Chapter 16

Lost-Found Nation

Summary
     This chapter discusses the events surrounding the last known meeting between W.D. Fard and Elijah Muhammad in 1934, and the history of "the Nation of Islam - a faith that has usually done its level best to reject everything about America" (261). It all began with a man named Wallace Fard, who went around the slums, selling clothing, preaching, and doing magic tricks. Now how did this man ever gain a following? Well, he came to the black community at the right time, a time full of "radical religious departure" because they had never really been allowed to choose their own religion before (262). Something a lot of these new religions had in common was "a rejection of received white history and culture" (264).
      Fard's invented theology, called "The Knowledge of Self and Others," took an interesting spin on that rejection. According to him, Allah was not a "spook god," but "the Original Man, and all his descendants - all of the black people of the earth - were the Original People" who had ruled the world before white people, an inferior race, had been invented through many "diabolical experiments" and somehow managed to take over (265, 266). Fard believed that he had come to bring the Original People back to power. He "stood the traditional white, American worldview on its head" by showing that the white people were the ones at fault, especially for creating slavery, leading to much of the American black nationalism then and today (267). A man named Elijah Poole from the slums found his salvation in the religion, and thought that Fard was the Messiah. He preached with him, learned from him, and became his #2 man, something that made other close followers jealous and caused them to turn away. To get them back, Fard came up with "The History of the End of the World," detailing the "imminent destruction of the white race" (272). Everything began to deteriorate, though, when a "sacrifice" by a believer got Fard arrested and attention drawn to his cult, but Elijah never backed down and kept running the Nation of Islam, even when Fard was sent away. When Elijah was arrested, however, the faith stalled until Malcolm X came along and helped it grow. The author would have loved to be there to see inside the minds of the two famous (or infamous) men, see their intentions, and more.

Reflection
      Although Fard's ideas seemed completely crazy to me, the author did have a point when he mentioned that "they were no more crude, or bigoted, than the self-serving doctrines of social Darwinism," so it makes sense that African-Americans would feel drawn to the Nation of Islam (268). It probably made them feel like they had more power. At the same time, though, Fard's religion felt like fiction, like he had completely made it up, like he was in English class and his teacher told him to write a story including a protagonist, a villain, and a conflict.
      I was shocked when I read that children were being taught this religion and how to hate white people, and they would be rewarded if they cut off the heads of four 'devils'" (273). That is the issue with many religions - they focus around hate. This kind of hate has been the root of so many problems in the world.