THEBLACKSCHOLARThe Nation of Islam: 1930-1996

ONE OF THE MORE PROFOUND cultural andpolitical phenomena of the late twenti-

eth century has been the religious conversionof approximately one million African Ameri-cans to Islam.' Encroaching upon a domainover which Christianity held virtual sway forone and a half centuries, this recent turn ofevents owes most of its influence to an organi-zation known as the Nation of Islam (NOI) .2The NOI - both the original group and itsoffshoots -offers an intriguing example of areligious-oriented nationalist movementwhich, over a period of six decades, has cometo embrace traditional Islam in halting andcontradictory ways . At times this embrace hasbeen direct and deliberate ; at other timesmore indirect and pragmatic, in order thatcentral aims might be more effectively pur-sued . Minor organizational discontinuitiesaside, the NOI has proved to be the largestand longest-lived institutionalized nationalistmovement among blacks in the United States,far outstripping the widespread appeal andinfluence of Marcus Garvey's Universal NegroImprovement Association which flourishedduring World War I and the immediate post-war years.

With the passing of its supreme leader,Elijah Muhammad, in early 1975, the Nationof Islam reached a fundamental divide . Pro-pelled by Mr. Muhammad's son, Wallace, theNOI quickly underwent fundamentalchanges in structure and belief, as well as inname . From a large sect preaching nominalIslam the group rapidly evolved into a Sunni

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Religious Heterodoxy andNationalist Tradition :

The Continuing Evolutionof the Nation of Islam

by Ernest Allen, Jr.

Islamic community with substantive ties to alarger international community of religiousadherents. In October 1976 the NOI becamethe World Community of al-Islam in the West(WCIW) ; in its final incarnation, lastingfrom May 1980 through May 1985, the orga-nization was known as the American MuslimMission (AMM), after which time it disband-ed . Today the work of Wallace Muhammad- who now goes by the name of WarithDeen Mohammed -is primarily evangelical,his constituency comprised basically ofAfrican American Muslims who regularlyattend some 200 plus masjids throughout theUnited States . Within Islamic circles at homeand abroad, Imam Mohammed's voice car-ries considerable influence; within the secu-lar world he rarely has been heard from inrecent years, save for occasional interviews inthe press. Politically conservative and entre-preneurially inclined, Imam Mohammed'ssecular views correspond with the mostreserved elements of the black middle-class,its business-oriented strata in particular. Thepolitical outlooks of his followers, however,appear to follow diverse paths.

WERE THAT THE ONLY STORY TO TELL, itwould be a remarkable one, indeed .

African Americans now constitute the largestsingle "ethnic bloc" within a religious com-munity comprised of millions of Muslims,both immigrant and native-born, residing inthe United States . However, in 1978 the pic-ture was further complicated by the splinter-

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ing off of a new formation from the ranks ofthe transformed NOI - then known as theWCIW. Distressed with the sweeping changesin doctrine and organizational structure aswell as the loss of economic empire amassedunder the old group, Minister Louis Far-rakhan led thousands of dissatisfied follow-ers into a newly constituted Nation of Islam.

Nor was Farrakhan the only defector. Byfar the most capable and charismatic leaderto emerge during the NOI/WCIW/AMMtransition period, he nonetheless has distantrivals among others dissatisfied with thecourse set by Warith Deen Mohammed .These include Silis Muhammad, who alongwith Abu Koss subsequently established theLost-Found Nation of Islam (LFNOI), basedin Atlanta; Brother Solomon (a.k .a . Royall XJenkins) and his spokesperson, former NOIsecretary Abass Rassoull, whose organizationat Camp Springs, Maryland is known as theUnited Nation of Islam (UNOI) ; and JohnMuhammad, younger brother of Elijah, who,while maintaining a distance from Farrakhan'sorganization, has retained the NOI name forhis Detroit temple.' The Five Percenters, anearlier but structurally amorphous spinoffformed in Harlem, New York City in 1964,continue to exert influence not only uponinner-city youth, but college students as well- especially through the medium of rapmusic. None of these groups have significant-ly contested Farrakhan's leadership.

Since his break, Louis Farrakhan's NOIhas succeeded in expanding its membership,reclaiming a portion of the economic hold-ings of the pre-1975 group, and amassingnew enterprises as well . Retaining core ele-ments of the old doctrine while selectivelyappropriating additional elements of tradi-tional Islam, the perennially militant NOI-like its predecessor - finds principal sup-port among economically dispossessedAfrican Americans, the number of whichappears to increase with each passing day.Doctrinally, the LFNOI devotes considerableenergies to scriptural prophecy, not least ofwhich is the supposition that BrotherSolomon of the LFNOI is identical to KingSolomon of the Bible, whereas the UNOI'soverriding concern lies in its reparationsclaims upon the U.S. government. While the

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Lost Found Nation of Islam, the UnitedNation of Islam, and the Detroit-basedNation of Islam also draw upon the "econom-ically challenged," the latter two groups, espe-cially, take pride in preserving venerable NOIorthodoxy against any doctrinal or ritualisticchanges, apostasies for which they occasional-ly chastise Minister Farrakhan. Initially criti-cal of Farrakhan, the LFNOI, for its part, hassought a rapprochement with the NOIleader, with no reported success thus far.'

Without question, the principal "competi-tion" for members on the African AmericanIslamic front now rests between the con-stituencies represented by Warith DeenMohammed and Louis Farrakhan. The prima-ry difference between the two, however, lies inthe realm of religious orthodoxy, social-classconstituency, corresponding degree of mili-tancy, and organizational centralization . Thefollowers of both tend to associate their eco-nomic successes - and how could they not?- with the righteousness of their respectivespiritual trajectories . And both groups tendtowards political conservatism .

"UpYou Mighty Race":The Nationalist Legacy of the Universal

Negro Improvement Association

AS A RELIGIOUS-NATIONALIST MOVEMENT, whatwere the ideological sources of the NOI's

nationalism, the constraints and compulsionsby which its political and identity concernswere given shape? A fundamental duality hastended to beset African American communi-ties from the late 18th century to this day. Onthe one hand, black people have, from thebeginning of the republic, demanded fullsocial and political rights based upon their pre-sumed birth-right citizenship status . That statushaving been denied, they have often opted fora political and economic self-determinationanchored in the renunciation, implicit or oth-erwise, of American civic identity. This lattertendency has sometimes blossomed intodemands for full political autonomy. Given thedifficulties of securing an autonomous territor-ial base within the United States, however,African American political nationalism -untilthe mid-1960s at least - tended to flow largelythrough emigrationist channels.

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But the material barriers to emigrationismproved at least as great as obtaining self-deter-mination on Northamerican soil . From theoutset of slavery in the early 17th century tothe present, relatively few people of Africandescent ever permanently departed the conti-nent for other shores . But hard realities failedto stifle the dreams of political autonomywhich continued to reverberate among sectorsof the African American population . Onlywith the passage of the Civil Rights and VotingRights Acts of 1964 and 1965 - measureswhich enforced the full citizenship status ofblacks in the United States for the first timesince Reconstruction - were the materialunderpinnings of emigrationist utopianismultimately undermined . (In the wake of"African independence" these "Back-to-Africa"sentiments were subsequently accorded a coupde grace as a result of the continent's growingsocial problems .) Nonetheless, despite theexistence today of an unprecedented numberof black elected officials in the AmericanSouth, as well as a widespread election ofnorthern blacks to office as a result of demo-graphic changes, the state of U.S . "justice"continues to founder on the rocks of "racial"difference . Dual standards at all levels of lawenforcement and the judicial system, and anabsence of economic democracy which nodegree of electoral participation might dis-semble, continue to fuel a fundamental andenduring sense of African American alien-ation from the broader society. (This alien-ation, one might add, is shared, albeit on dif-ferent grounds, by increasing numbers ofmarginalized Americans of all "ethno-racial"backgrounds.)

THE EMIGRATIONIST-SEPARATIST stream of20th-century African American national-

ism differs significantly from its 19th andlate-18th century counterparts due primarilyto the influence of Marcus Garvey, wholinked the quest for black self-determinationto a vigorous attack upon African Americanclaims to civil and political liberties withinthe United States! (The way had been pre-pared, it is true, by Booker T. Washington'ssubordination of such claims to economicdevelopment.) This dubious strategy lay atthe core of controversies surrounding the

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Garvey movement in the 1920s, resurfacedwith neo-Garveyite groups and the originalNation of Islam in the 1950s, and seems tohave been put to rest only recently by .Minis-ter Farrakhan's endorsement of Jesse Jack-son's presidential campaign in 1984. Gar-vey's Universal Negro ImprovementAssociation (UNIA), a mass-based Pan-Africanist organization which peaked in themid-1920s, paved the way for a complexassortment of nationalist groups which fol-lowed -including the NOI.

Although linked to one another by theirrespective quests for self-determination, itwould be erroneous to assume any overarch-ing ideological connection between Gar-veyite and Islamic-oriented nationalisms . Forexample, where Garveyism upheld the politi-cal and economic redemption ofAfrica as itsideological centerpiece, the original Nationof Islam limited its sights to the spiritual andmaterial redemption of African Americans.(Indeed, it regarded the African continent asa land inhabited by "uncivilized" beings.)'oGarvey, moreover, was an unabashed Christ-ian who vigorously sought to subordinatereligious differences among blacks to thegreater goal of self-determination, while theNOI itself was founded along strict religiouslines.' l Although both groups counseled sep-aratism in one form or another, emigra-tionism was, for Garvey, a most pressing andimmediate matter, whereas the NOIapproached the issue mainly as a rhetoricalquestion devoid of practical implementation .For the UNIA as well as the NOI, the topic ofAfrican American pride and self-respect layat the doctrinal core of each, but handled indifferent ways - the former championing aPan-African identity, the latter a complex ofreligious and fictive ones .

HERE wERE MORE direct historical connec-tions as well, including the legacy of sym-

bolic militarism initiated by the UNIA in theform of a disciplined, non-armed securityforce. "Where is the black man's Govern-ment? . . . his army, his navy, his men of bigaffairs?," inquired Marcus Garvey during theWorld War I era. "I could not find them, andthen I declared, `I will help to make them' .""Mr. Garvey's "army" assumed the form of the

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Universal African Legion, a phalanx of uni-formed black men, and the UniversalAfrican Motor Corps, comprised of uni-formed black women - both given toimpressive public display, especially at UNIAparades and conventions. This martial touchwas variously replicated by Depression-eranationalist organizations such as the St .Louis-based Pacific Movement of the EasternWorld, whose male members drilled weeklywith wooden rifle stocks, and less ostenta-tiously by the NOI's Fruit of Islam, to whichall males of the group belonged." Porten-tous symbol of African political indepen-dence, the red, black, and green banner ofthe Garvey movement would also spawn par-allels among future nationalist organizations-including a slightly altered appropriationof the Moroccan state flag by the MoorishScience Temple of America (MSTA) and amore radically modified version of the Turk-ish one on the part of the NOI.14

ORE SUBSTANTIALLY, a central aspect ofthe UNIA's legacy for future African

American nationalist organizations and lead-ers was Garvey's political conservatismregarding domestic social issues within theUnited States . Studies of late 19th-centuryblack entrepreneurialism demonstrate aclose correlation between individual strivingstowards capital accumulation and the exis-tence of political conservatism within blackcommunities. Garvey's general penchanttowards conservative values accelerated frommid-1921 onwards, after having been tem-porarily barred from re-entering the UnitedStates following a trip to Central Americaand the Caribbean. Prior to this time, theUNIA had sought an amelioration of socialconditions for black Americans in tandemwith the goal of African liberation; subse-quently, in somewhat the same way thatBooker T. Washington "exchanged" the rightof African Americans to enjoy full civil andpolitical liberties for the right to pursue adollar, Garvey contextualized the liberationof the African continent as an alternative tothe African American pursuit of humanrights within the U.S .

17(Washington argued

that such liberties eventually would flowfrom the fact of making oneself indispens-

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able economically ; Garvey reasoned thatAfrica, as a strong nation-state, would be ableto protect the interests of diasporic blackseverywhere in the world.) In predicting thatblacks eventually would be driven out of theUnited States into a receptive African home-land, Garveyism also bore resemblance tothe "catastrophic Zionism" of Max Nordau,who in 1920 envisioned a similar flow ofJewsinto Palestine following their expulsion fromEurope."' The untenable character of Gar-vey's stance was manifest in his urging blacksto be loyal to all flags under which they lived,while simultaneously declaring that "Ameri-ca is a white man's country." Paradoxically,this militant conservative - indeed, reac-tionary - stance vis-a-vis the U.S . domesticfront stood in contrast to Mr. Garvey's pro-gressive, anti-colonial position regardingAfrican affairs as well as his support of tradeunionism in the West Indies . But one thing isclear: fortuitously or otherwise, the eschew-ing of civil rights in the U.S . on the part ofblacks themselves has always tended to coin-cide with the outlook and needs of far-rightsegments of the dominant population .

WHEN MARCUS GARVEY added to hisexhortations of "race pride" a champi-

oning of "racial purity," for example, thenpunctuating this new emphasis with calls foran African expatriation and a renunciationof domestic rights, his position then fairlycomplemented the outlook of some of themost reactionary, race-baiting Negrophobesin the U.S . Indeed, the NOI's later coopera-tion with right-wing whites was prefigured inGarvey's infamous meeting with EdwardYoung Clarke, Imperial Kleagle of the KuKlux Klan, in 1922 ; in his subsequent affilia-tions with arch-racists John Powell of theAnglo-Saxon Clubs of America and EarnestSevier Cox of the White American Society; aswell as the cooperation of neo-Garveyitegroups such as the Peace Movement ofEthiopia with Mississippi Senator TheodoreBilbo's anti-black, African repatriationscheme in 1939. Parallels assuredly can befound in the invited appearance of Ameri-can Nazi Party head George Lincoln Rock-well at the NOI Saviour's Day observance in1962, and, sometime later, the explicit agree-

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ment reached between the NOI and the KuKlux Klan providing for the non-harassmentof NOI members in the South by racistwhites . In the mid-1980s Louis Farrakhanhimself received public endorsements from anumber of white extremist organizations,including the White American Political Asso-ciation and the Posse Comitatus, which hechose (publicly, at least) to ignore . But mem-

bers of the association, including its leader,

Tom Metzger, reportedly accepted an invita-tion to attend a September 1985 rally spon-sored by the NOI, to which they donated$100. Farrakhan, moreover, has received ful-some praise from Britain's National Front,and in 1990 NOI spokesman Dr. Abdul AlimMuhammad reportedly addressed a confer-ence of Lyndon Larouche supporters . '9 Farfrom constituting an anomaly, collaborationwith reactionary forces appears to be a fun-damental feature of the right-wing national-ism of the oppressed -witness the ill-fatedcollaboration of Zionists with the ThirdReich during the 1930s. 2o Garvey's labeling

of the United States as a "white man's coun-try" in 1922 would in no ways deter his par-ticipation in electoral politics . Two yearslater he founded the Negro Political Union,an effort which served as a precursor to later(but infrequent) forays by African Americannationalists into the electoral arena (forexample, MSTA involvement in Chicagoward politics in the latter 1920s as well as theunsuccessful 1990 Maryland political cam-paign ofAbdul Alim Muhammad) .

What the Garvey movement had demon-strated, above all, was the concrete possibilityof organizing a mass-based African Americannationalist organization in the United States.Serving as a model- although not a partic-ularly solid one - for a merging of thedemands of African liberation with those ofan economic entrepreneurialism, the UNIA

inspired African Americans to seek econom-ic and. political self-sufficiency in "a land of

our own." But it was in the United States thatthe UNIA launched its economic undertak-ings : short-lived economic enterprises suchas the Black Star Line, a handful of groceryand millinery stores, and far more successfulventures such as the Negro World newspaper.Marcus Garvey's ultimate economic aimwas to

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establish mercantile relations between"Africans at home and abroad," with theAfrican continent viewed as a source of pre-cious raw materials, the Americas as a manu-facturing base . An inherent difficulty whichthese intertwined goals of petitbourgeois eco-nomic advancement and political militancyfaced, however, was that of separating the exi-gencies of mass organizing from the day-todayfunctioning of business enterprises. Garvey'sefforts to secure shipping contracts frommajor North American firms and to negotiatedocking arrangements with colonial govern-ments, while simultaneously proclaiming tothe world the UNIA's ultimate aim to runwestern colonial powers out of Africa, offers acase in point! And because the UNIA's BlackStar Line was both an economic venture and apowerful symbol of black achievement, priori-ties were sometimes confused - such as thediverting of ships laden with perishable cargoto side destinations for propaganda purposes .The pattern of rewards and attendant pitfallsaccompanying the linking of mainstream eco-nomic activities to oppositional politics wouldbe replicated by future African Americannationalist organizations - and the Nation ofIslam especially.

Islamic and Pseudo-Islamic Tendencies :Ahmadism, Freemasonry, and

Moorish Science

WHILE GARvEYISM CONTINUED TO SERVE asa model of political and economic self-

determination for the NOI as well as othernationalist groups, examples of heterodoxIslam seem to have arrived from three princi-pal sources: the Ahmadiyyah Muslim sect,the African American Masonic offshootknown as the Ancient Egyptian Arabic Orderof Nobles of the Mystic Shrine of North andSouth America (AEAONMS), and the Moor-ish Science Temple of America. 21 Exportedto the U.S . by Indian missionary MuftiMuhammad Sadiq in 1920, AhmadiyyahIslam proved traditional in virtually everyway- save for the declared prophethood ofits founder, Gulam Ahmad. The Ahmadiappeal fell most heavily upon African Ameri-can urban dwellers ; and the imaginations ofaspiring black religious leaders of all fringes

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were no doubt stoked by its heterodox claimsfor an Islamic prophethood succeeding thatof Prophet Muhammad. The NOI's uninter-rupted employ of Maulana Muhammad Ali'sEnglish-language translation of the HolyQur'an, as well as his numerous books andpamphlets devoted to Islam, suggests animportant Ahmadi influence, as does ElijahMuhammad's employ of the pseudonymGulam Bogans in the early 1940s.

HE AEAONMS, ON THE OTHER HAND, wasfounded by 33° Prince Hall Masons in

June 1893 at the Columbia Exposition inChicago. For their rituals and texts, BlackShriners drew upon materials quietly expro-priated from their white segregationist coun-terparts, whose own organization was knownas the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles ofthe Mystic Shrine for North America. Thisoriginal Shrine was established as a Masonicsocial organization in New York City in 1871,but in its irreverent legend lay claim to hav-ing been founded by "Kalif Alee" (Caliph'Ali ibn Abi Tabib), cousin and son-in-law ofthe ProphetMuhammad,

in the year of the Hegira 25 (A.D . 644) at Mecca,in Arabia, as an Inquisition, or Vigilance Commit-tee, to dispense justice and execute punishmentupon criminals who escaped their just dessertsthrough the tardiness of the courts, and also topromote religious tolerance among cultured menofall nations. . . . The order is yet one of the mosthighly favored among the many secret societieswhich abound in Oriental countries, and gathersaround its shrines a select few of the best educat-ed and cultured classes. Their ostensible object isto increase the faith and fidelity of all true believ-ers in Allah (whose name be exalted! ) .

2

Far from exuding spiritual solemnity, theArabian-inspired "temples" of black andwhite Shriners became playgrounds in a dou-ble sense: as "burning sandboxes" of Freema-sonry, where mirth and merriment reignedin contrast to the relatively staid dignity oflodge ritual ; and, since the red Turkish fezhad been "adopted as a uniform style ofhead covering for all Nobles of the MysticShrine,"'-' as sites where one could "play at"being a Turk or Egyptian - that is to say, a"Mohammedan." As Freemasons, moreover,Shriners were frequently versed in the meta-physical rigors of the Egyptian, Eleusinian,and Pagan Mysteries, as well as those of

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Cabalism, Gnosticism, Rosicrucianism,Theosophy, and Astrology. Herein, believ-ers claimed, pulsed the subterranean rootsof an esoteric, hidden knowledge undergird-ing all religious thought, Islam included .Over time - especially given the ignoranceof traditional Islamic practices in the U.S. -Islam and Freemason2y occasionally came tobe identified as one. A practicing Freema-son for seven years prior to his joining theNOI, Elijah Muhammad once described therelation between Freemasonry and Islam inthe following way:

Before the coming of Allah [i .e . W. D. Fard],Islam was sold to the so-called Negroes in a secretorder or society called the Masons . This order ismade up of thirty-three (33) degrees and it issold by degrees. If a member is eligible and ableto pay for all the degrees he may do so, but onlythose who take the thirty-third (33rd) are calledMoslem Shriners .28Imprinted with Garveyite, Masonic, and,

most likely, Ahmadi influences as well, theMoorish Science Temple was responsible forushering in the premier African Americanversion of an Islamic-oriented nationalism.Reportedly founded in Newark, NewJerseyin 1913 by North Carolina native TimothyDrew -better known by his Shrine-inspiredname of Noble Drew Ali-the original orga-nization seems to have been linked to an ear-lier formation known as the Canaanite Tem-ple.29 Details of the MSTA's early years, not tomention those of its founder, remain miredin profuse legend, but by 1925 the organiza-tion had firmly established itself on Chica-go's South Side . Many of the MSTA's keyideas were absorbed by the fledgling NOI:the fictive notion of an "Asiatic" origin ofAfrican Americans; the adoption of "Moor-ish" dress, including fezes worn by men;'o ahealthy confusion of Islam with Freemason-ry; the claim that Islam was the original reli-gion of blacks prior to their having beenenslaved ; 3 ' and a religious nationalism nomi-nally infused with Islamic points of refer-ence . In the entrepreneurial realm the influ-ence of Garveyism was equally manifest inthe activities of the MSTA and the NOI: forexample, a suite of "Moorish" health prod-ucts, echoes of which would be seen in Min-ister Farrakhan's own beleaguered line ofP.O .W.E.R . cosmetics, and in the desire for

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land . Striving towards economic self-suffi-ciency at a most rudimentary level, the NOIestablished farms in Michigan, Alabama, andGeorgia, paralleling the earlier existence ofMSTA agricultural enterprises in PrinceGeorge county, Virginia; Long Island, NewYork ; Woodstock, Connecticut; and the Berk-shires of western Massachusetts.

DEOLOGICALLY, the two organizations dif-fered in important respects as well . The

UNIA legacy included the placing of womenof substance - Henrietta Vinton Davis,Maymie Leona Turpeau DeMena, and AmyJacques Garvey come readily to mind - atthe top organization levels . Within the muchmore organizationally decentralized MSTAcould be found several female heads of localbranches known as "governors ." But despitethe inclusion of at least one female minister,Ava Muhammad, under the leadership ofMinister Farrakhan, the NOI, as in the past,observes a strict, traditional division of gen-der roles." There were other divergencies .Where Noble Drew Ali preached "peace andlove" to all humanity, NOI founder WallaceD. Fard taught that all whites were "devils"who eventually would be destroyed. Andwhereas the MSTA championed a nationalidentity comprised of Moorish, Islamic, andAsiatic elements and an American civic iden-tity (until Ali's death from tuberculosis inmid-1929 the Chicago MSTA was deeplycommitted to Republican ward politics onthe South Side), the overlapping group iden-tities claimed by the NOI-Asiatic, Islamic,and Lost Tribe of Shabazz -were linked toa repudiation of American citizenship andan espousal of black political self-determina-tion . Until the death of Drew Ali, at least, theChicago MSTA was a very "public" organiza-tion, in contrast to the early character of theNOI, which remained far more "secretive"and inward-looking until the latter 1950s.And whereas the MSTA, up to the presentday, has maintained its own, original "HolyKoran" cribbed largely from apocryphal,Christian-based scriptures, the Qur'an of theProphet Muhammad was embraced -albeitnominally - by the NOI from the outset, itsteachings gradually and selectively incorpo-rated into the overall organizational doc-

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trine. Finally, the NOI, with its claim to apoc-alyptic truth, assumed far more of a mil-lenarian character than did the MSTA.

The Early Nation of Islam: 1930-1946

E STABLISHED BY ONE W. D. FARD (pro-nounced Fa-ROD) in Detroit in mid-

1930, the Nation of Islam extolled a doctrinewhich was Islamic only in name . NOI beliefsregarding the anthropomorphic nature ofGod, the non-existence of the hereafter, andpolygenesis were sufficiently distant from notonly the teachings of the Qur'an and theHadith or Sunna, but mainstream Christianityas well." Forged in the midst of the GreatDepression, Master Fard's incipient religiousviews sought to address two problematic areasof African American working-class life . On theone hand lay the task of reinforcing a sense ofpersonal dignity; on the other, promotingindividual material welfare. Like Noble DrewAli, the path by which Fard chose to approachthese twinned goals lay within as well as out-side the prevailing Christian worldview ofAfrican Americans. Unlike Ali, however, Fardlearned to maneuver his own set of beliefsupon asea of uncharted metaphysics.

For Prophet Fard, the elevation of blackdignity and self-respect depended on the cul-tivation of a special African American rela-tionship with God, as well as a selective chal-lenging of prepotent views bearing on theorigins of humanity and the beginnings ofcivilization . Existentially speaking, Fard'sintent was to transport African Americansfrom the periphery to the very center ; in thisrespect, of course, his aims were far less cos-mopolitan than the romantic nationalism ofhis predecessor, Marcus Garvey. But the keyto Master Fard's thought lay in the imagina-tive way in which he responded to specificarguments of pseudo-scientific racism, bibli-cal cosmogony, and racialist historiography-all within the context of late 19th-centuryupheavals in American Protestantism. 3b

TheProtestant Crisis: Faith v. Science,Religion v Everyday Life

RREPRESSIBLE DOCTRINAL (and institutional)difficulties confronted Protestant Chris-

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tianity toward the end of the 19th century:while an unremitting march of scientificknowledge now found itself in open conflictwith literal interpretations of the scriptures,Christianity's own strict dichotomizing of theuniverse into the natural and the supernat-ural had conspired to render the idea ofGod irrelevant to everyday needs. Ensconcedon His heavenly throne, the Creatorappeared far removed from the surroundingmaterial culture of urban industrial society.Confronting an unceasing clash of scientificand spiritual truths, fundamentalists con-curred that the Bible bespoke absolute cer-tainty, and that religion itself constituted thehighest form of science . Christian Science,with its emphasis on the spiritual healing ofphysical ailments, promoted similar claims,while Jehovah's Witnesses, for their part,sought millenarian solutions to the problemsprovoked by industrial unrest . Sensing thatbaptism was no longer sufficient to the con-version process, by the early 20th centurymembers of newly formed Pentecostal andHoliness sects submitted to additional stagesof ritual spiritual purification, bringing Godwithin themselves while clinging to theunerring sanctity of the Word . MainstreamProtestants, on the other hand, had begunto shy away from literal interpretations of theBible, often focusing instead on the life ofChrist as inspiration for everyday humanbehavior . Frequently they adopted a morepantheistic view of the Creator, seeking toexperience His presence in every aspect ofdaily life . Having first emerged in New Eng-land in the 1840s as a belief in the power ofpositive thinking to heal illness, NewThought, as it was called, later evolved into aset of variant religious doctrines whichsought to establish a greater unity betweenGod and humanity as well as the channelingof God's spirit into practical solutions tohuman problems . And, finally, throughimplementation of the Social Gospel, Protes-tant ministers also sought to redirect thechurch's attention to the material life ofindustrial workers and the poor. But the doc-trinal breach between natural and supernat-ural realms could not always be healed withinChristianity's perimeters; to secure that goal,for example, many white middle-class Ameri-

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cans had turned to Hinduism or Buddhism,not to mention Madame H. P. Blavatsky'sidiosyncratic version ofeastern spirituality

S HE HEWED A SPIRITUAL-MATERIAL GATEWAY

for African Americans stranded in thedeepest recesses of the Great Depression,Prophet Fard evolved a complex response tothis still reverberating upheaval in Protestantthought. On one level he embraced the scien-tific viewpoint -or perhaps more accurately,its coattails -wholeheartedly. No one wishesto appear unscientific in a scientific age (asthe very names "Christian Science" and"Moorish Science" attest), and Nation of Islamtheology bore the imprint of these unsettlingtrends as well . In the name of science Farddenied the existence of spirit, be it manifestedas life in the hereafter or in the more exaltedform of what he called the "mystery God" ofChristianity. He attacked prevailing Christianteachings which offered the prospect of agood life only after physical death -a futurebliss shimmering in stark contrast to the mate-rial misery in which African Americans actual-ly found themselves during the Depression .One's heaven and one's hell, Fard submitted,were right here on this earth.

But howwas Master Fard able to reconcilehis evisceration of religion's spiritual dimen-sion with the ushering in of a new religiousfaith -one which, by definition, would haveto be rooted in some kind of belief in thesupernatural? He overcame this basic impon-derable, first of all, by simply keeping suchthoughts totally isolated from one another.Further obscuring this fatal, doctrinal flawwas Fard's attributing to science the mysticalqualities which he had formerly ascribed tothe God of Christianity, thereby allowing thesupernatural to resurrect itself in numero-logical garb . Forced to succumb to the powerof a transcendent science, spirit lay brokenon the rack of enlightened contemplation ;resurrected in an adjoining cell, however, itquietly entered the human realm, divinityand humanity becoming as one. This fusionof matter and spirit offered a thoroughreconstituting of the African American rela-tionship to God, where "the Blackman"vaulted beyond the status even of God's cho-sen few to became the Creator incarnate:

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"The Holy Qur'an or Bible is made by theoriginal people who is Allah, the SupremeBeing or (Black man) of Asia." (Here onefinds echoes of Moorish Science theology.)As the Blackman acquired divinity, on theother hand, that same quality was simultane-ously distilled into a privileged human form .In contrast to the "spook God" of Christiani-ty, the divine savior of black folk was said tobe a living, breathing, anthropomorphicentity in the person ofW. D. Fard. Now, ondifferent occasions, it is true, Fard hadreferred to himself as a prophet and the Sonof Man, of whom "rain, hail, snow, and earth-quakes" were incontestable manifestations .The Son of Man, he declared, was the "true"and "only" God. Sharing the deific pan-theon, moreover, were twenty-three scientistswho also played a crucial but enigmatic rolein the functioning of the cosmos . But notuntil after the prophet's disappearance in1934 would an ensuing religious factionheaded by Elijah Muhammad openly claimthat Fard himself was Allah, the supremeGod, to whom was subordinated the com-monplace godliness of the rank-and-fileBlackman . No more the worse for its indeter-minacy than the idea of the Christian Trinity,this dualistic notion of the divine wouldremain a pillar of NOI belie£38

The Origins of Humanity and Civilization

EGARDING CIVILIZATION'S ORIGINS, biblicaltradition had bestowed all glory on

Mesopotamia, cradled by its twin river-val-leys . On the secular side, mislabeled 19thand 20th-century "world histories" also con-sidered "western Asia" or the Near Orient -by which was usually meant Mesopotamia orEgypt - to be the veritable seedbed of uni-versal culture. At the same time, the disem-boweling of Egypt from Africa's geographicalmappings, reinforced by a sublime igno-rance of cultures south of the Sahel, hadresulted in a banishing of the African conti-nent to the darkest recesses of the westernimagination . 39 Faced with the enormity ofthese "pro-Asiatic" and anti-African senti-ments, W. D. Fard (again following MoorishScience lead) opted to promote the fictiveidentity of African Americans as civilized "Asi-

Page 10

atic blacks," thus avoiding confusion with whathe deemed to be the "uncivilized" ones of theAfrican variety. "Why does the devil call ourpeople Africans?," asked Master Fard in LostFound Moslem Lesson No . 1 . "Answer: To makethe people of North America believe that thepeople on that continent are the only peoplethey have and are all savage." To the contrary,remarked the NOI's Student Enrollment cate-chism, "The Original Man is the Asiatic Black-man, The Maker, The Owner, the cream ofthe planet earth, God ofthe Universe ."On another front, 19th-century scientific

challenges to the biblical version of Adamand Eve's creation had also led to pseudo-sci-entific affirmations of the existence of a preyAdamite, Negroid "race" of inferior stamp.Adam the White-or so the new fable went- was not the first man of creation butrather the most perfect one. Embracing thispolygenetic construct in its general contourswhile reversing the assigned values, Fard ele-vated black Americans to the position of"original people" of the planet, the LostTribe of Shabazz. The corollary of the asser-tion that "all black men are Gods" and ofprimeval origin was that white folk, the per-sonification of Satan on earth, were said tohave been created thousands of years laterthrough a grafting process perfected by anevil black scientist namedYakub.

Fard's version of scientific knowledge thuscast an ambivalent shadow, containing as itdid the example of "science run amuck" inthe foreboding machinations of Dr. Yakub, aswell as what he considered to be a more salu-tary and disalienating process represented bythe transcendence of matter over spirit. Butthere were other apparently useful facets aswell . "The planet earth is the home of Islamand is approximately twenty-five thousandmiles in circumference," he instructed . Andbecause the black man "makes history orQur'an to equal his home circumference,"Islam thus renews "her history every twenty-five thousand years." What also passed for sci-ence within NOI circles often was transmittedin the form of mathematically oriented puz-zles, the solutions to which did not ordinarily

2translate into anticipated, arithmetic terms:"After learning Mathematics, which is Islam,and Islam is Mathematics, [it] stands true, you

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can always prove it at no limit of time," theNOI founder once claimed. "Then you mustlearn to use it and secure some benefit whileyou are living - that is, luxury, money, goodhomes, friendship in all walks of life ."Although genuinely concerned with the mate-rial progress of his followers, there is no evi-dence that Master Fard advanced an overarch-ing program of economic entrepreneurialism- unlike later developments within the NOI.On the other hand, his instilling of pride andself-respect among his flock (leading to theirgreater employability), coupled with his rec-ommendations regarding the practice of fru-gal life styles and proper eating habits, didlead toward notable improvements in their

44material existence.

HERE, CLEARLY, lay the ingredients of anovel religion, one tailored to the

needs of newly arrived black southernmigrants to the Midwest during the GreatDepression . Like his fin-de-siecle Christiancounterparts, Master Fard was led to adjusthis religious thinking to the march of scien-tific progress while at the same time essayingto fuse the gap between natural and super-natural in the context of quotidian experi-ence. With respect to the Great Depressionera, his efforts were not radically unlikethose of Father Divine, who embraced NewThought dogma, declared himself to be theincarnation of God, and also encouraged thetaking of new names by4followers as a sign ofspiritual regeneration . Fard's mission, onthe other hand, was not exactly one of rescu-ing Christianity either from science or fromitself. Actually, for the NOI founder to haveclaimed that his doctrine, with all its curiosi-ties, somehow belonged to Christian tradi-tion would have burdened even his mostcredulous proselytes . But Islam also claimeda holy book, the content ofwhich was conve-niently imperspicuous to the overwhelmingmajority of African Americans. Ultimatelythe teachings of Master Fard would bereceived by his followers as knowledgegleaned from Islamic scripture, notwith-standing the doctrinal incongruities betweenthe two or the lack of any mention of theProphet Muhammad in NOI catechisms .

Thus, it seems, it was not so much the Islam

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of the Holy Qur'an as it was a peculiar notionof Islam which would attract NOI followersand messengers alike for years to come . Com-pared to the extended body of argumentselaborated by Elijah Muhammad beginning inthe latter 1950s, Fard's theological legacy wasboth fragmented and thin - albeit endur-ing.'6Following the latter's departure from thescene in mid-1934, after which the organiza-tion spun into decline, it was left to Muham-mad to evolve a full-blown theology for thegroup - now variously known as the AllahTemple of Islam (ATOI) or the Holy Templeof Islam - based upon the rudimentarylessons left by his teacher.

But the ATOI'sinstitutional reawakening would have to awaitMessenger Muhammad's release from prisonin 1946, after nearly four years of incarcera-

48tion . Following his discharge, Muhammadmade successful efforts to transform the AllahTemple from a small, inward-looking group toa major mass organization .

49

In Transition : 1946-1958

RECENTLY ARRIVED SOUTHERN MIGRANTScomprised the NOI/Allah Temple's

bedrock constituency from the Great Depres-sion through the early 1950s. The NOI hadreached a height of some 8,000 membersunder W. D. Fard's leadership, but by theearly 1950s the ATOI's main temple inChicago claimed fewer than 300 adherents.However, the arrival of Malcolm X in 1952following a six-year prison term was to trans-form everything. By his own account, Minis-ter Malcolm was largely responsible forexpanding the membership from approxi-mately 400 to 40,000 persons, and the numberof temples 5n U.S . cities from four to well overa hundred. While it is indubitably true thatMalcolm X, at this stage, was hardly capable ofdeveloping the organization on his own, itseems equally clear that without the energeticassistance of his bright, young, and articulatenew minister, Mr. Muhammad would havebeen hard pressed to expand his groupbeyond the status of a store-front religious

52operation . Under the latter's overarchingleadership there occurred a steady growth ofATOI-affiliated economic enterprises on ascale eventually extending far beyond Garvey's

Page 11

entrepreneurial legacy. By 1956 the Chicagoheadquarters boasted a temple, a gradeschool, a restaurant, bakery, grocery store,and an apartment building. Chicken and beefsold in the grocery store were raised on theATOI's 140-acre farm at White Cloud, Michi-gan. Additional businesses were in place by1958, including an auto repair and paint shop,a laundry, a cleaning plant, and dress andhab-erdashery establishments .The Allah Temple's attraction to econom-

ic entrepreneurialism lay in a desire for notonly economic self-sufficiency, but also theisolation of its followers "from the wickedpeople and impure life as much as possi-ble." But a decade later organizationalgrowth had inspired overtures to the outerworld as well as a return to the originalgroup name . Each Wednesday and Fridaythe public was invited to nightly forums ;marking a major turning point, the Nationof Islam's first truly public convention washeld in 1957 . 55 Beginning in June 1956 andcontinuing through August 1959 when thepaper changed ownership, articles written byMr. Muhammad appeared in a weekly col-umn published in the nationally distributedAfrican American newspaper, the PittsburghCourier. Thereafter, other newspapers,including Muhammad Speaks (founded byMalcolm X in May 1960), picked up theslack in the propagation of the NOI word .

THE NOI's RAPID GROWTH, marked by amodest influence of traditional Islam,

coincided with a now enlarged vision of theorganization's domestic as well as interna-tional roles . Domestically, the NOI heldclaim to a more "dignified" way for BlackAmericans to secure justice than that pro-posed by existing civil rights organizations,and asserted the superiority of (nominal)Islam over Christianity as the religion ofchoice . On the international plane the NOIsought to become the recognized leader ofall Muslims on the Northamerican continent.Ironically, the NOI's accelerated expansionoccurred at a time when substantial civilrights gains by blacks were beginning to beeffected in the American South. But the bru-tal backlash directed against black demon-strators and their supporters, set against the

Page 12

unchanging, marginalized social status of mil-lions of unskilled and semi-skilled black work-ers, North as well as South, soon led to aquestioning of the process by which civilrights leaders were pursuing the goal of blackequality. Exploiting these various contradic-tions, the Nation of Islam counterposed thegoal of "separation" to the one of "integra-tion" espoused by mainstream civil rightsgroups ; upheld the superiority of self-defensemeasures over the tactics of passive resis-tance;" and, as a counter to the prevailingAmerican and Christian identities of BlackAmericans, continued to lay claim to "Asiatic"and Islamic ones. The NOI doctrine of eco-nomic and political self-sufficiency wasincreasingly touted as the "alternative" toAfrican American demands for civil rights -rights which NOI leaders unfairly but effec-tively characterized as "begging ." As with Mar-cus Garvey (with parallels to Booker T. Wash-ington before him), fundamental citizenshipdemands were bartered against quests for anAfrican American political and economicautonomy which would never arrive ."

MEANWHILE, Elijah Muhammad's intenseperiod of Qur'anic study seems to

have bolstered an expansive self-confidenceon another front. In early 1959 the newlyestablished public relations department ofthe NOI issued biographical sketchesdescribing him as "The Messenger of Allah"and "Spiritual leader of the Moslems in theUnited States ." Within the tiny, Northamer-ican Islamic community, the most vociferouschallenge to such claims came from theAhmadis, who possessed little clout in thelarger Islamic world and who domestically,by this time, had been out-organized by theNOI . Belying his domestic critics, in late1959 Mr. Muhammad undertook a successfulvisit to Mecca and the Middle East, an indica-tion of the degree to which pragmatic ele-ments within the Arab world were preparedto embrace the rise of Islam, howeverunorthodox, in the United States.

Doctrinally speaking, the NOI's growth inmembership and economic clout during thelatter Fifties was paralleled by increasing ref-erences to the Qur'an in the public writingsand speeches of Elijah Muhammad. After

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advertising for an Arabic instructor for theNOI's grade school known as the Universityof Islam, Muhammad received a responsefrom a Palestinian Muslim by the name ofJamil Diab, who was to spend several yearsteaching at the institution . Out of the closepersonal relationship which formed betweenDiab and Muhammad, the latter wasexposed to the more traditional forms ofIslam: conversance with the Fatiha (openingchapter of the Qur'an), mudu' (ablution),salah (the five daily prayers), as well as agreaser respect for the Prophet Muham-mad. This new orientation was reflected inthe weekly articles which Elijah Muhammadwrote for the Pittsburgh Courier at the times'But the Messenger's omra, or small hajj,to Mecca would lead to a decisive changein direction, according to W. DeenMohammed. During the 1930s Master Fardapparently had misled his followers intobelieving that the streets of Mecca werepaved with gold, and that once qualified tovisit the Holy City the believer would beoffered a dazzling choice of mansions inwhich to reside . What Elijah Muhammad dis-covered in pre-OPEC Mecca, however, waslittle more than a "rude awakening" :unpaved roads; unadorned stone edifices,none taller than three stories; and an econo-my built upon the bazaar trade of peregrina-tors . Visits to other cities of the Middle Eastby this quintessentially American tourist didlittle to disabuse him of such impressions ofrudimentary economic life . Although full ofpraise for leaders such as Egypt's GamalAbdel Nasser and others, he no longerregarded the Arab material world as a fitexample for black Americans, who assuredlywould have to "do for self"

Secularization and LeftwardLeanings : 1958-1964

FROM 1958 TO 1964 THE NOI entered amore secular phase as well, dominated by

concerns with worldly matters and revolu-tionary political discourse. To be sure, theNOI had placed emphasis on material suc-cess since the time of W. D. Fard, whereheaven and hell were judged to be "righthere on earth!" But the expanding scale of

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operations was something else again .Although the social backgrounds of newministers recruited by Malcolm X from themid-1950s onward had begun to reflect agreater degree of formal education (withsome even having undergone college train-ing), the same could not be said for therank-and-file - at least immediately. 64 Lack-ing an educated constituency, the rapidgrowth of the organization's economic enter-prises resulted in pressures to recruit outsidetechnical and managerial staffs . Due toongoing tensions with immigrant Arab Mus-lims who often disagreed with Mr. Muham-mad's heterodox Islamic doctrine, the mostacceptable and readily available source ofpersonnel, it turned out, would be foundwithin the black middle class. In March 1958Mr. Muhammad publicly appealed to blackintellectuals to join NOI efforts to developAfrican American self-sufficiency. His call fora "united front" of black men four monthslater made clear his ambitions to become asecular as well as religious leader of BlackAmerica. Although Muhammad's largeraims seem to have gone unrealized, eventual-ly African Americans representing ideologi-cal views ranging from hard-shelled national-ist-oriented to Old Left were tapped forvarious NOI positions. Christine Johnsontook charge of running the Chicago-basedUniversity of Islam and preparing its curricu-lar materials; Dick Durham,John Woodford,and Leon Forrest at various times held thetop editorial posts at the weekly newspaperMuhammad Speaks; former SNCC leaderDiane Nash Bevel became the newspaper'slibrarian; andjournalists Charles P. Howard,Joe Walker, Charles Simmons, and numerousothers played prominent roles as correspon-dents. Although such individuals weresalaried employees, not converts, over timethe organization did manage to attract alarger percentage of "middle-class" blacksinto its actual membership.The physical layout of Muhammad Speaks

itself followed the successful format estab-lished in the Pittsburgh Courier and other sim-ilar black publications : one article (or, as inMuhammad Speaks, the centerfold) set asidefor the weekly scriptural teachings of ElijahMuhammad, the remaining sections devoted

Page 13

primarily to secular news items and regularcommentary bearing on women's interests,health, and international events. As thepaper steered to the Left under its exem-plary editorship, the presence of MessengerMuhammad's apocalyptic and occasionallyrambling articles on the center pages, sur-rounded by news stories devoted to anti-colo-nial struggles, workers' strikes, anti-wardemonstrations, and the plight of politicalprisoners, appeared incongruous at best .Nonetheless, the formula proved successful :far broader in scope than any black main-stream publication, Muhammad Speaksremained a source of hard-core news, intro-spective commentary, and spiritual suste-nance for literally hundreds of thousands ofdevoted readers for over a decade .

CODIFIED IN NEWSPAPER LAYOUTS, the doctri-nal division between secular and sacred

was more significantly reflected in therespective public roles of Malcolm X and Eli-jah Muhammad from the late 1950s onward .Whereas Elijah Muhammad's writings andspeeches occasionally touched upon secularthemes, most thoughts which he cultivatedfor public consumption tended to beexpressed in spiritual - generally apocalyp-tic - terms. And where the earliest publicdiscourses of Malcolm X revolved largelyaround spiritual issues, by the 1960s the sub-ject of religion, in his public teachings atleast, was mentioned mostly in passing: "Youaren't oppressed because you're a Baptist ora Methodist," Malcolm chided his AfricanAmerican audiences, "you're oppressedbecause you're black." Increasingly moved bythe socialist revolutions successfully under-taken in China and Cuba, as well as theongoing anti-imperialist struggles takingplace in other parts of the "non-white" devel-oping world, Malcolm X sought to cast theAfrican American struggle for human rightsin a more encompassing, revolutionary light.Thus while Messenger Muhammad's reli-gious precepts remained invariant, MinisterMalcolm's secular call for the political trans-formation of the U.S . was pushed to theouter limits . Despite the private sanctiongiven this direction by Muhammad, Mal-colm's revolutionary, rhetorical flourishes

Page 14

lacked institutional conviction, and it was leftto the Black Panther Party to carry his "pre-mature" call for armed struggle on U.S . soilto adisastrous end.

0 FFICIALLY DEPARTING THE NOI in March1964, Malcolm X perpetuated the

NOI's spiritual/secular dichotomy by estab-lishing autonomous, short-lived religious andsecular organizations - the Muslim MosqueIncorporated (MMI) and the Organizationof Afro-American Unity (OAAU), respective-ly By subsequently seeking to join the civilrights movement in a meaningful wayhe alsosought to break with the NOI's past practiceof "talking tough, but never doinganything." Malcolm's assassination in Feb-ruary 1965 seems to have led to a significantfalling off of NOI recruitment until the latterpart of the decade, when the organizationmade a substantial comeback . (This revital-ization, it should be noted, arrived at a timewhen civil rights and black power organiza-tions were in terminal decline.)

Having had insufficient time to consolidatethe MMI and the OAAU following his breakwith the NOI, what Malcolm X left to futuregenerations was a five-fold ideological legacy.The first involved his imparting a sense ofintegrity, honesty, and genuine pedagogy toAfrican American leadership which, sad to say,has remained unparalleled since his death .Second was his vow to pursue African Ameri-can liberation by "any means necessary." Thirdwas the gift of NOI demonology, which contin-ues to be recycled in numerous reprintingsand reproductions of Malcolm's earlierspeeches and taped lectures . Fourth was hisconversion to Sunni Islam, a dramatic momentwhich' scored a deep imprint upon NOI mem-bers and non-members alike. And finally, El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz bestowed upon AfricanAmericans a triple broadening of horizonsregarding the concept of their struggle : fromcivil rights to a more fundamental demand forhuman rights; from the strictures of domesticpolitics to a genuine internationalism, bearingimplications for global alliances with othersfacing similar oppression ; and from a narrownotion of civil rights where the sanctity of pri-vate property was never deeply interrogated, toone of socialist revolution ."

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Economic Development andBourgeoisification: 19641975

AT THE NOI'S THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTIONin 1959 Elijah Muhammad announced

a $20 million project to construct a mosque,school, and hospital on six city blocks -anendeavor which was never realized .7' Butbuilding upon earlier acquisitions, by theearly 1970s the NOI had managed to accruesome $14.5 million in Chicago property,including a string of small bakeries andcleaners, some 40-odd rental units, a control-ling interest in the Guaranty Bank and TrustCo, a newspaper with annual profits of $3million, and a supermarket which cleared$325,000 on sales of $1.7 million. The groupalso ran a $22 million fish import businessand held title to 20,000 acres of farm land inMichigan, Alabama, and Georgia - some$6.2 million worth.

Although overall organizational assetswere often reported to have been as high as$70 or $80 million, that figure was much toogenerous, according to Wallace Muhammad,who estimated the NOI's net worth in 1976to be around $46 million

.73On the debit

side, for example, there had existed threeyears earlier some $9.4 million in long-termdebt; losses accruing from the farm opera-tions alone came to almost $700,000 yearly;and millions of dollars in back taxes wereowed the Internal Revenue Service. Otherproblems cited concerned sub-minimumwage salaries for employees as well as lapsesin social security payments to the federalgovernment . Due to a severe lack of cashflow, an absence of technical and managerialskills, and a downturn in the U.S . economy,at its early 1970's peak the NOI's financialempire already lay in jeopardy. In a franticeffort to obtain cash, the organizationturned to Arab countries and, reportedly, tocrime. A$3 million loan -used for the pur-chase of a Greek Orthodox Church subse-quently transformed into a mosque -wasobtained from Libya in 1973, but reportedefforts to secure funds from other Arabnations in exchange for the NOI's relaxingof its racial policies and the embrace of amore traditional Islam, ended in failure.Libya later refused a second loan request.

74

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THE NOI'S EXPANDING ECONOMIC CRISIScoincided with a further deterioration in

Elijah Muhammad's health and the effectivecontrol of NOI money affairs on the part ofa coterie of Chicago-based individuals knownaffectionately as the "royal family": FOI-headRaymond Sharrieff, Elijah's son-in-law; Has-san Sharreff, grandson; and sons HerbertMuhammad and Elijah Muhammad, Jr.' SWith the NOI's growing bourgeoisificationendorsed by Elijah Muhammad himself, theorganization in early 1972 embarked upon a$2 million project involving the constructionof five homes on South Woodlawn Avenue tobe built for families of NOI officials at orga-nizational expense. While some NOI mem-bers felt such gifts to be well deserved, oth-ers took note of a widening economic gapbetween leaders and followers. In earlieryears the NOI had prided itself on holdingstandards higher than those of the Christianchurch ; now outsiders and some insiders aswell began to question whether the differ-ence between Muslim ministers and theirstereotypical Christian counterparts was root-ed in anything more than narrow doctrinaldisagreements.

Responding to the corruptive "rise topower" of Mr. Muhammad's heirs apparent,a rebel group of young Muslims, described as"all in their 20s," took matters into their ownhands. In October 1971 Raymond Sharrieffwas the target of a botched assassinationattempt; shortly thereafter several dissidentswere found murdered .;~ The followingmonth, the group initiated a planned tour ofNOI temples in some 16 cities, ostensibly forthe purpose of forming a new organization .But the trip ended tragically in Baton Rouge,Louisiana in early 1972, where the insur-gents had held a rally which culminated inthe deaths of two white deputy sheriffs andan equal number of NOI adherents. Fromhis Chicago headquarters, Elijah Muham-mad denied any knowledge of the incident.But further incidents of bloodshed - forwhich calculated efforts at destabilizationcannot be ruled out as a contributing factor- would continue to mar the NOI's publicimage. 79 A year later, in Washington, D.C ., agroup of NOI disciples murdered sevenmembers of a Hanafi Muslim sect, including

Page 15

five children .80Four months later Hakim A.

Jamal, cousin of the late Malcolm X and anoutspoken critic of Elijah Muhammad, wasexecuted in his Roxbury, Massachusettshome . The following September JamesShabazz, minister of the Newark mosque,was assassinated by former NOI memberssaid to belong to an insurgent group knownas the New World of Islam, a tragedy whichled to the subsequent murder and decapita-tion of four other African American Muslimsin Newark .

Page 16

The Passing of Elijah: From Nation toWorld Community

ELIJAH MUHAMMAD'S DEATH in February1975 set into motion a chain of events

which would change the face of Islam in theUnited States. Taking firm charge of theNOI, Wallace Muhammad instituted theolog-ical and structural changes at a dizzyingpace . Four months after taking command heannounced a change in policy permittingwhites to join the group ; around the sametime the first female minister was appointed.Harlem Temple No. 7 on 116th Street wasrenamed after Malcolm X, and a new templeopened in Spanish Harlem in an effort toincrease the number of Hispanic members.Legal fees for NOI members accused ofcrimes were no longer to be automaticallypaid . The NOI's stringent dress code wasrelaxed, its security force, the Fruit of Islam,abolished. No longer celebrated, as in thepast, as a commemorative religious holiday,Saviour's Day, 1976 was made the occasion ofthe first-year anniversary report; the follow-ing year the observance became known asSurvival Day. By early 1978 it was reportedthat every top-ranking administrative posthad been changed at least twice, with minis-ters placed on fixed salaries at $150-$300 perweek, instead of being able to set their ownrate . The ministers - now designated asimams-were removed from business opera-tions, and unprofitable enterprisesscrapped

.88In line with these structural trans-

formations, a most fundamental changeoccurred within NOI doctrine as well . Nolonger would the racialized elements of NOIeschatology issue from its gatherings and

propaganda organs : the organization'sbeliefs were becoming fully consonant withthose of Sunni Islam. Prophet Muhammadwas declared to be seal of the prophets ; theHoly Qur'an the last book . Henceforth thegroup would observe the Five Pillars ofIslam, the yaum aljumu'a (Friday congrega-tional prayers), as well as the practice of tra-ditional salats or prayers, for which seatswere ripped out of the former temples inorder to provide appropriate space.

84

THE FINANCIAL TURMOIL resulting from Eli-jah Muhammad's having died intestate

pitted the claims of some family membersagainst those of the organization . For years,cash had been taken in with no accountabili-ty; in many instances Elijah Muhammad'spersonal holdings proved inseparable fromthose of the NOI . As a result, some of theproperties, including Your Supermarket,The Fish House, Salaam Restaurant, and theShabazz Bakery, were divided among thefamily ; others went to the organization .

Inthe process the state did its best to withholdas many resources as possible from theNOI.

In mid-1986 a Chicago probate courtruled that a $5.7 million Poor Fund Accountbelonged not to the former Nation of Islam,but to Mr. Muhammad's personal estate .Awarding the amount to his twenty-two docu-mented children

,87the court ordered the

repository for the account, Dai-Ichi KangyoBank (formerly First Pacific Bank) of Chica-go, to relinquish the funds. $$

Inheriting an economic morass which wasyears in the making, Wallace Muhammadannounced to his followers in 1976 that "Youare in debt, debt, debt. ""9 With the selling offor leasing of NOI properties, millions of dol-lars of inherited financial obligations wereeventually retired. Stepping down as leaderof the WCIW in 1978, Muhammad notedthat the organization's "image has beenchanged from one of financial empire toone of a real religious movement and I hopeit remains that way" But the claim was notquite accurate : although the WCIW haddropped the rhetoric of economic national-ism and involuntarily liquidated many of itsproperties, the quest for economic empireseems to have burned just as strongly as

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ever . 9 ' Early the following year, AmericanPouch Foods, Inc. (APF), a joint economicventure begun by the WCIW and membersof Chicago's Chinese business community,signed an 18-month initial contract with theDefense Department to produce "MRE"(meal-ready-to-eat) plastic and foil pouches,replacing the "C-rations" formerly used byU.S. combat troops . After missing two deliv-ery dates, its $21 .3 million contract (thelargest ever awarded a minority-controlledfirm) was canceled, and APF folded . Despitethis setback, by 1986 enterprises underWarith Deen Mohammed's commandclaimed properties worth $12 million.

IN ORDERTO CUSHION THE RAPID PACE of ideo-logical and structural changes occurring

within the organization, a series of transition-al stages was undertaken by leadership .Beginningin early 1976, as a sop to repressednationalist undercurrents within the organi-zation, members were referred to as Bilalians,after the devout Abyssinian Muslim, Bilal ibnRabah, whom the Prophet Muhammadappointed as the first muezzin . Thereafter,Muhammad Speaks newspaper became BilalianNews .

93Later that year the NOI name was

changed to the World Community of al-Islamin the West, a move which emphasized theinternationalist ties of Muslims over thenationalistic bonds of African Americans, orummah over `asabiya. 94 In the spring of 1980the group renamed itself the American Mus-lim Mission, an identification retained untilits dissolution five years later. At that pointformerly affiliated mosques were urged to"associate and collaborate with other Islamicgroups of all races and ethnic origins."95

WITH CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS ORIENTATIONcame a new-found focus on American

patriotism : "The problem is," affirmed Wal-lace Muhammad in 1978, "we don't identifywith America. . . . We haven't been raised tobelieve that citizens have a voice and power."It was, of course, the centuries-old suppres-sion of the "voice and power" of AfricanAmericans which, for many of them, hadsoured any sense of devotion to the state .ButonJuly 4, 1979, with optimism ringing inthe air, thousands of Bilalians marched down

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Chicago's Michigan Avenue bearing Ameri-can flags and posters affirming their patrio-tism : "America Is Hope," "Races Unite!,""Build One Nation! "96 "How can we betterserve this country?," Imam Mohammed wasasked in a later interview. "We cannot makemuch of a contribution to the country as citi-zens," he replied, "if we ourselves don't havethose healthy sensitivities that the citizenshave for the future of the country in politicsand even in business .

,97Mohammed's "sensi-

tivities" were later reflected in his support forconservative Republican political candidatesthroughout the 1980s and early 1990s,including his backing of George Bush overBill Clinton in the last presidential election . 98His highly publicized leading of the U.S .Congress in prayer has been depicted bysome as a decisive, symbolic victory for Islamin the United States, by others as a shamefulsellout to the Great Satan! Despite undeni-able changes in secular as well as religiousorientation, Mohammed remains wedded toearlier NOI precepts of self-sufficiency, eco-nomic entrepreneurialism, and political con-servatism. Today he has become the mostprominent spokesperson for Islam in theUnited States, but his direct constituency ismuch smaller. "I represent my supporterswho are mostly African American Muslims ofone history and one aim - excellence,"9"Imam Mohammed recently affirmed . Precisefigures are still hard to come by, but in 1986,by his own account, that represented some25,000 to 30,000 active supporters . The factof Mohammed's wide-ranging influence wasnot lost on Islamic states eager to gain influ-ence over U.S . foreign policy. But he hasrejected any lobbying role for himself, alongwith an unprecedented opportunity toemploy the international pressure of Arabstates to improve the social conditions ofBlack Americans.

ARuffling of Ill Winds:The Rebirth of the NOI

IN EARLY 1977 WALLACE MUHAmmAD claimedthat only five or six ministers had depart-

ed the organization as a result of his newlyimplemented policies .l0l Significantly, howev-er, old-guard administrators John Ali, Abass

Page 1 7

Rassoull, and Raymond Sharieff had beenousted .'

O 'Minister Silis Muhammad departed

the organization soon after it was opened upto whites, as did Minister Jeremiah Shabazz.Independently of one another, Muslim chap-ters in Culver City, California and Dothan,Alabama began publishing newspapers bear-ing the name of Muhammad Speaks after theoriginal organ was renamed Bilalian News.

103

Then, beginning in early 1978, the WCIWreportedly suffered a plunge in membership,an event given impetus, no doubt, by theofficial departure of Abdul Aleem Far-rakhan, the name by which Louis Farrakhanwas then known . Details are lacking, but itwas apparently this deteriorating state ofaffairs which forced the resignation of Wal-lace Muhammad as organizational head inthe fall of that same year, and his replace-ment

ce-ment by a regional council of six imams.

ByMay 1985 the group, after having gone bythe name of the American Muslim Missionfor a period of five years, elected to disband,allowing its several hundred masjids to gotheir ownway.

INISTER FARRAKHAN'S BREAK with theWCIW became known to the general

public in March of 1978, but he had alreadyindicated plans to reestablish the Nation ofIslam that previous November, despite hav-ing been offered back his former position ashead of the Harlem mosque several monthsearlier. 105 When dissatisfied followers of W.Deen Muhammad departed the WCIW, how-ever, they did not do so in order to attachthemselves to a reconstituted NOI, for therewas no public organization to join, no openproselytizing on Farrakhan's part - a cau-tionary lesson gleaned, no doubt, from Mal-colm X's tragic departure from the parentorganization fourteen years earlier. The newmovement began subterraneanly, reproduc-ing itself in temporary storefronts andmakeshift back rooms. As one observernotes, "Not until 1980 did the Minister startpicking up momentum with a national tele-phone conference call to followers. The firstSaviour's Day convention in 1981 attractedan estimated 5,000 to 8,000 people . A per-manent office wasn't acquired until the FinalCall building was purchased in 1982."

lobBut

Page 18

the real organizational takeoff had to awaitJesse Jackson's presidential campaign in1984 . From that point forward the NOIenjoyed a meteoric rise which has resulted inthe presence today of some 120 mosques inU.S . urban centers and several international-ly, as well as the edification of a multi-milliondollar economic empire dependent,ndent, in largemeasure, on public funds. Included arenot-for-profit organizations such as the FinalCall newspaper, Muhammad University ofIslam, and a network of mosques whichthemselves engage in business, but also prof-it-making enterprises privately held by mem-bers of Minister Farrakhan's inner circle .The latter include companies engaged insoap and cosmetics distribution, pharmaceu-ticals, media ventures, restaurants, clothing,and, most lucratively, apartment-complexsecurity firms tied to government funding.

OldTeachings v. New Realities

T IS APPARENT, IN RETROSPECT, that in thelate 1970s and early 1980s conditions

allowing a return to an unmodified NOI ide-ology and practice were far from conducive.At the forefront lay challenges spawned bythe triumphs of the civil rights movement aswell as the mounting social problems ofAfrican countries in the wake of formaldecolonization . Second, the collapse ofinner-city economic life wrought by the dein-dustrializing of America had undercut thedreams of traditional entrepreneurialnationalism. Third, fueled by immigrantforces as well as African American conver-sions, an unprecedented dissemination oftraditional Islam throughout the U.S . hadtaken place. And, finally, there existed a dou-ble problem bearing upon Farrakhan's ownlegitimation . One concerned his relation toboth the Prophet Muhammad and ElijahMuhammad, after his having initiallyendorsed the direction taken by the WCIW.The other arose with respect to the mori-bund civil rights establishment, whichinvolved obtaining its blessings for his abilityto rally grass-roots blacks while remainingaloof from actual civil rights projects . Com-pared to the earlier climate of corporate lib-eralism, however, the rise of ultra-right politi-

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VOLUME 26, NO. 3-4

cal formations in the eighties posed no cleardisadvantages to a reconstituted NOI which,like its predecessor, embraced a highly con-servative social outlook.

PASSAGE AND SUBSEQUENT ENFORCEMENT Ofthe Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in

1964 and 1965 transformed the domesticpolitical landscape in numerous ways . Theeffect upon African American nationalism inparticular was 'to lay to rest a principal sourceof African American political alienation : thesuppression of black voting rights in theSouth. Many African Americans - particular-ly those undergoing socialization in subse-quent years - would begin to think of them-selves as undisputed citizens of the UnitedStates. Then too, as time went by, the mount-ing social difficulties of'nominally indepen-dent African states - as measured in out-breaks of famines, plagues, and ethnicallybased political strife - rendered increasinglybleak the utopian vision of an African Ameri-can "return" to the continent. The overallresult could only be a further undermining oftraditional African American arguments fordomestic territorial autonomy as well as emi-grationism.'O' Adjusting to these new realities,Minister Farrakhan declared in 1985 that :

God wants us to build a new world order. A newworld order based on peace, justice and equality.Where do we start? . . . [P]hysical separation isgreatly feared [by whites], and it is not nowdesired by the masses ofblack people, butAmeri-ca is not willing to give us eight or ten states, oreven one state . Let's be reasonable. . . . What wepropose tonight is a solution that is in betweentwo extremes. If we cannot go back to Africa, andAmerica will not give us a separate territory, thenwhat can we do here and now to redress our owngrievances? . . . [W]e propose that we use theblessings that we have received from our sojournin America to do for ourselves what we have beenasking the whites in this nation to do for us . "'What "doing for self" meant, in Far-

rakhan's words, was the "redirecting of our204 billion dollar purchasing power." But atthe close of the 20th century, such a strategycould only mean a return to the program ofeconomic nationalism advanced by BookerT. Washington a century ago, with its atten-dant downplaying of civil and political rights .Such an outlook remains problematic evenwithout the NOI's former policy of denounc-

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ing these rights, and especially so giventoday's conditions . For the NOI, the col-lapse of inner-city economic life in the 1980srevealed a two-fold edge : on the one side, agrowth in the numbers of disaffected AfricanAmericans who would become potential can-didates for NOI recruitment; on the other,evaporating community resources that a revi-talized NOI could no longer draw upon in itsattempt to regain and even surpass ElijahMuhammad's former economic empire. Sim-ply put, the time-tested entrepreneurialnationalism of former decades was no longersufficient . Despite five million dollars instart-up capital from Libyan Colonel Muam-mar Gaddafi, Farrakhan's P.O.W.E.R . line ofClean & Fresh toiletries remains in a state ofeconomic limbo-not quite moribund, butnot exactly thriving either.

The NOI's fishimportation business, Blue Seas, was dis-solved in 1982 ; its successor, Blue Seas Chica-go, faced an identical fate ten years later. ' 13Faced with uninspiring returns from suchventures, Minister Farrakhan, following thelead ofW. Deen Mohammed, began to solic-it government contracts -a complete turn-aboutfrom earlier NOI practices.

In the late 1930s NOI members hadrefused social security identification num-bers, regarding them as the "mark of thebeast." In soliciting funds from the "whitefolks' government" half a century later, Far-rakhan could no longer portray federal andstate agencies as undistilled repositories ofsatanic influence. The new trajectory beganwith the NOI's successful attempt to rid aBaltimore housing project of drug dealers;thereafter the NOI sought federal and localmonies for similar purposes in Washington,D.C ., Los Angeles, Dayton, Pittsburgh, Chica-go, and elsewhere. The irony is that thepositive cash flow to security firms privatelyowned by members of the Farrakhan familycircle depends upon the continued existenceof inner-city crime.

UNDER ELIJAH MUHAMMAD the NOI devel-oped modest retail and service enter-

prises centered around its urban mosques, aswell as an unprofitable, small-scale agribusi-ness . But as one commentator noted, theorganization "never entered such lucrative

Page 19

fields as middle-level retailing, wholesaling,manufacturing, insurance, and investment ."Recently, following what has been character-ized in the press as a three-year plan, the NOIopened a five million dollar food-service com-plex, called Salaam Restaurant, on 79th Streetin Chicago -a dramatic, albeit local, achieve-ment in substance as well as symbol.

117Also

planned is the expansion of the NOI's truck-ing firm, restaurant outlets infour U.S . cities,and a 2,000-seat auditorium ."' Such venturesare not impractical to attain, despite the pre-sent economic climate, but will nonethelessrequire onerous tithing of devoted followers.Yet there also have been economic moveswhich seem far more symbolic than substan-tial . For example, while Farrakhan's partialreclaiming of former NOI land in southwestGeorgia in early 1995 clearly indicated hisdetermination to reassemble the NOI's for-mer economic empire, the reality was that,under Elijah Muhammad's direction, thefarms had amassed debts of nearly three-quar-ters of a million dollars per year. Presently theNOI is said to own 2,000 acres of land inMichigan and Georgia, with plans to acquire8,000 more . But the question remains as towhether the present-day NOI has truly man-aged the art of running a small-scale agribusi-ness, or whether it has allowed its economicvision to be clouded by nostalgic yearnings. ll9

Page 20

Legitimation: Responses to Traditionand Orthodoxy

N ELECTING TO RETURN to the old teachings,Farrakhan faced a two-fold problem of

legitimation : finding acceptance among theNOI faithful as the Messenger's rightful heir,on the one hand ; and on the other, cultivat-ing a sense of ambivalence, if not approval,within traditional Islamic circles regardinghis spiritual authenticity. Formidable obsta-cles blocked Minister Farrakhan's belatedbid to insert himself in the direct line ofleadership succession to Elijah Muhammad.For three years, after all, the world was madeto understand that Wallace Muhammad, sonof Elijah, had been chosen by the Messengerof Allah as his successor. And had not LouisFarrakhan himself proclaimed that "No illwinds will ruffle this divine nation . No one

among us is hih enough to tie the shoelacesof Wallace

,?10-Since a direct endorsement

from Elijah Muhammad was no longer possi-ble, Farrakhan was forced to pursue a moresymbolic route to legitimation . By purchas-ing the Messenger's former homes in Chica-go and Phoenix, as well as the NOI's originalmosque and school on South Stony Island inChicago, he has placed himself literally atthe seat of former power. Second, by gradu-ally reassembling the economic empire of hisformer teacher he is showing himself to bethe Messenger's equal in secular affairs -aclaim which, of course, could never be statedopenly without dissolving the mystique ofMr. Muhammad's proffered omniscience.

Fortuitously, the critical endorsementwhich once seemed impossible, eventuallycame to pass . In the fall of 1989 Minister Far-rakhan revealed that while visiting Mexicofour years earlier he had received a vision inwhich he was transported inside the NOI'sMother Plane (better known as Ezekiel'sWheel of the Old Testament) . There, via aloudspeaker, the voice of Elijah Muhammadcame to him bearing a cryptic warningregarding U.S . plans to wage war on Libya.But it appears that the more importantobjective of Farrakhan's thoroughly remark-able press conference on the subject- cap-tured on videotape and widely circulated bythe NOI in pamphlet form as well -was todemonstrate an unassailable affirmation ofElijah Muhammad's support for him!"

E QUAL IN IMPORT to the partial civil rightsvictories of the 1960s was an amend-

ment to the U.S . Immigration and Nationali-ty Act, effective at the very end of 1965,which sparked the entry of foreign-bornMuslims into the U.S . by the hundreds ofthousands. From 1965 to 1986 the numberof Muslim immigrants admitted to the U.S .each year (most of whom hailed from theMiddle East, North Africa, and Asia) wouldmultiply by a factor of eight. By the latteryear the total number of Muslims living with-in U.S . borders would be estimated at 4 mil-lion .

121Carried past immigration checkpoints

by an unprecedented wave of adherents, tra-ditional Islam rapidly spread to key U.S .cities, further narrowing the possibilities for

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the Nation of Islam to pass off its private doc-trine as being synonymous with Qur'anic wis-dom. The pressure on Farrakhan to drop, orat least to modify, basic NOI beliefs wouldbecome formidable .

ONE OF THE MOST VISIBLE BREECHES OfIslamic tradition existed in the form of

prayer originally taught by Master Fard. Inorder to close the ritualistic gap, a WestAfrican sheikh was subsequently brought into instruct the faithful in matters of tradi-tional prayer.

113Regarding the vast difference

between its projected doctrine and tradition-al Islam, however, the NOI has resorted to anumber of explanations, including a Cabalisttwist affirming the existence of two Qur'ans- the exoteric, manifest version with whichall Muslims are familiar, and a more pro-found, esoteric one whose meaning can bedivulged only through numerological analy-sis of the former.

124But when all else fails the

organization reverts to Elijah Muhammad'sstock explanation: the NOI version of Islamis tailored to African American conditions,while that of Arabs is excessively ethnocen-tric, if not tainted by racism. (See accompa-nying sidebar, "Africa 1994: Saviour's Day,Ghana") . In contrast to an earlier era, on theother hand, the demonizing of Euro-Ameri-cans has been more or less downplayed,bringing the NOI that much closer to theuniversal ideals portrayed in the Qur'an .125

Facing potential isolation due to the grow-ing numbers of traditional Muslims in theU.S., Minister Farrakhan has sought allianceswith black secular organizations in a wayreminiscent of the earlier, fruitless outreach-es of Elijah Muhammad. Also, his attemptedlinks to the Congressional Black Caucus werelikely viewed as according greater potentialaccess to government contracts. Moreover,given the demonstrated reality of AfricanAmerican citizenship and the apparent lackof political alternatives, participation in elec-toral politics (an issue which Elijah Muham-mad had treated equivocally in earlier years,but without actually ever having endorsed acandidate

126)would be increasingly difficult

for Farrakhan to avoid, especially given theovert political activities of W. Deen Muham-mad.

The careful groundwork laid in

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developing these political liaisons was subse-quently uprooted by public outrage overcontinuing antiJewish remarks made byMinister Farrakhan and one of his associates(now former spokesman), Khallid AbdulMuhammad.128 Questions remain as to whyFarrakhan resorted to antiJewish diatribes inthe first instance, and why he continues tohold his ground on the issue despite a resul-tant undermining of his business enterprisesand political alliances.

Anti-Semitism and the Clash ofRight-Wing Nationalisms

ONCE AGAIN, the history of the UNIAproves instructive . When the political

content of Garveyism shifted to the right inmid-1921, its characterization of the chiefenemy of black liberation in the U.S . under-went a transmigration as well - from thedominant classes, government, craft unions,and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, toblack people themselves . "Having had the wrongeducation as a start in his racial career, theNegro has become his own worst enemy,"wrote Garvey in 1923, responding to formi-dable attacks which had mostly to do with hisrepudiation of civil rights for black Ameri-cans .

In this way, the UNIA's African Amer-ican detractors conveniently served as anexternal threat contributing to the organiza-tion's internal cohesion, as well as a readyscapegoat whenever UNIA plans failed toevolve as anticipated. Moreover, the militant,public condemnations and threats whichGarvey unleashed upon such critics not onlystoked his mass popularity, but also tendedto obscure the conservative political contentof his domestic message. Needless to say, hisattacks upon civil rights advocates alsoendeared him to trenchant Negrophobeswho, when all was said and done, had nomore use for Marcus Garvey than for thosewhom he publicly chastised.

IDENTICAL FACTORS HOLD TRUE with respectto Minister Farrakhan's effective charac-

terizing of Jews as a principal enemy ofAfrican Americans, beginning in mid-1984.It is worth remembering, however, that whencriticisms of Jews arose within the old NOI,

Page 21

Africa, 1994 : Saviours' Day, Ghana

AN EGYPTIAN COLUMNIST NOTED that Minister Far-rakhan first made press headlines in Africa in

the mid-1980s as a result of his "much publicisedfriendly relations with the Libyan leader MuammarQaddafi." Broadening those African connections,the NOI's First International Saviours' Day was heldin Accra, Ghana from October 6 through 9, 1994.NOI leaders were accompanied by some 1,500 to2,000 black Americans on the trip, including the rapgroup Public Enemy and other musicians. ThereFarrakhan called for a new vision which would bringabout economic self-sufficiency for the African con-tinent . 2 At the end of the conference the NOI's Min-ister of Health announced plans to construct a $20million factory in Ghana to manufacture medicalsupplies - syringes, drugs, and drug containers -for local use as well as export. High on the project'sagenda was the introduction of a device for HIVscreening known as target HIV, "whose results couldbe read visually and obtained within five minutes.The NOI has had no prior experience in runningsuch an operation, however, and it remains to beseen whether the enterprise will get off the ground .

There were Ghanaian supporters as well as de-tractors of International Saviours' Day, and it wouldbe unfair to draw up a balance sheet based uponnewspaper accounts alone. The arguments of someof these contrary voices, however, were not withoutballast . Declaring itself in opposition to "racialized"politics, for example, the Ghanaian Chronicle af-firmed that:

We do not care about some phantom White man sit-ting in down town Santa Barbara or in Accra orHarare . We do not care about the colour of an op-pressor or tyrant. A tyrant is a tyrant, and it is morepainful when the oppressor happens to be blackand African . Unfortunately, that is the situation inmost of black Africa which has been enslaved bymilitary men of stunted intelligence who overnightturn into four-piece wearing, agbada clad teflon de-cnocrats and terrorise their own citizenry.

Many o£ Africa's problems were created by whitecolonialists, conceded the editorial, "But 90 percentof our problems are down to the kind of leaders wehave in place today who allow themselves to be used.And we find it utterly repulsive for Minister Far-rakhan to give succor to them, and not spare athought or a word of counsel to them ."' The NOI'sIslamic heterodoxy was also attacked by Sheikh M.M.Gedel, Secretary General of the Supreme Council forIslamic Affairs, who remarked that "any other addi-

Page 22

tional message that comes after the prophet Mo-hammed, is not proper and must be rejected .'

,6

call to Islam in Africa also raised theissue of white supremacist attitudes among ArabMuslims: "to my Arab brothers and sisters," ex-claimed Farrakhan on International Saviours' Day,

you have to be very careful about how you spreadIslam. You cannot spread a cultural imperialism inthe name of Islam. . . . If you feel that Islam is thetrue path, then ask me to accept Islam but don't tryto make me an Arab when I am African . Allow meto keep my African personality, my African culture .What has happened in Africa is that the seed ofwhite supremacy is even seen in Islam in the waysome of my Arab brothers treat their African broth-ers in Islam . They are not treated as equal . They aretreated as somebody who joined a faith that doesn'tbelong to them.'

Anti-black Arab racism is indeed a problem. But bycriticizing Arab Muslims, and thereby seeking to un-dercut the role of traditional Islam in Africa south ofthe Sahara, Minister Farrakhan appears to ignorethe region's twelve-century-old Islamic legacy -which includes the wide-ranging historical influenceof indigenous African Muslim leaders such as Al-HajjOmaru and Usuman dan Fodio. s Given the histori-cal background, it remains to be seen just how Min-ister Farrakhan's approach to Islam, tied to thetheme of oppositional culture, will be received inWest, Central, and East Africa.

3 Ghanaian Times (October 10, 1994) : 8.

4 Ghanaian Chronicle (October 10-12, 1994) : 5.

5 Ibid .

6 Ibid .

7 Final Call (November 2,1994): 31 .

- Ernest Allen, Jr.

Notes1 Carnal Nkrumah, "Nation Among Nations," Al-AhramWeekly (28July-3 August 1994).

2 Ghanaian Times (October 10, 1994) : I, 3; [Accra] DailyGraphic (October 10, 1994) : 1, 9; Final Call (November 2,1994) : 2-3, 7-8,34 .

8 Edward Wilmot Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the NegroRace (1888; rpt . Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1994); seealso Peter B. Clarke, West Africa and Islam: A Study ofReli-gious Developmentfrom the 8th to the 20th Century (London:Edward Arnold, 1982) .

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VOLUME 26, NO . 34

they tended to do so within specific contexts .One of these was experientially based, cen-tering on the economic exploitation ofblacks by Jewish landlords and merchants(usually in cities of the northeastern UnitedStates) . Another concerned the negativeimpact of Israel, backed by the economicand military might of the U.S ., on MiddleEast Islamic states . And a third was tied upwith revelations of Israeli government sup-port for South African apartheid. But ElijahMuhammad's NOI was never overly con-cerned with the subject of Jews : "We makeno distinction between Jews and nonJews solong as they are all white," Malcolm X oncestated. "To do so would be to imply that welike some whites better than others . Thiswould be discrimination, and we do notbelieve in discrimination ."" I However, whatFarrakhan was to learn in the 1980s, perhapsby happenstance, was that his verbal attacksupon Jews carried the same political advan-tages as had Marcus Garvey's diatribesagainst his black critics in the 1920s, includ-ing the support of the ultra-right . Just as Gar-vey had elicited the support of Negrophobesfor his attacks on civil rights advocates, sodid Farrakhan gain the approval of powerfulright-wing, anti-Semitic forces for his verbalassaults against Jews . For example, shortlyafter the minister's antiJewish campaigntook hold in the mid-1980s, the organ of theultra-right National States Rights Partydenounced a recent publicizing by themedia of Martin Luther King's proJewishstatements of the 1960s: "The future leaderof the blacks will not be a King who bows tothe Jews," one of its articles concluded, "ITWILL BE A FARRAKHAN WHO HAS THEGUTS TO STAND UP TO THEJEWS!""'

FARRAKHAN'S ANTI-JEWISH STANCE broughtadditional benefits as well: a generating

of publicity disproportionate to the actualinstances of such remarks uttered in public,as well and an appeal to anti-Zionist ele-ments throughout the Arab world. Asidefrom those instances where his remarks weretwisted or edited by the media to make themappear what they were not, Jewish Americanshad every reason to be offended by hisnumerous, confirmed statements bearing an

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antiJewish character."' The continued prolif-eration of anti-Semitic rhetoric has placedprincipled Jewish organizations in a quandary.Any reluctance on their part to respond toanti-Semitism is to invite its spread; but to over-react, on the other hand - for example, bypresumptuously demanding that AfricanAmerican organizations repudiate any connec-tions with Farrakhan - is to risk providingammunition for Farrakhan's classic, anti-Semit-ic claims of `Jewish domination and control."However, in much the same way that MinisterFarrakhan has offered a distorted portrait ofJews as the principal enemy of blacks, right-wing Jewish institutions such as the Anti-Defamation League have themselves dishonest-ly characterized blacks as the most dangerous,single bloc of anti-Semites in the UnitedStates .

114As one perceptive journalist

remarked, "One can only speculate on the rea-sons why so much time and energy are wastedsavaging Farrakhan, especially when there arewhite fascist paramilitary organizations run-ning around the country dedicated to thephysical extermination of their many 'ene-mies,' most prominently AmericanJews."

Fortunately or otherwise, the issue of"black anti-Semitism" as the main danger toJewish Americans took a back seat followingthe bombing of the Oklahoma City federalbuilding by (apparent) members of an ultra-right paramilitary group, only one of manywhich seem quite prepared to use force toeliminate Jews and African Americans (notto mention government agents of whateverethno-racial background) from the face ofthe earth . And, most recently, Farrakhan'sapproaches to Jews have tended to be vacilla-tory and equivocal, intermixing anti-Semiticoutbursts on one day with violin concerts ofatonement on the next. For Farrakhan as forGarvey, the challenge of reconciling compet-ing demands of mass organizational dynam-ics and primitive capital accumulationappears to be an onerous one.

The Million Man March and Its Aftermath

CONSTITUTING ONE OF THE MOST UPLIFTINGmedia events of the 20th century, the

Million Man March held on October 16,1995 marked the highest point of Minister

Page 23

Louis Farrakhan's tenure over the Nation ofIslam.

136

Celebrated as a "Holy Day of Atone-ment and Reconciliation," the purpose ofthis Washington, D.C . pilgrimage, accordingto Farrakhan, was to "reconcile our spiritualinner beings and to redirect our focus todeveloping our communities, strengtheningour families, working to uphold and protectour civil and human rights, and empoweringourselves through the Spirit of God, moreeffective use of our dollars, and through thepower of the vote.

,137As a symbolic gather-

ing, the Million Man March was an unquali-fied success. But the real measure of its sig-nificance would lie in its "follow-up"activities, the presence or absence of whichwould determine whether the march wouldbe enshrined as an perennial "feel-good"symbol, or more hopefully function as a cata-lyst for a genuine grassroots movement capa-ble of fulfilling its stated aims . The answerwould rest in the quality of programs andmechanisms that march leaders would putinto operation, as well as in their determina-tion to carry them out. A year following theMillion Man March, the balance sheet offersdecidedlymixed results.

THE ORGANIZATIONAL VEHICLES assigned totransforming the energies of the march

into coordinated activity`at the grassrootslevel were the some three hundred fortyLocal Organizing Committees which origi-nally brought the march into being (andwhich were reportedly composed of localpolitical, religious, business, and communityleaders), and the National African AmericanLeadership Summit (NAALS) chaired by for-mer NAACP head Benjamin Chavis . Organssuch as the Final Call tend to carry littleinformation on the progress of such groups,and independently tracking their work is adifficult task. However, charges did arise justmonths following the march that NAALS,although conceived as a collective black lead-ership forum, was not truly functioning inthat spirit .

1311

On a more positive note, evenmainstream media most hostile to Farrakhanhave conceded that the positive spirit gener-ated by the Million Man March has inspireda greater participation of black men in theaffairs of their communities. In the Denver

Page 24

black community, for example, the fire-bombing of homes by youth gangs this pastwinter was met by African American publicpressure organized by the local march com-mittee, thereby (arguably) contributing to acurtailing of gang activities . To cite yetanother positive example closer to my ownlocality, NOI Mosque No. 13 in Springfield,Massachusetts, under the leadership of Min-ister Yusuf Muhammad, has enrolled a largecross-section of the Springfield black com-munity in its Million Man March Committee,which meets regularly to flan proactiveinterventions in local affairs.Judged by the effusive rhetoric of the Mil-

lion Man March, one would think that theNOI's national leadership might havepoured considerable resources into suchLocal Organizing Committees, identifyingthose which have been most successful incommunity outreach projects and publiciz-ing their specific successes as well as organiz-ing techniques . To the contrary, threemonths following the march Louis Far-rakhan embarked on a World FriendshipTour which carried him to some twentycountries in Africa and the Middle East . Thistour became, in essence, an internationalevangelical crusade, the aim of which was to"take the spirit of the . . . Million Man Marchto Africa and establish an international Dayof Atonement, Responsibility and Reconcilia-tion .

,141

(However, the quixotic content ofMinister Farrakhan's World Friendship Tourtheme, not to mention his subsequent roleas apologist for General Sani Abacha's brutalmilitary regime in Nigeria, should not beallowed to obscure the noteworthy fact thatMinister Farrakhan is the first African Ameri-can since El-Haaj Malik el-Shabazz to bereceived by African and Middle East govern-ments as a defacto head of state.)

Last October, at an observance held infront of United Nations headquarters tocommemorate the first anniversary of themarch, Minister Farrakhan declared that thepurpose of the anniversary was to "atone forviolence, murder, and war, and to call thekings and rulers of the earth to atonementfor violence, murder, andwar; and to call themembers of the human family, and ourBlack family, in particular, to the spirit and

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process of atonement for violence in theworld and in our communities and the lustto kill that pervades this society, and per-vades the earth." But even if "violence,murder, and war" are not endemic to thehuman condition, it is clear that Farrakhan'sunfocused "soul-saving" crusade is a goalwithout a foreseeable end. On a more tangi-ble plane, on the other hand, march organiz-ers also convened a National Political Con-vention - the agenda of which included acall for transforming American politics to a"God-centered system" -on September 27-29 at St . Louis. But outside sources claimed agathering of only some 400 to 600 delegates,with an additional 5,000 persons in atten-dance at Minister Farrakhan's keynoteaddress. Where Minister Farrakhan may gofrom here is anyone's guess, but his directionat this time would seem to be other thantowards the strengthening of grassroots com-munity organizations over which the Nationof Islam would have difficulty exerting directcontrol, and therefore away from some ofthe more tangible mandates of the MillionMan March.

143

0VER A HALF-CENTURY AGO, SociologistErdmann Doane Beynon likened the

Nation of Islam and groups of similar miento a tree which grew out of conditions facedby migrant blacks in northern urban centers."After one branch has grown, flourished,and begun to decay, another shoots up tobegin over again the same cycle, thoughalways with an increasing degree of race-con-sciousness and anti-Caucasian prejudice .""'With the southern black migratorywave longhaving reached a termination, but withhopes for African American economic jus-tice throttled by a slowly decaying "post-industrial" capitalism, offshoots of AfricanAmerican millenarian movements continueto increase, multiply, and divide . The pre-sent-day NOI continues to attract adherentswho, after achieving some degree of eco-nomic parity, may yet pass into the ranks of amore traditional Islamic constituency in theUnited States . A far more charismatic show-man than Warith Deen Mohammed, Louis

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Farrakhan also remains the militant voice ofthe downtrodden, the dispossessed amongAfrican Americans, while his more traditionalcounterpart tends to represent that of the .rel-atively more economically secure . 145 The long-range indications of both tendencies appearto be that African American Muslims as awhole will remain a conservative politicalforce wedded to the vision of economicempire. From either perspective, the upwardeconomic mobility of black Americans isscheduled to arrive in the form of capitalaccumulation by brute force, large proceedsof which are actually destined for privatebank accounts, zakat notwithstanding. Thealternative, one admittedly difficult as well asdangerous, is a collective assault upon thestructures of institutionalized inequity. If alarge-scale, more socially progressive AfricanAmerican Islamic movement is ever toemerge, its most likely point of departure willnot be from within existing organizations,but rather a splintering off of new groupsfrom such bodies against the backdrop of anemerging, broad-based secular movement forsocial change in the United States .

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my appreciation to Muham-mad al-Ahari, Robert L. Allen, Joseph Ben-nett, John H. Bracey, Jr., Claude A. Clegg,Prince-A-Cuba, David Du Bois, Scot Ngozi-Brown, Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, H. KhalifKhalifa, Akbar Muhammad, Andrew J. Rosa,Preston Smith, Vernis Wellmon, and JohnWoodford for their generosity in providingme with information used in this study, how-ever wrongly I may have interpreted any ofit .A special thanks to Robert Chrisman, ClaudeA. Clegg, andJohn Woodford for their com-ments on an early draft.

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Notes

1

Carol L. Stone, "Estimate ofMuslims Living in Amer-ica," in The Muslims ofAmerica, ed . Yvonne YazbeckHaddad (New York : Oxford University Press, 1991),27.

2 Earlier influences came, of course, from enslavedAfrican Muslims during the antebellum period; how-ever, between life in the slave quarters and that of20th-century African American communities, nodemonstrable continuity of Islamic institutions canbe found. From 1920 onward a more durable, albeitheterodox source of Islamic teachings was availablethrough the Ahmadiyyah movement. See Allan D.Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: ProudExiles (New York : Routledge, forthcoming 1997) ;Michael A. Gomez, "Muslims in Early America," Jour-nal ofSouthern History 60 (November 1994): 671-710;Clyde-Ahmad Winters, "Afro-American Muslims -From Slavery to Freedom," Islamic Studies, 17.4(1978) : 187-205 ; and Richard B. Turner, "TheAhmadiyya Mission to Blacks in the United States inthe 1920s, "Journal ofReligious Thought 44 (Winter-Spring 1988) : 50-66.

3 Information for most of these groups is extremelysketchy. The LFNOI, with some twenty mosqueslocated mainly on the eastern seaboard and in theSouth, was founded in August 1977 and has pub-lished its newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, since 1984 .Publisher of the weekly newspaper, Your MuhammadSpeaks, and in existence at least since 1992, theUNOI also claims mosques in Missouri and Con-necticut . From the Highland Park enclave of Detroit,Michigan, John Muhammad's organization publishesits own newspaper, Muhammad Speaks Continues. H.Khalif Khalifa reports the existence of some tenindependent organizations (the aforementionedgroups comprised) bearing the NOI name in oneform or another, including a mosque in Cleveland,Ohio, two in Richmond, Virginia, and one in theBronx, NewYork City. Details concerning the LFNOIand its ideology have recently become available inPeter Noel, "One Nation?," Vibe (February 1996), 73 ;and Mattias Gardell, In the Name ofElijah Muhammad:Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (Durham,North Carolina : Duke University Press, 1996), 215-23 . For further, brief information on the UNOI, seePeter Noel, "The Final Call: Power Struggle in theNation of Islam," Village Voice (February 15, 1994) :23, 29 ; for John Muhammad's NOI see Aminah Bev-erly McCloud, African American Islam (New York andLondon : Routledge, 1995), 83-84.

4 An event virtually unnoticed outside New York City atthe time, in 1964, after departing the NOI, Clarence13X formed a group of approximately 200 youthsrecruited from the streets of Harlem and Brooklyn .Popularizing the NOI's esoteric, internally-held doc-trines as its own, the Five Percenters, as the loosely-knit group came to be called, would have far-reach-ing effects on black popular culture of the 1980s.See Prince-A-Cuba, "Black Gods of the Inner City,"

Page 26

Gnosis 25 (Fall 1992) : 56-63; Prince-ACuba, ed., OurMecca Is Harlem: Clarence 13X (Allah) and the Five Per-cent (Hampton, VA : U.B . &U.S . Communications Sys-tems, 1995); YusufNuruddin, "The Five Percenters: ATeenage Nation of Gods and Earths," in Muslim Com-munities in North America, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck HaddadandJane Idleman Smith (Albany, NY State Universityof New York Press, 1994), 109-32 ; and Ernest Allen,Jr., "Making the Strong Survive: The Contours andContradictions of `Message Rap'," in Droppin' Science:Critical Essays on Rap Music and HipHop Culture, ed .William Eric Perkins (Philadelphia: Temple Univer-sity Press, 1996), 159-91 .

5 And there are those who have chosen to remain,more or less, on the sidelines, opting instead to pre-serve and propagate the original teachings of ElijahMuhammad in their pristine form: for example, inChicago, the Committee for the Remembrance ofthe Honorable Elijah Muhammad [CROE], led byMunir Muhammad; United Brothers and United Sis-ters Communications Systems, based at Hampton,Virginia and headed by H. Khalif Khalifah, publisherof the newspaper, Your Black Books Guide, as well asnumerous books and pamphlets; in Atlanta (recentlyrelocated from Cleveland) the group SecretariesMEMPS [Messanger Elijah Muhammad PropagationSociety], publisher/distributor of Message to the Black-man: The Magazine, audiotaped speeches by ElijahMuhammad, and other works, led by Minister NasirMakr Hakim; and Sam Shabazz Muhammad'sAfrican-American Genealogy Society, located inCompton, California, which has reproduced, in twovolumes, many ofElijah Muhammad's c. 1950s news-paper articles .

6 Abass Rassoul, "What Must Be Done . . . After theComing of God!," It's Time to Know! [UNOI] 2 (Fall1994) : 14-17; Reparations Petition for United NationsAssistance Under Resolution 1503 (XLVIII) on Behalf ofAfrican-Americans in the United States of America(Hampton, VA: U.B . & U.S . Communications Sys-tems, 1994). The equating of Brother Solomon andKing Solomon is not unlike the practice accordedElijah Muhammad, who was often held to be theprophet Muhammad of the Qur'an as well as theprophet Elijah of the Bible. Most recently, however,in a leaflet advertising UNOI meetings in Kansas Cityin July 1995, Brother Solomon claimed the mantle of"Allah ."

7 Your Black Books Guide 5 (February 1994): 9-10. AJan-uary 1994 issue of Muhammad Speaks [LFNOI]reportedly carried a public apology from LFNOIhead Silis Muhammad to Louis Farrakhan for pastcriticisms of the latter's policies .

8 For a panoramic, historical view of African Americannationalism through primary sources, see John H.Bracey, Jr., August Meier, and Elliot Rudwick, ed .,Black Nationalism in America (Indianapolis, IN : Bobbs-Merrill, 1970) .

9 By way of contrast, in 1854 a convention of AfricanAmerican emigrationists declared -notwithstand-ing their conviction to depart the U.S . for a more

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hospitable territory-"That as men and equals, wedemand every political right, privilege and positionto which the whites are eligible in the United States,and we will attain to these, or accept of nothing."Herbert Aptheker, comp . and ed ., A DocumentaryHistory of the NegroPeople in the United States:From Colo-nial Times through the Civil War (New York: CitadelPress, 1951), 365. Whether resulting from a fear ofdeportation or simply callousness on his part, Gar-vey's status as a British subject was undoubtedly a fac-tor in his cavalier dismissal of black rights in theU.S.

10 As NOI founder W. D. Fard noted in his Lost FoundMoslem Lesson No. 1, "The original people [ofAfrica]live on this continent and they are the ones whostrayed away from civilization and are living a junglelife ." In a criticism of African American culturalnationalists made four decades later, Elijah Muham-mad could write: "For nearly forty years I have beenpreaching to the Black man in America that weshould accept our own; and instead of the Blackman going to the decent side of his own, he goesback seeking traditional Africa, and the way they didin jungle life and the way you see in some uncivilizedparts of Africa today." The Fall of America (Chicago :Muhammad's Temple of Islam No . 2, 1973), 150.

11 See Randall KBurkett, Garveyism as a Religious Move-ment: The Institutionalization of a Black Civil Religion(Metuchen, NJ : Scarecrow Press and American The-ological Library Association, 1978).

12 Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, ed . AmyJacques-Garvey, dbl. vol. (New York : Atheneum,1969), 2:126 .

13 See Ernest Allen, Jr ., "Waiting for Tojo : The Pro-Japan Vigil of Black Missourians, 1932-1943," Gate-way Heritage 16 (Fall 1995) : 50 . During the 1940s theNOI's Fruit of Islam apparently drilled with woodenrifle stocks as well; such paraphernalia were amongitems seized from the organization by federal author-ities during WorldWar II.

14 The Moroccan and MSTA flags are defined by agreen, five-pointed star placed against a red back-drop. The Moroccan star is drawn in the form ofthick, overlapping line segments, whereas that of theMSTA is solid in color. Both Turkish and NOI flagsconsist of a white star and crescent inscribed on afield of red. However, the concave edge of the cres-cent faces to the right on the Turkish banner, where-as that of the NOI's faces left. Additionally, the NOIflag displays the letters F, J, E, and I (Freedom, Jus-tice, Equality, Islam) sequentially at each of the cor-ners, beginning counter-clockwise at the upper right.

15 See August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age ofBooker T. Washing-ton (Ann Arbor, MI : University of Michigan Press,1963) ; Kenneth Marvin Hamilton, Black Towns andProfit: Promotion and Development in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1877-1915 (Urbana, IL : Universityof Illinois Press, 1991) ; Robert L. Factor, BlackResponse to America: Men, Ideals, and OrganizationsfromFrederick Douglass to the NAACP (Reading, MA: Addi-son-Wesley, 1970)

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16 See Ernest Allen, Jr., "The New Negro: Explorationsin Identity and Social Consciousness, 1910-1922," in1915: The Cultural Moment ed. Adele Heller and LoisRudnick (New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers UniversityPress, 1991), 48-68.

17 In this light, the question as to whether or not theUNIA believed in either a partial or wholesale blackAmerican emigration to Africa proved irrelevant :unable to realize either goal, the principle issue forthose who remained in the U.S. was that of securingfull civil and political liberties - an aim which Gar-vey derided time and time again.

18 See Max Nordau, Max Nordau to His People (NewYork : Scopus, 1941), 199; Edwin Black, The TransferAgreement: The Untold Story of the Secret AgreementBetween the Third Reich andfewish Palestine (New York:Macmillan, 1984), 76-77. For a brief comparison ofthe "Zionisms" of Theodore Herzl and Marcus Gar-vey, see Arnold Rose, The Negro's Morale. Group Identi-ty and Protest (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota,1949), 43-44.

19 Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions, 2:71, 260-61 ; E. DavidCronon, Black Moses. The Story ofMarcus Garvey andthe Universal Negro Improvement Association (Madison,WI : University ofWisconsin Press, 1955), 188-90; TheMarcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Associ-ation Papers, edited by Robert A. Hill (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1985), IV: 679; Ethel Wolf-skill Hedlin, "Earnest Cox and Colonization : AWhite Racist's Response to Black Repatriation, 1923-1966," unpublished Ph.D . dissertation (Duke Univer-sity, 1974), 106-107; Theodore G. Bilbo, "An AfricanHome for Our Negroes," The Living Age, 358 (June1940): 328, 330; Arna Bontemps andJack Conroy,Anyplace But Here (New York : Hill and Wang, 1966),208-211 ; Malcolm X: The Last Speeches (New York :Pathfinder Press, 1989), 122-24 ; Edwin Black, "Far-rakhan and the Jews," Midstream 32 (June/July1986) : 3-4; New York Times (October 3, 1985): 19 ;Washington Post (October 5, 1985): 11 ; Time (October14, 1985) : 41 ; Washington Times (November 11,1985) : 7; Mattias Gardell, "The Sun o£ Islam WillRise in the West : Minister Farrakhan and the Nationof Islam in the Latter Days," in Muslim Communitiesin North America, 38-39.

20 See Black, The Transfer Agreement, esp. 71-82; see alsoJoseph B. Schechtman, The Vladimirfabotinsky Story;Rebel and Statesman: The Early Years (New York : T.Yoseloff, 1956-1961), 399-415.

21 However, a debate concerning the appropriatenessof Islam did occur within the UNIA in 1922, andAhmadis made minor inroads into the organizationthe following year. See Tony Martin, Race First: TheIdeological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Gar-vey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 75-77; NegroWorld (September 2, 1922) : 12 ; (September 8, 1923) :10 .

22 The Ali translation contains four explanatory foot-notes referencing the anticipated coming of theMessiah, which may explain the NOI's preference

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for this particular version of the Qur'an . As ZafarIshaq Ansari, "Aspects of Black Muslim Theology,"Studia Islamica 53 (1981) : 170 n2, has indicated, theAhmadi-NOI connection deserves further research .See also Turner, "The Ahmadiyya Mission to Blacks"and, for general insight, Yohanan Friedmann,Prophecy Continuous : Aspects of Ahmadi ReligiousThought and Its Medieval Background (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1989) .

23 Joseph A. Walkes, Jr., History of the Shrine: AncientEgyptian Arabic Order, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Inc.(Detroit : AEAONMS, 1993), 15 . For information onPrince Hall Masonry, see Charles H. Wesley, PrinceHall : Life and Legacy (Washington, DC : UnitedSupreme Council, SouthernJurisdiction, Prince HallAffiliation, 1977) ; Loretta J. Williams, Black Freema-sonry and Middle-Class Realities (Columbia, MO : Uni-versity of Missouri Press, 1980) ; Joseph A. Walkes,Jr.,Black Square and Compass: 200 Years of Prince HallFreemasonry (1981; rpt. Richmond, VA: Macoy, 1989);William A. Muraskin, Middle-Class Blacks in A WhiteSociety: Prince Hall Freemasonry in America (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1975) . A social historyofblack Freemasons is still sorely lacking.

24 George Livingston Root, Ancient Arabic Order of theNobles of the Mystic Shrine for North America, rvsd. ed.(San Antonio, TX : 1916), 9. Ali actually held theposition of Caliph from 656 to 661 A.D .

25 Constitution and Lam of the Imperial Council of theAncient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine forNorth America (1896), 11 .

26 See, for example, Albert Pike, Morals andDogma oftheAncient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry(Charleston, SC: 1871) ; Manly P. Hall, An Encyclope-dic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosi-crucian Symbolical Philosophy (1928; rpt. Los Angeles:Philosophical Research Society, 1988) . A critique ofa number of these metaphysical currents withinFreemasonry can be found in HenryW. Coil, Conver-sations onFreemasonry (Richmond, VA : Macoy, 1976).

27 This identification, which gathered steam in the early19th century, was the product of the imaginations ofOrientalists, Freemasons, and secret-society conspira-cy buffs in their studies of esoteric Islamic sects; ofdocumented affinities between Bektashi Sufis andFreemasons throughout the Middle East ; and,towards the latter part of the century, the actualmembership of numerous grand viziers and otherOttoman functionaries in the Masonic lodges ofAnatolian Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Europe.

28 Elijah Muhammad, The Secrets ofFreemasonry (Cleve-land: Secretarius Publications, 1994), 39 . See alsoHatim A. Sahib, "The Nation of Islam," unpublishedM.A. dissertation (University of Chicago, 1951), 90;Elijah Muhammad, "The Truth," rpt. in Sam ShabazzMuhammad, comp ., The Truth, Book #1 (Compton,CA: African-American Genealogical Society, n.d .), 4;and Elijah Muhammad, The Theology of Time (Hamp-ton, VA : U.B . & U.S . Communications Systems,1992), 282-86 . For a critique of Freemasonry froman Islamic perspective, see Mustafa El-Amin, Al-Islam,

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Christianity, &Freemasonry (Jersey City, NJ : New MindProductions, 1985) .

29 See Peter Lamborn Wilson, "Shoot-Out at the CircleSeven Koran: Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Sci-ence Temple," Gnosis, 12 (Summer 1989) :'44-49;Peter Lamborn Wilson, Sacred Drift: Essays on the Mar-gins of Islam (San Francisco : City Lights Books,1993), 15-50; Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad andJane Idle-man Smith, Mission to America: Five Islamic SectarianCommunities in NorthAmerica (Gainesville, FL: Univer-sity Press of Florida, 1993), 79-104 ; Arthur HuffFauset, Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro ReligiousCults in the Urban North (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1944), 41-51 ; Bontemps andConroy, Anyplace But Here, 205-208; McCloud, AfricanAmerican Islam, 10-11 .

30 E. U . Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search forIdentity in America (Chicago : University of ChicagoPress, 1962), 77 n37.

31 But in explaining the reason for the transatlanticslave trade in his English Lesson C1, W. D . Fardinvoked not the argument of a "fall from grace" onthe part of Africans -aview held by Noble Drew Ali- but gullibility on the part of the enslaved them-selves: deceived by a slave trader in Africa into think-ing that they would receive gold, blacks foolishlyallowed themselves to be captured .

32 For information on MSTA farms see Richmond Times-Dispatch (April 11, 1943) and Berkshire Eagle (Febru-ary 10, 1944) .

33 See Honor Ford Smith, "Women and the GarveyMovement in Jamaica," in Garvey : His Work andImpact, ed. Rupert Lewis and Patrick Bryan (Tren-ton, NJ : Africa World Press, 1991), 73-83. For a dis-cussion of relative female autonomy within theNewark, Philadelphia, NewYork City, and Baltimorebranches of the NOI, see Cynthia S'thembile West,Nation Builders: Female Activism in the Nation of Islam,1960-1970s (New York: Garland Press, forthcoming,1997). Asection from West's original dissertation isreproduced in this present issue as "RevisitingFemale Activism in the 1960s: The Newark Branchnation of Islam."

34 Both the Aquarian Gospel offesus the Christ (1907; rpt.Marina Del Rey, CA : DeVorss & Co ., 1991) and Infi-nite Wisdom (Chicago : deLaurence, 1923) [distrib-uted by the Rosicrucian Order under the title UntoThee I Grant (1925; rpt. San Jose, CA : SupremeGrand Lodge of AMORC, 1968) ], principal worksfrom which the MSTA "Holy Koran" drew its texts,bear unsubstantiated claims of having been discov-ered in Tibetan monasteries . For a trenchant cri-tique of the Aquarian Gospel see EdgarJ. Goodspeed,Famous Biblical" Hoaxes (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerBook House, 1956), 15-19. The NOI's millenariancharacter is analyzed thoroughly in Martha Lee, TheNation ofIslam: An American Millenarian Movement(1984; rpt. Syracuse, NY Syracuse University Press,1996).

35 See Ansari, "Aspects of Black Muslim Theology," 137-76, for the best comparative analysis of early NOI

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theology and traditional Islam. Also useful is MustafaEl-Arvin, The Religion ofIslam and the Nation ofIslam:What Is the Difference? (Newark, NJ: El-Arvin Produc-tions, 1 .990).

36 See Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and IndustrialAmerica (New York : Harper & Brothers, 1949) ; PaulA. Carter, The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age (Dekalb,IL : Northern Illinois University Press, 1971) ;Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America (New York:Scribner's, 1965), 291-315 esp.

37 See, for example, Carl T Jackson, The Oriental Reli-gions and American Thought: Nineteenth-Century Explo-rations (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981) ; WendellThomas, Hinduism Invades America (New York: Bea-con, 1930); Charles Samuel Braden, Spirits in Rebel-lion, The Rise and Development ofNew Thought (Dallas:Southern Methodist University Press, 1963); StephenGottschalk, The Emergence of Christian Science in Ameri-can Religious Life (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1973) ; M. James Penton, Apocalypse Delayed:The Story ofjehovah's Witnesses (Toronto : University ofToronto Press, 1985) ; Richard Hughes Seager, TheWorld's Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter,Chicago, 1893 (Bloomington : Indiana UniversityPress, 1995); Bruce F. Campbell, Ancient WisdomRevived: A History of the Theosophical Movement (Berke-ley: University of California Press, 1980); Peter Wash-ington, Madame Blavatsky's Baboon : A History of theMystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualismto America (New York : Schocken Books, 1995).

38 Q&A 4, Lost Found Moslem Lesson No. 1;Q& A l, 8-11, Lost Found Moslem Lesson No . 2. Taken into cus-tody by Detroit police in late November, 1932, Mr.Fard reportedly told detectives that he was the"supreme being on earth." But the surprise regis-tered by one of his followers after reading thisaccount in the newspaper appears to leave intact theclaim that the fractious issue of Fard's divinity sur-faced within the NOT only following his departurefrom the Midwest in 1934 . Detroit Free Press (Novem-ber 24, 1932) : 2; Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult," 897.The lack o£ hierarchy implicit in the notion that "allblack men are gods" contributed no doubt, to inter-nal challenges to Noble Drew Ali's leadership inearly 1929, as well as to the plethora of Moorish"gods" who claimed suzerainty over the MSTA fol-lowing Ali's death from tuberculosis that same year.Seeking to solidify the lines oforganizational author-ity following Fard's departure in 1934, when Muham-mad declared Fard to be Allah, he made certain toemphasize his own role as Allah's Messenger. See myrelated discussion of the Five Percent worldview in"Making the Strong Survive," 165, 187 n17.

39 See, for example, James H. Breasted, The Conquest ofCivilization (New York: 1926) ; Hendrick Willem vanLoon, The Story ofMankind (New York: Boni & Liv-eright, 1921) .

40 See The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple ofAmerica (1927), Chapt. 45 :1 . Such a notion was rein-forced, no doubt, by references to "Asiatic blacks"and "African blacks" in the work of Herodotus, as

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well as by claims of the existence of black civiliza-tions in Asia on the part of 19th-century commenta-tors such as Godfrey Higgins. See Frank M. Snow-den, Jr ., Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in theGreco-Roman Experience (Cambridge, MA : BelknapPress, 1970), vi-vii, 10407; Godfrey Higgins, Anaca-lypsis: An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of the Saitic Isisor An Inquiry Into the Origin ofLanguages, Nations andReligions, 2 vols . (1836; rpt. Brooklyn, NY: A&BBooks, 1992), 1: 51-59.

41 See, for example, Griffin Lee [Paschal Beverly Ran-dolph], PreAdamite Man: The Story of the Human Race,from 35,000 to 100,000 Years Ago (New York : SinclairTousey, 1863) ; Alexander Winchell, Preadamites; or, ADemonstration of the Existence of Men Before Adam;Together with a Study of Their Condition, Antiquity,Racial Affinities, and Progressive Dispersion over theEarth(Chicago : Griggs, 1886). For critiques of such views,see Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, rvsd .ed . (New York : W. W. Norton, 1996) ; George M.Fredrickson, Black Image in the White Mind : The Debateon Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914(New York: Harper &Row, 1971) . Not all 19th-centu-ry works on pre-Adamites cast their subject in aracialized context. Isabella Duncan, for example,considered the first human inhabitants of earth tohave been angels, whereas James Gall held them tobe devils. See Isabella Duncan, Pre-Adamite Man, 3rded. (London: Saunders, Otley, and Co ., 1860) ;JamesGall, Primeval Man Unveiled: or, the Anthropology of theBible (London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co ., 1871) .

42 Examples of Fard's puzzles can be found in Bon-temps and Conroy, Anyplace But Here, 220-21 .

43 Prophet W. D. Fard, This Book Teaches the Lost FoundNation ofIslam (n .p., n.d.), Problem 13 .

44 So much so, it seems, that during the economicupswing which took place from the late 1930sthrough WorldWar II, the small, gainfully employedgroup which constituted the Detroit NOT was report-edly far less militant than its Chicago counterpart .See Erdmann Doane Beynon, "The Voodoo CultAmong Negro Migrants in Detroit," AmericanJournalof Sociology, 43 (May 1938) : 905-906.

45 See Jill Watts, God; Harlem U.S.A. : The Father DivineStory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) .Marcus Garvey, too, had internalized certain aspectsof New Thought. See Robert A. Hill and BarbaraBair, ed ., Marcus Garvey : Life and Lessons ( Berkeley :University ofCalifornia Press, 1987), xxviii-xxix .

46 See, for example, Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult," 900-901 .

47 See, for example, Elijah Muhammad, Message to theBlackman in America (Chicago : Muhammad's TempleNo . 2, 1965) ; The Fall ofAmerica (Chicago: Muham-mad's Temple No . 2, 1973) ; Our Saviour Has Arrived(Chicago : Muhammad's Temple No . 2, 1974) ; TheTheology of Time (Hampton, VA: U.B . &U.S. Commu-nications Systems, 1992) .

48 In May 1942 Muhammad was arrested in Washing-ton, D.C. for failure to register for the draft. Outonbail, he returned to Chicago where he was re-arrest-

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ed the following September on additional violationsof the Selective Service and Training Act, includingthat of sedition . In late November he was convictedand sent to prison on the initial charge ; havingachieved the goal of wartime incarceration, authori-ties then dropped the second set of indictments.Memorandum from SAC, Detroit to Director, FBI,August 9, 1957, FBI file 105-24822-25 ; Ernest Allen,Jr.,

"When Japan Was `Champion of the DarkerRaces' : Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering ofBlack Messianic Nationalism," The Black Scholar 24(Winter 1994) : 23 . All FBI records cited in the pre-sent study were secured under the Freedom of Infor-mation Act.

49 The most complete source on Muhammad's life andthought is Claude A. Clegg, III, An Original Man: TheLife and Times ofElijah Muhammad (New York : St.Martin's Press, forthcoming February 1997) . See thepresent issue for a reprint of his fifth chapter, enti-tled "Rebuilding the Nation : The Life and Work ofElijah Muhammad, 1946-1954."

50 Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult," 897; Sahib, "The Nationof Islam," 99, 108; Autobiography of Malcolm X (NewYork: Ballantine, 1973), 219.

51 Malcolm X, Autobiography, 290; Clifton E. Marsh,From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Transition from Sep-aratism to Islam, 1930-1980 (Metuchen, NJ: ScarecrowPress, 1984), 72 .

52 Throughout the 1950s the respective leadership skillsof Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad fairly comple-mented one another. But most African Americansremained unaware ofMessenger Muhammad's deep-er wisdom until Malcolm X had endlessly extolledhis leader's virtues in public.

53 Pittsburgh Courier (April 14, 1956) : 3 [mag . sect.] ;Report of [agent name deleted], December 27,1956, FBI file 105-24822-13, p. 30 ; Pittsburgh Couri-er (February 22, 1958): 8; and (March 15, 1958) : 5[mag. sect .] . Malcolm X noted a "sharp climb" in thenumber of Muslim-owned small businesses by 1961,but did not distinguish between privately and organi-zationally owned enterprises. Malcolm X, Autobiogra-phy, 263.

54 Sahib, "The Nation ofIslam," 84.

55 However, the second openly advertised convention inFebruary 1958 was publicized as the "ninth," whichwould date the very first (but apparently closed)convention meeting back to 1950 . Pittsburgh Courier(March 8,1958) : 4-5 [mag . sect.] .

56 Coincidentally, the emphasis on self-defenseoccurred during a period when armed, anti-colonial,anti-imperialist struggles on the continents of Africa,Asia, and Latin America were in the ascendancy, asituation which led many African Americans -above all, Malcolm X- to blur the notion of armedself-defense with that ofviolent political revolution .

57 Elijah Muhammad's early writings spoke of a"return" to the East and to "best lands," which origi-nally meant the Nile Valley as well as Mecca; later hecalled for a physical "return" of Black Americans to

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Africa in the vaguest of terms, allowing that if theU.S. government would not pay for their transport,that it should set aside a separate territory in thesouthern states for black settlement. Neither choiceproved viable . But Garvey at least purchasedsteamships, only one of which may have been suit-able for transatlantic travel ; there exists no concreteevidence of emigrationist plans on the NOI's part,however. Privately, Elijah Muhammad admitted assuch . See Louis E. Lomax, When the Word Is Given(Westport, CT : Greenwood, 1963), 79 .

58 Pittsburgh Courier (January 17, 1959) : 8. In a messageto the African-Asian Conference meeting in Cairothe previous year, Mr. Muhammad proclaimed him-self the "Leader, Teacher and Spiritual Head of theNation of Islam in the West." Pittsburgh Courier (Janu-ary 18, 1958) : 5.

59 Some of these challenges came in the form o£ adhominem attacks; see, for example, New Crusader(August 15, 1959): 1 . See also Essien-Udom, BlackNationalism, 80 n45, 311-17 ; and C. Eric Lincoln,The Black Muslims in America, rvsd . ed. (Boston: Bea-con Press, 1973), 184.

60 Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism, 275; Lincoln, BlackMuslims, 246.

61 Information in this section concerning Diab andMuhammad, as well as the latter's Middle East tour,is based on an account given by Warith DeenMohammed, "Race Relations in America: An IslamicPerspective," videotaped speech delivered at theUniversity of Massachusetts/Amherst, November 16,1993 . Despite such negative impressions, afterreturning to the U.S . Elijah Muhammad subsequent-ly referred to NOI temples as "mosques ." MalcolmX, Autobiography, 263.

62 On the other hand, the NOI continued to observeRamadan in December instead of March (undoubt-edly for the purpose of challenging the pervasiveinfluence of Christmas) ; the form of prayer taughtby Master Fard - a slight cupping of the hands withpalms facing upward-wasunknown to the interna-tional Muslim community; nor was the practice ofjumah observed . What also remained were Fard'sbasic teachings concerning the nature of God andSpirit, polygenesis, and a fundamental disregard forthe prophet Muhammad . As a result, Sheikh Diabultimately and bitterly dissasociated himself from theNOI. See Lincoln, Black Muslims, 183-84 . For a briefdescription of pre-1978 NOI prayer rituals, see alsoLasin6 Kaba, "Americans Discover Islam through theBlack Muslim Experience," in Islam in North America:A Sourcebook, ed . Michael A. Koszegi and J. GordonMelton (New York : Garland, 1992), 32.

63 These articles were subsequently reproduced in theform of topical fragments in two volumes known asThe Supreme Wisdom, published in the latter 1950s,and wholly in Message to the Blackman in America andother works.

64 Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims, 73 ; Malcolm X,Autobiography, 249-50.

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65 Pittsburgh Courier (March 8, 1958): 7; (July 19, 1958) :8. In a repeat of this pattern, in late 1972 ElijahMuhammad requested a meeting of five hundredNew York black business and professional leaders todiscuss the expansion of NOI activities. Anticipatinga genuine dialogue, several participants expresseddisappointment at having been lectured to by Mr.Muhammad as if they had no ideas themselves tocontribute . New York Times (October 2, 1972) : 24.

66 For insights into the running of the newspaper, seeJohn Woodford, "Testing America's Promise of Free

Speech : Muhammad Speaks in the 1960s, A Memoir,"

Voices of the African Diaspora [CAAS, University ofMichigan] 7 (Fall 1991) : 3-16 ; rpt. as "Messaging theBlackman," in Voices from the Underground, 2 vols .,ed . Ken Wachsberger (Tempe, AZ : Mica Press,1993), 1 :81-98, Relocations of the Spirit (Wakefield, RIand London: Asphodel Press, 1994), 66-116 . In theearly 1960s assessments of the Nation ofIslam by theCommunist Party U .S .A's black leadership weredivided. Based in Chicago where the party had estab-lished a rapport with the NOI, Claude Lightfoot wasgenerally supportive ; in NewYork City where it hadnot, James E. Jackson was highly critical. See ClaudeLightfoot, "Negro Nationalism and the Black Mus-lims," Political Affairs 41 (July 1962) : 3-20 ; and JamesE. Jackson, "A Fighting People Forging Unity" Politi-cal Affairs 42 (August 1963) : 41-46.

67 The success of these early recruitment efforts isnoted by Malcolm X in his Autobiography, 262 ; seealso Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims, 73. Thegrowing inclination on the part of the NOI to recruitmore of its members from the middle class also mayhave had to do with cultivating a wealthier con-stituency from whom more substantial revenuescould be tithed . In his "The Rise of Louis Far-rakhan," The Nation (January 21, 1991): 54, AdolphReed, Jr. has noted a connection between the NOFsmiddle-class recruitment and its drive for economicgrowth in the early 1970s.

68 For a discussion of the OAAU's significance, seeWilliam W. Sales, Jr., From Civil Rights to Black Libera-tion : Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-AmericanUnity (Boston: South End Press, 1994) .

69 Malcolm X, Autobiography, 289.

70 Lawrence Mamiya has advanced a convenient para-digm to characterize the difference between LouisFarrakhan andW. Deen Mohammed as that of a pre-hajj "Old Malcolm" to that of a post-hajj "New Mal-colm ." This framework holds true, however, only ifone limits oneself to the domains of religion andracial nationalism. See Lawrence H. Mamiya, "Minis-

ter Louis Farrakhan and the Final Call : Schism inthe Muslim Movement," in The Muslim Community inNorth America, ed . Earle H. Waugh Baha Abu-Labanand Regula B. Qureshi (Edmonton: University ofAlberta Press, 1983, .̀, 234.

71 Pittsburgh Courier (February 28, 1959) : 4-5 [mag .sect.] .

72 Chicago Tribune (March 12, 1995) : 16.

73 Newsweek (March 15, 1976): 33.

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74 Chicago Tribune (March 1, 1976) : 1; (March 12,1995) :16; New York Times (December 6, 1973) : 37; (Febru-ary 26, 1976) : 14 ; Bruce Michael Gans and Walter L.Lowe, " The Islam Connection," Playboy Magazine(May 1980) : 130. In a Muhammad Speaks interview c.December 1973, and at a press conference as well,Minister Farrakhan steadfastly denied that Muslimshad engaged in crime in order to bolster saggingNOI revenues . A reprint of the interview can be

found in 7 Speeches by Minister Louis Farrakhan (New-port News, VA: Ramza Associates & United BrothersCommunications Systems, 1974), 43-64; see also NewYork Times (December 11, 1973) : 74 . More recentlyan internal FBI report transmitted surreptitiously tothe Anti-Defamation League's domestic intelligenceoperation claimed - perhaps deceptively - thathigh-ranking members of the present-day NOI hadengaged in white-collar crime for the purpose ofimproving the group's cash-flow. Specifically men-tioned were instances of federal tax violations, cred-it-card fraud, and bank-loan scams, the last-men-tioned being an offence for which former NOIminister Khallid Abdul Muhammad actually servedprison time . Equally troubling was the inference thatthat 41 members of the New Orleans-branch NOIhad offered cash and other items to food-stamprecipients in exchange for their stamps, which wouldthen be redeemed at a substantial profit from localbanks. "San Francisco Police Affadavit in Support of

Search Warrant for A.D.L . Offices," April 1993 . Seealso Robert I . Friedman, "The EnemyWithin," Vil-lage Voice (May 11, 1993): 27 ff.

75 See Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims, 74 . Nation-al SecretaryJohn Ali appears to have played an advi-sory role with respect to this privileged inner circle .In his When the Word Is Given, 82, journalist LouisLomax identifies John [X] Ali as a former FBI agent.

76 Chicago Tribune (January 14, 1972): 2, sect. 1D . Per-

haps to silence anticipated criticisms of this ostenta-tious measure, Elijah Muhammad simultaneouslyannounced plans for the construction in Chicago of100 single-family, low-income homes financed by theNOI. The latter project does not seem to have mate-

rialized, however. Chicago Tribune (January 15, 1972) :1.

77 Chicago Tribune (January 13, 1972): 2, sect. 113; (Janu-ary 14,1972) : 2, sect. 1D .

78 [New Orleans) Times-Picayune (January 11, 1972): 1, 2;(January 12, 1972) : 1, 2; (January 13, 1972) : 2, 3;Chicago Tribune (January 14, 1972) : 18 ; (January 15,

1972) : 1; (May 1, 1973) : 1, 3; New York Times (January21, 1972): 1, 21 ; (May 1, 1973): 35; (April 1, 1975) :25 . Nine Muslims were eventually found guilty ofmurder, but the convictions were overturned on atechnicality.

79 Nor was the NOI image helped by the fact thatAfrican Americans affiliated with Dar Ul Islam, a tra-ditional Islamic organization based in Brooklyn,were also involved in a deadly gun battle in early1974; to the general public, to be black and Muslimwas to be a "Black Muslim," or NOI adherent. See

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New York Times (February 6, 1974) : 44.

80 Its leader, Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, had recently sent asecond series of letters to ministers of NOI mosquesurging them to reject the teachings of ElijahMuhammad . New York Times (January 19, 1973): 1,13 ; (January 31, 1973) : 10 .

81 New York Times (May 3, 1973) : 26. Authorities claimedthat Shabazz was killed because he taught that ElijahMuhammad was the messenger of Allah, contradict-ing the dissident group's belief that he was Allah inperson . New York Times (September 5, 1973): 50 ;(May 3, 1974) : 3.

82 See Zafar Ishaq Ansari, "W. D. Muhammad: The Mak-ing of a `Black Muslim' Leader (1933-1961)," Ameri-canjournal ofIslamic Social Sciences 2.2 (1985) : 245-62 ;C. Eric Lincoln, "The American Muslim Mission inthe Context of American Social History," in The Mus-lim Community in North America, 215-33 ; Lawrence H.Mamiya, "From Black Muslim to Bilalian : The Evolu-tion of a Movement," Journalfor the Scientific Study ofReligion 21 (1982) : 138-52 ; and especially Lee, TheNation ofIslam, 98, 101.

83 Time (June 30, 1975) : 52 ; New York Times (June 17,1975) : 9; (February 26, 1976) : 14 ; Chicago Tribune(March 1, 1976) : 1; (February 19, 1976) : 1, sect . 2;(March 1, 1976): 1; New York Times (March 7, 1978) :18.

84 Time (March 14,1977) : 59 .

85 MuslimJournal (January 10, 1986): 2; (February 11,1986): 2; (March 21, 1986) : 8 [WNE sect .] .

86 It was also the intention of the Federal Bureau ofInvestigation to generate "factionalism among thecontenders for Elijah Muhammad's leadership orthrough legal action in probate court on his death."See excerpts from FBI memorandum in MuslimJour-nal (April 4,1986) : 4.

87 Fourteen of the children were conceived outside ofhis marriage to Clara Muhammad . Devotees contin-ue to represent Mr. Muhammad's acts as having ful-filled a prophetic role, and the secretaries withwhom he had entered into carnal relations as his"wives ." Others point out that, under the NOI codeof conduct, lesser ranking members had been sus-pended from the organization for engaging in simi-lar activities . True, Elijah Muhammad himself calledthe Bible a "poison book" for its having overtlydepicted the moral lapses of prophetic figures, butwhether he considered the "poison" to be in thedoing or the telling is a matter of conjecture.

88 Chicago Tribune (July 11, 1986): 1-2. The fact that theNOI had deposited approximately $20 million in aJapanese bank is of more than passing interest . Inthe early 1960s Japanese businessman Seiho Tajiri"arranged for a major Japanese food company toprovide for the fish sold in the Nation of Islam'sshops and restaurants." But Elijah Muhammad's pro-Nippon leanings can be traced back thirty years pre-vious. See Frank McCoy, "Black Business Courts theJapanese Market," Black Enterprise (June 1994) : 216;and Allen, "WhenJapan WasChampion," 25, 32.

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89 Newsweek (March 15, 1976): 33 . See also New YorkTimes (August 8, 1976) : 34 .

90 Chicago Tribune (September 13, 1978): 1, sect. 3. Inlater years Muhammad would interpret the zakat, ortithe, as a responsibility to engage in commerce : "busi-ness is a religious obligation . It is a religious obliga-tion for Muslims." Muslim Journal (February 7,1986) : 2.

91 Even as Wallace Muhammad announced the exis-tence of $900,000 in short-term and $4.5 million inlong-term debt some two years earlier, the NOI con-tinued to purchase Chicago properties. Chicago Tri-bune (March 1, 1976) : 1.

92 Chicago Tribune (January 7, 1979) : 6; Black Enterprise(March 1981): 20 ; MuslimJournal (April 18, 1986) : 7;Lincoln, "American Muslim Mission," 229.

93 New York Times (February 26, 1976): 14 . Bilalian Newssubsequently became the American Muslim journal,and then simply the Muslimjournal.

94 New York Times (October 19, 1976) : 33 . For a discus-sion of ummah and `asabiya see McCloud, AfricanAmerican Islam, 45 .

95 Chicago 73ibune (May 3, 1985) : 1, 24.

96 New York Times (May 25, 1978) : 20 ; James EmersonWhitehurst, "The Mainstreaming of Black Muslims:Healing the Hate," Christian Century (February 27,1980) : 229.

97 MuslimJournal (February 21, 1986): 2.

98 New York Times (May 3,1993) : B7.

99 MuslimJournal (March 17, 1995) : 15 .

100 Muslim Journal (April 18, 1986) : 6. This number isto be distinguished from weekly attendance figuresat "affiliated" mosques during the same period,which has been reported in the hundreds of thou-sands.

101 Time (March 14,1977) : 59 .

102 New York Times (February 26,1976) : 14.

103 Chicago Tribune (January 7,1979): 6.

104 Chicago Tribune (September 13, 1978) : 1, sect . 3;Christianity Today 23 (October 6, 1978) : 45 .

105 "BBB Interviews Minister Abdul Farrakhan," BlackBooks Bulletin 6 (Spring 1978) : 45, 71 ; Gardell, 'TheSun of Islam Will Rise," 25 . See also Mamiya, "Min-ister Louis Farrakhan and the Final Call," 234-53 ;and Jabril Muhammad, This Is the One: The MostHonored Elijah Muhammad, We Need Not Look forAnother!, rvsd . ed. (Phoenix, AZ : Book Company,1993), 154.

106 Black, "Farrakhan and the Jews," 6. See also Mad-hubuti's instructive account, "The Farrakhan Fac-tor," regarding Farrakhan's use of Chicago-basednationalists to build his initial following. Haki R.Madhubuti, Claiming Earth: Race, Rage, Rape,Redemption : Blacks Seeking A Culture ofEnlightenedEmpowerment (Chicago : Third World Press, 1994),71-98.

107 Time (February 28, 1994) : 26 .

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108 See Chicago Tribune (March 12, 1995): 1 ff. MinisterFarrakhan's fiery riposte to the Tribune's series ofsensationalist exposes of his operations failed todislodge the claim that many NOI-affiliated firmswere privately owned.

109 There was by now, of course, the promise (orthreat) of an African American domestic homelandadvanced by ultra-right wing paramilitary groupssuch as Posse Comitatus and Aryan Nation, whoevinced a desire to partition the United States intoracial enclaves . To be sure, such plans smackedmore of a Bantustan or concentration-camp gover-nance than of genuine autonomy ; and Farrakhan,despite his apparent ties to such groups, hasdeclined to endorse such plans publicly. See Wash-ington Times (November 5, 1985): 7.

110 Back Where We Belong: Selected Speeches by MinisterLouis Farrakhan, ed . Joseph D. Eure and Richard M.Jerome (Philadelphia: PC International Press,1989), 154-56. Here Farrakhan confesses publiclywhat Elijah Muhammad earlier admitted in private .

111 See, for example, Sigmund Shipp, "The Road NotTaken: Alternative Strategies For Black EconomicDevelopment in the United States," Journal ofEco-nomic Issues 30 (March 1996) : 79-95. During theReagan years, black petit-bourgeois elementsevolved another strategy to replace the traditional"ghetto nationalism" of earlier epochs : corporateinterventionism . Farrakhan has not followed theirlead . For a dissection of this particular tack, seeEarl Picard, "The New Black Economic Develop-ment Strategy," Telos 60 (Summer 1984) : 53-64.

112 Time (February 28, 1994) : 26 .

113 When Farrakhan was still minister of the Harlemmosque in the 1970s, he oversaw operations of theFish Force, a NOI fish-import business . For anaccount of the latter's business activities seePlaythell Benjamin, "The Attitude Is the Message,"Village Voice (August 15, 1989) : 25, 27.

114 The situation was roughly analagous to that whichMarcus Garvey faced in 1922, in the wake of thepost-World War I recession. Several years earlier theUNIA had been awash in self-sufficient funds gar-nered from a black working-class constituency ; inthe face of massive employment losses occasionedby the recession, Garvey produced a pamphlet enti-tled "Appeal to the Soul of White America,"requesting monies from whites to support his pro-gram of African expatriation . Garvey, Philosophyand Opinions 2: 1-6.

115 "The Muslims to the Rescue," Ebony (August 1989):136, 138, 140; LosAngeles Times (July 2, 1992) : BI,3; (November 2, 1992) : Bl ; (December 27, 1992):BI, 6; U.S. News and World Report (September 12,1994) : 40, 42-43; New York Times (March 4,1994) : 1,18 ; Chicago Tribune (March 12, 1995): 1, 16-17;(March 13, 1995) : 1, 10 . Success has also beenforthcoming to the NOI in obtaining governmentcontracts to treat AIDS patients at its Washington,D.C. clinic, but the victory was also marred by con-troversy . The clinic's director, Dr. Abdul Alim

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Muhammad, initially claimed that interferon thera-pies had "cured" significant numbers of peopleafflicted with AIDS. Following an outcry from thescientific community, he subsequently scaled backthis claim to the more credible assertion that inter-feron helped AIDS patients gain weight . Therewere also complaints from the black gay communi-ty, some members of which claimed that turningAIDS medical testing over to the anti-homosexualNOI was akin to turning the fabled black scientistYakub loose in a nursery! Washington Post (July 29,1993) : 25; (September 29, 1993): DI, 5; New YorkTimes (March 4, 1994) : 10; Final Call (October 6,1994): 7; Chicago Tribune (March 14,1995) : 1, 10 .

116 Benjamin, "The Attitude Is the Message," 25 .

117 New York Times (March 1, 1995): C1, 10 .

118 Business Week (March 13,1995) : 40 .

119 A more recent report on NOI economic activitiespaints an even bleaker picture. See Washington Post,national weekly edition (September 9-15, 1996): 6-11 .

120 Cited in New York Times (June 17,1975) : 9.

121 Louis Farrakhan, TheAnnouncement: AFinal Warningto the U.S. Government (Chicago : FCN, 1989) . W.Deen Mohammed, one notes, has never reportedexperiencing a similar vision. However, Abass Ras-soull of the UNOI claims to have been recentlyinformed by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad inperson that "Minister Farrakhan had been properlyrelieved of the post of sitting in The Messenger'schair on September 30, 1989 ."

122 Annual Report of the Immigration and NaturalizationService, 1966 (Washington, DC : U.S . GovernmentPrinting Office, 1967); Stone, "Estimate of Mus-lims," 25-36.

123 Gardell, "The Sunof Islam Will Rise," 32 .

124 Ibid ., 34 .

125 This liberalizing tendency already had begun underElijah Muhammad around the 1972-1973 period .In its stead arose the demonizing of Jews . SeeGeorge E. Curry, "Farrakhan,Jesse &Jews," Emerge(July/August 1994): 3435.

126 See, for example, Muhammad, Message to the Black-man, 173, 316.

127 For Farrakhan's views on the efficacy ofpolitics, see"Farrakhan : Some Straight Talk and a Few Tearsfor Malcolm from the Minister," interview byGeorge E. Curry, Emerge (August 1990) : 34 . Reflect-ing the implicit assumption that blacks are indeedAmericans, Farrakhan claimed in a recent workthat "Over 30 million Americans live in poverty,and 10 million of those are black." Louis Far-rakhan, A Torchlight for America (Chicago : FCN,1993), 15 . Where Elijah Muhammad had outrightdenied the existence of an American identity forblacks, Louis Farrakhan now implicity assumes itsexistence. The NOI's initial venture into establish-ment politics occurred with its support of theJack-son presidential campaign in 1984 . Six years later,rather than throw its weight behind individual

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black politicians over whom it exercised no realcontrol, the NOI decided to run its own candidatesdirectly. Entering the Democratic primary race inMaryland's 5th District, Dr. Abdul Alim Muham-mad sought to unseat a well-heeled U.S . Congress-man seeking a fifth term. Outspent in the cam-paign by a factor of ten-to-one, Muhammadreceived only 21 % of the vote, thus once againputting on temporary hold direct NOI participa-tion in electoral politics . Capturing the NOI'sattention was the fact that the black population ofPrince George's county, the greater portion ofwhich was located within the 5th District, hadgrown to 50% of the total, thus offering the possi-bility of a successful run for office based upon adirect nationalist appeal . The assumption provedincorrect. During the same period, NOI membersShawn X. Brakeen sought a school board post, andGeorge X. Cure a delegate's seat, in the District ofColumbia . Washington Post (August 2, 1990) : D2 ;(September 12,1990) : A21.

128 For perceptive views on the power struggle withinthe Nation of Islam, see Peter Noel, "To Kill ABrother Minister : Khallid Muhammad Versus theNation of Islam," Village Voice (August 2, 1994) : 21ff. ; Noel, "The Final Call," 23 ff. ; and SylvesterMunroe, "Khallid Abdul Muhammad," Emerge (Sep-tember 1994): 40-46. Both authors have no troublein identifying Khallid Muhammad's constituencyoutside the NOI, but his specific base - if any -within the organization remains unclear.

129 Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions, 2: 133. That is notto say that many of Garvey's enemies were not alsomotivated by petty jealousies or strong pro-govern-ment bias as well .

130 The saga began after presidential candidate JesseJackson was accused of uttering a slur against Jews.See Curry, "Farrakhan,Jesse &Jews," 30.

131 Cited in Lincoln, Black Muslims, 176.

132 Thunderbolt 309 (n .d ., c. 1985): 5.

133 For examples of deliberate distortions of Far-rakhan's remarks, see Curry, "Farrakhan, Jesse &Jews," 37, 40 .

134 By 1985 a symbiotic relationship of sorts appearedto develop between Farrakhan and his right-wing,nationalist counterparts within the American Jewish community. First, Farrakhan would utter an out-rageous remark concerning Jews, for which Jewishorganizations would then expend tens of thou-sands of dollars denouncing him in full-page news-paper ads. This free publicity only furtherendeared Louis Farrakhan to black communitiescoast to coast, increased NOI membership, and, forbetter or for worse, made Farrakhan's name ahousehold word . Such negative publicity alsoattracted the attention of "checkbook Zionists" (asthey are known within theJewish community), whowould then proceed to pour hundreds of thou-sands of dollars into Jewish protective organiza-tions. These groups would subsequently demandthat prominent blacks denounce Minister Far-

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rakhan for his verbal transgressions . Then beganthe next round of a ritual of which a good manyAfrican Americans have grown weary. To para-phrase an ancient African proverb: "When tworight-wing zealotries clash, only rational people gettrampled."

135 Benjamin, "The Attitude Is the Message," 24 .

136 See Ernest Allen Jr., "Toward A `More PerfectUnion' : A Commingling of Constitutional Idealsand Christian Precepts," Black Scholar 25 (Fall1995): 27-34.

137 Louis Farrakhan, "Why A Million Man March?,"Final Call (August 30, 1995) : 19.

138 George E. Curry, "After the Million Man March,"Emerge (February 1996): 48 . An exception to themeager availability of information on the LOCs wasthe October 22, 1996 Final Call, celebrating thefirst anniversary of the Million Man March.

139 New York Times (March 25,1996) : Al, 12 .

140 [Springfield] Sunday Republican (June 30, 1966) : Al,13, 18 ; The Spirit [Official Newsletter of the SpringfieldChapter ofthe Million ManMarch Committee] 1 (Octo-ber 16, 1996).

141 Final Call (January 31, 1996): 3.

142 Louis Farrakhan, "Can the U.N . Avert the War ofArmageddon?," Final Call (November 5,1996): 21 .

143 Divided reactions to march follow-up activities arereflected in interviews conducted by DarrellDawsey, "In Their Footsteps, Emerge (October1996) : 46-49.

144 Beynon, "The Voodoo Cult," 906.

145 See Mamiya, "Minister Louis Farrakhan and theFinal Call," 24-55-51 esp.

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