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IWDM Study Library 
First Islamic Cultural Convention at McCormick Inn 2

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
Get the individual turned on. Once the individual is turned on in the way, Allah wants us to be turned on, everything else follows of natural consequence.
So, what are we overlooking in the world? In time, we have become too much excited about competing with others. We are too excited about competing with others. We know we have to be aware of the competition, opposition and competition. We have to be aware of that. We have to be prepared for opposition, for competition. We have to be prepared for that. But that's not what the Muslim life is about. The Muslim life is about establishing the person that Allah wants walking on this earth, living on this earth, achieving on this earth. That's what the religion is about, establishing that person that Allah wants. So, we began with the idea of one. Allah created Adam, Adam, one person, one man, one person. And from that one person he made mates, male and female. And then from the two of them he made all of us. So how did the community of the world start?
It started with an interest in one person, and that interest in one person was Allah's interest. It started with Allah's interest in Adam. And from Adam we get the whole humanity, the millions and billions now populating the earth. The focus was on one and Allah says in the holy book, in the Qur'an, your life and resurrection is like that of one person. One person. What is that saying to us? That is saying to us, if you want to resurrect the whole people, resurrect, concentrate on the individual. If you want to resurrect the whole people, concentrate on the individual because they're not one solid body.
They are bodies in a group. They are single bodies in a group. And if you address the unit, you'll reach the community. If you address the unit, you'll reach the group. If you can excite the unit, you can excite the many. Why? Because though they're distinguished one from another by their names, by their levels of ability and so forth, by their sex, by their color, or by their race. Though they're distinguished in these many ways. There is a type that represents self and person for all of them. There is a type, there's an essential type we call the essential human type that Allah wants.
And if you address that type that Allah wants, you'll be addressing all of them individually. You'll be addressing all of them equally. You won't be favoring any of them, you won't be overlooking any of them. You will be treating them all as equals and treating them equally, if you address the essential human person. The essential human type that Allah wants in all of us and that Allah created in all of us. He made all of us that. In the Constitution of these United States, pardon me, in the Constitution of these United States, we find an identity for man, not all men, for American man, for the citizens of America. we find identity there. And that identity don't put in the male, it is for females also. There's an identity there. "We hold these truths that all men are created equal". So there the Constitution recognizes the sameness for all people, a sameness for all people. They're created equal. "We hold these true that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator." So there the Constitution of these United States, recognizing a creator. Are endowed by their creator, with certain inalienable rights, with certain rights that shouldn't be violated, with certain rights that shouldn't be taken away from them.
That's what it means. "And among these, it goes on to say life, life." So. the constitution of the United States does not base itself upon the identity of a race. It does not base itself upon the identity of a nationality. It bases itself upon the common type, the universal type, the person that all of us are, or is. It bases its identity upon that. The Constitution, I've read it, you read it yourself. It is supported not by any racial identity. It doesn't give any racial classification for the man that the Constitution is written for. The Constitution is not written for a particular racial man or nationalistic man. It's written for the universal man. It's based upon the life, needs and aspirations of the universal man, the common type, the person that's in every one of us, the same, no different. That's the man that Allah created. That's the man Allah created. That's the man Allah wants in all of us, men and sister, if you understand that's the same person Allah created in you and the same person Allah wants in you.
Now it so happens that in time man gets off the natural track. Allah created him on that natural track in time, he gets off the natural track and he loses his original nature. He loses his original form of life and Allah has to re-establish him. He repents, he's burdened, and pretty soon he knows that something is wrong and he'll cry out for help and Allah will answer him every time he turns to him. Allah comes and answer him and establish him again. So, what is that precious, precious role for us that we should be aware of? To G-d, to work for, to support, to promote, the establishment of the human person, the establishment of the human person. Now what do we mean by establishment of the human person? By establishment, I am referring to the evolved human person. The evolved human person. Now when we look at something as simple as a wheat plant, the wheat, you know wheat, we make bread from wheat. When we look at something as simple as that, it's a plant with roots with the stem, with a head on it. But how is it identified? The wheat plant is not identified for its root.
It's not identified for its stem or the blade. It's identified for its product. The root comes, the blade shoots up and it grows all up and it gets a head and after a while, the last thing is its product. It's a wheat seed. Now all plants are not identified for their seed. An apple tree is identified for its fruit with the seeds in it, but a wheat is identified for its seed. Why? Because man appreciates a thing for its worth, and Allah gave man the capacity and power to give name to things. We know that in the story of Adam. He created Adam and then empowered Adam to give names to things. So, man give names to things according to the worth of those things to him. So, the apple is desired for the whole apple, not for the seeds and the core. He was more attracted to the whole apple. So, he named the tree, apple tree. Apple tree. And we think of apple, not seed.
But he valued the seed of that wheat plant more than he did the other part of it, the foundation, the roots or the stem and all that. The grass. The grass looks pretty, but he didn't name it for the grass, he named it for the product, the seed. He named it wheat. And we take the wheat and we make bread. So, we value the wheat for the bread, for the wheat and the plant for wheat seed and the bread that we make from the seed. Yes. Likewise for all the things, if you study all the things that man has named, now, sometimes you find something going off. That's why we are talking about the subject. Looked like something went off and he didn't name, he didn't follow the same logic. Something went off just like right now we're call black people, something's gone off. Are we valued for blackness? Are we valued for the color of our skin? If that's so we are certainly cheaply valued. If that's the worth that people see in us now, is our skin color, we have a cheap value on us. Well, you may say, well what about other people? What about the Chinese? When you say Chinese right away, you think about a people in culture, a people in history right away.
When you say black, you think about a people in racial confrontation. You think about the burden on the people. But when you say Chinese, you think about the achievements of the people. Chinese, right away. Chinese, yeah, I know they made China, they discovered gunpowder. Yeah, the Chinese. Oh yeah, great warriors too. Right away. A Chinese, oh yes, a Chinese, yeah, they Chinese, egg foo young and fried rice. Right away you start thinking of what those people are known for, what they do. You start thinking of the positive things about those people, they're worth to you. But as soon as we say black right away, racial vibrations go all through the audience. It automatically kicks off racial vibrations as soon as we say black. So, something has gone wrong. We should be promoting concern for the establishment of the human nature and the human person. That means so much. That means so much, but that's not enough. We have another side to it too. And that is the promotion of growth for the intellect. Promotion of growth for the intellect. Man is valued first of all for his excellent form, among the many forms that Allah created, the human form is seen as the most excellent. I don't want to be any other form. Maybe you do. I don't. (You) might find somebody here that's dissatisfied with their form, but I wouldn't want to be any other form. And I know you know, about angels too, and I respect them and I love them too and value them in G-d's scheme. But I don't want to be an angel either. I would like to be angelic in many of my mind and properties and behavior, especially behavior. I would like to be angelic in some certain respects, but I don't want to be an angel because an angel was limited. If they weren't limited, they could have named the things. When Allah asked them to name the things they could not, and then Allah didn't choose the angel to be the Khalifa. He chose the human, Adam, to be the Khalifa. And we know that that Khalifa, that man, that Khalifa, that great type that we are talking about now, that we all hope to grow into and or toward for the fulfillment of our need inside and outside too. We know that that Khalifa is to really be seen in Prophet Muhammad, the peace and the blessing be on him, if we understand, he is the fulfillment of that Khalifa. The Khalifa himself was in evolution.
He was in the process of being or becoming as they say some people say. So, he had to be gradually brought to his completion. Adam was not the final prophet. Prophet Muhammad is the final prophet. Adam is not the seal of the prophets. Muhammad is the seal of the prophets. Likewise, if you go behind the prophet for the earlier prophets, none of them represented a seal or a completion or a conclusion. Only prophet Muhammad represented that. And that is why in the heavens it was our prophet who led all of them in prayer. He's the leader for all of them, which means that they represent a progression toward completion, just a progression toward completion. It begins with the first step and then a second step. They represent a progression toward completion. So, though the first man was a long way from that final completion that Allah wanted for Prophethood, he was a long ways from that. He and his soul, in his aspiration, he was aiming and reaching for that. Adam himself was reaching to become Muhammad and every prophet behind him was reaching to become Muhammad.
And finally, Muhammad comes. He is the human destiny and the Khalifa, the destiny for the Khalifa. He is the destiny. He is the end product. He is the completion for all of them. And that urge is in us. We are not prophets, but that urge is in us to live the fullness of the identity that Allah created for us to live that identity, to come into that identity, to come completely into it, to be the complete person, the complete human being that Allah intended us to be. He intended all of us reach fulfillment. We won't be prophets, but he intended that all of us reach the fulfillment. If He didn't, then He wouldn't have told us that you'll find in Muhammad the Prophet, peace be upon him, an excellent model for any who believes in G-d and the last day. So that's telling me that Allah has raised up Muhammad, the last prophet ,as the model, the end product that he wants to put before all of us to make that end product appealing to all of us. So, all of us will try to grow into the sunnah of that end product.
Yes. So that tells me that inherent in my very nature, inherent in me is an urge to become like the sunnah of the Prophet. To become that complete man, that complete person. Praise be to Allah. There are Arabic terms for this. There are Arabic terms for the complete man sometimes called also the perfect man. And that's one thing we can be. We can be perfect human beings, perfect human beings doesn't mean that you don't make a mistake sometimes. See, perfect human being doesn't mean G-d. We can never be anything but a small and illegitimate G-d, but all of us can be great human beings.
So, what is overlooked, in my opinion, the thing that's hurting us most is that we are putting too many things ahead of the greatest concern and that is the promotion of established human persons, established human persons and the promotion of growth in the intellect for all people. You will find that some societies will be failing because they are not promoting established human persons. Established human person. Now remember what I said about the established, I mean evolved, the evolved human person, human person and his aim in his natural aim, in his inherent aim he has come into in his natural inherent native aim. He's coming, he's growing into that, he's coming into that. The human being in his evolved concept, not in his growing or a baby, feeble, weak. No, no, he's born like that. Allah says we all are born weak and we know that. We are born babies. We all are born weak, but that's not the end product that Allah wants. When we look at the seeds we sow as farmers, that's not the end product we want. We are giving those seeds to an environment and we hope that in time we'll get the end product we want.
So. if somebody say, Hey, what do you care about all those, get that little trash there or look like little rocks. What do you care about that stuff? If they don't know what comes from those little rocky looking things, they will say, hey, why you waste your time throwing all those little rocks around all day long, you throwing all these little rocks and stuff around. And they come two months later and the man is there eating from it and feeding, and got business and running a big truck and a car and everything and got a processing factory and everything. Well, I understand now.
It's the same for us. We look at the human being and his weakness in his undeveloped state and we esteem him to be nothing, huh? Oh, trash people. Some of us will say that. Oh, trash people, worthless people. In fact, history tells us that that was the attitude of society, to look at certain individuals that were nonproductive, trash, trash, inferior trash and they abused them, took advantage of them and even suppressed them and kept them on the level of trash, kept them in a situation of trash because they didn't have any regard for them, no respect for them. Allah wants us to have a regard for just like the seed that the farmer regards. He doesn't regard it for what it is now he regards that seed for what that seed will be. He regards that seed for what that seed can become, he's looking at whats the potential in that seed, he appreciates that seed and value it for a potential.
He will say, yeah, I know this nothing but a seed, but this is a potential cornstalk and one cornstalk can keep me from being hungry for one day. You, see? Yeah, one cornstalk, he said that one seed is a potential cornstalk and there's going to be several ears on that one cornstalk from this one tree. Qur'an mentions this. On each ear of corn there are going to be hundreds grains, hundreds of seeds. So, he looks at it and values it not for what it is at that particular time, but for what it will be. And this is something we are overlooking. When I say we, I'm not talking about us just here in America or just certainly not here in this place here today in McCormick Inn Hotel, this facility, no, and I'm saying this, I'm not talking what we are overlooking. I'm talking about the nations, the societies of the world, the societies of the world. Now who are responsible for the behavior of the societies of the world?
It is the so-called established people. For Muslims. Who are we talking about? For Muslims we are talking about the heads of Muslim states. We are talking about the heads of strong Muslim institutions, the institutions of learning and whatever. That's what we are talking about and those are the people we are hoping to reach today to let them see that there's a greater purpose and a greater role that we are playing down. We are overlooking. And Muslims have left it centuries ago, didn't just happen, they left it centuries ago. Prophet Muhammad came and he worked hard to build up the human establishment, the human establishment. To build up the dignity and worth of one single person, male and female equally.
It takes too much to go over all the history. That's not the object today. The object today is just to point to a great concern that I think is hurting us all over the Muslim world, throughout the international Muslim world because we have given other things more priority than "that" thing and it should be given the greatest priority. Dear beloved people, don't you know that war zones are made because that particular duty is overlooked. If we work hard to build up the human person, we will have much less trouble of war zones all over this planet earth. Certainly, if we had been working in the Middle East to build up the natural human person and his human excellence, that Allah intended for him before 1947 or whenever Palestine came into existence. If we had been working for it in the Middle East, there would never have been a state imposed upon the population there, because those human beings would've been so excellent in their human form and in their human nature, there would've been a great number of them representing a strong, even though they'd be a minority, there would've been a strong minority of them that demand respect. And the whole international world will say, no, they can't do that to the Middle East.
We would've had enough support all throughout the whole international world to say, no, you cannot do that to the Middle East. But when we fail our responsibility to attend the need to establish the human excellence that Allah wants in us, the purpose for which Muhammad came and presented himself and G-d presented him that purpose. When we fail that dear people, we invite all kind of trouble and we won't have the sympathy of the majority of civilized people on our side because they say you have neglected your human life. You have neglected your human life and because you have neglected to establish your human life, human life is not play and fun and foolishness and making babies and sex and all that stuff. Human life is human intelligence. Human life is human intelligence, human conscience based in human intelligence and it includes so many other great concerns and aspirations. Human life is the first building block for civilization. That's what human life is. True human life is the first building block for civilization. Just like I was talking about that farmer with his seemingly worthless seeds, those who don't know what seeds are. Yes. So, you throw out a human life in its right form and put it in its right environment.
If you value the human person, you're going to make the environment respect that human person.
A man goes and he works hard to build a nice home. He makes a nice home. He labors hard. He sweats for weeks and months to build a nice home. What is he building that home for? Why is he sweating day after day? Why is he stacking up all of his money and everything? He wants an environment for something he values. He wants an environment for something he values. That's his wife, that's himself. That's the children he hopes to have or they hope to have. Yes. That's the kind of work you get when you really appreciate the life and know the value of the human person. Oh yes, same way it is for the whole civilization. When we appreciate the individual and value the individual, we will build a great house we call civilization. We'll build a great house we call nation. We'll build a great house we call the United States of America. Don't you know, the idea, the beauty, the worth, the power, whatever we find of value in this great nation you call the United States, don't you know, it was built.
It was requisitioned. It was requisitioned. You know what requisition means? Requisition means that something is here asking that we get something else. So, it was the focus. It was the focus on the ideal human first, that American founders, the founding fathers, wanted to protect and give opportunity to and protect by law so that human type and human person will have freedom, prosperity here on this earth, in this land called America, conceived and establish for that human person. Requisition in all of his laws, requisition in all of his duties, requisition in all of his values, material, et cetera, requisition by the human person himself. This is the truth and it's simple truth, it's powerful truth.
Now we talked about the human person in his design that Allah wants. Maybe when he first comes here, he not, he doesn't impress us very much, but Allah says wait.
A certain number among the angels, Iblis was the great rebel, the most notorious of those that looked down on what Allah was about to do. But Allah told them, wait. Say, wait until I have breathed into him of My spirit. Well, what is that? Of My purpose, of My will? Wait until he be inspired with My will and be inspired with My purpose and be motivated by My will and be motivated by My purpose. He said, then make your bow in submission to him.
And all of this is naturally in us. All of this is our native potential. It's our natural born potential. All of us are born with this and don't you know, that's what the Constitution is saying of that great human fight? That every person is born qualified for what we are granting this citizen of the United States. Every person by nature is born, birthed into the world, qualified for it because we can't give it to him. It have been given to him by his creator, "endowed by His creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Now you think that ain't Islamic? That is Islamically focused. May I repeat that? That is Islamically focused! And I've studied the Bible and I've found great signs of the great wisdom of the high wisdom in the Bible, the great plan in the Bible. I've studied other religions and I've studied the other books by great writers, great philosophers and political idealist and et cetera. I've studied and I haven't yet come up with anything that is more evident than the Qur'an as the support for the great vision of the founding fathers of these United States. I'm sure they read Bible and they read Plato and they read the great Greek philosopher. I'm sure they read all of that. But I'm sure that they had to stumble down that road until they got the Qur'an.
We are not talking about something that we can't prove. Its proven by history that the Qur'an, Prophet Muhammad demonstrating it, made possible the rejuvenation of the fallen nations of Europe and that ancient world back there. They had fallen and it was the Qur'an, the presence of the Qur'an and our Prophet demonstrating that life, demonstrating it, that made possible their reawakening, their revival, their renaissance, the return of civilization and excellent standards for them. The Qur'an and our Prophet, yes, broke the darkness. And what Allah said that He has brought us out of the darkness into the light. You know what that means? Out of ignorance, savagery into civilization and higher learning, great intellect, higher education. The work of a prophet is the work of a civilizer, especially when he finds his people without civilization. The work of a prophet is the work of a civilizer. The greatest civilizer in the history of man is Muhammad the Prophet, peace and blessings be on him.
And look how tactful Allah made our Prophet. So, he tells us certain things to be, to clean up, just to have good hygiene and things just common sense, good decency, good hygiene, and to perform your prayer. Then he says almost apologetically because he knows the weakness of the un- established person in his excellence, I'm talking about that excellent evolved excellence. G-d does not want to burden you, but He want that you be purified. Isn't that so nice? Isn't that so nice? Oh, that's so nice. That's a loving G-d. You'll never find that kind of kindness and love and consideration typical even in the best mother. Sometimes though she'll manifest it. But I said it's not common and typical. The average mother say, look here boy. Now I've been teaching you to wash your face and clean your stinking self up for years and I still got to tell you to go to washroom, get to the washroom and do something about your stinking self. There's a whole peninsula of stinking people over there in what is now called Arabia. Only a few, just a very few, you had to search with Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, you have to search with Sherlock Holmes' looking glass to find them to find the one that wasn't stinking. A whole peninsula over there stinking. And look how kind Allah was. Says, now clean up yourself. Clean up yourself. Now it's not My desire. I don't like to see your burdened, but I wish that you'd be purified. Beautiful, beautiful. And that's another thing we overlook. We overlook the part of Al Islam that appeals to our strong human sentiments. We overlook that part of Al slam and in doing that, we are overlooking our role to advance that, to promote that. If we were sensitized as we should be in that regard, we wouldn't have waited for the United States of America to progress its democracy and to grow to where its people have the conscience, to go and look for suffering people and try to bring aid to them to look for the sick, to look for the hungering people, to look for the neglected, the uneducated, and to try to bring information, intelligence and education to them. We wouldn't have waited. We would've been working hard like the Prophet Muhammad and his early followers, we would've been working hard to go to the aid of anyone who fallen from the pedestal of established person, an established human being. We would've been going to that aid. We wouldn't have waited for the civil rights movement. We wouldn't have waited for the protests, and demand that this civilization, claiming to be the highest civilization on earth, to release its slaves, to stop discriminating against them, to stop, making double laws, treating one as a animal and the other as a human person. We wouldn't have waited. We would have found some strategy, even if we didn't have the material might. If we had been sensitized as we should be sensitized throughout the international Islamic world. We, our leaders, our people in government positions, our people over institutions, our people over the nation, our people over the economy, our people over the products of the country, people in power, people with power. They would have insisted that an attempt be made to shame America, to shame America, and to bring America from its ignorance and from its abuse of the people now we call African-Americans or black. Yes, there would've been a voice coming out of the Middle East saying, our Prophet came and he had a great strategy for correcting this wrong in society. May we share with you this strategy. If they couldn't get any results, they would have then made even a stronger appeal and did something even more embarrassing for America. They would've said, look, rather than see those human beings treated like that, they're human beings. Have them come here, our country's open, send them over here. They'll be better over here living with us in our level, on our level of development, industrial development or economic development. They'll be better over here living with us than living in that misery. You have them in.
They will say, well, may we have an opportunity to take that burden off of you? May we invite them to become Muslims? May we invite them to join us in a Muslim land where they will not be treated as sub-human? But there was no effort. No effort. Why? Because they had lost something. Wherever Prophet Muhammad found people mistreated like animals, treated harshly and cruelly, his anger went against those people that were treating them harshly and cruelly. And he invited them to AI-Islam and he wanted them to hear the message, the call of an Al Islam so that they won't tolerate anymore the abuses that they were receiving. Look, the great message, the appealing message of Al-Islam to the dignity and to the great worth of the human being to his inherent worth and pride or dignity, whatever you want, call it, ringed into the ear of Bilal while he was yet a slave and changed him though the man, that the slave master still held Bilal in slavery, still treated him like subhuman, Bilal had changed. He was no more a slave. He no more could accept slavery. He refused to obey his master in things that he knew was beneath his human dignity, beneath what Allah intended for him as a human being. He refused it. He refused to worship false idols and his master was so embittered he began to torture Bilal. Torture him.
And what happened? One of the followers of Muhammad, the Prophet, peace be upon our prophet, came and he didn't say, I'm going to kill you for doing this. It wasn't a crazy radical step taken to give that human being, Bilal, a chance to be human being. He came to him and said "How much you want for him?" And he paid Bilal's, who was of our color even darker than me, he paid for Bilal's freedom because Bilal didn't want to worship falsehood and didn't want to be sub-human anymore. Now you have now a real example of what is given in the words, "Allah never changes the state of a people until they change what is in their hearts or what is in their soul." Yes, it says, Si anfusihim, until they change, Bi anfusihim. Until they change what is bothering or disturbing their persons or their soul. So, none of us can really say in truth that our soul is not bothered by the way of life, that the average one of us are living in America. No, none of us can say that. The way of life that the average one of us give ourselves to or him or herself to in America, is a burden on our conscience.
But since the great many are doing it and the establishment or the super culture supports it, promotes it, we don't have nothing to prick our conscience, nothing to remind us of the shame but our own little selves. And most of the time we can't think, can't be in privacy with ourselves to even hear our own individual voice or complaint against the state of life that has been cut out for us in America.
So, we can only hear the approval coming from the many, coming from the television and coming from the newspaper, coming from the many. We can only hear the approval. We have to fight like the dickens to go and hear what our own soul is whispering. We have to cut off the tv, we have to cut the record player off. We have to maybe leave the house. Now, if a prophet had to leave the city and go up in the mountain, away from everybody to hear his better side, his better voice in hopes that Allah would speak to him through it, you know we have to do something. I don't think there's a mountain far enough away from all of this trouble and confusion we have in these big cities of America.
The ignorant lifestyle, reckless, destructive lifestyles, the noise. If you ain't used to it, you'll get shocked. You might have a heart attack. Yes, if you can make one room soundproof and you go and stay in that room for three days and then come out of that room, you might have a heart attack. But there's an easier situation, the automobile. Just let one of these average youngsters have your automobile and when he gets through with it, you get in there and turn on the motor. You get in there and turn on the ignition. And when the ignition comes on, the radio is going to come on at the same time. And you might have a heart attack. Sounds like an explosion. You turn the car on the radio, come on, it sounds like an explosion. And they're used to that. They like that. They just in the car just going right on in it. Now why they got to try to look crazy too? It ain't enough to be acting like that, he got to look like it. He's saying with his face, everything is out of order. Now, they used to have in primitive societies, might even can find one now somewhere in the jungles, in primitive societies, they used to have witch doctors.
Magic men, who would work tricks on the behavior, on the nature and behavior of members in the tribe so that he would get an obedient following or fearful following that would fear him and do anything he'd say. And sometimes his medicines, and his chemicals would send some of them just into that kind of shape. And if he ain't getting no obedience from him, he'll point to them. "The curse you see the curse you beware of him, he cursed he cursed. I put the curse on him." Now when civilized societies find that kind of a thing existing, they go in there and kill the witch doctor, kill him. Now who's going to come in here and kill the rich doctor that's got our young boys?
Now who's going to find the witch doctor that's got your son or your child behaving like that and kill him? Don't you know, that kind of thing couldn't happen. That evil couldn't get to that degree if we had respect for building up the human person.
Our religion, Al Islam, our Qur'an, our holy book Qur'an, and our Prophet obligates us, Allah obligates us by what the Prophet has established for and by the Qur'an, He obligates us to work always to keep and protect and keep an environment in a situation for the excellent human life Allah created and intended to grow and flower in the human being. Yes, we are obligated to do that. So, whenever we see society falling off the great pedestal of human excellence, we should be troubled and alarmed to the extent we organize together. And if we can't make an appeal safely and get respect of that society that is doing that evil, we have to meet even in secret and plan and work together for what? Allah says. And most of the secret meetings are for no good. The secret meetings are only good if they're made for what? To promote righteousness, decency, fair dealing, respect between person and person in society. So, someone has been off the job. Now, I hope we don't go too long here. I'm going to try to keep it within a reasonable time. Let us look now at an automobile as a picture of something for us.
We have to understand that just looking the part is far from being enough and that's what this world approves today. You don't have to be anything, just look the part. Muslims, we can't accept that.
The hollow vessel with nothing in it is good for nothing but the fire. That's our opinion. You must have the established substance that Allah wants there, not just a picture of it. You'll look at a car and you see, oh, that beautiful car. Might look like it just came from the showroom. Look at that. And you admire, it. Oh, how nice it is. Now, if you go to start it up and nothing happens, you grab the steering wheel and it's loose. It ain't connected to nothing. You hit the brakes and they loose too. Ain't connected to nothing. You go to mash the button and roll the windows up. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Look how the worth of that car has fallen. Well, that's the same way it is for a human being that looks like us in picture, look like what Allah wants in picture, but when we communicate with them, we find nothing functioning under the covers. So, it says the life, Allah says that He will give us a life, a good life Allah promises us that. That He will give us a good life. He'll establish us in a good life. He promised us a good life. The good life is this ideal destiny that we are talking about for the human person. That's the good life that we want.
We naturally are growing toward it if we'll just listen to our better, better motivations. We are naturally growing into it, but we need the help of Allah. We cannot realize it to our satisfaction without the help of Allah. And we will lose what we gain if we don't at some point turn earnestly seeking the help of Allah. Not any imaginary G-d, the real G-d.
In order to have a functioning person, we have to have that that Allah intended for that person, the human properties, the human nature and the properties operating. They have to be working. They have to be working and operating for him. A functional being has to be in this picture here, a functioning human being, a functioning person. Now, if society will affect my behavior in such way that my mind, my human sentiments are no longer suiting or meeting this identity, agreeing in this identity, then what have we here? We have a foreign life created or we have a dead, in fact, no matter what we have if we don't have the human type in there, the human being is for all intensive purpose, dead! Dead. He's not there just like that car, beautiful picture, dead, dead car. Nobody wants a dead car. Now, by design, we are human beings. And by design what we mean when we say we are human beings, we mean we are creatures of intelligence or creatures with great potential for intelligent behavior, intelligent life, intelligent aspiration. That's what we mean. Now, Al Islam values the human person essentially or basically for that excellence or that superiority in him over other creatures.
He's valued for his intellect. He's valued for his intelligence. Read the Qur'an over and over and see what is the language there. The language is questioning men's disrespect for the value of intellect and intelligence in the human being. So, whether we have 90% in this audience or in our association, 90% that love, stupidity, care nothing about education, that doesn't hurt at all or change at all. Our determination to bring to them to bring to their conscience the great value of intellect that Allah created in them. So, our duty is to go to people who are behaving crazy, behaving like animals that have gone insane, people that disrespect things that should be respected. People that are abusing themselves and destroying themselves and ignoring their obligations to their families and to their communities, or neighborhoods. I mean by community, their neighborhoods. We are to go to those people and invite them to come back to human conscience. To see the human being in its true worth and realize that everyone has that great possession. Every child is birthed, born in the world with that great possession. And all they have to do is change their attitude, change their ugly disposition, and get a spirit to follow good sense. Don't go there and tell them that. You have to have faith in Prophet Muhammad if you expect to change.
Don't go there and say, oh, you first have to believe in Allah before there will be any change. Don't do that. Don't go and say, oh, first you have to get some morals in you get some good morals in you before you have any change. Don't say that. Go and say, you have already in you what is needed to make you better than the people you are associating with. You already have with you in your possession, the equipment that you need to rise up from this low level and compete with the people that you are now dependent upon. That's the way we should talk to them. Say, look you were created to be a sentimental person with human sentiments to be caring and loving. Yes, that's true. And you were created to be strong and muscular and to push people around. You're created to display authority and to feel good over power. That's true. But most importantly, you were created an intellect and intelligent. And if you respect yourself as a creature of intelligence, you'll have all the other changes you need coming after that. We first, we should appeal to people to respect themselves as creatures of intelligence. Here again, is an overlooked role for Muslims in world leadership.
When you think of world leadership, what are you thinking about? Are you thinking about industry?
Are You thinking about political philosophy, political ideologies? Are you thinking about business opportunity, the growth of wealth? Yes. All of that is world leadership, but that can't get anywhere until there's worth established in people. And that's why America has fallen so much as an industrial power and has fallen so much as a leader among nations. It is because this precious foundation that we have been talking about now for our or so, a good hour, has been neglected. It has not only been neglected, it has been warred upon. And that's why we have the big problem we have now. That's why we have the lost esteem for the country that we have now. And that's why they don't see a quick turning point for the country because there's no quick turning point for this terrible, neglected foundation, the human foundation. See, the Muslims shouldn't be going about the world telling other nations, you have to be free because G-d loves you. That's true, but that's not enough. You should choose to be free because G-d loves you. You should choose to be free because you are a human being just like everybody else. That's good, but that's not enough.
Because when you say a human being just like everybody else, that youngster that's going about....(unintelligent), that guy, when you say you're a human being like everybody else, he said, "yeah man, yeah, I know it!" He has gotten attached to another meaning for human, and he and he ain't nowhere in touch with the meaning that Allah intends for him. So, it ain't enough to go back and tell him, yeah, you're human. We did that in America. Now when I say we, I mean the country. Did that in America during the sixties. All the trouble came out and what happened? They came with that sweet talk. "Love, got enough love for everybody." (A)Stranger walking down the street, want to kiss you. "Peace and love." That happened right in the city. And then after a while we saw them with cats in the house and they weren't just for pets, they were for eating. You remember? Same wayward bunch. Go protest against the establishment, they're going to live off of cat meat. This was in the news. Ivy Leaguers too. Among these people that did that was some Ivy Leaguers, those who were once leading students in some of the best colleges of the United States. They lost their sense of worth. They lost the ability to identify their true worth and start seeing themselves in the dark, through confusion. So, in time what happened? They became so soft, they weren't good for nothing. I'm talking about the majority. Majority of the Americans became so soft and not good for anything. They ain't good to keep strong homes. They're not good to keep a strong job market. No, job market weak because there's no strong disciplines in the workers of the job market. So, the country had to save itself and open, change the immigration laws and everything to encourage more stronger people from societies that weren't affected like this to come into America and give America a few more years to live. You want to know why all these different people coming from all over the world, because ain't no people in the United States to hold the United States up. We've been wiped out, wiped out by ignorant, abnormal behavior.
Now that's the ugliness, that's the shame, that's the hurt on us who have let ourselves fall like that in the United States and on our institution and our leaders who allowed that and didn't come out strongly against it, even if they had to go to civil war. Civil war would've been better, but they wouldn't have had to go to that extent. Could have brought us back to our senses, but that was big dollars, big money, easy, quick dollars. See a foolish person, you can get all their money. A person whose got sense, you're just going to get the amount he can afford to spend. I was reading the other day where we as a people, African-American people, spending 8% of the national spending, we represent 8%, so this report says, of the national spending. We are not 8% of the population. So, we are spending much more than is represented by our share or numbers in the population of this country. And that tells us what, that our spending indicates that we are well off in this country materially or financially. Our spending, if people look at nothing but the record of our spending, that data says that these people are better off financially than most of the Americans, because we are spending much more than our share in the population. You understand what I'm saying? Our share and the number of people in this country says that we should be spending much less than what we are spending. What are we now what? 11% or more? 12% maybe. Of the population. They say about 11%. Huh? They say we are about 11% of the population. So here we represent 11% of the population, but we are spending 8% of the whole national spending for all the whole country and just 11% of the population. And we say we are poor. There are other groups that I'm sure represent much bigger numbers than that of the population, but spending much less than that of the national spending. And we don't need any figures to tell us what's happening. You go to any house of these people that call themselves poor, go there and see how they live. You go into what they call a middle class white, middle class European American, and they won't have on the whole, you won't find them with as many cars and as later cars and models, as many TVs, as many phones, as much carpet. You won't find them with that. You won't find them with as many refrigerators and as much stuff in the refrigerator.
We can kill the baby crawling around the refrigerator by opening the door. And another good indication of our heavy spending, that we spend more than other Americans. We are not even talking about the rich minority. There's a powerfully rich minority that's making oh so much, a million times the money that we make as individuals, million times our salaries. They're making million times our salaries and some of us have as much consumer product in our house and in our environment as those people making all that money. And then we say we're poor. How can you be poor? How are you poor, and you've got a big car, all them cars out in front of your house. People can't find a parking place. You got a car, your wife's got a car, sometimes you got two, she got one. Three or four teenagers in the family, each one got a car. You need a parking lot for your cars. A garage or something, city garage or city garage or parking lot, just for the cars, but you poor. Go to that house. Go to that house. Go to that house, I guarantee I'm not exaggerating. Go to that house where the two grown up got three cars and two or three or more teenagers, each one of them got a car. Go to that house and stay there long enough and you'll see the lights go off, the phone go off.
It's their house, so they don't get no 5 day notice or nothing. They just lose the mortgage or something. They lose the whole house in time, the whole house is gone. That's a shame. Why? Why is that? Is it a moral issue? Certainly it is. Is it a social issue? Yes, it is. The family issue. Yes it is. But more accurately in our identification, identifying the problem it is an issue of ignorance. The failure of that person to be intelligent. Nothing dignifies us more than an appreciation for intelligence. Don't you know that? Nothing disciplines us more for a better performance than an appreciation for our intelligence.
Appreciation for my black skin is nothing like as powerful as my appreciation for my intelligence in affecting change in me for the better, making me a better person, making me a more productive person, more progressive, a more aggressive person for good. No, nothing in me, no sense in me or myself is more productive or more powerful for my good future than my sense of intelligence and respect for my sense of intelligence. Yes, those are the people that run the world, not people that look at their self in the morning to see what color... "Oh baby, I'm looking a little pinkish today, huh? Oh boy, I got to do something about that, you know that's my pride." He's looking in the mirror and seeing an intelligent person, an intelligent manager of finances, an intelligent manager of property, an intelligent manager of employees. He's looking at an intelligent person. Our religion requires of us that we promote the human type that Allah wants in us and that we promote the growth of intelligence in that type. Thank you very much. As salaam alaykum.



