Chapter 16: Lost-Found Nation: The Last Meeting between Elijah Muhammad and W.D. Fard

Chapter Summary:

     This chapter explores the religion of the Nation of Islam, the rise to fame of an exotic, unexplainably compelling light skinned man by the name of Wallace Fard Muhammad. Muhammad gained much of his followers because of the time period in which he appeared, "a period of both intense disillusionment and radical religious departure within the black community," as well as the fact that more blacks, "ground down by poverty and embittered by continuing white intransigence, had begun to turn to new gods." No one exactly knows where Fard came from, or who he was, but the religion that he created became iconic - using Noble Drew Ali's religion as a jumping off point, he invented his own theology involving Europeans as "crude savages" and "black people as the "progenitors of civilization," whom had become "slavish imitations of their white masters" and whom Fard had come to empower and eliminate the white man altogether. Elijah Poole was a man who found his salvation with Fard and the Temple of Islam - he eventually became Fard's right hand man and kept the secret that Fard was the messiah (the incarnation of God on earth). However, once the general public found out (by Robert Harris's human sacrifice) about Fard's voodoo cult which included plans for an apocalyptic genocide of whites, leaving only a purified world made up of the "Original People," people began denouncing the faith left and right, as the people of Detroit were ashamed of its existence. Fard was arrested, and back and forth he went from imprisonment to disappearance to sneaking back in to revive his religion, to being arrested again, to finally denouncing his own faith, saying ti had all been a scheme to "get as much money out of it as he could." Mysteries still remain as to what happened to Wallace Fard Muhammad after he swore he would never return to Detroit, as well as what he told to his alleged successor Elijah Muhammad - did Elijah know of his faithful master's retraction? Was foul play involved? We may never know. 

Chapter Reflection:

     This chapter made me uneasy, because of the mystery surrounding this "messiah." The religion kind of scared me, it seemed like a science-fiction made up movie or something that convinced black people to turn against all white people and want to kill them all to purify the world - very Holocaust/genocide. The very notion of a messiah, and especially what converts would do for him scares me especially, the ideas of cults and how people are drawn into what seems like such ridiculousness. I also was unsettled by the mystery which surrounded the disappearance of W.D. Fard and how did he just drop off the face of the earth? I'd like to learn more about it but I'd also not like to learn more about it...