(Reprinted from the Muslim Journal (2-28-03 to 3-14-03)

A Time for Greater Communities

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

(The following lecture was given by Imam W. Deen Mohammed in Markham, III., on Sept. 8, 2002.)

Peace be unto you, As-Salaam-Alaikum. It means the same. We thank Allah, G-d, for our life and all that supports our life. We thank Him for this day we have here, a day of pleasure and a day of serious thought. We worship G-d and we thank G-d for His Servants, the Messengers, the Prophets.

We salute the last of the Prophets, Muhammed, with the salutation, the Prayers and the Peace of G-d be upon him, and upon His Servants, the righteous, all, ameen.

See how close we are to the Christians? We say "ameen" and they say "amen." Although today I am here to talk about something we an have a need for, a spirit for.

Any human being has a spirit for what I will share here today. My spirit for it was so strong that it shaped my speech in the Nation of Islam and it has shaped my
speech since I was a Minister in the Nation of Islam.

A senior member of the Nation of Islam sent me this tape, and it was a tape of Malcolm X introducing me, around 1957 or 1958. He had invited me to speak, and it was not in New York. Malcolm was responsible for many cities outside of New York and away from the East Coast.

I spoke briefly and set down, and Malcolm whispered to me: "Min. Wallace, they want to hear more." So I got up and continued where I left off or had concluded before. I did have more to say, so I continued.

I listened to that tape the senior member sent to me and said, "I am surprised. What I said then is what I am saying now! There is no difference." Although I didn't have the formal opening that I have now, I did use the opening we used back then when we would say: "We thank Allah for the Hon. Elijah Muhammad."

What I was talking about then is what I am going to talk about now. We need to be more in charge of our lives, period. But that doesn't go for just us African Americans or Blacks, it goes for all people nowadays. The world has changed so, that you have to spend too much time to have serious thought about your own lives.

Even when someone says, "how are you," we are not thinking about it. The only time we really think about this is when we get a five day notice or the house catches on fire or the dope fiend's son does something to get us upset.

We only think of our life when some great tragedy occurs. At other times, we are so busy working and trying to pay the bills. Or we are busy being entertained by Satan, and he can keep all of us busy. I am talking about that time you are giving to what you know to be wrong.

We spoke of the "great seers" before we called them prophets. Don't you know the great seers saw this coming? They said a time is coming when man, the individual person, will be so occupied with his own concerns, that he won't have time for anybody else. Isn't that the world now?

The mother is so busy, she doesn't have the time that she would like to give to her children. Individuals in the family are so busy, they can't give time to the family. They are all going their separate ways, in their separate worlds doing their separate things. So the times that these great minds and visionaries and psychic people  those G-d blessed with special psychic powers  that time is right here now.

They told us the city was going to become bigger and bigger and that the population was going to become more and more. That the cities would become the main places for sin and corruption. That has happened already. It would be so bad, the righteous were going to find no comfort anywhere. There was going to be no peace for the righteous, except in their own souls.

If you are a good person, no matter how much bad is around you, you can be right in the midst of hell and your goodness will be your protection. You will think about the misery all around you, and it will make you sad. But it does not take away your peace.

Even if it is your special daughter, the one you admired the most, goes and get involved in drugs and prostitution and becomes such a sad thing in your life, you might even say: "Sometimes I wish I were dead. I would rather be dead, than to see her like this." But that is only when you are thinking about her. Otherwise, she does not take away your peace.

You have something in the center of your life, centered inside, that is keeping your life and keeping you from becoming miserable. Someone may say, "Girl, how can you smile with all the problems you have?" If you know scripture, you may quote some scripture to that person, for this is life.

What is so special about a human being doing good, that they can have that kind of protection from hell although they are right in the midst of hell, but it is not touching them, thank G-d. What is this all about? It is about the value of the human being that G-d made. The human person was developing upon the natural world; it was supporting human life.

The human being was developing materially, mentally and everything was supporting that natural world that G-d, The Creator, made before man came in with his influence and changed it. He made it man's world and put man's creation all around us.

We know the ground that we are looking at is just like G-d made it; it hasn't changed. It's good to look at the ground. We know the ground and the grass and the maintenance of those things are the same as before man imposed himself upon G-d's world. This doesn't mean that I'm against man's world. I am in favor of it, but not of those things that hurt us.

None of us are completely pleased with man's world, but none of us want to do away completely with it, for man's world offers us a great abundance of good also. But at the same time, we have a thinking that will make us hurt ourselves and hurt society. We have to correct all of that.

What I am talking about is going to help us to better situate ourselves inside of our own society. Even myself in putting this together strengthened me. Today, I am speaking on my favorite topic that shaped my life the way I am today.

Those seers knew that there was going to come a time when every individual person would have much more responsibility than they had in the time of those seers. They believed that the city would not be able to guarantee you a good life, that it was going to become so burdened and so corrupt.

The cities that we built were formed so that we would have protection. That we would have support from our collective moneys and moral strength, etc. They supported cities, so that they would have a better life all together, with more streets, with more services and the store within a reasonable distance. They wanted a more comfortable and a safer, more secure life.

Finally, they had to get the police department and the fire department. But it was just to keep their life comfortable and secured with a sense of protection and a sense of being safe in the town. These cities have developed just as those seers of over 3,000 years ago were telling us. We see it now.

The worst place to be is where people live. The safest place to be is where there are nothing but animals. Originally, people wanted to be with other people and away from animals because then they were less protected. But now it is the other way around. Today, we are much better off in the jungle with the animals and with a fire to keep them back.

The human being is not even tasty to animals. We have sweet meat, but it is not appealing to animals. Only the most vicious and the most hungry of animals will eat human meat.

The city is not supporting our life the way we wanted them to. We have the police and the fire department to come to our rescue, but they don't guarantee us security and protection. They can't do it anymore. The city is too burdened with too much corruption and insanity. The time is here that the seers saw.

The seers said that when this time comes, every person must accept more responsibility. We believe that day comes and night comes behind it, and behind night day comes again.
There is a returning of things.

The crescent moon comes and becomes a full moon and then there is no moon, and the new moon appears again. The sun comes and goes away. The storm may come, but the fair weather is coming behind it at some time. Everything is changing and repeating as in cycles.

So however we started, we are going to have to come back to that. This is what the great seers saw. We all started not depending upon city life, because there were no cities. We all started not depending upon the police department and fire department, because those things were not existing.

We were depending only upon our nature, our intelligence, our good hearts that G-d made us.

We were made to make selections. We don't just choose anything. We make selections, and animals do too. But it is the free thought and reason that we have and animals don't have, to think different from the way we are created. We can come up with a new idea of a way to live against the way we were created to live.

Animals can't do that. The animals can't think up another lifestyle. The roach of today is the same as the roach during the time of the Pharaohs of Egypt, who made them sacred things. The dogs and birds and whatever it is living perform the way G-d created them. It may have evolved slightly, but it performs the same way. Its life is the same and its mold is made, and it can't come out of that mold.

Only human beings were made to come out of their mold. We should be thankful to What created us, that we were created with more freedom than anything that exists.

We have more freedom than anything that exists, and look what we have done with our freedom. We have made the city a virtual hell in the life of most decent people. We have done that with our freedom. We couldn't have done that, if we were cockroaches and bees. We would still be living in honey cones and life would still be the same.

This is prophesied that this would come. But I have said that things are returning, and we have to return to the way it was before.

We are not going to do away with these cities and the modern comforts we have; let's not be crazy people. We are going to keep all of these comforts, but in terms of how much of this responsibility I should accept in my own life for my own condition, we need a big change.

We cannot live in these cities any more and say, "Well this is my house, my yard, and that is the extent of it for me. My job and this are the extent of my world." No, every step you take from your house to your job is your world. Every step you go away from the job and the home, that is your world. Wherever you go on this planet, that is your world.

This was true even way back when man had not created his world and there was nothing but the natural world that we say G-d made. G-d made all of this, and there is nothing except in man's history and in man's works that tell me this earth is not mine.

We paid for the ground we are standing on now, and we knew we had to pay for it. But this is what is on the minds of a lot of our youngsters right now. The world is pressuring our youngsters so much and making their lives so miserable, and they don't have the wherewithal and idea of how to cope with this thing. So then they depend on their own thinking.

And what do they say: "Man says this is his, this town belongs to him. Man says I can't sleep on this ground, but this ground was made for all people and not just for The Man." So you have a movement against the System by these youngsters, who reject the whole System and condemn it. And they are not the first to do that, our African American young men and the Hispanics and others.

Back in the 1960s, it was the Ivy League high up White children who rebelled against the System. They were intelligent college students, who started living off the wild life and refusing to even go to stores and buy food. Their parents would have kept supporting them even in the way they were. But they were so much against the world as it was developing, that they decided they would reject the world and not accept anything from it.

Something causes you to go back. Enough pressure will cause you to go back. When we go back without guidance, we go back and down. But if we go back with guidance, we go back and up. I am speaking from Guidance; I am not speaking from Wallace.

We need to go back to the innocent human person. You want to know where that person is? It is in the arms of any new mother. The new baby that the mother gets into her arms, she gives to the father and they hold their future, the new human being. That new human being is ready to be guided aright.

They use to have in the criminal laws that we had in the great United States of America, though it only stayed there temporarily not for long, a law that allowed them to sterilize the really hardcore and bad criminals. They believed as scientists that criminology could be inherited. But science changed and brought back in the belief that "no, every child
is born free of any criminal mind." They believed that no child was born with a criminal mind and had to stop that practice.

They would use the lie detector to sentence you or to let you go. It would determine whether you go free or go to jail. It would detect your own truthfulness. It was said you could lie with your tongue, with your mind, but your body, your flesh could not lie. They were putting things on to you that would reflect the life that G-d gave you and how it was affecting your thinking and your mind.

They would test you and find the lie detector going off, when they asked you certain things and could tell you when you were lying. What was it that was telling them that you were lying? It was the life that G-d gave you. You are in that life and you were lying in that body. Though as an adult you had become a criminal in your mind and a criminal in your behavior, that life had not changed.

Now, I think you can see what is the sacred human person in all the religions. For some, a person who is sacred like that and in agreement with their original innocence and purity, that person is also called "god." But for many religions, we say, "No, that person is not god. That is just a perfect person  not G-d."

Every step you take from your house to your job is your world. Every step you go away from the job and the home, that is your world. Wherever you go on this planet, that is your world.

This was true even way back when man had not created his world and there was nothing but the natural world that we say G-d made. G-d made all of this, and there is nothing except in man's history and in man's works that tell me this earth is not mine.

We paid for the ground we are standing on now, and we knew we had to pay for it. But this is what is on the minds of a lot of our youngsters right now. The world is pressuring our youngsters so much and making their lives so miserable, and they don't have the wherewithal and idea of how to cope with this thing. So then they depend on their own thinking.

And what do they say: "Man says this is his, this town belongs to him. Man says I can't sleep on this ground, but this ground was made for all people and not just for The Man." So you have a movement against the System by these youngsters, who reject the whole System and condemn it. And they are not the first to do that, our African American young men and the Hispanics and others.

Back in the 1960s, it was the Ivy League high up White children who rebelled against the System. They were intelligent college students, who started living off the wild life and refusing to even go to stores and buy food. Their parents would have kept supporting them even in the way they were. But they were so much against the world as it was developing, that they decided they would reject the world and not accept anything from it.

Something causes you to go back. Enough pressure will cause you to go back. When we go back without guidance, we go back and down. But if we go back with guidance, we go back and up. I am speaking from Guidance; I am not speaking from Wallace.

We need to go back to the innocent human person. You want to know where that person is? It is in the arms of any new mother. The new baby that the mother gets into her arms, she gives to the father and they hold their future, the new human being. That new human being is ready to be guided aright.

They use to have in the criminal laws that we had in the great United States of America, though it only stayed there temporarily not for long, a law that allowed them to sterilize the really hardcore and bad criminals. They believed as scientists that criminology could be inherited. But science changed and brought back in the belief that "no, every child is bom free of any criminal mind." They believed that no child was born with a criminal mind and had to stop that practice.

They would use the lie detector to sentence you or to let you go. It would determine whether you go free or go to jail. It would detect your own truthfulness. It was said you could lie with your tongue, with your mind, but your body, your flesh could not lie. They were putting things on to you that would reflect the life that G-d gave you and how it was affecting your thinking and your mind.

They would test you and find the lie detector going off, when they asked you certain things and could tell you when you were lying. What was it that was telling them that you were lying? It was the life that G-d gave you. You are in that life and you were lying in that body. Though as an adult you had become a criminal in your mind and a criminal in your behavior, that life had not changed.

Now, I think you can see what is the sacred human For some, a person who is sacred like that and in agreement with their original innocence and purity, that person is also called "god." But for many religions, we say, "No, that person is not god. That is just a perfect person  not G-d."

It is G-d Who looks for the perfect person who is like that, who still can appreciate and love and wants to obey his innocence that G-d created and wants to remain not guilty of any sins and any lies, G-d takes that person and makes him a messenger to direct others.

We don't believe in a god; we believe in a man. I heard a Christian Evangelist who I liked even before I met him, that is Dr. Robert H. Schuller with the TV Ministry from the Crystal Cathedral. I heard him teach once saying, "G-d believes in you." If He didn't believe in you, He wouldn't have trusted you to do the things that animals can't do. He must believe in you.

We have model human beings, not gods. No person is god, though G-d is present in all of us. Not only that, G-d is present everywhere. This is what our Scripture says and that of others. I know other Scriptures, too. But we don't like to think of G-d as being down, so when we think of G-d we look up. We like to think of Him being high up above all things imaginable. And I will do that myself. I will point one finger up, representing One G-d and to let someone know that that is where I am.

But for a scientist and astronomer, if you say straight up, he will tell you whatever it is won't be there for long. Because the earth is turning and even the sun will be in the shadow of the earth is blocking it. Then we see what is on the other side, the starry sky.

The poet says, "The night has a thousand eyes and the day one." With each quarter of the day passing, the sun is no longer straight up; it has moved down.

If G-d is up there, then how long is He up there? So wherever we are and whatever situation we are in, we want to always respect G-d high above us in everything imaginable. He is not in any particular location.

I am trying to talk us into common sense, into the common intelligence that G-d created the baby with. Though we get away from that good common sense intelligence, when we get into this city life.
We need to get back to where we think with good common sense, think truthfully, think beauty and think love. The city is so much in our way, that we think ugly and think hate and sickness and violence. So let us come back to ourselves.

That is why the Hon. Elijah Muhammad called us the original man; he wanted us to think of our original selves and come back to that self.