04/12/1998
IWDM Study Library 
Celebrating Life 
Oakland, Ca

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Moderator:
The following lecture titled "Celebrating Life" was recorded Sunday, April 12th, 1998 at the Oakland Convention Center in Oakland, California. The lecturer is Imam W Dean Mohammed, Muslim American spokesman. And now Imam Mohammed.
IWDM:
As Salaamu Alaikum again, Peace be unto you or Peace be upon you. Really, for the Muslim is "Peace be upon you." This religion obligates us to be responsible for keeping the peace, for keeping the peace. And we want the good life. And Allah wants all of us who are sane members of the Muslim society to accept responsibility for keeping the peace, for keeping the peace. We are the people of the Book, the Scripture, people of the Promise, pardon me, in the Scripture that they would be peace loving and peacemakers. Peace loving people and peacemakers. So, we are the People of Peace. Muslim means peace. Islam means peace. Our greetings mean peace. And it obligates us to keep the peace and be responsible for the peace.
Life, celebrating life, it so happens that this is a time of the year when three great religions are really in a sense celebrating life. Eid al Adha for us is a celebration of life. The life that Allah wants for us. That our Lord, the Creator G-d wants for us. It's a celebration of life and it's a victory for life. It celebrates the victory for life. The Hajj is contention. Hajj. Hajj means contention. Forces, forces are meeting. Forces are coming against each other for Hajj. Forces are coming against each other. And that's life. Life is contention. The forces of life are in contention with the forces of death. And, you know, death comes in many forms, like life comes in many forms. Life comes in the human form. The human form comes in many forms. Emotional form, spiritual form, and a rational form, rational form. We have all these forms in life. Death comes in many forms, just like life comes in the many forms. Death comes in emotional form. Sometimes our emotions kill us. Our emotions destroy us and also our reasoning kills us, our reasoning kills us.
The satan suggested a kind of reason, a kind of reasoning to our father Adam, peace be upon him. And he was deceived by the kind of reasoning that the satan suggested to him. So, he accepted that kind of reasoning and death took away his life. A form of death took away his life. He had the life before and he lost it. He lost it to the death. A kind of reasoning that the satan sold him. And we know that Scripture says, "Sin is death." Sin is death. Bad morals take away the good morals and the good morals are life. The bad morals is the death. So, death and life are in contention. Is that correct? They're in contention. And G-d put us here to be victorious. Allah created us to be victorious, not to be losers, not to be defeated.
He put us here to be victorious and He trusted us in the arena of the universe. Isn't that something? G-d created a little creature like me and trusted me to be in the arena of the universe and really equipped me to survive and be victorious. But I just need a lot of help, that's all. I need a lot of help to survive the many forms of death that come at me. But thank G-d with the help of His Revelation, we can always be victorious. Because the help that we need in the Revelation to even survive satan's suggestions is right in the Book, right in the Revelation itself. The help we need to survive the suggestions of satan himself, that our Father fell victim to... Adam. Our Father fell victim to the suggestions of the satan. But with the Quran, we don't have to fall victim to the suggestions of the satan.
So really, G-d created us for life...G-d created us for life. To have the life...to have the life, the good life. And the life, once we know it, the life is our salvation. The life itself is our salvation. Our salvation is the life that G-d chose for us, that G-d created us for. That's our salvation. The life itself is the salvation. I repeat, the life itself is the salvation. So we don't expect salvation to come to us from persons.
Salvation comes to us in the life...comes to us in the life. If we accept the life that is the salvation. Yes, this is the Old Testament. This is the New Testament. This is Islam. Yes. If we accept the life that G-d created us for, that is our salvation. And the call of Islam, isn't it the call to life? It's the call to life. "Hayalal Salah" That's the first thing we call, we get in the morning supposed to get it five times a day, "Hayalal Salah" and they translate it, "Come to Prayer." But Hayah means life. Hayah, the word Hayah means life. And here Hayah is used as an imperative. A command. A command and an imperative, an order telling us come to life. "Hayalal Salah" so actually it's an order to accept the life, to come to the life. Where is the life, firstly? The life is in G-d's Guidance.
The life is in G-d's Guidance. And we receive the life from G-d's Guidance. And that life comes into us from G-d's Guidance. And once it comes to us, comes into us, it becomes our life. So actually, to start with, we are asking for life. The little baby, newborn baby that comes here, it opens its mouth, and it gasps, and it breathes. It's asking for life. And then we give it the support it needs. And it begins to come into the life, into the life of a person, a human being, a person in the human environment or the social environment with mom and daddy and the children. It comes into the human life that G-d wants for it. But that life can only keep us for so long without the Guidance of G-d. The satan is too much of a challenge for us having only that life that the social environment enabled us, enables us to come into.
Because the satan, he has a bigger...he has a bigger influence to attract us than the social life influence. So, he will come in later and take us away from that good innocent baby life and we'll find ourselves in hell if we are not careful, he will invite us to the life that will be hell for us if we are not careful. So, G-d has to reveal His way and reveal the life. So, the call to the Muslim every day is, "Hayah", "Come alive." That's what it means. "Hayah alal Salah", "Come alive to Prayer. Come alive to Prayer". Now we...it means wake up, be conscious. Become conscious. And consciousness is a life. When a human being loses consciousness, the medical profession will say that person is dead. If they can't be brought back to consciousness, they say they are medically or clinically dead, right? They'll be clinically dead just like a vegetable.
No human life exercise there in that body. So, this is the call to life is a call to become conscious. Conscious of yourself and of your obligation to G-d who created you. Become conscious. Now, when we come to the Prayer, what are we going to be given? We think of Prayer as Prayer. And very few of us will have it dawn on our minds that really our Prayer is the Quran. Our Prayer is the whole Quran. And in the month of Ramadan, we follow the Prayers. And when the month of Ramadan is finished, we have heard, recited and followed the whole Quran in Prayer, whole Quran in Prayers. This is what is so special for Islamic Prayer, the Muslim Prayer. And by the way, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said in about 1959, I think it was, he published it in an article of his. He said, "There is no greater Prayer form than the Muslim Prayer form."
That's what The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said. You know, some of us, we only remember what the white man...what The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said about the white man. But I remember what he said about G-d, about Prayer, about Islam, about Muslims. I remember a lot of things he said. And to me it's much more important than just remembering what he said about white folks. Yes. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said in this article that was published in the paper, New Amsterdam, I think it was The Amsterdam News, Amsterdam News, a Black publication. He said that there's no greater Prayer form or service than the Muslim Prayer form, or the Muslim Prayer service. He also put out in a little Prayer book, he put out a little Prayer book at the time to help us learn how Muslims pray.
That didn't last very long, but he did do it. He did do it. Which tells us that that was one of his concerns was to have us learn the real Muslim way. Yes. So, getting back to the life now, celebrating the life. The life then is G-d's Word, isn't it? The real life that we are called to is the Quran and the Quran is G-d's Words. So, the real life is G-d's Words. We are asked to come to G-d's Word for the life G-d wants in us.
Come to Prayer. Hayah, living, living, alive. Come living, come alive to Prayer. And what is the Prayer? What's going to support that life? Salat. The Salat. And what is the Salat? The Word of G-d? Haya alla Salah. Come living, come alive upon what? The Salat. And G-d says every creature that He has made, birds and all, they know their mode of Salat. So, this Salat is a bigger... See, it takes the Islamic philosophers to really discuss these things to us and bring out the great messages, the great messages for us, for our life that are hidden... hidden in the core of these terms. Hidden in the composition of these terms. Great message, "Come to life". Come alive and come to the life. So, the life is Prayer, the life is our Prayer. Pray five times a day. Why five? Because life is five. Life is five, life is five. The life in community is five.
It can't be ordered by six or by seven. It must be ordered by five because the common person must be able to understand the order of his society and be able to share responsibility for the order of his society. So, the real order for ordering society is the order that respect the common five senses of man.
We can't have a society based upon intuition or ordered by intuitiveness. We can't have a society based solely upon moral life or moral taste. It must be a society that respects the common rational senses of every person, male and female, young and old. And this is the way civilization have moved. Civilization have moved to respect the five senses of man. You know, some people have six point stars, some people have eight point stars representing their order, their social order. We have five point star in most of the nations have five points star representing the social order that the people, that the citizens must uphold and live under. You see, that's the order of the common man. And that was a great, great American during the revolution who said, "Give me liberty or give me death. Give me liberty or give me death". And liberty for even the intellectual is the liberation of his common sense.
I heard, watching television and they were giving this lawyer a lot of attention on TV. I forget his name now and I got it in my notes, but I didn't come out here with that today. But I often, I refer to this to get us to appreciate common sense, healthy common sense, natural life common sense. He was asked to explain what accounted for all his wins in court. And he said, "Well, most of my opponents", he said "they come to court with the law books". He said, "I come to court with the law books and common sense". With the law books and common sense. And one of the, again, one of the great Americans who helped us get slavery off our backs and come to a liberating idea of what life is or what democracy is. He said, pardon me, he didn't say, he wrote a book putting importance on common sense. Paine. What is his full name? Thomas Paine. Common sense. That was what he brought to the people, common sense. And he appealed to the citizens to respect what is common sense, so they could break the grip of old ideas on them and come to a more liberal, a liberal society, a more liberal perception, a better perception or clear perception of what a liberal society should look like, you know. Common sense.
So, G-d created us with common sense. G-d created us with common sense. And if we going to be alive, we have to be alive as common-sense people. We see common, we see the five senses first in their role in the biological body. In the flesh body, you know. We see with our eyes, we see visually, concrete objects or objects that we can perceive with the physical sight, with our eyes. That's the sense of sight, huh? One of the great senses, the sense of sight. And we smell objects that are in the air that give off aroma or some kind of scent with our nose. The sense of smell. And we hear the sound of objects with our ears, the sense of hearing. And we tastes things put in our mouth to see if it's salty or sweet or sour, bitter or whatever with our tongue. And that's the sense of taste. That's four. And we feel things with our skin. The sense of touch. Sense of touch. So, we have these five senses in the physical body, but these five senses also have counterparts in the abstract body. So, perception with the eye should be associated with a higher evolution of perception.
That's perception in the intellect. So, we see also with the intellect, that's a higher perception, that's a higher sense. And all of these are common senses that we have by our natural creation. Our natural creation has provided us with these common senses and their counterparts. And the rise or evolution of the senses. Perception in the body, physical body is evolved to perception in the intellect. Smell in the physical body, evolves to intuitiveness, intuitive power in the soul. Hearing in the ear evolves to an intuitive hearing, that's above hearing with just the ear in the intellect, in the intellect. So, all of these senses, even the touch, we... our touch, our sense of touch and the physical body, evolves to moral touch or I would say emotional touch in the abstract body, emotional touch. We know what feels good emotionally, what feels bad emotionally.
How we should respond to that feeling emotionally. This is a higher evolution. This is in the abstract body. So, all of these senses are firstly in the biological body, their flesh and blood body, but they evolve. The human being is an evolving life. Rising life rising to higher planes of reality, higher planes of perception, consciousness, they say. Higher planes of consciousness. So, this is the human being, this is our common inheritance. These are our common properties, our five senses are our common properties. And you know, there's a story about Prayers, the number of Prayers that we say how we came to have these five Prayers ordered. And the story says that Moses saw Muhammad going to G-d for Guidance and he told Muhammad, peace be upon the Prophets, he said... I'm giving it to you shortened in my own version of it. Okay? He said, "My experience tells me that you need to ask G-d to shorten the Prayers, because we was praying 50 and it's little bit too much."
So, he suggested to the Prophet that he ask G-d to shorten the Prayers. So, G-d did, G-d shortened the Prayers to five instead of 50, five Prayers. Now I don't know if that hadith is really a sound hadith or not, you know. I don't know how much to trust that hadith, but I do trust the wisdom of that hadith. But to say I really believe the Prophet said that I can't be sure, I can't be sure that he really said that. But I do trust the wisdom of that hadith and what it's saying that the leader must lead the people through and respect for their common sense. He must lead them through their common sense, communicate to them through their common sense and lead them through their common sense and with respect for their common sense. Five. 50 to me implies an educated perception of your common senses.
That's what 50 to me implies. An educated perception of your common sense. In other words, you are intellectually conscious of your five senses in your body. You see, what I'm sharing with you now. What I've been sharing with you. The higher senses, how the senses graduate and how the five move up into high planes of perception and reality. See, that's okay for this discussion, but we want to help everybody out there in the street. We better not try to have all this discussion with them. We just, all the society, so the society respects the healthy life of the five senses and supports and feeds the healthy life of the five senses. And that's what we should do, you know. And then you take care of the business.
The Quran is the Word of G-d and the Quran feeds life on all levels, feeds life on all levels. So, the most uneducated one of us is fed amply, sufficiently by the Quran when we hear it. And the most avid, one of us for learning for knowledge is also fed amply, sufficiently, when you hear the Quran. It's actually always ahead of us, bigger than us and ahead of us. The Word of G-d is always bigger than our minds and ahead of our minds.
Those fateful students, the scholars of Quran, they accept what G-d has Revealed and they believe that the Book is enough for us till the Day of Judgment. And no matter how long we human beings live on this earth, it will be supplying them with Guidance, with the light, the Guidance and the way to have a life and to have it as the Bible says "more abundantly." It caused us to, "Kauthar, inna a'taynaka kawthara"..."Surely we have given you abundance"..."Fasalli lirabbi wa in'har"... "Therefore pray to your G-d. Make Prayer to G-d and strive hard, strive hard". Prayer and effort. Life and effort. Isn't that what life is? Life is, life and effort. No effort, you lose a life. Life and the effort, make the firm effort for the good life. Now to have the life G-d wants us to know that He is the Giver of Life. G-d is the Giver of Life, the same One who gave us this biological life that we must have in order to have a presence in the world, to have the life, to have consciousness, and to be living in a real world, we have to have this biological flesh and blood body.
The same One that provided for you a home for your first life will give you the second life. He's going to give you the second life. What is the second life? Clear vision. How to reach the Destiny He created you for. He created you not just to be here, but He created you to make progress here until you get all of the good excellence of mind and spirit and beauty... beauty. Some of us ignore beauty as a motive in our life. G-d wants us to get all the good life that He have created for us. And to get that we must not just be here, we must make effort and make progress on the road. And we must increase day by day our worth to ourselves and to human society. This is growth. That's the real growth to increase our worth to ourselves and to human society. G-d tells us that He created us like a plant. And when you study plants, oh you can get so many beautiful messages, so many eye-opening messages from the life of plants. We think of a tree, you know, "Oh that's nothing but a simple tree".
But look, that tree does not live, was not created... maybe it, I don't know what it lives for I can't talk to it..., but when I study it, I know that it is not existing... put it that way... for itself alone. The tree just serving life, right? It's a life. Serving life with beauty, with food, with beauty, and everything is serving life. Then some trees, like many plants, they give you seeds that you can hold until spring returns and get a bigger harvest. Get a bigger harvest than you got last year because of more seeds, more seeds. And if you're a good farmer or a good study of the person who studied this, you will learn how to select seeds. And the life that you are using will give you the knowledge of how to even get better life than they gave you last year or 10 years ago by selection.
And it ain't no complicated thing. I can give you one lesson in agriculture that you'll go to school eight years or ten years for, and that is selection. If you want string beans that look like the chain store, the supermarket string beans. When you plant your seeds and you get string beans, take the straight string beans, the ones that look perfect like you want them. Save the seeds. Take the ones that's curved and not like you want and save them separately. Next time you plant, plant them separately and you'll get all straight ones from the straight string beans. And you get all bent ones or sickle-shaped ones, from the sickle shape. Ones that you got, seeds that you collected. That's by selection. And if you get so many after a while you say, "I don't care for these sickle shape string beans."
You can boil them in the pot, and they make nice bean soup, and you'll have all, nothing but straight ones growing in your yards. I know because I've done it. My wife and children will tell you my string beans looked better than the string beans they had in the Jewels Food store. Mine were best. They were the prettiest. Because I selected them myself. I selected only the best and I attended to them, and I thank G-d put a little green on my thumb or something. I believe I had a little help from the unseen forces too. Yeah, yeah, I do. Yes. So, life...life. G-d wants us to look at the whole life that He created, plants, animals, yourself. G-d said, "They're signs in the Heavens and they're signs in the earth and also signs in you". So, look at everything for the Signs of G-d so that you read the Messages of G-d in the natural created world and benefit from it.
G-d doesn't tell us He made our life like a plant just for us to hear it and stop. G-d wants us to think. That's why He says, "And think for surely thinking profits you". Thinking by thinking you will profit, P R O F I T. Profit, gain, have gain, increase, more of what you want. Jew, by the way, I'd like to throw a little humor in here. The Jew, by the way, was sitting in a conference. We had high level conference of religious people working for peace in the world. And they kept on talking about the Prophets, Christians and a few Muslims too.
They kept all talking about the Prophets of Scripture. So, I wanted to just get a reaction from the Jewish Rabbi. So, I told him, I said, "Aren't they, aren't those your Prophets they're talking about?" And he knew, by the look on my face that I was making humor, you know. I say, "Aren't those your Prophets they're talking about?" He said, "Mohammed," he said, "Imam Mohammed among the Rabbis", he say, "We often say we have given them Prophets and losses." So, they see Prophets as profits and losses, or gains and losses. And that's right, you know. It depends upon your attitude. You go in the Book, he'll get nothing but losses if you got the wrong attitude.
Imam was right. They have to have the right attitude, the right disposition on the Path of G-d. If you don't have the right disposition, you'll get nothing but losses. But if you got the right disposition, you'll get Profits. Profits yeah. And that's what CPC wants. Profits for us. Yes. That's our business venture. Yes. So, life, it's all about life. Shouldn't we celebrate life? Are Muslims to celebrate life? I believe so. I believe so. We have two Eids, two main Eids that the Prophet left with us. Peace be upon him, Muhammad. G-d left them in Quran and he left them with us. And they're the Eids of Fitr and the Eid of Sacrifice, Abraham's Sacrifice. Now you think about this.
One is called Eid al-Fitr. And when you look at the word "Fitr", Fitr means "Original life" or "Original nature." Celebrating original life, or original nature. That's what Eid al-Fitr is. Eid al-Adha...Eid al-Adha is a celebration of the brighter life. "Adha" means "more brighter." You just left... one Eid is only three months behind you. Now here comes another Eid that follows it. And it is called Eid al-Adha, Adha means more brighter. Brighter. Brighter in what respect? In every respect. Not just brighter in the sense of more enlightened. And it is, it represents more enlightenment or "The Enlightened." It really represents The Enlightenment.
The first is "The Life", the second is, "The Enlightenment", the correct life, and then enlightenment. So, al-Adha is the life of enlightenment. And it is also the life of more joy and pleasure. Yes, more joy and pleasure. Brightness means happiness too. Happiness. When my life is bright, that suggests that I'm pleased, I'm happy, I'm not sad. When my life is dark or dull, it suggests that my life is not happy, not pleased, not... "I'm sad, I'm sad," downhearted so to speak. So, it is Adha means the first one was bright.
The first one was bright. Now here comes the second one that's Adha. It implies that the first one was bright, this was brighter. So, the Eid of al-Fitr is bright, but the Eid of al-Adha is brighter. Why? Because one is the natural life in its excellence. The second one is the intellect in its excellence. Do I need make some more connections for you all? (No.) Okay. All right. Thank you. Praise be to Allah. Praise be to G-d. Yes. So, this is the two. So, the first celebrates life. Our first Eid is a celebration of life. Celebrating the life of restraint, the life of discipline, of the appetites. We discipline the appetites. We restrain the appetites for G-d's Pleasure. So, no thing that G-d forbids to come into this body comes in there. This body does not live for itself. It lives for G-d. "So darling, you feel sexy? No, the sun is still up. You have to wait."
Now you list the other way around. The darling is a man, a male, "Darling, you sexy?", "No sweetie, you have to wait. The sun is up." Yes. So, when we finish the 30 days, 29 or 30 days of the fast month and new moon appears telling us the month has ended, there's a celebration and we are celebrating the life, the victory of the life of discipline. That discipline itself for G-d's pleasure. Isn't that wonderful? And then here comes the Eid al-Adha. And we do the 10 days of Hajj.
And contention, life in contention, life struggling against the forces that bring death, moral death, spiritual death, mental death, ignorance, etc. Not just physical death. And we are victorious. We have completed the Hajj. We are victorious. Come down from the Mount of Arafat... come down from the Mount of Arafat, celebrating the Praise of G-d. Lifting our voices, glorifying Him with our tongues and our spirit and our expressions, huh? Going down from the mountain to the Sacrifice of Abraham the next day. Isn't that beautiful? Yes. And we go down from the mountain to the Sacrifice of Abraham the next day on the 10th. And the Prophet said, "And be aware of five, before five be your failure." Be aware of five. Take charge of five. Before five undo you, be your undoing.
Five What? Five senses. Again, returning to the common man's protection, common person's protection. Our five senses. "Be aware of five before five be your undoing"... means be aware of what your eyes look at. What your ears open up to. What your nose sniffs. What your tongue speaks out for. Huh? What your hands want to touch. Be aware. Be aware of five on a high plane that G-d Guides you to before these five in the gross body be your undoing.
Praise be to Allah. The Prophet, you know, the Prophet put it in other words says, "Plan for the day. Plan for sickness while you're healthy." An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So, the Prophet gave us to it in a lesson like that. But I think what I've said it says the same thing. It says the same thing. Yes. So, Islam is not only Spirit, but also knowledge for Guidance. Knowledge for guiding the life on the Path of G-d. On the Path of G-d. So, Islam wants us to be conscious followers of the way. Conscious followers of the way. We must follow the Way, the Path consciously.
We can't accept to be following the Way under the Spirit. There's no Holy Ghost sermon, Holy Ghost arousing sermon in Islam to get you to be unconscious, but in the grip of the spirit so that the spirit can hold you from the world. No, that's not Islam, that's not the Path of Islam. The path of Islam is to awaken your mental awareness, your mental awareness, to awaken your mind and then guide your mind with the knowledge that your body is asking for. Your body, G-d created it. And it's asking for protection. It's asking for Guidance. It's asking for the life. And Islam wants your mind to wake up to the need to be fed by the food that G-d gives in the Word. The Word of G-d feeds us and gives us the life that we need. This is the beauty. And we celebrate the life so that the Revelation that G-d gave Abraham our second Father was a Revelation to bring us education, enlightenment so that we would be an educated society and enlightened society and get all the benefits of G-d's Creation, science, technology, and everything.
That's what G-d created us for. So, this progress that we have seen on this earth for enlightened and industrial societies is what G-d Created us for. So don't just think of Prayer as something from G-d. And think of fasting in the month of Ramadan. That's from G-d. Eating after the fast is also from G-d. And riding on more than just the spirit. Riding on a boat or airplane a 747, that's also from G-d. Yes, all of it is from G-d. He created the earth and you to have this great meeting. Yes, the intellect and the life in us embraces the creation. And the creation opens up to us saying He created all of this to be our tilt. Huh? To be our tilt for us to engage it, plow it. And Samson say, "You wouldn't have got this from me if you hadn't plowed my heifer."
You want us to engage it, to plow it. It's our tilt. The whole physical environment that He created. And just like we engage a female in lawful marriage, or lawful bonding. G-d has approved of this. We are husband and wife. If we would have the same sacred respect for the relationship Allah want us to have with this external world we call the material existence, we can have good products from this external world and many of them that will give us pleasures. Just like the beautiful, good obedient children give us pleasures at home. When we look at them, we look at wife sometimes want to kiss her again. We just got through kissing her, and we thought we had kissed enough, and we thought we were satisfied. But we look at the children... "Girl, come here, let me kiss you again." Beautiful children, healthy minded children, obedient children. We can have the same relationship with the material world. Celebrate life. Peace. As Salaamu Alaikum.
Moderator:
For more on the ministry of Imam W Deen Mohammed, Muslim American spokesman, call 17082019692. Or write, post office box 1061, Calumet City, Illinois, 6409. For WDM Publications, call 17088627733. Or write, post office Box 1944, Calumet City, Illinois, 60409. For Muslim Journal, see local distributor and thanks for listening.


