The Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and the Men Who Follow Him

Dawn-Marie Gibson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137540768
• eBook ISBN: 9781137530844
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

This book examines the varied ways in which Minister Farrakhan's Resurrected Nation of Islam appeals to men from different backgrounds. Dawn-Marie Gibson investigates a number of themes including faith, family, and community, making use of archival research and engaging in-depth interviews. The book considers the multifaceted ways in which men encounter the Nation of Islam (NOI) and navigate its ethics and gender norms. Gibson describes and dissects the factors that attract men to the NOI, while also considering the challenges that these men confront as new converts. She discusses the various inter-faith and community outreach efforts that men engage in and assesses their work with both their Christian and Muslim counterparts. To conclude its discussion, the book takes a look at the NOI's 2015 Justice or Else March to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Million Man March in Washington, DC.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Dawn-Marie GibsonThe Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and the Men Who Follow Him10.1057/978-1-137-53084-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Dawn-Marie Gibson¹

(1)

University of London, London, UK

End Abstract

In 2001 historian Vibert White published Inside the Nation of Islam: A Historical and Personal Testimony by a Black Muslim. White’s book divulged countless details of corrupt and exploitative practices within Minister Farrakhan’s Resurrected Nation of Islam. In the book, for example, he writes that coerced financial donations to the NOI left his family financially vulnerable and that for his “sacrifice” he was considered “a good brother.” ¹ Inside the Nation of Islam remained the only detailed and published account of a former male member of Minister Farrakhan’s NOI until 2015 when Lance Shabazz published his book, Blood, Sweat & Tears: The Nation of Islam and Me. ² Much like Inside the Nation of Islam, Shabazz’s book recounts abuses of power within Minister Farrakhan’s faith community and alleges that Minister Farrakhan, like his predecessor Elijah Muhammad, has fathered children with women other than his wife, Khadija Farrakhan. ³ Current male members of Minister Farrakhan’s NOI are adding their own autobiographies to the existing literature. ⁴ African American men form the majority of the Resurrected NOI’s membership in the USA. Yet, little is known or indeed documented about the men who engage with, join, and work alongside and within Minister Farrakhan’s faith community.

The history of African American men’s experiences and work in Minister Farrakhan’s The NOI has been overlooked by historians and scholars of Islam. Their absence from the historical record is likely the result of two factors in particular. First, Minister Farrakhan’s faith community is regarded by many as sitting somewhat on the fringes of the American ummah (Muslim community). The community’s belief that NOI founder Fard Muhammad was God incarnate tends to trouble many American Muslims and invites charges that NOI members are guilty of shirk (polytheism). Thus, male members of Minister Farrakhan’s NOI are regarded as distinct and not necessarily representative of the larger African American Muslim community which accounts for 20% of the total Muslim population in the USA. ⁵ Secondly, accessing male members of Minister Farrakhan’s community can prove difficult and therefore the group may appear impenetrable to scholars. Male members of the NOI are referred to as the Fruit of Islam (FOI) within their faith community and the communal laws governing the FOI prohibit them from discussing “F.O.I. affairs outside…meetings with anyone.” ⁶ Thus, the inner workings of the FOI in Minister Farrakhan’s NOI are a well-kept secret. Minister Farrakhan’s The NOI has a plethora of social media platforms which are clearly designed to make the group and its teachings accessible to outsiders and those who may not be able to attend an NOI mosque on a regular basis. However, sourcing interview-generated research from the community remains problematic for many scholars and thus presenting FOI in their own words can prove difficult, to say the least. Thus, their history and experiences in the community remain largely undocumented. The Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan and the Men Who Follow Him seeks to address this deficit in the existing scholarly literature. In doing so, this book makes three central contributions to the extant scholarship on the Resurrected NOI. First, it is the only scholarly book to consider men’s experiences of Minister Farrakhan’s faith community and by extension the only work that examines their efforts to develop, promote, and construct families within their faith community. Secondly, the book is the only scholarly work to interrogate the varied ways in which the FOI engage and construct interfaith community outreach initiatives. Lastly, it is the only current academic study to examine the Resurrected NOI from the “bottom-up” and offer perspectives derived largely from its current male membership. The book considers the NOI’s appeal to men from various backgrounds and challenges narrow descriptions of the organization’s membership. It also examines how NOI gender norms impact men’s decisions concerning family and marriage within the faith community and discusses the interfaith and community work that they engage in. The book closes with a discussion of the NOI and Minister Farrakhan’s recent efforts to inject themselves into national discourses surrounding racial injustice at the Justice or Else March on October 10, 2015, in Washington, D.C.

The Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and the Men Who Follow Him argues that Minister Farrakhan’s gospel of self-help and self-improvement, whilst based on much earlier Black Nationalist formulations, appeals to men from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. His followers include college-educated professionals, former gang members, and prisoners. Men’s motives for joining the NOI vary. Some are drawn directly by a deep-seated love for Minister Farrakhan and regard him as a father figure and mentor, whilst others are motivated by a desire to support the NOI’s community improvement initiatives. The theology of the NOI, whilst dismissed by many American Muslims as heretical, also appeals to men and speaks directly to their experiences as victims of structural racism. Men’s experiences of the NOI and its appeal to them cannot be understood outside of an appreciation of the context in which they encounter the Nation. Minister Farrakhan’s rapport with broad sections of Black America and Black men in particular must be understood within the context of their history of exploitation and demonization in the USA.

This book is concerned with a number of themes including faith, family, interfaith and community outreach, and national discourses concerning America’s lingering race problem. It highlights the experiences of male members of the community in their own words in the form of their writings, lectures, and interview-generated research. The book also focuses attention on the concerns of organizations and imams that work alongside and protest the NOI, including the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, and the Anti-Defamation League.

Muslim America and the Nation of Islam

Louis Farrakhan’s Resurrected NOI is estimated to have a total membership of fewer than 50,000 in the USA. ⁷ If this estimate is accurate then the contemporary NOI is around half the size of Elijah Muhammad’s NOI in the early 1960s, when sociologist C. Eric Lincoln estimated it to have a membership of approximately 100,000. ⁸ The present-day NOI is a numerically small but nonetheless influential community. Nation members are dwarfed in numbers by their African American Sunni Muslim counterparts who account for 1.6 million of the total 4.1 million Muslims in the USA. ⁹ Minister Farrakhan’s community is one that has limited, and at times fraught, encounters with Muslim America and representatives of American Muslim organizations. Indeed, many Muslims both within and beyond America’s borders regard the theology of the NOI as heretical. Minister Farrakhan’s followers, however, regard the NOI as a beacon of Black consciousness and construe its survival through years of intrusive government surveillance as a sign of God’s favor. ¹⁰

Unlike many American Muslim organizations the NOI is, as Islamic Studies Scholar Herbert Berg rightly notes, an “indigenous form of Islam.” ¹¹ The organization was established by an immigrant peddler known as Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in Detroit in 1930 and was later led by Fard’s handpicked “Supreme Minister,” Elijah Poole (later known as Elijah Muhammad), from 1934 to 1975. ¹² Little is known or documented with regard to Fard’s origins. However, unpublished research by historian Fatima Fanusie suggests that he was of Pakistani origin. ¹³ Fard Muhammad converted thousands of African Americans in Detroit to his own unique interpretation of Islam. Indeed, sociologist Erdmann Beynon estimated that Fard had converted approximately 8,000 African Americans to the NOI. ¹⁴ According to Fard Muhammad, African Americans were the “chosen people” of God. Their white counterparts were “blue-eyed devils” who had been created by an evil scientist, Yakub, on the island of Patmos 66,000 years ago. Fard introduced himself to his followers initially as a peddler and later as a prophet. He identified his African American followers as descendants of the Tribe of Shabazz, which he described as an ancient Black civilization. Fard taught his followers that heaven and hell were nothing more than conditions that existed on earth and that so-called Negroes who rejected Islam were living in hell. Religious Studies scholar Justine Bakker notes that Fard “offered a vicious critique of Christianity and preached an apocalyptic vision of the coming War of Armageddon, which would lead to the destruction of “the world of the white man” and the eternal salvation and domination of the ‘black nation.’” ¹⁵ Numerous factors account for Fard’s success in converting African Americans to his own unique formulation of Islam. First, the Great Migration of over 1.5 million African Americans from the rural South to the urban North and Midwest during the interwar years left many migrants without a spiritual home. Midwest Scholars generally agree that the Southern Black Church acted as a “refuge” for Blacks during slavery and its violent aftermath. ¹⁶ The northern-based churches appeared very distinct to their Southern counterparts through the lens of migrants. The sharecropping system that emerged in the South following the demise of slavery tied African Americans to lands owned by whites and left them with little opportunity for economic independence. Black Southerners were lured to the North for various reasons including a desire to escape the pervasive racial injustice and terror that white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan visited upon their communities. However, as historian Stephen Tuck notes, the “primary cause of the Great Migration…was the promise of a half-decent wage in the city.” ¹⁷ Second, the onset of the Great Depression in 1930 devastated African American families and contributed to the rise of female-headed households. Fard’s teachings on personal responsibility and patriarchy spoke to the realities of the fragile family networks he encountered. Third, Islam’s then largely undocumented history in Black America, as articulated by Fard, intrigued his audiences. According to scholar Alan D. Austin, between 7% and 10% of the slave population in the US were Muslim. ¹⁸ However, Islam did not survive in the plantation South. The strict observance of the religious practices of slaves ensured that they were unable to effectively pass on their faith to their children. Yet, as Religious Studies scholar Mattias Gardell notes, the “memory” of Islam did survive. ¹⁹ Fard’s discussions about the religious practices of his audiences’ ancestors awakened a desire to know more about what he identified as the “natural” religion of African Americans. Lastly, the near collective failure of Muslim missionaries to teach and convert significant numbers of African Americans to Islam ensured that Fard’s teachings appeared authentic to his followers. Indeed, it is likely that many of the individuals Fard converted had never read the Quran.

Islam has a long history in the USA. However, it remained a faith that few African Americans identified with at the outset of the twentieth century. Early Muslim immigrants to the USA between 1875 and 1912 failed to carry out any si...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Becoming an FOI
• 3. Constructing Families in the Nation
• 4. Interfaith Outreach and Serving the Community
• 5. Justice or Else!
• 6. Conclusion
• Backmatter