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The Canon · No. 102

Nation of Islam

NOI

1930 CE – present · Abrahamic · Living · United States, chiefly urban centres

VII. THE MODERN AGE — 1800 – 1945

How many

Estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000. Its historical influence on Black American life vastly exceeds its membership.

Who began it

Wallace D. Fard (Fard Muhammad), a door-to-door salesman in Detroit who began teaching in 1930 and disappeared in 1934. Elijah Muhammad (Elijah Poole, 1897–1975) led it for four decades.

What it is for

To restore what it presented as the original religion and dignity of Black Americans, and to build economic and social independence from white America.

What it worships

Allah. The Nation taught that Fard was Allah in person and Elijah Muhammad his messenger — both positions that place it decisively outside mainstream Islamic belief, which holds God to be incorporeal and Muhammad the final prophet.

What it holds

The original human being was Black; the white race was created 6,000 years ago by a scientist named Yakub through selective breeding, and was permitted a period of dominance now ending. Black people in America are the lost tribe of Shabazz. Separation, not integration, is the remedy. Economic self-reliance, strict personal discipline, and the reclamation of the self from the slave name — hence the surname X, marking the African name that was taken.

What it does

Rigorous personal conduct: no alcohol, tobacco, drugs, pork or extramarital sex. Modest dress; suits and bow ties for men. The Fruit of Islam, a disciplined male order. One meal a day and the dietary teaching of How to Eat to Live. Business ownership; farms, bakeries, newspapers and schools. Prison ministry, which has been the movement's most effective recruiting ground and, by many accounts, a genuinely successful rehabilitation programme.

After death

The Nation under Elijah Muhammad taught that there is no afterlife of the conventional sort — heaven and hell are conditions on this earth, and resurrection means the mental resurrection of Black people from ignorance. This is a striking departure from both Christian and Islamic teaching, and Warith Deen Muhammad's later reforms replaced it with standard Sunni eschatology.

Its texts

The Quran and Bible, read through the movement's own lens. Elijah Muhammad's Message to the Blackman in America and How to Eat to Live. The Final Call newspaper.

Its branches

The Nation of Islam under Farrakhan; the far larger community of American Muslims who followed Warith Deen Muhammad into Sunni Islam; several smaller splinters.

Of note

The Nation's real historical weight is that it produced Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, and that its most consequential act was its own leadership deciding in 1975 that its founding doctrine was false and abandoning it.

Its timeline

  1. 1930 CE Fard begins teaching in Detroit.
  2. 1934 CE Fard disappears; Elijah Muhammad takes leadership.
  3. 1942–46 CE Elijah Muhammad imprisoned for draft resistance.
  4. <strong>1952–1964 CE</strong> Malcolm X joins after converting in prison and becomes the Nation's national spokesman, growing it from a few hundred to tens of thousands. He is the most compelling public voice for Black self-determination in America.
  5. 1964 CE Malcolm leaves after learning of Elijah Muhammad's conduct, performs the hajj, and — encountering Muslims of every colour at Mecca — publicly repudiates the racial doctrine and converts to Sunni Islam.
  6. <strong>21 February 1965 CE</strong> Malcolm X is assassinated in Manhattan. Two of the three men convicted were exonerated in 2021.
  7. 1964 CE Cassius Clay becomes Muhammad Ali; his 1967 refusal of the draft on religious grounds costs him his title and three years of his career, and is vindicated by the Supreme Court in 1971.
  8. <strong>1975–76 CE</strong> Elijah Muhammad dies. His son Warith Deen Muhammad takes over and dismantles the entire racial theology, moving the community into mainstream Sunni Islam and eventually dissolving the organisation. It is one of the most remarkable doctrinal reversals in modern religious history.
  9. 1977–78 CE Louis Farrakhan rebuilds the original Nation of Islam on Elijah Muhammad's teachings.
  10. 1995 CE The Million Man March in Washington, convened by Farrakhan.
  11. Present Farrakhan's statements about Jews have been repeatedly condemned as antisemitic by the ADL, the SPLC and mainstream civil rights organisations.

Sources

Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.

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