![]() |
Elijah Muhammed, whom the Nation of Islam (NOI) considers to be a
prophet of God (Allah), lays out his beliefs in "Message to the
Black Man." Chapter 62, Verse 4 |
||
|
1964, after Elijah Muhammed admitted to sexual affairs with his secretaries, Malcolm X left NOI for mainstream Islam. Elijah Muhammed called for his death, and within a year Malcom X was killed by followers of Elijah. In 1975, Elijah Muhammed died. His son W.D. Muhammed renamed the organization World Community of Islam and renounced his fathers' teachings for mainstream Islam. In 1978 Louis Farrakhan split and formed the current Nation of Islam based on the original teachings of Elijah Muhammed. Farrakhan
and Khallid Muhammed Farrakhan grew up in Boston as Louis Eugene Walcott before joining the Nation of Islam at the urging of Malcolm X. In the early 1960s, as Louis X, Farrakhan was minister of the Nation of Islam's Boston mosque and a kind of understudy to Malcolm X. When Malcolm X split from the Nation in 1964 and turned orthodox Islam, Farrakhan sided with Elijah Muhammed, leader of the Nation from the early 1930s until 1975, and the bitter conflict ended with the assassination of Malcolm X by three of Elijah's followers in 1965. After Elijah's death in 1975, Elijah's son W.D. Muhammed inherited the Nation of Islam and renamed it the World Community of Islam in the West. W.D. had been very good friends with Malcolm X and renamed the Harlem mosque in his honor, much to Farrakhan's chagrin. Since Elijah Muhammed believed in separation of the races, more strain developed when W.D. proclaimed that whites were welcome as members of the sect. In 1978, Farrakhan announced his departure and the formation
of the new Nation of Islam on the basis of Elijah's teachings. When
the World Community of Islam disbanded in 1985, Farrakhan's group was
left as the only legacy of Elijah Muhammed. Farrakhan reestablished
the Fruit of Islam, the Nation's security force, and restored all of
the old ideology. Some of the old teachings include claims that blacks
were the world's "original" race; that black Americans are
descended from an ancient, "lost" Asian tribe; and that the
white race originated from a demonic laboratory experiment. From this
time on, Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam have continued to gain recognition. |
Chapter 54, Verse 1 Chapter 105, Verse 11 |
||