(Reprinted from the Muslim Journal 3-26-08 to 4-4-08)

Life: The Final Battlefield

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

Peace be unto you. As-Salaam-Alaikum. We always thank G-d for our presence. We say al hamdulillah. And we trust G-d with our future and especially with our delivery. We trust G-d that He will bless us to achieve the best for you in the audience here and you in the radio audience.

We begin by saying, Bis-millah ir-rahman ir-rahim; with G-d's Name, The Merciful Benefactor, The Merciful Redeemer. Life, itself, is the last battlefield. Human life is the core life of humanity. Human essence is what counts for that core life.

HUMAN ESSENCE LOST FUTURE LOST

Human essence or human life is as a seed for plant life. Our classic Scriptures give us that comparison. For plants, seed lost, future lost. For humans, essence lost, future lost. Where people are found not conscious of what it means to be human or have human life, life goes down - not up.

Of all the global land masses, Africa appears now to be suffering the greater losses. However, hope is not lost. The Wilson Quarterly Magazine, Winter Issue of 2008, carries a cover feature. I will give you the quote that is on the cover of this Winter Issue of that Magazine: "The Coming Revolution in Africa," by G. Pasquel Zachary:

"Small farmers, representing more than half of sub-Sahara Africa, are situating themselves to brighten the future for the whole continent. These small farmers are growing beautiful crops, exporting their produce to Europe."

Wherever human life is valued, life is on the up-and-up. To lose a sense of human value is a loss of life's most potent motivation. A belief that all humans are of the same human essence served to keep the slaves up in spirit.

Nations survive and nations prosper upon the pride in achievement, however, eventually that pride fails. Human nature, of its own constitution, holds up life. Life rewards those who value it and punishes those who mistreat it.

For the global community, the war is not on the other side of the ocean. The war and the final battle occur wherever people are. In this time of the global community, all of us are brought together in spirit. And the cultures of the various people on this planet earth are mixing.

COMMUNITY DYNAMICS

Community dynamics are working now to finish us off or to save us for a new and better future. What is community dynamics? Community dynamics is the interaction of social interest, moral interest, political interest, industrial interest.

When all of these interact, they produce a movement. That movement goes forward, as long as human essence is alive in the mix.

This battlefield is in the hood where the children of ancestors sold on slave blocks are culturally hoodwinked.

Sensationalism and consumerism enslave the freedom spirit. When we were slaves, we couldn't consume too much; our consumption was controlled by the plantation.

When we got free, we knew what we had to face, so we taught our children to be frugal. We taught our children not to be wasteful. We taught our children to work and to sacrifice and to save for a better future. Work ethics, moral consciousness were all wiped out by modern day sensationalism and consumerism.

FROM SLAVE BLOCK TO HOOD BLOCK

In this battlefield in the hood where the children whose ancestors were sold on slave blocks, now we, their children, are defeated by the culture we give into.
Sensationalism and consumerism enslave the human spirit. Traditional human pride suffers a sell out to hood blocks. We have come from slave blocks to hood blocks.

Life's battlefield is eroding our big cities' infrastructures. It has little to do with race anymore. It is the problem of society, more than it is the problem of race. Society has lost and has lost big.

The popular society has lost its connection with human essence and has lost human values. Only a few have survived. But isn't that what Scriptures tell us, that in the end, the many will be lost and only a few with survive? Both Books say this, and when I am speaking to you I am speaking from what both Books say on the issue. Both Books say the many will be lost and only a few will be saved.

The Books I am referring to are the Bible of the Christians and the Qur'an of the Muslims. Some people give in to sensationalism and follow the big crowds. You have excellent help in speakers, but they are not speakers who are sensational or want sensationalism for themselves.

So you don't seek them and you don't gather behind them, but just a few. And that is according to Scripture. I am telling you that if I came here and there were only nine people in here, I would be just as happy as I am now.
The crowds don't move me; the sincerity in the people moves me. I am not a show business man, never was and never will be.

I used to be a loud mouth minister, but I wasn't showing off. I was just angry, angry with the wickedness and stupidity of people.

Traditional human pride suffers a sell out on hood blocks. Not slave blocks anymore, they are hood blocks. But they are slave blocks, because anything that takes your human values out of you and takes your human spirit away from you, that thing enslaves you.

So we are slaves, those who suffer from sensationalism and a need to follow sensationalism and a need to consume beyond their needs. They are slaves.

BREAK FROM SPIRIT OF SENSATIONALISM

If you want to be free economically or financially, you have to first break from that spirit of sensationalism and consumerism and get back where we were when we protested against our enslavement on the plantation.

We were not in sensationalism. We were not in consumerism. We were in our pride as human beings. That pride made us very uncomfortable. That pride would not allow us to be comfortable being slaves.

And we worked against it, until we influenced many other people who had a sense of human value and pride in themselves, in being human beings.

They supported our efforts. Quakers, Jews, Gentiles and Europeans were all touched by our struggle to stay human and not give in to the dehumanization of the plantation. And we succeeded.

All we have to do is rehearse and go back and retrace our existence from where it began to where it is now. It began on the plantation.

REALITY OF PLANTATION LIFE

All we have to do is rehearse and go back and retrace our existence from where it began to where it is now. It began on the plantation. We were children separated from our parents. We had no way of connecting with Africa, with African religions or with the spirit of the African people.

We were separated so thoroughly, so completely, and the only reality we had was the plantation life. Now understand that: "Children taken away from their parents and raised with no knowledge of their parent's way of life, knowing nothing but plantation life."

Animals will stay right where you put them and find a way to be happy right where you put them.

But the human being, if you degrade their worth as humans and put them in circumstances or situations that prevent them from having a sense of being human and a sense of well being, it will trouble them inside. It will make them rebel against the situation you put them in. They will not accept it.

LIFT ABOVE THE HERD

Human beings are very special in creation. We are the most special of all creation - human beings. When you believe that, it puts you much above the regular run, much above the general crowd. When you believe that, it lifts your mind up above the general herd that just goes with impulses and not think.

When you have a sense of your human value, it works in the mind and in the heart. It works in both places. The heart works to help the mind focus. Once the mind focuses, the mind takes over and leads the way.

But we need the heart to help us focus. The heart is our feeling for one another
and caring about one another and not wanting to see other life suffer so much. That is the heart waking up.

When the heart awakens, it immediately steps beside its wife and says, "I will go out and chart a way for us. I will go, darling, and I will chart a way for us." That is how G-d made us. That is how our Creator constituted us.

Our infrastructure is now needing serious repairs. And where is the money? More taxes? The poor are already taxed too much. But something has to be done. So practically everybody will say, "The rich have to be taxed and the poor have to be taxed less." I agree with that.

SOMETHING NEW: RICH WANT TO ENRICH THE POOR

When we see what is going on today, we see some new things happening and positive things too.

They are very positive, when two very rich fellows share the same concerns and get together and publish a book, and this book they published is given as encouragement and instruction to the average person — of medium income, of the poverty level or simply poor.

They are giving this information to anyone who will appreciate it and use it. Their book is to teach all of us how we can become rich.

One is Asian and one is an European American. This is something new that is happening, when rich people want poor people to become rich.

Why? It is because they are good hearted people and value human life. They feel bad that so much money is being controlled by a very few people, and they want to change that.

They know if they can be successful in bringing poor people into the roles of the rich, that society will be relieved of much of its burdens. The rich who come into wealth because they were favored by circumstances are tied up with their business interests, which takes up all of their time.

RELIEVING MISERY FOR RICH and POOR

They know that if regular people become very, very wealthy, these new wealthy people will not tie up all their time in industry and technology and things like that but will share their good fortunes with their communities and will invest heavily in their communities. And their communities will grow financially and misery will be relieved for both the rich and the poor.

When we suffer, it eventually becomes a political issue, and eventually the government makes it an issue for everybody. The rich are taxed and the poor are somewhat relieved.

But if we could be ourselves the factor for changing our circumstances, no body would be overly taxed. Everybody would be relieved, and this is what is going to happen.

HOW WE'VE BEEN TORN DOWN, SPIRIT BROKEN

Life's Battlefield is disrupting home life. I started on the inside, with human essence. Then I went to the outside with what is happening in the world. Now I am coming back inside with home life.

That is just how we have been torn down. That's how our spirit has been broken. That's how we lost our life. We lost, first, inside ourselves. We lost the sense of human worth and followed the world.

Then the world did us in, and misery will drive us back home. We are back home now, and we have seen life's battlefield. We have seen how life's battlefield also has enveloped home life. It has taken over home life and disrupted home life.

We let our life go to the streets. "Oh, I tried to keep my children at home." You tried. But we all did not get together and address the major issues. Did the neighborhood blocks get together and address this issue as a major issue?

In Islam, if the community fails, everyone in the community is to blame. We have to admit that our community failed. We did not rise up against these things as a community. We didn't say, This cannot happen. We will not tolerate this." So we all are to blame.

Allah says, "Your life and your resurrection is as that of one living soul." What is Allah telling us? Before you can lose the good life that Allah, G-d, wants us in, you have to lose it in your heart and soul first. That is where it starts first, in the individual.

If it is to return, the good life, if we are to have a resurrection of our spirit, it has to happen there in one person. Allah has given us great help. A new day is here. A bright day is here. Relief has come in one soul -Barack Obama.

This isn't politicking. I have to keep this separate from his campaign. But I have to connect it with him, because Allah, G-d, has blessed him to aspire for the presidency of these United States. The same Allah, G-d, has blessed him with strong support from strong and rich White, European Americans.

Life's Battlefield is disrupting home life. I started on the inside, with human essence. Then I went to the outside with what is happening in the world. Now I am coming back inside with home life.

That is just how we have been torn down. That's how our spirit has been broken. That’s how we lost our life. We lost, first, inside ourselves. We lost the sense of human worth and followed the world.

Then the world did us in, and misery will drive us back home. We are back home now, and we have seen life's battlefield. We have seen how life's battlefield also has enveloped home life. It has taken over home life and disrupted home life.

We let our life go to the streets. "Oh, I tried to keep my children at home." You tried. But we all did not get together and address the major issues. Did the neighborhood blocks get together and address this issue as a major issue?

In Islam, if the community fails, everyone in the community is to blame. We have to admit that our community failed. We did not rise up against these things as a community. We didn't say, "This cannot happen. We will not tolerate this." So we all are to blame.

Allah says, "Your life and your resurrection is as that of one living soul." What is Allah telling us? Before you can lose the good life that Allah, G-d, wants us in, you have to lose it in your heart and soul first. That is where it starts first, in the individual.

If it is to return, the good life, if we are to have a resurrection of our spirit, it has to happen there in one person. Allah has given us great help. A new day is here. A bright day is here. Relief has come in one soul -Barack Obama.

This isn't politicking. I have to keep this separate from his campaign. But I have to connect it with him, because Allah, G-d, has blessed him to aspire for the presidency of these United States. The same Allah, G-d, has blessed him with strong support from strong and rich White, European Americans.

Whether he gets there or not, the victory is already real. The spirit and souls of Black folks will never be the same again. Allah has permitted that one person whom we identify as a Black man or so-called Negro or as an African American going with green lights in the road - no red lights - in the road to the White House.

They try to divide us along color lines of White and Blacks: "Oh, he will win this state because there are a lot of Blacks there." He has proven them to be wrong. "He won't win this state because Hispanics are going with Hillary Clinton." He has proven them to be wrong.

This is the Day of Awakening, for sure. We have been warned, but our leaders, most of them in religion - I did not say in Christianity and did not say in Islam -most of them in religion have not stayed with their human values. Most of them have separated from their human values.

They value show biz; they value sensationalism. They value money. They value fancy cars. They value rich houses to live in - lost human values. So how can the people be saved, when their leaders are blind, deaf and dumb.

We have to get our home life back. The only way to get our home life back is to awaken again to our human essence. Essence means the most important part. Essence means the value of what we are talking about.

If you get an orange, right away you want to get the juice out of it. Or you want to eat the insides. I have never seen anyone get an orange and chew from the outside. You want to get into it, to get to its essence.

To get the home life back, we have to stand upon our human values again. We stood up to the White man who was enslaving us. We stood up to the plantation rule that was over our life.

What were we standing upon? A sense of our human value. If we return to that now in our homes, we can inspire our children. The husband and wife can be loyal to one another.

You can't be loyal to one another, if it is only about sex like an animal. You have to have something stronger than that, because you are much above animal life.

Allah sent you seven stratospheres up above animal life. You can't just have sex and plenty to eat and look fancy. Look how fancy the peacock dresses. And no matter how much you women try to look pretty, you can't out do that peacock.

That's not where it is for human beings. Human beings don't have to look pretty. You have to feel pretty; that is the difference. Human excellence is all about essence. Outward is beautified by what is established inwardly. The Bible says, "A man is as he thinketh in his heart."

If you disconnect your thinking from your heart, you are not a man and you don't have life. You are on the way to death, destruction, loss of human value and loss of human excellence. One follows the other. If you lose the appreciation for human value, it won't be long before community values disappear and community life will be lost also.

That is what has happened to us. But we can save it all. Just go back to human essence and go back to human value and stand up on your human worth, and you can bring that back again. You can bring your home back into civilization.

Civilization means progress. Civilization means progress for moral life, progress for material life, progress for education. Civilization means progress all around. If you stand upon human values again, you can bring home life back into civilization.

There is no civilization at home, when you wake up and hear nothing but M F, cheap language. It works against education. There is a very good word in the dictionary that describes what you are angry with, but you have a convenient word - it's M F. It reduces your vocabulary, where your vocabulary becomes very small. It helps you stay ignorant.

See how life is battling to get rid of that which is in the way of life. Don't blame it on the White world. Stop blaming it on the White world. It is over for the White world. The White world has been brought down to the same battlefield that everybody else is in. It is the battlefield of life. And they are losing just like everybody else is losing.

You have to wake up to the prophecy, that there is coming a time when life itself that G-d constituted will speak out and start punishing those who have abused and mistreated life. That is where we are now.

You don't have an excuse. I don't have an excuse. G-d has made it very clear to us, and G-d has given us a great helper in Barack Obama. Stay with the best that you have. Don't put down your excellence for something worse.

As-Salaam-Alaikum.