1981-February-27

Bilalian News

The Correct Islamic Attitude: Part 2

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

With the Name Allah,
the Gracious, the Compassionate

As-Salaam-Alaikum

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from a Khutbah by Imam Warith Deen Muhammad at Masjid Muhammad, Washington, D.C., Jan. 16, 1981 - - Continued from last week.)

Can we have a second nature? Certainly. We can have a second nature, a fifth, a sixth, a tenth, a twelfth, and on and on. Every time we become accustomed to a certain way and give into that way, that becomes our nature. So we often get out of our original nature, though it rests dormant, and we have to be called back to that original nature.

The original nature of the ego or the aspiring intellect is Muslim. Muslim means submitting or agreeing to the will of God, inclined toward universal peace. Our religion is Al-Islam, meaning, that religion that is in accord with the order established by God. That order established by God conforms to the principle of peace.

Science says that the creation was once in a state of convulsion and chaos. Science says, "The nature of creation brought it to order, to peace." Is the sun upset now? It seems to be very, very constant, very much contained. It follows the same pattern, every day. When we look at it, we don't see confusion.

Now scientists, with their scopes, look at it and say, "Oh, it is quite violent inside." Well it is violent inside, but it's so orderly outward. We know that the Quran has given science that insight. Allah says in the Quran that in the beginning this creation was in a state of convulsion, in a state of confusion, in a state of violence. Allah brought it to peaceful order.

No, we don't think that Allah in our weak being reached out His hand or made some gesture and said "peace" to His creation and it came into a peaceful order. Allah is beyond our ability to contain, capture or conceive Him. But. we can understand His law operating in His creation- It is only by an indirect signaling route that we are really able to understand the workings of Allah.

So Allah says, "It is not befitting that any mortal should behold God." It is not befitting that any creature should behold God, or communicate with God except by revelation. Then if we understand the law working throughout creation, to sustain creation, to keep creation in the order intended by Creator, to bring it back when it slips from that, to force it back into the form or order intended by its Creator—when we understand that law operating throughout creation, we can understand the way of Allah.

Therefore, this religion is a religion of nature, meaning the original order established by God. Human beings, then, have an ordained nature for a natural way of life. We have a natural identity. If we progress from that first and on and on and on, remaining always in agreement with the ordained nature which is excellence-directed, then whatever advancements, whatever achievements, whatever improvements we make or growth comes about, it will conform to the original. Therefore, whatever personalities evolve, they will be personalities after the original and therefore predestined and original.

We know submissiveness to the will of God is the nature of His creatures. If we accept that in our total being as we advance, the intellectual being will have an intellectual personality of the Muslim.

The scientists, the dentists, whatever, will have the personality of the Muslim. There's no need for us to take on foreign personalities as we grow in our intellect. We all should have the same light of character on our faces—the faces and light of the Muslim. The face of the Muslim is a human face. No amount of insight into the workings of nature or into religion should change that human face.

Some people become so mechanical or impulsive in their personality, so mechanical or impulsive in their sentiments, so mechanical or impulsive in their expressions that they lose their membership in the human family.

The problem does not exist only on the right hand, it exists also on the left. On the left hand you have the spiritualists and the blind in knowledge who would escape the realities of life and become so spooky looking, so ghostly looking, or so impressionable in the mold of changing circumstances that they don't identify in the human family.

So ours, Al-Islam, is the religion of human beings, not the religion of spooks and not the religion of atheists, and not the religion of in ordinate mechanical personalities.