Executive Summary:
The Nation of Islam (NOI) was formed in 1930 by Wallace D. Fard, a mysterious figure whose origins remain disputed. Fard was also known as Wallace Fard Muhammad, W. Fard Muhammad, Farad Muhammad, Wallace Dodd, Wallace Ford, Wallie D. Ford, Wallei Ford, and Wallace Farad. The NOI purports to fight systemic oppression of, and discrimination against, Black Americans by preaching Black racial supremacy. The group mixes tenets of Islam with conspiracy theories and mythology deeply rooted in racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-LGBT beliefs. While the NOI claims to be Islamic, its teachings contradict traditional, core Islamic doctrine.
As early as 1974 under Elijah Muhammad, NOI promoted Black separation and lambasted integration. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NOI was considered a fringe “voodoo sect” in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1959, minister and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. denounced it as “a hate group arising in our midst that would preach the doctrine of Black supremacy.” Upon leaving NOI in the 1960s, Malcom X denounced its racism as a “sickness and madness.” Nonetheless, NOI has since grown into one of the wealthiest and best-known Black organizations in America.
Under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, NOI has continued to promote hateful racist and anti-Semitic positions. For example, in 1991, at Farrakhan’s request, NOI’s research department published The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, which highlighted Jews’ involvement in the slave trade and the Confederacy. Historians generally label the book as wildly inaccurate and vicious. NOI published two volumes of the book and a third called Jews Selling Blacks. Writing on behalf of NOI, Farrakhan has accused Jews of maximizing their wealth to become “masters in every field of human endeavor.” On October 16, 1995, Farrakhan organized the Million Man March on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., one of the most prominent events in NOI history. Between 400,000 and 850,000 people attended the march, during which Farrakhan called white supremacy the root of America’s suffering. Nonetheless, Farrakhan has promoted a virulently anti-white and anti-Semitic ideology through NOI. Farrakhan has used NOI’s social media presence and his platform at NOI’s annual Savior’s Day rally to promote his positions. Despite widespread condemnation, Farrakhan and NOI have had widespread influence on celebrity followers, as well as individuals such as Noah Green, the alleged NOI follower who rammed a car into two Capitol Hill police officers on April 2, 2021.
Farrakhan rose to prominence within the NOI under the tutelage of Malcom X in the 1960s. While Malcom X ultimately left and denounced the organization, Farrakhan’s power in it increased. Longtime NOI leader Elijah Muhammad died in 1975 and was replaced by one of his sons, Warith Deen Muhammad. Warith and Farrakhan disagreed over the NOI’s future. As leader, Warith tried to move the NOI away from preaching racial separatism and Black supremacism and adopt a more orthodox and inclusive Islamic theology, while Farrakhan wanted the NOI to remain true to Elijah’s original teachings. Warith changed the group’s name to the World Community of al-Islam in 1976, but Farrakhan created a new organization named the Nation of Islam that espoused the old NOI’s longstanding theology and ideology. Farrakhan often refers to himself as the heir to Elijah Muhammad’s legacy, but Warith accused him of presenting a “false image of Islam.”
The NOI’s anti-Semitism and support for separation of white and Black Americans has garnered the group positive attention from neo-Nazis and other far-right organizations. In 1962, the NOI invited American Nazi Party head George Lincoln Rockwell to one of its conventions, during which Rockwell called Elijah Muhammad “the Hitler of Blacks.” Shortly before his assassination by an NOI member, Malcolm X revealed that NOI and the Klu Klux Klan representatives had met with the aim of building a mutually beneficial relationship. A 2017 tweet by Farrakhan saying, “Black People: We should be more convinced that it is time for us to separate and build a nation of our own,” drew praise and re-tweets from white nationalist leaders like Michael “Enoch” Peinovich, Richard Spencer, and Jared Taylor.
Farrakhan has also defended foreign dictators, such as Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, Idi Amin of Uganda, and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Most prominently, Farrakhan and the NOI received millions of dollars in donations from former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and Farrakhan traveled to Libya in 1986 to meet personally with Gaddafi. Farrakhan has also made multiple trips to Iran, most recently conducting media tours in 2016 and 2018.
Since 2012, Farrakhan has also pushed for a “long and beautiful relationship” with Scientology, with thousands of NOI members now studying the fringe ideology. Though L. Ron Hubbard—the science fiction author around whose writings Scientology is based—specifically dismissed the existence of Allah, several members of the Nation of Islam began following the pseudo-religion in the early 21st century.
Doctrine:
The NOI purports to fight systemic oppression of, and discrimination against, Black Americans by preaching Black racial supremacy. The group also mixes tenets of traditional Islam with conspiracy theories and mythology deeply rooted in racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia. Since its foundation, NOI has characterized whites as “devils,” claimed Jews control the government and perform chemical experiments on Black Americans, and forbidden interracial marriage.
While the NOI claims to be Islamic, many of its teachings contradict traditional, core Islamic doctrine. Most glaring, the NOI claims that Allah “appeared in the Person” of the group’s founder, Wallace D. Fard, and that Fard’s appearance on Earth signaled the coming apocalypse which would overthrow the white “devil”—a battle the NOI would play a central part in.
The NOI’s version of the Shahada—the central creed of Islam—states, “There is no God but Allah, who appeared in the person of Master [Wallace] Fard Muhammad, and I bear witness that the most honorable Elijah Muhammad is the exalted Christ, and that the honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is our divine reminder, warner, and servant among us.” By contrast, more orthodox schools of Islam hold that Allah does not assume human form, and the traditional Shahada simply states, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.”
The NOI’s hybrid theology claims Black people were the original human beings and lived in an earthly paradise. Then, an evil scientist named Yakub (the same person as the Biblical character Jacob) created the white race through selective breeding of Black people to produce humans with increasingly lighter skin, and those whites then subjugated the Black people. The impending apocalypse will return the world to that earlier state of paradise. According to the New York Times, the NOI also does not observe sharia (Islamic law), which is derived from the Quran and the prophet Muhammad’s reported statements.
Following Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1975, his son, Warith, attempted to moderate NOI’s rhetoric and adjust its teachings to reflect more orthodox Islamic practices. In 1976, he changed the group’s name to the World Community of al-Islam. In 1977, however, Farrakhan split off from the renamed organization and created a new Nation of Islam that espoused Elijah Muhammad’s views.
Farrakhan frequently refers to Judaism as the “dirty religion” and claims that Black people, not Jews, are God’s “chosen people.” In 1991, Farrakhan commissioned a purported study by the NOI’s Historical Research Department that falsely claimed Jewish merchants were the main perpetrators of the Atlantic slave trade. Farrakhan also describes the LGBT community, Catholics, and whites as “potential humans ... [who] haven’t evolved yet.” He has also pushed anti-LGBT conspiracy theories, claiming homosexuality is the result of a chemical reaction and part of a government conspiracy to chemically castrate the Black American population.
For years, the NOI has warned Black people against getting vaccines, spreading anti-vaccination conspiracy theories such as that the shots cause autism. In its messaging opposing vaccinations, the Nation’s exploits distrust among Black people of the government’s motives and claims. For example, the NOI cites the example of the 40-year-long Tuskegee experiment, in which the U.S. Public Health Service studied the effects of syphilis on hundreds of black men but did not give them suitable treatment or enough information to provide informed consent. Recently, the Nation has also strongly opposed receiving vaccinations for COVID-19. Farrakhan has described vaccination as “toxic waste” and a “vial of death.” He has also accused infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates of seeking to use vaccinations “to depopulate the earth.”
Organizational Structure:
Across the United States, the NOI operates places of worship called mosques or temples. Farrakhan oversees a Council of Leaders, which he has claimed will take over the NOI following his death. The NOI further consists of ten “ministries”: Spiritual Development, Agriculture, Health, Education, Information, Trade and Commerce, Defense, Justice, Arts and Culture, and Science and Technology. Each ministry is reportedly headed by a “minister,” although the current ministers remain unlisted on the official NOI website.
NOI’s militant branch, the “Fruit of Islam” (FOI), was designed by Fard to protect followers from police and to patrol low-income Black neighborhoods, where it has been credited with reducing crime rates. In a 2017 interview, NOI expert Professor Zain Abdullah referred to the group as a “self-defense organization.” He added, “They believe in self-defense, they don’t believe in turning the other cheek,” indicating the group believes in using violence when its members feel threatened. In 1990, NOI founded a subset of FOI, the Nation of Islam Security Agency, in Washington, D.C. This group was specifically tasked with guarding low-income housing projects in an effort to help lower crime rates, and received multi-million-dollar contracts from cities, including Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
The Fruit of Islam has so successfully achieved its aims that in 2012, Chicago’s then-mayor, Rahm Emanuel—himself Jewish—said, “They have decided, the Nation of Islam, to help protect the community. And that’s an important ingredient, like all the other aspects of protecting a neighborhood.” The NOI has also worked with local police to develop anti-drug plans for low-income housing complexes.
The NOI’s anti-crime and rehabilitation efforts have long been its major draw for African American activists. Many anti-violence groups have also partnered with the NOI due to its extensive presence in prisons, where it uses its ideology to reform violent inmates and preaches a strict anti-drug, pro–traditional family ethos.
The NOI has also produced several in-house newspapers dedicated to spreading the NOI’s message and to the “survival of the Black nation.” From 1960 to 1975, the NOI ran a popular tabloid called Muhammad Speaks. When Warith left NOI in 1975 he took Muhammad Speaks with him, changing its name first to Bilalian News and then to Muslim Journal. Farrakhan established a new NOI newspaper in 1979, the Final Call, dedicated to spreading the NOI’s message and to the “survival of the Black nation.”
Under Farrakhan, the NOI also established the Nation of Islam Research Group, which ostensibly collects and writes articles on current topics related to the NOI’s activities. The Research Group has been used to lend credibility to the NOI’s anti-Semitic claims. In 1991, for example, it published a study titled, “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,” which falsely claimed Jewish merchants were the main proponents of the Atlantic slave trade.
Financing:
The NOI began building a massive financial base in the 1940s, when Elijah Muhammad purchased farmland and founded businesses in several U.S. states that would be worth millions. Under Farrakhan’s leadership, the NOI further invested in economic self-sufficiency, and established shops and health products. The group also owns farms in Michigan and Georgia, selling its food at its own grocery store in Atlanta. Farrakhan himself is worth more than $3 million. NOI goods, including its teachings and speeches by its leaders, are available for sale at all major online retailers, as well as in stores such as Walmart and Barnes and Noble.
The NOI also received $8 million in donations from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in the 1970s and 1980s. Gaddafi had a close relationship with the group, and the NOI believed Gaddafi was “a friend of the struggle of Black people all over the World for true liberation.” The group saw his regime as part of NOI’s same fight against white Western oppression. Gaddafi explicitly stated that this money was intended to aid Farrakhan in establishing his economic vision for the NOI, and these funds indeed supported many NOI-operated businesses. A final donation from Gaddafi of $1 billion was blocked by the Clinton administration in 1996 due to increased U.S. sanctions against Libya.
Recruitment:
The violent reaction by some U.S. state governments to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped push Black Americans to join the NOI. The new recruits were drawn to the group’s hardline stance against the oppression of Black Americans by the “white devil.” Many prominent civil rights leaders joined the Nation in the 1950s, including Malcolm X and boxing champion Muhammad Ali, which also helped expand the NOI’s membership. Membership surged again in the 1960s as a new generation of civil rights activists adopted more militant positions and found common ground with the NOI and its ideology. As urban riots erupted in northern states, Black Americans were increasingly drawn to the language of racial separatism espoused by the Nation.
In recent decades, the NOI’s rehabilitation and anti-crime work among Black American prisoners and low-income communities has attracted broad support, including new followers and allies within the civil rights movement. These allies have historically been wary of criticizing the racist and anti-Semitic aspects of the NOI, claiming the organization is the only group helping destitute Black Americans. Despite this, NOI membership figures have fallen drastically under Farrakhan’s leadership, standing at approximately 35,000 today compared to its peak of 100,000 followers in 1995. Black American Muslim converts, once the core of the NOI’s membership, have turned increasingly to traditional Islamic sects in the twenty-first century.
Training:
The NOI conducts education and training programs in prisons, aimed at recruiting new members and rehabilitating convicts. New converts study under an NOI leader, taking classes and completing an oral exam before being given a new last name and officially joining the group. Men who join the FOI are taught physical fitness, receive self-defense and martial-arts training, and learn “how to be a good husband and father, how to become employed and stay employed, career development and salesmanship.”
In a 2019 video, U.S. Army veteran and FOI member Minister Abdullah Tahama claimed that FOI training was modeled after the Army’s bootcamp and was intended to separate trainees from society to remove material urges. A 2014 ad for the FOI posted on YouTube showed members boxing and weightlifting while a voice-over spoke about the importance of spiritual strength.
The all-female counterpart to the FOI, known as the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class, teaches women “how to take care of themselves, their families and their husbands,” and offers classes on physical fitness, Arabic, Islamic history, and spiritual lessons.
