2000-July-28

Muslim Journal

Saving Our Children, Saving Ourselves: Part 3

Imam W. Deen Mohammed

We Praise G-d. We witness that He is One and there is nothing to be worshipped other than Him. And we witness that Muhammed is His Servant and His Messenger, most honorable and generous Messenger of G-d. The prayers and the peace be upon him and on his family, his descendants, his Companions, the righteous, all. Ameen.

In concluding today's khutbah, I want to bring a concern to your attention. And that is our youngsters, our teenagers, especially our girls who come into puberty and they feel the desire for sex is natural, it's nature. And they live in an environment that is always questioning and undermining what decent people in religion want for their young girls.

So we are aware of this; this is not to make you aware of it. It is to tell you something and to invite you to think about it, that I told you a long time ago when I was your Imam on 73rd and Stony Island.

We have our own life as Muslims. What's expected of this American public is not what is expected of Muslims. In this American public, it is expected that a girl is going to hopefully finish high school. And if she can qualify, the parents will want her to finish college and then think about marriage.

It is very difficult for the average girl to finish college and not have a baby or violate the religion — to have sex out of marriage.

And when any of our children survive this, oh we are so proud of them. And we should be very proud of them, because we know they are not the average. They are very, very special, when they can survive the sex drive and can go through high school and go through college and marry. It is wonderful, if they can do that.

But as I have said, most of them don't do that. The great majority of them don't make it. Even our children don't make it. So what are we going to do about that. I want you to think about it again.

We have girls who start feeling their sex urge at age 12, 13, 14, 15 those are very trying years. Why don't we go back to the best of the human behavior that many of us had in the south, that is really our original Muslim behavior.

That is, this girl wants to have sex with this boy and this boy wants to have sex with this girl, and we think they can make a good husband and wife in the future. So let us have these two youngsters married.

We know they have to finish school, so let us support them. The family was an institution working to do the best for their descendants, for their children who are coming. And the mother was taken care of by the elders in the family.

The grandmother, if she was living, would take care of that girl and take care of the girl's children and help her with them and let her go to school and be educated.

How come we can't do that? That is Islamic. In Muslim countries, do you think the brothers and sisters, husbands and wives over there tell their children: "You have to finish high school. You have to finish college. And when you are 35, you can get married."
Some of us take that long to finish high school and college. The intention is not humor; the intention is to make us sensitive.

We can do that. All we have to do is have a meeting and the majority of our leaders decide that this is what we want to institute for our community.

We have the big Islamic Convention coming up this Labor Day. If we announce a position on this during the Labor Day weekend when we are having our Convention, believe me, it will be heard by a lot of Muslims and non-Muslims, too.

This is going to be made public and some of it will be live broadcast on the radio. A lot of people will hear about it. We want Christians to think this way, too. This is how they originally thought. The best of the Christian families use to think that way.

So let us think about it very seriously, brother Imams and our leaders. The rest of our leaders — the business people and our educators, let us think about this very seriously for the next couple of weeks and get back to me and let me know what you think.

If you approve of us calling for this attitude and position, we will announce that that is our position — the position of the Muslim American Society, MAS -- on this coming Labor Day Celebration of our community's Islamic Convention.

I am prepared now. I don't want my son, who will be old enough to look for a wife in a few years, wanting your daughter or anybody else’s daughter who is lazy; her spirit is always outside of the door instead of inside in the home.

I don't want my son to have a woman like that. Now he may want a woman like that when he gets older; I don't know what he will want. But I know I don't want that for him.

And if he is like that, I don't want him for a good girl. I would not want him for your good girl. I will tell you: "Brother, you are making a mistake. This daughter is not fit for your son." We are supposed to be each other's brothers and sisters and we are supposed to tell each other that:

"Brother, you are making a mistake, this daughter of yours should not be married to this Son of mine. All he wants to do is hang around the house and look at television, until it gets dark. Then he wants to go out there and stay until it gets light again. He's not looking for any job."

We should help each other, and I am prepared to do that.

This is Islam and I am not instituting something that is not Islamic; this is Islam. Allah says: "The virtuous for the virtuous." Isn't this Qur'an? "Mates of like nature...."

So help me with this community, because we want to save our children, and we want to save ourselves. Because when they go to hell fire in this life, they take us with them. So we pray to Allah to save us.

And Allah says: "Oh you who have faith, save your own selves and your families from the fires of hell." As-Salaam-Alaikum.