08/19/1995
IWDM Study Library 
IWDM Speaks to Youth
Robbins, IL

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Fooling him and be the boss and not the bad. Even the worst of us, we don't like to turn over with absolute authority to the worst part of ourselves do we? I've met a lot of bad fellas, but I don't I met one that wanted to turn all authority, all authority over to the worst part of themselves. I don't think they did. I don't think anyone was ready for that. Only Satan perhaps was ready for that. And then I think he would do that very carefully. And we believe, I said we believe, or did I say? No, I don't think I did. We believe that when this body is finished, we are not finished. We'll die. Everybody has to die. Everybody that's born has to die. This is Christianity, this is our religion too. Everybody that born, that is born has to die one day. But we believe the same G-d that made us the first time, using the words of G-d in our Holy book, that same G-d is able to make us again.
So, the one that made us in the beginning from nothing, He will make us again from dust when we died and become no more than dust in earth. Dust, gases thrown out into air. The G-d that made us the first time from nothing, He can make us again from the dust or whatever we are after being dead and gone or passed away and become nothing but the elements. G-d says the same G-d that made you the first time from nothing can make you again. And we believe in that. So, believe in what we call the afterlife. We believe that there is going to be a new life, another life, resurrection after the death. But we also believe in Yaumadeen, the judgment. We believe that we have to account for what we have done on this earth no matter how good we are, how bad we are.
And death didn't finish it off. We got good for our good while we were living. But G-d has more good for us. If we are good, G-d has even more good for us. He has planned even more good for us to satisfy the deep yearnings in our soul for something that this world just can't give us. And G-d has prepared another world for that to give us that. So, we believe that we get good for our good in this life, but the full reward that G-d wants to give us will only come when G-d gives us that next world.
And similarly, we believe that people who are criminal and bad and don't care about anybody or anything and they just keep doing evil and keep hurting people and keep killing and taking lives and making other people lives miserable. That when they pass out this world too, they have to also face another world. The world that they're going to face is the world of their own evil. The world of their own crimes and cruelties is called hell in English. It's called hell. We believe that they're going to have to face that. And they will get some of their punishment for what they did in this world. While they live in this special body, they will get some of the punishment that they earn, but they won't get the full punishment that they have earned until the next world. And for them, if they did not repent, did not change their ways, the next world for them will be the hell. Now that is our belief. So, if G-d is going to give us a test like the teacher gives us at the end of the period and G-d is going to say, "Well, this person's test says that they have earned My paradise," and another person will come up and fail the test. And G-d says, "Well, this person's test says that they have earned the hell."
What should that tell us? That we should do everything.... If we believe in G-d, we should do everything we possibly can while we live and have control in our hands. Because although we are living in the flesh of that body, we got very much the controls in our own hand. So, while we live, we should be trying to live so that we earn the best that G-d has promised us and not the worst, not the hell. That's how we should live. And these beliefs are no different than yours. If you say you are a Christian, these beliefs I've given you that are Muslim are the same as yours. You believe in those things too. If you're a good Christian, you believe in those things too. Now, you may believe in some other things that I haven't mentioned. That's not what we believe in, but I have given you what we believe in.
Any good Christian, even the Jews, would most likely say we believe in the same. If they have knowledge of their faith, of their scriptures and what they should believe, they'll say yes, we believe in the same. So, you see how close we are except in one way? In a sense we are very close together as believers in G-d. Muslims and Christians are very close as believers in G-d. But in another sense, we're very far apart because none of us will ever say the Prophet Jesus Christ, Peace be upon him, he's G-d. We'll never say that. We'll never say that. And we'll never say that He's the son of G-d, the son. We'll never say that. So, we have closeness by our beliefs and at the same time we have a distance, great distance between our belief. But essentially, basically we believe in the same thing. And that's why we had to tell Christians that we are not your enemies.
That's what it means when G-d says "Say to them, your G-d and our G-d are one and the same G-d." That's the same. We are not enemies. We shouldn't be enemies. And G-d tells us in our Holy book to say to the People of the Book, "Our contention is not with you." We are not out to fight you. We are not out to hurt you. Our contention is with the people who are idol worshippers and who don't want to see others worship G-d as G-d should be worshipped. Our contentions is with them. Those who want to see people who believe in G-d without the freedom to do that. They want take away our freedom to believe in our G-d. They want to take away the freedom, our freedom to worship G-d. They want take away that First Amendment, US Constitution right from us. And they tried to do it before there was a US Constitution.
They tried to take it from the Muslims in Arabia 1,415 years ago, at least 1400 years ago. They tried to take it away from the Muslims in Arabia. But G-d blessed the Muslims in Arabia. The Muslims in Arabia were first one person. His name was Muhammad Ibn Abdullah. One person. And they could not defeat that one person. The thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of them on earth, they could not defeat that one man. That one man was helped by G-d until he got thousands of men to join him, thousands of women to join him. And when he got the control, what did he say to them? Did he say, "Now you can't live in Arabia since you fought us. You can't live in Arabia since you killed some of our relatives. You can't live here in this Arabia." No. Our Prophet said, if you will just be peaceful from now on, you have the freedom to live in our country and enjoy it just as all the other senses. That's what our Prophet did. So, he fulfilled the scripture of the one who would come and be a victor, have victory in the name of G-d. Who would be victorious, but he would forgive his enemies and stop the blood feud, stop fighting with peace, by establishing peace and forgiving the enemies. It worked. The proof that it worked, there are 1 billion Muslims on earth today. Yes, they're in the Middle East where it started in Arabia, there in the Far East and India and Pakistan. In Afghanistan and China, in Russia, all over.
In Africa, in Nigeria and Morocco, in Egypt and Somalia, in Sierra Leone, in Senegal, Ghana, all around. More than 50% of Africa is Muslims. So that's what we wanted to share with you. So much for the picture of Islam. I should mention one thing because every religion has good and bad characters. Is that not true? Every religion has good and bad characters. As much as I like Islam, as much as I like Muslims. I can't fool myself and say I've never seen a bad Muslim. I have seen bad Muslims. And I'm sure you can't fool yourself and say you've never seen a bad Christian. You have seen bad Christians. Maybe they didn't deserve the name that they were wearing, but they were wearing those names and they were bad. So, the Prophet of Islam Muhammad, Prophet Muhammad, Prayers and Peace be upon him, he said that he came, one of the main reasons why G-d missioned him or sent him into the world was to promote good character, good character. So, if you find any Muslim not caring about their character, being cruel, being unnecessarily rude, being a liar, a thief, a bad character, a criminal. Know that that person is violating one of the most important conditions in his religion and that condition is that you be of good character. That you be of good character.
Now I think I have not more to say about what we believe in. That's not all about belief, but that's the most important thing that I've shared with you, the most important thing that make anyone a Muslim, that they believe in those things that I have shared with you. I'm going to go now to what I want to say about our relationship as a people with G-d. We can read in the scriptures the story of many people in the Bible. The limelight or the spotlight is going to be mostly on people who are called Hebrews, Israelites, or Jews because the Bible presents them as a stage, stage presentation to teach them, Jews G-d's way in the whole world. So, you'll find the Jew as a Jew in the Bible, he'll be acting the part of many people, not just Jews. He'll be acting a part of the African, the Asian, the European, he'll be acting a part of many people, but he'll be relating it to his own life and his own plight, his own history of suffering and joys of achievements and failure. He'll be relating it to his own history, but it is not really the Jew all the time in the picture. It's the Jew acting somebody else's history, somebody else's plight.
And getting a message through that picture, through that theater. From that theater we get a great message or great teaching. Now, I read in the Qur'an of people who lost their great place on earth because their behavior changed and they became bad people. And I read in the Bible the same thing. But I read something very special in the Bible about people who were given a good situation on earth and lost it. Jews specifically, particularly. They knew G-d. They knew they once had a great relationship with G-d, but now they found themselves, now find themselves.... This is in ancient times, under Pharaoh in Egypt. And they're enslaved and treated cruelly. So, they remember that this wasn't the way we always lived, that we once had a good life. What has brought us to this? Have our people sinned so much that G-d forgot us, turned away from us and let us fall into the hands of these bad people, these Pharaohs of Egypt? So, they would wonder, this is similar to some of the language that they speak and they spoke in the Bible. It's there in the Bible. And they wanted to train their souls to call on G-d and to hear G-d for an answer. G-d, why are we in this terrible situation? You didn't create us to be slaves of Egypt.
And their story says that G-d responded to them and through the Prophet G-d spoke and told them that He would give them a redeemer, He would give them Moses and that if they would follow Moses, he would redeem them. He would lead them again out of their miseries to a good life where they would have a good life of their own. I want to ask every single African person, or African-American person or black person, negro whatever you call yourself. I want to ask every one of you right now, when you read that history of those Jews and when you read the history of our people, tell me what is the difference? We were slaves and we too didn't know why we were treated so bad. And our souls too were yearning for an answer from G-d. G-d, how do we fall to this? How do we get in this situation? Why are we now the slaves of these people with no respect and no good treatment, only bad treatment? Why is this happening? We wanted G-d to give us an answer. And our history also will show, even though none of those persons said they were Prophets, none of them said they were Messengers of G-d or Prophets until late in our history.
There was Fredrick Douglas who stood up. He ran from slavery. He stood up and he spoke out against slavery and he got help. The Abolition movement was cooperating and he was a strong voice advocating freedom for the slave, respect for every human being. He didn't say he was a Prophet. He didn't say G-d called me.
But he obligated himself the same way the Prophets obligated himself. He obligated himself to G-d the same way the Prophets obligated themselves to G-d without being told he was a Prophet or Messenger of G-d, without claiming he was a Prophet or a Messenger. G-d. Without perhaps even thinking that he was a Prophet or Messenger of G-d, he conducted himself as one that G-d had chosen to do that great work, that special work of standing up in the face of all kinds of threats and taking risk of life, risking his own life that he would be killed, shot, burned, hanged on the tree. He risked all of that to say the right thing, to do the right thing.
And tell me, was he trusting in anybody of the earth? No. He was just like the Prophets. He was trusting in G-d. Not only Fredrick Douglas. Sojourner Truth, the brave woman who went down in the south, told her people to leave the south, leave slavery, run with her with a shotgun. She's known for the Underground Railroad. Wasn't no train, some black feet, running, running along the trail. Sojourner Truth pointed out to them. And they were running up north, beating it, beating their way up north to get away from that bad condition down south they called slavery, or plantation slavery. She too believed in G-d. She was brave because she thought G-d was against slavery and that if she stood up against it, the G-d that was against slavery would be her friend and be her protector. Frederick Douglas thought the same- That G-d was a good G-d and that G-d was against slavery and if he stood up against slavery that G-d would be on his side.
He thought the same. There was Elijah Lovejoy who lost his life. He thought the same. Was it only him like that that lost their life? There are Prophets who lost their lives too. Read the Bible. Bible says that some Prophets, some Messengers of G-d lost their life, but that didn't mean that G-d wasn't G-d, or that they weren't G-d's Messengers or in G-d's presence. It didn't change that. The same G-d that gave them the life was able to give them a better life, another life and to send another man behind them to continue their work until it was finally accomplished. Now can't we think ourselves in the same light. Not that we should say Frederick Douglas is a Prophet. I'll never say Frederick Douglas was a Prophet. Frederick Douglas was not a Prophet. He was not even conscious of being a Prophet. He did not even call on G-d that he shouldn't be a Prophet. But he followed in the steps of the Prophets.
He took the risk that the Prophets take. He believed in the G-d that the Prophets believed in. And so did every one of our brave men who braved that and called us from slavery, and called us from subjection and dependence, helpless, silly baby life dependence on the white man. Called us away from that to stand on our feet and be adults, for ourselves. Every one of them that did that believed in G-d. Dr. Martin Luther King, truly he believed in G-d and he died as a man that believed in G-d. So, what does all this say to me in the final analysis or in the conclusion after I summarize it all? What does this say to me? It says to me that African-American people or Africans in America who were enslaved here, those people and their descendants now and yet to come for generations, you have a special, we have a special covenant with G-d. Because of those men, because of our condition and because of those men and women who were blessed by G-d, who were committed to G-d, who had a voluntary contract with G-d for us. To bring us to a better condition, a better life, and to stand up on our feet. Because of that, they had an unsigned covenant with G-d and we have an unsigned covenant with G-d.
And until we come back to this kind of consciousness and stand up and try to do what G-d wants us to do and following the best behavior that has been shown for us by the best examples that have come in the past, we will not be favored by G-d. We'll get the same kind of treatment that others got, that G-d took into His mighty arms and said, "You are my babies. You are my friends. You are the ones that's persecuted. You're the ones that's mistreated. I am the G-d that made you and those that are mistreating you. I'm with you. I'm going to help you get out of this mess." That same G-d. If we don't honor our covenant, our sacred contract with G-d, though it's not signed. It's signed by the heart, it's signed by the soul. It doesn't have to be signed by the pen.
If we don't honor it, we'll get the same treatment from G-d that they got. When they didn't honor that covenant with G-d, what did G-d do? G-d let them suffer the bad consequences of their own foolishness, of their own ignorance, of their own sins. G-d left them to their folly and their foolishness and their sin. And they wasted away. They wasted away. Now we got too many thousands, too many millions out there in the streets, high places and low places, educated and fools. We got too many that are wasting their lives away. Let us not let them waste the life of this chosen people. We are a chosen people. We have a contract with G-d. Let them not waste our life. Let us be the best believer in G-d we can be so that G-d will always honor us in that agreement and protect us as He protected the great people of the Scripture, Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Thank you. Peace be on you. As Salaam Alaikum.



