QUESTION: As-Salaam Alaikum wa Rahmatullah wa Barakaatuhu Imam E. Abdulmalik Mohammed. I want to say that Prophet Muhammed is our leader. I don't think of myself as a supporter of any leader but him but I respect leaders. I respect you. You have given many of us looking at this community a lot to think about if we care about this community.
I read what you have put out here and I listen to you. I am not comfortable saying that you are my leader or the leader for our community. But, I can't ignore you or what you are saying. I can't disagree with you. If you weren't in prison there is no way I could not support you as the leader.
Your message is most clear and most correct. There is not any other leader like you in our community who I feel comfortable to accurately represent our community in public like on TV or giving public addresses like Imam Mohammed. You are not like any of these other ones at all. You are completely different. In my mind I hear Imam W. Deen Mohammed when I read what you say. I don't feel that with any of the other ones, not even close. My problem is you being in prison. I guess I am like some others who say that they will wait to decide about you when you get out of prison. That said I do have a question that I know I would have been posed to Imam W. Deen Mohammed if I got the chance. I am very interested in your answer and I will definitely share it. What is your take on the President of the United States?
IMAM EARL ABDULMALIK MOHAMMED: Thank you sister for your honesty. As-Salaam Alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakaatuhu, and that is Peace be on you and the Mercy and Blessings of Allah. I understand your concern. I do not want to draw any more attention to the prison situation than is necessary. It is not positive for me or my loved ones or for our community. It is a burden. Even when it is no longer a concern I won't give it much of my attention. And, I won't permit others to make it an issue. I know it is a strategy for some to be used against me down the road. But they have their planning and G'd is above their planning and His Plan is superior to theirs. I have faith in Allah's Plan.
You have asked a weighty question, and a timely one. I have not wanted to speak too directly about this President. I have made some comments, but they were general about some language used and decisions that were made by his office and administration. I have not even shared my thoughts with people who work closely with me. I have listened to them and their thoughts mostly.
I do not, and I don't believe the American people, can excuse abuse of the office of President. It is an honored office by all nations and leaders in the world because of the idea of Democracy and the importance of it in the world. Those who have the responsibility of the Office have to have an awareness and consciousness of the reach and influence of the Office beyond a political pulpit for obtuse or selfish ideas of human life in society. We may think of it in political terms, and it may be defined by news media in those terms, but it is a moral office. The way our world is organized now, this modern world we live in, the Presidency of the United States has moral purpose and wide moral influence.
What do I mean by that, moral purpose and influence? I mean that the way in which the American people understand the value of their human lives and what their lives as citizens looks like, is profoundly influenced by what comes from that Office. If that office is advocating a certain perception of the value of human life, then the character of the American people is impacted by that, their relationships with others are impacted by that, the disposition -the spirit, of the whole nation of citizens are impacted by that. This is the moral concern. It is and will always be above the political concern. Human lives are not the quotient in a political equation, or pawns in political strategies and power games. They can be thought of this way, but in the reality of the universal human existence, human life and its value is the central, moral matter of all peoples and governments.
How human life is characterized in a nation ultimately determines the endurance of those nations. If the leaders see the whole life of the common people just as soldiers to be directed for a political destiny, the humanity in those persons will eventually wake up to that. They will think on that and they will make a determination if that is what satisfies them. Human life can be coerced by national agendas, but the design of human nature and its purpose belongs to the One that Designed it and the purpose that He designated for it. The destiny of human consciousness is to understand human purpose, and when that purpose becomes manifest or is within the grasp of the intellect of the common people's urgings, they will identify with that and push against that which denies that.
I do not like to say this, but it is clear to me that this President abuses the intelligence of the common people of this country, and the solemn nature and dignity of American citizenship. I cannot speak to any legal issues or political agendas, or even political language. What I know is that my moral sensitivities as a human being and as a citizen in a country that has fought back against the language and policies of oppression and unjust divisions along lines of race and ethnicity for the purpose of advantage of one race against another, or one community against another in bitter, ugly contention, are offended. I am morally offended by the language of this President.
To be more clear, what is most offensive is not that he may favor one group over another for whatever reasons he has, it is that he encourages the contention and strife, and appears to me to enjoy this spirit of contentiousness for no other reason than advantage of one group or disparaging another group. To me, this is a fundamental abuse of the Office. If I am to identify in the American identity from whatever ethnic group or religious group I belong, then the leader of the country should also identify with me in that shared identity with his public language of what an American is, and what America is as an idea. If the President's idea of an American is fundamentally flawed and in conflict with the basic American idea as defined in the founding documents of the nation, or in conflict with the statements and thoughts of its finest American statesmen and leaders through history, or seeking to deny to its citizens the honor and dignity of citizenship rights through his language and appeal, then he is abusing the Office.
That is what I would like to say. The office of the Presidency of the United States of America as an office of moral impact and influence is being abused, and it stands to have this aspect of the office threatened for a very long time, unless those of us who understand it address it properly and within the best interests of the citizens and best perceptions of the American idea. I believe this is also related to what is called 'climate change' in that the distinction of the seasons are being blurred. Summers are hotter and longer, winters colder and more severe. It appears that the orchestrators of language in society, those advancing the Enemy of man's agenda, want there to be two seasons in this order of the moral human-relationship climate they want to become dominant. They want two extreme seasons, and as a part of their plot against human life they want to manipulate high offices all over the world to usher it in. It is not only a scientific reality. It is a social scheme.
But, I believe in the American people. We are an innocent people on the whole. Most Christians are innocent in their faith. Most Jews are innocent in their faith. Most Muslims are innocent in their faith. As religious bodies we want for each other what our religions point to as the best human life, and we want to believe our leaders want the same. This is a very special influence, a very special power we might say, a very special role, a very special leadership that we who have faith in G'd, have in America. America is a very special society in the history of humanity, and it has endured periods of heavy sin. These abuses we see now can be corrected, we believe. I will leave it at that for now. This is our Islamic message and I know you know it is worthy to be shared.