05/31/1992
IWDM Study Library
Crime and The African American Male Newark,NJ

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

That is peace be on you. This is the first time that I was ready ahead of you. I've been waiting for, well, last hour or so to come here because I'm pressed. Really, we had thought that we would get started much earlier and I have a flight, so I'm going to be pressed for time. But I hope that I somewhat do justice to this topic. First, let me say we thank Almighty G-d. We thank the one Lord Creator for all of us whose name, proper and inclusive name for Muslims is Allah. And we pray the Peace and the Blessings be on, the Prayers and the Peace be on Muhammad the Prophet. We pray the Prayers and the Peace be on Muhammad the Prophet who was preaching on this earth in the peninsula called Arabia. Now Saudi Arabia. In fact, it was not called Arabia at that time by the Arabs.

It was divided and called by different names. It was a peninsula under the divided rule, tribes who at most times were at odds with each other. But the Prophet united the people of that peninsula and with the universal message of Islam. Eventually the religion reached into the neighboring continents, Persia, Africa, Iran, pardon me, what is called Iran now. Persia, Africa, the continent of Asia that is and all the Middle East and the continent of Africa and also an important part of the continent of Europe. All was reached as far as Pakistan and Russia. Eventually within centuries the religion has spread all the way to those areas. And today, Islam, as you know, is around the world, about 1 billion people believing in that faith. In addressing the serious, the very serious burden on our lives, on the life of our males, the African American male and the African American community, our family, our friends, the neighborhood, the burden of crime. Crime on the black male. I would like to first point to a success, great success story with the crime, dealing with crime.

The Prophet, Peace and Blessing be on him. He came to a people, was raised up among a people who were given to crime. Crime was a way of life for them as crime has become a way of life for us in many parts of the United States and these big depressed areas of our city. How did Islam deal with the problem of crime? By first not calling attention to crime per se or to the criminal, but to calling attention to the dignity, the worth, the value, the worth, the dignity, the excellence of G-d's creature, the human being. And after bringing home to every individual, that every individual human being born in this world is born for excellence, is born for great dignity, born for a great role on this earth, then those individuals were informed that they are to be responsible to the highest authority that exists and that is the G-d that created everything. And that they were called slaves because at that time, to enslave the weak or to accept the weak into slavery or into slave service for you, it was very popular in those days.

It had been practiced for centuries before this time that I'm speaking of right now, the time of Muhammad the Prophet, about 570 and 600 AD. And when they were told that they were slaves only to G-d, in fact, when you're told that you're slave to G-d, that's what it means. You are a slave only to G-d. You can't be a slave to G-d and a slave to somebody else at the same time. G-d won't accept the slave that share himself with another master. You can only be slaves to G-d. So that message had a great impact. That message had a great impact on their sense of worth, their sense of personal worth. And then to address crime even further, but indirectly, not directly, Allah revealed to this Prophet, this wonderful man, this excellent example for all Muslims and all of humanity that believe in G-d in the last day as Allah's words say to us in Qur'an. We were told by G-d in the Qur'an, and it's there for us to read now of Satan the devil, Satan, the devil.

Now I believe most good Christians, most good religious People of the Book, they would agree to me. They will agree with me that the world of crime is the world of Satan. And the boss of that world is the devil, Satan. The leader of that world is Satan. Sin comes with Satan. The origin of sin is the beginning of Satan for religious people, for religious people. There was no sin until Satan came into the picture. And the worst sin, the worst sin that man can have is sin against G-d. For religious people, the worst sin is sin against G-d. So, we are told as Muslims in our religion, in our Holy Book, that Satan is not as powerful and not as big as most people think he is, though he is very powerful, but he is not quite as big as most people think he is. And his role in our life is kind of played down If we really understand what our scripture says. And our scripture says this, that Satan has no power over us except to give us an invitation. He just invite us. That's all Satan can do is invite us. So, what does that do? While we recognize that Satan is a big troublemaker, it places responsibility on all of us. That if you give yourself to the influence of Satan, it's because you accept his invitation. Many go around blaming the devil. Say, "Oh, my life is miserable because of Satan." No, no, Satan is not that important. Your life is miserable because you accepted his invitation. See, this is the way our religion deals with it. Now another thing, another thing about Satan is this. You know, we think that Satan is mysterious. Maybe he is, but I doesn't deal with him that way. If he's mysterious, our religion ignores his mystery and deals with his reality.

Our religion says stay away from certain things that open the gates or open the door for criminal behavior. But before mentioning these certain things in connection with the Satan, I want to tell you something else about how our religion approach problems of the nature that we are to address at this conference here. And we must salute and give our thanks and appreciation to the Islamic Research Group for that, for this occasion. And also to our very highly esteemed personality, Ron Karenga, who's influence is far reaching, very far reaching. Dr. Ron Karenga, who is Professor as you know at the University of California. And I know you will become better acquainted with him, those of you who don't know him, but I've been acquainted with him as many of you have for some time, for years. We are indebted to them. Now, getting back to what the point I was making is this. That our religion didn't come to drunkards, to people giving to the habit of drinking too much liquor and being drunk, and it didn't come to the thieves who were stealing and robbing and maiming people or killing people.

It didn't come to them and say, you criminals have to stop this. You are a problem. We going to finish you off. You have to conform. You have to reform yourself or conform or we going to do away with you. They didn't handle it that way. And believe me, criminal behavior, destruction, self-destruction and destruction of society was very, very serious at that time, but that's not the way it was done. The first treatment of the problem of alcohol was just in these words. The first words of caution concerning the problem of alcohol came saying, do not come to the mosque or to prayers under the influence of alcohol.

And then finally, very, very, very, very firm position was taken that outlawed the use of any alcohol. And what was said then was this, "Alcohol is an invention of Satan." Alcohol is an invention of Satan, the devil, stay away from it if you expect to be successful. It didn't say stay away from it if you expect to be intelligent or if you expect to be a person of good morals, or if you expect to be a successful husband. It said stay away from it if you want to be successful, successful. It covers everything. And we know when we give ourselves to alcohol or drugs and become the victim of such drugs, we are subject to be a failure at home with our wife, a failure with our children, a failure on our job, a failure anywhere and everywhere. We know that. Now, you may say, well, why are you tying that with crime and the African male? Well, you just go to any police department and ask them how many people are committing crimes that are taking drugs are under the influence of alcohol, and you'll understand why I'm making the connection.

So, another point I want to make is this. We today, we don't have to look way back there, although that was the most excellent example of how we should deal with the problem of crime in a society. The most excellent example comes from our knowledge of Qur'an, the Holy Book of Muslims and the life and the works of Muhammad the Prophet to whom the Qur'an was revealed, the Prayers and the Peace be on him. But we have today, we have Saudi Arabia. Now, many of us don't like Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia is unpopular in American society where crime is most popular. But it's not popular in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, crime is not popular there. And don't think somebody's getting his head chopped off every day or somebody's getting his arm or hand that he stole with chopped off every day. Don't think that's happening. No. Very few people suffer that.

And every once in a while somebody is being killed or executed, capital punished, receiving capital punishment or getting a hand chopped for being a habitual thief that cares nothing about anything. A Muslim won't chop the hand the first time somebody steal. In fact, a Muslim is obligated, a learned Muslim, a government official or any learned Muslim who is in charge of the crime in an area. If he learned that a person has stolen something, his first obligation is to find the cause why this person is stealing. And if he discovers that this person is hungry or that this person is very poor and has been forced into this crime or into this bad behavior by bad circumstances, then though he is told you are responsible for yourself. You are morally responsible. You are not to do this. But he won't be dealt with severely. And in fact he will be helped if they do the decent thing that a Muslim should do, his needs will be provided for.

He'll be given a better situation where he can earn some living without stealing. He'll be taken in by somebody if there's no job for him. Some rich person will take him in and say, I will adopt you as my son maybe. That's encouraged in our religion. He's out there with no help, no way to earn his living. He's desperate in the street, nobody to feed him and no way to get it. So, obligation is first on the Muslim community to change those bad circumstances for him if it's a decent Muslim community. So, there's a lot that we should know about Islamic law before we say it is a severe law. And I want to add this, that our religion says there is mercy in the strictness of the law. There is mercy, and I want you to know that I'm a firm believer in the strictness of the law.

But after you have educated people, after you have brought their senses back to reality, our society of crime, our criminals in this society are far from reality. The miserable state of moral consciousness for this society is such that they don't even have a responsible perception or responsible idea or responsible mind when it comes to really understanding what is moral behavior. So how can we be so hard on people in a culture that confuse and pollute and degenerate the very idea of morality? And we have more than that as a problem. We have more than that as a problem.

We put so many burdens on the mind of the public that has to live in a high tech society, a very highly evolved society when it comes to science, science, industry, technology, et cetera. But when it comes to perceiving the universe correctly, when it comes to perceiving the nature of man and woman correctly, the idea or the concept of a human being correctly, we are primitive, burdened by primitive mythologies. This is the condition of the general public in America, the average person. And the only reason why we don't have a totally collapsed society over here, a finished society with no life at all to continue is because a few of us are not wasted by this condition in the society. A few of us are held by a behavioral system. A few of us are still loyal to some belief, whether it's called Christianity, whether it's called Islam or Judaism, or whether it's called the idea of Kwanza or whatever it is, there is a system of belief.

There is a structured idea of what life should be and what the destiny of man should be. There's some concept of what the destiny of man should be. Those few people who still have that, or those few people who are educated and their own higher mind prevents them from being the slaves of the bad and the degenerative influences in the so-called popular culture, they are somewhat safe. In fact, many of them are safe. They're safe, but they're not safe because the society gives them job opportunity. You can have job opportunity and still be out there selling drugs. In fact, many selling drugs got job opportunity, but drugs is a better job opportunity for his state of morality.

We are not so much the victims of concrete things. Even when we blame racism for our problem, racism should be dealt with more as an abstract evil than as a concrete evil. What I mean by that? Racism can best be dealt with, defeated, if we look at racism as an abstract and not at racism as a white man. Racism is not a white man or a white woman. There was a time when a white man and a white woman had no racism. Something happened to make them racist. So, when you deal with the abstract reality of a thing, you are dealing with it more in its reality. When you deal with it as a concrete, you're not dealing with its reality. Now you can take a pistol and shoot a criminal and crime is over for him. At least he ain't going to commit no more crime. But it doesn't mean that the same thing ain't in another one. But if you stop shooting the people and killing the people and start killing the things that breed that kind of mentality, pretty soon you won't have to shoot anybody and you won't have any more criminals left to give you a whole lot of problems. At least you won't have a society filled with criminals.

You'll reduce it down where the problem can be handled without us being so burdened in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in the society. So, this is the way that I think we should look at things. We are victims of conditions more than we are victims of the white man. We are victims of conditions more than we are victims of drugs. We are victims of conditions more than we are victims of crime. We are victims of conditions. And we who think ourselves to be educated, we who have helped from a long, long, long history of great tradition of success for our ideas, whether it is Islam or Christianity or something else, we should be responsible for our brothers and sisters. And let me tell you, when judgment day come, who do you think G-d will look at first when we come in and G-d say, look, your boys, your young boys didn't have jobs.

Your young boys were dying in the street like flies killing each other like they had no knowledge of what a human being is. You think G-d is going to talk to the white man first? He's going to talk to us first because those are our boys. He's going to talk to me in my home about my son and my daughter. He's going to talk to our race about our sons and daughters, what's happening to them in these streets. He's going to talk to our race. He's not going to go to the white man, talk to the white man's race first. He going to talk to our race. Who you go to first, the father, the mother, or somebody living across the street or somebody outside the family. If the children are being neglected, the children are being mistreated, they're dying because of neglect or abuse or whatever, you're going to go to the house and talk to the people of that house, to the parents in that house.

So, we have to become more responsible for our own youth and stop pointing the finger at the white man. Stop pointing the finger at the government. Damnit, we can do more about the situation than we are doing. I know we can. There was a time when we had thinkers, thinkers thinking not only for our present state, they were thinking for our future state. Men like Frederick Douglas, men like Garvey and many others. Men like Dr. Martin Luther King, men like Elijah Muhammad, men like Malcolm X, men like Benjamin Mays. So many, I can name so many who weren't just thinkers. They were thinkers for the betterment of our people. They were thinkers for the future of our people. And we need to come together more, we people that you recognize as great minds. We need to come together more and be great minds for the betterment of our race. Thank you very much and I'm for it. Thank you very much.
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