June 23rd 2001
Harvey, IL Address
Imam W. Deen Mohammed

We witness that he is one and that he's the creator of everything, and G-d who cares about all of his creation, and especially his human creation. And we witnessed that Muhammad, to whom the Quran was revealed centuries ago... 14 centuries and more ago, is the seal of the prophets, is the last of the prophets. And the Quran is the last of the revealed books, the book of the Muslims. The Bible... Our book of the Muslim's is the last of the revealed books. We are Muslims, and we are also obligated as Muslims to make a contribution to the whole world and to be of service to G-d, but through service to humanity. Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, said, "The best of you is the one who is best in his service to all people and to the whole of humanity." And so, we are obligated as Muslims to work not only for ourselves, but to work for all human beings. We work for the human family, family of man.
And this really empowers the soul and the person, the intellect, to have a much better life for self, for family and for your neighborhood. If you can get more of us to understand that the purpose of human life on this earth is service to G-d, but through service to community, service to mankind... Service to mankind and community who would have more people turned on to wanting to be productive. And a big cause means more production. Small calls means less production. If you work only for your individual self, you won't have much. If you work only for your family, you'll have a little more, but not too much. But if you work for the community of mankind, you have all the freedom possible for you to make great contributions for yourself, for your family, for your needs, community and for the whole world.
So this is what G-d wants in all of us. G-d wants all of us to be turned on to serving him, but serving him by doing service to the whole community of mankind, making that our service benefit or be useful for the whole community of mankind. Juneteenth, the day that commemorates our emancipation, or our freedom, from slavery in these United States should be understood as a day that feed our bodies, our physical bodies, so that our physical bodies could then have opportunity to go from slave master, and from plantation, and even from the state that we're your slaves, to any place on this earth. So that was the freedom for the body, for the purpose of giving freedom to our minds. When the slaves were freed, it is reported in newspapers... Newspapers of the cities of the United States reported that when the slaves were freed and they heard, "Yes, now you're free."
They could be seen going to pick up literature and trying to read, because they were not welcome to do that before as slaves. The slave master wanted them to do the physical labor and not to be interested in reading material or being educated. That would've hurt his business. If they had devoted a lot of attention to educating themselves and reading, et cetera, that would've been the, first, personal development. And he did not give them opportunity to do anything for personal development, except prepare themselves by going to bed and getting up to work for him the next morning. So when we got our physical bodies free, the slave saw that as the opportunity now for me to go and pick up a book and read it, "I didn't have the opportunity before to broaden my mind, to educate myself, to understand that the most precious freedom is not the freedom of the physical body."
You have the story of Prophets and servants in the Bible, and many of them, because the world did not like what they were doing... The rulers at that time, the ruling order, did not like what they were doing, they put them in prison. But in prison, those Prophets were still serving G-d. They were still devoted to what they were devoted to before. And their following was growing outside of the prison because they knew their leader, though locked up physically, he was not locked up spiritually, and he was not locked up mentally. So many great works were written and produced while confined, while imprisoned, while locked up.
So, actually, we know of Frederick Douglass, who was a slave and he had a good master at one time... By a good master we mean that his master wanted to see him have improvement on his life. So the master went and bought books for him to read, knew he was very avid thinker, reader. Pardon me. His master saw him reading and said, "I'll give you some books." He got him books and he helped him get educated. Frederick Douglass was already intellectual, and a learned person while yet a slave.
His master had to give him up because of financial problems he had. So he had to give up Frederick Douglass. He sold him to another master. That master turned out to be harsh, cruel, not caring about Frederick Douglass as a person, but just caring about Frederick Douglass as a slave that would get him serviced that would do services, do work for him. Frederick Douglass had not been prepared to take that kind of situation. So, history says that he, actually, struck his master. Hot him with his fist and he fled. He fled. He ran from him and got free of him. Eventually came up north, got to the Boston. And were accepted in the law as intellectual, working with the abolitionist movement to abolish, to end slavery in the United States, and later became a statesman; and visit Europe, other parts of the world, as a statesman from the United States of America. Now that's some real progress for the individual.
And if we look at him, his life and his progress, we will see that the body does not have to be in good situation for the mind to make progress. And we can just reflect quickly on some of the neighborhoods that we grew up in. I myself grew up in a very poor and bad neighborhood. One block from where we used to live on 53rd and Wabash. 5338 Wabash. Just one block. We walk over to State street and there were bums, wine heads, plenty of taverns, bad conditions, people living very poor. Life wasted. Wasted lives. And some of you, you came up from, even perhaps, worse than... (gap in the tape)
That the human being is a wonderful, marvelous thing. Your life, your creation, what is possible for you. It's a marvel. It's a wonderful thing. You're capable of rising as high as any other human being, born of a woman. Yes, you are. But you have to have faith in yourself and you have to know that you can't do much at all for yourself or for anybody else until you appreciate what Allah has done. And you in Christianity, have G-d has done.
Allah is G-d in Arabic, English is G-d... In English. We have to appreciate what the Creator has done. That's what the thinkers began. Thinkers who thought themselves out of savagery, who thought themselves out of ignorance, and a wasted life. What they began to think about is what God has done. They looked at the sky and they start to wonder how the heavenly bodies stayed the way they are. Every night we see them there. They're there every night. Every morning the sunrises. Every night, every evening it sets and gives us a night to rest in. So they were wondering about those things.
And when they started to wonder about those things. Their mind started to expand. Their mind started to get bigger. The big environment is made to stimulate your mind to grow bigger. G-d did that for you. God didn't want you small. G-d wants you big. He wants you smart. He put you in a little... He put you in Harvey and it wouldn't have been no way to look outside. But he put you in a big universe, a big world with a huge... with a sky. It looked like it's unlimited. It is unlimited, I believe. We can't find the end of it. Big earth with all of these wonderful things, growing out in it. And in Scripture, both Quran and the Bible, we're told that G-d made the Earth to support us, to give us our food and support us. And Allah says in the Quran, it is also in the Bible in that way, that, "he supplies you, your needs to give you what you need from him and from earth."
Isn't that wonderful? From the skies and from the Earth, he gives you your needs. He supplies you with your need, G-d supplies you with your need. So if we could believe in G-d and have this true picture of what G-d did when he created a human being, a thinking creature who could think himself free of his own physical and natural limitations. The physical and natural limitations are no more better than the life of a animal. My physical and natural limitation make me no more than an animal. Maybe at best, a good animal, a top animal. A chief animal, but still animal. Because if I just have nothing but the natural urges in me and my physical body, the master, the slave master can have me. I will accept the slave master. As long as he permits me to party on the weekend, let me drink and have some sex on the weekend. Let me dance, feel good on the weekend and enjoy the bodily pleasures. I'll be your boy.
But once your mind is turned on to thinking free of your body, thinking beyond the limitations of body, thinking beyond sex, thinking beyond eating food, thinking beyond drinking, and drinking liquors and getting high, taking the wrong narcotics, thinking beyond dancing and singing. When your mind starts to grow free of those limitations that will free the animals, I guarantee you, if you go out there in the zoo and get some of those animals to drink some liquor, they'll be happy too. Yeah. And give them a shot of drugs, oh, man, they'll be high too. That's for animal. That's for animal. What G-d has created us for is for us. And he has created us to benefit from all those in the skies and all those on earth.
All of us won't be able to start a movement in that direction, but all of us are able to make some contribution to a movement that goes in that direction. None of us are too weak, or too sick, or too ignorant to make some contribution to that kind of movement. And that kind of movement will expand the mind even of the sleeping ones, of those that want nothing. If they start to see that kind of environment grow around them, their mind's going to be turned on and they're going to start to grow themselves. So hope, for even those that are hopeless, is that we have something done. And, thus, in the terms of industry, that will make them have environment that will turn their minds on and make them appreciate a new environment, or a new situation and a better life for themselves. And understand this, that freedom of the slave was the freedom to have their lives back in their own hands. That's real freedom. That's the freedom they wanted.
Their lives were in the hands of a master. They wanted their lives free so they could have their lives in their own hands. So they can say, "I want to marry that lady, not the one my master brought in here for me. I want to marry that young man, not the one my master want me to mate with tonight." They wanted the freedom to have their own choices, to have their lives in their own hands. That's the real emancipation. When you have the freedom to make your own decision from your own thought, when you are free to take your own life into your own hands.
The Hon. Elijah Muhammad attracted so many very poorly educated African Americans of the poor quarters and areas of Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee in their early 30s and 40s. He attracted them to come to him, to come to his call for building a nation. He attracted them because he gave them an idea of them being in another world called their own, belonging to a nation, a concept... A national concept that was their own and being able to make decisions without white man's approval, without slave master's approval.
Not that all white men are slave masters, but if, white people put you in that situation, then the whole race is seen as a superior race. And they're seen as a master race until you do something on your own, as your own self, as your own race to give you credit in this world with them. And that's was the call of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad. Come, let us do for self. Let us show ourselves, firstly, that we can do things by our own selves. Our people loved it and they still love it. They're following minister Farrakhan, because they love that. They love that. And it's a need in all of us.
We have a bigger picture now. It's not a black nation. We have a bigger picture. Our field of labor is the universe. The Quran, Muhammad invited us to see our field of labor as the whole universe. So we're on the road to catch up with the white man. Because that's what he sees the whole universe, as a feel for his labors. He labors in the sky, and he has astronomy, and he has all kind of intelligence coming to him from the sky. And he labors on the earth, and he has a farming and agriculture, and industry of all kinds because he was turned on by scripture.
So let us be turned on for the bigger thing, and we will be successful. And let us no longer see our emancipation just as emancipation to be free to go and party, be free to have a good time. Look a good time is working. G-d knows, the best time I have is the time when I'm working. When I'm working with my pencil, or my pen, or my thinking. Or when I'm working at the job at Eggmate at the meat market. I'm working in the office with the ministry. So? Then I'm working. That's when I'm happy. That's when I feel more productive. That's when I'm really doing something. [inaudible] ain't never had a charge like we could have. Can we indulge the mind and not the flesh? I think you brothers understand where I'm coming from. Yeah.
There's time for us to accept what G-d has offered us, ever since life began for human beings on this earth. And that is a complete freedom, but a freedom that you have to pay one price for. And that price: obey G-d. And you can be as free as the stars in the heaven. Free as the air that blows around the earth. You can be as free as everything that G-d has made. And G-d only wants that you pay one price: obey G-d with that freedom.
Thank you. And may G-d keep us in the best tradition of the best African American people up from slavery.


