1977-October-28

Muslim Journal

Charity

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

With the Name Allah (In the Name of God), the Gracious, the Compassionate.
As-Salaam-Alaikum

If a man's got a treasure, he should know where it is and he should know the state, the condition of that treasure. If you've got a bank account, don't you want to know where it is? And don't you want to know the condition of that bank account? If you've got a wife, don't you want to know where she is? Don't you want to know the state of that wife? Alright, so we've got a society that represents all of us; don't we want to know where the society is? Shouldn't we want to know the state of this society? Should we say freedom, freedom, freedom and let everything go? We have to get on the job, and to get on the job we have to get moral direction back into our individual lives, and moral direction back into the community life. And to get that, we have to get right back down to the bottom of life and make things right again from the bottom, up.

This is scripture I'm speaking to you, not from myself. I'm not formally educated. I'm speaking to you from scripture. Scripture says that God, one day will remove the sun and the moon and the stars, and will make those lights the dress of beings walking on earth. And the scripture says again that God one day will level the mountains. You won't find any high and low spots on the earth. He says He will level the earth. This has meaning, this means something. We either are going to believe in the Bible as Christians and Jews and believe in the Holy Quran as Muslims, or we are going to give our life to materialism, to atheism, to something that we don't want as human beings. So let's not give up what we've got until we first examine—reexamine—thoroughly what we were given and see if there is worth in what we have been given.

We don't have to go to socialism or to communism in order to bring equality on earth, charity to the needy. The Bible says that God is going to reduce the mountains; He's going to cause the mountain to roll down into the valley. The wealth that nations pile up for a few, God is going to roll it down into the valleys so that the few and the many share in the wealth. The Quran says the same thing. The Quran says that God is going to make them as a level plane.

In the Quran, Allah says He's going to make the earth plain and level. He says there will be no crookedness in it. The hope of the prophets, that hope that God inspired is the hope that one day knowledge will not be monopolized, will not be kept for a few and denied the many. That wealth will not be hoarded for the benefit of a few and denied to the many. The hope of our religion, the hope of scripture is that wealth and knowledge will come down to the weak, to the meek, to the humble, to the poor, to the ignorant. And that it will be as accessible to the poor and to the ignorant as it will be to the wise and the rich. This is scripture; this is the direction we should be moving in.

Religious leaders can't point the finger at government as much as the government should be pointing the finger at us. The government has been taxing and taxing and taxing—taxing the rich so that the mountain of wealth be shared by those who live in the valley or in the pocket of poverty. The government has been doing this. Our government, the government of the United States has been trying to corrode the mountains of wealth so that wealth is shared by the suffering masses.

But what have we been doing as religious leaders? We've been preaching happiness. We've been preaching the pleasure and have forgotten the main ingredient and that is work. We should have been preaching that pleasure and reward exude from good consistent work. If I preach to you all pleasure, you'll forget about what you have to do in life. The great pleasure that comes to the religious devotee is the pleasure of coming into a heaven, into a blissful stage by pleasing God. You know I don't like pain! "You sinner, you're going to burn. The righteous are going to fly, and float, and drink milk and honey and wear white silken robes and lay down on couches and rest.” But who is going to be working for the righteous? Work is the life of natural growth. Work and experience should increase knowledge, substance, and pleasure in our lives.

Once two men came to Prophet Muhammad and they were praising another. They said, "Oh, we have a wonderful man in our community, Prophet. Prophet Muhammad, he prays all of his, prayers, he's all the time praying." Prophet Muhammad said, "Who gives him his necessities, his food, etc.?" They said, "We do." He said, "You are better than Prophet Muhammad told them that - they were better than that man. They were workers, they were building the kingdom of God. The other man was just praying his way out of the kingdom. And this is what we do when we place all the importance on life hereafter, on the heaven to come and forget about the job and the world that we live in right now. The main job is not improving our clothing, not making the dinner richer, or the car a later model. The main job is improving the contents of life and moral intelligence for the individual and the nation. Habits of heart and mind are the more important possession to watch over and to improve upon.

Your brother in service to Allah, Wallace D. Muhammad