1979-February-16

Bilalian News

The Shackles of Slavery: Part 7

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

With the Name Allah (In the Name of God), the Gracious, the Compassionate

As - Salaam – Alaikum

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from Mujeddid Wallace Deen     Muhammad's  "humorous exorcism" delivered at Malcolm X College in Chicago, Nov. 30, 1978 - Continued  from last week.)

All praise is due to Almighty God, the guardian evolver and sustainer of all the worlds. The blessings and peace be upon Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah to us all.

O Allah, guide us, forgive us our faults, and grant us the blessings of faith. I bear witness there is no deity except Allah and I bear witness Muhammad is His Servant and His Messenger. Peace be upon him, his descendants, his companions, the righteous servants, all of them, and upon us in America and throughout the world:

A certain Prophet, Jeremiah I believe, was given insights by the inspiration of God. He was asked as he was being lead into the knowledge to tell what he was seeing. "And what is it you see, Jeremiah?"

"I see a fig tree," Jeremiah said. "I see figs, very good ones and very bad ones. Very corruptible ones and very good ones."

What is the fig? Secular knowledge. A fig is a fruit that's easy to eat when it ripens. The skin is nice and soft and when you bite into it, it's sweet and juicy and filled with a lot of little seeds. It can multiply itself many, many times because it has so many seeds within itself. That's the description that God inspired in His servants of the secular nature.

We have so many sciences in the secular field, it's loaded with the seeds of knowledge. And practically all of us like that.

Some of the Sisyphus people don't like that; they don't even care for knowledge any more. The tree of that fruit grows up and it gets an ugly form — nice beautiful fruit, but the older the tree gets, the uglier it gets. And if it's not watched over, that fruit grows and gets an ugly form.

The older the tree gets, the uglier it gets, and if it's not cared for and watched over carefully, it becomes filled with terrible worms. That's the description that God inspired in his servants to place on this secular appetite of ours that ignores the guidance of God, refuses to believe in an Infinite Creator and thinks this world is all that there is.

We look pretty good when we are young and we develop something nice -- the fruit, the knowledge we spread, the things we say to people out of our mouths and our intelligence.
It's so easy to digest and it's productive. It produces so much for us in the secular world because it has so many seeds for reproduction.

But soon, it gets so ugly, so materialistic that the human being in his true nature can't stomach the sight of it.

After a while, it develops those worms that spread all through it. The worms of filth, corruption, crime, lust and vice are multiplying. Then you have to get the vice squad, and the United States has to represent two bodies. They are separated in this country. You have to have a President and a Vice-President.

Not that it's in those two bodies. It's in the system. It's in the rule of the system. The one who takes care of the virtues and the one who's the master of the vices.

Jeremiah Verse 9, Chapter 3 says, "Through the lightness of her whoredom....It corrupts the minds of the earth and commits adultery with stones and with stock."

Let me explain to you what is meant by commit adultery with stones and stock. Stones stand for principles of knowledge, principles of intelligence, principles of virtues. Stones are something firm and solid that you can stand upon that will hold you up. These are stones.

What are the stones that hold up virtues and intelligence in our society? The stones that hold up this civilization are the laws.

The stock represents the society. They call you live stock, but God says you are dead stock.

It is in the Bible. I didn't put it there. It says that these people who would rise up to take down every government with the Sisyphus sliding board, they will rise up with every government and will pack themselves under every green tree.

Government stands for political power. You don't have to have the Constitution of the United States of America to have a political power. Wherever there's a strong government, there is a political power.

We talk about the politics of an organization. It doesn't have to be the politics of a government. We speak of the politics of an organization because an organization must have government.

What does a tree represent now? The tree represents the culture — the customs, the knowledge that feeds the society so it can grow into a civilized form. That's what the tree represents.

"Under every green tree" - if I say you are green, what do I mean? You are naive. Under every naive society. There are some societies that are not so naive as to be manipulated by the Jahcubite. But most of them are green trees. They are naive. They can be manipulated.

When Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was raised to give the great universal message of Al-Islam to the world, the society that he came to was called pagan. In the Quran, they are described as a green tree — naive people.

God says to Satan, "Fire can even be brought out of a green tree." Do you think you are the only one who has rights to this knowledge? God says, I'll take a green tree without your help — without the help of the intelligence of this world — and bring fire out of it to light the whole world.

Now, let us look at a play on words. The Hadith says for every line, there is an expressed and an implied meaning. There is an application that is explicit and an application that is implied.

Alright, let us go now to this word, "illah." La illah illallah. Before this was revealed to Prophet Muhammad, there was in scripture a Prophet by the name of Samuel, and God was trying to bring him to his mission, but he was so confused with the confusion in the world -his environment was so heavy that he couldn't see God's message through the confusion.

Every time God called him, he answered illah instead of answering God. He went to illah, the priest, and the priest was confused, "I didn't call you." He went back again and God called him again. He got up a second time and went to illah and again, illah said, "I didn't call you." Finally he was called and he understood.

And when Prophet Muhammad was called, he said, "I can't read." And when God repeated the call a third time, again he said, "I can't read, I'm not a man of letters." God caused the forces of human evolution to grip him and feed him, and it squeezed him once, twice and the third time, and he began understanding the revelations.

Now, let us see here. La illah illallah. The first illah was not the way we have it today. The first illah which means "to go to" - illah: to go toward or to. La illah illallah, "No God except the God," "No deity, nothing to worship, nothing to pray to, nothing to fear, except The' God." No Jesus, Son of God, no Holy Ghost, helping God, but "The" God.
It wasn't illallah to start with. It was illah, just as the pagans explained it when they were put on the spot. They were put on the spot so that God could bring out the secrets of their beginnings so we would know.

They said, "No, these things are not actually God." The dumb among them thought they were actually God, that there was a real spirit in them. The priesthood of the idolaters knew that those idols weren't actually God.

They said, "No, these are not actually God, but they are a means for getting to God."

(To be continued)