1978-June-16

Bilalian News

The Principles of Al-Islam

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

With the Name Allah (In the Name of God), the Gracious, the Compassionate

As-Salaam-Alaikum

(Excerpts from a Khutbah delivered by Emam Wallace D. Muhammad at Jumah Prayer, March 10, 1978 –continued from last week: conclusion.)

There, you have your powers of self-control really in jeopardy, Brother. Then you have to go to perform the rites. You have to make the walk around the Kaa'bah seven times. You're not the only one. Many people are there to make it.

Some are slower than you in physical power and slower than you in intellect. All are there to make it. Some are superior to you in power, superior to you in intellect. Every now and then you might get irritable. You have to call on your Lord or be trampled. Only Allah can save you.

If you go there trying to push people around you're going to get hurt, because you are going to meet someone else who hasn't developed self-control enough. He's going to say, "Oh, when I see him, I'm going to give it to him!" and there you'll be—wasted with those who didn't make the Hajj.

Making the Hajj is not just going there. Making the Hajj is controlling yourself. Allah wants us to control our prejudices, control our fears, control our unfounded hatred. He wants us to control all these things so that we overcome them.

If you deny an evil influence a fertile bed to grow in, that thing is going to die eventually. Take a thing out of the bed that it is growing in and it has to die.

We deny these prejudices, the bitter racial hatred and selfish tendencies in ourselves, the lack of charity and love that makes us push each other around, and deny each other and hold each other back.

"Wait for me, I have to get mine first." There, you can't do those things. There, you have to give yourself to Allah. You have to let a baby walk in front of you, you have to let your sister walk in front of you, you have to let an old man walk in front of you. You have to let a man stronger and younger than you walk in front of you. If he wants to take the way, give him the way.

You're not coming there to have a duel with him, you're coming there to give yourself to the Oneness of God. Yield your will to God and give yourself to the Oneness of God and be at one with humanity, with your brothers and sisters. That's the wholeness that the heart yearns for. Can anybody show me a better way than this way?

I have studied, I have listened, and I still have open ears. I don't listen now because I think there is anything out there, I listen now because I want somebody to tell me something that they think is worthy of being compared with this way because I'm anxious to show them that there is nothing that comes near to being a comparison with this way.

Al-Islam is so superior to all other ways that there is nothing on Earth, nothing has been dreamed of or imagined by man as a way for human beings that comes anywhere near to comparing with Al-Islam.

Peace be to you
Your brother in service to Allah,
Wallace D. Muhammad