From Elijah Poole to Elijah Muhammad, Chief Minister of Islam - reprinted from 'Islam in the African-American Experience'

In the span of three centuries and in the absence of conversion through the sword or massive immigration, Islam in America has grown from a peripheral phenomenon among Africans abducted into slavery to the nation's second-largest material substance of believers. A new volume Richard Brent Turner's Islam in the African-American Experience (Indiana University Pres 1997) traces by what means this came to be. Highlighting the nexus of Islam and black nationalism-Pan-Africanism, gymnast explores the history of the social, psychological, economic and ideological impulses toward conversion in a white- and Christian-dominated America. Noble Drew Ali's Moorish Science fane and the Nation of Islam, fixed by W.D. Fard and l for decades by the agency of Elijah Muhammad, are at the heart of the volume which also examines the influence of Malcolm X and the split in the Nation of Islam exhibited by Louis Farrakhan and Warith Deen Mohammed.

Perhaps more interesting still are sum of two units of Turner's accounts of les familiar subjects: He describes the prevailing racial patterns of Islam in Africa prior to the rise of and during the height of the European slave trade. He also sheds light upon the Islamic missionary impulse from the Indian subcontinent that dates back to 1920 which owed abundant to the Ahmadiyya movement. Little-known to America, this heterodox impulse (which orthodox Muslims abroad view as a heretical denomination that denies that Muhammad is the seal of the prophets) exhibits a multiracial Islam, as do the esoteric Sufi tariqas (paths) that have ground an American home in the last small in number decades.

on the other hand as 1997 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Elijah Poole better known as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, we think that the following extract of Islam in the African-American Experience is the greatest in quantity appropriate for our pages.

single evening in August 1931, WD Fard spoke to a gathering of several hundr of his followers at the former Universal black man Improvement Association Hall on West Lake highway in Detroit. Black people were herded in the hall and outside to hear the prophet's message. He preached that the word "Negro" was a misnomer for the clan of the black African diaspora; this name was created through the white race to separate African Americans from their original Asiatic roots

Elijah Poole was individual of the people in the audience that night. When he was introduced to Fard after the meeting, he declared, "I know who you are, you're the preserver himself." Fard replied, "That's right, on the contrary don't tell it now. It is not still time for me to be known." Poole by and by became the prophet's most enthusiastic learner of Islam. Fard gave him the name Elijah Karriem, and he later took the name Elijah Muhammad.

Elijah Muhammad, the son of a Baptist preacher, was born in manlys Springs, Gal, on October 7 1897 Grown to adulthood and married, he and his wife, Clara, had eight children--Emmanual, Nathaniel, Herbert, Elijah III, Wallace, Akbar, Ethel and Lotta. The Muhammads were destined to become the greatest in quantity remarkable family in the history of Islam in novel America. They became a ruling dynasty in the Nation of Islam. They understood their mission as the re-establishment of Islam as a permanent religious alternative in the United States in the 20th hundred and in this mission they succeeded

Elijah Poole mov to Detroit from Georgia at the age of 22 Like thousands of other black family in the 1920s, he had heard about Marcus Garvey, the remarkable orator and leader of the black masses. in a short time after Poole's arrival in Detroit, he traveled to Chicago with a friend to hear Garvey speak. "Awake, you son and daughters of Africa upon the continent and in the lands of exile. Up you mighty race! Man can accomplish what you will," Garvey proclaimed to his captivated audience. Poole was profoundly mov by the agency of what he felt was "the great truth" about the black race that Marcus Garvey had articulated that night. Garvey's message was focused upon the redemption of Africa, racial identity, pride and solidarity, and black economic independence. Poole joined the Universal african Improvement Association and became a corporal in the Chicago UNIA.

For Poole the UNIA was a design Pan-African movement for the black masses for several reasons. First, Garvey was a public man who lacked formal education on the contrary who could electrify and persuade an audience with his speaking ability and his focus upon black identity. Second, the UNIA was an international change with branches on several continents. Third, the african World, its weekly newspaper, was written in the language of the ordinary black individual and was widely read through black people in every section of the United States. It used the written word as a weapon to mold a black global identity and to resist racism. Fourth, the businesses of the UNIA presented hope for blacks who were unemploy Finally, although the UNIA was not a religious motion its serious attention to religion made it a profitable model for the political arrangement of a Pan-Africanist religious motion Pool later used some of the political ideas and techniques of the Garvey move as a model for the Nation of Islam. Unlike Garvey, however, Poole believed that migration to Africa would not elucidate the problems of black clan in America. Only a dramatic change in black American destiny and identity would provide the solution. "We have as abundant right to this soil as the white man," Poole said. "Why should we claim the land of our black brother in Africa, for which he has given his life and labor? It belongs to him. Our destiny is right here in America."