Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed Speaks

What is Islam? What is a Muslim? Who is Prophet Muhammed? 

These are questions I was asked recently in the context of providing answers that could be used to introduce Islam to interested persons and to better acquaint a new Muslim with his or her life of faith and what the religion of Islam identifies as proper or good human conduct. These three straightforward questions always appear together and are always relevant. They cannot be reasonably separated from one another.

I know of Muslims, or those identifying as Muslims, who cannot answer these questions in any appreciable way. They will search for the academic, dogmatic, textbook, or ritual answer which most of the time is of little or no use to the questioner and any who are sincerely searching for truth and faith. The answer given is too often given to satisfy the formal interest, but it makes few connections to serve the needs of the common person. It is heavy on terminology and light on accuracy. These kinds of weak answers cloud the correct image of Islam.

Preachers and leaders of the Islamic faith will tackle what many of them consider to be bigger questions than these straightforward ones. But, without the correct understanding of these fundamental, central matters, they will be misleading others on those so-called ‘bigger’ questions and confusing the matter for understanding Islam. I know of a group of people in America and a leader of that group who in the eyes of many in the public are best qualified to answer this question on Islam and Muslims.

In reality, his idea of what Islam is with its material god and material destiny, is as far as can be from the truth of Islam. He knows well that his group’s concept of G’d and man is not recognized and cannot be reconciled in any way with Islamic teaching but he continues to identify himself as a leader for Islam and Muslims. This is why these questions are always relevant in every time and all times. There will always be these kind of issues confusing and obscuring the Truth for some selfish or otherwise misguided aims. 

This is not only a problem in America. In fact, the problem is more serious in parts of the world that are traditionally known as Muslim societies. What Muhammed the Prophet taught and emphasized has long been lost from these societies. This trouble in the Muslim world conscience has in many ways influenced the problem in America. If the correct picture of Islam was preached and demonstrated in its correct language and emphasis in the so-called Muslim world then the problem in America would not be as acute.

My position, and the position of the late leader of Muslims in America—Imam W. Deen Mohammed, is that there is no society on this earth that is truly under or characterized by correct emphasis in Islamic teaching and authority. There are many that claim it, and many that have had it in their illustrious past.

Many of these so-called ‘traditional’ Muslim societies claim authority over Muslim life, but few if any of them attempt to govern human lives with respect for Muhammed the Prophet’s emphasis in faith and the related quality of existence he taught that G’d intended for men and women to have in society. These Muslim countries have Islamic history and the texts of Islamic teaching, but the content of Islamic life has escaped them.

The problem for identifying and presenting the correct understanding of Islam cannot be solved without first recognizing that the Islamic community on this earth is intended by G’d to be one global community of faith, with one perception of faith and human purpose. That is to say, one correct perception of G’d, His Oneness or Unity, and Authority as Lord and Creator, and one accurate idea of human life and its purpose as He planned and created it. This means that Islam takes into its concern every single thing that defines an individual human life—male and female, and all human lives collectively in a living human society. Islam has in its aim the whole human community as originally intended by its Lord and Creator, with concentration on its origin and form, its living existence, and its objective and destiny. 

Islam values both Nature and Intellect, placing Nature in its respected role to nourish and support Intellect. It elevates justice to the highest summit, even above freedom, and preserves it by pointing at the root of every single oppressive scheme that can include a too permissive freedom. It promotes both maleness and femaleness and makes a special, singular pursuit of family development. It protects for every soul a dignified access to the material world, projecting a respected role for wealth, its acquisition and its distribution, and accepting no rationale for any society to make poverty a permanent condition. It champions knowledge and isolates ignorance. It invites to patience and goodness, raising a societal conscience that unnerves the selfish, cures the greedy, and warns of a certain punishment for those committed to weakening human life through psychological schemes using G’d’s Name.

Islam invites to purity and rejects filth—morally, ethically, in thought and deed, in body and even clothing. It protects race dignity in every shade of skin and grade of hair, in every conceivable contour of culture, by highlighting the common and classic human identity. In so doing, Islam makes common-sense reasoning the primary weapon against all arguments attempting to justify the forming of race supremacist logic. Islam dismantles every man-god lie ever conceived and perpetrated, naming man as the obedient servant of the One True G’d to be his most noble identity.

Islam disenfranchises every boogey-man myth that attempts to construct an all-powerful evil or Devil. It uncovers every deceit and blocks every lie that the devil tells man about his created human purpose and destiny. It thwarts every scheme the devil conceives to weaken mankind’s just pursuits, and places Satan’s influence over human life as inferior and subordinate to man’s inherent excellence.

If humans acquiesce to sin and its influence, it is not from a sinful nature. Islam says human perfection has flaws because man is not Divine. Human life is built upon this perfect nature and when it fails it is from a weakness of the person or the society that can be corrected by repentance and G’d’s Forgiveness at any time and for any shortcoming.

Spirituality in Islam is lucid and balanced. It is not and can never be any form of drunkenness that makes sense only in a state of escapist euphoria or ecstasy that is irrelevant and impotent in addressing man’s actual and real condition in the world. Man’s spirit as Islam defines it is a directional urge created by G’d as a necessity for him to enable sustained progress and continuous improvements of the human condition. It does not inflate or deflate his natural ego.

Prayer for Muslims is a conscious act in the individual’s and community’s progress toward recognizing, remembering, studying, and rehearsing Divine Guidance as one of two absolute essentials for societal development and stability. It’s committed partner is Nature itself. In other words, Islam is the Natural way and also the Guided way. G’d reveals in the Holy Book of Muslims a supplication to Him for man to recite often in his natural state of pursuing Truth. It is a part of the first chapter of the Holy and Generous Qur’an. It reads:

اهْدِنَا الصِّرَاطَ الْمُسْتَقِيمَ

صِرَاطَ الَّذِينَ أَنْعَمْتَ عَلَيْهِمْ غَيْرِ الْمَغْضُوبِ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا الضَّالِّينَ 

In introduction I have said all of this to make the point that every essential human need is addressed in Islam, as G’d planned and created human life. So, in answering these important questions we must begin here with the correct presentation of G’d, and man’s relationship with Him, and how Islam is named for that relationship. That relationship as categorized by Islamic teaching in Muhammed the Prophet’s demonstration is the example for human progress in all times and places for as long as man exists and until G’d’s Creation is concluded by Him. These ideas and how they are presented in Islam serve to simultaneously define Islam, Muslims, and the role of Muhammed the Prophet. 

In the teaching of Muhammed the Prophet—the one who is trusted and authorized by G’d to define Islam in the world according to what has been revealed to him by G’d, and to instruct and demonstrate to humanity its fundamentals, he says firstly that “Islam is built upon five.” And on another occasion he explained the five saying firstly that “Islam is to witness that nothing deserves worship except the One G’d Alone with no partners joined to Him or associated with Him, and to also witness that Muhammed is His slave-servant and His Messenger.” 

These two statements say everything as one rational faith expression. It says everything that needs to be said in composite about what Islam is, who Muslims are, and who Muhammed is. Its proper understanding is the universal tool G’d gives humanity to unlock human potential for its intended purposes and destiny. How? To approach G’d properly is to recognize His singular authority over everything He has created and to acknowledge that human life has been planned by Him.

In order to derive the full benefits for human life a human being must obey G’d in that Plan. Man must feel in his makeup the debt of thankfulness to the Lord-Creator, and he must humble himself with gratitude to that One G’d for everything that has been put in place by Him to support and sustain human life and existence. This implies that everything that is created belongs to the Plan. So, therefore even that which exists outside or alongside human life obeys G’d’s plan for it. This understanding leads to the the best and most satisfying and contented human existence. This is Peace.

What follows in Muhammed the Prophet’s statement of what Islam is connects humanity to Divine and Universal Guidance (prayer), Universal Love in application (charity), Discipline upon Universal Purpose (fasting), and recognition and enjoyment in the collective Universal Nature that is fundamental to and evident in all systems of peace and order (obligatory visit to the House).

This all implies that everything that exists is part of a systemic whole and that everything in Creation around man yields to man its benefits upon compliance with these universal laws. This, then, is al-Islam. Those who generally recognize this as their common human property, entitlement, and inheritance are Muslims. Those who adhere to it in their consciousness and accept the life of willful obedience to the Lord and Creator of it all are all the peoples of the rational faith, followers upon the ancient tradition of Abraham. Those who act upon it to improve the universal human condition as service to G’d are the righteous, all of them earning and deserving G’d’s Pleasure and Reward.

Finally then, the human being who was chosen to demonstrate how human life is to be lived in its full form and in every detail toward a completed life of human excellence is Muhammed. He is not a god. He is not a son of G’d. He makes no claim to a divine nature, other than to join nothing in worship to the Divine One Who created him. Muhammed, the prayers and the peace be on him, is, like all of us, a flesh and blood human.

He was chosen because of his willingness to obey his own natural inclination to excellence and then to recognize that he owed obedience to the One who was responsible for creating him and giving him inherent properties to arrive at his this best and most excellent existence. It is this awareness and humility that enabled Muhammed to become G’d’s Messenger and meet with and be taught G’d’s Word. It is this disposition in him that positioned and qualified him to be the Prophet of G’d. Muhammed, then, is the universal example to all mankind in all righteous human interests and endeavors that lead to the establishment of the just society that G’d wants and planned for humanity.

I must conclude this explanation by saying that  what I have emphasized here bears the influence and distinct mark of the Muslim-American tradition of Islamic knowledge. It is the Islamic teaching language of W. Deen Mohammed, son of Elijah Mohammed. We continue in that tradition by G’d’s Mercy.