05/29/2005
IWDM Study Library
2005-05-29  IWDM First Sunday Speech  
Pt.2
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

00:00 IWDM: Holy Scripture, or Sacred Scripture, we're talking about Judaism mainly this, the related religions that we are related to, the religions that we are related to, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; these scriptures have the idea of first man in it and all of them called that man Adam. In our Holy Book, it did not change the pronunciation of the name, Adam, same Adam. Imagine being in that time and being that person, Adam. Also imagine, feeling hungry; now, you're a big boy, you ain't crawling, you're not learning how to stand up. You've been walking around, but you alone and nobody else just you. You are a big boy now. Now what would you do? 

00:55 IWDM: The world is there all around you and there is water, pure waters, nice waters, but you have to go walk a little bit to find them. There are trees with fruit and animals everywhere, all kinds of animals. Now what would you do? Would you wait on a welfare check? [laughter] One can't come because that time hasn't arrived. [chuckle] A people are very much like this boy. I'm talking about a people like us, free people. Free in America with opportunities everywhere. Some of us are growing up, but the people's spirit is down, down like a baby, crawling over the ground.

01:58 IWDM: The people are being cared about by others as a community, having community needs, grocery stores, restaurants, hotels, whatever. The people are being cared by others like a baby in a mother's arms. The idea of a single person alone in this great, big earth, fruitful earth, productive earth teaches us to listen to the better voice inside my body. But we have powerful things pulling our attention in all kinds of direction except the profitable and productive directions; foolishness, fun for the sake of fun, ignorance, self-destruction, dancing ourselves into the mental hospital. Putting our attention on sex; so much that our brains can't produce for us, so we can be achieved people in the world. Just too much sex.

03:32 IWDM: The condition is so disappointing and hard to deal with that our professional people, our achievers, they go their own separate route. Usually move even out of the neighborhood, move near non-blacks or in a neighborhood with non-blacks and get away from the burden. That's not the right thing to do, but they do it. Malcolm X may his soul be rest, he used to criticize the African American leaders in New York where he lived. He would say, "You say you represent the people but you live in the man's neighborhood not in this neighborhood." Well, I never---I admired Malcolm for most of what he said and did, but I never really agreed with him all the time, sometimes I disagreed with him.

04:46 IWDM: And I wouldn't have made those persons feel uncomfortable to get their following [chuckle] over to the Nation of Islam. I wouldn't have done that because right away, but I see our people's condition in how hard you have to struggle to keep your sanity and your good human decency living in somebody's neighborhood, I wouldn't bother. I'd just keep quiet. I wouldn't even let... I wouldn't whisper it that they weren't living in the neighborhood; just keep quiet. Yes, so we are created to have born senses, born behavior. And we are created to have the intelligence or born senses to make certain decisions. In our religion, also in the religion of the people of the book, we are told that the only human being distinct in his own creation and nature, he is a unique creation, not another one like him. But if he goes to sleep or loses his orientation, his pattern of behavior in his own life and nature, he can be influenced by things living and dead to come out of his own behavior or nature. And he can fall lower than the animals that G-d made beneath him. He can fall lower than them in his thinking and in his behavior.

06:33 IWDM: If he separates from the social pattern that G-d created him to evolve upon, the human social pattern. Yes, so we have born behavior and we have learned behavior. G-d created us with a mind to think, eyes to see and question. Your eyes don't just see, your eyes also question, and your eyes make decision. Yes, your eyes has the ability to see, has also the ability to be discriminate, to choose the better sight from the worst sight, to choose the more beautiful appealing thing from the ugly offensive thing, to choose the decent smelling thing from the vulgar smelling thing, et cetera. So all of these senses have this.

07:37 IWDM: In Islam, we're told that G-d established our religion upon five principles. The secular world tells us that man, intelligence, our human intelligence is established and evolved upon five senses. Sense to see, sight, sense to hear, sense to taste, sense to smell, sense to feel. And they, the secular world scientist, tell us that nothing is accurately perceived or known without it coming through one of these five doors or five senses, one of the five senses. And they call it empiricism, that that is perceived empirically or empiricism.

08:40 IWDM: And we know that, also that knowledge is intuitive, intuition, power of intuition; knowledge is intuitive. Here's the secular world using intuitive knowledge for what we call the Holy Spirit. Now, the Holy Spirit makes itself known on different levels. The highest level in our religion is the level of revelation, like Muhammad, the Prophet received, the great prophets up to Muhammad the last. That's the highest level of communication through or by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yes. Now, in this secular world, they recognize the power of intuition, but do they make a point of telling the students in their classes, the professors; do they make a point of telling the students that human being cannot control this. You cannot control it; nobody can control it. Nobody knows when it's going to work for them and when it's not. So, if it's completely out of your control, then you're dependent on it, you're not controlling it.

10:04 IWDM: So a person with a common nature that hasn't been made so complicated by the secular world in their thinking, and their ability to think and judge, and perceive what is rational and what is true, those persons that haven't been reformed, they're still in their nature that G-d created them in, they'll right away, say, "This is the presence of G-d." They identify it as the presence of G-d or the presence of a power superior to them, a higher authority, a higher power, a higher reality, which will eventually lead you to say G-d, right? Yes.

10:54 IWDM: It has long been known, I guess, since man has existed on this earth, that man has certain powers to perceive and know things without his control. A man was telling me once, he said, he wasn't American born, he was foreign born, but that doesn't matter really. He said that one day we were just sharing spiritual thoughts with one another. He said, "One day, I felt really terrible; just all of a sudden, I felt real terrible inside, and my mind told me to call my aunt. I had no way to call her. I didn't know where she was living at. So, finally, I was able to." He said, "It took me months before I was able to get contact with it. And at that time, they told me that at that time that she had passed."

11:55 IWDM: So, there's a connection. There's a psychic connection. Our soul connection. Where close people who have close ties with each other, who have love for one another, feelings for one another, care for one another. Something happens to that one, that other person, or that person loved by them, it can be registered on their soul, on their psyche. And we can't control it; that's not our power; that's the power that G-d gave us. Muhammad the Prophet calls it, says that G-d is like a landowner and he permits others to use his land, all but one part of it called the Sanctuary. He doesn't permit them to use that part; he only uses that part.

13:05 IWDM: Well, this power that I'm talking about in us is this power to intuit, knowledge. To get it, power by, knowledge by way of, by power of intuition. This is Sanctuary; this is G-d's sanctuary. And as I said in Islam, we believe that activity in that reality is on different levels, small levels, but the highest level is the level experienced by the great prophets; Abraham, Moses, Jesus, the great Prophets, Muhammad the last, all of them.

13:45 IWDM: Now, we have in the Qur'an... But first let me go to the Bible, because the Bible I said is a commentary and an extension on the teachings of the Bible. Jonah was called by G-d to do a job and he didn't act as he should, he didn't act upon it readily, he didn't give it the importance that it deserved, so he ends up on a ship sleeping on the cargo, the commercial materials. Imagine there was cotton in there, yeah, cotton maybe; probably some musical instruments; and some whiskey. Yeah, and maybe some lewd pictures of naked women and pretty naked women. And he was lying up there to sleep, and G-d told him, go to Nineveh to warn them against their behavior. So G-d caused the waters to become enraged; the winds blew and raises the waters and the ship looked like it was going to go down. And the ship masters, they say, "What's wrong here? What has happened here?" I guess, they were getting revelation on a lower level.


15:29 IWDM: Something was reaching their psyche. They say, "Let us search the boat." And they searched the boat and they came upon Jonah, he was sleeping. And right away, they knew that he didn't belong on their ship. They said, "Let's throw him overboard." And they threw him overboard in the raging waters, and the ship was saved. But Jonah wasn't saved yet. Along come a big whale, a big fish, they don't say a whale, they say it's a big fish, but by reason we say it's a whale... Comes a big fish and swallows Jonah up. Jonah now is carried by a fish, he's in the belly of this fish. So he's not going to drown, he got... That fish got enough air in it for him. He's an air breather, big air breather too. The fish breathes air, the whale, the big fish whale, the big fish breathes air. Not water, air. So Jonah remembers I guess that was bad enough time to make him recall something. So he remembered that he had been given a mission and he felt sorry. And as soon as Jonah became conscious, the whale rushed to the land and puked him out. I said puked him out.

16:56 IWDM: The whale said, "What is this nasty thing I got in my stomach?" [laughter] "How did I get this inferior food in my stomach?" So he puked it out on the land, on the seashore. Jonah said to himself after he got out there and stood up on the seashore, he said, "I got a three-day journey." Now he's out there on the seashore. His life's been kicked back to day one. [chuckle] They threw him out of their world; threw him out there on the sand. So his life now is, day one, starting of day one. At zero point of time, he says, "I got a three-day journey." Now, how does our scripture identify this three-day journey? G-d says, "By the tin, the fig, waz-zaytuun, and by the olive, Wa turi seenin, and Mount Sinai. Wa hadhal baladil amin, and this town secured."

18:18 IWDM: Surely man is created in the most excellent form, a mould, this what G-d says. So this is a three-day journey Jonah had. Jonah had to progress through generations, not one life, but through life continuously. And isn't this, how we have progressed in America, not one generation but through life or reproduction continuously. And we are long ways advanced from where we were when we started, huh. But we are not doing as a people, what the Nation of Islam founders, I said founders, my father's teacher and him, what the Nation of Islam founders planned for us.

19:23 IWDM: What is that? To not depend on outside community, not depend on outside people, but depend on your own people for your future in this world. Let the world plan what it want to plan for whoever they want to plan for, but let us always have a plan of our own, for carrying us in this world, to where we want to go. Yes. See, but Jonah... G-d is showing us to a figure called Jonah. That this is not the work of one generation. This is the work of many generations, but you have to hold to it. Like we held to our own independence from 1930 to 2005 May 29th. And we're not going to give it up. We're going to hold on to it until we deliver ourselves in that community life that is safe and secured.

20:42 IWDM: Praise be to Allah. Thank you. That's all I want to say to you. Peace, As-Salaam.
