Word: islamics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Nation of Islam has its roots in the movement to rediscover African traditions which accompanied the campaign for civil rights. African-American activists of the era, in piecing together their ancestors' customs, sought a unique cultural identity for themselves, distinct from the European-American culture which had been imposed upon them...
...grasping for a definitive spiritual facet to their cultural heritage, they latched onto Islam, the first major world religion to incorporate a large portion of the African continent. The Nation of Islam began preaching Islam as both the ancestral religion of the African and the ideology which would liberate Blacks from their oppressed condition...
...reaction of some Blacks to years of suffering American society's iniquity became increasingly bitter, a reverse form of racism began to appear. Centuries of white bigotry against Blacks inverted into Black hatred of whites. The followers of the Nation wanted a spiritual rationale for racism. Islam, as promulgated by the Nation, became less the orthodox belief to which a fifth of the world's population adheres, and more a justification for the Nation's political agenda...
Thus, Elijah Muhammad, the late messiah and absolute ruler of the Nation, preached a message of Black supremacy and racial isolation as intrinsic to Islam. Malcolm X, the foremost among Elijah's ministers, was also a disciple of bigotry until he reached his crucial epiphany when, brought into close contact with Muslims of every color at Mecca...
...Elijah Muhammad, Warith Deen Muhammad, like the majority of African-American Muslims, has accepted the non-racist beliefs of mainstream Islam. A vocal minority in the Nation of Islam, however, continue, to preach their message of intolerance...