Invented Knowledge by Ronald H. Fritze

Author:Ronald H. Fritze [Fritze, Ronald H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-86189-674-2
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 2009-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

AFTERMATH

Turn to Allah and fear Him. Be steadfast in prayer and serve no other god besides Him. Do not split up your religion into sects, each exulting in its own beliefs. QURAN71

Elijah Muhammad and his followers strove to expand the membership of the Nation of Islam and the prosperity of its various business ventures. One of the new recruits was Malcolm Little, later much better known as Malcolm X, who joined in 1948 while in prison. An enthusiastic disciple, the talented and charismatic Malcolm X quickly rose to be de facto number two in the Nation of Islam. Many credit him with the bulk of the responsibility for the steady expansion of the membership of the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and early 1960s. His rise in the Nation of Islam was similar to Elijah Muhammad’s in that it aroused the jealousy of those already around the Messenger of Allah, including members of the Muhammad family. Unlike Elijah Muhammad, the intelligent and inquiring Malcolm X eventually came to the conclusion that the Nation of Islam was not true Islam. By the early 1960s rumours of Elijah Muhammad’s sexual dalliances and fathering children out of wedlock became virtually undeniable except by the truest of the true believers. From its genesis the Nation of Islam had preached an austere and puritanical code of morality, which was enforced with severity by Elijah Muhammad. That he walked on feet of clay profoundly disillusioned many of the faithful, especially Malcolm X. Meanwhile the growing influence and independence of Malcolm X finally triggered the jealousy of Elijah Muhammad as well of other members of the Muhammad family and leaders of the Nation of Islam. The two men parted ways over some intemperate remarks that Malcolm X had made concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy but that was probably merely a pretext on the part of Elijah Muhammad. Tensions mounted as Malcolm X began to organize his own separatist movement and on 21 February 1965 assassins gunned down Malcolm X as he began to give a speech at a Harlem meeting hall. The gunmen almost certainly acted at the behest of Elijah Muhammad. Ironically Malcolm X’s acclaimed Autobiography appeared soon after and immortalized him.72

Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam survived the loss of Malcolm X. More importantly they survived the coming and going of the years 1965 and 1966, the long-predicted time of the Fall of America. Although the Nation of Islam’s apocalypse failed to occur, like other millennialist religious movements before it, it adjusted and moved on to become a relatively stable religious denomination but with a somewhat eccentric theology and a more narrow audience than usual.73 Aberrations from this trend did occur. During 1973 and 1974 a renegade group of four members from the San Francisco Temple Twenty-Six engaged in their own personal war against white America. Over a period of six months they murdered fifteen people and decapitated them while maiming twelve others, in the name of the Nation of Islam.

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