11/10/1999
IWDM Study Library 
Emory University Atlanta Ga

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
As Salaamu Alaikum! And thank you, Ayesha. It's an honor to be here to address the topic along with the...as part of the program that you have here on this campus, on this prestigious campus of Emory University. We thank G-d for our life and our presence here in this time, this great time on earth. And the topic that we have been asked to address and that we have accepted to address is the importance of spiritual aspects and the balancing of spiritual and material life. Once an Imam was speaking to us from outside our Community, he was not Black, or African American, and he said, "You know, Islam is a religion that teaches us to take care of both worlds, the spiritual and the material." And I remembered that always because back then and even now, I have much more spiritual than I have material and it's not so comfortable for me, I need a little more material balance in my life. (Laughing) Let me...I forgot to put on my glasses. I have to put on my glasses, I need to have these glasses on so I can be more comfortable here reading my notes.
Yes. I'm a student of Islam. I'm a student of Quran, the Holy Book of more than one billion Muslims on this earth and I'm a student of the sayings and works or life of Muhammad the Prophet, the Prophet of Islam. And I owe all of my, I would say, credits to what Islam has done for my mind and what Muhammad has done for my self-esteem. Communities or societies tend to be characterized by the influence of the prevailing interests that gives form to their behavior... to their behavior. And in our African American community, we have had to struggle with our life, I think we still are not satisfied with what we have really established with our life, our behavioral life, how we would love to behave. Some of us have, but many of us haven't. We're not comfortable with our identity as a people, many of us are not comfortable at all with our identity as a people. We think that we need to become more African, many of us and some of us think we need to become more Islamic to be comfortable with our identity.
And others think that we just need to study our own makeup as a people and have the best of our minds guide us to a comfortable life or a comfortable identity. I think, for Muslims, the identity problem is solved. When we learn that we are Muslims by nature, Muhammad the Prophet said, "Everyone is born Muslim and is made other than Muslim because of circumstances that he is put in... that we are put in." So, this is a perception, or an idea of human constitution that we are happy with. I'm constituted by G-d. G-d has constituted me to be Muslim. And Muslim simply means to be obedient to G-d and to live the life of virtues and excellence and to strive always for improvement in my life. This is what I see as Muslim. That's the Muslim. And wanting to please G-d and wanting to strive, always, to have a better life, a better picture of myself before G-d and before the best of humanity.
So, this is a satisfying identity and I think when we speak of about humanity as Americans, when we speak of our humanity, the humanity that we are proud of and humanity that we hold sacred. We are actually talking about the Muslim identity. For the Americans, it's not the Muslim identity, but for us, it is the Muslim identity, the natural Muslim identity. Now, to become a conscious Muslim, we know, and a practicing Muslim, in the proper sense, we know we have to be familiar with the Quran, the teachings of the Quran, the Holy Book, the Commandments of G-d for Muslims, and we have to be familiar with the lifestyle of Muhammad, how he demonstrated Muslim life and Muslim behavior. G-d says we are people struggling, people struggling to establish ourselves. And certain developments have to form and we have to be successful with those developments or we never get where we want to go, where our souls want us to go. G-d says, "His Throne was established upon the water." Scripture, Quranic Scripture that is, wants us to be aware of the complexities of human life, nature and behavior.
We are told of stages of development. We are told of human life, man's life being given or fated to an existence and the hardship, struggle. Allah says, "The soul shall be given to toil, followed by more toil and then soon, you shall meet Him." Meaning your Lord. So, we believe that G-d is saying to us that we have been created to seek G-d, to seek Him for assistance, to seek Him for approval. And the difficulties that's in our way are put there to make us strive harder and to make us advance more. Without difficulty, we don't strive hard and without striving hard, we don't have much advancement. So, this is G-d's Way, this is the Way of G-d. And this is addressing the complexities of human life. We also are made aware of the role of emotions and reason and insight and deciding the shape an outcome of our life in society. Three steps are given in the Quran, the first step is identified as the step for the impetuous self... the impetuous self, demanding self. And I tried to understand what G-d is saying here and I've thought about the differences in little babies.
When you see that all the little babies, infants, a few days old, but they're different. Most infants will be calm, peaceful, but some, just here today and they seem to be irritated. The mother does everything for the baby, changes the diaper, warm and clean them nice and everything, but still the baby seems to be restless and irritated, restless and irritated. And grows up and is a few months old and the mother says, "This child is different." I've heard mothers say exactly that, "This child is different. Oh, this child just makes so many demands on me." Insisting that they get attention right now, "take care of me right now or I'm going to make your day most miserable for you". Well, this is a characteristic in the development, a characteristic stage in the development of the human soul. Some of us are like that, we are pressing for attention, we are just demanding attention and we can't be satisfied unless we're getting a lot of attention.
And another step in the development is curiosity, right? Intellectual curiosity, mental curiosity, rational curiosity and this is detectable too. When you look at the little children, you see some little children, in fact, I think most children tend to be curious, they want to examine everything, they want to see what this is. Once, my wife and I, we were with our little girl, first child, and every time we gave her something, she would throw it down and she would look for something else that was up high and she would pull it down and make it fall. So I said to my wife, I said, "Just see that she doesn't hurt anything. " I said, "Well, she's discovering something, she's discovering gravity." (Laughing).
Now, my studies of the Bible, I'm a student of the Scripture, especially Bible and Quran. My studies of the Bible and the Quran have brought me to believe that this condition that develops in the soul to form society after the influence is given to, it's mentioned in the Bible, this is an impetuous stage in the development. And it mentions in the Bible as Ham, H-A-M, the person, Ham. Noah, according to the Bible, had three sons and Ham was one of them. Ham is also a plural body according to the Bible. The Bible says that Ham, quote, "Ham is Egypt. Ham is Egypt." Now, I think, at that time, the whole of Africa was Egypt, all of Africa was Egypt. Just like there's certain periods in history, times in history, the whole of Africa was called Sudan, the whole of Africa was called "Kush" at one time, Kush...Kush at one time. So, I think these people who wrote this, they saw the whole of Africa as Egypt, it wasn't Cairo, it wasn't the Egypt that we know now, it was Africa, all of Africa was thought of as Egypt.
And what Ham's brother saw as a serious matter, Ham's brother, he had two brothers, both his brothers, but what they saw the serious matter was humor, to Ham. According to the Bible, when Ham saw his father, Noah, intoxicated or drunk the Bible says, and naked, Ham laughed. I'll use the quote, "He laughed." The Quran mentions the people for whom the sun set and it says, "The sun set upon murky waters, murky waters." Also, in the Quran, we are told that all life begins in water. This is a society characterized by emotional life and we are seen as lovers of nature, lovers of G-d, lovers of their work that they devote themselves to, the work that supports their lives, et cetera. And in the reverse, we find societies driven by, not by love but by hate. They will love each other, the members will love each other. We were put under a lot of difficulty because of an era, a race, white supremacists, they call themselves white supremacists, who loved each other, but they hated us. And it seemed as though the people like that thrive on hating others, but they will love each other, they thrive on hating others. After they seek dominance too, they want to dominant, like the [...] become the dominant people, the dominant person.
G-d says, in our Holy Book, He will never give the rule to anyone who seeks corruption in the land or seeks the dominance. I'm saying these things because the Quran wants to educate us, G-d wants to educate us. G-d educated the Prophet Muhammad, educated him, he was not formally schooled. G-d educated him and made him the leader to lead the dark world into civilization and good character, Muhammed the Prophet. According to the teachings in the Quran, on human nature, man and society's behavior is evolutionary. And I think that's what G-d is saying when He says that you're given to hardship, toil after toil, and He says, but you're going to meet Him, when you meet your Lord, you are going to meet Him, meet your Lord.
We are told of two stages in the road to establishment. The first stage, the water, is characterized by indulgence, indulgence for indulgence' sake. We find there are people like that and societies like that sometimes. They just want to engage something, indulgence for indulgences sake, no real purpose behind it. They don't have another step to follow and another step to follow to meet some goal or something, they just indulge it for the sake of indulging it. The second stage for millions of us is characterized by inquiry and the Nation of Islam that I was born in, I was born into the Nation of Islam, the Black Muslims as we were called by Dr. Logan, Dr. C. Eric Lincoln, great African American theologian, Christian theologian. That's the society that I was born into. It compels us to be curious, to ask questions, to not accept things literally, not even the teachings that we were given, called the teachings of the Nation of Islam, but to question those things and to try to find deeper and more meaning that will satisfy us, our understanding and help us to earn a better state of mind and a better life. The path to life is a path toward discovery, toward discovery. G-d has created us to use our intellect and to discover things, like that little child, when something falls, just to see, "What is that? How come it falls?" I believe this stage is referred to with the expression, 'self-accusing soul'.
There is an expression in the development of the human soul that is called, 'self-accusing soul'. For those who speak Arabic, Nafsin Lauwaama, and the thirsty, impetuous one, Nafsin Arawaama. Nafsin Lauwaama, 'self-accusing soul'. The first step and stage in the development of the soul is characterized by efforts made to improve its own state of existence, improve our state of existence, the ascendant nature. The nature to rise higher in the scale of human worth... of human worth. To fulfil the need in your life, to be satisfied with yourself... to be satisfied with yourself, as a creature of great worth. The demands on us, for self-esteem or merit in the society of the good doers and the excellent people who want inclusion, we want to be among them, we want them to accept us. And this is in all of us. I know some of us give up too soon, and some of us never give up, we never give up. Trying to better our own conditions, better our own minds and better our own conditions so that we will be able to demand a place among the best people on this earth, and I believe that's what the Nation of Islam was to us. That we worked hard to improve ourselves to qualify so we wouldn't have to beg somebody to accept us, but our worth will cause them to invite us among them and they would be happy to include us. Thank G-d, we've come there with the light of Quran and the light of Muhammad's life. Praise be to Allah.
I repeat the first step and stage in the development of the soul is characterized by efforts made to improve our state of existence. I believe this step is the ascendant self, the ascendant soul or the ascendent spirit. "And by the fig," G-d says in the Quran, "And by the fig and the olive and Mt. Sinai and this town made safe, surely we have created man in the best of molds".
So, for these stages in development, these stages that we have to undergo in the development of our soul these three stages are referred to in the Quran as three veils of darkness, three veils of darkness. It doesn't mean we're going to be in the light and satisfied with ourselves simply because we develop our emotional nature, mature emotions and develop our rational minds, and guiding our minds, rational minds or seek achievement, seek betterment for our human condition. It doesn't mean we're going to be happy. We believe, as G-d says that He has created man to be His servant, to be G-d's servant. Without G-d in our life, we don't think we can that happiness, that satisfying happiness, without G-d in our life. And if our service is not also service to G-d, meaning that we need to have G-d to accept our service and to be pleased with our service. We are answering His demands in our life with our actions and our behaviors. If you don't have that you don't think you can be happy. We think you will always be short of that fulfillment, short of that fulfillment.
These three steps given, the fig, the olive, Mt Sinai and this town made safe, tells us something. That these steps are to bring us to community establishment. That man has been created to live in community and to establish community life so that community life accommodates the human being with all of his fine attributes, noble aspirations etcetera, and until we can make our environment suitable for the best aspirations of the human soul, and the human life the environment itself is not complete enough for us. So, G-d is telling us, in my understanding, that your soul wants the environment, and when He says to us that He created the first person and put him in Paradise, in the Garden of Paradise. G-d is not telling us so much what He did as He's telling us what He's going to do, and we have to work for. We have to work for a heavenly state in our life, a heavenly state of a society. Where the members of society, where they feel good, will feel safe, will not feel danger from each other. This is what Muhammad wanted for us, and this is what Muhammad asked of the Muslim supporters, his followers that we have an Ummah where no Muslim will be threatened by his neighbor. Where Muslims can trust his wife at home by herself and no neighbor will violate his life. To have his life to himself and to himself a life. Where his property will be protected, and no neighbor will violate the rights of his property while he's away. His life will be safe, his life will be successful.
So, this to me is where G-d wants us to take our life. And G-d has put difficulty in our path, emotional life to test us, rational life to test us and spiritual life to test us. And the only fulfillment we'll have is when we make heaven of our environment, heaven of our society. Look at a heavenly society, And that's the reason though of the great religions today. The movement of the great religions today is to join each other for the first time in the history [...] on this earth, the major religions are joining each other, to work together, their leaders, to work together to see how they can contribute together to make a joint contribution to the betterment of man's life on this earth. To respect diversity, our differences, respect and cooperation. so we can have a more peaceful, a more safe and a society that will invite more progress from all of us, the poor the rich, the learned, the unlearned for all of [...] to achieve as much as we want to achieve in the spirit of [...] for ourselves, our family, our neighbors, our society this is a great time, a very great time and the time is running let us hurry up and compete
The Quran, Allah wants us to see human life as a complex life but that is not... I don't believe the Quran wants us to suffer to get the best help from Revelation or from the Quran. We're offered, I would say, easy steps, that will bring us to that better life that we want. The following example that I have taken from the Quran, that I think shows us that we can have really shoulder the complexities of human soul, life. to have the good life that G-d wants us to have, G-d shows us the complexities of human soul and nature so that we will become better authorities on human nature so that some of us will learn the fields of psychology and other fields so that we will be able to treat the ills of human nature. But the common people are given help from G-d that will keep them from going to the Psychiatrist. That will keep them from going to these places for help. If they just follow the simple Quranic teachings. G-d says "Seek by the means Allah has made available to you the home in the latter home, the home in the end or the world in the end, but do not forget your share of this world."
And G-d says, "By the fig, and the olive, and Mt. Sinai, and this town made safe, surely we have created man from the best of molds, in the best of molds." So, G-d is saying that man is not to be condemned or looked down upon because he gives himself to emotions. An emotional nature, the water nature, you know, causes us to be, I would say, imaginative and spontaneity in the intellect, spontaneity in the thirst for understanding. We come up with a lot of beautiful things, that we just contribute to the beauty of the world and contribute to the different variety of things but we don't have a direction, but that's necessary. Let us welcome the artist, let us welcome the emotional person, let us thank G-d for him too. Because all of us together we contribute to an environment that best serves the soul and the intellect, the soul and the intellect. You can't just have one of these and have the environment that will support our life and help it get to where it has to go. You need all of these, you need all of these. You need babies to help us mature. My children have helped me mature perhaps more than anything else. My children. Yes. So, you need babies to help us mature, you need babies to keep us with the right sensitivities. And again G-d has given us the prayer of the devoted Believer, or the devoted worship of G-d. So, the prayer of the devoted worshiper of G-d is, "Our Lord gives us in this world's life excellence and in the next world's life excellence and save us from the fires, the fires of sins" And save us from the fire.
So, this is a balanced religion, it wants to us to have excellence in this life and excellence in the next. And it lets us know that the end is more important and more valuable in quantity and also in quality, that's what G-d tells us, of the end. Life that we are to seek is purgatory, life at the destination or the Hereafter as you may say, that's the more valuable life, it's more valuable in terms of quality and quantity. That's what G-d said. However, if you neglect the purpose and go only after that, you may miss that too.
The best of communities on this earth, today, are the ones that are studying the mistakes that we have made, societies have made, city planners have made. City planners who didn't foresee the trouble that certain developments, certain industrial developments were going to put on human life and families. These better communities are now seeking to carry human interest side by side with community planning. It's a great time we're living in. In my understanding, human interest has more to do with the human soul and the human spirituality than it has to do with anything else. Human beings are spiritual, they are essentially spiritual life, human life is essentially a spiritual life.
We are industrialists, I believe it's going to take us to the community life that G-d wants us to have on this earth. But we have to merit acceptance and merit inclusion. We have to merit that, you just can't say, we're going to have unity, we're going to have inclusion. All of us have to decide to merit inclusion, merit acceptance. And I believe when G-d says to us in the Quran, "Go, all of you, as in a race, after all that is good and excellent. After all that is good and excellent. Go as in a race." So, this is a beautiful, healthy competition G-d is asking us to accept, to enter into a healthy competition where you are all striving and racing for the betterment of life, for more refinement, for a more virtuous life, for more excellence as producers, as creators, for more excellence. And G-d said He recognized us as creators, He said that G-d is the Best of Creators, that means there are other creators.
So, G-d want us to be producers, to be creators and He wants us to work for excellence, to rise more and more in the scale of excellence, to merit unity. He wants to unite humanity, He wants to unite Muslims, Muslims have to thrive separately to merit unity, to merit inclusion, to merit the right to sit at the table with others and be called an equal member in the family of man. An African American who was not a Muslim, he was a Christian. The Honorable Marcus Garvey, he was trying to bring African Americans from Africa to accept their identity as Africans and to believe in their worth, their equal worth as human beings. You know, the United States, every citizen of these United States, that goes through high school, were are told, and you who become nationalized citizens, you are told too, all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and it goes on to speak. So here is a condition for membership or citizenship in the United States, in the citizenry of the United States, it is that we accept the equal creation of our fellow man. That we have no superior creation to our fellow man, that G-d gave us all equal creation, our creation is equal.
But if we don't make the best use of our time in this life, as Muhammad the Prophet said, if we don't make the best use of our time on this earth, then we will fall behind in worth and others will be ahead of us. G-d didn't desire that inequality for us, He gave us a chance to use our equal talents, our equal creations, and work hard. And there is a beauty in this too, because we're never going to have everybody succeeding. G-d wants us to care about each other and if all of us were independent, there'd be no room for me to have a heart or to live out the better motivations in my heart, to want to help somebody. And helping and having love and caring for each other, and want to help each other, it affects all of us in a positive way.
So, G-d has given us many people and most of them will not be able to go where the few can go, so that the few will serve the many and the many will be helped by the few. And a big condition will come and occasionally G-d will let us know, but it's not always this fortunate few that bring about change for the better, that brings about revolution in the world, sometimes it's from the one that is least expected to lead, or make a change for the world, will come in the least one. From the least one it comes, from the most rejected, from the most neglected, from the most uneducated sometimes comes that person. Well, this is the beauty of life and you will never understand all the mysteries of life, but I think if we follow just the simple instructions that we have in our religion, to help us live the life and understand the life that G-d wants us to live, we will be successful and we won't be at each other, we won't be fighting each other, we won't be hating each other, we'll be proud of each other's achievements. Yes. I thank G-d. I never did envy another person's achievements, but I have lived and grown to really applaud the achievements of the white race. So that if all blacks can do that, boy I'm telling you, I think the prediction or the hope of Marcus Garvey will be real for us. He said, "A day will come when the African family will rise up and take its place in the constellations of the Heavens." That's coming. Peace to you. As Salaamu Alaikum. (Takbir...Allahu Akbar)
Speaker 2:
Thank you, Imam Mohammed.
IWDM:
Thank you.
Speaker 2:
Imam Mohammed will be taking questions, briefly. If we could please keep our questions as concise as possible. And there are two microphones on each side.
IWDM:
That's a very fair question, [...] question, I would say something else about diversity, I will say something else about diversity. And when we are promoting unity and inclusion, don't think that's going to hurt your hopes for yourself, for your own distinction, we have hopes of bettering ourselves as a group, you know. No, no. We have to be aware of our shortcomings, or aware of what we have been deprived of and we have to work on bettering the African American people and enriching us as African American people, et cetera or building the African American identity.
If we accept to merit inclusion, we are going to improve a lot of our people, if we accept that is what we should do, merit the right to be included, then we are going to build a strong and more healthy identity for ourselves. We are going to become richer and more resourceful as a people and more productive as a people. That's the answer, work to merit acceptance, work to merit inclusion, but have the unity as the bigger interest, not our separate lives and our separate existence, but the unity of the family of man as the bigger interest and we will be very successful. I'm still waiting for a hand, do I see a hand? Oh, there? Okay.
Speaker 3:
Salaamu Alaikum. My name is Muhammad from Somalia. I think that the question is that, is there any way that you will go to [...] for peace [...] so that you can help thousands and millions of Muslims in a different world [...] how they can [...].
IWDM:
Yes. I believe I understand his question. I think the best way for us, in this time, to serve the "Ummah" the international society of community of Muslims is the best way to serve the rest of society, international society of Muslims, is that wherever we are, work to get rid of the misconceptions in the minds of people about Muslims, who Muslims are, what our life is, what we want. For us to get rid of these misconceptions and work to establish the true picture of the Muslims, not in our preaching only, but in our works in society. Wherever we are, let the politicians work hard on establishing the true picture and the best picture of Muslims, if he's Muslim.
The doctor, the industrialist, whatever, the carpenter, let us all, the preacher, let us all work on establishing the correct picture of what a Muslim is. And I think if we do this, we going to find Muslims will be helped by us more than by any other effort we could make. Muslims are depressed, the Muslims souls are depressed, they are hurting, it's not because of these problems we are getting from other people, it's because of the shortcomings in our own selves. If we work on that, I think we will get the best help for the Muslim society at large.
Speaker 3:
Salaamu alaykum.
IWDM:
Alaykum salaam.
Speaker 3:
[...] ...what he said [...] true Islam, that is orthodox Islam Your father was preaching a slightly different way of Islam, would you be kind enough to elaborate on that?
IWDM:
Yes. As I said, about human life, we will never understand all the mysteries, but we have enough clear instructions to follow that will give us a very happy life, a satisfying life on this earth. And when it comes to understanding the works of my father, Elijah Muhammad, we say the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his teacher who was not an African American, who was not Black, who was not even an American, he came from outside. To understand them, I don't think we'll ever understand all of it, everything about them, but I'm convinced of one thing, that we had a strategy, a strategy to have Islam accepted from the poor, in the ghettos, the poor corners of African American people. We didn't trust the talented [...] intellectuals like W.E.B. DuBois. We didn't trust them, we felt that they were too convinced that the western way was superior. So, they went among those who were culturally illiterate and culturally deprived, more culturally deprived and they attracted them to their ideas. And the strategy was to endear them to the Quran, endear them to Muhammed the Prophet, endear them to Islamic nations of the world.
Now, keeping from them, the knowledge of Quran and the real knowledge of Muhammed the Prophet and the real truth of the Islamic world. Keep it from them and keep them in a contained environment, a contained language environment until improvements come outside from America, in the society of America, to welcome their struggle for excellence and inside Islam. And when that comes, they will get more education, there will become better educated and the sincere one would be able to be part of that society and not take this teaching literally, study it, look to see what's under the cover. They would discover the strategy and they would go to the Quran and they would be Muslim, so we have a new Muslim on this earth because of that strategy. Thank you. I have to leave now for a plane, but I hate to go. This is my love. As salaamu alaykum. Peace. Thank you.
Speaker 2:
That concludes or program for tonight, thank you, again, to Imam Mohammed for being with us. Thank you, also, to our sponsors, The Department of Middle Eastern Studies, The Department of Religion, The Office of the Dean of Chapel and Religious Life, The Office of Multicultural Programs and Services, The Office of Student Activities and College Council. And thank you all for attending. Please remember the other events of Islamic Awareness Week, Dr. Muriel Islam's lecture on Muslims in America, Race, Religion and Marginality, being held tomorrow evening at 7:00 PM in Lyncher Ballroom, in the Dodge University Center. Also, Friday, 4:00 PM in White Hall, the interstate social. Thank you all again. Goodnight. As salaamu alaykum.


