1985-December

Progressions Magazine

The Influence Of Evil On America

Imam W. Deen Muhammad

As human beings, we are not capable of keeping our life and morals intact without the blessings and help of God. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is one whose life was kept intact, even before he was made a prophet. Though he lived in sinful pagan Arabia, which at that time was perhaps the area on the globe with the greatest ignorance. Prophet Muhammad did not give himself to the sins and ignorance of the world into which he was born.

When I was a boy, the devil didn't ask us to do the things he is asking of us now in America. The devil didn't ask people to decide for themselves what is right and wrong. The devil went along with the children in consulting their mothers, their fathers, their church and the establishment. But for our children today, it is a new world, a different situation. Today the devil is advising our children. He is telling them, "Don't listen to your mother. Don't listen to your father. Don't listen to your religious teachers. Make up your own mind." And what has been the results of this? The results have been rebellious and defiant youth who have become victims of the devil's influences.

The devil now controls what happens in the environment of America. And God has put it in the nature of the human being to believe the overwhelming majority rather than believe the unpopular minority, because, under normal conditions, the majority is usually right. But scripture warns us that in the end of the world, Satan creates an unnatural, abnormal situation that makes the majority his subjects, then the environment becomes his instrument.

The good people in America today, our mothers, our fathers, our aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers tell our young people what is right. However, when they reflect on what the world is saying and doing, they walk away from the good advice and follow the voice of the world. Why is this? It is because the voice of the world is just too much for them. There are too many people saying the same thing, making it too popular to ignore.

What will save us and our children in this day and time? What will save you is your true self. But the devil doesn't allow you time or a chance of live your true self, because he is busy building an environment to convince you that wrong is right and at the same time saying, "You are your own judge. Nobody else should tell you what you should do or think. Not your parents, your preacher, nobody. Only you matter."

Furthermore, the devil makes you feel sub-human if you listen to other authority. This is what the devil is doing to our children, and many adults are among the children. The devil makes many of us feel like we are an inferior intellect, as though we have inferior minds if we allow a parent or morally upright person to tell us what to do over our own opinion. The devil is making individual opinion the rule, and as a consequence, destroying respect for parent, for proper authority, and for moral authority. He is not only destroying it, he has destroyed it.

The Devils Plan

This is the situation in which we now live, and God has given us the solution in the Qur'an. As stated in the article, ACCEPTING THE DIFFICULT, "Satan's plan is (but) to excite enmity and hatred between you with intoxicants and gambling, and hinder you from the remembrance of God, and from prayer"

Why does the devil use such things as intoxicants, liquor, wine, cocaine, heroin, etcetera? Why does he make gambling attractive? God answers it in the above verse. He does this to create hatred and division among the people.

If you lose your sense of moral excellence, or moral direction and moral purpose, and you become one who just gets drunk or gambles, take great risk with your family's precious resources, it causes confusion, division and loss of respect in the family. After all, when a married man gambles, he gambles with the property of the family.

The devil produces these things in order to create hatred, envy, and division among the people. And this will happen once we trust immoral means for survival and progress, because we then lose the natural human respect for one another. Under normal human conditions or circumstances, we would have moral sensitivities. We would question our attitudes, our feelings and our judgments that we make against each other before carrying them out. But in an environment or situation in which the senses are drunk, where there are no morals except risk taking, there is a slim chance of us thinking of our position or our attitude toward each other.

If I do something that causes you an inconvenience, you will hate me. You won't ask, "Hey, what is the right and wrong in this situation?" You just register my interference, my opposition to you. Then right away, you dislike me. Not upon principle, but upon feeling that affects you. Whenever any of us start feeling angry toward each other or get a bad attitude, we should questions the influence of Satan.

God Has Not Changed

More than fifty percent of the African-American girls are having babies before they get married according to the latest statistics. Why are they doing this? God hasn't changed what He said in the Bible and in the Qur'an. If Christians believe their Bible, God hasn't changed. We know what God says in the Qur'an hasn't changed. So why are so many people doing these things? It is because the system has made this type of conduct popular. The system has said, "Little girl, don't worry about obeying the church the synagogue or the mosque. Don't worry about obeying your religion or obeying your parents. We've got plenty of prevention, plenty of pills to sell you. Here, help the economy. Stop obeying your religious law and buy our things, and just go on and have sex as you please".

I see and feel what this environment in America is doing to human lives. I see how it undermines the sacred office of parent, and takes away from the parent their own children, and pit family members against each other. Such an environment makes everybody a stranger in the same house. Today America has become the Big Satan.

Here in America, liquor and intoxicants are now easier to get perhaps than any other place on earth. This is where gambling has been made a support for the national economy. A little more than twenty years ago, I went into a store and saw on the cover of a magazine in bold letters the words, "God is Dead." When I read it, I said to myself, "The devil has more freedom in this country than the good people." America has become a country that gives more freedom to Satan and his host than it gives to those who want to be good and practice righteousness.

If this country favors Satan, the wicked, the criminals and other wrong-doing people, and gives them more liberty than it gives to people who are trying to live a morally upright life, then tell me, is this country established for the good, or is it established for Satan? This country makes it difficult for people who try to do good, who try to live a good life. But this country opens up for corrupt people opportunities to carry out what they want in establishing their evil way of life.