Elijah Muhammad and Supreme Literacy: Lessons in Supreme Knowledge, Wisdom, and Understanding

By Lydia Magras Muhammad

Elijah Muhammad and the Supreme of Literacy explores how Elijah Muhammad framed the term literacy as contrasted with its generally known definitions and applications. The text frames a construct for understanding why Elijah Muhammad considered the science of literacy essential to the success of the Blackman and woman in America specifically, and people in general. It outlines the scriptural foundations of Muhammad’s teachings, drawn from both Bible and Qur’an. A detailed review of the course of study prescribed for his followers supplies Elijah Muhammad’s the unique perspective on both literacy and language. Examples of his study curricula are offered. A brief history of Muhammad’s own educational process is presented, with an emphasis on the pedagogy of literacy as practiced by Muhammad’s teacher, W.D. Fard. Material on the early educational focus of The Nation of Islam is introduced. And finally, general commentary on the teachings is made known through the lenses of three men in their role as teachers: W. D. Fard, teacher of Elijah Muhammad, Muhammad himself, and Minister Louis Farrakhan, student of Elijah Muhammad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RowmanLittlefield
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9780761872481

Book preview

Elijah Muhammad

and Supreme Literacy

Elijah Muhammad Studies: Interdisciplinary, Educational, and Islamic Studies

Series Editor: Abul Pitre

The Elijah Muhammad Studies: Interdisciplinary, Educational, and Islamic Studies series represents an effort to investigate the importance of Elijah Muhammad’s teachings across disciplines. This interdisciplinary series is grounded in the disciplines of education and Africana Studies. Elijah Muhammad was prescient with regards to current events like Black Lives Matter, Racial Justice, COVID-19, and Astrobiology. Books in the Elijah Muhammad Studies series will offer students, scholars, and leaders information that will push the boundaries of traditional research to demonstrate the impact of Elijah Muhammad’s teachings on contemporary academic discourse.

Books in the Series

The Educational Philosophy of Elijah Muhammad: Education for a New World by Abul Pitre

The Educational Philosophy of Elijah Muhammad: Education for a New World, Second Edition by Abul Pitre

The Educational Philosophy of Elijah Muhammad: Education for a New World, Third Edition by Abul Pitre

An Introduction to Elijah Muhammad Studies: The New Educational Paradigm by Abul Pitre

An Introduction to Elijah Muhammad Studies: The New Educational Paradigm, Revised Edition by Abul Pitre

Elijah Muhammad and Supreme Literacy: Lessons in Supreme Knowledge, Wisdom, and Understanding by Lydia Magras Muhammad

Elijah Muhammad

and Supreme Literacy

Lessons in Supreme Knowledge,

Wisdom, and Understanding

Lydia Magras Muhammad

HAMILTON BOOKS

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In The Name of Allah . . .

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The Knowledge of God

2 What Is Literacy?

3 The Crucible of Elijah Muhammad

4 Building a New Nation

5 The Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s Science of Literacy Curriculum

6 In Search of Knowledge: Practical Application of The Lessons

Conclusion: Friendship in All Walks of Life

References

Additional Sources

Index

About the Author

Acknowledgements

The journey to completion of this project has been a long one. But Allah provided me with the fortitude to persevere and angels to guide me. I am eternally grateful to Him, and I will be ever thankful for:

My mother, Mrs. Vivian Brimmer Brown, who will celebrate her 100th birthday in 2022 and whose 60 years as a catalogue librarian I channeled as I shuffled my notecards.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan for taking me under his wing along the way.

Dr. Abdul Pitre for inviting me to participate in the first Elijah Muhammad Studies Symposium, where the idea for this book was born.

And I cannot forget Master Fard Muhammad and The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, neither of whom I met, but without whose teachings I would not be the woman I am today.

Many scholars, friends, and family members provided counsel and contributed to my well-being as I was writing: my meticulous copy editor, Tricia Knight-Currie; my personal reference librarian, Gabrielle Toth; Demetric Muhammad, Cedric Muhammad, Wakeel Allah, Dr. Aminah Al-Deen, Sultan Muhammad, Dr. Malik Watkins, Na’aba Muhammad, and Eric Scovel-Goddard, who served as reviewers of early chapters; Dr. Shakeelah Hassan, Maryam Muhammad, Halimah Mohammed-Ali, and Rhea Muhammad, who shared their personal memories; and last, but certainly not least, Valerie Muhammad, Diana Muhammad, Wanda Muhammad, and Antoinette Roberson, my mother’s caregivers.

Introduction

In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

—John 1:1

kjv

, Holy Bible

Read in the name of thy Lord who creates.—Surah 96:1, Holy Qur’an

This text presents both narrow and broad definitions of literacy drawn from the pedagogy of Elijah Muhammad. The text also frames a context for understanding why Muhammad considered literacy to be essential to the success of the Black man and woman in America specifically, and people in general. The commentary is presented through the lenses of three men in their role as teachers: W. D. Fard (teacher of Elijah Muhammad), Muhammad himself, and Minister Louis Farrakhan (student of Elijah Muhammad). The Holy Qur’an, the book of the Muslims, speaks of the learned people as those who have been given knowledge. The point is that becoming learned is much more than receiving a certificate or a diploma. Becoming and being learned is the ultimate state of literacy, resulting in a mastery of the universe. And this process of becoming and being literate is scientific in nature. The raison d’etre of this book is the exploration of the literacy level achieved by Elijah Muhammad and subsequently taught to his followers. It is a literacy, focusing on the achievement of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. So let us establish some foundational definitions of these key words on which to mount our argument.

The word knowledge infers both a theoretical or practical understanding of a subject and an awareness or familiarity gained by experience. Wisdom is the aggregation of experience and knowledge together with the process of applying them critically or practically. And understanding exerts the power of comprehension and abstract thought, bringing to bear an individual’s perception or judgment of a situation. And so, the combination of these attributes results in a supreme ¹ literacy. As an adjective, supreme denotes being the highest in authority or rank, the greatest or most important. By any measuring matrix, the achievement of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding makes for a supremely literate human.

Elijah Muhammad was schooled in the Bible and taught one on one on the contents of the Qur’an. His teachings combine the scientific or rational with the intuitive or spiritual. He brought the functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain to focus on a singular mission—the reeducation and retraining of the Black man and woman in North America.

Elijah Muhammad’s use of language to establish literacy in its broadest application is exemplified by a foundational tenet of his teachings: knowledge of self.

It is knowledge of self that the so-called Negroes lack . . . that keeps them [from] enjoying freedom. . . . Without knowledge, we disgrace ourselves, subjecting ourselves to suffering and shame. (E. Muhammad, 1965, 32)

The essence of this principle is the reality that it is impossible to truly understand anything else if one doesn’t understand self. This principle undergirds Elijah Muhammad’s focus on literacy in its highest or supreme form. And since the supreme form of the universe is Allah, God, the Creator of All Things, the knowledge of God is the gateway to achievement of supreme literacy. In other words, knowledge of self is knowledge of God.

Knowledge of self was also a common thread in the educational philosophy of Du Bois and, to an extent, Carter G. Woodson (Alexander, 1989), all of whom lay the problem at the foot of the process by which the knowledge of present civilization was produced: the idea of dominion and rule, the root of which is properly called White supremacy. Elijah Muhammad worked assiduously to combat this idea and took the minds of Black people off White people. For, according to Haley (1964/2015), the teaching of Mr. Muhammad stressed how history had been ‘whitened’ [because] white men had written [the] history books (p. 177).

Elijah Muhammad was foremost a spiritual leader. He taught that Allah (God) is a real, live human being, differing from you and me only in that He is supreme in knowledge, wisdom, understanding, and power (Farrakhan, 2019). The text outlines the scriptural foundations of Muhammad’s teachings, drawn from both the Bible and the Qur’an. It includes a study of the Nation of Islam’s foundational principle concerning the knowledge of God.

How did an unlettered man with only a fourth-grade education come to lead the longest-surviving Black organization in the United States? Being lettered, or having letters behind one’s name, is commonly accepted as indicative of one’s tenure as a student in the halls of academia. And yet Roget’s (1982) thesaurus categorizes word under intellect, comprehension, and knowledge—with no mention of so-called formal learning systems. The word simply means learned. While Elijah Muhammad had a teacher, under whom he studied for three years, he most certainly achieved a mastery of both universal knowledge and comprehension of how and when to apply that knowledge.

Elijah Muhammad is also rarely discussed as a dialectical leader or teacher, one who is a master in the art of investigating the truth of opinions, the testing of truth by discussion. Talk back to me is an oft-repeated refrain in the mosques and study groups of the Nation of Islam. While some may consider this example of call and response as simply autonomic, I submit that it is a call to critical thinking, and not necessarily requiring an immediate voicing of the thoughts so elicited. The teachings provide a prism through which knowledge is refracted. They are a trigger for the engagement of the audience’s own critical-thinking processes. Through his teachings, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad (THEM) produced a new way of thinking in which the examination of processes and analysis of results constitute a unique approach to the concept of literacy. And of course, literacy, in its most rudimentary form, is a function of cognition.

Cognitive Science and Its Connection to Literacy

Cognition speaks to the acts of knowing, perceiving, or conceiving (a thing) as an act distinct from those associated with emotion and volition. Cognition is a function of the cerebral cortex, the location of analytical thinking processes (e.g., the functions of perceiving and understanding language). Spirituality is a subset of cognitive processes. Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion. In summary, cognitive science or the science of thinking enhances our ability to understand and read the world/the universe.²

In tracking the movements of thought, Elijah Muhammad interrogated the orientations of the mind that one is required to achieve to navigate successfully through the landscapes of being Black in North America. To connect literacy directly to this discussion of cognition, consider the actual fact that no book was first delivered on stone, or paper, or any conduit of the written word. Even the tablets of Moses were first an act of the mind of God. The revelations received by the Prophet Muhammad (praise be unto him—PBUH) were first recited from memory.

Science and Its Connection to Literacy

The Wisdom, Idea, and Way of thinking of Master Fard Muhammad, to Whom Praises are due forever, is Superior to any way of believing today. . . . As He said, first He Makes a New Mind for us and a New Way of thinking. He teaches us a different education, one that we have never had before. He Gives us Education on the Wisdom, Knowledge and Understanding of Gods . . . He builds our minds according to way Gods Think."—E. Muhammad, 1974, p. 123.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.—Philippians 2:5

kjv

, Holy Bible

Science involves methodology and development of theories. It relies on the construction of formulas to solve problems and build realities. Science is the process of using signs by which to calculate. Likewise, the basic building blocks of literacy—reading, writing, and mathematics—also rely on the construction of formulas or codes to solve problems of communication and computation. When we refer to Roget’s (1982) thesaurus,³ we find that the word science also belongs to the class of concepts invoking intellect or cognition whose primary attribute is logic—at least when the intellect is behaving or performing appropriately. In fact, the word science is defined on the same level of intellectual faculties and processes as the word knowledge itself. So, at its most elemental, science refers to any body of knowledge organized in a systematic manner, implying comprehension of knowledge of a noun (person, place, or thing). This definition helps us to understand the context of Elijah Muhammad’s phrase knowledge of self. Learning about self is a scientific process. Knowledge of self denotes a particular mindset, one capable and worthy to stand in the place of God.

Another class to which the word science is related is the class of order: words that specify the function of putting things in their rightful places. This concept is at the root of the word specialized—the process of giving an object special attention or preference. In this case, it is the intellect we are talking about. For example, innate universal grammar theory is born of scientific approaches to thinking and language. Where language is defined to include written narratives, grammatical forms can be equated to a kind of narrative formulary. For example, sentences form paragraphs, which form chapters, which form prose. And the Qur’an itself gives additional examples of this attribute of order in Surah 41—Ha Mim, also known as Fussilat or a thing made plain, providing a precise application to intellect, knowledge, science, and literacy:

41:2 The compilation and orderly arrangement [of this Qur’an] proceeds from the Most Gracious, the Ever Merciful [God].

41:3 [it is] a Book, the verses of which are detailed and clear in exposition.

It is beautifully interlinked [and it is in a language that] makes the meanings eloquently clear. It is very useful for a people who have knowledge. [As explained by Allamah Nooruddin, the Holy Qur’an]

But what is the constitution of a scientific approach to literacy? It is the combination of the sciences of mathematics and language, decoding and speaking, thinking and doing. Each of these elements is given a value equal to the value of its related elements. For example, in mathematics, Fard Muhammad used measurements of the earth to define the circumference of the Black man’s potential sphere of influence. Later, Elijah Muhammad would use the tenses of grammar to teach fine points of traditional literacy. Referring to Fard’s instructions to members who aspire to leadership within the Nation of Islam (NOI), Elijah Muhammad emphasized: [You are] to speak and use grammatic pronunciation of words and syllables in past, future, present, and perfect tense (F. Muhammad, 1957). In other words, I am, I was, I will be, I will have been.

Every human being has the right to access knowledge and a duty to exercise critical thinking—two foundational elements of THEM’s scientific approach to literacy. Critical thinking is a crucial component of rhetorical argument, and it takes into consideration cultural contexts and basic appeals. Elijah Muhammad’s scientific approach to literacy stresses the mastery of a specific skill or technique: the ability to process discrete pieces of information and weave a coherent picture for the purposes of evaluation, analysis, and righteous action.

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1, The Knowledge of God, introduces the concept of scientific or supreme literacy as it is related to the Qur’an and draws the parameters for discourse about who God is. This chapter also takes an in-depth look at W. D. Fard Muhammad and Point #12 of What the Muslims Believe, a part of the Muslim Program. Point #12 is the source of much confusion and consternation regarding the Nation of Islam, and I offer my foundational reliance on it for the reader’s consideration. As knowledge of God indubitably leads to knowledge of self, the chapter offers perspectives on definitions, applications, and utility of the phrase. Additionally, the chapter is centered around both Elijah Muhammad’s operant definitions of literacy and their foundations in Qur’an and Bible. Citing both these holy books, Elijah Muhammad makes the case for supreme literacy as the basis for the resurrection (spiritual and material) of the Black man and woman all over the planet.

Chapter 2, What Is Literacy? sets forth a general contextual framework of literacy as a concept—within the formal field of education (i.e., school systems), its linguistic roots, and the necessary redefinitions implied in the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. It addresses how Elijah Muhammad characterizes literacy and what he believes to be its purpose. While general definitions of the word are explored, a new paradigm for understanding the word is presented, the construct that underpins Elijah Muhammad’s pedagogy of literacy—knowledge of self. The word literacy, of course, also begs another question: What is education? And so, the chapter proffers answers to this question while also engaging in a conversation about literacy as a modality of wider communication and within the context of Black studies.

The life and times of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad represent a work of homogenizing, of making uniform and correcting the thinking of the Black man and woman in the United States. His own life is instructive in the achievement of this purpose. And so, chapter 3, The Crucible of Elijah Muhammad, offers a brief biographical sketch with an emphasis on his mother, his first teacher, Marie Hall Poole. Mother Marie is placed in the lineage of other specially prepared women who were mothers to men of God. From a very early age, she was to be a major influence, serving as his counselor and sounding board. Examination of his relationship with his mother lays the foundation for a more thorough discussion of the role of mothers in the education of their children.

Chapter 4, Building a New Nation, continues the presentation of Master Fard Muhammad, the founder of the