1980-March-7

Bilalian News

Highly Glorified is Allah: Part 2

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

With the Name Allah, the Gracious, the Compassionate.

As-Salaam-Alaikum

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from Imam Wallace Deen Muhammad's Jumu'ah  Prayer lecture at Masjid Honorable Elijah Muhammad Feb. 1, 1980 — continued from last week.)

And again Allah says of the pagan idol worship, when the idol worshipers are questioned about the worship of those idols, they say, "We don't worship these idols. They are a means for bringing us closer to the gods."

The idol worshipers explain that the material form is a means or a medium for bringing the hidden forms to them — that the gods are communicating through the physical forms. Then the challenge is put to them: What is better, your idol that cannot see, has no eyes with which to see, no feet with which to walk, no hands — or the human Messenger that Allah chooses? Which is better?

If you are going to have a message come to you through something, then wouldn't it make more sense that it should come through something more superior than your clay model or your iron or your stone gods? The man, the human being, Prophet Muhammad — he is the Messenger of Allah. Isn't it ridiculous that people pray to an idol that they form with their own hands and will believe that God will speak through that idol, but won't believe that Allah, that God will speak through a human being that they didn't form with their hands, that they cannot create?

The human being is not dead and listless like idols they make. The human being is alive, feeling, moving and thinking. The human being can communicate with other humans. There can be exchange between them. Doesn't it make much more sense that Allah would choose a human being to be His conveyer, to carry His message? Not an incarnation, but the Messenger.

When we read what Allah says in Quran concerning what I have just mentioned, we find that the comparison with the human being is not what some of you have made the mistake in doing. It is not a comparison between the Allah in human form and the idol gods. What a grave mistake and sin! It's a comparison between God's Messengers and idol gods that idol worshipers claim to be mediums through which God speaks.

Some of us don't know what we are looking for and we make a mistake. This dead person who wants to follow a man-god says, "Yeah, the Holy Quran is saying that man is God." That's the trouble you get into because your hearts are not right. If your hearts were right, you wouldn't get in that trouble.

Dear beloved Muslims, in the history of man's struggle to find intelligent faith, intelligent worship, there has been nature worship. It's really regretful and saddening that a misrepresentation of the Blessed Mary has come because of the confusion of ideas in religion with nature worship. From fertility worship, we have been given the erroneous worship of Christ the Prophet. This confusion of pagan ideas in the religion has caused the Christian Church to blend and confuse nature worship with Mary, and fertility worship with Jesus Christ — upon them be peace.

Dear beloved Muslims, Highly Glorified is your Guardian Evolver, "Who created then gave Guidance." Allah is "the Creator of every single thing," and Allah says that He created and He gave the guidance. Oneness — there is no deity except Allah alone. Oneness removes all -shirk," that is all corruption in the worship of Allah. Oneness!
But our logic is not that good all the time. So our limited intelligence cannot find pure Oneness all the time. We think we have found Oneness, but it still contains some shirk, some corruption. This is the case with many churches and many others. Pure Oneness removes all corruption in the worship of Allah.

Dear beloved Muslims, as we read the following, we will see that our attention is being drawn to Allah as He is then to problems in the worship of Allah: to "nature" — to "nature worship." Then to a problem that also developed later — "the forces of nature."

There is a tendency for weak intellects to identify the forces in nature as angels or Gods.
Such progression for the intellect was still "shirk." Then we come to the idea that the discipline, the universal discipline, the Oneness in the sense of a universal discipline, universal law — that that is God: still shirk. Then we come of the life processes, that the life processes are God: still shirk.

How do they reason this way—? Because the human being is human. He has a compassionate soul; he has a capacity for beauty and love. He has a great capacity for purity, for moral excellence, for charity, for kindness. So in trying to find the deity that he can accept, he runs into problems, if this conceived deity doesn't satisfy his soul.
Man rejects those cold concepts, those in-compassionate and dead concepts of deity to try to find a deity that his heart recognizes. He says, "Oh, no — that can't be God. The nature can't be God. This cold law can't be God. This universal scheme can't be God. Oh, maybe the merciful attribute, maybe the generous attribute, maybe the graciousness that we see manifest in this physical order maybe that's God."

So they start to identify the life force as God. Still shirk. They wrestle with that and then comes the problem again. The weak intellect is struggling on to find the True God. And Allah has set the intellect on the path. He comes to a conclusion, "Oh, no — there is a double thing working here; there is life and death."

The confusion is in duality. The problem of duality was in the very beginning. As soon as man thought something he could study objectively was God, he got the problem of duality. Everything that he can, study has a dual relation. Everything that Allah has created has a dual principle in its nature.

Allah says that He has created everything in pairs. But He is only One. He is One alone. There is no duality working in Allah. There is no negative and positive working in Allah. There is no male and female working in Allah. There is no matter and energy working in Allah. There is only Allah; He created all of these things. They operate on the principle of duality. He operates on the principle of Oneness, needing nothing.

That's why Allah says, "How can they charge God with having a son, when He never had a female partner?" He doesn't need to reproduce Himself; this is for creation. He is eternal, existing always the same. Never had to be born and never will go out of existence; will remain eternally the same. This is Allah, says Allah in the Quran.