Black Muslims

I

Introduction

Black Muslims, followers of a predominantly black religious movement in the United States, who profess Islam as their faith. Its leaders advocate economic cooperation and self-sufficiency and enjoin a strict Islamic code of behavior governing such matters as diet, dress, and interpersonal relations. Members follow some Islamic religious ritual and pray five times daily. The Nation of Islam is the most prominent organization within the Black Muslim movement.

II

History

The origins of the Black Muslim movement are found in two black self-improvement organizations that began shortly before World War I (1914-1918): the Moorish Science Temple of America, founded in 1913 by Prophet Drew Ali, and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, founded in 1914 by Marcus Garvey. When Ali died, leadership of his movement passed to Wallace D. Fard. In 1930 Fard founded a temple (later known as a mosque) in Detroit, Michigan, that was the actual beginning of the Nation of Islam. Fard, who used a variety of names (including Walli Farad and Master Farad Muhammad), is called God, Allah, or the Great Mahdi by Black Muslims.

In 1934, after the mysterious disappearance of Fard, the leader of the Chicago mosque, which was founded in 1933, became the Nation of Islam’s leader. He was Elijah Muhammad, known as Holy Prophet and Messenger of Allah, who had originally been named Elijah Poole and was born in Sandersville, Georgia, in 1897. Until his death in Chicago in 1975, Muhammad was the supreme leader of the Nation of Islam. In the 1960s his supremacy was challenged by Malcolm X, head of the New York City mosque, but Malcolm X was shot to death in 1965 by men said to be Black Muslims.

Formerly, Black Muslims held that the white person is the Devil, who enslaves all nonwhites. Black Muslims advocated the establishment of a separate African American homeland in the United States. Wallace D. Muhammad, who succeeded his father Elijah Muhammad in 1975, downplayed black nationalism, admitted nonblack members, and stressed strict Islamic beliefs and practices. In the late 1970s, however, a dissident faction, led by Louis Farrakhan, assumed the original name Nation of Islam and reasserted the principles of black separatism. In 1992 the group led by Wallace Muhammad took the name Muslim American Society, and Wallace Muhammad took the name Warith Deen Mohammed. The Muslim American Society adopted traditional Sunni Islam beliefs and embraced the idea of being part of a multicultural society.

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III

The Nation of Islam

The Nation of Islam has established accredited schools in more than 45 cities. The organization has sent the produce of their farmland by their own trucks and airplanes throughout the United States. The Final Call, a weekly newspaper founded as Muhammad Speaks, has a wide national circulation and an Internet version. The Nation of Islam rehabilitates convicts, drug addicts, and alcoholics through the so-called doing-for-self philosophy. Although no membership records are kept; estimates of membership range widely, from 10,000 to 200,000 followers.

In the early 1990s Farrakhan became an increasingly controversial figure. He was quoted as calling Judaism a “gutter religion” and referred to German dictator Adolf Hitler, who was responsible for killing millions of Jews (see Holocaust), as a “great” man. Although Farrakhan’s defenders later attempted to clarify that he was using the term in the sense of “historically significant,” his controversial remarks on the radio and at press conferences were widely condemned by other black leaders.

In 1995 Farrakhan organized the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., to draw attention to the plight of black men in the United States. In 1999 Farrakhan battled prostate cancer. In February 2000 he returned to the public stage when he reconciled with his longtime rival Warith Deen Mohammed. Their reconciliation was part of a reported effort by Farrakhan to move the Nation of Islam closer to the mainstream of Islamic belief and practice.

Radiation treatment was successful in treating Farrakhan’s cancer, but it damaged other organs of his body. In August 2006 Farrakhan’s poor health forced him to turn over control of the Nation of Islam to an executive committee. In February 2007 he gave what was described as his “last major address” to a meeting of the Nation of Islam.

IV

Muslim American Society

At the beginning of the 21st century, most experts agreed that a majority of African-American Muslims in the United States belonged to the Muslim American Society, led by Warith Deen Mohammed. The Muslim American Society also welcomes Muslim immigrants to the United States to its ranks. It remains critical of many of the beliefs of the Nation of Islam, such as the contention that the group’s founder, Wallace Fard, was the Great Mahdi, or savior.

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