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VOL VI  NO. 7  JULY 2005

REV. ROBERT KELLEY

 


Christianity & Islam: The Same? - Part III

 

Rev. Robert Kelley is the founder and president of Open Door Communication Ministries, Inc. and pastored the St. Mark Baptist Church of Portland, Oregon at the time this was published. 

 

(Editor´s Note: This is part three of an article refuting the destructive lie that Christianity and Islam are essentially the same religions.)

 

Brief History Of Black Muslims Continued
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad took the teachings of Mr. Fard (also known as "The Prophet")5 and over a 40-year period built a nationally known religious empire.  Beside temples and schools scattered around the country, the empire featured farms and diverse business enterprises.  In Chicago their headquarters, The Nation Of Islam (The Nation) operated "department stores, groceries, bakeries, and various kinds of service establishments."  In many cities they also operated "restaurants, barbershops, clothing stores" etc.6

 

Mr. Muhammad´s continual reiteration of "The Prophet´s" message of black uplift and restoration remained central to all Muslim activity.  Through the "Muhammad Speaks" newspapers sold in black communities all over America by persistent, neatly dressed men, a well developed prison recruitment effort, the explosive speeches of ministers such as Malcolm X and high profile converts like boxer Muhammad Ali, adherents to this uniquely black American brand of Islam grew though exact numbers are not available. 7

 

When The Honorable Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, his son Wallace Deen Muhammad became his successor.  After seeking to reform The Nation to conform more to the Middle Eastern brand of Islam, there was a schism.  As of 1994, there were three major black Muslim factions in the United States.  The group led by Minister Louis Farrakhan is the largest and retains the link to Elijah Muhammad and the teachings of  "The Prophet." 8

 

Black Muslims In Historical Context
The Nation came along on the heels of other black Nationalist movements including a group claiming Islamic ties called the Moorish Science Temple.  Their prophet, Noble Drew Ali founded it in about 1913.9 Marcus Garvey founded the "Universal Negro Improvement Association" in 1916 which sought to establish a new black nation in Africa.  His movement failed but not before garnering the support of millions of hopeful blacks.10  Along with The Nation, these and other nationalist groups of the 20th century were born out of the hopelessness and despair of living in a predominantly white America that oppressed and permitted the mistreatment of her black citizens.

 

At the turn of the 20th century, blacks were being violently intimated by white hate groups such as the KKK and lynched at will in rioting in cities of the South and North.  Black soldiers returning from World War I where they fought in segregated units, faced the indignity of racial insult and employment discrimination.  During the "Great Depression" many black men were the first to be laid off to make room for the white men who needed work. 

 

Most critical of all, the majority of whites carried on their racist and discriminatory conduct with what they claimed was the sanction of the God and Christ of the Bible!  This violent hypocrisy was more than growing numbers of demoralized and restless black males could take.

 

Understandably disenchanted poor and working class blacks especially were drawn to and have historically made up the membership base of The Nation.  Birthed in the Depression era ghetto of 1930´s Detroit, American black ghettos have remained fertile recruitment grounds for The Nation because ghetto economies barely improve even in times of prosperity.  From their inception, they have had a black help black "economic program that works, and the evidence of its effectiveness is highly visible in the ghetto..." 11

 

The Nation then, as introduced by "the Prophet," was another in a line of Black Nationalist movements which served as a repudiation of whites, their corrupt, hypocritical religion and weak, accommodating black Christians.  They were a "lost nation" now found as they recovered the knowledge of their divinity and past glory."  They are convinced that under a Black god they are building a viable Black Nation…"12  Their 1973 corporate statements relating "What The Muslims Believe" and "What The Muslims Want" stand today as their defiant public declaration of self and objectives under Minister Louis Farrakhan.13

 

Black Muslims And Black Christians
Among the black masses observing the largely former Christians turned industrious Muslims are more professing black Christians and apostates.14 As has been noted, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad came from a Christian background as did Ministers Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan.  According to black historian C. Eric Lincoln, The Nation attracts many black Christians who "have grown weary and impatient with the peculiar conditions of Christianity in America.  And it has, for there are no black Muslims except those who left the Christian tradition in search of a more satisfying alternative." 15

 

  5 C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims In America, Third Edition, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Trenton: Africa World Press, 1994),
      p.11.
  6 Ibid, p.88.
  7 Ibid, p. 218.
  8 Ibid, pp. 263-272.
  9 Ibid, p. 48.
10 Ibid, pp.52-61.
11 Lincoln, The Black Church Since, op. cit., p. 168.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid, pp.197-202.
14 Ibid, p. 156.
15 Ibid, p. 168.

 

To Be Continued Next Issue

 

 

©2005 Open Door Communication Ministries, Inc