W. Deen Mohammed, a Muslim imam, or...

W. Deen Mohammed, a Muslim imam, or spiritual leader, and the son of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, is scheduled to speak at the Los Angeles Convention Center next week as part of a nationwide tour.

He has represented U.S. Muslims at conferences in Morocco, Kuwait, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In February, he addressed military officials at the Pentagon and became the first Muslim to deliver an invocation in the U.S. Senate.

Mohammed says he seeks to represent all American Muslims but has a particular interest in addressing the aspirations of African-Americans. In an interview this week, the Chicago-based imam discussed the evolution of Islam in America toward a Koran-based religion that is race neutral.

He disagrees, for example, with the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, another black Muslim leader, about the religious needs of African-Americans. Farrakhan, he said, “insists that our people are not ready for Islam as it really is. He is saying that we have to give them a ‘black’ version of the religion to appeal to their need to have something of their own.” That, Mohammed said, is a “false Islam.”

“We see ourselves as a small population in the world population of Muslims. But we must rescue ourselves from the confused idea of Islam that we were given by Elijah Muhammad and his teacher, (Wallace) Fard,” he said.

Mohammed says that his father, an uneducated man who founded the Nation of Islam in the 1930s, didn’t know better than to believe the myths about history and international affairs he was taught by Fard. He coupled that information with his personal knowledge about segregation and hatred of white people toward blacks. He didn’t have enough knowledge of Arabic to study the Koran and discouraged his followers from doing so.

Mohammed, 59, said that, toward the end of his life, his father had privately and publicly moved away from the concept of a “white devil.”

“He was two people,” the imam said, “the man pronouncing judgment on America and at the same time teaching us to respect all people.” He remembers his father pointing out a white man, saying with deep respect: “He’s a scientist in Islam,” meaning he was one of the top minds in the religion.

Mohammed said he believes that “black nationalists, integrationists, the black (Christian) church leadership and others all have in common the desire to prove our equal worth as human beings with white people and all the races. Freedom and excellence are common aspirations and drives in African-American people that different factions of the black community are trying to realize by different means.”

Although he sees U.S. Muslims as part of an international religious community, he renounces the extremist brand of Islam as practiced by the Iranian ayatollah and others as not rooted in the Koran.

Mohammed speaks on “Excellence and Freedom: Our Common Motivation” at noon Nov. 21, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Admission is free. He will also be guest of honor at a fund-raising dinner for the Masjid Felix Bilal on Friday. Information: (213) 233-7274.

DATES

“Malcolm X: His Message to the Grass Roots for the ‘90s,” a two-day teach-in at Faith United Methodist Church, concludes today with a children’s presentation from 10 a.m. to noon and a 1 p.m. talk about Malcolm X’s theology by Cornish Rogers of the School of Theology at Claremont. The weekend’s forum starts an annual lecture series, called the Malcolm X Institute, at the church. Admission is free. The address is 1713 W. 108th St., Los Angeles. Information: (213) 754-8453.

CELEBRATIONS

The Santa Ana and Long Beach districts of the California-Pacific Conference of the United Methodist Church are sponsoring a welcoming celebration for newly appointed Bishop Roy Sano and his wife, Kathleen Thomas-Sano, at 4 p.m. Nov. 22 at Los Altos United Methodist Church.

Sano was born in Brawley to Japanese immigrants who were converted to Christianity following the death of one of his siblings. During World War II, he was sent with his family to an internment camp for Japanese-Americans. He completed his undergraduate work at UCLA and in 1952 was ordained a deacon, and in 1957 an elder and full member of the California-Nevada Conference.

He began graduate work at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and completed his Ph.D. in 1972 at the Clarement Graduate School.

Sano has served as the pastor of several churches and taught at colleges before being elected to the episcopacy in 1984. Most recently, he served in the Denver area.

Kathleen Thomas-Sano, whom he married in 1975, was born in Hawaii and has worked for the National Division of the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church. She serves on the General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, and the United Methodist Development Fund.

The address of the celebration is 5950 E. Willow St., Long Beach. (714) 539-1053.

The grand opening of My Jewish Discovery Place, a hands-on children’s museum, will be celebrated with a children’s fair and concert by Craig n Co. Nov. 22 at the Westside Jewish Community Center, 5870 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles. The concert is at 1:30 p.m. Tickets for ages 3 and older are $8 in advance, $10 at the door. (213) 857-0036, Ext. 2257.

HONORS

Six people will be honored at the ninth annual Testimonial to Leadership Benefit Banquet of the Masjid (Mosque) Felix Bilal at 7 p.m. Friday. They are Clyde W. Oden, president of the Watts Health Foundation Inc.; Lonear Heard Davis, president of J. P. Heard Management Corp.; Celes King III, state chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality; Haroon Abdullah, resident Imam of the Masjid Al-Shareef in Long Beach, and Karen Bass, executive director of the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse and Prevention Treatment. The guest of honor will be Imam W. Deen Mohammed, a national Islamic leader. Tickets are $50. Proceeds will buy computer equipment for a new worship and community center and school that the mosque is building in South-Central Los Angeles. The event will be downtown at the Los Angeles Hilton and Towers. (213) 233-7274.

Please address notices to: Southern California File, c/o Religion Editor, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif., 90053. Items should be brief and arrive three weeks prior to the event announced.