that
exists to him belong the most beautiful
names he is The Sovereign the Holy One
the source of peace the guardian of
Faith the preserver of safety the
exalted in might the irresistible the
Supreme the Creator the evolver the
bestower of forms and of all the names
or attributes used to describe his
magnificence Allah is used most
frequently in his Revelation so Muslims
refer to their maker in the manner he
has taught them knowledge is the
inheritance which we gain from the
prophets this is the inheritance for the
Believers the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam said that you must seek
knowledge it is obligatory on every
Muslim to seek knowledge
what is that knowledge
though some may use that to justify
they're taking degrees and degrees and
going and going through University Etc
and collecting their degrees saying well
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam
said seek knowledge it's
obligatory but what knowledge this is
the
question so the knowledge
which the prophet meant according to
Imam
gazali is that
knowledge which is obligatory on you in
other words when you are born the first
thing that the parent teaches the child
is there's no God but
Allah the first Duty the human being
must know his creator
he must know then his
teacher Muhammad
Ras and all the prophets were teachers
and the last teacher was Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wasallam the last
messenger then when the child
grows of course he must learn how to
clean himself it becomes obligatory to
know tahara how to be clean
he'll get to the stage when he must
learn how to pray so that knowledge
becomes obligatory at that
time obligatory for that child some say
at the age of seven to learn how to pray
because the obligation of prayer will
come at the age of
10 the age of puberty
knowledge of zaka how many of us here
have the knowledge of
zaka yet it's obligatory the moment you
have come to the age of responsibility
the moment you have wealth obligatory
now is that you know how to spend or how
to distribute
zaka this is the obligatory knowledge
because without this
knowledge your life
has become
worthless it is the knowledge which will
take you into the life to come and which
will give you the
success the true
success the knowledge of fasting you
must know how to fast what breaks the
fast what time must you break the fast
how many days is
Ramadan you must have that knowledge
when you've come to the age where you
must fast
because this is a
duty Hajj you must learn Hajj when you
are able to go on Hajj you don't have to
learn Hajj now for
instance but when you able to go on Hajj
then you must learn the duties of Hajj
according to the prophet Muhammad peace
be upon them Islam is built on Five
Pillars the first called Shahar is to
give wit wi that there is no deity other
than Allah and that Muhammad peace be
upon Him is his servant and messenger
the second pillar of Islam is Salat a
routine of five daily prayers to be
observed at specific times during the
day the third pillar is zakat an annual
charity minimally calculated at
2.5% of one's accumulated
wealth Psalm or fasting is the four
pillar of Islam requiring one to forgo
food and worldly desires between Dawn
and sunset the fast is observed once a
year by able-bodied adult Muslims for 29
or 30 days during the holy month of
Ramadan the final pillar is Haj a
journey or pilgrimage to the holy city
of Mecca in Arabia commemorating the
struggle and sacrifice of prophet
Abraham and his
family LGE is incumbent on all
able-bodied adults at least once in
their lifetime provided they can afford
the
journey each of the pillars has been
known to demonstrate tremendous powers
of transformation in the lives of people
in fact it was the fifth pillar of Islam
that had such a profound effect in the
life of Malcolm
X you don't have to worry about us
integrating with him we don't want to be
around that old pale thing Malcolm X was
known as a fiery speaker as a spokesman
for the Nation of Islam he had little
trust and no affection for white people
he was accused by the press in the US of
being a black racist when the Nation of
Islam suspended him for commenting on
the assassination of President Kennedy
in
1963 a friend urged him to perform the
pilgrimage to Mecca since I am a Muslim
and I knew that I could never stand up
in public and represent Mr Muhammad
anymore and at the same time I didn't at
that time want to say why I couldn't
represent him I knew as his son told me
uh Wallace Muhammad that the only
salvation for the Muslims they would
have to turn toward the Orthodox
religion of Islam and it was Mr
Muhammad's son Wallace Muhammad who
encouraged me to make the pilgrimage to
Mecca and get myself Orient oriented or
orientated into the knowledge of the
Orthodox religion of
Islam Malcolm described his experience
in Mecca with these words never have I
witness such sincere hospitality and the
overwhelming Spirit of true Brotherhood
as it is practiced by people of all
colors and races here in this ancient
Holy Land the home of Abraham Muhammad
and all the other prophets of the Holy
scriptures for the past week I have been
utterly speechless and Spellbound by the
graciousness I see displayed Around Me
by people of all colors there were tens
of thousands of pilgrims from all over
the world they were of all colors from
blue-eyed blondes to Black skinned
Africans but we were all participating
in the same ritual displaying a spirit
of unity and Brotherhood that my
experience in America had led me to
believe never could exist between the
White and the non-white America needs to
understand Islam because this is the
only religion that erases from its
Society the race problem throughout my
travels in the Muslim world I have met
talked to and even eaten with people who
in America would have been considered
white but the white attitude was removed
from their minds by the religion of
Islam I have never before seen sincere
and true Brotherhood practiced by all
colors together irrespective of their
color you may be shocked by these words
coming from me but on this pilgrimage
what I have seen and experience has
forced me to rearrange much of my
thought patterns previously held and to
toss aside some of my previous
conclusions this is a house formed 11
years later Wallace mammad inherited the
leadership of his father's
organization never before had so many in
America been led to embrace the proper
teachings of
Islam my last year in college I was
doing an independent study on
institutions all forms of Institutions
physical aish sh Mustafa is is the
editor of Mr Muhammad's weekly newspaper
the Muslim Journal my professor
sociology Professor when I told him what
I wanted to do my independent study on
pulled out a book called the black
Muslims by C Eric Lincoln and asked me
would I read this as a part of my
independent study and actually that was
my first direct contact with quote
unquote black Muslims as they existed
here in the United States I did not
fully agree with the context of the
organization
uh primarily in in the sense of a
representing man in the form of God uh
uh of any color that's somehow did not
quite strike a note of accord with me
but the context of there being an
organized structured group who were
willing to work towards Improvement of
the africanamerican community did strike
with me and that stayed with me yeah
[Music]
oh Mankind we have created you all out
of one pair a male and a female we have
made you into peoples and tribes that
you may know one another noblest among
you in the eyes of God is the most
righteous Islam is the upward
path if if we study actually the word
which gives us a clue about this in
Arabic the word for student
is
Talib
Talib it actually means someone who is
seeking therefore part of the
transaction which is
education is that there must be someone
who is
seeking I was I was looking for
something for filling and something
stable and something that I could
structure My Life by a lot of people
don't like structure but I'm one who
prefer a structured life and in that
search I found that al-islam gives you
structure it gives you Direction it
gives you content and it it gives you um
what I would like to prer to and what
most Muslims refer to as a as a greater
reality and of course that reality
includes your the concept of God uh uh
clear cleancut concept of a supreme
being being over everything and over all
creation so after a lot of consideration
in prayer and a lot of
Heartache I left 1979 I left the
religion and I I didn't go back well
then what happened is I could no longer
go to any other religion because as a
Jehovah's Witness I would thought that
all religions were bad except Jehovah's
Witness only Jehovah's Witness gained
the approval of God everybody else is
wrong wrong so you see with a clear
conscience I could not go to other
religions and then as a Jehovah's
Witness I no longer believed in their
teachings so I was like a man without a
religion
fortunately I was not a man without a
god everybody's faith is of course a
personal thing everybody comes to it in
different rades on different Avenues in
different aspects of life
um you you began to
recognize and compare and actually study
and for me it it was that kind of a
process it was a comparison a studying
and then that was the recognition that
this in fact is something that could be
satisfying for me and it was something
that um Avenue that I hadn't taken
before I even went back to the Catholic
church I said I was born a Catholic and
I've been a Jehovah's wi all my life so
I'm going to go back to the Catholic
church maybe I miss something okay so I
went back to the Catholic church for
about 3 months every day sit down stand
up sit down stand up sit down stand up
you know I go to all of their
masses it wasn't working it wasn't
working because it didn't appeal
here and it didn't
appeal here you try the church and you
try everything else but uh there's still
that void and over the 17 years I've
been reaffirmed in this Choice over and
over again that this is indeed the
better choice the better alternative and
uh it and it will lead to the successes
that we were pursuing in life about 5
years ago I had the privilege and the
honor of meeting a Muslim
person and I noticed that person because
of the personality always happy always
bubbly always friendly this attracted me
to that person so we started talking the
person told me that it was Muslim she
was Muslim it was a lady she was Muslim
and everything and all of that really
I've heard of Muslim I've heard of them
you have a religion Islam yeah yeah I've
heard of it I have no intentions of
becoming Muslim and I said I'm going to
learn how to be a Christian a good
Christian not Jehovah's Witness way but
how God wants me to be a Christian so I
began to study the Bible very very uh
closely at night and and many hours and
in prayer I read all of the New
Testament I thought I had it all lined
up then I started on the Old Testament
Genesis Deuteronomy
Exodus when I got to the
prophets something
happened when I got to reading in the
Bible about the prophets all of a sudden
I wanted to rest my eyes and I started
thinking about that person that told me
about Islam about being a Muslim about a
Quran about Allah subhana wa tala so I
said okay I am open-minded now I don't
think like I'm Jehovah's Witness I'm
going to find out if these people are
Liars if they are no good or whatever
I'm going to find out for myself I
started thinking 1.2 billion
Muslims shatan is good but he's not that
good to deceive 1.2 billion
people so I'll look at this this Quran
and I'll see what it is I started
reading the Quran I read it completely
all the way through the first time it
was unbelievable everything started to
fall in place everything made sense I
took the Quran and now I could say to my
Bible I know now it all works together
now I understand because of the Quran I
was able to understand my Bible and I
say oh this is great God is making me a
good Christian he's going to teach me
through the
Quran well as I kept reading and kept
reading I kept reading the Quran more
because it made more sense it was easier
it was simpler it appealed more to my
heart to my intellect to my mind and in
my
Bible as much as I know that at one time
it was a holy word of God now in its
polluted State I started to put it down
more and I started to read the
Quran oh mankind verily there has come
to you a convincing proof from your lord
for we have sent unto you a light that
is
manifest educ
is the beginning of Islam as we know the
first revelation which was sent to the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was
that Revelation which
began
read the order was to
read uh people are fascinated about
Islam in America they're worried about
it and they're confused about it and
they're afraid of it in some ways but
they're also enticed by it and intrigued
by it abdulh Moore is a writer and
editor in Lancaster Pennsylvania
he was introduced to Islam while running
a theater company in Berkeley California
the intelligent reader certainly and and
there's a a deeper appreciation of of
Islamic culture I think among people and
hopefully as time goes on and there are
more uh writers among the Muslim
Community who are who would who are
willing to break out of say a mold of
pure uh religious tra ism is what I'm
calling it just writing a track about
how great it is to be a Muslim and
everyone should be a Muslim you know
then then things may happen I think
people will see that there's a sweetness
and a and a uh uh a way of expressing
what's in our hearts uh that everyone
would be interested in I I think it's
really important that um uh Muslims
start uh approaching the people as
people and that and that Islam is
happens to be our focus and that it's
the um uh and that there are uh exciting
enticing and beautiful things about it
that people would be attracted to I
remember in in Santa Barbara there was a
man who was not a Muslim but he was an
intelligent man he was a writer and and
a book reviewer and he said he came up
to me once and he said you know you
ought to tell the Protestants about
Islam they would like to know that for
example uh it wasn't Eve's fault you
know it wasn't her
that the women are not the ones who are
the the major uh
sinners in in in the religion and on and
on he went through a whole list of
things that that he thought the the the
Protestants would be very excited to
know about that um you know that would
that that is in fact some of the basic
teachings of our of
[Music]
Islam surely with every difficulty there
is ease
[Music]
with every difficulty there is
ease therefore when you are free from
your immediate task still labor
[Music]
hard and to your lord turn all of your
attention Jihad is an organizing
principle in Islam because at every
level and at every facet of Islamic
understanding is the notion of struggle
struggle from within against both what
is within and what is without the
initial testimony of faith upon which uh
Islamic understandings are built known
as the shahada where you state that
there is no God but Allah and that
Muhammad is his messenger is an awesome
State very simple but very awesome
because to be able to