1989-October-20

Muslim Journal

What Are The Conditions (Bases) For Muslim Unity?: Part 4

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

(Editorial Note: The following is the culmination of Imam W. Deen Mohammed's salatul Jumuah Khutbah (lecture) delivered at the McCormick Center Hotel in Chicago, Illinois on September 1, 1989.)

We are told plainly by Allah in the Qur'an, "Allah looks not to our faces but to our hearts. "And the Prophet told us," There is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab or a black over a white or a white over a black. "He used it both ways. But I see this quote now from Americans where they are just giving part of it. They will give, "the Prophet said there is no superiority of a white over a black". Perhaps they are saying that it is meaningless to tell the people that there is "no superiority of a black over a white".

It is not meaningless. There are some of us with our small resources that are thinking ourselves to be superior over whites. You can claim superiority whether you have it or not. The first people who established "white supremacy" were even inferior to their own slaves. They were the rejects from Europe's prisons who got land in the South because it was open to them. They were from reckless power holders. Their behavior showed that civilization was more absent in them than it was in many of their slaves. But they established white supremacy.

Who knows! Maybe some little thugs will get together and will have "black supremacy". Your subjects may be superior to you, but you will have your black supremacy. We should report all of the Prophet's saying and put it the way the Prophet said it. Praise be to Allah.

We hope that we have helped clear the air, to remove the confusion from how we should perceive bases for our unity. We hope that this has been a helpful khutbah, a helpful lecture, on how we should perceive or view the bases for our unity.

We ask Allah forgiveness for our sins, for our faults and mistakes, and we pray that He guides us always to The Guidance. That He forgives us, grants mercy to us, and unites us as Muslims living up to the best standards for Muslims. That we obey Allah and obey His Messenger. That we strengthen our bonds by improving the content of our Muslim life. We must do more to live up to the content of our Muslim life. Pretence and weak contents are hurting our Muslim unity now.

If we strengthen the content of our Muslim life, then the unity of Muslims will definitely improve. We will have greater and better unity. Allah is not going to unite us upon corrupt bases. He will only unite us upon the true bases for Muslims. Let us accept that.

We pray prayers and blessing upon our Prophet. Amin. Our Lord, take us to Thy Self into the Company of the Righteous. Dear Believers, that is the prayer of the best of the believers. We are not perfect. We are subject to error, to do wrong, to commit sin. But at the same time, we have faith in our Lord that He has all power to forgive our sins. We turn to Him and ask Him for forgiveness. We should have a desire always to be identified with the righteous and not with the wicked people of the world. Our prayer should be that Allah enter us in among the righteous people.

Believe me, dear people, this religion is perfect. Nothing can be improved upon it. Take it from Qur'an and the Life of the Prophet as it has been established and given, and you will be successful all the way. You will be successful internally and outwardly, with yourself, with your family, with your associates, with your endeavors and everything.

You may say, "That is not so. He is promising too much." No, I am not. Even in myself, and I do not consider myself to be any special person deserving any great page in future books. If I do get such attention, it will be because of favorable circumstances and opportunities for me that others have not had. I only see an ordinary page for me. But for the "ordinary me," I look back on my efforts to please Allah five years, ten years, twenty years, thirty years, forty years, or fifty years back, and I have been successful.

I bought a car that finally broke down, and I had to get another one. But that does not mean that I wasn't successful. I had some other things that finally broke down, and I had to get some others. But that doesn't mean that I wasn't successful.

You are unsuccessful when you stop getting benefits. Praise be to Allah. So when you feel this strength and support, you just want everybody that you like to also have it. And the believer loves believers! That is not my teaching, for that is the teaching of the prophets and especially of Prophet Muhammed, the peace and blessings be on him.

The best of the believers is the Prophet, himself. And Allah requires of us that we love him more than we love ourselves and our near relatives. Allah requires that of us. When we understand that, it is so beautiful. Certainly!

Look how many of us send our best sons to war for the government! Now doesn't that mean that you have to love your nation more than you love your own child? When we tell you to love Muhammed, remember that Muhammed is better than all of the nations combined. He is the cause for the nations having life, if you understand. That goes for the nations of today, those that have real life in the degree that they have it.

The nations of today may not have that life in the full degree. But they have some of it. They would not be surviving and progressing, if they did not have a portion of it. And with these points and emphasis, I conclude the khutbah.

We pray that Allah blesses our gathering here today, the intent and all of our efforts for the three days we will be here and afterwards. We pray that He will save us from hardship, difficulty, misery, and especially from bad spirits.

We know how easy it is in America to pass to someone bad spirits. Let us remember the Prophet's teachings to us that, "The believers are as soft as milk in their dealings with believers." We are not supposed to be harsh, ugly, and hostile towards believers. Let us practice love, the love of the ummah and the love of each other. Let that spirit dominate in us, and don't take out our hostilities and bad feelings that we brought from other situations on somebody we find here that looks like a sheep.

I will look like a sheep a lot of times, but if you take your hostilities out on me you might see something else. I've gotten older now and can have more patience and can take a lot of abuse. But still I have a breaking point.

Good luck is always with the innocent and the justified and not with the guilty. The guilty can pull out a stick to hit you and miss. Then you try to hit him with the right hand and miss but hit him with the left and knock him out cold! Then you look and wonder, "How did that happen?" The Lord was on your side. We do not want that; we want good treatment from each other. We want to live up to the best Muslim behavior.

Understand this, Muslims think of behavior usually as moral behavior. But more important for Muslims is to think of behavior as intelligent behavior. For moral behavior graduates. It is when you just know good and bad, beautiful and ugly, or hot and cold. That is on the baby level of morality. But as we graduate, we come up into what we call ethics and moral rules for the intellect and for the total behavior, flesh, mind, and spirit.

We graduate from moral sentiment and moral feelings to the understanding of moral logic. Understand that Muslims are to try to present the most intelligent behavior at all times.

Thank you very much.