ATH: Imam Mohammed(ra) "Race Consciousness In Al-Islam"

Our presentation tonight is on race and racism and the reason why we chose to have both of these terms in the statement of the topic is because we believe that the big problem with race relations comes from us going to extreme.  Those who have racism and want to keep racism they go to one extreme to show that there is a race that is superior to the other  and those who would like to correct the problem and have people live as brothers and sisters in one human family, most of them go to the other extreme and don’t give the true picture of the problem.                                       

The problem comes from mistreatment by one people or another and the problem also comes from the lack of awareness in most of the advocates of racial harmony that man has been created to have a sense of pride in his family, in his group that he belongs to, not just himself but in his group that he belongs to.  I have many Muslim Imams or you would say Religious ministers or preachers and also scholars in the Religion who seem very uncomfortable with me saying that we are given a nature by our Creator that wants us to feel good about ourselves as a group or as a race.

So I believe G’d created us for race pride, created us for racial dignity.  I believe that when G’d says in our Holy Book that we have certainly made honorable or worthy of honor all the children or all the sons of Adam, G’d is not speaking of us only individually but G’d is speaking of us also as groups.  That G’d intended for the white man to feel good about being a white man but he also intended for the black man to feel good about being a black man, that's the problem we have to work on.