10/00/2002
IWDM Study Library
Youth Dawah Chicago IL

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Imam WD Mohammed:
That is we praise G-d, the Lord, keeper sustainer the cherisher of the world. We witness that He's one and we witness that Muhammad to whom the Qur'an was revealed, the last of the revealed scripture to the world. That Messenger Prophet who received this scripture, the book of the Muslims the Qur'an. We witness that he is the last of the Prophets, the seal of the Prophets mentioned in both the Torah and in the Gospel, Injil. And we witness also that he is a mercy to all of the worlds. G-d says of him, We have not sent you to be other than a mercy for all the worlds, not part of the humanity, but all of humanity and to all the worlds.
We are very happy to be here at Riverside with you. We support your good work, the good work of the Muslims in this area under the leadership of our brother and our Imam Ron Al Amin. We thank Allah for him and his family and we thank a lot for you the supporters. And we thank Allah for the good work that you're doing to present us correctly, that is Muslims and our religion. Embracing the good work of others who are not of your religion, embracing them and their good work. This is what will make us very successful not only here in America, but if we will demonstrate that, both the revelation of the Qur'an and the life of Muhammad for us as you all are demonstrating it here in this area, we should be successful all over the world. We should be successful everywhere. Islam, as one Egyptian told me after learning that I had become the leader in 1975 after my father. He knew my father and had visited my father while my father was living.
And he came to see the new leader and he said to me, he said, you are correct. He say we like the way you are starting this beginning here, that Islam does not come to tear down. Islam comes to build up. So we look for something to build upon, not for something to tear down. And this is the way of peace. This is the way of peace and progress. We thank Allah for our good senses that He blessed us with and we thank Allah that in spite of hardship and ugly times for us in America, we have kept our good senses and we are not thematic, we are not radical, we are not people looking for somebody to fuss with, argue or condemn. We are looking for people who are doing good work so that we can let them know that we are all together in this, all together and working for the good future for all people. And I really love your theme hard work. My father did not run from hard work and he did not suggest to run from hard work. He taught us to accept hard work because hard work would bring us a good life that all of us want in our souls. If we will work hard for it, we will get it. And the Arabs, they have a saying "If you want to be successful then work hard." Work hard. In the American business world, the bankers, they have a saying, "I got it the old fashioned way. I earned it." Yes, we know of the Christian ethics, work ethic, Christian work ethic. Also we have Muslim work ethic, ethics, work ethics. We care about work. Work is sacred for us. Our life is sacred. Our work for the life that G-d wants us to have achievements and progress is also sacred. Muhammad the Prophet Prayers and Peace be upon him in his last speech that he made to the great multitudes at the site of pilgrimage, he included these words that life is sacred and your property is sacred, your blood is sacred. So we have to respect human life. We have to respect family relations. We have to respect the rights of one another. He said our rights are sacred, our rights are sacred.
We should not violate the rights of one another. Do not violate the rights of one another. So we were guided right. We received the message from G-d that is guidance for all mankind if they will accept. And we also received the model human being Muhammad the Prophet. So we have no excuse if we will just open our eyes, be truthful, be honest with ourselves, don't lie to ourselves, don't deceive ourselves for little small things, little ugly, small things that we want because we are angry, because we have been made unhappy or because we are envious of the other who has it. Let us not let any of these small things cause us to lose the big prize. And Allah wants for us the big prize- freedom. I loved Islam even before I knew Islam because the Honorable Elijah Muhammad told us that his teacher from abroad taught him that Islam is freedom, justice and equality.
I was aware from time I could speak and hear and understand English language. I was aware that our people were not faring well in the United States of America. I was aware that we were having great difficulty and that the white world had rejected us and we had to fight for respect, fight with words. We weren't fighting with weapons. We didn't have an armed campaign going on or anything, but we fought with our word and we were aware that America was not accepting us, including us into society with everybody else. We were denied, held back, denied, oppressed, stepped back, stepped down and made to believe that we deserved it, that we were created inferior, that because we were black we could never be equal with the white man. We were taught these things. And I remember that time, but I also remember the Honorable Elijah Muhammad giving us hope, teaching us to respect ourselves and to believe in ourselves and to believe in our equal dignity and honor with other people.
And he said that you were superior and he was correct. Anybody that treated us like we were treated, they couldn't be superior to us. They were inferior. They had superior wealth and superior power. But we had superior human essence because we were not Klu Klux Klan members and we were not people who said blacks were inferior or whites are inferior. We were superior. Though inferior to them in physical power and in wealth, et cetera. And even in knowledge we were inferior but in human value we were superior to them because they were doing inhuman things to us and we were fighting for our humanity against their inhuman treatment. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was right 50 years ago. 50 years ago the white man was inferior to the black man. But now we all equal.
He was inferior. He was inferior. Not all of them. Never will all the people be united and agreed in a crime, something criminal. There will always be some among every group that will not like it. And we had plenty whites in this country that did not like the treatments that we were getting. They didn't like it. Long time ago they helped. And the time before our Emancipation Proclamation, whites and Jews helped the cause of freedom. They were united, called the abolitionists. They were united against slavery before we were freed. And because of the minority or the small number of good people that were not helping or supporting or even keeping quiet while we were being mistreated, we have good times now in these United States. We have so much good times that some of us are partying so hard we can't enjoy the real freedom. The real freedom is not the freedom to party and to shake the booty brother and sister.
The real freedom is to use your good senses and your good heart and your good human nature to advance the good life for yourself, for your family and for society. That's the real freedom. So when you're doing that, you are really using freedom. You're really using freedom in the right way. But freedom used to just shake the booty and have party on the weekend, go to church and let it all hang out again and go back to repeat that thing over and over again. That's not freedom. That's hell. That's hell in the name of the church.
We have to wake up. Muhammad the Prophet said that Allah wanted to show the angels His marvelous creation He was making for human beings. And He showed it to the great angel Gabriel, Jibril in Islam. And when Gibril said my Lord, that's what Gibril called Allah, G-d. He said, "My Lord, how can anyone go wrong in such a wonderful creator?" And then Allah, I guess within the twinkling of an eye, He changed the scenery and showed Gabriel the creation after Satan had influenced it. Had changed it. And when Jibril, Gabriel saw it , he said, "My Lord, how can anyone go straight in such a world?"
So we know that it is the Satan that has made life so difficult for us and made it so confusing for us. The Pope of the Catholic Church, John Paul II, have joined many of the other peace builders around the world. And he says of this culture that we have in the West, that it is the culture of death, the culture of death.
Now it is this culture of death that have us thinking that all life is for is just to smoke and drink and party and shake the booty and do whatever you want to do, whether it's right or wrong. Many people have that mind and that mind has been given to you by the devil, the Satan who is not really fighting G-d, he is fighting you. See Islam shows us really what Satan is. Satan is the one that wants to deny human beings the freedom to be responsible for their own lives. He thinks he's so high up and so wise that he should be having responsibility that only G-d should have. That he should be deciding how we live, how we fare in this world and when there's a problem, he's to have the last say, not human beings. The Satan chooses to control us, to keep us, he controls us with Allah say, with whiskey, gambling, intoxicants, gambling, superstitions, games of chances.
So when we look at the world and we see these evils, how prevalent they are and we see how many people are victims of these evils. Even church people, not just church people, Mosque people, Masjid people and Synagogue people, victims of these evils. So we see that we should understand as Muslims that behind those things is the Satan himself. Now don't go look for the Satan. You think he's a white man black brother. Don't go looking for him like that. You'll never find him. If you think he is a black man white brother and sister, don't go looking for him you'll never find him. So Allah knows how we can fight Satan. We cannot fight Satan by looking for a race or looking for a person. We can only fight Satan by fighting his work. G-d says "And fight the schemes of Satan. For his schemes are weak."
That's where he's weak, in his scheme. Fight the schemes of Satan for his schemes are weak. Now what does this have to do with our theme hard work? The first hard work you got to do is hard work on your own soul. That's what Islam want us to do. You have to perform Jihad to conquer your own soul for G-d. Conquer it. Save it from sin, save it from the clutches of the devil. Save your own soul from doing wrong. That's the first Jihad. That's the best Jihad. Once you make that Jihad, you are in good shape to make that Jihad in the public life, in the world of mankind or in the society, you are in good shape to do that. But if you make the Jihad in the world first and you haven't made the Jihad in your soul, you'll destroy yourself and destroy innocent people like what we are seeing in this world today.
Now, Islam wants to condition us for the work we have to do for our families and our neighborhoods and our world. Islam wants to condition us. And how does it condition us? It tells us that the things that are invisible, the things that are not seen, they are stronger than the visible, what you see, stronger than what you see. Allah says, look at the sky. See how those bodies are held up there? And it seems as though there's no structure to support them. They are not supported by visible structures. There are planets up there, Jupiter, much bigger than the earth, much heavier than the earth. But we can go out there and get a telescope sometime maybe we can see it with our eyes if we how to look for it. And it's up there in the space, suspended in space and it seems as though nothing is holding it up.
Now we know something is holding it up. When we learn science, we learn in astronomy et cetera. We know what holding it up. Science have identified what's holding it up. But for the human eye we don't see anything holding it up. So imagine the earth that we are on right now, we couldn't even know the size of it unless science had not discovered how to measure the size of the earth, how to know something about it. We wouldn't know how to measure it. You would think it was endless. You don't see any end to the earth. You keep going you think it's endless.
Look how amazing G-d's creation is. We can't really know it with our common senses, our common mind. Look at space. These are things that G-d wants us to think about so that we'll be conditioned to be successful in our life on earth. He wants us to have faith. So He created a world to signal to you things that stir your thoughts, excite your intellect, excite your mind, and make you want to want to ask questions. Why? How long? Where does it end? Where are we going? These are the thoughts that brought people to believe in G-d and become thinkers and later seers and later Messengers and Prophets of G-d, looking at the wonders of the creation. So G-d want to prepare us to be successful. So He created a creation to prepare us to be successful. And then He reveals about the sky and He said, look at the sky how He has made it.
Then he tells us that He feeds us not only from the earth, but He says he feeds us both from the skies and the earth. And then we study science, we learn from science. Yes, nitrates come down with the rain. Not just rain. We think only rain, but no science have found, discovered that not only water is coming down from the sky, but nitrates are coming down from the sky. And that's a substance, that's as substance that's needed in the earth to make plants and food grow more and better. It's for life. It's to feed the plant life. Nitrates are coming down. So not only water is coming down from heaven, food is coming down from heaven to grow your food better and to make it more abundant on this earth. So G-d revealed this long before science explained it, that He feeds you both from the heavens, from the skies and from the earth.
He says that from the earth He made the earth to give you all that you need. That's what G-d said. To give you all that you need. Says He made it to be enough for you and your needs. That's what G-d says, the earth. But yet we have a lot of people starving, a lot of people that say they don't have work. G-d is wrong. No, G-d is right. The world is wrong. There should be nobody starving. There should be nobody able to work out of work. We had a congressman pushing for full employment and we still should be pushing for full employment. There's no need for anyone that want to work to be out of a job and no need for anybody to be hungry. And you'll hear about the wars on poverty, the wars on poverty, Allah, G-d declared the first war on poverty. When G-d told the Jews and the Christians and us to not be comfortable while our brothers and sisters are suffering. That's the war on poverty.
Many got too much and many got nothing. That's no good. That's no good. It's not G-d's, it's the world's fault. It's not listening to G-d, not obeying G-d that we have these ugly things happening to us on the earth and these ugly conditions in our lives on the earth. Now G-d want us to know that what you can't see and can't completely understand and manage with your brain is that that you need to give you a condition to be successful in this life. And the first of the unseen is your creator Himself. You can't see Him with these eyes. You can't contain Him in that small brain of yours. He's too big for your brain and He eludes your eyes.
Alright. He says that the sights cannot check Him. If you saw Him, He showed Himself to you. Sights cannot check Him. Praise be to G-d. And yes. And then after you believe in G-d as the reality that escapes the physical eyes, then you start to look at yourself and that that you see is not really you. That's not your greatness. You think this man that I dressed up in the mirror is the your Imam? This guy here he walked with a cane up here. I didn't want to embarrass myself. I thought I could get here without that cane. So I wanted to look good. I'm dressed good, I want to look good. I left my cane back there behind the curtain. But ain't nothing to this, ain't nothing to this. It's the sensitivity that I was born with, human sensitivities that I was born with, that my parents nursed and preserved for me and kept me with it, protected those good human sensitivities for me and made me a sensitive person that cares about life and cares about my own body and my own interest. Cares about my brother and my sister and my family and my father and my mother and my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncle and my aunt.
If that person is in this body, that sensitivity, you can't check it with your eyes, you have to check it with your heart. You have to check it with the same sensitivities I got. And I like to have fun sometimes, humor is good for us. Somebody was taking my picture. I said, you got it? I said, did you get my picture? He said, yes. I said, no you didn't. And the real person you can't get it with that camera. I say the real Wallace, the thinker and the sensitive person, you cannot get it with that camera.
So I'm like G-d, I'm invisible. The real me is invisible. And that's true. That's a fact. That's a fact. The true me, the real me that I really value that's keeping this flesh from doing bad things and getting my mind and heart and soul and everything in trouble, that real invisible self in me, that’s the real me. So G-d want us to know that. Then He said He made seven strong heavens, seven strong heavens. He didn't say he made earth strong that strong. He made seven strong heavens like the Bible. Yes, seven strong heavens He says, or strong skies, seven strong skies He says He made. And He says that because He want us to have faith in something bigger than what our little minds can see. Bigger than what our little minds can see. You need faith in something much bigger than you and your job.
If you and your job going to be on this earth and you're going to be successful with it, then smaller things and cannot support a bigger thing. You need something bigger than yourself and your job to support you and your job. And that's faith in the Lord creator that made all of this for you to enjoy and have a good life. That's what we have to do. Faith is number one. You cannot work hard without faith. You see people having no spirit to work. They have no faith. If they had faith, they would have a spirit to work. Faith gives us spirit to work and Allah does not want us to have faith in Him alone, G-d alone and not faith in man. G-d created man to do wonders on this earth. And He shows us the Prophets that He supplied with guidance and blessed their souls because they were wonderful creations.
He gave them His support and then He shows them to us and then He tells us believe in them also. They're men. Allah tell us to believe in men and also believe in the medium that carry communication from G-d to those men. Believe in angels. And He tells us that He has assigned angels to all of us, every human being have angels guarding them for G-d. And if you don't deserve that protection, He takes it away from you. And an angel is recording your life, your behavior, everything you've done. An angel belong to you recording everything that you've done. And when they give up on you, buddy, the record speaks for you. And you gone to hell in this life and in the hereafter. We don't believe in hell that's just after the grave when you die. "Oh, I don't believe there's anything after death." Well believe in our hell. It gets you while you're here on earth. That's where it gets you first. Then you get the full measure after the grave. And heaven is likewise, you come into heaven while you're on earth, you can earn heavenly conditions right here on earth. If you get closer and closer to your creator, trying to obey Him and be the best you can be, you will get into heaven before this body goes in the ground. And whether you believe it or not, the man you're looking at right now is in heaven.
I'm in heaven and hell can't touch me. Thank G-d. So believe in something bigger than yourself. Don't just use yourself as a measure. You cannot be a measure for all truth. You're too small, you're too unimportant. Allah tells us "Man, think not that your creation is a bigger matter than the creation of the heavens in the earth." Man becomes scientific minded and he begins to think that he's more important than Allah's universe. He begin to think that he can manage this universe. No, no human being is big enough or capable of managing this universe. Only G-d can manage this universe.
G-d says "Think not that your creation is a bigger matter with G-d than the creation of the heavens and the earth." Have faith, then we can be successful. Faith in G-d, faith in the excellence of the human creation. G-d said He created us excellent and made all of our forms beautiful. That's what Allah said to us in Qur'an. That He created us excellent, made all of our forms beautiful. And He also says that He has made honorable all the sons of Adam. So no man, black man is not created without honor. White man, red man, whatever color you are, you are not created without honor. Your creation is dignified, honorable, and very precious, very special in the eyes of your creator. And it should be the same in your own eyes. And that's the spirit in man. It doesn't have to come by way of revelation. There's a spirit in man when he studies his environment and studies his own nature he comes to believe that something is responsible for him being in this most excellent form we call human. He discovers his human identity and he's proud of it. He's thankful to something for it. And that will take you to G-d. if you just discover the truth about yourself, that will take you to your G-d.
So this is a condition we need to work hard. Can't work hard with that silly mind the world gives us, the popular culture give us. You can't work hard with that silly mind. You have to believe in G-d, your creator, and believe in the excellence of your own creation. And then you can be very successful. So Allah says work hard. The Arabs have the principle if you want to be successful and assert yourself, work hard, drive struggle. But G-d says too "There can be nothing for humanity without hard work, struggle. And if you struggle, you shall see the benefits of it." Thank you very much. Work hard for G-d and for humanity. Peace. Asalaam Alaikum.
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