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IWDM Study Library
     THESE ARE BAD TIMES, BUT WE ARE AMONG THE LIVING 
PT. 3
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

00:01 Imam W. Deen Mohammed: Snow three feet, four feet deep. So hard you walk on it like it's a hard floor, cold. I look for a dog, can't see one. Looked for a cat, can't see one. Looked for a bird, no bird around. Every now and then, we see a black hawk, and the hawk is down, he ain't flying, he can't open his wings and let that cold air come up under his cover, so he's walking around slowly, slow, walking real slow. And what do we say, hawk is walking. It ain't flying no more, it's too cold, the hawk is walking and he be walking like he's so sad, so we cold too, toes all frozen up feeling numb. Waiting on the big bus or something. We used to say big red. Waiting on the street car, big red. And our feet feel numb like they're not even alive anymore. But when we see that hawk creeping down the street, we know how it can fly. Oh, our heart go out to that poor hawk.

01:09 IWDM: We're supposed to believe in life after death, but then the season changes, spring come and all the trees come alive, the grass and the bushes and the trees, everything that died comes to life again. And the birds come out, they're so happy, they're singing a new song after winter. Shut them in and shut them out, praise be to Allah... The birds are flying around, butterflies and all the living things, all the earth is just teeming with life.

01:48 IWDM: And it goes on and goes on and the weather gets very hot and then fall time and the thing is repeated over and over again. We're supposed to believe in life after the death. Yes, so G-d says read the signs and everything he has created, they have signs. Signs in the heavens, and signs in the earth and signs in you. Don't we find some people just like that? Oh, they have the seasons, go all the way from spring, summer, fall and winter, and come back to spring. And they will still be standing like a tree. Oh, you won't see them in their beauty and see them in their production. No, the world will take that away from them, and they'll be seen without their beauty, without their production, they're barren, but they'll still be standing. And they'll hold there in faith, hold there keeping their principle, keeping their high principle. They'll hold themselves right there, remain in a solid structure. Though they're losing everything, they appear to be dead. So he was once doing very well, but he's finished. And then Allah blessed them to have a warm breath come into their lives. A warm breath from a warm region comes into their lives, warms them up and after a while, you see them dressing up again. Dressing up again in their production, dressing up again in their beauty.

03:28 IWDM: Some of you don't have faith in the efforts of a righteous community. You think because they're slow realizing what they're working for that they can't get it. Have faith, the seasons are coming. G-d says, "Don't you know that the one who did the thing the first time, the one who made creation the first time, the one who gave life the first time, the one who beautified the world the first time, the one who beautified you and your life the first time, can't you believe that he can repeat his creation?"

[applause]

04:05 IWDM: Praise be to Allah. So let us not be among those who walk the streets drooping, or walk the streets laughing themselves into insanity, or walk the streets killing and hurting people. We're not them, they're the lost people, they're lost. We need the living to walk the streets with them and not be with them in their life, but walk the street with them so they will see that there's a living man still around. There's a living woman still around, there's a living child still walking the streets, there's a living girl still walking the streets. We need to make our presence felt in this world of the dead by keeping our life alive, and keeping our faith in G-d.

[applause]

05:00 IWDM: So don't let your behaviour put you among the dead, don't let your behavior take you from among the living. Let your behaviour be seen as the behavior of those who care. I'm not giving up hope. Those who still strive upon their own good principles. Those who still wait on the favors of G-d, though they're deemed to be far away, we keep our faith and wait for the favors of G-d. And you wait and wait and wait, and the longer you wait, the bigger the reward is gonna be. Yes. So I'm patient, I've learnt patience, I've learned that patience pays off big in the company of the righteous. Yes, patience pays off big.

05:49 IWDM: I've seen those lead that Elijah Muhammad said, "Be decent." He said, "Be clean." He said, "Be truthful. Be honest. Even give a white devil, if you're working for him, give that bright devil an honest day's work. Don't cheat the boss. But you come and work for us, and you cheat us! But some of us have not changed. We will not cheat. We will not cheat our own people, and we will not cheat anybody, huh? We keep to our principle. We hold to our good life and our good principle. We don't put it down. We lose a leader, we don't follow him to the graveyard, and then come up out of the grave, with the sin that he called us away from.

06:34 IWDM: He called us away from sin. Then he died, we go crying, crying at the grave site, and leave the grave site, and go back to the sins that he called us away from. You are not respecting the leader that you mourn for, or the leader that you weep for. You're not respecting him. You're hurting him more than anything could hurt him if he was alive, by you getting weak, saying: "Oh, he's gone now," and going back to... Some of you went back to the church. I knew a brother very well. And I met him some years later, he said, he was with some Christians. And he told me, he said, "I came back to the church." Know what I told him? I said, "Well, I know some that came back to filth, came back to lying and stealing. You came back to the church?" I said, "Good, brother. Be a good Christian." You think Christians won't be in Heaven? 

07:39 IWDM: Our Prophet Muhammad said that G-d showed him the Heaven. And he saw there the followers of Moses, and the followers of Christ Jesus. Yes! And he saw his own followers, also, and I'm sure that we were in the bigger numbers in the hereafter. And if Christians don't like what I'm saying, straighten up and fly right. Praise be to Allah. So we are reaching the closing hour, the closing of this hour of our broadcast, our radio broadcast. And again, I want to thank every radio station that carries this first Sunday message. And I hope to see you again on the next first Sunday of the month, which will be December. And until then, stay among the living. The dead needs your life. Peace be unto you, As-salamu alaikum.

08:54 S?: Walaikum As-salamu. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! 

09:03 IWDM: Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! We praise G-d. We witness that He is one, and needs no helpers, that He is the one responsible for His creation. And He is the one who cares for his creation. And He is the one who keeps his creation, and He needs no G-d with Him. And He has no G-d with Him. He says to us, no one comes to Him, except as a servant. No one comes to Him, except as a servant. And the highest position that He has given His creation, or His human creation, is position of servant. Position of servant. You know, some of us take great pride in working for a very big and popular company, or working for a big boss, or a big, important boss. We take a lot of pride in that, you know? We will say it with pride: "I work for such my servant."

10:20 IWDM: And His messenger, He serves them, and He delivers the message. He delivers G-d's message. He serves G-d, and He delivers G-d's message. He is His servant and His messenger. And He's also the seal of the prophets, the last of the prophets. And that means, He comes to correct what was lost, what the people lost, that the prophets brought to them: To correct it, and take out what had come into it, that was incorrect, and not in the original scripture or original message that they got from their prophets, or from the messengers of G-d. He comes to correct that, and He comes to complete it. Complete it. For the people of faith, we are in the second hour now, I want you to know that. I'm addressing you here. The people of faith, for generations upon generations, they have had a certain hope. And their hope was that the promise of the prophets would one day come true in what G-d says, what G-d promises.

11:41 IWDM: In this world, struggling to keep our life, and oftentimes, having to depend on the enemies of our life for a job, for income for a place to stay, et cetera. Excuse me one moment. That weighs heavy on our hearts. That weighs heavy on our spirit. It weighs heavy in our souls that we have to struggle to keep our life and our religion in a situation controlled by people who dislike our religion, who would rather see us change our religion and become something else. Yes, it's difficult. It's painful sometimes. Now, we know we have friends among them. I'm not saying we don't have friends among them. This is not all of them. But this is most of them or the many of them, this is how they feel about us. And they don't wanna see our condition change. They don't wanna see us established, spiritually first, but they don't wanna see us established materially.

13:16 IWDM: And they fear more than anything, they fear us becoming established materially because after you have shown them by your strong conviction and your undying faith, that you are Muslims forever... And I'm sure they're convinced that, "I'm a Muslim forever," and many of you, I'm sure they're convinced that you're Muslim forever... So like Allah says in the Quran to Muhammad, he says, "The rejectors of faith are the rejectors of the message of Quran," and Muhammad the prophet is the last final messenger... That those persons after seeing the Muslim grow in their religion, under the leadership of Muhammad, the prophet, they were convinced at a certain point, they were convinced that you can't change these people. You're not gonna be able to take them out of their religion. So, they have despaired of making you change your religion... Yes.

14:33 IWDM: So, we see the same thing repeated in our lives. It keeps coming over and over again. Believers will be in situations where they'll be under powers, or surrounded by persons of another faith who are not pleased with you continuing in your life and in your faith. And after a point, they will give up, and say, "We can't change those old Muslims. We can't change them. But let us make sure that they have no opportunity to establish themselves materially, because if they ever establish themselves materially, we certainly would have lost all hope of dominating them."

15:21 IWDM: Now, what do we wanna do? We wanna stay around here forever, a ghost of human life, a ghost of community life? That's what we are. If we believe in G-d, and we accept that we are supposed to be the Ummah of G-d, the Ummah Muhammad, the Ummah that G-d prescribed for us in the Quran, that is the community. And we don't have nothing but our faith, nothing but our religion, nothing but our prayers at home, and prayers in the small places that we rent and a few that we have, we own, but they're small. They cannot accommodate all of us. Are we gonna go on? "Please." to have no body, no physical body, B-O-D-Y... No physical body through which to express our spirit, our religion, our Islamic life. You just can't have Islamic life in your heart and in your spirit. Islamic life has to be expressed in Islamic structures. Islamic life has to be expressed in 'halal' businesses. Islamic life has to be expressed in homes owned by Muslims, in factories owned by Muslims. Yes, in productive land owned by Muslims, and transportation for shipping products owned by Muslims, in cars and buses and trucks, trains and airplanes owned by Muslims.

17:08 IWDM: A little man with only three grades of education from the South back there in his time. What was it worth? Nothing. Nothing then and certainly nothing now. Three grades of elementary education. He showed us the picture of what he wanted us to grow into. It was in kind of like a comic strip, but it didn't make us laugh, it made us serious. He showed us roads paved by Muslims, farmlands producing abundantly owned by Muslims. He showed us factories and heavy machinery owned by Muslims, airplanes flying in the sky owned by Muslims.

18:00 IWDM: He excited our appetite for a man's share of this good earth, didn't he? Yes. He excited our appetite for man's share of this good earth. Now that you have the Quran and you're reading it with clear eyes, shouldn't you want those things? Shouldn't you want that dignity? Should you want a neighborhood of thousands of people? A United States of millions of us with neighborhoods east and west and mid-west, north and south and everywhere, African-American neighborhoods. You can drive now west where you used to pass through white man zone and be afraid because over there, if he caught you over there, you could get killed.

19:08 IWDM: We can drive through that west side area now, through all that territory that used to be closed to us, and now it's open to us. And we've taken our poverty into the area where the white man used to be. We've taken our poverty into his area. We've taken our sterility, our business sterility, our economic sterility, we've taken it over there in his quarter and have spread it into his territory, have penetrated his territory deep, miles and miles into territory that was only his. We're there now, but we're there as his dependents. We're there to purchase from his stores. We're there to buy his old used up houses. We're there to buy his old problem, plumbing and electricity. We're there buying what he has left, and you think he's running from you. He's fooling you. He say, "Well, we got everything out of this and it's gonna cost us a whole lotta money to bring it back like it was when we moved into this area. It's time for us to move out. The blacks wanna come in here. They're dying to come in here. Let's move out and get twice what we paid for this property and turn it over to them." Yes. Are we gonna continue to live that way? 

20:55 IWDM: That's sick. It is, that's sickening. Any person that knows what's happening and continues to let it go, go along with it, is sickening, really sickening. Do you know, a people who call to the right life and recognized it but continue to live the wrong life, do you know you're in for a punishment? Our religion of Islam, the dawning of it was in Arabia. At some points, geographically, Arabia and Africa almost touching, almost touch each other. In fact, they do touch each other, a small waterway separating the two, and at some points, it touches.

22:14 IWDM: Our religion of Islam came to Africa, that continent, and it brought new life to the African people. Pepsi-Cola company, advertising to recognize the African or the black people, African-American or the African people, past. They show us in their advertising kings dressed in their royal garments, dressed in their royal clothing, looking honorable like state men. State men, and dressed as though they are men of wealth. And we know of Timbuktu, how those Africans who embraced Islam contributed literary volumes to Islamic work and how kingdoms grew more in wealth and grew more in the good life. How high forms of society came into place after the Africans embraced Islam.

23:58 IWDM: And the message of Islam then was what it is today. It's the message of respect firstly for G-d, and then for human life. Your parents, your family and human life. The message is still today what it was then. Freedom. Justice. Equality. Respect for everyone's rights. Yes. But look what formed and has been standing for hundreds of years now. Monarchies that became dictators. Wealthy families living in opulence, living in plenty. Having great wealth, spending heavy. Riding big, walking tough. While the multitude of their people starve.

