AMERICA'S EARLY EXPERIENCE WITH THE MUSLIM FAITH: THE NATION OF ISLAM

Middle East Policy, Fall 2008 by Talhami, Ghada Hashem

It should come as no surprise that Islam informed various transformations of African-American movements before the rise of the Nation of Islam (NOI). Although it had quickly become the exclusive representative of African-American Islam, the NOI was the product of a decades-long chain of events. Islam played an enormous inspirational and ideological role in the evolution of a distinct African-American identity. This study will trace the spiritual, ideological and psychological antecedents of the NOI as a way of charting the course of Islamic expansion within the United States. This will be followed by an examination of the official response of U.S. security agencies to this movement and the application of similar methods to the Arab-American community following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The purpose of this analysis is to clarify American perceptions of the role of Islam in the life of various American communities, native as well as immigrant, in order to uncover a developing pattern of official behavior as a predictor of future trends. Islam's attraction as an identity emblem among various Afro-American groups was witnessed as early as 1913. In that year, Noble Drew Ali, a precursor of Elijah Muhammad, organized what he called the Canaanite Temple in Newark, New Jersey. The emphasis on Biblical and distinctive names signified a deep-seated desire to chart a separate identity from that of other faith groups. When a split occurred within the ranks of the Moorish community in 1916, one group took the name of the Moabite Temple (apparently named after an ancient reference to Morocco, although Moab was really a kingdom in Syria), the other called itself the Moorish Divine National Movement of North America, Inc. This group moved to Chicago in 1925 and established the Holy Temple of America. It attempted to provide a collective response to the travails besetting black migrants to northern states and the escalation of Afro-American deaths by lynching. What is significant here is Drew Ali's determination to fashion a new national identity around the rejection of a certain kind of imposed integration, which had failed to protect the rights of the minority. In his early publications, Drew Ali would repeat the common assertion among an increasing number within this community that Islam was the black man's original religion. This notion gained strength through the desire to seek a national identity linking them to a homeland other than the white-dominated United States. In this context, the term Moorish was encouraged, while appellations such as Negro, Ethiopian or colored were strongly discouraged. The home of the Moors was Morocco, stressed Drew Ali, claiming that it was they who brought Islam to the New World. He also stressed the value of industriousness and hard work, but did not live long enough to see the expansion of his community. He was assassinated in 1920.

The early attraction of Afro-Americans to a religion other than Christianity developed as a result of their bitter national experience 60 years following the abolition of slavery. A new identity was sought, and Drew Ali's Moorish religion allowed for borrowings from Garveyism and oriental philosophers.2 Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was the first to propose a return-to-Africa movement through his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). He advocated a philosophy of separatism tinged with spiritualism. Among his young followers was Elijah Pool (Muhammad). Garvey also promoted the views of another influential member of UNIA, James Morris Webb, whose quest for a black spiritual revival inspired him in 1919 to write a book, A Black Man Will Be the Coming Universal King. Garvey reinforced this prediction by claiming that Africa will produce a black redeemer.3

But Garvey not only preached a message calling for the return to a united and liberated Africa; he was also inspired by Islam, the black man's original religion. The Garveyites' hymn for the president stated in its opening stanza:

Father of all Creation

Allah Omnipotent

Supreme O'er every nation

God bless our President.

In its 1922 convention, the Garveyite movement suggested that Islam be adopted as its official religion, since the majority of Africans were Muslims. Although Garvey did not accept this proposal, several of his followers compared him at one time to the Prophet Muhammad. In a hymn to Garvey, entitled "Sing of Garvey," he was described as the "Child of Allah." Thus, it seems likely that both Drew Ali and Elijah Muhammad received this Islamic influence through the Garvey movement.4

Elijah Muhammad's spiritual and political conversion to Islam clearly resulted from his involvement with earlier black-nationalist movements. He was obviously influenced by Garvey's exhortation to his followers not to seek guidance from white leaders, but to follow the guidance of black ones. Elijah Muhammad also learned from Drew Ali and the Moorish Temple that Christianity was not the black man's original faith. He adopted the need to emphasize economic independence and self-reliance from the Garveyite movement, which stressed industry, commerce and education in every one of its conventions. Marcus Garvey had been mistrustful of educated blacks who denied their own people. Elijah Muhammad carried this a step further by explicitly discrediting such middle-class black organizations as the National Urban League and the NAACP, neither of which took up the struggle of the poor and working classes.5 W.E.B. DuBois and the NAACP leaders were accused of being brainwashed by the white man's education. Thus, Elijah Muhammad wrote: