2006 April 7th
First Sunday Lecture Chicago, IL
Imam W.D. Mohamed


Speaker 1:
[inaudible 00:00:00] today, speaking from Homewood, Illinois, is our brother leader Imam W Deen Mohammed. Takbir.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Excuse me for being slow and late getting to the mic here. We want to greet all of you in the radio audience, listening audience, with peace our greeting as Muslims is as salaam alaikum.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
It's a beautiful day here today in the Chicago area, here in Homewood, Illinois. I just left Philadelphia. I was invited there to speak at a high school, Martin Luther King High School there. 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 Muslim and about a third of them were Christians. Their ages perhaps ranged from about 16 to 24 or 25, somewhere around there. I was really impressed with their performance. They said the right things, and they addressed the right problems and said the right things.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
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've often heard that the news wants sensationalism. They want what's sensational, what excites you and gets your attention right away. Tragedies and bad things that shock your moral mind, your moral nature and conscience. We're seeing a lot of that because it gets news. That is deserving of the news.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
The problem I have with it is they don't come back and balance it with the good news that's going on all the times in our lives that hardly ever gets reported, except in part 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. They're desperate. They're just as desperate as we are to help their brothers and sisters of their age who are in real, real trouble with their lives that are at risk. They're doing what they can and trying very desperately to help them. I just want to share that with you.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
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. Don't put it down just anywhere. That jacket cost a little money. A brother gave it to me. That's a gift. I'm sentimentally attached to that jacket. All right.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
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 schools was there. I better share some more information with you. The superintendent of Philadelphia schools was there and very much interested in my coming there, in my presence there. So much so that he said to me, he said, "We're going to plan for you to visit again. We didn't have enough time to prepare for your visit." He said, "We're going to prepare for your visit again." He said, "Next time, we're going to have a bigger facility, and it's going to be filled with students." That tells me the superintendent, he likes something I'm saying.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Everyone is born to grow and become mature enough, grown and mature enough, to manage one's own personal life, your body, your human life. But, if the environment is filled with things that attract your interests, some of those things may overpower your own will to govern your own life. 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 makeup, what will be enough for the management of our personal life and our own bodies.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
The importance of being in condition is what we want to talk about for a little while here, the importance of being in condition. To manage has his own functions of life. The human body needs to be in the condition that is known to work for it. To have its own composition, number one, to have its own composition. How can one lose one's own composition? The heart, the mind 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. Or mind and heart.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Along with these two organs, we have many other organs, but these are the most important: heart and mind. The heart is pumping life through 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 or 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.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
The brain, it's like the chief. It's like the boss. The brain is like the boss. I'll continue to read this, read what I've written here, and afterwards we'll 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.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
The human body grows to completeness, nine months usually in the body in the mother, and the cord after nine months, the baby is delivered. The cord connecting the baby to the mother is cut. The body is separated from the mother.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
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 until it reaches its 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 will repeat that. The human mind has to be in the condition that is known to work for it. Then for, the first composition of human life, the human mind, needs to be in the condition known to work for it.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Now, before we were exposed to so many things that take our attention, our minds' attention, these big cities. When we were living in rural areas in the South or in the North, where there were not a lot of distractions. Life was so easy to manage. But, you bring your young children up to the big city, it becomes very, very difficult, very, very difficult to manage a life.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
In these late years, the last 10 years or more, even the small towns have suffered the big town problems. Drugs, violence, etc. Needless self-destruction. Senseless, I should say, self-destruction, etc. 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.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Changing lifestyles brings on change in thinking and change condition of mind. Changing lifestyles. If you want a change your mind, all you have to do is change your lifestyle. If you want to lose your mind, 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.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
What's going to happen to the body? The body now is confused. The body will warn the mind, "Hey, this isn't right. You're doing something now that ain't good for you." The body will warn the mind. "Hey, you're eating too much." "You're laughing too much. You need to balance it. Come on. Come back. Get serious again." The body will warn you.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
I know you say the conscious and the subconscious and all that. I'm giving you a language that you can immediately 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 your body will maybe urge you a little stronger. After a while, the body has no more energy to spend on your mind. The body urges get weaker and weaker. After a while, you can't feel it. Then the body leaves you on your own. Leaves you on your own.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
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've done in our lifetimes. 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 saying, "Lord, you can't blame me for this. Judge, Supreme Court Judge, you 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 will 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. His mind made the decision to drug his mind, and I suffered the consequence."
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
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 human flesh is suffering terrible abuses, terrible abuses.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Now I want to share something else with you. That fellow who put that movie together, that is supposed to have Jesus Christ's story in it, and shows you how he was mistreated, how he suffered so much, let me tell you something. That's Christ, the human body. That ain't Christ the prophet. That is what we are doing to our own human bodies that G-d made, created, to serve us. To serve us a good life, and then we abuse it like that. 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.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Recently I read an article in Newsweek magazine, December the 5th, this year. That article was on anorexia. Anorexia. How many are familiar with the disease, the problem called anorexia. Oh good, about half of youl are. Now, think about this disease, anorexia. It affects children very young. Very young children. It also affects middle aged people. The article says that it affects blacks and Asians more than others, more than those that are not black or Asian.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Now, do we have some natural created susceptibility or vulnerability or weakness for this problem anorexia? I say no, but if we continue the lifestyle that we are coming to, we may in time have a genetic problem. It will 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 as it goes into the system of the bodies and affects the systems of the human body and eventually the human body will suffer the effects.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
What is worry? Worry is something invisible, isn't it? But, it can give you gray hair. It can give you bad nerves. It can deform your body, but it's a condition that goes into the mind that can affect your body. Anorexia, I believe, is a condition that has been brought on by these inhuman, abnormal, inhuman, insane lifestyles. Not only anorexia. Many other problems that we have are problems of bad mental dispositions and mindsets, bad lifestyles.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
We need to see these things clearly. 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 to work for the life of the mind and for the life of the body. 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.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Now, do you think everybody wants the public to have a change of mind? There are people making billions off of drugs, billions off of people drinking liquors in excess, billions off of people laughing themselves to the nuthouse. So, they keep you laughing. They want to keep you laughing. They know you're laughing yourself to the nuthouse, to the mental institution, but they'll keep you laughing. They'll tickle your funny bone until your mind becomes funny. Yes. They're not happy to hear me say these things.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
I mentioned recently during 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. Man began, we are told, in the Garden of Eden. To understand the Garden of Eden, let me tell you firstly that 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 a Garden of Eden and then human beings were made and got 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 grow out of animal makeup and animal performance to grow into the human mind so we can human life and human performance. We need time for that. Science will tell you it too eons of time to evolve human life, for human life to be formed on this Earth. Animals were here first.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
What do 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, don't want to do nothing but consume. You have no interest in building anything. You have no interest in giving anything to anybody. Your interest is just to dig in. It's not just food on the table that you get from Burger King, MacDonald's Kentucky Fried Chicken and places like that. Chinese food and all that. 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. You're hungry for a lot of things. Some are hungry for violence, right? Yes. Hungry for violence.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
You're becoming, the public that it is, is becoming a public driven by hunger like a mad beast, like an animal that can't ever get enough. They have to consume and consume and consume, never gets enough. Abnormal. Insane. Corrupt to the core. The environment is feeding you that. It's feeding you that.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
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. Look, we worry about being locked up in a jail physically, but we lock our own selves up in jail and can't move for human progress. We can't get on the road to human progress because we locked our own selves up in a jail. We look back at slavery and say, "Look what happened. 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 forefathers. You are allowing conditions to take over your life that are more cruel than those conditions that we suffered as a people long ago on the white man's plantation.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
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?
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
The answer is you have turned over the authority that G-d gave you to manage your own life. You've 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 your environment. Drugs take us down. Violence take us down. Stupid, silly fun destroys this people. Destroy our ability to manage our own lives as a people.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
We have to change. You heard it said as a man thinketh, so is he, and it's in the Bible, but it came from a philosopher. A philosopher first said it, "As a man thinketh, so is he." The Bible, 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. In the New Testament it changes somewhat, it says, "As a man thinketh in his heart," in his heart. That should help you understand what the problem is. The problem is letting your heart work with your mind to do wrong things. Your heart is the seat of your desires or like a symbol for your deepest hungers - your heart. You are thinking in your greed. You're thinking in your uncontrollable appetites. You're thinking there.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Perhaps all the brains need something in order for it to be energized. The brain doesn't energize itself. The brain is energized when the brain is in touch with something else. The brain has to be in touch with your heart to be energized. It has to be in touch with our appetite to be energized. Then once your brain is energized, it wants to serve the needs. The brain wants to serve the need in the heart.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
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. As long as it makes intelligent decisions, it qualifies to be in authority over the body. It qualifies to be in authority over your selection of things to fulfill appetites, because it knows how to distinguish between this and that, between what is good, 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. If you continue to ignore it, it won't even respond to you because 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 duty inside the human body, like the brain, like the heart.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
What we need to do is understand that life is not fun. Life is not a play thing. We are conditioned to in the new environment that we are in, the environment of entertainment and fun and going for pleasures and kicks. We are conditioned in this environment to behave towards the human body as though life is all about just having fun, just for play and not for real. It's for play. That's where all the problem is. That's where all the problem is.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Who are the biggest fun making people on the planet Earth? Tell me. I'm acting like I don't know. Did you say Africans? No. African Americans? Number one champ of fun and play and foolishness, African Americans. Number two champ, Africa. Yeah! Are we the champions of foolishness, fun and foolishness? We're the champions, and look at our condition.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Now, let's change the picture somewhat or the focus somewhat. When we study how life develops, human life that is, when we study how human life develops when it comes to maturity and making mature choices, it's no different from the way animal life develops. Baby puppies, little baby dogs called puppies, they play more than old dogs. Baby cub lions, they play more than old grown up lions. You can just go through it. Roosters. Little baby roosters play more than a grown up rooster. The older life gets, the more it gets away from fun foolishness and the more it gets towards seriousness and maintaining community life. That's life period, animal and man.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Shouldn't that tell us that we should guard ourselves against extremes of fun and foolishness? Now, we had help. We didn't get this crazy by ourselves. We got a lot of help. See, the market people, the commercial people, the market people, those who look for market everywhere to make money, to sell something, anything. Those market people, they spied us a few thousand years ago in Africa. Oh yeah. They looked at us and said, "Hey, here's a market, and a big one. These people are more given to fun than to serious matters, so let us start selling them things to feed that appetite they got for fun." They target Africa to sell Africa fun and foolishness. Yes.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Now, how come Africa was more vulnerable, a little bit more weak for such, I would say, schemes than Asians and others? Asia is a warm place. Africa is a warm place. Asia has its deserts. Africa has its deserts. Asia has some jungles. Africa has some jungles. They're much alike environmentally. But, the Africans live in closer proximity. You have asia so massive so big, the land is so big, so animals can stay far away from human beings. In Africa, man and animals live in a closer proximity.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Just like Asia, Africa has many monkeys. Monkeys look like humans and they seem to like fun. Even when a monkey is serious, to us it sounds like he's having fun. He might be [inaudible 00:35:21]. He might be warning another monkey, "Don't come over here," but he read it up as a monkey having fun. He's laughing. We think he's laughing. If you live in a close environment with him, pretty soon his antics will rub off on you. You carry yourself. You sneeze. Somebody sneeze. You don't have a cold. After a while another person sneeze. Something about the body just communicate something, certain things, and certain things are so deeply ingrained until it prompts the next person to do the same. [inaudible 00:35:58] "Achoo."
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Somebody laughs, another person laughs. Say, "What are you laughing about?" "I don't know, but he laughed." Yes, it's catching. They say it's catching. The behavior is catching. You see the monkey behave all his time is catching. Monkey also have very vulgar behavior. A monkey can do some nasty things in his monkey public. He ain't like a cat. Cat want to go in privacy. Cat can find somewhere private, cat go to get away from onlookers and take care of his private business.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
Certain animals, like pigs, monkeys and dogs, they have among them those that give themselves to public display of filth and nasty behavior, indecent behavior. Brother, you be careful taking your wife to the zoo. Especially to see the monkeys. You might have the embarrassment of your life. They're some nasty creatures. Scripture say that because of their continuous rejection of G-d and the lifestyle that G-d wants for them, G-d lets them regress and they became monkeys. Monkeys, not knowing their shame. Monkeys conscious of their shame but not responding to their shame, not being ashamed. Conscious of their shame, but their shame does not bother their minds.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
People become like that when they're taken over by forces in their environment and give their life to those forces and have those things ruling in their body. This ain't no new thing. It's an ancient thing. If you read Scripture, how they had false gods. People in ancient times, long ago. They had many false gods. They built statues, huge monuments, to their gods and named their gods [inaudible 00:38:28]. One named Muse, and the word "music" comes from that god, the god Muse. Music. This is no new thing.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
The science, the wise and those who know the science, the psychology behind these things, they won't tell you that you're worshiping Muse, but you are. There was never no real god named Muse that those people worshiped, but they gave themselves to fun and play. They loved to be entertained, so they built a god and they celebrated the worship of that god by calling the people at certain times to come in the presence of that god and have fun, like... What is that before Lent in New Orleans? Mardis Gras. Like the Mardis Gras takes place once a year. At certain times periodically in this history of ancient worship of false gods, they would have the people all come to a big festival where they would eat and drink and just let it all hang out. Have sex right before the god in the public in the presence of each other. Have sex with the women and everything. Just let all of it hang out.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
This ain't no new thing we see in the world today. It was an old trick playing on the minds of the people to reduce them to animals so that they don't have any intelligent mind to make intelligent choices. Therefore, the market is free to sell them anything and everything. I studied economics, and I read where - we have to stop in just a minute - I read where there was a great meeting of business people, businessmen. They met to see how they could stimulate the economy and get the people to buy more. They used to say you produce to supply needs. That was the whole theory in economics. The nature economics is to supply needs. They changed it. One of them came up with an idea. He said, "Let's create needs and sell any and everything." The moral life of the marketplace was lost when that idea came about. It was lost. There was a time when people selling you things in the market, they had a conscience. They wouldn't sell your children some of the things they're selling your children today, so that moral protection is gone.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
I have to conclude here because our first hour has passed. I hope that I will speak to you again next month at this time on the first Sunday. I couldn't speak on the first Sunday this time because somebody an [inaudible 00:41:40] came about and I had to prepare for it, and we put it one week up to the 9th instead of the 1st, but inshallahu G-d willing that is, I will be addressing live from this place here in Homewood, from this Homewood Inn facility we have here. Lovely facility. I will be addressing our live radio audience. We thank you for your attendance. We thank you for your presence in the radio audience.
Imam W. Deen Mohammed:
We pray always that we grow in goodness, we grow in health, we grow intelligently above all. Grow intelligently and manage our lives, accept responsibility for your own personal life and manage it against these evil forces, against these modern day false gods that are trying to take our life from us and take our children from us and wreck our families. We have to do something about it. We have to stand up to it. Please, be right minded people.


