FBI Report on Elijah Muhammad

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Any list of persons and organizations that the FBI investigated during the years of the civil rights movement reads like a who’s who of protest and reform movements. The FBI had extensive files on the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (with a separate file on Communist influences in the organization), the Black Panthers, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Individuals included Paul Robeson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Roy Wilkins, Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton Powell, Jesse Jackson, among numerous others. Most of these files were dry accumulations of factual information. The file on Elijah Muhammad was little different, though undoubtedly the unorthodox views Muhammad expressed were of concern to federal law enforcement.

“I. Background”

The file begins with background information on Muhammad, including his original name (Elijah Poole), his address, and his occupation in connection with Muhammad’s Temple 2 in Chicago—reflecting the NOI’s practice of numbering each of its temples in the order they were created. The file then provides basic information on the NOI, with emphasis on the notion that white people are to be regarded as “devils” and that NOI members are not to arm themselves but are required to defend the NOI and its members at all costs.

“II. Personal History”

The second portion of the FBI file reproduces an interview with Elijah Muhammad that was published in the yearbook of “Muhammad University of Islam—No. 2” for 1973. In a question-and-answer format, “Messenger Muhammad” provides details about his background—when and where he was born and how he was given the name Elijah, for example. The reader learns that when Muhammad moved to Detroit, he heard Wallace Fard Muhammad speak and believed that he was listening to the voice of Allah, or God. He describes how Fard gave him the name Elijah Karriem—typical of the way Fard provided his followers with Islamic-sounding names for a fee of ten dollars. He then describes how Fard appointed him as “Supreme Minister” and gave him the name Muhammad. Throughout the discussion, Fard is referred to as the Savior and Muhammad is referred to as a “humble” little man.

The interview goes on to elicit odd details about the movements of Fard and Muhammad in the early 1930s, disputes within the organization, Fard’s “persecution” and disappearance, and Muhammad’s assumption of the leadership of the NOI. Muhammad then discusses his arrest and imprisonment for failing to register for the draft, claiming that he would not take part in a war (World War II) on behalf of “infidels.” The interview also provides details about how the NOI was run during Muhammad’s absence, when the day-to-day operations were taken over by Muhammad’s wife, “Sister Clara Muhammad.”

“III. Teachings”

The third section of the FBI’s file reproduces portions of three documents written by Muhammad. The first is taken from a 1973 edition of the NOI’s publication, Muhammad Speaks. In this article Muhammad explains some of the NOI’s theological doctrines, many of them adopted from the Old Testament prophetic book of Ezekiel, though this source is never named. He explains that there is a ship, or plane, that is made like a wheel and is the means by which Allah will carry out his aims in the world, particularly his aim of creating a new world “under the Eyes and Guidance of Allah.” He claims that this wheel, “the most miraculous mechanical building of a plane that has ever been Imagined by man,” measures a half mile by a half mile and is capable of holding many people and of destroying the earth. Muhammad then makes an enigmatic reference when he asks, “After trillions of years should we let a baby, only six months old (6,000 years old) outwit us?” The meaning of this comment is unclear, but it is probably a reference to the emergence of the white race, a “baby” in comparison with the much-older black race. He goes on to assert that the “Black Man” created the heavens and the earth and that white people want to keep blacks “dumb” to the power of God. The passage concludes with assertions that whites want to shoot down the plane with military weapons and that the wheel will continue to protect the black man on earth.

The second article quoted in this section also appeared in Muhammad Speaks and is titled “Indians in America.” It begins with the assertion, derived from Wallace Fard Muhammad, that the American Indians are the descendents of black Asians, specifically from India. According to this theory, they were exiled from their native land sixteen thousand years earlier and arrived in North America by crossing, on foot, the Bering Straits—the narrow channel that separates Russia and Alaska and that in earlier ages was above water. They were driven away from India because they did not recognize Allah and the religion of Islam. Arriving in North America without guidance, they suffered further punishment at the hands of white men for their disobedience to Allah. Muhammad asserts that the “so-called Negro in America” is suffering a similar fate—conquest by the white man—because he, too, refuses to follow Allah.

Muhammad then states that the white man, too, is an exile, having been expelled from Arabia some six thousand years ago for spreading lies about Islam—an odd belief, given that Islam was founded in the seventh century by the prophet Muhammad. Blacks, though, arrived in the Western Hemisphere in a way different from the Indians and whites, for “we were kidnapped by the white man and brought here by force against our will, for the purpose of evil slavery and mistreatment.” Thus, to Muhammad it is clear that the black man arrived in North America without a burden of sin and therefore has a better chance of succeeding than do Indians and whites. Throughout this discussion, Muhammad emphasizes that Allah has manifested himself in the person of Fard, “To Whom Praises are Due forever.”

Muhammad rallies Black Muslims by telling them that their purpose is to create a new government, one that is dedicated to freedom, justice, and equality. He urges American Indians to join in his movement based on the notion that the Indians have a remnant of black blood. Even though Indians and blacks are two peoples, they share a common ancestry. He concludes by saying that “we want to unite the scattered tribes of the Black Man into one Nation and build for ourselves a strong Nation.

The third article, titled “We Want Earth,” is again from the publication Muhammad Speaks. Muhammad begins with the assertion that black people are the original people on earth and that they acquired the name Negroes from their slave masters. This excerpt is the most explicitly black nationalistic one of the three articles, for he states that “we must have some of this earth to live free on so that we can exercise freedom of action.” Former slaves cannot rely on their former masters for the necessities of life but have to provide them for themselves. He asserts that blacks make a boast of their freedom and reiterates that blacks have to provide for their own welfare. He reminds his readers that the slave masters robbed blacks both morally and physically and imposed on them a false religion. He asks black America to bring forward its scientists and educated people to help black Americans achieve prosperity and independence.

“IV. Foreign Contacts”

The fourth section of the FBI report has been heavily edited. This is common for files released to the public. It is impossible to say what has been omitted or why. Readers can only conclude that the decision was made to withhold some information for diplomatic or national security concerns, to avoid placing foreign people in embarrassing situations, to avoid revealing sensitive foreign intelligence, or some similar reason. In what remains, the section comments on some domestic contacts directly and indirectly associated with Muhammad, starting with a reference to “Hanafi American Mussulman.” An NOI member named Khalifa Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, whose original name was Ernest T. McGee, created a rift in the NOI because he wanted to bring the organization in line with orthodox Sunni Islam. In 1958 he created a splinter organization somewhat cumbersomely named the Al-Hanif, Hanifi, Madh-Hob Center, Islam Faith, United States of America, American Mussulmans in Washington, D.C. The group gained publicity in 1973 when members of Abdul Khaalis’s family—mostly his children—as well as a follower were murdered by members of the NOI in Philadelphia. As the FBI file states, Abdul Khaalis believed that Elijah Muhammad was responsible for these killings. Later, in 1977, the Hanafis would seize buildings in Washington, D.C., and take hostages in an effort to force the government to turn over the NOI members convicted for the killing of Abdul Khaalis’s family members as well as to halt the screening of a movie called Mohammad, Messenger of God, which they regarded as sacrilegious. Abdul Khaalis was sentenced to prison for his role in the event.

Reference is made to two additional figures. One is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, known as Lew Alcindor throughout his college career as an All-American basketball player at the University of California at Los Angeles. Abdul-Jabbar was affiliated with the American Mussulmen and, the file asserts, owned the house in which the 1973 murders took place. Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, became the most prominent spokesperson for the NOI in the 1950s and early 1960s, but when his views began to conflict with those of Muhammad, he defected from the organization to form his own more orthodox Islamic group. He was assassinated on February 21, 1965, by three members of the NOI.