New Perspectives on the Nation of Islam

New Perspectives on the Nation of Islam contributes to the ongoing dia- logue about the nature and influence of the Nation of Islam (NOI), bringing fresh insights to areas that have previously been overlooked in the scholarship of Elijah Muhammad’s NOI, the Imam W. D. Mohammed community, and Louis Farrakhan’s Resurrected NOI. Bringing together contributions that explore the formation, practices, and influence of the NOI, this volume problematizes the history of the movement, its theology, and its relationships with other religious movements. Contributors offer a range of diverse perspectives, making connections between the ideology of the NOI and gender, dietary restrictions and foodways, the internationalization of the movement, and the civil rights movement. This book provides a state-of-the-art overview of current scholarship on the Nation of Islam and will be relevant to scholars of American religion and history, Islamic studies, and African American Studies.

Dawn-Marie Gibson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.

Herbert Berg is Professor of Religion in the Department of Philosophy and Religion and the Director of International Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, USA. Routledge Studies in Religion For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

46 Scripturalizing the Human The Written as the Political Edited by Vincent L. Wimbush

47 Translating Religion What Is Lost and Gained? Edited by Michael P. Dejonge and Christiane Tietz

48 Refractions of the Scriptural Critical Orientation as Transgression Edited by Vincent L. Wimbush

49 Innovative Catholicism and the Human Condition Jane Anderson

50 Religion and Ecological Crisis The “Lynn White Thesis” at Fifty Edited by Todd LeVasseur and Anna Peterson

51 Secular Cosmopolitanism, Hospitality, and Religious Pluralism Andrew Fiala

52 Religion, Migration, and Mobility The Brazilian Experience Edited by Cristina Maria de Castro and Andrew Dawson

53 Hans Mol and the Sociology of Religion Adam J. Powell with Original Essays by Hans Mol

54 Buddhist Modernities Re-inventing Tradition in the Globalizing Modern World Edited by Hanna Havnevik, Ute Hüsken, Mark Teeuwen, Vladimir Tikhonov and Koen Wellens

55 New Perspectives on the Nation of Islam Edited by Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Berg New Perspectives on the Nation of Islam

Edited by Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Berg First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Berg to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-18188-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-64671-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC Contents

List of Contributors vii

1 Introduction 1 DAWN-MARIE GIBSON AND HERBERT BERG

PART I Gender, Society, and Global Connections 7 2 “A Superb Sales Force . . . The Men of Muhammad”: The Nation of Islam, Black Masculinity, and Selling Muhammad Speaks in the Black Power Era 9 D’WESTON L. HAYWOOD

3 Ebony Muhammad’s Hurt2Healing Magazine and Contemporary Nation Women 31 DAWN-MARIE GIBSON

4 The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State: The Nation of Islam and the Legal Battle for the Right to Assemble 46 SENECA VAUGHT

5 Eat to Live: Culinary Nationalism and Black Capitalism in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam 68 MARY POTORTI

6 Was It a Nine Days Wonder? A Note on the Proselytisation Efforts of the Nation of Islam in Ghana, c. 1980s–2010 95 DE-VALERA N.Y.M. BOTCHWAY AND MUSTAPHA ABDUL-HAMID

7 The Nation of Islam and Japanese Imperial Ambitions 118 FRANK JACOB vi Contents PART II Propaganda and Theology 133 8 Propaganda in the Early NOI 135 PATRICK D. BOWEN

9 “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is”: Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam, and Theological Phenomenology 154 STEPHEN C. FINLEY

10 Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies: The “Historical” Jesus and the Contemporary Christ 174 HERBERT BERG

11 Black Muslims, White Jesus: Removing Racial Images of God with CRAID and W. D. Muhammad 190 JAMIE L. BRUMMITT

12 Clearing the Planet: Dianetics Auditing and the Eschatology of the Nation of Islam 218 JACOB KING

13 The Evolving Theology of the Nation of Islam 236 NATHAN SAUNDERS

Index 251 Contributors

Mustapha Abdul-Hamid is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Religion and Human Values, University of Cape Coast. He holds an MPhil degree in Religious Studies from the same university. His articles include “Reli- gious Language and the Charge of Blasphemy: In Defense of Al-Hallaj” and “Islam, Politics & Development: Negotiating the Future of Dagbon.” Herbert Berg is Professor of Religion in the Department of Philosophy and Religion and the Director of International Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He holds a PhD degree in the study of religion from the University of Toronto. His monographs include Elijah Muhammad and Islam and Elijah Muhammad in the Makers of the Mus- lim World series. De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway is Associate Professor of Africa and African Diaspora in the Department of History at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He holds a PhD from the University of Cape Coast. His articles include “Fela ‘The Black President’ as Grist to the Mill of the Black Power Movement in Africa,” and “ ‘When the Global Marginalises the Local’: Marcus Garvey and Kwabena Damuah as Mortar to the Bricks of 20th Century Afrocentric Religious Reformation.” Patrick D. Bowen is an independent researcher who holds a PhD in Religion and Social Change from the University of Denver-Iliff School of Theol- ogy Joint PhD Program. He is the author of the multivolume book series A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States. Jamie L. Brummitt is an instructor at the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and a PhD candidate at Duke University. Her publications include “Mary Lyman’s Mourning Piece” and several encyclopedia articles. Her research focuses on the visual and material cultures of American religions. Stephen C. Finley is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the African & African American Studies Program at Louisiana State University. He holds a PhD from Rice University. His articles include viii Contributors “The Meaning of ‘Mother’ in Louis Farrakhan’s ‘Mother Wheel’: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Cosmology of the Nation of Islam’s UFO”; “ ‘From Mistress to Mother’: The Religious Transformation of Tyn- netta Muhammad in the Nation of Islam”; and “Mathematical Theol- ogy: Numerology in the Religious Thought of Tynnetta Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan.” Dawn-Marie Gibson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. She holds a PhD from the School of History and International Affairs at the University of Ulster. Her books include A History of the Nation of Islam: Race, Islam, and the Quest for Freedom; Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam (coauthored with Jamillah Karim); and The Nation of Islam, Louis Far- rakhan, and the Men Who Follow Him. D’Weston L. Haywood is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Haywood received his PhD in American history from Northwestern University. His research explores histories of Black protest, Black masculinity, and Black newspapers. Frank Jacob is Assistant Professor of World History at the City University of New York. He holds a PhD in Japanese studies from Erlangen Univer- sity. His publications include The Thule-Society and the Kokuryûkai and A Short History of the Amur Society. Jacob King received a MA in Religion from Claremont Graduate University in 2014, with a concentration in history of Christianity and religions of North America. He is a freelance writer, living in Los Angeles. His stories include the Pushcart-nominated “Dear Denny,” in the winter 2015 issue of Permafrost, and “The Great Excuse,” in issue number eleven of Fan- tasy Scroll Magazine. Mary Potorti is Affiliated Faculty at the Institute for Liberal Arts and Inter- disciplinary Studies at Emerson College and Lecturer of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She holds a PhD in American and New England studies from Boston University. Her articles include “To Feed the Revolution: The Black Panther Party and the Politics of Food” and “Planning for the People: The Early Years of Baltimore’s Neighborhood Design Center.” Nathan Saunders is Head of Collections at South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina. He holds a PhD in American history from the University of South Carolina. His most recent articles include “Spec- tacular Evangelist: Aimee Semple McPherson on the Fox Newsreel” and the forthcoming publication “Conservative Chick? Conservative Culture Warriors at War.” Contributors ix Seneca Vaught is Associate Professor of History and Interdisciplinary Stud- ies at Kennesaw State University. He holds a PhD in policy history from Bowling Green State University. His recent publications, “An Act of God: Race, Religion, and Policy in the Eye of the Storm” and “Tupac’s Law: Incarceration and the Crisis of Black Masculinity” analyze intersections of race, policy, and popular culture.

1 Introduction

Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Berg

In 1851, the French scholar Ernest Renan wrote that Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, “was born in the full light of history”—unlike the founders of the other “world religions.”1 Given the debates about Islamic origins, it seems Renan was a bit optimistic. However, it seems that we should be able to say confidently that the Nation of Islam (NOI), begun in 1930 in Detroit by a preacher using the name Wali Fard Muhammad, was certainly born in the light of history. After all, we have police reports and extensive Federal Bureau of Investigation files on him and his successor and apostle, Elijah Muhammad. For the latter, we also have extensive recordings of speeches, weekly columns, and books. The same is true of his most important and famous converts, including Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. How then is it that we know surprisingly little about key elements of the movement? The NOI attracted thousands of African Americans in Detroit in the early 1930s. Wali Fard Muhammad’s unique formulation of Islam, his critique of Christianity, U.S. race relations, and his perceived knowledge of their ancestors’ customs and religious practices intrigued members. Fard Muhammad segregated his male and female followers into hierarchical classes known as the Muslims Girls Training and General Civilization Class (MGT-GCC) and the Fruit of Islam (FOI). The former educated women in the rudiments of domestic science, while the latter taught men how to defend and protect their places of worship and the Nation community. NOI converts spent much of their time within their Nation community. Indeed, in his pioneer- ing study of the community, sociologist Erdmann Beynon observed that Nation members “way of living” resulted in them becoming “isolated” from non-members.2 Wali Fard Muhammad’s mysterious disappearance in 1933 did not signal the end for the NOI. Indeed, the group grew exponen- tially under the leadership of Fard’s apostle, Elijah Muhammad, throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Elijah Muhammad’s NOI remained a lesser known religious movement among African Americans until 1959, when the group received endless coverage in the national news largely as a result of its minister’s writings in African American newspapers. In 1960, the NOI’s first national minister, Malcolm X, received Elijah Muhammad’s blessing to begin work on the group’s first national newspaper, Muhammad Speaks. 2 Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Berg The newspaper outlined the community’s beliefs, critiques of the civil rights movement, and offered non-members a rare glimpse into the Nation. The community’s exponential growth brought with it increased government surveillance and infiltration by those working for the bureau. Power struggles and infiltration gripped Muhammad’s close-knit community and in 1964, it led to Malcolm X’s departure from the movement. The NOI continued to develop and grow following Malcolm’s departure and assassination in February 1965. However, Elijah Muhammad’s refusal to appoint or tolerate questions over succession ensured that upon his death in 1975 it was left to his immediate family to determine who should succeed him. In February 1975, Muhammad’s family announced that Wallace Muhammad (Elijah Muhammad’s seventh son) had been chosen as the community’s new leader. Wallace earned the displeasure of his father’s closest ministers prior to 1975. Much of their unease about him stemmed not so much from his politics but from his gradual efforts to introduce more Quran-based and “orthodox” teachings into the community. Wallace’s gravitation to Sunni Islam resulted in his suspension from the NOI on a number of occasions prior to 1975.3 Wallace demilitarized the NOI by disbanding the FOI and the MGT. He also overturned the community’s ban on whites becoming members and introduced Sunni Islam within the first two years of his leadership.4 The rapid changes that occurred within the NOI under Wallace’s leadership eased the path to Sunni Islam for thousands of NOI converts. Such changes, however, also devastated countless Nation members and their families. For while some family members readily embraced Sunni Islam, others construed the theological changes to be tantamount to heresy.5 One such individual was the NOI’s former Harlem minister, Louis Farrakhan. Minister Farrakhan left the World Community of Al-Islam in the West (WCIW) as the NOI became known in 1977. Shortly thereafter, he sought out to rebuild the NOI on Elijah Muhammad’s theological and economic principles. Minister Far- rakhan has enjoyed much success as the Resurrected NOI’s national leader. Farrakhan rose to national prominence in pockets of Black America and beyond in the early 1990s and reached the pinnacle of his career in Octo- ber 1995 when he led the Million Man March in Washington, DC. Minister Farrakhan’s NOI is no longer a replica of the original Nation. Indeed, like his former leader, Wallace, Farrakhan too has attempted to steer his followers toward a more universal understanding of Islam. Farrakhan’s NOI and Imam Wallace D. Mohammed’s community have continued to evolve significantly. Yet scholars have rarely noted such changes. For the first quarter century of its history, the NOI received almost no scholarly attention. When it burst into the consciousness of white America at the end of the 1950s—for most with the television documentary The Hate That Hate Produced and then with the “notoriety” of Malcolm X—some scholars finally turned their attention to the NOI. Much of it was initially hostile or dismissive, seeking to explain (away) this growing movement as merely an expression of Black nationalism, millenarianism, and so forth. It Introduction 3 would take several more decades before it was analyzed from the perspective of religious studies, gender studies, and so forth. A second generation of scholars then produced a wealth of literature on the NOI’s leadership, theology, and history. This volume seeks to once again expand what we know of this movement by examining important aspects of the NOI that have been neglected in earlier scholarship on Elijah Muhammad’s NOI, the community of his son Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, and the second resurrection of the NOI under Louis Farrakhan. New Perspectives on the Nation of Islam covers a wide range of neglected and overlooked topics on the NOI. In our selection of essays addressing Elijah Muhammad’s NOI, our contributors explore several aspects of the community including the use of early propaganda by the Nation’s leaders and writers, conceptions of masculinity in the NOI, the organization’s relationship with penal institutions and their critique of white supremacy, dietary laws in the community, and Muhammad’s redeployment of the figure of Jesus to fit his racial mythology. Our essays on the Imam Mohammed community reveal the origins and successes of the rarely examined Committee for the Removal of All Images That Attempt to Por- tray the Divine (CRAID) and our contributors work on Louis Farrakhan’s resurrected Nation explore gender norms in the community via the popular NOI magazine, Hurt2Healing. Our essays also examine the Nation’s presence in Ghana and Minister Farrakhan’s recent adoption of Dianetics Audit- ing and his community’s relationship with the Church of Scientology. The volume begins with several examinations of gender in the NOI. Few scholars have considered the varied ways in which women have experienced and contributed to the NOI throughout its long history. Our contributor’s essays on gender and the NOI challenge conventional notions of women’s subordination within the movement. D’Weston Haywood focuses in Chapter 2 on how the NOI constructed its vision of Black masculinity through its newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, and how it helped promote a particular model of Black masculinity not only through print but also in having its male sales force exemplifying ‘liberated’ Black men working to raise the consciousness of Black urban dwellers. The next chapter by Dawn-Marie Gibson takes up the subject of women’s efforts to modern- ize numerous aspects of the NOI’s gender norms through the popular NOI affiliated magazine, Hurt2Healing. The chapter argues that the magazine provides Nation women with a relatively safe space in which to challenge and redefine NOI boundaries as they relate to gender norms in Minister Farrakhan’s community. Chapter 4 by Seneca Vaught examines the importance of the NOI’s prison ministry, particularly on the right to assemble through a number of key court cases starting in the 1940s. From the politics of gender, the volume then turns to the politics of food, highlighting the varied ways in which members expressed their religious commitment within the movement. In Chapter 5, Mary Potorti shows how Elijah Muhammad presented both food choice and food security as a means and ends of social 4 Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Berg change. She argues that the diet he espoused in his writings and speeches represented a fundamental critique of American foodways and the capitalist food system, which he repeatedly characterized as a project of Black genocide because it perpetuated the physical, social, and spiritual starvation and poisoning of Black Americans. Although the Nation of Islam was born “in the Wilderness of North America,” its outlook was global. De-Valera N.Y.M Botchway and Musta- pha Abdul-Hamid explore the impact of the NOI’s attempts to proselytize in Ghana starting in the mid-1980s in Chapter 6. Of particular note was the resistance to these efforts, due in no small part to its well-established “orthodox” Muslim population. Interest in the NOI has often transcended America’s borders. In Chapter 7, Frank Jacob uncovers Japanese efforts during World War II to contact and ally themselves with the NOI. Jacob examines Japanese interest in the NOI and outlines the varied ways in which the Nation’s leadership viewed and interacted with Japanese radicals. Elijah Muhammad’s NOI generated significant attention from sociolo- gists, historians, and scholars of Islam following its unveiling in 1959 via The Hate That Hate Produced. Much of the existing scholarly studies of Muhammad’s community tend to focus on the Nation’s most well-known and controversial figures, particularly Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Louis Farrakhan. Elijah Muhammad received remarkably little attention from scholars until the 1990s, and much of this scholarship was confined to biographies of Muhammad. In our edited volume, we explore the theologies of Elijah Muhammad and his successor, Imam W. D. Mohammed. Our essays covering the use of propaganda and the theology of Elijah Muhammad seek to provide fresh insights into the ideological formation of the NOI. Patrick Bowen examines the earliest publications of the NOI to highlight how its African American members, including Elijah Muhammad, constructed and expressed its ideology. Bowen gives reliable and important details about the group’s structure and growth during this important formative, but hitherto opaque, period in Chapter 8. In Chapter 9, Stephen C. Finley argues for the importance of the religious dimension of the movement by approaching Elijah Muhammad’s teaching about the origin of the races using theological phenomenology, which uses theological symbolism to frame the existential dynamics of lived experience. In so doing, Finley shows the connection of the depiction of the “white devil” within the context of American white supremacy. Herbert Berg then outlines how Elijah Muhammad redeployed the figure of Jesus to fit his racial mythology in Chapter 10. By bifurcating Jesus into the last Black prophet sent to the white race, who rejected and killed him, and into the prophetic metaphor for the last Black god sent to the “lost-found Nation of Islam,” Elijah Muhammad’s Jesus served as a parable for the evilness of the “white devil” and the futility and danger of Christianity for African Americans. In Chapter 11, Jamie L. Brummit examines W. D. Mohammed’s CRIAD (the Committee for the Removal of All Images That Attempt to Portray the Divine) movement, which accused Introduction 5 white images of Jesus of causing psychological harm to African Americans. Although accused of dividing some African American Christians from Mus- lims, CRIAD urged white and black Christians and Muslims to unite against Christian racism. Even though Louis Farrakhan’s NOI received considerable scholarly attention in the early 1990s as a result of the Million Man March, these numerous studies, including those conducted by Robert Singh, Mattias Gardell, and Manning Marable, concerned themselves with Farrakhan’s leadership and popularity with broad sections of Black America. The final section of this volume focuses on lesser known aspects of Minister Farrakhan’s theology and his relationship with the Church of Scientology. In Chapter 12, Jacob King explores the rather unexpected adoption by Louis Farrakhan and his followers of Dianetics Auditing of L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientol- ogy. Elijah Muhammad’s teaching of “Knowledge of Self” is fused to the self-knowledge taught by Auditing. Finally, in Chapter 13, Nathan Saunders demonstrates how the NOI’s theology evolved from Elijah Muhammad to Louis Farrakhan and how the latter’s teachings on God, humanity, evil, and the end-times needed reformulation to speak to the concerns of African Americans in the post-civil rights era United States. In presenting these perspectives, this volume also seeks to highlight what we do not yet know about the NOI. This is true of the key figures and leaders such as Fard Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and Warith Deen Mohammed, but it is even more true of the men and women in the leadership roles in the NOI, its businesses, its day- to-day operations, and so forth. Just as important is the impact of the NOI on the lives of its “ordinary” members; its influence on African American communities, movements, and churches; its relationship with other and former NOI Muslims; and so forth. Moreover, the disappearance of Fard Muhammad and the ascendancy of Elijah Muhammad took the early NOI in a new direction, and the succession of the latter by his son Wallace D. Muhammad (later, Warith Deen Mohammed) in 1975 and the split by Louis Farrakhan two years later transformed both the NOI and African American Islam. The death of Imam Mohammed in 2008 and the eventual post-Farrakhan NOI assure that the story of the NOI and African Ameri- can Muslims is not yet complete. To construct the NOI “in the full light of history,” not only are there many more aspects of the NOI to investigate but also those aspects will undoubtedly continue to require many more “new perspectives.”

Notes 1. Ernest Renan, “Muhammad and the Origins of Islam,” in The Quest for the His- torical Muhammad, edited and translated by Ibn Warraq (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2000), 128–129. 2. Erdmann Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit,” Amer- ican Journal of Sociology 43.6 (May, 1938): 894. 6 Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Berg 3. Warith D. Muhammad, As the Light Shineth from the East (Chicago: WDM, 1980), 145. 4. Jane I. Smith, Islam in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 91. 5. Lance Shabazz, Blood, Sweat & Tears: The Nation of Islam and Me (Raleigh, N C: Lulu Publishing Services, 2015), 4.

Works Cited Beynon, Erdmann Doane. “The Voodoo Cult among Negro Migrants in Detroit.” The American Journal of Sociology 43 (July 1937–May 1938): 894–907. Muhammad, Warith D. As the Light Shineth from the East. Chicago: WDM, 1980. Renan, Ernest. “Muhammad and the Origins of Islam.” In The Quest for the Histor- ical Muhammad, ed. and trans. by Ibn Warraq, 127–166. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2000. Shabazz, Lance. Blood, Sweat & Tears: The Nation of Islam and Me. Raleigh, NC: Lulu Publishing Services, 2015. Smith, Jane I. Islam in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Part I Gender, Society, and Global Connections

2 “A Superb Sales Force . . . The Men of Muhammad” The Nation of Islam, Black Masculinity, and Selling Muhammad Speaks in the Black Power Era

D’Weston L. Haywood

By the late 1960s, much of the Black reading public shifted along with dramatic changes in the Black freedom struggle that heralded Black Power.1 As civil rights activists pressed forward in fighting for racial justice, and the mainstream Black press reported widely on the movement, other groups offering their vision of how the struggle should proceed gained increasing visibility and so did their news organs.2 The Nation of Islam (NOI) was one such group. In fact, given shifts to Black militancy, shifts that the NOI had helped influence, the Nation quickly became one of the most polarizing and exciting groups of the time.3 Through aggressive calls for an independent Black state, self-determination, and racial solidarity, as well as the electrify- ing oratory of its spokesmen, the NOI solidified a controversial reputation that intrigued the Black and white public alike.4 Yet conveying the import of these calls was the Nation’s newspaper, Muhammad Speaks. Founded in 1960 by Malcolm X, the paper helped stoke public fascination, especially among Blacks who were already consumers of a long vibrant Black print media culture that had helped shape the Black public sphere during the twentieth century.5 Scholars have done well examining the political, economic, cultural, and theological dimensions that made the NOI such a cap- tivating group, but less considered has been the paper, the Nation’s most lucrative business enterprise that helped attract attention and followers to the group as it endeavored to influence the course of the freedom struggle.6 Muhammad Speaks helped publicize the Nation, as well as elevate its particular vision and performance of Black manhood before an increasingly militant Black public.7 This chapter points out the pivotal role of Muhammad Speaks in helping advance not only the message of the Nation during the 1960s but also some of the group’s signature goals: the rehabilitation of Black men and urban Black communities.8 As some scholars have examined the Nation’s emphasis on restoring Black manhood, this chapter situates the NOI’s per- formances of Black masculinity in a broader context of the Black Power 10 D’Weston L. Haywood era that included an upsurge of militant Black male leadership, spectacular public displays of militancy and masculinity, and the rise of influential radical Black newspapers.9 Indeed, Muhammad Speaks was a part of a long- standing history of Black protest journalism, but signaled a departure to radical Black papers as this initially small grassroots paper ended up eclips- ing the lead of many major national Black periodicals.10 One of the ways the paper achieved this influence was by appealing to the gendered ideas and ideologies of Black Americans and their ongoing quest to win respect for themselves as “real” men and women.11 The paper foregrounded the NOI’s appeals to Black masculinity couched within the NOI’s patriarchal gender politics and sold by the Fruit of Islam (FOI), the elite cadre of male members.12 Their hawking of the paper from street corners was especially important for the time because salesmen contributed to the era’s spectacular displays of Black militancy and masculinity that helped generate a power- fully evocative visual culture of Black Power. In many ways, this culture literally and figuratively positioned Black male bodies at the center of the freedom struggle under the idea that their presence carried with it a manly influence thought to advance the race.13 While required to sell the paper, salesmen represented the redemptive potential that the Nation and its paper could provide Black men, as well as what became some of the era’s most popular ideals—mentally ‘liberated’ Black men exerting influence on urban space in order to help raise the consciousness of Black people to liberate themselves and challenge structures of white power.14 The NOI’s widespread use of newspapers and salesmen to promote the Nation began as early as 1956, when Elijah Muhammad published a weekly column in one of the most popular Black periodicals of the day, the Pitts- burgh Courier.15 For the Nation, the column, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” represented “a new era” in “the field of journalism among the so-called American Negroes.” At this time, other Black newspapers, such as the Amsterdam News and Los Angeles Herald Dispatch, also printed writings by Malcolm X and other Nation ministers, as well as and general news covering the Nation’s affairs.16 “With Messenger Muhammad writing in the Courier,” writers for Muhammad Speaks reflected glowingly,

The Courier, along with other Negro newspapers, was experiencing decreases in circulation among our people who have been trained to buy and rely on the white dailies and magazines for news. With Mes- senger Muhammad writing in the Courier, his followers began circulating the paper in every village, town, and city where the so-called Negro lived . . . Other newspapers seeing the Courier’s success and the tremendous promotion the Muslims were giving the distribution of papers, began to print different articles on the Messenger. They would then inquire of the Mosque how many copies would be needed as they knew a line of favorable type on Mr. Muhamad would bring increased sales. On several occasions, the Muslims would sell 10,000 New York “A Superb Sales Force . . .” 11 Amsterdam News newspapers after they got off work in an hour. Mr. Muhammad’s followers sold many Ebony subscriptions for Johnson publications.17

The article pointed to the crucial role salesmen played for both mainstream Black newspapers and Muhammad. “Blizzard, nor flooding rain, nor blaz- ing 100 degree heat nor 20 below icy cold” could stop salesmen, the paper would argue.18 Yet a rift between Muhammad and Courier editors resulted in the discon- tinuation of the column by 1959, despite its apparent popularity.19 Muham- mad Speaks explained,

The Courier began to print Mr. Muhammad’s column with error and began to print any article carried in the white press concerning Mr. Muhammad without checking with him to get his side or to see if the statements were true. Because of this lack of communication between the Courier, the column, ‘Mr. Muhamad Speaks,’ was discontinued . . . at a time when the Muhammad’s mosque was selling 1, 256, 555 copies yearly. Soon other so-called Negro publications got on the band wagon.20

The Courier’s split with Muhammad was motivated by emerging negative publicity surrounding the Nation in the white press, as well as a rising tide of Black radicalism that many major Black newspapers were beginning to condemn.21 The expulsion of Muhammad from a leading Black paper that had provided him a critical public platform appeared costly but ended up being serendipitous for the Nation. The rift helped bring about Muhammad Speaks at a time when the freedom struggle was beginning to shift to Black militancy—a shift from which the Nation and its news organ would later benefit immensely.22 Interestingly, the paper’s name resembled the name of the original Courier column. While declaring that, “Now comes the time to put forth the effort we have given others to our own,” it is possible that NOI leaders may have used the title to try to bring over loyal readers from the Courier to the new publication.23 Not before long, writers claimed that, “this paper is in such great demand that each issue is practically sold out before it goes to press.”24 Despite the exaggeration, the paper had a point. Its circulation soon numbered 500,000, supplanting the Courier’s circulation of 300,000.25 Indeed, the Black reading public’s interest in the Nation reflected growing interest, good and bad, in the group in general. Negative coverage from mainstream white media in particular motivated NOI leaders to marshal the paper to raise a counter-discourse that cast the Nation in a positive light.26 The launch of the paper marked the beginning of a strategic public relations campaign that would later expand to radio, television, films, and albums of Muhammad’s recorded speeches.27 For now, the paper distinguished itself 12 D’Weston L. Haywood from other Black periodicals by announcing from the outset the racial and gender politics that would underpin it, asserting that it was “Dedicated to Freedom, Justice and Equality for the Black Man.”28 Readers were promised to get “Accurate Reports of condition of So-calle[d] Negro from every section of America,” as well as “the Truth about the original Man—You will be given knowledge of just ‘who’ is the original man! You will be given the true identity of the ‘colored man.’ ” The paper initially sold for ten cents— but it was “Worth More,” writers insisted. It was the “paper that speaks out for you . . . Muhammad Speaks!”29 NOI leaders encouraged Blacks to reject white culture and resist its structures of white power, a mental, physical, cultural, and spiritual process that Muhammad Speaks writers argued also involved rejecting white media, including the white press. Indeed, the effort to establish the independent Black state that the NOI imagined also necessitated establishing an independent Black newspaper—one under the complete control of Blacks and solely devoted to addressing their issues.30 The FOI would serve as the foot soldiers for both. In Muhammad Speaks, readers found caustic and inspirational appeals to racial solidarity couched in gendered language rooted in a Black Nation- alist framework that demanded Blacks free themselves from submissive political, cultural, social, and economic positions. Such language reflected Muhammad’s gendered subjectivity, the Nation’s emphasis on redeeming Black men, and the effort of the leadership to motivate the overwhelmingly male membership.31 Much of the paper’s content centered on Muhammad’s teachings, especially his public speeches, which the paper sometimes printed verbatim in whole or as excerpts. Interested members of the public, who could not attend Muhammad’s speeches in different cities across the country that reportedly drew crowds numbering in the thousands, missed very few of his words with the paper. “Twenty million so-called Negroes should not be begging the white man to do for them what they can and must do for themselves,” he told a crowd of 16,000 in Washington, DC.32 Before 15,000 in New York, he charged,

We today, the black people, the black man have been made to think that we are an inferior people . . . The black man’s head may look hard and knotty, but that is all right. That head is from a father who created the universe . . . We are the Nation of Islam.33

Yet Muhammad’s articles were just as provocative as his speeches. “We know by the very nature of the white man that he will never do justice by us,” he insisted, condemning integration. “The only solution is SEPARA- TION of the black and white especially the slave master from his slave.”34 “We should know after 400 years under Christians, that there is nothing in white Christianity for the Black race but hell!” This was one expression of an acerbic critique of Christianity, as well as white and Black churches, that NOI leaders maintained in contrast to Islam, which they argued was “A Superb Sales Force . . .” 13 Blacks’ ‘true’ religion.35 Other writers for the paper only echoed these points in similar tones. With Muhammad Speaks promoting this highly charged rhetoric, Muhammad appeared to some observers to be, as religious scholar and sociologist C. Eric Lincoln documented in his seminal study on the Nation, “the most fearless Black man in America.”36 Whether in a public speech or a column, such language likely thrilled segments of the Black public that were becoming more and more militant. Indeed, many readers supported Muhammad’s blunt talk. After reading only one issue, one admirer wrote,

My husband and I were greatly influenced by your talks to the so-called Negroes . . . we were so inspired by reading the many truths . . . [that] . . . my entire family went to the Muhammad mosque . . . You speak the truth . . . and we believe that your teachings are the only teachings that will help us to help ourselves . . . Please inform me of how I can receive everyone of ‘Muhammad Speaks’ newspapers as I do not want to miss any of them since reading just the one paper has started me thinking differently for my family and myself.37

“It is what the black public needs. It is a moral upliftment in black pride. It is a forthright edition of Basic Truth,” said another reader. One Black male reader enjoyed it so much that he offered to “become an agent” for the paper.38 But essential to meeting the growing demand for the paper among the Black reading public, and helping to fuel it, were the FOI. They had peddled papers for Muhammad since his forays with the Courier and would continue now that the NOI had its own paper. Movement leaders’ use of the paper to capitalize on and influence escalating public interest put increased demands on the FOI to meet quotas in selling the paper. This move made the men virtually synonymous with it as salesmen. Operating “mainly upon person to person sales,” they became some of the most conspicuous exten- sions of the Nation before the public, oftentimes being the public’s first point of contact with the Nation.39 Thus NOI leaders expected salesmen, not unlike members of the movement in general, to be presentable in their clothing and appearance. Here salesmen were supposed to represent the redeemed Black male image that the NOI promised to provide Black men, among other things.40 Cleanliness and a comely appearance, which was supposed to penetrate inwardly as much as manifest outwardly, involved a number of grooming measures that the Nation encouraged through the paper as it promoted member-owned businesses, for example. Temple No. 2 Cleaners insisted that “to be successful . . . look successful by keeping your clothes neat.” One had to be “Dressed for Leadership,” according to Tem- ple No. 2 Clothing Store.41 Muhammad Speaks promoted what NOI leaders saw as a proper Black male public image, and salesmen helped serve as its real-life exemplars.42 Salesmen seemed to have mobilized the look as early as 14 D’Weston L. Haywood Muhammad’s work with the Courier. It was then that “it became a common sight to see the young clean-cut Muslim men during the week selling the Negro newspapers,” claiming that “clean-cut and courteous familiar figures they became in the community.”43 A serious paper sold by serious-looking men—perhaps their clean-cut aesthetic also served to make the paper that much more appealing to customers. One observer recalled that as a boy in the 1960s, he “enjoyed watching these handsome, strong, well-dressed men darting in and out of traffic to sell their materials,” while his parents bought the paper. “The image impressed me greatly,” he remembered, later becoming a member of the Nation himself.44 New York Times journalist Gertrude Samuels observed, “Their code emphasizing race pride and individual deco- rum, is helping to shatter the Negro stereotype of shiftlessness and lawless- ness and has undeniable appeal.”45 In many ways, the clean-cut look reflected the “clean” lifestyle that the Nation required of members, as well as a deep personal cleansing that many male members reported undergoing in their conversion to Islam, all of which they argued made them better men.46 Joseph X Barnes shared that “Islam gave him true life, manhood” while he served a sentence for robbery and assault. A product of the Nation’s successful prison ministry to many Black men, he

came into Islam as nothing; rejected and despised by the society that had made it possible for thousands of young black men such as myself, to be reduced to nothing. And now, thanks to almighty Allah, I am emerging as a man with a goal and a true avenue by which to reach my goal.47

Islam, under Muhammad’s teachings, “has restored life to a once dead Negro man,” Brother Angelo 3X shared. Once a “pimp, con-man, slick, fool, etc.,” Angelo’s spiritual journey “has restored understanding to a once dumb Negro man. It has restored pride to a once degraded Negro man, and made him proud of his blackness and all blackness.”48 William X Frank- lin, was in a “low moral and spiritual condition,” using “games and other trickery and deceit . . . so well that I thought I could make my living with them,” until he read an issue of Muhammad Speaks. He was “so impressed and inspired” by Muhammad’s writings in the paper that “I made up my mind to get a job and do right,” which was a decision that eventually led him to join.49 Brother Monroe 3X even “learned how to read from reading Muhammad Speaks.” It helped rescue him from a life of “crime” as “a poison animal eater, dope fiend and alcohol drinker,” and was so inspiring that “I believe this is why I still like to push MUHAMMAD SPEAKS so much.”50 These testimonies were among countless personal narratives the paper published, especially in “What Islam Has Done For Me,” a regular section dedicated to sharing the successful conversion stories and laudatory reflections of members. Many members reported their conversion and reformation in terms of a freeing of their minds, terms that presaged Black Power “A Superb Sales Force . . .” 15 advocates’ calls for the racial and mental liberation of Black people.51 Abdul Basit Naeem, a writer for Muhammad Speaks, asserted that the testimonials “Indicate Muslim Progress,” they “clearly show how the great U.S. Muslim leader (Honorable Elijah Muhammad) has helped thousands upon thousands of his wretched and woebegone people.” To encourage more members to tell their stories, Naeem insisted, “Islam as taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, loosens a new believer’s previously knotted tongue and equips him with unprecedented will and capacity to express himself.”52 This “capacity” was probably especially useful for salesmen in promoting the value of the paper to customers. Perched on street corners with the paper in hand like cultural weapons, salesmen became critical on many fronts. On one hand, they helped dis- seminate Elijah Muhammad’s message of Black Nationalism, complete separation, and racial uplift by making “new inroads into areas which never before had Muhammad Speaks subscriptions.”53 As Herbert Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad’s son and the director of the subscription department, put it, salesmen helped to “guarantee that the teachings and messages of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad go uninterrupted into the thousands of homes which otherwise could not be reached on a regular basis.”54 “The divinely inspired teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” the paper gloated, “have created a superb sales force . . . THE AMERICAN public is well acquainted with the effective soft-sell work of adult members of Muhammad’s Mosques of Islam across the country—the ‘Men of Muham- mad,’ properly known as the F.O.I—in distributing copies of Muhammad Speaks newspaper,” writers asserted.55 The paper even recognized “outstanding” salesmen, who sold impressive numbers of copies, some of whom received awards from Nation leaders.56 Selling the paper was such serious business, however, that failure to meet one’s quota could result in disciplinary measures enforced by the FOI, including corporal punishment.57 On the hand, by complementing the Nation’s uplift message with well- groomed visages, salesmen helped project before the public images of what the NOI’s brand of masculinity could do for Black men. Some members shared how significant the public function of selling the paper was for them. “Being in the public eye . . . makes a brother a living witness to the greatness of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad,” a salesman commented. A woman member reported,

My husband is putting into practice that which Messenger Muham- mad teaches (selling Muhammad Speaks Newspapers and striving to put into practice the other phases of righteousness.) . . . Through my husband, the head of the Family, the children and grandchildren see the work of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad.58

Writers interviewed one salesman, Brother Frank 8X Lopez, for instance, “about his success as a salesmen and how he happened to become a follower 16 D’Weston L. Haywood of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.” “I would first have to give credit . . . to the officials of the Mosque who instructed us on how to sell,” he explained. But pushing the paper had become a religious exercise for him as much as it was an FOI requirement he needed to satisfy.

The paper is sacred. When we are holding the paper we must be careful how we react to people, because we are holding the words of Almighty God, who is represented by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. The clothes we wear, the smile on our faces, consideration, justice are all a part of our sales technique . . . We are successful when we approach people as though Allah Himself would approach them.

Brother Frank’s sales pitch made for “a winning philosophy about selling Muhammad Speaks.”59 In fulfilling both of these crucial roles, salesmen represented Muham- mad’s imagined but desired “United Front of Black Men.” In asserting that “we need leaders at every level to challenge the lies of the white man,” Muhammad intended this united front to “take the offensive and carry the fight for justice and freedom to the enemy.” Muhammad hoped that the Nation’s real efforts to build this united front, in part by displaying and mobilizing the men they reformed, would ultimately create the means by which “every Black man in America [will] be reunited with his own” and “the American Negroes will discover themselves, elevate their distinguished men and women . . . give outlets to their talented youth, and assume the contours of a nation.”60 When Black Power exploded around 1966, many observers, including scholars, essayists, intellectuals, and pundits, considered the Nation to be among the vanguard of the movement, as well as its forerunner. Noting the dramatic turn in the Black freedom struggle, scholars August Meier and Elliot Rudwick observed, for example, that “a major factor leading to the radical- ization of the civil rights movement was unemployment and poverty—and an important force awakening the protest organizations to this problem was the meteoric rise of the Black Muslims to national prominence.”61 Many advocates of Black Power agreed. Their elevation of a militant Black consciousness, radical news organs, Black men’s activism, and spectacular displays of militancy and masculinity, among other things, imbued the Nation, the paper, and its salesmen with new meanings that helped reinforce the politics of the era.62 In particular, Stokely Carmichael, Huey P. Newton, and Eldridge Cleaver, echoed the ideological and gendered appeals for Black men to usurp white supremacy, take control of the economies and politics of Black communities, and forge solidarities with third-world peoples that had been vocalized for some time by Nation spokesmen and Muhammad Speaks. The Nation appreciated the homage young militants paid the NOI as harbingers to Black Power, though the young militants invoked Malcolm X especially when they made these appeals.63 “A Superb Sales Force . . .” 17 The NOI credited itself with helping inspire Black Power, and leaders pointed to the paper as part of the evidence that it had.64 Muhammad Speaks maintained the lead among radical Black newspapers that emerged throughout the decade, though writers still found it necessary to say that it was the authentically “Black” news organ—“the only black newspaper in America.”65 “More people than ever are reading Muhammad Speaks because we face the issue squarely . . . The issue is Black survival in a changing world,” it declared.66 Minister Louis Farrakhan, who rebuilt the original NOI in 1978, emphasized the point further.

While our black brothers and sisters in the civil rights movement were sitting-in, kneeling-in, etc., the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his faithful followers were busy developing the only black newspaper whose policy is completely controlled by the black man . . . Long ago, Messenger Muhammad instructed us, ‘Let us not beg for our dignity, let us build, and become dignified by the work of our own hands.’67

Some readers expressed their support in similar terms. “Of course anyone can pick up a newspaper,” commented one reader, “but the black man needs more than an ordinary newspaper. The black man needs a newspaper that prints facts which will tell him what the black man really is . . . Therefore, I like to read Muhammad Speaks newspaper.”68 A Black soldier stationed in Vietnam requested a subscription, saying,

I have been chosen by a group of brothers who . . . would like to see the weekly message spread all over Vietnam to all brothers who are here. . .. We feel that whitey has his publication here, so why can’t we have ours also.69

The politics of the era seemed to bring more patrons to the paper. With circulation booming, salesmen were instrumental now more than ever to distributing the paper and exemplifying Black Power’s appeals to grassroots mobilization, consciousness-raising, community activism, and Black (male) control.70 In principle, members of the NOI rejected U.S. citizenship, though they laid claim to the ghettos that had become cauldrons of Black discontent and unrest. The Nation demanded a separate Black state, but until it materialized, NOI leaders imagined impoverished inner cities as the spaces where their vision for productive Black-controlled political, economic, and social institutions would center.71 Indeed, many of its mosques were based in major cities such as Harlem, Boston, Newark, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles.72 From its earliest days, the paper had asserted in the same breath, “We Must Have Some Land! . . . We Must Con- trol Our Neighborhoods!”73 The paper also urged, “Support Your Own! Buy from Your Own! Live Among Your Own! Protect Your Own!”74 As urban rebellions, Black resistance to police brutality, and Black radicalism 18 D’Weston L. Haywood exploded in ghettos across the country throughout the decade, the urban remained a premier concern for NOI leaders, as well as their primary sphere of influence as leaders thought that Muhammad Speaks and salesmen were increasingly critical in helping exert that influence.75 Explicitly marking Black inner cities as the specific space of operation for salesmen to concen- trate their efforts, a “Notice to Muhammad Speaks Salesmen” instructed them that the “main areas of distribution of MUHAMMAD SPEAKS newspaper by salesmen on foot are the black communities.”76 As religious scholar Edward E. Curtis suggested about members’ ritualized activities, salesmen’s increased presence in Black communities made their bodies into “a locus of social protest,” especially within the context of Black Power.77 But for police, the increased public presence of salesmen and their being instruments of protest posed a problem. Here the “Notice to Muhammad Speaks Salesmen” was more importantly intended to help protect salesmen from police harassment and violence. This was especially important because attacks by police on Black people had been the cause of some of the urban rebellions, though Black resistance to such attacks had helped inspire Black Power.78 State authorities’ belief that the Nation in general represented a threat put many salesmen at crosshairs with the police as early as 1962.79 Skirmishes with police only continued throughout the decade as NOI subscription drives increased the exposure of the paper and salesmen. Pointing to what likely precipitated the “Notice,” the paper explained that “within the month of March alone, there were three areas in which MUHAMMAD SPEAKS newspaper sellers were set upon by police,” the paper railed, calling it “an attempt to impede the circulation” because it “currently has a wider circulation than any other black newspaper in America.”80 In another incident the following month, Theopholis X, a salesman in Omaha, had been “knocked down, beaten, publicly humili- ated, arrested and placed under bond merely for selling . . . (MUHAMMAD SPEAKS).” Reportedly, “City Hall became distressed when they learned that scores of white and black people had been buying the paper from Theopho- lis for a number of days, and the police department was notified.” After a “scuffle” ensued, “two policemen and at least three white bystanders” beat Theopholis. As “a locus of social protest,” these assaults attacked both the salesman and the assertions of Black Power they represented. Because of these problematic incidents, NOI leaders warned salesmen:

1. Stay out of white communities where MUHAMMAD SPEAKS is not wanted. 2. Do not distribute this newspaper in predominantly white residential sections. 3. Before you sell the paper in downtown sections, get the permission of the local police commissioner. 4. We are not responsible for whatever happens if you distribute our paper in forbidden areas. 5. You are not to force MUHAMMAD SPEAKS newspaper upon anyone. It is strictly forbidden.81 “A Superb Sales Force . . .” 19 Like many Black radicals, who made the street a stage for organizing, consciousness-raising, and displays of militancy and masculinity, salesmen sometimes confronted police.82 Yet, according to the article, residents planned to protest the “barbaric police beating and unlawful arrest” of Theopholis.83 Perhaps residents’ support for him was due in part to his being such a familiar, if not important, part of their community. As early as 1963, Louis E. Lomax, one of the journalists responsible for bringing the NOI to national attention, observed that members “lead an exacting, regimented life . . . brothers can be seen on the streets every day selling Muslim newspapers.”84 Just a few years later, this routine exercise of selling Muhammad Speaks would help influence and reflect the culture, organization, and politics that came to constitute Black Power. Through salesmen, the NOI united media, masculinity, and urban space, all of which became potent ideals and instruments for Black political and social organizing during the era. Radio and television exposure served as powerful public platforms for the Nation, but the paper and the streets in which salesmen sold it became other crucial public platforms, if not more crucial. Amid Black power discourses, organizing media and cultural symbols, spectacular displays of militancy and masculinity, and an upsurge of male-centered radical Black rhetoric, politics, and leadership, the NOI elevated its role as a critical actor in shaping the era. Salesmen represented ‘liberated’ Black men working to raise the consciousness of Black urban dwellers, who might also imbibe the same ideas that had helped transform those men into such the superb sales force.

Notes 1. As many scholars of this era have shown, “Black Power” was a capacious term that represented different things for different proponents at different times. While drawing on excellent studies on Black Power, my use of it here borrows especially from Amy Abugo Ongiri in her work Spectacular Blackness: The Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010). She explores the many ways in which meanings and practices of Black Power politics generated from and coalesced around a number of popular media such as art, film, music, news, and other visual tools. For more on the meanings and applications of Black Power, see for instance, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Iden- tity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Peniel Joseph, Wait- ing Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006); Peniel E. Joseph, ed., The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era (New York: Routledge, 2006); Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); and Donna Jean Murch, Living for the City: Migra- tion, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 2. For coverage of the civil rights movement by mainstream Black newspapers, see, for example, Patrick S. Washburn, “The Civil Rights Era and the Black Press,” in Patrick S. Washburn, “The Civil Rights Era and the Black Press,” in The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 197–205. 20 D’Weston L. Haywood 3. Ogbar, Black Power, 2. 4. Consider the tremendous attention the Nation began to receive from journalists and scholars by the 1960s. In particular, journalists Louis E. Lomax and Mike Wallace collaborated to produce the two-hour long documentary, “The Hate That Hate Produced” in 1959, which launched the Nation to mainstream, national attention. Lomax also wrote When the Word Is Given: A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World (Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1963). In 1961, religious scholar and sociologist C. Eric Lincoln published the first scholarly study on the NOI, The Black Muslims in America (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1994). 5. Robert E. Terrill, Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgment (East Lansing: Michi- gan State University Press, 2004), 215, n. 99; Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: One World, 1999), 258; Claude Andrew Clegg III, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York: St. Martin’s Press), 116. For histories of Black print media culture, see, for example, Armistead S. Pride and Clint C. Wilson II, A History of the Black Press (Washington: Howard University Press, 1997); Roland E. Wolseley, The Black Press, USA, 2nd Ed. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1992); Charles A. Simmons, The African American Press: A History of News Coverage During National Crises, With Special Reference to Four Newspapers, 1827–1965 (Lon- don: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1998); Lee Finkle, Forum for Protest: The Black Press During World War II (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975); For newer scholarship, see, for example, Todd Vogel, ed., The Black Press: New Literary Essays (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001) and Catherine Squires, African Americans and the Media (Cambridge: Polity, 2009). 6. Bruce Perry, Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America (New York: Station Hill Press, 1991), 220–221. Most scholars of the NOI usually mine the paper for comments made by or about Nation ministers, particularly by or about Malcolm X, especially in terms of tensions between him and other NOI leaders. Similarly, scholarship on the Black press usually overlooks Muham- mad Speaks. For scholars who have examined the cultural, religious, and gendered aspects of the paper, see, for example, Bayyinah S. Jeffries, “ ‘Raising Her Voice:’ Writings by, for, and about Women in Muhammad Speaks Newspaper” in A Nation Can Rise No Higher Than Its Women: African American Muslim Women in the Movement for Black Self-Determination, 1950–1975 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014) and Edward E. Curtis, IV, “What Islam Has Done for Me: Finding Religion in the Nation of Islam,” in Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 7. Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, 128, 137. 8. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 118; Malcolm X, Autobiography, 322–324. 9. On the point of some scholars’ analysis of Black masculinity in the NOI, see, for example, Curtis, Black Muslim Religion. On the point of displays of Black Power militancy and masculinity, see Ongiri, Spectacular Blackness. 10. Ogbar, Black Power, 44. 11. For more on Blacks’ quest for respect as “real” men and women, see, for example, Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny After Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: The University of North Car- olina Press, 2004); Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900–1930 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Darlene Clark Hine and Ernes- tine Jenkins, eds., A Question of Manhood: A Reader in U.S. Black Men’s His- tory and Masculinity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999); Steve Estes, I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: “A Superb Sales Force . . .” 21 The University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Darlene Clark Hine, Hine Sight: Black Women and the Reconstruction of American History (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1994); Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984); and Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Them- selves, 1894–1994 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1999). 12. For more on the FOI, see Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 137–146. 13. Ongiri, Spectacular Blackness, 19; Curtis, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 129; Estes, “The Baddest Motherfuckers Ever to Set Foot Inside of History,” in I Am A Man! Historians of Black women’s history and Black feminist scholars have shown the toll the privileging of Black men as racial leaders and representatives of the race has cost Black women and their political, economic, and social struggles, as well as that of struggles for racial advancement in general. See, for example, Hine, Hine Sight; Kimberly Springer, “Black Feminists Respond to Black Power Masculinism,” in Peniel E. Joseph, The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era (New York: Routledge, 2006); Giddings, When and Where I Enter; Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin, eds., Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2001); and White, Too Heavy a Load. 14. For more on their obligation to sell the paper, see Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 139. 15. Jeffries, A Nation Can Rise No Higher Than Its Women, 79. The NOI published a short-lived paper in the 1930s called the Final Call to Islam. See also Clegg, An Original Man, 116; Lincoln, Black Muslims, 127. 16. Ogbar, Black Power, 44. See also, Malcolm X, Autobiography, 258, 268. 17. MS, “Our Platform,” Muhammad Speaks. October–November 1961. 18. MS, “Onetime Proud Weekly Being Bossed By White ‘Brainwashers of Black- men,” Muhammad Speaks. May 1962. 19. Lincoln, The Black Muslims, 125–126, 137. The Courier awarded Muhammad the “Courier Achievement Award” in 1957. He was also awarded the “highest Achievement Award ever given to an individual” by the Herald Dispatch. 20. MS, “Our Platform,” October–November 1961. 21. Ogbar, Black Power, 45. See also, Malcolm X, Autobiography, 259, 266. In addition to the documentary, The Hate That Hate Produced, coverage of the movement by other members of the mainstream media, such as Time and U.S. News and World Report, was extremely critical and negative. See Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 4; Lincoln, Black Muslims, 102–103, 136–140. For many Black newspapers’ rejection of Black militancy, see Simmons, The African Amer- ican Press, 91, 102–103. See also Clint C. Wilson II, “What Price, Integration? 1970–1990s,” and “The Kerner Report as Catalyst” in Clint C. Wilson, Black Journalists in Paradox: Historical Perspectives and Current Dilemmas (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991). See also Mattias Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (Durham: Duke Univer- sity Press, 1996), 53. The FBI fed propaganda to several newspapers in order to discredit the NOI. 22. Lincoln, The Black Muslims, 128; Clegg, An Original Man, 127–128. 23. MS, “Our Platform,” October-November 1961. See also, MS, “Letters to the Editor,” Muhammad Speaks. April 1962. One reader stated, “I have read with serious profound interest Muhammad Speaks. For a long time I have been reading his other articles in the Courier, Herald Dispatch, and the New Crusader . . . I am mindful of the great good Mr. Muhammad has done for us Negroes.” It should be noted that the first edition of the paper was named Islamic News, and was renamed Muhammad Speaks. See also Karl Evanzz, The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 206. 22 D’Weston L. Haywood 24. MS, “Would You Like to be an Expert?” Muhammad Speaks. April 1962. 25. Ogbar, Black Power, 44. 26. See also William W. Sales Jr., From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity (Boston: South End Press, 1994), 118; Malcolm X, Autobiography, 255, 259, 266. Clegg, An Original Man, 127–128; Ogbar, Black Power, 45. See also, Manning Marable and Garrett Fel- ber, eds., The Portable Malcolm Reader (New York: Penguin Books, 2013), for some examples of these newspaper articles. Some of the negative coverage of the NOI was in part generated by “derogatory information” that the FBI provided selected reporters in order to undermine the Nation. See Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad, 53. 27. MS, “Muhammad Speaks,” January 28, 1966; MS, “Now on TV,” January 7, 1966; MS, “Urges All-Out Effort to Spread Truth via Newspaper, Messenger’s Book, Records,” December 15, 1967. See also, Lomax, When the Word Is Given, 84; Lincoln, The Black Muslims, 137. 28. MS, “Our Platform,” October-November 1961. 29. MS, “In the Future,” October-November, 1961. See also, MS, “Would You Like to be an Expert?” April 1962. Subscription campaign promotions said, “Your Subscription is more than buying a newspaper!! It is the building of a hospital . . . It is building a library . . . It is building a school . . . These goals can be achieved for the so-called Negroes with your taking a subscription. You should buy this subscription on the merit of the paper alone!” 30. MS, “Our Platform,” October–November 1961.; MS, “Self Help or Oblivion for the Negro,” October-November, 1961. 31. Lincoln, Black Muslims, 23. 32. MS, “16,000 Told So-Called Negro Must Have Home of Own! In Nation’s Cap- ital,” Muhammad Speaks. October-November, 1961. 33. MS, “Mr. Muhammad Addresses 15,000 in New York,” Muhammad Speaks. October–November, 1961. 34. MS, “Gottschalk’s Hatred for the Muslims,” Muhammad Speaks. July 1962. 35. MS, “Awake and See Truth,” April 1, 1963. See also, Lincoln, Black Muslims, 27–29, 72, 130–131. 36. Lincoln, Black Muslims, 2. 37. MS, “Letters to Editor,” Muhammad Speaks. December 1961. 38. MS, “Letters to the Editor,” April 1962. 39. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 139; Malcolm X, Autobiography, 258–259; Perry, Malcolm, 220–221. See also, Lomax, When the Word Is Given, 80; Ter- rill, Malcolm X, 94. It is important to note that some women sold the paper, too, though men comprised the overwhelming majority of salesmen. See Jeffries, A Nation Can Rise No Higher Than Its Women, 80. 40. On cleanliness, see Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 127. To be sure, the paper also expected this of women members: “Look Your Best!” “Dress Modestly,” “Should Women Wear Pants or Dresses,” “What is Cultural Refinement,” in MS, February, 1962. As Curtis notes, discussions about appearance in the paper focused especially on women’s dress. See Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 28, 96–98, 109–112. See also Elijah Muhammad, “Economic Program to Help Fight against Poverty and Want,” in Message to the Black Man (Chicago: Muhammad Mosque of Islam No. 2, 1965), 192. For more on histories of women in the NOI, see, for example, Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim, Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam (New York: New York Univer- sity Press, 2014); Jeffries, A Nation Can Rise No Higher Than Its Women; and Ula Y. Taylor, “As-Salaam Alaikum, My Sister: The Honorable Elijah Muham- mad and the Women Who Followed Him,” Race & Society l.2 (Spring 1998): 177–196. “A Superb Sales Force . . .” 23 41. MS, “Our Platform,” October-November 1961; MS, “Dressed for Leadership,” August 15, 1962. 42. C. Eric Lincoln, Sounds of the Struggle: Persons and Perspectives in Civil Rights (William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1971), 46. 43. MS, “Our Platform,” October-November, 1961. Sometimes the clean-cut look did not work, however. See, for example, Rodnell P. Collins with Peter A. Bailey, Seventh Child: A Family Memoir of Malcolm X (Secaucus: Carol Publishing, 1998), 97. Collins, the nephew of Malcolm X and a one-time member of the NOI, sold the Courier in Boston, along with his uncle and other FOI. He shared that he “tried to imitate [Malcolm’s] style when selling papers in Boston.” But his “looking squeaky clean” did not impress the “stuck-up, bourgeois, status- quo Negroes living in Sugar Hill.” Pointing to some of the class conflicts that shaped the NOI’s image before Black middle-class publics, Collins stated, “I mis- takenly thought they would be impressed by the sight of a young brother trying to make a few dollars legitimately. They were not. Most wouldn’t even look at the paper; others would take one from me, glance through it quickly, and give it back to me.” For more on these class conflicts, see, for instance, Robin D. G. Kelley, “The Riddle of the Zoot Suit: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics during World War II,” in Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994). 44. Vilbert L. White, Jr., Inside the Nation of Islam: A Historical and Personal Tes- timony by a Black Muslim (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 43. 45. Gertrude Samuels, “Two Ways: Black Muslim and N.A.A.C.P,” in August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, eds, Black Protest in the Sixties (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), 44. 46. To be sure, Black women also reported similar stories. See, for example, “Glad to Be an Original Woman,” MS June 16, 1967. The clean lifestyle included restrictions on clothing, hairstyles, diet, and leisure life, among other things. For a good discussion of this, see “The Ethics of the Black Muslim Body,” in Curtis, Black Muslim Religion. See also, Lincoln, Sounds of the Struggle, 41, 45. 47. MS, “What Islam Has Done for Me,” August 18, 1967. The most famous product of the NOI’s prison ministry was Malcolm X. In his autobiography, he recalled that one of the major concerns of “the white law agencies” was “the thing that I believe still ranks today as a big worry among America’s penologists: the steadily increasing rate at which black convicts embrace Islam. Generally while still in prison, our convict-converts preconditioned themselves to meet our Nation’s moral laws. As it happened with me, when they left prison, they entered a Temple fully qualified to become registered Muslims. In fact, convict- converts usually were better prepared than were numerous prospective Muslims who never had been inside a prison.” “My own transformation was the best example I knew of Mr. Muhammad’s power to reform black men’s lives,” Mal- colm asserted. See X, Autobiography, 282–286, 322. See also Lincoln, Black Muslims, 106–107, 79. 48. MS, “Islam Turned Waster into Strong, Black Man,” Muhammad Speaks. Janu- ary 6, 1967. 49. MS, “Islamic Teachings Saved Me from Treadmill of Evil,” Muhammad Speaks. February 19, 1965. 50. MS, “The Divine Teachings [Conquered] Fear and All Evil, Self-Destructive Habits,” February 16, 1968. 51. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 7, 26–31. 52. MS, “Says Testimonials of M’s Followers Indicate Muslim Progress,” Muham- mad Speaks. February 10, 1967. 53. MS, “Subscription Drive Picks Up Momentum,” Muhammad Speaks. July 15, 1962. 24 D’Weston L. Haywood 54. MS, “Coast-to-Coast Subscription Drive Underway,” Muhammad Speaks. July 1962. See also, MS, “Reach!!” December 1961. See also, MS, “Letters to the Editor,” April 1962. 55. MS, “Messenger’s Teachings Build Top Rated Salesmen in Nation’s Mosques of Islam,” Muhammad Speaks. May 3, 1968. 56. MS, “Sells 15,000 Muhammad Speaks for Trophy,” “Readers of [Varied] Reli- gions Aid Muhammad Speaks Subscriptions,” August 15, 1962 and “Outstand- ing Salesman of Muhammad Speaks,” August 18, 1967. Women also participated in the subscription drives, as well as young boys—some of whom were not NOI members but were loyal patrons of the paper. See also, Manning Marable, Mal- colm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), 213–215. It should be noted that some members, particularly in the Boston mosque, resisted the demands of these subscription campaigns. As Marable argues, it drove them to “open revolt.” 57. Perry, Malcolm, 220–221. See also, Marable, Malcolm X, 242–244. 58. Quoted in Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 139–140. 59. MS, “Brother Lopez Broke with Old Order, Joined Islam,” February 19, 1965. See also Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 139–140, 143. Curtis writes that selling the paper became “a religious ritual in the minds and bodies of its practitioners.” 60. Quoted in Lincoln, Black Muslims, 79–80. 61. See, for example, Meier and Rudwick, Black Protest in the Sixties, 13. 62. Ongiri, “Black Is Beautiful,” in Spectacular Blackness. 63. Many young Black Power militants had a great deal of respect for the NOI, though they disagreed with some of the NOI’s tenets. See “The Heirs of Mal- colm,” in Paul Alkebulan, Survival Pending Revolution: The History of the Black Panther Party (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2007); Clegg, Original Man, 243; Ongiri, Spectacular Blackness, 17, 19; Murch, Living for the City, 82, 127–131; William W. Sales, From Civil Rights to Black Libera- tion, 1994, 169–172, 180. 64. MS, “Black Power Based Theme on Muhammad’s Program,” Muhammad Speaks. August 4, 1967; MS, “Finds ‘Black Is Beautiful’ Concept Inherent in the Messenger’s Teachings,” April 26, 1968. 65. Ogbar, Black Power, 121; Clegg, Original Man, 243; Ongiri, Spectacular Black- ness, 19. For the nation’s disagreements with young Black Power radicals, see, for example, Dennis Walker, Islam and the Search for African-American Nation- hood: Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, and the Nation of Islam (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2005), 408–410. 66. MS, May 10, 1968. 67. MS, “Muhammad Speaks Cited as Key to Building Program,” Muhammad Speaks. November 24, 1967. 68. MS, “St. Petersburg Youth Hails Muhammad Speaks Paper,” Muhammad Speaks. November 3, 1967. 69. MS, “Black Soldier Wants Muhammad Speaks Delivered on Vietnam Battle- front,” Muhammad Speaks. May 10, 1968. 70. Lincoln, Sounds of the Struggle, 46–47. 71. For examples of illustrations of imagined and planned NOI farms and economic institutions, see MS, January 7, 1966, January 28, 1966, and “The Vision of Messenger Muhammad,” March 15, 1968. See also Perry, Malcolm, 224. See also Muhammad, Message to the Black Man, 194. Muhammad encouraged Black people to create an “ ‘Economic Savings Program’ to help fight unemployment, abominable housing, hunger, and nakedness of the 22 million black people here in America who continue to face these problems.” The proposed program involved supporting the NOI’s business ventures, including “subscrib- ing to the Muhammad Speaks Newspaper.” “A Superb Sales Force . . .” 25 72. These were cities called home by much of the Black masses that the NOI wanted to reach. See MS, “Visit Muhammad’s Mosques of Islam,” January 7, 1966, which listed the locations of many NOI mosques in cities across the country. See also Lincoln, Sounds of the Struggle, 41, 74; Lincoln, The Black Muslims, 2, 18–21; Herbert Berg, Elijah Muhammad and Islam (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 87–93. 73. MS, December 1961. 74. Ibid. 75. See, for example, MS, “Riots Greater in 1966,” January 7, 1966; “Negro Teen- Agers Ripen in Throes of Unrest,” January 21, 1966; “Black Struggles in Ameri- can Cities Declared to Be More than Mere Riots,” July 28, 1967; “Black Man’s Suffocating Environment Killing Him Early in Life,” August 11, 1967; “Black Ghettos Closed at Both Ends—Too Costly to Live or Die!,” June 30, 1967; “Gang Fratricide Takes Awesome Toll in Black Ghettos,” May 10, 1968. For more on urban rebellions of the late 1960s, see for example, Malcolm McLaugh- lin, The Long, Hot Summer of 1967: Urban Rebellion in America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 76. MS, “Notice to Muhammad Speaks Salesmen,” Muhammad Speaks. April 28, 1967. 77. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 129. 78. Murch, Living for the City, 131–132, 167–168; Malcolm McLaughlin, “The Apostles of Violence,” in The Long, Hot Summer: Urban Rebellion in America (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014). See also, Daniel Matlin, On the Cor- ner: African American Intellectuals and the Urban Crisis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 84. Some observers wrongly blamed the NOI for helping instigate the riots. However, this belief spoke to the influence that critics thought they had among Blacks. 79. See, MS, “Coast-to-Coast Subscription Drive Underway,” July 1962. The article reported that “Captain Raymond Sherrieff of the Fruit of Islam, in a special memorandum to Captains in Muhammad’s Mosques, declared that the subscription sales of MS could eliminate many current problems and achieve the following: 1. More assurance of readership. 2. More free time for FOI sales force. 3. Less police harassment in areas where sales of Muhammad Speaks is illegally opposed.” This article followed the murder of Ronald X Stokes, a member of the Los Angeles mosque killed by city police in April 1962. Yet selling the paper remained a priority, though NOI leadership seemed very concerned about the safety of salesmen and that of members generally in dealing with police. Consider, for example, Elijah Muhammad’s response to the slaying of Stokes. While fearing that members may retaliate and start a war, Muhammad stated that members were to “[h]old fast to Islam,” that “we are not going out into the street now to begin war with the devil . . . no, we are going to let the world know he is the devil: we are going to sell newspapers.” Quoted in Terrill, Mal- colm X, 94–95. For more on the NOI’s trouble with state authorities, see Lin- coln, The Black Muslims, 3–4; Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad, 53; Clegg, Original Man, 259; Marable and Felber, The Portable Malcom Reader, 221–222; Lincoln, Sounds of the Struggle, 74; and Curtis, Black Muslim Reli- gion, 118. On NOI leaders’ efforts to avoid police confrontations, especially like that of the Panthers, see John T. McCartney, Black Power Ideologies: An Essay in African-American Political Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 170. For a discussion of the FBI’s counterintelligence against the NOI, see Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad, 71–76. According to scholar Bruce Perry, some salesmen hawked the paper so aggressively that police had to be called. See Perry, Malcolm, 371. As late as 1972, another notice, “Warning: To Muhammad Speaks Salesmen” banned salesmen from selling to whites. See Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 220, n. 44. 26 D’Weston L. Haywood 80. MS, “Blast Cop Harassment of Muslim Newspaper Salesmen,” Muhammad Speaks. April 7, 1967. 81. MS, “Notice to Muhammad Speaks Salesmen,” April 28, 1967. 82. On this point, see Ongiri, Spectacular Blackness. 17, 19, 33–35, 48. 83. MS, “Muslim Knocked Down, Beaten by Police; Omaha Black Citizens Orga- nize Protest,” April 14, 1967. 84. Lomax, When the Word is Given, 80.

Works Cited “16,000 Told So-Called Negro Must Have Home of Own! In Nation’s Capital.” Muhammad Speaks. October-November, 1961. Alkebulan, Paul. Survival Pending Revolution: The History of the Black Panther Party. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2007. “Awake and See Truth.” Muhammad Speaks. April 1, 1963. Berg, Herbert. Elijah Muhammad and Islam. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Biondi, Martha. The Black Revolution on Campus. Berkeley: University of Califor- nia Press, 2012. “Black Ghettos Closed at Both Ends-Too Costly to Live or Die!” Muhammad Speaks. June 30, 1967. “Black Man’s Suffocating Environment Killing Him Early in Life.” Muhammad Speaks. August 11, 1967. “Black Power Based Theme on Muhammad’s Program.” Muhammad Speaks. August 4, 1967. “Black Soldier Wants Muhammad Speaks Delivered on Vietnam Battlefront.” Muhammad Speaks. May 10, 1968. “Black Struggles in American Cities Declared to Be More than Mere Riots.” Muham- mad Speaks. July 28, 1967. “Blast Cop Harassment of Muslim Newspaper Salesmen.” Muhammad Speaks. April 7, 1967. “Brother Lopez Broke with Old Order, Joined Islam.” Muhammad Speaks. Febru- ary 19, 1965. Clegg III, Claude Andrew. An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muham- mad. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. “Coast-to-Coast Subscription Drive Underway.” Muhammad Speaks. July, 1962. Collier-Thomas, Bettye and V. P. Franklin, eds. Sisters in the Struggle: African Amer- ican Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2001. Collins, Rodnell P. with Peter A. Bailey. Seventh Child: A Family Memoir of Mal- colm X. Secaucus: Carol Publishing, 1998. Curtis IV, Edward E. Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. “The Divine Teachings [Conquered] Fear and All Evil, Self-Destructive Habits.” Muhammad Speaks. February 16, 1968. “Dressed for Leadership.” Muhammad Speaks. August 15, 1962. “Dress Modestly.” Muhammad Speaks. February, 1962. Estes, Steve. I Am a Man! Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. “A Superb Sales Force . . .” 27 Evanzz, Karl. The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999. “Finds ‘Black Is Beautiful’ Concept Inherent in the Messenger’s Teachings.” Muham- mad Speaks. April 26, 1968. Finkle, Lee. Forum for Protest: The Black Press During World War II. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975. “Gang Fratricide Takes Awesome Toll in Black Ghettos.” Muhammad Speaks. May 10, 1968. Gardell, Mattias. In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. Gibson, Dawn-Marie and Jamillah Karim. Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Giddings, Paula. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984. “Glad to Be an Original Woman.” Muhammad Speaks. June 16, 1967. “Gottschalk’s Hatred for the Muslims.” Muhammad Speaks. July, 1962. Hine, Darlene Clark. Hine Sight: Black Women and the Reconstruction of American History. Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1994. Hine, Darlene Clark and Ernestine Jenkins, eds. A Question of Manhood: A Reader in U.S. Black Men’s History and Masculinity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. [Illustration.] Muhammad Speaks. January 7, 1966. [Illustration.] Muhammad Speaks. January 28, 1966. “In the Future.” Muhammad Speaks. October-November, 1961. “Islam Turned Waster into Strong, Black Man.” Muhammad Speaks. January 6, 1967. “Islamic Teachings Saved Me From Treadmill of Evil.” Muhammad Speaks. Febru- ary 19, 1965. Jeffries, Bayyinah S. A Nation Can Rise No Higher Than Its Women: African Ameri- can Muslim Women in the Movement for Black Self-Determination, 1950–1975. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014. Joseph, Peniel E., ed., The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights- Black Power Era. New York: Routledge, 2006. ——. Waiting Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in Amer- ica. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006. Kelley, Robin D. G. Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class. New York: Free Press, 1994. “Letters to Editor.” Muhammad Speaks. December, 1961. “Letters to the Editor.” Muhammad Speaks. April, 1962. Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America. Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1994. ——. Sounds of the Struggle: Persons and Perspectives in Civil Rights. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1971. Lomax, Louis, E. When the Word Is Given: A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Mal- colm X, and the Black Muslim World. Cleveland: World Pub. Co.,1963. Lomax, Louis E. and Mike Wallace. “The Hate That Hate Produced.” On News- beat, WNTA-TV, July 23, 1959. “Look Your Best!” Muhammad Speaks. February, 1962. Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. New York: Penguin Books, 2011. 28 D’Weston L. Haywood Marable, Manning and Garrett Felber, eds. The Portable Malcolm Reader. New York: Penguin Books, 2013. Matlin, Daniel. On the Corner: African American Intellectuals and the Urban Crisis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. McCartney, John T. Black Power Ideologies: An Essay in African-American Political Thought. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. McLaughlin, Malcolm. The Long, Hot Summer of 1967: Urban Rebellion in Amer- ica. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. “Messenger’s Teachings Build Top Rated Salesmen in Nation’s Mosques of Islam.” Muhammad Speaks. May 3, 1968. Mitchell, Michele. Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny After Reconstruction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. “Mr. Muhammad Addresses 15,000 in New York.” Muhammad Speaks. October- November, 1961. Muhammad, Elijah. Message to the Black Man in America. Chicago: Muhammad Mosque of Islam No. 2, 1965. ——. “Muhammad Speaks.” Muhammad Speaks. January 28, 1966. “Muhammad Speaks Cited as Key to Building Program.” Muhammad Speaks. November 24, 1967. Murch, Donna Jean. Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. “Muslim Knocked Down, Beaten by Police; Omaha Black Citizens Organize Pro- test.” Muhammad Speaks. April 14, 1967. “Negro Teen-Agers Ripen in Throes of Unrest.” Muhammad Speaks. January 21, 1966. “Notice to Muhammad Speaks Salesmen.” Muhammad Speaks. April 28, 1967. “Now on TV.” Muhammad Speaks. January 7, 1966. Ogbar, Jeffrey O.G. Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. “Onetime Proud Weekly Being Bossed By White ‘Brainwashers of Blackmen.” Muhammad Speaks. May, 1962. Ongiri, Amy Abugo. Spectacular Blackness: The Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic. Charlottesville: Univer- sity of Virginia Press, 2010. “Our Platform.” Muhammad Speaks. October-November, 1961. “Outstanding Salesman of Muhammad Speaks.” Muhammad Speaks. August 18, 1967. Perry, Bruce. Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America. New York: Station Hill Press, 1991. Pride, Armistead S. and Clint C. Wilson II. A History of the Black Press. Washing- ton: Howard University Press, 1997. “Reach!!” Muhammad Speaks. December, 1961. “Readers of [Varied] Religions Aid Muhammad Speaks Subscriptions.” Muhammad Speaks. August 15, 1962. “Riots Greater in 1966.” Muhammad Speaks. January 7, 1966. Sales Jr., William W. From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Boston: South End Press, 1994. “A Superb Sales Force . . .” 29 Samuels, Gertrude. “Two Ways: Black Muslim and N.A.A.C.P.” In Black Protest in the Sixties, ed. August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, 37–45. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970. “Says Testimonials of M’s Followers Indicate Muslim Progress.” Muhammad Speaks. February 10, 1967. “Self Help or Oblivion for the Negro.” Muhammad Speaks. October-November, 1961. “Sells 15,000 Muhammad Speaks for Trophy.” Muhammad Speaks. “Should Women Wear Pants or Dresses.” Muhammad Speaks. February, 1962. Simmons, Charles A. The African American Press: A History of News Coverage During National Crises, With Special Reference to Four Newspapers, 1827– 1965. London: McFarland & Company, 1998. Springer, Kimberly. “Black Feminists Respond to Black Power Masculinism.” In The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era, ed. Peniel E. Joseph, 105–118. New York: Routledge, 2006. Squires, Catherine. African Americans and the Media. Cambridge: Polity, 2009. “St. Petersburg Youth Hails Muhammad Speaks Paper.” Muhammad Speaks. November 3, 1967. “Subscription Drive Picks Up Momentum.” Muhammad Speaks. July 15, 1962. Summers, Martin. Manliness and its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900–1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. “Support Your Own! Buy from Your Own! Live Among Your Own! Protect Your Own!” Muhammad Speaks. December, 1961. Taylor, Ula Y. “As-Salaam Alaikum, My Sister: The Honorable Elijah Muham- mad and the Women Who Followed Him.” Race & Society l.2 (Spring 1998): 177–196. Terrill, Robert E. Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgment. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004. “Urges All-Out Effort to Spread Truth Via Newspaper, Messenger’s Book, Records.” Muhammad Speaks. December 15, 1967. “The Vision of Messenger Muhammad.” Muhammad Speaks. March 15, 1968. “Visit Muhammad’s Mosques of Islam.” Muhammad Speaks. January 7, 1966. Vogel, Todd, ed. The Black Press: New Literary Essays. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Walker, Dennis. Islam and the Search for African-American Nationhood: Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, and the Nation of Islam. Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2005. “Warning: To Muhammad Speaks Salesmen.” Muhammad Speaks. Washburn, Patrick S. The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom. Evan- ston: Northwestern University Press, 2006. “We Must Have Some Land! . . . We Must Control Our Neighborhoods!” Muham- mad Speaks. December, 1961. “What is Cultural Refinement.” Muhammad Speaks. February, 1962. “What Islam Has Done for Me.” Muhammad Speaks. August 18, 1967. White, Deborah Gray. Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. White Jr., Vilbert L. Inside the Nation of Islam: A Historical and Personal Testimony by a Black Muslim. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. 30 D’Weston L. Haywood Wilson II, Clint C. Black Journalists in Paradox: Historical Perspectives and Current Dilemmas. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. Wolseley, Roland E. The Black Press, USA. 2nd ed. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1992. “Would You Like to be an Expert?” Muhammad Speaks. April, 1962. X, Malcolm with Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: One World, 1999. 3 Ebony Muhammad’s Hurt2Healing Magazine and Contemporary Nation Women

Dawn-Marie Gibson

Introduction Nation women have a long history of engaging the public through their writings in the organization’s body of propagation literature.1 Yet editorial control of NOI publications by national ministers has often tempered Nation women’s contributions to the group’s plethora of newspapers, books and newsletters. Contemporary Nation women have circumvented this predicament by establishing their own publications and ensuring that they retain editorial control over the content of their magazines and literature. Ebony Muhammad’s Hurt2Healing magazine is one of several publications owned and edited by a Nation woman. Former NOI member, Tina Muhammad created the Resurrected NOI’s first magazine for women in the early 1990s. Tina’s Righteous Living magazine featured high-profile Nation women such as NOI director of protocol, Claudette-Marie Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad’s former “wife,” Tynnetta Muhammad. In an interview with Essence magazine in 1996, Tina commented,

Most people only know us [Nation women] from news clips of Minister Farrakhan’s speaking engagements . . . What I try to get across through the magazine is that you can submit yourself to God and still have a joyful life.2

The article in Essence was a significant milestone for Nation women. Indeed, it was the first time that Nation women had been featured in a popular Afri- can American magazine in their own words. Journalist Julia Chance’s article in Essence described Nation women as

a mighty force, not only in numbers but also in spirit, talent and service to their religion and to our community at large. Sisters comprise a substantial portion of the Nation of Islam’s membership, and contrary to popular belief, they play a leading role in the Chicago-based organization. They are publishers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, visionaries. More important, they are sisters we see each day but may feel separated from because of differences in dress or religious belief.3 32 Dawn-Marie Gibson Righteous Living was certainly an important tool for Nation women. How- ever, it proved short-lived and was discontinued after Tina left the Nation. Copies of the magazine are, however, archived and displayed at the NOI’s annual historical exhibit, which is held during the community’s Saviours’ Day convention in February each year to celebrate the birth of the NOI’s founder and deity, Fard Muhammad. NOI convert Audrey Muhammad followed in Tina’s footsteps in 2004 when she launched Virtue Today magazine. Audrey considers the magazine to be a “little helper” of the Resurrected NOI’s official newspaper, The Final Call.4 Virtue Today features advice and articles that have at their core propagation of NOI teachings. The success of the magazine has inspired other women, including Ebony, to launch their own publications. Hurt2Healing magazine stands apart from other Nation publications such as Righteous Living and Virtue Today in that it covertly deviates, at times, from Nation teachings. Further, the magazine is aimed at men and women. H2H magazine addresses delicate and conten- tious issues within the Nation community including Elijah Muhammad’s domestic life, abortion, abuse and infidelity. The magazine provides a space in which Nation and non-Nation members can discuss a host of issues that other Nation publications ignore or only briefly mention. It is the magazine’s rather uncensored content and effort to showcase Nation women that makes H2H magazine an important tool for contemporary Nation women. Ebony Muhammad came into contact with representatives of Minister Farrakhan’s NOI in 2005 in a poetry lounge in Houston where she was performing. She comments,

The FOI (Fruit of Islam) were selling tickets to the annual Saviours’ Day convention. I was already knowledgeable about the NOI and Minister Farrakhan and at that time was planning to visit the mosque. It was no coincidence that those brothers were there for me to meet and get the information needed for that visit.5

Ebony’s encounter with the FOI proved life changing in that it led her to attend the NOI’s annual Saviours’ Day convention and thereafter register as a member of the community at the age of twenty-three. No less than a year after joining the NOI, Ebony launched H2H as a monthly newsletter. The newsletter was inspired by the publications produced in her local mosque in Houston.6 Ebony has much in common with her sisters in the organization in that she is college-educated, young and pursues a professional career. In a recent piece for the magazine, Ebony noted that joining the Nation aided her in her quest for “spiritual awareness” but that it also brought trials, including divorce:

At the age of 23 I became a Registered Member of the Nation of Islam, under the direction of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. With personal growth and development came spiritual awareness and a Ebony Muhammad’s Hurt2Healing Magazine 33 yearning for a deeper understanding of myself and a more profound connection with Allah (God). This decision would be the catalyst for tremendous elevation as well as trials as I accepted a new and healthier lifestyle. The remainder of my 20s comprised of me obtaining my Mas- ter’s degree, a marriage, a divorce and starting two businesses of my own. Changing my environment, redirecting my focus to my goals and seeking spiritual enrichment were my methods for surviving my 20s. I had to make tremendous sacrifices, but it was well worth it!7

Divorce is frowned upon within the NOI. However, divorcees are certainly not a minority in the organization. Indeed, according to some Nation women, the current NOI divorce rate has become so high that Minister Farrakhan has stopped officiating weddings.8 Divorce is a topic rarely discussed in H2H. However, there is certainly no shortage of articles detailing the struggles and trials married couples experience. Ebony’s own experience of marriage and divorce may of course play some part in the magazine’s focus on struggles rather than triumphs in marriage. Indeed, unlike NOI propagation literature, H2H magazine rarely hails the “benefits” of married life.9 Ebony’s status as a single woman, business owner and college-educated professional enables her to lend her talents to the NOI in a way that many of her counterparts cannot. Time constraints and the need to balance family and work commitments ensures that many Nation women are less active in their religious organization than their male counterparts. College-educated women are a growing demographic within Minister Farrakhan’s Nation and have been for some time. Importantly, these women have been and remain instrumental in challenging misogyny in the organization and male control of publishing enterprises. In seeking to become the owners of their own publishing enterprises, Nation women, such as Ebony, are challenging male control and exhorting their counterparts to contest narrow and damaging images of themselves in the popular imagination.

Challenging Stereotypes and Misconceptions Nation women are often regarded as victims of male oppression and control. Indeed, it is a perception that many women claim to encounter rather regularly.10 As such, it is a perception that they are determined to challenge. The notion that Nation women are exploited and controlled by their male counterparts (known as the Fruit of Islam) and Nation ministers took root in the popular imagination in 1964 when former NOI national minister Malcolm X revealed to the American public that Elijah Muham- mad had fathered several children with his young secretaries. Further, Spike Lee’s portrayal of Nation women in his 1992 biopic, X solidified the notion that they were seen but not heard in Muhammad’s Nation. Elijah Muhammad fathered several illegitimate children with women who worked for him as private secretaries in the 1960s and 1970s.11 Explaining Elijah 34 Dawn-Marie Gibson Muhammad’s domestic life to rank-and-file members and the general public has proven problematic for Minister Farrakhan and contemporary Nation women. Indeed, the issue was rarely discussed within the NOI until 1993 when Minister Farrakhan addressed the matter at the annual Saviour’s Day convention.12 Minister Farrakhan’s address was prompted by depictions of Muhammad as morally bankrupt in Lee’s film. In discussing Muhammad’s domestic life, Farrakhan elevated the former secretaries to the “status of polygamous wives.”13Thereafter, he brought several of the “wives” to the stage to testify that Muhammad had not abused, exploited or mistreated them. Muhammad’s domestic life has never been addressed on the same magnitude as it was in 1993. The topic remains a sensitive one and one that is compounded by Minister Farrakhan’s efforts to deter polygyny within the Nation. Indeed, since the early 1980s, Farrakhan has advised his followers that the practice is an “evil” that should be regarded as the “exception” and not the “rule in Islam.”14 The unanswered questions and suspicions that surround Muhammad’s relationships with his “polygamous wives” may deter women from committing to the Nation. While the topic remains sensitive, it is one that Ebony Muhammad addressed in a 2010 issue of H2H magazine. In an interview with Elijah Muhammad’s former associate, Rahman Muhammad, Ebony commented,

When some people hear about the Most Honorable Elijah Muham- mad having wives (plural), they are very shocked, maybe even appalled. However, we read in scripture that many of the messengers and many of the prophets had wives. Why did Allah permit this? Why did He allow this to take place with His messengers and prophets? What was the purpose? . . . What qualities did they [the wives] possess? What calibre of women were the wives? How were they selected?15

In response to her question, Rahman noted,

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad had children by Sister Clara Muham- mad and they were all good with him . . . while he was with us . . . Dur- ing that time he took on wives. During that time children came from those wives. After his departure . . . none of his former children believed in him being the Messenger of God and his Teachings. All of them left him. However, the ones he had by his new wives, who people look at with evil intent, all of those never left him like the other children of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. They are with his Teachings as carried out by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan . . . I believe this, I can’t say how, but I believe that Allah dictated to him who to go into, who to marry. I don’t believe that it was just his (Honorable Elijah Muham- mad’s) choice. I believe the women were in the community, and I believe that God told him to go into this one and go into that one like God had Ebony Muhammad’s Hurt2Healing Magazine 35 Abraham to do. That’s what I believe. I can’t say he scrutinized each and every one of them and told this one and told that one . . . . I think Allah chose them for him.16

Rahman’s response to Ebony’s questions reveal little that is new in terms of how the organization has officially explained Muhammad’s domestic life. However, the fact that Ebony addressed the issue in her magazine is important for a number of reasons. First, the inclusion of the interview with Rahman in H2H magazine illustrates that Elijah Muhammad is not considered above question by contemporary Nation women. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the inclusion of the interview implies that contemporary Nation women such as Ebony are actively seeking to address concerns that potential members may have about the treatment of women in the organization. Questions pertaining to Elijah Muhammad’s domestic life account for much of the misconception surrounding women’s status in the NOI. How- ever, it is certainly not the only factor that influences how Nation women are perceived. Nation women have long been distinguished from their Sunni Muslim counterparts as a result of their unique Muslim Girls Training (MGT) uniform. Elijah Muhammad’s wife, Clara Muhammad, originally designed the MGT uniform in the 1930s. The uniform was standardized in 1967 and mimicked the uniforms worn by earlier Black Cross nurses in Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.17 Clara’s design, however, also took inspiration from the uniforms worn by Catho- lic nuns. Indeed, the uniform is remarkably similar to those worn by nuns and includes a headpiece and full-length garment that covers the arms and legs. The MGT uniform was designed to restore and preserve women’s modesty, especially during a time in which African American women were often the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of their white employers. Feminist scholars have often considered the MGT uniform to be restrictive and utilized for the purpose of restricting women’s movements. Contempo- rary Nation women have modernized the traditional uniform, and it is now available in several colors. However, its popularity has waned among contemporary Nation women. As noted earlier, H2H magazine is immediately identifiable with the NOI because Ebony wears the uniform in the photos that accompany her editorial letters. Ebony construes the uniform as a tool that enables her to promote a positive image of the NOI. She comments, for example,

I make a point to wear my garments, because they are very distinguish- ing. People take notice, and all it takes is that one moment and they will never forget you. I may attend a different event on the other side of town and someone will approach me and tell me they saw me a week ago somewhere else. They may not remember my first name, but they remember Muhammad and the headpiece. It’s very intentional. I want 36 Dawn-Marie Gibson people to see that we are touchable and real people who are civilized. I desire those who have never met a Muslim before to have the best experience and introduction, because they will remember that the next time they see us and possibly defend us if ill spoken of. They will have only positive reflections when they see the name Farrakhan. You could say that I’m striving to sow seeds of a positive image as it relates to Muslims in the NOI and in general.18

Few women who grace the cover of H2H wear the MGT uniform. Indeed, in recent years, only two issues of the magazine have featured women wearing the uniform on the front cover.19 Modesty is, however, encouraged within the magazine, although to a much lesser extent than one might expect. Much of the advice surrounding modest clothing comes from male voices in the magazine. In an article titled “The Secret to Attracting a Real Man,” for the September 2011 issue of H2H, FOI and community activist Deric Muhammad noted,

When a sister decides she will go outside disrobed, revealing certain body parts that should be reserved for a man who has decided he would take the responsibility of being her husband, and when you go outside like that, you will attract men, but you may attract the kind of man that you won’t want in your life long term, number one. Number two, and I’m just going to be real and honest, a man does not respect a woman who is disrobed as much as he respects a woman who is robbed or a woman who dresses modestly. Men have a higher regard for women who dress modestly than they do for women who don’t. A woman who covers herself is beautiful to all men. What the woman who does not cover herself fails to understand is that the woman who covers herself and covers herself beautifully—she’s not walking around with a blan- ket on—she has attracting power as well; a different type of attracting power. When she walks into a room where so many sisters are half- dressed, then she becomes the opposite that attracts . . . The sister who has on her garment . . . she gets all kind of positive feedback from men and women, but particularly from men.20

Deric’s comments in his interview with Ebony were no doubt prompted by Nation women’s frequent complaints about the NOI’s dress code. Indeed, even within The Final Call newspaper, women have commented that they find it difficult to source trendy clothing that is also modest.21Deric’s advice to women was reiterated by NOI blogger Jesse Muhammad in the February 2013 issue of the magazine when he remarked,

In the concrete jungles of the multiple projects we resided in Houston, throughout the halls of Forest Brook High School, and on the yard of Prairie View A&M University, showing it “all” was the mantra for Ebony Muhammad’s Hurt2Healing Magazine 37 young sisters. Modesty wasn’t in their vocabulary let alone in their minds as they walk malls for the latest freakish fashions. Yet, I would watch them get upset if a man stared at them, whistled at them, asked them for their phone number or even was bold enough to touch their body parts. The boys I grew up around saw this as an “open invitation.” . . . The women of the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class (M.G.T.-G.C.C.) were showing me, as a young man, something I had never seen before. They showed me that it’s a myth that modesty and covering up is a thing of the past. They showed me that covering up have a stronger attracting force than walking around half-naked in stilettos. They commanded respect. I watched them walk into a room and everything stopped. Not because of what they had on, but because of what they represented and radiated: high civilization. Wait. Don’t get it confused or twisted, as the youth say, the MGT-GCC know how to be modest and still out dress anyone in the building . . . Another myth they destroyed was that being covered up was somehow a tool to keep women oppressed. While in some foreign nations that may be true but not in the NOI.22

Modesty remains an important part of NOI teachings in regards to women’s dress. Minister Farrakhan often criticizes women who do not dress modestly. In his 2016 lecture at the NOI’s headquarters at Mosque Maryam, for example, he remarked that women “make a dog out of a man” when they dress immodestly.23 Yet many of the women who grace the cover of H2H magazine and feature within it could be described as wearing immodest clothing. In both the August and September 2010 issues of the magazine, for example, women were featured on the front cover with tight fitting, low- cut and sleeveless tops and in the December/January 2013 issue, African American entrepreneur Arian Simone graced the front cover in a low-cut top. The fact that Ebony has permitted women to be featured on the front cover of her magazine wearing fashions that clearly contravene NOI dictates in regards to modesty suggests that she either has the approval of Nation women to do so or that she does not object to women wearing clothing that her religious community clearly frowns upon. Regardless, the fact that such fashions feature in the magazine and the apparent lack of protest concerning such images clearly signals Ebony’s preference for women to retain ownership over their own bodies and arrive at the their own conclusions concerning what clothing they feel comfortable in. Articles that exhort the benefits of modesty, of course, balance the celebration of women’s fashions in the magazine. Such articles pay lip service to the NOI’s traditionally modest dress code and in doing so they may well appease traditionalists or purists in the NOI. Positive images of women such as those of Simone, however, equally illustrate Ebony’s determination to push the boundaries of what fashions her religious community is willing to not only tolerate but also embrace. Moreover, the inclusion of non-Nation women on the front cover 38 Dawn-Marie Gibson of H2H magazine clearly signals the evolution that has taken place within Minister Farrakhan’s community. No longer is contact between Nation and non-Nation members restricted, and no longer are Nation women’s clothing inspected.

H2H on Relationships and Marriage H2H magazine contains a wealth of “tips” and advice about single life, relationships and marriage. Importantly, some of the advice provided to women contravenes the instructions women receive in official NOI courting manuals. Courting occurs within the NOI under the watchful supervision of local MGT and FOI captains. Members are expected to work through the advice that the NOI’s courting manuals offer and to be mindful of their expectations of a potential spouse. Members of the Nation are not forbidden to marry outside of their religious community; however, they are encouraged to avoid the “additional challenges” that “inter-cultural/racial differences” may present.24 Courtship manuals explicate the importance and function of the roles that FOI and MGT captains play in the courtship process. In the 2012 manual, for example, members were instructed to report their interest in a potential spouse to their local minister, captain or lieutenant:

When an FOI sees an MGT that he thinks will make him a good wife, he should mention this to the Minister, Brother Captain, or Lieuten- ant to find out if she is available. A brother should never approach an MGT to inquire about her marital status or interest in him. He should not hint or flirt. If he hasn’t already been introduced, he should ask to be introduced to her (however, it is not recommended that you go into courtship with a complete stranger with whom you have never had a conversation). The request (to find out her availability) is forwarded to the Sister Captain. If the sister being requested declines and not wish to court, the Brother Captain will inform the FOI as he moves on. If she accepts, a meeting will be arranged for them to formally meet and counsel them on the rules of courtship . . . Likewise when a sister sees a brother that she is interested in finding out more about, she would go to her sister captain and make that known. The sister captain would then approach the brother captain and he would make this known to the brother.25

The courting process in Minister Farrakhan’s community very much mim- ics that employed by members of Elijah Muhammad’s community. Within Ebony’s magazine, however, such courting procedures are rarely reiterated or advocated. Indeed, H2H magazine offers a wealth of advice on dating and such advice is void of the courting processes advocated within the community. In the October/November 2012 issue of the magazine, for example, Ebony Muhammad’s Hurt2Healing Magazine 39 several contributors provided a “tip” to “finding Mr. Right.” Nowhere in the “7 tips” that contributors provided was the role of an MGT, FOI captain or chaperone even hinted.26 The failure to hint at let alone mention the role that captains are supposed to play in the courting process suggests that Ebony and her readers do not attach any particular importance to following courting processes as set out in the organization’s manuals. MGT and FOI captains have historically played a rather important and dominant role in matching up NOI members. Nation members are allowed to marry outside of the organization, but the stigma attached to the practice may well lead to it being seen as something of a last resort. Also important in considering the Nation’s discourse on endogamy is the fact that the NOI has historically suffered a high turnover in membership and bonds of marriage and family within the Nation may help reduce such a predicament. A survey of H2H magazine and other Nation literature suggests that many members join and engage with the organization as young, single adults. Minister Farrakhan and his regional ministers are arguably well aware that creating meaningful relationships and marriages between Nation members may lessen the likeli- hood of members leaving the community. Ensuring that these individuals marry within the organization is of vital importance from an organizational point of view. It also, however, provides roots and kinship networks for new members, thus helping them to settle more quickly into life as a NOI member. By omitting the role of MGT and FOI captains from their piece on finding “Mr. Right,” Ebony and her coauthors effectively challenged Nation women to take responsibility for their own dating lives. Implicit in the article is an understanding that women should not rely on the NOI and its officials to matchmake. Articles that challenge NOI customs in terms of either dating or male-female relationships are not uncommon in H2H magazine. For example, in the March 2011 issue, NOI contributor Samantha Luck penned an article entitled “Why Every Woman Needs a Male Best Friend.” Historically, the NOI has cautioned women against developing close friend- ships with men. MGT notebooks, for example, have in the past instructed women to “keep a goodly distance when speaking to a brother” and “never look a brother directly in the eye.”27 Luck’s piece in H2H magazine, however, illustrates that such stringent boundaries are not considered necessary or desirable by Ebony and her readers. In her article, Luck reflected on her own relationship with her male friend:

We talked that night as if we had known each other all of our lives. I had a great time that Spring Break with my girls but he put the spark in it, made it extra special. My MBFF became a fixture in my life, always caring, always motivating, pushing me career-wise, coaching me to do the unthinkable/non-typical, and always checking for and on me. P.S. I’m absolutely not talking about friends with benefits . . . not that anything’s really wrong with that if that’s what you choose. Not this article though.28 40 Dawn-Marie Gibson The inclusion of Luck’s article in the magazine evidences the extent to which contemporary Nation women have departed from older NOI customs and practices as outlined in the community’s host of official manuals and guides. Articles such as Luck’s, however, also sit side by side with features that discuss marriage, something that NOI members regard as ideal. Marriage is a subject that features regularly in H2H magazine. However, as noted earlier, such articles tend to caution women to be realistic about marriage and the trials that come with it. In the October 2010 issue of the magazine, for example, Hannibal and DeAndrea Muhammad noted,

The best preparation for marriage is to know yourself and to know what you want. Finish school and know your personal goals along with the goals you would like to achieve as a couple. Also, to identify who you are. Never lose your identity. That is what attracted your mate to you . . . Get to know each other’s immediate family and family abroad. Also learn about their friends . . . Remember, you can always prepare yourself financially, but you will never be financially satisfied.29

Articles such as the aforementioned tend to caution women to delay and prepare for marriage. Whilst such advice does not contravene NOI guidelines regarding marriage, it does clearly elevate women’s needs above those of the organization. Regional and National NOI ministers in the organization place an emphasis on marriage for FOI and MGT. In a lecture delivered at the NOI’s headquarters in 2012, NOI minister Dr. Ava Muhammad argued that remaining unmarried was “against our nature” and that marriage was desperately needed in order to create families within the organization. In her lecture she commented, “We have to produce and support families because the way we [African Americans] are being destroyed today is [through] dis- integration of the family.”30 Ministers such as Ava exhort NOI converts to build families within their religious community and to do so as a matter of priority. Indeed, the community have published a wealth of books on the importance of marriage. The most recent edition to this existing body of literature is NOI Minister Nuri Muhammad’s, “Before You Say I Do” (2016). Like his counterparts in the NOI, Nuri considers and advises that marriage is needed for the elevation of the community. In his 2016 book, he writes, “The ultimate powerbase of the black man and woman is the family . . . the rise of the black man and woman will be a direct reflection of the elevation of the family.”31 The sheer volume of literature dedicated to marriage and courting within Minister Farrakhan’s relatively small religious community suggests that members do come under some degree of pressure to marry. Women’s contributions to magazines such as H2H, however, illustrate that Nation women are very much cognizant of the flaws inherent in the NOI’s matchmaking processes. Advice to women in Ebony’s magazine reveals a desire for women to take charge of their own dating lives and responsibility for sourcing a mate. Ebony Muhammad’s Hurt2Healing Magazine 41 Nation women tend to construe traditional gender roles in a positive light as long as they do not come at the cost of their personal freedom and ambitions.32 Nation women who seek to pursue work outside the home are encouraged by Ebony and her contributors to H2H magazine to seek a mate who will “support” their goals. In a 2010 issue of the magazine, for example, Sister Striving remarked,

I am fortunate to have a mate who supports my dreams and current career. It was not easy at first. Men can feel very intimidated, if you will, by a college-educated woman if the man does not have the same education . . . I have been accustomed to supporting my husband by being his “cheerleader” . . . If you are not married and want to have a career, education, etc. it can be done. You will have to find someone willing to allow you to do your experimenting. Remember, the brother that wants a stay at home wife will most likely always have that desire . . . Explore and be ready to make sure to balance your career and duties . . . Your house can fall apart if everyone is not on the same accord. It is a struggle on a daily basis, but make sure you have someone willing to struggle with you for the greater good.33

Such advice to women would have been inconceivable in Elijah Muham- mad’s NOI, where all too often women sacrificed their careers and education for marriage. Advising that women balance their duties to their families and their work illustrates that contemporary Nation women are no longer content or indeed willing to sacrifice their professional careers for marriage. H2H magazine provides its female readership with a host of articles on courting and marriage. It does not, however, advocate or republish NOI guidelines as they relate to the aforementioned. As such, H2H magazine provides Nation women with alternative perspectives on dating and marriage and provides a safe space in which they can share their personal experiences and offer advice to other women. H2H magazine tends to concern itself much more with celebrating women’s personal successes in the work- place over and above their domestic pursuits.

Celebrating Nation Women H2H magazine depicts Nation women as professional, college-educated women who combine their professional work with their family commitments. Nowhere in the magazine are women encouraged to abandon or sacrifice their careers if they are married or have children. Indeed, Ebony’s magazine tends to privilege stories that cover Nation women’s successes over and above those articles that relate to domesticity and child rearing. In the December/January 2012 issue, for example, NOI member, Dean- drea Muhammad was celebrated for her success in creating her own line of beauty products. In the article, Deandrea remarked, 42 Dawn-Marie Gibson I have spent some time striving to live my “new” dream. With most committing a large amount of time to a 9 to 5, I decided to pave my own road and venture into running my own business. With formal education in Biology and Chemistry and a Master’s of Science in Nursing, I never would have thought I would find so much joy in creating all natural personal care products, but it became a lifestyle. Starting with little “experiments” in my kitchen and posting results on my blog, Original Beauty 7 was born.34

Similarly, in the February/March 2013 issue of the magazine, Ebony celebrated the success of young NOI member, Akilah Muhammad, who was also featured on the front cover of the magazine. Akilah is a recent graduate of Howard University, where she specialized in film production. In the ten- page interview that featured Akilah, she outlined her experiences at Howard and her ambitions for her future career.35 Articles such as those celebrating the success of female entrepreneurs such as Deandrea and college graduates are a regular feature of H2H magazine. Indeed, the magazine encourages women to pursue roles that are unconventional including those in the ministry. Minister Farrakhan’s NOI boasts a small number of female ministers including Dr. Ava Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad’s former secretary, Tyn- netta Muhammad, and Minister Farrakhan’s daughter Donna Farrakhan Muhammad. All three women enjoy a high profile in the community and have spoken regularly at the NOI’s headquarters at Mosque Maryam since the mid-1990s. All three women have been featured in H2H magazine. Whilst there success in the ministry is clearly celebrated, these women do highlight the need to address sexism in their community and attitudes that limit women’s progression. In celebrating women such as Ava, Tynnetta and Donna, Ebony and her readers are also challenging Nation women to contest sexism and the barriers that limit their work both in and outside the NOI.

Conclusion Hurt2Healing magazine stands apart from other NOI publications because it offers women something of a safe space in which to discuss, challenge and revise those aspects of their religious community that they find unappealing or indeed restrictive. Subtle challenges to the NOI’s dress code and courtship procedures illustrate that Nation women are actively working to make NOI norms work for them and indeed discarding norms that have been common but undesirable within their community for decades. Hurt2Healing magazine is one of several publications that feature contemporary Nation women. However, it is Ebony’s willingness to tolerate and indeed encourage dissent from NOI norms that gives the magazine the feel of an uncensored publication. Hurt2Healing magazine may not be circulated in mass numbers throughout the U.S. However, its content and images do challenge Ebony Muhammad’s Hurt2Healing Magazine 43 readers to reevaluate how accurate popular media representations of Nation women are. Nowhere in Ebony’s magazine are there images of women who appear oppressed, exploited or indoctrinated by the group. As such, the magazine equips Nation women with a much-needed tool that challenges images of them in popular thought as silent and oppressed victims in Min- ister Farrakhan’s NOI.

Notes 1. Dawn-Marie Gibson, “Nation Women’s Engagement and Resistance in the Muhammad Speaks Newspaper,” Journal of American Studies 49:1 (2015): 1–18. 2. Julia Chance, “Lifting the Veil” Essence magazine, July 1996, 86. 3. Ibid, 85. 4. “VIRTUE: Women’s Magazine Provides Positive Images for Ten Years!” The Final Call, April 1, 2014, 33. 5. Author Interview with Ebony Muhammad, 2012. 6. Ibid. 7. Muhammad, Ebony S. “Becoming Unlost.” Hurt2Healing. Accessed Novem- ber 5, 2015, http://hurt2healingmag.com/becoming-unlost/. 8. Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim, Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 173. 9. See, for example, Marcus Muhammad, What Do Men and Women Really Need from Each Other? What is the True Nature of a Man and a Woman (USA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012); Mustafaa Muham- mad, Mustafaa, 10 Reasons Why an FOI Should Not Date, Court or Marry a Woman Other Than an MGT (Self-Published E-book, 2015); Jihad Hassan Muhammad and Rodney Asaad Muhammad, Married to an MGT: The Bless- ing of Having Heaven at Home in a Black Woman: Overcoming Loss, and the Words That Could Save YOUR Marriage (Phoenix, Arizona: MASQ Media Group, 2014). 10. Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim, Women of the Nation, 178. 11. “Banks Must Pay $4.6 Million to Elijah Muhammad’s Heirs,” Jet magazine, March 8 1982, 12. 12. Maureen O’Donnell, “Farrakhan to Muslims: Honor Elijah Muhammad,” Chi- cago Sun-Times, February 22, 1993, 10. 13. Ula Taylor, “As-Salaam Alaikum, My Sister, Peace Be upon You: The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Women Who Followed Him,” Race & Society 1:2 (1998): 178. 14. Louis Farrakhan, “Keys to a Successful Family Life,” Speech delivered at Mosque Maryam, in Chicago, May 9, 1984. 15. Ebony Muhammad, “Understanding the Domestic Life of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad: One-On-One with Rahman Muhammad,” Hurt2Healing magazine, July 2010, 27. 16. Ibid. 17. Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim, Women of the Nation, 51. 18. Jesse Muhammad, “The Exclusive with Ebony S. Muhammad: How She Turned a Dream into a Reality,” Hurt2Healing magazine, March 2011, 55. 19. For example, see cover images for H2H magazine, May 2010 and H2H Maga- zine, March 2011. 20. “The Secret to Attracting a Real Man: One-On-One with Deric Muhammad,” Hurt2Healing magazine, September 2011, 29–30. 44 Dawn-Marie Gibson 21. Laila Muhammad, “Who Are You? The Immeasurable, Limitless Value and Beauty of a Woman,” The Final Call, December 17, 2013, 30. 22. Jesse Muhammad, “A Male Perspective: Deconstructing the Myth of Modesty” Hurt2Healing Magazine, February 2013, 46–47. 23. Louis Farrakhan, “The Life and Times of Muhammad Ali,” Speech delivered at Mosque Maryam in Chicago, June 12, 2016. 24. The Healthy Relationships Initiative Team, “Comprehensive Courtship Man- ual” Revised 2.14.2012. 25. Ibid. 26. “Do’s and Don’ts: 7 Tips to Find Your Mr. Right,” Hurt2Healing magazine, October/November 2012, 21–23. 27. Candace Shabazz, Muslim Girls Training, 348. 28. Samantha Luck, “Why Every Woman Needs a Male Best Friend,” Hurt2Healing magazine, March 2011, 39. 29. “The Expectations of Marriage: Reality Check! One-On-One with Hannibal and DeAndrea Muhammad,” Hurt2Healing magazine, October 2010, 77. 30. Ava Muhammad, “Fatherhood: The Black Man’s Power Base,” Lecture delivered in Chicago, Illinois, June 17, 2012. 31. Nuri Muhammad, Before You Say I Do (USA: Bashiri House Publishing, 2016). 32. Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim, Women of the Nation. 33. Sister Striving, “Understanding and Identifying a Supportive Mate,” Hurt2Heal- ing magazine, October 2010, 65–66. 34. “Blogger Turned Self-Made Entrepreneur,” Hurt2Healing Magazine, December/ January 2013, 25. 35. “The Exclusive with Akilah Muhammad,” Hurt2Healing magazine, February/ March 2013, 51–61.

Works Cited “Banks Must Pay $4.6 Million to Elijah Muhammad’s Heirs.” Jet Magazine. March 8, 1982. “Blogger Turned Self-Made Entrepreneur.” Hurt2Healing Magazine. December- January, 2013. Chance, Julia. “Lifting the veil.” Essence Magazine. July, 1996. [Cover image.] Hurt2Healing Magazine. March, 2011. [Cover image.] Hurt2Healing Magazine. May, 2010. “Do’s and Don’ts: 7 tips to find your Mr. Right.” Hurt2Healing Magazine. October- November 2012, 21–23. “The Exclusive with Akilah Muhammad,” Hurt2Healing Magazine. February-March, 2013, 51–61. “The Expectations of Marriage: Reality Check! One-On-One with Hannibal and DeAndrea Muhammad.” Hurt2Healing Magazine. October, 2010. Farrakhan, Louis. “Keys to a Successful Family Life.” Speech delivered at the Mosque Maryam, Chicago. May 9, 1984. ——. “The Life and Times of Muhammad Ali.” Speech delivered at Mosque Maryam, Chicago. June 12, 2016. Gibson, Dawn-Marie. “Nation Women’s Engagement and Resistance in the Muham- mad Speaks Newspaper.” Journal of American Studies 49.1 (2015): 1–18. Gibson, Dawn-Marie and Jamillah Karim. Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam. New York: New York University Press, 2014. The Healthy Relationships Initiative Team. “Comprehensive Courtship Manual.” Revised February 14, 2012. Ebony Muhammad’s Hurt2Healing Magazine 45 Luck, Samantha. “Why Every Woman Needs A Male Best Friend.” Hurt2Healing Magazine. March, 2011. Muhammad, Ava. “Fatherhood: The Black Man’s Power Base.” Lecture delivered in Chicago. June 17, 2012. Muhammad, Ebony S. Author Interview. 2012. ——. “Becoming Unlost.” Hurt2Healing. Accessed November 5, 2015, http://hurt2 healingmag.com/becoming-unlost/. ——. “Understanding the Domestic Life of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad: One-On-One with Rahman Muhammad.” Hurt2Healing Magazine. July, 2010. Muhammad, Jesse. “The Exclusive with Ebony S. Muhammad: How She Turned a Dream into a Reality.” Hurt2Healing Magazine. March, 2011. ——. “A Male Perspective: Deconstructing the Myth of Modesty.” Hurt2Healing Magazine. February, 2013. Muhammad, Jihad Hassan and Rodney Asaad Muhammad. Married to an MGT: The Blessing of Having Heaven at Home in a Black Woman: Overcoming Loss, and the Words That Could Save YOUR Marriage. Phoenix: MASQ Media Group, 2014. Muhammad, Laila. “Who Are You? The Immeasurable, Limitless Value and Beauty of a Woman.” The Final Call. December 17, 2013. Muhammad, Marcus. What Do Men and Women Really Need from Each Other? What is the True Nature of a Man and a Woman. CreateSpace Independent Pub- lishing Platform, 2012. Muhammad, Mustafaa. 10 Reasons Why an FOI Should Not Date, Court Or Marry a Woman Other than an MGT. Self-Published E-book, 2015. Muhammad, Nuri. Before You Say I Do. Bashiri House Publishing, 2016. O’Donnell, Maureen. “Farrakhan to Muslims: Honor Elijah Muhammad.” Chicago Sun-Times. February 22, 1993. “The Secret to Attracting a Real Man: One-on-One with Deric Muhammad.” Hurt2Healing Magazine. September 2011. Shabazz, Candace. Muslim Girls Training: M.G.T. & G.C.C. Notebook. Cre- ateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013. Striving, Sister. “Understanding and Identifying a Supportive Mate.” Hurt2Healing Magazine. October 2010, 65–66. Taylor, Ula. “As-Salaam Alaikum, My Sister, Peace Be upon You: The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Women who followed him.” Race & Society 1.2 (1998): 177–196. “VIRTUE: Women’s Magazine Provides Positive Images for Ten Years!” The Final Call. April 1, 2014. 4 The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State The Nation of Islam and the Legal Battle for the Right to Assemble

Seneca Vaught

Introduction Standing encircled by a constellation of black faces, a light-brown young man with slick dark hair screeches in a confident and authoritative tone,

I charge the white man, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, with being the greatest murderer on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest peace-breaker on earth . . . . I charge the white man with being the greatest robber on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest deceiver on earth.

The scene and the litany of charges came from the now infamous documentary, The Hate That Hate Produced. So forceful was the scene that it was used again by C. Eric Lincoln in the opening chapter of the first definitive study of the Black Muslims in 1961.1 The appeal of the scene is not only the centrality of the young Minister Farrakhan (then Louis X), only 26 years old at the time, but the centrality of race in the courtroom and the reversal of assumed roles. The activities commonly associated in American popular culture with blacks are reversed and in the most acrimonious of tones condemn white patriarchal American society in its totality. The play shocked audiences hearing it for the first time in 1959, but also provided a compelling portrait of the complex interplay of the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) belief structure and its relationship to the racial, religious, and political architecture of American life. Numerous scholars have taken up the Nation of Islam and its complex relationship to the law. The definitive treatment of the civil liberties and the Nation of Islam is Malachi D. Crawford’s Black Muslims and the Law. Crawford uses a critical race approach to legal history to argue that the Nation of Islam developed a complex legal strategy to advance and protect the rights and civil liberties of its members. Ula Taylor’s chapter in Law, Culture & Africana Studies, “Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam: Separat- ism, Regendering, and a Secular Approach to Black Power after Malcolm X (1965–1975)” addresses vital developments in the NOI regarding its policy The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State 47 views of Africa, reparations, and poverty. David Feddes, “Islam among African-American Prisoners” provides some broader context regarding the relationship between mainstream Islam and legal issues. However, other than Robert Uzzel’s thesis on the subject, few works delve directly into the relationship between constitutional principles and the Nation of Islam. This gap in the literature must be addressed for several reasons.2 Most recently, scholars such as Zoe Colley and Dan Berger have argued that prisons were an important site and symbol of organization for black protest. As Colley argued in Ain’t Scared of Your Jail, the turn toward vol- untary mass incarceration marked a distinct shift in black protest tactics. In her article “ ‘All America Is a Prison’: The Nation of Islam and the Politici- zation of African American Prisoners, 1955–1965,” Colley follows up her argument discussing how the NOI recruited behind bars, tracing motiva- tions of converts and the impact on the system. As she states, the lessons to be learned extend beyond the walls of the prison and black resistance. In the United States, carceral encounters were also crucial in shaping white American ideas about political ideology, economic inequality, and religious identity.3 While the aforementioned scholars have taken up the Nation of Islam and its complex relationship to the law, prisons, and political ideology, there is much more to consider about the unique role of the NOI’s political ideology and racial philosophy in relationship to major changes in Ameri- can religious and civic culture. Works examining the NOI often take the post-1960s pluralist religious environment as a given, but the openness to different religious expressions was seldom embraced during the time the NOI flourished.4 The NOI saw tremendous gains in the decades prior to the election of 1960 when it was impossible for a Catholic to be elected president and the concept of Islam was a mystery to the majority of Americans. However, it was during this nascent moment of the NOI’s evolution that it experienced the most dynamic periods of growth. How were Black Muslims able to recruit Black Americans to the cause while simultaneously engaging the national political culture as racial and religious outsiders? Prison recruitment and dynamic ministers alone were not the only factors for the NOI’s appeal. Black Muslims were effective because leadership and ministers challenged and often expanded notions of religious equality to gain the attention and respect of white audiences while simultaneously exposing racial injustices. Elijah Muhammad and his ministers demonstrated the power of Islam to reform and engage the dispossessed, but also expanded the meaning of religious freedom. It was a two-pronged strategy that drew on racial injustices of the jailhouse highlighted by broader critiques of a civic religion rooted in racialism. Building on previous works, I argue that the NOI’s legal strategy of religious liberty worked in tandem with its prison recruitment strategy to transform the meaning of Islam for Americans of all races. 48 Seneca Vaught Religious Freedom and the Origins of the Nation of Islam The nascent Nation of Islam’s legal encounters in the 1940s set the precedent for the growth of the movement using religious liberty as the basis of a broader social critique. Most readers are unfamiliar with several key cases and the carceral environment beginning in the 1940s that outlined the NOI’s contested strategy to gain religious recognition and the right to assemble in prisons. From its earliest days, incarceration and judicial justice factored heavily into the character of the Black Muslim movement. In 1932, according to Elijah Muhammad, W. D. Fard was “persecuted” and sent to jail twice. “He submitted himself with all humility to his persecutors. Each time he was arrested he sent for me that I may see and learn the price of truth for us.”5 Two years later, in 1934, Elijah Muhammad became head of the NOI and began a major transition in the history of the movement. This period, particularly developments emerging after 1935 as the United States lurched in the Great Depression, was the beginning of “difficult times” according to Marsh.6 The dolorous nature of the period was not only characterized in economic terms but also the religious and racial character of unashamedly pro-black religion came under increasing scrutiny as a threat to national security. Karl Evanzz and Ernest Allen Jr. have both discussed how prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor authorities were monitoring the Black Mus- lim movement. Authorities were particularly interested in the relationship between Muslims and Japanese reserve officer Sakota Takahasi but had also noted the intention of Marxists to co-opt the NOI in the 1930s.7 Seemingly, World War II provided a wartime rationale to clamp down on the movement. In 1940, Congress passed a wide-sweeping Selective Service and Training Act that was met by opposition from a variety of pacifists, radicals, and mainstream citizens who simply opposed the war. Since no evidence of collusion with the Japanese presented in the case, the Department of Justice prosecutors cited a violation of the Selective Service Act of 1940 against seventy NOI members as an act of treason. At the same time, the Addeynu Allahe Universal Arabic Association avoided guilty pleas taken by so many in the NOI and chose to register as conscientious objectors because they could not eat (haram) military food or fight against other ‘dark races’ because it was a violation of their moral convictions.8 When confronted with the mandate to register for military service, Eli- jah Muhammad, his son Emmanuel, and others of the small but growing Allah Temple of Islam were charged with evading the draft and abetting the number-one national enemy—the Japanese. Muhammad specifically was accused of harboring pro-Japanese sentiments.9 In January of 1941, nearly a year before the attack, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had delivered a speech widely known in later years as the “Four Freedoms Speech.” The speech hinted at the fragility of democratic government and also recognized the threat of populations throughout Africa The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State 49 and Asia, along with their natural resources, going over to “the conqueror.” The segment of the speech most familiar to readers today comes toward the conclusion, when Roosevelt cites “four freedoms” that Americans invest- ment in the war effort will secure. Of these, the second freedom states, “Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.” However, given the widespread harassment of religious adherents of non-Protestant traditions during the 1930s and 1940s, Roosevelt’s speech was more of an aspiration than an affirmation.10 Furthermore, the president’s pledge would be tested by the Nation of Islam as a particularly narrow view that had been neatly constructed only to protect the liberties of white Americans at the exclusion of other non-white peoples and non-Christian traditions. Just one year after Roosevelt delivered the “Four Freedoms” speech, Muhammad was scheduled to register and to be inducted into the U.S. military. When he refused, he was arrested and sentenced to serve time at the federal penitentiary in Milan, Michigan, until 1946.11 The year of 1946 also marked an important date for establishment clause jurisprudence in the United States. Whether cognizant of the case or not, Muhammad was raising similar issues presented in Everson v. Board of Education. Although the Supreme Court ruled against the plaintiffs, their questioning of reimbursements of public money for private transportation subsidies underscored a fundamental question: How actively could the public good engage collective interests in parochial matters? During the war, the Court took a reading of the First Amendment that upheld the status quo, but Muhammad’s case was part of a series of challenges that would challenge the prevailing Christian religious orthodoxy in the post-war years.12 To broaden the appeal of his case to non-Muslims, Muhammad characterized his trial and arrest in religiously symbolic Christian terms. Recalling those years, Muhammad noted,

I suffered for it [the truth] and went to prison and suffered there and in jails in this country: Detroit, Washington, D.C. and in Chicago, you know about it. I sacrificed even being in the presence and the love of my family for seven long years, seeking Almighty God’s truth, guidance and wisdom of Him for 7 long years.13

Here we get glimpses of how Muhammad interpreted his own incarceration. He characterized his incarceration in language that resembles the motif of the suffering Savior, the Lamb of God, a common typology of Protestant Christianity. He even invoked the symbolic nature of the number seven, that has significant symbolic meaning in Judaism and Christianity. In addition to invoking religious symbolism, Muhammad also was establishing himself as the direct successor to Fard, whom he equally extolled for his carceral suf- ferings at the hand of authorities in the courts and in prison.14 50 Seneca Vaught On July 23, 1942, Elijah Muhammad began serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, Michigan. Muhammad was incarcerated during a time when the Bureau of Prisons doubled the number of prisons that it operated and the number of inmates that were under its supervision. For example, in 1930, there were just 13 institutions over- seen by the Bureau of Prisons with an estimated 13,000 inmates. By 1940, that number had increased to 24 institutions with over 24,000 inmates. The Bureau of Prisons would not experience growth at this pace again until 1981 when the prison population would double from 24,000 inmates to more than 50,000 and would double once again during the 1990s.15 While serving at FCI in Milan, Michigan, Muhammad faced open hostility to his religious convictions, as Muslim prisoners were ignored in service offerings, ritual allowances, and dietary restrictions, even though they had a following large enough to attract attention from the guards.16 According to historian Claude Clegg III, Muhammad viewed his arrest as a type of persecution, and it increased his resolve. While imprisoned, Elijah and Emmanuel (his son) established a temple in the penitentiary with services three times a week on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.17 The converts, when freed, created a steady stream of new adherents to the Detroit Temple that Muhammad’s imprisonment had negatively impacted. These successes were undoubtedly credited to Clara Muhammad’s gracious assistance. As his wife, she not only served as a trusted conduit of the patriarch’s messages to the community on the outside but also as a scribe dispatching hand copied pages from the Qur’an to her incarcerated husband, as prison officials prevented him from retaining a copy of the sacred text.18 However, as Muhammad’s prison converts were released, the numbers once again began to increase.19

Carceral Issues and the Rise of the Nation of Islam The Nation of Islam’s rapid growth during the 1950s and 1960s occurred during a period of racial revolution, but also during a time of changing religious norms. The imprisonment of Elijah Muhammad and his framing of carceral encounters in religious terms characterized the high stakes of the NOI’s position during this period of significant growth and its relation to broader American debates on religious expression. Positioning the legal, racial, and political ideology of the Nation of Islam in terms of religious liberty appealed to a generation of incarcerated black men in the post-World War II era amid changing national ideas about religion and race. The incarceration of Fard, Muhammad, and Malcolm X, along with several legal cases, provides evidence of the NOI’s subversive power in carceral institutions as well as the successes of their recruitment strategy. For example, sometime between 1948 and 1952, Malcolm (Little) X converted to Islam while imprisoned in Massachusetts. His conversion represented the complex needs of African-American men that the NOI’s challenge to legal authority, established religion, and racist institutions The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State 51 provided. However, if the NOI were to meet the needs of black imprisoned men efficiently, it needed to become a ‘legitimate’ organized religion to be acknowledged by prison chaplaincies.20 In the spring of 1952, Malcolm X was paroled from prison and became an official minister in the Nation of Islam. He perfected his rhetorical flour- ishes and forensic reflexes to engage a variety of audiences, including the young and the educated, and he developed quite a reputation as a debater. When engaged in debate, he often invoked the unjust criminal justice system but would emphasize that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that all Muslims should obey the law and uphold the law. Invariably, this would set a trap for his opponents, who would then point out some practice of the Nation of Islam that they characterized as hate-mongering or promoters of violence. Malcolm then would often switch to the offensive by providing an example of that said practice as commonly understood and perceived as normal in mainstream white America. This would catch his opponent flat- footed, and he would slyly quip something to the effect of “what is good for the goose is good for the gander.”21 Malcolm X’s histrionics have often been highlighted as masterful displays of his quick intellect, but seldom are they considered as reflective of a broader legal strategy of the Nation of Islam in its attempt to position itself as a legitimate religious institution using the legal doctrine of religious equality—an approach that developed from its prison moorings. Accord- ing to Clifton Marsh, at least three of the nine ministers of the NOI, James 3X Anderson, James 3X McGregor, and Isaiah Karriem Edwards, had all served prison terms in the early 1940s for refusing to register under the Selective Service Act. Their religious protest forced prison administration, courts, and, eventually, the broader public to engage the racial, religious, and moral questions the organization posed in a legal forum.22 In August of 1957, when Wallace Muhammad, then 24 years old, was indicted for refusing to register for military service, at great financial cost, the Muhammad family challenged the ruling in the courts for three years. On November 4, Wallace Muhammad entered prison and served at the Elgin State Hospital before entering the federal correctional institution at Sandstone, Minnesota.23 Not only did this present Muhammad’s critics with the opportunity to criticize him but also made way for other Muslims to pursue that option, undermining the necessity of the prison strategy.24 For clarification, the indictment and imprisonment of blacks was unjust to the NOI but theologically ‘necessary’ for several reasons. As a matter of religious principle, Muhammad taught that it would be better for a Muslim to die than to renege on his beliefs and serve under the command of infidels. As a matter of criminal justice, the Nation of Islam relied on its proximity to criminal offenders to reform and to convert them. As a matter of theology, Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad did not teach that blacks were imprisoned because what they had done was not wrong, but rather they had been led astray. Muhammad’s explanation for black incarceration was to 52 Seneca Vaught be distinguished from the discourse of prominent black political prisoners, such as George Jackson, that emerged in the same period. Differing from the NOI, Jackson held that imprisoned blacks reflected the political reality of a racist society, so justice was invariably tainted.25 Many of the illegal activities that had led to the incarceration of blacks such as drug possession, prostitution, theft, and murder were perceived as the fault of the perpetrators but also an indictment of the depravity of American society overall. In other words, the incarcerated were personally responsible for their actions, but they were not cognizant of the broader social and economic framework that victimized them. This approach was highlighted in Muhammad Speaks in an interview with a Jewish American community organizer Saul Alinksy. For much of the 1950s, Alinksy had been organizing African Americans in Chicago against the political machin- ery of Mayor Richard Daley. The article highlighted his perspectives on the problem of prison and how that related to broader social questions raised by Black Muslims.26 According to Alinksy,

Everything becomes very sharp and clear when people are put together in a very small space. Take for example a Negro who goes into an Amer- ican prison. He sees what segregation really is in there—and everything is segregated. He comes out of it with a clearer understanding of segregated practices in a bigger society. He’s had more intensive experience in the smaller laboratory.27

Furthermore, after being paroled or discharged, the racial conditions of American society complicated making a fresh start. As Alinksy argued, the Italian could change his name but the Black ex-convict could not change his color. He faced a persistent situation of incarceration that was compounded by economic isolation. This social fact developed “a very natural bitterness and resentment against such injustice. How do you go to people who are kicked in the face by injustice and timely turnaround—whether it’s while working, socially, or anything—and talk to them about justice?”28 Summar- ily, Alinksy summarized the appeal of NOI jailhouse theology to Black men: the penitent Muslim led astray, exploited, and abused was redeemable, but American society, its unjust courts, and its prejudiced prisons, were not.29 This paradoxical truth, presented the dilemma of a black population in exile. Black men, Malcolm X and other ministers often proclaimed, had been so brainwashed or “bamboozled” that they were not only a threat to the broader American society but also to themselves and the black community. Stories of transformation and redemption were often highlighted in meetings, but also periodically in Muhammad Speaks. For example, the story of James Pasha emphasizes a typical pattern of a Muslim testimony. Pasha renders a story of youthful innocence then entrapment as he “was dealt a more deplorable fate” upon moving from Arkansas to Chicago. Ensnared The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State 53 in the vices of the city, he became “a rowdy, whiskey drinking fool,” where he faced strings of sentences in the Chicago City Jail and Bridewell Prison.30 Redemption came only as Pasha and others were able to submit to Islam and turn from their old ways to reclaim their true selves. This theology presented a paradox in that it upheld relatively conventional mainstream Christian values while indicting the racial hypocrisy of mainstream white American society. Nowhere did this tension become more apparent than in the legal challenges for authenticity and the right to assembly in prisons.31 By 1960, C. Eric Lincoln, then considered the foremost academic expert on the Nation of Islam, estimated that its membership was around 100,000 with 69 temples. That same decade, United Press journalist Horace Dasher Quigg penned a series of articles in the Monessen, Pennsylvania, Valley Indepen- dent. H. D. Quigg highlighted the paradoxes of the Nation’s carceral recruitment strategy. Perhaps by that date it had become so successful at mobilizing from prison that it became synonymous with the institution. Some estimate that the NOI reached its apex of prison growth during those years.32 According to some sources, after the screening of The Hate That Hate Produced, the NOI experienced a surge in membership but were unable to shake their jailhouse image. Thurgood Marshall criticized the group as “run by a bunch of thugs organized from prisons and jails and financed, I am sure, by Nasser [Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt] or some Arab group.” Authorities in prison and out were unable and often unwilling to separate the criminality of many converts from their racial message, which at the time was illegal in many Southern states still embracing Jim Crow.33 In July of 1962, around the same time black Muslims such as Elias Sengor were harassed by prison guards because of their religious beliefs, which war- dens viewed as a challenge to the established order, Federal Judge Burnita Matthews in Washington ruled that a Black Muslim William T. X. Full- word, must be allowed to hold religious gatherings at Lorton Reformatory in Virginia. The case was brought to the fore in 1959, following the solitary confinement of sixty Muslims. Following Judge Matthews’s ruling, Federal Judge John O. Henderson also considered the appeal of five Black Muslims at Attica who argued that a ban on their religious services was a form of religious discrimination. The rulings were interesting not only for the Muslims but also because of their implications throughout mainstream America.34 During the 1960s, the United States was engaged in a raging discussion about racial discrimination, but also evolving discussions of the role of religion in a pluralistic society. The election of John F. Kennedy as president in 1960 had brought the issues of Roman Catholicism to the fore. Black Americans, many of which embraced deep historical ties to Protestantism, had initial reservations regarding Kennedy’s candidacy but ultimately were drawn to accept the candidate based on his political promises and commitment to civil rights. By 1962, other religious questions had penetrated the public square. In particular, the question of mandated prayer in public schools became a 54 Seneca Vaught central discussion during this time period. In June of 1962, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in Engel v. Vitale, which was broadly interpreted as schools should not promote religious activities including prayer. This is particularly important for several reasons. It signaled a major shift in American jurisprudence that had long acknowledged the public presence of Protestant Christianity as the dominant religion notwithstanding the establishment and free exercise clauses. The United States was not a Christian monolith, and Christianity could no longer be enforced as the norm in the public square.35 It is in this context that Judge Burnita Matthews’s ruling should be understood. Matthews, the first woman to be appointed as a judge to a federal bench during the Truman administration, ruled on behalf of the Nation of Islam not because she endorsed their separatist philosophy but because she accepted the broader argument regarding the nature of religious pluralism. In addition to this case, the Troy X Cade case was also heard in1962. Once again, the case illustrates how the Black Muslims framed their rights to assembly in the language of a religious liberty issue. In Monroe, Louisiana, NOI congregants appeared in the Louisiana Circuit Court of Appeals to challenge the conviction of Troy X Cade. Cade, a Muslim minister and eight other Black Muslims were convicted on the charges that he was promoting the violent overthrow of the government. The case was covered in Muham- mad Speaks, where a special correspondent claimed the case represented a “vicious pattern of racial persecution and ruthless religious suppression extending from Atty. General Robert Kennedy’s office.”36 Others in the federal government recognized the drawing power of the Nation of Islam and its effect on the black community. In July of 1963, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner published a story on the origins of W. D. Fard. Some perceived the story as an example of investigative journalism, but for others, the intent of the article was to provide information that would cast doubt on the authenticity of the founder and the religious movement. The story was swiftly met by condemnation by Elijah Muham- mad who found the story to be a fraud. Nevertheless, this story has been a central point of contention between the Nation of Islam and its biographers until this day. Some NOI sources allege that the allegations were based on fabricated documents that were designed and promoted by the FBI as part of the COINTELPRO program to disrupt black activism during the period. Nevertheless, the voracity of which the NOI has responded to these allegations affirmed its commitment to challenge carceral forces to maintain its influence among its adherents and shun its detractors.37 That fall, C. Eric Lincoln addressed the integrated nature of this problem and its meaning for American society and law enforcement at the Univer- sity of California Conference on Law Enforcement and Racial Tensions. He emphasized the growth of the movement stemming from racial conditions and used the idea of “social anxiety” to frame their role. They occupied the bottom rung of the social ladder and their relationship within both the black The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State 55 community and police. It is important to note that Lincoln was invited to address a meeting of police who had also recognized the complex questions that the Nation of Islam had brought to the fore. The NOI engaged ideas of religious legitimacy while simultaneously challenging popularly held beliefs of black propriety. A series of high-profile confrontations with the police in New York City, Baton Rouge, and Los Angeles had presented a unique challenge for law enforcement. Evidently, growing numbers of police were concerned with the dogma of the group since it encouraged self-defense. One review of Lincoln’s work in a police publication identified the NOI as a “major police problem” because of their rejection of non-retaliation when attacked by whites.38 Importantly, policing and prison concerns voiced by the NOI should not be considered isolated from the string of religious liberty arguments that were being advanced in the courts. There were not separate self-defense and religious liberty policies; the views overlapped in the religious beliefs and political philosophy of the movement. For many in the movement, the redemption of black men in America was dependent on addressing both of these problems, and prison was one of the most important sites where these issues came together. In an interview years later, Muhammad bragged about the effectiveness of the Muslim prison ministry:

We have in Virginia, the law in Virginia, the government gave me the freedom to have a minister go there and visit them, and now there is four hundred of them there in that prison and they don’t have no trouble with them.

He cited his own experiences as a convict as being useful in helping him relate.39 This strategy was not left unnoticed by reporters in the mainstream press, as prison officials hoped to discredit the legitimacy of the religion using the criteria of established religious organizations. Ultimately, this strategy failed. In June of 1963, H. D. Quigg wrote in “Black Muslims Religious Claims Involve Courts” that a federal judge ruled the NOI was a religious group whether or not mainstream Muslims in the United States rejected their claims.40

A Waning Crescent Moon and Waxing Carceral State The aforementioned backstory provides a historical context that makes the 1971 Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) v. U.S. case read quite differently. Approaching the 1971 Clay case within the context of religious liberty challenges some prevailing views of the Nation of Islam in the post-civil rights era and broadens the legal debate the NOI has prompted about the role of race in American religious orthodoxy. On May 8 of 1967, when Muham- mad Ali declined induction into the armed forces by refusing to step forward 56 Seneca Vaught when his name was called, he was well aware of the central questions of religious liberty in his protest. Clay had requested deferment from military service a year earlier in February of 1966 and was clearly not the first Black Muslim to present his objections to military service. Ali was strategically drawing from an established tradition of conscientious objection stemming from Elijah Muhammad himself.41 In the midst of a divisive military campaign in Vietnam, how Ali’s decision was perceived often depended, not only on one’s position regarding racial matters but also on one’s political and religious beliefs. In the first 15 years of the Selective Service Act, it was uncommon for conscientious objectors to be granted deferment based on political principles. Since many of its critics did not consider the Nation of Islam a legitimate religion but rather a radical black social movement, some believed that Ali should not be granted exemption from service at all.42 To do so would further support the political opposition for the war and would undermine the power of the draft to provide conscripts when national security was threatened. Equally important, the Justice Department and the FBI questioned the sincerity of Ali’s objection to military service based on religious principles— a doubt that was also used to undermine the legitimacy of the religion. Other critics argued that Ali was not a legitimate minister. Since the majority of his time was not spent on legitimate ministerial duties but rather fighting in the ring, they believed he should not be granted exemption. Both of these criticisms hinged on the point that either the Nation of Islam was not a legitimate religion or that the duties that so-called ministers engaged in were not official enough that a comparison could be made with other “mainstream” religions.43 Unlike Elijah Muhammad, Ali was not sent to jail, but he did spend a tremendous amount of his political and economic resources in the appeals process. Many critics, both black and white, viewed Ali’s intransigence as a waste of his time, money, and talent. Though the war was broadly unpopu- lar, few people of his stature would dare spend the resources he did to rally against it. Certainly, fewer still would risk one’s livelihood and fame for such a bold political statement. Responding to his critics in May of 1967, Ali reaffirmed his stance,

I haven’t lost one thing, I have gained a lot . . . I am in court seeking justice under the laws of the land . . . If justice prevails, I will neither go to the army, nor go to jail.44

Without reading too deeply into this prepared statement, once again it is apparent how some elements of the Nation of Islam’s belief structure and legal strategy relate to the threat of incarceration using the framework of religious liberty. Although prominent members of the Nation of Islam constantly castigated the civil rights movement for its willingness to encourage protesters to be arrested in nonviolent direct action campaigns, it too The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State 57 invoked the threat of incarceration in strategic ways. For Black Muslims, such as Ali and Muhammad, the threat of prison was a mark of suffering that was an affirmation of one’s piety and virtue. Since Ali was one of the highest profile Muslims in the world, his conscientious objection to the war underscored the racial and political message of the Nation of Islam, illustrating its relevance to a variety of non-Muslim and non-black audiences. Some perceived that the federal government had targeted Ali for military service because they wanted to humiliate him and to silence the growing influence of the Nation of Islam. This spectacle posed serious challenges for the FBI—already working to discredit other influential leaders in the black liberation movement.45 The Clay case was heard in the aftermath of the Engle (1962) and Abing- ton (1963) cases. These cases illustrated a judicial shift on the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment and had a profound impact on an increasingly visible heterodox religious plurality in the United States. While Engle challenged the supremacy of Christian prayer in public schools and set a precedent for future challenges in public places, the Abing- ton School District v. Schempp case raised the question of whether requiring students to read religious texts in public schools violated the free exercise clause and First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.46 In 1969, Black Muslims at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta filed a suit with the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, arguing that their First and Fifth Amendment rights were being violated by Warden Olin G. Blackwell. Henry Walker claimed that the warden had arbitrarily denied the incarcerated NOI community articles of their faith. This restriction is of particular concern given the documented practices of unconstitutional and extralegal methods that the Department of Justice and FBI used to disrupt and discredit the religious freedoms of Muslims.47 Earlier in the case, Muslims had successfully argued that they should be granted the right to wear religious insignia, possess sacred literature (the Black Muslim Bible and the Holy Koran), and attend weekly scheduled meetings with an appointed chaplain provided by contract. Using this successful litigation, they extended their arguments to include a request for accommodations during Ramadan, access to the weekly radio address of Elijah Muhammad, and copies of the NOI’s newspaper Muhammad Speaks. The appellants also argued that they should be allowed to directly corre- spond with Elijah Muhammad since he was a religious leader.48 After the Blackwell and Clay case began to fade from public memory, Black Muslims faced new challenges in the carceral structure of America. New cases invoking religious liberty and religious discrimination were filed during the midst of what some historians have called the era of mass incarceration. During the 1980s, concerns for religious liberty were displaced by concerns for prisoner safety as inmate violence and prison gang populations increased. The American prison infrastructure, strained with the pains of growth during the 1980s, as the complex interaction between a militarized 58 Seneca Vaught criminal code, tough-on-crime legislatures, and a reconfiguration of the American political constellation was underway. The growth of prison populations during the decade presented some unintended consequences as the numbers of Black Muslims increased in proportion to the disproportionate number of African-American men being incarcerated. Some allege that NOI brotherhood became a “prison car” on the “road to survival.”49 In March of 1984, Amir Fatir (aka Sterling Hobbs) delivered a sermon to NOI congregants in the Delaware Correctional Center (DCC). Prison authorities claimed that Fatir was urging congregants to engage in violent behavior by “letting blood flow in the aisles.” Citing security concerns, the warden restricted the assembly of the NOI and challenged their status as a legitimate religion. Fatir responded by filing suit against Chaplain Frank C. Pennell under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that in preventing the NOI from religious assembly, the DCC was violating the constitutional rights of the Nation of Islam to free exercise of religion.50 This decision was followed by the O’Lone v. Estate of Shabazz Supreme Court ruling in 1987 that established prisons can restrict religious practices in general and NOI exercises in the interest of a specific government purpose. This ruling would prevail for more than twenty years until Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (2000), which restored some of the restrictions allowed under O’Lone. Despite the new challenges, the NOI did not abandon its traditional legal strategy. In 1991, the Hobbs v. Pennell case came to a close when a jury decided that although adherents to the Nation of Islam did have the right to assemble as a religious body, correctional institutions could require an outside imam to officiate the services.51 This decision was indicative of a broader national political trend reining in the gains of the prisoner’s rights movement a decade earlier. As growing numbers of young black and Latino men encountered prison under racially disproportionate sentencing, record numbers of black men turned to Islam and its variants to reaffirm their identity as social outcasts. From the mid-1990s onward, the demand for services and materials by the Nation of Islam in American prisons increased, all while American Muslims faced growing disadvantages in arguing for religious liberty successfully before a federal court.52 Following the Million Man March in 1995, thousands more found inspiration and a resonating message in Louis Farrakhan’s Torchlight for America.53

Conclusion Thomas Paine once wrote, “Tolerance is not the operation of intolerance but the counterfeit of it.” The prison experiences and court cases of the NOI provide important perspectives on the relationship between race and religion in American society. There is a long history of Americans suing for religious liberty in a society where the majority rule can force minorities to choose between faith or state-granted rights. The Nation of Islam’s carceral The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State 59 dilemmas highlight how race and religious liberty define the experience of Islam in the margins of American society. Paradoxically, the NOI’s dogma reflects the heterodox mosaic of American political, racial, and political conflict. In suing for its religious liberty in a series of cases stemming from its patriarch, the NOI was putting American society itself on trial. The majority of the controversial beliefs held by the Nation of Islam are not unique to the Black Muslim movement. Several cases such as Walker (1969), Clay (1971), and Hobbs (1983) illustrate that if the NOI is examined using the same criteria as other American religious groups, it is quite difficult to malign them on criteria other than their racial dogma. The American religious landscape represents a patchwork of old and new traditions, utopian and dystopian narratives, all bound by the imagination that each successive tradition is revealing something unique and prophesying more boldly. Contrasting the imprisonments of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Wallace Muhammad, readers can see a rather complex interplay of ‘criminal’ activity, religious sincerity, and racism overlap in the American criminal justice system. These imprisonments reveal how Muslims used the language of religious liberty and the plight of religious persecution to expose the hypocrisy of American racism. All three Muslims were incarcerated for their threat to the existing racial order—they were perceived as threats to national security or public safety. Though the crimes and rationales that led to the incarceration of each man were unique, each case illustrates how Black Muslims viewed their captivity as a part of a broader divine purpose. Elijah Muhammad was outraged that his son did not submit to the same type of incarceration as he had because he viewed the religious persecution of Muslims as part of a larger mission to expose the hypocrisy of Ameri- can justice and the racist carceral regime. Similarly, after his conversion to Islam, Malcolm X conceded that his criminal offenses were wrong but saw opportunities for incarcerated Muslims and ex-convicts to expose the racial order and the hypocrisies of religious liberty in the United States. When NOI beliefs were arranged and articulated in a way that challenged the established racial orthodoxy, the collection of these views were easily cat- egorized as supremacist, or in the most extreme cases as a threat to national security. While the harshest of the racist troupes such as categorizing an entire race as devils, a polygenesis creation, and an impending apocalypse may seem peculiar to some, from the nineteenth century, these views were promulgated separately by Mormons, Baptists, and by many respected natural scientists in the American religious landscape. In the era of Jim Crow, contemporaneous to the NOI’s most public period, many Southern congregations based their intransigence to desegregation on biblical interpretations that reflected American social orthodoxy at the time. Looking back, it may be easier to castigate an articulate group of economically and socially marginalized blacks for their acrimony rather than analyze their audacity.54 This view of the NOI may be unsettling to those who view the movement primarily as a social phenomenon and not a religious organization. 60 Seneca Vaught However, if the same criteria were applied to evangelicals and many other Christian movements within the religious right that emerged in the 1980s, one would see that the political ideology that manifested itself in the NOI is as readily visible in the Moral Majority, Christian Coalition, and other sectors of the Christian right. These cases illustrate the interconnectedness of the Black experience to American religious, political, and economic debates. Blacks and whites both share some moral interpretations of American society, but their views of justice, law, order, and virtue have not developed in consensus. Rather, key differences have emerged through conflict throughout religious and judicial institutions. It is not only in the chambers of the courts but also in encounters with police, confinement in jails, and isolation in prisons that the meaning of true justice is best articulated and traced. Ironically, as Black Muslims contributed to the idea of religious liberty in a pluralistic religious context, they also witnessed a broader dismantling of civil liberties in the aftermath of 9/11 that underscore some of the earliest challenges Elijah Muhammad and other incarcerated Muslims faced during the World War II era. Address- ing the range of questions raised in Boumediene v. Bush, recent scholarship most often tends to view 9/11 as a distinct break with the past rather than a reinterpretation of old practices in which race and religious justifications were used to circumvent constitutional rights in the interest of national security or public safety. From the founding of the NOI, its detractors, critics, and enemies emphasized ways to separate and isolate the Nation of Islam from mainstream Islam. Cavilers sought to deny Black Muslims legitimacy and consign them to a place without history, context, or rationality. Elijah Muhammad’s trial and alleged propensities to support the Japanese became not only a trial regarding religious discrimination but also an important bellwether for recurring debates over national security and civil liberties during the war effort. These debates centered on religion, patriotism, and majority American values to which black adherence was central. Malcolm X continued to engage this approach even after he left the NOI in 1964. His quest for an efficacious religious identity is often misconstrued as a search for acceptance in white America. Instead, it was an attempt to broaden ideas of democracy and Islam on terms that would reflect the evolving nationalist, transnational, and multicultural needs of black liberation movements. As Akinyele Umoja has written, “After leaving the NOI, Malcolm worked in a collective fashion to build an organization based on principle different from the NOI.” Furthermore, “his new leadership moved beyond authoritarian collectivism and embraced democratic participation.” Wallace’s departure from the NOI can be assessed in similar terms. The legitimacy he sought was both religious and racial and cannot be separated.55 Through religious liberty suits, what the NOI accomplished was creatively highlighting the interconnectedness of religious beliefs and political ideology. The two are not separate, as we would seek to believe but The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State 61 rather overarching and self-reinforcing. Most importantly, in fighting for the right to assemble, the Nation of Islam played a key role in preserving the crescent moon and disassembling the carceral state.

Notes 1. As portrayed in Callie Crossley and James A. DeVinney, Eyes on the Prize. America’s Civil Rights Movement, Vol. 4, (Alexandria: PBS Video, 2006). For original, see Louis E. Lomax et al., The Hate That Hate Produced. On News- beat, WNTA-TV, July 23, 1959, C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961). In this chapter, the term ‘Black Muslims’ is used to refer to the Nation of Islam and not adherents of “orthodox” Islam unless specifically noted. 2. Robert L. Uzzel, The Nation of Islam: Belief and Practice in the Light of the American Constitutional Principle of Religious Liberty. MA Thesis at Baylor University, 1976; David Feddes, “Islam among African-American Prisoners,” Missiology: An International Review 36.4 (2008): 505–521, doi:10.1177/009182960803600408; Ula Taylor, “Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam: Separatism, Regendering, and a Secular Approach to Black Power after Malcolm X (1965–1975),” in Law, Culture, and Africana Studies, ed. James L. Conyers Jr. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011), xi, 1–22. 3. Seneca Vaught, Narrow Cells and Lost Keys: The Impact of Jails and Prisons on Black Protest, 1940–1972. PhD Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2006, http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=bgsu1162336938; Zoe A. Colley, Ain’t Scared of Your Jail: Arrest, Imprisonment, and the Civil Rights Movement (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 4; Zoe Colley, “ ‘All America Is a Prison’: The Nation of Islam and the Politicization of African American Prison- ers, 1955–1965,” Journal of American Studies 48.2 (2014): 396, doi:10.1017/ S0021875813001308. 4. Ernest Allen Jr., “Religious Heterodoxy and Nationalist Tradition: The Continu- ing Evolution of the Nation of Islam,” The Black Scholar 26.3/4 (1996): 1–2. 5. Vibert L. White, Inside the Nation of Islam: A Historical and Personal Testi- mony by a Black Muslim (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 30; Muhammad in Louis E Lomax, When the Word Is Given: A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World (Cleveland: World Pub- lishing Company, 1963), 40; Claude Andrew Clegg III, “Rebuilding the Nation: The Life and Work of Elijah Muhammad, 1946–1954,” The Black Scholar 26.3/4 (1996): 50. 6. Clifton E. Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Resurrection, Transfor- mation, and Change of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in America, 1930–1995 (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 1996), 44. 7. C. Eric, Lincoln, The Black Muslims Revisited, or, the State of the Black Nation of Islam (London: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1972), 175–186. Evanzz, Messenger, 904 cited in Michael Angelo Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 2005), 283–284; Ernest Allen Jr., “When Japan Was ‘Champion of the Darker Races’: Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism,” The Black Scholar 24.1 (1994): 23–46. 8. Edward E. Curtis IV, “The Black Muslim Scare of the Twentieth Century: Reli- gious Stereotyping and Out-Grouping of Muslims in the United States,” in Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance, ed. Carl W. Ernst (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 92–93. 62 Seneca Vaught 9. Max Everest-Phillips, “The Pre-War Fear of Japanese Espionage: Its Impact and Legacy,” Journal of Contemporary History 42.2 (April 1, 2007): 243–244; Ernest Allen Jr., “When Japan Was ‘Champion of the Darker Races’: Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism,” The Black Scholar 24.1 (1994): 34–39. 10. Franklin Roosevelt, “Four Freedoms Speech,” Franklin D. Roosevelt Presiden- tial Library and Museum, January 6, 1941, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/ pdfs/ffreadingcopy.pdf. 11. Claude Andrew Clegg, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muham- mad (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 92; Lomax, When the Word Is Given, 46; Colley, “ ‘All America Is a Prison,’ ” 401. 12. Martha Craven Nussbaum, Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tra- dition of Religious Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 225–226. 13. Elijah Muhammad and Nasir Makr Hakim, The True History of Elijah Muham- mad, Messenger of Allah (Atlanta: M.E.M.P.S., 1997), 57. 14. Clegg, An Original Man, 92; Zafar Ishaq Ansari, “Aspects of Black Muslim Theology,” Studia Islamica 53 (1981): 137–138, 168, doi:10.2307/1595544. 15. “Bureau of Prisons Historical Information,” Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2014, http://www.bop.gov/about/history/. 16. Mattias Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 307; Clegg, An Origi- nal Man, 96. 17. Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims (1996), 44–45; Clegg, An Original Man, 96. 18. Ajile Amatullah-Rahman, She Stood by His Side and at Times in His Stead: The Life and Legacy of Sister Clara Muhammad. First Lady of the Nation of Islam, PhD Dissertation, Atlanta University Center, 1999, 65; Herbert Berg, Elijah Muhammad and Islam (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 38. On the important but overlooked role of women in the Nation of Islam, see Dawn- Marie Gibson, “Nation Women’s Engagement and Resistance in the Muham- mad Speaks Newspaper,” Journal of American Studies 1 (2015): 1–18. 19. Clegg, An Original Man, 92. 20. Louis A DeCaro, On the Side of My People : A Religious Life of Malcolm X (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 80–84. 21. Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 34; Robert James Branham, “ ‘I Was Gone on Debating’: Malcolm X’s Prison Debates and Public Confrontations,” Argumentation and Advocacy 31.3 (1995): 117–137. 22. Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims (1996), 73. 23. There are conflicting accountsof this development, but both accounts agree this tested the son’s relationship with his father and foreshadowed a split. 24. Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims (1996), 76; Karl Evanzz, The Mes- senger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 174. 25. Colley, “ ‘All America Is a Prison,’ ” 402; Clifton E. Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Transition from Separatism to Islam, 1930–1980 (Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1984), 76; Evanzz, The Messenger, 174. 26. Russell Burns and Saul Alinsky, “How Criminologist Who Studied Capone Gang See Guilt of the Good People [Interview with Saul Alinsky],” Muhammad Speaks, December 20, 1963. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Ansari, “Aspects of Black Muslim Theology,” 160; Vaught, “Narrow Cells and Lost Keys,” 43–45; Colley, “ ‘All America is a Prison,’ ” 404. The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State 63 30. James Pasha, “Became Muslim After the First Speech I Heard from the Lips of the Messenger,” Muhammad Speaks, September 11, 1964. 31. Edward E. Curtis, Islam in Black America Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African-American Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 102–103. 32. Colley, “ ‘All America Is a Prison,’ ” 407. 33. Wesley Muhammad, “Master W. Fard Muhammad and FBI COINTELPRO,” FinalCall.com News, January 4, 2010, http://www.finalcall.com/artman/pub lish/printer_6710.shtml; “Elijah Muhammad Dead: Black Muslim Leader, 77,” On This Day, February 26, 1975, http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/ onthisday/bday/1007.html. 34. Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad, 426 in note 134; Kathleen M. Moore, Al-Mughtaribun: American Law and the Transformation of Muslim Life in the United States (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 79–80. H.D. Quigg, “Claims of Muslims to Be Religion Have Been Contested in US Courts,” Philipsburg, PA Journal, June 18, 1963, C. Eric Lincoln Collection, Robert W. Woodruff Archives of the Atlanta University Center; H.D. Quigg, “Black Muslims May Be Recruiting New Members Inside Prison Walls,” Times, June 18, 1963, C. Eric Lincoln Collection, Robert W. Woodruff Archives of the Atlanta University Center; Colley, “ ‘All America Is a Prison,’ ” 404. 35. Bruce J. Dierenfield, The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed America (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007), 147–148. 36. “Muslims Granted New Hearing: Where US Permits Religious Persecution of Black People,” Muhammad Speaks, January 1962. 37. Muhammad, “Master W. Fard Muhammad and FBI COINTELPRO.” 38. Vincent Lynch, “ ‘Muslim’ Author, Law, Meet,” Sun-Reporter, September 29, 1962, C. Eric Lincoln Collection, Robert W. Woodruff Archives of the Atlanta University Center. 39. Elijah Muhammad, History of the Nation of Islam (Atlanta: Secretarius Memps Publications, 1994), 28. 40. Quigg, “Claims of Muslims to Be Religion Have Been Contested in US Courts.” 41. David Wiggins, “Victory for Allah: Muhammad Ali, the Nation of Islam, and American Society,” in Muhammad Ali, the People’s Champ, ed. Elliott J Gorn (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 98. Clay v. United States, 403 US 698 (Supreme Court 1971). 42. For an in-depth analysis of unique conditions, so-called heresies, and the significance of the NOI in the world of Islam, see Ansari, “Aspects of Black Mus- lim Theology,” 137–176. In addition to denigrating the religious sentiments of Black Muslims as a result of racial biases, detractors also sought to characterize the movement as a ‘cult’ to further diminish its significance. For examples of its characterization as a cult, see Erdmann Doane Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit,” American Journal of Sociology 43.6 (1938): 894–907. 43. Clay v. United States, 403 US 698 (Supreme Court 1971). 44. Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) Refuses Induction 1967, 2011, http://www.you tube.com/watch?v=tStvQ_QRldw&feature=youtube_gdata_player. 45. Susie Day and Laura Whitehorn, “Human Rights in the United States: The Unfinished Story of Political Prisoners and COINTELPRO,” New Political Sci- ence 23.2 (2001): 285–297, doi:10.1080/07393140120056009. 46. See Dierenfield, The Battle over School Prayer; “School District of Abington Township, Pennsylvania v. Schempp,” Supreme Court Cases: The Dynamic Court (1930–1999), February 5, 1999, N.PAG. 47. Edward E. Curtis IV, “The Black Muslim Scare of the Twentieth Century: Reli- gious Stereotyping and Out-Grouping of Muslims in the United States,” in 64 Seneca Vaught Islamophobia in America: The Anatomy of Intolerance, ed. Carl W Ernst (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 94. 48. Colley, “ ‘All America Is a Prison,’ ” 404, 410. 49. On the rise of the prison industrial complex, see Christian Parenti, Lockdown America (London, New York: Verso, 2008). Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad, 307. 50. Amy Kaslow, “Nation of Islam Extends Its Reach Behind Prison Walls,” Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 1996, http://www.csmonitor.com/1996/0520/052096. feat.cover.1.html. 51. Hobbs v. Pennell, 754 F. Supp. 1040 (Dist. Court, D. Delaware 1991). 52. Gregory C. Sisk and Michael Heise, “Muslims and Religious Liberty in the Era of 9/11: Empirical Evidence from the Federal Courts,” Iowa Law Review 1 (2012): 231. 53. Kaslow, “Nation of Islam Extends Its Reach Behind Prison Walls”; Louis Far- rakhan, A Torchlight for America (Chicago: FCN Pub. Co., 1993); SpearIt, Raza Islamica: Prisons, Hip Hop & Converting Converts, SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester: Social Science Research Network, February 11, 2013), http://papers. ssrn.com/abstract=1652121. 54. Thomas W. Murphy, “From Racist Stereotype to Ethnic Identity: Instrumental Uses of Mormon Racial Doctrine,” Ethnohistory 46.3 (1999): 458; Alan Scot Willis, All According to God’s Plan: Southern Baptist Missions and Race, 1945– 1970 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 19; Eugene D. Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Chris- tian South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 81–83. 55. Akinyele Umoja, “From Malcolm X to Omowale Malik Shabazz: The Trans- formation and Its Impact on the Black Liberation Struggle,” in Malcolm X: A Historical Reader, ed. James L Conyers and Andrew P Smallwood (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2008), 39.

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Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011. Gibson, Dawn-Marie. “Nation Women’s Engagement and Resistance in the Muham- mad Speaks Newspaper.” Journal of American Studies 1 (2015): 1–18. Gomez, Angelo. Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Crossley, Callie and James A. DeVinney (writers and directors). Eyes on the Prize. America’s Civil Rights Movement, Vol. 4. Alexandria: PBS Video, 2006. Hobbs v. Pennell, 754 F. Supp. 1040. District Court, D. Delaware 1991. Kaslow, Amy. “Nation of Islam Extends Its Reach Behind Prison Walls.” Christian Science Monitor. May 20, 1996, http://www.csmonitor.com/1996/0520/052096. feat.cover.1.html. Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961. 66 Seneca Vaught ——. The Black Muslims Revisited, Or, The State of the Black Nation of Islam. London: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1972. Lomax, Louis E. When the Word Is Given: A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Mal- colm X, and the Black Muslim World. Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1963. Lomax, Louis E. and Mike Wallace. "The Hate That Hate Produced". On News- beat, WNTA-TV, July 23, 1959. Lynch, Vincent. “ ‘Muslim’ Author, Law, Meet.” Sun-Reporter. September 29, 1962, C. Eric Lincoln Collection, Robert W. Woodruff Archives of the Atlanta Univer- sity Center. Marsh, Clifton E. From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Resurrection, Transforma- tion, and Change of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in America, 1930–1995. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 1996. ——. From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Transition from Separatism to Islam, 1930–1980. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1984. Moore, Kathleen M. Al-Mughtaribun: American Law and the Transformation of Muslim Life in the United States. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. Muhammad, Elijah. History of the Nation of Islam. Atlanta: Secretarius Memps Publications, 1994. Muhammad, Elijah and Nasir Makr Hakim. The True History of Elijah Muham- mad, Messenger of Allah. Atlanta: M.E.M.P.S., 1997. Muhammad, Wesley. “Master W. Fard Muhammad and FBI COINTELPRO.” FinalCall.com News, January 4, 2010, http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/ printer_6710.shtml. Murphy, Thomas W. “From Racist Stereotype to Ethnic Identity: Instrumental Uses of Mormon Racial Doctrine.” Ethnohistory 46.3 (1999): 451–480. “Muslims Granted New Hearing: Where US Permits Religious Persecution of Black People,” Muhammad Speaks. January, 1962. Nussbaum, Martha Craven. Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradi- tion of Religious Equality. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Parenti, Christian. Lockdown America. New York: Verso, 2008. Pasha, James. “Became Muslim After the First Speech I Heard from the Lips of the Messenger.” Muhammad Speaks. September 11, 1964. Quigg, H.D. “Black Muslims May Be Recruiting New Members Inside Prison Walls.” Times, June 18, 1963, C. Eric Lincoln Collection, Robert W. Woodruff Archives of the Atlanta University Center. ——. “Claims of Muslims to Be Religion Have Been Contested in US Courts.” Phil- ipsburg, PA Journal, June 18, 1963, C. Eric Lincoln Collection, Robert W. Wood- ruff Archives of the Atlanta University Center. Roosevelt, Franklin. “Four Freedoms Speech.” Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, January 6, 1941, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/pdfs/ ffreadingcopy.pdf. “School District of Abington Township, Pennsylvania v. Schempp,” Supreme Court Cases: The Dynamic Court (1930–1999). February 5, 1999. Sisk, Gregory C. and Michael Heise. “Muslims and Religious Liberty in the Era of 9/11: Empirical Evidence from the Federal Courts.” Iowa Law Review 1 (2012): 231–291. SpearIt. “Raza Islamica: Prisons, Hip Hop & Converting Converts.” SSRN Schol- arly Paper. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, 2013. http://papers. ssrn.com/abstract=1652121. The Crescent Moon and the Carceral State 67 Taylor, Ula. “Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam: Separatism, Regendering, and a Secular Approach to Black Power after Malcolm X (1965–1975).” In Law, Culture, and Africana Studies, ed. James L. Conyers Jr., 1–22. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2011. Umoja, Akinyele. “From Malcolm X to Omowale Malik Shabazz: The Transforma- tion and Its Impact on the Black Liberation Struggle.” In Malcolm X: A His- torical Reader, ed. James L Conyers and Andrew P Smallwood, 31–53. Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2008. Uzzel, Robert L. The Nation of Islam: Belief and Practice in the Light of the Ameri- can Constitutional Principle of Religious Liberty. MA Thesis at Baylor University, 1976. Vaught, Seneca. Narrow Cells and Lost Keys: The Impact of Jails and Prisons on Black Protest, 1940–1972. PhD Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2006. http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=bgsu1162336938. White, Vibert L. Inside the Nation of Islam: A Historical and Personal Testimony by a Black Muslim. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. Wiggins, David. “Victory for Allah: Muhammad Ali, the Nation of Islam, and American Society.” In Muhammad Ali, the People’s Champ, ed. Elliott J Gorn, 88–116. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Willis, Alan Scot. All According to God’s Plan: Southern Baptist Missions and Race, 1945–1970. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. X, Malcolm. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. New York: Grove Press, 1965. 5 Eat to Live Culinary Nationalism and Black Capitalism in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam

Mary Potorti

In 1938, sociologist Erdmann Doane Beynon documented the curious influence of Wallace Fard Muhammad—a mysterious peddler who appeared in Detroit in 1930.1 Working as a door-to-door salesman hawking silks and fabrics, Fard aimed to introduce black Americans to a new worldview by encouraging them to return to their “original” religion of Islam.2 One individual who encountered Fard before his unexplained vanishing in 1934 recalled that during these house calls, Fard graciously accepted invitations to dine with his hosts and willfully partook of their offerings. Fard then framed the meal as an occasion to teach. The witness remembered Fard’s words:

“Now don’t eat this food. It is poison for you. The people in your country [Africa] do not eat it. Since they eat the right kind of food, they have the best health all the time. If you would live just like the people in your home country, you would never be sick anymore.”

Fard’s lessons intrigued his audience. Beynon’s source recalled, “We all wanted him to tell us more about ourselves and about our home country and about how we could be free from rheumatism, aches and pains.”3 Fard, regarded by his followers as a prophet of Allah, thus utilized communal bread breaking as a platform for lessons about the relationship between black Americans’ history of violent subjugation and their present state of sickliness and deprivation. The Nation of Islam (NOI), the black nationalist religion Fard founded, interpreted many strictures of Sunni Islam in ways that made sense of the plight of black Americans and the continued domination of whites over the “original” black race. The enormous influence and popularity of the NOI, especially during its rapid expansion in the 1950s and early 1960s under the leadership of Fard’s successor, Elijah Muhammad, attested to the power of this message, which advocated black supremacy, racial separation, and black self-help through economic uplift. Overshadowed by the group’s more radical pronouncements against integration, police brutality, and Christianity as a conservative social force that muted black resistance, the Nation’s dietary laws operated as the basis of Eat to Live 69 its broader black body politics, which both demanded and forged opportunities for black self-respect and self-sufficiency in a world dominated by white economic structures and interests. In addition to teaching followers “how to eat to live,” NOI food laws created a need for new black-owned businesses that respected and catered to the exacting guidelines espoused by Muhammad. Offering important models of black economic success, these food enterprises meanwhile created valuable sites for community building, group policing, and proselytizing. Muhammad, who led the Nation from 1934 until his death in 1975, expounded upon the vital function of food as a tool of white oppression and an essential forum for collective identity and racial survival in a way that framed spiritual matters in pressing earthly terms. NOI theology held that Allah created black people to rule the earth. It explained the state of the modern world, in which white supremacy inflicted suffering and destruction upon the black masses, through the story of Yakub, a mad black scientist who had grafted the white race from the black race as an evil trick.4 Contending that heaven and hell coexisted on earth, the Nation taught that the invented “white devils” had used “tricknology” to subjugate the inherently superior black race. White treachery took myriad menacing forms. Certainly, the institutions of slavery and sharecropping most blatantly abused and exploited black bodies for white economic gain, while lynching and other acts of racial terrorism mutilated them to maintain white supremacy through black fear and subservience. But white deviousness also took more subtle social and cultural forms, including gambling, alcohol, drugs, fornication, adultery, and poor diet, introduced and encouraged by whites to keep lost black Americans in a bumbling state of penury, ignorance, and servitude. Despite this view, the central precept of NOI theology, which held that Allah would overturn white rule at a predetermined time in the near future, rendered ineffectual any political action or activism toward the end of racial inequality. Moreover, the black nationalism at the core of the Nation’s message fundamentally opposed growing local movements during the 1950s and early 1960s to achieve civil rights through civil disobedience and racial integration.5 In lieu of efforts to integrate into a white society of vice and corruption, Muhammad and his followers sought to exhibit black primacy by leading healthful, productive, righteous lives. In doing so, they worked to ensure their redemption as Allah’s original chosen people. NOI dietary laws, foodways, and food enterprises anchored these efforts. The intimate nature of food as an economic commodity, a tangible cultural product, and a biological imperative commanded the obedience of Muham- mad’s followers and garnered the interest and esteem of outsiders. While Sunni Islam has for centuries demanded adherence to strict dietary guidelines and periods of ritual fasting, the Nation of Islam, a religious organization unique to the United States, imbued food with heightened significance as a means of promoting earthly survival, socio-economic advancement, moral uplift, and spiritual purification for the “lost-found” members of the 70 Mary Potorti NOI in the wilderness of the United States.6 In this context, the Nation’s dietary laws, food enterprises, and food politics created crucial outlets for members to work to better their lives and to ensure their salvation upon the overthrow of white rule. Requiring personal discipline and public displays of faith and submission, the Nation’s prescribed diet and its steady discourse about processes of food production and regulation promoted the physical health and economic independence of Muhammad’s faithful. By positioning a seemingly mundane aspect of daily life in striking racial terms, Muhammad encouraged followers, interested listeners, and patrons of the many successful Black Muslim food establishments to examine the manner in which American systems of racial oppression, past and present, infiltrated every aspect of their lives.7 In order to avoid the damnation that awaited the white race, Muham- mad taught black Americans to cleanse themselves spiritually by emancipat- ing their bodies from the earthly depravity introduced and encouraged by whites since the time of slavery. The deceit and kidnapping of Africans by European slave traders and their African coconspirators and the chaining and starving of captives during the Middle Passage only began this struggle.8 Muhammad characterized African American foodways as a daily manifestation of the legacies of slavery—an inheritance responsible not only for white perceptions of black lowliness but also for growing public health concerns such as diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. By learning what to eat and when, Muhammad reasoned, black Americans would develop the ability and sharpen the desire to be masters of their own bodies and, thus, their own fates. Furthermore, when ultimately repossessed from the white captors who had stolen and mutilated them, those bodies promised to become productive economic tools, fertile reproductive vessels, and dignified, self- respecting soldiers of Allah.9 These points of etiquette attracted the most notoriety and harshest punishment when breached, in part because they required absolute abstinence from many common transgressions. By demanding restraint, Muhammad pronounced, Islam “destroys superstition and removes the veil of falsehood. It heals both physical and spiritual ills by teaching what to eat, when to eat, what to think, and how to act.”10 Here tellingly situating the task of learning “what to eat” and “when to eat” before the process of learning “what to think” and “how to act,” Muhammad highlighted the practical significance of dietary practices as the foundation of his project of black liberation. Muhammad’s separatist vision of black freedom acknowledged the symbolic and physical power of particular foods to operate as tools of oppression and exclusion, as well as forums for self-definition and expression of collective identity. Indeed, while many religions preached temperance and sexual propriety, the NOI stood apart from other proponents of black freedom by espousing strict dietary laws that required that many converts completely transform their eating habits by abstaining from foods rooted in memories of childhood, family, regional background, and racial identity.11 Eat to Live 71 Recognizing that his dietary regulations might confuse or overwhelm his followers, especially Muslim wives responsible for preparing meals for their families, Muhammad offered regular instruction, urging members to come to him personally with questions about the permissibility of specific foods. In the late-1950s, the Chicago temple distributed an eighteen-page mimeo- graph outlining acceptable and proscribed foods, but as the Nation expanded so too did the need for widespread clarification of its dietary laws.12 Of all the regulations and standards set forth by the Nation, those pertaining to food were sufficiently important and complex to warrant a regular column by Muhammad responding to the inquiries of loyal followers striving to abide by the most minute of his directives. Unlike tobacco and liquor, which Muhammad forbade outright, the vital nature of food required that followers learn how to navigate a complex set of rules using improvised techniques of cooking and preparation.13 Moreover, because chronic diet-related ailments such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes evolved over years and did not stem from a single identifiable source, followers might not appreciate the seriousness of Muhammad’s warnings against foods that contributed to them. Therefore, Muhammad found it necessary to invoke repeatedly his authority as the Messenger of Allah to advise followers to abstain from foods he associated with poor health and to sanctify dietary laws without clear basis in Islamic tradition. Shortly after publication of its first issue in 1961, the Nation’s official newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, began offering lessons about proper dietary practices. In August 1965, the paper first printed a regular column entitled “How to Eat to Live,” which Muhammad urged readers to clip for easy reference.14 Muhammad collected and reprinted these lessons in a two-volume manual likewise titled How to Eat to Live, published in 1967 and 1972, which, at the height of soul food’s popularity, offered the clearest evidence of the role of food politics in the Nation’s vision of black liberation.15 The organization’s approach to food represented a conservative critique of white America’s “Christian” culture, social structures, and values, conceptualizing food as a central forum for contesting and resisting white supremacy and black subjugation. Interest- ingly, Muhammad did not always simply speak about Christians but often directed his comments to them—rhetorical style that reflected his desire to reach black readers beyond the Nation’s membership and characterized his writings as both tools of instruction for followers and as instruments of propagation to reach the unconverted.16 The malleable nature of foodways and traditions—and the inexact nature of nutritional science—allowed Muhammad great flexibility in crafting his message. Muhammad surely recognized that the cultural significance and sensory pleasures of food threatened to dampen the appeal of his dietary dogma. Consequently, he conveyed his guidelines in graphic, even nauseating terms. He reserved the most vivid details and colorful imagery for the most “divinely prohibited” pork, asserting a pig “[e]ats [a]nything,” “[c]ontains worms,” and “is [p]oison.” Filthy, brazen, and noxious, the flesh of the 72 Mary Potorti swine shortened the earthly lives of those who consumed it, meanwhile condemning their souls to suffer with the race of white devils for which the animal was created. Grafted from a rat, a cat, and a dog as a medicine to treat white ailments, hogs “carrie[d] 999 poisonous germs” which rendered their flesh “not 100 per cent poison, but nearly 1000 per cent poison.”17 Anticipating objections from those who had consumed pork their entire lives, Muhammad acknowledged, “Christians have been eating the swine for four thousand years. Now,” he proclaimed,

Their punishment is total destruction by fire . . . . The white race was not made to obey the divine law. They were made to oppose it, therefore following after them and doing what they do is getting you the hell.18

Pork was not only unhealthy but also intrinsically unholy and unsuitable for Allah’s chosen race.19 “The swine was not made for Black People,” Muham- mad insisted.

It was made only for the white race. And, the white race teaches everybody to eat it, because it is a Divinely prohibited flesh; and they break all the Laws of God . . . They have their own law, because they are the gods of this world.20

In addition to their desire for health and propriety, Muhammad cunningly appealed to readers’ vanity (which he elsewhere characterized as immoral), insisting that the flesh of the pig would “destroy three one-hundredths per cent of the beauty appearance of the eater, besides giving him fever chills and headaches.”21 The absolute prohibition of pork resonated in its simplicity, as illustrated by a cartoon published in Muhammad Speaks in October 1969 depicting a conversation between two black boys.22 The first youngster, clad in a white sweater and cap (attire suggesting his alignment with “white” American viewpoints and behaviors), casually suggests that he and his friend stop for a hot dog. The second boy—marked by a black suit, bowtie, and fez with the letters “FOI” as a member of the Nation’s Fruit of Islam—declines the invitation, instead seizing the opportunity to lecture his friend. “[W]e are forbidden by Allah to touch swine . . .” he explains.23 The hungry youth counters with typical grievances against the logic of the Nation’s dietary laws, incredulously asserting that food producers and distributions would not “sell it if it was bad.” The Muslim patiently replies, “Brother, the white man sells many things that are not good for us . . . Look at all the bad meat . . . including swine . . . sold in our neighborhood.” The exclusion of pork, he continues, stems from the Bible, which commands, “Of their flesh shall you not touch[;] they are unclean.” isiblyV agitated, the non- Muslim boy cites the example of his own preacher, who lauded the pork Eat to Live 73 chops served by the boy’s mother during a recent dinner party. Undeterred, the FOI youth insists,

That preacher is the devil’s number one tool used to keep your mother and all our poor people in the diseased condition they’re in! [sic] He knows what the God says about swine, whiskey, beer, & wine, but he goes along with the enemy of God who taught us to eat the wrong food when he brought our people over here in chains!

Denouncing white people as “the enemy of God” and black ministers as agents of black disease and oppression, the cartoon commented on a variety of historical factors and contemporary social ills related to black Americans’ supposed predilection for pork. The cartoon emphasized the need to spread this dietary wisdom, known but disregarded by Christian ministers. The boys’ exchange touched on an array of important issues in addition to health and food safety, including exploitative food industry practices, the vices of black community leaders, the role of slavery in expediting the decline of black health, and the collective benefits of patronizing black-owned businesses. The scene concludes as the two head to a Muslim restaurant to “eat food that’s good-tasting and good for us!”24 In keeping with efforts to detach African Americans from the heritage of slavery, Muhammad deemed Southern culinary staples—foods associated with regional, racial, and cultural identities of black southerners and not prohibited by Orthodox Islamic law—unfit for consumption by black Americans. Muhammad outlined many “great poison dishes” that his followers must not eat. Though he generally encouraged Black Americans to eat low on the food chain, Muhammad denounced some vegetables such as collard greens and cabbage sprouts as “horse and cattle food” and dismissed many varieties of beans (namely, lima and butter beans, field peas, black-eyed peas, and soybeans) as “beans that cattle should eat.”25 Corn- bread and sweet potatoes, too, were better suited for animals than humans. “No corn bread at all!” he commanded.26

The white race, and some African people, used to live off corn bread, because it is cheaply made. It is not good for human consumption because of its potency, which only animal stomachs are able to digest. Positively do not eat corn bread.27

It similarly warned,

Sweet potatoes were never good for any human to eat. They are good for hogs, but not for you . . . [P]otatoes and rice are too starchy for you and me. They laden us with too much starch and fat, which are friends of diabetes.28 74 Mary Potorti These pronouncements rested not on religious principles or traditions but instead set forth an experientially informed denunciation of the dietary double standards of white Americans. “Peas, collard greens, turnip greens and white potatoes are very cheaply raised foods,” Muhammad taught.

The Southern slave masters used them to feed the slaves and still advise the consumption of them. Most white people of the middle and upper class do not eat this lot of cheap food, which is unfit for human consumption.29

Instead, the Messenger urged, “Eat butter, milk and fresh vegetables— but not your old favorite collard greens, cabbage sprouts, turnip salads, mustard salads, beet top salads, kale, etc. . .”30 Recognizing that many Americans likely ate “cheap” foods so as not to go hungry, Muhammad explained, “Most people like us to eat the inexpensive food, because we do not have the finance[s] to buy expensive foods that rich millionaires eat. So, He prescribed for us, dry navy beans, bread and milk.”31 According to Muhammad’s wisdom, clean, unprocessed foods prolonged life, but the benefits of even the finest ingredients would be lost if improperly prepared. The Messenger explicitly condemned the manner in which many typical Southern dishes were cooked—often fried or flavored with pork—which he accurately characterized as anathema to physical well-being. In his mind, these foods and foodways had been born of necessity and sustained by a lack of knowledge and self-regard among black Americans conditioned by centuries of custom and circumstance to hunger for and take pride in them. Muhammad made plain that his dietary laws applied specifically to black Americans. Commingling social and racial commentary with appeals to theology generally unsupported by sacred texts, Muhammad taught that the conditions, behaviors, and values of his followers distinguished them from the worldwide Muslim community, as they continued to be shaped and warped by centuries of enslavement and systematic oppression. Muham- mad’s corollaries to the Muslim diet thus revealed contempt for black cultural practices he believed had been influenced by engrained acquiescence to political and cultural dispossession. Muhammad acknowledged that many white Americans, particularly in the South, also consumed processed foods high in fat, salt, and sugar, but that, he believed, only heightened the need for black Americans to distance themselves from the behaviors, lifestyles, and cultural values of the damned white race. Allah had taught believers the right way, and those who knew better must do better. In radical tones and lively language, Muhammad demanded his followers enact their beliefs, their racial pride, and their subservience to him as Messenger of Allah by refusing to eat foods made by and for the white oppressor. As a result, in the realm of food and diet, the NOI promoted an immediate course of action in response to the problems it identified, articulating a race-based, food- centered social theology aiming not only at resisting historically racist views Eat to Live 75 of black personhood but also at counteracting the damage wrought upon black bodies and souls by structures of white supremacy32 Muhammad’s unyielding aversion to the politics and culture of the South- ern diet ironically reinforced the authority of white cultural practices by heralding them as the standard against which black Americans must define themselves.33 Such a view naturally ignored or condemned the potential for black culinary heritage to express a shared history or collective identity. Nor did Muhammad appreciate the value of that heritage as evidence of black Americans’ cultural innovation and efforts to maintain their humanity in often utterly inhuman conditions.34 Dismissing black foodways as rem- nants of the “slave diet,” Muhammad suggested that blacks in America had no culinary tradition. That which they honored as their dietary inheritance merely represented a perversion of white foodways. This argument, more than others expounded by Muhammad, sparked the ire of black cultural nationalists. Revolutionary poet LeRoi Jones, for example, left his wife and children and moved to Harlem, devastated after the assassination of out- spoken former NOI minister Malcolm X in 1965. Increasingly critical of pacifism and integrationism, Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka) vigor- ously defended soul food. In his 1965 essay collection Home, he asserted that allegations that a people lack

their own . . . characteristic cuisine . . . to me is the deepest stroke, the unkindest cut, of oppression, especially as it has distorted Black Ameri- cans. America, where the suppliant, far from rebelling or even disagree- ing with the forces that have caused him to suffer, readily backs them up and finally tries to become an honorary oppressor himself.35

Though Baraka’s indictment targeted white Americans, the NOI, too, could be found guilty of the crimes he alleged. In his view, the foundation of Muhammad’s attack on soul food was ludicrous. “No characteristic food? Oh, man, come on.”36 Muhammad’s dietary gospel, and his black body politics in general, neatly complemented the Nation’s broader mantra of black self-help, industry, and thrift.37 Though Muhammad never directly worked to advance his rhetorical demands for a separate black state, he maintained throughout his life that realization of his vision of black independence mandated black ownership of land conducive to agricultural productivity. Like many twentieth-century black leaders, Muhammad traced this need to the period of Reconstruction and the unfulfilled promise of the federal government to provide freedmen with “forty acres and a mule.”38 Land, Muhammad declared, must be the foundation of freedom, for the landless remained beholden to landowners for work, shelter, and, most importantly, food. In Muhammad’s eyes, a man who could not feed his family was no man at all. The Messenger’s personal history of sharecropping and physical deprivation surely amplified his belief in the urgent need to own land. Born Elijah 76 Mary Potorti Poole in 1897, Muhammad struggled with alcoholism and depression amid long periods of unemployment after migrating from rural Georgia to Detroit in 1923. These experiences frustrated his hopes to provide for his growing family over the next several years. Forced to turn to public assistance like millions of other Americans during the Great Depression, Muhammad realized that his family’s health and security faced immediate peril.39 In addition to explaining his plight as a poor black male abused and exploited by white society, the NOI fed Muhammad’s aspirations to establish financial stability and autonomy, not only for himself and his family but also for black Ameri- cans in a broader sense. Convicted of draft resistance in 1942, Muhammad served his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, about forty miles southwest of Detroit. Outraged by prison personnel’s refusal to accommodate the dietary needs of Muslim inmates, Muhammad nevertheless marveled at the facility’s 300-acre farm, manned by prisoners who tended livestock such as cows, pigs, and chickens.40 The farm enabled the prison to be self-sufficient, encouraged prisoners to work to feed themselves, and reminded black inmates, in particular, of their roots in the soil of the Deep South. In 1947, one year after his release, Muhammad purchased a farm in White Cloud, Michigan, about 180 miles northwest of Milan. Assisted by weekend volunteers from Chicago, two Muslim families operated the farm, growing wheat, beans, and vegetables; raising chickens; and producing milk and butter.41 By 1956, the NOI operated several large farms comprising one thousand acres in Michigan, which supplied milk, eggs, and other dairy products to the Nation’s growing number of food enterprises. Demand for access to the healthy, unprocessed foods advocated by Muhammad forged a captive clientele for businesses run by Black Mus- lims.42 In response to this created need—and to utilize the produce of the Nation’s farm holdings—the NOI and many individual followers founded and operated an array of food-related businesses, including restaurants, bakeries, butcher shops, processing plants, and even a tractor-trailer company to transport foods produced by NOI farms and factories to dispersed points of distribution. By the late 1960s, Muslim food businesses constituted a significant part, and arguably the most visible front, of the Nation’s business empire. Quite purposively, these enterprises advanced Muhammad’s objectives in crucial ways, exhibiting the possibilities of black self-help while situating Muhammad as a leader and the Nation as an organization that created concrete opportunities and visible improvements in black communities. Black Muslim food industries encouraged followers to construct and patronize independent food operations to keep money in black communities, generated organizational funds, spread the Nation’s message about racial separation and black uplift, and furthered black independence through land ownership and food production, vital for the physical sustenance of black Americans until the demise of white America.43 Creating businesses, Muhammad reasoned, would not only produce income for Black Muslims—and by extension, the Nation’s Eat to Live 77 leadership—but also create jobs to stem the rising tide of black unemployment.44 In July 1947, the Nation established the Shabazz Restaurant at Thirty-First Street and Wentworth Avenue in Chicago, an intersection that would later house Eat Ethel’s Pastries, a bakery managed by Muham- mad’s eldest daughter during her early adulthood.45 Chicago’s Temple No. 2 also operated a grocery and meat market. According to his son Wallace D. Muhammad (later known as Warith Deen Mohammed), the Messen- ger realized early on that believers and non-believers alike must see that the NOI platform could produce material improvements in their lives and their communities. In many cases, individual temples constructed and controlled these businesses, creating unions that directly associated the NOI’s religious values with its business acumen. Years later, Mohammed fondly recalled the work his family performed at the grocery store, where, given the Nation’s financial constraints and despite his own lack of experience, Elijah Muhammad butchered the meat. He learned on the job, referenc- ing charts and diagrams, asking suppliers for cutting demonstrations, and soliciting feedback from customers. “He, himself, with his own apron, had his children in the business with him,” Mohammed reminisced. “I used to do everything from slaughtering the chicken to cleaning and picking it, and even to cooking and serving it and then ring[ing] up the money in the cash register. We did all those things.”46 Building upon this early ideological and practical foundation of industry and entrepreneurship, Muhammad directly oversaw the establishment of many of the Nation’s more successful enterprises, particularly during a period of rapid expansion after 1952.47 In those settings, Black Muslims could be confident that the food they purchased would be permissible by Allah and that their money would help to support and employ black Ameri- cans in respectable work advancing the collective interests of the black community. Muhammad’s most dedicated pupil, Malcolm X, recalled,

[Sometimes] I would ride with him as he drove on his daily rounds between the few grocery stores that the Muslims then owned in Chi- cago. The stores were examples to help black people see what they could do for themselves by hiring their own kind and trading with their own kind and thus quit being exploited by the white man.48

Despite his prominence and growing personal wealth, Muhammad insisted on demonstrating his leadership and working-class sympathies by performing menial tasks while managing NOI enterprises.49 Malcolm X thus saw Muhammad “as an example to his followers whom he taught that idleness and laziness were among the black man’s greatest sins against himself.”50 From the beginning, Muhammad believed that the manner in which his followers presented and carried themselves and the orderliness and precision with which they ran their affairs could compel non-believers to consider the merits of his divine wisdom. Malcolm X, who spent countless hours 78 Mary Potorti talking with and learning from Muhammad, recalled one particularly effective pedagogical moment:

One day, I remember, a dirty glass of water was on a counter and Mr. Muhammad put a clean glass of water beside it. “You want to know how to spread my teachings?” he said, and he pointed to the glasses of water. “Don’t condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water,” he said, “just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won’t have to say that yours is better.”51

In the realm of NOI food enterprises, the medium heightened the message.52 Black journalists such as Louis Lomax and Alex Haley commented on the social function of Muslim eateries, particularly official temple restaurants. In Lomax’s view, the restaurant and the temple, “usually located close together, in the heart of the Negro ghetto,” functioned as “the nerve centers of work and worship.”53 Malcolm X worked from Harlem’s Temple No. 7 Restaurant, less than a block from the temple itself. Lomax reported in 1963, “He [Malcolm X] can be seen there almost any time conducting the financial affairs of the movement and holding press conferences.” NOI leaders typically secured convenient locations for temple restaurants, thus allowing ministers to move easily between the two settings while encouraging believers, as well as outside customers, to associate the good food and service of the restaurant with the principles and morals taught at the temple.54 In a foodscape described by Amiri Baraka as “hundreds of tiny restaurants, food shops, rib joints, shrimp shacks, chicken shacks, [and] ‘rotisseries’ throughout Harlem that serve[d] ‘soul food,’ ” the Temple No. 7 Restaurant constituted a haven for believers and other health-conscious diners.55 Whereas most ministers vowed to live in poverty (and for much of the movement, many followers, too, remained within the working class), the restaurants offered fine appointments such as linen tablecloths and chande- liers that required no added expense or personal indulgence, all while drum- ming up business. One ad billed the Temple No. 7 Restaurant as

the dining place of African students, diplomats, and even royalty . . . [t]he only spot in New York where you can enjoy your dinner in an Afri- can atmosphere . . . with a Nile River setting . . . beneath the Pyramids and the Sphinx.56

British photojournalist and New York Times editor Gertrude Samuels con- curred: “Even the juke box seems toned down. It is like a stage set.”57 Such ambiance surely also appealed to the growing ranks of the Nation’s lower middle and middle classes, many of whom had achieved social mobility through food-related entrepreneurial pursuits.58 Described by one contemporary scholar as “a deviant organization . . . subject to public scorn and ridicule,” the NOI worked to “consolidat[e] the recruit’s allegiance” by Eat to Live 79 creating alternative social “environment[s]” outside those “where substantial pressures operate to erode this allegiance.”59 Community and clientele served as points of distinction as much as the food itself. Muslim families often dined at temple restaurants before or after religious services. Muhammad always required his followers to dress modestly and neatly, but coming from or heading to the temple, restaurant patrons wore their best outfits, heightening views of Muslims as pillars of black respect- ability and conservative morality: “The men dressed in black, the women in flowing white, and the children wearing pins or buttons to let the world know of their commitment to The Honorable Elijah Muhammad.”60 In these settings, believers could be easily identified, not only by their attire and demeanor but also by their speech and conversation. Haley wrote of his time at the Temple No. 7 Restaurant, where he often convened with Mal- colm X, “I met some of the converts, all of them neatly dressed and almost embarrassingly polite. Their manners and miens reflected the Spartan personal discipline the organization demanded, and none of them would utter anything but Nation of Islam clichés.”61 Though Chicago and New York housed the bulk of Black Muslim establishments, Muslim restaurants, bakeries, and other businesses sprouted up in cities across the country. Muslims in Los Angeles, for example, ran the Oasis Restaurant and Shabazz Res- taurant (the latter of which boasted “delicious kosher dinners” and home- made pies), as well as the Shabazz Market. Proclaiming that “everyday is bargain day,” the Shabazz Market urged shoppers to “put the ‘BEST’ under your ‘VEST’ and ‘INVEST’ YOUR DOLLARS with YOUR OWN KIND,” promising, “we treat every customer like royalty!” Newark and Cleveland, too, each offered a Shabazz Restaurant & Bakery, promising the “the best in Muslim cuisine,” including “the original bean pie,” as well as “a variety of Danish pastries.” Muslims in Detroit ran the Shabazz East Restaurant, which offered live jazz and catering services and the O&C Super Market, which sold “eggs from our own chicken farm (Muslim).” It assured patrons that “watermelons from our Georgia farms” would be “coming soon,” perhaps supplied by United Brothers Produce Inc., a local distributor of crops harvested from Muslim farms. J&R Bakery and the Quon-Tiki Delicatessen likewise targeted Muslim clientele, asserting a “dedicat[ion] to serving only those foods designed to help keep you healthy.” Meanwhile, other businesses catered to Black Muslims, promising kosher meats and organic produce. Establishments such as the Oasis Food Market and Brothers Fish & Chips, though not openly Muslim by association or ownership, targeted Muham- mad’s followers by regularly advertising in Muhammad Speaks. Other Muslim-owned businesses in Chicago included the Shabazz Bakery and Cof- fee Shop, the Shabazz Supermarket (which sold pastries and breads from the Shabazz Bakery and fruits and vegetables from NOI farms), as well as the aptly named “Your Supermarket,” which opened in December 1967 and specalized in “delicious bean pies,” carrot pies, cookies, bread rolls, and other sweets.62 Many of these businesses purchased goods and ingredients from other Muslim-owned entities, including Alamin Produce Company, 80 Mary Potorti and regularly advertised in Muhammad Speaks, which often printed news stories that directly furthered their interests. For example, in January 1966, the paper reported charges by Walter E. Fauntroy, director of the Washing- ton Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), that chain stores in Chicago, New York, and Detroit served inferior quality foods, especially produce, while charging an average of 22 percent more at stores located in black neighborhoods than those in predominantly white ones.63 Of course, Muslim food businesses occupied the ad space surrounding such stories, as well as Muhammad’s popular “How to Eat to Live” column. These mar- keting ploys aimed to entice non-believers to patronize Muslim businesses, widely lauded for their cleanliness, pleasant service, quality ingredients, and fair prices.64 Restaurants and bakeries run by Muhammad’s followers naturally adhered to the Messenger’s dietary directives and nutritional guidelines, serving items such as beef and lamb sausages, various cakes and pastries, and the “famous bean pie,” which Lomax characterized as “something of a gourmet’s delight in the Negro community.”65 Muslim establishments never sold pork, alcohol, or cigarettes, but they also urged diners to replace seemingly benign foods— particularly starches like white bread, white rice, and white potatoes—with more healthful alternatives.66 Though the NOI’s demographic composition began to transition in the 1950s from older Southern migrants to young adults born and raised in urban ghettos, many members nonetheless maintained a taste for the culinary heritage of the South.67 Muslim cooks and chefs demonstrated great creativity and innovation in concocting menu items, particularly sweets that satisfied those tastes without violating Muhammad’s decrees. In addition to the omnipresent bean pie, which evoked the flavor of the forbidden sweet potato pie, one young Muslim girl fondly recalled enjoying “carrot fluff, a sweet blend of soft carrots, brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and enough eggs to make it fluffy like mashed sweet potatoes.”68 The Nation’s food enterprises thus encouraged diners “to eat to live” while demonstrating the manner in which businesses could strive to improve the health of individuals and communities while still remaining profitable. More importantly, it revealed that many who tried to follow the letter of Muham- mad’s dietary laws nonetheless maintained a sense of connection to and longing for the flavors and textures of Southern “soul,” while also demonstrating to non-Muslims who patronized those businesses because they sold quality, tasty foods at cheap prices, that Southern fare could be adapted to new needs and contexts. Certainly, the gustatory pleasures of familiar dishes enticed diners, but, as Amiri Baraka noted, the emotions and feelings they evoked held great significance as well. Words could not adequately convey, for example, the flavor of sweet potato pie to one who had never partaken of it, for to Baraka’s palate, the Southern staple “taste[d] more like memory” than the pumpkin pie to which it was often compared.69 While desserts like carrot fluff and bean pie offered, in Muhammad’s view, less indulgent or dangerous alternatives to soul food, the efforts of Muslim cooks to recreate Eat to Live 81 the flavors of the South constituted subtle resistance against the Messenger’s aim to eradicate Southern culture entirely from black life. Perhaps just as importantly, fare readily identified with the Nation, particularly bean pie, attracted non-Muslim patrons to Muslim-owned businesses, thereby creating vital occasions for propagation and proselytizing. One young woman named Amidah recalled joining the Nation after an encounter with staff at an NOI bakery. An NAACP youth leader and Harlem native, the woman was already somewhat familiar with the NOI. “I was on 125th Street [in Harlem], and I stopped by one of the stores owned by the Muslim brothers. I didn’t know that when I went in,” she said, “but I was interested in buying the bean pie because that was pretty popular in Harlem; everybody knew about the bean pie, and even if they didn’t care about the [Nation’s] philosophy, everybody wanted the bean pie.”70 After a challenging conversation with “one of the brothers in the store,” Amidah realized that the Nation demanded the kind of discipline the NAACP lacked. Drawn in by the Nation’s sweet concoction, an invention inspired by Muhammad’s prohibition of sweet potatoes and its strong endorsement of navy beans, Amidah met and had the occasion to interact with Black Muslims on their turf. The bean pie in this instance served not merely as a commodity produced and sold by Muhammad’s faithful but also as a tasty incentive that attracted an outsider into the social and religious realm of the organization. There the pie symbolized members’ dedi- cation to Muhammad’s teachings and exemplified the industry spurred by his vision of black economic self-sufficiency and cultural autonomy. As physical sites of socialization and socializing, NOI eateries offered cultural refuge while accruing social and economic repute. The Washington Sha- bazz Restaurant, for example, “located in one of the dingy sections of town” that housed “small black-owned businesses,” earned the respect not only of average residents but also of the neighborhood “pimps, prostitutes, and dope dealers.”71 Despite its blighted surroundings, Sonsyrea X remembered that during her childhood in the early 1970s “[t]here was always a long line, Mus- lim and non-Muslim, waiting to get inside the restaurant.”72 Sonsyrea credited the restaurant with providing a sense of self-worth to its employees and to Muhammad’s followers more broadly. She took pride in the fact that the Nation’s brothers “had done a great job of carving out a nice, spanking clean place for us to dine.”73 On a personal level, Sonsyrea felt that this public esteem, coupled with the NOI’s financial success, counteracted feelings of separateness, alienation, and insecurity she experienced while living and moving among non- Muslim blacks. As the restaurant grew in popularity, she explained,

It seemed like people were beginning to respect our Nation because black people were beginning to respect themselves . . . . I didn’t feel insecure about being special now because a lot more people in the black community were supporting our efforts through buying our newspapers and fish products and visiting our stores and restaurants.74 82 Mary Potorti These material gains, she believed, helped improve perceptions of the NOI in the black community more broadly, as outsiders “respected our independence and industry even if they disagreed with some of the other, finer points of our program.”75 The Nation’s approach to food and food security acknowledged the degenerative power of hunger to drive people to criminal acts and the capacity of food sharing to build a sense of community to soothe hostilities and bridge social divides.76 The salience and simplicity of this message could be easily understood and transmitted by all NOI members, even young children, as illustrated by a Muhammad Speaks cartoon published in Octo- ber 1969. The first frame shows a Muslim boy in a black -shirtT as he leaves the NOI-owned “Your Super Market” with a bag of apples. Two other black boys, with dirty faces, clenched fists, and patched clothing, lay in wait behind a fence. As the Muslim approaches, one of the deviants hollers, “Hey, boy! Give us some of those apples . . . we’re hungry!” Nonplussed, the Muslim youth graciously hands two apples to each of the bullies, whom he calls “brother.” The hungry boys’ dumbfounded reactions suggest that these tactics have not before elicited such a willfully generous response. Their aggression quickly turns to baffled gratitude, as one stammers, “Gee—uh—thanks, but we’re not your brother[.] You’re no kin to [us].” This comment explains the boys’ aggressive approach to securing food and their bewilderment at the Muslim boy’s sympathetic response to their hostility. Divorced from any sense of black consciousness, the poor boys failed to see the potential of working with other black people to address shared needs rather than turning against each other in solitary pursuit of singular survival. The Muslim boy explains, “You’re black and I’m black! That makes us brothers! So, instead of planning to do evil to each other, we do good and show brotherhood!” The two hungry boys quickly recognize these as the words and actions of a member of the Nation. “Right!” the benevolent youth confirms. “Mr. Muhammad teaches that a brother is not a brother unless he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” The last frame shows the would-be thieves carrying the entire bag of apples, apparently accepting the invitation “to [c]ome to Muhammad’s mosque and learn all about it!” In addition to conveying the need for Black Muslim youth to follow and enforce Muhammad’s dietary decrees, this parable positions Muslim youth (specifically males) as capable proselytizers and food as an accessible and revealing forum for spreading Muhammad’s message not only about diet and health but also about racial pride and black consciousness in a broader sense. Sonsyrea X similarly recalled the sense of belonging, community, and morality inculcated in the Nation’s progeny by rituals of food preparation and consumption. She explained,

Most of the families in our Nation were poor, but we learned that killing and stealing from one another were not options. We were taught Eat to Live 83 that if you had one green pea, you split that pea and shared it with your brother. If a mother had only five dollars, she should put hers with a sister’s dollars to buy groceries together.77

Most easily understood in the language of food sharing, this community ethos reflected not simply a pragmatic approach to group survival but a politicized stance in opposition to the oppressive tactics of the white power structure. “In the Nation I had learned that one of the white man’s tricks would be to starve us and deprive us and turn us against one another.”78 Like the children portrayed in the cartoon, young Sonsyrea recognized the divisive, corrupting power of hunger and learned as a student at the Uni- versity of Islam and in the Muslims Girls’ Training and General Civilization Classes to appreciate the Nation’s capacity to resist systemic subjugation by promoting economic autonomy and provisioning nourishment for the black masses. In demanding that his followers transform their personal lives and familial relations, Muhammad’s culinary nationalism also spoke directly to white food industries that profited from the exploitation and weakening of black bodies and black communities. Muhammad encouraged his followers to earn a living and refrain from earthly vices not only to prolong their lives and promote their spiritual purification but also, more practically, to assert their collective purchasing power as a marginalized minority of Mus- lims within the context of a politically and socially marginal black urban underclass. In books and newspaper columns, Muhammad vehemently denounced the motives of American food producers and distributors, as well as medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies that profited from those who fell ill from poor diet, for engaging in what he deemed a lucrative, thinly veiled project of black genocide.79 Scorning white flour and other processed grains “robbed of all . . . natural vitamins and proteins sold separately as cereals,” Muhammad proclaimed, “The white race is a com- mercializing people and they do not worry about the lives they jeopardize so long as the dollar is safe. You might find yourself eating death, if you follow them.”80 Asserting that “the poison that is now in our food and in our drink . . . [was] placed there deliberately by the enemy [white society],”81 Muhammad adamantly cautioned against the consumption of chickens raised in “filth” or milk contaminated with tuberculosis; the questionable nutritional value of canned meats and vegetables; the dangers of fertilizers and preservatives; the use of fluoride, chloride, and sodium “which may have a bad effect on our brains and our human reproductive organs”; and the pesticide DDT, widely sprayed in the postwar years, which “can, over the long years, help shorten the span of our lives.”82 In the context of post- war abundance, Muhammad noted,

Allah has blessed America with the best of foods and with good water that is plentiful. America has been blessed with everything she could desire, but after all of these blessings, she is ungrateful and turns good things into bad.83 84 Mary Potorti Muhammad likewise disparaged federal agencies such as the Depart- ment of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for enabling large corporations and organized interests to override the interests and welfare of consumers. Muhammad Speaks often commented on the enormous profit potential of modern agriculture, the role of government subsidies in enriching white landowners while forsaking black farmers, and the physical and economic exploitation of black farmworkers. In January 1962, for instance, the paper reported comments by Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman indicating that “farmers may realize about a billion dollars MORE in NET INCOME this year,” noting that 95,000 farmworkers had lost their jobs in the past year with increasing mechaniza- tion of cotton harvesting in the South.84 The USDA’s part in enriching powerful whites at the expense of the black poor only cemented the Nation’s perception of the government as fundamentally corrupt, a characterization that deemed futile any efforts to work within the system to change a society wedded to white supremacy. In his autobiography, Malcolm X remarked on the magnitude of interest group politics in the scramble for favors and resources in the nation’s capital. “The farmer, through his lobby, is the most government-subsidized special-interest group in America today,” he reasoned, “because a million farmers vote, not as Democrats, or Republicans, liberals, conservatives, but as farmers.”85 Implicitly recognizing the corre- lation between voting strength and economic clout, he continued, “Why, there’s a Beet Growers’ Lobby! A Wheat Lobby! A Cattle Lobby! . . . The government has departments to deal with the special-interest groups that make themselves heard and felt.”86 Alluding to his growing discontent- ment with Muhammad’s political inaction, X concluded, “There ought to be a Pentagon-sized Washington department dealing with every segment of the black man’s problems.”87 Though explicitly insular and officially unin- volved in national politics, the Nation continuously castigated the wasteful- ness of federal policies, in 1969 disparaging the “idleness” encouraged by $3.75 billion worth of USDA measures aiming to curb production and support market prices of agricultural commodities including wheat, cotton, and feed grains.88 The Nation deemed USDA measures to discourage production in the midst of widespread and well-documented hunger an ugly expression of the government’s misplaced priorities. Muhammad Speaks pronounced in 1969, “They Burn and Bury Food, Waste Land, but Want.”89 Despite the Nation’s often scathing critiques of white capitalism and the white-run government bodies that served its imperatives, Muhammad’s work was in fact widely lauded, not only by non-Muslim blacks but also increasingly by white interests and institutions. Nearly a decade after labeling the NOI “the Black Supremacists,” Time magazine heralded Muslims as the “Original Black Capitalists.”90 Characterizing the Nation as “the bourgeoi- sie of the black militant movement,” the magazine reported in March 1969 that the Nation’s “dogged adherence to the notion of build black, buy black is paying dividends.”91 Time described the growing “Muslim-owned Eat to Live 85 financial empire,” focusing particularly on operations in “Chicago’s South Side ghetto,” which at that point included two bakeries, two restaurants, and two supermarkets, as well as a warehouse, clothing store, and residential apartments.92 Six years later, Time eulogized Muhammad as “[a]s much captain of industry as Messenger of Allah,” noting that, by his death in February 1975, the NOI owned businesses and properties with an estimated combined worth of $75 million.93 Even Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley could not deny Muhammad’s influence, remarking, “Under his leadership, the Nation of Islam has been a consistent contributor to the social well- being of our city for more than 40 years.”94 Certainly Muhammad did much to change the self-image and aspirations of countless black Americans during the long civil rights era.95 The NOI created an identity around its opposition to pork, as well as traditional Southern foods such as catfish, sweet potatoes, and cornbread, and its embrace of healthier foods such as baked fish, whole wheat rolls, and its widely popular bean pie. Much like the conspicuously modest middle-class attire donned by members of the Nation, Black Muslims foodways distinguished believers from non-believers, as Muhammad required his followers to enact their beliefs on a daily basis. Prohibitions against particular foods and regulations about manners and ways of eating influenced where, when, and with whom Black Muslims could eat. Moreover, Muhammad’s advice revealed nutritional wisdom on the cutting edge of conventional knowledge or even medical science. Wisely observing the relationship between health and diet—and identifying the United States’ obesity epidemic decades before its emergence in public health discourse in the late 1970s—Muhammad and his followers likely did enjoy improved health and lower medical and insur- ance costs, thus enabling them to separate further from white-dominated pharmaceutical, medical, and weight-loss industries. Given that the majority of Muhammad’s early converts were poor or working-class black males, this foresight likely offered many a chance at a better, longer physical life. However, Muhammad’s adamant insistence, and Daley’s affirmation, that the NOI had in fact taken great strides for black Americans, particularly in urban communities, belies a less progressive reality—one readily, if uneasily, apparent among the NOI rank and file. Remembering her family’s dissatis- faction with NOI leadership during the mid-1970s, Sonsyrea X recalled that her mother felt increasingly alienated by the Nation’s internal politics. “Ma thought the Nation was supposed to be different from mainstream society where white people were separated from black people and people who had money to afford certain things were separated from those who didn’t,” she explained. “The ‘Royal Family,’ the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s wife, children, and grandkids, was treated with special favor, and the rest of us were just the poor masses. Ma was poor and without rank, so she had about as much a chance in this Nation as she did out in the world.”96 While the racial and religious rhetoric of the Nation promised social mobility, the profitability of its financial empire relied heavily on the voluntarism and 86 Mary Potorti contributions of believers. “Working” for the Nation, therefore, did not necessarily entail gainful employment, as, for example, NOI-owned businesses and restaurants expected unpaid labor from many who “believed they were working for the good of our Nation.”97 In addition to their sweat, upstanding members contributed one-tenth of their annual income as a “Duty” to support the Nation’s work and businesses. Monetary donations to Muhammad’s empire did not entitle donors to any share of the revenue, but instead were accepted as “alms” given not to a particular business or to the Nation as an organization but to Islam as a system of beliefs and a way of life.98 This economic arrangement, which Muhammad referred to as “communalism,” ensured that while some Black Muslims, particularly among leadership, enjoyed the wealth and trappings of middle-class life, the majority often subsisted on black pride, self-respect, and hope for personal redemption, reaping little in the way of material gain. Some indeed resented the manner in which Muhammad wielded his prophetic authority as a shield against criticism of his mandates, practices, or personal behaviors. By requiring followers’ unquestioning adherence to the earthly demands of his platform without regard for countervailing scientific, medical, cultural, or common knowledge, Muhammad minimized internal dissent against his more radical teachings about white devilry, black superiority, and his own role in the salvation of the black race. Sonsyrea X explained,

Elijah Muhammad told us . . . to chew our food a hundred times before swallowing, brush our hair a hundred strokes, and think five times about what we’re going to say before we spoke. He gave us a long list of forbidden foods and required all of us, kids and grown-ups alike, to digest the historical and religious lessons.

Muhammad’s preferred pedagogical tactic of force-feeding was revealing. In speaking to the needs of hungry, weak, poor, and sick segments of black America, Muhammad won their trust and loyalty. In teaching “how to eat to live,” he positioned himself as responsible for his followers’ very lives. Though Muhammad asserted himself in the role of earthly redeemer of the black race, his authority demanded subservience of a different form. Son- syrea X was likely not alone in her ultimate, troubling realization: “Elijah Muhammad had our minds completely.”99 Rather than work to empower the black masses, Muhammad channeled their moral and financial support to solidify his own influence, always in the name of Allah. Though he insis- tently spoke of the greater good of the black race, his efforts to improve the bodily health and material conditions of the NOI faithful aimed, at best, to reposition them as the beneficiaries of the same racist capitalist system that had proven detrimental to human health and agency. Unlike later food-centered efforts to advance black freedom, which sought to restructure or resist state programs and policies by highlighting Eat to Live 87 the abusive forms of capitalist democracy, the food programs and politics of the NOI sought to critique existing structures but not to reform them. Instead, Muhammad and his followers established parallel institutions catered to the needs and interests of black Americans as Muhammad defined them, challenging only the racist implications, not the capitalist foundations, of the American diet and the industrial food system that supplied it. Though he attacked “white capitalism” for exacerbating the struggles of the black poor, Muhammad’s food economy failed to correct the reality that many of the Nation’s most dedicated members grappled with the inter- locking oppressions of racism and capitalism. Rather than address both, Time reported, “The Muslims have become the nation’s leading exponents of black capitalism—a Nixonian term that they despise.”100 The issue of wide-scale access—to nutritious foods, employment, and entrepreneurial pursuits—remained problematic, driving some from the Nation’s fold while forging space for other black organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party to continue to experiment with tactics and strategies for ensuring that black Americans have not only the knowledge but the means “to eat to live.”

Notes 1. Ermann Doane Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit,” American Journal of Sociology 43.6 (May 1938): 894–907. Fard operated under many aliases, and his background and fate remain the subject of much speculation. 2. As a result of this tactic, Fard often became acquainted with the females of a household before meeting the men. Rosetta E. Ross, Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 141–162. 3. Qtd. in Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit,” 895. In his autobiography, Malcolm X described hearing a similar story from his mentor Elijah Muhammad about the early years of the Nation of Islam, and specifically its founder, Fard. Malcolm X with Alex Haley,The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley (1965; reprint, New York: Random House, 1992), 238. 4. Louis E. Lomax, When the Word Is Given: A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1963), 63. 5. Historian Jeffrey Ogbar argues that black nationalism’s focus on racial difference “reflected . . . and simply inverted the doctrine of white supremacy. It was, in fact, a declaration of white inferiority.” Jeffrey Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 3. 6. This term evoked the NOI’s belief that black Americans had been forcibly separated from their original religion of Islam and that believers had been “found” by Muhammad, who saved them from the damnation that awaited the white race as well as blacks who continued to be corrupted by white society and Christianity. 7. Sociologist C. Eric Lincoln offered the earliest known use of the term “Black Muslims” in reference to members of the Nation of Islam in his book The Black Muslims in America (Boston: Beach Press, 1961). 88 Mary Potorti 8. For more on the diet of African captives before and during the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas, see Stephanie E. Small, Saltwater Slavery: A Mid- dle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 43–49. Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach convincingly document the function of food as a tool of control in the slave system of the British North American colonies and the early republic of the United States. Covey and Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2009). See also Frederick Douglass Opie, Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), Chapters 1–3. 9. Muhammad believed the poor diet of black Americans stemmed from the refusal of white Americans to grant them the full rights of freedom. Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book One (Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propa- gation Society, 1967), 93. 10. Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society, 1965), 85. 11. At the peak of the organization’s influence and expansion, Muhammad and his ministers produced a variety of literature and gave countless public speeches expounding the relationship between black dietary habits and the history of racial oppression in the United States, vividly positing the centrality of food to prospects for individual, organizational, racial, and spiritual survival. The Nation of Islam featured regularly in black periodicals such as the Chi- cago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier, the latter of which published from June 1956 to August 1959 a regular column entitled “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” These papers targeted a broad cross section of African American readers, deliv- ering insight into the Nation’s views on such topics as contraception, family and gender roles, the Vietnam war, civil rights and urban unrest, and—repeatedly and emphatically—food etiquette and diet. Dawn-Marie Gibson and Jamillah Karim, Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 65. See also Lomax, When the Word Is Given, 84. By the time of the Greensboro sit-ins in February 1960, the NOI had established nearly seventy temples in the North, as well as a variety of business enterprises, schools, and employment training centers. At his death in 1975, Muhammad led between 50,000 and 100,000 followers who worshiped at seventy-six temples nationwide. Philip Norton, “Black Nationalism in America: The Significance of the Black Muslim Movement,” Hull Papers in Politics 31 (April 1983), 11; “Religion: The Messenger Passes,” Time Magazine, 10 March 1975. 12. Edward E. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 98. In 1959, Muham- mad outlined penalties for violating the Nation’s laws. He declared that those found guilty of the most serious offenses (“Class F” violations) would be subject to suspension from the temple for a minimum of thirty days. By this standard, Muhammad rendered consumption of pork as egregious as fornication, adultery, and even disrespecting the Messenger of Allah himself. See E.U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for An Identity in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 307. 13. Literary scholar Doris Witt notes the centrality of improvisation to African American culinary heritage, which has historically operated “as living knowledge rather than static artifact.” The innovative dishes concocted by Black Mus- lims thus seem very much in keeping with traditions of Southern cooking. Witt, Black Hunger: Soul Food and America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 13. 14. Elijah Muhammad, “For Long Life, We Must Be Careful What, When We Eat,” Muhammad Speaks, 7 January 1966, 11; Muhammad, “The Benefits of Eating Once a Day,” Muhammad Speaks, 3 September 1965, 11. Eat to Live 89 15. Opie’s valuable study offers a useful definition of “soul.” He writes, “Soul is the style of rural folk culture. Soul is black spirituality and experiential wisdom. And soul is putting a premium on suffering, endurance, and surviving with dignity. Soul food is African American, but it was influenced by other cultures. It is the intellectual invention and property of African Americans. Soul food is a fabulous-tasting dish made from simple, inexpensive ingredients. Soul food is enjoyed by black folk, whom it reminds of their southern roots.” Hog and Hominy, xi. 16. In a typical example, Muhammad writes, “I do not care how good a Christian you are, or how much you would love to see Jesus, or how much you would like to go to Heaven to see Jesus and sit down beside him, as the Christians teach you will do (smile), you never make any preparations to hurry to go out of this life to find another life.” Book One, 47. 17. Ibid., 110–111. 18. Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book Two (Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society, 1972), 19. 19. Historian Michael A. Gomez contends, “In some ways, the struggle between Christianity and Islam for the allegiance of black folk came down to this animal, and whether one was prepared to do without it; in other ways, the pig was simply emblematic of a much broader and complicated conflict, and it became invested with the values of the opposing camps.” Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 2005), 322. 20. Book Two, 37. 21. Book One, 110–111. 22. Cartoon, Muhammad Speaks, 3 October 1969. 23. Many NOI youth learned Muhammad’s dietary lessons as students at the Uni- versity of Islam, which emphasized “the observance of dietary laws and the development of a child’s character.” The Messenger (1959), 5. 24. Cartoon, Muhammad Speaks, 3 October 1969; underlining in original. 25. Book Two, 66, 65. Amiri Baraka, a staunch proponent of soul food, acknowledged that black cuisine centered on foods and ingredients that most white Americans typically would not eat. Baraka, Home: Social Essays (William Mor- row and Company, Inc., 1966; Akashic Books, 2009), 121, 122. 26. Book Two, 34. 27. Book One, 6. 28. Ibid., 4. 29. Ibid., 5. 30. Book Two, 34–35. 31. Ibid. 32. Muhammad often used the term “so-called Negro.” During a speech in Atlanta in 1961, Muhammad explained, “I say so-called Negro because you are not a Negro. You are members of the Asiatic Nation, from the Tribe of Shabazz. There is no such thing as a race of Negroes. This is a false name given you during slavery by your slave master, who, after robbing you completely of your knowledge of your homeland, your parents, and your culture, called you ‘Negro’ or Nigger because that word means something that is ‘NEUTER’ or ‘NEUTRAL.’ There- fore you are now a little group of people on this earth who stand out because you have become naturalized by ignorance of yourself and your own kind, and of your enemy. You are ‘neutral’ . . . not united with yourselves, among yourselves, nor are you united with your own people of your own world.” Qtd. in Lomax, When the Word is Given, 115. 33. Ogbar argues that the NOI was one of several “black organizations that were ostensibly pro-black [but] struggled with reconciling their own contradictions with black self-love.” Ogbar, Black Power, 11. 90 Mary Potorti 34. In their study of African American foods and foodways in the context of slavery, Covey and Eisnach argue that slaves “created flavorful and nutritious dishes by supplementing rations of poor-quality food and leftover scraps with their own enterprise, drawing on the rich African and Caribbean traditions of peppers and spices.” Covey and Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, vii. 35. Baraka, Home, 121. 36. Ibid. 37. Other NOI business ventures included, for example, clothing and shoe factories and outlets. 38. Stokely Carmichael arrived at this conclusion while organizing in Mississippi. See Carmichael with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) (Scribner, 2003), 288. Author James Baldwin, too, “could not deny the truth” of Muhammad’s contention that “no people in history had ever been respected who had not owned their own land.” Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York: Dial Press, 1963; Vintage Books, 1992), 73. 39. Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). Claude Andrew Clegg III argues, “Muhammad’s agrarian background and experiences in depressed Detroit during the 1920s and 1930s were directly tied to his later attraction to the Nation of Islam as a vehicle of financial uplift as well as spiritual and racial empowerment. In fact, thousands of African Americans were attracted to the movement because of its willingness to address both eschatological and earthly concerns.” Clegg, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), xii, 17. 40. Ibid., 94. 41. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism, 167. Clegg disputes this date, claiming that the Muslims purchased the farm in 1945, before Muhammad’s release. See Clegg, An Original Man, 99. 42. Lomax, When the Word Is Given, 80. 43. Warith Deen Muhammad, As the Light Shineth From the East (Chicago: WDM Publishing Co., 1980), 20. 44. Ibid. 45. Clegg, An Original Man, 99; Rudolph Bush, “Ethel Muhammad Sharrieff, 80: Nation of Islam leader’s daughter,” Chicago Tribune, 13 December 2002. 46. Warith Deen Muhammad, As the Light Shineth From the East, 20. 47. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism, 72, 167. 48. X with Haley, Autobiography of Malcolm X, 236. 49. As late as 1969, Muhammad’s personal secretary reported that the Messenger, 72 years of age and in declining health, still made day-to-day decisions about the operations of the Nation’s farms, bakeries, supermarkets, and restaurants. Anne Ali (Secretary to Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Messenger of Allah), “What Manner of Man Is Mr. Muhammad?” Muhammad Speaks, 31 October 1969, 19. 50. X with Haley, Autobiography of Malcolm X, 236. 51. Ibid. 52. Two decades later, the Chicago Tribune estimated, “At its height in the 1970s, court records show, Elijah Muhammad’s Nation owned farms in three states, a newspaper that earned annual profits of $3 million, a Chicago supermarket that cleared $325,000 on sales of $1.7 million, a string of small bakeries and cleaners, some 40-odd Chicago-area rental properties and the controlling interest in the Guaranty Bank and Trust Co. on the South Side.” David Jackson and William Gaines, “The Power And The Money: Farrakhan Prospers As Ventures Flounder,” Chicago Tribune, 12 March 1995. Eat to Live 91 53. Lomax, When the Word is Given, 19. 54. Ibid., 20. 55. Baraka, Home, 122–123. 56. Muhammad Speaks, January 1962, 16. 57. British photojournalist and New York Times editor Gertrude Samuels described the Harlem restaurant in a 1963 piece for New York Times Magazine. “[Y]ou will meet Malcolm X under a large framed portrait of ‘The Honorable Eli- jah Muhammad, Messenger of Allah.’ No-smoking signs abound in the well- appointed restaurant where white-jacketed waiters serve well-dressed diners. A mural of the Sphinx fills one wall.” See Gertrude Samuels, “Two Ways: Black Muslims and the N.A.A.C.P.,” New York Times Magazine (12 May 1963) in August Meier and Elliott Rudwick (eds.), Black Protest in the Sixties (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), 39. 58. For a useful discussion of the changing class dynamics of the Nation of Islam, see Lawrence H. Mamiya, “From Black Muslim to Bilalian: The Evolution of a Movement,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 21.2 (1982), 138–152. 59. John R. Howard, “The Making of a Black Muslim: The Nation of Islam Recruits Militants to an Ascetic and Dedicated Life.” (1966), Society (January/Febru- ary 1998), 35–36. 60. Lomax, When the Word is Given, 19. 61. Haley, “Epilogue,” in X with Haley, Autobiography of Malcolm X, 441. In an oblique reference to Muslim businesses, another contemporary observer noted, “The fact that the organization can provide a full social life furthers isolation from non-Muslims.” Howard, “The Making of a Black Muslim,” 36. 62. According to Lomax, many official NOI businesses were “called ‘Shabazz’ restaurants after Malcolm X whose ‘restored’ Arab name is Shabazz.” When the Word Is Given, 79. Your Supermarket was established in Chicago in Decem- ber 1967. See “Something for Black People to Be Thankful For,” Muhammad Speaks, 28 December 1973, 17. 63. “Chain Stores Charge Negroes More for Food Than Whites, Says Rights Leader,” Muhammad Speaks, 7 January 1966, 13. 64. “Races: The Original Black Capitalists,” Time Magazine, 7 March 1969. 65. Lomax, When the Word is Given, 20. 66. Sonsyrea Tate, Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam (San Francisco: Harper, 1997), 44. Muhammad did not categorize starches as sinful but taught that they caused illness. In this way, Muhammad’s dietary directives framed poor health as evidence of moral shortcoming or spiritual disobedience. Sonsyrea Tate recalled of her girlhood, “I knew that when we did little bad things, little bad things would happen to us, so I tried to stay good.” When she, her brother, and her young uncles “caught the chicken pox . . . I knew it was because we had sneaked to eat potato chips and chewing gum, which were prohibited from our diet. I made up my mind that if Allah forgave me and let me get over those awful, itchy, ugly bumps that popped up all over my body, I wouldn’t sneak and eat potato chips anymore.” Tate, 99. Muhammad encouraged the view that all physical ailments and health conditions revealed disobedience on the part of the afflicted. He argued that those who followed his directives precisely but still fell ill suffered “due to wrong mental food that they are eating, which has an effect on their digestive system. To get good results from eating the proper foods, we must have good thoughts.” Book Two, 11. In this way, Muhammad insulated his dietary laws against charges of ineffectiveness. In cases where good food had not staved off ill health, Muhammad argued that negative spiritual or mental energies (not flaws or holes in his nutritional wisdom) were to blame. 67. A typical convert in 1950 was thirty to sixty years of age and had not progressed beyond the eighth grade. Clegg judges that Chicago converts “generally lived a 92 Mary Potorti life at the bottom rungs of the city’s socioeconomic ladder, working at unskilled labor and indulging in such activities as gambling, petty crime, and premarital and extramarital sex.” By 1956, “increasing numbers of professionals and educated individuals began to join the movement.” By the 1960s, NOI membership consisted primarily of males between seventeen and thirty-five years of age. Clegg, An Original Man, 100, 111, 115, 251. 68. Tate, Little X, 67. Curtis writes, “Different communities used different ingredients . . . [indicating] that the practice of Elijah Muhammad’s system of ethics among his followers was not monolithic in nature. Bean pies could be made with white sugar in one city and with brown sugar in another. One could follow certain ethical guidelines while ignoring others, depending on one’s own sense of values and the culture of control and enforcement in one’s local Muslim community.” Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 107. 69. Baraka, Home, 121. 70. Qtd. in Gibson and Karim, Women of the Nation, 56. The authors use a pseud- onym for this source. 71. Tate, Little X, 67. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., 45. 75. Ibid. 76. Cartoon, Muhammad Speaks, 24 October 1969. 77. Tate, Little X, 4. 78. Ibid. 79. Muhammad’s dietary manifesto included multiple diatribes against birth control pills, highlighting his view of the interplay between food, reproduction, food and drug industries, federal agencies, and the future of the black race. In lieu of medical or pharmaceutical remedies, Muhammad urged the ill to fast. “Fasting is a greater cure of our ills—both mentally and physically—than all of the drugs of the earth combined into one bottle or into a billion bottles . . . [Allah (God) in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad] has told me there is no cure in drugs and medicine. And this, the world is now learning. We can take medicine all of our lives until it kills us, but we are still ailing with the same old diseases.” Book One, 19. 80. Book One, 6. 81. Book Two, 59. 82. Ibid., 73, 107, 108; Book One, 11, 50, 107, 108, 114–117. 83. Ibid., 93. 84. “Farmers Profit at Expense of Farm Workers,”Muhammad Speaks, Janu- ary 1962, 17. 85. X with Haley, Autobiography of Malcolm X, 362. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid., 363. 88. “Billions Wasted on Farmer’s Idleness,” Muhammad Speaks, 15 August 1969. 89. Leon R. Forrest, “The Burn and Bury Food, Waste Land, but Want: THE PILL for the Hungry,” Muhammad Speaks, 17 October 1969, 8. 90. “Races: The Black Supremacists,” Time Magazine, 10 August 1959. 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid. 93. “Religion: The Messenger Passes,” Time magazine, 10 March 1975. Less than four months later, Time revised this estimate, writing, “While maintaining traditional Muslim secrecy about overall membership (estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000, though higher figures are often used), [Muhammad’s son] Wallace revealed the dollar dimensions of Elijah’s legacy: the Muslims have investments Eat to Live 93 of $14.5 million in Chicago property and $6.2 million in farm land, while their stores, restaurants and other ventures pay $1.5 million annually in taxes. These are substantial amounts, but below previous guesses.” See “Religion: White Muslims?” Time magazine, 30 June 1975. 94. “Religion: The Messenger Passes,” Time magazine, 10 March 1975. 95. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall offers this indispensable conceptual framework for understanding the black freedom struggle. See Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History, 91.4 (March 2005): 1233–1263. 96. Tate, Little X, 105. 97. Ibid., 106. 98. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism, 165. 99. Tate, Little X, 60. 100. “Races: The Original Black Capitalists,” Time magazine, 7 March 1969; emphasis added.

Works Cited Ali, Anne. “What Manner of Man is Mr. Muhammad?” Muhammad Speaks. Octo- ber 13, 1969, 19. Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dial Press, 1963; Vintage Books, 1992. Baraka, Amiri. Home: Social Essays. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1966; Brooklyn: Akashic Books, 2009. Beynon, Ermann Doane. “The Voodoo Cult among Negro Migrants in Detroit.” American Journal of Sociology 43.6 (May 1938): 894–907. “Billions Wasted on Farmer’s Idleness.” Muhammad Speaks. August 15, 1969. Bush, Rudolph. “Ethel Muhammad Sharrieff, 80: Nation of Islam Leader’s Daugh- ter.” Chicago Tribune. December 13, 2002. Carmichael, Stokely with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York: Scribner, 2003. Cartoon. Muhammad Speaks. October 3, 1969. Cartoon. Muhammad Speaks. October 24, 1969. “Chain Stores Charge Negroes More for Food Than Whites, Says Rights Leader.” Muhammad Speaks. January 7, 1966, 13. Clegg III, Claude Andrew. An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muham- mad. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Covey, Herbert C. and Dwight Eisnach. What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of Afri- can American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2009. Curtis IV, Edward E. Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Essien-Udom, E.U. Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America. Chi- cago: University of Chicago Press, 1962. “Farmers Profit at Expense of Farm Workers.” Muhammad Speaks. January 1962, 17. Forrest, Leon R. “The Burn and Bury Food, Waste Land, but Want: THE PILL for the Hungry.” Muhammad Speaks. October 17, 1969, 8. Gibson, Dawn-Marie and Jamillah Karim. Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Gomez, Michael A. Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 94 Mary Potorti Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past.” Journal of American History 91.4 (March 2005): 1233–1263. Howard, John R. “The Making of a Black Muslim: The Nation of Islam Recruits Militants to an Ascetic and Dedicated Life.” Society 4.2 (1966): 15–21. Jackson, David and William Gaines. “The Power and the Money: Farrakhan Pros- pers As Ventures Flounder.” Chicago Tribune. March 12, 1995. Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America. Boston: Beach Press, 1961. Lomax, Louis E. When the Word Is Given: A Report on Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the Black Muslim World. New York: The World Publishing Company, 1963. Mamiya, Lawrence H. “From Black Muslim to Bilalian: The Evolution of a Move- ment.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 21.2 (1982): 138–152. Mohammed, Warith Deen. As the Light Shineth from the East. Chicago: WDM Publishing, 1980. Muhammad, Elijah. “The Benefits of Eating Once a Day.” Muhammad Speaks. September 3, 1965, 11. ——. “For Long Life, We Must Be Careful What, When We Eat.” Muhammad Speaks. January 7, 1966, 11. ——. How to Eat to Live: Book One. Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propa- gation Society, 1967. ——. How to Eat to Live: Book Two. Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propa- gation Society, 1972. ——. Message to the Blackman in America. Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society, 1965. Norton, Philip. “Black Nationalism in America: The Significance of the Black Mus- lim Movement.” Hull Papers in Politics 31 (April 1983): 1–36. Ogbar, Jeffrey. Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. Balti- more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Opie, Frederick Douglass. Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. “Races: The Black Supremacists.” Time Magazine. August 10, 1959. “Races: The Original Black Capitalists.” Time Magazine. March 7, 1969. “Religion: The Messenger Passes.” Time Magazine. March 10, 1975. “Religion: White Muslims?” Time Magazine. June 30, 1975. Ross, Rosetta E. Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003. Samuels, Gertrude. “Two Ways: Black Muslims and the N.A.A.C.P.” New York Times Magazine, May 12, 1963. In Black Protest in the Sixties, ed. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, 37–45. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970. “Something for Black People to Be Thankful For.” Muhammad Speaks. Decem- ber 28, 1973, 17. Small, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008. Sullivan, Patricia. Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Tate, Sonsyrea. Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam. San Francisco: Harper, 1997. Witt, Doris. Black Hunger: Soul Food and America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. X, Malcolm with Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley. New York: Random House, [1965] 1992. 6 Was It a Nine Days Wonder? A Note on the Proselytisation Efforts of the Nation of Islam in Ghana, c. 1980s–2010

De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway and Mustapha Abdul-Hamid

Introduction Founded by Master Fard Muhammad and guided and developed by Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam (NOI) is an Islamic religious movement that was part of the quest of a marginalised Black nationality to reclaim their humanity, gain equality, and leave the political periphery in the USA. The NOI’s efforts in economic emancipation, cultural assertion and self- determination, and heightened socio-political visibility ultimately aimed to rehabilitate the colour black and deal with the past injustices and present injuries from the supposed hypocrisy of a white hegemony. Originally interested only in Blacks in the USA, whom it deemed socially dispossessed, morally compromised, and economically emasculated, the NOI focused on the desperate Black proletariat and ghetto poor whose lives the NOI contended “were ethnically impoverished by white racist neglect of their most fundamental needs: . . . self-respect, . . . social dignity, . . . their royal black history, and worship and . . . a black God.”1 Over time, however, the NOI started to reach out to other parts of the world by preaching its message to Black people globally, including Ghana. This effort was in tune with Islam’s character as a missionary religion. Indeed, the Qur’an asserts that the Prophet Muhammad was sent as “a mercy to humankind” (Q 21:107). Thus Islam is supposed to be a religion for all nations. Therefore, even though the NOI was originally founded for Blacks in the USA, it also purported to have the divine mandate and Islamic character to serve as a light and guide to all Muslims. During the NOI’s 1994 Saviour’s Day celebration, held in Ghana, (the first time the event was held outside the USA), Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the NOI, declared the NOI was the light of the age to which Muslims internationally should look for truth and guidance. While Farrakhan argued that “we have always looked to the Prophets, and the Prophets came from the East: from Abraham to Muhammad”,2 he quickly invoked the Prophet Muhammad3 to legitimise his point about the NOI, which was born in the West. With all the passion that he could muster, he thundered, “In this day, your light is not in the East anymore; your light is in the West and it will come back to the East.”4 96 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid This was obviously re-echoing the prophetic statement that “the hour will not be established till the sun rises from the west, and when it rises from the west and the people see it, then all of them will believe in Allah . . . ”.5 It was also a direct response to the many sceptical Muslims who look upon the NOI with some suspicion. Farrakhan explained that the sun as used by the Prophet did not refer to the physical sun. But that the sun represented light. One of the praise names and attributes of the Prophet is An-Nur (the light). The Prophet, like all the other Prophets, brought light and guidance to humankind. By Farrakhan’s interpretation, therefore, Prophet Muham- mad meant that before the end of time, the light of guidance for humankind shall come from the West. The NOI was and is a bearer of a message from the West, hence Farrakhan found legitimacy for it through this prophetic saying. Muslim groups often seek to establish legitimacy using prophetic sayings (i.e., hadiths). Indeed, by bringing the Saviours’ Day celebration to Ghana, Farrakhan hoped to establish the NOI firmly in Ghana. However, as this chapter will show, that never happened, and today the NOI barely maintains a presence in Ghana. From the initial buzz that it generated when Farrakhan established friendship with Ghana’s former revolutionary president, Flt. Lt. (rtd) Jerry John Rawlings, the NOI became “a nine-day wonder”: an event that generates a lot of excitement and interest but which quickly fizzles out. This chapter looks at the attempts at establishing the NOI in Ghana, the initial interest and state support that it generated, its subsequent fizzling out, and the factors that accounted for its inability to become an established Islamic tradition like other Islamic traditions such as the Ahmadiyya, Tijaniyya and Ahl-Sunnah. The chapter concludes that the NOI could not have flourished in Ghana principally because of its beliefs, most of which are at variance with “orthodox” Islamic teachings. And in a fiercely conservative nation such as Ghana, the NOI was bound to face opposition not only from Islamic groups, but also from Christian groups who viewed the NOI as militant and anti-Christian. There is not much literature on the NOI in Ghana. Kevin K. Gaines, in his American Africans in Ghana, recounts aspects of the history of the NOI’s internationalisation effort in Ghana. However, Gaines did not examine the theological factors that accounted for the failure of the NOI to make an impact in Ghana. This chapter therefore seeks to fill this gap as far as literature on the history and evangelizing efforts of the NOI in Ghana is concerned.

Transcending the USA Border: NOI Internationalised After the exit of Malcolm X from the NOI, Farrakhan emerged as the spokesperson of the NOI. He became the leader of the NOI, albeit a reorganised one, after the death of Elijah Muhammad. He endeavoured to give the NOI an international outlook and transnational solidarity with the wretched of the earth and the struggles of the so-called third-world revolutionaries Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 97 against the hegemony of the USA and its Western allies. As part of this internationalisation effort, Farrakhan undertook three world friendship tours in 1985, 1996, and 1997 to a host of countries and their leaders.6 Gaines has argued that Farrakhan hoped to gain from the symbol of Pan Africanism and “seemed obsessed with retracing the footsteps of Malcolm X, whose image and memory were ubiquitous within African American popular culture at the time.”7 He posits that Farrakhan’s warm reception in Ghana enabled him to reprise Malcolm’s role as militant world spokesman.8 The NOI’s international branch emerged in Britain in the 1980s, followed by missionary activities in parts of the African diaspora. Some branches flourished, converted significant numbers, and became stable. Others did not because of certain factors. For example, sociologist Nuri Tinaz implies in his discourse that the British branch became popular among people of African descent, especially Afro-Caribbeans, because of a certain shared “pastness”9—a concept which Wallerstein identifies as basis for identity formation.10 On that score of analysis, Tinaz suggests that although the experiences of Blacks in Britain were different from those in the Americas, they had an awareness of their common historical encounter with and struggle against slavery, racism, and socio-economic exploitation and exclusion. It was this sense of a shared past, centred on the idea of Black diasporic peoplehood, and linked to a common history of white oppression of Black people in America and Europe and traditions of Black efforts to be free, since the days of slavery, which eventually manifested in shared movements and ideologies such as Garveyism and Black Power of the 1960s, and a contemporary struggle against a white British political system which was “intrinsically” racist.11 Within that context, the NOI’s racial and political agenda and self-help economic programmes, and image as a movement that sought to globally mobilise and unify Black masses and people, attracted many young African Caribbean and Blacks in Britain from the late 1980s onwards.12 In Trinidad, for example, the NOI remains small and weak.13 Though the Trinidadian mosque may be relatively small, that has not diminished its importance in the eyes of converts.14 That is because NOI members there “share more in common with their African American counterparts than an adherence to particularistic Islam.”15 Citing Michael Liber’s view on the African diaspora in Trinidad, Gibson avers that the African Americans and their Trinidadian counterparts share high levels of unemployment, poverty, and “complex racial problems”16—not all of which are shared with Ghanaians.

Going to Africa, the Motherland During the 1980s, the NOI started to court the friendship of African leaders. This orientation was part of its efforts to connect with the ancestral home of most of the members of the NOI and the African American community. 98 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid Partly a pilgrimage project, “a kind of new Hajj”,17 it was a return, association, and communication with their origin, which, in a Pan-African frame, aimed to create mutual benefits and a formidable front for their liberation from the clutches of neo-colonialist powers. Diplomatic ties were made with different African countries. Ghana attracted the missionary enterprise of the NOI. According to Gaines, most people of African descent globally revelled in Ghana’s independence in 1957—a milestone that invigorated their “rising demands for freedom and self-determination and heralded the impending demise of the systems of racial and colonial domination instituted in the late nineteenth century in the U.S. South and on the African continent”.18 Gha- na’s successful anti-colonial struggle informed African Americans’ struggles for equal citizenship, and its internationally acclaimed pro-Pan-African image/reputation continued to attract expatriates and visitors and groups of African descent, including the NOI; the African Hebrew Israelites, led by Ben Ammi; and the Bereshith Hashuvah Black Jews group, led by Rabbi Kohain Ha Levi, from the African diaspora.19 This study diverges from the thematic foci and analytic occupations of other extant studies about the NOI by examining the NOI’s diplomatic arrangements and operational endeavours in Ghana and how these fared. It was under the leadership of Farrakhan that the NOI from the 1980s onwards consciously made greater formal diplomatic intrusions and proselytising strides into Ghana. Farrakhan and his entourage of NOI notables and members frequented the country. The head of state, Flt. Lt. J.J. Rawlings, and his Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) government provided Farrakhan and his lieutenants space within the national media to espouse NOI views concerning Islamic theology, political and economic orientation, culture, and the idea of racial segregation within a country whose tapestry of religion had a significant slice of Islamic influence. Could its worldview flourish and endure in a country whose traditional Islamic culture preached the familyhood of humankind, regardless of gender, geographic location, and the artificially created labels of race, ethnicity, and nationality? How was its apocryphal story of the tribe of Shabazz and creation of the “devil” by Yacub going to fit into the sacrosanct narrative in the Qur’an about Allah being the Creator of everything and be accepted along the normative traditional account of creation? How were the projected images and persons of Wali Fard and Elijah Muhammed as Allah in flesh and Prophet, respectively, by the NOI going to be accepted by conventional Muslims in Ghana in the face of the normative that Allah is not visible and Muhammad is the last prophet? What about its belief in the existence of two Qur’ans20—a known one, which is familiar to all Muslims, and a powerful arcane one, whose import and secrets, understandable in NOI, are accessible through a numer- ological understanding of the known Qur’an? The unique history of slavery and racism in the USA is a factor for the rise of the NOI and its version of Islam. Could this experience have become meaningful to the Ghanaian public in their different historical and geographic contexts? Could Ghana have Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 99 continued to dabble as a diplomatic friend of the USA and NOI forever? Despite these questions, the NOI attempted to create an enduring presence among the people of the country and to endear itself especially to Ghana’s long-standing ummah.21

Islamic Communities in Ghana and NOI Beliefs A picture of the Islamisation of Ghana can be obtained through the patterns of the historical penetration and consolidation of Islam among the various chieftains and ethnic groups. By the advent of colonial rule, only the northern part of the country was Islamised with the massive conversion of the Dagomba, Gonja, Mamprusi and Wala.22 Islam became the “state” religion of these groups, whose rulers were converted by itinerant Muslim holy men, whose prayers were deemed efficacious in the solution of problems that beset these ethnic “states” in their formative periods. The gold and kola trades and, subsequently, Asante political domination of the north opened the middle and forest belts of the country to Muslims from the north. Many moved south and settled in Kumasi, the capital of the Asante region in the forest zone. Some became powerful courtiers, who used their literacy in Ara- bic as palace secretaries, peddlers of Muslim charms and amulets, soldiers for the Asante army, and ambassadors of the Asante chief to the northern kingdoms.23 The enclaves of these migrant Muslims in the south were called zongo. Zongo is a corruption of the Hausa word, zango, which means “the stranger’s temporal abode/quarter”. In time, however, these zongos became permanent places of settlement for these Muslims, who originally thought that their business-inspired stay in the south would be transient. The indigenous populations of the north, who constitute the bulk of the Muslim population in Ghana, were therefore Islamised through the activities of itinerant holy men whose power of prayer was believed to be almost magical. However, there was another group of “northern” Muslims who were not indigenes of the Gold Coast (the name by which Ghana was known before independence). These were Hausa men who were brought from Northern Nigeria by the colonial administration to serve as the nucleus of the Gold Coast Police, called the Gold Coast Hausa Constabulary (GCHC).24 Even- tually, the GCHC garrisons emerged in littoral places such as Denu, Aflao, and Accra. The mainly Muslim Hausa units of the colonial police contin- gent became factors for the spread of Islam in the coast. There were also Muslim enclaves created by returnee Afro Brazilians who were settled in Ghana after the abolition of the slave trade. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, freed enslaved Africans from Brazil, many being Muslims and originally of Hausa, Nupe, Kanuri, and Sahelian ethnic descent, were returned to Accra. The first group, with their leader Kangidi Asuman, alias Azumah, arrived around 1829.25 Others followed. Descendant families of these returnees include the Aruna, Nassu, Asuman (i.e. the Azumah family from which Ghana’s world boxing champion, 100 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid Azumah Nelson, comes), Tintingi, Adama, Peregrino, Abu, Marselieno, Sokoto, Viara, and Alipatara families in Accra.26 Then also, from the early 1920s to the 1980s, the missionary zeal of the Ahmadiyya and Shia traditions of Islam implanted them in Ghana. The Ahmadiyya flourished, mostly in the coastal and Upper West Region of the country. It is currently a dominant Islamic movement in Ghana, which sets up schools and hospitals to support its missionary efforts. The early 1980s especially saw the Shia tradition gaining roots in Ghana. Many Muslim students went to Iran for Islamic knowledge, in obedience to the prophetic edict to “seek for knowledge even if you might travel to China.” They returned to Ghana with the Shia ideology, which reigns highest in Iran. Today, many mosques in Ghana are designated Shia mosques and presided over by a chief imam called Shaykh Abubakr Kamaldeen. Thus Tijaniyya, Wahhabiyya, Ahmadiyya, and Shia are the dominant brands of Islam in Ghana. They constitute the Muslim Council of Ghana and the Hilal Committee that meets to deliberate on issues of common interest. Shaykh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu, a Tijaniyya, is their leader, mainly because of the status of Tijaniyya as the dominant Islamic religious movement in Ghana. Although, Farrakhan claimed the NOI was not in search of converts as such, but mutual understanding in Ghana, many Muslims, reportedly, deemed the line of faith which the group carried into Ghana as heretic. Reportedly, one Ghanaian Muslim postulated, “ ‘They have come here to talk about Islam, but it seems we should be teaching them’, . . . ‘Any true Muslim can tell that Muhammad was our last prophet’ ”.27 Sheikh M.M. Gedel, the secretary general of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs also charged, “Any other additional message that comes after the Prophet Muhammad, is not proper and must be rejected”.28 Tawhid (unity of God) is core to Islam. Qur’an chapter 112 declares, “Say: He is Allah. The One and Only. The Eternal, the Absolute. He begets not, nor was He begotten. And there is none like unto Him.” Indeed, a major disagreement between Islam and Christianity is the latter’s claim that Jesus is God incarnate. The Qur’an responds by saying that “the likeness of Jesus is like that of Adam” (Q: 3:59). The Qur’an illustrates the enormity of giving God an equal by declaring that “the skies are ready to burst, the earth to split asunder and the mountains to fall” (Q:19:90) but for the mercy of Allah, only because Christians say that He is three. Thus in the view of many orthodox Muslims, the NOI commits a similar offence with its belief that Master Fard Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad’s teacher, is Allah incarnate who manifested to rescue Black people, his people, on earth. They therefore view this as heresy. In Islam, it is believed that shirk (association- ism) is the only sin that Allah is incapable of forgiving. To them, therefore, the NOI’s deification of Fard is tantamount to shirk. By the very theology regarding Fard’s status, the NOI was bound to stagnate within Ghana’s fiercely conservative Muslim population. Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 101 Shaykh Muhammad Abubakar Moomen, a Ghanaian Muslim cleric and graduate of the Islamic University in Madina, Saudi Arabia argues that the NOI cannot claim to be a true Islamic sect with what he calls “its weird theologies which are at variance with the foundational tenets of Islam.”29 He argues that there are two critical pillars of the Islamic faith that distinguish it from other faiths and which, according to him, make Islam “the only truly monotheistic faith in the world.”30 He mentions the absolute oneness of Allah and the humanness of the Prophet Muhammad as these “critical pillars.” For him therefore, the foundational tenets of the NOI violate these two critical pillars and to the extent that the NOI’s beliefs are inconsis- tent with these foundational tenets of Islam, the NOI cannot be termed an Islamic sect. Beyond the NOI’s negation of tawhid, other core beliefs, such as the existence of two Qur’ans, made it unattractive and even aberrant. In Ghana where Wahhabiyya and Tijaniyya have been conflicting over “petty” doctrinal differences, one can imagine the resentment that a USA-born Islamic movement which confers prophethood on Elijah Muhammad and deems “whites” as devils will attract. The doctrines concerning Elijah Muham- mad’s prophethood and duality of the Qur’an and the demonising of whites evoked a heterodox narrative, which was unacceptable to most Muslims. Even the Ahmadiyya that asserts that Ahmad Ghulam is a non-law bearing prophet is resented. Indeed, some Muslims categorise them as deviation- ists at best and kufar (unbelievers) at worst. Furthermore, many Ghanaians having their ethnic and cultural identities such as Asante, Fante, and Ewe intact did not see themselves “lost” and therefore could also not identify with and gravitate to an ethno-religious organisation that preached that it was gathering and installing the identity of the members of the “lost tribe of Shabazz”.

For many of the descendants of enslaved Africans in the US and the diaspora, it was easy for them to accept the story of Shabazz because of the alienation from their history and the amnesia about their specific African origins that the episode of slavery engineered for them.31

However, for many Ghanaians, even if the tribe of Shabazz was not mythi- cal, they definitely were not part of it. Gary Karim, an African American and member of the NOI, who moved to reside in Ghana permanently after Akbar Muhammad (formerly Larry 4X Prescott), an aide of Farrakhan, set up base in Ghana as Farrakhan’s representative in the early 1990s, states that institutionally, the NOI barely exists in Ghana today. He says that apart from his three children, he barely knows any other members of the NOI in Ghana today.32 To him, however, that does not matter. For Karim the NOI is more of a philosophical idea than it is structural. For him, the existence or absence of physical structures is not necessarily proof of the success or failure of an idea. He argues 102 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid that the ideology of the NOI continues to influence many people in Ghana today, whether they are aware of it or not. That to him is a measure of the NOI’s success in Ghana. Gary Karim and his octogenarian father, Osman Karim, who lives in the USA but frequents Ghana, admit that the doctrines of the NOI are at variance with mainstream Islam “in many ways,”33 and, for them, that has made it difficult for the NOI to establish physical roots in Ghana where the Islamic orientation is traditional. Osman Karim, who maintains ties with Farrakhan, was a close associate of Elijah Muham- mad and Malcolm X, and was part of the entourage of Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champion and member of the NOI, that visited Ghana in 1964. A Ghanaian Muslim cleric, Shaykh Muhammad Abubakar Moomen agrees with the Karims and adds that if Farrakhan had allowed Warith Deen Mohammed, son of Elijah Muhammad, to insert the NOI into orthodox Islam, it would have made a better impact outside the USA.34 The NOI therefore struggled to find acceptance within the Ghanaian Islamic context. The majority of Ghanaian Muslims maintain their allegiance to “orthodox” Islam, mostly because they deem it efficacious in solv- ing their spiritual and physical problems.35 This is premised on the belief that the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, is As-Shifa (The Healing). The Qur’an, according to popular Islamic belief, is the literal word of Allah revealed verbatim to the Prophet Muhammad through Gabriel, an angel of Allah. Many Muslims believe that the Qur’an is uncreated and eternal. For the NOI to posit the existence of another Qur’an was to dilute the essence and power of the Qur’an, and that belief and its carrier were bound to be viewed with scepticism at best and suffer rejection at worst in a fiercely conservative country such as Ghana.

The NOI in Ghana Flt. Lt. J. J. Rawlings and a military junta overthrew the government of Dr. Hilla Limann on the 31 December 1981 and decreed on radio the establishment of the gun-backed PNDC government, which lasted until 1992. This regime presented itself as populist, revolutionary, and anti-neo-colonialism. Rawlings declared “a holy war” on social rot. “Holy war”, as used by a man who befriended Colonel Muammar al Gaddafi, immediately signalled a Gaddafi-Libya revolution ideological inspiration and/or connection to the coup. This was ascertained when the PNDC junta set up nationwide Study Clubs of The Green Book36 to promote the learning of Gaddafi’s brand of governance, which was a mix of Islam and socialism. Rawlings and his men preached that they sought to awaken a revolutionary psyche and spirit in the people: a can-do attitude that relies solely on Ghanaian and African capability. Rawlings searched for nearly every revolutionary around the globe (especially African revolutionaries) for edification. During the hey- days of his autocratic regime, Rawlings commonly gravitated to the company and political ideas of radical near-left and/or left anti-Western and Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 103 anti-capitalist leaders of the so-called third-world countries. These included Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Muammar al Gaddafi of Libya, and Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso. Farrakhan’s iconic revolutionary image was endearing to Rawlings. The military-style discipline of the Fruit of Islam (FOI), the seeming paramilitary wing of the NOI, and the order it brought to Farrakhan’s organisation, the NOI, was attractive to the soldier that Rawlings was. He invited Farrakhan to Ghana on numerous occasions to speak of his revolutionary political ideology publicly to motivate the can-do attitude in the people. Farrakhan’s first official visit to Ghana, a famous site of Pan-African hopes, was in March 1985 when he was on a World Friendship tour. Rawlings welcomed him, and they discussed African empowerment and renaissance issues. Emphasising the relevance of Pan Africanism and the international struggle of Black people and members of the so-called third world for mutual growth, Farrakhan also declared to his audience,

[W]e are brothers . . . your friends and we come home . . . for the first time in 400 years . . . hoping that you will receive us . . . from the West and know that God is raising up the destroyed in the west.37

Coincidentally, the mid-1980s was a period when the “religious landscape of Ghana showed a kaleidoscope of many different traditions which, for its sheer novelty and the speed with which it developed, forced itself on the consciousness of many Ghanaians.”38 Atiemo has cited Hummel to demonstrate that

in Accra [in the 1980s] . . . Hindu and Buddhist organizations are active among black Africans. The Hare Krishna movement has a temple and a training centre for black Krishna missionaries there, Swami Sivananda’s ‘Divine Light Society’ is running a ‘Hindu Monastery of Africa’, a Sri Sathya Sai Baba Centre proclaims the ‘Sai Religion’, a Guru Nanak society the Sikh Dharma. The ‘Maha Bodhi Society of Ghana’ has established a Buddhist temple, a library, and a training centre for Ghanaian Buddhist missionaries and printing press, and the Nicheren Shoshu is trying to spread its own Japanese version of Buddhism there. Add to this the Ahmadiyya Mission and some Sufi orders.39

The advent of the NOI in Ghana coincided with this proliferation of different religious traditions and movements, including Afrikania, which represented “Reformed African Traditional Religion”.40 The NOI belonged to the Abrahamic traditions, but its perspective about the theology of two Abrahamic faiths in Ghana: Christianity and Islam, was different. Because of their exclusivist tendencies, those two viewed the entrance of the NOI’s ideology and institution as an unsettling threat that should not be enter- tained. That entrance did not antagonise the other “newcomer” traditions 104 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid on the Ghanaian terrain, nor did it appear a threat to the indigenous spiritual path because of the accommodating tendency of the traditional religious worldview of indigenous African societies, which Sanneh describes as “the preponderant African impulse in the absorption of new religious ideas”.41 Through Rawlings “friendship” with the NOI, Farrakhan created a perennial relationship between himself and Ghana. Rawlings became an ally of the NOI, but Gaddafi was the NOI’s strongest ally on the continent and, according to Gibson, the NOI’s unorthodox teachings never hampered relations with Islamic Libya, arguably because the version of Islam which Gad- dafi himself practiced was not in line with orthodoxy.42 Rawlings, as leader of the National Democratic Congress party was democratically elected in 1992 as the first president of the Fourth Republic of Ghana. He left the office of president in 2001. The executive audience and state privilege that the NOI received from Rawlings was pronounced during his tenure as a military ruler, and such support remained visible during the immediate years of his first term as a constitutional president. Pursuing the creation of Western- inspired liberal democracy required him to cultivate sustainable diplomatic relations with the USA and the West in general. His seemingly liberal stance, however, sapped and retracted the revolutionary urgency and spirit that had foregrounded the NOI and its radical religio-political ideology during the PNDC revolution era. Rawlings and his government could no longer deem the USA as “evil” under the new political dispensation. Rawlings championed Pan Africanism, but the overt support which he offered the NOI diminished because such a support would have implied an anti-USA action. In March 1998, Rawlings and his government hosted President Bill Clinton in Ghana. Rawlings show of solidarity with Clinton signalled, at least to the recognition of the world, that he had cultivated a moderate view about the USA. As highlighted, Farrakhan’s visits to and lectures in Ghana continued after 1985. Rawlings encouraged Farrakhan to set up a permanent office in Accra, a NOI base and resident representative in Ghana, somewhere around 1989.43 As Gaines has pointed out, Rawlings expected some gains from the partnership. He sought to capitalise on the historical symbolism of Pan Africanism and

hoped to bask in the aura of Farrakhan’s image as Pan-Africanist fire- brand and, through his association with the NOI leader, to appeal for the support of Ghana’s Islamic minority in the Northern Territories as well as in the Accra suburb of Nima.44

It was also about “furthering Rawlings’ agenda at promoting tourism, a major growth industry, by attracting African American visitors”.45 Farrakhan obliged to the request for an information office, which would double as the NOI’s Africa headquarters, and sent the NOI’s international representative, Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 105 Akbar Muhammad, as ambassador to Ghana. Representing the NOI, Far- rakhan became a familiar face at many functions of national importance including Ghana’s independence ceremonies, Kwame Nkrumah’s eightieth birthday, and the Pan-African Historical Theatre Festival (PANAFEST). Sit- uated near the castle, the seat of government, perhaps as indication of government approval, the NOI office, opened sometime in 1990, initiated the selling of NOI literature such as the Final Call newspaper in its bookshop, at Osu, other bookshops, and around some Ghana mosques. However, by the late 1990s, nearly a decade after setting up base, the NOIs identifiable presence had dimmed. While the NOI’s status has remained nebulous, the active presence of the other more traditional movements continued. Its office near the castle is not functioning. It has been closed, and the shadow office it established around the Tesano-Achimota overpass in Accra became dormant and is now unnoticeable. There has been a deafen- ing silence about organised NOI public meetings and seminars. Prior to this blur, the visibility of the NOI benefited from the visits and lectures of Far- rakhan, a master of public psychology, who had an immense capacity to get public attention with his effusive, suave and charming personality, magnetic gestures, and insightful and enlightening lectures. Many of Farrakhan’s activities and speeches had access to the state’s print and electronic media. Some were broadcast live. His views, enmeshed in rhetoric which frequently referenced the Bible, Qur’an, and Black history, elicited the listening curiosity of many Ghanaians. His visits and the national platform that projected it made him and “Farrakhan’s people”—that is, the “Muslims from Amer- ica” (NOI), to become recognisable by many people in Ghana. Farrakhan’s charisma, the glitz and distinctive smart dressing of his entourage, his elo- quent commentary about Ghanaian and African history and contemporary issues, his penchant to worship and interact with the ummah in the Central Mosque in Accra, (signalling him as an affable leader), his call on Afri- can leaders and people to resist corruption and neo-colonial tendencies and unite for progress in Africa, and the NOI’s fascinating theology attracted the curiosity of many Ghanaians. The distinctive groomed hairstyle of the suit-and-bowtie-wearing men of the NOI made a niche in Ghana’s popular fashion culture. Impressed by the fashionable look of Farrakhan and his male followers, many Ghanaian men emulated that hairstyle, which became popularly known as “Farrakhan”. Considering the aura of dollar-backed affluence, which the glamorous appearance of Farrakhan and his entourage from the diaspora exuded, many hopeful youth who gravitated to the NOI’s activities must have done so nurturing an expectation to get the chance to travel to the USA and acquire the materials of such glamour. Mustapha Abdul-Hamid sees that an initial gravitation of some youth to the NOI, for intellectual and not religious reasons, was also spurred by the use of some of Farrakhan’s literature—that is, audio and video speeches—as part of the material for study by a burgeoning but transient youth movement called the Democratic Youth League of Ghana (DYLG). The DYLG was Rawlings’s 106 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid ideological youth movement, which aimed to tutor Ghanaian youth, especially those in secondary and tertiary institutions, in revolutionary ideas, including those of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Kwame Nkrumah, and other socialist ideologues and Pan-Africanism thinkers.46 It must be mentioned that welcoming a group of African relations from the diaspora and their secular political message of Black emancipation into Ghana, by many Ghanaians, including Rawlings, their leader, with a Pan-African hand and the proverbial Ghanaian hospitality, was one thing. Another was whether the theological and ideological orientation of the NOI would be largely accepted in a country whose large populations of normative Christians and Muslims, and members of indigenous African spirituality, possessed a different religio-political Weltanschauung and experience of colonialism. Thus, despite the executive patronage, some ambivalence and mixed reaction, and, at times, opposition from some Ghanaian individuals and political and religious groups confronted the NOI and its worldview. Some criticised it as heterodox. Others denounced it as racist, while some viewed its presence as a political danger to Ghana’s relationship to the West. For the political detractors of Rawlings, the NOI was anti-democracy because it supported the authoritarian regime of Rawlings. Gaines points out that Farrakhan’s exhortation in speeches to support Rawlings and his government and not to begrudge them the amenities of power, pres- tige, and wealth flew in the face of Ghanaians long-standing resentment of corruption.47 Opposition which sought to caution Ghanaians to suspect Farrakhan and the NOI and desist from entertaining their ideas manifested as demonstrations and writings in newspapers. In 1994, Farrakhan held the Saviours’ Day Convention, which commemorates the birth of Fard Muhammad, in Accra, Ghana. Being the first international one and lasting from October 6 to 9, it took about 1,500 to 2,000 celebrants into Ghana. It was good for the internationalising efforts of the NOI and also beneficial to Ghana’s tourism sector. Rawlings opened and closed the gathering. He applauded Farrakhan, who preached Black emancipation and rebuked the politics of the USA, as “one of the greatest and most impressive people I have come across” and for bringing “truth”.48 This grand celebration, which had aspects televised on national TV,49 however, revealed some of the suspicion and dislike for the NOI that existed among the local population in the secular and religious spheres. Many viewed the celebration “with a mixture of puzzlement, humor and even offense”.50 It thus elicited voices of condemnation of the NOI’s “racialised” politics and support for a Ghanaian government, whose antecedents are generally considered undemocratic, and its theology as heterodoxy. The Ghanaian Chronicle, a major mouthpiece of the political detractors of Rawlings, questioned a seeming paradox in the NOI’s political orientation: How could the NOI claim to be for freedom, justice, and equality and against the oppressive white man and the USA while befriending Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 107 those whom the newspaper perceived as “oppressive” and “undemocratic” African leaders. The newspaper therefore averred,

We [Ghanaians] do not care about some phantom White man sitting in down town Santa Barbara or in Accra or Harare . . . [and] about the colour of an oppressor or tyrant. A tyrant is a tyrant, and it is more painful when the oppressor happens to be black or African. Unfor- tunately, that is the situation in most of black Africa which has been enslaved by military men of stunted intelligence who overnight turn into four-piece wearing, agbada clad teflon democrats and terrorise their own citizenry.51

Moreover, the religious suspicion manifested because many Christians, especially the leaders, disagreed with the NOI’s traditional criticism of Christi- anity, which had assumed Eurocentric dimensions, as the devil’s religion. Consequently, a Christian women’s group spitefully petitioned Parliament to block the NOI’s Saviours’ Day Convention in Ghana.52 Some “Ghanaian [Christians] read Farrakhan’s warnings that whites were using religion to recolonize Africa as an open appeal for support for Islam in the face of the growing popularity of the Christian evangelism in Ghana and throughout Africa”.53 Many also deemed the NOI’s use of biblical ideas to support their doctrines and liberation theology as intentional misinterpretations of the Bible. In their estimation, the NOI was a threat to the sanctity of Christi- anity. This inspired their opposition to the NOI’s steady intrusion into the country. No wonder there were demonstrations of some Christians in 1993 to protest against NOI’s plan to hold the Saviours’ Day in Ghana. Accord- ing to Professor David G. Du Bois, “An attack in the media emanating from Christian elite . . . even discouraged Ghanaian Muslims from wanting to be part of it”54 Reacting to the opposition to the Saviours’ Day and by extension the NOI in Ghana, Farrakhan, it is reported, thanked all Ghanaians and added, “I don’t really believe they heard my message”.55 Nevertheless, it was Rawlings and state assistance that sustained the NOI’s public currency. On his visits, Farrakhan always made pronouncements that supported the PNDC’s orientation and credo of probity and accountability and self-help. He vocally praised Rawlings and his political achievements since his first political takeover with the Armed Forces Revo- lutionary Council (AFRC) junta in June 1979, and appealed for nationwide support for Rawlings. For example, in 1993, he celebrated the June 4 Revolution anniversary. He endorsed the rationale of the June 4 uprising of 1979, which made Rawlings the head of state for about three months under the AFRC. Consequently, newspaper articles such as “Time Africans Shunned Divisive Tendencies”56 and “June Four Aimed at Stamping Out Corruption”57 reported Farrakhan’s comments in favour of Rawlings and his political ideas and government. 108 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid During the Saviours’ Day celebration, Farrakhan spoke eloquently about Ghana and its connection to the Pan-African and Black emancipatory ideals of the iconic Marcus Garvey. He praised the foresight and wisdom of Ghana’s founders to include in the middle of the Ghanaian flag a black star. He saw in this an imagery that was akin to Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Liner that was the symbol of the return of the Black people to their ancestral home. He praised Ghana as a trailblazer in many respects, including the fact that it was the one country that was willing to take the bull by the horn and host the NOI despite of its rejection by other African countries, including Nigeria, where Farrakhan had made many unsuccessful trips to get its leaders to play host to the NOI. Ideally, Nigeria, as the most populous Black nation in Africa, would have been the best suited to host Black people returning to their roots. Farrakhan, therefore, saw in Ghana a nation of visionary people and leaders who would play a leading role in re-asserting for Black peoples a positive central position and significant role in world affairs. Apart from Farrakhan, whose visits threw light on the NOI, the local functionaries, primarily in Accra, undertook certain activities, such as occasional provision of health services by NOI doctors from the USA and the donation of medical items to hospitals in Accra to showcase the NOI as an entity with a social responsibility. They also endeavoured to connect with students of tertiary institutions by showing them videos, giving them NOI literature, and engaging them in discussions about NOI activities, lectures of Farrakhan, and history, as well as their connection to Black people’s global efforts. NOI’s dignitaries—for example, Akbar Muhammed and Farrakhan—also taught themes that the NOI traditionally dealt with at Pan- African studies and meetings, such as those at the W.E.B. DuBois Centre, in Accra.58 Due to the visibility that the state media gave to the movement and its leader, the broader collective consciousness of Ghanaians carried the knowledge that the NOI was/existed in Ghana. However, the actual catch- ment area of practical activities of the NOI was Accra. Therefore, its organisation became limited and attracted a few followers.59 One cannot tell the number of converts that the NOI made. Up till now, there is no recognisable NOI mosque, even though in 1994 Farrakhan pledged to build a mosque and school in Nima60 and in May 1999 his wife, Khadijah Farrakhan, Akbar Muhammad, and an NOI delegation laid the first bricks to signal the erec- tion of an NOI mosque and school and training centre at Galilea in Weija, a surburb of Accra.61 Present at the ceremony were government ministers including Dr. Muhammad Ibn Chambas, the late Dr. Farouk Braimah, some Imams and Islamic clerics from Ghana, and some Ghanaian and African diasporan guests. Mrs. Farrakhan deemed the proposed project “a small step to our (NOI) obligation to provide quality education and training to our youth.”62 A similar project, the NOI’s first building project in Africa, was undertaken earlier in the Gambia to memorialise Alex Haley, the writer of Roots.63A mosque or temple would have given some infrastructural Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 109 permanence to NOI’s physical presence. Some Ghanaian Muslim affiliates and sympathisers of the NOI are in Accra, but today, a handful of visiting or repatriated African diasporans may claim to be NOI. Gary Karim and his father, Osman Karim, are two such diasporans who still have a doctrinal and ideological allegiance to the NOI but whose recognition of and participation in any NOI operations in Ghana is at best theoretical because, in the words of Gary Karim, “there is no infrastructure on the ground to give vent to NOI beliefs.”64 Apart from what remains in the memory and psyche of some people in the public about Farrakhan and the visibility of the NOI during the 1980 and 1990s, an actual presence of the NOI in Ghana and, more importantly, the Islamic community is not and cannot be physically felt in terms of numbers and infrastructure and social activities. Despite this, the NOI has acquired a place in the history of Ghana.

NOI’s Failure to Gain Roots in Ghana The NOI was too Accra centred and failed to spread its teaching activities and social projects nationwide. Many Ghanaians thus acquainted with its message only through the camera’s lenses and, even so, mainly felt it through Farrakhan’s emotional outbursts during his occasional visits. Occa- sionally, some received firsthand experience about its import from visiting African Americans, the major adherents of the faith. The NOI lacked a conscious proselytisation outside the Greater Accra Region. In the case of other movements, especially the Wahhabiyya, Tijaniyya, Shia, and Ahmadi- yya, they sent “missionaries” nationwide, who settled among localities and engaged in da’wah (Islamic propagation activities). The Wahhabiyya enjoys the active support of the Saudi government in offering scholarships to Ghanaian ulama who have completed sanawi (the equivalent of senior high school) to study in Saudi universities, notably the Islamic University of Madina. They return to propagate the Wahhabi ideology. Ahmadis send their scholars to Pakistan to study. They return as tools for the spreading of the faith. In West Africa, Senegal has remained the spiritual Makkah of Tijaniyya. Iran continues to offer scholarships to Ghanaians to study in Iran. They also return and preach the Shia path. The Iranian government has established the Islamic University College in Ghana, where the Shia ideology is core to academic work. For the NOI, no incentive for study abroad existed, nor was there a clearly designated spiritual nerve centre where potential “evangelists” could go to study and return for the purpose of spreading the faith. Hence the African Americans were themselves required to spread the message. That was problematic. First, the African American was viewed locally as a person whose orientation was primarily Western. Many Ghanaian Muslims view Western ideology as an ideology that is tangential to Islamic ideology. Therefore, African Americans coming from the West and purporting to be preaching Islam, albeit a form of Islam that was different from the one 110 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid practiced locally, were bound to be viewed with scepticism. This created a certain epistemic distance that impeded the absolute acceptance of him/her as a genuine carrier of the message of Islam. Perhaps it was in recognition of this scepticism towards him and his followers that Farrakhan tried to justify the genuineness of the Islamic practice of the NOI at the Saviours’ Day Convention in Accra where he invoked a prophetic saying about the sun rising from the west to justify the genuineness of the NOI. In other words, he was trying to convince his Ghanaian audience, especially those that he called “my Muslim brothers and sisters”, that the NOI’s brand of Islam (coming from the West) was the modern-day guidance/light that the Prophet talked about. In spite of this intellectual rendition of the Prophet’s hadith, many Muslims were still not convinced of the guidance that the NOI was offering. Second, Ghana’s population has a majority section which is illiterate, at least in the secular sense of education—an education whose medium of instruction is English. The message of NOI was mainly delivered in English, and because it lacked adequate local conduits, it was difficult for most people to understand, let alone follow and accept the NOI’s message. As mentioned, the NOI did not put in place infrastructure to support its mission activities and register its physical presence. Apart from the executive support from the government, which was not eternal, the missionary officials on the ground, under Akbar Muhammad, and including himself, were basically left to their own funding and organisational managing devices, with no sustained powerful pump of funding from the NOI’s seat in the USA. Many, therefore, upon finding themselves in a dire financial situation, returned to the USA, which reduced the initial vitality of the NOI’s organisation efforts and sustainability of its ideological impartation work in Ghana.65 The NOI’s promises of building a mosque and health facility for Nima remained unfulfilled. Conversely, the Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Iranian governments built and continue to support the building of mosques, schools, orphanages, and hospitals, which attracted public admiration and led to conversions. The closeness of the NOI’s leadership to Rawlings, which created the impression that it was funded by the government, attracted resentment rather than admiration. Also at the heart of the NOI’s failure to fully anchor in Ghana was its seeming emphasis on the intellectual dimensions of Islam rather than its mystical aspects that purports to have a practical solution to the everyday problems of people. The West African Tijaniyya, also called Jama’at Fay- dat al-Tijaniyya (the Tijaniyya Community of Divine Grace), continues to attract popular allegiance because it purports owning the secrets of divine beneficence (sirr al-rububiya). Based on the customary worldviews of their indigenous communities, Africans generally gravitate to religions that show ability to solve the everyday crises that face them. There are numerous stories about how African chiefs became Muslims because they perceived Islam as having an almost magical solution to their confronting crises. Yaji, Kano’s chief from 1349–1385, pioneered the Muslim worship when, reportedly, he Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 111 converted to Islam because a Wangara holy man prayed for his victory in battle.66 Another story attributes the introduction of Islam to Dagbon in Northern Ghana to a Wangara holy man who won the Dagomba over to Islam because Zangina, the Dagomba chief, thought that he aided him mys- tically to remove the Gonja hegemony over Dagbon.67 Thus the Dagomba remains the most Islamised ethnic group in Ghana. Reportedly, Ndewura Jakpa, who founded the Gonja chiefdom, had a permanent Muslim cleric, Muhammad Al-Abyad, who helped him win battles through a magical staff decorated with amulets containing Qur’anic writings.68 Considering that the NOI and its missionaries did not engage in any exorcism exercises or faith-healing activities, it naturally was challenged in its ability to attract the admiration and allegiance of most Ghanaians. Even the Wahhabiyya, which initially purported to be puritanical, has resorted to faith healing in order to hold and retain the allegiance of its adherents. The NOI has unceasingly campaigned that Islam is humankind’s and not for Arab or any other group’s monopoly, and that Arabo-centric Islam tainted by racism of certain Arabs should be rejected. This led Farrakhan to caution,

Be careful how you spread Islam . . . . [don’t] spread a cultural imperialism in the name of Islam . . . If you feel that Islam is the true path, then ask me to accept Islam but don’t try to make me an Arab when I am African. Allow me to keep my African personality, my African culture . . . . [I]n Africa . . . the seed of white supremacy is even seen in Islam in the way some of my Arab brothers treat their African brothers in Islam. They are not treated as equal. They are treated as somebody who joined a faith that doesn’t belong to them.69

This confrontation of the hegemony of Arabs and other non-Africans, such as Iranian and Pakistanis, in Islam, which the NOI deems as white supremacy and racism against Africans/Blacks, must have seemed very extreme and distasteful to most Muslims, since by that stance, the NOI in fact challenges the sources of spirituality and even financial sustenance of the Shia, Sunni, and even Ahmadi Muslims. Moreover, the tacit support of Rawlings for the NOI fundamentally seemed advantageous, yet it also alienated many people from the movement. Rawlings certainly had many enemies, especially among the Muslim population. Rawlings outraged the Muslim community when his June 4 Revolution demolished a mosque in Accra’s central business district around 1979. It was part of his campaign against hoarding and profiteering. Simi- lar to Prime Minister Busia’s case, Rawlings was resentful because of the popular belief that most small businesses were owned by Muslims, many of whom were considered non-indigenes, and the mosque in the heart of Accra was a sort of sanctuary for them. In his view, however, his action was not impious; rather, it was an effort to prevent God’s house from becoming “a den of thieves and robbers.” The Muslim community, however, did not take 112 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid this kindly. Quoting the Qur’an to buttress his point, Alhaji Bashiru Baba Waiz, a prominent Muslim cleric of Kumasi and opponent of Rawlings, told the authors of this paper that, the demolishing was rather a declaration of war on Allah and His messenger,70 for the Qur’an expresses abhorrence for the pulling down of mosques thus

“had Allah not checked one set of people by means of another, there would surely have been pulled down monasteries, churches, synagogues and mosques in which the name of Allah is commemorated in abundant measure. Allah will certainly aid those who aid His cause, for verily Allah is full of strength, exalted in might. (Q: 22:40)

Therefore, many Muslims classified Rawlings an enemy of Allah and one of the wagers of war against Allah and His messenger. His ally, Farrakhan, was not spared in that hatred, and that certainly was a huge stumbling block for the fortunes of the NOI.

Conclusion The NOI made its first official contact with Ghana in 1985. With state backing and a revolutionary message, it held a lot of promise for spreading the message of Islam and inspiring a new generation of positive-thinking Africans. Nearly three decades after this initial contact however, the dream has all but fully manifested. Perhaps it will be re-dreamt as long as Ghana continues to maintain its renowned historical position as a symbol of Pan Africanism. Perhaps the NOI’s outreach efforts will be rekindled. Akbar Muhammad, the NOI’s first ambassador to Ghana, has virtually left the shores of Ghana. In 2014, he came to Ghana to attend the funeral rites of his daughter, Sumaiyah Aziz, who lived in Ghana. Like him, some key official members continue to undertake private and incognito visits to Ghana.71 Many factors have been responsible for this state of affairs. The NOI’s core messages about Allah and prophethood have not resonated with a Ghana- ian Muslim population that is fiercely conservative. The NOI’s association with Rawlings proved to be a double-edged sword; it seemed advantageous in the beginning, but it also blunted its potential for growth. It must have been unfathomable to sections of the Muslim population for the NOI to claim to defend Islam and openly ally with someone they deemed waged war against Allah and His messenger. This enhanced the mistrust that sections in the Muslim communities had for the NOI. Love is not the reward for those who “wage war against Allah and His messenger”; rather, it is “execution . . . or . . . the cutting off of hands and feet . . . or exile from the land” (Q 5:33). Therefore, rather than provide oxygen for the fire of the NOI, Farrakhan’s association with Rawlings was, quite manifestly, the water that doused it. Indubitably, Rawlings’s exit from the political scene Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 113 after 2000 was a major event that sapped the energy of the NOI to grow and thrive in Ghana. For many Ghanaians, the revolutionary language of Farrakhan resonated, but they were determined to remain firmly within the Ghanaian cultural and social milieux.72

Notes 1. Michael E. Dyson, Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 9. 2. Louis Farrakhan, Saviours’ Day Celebration Speech in Accra, Ghana, 1994. Video in possession of authors. 3. Muhammad Ibn Ismail Al-Bukhari, Sahih Al-Bukhari, trans. Muhsin Khan, Bei- rut: Dar-al-Arabia, n.d, vol. 8, 338. 4. Farrakhan, op.cit. 5. Al-Bukhari, op.cit. 6. For example, see Maize Woodford, “A Chronology: Farrakhan’s “World Friend- ship Tour” to Africa and the Middle East: January-February 1996”, The Black Scholar 26.3–4 (1996), 35–40, for sketch on the chronology and highlights of his itinerary of the 1996 Tour. 7. Kevin K. Gaines, American Africans in Ghana (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 275. 8. Ibid. 9. Nuri Tinaz, “Black Islam in Diaspora: The Case of Nation of Islam (NOI) in Britain”, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 26.2 (August 2006), 153. 10. I. Wallerstein, “The Construction of Peoplehood, Racism, Nationalism, Ethnic- ity”, in Race, Class and Nation, ed. E. Balibar and I. Wallerstein (London: Verso, 1991), 78 as cited by Tinaz, ibid., 153. 11. Tinaz, op.cit., 154. 12. Ibid., 153. 13. Dawn-Marie Gibson, A History of the Nation of Islam (Santa Barbara: Preagar/ ABC-CLIO, 2012), 135. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Cited in Gibson, op.cit 135. 17. Interview with Rabbi Kohain Natanyah Ha Levi, repatriated African American and leader of the Bereshith Hashuvah Black Jews Group in Elmina, Ghana, since the 1980s and executive secretary for PANAFEST, Ghana, on 30th November, 2014. 18. Gaines, op.cit., p. 2. 19. Interview, Ha Levi, op.cit. 20. Mattias Gardell, “The Sun of Islam Will Rise in the West: Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam in the Latter Days,” in Muslim Communities in North America, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 34. 21. This Arabic term connotes the universal community of Muslims. Here it means the family of Muslims in Ghana. 22. See Joseph Dupuis, Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London: Henry Col- burn, 1824); Mervyn Hiskett, The Development of Islam in West Africa (Lon- don: Longman 1984). 23. Hiskett, Ibid., 133. 24. Misbahudeen Ahmed-Rufai, “The Muslim Association Party: A Test of Reli- gious Politics in Ghana,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, New Series 6 (2002), 104. 114 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid 25. Alcione M. Amos and Ebenezer Ayesu, “I am Brazilian: History of the Tabon, Afro-Brazilians in Accra, Ghana,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, New Series 6 (2002) 39. 26. Ibid. 41. 27. Howard W. French, “Some surprises meet Nation of Islam visitors on Ghana Tour”, New York Times, October 9, 19941, accessed 25 November 2013, www. nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world.some-surprises-meet-nation-of-islam-visitors- on-ghana-tour.html. 28. Ghanaian Chronicle, October, 10–12, 1994, 5. 29. Interview with Shaykh Muhammad Abubakar Moomen in Cape Coast on 21 April 2016. 30. Ibid. 31. Interview, Ha Levi, op.cit. 32. Interview with Gary Karim, repatriated African American in Cape Coast, Ghana. He was born into the NOI. June 2014. 33. Interview with Gary Karim and Osman Karim, NOI members, in Cape Coast, Ghana, 25 April 2016. 34. Interview, Moomen, op.cit. 35. Interview with Dr. Alhaji Abdulsalaam Adam, Ghanaian Islamic cleric and university lecturer in Cape Coast, Ghana, 19 April 2016. 36. The Libyan leader espouses ideas that he opines offer solutions to African and global economic problems and the problem of oligarchic democracy, which robs the masses of their authority in this book. He introduces his “Third Universal Theory” and articulates his views about direct democracy or Jamahariyya. See M. Al Gathafi, The Green Book (Reading: Ithaca Press, 2005). 37. Gibson, op.cit., 99. 38. Abamfo Atiemo, “Zetaheal Mission in Ghana: Christians and Muslims Wor- shipping together?” Exchange 32.1 (2003), 33. 39. Reinhart Hummel, “Contemporary New Religious Movement in the West”, in New Religious Movements and the Churches, ed. Allan R Brockway and J. Paul Rajashekar (Geneva: WCC, 1987), 21 cited in Abamfo Atiemo, “Zetaheal Mis- sion in Ghana: Christians and Muslims Worshipping together?” Exchange, 32.1 (2003), 33. 40. Samuel Gyanfosu, “A Traditional Religion Reformed: Vincent Kwabena Damuah and the Afrikania Movement, 1982–2000,” in Christianity and the African Imagination—Essays in Honour of Adrian Hastings, ed. David Maxwell and Ingrid Lawrie (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 271–294. 41. Lamin Sanneh, “The Domestication of Islam and Christianity in African Societies. A Methodological Exploration”, Journal of Religion in Africa, 11.1 (1980), 2. 42. Gibson, op.cit., 98. 43. Interview, Gary Karim, op.cit. 44. Gaines, op.cit., 275. 45. Ibid. 46. Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, an Islamic scholar and university lecturer in Ghana, was once the patron of the DYLG in Nelerigu Secondary School in Northern Ghana. 47. Ibid., 275. 48. Gwen Gilmore, “Ghana extends warm welcome to Nation of Islam”, The Balti- more Afro-American, October 29, 1994, B8. 49. Minister Farrakhan Speaking in Accra, Ghana—1994, uploaded by Ahmed 770, April 3, 2009, accessed 25 November 2013, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Gjz8K-yJpJc. 50. Howard W. French, “Some surprises meet Nation of Islam visitors on Ghana Tour”, New York Times, October 9, 1994, accessed 25 November 2013, www.nytimes. com/1994/10/09/world.some-surprises-meet-nation-of-islam-visitors-on-ghana- tour.html. Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 115 51. Ghanaian Chronicle, October, 10–12, 1994, 5. 52. Clifton E. Marsh, The Lost Found Nation of Islam in America (Lanham: Scare- crow Press and Rowman and Littlefield Publishing, 2000), 148–149. 53. Gianes, op.cit. 275. 54. Marsh, op.cit., 148–149. 55. Final Call, vol. 14, No 1. 1994, 34. 56. Ghanaian Times, Monday, May 31, 1993, 1. 57. Daily Graphic, June 1, 1993. 58. Interview, Gary Karim, op.cit. 59. Steven J. Salm and Toyin Falola, Culture and Customs of Ghana (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002), 53. 60. Final Call, November 2, 1994, as cited in Marsh, op.cit., 149. 61. “First Bricks laid for Nation of lslam Mosque/School in Ghana”, The New York Amsterdam News, June 24–June 30, 1999, 2. 62. “First Brick Laid for Nation of Islam mosque/school & training centre in Ghana”, Final Call Online, accessed 11 July 2014, http://www.finalcall.com/ international/1999/ghana-noi6–1–99.html. 63. “Alex Haley Mosque to open in Africa”, The New York Amsterdam News, June 10-June 16, 1999, 48. 64. Interview, Gary Karim, op.cit. 65. Interview, Ha Levi, op.cit.; Interview, Gary Karim, op.cit, June 2014. 66. Abd al-Rahman Al-Sa’di, Tarikh al-Sudan, (trans.) and (ed.) O. Houdas and E. Benoist, 2nd Ed. (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1964),. 67. Hiskett, op.cit., 122. 68. Nehemia Levtzion, Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa (Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1968), 121. 69. Final Call, November 2, 1994, 31. 70. Interview with Alhaji Bashiru Baba Al-Waiz on 18 September 2009. 71. Interview, Ha Levi, op.cit.; Interview, Osman Karim, op.cit. 72. Gaines, op.cit., 275.

Works Cited Adam, Alhaji Abdulsalaam. Interviewed by De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway and Mus- tapha Abdul-Hamid. April 19, 2016. Ahmed-Rufai, Misbahudeen. “The Muslim Association Party: A Test of Religious Politics in Ghana.” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 6 (2002): 99–114. al-Bukhari, Muhammad b. Ismail. Sahih Al-Bukhari, vols 8. translated by Muhsin Khan. Beirut: Dar-al-Arabia. “Alex Haley Mosque To Open in Africa.” The New York Amsterdam News. June 10–16, 1999, 48. al-Gathafi, Muammar. The Green Book. Reading: Ithaca Press, 2005. al-Sa’di, Abd al-Rahman. Tarikh al-Sudan. Edited and translated by O. Houdas and E. Benoist. 2nd ed. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1964. al-Waiz, Alhaji Bashiru Baba. Interviewed by De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway and Mus- tapha Abdul-Hamid. September 18, 2009. Amos Alcione M. and Ayesu, Ebenezer. “I Am Brazilian: History of the Tabon, Afro- Brazilians in Accra, Ghana.” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 6 (2002): 35–58. Atiemo, Abamfo. “Zetaheal Mission in Ghana: Christians and Muslims Worshipping together?” Exchange 32.1 (2003): 15–36. 116 Botchway and Abdul-Hamid [Untitled.] Daily Graphic. June 1, 1993. Dupuis, Joseph. Journal of a Residence in Ashantee. London: 1824. Dyson, Michael E. Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Farrakhan, Louis. “Minister Farrakhan Speaking in Accra, Ghana—1994.” April 3, 2009. Accessed November 25, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Gjz8K-yJpJc. ——. Saviours’ Day Celebration Speech in Accra, Ghana, 1994. Video recording. [Untitled.] The Final Call January 14, 1994, 34. [Untitled.] The Final Call, November 2, 1994, 31. “First Bricks Laid for Nation of lslam Mosque/School in Ghana.” The New York Amsterdam News. June 24–30, 1999, 2. “First Brick Laid for Nation of Islam Mosque/School & Training Centre in Ghana.” Final Call Online. Accessed July 11, 2014, http://www.finalcall.com/interna tional/1999/ghana-noi6–1—99.html. French, Howard W. “Some Surprises Meet Nation of Islam Visitors on Ghana Tour.” New York Times, October 9, 1994, 1, www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world. some-surprises-meet-nation-of-islam-visitors-on-ghana-tour.html Accessed November 25, 2013. Gaines, Kevin K. American Africans in Ghana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Gardell, Mattias. “The Sun of Islam Will Rise in the West: Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam in the Latter Days.” In Muslim Communities in North Amer- ica, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith, 15–49. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. [Untitled.] Ghanaian Chronicle, October, 10–12, 1994, 5. [Untitled.] Ghanaian Times, Monday, May 31, 1993, 1. Gibson, Dawn-Marie. A History of the Nation of Islam: Race, Islam, and the Quest for Freedom. Santa Barbara: Praegar/ABC-CLIO, 2012. Gilmore, Gwen. “Ghana Extends Warm Welcome to Nation of Islam.” The Balti- more Afro-American. October 29, 1994, B8. Gyanfosu, Samuel. “A Traditional Religion Reformed: Vincent Kwabena Damuah and the Afrikania Movement, 1982–2000.” In Christianity and the African Imagination—Essays in Honour of Adrian Hastings. ed. David Maxwell and Ingrid Lawrie, 271–294. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Ha Levi, Rabbi Kohain Natanyah. Interviewed by De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway and Mustapha Abdul-Hamid. November 30, 2014. Hiskett, Mervyn. The Development of Islam in West Africa. London: Longman, 1984. Hummel, Reinhart. “Contemporary New Religious Movement in the West.” In New Religious Movements and the Churches. eds. Allan R Brockway and J. Paul Rajashekar, 16–29. Geneva: WCC, 1987. Karim, Gary. Interviewed by De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway and Mustapha Abdul- Hamid. April 25, 2016. Karim, Osman. Interviewed by De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway and Mustapha Abdul- Hamid. April 25, 2016. Levtzion, Nehemia. Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. Marsh, Clifton E. The Lost Found Nation of Islam in America. Lanham: Scarecrow Press and Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. Was It a Nine Days Wonder? 117 Moomen, Shaykh Muhammad Abubakar. Interviewed by De-Valera N.Y.M. Botch- way and Mustapha Abdul-Hamid. April 21, 2016. Salm, Steven J. and Toyin Falola. Culture and Customs of Ghana. Westport: Green- wood Press, 2002. Sanneh, Lamin. “The Domestication of Islam and Christianity in African Societies: A Methodological Exploration.” Journal of Religion in Africa 11.1 (1980): 1–12. Tinaz, Nuri. “Black Islam in Diaspora: The Case of Nation of Islam (NOI) in Brit- ain.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 26.2 (August 2006): 151–170. Wallerstein, I. “The Construction of Peoplehood, Racism, Nationalism, Ethnicity.” In Race, Class and Nation, ed. E. Balibar and I. Wallerstein, 71–85. London: Verso, 1991. Woodford, Maize. “A Chronology: Farrakhan’s ‘World Friendship Tour’ to Africa and the Middle East: January-February 1996.” The Black Scholar 26.3–4 (1996): 35–40. 7 The Nation of Islam and Japanese Imperial Ambitions

Frank Jacob

Introduction Despite the fact that one would not usually connect the history of the Nation of Islam with that of Japan, the interrelationship of American religion and Japanese imperial ambitions is especially visible in the history of the Nation. Japan’s interest in the Islamic world became especially strong as a consequence of its antagonism toward the Russian Empire, where many Muslims were longing for liberation. The Ottoman Empire, as a traditional enemy of the Czarist ambitions, became the first potential ally of the Japanese government.1 During the Russo-Japanese War (1904/05), the people in the Islamic world, especially the Ottoman population, celebrated the success of Japan, which was seen as the first non-European nation that was able to counter Western imperialism.2 As the first modern Asian great power, Japan became an idol of colonial emancipation and modernization, especially for the members of the Young Turks, who claimed it to be a model nation for a successful path to modernity.3 However, in the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese military also tried to influence the members of the Nation of Islam to form a fifth column during the Second World War. The Pan-Islamism that was initiated since 1900, consequently, was radicalized to attract the American Muslims of the Nation to act as agents of Japanese imperialism on U.S. soil. The relationship between Japan and the Nation of Islam is an interesting aspect of this attempt, which will be analyzed in the present chapter. I will first present a survey of the Islam-oriented policy of Japan from the end of the Russo-Japanese War until the Second World War. Second, the Nation of Islam and its branches, which were contacted by a Japanese agent in the 1930s, will be discussed to finally highlight the existing bonds between the Nation and Japan. In addition, the international perspective on the Nation of Islam will be provided as well as a description of Japanese war-oriented strategies of cultural counter-insurgency. While Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) tried to establish a Pan-Islamist movement to unite the resistance against Western imperialism, Japan would use the idea to create its own expansionist approach based on religious ideas. Islam was consequently a strategic factor that played an important The Nation of Islam 119 role in the first half of the twentieth century, making the Nation of Islam also a part of Asia’s transnational history.4 Following the Russo-Japanese War, a diplomatic relationship was established because one hoped to imitate a Japanese modernization that still left room for traditional non-European values.5 This pragmatic approach was an expression of the fear of being left behind the great powers, which would dominate the Ottoman Empire and other colonial or semi-colonial spheres in the future. In addition to these official approaches, individuals tried to get in contact with Japan for support with their resistance movements. From the Japanese side, those contacts were established by right-wing secret societies such as the Amur Society and the Black Ocean Society.6 These organizations expected the Islamic populations of Russia and Southeast Asia to become a strategic element in a future war, when they would influence the war itself by acting as a fifth column. Especially in Southeast Asia, where a majority of Muslims are still living today, Islam was of tremendous importance.7 The pro-Islamic-Japanese policy since 1905 was therefore an element of the military strategic planning, even if the first contacts were established by the aforementioned societies. While Islam could provide an antagonist expression of social or ethnic secession,8 it could also function as a unifying force.9 More than ever before, this force was growing during the Second World War as a result of which anti-colonial movements grew, and Islamic circles demanded a discussion of existing borders and ruling systems around the globe.10 Consequently, Japan tried to use the growing Muslim self-consciousness since 1905 to prepare a strategic advantage for future wars against Russia and the United States.

Islam and Japan It was not until the Meiji Restoration in 1868 that the first knowledge about Islam arrived in Japan. Eight years later, the first biography of the prophet Muhammad was published in Japanese, but it was not until 1920 that the Qur’an was translated into Japanese.11 During the years following the events of the forced opening of Japan in 1853 by American diplomatic and military pressure, the government was more interested in a speedy westernization than in Islamic beliefs and theology. Consequently, the final introduction of the other religion and its written evidences went through a Western filter, due to which “Islam being introduced to Japan in this way was seen through European eyes.”12 However, it was never successful in the East Asian country. Those who converted to Islam in Japan had different motives. Aside from religious attraction, they were motivated by intellectual sympathy, but mainly it was a cover for strategic or intelligence operations by the Japanese military that animated Japanese men to convert to the foreign religion.13 The initial impetus for those religious changes was achieved by an Islamic circle in Japan, which came into existence after the Russo-Japanese War, 120 Frank Jacob which started the reception of Japan in the Middle East. Pan-Islamists, such as Ahmad Fadzli in Egypt, depicted the Japanese Empire as the best possible example of orientation and as the first power in the fight against Western imperialism.14 Having euphorically celebrated the victories of the Japanese soldiers against the Czarist Empire, some anti-Russian or anti-imperialist intellectuals started their journey to Japan to learn how to become stronger.15 Consequently, many intellectuals from China, India, and the Middle East arrived in the following years. Due to this, Japan became a center of Pan-Turkish16 and Islamic Tartars from Russia. For the Pan-Asianist circles, the new guests provided an intellectual approach to the anti-Russian movements, which would be used in the Mus- lim regions of Russia and the Middle East to broaden the Japanese influence as a great power.17 The Pan-Asian vision of a liberation of Asia was thereby transformed into an ideology, which also claimed the liberation of the Islamic world. Due to this, the Iranian Revolution in 1906, the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, and the Turkish Republican Revolution in 1923, as well as the Indian independence movement, which was led by Gandhi or Nehru, were used to declare a modernization of Asia that followed the Japanese model.18 Pan-Islamists such as Ōkawa Shūmei19 claimed, “Japan needs to ride the wave of modern political currents in the Islamic world.”20 The Japanese aims remained vague, but many Muslims hoped for an equal position between their own aspirations for liberation and the supporters’ long-term targets. One of the most important Islamic scholars who reached Japan was Abdürreşid Ibrahim (1853–1944),21 a Tartar who wanted to achieve a Japan-like modernization of the Muslim world and a liberation from Rus- sian suppression.22 He met with members of the aforementioned Amur Society and Black Ocean Society—namely, Uchida Ryohei and Toyama Mitsuru. Both of these men had good relations with the military23 and tried to promote the cause of Ibrahim, who wanted to meet as many influential Japanese people as possible.24 Due to their activities, the members of these secret societies “pioneered contacts with Muslims”25 in the same way as they had established a Pan-Asian network in Korea, China, Mon- golia, India, and the Philippines. In 1909, the Asian Reawakening Society (Ajia Gikai) was founded to become the “propaganda arm of Japan in the Islamic world”26 and a meeting circle for Pan-Islamists as well as Pan-Asianists alike.27 Tartars, Chinese revolutionaries, Indian philosophers, and many other intellectuals met there to discuss the future of Asia, always observed by members of the right- wing societies, whose members were looking for strategic advantages in the future. One of these members would finally become the first Japanese Muslim. Yamaoka Kotaro,28 who would be called Haji Omar Yamaoka in the future, converted to Islam and accompanied Ibrahim to Mecca in late 1909.29 During his journey to the Middle East, the members of the Amur Society regularly lectured on the relationship between Islam and Japan to The Nation of Islam 121 promote a better cooperation.30 Following his explanation, the East Asian country and the Middle Eastern Islamic nations would symbolize two cita- dels on the flanks of the world. Following his arrival in Mecca, Yamaoka returned by visiting Damas- cus, Beirut, and Istanbul, where he continued his propaganda tour.31 As with some of the later Japanese Muslims, the journey to Mecca was the consequence of an imperial attempt to use “Muslims (. . .) creating a militant defiance against the rule of Western imperialism will be convincing as potential collaborators in the quest for a Japanese Asian empire.”32 Despite this steady interest in Islam as a political propaganda tool, the Islamic circle in Japan and its influence remained peripheral.33 However, another wave of pro-Islamism ran through the military in the 1930s, when Japanese officers were willing to support Islamic circles again. In the mid-1930s, further groups that would promote Islamic studies were established. The Institute of Islamic Sphere was one of the new organizations that also published a bulletin, which was called Islamic Sphere.34 Between the 1920s and the 1930s, five pilgrimages to Mecca were organized, as a result of which the relationship with the Islamic anti-imperialist movements was strengthened.35 Despite this organizational support, the total number of Japanese Muslims remained low, because most of them were ordered to convert to serve the aim of their home country. A Japanese intervention in Muslim communities would provide a strategic advantage in the northern regions of China as well as Southeast Asia. One of the representative literary works for that course was Wakabayashi Han’s publication The World of Islam and Japan (Kaikyô sekai to Nihon), which had an impact with regard to the spread of ideas of an interrelationship between the two factors of world history. However, there were not only books on the topic; different groups were also formed in the 1930s to underline Japanese ambitions with regard to its pro-Islamic policy. For example, in 1932, the Study Group of Islamic Culture was founded, followed by the Islam Study Society (Isuramu Gakkai) in 1935.36 In addition, the Japanese military had a growing interest in the different Islamic circles of Western China, especially since the imperialist ambitions had grown.37 Already during the Mukden Incident in 1931, the staff officers had tried to use the Chinese Muslims as a counterpart against Chinese nationalism, which was mainly anti-Japanese by its nature.38 One had also planned to enthrone Abdül Kerim Efendi (1904–1945), an Ottoman prince, as an independent Islamic ruler in Inner Asia.39 Thereby another puppet state, in this case of Muslim nature, would have come into existence to secure Japanese supremacy on the Asian continent. The Japa- nese policy, therefore, provides an example of how a diaspora or a pan movement was used in a political way to strengthen the imperialist advancement of a nation state that had no traditional connection to the specific religion. Islam was used as a strategic factor. Consequently, during Muslim- oriented rebellions in Yinjang (1931–1943, 1936), the Japanese were eager 122 Frank Jacob to support the Pan-Islamist and Pan-Turkist circles there, whose members had contacted the military attaches in Japan to get support.40 With growing antagonism toward the United States since the 1930s, the Nation of Islam also entered the focus of Japan’s military planners.

Why the Nation of Islam? The Nation of Islam, which had developed from the religious traditions of Noble Drew Ali’s (1886–1929) Moorish-American Science Temple and the secular ideas of Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), was able to provide its members with a strong feeling of spiritual and cultural belonging.41 It was this “need for identity and the desire for self-government” of the African American community that made people join the Nation of Islam, especially in the economic crisis of the early 1930s.42 It is true that

the eschatology of the Nation of Islam shows the black nationalists’ desire to free themselves from the exploited image of blackness and hence from the deep feeling of self-rejection, cultural alienation, and social estrange- ment which pervade and corrupt the personalities of the Negro masses.43

The Nation of Islam, which was based on the charismatic impact of two leaders.44 Wallace D. Fard, who is said by his followers to have been Arabian, was the first leader of the movement, but almost nothing is really known about this man who disappeared without a trace in 1934. Elijah Muhammad declared later that Fard himself had been God, which made Muhammad a prophet and the only authority on religious questions.45 Fard had been able to recruit 8,000 followers in Detroit, but Muhammad spread the influence of the new organization and established branches in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Washington, DC.46 A group of loyal supporters who followed his leadership backed Muhammad. In April 1934, he was arrested because he refused to send his children to school, and in 1935, the Nation of Islam was part of a courtroom riot in Chicago, which had to be ended by 150 policemen.47 As the messenger of Allah, Muhammad used his influence on the Nation to preach an anti-nationalist message. White culture was seen to be responsible for the African American suppression. It was consequently demanded that the members of the Nation refuse American culture in general as well as military service and Christianity in particular.48 His teachings were “esoteric in nature, centered upon eschatological and apocalyptic hopes”.49 Moreover, they were undoubtedly racialist, because Muhammad saw it as his

duty to show them (members of the Nation of Islam, F. J.) that the white race and Christianity are their enemies, and to warn that in the day of the judgment, those Negroes who have not heeded his warning will per- ish along with the devils (the Caucasian race).50 The Nation of Islam 123 The ideas of the Nation of Islam claimed that African Americans were part of an Asian Black Nation, specifically the so-called tribe of Shabazz, and Fard Muhammad in addition established “a paramilitary self-defense corps, the Fruit of Islam”51 that had to secure the Nation of Islam’s meetings against external interference, but could also be used as a violent action arm of the messenger. As the religious beliefs of the Nation of Islam were based on the assumption that Allah would return before the year 2000 and start a new era of African American rule, the growing conflict between the United States and Japan could be seen as a first sign of the nearing of the awaited Armageddon, a thought that Muhammad was still preaching in the 1960s.52 For the Japanese, who had already had experiences with Islamic movements, an approach to the Nation of Islam seemed simply natural in a time of growing potential for conflict between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

The Nation of Islam and Japanese Ambitions Black Nationalism in the United States was in most forms a separatist movement, because it aspired to segregation from the existing white-dominated society. While its history had seen a Pan-African movement,53 as well as a literary Black Nationalism, dating back to the late 1850s,54 it mainly “has its root in these urban tensions and in the hopeless frustration which the Negroes experience in trying to identify themselves and their aspirations with white society”,55 a factor which increased during the depression years, thereby stimulating the success of the Nation of Islam. Having to choose between “race-distancing elitists, race-embracing rebels, and race- transcending prophets”,56 many African American intellectuals were able to sympathize with the Nation of Islam, because it offered a new perspective for the definition of Black Nationalism as well.57 The “wishful image of the post-apocalypse Black Nation”58 determined Muhammad’s messianic preachings. Like Malcom X in later years,59 he criticized the disunity of the African Americans, whom he believed to be mislead by Christianity. However, the disunity was not only a problem between the Black Nationalists but also inside the Nation of Islam. Its theology, its aims, and its power structure were always open to criticism by internal competi- tors for leadership. While it was stated that the origin of the Nation of Islam could be traced back to the already mentioned Black Asian Nation60—this created a possible cooperation with Japan—Muhammad claimed that the ancestors of the humans of African origin had lived on the moon before the earth started to exist at all:

At one time this earth and the moon were one planet, but one of our greatest scientists became dissatisfied because he could not make all the people speak the same language and so he decided to destroy all the people and caused a great explosion on the moon. The moon was 124 Frank Jacob blasted out, twelve thousand miles from the original orbit. The earth fell thirty-six thousand miles from the original orbit. This is the earth we now live in. The part that was called the moon capsized and the life on that part was destroyed. The other part—the Earth—was able to retain its water and life. The name of the scientist who caused the explosion has never been revealed. The Messenger has taught us that at one time the whole planet was called “moon” and we are called “the people of the moon.” I understand that there are some tribes in Africa who refer to themselves as people of the moon.61

Now the African Americans were waiting for relief that would lead them back to their former importance, because the members of the Nation of Islam depicted themselves as the chosen ones of the Black Nation.62 They had to ensure that no racial mixture took place, because this would weaken the power of the African Americans, who were the generators of all civilization. Consequently, the “African people are determined to rid their land of the captors, to return to the culture and civilization which they enjoyed before the slave captors and traders invaded their lands.”63 The white race was depicted as a group of devils, who “were released on the coming of Columbus, and his finding of this Western Hemisphere. They have been here now over 400 years. Their worst and most unpardonable sins were the bringing of the so-called Negroes here to do their labor.”64 Armageddon would restore the black supremacy after the 6,000 years of Satan’s rule and would destroy the white devils, but the final judgment day would not come surprisingly. Due to this, the members of the Nation of Islam frenetically celebrated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.65 However, this was not the only Islamic-Japanese connection. Since 1930, a real connection existed between a Japanese agent, Satohata Takahashi, and a former minister of the Nation of Islam, Abdul Muhammad.66 They are reported to have resided together in Detroit in the early 1930s67 according to the FBI’s investigation. Abdul Muhammad, who had left the Nation of Islam as a consequence of internal struggles, wanted to create a new Islamic circle funded with Japanese money. Connecting Satohata’s approach with the Islamic policy of Japan on the Asian mainland during the same time, it seemed only natural that the Japanese military would prepare the Muslim trump card in all regions that might become important for a future war. Satohata, however, was not only well connected in the Black Muslim circles of that time. The FBI really regarded the “negro organizer and agent of the Black Dragon Society of Japan”68 as a possible threat. Abdul Muhammad established the Society for the Development of Our Own (SDOO) and attracted other members of the Nation of Islam to join the new organization. It is unclear whether Takahashi acted as an agent of the Japanese military or the Amur Society, which, as mentioned earlier, was active in the establishment of Japanese-Muslim relationships since the beginning of the twentieth century and also had close relationships with the The Nation of Islam 125 Japanese military as well as the foreign office. He also later claimed that it was he who was responsible for the founding of the new society after a dispute with his host:

TAKAHASHI said that he left (Abdul Mohammad’s) home after two week stay because he thought him a “fraud.” Thereafter, according to TAKAHASHI, he founded an organization really for the best interest of negroes, called Development of Our Own.69

The Japanese agent seems to have entered the United States through Can- ada in 1929 and met Abdul Muhammad due to anti-American agitations in Seattle.70 The last named asked the Japanese for financial support to establish the SDOO, and Satohata agreed because he wanted to establish a broad anti-American agitation throughout the country, which would be used as a fifth column in the case of growing U.S.-Japanese antagonism.71 Despite the close connection, the effect seemed to be rather negligible, because Satohata had to finish his personal engagement due to bad health.72 In addition, in December 1933, FBI arrested Satohata and deported him to Japan in 1934. At the end of the 1930s, he returned again to proceed with his work, but neither the SDOO nor the Japanese agent became really influential. Satohata was arrested again in 1939,73 and the link between the Nation of Islam and the Japanese money seemed to have been destroyed. The Nation of Islam remained untouched by a direct Japanese influence, even if Japan’s policy was seen in a messianic way. If the Japanese military and secret service had put more effort into this field, it might have become a real danger during the war years when African American activists established protests against racism in the United States, leading to race riots in 1943.74 However, the FBI not only monitored Afro- American newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier, Detroit Tribune, and Chicago Defender but also supervised the Nation of Islam, knowing that the religious movement could become a problem during the war. The fact that Elijah Muhammad had been in jail since 1942 throughout the whole dangerous war period, because he had demanded that the members of the Nation of Islam deny recruitment for the army, luckily made the Nation of Islam phlegmatic for a while. In the meanwhile, Japan continually tried “to befriend [Muslims] as allies in the construction of a new Asia under Japanese domination.”75 Rumors spread that Emperor Hirohito might convert to Islam,76 and the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, knowing about the case of the 1930s, feared an infiltration of Muslim circles by Japanese agents.77 The Nation of Islam thereby was not the only suspicious organization in the United States: the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, the Moors, the Iron Defense Legion, and the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World were all supervised.78 Without its figurehead, Muhammad, the Nation of Islam seemed to be no real danger, even if the members consequently denied army services.79 With 126 Frank Jacob the ongoing war, Japan had other problems to focus on, and the Islamic trump card could never be really brought into existence, at least in the United States.

Conclusion Japan had tried to establish a global network of pro-Japanese-Muslim circles, and the United States was also partially a piece of the whole plan. It is unclear who sent Satohata to the States, but he tried to establish one of those pro-Japanese-Muslim organizations, the SDOO, which was an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, which had suffered from internal power struggles for many years. Elijah Muhammad claimed to be the sole authority, and Abdul Muhammad, therefore, sought for alternatives, but especially for funding he received from Japanese hands. However, the work of Satohata was recognized, and the spy was arrested and sent back to Japan. A declining interest in the U.S. Muslims from the Japanese side as well as the bad health of Satohata made the operation an intermezzo, which was not able to influence the course of the Second World War from an internal U.S. perspective. However, it shows how religious movements could be used for political targets, a problem the world community is still facing today. It also shows that the Nation of Islam faced the same problem as Black Nationalism in general: a division of interests and internal power struggles. When Wallace Deen Muhammad declared after his father’s death in 1975 that there was no further need to keep the Nation of Islam in existence because Islam would provide a home for its members, Louis Farrakhan took over the organization and continued to preach a message of racism, especially against whites and Jews.80 In the case of Japan, the interest in Islam in the post-war era was also rather driven by economic reasons—a fact that was not only true for the Japanese trade policy,81 especially in a time of growing Islamic economies around the globe. Religious movements and organizations, therefore, always have to face the danger of becoming abused for external aims and ambitions—a fact we have to keep in mind when studying international inter- relationships, especially between Japan and the Nation of Islam.

Notes 1. Selçuk Esenbel, “A Fin de Siècle Japanese Romantic in Istanbul: The Life of Yamada Torajirō and his Toruko Gakan,” in Japan, Turkey and the World of Islam, ed. Selçuk Esenbel (Kent: Global Oriental, 2011), 131. 2. Ibid., 135; Selçuk Esenbel, “The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War on Ottoman Turkey,” in Japan, Turkey and the World of Islam, ed. Selçuk Esenbel (Kent: Global Oriental, 2011), 148; Reinhard Schulze, Geschichte der islamischen Welt im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994), 48. 3. Selçuk Esenbel, “Remarks on the Modernization of Japan and Turkey in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” in Japan, Turkey and the World of Islam, ed. Selçuk Esenbel (Kent: Global Oriental, 2011), 217. The Nation of Islam 127 4. Renée Worringer, “Pan-Asianism in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1905–1912,” in The Modern Middle East. A Sourcebook for History, ed. Camron Michael Amin, Benjamin C. Fortna, and Elizabeth Frierson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 331. 5. Selçuk Esenbel, “Japanese Interest in the Ottoman Empire,” in Japan, Turkey and the World of Islam, ed. Selçuk Esenbel (Kent: Global Oriental, 2011), 120; Renée Worringer, “Conceptualizing Modernity in Late Ottoman Times: Japan as a Model Nation, 1902–1913,“ in The Modern Middle East. A Sourcebook for History, ed. Camron Michael Amin, Benjamin C. Fortna, and Elizabeth Frierson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 433. 6. Esenbel, Interest, 120. 7. Katakura Motoko, Isurâmu no nichijô sekai (Tôkyô: Iwanami Shoten, 21991), 4–6. 8. Schulze, 311. 9. Barak Salmoni, “Excerpts from Üç Tarz-i Siyaset (‘Three Kinds of Politics’) by Akçuraoğlu Yusuf, 1904,“ in The Modern Middle East. A Sourcebook for His- tory, ed. Camron Michael Amin, Benjamin C. Fortna, and Elizabeth Frierson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 326; Schulze, 311. 10. Tamim Ansary, Die unbekannte Mitte der Welt: Globalgeschichte aus islamischer Sicht (Bonn: BZPB, 2010), 306–307. 11. Itagaki Yuzo, “Perception of Different Cultures: The Islamic Civilization and Japan,” in The Islamic World and Japan: In Pursuit of Mutual Understanding, Kokusai Kōryū Kikin, and International Symposium on the Islamic Civilization and Japan, ed. (Tokyo: The Japan Foundation, 1981), 141. 12. Ibid., 141. 13. Ibid., 142. 14. Selçuk Esenbel, “Japan’s Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Trans- national Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945,” in Japan, Turkey and the World of Islam, ed. Selçuk Esenbel (Kent: Global Oriental, 2011), 1–5. 15. Selçuk Esenbel, “The Legacy of the War and the World of Islam in Japanese Pan- Asian Discourse: Wakabayashi Han’s Kaikyô Sekai to Nihon,” in Japan, Turkey and the World of Islam, ed. Selçuk Esenbel (Kent: Global Oriental, 2011), 53. 16. Sergei A. Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960). 17. Selçuk Esenbel, “A Transnational History of Revolution and Nationalism: Encounters between Japanese Asianists, the Turkish Revolution, and the World of Islam,” in Japan, Turkey and the World of Islam, ed. Selçuk Esenbel (Kent: Global Oriental, 2011), 88. 18. Ibid., 98. 19. For his vita see Matsumoto Ken’ichi, Ōkawa Shūmei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2004). 20. Esenbel, Encounters, 99. 21. Ibid., 94–97; Esenbel, Legacy, 62–70; Komatsu Hisao, “Muslim Intellectuals and Japan: A Pan-Islamist Mediator, Abdurreshid Ibrahim,“ in Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World: Transmission, Transformation, Communication, ed. Stéphane A. Dudoignon, Komatsu Hisao, and Kosugi Yasushi (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), 273–275. 22. Esenbel, Claim, 5–8. Ibrahim wrote ten volumes about his experiences in Japan: Alem-i Islam ve Japonya’da Intisari Islamiyet (1910–1911). 23. Kokuryûkai, Goyô senbin jônegai, August 25, 1920, National Defense Archives Japan, Rikugunshô- nishiju-dainikki-T9–10–49. 24. Komatsu, 276. 25. Esenbel, Claim, 4. 26. Esenbel, Claim, 8. 128 Frank Jacob 27. Komatsu, 278–279. 28. Yamaoka Kôtarô, Sekai no shinpikyô Arabiya jûdanki (Tôkyô:, Tôa Shobô, 1912) describes the experiences of Yamaoka in the Middle East. 29. Itagaki,142; Worringer, Pan-Asianism, 332. 30. Worringer, Pan-Asianism, 336–337. 31. Esenbel, Interest, 123. 32. Ibid., 125. 33. Itagaki, 142. 34. Ibid., 143. 35. Esenbel, Legacy, 54. 36. Esenbel, Encounters, 97. 37. Esenbel, Claim, 11. 38. Selçuk Esenbel, “Japan and Islam Policy During the 1930s,” in Japan, Turkey and the World of Islam, ed. Selçuk Esenbel (Kent: Global Oriental, 2011), 35. 39. Esenbel, Claim, 13. 40. Esenbel, Islam Policy, 40. 41. Ibid., 62–63. 42. E. U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 83. 43. Ibid., 123. 44. Rüb, 173. 45. Essien-Udom, 46, 125–126; Rüb, 166–174. 46. Essien-Udom, 4. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 14. 49. Ibid., 8. 50. Ibid., 129. 51. William L. Van Deburg, “Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam,” Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan, ed. William L. Van Deburg (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 97. 52. Elijah Muhammad, “Know Thyself,” in Modern Black Nationalism: From Mar- cus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan, ed. William L. Van Deburg (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 99–100. 53. Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 143. 54. Ibid., 149–155. 55. Essien-Udom, 9. 56. Cornel West, Race Matters (New York: Vintage, 1994), 64. 57. Christopher Mulvey, “The Limits of Religion and History: The African Ameri- can Intellectual in the Twentieth Century,” in Religion in African-American Cul- ture, ed. Winfried Herget and Alfred Hornung (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2006), 180. 58. Essien-Udom, 250. 59. Elijah Muhammad, “From a Program for Self-Development” in Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan, ed. William L. Van Deburg (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 103. 60. The term Asian as it is used here is not similar to our cultural or geographical term. In the case of the writings related to the Nation of Islam, it becomes more emblematic for a racial similarity or connection between themselves and the ones who seem to share the similar “racial heritage.” The idea for sure was useful to argue for an alliance with Japan in the 1930s and 1940s. 61. Interview with Minister James 3X, quoted in Essien-Udom, 131–132. 62. Ibid., 133. 63. Herald Dispatch, March 5, 1959, 1. The Nation of Islam 129 64. Elijah Muhammad, “From the Making of Devil,” in Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan, ed. William L. Van Deburg (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 101. 65. Essien-Udom, 138–139; Karl Evanzz, The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Eli- jah Muhammad (New York: Random House, 1999), 134; Frank Kelleter, “The Nation of Islam as an American Religion,” in Religion in African-American Cul- ture, ed. Winfried Herget and Alfred Hornung (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2006), 225–227. 66. Evanzz, 105. On Satohashi’s activities see also Ernest Allen, Jr. “When Japan Was ‘Champion of the Darker Races’: Satokata (sic!) Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism,” The Black Scholar 24 (1994): 23–46. 67. Office Memorandum, SAC, Chicago (100–33683), October 30, 1957, in: Nation of Islam, SAC (25–20607), May 16, 1957, FBI File, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, FOIPA No. 351980/190. 68. ONI Rating Report, October 13, 1942, in: Nation of Islam, SAC (25–20607), May 16, 1957, FBI File, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investiga- tion, FOIPA No. 351980/190. 69. Confidential Report (100–5549–29): Abdul Mohammed, October 21, 1942, in: Nation of Islam, SAC (25–20607), May 16, 1957, FBI File, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, FOIPA No. 351980/190. Consequently the FBI considered this society to be led by Satohata himself as a sort of fifth column for Japan in the United States, see Office Memorandum, SAC, Detroit (100–26356), December 11, 1957, in: Nation of Islam, SAC (25–20607), May 16, 1957, FBI File, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investiga- tion, FOIPA No. 351980/190. 70. For the information on Satohata that was collected by the FBI see Report from Detroit, March 20, 1940, in: Office Memorandum, SAC, Detroit (100–26356), December 11, 1957, in: Nation of Islam, SAC (25–20607), May 16, 1957, FBI File, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, FOIPA No. 351980/190. 71. Evanzz, 108. 72. Ibid., 110. 73. Office Memorandum, SAC, Chicago (100–33683), October 30, 1957, in: Nation of Islam, SAC (25–20607), May 16, 1957, FBI File, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, FOIPA No. 351980/190. 74. Hayward “Woody“ Farrar, “Identity, Patriotism, and Protest on the Wartime Home Front, 1917–1919, 1941–1945,” in A Companion to African American History, ed. Alton Hornsby, Jr. (Malden, MS Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 373– 374, 14. 75. Esenbel, Claim, 1. 76. Suzuki Norio, “The problem of peace and world order in an Islamic context: The case of modern Japan,” in Peace Movements and Pacifism after Septem- ber 11, ed. Chiba Shin and Schoenbaum, Thomas J. Schoenbaum (Cheltenham/ Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2008), 121. 77. Esenbel, Islam Policy, 28. 78. Essien-Udom, 49. 79. Ibid., 68. 80. Patrick Allitt, Religion in America Since 1945: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 199. 81. Ito Shuntaro, “Islamic Civilization as Seen from Japan,” in The Islamic World and Japan: In Pursuit of Mutual Understanding, Kokusai Kōryū Kikin and the International Symposium on the Islamic Civilization and Japan, ed. (Tokyo: The Japan Foundation, 1981), 137. 130 Frank Jacob Works Cited Allen, Ernest, Jr. “When Japan Was ‘Champion of the Darker Races’: Satokata (sic!) Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism.” The Black Scholar 24 (1994): 23–46. Allitt, Patrick. Religion in America Since 1945: A History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Anderson, Victor. “Theorizing African American Religion.” In African American Studies, ed. Jeanette R. Davidson, 260–278. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Ansary, Tamim. Die unbekannte Mitte der Welt: Globalgeschichte aus islamischer Sicht. Bonn: BZPB, 2010. 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Winfried Herget and Alfred Hornung, 219–234. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2006. Komatsu Hisao. “Muslim Intellectuals and Japan: A Pan-Islamist Mediator, Abdur- reshid Ibrahim.” In Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World: Transmission, Transformation, Communication, ed. Stéphane A. Dudoignon, Komatsu Hisao, and Kosugi Yasushi, 273–288. New York and London: Routledge, 2006. Matsumoto Ken’ichi. Ōkawa Shūmei. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2004. Moses, Wilson Jeremiah. The Golden Age of Black Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Muhammad, Elijah. “From the Making of Devil.” In Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan, ed. William L. Van Deburg, 101–102. New York: New York University Press, 1997. ——. “From a Program for Self-Development.” In Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan, ed. William L. Van Deburg, 103–105. 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Fortna, and Elizabeth Frierson, 331–338. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. X, Malcolm. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as Told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine, 1993. Yamaoka Kôtarô. Sekai no shinpikyô Arabiya jûdanki. Tôkyô: Tôa Shobô, 1912. Zenkovsky, Sergei A. Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia. Cambridge: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1960. Part II Propaganda and Theology

8 Propaganda in the Early NOI

Patrick D. Bowen

Introduction Housed within the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library is a small set of photocopies that has been circulating in the African American Muslim community for several years.1 These photocopies are of the first four—and perhaps only—issues of the Final Call to Islam (FCI), the first Nation of Islam (NOI) newspaper. Published in the late summer of 1934, four years after W. D. Fard had begun teaching his doctrines and almost two years after the group had started undergoing membership loss and fac- tional schisms, the FCI was not the voice of all early Nation members. It was instead a product of the “Temple People,” a faction of the early NOI that was highly committed to Fard’s teachings as interpreted by the faction’s leader, Elijah Muhammad. Along with several previously unexamined secular newspaper editorials and letters to the editor written by Temple People members in the early 1930s, the FCI is one of the earliest publicly accessible documents concerning the views of this faction. Because of this fact, and because most of the previous scholarship on the early NOI has relied primarily on the period’s sensational newspaper reports about the group and interviews with original members conducted in the late 1930s and later,2 these various examples of early NOI propaganda offer a unique primary- source glimpse into the early years of the particular NOI community that would gain mass popularity in the 1960s. What makes the FCI and other early NOI propaganda writings especially valuable for analysis is that they are not simple regurgitations of the NOI’s doctrines that had been composed and codified by W. D. Fard. When people joined the NOI in the early 1930s, they were required to study and learn the contents of a printed pamphlet, The Teaching for the Lost Found Nation of Islam in a Mathematical Way,3 and an orally transmitted set of teachings known as the Secret Ritual of the Nation of Islam.4 Early NOI propaganda, notably, does not give equal amounts of attention to each of the items discussed in these codified teachings. Although a significant amount of this literature is devoted to presenting Fard’s official doctrines, it also brings in topics, evidence, emphases, and styles that, while certainly influenced by the NOI teachings, required additional information, interpretation, and 136 Patrick D. Bowen original thinking to produce. These writings, therefore, may be thought of as reflecting the vernacular ideas and emotions in the early NOI. As this chapter argues, it is in fact the early NOI’s intellectual and emotional world—as conveyed through its published propaganda—that defined and distinguished early NOI culture. By 1934, several African American majority Islamic groups had sprung up throughout the eastern half of the United States, but none showed the high levels of commitment that the Tem- ple People showed in their written works for issues such as millennialism, militancy in response to white violence, and health. To demonstrate the distinctiveness of the NOI, after presenting the historical background to the development of this propaganda, I examine the five major themes emphasized in the literature: white evilness and deception, “Islamic” interpretation of scripture, white violence and the need for militancy, the NOI’s psychological and emotional benefits, and the improvement of physical health by following the NOI’s teachings. The chapter concludes by highlighting how these themes were emphasized much more in the NOI than in other interwar African American Islamic movements.

The Development of Early NOI Propaganda The earliest known examples of an NOI member’s writings being mass distributed to the non-Muslim public are the six letters to the editor written by Fard, who wrote one, and Elijah Muhammad, who wrote five, that were published between late December 1932 and May 1933 in the popular national black newspaper the Afro-American.5 The content of Fard’s letter and the timing of Muhammad’s suggest that these letters were primarily sent in an attempt to capitalize off of the recent public attention given to the group. As far as is currently known, prior to late 1932, the NOI had completely escaped the press’s gaze, the movement having been spread primarily through word of mouth and creating little controversy. That November, however, NOI member and self-proclaimed “king of Islam,” Robert Harris, after reading in a “cheap magazine [. . .] a story of mysticism of the desert [. . .] [which said that] ‘the believer must be stabbed through the heart,’ ” rit- ually sacrificed his African American roomer.6 The event and the subsequent police investigation of the NOI created a sensation in the local press, which labeled the organization a “voodoo cult.” This press and police attention caused a major disruption in the group. Besides the damage to the group’s public image that was inflicted by being branded a “voodoo cult,” Fard was asked by police to leave the city, and, as his letter reveals, he did initially move to Chicago, leaving the Detroit temple without its head. From Chi- cago, Fard wrote his letter in an effort to disclaim Harris publicly as a member and to criticize the “voodoo” label.7 The group’s founder would soon after return to Detroit, but he now had to maintain a low profile, which meant the elevation of Muhammad—who had already been appointed as the movement’s official minister8—to become the public face of the NOI. It Propaganda in the Early NOI 137 appears that, as the group’s new public leader, Muhammad—possibly under the direction of Fard—began exploiting this entrée to the broader public for propaganda purposes. To this effect, his letters’ contents, notably, do not address the Harris situation but rather convey important themes in NOI teachings (to be discussed in this chapter) and encourage readers to come to Detroit to hear the “prophet” Fard speak. The cessation of Muhammad’s letters in May 1933 coincides with Fard’s being banished from Detroit for a second time9—an event that led to the movement undergoing several schisms.10 Unlike the other factions, Muham- mad’s following, the Temple People,11 maintained exclusive commitment to Fard, who, by late 1933, was encouraging the Temple People to pull their children out of public schools so they could be enrolled in the group’s own school, the University of Islam.12 This action resulted in the police beginning to look for the missing children in Detroit’s black neighborhoods.13 In April 1934, the University of Islam, which was located at the group’s headquarters on Hastings Street, was raided, and fourteen of its instructors were arrested for contributing to the delinquency of the children.14 Fed up with what was seen as continued white persecution, nearly fifty Muslims marched to the police station where they rioted, injuring several policemen.15 In the end, most of the rioters’ charges were dropped, and the court simply required that Muhammad send the children back to public schools.16 These events had the unintended consequence of indirectly leading to the creation of the group’s first newspaper. The NOI’s battle with the police piqued the curiosity of a local black attorney named John B. Morris, who began attending Temple People meetings and talking with its ministers to better understand the group’s doctrines.17 By June, he had joined the movement and for three weeks in July wrote a column for Detroit’s black newspaper, the Tribune Independent, in which he promoted the NOI’s teachings.18 The conversion of an attorney with advanced writing skills was a major coup for the early NOI—a group in which many of its members were illiterate.19 It is unsurprising, then, that Muhammad—who already had experi- mented with NOI propaganda20—put this new enthusiastic acquisition to work by making him the editor of the NOI’s first known publishing venture: the FCI.21 The FCI was a weekly newspaper that, as far as is known, ran for only four weeks, from August 11 through September 1, 1934. In this short time, however, the paper developed rapidly, with each issue having more content than the previous one: issue one contains four written pieces, issue two has five, issue three has eight, and issue four has twelve. This growth of the paper is reflected in its size as well; the first three issues are four pages long, and the last issue is six. All of this suggests that with every issue, interest in and support for the FCI significantly increased. A typical issue of the FCI contains, on the cover page, a large photograph or drawing. For the first two issues, this is a photograph of several dozen of the NOI’s fez-wearing “high ranking officials who have received the O.K. 138 Patrick D. Bowen of Prophet Fard.”22 In the upper left-hand corner of this photograph, there is the addition of a small version of the famous touched-up NOI picture of Fard, in which he is shown from the side while standing and reading a Qur’an. Issue three’s picture is a rendition of Solomon’s Temple similar to— and presumably borrowed from—engravings in Masonic publications. The art on the cover of issue four is the earliest known published NOI drawing— a form of art that would become popular in the NOI’s 1960s newspaper, Muhammad Speaks. This illustration by R. Sharrieff depicts Fard lecturing on a stage to a large black audience, which is made to represent the entire African American population. Below the picture, the first written section, which appears in every issue, is a short piece by Muhammad that includes verses from Surat al-Ahqaf from the Muhammad Ali translation of the Qur’an as well as two verses from the Book of Revelation from the New Testament. A short essay by Muhammad expounding on NOI teachings follows this section. Each issue also features an editorial by John Morris—whose Muslim name is John Ali—and a section that either contains or encourages readers to submit “Questions and Answers” about the NOI. The rest of the content varies from one issue to the next: sometimes there are announcements for upcoming NOI meetings, issue four prints a poem praising Fard as the group’s prophet, and the other articles examine various aspects of the NOI’s teachings. It is noteworthy that at least five NOI members wrote more than one piece for the FCI. In addition to Muhammad and Morris/Ali, there is Wali Mohammed, the newspaper’s manager; John Mohammed, the group’s secretary;23 and Burnsteen Sharrieff, the NOI’s “reformer,” a position for which responsibilities included serving as the NOI’s official typist and teacher.24 These individuals, along with Kallatt Mohammed—Elijah’s brother, who wrote one article and held the position of “head investigator”—made up the core of the NOI’s intellectual class at the time. As Edward Curtis has pointed out in his examination of Muhammad Speaks, as writers and leaders for the NOI, such individuals “were a professional class of persons who were recognized at a public level for [. . .] articulating reasoned arguments about [Fard and] Elijah Muhammad’s religious thought [. . .].”25 Moreover, they were presumably respected for their views and relatively influential both within the NOI community and in the NOI’s interactions with the educated and middle-class black population, which so far had gained relatively little knowledge about the Muslim movement. It will, therefore, be the writings of these particular Muslim intellectuals on which the following analysis will focus, although other writers will be included as well.

Major Themes in Early NOI Propaganda The majority of the ideas communicated in the early NOI propaganda are of two basic types: ideological assertions based on NOI teachings and practical justifications for joining the movement. The first type—ideological Propaganda in the Early NOI 139 assertions—predominate. These include discussions of the group’s myths of the histories of the races, claims of how the Bible and the Qur’an should be interpreted, and promotions of the idea that whites are evil and have deceived African Americans. These are, in fact, the core teachings of the NOI and therefore are highlighted and penetrate almost every element of NOI propaganda. While the second type of content—practical justifications for joining the NOI—is almost invariably interpreted through the NOI doctrinal lens and is often cited as evidence that supports the doctrines, it is presented in such a way that one could agree with it even if one did not believe in, or had doubts about, the ideological assertions. Combined, these two types of ideas serve to both shape and reflect the intellectual and emotional universe of the early NOI—at least in the Temple People community.

Ideological Assertions Most of the ideological assertions made in the early NOI propaganda can be divided into two groups: those that insist on the history of white evilness and deception and those that present a particular prophetic and apocalyptic understanding of the Bible and the Qur’an. It is an interesting fact that despite the propaganda’s constant claims of African Americans being “original” people, Fard’s teaching about black divinity—which one might assume to be the most attractive ideological claim of his teachings for his African American followers—was not a prominent feature of early NOI propaganda. Perhaps Muhammad and other early black Muslim intellectuals were of the opinion that this notion was so radical for American Chris- tian religious culture at the time26 that to emphasize it in the literature that would first expose people to Islam would turn them off from the religion immediately. Instead, the emphasis is placed on the history of white evilness and deception—concepts that were more relatable for African Americans of the Jim Crow era. Fard’s claim that whites are purely evil beings (devils) who were created 6,000 years ago by the black scientist Yakub are repeatedly discussed throughout the propaganda, particularly in the FCI. Slavery as the ultimate example of white evilness is emphasized on a number of occasions, as is white “trick-nowledgy”—the practice of withholding or giving false information to blacks to keep them in a state of fear and ignorance.27 Trick-nowledgy is a tool that had in fact been used since slave times, beginning with “the wholesale murder of our righteous forefathers”—an act that, since in Africa transmission of knowledge was orally based, cut Afri- can Americans off from their true knowledge and identity.28 Another aspect of this trick-nowledgy is whites hiding their true ideas and feelings in their writings; one must therefore “read between the lines” or “fix up” writings in order to see through these attempts at deception.29 White deception and evilness are so pervasive that whites generally, but particularly Britons and Americans, are regarded as “ALLAH’S greatest enemies.”30 140 Patrick D. Bowen A second dominant set of ideological assertions centers around the exegesis of holy scriptures, which is practically the exclusive domain of Elijah Muhammad, the early NOI’s “Minister of Islam”31 and the most prolific and prominent early NOI intellectual. From the beginning of his propaganda career, Muhammad’s writings were primarily concerned with arguing that popular understandings of the Bible—particularly in the black community—were incorrect. In his 1933 letters to the editor, Muhammad points out, for example, that it is important to recognize that the great biblical figures, including Moses and Jesus, were black men.32 However, more importantly for Muhammad is the notion that the Bible can be properly interpreted only after one has read and understands the Qur’an, “the book from which the American Bible came.”33 In the FCI, Muhammad explains the origins and purpose of the Bible:

The Bible is a book that was prepared [by Muslims] purposely as a warning to us in North America. It is not for Jews nor for Greeks. It speaks of none but the Black man of America and his falling away from Islam, our forefather’s religion and following after strangers (devils) and their religions. It exhorts them to cease the worship of Idols (Christian God) which our forefathers knew not nor did they fear or regard such gods. [. . .] The whole contents of the Bible that you have predict the return of us back to Islam and Asia, our home.34

To demonstrate this claim, Muhammad frequently cites prophetic biblical scriptures, often inserting his interpretations for certain words in order to show how they relate to African Americans. For example, in the introduc- tory piece that was printed at the beginning of every FCI issue, Muhammad presents Revelation 18:4 in the following way: “And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, come out of her (Christian churches) my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues.” In issue three, II Chronicles 6:30–31 is used with multiple parenthetical insertions:

Then hear thou from heaven (from the Holy City Mecca in the East, the dwelling place of Islam and the wisdom of Allah) and forgive, and render unto every man according to all his ways, whose heart Allah knows that they (Black man in America) may fear thee and walk in thy ways (live the life of a righteous Moslem).35

According to Muhammad, the Bible was

originally given to the Hebrews by the Ethiopians (Moslems) [. . .] that perchance if the lost brother would see it and read and understand its contents he would rise from the death of ignorance to the call of the Messenger (Prophet Fard Mohammed) whom Allah would send before the destruction of his enemies (Malachi 4:5).36 Propaganda in the Early NOI 141 Whites, however, as part of their trick-nowledgy, “DILUTED THE TRUTH IN THE BIBLE when they translated it out of the Greek tongues into the English language.”37 Without explicitly saying it, here Muhammad suggests that because African Americans do not know Greek, the only way for them to truly understand the Bible is by learning about the book from which the Bible was derived—which is the true holy scripture of all black people: the Qur’an. Curiously, however, only two sections of the Qur’an are ever cited by Muhammad in the early propaganda, and even these are rarely brought up.38 By insisting that the Qur’an is necessary to understand the Bible but then not presenting a thorough analysis of the Qur’an, Muhammad implies that he himself—and perhaps he alone—comprehends the Islamic holy text and, therefore, that his interpretation of the Bible is correct.39 As Muhammad’s use of the book of Malachi noted earlier indicates, Muhammad repeatedly asserts that the Bible tells African Americans that Fard is a biblically foretold prophet who has come to warn them to rejoin their true religion (Islam) so that they will be protected in an Armageddon that is expected to take place in “one [. . .] year” and will wipe whites and Christians off the face of the Earth.40 In Muhammad’s 1933 letters and in the first two issues of the FCI, Fard is consistently referred to as a prophet who was predicted to come by the old prophets of the Bible.41 Interestingly, in the third issue of the FCI, although Fard is still described as the prophet of Allah, Muhammad introduces two important notions: that Fard is the final prophet of the world and that he is also in fact the “Son of Man.”42 The term “Son of Man” is traditionally understood in Christian communities as a reference to Jesus, who uses the label multiple times in the Gospels. Muhammad, however, asserts that Jesus is merely a prophet and only Fard holds the Son of Man title.43 What he means by this term here is not entirely clear, but since, according to Muhammad, the Son of Man’s contemporary arrival is accompanied by an imminent Armaged- don, his concept of the Son of Man seems to be equivalent to the Son of Man in the Book of Revelation, a figure who is generally identified as Jesus. Therefore, we can presume that Muhammad was presenting Fard as possessing the same attributes of Jesus, especially that of being God—which is also an attribute of the Son of Man in Revelation (Rev. 1:8). There is some debate over the question of whether Fard himself had encouraged his followers to identify him as God. We know that in 1932, Fard told police that he was the “supreme being on earth” and “the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.”44 However, some of Fard’s followers who later insisted on his divinity admitted that Fard “told those police more about himself than he would ever tell us.”45 The question of Fard’s divinity was in fact the cause of multiple NOI schisms in 1934, with the Temple People being the faction that was most committed to the Fard-as-God idea.46 It seems that after the schisms, Muhammad felt free to adhere more openly to his view; by the 1960s, Muhammad was explicitly identifying Fard as the Son of Man, who was indeed God or Allah.47 142 Patrick D. Bowen In any case, the imminent Armageddon accompanying Fard’s appearance is perhaps a more important ideological concern in the FCI. This is made clear by the fact that at the beginning of every FCI issue, Muhammad emphasizes the reality of the coming apocalypse through his edited version of Revelation 18:8: “Therefore, shall her (Christendom) plague come in one day (year). Death and Mourning, and Famine: And she shall be utterly burned with fire: For strong is the Lord (ALLAH) who judgeth her. (The Christian churches).” He concludes this section by stating emphatically, “He who denies [NOI teachings] is foolish and will DIE IN HIS SINS!” That this strong, violence-laden Armageddon rhetoric can be seen throughout Muhammad’s early propaganda reveals the Temple People to have been highly millennialistic.

Practical Justifications Although the NOI’s ideological assertions predominate in the Muslim intellectuals’ writings, for the typical early 1930s black reader, who may have heard similar “fire and brimstone” preaching in many Depression-era black churches, perhaps the most attractive elements of the early NOI propaganda were its practical justifications for joining the movement. The Muslim intellectuals’ promises that the NOI would provide protection from white violence, psychological well-being, and improved physical health gave the movement appeal, even for readers who had doubts about the group’s ideological claims. Indeed, the fact that these particular themes were emphasized so frequently suggests that they were very popular in the broader NOI community and, perhaps, were the aspects of the NOI that were most important for the Mus- lim intellectuals themselves. So, although the tendency to highlight these concepts was undoubtedly inspired by the official NOI teachings, and despite the fact that the discussions of these benefits were interwoven with explanations of NOI doctrines, that these particular themes were repeatedly singled out reveals much about what was most important for followers of the early NOI. The ideological emphasis on imminent millennial violence reflects an especially potent theme in the early NOI: white violence and the desire for military-like protection. The emphasis on violence and militancy predates the formation of Muhammad’s Temple People faction and seems to have been a fundamental element of the NOI. The first known demonstration of NOI militancy took place in November 1932, when Robert Harris and other members of the movement were arrested and jailed; 500 NOI followers marched to the local police station and courthouse in support of their coreligionists.48 The source of this well-developed militancy is uncertain. Perhaps it had come from the leaders. If what the FBI claimed was true, and Fard had been incarcerated in San Quentin Prison in the late 1920s, he would have concocted his NOI ideas within the semi-militarized confines of prison and probably would have been exposed to San Quentin’s militant black nationalist Propaganda in the Early NOI 143 population.49 Elijah Muhammad, meanwhile, had been traumatized as a youth when he witnessed a lynching, which may have contributed to his own emphasis on violence and the need for protection. Long circulating rumors have in fact claimed that prior to joining the Nation, Muhammad had served in the paramilitary wing of the black nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association.50 Another possible source is the experience of the many original followers of the NOI in Detroit who had previously been members of the local Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA).51 These individuals would have seen firsthand the debilitating and sad outcomes of the violent conflicts in the MSTA in 1929 in Detroit and other cities—events that would have demonstrated the importance of organizing violence in a Muslim movement.52 Finally, it has been reported that the Fruit of Islam, the NOI’s own paramilitary wing, originally had several veterans as members,53 so their presence may have had a significant impact on the direction of the NOI. Whatever the source, however, militancy was encouraged by the leadership, as was fighting in self-defense—even when being attacked by armed police officers—and this seems to have been appealing to many African Americans who feared white racist violence.54 White violence itself was a dominant theme in the propaganda. In addition to the frequent discussions of the violent institution of slavery, early NOI writings stress both contemporary and potential acts of white violence, which are frequently linked with the legacy of white oppression. Muham- mad, for instance, in one of his 1933 letters to the editor, points out that in the famous “Scottsboro Boys” case, despite an accuser recanting her statement, “the wicked enemies of the black man cried for the righteous blood of these boys as they always have.”55 In his first editorial for the secular Tribune Independent, John Morris/Ali remarks, “Last week three black men were lynched. Christian white men lynched them. The white [and black] Christians will do nothing about it.”56 With the FCI, the theme continues. In the very first issue, Muhammad’s front-page article tells readers to

look at the wholesale Christian slaughtering going on in Germany now, and elsewhere in Christendom. Remember also our many sons and daughters that the damnable white Christians have sacrificed by hanging them in trees and roasting them in fires.57

John Ali concludes the issue by claiming that “in the brief space of six months [the white man] has lynched thirteen of us.”58 Issue two contains a piece by an anonymous author who laments that ever since converting he can no longer enjoy baseball, since he is now fully aware that in “Lynchers’ Paradise” (America) black women “cannot escape the lustful passions of the white beasts, who prey upon them with impunity,” because if she were to tell her husband about a rape, “the affair will end up in a lynching or maybe a wholesale massacre.”59 John Ali, in issue three, opens and closes his editorial discussing the 1930 lynching of one George Hughes with the claim that 144 Patrick D. Bowen over the previous thirty years, 10,000 African Americans had been lynched by whites.60 In the early NOI propaganda, the world is pictured as an incred- ibly violent place, and that violence is primarily perpetrated by whites. The threat of white-on-black violence was in fact what drew some people to the NOI, as they believed Islam offered protection. John Ali, for instance, repeatedly and explicitly states that he had been attracted to the NOI precisely because, from what he had seen, it is “a militant religion” and possesses great prospects of protecting blacks from white violence.61 This theme resonates throughout his and Muhammad’s early published writings. Muhammad states bluntly that while Christians kill other Christians, “Islam does not kill its followers—it kills its enemies.”62 According to Ali and others, furthermore, African Americans should be assured that once they decide to follow Islam, they will gain the support and protection of the rest of the world’s “four billion four hundred million” non-white people—“the entire Asiatic nation.”63 It is also subtly implied that in the United States alone there are “seventeen million” potential soldiers: the country’s African Amer- icans.64 Indeed, the intellectuals promise that Muslim militancy is so strong that in joining the NOI a person loses “all fear of his enemy.”65 The destruction of both fear and its corollary “inferiority complex” is in fact just one portion of the psychological benefits of Islam claimed by the propagandists. While life without Islam is portrayed as a “miserable condition,” embracing Islam is repeatedly said to bring both fearlessness and happiness to the individual.66 In many cases, merely obtaining the NOI knowledge of black history and divinity is sufficient for producing these positive emotions. But Islamic happiness is not purely internal; it is manifested publicly, as the Muslim community is said to be replete with brotherly love and self-sacrifice.67 Still, the early NOI emphasizes using a scientific view of life, so it is argued that these emotional changes can be looked at from an objective, scientific perspective: they are said to be the “psychological values” of Islam.68 The improvement of one’s life through Islam also comes in the form of positive changes in physical health. Life before Islam is characterized as full of sickness, fatigue, and physical pain, but Islam teaches “proper living,” which fosters an energetic life free from distress and disease. Beginning in issue three, Reformer Burnsteen Sharrieff wrote a column communicating Fard’s teachings on health, which focused on obesity as the source of many physical problems and held dieting and fasting as solutions. Muslims, she notes, “go some times 48, 72, 96 and more hours without food.”69 This fasting is to be accompanied by daily bathing, regular exercise, and avoidance of white bread, all of which “helps the thinking faculties and also prolongs our lives.”70 Male followers are advised to attempt to weigh no more than 150 pounds, and females no more than 120.71 Bad diets, it is explained, were imposed by whites motivated by the desire to oppress African Ameri- cans; prior to enslavement, “we had perfect forms. [. . .] We were beautiful Original people 100%”72 The NOI, then, besides protecting followers from Propaganda in the Early NOI 145 violence and fear, is seen as making African Americans healthy, intelligent, and happy people.

The Distinctiveness of Early NOI Culture Although there is still much to be learned about the many interwar African American Islamic movements, the available evidence suggests that despite the fact that the NOI shared many similarities with the other Islamic groups, the Nation’s early stress on the themes discussed in this chapter significantly distinguished the group. One area in which one can perceive the NOI’s distinctiveness is the topic of critiquing white people and their society. Two relatively popular Islamic sects, the Moorish Science Temple of America and the Ahmadiyya movement, make for good comparisons since, like the NOI, they were also able to attract thousands of African Americans and publish their own periodicals. They were similar to the NOI too in that both groups endorsed the notion that African Americans’ ancestors were Muslims and that African Americans would have better lives if they embraced the religion of their “forefathers.”73 The MSTA teachings even painted whites—whom they identified as “Lucifer, Satan, Devil, Dragon and Beast”—as not only the historical oppressors of “olive”-skinned people (“Asiatics”) but also the people responsible for making African Americans forget their true Islamic nature by labeling them with terms such as “Negro, Black, Colored, and Ethio- pian.”74 Yet neither the MSTA nor the Ahmadiyyas rejected outright all whites and white society as fundamentally evil; the Ahmadiyyas consistently attempted to convert whites, and the MSTA enthusiastically supported the white-dominated United States and its Constitution.75 References to white deception and violence, furthermore, were notably rare in their literature. Similarly, several of the period’s black-majority Islamic groups were, like the NOI, critical of the Bible, but they were not prepared to assert that the Bible had come from the Qur’an and contained a message written specifically for African Americans. Both the Ahmadiyyas and the MSTA claimed that the Bible did not tell the true story of Jesus who, they both asserted was only a prophet, not God on Earth, and in fact had gained much of his knowledge by traveling to the East. Perhaps the interwar Muslim doctrine closest to that of the NOI was that promoted by Abdul Hamid Suleiman, the leader of a “Caananites Temple” in 1923. Suleiman insisted that the Qur’an had been composed in 410 BC and that it was “rewritten about the time of Christ [. . .] and the references [to Christ] were put in then.”76 Still, despite sharing with the NOI the idea that the Qur’an preceded the Bible, Suleiman did not go as far as asserting that the Bible had been written for blacks in America. The Temple People’s claim that God had come to Earth specifically to help free African Americans through teaching and by preparing them for an imminent Armageddon also cannot be found in other interwar Islamic 146 Patrick D. Bowen movements. The Ahmadiyya founder, Ghulam Ahmad, was regarded, like Fard, as a messiah, but he was an Indian who never came to the United States and died before African Americans started converting. The MSTA, meanwhile, shared with the NOI the belief that all African Americans are naturally divine, but the group’s founder and leader, Noble Drew Ali, did not claim special divinity—he was merely a prophet,77 as was Paul Nathan- iel Johnson, a former Ahmadi leader who created the Fahamme Temples of Islam movement in St. Louis. All of these groups, moreover, had teachings that suggested a new age was on the horizon, but none depicted a soon-to- come violent Armageddon. Admittedly, a few small factions of the MSTA had leaders who were held up as messiahs, and in one Kansas City group, there was a widespread expectation that African American Muslims would be protected by the Japanese in a forthcoming major war.78 Interestingly, the belief that American Mus- lims could look to Asia for protection during an Asian-American war and from white violence generally was also popular among black Sunnis affiliated with Satti Majid, a Sudanese Muslim missionary who converted and organized an unknown number of African Americans during the 1920s.79 In such communities, while we confidently can assume that there was an emphasis on white violence similar to that expressed in the NOI, the extant documents from the period do not record this. Health, finally, seems to have been a major concern for at least one non- NOI African American Muslim organization. The MSTA’s first newspaper encouraged its members to buy the group’s various purifiers, healing oils, and antiseptics, and Noble Drew Ali himself had at one point worked as a healer.80 Still, the MSTA approaches to improved health were very much distinct from those endorsed by the NOI, in which it was claimed that the improvement of one’s physical and mental health was tied simply and directly to the embracing of Islam, which should be supplemented by fasting and eating a very restricted range of foods. The NOI’s views on diet, it seems, were closer to those of various conservative Christian sects, particularly the Seventh-Day Adventists. It is striking that in regards to each of these themes, the NOI took a more extreme position than the other interwar African American Islamic movements. All of these groups were known to critique white racism and violence, but the Temple People did so at a much greater frequency and with much more intensity than the others. Virtually all black Islamic groups had criticisms and unique views of the Bible, but only the early NOI presented a biblical history that elevated African Americans to being the book’s sole true audience. The Ahmadis and MSTA stressed the prophesized dawning of a new age, and certain MSTA and Sunni factions believed they would be protected by Asians in an imminent battle between the United States and Asian countries—but, again, the NOI stands out, as it combined these themes and insisted that, because of the coming of the “Son of Man” into the African American community, these events were only one year away from taking Propaganda in the Early NOI 147 place. Lastly, no other black Islamic group imposed such significant restrictions on food consumption or made such big claims about the improvement of health. It appears, then, that out of all of the black Muslim movements, the NOI was that which was most characterized by rejection of and protest against U.S. culture. Because of this trait, the NOI had the greater inherent potential to recruit the type of people most drawn to extreme positions and practices. For those who had, for instance, the greatest resentment against Ameri- can culture and the least hope for social change without all-out war, the NOI would have been the most attractive of the interwar African American Islamic movements. Therefore, it seems that at its core, the early NOI was better suited than the other groups for fostering a powerful, radical protest movement that would eventually significantly impact the shape of race relations in American society. It would be, in other words, hard to imagine a man with the revolutionary rhetoric and confidence of Malcolm X emerging from the Ahmadiyyas, the mainstream MSTA, or even the black Sunni groups. In studying the broader development of African American Islam, then, this trait of the NOI, as seen in its various propaganda materials from the early 1930s, cannot be ignored.

Notes 1. This chapter was made possible by the support of the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan through the award of the Bordin Gillette Researcher Travel Fellowship in May 2014. 2. Over the past few years, some scholars have mentioned and even cited the FCI, but so far no one—as far as I am aware—has conducted a thorough analysis of its contents. 3. A copy of an early version of this book is at the Bentley Historical Library. This document is today known as the “Problem Book.” 4. This was later written down and is known today, in a slightly altered form, as either the “Lost Found Muslim Lessons” or the “Supreme Wisdom Lessons.” Both the Teaching and the Secret Ritual are discussed in Beynon’s 1938 study of the NOI; see Erdmann Doane Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult among Negro Migrants in Detroit,” American Journal of Sociology 43 (May 1938): 901n17, 900. 5. For Fard’s letter, which was signed “W. D. Farad,” see “No Connection between Islam and Robert Harris, Alleged Voodoo Killer,” December 31, 1932, 6. Muhammad’s letters were written under the surname he used at the time, Kar- riem; see “Detroit’s Moslems Gave Dr. DuBois a Cheer,” January 28, 1933, 6; “Preachers Don’t Know the Bible and Must Hear the Prophet in Detroit,” April 1, 1933, 6; “ ‘Prophet’ of Detroit Says Black Man is Cream of World, Not Foot-mat,” April 15, 1933, 6; “Whose Christianity?” April 22, 1933, 6; “Mos- lems Are Misrepresented by Caucasians,” May 6, 1933, 6. 6. “Voodoo Killer Tries to Flee from Police,” Detroit Evening Times, Novem- ber 23, 1932, 2; “Leader of Cult Admits Slaying at Home ‘Altar’,” Detroit Free Press, November 21, 1932, 1, 3. 7. “No Connection between.” Fard’s letter is interesting for a few other reasons. For one, in it, he uses the term “nation of Islam,” which was not typically employed by NOI members at the time. In fact, this may be the earliest recorded 148 Patrick D. Bowen use of this term. Fard also claims that “organized Christianity” is only 550 years old (dating it to ca. 1380) and that Buddhism dates back to 33,000 BC. As far as I am aware, these claims have not before been recorded in scholarly discussions, although they are consistent with Muhammad’s claim that Islam preceded Christianity (see the following). 8. According to Claude Andrew Clegg III, in his An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 23, Fard made Muhammad the NOI’s “Supreme Minister.” However, in the FCI, while Muhammad is clearly the group’s leading minister, his title is listed in the masthead as “Minister of Islam in North America,” which is consistent with what Beynon (p. 902) reports as the title of the head minister. In fact, it seems that Muhammad is the only NOI official with a title of “minister.” The other officials in the Temple People were called both “laborers” and “investigators.” Prior to the schism, prominent NOI member Othman/Ugan Ali was officially referred to only as “teacher.” 9. “Banished Leader of Cult Arrested,” Detroit Free Press, May 26, 1933, 10. 10. Clegg, Original Man, 35; Beynon, The Voodoo Cult,” 904; Hatim A. Sahib, The Nation of Islam. PhD Dissertation., University of Chicago, 1951, 77. 11. Sahib, “The Nation of Islam,” 76–77. 12. Karl Evanzz, The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 95–96. 13. “ ‘Islam’ Faces Double Probe,” Detroit Free Press, March 28, 1934, A07. 14. “ ‘Islam’ Cult Faces Court,” Detroit News, April 17, 1934, 15; “Voodoo Uni- versity Raided by Police; 13 Cultists Seized,” Detroit Free Press, April 17, 1934, 1, 2. 15. “13 Policemen Hurt Battling Voodoo Band,” Detroit Free Press, April 19, 1934, 1, 3. 16. “Girl Recounts Lore of Islam,” Detroit Free Press, April 26, 1934, 1, 2. 17. J.B. Morris, “Islam as the Black Man’s Religion,” Tribune Independent (Detroit), July 7, 1934, 6; [John B. Morris/John Ali], “Editorial [IV],” FCI 1, no. 4, Sep- tember 1, 1934, 3. A brief biography of Morris/Ali is provided in the latter article. 18. The column was entitled “Islam as the Black Man’s Religion”; it appeared on July 7, July 21, and July 28. 19. Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult,” 900; Wali Mohammed, “The Educational Depart- ment of Islam,” FCI 1, no. 1, August 11, 1934, 2; Burnsteen Sharrieff Moham- med, I Am Burnsteen Sharrieff Mohammed Reformer and Secretary to Master W.D.F. Mohammed . . . and These Are Some of My Experiences (n.p.: n.p., 2011), [2]. 20. Muhammad apparently wrote at least one additional piece for a secular newspaper that has not yet been located. In his July 21 editorial, Morris notes that Muhammad had written an “article” entitled “Islam and American Black Man’s Salvation” for “one of our local papers.” 21. That Muhammad was the primary person behind the publication of the paper is suggested by the fact that the FCI’s masthead states that the newspaper was “Published Weekly by Elijah Mohammed.” That John B. Morris was the same person as John Ali—who is listed in the FCI as its editor—is supported by three pieces of evidence: 1) The biographical details known for Morris (see his July 7 editorial) and Ali (see the “Editorial” in FCI no. 4) are highly similar. 2) One of the contact phone numbers that the FCI lists, Temple 1–0086, is the same number Morris used in his classified advertisements that ran next to his Tribune Independent editorials. 3) The editor of the FCI was clearly a skilled writer, a trait that Morris had and, the evidence suggests, was otherwise relatively rare in the NOI. Propaganda in the Early NOI 149 22. See the caption under the photograph. 23. On his position as secretary, see the byline for his “To the Young Asiatics of North America” in issue four. 24. See Sharrieff Mohammed, I Am Burnsteen Sharrieff Mohammed. 25. Edward E. Curtis, IV, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 37. 26. This was true despite the fact that the notion of human divinity was present in a few popular white subcultures, particularly those affiliated with the New Thought movement. Nevertheless, the notion that divinity was exclusively possessed by black people was of course not adhered to in those groups. 27. See, e.g., Dorothy Lewis, “Wake Up!,” FCI 1, no. 4, September 1, 1934, 5. 28. [John Ali], “Editorial [I],” FCI 1, no. 1, August 11, 1934, 3. 29. [John Ali], “Editorial [II],” FCI 1, no. 2, August 18, 1934, 3; “Get Your Real Name,” FCI 1, no. 2, August 18, 1934, 4. 30. Elijah Muhammad, “A Warning to the Black Man of America [chapter I],” FCI 1, no. 1, August 11, 1934, 1. 31. See note 7. 32. “Detroit’s Moslems.” Muhammad appears to abandoned this view by the 1960s; see his Message to the Blackman (Chicago: Muhammad’s Temple No. 2, 1965), 269. In the 1960s and 1970s, Muhammad even vacillated over the race of the Prophet Muhammad; see Zafar Ishaq Ansari, “Aspects of Black Muslim Theol- ogy,” Studia Islamica, no. 53 (1981): 149, 149n5. 33. “Preachers Don’t Know”; “Whose Christianity?” 34. Elijah Muhammad, “A Warning to the Black Man of America [chapter II],” FCI 1, no. 2, August 18, 1934, 2. Neither this history of the Bible, nor the claim that the Qur’an preceded the Bible, is explicitly discussed in Muhammad’s well- known published writings from the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, in Muhammad’s Supreme Wisdom, vol. 2 (Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, n.d.), Muhammad explicitly states that the Qur’an “was revealed to [the Prophet] Muhammad in the seventh century A.D.” (page 76). However, because Muham- mad does continue to adhere to the idea that the Bible prophesizes certain things about the black community, including its being saved by the coming of both Fard and Muhammad himself, it appears that Muhammad has retained this history as the fundamental ideological basis on which much of his theology is based; see Ansari, “Aspects,” 152. 35. [Untitled], FCI 1, no. 3, August 25, 1934, 2. 36. “A Warning [chapter II],” 2. 37. Ibid. 38. Surat al-Ahqaf in each issue’s first section and Surat as-Saff in issue three. Muhammad’s tendency to only infrequently cite passages from the Qur’an, and then only citing short passages, was continued throughout his career; see Her- bert Berg, “Elijah Muhammad and the Qur’an: The Evolution of His Tafsir,” Muslim World 89, no. 1 (1999): 42–55. 39. Until his death, Muhammad would retain this view of himself as the sole authority for the interpretation of Scriptures; see Ansari, “Aspects,” 153–154. 40. This is contained in the short quotation of Revelation 18:8 at the beginning of every issue. 41. “Preachers Don’t.” 42. “A Warning to the Black Man of America [chapter III],” FCI 1, no. 3, August 25, 1934, 2. Fard is also referred to as the Son of Man in the caption for the illustration in issue four. 43. Ibid. 44. “Negro Leaders Open Fight to Break Voodooism’s Grip,” Detroit Free Press, November 24, 1932, 1, 2; Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult,” 897. 150 Patrick D. Bowen 45. Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult,” 897. 46. Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult,” 906–907; Evanzz, Messenger, 104–105. 47. See e.g., Muhammad, Message, 10–21, 107, 111, 299. For a discussion of Muhammad’s use of “Allah,” see Ansari, “Aspects,” 142–153. 48. “500 Join March to Ask Voodoo Kings’ Freedom,” Detroit Free Press, Novem- ber 25, 1934, 1, 2; Medina Mohammad, The Pathway of Islam in North Amer- ica (n.p.: n.p., 2014), 4. 49. See Patrick D. Bowen, “ ‘The Colored Genius’: Lucius Lehman and the Califor- nian Roots of Modern African-American Islam,” Cult/ure: The Graduate Jour- nal of Harvard Divinity School 8.2 (Spring 2013), http://projects.iq.harvard. edu/hdsjournal/book/%E2%80%98-colored-genius%E2%80%99. 50. Jeannette Smith-Irvin, Footsoldiers of the Universal Negro Improvement Asso- ciation (Their Own Words) (Trenton: Africa World Press, Inc., 1989), 15, 49, 72. 51. See Sahib, “The Nation of Islam,” 91, 96; Adeyemi Ademola, “Nation of Islam Deserted,” African Mirror (August-September 1979): 41; Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult,” 898. 52. See Patrick D. Bowen, “Notes on the MSTA Schisms in Detroit and Pittsburgh, 1928–1929,” Printed for the East Coast Moorish Men’s Brotherhood Summit, Baltimore, MD, March 29–31, 2013. 53. Mohammad, Pathway, 8. 54. See, e.g., James Pasha, “Brother Pasha Recalls Famed Chicago Court Case,” Muhammad Speaks, September 25, 1964, 11. 55. Karriem [Muhammad], “Moslems are Misrepresented.” 56. Morris, “Islam,” July 7, 1934. 57. “A Warning [chapter I],” 2. 58. “Editorial [1],” 4. 59. A Reader, “A New View with New Eyes,” FCI 1, no. 2, August 18, 1934, 3. 60. “Editorial [III],” FCI 1, no. 3, August 25, 1934, 4. 61. Morris, “Islam,” Tribune Independent (Detroit), July 7 and July 21; [Ali], “Edi- torial [IV],” 3. 62. “A Warning [chapter I],” 2. 63. Ali, “Editorial [III],” 4; “Editorial [IV],” 3; Morris, “Islam,” July 21 and July 28, 1934; Lonnie Pasha, “Black Man Father of All Humanity,” FCI 1, no. 4, Sep- tember 1, 1934, 4. 64. R. Sharrieff, “The Valley of Dry Bone (Black Man of America)” (illustration), FCI 1, no. 4, September 1, 1934, 1; Muhammad, “A Warning [chapter II],” 2. 65. Kallatt Mohammed, “The Psychological Values of Islam,” FCI 1, no. 3, August 25, 1934, 3; Ali, “Editorial [I],” 4; Morris, “Islam,” July 7, 1934. 66. John Mohammed, “A Happy Moslem,” FCI 1, no. 3, August 25, 1934, 4; John Mohammed, “To the Young Asiatics of North America,” FCI 1, no. 4, Septem- ber 1, 1934, 2; Ali, “Editorial [IV],” 3; Pasha, “Black Man,” 5; Morris, “Islam,” July 7, 1934. 67. Mohammed, “A Happy Moslem”; Mohammed, “Young Asiatics”; Ali, “Edito- rial [IV],” 3. 68. Mohammed, “Psychological Values,” 3. 69. Burnsteen Sharrieff, “Reduce and Be Cured of Your Aliments [sic],” FCI 1, no. 3, August 25, 1934, 3. 70. Ibid.; Burnsteen Sharrieff, “The Dangerousness of Overweight,” FCI 1, no. 4, September 1, 1934, 3; Wali Mohammed, “Health through Proper Living,” FCI 1, no. 4, September 1, 1934, 6. 71. Sharrieff, “Reduce.” 72. Sharrieff, “Reduce”; Mohammed, “Health.” 73. See Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience, 2nd Ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 90–108, 114–131. Propaganda in the Early NOI 151 74. Koran Questions for Moorish Children (Chicago: n.p., 1927), questions 28, 57, 60, 65, 86. 75. Patrick D. Bowen, A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Vol- ume 1: White American Muslims before 1975 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 225–230; Noble Drew Ali, “Moorish Leader’s Historical Message to America,” Moorish Guide 1.1 (August 24, 1928): 1–2. Some individuals within the MSTA did in fact reject white society, but they seem to have been acting independently or in non-mainstream factions. 76. Patrick D. Bowen, “Abdul Hamid Suleiman and the Origins of the Moorish Sci- ence Temple,” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion 2.13 (September 2011): 13. 77. However, on at least one occasion, he was referred to as “son of Allah”; see “Why the Prophet Came,” Moorish Guide 1.14 (March 1, 1929): 2. 78. Fathie Ali Abdat, “The Sheiks of Sedition: Father Prophet Mohammed Bey, Mother Jesus Rosie Bey, and Kansas City’s Moors (1933–1945),” Journal of Religion and Violence 3.1 (2015): 7–33. 79. On Majid and his followers, see Ahmed I. Abu Shouk, J.O. Hunwick & R.S. O’Fahey, “A Sudanese Missionary to the United States,” Sudanic Africa 8 (1997): 137–191; Patrick D. Bowen, “Satti Majid: A Sudanese Founder of American Islam,” Journal of Africana Religions 1.2 (2013): 194–209; African Moslem Welfare Society of America FBI file. 80. See copies of the Moorish Guide; Emily Suzanne Clark, “Noble Drew Ali’s ‘Clean and Pure Nation’ The Moorish Science Temple, Identity, and Healing,” Nova Religio 16.3 (2013): 31–51; Bowen, “Abdul Hamid Suleiman,” 34–35.

Works Cited “13 Policemen Hurt Battling Voodoo Band.” Detroit Free Press. April 19, 1934, 1, 3. “500 Join March to Ask Voodoo Kings’ Freedom.” Detroit Free Press. Novem- ber 25, 1934, 1, 2. Abdat, Fathie Ali. “The Sheiks of Sedition: Father Prophet Mohammed Bey, Mother Jesus Rosie Bey, and Kansas City’s Moors (1933–1945).” Journal of Religion and Violence 3.1 (2015): 7–33. Abu Shouk, Ahmed I., J.O. Hunwick and R.S. O’Fahey. “A Sudanese Missionary to the United States.” Sudanic Africa 8 (1997): 137–191. Ademola, Adeyemi. “Nation of Islam Deserted.” African Mirror (August-September 1979): 33–42. Ali, John [J. B. 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Stephen C. Finley

Introduction The Nation of Islam (NOI) may be the most misunderstood American religion. The complexity of the religion has often been reduced to “politics” as opposed to religion or to misapplied and intentionally dismissive tropes about white people as “devils.” But it is exactly this idea that is the most valuable, not only for understanding the NOI but also for a scholarly sense of what Elijah Muhammad was saying and doing. To this end, the NOI, under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad (1933–1975), reveals a new perspective and approach to the study of the religious group that has broader implications for sources and methodology in the study of religion. I call this approach theological phenomenology. Theological phenomenology is an existential- phenomenological approach that uses theological symbolism to frame the existential dynamics of lived experience. In this light, Elijah Muhammad’s framing of white people as “devils” is a theological-phenomenological description of white supremacy within the context of the United States. As Elijah Muhammad taught,

It is in their mythology, their religious narrative, variously called the “Myth of Yakub” or the “Yakub Myth”3 that the notion of white people as “devils” or as “the devil” appears. It should be stated at the outset that this is only one small aspect of the narrative that attempts to make sense of an absurd world: a terrifying world for African Americans, in which their bodies were the objects of racial discourses of inferiority and inhumanity that justified their imminent expurgation, destruction, and mutilation for centuries of American history, from hundreds of years of chattel slavery based not on class but on racial caste status, a period of lynchings that extended for another century (from approximately 1865–1960), to Jim Crow segregation and terror that led to “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is” 155 our contemporary era. But his own experience of this prompted a young Eli- jah Muhammad to declare, “If I ever got to be a man, I told myself, I would find a way to avenge [Albert Hamilton] and my people.”4 My previous work, indeed, itself an original and “new” perspective on the NOI called “Hidden Away: Esotericism and Gnosticism in Elijah Muham- mad’s Nation of Islam,”5 has divided the mythological narrative into five sections that are thematically distinct but all serve the purpose of giving “the Nation of Islam a sense of control over the meaning of ‘black’ bodies against a historical condition in which black bodies had been constructed by discursive and social practices that posited them as inferior.”6 This chapter consolidates the disparate and complicated discourses, which are found in multiple sources, and organizes them into five units that attempt faithfully to represent the myth. Those sections are: 1) the Creation of God and the Cosmos; 2) Renegade Black Scientists and the Destruction of the Original People; 3) East Asia and the Original People of the Earth; 4) Yakub, the Making of the White Race, and Genocide; 5) the Hidden God, Freemasonry, and UFOs. The current chapter and popular but myopic references to the NOI’s religious ideas focus almost exclusively on section four, which should be read in the context of the whole narrative and in the social, religious, cultural, and racial milieus in which it was produced. The mythology, which is an enormously complex and broad symbolic representation of an existential reality for many, if not most, African Ameri- cans during Muhammad’s life (1897–1975), was a theodicean response to the abject horror of African American life in the context of the violence of white supremacy and capitalism (in which their bodies were commodified for profit, pleasure, and violence) that must be taken seriously in order to apprehend the meaning and function of the narrative for the NOI and its broader appeal to African Americans. This point is worth emphasizing, for too often, the religion was and continues to be taken out of its historical and social setting in the United States and condensed to a lexicon or an index that renders it the problem, rather than viewing it as a conglomeration of ideas, discourses, and practices that offer a “counter-creative signification”7 on white supremacy and the violence that has been sui generis of the African American’s experience in America. Moreover, the misappropriation and misunderstanding of the NOI as a political movement using religious language (instead of the reverse) confuses the structure and function of the NOI as an orientation. As noted earlier, the NOI is an orientation seeking to provide a stronger sense of individual and collective meaning. With this in mind, it becomes easier to understand the more “controversial” doctrinal elements of the NOI—such as the idea that whites are “devils”—as theological assertions, as mythological elements that seek to speak truths instead of spread something akin to anti-white or as an untenable “black supremacist” rhetoric for which no structure nor system exists. Elijah Muhammad was merely describing the world within which he found himself—a world marked by the visitation of racialized violence on 156 Stephen C. Finely black communities by white supremacist people, laws, discourses, rituals, and institutions. Upon religious reflection, Muhammad found that the only way he could frame the actions and dispositions of white people—both liberal and conservative—was in terms of the demonic or the devilish. The reduction and flattening of NOI religious thought obfuscates the lived reality behind the lexicon, diminishes it to the point of irrelevance (or perhaps strategically constructs it as religious and racial grotesquery) so that the organization might, then, be dismissed and configured in a taxonomy of truncated religious groups and ideas that are anathema to supposed American ideals.8 Michel Foucault warns of this in Religion and Culture.9 He reminds us that once made public, writings—in this case once-secret religious discourses that are now codified in multiple texts for public consumption—are often read without regard for the intended meaning of the author. Foucault privileges the reader and his/her interpretation.10 While Foucault sees this as positive, he does not consider how misreadings or intentional misrenderings and trun- cations might be forms of discursive violence that further serve to diminish marginalized religious groups and communities to justify policies and practices that made their discourses necessary in the first place. This is the case, at least in this text, because he views religion as functioning with other forms of technologies to garner power to control and shape human behavior. But what about the underside of discourses? What about narratives that are counter- hegemonic as subjugated actors struggle to create spaces for new subjectivities in hostile conditions? This is the sense in which Elijah Muhammad, the NOI, and the narrative of Yakub, and, in particular, the discourse on devils should be read and interpreted. (Henry Louis Gates argues that African American literary works point to theory and method, both to what they mean and how they should be handled as material. The theory and method is within the sources themselves). Thus through the language, sources, and symbols of the Yakub mythology, Elijah Muhammad was describing a world—a world that he and so many black people lived—and he offered this originally secret knowledge to his followers as a theodicy: a way of justifying their lives and making sense of their suffering in a world in which violence(s) against them might otherwise seem existentially totalizing and ontologically paralyzing. Hence the question of suffering and violence in the face of white supremacy has been a perennial question of African American religion. Because of the tenuous nature of black existence in a world in which black bodies are perceived and lived as in jeopardy, African Americans, including the NOI, developed secretive discourses and practices that Anthony Pinn calls “covert”11 in response to the “dehumanization of terror.”12 I would add that part of what is “dehumanizing” now that the narrative of Yakub is more tenuously known publicly is the failure of scholars and popular sources to connect the discourses to what Biko Mandela Gray calls the epistemological- ontological orientation of African American religion that requires attention to the existential-phenomenological situation of African American religious “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is” 157 groups such as the NOI. In his essay, “Show and Prove: Five Percenters and the Study of African American Esotericism,”13 for instance, Gray argues that the secret knowledge of the Five Percent Nation of Islam, also known as the Nation of Gods and Earths—and I argue the same is true of the NOI and the story of Yakub—is not simply about knowledge acquisition nor of pedantic fixation, but it is about the verybeing of their members. It re-envisions who they are and who they could be. What Gray pushes for here is the point of my extended excursus, which introduces this chapter. Which is to say, Gray is calling us to pay critical attention to the conditions under which such secretive practices and discourses emerge and the relationship that they have to the people who practice them and their condition of existence—namely, as a response to terror and quest for new subjectivities and forms of religious consciousness in which African Americans re-make themselves and envision themselves anew that are not structured and determined by the enormous weight of a history of violence, subjugation, and narratives that render them non-human and inferior. This is what is meant by the epistemological-ontological orientation and the phenomenological- existential situation of African Americans, and this is precisely what is missing in discussions of the myth of Yakub and the hyperbolic and reactionary responses to the representation and description, metaphorical or otherwise, of whites(upremacy) as “the devils” in the experience of African Americans. In other words, the misappropriation arises from the inability or unwilling- ness to interpret the narrative in the empathic context (phenomenological bracketing) of religious meaning making as a description of experience in the world and as a theological theodicy that makes sense at most and is plausible and functional at worst, given the experience of Elijah Muham- mad and African Americans in the United States.

Elijah Muhammad, Racial Terror, and the Making of a Methodology It is in this setting that this chapter argues that the doctrinal structure of the NOI provided (and provides) more than a theological structure from within which a black person (particularly African American men) could retain a sense of dignity in an antiblack racist world.14 It also provides a religious praxis that validates the doctrinal structure while affording a new methodological approach for religious studies scholars. I call this approach theological phenomenology, and I find the resources for this method in the life and statements of Elijah Muhammad—particularly his doctrine of the white people as devils. Which is to say, this new approach to the study of the NOI—and possibly to religious studies more generally—is one that is rooted in Muhammad’s own methodology. Again, Gray’s methodological concern for the study of religion generally and African American religion specifically requires that Elijah Muhammad’s method—a method that informs this chapter—be gleaned in its connection 158 Stephen C. Finely to his experiences of and contact with whites and white supremacy— particularly in the form of lynchings. As the first epigraph framing this work demonstrates, the lynching of his friend Albert Hamilton had a significant impact on his life and thoughts. Because these experiences are important to his development, it is necessary to provide some biographical context, specifically as it relates to Muhammad’s experience of Hamilton’s lynching and his overall experience of and with white racial terror. The year is 1912. Elijah Poole (later Elijah Muhammad), a teenager who would later become an unlettered Baptist preacher, witnesses the lynching parade of his good friend, Albert Hamilton. This is one of many acts of violence and oppression he witnessed white people commit, and each of these events would stay with him for the rest of his life. Albert Hamilton’s lynching was one of numerous lynchings in his community, but this one stuck with him. Journalist Karl Evanzz called this particular occurrence “a primal event in shaping his lifelong contempt for whites.”15 Having been arrested and thrown in Crisp County Jail where three African Americans had been lynched a week earlier, a white mob broke into the facility, took Hamil- ton, and lynched him—parading his broken and mutilated body throughout the black section—the “Negro Town”—of Cordele, Georgia, where he was born. This was a form of public administration meant to teach and keep black people in their “place”; when white people perceived them, even in their imagination, to have crossed a line of behavior for black people, that was unacceptable to whites. Mob retribution frequently followed. The white community even made postcards of the event in order to celebrate it, to share it with family and friends in other geographical areas, and to re-live it.16 Young Poole was coming of age during a time when the number of Afri- can Americans who were lynched was unprecedented. This particular event, however, left an unshakable mark on Poole’s racial consciousness, and he “cried all the way home,”17 struggling to make sense of what happened to his friend and to comprehend the powerlessness of African American men, who did nothing to protect his community from white racial terror. Muhammad biographer Claude A. Clegg III makes a similar point as Evanzz when he claims, “This traumatic experience stayed with Elijah for the rest of his life and certainly made him more susceptible to black separatist doctrines.”18 Clegg’s claim may be historically accurate, but one wonders: What was it specifically about his future mentor Master Fard’s “separatist” doctrines that appealed to Poole-turned-Muhammad? Did it not, rather, influence a theodicean way of looking at the world that sought to make sense of the absurd racial terror that African Americans experienced at the hands of whites in the United States? Indeed, one of the hallmarks of African American religion and black religious and theological thought in the United States has been the attempt to answer the following question: What is the reason for unmerited black suffering, a suffering, as in the lynching that typified Elijah Muhammad’s experience in the South that focused on black bodies?19 The centrality of this question—the visitation of unmerited and gratuitous physical suffering “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is” 159 to African American communities—also required that the body become the central locus of religious meaning for African Americans. Charles H. Long agrees, noting,

As stepchildren of Western culture, the oppressed have affirmed and opposed the ideal of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment worlds. But in the midst of this ambiguity, for better or for worse, their experiences were rooted in the absurd meaning of their bodies, and it was for these bodies that they were regarded not only as valuable works but also as the locus of the ideologies that justified their enslavement.20

The centrality of the body is important because it speaks to the nature of racialized oppression and violence. As theologians Anthony Pinn and Kelly Brown Douglass have demonstrated, the surveillance, restriction, and destruction of the black body has been central to the development and maintenance of white supremacy, and this reality has had significant religious and theological consequences for African American religious communities.21 It is within this context—a context where people were forced to recon with the “absurd meaning of their bodies”—that we are able to situate the NOI’s mythology and theological doctrines. In interrogating these doctrines, I argue that we find new methodological resources for the study of religion. Upon further exploration, it becomes clear that Muhammad’s development of Fard’s doctrine of the white devil is not a value statement, but rather a phenomenologically salient description of white people in an antiblack racist world. In claiming that white people were devils, Muhammad was not judging white people. Instead, he was providing a theological framing of an experiential description based upon white people’s actions and dispositions toward black people. What Muhammad offered, then, was praxis for adherents of the NOI: describe the world and then attempt to unearth the theological framings or meanings upholding or undergirding this world. This praxis, I argue, is also the methodology that I am calling theological phenomenology: by describing the world of experience with theological language, Muhammad antici- pates and embodies William Jones’s concept of humanocentric theism in his Is God a White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology22 while extending and deepening it. I will return to Jones later in this chapter, but I must begin with a brief discussion of the phenomenological method.

What Is Phenomenology? Dermot Moran frames phenomenology traditionally as

a style of philosophizing, which emphasises the attempt to get at the truth of matters, to describe phenomena, in the broadest sense as whatever appears in the manner in which it appears, that is as it manifests itself to consciousness, to the experiencer.23 160 Stephen C. Finely This way of defining phenomenology is not without its problems. I want to understand phenomenology as a practice of description rather than a system that is sensitive to socio-cultural realities, which seeks to uncover the structures or conditions that govern intelligibility. In this section, I briefly turn to three different thinkers—Husserl, Heidegger, and Du Bois—to elaborate on what this definition means.24 Without a doubt, phenomenology is a term fraught with inconsistencies and conflicting definitions. Although the term at least goes back to Hegel,25 Edmund Husserl was the founder of the phenomenological movement, given that he turned phenomenology itself into a philosophical method.26 According to Husserl, the goal of phenomenology is to gain access to the indubitable foundations of our existence. He suggested that the best way to get to this was through descriptions of experience, for, following Descartes, the only sure foundation we have in this world is that we are the ones experiencing it. The world itself may not exist, but even if it does not, Husserl argued, we know that we do. For Husserl, Descartes’s work was not wrong; it just did not go far enough. What’s more, he understood his work as an extension of Descartes’, giving phenomenology an almost detached tone. The Husserlian method relied on describing one’s experience and then “reducing back” to figure out what structures or relations make that experience possible. This reduction entails something called “bracketing” [epoché], which meant for Husserl that the practicing phenomenologist would sus- pend or “bracket” whether or not that experience was “real.” It was only through this “bracketing,” Husserl maintained, that one could attain cer- tainty about the nature of what one was experiencing. A brief example here will illustrate this contention: If I want to know what the experience of holding a die is, I do not need to know whether or not the die (or even myself) is real; what matters are the contours of this experience—what is making me see or hold this six-sided cube as a die. After bracketing the reality of the world, Husserl argued, one could figure out certain structures of experience. And, borrowing from his teacher Frantz Brentano, he argued that the foundational structure undergirding experience was “intentionality,” or the reality that thought is always already directed toward something. Which is to say that thought is always already consciousness of something. The problem with this method is that intentionality is too cognitive, too epistemological. It reduces experience—and therefore existence itself—to the operations of a cognitive consciousness. We do not live this way, however, and his student, Martin Heidegger, therefore, critiqued and expanded phenomenology on this ground, asserting that existence is lived, therefore putting phenomenology into a more “existential” register. This existential development of phenomenology released the method from its more Cartesian roots and situated the phenomenological subject in a world— a multilayered and cultural world.27 As for Heidegger, phenomenology is the practice of describing what comes into the light of the world—a world within which we are situated and to which we are inextricably tied.28 I find “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is” 161 Husserl and Heidegger’s work compelling in certain ways. Both of them turn to experience—and more specifically, the description of experience— as the starting point for theorizing or understanding the world. Both Hus- serl and Heidegger attune us to the importance of bracketed description of everyday experience in the phenomenological method, and they speak to the reality that experience is “intentional” or directed toward something. And yet, both Heidegger and Husserl did not fully speak to the fact that this world does not come to us carte blanche. While Heidegger was certainly aware of culture as a reality, in his early work, nonetheless, he tried to articulate this cultural world in a neutral vein, with no recourse to socio-cultural developments, political issues, and ethical dilemmas.29 And so, while Heidegger was reforming Husserl’s phenomenology to fit his own “neutral” philosophical interests, another thinker, one who may have had a passing awareness of the burgeoning phenomenological movement in Germany, was, according to Paget Henry,30 developing his own phenomenology—one that kept an unflinching eye on the horrors of systematic racism within the context of the United States: W.E.B. Du Bois.31 If the European phenomenologists wanted to refrain from cultural specific- ity, Du Bois made it clear that culture cannot be divorced from phenomenological thinking. So, with Du Bois, we arrive at the final component of a rich phenomenological method. With Husserl, we get description; with Heidegger, we get the world; however, with Du Bois, we get culture. Du Bois’s descriptions of the operations of black double-consciousness are always situated in a world where one cannot ignore the mechanisms and effects of culture. He writes,

The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself though the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self though the eyes of the others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.32

DuBois goes on to describe African Americans’ attempt to attain their own self-conscious humanity and to merge this twoness, this bifurcation, into an integrated whole. In the United States, a country marked by chattel slavery and a burgeoning lynching movement, Du Bois could not merely stand as a detached philosophical observer analyzing the intricacies of intentionality or the meaning of being. For Du Bois, intentionality and the meaning of being are always and already inflected by what it means to be black—and therefore what it means to be a “problem” existentially.33 162 Stephen C. Finely All three of these approaches turn to descriptions of experience to arrive at those conditions or structures that govern intelligibility or sense. How- ever, I think it is necessary to temper the formal philosophical approaches of Husserl and Heidegger with an approach that is sensitive to cultural realities and ethical issues. For this reason, I understand phenomenology as the practice of describing experience in order to understand or further clarify our existence, and this is done in a way that is sensitive to socio-cultural realities. Now we turn our attention to how this is connected to Elijah Muham- mad and NOI mythology/theology in the rest of the chapter.

Muhammad and the White Devil Elijah Poole was probably not aware of the phenomenological developments occurring in the United States and abroad. However, his life and his writings and teachings display quite a bit of phenomenological acumen. We will take his doctrine of the “white devil” as a case study for this claim. While this particular doctrine has probably fallen under the most scrutiny and critique, at closer glance, one wonders whether this doctrine is the result of scorn or the result of rigorous existential and experiential description. If we return to his experience of his friend being lynched, and Clegg’s analysis of this experience, we realize a few things. Clegg suggests that he was more susceptible to black separatist doctrines, but if this was the case, then why the NOI? In this section, I suggest that the NOI was influential on Poole-turned-Muhammad because it provided a way to make sense of the world in light of his experience—to pursue what Anthony Pinn calls “the quest for complex subjectivity,” or the yearning for deeper individual and collective life meaning.34 This “quest” is religious, says Pinn, who defines religion as “the recognition of and response to the elemental feeling for complex subjectivity and the accompanying transformation of consciousness that allows for the historically manifest battle against the terror of fixed identity.”35 According to Pinn, religion is the continual pursuit for a more expansive and liberated understanding of individual and collective self-identity. In light of this, Muhammad’s experience of Hamilton’s lynching is part and parcel of his process of making life meaningful. Consider, for example, the fact that Muhammad was never able to shake the trauma. Decades later (c. 1966), as leader of the NOI, he would express,

This is the American so-called Negro: Robbed so complete today that even after reading the history of how their fathers were brought here, put on the block and sailed [sic] off as animals, and have been lynched and burned to the stake for every century since he has been here. And today he is being beaten and killed, shot down on the streets and on the highways throughout the government of America without hinderance [sic] by his slave masters children.36 “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is” 163 When these sentiments are connected and traced back to concrete events that occurred in his life—particularly his friend’s lynching and the racial terror that he experienced—it becomes clear why the story of Yakub, as presented by Master Fard Muhammad, his teacher, made perfect sense to him. This story gave an explanation to and for his experience of racialized violence; it acknowledged the hypocrisy of Christianity and spoke to the reason why whites behaved the way they did. The NOI mythology enabled Elijah to comprehend the violence against black bodies that otherwise made no sense. Why did the story make so much sense? Let’s return to the story for a moment. As the story goes, Yakub, the latest and the most significant of the god-scientists, was born near Mecca about 6,600 years ago in the current 25,000-year cycle37—an event that was prophesied by the 24 scientists 8,400 years prior to his birth.38 Known as the “Big Head” for his superior intellectual abilities and his arrogance or wisdom,39 Yakub was one of the 30 percent of the Original People, who was discontented.40 Gifted with superior genius, he studied genetics (i.e., “the germ of man”) as the collective of god-scientists had prophesied. To be sure, he was intent on making a [white] people who would destroy the Original [black] People41 from the time of his youth, and his studies and unusual creativity would ultimately serve his goal of human destruction. He devised his plan from unusual sources, given his keen insight. Therefore, Yakub was able to discern the relationship between magnets and human attraction that would be the basis of his diabolical scheme. One day Yakub, who apparently understood formal genetics and the notion of dominant and recessive traits, was playing with magnets. He learned from this the law of attraction. Apparently, the magnets symbolized the power of attraction—how an “unlike”42 people could attract, manipulate, and rule the Original People with lies and tricks. At the age of eighteen, he had fin- ished his formal education at the colleges and universities of his land, and he was esteemed as a brilliant scientist. Subsequently, he engaged in the study of eugenics in order to make such an “unlike” people who could dominate the Original People. By studying the Original People’s “germ” [read: chromosomes] under a microscope, Yakub discovered that there were two “people” [read: genes] in him, one black and one brown [read: dominant and recessive traits]. Through a type of eugenics or genetic engineering called grafting in which he separated the brown germ, he determined that he could “make” a [white] race of people who could rule and ultimately destroy the black nation.43 To make a long story short, the engineering of the white race would take 600 years, and though Yakub died at the age of 150, he passed on all of his secret knowledge to his followers. Through the process of grafting, he would separate the black germ from the brown germ, and from the brown germ would come the red, and from the red, the yellow—a 600-year procedure until finally the white race was 164 Stephen C. Finely made. It was this engineering process in which white people were “made” to which the term “devil” refers. To guarantee the method, Yakub’s people would forbid black people to marry one another and kill all the black babies that were born (and save the brown). The nurses would tell the new parents that the black babies had died and gone on to a better place—that is, heaven—hence the importance of the doctors, nurses, ministers, crema- tors, and notions such as heaven in the conspiracy.44 Finally, the conspiracy was carried out through the religion that Yakub developed—Christianity. Christianity confused African Americans about the true nature of who they were and, through appeals to an otherworldly heaven, obscured the geno- cidal plan created by white supremacy: one could easily and passively accept one’s death if there was a heaven on the other side of that death. Allah tried to save black people by sending the prophets to them—first Moses, then Jesus, then the Prophet Muhammad. God—that is, Master Fard Muhammad—disappeared in 1933 but left secret knowledge in the form of mythology that was transmitted directly from master to disciple, Elijah Muhammad. The fantastic account Master Fard Muhammad passed on to Elijah Muhammad for the “three years” in which he learned from Master Fard—part history, astronomy, evolutionary biology and genetics, numerology, metaphysics, theological anthropology, and science fiction—would transform his reality and give it a coherence and consciousness that the unlettered man had never before experienced. The world was no longer absurd, and the racial violence and oppression that he and many countless other black people experienced now made perfect sense. This mythology was disseminated to members of Muhammad’s NOI through various sermons and addresses that were later published in frag- ments by him and his followers.45 Muhammad claimed to have access to this esoteric knowledge regarding the nature of reality, God, and race, as did African Americans through him. He does not claim how he accesses this secret knowledge—only that it came from his relationship with Master Fard, the Great Mahdi, who taught him. He says, for instance,

The secret of who God is and who is the devil has been a mystery to the average one of mankind, to be revealed in all of its clearness to one who was so ignorant that he know [sic] not even himself—born blind, deaf and dumb. All praise is due to the Great Mahdi, who was to come and has come, the sole master of the worlds. I ask myself at times, “What can I do to repay Allah (the Great Mahdi, Fard Muhammad) for his coming, wisdom, and knowledge and understanding?”46

Muhammad refers to this knowledge as secret and mysterious, and he inti- mates that such knowledge is hidden primarily from white people, since he uses the term “mankind.” “Black”47 people, the mythology argues, are not a “kind.” They are the “Originals,” since only “kinds” were made through artificial genetic processes. Black people, on the other hand were created. “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is” 165 Elijah Muhammad emphasized that understanding whites’ nature as devils was the only way to make sense of the gratuitous violence which they enacted on African Americans and the entire world of color. He had lynching in mind, but no doubt also multiple genocides on the continent of Africa, which were part of the historical record. And European colonization was a history of one violent genocide after another (e.g., King Leopold II, Cecil Rhodes, etc.) as was the transatlantic slave trade for which there was no parallel in the world of color upon white people. In fact, the suffering of black people was distinctive in character from the suffering of other peoples. This requires a unique explanatory approach. Philosopher of religion Wil- liam R. Jones expounds on what he calls “ethnic suffering” and why it is a necessary category of analysis:

Four essential features constitute ethnic suffering: (a) maldistribution, (b) negative quality, (c) enormity, and (d) non-catastrophic character. By accentuating the ethnic factor I wish to call attention to that suffering which is maldistributed; it is not spread, as it were, more or less ran- domly and impartially over the total human race. Rather, it is concen- trated in a particular ethnic group. My concern in utilizing the concept of ethnic suffering is to accentuate the fact that black suffering is bal- anced by white non-suffering instead of white suffering. Consequently, black suffering in particular and ethnic suffering in general raise the issue of the scandal of particularity.48

To be clear, according to Jones, suffering occasions ethnic communities at a greater rate. It has no positive value. It is experienced as disproportionate to the population. In other words, it is inordinate in that it is visited upon a larger percentage of ethnic individuals in relation to their overall populations, and it is enormous in that it points to a “suffering that is unto death,”49 by which Jones means that it curtails life expectancy, or it antici- pates the immediacy of death. Finally, by “non-catastrophic,” he contends that ethnic suffering endures over a much longer period of time than other forms. It is transgenerational. “It does not strike quickly and then leave after a short terrible siege.”50 Elijah Muhammad offers his own theodicy for what Jones expresses through philosophical argumentation. The story of Yakub explained it. The relationship between the signifier “devil” and the signified—white people’s disdain for and continued genocide of black people was self-evident and undeniable for him. This linguistic symbol “white” equaled violence, even toward other white people: “Who has been our aggressors and murderers ever since we have been in America? Who, by nature, was made quick to shed blood—even his own?” Muham- mad continues,

And how much easier it is for them to shed our blood. They are heart- less, merciless, when it comes to you and me we all know the true 166 Stephen C. Finely answer, whether you wish to bear witness with your tongues or with your hands, we know that the white man is our aggressor—the hater of good, justice and equality for you and me.51

It was a fact of existence for Elijah Muhammad and for African Americans who found the NOI attractive and for many who did not. In the next section, I will bring all of this together, framing the NOI doctrine of the white devil as a theological-phenomenological description.

Theological Phenomenology: Description, Not Animus According to the mythology, whites were made, not created; they were and are the products of a perverse genetic experiment aimed at destroying the black race. But how does Elijah make the jump from white-as-genetic-defor- mity to white-as-devil? While we get some sense of how he thinks he made the jump—that is, the doctrine was transmitted in an esoteric fashion from Master Fard to Elijah—there appear to be other factors operative here. As I have noted in several places in this chapter, one such factor is the experiential context within which Poole-turned-Muhammed lived and existed. This context—marked by segregation and racial terror, particularly in the form of lynching—was not somehow erased from Muhammad’s consciousness upon converting. Again, as Gray suggests in his work, religious orientations are also framed in light of and in response to experiential socio-cultural contexts. This was no less the case with Elijah Muhammad. Having lived in a world wherein whites would viciously and gratuitously participate in violent and degrading acts against black people, Muhammad needed a way to make sense of this terror. That is, he needed a theodicy, a way to justify the presence of evil in light of the purported goodness and omnipotence of God. His experience provided both the concrete evidence of white supremacy as well as the impetus for a theodicy that would not reduce black people’s value or make them suffering servants in the aid of a larger divine plan, and in this way, both the NOI and, ironically, part of Christian metaphysics afforded him a framework to articulate the meaning of his experience. It is important, here, to note, along with Jones in Is God a White Rac- ist?, that the only viable theodicy is one that vindicates God of the possibility of being a white racist. Jones raises the question of divine racism not from within the realm of philosophical logic and “pure” reason, but rather within the context of concrete existential and experiential engagement. Arguing that God is “the sum of his acts,”52 Jones’s analysis raises the charge of divine racism based upon history, not reason (this is not a negation of Jones’s deployment of reason—he’s a philosopher—however, it situates reason within a larger context of experience). While Jones remains content merely to raise the question of divine racism, however—and only provide suggestions as to how to handle this reality—it “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is” 167 is very possible to understand Elijah Muhammad’s adoption and publicizing of the white devil doctrine as a theodical response to white supremacy that refutes the charge of divine racism. In this way, Jones and Muhammad share a methodological similarity; they remain connected to the world of experience as they engage in religious and theological reflection. Neither Jones nor Muhammad can shake the reality that “today [the African American] is being beaten and killed, shot down on the streets and on the highways throughout the government of America without hinderance [sic] by his slave masters children.”53 This reality is incorporated into their religious/theological reflections; however, while Jones focuses his reflection on the frameworks of his black theological counterparts and is content to make a/theological suggestions, Muhammad focuses his attention on making sense of this world in theological terms. And so while Jones and Muhammad may begin their reflections with a turn to experience—a phenomenological move—they depart from one another in how this turn is used: Jones’s phenomenology provides fod- der for critique. Muhammad’s phenomenology stands as the starting point for the development of a theological doctrine rooted in theodicean thinking. Herein lies the crux of theological phenomenology: it provides meaningful descriptions of the world of experience in theological terms and symbols, responding to and framing our world in symbols and signs derived from certain religious orientations and institutions. This is, I think, the only way to understand Muhammad’s white devil doctrine. I say this because, despite the fact that Muhammad might have har- bored anger toward white supremacy, he, nonetheless, was able to see certain whites as deserving of some kind of empathy. A good example of this is when he suspended his national spokesman, Malcolm X, for making inflammatory remarks about the death of President Kennedy given the country’s and many African Americans’ love for him. In light of this, it’s clear that Muhammad was not only describing the world of white supremacy and white supremacists in theological terms but also phenomenologically bracketing—to a point—his emotions and concerns. The term “devil” is not value-neutral, but when situated within a history of repeated and mutating white supremacist racialized terror, it becomes clear that Muham- mad was describing what he saw—that is, what he experienced. Moreover, in conjunction with the Yakub myth, this doctrine—the white-as-devil—also provided the theodicean response he needed. In order to refute the charge of divine malice or divine racism, Muhammad found resources in the Christian theodicy that is the devil—that is, an evil being who couldn’t be anything else—and a being who allowed God’s goodness to remain. But instead of allowing this symbolism to remain at the purely otherworldly level, Muhammad grounded it in the material world, found empirical evidence for the devil’s existence in the lynchings, beatings, shoot- ings, rapes, and degradation of black people that marked his sociocultural context. The white devil was a theological-phenomenological description; it 168 Stephen C. Finely was a bracketed description of experience (racialized terror) that used theological language (“devil”) to make sense of the world (white supremacy). This description was “bracketed” in the sense that history—not only his own experience—bore witness to the reality of white supremacy. Although Muhammad may have never read or even heard of Husserl, Heidegger, or other phenomenologists, his description of his world to uncover more general structures of existence (in this case, white supremacy) speaks to a kind of phenomenological approach—one laden with theological symbolism. In the next and final section, I will briefly discuss the methodological insights this approach might afford scholars of religion.

Theological Phenomenology as a Method for Religious Studies To be clear, my goal is neither to affirm nor to disavow Muhammad’s doctrine of devils. I offer theoretical and, perhaps more importantly, methodological insights as a means of engaging what is actually a significant contribution that Muhammad makes to black religious and theological thought and to religious studies. By taking him seriously, we gain a new methodology and hopefully a new appreciation for the meaning and function of his discourses on Yakub. The doctrine itself emerges out of the collapse of theological reflection with phenomenological description. This is the methodological insight that I argue can be gleaned from Elijah Muhammad and the NOI. It is important to also highlight the importance of William Jones here as well. Although his work may not be strictly classified as theological phenomenology—since he did not use theological symbolism simultaneously to describe and understand the world of experience—he nonetheless speaks to the centrality of experience and suffering in the development of African American theological and religious thought. While Muhammad may have never come in contact with Jones, his work appears to embody Jones’s assertion. The notion that whites are the devil is at once an articulation of experience, history, and theodicy, speaking to the importance of experience and suffering in black religious life and thought. Theological phenomenology, then, is a methodological extension of Jones’s existential-phenomenological reflections on the nature of theodicy and suffering within the context of African American life. Although theological phenomenology finds its first concrete expression in the white devil doctrine, it, nevertheless, has strong similarities to Gordon Kaufman’s theological method, wherein he makes it clear that theology is second-order reflection. More specifically, Kaufman pushes his readers first to describe the world, then describe God in relation to the world, and finally to describe the world again with this new picture of God in place.54 The difference between the two methods, however, is that the first two steps are collapsed into one in theological phenomenology; describing the world is already to describe something theological. We see some of this in Jean-Luc “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is” 169 Marion’s essay, “The Saturated Phenomenon,” wherein he describes the very condition of the possibility of religious experience as the very possibility of experience itself.55 His work ultimately fails for other reasons—largely because human difference remains unincorporated in his phenomenological reflections—but still, he gives us a sense of what I mean by the collapse of experiential description and theological framing. In theological phenomenology, the framing of experience itself is theological, so “devils” leave the world of otherworldly speculation and take on the concrete form of lynch mobs, racist law enforcement officers, and duplicitous white politicians. As I read Muhammad, to discern the “secret of who the devil is” is to keep a steady and stable eye on the world of experience while simultaneously filtering it through a theological lens. In so doing—that is, in finding out the “secret of who the devil is” through the method of theological phenomenology—Muhammad was also able to provide new ways of understanding life and experience that kept the dignity and worth of African Americans intact. And, if used properly, theological phenomenology might afford religious studies scholars new ways of understanding and engaging with religious traditions—especially those situated within the Africana context.

Notes 1. This chapter underwent several iterations and revisions, none of which would have been possible without the expert intellectual conversations with Biko Man- dela Gray of Rice University. This chapter and I are indebted to him. I would also like to thank the editors, Dawn-Marie Gibson and Herbert Berg, for their continued encouragement and patience. 2. Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Maryland Heights: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, [1965] 1997), 52. Cf. Elijah Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, Vol. 2 (Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society, 2006), 14, for a similar discourse that is verbatim in places to the one cited here. 3. Albert B. Cleage, Jr. Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church (Detroit: Luxor Publishers of the Pan-African Orthodox Christian Church, [1972] 1987), 94–103. 4. Karl Evanzz, The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 40. 5. Stephen C. Finley, “Hidden Away: Esotericism and Gnosticism in Elijah Muham- mad’s Nation of Islam,” in Histories of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revela- tion in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions, ed. April D. DeConick and Grant Adamson, 259–280 (Durham: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2013). See also, Stephen C. Finley, Re-imagining Race and Representation: The Black Body in the Nation of Islam. Unpublished PhD Dissertation: Rice University, 2009. 6. Finley, “Hidden Away,” 259. 7. Charles H. Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Study of Religion (Aurora: The Davies Group, [1986] 1995), 9. See also, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criti- cism (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1988); Stuart Hall, ed., Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997). To read the mythology literally is to deny the importance of 170 Stephen C. Finely signifying discourses and practices in African American religion and culture and to impose a flattened read on the narrative that negates the context, cultural setting, and lived reality of the author(s). 8. The Southern Poverty Law Center makes just this move as they locate the NOI in their classification of “Extremist and Hate Groups,” which includes the various iterations of the Ku Klux Klan, Skinheads, and other “white supremacist” religions and organizations. 9. Michel Foucault, Religion and Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999), 111; cf. 32. 10. Foucault, Religion and Culture, 111. 11. Anthony B. Pinn, Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minne- apolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 108ff. 12. Pinn, Terror and Triumph, 126. 13. “Show and Prove”: In Esotericism in African American Religious Experience: “There Is a Mystery” . . ., ed. Stephen C. Finley, Margarita Simon Guillory, Hugh Page, Jr., (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 177–197. 14. See, Lewis R. Gordon, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Atlantic Highlands: Humanity Books, 1995). 15. Evanzz, The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad, 41. 16. Ibid., 39–40. Cf. Pinn, Terror and Triumph, 75. 17. Evanzz, The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad, 40. 18. Clegg 1997, 10. 19. To gain some sense of this, see the introduction and first chapter of illiamW Jones’ Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998). 20. Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Study of Religion, 211. 21. See Pinn, Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis: For- tress Press, 2003); and Douglass, What’s Faith Got to Do with It: Black Bodies, Christian Souls (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005). 22. William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology (Bos- ton: Beacon Press, [1973] 1998). 23. Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (New York and London: Rout- ledge, 2000), 4. 24. To chronicle all of the works informing this statement would take too much space, since each of these thinkers were prolific writers. For an introduction to each of their works, I would suggest their most popular or influential texts. In this regard, one could look to the entire first section of Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970); for Heidegger, it would be his Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: HarperCollins, 1962); and W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam Books, [1903] 1989). 25. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. J. Hoffmeister (Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1977). 26. There are many areas to find this, but a look at Husserl’s work—Ideas I and II, Cartesian Meditations, and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcenden- tal Phenomenology—speaks to the shift of phenomenology away from Hegel’s dialectical description of consciousness to a methodological imperative to go to “the things themselves,” to explore everyday experience in order to handle epistemological and ontological questions. 27. The beginnings of this shift in Heidegger’s thinking are at least as early as his phenomenological lectures on religion. See The Phenomenology of the Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosseti-Ferencei (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). 28. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robin- son (New York: Harper and Row, 1968). “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is” 171 29. Again, Being and Time’s method of “fundamental ontology” sought to under- cover the transcendental structures governing any experience whatsoever—or at least that was the goal of the project. Whether or not Heidegger succeeds here remains uncertain—especially when one thinks about his lack of attention to the body. For more commentary on this, see Kevin Aho’s text Heidegger’s Neglect of the Body (Albany: SUNY Press, 2015). 30. Paget Henry, “Africana Phenomenology: Its Philosophical Implications.” Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise (Fall 2006): 1–23. 31. Paget Henry elaborates on Du Bois’ phenomenology in his essay “Africana Phe- nomenology.” As such, he heavily frames my understanding of Du Bois’s phenomenological contributions. 32. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 3. 33. W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 2. 34. Pinn, Terror and Triumph, 173. 35. Ibid., 175. 36. Muhammad, Elijah. The Science of Time: The Time & Judgment when Self Tells the Truth on Self (Atlanta: Secretarius MEMPS, 1993) 26–27. 37. Clegg 1997, 49; Clegg, An Original Man, 49; Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 110; Elijah Muhammad, Yakub (Ja-cob): The Father of Man-Kind (Atlanta: Secritarius MEMPS Publications, 2002), 61. 38. Muhammad 1965, 110. 39. Ibid., 110–101; Muhammad 1933, 30–31. 40. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, Vol. 2, 51. The contradiction that seems unexplained is how the Original People are “good by nature” and yet have the capacity to sin, which Muhammad tries to indicate when he says that 30 percent are always dissatisfied. 41. Stephen C. Finley, “The Meaning of ‘Mother’ in Louis Farrakhan’s ‘Mother Wheel’: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Cosmology of the Nation of Islam’s UFO.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80/2 (2012), 434–465, esp. 456–457. It should be noted that “black” was a “surplus category” for Muham- mad that not only referred to African Americans in the material sense, but to Asians, Native Americans, Latinos, and beyond. In its metaphysical, mythological, meaning “black” also signified extraterrestrials on Mars and Venus. Black people in North America are the direct and most immediate signification of the category, however, and they are the principle characters to which the mythology of Yakub points. 42. Muhammad 1965, 112. 43. Muhammad 1993, 6–9; Muhammad 2006, 38; Cf. Evanzz 1999, 75. 44. At the same time, the black race, the Tribe of Shabazz, included the black, brown, red, and yellow peoples. Cf. Muhammad 1965, 121: “The black nation, including its other three colors, brown, red and yellow, outnumber the Cauca- sian race, eleven to one.” See, Muhammad 1993, 12–13. 45. See, Finley 2009, 90 37n; A good collection of addresses on the subject, however, can be found in Muhammad 2002. 46. Muhammad 1965, 52. Cf. Muhammad 2006, 14, for a similar discourse that is verbatim in places to the one cited here. 47. Finley 2009, 110. The term “black” in the NOI referred to people who were understood as “black, brown, red and yellow.” 48. Jones, Is God a White Racist? 21. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., 22. 51. Muhammad, Message to the Blackman, 129. Cf. 128: “They shed the blood of all life, even their own.” 52. Jones, Is God a White Racist? 10–15. 53. Muhammad, The Science of Time, 26–27. 172 Stephen C. Finely 54. Gordon Kaufman, Essay on Theological Method (American Academy of Reli- gion, 1995). 55. See Jean-Luc Marion, “The Saturated Phenomenon,” in Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn: The French Debate,” ed. Dominique Janicaud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), 176–216.

Works Cited Aho, Kevin. Heidegger’s Neglect of the Body. Albany: SUNY Press, 2015. Cleage, Jr., Albert B. Black Christian Nationalism: New Directions for the Black Church. Detroit: Luxor Publishers of the Pan-African Orthodox Christian Church, [1972] 1987. Clegg III, Claude Andrew. An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muham- mad. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Douglas, Kelly Brown. What’s Faith Got to do with it: Black Bodies/Christian Souls. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005. Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Bantam Books, [1903] 1989. Evanzz, Karl. The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad. New York: Vintage Books, 1999. Finley, Stephen C. “Hidden Away: Esotericism and Gnosticism in Elijah Muham- mad’s Nation of Islam.” In Histories of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions, ed. April D. DeConick and Grant Adamson, 259–280. Durham, UK: Acumen Publishing Limited, 2013. ——. “The Meaning of ‘Mother’ in Louis Farrakhan’s ‘Mother Wheel’: Race, Gen- der, and Sexuality in the Cosmology of the Nation of Islam’s UFO.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80.2 (2012): 434–465. ——. Re-imagining Race and Representation: The Black Body in the Nation of Islam. Unpublished PhD Dissertation: Rice University, 2009. Foucault, Michel. Religion and Culture. New York: Routledge, 1999. Gates, Jr., Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Lit- erary Criticism. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1988. Gordon, Lewis R. Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Human- ity Books, 1995. Gray, Buko Mandela. “Show and Prove.” In Esotericism in African American Reli- gious Experience: “There Is a Mystery”. . ., ed. Stephen C. Finley, Margarita Simon Guillory, and Hugh Page, Jr., 177–197. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Hall, Stuart ed., Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage, 1997. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by J. Hoffmeister. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: HarperCollins, 1962. ——. The Phenomenology of the Religious Life, translated by Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosseti-Ferencei. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Henry, Paget. “Africana Phenomenology: Its Philosophical Implications.” Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise (Fall 2006):1–23. “The Secret . . . of Who the Devil Is” 173 Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, translated by Dorian Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Huhoff, 1960. ——. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, translated by David Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. ——. Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, translated by Daniel O. Dahlstrom. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2014. ——. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Phi- losophy: Second Book Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, translated by R Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989. Jones, William R. Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology. Boston: Beacon Press, [1973] 1998. Kaufman, Gordon. Essay on Theological Method. Atlanta: American Academy of Religion, 1995. Long, Charles H. Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Study of Reli- gion. Aurora, CO: The Davies Group, [1986] 1995. Marion, Jean-Luc. “The Saturated Phenomenon.” In Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn: The French Debate,” ed. Dominique Janicaud, 176–216. New York: Fordham University Press, 2001. Moran, Dermot. Introduction to Phenomenology. New York and London: Rout- ledge, 2000. Muhammad, Elijah. Message to the Blackman in America. Maryland Heights, MO: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, [1965] 1997. ——. The Science of Time: The Time & Judgment when Self Tells the Truth on Self. Atlanta: Secretarius MEMPS, 1993. ——. The Supreme Wisdom, Volume Two. Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society, 2006. ——. Yakub (Ja-cob): The Father of Man-Kind. Atlanta: Secritarius MEMPS Publi- cations, 2002. Pinn, Anthony B. Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003. 10 Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies The “Historical” Jesus and the Contemporary Christ

Herbert Berg

Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam for four decades, devoted much attention to the figure of Jesus—even more than he did to Islam’s “final” prophet, Muḥammad—despite claiming Islam as the only proper religion for African Americans. A comparison of his narratives about the “true history” of Jesus with those in the Qur’an and the Bible reveals that Elijah Muhammad felt no need to conform to the traditional understandings of these older accounts. Even when referenced, these accounts were subsumed under the racialist Weltanschauung that he had inherited from his religious mentor, Wali Fard Muhammad. This approach and the resulting narratives are somewhat surprising, since Elijah Muhammad self-identified as a Muslim and was well versed in the Qur’an. Yet he did not adopt or even adapt much of the Qur’an’s own reinterpretation of the biblical Jesus. He even ignored its key claim that Jesus was not killed. Ironically, despite his disdain for Christianity and the traditional Christian understanding of Jesus, he constantly referenced the Bible, bifurcating the biblical Jesus into the last Black prophet sent to the white race, which rejected and killed him, and into a prophetic metaphor for the last Black god sent to the “lost-found Nation of Islam in the wilderness of North America.” For Elijah Muham- mad, both Jesus and Christ, therefore, further his message about the evilness of the “white devil” and the futility and danger of Christianity for African Americans.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Qur’an, and the Bible Elijah Poole was born in Georgia in 1897. That he was raised as a Chris- tian is hardly surprising given that most African Americans had adopted Christianity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because of private instruction as slaves or because the first and second Great Awakenings. In fact, his father was a lay minister with whom he is said to have debated over doctrinal issues. Given that his own family was devoutly Christian, it is unclear when Elijah Poole first began to identify Christianity as the “White man’s religion” designed to enslave African Americans. It was likely Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies 175 only when he met Wali Fard Muhammad in Detroit in 1930. Soon after becoming a follower, the renamed Elijah Muhammad became a minister and then Supreme Minister of the Nation of Islam. From 1930 to 1934, Fard Muhammad—whom Elijah came to regard as Allah—personally instructed him until the latter disappeared. After succession disputes, several years of itinerant preaching, and imprisonment on the trumped-up charge of draft dodging during World War II, Elijah Muhammad emerged as the undisputed leader of the Nation of Islam until his death in 1975. Under his guidance and with his spokesman Malcolm X, his Nation of Islam grew from fewer than 1,000 followers in 4 poor temples in 1946 to over 100,000 followers in 76 temples.1 On the one hand, Elijah Muhammad’s Islam shared the family characteris- tics of what is often understood to be “normative” Islam: He taught the belief in Allah as God; the reality of the devil; the prophets such as Moses, Jesus, and Muḥammad; the centrality of the Qur’an; and the coming rewards and pun- ishments of Judgment Day. His followers also prayed five times a day, fasted, and abstained from pork and alcohol. On the other hand, all of these beliefs and practices had a racial (and, for many Muslims, an unorthodox) character: Allah was a Black man, the most recent which was Wali Fard Muham- mad. The central myth was not the life of the Prophet Muḥammad, but the breeding of the “devil white race” out of the original black humanity by the evil genius Yakub 6,600 years ago, the white race’s enslavement of Africans 400 years ago, and the impending apocalyptic destruction of those devils by Allah. Moses’s, Jesus’s, and even Muḥammad’s roles were largely confined to their futile efforts to reform or confine the white race. Elijah Muhammad even denied bodily resurrection on the Last Day as taught by most other formula- tions of Islam, opting instead to describe Heaven and Hell as contemporary situations and resurrection as a mental condition in the imminent end-times— an apocalypticism that owed far more to Christianity than Islam. Even central rituals such as fasting were practiced and understood differently: The Nation of Islam fasted, not during the month of Ramadan in commemoration of the initial revelation of the Qur’an to Muḥammad, but in December to focus his followers’ minds on Fard Muhammad instead of Christmas.2 Thus Jesus seems at first glance mostly irrelevant to this formulation of Islam. Yet Elijah Muhammad could not ignore the figure of Jesus. After all, the people whom he hoped to convert were almost exclusively Christian, thus precluding him from simply ignoring the figure of Jesus. To succeed with them meant going in to direct competition with Christianity and the biblical depictions of Jesus. He could not simply denigrate the figure of Jesus, for he valued the Qur’an, and it depicted Jesus as a great Muslim prophet, the penultimate Muslim prophet who came with Allah’s penultimate scripture. Yet the enormous attention paid to Jesus (especially in comparison to Muḥammad and given that Jesus “was not the equal of Moses and Muhammad”3) suggests that the figure was far more significant to him than just one whom he could not afford to ignore—for he certainly ignored many other important 176 Herbert Berg biblical and quranic figures. That significance emerges with the examination of his Christology or more accurately, his Christologies. In so doing, he found a way to make Jesus irrelevant to African Americans, while simultaneously using the figure of Jesus to redirect his audience to his message. The key to understanding Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies lies in his attitudes toward the scriptures that he employed. He described the Bible as a “poison book,” but one that contained many hidden truths and prophecies that he alone understood.4 The Qur’an, in contrast, “has Truth in it. I will not say it has some Truth in it. It has all Truth in it if you understand.”5

The book that the so-called American Negroes (The Tribe of Shabazz) should own and read, the book that the slavemasters have but have not represented it to their slaves, is a book that will heal their sin-sick souls that were made sick and sorrowful by the slavemasters. This book will open their blinded eyes and open their deaf ears. It will purify them. The name of this book, which makes a distinction between the God of righteous and the God of evil, is: Glorious Holy Quran Sharrieff. It is indeed the Book of Guidance, of Light and Truth, and of Wisdom and Judgement.6

Despite the epistemological supremacy of the Qur’an (and despite its own narratives of Jesus), Elijah Muhammad continued to focus on the Bible.

It is necessary for me to consult or refer to the Bible . . . because my people do not know any Scripture or ever read any Scripture other than the Bible (which they do not understand), I thought it best to make them understand the book which they read and believe in, since the Bible is their graveyard and they must be awakened from it.7

This allowed him to use the Bible while insisting that his followers rely solely on him for its interpretation. The novelty of the Qur’an to his followers made them likewise dependent on him for its interpretation. He used this dependency to reinterpret the biblical and quranic figures of Jesus radically. In 1957, Elijah Muhammad wrote a history of Jesus over several weeks in his column, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks” in the Pittsburgh Courier, which was once the most widely circulated African American newspaper. He pref- aced his narrative by asserting that Jesus was not the future prophet of Deu- teronomy 18:15–18, nor the child and Prince of Peace of Isaiah 9:6, nor the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. Instead, he cited the commentator of his copy of the Qur’an who suggested that masīh (the Arabic cognate of messiah) does not mean “anointed one” but one who travels much. This obviously does not apply to “the Jesus of two thousand years ago,” who traveled only in “the small state called Palestine.”

One of the main things that one must learn is to distinguish between the history of Jesus two thousand years ago and the prophecy of the Jesus Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies 177 who is expected to come at the end of the world. What we have as a history of the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago often proves to be that of the Great Mahdi, the Restorer of the Kingdom of Peace on Earth who came to America in 1930 under the name of Mr. W. D. Fard.8

Thus there are two Jesuses in the Bible and in the Qur’an, allowing Elijah Muhammad to pick and choose which aspects of the biblical accounts were to be interpreted to be distortions about the Jesus of two thousand years ago (and so ignored and made irrelevant) and which were to be interpreted as prophecies about the Jesus of the end of the world. When it came to the Qur’an, however, Elijah Muhammad could simply ignore that which did not suit his needs. In so doing, he was able to offer African American Christians a new contemporary Black Jesus to worship in place of the ancient Black prophet who should never have been worshiped. His attempt should not be seen as a rejection of the Christian myth that God became man for the salvation of humanity, but a re-articulation of it in a racialized voice.

Jesus of the Qur’an As noted already, Elijah Muhammad’s respect for the Qur’an was immense, and since Jesus is a fairly prominent character in the Qur’an, he must have been aware of its depiction of him. In the Qur’an, Jesus has a miraculous birth that was announced by angels; he performed miracles even as a child; he was sent with the Gospel and gathered disciples, and in the end, he ascends to God. He is even called Kalam Allāh, the Speech (or Word) of God. However, he was no more than a human messenger and righteous Muslim prophet whose enemies plotted his death but failed, for he only appeared to have been crucified. And the Qur’an explicitly denies that Jesus is God or that he is the son of God.9 Although this Christology should have served Elijah Muhammad well, since it would have allowed him to appeal to Jesus while still undercutting Christianity (as it was obviously intended to do in the Qur’an itself), he chose instead to ignore it. For example, in an early denial of the divinity of Jesus, Elijah Muhammad wrote,

An example of how the white Christians love to lie can be found in their teaching of Jesus. Jesus had said in his suffering, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) This indicates that he did not consider himself to be God or a son of God or equal of Him. Yet the white Christians believe in and worship Jesus as God or “son of God” or an equal of Him. There are many other Bible verses which prove that Jesus was only a man and prophet of Allah (God). Here I give three: “Is there a God besides Me? I know not any.” (Isaiah 44:81, 45:22) “I am God, there is none else.” (Isaiah 46:9) “One God and none other.” (Mark 12:32)10 178 Herbert Berg Verses denying the divinity or sonship of Jesus such as Qur’an 5:17, 5:72, 9:30, even the well-known and apt 112:1–4 were not used. Almost everything Elijah Muhammad wrote about Jesus that might allude to something from the Qur’an is already present in the canonical gospels. There is one minor exception and one inconclusive exception. The former is Elijah Muhammad’s discussion of Jesus bringing clay birds to life, which he mentions only in passing.11 The latter concerns the illusion of Jesus’s crucifixion.12 The Qur’an focuses mostly on the birth and death of Jesus, avoiding most of his ministry as described in the Bible. Elijah Muhammad had a similar focus; his elaborate reformulation also dealt primarily with the events surrounding the birth and death of Jesus. Yet he neglected this plentiful and apropos quranic material. The most significant aspect of the quranic Jesus, therefore, is its lack of influence on the man who so championed the Qur’an.

The Contemporary Jesus For Elijah Muhammad, the Jesus of the End of the World is Allah incar- nated in the person of Fard Muhammad. This prophesied Jesus may be of less interest than the one of the past, but the two are not independent: Elijah Muhammad’s authority rested on his encounter with this god, and most of the biblical descriptions about Jesus were reinterpreted to be statements about Fard Muhammad. According to Elijah Muhammad,

Nearly 75 per cent [of the Bible story of Jesus] is referring to a future Jesus, coming at the end of the white races’ time, to resurrect the mentally dead, lost members (so-called Negroes) of the Tribe of Shabazz. This Jesus is now in the world.13

In particular, Jesus’s proclamations about the “Son of Man” were to be understood as prophecies about Fard Muhammad.14 The FBI files on the Nation of Islam claim that Wali Fard Muhammad was in fact Wallace D. Ford, whose origin was disputed, but who moved to Los Angeles in 1913 and eventually ended up in prison for the sale of alcohol and narcotics. Upon his release in 1929, he was said to have headed north, making his way to Chicago and then Detroit, where he began his new movement. Run-ins with the police in 1933 forced him to leave Detroit and return to Chicago. A year later, he mysteriously disappeared.15 While Elijah Muhammad accepted the basic outline of the last four years, he repeatedly and emphatically denied the FBI’s claims about Wallace D. Ford. Fard Muhammad, he averred, was born in Mecca in 1877 and, though he preferred the Muslim term Mahdi, was the “Son of Man, Jesus Christ, Messiah, God, Lord, Jehovah, the Last (Jehovah) and the Christ”—all names employed by “the anti-Christs (the devils).”16 Why these names applied so well is obvious from Elijah Muhammad’s description of Fard Muhammad’s mission: Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies 179 He (MR. FARD MUHAMMAD, God in Person) chose to suffer three and one-half years to show his love for his people, who have suffered over 300 years at the hands of a people who by nature are evil, wicked, and have no good in them. He was persecuted, sent to jail in 1932, and ordered out of Detroit, Mich., May 26, 1933. He came to Chicago in the same year, arrested almost immediately on his arrival and placed behind prison bars. He submitted himself with all humbleness to his persecutors. Each time he was arrested, he sent for me that I may see and learn the price of TRUTH for us, the so-called American Negroes (members of the Asiatic nation). He was well able to save himself from such suffering, but how else was the scripture to be fulfilled? We followed in His footsteps suffering the same (persecution).17

Although no explicit biblical citations were given, the passage obviously alludes to the biblical story of Jesus, which even in its broad outlines is therefore mere prophecy about this contemporary Jesus of the end of the world. Moreover, all biblical passages thought to refer to the end-times, whether those ascribed to Jesus or Paul, those contained within the books of Daniel, Ezekiel, Joel, Revelation, etc., or those in the Qur’an are hitherto secret prophecies to the coming apocalyptic destruction of whites by Allah and the “Fall of America.”18 Elijah Muhammad employed the same technique to deal with references to Jesus in the Qur’an; they were prophecies about Fard Muhammad. For example, in the column cited earlier, Elijah Muhammad made it clear that only Fard Muhammad, far more than Jesus who traveled merely in Pales- tine, merited the quranic epithet masīh:

The Mahdi is a world traveler. He told me that he had traveled the world over and that he had visited North America for 20 years before making himself know to us, his people, whom he came for. He had visited the Isle of the Pacific, Japan and China, Canada, Alaska, the North Pole, India, Pakistan, all of the Near East and Africa. He had studied the wild life in the jungles of Africa and learned the languages of the birds. He could speak 16 languages and write 10 of them. He visited every inhabited place on the earth and had pictured and extracted the language of the people on Mars and had a knowledge of all life in the universe. He could recite by hear the histories of the world as far back as 150,000 years and knew the beginning and end of all things.19

A spatial mapping of this passage in the manner of Jonathan Z. Smith would prove fascinating, but my point here is that for Elijah Muhammad, biblical and quranic passages about Jesus were first and foremost prophetic references to Fard Muhammad and secondarily and perhaps only incidentally references to the Jesus of two thousand years ago.20 180 Herbert Berg The “Historical” Jesus Elijah Muhammad did not feel obligated to adhere to the biblical account of Jesus, for it was “translated into English by the enemies of Jesus.”21 And he told African American Christians, “Your Bible is poison, double-crossing itself.” And yet he stated that he was “not trying to condemn the history of Jesus as being false; but rather [I] am trying to put the meanings and signs, or miracles where they belong.”22 Later he added, “The Bible is very questionable, but it can be, and is now being understood, for God has revealed her hidden secrets to me.”23 As noted earlier, this was a remarkably ingenious tactic, for it allowed Elijah Muhammad to employ the scripture best known by his listeners, but make them utterly dependent on him for its correct interpretation. The Qur’an was another matter, for it contained “all truth.” However, most of that “truth” he simply did not cite. He only focused on Qur’an 23:50 (repeatedly), which speaks of Jesus and his mother Mary as a sign—which he understood as being a sign for the Jews that their rule and independence had come to an end, but more importantly, and as discussed earlier, as being “a sign or prototype of that which is to come.”24 In any case, Elijah Muhammad began his redeployment of the Jesus story with Mary, whom her father disguised in his clothes and a beard made out of goat hair to protect her from the insults of the white devil as she looked after the livestock. However, after he left to oversee the construction of a mosque, a severe dust storm arose. She called on Joseph, an old man whom she loved, to assist her with the animals. Three months later, her father noticed Mary’s weight gain, discovered that she had become pregnant by Joseph, and feared that he would have to kill her in accordance with Jew- ish law.25 Joseph, however, was approached by an old prophetess who told him not to deny the child for he “is the one prophesied in the Holy Qur-an as being the last prophet to the Jews.” Joseph, it seems, was only willing to claim the child after he was told that his son would turn out be a prophet. She then taught him how to protect the child from the Jews. Though Mary and Joseph had been engaged since childhood, they had not married. Joseph had a wife and six children, the latter of whom Elijah Muhammad thought were the brothers mentioned in Mark 3:31–32. Joseph, however, asked Mary’s father permission to take care of her.26 After the birth of the child, Mary fled on a camel to Egypt, for both Joseph and Mary were “Aboriginal Egyptians,” in order to protect her (as an unwed mother) and Jesus from Jews, who were “his enemies.” But among the “black people” of Egypt, he was safe. In his early teens, an old prophet befriended him and taught him, “You are the one who, the Holy Qur-an says, will be the last prophet to the Jews.”27 After completing his schooling with the old prophet, Jesus returned to the land of the Jews; he made no attempt to teach the Arabs and Blacks in Egypt and Africa, for he was never meant to be their prophet—a point Elijah Muhammad emphasized to demonstrate that no African American Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies 181 should follow this Jesus.28 In Jerusalem, he taught the religion of Islam, but all but a few Jews rejected him. After twenty-two years, Jesus learned that this “infidel race” could not be reformed and they would continue “to do their devilment” for two thousand more years. So he decided to sacrifice his life for Islam. The subsequent detailed narrative merits quotation in full:

One Saturday morning, between 9 and 10 o’clock, he came out on the streets of Jerusalem and saw a small group of people standing under an awning in front of a Jew’s store, trying [to] shelter themselves from the rain. Jesus walked in under the awning with the people and began teaching them. As his teaching began to interest the people, the storeowner came out and told Jesus to leave for he was causing him the loss of sales. Jesus said to the Jew: “If you will allow me to continue to teach them here, while it is raining, I wall [sic] make them buy something out of your store.” The Jew agreed for a while. But as time passed on, the Jew saw that the people were not buying as he thought they would. The Jew warned Jesus again to leave his store front. Jesus refused, because he had about 35 people, who had gathered to hear him. The Jew told Jesus: “I know who you are and if [you] don’t leave my store, I will call the authorities.” After the Jew called the authorities to come and take Jesus, they sent two officers to arrest him. There was a reward of $1,500 if he were arrested and brought in alive—$2,500, in gold, if he were brought in dead. The two officers wanted this reward, so both ran to take Jesus and arrest him. They arrived almost at the same time. The two laid hands on Jesus and began quarrelling over who was the first to lay his hands on Jesus. While arguing over whose prisoner Jesus actually was, Jesus asked the two officers if they would allow him to tell who touched him first. They two officers agreed. Jesus said: “The one on the right touched me about three-tenths of a second before the one on the left.” The officer on the left accepted the decision and left. Then Jesus and the other officer started walking down the street to turn him over to the authorities. While going one, the officer said to Jesus, “Since you came here to give yourself up to be killed, why not let me kill you and you will not feel it. But if I take you to them (the infidel Jews), they want to torture you—make you suffer. I will kill you in an instant and you will never feel death. Furthermore, I will get more for taking you there dead than alive. I am a poor man with a large family. Why not let me get the larger reward since you came to die?” Jesus agreed and said to the officer: “Come and do it.” The officer took Jesus to and old deserted store front, which was boarded up to protect the sort front from possible stones, thrown by boys, that might break the glass. The officer said to Jesus: “Stand with your back against this store front and put your hands up.” Jesus, being a brave man and ready to die, obeyed the officer and stretched forth his hands, like a cross (not on a cross, but made a cross of himself). 182 Herbert Berg The officer drew a small sword-like knife from his side (which looks like the American hunting knife). Only this little sword is sharp, on both sides of the blade to about two-thirds of its length. He plunged the sword through the heart of Jesus with such a force that it went clear through and stuck itself into the boards that he was standing against (and left him as a crucifix). By Jesus having such strong nerves, his death was so instant that the blood stopped circulating at once. And Jesus was left stiff, with both arms outstretched in the same position as he put them when ordered by the officer. The authorities came and took him from the boards where the knife had pinned Jesus’ body. When Joseph heard of his son Jesus’ death, he came and got the body from the authorities. He secured some Egyptian embalmers to embalm the body to last 10,000 years. Joseph wanted body embalmed to last as long as the earth (petrified) but was not able to pay for such embalm- ment. The Egyptian embalmers put the body into a glass tube filled with a certain chemical (known only to the Egyptian embalmers) that will keep one’s body looking the same as when it died, that is if they get the body at a certain time, for many thousands of years—as long as no air is allowed to enter the tube that the body is in. They buried the body in the old city, Jerusalem. His body lies in the tomb in such manner that it reflects in four different directions. This was done to keep the enemies from knowing in just what direction the read body was lying. No Christian is allowed to see the body, unless they pay a price of $6,000 and must get a certificate from the Pope of Rome. The tomb is guarded by Muslims. When Christians are allowed to see Jesus’ body, they are stripped of their weapons, handcuffed behind their backs, and well-armed Muslim guards take them into the tomb. But, Muslims can go to see his body at any time without charge.29

The source of this myth and its elaborate details (the altercation with a Jew in front of his store, the arrest, the officer agreeing to kill him for a reward, and so forth) are unknown, but it clearly was not drawn from the material on Jesus in the Qur’an. This narrative may have been influenced by Qur’an 4:157: “ ‘Verily we killed the Messiah Jesus son of Mary and messenger of God.’ They did not kill him nor crucified him. But it was made to appear to them [as though he had been].” Yet again, Elijah Muhammad did not cite a uniquely apt quranic verse. He was also aware of the Ahmadiyya Muslim claim that Jesus died in Kashmir, but he dismissed it. In fact, he was just as critical of Muslims who, like Christians, went too far in their “spooky beliefs”—that is to say, in spiritualizing God.30 But the point of some of the details, particularly Jesus being stabbed in the back with his arms stretched out against the wall and so in the shape of a cross, is clear. It is etiological. Stating that Jesus was embalmed and buried in Jerusalem where his body remains under Muslim guard makes an equally clear point. The historical Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies 183 Jesus is not coming back; African Americans must not look for salvation from the historical Jesus, but from the contemporary Christ.

Conclusions One of Elijah Muhammad’s most important and enduring goals was to break the “evil” stranglehold of Christianity on African Americans. For him,

Christian is a religion organized and backed by the devils for the purpose of making slaves of black mankind . . . . He (Allah) said that Christianity was organized by the white race and they place the name of Jesus on it being the founder and author to deceive black people into accepting it. Our first step is to give back to the white man his religion, Christianity, church and his names. These three are chains of slavery that hold us in bondage to them. We are free only when we give up the above three. The Bible, church and Christianity have deceived the so- called Negroes.31

To achieve this goal, Elijah Muhammad used two tactics. First, he replaced the Jesus of Christianity with the Christ that was Fard Muhammad, cleverly reinterpreting the scriptures about the former to be about the latter. In that way, he was able to use the Christian Bible (the only scripture most of his audience would know) to undermine Christianity itself.32 Second, he replaced the biblical narratives of Jesus with one that undermined all of the key Christian claims including his miraculous birth, his death and resurrection, and that his message was in any way directed at African Americans. Thus it condemned the African American worship of Jesus—especially the Jesus as Messiah (masīh) and Savior; it was not only an improper and point- less activity but also an evil, enslaving deception perpetrated by whites. The Bible and the Qur’an figured only superficially in the second tactic, but were ubiquitous in the first. This may help explain why after a flurry of writing about the Jesus of two thousand years ago in 1957, Elijah Muhammad never fully returned to the theme in the next eighteen years.33 However, during that time, he continuously reiterated and expounded on the true Jesus of his people: “Before we ever suffered ourselves, Master W. Fard Muhammad, our God and Savior, the Great Mahdi, Almighty God Allah in Person, Him- self suffered persecution and rejection. All for you and for me!”34 In Elijah Muhammad’s Christology, Jesus of Nazareth was not the “Christ” and certainly not the founder of Christianity. He was merely a prophet, whereas it was Europeans who had created Christianity in his name for a nefarious purpose: “Christianity is one of the most perfect black slave-making religions on our planet. It has killed the so-called Negroes completely mentally.”35 For Elijah Muhammad, it taught Blacks to worship a false white, blond, blue- eyed God. In effect, it made them to worship whites. It also encouraged them to turn the other cheek docilely when they are abused and to wait until the 184 Herbert Berg next life for justice. Elijah Muhammad castigated Christianity and prophesied that it would soon be destroyed. In making the “historical” Jesus or the contemporary “Christ” Black, Elijah Muhammad was hardly revolutionary. The Black Christ, whether understood symbolically or even biologically, was common just before the Nation of Islam: Marcus Garvey, Countee Cullen, and W.E.B. Du Bois, for example.36 And his understanding of Allah as a Black man certainly seems dependent on Henry McNeal Turner’s “God is a Negro.” What was new, however, was his use of the Black Jesus and the Black Christ to attack Christianity, not just white Christian racism. No doubt Elijah Muhammad’s Christian upbringing kept Jesus central to his conception of religion and no doubt the quranic Jesus played some role in his lingering attachment to Jesus, but it is the biblical figure of Jesus and its importance to African American Christians that gave this figure such prominence in Elijah Muhammad’s writings. Jesus could not be relinquished, but he could certainly be reinterpreted. Elijah Muhammad redeployed Jesus as a prophet, a Black one, and one who had made one last, futile, and ill-fated attempt to reform the devil white race. In so doing, the “historical” Jesus was depicted as irrelevant to African Americans.37 The Christ, however, remained as important in his formulation of Islam as it was in Christianity. Ironically, in identifying Fard Muhammad with the Christ, Elijah Muhammad’s placed a re-articulation of the central Christian myth at the core of his Islam.

Notes 1. For a biography of Elijah Muhammad, see Herbert Berg, Elijah Muhammad and Islam (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 31–52. For a detailed biography, see Claude Andrew Clegg III, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997). 2. Elijah Muhammad wrote that Fard Muhammad had taught him that it was Nimrod who was born on December 25, not Jesus, who had been born during the first or second week of September. Nimrod was born as an opponent to Moses’s teachings. Thus the teachings of Moses lasted, not 2,000 years, but only 1,700, for they were cut short by the 300 years of Nimrod’s teachings. Nimrod was an “evil, devil man.” Elijah Muhammad, “Christmas!” Muhammad Speaks, 10 December 25, 1970, 15. 3. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 50 May 2, 1959, 14. 4. “The Bible is now being called the poison book by God Himself, and who can deny that it is not poison. . .. I don’t mean to say that there is no truth in it. Certainly, plenty of truth, if understood.” Muhammad, The Supreme Wis- dom: The Solution to the So-Called Negroes’ Problem (Newport News: The National Newport News and Commentator, 1957), 12–13; and Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 47 June 30, 1956, p. Maga- zine Section 2. See also, Berg, Elijah Muhammad and Islam, 58–60. 5. Muhammad, The Theology of Time, transcribed by Abass Rassoull (Hampton: U.S. Communications Systems, 1992), 379. 6. It is not to be read without his guidance though, for he adds, “But the average one should first be taught how to respect such a book, how to understand it, and how to teach it.” Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 50–51. Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies 185 7. Elijah Muhammad added, “There are many Muslims who do not care to read anything in the Bible. But those Muslims have not been given my job. Therefore, I ignore what they say and write!” Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in Amer- ica (Newport News: United Brothers Communications Systems, 1992 [1965]), 82. 8. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 July 20, 1957, 10. 9. Qur’an 3:45–59; 4:157–159, 171; 5:17, 46, 72, 75, 110–118; 6:85; 9:30; 19:30–34; and 43:49, 63–64. 10. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom: Volume Two (Hampton: U.B. & U.S. Com- munications Systems, n.d.), 80. 11. Qur’an 3:49 and “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 Octo- ber 5, 1957, 10. 12. Qur’an 4:157 and below page 000. 13. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 Septem- ber 21, 1957, 10. 14. See, for example, Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Cou- rier, 48 January 19, 1957, p. Magazine Section 2; and Muhammad, “Says So- Called Negro is the Biblical Lost Sheep,” Mr. Muhammad Speaks 1 (Special Edition, 1961), 3. Just because Elijah Muhammad did not identify himself with Jesus as others such as Noble Drew Ali had done does not mean he did not see himself mentioned frequently in scripture. Elijah Muhammad tended to see quranic verses containing “Messenger of Allah” as references to himself. 15. For a more detailed biography and discussion of the claims of the various sources, see Berg, Elijah Muhammad and Islam, 24–27. 16. Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 294. The epithet “Mahdi” is equated with the angel of great power who descends from heaven according to Revelation 18:1. Elijah Muhammad explained, “This angel can be no other than Master W.F. Muhammad, the Great Mahdi . . . The Great Mahdi is indeed the most wise and powerful being on earth (God in Person). It is He who with a strong voice announced the immediate doom of America.” Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 48. 17. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks” 47 June 23, 1956, p. Magazine Section 2. A slightly edited version appears also in Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 15. 18. For discussion Elijah Muhammad’s eschatology, see Berg, Elijah Muhammad and Islam, 88–92. 19. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks” 48 July 20, 1957, 20. 20. Most quranic references to Allah in the Qur’an were references to Fard Muham- mad for Elijah Muhammad too. However, even with these, he was capable of ignoring even these if they did not match his teaching. For example, he ignored the strict monotheism of the Qur’an (as in Qur’an 112:1): There were more Gods than One god. We are just now coming into the One God. The One God is Present to Change the world into a new world . . . a world of His Choice and of His Making. But, between This God there were many other gods, from the Creation until today. Each God had a limited time to rule. The time of rule of Yakub’s made man (white man) was limited to 6,000 years. But, before this one[,] God had 25,000–035,000 years to rule. Then, His Wis- dom was replaced by another God. All of these Gods who rule from 25,000– 035,000 years, were Black People. Do not get the idea that they were gods of different colors, as we never had any colored gods until the Black god Yakub made a colored god. Muhammad, “Old World Going Out with a Great Noise! Disagreement Mounting,” Muhammad Speaks, 11 November 26, 1971, 16–17. Elijah Muhammad’s understandings of monotheism and of nature of gods were atypical. 186 Herbert Berg 21. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 July 27, 1957, 10. 22. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 Octo- ber 12, 1957, 10. 23. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 Novem- ber 9, 1957, 10. 24. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 August 3, 1957, 10; and Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” 48 October 12, 1957, 10. The signification is far more elaborate: Jesus and his mother were a sign of the so-called Negroes’ (the actual lost and found members of a chosen nation) history, among the devils, in the last days of the devlis’ [sic] time on earth. The birth of Jesus (out of wedlock) was a sign of the spiritual birth of the lost-found so-called Negroes in North America; who are out of their own people and country (out of the wedlock of unity) living and mixing their blood with their real enemies, the devils; without knowledge. Yusuf (Joseph) and Mary’s childhood love of each other, at the age of six, and the promises to marry each other when old enough, was a sign of the love of Allah (God) for the lost-found, so-called Negroes, at the end of the devils’ time (6,000 years). The visiting of Mary by Joseph, for three days under the cover of darkness, and in the absence of the father, and under the disguise of Mary’s father’s clothes and Joseph’s wearing a goat’s beard, was a sign of how Allah (God), who is referred to in the name “Mahdi,” would come under disguise Himself, in the flesh and clothes of the devils, for three days (three years), to get to the lost-found so-called Negroes and start them pregnating with the truth through one of them, as a messenger, under a spiritual darkness. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” 48 September 21, 1957, 10. Elijah Muhammad was not troubled by polysemy with his symbols. 25. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 August 10, 1957, 10. 26. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 August 17, 1957, 10. He is also, therefore, the last prophet to the white race in general. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” 48 September 21, 1957, 10. 27. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 August 24, 1957, 10. Elijah Muhammad emphasizes several times, “We must not forget that Jesus was not a member of that race. Jesus belonged to the black nation . . .. if Jesus was a member of that race, he would have been a devil. Again, Jesus would not have declared that the Jews were devils. (John 8:44).” Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” 48 September 21, 1957, 10. 28. Elijah Muhammad seemed perplexed and exasperated that there should be any African American Christians: There are any number of scripture in both the Bible and Holy Qur-an that Jesus was a prophet sent to the House of Israel alone. We have no scripture of him teaching anywhere else but among the Jews. He was not a universal prophet (not sent to the whole world). He made no attempt to teach Arabs nor the blacks of Egypt or Africa. According to the history of his disciples, none of them carried Jesus’ name and teachings into the countries of the black nation. Paul, one of the greatest preachers and travelers of Jesus’ followers made no attempt to teach the black nation; nor travel into their countries. (I just can’t see how the so-called Negroes think that he is their Saviour, when he didn’t save the Jews to whom he was sent, and he has not saved the so-called Negroes from the slavery of white Americans). Muhammad, “Mr. Muham- mad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 August 31, 1957, 10. Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies 187 29. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” 48 August 31, 1957, 10; and Muham- mad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 September 7, 1957, 10. Another version of the birth and death of Jesus is available in a 1992 publication, Elijah Muhammad, The True History of Jesus: Preacher of Freedom, Justice & Equality: Islam (Chicago: Coalition for the Remembrance of Elijah, 1992). Parts of it are verbatim reproductions of this series of columns, whereas other parts seem to be earlier versions of them. Yet others are later paraphrases of the same material. The only unique material is about Jesus’s sojourn in South- ern Europe, where he gave his famous Sermon on the Mount, but realized he was too early to preach the message of freedom, justice, and equality. 30. On these issues, Elijah Muhammad states, Most commentators on the life and death of Jesus, disagree with the saying that, “Jesus dies on the cross, or was even murdered (killed).” They think that He traveled into India and died in Kashmir, but this is wrong. He did not go there, nor is that His tomb in Kashmir. It is only an old belief among those who actually did not know who the Nabi (prophet) was who came to Kash- mir and died and was buried there, whom old settlers claimed came from the West. Nor real proof is show that it was Jesus’ body. The scholars on Holy Qur-an go to the extreme with the word “spirit” as the Christians do, especially in the case of Allah. My work is to bring you face to face with God, and to do away with spooky beliefs. Muhammad, “Mr. Mu- hammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 48 October 19, 1957, 10. 31. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 13–14. 32. In pursuit of this goal, even the name of Jesus and hymns were attacked. Elijah Muhammad points out that the ship of John Hawkins, the pioneer of the English slave trade and first to make the Atlantic triangular trade, was named Jesus. The old Negro spiritual, “Give me Jesus” with the lyric “You can have the world, just give me Jesus” is not about Jesus of Nazareth, but about the slave ship as it sailed away from the Americas and the Africans it had just deposited there. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 16–17. 33. Elijah Muhammad very briefly reiterated his version of Jesus’s birth in three short articles in 1966. See Muhammad, “Jesus,” Muhammad Speaks, 5 June 3, 1966, 1–2; Muhammad, “Jesus,” Muhammad Speaks, 5 June 10, 1966, 1–2; and Muhammad, “The True History of Jesus Revealed: Jesus Only a Prophet,” Muhammad Speaks, 5 June 17, 1966, 1–2. The last time he even alludes to his novel telling of Jesus’ “crucifixion” is in 1959, when he states that his “body is still embalmed in Palestine and will remain there.” Muhammad, “Mr. Muham- mad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 50 May 2, 1959, 14. 34. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom: Volume Two (Hampton: U.B. & U.S. Communications Systems, n.d.), 12. As noted earlier, the notion of “suffering” and “persecution” is reminiscent of gospel portrayals of Jesus. However, Elijah Muhammad added that this savior was not sent for the Jews, nor was he sent to save African Americans from sin in the Christian sense: “A Savior has come to save you from sin, not because you are by nature a sinner but because you have followed a sinner. You have been taught by a sinner.” Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, p. 237. His theodicy is simple: whites are devils and responsible for all evils. 35. Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, 47 August 25, 1956, P. Magazine Section 2; and Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 70. 36. See Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994), 30–34, 188 Herbert Berg 37. For a survey and analysis of the continuing reinterpretations of the figure of Jesus by more contemporary African American Muslims—including some who trace their views to Elijah Muhammad—see Kathleen Malone O’Connor, “The Islamic Jesus: Messiahhood and Human Divinity in African American Muslim Exegesis,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66 (1998), 493–532.

Works Cited Berg, Herbert. Elijah Muhammad and Islam. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Clegg III, Claude Andrew. An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muham- mad. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Douglas, Kelly Brown. The Black Christ. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994. Muhammad, Elijah. “Christmas!” Muhammad Speaks. 10 December 25, 1970, 15. ——. “Jesus.” Muhammad Speaks. 5 June 3, 1966, 1–2. ——. “Jesus.” Muhammad Speaks. 5 June 10, 1966, 1–2. ——. Message to the Blackman in America. Newport News: United Brothers Com- munications Systems, 1992 [1965]. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier. 48 January 19, 1957, Magazine Section 2. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier 50. May 2, 1959, 14. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier. 47 June 23, 1956, Maga- zine Section 2. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier. 47 June 30, 1956, Maga- zine Section 2. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier. 48 July 20, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier. 48 July 27, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier. 48 August 3, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier. 48 August 10, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier 48. August 17, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier 48. August 24, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier. 47 August 25, 1956, Magazine Section 2. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier 48. August 31, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier 48. September 7, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier 48. September 21, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier 48. October 5, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier 48. October 12, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier 48. October 19, 1957, 10. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier 48. November 9, 1957, 10. ——. “Old World Going Out with a Great Noise! Disagreement Mounting.” Muhammad Speaks. 11 (November 26, 1971): 16–17. ——. “Says So-Called Negro is the Biblical Lost Sheep.” Mr. Muhammad Speaks 1 (Special Edition, 1961): 3 and 18. ——. The Supreme Wisdom: The Solution to the So-Called Negroes’ Problem. New- port News: The National Newport News and Commentator, 1957. ——. The Supreme Wisdom: Volume Two. Hampton: U.B. & U.S. Communications Systems, n.d. ——. The Theology of Time. Transcribed by Abass Rassoull. Hampton: U.S. Com- munications Systems, 1992. Elijah Muhammad’s Christologies 189 ——. The True History of Jesus: Preacher of Freedom, Justice & Equality: Islam. Chicago: Coalition for the Remembrance of Elijah, 1992. ——. “The True History of Jesus Revealed: Jesus Only a Prophet.” Muhammad Speaks. 5 (June 17, 1966): 1–2. O’Connor, Kathleen Malone. “The Islamic Jesus: Messiahhood and Human Divin- ity in African American Muslim Exegesis.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66 (1998): 493–532. 11 Black Muslims, White Jesus Removing Racial Images of God with CRAID and W. D. Muhammad

Jamie L. Brummitt

On June 17, 1977, the cover of the Bilalian News announced, “W. D. Muhammad leads movement to DESTROY ALL RACIAL IMAGES OF GOD!”1 The movement was popularized as CRAID, or the Committee for the Removal of All Images That Attempt to Portray the Divine. Through CRAID, Muhammad instructed Bilalians (a term he used for Americans of African descent2) to “demonstrate and boycott if necessary, until we get all those Caucasian images of [the] divine out of our neighborhood.”3 CRAID urged black communities to remove white images of Jesus from their churches and homes. Muhammad advised, “Nobody since Prophet Muhammad has ever done anything that is more important in religion than this ‘removing all racial images from worship.’ ”4 For Wallace D. Muham- mad (later known as Warith Deen Mohammed), white images of Jesus were the root of racism in America. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, CRAID represented the most important work of God in America for black Mus- lims.5 It mobilized members for national and international religious reform and missions. It constructed a black Muslim identity for members of the Nation of Islam (NOI), World Community of Islam in the West (WCIW), and American Muslim Mission (AMM). It also legitimized Imam Muham- mad’s authority in the community. To chart CRAID’s importance, I use a visual culture method, which examines the social and cultural history of images, as well as debates surrounding the use of images.

The Historiography of CRAID Scholars have paid little attention to CRAID and its significance.6 This stems, in part, from scholars’ attention to texts as the most important elements that define religious practice. It is also related to misconceptions that Muslims, like Protestants, do not employ, debate, engage, or discuss images and objects.7 Finally, it is related to historians’ attempts to define CRAID as successful or unsuccessful. For example, in “American Muslim Mission,” Lawrence A. Mamiya, a scholar of religion and Africana studies, argued that CRAID’s “attempts to convince black churches and clergy to remove pictures of Jesus depicting him as the son of God were not successful.”8 For Black Muslims, White Jesus 191 Mamiya, CRAID garnered no success and was primarily concerned with promoting the monotheism of Abrahamic traditions. Edward E. Curtis IV, a scholar of American Islam, provided one of the most robust historical analy- ses of CRAID.9 In Islam in black America, Curtis examined CRAID in terms of “Islamic universalism” and “black particularism.” Curtis concluded,

The goals of CRAID, then, were both particularistic and universalistic: on the one hand, protesters hoped to rid black America of the negative psychological consequences of a white God; on the other, they were also advancing their beliefs in the One God and their theological opposition to shirk, or the association of God with anything other than the Divine itself. In doing so, CRAID created a version of Islamic universalism that paid attention to specifically black concerns.10

Curtis’s framework is helpful for studying CRAID. It urges scholars to recognize the “Muslim-ness” of CRAID and its members, while also emphasizing historical method and context. Without losing Curtis’s emphasis on historical method, I want to shift attention away from studying CRAID in terms of Islamic universalism and black particularism. Curtis criticized this framework himself in “African American Islamization Reconsidered.” Curtis advised,

Rather than evaluating African Americans’ ‘Muslim-ness’ by juxtapos- ing their religious practices with some ahistorical mode of the ‘real’ Islam (usually seen to be embedded in authoritative readings of Islamic sacred texts), I seek to chart how African-American Muslims have constructed what is ultimately an imagined communal identity.11

Following Curtis, I move away from evaluating the “Muslim-ness” of Afri- can American Muslims.12 Members of the NOI, WCIW, and AMM were American Muslims. Their religious communities, individual identities, ideas, and practices were intricately tied to Islam, and American history, culture, and Christianity. Thus I seek to show how African American Mus- lims constructed a communal identity in respect to American visual culture in the 1970s and 1980s. To chart the relationships between black Muslims and white Jesus, I employ the study of visual culture as my method.

Defining Visual Culture Visual culture emerged as a scholarly method in the 1970s. It marked a departure from art-historical approaches for studying images. The latter focused on the creation of images as individual works of art and artists’ intentions and creative processes behind these works. Visual culture extended these focuses by including examinations of the cultural and social effects of images.13 Religious studies scholars have incorporated this method 192 Jamie L. Brummitt into their work since the 1990s.14 David Morgan, a scholar of religious visual and material cultures, defined visual culture as the examination of “the cultural work that images do in constructing and maintaining (as well as challenging, destroying, and replacing) a sense of order in a particular place and time.”15 Visual culture focuses on the social interactions between images and humans that forge meaning. It recognizes the ways that people use (or do not use) images in their everyday lives, the meaning that images and people give to one another, and theological notions passed down through ministers and sacred texts about images. Examining the cultural work of images also means that scholars use images as visual evidence in their textual arguments. Morgan defines three categories of visual evidence that may be employed in scholarly arguments: example, demonstration, and comparison.16 Employing a visual culture method is essential for studying CRAID. The movement’s primary concern was the place of images in Muslim, Chris- tian, and American practices. CRAID emerged at roughly the same time when scholars began to research the social effects of images. In 1975, Laura Mulvey published “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in which she introduced the concept of the “male gaze” and structures of gendered power in film.17 CRAID did not emphasize the effects of gender as much as race in images. Even so, CRAID members did reference contemporary academic research about the social and psychological effects of images when promoting CRAID.18 Examining debates about images and images as visual evidence19 shows how Islamic history and theology, as well as historical context, drove CRAID activities.

Finishing the Work of Prophet Muhammad W. D. Muhammad grounded the foundation of CRAID in Islamic history. In June 1977, Muhammad called a meeting to finalize CRAID’s structure. He told committee workers and guests, “Whether you realize it or not, you who support my call to have racial images removed from the worship of God, are doing something more important than anything anybody has done since Prophet Muhammad.”20 W. D. Muhammad referred to Prophet Muham- mad’s destruction of idols recounted in the Qur’an and hadith. In 630 CE, Prophet Muhammad destroyed 360 idols in the Ka‘ba. This destruction of images marked a break with the jahiliyya, or the age of ignorance, and the worship of images, statues, and stones as gods. Prophet Muhammad cleared the Ka‘ba of competing divinities to return the tribes of Arabia to the monotheism of Abraham.21 W. D. Muhammad referred to this destruction to ground CRAID in Islamic theology. W. D. Muhammad recognized CRAID as a natural outgrowth of Prophet Muhammad’s actions at the Ka‘ba. In fact, he argued that CRAID was the most important outgrowth. According to Muhammad, “Nobody since Prophet Muhammad has ever done anything that is more important in Black Muslims, White Jesus 193 religion than this ‘removing all racial images from worship.’ ”22 He also reasoned that CRAID embodied the words of Prophet Muhammad’s teachings: “In fact that [removing racial images] is exactly what he emphasized in his preaching. La ilaha illa-l-lah la shareeka lah. There is no God, except God Allah, there is nothing like unto him.”23 Like the Prophet, W. D. Muham- mad promoted monotheism through the destruction of images that depicted the divine. Thus CRAID supported theological opposition to shirk. Shirk, according to Jamal Elias, is “understood both as idolatry and as believing in deities beside Allah, with the two being conflated on occasion.”24 W. D. Muhammad rarely, if ever, used the term shirk when describing CRAID.25 The emphasis on monotheism and the removal of images of God did support the notion. CRAID, however, did more than link black Muslims to idealized Islamic history and theology. W. D. Muhammad saw the work of CRAID as God’s intervention in American religious and social life. CRAID was more than a natural outgrowth of Prophet Muhammad’s words and deeds. It was the culmination of Prophet Muhammad’s attempts to bring the world back to monotheism. W. D. Muhammad explained,

When Prophet Muhammad preached, it wasn’t time [for the destruction of divine images]. God had not chose [sic] a time to go into the depths of what they had done with this corrupt idea of worship of God, but he dealt the death blow to that idea.26

In other words, God had chosen W. D. Muhammad and CRAID to finish the work started by Prophet Muhammad at the Ka‘ba. “The full extent of the harm that [this corrupt idea of worship] has done to society,” W. D. Muhammad explained, “was yet to come out and the Holy Quran says, ‘We shall make them know exactly what it is they have done.’ ”27 The work of CRAID brought Islamic history and theology to the forefront of black Muslims’ lives. CRAID members and activities were to show the world how and why white depictions of Jesus harmed the black community. God chose black Muslims and commissioned them to finish the work of Prophet Muhammad. Thus for W. D. Muhammad, CRAID represented the work of God in late 1970s America.

Jesus in the Civil Rights Movement and American Cities The divine work of CRAID was rooted in debates about black identity and the struggle for black liberation. Before a gathered crowd in 1977, W. D. Muhammad suggested that the goal of CRAID was “to remove Caucasian images of divinity from houses of worship.”28 That is, the goal of CRAID was to remove white images of Jesus from area churches. White images of Jesus populated American homes, churches, and movie theaters since the early twentieth century.29 CRAID was necessary, Muhammad explained, 194 Jamie L. Brummitt because “whenever a people give you their images to worship, racism is in that religion.”30 White images of Jesus were the root of racism in America. Muhammad warned of the damaging effects white images of Jesus had on black Americans:

As long as white (Caucasian) people think their physical white image is in the world as the image of God, and as long as non-white people see and know that the Caucasian image is in the world as the physical image of God, there will be no real coming together and no peaceful meeting of the minds of Caucasians and non-Caucasians.31

White images of Jesus gave white Americans god complexes. Racialized images of the divine divided black and white American communities. Muhammad further advised his followers,

Anytime you can get together to boycott and demonstrate for a job, for a seat on a bus, for the opportunity to sit in a school with Caucasians—you can go out there and demonstrate and boycott if necessary, until we get all those Caucasian images of [the] divine out of our neighborhood.32

Removing white images of Jesus from churches and communities was tied to the continued fight for African Americans’ civil rights. W. D. Muhammad’s denunciation of white images of Jesus was not new. Criticisms of these images gained prominence in the late nineteenth century and continued during the civil rights movement.33 As early as the 1890s, Henry McNeal Turner, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, lamented imaging God as a white man. In an essay for the AME’s journal Voice of Missions, Turner argued, “We have as much right Biblically and otherwise to believe that God is a Negro, as you buckra, or white, people have to believe that God is a fine looking, symmetrical and ornamented white man.”34 Turner recognized that white depictions of God were social constructions. He noted,

Every race of people since time began who have attempted to describe their Gods by words, or by paintings, or by carvings, or by any other form or figure, have conveyed the idea that the God who made them and shaped their destinies was symbolized in themselves, and why should not the Negro believe that he resembles God as much so as other people?35

Imaging God as a white man, however, was not a harmless social construction. Turner concluded, “We do not believe that there is any hope for a race of people who do not believe that they look like God.”36 Imaging God only as a white man oppressed black Americans. Others stated more clearly that Jesus was a black man. In 1901, Willard L. Hunter published Jesus Christ Black Muslims, White Jesus 195 Had Negro Blood in His Veins. He asked readers, “What will the negro-hat- ing white Christians do when He comes to take charge of His church, and they find that He is a black Savior?”37 Hunter mobilized Jesus, according to historians Edward Blum and Paul Harvey, to “combat segregation, the lynchings of black men, and the rapes of black women.”38 Many others— from Marcus Garvey Jr. to poets and artists of the Harlem Renaissance— followed suit in their mobilization of Jesus to combat racism, segregation, and Jim Crow in America.39 Debates about Jesus’s skin color intensified during the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. placed Christianity and Jesus at the center of African Americans’ fight for civil rights. In the 1950s, King defined Jesus as a nonviolent protester whose skin color was inconsequential. Responding to a letter from a disgruntled reader about Jesus’s skin color, King wrote, “The color of Jesus’ skin is of little or no consequence,” because skin color “is a biological quality which has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of the personality.”40 Many other black and white Americans disagreed with King. For many, Jesus’s skin color mattered. In the 1960s, advocates of Black Power called for the rejection of white images of Jesus. Vincent Harding, an African American historian and scholar of religion, explained “the ideology of blackness” and its relation to white depictions of Jesus.41 Writing to white moderate Christians in the Christian Century (1967), Harding suggested, “the ideology of blackness surely grows out of the deep ambivalence of American Negroes to the Christ we have encountered here.”42 Harding explained, “Almost everywhere we blacks have met him in this land, this Christ was painted white and pink, blond and blue-eyed—and not only in white churches but in black churches as well.”43 In fact, the white Jesus was everywhere. His presence was in the “books, the windows, the paintings, [and] the film-strips.”44 Harding argued, “Millions of black children had the picture of this pseudo-Nazarene burned into their memory.”45 White images of Jesus shamed black children and adults for their contrasting physical appearances, emotions, and danc- ing. These feelings of disgrace, according to Harding, were a part of the past. In 1967, “Bold young back people” declared, “No white Christ shall shame us again. We are glad to be black. We rejoice in the darkness of our skin, we celebrate the natural texture of our hair, we extol the rhythm and vigor of our songs and shouts and dances.”46 The rejection of white Jesus embodied Black Power. “That is Black Power,” wrote Harding, “a repudia- tion of the American culture-religion that helped to create it and a quest for a religious reality more faithful to our own experience.”47 Christians could no longer say to these young black people “you must love—like Christ and Doctor King.”48 For Harding, Black Power liberated black Christians from the oppression of white images of Jesus and white Christianity in America. Other ministers and theologians urged Americans to embrace black depictions of Jesus. In 1969, Ebony published “The Quest for a Black Christ: Radi- cal Clerics Reject ‘Honky Christ’ Created by American Culture-Religion.”49 196 Jamie L. Brummitt The article highlighted the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Albert Cleage Jr., who supported depicting Christ as a black man in churches. It featured churches in Detroit and Philadelphia that displayed black images and statues of Jesus. Despite these suggestions, many churches continued to use white images of Jesus in services. This is illustrated in an image from a 1967 Brooklyn Sunday school parade.50 The image shows an African American boy sitting on a parade float below a picture of Jesus. The picture of Jesus is Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ (1941), a white image of Jesus. Sall- man’s Jesus was by far the most popular image of Jesus in twentieth-century America. It was displayed in black and white churches, homes, and parades. People gave the image as a gift, and it was reproduced on pins, plates, sta- tionary, buttons, and greeting cards. In 1942, three million reproductions of the image were ordered, many of which were sent to American men serving in World War II. By 1984, 500 million reproductions of the image were printed.51 The Sunday school parade image embodied the concerns of some African American Muslims and Christians. Despite warnings from prominent ministers, many Christians continued to worship under white images of Jesus in the late 1960s and 1970s. Black children sat below the white Jesus, like the boy in the chair, and emulated the figure. This horrified some black leaders and parents because they saw white images of Jesus disciplin- ing the bodies and minds of black children and adults. This too closely resembled the enslavement of black men, women, and children in previous centuries and evidenced the continued oppression of African Americans by whites in the twentieth century. The continued use of white images of Jesus in black churches was related to the suburbanization of America. From 1915 to 1960, more than five million African Americans migrated from the rural South to major cities in the North, Midwest, and West. Migration promised a reprieve from the violence and segregation of the Jim Crow South. It also promised more and higher paying jobs, as well as better social and living conditions. These promises, however, were not always realized.52 As African Americans settled into predominantly white neighborhoods, many white Americans fled to the outskirts of cities. Some African Americans participated in this suburbanization, but many remained in cities.53 Harding explained how this phenomenon impacted religious life. African Americans saw,

this white throng fleeing before the strangled movement of the blacks out of the ghettos, leaving their stained-glass mausoleums [churches] behind them . . . . And [now] the old Christian buildings are filled with Negroes young and old studying African history.54

White Americans left behind their city churches with their white images of Jesus in stained glass, statue, pictorial, and crucifix form. Many black ministers and Christians who moved into these churches did not remove the white images of Jesus. Other black churches continued to buy and display white images of Jesus.55 Black Muslims, White Jesus 197 The link between American suburbanization, the “left-behind” churches, and white images of Jesus is important for understanding W. D. Muham- mad’s call for the removal of divine images from churches. Muhammad recognized that African Americans were still using white images of Jesus in their worship services in the late 1970s. This is what Muhammad meant when he suggested that CRAID members should, “boycott and demonstrate . . . until we get all those Caucasian images of [the] divine out of our neighborhood.”56 Muhammad’s promotion of CRAID was meant to rid churches and communities of white images of Jesus to alleviate the perceived social and psychological damages the images had caused and were still causing. The work of CRAID was intricately tied to debates in the 1960s and 1970s about the displacement of white images of Jesus for the social, moral, and religious uplift of African Americans.

Visual and Ideological Continuity from Elijah Muhammad to W. D. Muhammad One of the strongest criticisms of white depictions of Jesus culminated under Elijah Muhammad’s leadership of the NOI in the 1960s. This criticism was linked to the NOI’s foundation myth that explained the emergence of the white race. Six thousand years ago, the mad scientist Yakub from the black tribe of Shabazz produced a new race of whites, or devils, via genetic modi- fication. With the enslavement of Africans in the sixteenth century, another millennium emerged in which the white devils ruled the world. The religion of the white devils was Christianity.57 It stood in opposition to Islam. Christianity, Elijah Muhammad explained, was “one of the most perfect black-slave-making religions on our planet. It has completely killed the so- called Negroes mentally.”58 According to Herbert Berg, Elijah Muhammad understood that this meant Christianity taught “blacks to worship a false, white, blonde, blue-eyed God. In effect it teaches them to worship whites.”59 This was no abstract theological discourse. Muhammad literally meant that Christianity used white depictions of Jesus to enslave blacks. The Jesus of Christianity was Satan. This connection is most apparent in the drawing Whom Shall You Serve? by Eugene Majied published in Muhammad Speaks in 1964 (Figure 11.1).60 The drawing illustrates two panels in which worshippers walk to religious buildings. The left panel depicts a white, crucified Jesus hanging from a cross atop a church. The white Christ emanates from a black cloud in the background, which signals sin, death, and lies. Three scandalously clad women and two overdressed men strut to the entrance of the church via a curved pathway. Words over the entrance to the church indicate that Christianity is “White man’s slavery.” The right panel depicts a mosque, a Muslim worship space, with the Islamic star and crescent above the dome and entranceway. Two rows of neatly dressed men, all in the same black suit, proceed on the straight path to the entrance of the building. The men are followed by two rows of women all clad in the same white dress and head covering. A lone 198 Jamie L. Brummitt

Figure 11.1 Whom Shall You Serve? Cartoon by Eugene Majied, Muhammad Speaks, 11 September 1964, 5. figure clothed in a black suit oversees the procession into the building. The drawing emphasizes the question “Whom Shall You Serve?” by labeling the left panel “Satan?” and the right panel “. . . or God?” The panels are commentaries on the order, gender norms, dress, and worship practices of Christians versus Muslims. The white Jesus on the cross signals all that is wrong with American society. By worshiping a white God on a cross, black Americans unconsciously dress and act like whites, and continue to participate in “white man’s slavery,” or Christianity. The drawing makes it clear that well-behaved black men and women, who respect their bodies and one another, are free Muslims. This visual and verbal language about Jesus was reflected in W. D. Muhammad’s writings. W. D. Muhammad also advised members of the NOI to recognize the white Jesus as Satan. Muhammad’s understanding of the psychological effects of Caucasian images of Jesus were directly tied to his father’s understanding of the need for black Americans to reject white Christianity and accept Islam. In April 1975, just after the death of Elijah Muhammad and before the formal formation of CRAID, W. D. Muhammad wrote an article in Muhammad Speaks entitled “Invisible White Divinity by Visible Whit- ened God.” This article introduced theological arguments against imaging Black Muslims, White Jesus 199 a white man as God in the flesh. Muhammad maintained, that “The Chris- tian Church is different from all other religions in their belief in three gods in one.”61 Christians show “god in the flesh and they show him as white. They say that this white god is the world savior.”62 He explained, “This is the power of the beast . . . This doctrine is the work of the one called Satan. Satan or shaitan (in Arabic) means the Enemy of the Divine.”63 According to him, the white Christian God was Satan. Christianity was a false religion of psychology meant to dupe the black masses. This language about Jesus as Satan tied the theology of Muhammad to that of his father. Muhammad tempered this language in his promotion of CRAID, but it was no less pointed. He no longer employed language of the white Jesus as Satan. Rather, Muhammad focused on the psychological and social effects of racial images. There was an important reason for this: Muhammad advertised CRAID as an interfaith movement, which I explain next. Muhammad and CRAID members did, however, employ images similar to Figure 11.1 to promote CRAID’s urgency. The first CRAID article published in the Bilalian News included an image of a white crucified Jesus (Figure 11.2).64 White images of Jesus like the one in Figure 11.2 were the images CRAID members were urged to boycott and destroy. In fact, one of the most popular slogans for CRAID suggested, “The strongest wedge between non- Caucasians and Caucasians is a Caucasian image of God on the cross.”65 CRAID’s visual and verbal language mirrored that of Elijah Muhammad. These similarities in language made CRAID one of the most important organizations in the newly formed WCIW. CRAID provided the visual and ideological continuity between the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and W. D. Muhammad. Both taught that Christianity and white depictions of Jesus were harmful to black Americans. Both also encouraged black Ameri- cans to seek Islam as the true path to God. This continuity garnered support from NOI members who struggled with W. D. Muhammad’s ascension to leadership in February 1975.66 CRAID, however, did more than provide visual and ideological continuity. CRAID put black Muslims to work. Muhammad went further than his father in challenging the social effects of white depictions of Jesus. He called for action in the removal of images of Jesus from American churches. This call to action was important because in 1975 and 1976, Muhammad dismantled significant NOI devotional and organizational structures. In November 1975, Muhammad changed the name of the NOI’s newspaper from Muhammad Speaks to Bilalian News. In November 1976, Muham- mad renamed the NOI and set up the first organizational structures for the WCIW.67Also in 1976, Muhammad disbanded the Fruit of Islam (FOI) and Muslim Girls Training (MGT), organizations for men and women, respectively. In June 1977, Muhammad announced the formation of CRAID. CRAID activities put Muslims to work for God in the WCIW. Malachi Crawford suggested, “In dismantling the NOI, Imam Muhammad not only altered the distribution practices of NOI newspapers but also fundamentally Figure 11.2 Munir Um’rani and Aquil Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God!,” Bilalian News, 17 June 1977, 4. Black Muslims, White Jesus 201 separated perhaps the two most essential components of the group’s belief system: work and morality.”68 Crawford argued that Muhammad reunited these components through the increased circulation of the Bilalian News.69 I suggest that these components were also reunited, and to a much larger extent, by CRAID.

The Divine and Devotional Work of CRAID The call to remove racial images of God summoned the black Muslim community to action. CRAID created a communal identity under which the tran- sitioning community united through devotional work. In September 1977, the Bilalian News printed Muhammad’s stance on CRAID activities as devotional work. He advised WCIW members, “Go out as a follower of Al-Islam, a believer in the true religion accepting the leadership in the community of your Emam W. D. Muhammad.”70 “Go out there,” Muhammad urged, “innocent, desiring nothing but to serve Allah in the right way, and to do what is right and proper as a Muslim, and you support this drive to remove all racial effects from worship.”71 His advice is striking on several levels. First, he suggested that true followers of Al-Islam would accept his leadership in the community. Second, true Muslims supported him by participating in CRAID activities. Third, he suggested that a Muslim’s participation in CRAID was a way to serve Allah as a proper Muslim. Thus he helped legiti- mize his leadership and authority by promoting the work of CRAID as God’s true devotional work. According to Muhammad, good Muslims were members of CRAID who supported his leadership. In fact, countless Muslims participated in local and national CRAID chapters, activities, and events. WCIW members took up the work of CRAID with zeal. Mumin Abdul Rahman was appointed the chairman of CRAID in June 1977,72 and many others assumed leadership roles in local chapters. By September 1977, CRAID chapters had been established in Chicago, Birmingham, Florence, South Carolina, Brooklyn, and Muskegon, Michigan.73 By the end of 1978, the Bilalian News reported CRAID activities and local chapters in St. Louis, Bakersfield, California, Oakland, Los Angeles, Rocky Mount, Virginia, Harlem, Cleveland, New Orleans, Georgia, Ohio, New Jersey, Texas, and countless other towns and states.74 Ahmed Ghani, chairman of the local St. Louis chapter of CRAID, estimated that his chapter included between fifty and sixty members by the end of the 1970s.75 CRAID blossomed into numerous local chapters in less than a year with hundreds, if not thousands, of members. CRAID members engaged in demonstrations, disseminated promotional literature, and catalogued CRAID activities in the Bilalian News. The Bilalian News documented the week-to-week work of CRAID in countless images and articles. It provided physical evidence of the work of God in local communities and cities around the nation. In December 1977, the Bilalian News published an image of a CRAID demonstration (Figure 11.3). 202 Jamie L. Brummitt

Figure 11.3 “CRAID in Action: Remove racial images from worship.” Photo by Luqman A. Haqq. Bilalian News, 16 December 1977, 14.

The headline reads, “CRAID in Action: Remove racial images from worship.”76 The image shows protesters walking along a street corner holding picket signs that read:

What would happen if white people were to sit in churches for 300 years with the image of a black man on the cross? What would this do to their minds? Black Muslims, White Jesus 203 What happens to the little white boy who sits and looks at the purported image of [the] Divine in his white skin? What does this do to his mind as he sees an image of himself?

These were the most common slogans on picket signs at CRAID demonstrations. They were also quotes that Muhammad used in his speeches to describe the importance of CRAID.77 The picket signs were meant to draw audiences’ attention and encourage passersby to participate in the work of CRAID. The caption of the image reads, “DOWNTOWN TRAFFIC officer drawn away by the weight of picket signs, to give support to CRAID protestors.”78 Whether or not the police officer actually gave his support to CRAID protesters is unknown. More likely, the police officer was monitoring the protest. In any case, what is important is that the Bilalian News used photos of CRAID activities as evidence of the success of the movement. This is particularly clear from images published in December 1977. The images depict a Bilalian News correspondent inter- viewing white passersby at a CRAID demonstration (Figure 11.4).

Figure 11.4 “CRAID in Action: Remove racial images from worship.” Photos by Luqman A. Haqq. Bilalian News, 16 December 1977, 15. 204 Jamie L. Brummitt The image captions record the commentary of the passersby. One image caption reads, “We have wasted enough time on racism; God is for all of us and His word has no color.”79 Another caption reads, “Downtown Jewelry merchant says there should be no images of God whatsoever.”80 A third caption reads, “Street corner preacher says in the interview with PIC reporter Ahmad Hakim, that Church has missed the mark. There is a new-age understanding of the word of God.”81 The quotes and images suggested that the signs and slogans had transformed the hearts and minds of white passersby. CRAID activities were presented as successful devotional work. The images of the protests urged readers of the Bilalian News to understand the leadership of Muhammad and CRAID activities as successful events sanctioned by God. Members of the WCIW recognized CRAID as central to American Islam. They also recognized the importance of the movement for all black Americans in the 1970s.

An Interfaith Movement Challenged Muhammad introduced CRAID as an interfaith movement for Bilalians— that is, all Americans of African descent.82 In fact, in 1995 the editors of Evolution of a Community remembered how CRAID was “a major interfaith effort.”83 Muhammad called both Muslim and Christian leaders to action. Muhammad encouraged CRAID members to write to local churches and ask them to either take down images of Jesus, or host forums at their churches about CRAID.84 In July 1978, the New Orleans chapter noted that it had sent over 800 letters to churches of all denominations in the area.85 While many churches ignored the requests, some acquiesced. On December 23, 1977, the Bilalian News reported, “Muslim, Christian unity marches on.” The First Baptist Church of Rocky Mount, Virginia, received a letter from Imam Louis Farrakhan’s Masjid Muhammad about CRAID. The church invited Farrakhan to a service as a guest speaker. The Reverend Hamilton described the initial CRAID letter to the church as “the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”86 Some churches agreed to remove depictions of Jesus after CRAID forums. On August 25, 1978, the Bilalian News published, “Christian clergy removing images.” The Masjid Muhammad of Martinsville, Virginia, sent letters to three local churches asking them to remove white images of Jesus. When one minister read the letter to the church, the “congregation . . . eagerly volunteered to assist in removing all images from their churches.”87 CRAID members united in their devotional work by writing letters about CRAID, visiting churches, and lecturing about CRAID. Not all African American Christians, however, supported CRAID, and its interfaith efforts were challenged. Muhammad’s call for destroying all racial images of God irritated many leaders. Some responded to Muhammad’s call with venomous attacks on the movement. Vernon Jordon, executive director of the Urban League, accused Muhammad of starting a “holy war.”88 Leaders also accused Muhammad Black Muslims, White Jesus 205 of dividing the black community over trivial issues. The Reverend George H. Clements of Holy Angels Catholic Church in Chicago opposed Muham- mad because his church chose to display black images of Jesus. Clements argued that his motives for employing “a black Christ” were not meant as a declaration on “defining God as being black.”89 Rather, Clements recognized that “color is irrelevant” and that “God is a spirit, color is only a mute question.”90 Clements also suggested that Muhammad had overstepped his bounds. Clement reasoned, “There are more important issues to be raised,” and “I also think the Muslims should respect my organization’s right to display images of Christ in whatever manner they see fit.”91 Some ministers did not want Muhammad or CRAID members meddling in church affairs. Other ministers were more adamant about the importance of black depictions of Jesus in churches. In June 1977, the Bilalian News reported that the position of Reverend Albert Cleage Jr., pastor of the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Detroit, “is still the same as it was in 1969” when he was featured in “The Quest for a Black Christ.”92 There, Cleage argued that Jesus was literally and historically black. “When I say that Jesus was black, that Jesus was the Black Messiah,” Cleage clarified, “I’m not saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if Jesus was black?’ or ‘Let’s pretend Jesus was black’ or ‘It’s necessary psychologically for us to believe that Jesus was black.’ I’m saying that Jesus WAS black.”93 CRAID perturbed ministers such as Cleage because it challenged black liberation theology that emphasized Jesus as a literal and historical black man.94 Others leaders blamed Muhammad’s advocacy of CRAID for dividing the black community rather than uniting it. The Reverend Al Sampson of Chi- cago’s Fernwood Methodist Church responded to CRAID in an interview with the Chicago Defender in June 1977. Sampson declared, “The church has been responsible for holding the black community together.”95 Sampson asked, “How come he [Muhammad] won’t speak out on issues that are really a threat to the black community?”96 Another minister interviewed by the Chicago Defender suggested that Muhammad was trying to “divide the church.”97 Sampson was so disturbed by CRAID that he publicly debated Muhammad on July 23, 1977, at the “Color of Christ Community Forum” at Chicago’s Parkway Community House. The Bilalian News reported that approximately 2,000 people attended.98 Many Christian ministers spoke out against Muhammad and CRAID activities. For some, removing black images of Jesus from churches threatened black liberation theology. For others, removing white or black images of Jesus from churches worked to divide the black Christian community. Still others recognized removing images of Jesus as old news because they had moved on to more pressing issues in the fight for African Americans’ civil rights in the late 1970s. Despite pushback from prominent black ministers, CRAID grew as an interfaith movement and convinced some black churches to remove images of Jesus. W. D. Muhammad urged members of the WCIW to continue with their CRAID efforts. 206 Jamie L. Brummitt The Final Step: CRAID in Action in the 1980s CRAID remained an important committee in the black Muslim community in the 1980s as the WCIW underwent further transformations. In 1980, W. D. Muhammad renamed the WCIW the American Muslim Mission (AMM). At the same time, he changed his own name from Wallace Delaney Muhammad to Warith Deen Mohammed. Those changes in name brought transformations to the organization’s structure and purpose. Those changes troubled some members who left the AMM to start their own Muslim communities. For example, Imam Siraj Wahhaj resigned in 1981 and founded the Masjid Taqwa, an independent masjid in Brooklyn where he served as the imam.99 Despite the restructuring, CRAID continued to operate and grow with the AMM. The Bilalian News published news about CRAID activities until 1981, when the publication’s name changed to the American Muslim Journal. Local CRAID chapters continued their protests of white images of Jesus. These protests, however, were more than small gatherings on side streets. In August 1982, Imam Pasha led the Atlanta Masjid and CRAID chapter in a march on Atlanta. The American Muslim Journal reported the march as “one of the largest demonstration walks in the city’s history.”100 Par- ticipants handed out CRAID flyers to onlookers while others read CRAID messages over loudspeakers mounted on cars. Similar demonstrations were held across the country from Boston to Washington, DC, to San Diego.101 This work of CRAID, however, was not confined to local chapters. These demonstrations were a part of a larger effort to achieve national cohesion and international recognition in the early 1980s. CRAID chapters united in the early 1980s under “the National Petition Drive.” The goal of the National Petition Drive was to collect ten million signatures from Americans who supported removing racial images of the divine from churches and public spaces.102 Collecting signatures was also part of an international goal. Ultimately, signatures from the National Peti- tion Drive were to garner support and publicity for a meeting between Imam Muhammad and Pope John Paul II. Muhammad hoped to meet with the pope to discuss removing images of Jesus from Catholic worship spaces around the world. At the National Petition Drive in Washington, DC, CRAID members collected over 2,000 signatures. This demonstration in Washington, DC, also had another goal. CRAID members carried signs to the U.S. Capitol Building where they boycotted the “paganistic influences depicted in two 6-foot tall mannequins suppos- edly being [the] prophets Jesus (Isa) and Moses (Musa).”103 These statues as imaged forms of the prophets were thought to have idolatrous influences on American society, culture, architecture, and religion. The American Mus- lim Journal’s report of the event did not mention where the statues were located or any more details about the statues. Perhaps CRAID members disagreed with the display of bronze statues of Moses and St. Paul, which Black Muslims, White Jesus 207 represented “Religion,” in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Con- gress.104 Perhaps CRAID members called for the removal of the friezes in the U.S. Supreme Court Building that depicted Moses and other lawgiv- ers of history. If the latter, the American Muslim Journal’s report did not acknowledge the figure of the Prophet Muhammad in one of the friezes.105 Despite the unknown identity of the boycotted statues, the point is that in the 1980s, CRAID sought national cohesion and international recognition in its activities. It looked to transform American and international religious practices involving images. The demonstrations and National Petition Drive were a part of an even larger national CRAID goal. These were to culminate in “The Final Step” or First National CRAID Convention in Dallas, Texas, at the Fair Park Coliseum on August 21, 1982.106 Plans for the National CRAID Con- vention began in 1981 under the direction of Muhammad and CRAID’s national chairman Antar Jannah. Religious groups from the Dallas area and all members of the AMM who could afford the trip were invited to attend.107 In the year leading up to the convention, Qasim Ahmed, imam of the host masjid in Dallas, called CRAID members to join the landmark event. In an interview with the American Muslim Journal, Ahmed predicted, “I think this is going to be one of the most important conventions in our history because it’s a first and it’s a landmark.”108 Ahmed also linked the work of CRAID and the convention to the work of the Prophet: “We see it as the continuation of the march that Prophet Muhammad did when cleaning out the Kaabah [sic]; that is, the people demonstrating for pure worship, that there’s one God for all people.”109 W. D. Muham- mad and CRAID members continued what they viewed as the Prophet Muhammad’s work reforming American Islam and American religions in the early 1980s. The Final Step attracted thousands of attendees over a three-day period. On August 20, over 1,500 people gathered for a Jumah Prayer service at the Dallas Convention Center where Imam Muhammad delivered an “electrify- ing khutbah.”110 On August 20, more than 5,000 people participated in the four-and-a-half-mile CRAID walk from the Kennedy Memorial on Com- merce Street to the Fair Park Coliseum.111 Voices from loudspeakers proclaimed to passersby, “AS-SALAAM ALAIKUM. MAY PEACE BE UNTO YOU. YOU’RE NOW WITNESSING THE LARGEST MOVEMENT IN AMERICA.”112 At the Fair Park Coliseum, Muhammad, “the great Muslim and world leader,” addressed thousands and outlined reasons why attendees should remove racial images from worship.113 Muhammad also spoke to a Dallas Methodist church on Sunday, August 22, and called for Muslim- Christian unity in the fight against racial images. The Final Step, or the First National CRAID convention, called on thousands of attendees to spread its message about removing racial images of God. The Final Step also had other objectives. During the early 1980s, the American Muslim Journal advertised CRAID and the Final Step as 208 Jamie L. Brummitt a program “for Dawa [sic] and Development.” Participating in CRAID chapters and activities, according to the periodical, would “ensure a healthier life for all humanity.”114 CRAID grew as an interfaith movement simultaneously committed to Muslim missions. The focus on CRAID as an important component of dawah mirrored the change in the organization’ name, American Muslim Mission. CRAID and the AMM were committed to religious reform and Muslim missions worldwide. The Final Step and its success were conceived of as proof of W. D. Muhammad and the AMM’s authority. Shakir Mahmoud, a member of Boston’s Council of Imams, told the American Muslim Journal, “Not only is this the Final Step, but the ‘final proof’ of support for leadership.”115 The Final Step worked to legitimate the leadership and authority of Muhammad and the AMM. The early 1980s witnessed the development of CRAID as a nation- ally unified movement committed to national and international religious missions and reform. CRAID activities declined after the mid-1980s as the AMM underwent further transformations in name and organizational structure.116 Even so, members did not forget CRAID or its importance for their communities and the nation (Figure 11.6). Imam Sidney Sharif reminded readers of the Afri- can American Image in Crisis (1985) that “Imam W. Deen Muhammad . . . said that it [CRAID] is one of the most important Committees in the community . . . that the work of this Committee must go on if everything else stops.”117 In 2013, WDM Publications continued this work with the publication of Muhammad’s address at the First National CRAID Convention as the book Message of Concern.118 Today, the Muslim Journal still features a version of Muhammad’s “A Message of Concern to the American People” that was published in the Bilalian News and distributed at CRAID events (Figure 11.5).119 For many, this message is just as appropriate today as it was in late 1970s and early 1980s America. It promotes racial equality in American religious thought and practice by removing white images of Jesus. Examining CRAID in terms of visual culture helps scholars recognize how CRAID members viewed their work boycotting white images of Jesus as central to their communities and American Islam. CRAID emphasized Islamic theology and history, the work of the Prophet Muhammad in America, and American social concerns. It put community members back to work after Muhammad disbanded the FOI and MGT. It provided the continuity that bound members together as leadership transitioned and the organizational structures and names changed. CRAID also called for cooperation between black Muslims and black and white Christians in the continued fight for civil rights and religious reform. Leaders also presented CRAID as an interfaith movement that was simultaneously committed to dawah, or Muslim missions. For black Muslims, CRAID represented the most important work of God in America in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Figure 11.5 Emam W. D. Muhammad, “A Message of Concern to the American People,” Bilalian News, 4 November 1977, 20. 210 Jamie L. Brummitt

Figure 11.6 “CRAID in action in Cleveland,” Bilalian News, 19 May 1978, 14.

Notes 1. Munir Um’rani and Aquil Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God,” Bila- lian News, June 17, 1977, cover. See also 4–6. 2. W. D. Muhammad used the term “Bilalian” to link black Americans and the history of African enslavement in America to the formation of Islam in the sixth century. Bilalian referred to Bilal ibn Rabah (580–640 CE), an East African who had been enslaved then freed upon his conversion to Islam. Bilal was a companion to Prophet Muhammad and the first muadhdin, or prayer-caller, in Islam. In 1975, W. D. Muhammad renamed the NOI’s newspaper Bilalian News. For more on the term “Bilalian,” see Edward E. Curtis, Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African-American Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 108, 119–121. 3. Um’rani and Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God,” 4. 4. Nathaniel Omar, “ ‘Images of Divine’—root of Racism,” Bilalian News, Septem- ber 30, 1977, 3. 5. C. Eric Lincoln used the phrase “Black Muslims” to refer to the followers of Eli- jah Muhammad who were “America’s foremost black nationalist movement.” The Black Muslims’ “ultimate demand” was that “blacks be allowed to set up a separate state within the United States, occupying as much as one-fifth of the nation’s territory.” I do not use “black Muslims” in this chapter in the same way. I use the phrase to highlight the racial tensions described by African American Muslims who recognized white images of Jesus as socially and psychologically harmful. There is no indication from my research that the followers of W.D. Muhammad were a separatist movement. On the contrary, they used CRAID Black Muslims, White Jesus 211 to unite the black community and fight for African Americans’ civil rights in America. See C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdsmans ; Africa World Press, Inc., 1994). 6. For recent scholarly references to CRAID see Lawrence A. Mamiya, “American Muslim Mission,” ed. Anthony B. Pinn, Stephen C. Finley, and Torin Alexander, African American Religious Cultures (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2009), 83–84; Dennis Walker, Islam and the Search for African-American Nationhood: Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, and the Nation of Islam (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2005), 61–62; Clifton E. Marsh, “The Theological-Ideological Dispute Between Imam Warith Deen Muhammad and Minister Louis Farrakhan,” Studies in Con- temporary Islam 5,.1–2 (Spring and Fall 2003): 46–47; Curtis, Islam in Black America, 116–117; Edward E. Curtis, “Islam in Black St. Louis: Strategies for Liberation in Two Local Religious Communities,” Gateway Heritage: Quarterly Journal of the Missouri Historical Society 17, no. 4 (January 1, 1997): 41; Den- nis Walker, “The Black Muslims in American Society,” in Cargo Cults and Mil- lenarian Movements : Transoceanic Comparisons of New Religious Movements, ed. G. W. Trompf (Berlin , New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990), 356–357. 7. See David Morgan, “Introduction: The Matter of Belief,” David Morgan, ed., Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London , New York: Rout- ledge, 2010), 1–17; Jamal J. Elias, Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012). 8. Mamiya, “American Muslim Mission,” 83. 9. See Curtis, “Islam in Black St. Louis: Strategies for Liberation in Two Local Religious Communities,” 33–43; Curtis, Islam in Black America, 116–117. 10. Curtis, Islam in Black America, 116–117. 11. Edward E. Curtis, “African-American Islamization Reconsidered: Black History Narrative and Muslim Identity,” JAAR 73. (September 2005): 661. 12. This is still a topic of debate among many scholars. See Zareena Grewal, “Desta- bilizing Orthodoxy, De-Territorializing the Anthropology of Islam,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 84. (March 1, 2016): 44–59. 13. David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Prac- tice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 29. 14. See David Morgan, Protestants & Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Elias, Aisha’s Cushion. 15. Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 29. 16. Ibid., 36–39. 17. Laura Mulvey, “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema,” Screen 16.3 (1975): 6–18. 18. See Emam Na’im Akbar, “Caucasian images of divinity cause psychological damage,” Bilalian News, June 17, 1977, 6. 19. I employ visual evidence primarily via the example and comparison forms. 20. Omar, “ ‘Images of Divine’—root of Racism,” 3. 21. See Elias, Aisha’s Cushion, 1,3,10, 105–110; Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 119–120. 22. Omar, “ ‘Images of Divine’—root of Racism,” 3. 23. Ibid. 24. Elias, Aisha’s Cushion, 111. 25. I have not encountered the term yet in W.D. Muhammad’s references to CRAID. 26. Quoted in Omar, “ ‘Images of Divine’—Root of Racism,” 3. 27. Ibid. 28. Um’rani and Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God,” 4. 29. See “Nordic and Nativist in an Age of Imperialism,” in Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God & the Saga of Race in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 141–169. 212 Jamie L. Brummitt 30. Um’rani and Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God,” 4. 31. Abdul Aleem Seifullah and Samuel Ayyub Bilal, “Forum Sheds Light on Racial Images in Worship,” Bilalian News, August 12, 1977, 3. 32. Um’rani and Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God,” 4. 33. Curtis, Islam in Black America, 117. See also “Black Moses” in Stephen R. Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, 1st Ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 200–228; “Body Battles in Antebellum America,” and “Civil Rights and the Coloring of Christ” in Blum and Harvey, The Color of Christ, 105–119, 205–233. 34. Quoted in: Prothero, American Jesus, 214. See also James O. Duke and Mark G. Toulouse, Sources of Christian Theology in America (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999), 328–329. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. W. L. Hunter, Jesus Christ Had Negro Blood in His Veins: The Wonder of the Twentieth Century (W.L. Hunter, 1901), 15–16. See also Blum and Harvey, The Color of Christ, 151–152. 38. Blum and Harvey, The Color of Christ, 151. 39. See “Black Moses,” in Prothero, American Jesus, 200–228; James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011). 40. Quoted in Blum and Harvey, The Color of Christ, 205. 41. Harding Vincent, “Black Power and the American Christ,” Christian Century 84, no. 1 (January 4, 1967): 10–13. See also Blum and Harvey, The Color of Christ, 217. 42. Vincent, “Black Power and the American Christ,” 10. 43. Ibid., 11. 44. Ibid. 45. Vincent, “Black Power and the American Christ,” 11. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 12. 49. Alex Poinsett, “The Quest for a Black Christ: Radical Clerics Reject ‘honky Christ’ Created by American Culture-Religion,” Ebony, March 1969. 50. William Gale Gedney, “African-American boy sitting on a float dressed as a king below picture of Jesus” (photo). Brooklyn Sunday School Parade, 1967. William Gedney Photographs and Writings, Duke University David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Durham, NC. accessed February 3, 2016 at http:// library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/gedney_NY0449/. 51. David Morgan, “Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman,” Reli- gion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 3. (January 1, 1993): 32. See also David Morgan, Icons of American Protestantism: The Art of War- ner Sallman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Blum and Harvey, The Color of Christ, 208–211. 52. Alferdteen Harrison, Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992), viii. 53. Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 54. Vincent, “Black Power and the American Christ,” 11. 55. Black “storefront” churches also displayed or painted white images of Jesus in sanctuaries during this time. See Blum and Harvey, The Color of Christ, 179. 56. Um’rani and Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God,” 4; emphasis mine. 57. For mythmaking as a process of identity and social formation see Herbert Berg, “Mythmaking in the African American Muslim Context: The Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and the American Society of Muslims,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73.3 (September 1, 2005): 685–703. Black Muslims, White Jesus 213 58. Quoted in ibid., 693; Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 2ndEd. (Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, 1973), 70. 59. Berg, “Mythmaking in the African American Muslim Context,” 693–694. 60. Eugene Majied, “Whom Shall You Serve? [Cartoon],” Muhammad Speaks, Septem- ber 9, 1964, 5. See also Edward E. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 115. 61. W.D. Muhammad, “Invisible White Divinity by a Visible Whitened Divine,” Muhammad Speaks, April 4, 1975, 12. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid. 64. Munir Um’rani and Aquil Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God!” Bila- lian News, June 17, 1977, 4. 65. Seifullah and Bilal, “Forum Sheds Light on Racial Images in Worship,” 3. 66. For struggles in power and leadership during the transition see Malachi D Craw- ford, Bilalian News and the World Community of Al-Islam in the West. Thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003, 35–39. 67. W.D. Muhammad, Muhammad Speaks from Harlem, Vol. 1 (W. D. Muhammad, 1984), 128–131. 68. Crawford, “Bilalian News and the World Community of Al-Islam in the West,” 47. 69. Crawford, “Bilalian News and the World Community of Al-Islam in the West.” 70. Omar, “ ‘Images of Divine’—root of Racism,” 3. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. 74. See Ibid.; Hassan El-Aminm, “Harlem Masjid Pushes to Remove Racial Images,” Bilalian News, December 30, 1977, 19; Ahmad Hakim, “CRAID in Action: Remove Racial Images from Worship,” Bilalian News, December 14, 1977, 14–15; Adbul Muhdee Shakir, “Muslim, Christian Unity Marches on,” Bilalian News, December 23, 1977, 11; Evelyn Akbar Nazeeh, “Muslim Demonstrators Urge: Remove All Attempts at Divine Imagery,” Bilalian News, April 28, 1978, 9; “Scenes from the Community,” Bilalian News, May 19, 1979, 14; Abul Aleem Seifullah, “Disapproves of Cross-Wearing: Minister Removes Christ Image from Church,” Bilalian News, June 9, 1978, 11; Robert Aqull, “Removing ‘Divine Images’ in New Orleans,” Bilalian News, July 1978, 8; Omar Abdul Aziz, “No Racial Images,” Bilalian News, July 28, 1978, 9; Imam Qibiah Khan, “Chris- tian Clergy Removing Images,” Bilalian News, August 25, 1978, 9; “Southwest Region Steps Up Pace,” Bilalian News, September 22, 1978, 29; “CRAID at Work,” Bilalian News, October 13, 1978, 29–30; Laila Muhammad, “CRAID Awakens Kalamazoo,” Bilalian News, December 8, 1978, 18; “CRAID Moves in Los Angeles,” Bilalian News, December 29, 1978, 26. 75. Curtis, “Islam in Black St. Louis: Strategies for Liberation in Two Local Reli- gious Communities,” 41. 76. Hakim, “CRAID in Action: Remove Racial Images from Worship,” 14. 77. Um’rani and Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God,” 5. 78. Hakim, “CRAID in Action: Remove Racial Images from Worship,” 14. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid., 14–15. 82. Um’rani and Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God,” 4; Seifullah and Bilal, “Forum Sheds Light on Racial Images in Worship,” 3, 19; Mujib Mannan, “Christ Color Controversy,” Bilalian News, August 12, 1977, 5, 19. 83. Abdul Abdul Rasheed, Rafar Muhammed, Seifullah Muhammad, Muhsin Abdullah, William Bilal, Fatimah N. Muhammad, Abdul Hakeem Waheed, and Salim Q. Zambezi, Evolution of a Community (Calumet City: WDM Publica- tions, 1995), 18. 214 Jamie L. Brummitt 84. Hakim, “CRAID in Action: Remove Racial Images from Worship,” 14–15. 85. Aqull, “Removing ‘Divine Images’ in New Orleans,” 8. 86. Shakir, “Muslim, Christian Unity Marches on,” 11. 87. Khan, “Christian Clergy Removing Images,” 9. 88. Um’rani and Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God,” 4. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid. 93. Poinsett, “The Quest for a Black Christ: Radical Clerics Reject ‘honky Christ’ Created by American Culture-Religion,” 174. See also “Black Faith: The Rev. Albert Cleage Jr., Black Christian Nationalism, and the Second Civil Rights Community in Detroit,” in Angela D. Dillard, Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 237–285. 94. James Cone systematized and popularized black liberation theology in Ameri- can universities and churches in the late 1960s and 1970s. For more on Cone and the place of Jesus in black liberation theology see Blum and Harvey, The Color of Christ, 221. See also James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Lippincott, 1970); James H. Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (New York: Seabury Press, 1969). 95. Um’rani and Nurridin, “Destroy All Racial Images of God,” 5. 96. Ibid. 97. Ibid. 98. Mannan, “Christ Color Controversy,” 5, 19. 99. Mamiya, “American Muslim Mission,” 81, 83. 100. Sabir Kasib Muhammad, “Imam Pasha leads downtown Atlanta C.R.A.I.D. walk,” American Muslim Journal, 20 August 20, S2. 101. Idris F. Bilal, “C.R.A.I.D. Committee gathers signatures on ‘Boston Com- mon’,” American Muslim Journal, 20 August 1982, 4, 9; Aqeel M. El-Amin and Harold Zink, “C.R.A.I.D. walk in San Diego,” American Muslim Journal, 27 August 1982, S1, S3; Muhammad D. Saudi, “C.R.A.I.D. on the move in the nation’s capital,” American Muslim Journal, 20 August 1982, 4, 9. 102. See “CRAID readies for Dallas,” American Muslim Journal, 23 July 1982, 9; Samuel Ayyub Bilal, “Huge CRAID walk to convention,” American Muslim Journal, 10 September 1982, 4. 103. Saudi, “C.R.A.I.D. on the move in the nation’s capital,” 4, 9. 104. See Herbert Small, ed., Handbook of the New Library of Congress (Boston: Curtis & Cameron, 1897), 64–65; “Online Tours,” web page, Library of Con- gress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, accessed April 12, 2016, https://www.loc. gov/visit/tours/online-tours/thomas-jefferson-building/main-reading-room/. 105. For more on the friezes, see Sally M. Promey, “The Public Display of Reli- gion,” David Morgan and Sally M. Promey, The Visual Culture of American Religions (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 40–42. 106. Wali Akbar Muhammad, “C.R.A.I.D. Walk in Dallas climbs to success,” American Muslim Journal, 27 August 1982, 5. 107. “Be in Front for CRAID Convention,” American Muslim Journal, 16 July 1982, 5. 108. Muhammad, “C.R.A.I.D. Walk in Dallas climbs to success,” 5. 109. Ibid., 5, 9. 110. Samuel Ayyub Bilal, “Dallas hears three powerful talks by Imam Muham- mad,” American Muslim Journal, 10 September 1982, 4. 111. Bilal, “Huge CRAID walk to convention,” 4. Black Muslims, White Jesus 215 112. Ibid. 113. Bilal, “Dallas hears three powerful talks by Imam Muhammad,” 4. 114. “To ensure a heathier life for all humanity,” text box in lower right-hand corner, American Muslim Journal, 27 August 1982, 5. 115. Bilal, “Huge CRAID walk to convention,” 4. 116. For transformations in name and structure in the mid-1980s see Mamiya, “American Muslim Mission.” 117. Sidney Rahim Sharif, The African American Image in Crisis: Al-Islam or Hell (Jersey City: New Mind Productions, 1985), 115. 118. Imam W. Deen Mohammed, Message of Concern: Removal of All Images That Attempt to Portray Divine, (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013). This is a reproduction of W.D. Muhammad’s address at the CRAID convention in Dallas, TX on August 21, 1982. 119. Imam W. Deen Mohammed, “A Message of Concern,” Muslim Journal Online, accessed 31 January 2016, http://muslimjournal.net/a-message-of-concern/.

Works Cited Akbar Nazeeh, Evelyn. “Muslim Demonstrators Urge: Remove All Attempts at Divine Imagery.” Bilalian News. April 28, 1978. Aqull, Robert. “Removing ‘Divine Images’ in New Orleans.” Bilalian News. July, 1978. Aziz, Omar Abdul. “No Racial Images.” Bilalian News. July 28, 1978. “Be in Front for CRAID Convention.” American Muslim Journal. July 16, 1982. Berg, Herbert. “Mythmaking in the African American Muslim Context: The Moor- ish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and the American Society of Mus- lims.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73.3 (September 1, 2005): 685–703. Bilal, Idris F. “C.R.A.I.D. Committee Gathers Signatures on ‘Boston Common’.” American Muslim Journal. August 20, 1982. Blum, Edward J. and Paul Harvey. The Color of Christ: The Son of God & the Saga of Race in America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Cone, James H. Black Theology and Black Power. New York: Seabury Press, 1969. ——. A Black Theology of Liberation. New York: Lippincott, 1970. ——. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011. “CRAID at Work.” Bilalian News. October 13, 1978. “CRAID Moves in Los Angeles.” Bilalian News. December 29, 1978. “CRAID Readies for Dallas.” American Muslim Journal. July 23, 1982. Crawford, Malachi D. Bilalian News and the World Community of Al-Islam in the West. Thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. Curtis, Edward E. “African-American Islamization Reconsidered: Black History Narrative and Muslim Identity.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73.3 (September 2005): 659–684. ——. Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975. Chapel Hill: Uni- versity of North Carolina Press, 2006. ——. Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African- American Islamic Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. ——. “Islam in Black St. Louis: Strategies for Liberation in Two Local Religious Communities.” Gateway Heritage: Quarterly Journal of the Missouri Historical Society 17.4 (January 1, 1997): 33–43. 216 Jamie L. Brummitt Dillard, Angela D. Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. Duke, James O. and Mark G. Toulouse. Sources of Christian Theology in America. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999. El-Amin, Aqeel M. and Harold Zink. “C.R.A.I.D. walk in San Diego.” American Muslim Journal. August 27, 1982. El-Aminm, Hassan. “Harlem Masjid Pushes to Remove Racial Images.” Bilalian News. December 30, 1977. Elias, Jamal J. Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. Hakim, Ahmad. “CRAID in Action: Remove Racial Images from Worship.” Bilalian News. December 14, 1977. Harding, Vincent. “Black Power and the American Christ.” Christian Century 84.1 (January 4, 1967): 10–13. Harrison, Alferdteen. Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992. Hunter, W. L. Jesus Christ Had Negro Blood in His Veins: The Wonder of the Twen- tieth Century. Brooklyn: W. L. Hunter, 1901. Khan, Imam Qibiah. “Christian Clergy Removing Images.” Bilalian News. August 25, 1978. Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerd- mans; Africa World Press, Inc., 1994. Majied, Eugene. “Whom Shall You Serve? [Cartoon].” Muhammad Speaks. Septem- ber 9, 1964. Mamiya, Lawrence A. “American Muslim Mission.” African American Religious Cultures, ed. Anthony B. Pinn, Stephen C. Finley, and Torin Alexander, 77–88. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2009. Mannan, Mujib. “Christ Color Controversy.” Bilalian News. August 12, 1977. Marsh, Clifton E. “The Theological-Ideological Dispute Between Imam Warith Deen Muhammad and Minister Louis Farrakhan.” Studies in Contemporary Islam 5.1–2 (Spring and Fall 2003): 37–48. Mohammed, Imam W. Deen. “A Message of Concern.” Muslim Journal Online. Accessed January 31, 2016 http://muslimjournal.net/a-message-of-concern/. ——. Message of Concern: Removal of All Images That Attempt to Portray Divine. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013. Morgan, David, ed. Icons of American Protestantism: The Art of Warner Sallman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. ——. “Imaging Protestant Piety: The Icons of Warner Sallman.” Religion and Amer- ican Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 3.1 (January 1, 1993): 29–47. ——. Protestants & Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ——. The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Muhammad, Elijah. Message to the Blackman in America. 2nd ed. Phoenix: Secre- tarius MEMPS Publications, 1973. Muhammad, Laila. “CRAID Awakens Kalamazoo.” Bilalian News. December 8, 1978. Muhammad, Sabir Kasib. “Imam Pasha leads downtown Atlanta C.R.A.I.D. walk.” American Muslim Journal. August 20, 1982. Black Muslims, White Jesus 217 Muhammad, Wali Akbar. “C.R.A.I.D. Walk in Dallas climbs to success.” American Muslim Journal. August 27, 1982. Muhammad, W. D. “Invisible White Divinity by a Visible Whitened Divine.” Muhammad Speaks. April 4, 1975. ——. Muhammad Speaks from Harlem, Volume 1. Chicago: W. D. Muhammad, 1984. Omar, Nathaniel. “ ‘Images of Divine’—root of Racism.” Bilalian News. Septem- ber 30, 1977. Poinsett, Alex. “The Quest for a Black Christ: Radical Clerics Reject ‘honky Christ’ Created by American Culture-Religion.” Ebony. March 1969. Prothero, Stephen R. American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Rasheed, Abdul, Rafah Muhammed, Seifullah Muhammad, Muhsin Abdullah, Fatimah N Muhammad, Robert Pearce, and Mohammed Group. Evolution of a Community. Calumet City: WDM Publications, 1995. Saudi, Muhammad D. “C.R.A.I.D. on the move in the nation’s capital.” American Muslim Journal. August 27, 1982. “Scenes from the Community.” Bilalian News. May 19, 1979. Seifullah, Abul Aleem. “Disapproves of Cross-Wearing: Minister Removes Christ Image from Church.” Bilalian News. June 9, 1978. Seifullah, Abdul Aleem and Samuel Ayyub Bilal. “Forum Sheds Light on Racial Images in Worship.” Bilalian News. August 12, 1977. Shakir, Adbul Muhdee. “Muslim, Christian Unity Marches on.” Bilalian News. December 23, 1977. Sharif, Sidney Rahim. The African-American Image in Crisis: Al-Islam or Hell. Jer- sey City: New Mind Productions, 1985. “Southwest Region Steps Up Pace.” Bilalian News. September 22, 1978. Um’rani, Munir, and Aquil Nurridin. “Destroy All Racial Images of God.” Bilalian News. June 17, 1977. Walker, Dennis. “The Black Muslims in American Society.” In Cargo Cults and Mil- lenarian Movements : Transoceanic Comparisons of New Religious Movements, ed. G. W. Trompf, 343–390. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1990. ——. Islam and the Search for African-American Nationhood: Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, and the Nation of Islam. Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2005. Wiese, Andrew. Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 12 Clearing the Planet Dianetics Auditing and the Eschatology of the Nation of Islam

Jacob King

Introduction For two faiths so closely scrutinized by the Western media, the baffling partnership between the Nation of Islam (NOI) and the Church of Scientology (CoS) has received little attention. This is all the more surprising considering Scientology’s singular relationship with Hollywood, and Farrakhan’s reputation as an anti-Semite. But Farrakhan has offered a clear, if unlikely, reasoning behind his decision. The NOI, he states, is plagued by the same demons haunting the African American community in general. He identifies these demons as a mental and spiritual sickness in need of treatment. This chapter argues that Dianetics Auditing fulfills a vital function in the evolution of the NOI, and brings Farrakhan’s vision of the end- times closer to realization. This is accomplished in two ways: (1) by, in Farrakhan’s words, “free[ing] whites of the mind Yakub gave them” and (2) by awakening Lost-Founds to a new kind of “Knowledge of Self,” readying them to take their rightful place as rulers of the earth. The NOI concept of “Knowledge of Self” will be examined and contrasted with the self- knowledge sought in Dianetics Auditing. The Dianetic approach is internal and noetic, aiming to rid the practitioner of psychic defects and restore her functioning as a spiritual being. What Elijah Muhammad calls “Knowledge of Self” is just the opposite: realization that one is part of a divine collective, the Tribe of Shabazz, rulers of the earth and creators of the universe. The “mentally dead” Lost-Founds, through assimilation into this collective, are “resurrected” and raised from the “mental death” dealt them by their former slave-masters. Farrakhan has supplemented the NOI’s “Knowledge of Self” with the self-knowledge offered by Dianetics Auditing, but this is hardly a conversion. The Honorable Minister, on the contrary, has leavened this endorsement with his trademark, doom-laden rhetoric. While whites can achieve a limited salvation through auditing, it is the Lost-Founds who will truly benefit: awakening to “Knowledge of Self” is a necessary step toward the final judgment, and the ideas of L. Ron Hubbard are a powerful tool to this end. It is surprising that, for two movements so often covered (and in Clearing the Planet 219 such sensational terms) by the American media, the very public adoption of Scientology teachings by the Nation of Islam has garnered relatively little attention. Among the journalists who did take note, the tone, understandably, was one of surprise. In his Village Voice blog, Tony Ortega wrote, “Holy Doctrinal Mashup, Batman! [. . .] Louis Farrakhan has been encouraging his members to read [. . .] Dianetics, and even to get enough training in Scientology to become auditors.”1 Although Farrakhan’s relationship with CoS was first made public around 2006, when he was honored at the church-sponsored Ebony Awakening Awards,2 his introduction to Dianetics came much earlier. Sources differ on his first encounter with the teaching, which came sometime in the ’90s, either from singer Isaac Hayes or from Baptist minister and practicing Scientologist Alfreddie Johnson.3 Johnson is the founder and president of the World Lit- eracy Crusade, a Scientology-backed nonprofit, and Hayes, until the time of his death, was its spokesman. The World Literacy Crusade brings the study technology developed by Hubbard, Scientology’s founder, to residents of inner cities in an attempt to combat the illiteracy Johnson believes is “at the root of all social ills, from crime and drug use to poverty itself.”4 According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Farrakhan has, since the early 2000s, sanctioned the training of NOI in the “methods of both the World Literacy Crusade and its drug-addiction treatment program, Narconon.”5 Both nonprofits acknowledge that L. Ron Hubbard developed the tools and techniques they use, while at the same time distancing themselves from Scientology. Narconon is “non-religious and a person does not become a Scientologist by doing the program,”6 while Applied Scholastics, which sponsors the World Literacy Crusade, is “not part of the Church of Scien- tology or any other religious organization.”7 Applied Scholastics “works with hundreds of schools and affiliated programs,” in addition to its private school network, the Delphi Program.8 Narconon “constitutes a worldwide network of forty-five residential rehab centers,”9 offering “a precise, step- by-step regimen that addresses all aspects of addiction to assist individuals to overcome its adverse effects for themselves and those around them.”10 The NOI has been quite public in its antipathy toward “white devils,” and yet, bafflingly, its leadership has endorsed the “so-white-he-glows Hub- bard.”11 Journalist Eliza Gray, in her article for the New Republic, identified some “striking theological overlaps”12 to explain the strange affinity between the two movements. The most obvious (and least compelling) of these is, of course, the science fiction flavor of both mythologies. Any comparison here, when held to the light, is superficial at best. Gray offers a far more intriguing analogy, however, in writing that

at the core of both religions is a never-ending pursuit of a better self. In [. . .] Scientology, that best self is ‘clear’ of residual traumas buried in the subconscious. In the Nation, that self is free of the hang-ups of white culture that black people have internalized to their detriment.13 220 Jacob King It should again be emphasized that it is not Scientology that Farrakhan is embracing. Scientology, in affirming past lives, an immortal soul, and the alien origins of human neuroses, is clearly at odds with the NOI’s core tenets. But Narconon and Applied Scholastics employ the secular principles in Hubbard’s teaching to bring about social change. As noted earlier, they have, for decades, been courting the African American community in inner cities. That Farrakhan should not merely tolerate, but support the encroach- ment of a white-founded, white-dominated religion upon the black community is, to say the least, unexpected. A study of the interrelationship between the NOI and the CoS-sponsored nonprofits performing outreach into the inner city is beyond the scope of this chapter. But it verifies that Farrakhan’s endorsement and implementation of Dianetics Auditing among his ranks is a decision neither sudden nor rash. Dianetics, with its “never-ending pursuit of a better self” seems to have intrigued Farrakhan and led him to seek outside the teachings of Elijah Muhammad in his search for truth. But this is in no way a conversion: ‘The critics are saying, “Farrakhan’s talking all this Black talk and went over to this White man, L. Ron Hubbard [. . . ”] I am you. I haven’t changed my religion.’14 This chapter proposes that Farrakhan should be taken at his word and that the technology of Dianetics Auditing provides a means for the fulfillment of NOI eschatology. It is, in other words, a means to an end and not an end in itself. It is in this “never-ending pursuit of a better self,” or what I shall deem “the pursuit of self-knowledge,” that the key to this thesis can be found. In both the Nation of Islam and Scientology, the acquisition of self-knowledge plays a central role. These two faiths, however, define self- knowledge in terms so radically different that they would seem to be incom- patibly opposed: What Elijah Muhammad called “Knowledge of Self” is a historical, communal affirmation; Hubbard claims, through the practice of Dianetics Auditing, to offer an internal, noetic, and individual form of self-knowledge. A brief15 treatment of both approaches will be offered in the following section. When placed side by side, and viewed through the interpretive lens offered by Farrakhan, a clearer picture emerges: The teachings of L. Ron Hubbard (the practice of Dianetics Auditing, in particular) provide a means of more fully realizing the “Knowledge of Self” sought by members of the NOI.

The Role of “Knowledge of Self” in the Eschatology of the Nation of Islam The awakening of the Lost-Founds of North America to “Knowledge of Self” forms an essential moment in the eschatology of the NOI—in fact, it is the “last step.”16 The gnosis achieved by a convert to the NOI involves an acceptance of oneself as a part of this exalted group. Lost-Founds discover that they are part of an ancient brotherhood of all black people, the Tribe Clearing the Planet 221 of Shabazz, from which “all mankind are the offspring [. . .] older than the sun, moon and star.”17 Those who belong to the Tribe of Shabazz are the original people of the earth, ordained by God as authorities over all others.18 In addition to accepting one’s identity as a member of the Tribe of Shabazz, and one’s role of authority, “Knowledge of Self” also entails the acceptance of a history radically different than that accepted by the academy. The humili- ation of slavery and the centuries of oppression by the white-dominated power structure are revealed to be part of a divine plan. For the NOI, the black race, the Tribe of Shabazz, is not merely the original people of the earth, but the author of all creation, “older than sun, moon and star.”19 The black race, being divine, is aware of all that is to come. The council of scientists20 at its head set down the future of the Tribe of Shabazz in 25,000-year increments. One is deemed “Judge or God” over the other twenty-three, who are engaged in planning the next twenty-five millennia. The twenty-three decide when and where each portion of the history will come to pass and offer part of the history to Allah’s people when the time is right, in the form of scripture.21 While the black race has existed from the dawn of time, the white race is a relatively new phenomenon. The origin of the Caucasian people (and of the terrors they would visit on the Tribe of Shabazz) was prophesied by the council 15,000 years ago. They knew that a brilliant black Scientist, Yakub, would “produce a new race of people, who would rule the original black nation for 6,000 years[.]”22 Yakub, through generations of brutal genetic experimentation, grafted a conniving, wicked, “un-alike” race of blond- haired, blue-eyed devils. These people were called “Caucasian—which means, according to some of the Arab scholars, ‘one whose evil effect is not confined to one’s self alone, but affects [sic.] others.’ ”23 Yakub, in his dark wisdom, advised the Caucasians to “upset their peace by putting one against the other, and then rule them after dividing them.”24 Thus began the oppression of the black race at the hands of the devils. This oppression, as noted earlier, would last for six millennia, with the “prodigal son” (the “universal power” that is the black race) resuming its authority at the dawn of the seventh.25 The devils’ appointed time to rule ended in 1914, but God, for a time, has spared them from destruction, because he “could not kill [them] without killing us[.]” The Lost-Founds must come into a knowledge of who they are, and who the devil is, before they can inherit the kingdom.26 To accomplish this, Allah himself, in the person of Master Fard Muham- mad, appeared publicly in Detroit in 1930. His goal was nothing less than the resurrection of the dead—not a physical but a psychological resurrection. Four centuries of mental slavery have, understandably, left the Lost- Founds in a state of mental death.27 The ideas of a literal resurrection, and of a heaven and hell in some imaginary “hereafter,” are examples of the mental bondage under which blacks are held. Christianity, far from being a benign or noble religion, was a pack of malicious fairy tales designed to 222 Jacob King keep blacks docile before their slave-masters. Fard taught Elijah Muham- mad, the NOI’s long-time leader and “Messenger of Allah,” that there was no incorporeal creator deity,28 that God was the black race, the Tribe of Sha- bazz, that the only soul men have is the air29 they breathe, and that heaven and hell30 are earthly states. Fard’s appearance was itself a marker of the beginning of the end for the present world order. Resurrected Black Muslims would recognize that his coming was prophesied31 long ago. He came to give the former slaves of America knowledge of their true divine nature—and to give the whites of America one last chance at more time.32 The NOI is not vague in its demands. What God desires of America is found in point four of “What the Muslims Want,” familiar to any student of the movement: for the Lost- Founds to be given a territory of their own “on this continent or elsewhere,” with the United States, as a means of reparation, supporting it financially until they become economically self-sufficient.33 Elijah Muhammad, like Moses before him, demands of the powers that be that they let his people go. But he is skeptical that they will heed his voice. In any case, their doom is sealed. Allah will return to set up his kingdom and bring the devils to justice. Like the true history of the black race and the white devils, the belief in the coming judgment is critical to Knowledge of Self. As the Tribe of Sha- bazz foreordained the entire course of human events, an understanding of the future is historical in the same sense as a grasp of the past. Knowledge of Self, moreover, places the present in a sacred context. Political unrest, natural disasters, etc., become signs34 for those with eyes to see. Current events are auguries, for the faithful, of the coming apocalypse. Soon the world of devils will face a savage reckoning. The white race, in comparison to Allah, are mere babies35 in their wisdom and technological capabilities. God, ageless and all knowing, has at his dis- posal the most awesome of weapons, the Mother Wheel, which shall destroy Babylon and its former slave-masters. It carries 1,500 bombers planes of such power that they can “bring up mountains.”36 While this particular wheel was built on the island of Japan37 in 1929, the Tribe of Shabazz has been preparing for the battle for six38 millennia. According to Elijah Muhammad, the devils, utterly outgunned by their ancient creators, have no hope of mounting a successful defense. The scientists on the Wheel are telepathic and can “know what you are thinking before the thought materializes.”39 Anticipation of the inevitable race war, and the subsequent deliverance of the Lost-Founds at the hands of the Mother Wheel, form the core of NOI eschatology. Elijah Muhammad was not shy in predicting various dates for this Deus ex Machina. We find, for example, in Message to the Blackman, the years 1965–1966 named as the years “bringing in the ‘Fall of America.’ ”40 But those years came and went without the arrival of the Mother Wheel, as did many others in which he made similar promises41 to his faithful. Farrakhan, doubting neither the Messenger of Allah nor his message, has puzzled why the NOI has yet to achieve its potential. The problem extends, Clearing the Planet 223 for him, to any group founded for the betterment of black Americans. He asks why “none of our organizations really reach what they’re supposed to reach,” and why they may gain momentum for a time, but eventually sput- ter. The blame rests, in part, on the members themselves: “What’s wrong in the church that we’re talking about ‘demons’ outside, and the demons [. . .] are on the inside? It’s a sickness that’s in us. [. . .] in our minds.”42 After all, the awakening of the Lost-Founds of North America was supposed to effect a great unity among them: they were to be united under the banner of a single nation and faith. That they would be resurrected, given a new and sacred knowledge, and drawn together in one accord was the final step upon which Allah awaited. One could surmise from Farrakhan’s words that Allah did not make his promise in bad faith, but rather that this awakening has not occurred to his satisfaction. There is some factor—heretofore unseen—that has stayed the Mother Wheel’s arrival. Despite being given Knowledge of Self, the NOI, and the African Ameri- can community with it, are still divided. Worse yet, they do not live according to their righteous nature. Still, they try to “live the life of devils,” though, “When they are fully in the knowledge of self, they will do righteousness and live in peace among themselves.”43 The Knowledge of Self offered by the NOI—historical and external as it is—seems to have failed to return the Lost-Founds to their proper state. They still, as “demons are wrecking the church, [. . .] live the life of devils.” Farrakhan, upon whose shoulders the mantle of Fard and Elijah Muhammad rests, must make ready the way of the Lord. Chip Berlet, an analyst at Political Research Associates, offers some convincing speculation as to why Farrakhan might look outside of his faith—and his race—for a solution. Farrakhan, “nearing 80 [he is now 82], he has a limited time left to prepare his followers for their journey to the ‘Mother Wheel,’ and is desperate to see them ready before he dies.” Farrakhan may be concerned about why the world has not ended yet and is searching for a way to eliminate anything blocking that.44 Berlet’s suspicions are confirmed by Farrakhan’s own words. We find explicit in Farrakhan’s earlier statements that there remains a key demanded of the Lost-Founds for entrance to the promised land: a key that they lack, despite their Knowledge of Self. Reverend Alfreddie Johnson, a Scientology minister who has “worked as a liaison”45 between the Church of Scientology and the NOI, has framed the dilemma in the language of L. Ron Hubbard:

Our experience has caused us to experience many, many engrams [. . . W]e’ve gone into the valence of that which overwhelmed us and that was the valence of our slavemaster’s [sic] and we are doing to each other what was done to us.46

For one familiar with the language of Scientology, Rev. Johnson identifies the problem—engrams in the children of former slaves, causing these 224 Jacob King children to act out the valence of the slave-master—as a kind of mental illness. While the problem is one crippling the Lost-Founds as a whole, the remedy proposed addresses individual psychic scars. That remedy, for John- son, is Dianetics Auditing, a cornerstone of Scientology. While a full treat- ment47 of Auditing is beyond the scope of this chapter, a clarification of two terms used by Rev. Johnson (“engram” and “valence”), as well as a brief description of Auditing’s relation to them, will demonstrate a new approach by the NOI to self-knowledge.

The Reactive Mind and the Valence of the Slave-Master According to Dianetics, the human mind is a perfect computer, “more fan- tastically capable than any computing machine ever constructed and infi- nitely more elaborate.”48 This perfect computer, the analytical mind, files all memories away in the standard memory banks. Everything ever perceived49 by it (sights, physical sensations, odors, etc.) is fully accessible to it and remains so throughout a lifetime. The question naturally arises as to why all memories are not then accessible to the average person. Hubbard asserts that a far more primitive—and far less rational—companion often supplants the analytical mind. He calls this the reactive mind. The analytical mind, despite its extraordinary capacity, is somewhat delicate. In order to preserve its circuitry during moments of pain or danger, it becomes “unconscious” and cedes control to the reactive mind. The memory of the reactive mind is on par with the analytical, but its intelligence is “sub-moron.”50 The analytical mind “might embrace the most staggering summations of calculus,”51 but, for the reactive mind, “the equation is A=A=A=A=A.”52 Hubbard uses the example of a woman being beaten by her husband. She is doing the dishes, the water is running, and a car passes outside. All these are being recorded by her analytical mind. Suddenly, she is struck by her husband. In this moment of pain, she becomes “unconscious,” with her reactive mind now keeping the minutes. Her husband continues to beat her, the water keeps running, and a chair is knocked down as the violence goes on. Between blows, the man hurls insults at his wife, telling her that she is no good, that she is a faker, and that she is forever changing her mind.53 Now an engram has been formed. Unlike a benign memory, an engram can have a personality of its own, “and behaves like an entity.”54 In the example, the woman’s reactive mind, calculating on a sub-moron level, judges her experience as follows: [T]he pain of the kick equals the pain of the blow equals the overturning chair equals the passing car equals the faucet equals the fact that she is a faker equals the fact that she is no good equals the fact that she changes her mind equals the voice tones of the man who hit her [. . .] But why continue? Every single perception in this engram equals every other perception in this engram.55 Clearing the Planet 225 If this woman, a year or so from now, is washing the dishes as a car passes, and her toddler son knocks a chair over behind her, this engram of past abuse can be restimulated. She may feel a pain in the area where she was hit and start thinking that she is no good, a faker, etc. Worse yet, she may dramatize the engram, “possibly, by doing and saying exactly the same thing done and said to her.”56 And so she may beat her child, telling him that he is no good and a faker. In Hubbard’s language, she “dramatizes” this engram and takes on the “valence” of her abuser. Each engram has several valences (Latin for “powerful”), or “dramatic personnel in an engram. In the case of the woman being knocked out and kicked, there were two valences present: herself and her husband.”57 In Dianetics, Hubbard claimed to have found the underlying drive behind all life. He discovered “the dynamic principal of existence—SURVIVE!”58 If the goal of the organism is to survive, and if “the woman who was knocked down and kicked” would stand less of a chance of surviving than the one who knocked down and kicked, then the reactive mind, with its limited capacity, would undoubtedly choose the valence of the abuser over that of the abused. Assume that the woman in our example, when her engram was restimulated, took on the valence of her husband and abused her infant son. Her son, in experiencing a moment of pain and distress, would naturally record the event in his reactive (and not his analytical) mind. He would form an engram, a mirror image of her own, and may act out her valence rather than his. An engram, then, can pass from parent to child “just as certainly as if those engrams were bacteria.”59 If engrams can be passed from parent to child, it follows that that their effect can be more far-reaching. Hubbard writes that certain engrams can infect a people like an epidemic, crippling whole civilizations.60 The Lost- Founds have been subject for centuries to the violence and malice of the devils. It is no surprise, then, if, in order to survive, they take on the valence of their oppressor. Farrakhan laments that, “We have become ‘little devils,’ and we are now prone to wickedness under the Reactive Mind of our Sociopathic slave master.”61 But he has discovered, in the thought of L. Ron Hubbard, a technology to return blacks to their true nature and even offer a lifeline to willing whites.

Conclusion: Dianetics Auditing and Self-Knowledge as Prerequisites to Knowledge of Self

Why Dianetics? It is perhaps more unexpected that the Church of Scientology, or any of its affiliates, should embrace a relationship with the NOI. It seems that both parties shoulder a considerable risk in this pact. Farrakhan, as noted earlier, must weather the charge of hypocrisy for not only accepting a white man’s 226 Jacob King teaching but also, worse yet, for apparently deeming it necessary for the fulfillment of the Lost-Founds’ destiny. And the CoS—a perennial media punching bag—has made an even more daring gambit. Public knowledge of Scientology tends to be focused on its celebrity acolytes. The press takes interest in Scientology—over, say the Unification Church, Falun Gong, or the Raelians—because of its singular intimacy with Hollywood. The CoS has, inexplicably, honored a man at its awkwardly named “Ebony Awaken- ing Awards” who has a reputation for anti-Semitism. Farrakhan accuses his critics of misrepresenting him, wrenching his statements from their context to caricature him as a vicious bigot. Nonethe- less, Farrakhan has been widely perceived as an anti-Semite by the Western media. He is famously quoted as calling Judaism a “gutter religion”62 and warning Jews, “When God puts you in the oven, you’re there forever.”63 But Farrakhan is nothing if not a paradox. A classically trained violinist, he performed the work of Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn before an audience in 1993. It was, in part, a gesture of reconciliation, to “try to do with music what cannot be done with words and try to undo with music what words have done.”64 He has even gone so far as to say that, one day, whites may be granted admittance into the NOI.65 While on the one hand, like his teachers before him, he affirms the supremacy of the black race and the eventual destruction of Yakub’s progeny, Farrakhan has, on the other hand, suggested (as in the case of the Mendelssohn concert) that there are certain aspects of white culture that he admires and (as in the case of Dianet- ics and CoS-related nonprofits) that he is willing to work with whites for the betterment of his people. Any reasons offered for an alliance between two organizations so prominent and so secretive will, of course, be speculative. The decades-long efforts of Applied Scholastics, Narconon, etc., in the inner city can, somewhat cyni- cally, be interpreted as a means of covert proselytizing. But it is also possible that well-meaning Scientologists such as Isaac Hayes saw in Hubbard’s social programs the most effective remedy for problems facing the inner city. That these nonprofits have the resources of the CoS to draw upon may be part of their appeal to Farrakhan. Instead of wrangling with the logistics of founding a new organization, the NOI, with this partnership, is able to step into on ongoing project, one which, if its long history in the inner city is any indication, has cultivated a level of trust among poor blacks. Still, the CoS, white founded and white dominated, could be perceived as an opportunistic outsider in the inner city. With Farrakhan’s endorsement, Hubbard’s ideas stand to gain a greater legitimacy in the community. But the implementation of Dianetics Auditing into the NOI represents a deepening of this bond. Thankfully, Farrakhan and Johnson spell out the reason behind this particular turn clearly. To conclude this chapter, the role of Dianetics Auditing in the light of NOI eschatology will be examined. Elijah Muhammad wrote that some Arab scholars understood the definition of devil to be, “one whose evil effect is not confined to one’s self alone, but affects [sic.] others.”66 Both Rev. Johnson and Minister Farrakhan have Clearing the Planet 227 affirmed Muhammad’s statement in their embrace of Dianetics Auditing and of the relief it may be able to offer. The practice of Auditing is an internal, noetic means of acquiring self-knowledge, in stark contrast to the NOI’s external, historical Knowledge of Self. From the Scientology website: Auditing uses processes—exact sets of questions asked or directions given by an auditor to help a person locate areas of spiritual distress, find out things about him or herself, and improve his or her condition. There are many, many different auditing processes and each one improves the individual’s ability to confront and handle part of his or her existence.67 The “areas of spiritual distress” are not found in a people, but in a person. The “processes” in auditing address the individual, allowing her to “confront and handle” her existence. While being audited, the woman in our example can return to the scene of abuse. An auditor, whose task is to listen68 rather than diagnose, guides her. While a recipient of the NOI’s Knowledge of Self receives a ready- made identity and history (a la the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Supreme Wisdom), only the person being audited69 can determine whether or not she has sufficiently exorcized her engrams and understood the source of her psychic malfunction. And so the woman in the earlier example, with the aid of an auditor, is returned to the time the engram formed. She is asked to recall everything70 her senses registered in those awful moments. The goal71 is that the engram might be “refiled” in the standard memory banks of the analytical mind, reduced to a harmless memory. The woman in our example acquires self-knowledge—necessarily individual in its nature. Such understanding can be profoundly transformative, as many members of the NOI acknowledged when Mosque Maryam opened its doors one weekend, for believers and nonbelievers alike, to receive auditing. Brenda Stoxsell, who had recently suffered the passing of both her mother and her grandmother, as well as the sentencing of her seventeen-year-old brother to life imprisonment, testified that she discovered a tension in her stomach during auditing—not the ulcers that plagued her, but their cause. When she was able to address her personal history, healing—both physical and psychological—followed:

When I poured out my heart and [let go of] that sensation that was here (she said clutching chest and stomach), I had ulcers but it wasn’t the ulcers [. . .] I was given the opportunity here to address my personal history, they came out and I feel like I can fly.72

Stoxsell addressed not a communal history, but a personal one. It is dis- coveries in these inner realms that gave her “a power I’ve never felt before.” That such self-knowledge can be complimentary to the NOI’s Knowledge of Self is made apparent by another attendee, Ariel Beloch: “It started when I was younger with my cousin making fun of my dark complexion and I’ve always been uncomfortable in my skin. And now I’m very proud of it.”73 228 Jacob King Beloch may have had an engram and may have dramatized the valence of his cousin in his discomfort with his own dark skin and that of others. As for Beloch’s cousin, his mockery is a mere parroting of white anti-black prejudice—he, too, dramatizes the valence of the devils, with his reactive mind mimicking the behavior of the oppressive and dominant power structure in an effort to survive. Beloch, in being Audited, wrested himself from psychic bonds which, without it, would have left him thinking about himself as the devil thinks of him. Without this self-knowledge, he would be unready to receive Knowledge of Self. Farrakhan has unmasked “the demons wrecking the church, the hypocrites wrecking the mosque” as the engrams described in Dianetics. He identifies the internal, noetic self-knowledge offered by Auditing—and the “exorcism” that accompanies it—as a necessary prerequisite to receive Knowledge of Self:

When you look at our behavior, you’re looking at “demons” that are sitting up inside of us that have to come out in order for us to be what God intends for us to be. And that means that every one of us have to be purified! All of us!74

While Auditing makes self-purification possible, the technology available on the Mother Wheel—the “Wisdom and Science” of the Black Gods—will allow the righteous to purify the whole earth:

Once that Knowledge is transferred to us: We have exactly what it will take to purify the Earth! And the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has taught us that once you get rid of the wicked, the Earth will take on “new growth[.]”75

“To purify the earth” is to purge the world of Yakub’s progeny. The NOI have always been unequivocal on this, but Farrakhan, in his embrace of L. Ron Hubbard, has remarked that auditing may well help willing whites to purify themselves. Elijah Muhammad taught that the Mother Wheel, when it comes, will destroy all whites except for the few who practice Islam. These whites, “Muslims by faith and not by nature,”76 allowed to “see” but not “enter the hereafter,” will at least be spared Allah’s wrath.77 But here we find Far- rakhan going a step further:

White people that are under [Hubbard’s] teachings are better than those that we have met in our sojourn in America[.] If they stay under L. Ron Hubbard, he will free them of the mind that Yakub gave them!78

Hubbard’s technology can excise the devilishness from whites. This devilishness—the warmongering, hypocrisy, profligacy, exploitation, etc.— is why “the God of the righteous has found them disagreeable to live with in peace, and has decided to remove them from the face of the earth.”79 Clearing the Planet 229 While Farrakhan stops short of promising reformed whites a place in “the hereafter,” the regard with which he views Hubbard’s achievement is indeed extraordinary: Hubbard, a white man, has found a way to reform Cau- casians. Elijah Muhammad wrote that Moses, Christ, and Muhammad had tried and failed80 to do just this. Farrakhan identifies another affinity between Hubbard and the prophets:

Mr. Hubbard recognized that his people have to be civilized. He never wanted to continue this world, nor was he trying to save this world. He was trying to prepare a people to build a Brand New World, and a Brand New Civilization!81

And it is this new civilization—a civilization in which the Lost-Founds at last come into their own—with which Farrakhan is chiefly concerned. In his embrace of Dianetics Auditing, The Honorable Minister has in no way dulled his apocalyptic rhetoric. On the contrary, he has stated that the deci- sive battle between Allah and the forces of darkness is fast approaching and that wheels are being seen82 the world over, but receive little coverage by media. His call to whites, then, is no olive branch—it is a final warning. As for the Lost-Founds, Auditing will not save them, but merely prepare them to receive the Knowledge of Self offered by the Nation of Islam: “But listen: The Blacks who study with Scientology are not yet what God desires to make them into. That indeed has to come from us.”83 And his announcement to the Lost-Founds is equally urgent: “The demons wrecking the church, the hypocrites wrecking the mosque” are symptoms of a condition that has, thanks to Hubbard’s technology, become curable. The Mother Wheel is soon coming, and, like his teacher before him, Farrakhan can point to signs in the skies. The self-knowledge, external and historical, offered by the NOI is at last capable of being received by the Lost-Founds. But, apparently, Yakub’s progeny are necessary to implement it. That the Lost-Founds might need Hubbard’s internal, noetic approach to self-knowledge to discover their cosmic role is, naturally, ironic. But in all irony lies conflict—and, in this conflict, lies a dialectic. Farrakhan has led his faithful into a space that he himself has occupied for many years: one between condemnation and reconciliation, between the olive branch and the sword, and, ultimately to a wandering in a new and unknown wilderness, from which he hopes Allah will ultimately deliver them.

Notes 1. Tony Ortega, “Scientology and the Nation of Islam: A Heartwarming Indepen- dence Weekend Parable,” The Village Voice Blogs, last updated July 1, 2011, http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/07/scientology_and_1.php. 2. Shelly Rossetter and Thomas C. Tobin, “Louis Farrakhan Renews Call for Self-Determination Among Nation of Islam Followers,” Tampa Bay Times, October 18, 2010, http://www.tampabay.com/news/religion/louis-farrakhan- renews-call-for-self-determination-among-nation-of-islam/1128781. 230 Jacob King 3. Sources differ on whether Hayes or Johnson introduced Farrakhan to Dianet- ics. The Southern Poverty Law Center claims Hayes (Source: Leah Nelson, “Black Supremacist Nation of Islam Pushes White-Dominated Scientology,” The Southern Poverty Law Center, last updated June 07, 2011, https://www. splcenter.org/hatewatch/2011/06/07/black-supremacist-nation-islam-pushes- white-dominated-scientology), while The Village Voice Claims Johnson (Source: Tony Ortega, “Scientology and the Nation of Islam Exposed in Florida School Takeover; In Israel, Miscavige Shown to be a Liar by his own Attorneys,” The Village Voice, last updated February 26, 2012, http:// www.villagevoice.com/news/scientology-and-nation-of-islam-exposed-in- florida-school-takeover-in-israel-miscavige-shown-to-be-a-liar-by-own-at torneys-6726149. 4. Duke Helfand, “Literacy Drive Uses Scientology Founder’s Lessons,” The Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1997, http://articles.latimes.com/1997/aug/01/local/ me-18452. 5. See note 3. 6. “Drug Rehab,” Narconon Website, accessed April 4, 2016, http://www.nar conon.org/drug-rehab/. 7. “Frequently Asked Questions,” Applied Scholastics Website, accessed April 4, 2016, http://www.appliedscholastics.org/about-us/frequently-asked-questions. html. 8. “Applied Scholastics Schools & Programs: A Unique Methodology of Individu- alized Instruction,” Applied Scholastics Website, accessed April 5, 2016, http:// www.appliedscholastics.org/schools-programs.html. 9. “50 Years Saving Lives from Drugs,” Narconon Website, last accessed April 5, 2016, http://www.narconon.org/about-narconon/saving-lives-from-drugs.html. 10. Ibid. 11. Tony Ortega, “Scientology and the Nation of Islam: A Heartwarming Indepen- dence Weekend Parable,” The Village Voice Blogs, last updated July 1, 2011, http://www.villagevoice.com/news/scientology-and-the-nation-of-islam-a-heart warming-independence-weekend-parable-6662224. 12. Eliza Gray, “The Mothership of All Alliances.” http://www.newrepublic.com/ article/politics/magazine/108205/scientology-joins-forces-with-nation-of-islam. 13. Ibid. 14. Muhammad, Charlene. “A Weekend of Healing at Mosque Maryam.” The Final Call, last updated July 5, 2012, http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/ National_News_2/article_9004.shtml. 15. For a more detailed treatment, see my thesis, “Clearing the Planet: The Adoption of the Teachings of L. Ron Hubbard by Louis Farrakhan, and its Significance for the Eschatology of the Nation of Islam,” ProQuest, 2014. 16. Abdul Noor, ed. The Supreme Understanding (Lincoln: Writers Club Press), 147. 17. Ibid., 119. 18. Ibid., 40–42. 19. Noor, The Supreme Understanding, 119. 20. The word “Scientist” is capitalized in this essay, following the spelling found in much of the NOI’s literature. I have kept it in order to emphasize the special meaning attributed to the term by Elijah Muhammad, Farrakhan and others. 21. Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Phoenix: MEMPS Secretarius Publications, n.d.), 108. 22. Ibid., 110–111. 23. Ibid., 116. 24. Ibid., 116–117. 25. Elijah Muhammad, The God-Science of Black Power (Phoenix: MEMPS Secre- tarius Publications, n.d.), 41. Clearing the Planet 231 26. Elijah Muhammad, The Theology of Time (Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Publi- cations, 2004), 25. 27. Ibid., 221. 28. Muhammad, The God-Science of Black Power, 8. 29. Cf., Muhammad, The Theology of Time, 20. 30. “Heaven is a state of mind and hell is labor and pain to get into heaven.” Noor, The Supreme Understanding, 152. 31. Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 111. 32. Elijah Muhammad, The Fall of America (Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Minis- tries, n.d.), 143. 33. “What the Muslims Want.” accessed September 27, 2014, http://www.noi.org/ muslim-program/. 34. Muhammad, The Fall of America, 157. 35. Cf., Elijah Muhammad, The Mother Plane (Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Publi- cations, 1996), 21. 36. Ibid., 32. 37. Abdul Noor, The Supreme Understanding, 87. 38. Elijah Muhammad, The Mother Plane, 39. 39. Muhammad, The Fall of America, 252. 40. Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 271. 41. Cf. Evans, Karl. The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (New York: Random House, 1999). Note 23, Location 9959. 42. Farrakhan, Louis. “The Lawful Captive Shall Be Delivered.” http://www.final call.com/artman/publish/Minister_Louis_Farrakhan_9/article_7787.shtml. 43. Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 108. 44. Leah Nelson, “Black Supremacist Nation of Islam Pushes White-Dominated Scientology.” Hatewatch Blog, last updated June 6, 2007, http://www.splcenter. org/blog/2011/06/07/black-supremacist-nation-of-islam-embraces-white-domi nated-scientology/. 45. Asahed Muhammad, “Healing the wounds, answering the call for saviours,” The Final Call, accessed September 27, 2014, http://www.finalcall.com/artman/ publish/National_News_2/article_8249.shtml. 46. Ibid. 47. For a fuller (though by no means exhaustive) treatment, see my thesis. 48. L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (Los Ange- les: The Church of Scientology of California, 1975), 43. 49. Ibid., 45. 50. Ibid, 59. 51. Ibid., 62. 52. Ibid., 63. 53. Ibid., 60. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid., 63. 56. Ibid., 80. 57. Ibid., 80–81. 58. Ibid., 37. 59. Ibid., 135. 60. Cf., Ibid., 24. 61. Farrakhan, Louis. “The Lawful Captive Shall Be Delivered.” http://www.final call.com/artman/publish/Minister_Louis_Farrakhan_9/article_7787.shtml. 62. “FARRAKHAN and the JEWISH RIFT How It All Started.” The Final Call, Online Edition, accessed September 14, 2015. 63. Christopher Hitchens, “Mr. Kissinger, Have You No Shame?” Slate, December 27, 2010, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/ 12/mr_kissinger have_you_no_shame.html. 232 Jacob King 64. Bernard Holland, “Sending a Message, Louis Farrakhan Plays Mendelssohn,” The New York Times, April 19, 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/19/arts/ sending-a-message-louis-farrakhan-plays-mendelssohn.html?pagewanted=all. 65. “Can White People Join the Black Muslims?”YouTube Video, 1:55, posted by truthspreader, posted on November 26, 2008 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=mFhRDYYZU3c. 66. See note 20. 67. “What is Auditing?” Church of Scientology Website, accessed September 29, 2014, http://www.scientology.org/faq/scientology-and-dianetics-auditing/what- is-auditing.html. 68. Cf., What Do the Terms Pre-clear and Auditor Mean?” Church of Scientology website, accessed September 14, 2014, http://www.scientology.org/faq/scien tology-and-dianetics-auditing/what-do-the-terms-pre-clear-and-auditor-mean. html. 69. Cf., “Comparison to Other Practices.” Church of Scientology Website, accessed September 14, 2014, http://www.scientology.org/what-is-scientology/the-prac tice-of-scientology/comparison-to-other-practices.html. 70. Cf., L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, 195. 71. Cf. Ibid., 185. 72. Muhammad, “A Weekend of Healing at Mosque Maryam.” 73. Ibid. 74. Louis Farrakhan, “Preparation of the Mind and Qualifications to Act for Christ.” The Final Call, last updated March 10, 2011, accessed March 13, 2014, http:// www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Minister_Louis_Farrakhan_9/article_7648. shtml. 75. Louis Farrakhan, “The Great, Life-Giving Wheel (‘Mother Plane’): The New Jerusalem, Part 2,” The Final Call, last updated January 27, 2014, accessed Sep- tember 27, 2014, http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Minister_Louis_Far rakhan_9/article_101186.shtml. 76. Cf. Elijah Muhammad, Our Saviour Has Arrived (Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Ministries, n.d.), 89. 77. Ibid. 78. Farrakhan, “Preparation of the Mind and qualifications to act for Christ.” 79. Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 294. 80. Muhammad, The God-Science of Black Power, 54. 81. Farrakhan, “Preparation of the Mind and qualifications to act for Christ.” 82. Cf. Farrakhan, “The Great, Life-Giving Wheel (‘Mother Plane’): The New Jeru- salem, Part 2.” 83. Farrakhan, “Preparation of the Mind and qualifications to act for Christ.”

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Nathan Saunders

That the Nation of Islam is a religious organization seems self-evident, but some scholars who study the Nation question the extent to which religious ideas have shaped the group’s identity and agenda. In his seminal study of the Nation of Islam originally published in 1961, the prominent African Ameri- can sociologist C. Eric Lincoln wrote that “although the Black Muslims call their movement a religion, religious values have a secondary importance” and that religious ideas “are not a part of the group’s basic appeal, except to the extent that they foster and strengthen the sense of group solidarity.” As the Islamic studies scholar Edward E. Curtis IV argues, this understanding of the Nation stems from an unwarranted dichotomy between politics and religion. I argue that it also ignores the language that the Nation’s leaders have used to support their social and economic programs. Wallace Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad taught that black people should not cooperate with whites because their creator made them to be evil, and by associating with the white devils, they risked incurring God’s wrath. Black people would enjoy peace and justice in the Hereafter because they were the Original Men, and the earth rightfully belonged to them. All of these ideas constituted basic tenets of the Nation’s theology, and all were foundational to its understanding of its mission. As the group’s underlying theology evolved under Warith Deen Mohammed and Louis Farrakhan, so did the language of its protest and its overall stance toward the wider culture.1 The Nation of Islam’s protest against oppression therefore has a strong theological basis. This chapter explores how Elijah Muhammad, and later Louis Farrakhan, answered the basic questions posed by any theology: What is the divine? Can the divine be known, and how are human beings to respond to this knowledge of the divine? Under both leaders, the Nation’s theology focused in particular on the nature of God and how that nature relates to human nature, the problem of evil and its ultimate defeat, and the end-times. Elijah Muhammad’s answers to these questions constitute a broadly Muslim theology that appealed to African Americans in the mid- twentieth century. Because each generation has its own special concerns and so asks its own questions about God and man—or the same questions in different ways—the Nation’s theology has evolved. Louis Farrakhan’s theology The Evolving Theology 237 reflects Muhammad’s influence and evinces the same basic concerns with questions of God, evil, and eschatology, but the social and cultural situations Farrakhan has confronted over his nearly four-decade tenure as leader of the Nation have necessitated reformulations of the group’s theology and in some cases radical departures from Muhammad’s teachings. Before exploring Muhammad’s and Farrakhan’s theologies, it is important to recognize the authorities to which they appeal in formulating their doctrines. The Bible and Ahmadiyya Muhammad Ali’s translation of the Qur’an form the basis of Elijah Muhammad’s theology, although he gives primacy to the Qur’an because “[f]rom the first day that the white race received the Divine Scripture they started tampering with its truth to make it to suit themselves and blind the black man.” God has therefore declared the Bible to be “the poison book.” Muhammad nevertheless cited the Bible far more than the Qur’an in presenting and explaining his doctrines, perhaps because as the son of a Baptist preacher, he was more familiar with its contents, at least initially. His followers likewise would have recognized biblical passages more readily than quotations from the Qur’an. At the same time, the Islamic studies scholar Herbert Berg notes that Muhammad’s political and economic agenda “drew on no scriptural support—neither biblical nor quranic.” Furthermore, Muhammad’s claim to act as the sole representative of Allah on earth meant that his followers relied not so much on sacred scriptures as on Muhammad’s writings about the sacred Scriptures. Curtis notes that informants at several different mosques across the country related that they did not need to read the Qur’an because “Elijah Muhammad did all of our reading and interpreting for us.”2 Thus Muhammad’s voluminous, though often repetitive, writings offer rich material for formulating his theology. During the late 1950s, the Pitts- burgh Courier published his weekly column, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” not to be confused with the Nation’s official newspaper that began publication in 1960, Muhammad Speaks. The most important sources for his theology include two volumes entitled The Supreme Wisdom and a 1965 book entitled Message to the Blackman in America. These works consist primarily of compilations of Muhammad’s writings in his weekly column and newspaper. Muhammad published a number of other books, including a treatise on God’s judgment entitled The Fall of America and two volumes on the Nation’s dietary practices. Again, much of the material in these books recycles Muhammad’s previous writings. This study primarily draws upon the two Supreme Wisdom volumes and Message to the Blackman in America. As for Farrakhan, his teachings appear most frequently in his organization’s newspaper, the Final Call.

Elijah Muhammad’s Theology Muhammad taught his followers to practice the five pillars of Islam, but reinterpreted them for an African American audience. His reformulation of 238 Nathan Saunders the shahada (the confession that “there is no god but Allah and Muham- mad is his prophet”) set the Nation apart from Sunni Islam perhaps more than any other aspect of his teaching. Muhammad’s doctrine of Allah begins with his repeated, emphatic declaration that “God is a man, and we cannot just make him anything other than a man.” Whites, “the great archdeceiv- ers,” taught “that God is a spirit (spook),” because “they are enemies of the truth” who do not want “the American so-called Negroes” to know their real Father. Furthermore, God is physically present in the world. Muham- mad taught “not the coming of God but the presence of God in person.” Whites “knew that God would come in person after you,” and they “are aware that God is present among us, but those of you who are asleep they desire to keep asleep.” Muhammad also clearly equated God with Allah of the Qur’an, the “Son of Man” described in the Gospels, the “Holy One,” and the “Creator and Maker of the heavens and the earth.”3 When Muhammad taught God’s non-spiritual personhood, he referred specifically to Wallace Fard, also known as Wali Fard Muhammad. “Mr. Fard Muhammad (God in Person),” he stated, “chose to suffer three and one half years to show his love for his people who have suffered over 300 years.” Elsewhere Muhammad described him as “our God and Savior, the Great Mahdi, Almighty God Allah in Person.” Muhammad claimed he received his teachings directly from Fard Muhammad, an enigmatic figure whose origin and ultimate destiny remain a source of debate eighty years after his disappearance. Fard arrived in Detroit some time in 1930, was arrested in 1932, was expelled from the city and moved to Chicago in 1933, and disappeared shortly thereafter. Despite Fard’s absence, Muhammad continued to teach that “[t]he Son of Man is here,” seeking “that which was lost (the so-called Negroes).” He will ultimately conquer “the black nation’s enemies,” but until then, “Allah, who is in person among them,” is actively gathering a righteous people who will inherit the earth.4 Muhammad’s doctrine of God is actually more complicated than it at first appears. In addition to his belief in Fard Muhammad as Allah, he also taught that blacks as a collective are in fact “the first and the last, and maker and owner of the universe.” He also described Yakub, a black scientist who created the white race, as “another God.” All of history, according to Muhammad, consists of a series of 25,000-year cycles. During each cycle, a group of twenty-four scientists coordinates world events. One of these scientists “acts as Judge and God for the others.” These scientists are not spiritual beings, but black men. Muhammad, therefore, did not believe in Allah as an uncreated, eternal being, nor did he believe Allah to be unique or separate from his creation. Thus, as Berg notes, Muhammad was “not a strict monotheist.” More than the Nation’s other doctrines, Muhammad’s identification of Fard Muhammad as Allah engendered hostility from traditional Muslims and problematized the Nation’s place within the international Muslim community.5 The Evolving Theology 239 Muhammad affirmed Allah as the Creator, but he said very little about the origin of the Universe. He asserted that “[w]e have an unending history of the black nation” and that “the so-called Negroes are the original people of the earth who have no birth record.” Furthermore, “the earth was populated by the black nation ever since it was created.” All other races—“brown, yellow, red, and white”—derive from the original black race. Muhammad does relate some details about the ancient ancestors of those blacks living in America. So-called Negroes in America descend from the Tribe of Sha- bazz, an “Asian black nation.” The tribe formed some “66 trillion years ago when a great explosion on our planet divided it into two parts. One we call earth and the other moon.” After this cataclysmic event, the tribe of Sha- bazz settled in the Nile Valley. Allah then took the tribe into “the jungles of East Asia (Africa)” in order “to make all of us tough and hard.” Whatever hardships the Original Men have experienced, Muhammad called them to remember that “the black people are by nature the righteous” and “are righteous by creation, and we cannot be other than righteous.”6 Muhammad taught his followers that whites, unlike their African Ameri- can counterparts, were not by nature righteous. He believed whites to be constitutionally different from black people and so have a different relationship to Allah. Muhammad forcefully reminded followers, “The white man is not your brother.” Approximately 6,600 years ago, a rogue black scientist named Yakub, who had been exiled to the island of Patmos in the Mediterranean Sea, forced his followers to breed in such a way that they would give birth to progressively lighter skinned children. In the process, he and his followers also created all other races of people. The white person was “born by nature a liar and a murderer.” To avenge their persecution and exile, Yakub’s followers taught whites to infiltrate black society, sow discord, and then mediate the resulting disputes. Adam was the head of this group of whites, and the blacks expelled him and his followers from Paradise (located in the vicinity of Mecca) into Europe, which Muhammad referred to as “West Asia.” Although sharing some similarities to Original Men in appearance, whites are in fact so different from blacks that the offspring of their sexual union is less than human. Muhammad claimed that some whites attempted “to graft themselves back into the black nation,” and some “were lucky enough to make a start, and got as far as what you call the gorilla.”7 The inherent superiority and righteousness of Original Men begs the question of why the devils were allowed to divide and oppress them for so long. The explanation of this problem and its solution form the center of Muhammad’s theology. The enslavement of Original Men plays an important part in God’s divine plan. God purposed that whites would enslave blacks for “four hundred years” so “that Almighty Allah (God) might make himself known through us to our enemies, and let the world know the Truth that He alone is God.” This four hundred year period began in 1555, when 240 Nathan Saunders John Hawkins began the English slave trade. Now that the four-century age of oppression has ended, Original Men must throw off the yoke of the slave masters.8 Muhammad explained that white devils oppressed Original Men by robbing them of self-knowledge. His solution was not first to call African Americans to a social program, but to learn about Allah and to understand the truth about their origins and nature. Muhammad argued that African Americans must come to understand that whites have always deceived them and that Christianity was nothing more than an instrument used by whites to aid their enslavement. Muhammad respected the Bible, but eyed with suspicion a book that “makes God guilty of an act of adultery” and that “charges Noah and Lot with drunkenness.” The Bible also contains moral instructions that perpet- uate his people’s enslavement, instructions to “[l]ove your enemies, bless them who curse you, pray for those who spitefully use you, him that smiteth thee on one cheek, offer the other cheek.” Perhaps most importantly, white Christians’ hypocrisy over the course of several centuries constituted a powerful object lesson on the inability of Christianity to bring about true moral and social reform.9 Christianity’s obfuscation of African American’s true origins hurt them in several ways. First, so-called Negroes have yearned the friendship of whites due to ignorance. Second, African Americans have fallen prey to white devils’ schemes to weaken their minds and bodies. “The hog,” Muham- mad claimed, “is the cause, the root of most of our sickness.” Along with abstaining from pork, Muhammad told African Americans to “[s]top eating yourself to death by eating three meals a day.” Lack of self-control with respect to food relates to a third problem. Muhammad explained that African Americans need “to cut our extravagances.” Muhammad believed that American blacks “like sport and play” too much and spend too much money on “fine automobiles, fine clothes, whiskey, beer, wine, cigarettes, tobacco, and drugs.” So-called Negroes therefore “wasted too much money trying to be the equal of the millionaires of America.” The daily problems African Americans faced—and most of Elijah Muhammad’s audience would have readily recognized the problems he described—grew not from inconsis- tent application of principles they already knew, but from ignorance of the truth about God and man. Any change in society therefore had to start with a change of basic beliefs.10 Muhammad’s conception of the relationship between the races is even more striking in light of Fard Muhammad’s physical appearance. Accord- ing Muhammad’s son Warith Deen Mohammed, Elijah Muhammad taught that Fard Muhammad’s mother was white, and Muhammad himself admitted that blacks in Detroit did not immediately recognize Fard Muhammad “as being one of us.” Elijah Muhammad explained that Fard Muhammad had to appear this way so that he could “go among both black and white so that he could not be discovered or recognized.” Fard Muhammad is not The Evolving Theology 241 the only prophet who appeared white. Elijah Muhammad called Moses and Jesus “the most outstanding prophets in the history of the Caucasian race.” Although Elijah Muhammad did not specifically claim that Jesus and Moses shared Fard Muhammad’s racial ambiguity, the ability to move among both whites and blacks seems a common trait among the most influential of the world’s prophets.11 Fard Muhammad needed a disguise because he was accomplishing nothing less than the deliverance of his people from their oppressors. If so-called Negroes found themselves under the mastery of white devils because of lack of knowledge, then the salvation of Original Men centered on the recov- ery of truth. “Allah has declared,” Muhammad taught, “that we (the so- called Negroes) cannot return to our own land and people until we have a thorough knowledge of our own selves.” Elijah Muhammad saw himself as picking up where Fard Muhammad left off, stating that he had “been risen to raise my people here (the so-called Negroes), and to help them into the knowledge of Self, and their God Allah (who is in person among them) and the devils (their open enemies).” As he stated, “We all have been well- trained into the wicked civilization; now we must be trained into the knowledge of the righteous one.”12 Muhammad preached that Islam was the cornerstone of the righteous civilization, the antidote to the slave master’s religion. Unlike Christianity, Islam had the power to unite all African Americans. Mohammed identified Islam as the “religion of the whole tribe of Shabazz” and therefore the ancestral religion of all so-called Negroes. Remembering this heritage involved shedding European surnames. By adopting Islam, African Ameri- cans necessarily had to sever religious ties with white Christians and return to a common heritage and faith over against that of their erstwhile slave masters. Elijah Muhammad taught the personal, psychological benefits of Islam for individual believers. Islam alleviates, “fear, grief, and sorry from any believer,” and brings “peace of mind and contentment.” For Elijah Muhammad, however, the unity that Islam engendered constituted the real source of the faith’s appeal and power.13 According to Muhammad, Islam also had the potential to produce a people who would be both independent and industrious. Whites have succeeded in teaching blacks “to depend on the white race to care for [them] forever.” Islam prevents American blacks from wasting their money on alcohol and tobacco, not to mention poisonous food. When members of the Nation save their money, they can contribute to the ultimate goal of having their own nation-state within the territory of the United States. Muhammad, therefore, saw integration as one final trick of the white devils to oppress so-called Negroes by convincing them “that they are entering a condition of heaven with their former slave-holders.” With the end of the 400-year period of slavery in 1955, “[t]he divine power is working and will continue to work in favor of the so-called Negroes return to their own.” “The separation,” Muhammad concluded, “would be a blessing for both sides.”14 242 Nathan Saunders So-called Negroes had to remove themselves from the devils because the end of the four hundred year period signaled the impending judgment of whites. “The Son of Man,” Muhammad taught, “is after the so-called Negroes to set them in Heaven and His enemies in hell.” According to Muhammad, Heaven is neither a spiritual realm, nor is it separate from the material world. Whites taught blacks to focus on heaven so that they would remain servile. “The slave is made to believe his will come after death,” Muhammad proclaimed, “and his master knows that death settles all.” After a “religious war between the two great religions of the earth and their believers, namely Islam and Christianity,” Allah will rule on the Earth. The Nation of Islam provides a foretaste of the blessed state. Followers of Allah already enjoy “Heaven on Earth” because, within their communities, they experience “Freedom, Justice, Equality” and have “money, good homes and friendship.” The new world will have the added benefits of “[n]o sickness, no hospitals, no insane asylums, no gambling, no cursing” because the world will no longer suffer from the corrupting influence of white devils.15 Muhammad’s statements regarding the salvation of black Americans as a group are at times ambiguous, but appear to teach that only a small minority of blacks will enter the Hereafter. Referring to Rev 14:1, he stated, “That only 144,000 of us will accept and return to our God (Allah) and the rest, 16,856,000, would go down with his enemies.” The “number is small,” he wrote, “because the beast (devil) put fear in us when we were babies.” He did, however, hope “that you may be able to beat the old prophets predic- tion by making the truth so simple that a fool can understand it.” In another teaching, he proclaimed, “Ninety-eight per cent of the so-called Negroes are at the present time in doubt about Islam being their true religion,” and the “other two per cent are with me.” He was confident, however, that “they will all be with me as soon as they see and feel a little of the chastisement of Allah.” At the same time, he warned black Americans that unless they turn to Islam, they will never escape the bonds of slavery. 16 The new world will be material, not spiritual. As Muhammad rejected belief in a spiritual deity, he also rejected the idea that human beings have spirits that can exist apart from their bodies. He consequently did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. He instead interpreted the resurrection as psychological. “It is the mentally dead, the ignorant,” Muhammad taught, “whom the devil’s falsehood has killed to the knowledge of truth.” Resurrection occurs when so-called Negroes turn from falsehood to Islam. Resurrection “can’t refer to a physically dead person, because that he has gone back to the earth, or up in smoke, or eaten by some wild beast or fish of the sea.” It seems that Muhammad believed that those living when Allah executes his righteous judgment will in fact live forever in the blessed state of the Hereafter. He proclaimed that Allah promised his followers “not an entirely new body, but a reversal of the old decayed body into a new growth, which he said, would make us all as we were at the age of 16.” Furthermore, there “will be such a change in the general atmosphere of the earth (in the The Evolving Theology 243 Hereafter) that the people will think it is a new earth.” In the Hereafter, “the righteous will make unlimited progress.” Furthermore, the “only difference” between the “present Brotherhood of Islam” and “the Brother- hood in the Hereafter” is that those in the Hereafter “will enjoy the spirit of gladness and happiness forever in the presence of Allah.” Even though followers of Islam living at the time of Allah’s judgment can enjoy a renewed body on a renewed earth, they will still have basically their same physical bodies. “The life in the hereafter,” Muhammad affirmed, “is only a continuation of the present life. You will be flesh and blood.”17 In order to win a hearing at all, Elijah Muhammad had to present a theology that resonated with African Americans’ daily experiences. This theology in turn animated the Nation’s social programs. Elijah Muhammad therefore had to build a compelling theology if the movement he shepherded was to grow and thrive. His theology first identified Wali Fard Muhammad as Allah, although others possessed divinity before him. African Americans learned of the divine, and of their relationship to the divine, indirectly through the teachings of Fard Muhammad and the Qur’an. Elijah Muhammad, operating in the office of prophet, interpreted Fard Muhammad’s few early texts as well as the Qur’an for his followers. With respect to how human beings were to respond the Allah, Muhammad taught them to separate themselves from whites, who were in fact a degenerate form of human being facing imminent judgement, by embracing the teachings and practices of Islam as Muhammad presented them.

Louis Farrakhan and Changes in the Nation’s Theology Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1975 ushered in a time of transition for the Nation as a religious institution as well as a time of reflection concerning Elijah Muhammad’s teachings. The Nation’s internal debates centered on the disparate paths chosen by Louis Farrakhan, who served as the Nation’s spokesperson and national representatives from the time of Malcolm X’s departure in 1964 until Muhammad’s death, and Warith Deen Mohammed, Elijah Muhammad’s son and successor. After succeeding his father, Warith Deen Mohammed shifted rapidly to embrace Sunni Islam—a shift that entailed rechristening the Nation as the World Community of al-Islam in the West less than two years after Elijah Muhammad’s death. Warith Deen Mohammed’s reforms in fact revealed “orthodox” undercurrents already present during the last years of his father’s leadership. Curtis argues that the Nation actually “became increasingly Islamized” between 1960 and 1975. By the late 1950s, Muhammad was already teaching his followers to pray toward Mecca five times each day. After undertaking the umra, or minor hajj, in late 1959 and early 1960, he decided to use the term “mosque” rather than “temple” to refer to the Nation’s congregations. During that same time, the University of Islam in Chicago began teaching Arabic, with Muhammad’s own sons becoming 244 Nathan Saunders some of the most enthusiastic pupils. Surprisingly, the year before he died Elijah Muhammad affirmed that some “white people in Europe” and “quite a few white people in America who are Muslim by faith” will “receive the Blessing of entering into the Hereafter,” although unlike Original Men, these whites “will not be the people to live forever.” Finally, Muhammad and his lieutenants offered spirited defenses of their beliefs against their Sunni detractors. Their defenses pointed to the Qur’an as supporting Elijah Muhammad’s status as a prophet and in Fard Muhammad’s divinity. This apologetic enterprise, however, placed the Nation in conversation with both Sunni Islam and the Qur’an to a greater extent than ever before.18 Farrakhan was one of the Nation’s most vocal apologists during the Sunni-Nation debates of the 1950s and early 1960s. Although he publicly supported Warith Deen Mohammed and his post-1975 reforms, most knew that Farrakhan did not wholeheartedly accept the new leader’s authority or his revisions of the Nation’s faith, practice, and organization. As the historian Dawn-Marie Gibson notes, Farrakhan was “clearly out of his comfort zone in teaching Sunni Islam.” She also notes that his dissatisfac- tion with the World Community of al-Islam in the West also stemmed from his removal from the Harlem Mosque, as well as Mohammed’s disbanding of the Fruit of Islam shortly after Elijah Muhammad’s death. Farrakhan was not alone in his opposition to these changes. Many within the Nation believed Warith Dean Mohammed had departed from the true faith, and this disaffected group looked to Farrakhan. Farrakhan consequently broke with Mohammed in 1977 to restore what he saw as the true teaching and practice of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam.19 Farrakhan initially perpetuated Elijah Muhammad’s theology. He did not substantially alter any of his teachings with respect to the appearance of Allah in the person of Wali Fard Muhammad, the origin of the white race, the need for knowledge of the black race’s origins, and the imminent judgment of the world. For example, in a 1983 discourse on the Fruit of Islam, he taught that whites had cleverly oppressed Original Men but that now “God has come in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, whom praise is due forever, and has established his position behind enemy lines, and He raised up the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to guide us now in the taking, or re-taking of our home.” In a 1989 speech, Farrakhan also reaffirmed Muhammad’s teaching on Allah’s judgment of white America, including his belief in a spacecraft hovering over the earth, poised to carry out God’s wrath on the white devils.20 The historian of African American religion Lawrence Mamiya argues that the split between Farrakhan and Warith Dean Muhammad roughly followed class lines. According to his argument, Farrakhan drew his followers from the lower classes. Mamiya believed that economic hardship and racial strife during the 1980s might, therefore, lead to growth for Far- rakhan’s Nation. Contrary to Mamiya’s thesis, those years in fact coincided with Farrakhan’s gradual move away from the racial particularism of Elijah The Evolving Theology 245 Muhammad’s theology. Farrakhan even appears to have embraced Muslim “orthodoxy.” The scholar of American religions Mattias Gardell notes that between 1980 and 1990, Farrakhan’s formulation of the shahadah grew increasingly to resemble that of wider Muslim community as Farrakhan downplayed Fard Muhammad’s divinity. In 1994, Farrakhan reached out to the Islamic Society of North America for help in switching the time of the Nation’s fast from December to the lunar month of Ramadan, and he told his followers to undertake the hajj if they were able. He even moved the day of the Nation’s religious services from Sunday to Friday. In outward practice, then, Farrakhan brought the Nation closer to the Sunni Islam of Warith Deen Mohammed’s group—the group he left because he felt it had abandoned the teachings of Elijah Muhammad.21 Farrakhan’s innovations culminated in a literal embrace of Warith Deen Mohammed at the 2000 Saviour’s Day celebration. This momentous reconciliation between the two most visible leaders of African American Muslims was in fact the culmination of Farrakhan’s own long movement toward Sunni Islam. In his 1999 Saviour’s Day speech, in a discourse known as “My Apologia,” Farrakhan surprisingly announced that he did not believe that Wali Fard Muhammad was divine, but was instead a healer—a prophet that Allah sent to lead his people out of darkness. Farrakhan had in fact taught the doctrine of gradualism as early as 1990. According to this doctrine, both Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad had intended African American Muslims to move toward Sunni Islam all along. Blacks’ deplorable social situation required a long period of preparation and a set of doctrines different from those espoused by mainstream Muslim groups. This stance placed Farrakhan in the same theological camp as Warith Deen Mohammed with respect to his understanding of the roles of Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad, although Farrakhan did not want to abandon those two figures completely, as his counterpart seemed to desire. By the early 1990s, then, Farrakhan’s theology differed from Warith Deen Mohammed’s in degree rather than in kind.22 This move toward a more universal message may have resulted from a desire to recruit new followers, especially Hispanics, or Farrakhan’s recognition of the importance of allies in the wider Muslim world—allies who perhaps saw the United States in much the same way he did. Some members and former members of the Nation reacted to Farrakhan’s changing theology with a sense of outrage and betrayal. The African American studies professor and former member of the Nation Vibert L. White Jr. even charged Farrakhan with changing his teachings in order to court benefactors among the Sunni Muslims of the Middle East and North Africa. This opposition from within the Nation tempered Farrakhan’s universalist tendencies. His periodic anti-Semitic outbursts, including the 2010 publication of a second volume on The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, constitute the most visible manifestation of his persistent racial particularism. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, Farrakhan appears to have 246 Nathan Saunders settled on what Curtis already recognized in 2002 as a “black messianist vision” that linked “universal human redemption with black chosenness.” In a controversial lecture on October 19, 2008, Farrakhan stated that Fard Muhammad wanted to uplift both blacks and whites, but in different ways. He taught that Fard Muhammad was in fact a universalist, but that the conditions African Americans faced in Detroit during the early 1930s required a strident message of racial superiority to jar them out of complacency. Now that African Americans enjoyed more social and political equality as well as greater prosperity, they suffered less with feelings of inferiority and degradation and so did not need quite so militant a message to instill racial pride. This reformulation of the Nation’s history in turn led Farrakhan to offer new interpretations of familiar narratives. Yakub, for example, was no longer an evil genius who created a new degenerate and wicked race, but a brilliant scientist whose work led to some tragic situations. Allah would work to redeem people of all races, but the black race was his chosen vehicle to accomplish this redemption for the rest of humanity.23 Whatever other reasons might have pushed Farrakhan to embrace Sunni Islam, his recognition of his followers’ changing spiritual needs and social situations probably figured most prominently in his mind. He certainly remembered how willing most members of the Nation were to embrace Sunni Islam so quickly after Elijah Muhammad’s death. As a skilled leader, he understood that his followers might not have been ready to break entirely with Elijah Muhammad’s teachings. At the same time, they were not facing the same economic and social problems that their parents or grand- parents faced in the 1930s, or their parents faced in the 1960s. A more racially integrated society offering comparatively greater opportunities for economic and even political advancement called for at least a willingness to look again at the Nation’s teachings and their implication for personal faith and practice. This new openness to different theologies has led to some surprising theological innovations. Farrakhan shocked many observers when he introduced the healing benefits of the Church of Scientology. Farrakhan first publicly encouraged his followers to undergo auditing—a process aimed at uncov- ering and dealing with painful repressed memories—in 2010. The Nation seems to have enthusiastically embraced the technique, with 500 graduat- ing as “Certified Hubbard Dianetics Auditors” during the 2011 Saviour’s Day ceremonies. Farrakhan did not adopt Scientology wholesale, teaching instead, “We are Muslims, but if Scientology will help us be better, then I want the technology of this to help us be better Muslims.” Nevertheless, certified auditors must studyDianetics as well as number of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s other writings.24 Certain stark theological differences will most likely stand in the way of the Nation adopting other tenets of Scientology. For example, Scientology teaches that the auditing process involves dealing with memories from past lives. For Farrakhan, however, auditing is one tool to help those who need The Evolving Theology 247 psychological healing or desire to overcome whatever obstacles prevent them from achieving personal fulfillment. He hopes to use Scientology to help people “be better at who [they] say [they] are.” He believed that Scien- tology “could bring up from the depth of our subconscious mind things we would prefer to lie dormant.” A reporter writing for the Final Call affirmed that auditing has as its goal helping individuals with “stress, depression, and anxiety.” The United States of the early 2000s was very different from the United States of the 1950s. Although African Americans on average still deal with higher rates of poverty and confront discriminatory social institutions, Far- rakhan addressed a generation of followers whose concerns increasingly centered on self-fulfillment and personal wholeness. Farrakhan has perhaps simply been following a broader therapeutic trend in American religion. Racial oppression still serves as the focus of much of the Nation’s teaching, but like other Americans, members of the Nation want to know how to deal with the stresses that arise from family and work, and face the same psychological struggles that result from living in a highly mobile, ever changing post-industrial society. Farrakhan’s audience now found themselves going to school, working, and shopping with whites. Identifying Wali Fard Muham- mad as Allah, describing whites as racially degenerate and wicked, and calling African Americans to remove themselves from white society does not resonate quite as much as it did in the mid-twentieth century. Farrakhan’s revision of the Nation’s shahada so that it resembles that of other Muslim groups reveals that the Nation was offering a different theology to a different social situation. A god who revealed himself only to Afri- can Americans in 1930s Detroit and came only to save African Americans, made little sense to those who like Malcolm X had become increasingly aware of the world Muslim community. Knowledge of the divine still comes through the prism of Farrakhan’s interpretation, even if that interpretation now comports with interpretations his followers hear from other sources. Finally, the call to separate from white devils is less desirable, and even less practical, than it had been in the 1950s. The Nation’s members might see themselves as possessing knowledge hidden from whites, but the idea that whites are a degenerate and wicked form of humanity makes less sense to those who have at least some positive, regular interactions with them. Muhammad’s theology spoke to African Americans facing segregation, discrimination, and poverty to a far greater degree than their descendants. Muhammad found a receptive audience for his teachings on the divinity of Wali Fard Muhammad and all Original Men, the wickedness of whites and their power structure, and the coming judgement of Allah because his followers wrestled with a segregated society that had in many cases legally denied African Americans political rights, economic opportunities, and equal education. A racially particular message resonated with thousands of people who had encountered both the harshness of southern agrarian life and urban slums. Although the continued reality of racial discrimination 248 Nathan Saunders in early twenty-first century America meant that a message of racial uplift, or even racial superiority, continued to resonate, social integration and increased economic opportunities for African Americans meant that racial particularism no longer carried the appeal it once did. Farrakhan’s teachings on gradualism highlight this shift in the black experience in America. He focused on the same broad theological themes as Elijah Muhammad and grounded his teaching in many of the same sources. He nevertheless refor- mulated the Nation’s teachings on God, humanity, evil, and the end-times so that they spoke to the concerns of African Americans in the post-civil rights era United States.

Notes 1. C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, 3rd Ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerd- mans, 1994), 26; Edward E. Curtis IV, Islam in Black America: Identity, Lib- eration, and Difference in African-American Islamic Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 2. 2. Elijah Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, vol. 1 (Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, 1958), 12; Herbert Berg, Elijah Muhammad and Islam (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 102; Curtis, Islam in Black America, 83–84; Edward E. Curtis IV, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975 (North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 46. 3. Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (1965; repr., Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society, 1997), 4–5, 7, 9, 14, 82, 244. 4. Elijah Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom (1957; repr., Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, 2008), 1:15, 2:12; Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 17, 19–20. For an informative account of the historical debate surrounding the identity of Wallace Fard, see Dawn-Marie Gibson, “The Prophet in Detroit: Fard Muhammad and the Origins of the Nation of Islam,” U.S. Studies Online: The BAAS Post-Graduate Journal 13 (Autumn 2008), http://www.baas.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id= 68%3Aissue-13-autumn-2008-article3&catid=15&Itemid=11. 5. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 1: 38; Muhammad, Message to the Black- man in America, 108–110; Herbert Berg. Elijah Muhammad and Islam (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 76. 6. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 1:38–39, 2:18; Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 3, 108; Elijah Muhammad, The Fall of America (Chi- cago: Muhammad’s Temple of Islam No. 2, 1973), 27. 7. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 1:30; Muhammad, Message to the Black- man in America, 110–120, 129. 8. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 2:47; Muhammad, Message to the Black- man in America, 3. 9. Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 26; Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 1: 12–13. 10. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 1: 18–19, 22, 30, 2:43; Muhammad, Mes- sage to the Blackman in America, 193. 11. Wallace Deen Muhammad, As a Light Shineth from the East (Chicago: WDM Publishing, 1980), 28; Hatim A. Sahib, The Nation of Islam. Master’s Thesis, University of Chicago, 1951, 65, 92; Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 20, 269. 12. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 2: 10, 61, 1: 39. The Evolving Theology 249 13. Ibid., 1:16, 31, 33. 14. Ibid., 1:33, 2:38. 15. Elijah Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks: The Hereafter,” The Pittsburgh Courier, October 13, 1956. 16. Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 1: 41, 2:61; Elijah Muhammad, “Mr. Muhammad Speaks,” The Pittsburgh Courier, October 27, 1956. 17. Elijah Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, 1:12. 18. For Wallace Muhammad’s views of his father and his shift to Sunni Islam, see Dawn-Marie Gibson, A History of the Nation of Islam: Race, Islam, and the Quest for Freedom (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012), 78–79; Curtis, Black Muslim Religion and the Nation of Islam, 13, 44–45, 132; Claude Andrew Clegg, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York: St. Mar- tin’s Press, 1997), 143. For Elijah Muhammad’s statement on white Muslims, see Elijah Muhammad, Our Saviour Has Arrived (Chicago: Muhammad’s Temple of Islam no. 2, 1974), 89. 19. For an account of Farrakhan’s alienation and departure from Wallace Muham- mad’s World Community of Islam in the West, see Arthur J. Magida, Prophet of Rage: A Life of Louis Farrakhan and His Nation (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 113–128. Also, Gibson, A, History of the Nation of Islam, 82. On Farra- khan’s relationship with Malcolm X, see Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2011), 291–292, 327. 20. Louis Farrakhan, The Meaning of F.O.I. (Chicago: The Honorable Elijah Muham- mad Educational Foundation, 1983), 2; Louis Farrakhan, The Announcement: Final Warning to the U.S. Government (Chicago: The Final Call, 1991), 5, 16. 21. Lawrence Mamiya, “From Black Muslim to Bilalian: Evolution of a Move- ment,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 21 (June 1982): 149–150; Mattias Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 192; Curtis, Islam in Black America, 130; Gibson, A History of the Nation of Islam, 146. 22. Askia Muhammad, “A Bearing of Witness: Min. Farrakhan Defends Foundation of Nation of Islam,” The Final Call, last modified March 10, 1999, accessed July 18, 2014, http://www.finalcall.com/national/1999/sd99-cover.html; Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad, 192–194. 23. Vibert L. White, Jr., Inside the Nation of Islam: A Historical and Personal Tes- timony by a Black Muslim (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 211; Gibson, A History of the Nation of Islam, 176–177, 178; Curtis, Islam in Black America, 133, 134. 24. Eliza Gray, “Thetans and Bowties: Scientology Joins Forces with the Nation of Islam,” New Republic, October 25, 2012, 5; Charlene Muhammad, “Nation Adopts New Technology to Serve Black Nation, World,” The Final Call, last modified April 4, 2011, accessed July 8, 2014, http://www.finalcall.com/artman/ publish/National_ News_2/article_7697.shtml.

Works Cited Berg, Herbert. Elijah Muhammad and Islam. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Clegg, Claude Andrew. An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Curtis IV, Edward E. Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. ——. Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African- American Islamic Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. 250 Nathan Saunders Farrakhan, Louis. The Announcement: Final Warning to the U.S. Government. Chi- cago: The Final Call, 1991. ——. The Meaning of F.O.I. Chicago: The Honorable Elijah Muhammad Educa- tional Foundation, 1983. Gardell, Mattias. In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. Gibson, Dawn-Marie. A History of the Nation of Islam: Race, Islam, and the Quest for Freedom. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012. ——. “The Prophet in Detroit: Fard Muhammad and the Origins of the Nation of Islam”. U.S. Studies Online: The BAAS Post-Graduate Journal 13 (Autumn 2008). http://www.baas.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id= 68%3Aissue-13-autumn-2008-article3&catid=15&Itemid=11. Gray, Eliza. “Thetans and Bowties: Scientology Joins Forces with the Nation of Islam.” New Republic. October 25, 2012. Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans. Magida, Arthur J. Prophet of Rage: A Life of Louis Farrakhan and His Nation. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Mamiya, Lawrence. “From Black Muslim to Bilalian: Evolution of a Movement.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 21 (June 1982): 138–152. Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011. Muhammad, Askia. “A Bearing of Witness: Min. Farrakhan Defends Foundation of Nation of Islam.” The Final Call. March 10, 1999. Accessed July 18, 2014. http://www.finalcall.com/national/1999/sd99-cover.html; Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad, 192–194. Muhammad, Charlene. “Nation Adopts New Technology to Serve Black Nation, World.” The Final Call. April 4, 2011. Accessed July 8, 2014. http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/National_News_2/article_7697.shtml. Muhammad, Elijah. The Fall of America (Chicago: Muhammad’s Temple of Islam No. 2, 1973), 27. ——. Message to the Blackman in America. 1965; repr., Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society, 1997. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks: The Hereafter.” The Pittsburgh Courier. Octo- ber 13, 1956. ——. “Mr. Muhammad Speaks.” The Pittsburgh Courier. October 27, 1956. ——. Our Saviour Has Arrived. Chicago: Muhammad’s Temple of Islam no. 2, 1974. ——. The Supreme Wisdom. 1957; repr., Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, 2008. ——. The Supreme Wisdom, Vol. 1. Phoenix: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, 1958. Muhammad, Wallace D. As a Light Shineth from the East. Chicago: WDM Publish- ing, 1980. Sahib, Hatim A. The Nation of Islam. Master’s Thesis, University of Chicago, 1951. White Jr., Vibert L. Inside the Nation of Islam: A Historical and Personal Testimony by a Black Muslim. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. Index

Addeynu Allahe Universal Arabic Federal Bureau of Investigation 1 – 2, Association 48 124, 142, 178 Ahmadiyya movement 96, 100 – 1, 103, Final Call to Islam 135, 137 – 43 109, 111, 145 – 7, 237 Final Call Newspaper 32, 36, 105, Ali, Muhammad 4, 55 – 7, 102 135 – 6 Ali [Morris], John B. 137, 138, 143 – 4, Five Percent 157 148 – 50 Foucault, Michel 156 Allah Temple of Islam 48 Fruit of Islam 1 – 2, 12 – 16, 32, 36 – 40, 72, 73, 103, 143, 199, 208 Bible 57, 72, 105, 107, 138, 139, 140 – 1, 174, 176 – 9, 183, 184, 237, Garvey, Marcus 35, 97, 108, 122, 176 240, 242 184, 195 Black Power 9, 14, 17, 19, 195 Haley, Alex 78 – 9, 108 Christians and Christianity 1, 4 – 5, 12, Hate that Hate Produced, The 2, 4, 49, 53 – 4, 57, 60, 68, 71 – 3, 96, 100, 47, 53 103, 106 – 7, 122, 123, 140, 144, 146, 163, 164, 167, 174 – 7, 180, Jesus 3 – 5, 100, 140, 141, 144, 164, 182, 184, 191, 195 – 6, 197 – 205, 174 – 84, 186, 187, 188, 190 – 1, 207, 209, 221, 240, 242 193 – 9, 204, 229, 240 Church of Scientology 3, 5, 218 – 20, Jews and Judaism 180 – 1, 186 223 – 9, 246 – 7 Jim Crow 53, 59, 139, 154, 195, 196 Civil Rights 5, 55, 194, 248 Kennedy, President 53 – 4, 167, 207 Dianetic Auditing 5, 218, 220 – 9 King, Jr., Martin Luther 195 Diet and Food 4, 48, 68 – 87, 144, 146, 175 Majid, Satti 146, 151 Drew Ali, Noble [Timothy] 122, 146 Moorish Science Temple of America Du Bois, W.E.B. 108, 161, 184 143, 145 – 7 Moses 140, 164, 175, 206, 222, Fard, [Wali Fard Muhammad] W.D. 229, 240 1, 5, 48 – 50, 54, 68, 95, 98, 100, Mother Wheel 222 – 3, 228 106, 122 – 3, 135 – 9, 141 – 2, 144, Muḥammad 174, 192 – 3, 206 147, 159, 163, 164, 166, 174, 176, Muhammad, Akbar 101, 105, 108, 178 – 9, 183, 221 – 3, 236, 238, 110, 112 240 – 1, 243 – 4, 246, 247 Muhammad, Clara 34 – 5, 50, 62 Farrakhan, Louis 2 – 3, 4 – 5, 17, 31 – 4, Muhammad, Elijah 1 – 6, 15 – 16, 31 – 6, 36 – 46, 58, 95 – 8, 100 – 9, 111 – 12, 41 – 2, 46 – 51, 54, 56, 59, 60, 68, 75, 126, 204, 218 – 20, 222 – 3, 225 – 6, 77, 79, 85 – 6, 95 – 6, 98 – 100, 101 – 2, 228 – 9, 236 – 7, 243 – 8 122, 125 – 6, 135, 136 – 43, 148 – 9, 252 Index 154 – 9, 162 – 9, 174 – 84, 197, 199, Society for the Development of our 218, 220, 222 – 3, 226 – 8, 236 – 48 Own 124 Muhammad, Emmanuel, 48, 50 Southern Christian Leadership Muhammad, Gaddafi 102 – 4 Conference 80 Muhammad, Herbert 15 Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Muhammad, Wallace Delaney [Warith Committee 87 Deen Mohammed] 2, 5, 51, 59, 60, 68, 77, 126, 190 – 4, 197 – 209, 236, Takahashi, Satohata 48, 124 – 6 240, 243 – 5 Teaching for the Lost Found Nation of Muhammad Speaks 1, 3, 9, 10 – 19, 52, Islam in a Mathematical Way, The 57, 71 – 2, 79 – 80, 82, 84, 138, 174, 135 175 Tribe of Shabazz 98, 101, 123, 176, Muslim Girls Training 1 – 2, 35 – 40, 178, 218, 220, 221, 222, 239, 241 199, 208 Turner, Henry McNeal 184, 194

National Association for the UFOs 155 Advancement of Colored People 81 Universal Negro Improvement Association 35, 143 Qur’an 2, 138, 139, 140, 174 – 84, 192, University of Islam 137 193, 237, 243 Virtue Today Magazine 32 Ramadan 57, 175, 245 Rawlings, Jerry 96, 98, 102 – 6, 110 – 12 World Friendship Tours 97, 103 Reconstruction 75 Righteous Living Magazine 31 – 2 X, Malcolm 1 – 2, 4 – 5, 9 – 10, 16, 33, 45, 50 – 2, 59, 60, 75, 78, 84, 96 – 7, Saviours’ Day 32, 34, 95 – 6, 106 – 8, 102, 147, 167, 175, 247 110, 245, 246 X, Sonsyrea 81 – 3, 85 – 6, 91 Selective Service Act 48, 51, 56 Slavery 69 – 70, 73, 97 – 8, 101, 139, Yakub 69, 98, 139, 154, 156 – 7, 143, 154, 161, 183, 197, 221, 241 – 2 163 – 65, 167, 175, 221, 238 – 9, 246