September 22nd 2002
IWDM Study Library

The World is Moving Forward: Accept More Responsibility: Part 1
Imam W. Deen Mohammed


00:02 Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Thank you. We praise G-d, Allahu Akbar, means G-d is greater. He's greater, as one of the prophets in the Bible says, "he was going to build the temple" And he wanted to build the temple to worship G-d and he said, "I know that this temple is not big enough to hold you" he said "not even the skies of skies" that mean, all these, what is out of space, out and the Earth couldn't hold you. And Muslims, we say that following the purity of revelation that began with the first messenger or prophet of G-d had began really with the creation of man out of himself. We accept all of it, and our Holy Book says "We believe in all of it". We believe in what G-d revealed to the prophets, Noah and all the other prophets and we do not reject any of them. We believe in what he revealed, all of it. This is Islam. This is the teaching of Quran and Islam.

01:24 IWDM: And what I want to bring to your attention today. Anything that we have chosen the thing that we have chosen is the world is moving forward according to prophecy. It is moving forward to more to bring us into the situations that require us to have more and more responsibility in our own hands, for our own life and situation. In the neighborhood, wherever we are, we are, we brought by a will of G-d to a situation on this Earth, where all of us individuals in our sane minds will have, eventually, will have to accept more responsibility for ourselves. Because the world is too crowded, too busy. Governments are too burdened, parents are too burdened, the world itself is too burdened. Our neighborhoods are too burdened, city life is too burdened. We're too burdened to excuse anyone from their responsibility that their only life demands of them. G-d created us to have a life and that life demands of us certain attention. That certain attention be given to it, and that attention shouldn't be put in the hands of others, we have to accept to give our life that attention ourselves.

02:57 IWDM: And that's where are the message of G-d comes. Whether it is Old Testament religion or whether it is before the Old Testament, or others who came with the Old Testament. There are other religions that the Quran recognizes. G-d says to us in our Holy Book, there are many prophets and messengers of G-d that are not named in the book. So we must accept them. That there were many other messengers and prophets of G-d. They're not all named in scripture. And those who came later in time, like Moses and like Jesus Christ and then Mohammed, Peace be on all of the servants of G-d, they all brought us the same message that G-d created everything. And that man, is created for responsibility. Not just man alone. Man there means mankind. It means all people. That G-d created all people for responsibility.

04:04 IWDM: And when we read in our language of religious language, that G-d' purpose in creating us was for his mercy. And then he says also, that from his mercy we have to understand that this has two meanings. Mohammed the prophet, the last of the prophets. He taught us that whatever is given as a word of G-d, scripture, it has two readings. Two readings, not one. And whatever he has taught, he said, has two readings, not one. So the obvious reading, if G-d says that he created human beings for his mercy. If the obvious meaning is that G-d does not want us to be cruel to each other. And he does not want us to be the victims of cruelty, but he wants both the rulers and those who are ruled by the rulers to be merciful. Be merciful to yourselves and those who rule us, G-d obligates them to be merciful to those that they rule over. And be merciful to those that they have power over. He says...

[foreign language]

05:17 IWDM: Which, in the language of our Holy Book he says, he has obligated everything by the rule of knowledge and mercy. Knowledge and mercy.

05:33 IWDM: Now, so we can see if we study history. I'm a student of history. If we study history, we can see the growth of cities. And the growth of the population of people on this Earth. And the growth of their activities. How their activities grow and kind of interlock. They come together. They grow and come together. And they are referring to what is now in the language of the governments, one world order, America uses this language. One world order. This is referring to the world order that has been brought up by material dynamics. Material dynamics, material growth and development, and the influence of material, growth and development, the effect of material growth and development on our cultural life, on our souls, on our spirituality, on our souls. The effect of that is creating a one world order.

06:39 IWDM: We used to see people behaving much different from one another, thinking much different, behaving much different. But now, we see, whether people are Asians or Africans or Europeans or Arabs and whatever, we see on the television that they're coming in to one behavior. And Jeff Ebony wrote, did a special once on The Grounding of America and Ebony was showing how the spiritual influence the entertainment, Black entertainment, and the spirit of Black entertainment, how it has affected people, especially White Americans. They used it in behavior they have, they used it in dance and they dance now, they use it in singers they sing now, they didn't have the musical life that they have now. They didn't have the rhythms that they have now, they didn't have the musical spirit that they have now.

07:41 IWDM: So our life, our life has affected their life. But not only their life now, also the life of people around the world because the world is so interconnected that you cannot sneeze here without it also happening across the water. You sneeze here, somebody will sneeze across the water, I hope you understand what I'm saying. If you get sick here, somebody can get sick there any time, it's going to spread, sickness spread and health spread. [chuckle] Germs spread, whether they're healthy germs or bad germs. Yes, so you catch people now and they can't speak English, they're speaking in their own foreign language, you can't understand a word they're saying. But they're doing this.

[laughter]

08:35 IWDM: Low-five, Low-five and high-five, gimme some skin, Low-five. We know where that came from, that came from us. Came from us in America, in our neighborhoods, we didn't know it was going to get out of our neighborhood. When we were doing that we didn't have any knowledge that the white man was going to start doing that in America. Now it's been going all the way across the ocean, people over there speaking words, and they didn't understand a word he's saying, and he's doing, "Hey, gimme some skin, bro." He's saying in his language, "Hey, give me five, one on the high side, baby!"

[laughter]

09:07 IWDM: Our language going all over the world, yes. So the world is becoming one world order, that's what it's becoming, one world order. But that world grew out of material dynamics. It's a product of material dynamics. Money, income, jobs, industry, and industry affects the soul, so that the soul has to respond to it. When the soul responds to industry, we see culture. Culture is a response to material development, that's what a culture is. Culture is a response to material development, just as the culture we call grass, plants, fruit, these things, flowers, this is culture, too. This is culture, but in the natural world and the physical world, and it is responding to the Earth, the material Earth. You put the right things in the Earth, rain hits it, water comes to it, our water comes to it, up comes living things. And we think of a rich culture like we think of a rich greenery, a rich plant life, a rich environment of greenery and plants etcetera, that's how we think of a rich culture.

10:39 IWDM: So, we have to understand then that we are living in a world that has grown to its fullness, it has grown to its fullness. The boats could not go to every land, and that was only less than 1500 or 1600 years ago, the boats could not go to every land. But now they can go to every land, boats can go to every land, plants can go everywhere. Transportation has connected people all over the world. The world has become connected by transportation, modern transportation, and it's connected by modern technology. Television, communication systems, brings us to belong to one world, one world. And it's crowded with people, and their demands on it for a certain behavior, but the nations are too overburdened to guarantee anybody's behavior going to be good, they can't. No matter what they do, they can't guarantee you that you'll have a safe neighborhood. They can't guarantee that.

12:02 IWDM: Police department, no matter how much money we spend on it, no matter how much money we give law enforcement, course it, whatever, it's not going to guarantee us that we're going to be safe at home. We still have to live with the possibility, knowing that there's a possibility, someone may break into home, someone may shoot inside the home, some doped up person may run his car upon me into my house, and kill somebody in the bedroom, or damage the house, and have to tear the whole house down. It happened recently. A vehicle hit a house and destroyed the whole house, they had to take the whole thing down. It hit one of the main supports of the house, the whole house had to come down.

12:53 IWDM: Yeah, so we're not safe and it's not going to get less burdened, burdened. It's going to become more and more burdened, because populations are growing, and business is growing, activities are increasing all the time. So, we have to understand that the time that predicted long time ago, that every tug must sit on his own model, every man must have his own fine victory, etcetera. And the Quran says this that, "No one will be able to take the burden of another." That is my life is burdening me, I won't be able to take your burden, too. You're going to have to carry yourself. That doesn't mean that I won't be able to help you, I might be able to help you, but I can't take all of your burden. You cannot put all your burden on me. You have to be responsible for your own life. And people will help you and assist you, but don't tell them every time your tooth hurt, ached, that they have to have a toothache.

13:56 IWDM: Every time you itch, they have to itch. Your stomach cramps, they have to have a cramp. There's some people just like that. They don't say, "Hey, I have a stomach cramp. My stomach is cramping. You have to cramp, too." They just keep telling you. "My stomach cramp! My stomach cramp! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!" But they don't take some more Pepto-Bismol.

[laughter]

14:28 IWDM: But they don't stop at that. "It still hurt." "Oh, I've got a toothache." They're probably letting you know. "Oh, he's not treating me right. He didn't come home last night." That's your toothache, now I got to take it, too. Waking me up 3 o'clock in the morning, "He didn't come home. He ain't here yet." We can't live like that. We have to sperm up. The leaders of this world have to demand more of the people that they lead. Can't pacify people and make them think that life doesn't require any burden, nothing... They don't have to do anything. That Jesus Christ has a son, did he come and say, "I'm going to take all your burden. You don't have to do nothing?" Yeah, they say he bore the cross, he bore the cross, but didn't he say, "Take my cross. The same thing I'm doing, you do, too?" He said, "It's light." Meaning the way he approaches it makes burden light. The cross represents burden and death. Burden can also kill. It represents burden.

15:45 IWDM: So, he's saying that my burden is light, because of the way I approach it. G-d has made me to approach these burdens the way I do. And if you approach them the way G-d has made me to approach these burdens, your burden, too, will be light. That's what he meant when he said, "You take to my cross, take my cross. My burden is light." He was offering the people a better way to live with the burden of life. Because, actually, the cross, too, is a symbol of life itself, in balance. That's the cross. This is the cross. This is life in balance, that's what it means.

16:25 IWDM: In the amusement world, the one who walks the tightrope, he has to do this to balance. This gives you better balance. This enables you to balance much better, when you're holding your arms out like this. So, it's a sign of a balanced life and a balanced person. A person that's not going to either extreme, not to the extreme left, not to extreme right, but he's centered, where G-d wants him to be, you see? This is the sign of life, too, and he wants you to take up that life. Says, "And the burden is light." Is it in Islam? Yes. No burdened bearer will be able to bear the burden of another. I won't be able to carry your cross for you. You have to carry your own cross. And again, what is this cross a sign of? A sign of your own body, your own balance in your own body. That's what it's a sign of.

17:21 IWDM: So, you carry your own cross mean carry your own life. The point that we're making here this afternoon. Be responsible for your own life. So, it's not what we think it is. We look at these signs and look at the holy man, look at the righteous, loving man, and we think he's saying, "I come here to take on all your sins. Give me all your worries. Give me your Excedrin headache, and give me all your love problems. Just give me everything that burdens you and you go free." Try that.

17:58 IWDM: You'll go to the mental institution, to jail, to death on the streets, or we'll just waste away, waste away. I've seen people just waste away. Get thinner and thinner every time, I see them a little bit thinner. After a while, I hear they've gone, died. They're not accepting responsibility for themselves. Waiting on somebody to do everything for them. Time is up for that. We have to teach people that life requires attention. Just like a piece of property. You get it, you have to give it your attention. If you don't, the value of that property goes down, down, down, down, or somebody will take it from you. Sometimes, somebody see you. Not conscious of the thing that has value. They say, "Well, they don't care about it." They take it.

19:00 IWDM: Yeah, governments will take whole countries, because they think that people who occupy those lands don't respect the land, and don't intend to do anything with the land. So, another government will go and invade them, and take the whole land from them, take the whole country from them. That happened to the Indians, the natives of this, what we call 'Indians', the Native Americans, that happened to them. The so-called 'more advanced' Europeans, they came here and found that the Indians were living a life that they thought was primitive and backwards. So, they thought they had a justification to take over this land. Put them on reservations, pushed them out of the way, out of the way. This is life. And the time is coming again. The survival of the fittest is a law of nature, a law of the wilderness, a law of the jungle. But, believe me, that law is not more serious than it is right now, in these big cities. The survival of the fittest. You'd be more apt, or more likely to survive in a real jungle with snakes and animals, than you would be trying to survive in some of these big cities, and some of these bad areas of these big cities. You should kill faster there than you will in a jungle where there's supposed to be the natural law of the survival of the fittest.

20:22 IWDM: And if you keep up with the news, you keep up with what's happening in the news, they are telling you that we are facing more and more of situation of the survival of the fittest. The unfit are being annihilated. They're being wasted away. They are allowing them to waste themselves away, by allowing them to destroy themselves, with things that used to be illegal, and they used to enforce it. You couldn't find certain things. Look what they did during Prohibition. Look how they searched for anybody that had alcohol. They're not going to search like that for anybody that's got drugs. There not going to be that kind of search for those that got drugs. So, you use drugs, you use it right out in the open, right in the public, right in the public's eyes. You can use drugs and nobody's going to bother you. Every now and then, there's an arrest, but there's a freedom to have drugs, and have violence, and have a corrupt life, a corrupt life. There's freedom to have all that and no one is taking that freedom from us. If anything, we're having more and more temptation coming, so that we will be invited to do more and more of those things that destroy us. So, that's what's happening. Accept more and more responsibility.

21:45 IWDM: Now, we can do marvelous things ourselves. If we will just start looking to ourselves more, and having more faith in ourselves, in our own ability, to take charge, and have a better life, and a better future for ourselves. We can do that for ourselves. We are free in this small town called 'Malcolm'. Some of our folk and our friends have just walked in. Peace to you, good afternoon. Yes, please come join us here. Yes, so this small town will not deny us our freedom to do anything good that we want to do, in this town, that this town approves of. And we don't have to have vice and bad life, neglected property, rundown property, sore eyes everywhere. We don't have to have that. If we want to, we can on our own initiative, we can take charge of this community, this neighborhood, this community, and make it what we want it to be. We can make it clean, beautiful, and it is.

23:13 IWDM: This neighborhood we're in right now, this is Markam IL. This town is a good town, good town for family. I lived in this town and the people here are good neighbors. You don't have a problem, but not near as many as you have in some other towns. And they are inviting us to make our own contribution. As residents, as citizens here in Markam, they are inviting us. The mayor, the police department, the fire department, all of these structures that we have paid our taxes to create and to keep. [chuckle] They work for us and they want to see us work for ourselves. If we want to work for ourselves to make this even a cleaner, and even a more peaceful and a more prosperous, prosperous. Malcolm, they welcome us to do that. If we get our heads together, we put our heads together and plan to do that, we can do that. But we have put our heads together. We have a plan here that's in other places of the United States too. We have collective purchasing plan, collective purchasing conference plan. And this plan is to show poor people of small means, small financial mean, show them how they can invest and get more in return than they would if they had that money in a bank account.

24:46 IWDM: They get more in return and become partners. Equal owners depending on your share of course, but equal under the law of our corporation. You'll get the same treatment that anyone gets who invests $2 million, and all you invested was maybe 200. You get the same in protection. You are honored with all best of the honors. And we will share with you our vision and show you how we have come as far as we have come. And you can see by how far we have come in a relatively short period of time. You can predict that by next year, this time we're going to be even much farther in the road of progress. Yes. We invite Christians, any good people. You believe in G-d and you mean well, you mean good, you want to see good done by everybody, then you are our brother and our sister, and we love you just as we love the Muslim brother and sister, no different, no different at all. Good is good and bad is bad.

[laughter]

25:54 IWDM: Yeah. Now, getting back to our theme. So in this theme, we have the time has come, the time is good, the time is here for bigger and better community life. I want to address the purpose for which G-d created man, man. And we said, among the purposes, mercy. He said he created mankind for his mercy. But there are other, he said, he created us also that we may be his servants, his servants. Every human-being is created to be a servant of G-d, a servant of G-d. Now, there're other reasons too, many reasons that he has created us for.

26:50 IWDM: But I've given you the ones that are more in focus than are talked about more in our religion, in our holy book. That is that he created us for his mercy and he created us to serve him, to serve him. Now, how does his mercy come? Two ways, come from kindness. The kindness of G-d, firstly. The kindness of our fellow men, other human-beings. But it also comes with the development of the material environment. You develop the material environment, life becomes much more comfortable, less miserable, much less miserable. These modern comforts that we have, we don't want to get rid of them and lose them and go back to the horse and buggy days, or go back to walking miles and miles and miles to get... It won't work today. Life is too busy. Life is too demanding. By the time you get to work, you won't have a job.

[laughter]

28:02 IWDM: The boss will tell you, "Well, I'm sorry. We have done your job for three weeks, and we needed you every day."

[laughter]

28:14 IWDM: So it doesn't work. The old conditions just won't work. And the new conditions have given us comforts that we didn't have before. Conveniences we didn't have before. Couldn't even dream of the conveniences that we have now. Many years or many decades ago or centuries ago, we couldn't even dream of these conveniences. So the mercy comes by developing your material environment. Develop your material environment and you make life much more merciful on people. You make it much less miserable on people. Now, with that said, now I can say this. Adam was created to develop the material world. The first man, our father, first father, he was put on earth to develop the material world.

29:09 IWDM: However, the material world challenges your best nature, because as you engage in material world more and more, you give less and less attention to your soul. So after a while, you'll find yourself being materialized instead of spiritualized. And you have to then fight the material influences to get your soul back, you see. Well, that's the dynamics. That's the test of this life that G-d puts us in. He challenges us. But every test that you stand up to, if you succeed, you're little stronger after the test than you were before the test, right? Well, G-d give us tests to make us stronger. To make the next generation stronger than the first.

30:00 IWDM: So man is supposed to grow better with time. He's supposed to grow stronger with time. But when he loses G-d... As one, a pious old man, Muslim from overseas told me, he was Sudanese, he said, "Walrus," he said, "for everything that we lose there's something to compensate." That mean you can make up, yeah. The finest woman you think you can't live without, but there's something to compensate for her. Maybe your jaguar or something can take your mind off of her. I don't know what will take your mind off of her. But something can take your mind off of her. For me just a beautiful natural scene. I just leave the city and go out to a beautiful natural environment and I forget them.

[laughter]

30:52 IWDM: I forget all my miseries.

[laughter]

30:57 IWDM: Yes, so there's something to compensate. Something to make up. He said, "But Walrus if you lose G-d, there's nothin' to compensate. Nothin' to make up for." I love what that man told me, because it spoke to my own heart. Spoke to my deep... Spoke into the depths of my own soul. I felt that, yeah. Yes, so now we look at Adam and we see Adam in scripture and he's given... Almost in the same picture in both books the Quran and the Bible. The Bible before the Quran and the Quran comes after the Bible and gives Adam almost in the same picture. Essentially the same picture of our Father. That he was created with the good nature. He was created with the good form. The good life, but he was vulnerable to influences from without. And the most subtle of all influences is the whispers of Satan. Shaitan, the enemy of all human-beings. So in both books he cast his suggestions and he caused our Father to slip from the position that G-d had established him on. And in the Bible, he has a son Cain. Adam has a son Cain. In the Quran we have the same Cain, in the Quran, but not given in the same series, in a different series. We have the same Cain. Both Cain is both in the Bible and in the Quran. Now what happened to Cain? Cain slew his brother.
