1981-April-24

Bilalian News

Underdeveloped People

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 a/so additional copies for friends and relatives.)

We have to save our lives. Where will our children be? There are men in the Middle East who plant olive trees. They plant them not to eat from those trees. The men will be dead and gone before the trees are ready to bear olives. These trees live 100 years or more. And if you plant them, you don't eat from them, your children eat from them. What are we doing for our children? What are we planting for our children? What are we building for our children?

Are we saying, "This is for my children -I'm not going to eat from this"? That man over there in the Middle East—and in other parts of the so-called underdeveloped world—is planting the olive tree not for him to eat—it wouldn't mature in his day. He's planting it for his babies' future.

Tell me—how many of us are saying, "I'm not going to spend this $50, I'm going to put this $50 into my child's development. I'm going to put this $50 where it will grow and produce for my children"? How many of us are doing that? Very few.

Most of us have to have a Cadillac before we invest in our children's future. Once we get a Cadillac, we've got to have a Rolls Royce, and diamond rings. We'll never get anywhere like that. We are a people who are by description underdeveloped. We are a third-world underdeveloped people. In economic terms, and in many other ways, we are an underdeveloped people.

How do the underdeveloped nations handle their problems? They discipline themselves. They put leaders over them that have the strength to live a sensible life in terms of spending the wealth of their society. They don't allow leaders to waste the wealth of the nations. And the leader wouldn't allow his people to waste the wealth. They insist that they live moderate, moral and virtuous lives.

Do we think we're going to become strong as a people, getting drunk every weekend, gambling our money away, spending money on sex? Don't you know sex takes a lot of money? It's expensive. The money in pills and other artificial devices used to stimulate yourselves—sometimes x-rated films and then all night long. Can't we see that we're a sick people that's getting sicker and sicker?

You take zinc pills, Iron John pills: you eat nuts, dried fruits, yogurt, vitamin E in the liquid form and pill form; eating all that stuff for what? To prove to the female that you're strong? Where is your strength? If you've got to spend all that money on pills and stuff, where is your strength? You have no strength. It's pitiful. This kind of mind exists in our society because the thinking in the society is self-destructive. We don't have to have a revolution like they had in Russia— the Bolshevik Revolution—or the revolution led by Mao Tse-tung or by Castro to put life back on this planet for Americans in a strong form.

All we need to do is recognize that we've been given a picture of the world that comes from the language of mythology and not from the language of truth. That's all we have to do.

I know that some preachers charge me with trying to convert Christians to Al-Islam. But I tell them to go to their Bible and if they've got faith in God, faith in truth, read the Bible for themselves and they'll see that there are two voices contending with each other in the Bible. Not just the voice of God and the voice of Satan, but the voice of the concerned human being and the voice of the devilish people. The concerned human being says, in the Bible, in this language inspired by God, that the worst of all things were found in the sanctuary.

The Bible is telling us with these words that there is coming a time when the people are going to discover that the real problem for them is right in the church. Before we can do anything, dear beloved people, to better our lives, to destroy racism, we have to first correct our concepts—our Christian concepts of the world, of human life, of the beginning of the races.

Our whole life is determined by the kinds of things that are put into the atmosphere of emotionalism and sentiments. We think that we have to respond to sentiments rather than respond to rational truth. The human being in his natural make-up is a creature of sentiments and a creature of intelligence. The two are necessary to make a human being.

A human being can't be dry rational substance without (natural) sentimental make-up. But, it's just as bad when you don't have the intelligence and have only the sentimental make-up. You'll find some people who are just like leaves and trash in a windstorm. You can't find them anyplace. They are just like dust in the air; if the winds blow violently, their activity increases, if the winds become still, they become still. That is the description that is the faith or the image of the greater percentage of the people.

Ten years ago. in the 1960s, look what we were doing. What .motivated us? Was it rational doctrine, or was it emotionalism? Someone raised the black fist and said, "Black Power" —and revolutionized the whole African-American community. Someone sang the song, "Black and Proud," and changed the mind of the whole African-American community. Then, Hollywood and TV comes out and shows us some dressed-up peacocks—sissy pimps in long chinchilla coats; Sherwood Forest tights with mink spats on their alligator shoes —and we turn into a bunch of pampered sissies. The welfare class—that's what we've become.

We need to make a serious change in the way we do things. And in order to make that serious change, we have to make a serious change in the way we think. We have to learn to think as intelligent people. I know this might be a slap in the face to some of you who know you are intelligent; you can be learned and not have the ability to execute intelligence. Look at the United States of America, It is the most learned nation on the face of the earth. No people has achieved what America has achieved in terms of industrial knowledge.

The sciences—all the knowledge here has been developed much greater than it has been developed in any other part of the world. Ten years ago —20, 30, 50 years ago—America was a great learned nation. But, look how silly the human conduct of America was. Don't think because you have knowledge, you are intelligent. You can have knowledge and behave very silly. Our problem is sentiments and emotions. I keep hitting on this and people say, "Well, how can we live without being sentimental and emotional?"

I'm not saying that you shouldn't be sentimental and emotional. I'm saying you should also be intelligent, and one should protect the other. The sentimental nature of the human being should protect the intelligence from going into a kind of hard-rock dry life, and the intelligence should protect the sentiments from just dissipating itself in the society.

That's what we have become, a people who dissipate our life forces in the society. People without direction; people not respecting discipline; people not respecting direction — we are part of the whole sickness that has taken over the American society. There was a time when it was just us, we were the only ones wasted, but now America is wasted. What are we going to do? How are we going to survive?