Elijah Muhammad and Islam

3. Elijah Muhammad and the Qur'an

53 3 Elijah Muhammad and the Qur’an The question of whether the religious movement Elijah Muhammad led for so long is “Islamic” is a challenging one. Were one to focus on doctrines such as the incarnation of Allah in the form of Fard Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad’s own status as the Messenger of Allah, the denial of the resurrection and contemporary nature of heaven and hell, the racial framing of Islam, and the focus on the racial conflict in the United States, it would certainly seem that Elijah Muhammad led a movement that was fairly unislamic.1 A comparison with the five principles of Islam—belief in Allah (including that he does not take material form), in angels, in prophets (the last of which is Muhammad), in scriptures, and in the Last Day (which involves the resurrection of the dead, judgment, and being assigned to heaven or hell)—seems to confirm that appearance. Yet were one to observe instead members of the Nation of Islam identifying themselves as Muslims, worshipping a deity called Allah, praying five times a day, abstaining from pork and alcohol, and, most importantly, using the same scripture used by other Muslims, the Qur’an, one might come to the opposite conclusion. Even those problematic doctrines detailed above find support in the Qur’an, according to Elijah Muhammad. This scripture is generally believed by Muslims to be the literal, eternal, incorruptible, and inimitable speech of Allah revealed to Muhammad the Prophet via the angel Gabriel. That Elijah Muhammad claimed the Qur’an to support his formulation of Islam vexed his Muslim opponents, for they asserted proprietary rights over its interpretation, and it puzzled his would-be African American converts, for they had no familiarity with this text. Some African slaves in the early days of the nation had been wellversed enough to be able to reproduce the Qur’an from memory in writing after many years of enslavement. However, not until Drew Ali introduced his Circle Seven Koran and Elijah Muhammad promulgated the Qur’an was the word “Qur’an,” much less the text itself, widely known by 54 Elijah Muhammad and the Qur’an African Americans. It will clarify the context within which Elijah Muhammad disseminated knowledge of the Qur’an if we examine Drew Ali’s Circle Seven Koran and Elijah Muhammad’s use of the Bible. This context highlights Elijah Muhammad’s unique and evolving relationship with the scripture of Islam. The Circle Seven Koran As we have seen, Drew Ali founded the Canaanite Temple in 1913 in Newark , New Jersey, and fifteen years later it evolved into the Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc. He claimed that years earlier, in Egypt or in Mecca, his prophethood became manifest as a book: The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America. (To avoid confusion, The Holy Koran of Noble Drew Ali will be referred to as the Circle Seven Koran, the name used by his early followers because of the symbol on the cover.) It has also been asserted that this book was first published in 1916, but scholar Peter Lamborn Wilson suggests that there was no printed edition prior to 1927.2 Chapters 2 to 19 are very lightly edited material from The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ by Levi H. Dowling, published in 1908.3 However , more telling are chapters 20 to 44, which come from a Rosicrucian book entitled Unto Thee I Grant, by Sri Ramatherio, whose original publication may date back to 1760 but whose 1925 revision seems to be the one employed by Drew Ali.4 Both of these originals were eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pseudepigrapha; the former claims to recount Jesus’ ministry in India and Egypt prior to his ministry in Galilee; and the latter consists of instructions on social and communal relationships, morality , and theology. The final chapters, 45 to 48, with their more numerous spelling and grammatical errors, seem to have been composed by Drew Ali himself. In these final chapters, Drew Ali outlines his view of Moorish history, including the origin of the Asiatic nation, the birth of Christianity in Rome, and the Canaanite origin of Egypt, the capital of the “Empire of the Dominion of Africa.” He closes with an assertion of his prophetic mission . Except for the use of the name “Allah” and two minor references to Muhammad (as the “founder of uniting of Islam” and as he who “fulfilled the works of Jesus of Nazareth”),5 the contents of...