you have to read it. So if I read the whole Al Fatiha without stopping and some people do and I mean read it slowly, the whole Al Fatiha slowly without stopping. That's the wind they have. They make good deep-sea divers. So they can get enough wind to say the whole Al Fatiha without stopping, in one breath and they don't stop. So, they will say it like this, I can't do it. I'm going to stop before we get to the end. Bismillah Ar Rahma Nir Raheem. Alhamduillahi Rabbil Al Amin, Ar Rahma Nir Raheem. Maliki Yaumideen. Iyaka Na’budu.
I'm out of breath. Okay? So, they pronounce every sign on it. But if you stop, you don't pronounce the last sign. The last sign here is this sign. So this would be Bismillahi. If I stop, I don't say he, I say Bismillah. The H is silent. Alright, so let's take this off now and let's go to Alhamdu. Al, always when you see these two letters together, they're pronounced L or either if it's not L like this, it has to be in. Can't be but a few things. In, or it has to be Qul, right? It has to be one of those. Most of the time it's Al like this is Alhamdu, we put ha, that's this letter. Al ha meem.
And we put dal to make sound du, to make du sound we just put this over it. Now you know how I can make you never forget these rules? All I have to do is say dal u du, dal u du, du du and you won't forget, you see? Put two of these signs together and put both these signs over it and then this is pronounced du du. And now it's pronounced da da. And now it's pronounced di di. You see? These signs are what changed the pronunciation. Di di. I just made it simpler, that's what I did. That's exactly what I said. I made little ones up above it. But then I took and I made big ones with it like this. Two big ones and it du du. And I made two big ones. Da da, da da.
Now watch. Di di. These are the long vowels. The long vowel. We make the short vowel sound with just signs. Ba, bi, du. But we made the long ones with the letters of the alphabet. Here, I put 'em down here. Da, di, du, see? This is the beginning of reading Arabic This is how you have to start. You have to learn the signs of the dots and the signs after you learn the shapes. But really, I think the best way is to begin right with reading. Not to teach alphabets, to begin right with reading and teach five shapes of the letter, dots and signs. Those are the most important things. So we write down Al Ham Du Li La Hi. Now this H at the end of Allah, at the end of Allah, this is to G-d, Allah, and this, where is it? Well, we erased it, did we? Let's put Allahu, Allahu, Allahu, Allahu, Allahu. This is how you pronounce Allah when you're beginning. If you say Allah is the greatest, how do you say it? Allahu, right. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. But actually we are not saying Allah is the greatest, are we? It should be Allahu Al Akbar, like that. But it's not that. It's Allahu Akbar, like this. Allahu Akbar, like this. It means Allah is greater.
Allah is greater, bigger, more important, greater, than what? Anything, you see. But in English we have different kind of sentence structure, grammatical structure. We say G-d is the greatest, but that actually means He's the greatest. It means that because we know G-d is the greatest. But if I say Muhammad Ali is the greatest, I don't mean over everything. I mean he's the greatest fighter, right? Or maybe the greatest entertainer. Greatest TV entertainer, right? Okay, alright. If I say Muhammad Ali is the greatest, that's what I mean. He's the greatest fighter or he's the greatest on TV or something. But when we say Allah the greatest, it means really the greatest of all. It means the greatest of all. There's a way that it's written in Arabic that tells you the greatest of all. Allahu Akbar. It means in any field, whatever you are talking about, He's the greatest of whatever you compare Him with.
That's what it means. Whatever you are talking about, associating Him with or comparing Him with, He is the greatest, not the greatest, the greater. The greater is the greatest. When we are talking about things, we are talking about two, but in English they say there are three. Three, what they call it, three degrees. There is three levels, good, better, bad. Good, better, bad. So everything goes in threes right there across the trinitarian mind you see. The good, better, bad. But actually, when we are talking about what's the better, we are talking about the better of two things.
We hardly use good, better, best. If we use that, we go on to a thousand things. There will be something a little better than that. Little better, little better. We can go on forever, can't we? But there is a comparison between two things. We say this is salty, this is not salty, this is sour, this is sweet, this is strong, this is weak. Comparisons are usually between two things, not between three or lot of things. This is strong, this is weak. This is hot, this is cold. This is great, this is not great. This is good, this is bad. This is greater, this is weaker. Allah is greater. Everything else is lesser, lesser. So I don't want you to change your language now. It's okay to say Allah is the greatest, but I want you to understand Arabic, that in Arabic we don't say Allah is the greatest with Al, the. This is the. We don't say Allah is Al Akbar. We say Allahu Akbar. And it has a much greater meaning. Whatever thing you imagine, Allahu Akbar. It covers a broad field. But once you say Al, it is speaking of a definite thing. It is limited. You restrict it. I hope you understand. Once you say Al, then it makes a comparison between something. You say maybe Allah is the greatest in this sense or in next the sense. But when you don't restrict it and you leave it open, greater. Now remember, greater doesn't just mean greater. It means more important.
Yes, more important. Bigger. There's a word in Arabic takbir. It's written like this. I don't know if y'all can see it. Let's take this off. And just talking about Arabic and that's what I'm doing now, I'm going to teach you Arabic. This is how you learn Arabic. In time Inshallah, if I be around that long. Let's see. I don't intend to go, but things may take you away from here. Yes. This is Ta, ta. This is the bi, this is the long e, beer, two dots. Two big dots. This is Kabeer. The word Akbar is of the same word. So, if we say this is Kabeer, it means big, right?
Big. Kabeer I make it like this. Akbaru means bigger than this. Bigger than this. You see? So, Akbar means bigger. This means big. Akbar means bigger. The biggest. How do you say it? You don't know. No, the biggest. There's way to say it. Al Akbar, right. So, there's a way to say the biggest. Al Akbar. It would be the biggest or the bigger, but we don't speak like that when we talking about Allah and other things. We don't say that. We say Allahu Akbar, not Al Akbar. Because there is nothing else Al Akbar.
You understand? Allahu Akbar. There is nothing Al Akbar. Whenever we write Allah like this, it takes the definite noun. It is the subject. It is the definite noun. So, it is the. Although it's written Allah, it is the. So, we don't have to say Allah Al Akbar. We just say Allahu Akbar. Means Allah is bigger, more important. So, this word Akbar means in degrees, in degrees of greatness. The degrees can be in power, degrees can be in size. The degrees can be in many things. So, this word covers all that. It means bigger or greater, or more important. The only word that we put, pardon me. The only form that we use Al with is Al, as somebody says, Kabeer, when you're talking about Allah.
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