1980-October-31

Bilalian News

The Strength Of Human Nature

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

With the Name Allah the Gracious, the Compassionate.
As-Salaam-Alaikum

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from Imam Warith Deen Muhammad's masjid lecture in Miami, FL., Oct. 20,1979.)

Living should be very easy for us, but most of us find life too much of a challenge. The richer we become in terms of a challenge. The richer we become in terms of material things, and even in terms of enlightenment or knowledge, the greater this test becomes for us— that test of life, trying to live.

It shouldn't be that way—more knowledge should make life easier more material things in our lives should make life easier. God has not made these things to be a burden and a hindrance in the path of life. No—God has made these things to be benefits, contributions, complements.

It is because we stray from our true identity as created beings, created by the Almighty Himself, that we run into so many problems. There is something very special about human beings. No matter how bad things get, the human being can always bounce back, the human being can always recover and get back into the race for progress, for health.

If we carry the burden on our minds that human nature is from Satan, we're going to be in trouble, we are never going to get out of the problems we are in. We get ignorance, we get disobedience, we get abnormal social behavior from the influences of Satan.

Allah has made the human nature so powerful that it speaks to us in our quiet thoughts, and we call that conscience. That's one level of conscience. Faith comes to us on different levels of conscience; the deepest level of conscience is your original nature, the nature that God created. Sometimes things come into our conscience from that deepest of all levels of conscience and it's so powerful that it can bring about changes in our lives if we will only listen to it.

Don't confuse that with the conscience you have learned in society. Society has told us many things, and those things are in our conscience too. Many times, our behavior is a response or a reflection of what has been put into our conscience by the society.

But there is something with all of us that was there before the society of man, before the language environment of man—our original nature.

We believe, first of all, that we are Muslims. We don't believe that Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) made the first Muslims; that's against the teachings of Prophet Muhammad. We believe that the first man—the first human being, male and female, created by Allah—was Muslim, and we believe that Muslim nature is still in every person.

Every person has that original nature. But our learning, as they would tell us in psychology, dominates the conscience, and sometimes because that learning is not in accord with what Allah or God gave us, it takes us away from that original nature.

If we are to have dignity, if we are to have liberty, then we must have it on the strength of our human nature. We can't have it any other way.

The reason the world has gone wrong is because people have tried to build society on something other than human nature. We can't build a human society on something that's not human nature. We have to know what human nature is and then build society with respect for what human nature is.

Human nature requires much of us. Human nature requires that I be more than just a praying, meditating Muslim.

Human nature requires that I be useful to myself in society and be useful to others in my society. Human nature requires that I grow mentally, morally, spiritually, socially — in every way.

Human nature is pushing me from the cradle to the grave, and that's the kind of power and force we need in the life of society. We need that potent power that God gave every human being — human nature.