Nation of Islam

Nation of Islam:

see Black MuslimsBlack Muslims,
African-American religious movement in the United States, split since the late 1970s into the American Society of Muslims and the Nation of Islam. The original group was founded (1930) in Detroit by Wali Farad (or W. D.
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Nation of Islam

The Nation of Islam awaits the return of Wali Farad Muhammad, a human embodiment of God, who disappeared in 1933 but will return with a new and final holy book.

The Nation of Islam (NOI) is also known as the World Community of Al-Islam in the West, the American Muslim Mission, the Nation of Peace, and the Black Muslim Movement. The NOI was founded in 1930 by Wali Farad Muhammad (b. Wallace Dodd Fard) in Detroit. In the beginnings of the movement, the emphasis was largely social, a group of people working together to improve the political and economic structure of their own community first, and then to spread their doctrine of a better society across the United States.

Most of the religious doctrines and beliefs that became an essential part of the NOI were derived from the teachings of Noble Drew Ali and his Moorish Holy Temple of Science. Ali taught that most of the African tribes from which the slaves were captured were of Islamic heritage and should therefore be referred to as Moors. He further emphasized that a sure step to salvation was made when an African American refused to be called “Negro,” “black,” or “colored” and insisted upon being called a “Moor” or “Moorish American.” When Noble Drew Ali died in 1929, John Given El claimed to be the reincarnation of the teacher—but so did Wallace D. Fard. Those who followed Given El became the Moorish Americans of the Moorish Temple of Science in Chicago, while those who followed Fard became the Nation of Islam.

Fard, now Wali Farad Muhammad, de-emphasized the Bible and introduced his followers to the Qur’an. Among his basic teachings were the following:

Allah is God, the white race is the devil.
The Asiatic black people are the cream of planet Earth.
Blacks cannot achieve freedom, equality, and justice until they speak their true language (Arabic), practice their true religion (Islam), and gain their own separate state.
Christianity is the white man’s religion, the slave religion that enabled the white man to keep the black man subjugated.

By 1934 Wali Farad Muhammad had gathered about eight thousand members into his flock, and then, in June of that year, he mysteriously disappeared. His most dedicated minister, Elijah Muhammad, took over the NOI. Elijah was so dedicated to his predecessor that he believed Wali Muhammad was God incarnate. Elijah was extremely strict and ran the NOI with an iron hand, even while in prison during World War II for draft evasion. His commands were relayed to the faithful by his wife, Clara, and his head ministers.

Elijah Muhammad remained head of the NOI until his death in 1975, when leadership passed to his son, Wallace Muhammad. Elijah had excommunicated Wallace at least four times during disputes over the ideology of Islamic Nationalism and black separatism, but had always reinstated him. Wallace Muhammad and his close friend Malcolm X had denied that Wallace Fard was actually Allah in the flesh, and they railed against Elijah Muhammad for being unfaithful to his wife and thereby committing adultery, a violation of the tenets of Islam. When Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, he was separated from the NOI and held in disregard. Wallace Muhammad restored the legacy of Malcolm X as a respected and prominent teacher. Among other changes implemented by Wallace Muhammad were the following:

The removal of the doctrine of racial superiority taught by Wali Farad Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad. Orthodox Muslims believe in the equality of all. There is no one group superior over another.
The recognition of Wali Farad Muhammad as a wise man and a teacher, but not the incarnation of Allah. Orthodox Muslims believe the Qur’an given to the prophet Muhammad between the years of 610 and 632 was Allah’s final revelation to humankind.
Business and religious practices would be conducted as separate entities.
The Nation of Islam did not wish to establish a state separate unto themselves.
The U.S. Constitution would henceforth be honored by all NOI members.
NOI members would now be aligned with Orthodox Islam.

Wallace Muhammad changed the name of the Nation of Islam to the Bilalian Community, then to the World Community of Al-Islam in the West, then to the American Muslim Mission, and finally to the Muslim Mission. Today the Muslim Mission is considered orthodox and is accepted as a member of the traditional Islamic community in the United States.

While Wallace Muhammad was restructuring the group founded by Wallace Fard and carried forth by Elijah Muhammad into a very different kind of organization, a number of NOI followers strongly objected to the dismissal of the doctrines of black racial superiority and racial separation as taught by the Founding Fathers. In 1978 Louis Farrakhan assumed the leadership of the NOI as the “spiritual son” of Elijah Muhammad, and in 1981 he publicly announced the restoration of the Nation of Islam.

Farrakhan remains the leader of the Nation of Islam and lives in Chicago. The headquarters of the NOI, the National Center, houses Mosque No. 2, also known as Mosque Maryam, dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus. (Jesus, known as Isa in Arabic, is revered in the Islamic faith as a prophet and holy man.) Mosque Maryam is the National Center for the Re-training and Re-education of the Black Man and Woman of America and the World.

Among the controversial teachings of the Nation of Islam are the following:

The black man is the original man on Earth. By using a special method of birth control created by Yakub, a black scientist, the ancient black man was able to produce the white race. Farrakhan has remarked that the white people are “potential humans” but they haven’t yet evolved.
The universe was created 78 trillion years ago, and also at this time God was self-created on Earth. He was the only one in the entire dark universe, but he was a black man.
The original, physical manifestation of God died, but his essence is infinite. Since the physical God died, the universe has been ruled by a council of twenty-four black scientists, the head scientist being known as Allah. No God lives forever. Their wisdom and work may live for 25,000 years, but the actual being may have died after a hundred or so years. There have been a succession of Gods, each a black man. In our current time, the supreme God was W. D. Fard, who disappeared in 1933, but who will return with a final holy book.
There is a giant Mother Spaceship that is made like the universe, spheres within spheres, and can appear as a cloud by day but a pillar of fire by night. What white people call “UFOs” are smaller craft from the Mother Ship.

As in orthodox Islam, the NOI member believes in prayer five times daily, facing in the direction of the holy city of Mecca; charity to the poor; fasting during the month of Ramadan; and the duty of everyone who is physically and financially able to make Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, at least once in a lifetime.

Nation of Islam

Related to Nation of Islam: Black Panthers, Elijah Muhammad

Nation of Islam

The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization whose origins are somewhat mysterious. Wallace D. Fard, later known as Master Wallace Fard Muhammad, established the NOI in Detroit during the 1930s. Fard Muhammad, a traveling salesman who sold African silks and advocated self-sufficiency and independence for African Americans, taught Elijah Poole the history of what Fard Muhammad called the Lost-Found Nation of Islam—descendants of the tribe of Shabazz from the Lost Nation in Asia. Fard Muhammad taught Poole in part that Mr.Yacub, a black mad scientist, created what was called the devil race—the white race—approximately six thousand years ago, and that the devil race would rule the world for the next six thousand years.Elijah Poole was born in Sandersville, Georgia in 1897. His father, who was a Baptist preacher, had been a slave. At the age of twenty-six, Poole moved to Detroit with his family. In 1930 in Detroit, he met W. D. Fard, the founder of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam. When Fard disappeared in 1934, Poole—then known as Elijah Muhammad—moved to Chicago, where he organized his own following and established the headquarters of the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad remained the spiritual and organizational leader of the NOI from 1934 until his death in 1975. During that time, the NOI became recognized as a black nationalist religious organization that advocated racial separatism and self-sufficiency for African Americans. Often called Black Muslims, the NOI's members are required to adhere to a strict moral and disciplinary code. Men members typically wear suits and ties, and women members are required to wear modest clothing, typically white gowns or saris. The NOI's teachings forbid the eating of pork and the consumption of alcohol or tobacco.

In the early 1950s and 1960s, the NOI called for racial separatism in the United States, and at times protested against police brutality and filed suit against various police departments in response to alleged police brutality. It also frequently recruited members in large cities and prisons. In 1947, Malcolm Little—who later became Malcolm X—converted to Islam and joined the NOI while incarcerated in a Massachusetts prison. As a national minister and spokesman for the NOI, Malcolm X was a fiery speaker and proponent of the organization's concerns. However, during the early 1960s, ideological differences developed between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, and in 1964, Malcolm X formally left the NOI.

Shortly after Elijah Muhammad's death in 1975, his son Warith Deen Muhammad renounced black separatism and the origins of Black Muslims and established the World Community of Al-Islam in the West, later called the American Muslim Mission. NOI minister Louis X, who later became Louis Farrakhan, initially supported Warith Muhammad but soon reestablished the NOI. Other organizations and factions also split off from the original NOI, including the more militant Lost-Found Nation of Islam, which publishes the weekly newspaper Muhammad Speaks. In the mid-1990s, Farrakhan's organization was generally known as the NOI.

Like Malcolm X, Farrakhan is a fiery orator and skilled leader. Yet, he and the NOI have been criticized for anti-Semitic and antiwhite statements as well as conspiracy theories concerning Jewish American business leaders. Khalid Muhammad, a former NOI spokesman, was especially known for the excoriating statements and speeches he gave at many U.S. colleges in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Although the NOI later expelled Khalid Muhammad, his speeches contributed to a continuing debate as to whether so-called hate speech should be punished or regulated by U.S. universities.

During the early and mid-1990s, Farrakhan and the NOI appeared to be shifting their political focus away from black separatism and toward a more universalist or mainstream approach. The NOI also has begun to develop various major business ventures, including the operation of a restaurant in a poor neighbor-hood on Chicago's South Side. Its security arm—the Fruit of Islam—has been involved in providing security for housing projects in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., under contracts with public agencies such as the Chicago Housing Authority. In October 1995, the NOI and Farrakhan were instrumental in organizing the Million Man March, bringing together hundreds of thousands of African American men in Washington, D.C.

Cross-references

Hate Crime; Civil Rights Movement.

Nation of Islam

Nation of Islam

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Nation of Islam

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Nation of Islam

Words related to Nation of Islam

noun a group of militant Black Americans who profess Islamic religious beliefs and advocate independence for Black Americans

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