Black Muslims and the Nation of Islam Ever since entering the
spotlight of public attention (about 1984), Louis Farrakhan has
been a controversial figure. He thrills the hearts of some,
scares the daylights out of others, and offends many more. When
he called the African-American community to participate in a
"Million Man March" on Washington, D.C., 400,000 responded—twice
the number who walked with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963.
Unlike Dr. King, everything Farrakhan said was dedicated to
Allah. Few people have reminded Americans of Islam’s presence on
this continent more pointedly than Farrakhan. But what many
people do not know is that Farrakhan does not represent Islam.
He is the leader of the Nation of Islam, a distinctly American
invention that has its roots in the opening years of the
twentieth century (see Bijlefeld, 1993; Gudel and Duckworth,
1993; Ahlstrom, 1972; Morey, 1992). In 1930, a Detroit clothing
merchant named Wallace D. Fard (a.k.a. Wali Farad Muhammad)
began preaching an Islamic-flavored