1990-July-13

Muslim Journal

An Overlooked Role For Muslims In World Leadership

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

This address today is given mostly with the Muslim community at large in mind, that is the International Muslim Community. We also hope that this address will reach many in that International Muslim Community population on this earth. You have already heard that there are about one billion people or one out of five persons on this earth identified in the world's Muslim population.

We are addressing the need for us to recognize an overlooked role for Muslims in world leadership. There are many ways to see the most important concerns for Muslims. I have heard different qualified speakers speak on our most important concerns, and I have enjoyed and appreciated what they have to offer. However, sometimes it is the thing that seems to be not so important that is the most important.

When our Prophet Muhammed preached the religion and lived the religion, he worked hard for growth in individuals. He had a number of companions and associates, most of whom were his companions and associates before he became prophet. They were either associated with him as friends as with Abu Bakr As-Siddiq, may Allah be pleased with him, or they were relatives like the great Ali Ibn Khataab, may Allah be pleased with him. This supports the position that the Prophet had an interest in people as persons and as individuals.

He was seen building up women, building up men, and building up children. He would talk with the youngsters. He had an interest in building up the individual. But ordinarily we do not look at him in that way. It is not the habit of us to see the Prophet in that light or that role. Our habit is to see him as leader of the multitudes, which he was and is.

You (the Muslims) have been brought out to be a community. How were the Muslims brought out? Was there a call, "Community of Muslims come alive?" "Community that Allah wants come alive, come into existence?" That is not the way it was done.

The appeal was made to individual concerns, the individual's problems, the individual's interest, and most of all to the individual's nature. The address was made to awaken the individual and to get the individual turned on to regardful and productive life. Once the individual is turned on in the way that Allah wants us to be turned on, then everything else follows of natural consequence.

So what are we overlooking in the world? With the passing centuries, we have become too much excited about competing with others. We know we have to be aware of inter-religious (between societies) competition and opposition. We have to be prepared for opposition and competition, but that is not what the Muslim 's life is all about. The Muslim life is about establishing the person that Allah wants standing, walking, and achieving on this earth. That is what the religion is about, establishing persons in the role, given by their Creator (Allah).

We begin with one. Allah created Adam, one person, one man. And from that one person, He made mates — male and female. And 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 one soul and from one soul comes the whole humanity, the millions and billions now populating the earth. The focus was one.

Allah says in the Holy Book, the Qur'an, "Your life and resurrection is like that of one soul." That is saying to us that if you want to resurrect a whole people, then concentrate on the individual (the human soul). Because a group is divided individually but united upon one essential type. They are single and different bodies in a group. But if you address individual interest you will reach the community or the whole group, If you can excite the unit (essential type), then you can excite the many.

Although they are distinguished one from another by their names, by their levels of ability, by their sex, by color, or race, there still is the essential type that represents "self for all of them. There is an essential type we call the essential human type which Allah wants. If you address that type that Allah wants, you will be addressing all of them individually and equally.

You will not be favoring any of them or overlooking any of them. You will be treating them all as equals if you address the essential human person or the essential human type that Allah wants in all of us. This is the type, the soul, and the nature that Allah created in all of us. He made all of us from "one soul."