The Messenger, page 49
EPILOGUE
VIRTUAL RELIGION
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
—John 8:32
The demagogue, mounting his platform, like a slave in the market, is a slave … and because of the honors which he seems to receive, is the slave of ten thousand masters.
—Philo Judaeus, Joseph1
Richard D. Heideman, president of B’nai B’rith International, said the [Malcolm X] stamp should “remind all Americans of the possibility of change and reconciliation between people previously divided by racial hatred.”
—Washington Post, November 20, 1998
“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad has returned!”2 proclaimed a new home page on the World Wide Web on the centennial of his birth. “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was introduced to his biological brother, Supreme Minister John Muhammad, for the first time since 1975,” stated a caption accompanying the article. In the photograph, John, the youngest of the Messenger’s twelve siblings, is holding the hand of a man who appears at least twenty years his junior. The man presented as Elijah Muhammad is dressed in white from head to toe. He has a blank look on his face reminiscent of Peter Sellers in the movie Being There. His resemblance to Elijah Muhammad is nil. Perhaps that is why John Muhammad is smiling broadly, and a woman standing behind them seems equally amused.
Accompanying this new and presumably improved Messenger is an equally odd fellow who calls himself Brother Solomon. But you don’t have to call him Brother Solomon, as Mr. Johnson in a certain beer commercial reminded us: you can call him Solomon, or you can call him Allah, or you can call him God, but you don’t have to call him Brother Solomon. He bears a slight resemblance to football legend Art Monk, but he swears to God that he really is God. Alas, Elijah Muhammad has risen from the dead and is inhabiting another man’s body, and God has returned to his Earthly Kingdom, not as Master Wallace D. Fard or Wallace Fard Muhammad, but as Brother Solomon, leader and founder of the United Nation of Islam. Things have come to that in the African-American community of professed Muslims. The Nation of Islam, which underwent reformation in 1975 by Imam Wallace D. Muhammed, has become the carcass of a cat on a country road, its rotted flesh baked by the summer sun. Cultural vultures tear away its flesh in their futile search for its mythical remaining lives. Today, there are more groups called the Nation of Islam (or some variation of it) than bicycles in China. The name no longer denotes a sect; it denotes a twisted virtual reality game in which the cat lives all nine lives concurrently.
Solomon’s United Nation of Islam is headquartered in Temple Hills, Maryland. Right now, the only other branch is in Kansas City, Kansas.3 Solomon says that the difference between his cult and the sect headed by Farrakhan is that the United Nation of Islam is run by God (that is, Solomon), while Farrakhan’s group is headed by a mere prophet. On September 18, 1997, Abbass Rassoull, Brother Solomon’s assistant, sent Minister Farrakhan a letter advising him that “the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has returned” and was interested in speaking at Mosque Maryam in Chicago, which is owned by Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. “I pray that you see the light of this.”4 Perhaps Farrakhan did, because he has been feeding a similar spiel to his followers for the past several years. “In spite of the controversy and clamor surrounding the Nation of Islam and its Divine Leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan,” a recent article on the Farrakhan-sponsored World Wide Web site states, “we are forging ahead in the Spirit of Almighty God, Allah, to unite with all of humanity in the Oneness of God, where all people of goodwill of every race and of every nation may participate in the Universal”—something or other.5 The article was written by Tynetta Deanar Muhammad, alias Tynetta Nelson, who describes herself as the “wife” of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.6 This misleading statement at the conclusion of the article is appropriate, given that the cyberspace feature begins with prevarications and has misstatements in its midsection, so that it is consistent in at least one respect. Like Elijah Muhammad, who taught that Fard was the Messiah and that he, Muhammad, was the Seal of the Prophets, Farrakhan claims now that Elijah Muhammad was a messiah, and that he, Farrakhan, is a prophet. More ghoulishly, Farrakhan and Tynetta Nelson both contend that Elijah Muhammad is alive today; reports of his death, his autopsy, his burial, and his headstone have been greatly exaggerated.7
The irony is that at the 1973 Saviour’s Day Convention, where Farrakhan sat less than thirteen paces away from the Messenger for over two hours, the Messenger spoke specifically about the notion of the afterlife and reincarnation. “The Bible says that after Elijah there are no more prophets,” he said over Farrakhan’s yodel-like yelps of “Go ahead, Dear Holy Apostle!” “There is no coming back. After we die, there is no coming back. That’s the end of all life.” He said people who believed in the afterlife or reincarnation were practicing what he called that “crazy Christianity religion.” Clearly, then, Farrakhan and others are knowingly attributing religious beliefs to the Messenger that he shunned shortly before his death. The same holds true for Tynetta. Her claim of being the “wife” of Elijah Muhammad is wishful thinking and nothing more. She was not married to him legally, illegally, or by common law. His death certificate, a copy of which appears on a Web site created by a rival Muslim faction, clearly reads that he was widowed.8 The bitter truth is that she was one in a string of mistresses who bore his children, and that he was a father who publicly denied siring her children until the final months of his life. As this book has pointed out, her jealousy of the other mistresses was captured on tape by the FBI.
In a televised interview with a foreign journalist a few years ago, Farrakhan said he could not believe that one day soon people would regard him in the same way they think of the Prophet Mohammad of the Holy Quran, Jesus, and other major prophets. The journalist smiled nervously, and his look conveyed what students in a recreation room at a local college said aloud: Farrakhan was either joking or delusional when he made the statement. The assumption that he will eventually be regarded as a major prophet painted him in a stark shade of megalomania, and evoked lung-clearing laughter from the students watching the interview on Maryland Public Access Channel. As for Farrakhan’s arguments about the resurrection of Elijah Muhammad, they have not gone unanswered. Minister Levi Karim, who belongs to yet another offshoot of the Nation of Islam, suggests that Tynetta and Farrakhan are “liars” and “deceivers.”9
John Muhammad has repeatedly condemned Farrakhan, Tynetta, and others who he thinks are deliberately misleading young people about the Nation of Islam and the Messenger. Karim registered his complaints in cyberspace on the “Muhammad Speaks” Web page. “These deceivers and misleaders are actually trying to convince us to give up one spooky belief (that Jesus will return from the grave) for another spooky belief (that Messenger Elijah Muhammad will return from the grave). I say, NO THANK YOU, Brother and Sister. Been There, Done That,” Karim wrote on the Muhammad Speaks Web site in 1996.10 John Muhammad made similar arguments in The Journal of Truth, a slim volume of his recently published speeches:
I can’t see how Minister Louis Farrakhan, who sat under the Messenger’s teaching for a few years, can now preach that the Messenger is alive. This doctrine has caused confusion among good people.… Sister Tynetta Deanar Muhammad should have a clear knowledge of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s death or being physically alive.… There is no such thing possible as my brother [Elijah] and the Messenger … being still physically alive.… And there is no such thing as the return of one’s spirit into another after physical death.11
To the bafflement of his family, John Muhammad seems to have become a party to the reincarnation show. John’s nephew, Chicago broadcast journalist Wali Muhammad, was bewildered by the photograph of his uncle with the man posing as the Messenger. Asked what he thought John’s motive was in participating in the charade, Wali’s answer was simple and unequivocal: money.12
Money and celebrity may be the evil twins responsible for the proliferation of cults using the same or similar names and the Messenger as the lure. Malcolm X became a controversial celebrity during the zenith of the Black Muslim movement, but he shunned chances to grow rich. The Messenger grew rich, but he was unable to achieve celebrity status. Since the Messenger’s death, only one Black Muslim—Farrakhan—has acquired both wealth and fame. Neither the Messenger nor Malcolm X appeared on the cover of Time or Newsweek (or any other mainstream national publication). Farrakhan has appeared on both. In March 1998, Farrakhan was among many “celebrities” at the seventy-fifth anniversary party held by Time in New York City.13 Farrakhan, in the tradition of entertainers, had just concluded his “World Friendship Tour,” which included a cordial meeting with Saddam Hussein’s subordinates, and a controversial kiss with Winnie Mandela, the militant African National Congress leader who is as suspect in South Africa as Farrakhan is in America.14 At the time the kiss was captured by international photographers, both Mandela and Farrakhan were subjects of speculation about their involvement in misdeeds against their own people.15
The titles that he gives to his international escapades are perhaps the greatest reminder that Farrakhan, like a leopard, is incapable of changing his spots. Although he changed his name long ago, he remains Louis “the Charmer” Walcott at heart. His violin concerts and sound recordings attest to that, as do the rock-music-style labels he puts on his national and international travels. In a bid to share the national spotlight with Farrakhan, the new groups have descended from the sublime to the surreal. Silis Muhammad has accused Farrakhan of betraying the Messenger’s mission. Before the Million Man March in 1995, Silis wrote Farrakhan a letter accusing him of violating Elijah Muhammad’s teachings by, among other things, participating in the voting process. On another occasion, after Farrakhan refused to cooperate in Silis Muhammad’s plan to unite their two groups, Silis derided Farrakhan as the “Second Beast of the Book of Revelations.”16
What is one to make of this modern Tower of Babel? Essentially, each group is little more than a cult of personality. When their aging leaders are gone (both Farrakhan and Silis are sexagenarians), all that will remain is a storefront temple here and there. For the most part, members will scatter to the winds, as they did when Marcus Garvey was deported, when Satohata Takahashi was deported, and when Father Divine died. Mergers are unlikely, since there is little that groups using the Nation of Islam’s flag in their coat-of-arms agree on. All agree that Master Wallace D. Fard was Allah in person. This belief persists despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary that has surfaced in the last ten years. Most also believe that Elijah Muhammad was the Seal of the Prophets, despite the inherent contradiction with the Holy Quran. Beyond that, there is nothing but babbling.
As a practical matter, the Nation of Islam is a mirage. It has become the stuff of legend, like the block of salt mistaken for Lot’s wife. The Nation of Islam built by the team of Malcolm X and the Messenger has disintegrated and become a pool of gross mutations. During the twelve years of Malcolm X’s ministry, it constantly progressed financially and philosophically. After Malcolm, the sect devolved instead of continuing to evolve. When the current crop of leaders depart, the sole victor may prove to be the one J. Edgar Hoover suggested was best suited to direct Muslims: Imam Wallace D. Muhammad. Though he, too, is a sexagenarian and is struggling financially, his followers are more concerned with their spiritual advancement than those of Farrakhan and Silis, who remain mired in a hybridized theology grounded in erroneous assumptions about race. There is none of the petty political sniping in Wallace’s organization that is so characteristic of the other groups. Wallace’s followers have not been accused of attacking members of other Islamic sects, as have the followers of Silis and Farrakhan. Finally, Wallace’s coreligionists no longer have the need to demonize Caucasians or to promote themselves as God’s Chosen. Wallace Muhammed has recognized such teachings for what they are: psychological bondage that blinds the believer instead of opening his or her eyes to the truth.
Unlike Farrakhan, who has retained much of his charisma for forty years, Wallace is no longer the forceful speaker he was when Malcolm X was his teacher. After a faltering start, during which he ridiculed his father, talked too freely to FBI agents, and behaved in a suspect fashion toward Malcolm, Wallace appears to be adjusting to the axiom about the impossibility of serving two masters: he often speaks of his need for money, but he doesn’t let it blind him to his higher mission. He has single-handedly converted tens of thousands of African-American Muslims from a false Islamic faith to true orthodoxy. For the descendants of slaves who came to America as Muslims, that will prove to be Wallace’s greatest gift to his father and to his country. History will remember him not as a prophet, as some imagine it will remember them, but as a decent man who struggled to remain true to the tenets of his faith.
Farrakhan’s legacy is another matter entirely. “I’m not going to be a prostitute for anybody anymore,” Farrakhan protested when Wallace Muhammed announced that he was transferring Farrakhan from Harlem to Chicago in 1977. “Why should I do it for anybody else when I can do it for myself?”17 If, as his outburst implied, Farrakhan regarded himself as a prostitute for the Messenger, future historians would be wise to examine the implications of his outburst. Someone, a divinity student perhaps, may compare him to the sisters Ahola and Aholibah from chapter 23 of the Book of Ezekiel: “Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she played the harlot in the land of Egypt.” And they will surely look more closely at his statements regarding how he and the Nation of Islam “dealt with” Malcolm X, particularly after the FBI declassifies its files on Farrakhan. While we’re on the subject, Farrakhan, who has been clamoring for the release of the FBI files on Malcolm X, could help allay suspicions about his youthful transgressions and perform a public service by requesting the release of his own files, which remain classified. That, of course, isn’t remotely likely.
For now, Farrakhan remains a world-class demagogue, one who broke bread with other demagogues, such as Saddam Hussein, Winnie Mandela, Idi Amin of Uganda, and Sani Abacha of Nigeria. He will be remembered for deliberately distorting the teachings of the man he professes to love more than anything in this world and abusing the religion he claims to practice. He will be remembered for the Rolls Royce in which he was chauffeured about town, the gauche jewelry and tailor-made glitzy suits, and, yes, the contrived militancy he summoned at the first sight of a television camera. He has successfully repackaged and marketed the Messenger. Books authored by Farrakhan sit alongside The International Jew by Henry Ford and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
The Messenger’s recorded speeches and old photographs are sold in stores run by Farrakhan’s sect in nearly every major city, and are normally displayed side-by-side with Farrakhan’s books, tapes, and photographs. The signs in the window don’t say so, but “Idolatry for Sale” is the message one gets from visiting these establishments. One item for sale is a sticker reading “Don’t Mess With Farrakhan.” Shortly before his death, Captain Joseph offered another slogan: “Don’t Listen to Farrakhan.” Joseph agreed with what Muhammad and his children have long suspected, namely that Farrakhan could not be trusted to represent the man that the Messenger had become shortly before his death, the man who ordered those who worshipped him to stop calling white people “devils.”
The words of Thomas Jefferson come to mind when one reflects on the proliferation of the Elmer Gantry type of Muslim ministers in the African-American community. The same greed and hypocrisy that soured blacks on Christianity will ultimately spill over into Islam at the rate things are going. The first omen of this was the confession of Omar Muhammad on the Christian Broadcasting Network.18 Omar’s father was a captain of the notorious New Jersey mosque who enjoyed “dinners with close friend and leader of the Nation of Islam, Minister Farrakhan.”19 After a series of unfortunate social encounters that tested his faith—at least as taught by the Messenger—Omar abandoned the Nation. He also abandoned Islam and became a Christian. “The spirit of Islam, I would like to say, put on me a spirit of ignorance and almost deafness and dumbness.” It is understandable, though regrettable, that he blames a true religion for the shortcomings of dishonest, incompetent imams. As the Omars in the Nation of Islam realize that what they accepted as Islam is nothing more than a shell game designed to keep certain families in the lap of luxury, they will reject it and seek the truth somewhere else. They will curse the teachers who sold them into spiritual slavery instead of leading them to the liberation of true faith. Today, no one in her right mind names a child after Benedict Arnold or Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot. Tomorrow, no one will name a child in honor of the imams who have betrayed this generation. “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just” and “that his justice cannot sleep forever,” Jefferson said in reflecting upon slavery.20 That’s a thought that pulpit pimps—and prostitutes—should keep in mind and take to heart.
