10/15/1988
IWDM Study Library
Clara Muhammad School Education Banquet
New Haven CT

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
[applause]
Imam Mohammed: Thank you. As salaam alaikum.
Imam Mohammed: That is peace be unto you. We always begin trusting the one Lord and creator for the success. The desired outcome of all of our endeavors, all of our works. We pray the peace and the blessings be on the last prophet messenger of G-d, Muhammad, to whom the Quran was revealed, our holy book was revealed, and all of the proper salutations. We also pray that peace and blessings, the mercy of G-d be with us all here and throughout the world.
First of all, before making my address, which would have been much longer, as the senator said, had I not been so well-fed in my mind and in my spirit by the presentation of Sister Clara Muhammad School here in New Haven, Connecticut. To the principal of the school, Sister Zakia and the Imam, and the staff of the school, Sister Clara Muhammad School and the Imam staff, congratulations. I think you need that congratulation, - entitled to that congratulation from all of us.
I hope that you have gotten a very good video of that little stage presentation we got there, causing us to go back and retrace the history of our spokespersons for-- Yes, because there are some women and there too, - great women [laughs] for our dignity. For the uplift of the life and image of our people here in America. I already made a personal bid in the name of the account, the Muslim American Community Assistance Fund. I made a personal bid already, I offered $100 for a copy of the video.
[applause]
Imam Mohammed: I made a request that the profit from the purchase go to the school here in New Haven. I told her she should advertise. I told the principal, Sister Zakia, that it should be advertised in the Muslim journal, in the Muslim papers. There is another Muslim paper advertising in that one too. That the Imam made the first bid for a copy of the video and said that that's the minimum that we should pay to contribute to the school here in New Haven.
[applause]
Imam Mohammed: Believe me it's worth it. Nobody will be disappointed, don't worry. They won't be disappointed. You see what it did here. I saw what it did here. The believers, the Muslims and everybody. The Muslims, they were thrilled. Watching the youngsters and hearing those words. They performed so well. Excellent, very excellent performance, which tells us that we if we invest here, we will be investing in a worthwhile school with a very deserving staff.
I say again, with Allah's name, the Merciful Benefactor, the Merciful Redeemer, bring peace and blessings be upon the last and universal messenger Prophet Muhammad, and all the proper salutations. To Imam, Abdul Majeed Kareem Hassan of the Muslim community, here I express my appreciation and also to Sister Zakia, the principle of Clara Muhammad school, I express my appreciation for this invitation, for this opportunity and honor to address this beautiful gathering of distinguished leaders of the community.
Honorable servants of the public, and the state and the city here, honorable Imams that have come from the region, some of them from as far as Philadelphia and perhaps even further, and all the honorable people in the audience here. We are taught in our religion that Allah created all of us with honor. I'm trying to encourage and promote that kind of respect in us for all of us. Some of us earn higher honors than others, but we are all honorable creatures, so says G-d.
I now quote Allah most high to introduce my topic or my subject for tonight. I quote, our holy book, G-d says, that is Allah says, "Is it not that the creation and the command belong to Allah?" This is from Quran? "Is it not that the creation and the command belong to Allah?" Or as we say in English, the language of the Christian people, American people or English people, "G-d, is it not that the creation and the command belong to G-d?" That's a question that G-d Himself puts to us in the Quran. The Arabic for that, some of you read the holy book in Arabic too, "[Arabic language]".
"Peace be upon him, the Prophet Muhammad. The Messenger of Allah, that is the messenger of the one and only G-d. He said, and I quote, “You have not faith until your inclinations follow what I have come with." We know that he came with the revelation from Allah called Quran. It was mentioned earlier that the first verses of this holy revelation, his last revelation from Allah began Iqra, the director of the community education. I forget the expression that was given now, but it means community education, educational community. He said this word iqra says two things in one time. That is read and also proclaim.
Read and it also says proclaim. The title, the name of the holy book itself- in fact, many names are given for the Holy Quran, but the proper and most specific name is Quran. It is related to the same root word that iqra itself is related to. It means, that which is read and proclaimed, Quran itself. We know that when Allah said to the Prophet, read or proclaim, he was saying to the Prophet, proclaim the whole revelation, the whole Quran because in time over a period of 20 years or a little better, he read, recited and proclaimed the whole Quran that was given to him an unlearned, an unlettered person.
He was not the son of learned parents, educated parents, he was not himself ever, a student of any formal school or anything. He was a common man with mother wit, but was blessed by G-d to be the best of creatures for mankind, for human beings in his moral life and also in his intellect.
Because he was the fitting vessel for the last revelation, G-d gave him that last revelation and he became an influence on the people of Arabia.
It was called at that time Jahiliyah meaning the ignorant age people, savage type kind of people, and the whole world at that time was under darkness, it's doing what we call the dark ages. Out of that dark age period and out of that Jahiliyah, Peninsula of people call now Arabs, came to light to influence the intellect of the learned people and scholars of the East and the West and eventually became the influence for bringing about the revival of the intellect, revival of sciences in the western part of the world.
We today as Americans and those in Europe, they enjoy something that was started by an unlearned person because that unlearned person was fit for the last revelation, a revelation that emphasizes the use of the intellect, the rational faculties of man and the use of the intellect and the purpose or the destiny of man's intellect which is excellence for man and for the whole society. I have been asked to speak on needs or what is needed over what is available, or emphasis on what is needed rather than emphasis on what's available. I hope I can within 15 to 20 minutes make a couple of points. That's all.
Just make a couple of points. I don't profess to be an intellectual myself, but I believe everybody has an intellect. I'll do the best I can, then like I said in my last talks, well, they expect the dynamic speaker that's going to shake the place, that's going to rock the place. I'm not Farrakhan by a long shot, and I do my best when I'm settled and when I take it easy. I please myself most. I may not please the audience all the time, but I please myself most when I'm settled and when I take it easy, and subjects that excite me really I'm afraid to even accept them nowadays.
I'm not going to even give you some of those subjects that excites me. [chuckles] I'll just leave it like that. Now I began with a quote- I began to start with a quote from our holy book, the Quran, G-d saying, "Is it not that the creation and the command belong to Allah." To say this, we know as curious-minded people, students of science, students of nature, lovers of nature, I am a lover of nature. I'm a student of nature. When I was in elementary school and high school, the subjects that I loved most was subjects that were clearly expressive of nature.
The natural sciences and other subjects that clearly and directly connect with nature itself. Because of that, I have appreciated our holy book so much in a great degree because, in our holy book, nature is clearly reverenced. Why I say clearly, because I am also a student of other scriptures and I'm aware that in a mysterious way, nature is also a reverence in other scriptures. But on the surface, many scriptures seem to point out nature as the adversary, the enemy of man. The heaviest burden on us as people finally to manage ourselves, is the burden of life itself.
Sometimes I believe, although I'm not a Christian, I haven't been through the Christian teachings on their theology religion, I have no degree in the studies of the Bible anything, only self-taught. But I believe that one of the meanings of the cross is a symbol standing for- I'm sure if I understand Christian teachers and Christian teachings education, I'm sure the cross is a symbol for many things. Mysterious symbol for more than one thing. I believe one is life itself because we know the cross from the ancient Egyptians times, the times of the Pharaoh, they had a cross also, and they call it the cross of life.
That was long before Christians had a cross, so it could be a reason, and if I was as courageous and brave and following my own impulses as many of these doctor, degree authors of books and publications, I would just say it as fact and putting my name on it.
[laughter]
Imam Mohammed: I'm saying this and not claiming that this is an established fact for religion but I'm saying that one of the crosses you have to bear is the cross of your own life. Pick up your own life, carry your own life. This world should help us carry our own life if we need help, because in both the great religion and all the great religions, we are supposed to respond to our brothers' needs and not turn away from him. Yes. The conduct of life needs established basis for making personal judgments or opinions. In my view, the society is coming more and more to the freedom of everything.
Not just the freedom of dress, the freedom of expression, but the freedom of everything. This means that people are tending to more freely make serious judgments without having established basis, without having a respect for some established basis. That doesn't mean that every time we are ready to make a critical judgment in our life at home, personal life, individual life, or at home with the family or whatever on the job, anything, that we have to sit down and become philosophers and search the logic in everything and go through all that, I don't mean that.
We should have a spirit in us that has been created over the history, over the period of time that we've been living. That spirit had been created by vital principles, vital things in our life. Some kind of influence in our life that man has respected as a group, or as a society or as a nation. When the nations lose that, then pretty soon it goes from the individual. The individuals that are not in touch themselves with a basis upon which they can relate the conduct to some kind of basis.

Then they too eventually go astray from that, and everybody in this so-called free society that has stressed freedom a little bit too far has stressed it into a degenerate state are going on about their business making opinions. They will tell you ''Well, that's my opinion.'' I remember early on, 50 years ago, you think I'm not that old? Yes, I'm that old. I would say even 30 years ago, I remember hearing this kind of expression from a lot of people, they weren't saying it all the time, - “You want to hear my honest opinion?”
Audience: That's right, that's right.
Imam Mohammed: But no, you hear that hardly at all. Why? Because they haven't got the freedom to just go away from morals, go away from discipline, go away from any rule of conduct. Any basis for forming opinions and judgement, so that's not necessary anymore because all their opinion is likely to be dishonest. Why I say, do you want to hear my honest opinion? My leaders don't even have honest opinions. Not pointing at any particular leaders, but we know we have had presidents that did not give us their honest opinion. Recently.
I want you to know right here, right now, that the hell that I have been through just trying to stay black, will not let me be all together and solely committed to the democrats or to republicans.
[applause]
Imam Mohammed: Now I'm going to give a term here from the dictionary in hopes of making it clear what I am trying to point to as a problem and as a direction really, for our thoughts and thinking. The term asocial, A-S-O-C-I-A-L, social with “A” before it, asocial. The term asocial means not considerate, not considerate of others. If we are really moved as social creatures, when we are dealing with each other, responding to each other, then we are considerate of each other. The term for that absence of consideration is asocial.
I sense that the spirit of this society that we constantly complain about, or to, is an asocial spirit. So there is the rule of a spirit-- See, with spirit comes a rule, spirit wants to take over. Any spirit. Spirit of alcohol want to take over. The spirit of anger wants to take over. Spirit is made to rule. So this rule of spirit that we're calling asocial, wants to take over, and it is an influence on one's ability to come to a judgement or to an opinion.
Okay, why son do you reply like that to me and you know me, you know I'm your mother or your father or your guardian or your close relative that cares about you and always cared about you. I've never done anything to make you think that I don't love you and you just turn me off like that and say you're entitled to your own opinion, knowing that what I am telling you is good for you. Why? They do it, they know they're wrong but they can't register the wrong on their part, up here or in here.
They can't register it because some spirit is overruling them, overruling the spirit in them to be straight, to be honest, to be respectful of the things they know they should be respectful of. I'm not speaking just from observation from observing others, I'm speaking also from experience, my own experience. I don't think there are any of us that have had more than five children and haven't experienced what I'm talking about right now. Now, opinions or judgements, because opinions and judgements are the same depending on what strict usage we're talking about.
Judgement is a stronger word but the judge who sits in court and judge a case, he also will give you his opinion and put it in a judgement and will make a decision based on that opinion he put in the judgement. "My opinion is that you need five years in jail." He doesn't have to say, "My honest opinion." Another big problem we have with this kind of asocial spirit that's taking over the lives, the thinking, life performance of individuals and communities, is the growth of manipulated opinions and judgements.
You may say, "How can someone manipulate my opinion? How can someone manipulate my judgement?" Influences can, individuals can do it, but what's manipulating our opinions and judgements is the influence that's in this asocial state of man in society. Not only that, the victim who's opinions and judgements, now you might say, "Is this man telling me that my judgements and opinions have been manipulated?" Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I want to make it very clear that our opinions and judgements in great part have been manipulated.
Where's that villian, where's that conspirator? The spirit in the society is manipulating your opinions and judgements, that asocial spirit. Now also, the spirit brings about what's manipulated and also manipulative. So one is manipulated, the victim and the one that's doing it is manipulative. Then the victim who's manipulated also becomes manipulative. So the people we must fear most, when it comes to the fear of manipulative influence on our opinions and judgement, are those who have been the most manipulated.
Now, judgements and opinions are influenced by need. Needs are influenced also by what's available, and what's available is influenced by what's needed. When it comes to our ability to function or operate properly as human beings. The body, if you don't abuse it with your mind or if it is not denied it's essential needs, it will function properly. We know that and we respect the body so much as a good performer, when a baby comes, we won't treat that baby like we treat adults.
“Oh honey, don't, don't. Please don't. I just can't see you suffering like that. Why don't you take a little drink? It will calm you, it'll make you feel better. Oh baby, I can't stand to see him suffer like that, I'm going to give him this $100 and let him go get a fix. I can't stand to see him suffer like that. He can't rest, give him a tranquilizer. Let him have a tranquilizer honey, let him have a tranquilizer. Give him some downers and give him some uppers. I can't stand to see him get all upset like that, poor child about to have a fit. Why don't you give him $200, he only want to buy a shirt.”
[laughter]
“Go on and give him that $125 for those sneakers. That ain't much but look at him, look at how he's suffering. Let him have it, baby. They are worth it,. But that's how we treating the big ones. That's how we treat them when they are big, but when the baby is in the crib, when it's laying in the crib, we don't say, "Hey honey, that baby been crying all night. Give him a fix. Give him a little drink. Give him a little shot." Well, wait a minute now, I have known some parents among the ignorant you know, among the ignorant, the most uncultured, the most uncultured class of our people. Yes I have known them to say they are, - what do you call it? Spike? They spike the juice, so the baby will rest well. Well, I hope that you are not doing that now, because alcohol can mess that child up for rest of his life when you put it in the system. Now, we know better than to give a baby everything that it asks for, to just give it anything to satisfy it, but when we get grown, many of us get weak, and we going to give each other whatever we holler for.
We holler for it, make enough noise, - "I can't. I'm tired of hearing them out." Or, "I'm tired of seeing him in that shape." Give it to him. Now, this is too expensive for white folks. Now what you doing accepting that kind of conduct in your life? 
In concluding this, I want to bring to our mind quality. A human being is a creature motivated naturally to not just get more in quantity, but to get more in quality. We hear so many of our alert watchers over the state of society, tell us that we have to come back to a sense of the quality of life.
In reference to the emphasis on needs over availability, I say what we should be focusing more than needs and availability, is quality and the necessity or the need to qualify needs themselves. We should stop, "Hey, wait a minute, didn't I just buy you a nice shirt, a nice jacket and you know how much money I make? And you're asking for another Adidas garment. You want two pairs of Nike sneakers."
Well, I will listen to you if you can qualify that need. We should respond to needs if they can be qualified. If we would live like that with respect for quality in the life of the human being, and encourage each other to identify with self, to see self not in terms of object. My physical self, my biological self, my physiology, all of that is tied to the object, but my life as a creature seeking quality is tied to my soul. The essence of the human being is tied to the human soul itself. It is the human soul itself that G-d created and designed that soul for excellence.
It has a need for quality, and sometimes it will throw away quantity and accept to be a beggar in the streets. Be rejected by rich parents, or be even executed because it is put on the spot to make a decision whether you're going to choose the object body or the real human person, the body, the value. Because in a real sense we are creatures of value and our identity should be seen in terms of value and not in terms of body, physical concrete object.
Although we know that that part of us is the vessel for us and it is the- you may, say the breeding bed for the higher life that comes out of it or comes up, rises up and grows in it, but we are not to see our essential self or life in the object, but we are to see it in the moving creature, the growing creature, the ever growing creature because this body grows to a certain height and it stops. It might take on a lot of fat but that's different. It'll stops growing up but start taking on a lot of fat. Don't think that's real growth now because you can put that on a skillet and melt it and it goes right out.
Yes. Again, we must understand that this world has progressed because when necessary, quality has influenced needs, and when necessary, needs have influenced quality and also availability. You see, availability of things, right now we wouldn't have this great availability of things if needs hadn't influenced availability, and availability influenced need. I feel in 1945 certain needs, now in 1988, I look back at the needs that I recognized in 1945 and I say, "Boy oh boy, I was happy."
Those are my needs that I recognize and I was happy, but can I be happy with those needs satisfying the same needs today that I felt good having them satisfied in 1945? Can I be satisfied today? I want to kill somebody. So there is a tolerance tied to the natural ability or the natural capacity of the created being himself to perform successfully. There is a tolerance, and that tolerance G-d has created it.
It can shrink to enable us to live happily with less, and when the availability is there, it stretches, so it's taking more, getting more, and when availability is not there, in terms of what the supplies or what the opportunities are in the environment, but G-d makes us grow internally to be aware that I am cheated and man will look at the environment and begin to invent, create new things, invent new things to satisfy needs that haven't been expressed by the great majority yet. Needs that he senses in his own soul or his own intellect, or both.
Yes. So, as a result, things are brought about and then the influence of more things available gives us a greater sense of need. This new generation, oh, their sense of need is outrageous. Why? Because certain influences from the commercial world mainly, have excited the appetites to not be satisfied with what is sane, but to go after what is insane. "Daddy, can you get me a Jaguar?"
[laughter]
Imam Mohammed: You talking about being caught by surprise. I never expected that. "Do you want to make a bank robber out of me?" "Well, I'll get me one. I'll get me one. I know a friend of mine he has a Jaguar. I know what to do. I'll get me a Jaguar." "Forget it. You don't have to get it from me." So, I go back now in conclusion to the first quote from G-d in our holy book Allah as we call Him in our Muslim or Quranic name and Muslim name. In fact, we believe according to our religion, that that is the name that Abraham the messenger of G-d himself used long before Muhammad, Allah.
Because he used it, the son of Abraham through Hagar and Ishmael and his descendants down to Muhammad and even to this day in that part of the world have had the name, Allah. The Jahiliyah Arabs before the message of Al-Islam, the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad, peace be on him, they had this name Allah. But that was a name that they treated as a special name, a name that was not to be focused upon and they would focus on their handmade deities, the idol gods that satisfied their smaller needs in their home life, family life, and occupational life.
The god of fertility, the G-d that protects the family, the god of love, the god of this and the god of that. They had so many gods. Don't laugh now, you have the same, you're pagans right now in America. They didn't make those figures because something came to them then said, "Design a piece of mud or design a piece of clay like this." They first had a concept in their mind, an abstract in their mind, and then they designed something concrete to resemble or fit that idea of an abstract in their mind.
We have abstract ideas and influences in our mind that rule over us right now in America and calls us to disobey the religious life that our families chose and disobey every dictate of intelligence and reverence and the favor of these influences. These abstracts influences that are deities, false G-ds ruling in our mind and spirit right now in America. The Western world is the most pagan world on the face of the globe right now. But we have risen above the childish habit of making these physical things.
Somebody broke those up for us long ago and convinced us it was stupid, so we don't make idols anymore but we have the abstract living in our minds and in our spirit and in our life, ruling us and taking us away from the higher reverence that we should have in an intelligent world and society like this is, as you see. 
Concluding now. G-d says, the term Allah for the Muslims, G-d in English, "Is it not that the creation and the command belong to Allah?" Judgement is a command. When you form a judgement and then apply it to yourself, to your behavior, that's a command.
You're commanding yourself with that principle or that authority or that opinion or that judgement. So we are forming rules of command. We are forming opinions that are ruling in us, judgements that are ruling in us, with no respect for an established basis. Upon what are we forming- just my feeling? “Oh I feel this is right”. The average one will tell you, "I feel that that's what I should do," and they do just that. I feel that that's what I should do. Don't say nothing to me now, I'm getting ready to get on you, I'm going to jump on you now. If you keep bothering me, I'm going to do you in. As one says, "I'm going to mess you up good." 
This society hasn't become too difficult for us. All we have to do is return to the sane teachings of the sane parents, our ancestors behind us. Return to the teachings of those sane people behind us who lived in conformity to a set of rules. Principles, established principle. Standard behavior that universal man respects. Not the jailhouse fellow. The kind of rules and opinions and et cetera that we are responding to most of us now is what the jailhouse inmate, the inmate.
This to me is the greatest need in our life, and that’s where we should put the importance on that particular need. The need to get back to what has accounted for the survival and progress of universal man on this earth, and put emphasis there over what's available. Because we know when were brought from Africa here as slaves, we know what was available, the opportunity to be slaves.
[00:47:42] [END OF AUDIO]

