The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a black nationalist religious group founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. While it identifies itself as promoting a form of Islam, its beliefs differ considerably from mainstream Islamic traditions. Scholars of religion characterize it as a new religious movement. It operates as a centralized and hierarchical organization. It has been characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League as a black supremacist hate group.
The NOI teaches that there has been a succession of mortal gods, each a black man named Allah, of whom Fard Muhammad is the most recent. It claims that the first Allah created the earliest humans, the Arabic-speaking, dark-skinned Tribe of Shabazz, whose members possessed inner divinity and from whom all people of color are descended. It maintains that a scientist named Yakub 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 and separatist. A millenarian tradition, it maintains that Fard Muhammad will soon return aboard a spaceship, the "Mother Plane" or "Mother Ship," to wipe out the white race and establish a utopia. Members worship in buildings called mosques or temples. Practitioners are expected to live disciplined lives, adhering to strict dress codes, specific dietary requirements, and patriarchal gender roles.
Theology
The sociologist of religion David V. Barrett noted that the Nation's theology is "very distinct" and "extremely detailed". The Nation provides conflicting statements about its theology; although it professes commitment to the monotheistic idea of a single God, its discourse refers to multiple gods, meaning that it can be interpreted as polytheistic.
In the NOI's view, each Allah (God) is not an incorporeal spiritual entity but a flesh-and-blood person. These Allahs are anthropomorphic, taking the form of black men, which was the shape that the first Allah consciously adopted. In Nation teaching, the Allahs are not immortal, instead typically living for around 200 to 300 years. They have varying abilities and degrees of power, with each taking over following the death of their predecessor, after which they rule for a cycle in history. The Nation regards its founder, Wallace Fard Muhammad, as the latest of these Allahs, or "God in person". He is deemed the first to have attained the same powers as that of the earliest Allah, namely the ability to return the universe to its primordial darkness and then recreate it. The Nation teaches that although this founder disappeared in 1934, he would live for another 409 years.
Reflecting a belief in the inner divinity of humanity that is common among North America's black-oriented new religions, the Nation also promotes the idea that "God is man and man is God, that God has a presence inside human individuals." Accordingly, the NOI teaches that the black race, in its natural state, is divine, a "nation of Gods", with its second leader, Elijah Muhammad, espousing the view that "all Muslims are Allahs". According to the NOI, "knowledge of self" is key for black people to realize their inner divinity. The NOI thus maintains that by following its teachings, its adherents can recognize their inner godliness. In doing so, it stipulates, black people will also recognise that they have psychic powers; Elijah Muhammad for instance claimed telepathic abilities.
According to the scholars of religion Jason Eric Fishman and Ana Belén Soage, the Nation of Islam's theology is "completely divorced" from that of mainstream Islam. In the latter, God is a single, monotheistic entity, one that is eternal and non-anthropomorphic; Islam also stresses that there is a fundamental ontological divide between humanity and God, which is at odds with NOI teaching. Similarly conflicting with mainstream Islam is the NOI's claim that there is no afterlife; Elijah Muhammad wrote that "when you are dead, you are DEAD". Notions of Heaven, the Nation claims, are a lie used by white Christians to keep black people docile. Instead, Elijah Muhammad taught that there is no spiritual realm beyond the material universe.
Cosmogony and the Tribe of Shabazz
The Nation teaches that in the beginning there was nothing but darkness. Then, 76 trillion years ago, the first Allah willed himself into being, taking 6 million years to form into his desired appearance: that of a black man. This color chosen was a reference to the blackness from which he had emerged. The first Allah then created the Sun and the planets, as well as fellow black gods, who lived predominantly on the Earth but also on Mars. Of these, the first Allah and 23 others formed a council of ruling imams: 12 greater and 12 lesser. Each of these imams would take a turn being the ruling Allah for one cycle each.
The NOI refers to these early individuals as "god-scientists". They are part of what it calls the "Original" or "Asiatic" race, a people who were divided into 13 tribes. The Nation labels these people "black", describing them as having dark skin as well as smooth, straight hair, closely resembling dark-complexioned Arabians or South Asians rather than Sub-Saharan Africans. In portraying humanity as the creation of the first Allah, rather than a product of evolution, the Nation endorses a unique form of creationism and believes dinosaurs to be a hoax created by white scientists.
According to Nation teaching, one of the god-scientists was a renegade and, 66 trillion years ago, tried to destroy the Earth with explosives. The resulting explosion forced a chunk of the Earth's mass into orbit, where it became the moon. One of the 13 tribes was trapped on the moon, where they died due to lack of water. The Nation also maintains that 15,000 years ago, the god-scientists wrote down knowledge of the future in a text, the Mother Book, parts of which have passed down in the Torah, Gospels, and Quran.
Of the 12 tribes that remained on Earth, the most resilient was the Tribe of Shabazz, who settled in Egypt's Nile Valley and the area around Mecca in the Arabian peninsula. The Nation calls this region "East Asia", reflecting its belief that Asia and Africa were once a single continent. It was because they moved into the "jungles of East Asia" (i.e. Africa), Elijah Muhammad claimed, that members of this Original Asiatic Race developed Afro-textured hair. The Nation teaches that the Original Race were Muslims by their intrinsic nature, but that many created heretical deviations such as Hinduism; some of those who broke Islamic rules were exiled to North America, where they became the continent's native population.
For the Nation, everyone not of West European genetic origin is a descendant of the Original Asiatic Race. In contrast to understandings of race held by most Americans, for the Nation, "black" does not simply mean those of Sub-Saharan African genetic descent, but all people of color, including Asians, North Africans, and Native Americans. Even some Eastern Europeans, such as Albanians, are considered descendants of the Original Asiatic Race. Elijah Muhammad for instance referred to "black, brown, yellow [and] red" people as collectively constituting "black mankind", which he then juxtaposed against the "white race".
Story of Yakub
The NOI teaches a story about a figure known as Yakub. The story received its fullest exposition in Elijah Muhammad's 1965 book Message to the Blackman. In this narrative, Yakub was a black scientist; a child prodigy, by the age of 18 he had learned everything that Mecca's universities had to teach him. He attracted a following but caused trouble, leading the Meccan authorities to exile him and his 59,999 followers to Pelan, the Mediterranean island of Patmos.
On Pelan, the NOI claims, Yakub engaged in a selective breeding program to create the white race. This entailed breeding new children, with those who were too dark killed at birth and their bodies fed to wild animals or incinerated. Over several centuries, Yakub's experiments created a blonde, light-skinned people, the white race. The Nation maintains that most white people are unaware of their true origins, but that such knowledge is held by senior white Freemasons. The NOI teaches that, as a group of people distinct from the Original Asiatic Race, the white race are degenerate, sub-human, bereft of divinity, and intrinsically prone to lying, violence, and brutality. Elijah Muhammad repeatedly referred to whites as "the devil". Various academic commentators have characterised these views as racist.
According to the Nation's teachings, Yakub's newly created white race sowed discord among black people, and thus were exiled to live in the caves of "West Asia", meaning Europe. In this narrative, it was in Europe that the white race engaged in bestiality; their attempts to restore their blackness resulted in the creation of apes and monkeys. To help the whites develop, the ruling Allah sent prophets to them, the first of whom was Musa (Moses), who taught the whites to cook and wear clothes. According to the Nation, Jesus was also a prophet sent to civilise the white race. The group rejects the Christian belief that Jesus was a unique manifestation of God, that he was the Messiah, was the product of a virgin birth, or was crucified and resurrected.
White rule and antisemitic conspiracism
In the Nation's teachings, the ruling Allah permitted the white race to rule the Earth for 6000 years. The whites subsequently began to dominate the world, using tactics that the Nation calls "tricknology". The group maintains that the ruling Allahs allowed this so that black people would discover humanity's inner potential for evil and learn how to defeat it, thus enabling them to realize their inner divine capacity. According to this teaching, the period of white rule came to an end in 1914.
During the era of white rule, the Nation states, the whites enslaved the Tribe of Shabazz, shipping many of them to the Americas. The NOI claims that most enslaved blacks forgot their true names, their Arabic language, and their Muslim identity, instead embracing Christianity, which the Nation labels "white man's religion". The group deems Christianity a tool of white supremacy used to subjugate black people, and expresses the belief that the oppressed (African Americans) and the oppressors (European Americans) cannot share the same god. The Nation claims that in their enslaved state, black people began engaging in sinful behaviour such as fornication and drinking alcohol, something encouraged by the whites. In making this argument, the NOI equates the United States with the city of Babylon, which in the Bible is presented as a symbol of oppression.
The Nation thus understands the modern subjugation of African Americans as part of an ancient white conspiracy. The group interprets many of the problems facing African Americans in this light; NOI leader Louis Farrakhan for instance claimed that the white establishment encouraged a black gang culture to provide an excuse for the police killing of black youths, that they flooded black-majority areas with drugs, and that they created AIDS to exterminate black people.