1990-April-13

Muslim Journal

How We Are To Establish Muslim Life In America: Part 6

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

(Imam W. Deen Mohammed's Phoenix, Arizona public address of January 21, 1990 is given here. We thank Allah for the opportunity to make this presentation to the Muslim Journal readers).

Of course, you can reject anything or everything of what I say, like some of you do. However. I am saying that I believe it is Allah's Will, The Almighty's Will that we be saved by the Qur'an and by the lifestyle of our Prophet Muhammed who is given in our Holy Book (Qur'an) as an excellent model of behavior. I believe firmly that Al-Islam ("Islam") is in America by God's (Allah's) Will to save and establish African Americans.

If you have been chosen by Allah for a certain purpose, for a certain service, then know that this situation in the United States will get better as we come into "Islam " with our numbers and good behavior. The church has given us some kind of real uniform life, a lifestyle and a behavior that have kept us in good shape with human sense and human feelings. But the church role in the African American grows weaker and weaker as we become freer and freer. It grows weaker and weaker as an influence to keep good behavior in us.

I am saying that Allah intended that Al-Islam be our salvation. If a child was taken from his parents by a kidnapper, and that parent was hurt and done a terrible injustice, and so was the child; if no help comes to the child, and the parent also is being slandered and mistreated and lied against, then don't you know that if there is a God, then God should in time do something for that situation?

The mercy and justice would be to bring that child and that parent back together. Even if the parent is dead, if the child is still living, the justice would be to reconcile that child with its parents. But our parents are not .dead; they are still alive. There are African Muslims still in Africa, and history reports that many of us were brought from African Muslim life and were enslaved here in America. Slave traders (buyers) did not go to churches in Africa to get slaves for America.

When I was following my father's teachings, I felt it-strongly. I felt that Allah had plans for us. Keep knocking and bumping heads and falling over and getting bruised up, after a while some will see the problem.

I also believe with time more and more of us are going to realize that we are trying to do the unexpected and the unnatural thing: it is not popular for an African American race to embrace the religion of a White race, when that religion is imaged in a "white man", the "Word "and "God". The only way that could happen, we were under them and could not express freedom of choice. Christianity and the church came into our lives after we had already been enslaved in America. We had already been given lies about what was in Africa. We had already been made ignorant of Al-lslam (Islam). We knew only slavery in America. The slaves were not allowed to know more than that.

We had been kept worldly naive, worldly misinformed, completely or totally blind as to what was happening on the international world scene. When we went to the "white man's church", we were somewhat like a primitive people in a land, and then a modern vehicle falls out of the sky. Because we don't know how it was put together, we start worshipping it. History records that some primitive people actually did worship a plane which fell in their area. They thought it was some kind of god.

We came from a situation that did not allow us to make free choices. To make a free choice, you have to know something. How can I choose something better than the ''fat back'' and ' 'greens'' and "hog jaws"? How could I choose something better, if I never knew better? I am going to choose what I know, and we did not know better. Conditions under "white rule" made us fearful and suspicious of every thing else. A man could bring a sirloin or porterhouse steak to us and some would have said, "Oh, we don't want that." "Will you just taste a little of it?" "No, I don't have to taste it. I know I don't like it."

I pray to Allah to give me the life of four generations, and I hope to get the fourth generation of these people to like a better food ("Islam"). You have to will the responsibility to your children: "Son, will you keep working on getting us (African Americans) better food?"

I respect the essence (excellence) of Christianity. I respect it very dearly. But I don't respect the stupid behavior of you so-called free African Americans who continue to fight against our religion — Al-Islam. Our own so-called church people are sometimes as devilish as can be. .

They meet us and act as though they are our brothers. They say, "'Eman' Mohammed! I'm happy to meet you. brother. Keep the good work up?" They will get back behind closed doors with their company and say. "\\r have to watch these Muslims, man. They are trying to take the limelight from us. Watch these Muslims. You know they are heathens, man. They don't believe in Christ, you know. They are the Anti-Christ!" Behind our backs they are saying ugly and cruel things about us.

We know these plantation dupes. Don't think you have put one over on us; you have not! We can't ignore that kind of behavior. Many of these people have become educated and have read about the international world and come to know about the glowing and high position that their people had as Muslims in the past life of Africa, about the achievements of their people in Africa, as Muslims, yet they look for something to discredit that.

They (our immoral duped leaders) will find that the African Muslim had a great past, and then look feverishly to find something somewhere to discredit that. They go and dig up "animalism" and show the African believing in animalism. They will say, "The Africans believed in animalism and ancestry worship? There were some great men of medicine who created medicine long before the Muslims." This is done just to discredit our Muslims' pages of glory on the continent of Africa.

No matter what they dig up, it looks small on the scale when we put the achievement of the African Muslim up against it. What is wrong in us to make us not appreciate African Muslim history? We say that we want to appreciate our past, we want to remember Africa, we want "Black" history. So what is wrong with us that the majority do not appreciate that biggest of pages in Black history? Doesn't that tell you that there is something sadly and cruelly wrong with the many of us? There is something sad and pitiful in their thinking. Something is awfully diseased in them to make them want to ignore pages of their glory, a past that was Muslim.

Too many are still saying, "That's not soul food. We don't want that. That i* not the black church. We don't want that!" And a people breaking off from their best and favoring the worst in them and in European Americans deserves punishment from Allah. And I do believe, "blacks" of America, we are under punishment.

This is not the first time 1 said this. I believe our race is under punishment. It is punishment for big crimes; our people lost innocent lives, suffered the worse cruelties and during "white rule" America they (we) were treated worse than animals. Our race was shut out of the human society as an equal member.

Some did not believe that "God" intended that horror for our race, and they prayed and struggled and suffered and waited. Finally, better times came. Support came to their side from exceptional white Americans. Long last, freedom and good times came. We forgot the high and noble aspirations of those who suffered slavery and Jim Crow, those who worked for our sake and for our future. We forgot the high principles and great moral and civil aspirations and strayed to have fun on the weekends. We treated the sacrifices and the suffering as though it was for us to have weekends in these big cities of America.

Don't you know a people putting aside the high moral values and obedience to God which invited God to help, now in their laxed morals invites punishment. There has to be SOMETHING to appeal to the many and invite the many to excellent productive behavior. Al-Islam is here (in America) to lift from us the curse.

To be continued...