On “The Black Muslims in America” by C. Eric Lincoln ****

Lincoln's work is one of sociology more than history. Not having that much knowledge of the Black Muslim movement, I found this work very interesting and informative. That it was written from a sociological perspective, however, had some drawbacks insofar as the book was organized around topics and themes rather than chronologically. This meant, for me, that at times the work was hard to follow—that is, it was hard to remember particular points because I didn't have a narrative to pin them on.

Of course, history still makes up a large section of the work. One does eventually learn about Wallace Fard, Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm X, and others. Fard was the founder of it all. I don't remember much about those sections of the book, but as the book moved into the 1960s, it becomes clear that Fard comes to be seen by later Muslims as a kind of Allah incarnate. Elijah Muhammed, in turn, becomes Fard's spokesperson and prophet. The movement, in other words, takes on a kind of cultism. Malcolm X was one of the converts (all converts apparently take on the X “surname”), an important one insofar as he was able to give effective voice to Elijah Muhammed's and the movement's ideas. But as becomes plain, very late in his short life, he abandoned certain givens that the movement believed in—possibly at the peril of his life, and certainly at the rejection of him from the movement—coming to see the brotherhood of all people at the Haj.

The cultishness was one of the main things I took from the book; others were the kind of reverse racism embedded in the movement, and the manner in which the movement actually changes people's lives for good. All these things sort of go together.

A major tenet seems to be that White people are essentially the devil. The world will one day change, and God's children, the colored people, will rule and Whites will be cast off to the dustbin (or at least confined to Europe, where they belong). The Muslim movement is not integrationist. And really, in some ways, it's understandable why some minorities would be skeptical of integration, the way that it has often led not to better living conditions for minorities but to simply another manner of oppression.

The Muslims encourage good behavior from their converts, and this has led in some cases to poorer people (to which the movement largely appeals) actually making changes that positively affect their lives (e.g., drug aversion, commitment to family and work). They also encourage self-defense, even as they discourage activist sort of activities. This is in part influenced by the eschatalogical utopian viewpoint—that one day, Allah will take care of everything and Whites will fall and Black people will rise to their natural position. The counterpoint to such beliefs, however, is that it seems as if the religion is a way that actually stifles meaningful interracial achievement and solutions and attempts at meaningful change; instead, it reinforces racial strife.

The sort of eschatological thinking actually reminds me a lot of some branches of Christianity and calls to mind the way that Marx would call religion the opium of the people. The focus of the Black Muslim movement seems in many ways to have been Elijah Muhammed. What he says/believes goes. Run counter to that, and you're out of the church. Don't create trouble, in other words, in or out of church surroundings so that the movement can keep growing.