QUOTES by Imam W. Deen Mohammed

Thursday, November 15, 2012

The Key To Success

"And who is better in religion than one who submits his whole self to G'd, and is a doer of good, and follows the order of Abraham, the upright in faith."  Qur'an 4:125

When we read the above verse from the Qur'an, we learn an important lesson for people of faith. We must realize that if we give ourselves wholly to G'd, He will befriend us. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) has also taught that if anyone will give himself totally to G'd and love Him with all of his heart, G'd would then become his defender. His actions and his soul would then be protected by G'd as though G'd was the one committing those acts. Whatever he does with his hands or with any other part of his body or his soul, G'd will be with him. His deeds will become prosperous and successful.

To love G'd totally is the answer for us. We find that Prophet Abraham (pbuh) held nothing back from G'd. He gave himself totally to G'd. You probably have heard the story of how he offered the life of his son, Ishmael to G'd in sacrifice because he saw in a vision that G'd required this of him. However, as the Qur'an tells us, "It is not the blood that reaches G'd, but your goodness (your sincerity) that reaches Him."

G'd did not want a blood sacrifice. This is not only the Qur'an, but the scriptures before it said the same thing. The Bible says that it is obedience and not blood sacrifice that G'd wants. Once Abraham (pbuh) carried out in his heart what G'd wanted, G'd showed him that his willingness was enough. By having this willingness, Abraham perfected his faith. Abraham perfected his faith because he denied nothing to G'd. Whatever G'd required of him, he gave willingly. Thus the verse says, "And who is better in religion than one who submits his whole self to G'd and is a doer of Good."

There are some people who say, "Oh, I want to be so much in accord with G'd that my will becomes G'd's Will, that my spirit becomes one with G'd's Spirit." But these people then leave the society to accomplish that. We cannot be really holy and be contributing nothing to the good life of human beings. If we are ho­ly, but off alone somewhere in a closet or in a cave, that kind of holiness is not accepted in Al-Islam. So in surrendering himself totally to G'd, in doing good, and in following the order of Abraham (pbuh), man becomes in accord with G'd's Will.

We see then that it is not enough just to do good. We must also follow the order of Abraham (pbuh) which was the order of sacrifice and goodness for the sake of pleasing G'd. You can do good, but your goodness may not be to please G'd; it might be vain or selfish. Abraham (pbuh) showed that he was a servant of G'd because he did nothing for selfish motives or for personal gain. Whatever he did, it was for the sake of others.

According to the history of Abraham (pbuh), he engaged in business, but he did not make himself a burden on the people. He didn't ask the people to support him or his business. His business was a support for the people who were in his environment  This is the character of Abraham (pbuh), the upright in faith. If scripture says that G'd took Abraham (pbuh) for a friend, and we want G'd to be our friend, then these are the conditions: first, commit yourself totally to G'd. Second, be a doer of good. Let your goodness be seen benefiting people and follow Abraham (pbuh) in his inclination which was to please G'd.

G'd tells us in the Qur'an that we are to be in the forefront of those doing good, and not behind others. We don't want to be just even with others in this. You may say, "Oh, I just want to be equal to the average person." You should not want to be average. You should want to be foremost. Anyone who wants to be second or third is not following the spirit of what G'd asks of us. Foremost is the Word of G'd. Keep His Word in front of you at all times. Make His Pleasure your main objective in life, and make everything else conform to that objective. This should be our concern. If the concern to please G'd incorporates and overrides all other concerns, then it makes all other concerns successful. And if you have that kind of attitude, G'd says that you are a sure success.

If we follow the Word of G'd, have faith in Him and give ourselves totally to Him, He will kindle the right spirit in our hearts. And as long as we burn with that desire, and with that spirit, we will be successful.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Allah Is Present Everywhere


The signs of Allah's presence are in everything wherever we may be. Think about how society develops into economic orders and political orders and eventually becomes what we call modern civilization. The life of society starts as simple life with people living on the land and living from the fruits of the land. Early society does not have to cultivate the land because the people have not advanced to the point where they know that the land needs cultivating. They just move along on the earth as animals, picking up all types of food that they find and then they move on.
Finally  they find a place  that  has enough food to enable them to stop moving and settle down soon, when people find that they have time on their hands, they begin to use that time to see what else they can do. In time they begin to study and they discover that they can do some things for themselves that nature did not do for them. Eventually, man becomes master of his environment. Soon he forgets that he was once just like the bird, the cat, the dog, and other animals that had to roam about in the wilderness. Time was the essence that enabled him to think, to learn from his environment, and to come up with new tools that enabled him to become a master in his environment.
We see that man should be grateful to the someone or to the something that made the advancement of his society possible. If modern man has discovered something so unique that he can claim all of his achievements for himself, we should listen to modern man and forget about the G'd Who has supposed to have made all things possible for us. As I travel in different parts of the world and listen to different ideas about how life should be lived and how society should be run, I have been convinced over and over again that Allah is G'd and that Allah is the One Who deserves all of the credit for everything that man and society have been able to achieve.
As you know, it did not take the primitive man long to discover religion. He recognized that he was helpless before the mighty forces of nature. When the thunder rang out with its loud clap and when the lightning flashed and lit the dark forest or brightened the dark doorway of the cave, the savage man trembled in fear. This fear forced him to cry out to some kind of g'd. Because religion has this kind of primitive beginning in the earth, some modern men acquire the knowledge of modern man's society and look back on the beginning of the spiritual movement in the earth (religion) as also being primitive. We, as Muslims, know that religion is the most advanced thing on the earth; in fact, it has always been the most advanced thing on the earth. Religion is really the invisible thing that is moving and guiding man all of the time. Although man does not know it.
We should consider our simple beginnings in the earth and weigh them with our achievements. We should also be asking ourselves the question, "By what way have all of the ideas for our advancement reached the minds of men?" Everything that we see in human society that has been made by modern man has its original image (pattern, essence or substance) in the creation itself. What we have is just an opening of a flower that was already complete.
Once the rosebud sprouts from the plant, the petals have already formed and the structure of the beautiful flower is already designed. Even after the flower bud opens up and we see what is on the inside, we might think that the flower had been fully open all the time if we did not have knowledge of what happened before the bud opened. The Holy Quran speaks of the wonders of the natural creation as "signs" that pass knowledge on to the mind of man. This precious knowledge from Almighty G'd enables man to create himself after the pattern of the things that Allah has designed in creation.
In various caves that I have visited in China and in Jamaica, I have seen how man was given a knowledge of building with cement perhaps a million or more years ago before he came into the knowledge of how to use it. By the wonders of creation the cave drips a limestone water substance from the roof and it piles up on the ground in columns. Over periods of hundreds and thousands of years, the dripping of limestone from the roof of the cave and the piling up of limestone on the floor of the cave form stalagmites and stalactites that function as great columns. If such columns had not been built up in time, perhaps the weight pressing down on the top of the cave would have caved in the structure and simple man would not have had a place to live. But the Designer of creation had designed early man's home so that it would naturally make its own strong columns to hold up its roof.
Not only in the natural formation of columns, but in many other things that you can see in caves are ideas of how to construct things in the world. I could give you example upon example of things that I have seen in natural formation (things that grow naturally out of the earth or things that happen naturally in the earth) that are clear patterns for man to copy so that he can build great structures for himself.
The techniques and the principles of construction are also seen in the growing of certain trees. Their limbs stretch out over great distances and drop vines which grow and become big like the trunks of big trees. These trees with their huge branches stretching out would break if the Great Designer had not caused them to drop down vines that take root and become strong as support columns to hold up the mighty beams that are going out from the trunk. Man makes a lot of "to do" over his accomplishments, but the righteous servants of G'd who have given their hearts and their minds completely to the Maker of the creation can see and understand that man has nothing to brag about. Almighty G'd, the Great Architect of creation, suggests everything to man's mind before man comes into the knowledge of the thing.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

The Light of Knowledge


G-d told the angels to prostrate (submit) themselves to Adam (the mind, the heart, the nature and the spirit that He wanted to rule the earth), and they all bowed down, saying to G-d that they had no knowledge except that that He had given them. But Iblis, the leader of the angels, refused to bow down to the man that G-d had. made. G-d pointed out to the chief of the angels that all of his followers had submitted to Adam; He asked Iblis why he was refusing to prostrate himself to His new creation, the man that He Himself had shaped from stinky mud and breathed into him of His own knowledge and of His own wisdom. Iblis, in his arrogant, self-serving mentality said, "I am better than he (Adam)," thinking of himself before he thought of what was right and best for the whole. The leader of the angels told G-d, "You made me of fire, and You made him of black, stinky earth (clay) fashioned into shape."

This leader of all of the other angels had a nature that was different from that of his followers. In giving G-d credit for all of the knowledge that they had, the rest of the angels confessed with their own words that they did not even have the nature to disagree with G-d. Here the Holy Quran is using picture language, teaching as G-d teaches the baby when he first comes from the womb. G-d gives the newborn baby picture language to open his mind to a higher kind of language (truth).

The angels are things that we conceive as having no physical forms (invisible entities). We find that in creation there are many invisible things that have reality and that act on us from without and from within. There are the forces of gravity, the forces of electricity, the forces of light, and the hidden, invisible forces of noise. Not only are we affected by the noise itself, but there is also a force behind noise or in noise that affects the human being's nature  The noise hits the physical ear drums, but there is an entity of the noise that affects your very nature.

There are numerous invisible entities in creation that science has now discovered that early man had not yet known. Early man thought that those invisible forces had some kind of reality like human reality, that they conversed with each other and that they had husbands, wives and children. But as the man came into more knowledge, he realized that these forces are only invisible forces in physical matter and that they have direct relationship with the physical world. When man comes into this knowledge, he take on the light of knowledge and the light of science. For example, if a person is ignorant, we might call him dull or dark because this is the language that the world has given to us. They have translated physical light into terms to serve the meaning for spiritual and rational light. In the religious language, we have light meaning spiritual light, spiritual knowledge or deeper knowledge into the things that are physical. The physical world has their knowledge, they refer to it as light, and although they do not use the term light any more, we still use the term bright for a smart person, or for a person who is highly intelligent. With this language, G-d brings pictures to our minds that will enable us to understand a higher concept, a higher reality or a higher language of that reality. As our knowledge increases, we learn how to break the chains and the gravity of the physical world, how to get away from or to step above the natural law, and how to make a plane for ourselves and call it man's law. But man has to come from the same nature (the same simple origin) that the creation is of, so he, in his beginning, was an angel; man grows in knowledge and he becomes the leader of the angels. Then this leader of the angels, man, gets to thinking of himself as being the boss in creation, that he is his own boss, and that he has no force to answer to. But G-d is ever in charge and ever in control and He raises up a man from among them who begins to question their knowledge and question their conduct.

G-d revealed to His prophets that they should say to the angels, "Your knowledge is of the nature of fire. G-d has decided to make a ruler in the land, and he will not be a ruler of fire." Fire burns up things, twists them out of their natural form and causes them to deteriorate  break a loose or disintegrate. Fire destroys forms and it creates new forms. When we throw a piece of fat in the fire, we end up with grease and smoke. When G-d says that He is going to create His man and make him the ruler in the land, He is saying that He is also going to burn the world but with a new kind of fire. The fire of G-d's man will be the fire of pure light (truth). Light is different from fire in that it does not destroy the forms of things, it reveals (shows) the forms of things. G-d is not going to force a devil to come back into good form, He is only going to shine the light on the devil to let the world and the devil see that he is out of form. All ah is not going to change the human nature; He does not want to make the human being an angel or a spook flying around somewhere in the world. He is just going to shine the light on the real thing that He created to show you the reality that He made to exist. He does this so that we can allow that reality to come into being.

The Qur'an, The Key


The Qur'an makes it possible for the human intellect to connect back with the creation as Al­lah intended for the intellect to be connected with the creation. The Qur'an is therefore the key, the miftah; the key that opens up the crea­tion again for man to get the proper benefit that Allah, his G-d, his Lord, his Creator intended for him. That's a great mercy! The Arabs, when they understood the attribute, Ar-Rahman, in their intellects as scholars, they became so ex­cited about that attribute of G-d that they started saying, "Ar-Rahman", more than they said, "Allah". And it's mentioned in the Qur'an because the others ques­tioned that. They were thinking that they were doing wrong. They complained to the Prophet that the others were saying Ar-Rahman in­stead of Allah. So, Allah revealed to Muhammed, "Call on G-d by Ar-Rahman or any other name. For to G-d belongs the most beautiful names." That was the answer, which means they were not condemned for pleading to G-d saying, "Ar-Rahmanu, Ar-Rahmanu!" But that was approved because G-d is Ar-Rahman and over and over in the Qur'an you hear G-d referred to as "Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem!

We want you to appreciate the perception of yourself and the per­ception of the world outside your learning environment as G-d wantsyou to appreciate it. Once you do that we can go home. We don't have to worry about you anymore. You're going to live and progress. We know it. It is guaranteed. Once you feel comfortable with that, nobody has to worry about your mind anymore. You're going to live and pro­gress. That is what Muhammed came to do and that is what he did. He gave the Qur'an in the right way to those people, his first followers, and they became the teachers that revived the intellect and brought back the sciences that were lost; and introduced what we have today as the world of modern sciences.

The word of G-d is our life! Our life is not this body, this flesh and blood, my own intelligence and my own emotional makeup. The life is not really that. I need G-d's word to come into that life, to make it really a life, the life that Allah wants. So our life is human. But what makes it really alive, gives it life, gives it vigor, gives it will power and everything that G-d wants for that life, the life that G-d wants has to come with the word of G-d; and that's the life. That's the only life! That is the real life! Until then, we are dead or sleeping. We have to have the word of G-d in us to be alive, really alive as G-d wants us to be alive; the life that Allah intended for us, highly praised and glorified is He.

So we know the Qur'an is the life and we're anxious. Our own bio­logical body knows, "That is the real life, not this life I have; not this biological life. But the real life is what comes into me when Wallace is listening to the Qur'an and feeling the Qur'an, and he's digesting the Qur'an. That is the real life!" This body, this physical body, it gets its life from the material world and the material world you know every­thing that's there. The water and all the elements that are in the material world that we take into our body (a hundred and eight or so elements that we have to take from the material world into our body) give our body its physical form and keep the physical form for us.

The Common Good and the Common Destiny


We praise G-d, the One G-d for all of us. We are told in our religion to say to the People of the Book, the Christians and Jews, that "Your G-d and our G-d is One in The Same G-d." I begin with that.
I want to say that we, as Christians, Jews and Muslims, are having the same Guidance from G-d for our human life. G-d intends for us all to have life and have it better and better all the time.
We have the life of our Prophet Muhammed, the model for human life and behavior in excellent form. G-d wants a beautiful and excellent life for all of us. Jesus Christ, as I understand him in Scripture, also is a sign and model of the best human life that is possible for us on this planet earth.
Muhammed and Jesus Christ invite us to the same, the best possible life we can have. And we don't believe we can have that life without G-d Who created it. He Who created it knows best what is good for His Creation.
I have felt so wonderful since I have been in this town (Columbus, Ohio) meeting so many of my friends and fellow leaders of my association, and the Christians and leaders from other faiths. The honorable leaders here behind me, I have been made to feel so good to be in your presence and to know what you are all about.
It will be the Believers who will make the world better. Leaders can come from unexpected places and people, or families and neighborhoods, etc., if they are touched in their hearts the way G-d wants them to be touched.
If they are motivated and sincere, eventually G-d will bless them with the light and enough support to get help from many other people in their area and outside of their area - from the whole world. G-d can do that for us, and G-d has done that for us.
Our religion is no different from Christianity and Judaism, in this respect, it wants to promote the best. Even the Scripture, itself, has variations, when it comes to what it can produce for us. Some parts of the Scripture, the Qur'an or the Bible, if you take it, it will give you only so much.
Other parts of the Scripture, if you take it, it will give you much more. Even the Scripture varies in what we can do for human life, how we can serve human life and how we can promote the excellence that we all want for our life on this earth.
G-d says, "Take the best thereof." This is Qur'an, our Holy Book. You know you can open the Bible and the Qur'an and your eyes might fall on a certain page that may not move you at all. It might perplex you. It might confuse you. It might make you say, "I have to get away from this page and open another page."
That is with any Scripture. The Scripture is given to serve life on all levels - intelligence on all levels, sincerity on all levels. Some of us are not as sincere as others, so it is designed to serve all levels of life and the whole of life -life for the individual, life for the family, life for the community, life for the world, life for a person in a particular profession or aim in life or ambition.
In Christianity, Judaism and Islam, you will find men of all professions, who believe in these faiths. G-d says, again, "Take the best thereof." And G-d gives us a human model. He says of this human model, "This is what I want in all of you."
Jesus Christ, of him He said, that he spoke to his people and said, "I in You (G-d), and You in me." Christians will tell you that Christ is in everybody.
Muhammed said, "Every human being born is born a Muslim, until the environment they are put in makes them otherwise," a Christian or other.
Brother Muslims and Sister Muslims who are here, our Prophet is pointing to the same excellence, purity and goodness that G-d put in Christians, Jews and Muslims.
Christians will call it the Christ-nature. We call it Muslim. We are talking about the same thing. We have been created for the same thing.
We are to be conscious of that life and have respect for that life and build on that life, so that it will grow and become more useful for ourselves and more useful for mankind.
Our Prophet said, "The best of you are the ones who are most useful for mankind, for all people." We are not as separate as we think we are. We are essentially one people.
We have concepts in Islam called Taqwa and Tawheed. Taqwa is a consciousness that brings small minds into the open universe, with our minds and our hearts. Eventually we arrive at Tawheed, the way of the Prophets who guided mankind to the Oneness of mankind and the creation, the unity of mankind under One G-d.
If you were to hear Muslims say what is their Articles of Faith, the important statements of Faith, and then listen to the Christians say what is their important Articles of Faith, you will see that they are the same.
It is the same for any human being who is motivated to embrace goodness everywhere and acknowledge that goodness everywhere.
The Muslim says, "Surely, G-d is all good, and He does not accept anything except that that is good." We are to appreciate good and want good for our own life.
It is our own short view or opinions or perceptions of what is logic, what is rational, what is true that separates us.
If we follow our natural urges coming from the purity of our essence, we all would be in agreement. We are here for the same and all want the same for the future, an excellent life. We want our families to be in good shape. We want our children to be safe.
Our babies come here speaking baby language. They don't come hear speaking Yoruba, Arabic, Swahili, Chinese, Japanese or Russian. All of them come here speaking baby language and have to learn all of our separate languages.
The Creator gave us one and the same life and made us one and the same people. Then there come the differences, the different histories, the different languages, the different ethnic make ups, etc. But all of these are additions put on the baby, born in the family of human beings as one member.
Our separate locations put a dress on the baby, an addition on the baby. It takes the baby and makes it different. Then he looks around and sees how different he is.
But if we could go back, return as Allah in the Qur'an says, "To G-d is your eventual return."
When we return to the baby, we return to the original Muslim, the original innocence of the baby, the innocent nature and life of the baby. For the Christian returning to that, it is returning to the first Christ nature.
The languages, as we learn to express them, separate us. But if you can research and go back in history and find the original language, the language of the original nature in its purity as G-d created it, we find that we all want peace and the good life for ourselves and for our families, our children.
We all want heaven. We don't want hell. We will have hell, but we don't really want it. Everybody wants heaven. This is the common life, the common good, the common destiny.
The common destiny is the destiny that G-d has created for us in our very human composition. G-d has composed us naturally, originally, to want goodness, to want heaven not hell, to want peace and decency and respect. We want to feel that we are with people who care about themselves and about others.
We cannot have this without respect for the better. If the followers of our leaders would return to their better nature, listen to their better nature, and choose leaders with that better spirit and better nature, the world would improve so much. Misery would be taken out of our lives and out of our neighborhoods, if we would do that.
But somehow, the environment that we live in, in these times, is not as conducive for us collecting our better senses, coming back to our better minds, as it was for man before industrialization and accumulation of money, and things that give us pleasure, cluttered the neighborhoods and cluttered the buildings, cluttered with dead things.
It is not like the original environment before man built his world and made his environment and made it so cluttered.
We need leadership to keep us aware of what is best for the original life that G-d made. We know this environment that we come out in everyday, with the liquor store across the street and on the corner and all other stuff in our view when we walk out of the house, is not what G-d wanted us to look at when we wake up and go out from our private quarters.
G-d wanted us to see the beautiful world of living things, trees and animals and how beautiful fall is with all of its beautiful colors. See how G-d made the green things to grow strong and beautiful. But before they go to sleep for the long period of time before spring comes again, they give us the beautiful colors of fall.
Not only beauty, they give us substance for our life, fruit and grain. And it gives it to us abundantly. They just drop the fruit down, generously. They give us beauty generously.
G-d said in Scripture that He gave the parable of human life as the parable of a plant. So that says to us that G-d wants us to give our best before we die, before we take that winter sleep. He wants us to give the beauty of life.
If we could be motivated as the Seers, the Prophets, the Messengers of G-d - motivated by G-d's Handiwork in His Universe with all of its possible views - we will have a power to overcome a lot of these weaknesses we have and the trends that we have become set in. We would have the power to overcome.
G-d said in our Holy Book, "Oh man, don't think that your creation is a bigger creation than the Universe." The Universe is bigger than us. If we become separated from it or unrelated to it, we become smaller and smaller.
If we wake up and began to appreciate it, and say, "Let me look at G-d's Work, at what G-d did!" as you look at it and start appreciating it, it will start increasing your own worth.
G-d's Work will increase your intelligence and most of all increase your decency. But in man's world, we have not the original environment that G-d intended to support your life and open up your life to a great future, that would make a Paradise on earth for us, if we accept it.
We want the same things. Science tells us that we are all human. That is our first identity. That is what connects us all together. We are human. We are not dogs, cats, tigers, trees - we are human. That is our true identity.
And because we recognize that as our true identity, we can be served by the same doctor. The doctor can serve a black man or a white man. He only wants to know if it is a human, for he was taught to treat humans. He has the science and the medicine and skills to treat humans.
Life would be so much better, if we would just close our eyes to everything we think we know and then ask G-d to open our eyes again.
Thank you and may G-d guide us to His Purpose for human life on this earth. Ameen.