07/25/1983
IWDM Study Library
Interview Houston TX

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: As-Salaam-Alaikum, dear people. As-Salaam-Alaikum means may the peace and blessings of Almighty G-d be upon you. I'm Ibrahim Kamalud-Din. For the next 30 minutes, I'm going to be your host on American Muslim Mission in focus. This is a program that is designed to bring very important and needed information to the people in society that will enable us to correct our lives and to establish good self-government in our lives. Most people you know they think of government as city, state and national, but they never apply government to their own personal lives.
So, its very important that we understand these things to correct the problems in our families and to preserve the life that we've been used to. I would like to introduce to you a very special guest that we have with us today. His name is Imam Warith Deen Mohammed. He is the leader of the American Muslim Mission, which is the largest Muslim community in the Western Hemisphere. Imam Mohammed is well-known in America and around the world. Brother Imam, we would like to welcome you.
Imam Mohammed: Thank you.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: We know that you have a very busy schedule, and to take time out from it to come and visit with us is a great honor. We know that you travel all over the country fulfilling the invitation that you receive from the colleges, universities, high schools, churches, leadership conferences, and other organizations. Again, we'd like to thank you for being here. Also, we have two other guests. Our first guest I'd like to introduce is Imam Abdul-Karim Bilal. He is in the Public Relations Department of our community.
Also, Imam Marvin Muhammad. He is also of the Media Propagation team. I'd like to thank both of you for being guest on our program. Brother Imam, to try to take advantage of this short time that we have, I'd like to get right to the point. There's a question that I know that many of the people must have in their minds, and I've heard you often speak on this particular problem, like the moral decadence in our society and the importance of having good morals.
Moral excellence, I've often heard you say, is the key to healthy human community development. Every aspect of society have to have this good moral base, and that includes education, business, government, and religion. Now, I noticed that we have problems in all of these areas in our society. I figure that the reason for that is because it must have something to do with that moral base. Would you please address this?
Imam Mohammed: Well certainly. If we don't have people-- Well, I'm talking about our own membership, our own community. How to survive if we don't have people with good morals? People with good morals, they represent the stabilizer for a community. If you lose the morals, eventually you're going to lose everything. If you can keep a core of people dedicated to the establishment and continuation of good moral life--

Imam Mohammed: Excuse me. Then there's a future for that community. Without that, there's no future for the community. You can accumulate a lot of material wealth, but eventually, you're going to lose it if there's no moral stabilizer in the society.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: So actually-- I'm sorry.
Imam Mohammed: Actually, the beginning of material growth is from a moral base. Criminals didn't begin material growth for society. It was people who cared about their families, care about the future of humanity. They weren't working just for themselves. They were working for their families and working for the future of humanity. They were the ones who open up the material world, brought the sciences and industry, et cetera. And then later, the people forget that and they think that all they have to do is to have a good material life is just to be materialistic. And that wont do it. We've seen the wave of materialism come in on the black movement. Black people used to be church-oriented.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: That's true.
Imam Mohammed: They used to be freedom-oriented in a healthy sense, not permissiveness. And we lost that when we were talking about black power and the green power. Power of the dollar, right?
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: Yes, that's right.
Imam Mohammed: And look at the state of the cities where we are concentrated, like in Newark, West Side Chicago. Also Southside of Chicago experienced a lot of deterioration, that material deterioration, the cost of that new wave of materialism and lack of principle, or lack of appreciation for values, for established values. We suffered that. The gains that we had made materially as family people.

Imam Mohammed: The Prophet said, "Peace be on him." That higher education is the lost property of every faithful person.
Marvin Muhammad: The basis of material progress is in morals. I know recently you've been touring countries speaking on cultural and economic development. Also, I know that our community, the American Muslim Mission, we have a program called AMMCOP. Could you tell us a little bit about economic and culture development that's needed among African-American people?
Imam Mohammed: Yes. As Muslims, it's important to know that we are obligated to live as a community and to see ourselves really as one community of people. The same guidelines that we should follow here in America, are those that should be followed or are followed by Muslims all over the world? We have one community design for our life. It's called the Ummah of al-Islam, the community of the religion Islam. We are now beginning to make progress toward fulfilling the community demands on our life, in our religion. We just can't go to a service, and pray, and go home, and say, "I have completed my religious obligation."
Muslims have to establish institutions of learning. Muslims have to establish some material productivity, so that they are not depend materially on the citizens of their country, or their city to provide for them the things that they have the ability too, to provide for themselves. This material dignity is just as important for us as spiritual dignity for our resources. Not that he should get credit for all of this because we know Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, even Dr. King, though he is known for civil rights, he cares blacks too to take advantage of the opportunity to do things together in order to get better benefit from it, you see.
We believe in collective buying, which is AMMCOP. It's a collective buying program. Together, we can become a purchaser that has to be reckoned with. As thousands of us get together, we make a purchase. We have $5 each or maybe $10 each, but you get 5,000 of those people together, and that's a big purchase. We hope to make annual purchases for the AMMCOP program. We also have another idea that I hope we'll be able to discuss maybe later, an idea we call collective community.
Marvin Muhammad: Yes.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: Also, brother Imam, our time is running out, but there's something I want to get to and I know it's very important, and that's concerning Prophet Muhammed. I know that today in America, the name of Prophet Muhammed is being mentioned and talked about all over the country. There have been many negative concepts fair to the mind of the people concerning Prophet Muhammed. People have been told that he's not a true prophet, that he's a self-made prophet and all this type of thing.
Imam Mohammed: Obvious, among intellectuals, middle class and even among regular people. Whites, blacks, everybody in knowing exactly the truth of this religion. A lot of good books are being published now or by Islamic scholars, one that Jesus spoke of that would come that Christians believe is the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit. We accept that too, that the Holy Spirit must come, and the Holy Spirit makes the way. But the Holy Spirit manifests itself in a person worthy. And that was Prophet Muhammed.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: Also, I've heard you speak of-- Not only you; I hear others speak of it also, of a world conspiracy to lead people away from religion and belief in G-d.
Imam Mohammed: Yes. When I say world conspiracy I'm not referring to any particular nation. I'm not referring to a particular group or organization. When I say world conspiracy, I'm talking about a lot of disorganized unorganized criminals who would like to keep life hellish, like to keep life corrupt. Who like to make money at any cost, at the expense of human life, experience..
Imam Mohammed: People live in the small towns, in the country. All those small towns now becoming a big city, they get a lot of problems. They live out in a rural area, on a farm somewhere, they're in touch. They know the natural life. They know that they're not the boss. They know that they are not Superman. They know that they can be killed.

Imam Mohammed: Everything that's worthwhile for society sprung from the Quranic source. It's really the foundation for our Islamic civilization, and the great institutions that support society.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: Listening to you, I can understand sometimes why people think that we're proselytizing, because Al-Islam is so beautiful.
Imam Mohammed: That's true for the Bible, too.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: Yes.
Imam Mohammed: Where did Christian civilization get its structure?
Imam Abdul-Karim Bilal: Yes. Imam, I had a question I wanted to ask you-- In your book, As The Light Shineth From The East, you explained to us what does that relate to in our everyday life and how is that considered-- Scripture is a blueprint. How does relate to us in our everyday life As The Light Shineth From The East? Even into the west.
Imam Mohammed: Yes. It so happened that most of us think when we talk about East, we talking about the Orient. Because the East is Orient. We'd say, "Oh, you mean knowledge came from China, knowledge came from an Asia, from Arabia." We think of it that way, but actually, the home of our religious enlightenment is Mid East. G-d says in the Holy Book that it is a light that is neither East nor West. It is neither East nor West. When we talk about light shine from the east, we're not talking about that geography, we are talking about the sunrise of the human conscience.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: Okay, brother Imam. I have a question that I want to-- We have become-- I would say our society, and we don't have much to have for this one, but it seems that we have become sensation seekers. I noticed that everybody wants to get some kind of kick, and it seemed like it's an escape to try to get away from our problems instead of facing up to them and solving them. If you could speak to that briefly, I'd appreciate it.
Imam Mohammed: Well, I would like to just give the warning.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: Yes.
Imam Mohammed: There's only so much money. We're not living in 1940s, we're living in 1980s. We're living in a time when the third world, they want their fair share too of the productivity of this planet we live on. Alright? Ok. So, if people don't pull their life together and stop giving spending money wastefully for kicks or just fun, they're going to be done away with. Life itself is going to eliminate these people.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: I can see that.
Imam Mohammed: There is not enough charity in the Earth to carry that kind of criminal burden.
Ibrahim Kamalud-Din: That's right, thank you very much brother Imam. Dear, beloved viewers, our time has run out again. We want to thank you very much for remaining with us through the whole program. I hope that you have gained some good information that will help you in your everyday life to improve it. I want to leave you with the greetings of peace of As salaam-Alaikum, and that means may the peace and blessings of Almighty G-d be upon you. We'll see you on our next program.


