Elijah Muhammad

“ Messenger Elijah Muhammad, a meek and humble little Black Man, who has been Divinely Taught and Divinely Missioned by the Supreme Being, Almighty God Allah Himself, to teach naked truth to the so-called Negroes of America and raise us from our mental sleep, is making a proclamation among us today that the world must bear witness had to come straight from the mouth of Our God. ”

“ An editorial in the January 29, 1965, issue of "Muhammad Speaks" reveals the main theme and purpose of Elijah Muhammad's whole publicity program through the years:
"... we cannot get our freedom, justice and dignity from the American government without Divine help. It has been Divinely predicted that God alone would send a Messenger and that messenger is among us." .⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.⁠.
"... The slave is never able to free himself from the master without a guide. And that guide is the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, born to do just that." But the "so-called Negro" needs prodding. ”

“ B. Wealth
As previously mentioned, all NOI funds and property are under the complete control of Elijah Muhammad. Although most real estate is owned in the names of various temples, members of Elijah's family, or the Progressive Land Developers, Incorporated, Elijah, as the "Messenger of Allah" and absolute ruler of the NOI, makes or approves all decisions involving the financial policies and holdings of the entire cult. ”

“ Islam poses a challenge and a threat. Thousands of so-called Negroes are beginning for the first time to think for themselves, and are turning daily, away from the segregated Christian church, and rejoining the ranks of our Darker Brothers and Sisters of the East, whose ancestral faith is the age-old religion of Islam, the true religion of Dark Mankind, the true religion of our foreparents.
The Spiritual Leader and Teacher of the many thousands of “new converts” here in Black America is Messenger Elijah Muhammad, one of the most feared and revered men in the Western Hemisphere. ”

“ They are a very receptive group, who see Muslim activity within the prisons as an outlet for protest against their situation. With the attitude of what-have-I-to-lose, they hope that some benefits might come to them by joining the NOI.
For a multitude of reasons, there are American Negroes who sympathize with the Black Muslims or actually become loyal followers of Elijah Muhammad and his NOI leadership. For those who join, "the Messenger's" word is law, and all who wish to remain in the cult must follow Elijah's strict discipline as imposed by his loyal ministers. ”

“ It is nevertheless possible that the gnostic doctrine concerning the Crucifixion was adopted by Muhammad as likely to reconcile the Jews to Islam, as a religion embracing both Judaism and Christianity, if they might believe that Jesus had not been put to death, and thus find the stumbling-block of the atonement removed out of their path. The Jews would in this case have simply been called upon to believe in Jesus as being what the Koran represents him, a holy teacher, who, like the patriarch Enoch or the prophet Elijah, had been miraculously taken from the earth. ”

“ He justifies himself. But strengthened, comforted, uplifted by the exaltation of the consciousness of God's presence, Elijah feels his resilient powers again upspringing. His courage returns; his perceptions grow sharp again; the inspiration of a new line of action opens up to him. He hears the word of the Lord: "Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus; and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria, and Jehu the son of Nimshi to be king over Israel, and Elisha the son of Shaphat to be prophet in thy room. ”

“ The strain and burden of a great message of deliverance to men has again and again found the weak places in the faith and courage of the most devoted and heroic of those to whom it has been entrusted. Moses pleads under its pressure that another may be sent in his place, asking despairingly, “Why hast thou sent me?” Elijah prays for death. Mohammed passes years of despondency and hesitation under the sneers of those who scoff, “There goeth the son of Abdallah, who hath his converse with God!” ”

“ He is not designated as the power to effect the great revolution which should root out idolatry and destroy the house of Omri; but Jehu, an unscrupulous yet jealous warrior, was to found a new dynasty, and the king of Syria was to punish and afflict the ten tribes, and Elisha was to be the mouth-piece of the Almighty in the court of kings. It would appear that Elijah did not himself anoint either the general of Benhadad or of Ahab as future kings,--instruments of punishment on idolatrous Israel,--but on Elisha did his mantle fall. ”

“ The essence of that belief is, that the system as taught by Prophet, Khalífs and Imáms is absolutely perfect. [30] Innovation is worse than a mistake. It is a crime, a sin. This completeness, this finality of his system of religion and polity, is the very pride and glory of a true Muslim. To look for an increase of light in the knowledge of his relation to God and the unseen world, in the laws which regulate Islám on earth is to admit that Muhammad's revelation was incomplete, and that admission no Muslim will make. ”

“ In another version of the same story in Ibn Ishaq, we are told that “the most learned man living in the Torah,” the rabbi Abdullah bin Suriya, tells Muhammad privately, “Yes, [...] they [the Jews] know right well [...] that you are a prophet sent (by God) but they envy you” (p.267) . The moral of the story is clear: The Jews cannot be trusted to give an honest account of the contents of their own holy books, either when it comes to the punishment for adultery, or the foretelling of Muhammad’s coming as a prophet. ”

“ To free will he gives rather a new bearing. The will he regards as simply a manner of knowing and so as an accident of knowledge; a voluntary act he defines as one known to its agent. Those who are condemned to the fire of hell do not suffer eternally by it, but are changed by its purification. The term "Muslim" must be taken to include all who believe that God has neither form or body, since the attribution of a human form to God is the essential mark of the idolater, that he is just and wills no evil, and that Muhammad is his prophet. ”

“ In the earliest group of speeches delivered at Mekka, forty-eight in number, belonging to what is called the First Period, extending over the first four years of Mohammad’s mission, we feel the poetry of the man. Mohammad had not lived among the sheep-folds in vain, and spent long solitary nights gazing at the silent heaven and watching the dawn break over the mountains. This earliest portion of the Korān is one long blazonry of nature’s beauty. How can you believe in aught but the One omnipotent God when you see this glorious world around you and this wondrous tent of heaven above you? ”

“ The life on the hills gave him the true shepherd’s eye for nature which is seen in every speech of the Korān; and it was in those solitary watches under the silent sky, with none near to distract him, that he began those earnest communings with his soul which made him in the end the prophet of his nation. Beyond this shepherd life and his later and more adventurous trade of camel-driver to the Syrian caravans of his rich cousin, Khadīja, whom he presently married [Pg xxvii] at the age of twenty-five, there is little that can be positively asserted of Mohammad’s youth. ”

“ There is but one man in the Old Testament who, as a prophet, stands on the same level as Elijah,—he who stood with Elijah on the snowy heights of Hermon when their Lord was transfigured into celestial brightness, and they spake together of His decease at Jerusalem. And Moses had passed through the same dark hour as that through which Elijah was passing now, when he saw the tears, and heard the murmurs of the greedy, selfish, ungrateful people, who hated their heavenly manna, and lusted for the leeks and fleshpots of their Egyptian bondage. ”

“ Although many Caucasian tribes have been converted to Mohammedanism, the most part of them may be called idolaters, as they frequently worship some inanimate objects. It is very remarkable that the prophet Elijah is a particular object of adoration among almost all the Caucasian tribes, both Mohammedan and Pagan. ”

“ No man in Makkah was more conversant with Holy Writ than Waraqah, a convert to Christianity; and, like the Syrian monks, he lived in hopes of the advent of a Prophet to be born in Arab-land. Therefore, he had no sooner heard his cousin's story than he cried out, while tears of joy welled up in his eyes: 'Most Holy God! If what thou sayest is exact, O Khadijah, He who manifested His presence to thy husband is the great Namus, Allah's confidant: the Angel who appeared to Our Lord Moses! Mohammad will be the Prophet of our Nation! ”

“ The necessity was upon them to choose a leader to take the place of the Prophet of God, and thus to fix for all time what was to be the nature of the Muslim state. Muhammad had appointed no Joshua; unlike Moses he had died and given no guidance as to the man who should take up and carry on his work. If we can imagine the people of Israel left thus helpless on the other [8] side of the Jordan with the course of conquest that they must pursue opening before them, we shall have a tolerably exact idea of the situation in Islam when Muhammad dropped the reins. ”

“ It is true that the state of Arabia previous to the time of Muhammad was one of preparedness for a new religion—that the scattered elements were there, and wanted only the mind of a master to harmonise and enforce them—and that Islam was, so to speak, a necessity of the time. [15] Still Muhammad's career is a wonderful instance of the force and life that resides in him who possesses an intense Faith in God and in the unseen world ”

“ Ibn Ishaq mentions several specific accounts of Jews in Arabia right before the time of Muhammad predicting the coming of a prophet with Muhammad’s attributes, only to reject Muhammad out of “wickedness and envy” when they actually encountered him (pp. 93-95) . One of these accounts quotes the Koran 2:89: “And when a book from God came to them confirming what they already had [...,] when what they knew came to them, they disbelieved it. The curse of God is on the unbelievers” (p. 93) . ”

“ Ibn Ishaq portrays Muhammad himself as repeatedly telling the Jews that his coming as a prophet is plainly foretold in the Jewish scriptures. After the Muslim victory over the pagan Quraysh at the battle of Badr, Muhammad assembled the Jews of the Banu Qaynuqa in the marketplace in Medina and addressed them as follows: “O Jews, beware lest God bring upon you the vengeance that he brought upon Quraysh and become Muslims. ”

“ That widely different estimates have been formed of Muhammed is well-known. To Moslems he is, of course, the prophet par excellence, and the Koran is regarded by the orthodox as nothing less than the eternal utterance of Allah. The eulogy pronounced by Carlyle on Muhammed in Heroes and Hero Worship will probably be endorsed by not a few at the present day. The extreme contrary opinion, which in a fresh form has recently been revived [1] by an able writer, is hardly likely to find much lasting support. ”

“ For, verily, I am Thy slave, O Lord, and Thy guest in this Thy house. O Lord the Compassionate, I remind thee that there is no Lord but Thee. Thou art alone, and hast no mate. Thou art everlasting. Thou begettest not, neither art Thou begotten, and there is not any one like unto Thee. Verily, Muhammad is Thy slave and Thy apostle—may peace be with him and with his people. O Generous, O Magnanimous, O Exalted, O Just!”
Then we said three times, “God is Great!” and then, “I seek shelter in Thee from the snares of the devils of man and jinn, and from the evils that may betide the Arab and Ajem!” ”

“ After the move to Medina in 622, Muhammad was at war with the pagan Quraysh of Mecca. His authority as a political and military leader, and thus his survival, depended on his followers accepting him as a prophet receiving authentic divine revelations. The Jews, due to the moral weight of the Hebrew Bible and the literacy of their rabbis, thus posed the single-greatest ideological threat to Muhammad and the nascent Islamic state. [56] According to Ibn Ishaq, he worked to discredit them by repeatedly calling them liars whose claims about their own scriptures were not to be trusted. ”

“ If a negro slave is appointed to rule over you, hear him, and obey him, though his head should be like a dried grape.
There is no obedience due to sinful commands, nor to any other than what is lawful.
O Prophet of God, if we have princes over us, wanting our rights, and withholding our rights from us, then what do you order us? He said, “Ye must hear them and obey their orders: it is on them to be just and good, and on you to be obedient and submissive.”
He is not strong or powerful who throws people down, but he is strong who withholds himself from anger. ”

“ During these years of struggle and persecution at Mekka 90 out of the 114 chapters or speeches which compose the Korān were revealed, amounting to about two-thirds of the whole book. All these speeches are inspired with but one great [Pg xxxvi] design, and are in strong contrast with the complicated character of the later chapters issued at Medina. In the Mekka chapters Mohammad appears in the unalloyed character of a prophet: he has not yet assumed the functions of a statesman and lawgiver. His object is not to give men a code or a constitution, but to call them to the worship of the One God. ”

“ At last, on one of the highways, the man of God appeared to the prime minister and told him that he had no fear to meet the king and would do so if he would carry word to Ahab. True to his word, he met the king, confronted him with his disloyalty to Jehovah, and challenged him to produce the prophets of Baal for the great test on Mount Carmel; and then, after his triumph, Elijah again disappears.
In the third chapter we have the only account of the man’s inner life. If it were not for that chapter with its story of his subjective struggle, Elijah would be no example for us men of this day. ”