06/18/1978
IWDM Study Library
The Family
Chicago IL

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
The following is part one from a special address by Imam Wallace Deen Mohammed at Calumet High School in Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday, June 18th, 1978.
Dear beloved Muslims, People, friends, as-salamu alaykum. As-salamu alaykum, as you know, means peace. Peace be with you, or peace be unto you. And that is the peace that G-d gives. As-salam is the peace that G-d gives, as-salamu alaykum. And release, almighty G-d, to help us establish peace on Earth, in our lives, for all of us.
The wish has been for thousands of years for peace, that G-d would establish peace, that G-d would give us peace. Moses said peace. Abraham before him said peace. Jesus, the Christ, said peace. Peace be unto you. And we're still saying it, we haven't given up. We still hope that we can have peace. We're still saying peace be unto you, as-salamu alaykum.
I would like to begin the talk this afternoon on the strange problems in American life that we have to put up with, that we have to cope with, that we have to overcome. By reading first two verses from the Quran. The Quran is the holy book of about 800 million people on this Earth. Many of them being in Asia, in Europe. And many of them being on the continent we call today Africa.
The chapter I'm going to read from is called The Kahf the chapter is called the Kahf. Beginning with the verse 36 of this chapter. "And how many generations before them did we destroy for their sins? And stronger in power were they than these. Then that they wander through the land. Was there any place of escape for them? Verily, in this is a message for any that has a heart and intelligence to hear and earnestly bear witness to the truth."
I have read these two verses to bring home to our view, to our understanding, the most serious problem we are faced with, the most serious problem that any people are faced with in times of confusion, in times of material pain and selfish greed, heartlessness, lack of concern for each other. Whenever the world is filled with material goods, and the people have no heart for each other, the conditions that are brought about that demand that the people's heart come to life, and that their intelligence be used.
Today, nothing is more in danger of being destroyed than our hearts and our intelligence. If we would look at the human being and point out any human beings, the best that is in the human being, we would have to point to the human heart and to the human intelligence. If we don't use these things, then we can't help but be inferior. We can't help but be given to destruction, social destruction. Destruction of ourselves at our own hands.
Things have not changed that much. The creation is still the creation of G-d. And the solutions are still sensible ones. No magic. G-d has never asked us to turn to guesswork for answers. G-d never asked us to turn to superstition, to magic, for answers. Every great messenger or prophet of G-d directed us to a plain, sensible way out of our miseries or out of our problems and confusion. They never told us to ignore good senses. They never told us that we could do whatever we want to and achieve the good life that we want. All of them told us that there are conditions to be met. Yet there is a way, and that way is supreme, and all other ways lead the human beings to destruction. Self-destruction. To ignorance.
The way that leads us to high life is the way of good sense, the way of high morals. This is instruction or message that has not changed. G-d told His very first prophets this message, and every prophet that came after, he told them the same message. And Jesus, he gave the same message. And Muhammad, he gave the same message. That the human beings had been created to live on a high plane of moral excellence and good sense.
In a world that is commercial, materialistic, the human being is depraved. The hunting, everybody is hunting the human beings. Everybody is preying upon the human beings. Everybody wants your blood. Why? Because to survive, they must have you as a tool and a resource. A tool for carrying out their wishes, and a resource for exploitation. For the sale of their goods, for the creation of markets.
How can we survive? We can survive by going back to that that is superior. We can survive by going back to our true base, our true power. There is a real base for human beings to stand upon and grow upon, develop upon. And there is a power that we have because of our creation. That is in the very design of our creation itself, is power. If we know that design, if we expect that design, if we use the guidance, the guidelines that are seen in that design, nothing of this world can overcome us. Nothing of this world can defeat us.
Striking out in the dark, we can never make it. Guessing every day, we can never make it. Having no discipline in our lives, we can never make it. Not knowing the ABCs of life, we cannot make it. There is knowledge that must be had. There is a position that must be taken. And we have to stick to it. The human being cannot be successful in life unless he takes a firm position to follow some straight way.
I know what you've been told. Let it all hang out. Live loose. Have no concerns. But what has that brought us? Poverty, imprisonment, financial weakness, moral decay, literal depression, sickness upon sickness. The loss of our family ties. The loss of love and appreciation for our brothers and sisters in our own household. The loss of appreciation for Mom and Dad, for Grandpa and Grandma. The loss of appreciation for the children that G-d blessed us with.
This is what this whole carefree life has brought us. It has brought us the loss of the precious thing that made human life great. It has brought us insanity. It has made our world mad. People seeking fulfillment in drunkenness. Narcotics. Destruction. Self-love. Vulgarity. Lust. Foolishness. That's the way down. That's not the way up.
We complain that we are down on the bottom, but we continually consume those things that invite us to go down even further. How can we blame economic weakness of our race on the establishment, on racism, when we are choosing to go down, rather than to go up? When we are, of our own free will, choose to put our checks in luxuries that we can't afford? In shiny, flashy things that bring us nothing? When we choose to put our money in a big party, play the money away like little children, popping the fingers, shaking the tails, smoking the cigarettes, drinking the liquor. Come back home with no money. You put your money in play and foolishness.
What can save us from this downhill drop? This downhill drop? What can save us from it? The creation is the same. The nature of G-d's creation has not changed. The solutions that worked 4,000 years ago still work. That worked 2,000 years ago will still work. That that worked 1,400 years ago will still work today. What is the answer? Know yourself. Preserve yourself. Because you are greater than anything you can possibly become. Aren't you listening?
Yes, sir! Yes, sir!
Did you come here to pop your finger and shake your thing?
No, sir!
If you did, then you're wasting my time. If you came here to find more help to go down then you're wasting my time. But if you came to find some help to go up, then you're helping me, because I want to go up. And I know that I can't go up without you. Because you are me. You are my community. You are my problem. You are me. And I can't live without you. And if you go down, you take me with you. I can get a room in the Watergate Hotel, in the penthouse, and eat filet mignon, caviar. But to be sane, I have to identify with you. If I want to remain sane, I have to face the reality, and that is this. That a Bilalian might be sitting on top of the world, but as long as majority of the Bilalians are on the bottom of the world, no Bilalian is on top of the world.
Most of the world don't know us by our personal names. They know us by racial identity. I may sit on top of the Watergate and live like a rich Sheik, but the people will say, "Look at that fool, sitting on top of the Watergate, wasting his money instead of putting it to good use, so he will have respectable image in the world." Yeah. A foolish people deprive the whole people of respect and dignity. A wise people can give a whole people respect and dignity.
The materialistic world needs you. And they have found a way into your heart, and into your mind that is open to them day and night. And we only get a chance once in a while to speak to you. And even then, we can hardly reach you, because they've had so long to work on you that you're hearing them while we're talking to you. All day long, they have you. They reach you through the TV, through the records, through the record player, through the radio, through the magazines. All day long, they are reaching you. They reach you through the foolishness that they brand into the people around you. They're clouding when the record player's off, the song is still being sung.
So 24 hours, you are under the influence of a world that want to prey upon you, that want to suck your blood, that have to have you for their exploits. And when we get you, it's like getting somebody who was told to repeat a simple lie, over and over, for 20 hours. And then you get them, and they can't hear you, for hearing that simple lie being repeated over and over in their minds. Yeah. You're talking about indoctrination. The indoctrination is a thing that comes in your ears, in your mind, your eyes, daily, from TV, radio, magazine, and the noise you hear all around you in your house and out on the street. That's indoctrination. That's indeed indoctrination.
Turn the TV on in the morning, and they're selling you something that you don't need. A hamburger, toasted on the top, soft on the inside. And you'll go look for that hamburger, because it's different. "Oh, I heard there's a restaurant that's selling hamburgers, a fast food place that's selling hamburgers toasted on the outside. Top toast bun." Just call it anything, you've got to buy it because it's new. An umbrella that plays music. Any unnecessary foolishness can be sold to you. Right? Oh yes, you know it's the truth. "Oh, I have to buy my child some new socks." How come? "He doesn't like the ones I bought him. He wants the ones they put out with Mickey Mouse on them." Any money you put into his socks is going to waste. Those sock are no more good because they brought out some with Mickey Mouse on them.
All they have to do is put it on TV once, and show little children playing with Mickey Mouse on their socks, and all your children have to have those socks with Mickey Mouse on them. "Mommy, get me the socks with Mickey Mouse on it!" Okay, I'll get them as soon as I go out this door. Next time I go shopping. Daddy say, "Look here, girl, didn't we buy this boy socks last week?" Say "Yeah, but she want the ones with Mickey Mouse on it." He said, "We ain't got no money to buy no more socks." "Nigga, are you going to deprive my child of socks with Mickey Mouse on it if he want them? My baby just as good as anybody else's!" Pretty soon, the relationship between husband and wife is destroyed. A father has left home. There's a fatherless household. Who broke up the house? Mickey Mouse socks.
This is a strange kind of development that has taken over American people's lives. Got us divorcing each other over foolishness, hating each other over foolishness. Digging ourselves deeper and deeper into poverty over foolishness. The way out is to know yourself. And when you know yourself, be yourself. Don't let the influences from the TV to change yourself. G-d didn't make you to spend the money you need to go to school, the money you need to save your apartment, the money you need to pay your rent.
G-d didn't make you to take that money and to buy some Mickey Mouse socks, or to buy a Cadillac with seats that have leopard skin, peacock feathers stuffed in the seats. Because we'll buy it. They put it on TV. "This Cadillac is custom-made, peacock feathers in it. These peacock feathers, each one of them cost five dollars." Stuffed with peacock feathers. The skin is made from alligator, a rare species that'll soon be extinct. There are only 25 of these Cadillacs that can be made. Because of the species facing extinction. The Bilalians the African-Americans will rush down and get 20 of those Cadillacs, and all the other people in the world will only be able to get 5.
And then we tell the world "We on the bottom, we can't get up." They ought to tell you, "Eff you." That's right, the world ought to say, "Eff you, you stupid niggers. Stay on the bottom." "Oh, what kind of man is that? He doesn't sound like he's a religious man, using that profane language." I'm using the only thing that most of your ears are open to. If your ears could hear something else, I would use something else. The world has conditioned you to hear vulgarity, profanity. We come up here and read the Quran, filled with life, filled with solutions to your problems. You can't hear any of it, because we didn't call you MF.
This is strange, isn't it? That people can't respond unless they're abused? That they can't enjoy anything unless it's degrading? This is strange. For a few minutes, let us listen to what G-d says about us. G-d says that He has created us in the best mode. In the most excellent design. G-d said that not only has He created us in the excellent design, but He has made our form, our looks, our form excellent, good, and beautiful. This is what G-d said.
G-d tells us that life is human, but it is also real. The human being is an unstable creature, but he has a nature that will give him stability if he will learn that nature and give himself to that nature. You know how the heart is. The heart is flighty. The heart take wing, and it flies away from us. But we also have a stabilizer. We have knowledge. We have conscience. We use good senses. We respect what should be respected. We can train our hearts like we train birds. You can train a bird, and that bird will go where you want it to go, and will return back to you. You can train your heart to go where you want it to go, and return back to you.
This world is designed to the TV tube and other means, other mediums. It's designed to take your heart away on a flight, and never let you get it back. You only get your heart back when they want you to have it back. They send it back to you, and take it away any time they get ready. This means that you don't possess yourself. How can we exist and make progress if we don't even possess ourselves? "I want a car, I want a house, I want this, I want that." What about myself? Shouldn't I want myself? If I have a house and don't have myself, what good is a house? Got car and got a house, but I don't have myself.
So myself becomes a torture in my life. Myself is the demon in my life that's torturing me. That's making me undermine my good efforts. Depriving me of ever reaching my goals. I can't reach the goal because myself is the enemy between me and my goal. Isn't that a fact of this life? You know it's no good for you to make $250 a week and spend $50, one fifth of it in one week, at a party. You know that doesn't make any sense. Then come up at the end of the month, you don't have your rent. And the man sit your leopard couch on the sidewalk. Your almost $1,000 color TV on the sidewalk. The rain come down and beat on it. You don't have enough money to hire a U-Haul to take it somewhere. You don't have no money to pay for storage. You don't have no place to put your furniture. There's the big rich king put out of doors. The weather is beating down on his leopard couch and his $700 color TV. So he have to get on the phone right quick and see if he can sell it. "Look, man, they put my things out. The TV I paid $700 for it, give me $200." Bad business, bad business. Now he's taking big losses on his investments. Cause he's living like a crazy man.
Every human being should know him or herself. What have we been taught concerning ourselves? We were taught that our own self is a righteous Muslim. If we be righteous Muslims, then nobody can take advantage of us. What is a righteous Muslim? One who follows G-d's guidance, not the guidance that the world offers. If TV commercials tell me to spend a big sum of my income on unnecessary things in my life, I have to obey G-d and ignore the TV, because G-d says those who waste their earnings are brothers of the devils. I don't want to be a brother of the devil, so I'm not going to waste my earnings on unnecessary things. G-d says a Muslim is obligated to educate his child. The Muslim is obligated to give decent food, clothing, and shelter and education to their children. I'm not going to take the money from the things that G-d say it belong to and give it to things that I don't need.
Do you know how the south side, the west side, you know how these great blocks of Bilalians should look? We should be looking in our physical appearance, the way the people look in Guyana. The way the people look in the developing countries. It should be as hard to find a diamond on the finger of an African-American as it is to find a diamond on the finger of a man in Chinese, communist China. You go there, you don't expect to find diamonds on the fingers of the communist Chinese people. They have decided that there's something more important than them wearing diamonds, chinchilla coats, big fur hats, high heeled boots.
They have decided that there's something more important than that, and that's the dignity of the Chinese people. Are we prepared to make sacrifices like that, for the dignity of the African-Americans? We will never have the respect in the world until we get prepared to make some sacrifices. I have money at my fingertip. I could have come here with diamond ring on my fingers. I could have a $500 or $1,000 watch on my arm. I could have $100, $200 pair of shoes on my feet. I could have come here in an expensive car costing $12,000.
But that amount of money can put a poor brother who has ability, who has a good mind, who needs an opportunity to grow in the schools and in economic order of our society. He needs an opportunity, but he doesn't have even rent. He doesn't have a home to live in. Why? Because his father was poor, his father was a waster, his father was a pampered pimp who cared more about flashy clothes than he cared about the future of his race. So his father dug deeper and deeper into the pit of poverty, and left his son poor and without help. So his son comes up battling. He doesn't have any investment, no investment was left to him, not even five dollars in an account. Nothing for education, no home, nothing but a five day notice.
Isn't that what most of us leave our children? A five day notice. No money in the account. Nothing for education. Nothing for our future. We leave them with nothing but a habit that's unreal, that's too expensive for them. And if they seek to satisfy themselves, they will go to jail. They will have to kill somebody, and they go to jail. Isn't that a fact? Isn't that the reality that we live with, the majority of us? Little children grow up under a father who tempted his child with too much? His father's wearing clothes that he can't afford, the child feel he has to have the same clothes? His father's riding around in a car he couldn't afford, the child feel he have to have the same car. His father left him no money in the bank, left him nothing to start with, left him with nothing but a big, big appetite for things that he can't afford.
So the child go out and stick up a bank. He goes to jail. Who sent that child to jail? That father that gave him an appetite to big for him to afford. These are the simple problems in our life. You want to know who's holding you down? I'm telling you what's holding you down. It's not the American flag. It's not the segregationists. It's you. I know the Caucasian people, all of them don't like us. Majority of them don't care to live with us. Well, that's no problem. Majority of them don't care to live with each other. The Irish run from the Italian, the Italian run from the Irish. They don't care to live with each other.
Over the centuries, they have learned that they don't like to live with each other, so they don't force themselves on each other. The Irish go with the Irish, the Italian go with the Italian, the Puerto Rican go with the Puerto Rican, the Chinese with the Chinese. And they don't need a mountain-high stack of legislation to protect them, because they have decided that we can live alone. We don't have to live next door to you. But we think we have to live next door to people. We think the answer is in making people accept us, before we accept ourselves. The answer is in accepting yourself first, so people will accept you automatically.
And you don't win respect by digging your grave. You win respect by building your life. When you waste your earnings in narcotics and wine and gambling, and expensive living that you can't afford, you're digging your grave. This is a simple daylight that we need to shine on the south side and on the west side. And if we accept it, we can rise.
I offer you a chance to join a revolution bigger than any led by any gun, any physical canon, any physical weapon. There has never been a revolution bigger than the one I ask you to join right now, and that's the revolution to accept, to make the changes in your life that will dignify the whole race!
It's a struggle. You need strength. It's hard to feed yourself, especially force-feeding. You know, we force-feed ourselves. When you force-feed yourself, you destroy the natural nature of self-protection in the creature. The creature has been given a nature by G-d to set off an alarm, when something is wrong inside the system. But if you keep forcing and ignoring the alarm, the alarm says, "Hell, they don't need me alarming, and nobody hears it." So the alarm stops going off, and pretty soon that force-fed individual or creature is so abnormal that it doesn't realize that it's being fed into its own destruction.
I've seen them force-feed ducks for the market. They make them fat for the market. The duck eats until he's full. They say, "No, that's not enough, duck. We want you fatter than that, because you have to be sold on the market, and the people in the market want you fatter than that." So they take the duck and open the duck's mouth, and a machine comes and stuff food down into that duck's mouth. They call it force-feeding. Don't you know you are a race of force-fed ducks? What is the machine that's feeding you? Commercialism. Fads given to you over the TV screen, and over the movie screen, from Hollywood. You get the fad, and you have to force-feed yourself. But nature says, "I'm satisfied. I'm clothed, I'm sheltered, I'm fed." But no, you've got to eat some more.
Here's a special food that you got to have, because other people got it. What other people got it? When they start selling us these things, nobody has it. They start off on the very beginning, telling you, "This is what America wants! This is what America likes! This is what the people that are progressive are doing. This is what the progressive people are doing." And you say, "Oh, I have to do that." You're the first fool to do it.
You know, I have met rulers over nations who had less wealth than these people that meet me complaining because they're on welfare. This is a reality. I have met rulers over nations, I repeat, who came out and met me, and their clothes cost about a third of what yours cost. His car was a very cheap-priced car, low-price car. His home was simple, not elaborate. In his personal life, he was a poor man by your standards. But he was a ruler of a whole nation. And all of his people were rich compared to you. When we're comparing them with you, they're rich, you're poor. Because you live on charity, promises. Those people are living from the work of their own hands. That's the difference.
You wear the clothes that other people designed for you and sell you. You eat the food that other people choose for you. You live on the level that other people decide for you. "Oh, that's just like everybody." No, you're wrong. Most of the other ethnic groups do not live like that. Most of the other ethnic groups, they live on the level that they choose for themselves. And they buy the food that they like themselves. And they dress the way they like to dress themselves. They have a decision in the way they live. But you have no decision in the way you live.
They change the way we look like the seasons. Anytime they want to change the way we look, they just put out a new look, put a Bilalian in a new dress, put them on TV or put them in a new superfly movie. Call it by any name, just put him in a big Bilalian or Black, African movie. African-American movie. And he comes out, and he sets the style for the rest of us. They can put him in the movie with blue streak in the hair, rainbow-colored hair. Yes, red, green, blue, orange, the rainbow in his hair. Big natural rainbow. They can dress him up in the summer with leather gloves, all the way up to his elbow. And you'll come out in 100-degree weather with leather gloves all the way up to your elbows, because you don't have a mind of your own. Your mind belong to the commercial influences.
This is medicine for every ailment. You want to hear something spooky? Just let Bilalians start living like they got sense. Start following sense rather than fads. And I'm telling you, you'll find the cure-all. High blood pressure will go down, corns will start just falling off, melting off your toes. Yeah. Arthritis will just roll out, ooze out of your body and run down into the gutter somewhere. Yeah. Just find yourself coming into a new life all of the sudden.
You know, they're saying now that we suffer a higher level of hypertension than any other people in America, in the world? Us! You know, we used to brag, "Yeah, you know, they don't give us nothing. They keep us down, but we don't die like they die. We're healthier, we're stronger, we live longer." Look here, that ain't true. Somebody fooled you. Your life expectancy is not as long. You got a whole lot of unnecessary ailments. High blood pressure, hypertension. Do you know where those disease do their damage? Right up here. High blood pressure, it puts you out of business. Yes. Hypertension puts you out of business right here.
Got our women now they can't even go to bed with an Excedrin. I remember about 20 years ago, they could go to bed with two or three aspirins. But now that doesn't work. I've seen them throw away the aspirin bottles. Just pick it up and look at it, just throw it on the floor. I'm not joking. You know, go to the medicine cabinet, get the aspirin, and look at it, throw it on the floor. Pretty soon, they're taking something stronger. A bunch of dope addicts. Pill-popping dope addicts. Go to have coffee and look like they're doctors or something, open up bottles and meds and stuff. You're destroyed. You don't have to live like that.
Commercialism. Fads given to you over the TV screen and over the movie screen, from Hollywood. You get the fad, and you have to force-feed yourself. But nature says, "I'm satisfied. I'm clothed, I'm sheltered, I'm fed." But no, you've got to eat some more. Here's a special food that you got to have, because other people got it. What other people got it? When they start selling us these things, nobody has it. They start off on the very beginning, telling you, "This is what America wants! This is what America likes! This is what the people that are progressive are doing. This is what the progressive people are doing." And you say, "Oh, I have to do that." You're the first fool to do it.
You've been listening to Imam Wallace Deen Mohammed of the World Community of al-Islam in the west.
But I'm expecting we can find some small unique project that would be funded by people who support fine pursuits in the field of higher learning. Maybe even a technical institute. We have a brother who got a patent for an invention that he himself created, purifying water. He himself is a scientist. Maybe we can find a brother like that, maybe another person with promising experiments or projects, and let them set up something technical in there. And if it can accommodate larger participation, we can even open it up for others.
You know, sometimes a small thing like that introduce big things to the world. So don't think it's the size of a structure. No, it's the quality of a structure. If you bring the right quality operation in there, and it's structured procedures, never can tell what might come out of it, and it will be reported by people who recognize the worth of such a project.
Then again, I'm thinking that the only way ... Anything that goes in there, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's name will be on it. In some connection. As the one who made the building possible, or as the one who has been a leader in this particular field, because he promoted or encouraged it. For his name is not going off the building, don't worry about that. A gold plaque will be on the building, or a brass something that will hold up with his name on it.
But I'm thinking there's a sister Hassin. She wants to see an Islamic museum. She wants to see a big museum. I do, too. But I'm thinking that financial help may also be a good idea for a small Islamic museum that will not deal with the large variety of displays, exhibits, that an ordinary Islamic museum would carry, but will have special exhibits. Very select exhibits.
And I'm thinking of asking the Muslim world to send us an A number one Hafiz to recycle on in that kind of museum. And to offer special training to a select number, never no more than maybe three or five persons at first, select training to a very select number of persons in our community, in outside of our community, who would want to get that kind of Hafiz training. I think that would be a great idea.
An Islamic museum that will bring in special films on the holy places in the Muslim countries, on the grand mosques that are in Muslim lands, on precious Islamic kinds of sites you can see, that you perhaps never will see because you're not going to travel that wide. To bring those sites in, and precious museum pieces. Maybe we can get the Turkish Museum, Islamic Museum, Turkish Museum, to give us something that no other museum could get. No, non Muslim museum could get it. Maybe they could give us something so dear and precious that it will bring a Muslim all the way from Washington to come to the national house to see it.
I think we can get that. But let me tell you what we have to do. I'm telling you what we think, now let me tell you what is a must. We have to put that national house to some practical use. And we have to do it fast. Not only that, any other piece of property that's just sitting up taking money out of these poor people's hands, and that's mine too, the more you get the less I got. Is gas going up? I don't want to ask you for no more money. It's getting hard for all of us, now. In fact, I'm thinking of opening up a bicycle shop.
You know, there are some people who love the Honorable Elijah Muhammad so much with a sentimental love, that they don't want to see nothing go in that house. They don't want to see anything go in his bedroom. But let me tell you, for people to grow up and become a great people, you have to be able to rise up above narrow kinds of sentimental feelings and ideas. I think it will do more, contribute more to the greatness and dignity of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad if we make that house a national Islamic museum. A national Islamic museum, dedicated to the labor of the labor of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to dignify the medallion people. Wouldn't that be great?
Well, you imams out there, I want you to send me back the response that you're getting out there. The response that I'm getting in here tell me that I have Chicago support to make the national house an Islamic museum. Once I get the word from the council of Imams that the majority of the Muslims in our community support this idea, we're going to begin right away to make that house a national museum that will take away the taxes. We will put some money in there, we will take out that expensive electricity and plumbing and etc. that they put in there just to keep this community economically suppressed. I will take that stuff out of there, we will put reasonable fixtures in there, we will put gas in there, and that museum will be reasonable, and we'll have contributions coming from all over the world Insha'Allah.
Chicago, I believe I can say we have a majority vote for that program. Let's see you stand, all those in favor, all those in favor. We have a unanimous, unanimous decision in Chicago to make the national house an Islamic museum. Thank you very much, thank you very much. Unanimous decision in Chicago. All praise is due to Allah.
Do you have a comment? Well, I just want to express my thanks to the sister who made that cap for me, and to others who have given me gifts of robes. I have a bathrobe that was made by a sister. House shoes, slippers, who made it almost, I believe, three years ago. And believe me, it's still just as good. And I have several other things that was given to me. So much was coming in, I had to make announcements, "Don't give me any gifts." And believe me, the announcement is still on. Don't give me any gifts. Because when you've got a whole community giving a person gifts, it gets too much. So please, as much as I love to accept it, just your desire. I know desire's in it, sisters and brothers, to give me something personal sometimes. I thank you very much for it. But when you see me, give me as-salamu alaykum, and the look in your face will tell me that you'd like to give me a coat, a jacket, shoes, and everything.
Now, I have ... That doesn't mean that if you send something, I'll throw it away. If you send something, I will keep it if I can use it. If I can't use it, I'll give it to somebody else that can use it. But I discourage this, so please don't be encouraged to send me gifts.
There was a sister Cumati, she's a sister who was a victim of an attacker, an armed attacker. She was shot right point-blank. Bullet went through, I am told. She was shot more than once. The sister wasn't in the hospital, I don't think, nothing but a week or so, if that long. The sister out walking around, and she is preaching support for al-Islam. The sister has been made a stronger Muslim. A lot of us would take a misfortune like that as a bad sign, and become weak in our faith. This sister took it as a good sign, that Allah is with her, that Allah is with her imam.
She told me, she said, "Brother Imam, I'm with you. Don't worry, I'll never leave this community." So with her misfortune, Allah's planted her faith so strong that now she's going to make many other strong, because of her own strength. Sister Comasi, is she here today? No, she's not. I guess she's not here today. She'll be here. She's here often. She's a very, very frequent, very regular in her attendance. Well, when she comes along, we want her to come here and tell the community her experience.
She says she might be off somewhere propagating. Right now that sister may be at some church or some corner, propagating the teachings of al-Islam. She told me, through others, she got the word to me that she wants to talk to the sisters, because she believes that her misfortune has been turned into a fortune.
She wants to tell the sisters, she wants to tell the sisters ... Come up, I can't hear you back there. She wants to tell the sisters that the Islamic dress should be supported more by the Muslim sisters. She says when she was attacked, she had on pants, and her hair wasn't covered. She wasn't looking Islamic. And she believes that G-d has used her to tell the sisters that they are to support the Islamic dress more.
Dear people, that's the extent of my talk today. I want to hear what sister has to say, and then if that won't prolong me more here, I'm going to give you the greeting. Yes? All the teenagers who can come out tomorrow at 1:30 to the schools, please come out. Sister Comasi wants to speak to the teenagers. But believe me, I can excuse a lot of these teenagers for short dresses and pants. Because after all. They're young, and they're just getting their ... You know what I mean? And the teenagers want to fit, you know?
But what about these sisters? What about the sister that already got a husband? Been married three or four times? And she still want to show up the contour of her whole body. Wants you to see her X-ray, a structural X-ray of her body. What about those sisters? I want this sister to speak to all of these sisters. In fact, sister, I want you to speak to these brothers, some of them don't dress Islamic. Come out with pants on so tight we can count your change, and tell you whether the quarter is heads or tails in your pants. Yeah. Pants so tight you can look at his pocket and tell him the quarter is heads. Go and have a big six foot four, 300-pound brother raping you, you keep dressing like that. Don't demoralize the community. Keep the Islamic life live in you.
I'm proud of these sisters who love their dress. Ain't nobody forcing these sisters to dress like that. These sisters have been dressing like that for so many years, they love it. Oh, yes. And they look decent and beautiful. This sister was a good sister. Believe me, she wasn't vulgar. This sister was a good sister, sister Comasi. She might have been dressed in pants and everything, still, she's a good sister. Even in her pants, she's a good sister.
And Allah has shown her that she has a mission. Carried her through something that most likely ... People don't come through that. It's almost a miracle, that she was shot like that. I think she was shot in the leg, shot in the chest. And in in the hand. Hand, leg, and chest. And we thank Allah for saving our sister, and we're sure that He has important work for her to do. And I think she has found it, she found it. So we don't have to push her anymore. She's going to be pushing us.
I think it's going to be an inspiration and encouragement to all of us. I know it is to me. Make me more determined, stronger, and more enthusiastic to get out there and do more work for Allah. Thank you very much for your patience. I didn't intend to hold you this long, but I think we accomplished something today. Hope to see you Friday for Jumu'ah those who can afford to come out. And next Sunday at 1 p.m. Thank you and peace be unto you, as-salamu alaykum.


