Fellow Muslims with eyes the bluest of blue and skin the
whitest of white...
Former NOI members who recognized anti-white racism as
folly and converted to proper Islam include Malcolm X and the world champion
heavyweight boxer, Muhammad Ali. Both spoke out on the subject:
“[The Hajj
pilgrimage to Mecca] was an exhilarating experience to see people belonging to
different colors, races and nationalities, kings, heads of states and ordinary
men from very poor countries all clad in two simple white sheets praying to God
without any sense of either pride or inferiority. It was a practical
manifestation of the concept of equality in Islam.” (Muhammed Ali)
“During the
past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate,
drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) --
while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the
bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the
whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the
‘white’ Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African
Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana.”
“We were
truly all the same -- because their belief in the one God had removed the
‘white’ from their minds, the ‘white’ from their behavior, and the ‘white’ from
their attitude.”
“This
religion recognizes all men as brothers. It accepts all human beings as equals
before God, and as equal members in the Human Family of Mankind. I totally
reject Elijah Muhammad’s racist philosophy, which he has labeled ‘Islam’ only
to fool and misuse gullible people as he fooled and misused me. But I blame
only myself, and no one else for the fool that I was, and the harm that my
evangelical foolishness on his behalf has done to others.” (Malcolm X)
Whither the “Nation of Islam”?
Laudable as the lifestyle espoused by the NOI may be,
one cannot escape the fact that despite some of the trappings of Islam, the
theology and ideology they currently espouse are not only non-Islamic but
actually anathema to Islam. There are, however, some signs that things may be
changing for the better.
On the death of Elijah Mohammed in 1976 his son Wallace
D. Muhammad (now known as Imam Warrithuddin Mohammed) assumed NOI leadership,
renamed the organization the Muslim American Society and tried to steer it
toward Islamic orthodoxy. After three years a disgruntled Louis Farrakhan
broke away and re-founded the NOI in line with the teachings of Elijah
Mohammed. But in February this year, Farrakhan, recovering from a serious
battle with prostate cancer which may have given him cause to reflect, shared a
platform with Wallace and made an important move toward mainstream Islam by
declaring:
“Allah sent
Mohammed with the final revelation to the world. ... There is no prophet after
the Prophet Mohammed, and no book after the Koran.”
Let us hope that similarly orthodox statements on the
nature of God and on race will also soon be forthcoming. Let us look forward
to the day when Louis Farrakhan and his NOI follow the example of their former
colleague, Malcolm X, who eventually found his way from the so-called “Nation
of Islam” to genuine Islam and stated:
“I declare
emphatically that I am no longer in Elijah Muhammad’s ‘strait jacket’, and I
don’t intend to replace his with one woven by someone else. I am a Muslim in
the most orthodox sense; my religion is Islam as it is believed in and
practiced by the Muslims in the Holy City of Mecca.” Alhamdulillah.
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