1977-March-25

Bilalian News

A C.R.UC.I.A.L. Call For Survival!!!

Imam W. D. Muhammad

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful; Peace and Blessings upon His Servant and His Messenger, Muhammad, forever. Amen.

There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

As-Salaam –Alaikum

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In America today, the government is really bearing a cross that is not fully theirs. The church, the mosque, and the synagogue should speak out and accept their responsibility. The area that is hurting us most right now is not Vietnam, but it is the kind of socially disrupting and deteriorating things that that war bred—that is; dope addiction, violence, vandalism, and immorality. AH of these morally deteriorating and disintegrating things are in areas that are vital to the fabric of the society. These are the things that, to me, must be addressed immediately for the survival of the country. They are not the responsibility of government as much as they are the responsibility of religion. The total responsibility that the government has taken for solving the social ills and the moral ills of the country must be stopped.

Put Down Crusading Banners

I have seen figures stating that the  government is paying 85 per cent of the cost of all abortions in the country. Also, figures state that there are about 300 abortions for every 1,000 live births. Some religious puritans might jump up and say, "Down with the government; they are killing our people." But where is the responsibility? It is on the church, it is on the mosque, it is on the synagogue.

The people have received wrong teachings and they have been lead wrong. The religious leaders have failed the people as true leaders, and that is why we are having so many problems like mass abortions. The religious leaders should accept the responsibility to restore moral strength to the homes and respect for parents in the homes. They should accept the responsibility to direct our children away from self-destructive behavior to constructive behavior. To do this, the religious leaders have to put down their crusading banners and stop crusading for their separate religions as Jews, Christians, or Muslims. They must start crusading for the very survival of our society. The parents have the authority in the home but they cannot use it because the church has failed to uphold the parents' rights. (When I say church, I mean mosques and synagogues also).

Religion: The Strongest Influence

Religious leadership is still the strongest influence in people's lives in the West and certainly in America. Whether we like it or not, we are dominated by religious ideas and we are unconsciously directed by religious behavior. Sometimes when we do not have the proper guidance, that relationship is reversed — we think we are going forward but we are really going backwards. That is what we have in the West now.

The religious leadership has failed to come and stay out front to protect the rights of fathers, the rights of mothers, the rights of children. The government is now trying to do this but it is too much burden on the government. That is one reason why the taxes keep going up. If religious leadership would come out and fight some of the terrible moral problems that we have, we would see a great improvement.

Moral decadence: The Common Disease

I have read that approximately 40 per cent of all marriages end in divorce. Out of 418,100 illegitimate births, 221,400 of those births were by girls under twenty years of age. This is a situation of babies having babies. Mothers today have less pa rent-knowledge than they had forty years ago. Mothers then knew that they had the responsibility of making mothers out of their daughters before they got married. Wives in the past were prepared to be mothers as well as wives.

The moral decadence of our society is increasing at an alarming rate. In 1975 there were 400,000 daily heroin users and another two to four million people who used heroin occasionally. These problems are not only reaching Bilalian people as they once were, but now they are effecting everybody. This is now a disease that effects everybody's community. I also understand that there are a large number of physicians who are becoming addicted to heroin. Since most of the religious leaders have knowledge of these kinds of figures, I am surprised that we do not have more religious leaders asking that we really get down to business and do something serious to correct the problem of moral decadence that is in the society.

A Spirit Of Self-Suicide

The Western world has been taken over by a spirit of self-suicide. The basic cause of this problem is a misinterpretation and misunderstanding of what the term "freedom" really means. It is also a misinterpretation of the use of the term "freedom" in the Bible. The New Testament is taken to be the end of the law. This idea of lawlessness has been fed into the unsuspecting society. I do not just mean lawlessness as it is in the common criminal in society, but I mean lawlessness from within the individual's makeup.

This "freedom" is taken to mean that "I don't have to govern myself any more." Thirty years ago or more we had individuals who believed in law. (I do not mean law in terms of a legal institution but law within the individual's own self). People realized that they had to execute law on their own individual self to keep themselves from going downhill. But today we have lost all of that respect for law. There is a tendency to just give ourselves to a life of disorder, a life of no discipline.

A Game With Death

It seems that people believe that "freedom" means destruction and that "freedom" is daringness. The daredevil Evel Kinevel is just a physical figure that represents the kind of mentality that the American people have taken on. They are daring, they want to show that they can face fire or that they can jump over the canyon and not be destroyed. They are just playing a game with death.

This is a kind of mentality that has its origin in the Bible. Jesus came to fight this kind of mentality but he was overcome. The people misread his teachings and the self-suicide desire was made stronger. It comes to us from a misunderstanding of the Bible and from a false idea of "freedom." The false interpretation of the idea of "freedom" in the Bible is responsible for all of the downhill moral decadence that we see in the society.

An Appeal To The Death –Instinct

I am not saying that all members of the society have to become Muslims to solve our problems. Jesus is a prophet that is accepted by Muslims just as he is accepted by Christians. We respect him, we love him, and we believe that he was a holy man directed by God. He established a bright light for the world. Christians do not have to give up Jesus; they can keep Jesus. They do not have to become Muslims, but they should understand what Jesus really represented.

To see a Jesus on the cross bleeding as a physical white man appeals to the death instinct in the people. The human being has death-drives and he has life-drives. The life-drives, thank God, are stronger than the death-drives. We always find more people who want to live than we find people who want to die. If you give people images of God like the crucifix, bleeding and suffering, and say that Jesus died for our sins— you only nourish the death-drive in them because people want to be "like God." There is a great difference between what most Christians believe and what Jesus really taught. Jesus did not give the image of himself on a cross; this was done after his death.

A Period Of Reconstruction

I do not know if I will be successful or not, but I am going to ask our leaders to come together in an emergency meeting because our condition is just that bad. We have already gotten together with some of them and discussed the situation. Brother Herbert Muhammad has already reached a great number of outstanding leaders (Bilalians and non-Bilalians) and they have given their support to meet with us here in Chicago on June 7. We are going to call another meeting very soon asking religious leaders, government leaders, and community leaders to come together with us. We want to use the great leadership that is already in our leaders to plan a way out of this serious situation. We are going to do it.

After the Civil War was won, the South had a period of "reconstruction." After slavery, the real victims (Bilalian ex-slaves) did not have a period of reconstruction. We have not yet gotten together as a people to scientifically study the effects of slavery in our present generation and to see what must be done to free us from slave mentality, from slave behavior. We have not examined the effects of three hundred years of enslavement here in America on our lives. We have not scientifically identified the behavior that we have that is against our own future development. So let us come together and do it.

A Mission For Survival

I am going to ask the leaders to come together right away. They are ready and some of them have already told me that they are ready. I am going to send them a message and we are going to get together and get busy. We are going to set up so many seminars throughout these United States until they are going to be more plentiful than churches used to be on State Street in Chicago. We are going to organize qualified people and have them crusade all over the country. This is going to be a crucial mission — a mission of survival. We are going to have them go all over the ghettos of America and set up seminars with the people. These "task forces'.' will teach the people what economics is and what politics is. They will teach them from the ground on up to the Presidency and let them see that this world is a real world. This world is not put together by dreams and spooks. It is put together by intelligence and by delicate skilled fingers with sharp pencils and a lot of other complicated, fine tools. We are going to explain the structure of true society and we are going to give our people a right picture of what citizenship is. We cannot really take advantage of our rights to have citizenship here in this country because we have not yet understood what citizenship really is.

We cannot participate as we should in elections or in voting because we do not even understand what it is all about.

Educate! Organize! Coordinate!

It is the duty of the leadership of our people (not only our people, but all the deprived people of America) to set up seminars and to preach knowledge, to preach political orientation, to preach societal knowledge (the knowledge of how to put society together in the right pattern). This knowledge should be preached as bard, as often, and in as many places as it is preached that Jesus died for your sins. If we do, I guarantee you that in a year we will be on the way.

I am issuing a national call for survival to all concerned leaders and to all concerned citizens of America. We are in the process of forming a group of such persons from all segments of the society who are ready to mobilize their forces against the common enemies of our communities. The group is properly named "C.R.U.C.I.A.L." (Coalition For The Reconstruction Of Unified Community Involvement And Leadership).

We will educate the deprived of the people, we will organize the productive masses, and we will coordinate the efforts of existing leadership in a national program for the survival and restoration of human life in America.

Thank you for honoring us with your time to read these few words.

Your brother,
W.D. Muhammad