1984-October-5

A.M. Journal

Imam Muhammad's Address To 1st Political Awareness Confab: Part 3

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from Imam W. Deen Muhammad's address at the 1st National Political Awareness Convention, held Aug. 25, 1984 at the Convention Center, Washington, D.C.)

Dear beloved people, our aim is community excellence. If we want to reach our goal, it's going to require us to stop in-fighting, stop giving our attention to how close one of our co-workers is getting to a better situation, and wanting to beat him to the better situation. We have to get rid of that. We have to get rid of bringing attention to our own personal worth. We have to get rid of that for the bigger sensitivity—for the more productive appetite.

We have to have the desire to see recognition come to the community—not to us individually.

A LEADER IS IN a terrible situation. If he's not careful he will give in to the praise, to the spotlights, to the influences of the stage, to the cheers of the people and become unfit for leadership.

I know Allah is with me. I know God is my protector. If He weren't, I would have become drunk a long time ago.

Why is all this Godly help coming to this African-American descendant of slaves? Because Allah loves the many — the striving poor. Allah's mercy goes out to the many — the striving poor. Not to those who care nothing about their families or the help they received from the people of the past; not those who want to live on somebody else, taking ad' vantage of people, preying on the weak in their own society. No! Not those — Allah is letting them go to hell. But Allah's mercy goes out to the striving poor.

And believe me, when people get up and hear Imam W. Deen Muhammad — you know, I come to hear Imam W. Deen Muhammad too. I don't know if you know it or not — but when people gather to hear Imam W. Deen Muhammad, you can bet that the majority of those people are the striving poor.

THEY ARE NOT people who are satisfied to be given rations or charity, they are people who want economic dignity, but the circumstances are just too monumental or they have patience, they support the community effort and trust the love and mercy of God.

They die  every  year, but none of them of that character lives a life or dies 8 life in vain. They do not die without reward. I believe with certainty that they are with Allah, they are getting their full reward.

We are a people who are criticized in secret for not having civilized devotions. In the main that is correct. Most of us still carry the burden of disorientation from the time of slavery. This left us on the level of common animal emotions, we want such things as food. sex, protection from fear, etc.

BUT NO MATTER what color a man is or where he was born — Allah did not create any human being for that level of existence. But He created every human being - in the Word of God Himself — in the most excellent model, the most excellent mold.

It is our past circumstances and the failures of our race, our ethnic group, to support leaders who attempt an independent work to restore our human minds and civilized consciousness to the African-American deprived persons.

But praise be to Allah, I think we are now on course for good. I don't believe anything will take this work off course again.

European-Americans, Asian-Americans — all of these ethnic groups talk about our situation in privacy. They call it the black situation and say we do not have civilized devotions — that the majority of us just want a good time. That's not quite right.

THE GREATEST URGE in the African-American population now is not for fun. The greatest urge in the African-American population now is to demonstrate distress and desperation!

The support for the Rev, Jesse Jackson was for the most part an expression of desperation — the release of desperation.

People are desperate because they have come to 1984 and don't have much to look at but disappointed expectations.

The sophisticated insight that established society leaders have is beyond us, and we could not get it except for the mercy of God. That insight that brings an un-established community or a group of people to realize that they cannot establish their community life until they find spiritual equilibrium — psychological stability. We can't have that, Not in the state we are in because we don't have stratified, structured devotions, stratified, structured loyalties.

We don't have the vision to come into that, because we have been cut completely off from natural development and the traditional life of a people. What we have here is just America, democracy, freedom and an opportunity to make it on your own.

A PEOPLE WHO have suffered as we have in the past — the degree of slavery exacted upon us -- require more than the opportunity to make it on their own. They require someone to tell them what is their own, because their situation and past experiences have rendered them a baby in the world of men.

Don't feel inferior because you can't compete with the white man and other ethnic groups; don't feel inferior because you're still behind all of them, behind the newcomers — the Koreans, the Cubans — but thank God that He has made it possible for us to hear the answer, and do something about the situation.

An excellent writer, John Naisbitt, wrote a book and this book points to 10 major developing trends we are now experiencing — trends that will shape the future life for the American people. He also presents direction for transforming the life and improving the situation for a people who understand those trends and will accept his recommendations.

He says that America is moving from an industrial society to an information society. The next thing he lists is forced technology — high-tech he calls it, and this he says is a major trend that is going to shape the future life of the American people. Thirdly he lists (a shift from) national economy to a world economy.

WHAT HE IS SAYING is that nations now have to reckon with a major trend that is demanding attention to world economy and depriving nations that enjoy privileges and markets overseas, etc. He says that this major trend is depriving them of the conveniences and the situation that they enjoyed in the past, and that they will now have to give more attention to world economy.