Question: Imam, I read where you said that the people are cursed. I believe you deserve respect and attention. I believe you have earned the community's respect and attention. Please explain what you meant by this.
IMAM EARL ABDULMALIK MOHAMMED: Thank you for expressing your concern. I seek Allah's Protection from the rejected one. What I say is not coming from random thoughts. Leaders who are serious about their work don't make baseless remarks. Leaders under Islamic authority cannot make baseless statements. An Imam or any conscious Muslim cannot just come out of their mouth with anything and feel that it should be accepted just because they say it. It must have foundation in truth. And what I mean by truth is that it must have foundation in the Holy Qur'an teaching, in the Prophet's teaching, and in the case of our association of Muslims, it must have basis in Imam W. Deen Mohammed's teaching. The Qur'an says that we are not to accept or follow anything for which there is no knowledge basis. So, it is necessary to answer questions like this one you have asked because this question permits us to verify the authenticity or falsehood of any claims that may be made in the name of religion, or in the name of the dignity of a People who say they are under the authority of G'd and Islamic faith and its disciplines.
In an address some years ago in Washington, DC at Howard University, I cannot tell you the exact year, but I was there with Imam W. Deen Mohammed on this occasion, as were several of the well-known leaders of our community at that time. Perhaps it was the mid to late 90's, and Imam W. Deen Mohammed was speaking on the sacred nature of our aspirations as a People who had been denied the natural right to plan an existence for ourselves in America. Now, I am recalling this and it has been over 20 years, so I cannot give you a quote of what he said. I can give you his reasoning because his reasoning is in me. Someone asked me just the other day, "Do you have transcripts of Imam Mohammed's addresses?" I replied, "No." This person said, "How is it that what you say is almost exactly what he said, and sometimes it is from 30 years ago or more?" Then this person answered his own question because I didn't say anything in reply. He said "It is just in you. You understand him." I am sure this person would not refer to himself as my supporter, and I would not either. He came to his own conclusion.
In this particular address Imam Mohammed was pointing to the way in which these sacred aspirations must be fulfilled in the people, and that they cannot be treated as cheap by those people. To treat them as cheap is to cheat the leadership efforts of all the great leadership that African-American people have had to secure the life for us that G'd intended for us and all human communities to have, that we were denied. The Imam said that if any were to cheat his leadership that he prays that G'd curse them. That is how he concluded that address at Howard University.
In the Qur'an there is a remembrance, or a story, of a Prophet and his people. They were a people who had aspired for establishments and achieved much of what they had aspired for. But, among them was a group who had been denied, a group made weak, as the word in the Qur'an describes. The words of the Qur'an in Arabic, the depth of the meanings, can only be gotten to by the faithful, the guided or inspired, and the serious student of Qur'an knowledge. I am not speaking of the inspiration given to the Messengers and Prophets. That is a another category. Although, there are men and women who by evidence of their understanding of the human condition and their work for humanity were clearly guided and inspired. I am speaking of Imam W. Deen Mohammed. We belong to his tradition of knowledge, and he was an inspired soul. So, I am speaking in his language and the language of his tradition -that this group mentioned in the Qur'an was a group "made weak" by conditions they had been forced to endure imposed on them from another group in their society. This Prophet first corrects the achieving group in their attention to duty to G'd. That their attention to duty to their Lord is lacking in them. Then, he tells this group of achievers that they will be tested by the life and choices of a "she-camel" and he instructs them to not interfere with the she-camel.
Prophet Muhammed had a she-camel, too. And he permitted her to make the choice for his residence when he arrived at Madinah. He did not tie her, as in the statement "Tie your camel." He permitted her to make a free choice and he accepted her choice. This is a lesson for those who want to interfere with what I am doing, or want to cast doubts on it or me.
So, these achievers decided they would hurt the she-camel. The Qur'an says that they prevented her from satisfying her thirst. And as a result they incurred the curse and punishment of G'd. Her thirst was her natural aspirations, her natural entitlements. She knew where to drink to satisfy her thirst, and she was denied.
Our people know instintively how and where to satisfy their thirst for establishment, even though they have been deprived. The Order of leaders, the Achievers, that have accrued what they consider to be high and great knowledge, and believe me I want to name some of them for you. I think, however, that if I name one or two of them, some others will slide by. They are all guilty. And they are a cursed body because they have schemed to prevent the people from satisfying their natural right to have leadership by 'hamstringing' their ability to make intelligent choices. They have as their strategy to replace Imam Mohammed's teaching with their own "World Wide Ministries" and "Muslim Think-Tanks and Institutes" that promotes them as the chief Imams of their own self-created standards of Islamic scholarship and leadership. They present themselves as scholars of Arabic and Islam, simultaneously. They want to be seen as 'established' in knowledge whereby they suggest themselves to be mighty edifices of knowledge built into and apart of the people's sacred worth. But their claims are empty because that which is required of duty and faith in them is voided by clear errors in their teaching, and worse, their behavior. They condemn anything that relies on the natural urge and natural pursuits for establishment and dignity, and the evidence is that their public record shows them to utilize methods to belittle or ridicule those they do not like or who challenge their understanding. One, I am thinking of, has a trademark laugh that precedes any answer he gives to someone's legitimate challenge. It is his way of letting all who are witnesses that he thinks very little of anyone else's opinion.
They do not trust nature or its processes, and they devote themselves to carving knowledge 'institutes' within our community reality, or you might say our 'earth', for the purpose of intimidating those who rely on the natural processes of knowledge who are symbolized in the innocent nature, pursuits, and choices of the she-camel. So, the people I am referring to as 'cursed' are those who cheated Imam W. Deen Mohammed's leadership by denying his followers access to the choice of his leadership in the present. The she-camel's thirst is real. They know it, and they know that their knowledge is illegitimate, and therefore they cannot help her, so they want to destroy her. Is she destroyed? No. Prophet Muhammed protected her. He freed her to make her choice. And in these times at the End, his representative, the Guided-Reformer, protects her. But, it is these types and the ones they have trained to follow their way that are cursed. Allah's Punishment is on them.
They are marked by their language and their pursuits -always grandiose, always inflated, always full of hype. This is the Order, the group, the association, whatever or however you want to refer to them, that opposed Imam W. Deen Mohammed's understanding, teaching, methods, and leadership during his life and they oppose it now. They are the same ones who say we will use Imam Mohammed's language and not his name. They also say Imam Mohammed has no successor, which is to say in coded language that his people have not the nature or intelligence to read or discern the clear messages he himself left in the open for them to interpret and understand who his successor is or at least where to find his successor. Who else, but this type, would be the cursed and punished among us? Why? Because they want to cripple the People's ability to see that which strengthens them and frees them to realize their created dignity and their community destiny.