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TheNation of Islam (NOI) is ablack nationalist religious group founded in the United States byWallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. While it identifies itself as promoting a form ofIslam, its beliefs differ considerably from mainstreamIslamic traditions.Scholars of religion characterize it as anew religious movement. It operates as a centralized and hierarchical organization. It has been characterized by theSouthern Poverty Law Center and theAnti-Defamation League as a black supremacisthate group.
The NOI teaches that there has been a succession of mortal gods, each a black man namedAllah, of whom Fard Muhammad is the most recent. It claims that the first Allah created the earliest humans, theArabic-speaking, dark-skinnedTribe of Shabazz, whose members possessed inner divinity and from whom allpeople of color are descended. It maintains that a scientist namedYakub then created the white race. The whites lacked inner divinity, and were intrinsically violent; they overthrew the Tribe of Shabazz and achieved global dominance. Setting itself against the white-dominated society of the United States, the NOI campaigns for the creation of an independent African American nation-state, and calls for African Americans to be economically self-sufficient andseparatist. Amillenarian tradition, it maintains that Fard Muhammad will soon return aboard aspaceship, the "Mother Plane" or "Mother Ship," to wipe out the white race and establish autopia. Members worship in buildings calledmosques ortemples. Practitioners are expected to live disciplined lives, adhering to strict dress codes, specific dietary requirements, and patriarchal gender roles.
The Nation of Islam teaches thatblack people are the aboriginal people and that all other people come from them. Louis Farrakhan has stated "If you look at the human family—now, I'm talking about black, brown, red, yellow and white—we all seem to be frozen on a subhuman level of existence. In Islam and, I believe, in development. But when moral consciousness comes and we have a self-accusing spirit, it is then that we become human beings. Right now, we have the potential for humanity, but we have not reached that potential because we are functioning on the animalistic plane of existence."[1][2]
The Blackman is the Original Man. From him came all brown, yellow, red, and white people. By using a special method of birth-control law, the Blackman was able to produce the white race. This method of birth control was developed by a Black scientist known asYakub, who envisioned making and teaching a nation of people who would be diametrically opposed to the Original People. A Race of people who would one day rule the Original People and the earth for a period of 6,000 years. Yakub promised his followers that he would graft a nation from his own people, and he would teach them how to rule his people through a system of tricks and lies whereby they use deceit to divide and conquer, and break the unity of the darker people, put one brother against another, and then act as mediators and rule both sides.
— Elijah Muhammad,Message to the Blackman in America, Muhammad's Temple No. 2, 1965 & Dorothy Blake Fardan,Yakub and the Origins of White Supremacy, Lushena Books, 2001
In an interview onNBC'sMeet the Press, Louis Farrakhan said the following in response to hostTim Russert's question on the Nation of Islam's teachings on race:
You know, it's not unreal to believe that white people—who genetically cannot produce yellow, brown or black—had a Black origin. The scholars and scientists of this world agree that the origin of man and humankind started in Africa and that the first parent of the world was Black. The Qur'an says that God created Adam out of black mud and fashioned him into shape. So if white people came from the original people, the Black people, what is the process by which you came to life? That is not a silly question. That is a scientific question with a scientific answer. It doesn't suggest that we are superior or that you are inferior. It suggests, however, that your birth or your origin is from the black people of this earth: superiority and inferiority are determined by our righteousness and not by our color.[3]
Pressed by Russert on whether he agreed with Elijah Muhammad's preaching that whites are "blue-eyed devils", Farrakhan responded:
Well, you have not been saints in the way you have acted toward the darker peoples of the world and toward even your own people. But, in truth, Mr. Russert, any human being who gives themself over to the doing of evil could be considered a devil. In the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, it talks about the fall of Babylon. It says Babylon is fallen because she has become the habitation of devils. We believe that that ancient Babylon is a symbol of a modern Babylon, which is America.
Malcolm X said:
Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to Black people. Even [Senator James]Eastland knows it. Anyone who has studied the genetic phase of biology knows that white is consideredrecessive and black is considered dominant.
— The Playboy Interview: Malcolm X, interviewed byAlex Haley,Playboy Magazine, May 1963
Lincoln describes how religious services use myths and over-generalizations to indoctrinate NOI adherents.
Often the minister reads passages from well-known historical, sociological, or anthropological works, and finds in them inconspicuous references to the Blackman's true history in the world.... Occasionally the minister chides the audience for its scepticism: "I know you don't believe me because I happen to be a Black man. Well, you can look it up in a book I'm going to tell you about that was written by a white man." He then reads off references that his hearers are challenged to check for themselves. A single documented statement, however, may become the basis of a wide range of generalizednon-sequiturs. The fact that a North Carolina slaveholder had an Arabic-speaking Muslim slave of unusual mathematical ability may be offered as evidence that all slaves brought to America were Muslim, Arabic-speaking, and learned. Similarly, historical facts may be indiscriminately mingled with myths and countermyths.
— The Black Muslims in America, pp. 120–121
