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Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān

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African Americans (2 ,058 w or ds) Ber g , Her ber t

African Americans

Historical information about indiv iduals like Job ben Solomon (ca. 1700-73), Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima (1762-1829) and Omar ibn Said (ca. 1770-

1864 ) demonstrates that some of the Africans brought to America as slav es were not only Muslim but well-v ersed in the Qurʾān as well. For

example, the first-named, born Ay uba Suleiman Ibrahima Diallo, came from a family of religious leaders in Futa in present-day Senegal. After he

was manumitted and taken to England, he wrote sev eral copies of the Qurʾān from memory . T hese men, howev er, were exceptional. Enslav ement

ev entually stripped nearly all Muslim Africans of their language, culture and religion.

Only considerably later did African Americans seek to reclaim their Islamic heritage. T he foundation of the Moorish Science T emple in 1913 by

Noble Drew Ali represents one of the first attempts. Ac- ¶ cording to Drew Ali, true emancipation would come to African Americans through

knowledge of their Moorish heritage and the return to their religion, Islam. Each racial group had its own religion. For Europeans it was Christianity

and for Moors it was Islam. Although couched in Islamic phraseology , many of the practices and insignia of the T emple seem to hav e been deriv ed

from T he Ancient Egy ptian Arabic Order of Nobles of the Shrine (also known as the Black Shriners). T his mov ement had adopted its practices and

insignia from T he Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the My stic Shrine (originally a whites-only organization in the United States) which had

acquired its “Islamic” elements through its Scottish Rite Mason founders. T hey claimed an initiation from a Grand Shay kh of Mecca, honors from

the Ottoman Sultan Selim III, a charter from the Bav arian Illuminati and links with the Bektashi Sufi Order.

T he pseudo-Islamic nature of the Moorish Science T emple is particularly ev ident in the sixty -four-page The Holy Koran of the Moorish Science

Temple of America, also known as the Circle Seven Koran. About half of this Koran is taken from an earlier text which purports to prov ide an

account of Jesus' adolescence and early adulthood in India. Another major section, entitled “Holy Instructions from the Prophet,” is an adaptation

of the Rosicrucian or Masonic Unto Thee I Grant (or The Economy of Life and Infinite Wisdom). Drew Ali's personal contribution consisted of

replacing the word “God” with “ Allāh ” and remov ing the description of Jesus as blond and blue-ey ed. Nothing in the Circle Seven Koran comes

from the Qurʾān. Muḥammad, in fact, is mentioned only twice and then only as the fulfiller of the works of Jesus (Wilson, Sacred Drift, 19-26).

T herefore the Circle Seven Koran's significance to Islam lies mainly in the implicit challenge to the uniqueness and finality ¶ of the Qurʾān that the

use of the title “Koran” represents.

T he Nation of Islam represents another attempt to rediscov er a Muslim heritage for African-Americans. Its founder, Wali Fard Muhammad (ca.

1877-1934 ?), is reported to hav e taught directly from an Arabic Qurʾān and to hav e consecrated it as the mov ement's primary scripture. When Fard

Muhammad disappeared in 1934 , his disciple Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) became the mov ement's leader for the next four decades.

Fundamental doctrines of the Nation of Islam included the belief that God had appeared in the person of Fard Muhammad; that Elijah Muhammad

was his messenger; that the “ dev il” Christian white race was created by a renegade black scientist six thousand y ears ago; and that, although it had

been prophesied that the white race would enslav e the black race, the battle of Armageddon that would destroy the white race was imminent.

Although these teachings appear to be unqurʾānic to most Muslims, Elijah Muhammad found qurʾānic support for them. For example, he

interpreted qurʾānic passages about God, his messenger, Satan and the last day as references to Fard Muhammad, himself, the white race and

contemporary America, respectiv ely . His exegesis therefore consisted largely of reading the Qurʾān as a prophecy about peoples and ev ents in the

United States. T his put him in conflict with the classical exegetical tradition, which relies heav ily on lexical and grammatical explanations and

particularly on the historicization of the Qurʾān through reference to the occasions of rev elation (q.v .), abrogation (q.v .) and so forth. Elijah

Muhammad's framework is not that prov ided by the biography of Muammad (see SĪR A A N D THE QURʾĀ N ), but by the doctrines of Fard Muhammad. It

is noteworthy that Elijah Muhammad relied much more on the Christian Bible than the ¶ Qurʾān, ev en though he felt that the former was a “poison”

book full of “slav e teachings.” T he Qurʾān, in his mind, was a perfectly pure book of guidance, truth and wisdom. T herefore, he encouraged all

African Americans to buy it and read it. Despite his heretical v iews, he is primarily responsible for introducing African Americans to the Qurʾān.

After his death in 1975, Elijah Muhammad was succeeded by his son Wallace D. Muhammad — now known as Warith Deen Muhammad — who led

the mov ement in the direction of more traditional Islamic beliefs and practices and changed its name to “ T he World Community of al-Islam in the

West” and later to “T he American Muslim Mission.” Louis Farrakhan (b. 1933), unhappy with these changes, reconstituted the Nation of Islam in

1977 under the original teachings of Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad. In both present-day mov ements, the Qurʾān is the main scripture.

Although the Moorish Science T emple, the Nation of Islam and the American Muslim Mission hav e been the most prominent African American

Muslim mov ements, there are at least fifteen other groups of this ty pe, each possessing its own understanding of the Qurʾān.

Herbert Berg

Bibliography

N. Drew Ali, The holy Koran of the Moorish Science Temple of America, Chicago 1927

Anon., Unto thee I grant, 1925

H. Berg, Elijah Muhammad

An African American Muslim mufassir? in Arabica 4 4 (1997), 1-27

E.D. Bey non, T he v oodoo cult among negro migrants in Detroit, in The American journal of sociology 4 3 (July 1937-May 1938), 894 -907

C.A. Clegg III, An original man. The life and times of Elijah Muhammad, New Y ork 1997

Lev i [H. Dowling], The aquarian Gospel of Jesus, Bellv ille 1908

E. Muhammad, The supreme wisdom. The solution to the so-called negroes' problem, Chicago 1957

id., Message to the blackman in America, Chicago 1965

R.B. T urner, Islam in the ¶ African-American experience, Bloomington 1997

P.L. Wilson, Sacred drift. Essays on the margins of Islam, San Francisco 1993

Citation Ber g , Her ber t. "A fr ica n A m er ica n s." Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. Gen er a l Editor : Ja n e Da m m en McA u liffe, Geor g etow n Un iv er sity , Wa sh in g ton DC.

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