Nation of Islam

Nation of Islam. The religious organization that became the Nation of Islam (NOI) originated in Detroit in 1930 with the teaching of W.D. Fard, also known as Fard Muhammad.Born of obscure parentage in 1891 in either Oregon or New Zealand, Fard had been imprisoned in California in 1926 for selling drugs. His theology, combining Islam and Black Nationalism, captured the imagination of Elijah Poole. Born in Sandersville, Georgia, in 1897, Poole's formal education ended with elementary school. At age ten he witnessed the lynching of a black man—an event that profoundly impressed him. At fourteen he joined the Baptist church. In 1923 Poole, migrated to Detroit with his wife and two children, where he became a factory worker. In 1931 he encountered Fard Muhammad, who preached that “the Original Man,” a “Black Man,” evolved 76 trillion years ago, adopted the name “Allah” or God, and created others in his image. African Americans were therefore inherently Islamic. But an evil scientist, Yacub, created a white race of innately wicked “devils.” The reign of the “white devils” would soon end, however, and the “Black Man's” rule would resume.

By 1934, Fard Muhammad had disappeared and Poole, now Elijah Muhammad, assumed leadership of the organization, whose small membership was concentrated in Detroit and Chicago. During World War II he was imprisoned for pro‐Japanese pronouncements. After the war, more African Americans embraced the NOI's message of economic self‐reliance, black nationalism, and virtuous living. The NOI's growth was furthered by Malcolm X, the former Malcolm Little, a charismatic recruit who led a successful Harlem mosque and helped launch NOI's widely sold weekly newspaper, Muhammad Speaks. Prisons supplied many recruits. Membership estimates vary, but at its peak, the NOI had perhaps 100,000 adherents. Malcolm X broke with Elijah Muhammad in the early 1960s, and his 1965 assassination by NOI gunmen caused significant defections. After Elijah Muhammad's death in 1975, his son, W.D. Muhammad, changed the organization's name to the World Community of Islam in the West and sought to turn believers toward orthodox Islam. This led to more defections. The minister Louis Farrakhan (1933–), moving into Elijah Muhammad's former residence in Chicago, revived both the NOI name and the discarded theology. The NOI's “Million Man March” of October 1995, which brought thousands of (mostly) African American males to Washington, D.C., confirmed the disillusionment of many African Americans with the failed promise of racial equality and integration and the continued attraction of the NOI's blend of racial chauvinism, capitalism, and strict standards of personal morality.
See also African American Religion.

Bibliography

C. Eric Lincoln , The Black Muslims in America, 1997.
Richard Brent Turner , Islam in the African‐American Experience, 1997.

Gerald Horne