Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed Speaks

QUESTION: Imam Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed, would you please comment on your opinion about the behavior of the President of the United States in the recent Presidential debate and since his release from the hospital? 

IMAM MOHAMMED: I would not like to comment on the behavior of any sitting President of the United States unless our Islamic obligations are requiring it of us. We are not motivated by political interests. We are not seeking political advantages or following the logic and rules of political sciences. We do not desire relationships for political expediency. We would not be comfortable if even those of our people who are servants of the public in elected offices would describe themselves as politicians. They may be described as such but myself as a person of faith governed by Islamic teachings of faith, a conscientious Muslim, when I am looking at Muslim elected officials I do not want to see them as politicians. I want to see them as Muslims serving the common good. That is what they are called to do. Allah, the Most High says of us in our Holy Book, “You are the best community brought out for the good of all people.”

Politics are seen as a necessary matter in the Western model. We respect the Western model but its theorists are not our instructors for the construction of and maintenance of human society. Politics tend toward focusing the activity of power centers, manipulating them for the desired interests of power groups. Islam focuses the power centers too, but to purify them for the good service of mankind. I am not saying that a politician cannot be a Muslim. I am saying that a Muslim must perform ablution of his or her power centers, and it begins with intent to please G’d and obey G’d.

What I am seeing is the rise of a type of leadership in the world—a disposition in individual leaders and a dispositional character of institutional leadership. This leadership does not look to please or obey G’d. In fact, it wants to be a god and presents itself as god-man authority. It thinks of itself as the ‘perfect specimen’ of human identity. It is indeed an illegitimate god, legitimate only as a product of its own manufactured cultural arrogance, and animated to oppose the movement in the world to see mankind as one human family and the idea that all members in that identity possess sacred value.

The Fascists of old valued only their ethnic group as human. This authoritarian-type leadership commands the identity of its people for service to its people and its people only. It cares nothing for the universal destiny of mankind and accommodates no notion of obligation to the global community in protecting or honoring human life. It wants what it wants for itself and will pursue its needs and wants at the expense of a healthy human world. It is the supremacy idea of the thunder and the hammer—the Thor mentality.

It comes out of the sky in shock waves of outrageous thunder language and the behavior of a hammering bully. It is the Tarzan swinging from out of the skies. He rules by unintelligible, dramatic pronouncements and an iron weapon of might to enforce the will of his idea. His rule respects no universal idea of human decency. Mussolini of Italy, Franco of Spain, and Hitler of Germany respected no common decency. These tyrannical oppressors created their own standards of national and ethnic identity and mores of decency, and then made them into national movements and laws. So, in Nazi Germany it was not decent or human to be anything other than the Aryan-type, and so all others were demonized and targeted. The Thor-Tarzan, god-man mentality is an obvious supremacy strategy. 

I see the Thor mentality in some well-known Arab states now too. It seems that the ruling order in these states has changed their disposition to now disfavor the humane decision-making of Abu Bakr As-Siddiq, one of their great Arab fathers and a special companion of our Prophet Muhammed, the prayers and the peace be on the Prophet and may Allah be pleased with Abu Bakr. We Muslims do not ever think of our Islamic heroes first in their racial identity. We think of them as believers in G’d, followers of Muhammed the Prophet, as Muslims.

Abu Bakr followed the humane logic of his teacher and sought to free the slave in Arabian society. He was no slave-maker. He was a freer of slaves with an eye on love and respect for the humanity Allah created that was disrespected by the prevailing political and cultural order. He was an educated student of Prophet Muhammed and so we do not have to mention the Prophet’s opinion on the matter. His strategy to free the slave speaks to the legacy of Prophet Muhammed’s influence on the question of slavery.

These present Arab state regimes in 2020 abuse their African migrant guests as if they are a lesser human creation. This is their styling of the Thor mentality—thunder and smash, and the Tarzan mentality of racial supremacy. Abu Bakr negotiated with the power center for what price the slave could be freed, and then worked with the teaching of his teacher and leader to guarantee that former slave a respected and honored place in society. He had no threatening disposition and no scheme to dominate. How far these rulers have gone away from this example by concentrating their African migrant guests in confines reminiscent of the slave vessels carrying our Muslim and non-Muslim African ancestors packed as sardines to the shores of the American market.

Nothing in their Arabian history says more for their humanity than their Islamic history. It has not been their ancient Arabian greatness that brought them respect and attention in this present world. It is not even the petro-wealth. It has been their Islam—the Islam of our Prophet Muhammed and his trusted companion Abu Bakr. They are shaming themselves before Muslims, before the world, and before Allah, the Most High displaying an attitude and behavior reminding us Muslim-African-Americans of American slave traders. 

With regard to our Muslim-American perspective, it has been said that the late Honorable Elijah Mohammed was a dictator and an authoritarian leader. The distinguishing factor is that he exhibited a human decency informed by Islamic sensibilities. Further, he made a pathway for corrections to be made under the authority of Islam. By way of proof, it was his son, our late leader Imam W. Deen Mohammed, who taught us and educated the American conscience that Muhammed the Prophet established that “religion is sincerity.” Prophet Muhammed was asked “to Whom?” He replied “to Allah, to His Book, to His Messenger, and the leaders of the Muslims and to the general population.”

In other words our duty as Muslim-Americans as a people of faith is to serve the Lord-Creator of humanity by way of the rule of laws of decency established by Divine Ordinance to respect all human beings in their common humanity and their common human destiny and entitlements. We do not accept Thor or Tarzan as gods. There is nothing worthy of worship except the Lord and Creator of everything that exists.

I am not sure if you will be satisfied with this answer. But I am sure the President, if it gets to him, will understand what Muslims in America are for and against, and why. If he is not sure he can ask his like-minded friends in the Muslim world and they will explain it to him as they correct themselves.