(Reprinted from the Muslim Journal 10-28-05 TO 12-2-05)

“Human Survival In Progress…”

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

(Imam W. Deen Mohammed gave this First Sunday Public Address on Oct. 2, 2005, at the Homewood Hotel, 17400 S. Halsted, Home-wood, III. The Homewood Hotel will be the venue also for the Oct. 21 - 23, 2005, Ramadan Session with Imam Mohammed. See below for details.)

Our Greeting is Peace be unto you, "As-Salaam-Alaikum." We always begin with G-d's Name, asking Him for His Blessings and hoping He will accept what we present. We say, "Bismillah, Ir-Rahman, Ir-Rahim"; With G-d's Name, The Merciful Benefactor, The Merciful Redeemer.

And we say, The Praise and the Thanks are for G-d, the Lord and Sustainer and Keeper of all the worlds. And the prayers and the peace be upon His noble and generous Messenger, and what follows of that traditional salutation.

We will begin by addressing our most important perception of ourselves as Believers. That is the collective life, the life we all share, the common life that we hope will take us always to the common good and not to the hell fires of our passions.

Highly Glorified is Allah, Who says in our Holy Book, the Qur'an, "Attention you people. Reverence your Lord, the One Who created you from a single soul and created from it its mate and caused it to spread forth from both of them males many and females.

"And reverence Allah, the One Whom you involve, asking one another to respond. And be regardful of female entrusted ties of relationships. Surely, at all times Allah is watching over you."

Allah is the Name of G-d for the people we call of the Abrahamic Faith or the People of Abraham. They also are called the Heavenly Religions by Christians, Jews and Muslims. Allah is not the name of any person, no human, no object created or existing in the material world. Allah is only the Name of G-d, the Creator.

We want to address also the soul's inherent value and our belief in Angels. From reading Sacred Scripture, we learn of a belief in Angels. In the Qur'an, we learn that at birth every newborn is assigned two Angels. Its one Angel is given to assist it in the victory in its jihad of moral combat. Its other Angel is assigned to record its deeds over the duration of the person's life.

This focus on Guardian Angels speaks to a necessity imposed by nature to bring souls to accept their own share in the responsibility for the shape and outcome of their own lives.

In the final analysis, not even pointing out Satan as the problem will excuse any from their inherent responsibility. That is to say, we are born with many rights. But we also are born with responsibility.

The government of the United States and the Constitution of this great land recognize this inherent nature or inborn gift from The Creator, G-d, as we call Him Allah in Al-Islam for Muslims.

The government document reads, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident." And it goes on to say that not government but "The Creator endowed or gave certain rights to human beings." They are called "inalienable rights"; they cannot be taken away.

The government took the position that not even the power of government can take away those rights. It goes on to name those rights: Life -that means the permission to have your own life and not have it in the possession of somebody else is given by G-d.

A long time, as you know, this country tolerated slavery. And slavery took away our life, not only our rights but our life. We were not free to live our own lives. We had to live the life planned for us by plantation owners and slave masters.

The document goes on to read regarding these inalienable rights: "Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

When I was taking a few courses in junior college, I remember reading in a text that one of the students had, that the pursuit of happiness is understood as the right to have property. Every citizen in these United States has the right to have property of their own.

We know what G-d says to us in our religions - I am a student of the Bible and the text of other religions, too. But I study mainly the Bible and our Holy Book, the Qur'an.

I remember reading in the Bible references to this same right or inborn nature and its wonderful properties and how these properties are to be protected by G-d, Scripture and the conscious righteous people, so that no person will be deprived of those rights.

And if they ever are deprived, it is the duty of the conscious righteous people to go to the aid of those persons or individuals, who have been robbed of their rights or denied their rights.

We come now to human life and its spiritual or psychological dynamics. We read in the dictionary the meaning of dynamics, and I want you to understand how I am using this word. So I am reading the entry that fits this language I am using here now. "Dynamics is pertaining to energy, motion in relation to force."

Envisioning the conclusion of this world, we find that the ancient people of religion and the words of the seers and the wise tell us how man's world will come to a conclusion. We see this as wisdom, and we see much of it as prophecy. I won't use any of that language referring to the end of time in an attempt to give that picture of the last days.

Most of us in church life or in mosque life or in whatever religion you have, I am sure that you are aware of the many pictures given to us of the last days.

Of natural causes, human life will be pressured into moving forward. Also by the extending or intensifying of pressure bringing to bear more pressure, pressure behind pressure on human life, it is forging a meeting before Him. I am giving you the language of Qur'an. Him means Allah.

The language of the Qur'an is "one pressure behind another, pressuring the hearts of the people." Sometimes, it will become so unbearable, people will wonder, "Is there a G-d." The pressure will have become so much on them.

In another focus on the dynamics of human survival and progress, it is revealed that this pressure and struggle in the soul will bring the human perception to be eye-to-eye with the Fires of Hell.

'You shall be brought closer and closer, and you shall see Hell with clear vision, with sure perception or correct perception." This is Qur'an. But reference to this is also in the Bible.

In fact, whatever came to us in the Qur'an, it came to us addressing what had come before to the people called Jews and Christians, both called by us as given to us in our Sacred Book, "The People of The Book," meaning the people of the Scriptures that were revealed to Abraham, Moses and Jesus Christ - peace be on them all - and the many others whom I didn't mention.

Though religion has been the world's biggest oppressor, the Qur'an says religions' merits are more than the demerits. The Qur'an's fresh air way of addressing prophetic "End of Time" is intended for the sharpening of human perception.

Perception in the intellect regarding the history of religion how, in one hand, religion has been offering charity and giving charity, and in the other, religion has been greedy for power even over nations.

Nevertheless, important it is that issue baggers serve themselves well by being conscious of the fact that some Scriptures clumsily fabricate a message bearing cloth as a strategy for survival and also as a strategy for war.

These strategic planners, in planning the death of brutal, savage governments also subtly plan a peace times and a time for discarding their cloth stained with bad blood.

Rising spiritual and social dynamics, rising public awareness and literacy in the public, rising respect in government for the value of the common citizen and their publics, honoring the equal rights of the common citizen in the life of the state, all of such makes understandable the prophetic Qur'anic expression: Day of Religion.

In the Qur'an, the expression Day of Judgment is the same as Day of Religion. Of Sacred Scripture, the Qur'an's Words read: "None can touch it." It means none can reach its insights but the purified ones. None can touch it but the purified ones.

Most of man's Holy Scriptures are arduous fitness exercises in moral leadership training. Engagers who remain constantly devoted will grow in moral firmness to qualify for a seat at the table of ethics and global rule or order.

So the Words of G-d in Scripture are intended to produce a special leadership for the world. But you have to go through arduous training. In world religions, the student will find the most disturbing reading, on first sight, when you start to read the Scriptures. If you are morally sensitive and curious, you are going to find the reading of Scripture very disturbing on first reading.

And on second sight, you are going to perceive the most intriguing and productive literary fabrication. You are going to be amazed and will say, "Oh, this is the most productive literary fabrication I have ever experienced or read!"

Hence, the Qur'an's first word in its revealing itself to our Prophet Muhammed, the prayers and the peace be on him, is "Read!" This word, "Read," is prophetic, having to do with old prophecies. Reading can be mentally, morally, intellectually and spiritually liberating. However, the benefits are expected to only be opened for the constantly devoted student.

Regarding using our five senses, they are necessary if we are to gain any knowledge or information. Knowledge and information must come through the five senses. I know perhaps you are thinking that knowledge is intuitive. That is true. But if you don't use your five senses and work those senses very diligently and constantly, there will be not true intuitive knowledge.

In fact, some authorities on the psychology of man say that really the sixth sense that we come to understand - intuition or inspiration - is all the senses in one. It is the power of the five senses producing one sense or one medium - intuition.

Muslims who are students of their religion do not believe that man have any power over intuition. It is the sacred property of G-d, and He does not allow us to have command over it.

So by using our five senses, we are brought into another dimension, a spiritual dimension that brings information to us without our personal control over it. For that reason, we believe in Angels.

There is a medium working in our life and in the world to bring us information. Or I should say "mediums." The one medium is the medium we call Angels, but they are themselves performing different roles - there are many.

The Prophet spoke of the five senses to protect us from the harm of Satan, the enemy of mankind, or called Shaitan in our religion. He spoke on the five senses, because Satan is the enemy of all human beings.

Why is he the enemy? It is because the human being, in their natural mind or nature, do not want to dominate anybody. They don't want power over people, but Satan does. Satan wants to rule everybody. And Satan wants power over everybody in every nation. That is Satan.

The average human being, we don't want that. Human beings in our true nature do not want that. So we want the sharing of power, the sharing of authority under One Authority that we all agree is over all of us. And that is G-d. That is what we want.

Satan being against that wants to trick us and deceive us and make us think that religion is something different from what G-d intended for us.

And Allah, G-d Most High, says, "Never did G-d prepare something for His
Messenger or Prophet, that Satan did try to present the likeness of it."

So if that is true, if G-d produced a Bible, then Satan also wants to produce a Bible. If G-d produced a Qur'an, Satan also wants to produce a Qur'an.

And he wants to make it look so much like the one G-d gave you, that you can hardly tell the difference. Or the average person will not be able to tell the difference.

Regarding love for one another, we need to love one another. How are we going to survive these powerful schemes that are designed to reach the hearts and minds of all people and cause them to deviate from the Plan of G-d? How are we going to survive that, if we don't love one another?

We have to be strongly bonded together. And the strongest bond for humans is love. Thus G-d says, "You should love Muhammed the Prophet, His Messenger. You should love him more than your own self and your own families."

Why? It is because he is the Life that is your salvation. Not only in him, but that same life is in all of you, in all of us. He is representative of the life that is our salvation. We should love him more than our own life, because most of us don't even perceive correctly that life in us that is our salvation.

It is called Christ nature. It is called Muslim nature. It can be called by other names. But most of us haven't achieved it, have not reached it and have not grown upon it. So we live a life that Satan planned for us, or we live a life of our own whims, imaginations and impulses or whatever spirits we come into.

Living these lives cheats us out of the precious life that G-d created us for. And we look at these lives that we are living and say, "I don't love this life I'm living as much as I love Muhammed the Prophet (SAW)."

He is your true life and sacred life; he is your best life and he works for your
liberation, for your salvation. So he says regarding love and what we desire or wish for ourselves, "The Muslim is one who wants for his brother what he wants for himself." And he warned that we would not be blessed by G-d, until we want for our brother what we want for ourselves.

Praise be to Allah. What did he say about the five senses? Did he say the five senses are to believe in G-d or to witness G-d and to pray and to give in charity and fast the month of Ramadan and make the Pilgrimage to the House? That is what he said when he was asked "what is Al-Islam."

But addressing the five senses, he did not say that. He said, "If you don't use your five senses to take care of your affairs presently and for the future, you are going to lose the ability to use your five senses."

Why? It is because you are not alone; there is the enemy of the human being who has been around longer than you. He is older than you and wiser in the ways of the world than you.

The Bible calls him the most subtle of all the creatures on the earth. That means he is the one that you are most likely to overlook. His presence and his wisdom keeps him hid from human view. It is very hard to find him and to detect him.

And his ways of reaching you through your weaknesses are so subtle and so hidden and so intelligent, the average one cannot with stand him and cannot keep back his advances.

Hence, the Muslims, we seek refuge with G-d from the Rejected Satan.

The Prophet said, "If you don't use your five senses to take care of your affairs presently and for the future, you are going to lose the ability to use your five senses." Why?

It is because you are not alone; there is the enemy of the human being who has been around longer than you. He is older than you and wiser in the ways of the world than you.

The Bible calls him the most subtle of all the creatures on the earth. That means he is the one that you are most likely to overlook. His presence and his wisdom keeps him hid from human view. It is hard to find him and to detect him.

And his ways of reaching you through your weaknesses are so subtle and so hidden and so intelligent, that the average one cannot withstand him and cannot keep back his advances.

Hence, the Muslims, we say: "I seek refuge with G-d from the Rejected Satan."

Muhammed the Prophet is reported to have said also on the five senses to his learned disciples, followers and students, "If anyone would wash five times in a river, the person would be clean of all impurities." Now we know some of us can get so filthy, we could wash 50 times in the river and still be unclean.

He was not referring to a physical river. A river is a directed flow of water. What the Prophet is saying is that if you clean yourself with your five senses being put in a stream of spiritual obedience that pursues the same Object or keeps in the same Direction, never reversing, never going off its course -like a train on its tracks, if you keep to that, you will be purified, you will be cleansed.

We have many who have kept to their religious devotion and have their spirit for their Creator and have done that constantly over long periods of time and have realized that they are blessed to be protected from the suggestions of the Satan and protected from the temptations of the world and ungodly people.

Sometimes, the situations they are in are like virtual hell; every description they find in the Book of hell, they see it all around. And they feel the agony of the burning fire touching others, while they are spared. So we know the Power of G-d's Word, and we know He has created us to get that Power by our sincere and constant devotion, never giving up.

The five senses can take us up, that is advance our life, and the five senses can take us down. G-d says, "Whoever spends on his own soul -spends on the upkeep and advancement of his own soul in accord with what G-d wants of him - will certainly be successful. And the one who does not spend on the good condition and advancement of his own soul will certainly be a loser, losing everything."

When Muhammed the Prophet was addressing the five senses, he was addressing the things that operate in our human nature - in our body, in our mind, in our soul, in our spirit - operate there to assist us and bring us closer to the great life and great end that G-d wants for us.

Another reference to the five senses is in the Bible, in the New Testament. It says that Christ Jesus, peace be on him, was approaching and saw a woman washing at the well. He said to this woman: "You have had five husbands over you, and the one you have now is not yours."

Was he talking about the five senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste, feeling? No. He was alluding to those senses as key factors in the problem, but he was not addressing those five senses directly when he said, "You have had five husbands over you, and the one you have now is not yours.”

He meant, you have had five senses ruling in your life or in your nature. And you have had a life given to you that compliments your nature and preserves for you your five senses. But now you are following rituals and culture that G-d didn't give you. The world gave you that.

You are following a sixth principle that shouldn't be your husband and shouldn't be our mother. That is the wayward culture, the culture influenced by The Satan, himself.

Let us go back to the expression Day of Religion that is also to be read or translated as Day of Judgment. The word, Deen, has a connection with the word, Dan, which means Debt.

What is Allah saying when He uses the expression Day of Religion? It is the Day that you must answer for the Debt. The Day is coming when all of us must answer for the Debt.

We may be indebted to the Founding Fathers of the United States for this beautiful land that we live in. But before these United States, this whole earth was G-d's House of Worship. Before the United States and all the nations preceding the United States, this beautiful earth was indeed beautiful - before the nations put their pollutions and their hands on it and influences in it, it was most beautiful.

It was called by the Revelations "The Garden of Eden," a beautiful paradise. When we go to a virgin land, one that hasn't been spoiled by man's works and industry, that small peace of land is called paradise by those who discover it.

Allah, G-d, says in our Holy Book, "The Earth is My House of Worship. The Earth is My Masjid."

When we think about the many tribal people living in their traditional native life, again untouched by industrial nations, their concept of property is different from our concept of property.

They will say the land does not belong to any one of them. No member of the tribe can claim ownership of the land; the land belongs to all the people.

Of the river, they will say it is mutual property, because "we didn't make it." Even if there are fruit trees, no one native can claim possession of the fruit trees. They say that, because they didn't make it. The fruit trees were here all the time, and they never know when they began.

Do you think the Qur'an missed this great idea and great way of perceiving external objects and reality made by The Creator or formed before man? It does not.

When the Qur'an says, "The Earth is the House of Worship of G-d," it is addressing the idea that has been for generations and generations, in time forgotten, in what we call Native people.

It is the idea that what we didn't make, we cannot make claims on it, and we cannot use it selfishly and deny others the right to it. That is common property, and it is an idea a little stronger than the common good. Praise be to Allah.

We look at the saying of the "Day when we must answer the Debt, the Debt to G-d, The Creator of everything." That is the language in the Qur'an and Bible, but more specifically in the Qur'an, calling G-d by title, "The Creator of Everything."

We don't believe that there is more than One Creator. There is only One Creator. It says, "Look at the design in creation, in the matter and in everything you see or behold - in the sky, in the earth, everywhere - can't you see that One Artist did it, not two?

The Qur'an says that if there had been more than One, we would see conflict and discord. Because we know when any two minds of bosses from people do a thing, there is going to be a struggle for the upper hand in it and discord, unless they agree in one.

And how do they agree in one? They agree in One Authority over them both. Then they can show unity, consistency, harmony, etc. That is what we want for our life on this planet earth.

We don't want it to be tormented by adverse spirits and Big I's and Little U's bagging issues. There are a lot of issue baggers that have risen up here lately and are very popular. They have no real purpose of their own or no real plan of their own. They just want to stay popular and benefit from their popularity. I call them "Issue Baggers."

There is the day when we have to pay the Debt owed to our Creator. What are we going to pay Him for? You didn't make your life. You can go back to every human being ever thought of, and no human being formed their life. It was formed by a Superior.

No human being made the brain, the mind and nervous system to be as it is and to work as it does. No human being created or made such a powerful or wonderful productive computer we call the human life or human person. Nobody did that but G-d.

Whatever we have been able to achieve with ourselves, with our own lives, by studying our own lives and by studying the area out in our environment - the environmental life of both dead and living things - whatever we have been able to achieve is not owing to the computer, any more than the computer you are using deserves credit for what it does.

It does not deserve credit for what it does. The one who designed the computer and brought it into existence and the persons who worked to bring it into existence are the ones who deserve credit for what that computer does.

So you sing beautifully. The persons who sing beautifully and get people to rave and swoon by the thousands, most of them praise G-d. They recognize that their talent is from G-d. So it is for the artist, the painter, for the true scientist, all of them will not accept too much credit. They will mention G-d and acknowledge G-d in their achievements.

I want to conclude leaving this picture on your mind. This is The Day of Religion, the Day of Paying the Debt, making up for the Debt. What does G-d want from us? Nothing. He just wants you to acknowledge that He made all of this possible and not man. That is all He wants.

He wants you to be fair and honest and not proud and arrogant and boastful. He wants you to acknowledge that it is not you, but it is your Creator Who made all of this possible.

What else is this expression saying? It is a comment on the old use of the term "religion." It is telling you that what you have known as religion is charity and theft.

It has given you on one hand and robbed you on the other. The message of the Qur'an and the hidden message in the Bible is to expose that theft and to prepare us for the day we are living in.

It is the Day of Manifestation of all good and all bad. So we can make the proper choice, so we can succeed on the Path that G-d gives us.

Thank you. This concludes this Radio Address today. To all of you in our Radio Audience, peace and happiness, the happiness that only G-d can give, "As-Salaam-Alaikum" - The Peace be unto you.