2006/04/09
IWDM Study Library
FIRST SUNDAY LECTURE 
PT 1
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

00:00 Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Excuse me for being slow or late getting to the mic here. We wanna greet all of you and the radio audience, listening audience with peace. Our greeting as Muslims is "Assalamu 'Alaikum."

00:13 S?: Wa alaikum assalaam.

00:18 IWDM: It's a beautiful day here today in Chicago area. Here in Homewood, Illinois. And I just left Philadelphia, was invited there to speak at a high school, the Martin Luther King High School there. And we were received by many youngsters and they gave a performance that really spoke to the needs, the mind needs of their peers. They did a wonderful job. They were, maybe two thirds of them were Muslims and about a third of them were Christians. And their ages perhaps ranged from about 16 to 24, 25, somewhere around there. And I was really impressed with their performance. They said the right things and they addressed the right problems, and said the right things. We should never give up on our youngsters. What we are seeing in the news, is not always a reflection of what is real in the life of African-American people. We see a lot of trouble. We see a lot of failure. But that's news, news captures such things. I often heard that news wants sensationalism, it wants what's sensational, what excites you and what gets your attention right away. Tragedies and well bad scenes that shock your moral mind, your moral nature and conscious.

02:02 IWDM: So, we are seeing a lot of that because it gets news. And it is deservant of news, it's deserving of the news. But the problem I have with it is that they don't come back and balance it with the good news that's going on all the time in our lives that hardly ever gets reported except in pot and on very few occasions, it's reported. These youngsters are doing good, they're not only doing bad. The youngsters are doing a lot of good and they're reaching their peers, their friends, their associates in the streets, they're reaching them and they're desperate. They are just as desperate as we are to help their brothers and sisters of their age who are in real, real trouble with their lives, and are at risk. They are doing what they can and trying very desperately to help them. So I just want to share that with you. I had a very good visit to Philadelphia. It's a little warm in here and I have on a jacket I need to take off. Someone take that jacket for me. And don't put it down just anywhere, that jacket costs a little money, a brother gave it.

[laughter]

03:19 IWDM: Yeah. As a special gift. I'm sentimentally attached to that jacket. Alright. Now, I was thinking that I should share some of what I gave to that audience, share some of that with you today. Some of what I gave to that audience in Philadelphia, at the Martin Luther King High School in Philadelphia. The Superintendent of school was there. I better share some more information with you. The Superintendent of schools, Philadelphia schools was there. And very much interested in my coming there and my presence there. So much so that he said to me, he said that, "We ought to plan for you to visit again," said, "We didn't have enough time to prepare for your visit." He said, "We're gonna prepare for your visit again", and he said, "Next time," he said, "we're gonna have a bigger facility and it's gonna be filled with students."

04:34 IWDM: So that tells me the superintendent, he likes something I'm saying. Everyone is born to grow and become mature enough, grown and mature enough, can manage one's own personal life. Your body, your human life. But if the environment is filled with things that attract your interest, some of those things may overpower your own will to govern your own life. But G-d created you to govern your own life. The creator made all of us and equipped all of us, gave us what we need in our own bodies and in our own make up, what will be enough for the management of our personal life, our own bodies. The importance of being in condition is what we wanna talk about for a little while here. The importance of being in condition. To manage his own functions of life, the human body needs to be in the condition that is known to work for it. To have his own composition, number one, to have his own composition. Now, how can one lose one's own composition? The heart, the mind, these are two of the most important organs; the brain or the mind and the heart, our feelings. These are the two most important organs, heart and mind. Our mind and heart.

06:40 IWDM: So along with these two organs, we have many other organs, but these are the most important: Heart and mind. The heart is pumping life to every part of the body. Life. Food for life goes into the blood and the heart pumps the blood so the blood gets to every part of the body. Even the hair needs blood. The roots of the hair is deep enough in the scalp on the skin, so that it also gets nourishment from the blood. The whole of the body is served by the heart that pumps blood throughout the body so that the whole body gets the life, gets the life and the food. Life and the food, for life. And the brain is like a chief. It's like the boss. The brain is like the boss.

07:38 IWDM: Now, I'll continue to read this. Read what I've written here, and afterward we can come back to this, to that thought. To have circumstances. Now, we know that we need circumstances. Even in the mother, the right circumstances have to be there. Because if she's deficient in health or deficient in what she needs to make her body healthy, it will most likely affect the growing baby in the mother. The human body grows to completeness, nine months, usually, in the mother. And the cord, after nine months, the baby is delivered and the cord connecting the baby to the mother is cut. The body is separated from the mother. The new human life now has a mind growing, to one day take charge and be the authority over the human body. As it is for the first composition of human life, for that life forming in the mother 'til it reaches this completion and has to be separated from the mother, the human mind first needs to be in the condition known to work for it. I wanna repeat that.

09:16 IWDM: The human mind has to be in the condition that is known to work for it. As it is for the first composition of human life, the human mind needs to be in the condition known to work for it. Now, before we were exposed to so many things that take our attention, our mind's attention, in these big cities, when we were living in rural areas, in the south or in the north, where there was not a lot of distractions, life was so easy to manage. But you bring your young children up to the big city, oh, that becomes very, very difficult, very, very difficult that matters to life. Now, in these late years, last 10 years or more, even the small towns have suffered the big town problems: Drugs, violence, etcetera.

10:45 IWDM: Needless self-destruction, senseless, I should say, self-destruction, etcetera. Since the human body has no will to boss the human mind, creation didn't give the body a will to boss the mind. Creation gave the body only a will to serve the mind. Changing lifestyles brings on change in thinking and change condition of mind, changing lifestyle. So if you want a change of mind, all you have to do is change your lifestyle. If you want, pardon me, to lose your mind [chuckle], all you have to do is go and get in or accept a bad lifestyle. A bad lifestyle takes away your good mind. Now, the mind is not in the condition that is known to work for the life of the mind. So what's gonna happen to the body? 

12:02 IWDM: The body now is confused. And the body will warn the mind, "Hey, this ain't right. You're doing something now that ain't good for you." The body will warn the mind, "You're eating too much. You're laughing too much. You need to balance it, come back, get serious again." The body will warn you. I know you'll say that conscious, or subconscious, and all of that. I'm giving you a language that you can easily understand. The body will warn you, and you may listen, and then you will come back into the condition of mind that is known to work for you. Or you won't listen, and the body will urge you, maybe a little stronger. And after awhile, the body has no more energy to spend on your mind. The body urges get weaker and weaker. After awhile, you can't feel it. Then the body leaves you on your own; leaves you on your own.

13:23 IWDM: Now, in religion, both Christianity and Islam, in religion, we're told that when judgment time comes, and we have to stand in the court of judgment, and answer for our wrongs that we have done in the lifetime, we're told that members of our own body will testify against us in that supreme court. The members of our own body will testify against us. You'll say, "No, you can't blame me for this! The judge, supreme court judge, he can't blame me for this! It was his feet following his mind that walked him into that whorehouse! It was his mind telling his eyes to look at that woman that messed up his family life." The members of your own body are gonna speak out against you, and say, "No, I didn't ask him to shoot drugs into me. I didn't ask him to drug me. It was his mind that wanted to be drugged, and his mind made the decision to drug his mind, and I suffered the consequences." Now, you're talking about abuse. If we really think about it, think about the condition of human life now in the streets, and in some of these homes, and look at what we have done to our bodies, the innocent flesh, human flesh is suffering terrible abuses; Terrible abuses.

15:18 IWDM: Now, I'm gonna share something else with you. That fellow who put that movie together that is supposed to have a Jesus Christ story in it, and showed you how he was mistreated, how he was suffered so much, let me tell you something: That's Christ the human body. That ain't Christ the prophet. That's what we are doing to our own human bodies that G-d made, created, to serve us, to serve us for a good life, and then we abuse it like that. So, when you weep for Jesus Christ, as given to you in that movie, weep for your own people's human bodies that are suffering and abused all the time, 24 hours a day, by the mind.

16:24 IWDM: Recently, I read an article in Newsweek magazine, December the 5th, this year. And that article was on anorexia. Anorexia. Anorexia. How many are familiar with the disease, the problem called anorexia? Oh, good, about half, about half of y'all almost. Now, think about this disease, anorexia. It affects children, very young, very young children, and it also affects middle aged people. And the article says it affects blacks and Asians more than others, more than those that are not black or Asian. Now, do we have some natural created susceptibility or vulnerability, or weakness for this problem, Anorexia? I say no.

17:37 IWDM: But if we continue the lifestyle that we'll come into, we may, in time, have a genetic problem. It'll become a genetic problem. The genes are made originally in the garden of paradise by G-d, the creator. But our abuse of our minds, is that it goes into the system of the body and affects the system of the body, human body, and eventually, human body will suffer the effects. What is worry? Worry is something invisible, isn't it? But it can give you grey hair. It can give you bad nerves. It can deform your body. But it's a condition that comes into the mind that can affect your body. Anorexia, I believe, is a condition that have been brought on by these inhuman, abnormal, inhuman, insane lifestyles. Not only anorexia, many other problems that we have. Our problems of bad mental dispositions, bad mindsets, bad lifestyles. We need to see these things clearly and if we see them clearly, if we can bring this information to the public, the public will hear it, and the public will have a change of mind, back to that mind that has proven the work for the life of the mind and for the life of the body.

19:34 IWDM: That's the problem as I see it. The problem is reaching the public with simple, plain truth, not complicated theories, or a lot of complicated ideas that will bore them and turn them off. But come to them with plain, simple language. Truth, regarding their condition and I do believe that the public will have a change of mind. Now, do you think everybody want the public to have a change of mind? There are people making big... Billions off of drugs, billions off of people drinking liquors in excess, billions off of people laughing themselves to the nut house. So they keep you laughing, they wanna keep you laughing. And they know you're laughing yourself to the nut house, to the mental institution. But they'll keep you laughing, they'll tickle your funny bone until your mind becomes funny. Yes. So they're not happy to hear me say these things. I mentioned that recently, I'm doing an interview, I mentioned that the curriculum, education, needs to focus on the natural world order and the human mind relationship to that natural world order.

21:09 IWDM: Man began as we are told in the Garden of Eden. To understand the Garden of Eden, let me tell you firstly, the Garden of Eden is not something that existed in the beginning of human creation when there was no human being on earth, and then there was the Garden of Eden, and then human beings were made, and, are formed and put in that garden. No, it's not talking about the past. It's a picture of what G-d wants for us in our life, that we have to work for, that we have to grow into. We need time to go out of animal, animal make up. An animal performance to grow into the human mind, so we can have human life and human performance, we need time for that. Science will tell you it took eons of time to evolve human life, for human life to be formed on this earth. Animals were here first. And what animals want? Animals want to feed their hunger. That's what they want, animals want to feed hunger. Now, if you can be conditioned to want nothing but appetite, they wanna do nothing but consume, consume. You have no interest in building anything. You have no interest in giving anything to anybody, your interest is just to take in. And it's not just food on the table that you get from Burger King, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and places like that, trying to eat food and all that.

23:02 IWDM: No, you are hungry for more than that, you're hungry for fun. You're hungry for sex. Even when the body says, "I'm through, I don't want anymore", you go and buy something to make you want more. So you are hungry for a lot of things, some are hungry for violence. Right? 

23:31 IWDM: Yes. Hungry for violence. So, you're becoming, the public that is, is becoming a public driven by hunger like a mad beast, like an animal that can't ever get enough. Just have to consume and consume and consume, never gets enough. Abnormal, insane, corrupt to the core. And the environment is feeding you that. It's feeding you that. So you have now become a slave to your circumstances. A slave, a complete slave to your circumstances. You're not the boss in your body. The circumstances are bossing you. Huh? 

24:24 IWDM: Look, we worry about being locked up in a jail physically, but we lock our own selves up in jails and can't move for human progress. We can't get on the road to human progress because we've locked our own selves up in a jail. We look back at slavery and say, "Oh, look what happened to us. Wasn't that sad? Wasn't that bad?" And you put yourself in a mental condition of slavery and subject yourself to the forces of your environment that are crueler to your human life, your human mind and your human body than the plantation slavery was to our ancestors, our forefather. You are allowing conditions to take over your life that are crueler, that are more cruel than those conditions that we suffered as a people long ago on the white man's plantations. And we ask ourselves, "How come we can't unite?" We ask ourselves, "How come we can't get together and do better with our life? How come we can't get together and make our neighborhoods financially strong, like the whites and the Asians and the others do. How come we can't succeed with that?"

25:42 IWDM: The answer is, you have turned over the authority that G-d gave you to manage your own life, you have turned it over to the circumstances in your environment, in the public environment. There's no rule in your body from you, it's only from the circumstances in the environment. So, drugs take us down, violence take us down. Huh? Stupid, silly fun destroys these people, destroy our ability to manage our own life as a people, and we have to change. You have heard us said, "As a man thinketh, so is he." And it's in the Bible, but it came from a philosopher. The philosopher first said it, "As a man thinketh, so is he." And the people, they adopted it and put it in the Bible. "As a man thinketh, so is he." In the New Testament, it's in the Old Testament, it's in the Qur'an and in the New Testament, it changes somewhat, it says, "As a man thinketh in his heart," in his heart, that's to help you understand what the problem is. The problem is letting your heart work with your mind to do wrong things. Your heart is like the seat of your desires, or like a symbol for your deepest hungers, your heart, and you're thinking in your greed. You're thinking in your uncontrollable appetite. You're thinking there, for after all, the brain needs something in order for it to be energized.

27:51 IWDM: The brain doesn't energize itself. The brain is energized when the brain is in touch with something else. So, the brain has to be in touch with your heart to be energized, has to be in touch with your appetites to be energized, and then once your brain is energized, it wants to serve the need. The brain wants to serve the need in the heart. Yes. But now, if someone can change the intelligence system of your brain so that your brain now is not functioning as it was created to function, it was created to make intelligent decisions, and as long as it makes intelligent decision, it qualifies to be an authority over the body. It qualifies to be an authority over your selection of things to fulfill appetites, because it knows how to distinguish between this and that, between what is good and what is harmful, what is sensible, what is foolish, the brain. But if you ignore that, ignore the brain, the brain is an organ. It belongs to the body. It's a piece of flesh, it's meat, it belongs to the body. So if you continue to ignore it, it won't even respond to you, 'cause it's the body. Same thing we said for the body as a whole, it can be said for any organ that functions within the body or performs a responsibility or our duty inside the human body, like the brain, like the heart. All right.

29:51 IWDM: What we need to do is understand that life is not fun. Life is not a play thing. We're conditioned to in this new environment that we're in, environment of entertainment and fun and just going for pleasures and kicks, we're conditioned in this environment to behave toward the body, human body, as though life is all about just having fun. It's for play. It's not for real. It's for play.

