Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African-American Islamic Thought

Chapter 4: Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975) and the Absolutism of Black Particularistic Islam

Chapter 4 Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975) and the Absolutism of Black Particularistic Islam INTRODUCTION Like Blyden and Drew Ali, Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Elijah Muhammad viewed Islam as a religious alternative to Christianity that fostered a positive sense of black pride and advanced the fight for black liberation. Muhammad, who led the NOI from the 1930s until his death in 1975, also saw Islam as the “natural” religion of blacks. In fact, as I argue below, he did not distinguish between being black and being Muslim: for Muhammad, these identities were identical. Muhammad’s particularistic vision, however, was far darker than that of Blyden or Drew Ali. Unlike his predecessors, he did not share the hope for a rapprochement between blacks and whites. Instead, Elijah Muhammad embraced an absolutist particularism, espousing a fire-and-brimstone approach to race relations. Whites were the devil, Muhammad taught, and both they and their civilization would perish in the coming Apocalypse. Muhammad based these millennialist beliefs on the teachings of W. D. Fard, who appeared to him in early 1930s Detroit. Fard, Muhammad believed, was God in the flesh; Muhammad understood himself to be His Messenger. He believed that Fard had chosen him to “mentally resurrect” the “black man” through the propagation of Islam. Muhammad’s mission of Islamic renewal, however, encompassed more than the mere reconversion of African Americans to their “original” faith. Being a Muslim, Muhammad taught, also meant exhibiting a high moral character, industriousness, and independence . Hence, Muhammad advocated a strict code of ethical behavior, an 63 economic program of self-help, and the rejection of white American national identity. Unlike Drew Ali, Muhammad was familiar with many Old World Islamic traditions and texts, and synthesized them with his own prophetic vision. But as the Nation of Islam gained more national prominence during the 1950s, his synthetic vision came under fire from a number of Muslims outside of the movement. When these attacks on Muhammad’s Islamic authenticity became more frequent in the late 1950s and 1960s, he faced an important choice between abandoning parts of his particularistic vision or risking his Islamic legitimacy among non-movement Muslims . He chose the latter, entrenching himself even more deeply in his own prophetic authority. This chapter begins with the emergence of Muhammad’s thought by placing him within the general context of African-American Christianity and more specifically within the history of millennial dispensationalism so central to the black Protestantism of his youth. After outlining the experiences that led to Muhammad’s conversion to W. D. Fard’s Nation of Islam during the Great Depression, I depict the immigrant Muslim milieu in which Muhammad may have gained much of his knowledge about Islam. The following section then shows how Muhammad combined these Islamic influences in the postwar era with the dispensationalism of his youth, a fascination with UFOs, and other elements to form a unique body of African-American Islamic thought. Finally, I discuss Muhammad ’s decision in the 1960s to dismiss the criticism of non-movement Muslims, and in effect, to rid his own version of Islam of any universalism whatsoever. THE BLACK CHRISTIANITY OF ELIJAH’S YOUTH AND THE DISPENSATIONALIST IDEA Born in 1897 in Sandersville, Georgia, Elijah actually grew up in Cordele, a town whose race relations were governed by the system of Jim Crow segregation that arose in the post-Reconstruction South. Elijah had come into the world just one year after the Supreme Court ruled in the famous Plessy v. Ferguson case that segregation in public accommodation could be “separate, but equal.” Plessy codified what had already been happening in the South since the presidential election of 1876, after which blacks were systematically denied the right to the ballot, to equal opportunity, and to due process. Lynchings were not uncommon. In the midst of this 64 Islam in Black America depressing scene, African Americans still struggled to support themselves and to find meaning and dignity in their lives. The Black Church, dominated by the Baptists and Methodists, played the most vital role in the survival process. Young Elijah knew the Church’s importance firsthand, since his father, William, was a Baptist preacher. According to Muhammad, his father’s sermons, like others of the period, were often apocalyptic in nature , although his son constantly questioned his religious beliefs, including his scriptural interpretations.1 Given Elijah’s later teachings, it seems likely that the...