05/31/1997
IWDM Study Library
Al-Islam the Invitation to Support City Builders Harvey IL

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

Allahu Akbar!. As salaamu alaikum! That is peace upon you. We thank Allah for our presence here. We witness that He is one, the Lord, creator of everything, who cares about all of his creation and especially his human creation. And we witness that. Muhammed, to whom the Qur'an was revealed better than 14 centuries ago, is the prophet mentioned in the Torah and in the Injeel. That is in the scriptures given to the Jews, and the scriptures now belonging to the Christians. That he is the prophet mentioned in those books as one coming as G-d says to us in the Qur'an as one coming to break all bonds of slavery and to take from the people, the heavy yolks that weighed them down.
And the main instrument that the prophet used to accomplish his unmatched work in the history of man, and I'm not saying this as the author of these words, these words are really coming from historians who were not Muslims. The main instrument that was used was the instrument of community and education. Community and education. The prophet, Muhammed, prayers and peace be upon him, he was mission by G-d given the mission, the job to do. And that job was to lead people into community life. The community life that Almighty G-d wills for them, wills for them, or desires for them if we can use such expression.
And the prophet immediately began to put emphasis on literacy, reading. He would himself teach the people, the crowds, and he would see that they knew exactly the correct reading that was given to them of what G-d had revealed. And see that they wrote it down and they write sometimes only one line, and the prophet obligated them to learn the one line and then teach that to someone else. So he began to work like that. And we think of public education as something recent, but actually it was the prophet who started public education. He started public education and everybody in the citizenry of the Muslims were obligated to appreciate knowledge, to appreciate education, to try to learn, to read and write, and to seek knowledge and to seek knowledge. And those who were more able were responsible for teaching and bringing up those who were not able or less able.
And his great works was not really seen until there was a situation for building a community, building a community. He lived half of his mission, the life of his mission, the life of his works, his great works as a prophet and messenger of G-d, he lived half of that life, persecuted by his fellow Meccans, the people of Mecca, and denied an opportunity to express what he had received from G-d and worked for the aims, for the ends, for the destiny that G-d wanted him to work for. He didn't have a situation in Mecca for that. And it was only when he was invited by some citizens of another city, nearby city, Medina. In fact, it's the second city in the peninsula of the Arabs now called the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The second city, Medina was a nice, very nice city and people from that city, they came and visited the sacred precincts in Mecca during the time of pilgrimage or Hajj, pilgrimage when the pilgrims come once a year to those sacred precincts.
And on that occasion, on that particular occasion, they invited the prophet, Muhammed, peace be upon him, to come to Medina and live where people welcomed him and leave that place Mecca, where people were persecuting him. And he accepted the invitation and he went to Medina. When he went to Medina, he didn't have anything. The people welcomed him into their homes. But pretty soon there was a place for him to teach daily and on a regular schedule daily. And people would come to him with all kinds of problems. And he was busy trying to give them as much and as fast as possible what G-d had revealed to him. And G-d had revealed to him, in the Qur'an, that His creatures, His human creatures should be Muslims and that they should know the religion, Islam and the religion. Islam is a religion for more than just rituals and spiritual devotion, that Islam is a religion for life in community, a religion for life in community.
We had to live life in community, and the prophet was obligated to guide us and lead us and show us the way to that community life. And he did. Within a relatively short period of time, there were people who were farming, but not farming as they were farming before, people with fruit arches, but not seeing them as they saw them before. They were seeing these resources as resources with a great role, with a great purpose. Their purpose was to contribute to this ummah, to this community, this new community. So they saw their resources as resources needed by their community, and this community was pictured to them in such a beautiful way that they gave their whole life to working to build the community of Islam, the community of Muslims, the community of Islam. And the person who worked the land, he had a new respect for the land.
He had a stronger interest in the land. He had a stronger dedication, a stronger devotion. So the work, everything increased, the work was increased, the benefits of the effort were increased. The effort would produce so much more now because the people had this great vision in front of them. They had this great purpose in front of them. As I have studied the Qur'an regarding the emphasis on Islam as a way of guidance for man to live, not only in his soul and not only in his family, in his home with his family, but also in the public, in the community. As I have studied that, I have come to believe that Muslims cannot have the Muslim life without working for community. If we don't work to have Muslim community, Islamic community, we can't have the Muslim life. Our life will be oppressed. There were individuals called Meccans, the citizens of Mecca, pagans, idolaters who worshiped idols, false G-ds.
They were the ones who were making the life of the Muslim miserable. But we don't have that. We don't have those pagans. We don't have those idolaters to make our life miserable. But if we don't have a situation for us to build a community, when we say a community, we are talking about just what we have here in Harvey. Harvey is a community. Chicago is a bigger community, a big city, A big city. City is the final step in the road toward realizing community, organized community. City. In the city is where you see everything come together. That's where the organization is. That's where the offices are. The offices are in the city and the offices are serving. Even the rural areas are served by the city offices or by the state office existing somewhere. And the state office is there, but it wouldn't have any real meaning if it wasn't for transportation, business, organized business, transportation, commercial life has to be well organized.
And all of that comes concentrated. It's concentrated. It comes very heavily. It's very thick in the city. It's very thick in the city. So you want to see how man has evolved to live. You have to see a city in operation. You have to see a town, a city in operation. Then you can see how a man has evolved to live. If you go in rural areas and see the gardener out there, see the farmer out there with his animals and with his.....he's producing needs that we must have. He's providing that. In fact, agriculturalists used to be the one that the whole community was depending on the agriculturalists, for him to produce the products and then the products to be refined, manufactured, and everything was supported by agriculture in the early beginnings of man's growth as society. But as man began to grow more and grow more and more, industry, chemistry and all these other sciences come into play, and then you have a more complicated society and a more complex society and the farmer, he's kind of pushed back.
He's not as important anymore. But the foundry is, the manufacturing operations are important and everything, the news media is so important. News media becomes very important. Whereas in the earlier steps, the steps in the progress of society, news, media is not even known. But then news media becomes so important. People are living in close contact with each other. The Qur'an, in my opinion, it's designed to serve all the needs of man in society, all the needs of man in society, or the human being in society, all the needs. So soon, these people who followed Muhammed, the prophet, these wonderful people who recognized his mission and followed him. Pretty soon they had fine schools. Their schools were so attractive that people from distant lands, non-Muslims as well, would come to see those schools. It was a renewal of, I would say, productivity on the part of the human intellect.
Brought the human intellect to be productive again, productive, greatly productive again. Within a relatively short period of time, there were schools of higher learning colleges, universities, we would say, in Damascus, Syria, Baghdad, Iraq, Fez Morocco, eventually Timbuktu, Africa. Many places. Spain, went to Spain, Cordova, Spain. There. The religion blossomed there. And everywhere it blossomed, it blossomed through the, I would say, the structures of community. It wouldn't just depend on just man, man, man lives and dies. We had the religion and we die, we go, we leave nothing. But if we have institutions, institutions for educating and preserving the knowledge, if we have institutions for designing the city, the town, and preserving the interests that we have in a town, firstly worship of G-d, then schools, education, and then the organized society, organized, the whole society.
The aim is to bring the religious community to be responsible for society, to be builders of towns, builders of cities. Harvey is a city, its already here, it's here, we live here. In my opinion, as Muslims, especially our leaders, we are obligated to see how Harvey can accommodate our need to have Muslim community life, not a Muslim mosque, to pray in only, a Muslim school to send our children in only, but a Muslim geography, a Muslim geography. A small piece of this geography where we will have responsibility in that geography for everything that's happening inside that geography.
The medical facilities, the hospitals, the schools, the industry, the businesses, the transportation control centers, everything. That's where our eyes should be now. Our eyes should be on that. How can we organize ourselves to have a model of Muslim society with the geography in our possession and in our control, the geography, in our possession and in our control. We believe that G-d is with that effort. And if we will make the effort, G-d will be in the effort. We won't be doing it alone. Allah will be doing it with us. We will get help from Almighty G-d for that effort. But if we just want to have a school to teach our children so they don't have to go to public school. If we just want to have a mosque so we can go there and make Friday prayers. If that's all we want, we will never have the Muslim life displayed on the American soil. The Muslim life should be displayed on the American soil.
America invites that. America is that. That's what America is. America is more beautiful when someone comes from far East Asia somewhere and he lives in an area to himself with his other Asian brothers and sisters or friends or whatever, he lives in that area to himself, and when we visit that area, we see his contribution, their contribution to the cultural quilt of the United States of America. We see their design on the buildings. We see their taste in the culture. We see their taste in the selection of foods. We see their taste in their selection of dress, how they dress. That's what America is. America is one of many, epluribus unum. America is one of many, one nation of many and one people of many cultures, many religions. That makes for the beauty of America. That's America. You want to become more American, establish your identity more. The more you establish your particular identity, the more American you will be.
America is a country that opened its arms. It was established to open its arms to people who couldn't live that life where they were because they were having bosses over them or having a system of government system over them that didn't want them to have the freedom that they needed to live the life they wanted. So they came, the pilgrims came, and others still, they're still coming. And they come here to have more freedom so that they can live the life of their own choice. We are Muslims. We should be living the life of our own choice. We must have a geography for our life. We must have a piece of land and geography for our life, and we must be responsible for that land, for that geography. And we must establish everything that is needed for community in that piece of geography. And we don't have to have it just in one place.
We don't have to have it in one place. We can have a model in Harvey and a model somewhere in Chicago. We can have a model in Atlanta, Georgia. We can have a model in Buffalo, New York. We can have a model everywhere. We can have a model in Canada. We can have a model everywhere. Wouldn't it be wonderful to travel to the different beautiful models of Islamic government in society? Oh, he's talking about bringing in another government. No! When you have Muslims, halal life, when your life is halal under the American system, you have Islamic government. Our government is our Qur'an and Muhammed as our leader. That's our government. It's a portable government. We can carry it in our brief cases and establishing anywhere we go. G-d knew how America would be designed. So G-d made this package good for America. It's not only going to be good for us. If we establish this excellent Muslim life, Muslim life in community on a piece of geography, it's going to be an excellent contribution to the American way of life. Wonderful and excellent contribution to the beautiful quilt of America's plurality, the plural life of America. Yes, it is.
And people will come, if they will come on tour buses to see a building that's influenced by eastern taste. The architecture is influenced by eastern, Eastern taste. It's not quite eastern, it's western, but it has a little eastern flavor to it. So they will take a tour bus and bring their children there and bring them over. Look at this place they built. What do you think they'll do once we have a whole piece of geography with all of these independent institutions working and cooperating together for community life and life? Oh, buddy, you won't have only tours, E.T. will come and visit you.
Especially when they say, Hey, who headed up this Africa? Who headed up this effort? Oh, black people, this is New Africa. You bet E.T. will come see you. This is what we want. We have an organized effort now to bring our small resources together, financial resources together so that we can be empowered as purchasers, so we can make big purchases so we can purchase directly from factories. We have about $700,000 right now, and we have big friends who tells us they can multiply that. It'll at least be 5 million anytime we want it to be. That would be our purchasing power and big opportunity to open up for us. And it's only because of G-d. G-d is with this. G-d is with this because we have been faithful. Not all of us, but enough of us. We have been faithful. We have not given up on G-d. No. And we have been patient. We have had falls and setbacks,
ut we have not given up on G-d. G-d rewards such sincerity. G-d rewards such patience, and this is our time to benefit from the Lord. So have faith. And pretty soon you are going to see the Muslim influence on the development of the city. And you're going to see Muslims piloting, starting, initiating work to build new towns and new cities, new towns and new cities. And you're going to see something that won't look east or west. It won't look like the east and it won't look like the west. It'll be something in between. Yes, it's coming. And the Lord's going to bless us with people who will mind their own business. And that's exactly what the black man needs to do. He needs to mind his own business. So believe me, that's no stretched out, farfetched idea that we are sharing with you when we say Islam wants us to be city builders. The honorable, Elijah Muhammad, he didn't have the knowledge right, but he certainly had the spirit and he organized, set up a company called Progressive Land Developers. That's a sign. There was only a sign. That's a sign of the direction that we have to go into. But this time we're going to do it with the light on and do it correctly. And we are going much further than just farming. We are going to city building. Thank you very much. As salaam alaikum.

