Science and Technology in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam

Abstract

This article explores the centrality of science and technology to religious thought and practice in Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam from the 1950s through the 1970s. Tracing the dynamic meanings of scientific knowledge in the context of the postwar United States, the article's central argument is that like other UFO and extraterrestrial religions, the Nation of Islam emphasized scientific, material, and empirical over spiritual and supernatural understandings of religion. It also suggests how members of this new religious movement studied and attempted to live according to the scientific and mathematical principles derived from their prophet's cosmological, ontological, and eschatological teachings on the nature of God, the origins and destiny of the black race, and the beginning and end of white supremacy.

Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements

“…Instead, the NOI focused on achieving its goals through the reformation of Black American minds and bodies. Membership in the NOI required careful study and practice of Elijah Muhammad's teachings, which combined Islamic themes with twentiethcentury metaphysical religion, including a belief in UFOs, to produce a version of Islam that included novel theological, cosmological, and eschatological doctrines as well devotion to a strict code of middle-class, socially conservative ethics (Curtis 2016). From an historically Islamic perspective, one of the most controversial of these teachings was the belief that W.D.…”

“…Indeed, the belief that scientists' mastery of technology was behind most cosmological events was central to Elijah Muhammad's thought. Like Christian fundamentalists, he agreed with the idea that the current historical dispensation, or the reign of white civilisation, began 6,000 years ago, but he argued that the actual origins of humanity-that is, Black humanity-could be dated to trillions of years ago (Curtis 2016).…”

“…If people were willing to take this spiritual medicine, humankind could rediscover its Blackness, that is, its original goodness, and live in peace and harmony. Though the NOI did much to further a dark and angry religious vision of the racial apocalypse, Elijah Muhammad's religious teaching was in the end a utopian vision of human solidarity (Curtis 2016).…”

“…In the twenty-first century, Farrakhan made an alliance with the Church of Scientology, and various members of the NOI engaged in a Scientology practice called auditing, which focuses on self-knowledge. The two organisations' interest in science, technology, and especially extra-terrestrial beings became a common ground for cooperation, and demonstrated the seriousness of the NOI's long history as what some students of new religious movements have called "UFO religion" (Curtis 2016).…”

Gelatin, halal or haram? Gelatin, halal or haram?

“…The animal has exposing its pair to other male pigs and it even delights in doing so. These traits have affect-ed its meat and so the people who feed on it get the same traits and morality [43][44][45][46][47]. Pigs do not have any interdiction to eat very dirty and contaminated things and even their stools, that's why the stomach is the place of variety kinds of germs that also spreads to its meat, blood and milk, therefore, many of these contaminants are also enter into swine products [48].…”