02/05/2006
IWDM Study Library
SCIENCE AND RELIGION

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

Speaker 1: While Imam is coming to the mic, Id like to just do my little brief introduction if I may. This human world that we are living in is becoming more clear and refreshing as each day come and go. No thirst comes without a quencher. More important, the man who truly understands the life and works of Prophet Muhammad the last, and that's none other than Imam W. Deen Mohammed. Takbir.
Audience: Allahu Akbar.
Imam Warith Deen Mohammed: Thank you. Peace be unto you. As-salamu alaykum.
Audience: Wa?alaykumu as-salam.
Imam: To our audience here and also to the listeners in the radio audience, we wish you peace and we wish you a good day always. We pray G-d's help be with us, His mercy, and we pray that He guides us always, Ameen, or Amen, as the English language goes.
We always begin recognizing G-d and trusting that G-d will be with us. We acknowledge that Muhammad of the Scripture, the Quran, the last of the revealed books, is the last of the prophets. We pray peace and prayers be upon Him again, Ameen, or Amen.
I have to get me  I just rushed from another meeting coming here and I didn't even get my glasses out. I have to have these glasses, so I'm taking a moment here to get my glasses on. The weather kind of a little cooler here but still, it's much better than it used to be in this Chicago area. Years ago, it was much colder. We didn't expect it to be any, except cold.
Now, you can hardly tell Chicago from some of the southern states and cities I visit. I go there sometime and the weather is about the same as ours. On a few occasions, I have traveled to the south and their weather was not as good as ours, not as pleasant as ours. That warming up is something else. It's a danger, but I sure like it.
[laughter]
Because I live in the Chicago- [laughs]
[laughter]
Chicago area. Chicago is my hometown. I've heard the saying say, "If you don't like Chicago, say 'stick around'"
[laughter]
I've moved to several cities, at least four cities, over the duration of my time of leadership with you all. There's only one city that I would like to move to of those four cities. Chicago, I guess it's because of history too. We have a history here that started in 1934. Goes always back to that time. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, he did a lot of great works here that many of his critics don't know about. They just saw him as a different man condemning the world, especially the White world, but they didn't see the full picture of Elijah Muhammad, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, my father.
Someone in Chicago did because they acknowledged his influence Sun-Times and also in Channel 11 Magazine Chicago, its titled Chicago. They acknowledged him as one of 100 persons who most influenced the history of Chicago. They weren't acknowledging him in a negative sense. They were acknowledging him in a positive sense.
When I first met the father of our mayor in Chicago now, Richard J. Daley, when I first met him, I just paid a courtesy call on him. As a leader, I felt obligated to go to his office and pay a courtesy call, so I did. The first thing he told me before I could really say much to him was that, "We knew your father." He said, "My doors were open to him." I guess he said that to say, "Relax."
[laughter]
It really relaxed me. [chuckles] We live in the world, but we have little chance of really benefiting from the world in our time as people of old did and as many primitive people still do. They cant have the great life of comforts and knowledge, and education, and progress of science and technology that we have. They at least can have peace in their little huts, in their little places they live in. Were talking about backwards people, primitive people.
They can have a healthy relationship with family members. They can have more peace than most of us have. They can have more love for one another than most of us city people have. The environment has changed so much because of progress for science and industry. It has changed so much and it has kind of blocked the human nature from the kind of support the human nature gets from creation in its natural form and natural design that G-d made.
We are suffering many problems and we might be losing faith in G-d, some of us losing faith in religion. This factor is one of the factors that I think has a lot to do with common people, ordinary people losing faith in G-d and losing faith in their religious places or in their religious leadership. It is because we do not have that direct interchange for our emotions and for our hearts, and for our intelligence, for our brains that man did have and still have in some primitive corners of the world.
G-d made the world to favor human life, not to curse it. He made the world to favor human life. The story of the paradise, Eden. Paradise, "Jannah," we say in the Quranic Arabic language, Jannah. The story of that beginning of human life in a garden of paradise is when you study it and look at it, we had to rethink, be think. [laughs] When you look thinking to it, think into it, you come to understand, most likely as a scholar, you should come to understand that that's more a picture of G-d's wish for mankind. Than it is a picture of what was.
It's a picture of G-d's wish for mankind. It serves us better when we understand the garden of paradise or Eden, as G-d's wish for mankind than it does when we think of it as a beginning for a primitive man. No, its G-d's wish for mankind. Now, when we understand, Scripture, classical Scripture, Bible, Quran, and we may include some other scriptures too. When we understand Scripture, we understand that Scripture sees the world differently.
Not with the eyes of the secular world and not with our eyes, it sees the world differently. It sees the world as the voice of G-d Himself. What G-d made is His voice speaking. The universe speaks, the material system of matter speaks. G-d says regarding this, he said, "Most of the people they go along unaware heedless of these signs, heedless of these signs.
I've watched birds I read to a student in high school, I read about migratory birds how they migrate and how they respond to the sun. The Sun rises as scripture says, it rises from east and sets in the west. It also rises over a period of a year, it rises from two points in the East or two positions in the East. It sets on two points or on two positions in the West.
The birds, migratory, I guess, migratory animals more than just birds, but the birds is very easy to notice them. We very readily notice them if we start to observe the birds and have a curiosity, know their life and what's affecting their life. You'll find birds, when the weather gets cold and too hard for them, they take flight and they fly south where the weather is warmer from the north.
They go from the north where the weather is warmer in the south, and they also come back when the weather warms up in the north, they will come back from the south. The south is hot and nice but what were they doing when we were cold in Chicago? They were living better in Eden a little bit in the south. But now we're warming up they say, "Hey, a lot of food have collected and piled up in Chicago, it's warm there now, let's go to Chicago and eat." Well, they know how to follow.
The Sun, I'm sure, is a guide for them. The Sun in the sky is a guide for them because actually if you observe it as I have, when it's getting near time for cold weather, the Sun seem to be more in the south than in the north. When it warms up in the north, the Sun is more in the north than in the south. Really, I think these birds, they have a inner sense that tells them that. I don't think they look and say, "Hey Joe, let's fly, the Sun is in the south now. It's time for us to go down south."
I don't think that. I think their system register these changes and they know when to move and where to move. It seems that G-d is so-- you hear me saying that, do you feel G-d's love? I do. That's G-d's love that regulated that like that. That's his love. Then we have this free will, so we act on our own and plan without referring to higher powers or reading the signs. We don't do that. We plan and we get in trouble. Soon we are in real deep trouble, very serious trouble and we are crying out.
If we would guard against extremes, because whether your scripture is Christian or Muslim, both these scriptures tell us to guard against extremes. Don't go out for too much lavish, too much more wealth on yourself. Don't go for diamonds and gold as show off and fur coats, and leather coats to show off like that. That's an extreme and very few people can manage, very few in the public can manage that extreme.
I saw a movie, a gunfighter movie. It was a western movie about the lawless times in the West, in these United States. This gunfighter, he wore his guns, his pistols, two of them, and he was so good at getting to them faster than his opponent. He was well known as a fast shooter, could get to his guns and shoot very fast. The movie went on to show him, focus on him for the whole movie. At the end of the movie it was very clear what the message was, he was not wearing the guns, the guns were wearing him.
His importance was all in his guns. His worth as a person was all in his guns, so the guns were wearing him. The same thing happen to us who go to extremes in other ways, lavishing ourselves with this wealth or upon ourselves personally. Now, don't think that this is a speech or a talk I'm giving against money or against earning money and against being wealthy. No, not at all, I would not turn down a chance to make billions of dollars, trillions of dollars, I would not turn it down because that would only situate me better to help the needs that I see in the world that needs help.
I never cut my chance to make more money. No, I want to make more and more, and more, and more because I want to help the earth not just W. D. Mohammed. Now, there are many people like that, Bill Gates in his way, Bill Cosby in his way, so many of them like that, they make plenty money but they help suffering humanity. They help people who need help, they help them. If we are going to do that, then what's wrong with living in a capitalist society, if you are a socialists, a religious socialist like Imam W. Deen Mohammed.
There's nothing wrong with it. Make money and put it to good use, that's the purpose. Not only that, we who want to become very well educated and we have been blessed with a talent to do that. G-d has blessed us with circumstances and a talent to do that. We also should realize that knowledge is a precious commodity, very precious commodity. When we give of our knowledge, we should give of it the same way we give our money. Don't horde knowledge, don't horde money, but get a lot of both if you can. [laughs]
The garden, it was a garden that had everything in it, okay by G-d, except the forbidden tree. Mentioned both in also in the Quran because after all when you understand, the Quran is like a Tafsir on the Bible. At least on those parts of the Bible that were issues for the past, issues for the present in the time of Muhammad and Muhammad the Prophet, peace be on him, he must have understood them to be issues for the future, going far into the future until mankind is able to see the light and respond to the light as G-d intend for man to respond to the light. I'm talking about divine light, guidance from G-d.
The garden had this tree in it. If you would think now it's not hidden, you just have to think. It says a tree of knowledge, and a knowledge of good and evil, but it's a tree that G-d forbids. Its a knowledge context that establishes or pretends to establish what's good and what's evil for human beings, what we should want and what we should not want. Well, if I told you that tree was the world that we're living in right now, would you believe it?
Audience: Yes sir.
Imam: The world that we're living in right now, it wants to tell us what's good and what's bad for us, and it gets most of us, doesn't it? It wants to tell us what is bad and what is good, what is evil and harmful, and what is good or helpful. It wants to tell us that. Some of them, the leaders in this world, you may say secular world. I don't say secular world because that's, for one, of a better name, that's what they say, they say the secular world.
There are many established communities established in the secular world and they are doing business as members in the secular world, but they are not of that mindset. They have their love and that devotion is for G-d and humanity, kindness to their fellow men. Theyre not of that world but they're in the, first, why I hesitate to say secular world. I say world because they are the biggest. They're the biggest outside the home. Outside your home, they're the biggest, so I say the world.
Then we have in the home, the private world. We have the religious workers working hard against the influences of the world to save families and life for the plan that G-d gave Adam when He gave him the plan of the garden. Yes. So we underestimate religion, we underestimate scripture, we underestimate religion, we take it to be no more than what we see. Our minds can't see all everything all the time, you know? We can't see everything.
Never reduce G-d or Scripture down to your focus. You can't put G-d and Scripture in your focus unless you get guidance from G-d. Then you can put in your focus but your mind itself on its own is too small and the possibilities for your vision or your scene, it's too small without the help of G-d. For you to look at religion and condemn religion or look at Scripture and condemn Scripture, or look at G-d and say, "I don't think I want to believe in G-d anymore." You're going on your own.
If you knew the G-d that the prophets knew, if you knew the G-d that the Saints knew, if you knew the G-d that the seers, those who look into, not just at, knew, you wouldn't be in the fix you are right now. And you would reject the big world and its invitation to go on your own because isn't that what happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?
Audience: Yes.
Imam: He got an invitation to go on your own.
[background conversation]
[background noise]
Stop letting what you think G-d said hold you down or go on your own. So the secular world, that's his voice, that's his message. Don't let your parents hold you back, don't let your parents keep you down, don't let your parents control your behavior, and don't let religion, don't let even G-d control you. Be on your own. I'm not trying to really criticize the world. I'm trying to get you in the audience stronger in faith, that's all.
My intent is only to get you to be stronger in your faith. Don't be weak in your faith. Be strong in your faith because G-d is not responsible, the Scripture is not responsible. No. Your religion is not responsible for the state that the world is in. It is those who care more about money, care more about the power that money gives them. They care more about that than they care about human life, than they care about families.
So they'll break up families, they'll ruin human life and you know what they say, they got a devilish mind some of them. They say, Well, if there's really a G-d, he can straighten it all out. Ain't my responsibility to make it nice. If there's really a G-d, why dont he show up and intervene. Well, he does over and over again. Such mindsets or mentalities, they are overturned, they are put down. They lose their place in the seat of power. It happens over and over again but they never give up. [laughs]
So we should have faith. We must have faith. Have faith and have strong faith. Dont look at the world that is hurting human life, moral life, spiritual devotion. Don't look at the world that's hurting that essential life, that first life, that Garden of Eden life without looking at the direction that you get from your good parents at home and the direction that you get from your religion. You know, even if a bad person is preaching, whether it's on Sunday or Friday, - he can't help but quote from Scripture, right? I guess that's why a lot of these bad preachers, they keep an audience because there's enough coming from Scripture to at least let the hearts and soul that he is preaching over feel G-d, you know? They will feel G-d in their hearts and in their souls, they'll feel G-d. So they keep coming back to feel G-d and I'm sure that lot of them thinking coming back to him. No, you ain't nothing but a show. Its just like going to a good simple show, shallow script, [laughs] and a simple show.
Theyll come back to you because whether they know it consciously or not, they are hearing something from the Bible or something from the Quran of G-d's word. They go there to get it. Well, I told those who support me and my leadership, I told them, "You don't have to be a Muslim in these small confines." If the Mosque is not making you feel healthy, then you should leave it. Yes? Now dont go out there and tell somebody I see lead a leader Church, I see at the Mosque.
[laughter]
I represent the Mosque. If the Mosque is not making you feel happy, please leave it. If it's not making you feel good, please leave it. You'll be better off without it. But don't leave it before trying to bring about change. And how are we to bring about change when we are not liking what we are experiencing or what we're looking at, or what we are supporting with our charities or whatever? How are we to change it? We have instructions in the religion that says, Change it with your hands if you can do that. If you can find the wherewithal, change it with your hands.
Now, what does your hands mean? It means your action, it doesn't mean go up there and grab the preacher, and pull him down from the podium and throw him out the door like an Indian told me they did a preacher once. Yes, I was in prison, Sandstone, Minnesota, serving time for refusing to answer the Selective Service Order to go to a certain hospital. I had no objection but I couldn't get my father to say that he approved of it, so I didn't do it. I wouldn't go, so I went to jail. Have you ever went to jail for the Hon. Elijah Muhammad? I did.
[laughter]
I don't regret it. I don't regret it. But it wasn't my decision. I've been on his decision, not mine. Okay? Anyway, I was up there in Sandstone, Minnesota, and Indians were in that federal prison for little petty things, petty things. This Indian's name was Lefham and we got to be kind of friends, we talked a lot together. He said, "Elijah Muhammad, hes different? I say, Yes he is. He said, You know what, I'm going to tell you a little story.
He said there was a preacher, priest, I think a priest, he said, He would always start off his sermon telling us about heaven. Saying he had a picture of angels. Big picture of angels going up into heaven. One of the books asked him, he says, How come no Indians are going up into heaven? And he had difficulty asking the question and they were impatient. So, he said, they immediately grabbed him and threw him out on the dirt. That tells you that was the kind of a poor area, not many people populate in that area because they say they threw him out on the dirt. Here, he would get hurt, they threw him out on some concrete.
[laughter]
Well, I thought thats funny. The point of me saying that is that you cant judge people if they're not educated. So, we don't need to explain difficult matters to them. Just give them something to make them happy. That seems to be the position in religion for many churches and many mosques, many Imams. Yes. They can't handle difficult matters, so just give them something to keep them happy. And they have gotten out of touch with their own following. They're following is more advanced when it comes to intelligent feelings. Feelings for what is sense and what is nonsense.
They have become more intelligent than their leaders and they wondering how come their youngsters are leaving them. How come their children are leaving them? It's because you're not making sense and you underestimated the intelligence of our public. In the United States, we have a much more literate public than youll find in most places of the world. We have to upgrade our message. Yes, we have to upgrade our message and speak more sense to the congregation, and stop depending so heavily on emotionalism.
That time is here, and you will see signs, not only from me or in me, but you'll see signs in the world leadership for world religions. You see the signs in the world leadership now that a change must come about. There must be a change. So, the tree of death, is this world culture that it has for the public, that the late Pope, John Paul II, called The culture of death. That's exactly what he referred to it, the culture of death. He gave it other names but it's death.
Going back to original nature or to the beginning of human life, how we began in innocence like a baby, this is what scripture shows us. The Bible says that G-d made Adam from clay, didn't it? And the Quran says, And He, meaning G-d, began the creation of man from clay. That's what Quran says, from clay. I think, more than 60% or 70% of our public are ready for us to tell them what clay means. Why should we keep our public ignorant, when most of our public are not feeling comfortable with the idea that man was made from clay?
The scriptures say also, that the likeness of the creation and growth and life of human beings is that of plants, like trees and other plant life. If you have nothing but clay, tell me what kind of crop you're going to grow out of clay? When these questions start to come in the minds of our people, were in trouble if we continue the same old language with no teaching. Both the Bible and the Quran stresses teaching over preaching. Teaching is more important than preaching.
This is no new term to identify human life. Long before religion had the term, it was in the world among people. In the Arabic language, which is one of the most ancient of languages, we still have in use, Arabic. In the Arabic language, when they want to say clay, they say tin. But they also say, tofl. When they want to say, baby, they say, tifl are the same, tifl. Very closely related tifl, tofl, same in letters. The letter T in Arabic, the letter F in Arabic, and the letter L in Arabic.
So, what does that tell you? That baby and clay have the same meaning. If in their language, baby and clay have the same meaning, essentially the same meaning. What is clay about a baby? A baby is impressionable. A baby, if you show it love, it is impressed upon the mind and soul of that baby. That baby will take that imprint of love and begin to act out love. Begin to want to love, begin to want express love. Also, the baby is ready for you to mold it in any shape you want.
If G-d doesn't protect the baby, you can mold the baby into an inhuman shape or form. The baby is like clay also in that it is manageable. It responds to pressure and to touch. Fresh clay, you just touch it, and there's an imprint, yes, like a baby. Instead of us stopping just with G-d made man from clay or began the creation of the human being from clay, we should think and that's what religion wants us to do too, think. But some of our preachers, and our Imams, they don't want you to think.
I love them, and I think theyre really acting from a feeling or sense of insecurity. They are afraid if you know too much, theyll be put out of a job. I wouldn't want a job if I had to stoop down like that to keep it. No, I wouldn't want it. I'd rather be a welder again. I used to be a welder, I love welding and heating up metal, and making metal run like soup, and shaping it into form. Oh, it was very interesting. I loved my work.
Finishing your work and seeing that you made hard steel run like water, and then made it look pretty. Yes, I loved my work. Now, I'm working with people, and I can't look at a blueprint and start getting the pieces for the job, and putting my -- well, and now I'm getting ready to put heat on them, heat on these metals, so I need some grippers. I know the name very well -- Vice grippers. Hey, somebody knows something about carpentry and metal work.
Yes, vice grips, Ill look for the vice grips. Line it up, get it all lined up with the jig. Get it all fastened in and the vice grips holding it. Whatever else I need as a tool to hold it, get it in place, so when I put the hot fire to it, it's not going to move out of shape. When we got to have the hot fire of invitation to lust for sex and other things, wheres the jig? I don't have a jig?
I say, G-d, what, I don't have a jig. These people are burning hot, and the world is welding them, and forming them. And for this job you gave me, I don't have a jig. I dont have vice grips. Because G-d doesnt want you to be held by vice grips, He gave you free will. You know, there are many people who wonder, "How come I dont have G-d manifest in my life? How come I dont hear G-d? How come He doesnt reach me?" Many of us say things like that. When were feeling sorry for ourselves we start to blame G-d. There are some people, I dont care how poor they are, I dont care how uneducated they are, some people just wont abandon moral sense.
They keep their moral sense and they do what they know is morally proper or decent and intelligent, though they have not finished high school, though they have not finished grade school. And they wont steal and they wont present them in a vulgar, indecent way in the public or any place. Its because they will not give up what they value more than money, what they value more than popularity, than being popular with the crowd and thats their decent moral principles.
G-d, in making us, He knew that some of us would be weak, but He knew that a few of us would be strong and we survive every attempt of this world to destroy our original nature that G-d made for us and we survived and we will survive. When Im speaking to you, whether to a small audience of three or four persons or to a big audience like we got now into the thousands, my interest is to strengthen your faith as I mentioned before. Not to convert you from your religion, not to make a Muslim out of a Christian because Ive seen some Muslims who have been made Muslims and they were Christians before and I wish nobody had bothered them because they were much better before than they are after.
[laughter]
Some of them, not all, so I dont like to disturb people. G-d didnt come just to tell us the way of the Christians has to be finished, done away with, no. Rather, He told us through Muhammad the prophets words, when all of this is finished and we see the heavens or go to the heavens, theres going to be Jews and a big number of Christians and He said in His followers. He said and his followers going to be biggest number.
The biggest number would be his followers and theyre saying now that Islam is the fastest growing religion, but also concerned Muslim scholars and teachers and just good people with good sense who are looking at whats happening. They say we should not be looking at big numbers. We should be looking out at the quality of Muslims and really, thats a good note to say amen on.
[laughter]
And for many, amen means shut up.
[laughter]
Close out and let us go home. I was at a church once, yes, I went to churches. Ive been a Muslim by name, all of my life as you all know. Those who know me, they know that I was born in 1933 in Detroit, Michigan about a year or so after my father and my mother had accepted to be Muslims. I was at a church once. My father said that his teacher said I would help him in the leadership.
I said to myself once, I said, "Well, I should go and see what Christians believe and experience what they experience, so I will know when I speak to them. I think it would be a little ignorant on my part to speak to an audience of people who were raised as Christians and not know what they believe, what makes up a Christian, what makes a person Christian". So I went to churches.
I went to Presbyterian Church, I went to a Catholic Church, I went to Holiness Church, I went to Baptist Church. I went to a lot of churches. One time I was in the church and this preacher was preaching but to tell you the truth, I wasnt as comfortable with him as I was of some of the other church sessions I had been in because some of them got some music. It will sure hold you for a while, especially with that music and drama too. I wasn't lost but, I was on the brink.
[laughter]
One of these preachers looked like he just couldn't get it together. He was faking his own excitement. It was obvious he was faking his own excitement. A sister said, Amen. He just kept going. She said, Amen. He just kept going. After a while another sister gave him, Amen, Amen. Two of them said amen until he finally got the message [laughs]. They said close out [laughs]. So we say thank G-d for our presence here today and every time you wake up it's another day you should feel good. You should feel good because each day is another chance to make it better.
You all in our radio audience, you be strong. Keep your faith. Be strong because the world of suffering humans need all of us to live and work hard. Peace be unto you. As-salamu Alaykum. 
Now, we are going to begin the second hour in just a few minutes. First Im going to ask, if there any announcements anything or acknowledgements, please come forward. For this hour of our program on the first Sunday, what I have in mind is speaking to the broad audience like I do on the radio and then addressing some of the same thoughts, but for the live audience here, certain things, if you say it to the public, especially if those things can be disturbing, sometimes, if presented in the wrong way. I find that an audience that youre going to have, theyre going to leave you or you may not see them again. Thats a one-time audience or one-time experience. Its more risky with that kind of audience than it is with the live audience. I have said certain things and got out that I said those things and I said, Well thats true what they say I said, but I said it to an audience that I was talking to and leading up to a conclusion."
And just to take my conclusion out there and give it to somebody, was to me, wrong. Thats wrong done me because I didnt give it that way. I build up to that conclusion and I prepared my audience for that conclusion. There are many things that we can say to a live audience that would be not advisable to say to an audience that you speaking to on a radio or TV and its just one-time thing and thats it. They go and you are not able to see them again, to again present yourself so they know you, truly know you.
But this audience here, this audience we have every month, every first Sunday, and I consider you all to be my students most of you and I know that most of you all know me and you're not going to make trouble for yourself, you're not going to make trouble for me. The same picture that we were giving you of paradise, we want to continue to address that, paradise, the picture of paradise.
We're told that the man G-d created first, man our first father, he was created and I'm sure that he was already breathing air but then G-d mentions him again and said when I have breathed into him of my own inspiration or My own spirit to inspire him. So this is a second breath. The breath of creation and now the breath of G-d. The breath of creation is now the breath of G-d.
If we can just look at the breath of creation first and see the breath of creation, I think a lot of us don't even study or observe the breath of creation. When a baby is born, a child is born, the child only become conscious when it takes in the breath of creation. When it takes in the breath of creation it becomes conscious. If it becomes conscious it will live. If it receives the breath of creation it becomes conscious. If it becomes conscious it will live, most likely.
The breath of creation is to be seen not only as air but it also is to be seen as influence. Influence, because when you become conscious from the womb of your mother, where there was no sound reaching you, when you become conscious you're hearing things and these things are affecting your mind and building your mind from zero. Your mind is starting to be built or composed, put together. When the new baby open his eyes it sees things. No pictures were given it while it was in its mother's body. So now it is seeing things, it's hearing things, it's feeling things, the five senses are being engaged.
The senses of the body are being engaged and it begins now to form itself. It's forming itself because the scripture says as you think, philosophy said it before, a philosopher said this before scripture, As you think so are you. And the scripture, the gospel added something to it that makes it a little better for religious persons or for sensitive human person. It said as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.
So you know, you can think about things that you never give your heart to it is like you never thought about almost (laugh). But once you give your heart to it then it begins to affect you, your whole life. So as a man thinks in his heart, - and the Quran came after the gospel and it supports that also, supports that reading. Everything in our environment then, under certain circumstances, can affect how we are made internally, how we are composed internally. So if you are put it in a garden where everything there was prepared by G-d, it supports the good life forming in you. Then you form beautifully until outside influence comes to pull you out of the garden.
My interest also is in bringing credit to things and societies before our time that we have been influenced to discredit and give them no credit at all. For example, what we call primitive religion or tribal religions. Tribal religions, if they didn't have interruptions from modern man's thinking, influenced by money, power, industry, then they should have something good. Don't think they don't have anything good, they should have something good.
Some years ago I was reading of the Native Americans, Indians as we call them, their religions. I read where they believed too, that everything in the natural creation, as G-d made it, has an influence, a message. If these people we call primitive had these ideas that we find in our religious education, shouldn't we reflect on them with some respect? Yes we should. We think of ancient nations and we tell all those ancient nations they were condemned. They were not given scripture, they weren't Christians, they weren't Jews, they weren't Muslims and some of us tend to put them down as barbaric, savages. They had savages but they also had humanitarians.
Ancient nations had both savages and humanitarians. They were not all like that picture some of us have in our minds of them. Both scriptures say before our time there were great nations and they excelled in building, in construction, in road building and many things. They excelled, they had great nation and enjoyed great comforts. Ancient ones before us, before the west, before the new development we call our history, our history of the world as we know it. But some of those in the past they also had these skills, they had science, they had humanity, human feelings for each other and they were promoting humanity.
So don't think they all were down to nothing when it comes to the ideal human being and human society that we have in mind now. We have to learn to give credit to whom credit is due, no matter whether they believe like we believe or not. Like children, children grow up from babies, a young boy, teenager, young girl, they show their talents, they become artistic and they are creative and they impress us with what they are thinking about and what they are doing.
So did societies, societies in the early years of G-d's plan for man. They were able to do very beautiful things and make great impressions on any intelligent person's mind. So we can realize a relief for our hearts and souls and spirit. If we just come from this world that's so narrow, so greedy, so narrow that it wants you not to look at anything other than it and give only it credit but nothing else. The truth will set you free. I believe that.
Open your heart and mind and eyes for the truth and the truth will set you free. I think it means just to take the pressure off your soul, I think that's what free means there [laughs]. It'll take the pressure off your soul. Consciousness comes when we breathe the air but look what the air does. The air is like the cord of the computer and you plug it into the energy, into the electric source. You plug it into the energy source and the computer is on now is workable.
You breathe the breath of creation, the air and it does the same thing for the mind. It turns it on and now it's ready to record and to express itself. Express what's recorded. What this world breathes, it breathes. see this is another meaning for breathe. It means to influence you from without and breathe in or influence you from without but now you have taken it within.
Then you respond with your exhale. Breathe in, exhale and exhaling is your response to what you breathe in but not air influences from all the things that your five senses are getting. That's actually building the life of your five senses. So when the second breath comes from G-d, when G-d breathed into us expect that it works similarly. If it's not going to work similarly G-d wouldn't have used it as breath so it's going to work similarly. I'm ready to say Amen. And I  mean the amen those two women were crying for.
 [laughter]
It should work similarly and that's why it's called the Word of G-d because scholarly thinkers or intellectuals don't just take in and respond the same way but as it came in, they respond and give the same thing back. No, they don't do that. They take in and there's a pause and they read what came in and then they give it back and they need paper. Sometimes we have to rush to get a piece of paper before we forget that wonderful idea. The rush they get a piece of paper and pen and they write it down and the first word to Muhammad the Prophet was what? Read. He didn't say, Allah, he didn't say G-d is G-d.
That's something for you Muslims, we Muslims to think about. First word of revelation, first word from G-d to Muhammad was not bismillah Rahman Rahim, was not Allahu Akbar, what a lot of you all like to say. It gives you some kind of charge. Allahu Akbar. Read and then say Allahu Akbar. First word to him was read and look how it came in five verses, five statements. Now you know that has something to do with your five senses. Read in the name of your Lord who created, created the human person from blood adhering. Read and your Lord is most generous. Isn't that wonderful? Most generous.
Got more to give you than you can look at or count or see if you look for the rest of your life. Most generous, who taught man the use of the pen, how to preserve the knowledge. Who taught mankind what mankind was not before knowing. When I first started out as a minister, I was dealing with a mindset that had to be changed so that we would be free to embrace the big truth, the whole truth. What did I say? I said, "man means mind." Now I didn't know the power of what I said when I said it. All I know I just knew I needed to say it but it transformed brutes and criminals. It did.
Some of them still around, they were witness that they used to be brutes and criminals, transformed brutes and criminals. Man means mind. Then as we progressed on I said, "Words make people, words make people. Today I say to you whatever I said to you at any time, I didn't say everything. Please keep up with it, keep current, be aware of what I'm saying at the moment or at the time and keep growing, keep progressing because it's not the flesh that is the beginning of life for human beings. The flesh is the beginning of the condition for the life of human beings to begin. We begin in the flesh but it's not the life itself.
The real life is your good nature, your good sentiments, your concerns for better and your spirit to have better, not only for yourself but for yourself and the world, the whole world. That's the real life, the growing of your heart and the growing of your intelligence together. Sometimes the heart knows when intelligence is not traveling on the road that it got on. It got on the road of intelligent, now it's on the road of ignorance and self-destruction. The heart will know that and the soul is the seat of the activities. Thank you very much peace. As-salamu alaykum.
[applause]
Somebody got to close out.
Sister Umatilla: I got one more guest.
Imam: Sister Umatilla Shareef is coming with another announcement and I want to introduce to you our Imam that you know most of you know. He's brother Fareed and I'm going to ask him to come and just announce or introduce to you a change that we have made for our office that has fostered and handled every convention for the last few years. We don't have the same persons working with the office anymore, we have new persons. I think we only have one from the office but we have a committee that's very important organ for making our conventions a success, for planning and helping us plan these conventions and help making them a success.
Except for that committee and Safa, Mohammed, brother Rafahs daughter who works directly with me from that office, she's a very promising young lady, very young but she has great promise. She's very intelligent and works very well and makes friends. That's what we have to do, make friends. I've got too many enemies already and we have brother Fareed and also brother Ansari, but he'll bring all this to you and I have asked them to take responsibility for it and they want to plan something big for me.
I won't tell you that, he'll tell you that too. Let him come first. She only has taken a minute and then we'll hear from brother Imam Fareed. Imam [unintelligible 01:09:53] Fareed from Norfolk Virginia.
[01:09:55] [END OF AUDIO]

