Why Islam Appeals to African-Americans
by Jack Evans

Some African-Americans seek comfort from Islam

Two major factions of the Islamic religion exist in America: the Orthodox faction, which holds strictly to the Koran and Hadith (traditions) of Mohammed, and the Nation of Islam, which adapts Orthodox Islam to the peculiar problems of black people in America. The tenets of the Nation of Islam are most appealing to African-Americans and are attracting them to this cult in great numbers.

The primary commonality of Orthodox Islam and of the Nation of Islam is that both are reactionary. Orthodox Islam, as reflected in the Koran, is a reaction to idolatry, Judaism and Catholicism (which Mohammed calls "Christianity"). The doctrine of the Nation of Islam is a reaction to the white racism of America, as reflected in its major resource book, Message to the Blackman in America, by Elijah Muhammad, its primary founder and guiding influence.

To understand, to some extent, the reason for the effectiveness of the doctrinal philosophy of the Nation of Islam among African-Americans, it is necessary to have at least a cursory knowledge of the history of racism in America, which was the product of the despicable, dehumanizing, evil system of slavery. It is historically factual that black slaves were brought to America as chattel from Africa in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, sold, traded, treated like animals and forced to breed large families for the economic security of the white masters. Although the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 legally liberated the black man's body in this country, his mind was still in bondage to his self-image of worthlessness, his impotence of economic strength, his lack of educational training, and his failure to understand the importance of unity among those who had shared the slavery experience. It was the racists' primary objective to keep the mind of the freedman, as well as that of his descendants, in this psychological bondage through the system of segregation, discrimination and caste. Thus, the plight of the transplanted African and his offspring in America became a matter of fighting the system just to survive.

The system used everything possible to remind the black man of his former status in America as a slave and to keep him in "his place" as a "second-class citizen." To do this, the system used housing discrimination, creating the black ghettos of America; job discrimination, giving the black man the last-hired-and-first-fired positions and keeping him economically weak; educational discrimination, promising him separate-but-equal facilities for education, emphasizing the "separate" but minimizing the "equal"; and religious discrimination, abusing Christianity, which he had also done during the days of slavery in order to maintain the system.

It was to the abuse of Christianity that the Black Muslim, unknowingly, reacted, as he reacts even now, and not to Christianity as it is revealed in the Bible. For abused Christianity, regardless of its claims to Bible sanction and its attempt to identify with Jesus Christ, is not Christianity at all. This was true during the days of Mohammed in the seventh century when he was reacting to Judaism and Catholicism; during the days of the Crusades, which were wars and killing between the Muslims and Catholics over control of the Holy Land; during the days of slavery, when the Bible was misused in an attempt to establish the divine approval of the evil system; during the aftermath of slavery and the days of segregation and discrimination, when there were continued attempts by those who claimed Christianity as their religion to justify racism; and even today in which some die-hard racists, who claim Christianity, still try to abuse the teachings of Christ Jesus.

Participants in or supporters of any of the activities of their kind are not representative of New Testament Christianity. Yet not realizing this basic premise, the Muslims, and especially the Black Muslims in America, continue to react to the abuse of Christianity by calling it "the white man's religion." And needing a religious solace, the black man, who was frustrated with the abuse of Christianity, found comfort in this religion from the East called Islam, which he was told was his original religion anyway, which he had been denied in America. Building on this natural-religion denial tactic and achieving the desired results among the oppressed black Americans, Black Muslims admit, and rightly so, that their application of Islam to black problems in America was designed to achieve religious, economic, social and political ends. It also was designed to give American black people a better self-image and confidence in their strength.

The founders of the black version of Islam, however, were influenced originally in their designs by the philosophies of two prominent black nationalists of the early 1900 more than by the teachings of the seventh-century Mohammed. These two influencing persons were Marcus Garvey and Timothy Drew (later called Noble Drew Ali). It is apparent to one familiar with the black version of Islam that its very foundation rests on the socioeconomic ideology of Garvey and the religious ideas of Drew. Although the two men were contemporaries, they represented two traditions of black nationalism in the United States. Yet black Islam is a synthesis of both traditions.

Garvey, called the "Black Moses," came from Jamaica to the United States in 1916 and settled in Harlem, N.Y. He immediately began his program of uniting black people in America with the objective of establishing a separate country and government for them. His rationale for this objective is reflected in his statement: "The Negro needs a nation and a country of his own, where he can best show evidence of his own ability in the art of human progress. Scattered as an unmixed and unrecognized part of alien nations and civilizations is but to demonstrate his imbecility, and point him out as an unworthy derelict, fit neither for the society of Greek, Jew nor Gentile."

Garvey further stated, "The only protection against injustice in man is power -- physical, financial and scientific." To further the acquiring of power for black men, Garvey was joined by another contributor to the origin of black Islam in America: Timothy Drew of North Carolina.

Building on the ideas of Garvey, Drew claimed that he received his knowledge of Islam from the king of Morocco in North Africa who commissioned him to bring Islam to black people in America for the purpose of uniting them and overthrowing the white system in this nation. He established a number of Moorish-American Temples of Islam in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan, stating that black people in the United States should be called "Moors," after their homeland in Africa, and should embrace their original religion, Islam. Drew's short period of leadership ended with his mysterious death in 1929.

Although Drew claimed to have been a prophet, his successor, Wallace D. Fard, made an even greater claim to religious power -- that of being God in the flesh, which is totally contrary to the beliefs of Orthodox Islam. This claim of being God caused a split in the Moorish movement with one faction remaining faithful to the ideas of Noble Drew Ali and the other faction, which later became the Nation of Islam, remaining loyal to Fard, who claimed to have been the reincarnation of Noble Drew Ali.

Assuming the title of "Master Wallace Fard Muhammad," Fard established his first temple in Detroit and said his mission was to secure freedom, justice and equality for the black people of the United States because of their having been robbed by the white man, whom he referred to as the "cave man," "Satan" or "Caucasian devil." Fard, like Drew, also mysteriously vanished from the scene. He was succeeded by his closest disciple, Elijah Poole, later called Elijah Muhammad, who is considered to be the father of the Nation of Islam.

Drawing from the socioeconomic-religious philosophies of Garvey, Ali and Fard, Elijah Muhammad gave the Nation of Islam the organizational form needed to sustain it. He pointed out more vociferously than his predecessors the atrocities of the white man in America against the black man. To appeal to the black psyche, Muhammad says in his book, Message to the Blackman in America, which is the bible of the Black Muslim, that the white man was created by an evil God-scientist named Yakub, who would give the white race 6,000 years to rule the black race. After that time, which Muhammad says has ended, the original black nation would bring forth almighty God in the flesh to destroy the white race of devils and rule forever. He says that this God was the Mahdi, who came to the earth in the flesh in July 1930 in the person of Master Wallace Fard Muhammad, whose earthly home was Mecca, Arabia. He further states that God is black, and his only people are black.

To strengthen his case against the white race, Elijah Muhammad points to the evil system of slavery, not knowing that Mohammed in the Koran regulated slavery and, according to Muslim historians, owned African slaves himself. Nevertheless, Elijah Muhammad uses the support of black slavery in America by the white church system as proof of the fact that Christianity is the white man's religion and the Bible is the graveyard of the black man. One example of this fact, according to Muhammad, was The Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and their use of the cross as their symbol of righteousness. And although racism, under the guise of the cross of Jesus Christ, is an abuse of Christianity, it is for this reason that many African-Americans reject Christianity and embrace the black version of Islam rather than Orthodox Islam.

Using reverse racism to infuriate black people in America, who were oppressed economically, educationally, socially and politically, and instilling in them a sense of racial pride and strength in unity, Elijah Muhammad built a massive financial empire in the Nation of Islam, headquartered in Chicago. On his death in 1975, he was succeeded for a few years by his son, Wallace D. Muhammad, who tried to institute a policy of inclusion of all races, including white people. But that policy led to his being overthrown by a more militant element within the Nation of Islam who wanted to retain the racist policy of Elijah Muhammad. That element is being led today by Louis Farrakhan, the charismatic spokesman who called the Million-Man March on Washington, D.C., in 1995. Farrakhan used the success of that march to give him credibility as a spokesman for all black people and to enhance his position as a proponent of the religion of Islam.

The official newspaper of the Nation of Islam under Louis Farrakhan is The Final Call, which defines its name in the masthead as, "A message dedicated to the Resurrection of the black man and woman of America and the world." This paper, which limits its work to the mental resurrection of black people, also carries in every issue a section titled "The Muslim Program: What the Muslims Want and What the Muslims Believe." Included in what the Muslims want is "complete separation in a state or territory of our own," which does not sound like the reconciliation Farrakhan said was one of the goals of the Million-Man March. And included in what the Muslims believe is the statement: "We believe that Allah [God] appeared in the person of Master W. Fard Muhammad, July, 1930; the long-awaited 'messiah' of the Christians and the 'Mahdi' of the Muslims."

The latest claim of Farrakhan is that he is "a Jesus, a savior and messiah," and the Elijah of the prophet Malachi who was to come for the black people of America. He states that the Jesus of the Bible was the historical Jesus who only prefigured the coming of a prophetic Jesus, who is Farrakhan himself.

Although many African-Americans are accepting this heretical teaching of a messiah figure who promises to relieve all of their socioeconomic-religious problems by destroying their oppressor, the white man in America, it would be well for all to remember that the Bible still teaches that Jesus Christ of the Bible was the only God manifest in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16) and that He is the only prophetic, historical and eternal Messiah (Hebrews 13:8; Revelation 1:8), whom all men must believe and obey in order to have a hope in this life and in the life to come (1 Corinthians 15:19; John 3:16; Hebrews 5:8-9; 1 John 4:14). *

Jack Evans, president of Southwestern Christian College, may be contacted at 200 Bowser Circle, Terrell, TX 75160.

[Editor's Note: I would like to thank Jack Evans for planning and gathering these articles about Islam.]