(Reprinted from the Muslim Journal 6-23-06 to 6-30-06)

Imam W. Deen Mohammed Speaks On The W.D.M. Ministry Sponsored Annual Muslim Convention 2006

(The following interview with Imam W. Deen Mohammed was conducted on Thurs., June 8, at the Office of The Mosque Cares by Imams Shaheed Abdul Ghani and Darnell Karim.)

Imam Mohammed: With Allah's Name, The Merciful Benefactor, The Merciful Redeemer. We salute the last Prophet Muhammed with The Prayers and The Peace be upon him, and what follows that traditional salute given to him by well over 1 billion Muslims throughout the world.

We are preparing our Annual Convention that we have been identifying as "Islamic Convention." We have changed it this year to read "Muslim Convention," because an Islamic Convention puts religion in focus.

Actually, our Conventions that have been going on for a number of years are not to put the religion in focus as much as it is to put the members of our association in focus. That was started back in the 1960s and long before that by the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, our late leader. We pray G-d forgives him his sins and grant him the Paradise.

Since that time, we have been keeping the same spirit -the spirit of coming together once a year to see one another, to be with one another, and most importantly to hear what our leader has to say about the state of affairs for our association and community.

With that, I now go to the particulars for our Convention. Our Convention will be having workshops on CPC, ComTrust, LLC - that is our Collective Purchasing efforts to increase business for people coming together with their small means, but will be great means when it comes to character and virtues.

In my opinion of what makes businesses successful, and I believe this is generally accepted in the business world, is sticking to your principles, establishing yourself upon good character and a virtuous life. This is what we expect from our business people who have come together.

We have an association of business people, who are independently doing business but are collectively buying and making big volume purchases. We will have a workshop and conferences and Graceline Fashion Show also sponsored by the same business effort. The Fashion Show is headed by Binah Mohammed.

This will give an opportunity for the designers in our community to put their designs modeled on display to see what they are producing in our community and show those who are excellent in their works. That is the business side.

More than that, I have to go quickly to the spiritual side. Jumuah will open our Convention. Jumuah will be on the Friday of the Labor Day Weekend this year at the Muslim Convention of 2006.

After Jumuah will be the Vendors Market. And it is exciting just to walk through the Vendors Market and see all the fine products ranging from garments, dress suits, women's and children's dress and other items in the market, including cosmetics, oils, incense and fascinating and attractive jewelry I've found our vendors having in the Marketplace for our Annual Muslim Convention.

Sunday, we will have what will be the State of this Association Address given by myself. On Cultural Night we are expecting to have a guest speaker and keynote speaker.

Our guest speaker will be the President of a University in Indianapolis, who is an African American man and a very down to earth person. He has a lot of admiration for our history going back to the Nation of Islam and especially for what we are doing now in the community.

We will have a keynote speaker, and I hope we will have a lot of youngsters out to hear her. She can really move or motivate youngsters.

I don't know if both of them will be addressing us on Cultural Night, but I do know that one of them will be addressing us on Sunday, when I make my major address of the year, the Public Address on the State of our Community and
addressing the public life on how we can be more productive as citizens and enjoying our life more as G-d has designed this life to work for us.

G-d designed our life to work for us. And those who have done the most in the world have been guided by Scripture to know what G-d designed for us in this world, what we are to do with our life and our opportunities in the public.

With that, I say we are happy to be preparing for our Annual Muslim Convention and are expecting many more than last year to be present for this year. I thank those who recognize my 30 years of leadership and growth that we have realized around the country and outside like in Bermuda and a few other places. We are celebrating 30 years of my leadership.

Peace. As-Salaam-Alaikum.

Q: Brother Imam, we want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule for coming to talk with us today on the upcoming Convention. We have a few questions we would like to ask that are relevant to the upcoming Convention.

For example, last year the theme for the Convention was "Human Nature, Earth's
Most Valuable Resource." This year's theme, we have "Earning Freedom and Economic Empowerment, We are a Friendly Neighbor Community."

How do you see these two themes coming together to benefit us as a whole?

IWDM: Yes. Last year, the subject was more on nature, to bring our attention to the inherent human worth that we have, that most of us don't realize because of bad circumstances for our life.

It is either bad home conditions or bad neighborhood conditions or bad world conditions. There was a time when the world was very bad for us, and we had a hard time for surviving.

One of our guest speakers to speak at the Convention this year said that when we were struggling and all of us were hurting together, we were focused better. So the attention was given to the good nature that G-d put in all of us, to rely on when pressure and bad times come.

Our attention was on that, and we have allowed everybody to benefit from that but ourselves. Everybody is making billions on our good nature, except ourselves. They are either getting benefits by appealing to our good side or by appealing to our weaknesses.

They are corrupting us, so we will buy things that we shouldn't buy and give our life to things that we shouldn't give our life and our moneys to. They will put us in hell, if we don't control our own resources. That is what the theme was about last year.

This year, we are looking more at the community than at the Nation and focusing more on community life and how G-d also has made inherent in us community life. Every individual is born in and hungers for community life. The urge in preparing ourselves is with the hunger in ourselves for community life.

Man's life - and that includes women - is never complete, until he finds his life established in community. It is as inherent as the soul with its righteousness, as the soul with its curiosities to develop its intelligence for us.

That is why G-d says, "You are the best community evolved for the good of all people." He is telling us that we are inherently a people born to come into community life. G-d has put that seed in us.

It will be focusing on community life, so we can prepare ourselves for the full community life, so we will have people representing us well in religion or spiritual life, in business, in politics, etc.

Q: In keeping with that spirit of the question just asked, with each Convention, though you have had various subjects, how do you focus heading into this Convention? You have given various subjects, and where are you headed with those?

IWDM: Destiny for the human soul cannot be realized except with other people. Even eating a meal at home with your family, the Prophet encouraged that we not eat alone.

He said to have company with you when you eat. He said the blessing is on the numbers. If one eats, that is a small blessing portion. If two eats, it gets bigger and so with 10 and 20. If 30 eat together, the blessings are much more.

That is why we feel so good to eat, when there is a crowd compatible with our own good nature and aspirations. When we eat with people Like that, we feel so good. We feel much better than we do eating at home by ourselves or with just a couple of people of the family.

When the group comes together, look how good we feel and so alive. In the long run, what we are hoping for in the distance is to see year by year that no year is less impressive than the year before. That is what we are straining for.

The long distance aim that we have is to see this community life blossom more and more, come up structured well more and more.

We want to come up having more and more of what this life calls for as a community. That means, most importantly, clean and decent places that we can respect and others can respect who come from any religion - places of worship or mosques.

In the same measure of importance, we have education. There is no education separate from religion in Islam. It was that way and still is for many Christians in the early history of this country. Government did not fund schools. Schools were funded by the early churches.

So there is no way to separate our interest for education, for our adults and also for our children who inherit us. So down the road, we hope to have quality and fine schools that light us up when we see them and know that our children are attending those schools.

We hope to have neighborhoods where Islam will be present there, not just Muslims without Islam. Islam will be present in the Muslims.

We will have the Muslims conducting businesses, following the guidelines of our religion. They will not have something that our religion rejects or letting down our standards. We hope to have a striving business community.

We hope to have the adhan heard in that neighborhood. And I have heard from our government people in these towns where we are, that they would not only welcome our places of worship, but they would welcome our adhan to be heard in the neighborhood, just as they welcome church bells to ring. We hope to see that one day.

We also would like to see us having everything as our responsibility that we have to have. I will never be pleased, myself, with a neighborhood that can't take care of itself financially. The neighborhood should be supported by business people and the business people should make the neighborhood strong financially.

We should be able to go within a reasonable distance in our own neighborhoods to buy what is convenient for us to have. The convenience store should be in our own neighborhood. There, we should go to buy eggs, flour or milk or even a garment to wear for Sunday. We shouldn't have to go way across town. We should have everything that we need.

We should have a real estate agent there, if we want to talk to a real estate agent about selling or buying property. I will only be satisfied when we have a neighborhood that is sufficient in every respect, where business people are strong and belong to that neighborhood and provide the tax base for the whole area.

In our neighborhood, the tax base should provide for our own area. The city should not be looking at us, saying they wish those people had not moved in here. They should be saying, "We are proud of these people. They have a strong community. They have a strong and safe neighborhood."

That is the aim down the road. We have to make improvement on the development of that every year. We have to see ourselves getting closer and closer to that every year.

Q: It sounds like work. We have our work cut out for us.

IWDM: That kind of work sounds like happiness. A real man is sad because he has no work to do.

Q: Staying on the theme for this year's Convention, "Earning Freedom and Economic Empowerment ....," it brings to mind our youth. We are about 30 years into your leadership, and some of us who were back during the time of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad have about 30 or 40 years of his leadership.

What do you think is the reason why it has taken us so long economically to develop? What affect is this having on our youth today?

IWDM: The first part of the question. The reasons that have caused us not to achieve sustained growth for our economic efforts and interests are mainly two reasons. Firstly, under the Hon. Elijah Muhammad we were a protest movement, just like the Civil Rights Movement was a protest movement.

We were protesting bad treatment and limits placed on our lives by the government, itself. The government was permitting that. When the idea started in America, in the early 1930s and 1940s and 1950s and through the 1960s, all of those years, there were two laws and two Americas. There were two laws -one for White folks and one for us. And there were two Americas - one open and one closed. The one that was closed was closed to us.

Q: Staying on the theme for this year's Convention, "Earning Freedom and Economic Empowerment: We Are A Friendly Neighbor Community," it brings to mind our youth. We are about 30 years into your leadership, and some of us who were back during the time of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad have about 30 or 40 years of his leadership.

What do you think is the reason why it has taken us so long economically to develop? What affect is this having on our youth today?

IWDM: The first part of the question. The reasons that have caused us not to achieve sustained growth for our economic efforts and interests are mainly two reasons.

Firstly, under the Hon. Elijah Muhammad we were a protest movement, just like the Civil Rights Movement was a protest movement. We were protesting bad treatment and limits placed on our lives by the government, itself. The government was permitting that.

When the idea started in America, in the early 1930s and 1940s and 1950s and through the 1960s, all of those years, there were two laws and two Americas.

There were two laws - one for White folks and one for us. And there were two Americas - one open and one closed. The one that was closed was closed to us.

That was the reality. That is one of the reasons. The Nation of Islam was protesting that and condemning the whole society of America as a race of devils, blaming them for all of these evils.

We know many of them were innocent, but when you are hurt like that, you don't say, "I know there are three or four people around here not hurting me. It's just this 300,000 beating on me." You say, "These people are hurting us." That was the reality.

Then when we accumulated the money, and the Hon. Elijah Muhammad passed away, the government people watched the Hon. Elijah Muhammad come from nothing in the 1930s to where he was in the 1960s. And in the 1970s, he passed - in 1975. So they watched and knew that this man was a wise leader and a safe leader.

They knew that they could trust him to not start any senseless violence or have his people corrupting our society. But now they know he is going to pass, and they thought the next man was not going to be the man the Hon. Elijah Muhammad was. Maybe he would not be as wise and as safe with those explosives the Hon. ELijah Muhammad was working with.

They feared that the next man coming up would not be able to handle the explosives in the language of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, like he handled them. So they planned to deprive the next leader of financial strength, because that is what made you strong - money.

What did they do to the Nation of Islam, to us? They did the same thing to us that they did to Garvey and all the rest. When those leaders got to old age or when they passed, the government came in with charges of taxes unpaid and took all the money away. So if you got the wrong leader, you won't be strong financially to support yourself.

That is one of the reasons. The other reason is that we depend on leaders too much. We see our whole life in a leader, and for some reason our leaders have been all Messianic leaders.

The Messianic leader is the leader you believe G-d gave you; he has a mission to complete something for you, and G-d gave him that assignment. When he is gone, the spirit is knocked out of most of the followers. They have no spirit to keep going, when he is gone.

To have sustained economic growth, you have to see the job as being more important than your persons, even though that person be the leader. That is what I have done over 30 years. I have built up that kind of reality in the minds of our people and especially in the minds of our leaders. I expect our growth to continue, whether I am here or not. We will have sustained growth.

Q: What impact do you think that has had over the years on our youth?

IWDM: Yes. That was the other part of the question. It has its impact in the life of our adults much stronger, much more evident than it is in our youth. The youth are young.

The youth will either go away from you and find something to do or will get a spirit to pull you out of your misery and your sleep. They will wake you up out of your sleep, and we see our youth doing that.

We have young males and females all around the country who are very enthusiastic and optimistic, and their leaders within their own association are real leaders. I don't think we have to worry too much about our youth being hurt by these setbacks.

It is usually the adults with families and children who have not seen this fulfilled for their children who are the ones set back.

Our youngsters will find something to do. They will leave that which is dried up and passed away; they will leave the dead and go find the living. Or they will have the spirit and vision for bringing the dead to life again.

I don't worry about the youth right now. The only thing I worry about is us not making it clear to our youth that we appreciate those who are alive and going after the real life.

We are not so disturbed by those who give themselves to violence and indecencies, filthy language and whatever, that we can't see our good youth and good merits they have earned by sticking with the good life and working to establish the good life in society.

Q: Back on the Convention. Each year we have these different programs that you have given to the community. So should there be a progress report to say, for example, "We were here last year or two years ago. And now we are at this point."

IWDM: Yes. All around growth or progress is what we would like to report on. When I say "all around," I mean for education and our school system or schools in the various cities of the United States, and also for our creative business people. It should be the same for our creative business people.

It should be also for our message of Islam and how we are doing. What is the key language, the most important language in our religious message. We need to make that clear on Convention day.

Many who are not in touch with a big community hardly get a chance to pray with Muslims in the same association that they are in. They are in small towns and places where it is hard to get that kind of information.

They depend on the Annual Muslim Convention, which we used to call Islamic Convention before, to fill them in and to bring them up to date on what is going on.

It is to make it clear to them how they are to look at things: How they are to see Imam W. Deen Mohammed, how they are to see efforts for education, how they are to see our patriotism as Americans.

Our patriotism is not the patriotism of skinheads or Afro wearing people. Our patriotism is our own.

They want to hear that. They want to hear what is this new relationship we have with the United States. They have a lot of questions they want answered.

Imam Darnell Karim, we should also have workshops on what is the focus, where should we be focused. Where are we focused in terms of our interest in education and schools. Where are we focused as citizens who uphold the law and offer the good life for America.

We should have workshops and we have enough months between now and then to get it done. You only need a month or so to put this together.

I am speaking to the leaders now who work with me. You all should be working to see that we have workshops with something of real substance and something that is really addressing our community and not just addressing ideas or interest.

It should address our community and our community needs.

Q: Brother Imam, thank you for taking the time for us to have this opportunity. We would like for you to make a closing statement to go out over the air.

IWDM: You can be free and yet not be free. You can be free as far as your knowledge of the Emancipation Proclamation or free as far as your knowledge that all citizens in America are free. You can be free with that awareness, but that awareness is not enough for freedom to become real for you.

To have freedom become real for you, you have to qualify. And that is what we
are going to talk about at the Convention's Sunday Address.

Q: Yes, and we want everyone to be there to hear you speak on this subject. We encourage everyone to be present. The Sunday Public Address on Sept. 3, 2006, will be at the UIC Pavilion, at Racine and Harrison Streets, in Chicago, 111.

IWDM: I hope that we will get carpools and buses and assist the people who will be present here from around the Midwest and from as far away as Los Angeles and San Francisco and New York City, and Atlanta.

I hope that with a united effort, we will have a way to get all of them to the Pavilion.