Nation of Islam

Wallace D. Fard

According to his disciple Elijah Muhammad, Wallace D. Fard was Allah in the flesh, who unexpectedly turned up on the streets of 1930's Detroit.

An incarnate Savior is a deviation from standard-brand Islam. Yet the recurrence of this idea, in Islamic off-shoots like the Druse and Ahmadiyya sects, testifies that it corrects a deficiency in Islam, restoring the latter to its claimed status as the original faith. Unfortunately Wallace D. Fard, scurrying away from J. Edgar Hoover, is a Savior who cannot save. It is not so much the wrong concept, but the wrong guy.

The Deportation of the Moon

A theory of secular science that goes in and out of fashion proposes that our present-day moon is the remnant of a body of material ejected from the earth. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad added a new twist to this story, reporting for the first time that it was human endeavor, through the means of dynamite drill bombs, which resulted in the transport of the moon to its present location.

Alas, the moon being deficient in oxygen, water, and other necessities of life, the survivors of the righteous Tribe of Shabazz who found themselves there relocated, pined away:

The God-Scientist Yacub and the White Race

According to the Bible, all mankind are of one race, one descent:

"God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;..." (Acts 17:24-26).

The Koran shares this universal emphasis. Mohammed ibn Abdallah's message is addressed to "all men," whatever their color:

"And among his signs are the creation of the Heavens and of the Earth, and your variety of tongues and color. Herein truly are signs for all men." (Koran, Sura 30: 21).

Mohammed ibn Abdallah also reiterates than mankind are of common descent:

"O men! fear your Lord, who hath created you of one man, and of him created his wife, and from these twain hath spread abroad so many men and women." And fear ye God, in whose name ye ask mutual favors,- and reverence the wombs that bore you." (Koran, Sura 4:1).

"And it is He who hath produced you from one man, and hath provided for you an abode and resting-place! Clear have we made our signs for men of insight." (Koran, Sura 6:98).

"He it is who hath created you from a single person, and from him brought forth his wife that he might dwell with her..." (Sura 7:189).

"He created you all of one man, from whom He afterwards formed his wife; and of cattle He hath sent down to you four pairs." (Koran, Sura 39:8).

According to the Koran, Jews and Christians are men God created:

"Say the Jews and Christians, 'Sons are we of God and his beloved.'...Nay! ye are but a part of the men whom he hath created!" (Koran, Sura 5:19).

In spite of purposeful Bible teaching that all mankind are of one descent, some white Georgians who met up with young Elijah Poole, a preacher's son, held to a different teaching: that the creation narrative in Genesis described an event which took place 6,000 years ago, namely the creation of the white race. The black race, they believed, was either a pre-existing unmentioned animal creation or the consequence of some subsequent process of pollution involving 'serpent-seed' or the like. It would appear that young Elijah's literacy skills were insufficient to overcome this predominant social consensus, and he adopted it wholesale into his account of the world:

"According to the Bible (Gen. 3:20-24), Adam and his wife were the first parents of all people (white race only) and the first sinners." (The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, 'The White Race's False Claim To Be Divine, Chosen People,' http://muhammadspeaks.com).

The difference between the creation story as told by white Georgians and Elijah's version is a difference of perspective: it seemed to young Elijah that the creation of the white race was not a good thing but a bad thing. Borrowing a page from gnosticism, his religion ascribes the creation of a significant feature of the world, namely the white race, not to the high god, but to a fallen, inept and ill-motivated lesser deity, a god-scientist named Yacub. This party designed the white race according to a program of genetic engineering called 'grafting:'

"It was a black man by the name of Yakub, 6,600 years ago who grafted the white race out of us...what you have in the Bible there, dated back to 6, 000 years ago, means this: that it had taken their father, Yakub, 600 years to make a race out of another race. He was grafting out of darkness, or out of the Blackman for 600 years, to bring out a complete white man altogether different by nature than that in which he was taken from. These are facts that I defy your colleges or university professors to dispute. There are so many of you whispering, going around saying, 'This old story, we all are from God; we are all brothers; we all are alike.' I say to you my people, stop telling other than the truth, you are not like white people." (The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, 'Christianity vs. Islam,' 1962, http://muhammadspeaks.com)

Though white folk did not come out well, rule was given to them for 6,000 years, a period which came to an end in 1914.

A novel feature in this system is the extremely long time period allotted to the history of the black race, stated in the trillions of years. Inasmuch as no birth record survives, perhaps the correct count is "forever." Where does this idea come from? Like the story about the moon, it may be an exaggerated version of information found in the newspapers, reporting on the 'Out of Africa' strain of secular science. However to count 'trillions,' the newspaper-reader must turn to the story about the national debt, not the age of the race or the planet:

Theology

At times the Honorable Elijah Muhammad seems willing to follow where his gnostic paradigm leads, even if away from monotheism:

At other times he seems to want to conform to the monotheistic theology he heard from his Baptist minister father's pulpit. The Koran, which Elijah Muhammad urged his followers to study, is equally unaware of any succession of gods. Even the more enlightened pagans, such as the Greeks and Romans, did not believe in gods with finite life-spans. The Greek and Roman gods were immortal, though venturesome ethnographers hear tales of the twilight of the gods. The gods under present scrutiny have not even that much to boast of:

"Allah, in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, to Whom praises are due forever, taught me that there are not any gods Who live forever. Their wisdom and work may live six thousand or twenty-five thousand years, but the actual individual may have died within a hundred or two hundred years, or the longest that we have a record of, around a thousand years." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 96).

There is a cycle, a succession, of gods in Nation of Islam theology. But a succession implies a plurality:

"He makes all things new. Allah (GOD) Who Came in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, to Whom Praises are due forever, taught me that every twenty-five thousand (25,000) years, each God coming after the other God made a new civilization. His belief, teaching, and theology were different from the other God who preceded Him who made a beautiful change in the history of the wisdom of man." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 119)

"The Wisdom of each God, according to what Allah (God), in the Person of Master Fard Muhammad, to Whom praises are due forever, taught me, has a cycle of twenty-five thousand years. Once every twenty-five thousand years, another God would be given a chance to show forth His wisdom to the people." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 98).

The Bible teaches that God always has been God. He does not change. There is no succession to this office, and there is only One office-holder:

"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." (Psalm 90:2).

"For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed." (Malachi 3:6).

Elijah Muhammad did not teach that Wallace D. Fard always had been God. Neither is Wallace D. Fard, precisely speaking, the incarnation of One who had always been God; that is 'spook' theology. The Koran does not dispute God's eternity:

"SAY: He is God alone:
God the eternal!" (Koran, Sura 112:1-2).

Though Elijah Muhammad repeats the Muslim confession of one deity without any evident embarrassment, the tales he tells call to mind quite different precursors:

According to the gnostic world view, evil in the world,-- which for Elijah Muhammad includes the existence of the white race,-- requires another source than a good Creator:

"Yakub, the father of the devil, made the white race, a race of devils -- enemies of the darker people of the earth. The white race is not made by nature to accept righteousness...If you and I believe that the devils are from the God of Righteousness, we are making the God of Righteousness an evil god, who created an evil god, and made the evil god to become the best guide for the people of righteousness." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 90).

One might hope that this crew are 'called' gods who have not the nature of deity, like the 'other' or 'strange' gods of the Bible. The 'strange' gods, recall, are not gods by nature: "Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods." (Galatians 4:8). But this fond hope would be disappointed, because there is not any entity in Nation of Islam theology which has the attributes of the true God, who cannot not exist. There is no 'I AM' in Nation of Islam theology, only an 'I, like you, came to be:'

"How came the Black God, Mr. Muhammad? He is Self-created. How could Self create Self? Take your magnifying glass and start looking at these little atoms out here in front of you...This is the way He was born: in total darkness. There was no light anywhere. Out of the total orbit of the Universe of darkness there sparkled an atom of life." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 39)

"Allah was created; self-created from an atom of life. The atom of life was not only able to create flesh and have blood from the earth that He was created on -- Allah (God) was created on the very earth that we are on today. But the earth was not as it is today." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p.146).

The author does not detail how to create oneself, other than that it involves 'rotation:'

"Just think it over: a little small atom of life rolling around in darkness. Think it over: Building itself up, just turning in darkness, making its own self...He started rotating." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 43)

Elijah Muhammad occasionally addresses black people corporately as God:

"You brought forth that light. You are walking around looking for a God to bow to and worship. You Are the God!" (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 35).

"When we say 'Allah,' that Name means God and covers all Muslims. All Muslims are Allahs, but we call the Supreme Allah the Supreme Being. And He has a Name of His Own. This Name is 'Fard Muhammad.' 'Fard' is a Name meaning an independent One and One Who is not on the level with the average Gods (Allahs)" (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, pp. 56-57).

"We are all God. When we say 'Allah' we mean every righteous person. Allah teaches me that He is a man -- not something that is other than man." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 26).

This elevation of mankind (or in this case, a portion of mankind, exclusive of white persons) also fits into the gnostic paradigm.

God is Not a Man

As seen earlier, Elijah Muhammad could talk about W. D. Fard in the same incarnational language Christians use in talking about Jesus. Sometimes it seems he's telling the familiar Christmas story, with a different set of characters.

But on a closer look, Elijah Muhammad's concept of Master Fard's deity is more reductive than incarnational. The Bible teaches that God's own nature is not the same nature as a man:

Thus Christians say, Jesus Christ has two natures, His own proper deity from before the ages and the humanity He took on late in time in the incarnation. Instead Elijah Muhammad argues, against the Bible, that God IS a man. He sees proof of this in the Bible's references to God's hands, His feet, His walking and talking. While Jesus taught,

"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24),

Elijah Muhammad begs to differ:

Elijah Muhammad could not disagree more with the idea of God found in the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

"What is God?

"God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 4)

Elijah Muhammad sees evidence of God's humanity in His likeness and His activities:

"So according to God's own words, through His prophets, He must be a man. He is interested in man's affairs according to the Bible (Genesis 1:27): 'God made man in His own image and likeness, both male and female.' If we believe that alone, that God created man in His own image and likeness, that is sufficient for us to expect God to be nothing other than man." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 66)

"All these scriptures show that He sees, hears, feels, tastes, smells, talks our language, walks, stands, sits, eats, and drinks. Therefore, God must be a human being." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 63).

This materialist way of thinking about God is surprisingly popular with American 'prophets' and religious teachers; Finis Dake and Joseph Smith shared a similar concept. Is it Biblical?

Slavery

It is shameful to realize that nominal Christians were implicated in the slave trade. This legitimate indictment was over-generalized by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad as, 'only Christians were involved in the slave trade.' This is not so. When Elijah Muhammad completed his Hajj to the holy places of Saudi Arabia, there were still persons of African origin held there in a condition of slavery. Slavery was not outlawed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia until 1962.

"We are the results or victims of Christianity. Who made us spiritually blind? It was white Christians who went after our people and put them in chains 400 years and brought them here...The white race has made them a little religion to catch black people with. Christianity, if you study it, you will find that the whole of its teachings is nothing but slavery. It's to enslave black people for the service of white people; That's all it's for." (The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, 'Christianity vs. Islam,' http://muhammadspeaks.com).

Is the Bible pro-slavery or anti-slavery?

The prophet Mohammed ibn Abdallah was himself a slave-owner. The worst abuses of the Southern slave system which scandalized Malcolm X find no warrant in Christianity, but are specifically allowed in the Koran. The privilege of enjoying the sexual services of slaves is granted to the prophet:

"O Prophet! we allow thee thy wives whom thou hast dowered, and the slaves whom thy right hand possesseth out of the booty which God hath granted thee..." (Koran, Sura 33:49).

...and to the faithful generally:

"Not so the prayerful...And who control their desires, (Save with their wives or the slaves whom their right hands have won, for there they shall be blameless; But whoever indulge their desires beyond this are transgressors)...These shall dwell, laden with honors, amid gardens." (Koran, Sura 71:22-35).

It is shameful that white, nominally Christian slave-owners in the American southland conducted themselves as if they were Muslims, but the remedy is not to embrace Islam. Mohammed ibn Abdallah does not write as did the abolitionists, aflame with the morality of the Sermon on the Mount, or as the framers of our Declaration of Independence:

"God maketh comparison between a slave the property of his lord, who hath no power over anything, and a free man whom we have ourselves supplied with goodly supplies, and who giveth alms therefrom both in secret and openly. Shall they be held equal? No: praise be to God! But most men know it not." (Koran, Sura 16:77).

Elijah Muhammad divides the American populace into the children of slaves, and the children of slave-owners. Yet his own audience were more likely to be the children of slave-owners than the average white American. Those white Americans whose forebears lived north of the Mason-Dixon line, where slavery was illegal prior to the Civil War, are not the children of slave-owners. Because the area north of the Mason-Dixon was always more populous than the south, this was the majority of the population prior to the Civil War. Neither are the multitude of white Americans whose forebears were not in the country at the time of the Civil War but only arrived thereafter the children of slave-owners.

Nor was the wealth of this country built up by slave labor. Slavery was a regional institution, not a national one; and the region where it was prevalent was, and remained for a very long time, the most backward and impoverished area of the country. Most white Americans do not perceive themselves as having been the beneficiaries of the slave system, nor did Elijah Muhammad ever construct a plausible narrative justifying why he so categorized them.

The Supernatural

Wallace D. Fard instructed his Messenger Elijah Muhammad for several years in Detroit before going...where? To Japan to construct the Mother Plane, or on to future encounters with the law and J. Edgar Hoover? While no outside observer can know what features of this wildly original religion come from Mr. Fard and which originated in Mr. Muhammad's fertile brain, perhaps a note of Mr. Fard's street-wise voice lingers in the skepticism about the supernatural that pervades Nation of Islam thinking. How about life after death, a common religious concern? Elijah Muhammad isn't buying it:

Though texts accepted as holy by the Nation speak of resurrection, this 'resurrection' is understood as an awakening from the death of error, not as revivification of the deceased. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad went so far to deny the Easter resurrection as to claim Jesus' dead body had been embalmed and preserved:

"There is no such thing as Jesus sitting in a heaven waiting for the final Judgment, he won't be here when the final Judgment come anymore than Moses or Abraham. He's gone back to the earth, or rather he's embalmed, and he will stay there another well 8,000 years. They embalmed him to last 10,000 years, and that his body will disappear at the end of ten thousand years. And it will disappear at this very hour if air is let in that tube that he's in. He's not alive, he looks just like he did the day that they killed him, but he's not alive. Go there and yell to him all you want to, he can't speak, he can't hear you either." (The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, 'Christianity vs. Islam,' http://muhammadspeaks.com).

There is a perplexing ambiguity in Elijah Muhammad's understanding of Jesus. Elijah Poole was looking for the second coming of Christ when he told Wallace D. Fard, 'I know who you are.' Yet Jesus, in Nation of Islam teaching, is just a prophet, whereas Wallace D. Fard is Allah in person.

In light of this movement's skepticism about a literal, physical resurrection, their choice to identify themselves as 'Muslims' is peculiar. Like a modern political candidate, Mohammed ibn Abdallah stayed 'on-message' even at the cost of repetition. His message, that men will rise again, was laughed at by the scoffers, who said,

"But the unbelievers say to those whom they fall in with, 'Shall we show you a man who will foretell you that when ye shall have been utterly torn and rent to pieces, ye shall be restored in a new form? He deviseth a lie about God, or there is a djinn in him,' but they who believe not in the next life, shall incur the chastisement, and be lost in the mazes of estrangement from God." (Sura 34:7-8).

"And He whom God shall guide will be guided indeed; and whom he shall mislead thou shalt find none to assist, but Him: and we will gather them together on the day of the resurrection, on their faces, blind and dumb and deaf: Hell shall be their abode: so oft as its fires die down, we will rekindle the flame. This shall be their reward for that they believed not our signs and said, 'When we shall have become bones and dust, shall we surely be raised a new creation?'" (Sura 17:99-100).

"If ever thou dost marvel, marvellous surely is their saying, 'What! when we have become dust, shall we be restored in a new creation?' These are they who in their Lord believe not: these! the collars shall be on their necks; and these shall be inmates of the fire, to abide therein for aye." (Sura 13:5-6).

"And they say, 'There is no other than our life in this world, neither shall we be raised again.' But if thou couldest see when they shall be set before their Lord! He shall say to them, 'Is not this it in truth?' They shall say, 'Yea, by our Lord!' 'Taste then,' saith He, 'the torment, for that ye believed not!'" (Sura 6:29-30).

Were the scoffers Mohammed ibn Abdallah encountered scoffing at the idea an author might forge a simile between correction from error and resuscitation from death? Inasmuch as there is nothing incredible in an author crafting a metaphor or likeness, why would the scoffers balk at such literary license? Rather they found the fact of resurrection impossible to credit, for much the same reasons as did Elijah Muhammad.

The only thing dearer to Mohammed ibn Abdallah's heart than the resurrection and meeting with God was the confession there is no God but God. Joining other gods to God is unwelcome in this faith:

"SAY: Come, I will rehearse what your Lord hath made binding on you -- that ye assign not aught to Him as partner; and that ye be good to your parents..." (Sura 6:152).

"Had there been in either heaven or earth gods besides God, both surely had gone to ruin. But glory be to God, the Lord of the throne, beyond what they utter!" (Sura 21:22).

Given Mohammed ibn Abdallah's preoccupations, it is perplexing that a story-teller who liked to recount tales of god-scientists and denied the resurrection attached himself and his followers to this religion. Why not Hinduism, which is sympathetic to long-phase cycles of gods? In attaching his followers to Islam and urging them to read the Koran, Elijah Muhammad was stamping an expiration date on his religion. When they follow his advice, they stampede into orthodox Islam.

The Quest for the Historical Wallace D. Fard

The rise of the Nation of Islam occurred in plain view, recently enough for ample documentation and evidence to survive detailing the circumstances of its origin. Let us impose, onto this well-documented modern event, the paradigm employed by secular 'Jesus scholarship.' The results are farcical.

The model employed by Ernest Renan in the nineteenth century was the "Legends of the Saints." European saints were alleged to be modest, unassuming types about whom legends congregated after their death. Jesus, too, must have been of this stamp, or else He would be unlike the European saints:

"The legends respecting Alexander were invented before the generation of his companions in arms became extinct; those respecting St. Francis d'Assisi began in his lifetime. A rapid metamorphosis operated in the same manner in the twenty or thirty years which followed the death of Jesus, and imposed upon his biography the peculiarities of an ideal legend." (Ernest Renan, The Life of Jesus, Author's Introduction.)

Employing this paradigm in the case of Wallace D. Fard, we discover that Mr. Fard did not claim to be God, rather this claim arose in the "twenty or thirty years which followed [his] death." Yet not only Elijah Muhammad, but also the Detroit Police, heard him make this claim:

"On Wednesday morning, November 23, Fard was apprehended while leaving his hotel room at 1 West Jefferson Street. [...] Once at police headquarters, he answered questions circumspectly and in his typical messianic vein. According to police and press transcripts, Fard identified himself as the 'supreme being on earth' and claimed responsibility for starting the Nation of Islam, assisted by Ugan Ali, who was also arrested." (Claude Andrew Clegg III, 'An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad,' p. 31)

In 20 B.C., no one had heard of 'Christianity.' In 140 A.D., Christianity had spread round the globe. When confronted with a new thing in the world, the nineteenth century 'explained' it with an adverb: "gradually." Even though it is not clear an adverb can be the answer to a question 'why' or 'how,' this answer solidified into unquestionable dogma.

It's not clear it's a useful answer even in the fields where it was originally introduced. A tourist viewing the Western badlands is not impressed by the idea 'this must have happened gradually.' While the topography of Sandy Hook in New Jersey changes, no one has ever seen it change 'gradually.' Rather, people wake up and discover a thundering storm in the night has introduced a new reality.

The idea that new religions are introduced through gradual accretions to existing religions is an especially unhappy one, and not only because the time scale available is so compressed the 'Jesus scholars' must ever be trying to enlarge it. The religious public is expected to throng to some unpretentious, mild-mannered Mr. Milquetoast, holding aloft his beige banner, as he leads them on an unexciting and unassuming program of minor reform. They continue to follow complacently as the successor generation introduces radical innovations such as Mr. Milquetoast's deity. What would make people act like this? If the charismatic founder cannot introduce innovation, how can the lackluster caretakers who succeed him?

In fact, none of the new religions born on American soil arose according to the gradualist paradigm. When we inspect Mormonism, the Shakers, the Comet Hale-Bopp UFO cult, and others, we realize that the most extreme doctrines and practices of these groups either arose in the generation of the founders, or not at all. New religions often experience a pronounced contraction in the second generation, not an expansion to even wilder claims, if indeed they survive at all. When Wallace Muhammad took over the reins of the Nation of Islam from his deceased father, the group lunged toward mainstream Islam and away from the founder's doctrines. Louis Farrakhan and others who remained faithful to Elijah Muhammad's message were forced to secede. Likewise, the Mormons abandoned polygamy, a controversial but theologically significant practice espoused by Joseph Smith, in exchange for statehood for Utah. Herbert Armstrong's group abandoned the founder's heterodox teaching that God was a 'family,' not a Trinity, after the family who thought it plausible God was a family passed from the scene. These groups experienced, and succumbed to, pressures to conform, not only from the larger society, but from their own members and contributors. From whence would come pressure for ever-expanding doctrinal innovation?

New religions on American soil are not started by mild-mannered reformers whose teachings and personalities are exaggerated by their successors. Is there any reason to believe new religions have ever been so generated? If there is not, then why is secular 'Jesus scholarship' based on this illusion?

Roots

Many Americans think of Muslims in America as a new phenomenon. It is surprising to realize that some of the Africans brought to this country in its infancy, while the importation of slaves was still legal, were practicing Muslims:

"Before 1808, when the transatlantic trade was still legal in what was by then the United States, possibly tens of thousands of Muslims from Senegambia and other Islamic parts of West Africa were transported to North America as slaves. Numerous notices in Georgian and South Carolinian newspapers for runaway slaves with Arabic names confirmed the presence of a significant Muslim minority among African-American slaves." (Claude Andrew Clegg III, 'An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad,' p. 18)

But there were no practicing Muslim communities among the slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Nevertheless, the idea arose among some African-Americans that they could see past their slave identities by 'returning' to Islam, although the Islam of Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science Temple owed more to the Shriners than to Mecca.

But where did this idea come from, the religious adherence is a subordinate factor in ethnic or national identity? It does not come from the Koran, which ridicules those who look to their ancestors for religious assurance. In the Koran, keeping to the fathers' tradition is the infidels' constant refrain:

"And when it is said to them, 'Follow ye that which God hath sent down;' they say, 'Nay, we follow the usages which we found with our fathers.' What! though their fathers were utterly ignorance and devoid of guidance?" (Koran, Sura 2:165)

"And when it was said to them 'Accede to that which God hath sent down, and to the Apostle:' they said, 'Sufficient for us is the faith in which we found our fathers.' What! though their fathers knew nothing, and had no guidance?" (Koran, Sura 5:103)

"Have thou no doubts therefore concerning that which they worship: they worship but what their fathers worshipped before them: we will surely assign them their portion with nothing lacking." (Sura 11:111).

"And when it is said to them, Follow ye what God hath sent down, they say, 'Nay; that religion in which we found our fathers will we follow.' What! though Satan bid them to the torment of the flame?" (Koran, Sura 31:20).

"For when our distinct signs are recited to them, they say, 'This is merely a man who would fain pervert you from your father's Worship.' And they say, 'This (Koran) is no other than a forged falsehood." (Koran, Sura 34:42).

"Then shall they return to hell.
They found their fathers erring,
And they hastened on in their footsteps." (Koran, Sura 37:66-68).

"But say they: 'Verily we found our fathers of that persuasion, and verily, by their footsteps do we guide ourselves.' And thus never before thy time did we send a warner to any city but its wealthy ones said: 'Verily we found our fathers with a religion, and in their tracks we tread.' SAY,--such was our command to that apostle--'What! even if I bring you a religion more right than that ye found your fathers following?'" (Koran, Sura 43:21-23).

Abraham is Mohammed ibn Abdallah's hero; he imagines himself to be following that patriarch, though he has lost hold of Abraham's messianic faith. Abraham was a man who left his home:

"Of old we gave unto Abraham his direction, for we knew him worthy. When he said to his Father and to his people, 'What are these images to which ye are devoted?' They said, 'We found our fathers worshipping them.' He said, 'Truly ye and your fathers have been in a plain mistake.'" (Sura 21:52-55).

Since the idea of looking to one's racial ancestors for religious guidance does not come from the Koran, from whence does it come? From nineteenth century Europe. It is the blood-drenched root of nationalism, an ideology which rivals even Islam and Communism in the number of human lives it has cut short.

The Virgin Mary

"Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" (Luke 1:34)

According to both the Bible and the Koran, Mary was a virgin when the angel announced her pregnancy:

"She said, 'How, O my Lord! shall I have a son, when man hath not touched me?' He said, 'Thus: God will create what He will; When He decreeth a thing, He only saith, "Be," and it is.'" (Koran, Sura 3:42).

"She said: 'How shall I have a son, when man hath never touched me? and I am not unchaste.' He said: 'So shall it be. Thy Lord hath said: "Easy is this with me;" and we will make him a sign to mankind, and a mercy from us. For it is a thing decreed.'" (Sura 19:20-21).

"Verily, these vied in goodness, and called upon us with love and fear, and humbled themselves before us: And her who kept her maidenhood, and into whom we breathed of our spirit, and made her and her son a sign to all creatures." (Sura 21:90-91).

Elijah Muhammad zigs on this point when everyone else zags. The way he tells it, Jesus was the natural offspring of Joseph and Mary. Joseph was married to another party who had borne him six children at the time of this illicit affair. Unlike the Honorable Elijah Muhammad himself in his later years, Joseph was swift enough not to get caught:

"Joseph came daily with water and food to Mary and to see the baby. He fooled his wife by telling her that he had a job building a house. This was how Jesus was born." (The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, 'The True History of Jesus,' http://muhammadspeaks.com)

But this is the very same kind of slander against Mary that so incensed Mohammed ibn Abdallah against the Jews of Medina:

"So, for that they have broken their covenant, and have rejected the signs of God, and have put the prophets to death unjustly...And for their unbelief,-- and for their having spoken against Mary a grievous calumny..." (Koran, Sura 4:154-155).

The Second Coming

"Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." (Acts 1:11).

The Bible teaches two advents of "this same Jesus." This is He for whom Elijah Poole was looking when he found Wallace D. Fard instead. In Nation of Islam theology, Fard is the "Jesus" of the Second Coming:

According to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, it is nothing but "ignorance" to believe that the Jesus of the first coming is anything other than a mortal man, a prophet, and a mistaken one at that, now dust:

"But you keep trying to preach the dead prophet, Jesus, back to life. Jesus was nothing but a prophet and he did not deny it. I have contended with you on this...We know what happened to him 2,000 years ago. He cannot come back from the grave. He is not in heaven...I would not give you two cents for all your praying to a dead Jesus to hear you. He does not hear you. He is dead and buried as all others before him and since who have died." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, pp. 210-211).

Yet the Jesus of the Second Coming, Wallace D. Fard, is God in person. Why this puzzling asymmetry? Why would there be an ontological difference between what Jesus was in His first advent and what "this same Jesus" would be in His second advent?

There is no need to investigate this claim, incidentally, because the Bible teaches that if you have to ask, it's not Him:

Honor Thy Mother

"Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee." (Exodus 20:12).

Wallace D. Fard, according to Elijah Muhammad, was the son of a black father and a white mother:

"The Great Mahdi, the God and Judge Who is now present in the world, Master Fard Muhammad, To Whom praises are due forever, taught me that His father was a real Black Man. His Father went up to the mountains (governments of the Caucasians) picking out a white woman to marry so that she would give birth to a son looking white but yet the Father is Black." (Elijah Muhammad, 'Our Saviour Has Arrived,' 1974, p. 183).

It is distressing to think that Mr. Fard taught people to believe that his own mother was a devil. This is a dutiful son? And why is the Savior of the black man half-devil? Does good fruit come from an evil root?

Like gnosticism, this faith looks not for converts, for sinners willing to leap over the chasm to the other side, but for people to realize who they are. White folk, by nature, are wicked, and black folk are good. They should wake up and realize who they are. But who are they? An artist wishing to draw a colored pencil portrait of leaders of this movement like Wallace D. Fard, Elijah Muhammad, and Louis Farrakhan, will make liberal use of that much maligned colored pencil formerly known as 'flesh' but subsequently relabelled 'peach.' The 'black' pencil will remain in the box unused.

Did Wallace D. Fard sincerely believe that his own mother was a devil, not a human being? Neither the Bible nor the Koran takes up his cause:

"And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:7).

"Moreover, we have enjoined on man to show kindness to his parents. With pain his mother beareth him; with pain she bringeth him forth..." (Koran, Sura 46:14).

"Thy Lord hath ordained that ye worship none but him; and, kindness to your parents, whether one or both of them attain to old age with thee: and say not to them, 'Fie!' neither reproach them; but speak to them both with respectful speech; and defer humbly to them out of tenderness; and say, 'Lord, have compassion on them both, even as they reared me when I was little.'" (Sura 17:24-25).

Wallace D. Fard had so much in common with his contemporary Father Divine as to make an observer suspect copying. In the nature of things, Father Divine, whose message was not racist, attracted many more white followers, however both figures addressed a felt need at the time, aiming for that constituency which saw in the mainline churches the slave-master's religion. Marcus Garvey was the 'John the Baptist' who brought everyone to state of expectancy: "Marcus Garvey had once stirred crowds in Harlem with the prophecy, 'A black God is coming. Be ready when he cometh.'" (Robert Weisbrot, Father Divine and the Struggle for Racial Equality, p. 60.) Both, unfortunately, were false gods, upon whom their followers' devotion was wasted: