04/06/2001
Muslim Journal

The Life of the Human Family (Part 6)
By Imam W. Deen Mohammed

The following address was given by Imam W. Deen Mohammed on Sun., May 28, 2000, at the CPC Memorial Day Weekend Event at Kennedy King College in Chicago, Ill.

The one who discovered penicillin was looking for something else, not penicillin. He left his sandwich on the window, and he was so busy with his scientific work or experiment that he forgot he left his sandwich on the win¬dow. Mold accumulated on the bread and the breeze from the window blew the mold off his bread into his experiment.

Then he discovered that all the germs had been killed and he didn't know how they had been killed. He was look¬ing for something or some way to kill the germs. Then he noticed that there was the bread and there was the mold and that mold from the bread had fallen into his experi¬ment. That is how we got penicillin.

Now, who gets the credit for us getting penicillin? He was looking for something else; he was not looking for penicillin. The little light wind came and blew mold off his bread into his experiment, and that is how we got penicillin. You can read up on this in your encyclopedias and can verify what I am telling you here.

You know how valuable penicillin has been. So was that Mother Nature? Yes, it was Mother Nature for a par¬ticular kind of life to meet another kind of life that it was not meant to be compati¬ble with, was detrimental to and to destroy that other kind of life. It so happened that the other kind of life was bacteria which was caus¬ing great harm, great sick¬ness in people, mankind.

That penicillin in the mold was the answer for that par¬ticular experiment to get rid of that bacteria. So that was Mother Nature, and G-d defi¬nitely has made Mother Nature the servant of man. That story is told from Gene¬sis to Revelation. It is told from the beginning of the Qur'an to the end of the Qur'an.

SPEAKING FROM KNOWLEDGE OF QUR'AN

Whatever I am telling you, I am speaking from my knowledge of Qur'an and scripture. With all of this about the mold, I am coming to you from my knowledge of scripture. The story I have just related regarding Mother Nature is from the beginning of the Qur'an to the end. It is also from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible. But most people can't see it, because they miss the con¬nections. They have bought the logic before the logic is delivered.

What we have to under¬stand is that the call to reli¬gion is the call to the life. It is the life that makes us happy and we don't want any other life after it. It is the life that makes us feel that now for the first time, my life is com¬plete and I don't need any¬more. I am constituted now in the way that I want to be constituted.

What do I mean by "constituted?" Put together. I am put together now in the way that I want to be put together. My feelings, my thoughts, my spirit, my hopes, and my aspira¬tions. I am put together now in a way that makes me per¬fectly content with myself. So now I know that I can live and be successful anywhere I am. You can put me on the moon, and if human beings can live there, I'll be happy.

My happiness is not some¬thing that is injected into me. It is not something inject¬ed from without; my happi¬ness is something that has been turned on inside of me. It is just blooming and active and lighting up and is an energy field right inside somewhere. And it is feeding my whole being and makes my brain expand.

Though the flesh is here in the skull and cannot get out, the life of my brain fills the world and explores the world. It goes on a work visit and also on a pleasure visit exploring the universe and not missing anything down here on earth, either. This can happen to all of us, if we will just accept that G-d made us very, very special and has not made any other living thing in creation this special.

JUST BELIEVE IN G-D

If you will just believe in G-d, and it is easy to believe in Him, just recall your own greatness and know that you could not have this greatness had you not been created by G-d and then helped by G-d, after you had been created.

So the call in Al-Islam before the break of dawn, before the sun rises, is "G-d is Greater. Allahu Akbar." It is the first words we will hear in the morning that wakes us up in a real Muslim environment or neighborhood. After that, we hear "I witness there is only One G-d." After that, we hear "I witness that Muhammed is the Messenger of G-d." After that, we hear "Come to Prayer."

G-d says that never did a nation fall, until it stopped praying. So it says, "Come to Prayer." And what is this Come to Prayer? What is the value of it? What does it mean that I am coming to prayer? It means "Come to Success." Your prayer is your guarantee that you will have success, if you continue your prayer. That is the connection.

By prayer, you connect again with the G-d that cre¬ated you for the first time, and that same G-d can create you again – all over. I am not the human being that I was when my mother gave birth to me. I am in my flesh, in my biology, in my original life. But as a mind, as a "consciousness," I am a new person.

I am not the teenager that I was when I hung around with Leroy, the brother of Imam Darnell Karim, when we ran around as buddies all the time. And there was Charlie, Charles who was sister Delores Jordan's son. I am not the fellow who hung around with those boys and played in the neighborhood and sometimes got into fights and sometimes did things we would be a little ashamed of.

My mind is so much bigger now. My understanding of life and its realities is so much bigger now. My attachment is to something that is much greater than I am, attach¬ment to G-d through His Word, the Qur'an, and through His Messenger Muhammed. That attach¬ment has made me this new person. Because of that attachment I am this new person who is connected to G-d through the Words of G-d, and I know I am connected with Him.

Someone will ask: "Do you have to go through Muhammed?" No. I studied Muhammed, so now I don't have to go through Muhammed. I can go directly to my G-d. "Do you have to go through the Qur'an?" No. I studied the Qur'an, and now I go directly to my G-d. But the Qur'an is still my number one diet. It sustains my life.

My number one food is the Qur'an and the life examples of Muhammed the Prophet. I eat divine food of the Word of G-d and mortal food of the life examples of Muhammed, the mortal man. And that is what I know will give you the life, if you have faith in it.

CREATED TO TRUST KINDNESS

We are created to trust kindness. And G-d is the Most Kind. Trust G-d. Have faith in G-d. But G-d created us above animals and other things in creation and gave us a margin of freedom that He did not even give to Angels. So we should not ben¬efit from this great capacity that G-d has created us for, if we don't respect decent, moral, ethical, human think¬ing – intelligence.

I am a witness, myself, of what can be done for a person to bring them to be estab¬lished in this great life. My father was a leader of some¬thing and he told me and his other followers, especially his ministers and those who could get near him who were invited to his house:

"Don't just read, but think deep. Reading and studying to search the depths of the message or the language or the teachings is an exercise for your intelligence. It is an exercise of the brain. It will develop the brain more and more."

Not questioning things, not being curious, not trying to see if there is more into some¬thing than appears to the eye on the surface – not being interested in doing that is lit¬tle exercise for your brain.

I went to junior college and took English to learn how to speak better, so I could do my job better with you. I also took literature, where they will give you a passage to read. After you have read that passage, the teacher does not want you to tell him just what you have read. He wants you to tell him what you found with your reason¬ing power, with your logic, with your intelligence.

LEARN TO USE TERMS PROPERLY

What did you find in this? Give the interpretation of what you read. Give what was motivating the writer. What did the writer intend for you to get? The intelligent ones who know literature, who have studied it, have come to a methodology of how to determine with intelligence and with knowledge of language and grammar and meanings of what this writer wanted you to see and get from this reading.

So the teacher will ask the student, what was the writ¬er's purpose and what was the writer trying to communi¬cate. Many of you have heard, "what was the moral of the story?" So you cannot just read on the surface and just give back what you read.

The Hon. Elijah Muhammad was not a college profes¬sor and did not know their methodologies. But the Hon. Elijah Muhammad gave us a challenge, and that challenge exercised the muscles of our intelligence and made his son very strong in the muscles of the brain. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad's affect on me with his teachings made my mental muscles; the muscles of my intelligence, work hard to see what is in this lan¬guage.

He made me sharp sighted, or I would have just passed over what I read and said nothing, like most of you did. But I read where his teacher said, to speak well you must learn how to use the terms properly. What does that mean? Yes, he wants you to speak. Speak to who? To speak to the public and tell the public about him and about the mission that you had.

But you can't speak well to that public, until you learn how to put the terms that he uses in the proper places. When I read that, I was encouraged. Then I was searching with more enthusi¬asm. Because I believed then that if I could break the code of this language, then I could use these terms properly and I would be successful when I spoke. That is what he said, and that is what I followed and I am successful.

If I were not successful, you would not be sitting here and listening to me right now. You were the followers of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad. I am here looking at many faces who were the followers of my father before I became the leader. You would not be here with me making this 180 degree turn from what we used to think and believe, if I were not a successful speaker.

I am a successful speaker because I followed the advice and instructions of the teach¬er, Mr. Fard, who taught my father. I followed his instruc¬tions to study the terms and struggle with them with the muscles of my mind and intelligence, until I could put them in their proper places. So I would know what the writer, the composer of this composition, wanted us to know and wanted us to do with our lives.

All of you can’t walk that path and all of you can't do the things that I have done. There is no need that you do that. It only needs for one to do it and share it with all the others. I have seen it. I have come to it, and I know for a fact that Mr. Fard wanted me to be a Muslim with all the Muslims of the world.

And Mr. Fard wanted me to follow the Qur'an as my Holy Book and to lift it up above all the literature of the world. And he wanted me to follow Muhammed of Arabia, the model human being for all people, a mercy to all the nations – as G-d says in the Qur'an. I know Mr. Fard wanted that for me.

THE JOB OF THE HON. ELIJAH MUHAMMAD

So you ask, "What about your father?" My father wanted me to be a new man with a new mind and to believe that there were new things in store for us. And he had great hopes that I would be a leader after him. That is what I know of my father.

I know that he did not see the way, he did not know how to get to where I am. But, he believed that something was coming that would take us into another dimension and put us where our hearts and souls desired to be under G-d. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad believed that and had great faith in that. And I could share with you many things that he said out of his own mouth to back that up, but I won't take the time to do that.

Let it be enough to believe that the Hon. Elijah Muham¬mad was an intelligent man, and he was a hard worker, working hard to see that not just Muslim Blacks but that all of us were in a better con¬dition—All African Americans. His job was not just the job of making African American’s Muslims.

His job was the job of hav¬ing all African Americans come to G-d and have a bet¬ter life that their G-d created them for on this earth. That they be equal and have equal opportunity to achieve equal¬ly with the other people – the White race first.

He wanted a better condition for the African American people, so that we would not be thinking of ourselves as inferior, so that we would not be intimidated by the White man's achievements but be brave enough to seize oppor¬tunity and have faith enough in ourselves that we could rise as high as he had gone and maybe outstrip him. This is what the Hon. Elijah Muhammad wanted for us.

Islam is a call to life: "Hayya alas salah. Come to Prayer. Hayya alal falah. Come to Success." Faith is the beginning of life. If you have no faith, you have no life. With faith in G-d, your intelligence will work well for you. Reject G-d and your intelligence works against you. With your intelligence working well for you, you will come to see a new world of reality and a new world of possibilities for your mind and all of your skills or your human tools.

And you will have to have faith again. Yes, faith has to come twice. Faith, first, is the faith of an innocent baby. But the second faith is the faith of a person of great knowledge and great understanding, a higher level for faith. That faith will put you in a situation to manage your life and to be very successful with your own life.

You will not have what is called an identity crisis. You will not be wondering, "Who am I? Am I African? Am I the black god?" You will stop going on such trips and you will be comfortable at home with your true human picture.

G-d says that He is the One Who gave you your pictures while you were in your moth¬er's womb. And He says, "And He made your pictures beau¬tiful and excellent." What is a picture? It is the picture of the true human person in the excellence that G-d created us for.

In that confident form, that confident position of faith in yourself and in G-d, you will start to be successful estab¬lishing your life – not only for yourself, but for your neigh¬borhoods, your communities, your towns, and if you want to for the whole world. You can join those planning the future for the whole world and build the whole world better for those who are com¬ing tomorrow.

You will also have prosperi¬ty. Prosperity will not be something you are thinking about but don't know how to find it or to have it. Prosperi¬ty will be right at your finger¬tips. And if you keep your direction as a Muslim, keep turning to your Qiblah in prayer, you will be successful.

Let us enjoy this great life that G-d has connected us to again. It is the life that He created our first father in, and our first father was like a baby in that life because he had not experienced life in conflict with Satan, the Devil, and all the other things that were challenging life in creation.

To the wise serpent, he was nothing but a baby. To the forces of nature that would challenge him, he was only a baby. But as G-d expanded his mind, in time through his descendants, the man became so mature and so educated and so wise and so informed of what the world is and its nature and of what the uni¬verse is and its nature, that he has nothing to do now but keep his contact with his G-d through prayer.

And Allah says, "And every creature He made knows his mode of prayer." And when you get afraid, we all pray as is our nature calling on our G-d.

END