August 28, 1992

Muslim Journal

"Dealing With Money Problems": Part 5
• Motivation for the Positive

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

Accurate Focus

Each focus in the mind represents a room. Each concentrated area in your mind represents a room. We have all of these different rooms in our minds: Race consciousness. Race awareness forms one of these rooms. The situation for employment forms one. The state and our own town and how it is performing also affects us. If any of those concentrations of interest is confused, it affects the whole mind. If we have the wrong perception of material life and opportunity, if it is terribly distorted, it is going to affect the whole state of our minds.

Progressive Focus

If we can keep ourselves to what we believe in, we Muslims will keep to the Qur'an and to the example of Muhammad The Prophet and to traditional excellence. I wish you wouldn't be Shii, but if you want to be that then follow the best that they have to offer. This is the key for every human being. Every human being is created to want better. Don't be despondent and throw up our hands and give up because we can't get everybody to believe in the religion as we believe or think the way we think in the religion. Don't give up.

Central Focus

You cannot just look at the state of unemployment and say "We need jobs!" When we get the jobs, how many can be placed? So are we to demand that our government spend our tax payer's money to create enough jobs to hire all of the unemployed?

However almost equal in importance is to help better the life in these streets. Too many suffer needlessly and have no interest, no faith, and no desire to accept good help. We cannot give up on them. We have to help them. The organization AA-MAN is an example of what can be done to reach some of these unreachable people.

Precise Focus

The wrong attitude caused by a distorted picture of what reality is for race relationship is going to do the same. When people follow a discipline, an ideology, a philosophy, a message, a scripture, a teaching or whatever, that offers them a discipline for their total perception, a discipline that in its-composition is a total behavioral system - it decides how you will look at everything. When people have that, they are fit to meet the challenges. We want to do justice by an ideology or some philosophy or some message or some scriptural religion that offers a system for our behavior.

Natural Focus

All great religions offer a behavioral system, and they are perceived after the order which God created. Allah's creation is an orderly system for this life and for the ordering of life. If we had a system of belief that was perceived correctly and patterned on God's universal system, it should be able to support us and give us a situation for life and growth and prosperity. That is the idea, and it is true and will work. But who will accept that among that fifty percent out there?

Islamicly Focused

Work on doing two things: Educating ourselves in the Muslim Community in the proper way; devote ourselves to that. Do that in our homes, in our schools, in our mosques. If you don't have that situation, then find a way to meet in homes every week and educate your community in Islam, in Qur'an, the the Sunnah and Life of the Prophet. This is one answer, and for us it is the best and most important and most rewarding one.
To be safe, we should have the right perception in Islam. We need the right perception, and if there is a system offered for total behavior, then you are safe.