Brief History:

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       The Nation of Islam (NOI) is an African-American political and new religious movement, founded in Detroit, Michigan, United States, by Wallace Fard Muhammad on July 4, 1930. Its stated goals are to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African Americans. Critics have described the theology of the organization as promoting antisemitism and anti-LGBT teachings/ statements and of promoting racial separatism black nationalism and of having promoted black supremacist beliefs in the past. The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks the NOI as a hate group which, it claims, teaches a "theology of innate black superiority over whites". The goal of this group, according to the Nation of Islam, was to "teach the downtrodden and defenseless Black people a thorough Knowledge of God and of themselves, and to put them on the road to Self-Independence with a superior culture and higher civilization than they had previously experienced."

    To really understand how this "Nation" evolved let's go back further than 1930 with Mr. Fard. Islam was brought to the United States by African Muslim slaves, and it retained a real if minuscule presence in the country throughout the 19th century. It reemerged at the beginning of the 20th century as a result of the efforts of the Aḥmadīyah movement, an unorthodox sect founded in India by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (c. 1839–1908), and of Shaikh Ahmed Faisal (1891–1980), the Moroccan-born leader of an independent Black Muslim movement. Muslim teachings were tied to Black nationalism by Noble Drew Ali, originally Timothy Drew (1886–1929), who founded the Moorish Science Temple of America in Newark, New Jersey, in 1913. He produced a new sacred text, The Holy Koran, that bears little resemblance to its namesake and was based on his limited knowledge of Islam and on spiritualist teachings. Among those associated with the Moorish Science Temple was a peddler named Wallace D. Fard (or Wali Fard Muhammad). In 1930,he tried to take claim its leadership by proclaiming himself to be the reincarnation of founder Noble Drew Ali but failed. While Mr. Wallace Fard aka Wali Fard Muhammad mysteriously came on the scene he also mysteriously disappeared in 1934.According to Muhammad, Fard trained him daily for nine months, then less frequently for about two years. In May 1933, shortly after naming Elijah Muhammad Minister of Islam, Fard disappeared without notifying his followers or designating a successor. In the wake of Fard's disappearance, several potential leaders emerged. Muhammad asserted that Fard had selected him to be his successor and trained him "day and night" for three years. He argued that Fard was God incarnate, and that Fard had revealed this to him alone. In 1942, during World War II, Elijah Muhammad was convicted of violating the Selective Service Act and jailed. Many other Nation of Islam members were similarly charged, as NOI opposed serving in the United States military. Upon his release in 1946, Elijah Muhammad slowly built up the membership of his movement through recruitment in the postwar decades. His program called for the establishment of a separate nation for black Americans and the adoption of a religion based on the worship of Allah and on the belief that blacks were his chosen people. His successor Elijah Muhammad established places of worship (called temples or mosques), a school named Muhammad University of Islam, farms, and real estate holdings in the United States and abroad. The Nation has long been a strong advocate of African-American businesses. Elijah Muhammad believed that the white race was created by Yakub, a Black scientist, and that Allah had allowed this devilish race to hold power for 6,000 years. Their time was up in 1914, and the 20th century was to be the time for Black people to assert themselves. 

During this time, the Nation of Islam attracted Malcolm Little. While in prison in Boston for burglary from 1946 to 1952, Little joined the Nation of Islam. He was influenced by his brother, Reginald, who had become a member in Detroit. Little quit smoking, gambling and eating pork, in keeping with the Nation's practices and dietary restrictions. He spent long hours reading books in the prison library. He sharpened his oratory skills by participating in debating classes. Following Nation tradition, Elijah Muhammad ordered him to replace his surname, "Little", with an "X", a custom among Nation of Islam followers who considered their surnames to have been imposed by white slaveholders after their African names were taken from them. The X was meant to represent a "lost heritage and a personal unknown history." Malcolm X rose rapidly to become a minister and national spokesperson for the NOI. He is largely credited with the group's dramatic increase in membership between the early 1950s and early 1960s (from 500 to 25,000 by one estimate; from 1,200 to 50,000 or 75,000 by another).

        Malcolm Little, better known as Malcolm X, took over the New York Temple. Malcolm X brought many into the movement but later became an embarrassment when he asserted that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a “case of chickens coming home to roost.” Expelled from the Nation, he accepted orthodox Islam after going on the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. 

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There were a number of splits and splinter groups during Elijah Muhammad's leadership, most notably the departure of senior leader Malcolm X to become a Sunni Muslim. Before he could fully articulate his new views, however, several members of the Nation killed him in 1965.

            In the remaining decade of Elijah Muhammad’s life, the movement was increasingly plagued by violence between members and former members. In 1973, for example, Nation members invaded the Hanafi Muslim Center in Washington, D.C., founded by Hammas Abdul Khaalis, a former Nation leader, and attacked his family, killing his children and leaving his wife paralyzed.

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       After Elijah Muhammad's death in 1975, his son, Warith Deen Mohammed, changed the name of the organization to "World Community of Islam in the West" (and twice more after that), and attempted to convert it to a mainstream Sunni Muslim ideology. In 1977, Louis Farrakhan rejected Warith Deen Mohammed's leadership and re-established the Nation of Islam on the original model. He took over the Nation of Islam's headquarters temple, Mosque Maryam (Mosque #2) in Chicago, Illinois.

      A talented orator, Farrakhan began his organization with only a few thousand adherents but soon reestablished a national movement. He published Elijah Muhammad’s books, started a periodical, The Final Call, and eventually purchased Elijah Muhammad’s former mosque in Chicago and refurbished it as the new headquarters of the Nation of Islam. He also expanded the movement internationally, opening centres in England and Ghana. He gained notice outside the African American community in 1984 when he aligned himself with the U.S. presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson, though he was criticized for anti-Semitic remarks that included an attack on antebellum Jewish slaveholders. Farrakhan steadily gained nationwide support for his encouragement of African American business and his efforts to reduce drug abuse and poverty. By the 1990s he had emerged as a prominent African American leader, as demonstrated by the success in 1995 of the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., which he helped to organize. Farrakhan toned down his racial overtones and moved the group toward orthodox Islam after a bout with prostate cancer in 2000. An estimated 10,000 to 50,000 people are members of the Nation of Islam. Since 2010, under Farrakhan, members have been strongly encouraged to study Dianetics, and the Nation claims it has trained 1,055 auditors.

         Dianetics is a set of ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. Dianetics is practiced by followers of Scientology and the Nation of Islam.

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