August 14, 2026

Dear Believers, Friends & Fellow Students,

As-Salaam Alaikum!  This week we will continue our journey of Self Improvement: The Basis for Community Development with Study Guide 18: Rising Above Emotion Into the Thinking of God. Our focus this week is Joseph. As we attempt to walk in his moccasins(shoes), let us not forget the context of our study is self-improvement,  which includes: self-examination, self-analysis and self-correction.

Minister Ava Muhammad (April 16, 2021), in introducing this section, wrote:

“As you read this brief but powerful section, consider why the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan wants us to take time to look at the importance of a righteous man developing the strength to overcome a natural attraction to women when it is under circumstances that will "lead him into evil and indecency".”

May Allah continue to bless us with Love and the Light of Understanding!

Assignment:

Read & Discuss:
 Study Guide 18: Rising Above Emotion into the Thinking of God
 Section titled JOSEPH'S FIRMNESS UNDER TEMPTATION

Discussion Questions (these are not official questions from the Study Guide):

1. Share the aspects of the reading that made you reflect most deeply on yourself. What did you see?
2. As we attempt to walk in the moccasins of Joseph this week, what do you see or sense that may have been different from your own initial perspective?
3. The study guide asks us to study the emotional conflict Joseph faced and asks, "How would you have handled your emotions in that situation?"
4. Joseph told the seductress, "Allah forbid! Surely my Lord made good my abode." He answered temptation by remembering what Allah had already done for him. What has Allah already done for you that you could call to mind in a moment of temptation?
5. Minister Ava Muhammad points us to "the importance of a righteous man developing the strength to overcome a natural attraction to women when it is under circumstances that will lead him into evil and indecency." Can you think of a time when you had to overcome a natural desire? Where does that strength come from? How can you develop or increase that strength in your own life?