Elijah Muhammad

• Born: 7 October 1897
• Birthplace: Sandersville, Georgia
• Died: 25 February 1975
• Best Known As: Nation of Islam leader, 1934-1975

Name at birth: Elija Pool or Elijah Poole

The self-proclaimed "Messenger of Allah," Elijah Muhammad was the leader of the Nation of Islam from 1934 until he died in 1975. He grew up outside of Macon, Georgia, but in 1923 he brought his family to Detroit, Michigan. There he joined a number of activist organizations, including Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). After 1931 Muhammad was a close associate of W. D. Fard (later known as Master Fard Muhammad), the founder of the Nation of Islam ("Black Muslim") organization. Fard gave Elijah the name Elijah Muhammad (replacing the "slave name" Poole), and Elijah Muhammad became second only to Fard in the organization in just a few years. Fard disappeared in 1933 and the next year Elijah Muhammad opened a mosque in Chicago as the de facto leader of the Nation of Islam. Fard was declared the personification of Allah on earth, and Elijah Muhammad declared himself Allah's messenger. By the end of his long life, Elijah Muhammad was credited with introducing Islam to hundreds of thousands of black Americans, but pilloried by some for his anti-white theology and immoderate lifestyle. He was also the subject of scrutiny for various branches of law enforcement for most of his adult life, and spent nearly four years in jail during World War II because he didn't support the U.S. war effort. His most famous followers are Malcolm X, who split from the Nation of Islam in 1964 and was murdered in 1965 (by Elijah Muhammad's followers, some say), and Louis Farrakhan, who joined the Nation of Islam in the 1950s and revived it in the late 1970s, after Elijah's death.

He married Clara Evans in 1919 and they had eight children... After Elijah Muhammad's death, his son, Warith (neé Wallace) Deen Muhammad, took over and turned toward more traditional Sunni Islamic beliefs, while distancing himself from the black separatist movement and its anti-white rhetoric. Farrakhan, however, continued to preach the divinity of Master Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad, as well as their less orthodox Islamic beliefs. Farrakhan's branch continued the name Nation of Islam, and W. Deen Muhammad's branch became what is now called the Muslim American Society.

For more information on Elijah Muhammad, visit Britannica.com.

Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) was the leader of the Nation of Islam ("Black Muslims") during their period of greatest growth in the mid-20th century. He was a major advocate of independent, black-operated businesses, institutions, and religion.

Elijah Muhammad was born Elijah (or Robert) Poole on October 7, 1897, near Sandersville, Georgia. His parents were ex-slaves who worked as sharecroppers on a cotton plantation; his father was also a Baptist preacher. As a youngster Elijah worked in the fields and on the railroad, but he left home at age 16 to travel and work at odd jobs. He settled in Detroit in 1923, working on a Chevrolet assembly line.

Poole and his two brothers became early disciples of W.D. Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam. Fard, of mysterious background, appeared in Detroit in 1930, selling silk goods and telling his customers in Detroit's African American ghetto of their ancestral "homeland" across the seas. Soon Fard began holding meetings in homes, and then in rented halls, telling his listeners tales purporting to describe their nonwhite kin in other lands and urging them to emulate these brothers and sisters in such matters as dress and diet. Fard proclaimed Islam the one correct religion for African Americans, denouncing Christianity as the religion of the slavemasters. His meetings became dominated by his bitter denunciations of the white race. Soon Fard announced the opening of the Temple of Islam. It featured much antiwhite invective and embodied an unorthodox form of Islam, but the movement also emphasized African American self-help and education.

Fard disappeared, as mysteriously as he had arrived, in the summer of 1934. The movement he had founded quickly developed several factions, the most important of which was led by Poole, who had become a top lieutenant to Fard and whose name along the way had been changed to Elijah Muhammad. The movement had long had a policy of requiring members to drop their "slave" names.

Settling in Chicago, away from hostile Muslim factions in Detroit, Muhammad built what quickly became the most important center of the movement. Chicago soon featured not only a Temple of Islam, but a newspaper called Muhammad Speaks, a University of Islam (actually a private elementary and high school), and several movement-owned apartment houses, grocery stores, and restaurants. Temples were opened in other cities, and farms were purchased so that ritually pure food could be made available to members. The movement was a sharply disciplined one. Members had strict rules to follow regarding eating (various foods, such as pork, were forbidden), smoking and drinking (both banned), dress and appearance (conservative, neat clothing and good grooming were required), and all kinds of personal behavior (drugs, the use of profanity, gambling, listening to music, and dancing were all outlawed).

Muhammad also revised the theology of the movement. Under his system, Fard was proclaimed the earthly incarnation of Allah, the Muslim name for God; (Elijah) Muhammad was his divinely-appointed prophet. Muhammad also taught that blacks constituted the original human beings, but that a mad black scientist named Yakub had created a white beast through genetic manipulation and that whites had been given a temporary dispensation to govern the world. That period, however, was due to end soon; now the time was at hand for blacks to resume their former dominant role. It was understood that violent war would be likely before the transition could be completed. In the meantime, Muhammad advocated an independent nation for African Americans.

In 1942 Muhammad was one of a group of militant African American leaders arrested on charges of sedition, conspiracy, and violation of the draft laws. He was accused of sympathizing with the Japanese during World War II and of encouraging his members to resist the military draft. He had, indeed, argued that all nonwhites are oppressed by whites, and that it made no sense for African Americans to fight those who were victims of white racism as much as they themselves were. Muhammad was certainly no pacifist, but he argued that the only war in which African Americans should participate would be the coming "Battle of Armageddon," in which blacks would reassert their rightful superiority. For his words and actions Muhammad spent four years, from 1942 to 1946, in federal prison at Milan, Michigan.

Factions occasionally withdrew from Muhammad's movement. In the early 1960s Muhammad came to be overshadowed by the charismatic Malcolm X, leader of the New York Temple. Tensions between Malcolm X and Muhammad's leadership grew; finally, after Malcolm X commented that John F. Kennedy's assassination was a case of "the chickens coming home to roost," Muhammad suspended him. Shortly thereafter, in 1964, Malcolm X founded his own movement, which moved toward a more orthodox form of Islam. However, Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965.

Elijah Muhammad died on February 25, 1975. After his death the leadership of his movement passed to his son, Wallace (now Warith) Deen Muhammad. The younger Muhammad renamed the movement the World Community of Al-Islam in the West, and then the American Muslim Mission; he also began to call blacks "Bilalians," after Bilal, who was said to have been an African follower of the prophet Muhammad. Warith Muhammad relaxed the strict dress code, abandoned resistance to military service, encouraged members to vote and to salute the flag, and even opened the movement to whites. In general, he made the movement much more conventionally Islamic.

Many members were disturbed at the movement's new, moderate direction and withdrew to form more traditionalist splinter groups. The most important of them retained the old name, the Nation of Islam, and was led by Louis Farrakhan (born Louis Eugene Walcott of British West Indian parents in 1934). Farrakhan generally retained Elijah Muhammad's ideas and practices, including the strict behavioral rules. He achieved prominence when he became a major adviser to Jesse Jackson during the latter's presidential campaign in 1984. At that time Farrakhan aroused controversy, particularly for his reported death threats directed at Jackson's Jewish critics.

Further Reading

The life and role of Elijah Muhammad are prominently discussed in the first thorough study of the Nation of Islam, C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (1961). His own principal work is Message to the Blackman in America (1965). Basic information can also be found in Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965). Information on Muhammad's life and ideas can be found in a number of books and articles on Black religion in America. See, for example, Henry J. Young, "Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975): Messenger of Allah," Major Black Religious Leaders Since 1940 (1979). For an interesting interpretation of the role of Fard, see Wallace D. Muhammad, "Self-Government in the New World," in Milton C. Sernett, editor, Afro-American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (1985).

religious leader

Personal Information

Born Elijah Poole, October 7, 1897, in Sandersville, GA; name changed to Elijah Muhammad, c. 1931; died of heart and respiratory ailments, February 25, 1975; son of Wali (a Baptist preacher and sharecropper) and Marie (a sharecropper) Poole; married Clara Evans, 1919; children: eight.
Religion: Nation of Islam.

Career

Worked as a laborer in Georgia and Detroit, 1913-30; met, worked for, and studied under Wallace D. Fard, 1930-34; established Southside Mosque in Chicago, IL, 1932; became leader of Nation of Islam on Fard's disappearance, 1934-75; violated Selective Service Act by exhorting followers to avoid the draft, 1942; worked to build self-reliant black enterprise under Nation of Islam banner, mid-1960s-1975. Author of Message to the Black Man in America, published by United Brothers.

Life's Work

"During our colored and Negro days, he was Black." So said Jesse Jackson shortly after the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's death on February 25, 1975. Elijah Muhammad was a fearless critic of white America at a time when blacks who questioned the status quo had much to fear. Known as the Messenger of Allah to the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in North America, his Temple of Islam mixed black nationalism with a program of economic self-improvement and the dietary and prayer laws of traditional Islam. Muhammad and his movement pioneered an interest in black history, emphasized black pride, and practiced black entrepreneurship and self-reliance.

Elijah Muhammad was born Elijah Poole on October 7, 1897, in rural Sandersville, Georgia. His parents, Wali and Marie Poole, were former slaves who worked as sharecroppers. His father was a Baptist preacher. Young Elijah went to school through the fourth grade and learned the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic before economic conditions forced him to join the rest of his family working in the fields.

There was little future there for one of thirteen children, so at the age of sixteen he left home. In 1919 he married Clara Evans, and in 1923, he, Clara, and their two young children moved to Detroit, joining a mass of African Americans who migrated north seeking jobs after World War I. There, he held a series of jobs--including a stint on a Chevrolet assembly line--before the Great Depression hit and devastated the U.S. economy.

In 1930 he came under the influence of Wallace D. Fard, the founder and charismatic leader of the Nation of Islam. Fard had appeared in Detroit in the summer of that year, selling raincoats and later silks. He charmed his customers with tales of black history and showed them--through ingenious interpretations of the Bible--that Islam, not Christianity, was the religion of black men in Asia and Africa. Fard's message struck a chord, and his initial sessions grew to gatherings in homes and then to mass assemblies in a hall that he and his followers hired and named the Temple of Islam.

Each person wishing to join the temple was required to write a letter asking for his original (Islamic) name to replace the slave name the white man gave his ancestors. When Elijah Poole and his two brothers applied for names, they neglected to indicate that they were related. The prophet--as Fard was called--inadvertently gave them three different surnames: Sharrieff, Karriem, and Muhammad.

Once accepted, Elijah Karriem--as Poole was then called--devoted himself to Fard and the movement. Opposed by moderates, he nevertheless became Fard's most trusted lieutenant. Fard acknowledged his higher status by renaming him Elijah Muhammad and appointing him chief minister of Islam.

In 1932 Fard sent Muhammad to Chicago to established the Southside Mosque, which was later called Temple No. 2. Muhammad was successful in that venture, but at the same time back in Detroit, Fard was being harassed by the police. C. Eric Lincoln, author of The Black Muslims in America, quoted Muhammad's recollection of the events: "He [Fard] was persecuted, sent to jail in 1932, and ordered out of Detroit, Michigan, May 26, 1933.... He came to Chicago in the same year, [was] arrested almost immediately and placed behind prison bars. He submitted himself with all humility to his persecutors. Each time he was arrested he sent for me that I ... [might] see and learn the price of truth for us (the so-called Negroes)."

Fard was not the only object of police interest. Muhammad himself was arrested in 1934 when he refused to transfer his children from the movement's school, the University of Islam, to a public school. Tried in Detroit, he was found guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and placed on six months' probation.

Likewise, the police were not the only organization harassing the Nation of Islam. Communists, anti-union, pro-Ethiopian, and pro-Japanese elements all tried to take over the movement for their own ends. Despite these pressures, Fard established effective organization, implemented ritual and worship, founded the University of Islam school for Muslim children, and instituted the Fruit of Islam, a paramilitary organization meant to protect the organization from police and other unbelievers.

When Fard disappeared in June of 1934, most saw Muhammad, his chief minister, as a natural successor. But Detroit was filled with rivals, so Muhammad returned to Chicago and Temple No. 2. There he set up new headquarters and began to reshape the movement under his own highly militant leadership. He equated Fard with "Allah" and instituted prayers and sacrifices to Fard. He also assumed the mantle of "Prophet," which "Allah" had worn during his mission in Detroit.

The five-foot five-inch tall, thin-voiced Muhammad was physically an unlikely leader of a mass movement. But what he lacked in physical stature he more than made up for in intensity and radicalism. Whites, according to Muhammad, had forced the present intolerable situation on blacks, but the black man had allowed it to continue by remaining "in a land not his own." According to Muhammad, separation was the only answer. The separation Muhammad was talking about was not the "back to Africa" movement that black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey had proposed a generation previously. Lincoln quoted Muhammad as saying that what he and the Nation of Islam wanted was "some of the land our fathers and mothers paid for in 300 years of slavery."

According to Muhammad, blacks were the original, superior race of humans on earth. The tribe of Shabazz--the black race--began when an explosion divided the earth and the moon sixty-six trillion years ago. Whites, Muhammad claimed, were created by the evil magician Yakub. Yakub had grafted the weaker of two germs that exist within blacks, and the end product of his biological experiment was the white race. As a result of their unnatural creation, whites were thought to be evil and degraded. Muhammad believed that the white man's reign on earth was to last 6,000 years before Allah came, at which time the white race would reach its end. The Nation of Islam views the coming of Allah as the coming of the Supreme Black Man, the Supreme Being among a mighty nation of divine black men.

The Nation of Islam became known for fostering black pride and self-sufficiency among its predominantly young, male, lower-class members. Muhammad promoted an effective program of good health, self-improvement, and moral guidelines for members of the movement to follow. Alcohol, tobacco, and the "slave diet" of pork and cornbread were prohibited; one meal of fresh food was encouraged; male members were required to recruit new followers to the faith; and a strict code of marital fidelity was enforced. Muhammad also encouraged members to improve themselves economically and provided schooling and training in business enterprises to assist them in attaining the goal of financial independence. "Put your brains to thinking for self;" The Black Muslims in America quoted him as saying, "your feet to walking in the direction of self; your hands to working for self and your children.... Stop begging for what others have and help yourself to some of this good earth.... We must go for ourselves.... This calls for the unity of us all to accomplish it!"

Throughout the 1930s, Muhammad and his staff continued to build temples in the heart of the black ghetto, where, according to The Black Muslims in America , "the illusion of a 'Black Nation' within a surrounding and hostile 'White nation'" takes on a semblance of reality. During World War II the authorities saw the Nation of Islam's separatist ideology as a threat to the war effort. In 1942 Muhammad was arrested and charged with sedition and violation of the Selective Service Act. Cleared of sedition charges, he was convicted of exhorting his followers to avoid the draft. He spent the remaining years of the war in a federal prison in Milan, Michigan, where he was able to control the movement from his prison quarters.

Small, thin, and suffering from asthma and bronchitis, Muhammad was nevertheless able to keep the movement going. His column in the Pittsburgh Courier was widely read and commented on in the black community. In the late 1940s, Malcolm Little joined the movement while serving in a Massachusetts prison. Renamed Malcolm X, he became Muhammad's chief disciple and bore Muhammad's message across the country. According to Newsweek, Malcolm "put the little kingdom of Allah on the map."

By 1960 the Nation of Islam had 69 temples or missions in 27 states. Tiny compared to conventional churches, its growth nevertheless became a worry to both conservatives and liberals. The conservative newsweekly U.S. News & World Report played on racial fears with a 1959 article called "Black Supremacy Cult in U.S.--How Much Of A Threat?" Among liberals, NAACP Chief Council Thurgood Marshall, probably smarting from Nation of Islam criticism, told the New York Times that the movement was "run by a bunch of thugs organized from prisons and jails and financed, I am sure by [Egyptian nationalist leader Gamal Abdel] Nasser or some Arab group."

But while many criticized the Nation of Islam's rhetoric, its positive effects could not be overlooked. Even Newsweek admitted that behind the discourse on "White devils," there was an inspirational message. "The real heart of Muhammad's message was the worth, the competence and the solidarity of Black people. He urged them to express it through a meld of puritan morals (no cigarettes, liquor, drugs or non-marital sex) and Protestant work ethics."

Despite or maybe because of the movement's tremendous growth, some say a rift had developed and that Muhammad was looking for an opportunity to put Malcolm X in his place. That opportunity came in November of 1963 when Malcolm told a Black Muslim rally at Manhattan Center that the assassination of President Kennedy was an instance of "the chickens coming home to roost." While Malcolm's statement was not against the Nation of Islam dogma, it was not the kind of utterance Muhammad wanted him to make in public. As punishment Malcolm was silenced for 90 days.

Malcolm accepted the punishment, but on March 8, 1964, he broke with Muhammad, telling the press that he was leaving the Muslims to organize his own party. According to the New York Times, Muhammad's reaction to Malcolm's schism was both angry and regretful. "Malcolm's plans have had no effect at all on the movement. My work is divine work and people believe in what I am teaching of the resurrection from the death--the mental death of my people. Anyone who deviates from Islam is a hypocrite."

After Malcolm X was assassinated in February of 1965, Muhammad kept close to his Chicago mansion, giving few interviews and rarely appearing in public. When he did appear it was in the company of hundreds of Fruit of Islam security guards. Mostly he worked in the Nation of Islam offices, planning recruitment strategies and tending to the movement's growing network of businesses, farmlands, and restaurants.

In the early 1970s, an increasing radicalism made itself felt in the movement. A January 1972 shootout between police and a Louisiana Nation of Islam splinter group brought to light a split in the movement. According to Newsweek, younger activists such as the Young Muslims in Chicago, Saudi Arabia in New York, and El Colistrand in Oakland, California, were disenchanted with the $1.5 million the Nation of Islam was spending on mansions for Muhammad, his family, and his aids in Chicago. Muhammad responded to the rebellions like the elder statesman he by then was. "I think there is some little splinter group that sometimes wants to go out for themselves and be big boys," he told Newsweek, "and so they take chances sometimes, and sometimes they stub their toes and they have to go back home and bandage them up. By that time, we're back where we was."

On January 30, 1975, Elijah entered Mercy Hospital in Chicago suffering from heart trouble, bronchitis, asthma, and diabetes. He died on February 25th. In a 1989 article for The Final Call titled "Allah's Promise," Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan eulogized Muhammad and called on black men and women to see the value of his words: "This modern era of Black consciousness was inaugurated by Muslims.... We became Muslims because Master Fard Muhammad came and raised up the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and gave him a methodology that enabled him to reach a spiritually and mentally dead people and raise us to spiritual and mental life."

Farrakhan continued: "Elijah Muhammad was indeed a friend of the Black man and woman. He worked, suffered, studied, and constantly prayed for our rise. He sacrificed his own personal life to devote 44 years to the rise of our people. He singlehandedly, with tenaciousness of will and singleness of purpose, turned the language of America from use of the word 'Negro,' which means something dead, lifeless and hard, into seeing ourselves as Black people, members of the aboriginal nation of the Earth.... He more than any religious leader is responsible for causing us to refer to one another as brothers and sisters."

Further Reading

Books

• Lincoln, C. Eric, The Black Muslims in America, Greenwood Press, 1982.
• The Negro Almanac: A Reference Work on the African American, edited by Harry A. Ploski and James Williams, 5th edition, Gale, 1989.
• Young, Henry J., Major Black Religious Leaders, Abingdon, 1979.

• The Final Call, January 15, 1989.
• Newsweek, January 31, 1972; March 10, 1975.
• New York Times, February 26, 1975.
• New York Times Magazine, March 22, 1964.
• Reporter, August 4, 1960.
• Time, March 10, 1975.
• U.S. News & World Report, November 9, 1959.

— Jordan Wankoff

Elijah Muhammad
Giving a speech in 1964.
Born	October 7, 1897(1897-10-07) Sandersville, Georgia
Died	February 24, 1975 Chicago, Illinois
Occupation	Leader of the Nation of Islam
Religious beliefs	Nation of Islam
Spouse(s)	Clara Muhammad

Elijah Muhammad (born Elijah Poole, October 7, 1897 - February 24, 1975) led the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Conversion 3 Leading the Nation of Islam 4 Women and children 5 Split with Malcolm X 6 Teachings 7 Leadership 8 Legacy 9 Honors 10 Controversy 10.1 Malcolm X 10.2 Hanafi Murders 10.3 Racism 11 See also 12 Notes 13 External links

Early life

Elijah Poole was born in rural Sandersville, Georgia, the sixth child of 13 children of Willie Poole, Sr. (1868–1942), a Baptist pastor, and Mariah Hall (1873–1958). Both were sharecroppers. By the fourth grade, Poole left school to join his family working in the fields. By 16 he had left home to work in factories and businesses in the area. In 1917, at 20, Poole married Clara Evans, later to be known as Sister Clara Muhammad.

In 1923 Poole and his extended family joined the Great Migration of African Americans leaving the rural southeast and moving to the industrial north. Poole later remembered that before the age of 20, he had witnessed three lynchings of blacks by whites in rural Georgia. He later said he had "seen enough of the white man's brutality to last me 26,000 years."^[1] The Pooles settled in Hamtramck, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Through the 1920s and 30s, Poole struggled to find and keep work as the region's economy suffered during the Great Depression. During their years in the Detroit area, the Pooles had eight children, six boys and two girls.^[2][3]

Conversion

Part of a series on Nation of Islam

Famous leaders Wallace Fard Muhammad · Elijah Muhammad · Malcolm X · Warith Deen Mohammed · Louis Farrakhan History and beliefs Saviours' Day · Nation of Islam and antisemitism · Tribe of Shabazz · Yakub · Million Man March Publications The Final Call · How to Eat to Live · Message to the Blackman in America · Muhammad Speaks Subsidiaries and offshoots American Society of Muslims · Fruit of Islam · The Nation of Gods and Earths · New Black Panther Party · United Nation of Islam · Your Black Muslim Bakery

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In August 1931, at the urging of his wife, Poole attended a speech on Islam and black empowerment by Wallace Fard Muhammad, held in a packed basement meeting room. After the speech, Poole said he approached Fard and asked if he was the redeemer. Fard responded that he was, but that his time had not yet come.^[4][5] Poole soon became a disciple of Fard's and converted to Islam, as did his wife and several brothers. Soon afterward, Poole changed his surname, first to Karriem, and later, at Fard's behest, to Muhammad, when he assumed leadership of the Temple.^[6]

Little is definitively known about Fard. He claimed to have come from Mecca. The FBI believed him to be a petty criminal from California named Wallace Ford.^[7] He was working as a door-to-door salesman in Detroit's black communities in addition to preaching.

By 1930 Fard had formed Allah's Temple of Islam (ATI) in Detroit and was attracting crowds and as many as 8,000 members with his proto-Islamic, Afro-centric teachings.^[8] Fard taught dogma that, although similar to orthodox Islam in some ways, differed from it in various essentials, and added elements geared toward the Black nationalism started by Marcus Garvey. Fard conducted a series of lessons and correspondence with Muhammad and others, which eventually would be set down as the Nation of Islam's doctrine. The Temple continued to grow and organize. Muhammad soon became 'Supreme Minister' in the new organization. Fard developed the Fruit of Islam (leadership was given to Elijah's younger brother, Kalot Muhammad), Muslim Girls Training & General Civilization Classes and the University of Islam, to provide Islamist education outside the school system.

In 1932 a mentally unbalanced member of Fard's "voodoo cult" committed a highly publicized ritualized murder. Fard was initially arrested and then released by police on the condition that he leave Detroit. Fard headed to Chicago, where he started Temple No. 2. He turned over leadership of the growing Detroit group to Muhammad and the Allah Temple of Islam changed its name to Nation of Islam.^[9] Muhammad and Fard continued to communicate until 1934, when Fard vanished and Muhammad was named 'Minister of Islam'. Following the final disappearance of Fard, Muhammad deified the temple's original leader, calling him an incarnation of God and predicting his eventual return to earth.^[10][11]

In 1934, the Nation of Islam published its first newspaper, the Final Call to Islam, to educate and build membership. Temple children attended classes at the newly created ‘University’, but this soon led to challenges by Boards of Education both in Detroit and later, Chicago, which considered the children truants from the public school system. The controversy led to the jailing of several board members in 1934 and to violent confrontations with police. Muhammad received a sentence of probation for the altercations and the temple continued the practice.

Leading the Nation of Islam

Muhammad took control of the Temple only after bitter, internecine battles with other potential leaders, including his brother. In 1935, fearing for his life as these battles became increasingly fierce, Muhammad left Detroit and settled his family in Chicago. Soon, still facing death threats, Muhammad left his family there and traveled to Milwaukee (where he established Temple No. 3) and eventually Washington, D.C. Muhammad established Temple No. 4 in the District and spent much of his time studying at the Library of Congress.^[4][12][13]

In 1942, Muhammad was arrested for failure to register for the draft. After he was released on bail, he fled Washington at the urging of his attorney, who feared a potential lynching, and returned to Chicago after seven years' absence. Muhammad was soon arrested again, charged with eight counts of sedition for instructing his followers not to register with Selective Service or serve in the Military. Found guilty, Muhammad served four years, from 1942 to 1946, in federal prison at Milan, Michigan. During that time his wife and trusted aides ran the organization and transmitted his messages to followers from his letters from jail.^[14][15][16]

Following his return to Chicago, Muhammad was firmly in charge of the NOI. The organization had held its membership steadily during his years of imprisonment, and began to grow once he returned. From four temples in 1946, the NOI grew to 15 by 1955 and by 1959 there were 50 temples in 22 states.^[17] One of Muhammad's top lieutenants during this period, generally credited with growing and expanding the NOI, was Malcolm X. Converted while in prison, Malcolm X became involved in the organization in 1952. He traveled across the country opening and organizing temples. During this time, NOI also began expanding economically. By the 1970s, the nation owned bakeries, barber shops, coffee shops, grocery stores, cleaners, a printing plant, retail stores, real estate (including three apartment buildings in Chicago), a fleet of tractor trailers and farmland in Michigan, Alabama and Georgia. In 1972 the Nation of Islam took controlling interest in a bank, the Guaranty Bank and Trust Co. The NOIs schools expanded until by 1974, children could attend its separatist schools in 47 cities in the U.S.^[18] In 1972, Muhammad told followers that the Nation of Islam had a net worth of $75 million.^[19]

Muhammad died at Mercy Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on February 24, 1975 from congestive heart failure. It was the day after Saviours' Day, celebrated in the NOI as the birthday of founder W. Fard Muhammad.

Women and children

By most accounts Elijah Muhammad had 21 children by eight women. He had eight children with his wife, Clara Muhammad, and at least 13 other children with seven other women, mostly young secretaries for the Nation of Islam. These relationships were a source of great strain in his marriage. The perceived infidelity (some^[who?] in the Nation of Islam considered the women to be additional wives) came to be a source of disenchantment for Malcolm X and others in the Nation. They were disturbed because Muhammad preached the importance of faithfulness in marriage, and also because he allegedly used NOI funds to support the other women and natural children.^[18][20][21] After Muhammad's death, 19 of his children filed lawsuits against the NOI and its accounts seeking status as heirs. Ultimately the court ruled that the NOI could keep the funds.^[22][23]

Split with Malcolm X

Muhammad and some of his followers began to feel that Malcolm X was grabbing too much of the public spotlight and showing too much ambition. By 1963 author Alex Haley had begun working with Malcolm X on his autobiography. There were serious tensions within the Nation and threats were made against Malcolm X's life. Following Malcolm X's controversial remarks about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Muhammad prohibited him from speaking to the press or making any speeches for 90 days. In March 1964 Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam to found a separate Muslim mosque in New York, and numerous supporters followed him. He converted to traditional Sunni Islam, and made public statements refuting numerous tenets of the NOI. Malcolm X declared his desire to work with other civil rights leaders, which he said had been prohibited by Muhammad. In 1965 he was assassinated in an attack at the Audubon Ballroom in New York. Three NOI members were convicted of the murder of Malcolm X.

Teachings

Main article: Beliefs and theology of the Nation of Islam

As envisioned by W.D. Fard and Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam departed from orthodox Islamic doctrines and practices. As leader of the Nation of Islam, Muhammad established that Fard was literally Allah, and Muhammad, his messenger on earth. Muhammad codified and expanded on Fard's teachings and writings in the doctrines of the NOI, teaching it in its schools and temples.

Like mainstream Islam, NOI members are expected to abstain from eating pork, from smoking and drinking, the use of drugs, profanity and gambling. They are expected to dress conservatively. Until recently, members did not fast during Ramadan and did not perform Salaat (Islamic prayer).^[24][25]

The Nation of Islam teaches a black separatist doctrine. According to its beliefs, blacks were the original people on the Earth but had been tricked out of their power, conquered and oppressed by the Caucasian people via a global system of white supremacy.^[26] According to NOI doctrine, the white race was produced through a series of genetic breeding experiments conducted by a bigheaded scientist known as "Dr. Yakub".^[27][28][29]

Officially, the Nation of Islam seeks: "a full and complete freedom, equal justice under the law applied equally to all, regardless of race or class or color and equal membership in society with the best in civilized society." The NOI as formed by Muhammad is a nationalist organization seeking "complete separation in a state or territory of our own." ^[30] Researcher John L. Esposito has written: "Elijah Muhammad emphasized a "Do for Self" philosophy, appealing particularly to black youth, focusing on black pride and identity, strength and self-sufficiency, strong family values, hard work, discipline, thrift, and abstention from gambling, alcohol, drugs and pork."^[31]

Muhammad opposed the "back to Africa" movement supported by Marcus Garvey and other 20th century black leaders. Instead he believed in seeking aid and support from independent African and Muslim nations to improve conditions for blacks in the United States. Eventually, Muhammad preached that Allah would destroy 'White America' and faithful followers of Islam in America would emerge as conquerors and settlers of a new world.^[32]

Leadership

While the organization had a board of directors and ministerial leadership, Elijah Muhammad was ultimately the unquestioned leader of the Nation of Islam. The man who led the Nation of Islam for more than 40 years was slender and stood only 5'6". He was soft-spoken and light-skinned with a thick Georgia accent. His speech in public was halting and he often struggled to find words. Some researchers have said that this made him a disarming figure for listeners, who responded to his earnestness and simplicity.^[4]

Muhammad made the nation of Islam a public organization, putting converts as exhorters in the streets of urban areas, selling newspapers, writing weekly newspaper columns (his columns in the Pittsburgh Gazette brought in more letters to the editor than any other feature,^[18]) and even parading the Fruit of Islam at times. Visitors to temples found smartly dressed members, usually wearing bow ties, and a militaristic discipline. They found a compelling vision of strong black leadership that was so often lacking in the world outside the temple.^[33]

Legacy

There are 6 to 8 million Muslims in the United States, and nearly 30 percent of them are African-American (nearly all converts from mainstream Christian denominations). During his lifetime, Muhammad saw Islam become an important presence in the black community and saw his organization grow to tens, if not hundreds of thousands of members. The Nation of Islam grew to become an enterprise with assets reportedly worth $75 million.

In addition to its particular brand of Islam, the Nation of Islam encouraged its followers to build stable families, become self-sufficient, live disciplined lives and reject drugs, alcohol and criminal activity. While temples have had mixed success in these areas, the Nation of Islam has encouraged tens of thousands of followers to avoid many of the traps of urban low-income life.^[34] In the words of historian Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar "In many ways the Nation was on a civilizing mission to rebuild, redeem and rejuvenate a downtrodden and backward people."^[35]

The Nation of Islam splintered into three factions after Elijah Mohammad's death.

Elijah Muhammad wished his son, Warith, to take leadership of the Nation of Islam after his death. Under Warith Deen Muhammad, the NOI moved toward mainstream Sunni Islam, away from Black Nationalism. It accepted white members, rejected the idea of W.D. Fard as Allah and disbanded the Fruit of Islam. Eventually his faction was renamed the American Society of Muslims and Warith Muhammad became a less polarizing figure. He delivered the first Muslim invocation in the U.S. Senate, and in 1993 gave an Islamic prayer during the first Interfaith Prayer Service of President Bill Clinton.^[36][37] At his death in 2008 he was eulogized as "America's Imam"^[38]

Louis Farrakhan left the Nation of Islam over disagreements with Warith Muhammad's direction. His new organization hewed more closely to Elijah Muhammad's ideology, including the tenet that W.D. Fard was Allah on earth. He reestablished the Fruit of Islam. He began publishing the Final Call newspaper and eventually called his organization the "Nation of Islam." As of 2009, he still leads the organization.

A third faction, the Lost Found Nation of Islam, was formed by Elijah Muhammad's son-in-law Silas Muhammad.

Honors

In the early 1990s the city of Detroit, Michigan, added the name "Elijah Muhammad Blvd." to its Linwood Avenue neighborhood.

One of Muhammad's grandsons, Ozier Muhammad,^[39] is a photographer for The New York Times who has won a Pulitzer Prize.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Elijah Muhammad on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.^[40]

Controversy

Malcolm X

Some writers have suggested that formal orders from top Nation of Islam officials, including possibly Elijah Muhammad himself, played a role in the assassination of Malcolm X, for which members of NOI were convicted. This contention is disputed by followers of the NOI. Malcolm X asserted that "Elijah Muhammad could stop the whole thing by raising his hand, but he won't."^[41]

Louis Farrakhan later stated that the group's "incendiary rhetoric" may have led to the assassination.

A daughter of Malcolm X was charged with trying to hire a hit man in the 1990s to kill Louis Farrakhan. Her family "resented Farrakhan and had good reason to because he was one of those in the Nation responsible for the climate of vilification that resulted in Malcolm X's assassination," according to Stanford historian Clayborne Carson.^[42]

Hanafi Murders

In 1973 seven killers, who were later identified as Nation of Islam members from the Philadelphia temple's Black Mafia, broke into the Washington home of Hanafi leader Khalifa Hamaas Abdul Khaalis. Weeks earlier Khaalis had written open letters criticizing and mocking Muhammad and Fard. The men brutally murdered five of Khaalis' children, his nine-day-old grandson and a follower. Khaalis, who was not at home, escaped the carnage. Five of the men responsible were captured, tried and convicted of life sentences. Muhammad was never found to have ordered the murders, though many had suspected he had some direct or indirect involvement.^[19] Khaalis swore revenge and years later his movement attacked and held hostages in the Washington D.C. offices of B'nai B'rith in the 1977 Hanafi Muslim Siege.

Racism

Main article: Nation of Islam and antisemitism

Nation of Islam ideology is generally considered racist and Anti-Semitic,^[43][44][45] placing the black or "Asiatic" race (which, according to the NOI, includes all people of color) above whites. Membership has included Asians and Latinos over the years. And though racially integrated to some degree, Muhammad regularly referred to whites as "devils" in his writing and preaching.^[46][47][48]

See also

• The Hate That Hate Produced

Notes

1. ^ Claude Andrew Clegg II, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad, St. Martin's Griffin 1998
2. ^ Richard Brent Turner, "From Elijah Poole to Elijah Muhammad", American Visions, Oct-Nov, 1997 at (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1546/is_n5_v12/ai_19909405/pg_1?tag=content;col1)
3. ^ Karl Evanzz, The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad Random House, 2001
4. ^ ^{a b c} An Original Man
5. ^ From Elijah Poole to Elijah Muhammad
6. ^ The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad: This source claims the first encounter between Poole and Fard took place at the Pooles' dinner table.
7. ^ The FBI spent decades trying to get to the bottom of Fard's identity. Their files are now available through Freedom of Information requests. http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/fard.htm
8. ^ Arna Wendell Bontemps, Arna Bontemps, Jack Conroy, Anyplace But Here, University of Missouri Press, 1966
9. ^ The Messenger suggests the name was changed to convince the authorities that ATI had gone out of business.
10. ^ An Original Man: One NOI tenet states: “There is no God but Allah, Master W.D. Fard, Elijah, his prophet”
11. ^ Charles Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994
12. ^ Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience, University of Indiana Press 1997
13. ^ "A Historical Look at the Honorable Elijah Muhammad", Nation of Islam web site
14. ^ An Original Man
15. ^ A Historical Look at the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, NOI
16. ^ E. U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism, University of Chicago Press 1962
17. ^ Black Nationalism
18. ^ ^{a b c} In the Name of Elijah Muhammad
19. ^ ^{a b} The Messenger
20. ^ The Messenger has a list of children and "wives".
21. ^ The Autobiography of Malcolm X
22. ^ "19 Children of Muslim Leader Battle a Bank for $5.7 Million", N.Y. Times, November 3, 1987
23. ^ "Court Gives Leader's Money to Black Muslims", N.Y. Times, January 2, 1988
24. ^ http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/2002/10/Chart-Nation-of-Islam-and-Traditional-Islam.aspx Beliefnet discussion
25. ^ Malcolm X spoke of his embarrassment in his visit to Mecca when he was unaware of the Salaat prayer ritual.
26. ^ Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman 1965
27. ^ Dorothy Blake Fardan, Yakub and the Origins of White Supremacy, Lushena Books, 2001
28. ^ Message to the Blackman
29. ^ Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Random House Publishing Group, 1964
30. ^ http://www.noi.org/muslim_program.htm The Muslim Program
31. ^ John L. Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam, Oxford University Press 2002 pages 52-56
32. ^ Message to the Blackman in America
33. ^ Much of this is from The Black Muslims in America
34. ^ Edward E. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960-1975 University of North Carolina Press, 2006
35. ^ Jeffrey Ogbonna Green Ogbar, Black Power, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004
36. ^ Don Terry (October 20, 2002). "W. DEEN MOHAMMED: A leap of faith". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/religion/chi-021020-mohammedprofile,0,7411660.story. 
37. ^ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week106/profile.html
38. ^ Ahmed M. Rehab (September 10, 2008). "Farewell, America’s Imam". Anderson Cooper 360: Blog Archive. http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/10/farewell-americas-imam/. 
39. ^ The New York Times: How Race is Lived in America: Photographer's Journals
40. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
41. ^ Malcolm X speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRC5jN5I-wU&NR=1
42. ^ Stanford University News Service http://news.stanford.edu/pr/95/950117Arc5411.html
43. ^ "What is the Nation of Islam?", Anti Defamation League
44. ^ The Hate that Hate Produced, 1959, News Beat, WNTA-TV, New York available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/mxp/archival.html
45. ^ Milton Klegg, Hate Prejudice and Racism SUNY Press, 1993 page 225-227
46. ^ Elijah Muhammad, The Supreme Wisdom, Secretarius MEMPS Ministries, Phoenix, AZ, 1973 page 23 "...the whole Caucasian rade is a race of devils. They proved to be devils in the Garden of Paradise and 4,000 years later they were condemned by Jesus. Likewise they are condemned today by the Great Madhi Muhammad as being nothing but devils in the plainest language."
47. ^ Elijah Muhammad, Making of Devil a 1965 column, "we have seen the white race (devils) in heaven, among the righteous, causing trouble (making mischief and causing bloodshed)"
48. ^ Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live, Conquering Books Llc, 1992 "They, the white devils, are not here to teach us, the Lost Found members of the Aboriginal nation, to live a long life"

External links

• Nation of Islam Official Biography
• Seventh Family of the Nation of Islam
• Elijah Muhammad History
• Malcolm X Reloaded: Who Really Assassinated Malcolm X?
• pages from the FBI's investigation of Elijah Muhammad

Preceded by Wallace Fard Muhammad

Nation of Islam 1934-1975

Succeeded by Warith Deen Muhammad (1975), Silis Muhammad (1977), Louis Farrakhan (1978) (split)

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