Warith Deen Mohammed
Warith Deen Mohammed was an African American Muslim leader, theologian, philosopher, Muslim revivalist, and Islamic thinker.
He was a son of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam from 1933 to 1975. In 1975, upon Elijah Muhammad's death, he became the Nation of Islam's national leader.
In 1976, he disbanded the original Nation of Islam and transformed it into an ostensibly orthodox and mainstream Islamic movement. He rejected the previous deification of Wallace Fard Muhammad, accepted whites as fellow-worshippers, forged closer ties with mainstream Muslim communities, and introduced the Five Pillars of Islam into his group's theology. This organization was called the Bilalians, World Community of Al-Islam in the West, American Muslim Mission, and finally the American Society of Muslims.
Splinter groups which resisted these changes were formed after Elijah Muhammad's death, particularly under Louis Farrakhan, who would revive the name Nation of Islam for his organization, Final Call, in 1978. Farrakhan's NOI and the previous Final Call claim that they are direct continuations of the pre-1975 NOI.
Biography
Early life and education
Mohammed was born Wallace D. Muhammad on Yemans Street in Hamtramck, Michigan in 1933. In 1992, he changed his legal name to Warith Deen Muhammad, which translates to 'Inheritor of the Religion of Muhammad'. His parents were Clara and Elijah Muhammad, both highly active in the Nation of Islam, the organization that preached a form of Black nationalism and its own version of Islam. From 1934 until he died in 1975, Elijah Muhammad led the Nation under the title, "the Messenger of Allah."Named to honor Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam, Mohammed grew up in Chicago as one of seven siblings. His elementary education came from the Muhammad University of Islam school system. He briefly studied Arabic as a youth under Jamal Shakir Diab, a Palestinian who was later hired by his father to teach at the MUI in Chicago.
Mohammed became a minister under his father in late 1958 and served in Philadelphia during the late 1950s and early 1960s. While serving in Philadelphia, W.D. Mohammed commenced an extensive study of Ahmadiyya doctrines under Philadelphia-based Ahmadi missionary Muhammad Abdullah.
On October 29, 1961, Mohammed was arrested for failure to report to Elgin State Hospital. The following day, on his 28th birthday, Mohammed was transferred to Federal Correctional Institution, Sandstone to begin a term for having refused induction into the United States military. He could have performed community service, but his father pressed him to accept the jail time. He spent most of that time studying the Quran, the main Islamic holy book, and the Bible.
He became convinced that the Nation of Islam had to change. In 1963, he was released from prison and resumed studies under Muhammad Abdullah. Close also to Malcolm X, who the NOI had expelled, he found that by this time his viewpoints deviated significantly from those of his father, whom he no longer believed to be a prophet. Because of this conclusion, he was excommunicated five different times; by 1974, he returned permanently to the NOI.
Religious leadership and ministry
Reforming the Nation of Islam
Upon his father's death on February 25, 1975, Mohammed was unanimously chosen as the leader of the Nation of Islam and introduced to the NOI membership at the annual Saviours' Day convention on February 26, 1975. Among the first changes Mohammed instituted, he dropped the title Supreme Minister and took the titles Mujaddid, Chief Imam, or simply Imam, in 1976. The same year, he unveiled a new flag for the NOI community.These were just two of the many reforms which Mohammed introduced. Among others, he eliminated the NOI dress code, disbanded the military branch of the NOI, clarified the concept of the devil, and introduced an eclectic, esoteric interpretation of Islam he labeled, The Divine Mind/Body-Christ. According to WD's former Special Aide Dr. Na'im Akbar, WD's Teachings are not restricted to WD's followers but "will provide for the social community a series of readings which will cultivate and grow them more effectively as social human beings... based on the most renowned religious teachings of a teacher in the West." Similarly, via his various written works, Muhammad Speaks newspaper, and public speeches, he gradually introduced and explained Islam's Five Pillars. He stated that Fard was not divine and that his father was not a prophet. All of the over 400 temples were converted into traditional Islamic mosques. He also renamed the community several times before finally settling on the American Society of Muslims to reflect the new thinking. Mohammed was frank about his intentions to evolve the movement. On November 19, 1978, he spoke on the "Evolution of the Nation of Islam" at the American Academy of Religion in New Orleans.
Mohammed's changes reached deep into the philosophy of the movement which his father had led for so long. He rejected literal interpretations of divine scriptures, his father's theology, and Black-separatist views, and based on his intensive independent study, history, and theology, he accepted whites as fellow worshipers. However, he also encouraged African Americans to separate themselves from their pasts, in 1976 calling upon them to change their surnames which were often given to their ancestors by slave masters. He forged closer ties with mainstream Muslim communities, including Latino Muslims. He also decentralized power. On September 10, 1978, in an address in Atlanta he resigned as Chief Imam and appointed a six-member council to lead the Community.
Mohammed felt quite keenly about his role in reform. In an interview which was published in the Muhammad Speaks newspaper and conducted by his brother Jabir Herbert Muhammad, Mohammed described his role as the successor to their father as that of a Mujeddid, one who would watch over the new Islam or community. In 1979 he used the title Mujeddid on his byline in his weekly articles for the Bilalian News.
Warith Deen Mohammed received encouragement from the international Muslim community, yet the changes which he made within the Nation of Islam were not universally accepted. Several dissident groups resisted, most notably those who followed Louis Farrakhan in breaking ranks with Mohammed. These groups revived the name 'Nation of Islam' between 1977 and 1979. At the outset of the 1991 Gulf War, Warith Deen Mohammed became the only American Imam to issue a public endorsement of the US military bombing of Iraq. Two consecutive Muslim Journal issues featured the endorsement on its front page. The endorsement came on the eve of the Amiriyah shelter bombing.
The following year, in recognition of his military endorsement, the United States Congress and Pentagon honored WD Mohammed for his "loyal and unswerving religious leadership in support of our Nation during the difficult times during the Gulf War." Mohammed described the invitation "I am like floating in the air. I never dreamed that we would receive such an invitation." When questioned about his Gulf War endorsement and call for Muslims to fight Muslims generated conflicts in his community, he replied, "Yes, it is a conflict. It is a conflict of emotions and a conflict of conscience for many. But for me it is no conflict of conscience when I know that I am on the right side. Once I know that I am on the right side, I have no conflict of conscience at all. I did not rush into any decision. I thought it out very carefully…So I thank America many times. I thank you again. I thank the military. I thank the Army. I thank all of you. I told my sons I would be proud if my sons were in the military."
In 1995, Mohammed released a statement in which he expressed his concern about Farrakhan's motivations and the racial divisiveness of his ministry. Yet over the next twenty years, the pair would embrace publicly. Warith Deen Mohammed declared, "I will never denounce him as long as he says he wants to be a Muslim." They also declared reconciliation at the annual NOI Saviours' Day convention on February 25, 2000, and NOI Million Family March on October 16, 2000. Still, on August 10, 2007, Mohammed repeated his frustration with the separatist stance of the current Nation of Islam, stating that its leaders had, "for the last 10 years or more,...just been selling wolf tickets to the white race and having fun while they collect money and have fancy lifestyles." He predicted a quiet evolution in the NOI towards unity with the mainstream American Muslim community.
Building ties within the Muslim community
Mohammed was intent on strengthening bonds between his movement and the wider American Muslim faith community as well as with followers of Islam abroad. It was his goal to align American Muslims with Sunni Islam. In 1976, he took a delegation to Guyana on an official state visit to meet with Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, and the then President of Guyana Arthur Chung, during which he forged ties with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in the region.In Geneva, Switzerland in 1985, he met with Dr. Muhammad Ahmad Al-Sharif, Secretary General of the World Islamic Call Society of Libya and Dr. Abdul Hakim Tabibi, an Afghan mujahid, to discuss areas of future cooperation with the World Islamic Call Society and the Muslim Community of America. He hosted Grand Mufti Abdullah Mukhtar, the leader of an estimated 60 million Muslims at Masjid Bilal, during his first visit to the United States in 1994.
In 1999, he was elected to serve on the Islamic Society of North America's shura board. That same year, during Ramadan, he pledged to work with the Grand Mufti of Syria, Shaikh Ahmed Kuftaro an-Naqshbandi for the advancement of Al-Islam during a meeting with Kuftaro and Shaikh Nazim al-Haqqani. He was the special invited guest and keynote speaker at the "Inaugural Conference on the Growth and Development of Islam in America", held at Harvard University on March 3–4, 2000.