01/29/1989
IWDM Study Library
Human Salvation A Muslim View 
FL Pt 2a

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Surely Allah most high, G-d most high is good. He does not accept what anything that is not good. And surely Allah ordered the messengers, that is the prophets, the messengers, ordered the messengers what He ordered the faithful. That mean us, the believers. What He ordered the faithful. And then the prophet, peace, and blessing be on him, he quoted the words of Allah in the Quran that was given to him from G-d as revelation for the world to its very end, to the last day. And he recited these words of Allah in the holy book in His last revelation.
He said, quoting the words of Allah, said, "Oh, you who believe, eat of the good things Allah provided for you." Then he went on to quote again, pardon me I missed it, I'm sorry, I missed the first one, I have to go back and correct this. He first quoted what Allah said to the messengers, pardon me. "Oh, you messengers," that means all of His prophets, whoever He revealed to and gave him a mission. "Eat of the good things and do righteous works." And then this report on the prophets says, and the Most High says, and this is in the holy book. Whatever he quoted from the holy book is still there just as He gave it.
You can go now and open the holy book as I did and you read this exactly as the prophet gave it. He said, the Most High said, He said, the prophet said, "Oh, you who believe, eat of the good things that I have provided for you." Ma razaknaahum, that I provided for you. What is it saying? It is saying essentially or most importantly two things, principally, two things. It is saying, first of all, that Allah has no failings in Him, Allah has no defects in Him, Allah has no immoral thing that can be associated with Him. He is perfect in every sense in the purest and in the best senses.
He is perfect. He is good and He will not accept that you worship Him or offer Him something that is not good. Simply put, Allah does not accept money from illegal criminal activities to be put into charity. I don't care how bad conditions get. Allah will never accept or approve a devotee, a worshipper, a believer bringing money from illegal business or illegal activities and giving it into zakat or into charities and he gets credit for it. No, he gets no credit for it. He gets credit for corrupting the idea of charity and that's something on him he'll have to answer for in the judgment. If he does it with a conscious.
If he's stupid to that extent, then we have to bring to him the Islamic idea of morality, the Islamic idea of religion, so we bring him from that stupidity. Once he knows better, he got a punishment coming for bringing illegal wealth or money he got illegally into the charities. Allah does not accept it, but even more importantly, we must understand that there are men who took it upon themselves as priests, monks, imams, Islamic saints to change what Allah ordered and allow something wrong to be done in the name of religion and as a duty to G-d.
They've done that, so Allah is not only addressing the little common kinds of things that we are guilty of. He is addressing the bigger sin of lying in religion, lying in holy texts. Changing holy texts and lying in holy texts just to serve some worldly need or some emergency or some expedience when Allah did not authorize it. So, Allah is good, He does not accept anything but good. To make it very clear, the prophet quoted the words of Allah in the revelation, the Quran. "Oh, you messengers, eat of the good things and do deeds of righteousness." Let your works be righteous.
That mean that He never allowed or authorized any prophet, any messenger to do sin, to do wrong. Never. So, a messenger that breaks Allah's law, a messenger that departs from the excellence of human morality, from the excellence of human decency, he's no messenger at all. If it could be that Allah chose him, Allah knows him before, He created him, so He knows what he's capable of. Allah would never choose a man that would do things like that. If we can imagine that yes, that can happen that a messenger Allah chose would do things like that, corrupt what Allah gave him straight, change it and bring about errors in it just for his own benefits to get things done real quick and get worldly advantage.
If we can imagine that, understand that that messenger that did that is going to get his in hell, he's going to get a piece of the hell, he's going to get his. Yes, because Allah says, He does not accept that. He's good and He doesn't accept anything but good. And what He ordered the messengers, He ordered the believers, the common believers. If Allah ordered the messengers to take up the challenge in their time and fight corruption in their time, that same responsibility is on the believers. If he ordered the messengers to challenge political authority or governmental authority that was inhuman and abusive or immoral at any time, the same responsibility is on the believers.
If He ordered the messengers to go out and tackle the problem of foolish and senseless behavior, destructive behavior in the society, that responsibility is on the believers. Yes, if He ordered the prophets to go out and address the vices of a particular time, the same responsibility is on the believers. If He ordered the prophets to look at the needs of the widows at a particular time, to come to the aid of the orphans at a particular time, to come to the aid of those deprived of education at a particular time, to bring help to the weak and the oppressed, the same responsibility is on the believers. I can go on, and on, and on, and on, the same responsibility is on the believers.
He didn't make messengers one kind of creature and us another kind of creature. He said, If there had been a population of non-humans on earth, He would have sent a messenger that was a non-human. But He sent a typical human because there were typical humans on earth. And Allah says again in the holy book, He says, "Say," He's speaking to Muhammad, "Say to them 'Anna basharum mithlukum, I am a human mortal just like you.'" Some religions, I guess because of their thick veil of mystery, maybe some religions are responsible for people coming up with strange ideas about the nature of G-d's messengers.
They got strange ideas about their own nature too. But in our religion, there is no excuse for that because we don't have that darkness, that dense veil between us and what Allah wants us to see and what Allah wants us to do. There is no veil, it's plain and simple. Allah says of this revelation of the Quran that it is the clear evidence and that the prophet talks to you in plain language. We have gone over several points that represent serious encounters for the growth and progress of the human soul, the human mind, the human being in his composite whole.
And weve point to mainly to the need in us for good common sense and behavior that Allah the Creator designed for us, authorized for us, and that behavior is intelligent behavior. Allah never designed us to have foolish behavior. When you're having foolish behavior, you're going out of your own excellence. Foolish behaviors, out of your excellence. It doesn't mean that we can't have humor, you can have humor, without being crazy. You don't have to come out and hit yourself over the head with a bat to make somebody laugh.
Yes, and we have also said, this is very important for you taking this message, receiving it correctly and taking it back home with you as it should be, as I gave it. We said that, human salvation is inclusive. Once you have human salvation, every other salvation is open to you, but if you don't have human salvation, then every other salvation is closed to you. You can't have political salvation or economic salvation or any other kind of salvation, not even moral salvation. No matter how much you may want to be morally good, you can't have moral salvation until you first have human salvation.
That's why some people because they have a faulty human idea of themselves, a faulty or incorrect human definition of themselves, they are able to believe that they are morally good and do the worst things on this earth. They're blind to their own moral feelings. Their own moral blindness. They're blind to their own moral blindness. They can't see and they don't even know it. And I read the teachings of men that thought they were moral saints and the things that they said and suggested, the influences that they left for people who would follow them were dangerously immoral. So, you can't have any kind of salvation until you first have human salvation.
And human salvation is just seeing in good common-sense terms what you are, what your movement should be in life, where you should be going to live the fullness of your life. And the obligation on you to respect that in everybody else, and to respect their right to come into their excellence too. And to be compassionate, intelligent, compassionate, understanding. And to want to carry, not only your burden but want to carry some of the burden of others that are weaker than you. Yes, good human society, that's what we should be after. Don't be so jealous of others that you allow it to warp your own human form and make you an ugly creature inside.
If you've got that in you, you need to come to the right human idea of yourself. When you come to that idea of yourself, when you see yourself as Allah made you, you will feel good about yourself. Once you feel good about yourself, you'll treat others better. Yes, the people who treat other people the worst are those that really can't stomach themselves. That's destruction going out in all directions because it can't be contained, it's just there. The bottled-up misery that gets so tight in the bottle it just burst the bottle and go out in every direction.
A piece of the bottle hit mama and cut her head, and he's outside of the bottle now. Now hes not even aware that he lost his bottle. "You in the way. Hell, you in the way."
I know you've seen some of that behavior. We living in ugly times. People go out driving like they out to kill somebody. Driving down the road like they want to hit somebody. Say, "Hey, what you got, a guided missile or something? Now, I'd move out of your way and you're still coming at me."
It looks like he's targeting you on the road. You go that way, [mimics car].
The absence of good human sense that will make us appreciate human life, be dignified, respectful, courteous, understanding, and helpful rather than the reverse of those. So, I conclude this and I hope that at another time, we will take up the subject of human salvation because we would like to address the failings in our life to achieve what we want to achieve as a people, and to look at it in the light of what we've just discussed. To look at those failures and see that we can overcome if we would just do some simple things. Just take some simple steps in our hearts and in our minds or in our senses.
Thank you very much and may Allah guide all of us to better understanding, and to a better life, and save us from our foolishness, from our ignorance, and from all of our sins, Ameen. As-salam Alaykum.
Congregation: Wa-Alaykum Salaam.


