Trinity Essay, Research Paper
trinity”Black Gods of the Inner City”Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam is a figure as current astoday’s headlines, but the movement of which he is a nominal spokesman has acontinuous history of over sixty years in this country. The Nation of Islam(NOI), as it is officially known, came to the attention of the general publicin the 1960s as the “Black Muslims.” (1) It is well-known for its doctrinethat the White Man is a devil. but what is probably less well known is anotherpart of its teaching – that the Black man is god. Outsiders have done little in-depth research to trace the NOI’s doctrinalpredecessors. The NOI itself has denied its connections with previousmovements, specifically the Moorish Science Temple of Noble Drew Ali. Ali,who was born as Timothy Drew in North Carolina in 1886, taught, among otherthings, that Blacks are descended from the ancient Canaanites. Legend has itthat he was the reincarnation of Muhammad, the Prophet of orthodox Islam. Eventually relocating to Chicago, Ali built an organization that numberedperhaps 30,000 adherents at its peak. (2)On March 15, 1929, Ali was arrested after factional violence resulted in thedeath of a rival, Sheik Claude Greene. Arrested and held in the county jail,Ali was eventually released on bail, but died July 20, 1929, under mysteriouscircumstances. (3)Master Fard MuhammadThe story of the NOI itself starts with a man variously known as Wali Farrad,W.D. Fard, Wallace Fard Muhammad, and Farrad Muhammad, but who is best knownas Msater Fard Muhammad. (4) According to his sucessor, Elijah Muhammad,He came alone. He began teaching us the knowledge of ourselves, ofGod and the devil, of the measurements of the earth, of other planets,and the civilizations of some of the planets other than the earth. He measured and weighed the earth and the water; [he gave] thehistory of the moon; the history of the two nations that dominated theearth. He gave the exact birth of the white race; the name of theirGod who made them and how; and the end of their time, the judgement,how it will begin and end. (5)According to the same source, Fard had said, “My name is Mahdi; I am God.” And according to another source, Fard, when asked who he was by the Detroitpolice, responded: “I am the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.” (6)Master Fard Muhammad is officially noted by the NOI as having arrived inDetroit on July 4, 1930, and departed on June 30, 1934. (There is an oldertradition of an earlier arrival twenty years previous as well as attendanceat the University of Southern California.) (7) In the interim, Fardestablished temples in several cities and created a hierarchical organizationcomposed of a men’s military training unit called the Fruit of Islam (FOI), aministers’ corps, and a women’s auxiliary called the Muslim Girls Training andGeneral Civilization Class (MGT-GCC). (8) This infrastructure was built uponFard’s ideological foundation known as the “Secret Ritual,” which, arranged ina question-and-answer format, became better known as the “Lost-Found MuslimLessons” or simply as “the lessons.”Within these lessons were the basic elements of an ancient mystery school. Itinvolved secrecy from outsiders; an esoteric ritual containing keys forrecognition between fellow members; a cohesive world view; and a tradition thatcould be explained only to initiates. Central to these teachings were theknowledge of self and the Black man’s godhood. (9) According to theseteachings, the Black man was by nature divine, and in fact was the originalman, ancestor of the human race (antedating Louis and Mary Leakey’s discoveriesof early human remains in Africa by nearly thirty years.)White people, on the other hand, were produced out of Black people by ascientist named Yacub approximately six thousand years ago. (10) Discoveringa recessive gene in the Black man, Yacub used a system of eugenics on agroup of sixty thousand people on an island and, after six hundred years, wasable to create a biological mutation: the White man. Of course Yacub did notlive to see his creation, but he left behind an infrastructure to propogatehis system, as well as the ideological basis for White supremacy. Bleachedof the essence of humanity, Whites were “without soul.” Nonetheless the racewas destined to rule for an allotted period extending to 1914 A.D, though, asFard’s messenger Elijah Muhammad put it, “a few years of grace have been givento complete the resurrection of the Black man, and especially the so-calledNegroes whom Allah has chosen for this change (of a new nation and world). They (so-called Negroes) have been made so completely mentally dead … thatextra time is allowed.” (11) It was also taught that the supreme god amongstthis mighty nation of Black gods commanded the name of Allah. (12) This titlewas claimed by Master Fard Muhammad himself. Fard’s deification of man can hardly be considered an aberration in light ofhistorical precedents. The ancient pharaohs of Egypt, the Aztec emperors, andthe Peruvian Incas who traced their ancestry to the Sun God are well-knownexamples. More recently, there are claims of divinity for emperors Hirohitoand Haile Selassie, the Dalai Lama, and Kushok Bakula. (13) And even theseshould hardly turn any heads in the light of the tradition of Jesus of Nazarethas God incarnate. The Hindu avatar tradition would also be right at home insuch company. The teaching of the divinity of the Black man specifically (a doctrine known as”incarnation”) is said to go back to ancient Egyptian mystery schools; in factKhem (and its variants Cham, Ham), an ancient name of Egypt, means “land of theBlacks.” Nor did the doctrine of incarnation start with Master Fard Muhammadand the NOI; according to Fard’s messenger and succesor, Elijah Muhammad, theknowledge of man as god had been long known but “was kept a secret from thepublic.” (14)”The Lost-Found People of Islam”Prior to Fard’s appearance in 1930, Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science Templesof America were in decline. After the loss of its founder in 1929, the movementhad fallen into three separate schisms. Sheik John Givens El claimed thatNoble Drew Ali had become reincarnated into him, Givens El, on August 7, 1929. in Chicago. This was publicly announced in Chicago’s Pythian Hall on August19 of that year. (15)But, according to scholar Ravanna Bey, W.D. Fard, known at the time as AbdulWali Farrad Muhammad, and two other Moorish Scientists, Mealy El and CharlesKirkman Bey, contested the authority of Givens El. The latter two went on toestablish their own independent Moorish Science Temples, while Fard converteda Detroit Moorish Science Temple and renamed it the Temple of the Lost-FoundPeople of Islam (a story that has been hotly contested by NOI leadership). (16)A wartime memo claimed W.D. Fard was one Sheik Davis El from Kansas. (17)According to yet another source, Fard had declared himself the reincarnationof Noble Drew Ali. (18) With so many stories in circulation, confusion hasbeen the norm. On November 21, 1932, Robert Karriem, a member of Fard’s Detroit temple, wasarrested for the murder of J.J. Smith, another temple member. The policearrested thirty seven members in what they characterized as a case of “humansacrifice” with religious overtones. They labeled the incident as the “VoodooMurder,” and the media followed suit. (19) The organization was referred to asthe “Voodoo Cult,” and Fard as “Chief of the Voodoos” by the detractors. Karriem, also known as Robert Harris, was found insane and ordered to beconfined to the State Insane Asylum at Ionia, Michigan, on December 6, 1932. Meanwhile Detroit was being turned upside down in pursuit of Fard, who wasproving to be elusive. After seven months, the police finally arrested him atDetroit’s Hotel Fraymore on May 25, 1933. Held overnight for “investigation,”he was photographed and fingerprinted. On the following day he was ordered outof the city. Traveling to Chicago, he was again arrested. According to ElijahMuhammad, Fard “came to Chicago in the same year [1933] and was arrested almostimmediately on his arrival and placed behind prison bars.” (20) According toFBI sources, Fard was thought to have been arrested in Chicago on September 26,1933, without disposition, photo, or fingerprints taken, for “disorderlyconduct,” a police euphemism for the harassment of undesirables. This is thelast official record of Fard. Unsubstantiated rumors lay his disappearance atthe door of the Chicago police department; but according to NOI tradition, Fardcontinued to visit Detroit surreptitiously into 1934. Fard The ManWho was Fard? Official NOI teachings state that he was born in Mecca, Arabia,February 26, 1877. The offspring of a Black father and a White mother, he was”able to go among both black and white without being discovered or recognized.”(21) His mission was to teach freedom, justice, and equality to the members ofthe “lost tribe of Shabazz in the wilderness of North America.” He hadrecieved the finest education in preparation for his mission; “he could speak16 languages and write 10 of them. He could recite the histories of the worldas far back as 150,000 years and knew the beginning and end of all things.”(22)However, different sources contribute their conflicting versions of the man. Fard was also described as a “Palestinian Arab who had participated in variousracial agitations in India, South Africa, and London before moving on toDetroit.” He was also thought to be the son of an African Jamaican mother anda Syrian Muslim father. (23) Another report claimed that he was born of aMaori mother and a British sailor father in New Zealand. (24) Still anotherstates that he was a Turkish-born agent for Hitler. (25) A recent accountsomewhat incoherently describes Fard as a “Jewish Nazi Communist,” and says hewas an agent of the CIA in 1930 (seventeen years before that agency came intoexistence). (26) One more recent writer has constructed the tenuoushypothesis that Fard came to Sufi mysticism by way of Theosophy. (27) There iseven an account (complete with transcript) of a supposed ecncounter betweenFard and Albert Einstien at a Detroit radio station in 1932. While the oral histories of Moorish Science adherents claim Fard as one oftheir own gone astrary, NOI initiates say that Fard, arriving in the”wilderness of North America” as early as 1910, taught Noble Drew Ali, FatherDivine, Daddy Grace and Sufi Abdul-Hamid (28) the concept of Black godhood,though all of these later went on their own way. There is also a traditionthat in Egypt Fard taught Duse Muhammad Ali, the mentor of Marcus Garvey(founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association), as well as Garveyhimself, whom he met in London. Fard was described as having an “oriental cast of countenance,” (29) adescription which a 1933 police photo seems to bear out. Police sourcesdescribe him as five feet six inches in height and weighing 133 pounds. Hiseye color is given as “maroon,” his hair as black, and his complexion isdescribed as “dark” or “swarthy.” One entry described him as looking like a”dark complected Mexican.” Only two photographs remain from Fard’s three anda half years in Detroit: the police photo and a “glamourized” (i.e. touched-up)portrait of a sort popular in the late 1920s, taken at a forty-five-degreeangle by a professional photographer. The latter became the official portraitof Fard, and was later reproduced in a painted portrait at the Muhammad familymansion in Chicago. The Departure of FardOther accounts circulated after Fard’s disappearance. According to ElijahMuhammad, Fard was “ordered out of the country” and caught a flight to Mecca. (30) It was also reported that he sailed to Austrailia and New Zealand, andthat he was last seen “aboard a ship bound for Europe.” (31) A suspect sourceclaimed that Fard was interviewed in Germany but denied ever being in theUnited States. (32) A recent report in an orthodox Muslim newspaper claimedthat Fard is alive and living in California and is now himself an orthodoxMuslim. (33)In addition, there were rumors to the effect that Fard “met with foul play atthe hands of either the Detroit police or some of his dissident followers,” orthat he was the victim of “human sacrifice” himself, thereby accounting forboth his disappearance and his title of “Saviour.” (34) Anotherunsubstantiated story said that, afflicted with an incurable illness, he diedand was buried under another name, and “no man knows of his grave to this day.”Rumors aside, there has been no reliable report of his death. The FBI, whichinitiated an investigation of Fard in 1942 that was to last more than thirtyyears, could not substantiate or verify his name at birth, birth date, placeof birth, port of entry, exit, or present whereabouts, despite exhaustiveinquiries. There are even indications that bodies were exhumed in the searchfor Fard. The Messenger of AllahIt was Elijah Muhammad who was almost single-handedly responsible for thedeification of Fard as “Allah.” (35) Elijah Muhammad was born Paul RobertPoole in 1897 on a tenant farm in Sandersville, Georgia, the seventh oftwelve children; he was given the name Elijah by his grandfather. Later on,Fard would give him the name Muhammad. (36) Elijah married the former ClaraEvans and migrated to Detroit in 1923. Working at a variety of jobs until theDepression hit in 1929, he went on relief until 1931. It was in that year thathe first met Fard, but says that “it was not until 1933 that he [Fard] beganrevealing his true self to us.” (37)After Fard’s disappearance, the struggle for succesion commenced. Elijah’s ownbrother fell in the bloody internecine warfare that developed. (38) Rivals inthe Detroit temple made necessary Elijah’s hegira to Chicago, which wasdestined to become the headquarters and power base; but from 1935 to 1942, hewas on the run. In 1942 he was arrested in Washington, D.C., by the FBI oncharges of sedition. At roughly the same time, more than eighty members of the
Chicago temple were taken in under the same charge by FBI agents working withlocal police. One of the arrested temple members said the officers “tore theplace apart trying to find weapons hidden, since they believed we wereconnected with the Japanese.” (39)The sedition charge was based on the temple’s anti-draft stance and was appliedfor blatantly political reasons. The arrest of Elijah and his followers, andtheir subsequent incarceration until the end of the war, greatly enhanced theirstatus as martyrs for the cause. Like other leaders jailed for their activities, Elijah brought forth innovationsfor his movement when he was released. Prior to his imprisonment, the movementwas based entirely on its theological teachings and traditions. In 1946 itnumbered in the hundreds, just possibly the thousands. But that was to change. Upon his release, Elijah stated, “We have to show the people something – wecannot progress by talk.” And so, as his son Wallace later explained, Elijah”changed from preaching his mysterious doctrine to doing something practical. He said, ‘We have to have businesses.’ So he began to promote the opening ofbusinesses. He said, ‘You have to produce jobs for yourself’.” (40)Quietly growing through the 1940s and ’50s, the NOI came to enjoy phenomenalgrowth in the 1960s owing to media exposure and the charismatic gifts of itsnational spokesman, Malcolm X. As Elijah’s chief minister, Malcolm was knownin Black inner cities for his dynamic presence and speaking ability. He gainednational exposure through Mike Wallace’s 1959 television documentary, “TheHate that Hate Produced.” The program shocked Middle America, while at thesame time grim-faced FOI members met with admiration from inner-city audiences. Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and the NOI had arrived on prime time. Recruitmentskyrocketed. Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, Malcolm X had been introducedto Elijah Muhammad through family members while in prison in Massachusetts. Inthe early 1950s he converted and took his “X.” (41) Upon his release he joinedthe organization in Detroit and subsequently rose to a position of leadership,eventually moving to New York City, where he was assigned Temple #7. But in1965 factional rivalry and FBI activities reaped their harvest: Malcolm X wasassassinated. After his death Malcolm X became the martyr of the Black nationalist movement. But for the next ten years, the various factions were just treading water, andno one made any waves until the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975. Allah Comes To HarlemIn the meantime, however, the doctrine of Black incarnation had not died, andwhile W.D. Fard was still invoked in prayer in the temples of the NOI, anothercycle in the series of resurrections and reincarnations came about. The formerFOI Clarence 13X became the founder of the “Five Percenters” in New York Cityaround 1964. Born Clarence Edward Smith in Danville, Virginia, in 1928, while still in histeens he came with his family to New York City. Married and the father ofseveral children, he served with the U.S. Army during the Korean Conflict. Honorably discharged in 1954, he remained a reservist until 1960, at which timehe joined the NOI. He remained in the NOI until he was expelled by Malcolm Xunder orders from the Chicago headquarters in 1963. The leading rumor of the cause of Clarence’s expulsion was his admitted lovefor playing craps. Dice playing, it was claimed, was a way of demonstratingthe probabilities inherent in the nature of the universe. By contrast toEinstien’s famous dictum, “God doesn’t play dice,” the former Clarence 13XSmith, who took on the attribute (or name) Allah, did claim, “I am going toshoot dice until I die.” (42) And he did. “Allah,” as he became known, took Fard’s “Lost-Found Muslim Lessons” out of thetemple and put them into the hands of the youth in the streets. Fard’sinitiation ritual related a mathematical formula for the human society, whichwas broken down into percentages. The Five Percent were those who taughtrighteousness, freedom, justice, and equality to all the human family. Theytaught that the god of righteousness was not a spirit or a spook, but the Blackman of Asia. (Asia was viewed as the primary continent, all the others assubcontinents; continental drift was a facet of this teaching.)The Eighty-Five Percent, the masses, believed in a “Mystery God” and worshipped”that which did not exist.” they believed in a spirit deity rather than amaterial man as god. They functioned on a “mentally dead” (i.e. unconscious)level and were easy to lead in the wrong direction but hard to lead in theright. The Ten Percent were the bloodsuckers of the poor who taught the Eighty-FivePercent that a Mystery God existed. They kept the masses asleep with mythsand lies, catering to their superstitious nature and living in luxury from theearnings of the poor. The Five Percent were destined to be poor righteous teachers and to strugglesuccessfully against the Ten Percent. Their job was to lead the Eighty-FivePercent to freedom, justice, and equality. At first a loose confederation ofthe lumpen proletariat, Allah’s followers numbered in the hundreds, but thatsoon changed. The Rise of the Five PercentAllah attracted the attention of both the police and the politicians – a lethalcombination. Mayor Lindsay’s administration in New York City saw in him ameans of keeping the Harlem streets cool through the long, hot summers of theriot-strewn Sixties. So Allah was put on the city payroll. Meanwhile theNew York City Police Department’s Bureau of Special Services (BOSS), who kepttheir eyes on radicals and dissidents, put him at the top of their list of”Black Militants.” (43)For his part Allah wanted something for his youngsters. In the short time hewas associated with the mayor’s office, he was able to open an academy withcity funds. He expanded his recruitment of youth with picnic outings andairplane rides. The youth in turn sensed his love for them, and it is nowonder that in the contempary Five Percent he is referred to as “The Father.”Allah was assassinated Friday the 13th of June, 1969 by “three male negroes.”His Death was reported on the front of the New York Times. (44) His murderremains unsolved. It has been rumored within the FOI circles that his deathwas the result of his “taking the lessons out of the temple.” There isevidence, however, that BOSS instigated the assassination to create a warbetween the NOI and the Five Percent. (45) With Allah’s martyrdom, legendsagain began to proliferate, and “The Father, Allah” joined the pantheon of theBlack gods of the inner city along with Nobel Drew Ali and W.D. Fard. But Allah’s story doesn’t end there. Like Jesus, he taught “You are gods,”(John 10:34), testifying to the inherent divinity of man; nonetheless hisfollowers elevated him above themselves. His biographies became tinged withmyth, and a supernatural element was added to his teaching; the “Father” hasbeen magnified in his absence, and he has become a cult personality. Hisphotos adorn walls where previous generations had kept a picture of a blond-haired, blue eyed Jesus. A New EraWith the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975, a new power struggle ensued in thehouse that Fard built. Wallace Delaney Muhammad, son of Elijah, was born inDetroit in 1933. He recieved his elementary and high-school education at theNOI’s University of Islam in Chicago, and spent four more years studying Islamand Arabic at orthodox Muslim schools. He was long regarded as the logicalsuccessor to his father. Born and groomed for the part, he was introduced byMalcolm X as “the seventh son of our dear beloved leader and Teacher who isfollowing in the footsteps of his father.” (46)But not everything was to run so smoothly or so simply. Wallace D. Muhammadhad in fact been expelled by his father for his refusal to recognize thedivinity of Master Fard Muhammad. In addition, Minister Louis Farrakhan, thenational spokesman for the organization, was waiting in the wings. Farrakhan,while probably more popular among hard-core militants, failed to muster thevotes required from the family dominated inner circle in Chicago. So, despiteWallace’s departures from NOI orthodoxy, nepotism prevailed. Wallace was careful, however. He did not challenge the sanctity of hisnamesake’s coattails, to which he owed his own legitimacy. A year after hisaccension to power, Wallace claimed ni speeches to believers that he was incommunication with the founder, saying, “Master Fard Muhammad is not dead,brothers and sisters, he is physically alive and I talk with him whenever I getready. I don’t talk to him in any spooky way, I go to the telephone and dialhis number.” (47)Within a few years, though, Wallace was moving in the direction of orthodoxIslam. Taking the organization through a number of name changes, he changedhis own name to Warith (meaning “heir” in Arabic). Ultimately he sold off thebusinesses that had been accumulated over the previous thirty years and joinedthe fold of orthodox Islam. The Farrakhan FacetFor a while after Elijah Muhammad’s death, Louis Farrakhan toed the line. Approximately three years later, however, the old-line NOI traditionalistsregrouped. With a certain amount of encouragement from them, Farrakhan leftthe employ of Warith. Known in an earlier period as Minister Louis X of Boston’s Temple No. 11,Farrakhan had joined the NOI in the mid-1950s a former calypso singer, hebecame a speaker of some note. He recieved the name Farrakhan from ElijahMuhammad, but neither he nor anyone else seems to know just what it means. Groomed in the shadow of Malcolm X, and sometimes hosting him in his visits toBoston, Farrakhan was later to fiercely denounce him in the pages of MuhammadSpeaks, the paper that, ironically, Malcolm himself had started in New York in1960:Only those who wish to be led to hell, or to their doom, will followMalcolm. The die is set and Malcolm shall not escape, especially aftersuch foolish talk about his benefactor in trying to rob him of thedivine glory which Allah has bestowed upon him. Such a man as Malcolmis worthy of death. (48)Farrakhan later admitted his deviation from the NOI path in following Wallace. Others had refused to recognize the legitimacy of Wallace’s succesion and hadleft earlier. In time the NOI traditionalists regrouped around Farrakhan. One, the former Bernard Cushmeer (now Jabril Muhammad), joined up claimed thatElijah was not really dead. He wrote a book to prove it. Farrakhan, aftersome hesitation, concurred; in September 1985 he claimed to have had a visionin which he was taken up to the Mothership and saw Elijah. (49)But there was one certainty in the air: that a era had passed and a new cyclehad been initiated in the history of the unique form of Islam practiced in thewilderness of North America, complete with its own prophets, gods, saviors, andmessengers. Another CycleAfter centuries of slavery, lynchings, discriminations, miseducation, policebrutality, and poverty, it was not difficult for semiliterate Black migrantsin the Depression era to believe that the White man was a devil. What wasdifficult, after generations of being taught in schools, textbooks, and themedia that Black people were inferior and had no history of achievement beforeenslavement, was for them to see the divine nature in themselves. It was notfor Black people to rehabilitate their view of Whites, but to raise their ownself-esteem. The doctrine of Black godhood responds to this need, and theBlack gods of the inner city are symptomatic ot this effort. In recent years the Five Percent has grown in numbers, despite the departure ofAllah. The doctrine of Black godhood is enjoying a renewal among inner-cityyouth of the 1990s. They are attracted by its esoteric tradition, its Blackidentity, and the symbolism of the Five Percent’s Universal Flag. Itsinfluence in the rap music field is evidenced by the artists who identifythemselves with it in their lyrics: Big Daddy Kane (King Asiatic God Allah),Poor Righteous Teachers, King Sun, Rakim, Brand Nubian, Movement Ex, and LakimShabazz (who has done a video in Egypt with pyramids in the background). (50)What can you possibly think when you watch MTV and hear an attractive youngBlack woman, “cultured-down” (dressed in long skirts with here hair covered),announce: “Peace, this is the goddess Isis”? There’s definitely a connectionamong godhood, Blackness, and Egypt. However you may view the above, the next time you hear a twenty-year-oldyoungster like Lakim Shabazz on MTV rapping about “knowledge, wisdom, andunderstanding,” or saying “The original man is the Asiatic Black man,” or “I’m God, my number is seven,” you will recognize that he is reciting portionsof a once-secret ritual that is known to be more that sixty years old and thattraces itself back to ancient Egypt. With that knowledge, you can be assuredthat the Black gods and goddesses of the inner cities are alive and well. [ Prince-A-Cuba, born in Havana in 1962, can be reached as W. Don Fajardoc/o T.U.T., P.O. Box 3243, East Orange, NJ 07017. His forthcoming book isentitled Our Mecca is Harlem: Clarence 13X (Allah) and the Five Percent. ]______________________________________________________________________________Footnotes1. The term was coined in 1956 by C. Eric Lincoln. Cf. his Black Muslims inAmerica (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961, 1973),p. xii. 2. Lincoln, pp. 53, 57. 3. E.U. Essien-Udom, Black Nationalism: A Search for Idendity (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1971), p. 35. 4. E.D. Beynon, “The Voodoo Cult among Negro Migrants in Detroit,” in AmericanJournal of Sociology 43 (May 1938), Republished as Master Fard Muhammad:Detroit History, Prince-A-Cuba. ed. (Newport News, Va.: UB & USCS, 1990).Page references are to the latter. 5. Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Newport News,: UB &USCS, 1965), pp. 16-17. 6. Beynon, p. 6. 7. Ibid., p.5; cf. Pittsburgh Courier, July 20, 1957; and interview withElijah Muhammad by R.Simmons of the California Eagle, July 28, 1963. 8. Temples were founded in Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, andWashington, D.C. The Detroit temple had a membership of 8000, according toNOI officials, and 5000, according to the Detroit police. Cf. Beymon, p. 7. 9. The expressions “knowledge of self” and “know thyself” are found throughoutthe NOI teachings. Cf. George G.M. James, Stolen Lagacy (Newport News, Va.:UB &USCS, 1954), pp. 3, 88, 92 and Anonymous, Egyptian Mysteries: An Accountof an Initiation (York Beach, Me.: Samueal Weiser, 1991), p. 43. 10. Muhammad, Message, pp. 110-21. 11. Elijah Muhammad, Our Savior Has Arrived (Newport News, Va.: UB & USCS,1974), p. 13. 12. Lincoln, p. 75. 13. India’s ambassador to Mongolia, conside