April 20, 2001

Muslim Journal

Responsibility: A Critical Concern for a People Pursuing Business Establishment (Part 2)

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

(Imam W. Deen Mohammed gave the following address in Washington, D.C., at the CPC Distributors Conference on March 11, 2001.)

For anybody who deserts what we are doing and have shared our history of pain and suffering, of being put down as a people and then experience what has happened to make us the new people that we are, then you have nothing coming but hell fire if you don't join us and be sincere and straight. That is the prediction of Wallace D. Mohammed.

THE GLOBAL MARKET

Let us come closer to home now. We have mentioned the global market, and what I have said to you is that the global market welcomes all people. You are not discriminated against. You will meet some individual who will dislike you because of you or because of your identity with your people or with your religion. That will happen forever.

People are not going to be angels and are not going to be perfect, but they are not that many. Why worry about those people? There are too many others to deal with who have no problem and they welcome you. All they see is another human being, and they are in the great numbers – not the ones who are still warp minded.
The Hon. Elijah Muhammad wanted us to go outside of the United States and to have business interest in other countries. It was the Hon. Elijah Muhammad who brought products from South America, from Peru – the Whiting H and G – and Chinaware from China and leather goods from Pakistan, coffee from Africa and many other things that we realized under his leadership.


AN UNSELFISH EFFORT

Now we have an effort going again that is a national and international effort to improve the material state of our lives. We are not doing it selfishly.

We want our Christian neighborhoods to benefit from our presence in a Christian neighborhood. We want the town that we live in to benefit from our productive presence in that town. In the state and in the whole country, we are not selfish. We are for humanity. Allah has freed us for humanity and has ordered us to be of service to all humanity. G-d has ordered that.

Muhammed the Prophet stated it in his own words: "The best and most useful of you is the one who is most useful to humanity, to all people." So we know where we are today. And we know we were like a baby or human seed or life germ planted in the body of a woman and developing to one day be out of the small confines of her body and take its place in the world of mankind.

WOMB OF THE NATION OF ISLAM

The Nation of Islam was like the body of a woman, and a germ was put in there to produce a new Black man and a new Black woman. And it lived and survived and on the ninth hour it was delivered into the world to take its place among the people of the world, mankind. That is what has happened.

We are now determined to do our best in our lifetime to realize our most as G-d-fearing people looking to make not only a spiritual contribution but also a material contribution that will live many generations after we are gone, and I hope until the day that this world is brought to an end.

I hope that we will not slow down and not give up, but pass our interest on to our children, as it was passed on to me from my mother and father and to you all and plan to live on this earth for as long as this earth lives.

FAITH IN YOURSELF

If you have that kind of boldness or that kind of faith in yourselves, you are going to catch up and begin to surpass others. It is destined to happen. It is because you have been emptied more than any other people on this earth. We were brought here from Africa and emptied more than any other people that existed on this earth. And I do mean emptied!

What we had in our heads and in our hearts were emptied. What we had in our souls and in our spirits were emptied. We were left as empty vessels, as the slaves of the white people who owned us.

Then something started to happen and the empty vessel said, "I realize that I'm empty, but I don't think that is what G-d wants for me. And no matter what the White master says, I don't believe that G-d wants this bad situation for me."
The moment he or she started to think that way, the life started to come into that empty vessel – the life that belongs to that vessel. And over a period of time came Frederick Douglass and all of those great women, too, Harriett Tubman and the others.

NEW LEADERS EMERGED

In my time there was Benjamin Mayes and many others like Dr. Martin Luther King and the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X Shabazz. They were putting something in that vessel.

At the same time there were people bigger than Malcolm and W. Deen Mohammed already feeding on the universe and thinking on what G-d wanted for me and that this world was wrong. They were saying that G-d did not want this for me and that this was an evil thing put into this world.

And the life was coming into the vessel and becoming stronger and stronger. And when they saw a leader, they joined him, whether that leader was Frederick Douglass or Booker T. 'Washington or Marcus Garvey or the Hon. Elijah Muhammad or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Those who are actually sometimes bigger than the leader will join the leaders and looked up to them because they were bigger in terms of their voice and were applauding the leaders as representing them.

To be continued.