Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed Speaks

QUESTION: Imam Abdulmalik, please explain the meaning of our salute of the Prophet in Imam W. Deen Mohammed's way of teaching.

IMAM EARL ABDULMALIK MOHAMMED: Thank you for this question. This is the direction we want to move in. We want to address the important matters of faith that lead to better understanding, stronger faith, and better Muslim establishments for our group in America. We are Muslims with the proper understanding and basis in Islamic faith and knowledge. We have a tradition that is responsible for us coming to this proper understanding. We did not arrive here in a vacuum. We got here by way of Imam W. Deen Mohammed's teaching. It would seem unthinkable to any other people that we would abandon our excellence, but increasingly the language of our expression for Islamic life is not his or our own.

We are too often expressing a perspective on Muslim life that requires us to be a people other than our true selves. We are speaking a language we do not truly understand and cannot explain. We are copying others and not fully understanding the important matters that characterize an Islamic life-content, and we are vulnerable to be manipulated by others who see and have studied this tendency in us. They know that the plantation ghosts still lurk about us and still frighten us into a condition of doubt in our natural human esteem. They know many of us are still suffering a crisis of the self, and still searching for our true human selves and our true human form. They will take advantage of what they recognize as evidence that we do not trust ourselves, and that we are inclined to reject our own elevated record of teaching and understanding in our own tradition of knowledge in favor of something less.

Our enemies use this to identify those who can be manipulated so as to weaken our whole group. We have developed hypocritical habits that are obvious and glaring to cover our inadequacies. We will pretend to have knowledge but will not know how to identify or characterize the foundation of the Islamic principles that we are speaking about or quoting. We overstep and over-talk. We use terms like 'fiqh' and 'aqeedah' and 'shareeah' and by our misuse of these terms do not appreciate the fact that it is the language that scholars have derived from the Holy Qur'an and the Prophet's teaching. We do not realize that the terms themselves reflect a natural use of Islamic knowledge and understanding, and that a similar portal is open to all who exert themselves for that scholarly purpose.

This kind of activity is alive among us because a big number of Imams who are over our people are not firmly grounded in or not interested in Imam W. Deen Mohammed's tradition. They hate that I even use this language 'tradition of Imam W. Deen Mohammed'. They have been made to think that in associating with Imam Mohammed's tradition they are promoting something un-Islamic. They have been made to think that in associating with and embracing and advocating other schools of Islamic thought they will be more acceptable and more authentic as Muslims. They are pitiful and shameful. They are a burden on our group soul. They disgrace our special history as Muslims in America. They have made a slavish trade of their self-worth, and those who continue to sit under their influence and do not raise a serious objection are outright hypocrites to their own Islamic identity. The Islamic content of their lives is null and void, meaningless. They are only pretending to be Muslims. True Islamic sensitivity does not live in them and they will never accept responsibility for a true Islamic life. They are satisfied with a store-front identity. They want no real establishment. Brother, your question exposes this weakness and hypocrisy.

There is a distinct minority of Muslims who have never wanted to see us established in Islamic knowledge unless they tutored it. This speaks to what I have referred to as the tradition of Imam W. Deen Mohammed. When I speak of Imam Mohammed's tradition these types and their African-American students are hit directly. Do not think that I am aiming at them. I am presenting the matter as Imam Mohammed sensitized and authorized me to present it. I know what I am doing and why. This is what he entrusted to me and those who think like this. Those who know Imam W. Deen Mohammed best know what is truth. They know that I am speaking is nothing but the plain truth.

Imam W. Deen Mohammed wanted us to be more well established in true Islamic faith and correct Islamic knowledge and understanding. We must recognize that what is important for our Islamic life and identity in America is Imam W. Deen Mohammed. We must appreciate that it is a very special work that he did in America. He did not want us to have only a surface understanding. He was not satisfied that we learn Arabic for the purpose of proper pronunciation of terms derived from the Qur'an by scholars of other Muslim peoples. I am not making a mockery. I am pointing at a weakness in our moral constitution that we are masking with a false-piety. He wanted our understanding to be deep and organic, both within ourselves and in our American reality.

America is a peculiar and morally-confusing environment, and circumstances in America for supporting human life and human community development as G'd intended it is presented and defended in America in a very confusing way. America is a society that values freedom, but its notion of freedom can also justify a legal license to an immoral liberty. America's moral peculiarity interprets freedom as a property of the good, the bad, and the evil -and it will promote competition between these forces. In America, the more good and decent you are, the more you embrace private goodness and rise in the promotion of public goodness, the more you will feel the darkness and pressure of oppression. This is a serious conflict for the conscientious Muslim, and in order to make sense of what is happening you must have a special help to protect your Muslim life.

Conscientious Christians, Jews, and others suffer this conflict along with Muslims. This is why Imam Mohammed advocated for interfaith relationships. Islamic teaching in America without this awareness of the nature of American freedom will be dogmatic and ritual-based, and it will lose its Islamic character content, and its human appeal over time. It will lose the commitment of younger generations of Muslims to the power and pull of America's seasoned, peculiar environment. It is because the teaching will not contain the ethical vigor to interpret and decode America's peculiarity in a way that allows for the Prophet's teaching to be effectively heard and applied in the American environment.

It will be proven that wherever Imam W. Deen Mohammed's tradition is absent, in terms of understanding the Prophet's teaching and applying it in the American environment, in time that group of Muslims will lose the content of their Islamic life and will ultimately be reduced to reacting to America. This has proven to be the condition for the appeal of extremism among Muslims. Specifically, I am speaking of that which retards the progression of moral life and thinking that should eventually manifest as intelligent, productive life. Islam, as Imam Mohammed taught, wants a private and public moral and ethical consistency. This is Prophet Muhammed's and the Qur'an's teaching, but the language of that teaching must pay attention to the historical influences, the social influences, the material influences, to reach the mark. America is very peculiar when it comes to this.

So, the work that Imam Mohammed did in America cannot be taken as just ordinary. It was highly skilled work, among and on behalf of, and in the context of, a very unique people in the history of mankind. The condition of the African-American people, their history as a group soul, is not like any other story. Imam W. Deen Mohammed's work was in this context and it was also in the context of another strange interjection into the world -the teaching of the so-called 'Nation of Islam.' Imam W. Deen Mohammed's tradition is a Blessing from Allah.

I am not saying this as someone emotionally drunk. I am not saying it as an uneducated person. I am saying it as a strict discipline. I am saying it as an expression of that which is supported by precise and strict Islamic reasoning. I could say and have said he was 'guided'. I have said that his tradition is the 'guided tradition.' I am not taking liberties with Islamic requirements of faith and knowledge. Still, many Muslims do not comprehend what we are speaking of when we say he was 'guided'. This is because they are not students of the peculiar influences of the American environment and the circumstances of the African-American historical soul as the setting for Imam Mohammed's special work and the cause for his special role.

The salutations on our Prophet in the teaching of Imam W. Deen Mohammed is the language of Muslim leadership strategy for progress. Imam W. Deen Mohammed taught us that we should say when referring to the Prophet, "Prophet Muhammed, the Prayers and the Peace be upon him." He also would say, "we pray the highest salute and the peace be upon him, and what follows." This is also the common expression in English translation of the words of the Holy Qur'an and the Prophet's teaching referring to the status that Prophet Muhammed has in the life of the Believers in this world and also his status in the Heavenly Assembly -the assembly that includes the Angels and all of the righteous and blessed souls of mankind. I do not want to be too lengthy in answering your question.

A person might think that Imam Mohammed was taking from what had already been established as the translation for this salute of the Prophet. He was using the words that are commonly used by English-speaking Muslims, but with a distinct emphasis. I would like to make the point here that every translation he gave was commentary. His translations of these expressions were his explanations and his teachings, and they are an essential part of his teaching. We will make an error if we think that this was habit only. That he was only saying words as habit, without reasoning that we can see and follow as to why the habit was formed. Imam Mohammed was never just repeating words.

There is always something special and important there for those of us that were affected or influenced by our situation in America, and there is always something important as help to all Muslims to increase their understanding and appreciation for the depth of the Prophet's teaching. Imam W. Deen Mohammed's teaching is always fulfilling a need that preceded him and that had developed or been neglected in the world for understanding in Islam. It may have been that correct understanding may have been lost, or correct language may have been lost, because of Western, and in particular, American influences interfered or confused this issue. This was Imam Mohammed's work and his role.

"The Prayers." What prayers? And what is meant here by the highest salute? "The Peace." What peace? What quality and characteristics of peace?

Imam W. Deen Mohammed's teaching or 'tradition' makes the point that each time we salute our Prophet we are promoting a special understanding and we are exerting a special intensity in pointing to his leadership for the world. We are promoting Prophet Muhammed's leadership as the standard of moral logic and intelligence that is approved by the Lord of all the Systems of Knowledge and witnessed to by all those who have earned the Highest Recognition. History verifies that under Prophet Muhammed's leadership a new consciousness and a new language for human worth and human community dawned in the world. So, Imam Mohammed is reminding Muslims, and especially reminding Muslim religious leadership, that we are witnesses to Prophet Muhammed's elevated interests, language, and invitation to faith. Also, we are to adopt his activity as the method for the faithful to establish themselves.

"The Prayers" are the Prophet's teaching and invitation to faith in G'd, faith in Allah, faith in the true and Only Lord and Creator That Evolves us and then is Ever-Ready to Help us. "The Prayers" are the use of correct 'language.' "The Peace" is confirmation and proper demonstration of the Prophet's activity and methods in addressing every human need and endeavor in society. Prophet Muhammed's mission is positioned by a Divinely-inspired, enlightened, rational faith. His leadership is to assemble and employ the talents and attend the needs of haves and have-nots, elites and common-people, the educated and uneducated, all through systems of moral equity.

Imam W. Deen Mohammed is the true Representative of Prophet Muhammed in the context of modern America's reach and influence, and its peculiar moral environment that challenges modern man's perceptions and systems of freedom and justice. As Islam defines faith and works, when we salute Prophet Muhammed, we salute the burden of responsibility to advance proper human thinking in and proper human behavior.

When we think this way and pay more respect to what we have been given by Allah when He gave us the gift of Imam W. Deen Mohammed and his tradition, we will become an established Muslim people. Because of him we are a respected Muslim people. This is what he wanted for us in embracing his way. He wanted us to see that we are a chosen People, with a very special history and role in the Life of Man on this earth. We have been selected for this role, and if it were designated for another group then it would not have been necessary for us to develop in Islamic faith and understanding the way we have.

Someone told me recently that it is being said that Imam W. Deen Mohammed has no successor. I would ask the people saying this what their intentions are. It sounds to me like they are suggesting that they do not want his message to succeed. I want his message to succeed.