The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. This broadcast came five years after the historic Brown decision, three years after the launching of the successful Montgomery bus boycott, and one year before black students would begin the "lunch counter" phase of the civil rights movement. He was in prison at the time. God say you're the real devil. [72] Elijah Muhammad for instance referred to "black, brown, yellow [and] red" people as collectively constituting "black mankind", which he then juxtaposed against the "white race". Christians speaking Arabic would say Allah for God. [238] It is estimated that, at the time of the American Revolution in the 1760s80s, approximately 15 percent of enslaved Africans and African Americans in the new United States were Muslim. "Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." Ephesians 6:11 The above verse is the theme for the Nation of Islam's 2023 Saviours' Day convention taking place in Chicago, February 24-26. [217] NOI members also own urban gardens in various U.S. [155] Under Fard Muhammad's leadership, it reached a total of approximately 8000 members. [133] Farrakhan has also suggested that the countries of Africa should set aside land on that continent for the African diaspora, characterising this as a reparation for the complicity of West African states in the Atlantic slave trade. [269] The police then raided the Nation's headquarters and arrested Fard Muhammad. Even [Senator James] Eastland knows it. Farrakhan toned down his racial rhetoric and moved the group toward orthodox Islam after a bout with prostate cancer in 2000. Most Muslims believe that when they die, they will stay in . 1.) His teachings included many of the basic tenets of Islam, including monotheism, submission to Allah, and a strong family life, and these tenets were promoted in the Nations parochial schools. Now I Live for Jesus. [265] In 1923, Poole and his wife Clara relocated to Detroit, where they settled in the black ghetto of Paradise Valley. A UFO religion is any religion in which the existence of extraterrestrial (ET) entities operating unidentified flying objects (UFOs) is an element of belief. This entailed breeding new children, with those who were too dark being killed at birth and their bodies being fed to wild animals or incinerated. In the 1980s, Farrakhan referred to Judaism as a "dirty religion"[431] and described Adolf Hitler as a "very great man" who "raised Germany up from nothing". ), seem to want the universal validity of all religions at any price, even to the extent of attributing it to masters like Muhyiddin ibn al . 3 Pages. [279] His wife Clara took on the identity of Khadija. He produced a new sacred text, The Holy Koran, that bears little resemblance to its namesake and was based on his limited knowledge of Islam and on spiritualist teachings. [210] It also seeks the collective economic advancement of African Americans through individual achievement;[211] various women members created their own businesses, sometimes run from the home. I really was lost. [411], Prior to 1975, only a small number of Hispanic American and Native American individuals were members of the NOI, although under Farrakhan the Nation began putting greater efforts into recruiting among these groups. Louis Farrakhan's Jesus Is Not Our Jesus. I also have fond recollections of cheering for Muhammad Ali. [40] The Nation regards its founder, Fard Muhammad, as the latest of these gods,[46] or "God in person". Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). The Earth is 93,000,000 miles from the sun. [291] The NOI became a foil for the civil rights movement, which presented the group as evidence for the harmful effect that poor race relations were having in the U.S.[292] In 1962, Los Angeles police raided one of the Nation's temples; one member was killed and seven injured, attracting national press attention. "[121] Those living in this perfect society will eat the finest food and wear clothes of silk interwoven with gold. The FBI's FOIA Library contains many files of public interest and historical value. The year I was born, my father joined the Nation of Islam. [93] The United States is equated with the city of Babylon as presented in the Bible. "[136] In these schools, boys and girls are taught separately;[222] pupils are only given two weeks of vacation each year. 10. [318] "Temples" were renamed "mosques," while "ministers" were renamed "imams. Growing up within the Nation of Islam, I was exposed to certain beliefs that, in retrospect, seem quite bizarre. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Al-Hijra Al-Hijra, the Islamic New Year, is the first day of the month of Muharram. Their time was up in 1914, and the 20th century was to be the time for Black people to assert themselves. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have accused it of being a black supremacist hate group that promotes racial prejudice towards white people, anti-semitism, and anti-LGBT rhetoric. Louis Farrakhans views on white people being the devil [88], In the Nation's teachings, Allah permitted the white race to rule the Earth for 6000 years, a period that is almost at an end. [45] As his helpers, he created more black men and took his place on a council of 24 imams; 12 greater and 12 lesser. [414], The Nation does not publicly reveal its membership numbers,[1] and in the past it had a high turnover among its members, some eventually evolving into becoming conventional Sunni Muslims. [462] Elijah Muhammad dismissed these objections by claiming that the "Old Islam" of his critics was "led by white people",[26] while Farrakhan has responded to such criticisms with his own critique of the mainstream Islamic world, accusing it of racism, of being obedient to the U.S. government, of engaging in sectarian violence, and of excessively relying on the hadith rather than the Quran. [78] Central to its view of the apocalypse is a large spaceship, known as the Wheel, the Mother Plane, or the Mother Ship. [318], He increasingly aligned the group with Sunni Islam, rejecting many of the Nation's idiosyncratic teachings,[319] including its claim that Fard was God, that Elijah Muhammad had been a prophet, the Myth of Yakub, and the claims about the Mother Plane. The Nation of Islam grew quickly after World War II, and in the early 1960s it achieved national prominence through the work of Malcolm X. After death, most Muslims . He drew on various sources, including Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple of America, black nationalist trends like Garveyism, and black-oriented forms of Freemasonry. 5. Don't miss the next installment in the "Life, Death, and Everything After" lecture series. [188], The NOI encourages its followers to live highly disciplined lifestyles, revolving around structure and order;[145] these conservative and ascetic approaches have led to followers being called "Black Puritans. [367] These sellers were given sales quotas to fulfil and were sometimes punished if they failed to meet them. [403] Gardell suggested that this was partly due to the Nation's focus on hard work and rigid morality, which helped improve the economic situation of its members, coupled with the broader growth of the African American middle-class in this period. [439] Far-right Jewish groups have gone further; the Jewish Defense League organized a "Death to Farrakhan" march in 1985, while the Jewish Defense Organization was found to have Farrakhan as the top name on its list of individuals it sought to kill. [293] In 1963, a schism in the Nation's Temple Number 7 in Harlem led to the creation of a new group, the Five Percent Nation of Islam. [353] [264] On joining the Nation of Islam, Fard Muhammad gave Poole the new name of Elijah Karriem. [424] In a 1993 speech at Kean College, the NOI representative Khalid Abdul Muhammad stated that White South Africans should be given 24 hours to leave their country, and all of those whites who are still in South Africa after that point should be killed;[425] Farrakhan censured him for the tone of this speech. [260] He wrote two manuals, the Secret Ritual of the Nation of Islam and the Teaching for the Lost Found Nation of Islam in a Mathematical Way. Muslim teachings were tied to Black nationalism by Noble Drew Ali, originally Timothy Drew (18861929), who founded the Moorish Science Temple of America in Newark, New Jersey, in 1913. [298] Another prominent NOI member was the boxer Muhammad Ali. Burying the dead is the method prescribed. These two sins are forbidden by Allah because they sow enmity, evil and discord among people and lead to destruction. "[125] It seeks to empower black people by giving them a positive self-identity,[126] purging ideas of white superiority, and black inferiority, from its followers. [76], There, the NOI claims, Yakub engaged in a selective breeding program to create the white race. [316] Wallace Muhammad had had a strained relationship with his father and his father's teachings; while imprisoned in the early 1960s he had moved closer to Sunni Islam and had left the Nation on several occasions during the 1960s and 1970s, having re-joined in 1974. Portrait of Allah the Father, a one-time member of the Nation of Islam who split from the group in 1963. In Islam, funeral rites are prescribed by the divine law. Get the best from CT editors, delivered straight to your inbox! In his classic work The Black Muslims in America (1961), religion scholar C. Eric Lincoln (1924 - 2000) argued that originally the Nation of Islam was less a religious movement than a protest movement against centuries of racial oppression. [81] The NOIs ideas regarding white people have been labelled both racist[82] and racialist. [201] He claimed that this would extend the human lifespan and that those who ate only once every 24 hours would live for 150 years and that those who ate once every seven days would live for 1,050 years. They formed two new organizations, both called the Nation of Islam, that continued the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. The official Nation of Islam app features live and on-demand programs and events including inspirational and insightful messages from the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and Nation of Islam Student Ministers. We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents are descendants from slaves to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own, either on this continent or elsewhere. [382] His government gave the Nation a $3 million interest-free loan in 1972 to purchase its Chicago South Side centre,[383] and another $5 million interest-free loan in 1985 to fund its black enterprise program. My name is W. D. Fard, and I come from the Holy City of Mecca. Farrakhan steadily gained nationwide support for his encouragement of African American business and his efforts to reduce drug abuse and poverty. This website is for people of various faiths who seek to understand Islam and Muslims. [174] Services typically begin with the statement "As-salamu alaykum" (peace be upon you), with the congregation responding "Wa 'alaikum As-salam" (and also upon you). During his incarceration, he officially became a member, joining a growing number of African American men for whom the nation signified community, identity, reform, and dignity. [406] The Nation was active in prison ministry by the 1950s, with its numbers of imprisoned followers rising steadily in the latter part of that decade;[407] many of its members, including Malcolm X, were recruited while in prison. Johnson and Butler were later arrested and also charged in the killing. [105], During the time when Malcolm X was a member and leader of the Nation of Islam, he preached that black people were genetically superior to white people but were dominated by a system of white supremacy: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to Black people. [415] By 1960, its membership was being estimated at between 30,000 and 100,000;[281] in his 1961 study of the group, the scholar C. Eric Lincoln suggested the higher estimate. [341] In 1981, Farrakhan's Nation held its first convention,[342] and its membership began to increase rapidly in the mid-1980s. The more I visited, the more I was drawn to what I heard, almost as if the Holy Spirit was confirming that this was what I was searching for all those years ago, when doubts about Fard Muhammads teachings first arose. This led to headline news which often identified the NOI as a "Voodoo cult". [86] They reject the Christian belief that Jesus was God, that he was the product of a virgin birth, or that he was crucified and resurrected.[87]. The Nation of Islam Research Group (NOIRG), which claims to serve as the NOI's "historical research department," is a leading source in publishing and promoting the NOI's virulently antisemitic and conspiratorial beliefs. [115], The Nation teaches that a period of deteriorating inter-racial tensions will culminate in the apocalypse. [396] During the 1990s, the Nation collaborated with members of the far-right LaRouche movement as part of their shared opposition to the U.S.-led Gulf War. [175] A lecture will be provided by one of the ministers. [172] As well as serving a religious function, these can also be used as a community center, bank, school, and child-care facility. Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad surrounded by members of the Fruits of Islam, speaks at a convention in Chicago, Illinois. [118] It will then use the baby planes to place bombs beneath the Earth's surface, which will explode and wipe out the old, white-dominated order. By Ishaq Husseini. [219] For the Nation, acquiring land and growing food is regarded as a means of building self-determination for African Americans. Wallace Fard Muhammad established the Nation of Islam in Detroit. The afterlife. [278] Elijah Muhammad claimed that Fard Muhammad had been the latest Allah and that he had now returned to his own realm, with Elijah Muhammad remaining on Earth as his messenger. [1] E.U. [281], During the Second World War, the FBI started monitoring the Nation;[282] FBI informants reported pro-Japanese sentiment being expressed at its meetings. [350] He played a key role in getting two of the country's largest gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, to sign a ceasefire in May 1992. beginning of the eternal spiritual life. For a while after my father died, our family maintained a lukewarm connection to Nation of Islam doctrine. [270] After this incident, Fard Muhammad gave Elijah Poole increasing powers, declaring him Supreme Minister of the Nation and renaming him Elijah Muhammad. [312] This included sowing discord between the Nation and the Black Panther Party, encouraging several incidents in which Black Panthers attacked NOI newspaper sellers. [90] The Nation teaches that Allah allowed all this to happen so that the black race would realise humanity's inner potential for evil and discover how to defeat it, thus enabling them to realize their divine capacity and become Gods. [84] Aware of their role in the future, Allah sent Moses to teach the white race to cook and wear clothes. It has attracted the famous, such as Mohammed Ali. 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