Chapter 2 of This Side of Paradise: The Religious World of Elijah Muhammad

CHAPTER 2

ELIJAH MUHAMMAD'S DOCTRINE OF ALLAH/GOD

Anthropomorphism, Gnosticism and a Plurality of gods

Any study of Elijah Muhammad's theology must begin with his understanding and doctrine of God/Allah, for it is here that the Messenger's teachings truly become his own.  Elijah's god, Allah, shares the same name as the God of Muslims and Arabic-speaking Christians, but the similarity ends there.  We will begin our study of Elijah Muhammad's doctrine of God with a quotation drawn from his book, Our Saviour has Arrived:¹⁰¹  "All these scriptures show that He sees, hears, feels, tastes, smells, talks our language, walks, stands, sits, eats, and drinks.  Therefore, God must be a human being."¹⁰²  And, If we believe that alone, that God created man in His own image and likeness, that is sufficient for us to expect God to be nothing other than man...  The Muslims worship one God-- Allah, "Say:  He, Allah, is One God."  (Y)et 99% of the old world Muslims think that Allah is only a "Spirit" and is not a man.  Then they too need to be taught today the reality of Allah.  Certainly He is one God, but not a spirit....¹⁰³

This is a new knowledge of God, Elijah tells his followers.  It is a knowledge which has been kept secret from the world until now because God has saved this knowledge for his "chosen" people, the most wretched and despised people of the earth.¹⁰⁴

Although the Messenger has declared that Allah is One, as any Muslim would do, his theology is not monotheistic.  In a bold passage from Our Saviour has Arrived, Elijah Muhammad demonstrated that his teachings contain strong currents of Gnosticism and Manichaeism insofar as he taught that there were two gods alive in the world at the present time -- a good god and an evil god.  In addition to these two gods, Elijah further revealed that all Muslims are gods and that the name, Allah, means gods.¹⁰⁵

The god above all other gods has a name which can and must be known, and that name is Fard Muhammad.  "Fard", Elijah says, "is a Name meaning an independent One and One Who is not on the level with the average Gods (Allahs).  It is a Name independent to itself which actually means One whom we must obey, or else He destroys us....  [W]e call Him the Supreme Being because He is Supreme over all beings...."¹⁰⁶

The Birth of god

In Our Saviour Has Arrived Elijah Muhammad admits that he does not know when god was born, but he does assert that god was "self-created", in darkness, out of an "atom of life."  How could that atom of life make a record of its own creation?  It could not write its own creation, the record of it, because He was the First; there was (sic) no recorders around Him.  He was First to record His Ownself.  How long was that?  We can't tell; millions of years-- long before Yakub (the father of the devils) because the knowledge of God was kept as a secret from the public.  This is the first time that it has ever been revealed, and we, the poor rejected and despised people, are blessed to be the first of all the people of earth to receive this secret knowledge of God.  If this people (the white race) would teach you truth which has been revealed to me, they would be hastening their own doom, for they were not created to teach us the truth, but rather to teach us falsehood."¹⁰⁷

A New Allah for all Muslims

It will not be enough, then, to consider the theology of Elijah Muhammad as an expression of Islam which is unique to African Americans, and which ought to be respected as such.  Rather, Elijah the Messenger and Warner is making authoritative claims over all Muslims when he declared in the above:  "99% of the old world Muslims think that Allah is only a "Spirit" and is not a man.  Then they too need to be taught today the reality of Allah."  The white race (the devils) has hoisted a false teaching of God upon the black race because it is in the white man's nature to lie and deceive.  But the time has come for the truth to be revealed.  Ironically, even though he has set himself up as a Warner and Guide for all Muslims of the world, his teachings are not considered to be Islamic, at least not to Muslims.  For example, Zafar Ishaq Ansari, a Saudi theologian wrote in 1975 that: “The Black Muslim concept of God...is quite distinct, and indeed unique.  Even though Islamic religious terms have been freely used to elaborate, and Qur’anic verses quoted to support it, the concept is too foreign for Muslims even to comprehend, let alone subscribe to.”¹⁰⁸

In Allah in the West, Islamic Movements in America and Europe, Gilles Kepel gives the chapter on the Nation of Islam an appropriate title:  "The Birth of an American Religion".  He states that, "Fard and later Elijah Muhammad did not have to worry too much about whether their doctrine conformed to the 'orthodox' Islamic dogma.  Islamic scholarship was virtually absent from 1930's America, and there were no ulema in Detroit...to purge the Black Muslims' beliefs of their 'heresies'."¹⁰⁹

There may have been no ulema in Detroit at the time, as Kepel asserts, but Detroit, Michigan, was the center of Shiite Islam in the Unites States,¹¹⁰ and the kind of teachings regarding the Mahdi that Fard espoused have more similarities to Ghulat (radical or extremist) Shiite teachings than to Sunni understandings.  This is not to say that Fard was a Ghulat Shiite before his appearance in Detroit as the 'Savior' of black Americans, but he was more aware of and sympathetic to certain Shiite under-standings of the Mahdi than he was conversant with and sympathetic to Sunni expectations regarding the same, if Elijah Muhammad's teachings are an accurate reflection of Fard's.

In summing up a chapter on the subject of god as a man and not a spirit, Elijah quoted from the Psalms to shore up his argument and to justify his Biblically based authority.  He seems to have understood that to make this kind of claim he must demonstrate his divinely sanctioned authority to his audience.  After all, the claim that god is a man and not a spirit is contrary to everything his audiences would have believed about God, whether they were Christians, Jews or Muslims.  In short, Elijah attempts to prove that God has waited thousands of years for Elijah Muhammad to issue His warnings, speak His wisdom, pronounce His judgments and "rise up against the workers of iniquity."  After laying out the argument which has been buried in Psalms (regarding the coming of Elijah Muhammad), Elijah the Prophet once again declared that "God is a man and not a spook!"¹¹¹

The claim that God is not a "spook" is the foundational claim that paved the way for Elijah's ongoing deification of Master Fard Muhammad.  What Elijah is really struggling to get away from is the idea of the incarnation, as well.  The point he wants to drive home is not that God is a Spirit and a man, but rather, God/Allah is a man and has never been a Spirit.  Ansari understood this double attack on Islam and Christianity when he wrote in 1975 that "the barrage of criticism against (a) "spooky" God is directed almost as much against the Christians as it is against Muslims."¹¹²

A Superior Allah (Fard) and a Superior Imam (Elijah Muhammad)

In the Birth of a Savior, Elijah the Prophet further developed his understanding of Fard's divinity and his relationship to Islam.  Note, too, his use of Christian and Jewish themes in articulating the role of Fard as the one to whom all major Jewish, Christian and Islamic prophecies have pointed in anticipation of Allah's final deliverance of His chosen people from "the beast" (the white race). “His name shall be called Emmanuel.  God is with us.  It did not happen two thousand years ago.  It's today.  And I saw written on His side, King of Kings, Lord of Lords.  And He had another name that no man knew but He (Himself).  That's a name not numbered in the one hundred attributes of God's names...  What is his name then, Elijah, that you are representing?  He came to us in the name of Fard...  That morning prayer service is called Fard and that is made absolutely binding upon you and I that we should say.  Because in the last days, a man is coming by that name and it is going to be binding upon you and I that we bow down to that man or else.  The Fard.  It is said by the commentators it's a name that means Independent and a name that is absolutely made binding and compulsive.  We are compelled to submit to.  But nevertheless, it is not one of the ninety-nine attributes.  But yet this is an independent name outside of these one hundred...  What and why you should choose such names?  Because he is a God that is not associated with any other God.  He's a God that the others before Him has absolutely no association with Him.  Your God is one God.  No associates has He.  Your Lord is one Lord, meaning that He is not one that is associated with the twelve major of the twenty four elders.  These all must bow to Him.  The twelve major Imams, as they are called in Islam or in the Arab language, they don't have this one's knowledge.  This one has a superior knowledge and that other twelve minor of the twenty four elders as you find them in the last of the books here casting down their crown to that one that is conquering the beast and is delivering a people from that beast.”¹¹³

Emmanuel, King of Kings, Lord of Lords.  These are some of the historic names for Jesus Christ which Elijah Muhammad is now saying were not intended for Jesus Christ when he declared, "It did not happen 2,000 years ago."  Fard's name is a name outside the ninety-nine most beautiful names for Allah in orthodox Islam.  Fard is a name that was not known to all the major Imams and elders of Islam, nor was it known to the original Muhammad.  This name has only been revealed to Elijah the Messenger, who is now giving it to his chosen people.  To this man, Elijah says, all must bow down.  "And it is going to be binding upon you and I that we bow to that man or else."

We can also see in the above that Elijah Muhammad is confusing two Arabic words that sound, in English, almost identical:  one is farid, meaning unique ("It's a name that means Independent"… We might also note that the word farid is derived from farada, and it was the name of a 13^th century Persian poet, Farid ud-Din.), and the other is fard, which means a religious obligation ("and a name that is absolutely binding and compulsive.").  Since Elijah Muhammad did not know Arabic, it is possible (though it cannot be proven at this time) that Master Fard Muhammad was aware of both words and their meanings and used them both to describe himself to his disciple.  It should also be noted that Elijah Muhammad does not tell his readers or listeners who these commentators are (referred to in the above quotation) and where one might read more about the coming of a man by the name of Fard in Islamic tradition.

This one, this man, has no associates, Elijah tells his listeners.  This statement is a reference to the Muslim confession of faith that there is no God but Allah; and that no one and nothing can possibly have a share in Allah's divinity.  This doctrine, which is central to Islam, is also used to denounce the Christian belief in Jesus as the Son of God, the incarnate Second Person of the Trinity.  This one of whom Elijah speaks is not 'associated with the 12 major Imaams' who were believers in the Allah of the Qu'ran.¹¹⁴  Once again Elijah has affirmed that his Allah is not the Allah of Islam, as revealed in the Qu'ran and worshipped by Muslims.  Consequently, the teachings of the Imams of Islam cannot be applied in the task or hope of knowing the Allah of whom Elijah speaks.  A superior Allah has been revealed through a superior prophet and Imam, and it is time for the world to stand up and take notice.  The Warning has been issued.

Although Elijah declared that Allah has no associates and that there is none like unto him (Qur'an, 5:12), it would only be a matter of time before he would tell his followers that God was "beginning to change me into Himself."¹¹⁵  Evanzz attributes this massive leap from Elijah's prophethood into divinity as a "move more toward Sufism and the notion that each man has the potential to be a god."¹¹⁶  Although Sufis seek through their mystical practices and disciplines to attain a kind of experiential union with Allah, it must be noted that Sufis nevertheless believe that Allah, though accessible, remains radically other and transcendent.  If Elijah Muhammad was being influenced by Sufism it wasn't to become "at one" ecstatically with the transcendent God/Allah of Muslims, but rather to become at one with Fard Muhammad, whatever that might mean.  The notion that all are gods or have the potential to become gods is possibly less attributable to Sufism than it is to more popular American movements and teachings of the time which inspired people like Father Divine, i.e., New Thought and the Unity School of Christianity.¹⁷  According to these teachings it is believed that all people have the potential to become gods (or other christs, for the former and/or syncretistic Christians among them) through the power of positive thinking and the fine art of channeling the god within.  They believe that heaven is simply a state of mind that can be brought to earth through the efforts of enlightened individuals.  Unlike Father Divine and other New Thought and Unity School of Christianity proponents, however, Elijah Muhammad did not believe that 'true believers' (i.e., African Americans who follow Elijah Muhammad) have the potential to become immortal, even if they are by nature Allah or allahs.

When Elijah Muhammad proclaims that Allah is One, he does not mean to say that Allah is the only one.  Fard Muhammad is, rather, "a God that is not associated with any other Gods," and "He's a God that the others before Him has absolutely no association with..."  In other words, he is not the God of the Jews, Christians and orthodox Muslims.  Furthermore, it would be safe to say that Elijah Muhammad is thoroughly unconcerned with the Allah of the Muslims and holds Him in contempt.¹¹⁸

The Mortality of the gods

In a further assault against the traditional understanding of God/Allah, according to Jews, Muslims and Christians, the Messenger asserts that Allah (i.e., the gods) is/are not immortal.¹¹⁹  The gods somehow beget their successors, but nothing of the begetting god's being, or essence, lives on.  Only the previous god's wisdom lives on in memory.

In conclusion, we may safely say that Elijah Muhammad was a polytheist, though he believed in worshipping and being obedient to the god who is above all other gods, i.e., Fard Muhammad.  How the gods beget each other or how their divinity is passed on from one god to the next remains a mystery, at least to this writer.  We have seen Elijah's teaching regarding his belief that God, or the gods, are not spirits and have never been spirits, and that they have always been mortal, so the transfer of being or essence cannot be conceived of as a single god taking on a variety of forms through a number of successive incarnations.  We have also seen that the gods are not all-powerful, even during the time of their divinity, because they appear to be more like tribal gods, than gods of universal domain.  There is in the religious teachings of Elijah Muhammad a belief that the "current God" of white people is not the god of black people.  I make the distinction of "current God" in this instance because the god who created the white race, the evil black scientist Yakub, has long since died, but the god who is Lord of the white race now is at war with the god of black Americans.  Finally, Mr. Muhammad taught that all Original people (people of color) are Allah, or Allahs.  In short, Elijah Muhammad's doctrine of God bears no essential similarity to the Allah of Islam.