Allah, the Most High says in the Qur’an:

وَالَّذِيۡنَ اتَّخَذُوۡا مَسۡجِدًا ضِرَارًا … لَا تَقُمۡ فِيۡه

لَمَسۡجِدٌ اُسِّسَ عَلَى التَّقۡوٰى مِنۡ اَوَّلِ يَوۡمٍ اَحَقُّ اَنۡ تَقُوۡمَ فِيۡهِ‌ؕ فِيۡهِ رِجَالٌ يُّحِبُّوۡنَ اَنۡ يَّتَطَهَّرُوۡا ‌ؕ وَاللّٰهُ يُحِبُّ الۡمُطَّهِّرِيۡنَ‏

“And there are those who establish a mosque by way of trouble-making and causing harm… never stand in it. There is a mosque whose foundation was established from the first day on proper regard (for G’d and sacred matters). It is more worthy of you standing in it. In it are men that love to be purified, and Allah loves those who love to be purified.”

Expert commentators and scientists of human history, culture, religion, economics, and even psychology have in times gone by predicted and warned of an impending and general instability for global society. The warnings have ranged to predict effects upon the emotional, psychological, spiritual, material, political and moral stability of man. Holy Scripture addresses these matters most clearly. The learned followers of G’d’s Messengers are among these informed warners.

We might think of these commentators as ‘seers’ or ‘watchers’. Some may even refer to them as ‘prophets’. Not ‘Prophet’ in the way that Islam preserves that term in Muhammed the Prophet’s leadership finality - the prayers and the peace be on the Prophet, but more in connection with a common usage of that term meaning to warn and inform us. The wide-ranging and far-reaching implications of the instability they predicted touches each of us most obviously and directly in the way we understand the operational condition of man’s institutional life. Simply put, it is the question of whether vital human institutions are getting healthier or unhealthier, or whether we are perceiving them to be healthy or unhealthy, that measures stability and instability of our world.

Our confidence in the stability of these global, continental, national, regional, and local institutions is a main point of reference for maintaining our moral balance in the world. Loss of our moral balance will guarantee instability. How we estimate the state of human institutions also serves as an intimate view into the moral strength and standing of individual communities, especially in those that are thought and spoken of as ‘vital’ communities. Communities become ‘vital’ when they are an important primary or a major secondary contributor to that which feeds the support of a just existence for man. These communities are not utopian. They have many flaws and shortcomings, but they commit their own institutions to the causes of just order and they intend to serve their people by freeing them and trusting them in their inherent G’d-given honor and potential.

If a people are not in a primary or the secondary group, then that people are considered a third world entity. A Third World designation is not necessarily a negative connotation in this explanation, and the designation means more than a ‘developing’ society. In the wise language of the watchmen and watchwomen who act in what they regard as sacred duties, this ‘third world’ designation could mean that a people are in need of ‘vital’ supports to meet their own basic demands for a just human order. These basic demands are fundamental to all living and thriving societies. They are inalienable and inherent. They are the life-giving tributaries that flow in and out of our world’s great societal centers of education, culture, wealth, and faith.

At one time in the very recent past, the Muslim-American community that is traditionally associated with the leadership of Imam W. Deen Mohammed -though relatively small in number as juxtaposed with the great Muslim populations throughout our world, was considered by many Muslims and non-Muslims a vital community of Believers. Through its special history, its purified understanding and language of faith and knowledge, it’s innocent character, and its clear-headed ethical leanings, the world was introduced to a presentation of human life in Islamic perspective that it had not heard or registered from anywhere on the earth in over a millennium.

From this Muslim-American people -original in that description of religious and national identity, and descended from African slaves brought to continental America, came a new language that literally “remade the world”. It remade the old world of Islam and remade identity for blacks in America. It remade the culture and history of America, making mythological icons of its heroes. The world may yet come to know and appreciate them as the ‘Bilalians’ with a role in calling humanity to balance and stability by way of Faith, and then Freedom, Justice, and Equality; but for most they are known as Black Muslims or the Muslim-African-American community.

In 2022, nearly 14 years since the passing of this community’s well-known leader, Imam W. Deen Mohammed -may Allah grant Him mercy, the productive life of this people, as measured and characterized by those great achievements, is in a state of decline. Just as the Muslim world came to lose sight of Muhammed the Prophet, this people stand to lose Imam W. Deen Mohammed. It is not directly felt in the individual member all at once. The individual member will fight for an identification with Imam Mohammed, and so the yearning in the soul for his leadership remains. The loss registers in the community’s institutions. The institutions and their leaders have lost his thinking and lost access to the principles upholding his standing as a Qur’an guided community-man in the world of peoples devoted to a just balance and stability for all humanity.

The proof of this is that institutional instabilities go ignored and then denied, and thereafter unaddressed. This brazen neglect erodes the confidence of the individual Believer, and the irresponsibility of the leaders in the process is ultimately mirrored in and linked to the many examples of instability in the world plaguing and burdening the whole human family. In other words, not only does the Muslim-American community decline, but in its decline the world’s populations suffer an absence of necessary moral voice and vision. To the extent the Muslim-American community loses Imam W. Deen Mohammed, the world loses a critical, innocent point of view and access to Muhammed the Prophet’s leadership and message for humanity. To willfully decide not to publicly support and promote our best leadership messaging and tradition is to commit a sin against humanity, no less egregious than denying a deserving patient a life-saving diagnosis and medicine.

Our Islamic community in its strength is a necessary ethical voice and example for leadership stability in our world. Conversely, in its weakness and cowardice, its deliberate withdrawal and absence from the table of discussion, it contributes to the problem of instability for vital institutions in the world. If there is no clear view of peace in the world, or Justice, or freedom, or equality then our small community that began in the depressed areas of Detroit, Michigan in the early 1930s has a degree of culpability in exacerbating that problem.

The fact is that our moral reach is of such concentrated strength, that the absence of Imam W. Deen Mohammed’s influence has contributed to, and is directly connected to, the general lack of confidence that world populations are displaying toward important leadership institutions. But, it is not only that our voice or message needs to be heard in general. It is also that we say in the world to witnesses that we have a present day leadership continuing in our finest tradition and that we support that leadership. That we demonstrate by our public activity that we are remaining on the task of building our life in that specific language with that specific focus. If our public language changes then our public commitments follow.

If we are fundamentally changing the way in which we refer to our institutions then this is an indication that we have changed our commitments. Borrowing from the prevailing winds of influence that promote a certain language and point of view concerning issues of race and gender, international peace and war, public health, community development, etc. is NO leadership. If the prevailing influence is a ‘wind’ of instability propagating subtle and long-term policies of distraction from healthy community values, and the Muslim-American leadership is deaf to it or joins in it for reasons of a selfish, self-serving, personal ego-recognition expedience, then our community has contributed to the current and impending trouble.

Many examples come to mind: If the order of the day is gentrification in our major cities which at its core betrays the dignity of the character of local communities and the vital contributions of grass roots leaders, and our leadership joins that order in the name of some kind of confused or misdirected notion of community progress, then we have lost the vital connections. If we have ostensibly opposed the dog-whistling to nationalist sentiments and white supremacy coming from an amoral Trump leadership, but are unwilling or ill-prepared to speak a word of correction to the outrageous decision of a Biden administration to distribute drug paraphernalia in poor American neighborhoods to a vulnerable, uneducated population in the name of racial equality, we have lost the SACRED connections.

Imam W. Deen Mohammed was a man of truth and balance. Truth in faith. Truth in knowledge. Truth in relationships. His commitment to truth showed its sacred balance in his understanding of individual and community dignity as Allah had established it in his own person and developmental circumstances. I am speaking of his private dignity as an individual and his public dignity as a community. I am speaking of him as the special child and designated helper of the first leaders and teachers of the Nation of Islam. I am speaking of him in his real existence and role as leader of Islam in America introducing for the first time the values taught in the Qur’an and displayed by Muhammed the Prophet in American English.

In truth, Imam W. Deen Mohammed is himself, THE Muslim-American community. In the history of his person, his thinking, his reach in America and the world, and most especially in his private and public commitment to obeying Allah and Guidance and teaching that life and discipline in the open spaces of this world, Imam W. Deen Mohammed was the whole African-American Muslim community in its design and purpose. Any other person or local leader or local mosque membership that can be thought or spoken of constitute only a part of our life as a people. Imam W. Deen Mohammed is THE WHOLE PEOPLE. We do not know our Muslim Life in its proper dimensions, in fact we cannot even approach Muslim life properly, without consulting him in the verifiable tradition of his words and acts.

The aberrant among us have constructed a false mosque and they are contributing to instability in our world and the world. Therefore our life is not and can never be the doctrines of guess-work making false claims to the roots of language and truth; nor the so-called ‘advanced’ Arabic spookism of super-holy logician tricksters; nor the sinister plotting of the Imam in the Scheme of Last Instructions. Changing or deviating from the perspective and strategies of Imam W. Deen Mohammed for speaking to the needs and purposes of human life has created pockets of instability in Muslim-American institutions, and further supported a pathway for faulty reasoning that fosters instability in our world.

Recently, I was asked why I have not been invited to participate in the various organized public discussions, public study groups and expert panels organized by our leaders. To me the answer is obvious, but it is also complex. These groups and their organizers want to keep me and what I represent away from their public. They have surreptitiously undermined, plotted against and stolen Imam W. Deen Mohammed’s public from him. That is the answer. They know that if they invite and include me, their publics will be restored to Imam W. Deen Mohammed’s leadership. They are committed to disorder and instability.

Why?

They do not believe that human life deserves the dignity G’d gave it. They don’t trust the original man G’d made, inspired, and then trusted to its own natural discovery of SELF. They make war on that innocence in their mosques and in their instruction. They deny what G’d has Determined as the purpose and processes for that independent discovery that must take place in every human soul and every human community. They have their own understanding and notion of Guidance. They want to translate the meanings of that Guidance that suits their picture. They want to tell you what is important in Imam W. Deen Mohammed’s commentary that supports their picture, not what he emphasized.

They know just to have me seen, even if they were able to mute me, would bring the people more directly to Imam W. Deen Mohammed’s spirit. Not just his knowledge, but also his spirit. If I would have established myself as a colleague of theirs in their past and current interests they would have been of my most staunch supporters and defenders. I think they would even endorse me as their leader or most trusted representative. But because I continue to follow Imam W. Deen Mohammed’s instructions to me to “Never put yourself under them or their influence. You belong to me,” they will never acknowledge me in my role or acknowledge any important contributions that I would make. They stand over a people that they hope to deliver for the highest possible price to a world of instability of which they have a role in making unstable.

We fight to restore a just stability in this world under G’d’s Guidance and with HIs Mercy by succeeding Imam W. Deen Mohammed. We do not budge from the commitment, not now, not ever. It is our sacred duty. It is my sacred duty.