1981-April-17

Bilalian News

Nature Over Form

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

(Editor's note: Following are excerpts from Imam Warith Deen Muhammad's publication, "As The Light Shineth From The East." Bilalian News takes this opportunity to provide its reading public with brief glimpses of this historical work. We not only recommend that everyone purchase a personal copy, but also additional copies for friends and relatives — continued from last week.)

God, in structuring our human bodies, has hinted to us the need to grow into government. He put a head on our body. And in the head, messages are received from all parts of the body. And that computer digests those messages and makes decisions. The head is on top of the structure, and in the head is the vision that opens the path so that the whole structure may move forward. God in this is telling us that leadership is a natural requirement. All human beings must have leadership. God is telling us that government is a concept that every human being should embrace and should execute the knowledge of government for building government in the individual. We don't exist by having government in Washington or in the city halls. We exist by having government in ourselves.

I don't want anybody disciplining me forever like I am a child. We have the same potential, we have the same tools, and we have the same capacity for development that every human being has despite what the lying racists have said.

In the scripture we find the concept that really holds us in prison or releases us from prison: the concept of God as One God, One Creator. The Holy Quran says: Allah is the Creator of everything. This is the kind of picture or concept of God that brings peace to the worshipper. If I have to live thinking that the God that created me or the God that I worship is the Master or the Architect of part of this universe, but there is a part that He didn't form, that He didn't create, it brings about a disturbance in my soul and in my nature. It makes me fearful of that second God who is the contender.

The Holy Quran tells us there is no contender. There is no partner. His rule is not a partnership. It is a dictatorship. And it's the only dictatorship that man should have. Almighty God tells us very plainly in the Quran, that the worshippers are His slaves. This is to tell the slave-masters, you have no slaves but those that reject God  and  put themselves into your hands.

Dear beloved people, we've been blessed in the World Community of Al-Islam in the West to understand the powerful supreme wisdom that is written in symbolic scripture. We've found in scripture the formula for remaking human life on earth. It's a natural formula. It's the one that made human life in the beginning.

We're in a position to help Christians more than they could help themselves. Dear beloved people, religion is beautiful when you understand it. But it's pitiful in many instances when you don't understand it. We fail to understand that religion is speaking to the need to develop intelligent life, moral life, civilized society, order, leadership and government.

This is what religion is speaking to. In Genesis, we read: In the beginning the earth was without form, and void. Darkness was upon the deep; the spirit of God moved upon the face of the water and God said, let there be light. And there was light.

We read that and we're caught up in mythology. We think that the Bible is saying this is how the physical world was made. The whole creation was a big void and formless, and suddenly there is a big body of water or it was there already unformed, and the spirit of God began to move in the darkness of that physical water. And God said, let there be light.

And a great light rose up out of that water and went up in the skies and became our sun; and a lesser light went up out of that water and became our moon; and other lights went up out of that water and became our stars. After that God began to bring life to the earth. We read it and think it means that. We can't get the message. What good is a knowledge if you can't hear it? The Bible says, blessed is he that has an ear to hear. So what good is that body of knowledge we call religion—if nobody can hear it? Have we heard the message of Genesis? They tell me the Pope heard it. They tell me some of the doctors of theology heard it. But what good is it in their hands and not in the streets? The streets are where we have the problem. The masses need this knowledge. We need something to discipline our lives. We need something to rally around. We need something to devote ourselves to.

The way we conceive reality is more primitive than the most backward man of this earth. We think that' God said to man and woman after he made them: "Be fruitful and multiply"—and then when they committed the sex act, he cursed them. This is the idea in most Christian's minds.

"Original sin." Why won't the Pope tell us what original sin is? Why won't the Pope tell us that original sin has been and is committed on the minds of the masses? We have been given corrupt concepts of human life, of human nature, of the world, of reality, even of God.

Don't you know it's a shame for a person to think that God, in order to redeem sinful man, had to come down on earth Himself? He made the sun without standing on earth, He made the moon and stars without standing on earth, but now to get sin out of the earth He has to come down Himself. He's not coming down just to make Himself physically visible, He's coming down to commit suicide. Excuse me for putting it to you this way. But this is the way it's put to me.