Академия Корана:Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān/African Americans

Herbert Berg, "African Americans" in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: J. D. McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

Historical information about individuals 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 slaves were not only Muslim but well-versed in the Qurʾān as well. For example, the first-named, born Ayuba 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 several copies of the Qurʾān from memory. These men, however, were exceptional. Enslavement eventually stripped nearly all Muslim Africans of their language, culture and religion.

Only considerably later did African Americans seek to reclaim their Islamic heritage. The foundation of the Moorish Science Temple 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 Temple seem to have been derived from The Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order of Nobles of the Shrine (also known as the Black Shriners). This movement had adopted its practices and insignia from The Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (originally a whites-only organization in the United States) which had acquired its «Islamic» elements through its Scottish Rite Mason founders. They claimed an initiation from a Grand Shaykh of Mecca, honors from the Ottoman Sultan Selim III, a charter from the Bavarian Illuminati and links with the Bektashi Sufi Order.

The pseudo-Islamic nature of the Moorish Science Temple is particularly evident 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 provide 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 removing the description of Jesus as blond and blue-eyed. 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). Therefore 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.

The Nation of Islam represents another attempt to rediscover a Muslim heritage for African-Americans. Its founder, Wali Fard Muhammad (ca. 1877—1934?), is reported to have taught directly from an Arabic Qurʾān and to have consecrated it as the movement’s primary scripture. When Fard Muhammad disappeared in 1934, his disciple Elijah Muhammad (1897—1975) became the movement’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 «devil» Christian white race was created by a renegade black scientist six thousand years ago; and that, although it had been prophesied that the white race would enslave 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, respectively. His exegesis therefore consisted largely of reading the Qurʾān as a prophecy about peoples and events in the United States. This put him in conflict with the classical exegetical tradition, which relies heavily on lexical and grammatical explanations and particularly on the historicization of the Qurʾān through reference to the occasions of revelation (q.v.), abrogation (q.v.) and so forth. Elijah Muhammad’s framework is not that provided by the biography of Muammad (see sīra and the qurʾān), but by the doctrines of Fard Muhammad. It is noteworthy that Elijah Muhammad relied much more on the Christian Bible than the Qurʾān, even though he felt that the former was a «poison» book full of «slave teachings.» The Qurʾān, in his mind, was a perfectly pure book of guidance, truth and wisdom. Therefore, he encouraged all African Americans to buy it and read it. Despite his heretical views, 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 movement in the direction of more traditional Islamic beliefs and practices and changed its name to « The World Community of al-Islam in the West» and later to «The 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 movements, the Qurʾān is the main scripture. Although the Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam and the American Muslim Mission have been the most prominent African American Muslim movements, there are at least fifteen other groups of this type, each possessing its own understanding of the Qurʾān.

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 44 (1997), 1-27
• E.D. Beynon, The voodoo cult among negro migrants in Detroit, in The American journal of sociology 43 (July 1937-May 1938), 894—907
• C.A. Clegg III, An original man. The life and times of Elijah Muhammad, New York 1997
• Levi [H. Dowling], The aquarian Gospel of Jesus, Bellville 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. Turner, Islam in the African-American experience, Bloomington 1997
• P.L. Wilson, Sacred drift. Essays on the margins of Islam, San Francisco 1993