Teacher and Spirituality

By Marvin X

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was our greatest teacher. We need only list a few of his students such as Malcolm X, Warithdeen Muhammad, Muhammad Ali, Minister Farrakhan and myself among thousands of others here and around the world. Name another teacher with such outstanding students!

Recently I was selling books on the street at my outdoor classroom, downtown Oakland. A Chinese man walked by and seeing my book display, asked if I were Muslim. I said yes then asked if he were Muslim. He said no but said he loved Elijah Muhammad.

We are slow to recognize our Master Teachers; in fact, most have never heard of a master teacher. Elijah was our greatest, far greater than John Henri Clarke, Dr. Ben, Karenga, or any other so-called black scholars who more than likely studied the teachings of HEM. Elijah was a unique, original creation of Allah.

He was taught in the one-on-one Sufi tradition by Master Fard Muhammad for three and a half years, similarly, Elijah taught Malcolm X for three years, one on one. Master Fard appears to have been an associate of Noble Drew Ali, founder of the Moorish Science Temple in America. Elijah took the name Elijah Poole-Bey in the Moorish Science tradition. In The Theology of Time, he talks about his knowledge of Moorish Science and interaction with them while he was on the run for seven years.

Elijah appears to have been Fard's best student and cried crocodile tears when his master was arrested and deported in 1933 for immigration violations, i.e., inciting the so-called Negroes with racial hatred. Elijah and Fard’s relationship is very similar to that of the greatest Sufi Master Rumi and his teacher Shams of Tabriz. After Shams was murdered, in grief Rumi began reciting his legendary poems while whirling around a pole, thus the origin of the whirling dervishes,  that even now make him the best selling poet in America. After Master Fard disappeared, Elijah eventually blossomed into the personality we know today.

Fard placed Elijah in charge of the Nation of Islam and thus began his long journey to become the most feared black man in America, mainly because his teachings were indeed supreme wisdom for a people spiritually deaf, dumb and blind,

When Elijah's leadership was challenged by his associates, including his brother, he had to flee for his life for seven years. For another five years he was in Federal prison for sedition and draft evasion during World War Two. His wife Clara Muhammad assumed much of the leadership and administrative responsibilities while he was away. One day she will be recognized for her contribution to the black nation. Her son Warithdeen recognizes her more than he does his father, but this is because he was twelve years old when he came to know Elijah, since Elijah had been gone for twelve years.

Upon release from prison, he continued organizing the NOI. Fard had taught him an Islamic theology designed specifically for the so-called Negro, better known as the Asiatic black man in the hells of North America.

The teachings were naturally unorthodox and considered by detractors outside of Islamic tradition, although there are similar examples of NOI teachings in the Shia and Sufi traditions, such as the concept man/God/God man of Guru Bawa, or the cry of Al Hallaq as he faced martyrdom, "Ana Al Haqq," or I am the truth.  But the main focus of Fard's teachings were black consciousness and black nationalism, similar to the Sufi teachings in West Africa that helped inspire the fight against colonialism, from such masters as Ahmedu Bamba in Senegal to Usuman dan Fodio in Hausa-land, Nigeria.

Fard taught Elijah to use black supremacy as a psychological trick to get the so called Negro out of belief in white supremacy. The teachings were a more than necessary antidote to shock the so called Negro into manhood and womanhood, after centuries of physical and mental slavery, the servile, passive submission to the terror of American racism. Elijah's Islam was a panacea for the myriad ills of the colonized black nation in America.

The main lesson Elijah taught was do for self or independence. Elijah wasn't the first teacher of do for self, but he was the best. There had been a plethora of black nationalist teachers and organizers during the 19th century, including David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, Denmark Vessey, Nat Turner, Martin Delaney, Pap Singleton,Henry McNeal Turner and the greatest 19th century intellectual, Edward Wilmot Blyden, author of the classic Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, 1889. Blyden influenced the Pan African Duse Muhammad Ali who taught Marcus Garvey.

Aside from Noble Drew Ali, Marcus Garvey made the greatest progress during the early 20th century. Garvey had been taught Islam and Pan Africanism while in London during 1912 by the Egyptian Duse Muhammad Ali, from whom Garvey got the concept One God, One Aim, One Destiny, Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad. Duse Muhammad Ali edited a newspaper, the African Times and Orient Review. Booker T. Washington was a contributor, himself of Muslim origin, consider his name a corruption of Abukr.

Marcus Garvey made great progress but was betrayed and deported. Elijah built upon Garvey and where Garvey failed, Elijah succeeded, successfully building a spiritual and economic empire that astonished the world, especially the so called Negro for whom it was created as an example of what must be done.

Today, three decades after his transition, the teachings of HEM are being manifest in black entrepreneurship throughout America, slowing the brain drain of the black nation to American capitalism. Elijah's teachings inspired black liberation, the black arts movement, black studies, and black Christians are heeding the message of do for self, accumulating real estate and businesses on the model of Elijah's teachings.

In fact, the Christians are outdoing Muslims because after the death of Malcolm X, many Muslims converted to orthodox Islam and settled for ritual rather than Elijah's liberation theology and nationalism. Malcolm didn't have time to establish his Muslim Mosque, Inc., and his Organization of Afro American Unity.

Even Farrakhan's Nation of Islam is more ritual than substance. He has done nothing with the million men who marched in Washington. For the most part, they are lost and turned out, pants sagging like prison homosexuals, earrings in both ears, grills in their mouths looking like alligators, posing cool, imprisoned and criminally inclined, while their women rush to become highly educated for the new world that their men apparently will not enjoy with them unless they jump out of the box like jack and get a healing real quick. The black woman has discovered that rather than do bad, she can do quite well by herself.

Some people are fixated in time as a result of the Malcolm/Elijah conflict. But did not Elijah tell Malcolm to trust no one and guard against jealousy and envy? After all, jealous and envious Negroes had chased and tried to kill Elijah for seven years.

According to Nisa Islam, former National Sister Captain of the NOI, who lived in Elijah's house for several years, every time she mentioned Malcolm to Elijah, he cried like a baby, especially when she asked him if he killed Malcolm. She said he considered Malcolm his son. Certainly there were jealous officials who feared Malcolm's power, and they would/did gladly conspire with the US government to kill Malcolm.

These NOI officials didn't give a damn about Malcolm, Elijah or anybody else except the golden calf, i.e., money and power. Elijah was as much an obstacle to them as Malcolm. When Elijah became sick, one brother in charge of funds told me how officials came to him demanding money. He told them, "I'm not afraid of you guys, I'm afraid of Elijah." He knew Elijah had mystical powers far beyond the mentality of these Muslim officials.

When the brother was killed in the Los Angeles shootout with police, Elijah had told Malcolm that things happen in war, in revolution, and sometimes we lose a brother but we must continue until victory. And so we must continue. Malcolm was lost, we cannot remain stuck on this incident. In truth, you haven't done anything Malcolm said, Elijah said, prophet Muhammad Ibn Abdullah said, or anyone else. You've been doing nothing but bullshitting and faking.

Where is your warrior spirit after all these brothers have come to you? You have submitted to religiosity, myth/ritual that has nothing to do with building your nation which is the reason Allah send Elijah and everybody else. You are content to sit around praying in dresses. You could have stayed in the church and prayed—and put on dresses.

God sends you teachers from among yourselves, yet you reject them for the message of foreigners who have nothing but contempt for you. You've traded one slave master for another, the white man for the Arab man. You want to be an Arabian Knight. You speak Arabic but can't speak English. You refuse the concept do for self. Maybe you will get the concept in the next century or two or three.

posted 5 July 2006