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IWDM Study Library
2003 ASM Islamic Convention 
Chicago IL

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
We praise Him, we worship Him only we obey Him and we obey His Messenger, the last Prophet Muhammad, Sa Ala Alahi Wa Salaam. That is the traditional salute to him saying the Prayers and the Peace be upon him. And what follows of that traditional salute. Dear Muslims, dear believers, brothers and sisters, again, Peace be unto you. The Praise and the thanks is to G-d, the Lord Keeper of all the Worlds. Let me quickly try to take some tension out of the air. We who believe in this religion, we believe in G-d and we believe in Muhammad the Prophet, the model of the human being in his perfection as a servant of G-d.
We believers, we know our life, we know our life. And we know what is not our life. And we know our religion and we know what is not our religion. And we keep our life and we keep our religion. Other things can come and go, but we keep our life, that is our religion. We keep our religion. So I'm getting ready to be more at work, to do more, to be more productive and to contribute to the good life of the believers that I have a common history with and also to the good life of believers that I don't have that common history with. So I don't know about you, but when I told the Imams of my resignation yesterday, a big burden went off my back.
Yes. So I hope that gave you a little relief. Praise be to Allah. How Muslims are to plan our life. With the plan knowing firstly that Islam is our life, and without Islam we don't have any life. And we are to contribute to the excellence of America because this is where we live. This is where we're going to stay. This is our country and we have made great progress in this country after being put down lower than the animals of this land. The vision of our Founding Fathers, some of them were influenced. After they read the Qur'an, they were influenced in a good way to become even better visionaries after they read the Qur'an, after they got familiar with Qur'an and our Prophet Muhammad, his history of how he accomplished so much in about 10 or 11 years and how he worked for about 21, 20 or 21 years and accomplished so much, not only for Muslims but for the whole of mankind as G-d says "He was not sent to be any but a mercy to all the Worlds." Then if we follow him, shouldn't we want to see mercy to everybody? Shouldn't we want to see everybody having Mercy of G-d, the Mercy of G-d? Yes, we should. So the vision of our Founding Fathers is not so far from us. One of the Presidents of these United States, it's documented that he read the Qur'an himself, he read the Qur'an and he had the courage or the goodness to put it in writing that he read the Qur'an. And I have met Presidents in my time very recently. I have met presidents in my time who have expressed reverence and deep respect and reverence for our Holy Book, the Qur'an and for the tradition, the life of Muhammad the Prophet. So we don't live in a world of ignorant people. Our leaders are great people in this country. Our Presidents and our leaders of our society, are great people and they do respect great things. We don't always know that, but they do. I'm a witness that they do respect great things, and they respect Islam, and they respect our Holy Book. They respect the last Prophet Muhammad, Prayers and Peace be upon him.
This country welcomes us to diversity. All the other groups that have come before us, they came here because they were welcome. The idea of freedom for this society welcomes all people if they want to start their life over again. If they want a chance to live their life free of being persecuted, then America says, here is a place for you. Now we know our history. We know how we ourselves were persecuted, and we know religion has been persecuted too in America, religion has been persecuted. But that was not something that was called for by the Founding Fathers. The Founding Fathers planned the future of this society so that it would become a welcome place for all people having good intentions and wanting to establish their life after being denied their freedom, that freedom in their own lands or in their own country.
So we have ourselves then to appreciate this diversity and be supporters of this diversity. Islam, in Islam G-d says to us "Let there be no forcing people in their religion." No compulsory, no forcing people in religion, don't force people in religion. Says the way is clear. Whoever wants the way, take it. Whoever is not wanting the way to let him be free to reach reject. This is Islam. Not imposing our way on other people. Then we shouldn't try to promote our interest and to put down other people or try to have some plan to defeat their interest or to kill their life that they have chosen to have in this land of opportunity. We should respect all people who come here who want to have their life. We are latecomers. So we should study the history of this diversity, the history of the people that came here to have their life free so that they won't have to be afraid of rulers, of tyrants who would take their freedom from them. So if we are going to enjoy, Muslims, if we are going to enjoy the same freedom here, then the first thing we should do is have at least our Imams, our teachers, our leaders, knowing the history of this diversity so that we will appreciate it and support others in having the same freedom that we want for ourselves.
I repeat our religion is power, is our life. While planning our life we are to keep our plan in line the with the tradition of the life of our Prophet Muhammad, Sa Ala Alahi Wa Salaam, The Prayers and the Peace be Upon him. In order to be successful as a Muslim society or Muslim community planning our life in America, we must know the Qur'an better. We must know the life of Muhammed better because we will be forming something Unislamic if we don't form it in accordance with the teachings of Qur'an and the life of our Prophet Muhammad, Sa Ala Alahi Wa Salaam. We are in Chicago. I know a lot of you have heard things about old Chicago, like you've heard things about the old West. You're in one of the best cities we have in these United States. In fact, I think it is the greatest.
They might have some small towns with about 70 people in it, or maybe 700 that's better as an environment. But you still have to leave that small town and go to a bigger town. So come to Chicago anytime you like. You have an invitation from Imam Warithudin Mohammed, Warithudin Mohammed. We must understand also that our life is to be established in community and it is to be established as community life. Individuals life depend upon community life. I remember studying the writings on how people, human beings that is, individuals must have the freedom and opportunity to interact with other human beings, grow up in a human environment in order to become human. Isn't that something? If you don't have that and if you are left without a human environment in the wilderness...They documented this. They found a boy, they called The Boy. The boy was like an animal when they found the boy and the boy was acting like an animal, thinking himself one of the animals because that boy had not the opportunity to live and interact with other human beings. So Allah didn't create us to be alone. Allah created us to be in community life. And if you want to progress economically, financially, business wise or financially, you need each other. You need each other, you need community. So G-d gave us the concept that will satisfy all of our needs as individuals on this planet. That concept is community life. And G-d says to us, you are the best community, or of the best communities. Evolved for the good of all people. The best of communities, evolved for the good of all people.
We must also understand that our community, because we are minority in America, we are not the whole society, we are more part of the society. Our community exists in the environment of the bigger community that surrounds all of us. That is the community of the American people, mostly Christians. Others are increasing the number here that belong to other religions or other spiritual persuasions, but the majority are Christians. So we are most likely going to have Christians as our neighbors. I have a Christian, I don't know if he would approve me given his name, he's Mr. Thomas. He's Mr. Thomas. He has two names from the Bible. He's Mr. Isaiah Thomas.
And I've lived as his neighbor now several years and I trust him with my life just like I trust my life with the best of you. And he's a good Christian, a good church going Christian. So we are to recognize our neighbors and follow Muhammad's advice to us. Be aware of our neighbors and be always ready to assist your neighbor when your neighbor is in need. This is the teachings of Prophets. By me living that, thank you. By me living that with my Christian neighbor, I have the best Christian neighbors, I have the best. They only want to know if you are good and if mean them well, if you're going to be good by them, if you care about them. If you let them know that, then you'll see love come out of them that you don't see come out of a lot of Muslims.
Now I'm a good doctor. I can heal some of you Muslims if you let me. And we are also in the global community. We are part of a whole community of mankind. The international community of people. We are in that context too. So we must, must also be aware of that and draw from our religious teachings, draw from Qur'an, and draw from the enlightened teaching of Muhammad the Prophet so that we'll be successful in embracing mankind, citizens of the United States of America, near and far, and winning the friendship of the good healthy minded people so that we will have more freedom in this land to prosper. Freedom is offered to everybody that comes here and you are free, but you have to plan your freedom. If you don't plan your freedom, freedom will destroy you. As so many out there in the streets that are destroyed by the freedom as they perceive freedom, that freedom that they perceive is destroying them.
We don't want freedom to destroy us. We want freedom to give us more opportunity to live our life of health and productivity. Again, we must be also appreciative of people opening their doors to us. Now we know times have changed, so it's no big thing that we are having this meeting here, our annual public address here at the UIC Pavillon is no big thing. But in way it is a big thing too. When you look at the fear that's in the air because of the things that's going on in this world, and how Muslims are characterized by some of the things that Muslims are doing. You must also agree with me then that it is a big thing that we are having this meeting in this pavilion.
Now we Muslims are to see that our community life is not without good leaders. People complain, "Oh this place is bad or this Masjid ain't like it should be, this Imam, he should do this. Complain to everybody but the right person. Complain to him. Hold him, hold the eaders responsible. This is Islam. Allah has taught us with the Qur'an that when judgment day come, every people will be gathered together with their Imams, with their leaders. You're going to be gathered for the judgment and your leaders going to be with you, so that they will be a witness against you or for you and you will be a witness against them or for them.
The Prophet says, Prayers and Peace be Upon him, he said "Religion is sincerity." And they asked him to further explain. And he said "It is sincerity of a leader toward his follwing, and sincerity of a following toward the leader." So to be sincere to your leaders, you have to be truthful with them. You have to not say behind their back what you can't say to them before their faces. And for them to be sincere by you and with you, they have to not put their government jobs before your interest. So you are free as Muslims and you're free as Americans to choose the life you want.
So you need to choose leaders who love believers and whose life that they're living, whose behavior that we are looking at tell us they love believers. You need to choose leaders, Imams, who love obedience to G-d and who love respect for G-d and love respect for the G-d-given dignity or the G-d given honor, the G-d given honor that every human person should be respected for, whether that human person respects that honor that G-d has given them or not. We should not be the one to disrespect the honor that G-d has created for them. We should call them back to the honor if they're ignorant of it. Call them back to the honor that G-d created them for. But don't let us disrespect that honor, respect everybody.
And that ain't the first time you heard that. My father told you to do that. Education. Muslims must understand that education enables men to make progress in big, big measures. Without it you make progress In little small measures. Look at the societies before modern history. Look at the societies that didn't have education, that were not devoted to science or not devoted to industry, not devoted to knowledge. Look at them in history and you'll see how small their contribution is to mankind. Then look at those who have appreciation for science, appreciation for industry, appreciation for education, and look at the big world that they have created for mankind. So you must support education. You must have a respect for education and you must support it even if you are poor, support it with your mouth, with your lips. Give support with your mouth because even if you're poor, ignorant. Isn't that how our parents from slavery and our parents from the south when the North was open to them and they had to leave South to make progress? Isn't that what they told their children? And didn't they press upon their children, "Now you might do very well up North, but get an education. You owe it to me son and you owe it to your grandfather who's gone. Or you owe it to your grandmother, dead and in her grave. You're free and we were not. Give yourself a good education." And with that encouragement and the early release of our people after freedom from physical bondage, from slavery and plantations is a history of the rise of intellects, the rise of brilliant men and brilliant women who were our leaders and who made great progress for us in that time, immediately after slavery, up until the Civil Rights movement, up until the Civil Rights movement. Then the movement changed from one of an academic movement, academically supported movement. It changed from that to a political movement for Civil Rights. We have to keep history in our view. The teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, they used to say "History is best to reward all research." The Honorable Elijah Muhammad's Ministers and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad were speaking mostly to a congregation nationally and locally, a congregation that was almost a hundred percent illiterate.
Yes, we weren't intellectual, we were trying to learn how to read and we had programs for adults and children under the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's leadership to teach adults and children how to read. In fact, you couldn't even become a member until you wrote correctly a letter requesting to be a member. Is that not so? Yes, that was to emphasize and make you know that it's very important that you become literate. That man wanted us to succeed. I'm speaking of the teacher of my father, the one that he called G-d in the person, in the flesh. That man wanted us to succeed. He didn't want us to fail. And he knew that to succeed you must appreciate knowledge, you must want to become literate. So let's not forget that and let us go back to putting importance on things like it's supposed to be put on things and putting importance on things that are more important than others. Put more importance on those things and less importance on those things that are lesser in importance.
So your leaders must be encouraged to support private schools the more we live on this planet. In these times things have changed. Trends are different. The more we support private schools, the more we prepare our community, not just ourselves and our children, the more we prepare our community to prosper in the future, to prosper in the future. More and more we are going to see government burdened financially to finance our public schools. And we are going to see society growing in numbers and growing in problems just like it is now. It's not going to change. It's going to continuosly grow in numbers and grow in problems. The problems of living in these big cities is going to get greater and greater. It's going to take more and more tax money, government funding to keep civilization, to keep some sign or some sanctuary of civilization. So we have to be able to look into the future, our leaders, our readers, our literate.
Look into the future, see what the future has in store for us. And you'll see that if you want to be successful, you have to put more importance on education. You are now being challenged by newcomers who come here and they score higher on the test than average Americans score. So the American public of yesterday is challenged by newcomers today to even appreciate knowledge more in the world, to have more academic achievement. If you don't, you're going to find yourself way behind them. And maybe that's G-d's plan, I don't know. But I know I'm not going to believe it until I can't do anything about it. I'm going to try to do something about it. And the way we do something about it is prepare for it now. Support our private schools. We need private schools. These public schools can't teach us Islamic life. Even if they hire a Christian or a Jew or even the Muslim to work in the public school and teach us Muslim life, Islamic life, you'll be better off having your own Muslim school doing it because that situation will not give you what your own situation will give you.
I was told by an FBI who was questioning me during a couple times for the Nation Of Islam and I had been excommunicated, I had been put out. So he was questoning me and he was asking me questions about my father. He took over the conversation qand start telling me things about my father. Now I know they better information getters than I am. He didn't shock me at all. So he said "Your father didn't just give money to Muslims. "Your father gave money to needy Christians also. And I hesitated, I thought, and a couple of scenes came back to my mind, and I saw my father in the dining room at the table and I recall him saying that he had sent some money to some Christians who needed some help. So I told him, I said yes, I'm aware of that.
After I hesitated for a few minutes, couple minute I said, I said, yes sir, I'm aware of that. Maybe it was just 15 seconds. It seemed like it was a long time though. I hesitated probably 15 seconds. So I hesitated and I told him, I said yes and I am aware of that. Yes. Alright. When we plan our life, especially our schools, we should plan these schools so that we help Muslim children not only attending our Muslim school but Muslim children who are in public schools. We should have a program also for Muslim children who are in public schools. So then we assist them with their courses, with their subjects that they're having difficulty with. So we need to give them tutorial help to help them make better grades in the public schools. We can do that. That don't cost us a whole lot. So while we are not able to provide enough schools or enough quality schools to take care of all of the children of our parents, let us assist those parents with their children who are attending, children that are attending public schools by offering a program for them too, where they can get Islamic education on the weekend. And where they can get assistance tutorial help during the week and on the weekend.
Community life is the full life, complete life. Community life is the full life. It's a complete life. Community life is where you can have full expression for your life, your whole life. Where you express your spiritual life. That's number one. You go and join your brothers and sisters on Friday at the Jumu'ah prayer. And you go and join them at any time that you can that's possible for you. You join them in the five daily prayers as a group and you pray with your brothers and sisters. This is the spiritual life. Yes. And you work to improve your financial situation so that you can help that spiritual life. Don't you know if spiritual life didn't need help, G-d wouldn't have put it in a body. G-d put it in a flesh and blood body. My spiritual life can't communicate to you except through this instrument my flesh body. It needs to. Take away this flesh body, I can't reach you with any communication. Some people believe that you can, but that's spooky.
Yes. So value this physical body and know that the physical body that you live in is a sign from G-d to you. That as you need a house for your own soul, your community life needs physical structures for you to express your life in and express your life upon that life. Yes. You need stores, you need businesses for business life. You need cultural centers for cultural expression, for weddings, for child celebrations, for new birth celebrations, et cetera, for plays that will instruct the people to have the good life. You need this. No wonder they call us spooks. We don't have a body out here in the world.
While mentioning culture, I want to mention to you something that really made me feel sad. And that was, I thought that when I went to speak at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York, that I would be speaking in a facility that was owned by the Percy Sutton family, his business partners and his family, his family. Percy Sutton is an African American of prominence, a political figure, a great political figure in the vein of Adam Clayton Powell and well-respected person, and still is deserving of that respect. But somehow the management of that theater didn't go well for him and they lost the Apollo Theater. And then whenwere leaving they told me that we were renting from the Jews. Now that's not to say that that's bad. Maybe it's this better that you renting from a Jew. Sometimes it's better that a Jew is doing business with you. I've had some good Jews to open up opportunities for me. Yes I have. When I didn't have a job I had a Jew to befriend me. So this old idea that all Jews are like those that used to be in Jew town, cheating us and robbing us. Telling you "How you like that suit?" I remember them. "Look in the mirror. Look in the mirror," and he got a hand full of the suit holding it like this so it looks neat and tight in the front, but you don't know that, you just feel it. "Oh yeah." You get home man, you want to go back there and kill that Jew.
So we have a lot of bad experience with Jews, but that was a certain group of Jews who was crooked as hell. And they was of course use a Jew town, a marketplace called Jew town. But you could get some good hot dogs there. I'm telling you, some good hot dogs, Chicago style kosher hotdog. Man, they all right. My son say, daddy, don't say hot dog. He said, I don't like that expression. I say, what should I say son? He said say franks. Been hearing a lot of talk about the one world order. Now we know people look at the one world order differently. I guess the President and our State Department, when they think about the one world order, I'm sure they think about how the business life of the planet Earth is becoming one system now. Just one life system. No more like it used to be.
Each country having its separate economy and working separately and not interacting or really knowing its dependence on the other economies. But now that's gone, that time is gone. So we do have one world economically order. And I'm sure that we would like to improve the political order, we would like to see the political units or that is the Nations, the separate nations coming together to cooperate with each other for the good life, for peace and the good life of all of us, of all nations. But I don't know if that's what they have in mind for the political order. I don't know. But I do believe it's that. I know one thing. I served as a member of a special committee serving the President during the time of the Democrats in the White House, President Clinton. And I was working directly with the State Department at that time, and I was given that opportunity by the going out Secretary of State.
And he saw that I was in before the next Secretary of State came in. But our work didn't really start until the next Secretary had been established in that position. And I do have experience that tells me that the United States government, under the President of the United States, is very much interested in seeing peace and justice for all people, for all nations in the world. Now that is interfered with by private interest. Private interest makes it very difficult for any government to achieve all that it wants. But again, we must understand our responsibility to not only contribute to our own government or to our own community government. And don't think you don't have a government, a Muslim community must have its own government. Its government is seen in its organization and in its leaders. That's your government. Your government, the religious government is seen in it's organization and in its leaders.
If the organization is good and the leaders are good, you have good government. And our government lives under the protection or have the protection if we live with respect for others. Our government, our religious government has the protection of the government of these United States. And we should be obligating ourselves as much as other Americans obligate themselves to contribute to this government to make it better. If we are not pleased with it, let us be as other free Americans who are self-assertive, aggressive, and who appreciate their freedom and understand they have the right to influence the shape and the future of the course of their government. Let us be as energetic, as enthusiastic and as responsible as they are. Let us join them in working to make our government better, have our government better for all of us.
I was reading in the Qur'an, I'm a student of the Bible too, very good student of the Bible. Some of you preachers would be surprised what I can share with you if you meet me in private. G-d has blessed me with an understanding of the scripture and I thank G-d for it. And I'd like to share with good people what G-d has blessed me with. Yes. So I read in the Bible regarding Jesus Christ, Peace be Upon him, and I read in the Qur'an about Jesus Christ. And I read how his disciples said Jesus was calling for assistance for people to help him. And his disciples replied to him, "We are your helpers to G-d. We are your helpers to G-d. We are your helpers under G-d. We are your helpers for G-d. We are your helpers to bring G-d's cause to G-d, to bring it where He wants it to go, to take it where He wants it to go." Now I firmly believe that African-American people have a history that justified G-d's intervention. I believe African-American people have a history that justified G-d selecting the best of us to lead us into a model life that will be a model life to help strengthen the faith and trust that is in people to make this world a better life, a better world and a better life for all. You are chosen. Thank you. Peace be Unto you, Asalaam Alaikum.


