In the Spirit of the Gracious and Compassionate
Creator of the Heavens and the Earth
and Elijah Muhammad
Half a century ago, I left my pleasant life at Antioch College to join what I now know to be a pseudo-Islamic quasi-Christian cult-group criminal organization — Elijah Muhammad’s “Nation of Islam”.
I abandoned my academic career, ended up losing everything I owned, including a Steinway grand my parents had given me. Broke their hearts. I am still in pain, thinking about it. My life has not recovered.
I am convinced that Elijah Muhammad was sincere and honorable. He believed what he was teaching, from 1933 until shortly before he died. His son, W.D. Muhammad disagreed with him, openly, starting in 1962. Wallace (as he was known then) was put out of the organization, repeatedly. But, the last time — around 1973 — instead of having him put out, Elijah had him sent around the country to teach.
Someone (probably a delusionally “virtuous” person) secretly recorded what Wallace was teaching — “secretly” recording what was being said in a public forum is in itself a form of madness — and played it for Elijah. I believe it was at a meal, and Wallace was there. According to Wallace, his father jumped up (despite being seriously ill), waved his arms, and said, “My boy’s got it!”
My belief (based on this and other indications) is that Elijah knew he was mistaken, but (quite honorably) couldn’t just walk away or just say (in effect) “Oops!” and leave his devoted followers in confusion. Finally realizing that his son was actually right and that his son had figured out a way to transition his followers out of error and into the right path, he sent his son out to do that work and was absolutely thrilled to hear the words that would save his followers from error. “My boy’s got it!”
In actual fact, W.D. Mohammed (his chosen spelling of his own name, and as it appears on his birth certificate) saved me from the delusional madness I had been lured into.
I would like to believe that he saved many others, as well. But, as best I can tell, most of the others were not so much in the delusional madness as they were in the respectable hypocrisy of seeing their embrace of Islam as a path to respectable material comfort. As C. Eric Lincoln, author of “The Black Muslims in America”, wrote, most of those who claimed to be following Elijah Muhammad actually had “middle-class aspirations”. How can you have middle-class aspirations and simultaneously follow a man who says that America is going to be destroyed, burnt to ashes?
And now, still with the same middle-class aspirations, they claim to follow W.D. Mohammed, the man I heard tell us to read the Qur’an — which is in Arabic, and only in Arabic. I learned to read it 45 years ago. They still haven’t learned to read it.
Arabic is much easier to read than English, but you cannot know this unless you study it. All written language consists of strange shapes on paper. There are no “real letters” — as someone once called the Roman alphabet we use to write English.
From December 1976 to March 1977, I served on the governing board, in Chicago, of that criminal organization. The Board was openly criminal. When I urged them to govern their affairs by the Qur’an, one of the “Imams” (I don’t believe in such titles) on the Board told me I was going to get my head blown off. I replied, “Is that the worst thing you can think of?” I was so radical, W.D. Mohammed himself had to restrain me.
Yes, criminal organization. Imitation of Islam. Almost Christian, believing that a man – we called him “Master Fard” (pronounced “fa-RAAD”) – was the incarnation of “almighty god Allah”.
I had abandoned my comfortable academic life at Antioch College — where the Dean of the Faculty had told me they were planning to offer me tenure, a lifelong professorship – to join a pseudo-Islamic quasi-Christian cult-group criminal organization. This, because I thought it was better than the Gay life.
7 Dhul-Hijjah 1443
July 6, 2022
Which Way Is Up? 