tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19739741646485055642024-03-13T02:46:33.093-07:00Excerpts from Lectures of Imam W Deen MohammedThe Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-20697122608345266882018-11-24T16:50:00.000-08:002018-11-24T16:53:39.905-08:00Saviors Day<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Imam W. Deen Mohammed</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>February 26, 2002</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>"As a young boy of maybe 10 years old, I remember attending Savior's Day in a house that couldn't hold more than about 30 people. It was the house belonging to a believer, a Muslim sister. It was near the street now called Martin Luther King Drive and 32nd Street. At that time it was called South Park.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>In this big wonderful city of Chicago, you would think that homes had electric lights for everybody, but no. The poor had coal / oil lamps, and you could smell the fumes while you were in the house. It was poorly lighted and some areas were shadowy. The light thrown out was to brighten the whole upstairs where we were having Savior's Day. But we were happy.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>We were happier than we are now. Maybe now the excitement is worn off. I am still very happy. But most of us have been knocked down and all of the spirit has been knocked out of us. We didn't have anything, but we had what we cherished as being more important. We had a belief that G-d had loved us and that G-d had sent a help to us and that we were the Lost Found Nation of Islam. We had what was more important to us than food or fancy, fine buildings.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>There was a habit of giving out delicious apples, and February was a good month for that. We had these good, solid, nice apples that I remember biting into as a child and it was so nice! Everybody got a free delicious apple on Savior's Day. This was the Savior's Day celebration. What I want to do on this occasion is to talk about Savior's Day. We didn't expect anybody to talk to us about anything other than Savior's Day and what it meant to us. Savior's Day is meant to be a day of remembrance and celebration."</i></span><br />
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The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-59232993530137792642018-08-19T10:37:00.004-07:002018-08-19T10:37:29.889-07:00Responses and Solutions For Progress: Building the Community and Family<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Excerpt of the December 5, 1997 Interview with Imam W. Deen Mohammed</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>IWDM</b>: First, building a community is an obligation on all Muslims and believers who live in Muslim lands or in non-Muslim lands. I think having excellent models of community life in a predominantly non-Muslim society is a more conscious demand for us than for citizens of Muslim lands. It is imperative. It is not something we can say "yes" or "maybe" about. It is "yes," period. We must do this, if we are to fulfill our obligations as Muslims under both the Qur'an - the word of G'd, and the leadership of Muhammed (PBUH) - the Messenger of G'd. I believe that G'd has given us the community to focus our efforts, be they private, family or other. It is in man's nature to live and achieve in the community. G'd has given him an industrious spirit and nature to want to work and achieve community establishments. The full picture of that establishment is a community where responsibilities, benefits and opportunities are shared. Man is created for his share of responsibility to G'd for community.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Efforts to have civilized communities started with men going out in the field and facing the rough nature out there in the world, catching the animal, bringing back its meat for the table and its hide, selling what they could not consume to the next community if they could. After a while the income from their industrious labor and spirit would give them enough money (or good to barter) that they would not need to sleep in a tree, or on the ground, or in a hole in the mountain. They had the time to build a house and make progress. Pretty soon they would have a river boat, or a horse for transportation. I believe for that reason, man is described by some great teachers of Al-Islam and non-Muslims as being a creature who is plural and singular in the same time. He is singular in himself, but he is plural in the possibilities that G'd has made for him. He is plural in the spirit that G'd has given him . He can't live to himself -alone in his mind or spirit. In that sense, he is a temple within himself that has not one person's interest in it, but has the interest of many in it. He is plural, not in terms of psychology (that means you have a mental problem). Man is plural in terms of his interests and concerns. Therefore, he takes in his family, loved ones and his friends. He takes in the people and his country, and all those interests dear to his heart are now within his mind and spirit. He lives with them as a plural and complex social organism. He is living the life of one person, and at the same time living the interest of more than one person. This the way. G'd created us. When we can express this in the living environment, we are more content and free.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">People who are dull and wondering why they are dull spirited, many times it is because they are not motivated to share the responsibility for more persons than themselves. Muslims want to see their brother's life and his family in a state of excellence. All of that is necessary for the fulfillment of our spirit, and our soul's needs won't be fulfilled unless we have that. Community is the focus for us, and what I see as the most important thing to start with in building a community is the establishment of a nucleus. A Muslim community is established to accommodate the lives of people who believe and worship G'd. Every community will have a house of worship (or many). Communities are built to accommodate the needs of the family. The first need outside of the home is to have a school to educate our children. Then the community wants to have a township, ordinances, rules and regulations. After a while you will have many jobs and somebody regulating the town, which means government. This is the traditional pattern. The first step in our plan is to have a place of worship where we can worship and conduct the Friday Jumuah (congregational) service. The next step in our plan is to have the people employed, earning an income to support the other segments of the plan. Therefore, in this nucleus is worship, education and economic achievement. This is the first three.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We already live in a civilized society. We have the township or city, country and state services. As we develop in the three areas of the nucleus and feel comfortable, then we should also want to begin sharing the responsibility for the township and its conditions. This includes examining the benefits going to citizens from the government. Asking, is it an encumbering government? Is this too much to ask of government, or should we ask for more? All of this should not be just the concerns of non-Muslims. It is the concern of all the citizens. Muslims should take it upon themselves and become a part of the efforts to have the best environment possible for the citizens of the town or area. Muslims should share in that responsibility, when they are able to free themselves up enough to have the masjid (mosques), schools and employment to support their assets or investments. That is the plan in order of priority or interest. In my opinion, when it comes to making the plan materialize, the steps to success are not always a fixed approach. They say: "Build a masjid first"; we can have a masjid in rented facilities, in our homes, depending on how large the local following. This means we should study the situation and address how best we can realize the establishment of this nucleus - a place to worship, a private school for our children, and especially support for our men, so that they can have business establishments and employment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Which one then is the best to start the process? Again, in my opinion, when it comes to implementing this in society, we have to begin increasing the income of the community, if it is deficient. It is more practical when we are terribly deficient in income to first address that need. While this is being realized we will be worshipping in a rented facility, or at home, or on a piece of land. Therefore, the second effort is to provide decent facilities for the daily and the Friday Jumuah prayers. All of that is in the mind first, but maybe they don't realize it according to their preconceived notions. Sometimes the last thing is what we should first do in order to best accommodate the first thing. For instance, when a group effort is terribly deficient financially, it is best to address that issue first and try to create situations to bring in income. And once you have the income, then you can come back to first principles and cause them to materialize. Again the vision is for a nucleus where Muslim families will be living in close proximity with a masjid facility that also houses a school, or two different facilities. That is number one, along with the creation of businesses. In the nucleus they must all come together at the same time. The building of facilities should include the building of economy housing for the low income residents and decent homes for the leadership (more economically developed).</span>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-12902754105934099052018-08-12T13:29:00.002-07:002018-08-12T13:29:39.303-07:00To Have Life Better and Abundantly<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Jan. 11, 2004 - </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Praise be to G-d. We thank you all and greet you with the greeting of the Muslims, the greetings of G-d's servants who came before our Prophet Muhammed of Arabia, peace be on him, G-d's Last Prophet that He sent to this world, the Seal of the Prophets, Muhammed. They are the greetings of As-Salaam-Alaikum. Peace be upon you. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The beautiful sunshine today takes your mind off the cold weather. And if I had any problems, just looking at your beautiful faces and I know so many of your facings shining before me, that is enough to make my day. We thank Allah for each other.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">There is nothing better than the good family life and unity. That is for private life at home or wherever we are. And even more importantly, it is for the family of believers. Believers are a family; we are a community. When we call each other brothers and sisters, we are saying we are a family. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We thank Allah. I got several calls before getting here, telling me that if I were here I would be very pleased. They were telling me that the spirit was very high. So I came here ready to go. Last night (Jan. 10, 2004) was very beautiful, too. I enjoyed every minute of it, and my visit here has been a great treat to me. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Sometimes you have one thing in mind that you want to share with the audience, but as you are in the same environment, same place with them and meeting and greeting them and seeing their spirit, you have to change your plan for your address. You change it slightly but always with the same interest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That interest is, as the Scripture says, "To have life and to have it better and to have it abundantly." Allah revealed to us through Muhammed, the Prophet, "I have created you that you may grow." That doesn't mean to grow physically; everything grows like that. As long as you have life, you are going to be growing physically.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But G-d means grow in the life that He created us for. He has created us that we may grow in the life that He has created us for. That life, number one, is spiritual life. When you feel bad and it is not arthritis, when something is bothering you deep inside, that is spiritual life. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">And Allah created us to have a good feeling inside. Not that pressure. Not that bad feeling. Not that emptiness. Not that fear. Allah created us to be in Paradise, and I am in Paradise. I am truthful with no exaggerations; I am in Paradise.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The physical world all about us, whether you live in a good land or bad land, in a good neighborhood or bad neighborhood, the physical things all around us once Allah says, "I'm going to give this servant of Mine, this worshipper of Mine Paradise," nothing negative, nothing hurtful, nothing sad, nothing ugly, nothing distasteful can penetrate your Garden of Paradise. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The Scripture says that when the faithful ones pass in, they pass by those suffering and hollering and making noise, burning in the flames of hell. They will pass by them but be at a distance and will not be touched or affected by hell, although they can look at it from where they are.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That used to be just reading for me. And I accepted it, because it is revelation. But now I have experienced it. The flames can be even closer to you.... Oh, I love you people! It is not everywhere you can get an audience like this who has a taste for this heavenly food that I love.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The ancient who were trying to be upright in their human nature but were living in a human world that was animal, in terms of its behavior, there were a few thinkers among them. And the thinkers were in the time of the ancient pagan world. They put in myth a food they called "heavenly food," and they called it ambrosia. I don't know if this is the same ambrosia, but it is heavenly food. Praise be to Allah. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Allah says He created us that we may grow in spiritual life. Spiritual life is the life of our soul. The soul is the big life that takes in everything. The brain feeds on certain things that it encounters or experiences. Whatever it comes in contact with, if it awakens interest in the intelligence or in the brain, the brain will engage it. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But the soul can't help it. It registers everything. A little baby crying too long in the meeting here, the soul will be disturbed and say, "Why don't someone go and help that mother with that child?" We will feel about that child, just like it is our own child. That is the soul.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The soul hears something in the inner ear and it may sound good to the brain, but the soul will say, "Something is wrong with that." But something can be so attractive to the brain that it will occupy the brain so completely, that the brain can't hear what the soul has to say. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That was the situation for our father in the Garden of Paradise. The deceiver talked to him and got his brain to be completely attentive to what the deceiver was saying. He got so involved, so engrossed in what the deceiver was saying to him about things that he did not have a complete knowledge of or hardly any knowledge of. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">He couldn't hear with the ear of his soul, so he was deceived into believing a rationale that was given to him by Satan, the Shaitan, the devil himself. But the soul never bought it. And the soul couldn't speak loud enough for the man, our father, to hear over the loud interest, the loud voice of Satan. He couldn't hear.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Satan was telling him how to come into another life, a higher life. And G-d invites us always to come into a higher life. And G-d tells us, "Never did He plan anything for His worshippers that Satan didn't scheme to produce the like of it" to always take us away from G-d. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Many people are looking for Satan in the city where the pimps and prostitutes and gamblers, the lost souls are. Satan has no interest in that. He had them thousands of years ago. They are operating on his plan without him even being bothered. He is not interested at all in what is happening in the life of pimps and prostitutes and gamblers and drug dealers. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Satan says, "That is taken care of. But let me see what we can do about the Imam's life. Let's see what we can do about the Rabbi's life. Let's see what we can do about The Vatican. Let's give our attention to these boys who aren't playing our game. Let us work our way into their thinking so subtle, that they will be on our team, too, while they are thinking they are preaching the Word of G-d."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This is Scripture. I am coming from Scripture. This is what Scripture warns us of. We are invited to come to the life that G-d created us for. What is the life? It is the complete life. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Satan has tricked the world of religion into running away from the whole responsibility that G-d gave to man and leaving this world that G-d put us in to the wrong doers. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Allah says, "Who has said to My worshippers that this material world and the benefits of this material world are not for them?" This is the Qur'an. G-d says, "It is for them and exclusively for them in the Hereafter." </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Let us address for a few minutes the second part of G-d's Statement, "It is exclusively for them in the Hereafter." That statement in its second part is saying two important things to us. First it is saying to us, "Don't worry yourself to death. Stop grieving over the misery you see in the world. It is only temporary. And I am allowing it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">"It is not exclusively for you yet. It is to be shared with the wrong doers. I have given the wrong doers the freedom to get whatever they can get out of this material world. But they are shut out of the spiritual blessings. That they can't have, neither in the here or Hereafter." </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">They will never experience the heaven that Allah put Adam in, before he fell. They will never experience the heaven that Allah put Abraham in. They will never experience the heaven that Allah put Jesus Christ in. They will never experience the heaven that Allah put Muhammed ibn Abdullah, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, in. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">They never will experience the heaven that Allah put the pious saints in from different religions. They will never experience the heaven that Allah has put the son of Elijah Muhammad in.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But Allah says He hasn't barred or shut anybody out of getting beans and cornbread, having cattle and land and bank accounts. He hasn't shut anybody out of that, because He is a Wonderful G-d. He is even good to His enemies. He has given us a sign in David. David had enemies, but he also had love even for his enemies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Likewise it is for Jesus Christ and many of the pious saints, including Muhammed the Prophet. He even cared about his enemies, because they have a human soul, too. Who knows, only G-d knows who can be saved and who can't. We are just to try our best to be like our Lord in His Attributes of Patience, Justice and, most of all, Mercy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Praise be to Allah. There is nothing that G-d has not extended mercy to, even to Satan, if you understand it. When Satan refused to accept G-d's Plan for human beings, did G-d say, "I'm going to whip you real bad for that." G-d said, "Since you are determined to do your thing, go on. You are free." That is mercy. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">G-d says, "I'm not going to bring My Power down on you now. But at the end of your thing; your thing has an end. And when you reach the end of it, you are going to be in the fix that you plotted to have My human beings in. And I have created a fire that you don't know about. It consumes both men and stones." </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">G-d is calling the devil a stone. A stone can't feel. But did G-d give up on stones? No. He said that there are some stones, that under pressure, they will break or crack and water will gush forth from them. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">What is this G-d is saying? He is saying, "No matter how hard hearted you have become, no matter how hard you have become as a life, I put water in you and that water will still be there. And the hell you are going to make for yourself will one day crack your stones. Water will gush forth from them, and even tears will fall from Satan's eyes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Don't forget what Allah says in the Qur'an, "The Fire is real." I am not talking about something that doesn't exist or something spooky that you can't understand with your rational mind. The Fire of Hell is something you can understand with your rational mind. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The devil's existence is something we can understand with our rational minds. And if I had permission, I could put my finger on the devil right now. You know him. I can't put my finger on every one of them. But I can put my finger on the biggest and most concentrated company of them. And you all will see it plainly. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But once G-d shows us this, we are forbidden to show the world. Allah didn't take him out of his hiding place, and He didn't permit the prophets to take him out of his hiding place. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Now the Bible claims that G-d permitted the successor to Jesus Christ, Peter, to have the power to bind Satan for a thousand years, to lock him up for a thousand years and then let him go after the thousand years. Now why would any righteous servant of G-d want to let him go, if he ever locked him up?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Don't believe that story, even though it is in the Holy Bible. Since the day he has been permitted to be free, he has been free ever since. And nobody has the key to lock him up. He comes out when he wants. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">And those who think they have the power to put him in jail and let him out are deceived. They don't have the power to do that.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">All we have the power to do is respect our good nature, respect the good life that G-d created us with. And as long as we respect the good life that G-d created us with, we have a sure defense against Satan. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Something that seems small with no power has the power to defeat Satan, and that is your goodness inside you. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Just stay with your goodness and Satan can't touch you. If you practice staying with that goodness long enough and faithful enough you are not letting sex tempt you away from it; you are not letting greed for money tempt you away from it; you are not letting fear of wrong doers or bullies take it away from you — if you stick with that long enough, you will win guaranteed protection from Satan.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">He won't be able to come at you in any way. You will be in Paradise, and he can never come into Paradise. He hates Paradise, just like he hates the righteous servant. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The wise in the language of myth and culture have told us that Satan hates this life. If you sprinkle some pure water on Dracula, what happens to him? If you bring him out into the light, what happens to him? He is OK in the dark or in the shadows. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The wise in the language of myth and culture have told us that Satan hates this life. If you sprinkle some pure water on Dracula, what happens to him? If you bring him out into the light, what happens to him? He is OK in the dark or in the shadows. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The water means your innocence, your innocent soul, your spiritual life. If he were ever touched by that, it is all over for him. So he makes sure he is not touched; he stays away from the righteous, and he stays out of the bright Light of Truth. He knows it will do away with him. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">As long as you keep to your innocence, don't worry about the devil. Over a period of generations, of thousands of years, the people exaggerated the image and power of the devil. They made him bigger and more powerful than he was. They have him contending with G-d, as though they are on some equal plane.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">In Islam, the Qur'an comes to correct that. It doesn't say that G-d has any contenders, not even the devil. He is no contender for G-d. G-d lets us know, "This Satan, this devil, that you know in your life, he is not My contender. He is your contender." He is the opponent or the contender of human beings, not of G-d. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">G-d forbids that we even think something can challenge Him. Then He works on the problem of our thinking that the devil is so big. He says, "Fight the schemes of Satan (Shaitan), for surely his schemes are weak." It is not like the old teachings before the Qur'an came, that magnified him and saw big trouble in him. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">They'd say, "Don't engage him! He is too powerful!" But the Bible, too, came to deal with that. It said, "Rebuke Satan." Don't just listen to him, and you know he is talking wrong. Rebuke him means to tell him he is wrong, and he will run from you. The Bible says, "Rebuke Satan, and he will flee from you." </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That one statement kills all the other stuff about him being so powerful. Rebuke Satan, and he will flee from you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I was convicted for failing to obey the Selective Service order and was spending time in Sandstone, Minnesota, federal corrections institute. The Jehovah's Witnesses were in there too for doing the same thing, failing to obey the Selective Service order. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">There was this big, tall copper tone skinned Saintifier in the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses. He knew who I was. But he thought I was a Muslim so far away from G-d, that he thought I was Satan. So we are having a conversation, and I have always been the same as I am now. I don't believe in forcing something on you that you don't want. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">So I was being very nice and respectful and was not trying to convert him. But responding to him and what he was saying to me, I had to make a little trouble for him. I was being as gentle as I possibly could. But he got so upset, he said to me, "Get behind me, Satan." That is what he said to me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We both were in jail, and I guess he could move away from me for about 100 feet. So I said to him, "Hold up brother, the Bible says, 'Rebuke Satan, and he will run from you.' I'm not running, so what are you running for?"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This brother made parole before me, and then I got out and got back in the Temple. My father would not let me preach, and I think he didn't want me to make trouble for my parole. He was afraid that I might say something that would go against my parole. First I thought that I was still under punishment, but later on I understood it as my own protection. He was protecting his son.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But I was in the Temple one night, and who do I see? My friend, the Jehovah's Witness. When our eyes met, we were so happy to see each other. No matter what kind of situation you had with your "homie" in prison, when you see that person outside of prison you are happy. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">You were both confined together and both put in a bad situation, and when you are both out of that situation, you are happy. You forget every argument you had. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That is the same way it will be for us, when we get out of this trap that the world has put us in. And our wayward leaders, straying from righteousness that they had in slavery and immediately afterwards, have put us in this trap. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">When we save ourselves from this prison of ignorance, misguidance, deviation from the Law of G-d, deviation from faith and love for G-d, when we break out of this, we are going to be just like those "homies" that see each other when they get out of prison. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We are going to love each other. It will be: "As-Salaam-Alaikum, brother. As-Salaam-Alaikum, sister. Praise be to Allah." We are going to get it back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The Jehovah's Witness said, "I just came to see you." I told him how happy I was to see him. He asked where I lived and I told him. He said, "I'm going to come by your house." And he did, but he never joined the Nation of Islam. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Isn't that something? He came out of prison, found out where the Temple was and came there just to see me. He never tried to convert me to be a Jehovah's Witness again. All he wanted was to be in my company as a friend. It was wonderful. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Allah invites us to life. Genesis is an invitation to life. It is talking about the life that G-d created human beings for. It is not the life of rats, cats, dogs, sheep, cows, chickens, rabbits, snakes. No, it is a special life. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">None of those creatures were created for the life we were created for, and none of them can benefit from what Allah created as we can. None of them. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Animals have intelligence, like we do, like we do. I used to think that they couldn't reason, because science said they couldn't. But science is making a big mistake. Some animals can reason.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I believe that is what is being said, when G-d says He made some animals on the same day He made man, on the Sixth Day. He didn't just make man on the Sixth Day; He made some animals also on the Sixth Day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This is Genesis in the Bible. And if you understand it, it is the same thing that is in the Qur'an. It is in the Sixth Chapter of the Qur'an, called An'am or the animals. But that Six represents the Day that He created man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Allah says in the Qur'an that there is no creature that crawls upon the face of the earth that Allah has not assigned his life in a community similar to yours. There is the community of birds, the community of ants, the community of bees.</span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Bacteria have their community. The microscopic life that you can't even see with your eyes has its community, and they are crawling, too, upon something. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The life that G-d wants for us is the life that you can't have without the tool for the soul being established. What is the tool for the soul? Your intelligence. Your brain. You cannot have the life Allah created for the soul, until you establish your brain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Your soul goes out like air in a balloon. If you can imagine the skin of the balloon being the extent of space or as far as you can go out in space, the air is the soul and the air is pushing the balloon out. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">And Allah has created space, so it will extend as far as our life requires it to. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">There is no limit to it. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">As far as your soul wants to go out, let the germ of life be alive in the soul and it will push, it will fill the balloon up with the spirit and life of the soul. That balloon is not limited like the balloons we buy for our children; they will burst, when it reaches a certain limit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That skin that Allah has given to hold the core life of our soul will keep expanding forever. It will keep opening up forever, to give your soul more room and to want more. It opens up to unlimited expansion, unlimited extension, unlimited room. You can have as much as you want. Allah created us like that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But something as small as the point of a needle can hit the balloon and lose all of the air. I guess that is why Allah revealed that Satan had been disappointed, and that, "This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My Favor on you and have given you My Choice of religion, Islam." </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But G-d also says, "Don't drop your guard now. Satan has given up hope of deceiving you in big things, but be aware of him coming at you in small things." Like your respect for your husband, sister. Like your respect for your wife, brother. Like your respect for your parents, children. Like your respect for your children, parents. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">These are the things G-d made us to naturally manage. It is the nature of the heart to take care of these things. But when Satan comes at us with his schemes, he takes everything available to him and uses it to take us out of the life that G-d created us for.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">What is this life? In its best and complete picture, it is the life that has been given to us by The Life. And the highest life for us is The Word of G-d. That is Qur'an, true, pure, perfect revelation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">When it comes into our life, it gives us a chance to have a bigger and better and more beautiful life, and certainly a much more productive life, than we had before. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Is it really a new life? No, it is the same life you had before. The Sign is in Jesus Christ, and most of the students of scripture missed it. So Allah revealed it again. As Jesus Christ predicted it would happen, the Spirit of Truth would come. He revealed it again to Muhammed the Prophet.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The same Signs that Jesus came to show the world, that came in the clouds of the heavens and in parables, here G-d brings them again in plain language. This time it is not in the clouds of the heavens but in broad daylight. He is a man whom G-d chose to be His Last Messenger to fill the role of the Seal of the Prophets. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This man was not called by G-d so that he would be made clean and sanctified and holy and righteous, or made fit to be G-d's servant and messenger. He was already fit before he knew G-d. He was already the complete human being that G-d wanted before he even knew a religion.</span>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-39922785785526193162017-09-08T07:56:00.003-07:002018-08-12T13:40:17.840-07:00Hagar's Children<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>February 1986</i></b> - The white man refers to the African-American as "Hagar's children"
and so far, our history makes the white man look like he is telling the truth
or that he knows something about us that we are unaware of. It looks like he's
got some insight into our life that most African-Americans don't understand,
since he seems to be labeling us correctly all of the time. The white man
believes that G-d has doomed and destined the African-American never to be
functional in world society in any position of significance other than that of
Hagar's children.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">“When one refers to us as Hagar's children, he is not speaking from the
Qur'an. He is speaking from the Bible, and what he means by Hagar's children is
someone that doesn't know how to establish himself, so he sells himself to
somebody who is already established.” </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Hagar was not established. She had no home or husband so she sold her
services to Sarah (Abraham's wife), who had a home and a husband. Sarah was
established. But in order to grow, Hagar had to be put out of Sarah's home.
Sarah said to Hagar in effect, "Look here maid, I'm the one that approved
this, and I'm the one that brought you in here, but I can't stand looking at
your glory in my house. You get out into the desert away from my establishment
with this thing that is being produced in you."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">When the white man says, "Hagar's children," he means that
you are following in the tradition of the African girl called Hagar. Hagar
didn't have the courage or the vision to go and shop for a decent husband and
to require of her husband that he build her a house. She was just, a beggar
woman. She went to Sarah, and said in effect, "Look, my survival is
threatened. May I do something for you?" and Sarah said, "Yes." </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Look at the situation of the African-American community, and you will
see that they are Hagar's children. The African-American is not talking about
establishing their own neighborhoods or establishing business people in their
neighborhood. They are only talking about getting something from the white
man's house, crying, "Whiteman, you have a whole lot, give me some of what
you got." Whiteman, I'm no father to my children, take care of them for
me." That is the African-American's situation, and it is pitiful.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The situation is pitiful, despite the preaching from the time of
slavery until now, and despite all of the sacrifice of men being betrayed and
worked against by the powerful white society, and by the people they tried and
are still trying to help. </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">African-Americans don't have the courage to establish their ethnicity
like the Irish, the Italians and others, including the recent immigrants who
are now coming into this country from Asia, Cuba and elsewhere.
African-Americans don't have the courage to let the white man know that they
have a concern for their own kind, and are not depending on him to direct that
concern. They are afraid to talk like a man within the hearing range of the
white man, even though they know that they would be doing nothing but accepting
the responsibility that would bring them into the admiration of the American
people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I say to the Muslims, let us be more responsible for ourselves, our
family members, our neighborhoods, our personal property and our people. Let us
show America that we are not of the common run; we are special people with our
own sense of direction, and our own sense of responsibility. And believe me, if
we do this, we will go forward and become leaders of our own destiny in America
overnight.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-15217168075032254332016-10-10T06:21:00.001-07:002018-08-12T13:43:04.163-07:00On Hajj - Interview with Imam W. Deen Mohammed <span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Aug. 25, 2001 </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Q:</b> Brother Imam, we want to thank you for giving us this opportunity to interview you on the Hajj. Over the years, you have taught us to look deeper into concepts -religious concepts and other concepts. Is Hajj like that? Does it have surface meaning but also a more powerful and deeper meaning that those without insight are likely to miss? Would you explain?</span><br />
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<b>Imam Mohammed:</b> As-Salaam Alaikum. I think the meaning that is most important is not deep, it's plain. It's plain and easy to grasp by ordinary minds. But it's the meaning that I think most of us miss. That meaning is the one given by the learned scholars and Imams. This obvious one says that Hajj is the unity of mankind, especially in Islam. Islam is a model and should be the model of Islam for mankind, for all people. It is the Unity in the humanity that G-d created when He created our first parent, Adam, Peace be upon him. The meaning is Unity and Oneness for humanity under G-d. The Hajj is a return to your innocence -your purity — your original spiritual mental and social nature that G-d created us in, when He created the first people (or man).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That's the life that G-d wants us to return to. That's the real meaning of Hajj. It's a struggle — it's a struggle to unite humanity. You know that humanity is divided. Divided because of power, greed for power, greed for wealth, greed for the material world, and also sometimes for no other reason than "my family is all I care about. Don't bother me with yours."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Q:</b> In 1967, you made Hajj when the rest of us were in the Nation of Islam and you met Maulana Maududi. You were a young man, in your early 20s. A lot has changed since then. You met him on Arafat. Tell us about Arafat and its importance and the importance of that meeting with Maududi.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Imam Mohammed: Arafat gives the Muslims a chance, the leaders and the common man, too, if he is interested in having some responsibility or some role in society. Arafat is an opportunity for him to come and hear the most learned leaders in Islam. They will be Imams, They'll be educators. They'll be political figures, presidents, kings maybe. They'll be doctors and lawyers — all the professions - all the important professions will be represented there at Arafat during the Hajj.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That gives us a chance to benefit from each other's experience — knowledge and faith, too. When a man of extraordinary strong faith speaks on politics or economics or social life, that man also communicates his strong faith to you — even though his language is the language of his particular profession or field.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">So I know that a person or a weak battery can get charged up, get pretty strong just being here to hear what the good leaders are saying. I was there once when Maulana Maududi was there. I learned that he was there because I could hear them saying: "Maulana! Maulana's under such-and such tent!" Then someone said "Maulana Maududi" and that rang a bell! I said "Wow! Maulana Maududi!" I recalled reading some of his books from my father's library. So I said, let me find out where he is. While I'm thinking that, someone came; "Brother Wallace!" I said, "Yes." "Maulana Maududi wants you in his tent." And they came and got me and took me to his tent, and I met him and sat right near him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">He said this: "We have to be very aware and careful that we do not try to guide the Muslims in America — assist them, but don't try to lead them." That's what he told me on Arafat, with the tent full and they were all outside the tent. He was very popular with the Pakistanis and the Indians. He was of Pakistan and of the Indian people.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Q:</b> Now we have celebrated Eidul Adha here for many years. Tell us about celebrating the Eid in Mecca. What's it like and also making the Eid Prayers while we're there?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>Imam Mohammed: </b>Eidul Adha in Mecca is much different from Eidul Adha away from Mecca. And it's simply because Eidul Adha is celebrated on the 10th day of the Hajj. It is the climax, the highlight of the Hajj, the meeting on Arafat, according to Muhammed the Prophet or the Rites of Hajj. In Mecca, in the Holy Precincts, you are experiencing the difficulty of Hajj and also the wonderful blessing of Hajj with many Muslims from all over the world -celebrating the sacrifice of Abraham (PBUH) on Eidul Adha. You celebrate it with all those whom you unconsciously but strongly feel a bond with now, because you went through this together. And the crowd is oh so many times magnified, and the celebration too is so many times magnified! So I think that's the difference.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The difference is you are there and you have gone through difficulty and you have received many blessings. Now you are celebrating with so many Muslims from so many different faces and dress and languages, etc.</span>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-63248149293987576532016-10-10T06:12:00.001-07:002018-08-12T13:46:55.320-07:00Strive for Community Life<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>2005</i></b> - </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Thank you, Sis. Sahirah, International President of this great women's international organization. We are very proud of them. They dignify all of us with their service to humanity, especially to the women who need their services, who need their help. And we know that if you help a woman, you help many.</span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Prayers and the peace be on our Prophet Muhammed. That is the traditional salute to him. He said to one who was asking him how to share himself with this mother and father, who had become of old age and both of them needed his help. He was asking the Prophet how was he to share himself with his mother and father.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Prophet said to him, "Help your mother." The man was still waiting for more from the Prophet. The Prophet again said, "Help your mother." And then he said, "And help your father." So the emphasis is on the mother, and the mother is symbolic of the collective group, the family, the community, the congregation. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We have a sign in the House that we turn to when we worship in prayer, in congregation and prayer. The House is called Ka'bah, and Ka'bah means "connection." And G-d says to us in our Holy Book of the House that we call Ka'bah, that in it are blessings for many people. For Muslims all over the world, it is a sign.</span></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">It is a sign that scholars in Islam say is the Fifth Pillar, a sign of the unity of all mankind. It is the Fifth Pillar or fifth essential in the practices of Muslims. And there are five of those essentials.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The First of them is to witness that there is One G-d, Who is responsible for everything, bringing into existence everything that exists. That is The Creator, and we witness that He is One. And we witness that Muhammed (PBUH) is His Messenger. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Second is Prayer, to worship that One. Once we acknowledge that He is G-d, we should worship that G-d.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Third is to give in Charity. Fourth is to Fast, to restrain ourselves for G-d. G-d says in an inspired Hadith (saying of the Prophet), "Fasting is for Me." He says, "Let the fasting person know who sincerely fasts in the month of Ramadan" - that's the Fast month for us - that "the breath of the fasting person with G-d is like the best perfume in the nose of the people." </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That is how much G-d loves one who fasts for the sake of obeying G-d, having a disciplined life and obedience to G-d.</span></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">And the Fifth and last of those fundamental practices is to make Pilgrimage to visit the House.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Life is all about making connections. To have life, you have to make the first connection. That's what the President in the New England area has just done about two weeks ago. She made the connection, she and her husband who is an Imam I have known for some time. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Although I have never had any personal dealings with him, I feel as though he is my personal friend, Imam Dawud. May Allah bless this union with all the joys that you all want and expect. Ameen.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So life is all about connections. And then G-d wants us to know that even the forming of life in the body of our mother and her body, the forming of life is connections. He gives us the water and the thickening of water adhering, water trying to hold firmly together. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Blood is forming together, adhering, and then the fetus lump; the flesh now has formed and is holding. And it goes on to bone forming in the flesh. Then Allah says He covers the body with flesh, and after that there is another creation. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So G-d wants us to know our two creations. We have one creation that's flesh, special flesh, human flesh. It belongs to the animal world, but once the human spirit comes into it, it shouldn't be animal anymore. It should be human.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He wants us to know we have two creations. Then we are created all over again, and that's the human person inside the body. Religion, not just Islam - but the great religions, are all about acquainting us with the life inside the body, that second creation. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is the true life and G-d says of that life, He formed you in your mother and He formed your picture and made it most excellent in your mother. When the baby is delivered, you see a beautiful baby girl or a beautiful baby boy. And we see a picture and want that picture, that new baby. We've got to have that picture. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">G-d said he formed all our pictures in our mothers. He made your picture most beautiful, most excellent, the most handsome one. That's the human spirit and the human personality that G-d wants us to have in common with each other.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We should have one human spirit accepting all people in the family of man or human family. We should have one basic spiritual nature. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It's all about respect. It's all about giving, struggling, striving. Muhammed the Prophet (PBUH), when he was concluding his mission, he said many things. But one thing he said because he was persecuted and had to fight to free religion. He said G-d ordered him to fight until the religion is no more persecuted, and the people are free to worship under G-d. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This is Qur'an. This is the Word of G-d through Muhammed, the Prophet (PBUH). He said to the people - he didn't say "no more wars," but that's what I think he meant. "After this is only Taqwa and Jihad." Taqwa is a word we use for sacred respect. It is translated as fear sometimes, but it means sacred respect.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The fear is the fear to break that respect, to lose that respect. And G-d says, "And fear G-d." But it also means give G-d the respect that G-d is due. And, "All of your close family ties begin with mom and dad." Muslims, like Christians, are supposed to hold the life of family sacred. And anyone who violates the family commits a very bad sin. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Whether it be an outsider, an enemy of the family or a member of the family, when you violate the respect we should have for family, it is a major sin. G-d has placed nothing before family, except Him. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He also says, "Close family members who have close family ties have first rights in the Book of G-d," </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In America, I learned when I was a child that charity starts at home and spreads abroad. Take care of family first. This is both Christianity and Islam.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Life begins for human beings in Heaven. The person who loves G-d doesn't worry; if G-d says their life begins in Heaven, that's good enough for them. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">They are not going to get pencil and paper and try to figure out things. We can see that life starts in Heaven every time we look at the little baby that mama delivered; that's that heavenly life. The baby comes here with a spirit that has not been changed. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The world can change. Mom and dad can change. But that baby comes here with a spirit, the same spirit that G-d gave the first baby that was put on this earth, that existed on earth or in Heaven. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">G-d wants us to know that He is going to guide us. He is going to put us in circumstances that are going to be too much for us. He says the creation of Heaven and earth is a bigger creation than that of man.</span></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Why does He say that? He says that, to tell all of us that the human being is not able to manage this material world, that we have to be supported upon, without the Help and Guidance from G-d.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We know that in the story of the beginning of mankind, a kind of a Genesis in Qur'an, G-d said there was a rebel in the Heavens that we call Iblis. The Christian language would call him Satan; the Arabic word or Qur'anic word is Shaitan. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There was a rebel among the Angels. His name was Iblis, and he did not accept that man should be made a khalifah in the earth. Khalifah in the earth means one responsible for rule or authority that human life should have in the earth. Iblis did not accept that; he didn't like that and was not a true Angel but one of the Jinns.</span></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Angels are made of Pure Light. Jinns are made of fire. Jinns are made as passionate creatures. When Iblis did not accept G-d's Will, G-d said to him, "Get you down from here, all of you." Because of what this Jinn did, man also was sent down for human life, sent down from Heaven to the earth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Get down into the earth, into life. There, you will find all of your needs, and there you will die, and from there you will be raised up again." G-d is saying that man's life is to be lived on earth in the community of people, human beings. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Man is not an Angel. He has angelic qualities; he can serve in the role of an Angel; he can even behave as an Angel, which is rare. Man's description is human, not Angel.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">G-d said, "If the earth had been populated with Angels, He would have sent you an Angel as a Messenger." He didn't. He sent you a human person, Muhammed the human mortal, as he is called in the Qur'an. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">G-d is telling us that we have to accept to live in circumstances that we have on earth. We have to have G-d's Help to manage, because without G-d's Help, it is too much for us.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We don't have to tell too many mothers in the ghettos that. She knows it's too much for her. Her children turn to the street, and she can't call them back. There is nothing she can do about it but just see her children go the way of the streets. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">She can call everybody and not get any help. Everybody comes, but hardly ever anybody can help. Her children are gone.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That's because the world is a bigger influence than human influence. If we let the world and the circum-stances in the environment that we have in the world, if we let those circumstances and that environment go against human life, then we lose our children to that life, that Pope John Paul II, who has passed - may G-d have him in Paradise and Peace, Ameen - "the Culture of Death." </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He called that cultural influence we have in the street that is negative and against human decency, and these are his exact words, "the Culture of Death." So G-d wants us to have leaders who have the faith and spirit that they can manage circumstances in their environment and influence the environment, so the environment supports the human life that G-d wants for us.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Muslims are not only obligated to take care of their souls - yes, we are - but those of their families as well. G-d says take care of your families. "Save yourselves and your families from the Fires of Hell." Those fires are not just burning below the surface of the ground. They are burning wherever we are, and many of us are better than six feet below the surface of the ground. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We think we are walking on the ground, but we are not. We are more than six feet under, and the Hell Fires are leaping all over us.</span></span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We want to be able to manage circumstances. We can't do this alone; that's why G-d wants us to be a community. G-d says, "You are a community."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He doesn't want us to be anything but a community. The congregation is supposed to be the congregation of the community. The Muslims are a congregation. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Congregation means coming together, holding together. He could have used another word, which would make you want to think of comparing yourself to some other community. But He said, "... And you are the Best Community evolved for the good of all people...." </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We want to strive for community life, and we want to have our community life in the way that G-d guides us to have it and to have that community life welcome all people. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We are family. Humans are family. So we have to welcome all people who belong to the family of human beings. Welcome them and see no differences.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When you come to lie point where , ou meet them and you become friends with them as good persons and you come to the point that you've forgotten that this person belongs to another race, you've forgotten that person belongs to another religion, you become friends, you welcome each other, you live with each other and go places with each other, greeting each other "hi" and "how is your family," asking about each other's relatives - when you reach that point, you have joined and have successfully come back into the family of mankind as created by G-d. And you will be in heaven. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Muhammed, the Prophet (PBUH), our Prophet, the Prophet of the Qur'an, made faith a condition of love and made faith also a condition of getting into Paradise. He said, and I am quoting him word for word, "Never will you enter Paradise, until you have faith. And never will you have Faith, until you practice loving one another."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the beginning of the Nation of Islam around 1931, we have the records saying that the teacher of the Nation of Islam came from overseas and began teaching in Detroit, Michigan, where the first Temple was established. And the first chapter of this great International League of Muslim Women organization was established too in Detroit. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Nation of Islam, as I knew it - I was born in 1933 and remember 1943 and 1953; that's 20 years. All of those years, if you met a member of the Nation of Islam and you told them you were a member, they automatically accepted you as their brother and sister and you could feel that love.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We had love for one another. That's what was strong among us, that we had love for one another. We lost that during the change, when we stopped thinking about G-d so much and started thinking about ourselves - getting money, Black Power. All that took it away. We lost that genuine love we had for one another. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Over recent years, the past 10 years at least, I see that love growing again. And the International League of Muslim Women is really a great haven of love for one another. That, we feel. And you are helping us grow that love back. You are helping the community grow that love back that we lost. We are getting it back. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We have to understand, too, that we need special efforts like the International League of Muslim Women, special organized efforts. People should look for coming together. People should look for those of similar minds, when you want to do things, when you have a need that is not being fulfilled, it's strong in you and you want to do something about the situation.</span></span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Look for those who have your kind of thinking, your mind. Look for those in whose mind is the same fire burning, burning for something special. Then you group with those of like minds. You should group together and have your leader. When people come together, the leader manifests. The one who is best qualified will be known, and you'll have a leader.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This is how we want to multiply productive work. We want it to multiply. Let's not stop the work of the International League of Muslim Women. Let's find out what's the need in our community. Let us say, "Hey, I'm not going to wait for Imam W. Deen Mohammed to say 'shazaam' and create this. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">"He is not superstitious; he doesn't believe in that kind of magic. I'm going to do something like these women have done, like Sis. Sahirah Muhammad." Praise be to Allah. We thank Allah for her and all these great sisters. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Don't forget to identify with the "striving for," and today we are still the "striving for." If I remain the leader, I'm going to be the leader of the "striving for." When you get rich, I'm going to retire and will ask you for money. But I will always be the leader of the "striving for."</span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I think that is what Muhammed the Prophet (PBUH) meant, when he said he was offered two ways to go. He was offered to travel through the mountains, and he was offered to travel through the plains. He said he chose to travel through the plains. So identify with the "striving for" firstly, right at home in your community.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Identify with the "striving for," and let us test our leaders, when they come before us to lead us. Let us see if they have love and compassion for the "striving for," not the "lazy for." See if they love and care to serve the needs of the "striving for." If they do, then they are the leaders who we want and they must show us by their actions that they love human beings, that they love people. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That they are not just working for the dollar or working to pay their bills. That they are working because they love people and want to see the whole life better, not just one life or some better - but all the life better. Then we should support them. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I'm saying this because we live in a time when most of us have lost our human life. We are in human form, but we have lost our human life and are subject to have show-off leaders and people who are promoting self-interest, first and last. Those people will deceive us and themselves. All of us lose, when we accept such persons as our leaders.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So in my conclusion, we want to keep Taqwa and Jihad. Keep the Sacred Respect that G-d wants us to have, for G-d first, but also for human relationships, especially those family ties and all things that He, G-d, has made sacred. Then we want to always identify with people who are striving for a better life. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Thank you, and Peace be unto you. As-Salaam-Alaikum.</span></span>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-54706788412575624902016-10-10T06:08:00.001-07:002018-08-12T13:49:46.837-07:00An Islamic Formula for a Successful Life<b>1988 Los Angeles</b> - When it comes to a whole lot of people, a whole group, the masses, black, white, green or whatever color, when it comes to these big groups of poor people, they will point out the fact, but they don't point to the fact until after one of the poor have already called the attention of one of the members of his own lot to the problem They weren't talking about the poor self-esteem of blacks, until (Marcus) Garvey, Frederick Douglass before him, Drew Ali, and many others did and especially the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, they weren't talking about it until they made the point, that the black man has been derived of a comfortable self-image. That he has been told lies about his own individual human worth. And that has to be corrected if the black man is to meet the challenges of the modern times, and competitive world society. It was members of our lot that told us before the social scientists, the so-called learned Western scientists came out and began to make an issue, to get help for the problems.<br />
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And believe me, no matter how sincere these people are in education, in the social fields no matter how sincere they are, they can't do but so much. Their ability to help the masses, is greatly limited. They will spend on individual problems, but they will not spend significant amounts on satisfying the problem of the masses. And if they start to spend to correct t he malfunction in the masses, (and I'm not talking about blacks only) now, the masses-the uneducated, the un-established, the uprooted, that's who I'm talking about. If they spend they will not spend, and if they spend, there will be right away, a counter-movement against their spending. And that movement will be secretly spending to undermine what they are trying to accomplish. I said 'secretly': you won't be aware of what's happening. All of a sudden you've got freedom that you didn't have before; all of a sudden they are promoting liberty on your part that you didn't have before, you didn't dream of, you were even afraid to think of, telling you that you can freak off, and do whatever you like. That's to take the masses away that need help, that come to them.<br />
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Now, I'm not telling most of you anything; you know this. But, sometimes you have to be reminded, that the masses are an unwanted lot, they are only wanted in servant roles, and if there is no need for them in servant roles, they are regarded as a burden on society. Now, am I saying this to excite you, to rile you, to make you become dissatisfied or angry, with the Establishment? No! I am saying this to get you to see that you must be responsible for yourself, and whatever help comes to you accept it, if it comes from clean hands, accept it, be grateful to God and be grateful to your fellow man. But don't depend on that — for great help comes in seasons, but you have to live throughout the year. And my religion tells me, that I should direct my attention to a blessed tree, whose fruit comes in every season, and that isn't the world. The world's fruit is seasonal. You remember the seasons of (President) Kennedy, and the season of President Johnson, and now you are in the season of President Reagan. So you know something about seasons don't you? And I think the Christians say, there are those who can read the face of heaven, but can't read the signs of the seasons.<br />
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They can look at the sky and say it's going to rain, they see the clouds up there, and they believe most likely, that those are rain clouds, so they say it's going to rain, and they see the winds blowing the clouds, they say it's going to be fair weather. But they can't look down here where everything is happening all around them, and say hey, it's winter in June (laughter).<br />
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It is important to know that Scripture will focus on man as an identity, which is the answer for the identity conflict and identity burden. The Scripture focuses upon man's identity as universal man, as common man. Now we know our identity differs depending on the interest we give ourselves to. We even identify a person as a mailman, but that identity of his is not as important, not anything consequential as his identity as a creature who is a member in the material universe, and has a role, a purpose and a destiny, in that reality. That definition is much more significant, much more important for the human sense of well-being, sensor of direction, sense of purpose in life, than the simple identification of him as a mailman. But the mailman — that's an identification, isn't it? He's a mailman. See, some of us think that the identity that the traffic cop wants is the important identity; he's Negro, he's black, you're burly, or you're frail. 'I'm black and burly or I'm black and frail; I'm black and homosexual, I'm black and gay,' whatever. I'm not making jokes; I'm very serious. Those are the silly identities that we live with. Tm black and female, I'm black and masculine.' An ape is masculine — more masculine than you. He'll take your pants down. That ape is bad, tough, real burly. So that's not the identity that you should be proud of.<br />
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I'm on my topic, "Islamic Formula for a Successful Life." The first step towards being successful is to see yourself, for the moment you see yourself, according to the Prophet, (PBUH), you know your God. How can man know God and not know himself? You have to know yourself first, and you know yourself by looking at yourself in the cosmic reality. "Oh, what is he talking about, cosmic reality!" Look. Matter is continuous, there is a continuity to matter. Matter has a unity, matter has a sameness, matter makes up one family of matter. Stars and all the bodies and things in the universe; you are a citizen of the universe. You were a citizen of the universe before you became a citizen of Africa, or a native son of Africa; you were a citizen of the universe before you became a citizen of the United States; you're first a citizen of the universe. Your identity begins in the universal reality, and that's where you find your essence; that's where you find your nature. God says He made man and patterned him on the pattern which He made the universe. I hope we understand it as I go on.<br />
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Allah says, with the Revelation given to Muhammad the Prophet (PBUH), speaking to the Jews' stiff-neckedness, their stubbornness. that God revealed to them, that they should enter the door prostrate. You can enter the door prostrate, if you are ignorant and have been misguided, you can enter the door, prostrate, if the right picture is presented to you. What do we mean by prostrate? The Christians say it in a different way. They say. 'you cannot enter unless you come in as little babes.' God created first for us, the cosmic reality — stars, heavens, earth, all of this combined is one great endless, material reality. Now, maybe you can't be as philosophical as I can be. I heard a white man brag once, and he wasn't a high-class white man; he was a common white man — a common white man, of thought and principle, and he said in my presence: I believe he said it in my ears, but he wasn't looking at me.<br />
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I sensed he just wanted me to hear what he was saying. See, sometimes a man can look at a person, and can pretty well guess what kind of mind is in that person, and when you sense that a mind is in that person that may hear something that other minds won't hear, and you've been wanting to tell some black man that, the white man will tell that in the ear of that man, that he thinks will listen. So this white man said, 'the white man has great imagination, and that has accounted for his success.' That's what he said. You'd be surprised how help comes to people, from unexpected places.<br />
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Now, I agree with that man. Great imagination; imagination that strains itself to comprehend unreachable boundaries of this real environment, not imagination that sees what it can do unreal. See, the fools have great imagination too, but they stretch their imagination to see what they can do that's unheard of, that's unidentifiable, that has no place in the continuity of reality. They want to do something that's freaked way out, that's way-out. So their fiction is not appreciated by the critics of fiction, and they wonder 'how come, you see how they do us, man? Now you now the black man can write, man! The heavy prose, all the great fiction that we write, man. when do we get any recognition for our popular books, the popular fiction of our writers, man?' Your fiction is fictitious' It has no real reference! It's not a message of the truth' in strange apparel! It's just strange through and through! We need to know these things, so we can get our life into our own hands.<br />
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So dear beloved people, when talking about self-image, the importance of self-image for a healthy sense of well-being, the bigger picture i> the situation for the smaller picture. If you put a small picture in isolation, you are in trouble. But if you take the small picture and put it in the framework of the lug picture, now you've got a relationship, now you've got reality connected. Now you've got some way of defining the limiting definitions. See, the black man just keeps on going with the definitions of black. 'Yeah, black is beautiful, man.' Now, that's some light stuff to say about your identity as a race. Birds are beautiful — that's not a racial classification. 'Well, we needed that to come back from the negative things t he white man.' Well, all you can do is 'tit-for-tat".' He hit you on the shoulder, you hit him on the shoulder? That's child's stuff. He calls you ugly, don't try and prove yourself beautiful. He calls you ugly, try to prove yourself wealthy, or try to prove yourself wise; go for a bigger victory. He calls you ugly, don't go for that little shallow victor, that he's trying to influence you with, go for a bigger victory.<br />
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He'll say. 'you niggers are sure ugly,' you say, 'keep quiet, brothers, let's see if we can show him we're sure wise.' Because he'll let his daughter marry an ugly wise man, and while we are on this facet of the puzzle, you have to understand this, that all white people are not beautiful. Now, they know that. When the white man thinks of himself as the ideal race, with the idea of beauty and all that, he's aware, that some of his people are hideous. He knows that some of his people are so ugly that if he met them at high noon, he would be afraid. He knows that! But lifting himself up. as the ideal picture of man's beauty, has influenced you to think, that he ain't ugly! Sure, white people are beautiful, but white people are also ugly, with all their straight hair. A straight-haired orangutan doesn't make him beautiful. But some straight-haired blacks think that they are OK, that they are beautiful just because their hair is straight. Some are so ugly that they should be apologizing every time they see somebody. But his hair is straight, so he's not even conscious of it — he doesn't even know he's ugly.<br />
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And some old brainwashed victim of the white man's psychology, from the women, she'll be fine, she doesn't see anything but his straight hair. She'll have a baby and the baby will be born bald-headed, and ain't nothing there but the orangutan, and she's ashamed for people to come over 'and see my baby' because she married a head of hair.<br />
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So in order to work safely with any concept, you've got to see that concept in it> reality. And it is the cosmic concept that has given birth to every other concept— every animal, every plant, human being, body, every stone, every crystal. forms in the concept of the cosmic world.<br />
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The white man has that understanding; he makes fiction and he pictures his heroes as cosmic heroes. They don't have United States citizenship. They've got a citizenship in a cosmic galaxy. Now you tell me that hero's concern is as small as yours? No, your narrow picture of your identity makes you very small. Allah says, 'O man, think not that your reality is bigger than the external reality.' He patterned man's life and His reality on the order of the universe. You have universal disciplines in your nature, in your being by nature, and it is those universal disciplines that account for your well-being. If you lose those universal disciplines, you will lose your sense of well-being.<br />
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So we need the big picture in order to identify the small one, to find the place for the small one, the value of the small one.<br />
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We need to know the role of matter cosmic reality in order to appreciate the role of man. And Allah says the heavens, the stars, the moon, all of those things glorify God. all of those things conform to His purpose, all of those things conform to His will, all of those things follow the nature and aim that He gave them. And for that reason, they remain; their function is preserved for them, while man is constantly losing his function as the excellent creature that God created him to be.<br />
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Racist views of ourselves did not come to us from common, natural man. It came from man who gained the feel, the insight, the feel to confuse reality, and pass on pride to the fools that he himself pretends to buy, but does not buy, but only-sells it. If you think racist America was able to achieve the greatness that America achieved in the last hundred years, you are yourself ignorant. It was not racist America that achieved that, no; they used racism as an excuse to keep you out of the competition, to keep you fighting them in a battlefield of nonsense. "What the heck difference do it make if you white or I'm black" or "I'm superior because I'm white - white is better than black" and then we're going to counter, "I'm black and I'm better'n you." "Your skin burns in the sun; mine doesn't. You get sun rash, I don't." And when they come back, they talk about you.The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-34641011372879638042016-07-07T08:43:00.001-07:002018-08-12T13:52:00.938-07:00Patriotism<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Patriotism as we know, is an element in the social life of all people and we are all patriotic. The element of patriotism is always with us, but patriotism changes for us and sometimes we don't see or we don't identify the new patriotism. The old patriotism is still with us in our conscience so we don't identify the new patriotism. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What I mean by New World, is the unfolding or revealing of something that was with this country when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. That desire for a world wherein all the good human aspirations would be respected by the nation and by </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">the people of that nation, and that no one would be denied the free expression of his noble human aspirations and he would be able to pursue those aspirations.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That kind of environment doesn't come until moral freedom comes. That is, when people are able to express freely what they feel in their moral sentiments. This, to me, is the greatest difficulty for a society; to let the moral goodness just come out freely from all of the people. And I believe that the hurdles that we have come over; the hurdles of racism and now materialism are now dying. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Materialism and racism are still in the world, but I believe the "spirit" of the American people now is not racist and is not materialistic, and I am sure that what we are coming into now is the New World. That world that the founding fathers anticipated; the New World that is suggested in the lines of the Preamble to the Constitution that says that "All men are created equal and are endowed with unalienable rights."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This concept of man and the concept of the State being a State under G-d a state respecting G-d is really a way of saying or a way of expressing something else. That is, the need for the proper respect for individuals, for each and every individual regardless to his moral, religious persuasion; the respect for each individual. And when we see all beings as the creation of one G-d, and a nation and its people accountable to a G-d, then in that kind of thinking we have respect for each individual. We have a kind of sacred respect for each individual. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By New World we mean trying to help that spirit come to birth that has always been in the country. It is in the Constitution and it always has been in the country, but it has been overlooked and ignored, and even suppressed. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And now, I see the climate is right for the rebirth of this kind of respect for human beings, a sacred respect for human beings, for human life, for human aspirations."</span></div>
The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-17046252441586561452016-06-28T02:55:00.001-07:002018-08-12T13:52:40.175-07:00Zakat - A Societal Necessity<div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As with all the great religions, charity is a fundamental principle in Al-Islam that has been prescribed for its adherents. The concept of charity has an important role in the life of the Muslim and Islamic society. Charity in Al-Islam is closely related to the concept of charity in Christianity, and perhaps in Judaism. I am sure that it is very close to the concept of charity for the Christians. Charity in Al-Islam starts with the minimum requirement, and goes to the maximum.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In exercising the maximum degree of charity, we must be prepared to share our wealth, our money and our homes with those who are out of doors. We must be willing to give up much of what we hold private and dear for the benefit of those who are shut out. Charity is a means for improving society. It is not seen as a desirable condition to be on charity. At sometime in a person's life, they should want to get off of the charity role.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Charity is a great necessity for the good future and well being of the society. G-D says that He has created us upon equality. He also says that He has favored some above others. There will be some of us with greater spirit, greater talents and greater skills, and those with lesser ability may find themselves at the mercy of the better achievers. Therefore, G-D wants to sensitize and keep us in touch with the best of our nature that He has given us. He wants to keep charity in our spirit.</span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The role of obligatory charity (zakat) in Islamic society is to relieve the pressures on the less fortunate by taking a percentage of the annual income from those who are more fortunate. The amount arrived at by most writers and teachers on the subject of zakat or charity in Al-Islam is 2.5 percent (two and one-half percent) of your annual holdings. This is not an income tax deducted from your wages. This 2.5 percent is determined and collected based on your total accumulated wealth.</span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Under this particular concept or ruling, if you own an automobile, your automobile is accumulated wealth. If you have a garden, a farm, agricultural animals or money in the bank, it is all considered part of your accumulated wealth. From the above, we can see that the range of accumulated wealth under the terms of zakat is very broad.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Zakat is not the only way the Muslim society survives economically or financially. There is also sadaqah, which is an additional charitable deed performed after the obligation of zakat has been fulfilled. There is a great range for sadaqah. We have sadaqah eid: charity in one form or another that is distributed to the poor and needy. Muslims on the two great Eids celebrations: Eid ul-Fitr (Sadaqah ul-Fitr), and Eid ul-Adha. the bigger eid or the greater eid. As stated above, sadaqah is another term for charity, and that is the term we use for charity given on those great Eid days. We use that term for the charity that we give on those great days.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Sadaqah is expected from everyone, the poor as well as those who are in a better situation. Many times we don't have very much to give, but it is the spirit of the charity that is important for human society. Every man and woman needs the spirit of charity in their life in order for them to feel healthy enough to meet the greater challenges of life. If you do not have charity in your heart, you will be unable to meet the challenges of life.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">An Islamic society has to finance important new projects. If you are an independent Muslim nation, you have to finance the defense of your homeland. There are also other forms of revenue, but in Al-Islam, it is all charity. The role of zakat is to improve social life for the less fortunate. It is to help them have the basic necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter, education, a chance to free themselves from an impoverished situation and provide them with an opportunity to establish themselves. As we say here in America, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," and "It is better to teach one to fish, than to give him a fish."</span></div>
The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-10398281538110799262016-06-18T14:46:00.001-07:002018-08-12T13:54:12.398-07:00Why We Celebrate Father' Day<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Wall Street Journal Article Excerpt, Updated June 13, 1997</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">"In most of the countries of the world, religion has treasured traditional family life, in which sex has meaning as a strong bonding element between husband and wife. In this view, sex has an inherent social aim. Its purpose is organized family life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">When sex is understood and valued in this way, and its human and social meaning is carried over into public quarters, then public life has a strong social and moral foundation. Thus it was men who saw honest work as an expression of their masculinity who were most sought after by decent women. Such men also understood sex in the context of civilization, and took seriously their obligations as husbands and fathers. The term "father" commanded respect.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">What has come to be called "pop" culture has crowded out the traditional view of sex and morality. If we are to restore civilization's traditional respect for fathers, we must first restore respect for the traditions on which it was based."</span>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-10873553345964725432016-06-10T01:58:00.001-07:002018-08-12T14:01:58.737-07:00Use in Human Service<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>February 261988, Oakland, CA</i></b> - Praise be to Allah. As-Salaam-Alaikum, and that is peace be unto you. We give all praise to the One Lord and Creator of the heavens and the earth, Whose Proper Name with the Muslims is Allah , the same G-D for all the G-D fearing people on this earth. In fact, He is the same G-D for people anywhere, if they are existing in some other body and somewhere else other than this earth. It is the same G-D, the Lord of all creations. We give all praise to Him and we thank Him for the blessing of religion and the blessing of faith that came to us by way of the blessing to all people and to all nations and a mercy to all nations, the one we call Muhammad the Prophet. We pray the peace and blessings of G-D be upon him, and that we always be guided as Muslims into the excellence that he demonstrated and exemplified for the following.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Last evening we had a wonderful time and enjoyed another very successful fundraiser and evening of excellence for Sister Clara Muhammad School in Oakland, California. You will remember that I said to be prepared for tomorrow and come, for I am going to talk all day. I hope I won't do that, and I am going to try not to do that. We have been addressing some concerns, and I hope I can continue in that same vein and same line of progression. We focused on the human being as a creature with sacred properties and came from that focus to then focus on the human being as a creature with potential for the management of the environment, whether that environment be small or be the total environment that we live in. That is, the natural environment that we live in, the earth and all of its elements, the wind and water and fire, the sun and moon and stars above, for all of these things according to revelation from G-D were created to be utilities for man or as utilities for human society. They are to be of use in human service.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The term in the Holy Book is "saqa," which means that something has been made available by another principle or authority for human benefit. And Allah says that He made the sun and the moon to be of benefit to human beings. These things are not to be worshipped by us. And that is the point, that these things are not to be worshipped by us but they are to render services for us. And we should not become big-headed and think that now we are G-D, because you know that in the history of man's search for truth he began as a baby, then entered kindergarten, then elementary school and high school, and finally college and the university. And as we trace his movements from that first weak state of his, we see a progression in his worship.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">He worshipped the things he feared most, first. Then he worshipped the things he admired the most. And lastly, he worshipped the things that most satisfied his intellectual curiosity. That road of experience brought some men to stop right at themselves and they have gone no further. And for that reason, even in this most modern time in the sense of the advances of sciences, et cetera, there are now civilized nations still worshipping man as G-D. Let it be understood right here in the beginning of this address that Muslims worship nothing of creation. We don't worship the sun or the moon or man; we worship nothing of creation!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We worship only Allah, Who created everything and according to our Holy Book was existing before anything was created and is unlike anything He created and has no need of the creation for anything in Himself. He does not eat; He does not drink. He does not slumber; He does not sleep. Years and time has no affect on Him. These are the words of the Qur'an and not my words. These are the words of our Scripture. Time of the years has no affect on Him. Again, He cannot be affected by anything. Nothing can even approach Him to affect Him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That is the Qur'an. And most of you don't speak Arabic and so there is no real need for me to give you the Arabic from the Qur'an. And it takes too much time to say the chapter and verse. The worse preachers will give you chapter and verse for everything they say. So this is the "ayat" or the concept of G-D for Muslims. And you say, "What is He, then?" He is beyond the grasp of our human perception, and that is the G-D that man should worship. If I can perceive him fully and completely with my tool, then he is no bigger than me. Anything that I can perceive completely with my tools, then I am his equal. Whatever man has been able to completely perceive and understand with his mind or his intellect, he has been able to equal it or to master it. So the foolish notion of desiring and wanting to see G-D as you see your friend — look, you do not even see your friend in total. In fact, we know very little in total, but we can get a lot of knowledge of it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Going back now to what I was saying doesn't mean that G-D is non-existing. I can't perceive Him in total, but He is existing! It does not mean that He is not real; He is real. He is more real than the things we acknowledge as being real. Allah is more real in our religion and by our understanding in our religion. In fact, He is "The Real." And everything else is just a reflection of some minute part of His Reality. This is G-d.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Really, I hate to use the English word, for it carries the message that some people have in their religion that G-D is no more than the dynamics of the universe that goes up and down. They have said that man can descend to the dog and ascend to god. Therefore we have "G-o-d." What a nice message or saying, but it is dangerous and I mean terribly dangerous. For man is a creature of haste and daringness and is ready to do what he thinks can't be done. And that is the challenge he wants, the challenge that says, "No, you can't do it." He is ready for that one. And the biggest one is "be G-D!" And he is ready for that one, too. He wants to be G-D.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I am speaking not only from second hand and third hand, I am speaking from first hand. We used to say we were god, that is the followers of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. We used to believe that we were god, in that the black man was god. And our knowledge wasn't as heavy as the white man's that said he was God. So we did things more foolish than he did.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Perception is a natural urge in the intellect; it is a natural urge in everybody. When the baby is first born, the greatest interest in the baby appears to be the urge to perceive. The baby will look at the mother and look at the father, the brothers and sisters or whoever is in the household. They will look at the objects and study them. The baby wants to see and understand what it is seeing. It will look at itself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Science says that man is a creature of habit and it is described in so many ways. Science1 does not have any one definition for man; it has many definitions for man. The one we use most commonly is "human." And what does human mean? You'll say, "man of the soil or man of the earth." And perhaps that is so, but the idea we have now of human means a person with feelings, a person caring, a person that has refined sensitivities that are "human," or that are just natural for him.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Now when he behaves or responds to our kindness, et cetera, in an ugly way, then we may call him an animal. But again, that is a great mistake. Because you will find the same good feelings and concerns among animals that you find among human beings. I haven't seen any human mother any more caring than some of the mothers among the animals that I have observed. So really, that is not our excellence. Kindness, consideration, caring — those are not our "special" excellence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The special excellence of man is his mental power or intellect and is his superiority as an intellect. He is not superior as flesh; he is not superior as a creature of feelings. He is superior as an intellect. Man is a free creature. So his feelings sometimes will lead him to go beyond what is good. He can become so good that he is too good, and that is bad. Whereas the animals have checks on them. They can't love you to the death; I have never seen animals loving each other to death. But I am sure you have run into somebody, if it wasn't a girlfriend or boyfriend, that will love you to death. So you say, "I don't think I can make it, if you keep loving me. Hold up, slow up just a little bit." So that can't be our excellence. The intellect is our excellence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">There is something else that goes along with that intellect. And it is intelligence as well, and it is something that is typical of the human being. And that is a requirement in us to give for what we receive. 'To give for what we receive." A real human being does not like to receive and receive and receive and not give. A human being likes to receive and give. And this is a requirement in us that leads us to acknowledge G-D. "How did we get all of this? I want to thank somebody for it. Who am I to thank for all of this?" So he looks for the one to thank, and that is G-D. He keeps searching until he says, "Yes, G-D, I thank G-D."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That is the spirit and attitude that makes him a good servant of the Lord. He reaches a point in that realization, where everything he does he wants to do it knowing that G-D is pleased with it. Whether it is with his family and running the household or working on the job or helping the men in the neighborhood or even playing on a team, he reaches a point in that kind of progression where he wants everything to be first accepted by G-D. That is a wonderful creature.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That is the creature that excels. That is the creature that really becomes a hero. That is the way of the prophets of G-D. They are our best heroes. They rose above the confines of their being, time and knowledge, because they served the Lord Most High with that kind of devotion. We believe in this religion that man is a creature created for service. He cannot find happiness, until he accepts himself as such. That he is a creature to find his happiness, his pleasure in rendering service. He has been made the servant of G-D.</span><br />
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The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-85447529728635998792016-05-27T10:54:00.001-07:002018-08-12T14:02:41.971-07:00Memorial Day<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">"This is the Memorial Day Weekend, and memorial means that this day honors somebody or persons who should be remembered. They are the people who fought and lost their lives, so we could have this peace and security that we enjoy as citizens of the United States of America. We honor them and pay tribute to them on this day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Also we must take full advantage at every occasion, when there is a holiday that gives us time off from work, to meet together for every important interest that we have as a community, to study and strengthen the situation for our schools and masajid, for our business people, for our financial needs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The sick have to be taken care of. The little ones without parents have to be taken care of. These are all obligations spelled out for us very clearly in the Holy Qur'an. The weak have to be taken care of, not to mention that our investments have to be protected. As much as possible, we want to qualify to finance our own investments. So we have to work at that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">It is not going to happen, unless we work for it. Allah says that there is nothing for the human person, except that he strives for it, that you make a real hard effort - you have to strive for it. It is very difficult, and you are going and going but it is not with ease. It is with difficulty. That is our history."</span>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-55778168576506854042016-05-08T05:37:00.001-07:002018-08-12T14:39:28.881-07:00Mother<div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>April 7, 1978</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">As-Salaam-Alaikum, a woman's identity is in her basic nature—motherhood. A woman's unique nature creates her motherhood. She does not have to birth a child to come into motherhood. "Mother" as a social role, a leadership role for which physical motherhood is a symbol. Motherhood does not mean ability or capacity of only giving birth; it also means in addition, having the responsibility and authority of a mother (to look after and care for life as the mother does. Therefore, all women are by their nature and qualities mothers. Little girls are mother-like. The reproductive function in a woman naturally gives her distinct physical and social desires and a strong motherly interest in life and society.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Women need to take a new look at the role of motherhood in (the world and they need to re-assess, re-evaluate and re-establish the importance of the role of motherhood in the world. Motherhood is the most valuable attribute to society. Woman does not have to have a baby, or even be fertile to be a mother. To be a mother is to be a mother-like leader. Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), called women who served the community well—mothers. In the Catholic Church system where clergy or officials are arranged in order of grade, rank, or class, the highest rank of female is called mother, usually Mother Superior. These cloistered females certainly do not have babies or children of their own. They are called mothers because they fulfill the beneficial leadership role that Almighty God has assigned to the female.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Women are mothers first and always. They are mothers for their families inside their homes, but they should also be mothers for the block that they live on, for the nation they live in and for the world that we all live in. In short, mother means leadership in society. Mother leadership is essential. The loss or absence of this very important role has caused many of the problems in the world today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Women need to repossess the lost leadership role of motherhood. They should be active leaders in the community. We need motherhood leadership at every level of national life. Women, because of their natural stamina and keen interest, should push for the creation of a better life that would benefit and cover the whole world. Women should work for things that will be completed by them rather than start and stop in the first stage and leave them as many men often do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Apathy is the absence of feeling for each other as we should feel, It is the lack of concern about the terrible things that are happening around us. In other words, apathy means lack of interest and indifference. Mothers cannot afford to be apathetic, because all of the worthwhile, desirable and excellent qualities which the world needs rest in a very significant part and depend on the leadership of motherhood. That leadership is naturally concerned about the health and welfare of all human life—the home, the community and the nation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">If, through changing times and attitudes, a conspiracy has formed to diminish the role of women or cause women to become apathetic, it is our duty to disarm the conspiracy and re-establish and restore women to their rightful and deserved role of leadership in our society. And we should lend our whole and sincere support to their efforts in assuming their leadership role as mothers of the nation. When we have done this, we will have reached the core, the central or innermost heart of society. That is motherhood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We must have motherhood in the home and in the nation. We need those sentiments serving the best interest of the nation which are by nature female generated. We need the keen eye of motherhood watching over the land. Intelligent men know world leadership is best when it is combined with the wisdom which originates from fatherhood and with the wisdom which originates from motherhood. Female interest coming from the lungs of motherhood reaches us as solutions to problems and not merely as attacks upon conditions. The leadership role of motherhood over the nation requires that women meet the present challenge to eliminate the corruption and cruelties which modern society has imposed upon the woman. Because of the imposition of cruelty and corruption which surround us, the motherhood forces of heart and intellect are needed to save human life for America and the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Peace be to you</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Your brother in service to Allah,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Wallace D. Muhammad</span></div>
The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-5851420818471424592016-04-14T07:03:00.001-07:002018-08-12T13:21:14.562-07:00QUOTES by Imam W. Deen Mohammed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-75067010045792717272015-07-15T07:26:00.002-07:002018-08-12T14:37:31.707-07:00Be True To Your Label<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><i>June 7, 1987, Dallas Texas</i></b> - I have been, as you know, addressing you on the subject of "Sacred Life Connections." The theme that has been chosen for the workshops and for this address here today fits perfectly within that general topic, that I have been addressing. Community family life is a sacred life connection; to keep that life constituted, as our Lord Creator intended for us to be constituted, is a sacred duty. To hold to the identity that G-d intended for us, as individuals, and as groups, is a sacred duty. When we lose that identity that Allah intended for us, we begin to lose the way that G-d intended for us to be constituted, the way He intended for us to be made up, inside as well as outside.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Our religion, Al-Islam, focuses on family, and Allah Most High, that is, G-d Almighty, the Lord Creator says in our Holy Book, the Qur'an, "family obligations have a priority." Family obligations are given priority. My obligation to my wife, to my children, to my father, to my mother, to my grandparents, to the aging people in my family and the young in my family, is a duty that G-d has focused the revelation on, and has told us that before Him, family ties have a priority, family ties are given priority. We have obligations to family</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I have a right as an individual, to benefit from good family circumstances, a good family situation, and I have an obligation as an individual, to support good family life, to be a contributor, to contribute to the well-being and excellence of family life, and society; in our religion, everyone has an obligation to work for the same, and to respect the same. We understand that in America, this is the land of freedom and opportunity, and of the great experiments, the great experiments with freedom. So here in this country, not only are the good people free, but the bad people are also free, and sometimes it seems that the bad people have more freedom than the good people. More freedom to progress, more freedom to advance their aims, their ends, more freedom to pursue their goals, that are criminal, than the good people have to pursue their goals that are legal, and that are honorable, that are approved by G-d.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">It appears to be that way, and I used to feel very bad about the situation in American when I thought about this special kind of freedom that Americans have here, and for years, I was burdened with a great burden, and I said, well, what is this; is this the devil, is this hell or is this an opportunity for humanity to survive? And I couldn't say there was no opportunity for humanity here, because I have survived as an American and as a human being here. But it was confusing to me. And the more I thought about it, the more I had to rely upon the Qur'an, the teachings of my religion for an answer. And I came to the conclusion that this is just an opportunity; America gives you an opportunity, and all of us have an opportunity, and the problem for us is not to be blamed on America or on this special kind of freedom that we have here the problem is to be blamed on ourselves.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">America gives us a special situation for competition, and never think that you are going to be helped; in America, you are helped in seasons, and the season will come when you are not helped anymore. You are left on your own. So don't depend on anybody in America; nobody in America is going to help you always, except those who obey G-d over the word of man, and obey the Will of G-d, over the will of man. If you don't have anybody like that with you, then don't expect to be helped. Help here in America is always seasonal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Now you can just hang around, spring will come again, but winter will come too, again. Muslims' hope in G-d's word. We must put our hope in something bigger than America. Muslims' hope is in Allah, in what He reveals the Qur'an. Our hope is in the life that was demonstrated to us by His Prophet, His Messenger, Muhammad, the Last Messenger of G-d. That's where our hope is. Muslims, don't forget where your hope is, and work on keeping your identity. Muslims must work on keeping the Muslim identity. You know, things may be created or produced, and a label put on them, that truly identifies what has been made or produced, or created. But if those things are perishable, in time, the contents won't be true to the label, unless you find a way to preserve it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">In our life as human beings, we have this freedom, to conform or to not conform, to obey, or to disobey, and in the society that we live in sometimes encourages too much freedom, immoral freedom, and we find ourselves without knowing it, losing the original content of our lives. However, we continue to identify as we identified when the contents were correct. Muslims may call themselves Muslims, long after they have lost their Muslim lives. They still call themselves Muslims, and we are happy to say we are Muslims. But often, the Muslim life is left behind, long time ago. So we have to live true to our identity, true to our contents. If we don't, we are going to lose the life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Keep identity before you, and keep the true meaning of identity before you, not just as a name, because names are just in the air, unless you can just grasp the full meaning of what that name represents. The name "Muslim" connects us with a meaning. Islam, or Al-Islam as it is called in the Qur'an, or in the Arabic language, connects us with a meaning. It's not guaranteed that we are going to keep the meaning, unless we make an effort. The Muslim name is known also to Christians; they know it, they say, "oh yes, a Muslim, sure, we know what a Muslim is."</span><br />
<br />The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-51346402755942754102015-04-13T12:22:00.000-07:002018-08-12T14:38:27.630-07:00America's Beauty<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><i>9/06/1992</i></b> - </span>America is not a place that promises to give you religion or to give you culture. No. You are supposed to have cultural influences of your religion or from your past traditions. You are supposed to have your own taste for food, your own taste for clothing, your own taste for entertainment, your own taste for your intellect. You are supposed to make your own life in this land of opportunity and freedom. If you don't do it, then Satan and his hosts have everything ready and prepared for you. They will dress you, will give you entertainment, will give you taste, smell, hearing, and vision. So let us not exaggerate that melting pot thing. America is a melting pot only for those who leave the responsibility for self to the world. But if you take up responsibility into your own hands for your own life, America is no melting pot. The beauty and precious thing for American society is its pluralistic life we call plurality. That is America's beauty. The melting pot is not its beauty. Have you ever seen a painter pour all of the paint into one bucket? That is the ugliest stuff you ever wanted to look at especially once he integrates it all thoroughly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our beauty is in uniting upon what is inherent in our life and nature, while keeping our distinctions that have evolved upon what is inherent. We are to keep the distinctions. Excellence and progress for Muslims is what we want for our religious life in America. We want progress in the world. Allah invites us to attend to the needs for progress in the world. We know the Destiny is bigger and more important than the world, but Allah tells us to also progress ourselves in the world. </span>We are to have income from legal sources, halal sources. We are to have Islamicly approved work and investment and opportunity. We are to invest our income for financial growth and economic growth. We are to be competitive in all that G'd has approved. If G'd has approved for us to establish ourselves in the world, that is what we should do. There is a prayer of the Prophet (the prayers and the peace be on him) where he prays to G'd for worldly progress. He prays for it in connection with the prayer for the Hereafter. He does not separate the two. He made one prayer but prayed for the Hereafter and for worldly progress.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) described his life as being a religious life and also being a worldly life. This is the balance in Islam that most religions ignore. Don't think that you have a right in Islam to progress in the world; no, you have an obligation. It is not only a right; it is an obligation. We are obligated to follow the sunnah of the Prophet. We are obligated to obey the Qur'an; to follow its dictates and also the influence and advice of Qur'an. Some things are law and some things are advice. You are obligated to follow the sunnah of the Prophet and his advice and Qur'an, the Sunnah of G'd and His advice.</span></span>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-76119305495205272782015-04-13T10:20:00.003-07:002018-08-12T11:11:57.799-07:00Interview - If We Become Independent Thinkers, We Can Make a Contribution<div class="post-info" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; line-height: 24px; margin: 5px 0px 15px;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISMLAMICA: You’ve been teaching Islam in the United States for over 40 years. What challenges have you faced and what have you learned from these challenges?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">IWDM: The main challenge we faced was from ourselves. We are newly converted to Islam. And the way we came to Islam was different from other communities. It was intentionally an indirect movement. Teaching Islam at the time of my father, Elijah Muhammad, was a strategy of protest – to protest the condition of black people in America. And I was hoping that, in time, things would get better and that the conditions of black people would be better for blacks in the US.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: You were quoted by the Chicago Tribune as saying: “I have tried over the last 10 to 12 years to encourage [American Muslims] to get more religious education, but I have made no progress… American Society of Muslim (ASM) leaders don’t support me, but the followers do.” Can you elaborate on this?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">IWDM: Yes. Yes. Well first let me first speak of the problem inside our association: the mosques, the schools. The problem is that they were not educated in the teaching of Islam: Qur’an, Arabic, its meanings. They were not given that. So when we go to prisons to accept our imams as chaplains, they tell us that they need to be educated more in the religion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The imams amongst us don’t want that understanding. They stand in the way. They are really working against what I am trying to do. So all organizations that work for reform suffer that. The Prophet, who sought reform, look how he suffered – back biting and all that. So if he suffered that, how can we expect not to?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: What, in your view, distinguishes the experience of Black American Muslims from that of other Muslims in the United States? Has this produced an indigenous Islam amongst Black Americans?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">IWDM: Mainly it’s the history: how we became Muslims, the strange routes that we took, the feeling we have in our hearts and minds, our outlook on everything. I am not saying it is negative. It is positive. It encouraged us to become independent thinkers. And if we can become independent thinkers, then we can make a contribution to Islam in America.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: Black Americans have a rich cultural tradition including jazz, poetry and other artistic expressions. Is there a relationship between these cultural expressions and Islam?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">IWDM: Yes. Yes. I think our entertainment culture has really influenced America’s entertainment culture more than anything else. And we can use this positively to raise the moral life rather than putting it down. I think that nothing has raised the moral life more than that in black American culture. I can name many males and females that have lifted the life in American culture. But nothing compares to the rappers and the musicians.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: What is your relationship with African Muslims and scholars? Has this relationship influenced your role in America amongst the Muslim community? Is your outlook Afro-centric?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">IWDM: There is no direct connection. We don’t have any direct connection with them. They are doing their work given their circumstance in the world and we are doing ours. We are separate. We are trying to advance our lives. But we really appreciate each other. For example, [Howard University professor] Sulayman Nyang. We have contact with him at least 3 or 4 times a year, at least. We meet with him and he shares his views with us and we share our views with him. But as a work effort, we are not connected to him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: As a Sunni Muslim, you’ve never positioned yourself within any particular <i>madhab</i>. Do you follow any particular school and how, if at all, do you instruct your pupils about the <i>madhab</i> system?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s because, as I understand, the <i>madhabs</i> are geographically influenced. We are in a totally different geography in America. And I don’t think we should adhere to any madhabs because those were influenced by their location and they are different based on their location. The Shafi school and the Maliki school in North Africa and the Wahhabi one in Saudi Arabia. Regions are supposed to develop these madhabs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I think we are gradually getting a sense of <i>madhabs</i> in America, especially those like me. We are getting a sense of <i>madhabs</i>. And with the coming generation I think that we will be getting a much stronger sense of it. It is coming more and more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: Does the rise of Barack Obama suggest that the US has progressed in terms of race?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He put an end to the black baby crying and whining all the time (Laughs). And we welcome him. We thank God for him. Alhamdulilah. Even if he doesn’t become the president – but I strongly believe that he will become the President – his success has already sent signals to our spirits, our sentiments. That will make for a new spirit in black America.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: Less attention has been given to Keith Ellison, yet he’s both Black and Muslim. Does his election suggest anything about the future of Muslims in American politics?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I met with him in his mother’s house in Maryland. I am impressed with him. Like all elected officials, when they become elected, they have to recognize reality and the issues they have to deal with. They have to serve the country and they can’t jeopardize that interest by being too inclined to address Muslim problems.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I think that a lot of financial backers that supported him are disappointed because they expected him to do more. But he can’t do more. I don’t think that his meaning for us is anywhere near Obama’s meaning for us, even though Obama is not on record for being a Muslim. He’s on record for being a Christian: he goes to church on Sundays, etc. But just his image as a person helps all of us whether or not we’re Muslim or not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: You were the first Muslim to deliver the invocation opening the US Senate; you met the pope in 1996 and in 1999 addressed a gathering of 100,000 at the Vatican. You’ve met with presidents, the Dalai Lama, and Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious and political leaders worldwide. Is interfaith a cornerstone of your mission? What’s unique about your approach?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There are efforts here and there. We know there are African Americans working hard in the community to revive things. But on the whole we are sleeping. So we believe, unlike other people, other ethnic groups in America, we need to be brought to our true human values. And to do that we need to be taught humanity – appreciation for human values – and we need to join humanity. That is more important than racial identity – identification with humanity. Some individuals, educators, have tried to get our people to wake up to that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I recall a book in which the author wrote, “It seems that somewhere behind me I got separated from my social contract.” And that is just what he was talking about, the original life with all people. If you don’t have that you can’t succeed with your family, you can’t succeed with other people. And the Nation of Islam was trying to do that for us – give us a strong sense of identity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don’t know if you are going to appreciate this language, but African Americans, when we were brought to this land, and were made slaves, the slaves were intensely deprived of going back to their culture or their religions. So we’re raised with an intense void inside. So I believe that is why black people lag behind when it comes to community life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We have giants when it comes to Barack Obama or Colin Powell, and many others. Even females. We have giants, but those are individuals. And they are oppressed. They are <i>depressed</i>. Why? Because they know that the community life of black people is very slow to come around, if it’s coming around at all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: Can you talk about your role in the <a class="ext-link" data-wpel-target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2Ffocolare/" rel="external nofollow" sl-processed="1" style="color: #0066cc;" title="">Focolare</a> movement?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I started to come into the FLO (Focolare movement) when I was invited by Victor Hamdani. They learned about me, paid me a visit, and said that they wanted to introduce me to people that will welcome me. So we went to Pennsylvania and we went to the university there and we met with the Secretary General, with the World Congress of Peace. You see, it was WCP back then. There was a slight change in the name.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They told me at one time they wanted me to become the president in the United States (branch) of the organization. At one point, there was an evangelical (who) tried to block me. He would stare at me hard. He didn’t want me there. But they took a vote. And the guy came back, and said, “Imam Muhammad, now you are the International president.” So we have to work together. We have common goals and beliefs. So we have to work together.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: What lessons can the new generation of immigrant Muslims learn from the experience of Black Muslims in the US?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Well, I think they are learning it. And I think they are doing very well. We have to work our way up by working in the system and by being elected into positions of consequence. And I think that is happening – immigrant Muslims are working in politics. But not only politics, but working in the community and serving the needs of the community. And I think that they are doing an excellent job by working in America and defending their civil rights. So there is a growing, real deeply-rooted Muslim life right now in America.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: Do you think racism has a role in the relationship between immigrant communities of Muslims and Black Americans?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yes. But I think it started a long time ago. I’m not comfortable with you writing everything I say (Laughs). We find that immigrant Muslims show more racism than the white man sometimes because the majority of them (whites) have left it out of shame. They are really ashamed of it, what they did to black people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I find that in the Bible, people find a way, if they want something [racist], they find a way of putting it into Scripture. They got something they can use in the Bible. But the Bible as a whole is against it as we know.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The <i>shaitan</i> has done his work all over the world. And we are all victims. All of us. So we should work together to work against Satan.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">ISLAMICA: Some say that the future of Islam in the US will be led by the African American community. Others predict that the new generations of immigrants will be leading. In 50 years, where do you see Islam in the US?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Islam is a religion that directs us to community, to develop community – under God of course. And to be productive. The same message is in Jesus’ teachings. The Muslims that come here, some of them are very intelligent, and they know their religion. They are already doing things. So in 50 years from now, there’s a big hope.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Michael Vicente Perez is Senior Editor and Fatima Bahloul is Managing Editor of Islamica Magazine. While the magazine is editorially based in Amman, Jordan, both live in Michigan and are pursuing post-graduate degrees and research in the fields of anthropology and media studies.</span></i></div>
The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-70849733533001041402015-01-19T14:23:00.001-08:002018-08-12T11:07:11.360-07:00You Have To Get Prepared To Make It <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I listen to those who are talking about problems of race. They are saying, "Yes, racism is rising again." I don't worry; let it rise. If racists want to occupy themselves .with racism, then that gives us good opportunity. While they are occupying themselves with such, I am going to see if I can be a little better in the competition to get wealth. If they want to tie their hands up with racism, let them do it. There is enough good sense out here in the society now for no one to have an excuse for being racist. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I know what racism will do. It will tie your brains up so tight that you will not be able to see your way into your own house. So why is anyone frightened by the saying, "Racism and racial sentiments are growing and rising again! You know they can turn the clock back?" I know they cannot. The clock is not in the hands of one race anymore. There are other powers influencing the time of day. This is a different world and a different time globally. America has to watch the global hour hands to know what time it is on the national time piece.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There have to be circumstances within for managing those outside of us. Our religion sensitizes us to want to know what is our own condition. And that is another point of interest for the "have-nots" who are trying to make it in the land of plenty. We should take a look at our own condition out of a desire to be better situated internally. Do more and complain less. "I have a toothache," But "how often do you brush your teeth" never comes to mind. What is heard is, "I have to get me a dentist, and he had better be qualified like the dentists in their neighborhood." </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We do deserve the same good treatment that is given to any others. But what are we doing ourselves about our own condition? Are we questioning it? Are we trying to look for causes? That is the kind of sensitivity we need for making it in the land of plenty.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When viewing external factors it is wise to examine the way Christianity is presented. It can be presented in such a way that it will condition us to think very few African American Christians have studied the logic or the wisdom of Christianity. The great majority haven't studied the natural basis for many important things in Christianity. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There are natural basis requiring that there be in believers an appreciation for nature's role in religious matters. Also, it is important to know how religion views history. Many have not done any study, and for them Christianity is superficial and superstition, shallow and too much like voodoo deceits. Those without insight and without a spirit to meet the challenge of heavier concerns will tend to do the lazy thing: spook you and not educate.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I am a student of psychology. We have to be aware that we are a people who came from slavery in disrepair and not equipped to make informed choices. The only religion we could have was the religion of the people who enslaved us. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I can read something to you and pass on to you my emphasis and my way of reading it. It may be okay if I am your friend, for my influences of the reading then will be most likely good for you. But if I am not your friend or if I am the guy who is opposite everything you represent, then it is not good. You may not like this, but the church influence on the whole has weakened the African-American people. The emphasis passed on to us has made little dependent children out of most of the African Americans. I will go so far to say that it has in a strong but smaller degree made the European white man a community of childish thinkers.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I know that I say some things that some people do not like and you may want to get up and leave. But I accept your reaction. I have done this for a long time. I know I have to try and break unholy spells.</span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In many ways the African American people have a "white father." The "white father" is the European white man. I am not talking in the sense of "boss man," for you have gotten away from that. Now you will talk sassy to the boss, threaten the boss, and you might lynch the boss. You have gotten real bold and reckless and notorious lately. The note I wish to make is a religion that gives you to worship the image of a man which is an European looking man — although they say Jewish — is seriously problematic psychologically. It must be damaging the African American self-esteem.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The worship of the image was the first trip off the plantation. Fresh (suddenly) from under the slave master to worship an image that could be him (in resemblance). Well, that is some heavy Voodoo, It is heavy Voodoo to take a slave right out of slavery to one master and have him give himself in slavish worship under a image likeness of his former enslaver. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I do believe that a lot of "Uncle Tomism" was at work in us to make us accept the man-god image of Christianity as we did right out of slavery. I do believe that that was a lot of "hate71 conversion. I believe a lot of those blacks were just Toming" and lying. And in time it became acceptable and normal for us to be in such a mold. I believe a lot of the first ones were just outright lying. They did not believe that. How could they? The man-god image looks just like the man that just got through whipping me to break my human spirit. That acceptance was not normal for the intelligence.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Perhaps you can see it better this way. Suppose the black man had done that to England. Or maybe you could even say to someone other than the white man. It could have been to China or to Japan. Let us suppose that we had dominated Asia and treated Asia like Africa and we were treated. After we degraded Asians we would say, "Okay, we are going to free you now. That was wrong, and that will no longer be allowed in our nation or government. Now here you accept the Lord Jomo Kenyatta as your personal Savior, as your Lord and Savior. You confess all of your sins to him. And if you lean on him, you will be saved." Only "Toming" and lying could be in Asians accepting Lord Jomo. They will accept maybe because they want to be saved from getting any more punishment.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Qur'an and Hadith teach me to be intelligent and to assess the situation. To look at it and study it, to measure it and weigh it, and to let my intelligence and also my good virtues decide what I am to do, I am following Qur'an and Hadith. I am not going to be any wound up toy. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is not racism to talk about race problems. It is not racism to be concerned for my own. It is not racism to tell you to wait two thousand years to walk down Broadway with a "white" woman. That is not racism. That is the concern for the dignity of my own.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Again in showing the beauty of our religion, the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, says "Allah is good and does not accept what is not good." What is said is that Allah does not have any double standards, when it comes to ordering the Prophets, His Messengers, and ordering the people. He says, "What Allah has ordered for the Prophets or the Messengers, He has also ordered for the believers." There are no double standards. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Allah didn't send the Prophets to live up to one standard of virtuous life, and then allow the people to live on a much lower standard. He didn't send Prophets and allow them to violate laws, to do wrong, and then obligate the people to do right. There is no moral conflict there. There is moral consistency and unity all the way. Whatever Allah has ordered for His Prophets, He has ordered also for the people and the followers.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Eat of the things good and pure," was ordered to the Prophets, the Messengers and also to us, the people. Allah says he is going to put in the earth a khalifah. What is this khalifah? It is someone with responsibility for himself and for the good state of society. Someone trusted with authority, rule, and responsibility. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Allah also says that He has given everyone something of His Inspiration or something of His Spirit. We need to come into the spirit that Allah wants for us. What does it mean to have something of Allah's Spirit or of His Inspiration? It simply means that you have to be disposed internally to serve the Will and Plan of Allah. You have to be disposed in your heart and soul and spirit to want to serve the Will and Plan of your Creator.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That is what Allah created in creating a khalifah. He created one who was disposed and moved by spirit and nature to serve the Will and Plan of the Creator. If you have that, I can guarantee that you will be successful in the land of plenty. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Lord Who created us is the Lord Who gave us our nature, the Lord Who gave us our nature shouldn't give us an inspiration that would be in conflict with our nature that He wants for us. But that inspiration should be compatible and should assist and support the nature that Allah made and wants for us. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We are not talking about something unnatural. There is no reason to get spooky and float up into the zone that no one can find. Something of His Spirit is an orientation to obey the best in your human nature. When you want to obey in your spirit, in your soul the best that Allah has created you to be, then you have something of the Spirit of Allah. You have something of Allah's Ruh and His Own Inspiration has come down into you. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">You will definitely be successful if you come into that. No one can give you that state, you have to have the make up in yourself to come into it. But once you have it, you are sate and sound and you will make it in the land of plenty.</span>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-29901706109890397672015-01-03T12:33:00.001-08:002018-08-12T10:44:18.825-07:00Iqra<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: start; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"></p><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: start; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="tel:01/30/198" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="telephone" x-apple-data-detectors-result="0">01/30/</a>1983</b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: start; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">If you read the history of the people who worked against Prophet Muhammed, the kinds of things they did, they were able to come in and pretend to be Muslims.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: start; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">The Holy Qur’an says they would come in and pretend to be the best of the Muslims, they would establish that they are the most enthusiastic Muslims. They would say, "Let us go in among them and establish ourselves as the most enthusiastic Muslims — and then at a certain time, let us just quietly withdraw — and then that will make everybody wonder and will break the community of Muslims."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: start; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">The Qur’an tells us of this scheme they use and there are many, many other schemes and tricks they use to hurt a community, make you doubt, make you not trust the community.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: start; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;">BE AWARE</span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">of the many schemes they work. Read the Qur’an more. You have it in English -- Abdullah Yusuf AH a good translation, Pickthal, another good translation. Read it in English. Don't wait until you learn Arabic. Some of you will never learn Arabic. You'll die trying to learn Arabic.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: start; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">So keep trying, but in the meantime, read the good English translation. Read it daily! Don't wait until Ramadan. Read it daily, become more acquainted with your Holy Book so you will know the tricks that the world pulls to set back the good work of the righteous.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br class="yui-cursor"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: start; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: start; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: start; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">BE AWARE</span> of the many schemes they work. Read the Qur’an more. You have it in English -- Abdullah Yusuf AH a good translation, Pickthal, another good translation. Read it in English. Don't wait until you learn Arabic. Some of you will never learn Arabic. You'll die trying to learn Arabic.</span></p></div>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-9544150914889156342014-12-31T15:44:00.001-08:002018-08-12T10:44:19.708-07:00Inherent Value of the Soul<div style="text-align: start; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">10/02/2005</b><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> </span></div><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b><div style="text-align: start; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b>Imam W. Deen Mohammed</b></div></b></span><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Our Greeting is Peace be unto you, "As-Salaam-Alaikum." We always begin with G-d's Name, asking Him for His Blessings and hoping He will accept what we present. We say, "Bismillah, Ir-Rahman, Ir-Rahim"; With G-d's Name, The Merciful Benefactor, The Merciful Redeemer.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And we say, The Praise and the Thanks are for G-d, the Lord and Sustainer and Keeper of all the worlds. And the prayers and the peace be upon His noble and generous Messenger, and what follows of that traditional salutation.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We will begin by addressing our most important perception of ourselves as Believers. That is the collective life, the life we all share, the common life that we hope will take us always to the common good and not to the hell fires of our passions.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Highly Glorified is Allah, Who says in our Holy Book, the Qur'an, "Attention you people. Reverence your Lord, the One Who created you from a single soul and created from it its mate and caused it to spread forth from both of them males many and females.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"And reverence Allah, the One Whom you involve, asking one another to respond. And be regardful of female entrusted ties of relationships. Surely, at all times Allah is watching over you."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Allah is the Name of G-d for the people we call of the Abrahamic Faith or the People of Abraham. They also are called the Heavenly Religions by Christians, Jews and Muslims. Allah is not the name of any person, no human, no object created or existing in the material world. Allah is only the Name of G-d, the Creator.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We want to address also the soul's inherent value and our belief in Angels. From reading Sacred Scripture, we learn of a belief in Angels. In the Qur'an, we learn that at birth every newborn is assigned two Angels. Its one Angel is given to assist it in the victory in its jihad of moral combat. Its other Angel is assigned to record its deeds over the duration of the person's life.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This focus on Guardian Angels speaks to a necessity imposed by nature to bring souls to accept their own share in the responsibility for the shape and outcome of their own lives.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the final analysis, not even pointing out Satan as the problem will excuse any from their inherent responsibility. That is to say, we are born with many rights. But we also are born with responsibility.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The government of the United States and the Constitution of this great land recognize this inherent nature or inborn gift from The Creator, G-d, as we call Him Allah in Al-Islam for Muslims.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The government document reads, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident." And it goes on to say that not government but "The Creator endowed or gave certain rights to human beings." They are called "inalienable rights"; they cannot be taken away.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The government took the position that not even the power of government can take away those rights. It goes on to name those rights: Life that means the permission to have your own life and not have it in the possession of somebody else is given by G-d.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A long time, as you know, this country tolerated slavery. And slavery took away our life, not only our rights but our life. We were not free to live our own lives. We had to live the life planned for us by plantation owners and slave masters.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The document goes on to read regarding these inalienable rights: "Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When I was taking a few courses in junior college, I remember reading in a text that one of the students had, that the pursuit of happiness is understood as the right to have property. Every citizen in these United States has the right to have property of their own.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We know what G-d says to us in our religions - I am a student of the Bible and the text of other religions, too. But I study mainly the Bible and our Holy Book, the Qur'an.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I remember reading in the Bible references to this same right or inborn nature and its wonderful properties and how these properties are to be protected by G-d, Scripture and the conscious righteous people, so that no person will be deprived of those rights.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And if they ever are deprived, it is the duty of the conscious righteous people to go to the aid of those persons or individuals, who have been robbed of their rights or denied their rights.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We come now to human life and its spiritual or psychological dynamics. We read in the dictionary the meaning of dynamics, and I want you to understand how I am using this word. So I am reading the entry that fits this language I am using here now. "Dynamics is pertaining to energy, motion in relation to force."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Envisioning the conclusion of this world, we find that the ancient people of religion and the words of the seers and the wise tell us how man's world will come to a conclusion. We see this as wisdom, and we see much of it as prophecy. I won't use any of that language referring to the end of time in an attempt to give that picture of the last days.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Most of us in church life or in mosque life or in whatever religion you have, I am sure that you are aware of the many pictures given to us of the last days.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Of natural causes, human life will be pressured into moving forward. Also by the extending or intensifying of pressure bringing to bear more pressure, pressure behind pressure on human life, it is forging a meeting before Him. I am giving you the language of Qur'an. Him means Allah.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The language of the Qur'an is "one pressure behind another, pressuring the hearts of the people." Sometimes, it will become so unbearable, people will wonder, "Is there a G-d." The pressure will have become so much on them.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In another focus on the dynamics of human survival and progress, it is revealed that this pressure and struggle in the soul will bring the human perception to be eye-to-eye with the Fires of Hell.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">'You shall be brought closer and closer, and you shall see Hell with clear vision, with sure perception or correct perception." This is Qur'an. But reference to this is also in the Bible.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In fact, whatever came to us in the Qur'an, it came to us addressing what had come before to the people called Jews and Christians, both called by us as given to us in our Sacred Book, "The People of The Book," meaning the people of the Scriptures that were revealed to Abraham, Moses and Jesus Christ - peace be on them all - and the many others whom I didn't mention.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Though religion has been the world's biggest oppressor, the Qur'an says religions' merits are more than the demerits. The Qur'an's fresh air way of addressing prophetic "End of Time" is intended for the sharpening of human perception.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Perception in the intellect regarding the history of religion how, in one hand, religion has been offering charity and giving charity, and in the other, religion has been greedy for power even over nations.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Nevertheless, important it is that issue baggers serve themselves well by being conscious of the fact that some Scriptures clumsily fabricate a message bearing cloth as a strategy for survival and also as a strategy for war.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">These strategic planners, in planning the death of brutal, savage governments also subtly plan a peace times and a time for discarding their cloth stained with bad blood.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Rising spiritual and social dynamics, rising public awareness and literacy in the public, rising respect in government for the value of the common citizen and their publics, honoring the equal rights of the common citizen in the life of the state, all of such makes understandable the prophetic Qur'anic expression: Day of Religion.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the Qur'an, the expression Day of Judgment is the same as Day of Religion. Of Sacred Scripture, the Qur'an's Words read: "None can touch it." It means none can reach its insights but the purified ones. None can touch it but the purified ones.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Most of man's Holy Scriptures are arduous fitness exercises in moral leadership training. Engagers who remain constantly devoted will grow in moral firmness to qualify for a seat at the table of ethics and global rule or order.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So the Words of G-d in Scripture are intended to produce a special leadership for the world. But you have to go through arduous training. In world religions, the student will find the most disturbing reading, on first sight, when you start to read the Scriptures. If you are morally sensitive and curious, you are going to find the reading of Scripture very disturbing on first reading.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And on second sight, you are going to perceive the most intriguing and productive literary fabrication. You are going to be amazed and will say, "Oh, this is the most productive literary fabrication I have ever experienced or read!"</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hence, the Qur'an's first word in its revealing itself to our Prophet Mohammed, the prayers and the peace be on him, is "Read!" This word, "Read," is prophetic, having to do with old prophecies. Reading can be mentally, morally, intellectually and spiritually liberating. However, the benefits are expected to only be opened for the constantly devoted student.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Regarding using our five senses, they are necessary if we are to gain any knowledge or information. Knowledge and information must come through the five senses. I know perhaps you are thinking that knowledge is intuitive. That is true. But if you don't use your five senses and work those senses very diligently and constantly, there will be not true intuitive knowledge.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In fact, some authorities on the psychology of man say that really the sixth sense that we come to understand - intuition or inspiration - is all the senses in one. It is the power of the five senses producing one sense or one medium - intuition.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Muslims who are students of their religion do not believe that man have any power over intuition. It is the sacred property of G-d, and He does not allow us to have command over it.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So by using our five senses, we are brought into another dimension, a spiritual dimension that brings information to us without our personal control over it. For that reason, we believe in Angels.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is a medium working in our life and in the world to bring us information. Or I should say "mediums." The one medium is the medium we call Angels, but they are themselves performing different roles - there are many.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Prophet spoke of the five senses to protect us from the harm of Satan, the enemy of mankind, or called Shaitan in our religion. He spoke on the five senses, because Satan is the enemy of all human beings.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Why is he the enemy? It is because the human being, in their natural mind or nature, do not want to dominate anybody. They don't want power over people, but Satan does. Satan wants to rule everybody. And Satan wants power over everybody in every nation. That is Satan.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The average human being, we don't want that. Human beings in our true nature do not want that. So we want the sharing of power, the sharing of authority under One Authority that we all agree is over all of us. And that is G-d. That is what we want.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Satan being against that wants to trick us and deceive us and make us think that religion is something different from what G-d intended for us.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And Allah, G-d Most High, says, "Never did G-d prepare something for His Messenger or Prophet, that Satan did try to present the likeness of it."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So if that is true, if G-d produced a Bible, then Satan also wants to produce a Bible. If G-d produced a Qur'an, Satan also wants to produce a Qur'an.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And he wants to make it look so much like the one G-d gave you, that you can hardly tell the difference. Or the average person will not be able to tell the difference.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Regarding love for one another, we need to love one another. How are we going to survive these powerful schemes that are designed to reach the hearts and minds of all people and cause them to deviate from the Plan of G-d? How are we going to survive that, if we don't love one another?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We have to be strongly bonded together. And the strongest bond for humans is love. Thus G-d says, "You should love Mohammed the Prophet (saw), His Messenger. You should love him more than your own self and your own families."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Why? It is because he is the Life that is your salvation. Not only in him, but that same life is in all of you, in all of us. He is representative of the life that is our salvation. We should love him more than our own life, because most of us don't even perceive correctly that life in us that is our salvation.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is called Christ nature. It is called Muslim nature. It can be called by other names. But most of us haven't achieved it, have not reached it and have not grown upon it. So we live a life that Satan planned for us, or we live a life of our own whims, imaginations and impulses or whatever spirits we come into.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Living these lives cheats us out of the precious life that G-d created us for. And we look at these lives that we are living and say, "I don't love this life I'm living as much as I love Mohammed the Prophet (SAW)."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He is your true life and sacred life; he is your best life and he works for your liberation, for your salvation. So he says regarding love and what we desire or wish for ourselves, "The Muslim is one who wants for his brother what he wants for himself." And he warned that we would not be blessed by G-d, until we want for our brother what we want for ourselves.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Praise be to Allah. What did he say about the five senses? Did he say the five senses are to believe in G-d or to witness G-d and to pray and to give in charity and fast the month of Ramadan and make the Pilgrimage to the House? That is what he said when he was asked "what is Al-Islam."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But addressing the five senses, he did not say that. He said, "If you don't use your five senses to take care of your affairs presently and for the future, you are going to lose the ability to use your five senses."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Why? It is because you are not alone; there is the enemy of the human being who has been around longer than you. He is older than you and wiser in the ways of the world than you.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Bible calls him the most subtle of all the creatures on the earth. That means he is the one that you are most likely to overlook. His presence and his wisdom keeps him hid from human view. It is very hard to find him and to detect him.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And his ways of reaching you through your weaknesses are so subtle and so hidden and so intelligent, the average one cannot withstand him and cannot keep back his advances.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hence, the Muslims, we seek refuge with G-d from the Rejected Satan.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>The Prophet said, "If you don't use your five senses to take care of your affairs presently and for the future, you are going to lose the ability to use your five senses." Why?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is because you are not alone; there is the enemy of the human being who has been around longer than you. He is older than you and wiser in the ways of the world than you.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Muhammed the Prophet is reported to have said also on the five senses to his learned disciples, followers and students, "If anyone would wash five times in a river, the person would be clean of all impurities." Now we know some of us can get so filthy, we could wash 50 times in the river and still be unclean.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He was not referring to a physical river. A river is a directed flow of water. What the Prophet is saying is that if you clean yourself with your five senses being put in a stream of spiritual obedience that pursues the same Object or keeps in the same Direction, never reversing, never going off its course -like a train on its tracks, if you keep to that, you will be purified, you will be cleansed.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We have many who have kept to their religious devotion and have their spirit for their Creator and have done that constantly over long periods of time and have realized that they are blessed to be protected from the suggestions of the Satan and protected from the temptations of the world and ungodly people.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Sometimes, the situations they are in are like virtual hell; every description they find in the Book of hell, they see it all around. And they feel the agony of the burning fire touching others, while they are spared. So we know the Power of G-d's Word, and we know He has created us to get that Power by our sincere and constant devotion, never giving up.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The five senses can take us up, that is advance our life, and the five senses can take us down. G-d says, "Whoever spends on his own soul -spends on the upkeep and advancement of his own soul in accord with what G-d wants of him - will certainly be successful. And the one who does not spend on the good condition and advancement of his own soul will certainly be a loser, losing everything."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When Muhammed the Prophet was addressing the five senses, he was addressing the things that operate in our human nature - in our body, in our mind, in our soul, in our spirit - operate there to assist us and bring us closer to the great life and great end that G-d wants for us.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Another reference to the five senses is in the Bible, in the New Testament. It says that Christ Jesus, peace be on him, was approaching and saw a woman washing at the well. He said to this woman: "You have had five husbands over you, and the one you have now is not yours."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Was he talking about the five senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste, feeling? No. He was alluding to those senses as key factors in the problem, but he was not addressing those five senses directly when he said, "You have had five husbands over you, and the one you have now is not yours.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He meant, you have had five senses ruling in your life or in your nature. And you have had a life given to you that compliments your nature and preserves for you your five senses. But now you are following rituals and culture that G-d didn't give you. The world gave you that.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">You are following a sixth principle that shouldn't be your husband and shouldn't be our mother. That is the wayward culture, the culture influenced by The Satan, himself.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Let us go back to the expression Day of Religion that is also to be read or translated as Day of Judgment. The word, Deen, has a connection with the word, Dan, which means Debt.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What is Allah saying when He uses the expression Day of Religion? It is the Day that you must answer for the Debt. The Day is coming when all of us must answer for the Debt.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We may be indebted to the Founding Fathers of the United States for this beautiful land that we live in. But before these United States, this whole earth was G-d's House of Worship. Before the United States and all the nations preceding the United States, this beautiful earth was indeed beautiful - before the nations put their pollutions and their hands on it and influences in it, it was most beautiful.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It was called by the Revelations "The Garden of Eden," a beautiful paradise. When we go to a virgin land, one that hasn't been spoiled by man's works and industry, that small peace of land is called paradise by those who discover it.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Allah, G-d, says in our Holy Book, "The Earth is My House of Worship. The Earth is My Masjid."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When we think about the many tribal people living in their traditional native life, again untouched by industrial nations, their concept of property is different from our concept of property.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">They will say the land does not belong to any one of them. No member of the tribe can claim ownership of the land; the land belongs to all the people.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Of the river, they will say it is mutual property, because "we didn't make it." Even if there are fruit trees, no one native can claim possession of the fruit trees. They say that, because they didn't make it. The fruit trees were here all the time, and they never know when they began.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Do you think the Qur'an missed this great idea and great way of perceiving external objects and reality made by The Creator or formed before man? It does not.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When the Qur'an says, "The Earth is the House of Worship of G-d," it is addressing the idea that has been for generations and generations, in time forgotten, in what we call Native people.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is the idea that what we didn't make, we cannot make claims on it, and we cannot use it selfishly and deny others the right to it. That is common property, and it is an idea a little stronger than the common good. Praise be to Allah.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We look at the saying of the "Day when we must answer the Debt, the Debt to G-d, The Creator of everything." That is the language in the Qur'an and Bible, but more specifically in the Qur'an, calling G-d by title, "The Creator of Everything."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We don't believe that there is more than One Creator. There is only One Creator. It says, "Look at the design in creation, in the matter and in everything you see or behold - in the sky, in the earth, everywhere - can't you see that One Artist did it, not two?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Qur'an says that if there had been more than One, we would see conflict and discord. Because we know when any two minds of bosses from people do a thing, there is going to be a struggle for the upper hand in it and discord, unless they agree in one.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And how do they agree in one? They agree in One Authority over them both. Then they can show unity, consistency, harmony, etc. That is what we want for our life on this planet earth.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We don't want it to be tormented by adverse spirits and Big I's and Little U's bagging issues. There are a lot of issue baggers that have risen up here lately and are very popular. They have no real purpose of their own or no real plan of their own. They just want to stay popular and benefit from their popularity. I call them "Issue Baggers."</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There is the day when we have to pay the Debt owed to our Creator. What are we going to pay Him for? You didn't make your life. You can go back to every human being ever thought of, and no human being formed their life. It was formed by a Superior.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">No human being made the brain, the mind and nervous system to be as it is and to work as it does. No human being created or made such a powerful or wonderful productive computer we call the human life or human person. Nobody did that but G-d.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Whatever we have been able to achieve with ourselves, with our own lives, by studying our own lives and by studying the area out in our environment - the environmental life of both dead and living things - whatever we have been able to achieve is not owing to the computer, any more than the computer you are using deserves credit for what it does.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It does not deserve credit for what it does. The one who designed the computer and brought it into existence and the persons who worked to bring it into existence are the ones who deserve credit for what that computer does.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So you sing beautifully. The persons who sing beautifully and get people to rave and swoon by the thousands, most of them praise G-d. They recognize that their talent is from G-d. So it is for the artist, the painter, for the true scientist, all of them will not accept too much credit. They will mention G-d and acknowledge G-d in their achievements.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I want to conclude leaving this picture on your mind. This is The Day of Religion, the Day of Paying the Debt, making up for the Debt. What does G-d want from us? Nothing. He just wants you to acknowledge that He made all of this possible and not man. That is all He wants.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He wants you to be fair and honest and not proud and arrogant and boastful. He wants you to acknowledge that it is not you, but it is your Creator Who made all of this possible.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What else is this expression saying? It is a comment on the old use of the term "religion." It is telling you that what you have known as religion is charity and theft.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It has given you on one hand and robbed you on the other. The message of the Qur'an and the hidden message in the Bible is to expose that theft and to prepare us for the day we are living in.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is the Day of Manifestation of all good and all bad. So we can make the proper choice, so we can succeed on the Path that G-d gives us.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Thank you. This concludes this Radio Address today. To all of you in our Radio Audience, peace and happiness, the happiness that only G-d can give, "As-Salaam-Alaikum" - The Peace be unto you.</span></p>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-63867831620822816932014-12-31T15:33:00.001-08:002018-08-12T14:40:28.878-07:00Human Life - Grow and Produce<div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; font-weight: bold;">11/05/2006</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If the child could not balance itself and walk like it should, its life would be very difficult. The world is made for people who stand up on two feet. If you crawl around, your life will be very difficult. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Like the plant has to fix itself firmly in the earth to be nourished and grow to its full size, its maturity, we have to fix our child, our sons and daughters, firmly in reality. We have to situate them firmly in reality, so they will be able to bear their weight that Allah has created them for. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">G-d did not create them to stay small. G-d created them to grow, to increase in size, and they need to be given the care and understanding that they need to support their weight and not have to struggle so hard with supporting their weight.</span></span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">GROWING IN A BALANCE</span></b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">If he is not growing in a balance, it is going to be very difficult. Just think, the child is going to grow up pretty soon to be 170 to 180 pounds. Imagine if 100 of those pounds were on one side. Imagine how difficult it will be for that child to walk and balance that weight.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But if the weight is balanced correctly, the gait, the walk is so easy. So we have to teach our children balance in reality. Don't fail to teach them what they need to know to be successful in a real world.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">A real world requires that they accept more and more responsibility as they grow year after year and grow bigger in size. They are going to have to accept more and more responsibility.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Our First Father, Adam, G-d said was a man made of the ground. People of the ground, made of the ground like Southern farmers, know to prepare their children to live in reality. They prepare their children to provide for themselves, one day, food, clothing and shelter.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">They have to be ready to take on a wife for the males and be ready to accept the responsibility to provide living quarters for the female and the children that will be expected from her. The Southern people knew naturally to prepare their children for this reality.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">In the modern city world that we live in now, we don't do that. We leave it to the police or to the gangs or to the criminals to teach our children how to live in this world. We've given up, it seems. It seems that we think we can't manage our responsibility as parents anymore.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We turn them over to the world, and we have to change that. I know that many of you are not guilty of that, but there are too many of us who are guilty of turning the child over to the streets.</span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">IMPLANTED IDEAS</span></b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We are talking about a noun — this plant can be a thing, a living biological body called plant life, and it could be an establishment. It also can be an idea planted in the mind. It could be something "implanted" or put in the mind, hid away in the mind to produce its affect without the awareness of the person or the mind that was impregnated.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Mr. Fard, the teacher of my father Elijah Muhammad, created many things in the forms of ideas and thoughts and language, that he intended to go into the mind without your awareness, without you being aware of the purpose for which it was put in your mind.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">He wanted to have it grow in your mind, in the dark, and affect your life to one day change your life. He was planting seeds in the human mind; that is another meaning of plant.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">You plant something in the mind and it grows in the mind. And some of them will grow with your awareness of them growing, while others are slipped into the mind. They grow without your awareness.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">If a good Shepard or gardener plants seeds in our mind, the results in the future will be good for us. And we may reap a harvest of wonderful and great things, wonderful and great ideas that we couldn't see or perceive with our own minds or eyes.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">It had to manifest itself, produce itself, and show its growth in our life, for us to know, "yes, we are pregnant." Implanting is like impregnating. Implanting in the mind the ideas or seeds of thought is impregnating the mind. Ideas born in the mind are somebody's babies.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I once observed a person talking about the things that he had produced and he was showing them to observers. He said, "I am proud of these. These are my babies."</span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">CREATIVE THOUGHT OUR BABIES</span></b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Animals have sex and produce children; they don't have to go to school for eight years and for four more years and four more after that or six more years. They don't have to have all of that education. It is natural for them, habit for them, to have children.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">It is no big deal to have sex and to have babies. The big deal is to have creative thought. Then as a people, look at what you have done for the space that you live in. Look at what you have done for the space that was once vacant, barren, not productive.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">In a few generations, you look back on that space and see it just blossoming with wonderful creations that came out of the minds of your people. You can look at it and say, 'These are our babies."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That is a human achievement; that's better than an animal. An animal cannot have much of that. Bees build honeycombs and birds build nests and sometimes stay in the trees long after the birds are gone, just like the squirrels.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">But they don't leave skyscrapers. They don't leave factories. They don't leave plants that are producing many, many creations.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Plants! See what the industrialist called his factories? Plants! Adam is the first industrialist.</span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">FROM DUST TO INDUSTRY</span></b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">When I was a young Minister about 30 years ago, I said, "Man means mind." I also said, "We have to go from dust to industry."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The Scripture said that G-d made man from the dust of the earth. It was dry, for it hadn't rained. And He caused the rain to fall down and wet the earth, and He formed the man of the earth. That is just what is happening right now.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">There is dust everywhere, and I am trying to bring a light rain down — a rain of your good feelings, a rain of your good concerns, a rain of your good sentiments, a rain of your affection for the right thing. I am trying to bring that water down and let it touch the dust, to give it something to let it hold together.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Praise be to G-d. We have to become producers. We share as a group a history. I am not just thinking of us as Muslims, for first we have to realize that we are descendants of parents who were brought to these shores, to the West, to America to be slaves, part of slave labor.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We share an experience, and it is an experience that has left strong imprints on our very souls. So in this soul life or spiritual life, we have strong ties to one another.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">It is because we have experienced over the generations, over a long period of time, things that left hurt and things that left joy and pleasure.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">That is what makes us kin-folk. That is what really makes us soul brothers and sisters. It is the experience that we shared that others did not share with us. So we don't have that spiritual bond with them, that depth of soul with them that we have with one another.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The Irish have their own history of suffering and joy, and they are bonded together by their history. Now, if we forget the history or change and don't care anymore about remembering it, we lose the strong ties, the strong bonding. We lose the strong spiritual bonding.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">No matter how much we jump and shout, or dkihr ourselves out into space as religious people, soon as we get out of the hypnosis - or even under the hypnosis - we are not really loving one another.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We are just stroking ourselves. For we go right back to kicking each other in the face and killing each other and robbing each other and giving each other drugs. Why is that? It is because we have been separated from the history of our shared experiences that bonded us spiritually together and made us brothers and sisters. That made us hurt when one of us was hurting. It made us want to do something about bad conditions in our neighborhood.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We have to get that back. And we can get it back. We are getting it back right now, for there is a fine rain falling down. I feel it! It is a fine steady rain coming down on the dust. And the dust is holding together a little better now.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We have to make it all the way. We can't fail those who have paid the big price, so we would be free today. We can't fail the preachers who risked death, knowing the world didn't want them preaching what they preached: Manhood for the Black man.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The White Supremacists didn't call you a man; they called you a boy. Now here comes one who said: "I'm not your boy. I am a man, just like you."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Malcolm responded to one interviewer questioning him on television. The interviewer asked, "What do you all want?" It was a good question, since they were calling all White folks devils and saying they wanted to separate from them. And that their time had come to an end.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">If I had been on the other side, the one who was on the side of the world that was going to end, I would be concerned, too. Maybe we could make a deal. So they asked Malcolm, "What do you want?" Malcolm said, "Ask yourself, what do you want?"</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Malcolm was saying that he was not a boy anymore. That he was a man talking, and he wanted what a man wants.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">"You are a man, and you should know what a man wants." First you want that your wife be "your wife" and not somebody else's wife. And our wife as our community was somebody else's wife!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">They are plowing our community. They are implanting in our community. They are producing in our community. And the community is growing, but not by our thinking and not by our efforts and not by our SEEDS, SEEDS, SEEDS!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">It has to change and it will. Actually, it is changing. Getting back to establishment. The Hon. Elijah Muhammad, before he passed, saw that we had a plant. He called it the Muhammad Speaks paper plant, and the paper grew to be the largest circulation of any Black or African American newspaper in America. No matter how we got it, we got it.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">With that great increase in circulation, the Muhammad Speaks newspaper provided most of the cash flow, more than even the import and export business. It was the greatest producer of cash flow.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">It enabled the Hon. Elijah Muhammad to continue to do big things, like buy thousands of acres of farmland in Alabama, Michigan and other places. There was big growth.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I don't know if the Hon. Elijah Muhammad understood the creation of our First Father from dust. I don't know if he understood the parable of the creation of human life as a parable with a plant.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I do know if he were here to hear his son right now, he would jump and shout. I do know that he loved Scripture, and he would be jumping and shouting and my mother would, too.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I doubt that he understood those things, because a person who understands Scripture and is speaking to a religious body, you can't help but to share that with your congregation. So I am sure he would have shared that with his congregation. But you know they say that G-d works in mysterious ways.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">G-d can cause things to happen, and if you don't know what is going on, it can look spooky. It will have you saying, "What in the world is this?"</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">You'll shake your head to see if it will change or look the same afterwards. If it looks the same, then you have to try to grow to understand what is going on.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">I look at my father's life, his preaching, his words, his actions, and I know G-d intervened. He could not do that by himself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He could not have done that by himself, on his own limited education, thinking and mind. In fact, if he had been the most educated Black in America, he couldn't have done it, unless G-d assisted him and intervened in his life. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I know that for a fact, after looking at his words and his life and how it grew over the many years of his leadership and where he left off. He left off where all people should start.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For many years, he just taught us what we called The Lessons or Teachings of the Nation of Islam, Problem Books, First Student Enrollment, Lesson No. 1, Lesson No. 2, English Lesson No. 1, 14 Questions and Answers, 34 Problems. He had students. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Then he put out a book of his own, How To Eat To Live. And that was a good book, so good that one of the high priestess in the Black community in Herbal Foods and Health Foods had it, when I went to her place - Dr. Fultona of Chicago. Dick Gregory, the comedian and political activist, brought a lot of attention to her.</span></span></div>
The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-88859912940717661792014-10-13T07:09:00.001-07:002018-08-12T10:54:49.834-07:00The Children of Adam<div id="ygrp-mlmsg" style="position: relative;">
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We must understand that it is in that original gift from Allah that we find our equality. We are equal. Whatever Allah gave the first human being, He gave all. We are the children of that one original parent, Father Adam — peace be upon him. Being that Allah has corrected the error of cheapening Adam, in our eyes Adam is excellent and noble and the highly respected father. We are not ashamed of him. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We are "honored" to be his children. Allah Most Beneficent taught Adam "the names" and ordered that Adam be the bearer of responsibility on earth. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Some of you will say, "Oh, he committed sin." And we did too. That is why we are told he committed sin. It is to let us know that we are human, not divine. We are not gods or angels. We are human beings subject to err. Our Holy Book does not present Adam as a man of sin because he erred. We have no concept in our religion as "the man of sin", unless you are talking about Satan. And Satan is not called man, he is called "jinn".</span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">No Father Transmitted Sin To The Generations</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The man of sin would have to be all of us who are sinning. There is no father who transmitted "sin" to the generations. Our Father Adam was the man of obedience to Allah. However, because he was the excellence of common man, he could be tempted and led astray. Adam was tempted by the "Arch Deceiver", Satan himself. It was no ordinary smooth talker. It was the chief deceiver over the "angels". </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">How did Satan deceive Adam? It was a deceit put into Adam's sentiments and sentiment-charged thinking. Satan did not address Adam directly. He addressed Adam by way of deceit, which tells us that Satan recognized that if he went straight to Adam, Adam would reject him. Satan is the chief con "man". Adam did not see that he was being offered something wrong until much later. Our Holy Book says that Adam learned later that he had erred and he repented to Allah for his wrong. And Allah forgave him.</span></div>
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Father Adam Represents Great Potential For Excellence...</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We have a father that Allah made with great potential for excellence but with limitations. Allah did not make a god when He made our father. Allah is the Only God. He did not make an angel when He made our father. He made one with the freedom to make choices to rise up from erring and return to the pursuit of excellence. One day man will wake up and realize that he went wrong and will turn again to the best of himself and to the Greater, Allah. Adam did this, and Allah forgave him.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Isn't that a wonderful story to be told to the generations. Isn't that a wonderful story to tell our young boys and girls who are growing up. We are not ashamed of our Father Adam. We feel very dignified as the children of Adam. Allah says He made Adam to be the responsibility-bearer in the whole earth.</span><br />
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Angels Disagreed; Allah Said: "Wait..."</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Those of the angels said, "We disagree with this." I am giving it to you short for the sake of saving time. And what did Allah say to them? "Wait until I have breathed of my breath into him." Adam's nature is developmental and progressional. His full potential was yet to be seen. Adam was given a capacity to do more than angels. We know that whatever "breath" Allah gave Adam, He gave of it to us as well. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Allah says in our Holy Book that He has given every (human being) something of His Spirit. You may say, "I don't have that . And I guess Adam said the same when he found himself in the clutches of Satan. Adam had been taken off course, as perhaps some of you are. You can repent as your father did.</span><br />
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Perfect Human Nature With Limitations (We Do Not "Image” Allah)</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We know that Allah made the natural man with perfect human nature and with limitations. Allah made man to be responsible on this earth. Now the gift of creation will not take man all the way along the pursuit of his excellence without the assistance given in the revealed word, the Qur'an, Life will require that man turns again to his Creator Who created him and gave him excellence. He will turn to Allah for that additional help. Turn to Allah for additional help to meet the challenges that will come as we live on this earth and make trouble for ourselves.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That is the way we see man by his nature and potential in this religion. Allah (God) is the Creator of everything. He is not a God that has human form or weaknesses. Allah is not in the image of a human being. You may say, "We are in His Image," but that is not the language of Muslims. In the first place we do not try to "image" Allah, We know Allah by and through what He has revealed (the Qur'an) of Himself. Allah is not in physical form. Allah is not contained in matter or in the earth or in any vessel or in any idol or in any creature. We Muslims have to accept that. We cannot picture or visualize Allah in any human person or in any object of the creation.</span><br />
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<b style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Allah Is Creator Without Mistakes</b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Allah is the Creator and everything else is creation. He has not made any mistakes. We do not believe that Allah made a mistake and had to (repent) do it all over again. That is not Allah; that is man. That is us. We make mistakes and have to do things all over again. If there are problems, the problems are ours. This is the Muslim belief.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Is there a religion that says God made a mistake?: Well, just keep your ears and eyes open. There is justification for me saying what I am saying. We do not believe in that idea of Allah making mistakes. We do not think of God as a Being or Force that comes to our aid when we are in trouble as something equal in importance to God the Creator. All good and benefits are from Allah the Creator. I hope you are understanding what we are saying, and when I say "we" I am recognizing others.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This brings us to the natural conclusion that respects the excellence of what is natural for man. When we say nature, we are not talking about the nature we fall down to. We are talking about the nature we are created in to be established.</span></div>
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The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-6496958441596002322014-10-12T15:54:00.001-07:002018-08-12T10:44:19.387-07:00Celebrating the Victory of the Hajj on Eidul Adha<div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(130, 98, 83, 0.0980392); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.701961); font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
Imam W. Deen Mohammed (raa)</div>
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We witness that G-d is One, the Lord, Creator and Cherisher of the worlds. And we witness that Muhammed to whom the Qur'an was revealed is the Seal of the Prophets and the one prophesied in the Bible to take off the heavy yoke of slavery that weighed them down and to break every bond of slavery.</div>
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It is given to us in the Qur'an that he is the one mentioned in the Torah and in The Gospel or Injil to carry out that responsibility. He is a liberator who liberates from all forms of slavery. And the best key for unlocking the locks of slavery is correct education.</div>
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The leader in Islam, Muhammed the Prophet, established for us the Ummah, the global community or worldwide association of Muslims. He established that for us under G-d and following G-d's Guidance, and he established it after the Order of Abraham.</div>
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A learned sheikh told me when I was in Saudi Arabia once, "Imam Mohammed, you know Abraham is a community." He was telling me that Abraham was not just an individual figure but that he was a type of a whole community.</div>
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And when we study Jesus Christ in the Scriptures that were given to the People of the Book and also in Islamic knowledge, we see Jesus' type also as a mysterious Sign of the community, the community of Adam, the community of mankind. We are after that order.</div>
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Muhammed the Prophet taught us and we know Allah says to us in the Qur'an that you will find the Christians, those who call themselves Nazarahs, the people of Nazareth the old name for the Christians, will be the nearest to you in the practice of religion. That is the Christians.</div>
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The Qur'an also says that the world, the People of the Book, will see Muhammed the Last Prophet and Jesus Christ, also G-d's Prophet and Messenger, and they will see them together. So let us keep our spirit correct by not seeing Islam in opposition with Christianity.</div>
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Islam is in opposition with any untruth, with any falsehood, with any indecency. Islam is in opposition to nothing but what Allah has ordered it to be in opposition to. Islam does not pick up any personal quarrels with anybody or any idea or with anything.</div>
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Our obedience is to our G-d Who revealed scriptures before and then revealed the Qur'an as a clear explanation on that which was revealed before. So we must understand from those Words from G-d in the Qur'an, that the Qur'an and Islam are G-d's last address regarding what He said or has revealed to man.</div>
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We are not to go to the Bible. We are not to go to the Torah or The Gospel or to any other religions for guidance. Our guidance is the Qur'an, and we would hope that the whole world of religion would get acquainted with the Qur'an, so they would know what G-d has said more recently on what is right and what is wrong, when it comes to what He said to mankind.</div>
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G-d has spoken to many prophets before, and He has spoken to females, we are told in the Qur'an, and He spoke lastly to Muhammed, the model man prophesied that his day would come. Jesus Christ pointed to Muhammed.</div>
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All the prophets pointed to Muhammed, and that was told to us in the Sign that was given to us in the Ascension and Travel of Muhammed in the Night Visit, when he was seen leading the prophets in prayer.</div>
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Here is a revelation to tell us, the Muslims, that Muhammed is the last one and the last one is completing what the previous ones were all about. Muhammed, addressing this particular point, said there was a house being built by the Prophets and Messengers and Servants of G-d. He said, but there was one stone left to be placed to complete the structure of that house. And he said he is that last stone.</div>
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We know the last stone is the cornerstone, the stone that makes sense of the whole structure. The whole structure is left without sense, until that stone is put there. That stone is the stone of universal brotherhood, the stone of universal truth, the stone of oneness not only for G-d, but oneness for mankind.</div>
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Abraham was all about that. He was prepared to make a great sacrifice, to sacrifice his son. We in Islam say "Is'mail," as it is said in the Qur'an. In the Bible, it is Ishmael. The people of the Book, the Jews and the Christians say it was Isaac or Ishaq, as it is said in the Qur'an.</div>
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As you study what they have with them, it is very doubtful that the Jews and Christians are correct. Not even looking at Qur'an, without even hearing the words of Muhammed, if you just study what they have their own records, it is very doubtful that the one to be sacrificed was Isaac. The truth and evidence in their own records point to Is'mail as being that one.</div>
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Arafat is from the verb in Arabic, which means "to know," arafa. Arafat means the place where you come to know your brother in Islam, where you meet leaders from around the world. Many of you and I have been there. And you meet based upon Islamic equality, the equality of Muslims in Islam.</div>
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The one who meets you there may be the Custodian of the Kaa'ba, the King of Saudi Arabia, or he may be the President of Egypt, or he may be the highest scholar recognized by the Muslim public. When you meet him there, he may carry airs or show self-importance. But the spirit there will be against anyone showing self-importance</div>
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The spirit on Arafat at Hajj will be to recognize brothers as equals. A little man like me, the son of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and Clara Muhammad from Georgia and who were not educated people, I was welcomed in 1967 when I made Hajj with the Muslim Student Association of Canada and the U.S., under the leadership then of Dr. Ahmad Sakr, who lives in California now. He was their president.</div>
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They invited me to join them to make Hajj, and I told them that I didn't think I would have enough money. And they said it would only cost $500, and that was a long time ago. So I talked to my wife, Shirley, and she was happy and wanted me to make the Hajj. So with her permission, we all sacrificed and saved money from other things. It was me, my wife and only my daughter Laila at that time.</div>
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We made the sacrifice from our home needs and I saved the $500 in time to make the Hajj. They were very kind and generous and were handing me food and offering to pay for my ihram, and the brothers were just so loving. But I managed out of my own pocket.</div>
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I knew something about the Hajj from reading, and I felt that G-d obligated us individually to do that. And I didn't want anybody carrying my cross. So I carried my own cross and accepted my responsibility to myself under G-d. I paid for everything, and I would offer dates to others.</div>
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At that time, I realized that the Hajj is a connection for us to all people. This is the most important thing we need to know. Abraham is called the Father of the Many and in Islam, he is called the Imam or the Leader for the Nations. That means that his Sign was bringing all people into the one community of man under G-d.</div>
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And Prophet Muhammed was ordered or commissioned to order that again. In fact, it was never established. It was a hope, and that is why it is called the "millah" of Abraham. They translate "millah" to mean order, but it also comes from the word that also has a play on the "Hope of Abraham, the Upright in Faith."</div>
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We know we also have during the ritual of the Hajj to pray two rakats standing very near the Kaa'ba, after making our seven circles around it. We stand in a place called "Maqaam Ibrahim." It means where Abraham stood and it is understood that it is meaning where he stood in prayer. We follow him making two rakat of prayer.</div>
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Now did Abraham make exactly two rakat of prayer? The way we do prayer was only established in the time of our leader, Muhammed the Prophet. We know they made sajdah, for that is in the scripture that came before the Qur'an. But it is not in those scriptures that he performed salat like we do.</div>
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Although I know he didn't make two rakat like we do, in a sense by interpretation he did. The first two rakat in our Jumuah Prayer, which is just like the Eid prayers except for the takbirs, represents salat. And what happened to the other two rakat of the midday prayer? The education we give, when we give the khutbah, is the other two rakat.</div>
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Our prayer is the prayer of nature and nature prays not only for discipline, nature prays for growth increase. And nothing increases us more than knowledge. "Our Lord, increase me in knowledge" is the prayer of the righteous.</div>
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Abraham should connect us with education that was established by Prophet Muhammed, who was fulfilling the obligation of Abraham, the covenant of Abraham with his G-d. Education should be made available to all equally. If you are poor, you should have a way to get education as much as you want. If you are in the community of Muhammed, the Ummah of AlIslam, you should be able to get education as much as you want.</div>
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"This sounds like the socialist program," you may say. Well, a lot of good that you find not only in the socialist program but also in the capitalist program was in the Qur'an and Muhammed's teachings before it was in the world and in the West. So Islam wants liberal education and public education for all citizens in the Ummah of Al-Islam, that is for all members in the global community of Muslims.</div>
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We don't have that yet, but that is what we should be after. That's what our leaders should be helping us get. They should help us to get closer and closer to that goal of having education available to all members who are Muslims and have it available to them equally.</div>
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No one should be held back because they don't have enough money to get the education. No one should be held back because he is ignorant or dumb. He should be not only encouraged but also inspired. People need to be inspired sometimes and have someone to turn on their interest.</div>
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Islam is not only here to tell you where to go. Islam is here to prepare you to want to go there, to turn your interest on, so that you will want more knowledge and better education. This has happened to many in our association, since I have been the leader. And it happened to many before I was the leader.</div>
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I have had many to tell me, "It was your father who inspired me to go back to school, and I went back and got my degree." Isn't that wonderful? And many have told me, "Brother Imam, it was you...." I know what they mean; it is not me personally. They mean what I teach, and what I teach i? from Qur'an and from the guidance of Muhammed the Prophet and that which agrees with the Qur'an and with the guidance of our Prophet.</div>
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Many, males and females, and some 80 years old have gone back to school and got a degree, after being out of school for a long time with only a high school education. This is marvelous. This is wonderful. Islam doesn't war as much and as meaningfully with physical weapons as it wars with truth.</div>
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And truth is not just a moral issue; truth is a community issue. Truth has to be whole, and the Whole Truth cannot leave out any truth that we need to support our life in the community or in the society or in the world of mankind. We need leaders who are firstly leaders for good moral life, but also who are leaders for social life for man's life in "community."</div>
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Islam is the religion of brotherhood and sisterhood. Islam is the religion that makes all of us one family. This was the purpose of Adam, the first father. And it was advanced by those who followed after Adam: Noah, Moses, Abraham before him, Jesus and finally Muhammed. There are many who are not named and some of lesser importance than those I've named.</div>
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They came to advance the good life of mankind and to make knowledge accessible or available to all members of society, to bring mankind into one public the public of humanity. They came to bring mankind to see himself as one family the family of humanity. That is why we have two fathers Adam representing the natural man and Abraham representing the enlightened or educated man.</div>
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Celebrating the Victory of the Hajj on Eidul Adha</div>
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By: Imam W. Deen Mohammed (raa)</div>
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02/11/2002</div>
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We witness that G-d is One, the Lord, Creator and Cherisher of the worlds. And we witness that Muhammed to whom the Qur'an was revealed is the Seal of the Prophets and the one prophesied in the Bible to take off the heavy yoke of slavery that weighed them down and to break every bond of slavery.</div>
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It is given to us in the Qur'an that he is the one mentioned in the Torah and in The Gospel or Injil to carry out that responsibility. He is a liberator who liberates from all forms of slavery. And the best key for unlocking the locks of slavery is correct education.</div>
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The leader in Islam, Muhammed the Prophet, established for us the Ummah, the global community or worldwide association of Muslims. He established that for us under G-d and following G-d's Guidance, and he established it after the Order of Abraham.</div>
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A learned sheikh told me when I was in Saudi Arabia once, "Imam Mohammed, you know Abraham is a community." He was telling me that Abraham was not just an individual figure but that he was a type of a whole community.</div>
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And when we study Jesus Christ in the Scriptures that were given to the People of the Book and also in Islamic knowledge, we see Jesus' type also as a mysterious Sign of the community, the community of Adam, the community of mankind. We are after that order.</div>
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Muhammed the Prophet taught us and we know Allah says to us in the Qur'an that you will find the Christians, those who call themselves Nazarahs, the people of Nazareth the old name for the Christians, will be the nearest to you in the practice of religion. That is the Christians.</div>
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The Qur'an also says that the world, the People of the Book, will see Muhammed the Last Prophet and Jesus Christ, also G-d's Prophet and Messenger, and they will see them together. So let us keep our spirit correct by not seeing Islam in opposition with Christianity.</div>
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Islam is in opposition with any untruth, with any falsehood, with any indecency. Islam is in opposition to nothing but what Allah has ordered it to be in opposition to. Islam does not pick up any personal quarrels with anybody or any idea or with anything.</div>
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Our obedience is to our G-d Who revealed scriptures before and then revealed the Qur'an as a clear explanation on that which was revealed before. So we must understand from those Words from G-d in the Qur'an, that the Qur'an and Islam are G-d's last address regarding what He said or has revealed to man.</div>
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We are not to go to the Bible. We are not to go to the Torah or The Gospel or to any other religions for guidance. Our guidance is the Qur'an, and we would hope that the whole world of religion would get acquainted with the Qur'an, so they would know what G-d has said more recently on what is right and what is wrong, when it comes to what He said to mankind.</div>
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G-d has spoken to many prophets before, and He has spoken to females, we are told in the Qur'an, and He spoke lastly to Muhammed, the model man prophesied that his day would come. Jesus Christ pointed to Muhammed.</div>
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All the prophets pointed to Muhammed, and that was told to us in the Sign that was given to us in the Ascension and Travel of Muhammed in the Night Visit, when he was seen leading the prophets in prayer.</div>
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Here is a revelation to tell us, the Muslims, that Muhammed is the last one and the last one is completing what the previous ones were all about. Muhammed, addressing this particular point, said there was a house being built by the Prophets and Messengers and Servants of G-d. He said, but there was one stone left to be placed to complete the structure of that house. And he said he is that last stone.</div>
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We know the last stone is the cornerstone, the stone that makes sense of the whole structure. The whole structure is left without sense, until that stone is put there. That stone is the stone of universal brotherhood, the stone of universal truth, the stone of oneness not only for G-d, but oneness for mankind.</div>
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Abraham was all about that. He was prepared to make a great sacrifice, to sacrifice his son. We in Islam say "Is'mail," as it is said in the Qur'an. In the Bible, it is Ishmael. The people of the Book, the Jews and the Christians say it was Isaac or Ishaq, as it is said in the Qur'an.</div>
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As you study what they have with them, it is very doubtful that the Jews and Christians are correct. Not even looking at Qur'an, without even hearing the words of Muhammed, if you just study what they have their own records, it is very doubtful that the one to be sacrificed was Isaac. The truth and evidence in their own records point to Is'mail as being that one.</div>
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Arafat is from the verb in Arabic, which means "to know," arafa. Arafat means the place where you come to know your brother in Islam, where you meet leaders from around the world. Many of you and I have been there. And you meet based upon Islamic equality, the equality of Muslims in Islam.</div>
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The one who meets you there may be the Custodian of the Kaa'ba, the King of Saudi Arabia, or he may be the President of Egypt, or he may be the highest scholar recognized by the Muslim public. When you meet him there, he may carry airs or show self-importance. But the spirit there will be against anyone showing self-importance</div>
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The spirit on Arafat at Hajj will be to recognize brothers as equals. A little man like me, the son of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad and Clara Muhammad from Georgia and who were not educated people, I was welcomed in 1967 when I made Hajj with the Muslim Student Association of Canada and the U.S., under the leadership then of Dr. Ahmad Sakr, who lives in California now. He was their president.</div>
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They invited me to join them to make Hajj, and I told them that I didn't think I would have enough money. And they said it would only cost $500, and that was a long time ago. So I talked to my wife, Shirley, and she was happy and wanted me to make the Hajj. So with her permission, we all sacrificed and saved money from other things. It was me, my wife and only my daughter Laila at that time.</div>
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We made the sacrifice from our home needs and I saved the $500 in time to make the Hajj. They were very kind and generous and were handing me food and offering to pay for my ihram, and the brothers were just so loving. But I managed out of my own pocket.</div>
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I knew something about the Hajj from reading, and I felt that G-d obligated us individually to do that. And I didn't want anybody carrying my cross. So I carried my own cross and accepted my responsibility to myself under G-d. I paid for everything, and I would offer dates to others.</div>
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At that time, I realized that the Hajj is a connection for us to all people. This is the most important thing we need to know. Abraham is called the Father of the Many and in Islam, he is called the Imam or the Leader for the Nations. That means that his Sign was bringing all people into the one community of man under G-d.</div>
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And Prophet Muhammed was ordered or commissioned to order that again. In fact, it was never established. It was a hope, and that is why it is called the "millah" of Abraham. They translate "millah" to mean order, but it also comes from the word that also has a play on the "Hope of Abraham, the Upright in Faith."</div>
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We know we also have during the ritual of the Hajj to pray two rakats standing very near the Kaa'ba, after making our seven circles around it. We stand in a place called "Maqaam Ibrahim." It means where Abraham stood and it is understood that it is meaning where he stood in prayer. We follow him making two rakat of prayer.</div>
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Now did Abraham make exactly two rakat of prayer? The way we do prayer was only established in the time of our leader, Muhammed the Prophet. We know they made sajdah, for that is in the scripture that came before the Qur'an. But it is not in those scriptures that he performed salat like we do.</div>
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Although I know he didn't make two rakat like we do, in a sense by interpretation he did. The first two rakat in our Jumuah Prayer, which is just like the Eid prayers except for the takbirs, represents salat. And what happened to the other two rakat of the midday prayer? The education we give, when we give the khutbah, is the other two rakat.</div>
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Our prayer is the prayer of nature and nature prays not only for discipline, nature prays for growth increase. And nothing increases us more than knowledge. "Our Lord, increase me in knowledge" is the prayer of the righteous.</div>
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Abraham should connect us with education that was established by Prophet Muhammed, who was fulfilling the obligation of Abraham, the covenant of Abraham with his G-d. Education should be made available to all equally. If you are poor, you should have a way to get education as much as you want. If you are in the community of Muhammed, the Ummah of AlIslam, you should be able to get education as much as you want.</div>
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"This sounds like the socialist program," you may say. Well, a lot of good that you find not only in the socialist program but also in the capitalist program was in the Qur'an and Muhammed's teachings before it was in the world and in the West. So Islam wants liberal education and public education for all citizens in the Ummah of Al-Islam, that is for all members in the global community of Muslims.</div>
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We don't have that yet, but that is what we should be after. That's what our leaders should be helping us get. They should help us to get closer and closer to that goal of having education available to all members who are Muslims and have it available to them equally.</div>
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No one should be held back because they don't have enough money to get the education. No one should be held back because he is ignorant or dumb. He should be not only encouraged but also inspired. People need to be inspired sometimes and have someone to turn on their interest.</div>
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Islam is not only here to tell you where to go. Islam is here to prepare you to want to go there, to turn your interest on, so that you will want more knowledge and better education. This has happened to many in our association, since I have been the leader. And it happened to many before I was the leader.</div>
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I have had many to tell me, "It was your father who inspired me to go back to school, and I went back and got my degree." Isn't that wonderful? And many have told me, "Brother Imam, it was you...." I know what they mean; it is not me personally. They mean what I teach, and what I teach i? from Qur'an and from the guidance of Muhammed the Prophet and that which agrees with the Qur'an and with the guidance of our Prophet.</div>
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Many, males and females, and some 80 years old have gone back to school and got a degree, after being out of school for a long time with only a high school education. This is marvelous. This is wonderful. Islam doesn't war as much and as meaningfully with physical weapons as it wars with truth.</div>
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And truth is not just a moral issue; truth is a community issue. Truth has to be whole, and the Whole Truth cannot leave out any truth that we need to support our life in the community or in the society or in the world of mankind. We need leaders who are firstly leaders for good moral life, but also who are leaders for social life for man's life in "community."</div>
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Islam is the religion of brotherhood and sisterhood. Islam is the religion that makes all of us one family. This was the purpose of Adam, the first father. And it was advanced by those who followed after Adam: Noah, Moses, Abraham before him, Jesus and finally Muhammed. There are many who are not named and some of lesser importance than those I've named.</div>
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They came to advance the good life of mankind and to make knowledge accessible or available to all members of society, to bring mankind into one public the public of humanity. They came to bring mankind to see himself as one family the family of humanity. That is why we have two fathers Adam representing the natural man and Abraham representing the enlightened or educated man.</div>
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Praise be to Allah and let us accept this religion. It is clear and plain and easily understood. Let us also get benefits from G-d's Signs to us. In the Qur'an, G-d says that this Qur'an is not only guidance, but it is also medicine. It is healing for that that is in the heart or in the breast of mankind. It is a healing.</div>
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We glorify G-d. We praise Him with our whole being mind, body and spirit. And we worship none with Him and associate nothing with Him as G-d, for He is G-d Alone, the Creator of everything in existence, including His Prophets and Messengers. Praise be to G-d, and they cannot be equal; the created and the Creator are not equal.</div>
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Christ Jesus said in The Gospel, "The sent is not equal to The Sender." It is still written there in the New Testament as plain as day. I don't know how anyone misses it, for it is there as plain as day. It is saying that Jesus Christ is not equal to G-d Who created everything.</div>
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Praises be to Allah. G-d gives us Signs. And the signs are the sun and the moon. And G-d says, "The sun and the moon make sajdah, prostrate, in obedience." As I said I don't think Abraham actually did two rakat as we do them, following the tradition of Muhammed the Prophet. But nevertheless I believe he did two rakat.</div>
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Abraham's stand in prayer was for the nature, for the human life in its moral excellence. And his stand in prayer was also for education to come to the ignorant, liberal education to come to all the children of Adam.</div>
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His prayer was two rakat, and our prayer is two rakat, on the most sacred days and happiest of days. On Friday our prayer is two rakat. And on the two great Eids, our prayer is two rakat giving time for education.</div>
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Our training under the Hon. Elijah Muhammad was a big help for our understanding the great, big, wide field of Islam, which we came into with my leadership. His teaching was a big help. He taught us that we should be educated, and he taught us that religion is knowledge not just shouting and singing.</div>
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He turned us on to being students of religion. Nothing turned me on to that before my father. My father was the one who turned me on to being mentally curious, rationally curious to understand religion. I am a product of his influence, the influence of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad. In spite all the erroneous things about G-d and religion and man that</div>
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were in his package, the intent was good. And if you were sincere, the result was good.</div>
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I read in the Bible where it says that one of the great prophets gave the people an invitation where they could go in two directions they could go left or they could go right. But if you read carefully what he said, their best choice was not to go left or right, but to go straight in the center keeping a healthy balance away from the extreme right and extreme left.</div>
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He said, "I give you two ways." And then he said something else to them that made it clear that you have to guard yourself from going to the extreme in these two ways and keep straight down the middle. What he was saying is that "righteousness is your salvation, though I give you these two paths."</div>
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Is this in the Qur'an? Yes. And we are called "The Midway Community" not going to the extreme right and not going to the extreme left, keeping the correct balance. This is the Ummah of Muhammed the Prophet.</div>
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Other signs are the sun and the moon. These signs are not just in the religion of the recent people in history or of the Medieval Age. These signs go back to ancient times; Ancient Egypt had these signs, the sun and the moon. Ancient Egypt had the sun as a god and the moon as goddess or daughter of the sun.</div>
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The sun was called Osiris in Ancient Egyptian religious myth, and his daughter was Isis in the Ancient Egyptian religious myth. And Allah says the sun and the moon "sajudan." So don't follow the dumb and the blind who will lead you to more ignorance, where you will never discover the inheritance that G-d created you for.</div>
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G-d created you for your rights and inheritance, and we know that man will rob man of his rights and inheritance. And the Bible says, although we don't accept it that it is charged to a prophet of G-d, that a certain one who became a prophet of G-d robbed his own brother of his birthright and also of his inheritance.</div>
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So we know that man will rob man of his birthright and inheritance. Your birthright is the right to be a full human being with a complete mind and a complete soul, with an appetite not only for spiritual things but with an appetite also for material things.</div>
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We have in the Qur'an, "And the family of Quraish, G-d has secured them against hunger and fear, referring to the material and spiritual. It is a sign for us to not accept this world of spirituality or spiritual leaders who invite you to spiritual existence and don't encourage you to have material establishment and social strength and stability.</div>
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You can't have it without the whole life. You have to have it with some of this good earth, as the Hon. Elijah Muhammad said. That was his language. And you have to have knowledge of the earth that G-d created and knowledge of yourself.</div>
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This is what put suns in the heavens and hung moons for the night. Not the moon that you look at to see when the Eid or the next month starts. It is the moon of your own intelligence and the sun of your own intelligence. They are only signs that G-d put out there in the physical world to direct you to your own makeup.</div>
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That, "Just as I have hung a great light up in the sky to light the world, so you can find your way around and work and grow in knowledge and in mass, I have given you an intelligence that if you let it come on, it will light up your human world and will make you productive in the world, just as the sun makes the world productive from the things that grow in the earth."</div>
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You will be a source of energy, enlightenment, light and warmth. The light does not only shine, it also warms up. The light is not just guidance alone, it is also healing. Man discovered that a long time ago, that if you don't let the sun shine into your house, you will have more diseases. Have good windows and open the windows and let the sun shine in; it kills bacteria and harmful germs.</div>
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When you make sajdah, you reconcile your intelligence with the creation of G-d. Put your head on G-d's creation and let your head agree with G-d's Laws in creation. Then you can stand up again as a man. Allahu Akbar. And for G-d is the Praise.</div>
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We celebrate and observe the Greater Eid of Eidul Adha, and we wanted to be right with the Hajjis, to do it.</div>
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When the pilgrims are celebrating on the tenth day of the Hajj, we want to join them here in our Eid celebrations. Also I want to bring to your notice this. The Hajj starts with the New Moon just as the Fasting. But the celebration of the Fast comes at the end of the month, when the New Moon of the next month is sighted.</div>
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It is different for the Hajj, in that the Hajj starts on the first sighting of the New Moon and ends on the tenth day of the month. So the great celebration is on the tenth day of the month.</div>
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This is the day that animals are slaughtered and cooked and prepared deliciously. It can be beef or lamb or camel, which they eat in Saudi Arabia and is a good "workout" for the jaws!</div>
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They have delicious milk and plenty of food. And I knew that no matter how poor you are, you can't get over there and tell anybody you can't eat. You will have to turn down food. Although I have some criticism for him, let me tell you this about the Custodian of the Kaalaa, the King of Saudi Arabia. On a certain day of the week, anyone from the public can come to his table and eat.</div>
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During Hajj, if they know you don't have food, almost anybody who has food will share it with you. But also the administrators of the Hajj Saudi Arabians are in charge will see that you have food and are fed.</div>
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But so much food is bought and slaughtered by the Hajjis, that at the end they have a lot of waste. They try to give it away, but there still ends up to be a lot of waste. And it is very difficult to avoid waste, because they want to have more than enough. They don't want anybody to say, "I wish I had some more of this or that." But don't ever worry, you will be fed.</div>
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Going back to Abraham his sacrifice was the sacrifice of his son, "Isma'il." He was ready, prepared for that sacrifice. But it really tried him; it tried his soul and his mind. He, was convinced-and his son was too, that "if this is what G-d wants of you, then do what He wants of you." So his son Isma'il agreed to be sacrificed.</div>
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When Abraham had him on the alter or chopping block, G-d spoke to him and said, "Abraham, you have already fulfilled your obligation. You have done your sacrifice."</div>
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So the sacrifice that Allah wants from mankind male and female is that we be prepared and ready to give up anything, including our own life wife, mother, father, son, daughter and our own life even if we think this is what G-d wants of us.</div>
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We have to be prepared to do this. Some ask, "Why would G-d want me to give up my mother?" Maybe your mother is the enemy of G-d who is helping the Shaitan. G-d does not ask that you take her away to kill her, but G-d does ask that you be prepared to accept that she be killed. It could be a child who is a threat to the way of G-d.</div>
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G-d does not ask that you do it, personally. And how do we know that? Because Muhammed came to make everything more compassionate and softer for us. He would not permit a relative to go in the battlefield and kill another relative. He would tell the relative to let the non-relative do battle with that person.</div>
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It is beautiful how he prepared the way for the healing and the future solidarity of the Muslims. If I had to stand in prayer next to a brother who killed my father, I don't care if my father was a disbeliever, that is not a comfortable place to be in. Rather, it is simply that he lost his life in the war, not like a family member killed him.</div>
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This is a very sensitive religion and at the same time a very strong religion. That is the best. What did Abraham sacrifice in actuality? It was a lamb. What is this saying? It is saying his son, Isma'il, was a lamb, a lamb in his passions.</div>
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A lamb has very peaceful and loving passions. Isma'il represented the peaceful and loving passions in Abraham's following, which he was ready to sacrifice. This was spiritually based, because Isma'il was in the wilderness and his mother did not have food for him.</div>
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Isma'il, the son of Abraham, represented the peaceful and loving passions in Abraham's following, which he was ready to sacrifice.</div>
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This was spiritually based, because Isma'il was in the wilderness and his mother did not have food for him. She was panicking and running in desperation. She left her child, because she did not want to see him die in that state, without water in the desert.</div>
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After she came back to him, after panicking and running around, she saw that a well had sprung up at his heels. This tells us that Isma'il's essential nature and character were spiritual, but not educated.</div>
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Water coming down represents education, but this wasn't water coming down it was water coming up out of the ground. So this was his natural spirituality that G-d gave to him, before his spirituality was educated being rain.</div>
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Abraham built wells, as the Bible or old scriptures said before the Qur'an was revealed. He, the father of Isma'il, also had natural spirituality. We call him Abraham, the Upright in his nature; he had the natural, pure spirituality.</div>
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Water doesn't just come pure from the sky; water comes pure from the earth. The earth and sand beneath the ground filter water and purify it.</div>
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Abraham was willing to sacrifice this natural spirituality for social advancement. He was ready to sacrifice that child or nature of the society for the social.</div>
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G-d told him, "Don't actually kill the boy, but kill this nature in him, this nature to follow naturally the urges of his soul or his spirituality, and educate him. You don't kill him and throw him away; you kill him and feed him to the poor."</div>
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Don't sacrifice that nature. Feed that nature to the people. In other words, educate the people regarding the natural makeup of mankind. Teach the people their natural life and natural makeup, how G-d has given them wonderful urges for their establishment in their own nature. Teach them, so they will be enlightened regarding that that is in them as a created being.</div>
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Is there any support for this in scripture? Jesus Christ is the biggest support I have to offer to you right now. Jesus Christ is called the body that is to be eaten on the table. It says, "Take this wine representing my blood and drink it.</div>
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Take this bread representing my flesh and eat it." It is a sign that we are not actually to eat his flesh, but we are eating the body of his knowledge that has its basis in his flesh in his natural body.</div>
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Educate the people and teach them the natural makeup of mankind, so that they will have the many sciences the sciences of the blood, of the skin, of the bones, of the muscles, of the nervous system. There are a lot of sciences in this body.</div>
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So here is religion coming and inspired in common people. Muhammed was a common man, not educated and did not know anything about religion. Jesus Christ was a common man; he came from the people who were looked down on.</div>
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The Bible said, "Could any good thing come from the place where he comes from?" The people from whom Jesus came from were disregarded; it was thought that they didn't have anything to offer others. But out of that place came the leader for them, Jesus Christ, peace be upon the Prophet. He was a Sign to the world.</div>
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When G-d says, "the sun and the moon make sajdah," He is saying: "You, man, with your sun and moon should make sajdah. With your social light and with your spiritual light, you should put your head on My Earth I created, because I brought you out of the earth, like I did your first father Adam.</div>
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"Your origin goes back to the earth, My Creation. Whatever you are, you owe your existence to Me and My Creation. So make your obeisance, your submission, your sajdah to the Lord of the heavens and the earth."</div>
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Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. La ilaha illallah. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar wa ilahilhamd. And for G-d is the praise. We thank G-d. We glorify Him. And we hope to enjoy the Eid today, and if there is any celebration for us for three days, we hope that all of us enjoy our Eid.</div>
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Know that Muslims are bonded together as one family. We are to love one another, and we are to put that love into practice.</div>
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The best proof of our love is that we want for our brother and sister what we want for ourselves. That we seek advancement and seek growth and progress, not to be selfish with it, but to share it with our brothers and sisters.</div>
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Peace be unto you, As-Salaamu-Alaikum and Eid Mubarak.</div>
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The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-31010549705684560802014-09-25T03:37:00.001-07:002018-08-12T10:44:18.856-07:00The Story of Joseph<div id="ygrp-mlmsg" style="position: relative;">
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<b style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By Imam W. Deen Mohammed (raa)</span></b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Joseph said," Set me now, over the storehouses of the land. I will indeed guard them." Now, this is the story of Joseph. What you must understand that in the Story of Joseph, G-d says," In the story of Joseph is a great sign to all the seekers." So Joseph said, "now set me over the store houses." So who should we put in, over the distribution of goods, over the regulation of affairs, the regulation of the distribution of wealth. All governments must have some regulations. Who should we entrust to be over that? To be fair and just by all people. Someone who's integrity has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Someone who has been tested, and passed the test. Who came under the great pressure, who came under the great test, and passed the test. Not only as an individual, it as a people.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For G-d tests persons, and He tests people. And we were on the way to come into the position of Joseph, but we let the turbulent sixties, and all of its deceits, (the invitation to get the green dollar), the high emphasis on black beauty, and black power. We let all those deceits, and the invitation to smoke reefers, and burn incense, and go backwards in the path of civilization, rather than forward. To go to crime, and oppress your own weak people. Black on black crime. All of that mess that developed, knocked us out of the great opportunity to become the Joseph of the Western Hemisphere. Why, if we had been loyal to our profession, to our professions, to our claims, if we had been loyal to our better aspirations as we published all over this land, and throughout the world. If we had remained loyal as a people to those high aspirations, today, we would be the most beloved people in the Western Hemisphere. And people that's before us, in position of risks of high end to the other people.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Because we were people, and our forefathers, and our ancestors, following the spirit of freedom, the spirit of high moral conscious, high moral minds, the spirit of obedience to G-d that was all together with us. And we were warning the racist, warning the white man, that if he didn't hurry up and do what G-d wants, that G-d would bring terrible consequences on him. And if he is a conscious Christian, he should see his sins and repent. Wasn't that the voice of the African American (Indigenous African American) until he got freedom. Then when he got freedom, he forgot. And as a consequence, he knocked himself out of the opportunity to become Joseph of the land. Who Knows, maybe we succeeded? Maybe Joseph is right here? Who knows? Yes, who knows? Maybe in this small community of Muslims, maybe we are the Joseph? Now, I know we got a lot of bull out there too, but I'm talking about the good ones. I didn't invite the bull. I am not responsible for their presence here. But those who are truly and sincerely behind what I represent as a Muslim, maybe we are the Joseph. I think we have passed the test.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He say's "set me over the storehouse. I will indeed guard them as one that knows their importance." Isn't that wonderful. He would guard them as one that knows their importance. So Joseph was a morally oriented or a disciplined man before G-d established him. Because of him being a morally disciplined man, G-d chose him to establish him. But G-d said that He was going to teach him the interpretation of things that had been recorded or reported, and try him in situations in order to establish him in the land. He had the moral quality, and the moral tenacity, the obedience to his moral excellence. He had that, but G-d wanted to make him fit for the position over the man. To make him fit, G-d had to put him through trials so the world, looking on, would know that He has been qualified. Yes. They put him in all kinds of situations under the most powerful, and under the most wicked, and brought him through. Proved his excellence in all of those trying situations, G-d proved His excellence. And He taught him the Secret of things. The mystery of things to be interpreted. And He said, "in that wise, we establish Joseph in the land". The Bible says, "thus did we give established power to Joseph in the land to take possession therein." Didn't G-d say in the scripture, "My righteous servant shall inherit the land. The wicked shall not rule continually." G-d said, "He shall lead them on by their deceit to their doom." And He said, "my righteous servant shall inherit the land."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We have forgotten that. I'm not talking about we, the Public. I'm talking about we, the religious establishment. We have forgotten that G-d has required righteousness of us, in order for us to be put over the wicked, for if we don't have righteousness and only have the claim of being religious people, that doesn't give G-d the justice to put us over them. Only when we're righteous, and they're wicked. We're obedient to the moral code, to the moral law, and they're disobedient. They disrespect it. Then G-d will choose the righteous over the wicked. Is that clear as day?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So don't think that G-d calls us to be clean and saintly, and holy for an inferior role on this earth. He calls us to be excellent in every respect and it begins with moral obedience. Not for an inferior role on this earth, but for the choicest role on this earth. And there will come to past, over and over again, and still the people fail to see that it is the righteous that G-d gives the power too, and give the land too, if they will only stand up, and be what they're professing to be, therein for to take possession of the land therein.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We bestow of our Mercy on whom We please, and We suffer not to be lost any reward of those who do good. So if we remain constantly obedient to G-d it may be some time coming, but know for certain, that eventually, you will be put over your oppressors, your persecutors. Those who throw spiritual corruption in the path of your moral struggle. You will be put over them, and G-d will remove that headache from your life. It came with Mohammed, (pbuh). It came with righteous servants of G-d, before Mohammed (pbuh). It can come again if you all would only be strong. But G-d wants us to know that this great station on earth, that we can have, is not better than the hereafter. So, the next verse says, "But verily the reward of the hereafter is the best, for those who believe, and are constant in their righteousness." Praise be to Allah.</span></div>
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The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1973974164648505564.post-20454068507755437282014-01-02T15:14:00.000-08:002018-08-12T12:43:10.700-07:00Know Our Priorities<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We praise G-d. We worship Him alone. We seek His Assistance and His Guidance and His Mercy. For without His Mercy, we would not have been guided to the right way. We ask Him to forgive us our errors in the Faith, in the religion, and for our sins that we commit against our own selves. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">We ask Him to strengthen us in our position and our stand and to put it in our hearts and in our spirit a desire to always want to be better and the desire to be counted among His servants, the righteous. We offer Him worship and offer worship to none other. He is G-d alone. We do not worship any, except Him, being sincere and offering Him religion. Religion is for G-d.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The first home constructed for all people, according to our book, the Book of G-d to us and for us in our lives, G-d says that the first house built for the worship of G-d for all people is that house in Mecca, called The House, the First House, and it is our qiblah. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Qiblah means that it is our center and that we turn to that direction to make prayer and we also go in that direction or travel to that House to make Hajj or Pilgrimage. The House is very important.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If you are like a recorder that takes the message and gives exactly back what was given to it and no more, you don't have Islam. To have Islam, you have to be taught. Allah didn't send a Messenger with a book and say, "You read it and that is enough." </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Allah sent Muhammed to teach you the message. Allah says that he was sent to teach the Qur'an, not just read the Qur'an: "To teach them the Qur'an and also the rules of logic, of wisdom."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It is not enough to turn know the importance of turning toward the Qiblah or the Kaa'ba. You also must understand the meaning, the importance of facing that House in prayer, going to that House and saluting it before you begin your Hajj. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">It is a Home built for all mankind; it did not say it is a Home built for Muslims. It says "a Home built for all mankind." </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">What is this teaching us? It is teaching us to not be racist. It is teaching us to be one in the family of humanity and to accept all people as your brothers and sisters in humanity. That tells us that we are obligated, then, not only to Muslims but to the whole family of humanity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">First things first, we know that. Your first obligation is to those nearest to you. But after you have managed to take care of those nearest to you, your duty includes those who are farthest from you. Our learned teacher, Maulana Maududi, may G-d give him paradise, said that Islam is an idea for the reform of the whole earth. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Muslims have a mission to not only take care of their own families and their own Muslims, but we have an obligation and a mission to extend that kindness to the whole planet earth.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What's most important to Muslims are important relationships, vital relationships. The first of those relationships is our relationship with Allah, with G-d upon taqwa. Taqwa is translated by some as "G-d consciousness." Some translate it as "fear of G-d." G-d says, have this taqwa, this reverence or caution for G-d, and for family relations. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">It is also used in another way and less important way, I would say. "And have respect for the fire." So if you look at the many ways this "taqullah" verb form is used in Qur'an, then you will come away with the more complete understanding of what taqwa is. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Don't just read one meaning in Qur'an. Read the whole Qur'an. All Muslims are supposed to read Qur'ran at least during the month of Ramadan, or have it read to you. If you can't read yourself, then someone should read it for you. We have wonderful recordings now of Qur'an that can be played during the month of Ramadan.</span>The Mosque Careshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06095638576616116077noreply@blogger.com0