01/01/2005
IWDM Study Library
First Sunday Lecture
Homewood IL

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
IWDM:
Nobody ever done that it raised on my mind. Our people don't support movies like this.
Speaker 2:
Right.
IWDM:
The average one in these African American neighborhoods, they don't support class. They don't support culture. They don't support quality.
Speaker 2:
That's right.
IWDM:
All they want to see is violence and sex. Violence and sex. They get the big crowds, the movies that have a lot of violence and a lot of sex. They get the big crowds and these are movies that will feed your mind and help you get your life straight, or help you keep your life straight. Nobody wants to see those.
Speaker 2:
There it is.
IWDM:
So I've given up, really, appealing to those people of minds like that. Whether young, old, youngsters, our teenagers. My address to you all on this day and every day I speak, every first Sunday or live broadcast or the radio live broadcast, my interest is reaching those who care about life. Not those who have given up on it. Those who care about life because they can't help themselves and they can't help you. If they can help themselves, they wouldn't be in their condition. If we could help them, they'd be here, listening to us.
IWDM:
They have no interest in what we're saying. They have no interest in anything but what's got them. What's holding them. Vulgarity, violence, love for vulgarity and love for crime. Crime! That's a crime to treat yourself that way. It's a crime to treat your life the way you treat your life. And we want the conscious ones that are in our hearing range, in the radio audience and here at this facility, we want the conscious ones to register more the hurt on society. The hurt on human life. Think about it more, register it more so you will do more about it.
IWDM:
They can't help themselves. Spiritually they're dead. Morally they're dead. So how can you raise the dead, if they insist upon living in the graveyard? And the big city, they make more and more room for you. If you want to live in the graveyard, they'll turn over some more land to you. They increase the area for the dead. Oh, yeah! They lay out enough space when it comes to accommodating the dead. You want to die and go six feet under? They're ready for you. Got you land more. If your graveyard and your area is filling up, they got plenty land available. They'll accommodate you if you want to go down in the grave. A grave of moral decay, moral rot.
IWDM:
We have to reform the behavior. We can save those who are conscious. The best help that a conscious person needs and the help that helps them the most is just to know that there's somebody else conscious. And we want you out there in the radio audience that are conscious, still alive morally, still respect things of importance, still care about human life and human suffering, we want you to know that we are alive with you and we want us all to be together. Let us be together, one spirit. G-d has made us one spirit and G-d has made us one life. Human life and human spirit, and if you are in human life and like to remain human, you have human spirit. So we are one in the same, and I'm thankful to G-d. And we say thankful to Allah; Muslims say thankful to Allah, that we still have conscious people on this earth who will not give in to the pressure to go six feet under. And there's plenty of pressure out there to go six feet under. Plenty of it. Not much help to keep your life in a good condition, but a lot of help if you want to destroy your life.
IWDM:
You know, I was speaking on the subject of reform and an old song, words from an old song came to my mind. Goes like this, "I'm a change the way I walk. I'm going to change the way I talk." Yes, I said to myself, "Whoever wrote that song, they put something together." Because walking and talking are development that come almost at the same time in the life of human beings. Walking and talking. Usually a child that's walking can talk a little bit, too. And if he's talking, usually he's walking too. Walking and talking are like twins, you know, in the developmental progress of human life. They come around the same time; walking and talking.
IWDM:
In this world, it is bad influences... When I say "this world", I mean the corrupt world. The unconscious world, or I should say maybe the satanic world. That's not out to help human life, but out just to exploit human life. To profit, to make money at the risk of human life. That world reaches us with its influences and it changes the way we think. First it changes the way we think. Then it changes the way we feel. Because if the way you think changes, then you're open to feel differently too.
Speaker 2:
That's right!
IWDM:
So it changes first the way we think. Then it changes the way we feel. Then it changes the way we behave. And when the thinking changes, it's expressed in the language, the talk changes. And you know, I don't know how this world managed to be so quick. I know I read in the Bible it says, "One beast has eyes all over him." And I think that's the spies. That society beast had spies everywhere mixed among them, letting them know what happened, what their mood changes are. Letting them know what the trends are, or what they see developing.
IWDM:
So they'll find a youngster walking down the street and he has went off from the norm. He's left the old behavior and he indicated that he got another spirit in him, and a different behavior. He be wearing his clothes hanging off his butt and he'll say, okay. And a lot of them out there like him or they're ready to be like him. Let's put him on TV.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's right. Come on.
IWDM:
And we going to sell a lot of baggy clothes, hanging off the butt. Now why am I saying this to you out there? Because I believe there's some good, conscious ones out there that's going around with your clothes hanging off your butts. That tells the world they care nothing about human life. Cares more about money than anything. That tells that commercial mind in the world that you are one of them. Or you are one of their customers, potential or buying already.
IWDM:
So let us be conscious and let us fight the world that takes us down, and support the world that lifts life up. That's what we have to do. And this is an effort to reform the way you think. As I said, if we can reform the way you think... I should say we think, we can reform the way we behave. Because your behavior doesn't change until your thinking changes. I'm sure you recall being at home with your parents and some child, member of the family, sometimes a distant one, a close one, or an outsider may be in the house. Because our parents, both of them they don't care who's in the house. If you behave in an unconscious way, if you display ignorance and vulgar behavior, they'll correct you. They don't care who you are. They say, "Hey. This is my house." And they're correct.
IWDM:
But they would see someone behaving that way and they would say, "What's gotten into your mind?" Isn't that what they would say? "What's gotten into your mind?" Now they weren't no psychologist, but they knew common sense told them, if you're behaving differently, something has gotten into your mind. A lot of us, we think, "Oh, I know they bad, but you got to love them. Come on honey, I love you anyway honey. Come on. Just give me a hug." You should be giving a right cross. Muhammad Ali, or whoever the popular fighter is now. A right cross, knock them flat on their back and that'll be love.
IWDM:
By saying, "Come and give me a hug," that's saying, "I like you just as you are. You don't have to change for me. You ain't bothering me with your bad behavior. I like you just as you are." No, we don't. That's not like, that's not love. That's abuse. You're abusing them with that kind of treatment. Yes, and you know, if you conscious, you benefit from everything good. And when you're unconscious morally, spiritually, when you're unconscious you are susceptible, you are vulnerable, you are open to everything bad. You lose everything.
IWDM:
So we are a people who value human life. Your bad behavior hurts our feelings. The way you treat yourself pains us right in our hearts. We are not going to go to the grave with you. We going to work with the best of us and hope that one day our influence in our areas where we live and our neighborhoods, will be bigger than the influence of those who don't care about anything but money. Or will push every other important issue off the desk, if it hurts their money. They just want to keep the money coming big. And they're responsible for all the misery we are seeing now. Not only in the streets, but in our homes. They're responsible.
IWDM:
This much damage could not be done to us if it was not for television. Television now brings what's happening from all over the world right into your living room, and you can't be there all the time. You don't know what your children's watching and what they're not watching. So you've got corruption having free access, free entry, and that's bad. What are you going to do? You can't go crazy. I know I won't. I insist upon being sane and reasonable. You can't go crazy and say, "Hey, I'll beat you to death if you keep watching that." No, you can't do that.
IWDM:
If they insist that they going to watch that stuff and the teenagers, they're going to school, you can't beat them to death. You can just keep talking to them and try to reason with them. That's all you can do. And some of us, we do that and we lose them. They go to our house, pretty soon they don't want to stay with us because we irritate them. So they want to stay with somebody else. They leave us and go stay with somebody else and pretty soon we find out that they've left the good life, and they've joined those who waste life, destroy life.
IWDM:
And we only can do our best and have faith that eventually good wins out. Eventually, G-d takes over. We can only go so far, you see? After a while, G-d will say, "I will take charge of this matter." Then G-d brings his judgment and the whole world begins to change. People on high that tolerated the abuse of freedom. Freedom to make money at any cost. Freedom to take over a culture and make it nothing but a culture for dollars. A culture to produce dollars, yeah? That's almost what our culture is now in the streets and on television. It's a culture to produce dollars.
IWDM:
There come a time eventually that the higher ups in government, the higher ups in church life, and for all religion or mission life, the higher ups will get up too. G-d put in them the spirit, saying, "Hey. This has gone too far. It has to be checked." The higher ups in religion, in Christianity. I mean world Christianity; Christianity is not just here in America. Christianity in Europe, Christianity everywhere. The higher ups, they meet and they say, "Hey, something got to be done about this. It's got to be checked. It's gone too far."
IWDM:
They express themselves and higher ups in government hear their concerns, and those that have the same fear and the same concerns in high places in government, they meet with those of the religious establishment. Now, I'm talking as though this is something that could happen. Or something that has happened. But really, what I'm viewing in my mind right now, is what's happening at this particular time. So don't think everything is lost. No! We have people in high government positions and people in high religious positions, church positions, mosque positions, synagogue positions. We have people in high places with the thoughts, and with money, and power. We have people who have looked at this ugly scene. It's the ugly life scene as the public is going to the graveyard. And they're saying, "Let them go on their own, but we have to stop those who are profiting on their bad behavior."
IWDM:
The privileges that have been given to the moral money makers, is being taken away from them. It won't be long, I think you can see a sign of it in the movie theaters now. You're getting movies that's coming out that's addressing moral issues. More movies are coming out now that address moral issues. More movies that are coming out now that address the forces of good and evil. How they're in conflict and in battle with each other. More movies are coming out that tells us that the influence of those purses or people in high places, are reaching even the industry, the movie industry. We don't see it much, or hear it much in the record business. The recording industry for records and songs and stuff like that, music. We don't see it much, but it's there, it's coming. It's growing there, too and pretty soon the rapper... Don't you know that we have good rappers? There are good rappers. There are plenty of good rappers, but you don't see them in that period. They're still on there, but it's going away. It's a thing of the past. That's when the vulgar guy is welcome. The nasty mouthed guy is welcome and the clean mouthed guys, "We don't want you. There's nothing for you to do. Why don't you go back and get it together again." You know?
IWDM:
Nothing for him, and really what he got is help. He got medicine and healing and sweet stuff and good stuff. The other guy got poison, you see? That's all he got, poison, drugs in the form of music and song. That's what he got. The time is changing. It's time for reform.
IWDM:
If you are a Muslim in the audience, and remember the days of the nation of Islam under the honorary light of Mohammad. And there are many of you who never became Muslims, but you appreciated the honorary life of Mohammad's work for the black people, or for the African Americans. The honorary light of Mohammad, if I were to describe him in just one statement, I would say he was a man who wanted to dignify the life of his people.
Speaker 2:
That's right. I like that.
IWDM:
And that kind of work, when you look at the whole life and you want to make it more respectful, more respectable, and more respectful you are looking at it with the eyes of a reformer. You want to reform the life. Remember Carter D. Woodson? We celebrate him every February, black history month. He wrote a book challenging us to take on the responsibility ourselves for educating our children. And he said, he took the position that the way we were being educated by the public system was really miseducation. And he was correct. It has changed a lot since his time. A lot. In fact, it's a completely new scene. It's not the same scene that Carter D. Woodson was looking at, but it still has a long ways to go yet. It still needs more reforming. And I'm not saying this. This is the educators and the conscious teachers and also higher education and the institutions of higher education. They're saying it also, that we have to reform our system of education.
IWDM:
The textbooks, they still need more corrections and reforming. We need to reform the way they're composed or the way the writers perceive knowledge and education. The time is here and it's going to bring about the good change for the better. I'm optimistic. I see a good future coming. I think the sickness has reached its course and a healing time is here. Yes? The healing time is here and life is going to be beautiful.
IWDM:
Also, I want to say to the young people here in the audience, that we have to reform the way we see old people. Human progress on this earth has been made more and better because the old folks deposited what they had of value from their learning and experiences, into the ears and heads of the young. Well during that spirit of times behind us, a long ways behind us. Some of us still do it, but very few. During that spirit of times, youngsters didn't look at old people and say, "Oh. I have nothing to do with them and they have nothing to do with me." No, there's still a gold bond. Child and adult, a strong bond. There's still a dependency and even the rebellious ones; those that were of bad behavior, they had some respect for elders. Some respect for senior citizens, some respect for old folks. But all that was destroyed too, with this new popular culture that took over. Yes? All that was lost.
IWDM:
Also, adults, you have to reform the way you see the young people. I hear them saying, "Oh, well you know, they just young." And they don't add, "They don't know." You stopped doing that, but I remember a time you would say, "Oh, they just young. They don't know." They've learned so much you don't say they don't know anymore. They know more than every one of us, that's for sure. Especially about the world and life out there. Yes, but we have to change the way we look. We have to change and reform. Change, reform. Same. We have to reform the way we look at the youngsters.
IWDM:
We shouldn't look at them and say, "Oh, they're young. They're just caught up in that young life. I hope they survive it," you know? Uh uh. You can't look at them like that. You have to look at them and say, "If all of them go bad, we all are going to become extinct." Because our future is in our children. And the good life and good spirit that G-d put in human life, human nature has us wanting to deposit the best of ourselves as we see ourselves getting more and more away from the energetic life. We're near to retirement. An urge came over us to share with our children, with the young, what we got so that they will have more to work with for their future.
IWDM:
So we have to start looking at them like that again. We have to look at our children, our grandchildren. Imam Kareem, no Imam {???} I'm sorry. He mentioned that I'm a grandfather. I'm a great-grandfather. I got great-grandchildren and you see how it's supposed to go, Rafah?
Speaker 2:
Oh, yeah.
IWDM:
See, you have a father, then you have a grandfather. And then you have great-grandfather. It improves, eh?
Speaker 2:
Yes, sir.
IWDM:
As the family line goes, you supposed to be achieving more. So, now he produced me; he's a father. Now he produced me and I produced child from his line. Now he's a grandfather. Grand! You know, it kind of make me feel uncomfortable to say, "Hey, are you his grandfather?" Talking about my young son. He's my son. "Are you his grandfather aren't you?" And I say, "Yes, I'm his grand father and he's my grand son."
IWDM:
Now there's some here become a great-granddaddy. Not only grand, you great. But appreciating life, that's where it all starts. Man, when G-d made him on this earth, he thought about himself and he thought about the world all around him. And he realized that there was more in the world than He could possibly use. There was just too much out there for him. He didn't have an appetite to use everything out there. So it made him wonder, "Why have I been put in a world like this to think and understand and be free to benefit from all of this beauty, and all of this wealth and good stuff out here?" And he started to reflect and he came up with the idea that that couldn't have happened unless somebody [inaudible 00:29:08] and cared about life. G-d. G-d.
IWDM:
And we know that the ancient Medieval times and those around us here right now, those conscious people and teachers in religion, they say the first bond you should have is with G-d. And they say, "Never break that bond. Form a tight relationship with G-d and never break it." That's the key to-
IWDM:
That's the key to survival and good life on this planet Earth. [inaudible 00:00:13] with that [inaudible 00:00:18] I was speaking to a lady, she's not young anymore, she was young then, who said, [inaudible 00:01:21]. She knew that I was [inaudible 00:01:21]. Not a thing you said. [inaudible 00:01:21] spiritual and moral depth.
IWDM:
Another thing, we should see our youngsters doing well and let everybody know they did it. [inaudible 00:01:24]. They go through [inaudible 00:01:24] and they're going to make sure that we are known. What are they doing to our [inaudible 00:01:25] youngsters? [inaudible 00:01:25]. Look at them [inaudible 00:02:08], come here, honey [inaudible 00:02:13]. Good guy looking at that, right? A good guy, a good friend looking at that and saying, "Hey, I'm living life. I don't need your opinion."
IWDM:
He's notorious and he's bad. [inaudible 00:02:33] we have to reverse that. We have to stop that. We have to start recognizing the good child. Let the good child come up here [inaudible 00:02:39]. Yeah. And that will help you. The good child will eventually [inaudible 00:02:39] the bad child. He got to get popular on the other way. [inaudible 00:02:39]. We can change all that.
IWDM:
Another area we need to look at, is we see the public facilities. If I walk outside the house [inaudible 00:03:33] in front of your house. The line, the walk you take to go to the store, the walk you take through the park, the public vehicle you ride on, the train, whatever. We have to see in a different light. These things belong to all of us. We have to go from the plantation to the white man. The white man's street. You know all these streets. The white man only sidewalk and we tear it up. And we Trash it, and we spit on it [inaudible 00:04:30]. They become destructive. And we destroy our environment. We make ugly our own environment that we're living in. And an ugly environment makes your spirit ugly. It either kills the spirit or makes it ugly. It makes the spirit run out from that environment.
IWDM:
Which a lot of people do. They afford to go out that area. [inaudible 00:05:08] respect intelligent behavior more, intelligent life more. [inaudible 00:05:12]. You stay in that area, and sometimes that area becomes corrupt. The environment will corrupt you. You're waking up in an ugly, filthy, trashy environment, it will corrupt you. It will take your spirit, the power of your spirit away from you. And you become unconscious, not care anymore, you give up. [inaudible 00:05:42]. I had to throw up my hands. And while I see it, I just walk right back.
IWDM:
If you wanna see a good spirit, if you want to feel good inside if you want to feel like you want to live.Make that environment pretty. Pretty up your environment. Tell the child, keep the toys where the toys belong. Pick your clothes up, put the dirty clothes up. That's the natural spirit. That's the spirit of life, the original spirit of life that G-d created human beings with. The original spirit wants to see honor and beauty. [inaudible 00:05:57] honor and beauty. We should get up and make our bed, put our shoes together, the right shoe and left shoe [inaudible 00:06:51]. You got to go out, out to school, out to whatever, you have to find your shoe. You got to find a pair of shoes you want to wear. You got to find those shoes. [inaudible 00:07:07]. Find your shoes. Look how you torture your life [inaudible 00:07:13]. Do it again. [inaudible 00:07:14] and put those shoes together, right shoe left shoe. And put them where they're supposed to go, under the bed {inaudible to end}.
Speaker 2:
You are listening to a live broadcast.


