Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Lewis Hahn, Randall Auxier, and 

Lucien W. Stone, Jr., eds., The Philosophy of Seyyed 

Hossein Nasr (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 2001); 

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from Its Ori-

gins to the Present (Albany: State University of New 

York Press, 2006); ———, Science and Civilization in 

Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 

1970); ———, Philosophy and the Plight of Modern Man

(London: Longmans, 1976); ———, Knowledge and 

the Sacred (Albany: State University of New York Press, 

1989); ———, Religion and the Order of Nature (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 1996).

Nation of Islam

This indigenous African-American Muslim com-

munity of the Nation of Islam (NOI) began in 

1930, when racism and violence against blacks 

were still widespread in the U

nited

  s

tates

.

Although the shadowy figure of W. D. Fard (also 

known as Fard Muhammad, Wallace D. Fard, Wali 

Fard Muhammad, et al.) was the original impetus 

of the community’s distinctive black 

theology

and eschatological message, its true founder and 

leader for many decades until his death was Elijah 

Muhammad, born Elijah Poole (1897–1975), in 

Sandersville, Georgia. In 1923 he married Clara 

Evans, who later came to be known in the NOI 

as Sister Clara Muhammad, and settled in Detroit, 

where, in the early 1930s, he became acquainted 

with W. D. Fard and his already established Tem-

ple of Islam. By 1934 Fard had disappeared and 

Elijah Muhammad became the sole leader of the 

new community known as the Nation of Islam.

Combining use of the Bible and later the 

q

Uran

, Elijah Muhammad preached a message of 

modern black prophecy that emphasized themes 

of the chosenness and salvific destiny of the 

“Blackman,” doing his own revisionist history on 

racist American attitudes toward the “Negro” or 

“colored man” since the Civil War (1861–65). Pos-

sible Islamic sources for these teachings have been 

found by scholars of s

UFism

 and Islamic sectarian 

theologies (s

hiism

,  a

hmadiyya

, and even d

rUze

teachings), all of which espouse varying notions 

of the divinity within, cyclic prophecy, ongoing 

revelation, messianism in the Islamic figure of 

the  m

ahdi

, and millennialism in the imminent 

coming of the Last Judgment and reversal/over-

throw of the present corrupt world order. Several 

of these ideas exist on the margins of Islamic 

sectarianism and are strongly disavowed by the 

Sunni Muslim majority, particularly notions of 

modern prophecy, ongoing revelation, and human 

(in this case, black) divinity. These doctrines have 

made the NOI universally rejected by the Ameri-

can Sunni community since its origins, although 

there are more recent signs of a rapprochement 

with the larger world Muslim 

umma

, or religious 

community.

The NOI has frequently been categorized in 

purely secular political or sociological terms as 

black nationalism and not as a religious commu-

nity. This community certainly has played a large 

role in paralleling, stimulating, and critiquing var-

ious civil rights and sociopolitical activism move-

ments in America: the National Association for the 

Advancement of the Colored People (NAACP), 

Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement 

K  520