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March 8, 2007

Nation of Islam: History - Part 2

Originally this article was published in Family Security Matters and is reproduced with their permission.

Nation of Islam - What is it?

Part 2 (of 4)

By Adrian Morgan

Nation of Islam - The Path to Malcolm X

Part 2 (of 4)

When "Black Muslim" leaders such as Noble Ali Drew and Wallace Fard Muhammad were preaching, they were part of a phenomenon that had grown in the wake of abolition. Many poor blacks had been forced to migrate to find livelihoods, and in the cities of northeast America, where they faced discrimination, cults led by charismatic religious leaders flourished. These cults added a religious messianic dimension to the racial pride and Pan-Africanism of Marcus Garvey , W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.

Black Jews came into being before the Black Muslims - the first of their "churches" was the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of Truth for All Nations, founded by "prophet" F. S. Cherry in Chattanooga in 1886. On November 8, 1896, "prophet" William Saunders Crowdy (pictured above right) founded the "Church of God and Saints of Christ" in Lawrence, Kansas. The latter group practiced Jewish customs but melded them with Christian beliefs. Between 1919-1931, at least eight black Jewish groups were established in Harlem, New York. The most prominent of the Harlem Black Jews was Arnold J Ford, musical director for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association.

The emergence of Black Muslims in Detroit and Chicago followed many of the patterns of the Black Jews - including the fusion of their professed faith with aspects of Christianity and the belief that their leaders were "prophets". Following the ritual murder committed by one of Master Fard Muhammad's followers in November 1932, the Allah Temple of Islam aka the Lost-Found Nation of Islam gained notoriety.

The murderer, Robert Harris aka Robert Karriem, was eventually declared insane at his trial. His wife Bertha, who had originally been arrested as an accomplice to the killing, said that she had been terrorized by her husband, who had threatened to decapitate her and kill their two children. Harris/Karriem was not the first mentally unstable member of Fard Muhammad's group to make the news before being sent to the asylum at Eloise. In November 1931, Henry James Moaning, aka Ahmed Abdullah, had been declared insane by a court after he sent threatening letters to Detroit's mayor, Frank Murphy, and had broken into Murphy's apartment block. At that time, Murphy had been closing down "flop-houses" which provided accommodation for single men, many of whom were jobless and black.

Master Fard Muhammad and the secretary of ATI, Ugan Ali claimed following arrest that there was nothing in their sect which advocated "sacrificial rites". Fard was arrested on the morning of Wednesday, November 23, 1932, at the hotel where he lived on W. Jefferson Ave. A press report claimed that Fard told detectives that he was the "supreme being on earth." Fard was examined by immigration authorities. On Thursday, Ali's wife Lillie led a march to police HQ to have the two men freed. The following day a crisis meeting was held at the headquarters of the ATI, at 3408 Hastings Street. 200 members attended the venue, above a clothing store. Police reported that it was a "voodoo meeting".

During the day, Fard and Ali began a process of examination by doctors at the Psychopathic Ward of Detroit's Receiving Hospital. Five days later, it was concluded that though Ali was not "normal", Fard was not of unsound mind. By this time, the group had 8,000 members on its register. He left Detroit on a Chicago-bound train on December 7, 1932, and the ATI was nominally disbanded.

Fard came back to Detroit in January 1933. He was arrested on May 25, and ordered to leave the city. The official report states that Fard admitted that his teachings were "strictly a racket" and he was "getting all the money out of it he could." He returned to Chicago, where he was subsequently arrested for disturbing the peace as a result of his preachings.

The FBI accounts of Master Fard Muhammad and those of the Nation of Islam contradict each other, adding to the aura of mystery surrounding "Allah" and his time on earth. The FBI states he arrived from New Zealand in 1913 and had a British father and a Polynesian mother. He had spent time in Portland, Oregon and Seattle. In Los Angeles in 1920, while working as a restauranter, he fathered an illegitimate child to Hazel Barton. This son was named Wallace Max Ford. He was later killed at Linhaven Roads, Virginia, in August 1942 while serving as a US coast guard. Master Fard had been imprisoned for 3 years at San Quentin for peddling narcotics at his restaurant.

The FBI and the NoI agree on two issues - Fard disappeared in June 1934 and his birthday was February 25. According to his successor Elijah Muhammad aka Elijah Poole (pictured left), Fard returned to Mecca. Hazel Barton claimed he visited her to attempt a reconciliation, but being rebuffed he went back to New Zealand. In 1957, the FBI urged its various departments to examine their records, to see if Fard could be traced. No definitive proof of his whereabouts has ever been confirmed. At first, the NoI suspected foul play.

In the hands of Elijah Muhammad, the birthday of Fard became "Saviors Day". The somewhat flaky ideologies of Fard Muhammad became more outlandish. Fard had urged his followers to listen to broadcasts of Joseph Rutherford, president of the Jehovah's Witnesses, who claimed that the end of the "civilized" world had commenced in 1914. The notion of impending Armageddon had been preached by Fard, who had formerly claimed that if his followers ate certain foods and employed their time usefully, the world would be rid of evil by 1934. In his proselytizing, Elijah Muhammad continued the theme of an end to the evil civilization of the whites.

He spoke of a giant spaceship, called the "Wheel", which could inflict retribution on the evil white race, should they harm the Nation of Islam: "..THE WHEEL is in fact a ship (plane) made like a wheel. And it is made for the purpose of Allah (God) Carrying out His Aim upon this world. This WHEEL is by no means to be taken lightly!..."

"....The planes on this WHEEL will be sent down, earthward and are capable of destroying the world almost at once. THE WHEEL (the Mother Plane) is capable of carrying many people in it! The Wheel is 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile in size. The Wheel is capable of sitting up above earth's atmosphere for a whole year before coming down into earth's atmosphere to take on more oxygen and hydrogen for the people who are on this plane (THE WHEEL) O she is a wonderful thing!"

If the Black Man created the heavens and the earth.. AND THE BLACK MAN DID CREATE THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH... then what man is fool enough to challenge the Black Man... VENUS AND MARS... you cannot use Venus and Mars. The people on Mars will not you light (land) on Mars. If they do let you land on Mars, they will be silly to do so... YOU would like to see what the people on Mars look like. That is not, say, impossible. O WHEEL... the greatest mechanical defender, powered by the Spirit of Allah, to Protect us, the BLACK PEOPLE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH.""

These bizarre themes have recently been continued by Louis Farrakhan, a former Calypso singer called Louis Eugene Walcott from St Kitts, who joined the Nation of Islam in 1955: "Seventy-one years ago, before you knew anything about Mars, Master Fard Muhammad called Mars an inhabited planet. He said Mars is 141,500,000 miles from the sun, and she travels at the rate of 1,037-1/3 miles per hour. He said her diameter is 4,200 miles. Master Fard Muhammad said Mercury is also an inhabited planet and is 36,000,000 miles from the sun. Her diameter is 3,000 miles and she travels at the rate of 1,037-1/3 miles per hour. Think about that. No matter how close they are to the sun or how far they are from the sun, all of the planets travel at the same rate of speed."

"Master Fard Muhammad said Jupiter is 483,000,000 miles from the sun. She takes eleven years and nine months to make one complete circle around the sun; her diameter is 88,700 miles; Saturn is 886,000,000 miles from the sun; Uranus, 1,782,000,000; Neptune, 2,793,000,000 miles from the sun; and the far planet Platoon, or Pluto, 4,600,000,000 miles from the sun."

"Pluto [called "Platoon" by Fard] was first discovered in the year 1930, the same year that Master Fard Muhammad found you and me. How far is Pluto from the sun? Four billion, six hundred million miles. In this figure, you have the numerals four and six.""

The emphasis on numbers and mathematics was seen as a way for the Nation of Islam to combat the "tricknology" of the white devils. Fard's handwritten booklets were only available to a select few - only one of these had been printed, entitled "Teachings for the Lost Found Nation of Islam in a Mathematical Way- consisting of Thirty-Four Problems."

Other works by Fard were guarded carefully - "Secret Ritual of the Nation of Islam" had to be memorized by each member. This came in two parts, with the first comprising 14 sections, and the second, 40 sections. The mosques or "Temples" practiced strict segregation between men and women. It was compulsory for male members to be searched upon entering. The paramilitary guardians of the Temples were the smartly-dressed members of the so-called "Fruit of Islam".

The first Temple of the Nation of Islam was situated at 11529 Linwood Ave. In either late 1933 or the start of 1934, Temple No 2 was founded at 7351 S. Stony Island, Chicago. This was set up by Fard and Elijah Muhammad. By the time Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, there were 75 Temples across America.

In 1952, Malcolm Little (above right), a young man originally from Omaha with a traumatic past, met Elijah Muhammad at Detroit. At the age of four, Little's family home had been torched by white racists. Two years later his father was killed in a suspicious streetcar accident. His mother had been incarcerated in a mental asylum while he was a teenager. A petty criminal, Little had been exposed to Nation of Islam beliefs while in prison. He soon changed his name, and became a NoI mosque leader in Boston and then Harlem. By the end of the decade, he would be the main spokesman for the NoI, known by the name Malcolm X.

Malcolm X would later evolve beyond the narrow ideological confines of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, and for this he would pay with his life.

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Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at March 8, 2007 11:14 AM

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