03/15/1998
IWDM Study Library
Future Global Trends 21st Century 
Dallas TX

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Don Benton, our brother in humanity and the humanity that G-d created for us. I share with him that feeling of closeness, of likeness of the heart, and I immediately knew that he was a person that I could trust myself with, that I could lie down and go to sleep and not worry about any harm coming to me if he was awake. That's how I felt, yes. This is because our hearts must be pretty close to the heart that G-d wants in all of us. The closer we get to the heart that G-d wants in all of us, the more the differences just vanish, disappear.
We don't see differences, we see our brother. I want to say that we thank G-d for this opportunity to be here in Dallas on this occasion to support this conference, very important conference, a very courageous conference. We don't think of truth as being courageous, but truth is the most courageous force we have in the world. Truth, the most courageous force in the world. It makes cowards out of too many of us. It frightens too many of us and we become cowards, we can't embrace the truth. I have to say to Dallas, we love you and we are proud of you. We're proud of this city that has these very fine people in it, that is working to bring, as Dr. Reverend Peter Johnson said, to bring the family together, bring G-d's family together.
We're very proud of you and I just feel so blessed to be a part of your program, and to be, again, here in Dallas with you, to stand with you on something very worthwhile, something that can change the whole world from a world of suspicion, and division, and racism, to a world of brotherhood and peace. We think we've seen the golden days of opportunity. You wait until we accept each other as brothers and sisters all over this planet, and we don't have to be afraid of what the other's planning against the other. You wait 'til that day come. You will really see the day of golden opportunity.

Our religion is a religion of unity, and I believe that this is true for all the great religions. I was in a meeting of priests of different religions representing Al-Islam, the Muslims community, out here recently, and a Buddhist. He couldn't speak English too well, so when they asked him to make his contribution to the putting together an agenda, they said, "What do you what do you want to put on it?" They was trying to get him to respond, and he said, "We are one." They kept asking him- this is a very wise and learning man, now. He said, "We are one."
The lady who was putting the agenda together writing it down what should go into the agenda, she asked him for a third time, he said, "We are one." She smiled and she understood that that's all he wanted to say. We are one. The religion that we believe in it tells us that G-d made us one. G-d made even the male and the female from one, so He made the male and the female from one human soul. Nafsen Wahida is the Arabic, Quranic Arabic for it. He made the male and female from one human soul, which means we are one. When we marry as Christians- I include myself here, I'm American that's why I'm saying 'we'.
I'm not Christian, but maybe I am a Christian, I don't know. We should be the best of everything that's good that G-d wants us to be. When we marry we say we're united, we become one. Male and female in marriage they become one. The humanity, the people, are all one. G-d wants us to know our identity that we share together in common. G-d says of that identity that is the identity that He created. That is the identity He recreated. Now, I know he treated the African, the black man of Africa, and the white man of Europe, we know that.
He created these differences too, but G-d doesn't look to these differences. G-d says He doesn't look to our faces, but he looks to our hearts. Now, when you look at the heart-- I've had bad experience with it romance. I don't know of a successful romance that I've had in my life that didn't pain me so much. I think I would have to chose not to have it if I could have seen what it was going to bring to me. But when you look at the human heart, it's good. When you look at the human heart, you see different. If I could have looked at that girl's heart, I wouldn't have been excited because her heart looks just like mine.
You take a whole lot of human hearts and just lay them up here on the table. You couldn't pick my heart out. They look so much alike you have to say “What does his heart weigh? You have to have some special details to pick my heart out. The Kindness Foundation button that I'm taking back home with me that's given to me by Dr. Benton, this Kindness button, see, it has a heart there. That's not an African face. That's not a European face. That's just a human's heart, a picture of the symbol for the human heart.
When you look at the vital organs of human beings, they all look like. You imagine how much African your stomach look? They take your stuff cut it out, put it on the table, you know how much African their stomach is going to look? But you need it. Your heart, your lungs, even your tongue. Can you stick out your tongue? That's a Chinese tongue.

Look how important it is for speech, how important it is. The most important things in our physical makeup, they all look alike, and that's the way it is for the abstract body which is the more important body.
It is my intelligence that's more important. It is my emotional makeup, my sensitivities, my human sensitivity. These are the more important things that identify me more correctly. It's not my skin color or the way my body is shaped, but it's the invisible part of me that's the more important part of me. The truest part of me is my invisible self. That's the truest self. You can have two identical twins. Maybe the mama knows the difference. But if you just see them you have to stay with them for a while to learn who is who. You can't tell right away. You'll make mistakes. You call one you make a mistake. You call the one who's not the person, you call them by the wrong name. Identical twins. But the difference is in the invisible self, that's where the differences are. You will know their sentiments, you will know their emotions, you will know that their moral tastes, and etc.
You will know all these things about them and then you will really know them. G-d long ago told us what our life is. Our life is spiritual, isn't that right? Isn't what G-d told us? G-d told us our life is spiritual, meaning that it is not visible to the eye, to the physical eye. It's the spiritual life that's not visible to the physical eye. This is our true self, and G-d says, He's the one who made the common picture for all people. G-d says this in our Holy book He is the one who made the common picture for all people, and He made that picture beautiful most excellent. That's what G-d says.
He made that picture beautiful and most excellent. Now, the wisdom for us is that we should not fit do what young Wallace D Mohammed did, look at that pretty black girl. I don't know, the opposite just attracts sometimes. I'm not black on the skin color, I'm brown. That girl was black and mysterious, and beautiful, and I just wanted to just inquire. I just wanted to inquire discover her mysteries, and I got into serious serious trouble. So much trouble that I had to have a counselor tell me that your attachment is physical, Wallace. It took a long time for that to sink in, and free me. But it did, in time it freed me. When I finally understood that my attachment was physical,
I freed myself. I was able to do what my father did. He said, "You're having so much trouble with that girl Wallace?" He say "You should look at her and then turn your back to her and say, [gestures], and never look her way again." That's what he told me. But I couldn't do that. I looked at him and said, "Well, you're my daddy but you can't help me here."

This invisible self of ours, it's the true self. It can become corrupt. We can corrupt our own souls. Yes, we can corrupt that invisible self. We can make it corrupt. When it becomes corrupt, the physical body that G-d created too, G-d created both, G-d created the physical body too, the physical body will be in the tell on you. You won't even look the same. You used to be innocent. Now the physical body is saying, "Don't trust this so and so.

He's not innocent anymore." It will show up in your physical expression that you have changed from an innocent person to a guilty person, a wicked person. It'll show up. Some people can hide it very well. They can hide it. But the person whom himself sensitive to what's happening inside the person, you can't hardly fool people like that. You might fool many, but the person who's right inside in his invisible self or in her invisible self, they would detect right away, "This is somebody I shouldn't trust." Sometimes we go against that inner awareness, that inner perception that we have. We go against it. We trust people that something told us here, "Don't trust him." 
The lie detector. Everything that man makes it, whether he makes it a crude way or whether it's technology, science and technology, everything that we make is also in G-d's plan. It's in G-d's plan. The lie detector, I'm sure was in G-d's plan. What is the great truth that we should learn from the lie detector? It's that the human being in his original creation is truthful and honest. They wouldn't have spent money on that lie detector if they didn't think it works.
They made the lie detector and you submit to it. They will use it in court. The lie detector says he's lying. If you didn't say a thing, but your body registered your lies. Your flesh that G-d made registered your lies. We're told in the judgement by our Prophet Muhammad, the last prophet, the mercy to mankind, we're told that by him, that in the judgement the members of our body will testify against us. I believe there's something like that in the Bible.
Yes.
The members of our body will testify against us. Sometimes a person will see a very horrible act being committed. That act will be so inhuman and so terrible and horrible that it actually makes the body just react to it and you either break out in a cold sweat, or you may even throw up your food. You might throw up your food. Your own physical body is saying, "This is horrible." I think that's something that we should take note of.
We should make note of those things. I've seen people break out in bumps. Break out in bumps, because of what is happening to the invisible self. The visible self, the physical flesh body reacts to it, responds to it, yes. G-d has told us the truth. Christians trust the word of G-d. Muslims trust the word of G-d. Jews trust the word of G-d. If we trust the word of G-d, we have a chance, always. We have a chance, always.
The word of G-d will deliver us no matter how deep we are in the pit. The word of G-d can bring us out. The word of G-d can lift us up and redeem us. Trust the word of G-d. That's the answer for us all over the world. How many people embrace the word of G-d? How many people have even been fortunate enough to receive the word of G-d from the inspired servants of G-d. Many of them have not been blessed to have that over this earth. What we have to do, we have to come together and appreciate our common essence and realize that all of us have this precious common essence that's a light for all of us. The same for all of us.
In that invisible picture that G-d said that He made and made it most beautiful and most excellent. We have to come together and appreciate the common essence. The common essence of human pure innocent human feelings, sensitivities. It's our human sensitivity that awake our conscience and make us want to do something about the horrible state of human life in our neighborhood or next door, or across the waters in another country.
It's the innocent human feelings that awake the conscience and say something should be done about that ugly scene. That's what we share together. It isn't Chinese, it isn't African, it's not European, it's human. The best of our human nature, our human identity and our human life that we call our common essence. We should rally around that and that's where we can form, brotherhood. We can become all brothers. We can become all brothers there. We can become friends there. That's what makes us friends. Real true friends. I meet some Muslims, they tell me they're Muslims I don't feel any kinship because their hearts are not Muslim.
Their spirit is not Muslim, their souls are not Muslim. They just have a superficial identification with what they call the Muslim on this planet. I don't feel that they are my brother at all. Yes. When I meet a member of the Focolare Movement who are sitting over here to my left, when I meet them, I feel the bond of brotherhood. I feel the bond of unity in G-d. I feel that. I feel so comfortable with them and I know I can trust them. That's because their hearts are what they profess with their tongues. Many of us profess things with our tongue that's really not in the heart.

Where is the great hope for man? Where is the great hope for mankind on this earth? It's not anymore in any particular religious mission. It's not. Because religious truth has been so confused, we can't correctly identify our brothers and sisters anymore. We have been striving for Muslim unity in the United States of America for the last 10 years or more that I have been meeting with leaders of the other nationalities of Muslims in America. Are we making progress? No. Why don't we stop trying to get together as Muslims and get together as true persons? True human beings. I bet you that'll work. That'll work.
Oneness, G-d created this human body that we have given the picture of it to you that it also will also support your innocence. That it also will show up your guilt. That also will help you be comfortable doing the right thing. Your body, your flesh body. G-d says the earth itself, the earth itself is going to one day express its obedience to G-d. The earth. The earth that we live on. It's a body too created by G-d. It's created by G-d. How is that going to happen? I believe that the way that's happening is because we take our economy, the commercial life, commercial traffic, the economy of the world is now becoming more unified. We are seeing the business world become an international whole.
The business world is becoming an international whole. It's coming under one interest. Interest in the whole global community. That justice should be done to the whole global community. That everybody's market should be respected as their market. As their market. That no nation should dominate and take the markets of other people or take their resources and deny them their own market. This is the kind of world we're coming to. I think that's an unfolding of the revelation about the Earth will one day support G-d's will for the people.
This is the earth that we're using. We're using the minerals from the earth. We are using the things that grow out of the earth, that the earth produced because of G-d designing it that way. That's how we have wealth. Wealth used to be supported by the agriculturalists. Is that right? In the early development of the history of our economic life on earth, it was supported by the agriculturalists. Now it's needed more by the scientists and the skilled ones and the educated ones in science and technology more than it's needed by any farmer or any pattern makers or any dressmakers etc.
No, we need the world of science now and who is the giver of sciences? None of us created science. We discovered science. G-d is the creator of science. G-d created the world and when we studied the laws of the world that He created and we can explain those laws we have science. Really, G-d speaks through science as He speaks through scripture. He speaks in science as He speaks in scripture. Scripture is the word of G-d in a different sense, in a more sacred sense because we have these tools at our disposal, these tools of science, and we can be bad things. But G-d protects His word. We can't do that with G-d's word. That's the difference.
G-d's word is protected by Him and the science that G-d has put into our hands is left to us. G-d trusts us with it. We can do what we want with it. But it's from G-d too. Just like the revealed word is from G-d, science, true science, exact science, is from G-d. It's from G-d. That's G-d revealing the nature that He has created. The science of it, the knowledge of it so that we can benefit from it and have a better world to live in. Because of that revelation we call science.
Now, the world is becoming one. The economic world is becoming one. The market is becoming a one world market. I go to Jewels now and if I want to eat Chinese, I can. If I want to eat Philippine, I can. Philippine food on the shelf, yes. If want to eat some Japanese food, I can eat it. It's there. The more the America becomes filled with the different people of the world, the more the suppliers of food in the chain store has to respect that we have customers from Asia. We have customers from Africa. You can even find African food now where you couldn't find it. Yes, you can find African food where you couldn't find it before.
That's because of this world becoming one global community for us all. We have to have cooperation. We cannot afford to reject anybody. We can't afford to look at somebody as being an alien anymore. We have to accept all, that all are equally human and equally a legitimate part of this family that G-d wants to share the blessings of His creation. We can't stay away from each other more. We have to accept each other. The world is learning that and America has learned that. We have encouragement from our fine academic institutions and even from elementary schools now for us to learn other people. Learn about other people. Get to know other people.
Get to know them in their life that they cherish and value. Get to know them. Get to know their tastes for food, their tastes for dress, their tastes for entertainment. Get to know them better so we'll have a more comfortable existence for all of us on this earth. This is the encouragement we're getting from the highest academic institutions and also from the elementary school. Even the preschool now are given that information and encouraging that awareness and that acceptance in their preschool children that you should learn. They're given faces, put the faces of different people, the different races and different cultural ethnic groups all around the world.
They want to put them on the wall at school at a certain time to make sure that the school is seeing the whole family so that they won't think that some people are not accepted.
This is time for cooperation, time for inclusion, time for accepting others. The unity that G-d made, it supports differences. Unity supports differences. Like G-d gave us unity, we have one essential human life. That invisible picture of ours. One essential human life but G-d has made it to be expressed out of bodies that are different. My body doesn't look like the Frenchman's body. I like the Frenchman too but my body is different. My body doesn't look like his. My body is mine and the Frenchman's body is his. We look different physically.
We're physically different. The area that G-d permitted him to have his existence in, his native land is different from the native land of my beginning. My native land is somewhere in Africa. I don't know where. I won't believe Alex Haley. I can't find my Kunta Kinte.

But somewhere on the continent of Africa, I'm sure that's where my family began. My family began there. That environment, that physical environment over there, weather conditions etc., different from the Frenchman's. His mind has been activated, has been sensitized by different physical circumstance, a climatic circumstance, geographical circumstance, whatever, than mine. We have been sensitized differently because of where G-d permitted us to come spring up. You see? I will express even my talents differently. I was inspired to maybe be a wood carver. He was inspired maybe to be a stone carver. Maybe he used stones and shaped stones or something. I don't know.
We get these differences because of the different circumstances we were put in or we were born in. We get these differences. The unity that we're in supports these differences. The earth is the same all over, really, in essence. In its elements, the earth is the same in its elements and in its essential constitution or makeup the earth is the same everywhere. But it produces things different and that's what scripture tells us. Look how the same earth that appears to be no different from the earth over there produced this thing in excellent beautiful quality and the same earth looking the same over there can't produce it. Can't produce it.
I look at the desert where the Arabs roam. They used to be Bedouins and they roamed the desert. What is out there to inspire culture? Yet they have it. They have culture. They have rich culture. They had it before Al-Islam and they still have a rich culture. One of our leaders, our convener of our council for our Masjids, or Mosque, Imam Plemon El-Amin from Atlanta, he just returned from Saudi Arabia representing us at a festival for culture and heritage. Culture and heritage. This was the first time, I'm told by the inviters, that they included also outside of the Muslim culture. Outside of the Muslim culture, they included some other cultures in their festival celebration festivities.
This is beautiful. I thought of that land in the Bible, the prophets of the Jews, they mentioned that land and they, obviously, received revelation from G-d that one day that barren place was going to produce life. It says one day rivers will flow around there. One day rivers will run there. I recall the Bible. Yes, the Jewish prophets said one day, rivers will run. For us, they're not Jewish prophets, they're Muslim prophets and for the Christians, they're not Jewish but they're Christian prophets.
We understand. We understand. I don't mean to offend anybody.
Then the Quran mentioned gardens with rivers flowing beneath. Gardens with rivers flowing beneath. Now, I stretched my imagination, I believe in doing it. The Honorable Elijah Muhammed, he has stretched his imagination so big that he told the white man, "Get off the planet, it belongs to black people."
That was my father. I've had a lot of training. I stretch my imagination.
I said, look, there must be another application for this scripture. There must be another interpretation. Not just the rivers of spirituality or the rivers of the life, the real life that gives the world life. But this must be something else too. Maybe G-d also knew in advance and wanted us to know that this place that looks like I put them in a poor place, they have nothing, one day, rivers of oil, rivers of crude oil are going to be discovered. They are going to be able to turn the desert in to an oasis, the whole desert in to an oasis. That’s what they are trying to do. I hope they succeed. Turn the desert in to an oasis and we'll have a great town built upon the sands.
Yes, we think G-d has not recognized us or somebody is poor. Why am I in these circumstances? G-d's plan is just and poor situations sometimes produce the best human beings, poor people situation. Look at the beautiful people that came out of poverty. The poverty of knowledge, the poverty of the intellect and the poverty of the land. Poor lands and poor intellect but look at how the wonderful people that G-d had produced. There was time when the Jews. They were in bad situation. They had no power, they had no wealth, they had no great nations. They had nothing but they had faith in G-d and G-d gave them back, and many of them got so disappointed.
They thought G-d had forgotten them. They thought G-d had turn against them. Does G-d recognize me anymore? My G-d is forgetting me. My G-d has forgotten me. But G-d's way is just and I look at these enslavement of Black people now. I used to think of it as horrifying. it would set off in me ugly emotions sometimes, what was done to our people, but I've overcome that hurt. I've overcome it now and I know that no man can do me any wrong that G-d has not given permission for. If I can see the wisdom of G-d and turn my hurt into a positive force that will make me more human and a better human person, I would be so much enriched by that bad experience that G-d permitted for my future good.
I believe everything is done for future good. Now you know when you study Psychology without scripture, you see G-d as a bad tree, as a bad entity, yes. Many psychologists, American psychologists, they have seen G-d and religion has really the problem. That's because they don't know G-d's word and G-d's ways. But we who G-d has blessed to embrace His word and to appreciate His will and His ways, the ways of G-d, we know Him and we can bear. We'd also do the best we can with our life. Do always, do the best we can with our life to change circumstances for the better. But if we can't, then know that it's in the plan of G-d, and G-d, when He wants to, He will change the state for us.
He will change the circumstances for us. He will change our state into a beautiful state as He promised. He will change your state into a beautiful state. That's what G-d will do and every hurt is not intended to be a hurt. A lot of hurt is intended to wake up our conscience and sometimes G-d sacrifice some of us to wake up the conscience of many and even individual be rewarded immensely if he keep faith, remain faithful to G-d. This is my strong belief and I'm a free man because of that belief. My belief has freed me.
I'm not enslaved by racism, I'm not enslaved by any kind arrogance or selfishness. I brag and at the same time I humble myself, I'm committing sajda (prostration) in my soul to G-d, because I know it's only because of G-d that I have become this person I am. That's what I take great pride in, that's what I cherish more than anything else. It's not that millions of people, say Imam W Mohammed is a good leader. It's not because of that. It's because I have found freedom for the first time in my life and it's not freedom of my body but it's the freedom of my soul. My soul is free and at rest for the first time in my life because I have accepted the truth.

There's no freedom as sweet as the freedom of the soul, when the soul is free- because G-d has created the soul to make us aware of the need to free more of ourselves. You could free your physical body and the soul is still there telling you, "I'm not comfortable yet." You may be an intellectual slave. You may be an intellectual slave. A slave to a certain professor's thinking, a slave to a certain ideology. That's not enough to support your soul's good life. The soul will be telling you, "I'm not satisfied yet." You got to free more of your life. So, I can feel that I'm free. The way to free the whole life is accept the whole truth. That we are no more human beings and we all are equal in essence.
The advantages that we have over each other, are in the G-d's plan and can be explained by the circumstances we were given to. That's what explains our differences. We know some people are really physically impaired, mentally impaired. We are not talking about exceptions to the rule. We are talking about the general rule. What will take care of the exceptions? The true heart, the good heart of the human family on this Earth. We will take care of the exception. We will take a person who would be helpless and couldn't survive out there because of having some impairments up here.
We will take that person and give them a good existence and they'll be happy and they'll be trying to play ball and they'll be happy and they'll live a happy life, because we took them and gave them what they couldn't get by themselves because they were impaired. Where are we without charity? We're lost. Charity is a Christian principle charity is also one of the five essentials of our religion. If I would tell you what the essentials of our faith are, you would know it from your heart. The language sometimes keeps us separate from each other.
G-d gives us, through Muhammad the Prophet, the essentials of faith. They are, to believe in one G-d, to believe in the angels, to believe in the revelations, to believe in the prophets and messengers of G-d that received the revelations, to believe in the Qadr of G-d and that is that G-d's rule is over all. Over all that is happening in the universe, including in the life of man, G-d rule prevails over good and bad. It's deciding what harm can come, what good can come. It depends on how we approach a thing. We get the harm of it. We approach it in the right way, we get to benefit, the good of it. This is the rule of G-d. That rule of G-d is ruling in everything.
We believe in the resurrection after the death, the resurrection after the death, we believe in death. We believe in the final judgment, the judgment day. We believe in these things. Tell me, is that something you don’t believe in, Christian and Jews? You believe it the same. Our belief is the same. But some of us when we get to be standing before an all-Christian audience and we tell them, "The Muslims believe, alhamdulillah. The Muslims believe in Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala." And you don't understand what I'm talking about.
The Muslims believe in Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, and we believe in the angels and the angel Gabriel and Michael, etc. and when it gets through you, you say, "Well, they don't believe what we believe."

We have to find a common language, don't we? I think everything- when G-d says this creation of his, the Earth itself is going to support His will, is going to urge a man into the life that He wants for man. I believe that when we understand that, then we see that we are being marshalled together to have one common language, and it's the common language of that one single picture, the true human picture. Let us have diversity and let us be proud of our differences. Let us take pride in our different pictures, the African picture, the European picture, the Chinese picture, the Mongol picture, whatever.
Let us take pride. The Pygmies picture, yes. I got so fed up with my failure to have a good romance. I thought of going to Africa and find me a Pygmy.

Yes, I saw picture of a pygmy, there's a sweet little girl. She doesn't know me and I don't know her, she doesn't have my problem now we can go over there and start all over again, no problems for our relationship. I was thinking about going getting me a pygmy and just lose myself. My people couldn't find me ever again. Thank you, G-d bless us to appreciate our oneness, and be proud of our difference!

