2000-May-26

Muslim Journal

Public Address at the 1999 Annual Islamic Convention
Philadelphia, Penn. - Part 7

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

The freedom to think for yourself..., everyone of you has that and it is sacred. That is your sacred property. So don't be a slave to anybody. Don't listen to me and not use your own mind.
Use your freedom of choice, the freedom to think for yourself. I'd rather see you do that, than to kill that in yourself and just sit there and listen to me - like you are a dead dummy or something - and go out and do everything I say without a mind of your own.

G-d loves us, and He wouldn't give us limbs to use and then fix it so we can't use them. Or give me a right arm and I can only use a left arm. He wants me to use everything He gave me and what's more precious than these arms is my thinking, my mind, my right to think and make decisions on my own. You do the same.
We are in the world and this world has become literally our home, the home of all people - the earth, that is. So let us go after our lives. Let us strive and strain to perceive our life in its best order, as G-d intended it to be. And let us go after our life together and separately, because I want a dress that maybe you don't want. Let all of us go after the dress we want; let us all go after our life that G-d created for us.

But let us know the life of a drunkard is not the life G-d created for us. Nor the life of a dope addict or a person who loves violence or who loves self-destruction. That is not the life G-d created for us.
Nor the life of bigotry, hating another people because they don't speak your language and don't walk your walk or don't talk your talk or don't look like you look. That is not the life G-d created for us.

To be continued