Reprinted from the Muslim Journal 6-7-02 to 7-5-02

The Qur'an, The Final Frontier

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

(The following text is excerpted from the public address given by Imam W. Deen Mohammed in Hinesville, Ga., on Feb. 10, 2002, on the topic: "The Qur'an, The Final Frontier.")

I have decided to talk within the theme of this weekend, and I was very surprised myself by the language of this theme. It is very powerful, especially for students of Qur'an, thinkers in the knowledge of Islam: "The Qur'an, the Final Frontier, and Islam the Last Development for the Human Being."

We begin always with Allah's Name, The Merciful Benefactor, The Merciful Redeemer. We witness that G-d is One and the Creator of everything in the Heavens and in the earth. In the Qur'an we are told to say to the People of the Book, meaning Jews and Christians, "Your G-d and our G-d is One and the Same G-d."

You can read the Bible the Old and New Testaments  and you can read the Torah. You can read the teachings of those pious men of Judaism and you can read the commentary on the Books of Moses and you will see right away their G-d for them is the G-d that made the sky and the earth and human beings. And you will see the G-d for Christians is the same G-d, the G-d that created everything.

The difference comes when we seek to try to explain the "Self of G-d." Muslims do not seek to reveal G-d beyond where G-d goes with us to reveal Himself. When Christ Jesus, peace be on him, the leadership he left, his followers  students of scripture, students of G-d and even students of the person of Jesus Christ  had not yet learned enough about Christ himself to really know him.

The students of Christ studied for about three centuries or more trying to come to a conclusion on "What is the self of Jesus? Is he human, like all mortal beings? Or is he human and divine?" It took them centuries to come to a conclusion.

When they came to that conclusion, they did not have near to all of them in agreement. But it was published as a consensus of agreement the way we have it now from that time on Jesus Christ in the New Testament, peace be upon him.

Obviously, and that is to say how Muhammed the Prophet dealt with this subject, we Muslims are to believe that Christians believe in the same G-d that we believe in. Because Muhammed, himself, never stopped churches from existing or being in Muslim lands. There were churches and also Jews with their religious places, and Muhammed "mandated" that Christians and Jews should have religious freedom.

I have read his own writings, and he said: "They are to go on practicing their religion the way they did before Islam became the governing order." He did not require that they change their services. He didn't try to order Christianity for the Christians, and he didn't try to order Judaism for Jews.

You will find big churches in Egypt, where Islam went in the time of Muhammed the Prophet. You will find big churches in Turkey and in many parts of the Islamic world. And they have had Islamic freedom there long before they got it in the West. Islam established religious freedom for Christians and Jews long before they got it in the West.

I have had rabbis and students of the Torah to tell me that they owed it to Islam the days of the love for science that existed for centuries in Moorish Spain, where Jews, Muslims and Christians were working in a friendly atmosphere, as friends beside each other. This was provided by that Muslim government.

They worked beside each other studying the old sciences of the Greeks and all the sciences that had been neglected during the Dark Ages; they worked together to give the world true sciences and philosophy and many other fields of knowledge.

This period lasted more than 500 years, equal to the lifetime of the people in this New World from the Old World. It is much longer than the lifetime of the United States. And they enjoyed peaceful coexistence and cooperation for at least three or four centuries. The government of Spain did not collapse until about 500 years after it had been enjoying that kind of inclusion of the three major religions working together to help mankind.

Scientists of the West and historians and government people and others who were informed of what happened in the history of Islam in Moorish Spain readily acknowledge and express appreciation for that long period of time there, when that government was open to the world for the great religions to come there and work together for the betterment of mankind.

We would not have had what we called the Renaissance in the West, if there had not been first the Renaissance in the East made possible only by the Qur'an and the leader Muhammed, the Messenger of G-d, prayers and peace be upon him, our first teacher and first guide in Islam  the one to whom the Qur'an was revealed.

With that said, I want us also to understand that Islam is a religion that is to be practiced by people all over the world. Islam is not a religion made for one geography and not for another geography. It is not a religion made for Arabia and not for Afghanistan. It is not a religion made for Arabia and not for Chicago. It is a religion made for people wherever they live on this earth.

Islam is a portable religion that you can put in your bag and carry it wherever you go. It has no priesthood. These are the important features of Islam. It has no order for qualifying its leaders to preach Islam. What qualifies us is our respect and studious labor to understand G-d's Word given to us in the Qur'an.

The Qur'an is not to be kept by any priestly order or by any clergy. The Holy Qur'an's language will never become a dead language. It is not given to us as Arabic to practice in some kind of religious circle or order and to have another language for our secular world or for the public. No. It is the language for the common man.

No matter how much you are deprived of a formal education, if you say you have become a Muslim, you were converted, or if you were born a Muslim, you are obligated to study the Qur'an. You are obligated to learn to read, if you don't know how to read, so that you can read the Book that G-d gave to all of us  learned and unlearned, the rich and the poor. This is Islam.

You won't have any excuse in the Day of Judgment. G-d will say, "Didn't you know that the Qur'an was for every man and woman? Did you try to read it to see what I said there?" And we are obligated to study history and it is available to learn about Muhammed the Prophet. He is our first guide, our first teacher, our model of the human life that Allah wants of all of us and that He created us with.

Muhammed didn't say he came to represent a model that G-d hadn't created in Adam. It is the same model that He created when He created Adam, before Adam was deceived to come out of that model.

It is a natural inheritance that Muhammed wants us to know about, and it is projected before our eyes as the model that G-d created us to be. We are still the descendants of Adam and whatever G-d created for Adam, we still have it.

G-d extends what He gave the first creation and it continues to be extended. All of us have in us "the Muslim" that Allah wants us to be. As the Christians say, "Christ within us," we say "Muslim within us." Christ is called the Second Adam coming back after overcoming the deceptions of Satan. And then he is shown to us in his purity before Satan deceived him, and that purity is called Christ.

Islam and Christianity are not differing regarding this. Islam called Christ the original Muslim. Christianity called Christ, "The Christ." It calls the original Muslim "Christ" or the First Adam. We call Muhammed "The Model," so for us we have our Christ. Our Christ is the model Muhammed; Christianity's Christ is the model Jesus. Muhammed said that at the end of the world, you shall see Christ and Muhammed together. And I have just put them together for you.

This is a new day. The Qur'an or "what is to be read," that is its meaning, and it is also called "that to be recited." The Prophet established the practice of having all the people who learned Islam to recite the Qur'an. No matter what your position or status is in the society, you are obligated to read Qur'an and to recite it. Our public is supposed to know how to read Qur'an.

Most of you here know how to recite al-Fatihah, the opening chapter of the Qur'an and the most important chapter. By the learned scholars, it is called the whole of the Qur'an condensed, like a concentrated drink that has to be mixed with water. That one chapter we are obligated to say in our formal prayers and at all important occasions. And Muslims will say part of it for all serious occasions: With G-d's Name, the Merciful Benefactor, The Merciful Redeemer.

This includes the Names of G-d, particularly Ar-Rahman. And there is a whole chapter in the Qur'an that elaborates on the name, Ar-Rahman. If you want to see G-d as Ar-Rahman, then read the chapter in the Qur'an by that title. The Qur'an is a Book of reading and of recital.

G-d tells us in this Book that what He gave Muhammed is not something newly formed, but it is what was revealed to those who came before Muhammed and a clarification of what they were given from G-d and an explanation, so we will know how to apply it in our time, our life. And it is a conclusion, as we have it worded here: "The Qur'an, the Final Frontier."

There is also a chapter in Qur'an translated as "The Conclusion" or "The Unity." It tells us that for Islam, "Unity is the conclusion." The word plainly says "conclusion," but the language of the chapter also says "unity." It begins with the Unity or Oneness of G-d: "Say, 'G-d is only One Alone.'" It means that He has no gods with Him. And that is what the Old Testament says: "Make no gods with Me."

The Qur'an came back to reinforce that in Suratui Ikhlas or the chapter called The Conclusion. The Qur'an then also is revealed to conclude matters. What matters? Not the matters of our Pop Culture; it doesn't address this kind of stuff. It is the matters of revelations, what has come to the people of G-d from G-d as revelation. It comes to conclude those matters.

The books that they received also told them to expect the Day when the matters will be concluded. The Qur'an is in fulfillment of the prophecy that was given in the books. Muhammed the Prophet received the first words of the Qur'an that say: "Your Lord is the Creator." Those first words to Muhammed did not tell him, "Your Lord's Name is Allah." He didn't hear that word until after he had received the first communication from G-d. Later G-d gave him the word Allah in the communication.

The first communication said: "Read, in the Name of your Lord Who created, created mankind from a small clot of blood. Read, and your Lord is Most Generous, Who taught mankind knowledge and how to record it. Who taught mankind what mankind was not before knowing...."

G-d says in another part of the revelation that came much later to Muhammed:
If all the seas or bodies of water were doubled in number and they were made as ink and all the trees on earth were made as pens with which to write would all be used up, before the Words of G-d could be used up."

Now, aren't we poor students, when we think that all the Words of G-d are in the Qur'an? And it all can't be in the Bible either or in the Books of the Hindus or about the Luminated Buddha and in all the other religions, you still will not have all the Words of G-d. And G-d is still teaching.

I am a student of G-d's and I'm still learning. And that is the living and plain and unadulterated truth.

In the Old Testament, we read that blood is the life of the body. And in the New Testament we read that blood is the spirit of the New Testament. G-d said in the first verse given to Muhammed (PBUH): "Read in the Name of your Lord, Who created...." And the second verse given to Muhammed, the Prophet, says: "... Who created mankind from a clot of congealed blood."

In the Bible, G-d reminds the People of the Book: "When I found you, you were wallowing in your own blood." It means the blood from the birth, the blood of the woman, their mother who delivered them out of blood and water. The learned Jewish teachers and rabbis know what this means.

He (G-d) found them socially confused and socially corrupt and without the spirit of social and community life, as G-d wants them to have it in their bodies and in their people. So they were lost from their social calling as a people and as a community. And G-d had to lead them back to their true nativity, so they could follow their true lifeline and become a great people, as G-d wanted them to be.

We may say that G-d found us after slavery, a whole people  African Americans or Blacks  wallowing in our own blood. And we had to have Frederick Douglass and a few others to stand up out of that blood as a man in the mold that G-d wants us to be in and to lead the rest of us so that our race would come to stand up as one man in our social establishment created for us by our G-d.

For the religious people, especially for Muslims, community is the body. We are not supposed to see our body as our personal body. When you look in the mirror and see yourself, that is not the big picture. When you see your whole community, that is the big picture. That is the self, the collective body, that we want to establish.

That is no more than G-d reached the first man, Adam, with. He didn't want Adam to see himself in his own personal body. That is why He revealed in Genesis of the Bible that Adam is not to be seen as one body. Adam is to be seen as humanity, a collective body. In Adam, the person, we are to see the picture of the whole humanity what G-d wants for all nations and for all races of people, the collective body.

The spirit of the community is what we want, not one person's spirit. I was once in Saudi Arabia with some of the learned teachers there in religion. When the meeting was over, we sat to have our break and to drink tea. One of them near me said: "You know, Imam Mohammed, Adam was a community." I said, "I do know that. I read it in Genesis." He said: "And Abraham was a community." So I was listening then, and he left it there.

I think where he wanted me to take it was "... and Muhammed is a community." But he didn't say that. You know the saying, a hint is enough for the wise. So he stopped it right there. So I carried it the next step to say: "We are Muslims and Muhammed is a community."

We do say that this community is the community of Muhammed, the Prophet, peace be upon him. He was the one who G-d gave the vision to on how to establish it, and he was the one who actually established it in his lifetime.

Prophet Muhammed established the ummah of Al-Islam or the international community of Islam. So Adam is a human type for all people, as Abraham is a human type for all people, and Muhammed is a human type for all people.

How do we know that he is not just a human type for Muslims, but a human type for all people? We know by G-d's Own Words. G-d says to us in the last revealed book, the Qur'an: "In Muhammed, you have the most excellent human model for any who believe in G-d and fear the Last Day."

This means that you believe that there is not only G-d, but also that G-d is going to hold you accountable for the way you lived your life. In our Book, we are told that Muhammed the Prophet is a model for any who believe that, and the People of the Book believed that. They believe in G-d and also in Judgment Day, that they have to be accountable to G-d.

G-d tells us in the Qur'an, of Muhammed: "Certainly, Muhammed is a mercy to all the worlds." Doesn't this sound like the same language that we find in the New Testament and in Christian theology of Jesus Christ? That Jesus Christ comes to bring peace to the whole world and that he is a mercy to the whole world. It is the same.

When we understand these religions in their pure logic and in their beautiful language, we see that these religions are addressing the same major concerns. And the biggest of all concerns is that we perceive or see truth correctly.

Firstly, truth of this big world that we have, of the heavenly bodies and the earth with all of its beauty and wonders. That it reaches our thinking mind and that we give it thought, to command what should our relationship be with it. What should our respect for it be? How dependent are we on it, etc.?

Also, it is to have us look at our own selves and not just see the human form the body and the abstract higher reality on the inside of the flesh.

Listen closely to what I am saying; I try not to waste a single word. We have to look at ourselves as human beings and as created things, as people, as humans, and not take our own creation for granted. Look at it to appreciate it as a thing of value that G-d has given us. When I look in the mirror and see the person as body, I want to think about it as a Muslim.

The Muslim is a thinker; a Muslim doesn't just live to act and react. When you took your shahadah, your shahadah says "don't convert, until you have thought about it, until you have given serious thought to it."

We are thinkers, no matter how low we are on the level of society in education. We are obligated, all of us, to be thinkers. In Islam, you are not to be called a man, unless you are thinking for yourself. The word for man means you are thinking for yourself. If you are not doing that, you are not entitled to be called a man.

If I had time, I could show you things in your own body that you would hold and cherish for the rest of your life  if you have not come by this from some other way; you will love what I say and will cherish it for the rest of your life. I have put it in some of the publications that I have, and maybe you will find one day what I've said about the human body.

But even more important than the human body, the human body is the first Muslim. Before you get the world's mind in you and you get your own mind in you that you gained while working with the world outside, you were a Muslim from heaven as a new creation or child from heaven.

Muhammed, the Prophet, said this and you only need to go to any hospital where the newborn babies are and look at the newborn babies who will be Chinese, Indian, European, African and all kind of races.

Look at them and see can you tell that they are different as far as their expressions and how they are expressing themselves. See if you can find them expressing themselves in Chinese, in Yoruba, in Hausa, in Urdu or Hindi or Arabic or English. They will not be communicating in these languages; they learned these languages after they come into our world. G-d gave them one language, the language responding to the reality that they have when G-d created them.

They are in the world of sensitivities. They are in the world of feelings. When they open their eyes, they are in the world of their sight and their hearing and they get things from us. And right away their communication is polluted by what we are saying around them and the noises we are making around them and by the things they see that we have in their environment. And the soul becomes polluted.

But when they come here from G-d, they are not polluted. They are pure and born like angels from heaven. They are born like pure souls from heaven. In this purity, they are ready to obey momma.

They used to have criminal law in this country, in America, that said that criminology could be inherited. So they authorized certain criminals to be sterilized, so they couldn't have any more babies. They were thinking that would keep down the criminals in the society.

They finally had to give up that position in criminal law, and they had to establish that no human being could inherit from his parent, his mother or father, criminal behavior.

I'm saying to you that that is evidence of what G-d revealed to Adam, to Abraham, to Moses and to Jesus and to Muhammed  on what G-d revealed on human creation. That human creation comes into the world with an innocence, until something happens to deceive it out of its own nature that G-d created it in.

When they say it can't be inherited, it means that Allah G-d did not create any criminal. Allah did not create any sinner and never created a sinner. Sin comes after. When you hear the expression, "born in sin, understand that to mean that baby was born into a sinful world  not that sin was in the baby when G-d made it.

When G-d made the baby. it was made without sin  no matter how much sin the mother committed or the father committed or the whole family line committed. No sin can go into that baby that G-d made, until we put it into that baby. So we don I even have such an idea in Islam.

There is no such idea as the "original sin." There is no original sin; G-d is original. And the human being in the form and mold that G-d created is original; that's the original human being. That "original" is called a "Muslim." We used to say, "What is my own self? My own self is a righteous Muslim." We got that in our schools of the Nation of Islam.

Islam wants for us a brotherhood. And the true Muslim community spirit is the spirit of Muslim brotherhood. That includes sisters, like man includes woman in the dictionary. Man means the male in the family of human beings, but in any good dictionary man will also mean males and females  as in mankind. It is the same for Islam. The spirit is the blood, and for us the spirit is that of Muslim brotherhood and sisterhood, included in one.

Allah is the Name of G-d, but don't make any big deal of this. If you make a big deal of it, you will be using Allah in a way to say that He is not the same as the G-d for Jews and Christians and others. You will then make your G-d small and have Christians and others thinking you have some little homemade god.

Allah is only an Arabic word for G-d. A study of the word's history tells us that the use of the Name Allah in Islam combines two words from long, long ago  "al" which means "the" and "ilah" which means G-d. Allah means The G-d.

If you don't think Allah is the same for Christians, go to Lebanon where Christians have lived before and after the coming of Islam to the world. They were Arabs for as long as they remember, though further back they belonged to another people.

There was also a time back in history when the Saudis were not called Arabs but by some other name. Those people speaking the Arabic language are called Arabs.

In Lebanon, there have been Christians before and after the coming of the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammed (PBUH). If you ask them how do you say G-d, they will laugh and say "Allah." In their churches, they are saying Allah.

There are a lot of Christians and churches in Lebanon and in Egypt also. In many other parts of the Muslim world, you will find Christians in Muslim lands practicing their religion.

These people don't speak English; they don't say G-d. They use Arabic, which is their language. They say "Allah." In the Qur'an, Allah is the Name for all the worlds and for humanity or mankind. The Qur'an was revealed to be a communication with a script form and a style of communication which were divinely ordered to have it to reveal itself.

First it is given to a human being, a servant or messenger of G-d. Then the servant and messenger of G-d reads it. G-d gave Muhammed, first, five verses. He told him to "Read!" That was the first. "Read in the Name of your Lord, Who created..., Who made everything."

This carried the meaning "to read to understand"  not just to read. Isn't that the way education wants us to read; in school you are to read to understand. If you read just to read, you are not going to get good grades. But if you read to comprehend, you are going to get good grades. That is what Allah told Muhammed, when He gave to him the first words of the Holy Book. He said, "Read," with the meaning to read to understand.

Allah also said: "G-d shall teach you, Muhammed." This man had no formal education and no prior knowledge of scripture, for he lived among idol worshippers  idols carved out of wood or stone or made from clay. They didn't have Bible among them and had no classical religion in the history of civilization. So how was this man going to read, according to the definition in the Bible, that says "Read once, read twice." This is in the Bible.

There is nothing that Muhammed came to give us of a major importance that is not in the Bible or in some religion that is important to the world. Allah told him that He Himself shall teach him. And in the first communication to Muhammed, He was saying that Allah, G-d, is The Teacher. If any man has become a teacher, it is because G-d was The Teacher first.

I know my Teacher is G-d. My father told me that my Teacher would be G-d. He said, "I got mine in the person of a man, but he (Wallace) will get his from G-d  not in the person of a man but by way of revelation." My father said that to me in front of others. Now that it has happened, I am a witness to what my father was saying. G-d has taught me and is teaching me.

Muhammed left something for us; he gave us signs of the end of time. In one of the signs of the end of time, Muhammed said there would be a person that G-d would teach Himself. This is in established hadith. Allah taught Muhammed, and Muhammed predicted that in the end of time G-d would be the Teacher of one of his followers.

G-d has clearly said that He taught mankind; He is The Teacher of all people. You can't have true civilization, unless someone from among human beings receives inspiration or revelation from G-d.

G-d, Allah, is He Who created all matter, all life, all humans to reveal life to them; G-d has to reveal our own life to us. Do you think we would have civilization and government like we have it, if our society depended on nobody but us with common knowledge? No, indeed.

Even this civilization and this government is protected by angels and men of deep insight into revelation. Because of those angels and those men, our government has longevity. Our civilization lives on and on and on. It never happened for man before G-d's Words were lifted above man's government. That is what our government does  it lifts G-d and G-d's Words above government: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator...."

It is G-d Who created all matter and made it possible for human beings to get the sciences. But man gets off the path of true nature and gets into his ideas a reality and loses the truth of what reality really is. So he goes into darkness, as the Dark Ages in history, and then G-d has to come again to man find one worthy who kept his human decency. He comes to this one and deposits in him again G-d's Own Light, so that his mind and intellect will be illumined again.

With that Light given to him by G-d as a spark in his intelligence, he will be able to call fallen humanity back to the way of truth and reality. That is what happened during the Dark Ages, when Islam brought to the world by Muhammed the Prophet interrupted the darkness. This is in the Bible.

There will be a famine all over the earth, the Bible said. It won't be a famine of food, it will be a famine of hearing the Word of the Lord. That is the Bible. There will be darkness, and darkness will have the people starving without the food that G-d wants them to eat.

G-d said in the New Testament, referring to the Communion that Jesus established for his disciples and followers, "And the Bread is the Doctrine." Bread was the teaching of the New Testament. "And the Blood is the Spirit of the New Testament." Here bread, meat, blood, wine and water have to be understood. It is talking about a certain knowledge that G-d revealed. When He reveals it, it comes into your life and the world of mankind  to believers, especially  as the first germ of life.

It is compared with the natural development of life in the mother. So it says that first He takes water and blood and causes the blood to clot, and then He makes a fetus lump and makes the lump uniform. Then He puts into the lump bones that give it structure, and He clothes the bones with skin gives it sensitivities  and completes it as human. Then He breathes into that body a breath again, and it becomes a new creation. That is what G-d says.

G-d did this to reveal not only the material world that holds science, but so that you can get the benefits of science, for science is the tool that will improve upon your existence. Science is G-d's Second Mercy; He said to the People of the Book: "I will give to you two portions of My Mercy."

It is fulfilled in every chapter of the Qur'an, except in the ninth chapter, and in the contents of that chapter the two mercies are mentioned: Bismillah  With G-d's Name; G-d is Ar-Rahman  one Mercy, and He is Ar-Rahim  Merciful twice. This is what was prophesied in the Old Book, and here come these chapters reminding them of the promised two mercies  Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim.

They received the Mercy of correction on their spiritual perception, and then G-d guided them in the perception of the objective world the material benefits. And the Muslims became the new ones to introduce the true sciences to the world. This is history that Arnold Tornbee, a historian, and many others have written about. Arnold Tornbee is perhaps one of the greatest historians in the West.

The Muslim civilization flowered after the coming of the Qur'an and made possible the revival of intellectual interest in true science. The result was thinkers and students and philosophers and doctors  medicine men; they came to Syria and Iraq where centers of higher education were established by Muslims after following Muhammed the Prophet. They came from all over the known world to Muslim centers to have their intellect revived and science given back to the world.

How is it a mercy? It was this revealed Book, the Qur'an, that invited thinkers to see the world objectively, to see the practical benefits of it. Not in a priest's or pious man's romantic mind that looks at the sky and sees so much beauty in it and preaches that to his congregation.

It is beautiful, but what about the tools and utility that G-d put in the matter  sun, earth, wind, water, in everything  fire, for man to discover as science and then put to use in his own community?

Now he could have kind weather in a harsh, mean desert, where temperatures are averaging 120 or 130 degrees. Now he has air condition and sits in his house in that hot place and feels no heat. Science has made his life more comfortable for him in that desert. Once he only traveled on a donkey in the heat with only a white cloth to cover his head to keep from burning up. Now he has paved roads and sits in a Mercedes Benz all the way across the heated desert. That is science.

Now man wants you to see him as the creator of this new world, when G-d is his Teacher, G-d gave him his lab to work in, and G-d inspired him to know how to use the brain  the human computer that G-d created us with. How is man to get all the credit for this? This is the great message at the conclusion of things in this Time or Day of Religion.

Man has lied to himself and to the public and would have us think that man should get the credit for all of these things, when man is a beneficiary himself. He has benefited from G-d's objective world, from his human nature, from his rational senses and human sensitivities and everything else.

He is nothing but a flesh computer made by his G-d. The ones who gave us Apple and Macintosh Computers, do they tell us that is a gift from G-d? They claim that for themselves, for mankind from industrial men.

Then why don't they acknowledge that they are a computer, and without them being a computer they would never have seen how to get anything from G-d's creation, not to mention science. And they would not have perceived how to make the computer that they made. So why don't they admit that they are G-d's computer?

The political minded were locked out by G-d; they can't get what G-d revealed. The material minded, who just want wealth, can't get it; G-d locked them out.

They know themselves that G-d gave it to a man who was not educated by the world. They fear that if the spiritual people are allowed free study and free preaching of this Book, there will be another Muhammed on the scene. And his world will be bigger than theirs.

Allah says in this Holy Book, "None can have access to it except the purified ones." Again, He says, "This Book is Guidance for the G-d fearing, those respectful of G-d and respectful of Sacred Matters." And He has locked out those who don't have taqwa, that sacred regard. How powerful G-d is. He can speak to the world and no ear can hear but the one He wants to hear.

Praise be to Allah. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad, our former leader, left with the rest of our leaders the same thing that he left with me. He didn't give me something that they didn't have. In fact, he told them about me, and perhaps they had more than I had because he told them things about me that I didn't hear.

But look who got in the door, and it wasn't any multiple births. I don't have any twins; there was only one germ allowed to germinate.

That is a sign, and that is why I am sharing it. I challenge anybody and do it only for G-d's Glory. G-d is the Best Knower, and we cannot plan our own lives except as G-d plans. G-d gives us all kind of support for us to believe in and to be united and solidly together. But some are always looking for a way out of the Light, rather than looking for a way to see better with the Light.

He says: "None can get into it but the purified ones. It is guidance for those who have reverence for G-d, reverence for their parents and reverence for Sacred Matters."

He said that even if your parents stride with you to get you to believe something that G-d has not given you a foundation for, He has not supported that with anything in your religion to say that it is OK, He says "do not follow them in matters of religion, but keep good company with them in this life"  until you die.

Even if your parents reject you for becoming a Muslim, you should be striving until you die to stay with your parents and to love your mother and father and to love your close relatives, even though they say, "Don't come by my house." Do what I did, when my father told me not to come by his house. He said, "Don't worry your mother. You will get her in trouble. Don't try to call your mother."

That was the law of the Nation of Islam, that if you disagreed with important things, you would be excommunicated and could not have any contact with your people.

But that same man who put that kind of restriction on me, when he was in prison serving time for not signing up for the draft for World War II... Perhaps he would not have had to go to prison, if he had signed up for the draft, but he wouldn't even put his name on the draft card. He wanted to say, "We don't accept this." He was imprisoned in Milan, Mich.

During that time, he wrote to my mother and said, "Give my son this." What was it? It was these words from the Holy Qur'an: "If your parents strive with you to get you to accept or believe in something that you don't have any basis or ground from G-d for, don't follow them but keep good company with them in this life." It means until you die or until they die.

I didn't know that this was working in me; I didn't consciously look at it; it was my nature not to accept that I couldn't communicate with my mother and father. He put that Nation of Islam law on me, but before each Savior's Day came around I would write to him.

I would say, "Daddy, your Savior's Day is near and I want to wish you a successful annual Savior's Day Convention." And I would find ways to reach my mother and tell her, "Momma, don't worry about me. I am doing fine."

Now we come to Prophet Muhammed's own life that speaks to the idea that G-d created everything and G-d has the power to renew or bring everything back. G-d's world that He wants for human beings does not depend on civilizers from among men; it does not even depend on saviors from among men; it does not depend on men of science and technology.

G-d can return the order of the world whenever He wants to by revealing it, as He says: "When I want someone, I don't have to have a child. I select one from among those whom I have already created."

And He selected Muhammed from the men whom He had already created. He selected Moses from the men He had already created. He selected Abraham from the men He had already created. And He created Adam, our Father, Himself, peace be upon them.

If you study The Gospel, you will find one of the writers of The Gospel saying of Jesus Christ's lineage, his genealogy, that he was "born of Mary," and he goes on tracing his genealogy back and back, until it gets to the first man, Adam.

Then it says, "... and Adam, who was created by G-d." Jesus recognized Adam; he didn't say his father was not Adam. In scripture Jesus, in fact, is called the Second Adam.

In the Qur'an, Allah says that yes, Adam did fall victim to the seducing voice of the devil, called Shaitan or Satan, but he repented. It says, "He came upon a Word from his Lord and he repented, and his Lord accepted his repentance." So we don't have in Islam a picture of Adam as a sinner, without also having a picture of Adam as one who was a human with human imperfection.

So he did sin, as he was challenged by the most subtle creature in the earth, according to Genesis. So our first Father didn't receive any light challenge; he received a challenge from the wisest and most subtle and most deceitful and trickiest creature in the creation, Satan.

And Satan caused him to slip; the Qur'an doesn't say that he sinned, it says that he "slipped out of the clothing that G-d gave him." It means he slipped out of the protection that G-d gave him to protect his own soul and became victim of the Satan, the devil.

It also says that Adam "met a Word from his Lord and he repented." I believe that to mean not in his own time, but much later in history in the rise of man, the ascent of man in civilization, and I can tell you exactly the time. It was when Jesus Christ was born. In Jesus, Adam met a Word from his Lord and repented, and his Lord accepted him.

I can also tell you that I heard some things that my little heart and mind could not be comfortable with from my father's teachings; I was only 11 or 12 years old. I remember praying to G-d and saying, "Allah, if I am not seeing you correctly, please help me to see you correctly."

I can say to you that Adam in the genes of Elijah Muhammad by the name of Wallace met a Word from his Lord and repented, and G-d accepted his repentance.

Muhammed the Prophet's own life is also a mercy to us. And that is why G-d says to us in the Qur'an: "Muhammed is a mercy to all the worlds. I have not sent you to be any other than a mercy to all the worlds," it says speaking to Muhammed. He cannot be just for Arabs or for one continent or one people, he has to be for all people.

The international community called the Ummah in Arabic, derived from the word "um" which means mother, is our second gift of mercy from our G-d.

G-d gives true enlightenment to man as His Second Mercy. But those who followed Muhammed the Prophet  your community is a community of guidance, of business, of industry. It is a complete world or community, complete with medicine and sciences and military, everything.

Our community is also one of military people. We don't believe in turning the other cheek until we don't have any cheek to turn. We turn the other cheek once, and then we come at you when you try to hit the other side.

The only reason the Bible said to turn the other cheek was because they couldn't do anything about it at that time. The Romans gave them hell and would feed them to the lions and hang them up on crosses, so that was survival instructions to them. But if you don't have your life in somebody else's hands and the law is there, you don't give them a second chance to slap you.

The Qur'an gives us two gifts of mercy. One is Purity that brings us back to that original newborn child innocence, where we are not out to hurt anybody and ready to listen to good advice coming from anybody, especially from momma. We return to that Original Purity and Allah guides us to the practical application of scriptural sciences and also to the sciences of our objective world.

Peace. As-Salaam-Alaikum.