04-01-2007
IWDM Study Library
IWDM First Sunday Lecture
Pt 1

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

00:05 Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Thank you, praise be to Allah, thank you. Yes. We missed a few months and I missed being with you, let me thank G-d, we thank Allah that is, in our religion the name is Allah, we thank Allah for our presence here and we pray that He bless us always with the right spirit and bless us with His mercy and guidance, Amen. We are very pleased to be addressing our radio audience here in the Homewood, at the Homewood Hotel, accommodated very beautifully here. And our topic for this occasion today, is poor people who were first. The world of people started with poor people, there were no cities, no stores, no rides except animals, there was plenty of what was needed for survival, fresh plants, tasty fruits, and other foods. People must have populated hot areas and learned how to stay alive before venturing out into cold areas or into where there are cold climates. There where no phones and no store to call for pizza deliveries. What these first people had was a job. Getting to the point, in this time of growing and wasting food and other things, people are growing in years without the ability to stay alive, no spirit define the living.

02:19 IWDM: Figuratively speaking, in the scriptures of the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims, Adam is the first man to exist in heaven and as a concept, he was then released from heaven or sent from heaven to be formed in the Earth. Nothing had developed to support a plan for community again, no cities, no stores, no rides except animals. Obviously, a living man alone on earth had to eat, for this reason, the next scene for Adam in scripture is a scene placing Adam in the garden, the first garden, in this garden is abundance of food, or was abundance of food, and I would say, is abundance of food, trees of many kinds. Adam is told of a certain tree, Adam was not to eat from this tree. Adam was not given any help to gather what he needed, again, Adam our man, was given life and a job. If he wanted to eat, he had to go find food, and he had to gather his food, gather his supplies or whatever.

03:50 IWDM: Reality has limits for human reach, for human mental reach. As we have said, the poor person was the first to build community, the world scriptures of religion tell us the natural world exists to support life and inspire the human soul. This body of sacred knowledge teaches us knowledge and wisdom. This knowledge and wisdom is in a kind of cold language; this cold language is made of the heavenly objects in the sky, such as the sun, moon, and stars. And in the lower heavens or in the lower sky, there is found activity. This activity is known as the activity of clouding up, clouding the lower sky, rain causing rain to fall, lightning to flash, and thunder to roll, and we see occasionally falling stars, stormy weather. Hearing the most important knowledge or information, a person can be both poor in the pockets and poor in knowledge, as it was in the beginning it has said. "In the beginning," So it is written, "There was only man and woman on earth in the beginning. They had nothing but themselves and the environment that was natural." That is to say there was nothing man made to be found anywhere. When we observe the moral state for our public life, it appears to our mind that nothing is helping us be morally intelligent.

06:13 IWDM: We feel what we see, what we hear, what we think, etcetera. What we feel produces more feelings, no matter which door information comes through, our feelings are exposed. Sometimes our dreams are so real and exciting, we wake up sweating or laughing or crying or screaming. In the first environment for our life and progress, we were relatively safe, safe from losing our sense of what is good for us and what is bad for us. Our life, our feelings, our five senses, our spirit were helped, supported and directed, assuring human survival and progress.

07:10 IWDM: This same sacred body of knowledge would have us know that humans were made for the world and the world was made for humans, moreso than for any other living thing. The natural world is beautiful, but so is Chicago's skyline and lake front. Chicago's skyline and lake front put man's creation in view. That is to say, humans interact with Mother Nature and natural objects and things, and enhance or add to the beauty of creation. Add beauty to beauty, greatness to greatness, life to life, progress to progress. This sacred body of knowledge pictures a man's beginning in a beautiful place where he could find all that he needed to support his present state and inspire him to go on to a future of abundance of goods of every kind and unlimited progress.


08:28 IWDM: What already existed is to be understood as a head start, not a beginning, where there was nothing exciting for life and the imagination, interacting with nature, with natural creation. The human community has made miraculous industrial, scientific, and technological advances. All of this has been made possible by the way the first environment was and still is constituted. This sacred body of scripture informs the world of man of the directions for it, directions for the world that is, the natural world, and His world. And it also provides conclusions, how the world will be concluded.

09:27 IWDM: Man is told to expect trouble ahead increasingly, rising numbers for population, big cities, the crowding that we experience, great waste and material matter we see all around us, polluting the land and water and air. This trouble would bring man eventually to turn back to a hunger for the garden where his life got started. The original or the first environment for human as existence supports progress and communicates peace. Also, the natural environment made for us communicates cleanliness, orderliness, and beauty. More importantly, the skies and the earth communicated and integrated in workable wholeness.

10:34 IWDM: The same ceiling above, appeared at night bedecked with lights of stars and at day, when there no clouds, as a blue dome ceiling. The ceiling appears with its walls reaching downward, appearing to touch the ground. Those sharing this thinking expressed in this presentation on this earth, in the United States now, number more than 50 million. The best way to connect again with man's good moral nature and with his mother, Mother Nature. Mother Nature supported intelligence and respect. Our thinking for the purpose must be supported by universals, not by what is true for us in our special little situation, but what will stand up as truth anywhere we go on this earth. A sense of the systemic wholeness of matter is what we need. The earth would lose its existence if it did not obey its created disciplines, connecting the earth and the solar system with the sun, its moon, and other members belonging to its solar system or to the solar system.

12:03 IWDM: The sky with the earth as one of its members represents the wholeness, a unity, and as a system represents oneness. This sound scientific and commonsense understanding, should be a premise from which our thinking can reach a perception or an understanding of the unity of this plan for life, G-d's plan for life. The unity of animal life, the unity of human life. At this place for the progression of this presentation, we will now observe an eye opening scene. It has been said more times than can be counted humans or babies move about on their all fours, like animals, before standing up erect. This is correct, but needing closer observation. Babies crawl on their hands and knees, the feet of the babies crawling about, drag behind. These feet were made for standing up erect and moving about, they are not used until the proper time. The knees were not made for the humans to stand upon, the hands were not made for the humans to stand upon. Eventually, or when the time arrives, the spirit or the strong aspiration inherent in the life of the new member will stand the new member up upon his feet.
ng those things that were uppermost in our life. Hence, we were saved by ideas, thoughts, love, by life supported, goodness, we were fed and influenced by what was good for us.

14:13 IWDM: Coming from common sense, sounding a bit philosophical perhaps, the baby is formed in its mother and does not join the members of the family on an equal footing until it learns to stand up erect and walk. This is what more than 50 million Americans wish they could have said to Charles Darwin. Yes, poor life as a teacher, is the teacher. Every property of matter is a property of the human soul. One of the properties of matter is elasticity, others are malleability, ductility, inertia, capillary action, combustion, contraction, expansion, attraction, repulsion, and so on. Life is developmental, therefore, capacities' limits can be extended, capacity limits can be extended, exercise for better fitness may serve to illustrate this point. Push-ups increase in number with increase of exertion, patience, and endurance. This body of sacred knowledge representing what is sacred or Holy or divine or Godly for Jews, Christians, and Muslims does more than just speak to us, it also presses upon our capacity to understand and to think correctly, thereby increasing or expanding, our mental capacity. The sacred body of knowledge would want people to see every new baby as a new member to join our family directly from heaven.

16:40 IWDM: That is, a baby born is born sinless, maybe senseless too, guileless, innocent, without any criminal nature, without evil or sinful intent. When the good life... Pardon me, someone I think I got a typographical mistake here, but we'll get through it. When the good life of our southern parents and our upbringing is recalled, we can find a family picture of the first life and its innocence. When we look to see how we can observe this innocence, we can look at people living on things from the land, Southern people living on things from the land, where they live, worked, and where they rested from their labors, at night or in the evening.

18:03 IWDM: This scene resembles that first environment, for the first people named the Adam in this sacred body of scripture or knowledge. What is understood here is that the world as created by its creator, for mis-deviations, or bad thinking and behavior. But, it is intended to inspire only good life, good behavior, and good works. Poor life did not make the families we grew up with sinners or criminals. We had authority in our life and respect for proper authority, we had a plan to live by, authored by the author of our scriptures. We obeyed our parents who were obedient to their scriptures. Our parents taught us intelligent behavior, decent behavior, and respectful behavior. There were certain things that we respected above other things, we were excited about. Those things we were excited about would never come in the way of us obeying.

19:58 IWDM: Occasionally, we heard of a thief who was arrested. Every now and then, we would get news of someone who told a big, damaging lie, sometimes the name of a female was mentioned, a female who was said to be a prostitute or a male known to be an enslaver, a pimp. Such would come out in a conversation, this was not the norm; it was the exception to the general rule. The life of the decent poor people is a life of survival. Our majority in our neighborhoods of these times are failing to manage a life of survival. Our innocent parents loved us, loved us enough to insist we support decency, intelligence, and have a concern for self and a concern for other human beings. We valued sacred matters and human life more than we did money and show off life styles. We were poor in the pocket, but most of us would not steal, would not steal from each other, would not steal from stores or businesses, or from strangers. We would often see our grandmothers or our mothers darning socks, many today cannot understand this expression. During World War II, there was a rationing of certain foods and certain items of clothing. Some of us can remember having to wear the same shoes until a hole was worn into the shoe, into the bottom of the shoe. The sock also would have a hole, worn into it.

22:18 IWDM: However, our decent parents would insist that our socks be clean and our shoes be wiped or shined. We were sent to our place of worship clean and pressed. Poor life supported us of being supportive of one another. We would hurt to see one member of the family going out in the public with dirty clothes on or indecent clothes on. We would be hurt to see one of our members in the family sleeping in a bedroom that was so disorderly, so junky, an animal would not want to stay in that place unless it was a rodent or some other creature that wanted to hide up under the pile of things. In conclusion, our first world was a world that poor people gave mankind. Let us keep working for the garden of paradise as it was in the beginning, so will it be in the end. Now man was put on earth to be responsible, he was put on the earth to be a caretaker, to take care of the garden.

24:01 IWDM: It was called a garden, because it was a natural world that G-d made. And man, in the beginning of progress for civilization, he was a farmer before he was anything else. He would gather his food from those plants or living things that bore fruit or provided him with food. But that was not enough, so he learned how to save the seeds of plants for the next season or for the spring season, and he would plant those seeds and increase his harvest. And to survive 'til the next spring, he found a way to preserve his harvest that he didn't eat, he would wrap it in salt and put it under the earth or certain things he would put in oil to save them. Later on, you know, he learned how to can, make bottles, and can, preserve, put up preserves. This is how man survived and made progress. Today, we're not in touch with such activities of man, they are far from us. Good schools will take the children out on a trip and will take them to a place where they can observe how food comes to the market.

25:49 IWDM: But most of the children never get to see that. All they know about a chicken is the fast food place. What is a chicken? A chicken is a drumstick, a chicken is hot wings. But they don't know a chicken has a life and a beautiful life. And those youngsters and families that experienced the farm life, experienced how chickens live together, and how they respect one another, and how they have patience to sit on the eggs for a number of weeks to wait for the chicks to hatch and see the new baby pop through the shell of the egg, peck on the egg say, "Let me out." Put a little hole in the eggs and come through, come through, chicks come through the egg. That's exciting. That's life. It's real life. The big city life cuts us off from that, cuts us off from that. My point is, yes, life has gone to hell in Chicago, in Los Angeles, in New York City, in Harlem there, life has gone to hell. That's true. It's a fact. Public life has gone to hell, but we had a lot of help, we had a lot of help. And the world has made a lot of mistakes and maybe it will wake up and get back to the garden of paradise.
