1992-November-13

Muslim Journal

"A Focus for the Unity of Muslims in America": Part 2

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

(Imam W. Deen Mohammed made this public address at the 1992 Annual Islamic Convention in Atlanta, Georgia on Sunday, September 6, 1992. From it he has prepared this article for Muslim Journal's readers.)

Identifying Khalifah

Allah says He is going to create a khalifah in this earth. He says this in Qur'an and Highly Glorified is He. Now how are we to identify the life of this khalif? It will be from what God has revealed; that is how we will identify him. Allah said to the Angels, "I am going to put a khalifah in the earth." Don't we understand that to mean that before that time there was no man on the earth?

When God said He was going to put a khalifah on the earth, the Angels were disturbed by it. This creature that God was going to put on the earth would be able to make free choices; he would not be predetermined like the angels. The angels' choices are predetermined. Angels make no choices other than what is predetermined by their angelic nature. But the human beings can make choices outside of the human nature. And we know that when we look at popular society in America today, someone has been making choices outside of the human nature.

So what is the precious life of this creature called the khalifah that God says He is going to put in the earth? From Allah's Words, we know what that precious life is. The Angels were told to acknowledge him by being invited to make submission to Adam. We know that they resisted this and challenged this. So God says to Adam, "Adam, tell them their names." And when Adam told them their names, they all submitted except Iblis. Iblis was different from them, for he was before one of the jinns.

Then the angels said to God, "We have no knowledge except what You gave us." This is in Qur'an. Iblis still refused. And God said to them, "When I have inspired him with My inspiration or when I have given him of My spirit or when I have breathed into him of My breath" - it is all the same language - "make submission to him, make sajdah to him, bow down."

Khalifah: Creation of Intellect

Allah says of him that He taught him the names of things. Now is that addressing the mind or the intellect or not? The creation of Adam, the creation of khalifah gives us a setting where we see the first creature of God being created as an intellect. It is an intellect with rational abilities, an intellect capable of reasoning or of seeing things with a free and active mind This is what we see, it is an intellect being created by God, when God says, "I am going to create in the earth a khalifah."

God sees the precious life of the human being as being the human mind. In this society your possibilities for progress depend on how much you have as progress for your mind. That is what your station in the society depends on, how much you have as progress for your mind. Not only that in this big society in the United States of America, but it also depends on how much progress you have for your mind.

Human beings by nature identify each other with the recognition of each other as rational, thinking, mental creatures. Right now I have an interchange with you and you have an interchange with me. And we are not touching with the hands and are not doing the boogie or the jerk or whatever they do now. We are communicating with our minds. And we know that the heart has a great place in communications, but we are communicating with our minds.

Home: The Place of Rest

This mind in order to be developed, I repeat, needs to have a social community. And the first one is the human family, the small private family - mamma, daddy, sisters, brothers. I tend to be a bit of a philosopher, although I have not gone to college to get a degree. But I want you to understand what I think is important, if you really appreciate in a more rewarding measure just what we are as human beings.

We know we speak of home as the place of rest for us, if it is really home, when
every other place offers no rest.

Home is the place for rest. You may be with your friends having coffee in a restaurant where you may enjoy yourself, but if you have a good home after a while you will tell your friends, "Look, I have to go. I will see you all tomorrow or next year."

Home is the strongest attraction, if it is really home. It is the place for rest. It is not just the place where you go to sleep. It is the place to rest the soul. There your soul feels more at rest, more secure, more comfortable. Man will also feel at home with close associates, and the closest of associates are those relatives, the home. He not only feels at home, but he feels at ease.

Home: Cherished Thoughts

It is (Home is) also with his dearest and most cherished thoughts, the thoughts that are the closest to his heart, there he feels mentally or intellectually at home. So man does not only want to feel at home with his flesh and blood, he also wants to feel at home with his thoughts. Man, alone, with himself or to himself having only himself as his company will be conducting the activities of the mind and functioning as the intellect of the mind. He is conducting an activity he calls conversation in a setting where he projects himself in the first person, second person, and third person.

This is not the problems they identify as split personalities or as multiple personalities. In this case the person speaks to a reflection and a projection of himself. The person and his personality are unchanged; it is the same person with the same personality. There is no experience for conversing or communicating without another party. Even when you are alone you will make yourself multiple persons to have communication.

You will say to yourself, "Wallace, you had better hurry up and get out of here or you are going to be late." You are talking to yourself, but you have projected yourself as the second person. You have made yourself first person and second person. Sometimes you will even make yourself the third person and will say, "Wallace sure didn't do what he was supposed to do that time." It is as though you are talking to the second person about the first person, and all the persons are you.

The Original Social Nature

We are social beings by nature. We cannot function as an intellect without the social nature or the social life or the social make up. Why has God created us like that? It is because God wants us to be "ummatan wahidah" - one united community. That nature eventually brings us to feel at home with our brothers and sisters in one community where one idea reigns or rules there: One law, One God, one way of thinking, one way of behaving. People become united in one consistent life.

Don't you know that when you become a Muslim, you have an opportunity or situation where you can enjoy more closeness with members in the Muslim family than you can ever enjoy with members in an ordinary family of flesh and blood? That is a fact.

This is not to put more importance on the flesh and blood. God obligates us to put the obligation to our flesh and blood relatives even before our Muslim brothers in the community. That is essential and necessary for the human person, the individual and the family and is a very touchy and private thing. If that privacy is not protected, the bigger achievement which is the ummah of Islam will also be damaged. If we come away from that first order of commitment to family, eventually we won't be fit for the community of Muslims. That (family) is where the nature comes from.

The nature that is needed (in order) to live it in its fullest and most excellent way as a community of Muslims is given to us as in the private family flesh and blood social order. That is where it comes from. Allah says that this is the religion of fitrah, the religion of originality, the originality upon which Allah patterns the human. This religion is built upon respect for the original social nature of man demonstrated in family - flesh and blood relatives of mom and dad and children.

To be continued .