Reprinted from the Muslim Journal 7-26-02 to 8-30-02

“G-d Needs Nothing From His Creation; His Creation Needs its Creator”

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

(Imam W. Deen Mohammed gave this Jumuah Khutbah (sermon) in Brooklyn, N.Y., on May 17, 2002.)

We begin with G-d's Name, Who is merciful to us, The Merciful Benefactor and Merciful Redeemer. That is, He is merciful to us twice for our life here and hereafter. Firstly, He is merciful to us by creating us in such a wonderful human form and creating us with a mind and intellect to enjoy the material world both with our bodies and with our minds or with our material life and our spiritual life.

Then He is merciful to us again, when we lose the way and can't see any further how to carry our life where we want it to go, He gives us revelation or guidance through one who deserves that special help from G-d, our Creator. And we are put into a good position again to start afresh with our life and to carry it where our souls want it to go, where G-d wants it to go.

G-d has put it in the soul that He created to know where to go. That is, if we clean our minds and hearts and have nothing deceitful in us and be not all for ourselves but for our community, G-d will let us know through our souls where we should take our lives.

We witness that G-d is One Alone. It means that He does not need anyone or anything to help Him manage His creation  all of it, the skies and earth and everything therein. He has no partner or god with Him; He is G-d Alone. If anyone comes to Him, according to His Words in Qur'an, he comes as a servant.

We know all of the Prophets in Bible and Qur'an are written as servants of G-d, including Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, and all the Prophets and Messengers of G-d. Jesus introduced himself as a servant to G-d, in the Bible. And G-d says to Muhammed, revealing the Qur’an for the world, no one comes to Him except as a servant, not as a god or equal with Him.

G-d says in Qur'an, "I need not for you to feed Me (G-d)." He slumbers not and takes no sleep; He feeds but is not fed. That is G-d, the Creator. And we witness that Muhammed, to whom the Qur'an was revealed over 1,400 years ago, is His Servant and Hi? Messenger. That is our creed, our declaration of faith.

Our faith is firstly in G-d, Who created everything and made possible all goodness and all good things. Secondly, our faith is in man. When we say that we witness that Muhammed is the Messenger of G-d and the Last Prophet, we are saying that we have faith in G-d and in man. G-d requires that we not only have faith in G-d, but that we have faith also in man.

So it is not good just to believe. We are to look at Muhammed the Prophet and see him in his personal life as a human being and in his life as a prophet, for he is also for us a sign, as Jesus was a sign, peace be upon them. He is a sign that G-d does not need man to get man where He wants man to go.

The whole world can fail the human being. The whole world can fail the human soul. But that does not mean that G-d is helpless and depending on man to carry the human soul to where He wants it to go.

When all of their knowledge runs out and can't help us, when all of their creations can't help us, when all of their teaching and preaching can't help us, G-d can revive the intellect of the human being and lift that intellect up to higher planes, where that intellect will experience revelation on the highest level and come into a much bigger focus and dimension of his reality.

Then G-d will cause him to come back down off the high plane or level that He lifted him up to back with his people on the ground and revive them and guide them, so they will have what their souls call for.

G-d never did anything stupid! G-d never did anything that was senseless! Whatever G-d did, it is intelligent. Whatever G-d did makes sense. Understand that, firstly.

We must respect G-d. G-d doesn't play. G-d doesn't stroke Himself. He doesn't need that; we need that. We don't have to believe in a G-d that needs us to worship Him; He doesn't need us to worship Him. He is not a god that needs us to thank Him; He doesn't need us to thank Him. A G-d that needs us to pray to Him and bow down to Him or glorify Him, G-d doesn't need that at all.

But G-d created us and we are His creation and His creation needs to obey the Creator. And the creation needs to acknowledge the Creator The creation needs to appreciate the Creator. The more the creation does that, the better the creation is; it becomes better and better.

It is for us that we have revelation. It is for us that we have prayers. G-d does not need our prayers; we give G-d nothing when we pray to Him.

Muhammed the Prophet said: "You cannot increase G-d by any little small bit by whatever you want to do for Him.' This is what the Prophet taught to us. He is already perfect. And when He created the world, He didn't create it for Him to feed on it. He didn't create the world for the world to give Him strength. He created the world for man  the whole world, everything.

The sky and everything up there and the earth and everything down here, the insects and smallest things in creation, G-d did not create that for G-d. G-d created that for us, man. And man is the only creature that we see finding joy, pleasure, usefulness in everything that G-d created.

Nothing that G-d created is without use to human beings and community life.

We have the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. There we have all kinds of insects and things on display, as well as technology. We see all the animals. We have courses taught now in our schools. No matter how small life is, plant or animal, it is of interest to us. But isn't it true that G-d created all of this for man?

Nothing else wants to know about all these things. It is only man who wants to know all these things and seems to bring all of these things into his environment to study them, to ponder over them, to find enjoyment in them. So the world and all things, as the Prophet has taught us and the Prophets before taught us, all things that you see or know of in this world are created for man.

G-d needed nothing. We should first know G-d as The Real G-d, then we will have real faith, strong faith, undying faith. Then we will have strong interest, undying interest in the mission. Without these things brought to your mind and conscience, religion for you is like passing through a flower garden.

As long as the wind is blowing the beautiful smell in your nose, there is pleasure in passing through the flower garden. But there is a stockyard close by and if the wind changes, you will be passing through the flower garden, but you are smelling the stockyard.

That is how religion is in this world. As soon as something bad comes into their nose or senses, they lose the good relationship or good experience in religion. It should not be that way. Your mind should be converted to G-d. Islam is the only religion that I know of that insists upon your mind being converted to G-d.

We say, "I witness." 'I witness" is given also in the Bible. But it was not established by the followers of the Bible, except for a few. Muhammed the Prophet came to say it is important that your mind and your intelligence convert to G-d not just your spirit and your soul. Your mind and your intelligence should witness this Truth, that G-d is Creator of everything. G-d is G-d, and G-d has lifted up man  not only created him, but lifted him up in his intellect so that he will be a guide for the whole world of mankind.

The place for us to start is in the heart, but we are not just creatures of the heart. The animals have hearts and sometimes they display sentiments of the heart that attract our attention. We will be amazed and it touches our heart from their hearts. But I don’t think any of them can touch us with their intellects, with their minds like we can touch each other with our minds. We are superior to all created things, in our minds and in our intelligence.

G-d created a human being and gave that human being a superiority over other creatures and life He made, and that superiority is not in his feelings, not in his heart but in his intellect, in his mind.

So would He be a G-d making sense, if He didn't establish that human being in his intelligence and if He didn't tell them to develop their minds and cultivate their minds and respect their human intelligence and to use the tools of intelligence for their future good and benefit and conscience.

If He didn't do that, He would not even make sense after making the human being like that and then ignore the great wealth and value that He gave that creature when He gave him reasoning, intelligence and intellect.

So when you say, "I witness that there is but One G-d," you are supposed to say that with rational sense. And there is plenty rational guidance in the Qur'an that forces us to the conclusion that there is a G-d over all this creation. And that that G-d is not two or three or four or many, that that G-d is One. The creation itself points to One G-d, not to more than one.

That is the rational conclusion you should make. And if you don't have that when you come to Islam, when you hear the teachings of Islam, when you read the Qur'an, you should be guided to that kind of conclusion. And when you take your Shahadah or Declaration of Faith, it should be from the intellect, not from the heart and spirit.

This religion prepares us to accept responsibility for the community life of man on this planet earth. The great messengers and teachers of G-d come from mankind and they put mankind in the right position and on the right road.

But in time because man is encouraged by religion to engage the world so that it becomes a better world as a home for the human soul, or in trying to protect the human soul, man gets too involved in material things and things of the flesh and forgets what he was given from the messenger or the prophet that started him on the road.

Pretty soon, he is so far lost that he has to have another messenger or revivalist or someone to bring him back to where he is supposed to be. This happens, it has happened and will continue to happen. Muhammed the Prophet prophesied that his community would go down and fall under darkness, but it would be revived.

He promised his community, and that is us  we are his community and all of the people who follow the Qur'an and Islam knowing that it was revealed to Muhammed the Prophet; there are over 1 billion of us now on this earth in most of the countries of the world.

Muhammed the Prophet told us that at the head of every 100 years, there would be someone to revive the religion. Now if he said these things, should we be thinking that the Islamic world is all right all the time? How can it be all right all the time, if the Prophet said it was going to go into darkness, even after he had guided it right; he had set it up correctly?

He himself said it was going to go down. He himself said that at the head of every 100 years, there would be someone to revive it, a mujeddid, to bring back the newness or freshness – as it was before.

So we shouldn't then think that the Islamic world is in good shape all of the time, if what he said is correct. There are going to be times when the whole Islamic world is under darkness and not finding its way. But we shouldn't give up hope, because he said that there would come at the head of every 100 years a revivalist. What is he saying?

Do you think you can watch your calendar and say, "It's a hundred years at this moment, brother. The revivalist is here." No, that is not how it works. In the Arabic language, Islam is science, Islam is revelation, Islam is language that is on the level of the common man and at the same time is much higher than the grasp of the common man.

You need a special man inspired by G-d at times, or sometimes it is a woman, who will get us back to where we are supposed to be in our thinking. When the thinking is corrected, the thinking then can correct the heart. But when the thinking is in the dark, all we can depend on is the heart, and at first the heart is innocent and good.

When Muhammed said "every 100 years," it has to be translated or interpreted. The word in Arabic for 100 is "niat" and a death is "miat." These two words have the same essential constitution, when it comes to lettering. So when the Prophet said a hundred years, it was a play on "death."

Whenever his community dies, there is going to be one to resurrect it. Whenever this community dies to the right perception and way to live and practice Islam, there will be one to revive that understanding, to give it life again.

And the call to prayer begins with the word "life." First, we acknowledge G-d, that He is more important than anything else. Then you say, "Come to Prayer." That is the first pronouncement of the Call. The word is "Hayya," which is used to call someone and it means living.

The Arabs did not just hear that word for the first time from Mohammed's mouth. There is an Arab proverb in the Bible that says: "A living dog is better than a dead lion." In this proverb is the word "hayya," the living.

In the Call to Prayer, "hayya" is given as an imperative or as an order. It is a noun and a verb, for example the word "stop" is a noun and a verb.

"Hayya" in Arabic is living as in a noun. If you say, "Hayya alas salat," the same word that meant living now means "come." To the enlightened student who is searching language for more knowledge and understanding, this is saying to that student that this word does not merely mean "come," it means "come with enthusiasm, come living  not dead or sleepy or slumbering or absentminded." It means come with enthusiasm, come lively to prayer.

What is prayer now? To know this makes the difference between a live Muslim and a dead Muslim. When you see Christians with their hands up, they are praying. That is not the way we pray. When you see Muslims have their hands up, that is the way we beg  not the way we pray. This is saying that we are begging our G-d; we are not supposed to beg man.

The Prophet said the one who holds his hand out begging is inferior to the one who gives to the hand. To hold the hands out in prayer for the Muslim is not salat; this is du'a. And du'a means to call for help. To understand prayer in Islam, we must get the understanding from revelation, from the Qur'an and Muhammed. But the first source is revelation.

In the Qur'an, Allah says every creature knows its mode of prayer. The lion, the eagle, the snake, the mosquito, the fly  it didn't leave out any. It says that every creature knows its mode of prayer.

So what then is prayer? Prayer is your natural life's discipline given to you by Creator. All the animals that G-d didn't give free will and free intellect or mind, they stay in the same mold created for them by their Creator  they don't come out of that mold.

They wake up like they are supposed to wake up. They go to sleep like they are supposed to sleep. They move and transport themselves like they are supposed to  as they were created to. They form their families and their societies as they were created to. They conduct their daily life to survive as they were created to do it.

Man is above them in creation. Man is created also to think and plan his future. But the same G-d that gave that mold for them, gave us also our thinking mold and He has planned thought in human life to take us from animal existence to inspired man's existence and to serve community in a way to make it the most excellent and the most trouble free and intelligent community, the most obedient community to G-d, to Creator.

It is to be the strongest sign that this community recognizes its Creator and gives credit to its Creator above all things. This G-d has created our intellect to acknowledge Him and to take our life to the best possible condition. This G-d has given this to us in our nature, in our souls and in our minds.

This will happen in a natural way. That is what Allah says to us through Muhammed and revelation, "it is the religion of origin" our human origin, that He has pattern the human civilized society of man upon. So we think of revelation and yes, we need revelation just to assist evolution when man runs out.

G-d says, "My man is ready for Me now. He has run out. He knows not where to take his life. He has learned that he will fail himself. Now I will come and help you. So he will know Me." G-d wants to be known by human beings, so that human beings can do more with His creation than animals can do.

G-d wants this creation to be better, and He created one of the animals to do that with the capacity and potential to go higher and reach further with his mind and to take His creation further than animals can take it. He wants it taken to community life. This is where you should be in your thinking.

We, the world of religious teachers, are so far behind. We are talking to man's soul, we are talking to his spirit but are doing little teaching to his rational mind. And that is a big mistake.

In Islam, the focus is the rational mind and Muhammed the Prophet, peace be upon him, said "G-d did not create anything better than the human brain." This is the saying of our Prophet recorded in Bukhari and Muslim in hadith, the great volumes of information.

Muhammed was assisted by Elijah Muhammad, who was inspired by W. D. Fard Muhammad, and it wasn’t until he got that kind of assistance that the world witnessed this kind of talk.

Now if G-d wants me to glorify Him, should I just glorify Him with my hands in clapping or just by shouting with noise and movement.

A king may invite me to perform for him and I know how to crack jokes and dance and sing, but I also have mental skills and can do calculus and the kingdom doesn't have calculus. If he invites me, should I offer him what is superior or what I have that is inferior? Should I buck dance when the king needs calculus and I know calculus?

Should I go and give G-d the spirit of my soul and the sentiments of my heart, when G-d has created my brain above my soul and above my heart. Although the soul is so mysterious, it may extend above my brain, but I do know it waits on my brain to do something. So should I perform with my spirit and not perform with my mind for G-d? Should I glorify Him with my spirit and not with my intelligence?

When you see what has happened in this world to bring communities from existing just like animals, eating, sleeping, having sex, playing and dying, to engage in the material world and to give human beings science and technology and many comforts with the intellect working with matter....

When you see how Islam came in the time of Muhammed, when the world had left off intellectual interest and scientific inquiries, when Muhammed received Qur'an, it was inspired again in the minds of studious men and women.

Then the great sciences and technology came back medicine, astronomy with instruments to study the stars, with instruments to make glass  all of this came back. Then came universities and colleges.

When you see that, know that G-d created human beings to glorify Him, not just with the instruments of their feelings but with the instrument of their brain and their rational faculties, etc. This is a great glorification.

Should I go and give G-d the spirit of my soul and the sentiments of my heart, when G-d has created my brain above my soul and above my heart? Although the soul is so mysterious, it may extend above my brain, but I do know it waits on my brain to do something. So should I perform with my spirit and not perform with my mind for G-d? Should I glorify Him with my spirit and not with my intelligence?

When you see what has happened in this world to bring communities from existing just like animals, eating, sleeping, having sex, playing and dying, to engage in the material world and to give human beings science and technology and many comforts with the intellect working with matter....

When you see how Islam came in the time of Muhammed, when the world had left off intellectual interest and scientific inquiries, when Muhammed received Qur'an, it was inspired again in the minds of studious men and women. Then the great sciences and technology came back  medicine, astronomy with instruments to study the stars, with instruments to make glass all of this came back. Then came universities and colleges.

When you see that, know that G-d created human beings to glorify Him — not just with the instruments of their feelings but with the instrument of their brain and their rational faculties, etc. This is a great glorification.

Science tells us that the most developed part of the brain is the frontal part. But before science told us that, the religion told us that we put that part on the ground or floor in glorifying G-d.

G-d said He made the man of the earth; out of the earth he came. Then he is told that he will die and return to the earth. You should say: "G-d, I am dead when I am under the authority of narcotics and drugs and whiskey and sex. G-d, I am dead when I am under the influence of my bank account; my money is managing me and I'm not managing it.

"G-d, return me to the womb of science and knowledge and direction from You, so I can stand up as a living man on my feet again." So we glorify G-d and say, "G-d, I lost it, but I'm giving it back to You. I think I have found myself, and I am going to put my head on the ground that You took me out of, in hope that I will be born again and live again and glorify You with my whole life and with my mind."

Then educate your brothers. Educate your sisters. Educate your public for a better world. This is prayer. That is why on the Jumuah Day we don't have to say four rakat of Thuhr, the midday prayer. We cut it in half, because what I am doing with my khutbah (speech) is prayer.

The Bible has Jesus saying, "Give us this day our daily bread." He wasn't talking about Wonder Bread from the store. He was talking about the "bread  to be read and read correctly. And I need it daily." Is there proof of this in the Bible? Yes. The Bible said of Jesus, "Take this in the communion" wine – “in the remembrance of Me.”

The Bible says that the wine represents spirit and that it is the spirit of the New Testament. "Take this bread in remembrance of me, my body." And the Bible tells us that this bread is the doctrine of the New Testament. Doctrine means teachings.

The wine represents spirit, and the bread represents teachings. So I say to you to take the "b" off of bread and just read it as "read." This is in agreement with the New Testament.

This is a wonderful loaf of bread. In fact, it is five in one. Here is what we should be looking at. Islam comes to awaken us for community life. Muslims can't be Muslims on an island somewhere off to ourselves away from Mohammed our society and away from our people.

Muslims are obligated by the teachings of Islam to establish the individual in community  not outside of community. All of our aspirations, all of our hopes you are to first look at your community and then pick a place in your community for you to establish yourself upon or in. This is Islam; Islam requires that of us.

We are not to go out on our own individually and try to make a life for ourselves. We have to look at our community first and plan our life with respect to what our community gave us, with respect for what our community needs and with respect for where our community has to go in order to meet what G-d asks of community in Qur'an and in those teachings on the life of Muhammed the Prophet.

Islam is community life, not just living our own life privately or selfishly. Islam comes to do what civilization does. When we are told by G-d that this is a community of "fitrah," a community of origin, archeologists and the sciences that study the past life of man on this earth find evidence that human life is an evolving life.

G-d also says that we are created like a plant. And just like a plant starts with a seed and develops itself upon a stem and later produces a beautiful design or symmetry or production and oftentimes produces something useful to other life seeds or fruits that other life feeds upon, including human beings  or beauty that the human soul feeds on, it is giving something.

When the plant establishes itself, it is giving to something other than itself. The simplest of plants that has no seed, no fruit, no nuts, no beauty, it will die and its dead body enriches the soil that it came up out of or was taken from. It makes the soil richer for itself and for other things to grow in.

G-d has created life not to live selfishly but to give unselfishly  charity. Some of the greatest advancements we have made for human society have been made possible because of people not being selfish. Because if we were selfish, we would not even give the knowledge freely; not to mention the material benefits that some of us are fortunate to have and share with others so they would have a better life.

We wouldn't have the knowledge and the sciences in the world making it so beautiful, if it weren't for the charity that is in the heart of every human being. This is the beauty of religion; this is the substance of religion. The substance of religion is not in show, not in rituals, not in dressing up in your ihram, the two pieces of cloth, and bringing your picture back from Hajj to show people.

The substance of this religion is not "Allahu Akbar," and nobody heard it. These people are dead; you have to teach them for them to hear that. Just like it is for the evolution of man, social science believes that man has a natural desire and urge in him to evolve  to get better and better, more developed and more developed, become more resourceful and more resourceful, to become more qualified to do greater and better things  science says that man is created with this spirit and desire in him to evolve socially.

Science says that civilization does not really present itself, until man perceives his social aim of where he should take his life in community with other men and people and families  not just his private life. He has to be turned on to where he is to take his community life, his people, his tribe that he lives with on this earth or continent or peninsula. When he gets in that mind, that is when he starts to evolve socially.

This takes him to his social aim. That is to have comfort not just for himself but for the people he belongs to. If your Imam W. Deen Mohammed were not turned on to this when he was a teenager, you would not have W. Deen Mohammed.

It is not the Qur'an and the Sunnah that made this Imam. It is my desire to live the best of my social nature and to follow the best aim in this social nature, so that our people and I will be helped by my existence. Elijah Muhammad, my father, turned that on in me.

It was because of that nature, my "fitrah" that I was given that, and I was able to guide you to the Qur'an and the Sunnah. I know where my. salvation is. I know where my savior was  in my "fitrah."

To succeed in this world where all human beings have the same nature; G-d gave every human being a "fitrah." To compete in this world and to succeed, we need a strategy and a superior strategy, because other people have strategies too. We need the best strategy that can compete with all other strategies and not be defeated. That is the strategy of Islam. That is the strategy Muhammed had, prayers and peace be upon him.

The best strategy is the one of openness, not secrecy. G-d loves Truth. G-d loves courage in a righteous man, a righteous man who is brave enough to trust Truth, even when falsehood tells him he can live longer.

But don't think this is a silly, foolish openness. This is a wise openness. It reveals itself to those on top first, before the middleman hears it. It is put in a language that escapes the man on the ground but reaches the man in the high tower.

They now say: "Uh oh, we have company and we didn't create him. He is telling everything and telling what we are doing up here. We have to review our work and see where we are right now and see if we have done anything wrong. We have to make sure we are on solid ground. See if there is a prediction we can work out to explain this guy's creation." So they go back and study.

Then they come up with the conclusion: "He has seen in the sanctuary and into the sacred quarters, but he is not guided by G-d. He lacks the wisdom that G-d gives. So let's ignore him. Let's embarrass him. Let's bring out his weak side. Let's destroy him." But if they say, "he is genuine, he is wise, he is protected by G-d," they are quiet as they can possibly be. Because everything they say, they know he is going to hear it.