2016 08 00 Nova Religio - Vol 20 No 1 - E E Curtis

Magazine Overview

This issue of Nova Religio, Volume 20, Issue 1, published in 2016, features the article "Science and Technology in Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam" by Edward E. Curtis IV. The cover headline highlights key themes: "Astrophysical Disaster, Genetic Engineering, UFOs, White Apocalypse, and Black Resurrection." The journal is published by The Regents of the University of California and has an ISSN of 1092-6690.

Article: Science and Technology in Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam

The article by Edward E. Curtis IV explores the significant role of science and technology in the religious thought and practice of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, particularly from the 1950s through the 1970s. The author argues that, similar to other UFO and extraterrestrial religions, the Nation of Islam emphasized scientific, material, and empirical understandings over spiritual or supernatural ones. This approach was used to interpret their prophet's cosmological, ontological, and eschatological teachings concerning God, the origins of the black race, and the end of white supremacy.

The Nation of Islam, founded in 1930 by W. D. Fard Muhammad, gained prominence in the postwar United States. While past studies have focused on its black nationalist politics, racial uplift programs, and organizational history, this article delves into its scientific and technological claims. These claims included:

1. Islam as the natural, scientific, and technologically advanced heritage of black and Muslim people.
2. The belief that abuses of science and technology had led to a distorted human ontology, immorality, and an unjust social order.
3. The expectation that a UFO, termed the "Mother Plane," would intervene to end white supremacy.
4. The necessity of restoring black bodies and minds to a natural, scientific state to achieve justice and equality.

The article contextualizes these ideas within historical events of the 1950s and 1960s, such as UFO sightings, state-sanctioned violence against African Americans, revelations about eugenics programs, and the development of the birth control pill. It notes that mainstream scholars and institutions often perceived the Nation of Islam as exotic or dangerous, leading to a delayed academic investigation of its scientific aspects.

Curtis posits that the Nation of Islam's teachings on theology, cosmogony, theodicy, and soteriology were characterized by an emphasis on "the scientific, the material, and the empirical." Drawing on Benjamin Zeller's work, the article suggests that UFO religions provide materialistic explanations for supernatural topics, viewing all knowledge as derived from the physical, tangible universe accessible through the senses.

Elijah Muhammad, identified as the "Messenger of Allah," reinterpreted religious texts like the Qur'an and the Bible. He presented his revelations as a more authentic dispensation, incorporating ideas about extra-terrestrials, specifically "god-like black scientists," in the origins and demise of the world. Scientists were depicted as possessing advanced knowledge and technology, capable of creation and destruction.

The practice of science within the Nation of Islam involved members studying topics such as the separation of the Moon from the Earth, the genetic engineering of the white man, planetary distances, and the end of the world. Elijah Muhammad encouraged followers to study their history, become morally pure, physically healthy, politically independent, and economically self-sufficient. He argued that understanding the causes of distorted human ontology and unjust social orders through science was key to restoring black minds and bodies for racial justice and equality.

The Material God, Astrophysical Disaster, and Black Science

During the 1960s and 1970s, members of the Nation of Islam contrasted Islam's scientific and rational nature with Christianity. They cited figures like Warner X Berry and Dr. Leo X. McCallum, who proclaimed Islam's scientific and mathematical correctness. This appeal to rationality attracted professionals and those seeking an alternative to Christian doctrines, which were seen as unscientific and irrational.

Elijah Muhammad himself, in his 1965 work "Message to the Blackman in America," used appeals to rationality and materialism. He rejected the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as contrary to nature and mathematics and criticized the concept of an immaterial God. He taught that the devil had created falsehoods to enslave the minds and bodies of the ignorant, particularly "American so-called Negroes."

The Nation of Islam claimed to reveal "stigmatized knowledge," offering new interpretations of old narratives and exposing structures of repression. Elijah Muhammad cited the Hebrew Bible, specifically Habakkuk, to argue that God was a material being, identified as W. D. Fard, who appeared in Detroit in 1930 to teach black people their true identity and cosmic role.

Religious education within the Nation of Islam, particularly in its congregations, involved memorizing catechisms like "The Rules of Islam," "Student Enrollment," and "Actual Facts." These texts presented theological, ethical-political, and mythological teachings as factual, scientific conclusions. They oriented believers in cosmic time and space, providing data on the solar system, planetary distances, and Earth's dimensions.

Scientists in these texts were not just knowers but also creators and destroyers. Elijah Muhammad himself was sometimes referred to as a "scientist." The teachings emphasized that the universe and its entities were knowable and changeable through scientific understanding and manipulation.

Scientific Rebellion, Genetic Mutation, and the Fall of Black Civilization

Elijah Muhammad taught that black people needed to learn how they became second-class citizens. This narrative of Earthly origins was presented as repressed truth. According to the Nation's teachings, after the Earth separated from the Moon, black people established civilization in Mecca. The "original man" was identified as the "Asiatic Black Man," the "Owner, Maker, cream of the planet Earth, God of the Universe and Father of Civilization." This idea was popularized by Noble Drew Ali.

The Nation of Islam adapted this teaching, describing early human civilization where black/Muslim men and women spoke Arabic, lived productively, and followed moral codes. Mecca was considered the root of civilization and wisdom. However, a "dissatisfied" scientist created "kinky hair" for black people, associating it with toughness and nature, and an impediment to respectability.

The most significant scientific narrative was the story of the mad scientist Yakub (Arabic for Jacob), who genetically engineered the white man, described as a "genetically inferior monster, a rapacious brute, a devil." This account, detailed in "Message to the Blackman," is considered the central myth of the Black Muslim movement.

Recurring Themes and Editorial Stance

The article consistently highlights the Nation of Islam's unique integration of scientific discourse, particularly from astronomy and physics, with its religious doctrines. It emphasizes a materialistic worldview, rejecting metaphysical or spiritual explanations in favor of empirical and observable phenomena. The editorial stance appears to be one of academic inquiry, presenting the Nation of Islam's scientific claims seriously and analyzing their historical and cultural context without necessarily endorsing them. The recurring themes include the scientific nature of Islam, the role of UFOs and advanced technology, the reinterpretation of biblical narratives through a scientific lens, and the concept of scientists as powerful, almost divine, agents shaping human destiny. The movement's emphasis on science served as a rational and empirical alternative to traditional Christianity, aiming to empower black people by providing them with knowledge of their true history and place in the cosmos.

This issue of Nova Religio, Volume 23, Issue 4, published in 2014 by the University of California Press, focuses on the theme "Science and Technology in Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam." The content spans pages 15 through 24 and explores the unique intersection of scientific concepts, technological advancements, and religious doctrine within the Nation of Islam, particularly as articulated by Elijah Muhammad.

The Myth of Yakub and Eugenics

The article begins by detailing the narrative of Yakub, a figure presented as a "big head scientist" who, from a young age, sought to understand the laws of magnetism and aimed to create a people who would rule. According to Elijah Muhammad, Yakub studied the "germ of the black man under the microscope" and sought to "separate the one from the other” to "graft the brown germ into its last stage, which would be white." This involved a multi-generational and murderous program of eugenics. Yakub, with the help of recruited doctors, ministers, and nurses, allegedly performed blood tests to identify genes and enforced a rule where couples with all-black genes would not be married. Black children born were to be killed, with nurses ordered to "prick the brains with a sharp needle" and lie to the mothers, claiming the babies were "angel children" taken to heaven, or feeding them to "wild beasts" or the cremator.

The text draws parallels between Yakub's "final solution" and horrific applications of science in the twentieth century, suggesting a possible reference to Auschwitz, or at least resonating with the postwar understanding of such events. It also links these ideas to German "rassenhygiene" (racial hygiene) and racist eugenics programs in the United States. The article notes that even in the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of poor black women were sterilized without their consent, citing Fauquier County, Virginia, as an example, and quotes Elijah Muhammad stating, "Sterilization is not birth control."

Muhammad viewed birth control as an attempt to reduce the black population and warned against "disgraceful birth control laws now aimed almost exclusively at poor, helpless black peoples." The article contextualizes this within the broader threat of violence faced by black bodies in the 1960s, including rapes, police brutality, and disproportionate losses in the Vietnam War, which led many African Americans to see the United States as a racist society.

The White Devil and the Nation's Cosmology

Elijah Muhammad's claim that the white man was the devil, interpreted literally or metaphorically, resonated with many black people. According to Muhammad, white devils were destined to rule for a period, having conquered black Muslim civilization and enslaved the black Tribe of Shabazz. Despite efforts by Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad of Arabia to civilize or convert whites, these attempts failed. Black/Muslim people forgot their language, names, religious identity, morals, and rights, becoming victims of cultural, political, religious, and economic imperialism. They were brought to North America on slave ships and subjected to unhealthy food, liquor, and sinful behavior.

However, the Nation of Islam offered reassurance that white supremacy would end. Relying on "Actual Facts," they taught that the devil's rule began its decline in 1914. Elijah Muhammad explained that God appeared in the flesh in 1930 with the arrival of W. D. Fard Muhammad (Allah) in Detroit, who established the Temple of Islam. Fard taught knowledge of self, God, the devil, and the measurement of the earth and planets, framing knowledge in both theological and scientific terms.

By 1934, Fard left Detroit, leading to a power struggle. Elijah Muhammad established headquarters in Chicago. From 1943 to 1946, he served a prison sentence for draft evasion. By the late 1940s, he emerged as the undisputed leader. With the help of Malcolm X in the 1950s, the Nation of Islam gained national attention, partly due to the 1959 documentary "The Hate that Hate Produced," which depicted the Nation as a byproduct of bad race relations.

Black Resurrection, The Mother Plane, and White Apocalypse

Despite being seen as a radical movement, the Nation of Islam did not advocate political revolution or violent social change. Instead, Elijah Muhammad urged followers to obey laws, focus on personal moral reform, family-building, economic activity, and institutional growth. He taught that there was no afterlife and that heaven and hell were conditions of one's physical, material existence on Earth, defined by "Freedom, Justice, Equality; money, good homes and friendship." His mission was to mentally resurrect the dead, teach self-knowledge, and provide a path to paradise.

Communal life in the Nation of Islam emphasized healthy food, with believers told to avoid red meat, white flour, alcohol, tobacco, and pork, as well as Southern "soul food" staples like cornbread and collard greens. These dietary rules were framed in scientific and mathematical terms, with a commandment to eat only one meal per day to combat obesity and diabetes and extend lifespan. The article presents a chart from the "Actual Facts" catechism linking eating frequency to lifespan, suggesting that eating once every seven days could lead to 1,050 years, referencing Methuselah.

Clean living was seen as a way to achieve heaven in the present and prepare for the coming apocalypse. The concept of the "Mother Plane," a UFO, is introduced as a vehicle of global destruction that would end the white-dominated world. Sister Kris X of Temple/Mosque No. 7 in Harlem invited black/Muslim people to join her in the "Holy City," where "there's no heaven in the sky." The lives of black/Muslim people could be glorious if they recommitted to Islam, or they would face annihilation from the Mother Plane.

Elijah Muhammad described the Mother Plane as a "destructive dreadful-looking plane that is made like a wheel in the sky today. It is a half-mile by half-mile square." This UFO would destroy the old order and restore the reign of black/Muslim civilization. The idea of a feminine "mother" plane mirrors the construction of femininity within the Nation, where mothers had the power to destroy and create life. The Mother Plane's work was a display of God's power, and believers were warned not to worship it but to "seek refuge in Allah."

Postwar UFO Culture and the Mother Plane

The article notes that while popular culture contained references to aliens and spaceships by the 1930s, the concept of round flying disks, like the Mother Plane, became prominent after World War II. The 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" caused panic, and by 1947, sightings of "flying disks" and UFOs increased across the United States. The Roswell incident in 1947, involving the discovery of a "weather balloon," fueled conspiracy theories about government cover-ups. By 1950, the association of UFOs with "flying saucers" became ubiquitous, influencing movies and new religious movements.

The "Seekers," a group believing in a 1954 flood and salvation by a flying saucer, are mentioned as an example of the fertile context for embracing Muhammad's teachings. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Muhammad revealed more details about the Mother Plane in his 1973 book "The Fall of America," explaining it as the final blow to the white-dominated world. Signs of the apocalypse in the early 1970s included natural disasters, war, the sexual revolution, and the decline of the dollar.

Muhammad's interpretation of how a UFO would destroy the white supremacist dispensation was unique. He stated that black/Muslim scientists controlled the Mother Plane and were omniscient. Government scientists might try to destroy it with fighter jets, but the plane would destroy them instead. The Mother Plane could lift mountains, defy gravity, and generate its own oxygen and hydrogen. Quoting Ezekiel, Muhammad described the Mother Plane as a wheel with "four living creatures" that would scatter "coals of fire" or timed bombs over cities, designed to burrow miles below the earth's surface and "separate from the righteous that which is hindering the righteous from making progress."

The Purification of Whiteness

Elijah Muhammad explained that the white apocalypse would not kill all white people, as some white people had faith in Allah and Islam. He hinted that white people's genes could be altered to reflect the "inherently good and divine nature of the original black man." In 1967, he revealed that "evil-whiteness" was inherent even to the original black man, and that Yakub (like Jacob of the Hebrew Bible) was "wrestling the white man out of the black man." In the post-apocalyptic world, humankind would be purified of this "evil whiteness," and the "original man" would reign. The white part of humanity, responsible for colonialism, imperialism, slavery, genocide, the Holocaust, world wars, and nuclear annihilation, would be gone, leading to "Peace, joy, and happiness" and the end of "sickness, no hospitals, no insane asylums, no gambling, and no cursing or swearing."

The vision of the white apocalypse was seen as a means to an end, a better world where sinful behavior of whites would be destroyed, not as a justification for violence. It reassured the oppressed that their day was coming and encouraged self-reform.

Technology as Revelation

The Mother Plane itself was considered a form of revelation, reflecting modern orientations toward technology as a source of religious insight, particularly concerning technologies of destruction. Michael Lieb, in his book "Children of Ezekiel," explains how Ezekiel's vision of the apocalypse used the technological marvel of the merkaba (throne-chariot) to transform theoretical visions into a concrete "new order." Lieb argues that in the modern age, technology "manifests" or "discloses" the being of a thing. The Nation of Islam framed religion in the vocabulary of material reality and observable truth, even as Elijah Muhammad began to discuss his telepathic abilities and the potential for ordinary people to develop parapsychological powers.

In 1972, Elijah Muhammad gave speeches, later compiled in "The Theology of Time," framed as esoteric wisdom. He spoke of "secrets of all truth" that were now to be revealed. This signaled a shift toward more metaphorical language, though the wisdom gained was still material, not metaphysical. Muhammad claimed he could hear scientists on the Mother Plane and taught that followers could develop telepathy by clearing their minds. He compared Jesus to a scientist with a "radio in the head" capable of "tuning in" to others' thoughts. This paralleled esoteric understandings of Jesus but focused on real, physical realities understandable through the senses, not an immaterial spiritual realm.

Conclusion

The article concludes by noting that Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, and his son, W. D. Mohammed (Warith Deen Muhammad), became the leader of the Nation of Islam.

Recurring Themes and Editorial Stance

The recurring themes in this issue revolve around the Nation of Islam's unique synthesis of religious prophecy with scientific and technological concepts. The editorial stance appears to be analytical and historical, exploring how Elijah Muhammad's teachings on eugenics, UFOs (the Mother Plane), racial ideology, and health practices were shaped by and responded to contemporary scientific discourse, cultural anxieties, and historical events. The article highlights the Nation's distinctive cosmology, which posits a future apocalypse and a subsequent purification and reign of the "original man," driven by advanced technology interpreted through a religious lens. The emphasis on material reality, observable truth, and the potential for human transformation through scientific and spiritual means is a central thread throughout the presented material.

This document, titled "Curtis IV: Science and Technology in Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam" from the publication "Nova Religio," delves into the evolution of the Nation of Islam, particularly its integration of scientific and technological concepts into its religious framework. It examines the shifts in doctrine and leadership following Elijah Muhammad.

W. D. Mohammed's Transformation of the Nation of Islam

The text details how W. D. Mohammed, upon succeeding Elijah Muhammad, implemented significant changes, reinterpreting the Nation of Islam's teachings to align with Sunni Islamic practices. This included adopting the "Second Resurrection," emphasizing the Qur'an and Sunna as primary authorities, and altering core beliefs such as the nature of God and the role of Elijah Muhammad. Believers were instructed to follow Sunni pillars like fasting during Ramadan, performing the five daily prayers (salat), and undertaking the hajj to Mecca. The concept of the "Mother Plane" was recontextualized, no longer seen as a destructive agency of God. The organization was renamed the World Community of al-Islam in the West, and later the American Muslim Mission. W. D. Mohammed also decentralized the group, empowering local communities. This period is described as a "successful revolution."

Louis Farrakhan's Divergent Path

While many congregations remained loyal to W. D. Mohammed, not all leaders and followers were content. Minister Louis Farrakhan, who initially supported W. D. Mohammed, eventually broke away in 1975 to establish his own version of the Nation of Islam. Although he did not inherit the established mosques, Farrakhan successfully gathered former leaders and new members. His movement focused on interpretations of Elijah Muhammad's teachings, particularly the scientific and technological aspects, including the extensive teachings about the "Mother Plane" from the early 1970s. Numerology and Masonic elements became prominent in his speeches, exemplified by his address at the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, D.C. For Farrakhan, the "Mother Plane," also referred to as the "Mother Ship" and "Mother Wheel," held even greater significance for his religious authority than it had for Elijah Muhammad. The text recounts an experience in 1985 where Farrakhan claimed to have a vision of visiting the Mother Ship in Tepotzlan, Mexico, being transported by a beam of light.

Historical Context and Religious Thought

The article situates the Nation of Islam's scientific and technological teachings within the historical contexts of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It explores how elements of contemporary science and technology, including the Holocaust (Auschwitz crematoriums), postwar views on UFOs, and eugenics programs, influenced the Nation of Islam's religious thought and practice. The author aims to explain how Elijah Muhammad and his followers perceived their practices as rational and scientific, believing that mathematics and science revealed the true origins and destiny of black people. They saw technology, despite past abuses, as a means to achieve a black utopia through the "Mother Plane." Similar to other UFO-related religions, the Nation of Islam offered a materialistic explanation for existence and societal problems, contrasting with purely spiritual or metaphysical views. The core belief was that adherence to their teachings and the utilization of science and technology would lead to justice and a better life.

Endnotes and References

The document includes extensive endnotes and references, citing numerous books and articles related to the Nation of Islam, UFOs, religious movements, and African American history. These sources provide further context and scholarly backing for the analysis presented.

Recurring Themes and Editorial Stance

The recurring themes revolve around the Nation of Islam's unique blend of religious doctrine with scientific and technological concepts, its internal schisms and leadership transitions, and its engagement with UFO phenomena. The editorial stance appears to be analytical and historical, seeking to understand the Nation of Islam's beliefs and practices within their socio-historical context rather than dismissing them as mere cultic oddities. The article emphasizes the followers' belief that their integration of science and technology offered a rational path to empowerment and a better future.