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IWDM Study Library
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By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
We are standing up for, we have to see clearly our own principles, our own concerns. We have to have them so clearly outlines that we can, in a moment, define what our concerns are and show them distinct from what the concerns of the Israeli is and for what the concerns of the PLO are. I don't know if all those people from the Bilalian American community are as socially and spiritually evolved as I am. I wish they were, but I don't know that they are. Ain't nobody going to penetrate my substance. No, no, you ain't going to puncture my identity and have my fluids run out and mix with yours. Oh, no. I know who I am. I know what I'm about. I know what I believe in. I know where my belief is carrying me. The map is already made for me. I know what nations I can move into freely and what leadership I can embrace. I know clearly already.
When I meet leaders from across the water, I don't meet them as an outcast. I have a home. I have a dignified home. I have a rich home. I have a comfortable house. I have an indestructible house. I'm not looking for any place in somebody else's nation.
So I can go abroad and I can talk to people and I don't have to worry about them changing my mind and bringing me to their side. I know what side I'm on and what side I'm going to be on forever. And you can't know that until you find the truth, the truth that answers your questions. If you go away from here with a lot of questions, brother, bothering you, then you better be careful of who you talk to over there. You might never get back home. And I don't mean back to the United States. I mean, back to yourself. You might never get back home. Now how free it is to know the truth.
You know what I think? I think young fighters copy the expert and they think they're going to be successful like that expert because they were able to imitate the expert. They go in the ring and they look so pretty and they get about two or three wins. They think they're going straight to the championship, because they look just like Muhammad Ali. Sometimes before they get out of the amateur category, we hear he got knocked out. He's going downhill.
Well, I would like to caution our black-minded leader. Don't you try to imitate the honorable Elijah Muhammad until you get some truth that he has. Don't imitate him and run out thinking you knew everything and thinking you have all the tools and power to do whatever you want to do. Don't get that kind of courage until you learn something that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad knew and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad knew that in order to be successful in this America as an independent, you have to keep your own identity and never let it blend in or merge with other interests outside of the United States. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad told us, "Don't flirt with the Arabs." He said "I'm not raised here to make you an Arab or to turn you over to the Arabs". He said, "My purpose here is to make you something independent for yourself." Now, I don't have any fear like that of Arab influence because I know I'm Honorable Elijah Muhammad's son.
Now, if you be quiet, if you can be completely silent for a minute, I'm going to tell you what I mean. In fact, it might take me two seconds. Oh, I got it. I'm the Honorable Elijah Muhammad twice over. I don't worry about no threat from the Arab world to this community. What I'm referring to now is a fear that they're going to convert some of these people to their leadership. That time of fear is behind us. Allah Akbar!
Dear beloved brothers and sisters, we have a number of problems in our own community that I want to quickly deal with before going into our message for the day to you. Dear brothers and sisters, we have a committee for the removal of images in the worship of G-d. Now, we know that the Bible tells Christians, Jews and Christians, "Make no image, make no image." But Christianity, for the most of its history, has been a religion giving off false images of the divine. The crucifix of the holy prophet Jesus and many other pictures that have been made and statues that have been made are really against the Bible. It is not the Western world's fault. The people from the East who introduced Judaic Christianity to Europe, they themselves introduce a pagan, a pagan baggage and called it Christianity to the European people. They introduced idolatry. What they did, they compromised with the idolatrous religious thinking that was in Europe. Their object wasn't to convert those people to the truth, their object was to make a friendly nation that was powerful, that had the capability of ruling the world physically. Their object was to introduce a kindred religion to those people, knowing that once those people embraced a kindred religion, those people would also protect them. They weren't after introducing true religion to the European.
Who am I talking about? I'm talking about the so-called Jews who introduced Christianity to non-Jewish people. I appreciate the brothers and sisters of the CRAID committees throughout the nations who have supported my call for peaceful, respectful, quiet demonstration against images in the worship of G-d. But I have to caution you too, dear people, because you will find that every time we take up a good thing and the devote ourselves strongly behind doing it, people who are hypocrites, who have other concerns, who have other things they want to do, they come in disguised as one of the committees. Their object is not to work in the interest of the Imam's program, their object is to disgrace the Imam. Their object is to discredit the Imam. Their object is to make people turn their heads from us in disgust. And let me tell you how you will know them. Those who struggle hard to win friends and to keep the peace and not offend people, they are supporting me.
Those who say, "Let's go beyond this, let's demonstrate violently, let's disrupt their meeting, let's obstruct the way. Let's make it hard for them to even pass, to get into church. Let's put our signs in their way." They are not legitimate members of CRAID. Their purpose is to disrupt. They want to cause disruption. They want to cause disturbance. Their purpose is to embarrass us.
Those who claim they're supporting me and they put themselves in the face of the people, dirty, looking all shabby, looking strange and weird, they are not supporting me. They are trying to sabotage my work. Those who are supporting me, they want to look their best because they don't want nobody looking down on what we're doing.
About two weeks ago, I came to the masjid on a Sunday, and there standing at the gate, with something that looks like it should have been in an insecticide commercial or something, being sprayed on. Standing at the gate eating a cantaloupe, eating a cantaloupe, a whole cantaloupe. He had it in his hand, looked like it was cut in half, a broken half, and he was standing at the gate right where everybody could see him as they come up to the masjid, eating a cantaloupe, looking weird and crazy. That man wasn't crazy. That man is sane, he's got good intelligence, but he want intelligence people from the society to think that this is what is here. "They'll come to these people. Look, I represent what they are." These people are paid by Zionist devil and crazy minded, fanatical Christians who still will think in the days of the crusades, "We've got to stop these Muslims. They are the anti-Christ."
So they send these dirty, filthy servants of the devil down here to embarrass us and take the people's attention away from us and make them think that we are a bunch of crazy people. A bunch of filthy people. We don't care about our appearance. Wearing this cap does not make me filthy. But if I carry myself in a filthy way and I'm wearing this cap, then I look double filthy, I look twice as filthy as person who is dirty in an American hat. Because already, our minds have been conditioned to see people who have turbans and robes and things like this as filthy, less civilized than Americans.
So the mind has already been fed that image of a person wearing a cap like this or a turban or a fez, your mind has been conditioned to see him as somebody that don't care about the world and things, who's just satisfied to walk around and pick up the garbage off the street and eat it, beg for pennies. This kind of picture have already been put into your mind. So as soon as they see a brother with a fez on or a dino cap, or this so-called kufi whatever you call it that I'm wearing now, looking dirty and not caring about himself, and carrying himself in a loose, disorganized way, right away they identify him with the picture that has been implanted in their minds long ago. They say, "Oh, these Muslims are disgracing America. Look how unkept they are. Look how filthy and untidy they are. They look like bums. They look like beggars and bums. You know what I'm going to do with your beggars and bums?"
You're beggar- and bum-looking people, you're not beggars and bums. You look that way to disgrace us. I'm going to call the police and have you arrested every time I catch one of you loafing and hanging around out there, giving us an ugly sight, an ugly face, I'm going to add the police arrest you.
And we knew you'll be going to stop you from coming in here. You've been told, now you keep that up. We get on one nut, they sent a different nut. So we put here a pressure on one nut, that day a different nut goes out there, but I know he's from the same enemy, the same enemy sent him. Allah has given us guidance for all the problems we have and all the problems this world can give us. Don't you think you can come up with a new trick.
No loafing around the property. No loafing on the property or around the property. No hanging around this property. I don't want anybody to catch a Muslim on the street outside of the masjid for more than a minute. If you stop and speak to somebody and say, As Salaamu Alaikum wa Alaikum As salaam and go, don't stand for two or three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes talking to somebody out there. Don't even stand around within three or four blocks of this masjid, talking, because people are walking here too, and you're standing around holding conversations and talking. They pass by you and you're talking something that's going to discourage them. They hear something you say. You were there purposely, defend them in the opposite direction. So you can do it, but you will have to do it as the enemy you are. As long as you say you belong to this community, we're going to stop you from doing it.
You want to do it? Do it as the enemy you are. Come with a sign saying, "I am hot sale, Christian holiness, doody-doody-doody-boo." Whatever you are. "I'm a paid stock for the Zionist movement." Just come with your sign identifying you. And we won't throw you off. We won't throw you off the premises. We won't tell you to get away from in front of our masjid. You can come. Come, but identify yourself. Don't come around us pretending you are one of us and working against us.
I hope that's enough of that. And if it's not, we've got a different remedy to follow. No Muslim belongs to this community should wear something that I don't wear. If I don't come to this masjid in sandals, you shouldn't come here in sandals. If you follow me, how come you come in with sandals? You're going to come in in sandals? Why? If I don't wear Arabian desert garb here, why should you wear it? If I come here, with long Arabian desert garb, then you do it. Or ask me, "Imam, is this for all of us? Or is this just your dress? Is this to distinguish you as the Imam or the preacher? Or this the dress for all men?" And if I say, "I want all of you in a dress," then do it. I wear this cap. A round, white cap on my head. Sometimes I'll wear a different one that's a different color. And I wear some of those skull caps, knitted skull caps, occasionally, but very seldom. And I carry myself in such a way that people respect me no matter what I wear.
When you wear a cap like this, it's called a prayer cap. Common name for this cap is prayer cap. You should be wearing this for prayer in your house, or if you wear it outside, you should be coming to prayer. If you're going to work, why should you be wearing a prayer cap? Hm?
Now, if the man will let you pray on your job, you don't have to weigh your frack cap except after you've made ablution, then put on your cap and make your prayer, and after prayer, take it off and go back to work.
Let us... A happy note. There's a program headed by a group of brothers, and sisters I believe included, in New York to pay off the heavy mortgage that's on the Malcolm Shabazz Masjid here in New York, because the situation there for that masjid is very serious. We stand to lose that masjid. They could foreclose and we lose that masjid. If it was just a building, I wouldn't be too much concerned. It's more than a building. It now has become a historical monument. There in Harlem where the dope addicts are concentrated perhaps in the greatest number, a community of people have sprung up cleaning the ghetto, reforming and rehabilitating the drunks and the dope addicts.
And the man most responsible for the progress made in New York, his name now is on that piece of property, Malcolm Shabazz. That's too precious, too dear to us. We don't want to lose it. All praise due to Allah, they have come to me with a very good relief program. The program of 300. All they're asking for is 300 people, to allow their savings that's in the bank, or if you can't find 300, with 1000 each savings in the bank, then we would like to see others increase their savings in the bank until it is 3000, are donated to the project by sending it to the account that they have opened up. They have opened up an account at the bank. The monies can go directly to that account, or you can give the news to the Committee of 300 telling them that, "I'm ready to have my 1000 that is in my savings used for that purpose."
And what happens is this: your 1000 is borrowed on. The bank already has it and it's doing you no good except bringing maybe 6% or whatever. It's doing you no good except the few pennies you're getting on it, it's just laying up there. And the bank is already doing with your money what the Committee of 300 are asking you to let us do. They are already lending, borrowing on your money. And that Committee of 300 is asking that that money be put into one account, or into an account for this purpose. And if we do that, we can get the three... I believe $300,000 that we need to three Malcolm Shabazz Masjid and get it into our possession.
I'm behind that program. I met the man, I believe, that is leading the program, Brother Marshall, I met him and I'm so impressed by him and his sincerity that I told him to carry the word back to Imam Ali Rasheed and tell him that I support that program wholeheartedly and that I will seek funds to match what they deposit. They have already started and they've got, I think, invested $30,000, are already into that account.
The money they put in from heretofore, I have also got into this program to save the mosque in New York. From here on, I intend to find some money somewhere and I'm going to put it into an account. Every time they get 1,000, let me know. I'm going to put 1,000 in. I don't have it, but I haven't made any promises yet that our Lord didn't bless me to fulfill.
I don't have it, but our Lord will bless me to find it and get it. So we thank Allah for those concerned Muslims who share our sentiment for the Malcolm Shabazz Masjid, its history and what it means to the future. For not only us, but for the people of Harlem. That property is not only dear to us, I want you to know that. That piece of property is dear to many non-Muslim in Harlem. In fact, all Harlem identify with Malcolm Shabazz Masjid.
And many of them are helping too, poor people on the great strain there in New York. New York City itself is under great strain. Great financial strain. Now, I said that was a happy note and it was. Let me now strike another happy note. And I hope I'll be striking happy notes for the rest of this afternoon that we'll be here.


